Mideast Week in Review

by Michael Isenberg.

Syria war end game.

Israel sentences slap video teen to eight months in prison.

The war in Syria dominated the news from the Middle East this week. Government forces continued to make gains in the Eastern Ghouta region. 70% of the district, on the outskirts of Damascus, has now fallen into the hands of the Assad regime. The area had been under rebel control since 2013.

The operation by the Assad regime and its Russian ally has been brutal. The BBC reports more than 1,400 civilians have been killed. Among these, fifteen children and two women died in an underground school that was struck by Russian missiles.

With the capture of Eastern Ghouta, the Syria War is in its end game and, sadly, it's an Assad victory. Not that the other options were great. But at least the destruction will stop soon.

Separately, in the north of the country, Free Syrian Army forces, backed by Turkey, have taken control the Kurdish town of Afrin. The Turkish government claims that the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which controlled the area, is part of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a rebel group within Turkey which the government considers a terrorist organization. The US disputes the claim that the groups are in cahoots. Turkish president Recep Erdogan intends to create a buffer zone in northern Syria along the Turkish border. “The military operation will go on until the terror corridor through Manbij, Ain al-Arab, Tal Abyad, Ras al-Ain, Qamishli has been wiped out,” he said.

The Trump Administration has done little to protect the Kurds from Turkish aggression. Given that the Kurds allied with the United States in the battle against ISIS, and fought in the front lines, it is shameful that we are not doing more to help them. That may change, however, as American troops are stationed in some of the towns threatened by Erdogan.

There were reports of looting by the rebel forces. According to the BBC, “AFP news agency journalists in Afrin also saw rebels break into shops, restaurants, and houses, and leave with food, electronic equipment, blankets and other goods.” And we thought the Free Syrian Army were the good guys.

Also related to Syria, the Israeli government this week declassified video and other documents concerning its bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. This is the first public admission by the Jewish state that it was behind the destruction of the facility. Pundits believe the timing of the release is intended as a warning to Iran that Israel will respond similarly to Iran's nuclear ambitions. Indeed a tweet from Prime Minister Netanyahu, that “Israel's policy was and remains consistent - to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons,” seems to confirm that interpretation.

Read more—

Syria war: Rebel evacuations from Eastern Ghouta gather pace (BBC)

Syria war: Air strike 'kills children in Eastern Ghouta school’

Syria war: Turkish-led forces oust Kurdish fighters from heart of Afrin (BBC)

Syria war: Afrin looted by Turkish-backed rebels (BBC)

Israel admits striking suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 (BBC)

 

In a plea deal, an Israeli military court sentenced 17-year old Ahed Tamimi to eight months in prison. You may recall Ms. Tamimi as the Palestinian teen who was pictured in a viral video slapping an Israel soldier.

In my humble opinion, Israel made a mistake in prosecuting Tamimi. The video was a propaganda victory for the Jewish state, showing Israeli restraint in the face of Palestinian provocation. By imprisoning Tamimi, Israel is turning victory into defeat by creating a martyr for the Palestinian cause.

Read more—

Ahed Tamimi: Palestinian slap video teen gets eight months in plea deal (BBC)

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Photo credits: IHS Conflict Monitor, Twitter

The UN General Assembly: Hypocrites on Parade

We all saw highlights of President Trump’s speech. But what did other world leaders have to say?

Sure, Donald Trump got all the publicity. That’s par for the course when you threaten to “totally destroy North Korea.”

But this is a blog about Islam, so rather than North Korea, the focus here is the Muslim world. What did the various world leaders have to say about that?

I'll start with President Trump: he called out the “vile and sinister ideology” of “radical Islamic terrorism.” In particular, he singled out Iran’s “corrupt dictatorship” and “murderous regime.” Good stuff, noticeably absent from his 9/11 and Afghanistan speeches. Still, it's mostly a rehash of his May 21 address in Riyadh, which I covered previously.

Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel shared President Trump’s concern about Iran: “From the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean,” he said, “from Tehran to Tartus, an Iranian curtain is descending across the Middle East.” (If you don’t follow the reference, look it up. “Iron Curtain speech.” Get it? Iron Curtain/Iranian Curtain).

Hassan Rouhani of Iran came back swinging. He called the accusations against his country “ignorant, absurd, and hateful rhetoric” from a “rogue newcomer.”

Overall, President Rouhani wins the award for smarminess. “Our ambassadors are our poets, our mystics, and our philosophers,” he intoned piously. But my favorite part was, “The path of moderation nurtures beauty. Deadly-weapons exports are not beautiful; rather peace is.” He should know; his country is exporting weapons all over the Middle East to fight its proxy wars, including the humanitarian catastrophes in Yemen and Syria.

Rouhani concluded with a sales pitch for investment in the Iranian economy. He invited “all those who seek peace, security, and progress through partnership and cooperation among nations to visit Iran.” I’d actually like to take him up on that. I discovered in the course of research for my book The Thread of Reason that Iran is a country of spectacular and diverse natural beauty which, to its credit, takes great pride in its wealth of historical monuments, even pre-Islamic ones. Those who seek to destroy the monuments of the Confederate States of America could take a lesson from the Iranians. Still I think I’ll postpone my visit until I can travel in Iran without fear of being arrested and tried behind closed doors on dubious charges of espionage, as has been the fate of other Americans in that country.

Abdu’l-Fattah as-Sisi of Egypt presides over one of the world’s worst human rights abusers. It’s a place where Giulio Regeni, a Cambridge University student who was researching trade unions in 2016 mysteriously disappeared. His corpse, showing signs of excruciating torture, turned up in a ditch along a highway nine days later. In another story, just this week, an Egyptian court sentenced some 500 people in a mass trial for their role in the 2013 anti-government demonstrations. Amnesty International reported that 330 of them had already been detained for four years or more, and among these, there was evidence against only two of them. So one can only marvel at the irony of President as-Sisi lecturing the world body on “upholding the notion of the modern nation-state, which is based on the principles of citizenship, equality, rule of law, and human rights.” In a less hypocritical vein, he continued that he intended to defeat “any attempts at retracting to doctrinal, sectarian, ethnic, or tribal loyalties.” You read that right. No loyalty to religion, culture, or ideas allowed. One must be loyal only to the State.

On the subject of terror, President as-Sisi said, “We in the Muslim world need to face our reality and work together to rectify misconstrued notions which have become an ideological pretext for terrorism and their destructive discourse. As you may recall, Egypt has launched an initiative to rectify religious discourse in order to revive the moderate and tolerant values of Islam.” This showed some insight in that the roots of terror are ideological, but as-Sisi is mistaken that Islam has been misconstrued. While the ideology of ISIS and al-Qaeda isn’t the only possible interpretation of Muslim scripture, it’s certainly an interpretation with deep roots in that scripture. As for the prospect of any government “rectifying” religious discourse, or any discourse—that is truly chilling.

President as-Sisi also called for “global order that can face challenges, such as climate change.”

Mahmud Abbas, leader of the Palestinians, called Israel a colonial, Apartheid, occupying power, but nevertheless he promised that “upon Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied in 1967, the Arab and Islamic States would recognize Israel and normalize relations with it.” One has to wonder about his sincerity, since he then went on to denounce the “historical injustice” of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the document which laid the foundation for Israel’s right to existence in the first place. In any case, we're unlikely ever to put Mr. Abbas's sincerity to the test. There's only a small chance he'll ever have to follow through on this promise. Territories "occupied" in 1967 include East Jerusalem, which Israel views as part of its eternal, undivided capital.

As for Abbas’s view of the roots of terror, he claimed that “draining the swamp of colonial occupation of our land and ending its unjust, oppressive, and illegal practices against our people would greatly affect the fight against terrorism, depriving terrorist groups of one of the key rallying cries they exploit to promote their repugnant ideas.” This is an argument that Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, recently called “pure, unadulterated insanity.”

Mr. Abbas also said, “We once again affirm our commitment to…the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.”

Aung San Suu Kyi, First State Counsellor of Myanmar, chose not to attend, due to the anti-Muslim violence engulfing Rakhine State in her country; I wrote about that earlier this week. Instead, Counsellor Suu Kyi sent Vice President U Henry Van Thio, who for the most part parroted the awful speech that the First Counsellor delivered on Tuesday. But not to worry. Despite the atrocities in Rakhine, Mr. Van Thio assured the world that, “Myanmar welcomes the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.”

Well, that gives you some flavor of the 72nd UN General Assembly. As I read through page after page of self-inflicted grievances and smug hypocrisy, not to mention the pathological obsession with climate change, there was one question that kept nagging at me:

Why is the United States part of this?

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Transcripts and video of the speeches from the 72nd UNGA may be found on the UN Website.

President Art-of-the-Deal gets suckered

Syria ceasefire primarily benefits Putin and Assad

In the wake of President Trump’s first meeting with Russian president Putin on Friday, the two nations announced, with great fanfare, that they, along with Jordan, had reached a ceasefire agreement for a portion of Syria. The ceasefire began today and, and as of the time I’m writing this, it’s holding. It covers areas in the southern part of the country, in the provinces of Daraa, Quneytra, and as-Suwaida.

In a press conference following the meeting, Secretary of State Tillerson praised the agreement, saying, “I think this is our first indication of the US and Russia being able to work together in Syria.” He went on to say “our objectives are exactly the same. How we get there, we each have a view.”

In my humble opinion, the claim that the United States and Russia have the same objectives in Syria, and the only difference is how we get there, is ludicrous. The US seeks to overthrow the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, something Tillerson confirmed in his press conference. Russia is propping Assad up. That's literally the opposite objective. And the ceasefire is going to help them achieve it. Indeed, it's merely a continuation of a ceasefire that Syria announced unilaterally earlier in the week, amid rebel skepticism. I don't think anyone would accuse me of being unfair if I said that if the Syrian government announces a ceasefire unilaterally, you can bet it's in the Syrian government's interest to have a ceasefire. Only now the US is committed to it, which puts pressure on the US-backed rebels to abide by it as well.

I’m not alone in my opinion that, if the US objective is to unseat Assad, then the ceasefire is a sucker’s deal for the United States and its allies. In an interview with Fox News on Friday, former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said, “I’m not at all sure that this ceasefire, assuming it holds, and that’s a big assumption, doesn’t mostly benefit the Assad regime. In other words it gives them some calm on this particular front to enable them to move forward on another front.”

Indeed, a glance at the map shows the logic of Ambassador Bolton's concern. With a ceasefire in the south, government troops can move north to concentrate on recapturing other rebel-held territories, say near Damascus, or in Idlib province. The rebels in the southern provinces, meanwhile, are stuck there. To assist other rebel factions in the north, they would have to cross government-held territory, which they can't do.

Ambassador Bolton expressed broader concerns as well. “This deal goes a long way toward politically acquiescing and legitimizing in that Russian presence, and I think that’s a mistake...What bothers me about it more than anything else, it sounds exactly like the Obama administration’s position.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel seems dubious also. This morning he told his cabinet, “Israel would welcome a true ceasefire in Syria.” I admit I'm reading between the lines, but it sounds like he doesn't consider this ceasefire to be "true."

President Trump got elected by bragging about his skill at negotiation. If his deal with Russia on the Syria ceasefire is any indication, he may have overstated his abilities.

Michael Isenberg writes about the Muslim world, medieval and modern. His forthcoming novel, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092 and depicts the battle for the Muslim soul between those who embrace science and tolerance, and those who would rather throw in their lot with mysticism and persecution.

Photo credit: Ha’aretz
Map credit: SyrianCivilWarMap.com