By MOSHE YAALON, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE— Israeli Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Yaalon believes that Israel’s recent period of relative peace could be shattered by conflict and instability spilling over from its neighbors. Speaking to a standing-room-only audience at The Washington Institute on June 14, he provided a sweeping assessment of the risks confronting Israel today, from…
By SKYLAR SCHMANSKI, inCONTEXT— Syrian rebels temporarily seized control of the Quneitra crossing between Israel and Syria on June 6, spurring Austria to withdraw all of its 380 peacekeepers stationed in the Golan Heights. Vienna attributed its decision to vacate the buffer zone, where international forces have been stationed since the 1974 armistice, to the…
By RICK MORAN, AMERICAN THINKER— Lebanon’s mulch-religious society has become a tinderbox since Hezbollah, who dominates the government, announced their military assistance to President Assad in Syria. But the Sunni-Shiite divide in Lebanon is only a microcosm of what is occurring elsewhere in the Middle East. The two major sects of Islam, never at peace…
By GIL RONEN, ARUTZ 7— Israel “will know what to do” if Russia delivers highly advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Tuesday. AFP said this was “an apparent allusion to another air strike” on Syria. “The deliveries have not taken place – I can attest to this – and I hope…
By CAROLINE GLICK, JPOST— The threats emanating from Syria have become downright frightening. For the past several days, Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan has been warning repeatedly that it is certain that Israeli population centers will be hit by Syrian ballistic missiles and that we have to be prepared for the worst-case scenarios, including…
In recent weeks, Vladimir Putin hosted successive delegations of foreign leaders from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. With Moscow as the new address to find a solution to the Syrian civil war, what are the likely scenarios…
By JEWISH PRESS-— The annual assembly of the UN’s World Health Organization today adopted a resolution criticizing Israel — in the organization’s only debate on a specific country — with Syria protesting “inhuman Israeli practices” that target “the health of Syrian citizens.” The WHO resolution against Israel was not yet published, but was likely a…
By YAAKOV LAPPIN, GATESTONE— Russia is aggressively squaring off with an indecisive and rather meek West about Syria, and in the process, is also threatening to undermine Israeli efforts to ensure that Iran and Syria do not ship strategic weapons to Hezbollah. The Syrian civil war has become a dangerous and complex battle of multiple…
By MARK LANDLER, NY TIMES— In a clear warning to Syria to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamic militants in the region, a senior Israeli official signaled on Wednesday that Israel was considering additional military strikes to prevent that from happening and that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, would face crippling consequences if…
By DEBKAFILE— Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Netanyahu ended their three-hour meeting in Sochi Tuesday, May 14, at loggerheads on Syria. In fact, Putin warned his guest that Israel and its army, the IDF, were heading for war with Syria in which Russia might well be involved – and not just through the…