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SHORT, SHARP OFFENSIVE AGAINST SYRIA

Top Israeli General warns Sharon to stop preparing for "short, sharp offensive against Syria"

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Israel’s former head of military intelligence, Major-General Shlomo Gazit, has broken ranks and taken the unprecedented step of warning Ariel Sharon to stop threatening Syria. Gazit, now a respected elder of the Israeli intelligence community, spoke publicly in Tel Aviv last weekend.

He accused Sharon of running an "orchestrated campaign to incite and humiliate Damascus. It is only going to be a matter of time until the Syrians are unable to hold back and then the big blaze will begin."

He cited as an example of the "jab, jab policy" of Sharon, the recent incident when Israeli fighter planes buzzed the palace of Basha al-Assad, the Syrian president.

Gazit’s blunt warning has sent a shock wave through Israel’s military command structure. Sharon’s cabinet office has dismissed Gazit as "someone out of touch with reality". "But the reality is that Sharon IS preparing for a short, sharp offensive against Syria," insisted Gazit.

Support for this came only last Sunday when General Moshe Yaalon, chief of staff of the IDF, Israeli armed forces, also hinted at "further action" against Syria.

"If Damascus continues to ignore the message that Israel and other countries have sent to Syria, then it may be necessary to send messages of a different kind," said Yaalon in an address to the faculty of Tel Aviv university.

The reference to "other countries" was intended to convey that Washington would support an attack on Syria, Yaalon later admitted.

An hour after he had spoken, eight Israeli F-15 jets crossed the international border with Lebanon and flew over Beirut. There are 25,000 heavily armed Syrian troops in and around the city.

This was the latest incursion to deepen the crisis with Syria. Last month, F-15 jets dropped satellite-guided bombs on an empty Palestinian training base near Damascus. It was the first assault on the country’s soil in 30 years.

Damascus promised to retaliate. It has not done so yet.

But Syrian vice-president Abd al-Halim joined in the war of words this week. He accused Sharon of "staging psychological warfare" against Syria.

Next day, more Israeli jets swept over Syria’s forces in Lebanon.

Sources close to Sharon have said he was now convinced by hawkish generals like Yaalon that Israel should next strike at Syria’s missile sites hidden in Lebanon.

But Gazit, once a renowned hawk, has predicted such an attack could have deadly consequences.

“It would be wrong for Israel to underestimate Syria’s military strength. Damascus could retaliate with a ferocity that would surprise us.

"The Syrians possess hundreds of ballistic missiles with conventional, maybe also chemical warheads, which are targeted on all of Israel," he said.

Bush’s tacit support for an attack on Syria – together with his signalled readiness to introduce the Syrian Accountability Act in Congress – shows how closely Israel has veered towards war with Syria.

The Accountability Act calls for sanctions against Syria until Washington "decides" if Syria has stopped supporting terrorism, has withdrawn all its troops from Lebanon, has ceased the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and is ready to enter into "serious unconditional peace talks with Israel."

The Act is the handiwork of the neo-conservatives around Bush, led by Paul Wolfowitz. It is welcomed by Sharon as the first move for a "regime change" in Syria.

But men like Gazit now see the "Israelisation" of America as a dangerous ingredient in the already poisonous Middle East brew.

With the situation in Iraq increasingly eating away at Bush’s prospects of election for a second term, he will be more accommodating than ever to Israel. In turn, the powerful Jewish American lobby will pressurize the White House to allow Sharon a free hand in dealing with Syria.

For strategists like Gazit, one thing is clear: if America cannot quickly extricate itself from Iraq, for Washington to remain an Israeli partner in this most counter-productive of alliances in the Middle East will be a high price to pay for Bush.

Gordon

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=10558

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewforum.php?f=15

http://www.irmep.org

Subj: Peter Brookes and Phyllis Bennis on C-SPAN's 'Washington Journal' Today
Date: 11/30/03 5:04:32 PM Pacific Standard Time

To: peter.brookes@heritage.org, peterbrookes@heritage.org

Mr. Brookes,

I heard the 'A Clean Break' (more about such is found at www.irmep.org) call on C-SPAN's 'Washington Journal' this morning, and you were not fooling me with your propaganda for the Zionist extremist agenda of JINSA/PNAC (you can read more about this via the following URL which has material posted there concerning the Lt. Colonel at the Pentagon under JINSA Zionist extremist Douglas Feith as she retired after learning that the Bush foreign policy had been hijacked by the Cheney JINSA/PNAC Neocon cabal which Feith is part of):

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=10558

Additional posts appear at the following URL:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewforum.php?f=15

Phyllis Bennis said that the Iraq invasion/occupation was not being driven by Israel (what she stated is not accurate though as AIPAC lobbies on behalf of the Israeli government and was all for the Iraq invasion along with Likudites Sharon and Netanyahu whom the JINSA/PNAC Pentagon Zionist extremists are associated with). I had heard Netanyahu before the war mentioning that the US military could take out Saddam's regime.. So Zionist extremists Netanyahu and Sharon had been plotting with Zionist extremists Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Wurmser (and company) for years in advance of the tragic 9/11 attack to take out the regimes in Iraq, Syria and Iran (in order to neutralize regimes considered to be hostile to Israel) for Israel. The Zionist driven invasion/occupation of Iraq will only contribute further to the hatred of US by the Arab/Muslim world which will most likely result in further terror attacks against US.

The JINSA/PNAC agenda was and still is being put into play by dual loyalist (JINSA/PNAC) Zionist extremists like Perle, Feith, Bolton, etc. who are out to protect Israel at all costs by having the US military do what they advised Israel to do with 'A Clean Break' back in 1996 (before they got into power in the current Bush regime). They are hardly for "democracy" in Iraq because 'A Clean Break' advised for a Hashemite King (like Prince Hassan or similar) to be "installed" into Iraq (in order for such an Israel friendly lackey to sell US cheap oil and provide oil and water to Israel as well).


In addition, our vast financial (BILLIONS of US taxpayer dollars) support of Israel (which facilitates its brutal suppression of the Palestinians) contributed to the motivation for the tragic 9/11 attack (as mentioned by former Republican Congressman Paul Findley in the third edition of his "They Dare to Speak Out" book which one can buy at a discount by making inquiry at www.wrmea.com).