JN-1122

Jerusalem News (23 January, 2015, 3 Shevet, 5775)

Contents:
1. The Humanitarian Catastrophe in Syria and Iraq by Paul Rivlin
2. Iran Isn't Just Trying to Build a Nuclear Bomb BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
3. Canada Shoulder to Shoulder with Israel!
Canadian FM Baird to PM Netanyahu: Canada doesn't stand behind Israel.
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1. The Humanitarian Catastrophe in Syria and Iraq
by Paul Rivlin
http://www.dayan.org/iqtisadi-5-no-1-january-22-2015
Extracts:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented the death of 76,000 persons in 2014 and another 30,000 unconfirmed deaths. Both SOHR and the UN have confirmed that at least 200,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in the spring of 2011. In 2014, the number of confirmed deaths was equal to 0.3 percent of the population: in the US, the equivalent number would have been over one million!

On January 13, 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that the total number of Syrian refugees was 3.7 million. There were an estimated 1.1 million in Lebanon, 1.1 million in Turkey, 620,000 in Jordan, 228,000 in Iraq, and 138,000 in Egypt. This meant that 14.5 percent of the population had fled abroad, but other estimates suggest higher figures, exceeding four million or 18 percent of the population (equivalent to over 55 million US refugees). In addition some 7.6 million Syrians, more than one third of the population, have been internally displaced so that approximately half of the population has left its home.

More than 10 million Syrians now rely on aid to survive, nearly half of them in areas under siege or otherwise hard to access.

At the end of 2014, the total number of internally displaced people in Syria and Iraq was about 9.6 million, equal to the entire population of Sweden! The total number of refugees was between 3.4 million and 4.2 million. This meant that between 13 million and 13.8 million people had been forced from their homes. Many others remained in the ruins or partial ruins of their homes.
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2. Iran Isn't Just Trying to Build a Nuclear Bomb BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
http://news.investors.com/IBD-Editorials-On-The-Right/012215-735845-iran-is-on-the-march-toward-regional-domination.htm
Extracts:

While Iran's march toward a nuclear bomb has provoked a major clash between the White House and Congress, Iran's march toward conventional domination of the Arab world has been largely overlooked. In Washington, that is. The Arabs have noticed. And the pro-American ones, the Gulf Arabs in particular, are deeply worried.

This week, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized control of the Yemeni government, heretofore pro-American. In September, they overran Sanaa, the capital. On Tuesday, they seized the presidential palace. On Thursday, they forced the president to resign.

The Houthi have local religious grievances, being Shiites in a majority Sunni land. But they are also agents of Shiite Iran, which arms, trains and advises them. Their slogan ,  "God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel", could have been written in Persian.

Why should we care about the coup? First, because we depend on Yemen's government to support our drone war against another local menace, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. It's not clear if we can even maintain our embassy in Yemen, let alone conduct operations against AQAP. And second, because growing Iranian hegemony is a mortal threat to our allies and interests in the entire Middle East.

In Syria, Iran's power is similarly rising. The mullahs rescued the reeling regime of Bashar Assad by sending in weapons, money and Iranian revolutionary guards as well as by ordering their Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, to join the fight. They succeeded. The moderate rebels are in disarray, even as Assad lives in de facto coexistence with the Islamic State, which controls a large part of his country.

A strange occurrence last Sunday in the Golan Heights further illustrated Iran's domination of Syria. An Israeli helicopter attacked a convoy on the Syrian side of the armistice line. Those killed were not Syrian, however, but five Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and several Iranian officials, including a brigadier general.

The Israelis can defeat any conventional attack. Not so the Gulf Arabs. To the north and west, they see Iran creating a satellite "Shiite Crescent" stretching to the Mediterranean and consisting of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. To their south and west, they see Iran gaining proxy control of Yemen. And they are caught in the pincer.

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3. Canada Shoulder to Shoulder with Israel!
Canadian FM Baird to PM Netanyahu: Canada doesn't stand behind Israel;
 
PM Netanyahu Meets with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird
(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this afternoon (Monday, 19 January 2014), met with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird.

Canadian Foreign Minister Baird:

Todah rabah, thank you very much, Prime Minister, for your friendship, for your leadership. I know your father had a great influence to you in your life and your political life. My grandfather left Canada in 1943 to fight in Europe. He stayed in the Canadian forces for 25 years at the end of the war. The great struggles of his generation were fighting fascism and then in the Canadian forces during the Cold War fighting communism. Well the great struggle of our generation is terrorism and far too often the State of Israel and the Jewish people around the world are on the front lines of that struggle. And as I've said before, Canada doesn't stand behind Israel; we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with it."
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IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
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