Operation Pillar of Defense Assad's big chance

Anna: Bet­ter to kill one man in front of mil­lions than thou­sands in a war far away

Jon Sable Free­lance # 18 1984

There is one aspect of Israel’s oper­a­tion to sup­press Hamas’ rock­ets into the coun­try that is being totally ignored by everyone.

No I’m not talk­ing about the few pro-​Israel protests around the west­ern world or some of the out­ra­geous things pro-​Hamas pro­test­ers are say­ing.

I’m talk­ing about Assad’s Syria.

Assad has been killing more Arabs on pur­pose on a daily basis that Israel has killed acci­den­tally over the course of Pil­lar of Defense but in the same way the US media tends to ignore black on black vio­lence the media and the Arab world doesn’t like to talk about that.

And while Syr­ian Rebels squab­ble:

The main Islamist rebel groups in Aleppo, a key front line in Syria’s civil war, on Mon­day rejected the newly formed oppo­si­tion bloc, say­ing they want an Islamic state, as clashes raged countrywide.

“We, the fight­ing squads of Aleppo city and province, unan­i­mously reject the con­spir­a­to­r­ial project called the National Coali­tion and announce our con­sen­sus to estab­lish an Islamic state” in Syria, a spokesman announced in an Inter­net video.

“We reject any exter­nal coali­tions or coun­cils imposed on us at home from any party what­so­ever,” he said.

…and Iran con­tin­ues to build pipelines to Syria Assad gets the chance of his lifetime.

The best hope he has for crush­ing the rebel­lion is while the rest of the world is look­ing else­where and as long as Israel is prepar­ing to go into Gaza, the world;s press will keep look­ing south.

It’s an odd thing to put your­self in the mind of a mur­der­ous dic­ta­tor but If I’m Assad, I put every­thing in readi­ness and I wait and watch.

Within 4 hours of Israel going into Gaza I do two things at once.

1. Issue a strong state­ment con­demn­ing it and vow that Syria will not stand for it.

2. Unleash my chem­i­cal arse­nal on the rebels

and four hours after I do #2

3. Release the claim through Syr­ian & Iran­ian oper­a­tives through­out the Arab world that Israel hit Syria with Chem­i­cal Weapons to pre­vent inter­ven­tion that they knew was coming.

This simul­ta­ne­ously puts both Israel and the Arab world on the spot. Israel will no doubt deny it and given any level of time can dis­prove it, but it doesn’t mat­ter. There will be a large media pool that will auto­mat­i­cally dis­be­lieve them.

Even if they report the truth how likely is a pub­lic that they have fed myths of Israeli atroc­i­ties to for years going to sud­denly think it didn’t happen?

Once the meme is released the left in gen­eral and the Arab world (other than those being slaugh­tered) will at best believe it, or at worst pub­licly act as if they do.

Don’t believe me? Check out what Arabs believe from this pas­sage from the Seat­tle Times:

“We are all against Israel,” said Adel Mohammed, 35, a music teacher who was chap­er­on­ing a squeal­ing school group dur­ing a visit to the Octo­ber War Panorama, a large memo­r­ial to what is mythol­o­gized in Egypt as a deci­sive vic­tory over Israel in a 1973 con­flict also known as the Yom Kip­pur War.

Deci­sive vic­tory? Yes you read that right. It continues.

Inside the Octo­ber War Panorama, whose grounds dis­play Egypt­ian fighter jets and cap­tured Israeli tanks, a nar­ra­tor reads a tri­umphal account of the attack against Israel that started the 1973 war. That con­flict ended with a cease-​fire, Israel retain­ing con­trol of most of the Sinai Penin­sula, and both Egypt and Israel cap­tur­ing each other’s territory.

The high­light of the exhi­bi­tion is a dio­rama and 360-​degree mural of a bat­tle in which Egypt­ian forces over­took Israeli troops near the Suez Canal.

Mind you even using the most char­i­ta­ble sources, the Arabs lost

• Triple the dead
• Dou­ble the wounded
• Triple the planes
• 5 to 6 times the tanks
• 19 ships sunk vs 0 for Israel
• and nearly 30 times as many cap­tured prisoners.

In fact if it wasn’t for the cease fire com­ing when it did the entire Egypt­ian 3^rd army might have been destroyed utterly, yet 40 years after that slaugh­ter the Arab peo­ple still believe in the myth of Egypt’s vic­tory just as 10 years after ⁹⁄₁₁ many still believe Israel did it.

Trust me peo­ple who will buy this stuff will jump on the “Israel Chem­i­cal Weapons” story and repeat it to their children.

There are risks, the troops might refuse or the stuff could be cap­tured and there is also the chance Israel might actu­ally jump in to make sure none of the stuff is cap­tured by the rebels but vs the likely fall from power I bet Assad will jump at the chance.

And you won’t hear a thing about it. Remem­ber 10,000 Dead Arabs killed by Syria are not as news­wor­thy as 1 Arab killed by Israel.

Update: Assad might not get his chance

Speak­ing to reporters Tues­day in the Nile Delta city of Zagazig, Morsi did not pro­vide any evi­dence to sup­port his pre­dic­tion that an end to Israel’s week­long offen­sive against Gaza is immi­nent. He only said nego­ti­a­tions between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers will yield “pos­i­tive results” dur­ing the com­ing hours with­out elaborating.

Every day that this goes on and Egypt does noth­ing to aid Hamas, they lose face in the Arab world no mat­ter what the feel­ings of their own peo­ple against war at this time but as Jef­fery Gold­berg points out (via hotair) for Hamas there is no per­cent­age in peace for them.

Hamas’s strat­egy in this lat­est con­flict makes per­fect sense. Hamas, which is the Pales­tine branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, is the­o­log­i­cally com­mit­ted to the oblit­er­a­tion of Israel and believes, as a mat­ter of faith, that Jews are Allah’s ene­mies. Its lead­ers have believed, since the group’s incep­tion, that Jews are soft (“We love death and they love life,” a Hamas leader once told me, and it is a com­monly expressed thought). Hamas also believes that even­tu­ally mis­ery and fear will drive most Jews to leave Israel, which it views as a Mus­lim waqf, or endow­ment, not merely the right­ful home of the Pales­tin­ian people.

That is really the key to it all.