Mixed messages from Washington over Syria raise concerns in Israel

“From the Israeli perspective, this is handing over the keys to their backyard to their mortal enemies,” he said. “Across the board this would be an unmitigated disaster and also an unforced error.”

ed note–Doubtless (sad to say) there are all sorts of ‘experts’ in DUH-M who are either paying no notice of this latest development or else who consign all of it to ‘an act’ meant to trick people into thinking that Trump does not want war.

In any case, we’ll spell it all out for you, again, as we have for several years now, somewhere between a million and a billion times–If there is one sentence to explain the entire Trump phenomenon, who he is, why he is here and what it is he intends to do, it is to extricate the US from these disastrous wars that BY DESIGN are there to set into motion all the necessary steps that have as their intended end result the eventual destruction of the United States as a precursor to raising Israel up as the new world superpower. Everything else is window dressing–Trump’s pandering to Israel on Jerusalem, Trump putting the pancake on his head and visiting the Whining Wall., Trump staffing his cabinet with Jews and those who at least by appearances take on hawkish positions. He knows that Syria is the intended flashpoint between the US, Iran, Russia, etc, and therefore is out to remove that window of opportunity by pulling US troops out of the kill zone and the ambush.

It is for this reason that all persons who claim to be ‘truthers’, who claim to oppose the wars in the Middle East and who claim to be fighting for the rights of Palestinians and others whose lives have been destroyed by Judea, Inc need to dial down on their emotionalism and dial up on their rationalism. It would be nice if in the world of complicated and convoluted geo-politics a world leader could just do/say what was IMMEDIATELY necessary in bringing about an IMMEDIATE reversal of policies (whose inertia is decades-long in its momentum) at the mere snap of his finger, but it is not like that and anyone who presupposes that it is needs to find something more productive to do with their time then engaging in political activism/commentary.

Now, a few goodies in this article worth noting–

1. Obviously, Israel is not happy with Trump’s announcement, but is not surprised either, as the NeoCons knew frm the outset that this was Trump’s intention, which is precisely why individuals such as Kristol, Kagan, Wolfowitz, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Elliot Abrams and others acting as Israel’s surrogates in the US did everything within their power short of actually assassinating Trump to prevent his being elected.

2. Note that the ‘experts’ appearing in this piece warning of the dangers of a US pullout from Syria are those who are died-in-the-wool Neocons working for NeoCon stinktanks whose job is to meatgrinder the collective American mind and to steer public opinion in favor of more and more war for Israel, including Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who–as stated in this piece– ‘travels frequently to Israel and meets with Israeli officials’. Besides the very Hebraic Schanzer, we have the house-Arab Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi writing for Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum warning that a US pullout will ’embolden’ groups like ISIS, even though the Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah and Assad’s government have them on the run.

Also note as follows–

‘Israelis fear that the defeat of the Islamic State, while welcome, leaves in place Iran, an enemy, and Russia, a country that is friendly to Israel but whose interests are not as aligned as the United States. Russia, notably, has been Iran’s de facto ally in Syria. The US presence, comparatively, is limited, but simply by maintaining a presence, the United States signals that it has Israel’s back — freeing Israel to take action.’

Translation–The Russians and Iranians are there to hold back the vicious, feral dog from attacking other nations, as it has from the beginning, in its move to create ‘Greater Israel’. This–in addition to Trump’s stated goal of avoiding any new wars–is one of the primary reasons why Trump has sought to engender a positive and productive working relationship with Putin and why conversely those who are steadfastly opposed to this relationship–the Jews, both on the right and the left–are engaged in an open conspiracy to prevent this ‘relationship’ between the 2 world leaders from taking place.

And finally, note as well the comments of one Heather Hurlburt, who directs the New Models of Policy Change initiative at New America, who said the United States remains too entrenched in the region though its various alliances to fully disengage.

“What I assume is happening is that the connections between the Israeli military and the Pentagon are incredibly tight,” said Hurlburt, a foreign policy speechwriter in the Clinton administration. ‘Those folks are talking to each other, and in terms of what the Israelis need, I’m sure that line is open’.

What this intimates is that the ‘war’ between Trump and the ‘Deep State’ is not just between him and a handful of individuals in the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. In addition to the aforementioned, there are thousands of high-level/high-ranking people in the military as well who have been operatives for Israel for decades and whose elevated positions enable them to engage in all sorts of subterfuge, sabotage, etc without Trump knowing beforehand what is coming. Keep this in mind the next time there is bombing of some sort where dozens of civilians are killed by a US bomb, resulting in the anti-war crowd in America adding their voices to the already ear-splitting screeching campaign taking place on a daily basis by those out to see Trump removed and a more compliant and cooperative Mike Pence put into place.

‘But, but, but…Trump’s ‘Jewish’ daughter’…

Yeah, yeah, we know all about it, heard it a million times already.

Times of Israel

Meeting last month with Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came away satisfied that he and the American president were in agreement on a wide range of issues, including Syria, where Israel wants to limit Iranian influence as the Syrian civil war wraps up.

“We don’t have any limits on our action in Syria,” Netanyahu told reporters. “We see eye to eye,” he said of Israeli and US policy.

A few weeks later, Middle East watchers are wondering which eye bears watching: Trump keeps saying he wants out of Syria, while US defense officials and diplomats say the United States remains committed to its role in pacifying the country after seven years of a devastating war.

The equivocation is unsettling Israel, said Jonathan Schanzer, a vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who travels frequently to Israel and meets with its officials.

“There is a concern” in Israel “that the mixed messaging right now is revealing a certain confusion at a minimum, perhaps a lack of will to remain in Syria,” he said in an interview.

How are the messages mixed?

“We’ll be coming out of Syria like very soon,” Trump said last week, just hours after a Pentagon spokeswoman told reporters in a briefing that the United States was committed to its role in the region at least until the Islamic State terrorist group was defeated.

On Monday, US defense officials said they would send dozens of troops to Syria to add to the 2,000 troops already there assisting US allied rebel forces. On Tuesday, Trump said “it’s time” to get out of Syria.

“It is very costly for our country, and it helps other countries more than it helps us,” he said. “I want to get out, I want to bring our troops back home.”

Daniel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel who is now a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Trump’s pronouncements were stirring turmoil in the region.

“It raises fundamental questions not just for Israel, for our Kurdish allies, even our adversaries, about whether the United States plans to remain in Syria to complete the fight against ISIS and to help prevent an Iranian takeover of those areas that ISIS has vacated,” he said. The US forces in Syria are advising and assisting Syrian Kurdish rebels. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

Israelis fear that the defeat of the Islamic State, while welcome, leaves in place Iran, an enemy, and Russia, a country that is friendly to Israel but whose interests are not as aligned as the United States. Russia, notably, has been Iran’s de facto ally in Syria.

The US presence, comparatively, is limited, but simply by maintaining a presence, the United States signals that it has Israel’s back — freeing Israel to take action, as it did in February when Israel retaliated with airstrikes on Iranian targets in Syria after an Iranian drone entered Israeli airspace.

That becomes a much shakier proposition absent a US presence, said Moshe Maoz, Israel’s preeminent Syria expert.

“Israel will have to bomb Iranian positions in Syria” if Iran establishes a weapons supply line to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia allied with Iran that is assisting Syria, or if it establishes a permanent presence in Syria, said Maoz, a professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “And the danger is that the Russians will intervene, and Israel needs the backing of the United States.”

Russian officials have reportedly told their Israeli counterparts that Israel likely will have to put up with a permanent Iranian presence in Syria.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, said a US withdrawal could embolden the Islamic State.

“I think the consequences at this stage would be very negative for the SDF-held areas where the US maintains a presence, particularly as no peace plan has been devised between the SDF and Turkey,” he said, referring to the US-backed rebel alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces. “Indeed, it is possible that there could be an attack on multiple fronts against SDF areas by Turkey from the north and the regime and its allies from the south. The concern that this could create a vacuum for IS to regain some strength is not unjustified.”

Heather Hurlburt, who directs the New Models of Policy Change initiative at New America, a liberal think tank, said the United States remains too entrenched in the region though its various alliances to fully disengage.

“What I assume is happening is that the connections between the Israeli military and the Pentagon are incredibly tight,” said Hurlburt, a foreign policy speechwriter in the Clinton administration.

“Those folks are talking to each other, and in terms of what the Israelis need, I’m sure that line is open,” she said. “The people in the administration who understand Israel’s security concerns are consoling themselves that they’ve got all the firepower in place if and when they’re needed.”

Joost Hiltermann, the Brussels-based Middle East and North Africa director at the Crisis Group, an international think tank, said Iran’s influence in Syria may be overstated. Russia, he said, is in Syria as a means of leveraging its influence elsewhere in the world, and is not invested in advancing the interests of Iran. The Assad regime, which Russia and Iran have been propping up in the Syrian civil war, trusts Russia more than Iran; Assad and his clique remain secularists and are wary of Iran’s religious posturing.

“I’m not convinced for Iran this is sustainable,” he said of Iran’s ambition for a permanent stake in Syria. “They don’t have allies.” Still, he said, Israel had reason to be alert to Iranian efforts to transfer weapons to Hezbollah, which launched a war with Israel in 2006.

Still, Hiltermann said, Israel had cause to be unsettled by Trump’s pledges.

“The Iranians would benefit most were the United States to remove its footprint,” he said.

Schanzer said Trump’s promises to pull out were especially jarring for Israel and other allies, who expected Trump to reverse the policy of his predecessor, Barack Obama, of limiting US involvement in the Syrian conflict — not to advance it to its logical conclusion and leave.

“From the Israeli perspective, this is handing over the keys to their backyard to their mortal enemies,” he said. “Across the board this would be an unmitigated disaster and also an unforced error.”