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Snapped Shot informs us

Wow, so yesterday’s concussion grenade was not anything major, but it was followed up by a major car bombing in a different part of town, an event that took the life of one of Lebanon’s most fiercely anti-Syrian generals. Was the first attack intended to distract the Lebanese security forces, and to provide an opening for the second attack?

The Washington Post (with no sense of irony) gives play to some of the hypocrisy here:

Asked about the culprit, shop owner Rafael shrugged his shoulders, a gesture conveying the anonymity of those behind the assassinations that have become part of the country’s political calculus. Government supporters blamed Syria, as they have in bombings that targeted eight prominent opponents of Syria in the past two years. Syria denied any role and suggested that Israel or its allies had a hand in the attack.Government opponents, led by the Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, denounced the attack, calling Hajj’s death “a great national loss.” One of their Christian allies, former general Michel Aoun, said Hajj had been his candidate to assume leadership of the army if parliament elected the present commander, Gen. Michel Suleiman, as president. While government opponents and supporters have agreed in principle on Suleiman succeeding former president Emile Lahoud, who stepped down Nov. 23 at the end of his term, negotiations have stalled over a comprehensive deal to resolve the crisis, the country’s worst since the 1975-90 civil war.

Israel did it and Hezbollah denounced it. Right.

The New York Times deserves credit for leaving Israel out of the story, and pointing to an ominous statement by a Syrian politician.

Some leading anti-Syrian politicians blamed Damascus for the killing, as they have for a series of political assassinations during the past three years. They pointed to comments made Tuesday by the Syrian vice president, Farouq Sharaa, who said that Syria’s friends in Lebanon were stronger than ever and that “no one in Lebanon, even with foreign support, can win the battle against Syria.”

The Times has followed up the reporting with news of a crackdown in Syria.

The arrests followed Syria’s participation in the Middle East peace forum at Annapolis, Md., which was seen in the region as a coup for Syria and a sign of a thaw in relations between Mr. Assad and the White House.Emboldened by a sense that Syria’s tough anti-American policies have paid dividends, human rights advocates say, the authorities have turned to closing the last channels of public debate.

“This goes back to what we’ve always seen as a problem, that the opening with the West has never been contingent on Syria improving its human rights records,” Nadim Houry, who tracks Syria for Human Rights Watch, said. “It’s contingent on Syria cooperating on Lebanon, Iraq and the peace process.”

Hmm, sense from a member of Human Rights Watch. And sentiments that have been expressed by a number of bloggers, that Annapolis has strengthened Bashar Assad’s hand.

Similarly Barry Rubin writes

Claims made often verge on the pitiful. For example, dozens of observers insisted that Syria’s presence at the Annapolis summit showed that it was splitting away from Iran, which opposed the meeting. They forget that Syria participated in a nine-year-long peace process that Iran opposed–including direct negotiations with Israel–without damaging in the slightest the Iran-Syria axis.Second, this kind of talk destroys years of effort to isolate and pressure Syria. The tough strategy is not some silly stubborn refusal to chat with Damascus but designed to deter the regime from adventurism, shore up Arab states’ opposition to it, and encourage Lebanese forces battling against again becoming a puppet of the dictator next door.

And it looks like the effort to get Syria to Annapolis has emboldened Assad rather than engaging him.

JoshuaPundit sees even larger forces at play:

This is a clear signal that Iran and Syria are not going to be content with just Suleiman in the presidency. They want control of the Lebanese military, and they want anti-Syrian PM Fuad Siniora out as well, and in fairly short order, with Hezbollah, Amal and the pro-Syrian factions assuming total control of Lebanon.This will ensure that Lebanon comes under the control of Syria and Iran, and that the UN tribunal implicating members of Basher Assad’s family and other top Syrian political figures in the 2005 assassination of ex-PM Rafiq Hariri goes nowhere.

Like Israel, Lebanon’s democracy is the chief casualty of the new `understanding’ engineered by the Saudis between Iran and the Bush Administration

Seraphic Secret worries about the implications for Israel.

Israel is now being surrounded and strangled in a terrorist vice: Gaza, Lebanon; now the Israeli government talks of dividing Jerusalem and turning Judea and Samaria over to the Arabs, which means a deadly encirclement by short-range weapons—snipers and mortars.

Outrageously Joshua Landis defends Syria. Michael Young on the other hand explains what Syria’s been up to.

Creating a vacuum is not a strategy; it is a tactic designed to bring someone to power on Syria’s terms. Damascus wants exclusivity in the next Lebanese president, but without its armed forces in the country to impose this, a new officeholder might prove too independent. That’s why we should doubt Sharaa when he says, as he did on Tuesday, that Syria does not intend to return to Lebanon “militarily or in a security capacity.” But it’s also why, in believing that they cannot dominate the Lebanese without an armed presence, the Syrians might be overreaching. The Syrian move into Lebanon in 1976 required a regional and international consensus, as well as an Israeli green light, and was formalized by the Arab League. That’s unlikely to happen again today. In forcing the issue, doesn’t the Assad regime risk provoking a powerful local, regional and international backlash that might ultimately scuttle its plans?

(Both via the The POMED Wire)

Syria believes it can act with impunity. Someone needs the will and the means to exact a price from Syria for its latest adventurism or the situation will continue to deteriorate.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Not content with trying to murder schoolchildren with “crude, homemade rockets,” the Palestinian thugs are trying to kill farmers in the field now.

These are the attacks you never read about in the AP or Reuters reports. All you read about there are the Israeli responses to trying to keep their people from being murdered.

Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip launched three Kassam rockets into Israel Thursday morning, causing no casualties or damages.

Meanwhile, in two separate incidents near the Gaza security fence, gunmen opened fire at farmers working in their fields and at IDF bulldozers engaged in engineering work. There were no casualties in either incident.

Say, people who say that the Palestinians are only fighting against “the occupation,” kindly tell me which occupation counts farmers working in their fields. Oh, that’s right. The one that says all of Israel is Muslim land, which is, coincidentally, what the Hamas charter says. And oh yeah, a group that wants the UN to rescind the partition of Israel and insists that Israel should not exist. That kind of organization, and those kind of people, are the ones who would murder farmers in the field, and children in their beds.

The one that people say Israel should talk to. Because talking to an organization that wants you dead, that totally works.

Earlier this week, the UN passed a resolution introduced by Israel.

In a historic first, a committee of the United Nations General Assembly adopted an Israeli-initiated resolution on working matters. The resolution deals with agricultural technology for development, a relatively apolitical matter. But even such apolitical issues have not managed to squeeze past Arab opposition in the past. Supported by 118 countries, the resolution was introduced early this year.

But there’s a catch.

There were 29 abstentions, mostly from Arab countries. It is all but certain to be formally adopted by the General Assembly soon.

This sort of insult doesn’t seem to much interest the New York Times, but the Jerusalem Post observed:

On Tuesday, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman lauded the passage of an Israeli-drafted resolution in a UN committee for the first time ever. “For Israel, this is a very dramatic development and a historic day at the UN. This makes Israel a much more normal and acceptable member of the UN. One of our main aims is to not be a one issue country and to bring awareness of Israel’s excellence to the world,” Gillerman gushed. We hate to rain on this parade, but our own diplomats giving credence to claims that the UN is in any way treating Israel as “normal and acceptable” is like thanking a bully for slapping a new “kick me” sign on our backs.

More extensively the Post argues:

Even this “dramatic moment” was polluted by the incessant Arab campaign to delegitimize Israel. The utterly unobjectionable resolution, which urged member states to assist with agricultural development in developing countries, passed by a vote of 118 to 0, but with 29 abstentions and an even larger number registered “absent.” Most of the countries that could not bring themselves to vote for this banal resolution only because it was introduced by Israel were Arab or Muslim states, including many of those whose foreign ministers showed up in Annapolis, ostensibly to promote peace with Israel. Among these were Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. But the list of those not willing to stand with Israel even to promote development, largely in Africa, also included non-Muslim African states such as South Africa, Lesotho, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Many African states did support the resolution, but many others either abstained or were absent. In short, while this “breakthrough” resolution could be cited to exemplify the isolation of the Arab bloc, it also dramatically demonstrates the refusal of this same bloc and the countries that blindly vote with it to remotely treat Israel as a nation like any other – namely a nation with the right to exist – let alone a peace-seeking democracy under terrorist attack.

Elder of Ziyon rightly characterizes this as another example of Misoziony.

OK, so it is not that the Arab nations – even the ones supposedly at peace with Israel – have anything against the resolution. They just cannot stand to agree with anything Israel says, no matter how innocuous. It is easier to abstain than to even give the appearance of being on the same side as the hated Zionists on any issue. This is beyond politics – this is just a seething hatred for anything that Israel does; this is misoziony. The very idea of agreeing with the Jewish state on anything sticks in the throats of the Arab world. For them, emotion trumps logic, and visceral hate makes real peace impossible.

Israel has an outreach program called Mashav and, yes, it aids Arab governments too through this program. The subject of the “historic” resolution was agricultural technology. Israel actually is doing something about spreading the relevant know how around the world. For example: Jordan

In cooperation with Jordan, MASHAV operates a demonstration farm in the Karak region for intensive sheep’s milk production and processing, introducing the advanced “Awassi” sheep to the country which provide approximately four times the milk yields of indigenous sheep. The project includes over 400 sheep, a milking parlor and state-of-the-art mini dairy for the production of yoghurts and cheeses. In addition, the project’s sheep have been used to upgrade local flocks through breeding activities.

Egypt

Israel actively cooperated with Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation on Egypt’s national program of land reclamation (the “Mubarak project”) aimed at resettling and training unemployed university graduates on desert lands along the Nile delta. Cooperation centered on on-site demonstration activities, including professional training programs and the establishment of an irrigation demonstration plot at the Maryut International Training Center in Nubariya, Egypt and short-and long-term consultancies. In the context of this program, over 5,000 Egyptians were trained both in Israel and in Egypt and many joint R&D projects were successfully launched.

Palestinian Authority

Over 775 Palestinians trained in Israel in the first three quarters of the year 2000. In particular, there was fruitful cooperation in the fields of Agriculture, Environment, and Civil Society with major projects being launched between Israeli and Palestinian Ministries, hospitals and utility services providers.

But that stopped.

Unfortunately, in September 2000, the Palestinian Authority issued a clear directive to all official Palestinian bodies and NGOs to suspend all cooperation with Israel. It is our hope that with advances in the political process, it will be possible to once again achieve the high level of cooperation which we once enjoyed.

Admittedly Israel hasn’t implemented a huge number of programs for the Arab world, but the programs do exist. And the small number is a function of Arab resistance not of Israeli willingness. In fact it’s ironic that in the case of the Palestinian that they spurn efforts to make them more independent and embrace those that seek to perpetuate their dependency.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.