Arab Spring Winter
• Israelis are unhappy that US officials leaked to the NY Times last week that certain missiles survived the most recent Israeli air strike on Syria. The Jerusalem Post writes:
“The mere fact that such leaks happen often indicates that the Pentagon leadership does not have Israel’s interests at heart,” Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, told The Jerusalem Post. “It is difficult to assess the motivation of such leaks.”
Inbar listed several possible motives, including the wish to prevent future Israeli action.
• Sleep better: There are now 10,000 jihadis in the Syrian Golan opposite the Israeli border.
• Michael Totten reacts to Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s rare public appearance/speech in Beirut. ‘Nuff said.
Hezbollah desperately needs the Israel card, but it won’t work this time unless Israel invades Lebanon. Yet Israel won’t invade Lebanon unless Hezbollah starts something. And Hezbollah wouldn’t dare start something now while it’s busy in Syria. The last thing it needs is open-ended conflict on two fronts at once. Hezbollah isn’t a superpower. It only has a few thousand fighters.
It’s obvious to just about everyone now that Nasrallah needs a distraction, but the truth is that his relentless war against Israel has always been partially a distraction. His hatred of Israel is real, no doubt, but it serves a dual purpose. It papers over the dangerous rift between Sunni and Shia Muslims that has led to so many wars, the majority of which the Shia lost.
• The Washington Post‘s Lally Weymouth had a Q+A with Mohammed elBaradei, which had Israeli papers scrambling to read the tea leaves. Draw your own conclusions about what the Egypt veep said about Israel:
What about Egypt’s relationship with Israel?
Again, this is now a democracy. We need to make sure that there is really a real peace with the Israelis. They have an opportunity, frankly, right now. In the past, they had peace with Mubarak, not with the Egyptians. Now is an opportunity for them, and I hope they grab that opportunity to have a peace with the Egyptians. But that requires that they make certain major adjustments to their policy with the Palestinians.
Weymouth also scored the first Western interview with strong man Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi.
• The Gezi Park protests are history, and Erdogan’s exacting revenge on his Turkish media critics. Michael van der Galien explains:
In the following weeks, as many as 22 journalists and columnists have been fired since the start of the famous protests in Istanbul and other major Turkish cities. Thirty-seven others had to accept a “forced leave of absence,” meaning that they had to pretend to enjoy some precious off-time, while they, in fact, were desperate to get back to work.
More on the Turkish press crackdown at Time.and the NY Times.
• Elliott Abrams: Degrading Bashar Assad’s air power is doable.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Leo Leiderman withdrew his name from consideration one day after being tapped to become the next governor of the Bank of Israel. Globes reacts harshly to the anonymous “accusations” that brought Leiderman down.
• A Washington Post op-ed slams Israel’s move to send a group of Eritreans back to Africa.
• After Shimon Peres visited Vilnius, the Lithuania Tribune comments on new opportunities for Israeli-Lithuanian cooperation.
• From AFP:
Saudi Arabia denied permission to travel through its air space on Sunday to a plane carrying Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to the swearing-in of the new Iranian president, Khartoum said.
The plane had to turn back.
Too bad the Saudis didn’t force his plane to land. Bashir’s wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.
(Image of Rohani via YouTube/IranianTvChannel2, Nasrallah via YouTube/JewishNewsOne, Vilnius via Flickr/William Heusmann)
For more, see Thursday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
