By FARES AKRAM

GAZA — Khaled Meshal, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, has effectively abandoned his longtime base in Syria, where a popular uprising has left thousands dead, and has no plans to return, Hamas sources in Gaza said Friday.

“The situation there does not allow the leadership to be present,” a Hamas official in Gaza said. “There are no more Hamas leaders in Damascus.” The official and others, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Hamas leaders had left the Syrian capital because of security concerns.

But they said that Hamas, which rules here in Gaza, had not yet made a decision about closing its Syrian offices or where to moves its headquarters. Mr. Meshal has spent most of the past month on the move in the region.

Hamas had hailed the Arab revolts that toppled the governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, but it was embarrassed when Syrian dissidents moved against President Bashar al-Assad, who has played host to exiled Palestinian leaders for years.

On Sunday, Mr. Meshal is scheduled to make his first official visit to Jordan since he was deported in 1999. Qatar, one of Mr. Assad’s most vocal Arab critics, played mediator in arranging for Mr. Meshal’s visit to Jordan, which is expected to include a meeting with King Abdullah II. Jordan was the first Arab country to urge Mr. Assad to step down.

Hamas announced this month that Mr. Meshal wished to step down as the chief of the movement’s political bureau, which he has led since 1996, but the exact nature and meaning of his resignation remain unclear. Some said the announcement was a sign of an internal power struggle, others as a maneuver aimed at displaying his popularity. Still others said that Mr. Meshal had his eyes on a bigger position beyond Hamas.

By KAREEM FAHIM

SAQBA, Syria — If the scene here on Friday was anything to judge by, the armed opposition to the Syrian government was making inroads and had won control of this town at the doorstep of the capital, Damascus, and perhaps of several other neighborhoods, signaling an escalation of violence in this beleaguered country.

At a funeral for one of the more than 5,400 victims of Syria’s unfolding civil war, fighters from the opposition Free Syrian Army kept watch, their faces covered with scarves and balaclavas as they stood at the edge of a square, carrying assault rifles and grenade launchers. Thousands of demonstrators marched behind the coffin beneath the green, white and black banner of the opposition — not the Syrian government’s flag. Suspected state security agents were grabbed by the crowd.

The growing violence and assertiveness of the loosely organized military force hinted at the expanding role of armed fighters in a movement that began peacefully more than 10 months ago and that now seems to attract more defectors from Syria’s military by the day. After months of a withering government crackdown on the opposition, many protesters have come to welcome the fighters as a bulwark against the security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

The Free Syrian Army’s leadership is based over the border in Turkey. It is unclear whether it has any organizational control over the local, ad hoc militias in Syria that one person described as “franchises.” The scene in the square in Saqba showed that the ranks of the fighters had been buttressed by army conscripts and others, including air force veterans. In some places the militias are filled with local men, and in others, like Saqba, many of the defectors come from other parts of the country, welcome but somewhat mysterious guests.

“We don’t know who their commanders are,” said Rafaat Obeid, 37, one of the demonstrators. “We know they protect us.”

The growing numbers of armed rebels — and the determination of the government crackdown — has led to a rising tide of violence. The leader of the Arab League’s observer mission acknowledged on Friday that killings had accelerated despite the delegates’ presence. In a statement, the mission chief, Lt. Gen. Muhammad Ahmed al-Dabi of Sudan, warned of the “significant” escalation of violence in the previous three days and said it threatened negotiations aimed at ending the conflict.

Few of Syria’s opposition strongholds were safe on Friday as a government offensive unfolded across the country. The streets of Homs, Hama and Idlib came under shelling and sniper fire and were choked by clashes with opposition activists.

In the Free Syrian Army, the government faces what is surely a gathering threat. The rebels have fanned out across the country, forming militias that seem to be organizing mostly at a local level.

Khaled Abou Salah, a spokesman for the Homs Revolution Council, said brigades of Free Syrian Army soldiers in the city answered to neighborhood commanders who coordinated their efforts with officers in other parts of the country. The corps included engineers specializing in explosives and civilians, often men wanted by the government. Their ranks were growing, he said.

“Each time they bring new forces here, some of them defect,” he said.

In interviews last week, some residents of Homs, including several Christians and Alawites, expressed fears that hard-line Sunnis known as Salafis were forming armed groups and stoking violence. Those fears — which some said were overblown and ignored similar Sunni worries — reflected mounting concerns among secular activists that as the conflict drags on, an Islamist presence in some militias was giving the uprising an increasingly sectarian character.

One prominent leftist activist in Homs, heeding the concerns, said he was pressing his fellow activists to renounce the armed movement and stick to peaceful protests.

The tensions played out this week between secular and Islamist activists, with the Islamists pushing to name the weekly Friday protests “Al Jihad,” as other activists pushed for “the Right to Self Defense.” The secular activists won.

“The Syrian uprising is not a Sunni jihad against unbelievers,” said Rami, a protest leader in Damascus. “It is a Syrian uprising against a dictator’s regime, and for that reason there are protesters from Alawite, Christian, Druze, Ismaili and other sects,” he said.

In Saqba, a Free Syrian Army commander echoed that sentiment, saying that the fighters in the city crossed sectarian lines. “My colleagues’ names are George, and Joseph,” he said.

They had defected from military bases all over the country, with many saying they had fled after being ordered to fire on the protests. Men from Saqba had begged to join the brigade, usually motivated by revenge after the death of a relative.

Increasingly, the opposition movement seems to be facing a cornered but resilient foe. Arab and Western nations have intensified their efforts in the last week to isolate Mr. Assad’s government, demanding that he hand over power.

At the United Nations on Friday, Morocco presented a new draft Security Council resolution echoing the Arab League’s stance that Mr. Assad cede power to pave the way for a national unity government. The measure was opposed by Russia — and Syria — for hinting at sanctions and an arms embargo, and what the Assad government said was an effort to impose a solution from the outside.

“They deal with us as if we are a former colony that should subjugate itself to their will,” said Bashar Jaafari, the Syrian ambassador. “Syria will not be Libya; Syria will not be Iraq; Syria will not be Somalia; Syria will not be a failed state.”

Instead, the government promised to strike “firmly” at the armed gunmen, like the army defectors in Saqba, who it says represent the true face of an opposition it has branded as terrorists. The message has found sympathetic ears, not only among Mr. Assad’s large base of supporters but also other Syrians who fear that a growing armed insurgency will destabilize the country.

Within the past few days, the security forces have descended on Douma, 10 miles from Damascus, to take back neighborhoods they had ceded to armed gunmen. They did the same in Hama, where the bodies of dozens of executed prisoners were found on Thursday.

In another sign that the conflict might be escalating, there were unconfirmed reports on Friday of large protests in Aleppo, the country’s second largest city and a center of commerce that has stayed largely quiet.

Activists said that at least nine protesters were killed when plainclothes security officers attacked the demonstrations.

Homs was the site of the worst bloodletting. Activists said at least 40 people, including children, had been killed in sectarian killings and government shelling there since Thursday.

Increasingly, the opposition is meeting violence with violence. Opposition figures have warned about the new direction of the uprising as some militias have attacked the security forces as well as people seen — rightly or wrongly — as its supporters.

In Aleppo, Free Syrian Army officers were behind the recent assassination of a prominent businessman who was widely believed to be one of the main financiers of the shabiha, or plainclothes security officers, said Col. Ammar Alwawi, a Free Syrian Army officer in Turkey, who said the militia had been warning the government’s supporters for months to “return to the people.”

“There’s no other option now,” he said.

A Free Syrian Army member who identified himself as Lt. Sayf, said 35 soldiers from the militia were behind a bombing at a checkpoint near Idlib on Friday that killed at least two members of the government’s security forces.

Speaking of his role in the attack, Lieutenant Sayf said, “I thank God, with his blessings, no one from our army got injured and all security at the checkpoint were killed.”

Sabqa itself was hardly safe on Friday. In recent weeks, beneath the tall, dingy apartment blocks of the city, the fighters have fought off government attacks from snipers and tanks. More recently, mortar rounds have landing in the neighborhood, they said. At one point, there was a stampede, after rumors of a government attack.

Residents were mostly at ease in the square, where they talked about the violence of recent months, saying that more than 30 local residents had died.

“I’ve never felt safe in my house — in my country,” Jamal Attaya said as thousands marched past him. “The protests couldn’t go on without them,” he said, referring to the fighters.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 28, 2012, 8:50 AM (GMT+02:00)

San Carlos de Bariloche targeted for terror

Argentina has captured a three-man Iranian-Hizballah cell and is hunting for the rest of the network, according to exclusive debkafile sources. Its counter-terror police were a step ahead of attacks plotted against several of the 10 Habad centers in the country, part of a worldwide joint terrorist offensive against Israeli and Jewish targets. Two strikes were thwarted earlier this month in Thailand and Azerbaijan.
The three-man cell was captured in the Argentine resort town of San Carlos de Bariloche, 1,680 kilometers from Buenos Aires, a favorite starting-point for Israeli backpackers touring Patagonia and the Andes. The town is situated on the banks of Lake Naheil Huapi, a major tourist attraction of the Rio Negro district which is famous for its beauty.

Argentina’s anti-terrorist Federal Special Operations Group, known as T4, waylaid the three terrorists on tips from US and Israeli intelligence. In their possession were incriminating documents and maps.
Habad hospitality centers and Jewish institutions in the country were then shut down and given extra security guards, as was the Israeli embassy in the capital.

In 1992, the embassy was attacked by Iranian terrorists killing 29 people and injuring 242. debkafile‘s intelligence and counter-terror sources reveal that one of the things the investigation seeks to discover this time is whether the captured Iranian-Hizballah cell was given a safe house, guidance and aid by family members of World War II Nazi criminals who won sanctuary in Argentina.. At the time of the Israeli embassy bombing twenty years ago, the Iranian and Hizballah terrorists were suspected of working hand in glove with local pro-Nazi elements.  Argentina, Germany and Israel never confirmed this.

However, San Carlos de Bariloche is known as a post-1945 Nazi haven. Two books by British writers published in 2011 even claimed that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had managed to escape from Berlin and reach safety in this region. This rumor was always denied.
The terror alert Buenos Aires declared this week was also communicated to Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Mexico, in case additional Iranian-Hizballah teams were heading for Israeli and Jewish targets there too.

The plot Argentina foiled after Thailand and Azerbaijan indicates that Iranian intelligence and Hizballah’s special security arm are in the midst of a worldwide terror offensive against Israel and Jews. Habad centers were picked out because their doors are always open to travelers, easily identifiable and accessible. They are often packed with large numbers of Jewish and Israeli visitors. The attackers are therefore assured of a big splash in the international media – if they pull off an attack.
In November 2008, Lashkar e-Taiba, the Pakistani arm of al Qaeda, seized Habad House in Mumbai and murdered eight Israelis and American Jews before blowing the building up. The rabbi’s small child was the only survivor, rescued from the captured building by his Indian nanny.
In Bangkok, a member of the Iranian-Hizballah terrorist team, on his way with at least two confederates to blow up the Habad center after holding its occupants hostage and killing them, was captured two weeks ago, thwarting the attack. Then, on Jan. 19, Azerbaijani authorities nailed an Iranian intelligence-Hizballah cell in Baku in time to save the local Habad community center in the city.

Joint Iranian-Hizballah terrorist tentacles have already reached into three continents for an all-out drive to reach their prey – so far without success, owing to the cooperation among counter-terror agencies which remain on sustained high alert.

Did not want to your post openly. I have agreed with your EMP attack scenerio for a long time. I have been trying to find the time to run it past Dr. Carlos Kopp with whom I have discussed airpower issues before, but my duties as a professor have increased as of late.

Take a look a this webpage http://www.ausairpower.net/dew-ebomb.html

I will try to email him this weekend about the feasibility of surgical EMP strikes. I know BeBe and Barak know they will have to do somethings since Obama and his ilk believe that a nuclear Iran will create a deterrent situation–can we say delusional.

I am unsure if Israel could deal with the fallout–no pun intended–from a full out EMP attack, and the chaos it would cause. On the other hand airdropped and Popeyes launched EMP bombs could take out the nuclear infrastructure and inflict enough damage to deter the Ayatollahs from a counter attack on Israel.

Taking out a couple of cities like Bander Abbas and Beusher as well as an oil producing area like Khoramanshahr would cause enough damage to make them think about retaliation especially if BeBetold them that the next cities to be hit are Mashar, Isfehan, Tabriz, Qom and Tehran in that order.

Limited strikes might give the Green movement the opportunity to get rid of the Ayatollahs which would bring sanity to Iran.

I guess my whole point is that an all out EMP attack would be like crossing the line the US did at Hiroshima. The USA could at that time–not sure if we could now–I am not sure Israel should cross roughly the same line today. For deterrent value it would be great but with the Islamists taking over in Egypt, Libya etc. it may be too much.

The Arabs want the Iranians taken down but if they are obliterated then the old “war on Islam” battle cry echos across the Middle East. Limited strikes will keep the Sunni’s on Israel’s side–did I just write that ??? Anyway–this is my line of thinking right now.

If I get time this weekend I will develop the surgical strike idea a bit more and see what Carlos thinks about it–it all revolves around the output of a 1000LBS size EMP bomb.

The absolute silence about EMP weapons almost makes me think that is what the IDF is up to.

I looked at the naval base at Beucher today on google maps. Something like four or five frigates and three subs were there.

One gps guided emp bomb could render all the combatants inoperable–now that is a weapon. The irony would be that Israel would be the one to keep the Straits open !!! A fat and happy al-Saud family might be the price Israel might have to pay for a successful SEMP strike.

Sohrab Ahmari dismantles a new apologia from Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, who has consistently extended the benefit of the doubt to the regime in Tehran and has never extended the same courtesy to the Obama Administration. Oh, and Parsi has consistently blamed the usual suspects for everything that’s gone wrong in the U.S.-Iran relationship. Ahmari:

In “A Single Roll of the Dice,” Trita Parsi tries to account for this failure. But rather than re-examine U.S. policy and its underlying assumptions, Mr. Parsi spends much of the book casting blame on a wide range of actors for Mr. Obama’s inability to disarm the clerical regime through diplomatic means. Such blame-shifting is not surprising. The author has spent years, as president of the National Iranian American Council, advocating for engagement with Iran; he is now determined to explain away the policy’s inherent flaws.

The fault lies with the country Iran has repeatedly threatened to exterminate, of course:

Predictably, Israel and American Jews with an interest in U.S. policy are subjected to the harshest criticism. Israel’s perception of the Iranian threat, Mr. Parsi says, has long “resembled prophesy more than reality,” impelling the Jewish state to frame its conflict with Iran’s clerical regime “as one between the sole democracy in the Middle East and a theocracy that hated everything the West stood for.” Mr. Parsi rejects that perception. Beneath the Iranians’ viciously anti-Semitic and anti-American sloganeering, he contends, lies a legitimate demand that their “security interests and regional aspirations” be recognized. Meet the demand, he thinks, and Iran will no longer be a threat.

Israel and its allies in the U.S. were determined to prevent such an exchange of strategic respect, according to Mr. Parsi. Thus was closed a rare diplomatic opening represented by the election of an American president with a persona well suited to peacemaking and without “the baggage of previous administrations.”

Ahmari forthrightly states what honest observers (including honest observers inside the Obama White House) believe to be the root of the Administration’s failure to reach a breakthrough with Iran::

Mr. Obama’s engagement policy failed not because of Israeli connivance or because the administration did not try hard enough. The policy failed because the Iranian regime, when confronted by its own people or by outsiders, has only one way of responding: with a truncheon.

Iran tried to take advantage of the Arab Spring. It failed, miserably.

BY COLIN H. KAHL | JANUARY 25, 2012

One year ago today, Egyptians took to the streets to demand the removal of Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade-old dictatorship. As they waved flags and chanted for the fall of the regime, another ruler 1,200 miles to the east was calculating how to use their act of courage for his own profit. On Feb. 4, at the height of the protests in Tahrir Square, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took the stage in Tehran to deliver his assessment of the revolutionary moment unfolding in Cairo.

Speaking partly in Arabic, Khamenei described events in Egypt as an “Islamic awakening” inspired by Iran’s own 1979 revolution. The speech was blasted out to thousands of Egyptians via text message, and Khamenei even claimed on his webpage to have personally inspired the pro-democracy demonstrations, comparing them to “the yell that the Iranian nation let out against America and against global arrogance and tyranny.”

Khamenei was not alone in predicting that the Arab Spring would provide Iran an opportunity to expand its influence across the Middle East. Early on, some Washington commentators fretted that he may be right. Writing in Foreign Affairs, for example, Michael Scott Doran, a former official in President George W. Bush’s administration, cautioned that the “resistance bloc” led by Tehran was “poised to pounce, jackal-like, on the wounded states of the region.” And, in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset as recently as October that he doubted the “high hopes that blossomed in the Arab Spring” would be realized, arguing that Iran would manipulate events to expand its influence.

But even at the time, Khamenei’s assertions fell on deaf ears among the hundreds of thousands risking their lives in Tahrir Square. When asked about Khamenei’s boastful claims, one Tahrir protester mocked: “Egyptians were not inspired by Iran. Rather, the Egyptian people are inspiring the world.” This proved a much more astute observation than the supreme leader’s. As Foreign Policy‘s own Marc Lynch documents in his compelling new book, The Arab Uprising, the 2011 revolts in Egypt and elsewhere were inspired by decades-old grievances against corrupt regimes and the mutually reinforcing demonstration effects of simultaneous movements rising up across the Arab world. Iran had nothing to do with it.

The reaction in Tahrir Square represented a sign of things to come. Iran has tried to exploit events, but the winds of political change have not blown in Tehran’s favor.

When Mubarak fell, Iran’s leaders moved out with swagger. They saw one pivotal U.S. ally gone, and perceived an opportunity to exploit unrest to undermine other pro-Western regimes, especially Saudi Arabia. They sought to develop contacts with Islamists in Egypt and Libya, expand ties to opposition movements in Yemen, and capitalize on the indigenous Shiite protests in Bahrain. And Iran’s leaders seemed confident that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Tehran’s state ally in the Middle East, was immune from the populist wave because of its militant stance toward Israel and the United States.

One year later, however, it is hard to find evidence that Iran has benefited from the Arab uprisings. In fact, Iran’s regional position has taken a big hit. With the partial exception of Yemen, Tehran has struggled to build new networks of influence with emerging Islamist actors. Meanwhile, Assad’s regime has been thoroughly delegitimized, expelled from the Arab League, and is wobbling in the face of nationwide protests. This, in turn, has created considerable anxiety for Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that constitutes Iran’s chief non-state ally.

The perception of Iranian meddling has also decimated Tehran’s “soft power” appeal across the Arab world. Surveys conducted in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates by Zogby International show Iran’s reputation in free fall since the Arab Spring began. Just a few years ago, Iran enjoyed a strong majority of support among the populations of all these countries; as of July 2011, Iran had a net unfavorable rating in every country but Lebanon.

This is not just a temporary setback for Iran, but a sea change that could deeply undermine its regional ambitions. To be sure, the trajectory of the Arab Spring remains uncertain, and rising sectarian tensions and political backsliding in some countries may provide opportunities for Tehran to cause mischief. But several underlying dynamics suggest that Iran’s struggles will continue.

As Arab publics increasingly look to their own governments to represent their interests, Iran’s ability to leverage regional discontent to influence the Arab street will continue to wane. Moreover, emerging political actors vying for influence and votes in an increasingly populist landscape, including both secular parties and Sunni Arab Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, will be keen to brandish their Arab nationalist credentials and will be reluctant to forge close associations with Tehran. Within hours of Mubarak’s fall, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman was already taking pains to emphasize that “Egypt is not Iran. Egypt can build its own model of democracy according to its culture and Islamic preference.”

The Iranian regime’s brutal response to its own 2009 protest movement puts further limits on its influence over the Arab Spring. The regime’s refusal to respect universal rights, while claiming to back democratic movements across the Middle East, is irrefutable evidence of hypocrisy. And Iran’s continued support for the Syrian regime’s bloody tactics — at the very moment that Assad faces growing pressure from fellow Arab states and Turkey to end the violence and step aside — only magnifies this double standard.

Classic balance of power dynamics have also triggered extensive pushback from Tehran’s regional rivals. Iran’s nuclear ambitions, combined with widespread concerns of Iranian-backed subversion, have motivated unprecedented arms purchases and security cooperation among the Arab Gulf states. Exaggerated perceptions of Iranian meddling also produced the ill-advised Saudi intervention into Bahrain last March. In the face of perceived Iranian threats, Saudi Arabia and its allies are likely to continue to circle the wagons.

Lastly, as the prospects of Assad’s political survival in Syria continue to dim, so do Iran’s hopes for regional supremacy. For years, Iran’s close alliance with Syria has provided it with a platform to exert influence in the Arab world, and a base from which to funnel support to militant Lebanese and Palestinian organizations threatening Israel. But with the pro-democracy movement in Syria persisting in the face of severe repression and Assad’s regime facing international estrangement, Iran’s most critical alliance is increasingly tenuous.

If Assad falls, Iran may attempt to compensate by doubling down in Iraq. But the susceptibility of Iraq’s Shiite-led government to Iranian hegemony is widely exaggerated and Iraq cannot replace Syria as a gateway to the Levant. Iraqi nationalism is profound and local distrust of Iran, a country Iraq waged the bloodiest war of the late twentieth century against, runs deep. Iraq also desires a long-term partnership with the United States and improved relations with its Arab neighbors — goals that are incompatible with Iranian domination.

One year after the Egyptian revolution began, Khamenei’s hopes — and Western analysts’ fears — have not materialized, and are not likely to. Although it has been fashionable to describe Iran’s growing power in the Middle East, actual events suggest the opposite. Iran’s economy is reeling under sanctions, and the regime’s nuclear activities and saber-rattling increasingly mark it as a pariah state. And as the Arab Spring marches on, Iran will find itself falling further behind.

Colin H. Kahl is associate professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. From January 2009 to December 2011, he was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

Man, I’m taking a lot of heat in the Goldblog mailroom over something I wrote earlier (and, by the way, now that we’ve opened-up comments on this blog, please feel free to post your responsibly-written invective down below, though of course you can still email me directly). Here’s what I wrote::

And by the way, as an American Jew, I believe, as most American Jews believe (and most American non-Jews, as well) that Israel should exist and flourish as a Jewish country, that it is an important project of the Jewish people, that  and that it is a natural ally of the United States. An American Jew can feel this and still be a loyal, upstanding American. (Certainly, non-Jewish Americans are permitted to feel this way.)  I get the sense, from reading him every so often, that Glenn Greenwald is in the minority on this issue. Which is fine, of course. (Bold is mine).

Here is one letter from a Goldblog reader:

You say that Greenwald’s vicious anti-Israel double standard is fine with you. My question is what’s wrong with you? Greenwald is part of a small coterie of Jewish anti-Semites who never miss an opportunity, as the saying goes, to blast Israel or Jews for supporting Israel. It is morally, ethically and spiritually wrong what he does. How can this be fine with you? Are you trying to suck up?

To that last question, Umm, no. Here’s another, similar letter, more succinct:

You yourself are defining yourself as a self-hating Jew by endorsing the right of Glenn Greenwald to hate Israel.

Self-hatred is a deeply-inexact description of the people this reader is trying to describe. In my experience, those Jews who consciously set themselves apart from the Jewish majority in the disgust they display for Israel, or for the principles of their faith, are often narcissists, and therefore seem to suffer from an excess of self-regard, rather than self-loathing. “Self-hater” is a euphemism, then, for “auto-anti-Semite,” or some other such locution. I generally try to stay away from such descriptions (though there are some very obvious candidates for the label of auto-anti-Semite, including the John Mearsheimer-endorsed neo-Nazi Gilad Atzmon).

In the case of Greenwald, here is what I think, from afar, since we’ve never met. When I write that Greenwald’s ostentatious anti-Israelism is “fine, of course,” I’m not endorsing his views, I’m simply acknowledging that he has a right to say whatever he wants — he has a right even to defend the use of the neo-Nazi-derived anti-Semitic slur “Israel-Firster” to describe Jews with whom he disagrees — and I’m also acknowledging, in a way, that he is not sui generis: There have always been Jews who define themselves in opposition to Judaism, Marxists mainly, in the style of of Isaac Deutscher’s so-called “non-Jewish Jew.” (By the way, Deutscher was one of Christopher Hitchens’ favorite Jews, and we used to argue at great length about him. And by the way again, I forgot who made this argument to me, but it is possible to assert that opposition to Judaism is in itself a form of Judaism, given Judaism’s disputatious, questioning nature.)

I don’t know anything about Greenwald’s Jewishness. He could be a Marrano Chabadnik for all I know, though, based on the way he writes about Israel and American Jewish organizations, I often suspect that some really bad shit happened to him in Hebrew school. (I mean, worse than the usual soul-sucking anomie). But about what he writes: I do know that he evinces toward Israel a disdain that is quite breathtaking. He holds Israel to a standard he doesn’t hold any other country, except the U.S. Now, of course, if you read certain things I write (like this, for instance) you could say that I’m also hostile to Israel, though I also exhibit affection for Israel, both the reality of  Israel (or at least many of its facets) and the idea that motivated the reality into existence.

Greenwald has written millions of words (well, written and block-quoted, anyway), and I haven’t read them all, so he may have said something positive about Israel, but I don’t know. I’ve never seen him write with any sort of affection about Israel, Zionism, Judaism, the Jewish people, and so on. Of course, he doesn’t write with affection about very much at all. (This is not to say I don’t admire some of his stands, including his forthright stance against torture — of course, this is a very Jewish position to take, if you ask me.)

Though his opinions are his to have, I don’t think he is being intellectually honest when he defends the use of the term “Israel-firster.” David Bernstein has an interesting look at Greenwald’s hypocritical double-standard:

Obviously, Greenwald’s sensitivity to offensive language depends on whether he likes/agrees with the target. When his favored candidate, Barack Obama, was being attacked by John McCain, he was extremely quick to accuse McCain of using language designed to appeal to racist sentiment. When pro-Israel activists and politicians, a Greenwald-disfavored group, are being attacked by his anti-Israel compatriots, suddenly they are inherently immune from any hint of using anti-Semitic (a form, of course, of racism) language unless, perhaps, they are wearing swastikas and celebrating Hitler’s birthday. And the fact that Greenwald can and has come up with examples of where some of Israel’s supporters have used charges of anti-Semitism in inappropriate or exaggerated contexts is quite irrelevant to the point, just as it would be irrelevant to Greenwald’s post about McCain if someone pointed out that charges of racism against Obama’s opponents are at times inappropriate or exaggerated.

There is a great temptation on the part of some Jews, now that anti-Semitism is being mainstreamed by people like John Mearsheimer (read this indispensable Adam Kirsch piece on Mearsheimer’s unholy mission, and read this important Ben Cohen piece as well, on the chutzpah of anti-Semites who believe it is their right to define what is and isn’t anti-Semitism), and now that actual neo-Nazi terminology is being used in the press to describe certain Jews (and now, of course, that the Israeli government has mostly given up trying to make outsiders sympathetic to Israel’s cause), to communicate somehow to the non-Jews around them that they have nothing to do with Israel, or with Israel’s supporters. This is a self-defense mechanism of petrified people, and though it isn’t particularly admirable, it isn’t unnatural.

“Israel-firster,” of course, connotes someone who puts Israeli interests above America’s interests. It plays on an ancient stereotype of Jews, that they are only loyal to their own sectarian cause (Henry Ford’s “The International Jew” is a classic of the genre). From where I sit, there are three good reasons not to use the term:

1) It’s probably best, for civilization’s sake, to avoid using language popularized by neo-Nazis to describe Jews, especially because the manner in which neo-Nazis use the term is similar to the way in which the term is used by non-neo-Nazis. It is a term designed to stoke anti-Jewish resentment and prejudice.

2) It is a term designed to end an argument, not open a discussion.

3) It is an inaccurate way to describe American Jews who support Israel and support a strong Israel-U.S. relationship. It precludes the possibility that the person who supports Israel is doing so precisely because he or she feels that it is in America’s best interest to support Israel. There are many reasons for the U.S. to support Israel (for one view, from a former undersecretary of defense, and a former deputy national security adviser, both not Jewish, please read this), and there, of course, non-anti-Semitic arguments to be made against such support. But those who argue against a close relationship between the U.S. and Israel too often assume the very worst of their opponents.

You do, of course, have schmuckos like Andrew Adler, the now-ex-editor of the Atlanta Jewish paper, who fantasized in print about the Mossad rubbing-out President Obama. I don’t think this makes him pro-Israel, by the way, or whatever the non-anti-Semitic equivalent of “Israel-Firster” is. I think this makes him an idiot and a sociopath. The real subject of all this “Israel-Firster” invective is the fifteen or twenty percent of (non-lunatic) American Jews who feel very strongly anti-Obama because of his alleged dislike for Israel. The assumption among some people is that these folks aren’t even dual-loyalists, that they’re loyal only to Netanyahu. But though I’m not one of them (I’m accused almost every day of being in the tank for Obama), I think it is perfectly plausible to believe — and I’ve talked to right-wing American Jews who say exactly this — that pro-Israel Americans, Jewish or otherwise, are motivated to support Israel because they are Americans, and see in Israel a cause worth America’s effort.

Of course, Israel’s self-destructive leadership, through inaction on the occupation, by proposing laws that curtail free speech, by kowtowing to religious extremists, are creating conditions in which it will no longer be easy for Americans — especially American Jews — to see in Israel a reflection of American values. But this a subject for a separate post.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald just tweeted this: “Last week, @Goldberg3000 depicted himself as a McCarthyism victim – now he’s back to smearing people as Israel-haters http://is.gd/4a13jH”

Put aside for a moment Greenwald’s over-reliance on the verb “smear” to describe any sort of criticism of him. I do think that a reasonable reading of Glenn Greenwald’s work on Israel would suggest that he likes it not at all. There’s no proof in his writings that he has any affection for Israel, or any sympathy for Israel. Which, as I’ve said, is his right.

In today’s edition of “How Many Jews Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?,” certified leftist Spencer Ackerman goes after Glenn Greenwald and others — rather successfully, I think — for using anti-Semitic rhetoric to smear (Glenn’s favorite word) Jews with whom they disagree:

Some on the left have recently taken to using the term “Israel Firster” and similar rhetoric to suggest that some conservative American Jewish reporters, pundits, and policymakers are more concerned with the interests of the Jewish state than those of the United States. Last week, for example, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald asked Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg about any loyalty oaths to Israel Goldberg took when he served in the IDF during the early 1990s. (On Tuesday, writer Max Blumenthal used a gross phrase to describe Goldberg: “former Israeli prison guard.”) The obvious implication is that Goldberg’s true loyalty is to Israel, not the United States. For months, M.J. Rosenberg of Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog group, has been throwing around the term “Israel Firster” to describe conservatives he disagrees with. One recent Tweet singled out my friend Eli Lake, a reporter for Newsweek: “Lake supports #Israel line 100% of the time, always Israel first over U.S.” That’s quite mild compared to some of the others.

Ackerman makes this important observation:

Many of the writers who are fond of the Israel Firster smear are–appropriately–very good at hearing and analyzing dog-whistles when they’re used to dehumanize Arabs and Muslims. I can’t read anyone’s mind or judge anyone’s intention, but by the sound of it these writers are sending out comparable dog-whistles about Jews.

By the way, I don’t consider “former Israeli prison guard” a “gross phrase,” just so Ackerman understands. It’s an inaccurate phrase — I wasn’t a guard, I was a military policeman (the actual title of my position was “prisoner counselor,” believe it or not, which meant that I saw after the culinary, hygiene and medical needs of the prisoners, but I also, on more than one occasion, actually did give advice to Palestinian prisoners on how to apply to college in America — I stressed that the essay portion of any application would be an easy home run for any of these Intifada prisoners. A few of them did end up at universities here).

One amusing note: When Max Blumenthal (who now writes a column for a pro-Hezbollah Beirut newspaper, by the way — and no, I’m not making this up) calls me an Israeli prison guard, I invariably receive one or two e-mails like this one, just recently received:

“You can tried to hide your past but it’s not working. We all know now that you worked in a concentration camp for Palestinians.”

As loyal Goldblog readers know, I’ve done a very poor job of hiding my perfidious past: Writing a book about my service at this Israeli army prison camp was probably not the best way to keep this a secret.

But, onward. Here’s Ackerman on why it is important for leftists to avoid smearing Jews they are ostensibly trying to convert to their position on the occupation and on bombing Iran:

The left, I think, will win that debate on the merits, because it recognizes that if Israel is to survive as a Jewish democracy living in peace beside a free Palestine, an assertive United States has to pressure a recalcitrant Israel to come to its senses, especially about the insanity of attacking Iran.

But that debate will be shut down and sidetracked by using a term that Charles Lindbergh or Pat Buchanan would be comfortable using. I can’t co-sign that. The attempt to kosherize “Israel Firster” is an ugly rationalization. It shouldn’t matter that the American Jewish right proliferates the term “anti-Israel.” The easiest way to lose a winnable argument is to get baited into using their tactics. I don’t fetishize false civility; bullies ought to get it twice as bad as they give. People disagree, so they should argue. Shouting is healthier than shutting up.

The handful of Jews who use anti-Semitic terminology to demonize other Jews (and it really is a handful — I’m not sure they could fill a synagogue) do serve an important purpose, however: They open-up space for anti-Jewish invective in mainstream discourse. Here is Lee Smith, also in Tablet:

Why is it that no one bats an eyelash when a former United States national security adviser says, “The Israelis have a lot of influence with Congress, and in some cases they are able to buy influence”? Last week in an interview, Zbigniew Brzezinski accused the government of Israel of a crime. If he has evidence that Israeli officials have broken the law by bribing U.S. politicians, law enforcement authorities should compel him to produce it. But of course Brzezinski’s not really talking about Israelis. What he means is that American Jews have subverted the interests of the United States on behalf of a foreign power.

You don’t need to know much about history to recognize that Brzezinski here is trading in a classic anti-Semitic trope. Why didn’t his Salon interviewer call him out on it? Why hasn’t anyone else? Where are the American elites–the intellectuals, writers, policymakers, and political activists–when it comes to vigilance against anti-Semitism?

An attempt to answer that question must come in a separate post; I’m running off soon to an interview at the TSA (of all things). But I would note that Brzezinski is speaking at an event for his new book this Sunday at the Sixth and I Synagogue (!) in Washington. Maybe someone could go ask him what he thinks of the term “Israel-firster.”

Tehran threatens to block the world’s busiest oil-shipping route. What would happen if the strait were closed?

Soldiers take part in Iranian naval maneuvers near Iran’s Strait of Hormuz: Tehran has threatened to block the busy oil-shipping route, through which 17 million barrels of oil travel every day. 

Why is the Strait of Hormuz so important?
A narrow strip of water separating Iran from Oman, the strait is the major maritime link between the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the rest of the world. Tankers carry 17 million barrels of oil, about a fifth of the world’s supply, through the channel every day. Five of the planet’s biggest oil producers — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates — rely on the waterway to ship almost all of their energy exports. The waterway is now at the center of the West’s increasingly tense standoff with Iran, which in recent weeks has warned that it would shut the shipping artery if the U.S. or Europe tightened economic sanctions in response to its nuclear program. Iran’s top naval commander, Habibollah Sayyari, said closing the strait would be “easier than drinking a glass of water.” The Obama administration has publicly dismissed the threat as “saber rattling,” but sent word to Tehran through back channels that closing the strait would cross “a red line” and provoke an American military response.

Could Iran actually shut down the strait?
“The simple answer is yes, they can block it,” said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Over the past two decades, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard has stockpiled at least 2,000 naval mines. Those garbage-can-size explosives could be slipped into the water by midget submarines and civilian dhows (a kind of sailboat) and other fishing vessels. Although the waterway is 21 miles wide, Iran could make the strait a no-go zone for big vessels by laying mines across the deep, central passage that holds the inbound and outbound shipping lanes, which are each only two miles wide. That operation could be completed in a matter of hours. “All the Iranians have to do is say they mined the strait and all tanker traffic would cease immediately,” said Jon Rosamond, editor of the journal Jane‘s Navy International.

Has Iran ever acted on its threats?
Iran last tried to sabotage shipping during its decade-long conflict with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. When Iraq began attacking Iranian tankers in 1984, Iran responded by targeting vessels headed to and from Gulf ports, and laying mines in shipping lanes. The frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts almost sank after it hit an Iranian mine in 1988, leading President Reagan to order retaliatory strikes. In a single day, the U.S. Navy destroyed two Iranian oil platforms, a frigate, a gunboat, and three speedboats. Today, Iran’s navy is a more formidable enemy. Not only does it have an arsenal of mines 10 times more powerful than those used in the 1980s, but it now boasts “hundreds of advanced cruise missiles and possibly more than 1,000 small, fast attack craft,” U.S. Navy Cmdr. Daniel Dolan wrote in a 2010 report.

How would oil prices react?
They’d skyrocket. Energy analysts warn that even a partial blockage of the strait could send the price of a barrel of oil soaring to $150, up from about $100 today. Gas prices in the U.S. would quickly rise above $4.50 a gallon, and imperil the global economic recovery. But the Islamic Republic itself would likely pay the highest price for closing the strait. The Iranian government generates 65 percent of its revenues from oil exports, almost all of which pass through the waterway. Shutting off that cash stream would devastate Iran’s economy, which is already reeling from international sanctions and mismanagement. By delivering on their threat, said Dennis Ross, a former White House adviser on the Mideast, the Iranians “would basically be taking a vow of poverty.”

What could the U.S. do to reopen the strait?
It can’t just send in minesweepers. Any warship entering the narrow waterway could be easily surrounded by swarms of missile-armed Iranian speedboats, and targeted by anti-ship cruise missiles hidden on Iran’s coastline, islands, and oil platforms. So the U.S. would likely begin any mine-clearing mission by launching aerial attacks on Iran’s naval bases and missile silos. Since that would essentially put the two nations in a state of war, the U.S. would probably go further and embark on a broader offensive against the Islamic Republic. “You’d almost certainly also see serious strikes on their nuclear facilities,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Once the Iranians have initiated hostilities, there is no set level at which you have to stop escalation.”

So will Iran really close the strait?
Probably not. Most analysts think Iran will find less dangerous ways to dissuade the West from approving new sanctions. If they wanted to disrupt shipping, they could temporarily shut part of the strait for military exercises, or launch one-off hit-and-run attacks they could then blame on pirates. But Iran’s calculation would change if the U.S. or Israel launched a bombing attack on its nuclear facilities. Then a Hormuz shutdown “would happen pretty much automatically,” said Henry Smith of London-based security consultancy Control Risks. “The Iranians have been saying for a long time that is an option, and they would have little choice but to stick to that.”

Sending in the dolphins
If Iran shuts the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. will likely deploy its best mine detector: Flipper. The Navy has an 80-strong squad of bottle-nosed dolphins, some of which have been trained to find mines and mark their location by dropping an acoustic transponder. Navy divers are then sent in to destroy the explosives. The dolphins’ incredible natural sonar makes them perfect minesweepers: They can distinguish between a nickel and a dime at 100 yards, and among brass, aluminum, and stainless steel — even when the metal is buried under two feet of mud. “They are astounding in their ability to detect underwater objects,” said retired Adm. Tim Keating. Those skills have undoubtedly saved the lives of U.S. military personnel. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, nine Navy dolphins helped clear more than 100 mines and underwater booby traps placed by Saddam Hussein’s forces.

By REZA KAHLILI

January 27, 2012 – San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews.org -

Iran is taking several steps to help Syria’s beleaguered President Bashar Assad, assassinate opposition figures and attack Israeli and American interests worldwide, sources have confirmed.

After the recent assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy director of the first uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered retaliation.

He instructed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the chief commander of the Quds Forces, to prepare the ground for terrorist attacks, first to retaliate against assassination and espionage within the Iranian nuclear program, and second, to go on the offensive to make the West understand that any military action against Iran will create much instability in the world.

The Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah will meet with Iranian Quds Forces in Iraq’s Kurdistan region next week to discuss ways to export arms and explosives to Hezbollah cells and strengthen terrorist cells in the Middle East, according to SepahOnline, the media outlet close to the Revolutionary Guards.

Other sources reveal that several key figures in the Middle East are on the Shiite regime’s list of assassination targets, including Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, and several other Sunni authorities within the Iraqi government.

Hezbollah cells, in coordination with the Quds Forces, are to attack U.S. and Israeli interests around the world, even within America itself, the sources said.

On Jan. 13, Kristie Kenney, U.S. ambassador to Thailand, warned of a “real and very credible” threat of a terrorist attack in Bangkok. The warning came as Thai authorities arrested two Lebanese Hezbollah suspects.

Also today, two Azerbaijani citizens were arrested in an alleged plot to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to Baku, Azerbaijan. The suspects, who had been living in the city of Irbil, Iran, have been charged with smuggling weapons and explosives into Azerbaijan.

A source within the Revolutionary Guards has also revealed that Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists have been called on by Iran to protect the Guards base in the town of Mazaya in Syria. The unidentified source told the pan-Arab media outlet Al Arabiya that Iran wants protection for its military advisers who are in Syria to help Assad suppress the uprising against him.

The source, who is close to Soleimani, said the Guard forces in Syria, in coordination with Russia and China, act only as advisers to protect the Assad regime.

He added that Russia has committed to sending an aircraft carrier task force to the area to ensure that “the West knows we will not allow any military adventurism against Syria.”

The Guard commander said there is information that Israel is planning direct interference in the Syrian uprising by forming an anti-Shi’ite coalition, “Therefore we have requested Hezbollah enter into a dialog with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to form a united front against Israel.”

The leaders of the Islamic regime in Iran believe that an aggressive terrorist campaign on the world stage along with increased instability in the Strait of Hormuz will send a strong signal to the West to lay off its nuclear weapons program, giving the regime enough time to obtain the bomb and then announce nuclear capability, which they think will checkmate the world.

Mr. Kahlili is a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He now resides in the United States and writes under the pseudonym, Reza Kahlili. Currently he serves as a senior fellow with EMPact America and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’;s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy. For further background regarding Mr. Kahlili see our in-depth interview here Iranian Defector Reza Kahlili – Iran Runs “Large Network” Through U.S. Mosques And Islamic Organizations. He is the author of A Time to Betray, a book about his double life as a CIA agent in Iran’;s Revolutionary Guards.