LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
ِJUNE 02/2011

Biblical Event Of The Day
James 4/11: "Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. 4:12 Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?"

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources
Obama's new security staff may approve attack on Iran/By Amir Oren/June 01/11
Syrians are tired of Assad's 'reforms'/Fadwa al-Hatem/June 01/11
Squeeze Syria’s Thug-in-Chief Enough to Make To Hurt/By: Bloomberg View/June 01/11
Israel's recognition of Armenian genocide is political/By Alon Idan/June 01/11
The Armenian Genocide and Israeli recognition/By: Harry Hagopian/June 01/11
Is Yemen about to disintegrate/By: Hussein Ibish/June 01/11

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for June 02/11
Lebanon charges sheikh with spying for Israel/By Reuters/Haaretz
Israel's moral stand on Iran suffered a fatal blow/By Yossi Melman/Haaretz
Australia calls on UN to refer Assad to International Criminal Court/By Haaretz and Reuters
Hamza Al-Khatib, Syria Boy, Brutally Killed In Custody (GRAPHIC VIDEO)/Huffington Post
Assad is set to declare victory over Syria's uprising/DEBKAfile
Teenage victim becomes a symbol for Syria's revolution/The Guardian
To Much Skepticism, Syria Issues Amnesty/NYT
Under pressure, Syria offers full nuclear cooperation/Reuters
Bkirki welcomes Maronite MPs for talks Thursday/Daily Star
Lebanon's Palestinians to march to border/Daily Star
Mikati denies talk he will step down/Now Lebanon
Aoun: Incident of Telecommunications Ministry “took proper judicial path”/Now Lebanon
Security Council Press Statement on United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon/IEWY News
Lebanon's Palestinians to march to border/Daily Star
Rifi saga deepens political divide/Daily Star
Irish peacekeepers return to south Lebanon/Daily Star
The GOP's Hezbollah Wing Is Now Fully In Control/New Republic (blog)
Robert Gates warns of Hezbollah's bioterror ability/Bio Prep Watch
Maronite Bishop Council urges cabinet formation/Now Lebanon
Speaker Berri calls for Parliament session next week/Daily Star
EU official voices commitment to resolution 1701, UNIFIL/Now Lebanon
Syria killings likely “crimes against humanity,” HRW says/Now Lebanon
EU official voices commitment to resolution 1701, UNIFIL/Now Lebanon
March 14 slams Berri over recent criticism/Now Lebanon
Hamas representative in Lebanon says Sunday rally “not final”/Now Lebanon
Arslan welcomes patriarch calls to review Taif /Now Lebanon

Lebanon charges sheikh with spying for Israel
By Reuters/Haaretz
In the first high profile case of its kind in recent months, Lebanon's military prosecutor charges Sheikh Mohammed Ali al-Husseini of 'dealing with the Israeli enemy.'
Lebanon's military prosecutor charged a Shi'ite sheikh on Wednesday with spying for Israel, the first high-profile case of its kind in recent months.
Judge Sakr Sakr said Sheikh Mohammed Ali al-Husseini was accused of "dealing with the Israeli enemy, contacting them and dealing with foreign countries that deal with (Israel)", according to judicial sources. Husseini, who was also charged with acquiring weapons, ran an organization called the Arab-Islamic Resistance which he said had 1,500 fighters, according to security sources. Husseini was known to be critical of Hezbollah and its regional backers, Syria and Iran, and had claimed responsibility for firing rockets towards Israel two years ago, security sources said. Dozens of people suspected of spying for Israel have been arrested since Lebanon launched an espionage investigation in April 2009. Israel has not commented on any of the arrests. A high-ranking army officer, a Christian party member and telecom firm employees were among those detained over the past year. Seven people have received death sentences in the last few months. None has been executed. If convicted, Husseini could receive a jail sentence with hard labor for up to 10 years.
Security officials say the arrests have severely weakened Israel's spying networks in Lebanon. Hezbollah and Israel fought an inconclusive war in 2006 and while the border has remained largely quiet, there have been two instances of violence along the frontier since August 2010.

Obama's new security staff may approve attack on Iran
By Amir Oren /Haaretz
Israeli acquaintances of General Martin Dempsey, the chairman-elect of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, speak extremely highly of him. He is a pro, keeps away from politics and from self-aggrandizement, a military authority, and serious. President Barack Obama announced his appointment, which has to be approved by the Senate, four months before the term of office of Admiral Michael Mullen ends. Alongside him, and slightly above him, Dempsey will encounter a new Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, the successor to Robert Gates who will retire at the end of the month.
Obama has chosen the summer of 2011, about a year before the election season warms up in 2012, to refresh his national security staff. Within a few short months, he released his national security adviser, the retired General James Jones, in favor of his deputy, Tom Donilon; he parted from Gates; he transferred Panetta from the CIA to the Pentagon and General David Petraeus from commanding the forces in Afghanistan to the CIA; and he signed another round of senior military appointments. His image as supreme commander was strengthened following the success of the campaign against Osama bin Laden.
Dempsey, like Petraeus and others of their generation, is a thinking officer who reads and writes a great deal. As head of Tradoc, the Training and Doctrine Command of the ground forces, he aimed at enhancing it as an organization that can learn new things, and adjust to surprises and new and unknown rivals. Most of his time in the past two decades has been devoted to the Middle East - as an operations officer with the armored corps in the 1991 Iraq war, as a planner in the joint chiefs of staff, as the head of the American delegation that upgraded the Saudi Arabian national guard, as the commander of an armored division in Iraq in 2003, as the person responsible for training the new Iraqi army, and as the replacement for a commander who was ousted in the Central Command that covers Iran and Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
Dempsey is familiar with the Israel Defense Forces both from his days in Tradoc that first gained praise for studying the lessons of the Yom Kippur War just when the young Dempsey, a fresh Second Lieutenant from West Point, preferred the armored corps to the other corps, and from exchanges of information and opinions between the ground forces of both armies in recent years. The IDF has a permanent liaison officer with Tradoc at its headquarters in Virginia. Tradoc has also studied in depth the lessons of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead and the war against terrorism in the territories.
The head of the chiefs of staff does not command the corps but serves as the senior military adviser to the president. During the 1990s, only generals from the ground forces served in this position - Colin Powell, John Shalikashvili, and Hugh Shelton (whose bureau Dempsey headed ). In the past decade, only officers from the Air Force, Marines and Navy were appointed. Dempsey's appointment reflects the decisive part played by the ground forces, which Dempsey headed for only a few weeks, in American intervention overseas, mainly in the Middle East. It is deeply involved with its current assignments and does not have strength for further involvements. Therefore the changes in leadership at the Pentagon are not merely an American story. The chance that Dempsey, at the start of his term of office, would advise Obama to attack Iran, or to permit Israel to do so, is not high. The outgoing head, Mullen, is likewise not enthusiastic about that but his ties with the IDF's general staff are close and it can be assumed that, if Benny Gantz was persuaded to sign a plan by Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, Mullen would not be happy but would also not torpedo it. The conclusion is that between the end of June and Gates' retirement, and the end of September and Mullen's retirement, the danger that Netanyahu and Barak will aim at a surprise in Iran is especially great, especially since this would divert attention from the Palestinian issue. As the Supreme Court explained to Moshe Katsav's lawyers, some plans for summer vacations might be canceled.

Assad is set to declare victory over Syria's uprising
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
May 31, 2011,
Damascus is humming in anticipation of the victory speech Syrian President Bashar Assad is about to deliver in the coming hours with the announcement that the 10-week popular uprising against his regime has been defeated, debkafile's military sources report. In advance of the speech, Assad Tuesday, May 31 declared a general amnesty "for all members of political movements including the Muslim Brotherhood" (membership of which is punishable by death in Syria.) It is not clear how many of the 10,000 protesters impirsoned will benefit from the amnesty - or how genuine it is. The Syrian ruler may only be pretending to release all political prisoners to show he is meeting one of the protesters' key demands without meaning to carry out his promise. Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz reported Tuesday to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee that according to his information the death toll from Assad's brutal crackdown had shot up to 1,200. Also Tuesday, ruling Baath party sources reported that shortly before the speech, a national dialogue commission would be established representing political and economic interests in the country. They were careful to avoid saying "political parties" would be included in this forum.
According to our sources, propagandists in Damascus are striving to present a picture of wall-to-wall national reconciliation, while in practice, the Syrian ruler does not for a moment contemplate bringing opposition parties into his next political moves.
After suppressing protest in most parts of Syria with tanks, artillery and gunfire, Syrian troops are still fighting dissidents in two suburbs of the central city of Homs, Talbiseh and Rastan. They are the only pockets where Syrian troops have been confronted with heavily armed protesters using rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns.
Most of the uprising's ringleaders had by last week fled to Lebanon and set up an anti-Assad struggle's headquarters-in-exile in the northern port-town of Tripoli. From there, they smuggled arms to hold-out groups in Talbiseh and Rastan. But most military sources say these are the last dying embers of national campaign of resistance and the army will soon make short work of them. In any case, the hard core of the protest movement is on the point of departing Lebanon, mainly by sea, and heading for a safe haven somewhere in West Europe before Assad sends commando units after them in helicopters. Syria's veteran opposition leaders in exile were given permission by the Turkish government to hold a three-day conference in Antalya on ways of sustaining the anti-Assad impetus after the first 10 weeks. At the opening session starting Tuesday, those leaders were dismayed to find their ranks had been heavily penetrated by Assad loyalists. The communiqué they issued criticizing Asssad's amnesty and national reconciliation moves as "too little and too late" was the best they could manage.

Maronite Bishop Council urges cabinet formation
June 1, 2011 /The Maronite Bishop Council issued a statement on Wednesday urging relevant officials to form a new Lebanese cabinet. “The council calls on all relevant [bodies] to resort to the state, the principles of democracy and to revive institutions starting by forming a new cabinet,” the statement said. It also called on the Lebanese to “preserve their national unity through understanding and cooperation.”Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati was appointed in January with the Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition’s backing and has not yet formed his cabinet.-NOW Lebanon

Syria killings likely “crimes against humanity,” HRW says
June 1, 2011
Killings and torture by Syrian security forces in the southern city of Daraa over the past two months may qualify as crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.
The New York-based watchdog said more than 50 interviews with victims and witnesses indicate "systematic killings, beatings, torture using electroshock devices, and detention of people seeking medical care."It said that the nature and scale of the abuses "strongly suggest that these qualify as crimes against humanity."The criticism came as Syrian opposition groups met in Turkey to plan their next step, as protests have raged against President Bashar al-Assad's regime since mid-March. "For more than two months now, Syrian security forces have been killing and torturing their own people with complete impunity," HRW's Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement. "They need to stop -- and if they don't, it is the Security Council's responsibility to make sure that the people responsible face justice." HRW said Syrian security forces used deadly force against protesters and civilian bystanders, often without warning or trying to disperse the crowd using other peaceful means. In particular, it pointed to an attack on a mosque that served as a meeting point for protesters as well as a makeshift hospital, and attacks on subsequent protests, leaving more than 30 demonstrators dead. It also noted killings during a blockade of Daraa which began in late April left as many as 200 people dead. France has said authorities in Damascus must take a much bolder change of direction after at least 1,000 deaths in the crackdown on generally unarmed protesters, while Washington has demanded that Assad call a halt to the violence against his own people.AFP/NOW Lebanon

EU official voices commitment to resolution 1701, UNIFIL
June 1, 2011 /Head of the European Union Delegation in Lebanon Angelina Eickhorst said on Wednesday that the EU is committed to the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and to UNIFIL participation. “We are committed to the participation in UNIFIL troops and to the implementation of resolution 1701,” Eickhorst said during a seminar at the Issam Fares Center in Beirut. She voiced hope that last week’s attack which wounded six Italian UNIFIL soldiers in south Lebanon would not be repeated.
Eickhorst also reiterated the EU’s position that “Hezbollah or any non-state organization should not carry weapons.”“The EU is committed to supporting the Lebanese army and to not having armed parties except for state security forces.” Last Friday, a UNIFIL vehicle was bombed shortly after a ceremony at its headquarters in the southern village of Naqoura, close to the Israeli border, was held to honor 292 peacekeepers killed since the force was established in 1978. The explosion, which was the first of its kind since 2008, drew widespread condemnation from local and international officials.-NOW Lebanon

March 14 slams Berri over recent criticism
June 1, 2011 /The March 14 General Secretariat issued a statement on Wednesday slamming Speaker Nabih Berri and asking him to help his March 8 allies form a new cabinet instead of “battling” with others.“We advise Berri to employ his talents and assist his camp in forming the cabinet instead of launching [political] battles,” the statement said, few days after Berri accused March 14’s 2005 Cedar Revolution of “taking Lebanon 60 years back.”Berri’s comments are unacceptable, March 14 said.
It added that “the most dangerous thing in what [the speaker] said is his claim that March 14 [takes advantage of] martyrs’ blood to incite strife.”
The secretariat also stressed the need for Lebanon to fully implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and reiterated its condemnation of last week’s attack that wounded six Italian UNIFIL soldiers in south Lebanon.On Monday, Berri said in a speech that “the Cedar Revolution took us 60 years back, led to the spending of public funds, increased [national] debt and favored the atmosphere for more foreign interference.” -NOW Lebanon

Arslan welcomes patriarch calls to review Taif
June 1, 2011 /Lebanese Democratic Party leader MP Talal Arslan welcomed on Wednesday Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai’s calls to review the 1989 Taif Agreement and to grant more powers to the country’s president. “The head of the Maronite Church [was right] about the primary flaw that caused a crisis in the political system in Lebanon,” Arslan was quoted by the National News Agency as saying. He added that “nobody was aware that we limited the powers of the president who should protect the constitution.”
He also said that Lebanese parties restricted the decision-making process to the country’s premier instead of the cabinet as a whole. Rai said on Monday that the Taif Agreement “is not descended from heaven,” adding that if Lebanon needs to have “a new Taif, then let it be.” The Taif Accord negotiated the end of the 15-year civil war and called for political reform, the establishment of special relations between Lebanon and Syria, and a framework for the beginning of a complete Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. It also transferred some of the power away from the Maronite Christian community.-NOW Lebanon

Hamas representative in Lebanon says Sunday rally “not final”
June 1, 2011 /A Hamas Movement representative said on Wednesday that there is “no final decision” regarding the anti-Israel rally that might be held in Lebanon on Sunday to mark the 44th anniversary of the Six Day War, during which Israel seized its Arab eastern sector. “We are coordinating with the people of Lebanon regarding the Sunday mobilization,” Ali Baraka told New TV. “I cannot say that the rally is canceled as the talks are still ongoing, but there is no final answer [about it],” he added.
He also said that his group will “respect Lebanese decisions [regarding the issue].” However, he said that “June 5 will not be the end of the road…we have the right to mobilize and the final decision will be tomorrow.”The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state, but Israel, which annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community, lays claim to the entire city as its "eternal, indivisible capital."-NOW Lebanon

Israel's moral stand on Iran suffered a fatal blow
By Yossi MelmanHaaretz
Despite the drama created by MK Carmel Shama-Hacohen it wasn't the Mosad, the military censor or the head of security at the defense ministry that cut short the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee discussion of the Ofer Brothers affair. The move was the initiative of MK Shama-Hacohen himself, and if he thought this would lower the flames, he got the exact opposite result: The flames leaped higher than ever before.
His decision to stop the meeting not only infringed upon the parliament's reputation as an independent body and the principle of separation of powers, but actually helped feed the rumor mill and the conspiracy theories, which until now had to rely on an army of lawyers and publicity agents hired for tens of thousands of dollars by the Ofer family.
Sara and Benjamin Netanyahu with Sami Ofer at a groundbreaking ceremony at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center in 2006.
Behind the scenes, however, developments did take place. It seems the Ofers and the defense establishment have reached a quiet understanding on a cease-fire. The defense establishment wants to take the issue off the national agenda, fearing that public discussion would move in unwanted directions. This is what former head of the Mosad, Meir Dagan, aimed at when he somewhat enigmatically summed up the entire case in just one word: "exaggerating."
The Ofer family, for its part, released a press statement that seeks to calm tensions with the government but carries a considerable amount of chutzpah. The statement says that "we'd like to stress that we respect the statements by the Prime Minister's Office and the Defense Ministry yesterday. Disclosures by alleged close associates of the family were not made with the family's agreement and are certainly unacceptable to us, and we are sorry they were quoted as they were."
But the prime minister and defense minister made their statements precisely to debunk the Ofer family's foolish attempt to create the false impression that they operated their trade with Iran with the knowledge and authority of the state. Now, they're not only renouncing these attempts but are pushing the blame onto their own publicity agents, who supposedly never represented them.
At the end of the day, the Ofer family is withdrawing from its defense line that they were operating on Israel's behalf and carried out tasks for it in Iran. But even if they did once offer service to the nation under the guise of their commercial activity, this doesn't give them any immunity whatsoever.
As usual, the actual explanation for the events is much simpler. The affair has several aspect: legal, financial, security, diplomatic and ethical. Legally speaking, the Ofer family broke Israeli law by trading with Iran. The directive against trade with the enemy prohibits trade with Iran. Period. No discounts, no exceptions. This is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the defense minister reacted so strongly to the Ofers' attempt to cast the impression they didn't break any law.
Even if the Ofer family does assist the security organizations from time to time, this gives them no license to break Israeli law. Moreover, it also violates sanctions placed by the United Nations Security Council that prohibit trading with the Iranian national shipping company. Tanker Pacific, which sold the tanker to the Iranians, is a subsidiary of the Ofer Brothers Group.
The Ofer brothers and their legal advisors have now come up with a new sophisticated legal argument. In a nutshell, it goes: Please prove there's any connection between Sami Ofer and his son Idan, and Tanker Pacific. The connection is indeed difficult to prove, because Tanker Pacific has been registered through legal structures registered in various tax havens around the globe, to minimize tax payments for the company and to make it difficult to link the owners - the Ofer family - to the company.
But the American administration, at least, thinks it's clear enough. The Ofer Brothers Group does own Tanker Pacific. They also say this was a foreign company and thus no Israeli law was broken. Financially speaking, there's no doubt the Ofer family was trading with Iran for purely business motives. They were doing it to maximize profit - just like they mine for potassium and other minerals in the Dead Sea and cause it to dry up, although this time it's carried out with the knowledge and authorization of the state.
Shipping sources in Israel say that to judge from shipping sites that reported on Ofer family ships visiting Iran in recent years, the most careful estimates of their trade there would amount to tens of millions of dollars. The same sources say that Tanker Pacific never docked in Israel, for fear it would impede its ability to dock at Arab and Iranian ports.
Trading with Iran also causes military damage, however indirect, to Israel. Trading on the Iranian energy market strengthens the ayatollahs and allows them to keep building their missiles and nuclear programs, which threaten Israel. Iran can use the money it profits to build missiles that may one day be fired toward Israel.
But in the diplomatic field, the affair caused Israel very serious damage. Israel now appears as a state of double standards. It demands other nations to escalate the sanctions on Iran and enforce them. The Ofer brothers and the rather poor conduct of Israeli governments in recent years may well cause countries that Israel approaches on the manner to advise Israel to check its own house first. And who will believe Prime Minister Netanyahu next time he claims Iran is an existential threat to Israel? Just as importantly, Israel's moral stand on Iran suffered a fatal blow. Don't preach to us about how hypocritical the world is for trading with Iran out of greed, Israel will be told. This is exactly what your own citizens are doing.

Australia calls on UN to refer Assad to International Criminal Court
By Haaretz Service and Reuters
Australia's foreign minister has called on the United Nations to refer Syria's longtime leader Bashar Assad to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Wednesday. In a speech where he announced an expansion of sanctions against the embattled Syrian president, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said "I believe it is high time the Security Council now consider a formal referral of President Assad to the International Criminal Court."
Protesters in London hit an image of Syria President Bashar Assad with shoes, a sign of disrespect in the Arab world.
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also stepped up her rhetoric on Tuesday, saying that the reported torture of a Syrian boy shows the "total collapse" of Syrian authorities' willingness to listen to anti-government protesters. In some of her harshest comments about Syria's crackdown on the protests, Clinton suggested the Assad government's hold on power was weakening, while a U.S. spokesman described the 13-year-old boy's reported treatment as "horrifying" and "appalling."
The New York Times reported on Monday that an online video showed a 13-year-old boy, arrested at a protest on April 29, who it said had been tortured, mutilated and killed before his body was returned to his family."I can only hope that this child did not die in vain but that the Syrian government will end the brutality and begin a transition to real democracy," Clinton told a news conference.Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sought to crush 10 weeks of protests against his 11-year reign with a military crackdown in which rights campaigners say 1,000 civilians have been killed and more than 10,000 people arrested.
Clinton said she was "very concerned" by reports about the 13-year-old boy, whom she identified as Hamza Ali al-Khateeb.
"I think what that symbolizes for many Syrians is the total collapse of any effort by the Syrian government's to work with and listen to their own people," Clinton said, appearing with Colombia's visiting foreign minister.
"Every day that goes by the position of the government becomes less tenable and the demands of the Syrian people for change only grow stronger," Clinton said.
"President Assad has a choice, and every day that goes by the choice is made by default. He has not called an end to the violence against his own people, and he has not engaged seriously in any kind of reform efforts," she added.Activists said at least five people were killed on Tuesday when tanks shelled the central town of Rastan and security forces stormed Hirak, a town in the southern Hauran Plain where the uprising first broke out in mid-March. Syria blames the violence on armed groups, Islamists and foreign agitators, saying more than 120 police and soldiers have been killed in the unrest nationwide. Syrian state television said Assad had issued a "general amnesty" for all members of political parties but the United States dismissed this, as it has other moves such as his lifting of a state of emergency, as talk without action. "He has talked reform but we have seen very little in the way of action," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at his daily briefing. "He needs to take steps -- concrete steps, not rhetoric -- to address what is going on in the country."

Israel's recognition of Armenian genocide is political
By Alon Idan/Haaretz
"This is my duty as a Jew and as an Israeli" is cliche that is meant to revive anyone from their dogmatic coma. Each time this religious-nationalist conjunction is used, accompanied by a certain obligation, usually moral, the listener must assume that behind the pomposity and the drama hides some shame that is seeking to be retroactively erased.
So as not to remain in the theoretical sphere, let's examine the full statement made by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin on Monday after he decided to hold an annual Knesset session to mark the Armenian genocide by the Turks. "It is my duty as a Jew and as an Israeli," he said, "to recognize the tragedies of other peoples. Diplomatic considerations, important as they may be, do not allow us to deny the disaster of another people."
Rivlin made the statement about a week after the Knesset allowed its Education Committee to discuss the issue for the first time publicly, and about a year after former Meretz chairman and MK Haim Oron was authorized to hold a secret meeting about it in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. That, more or less, is how under the pretense "my duty as a Jew and an Israeli," 63 years of Jewish disregard for and denial of the slaughter of between 1 million to 1.5 million human beings just melts away.
And so, Rivlin decided that: "Diplomatic considerations, important as they may be, do not allow us to deny the disaster of another people." He's right, and every molecule of that rightness conceals a nucleus of the ridiculous. After all, diplomatic considerations, as important as they may be, did indeed allow us, that is, the government of Israel, to deny the disaster of another people for 63 years. Diplomatic considerations, important as they may be, for 63 years, prevented the state's leaders, from the indicted Ehud Olmert to the television star Shimon Peres - from discussing the matter, not to mention officially marking the genocide.
Rivlin needed a cliche precisely because as Jews and Israelis, we were partners to a moral injustice of historic proportions. He inflated the words to cover up a spindly moral reality. After all, Rivlin also knows that if we have to sum up in one phrase the reason for this moral redress, it would be a small and trivial one: the unraveling of our ties with Turkey. We are now able to discuss the murder of 1.5 million people because of political-diplomatic circumstances, and not because 1.5 million people were murdered. What common sense and dictates of conscience did not do, was accomplished by a ship by the name of the Mavi Marmara and statements by a politician named Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Discussion of the Armenian genocide permits scrutiny of the relationship between morality and diplomacy in Israel. Instead of ethical considerations trumping political ones as the foundation for policy, it turns out that morality is nothing but a derivative of politics, an appendage of narrow national interests. The dictate of the national conscience is the outcome of whatever we can get in exchange. Moral flexibility is not a one-time position having to do only with the Armenian genocide. One and a half million people are never a one-time matter and silence over their murder cannot be perceived as coincidental. In fact, the change in attitude toward the Armenian genocide should be seen as an indication of an overriding Israeli principle that says: Good is what is worthwhile, bad is what is not worthwhile. A codicil to this principle is: Good can always become bad; bad can always become good. A moral calculation as a derivative of cost-efficiency is, in fact, the true duty of every "Jew and Israeli."

The Armenian Genocide and Israeli recognition
Harry Hagopian, June 1, 2011
In her piece Knesset moves toward recognizing Armenian genocide on JPost.com on May 18, Rebecca Anna Stoil wrote that “The historical facts supporting the Armenian genocide are solid and well-based. There is still an argument between the Turkish nation and the Armenian nation, but this argument cannot justify even a sliver of denial regarding the Armenian people’s tragedy. We find it difficult to forgive other nations who ignore our tragedy, and thus we cannot ignore another nation’s tragedy. It is our moral obligation as human beings and as Jews.”
In fact, writing on Haaretz.com a day later under the title Knesset to discuss Armenian Genocide amid deteriorating Turkey ties, Jonathan Lis also explained how another parliamentarian, Zehava Gal-On, declared to the parliamentary assembly her belief “that it was the duty of the Israeli Knesset to make a clear stance on this issue, especially in face of the thundering silence of past Israeli governments over so many years.” She segued, “It is important to stress – the moral obligation to recognize the Armenian Genocide is not a left or right issue.”
Going back to April 24, 2000, then-Israeli Minister of Education Yossi Sarid also spoke at the 85th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. He referred to The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, whose Prague-born Jewish author, Franz Werfel, had published his harrowing story about the Armenian victims of the genocide in 1933 when Adolf Hitler had just come to power. Sarid stated, “As Minister of Education of the State of Israel, I will do whatever is in my capacity in order that this monumental work The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is once more well-known to our children. I will do everything in order that Israeli children learn and know about the Armenian Genocide. Genocide is a crime against humanity, and there is nothing more horrible and odious than genocide. We, Jews, as principal victims of murderous hatred are doubly obligated to be sensitive to identify with other victims.”
Uplifting words then and hopeful exhortations now, and it still feels we are witnessing another déjà-vu in Israel in 2011. Indeed, the way in which the Armenian Genocide is being horse-traded by Israeli politicians in geopolitical markets is not quite ethical, is it? Could it be that Israeli lawmakers are using this emotive issue to vent their displeasure at Turkey – almost to spite it – since relations sank to their nadir following the MV Mavi Marmara flotilla raid of May 2010? Would this discussion have really happened if the political and military alliance between Turkey and Israel had been as strong today as it had been a mere few years ago?
However, I also admit that sheer political interests are structurally dissimilar to ethics. So it would be a huge moral, let alone political, achievement if Israel – the central hub of the horrendous Holocaust that was visited by Europe upon the Jews in Poland, Germany and elsewhere but for which the Arab World often carries the tab – were to recognize at long last the Armenian chapter of genocide. After all, writing on JPost.com on December 24, 2010 under the title Keep Dreaming: This Week in Armenia following his return from Yerevan, capital of Armenia, David Breakstone, chair of the World Zionist Organization and member of the World Jewish Executive, stated unequivocally that “We [Jews] cannot right the wrongs of the past, but we can recognize them. Doing so would go a long way toward healing an open wound.” Breakstone added, “My visit to the genocide memorial in Yerevan dispels any doubt that this holocaust was every bit as ghastly as that experienced by the Jews a few decades later.”
So while we are all agog watching this space, let me recall an article by Raffi Hovannisian, former prime minister of Armenia and now leader of the Heritage Parliamentary Party. Under the title Turkey, Israel and the moment of truth on May 14, 2010, he wrote, "The Armenian Genocide must never be allowed to become a political football for selective use by two erstwhile allies to sort out their relations and the contents of their closets… Recognition should not be a favour, nor an instrument of self-serving leverage, but a matter of truth and equity - simple, overdue, unrequited - and nothing more.”
Whether this motion is recognized or not, I hope Armenians will remember that they do not need Israel or any other country to tell them that their forbearers underwent the Armenian genocide. Not when they survived this heinous crime and in fact triumphed by overcoming a project that strove to annihilate them. A robust people with their natural fortes and foibles, do they need the cloying imprimatur of other countries for them to realize that they defied the angels of death in the late 1800s as well as from 1915 to 1923 and came out victorious? I suggest not, since their – our – very celebration of life is the strongest riposte to those who tried to get rid of them – as will also their unflinching solidarity with all other victims of genocide world-wide.An after-thought here: Lebanon, whose parliament recognized the genocide in May 2000, houses many fine journalists, not least Robert Fisk, who enjoys an encyclopedic and sophisticated knowledge of the Armenian holocaust. I so would like to have a cup of tea with him today.

Syrians are tired of Assad's 'reforms'
Fadwa al-Hatem/ guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 31 May 2011
An advert for a construction site in Damascus features President Bashar al-Assad and the words 'together we build'. Photograph: Anonymous/AP
It is ironic that while Syria's much-heralded general elections bill has been released for public feedback on several official government websites including Tasharukia (an e-government portal), the justice ministry's website, the interior ministry's website and the local administration ministry's website, many villages that are now under siege by Syrian security services have no internet or telephone access.
The inhabitants of villages such as Talbiseh, or Rastan – that is, those who have not fled for their lives yet – will most likely be unable to give their opinion regarding this bill.
They have been under tank and machine gun fire for the past few days while the Syrian military widens its crackdown against protesters throughout the country. If they are not as enthusiastic or grateful as they should be about this elections bill then surely they are forgiven. The family of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib, whose horribly mutilated body was handed back to them by the security services last week, can also be forgiven if they are not impressed in the slightest.
The bill itself, made up of 68 articles, is about organising the means by which members of the Syrian parliament and the local councils will be elected. It also "guarantees" the integrity of the election process, while proscribing penalties for those who would interfere unlawfully and improperly. Most importantly the bill will place the supervision of these elections under the control of the judiciary, and not the executive.
What astonishes me most about the situation in the country is the two-faced attitude that the regime is displaying. On the one hand it wishes to be applauded for its "bold" reforms and initiatives, while at the same time its feared security apparatus continues killing, arresting and torturing countless Syrian citizens.
Two forms of carrot are constantly dangled tantalisingly in front of the population: those of "reform" and "resistance" (ie against Israel). Both are vacuous but were thought capable of keeping the regime in power indefinitely.
For anybody who follows such announcements regularly, the official and unofficial government media are always peppered with words such as "civilised", "progressive" and "development" – terms for something that is supposedly in a constant state of progress, or transition. This is what we find today in Assad's Syria, with political reform always something that is to be studied and applied moderately, but never actually implemented. Reform is the promised land that nobody will ever reach.
It seems that some reforms are far more urgent than others, though. In 2000 the Syrian constitution was amended almost instantly to allow the young Bashar al-Assad to be "elected" as president. Until then, the constitution excluded anybody younger than 40 from the presidency, but the amendment lowered the restriction to 34, which happened to be the age of the new president.
Similarly, sober lawmaking was found recently in the removal of the decades-old state of emergency, only for us to find draconian "anti-terror" laws being put in its place – another legacy for which we can thank George W Bush. In the name of reform, the Syrian regime giveth and the Syrian regime taketh.
Second, the issue of "resistance" and championing the Palestinian people's rights is something that many Syrians, including myself, have always felt very strongly about. Yet, incredibly, we are expected today as Syrians to consider the term "resistance" as the exclusive property of the Assad regime.
It is implied that if the Syrian revolutionaries had their way they would allow the opening of an Israeli embassy in the plush Damascus district of Malki tomorrow, and allow the relocation of the Palestinian people to a desert outpost on the Iraqi border.
Apparently Syrians are just waiting to betray the noble Arab cause in a trice if they are not savagely repressed at every opportunity. We are, to paraphrase Rousseau, being forced to be free – for our own good, of course.
Irony aside, it seems the Syrian regime does not yet understand that both these carrots can no longer work. What the Syrian people want is not phoney e-government websites or cheaper sugar and diesel. The people want the torture, killings and arrests to stop, full stop; they want their dignity back; they want an end to the endemic corruption and a dismantlement of the intrusive secret police.
Genuine political reform can never be possible while your own people are being killed in the streets. Nor, with regard to justice for the Palestinians, does it have to come at the expense of individual freedoms and rights. The people of Syria want their country back, and it is up to Assad, if he is serious about his future legacy and about reform, to give it to them.

Squeeze Syria’s Thug-in-Chief Enough to Make To Hurt
by Bloomberg View
In his posed photograph, the boy is a tenderfoot teenager -- round-faced, bangs askew, biting his lower lip. In the final video image of 13-year-old Hamzah al- Khateeb, released on YouTube, his head is misshapen, his body marred with cuts, bullet wounds, burns and a hole where his penis ought to be.
This is the latest handiwork of Syrian dictator Bashar al- Assad’s regime. Young Hamzah was detained by security forces when he attended an opposition rally with his father on April 29 in their hometown of al-Jiza. A month later, his tortured corpse was returned to his family.
Hamzah’s case has increased the heat and scope of protests against the regime in Syria. In a hopeful scenario, outrage over his murder would mark a turning point in the popular effort to end the brutal Assad dynasty, which so far has killed 1,000 civilians in the Syrian Spring, according to Human Rights groups. Sadly, the regime is showing resilience. The balance in such matters is determined by the strength of those willing to terrorize, torture and kill to stay in power versus the strength of those prepared to be terrorized, tortured and killed to overthrow those in power.
In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak fell because the army wouldn’t fire on protesting citizens. Assad, however, like his father, Hafez al-Assad, before him, can count on his forces. He assures the loyalty of the military-intelligence command by filling it with fellow Alawites, a religious sect that makes up only 7 percent of Syria’s population. The Alawites are convinced that if they lose control of the government, Syria’s Sunni majority will seek reprisals for 50 years of Alawite hegemony. Thus, for now, the power elite are willing to savage civilians to maintain their position, while an insufficient number of citizens are prepared to share the fate of Hamzah al-Khateeb.
Libya Template
It may be tempting to think that the U.S. and its allies should do in Syria what they are doing in Libya -- using NATO air strikes, under a United Nations mandate, to limit the regime’s ability to attack civilians. But the Arab League asked for action in Libya, and it is divided on Syria. And the factors that have supported success in the air operation in Libya -- weak anti-aircraft defenses and rebel forces prepared to protect civilians -- don’t apply in Syria. The Obama administration should take care not to raise expectations about change in Syria that it cannot fulfill. The president came close to doing just that when he said last month that Assad had a choice: to either lead a transition to democracy or "get out of the way." Economic Pressure What the U.S. and its allies can do is put more economic pressure on the Syrian regime. Already, the U.S. and European Union have frozen local assets of Assad and his top associates. China and Russia are unlikely to agree to broader UN sanctions, so the U.S. should seek alternatives. One would be working with the EU and Turkey to freeze the assets of Syria’s state-owned banks, which finance the Syrian oil industry and key figures in the pro-Assad business elite. The U.S. and EU should also bar flights to and from Syria, and widen visa bans on Syrian officials, especially military officers and their families. These measures aren’t likely to bring down Assad’s house. But they would sting. Having established themselves as miscreants, the regime’s agents should now be denied the privileges of international life. The sanctions would also let the Syrian opposition know the democratic world is behind them.
Should the Syrian Spring fizzle, the Assad regime would press for a return to normalcy, and many countries would be apt to go along. But the sanctions must remain, at least until there has been accountability for the atrocities being committed now. Since he succeeded his father in 2000, Bashar al-Assad has toyed with projecting the image of reluctant ruler and reformer. As Hamza al-Khateeb’s family knows perfectly, he is but one thing: an irredeemable thug.

Is Yemen about to disintegrate?
Hussein Ibish, Now Lebanon
May 31, 2011
Last Sunday I was involved in a panel discussion on the Al-Hurra satellite station regarding Yemen, one in which I was invited to discuss the policies of the United States. The other panelists were all Yemenis, including opposition and government figures. The conversation illustrated a great deal about how far down the road to chaos and confusion that country has drifted.
The main topic was about news reports that al-Qaeda had overrun the coastal city Zinjibar. Both government and opposition figures denied this, insisting that these were jihadist forces of a different variety led by a veteran named Khaled Abdel Nabbi. Al-Qaeda is unlikely to align itself with someone whose very name – Abdel Nabbi (“slave of the prophet”) – they would consider a serious blasphemy. The self-contradictory and self-defeating exchange of accusations between the Yemenis on the panel was very striking. Predictably, the opposition figures said Abdel Nabbi was closely aligned with President Ali Abdullah Saleh and acting on his behest. The pro-government spokesman claimed that, on the contrary, “everybody knows” that Abdel Nabbi is in the service of rebel general Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, and has been for years.
Both the opposition figures and I noted that this accusation was effectively a self-indictment of the regime, since Ali Mohsen only recently defected. “If he was working with jihadists, why wasn’t he arrested?” asked one of the opposition figures. What nobody noticed is that flipping the question on the government is also, in effect, a self-indictment by the opposition since accepting the proposition that Abdel Nabbi works for Ali Mohsen means that the government was complicit with these jihadists in the past and the opposition is now.
The panel, much like the power struggle between Yemeni elites in general, was reminiscent of two boxers flailing away but landing at least as many blows to themselves as to each other. It’s true that Saleh benefits in a way by “playing the al-Qaeda card” as the opposition puts it, since this underlines the threat of chaos as the alternative to his rule. On the other hand, the opposition also benefits since Saleh looks increasingly weak and out of control of his own country.
Today news reports suggest that the Yemeni Air Force bombed Zinjibar in an effort to retake the town, while security forces are said to have killed at least 20 protesters in another southern town, Taiz. So rather than any of this being an example of a calculated plot by one side or the other, it’s more likely that Yemen is simply slipping into total chaos and toward failed-state status. Under any controlled circumstances, Saleh would easily have been able to prevent 200 fanatics from overrunning a regional capital. It’s possible he didn’t want to, as some opposition figures claim; but it’s also undeniable that military forces on all sides are concentrated in Sanaa, the scene of a power struggle within the elite that has effectively split the military.
Rebel commanders over the weekend issued “Military Communiqué Number One,” which in the contemporary Arab world usually means initiating a coup or mutiny. In addition to this power struggle, Yemen has faced the Houthi insurrection, the presence of al-Qaeda and other jihadist forces, popular protests that are also probably not under anyone’s complete control, a Somali refugee crisis, and the existence of an undereducated, under-employed and heavily-armed population. There are also simmering North-South tensions that could re-erupt into another major national conflict.
So it’s quicker and simpler to list the forces keeping Yemen together than the dizzying array driving it apart. There is no question that the primary problem is that Saleh is refusing to step down, when even many of his supporters realize that it’s past time for him to go. Reportedly he privately claims the issue is about the next generation: He doesn’t want his sons and nephews to step aside for their counterparts in the rival Al-Ahmar clan. But most observers must have concluded at this point that Saleh is simply incapable of voluntarily stepping aside.
Thus far in the “Arab Spring,” no autocrat has voluntarily resigned. In Tunisia and Egypt, the leaders were removed by the army. In Libya (and now perhaps Yemen) the army split and civil war ensued. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has thus far managed to hold on to military loyalty, and thus to power. The efforts of the Gulf Cooperation Council states to get Saleh to be the first to voluntarily and peacefully step aside have proven a humiliating failure.
But opposition forces, especially within the elite and the military, are also hardly paragons of virtue and responsibility. As the television panel I was on concluded, while Saleh is certainly the core of the problem, both sides in the Yemeni elite power struggle are perfectly capable of inflicting damage on themselves, and on their country.
At this stage, Yemen looks poised for an extended period of conflict and chaos. And with so many centrifugal forces at work, the country may possibly even be heading toward disintegration.
*Hussein Ibish is a senior research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and blogs at www.Ibishblog.com.

Under pressure, Syria offers full nuclear cooperation
By Reuters
Syria, in a policy reversal, has offered to cooperate fully with the United Nations atomic agency, which wants to inspect a suspected nuclear reactor site that was bombed by Israeli warplanes in 2007, diplomats said. The move comes as Western nations were pushing to report Syria to the UN Security Council for its uncooperative stance.
Suspected Syrian nuclear facility reportedly bombed by Israel in 2007.
Damascus had insisted the site known as Dair Alzour was a military, non-nuclear complex before it was destroyed in 2007.
But that assertion by Syria -- which is also facing Western sanctions over a violent crackdown on pro-democracy unrest in the country -- was rejected in an IAEA report on May 24 which said Dair Alzour was "very likely" to have been a reactor.
U.S. intelligence reports said the desert site was a nascent, North Korean-designed reactor intended to produce plutonium for atomic bombs.
Damascus has rebuffed repeated requests by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for follow-up access to the site after a one-off inspection in 2008.
The United States and its European allies were expected to seize on the IAEA report's finding to lobby for a resolution by the agency's 35-nation board, meeting on June 6-10 in Vienna, to send the Syrian file to the Security Council in New York.
In a move that could complicate this, Syria offered in a letter to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano late last week to fully cooperate with the agency to resolve outstanding issues related to Dair Alzour, diplomats said. The promise may make some non-Western IAEA board members more reluctant about taking the issue to New York now.
"It will make it more difficult, there is no question about that," one senior diplomat from a developing country said. "It is a very smart move."
But a Western envoy said he expected the letter to have "close to zero impact" on the board's decision, saying it was an apparent last-minute attempt by Syria to undermine support for a vote to refer it to the Security Council. "I think the letter will be seen, except by very close friends of Syria, as just going through the motions," he said.
Another Western diplomat said Syria's letter only "pledges cooperation in an attempt to stave off a resolution and Security Council referral. Syria has stonewalled the IAEA for three years, and this is more of the same." The board has the power to refer countries to the Security Council if they are judged to have violated global non-proliferation rules by engaging in covert nuclear work. It reported Iran to the Security Council in 2006 over its failure to dispel suspicions that it was trying to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran has since been hit with four rounds of UN sanctions over its refusal to curb sensitive nuclear work. Syria, an ally of Iran, denies harboring a nuclear weapons program and says the IAEA should focus on Israel instead because of its undeclared nuclear arsenal. Western diplomats said their approach to the Syrian nuclear issue was not linked to anti-government protests inside the country, saying Damascus had long failed to cooperate over Dair Alzour and it was now time to act. But some non-Western members of the IAEA board have expressed doubt about taking strong action against Syria, saying that whatever happened at Dair Alzour was now history. The new Syrian letter may further strengthen this view. "Is it really something which you need to send to the Security Council, something that has happened in the past?" asked the developing country diplomat.