By REUTERS– Israel would use a lot fewer cluster munitions in any future war with Hezbollah than it did in their 2006 conflict, even though it would go into southern Lebanon earlier and harder, a senior Israeli military officer said on Monday. The disclosure confirms Israel already has detailed planning for an offensive aiming to…
By TZVI BEN GEDALYAHU— The IDF has drawn lines around land that will be used to absorb a potential flood of Syrian refugees fleeing from the civil war, and prevent a spillover of violence into Israel, Voice of Israel government radio reported. Military sources said the areas were designated “in cooperation with the United Nations…
By YAAKOV LAPPIN, GATESTONE— As Israel’s military watches Syrian sovereignty crumble and scores of militant groups form in the resulting vacuum, it is on alert for jihadi terrorist attacks from Syria. The working assumption in Israeli defense circles is that sooner or later, Assad will fall, and Israel will have to deal with whatever will…
By ISRAEL HAYOM-— Several Israeli warplanes violated Lebanon’s airspace Sunday, according to Lebanese media outlets, flying over the country’s southern region and setting off sonic booms in a possible response to Saturday’s violation of Israeli airspace by an unmanned drone which Israel has speculated was launched by Hezbollah. Residents in the eastern area of south…
By SAMARA GREENBERG, JEWISH POLICY CENTER— According to a report in the German weekly Der Spiegel, the Syrian army in August is believed to have test fired missile systems using empty shells devised for delivering chemical agents. The tests, according to witnesses, took place near Syria’s largest chemical weapons facility, the Safira research center, where…
By REUTERS— Supporters of the Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah are set to hit the streets of Beirut on Monday after its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called for protests against a film that portrays the Prophet Mohammad as a womanizer and a fool. Lebanon has already seen protests over the Internet video in the mainly Sunni…
By VICTOR SHARPE— According to 71-year-old French surgeon, Jacques Beres, who co-founded Doctors without Borders and who has recently returned to France from two weeks in the city of Aleppo, Syria’s main commercial center, the rebels there are determined to usher in a worldwide Islamic caliphate: “It’s really something strange to see,” he said. “They…
By DAVID M. WEINBERG, ISRAEL HAYOM— The shameful hooligans who vandalized the monastery at Latrun last week raised howls of protest worldwide. The ugly attack was covered extensively in just about every newspaper in the world, with a lot of buzz about the supposed brutalization of Israeli society and a radicalization of religious Jewry. Without…
By REUTERS— Any use of chemical or bacterial weapons by government forces in Syria would trigger a “massive and lightning fast” response from the West, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Monday. “We talk about this, in particular with our American and British partners, and follow it closely on a day-to-day basis. “Our response…
By ISRAEL HAYOM— The “dictatorial, evil, and bloodthirsty” Iranian regime must be immediately placed in a position in which it needs to choose between developing nuclear weapons and its own survival, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Tuesday at a memorial ceremony in Bulgaria for the victims of last month’s terrorist attack in Burgas.…