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Lebanese Government “Horn” Up for Grabs

November 16, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The two articles by DEBKAfile and Big News Network, which follow the Scriptures involving the plucking up of three horns, are interesting in that they may relate to one of the horns that will be plucked up by the Antichrist.

Will the three horns up for grabs in Daniel 7 be three of the four Arab countries consisting of Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan?

Daniel 7:24,25 – And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he

shall subdue three kings.

[25] And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.

Time (1 yr) + Times (2 yrs) + Time Divided (1/2 Yr) = 1260 Days

Revelation 12:6 – And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

Daniel 11:41-43 – He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon. [42] He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.

[43] But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.

Daniel 11:42 – He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.

The political, geophysical, and military positioning of Syria, Iran, and Iraq, from a prospective of having world influence, literally stinks. But the position of Egypt’ s Suez Canal, and Cairo, her capital, i

s outstanding. The antichrist is supposed to be a man of genius in all areas. That being the case, he would be worse than a milit

ary academy dropout were he not to take the Suez Canal, and then make Cairo his empire’s capital.

Daniel 11:43 – But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.

The three most “precious things” in Egypt are: the Suez Canal, the Nile River, its Delta, and Cairo, the capital. He will conquer the Suez Canal zone and all of Egypt. So just what is Egypt

? Many are inclined to establish it as the land bordered on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, on the west by Libya, on the south by Sudan, on the southeast by the Red Sea, and on the northeast by its Sinai border with Gaza and Israel’s Negev. And, geographically, that is quite correct. However, in reality, that is not Egypt. The real Egypt, where her people live, is much, much, smaller. Egypt is the land along her north and east coastlines up to about two miles inland, the Nile Delta, and the land along the Nile River extending about fifteen miles either side of its banks.

The antichrist will send messages to leaders of two of the original 10 nations confederated with him, namely Libya and Sudan, requesting them to mass their troops along the northern coastal border with Libya, and along the border where the Nile enters Egypt from Sudan. This will cause the diversion of some Egyptian troops away from Cairo and the Suez Canal in order to protect their western and southern borders. And this will allow the antichrist to rapidly push across the Suez Canal into Cairo and along her western and eastern coastlines, then to quickly progress southward down the Nile with little resistance. I believe he will control Egypt within two weeks after he reaches the Suez Canal.

Once he has conquered Egypt, he will make an assessment of his geopolitical position. After having done so, he would be a military fool to return to his home country. He will establish his capital at Cairo, and will remain there for more than three years. After three years he will receive news that causes him to quickly return to Jerusalem.

If a military leader plans to put down his roots for a while, what would be one of his major concerns? The relationship he has with the rulers of the nations that are on his immediate borders. That is, how sure he is they will not pull a surprise attack on him. So, through the prestigious position he has gained in the eyes of the Islamic world by this time, it will allow him to use the terrorist groups, already in Sudan and Libya, to overthrow their leaders, and in their place to install two of his stooges, where they will remain in control for some three years. He will already have plucked up the ruler of Lebanon, and replaced him with a stooge. It will surprise me if Lebanon, Sudan, and Libya are not the countries from which his stooges will rule.

Daniel 7:8,24 – I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were THREE of the FIRST horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things. [24] And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue THREE kings.

I believe the kings (rulers) of Lebanon, Libya, and Sudan will be subdued by being personally plucked up by the roots out of their positions of leadership in their own countries, and replaced by puppet rulers who do exactly as the antichrist directs.

Daniel 11:43 – [43] But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.

“At his steps” means “companionship” (Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance & Wilson’s O.T. Word Studies). This expression also appears in Judges 4:10, where it appears as “at his feet.”

Judges 4:10 – And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; and he went up with ten thousand men at his feet: and Deborah went up with him.

It represents an Old Testament word picture of a conquered leader or country laying yearly tribute payments before the king of the conquering country, who is setting on his throne, and the tribute is being placed at his feet on the steps leading up to his throne. So I believe the antichrist will place his puppet rulers on the thrones of Lebanon, Syria, and Sudan as those who are in “companionship” with him.

For more than three years, with the Suez Canal under his control, he will gain worldwide recognition and acclaim in his capital city of Cairo. Israel will be trapped in the Negev for more than three years (See previous updates), and stability will have come to the troubled Middle East. He will supposedly have done what all nations say they are seeking, that is, brought stability to the Middle East. But, between the third and fourth year of his rule, something will cause him to quickly head for Jerusalem.

Begin DEBKAfile Article

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Siniora’s Lebanese government breaks up, faces street disturbances after national unity talks collapse Saturday

November 12, 2006, 10:39 PM (GMT+02:00)

Five pro-Syrian Hizballah and Amal ministers walked out of Fouad Siniora’s government coalition Saturday, Nov.

11. Another two ministers, supporters of the pro-Syrian president Emil Lahoud, are on their way out, taking with them the government’s parliamentary majority.

The two Shiite factions and the pro-Syrian Maronite leader Michel Aoun say their followers will take to the streets as of Sunday for demonstrations in Beirut and other Lebanese towns.

It would only take a few shots, say DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources, to spark clashes between Syria’s adherents and opponents in Lebanon. The crisis erupted when Siniora proposed convening the cabinet Monday, Nov. 13, to approve a bill for a special court to try suspects in the Feb.

2005 Hariri assassination. He intended to propose a panel of 5 Lebanese and 3 international judges

to be appointed by the UN Secretary General. But the plan was generally expected in Beirut to run foul of Syrian President Bashar Asad’s resistance to seeing his close relatives in the dock. In line are his young brother Gen. Maher Asad, his brother-in-law and chief of military intelligence Gen. Asaf Shawqat and other high officers. Syria instructed its supporters in Lebanon to topple the government if necessary to block legislation for this tribunal. The failure of the unity talks in Lebanon is seen as the first sign of fallout in the Middle East after the Bush administration’s election defeat this week over its unpopular Iraqi policy. Iran, Syria and the radical Hamas leaders in Damascus are moving fast to take advantage of the Bush administration’s policy setback to sow unrest in Beirut and instability in the Middle East to raise the ante for their cooperation on Iraq. Next, they are expected to stall Western efforts to bring the warring Palestinian factions into a unity government

End DEBKAfile Article

Begin Big News Network Report

Shiite resignations cause Lebanon crisis

Big News Network.com

Saturday 11th November, 2006 (UPI)

Hezbollah ministers and their allies resigned from Lebanon’s Cabinet Saturday, causing a political crisis in a country trying to recover from this summer’s war.

The Shiite resignations involved five ministers, about a third of the Cabinet.

Israel raided Lebanon in July after two of its soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah militants. The invasion destroyed many villages in southern Lebanon and turned hundreds of thousands into refugees.
Saturday’s resignations were widely seen in Lebanon as an attempt to increase the Shiite parties’ share of political power, the Israeli Newspaper Ha’aretz reported.

The crisis also could harm the government’s attempt to control southern Lebanon and restrain Hezbollah, as called for in the U.N. brokered cease-fire agreement with Israel.

Ha’aretz said the resignations follow a shift in the balance of power in Lebanon, with the Shiites accusing other factions in talks of trying to rule alone.

The Shiite community is loy al to neighboring Syri

a, but a political bloc of Sunni, Druze and Christians control a majority of seats in the Lebanese parliament, which controls the security forces.

End Big News Network Report

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You’ll wonder where the WMD’s went, when you brush your Teeth with Syr-I-An-O-Dent!

November 16, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

I have always believed the WMD Reports on Iraq were valid, but they were whisked away into Syria when the allied forces were getting ready to invade Iraq. The article by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post, which follows, lends credence to my belief. One of several articles I issued on this subject, Special Prophecy Update Number 173A, follows the Jerusalem Post Article.

The title of this BLOG comes from an

ancient tooth paste commercial song.

Begin Jerusalem Post Article

Our World: The Second-Worst Option

Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST

November 13, 2006

A week before the US Congressional elections The New York Times published a front-page story which all but admitted that Iraq’s nuclear program had been active until March 2003, when the US-led coalition deposed Saddam Hussein. The Times report relayed concerns of officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding captured Iraqi documents which the administration had posted on the Internet.

The documents in question contained Iraqi nuclear bomb designs that could be useful to rogue states like Iran which are currently working to build a nuclear arsenal. The Times article also reported that, in the past, the same Web site had published Iraqi documents relating to nerve agents tabun and sarin. They were removed after their content elicited similar concerns from UN arms control officials.

In response to the Times story an international security Web site run by Ray Robinson published a translation of a story that ran on the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Seyassah’s Web site on September 25. Citing European intelligence sources, the Al-Seyyassah report claims that in late 2004 Syria began developing a nuclear program near its border with Turkey. According to the report, Syria’s program, which is being run by President Bashar Assad’

s brother Maher and defended by a Revolutionary Guards brigade, “has reached the stage of medium activity.”

The Kuwaiti report maintains that the Syrian nuclear program relies “on equipment and materials that the sons of the deposed Iraqi leader, Uday and Qusai… transfer[red] to Syria by using dozens of civilian trucks and trains, before and after the US-British invasion in March 2003.” The report also asserts that the Syrian nuclear program is supported by the Iranians who are running the program, together with Iraqi nuclear scientists and Muslim nuclear specialists from Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.

The program “was originally built on the remains of the Iraqi program after it was wholly transferred to Syria.”

This report echoes warnings expressed by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon in the months leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq that suspicious convoys of trucks were traveling from Iraq to Syria. Sharon’s warnings were later supported by statements from former IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon, who said last year that Iraq had moved its unconventional arsenals to Syria in the lead-up to the invasion.

ACCORDING TO the US Senate’s Prewar Intelligence Review Phase II, which studied the prewar intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, in 2002, the US had learned from the Iraqi foreign minister that while Iraq had not yet acquired a nuclear arsenal, “Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing” nuclear weapons. The Senate report concluded that Saddam was told by his own weapons specialists that Iraq would achieve nuclear weapons capabilities “within 18-24 months of acquiring fissile material.”

In the weeks and m onths after the September 11, 2001 attacks

on the US, President George W. Bush repeatedly stated that America’s primary security challenge was to prevent the world’s most dangerous regimes from acquiring nonconventional, and particularly nuclear weapons. When Bush’s statements are assessed against the backdrop of the apparently advanced Iraqi nuclear bomb designs that were placed on the Web in recent weeks, it becomes clear that the US-led invasion successfully prevented Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons.

In his State of the Union Address in 2002, Bush placed Iraq in the same category of threat to US national security as Iran and North Korea. The three rogues states, Bush argued constituted an “axis of evil” that must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The post-Saddam insurgency in Iraq – an insurgency largely facilitated and sponsored by Iran – has caused the US and its coalition partners no end of grief.

Some 3,000 coalition servicemen have been killed since the invasion; the overwhelming majority of casualties have been American. Frustration with the continued bloodletting in Iraq was undoubtedly the most significant factor that caused the Republican Party to lose control of both houses of Congress in last Tuesday’s elections.

And yet, for all the difficulties, pain and frustration the post-Saddam insurgency has caused the US, the toppling of Saddam’s regime successfully prevented Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Iraq is a war zone today. But it does not have, and likely will not acquire nuclear weapons – nor chemical or biological weapons, for that matter. To that degree, Bush was neither wrong nor premature when he made it known in the months following the invasion that the US had accomplished its mission in Iraq.

IN THE summer of 2003, assessing future trends on the basis of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Libya’s dictator Mu’ammar Gaddafi decided to forgo his nuclear weapons program. Libya’s decision to give up its nuclear weapons program was a direct consequence of Gaddafi’s analysis of US intentions after the invasion. Quite simply, he believed that the best way to ensure the survival of his regime was to relinquish his aspirations to become a nuclear power.

But as the months and years have progressed it has become clear that far from being a warning to other would-be nuclear armed dictatorships, the US-led invasion of Iraq was a one-shot deal. As Saddam was captured in his hole, Teheran and Pyongyang marched forward, unchallenged in their campaign to become nuclear powers.

The ascent of the most dangerous regimes in the world to the status of nuclear powers reached a new climax last month. First was North Korea’s nuclear bomb test on Columbus Day. Two weeks later Iran announced it was doubling its uranium enrichment by utilizing a second network of centrifuges.

For their part, most of the nations of the world have looked on with indifference to these developments. South Korean Foreign Minister and incoming UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appears far more concerned with the Japanese debate over whether North Korea’s nuclear test should or should not cause Japan to develop its own nuclear arsenal than with the fact that Pyongyang now has nuclear bombs.

Ban’s apparent moral and strategic dementia is of a piece with the international community’s apathy. Europe has responded to Iran’s sprint toward nuclear arms by offering its usual mix of toothless sanctions, emotional appeals and diplomatic pageantry, all aimed at marking time until Iran announces its entr e into the nuclear club.

Russia and China have responded to both Pyongyang and Teheran’s nuclear machinations by increasing their collaboration with both regimes.

AS FOR the US, Iran, North Korea and al-Qaida have all been quick to interpret the Democratic victory in last Tuesday’s Congressional elections as a sign that the US has chosen to turn its back on the threat they pose to America. By firing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and replacing him with Robert Gates, who supports appeasing the mullahs in Teheran and finding a fig-leaf excuse to vacate Iraq, Bush has done everything to prove America’s enemies right. Moreover, Bush administration officials’ statements ahead of the president’s trip to Asia this week indicate that Bush will seek to contend with North Korea by ratcheting up US engagement with Pyongyang in the six-party talks.

Reasonably, the world is now assessing the US through the prism of its non-action against Iran and North Korea rather than through the prism of Iraq. And the consequence of the view that Iraq was a deviation from a norm of US passivity is nothing less than the complete breakdown of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.

Last week the Sunday New York Times reported that Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE have all announced their intention to build civilian nuclear reactors. Last Tuesday, in an official visit to China, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reportedly signed an agreement with Chinese leader Hu Jintao for China to build nuclear reactors in Egypt.

It is not hard to see the lesson of these developments. As the Iraq campaign shows clearly, while the price of taking action to prevent rogue regimes from acquiring nuclear weapons is high, the price of not acting is far higher.

Relating this wisdom to Iran earlier this year, Senator John McCain said, “There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option [to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons], and that is a nuclear-armed Iran.”

The US and its allies are paying a high price for having successfully prevented Saddam from getting nuclear bombs.

The price that Israel or the US, or both, will pay to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs is liable to be even higher. Yet the alternative to paying that price will be suffering, destruction and death on an unimaginable scale.

End Jerusalem Post Article

Begin Special Prophecy Update 173A

SPECIAL PROPHECY UPDATE NUMBER 173A

May 24, 2004

Looks Like WMD Speculation of Update 137E May be Correct!

In the first Prophecy Update in our Archives, issued in January of 2001, titled, “Significant World and Mid-East Events,” I reported what was a rather strange event on the Syrian border involving two regimes that had never liked each other. I now believe it likely that it was much more significant that I thought at the time. An extract from it reads:

“The beginnings of a pattern of military unity between Syria, Iran, and Iraq are now emerging in the Mid-East. Iraq recently conducted large scale military maneuvers on the Syrian border, reportedly by prior agreement with Syria’s new President, Bashar Assad. Assad then made a trip to Iran to hold talks with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. The talks were described as a strategic dialogue.”

I now believe those military exercises could well have been maneuvers to prepare for the contingency of a possible future transfer of Iraqi WMD into Syria in the event of a U.S. attack against Iraq.

In Special Prophecy Update Number 81A, August 17, 2002, I quoted the January Update of 2001, and the following extract is from 81A.

“In previous Updates we have told how recent prisoner exchanges from previous wars have softened the bitterness between them. The relations between Iraq and Syria,

which are ruled by two rival wings of the Baath party, were severed in the eighties, but have been on the mend since 1997, fueled mainly by trade links. We have covered these trade links in detail in previous Updates, as well as the sneaky way that Syria is militarily assisting Iraq and receiving oil benefits in return. So, as much as Syria and Iran do not like, or trust, Saddam Hussein, any attack against Israel must include Iraq in order to succeed. This is one of the reasons that Bashar, last month, sent a message to Saddam on the thirty-fourth anniversary

of his rival Baath party rising to power in Iraq. In the message he underlined his desire to boost the brotherly ties between Iraq and Syria. A Jordanian newspaper, Al-Hilal, reported that last week Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met with the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on the border between the two countries. The article said Assad took his brother, Maher, and the head of Syria’s Intelligence Service with him to the meeting. During the meeting the report stated that Saddam presented Assad with an ancient rifle taken from the Iraqi Museum.”

Since the conquest of Iraq, we have only found small amounts of Mustard and Sarin gases in-country. I have always believed Saddam destroyed most, but not ALL of his WMD. But where was it? So, in Update 137E I speculated that, based on the extracts from Update 1 in January of 2001 and Update 81A in August of 2002, what was left of Saddam’s WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), may well have been transferred by convoy into Syria. And, a recent report obtained from the WorldNetDaily gives me reason to believe my analysis was more than speculation.

It will be very interesting to see just how much was dumped into Syria. (BEGIN QUOTE OF SPECIAL PROPHECY UPDATE 137E)

“In the Spring of 2002, Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad, the President of Syria, had a meeting at the border between Iraq and Syria. As far as I know, this was their only meeting. I must confess that, at the time the meeting occurred, its immediate purpose puzzled me. The Baath parties of Syria and Iraq had not been on friendly terms up to that point in time. As I recall, Saddam presented Bashar with a large, ancient rifle as a present. A year later, after their meeting, Operation Iraqi Freedom put Saddam on the run, and no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have yet been found in appreciable amounts in Iraq. This has caused me to suspect that the major purpose for the border meeting was to discuss the transfer of the Iraqi WMD into Syria for safekeeping if the United States were to attack Iraq. I admit this is speculation, but time will tell!

Syria is still continuing its support for the terrorist groups, whose suicide bombers have taken a great toll of Israeli lives, and it is continuing its program for the development of WMDs. Bashar Assad is now the main troublemaker in the Middle East. Assad and Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Hizbollah, a large terrorist army in southern Lebanon, have met on many occasions. Countless s tockpiles of weaponry have flowed freely from Iran

to Hizbollah military camps across Syria for years. Syria, which in reality has control of Lebanon, and refers to it as “greater” Syria, could cut off this horrendous buildup of firearms, explosives, and missiles to Hizbollah, but it’s leader encourages, rather than hinders, all activity that will lead to the destruction of Israel.

Without question, the majority of foreign fighters captured in Iraq are Syrian and Lebanese. The New York Times quoted an intelligence agent as saying more than 60 percent of all those captured were of Syrian origin, and the London Times has indicated that many of them are being trained in Syria to kill Americans in Iraq. According to the article, three of the trainees, calling themselves Martyrs of Islam, say that 140 men have entered Syria to increase their skills in terrorist killing methods.

As you know, from my many articles on the subject, I believe that the antichrist is likely to come from Syria. I keep my prophetic eye keyed on Syria. If a coup should occur in Syria, and a new leader immerge who possesses bonding skills between the other Islamic nations, I recommend watching him like a hawk.

My reason for believing antichrist will come out of Syria, or the area immediately surrounding it, can be found in Prophecy Updates 62 to 70, (Those without alphabetic suffixes) in our Archives. (END OF QUOTE FROM SPECIAL PROPHECY UPDATE NUMBER 137E)

The following information was sent to me by my family physician, Dr.

Thomas. Who had received it from WorldNetDaily.com. Over the last few months, it seems that the U. S. Intelligence community has received new evidence that reports a sizeable amount of Iraqi WMD systems, components and platforms, were transferred to Syria during the weeks leading up to the launching of operation Iraqi Freedom. However, I assure you, until an absolutely provable package is in hand, one that liberal congressmen and news media cannot degrade in another congressional investigation, it is debatable if the information will be released to the public.

The convoys were first spotted by U.S. satellites in early 2003, but the contents of the WMD were not confirmed. Confirmation came later from Iraqi scientists and technicians questioned by a U.S. team that was searching for Saddam’s conventional weapons, but all they knew for sure was that the convoys were headed west to Syria. However, over the last few months, U.S. Intelligence managed to track the Iraqi WMD convoy to Lebanon’s Bekka Valley, the home of

the Palestinian terror group Hizbullah. Through the use of satellites, electronic monitoring devices, and human intelligence, the intelligence community believes that much, if not all, of Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons assets are being protected by Syria with Iranian help, in the Bekka Valley. I doubt if the Syrians or Iranians would be crazy enough to release any of them to Hizbullah at the present time.

Saddam and Assad met at the border in August of 2002. According to this latest intelligence report, the Syrians received word form Saddam in late 2002 that the Iraqi WMD would be arriving, and Syrian units began digging huge trenches in the Bekka Valley. According to the report, Saddam paid more than 30 million in cash for Syria to build the pits, acquire the Iraqi WMD, and then conceal them. At first, U.S. Intelligence thought Iraqi WMD were stored in northern Syria, but in February of 2003 a Syrian defector told U.S. Intelligence the WMD was buried in or around three Syrian Air Force Installations. Intelligence sources said the Syrians kept all the dual-use nuclear components for themselves, but transferred any incriminating evidence to Lebanon.

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from which we extracted it.

What a Cotton-Picking Mess!

November 15, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The phrase from an old Tex Ritter Song, “You can’t pick very much cotton, when them cotton bulbs get rotten, in them old cotton fields back home,” is certainly appropriate for the situation in the Middle East

today.

I have never seen such a rotten mess in the “old world” since I listened to the invasion of Poland by Hitler in September of 1939. Truly, it will take the Second Advent of Messiah to straighten out this horrific maze of hate that has engulfed the Middle East and spread its tentacles around a tottering planet.

While it is quite true that no man can tell the hour, the day, the week, the year, the times of the moon, or the four seasons of Christ’s coming in the air for his Saints, I exhort all who would listen to understand that we can “see the day approaching.” Its approach is accelerating, and I am convinced when it does break out, it will be abrupt and without quarter.

Mark 13:32 – But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

Acts 1:6,7 – When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? [7] And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

Hebrews 10:25 – Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

I have collected a number of November articles from a wide variety of sources to place in a BLOG that illustrates my point.

Begin Arutz Sheva Article

*Shabak Chief Warns Again of Gaza Initiated War

Aratz Sheva – Israel National News

By Hillel Fendel

November 14, 2006

Yuval Diskin, Head of the GSS, tells Knesset Members yet again that Israel faces a massive military offensive initiated by increasingly-armed Palestinian terrorists in Gaza.

Appearing this morning (Tuesday) before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Diskin said that the terrorists in Gaza are preparing

and arming themselves for the coming clash. The extremist factions in particular are strengthening themselves, he said.

Diskin told the MKs that the terrorists in Gaza are carefully studying the lessons of the recent war in Lebanon, and are receiving mass quantities of weapons smuggled in from Egypt. He added that terror experts are also making their way into Gaza in various clandestine ways, as part of the preparations for the frontal clash with the IDF.

The General Security Service chief said that Israel will be left with no choice but to preempt the attack with a large, comprehensive offensive in Gaza. He added, however, that now is not the time for an offensive. Instead, he proposed that Israel enable Fatah to be strengthened at the expense of Hamas.

Diskin has long painted a grim picture of the situation in Gaza. He told the same committee this past August, “Samaria has become the land of Islamic Jihad following the Disengagement,” noting that Judea and Samaria have become much harder to control since four Jewish communities in northern Samaria were destroyed by the Israeli government in 2005. He said that Hizbullah is becoming a greater threat than even Fatah and Hamas within these areas.

A week earlier, the Shabak chief told the government ministers that the “intensification of terror infrastructure in Gaza is a strategic problem which, if not treated properly, will result in a situation just like in Lebanon.” He said that “tons of explosives and hundreds of weapons have been smuggled in recently through the Philadelphi Corridor [on the Gaza-Egyptian border].”

In response to Dichter’s comments, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has been asked to initiate a public investigative committee to review the decision-making process that led to the Disengagement from Gaza. An organization named “The World Task Force for the Nation and the Land” demands an investigation into how such a decision could have been made in the face of strong security warnings and the firing of Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Yaalon, who opposed the plan.

COLLECTION OF NOVEMBER ARTICLES

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Daily Alert

*IDF: Hamas Building an Army in Gaza

Joshua Brilliant

The Israeli defense establishment maintains Hamas is building an army in Gaza, partly to fight Israel and partly for a showdown with Fatah. Hamas already has thousands of armed men whose uniforms and conduct demonstrate “elements characteristic of an army,” a milit

ary source said. The head of the IDF Southern Command, Maj.-Gen. Yoav Gallant, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday that Hamas is building battalion

and brigade formations. It smuggles into Gaza two to three tons of explosives a month and is engaged in serial production of weapons. Unless checked, Israel could find itself facing a force “in the scale of a division [10,000 soldiers – similar to the size of Hizballah].”

A military source said Palestinians have smuggled large quantities of anti-tank missiles, and over the past year hundreds of thousands of guns, mostly through tunnels. Israel “must not let Hamas and (other) terror organizations build a terrorist infrastructure similar to the one Hizballah built in Lebanon,” Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Tuesday. (UPI)

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Daily Alert

*Hizballah Sets Deadline for New Lebanon Government

Nadim Ladki

Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday gave Lebanon’s majority anti-Syrian coalition until mid-November to agree to the formation of a national unity government or face protests demanding new elections. He said Hizballah and its allies should have at least a third of the cabinet. The group, and Nabih Berri’s Amal faction, currently have five ministers

in the 24-member government. A third of votes in the government can block the passage of decisions in any cabinet vote. (Reuters)

*U.S. Preparing Abbas Guard to Take on Hamas

Aluf Benn and Avi Issacharoff (Ha’aretz)

The Bush administration has undertaken efforts to arm and train the Presidential Guard of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in order to prepare it for a potential violent confrontation with Hamas forces in Gaza.

Palestinian sources say the training of 400 Force 17 troops in a “Special Presidential Guard” started a month ago in Jericho under the guidance of an American military instructor.

*Hamas Receives Advanced Anti-Tank Missiles

(Middle East Newsline)

Israel has determined that the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has received advanced, Russian-made, AT-14 Kornet anti-tank missiles with a range of 5.5 km. and a high level of accuracy.

Officials said the weapons were capable of changing the strategic balance in the region since they could significantly threaten Israeli military operations in Gaza.

They said the missiles could also target civilian and military sites inside Israel.

“The Palestinians have received dozens of the anti-tank missiles that were used by Hizballah in the Lebanon war,” said Shalom Harari, a senior consultant to the Defense Ministry.

“These are weapons that break the strategic balance.”

*U.S. worried Iran, Syria helping Hezbollah bid to oust Siniora

By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies

November 1, 2006

The White House expressed concern Wednesday over what it called mounting evidence that Syria and Iran are joining with Hezbollah in an attempt to topple the Lebanese government.

Press Secretary Tony Snow said any such bids through tactics including violence or physical threats to Lebanese leaders would be a clear violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and three United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“Support for a sovereign, democratic, and prosperous Lebanon is a key element of U.S. policy in the Middle East. We are therefore increasingly concerned by mounting evidence that the Syrian and Iranian governments, Hezbollah, and their Lebanese allies are preparing plans to topple Lebanon’s democratically-elected government led by Prime Minister Siniora,” the White House said in a statement.

“Any attempt to destabilize Lebanon’s democratically-elected government through such tactics as manufactured demonstrations and violence, or by physically threatening its leaders would, at the very least, be a clear violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1559, 1680, and 1701,” the statement said.

Hezbollah on Wednesday threatened demonstrations to force early elections in Lebanon if its demands were not met for a “national unity” cabinet that would give the militants and their allies veto power over key decisions.

The effort seems certain to further exacerbate an already tense political situation in Lebanon, where the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has refused earlier Hezbollah calls to step down and allow the formation of a new Cabinet.

It could also lead to violence, with pro-government groups warning of a confrontation with militants in the streets.

“Our concept of the national unity government is that all the basic forces in Lebanon be in it … actual and serious participation, not an aesthetic participation,” Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said in a three-hour interview on his group’s television channel Al-Manar on Tuesday night.

In the face of Nasrallah’s ultimatum, government supporters have threatened counter-protests, raising fears of a repeat of the kind of sectarian clashes between Lebanon’s Sunnis, Shiites, Druze and Christians that ravaged the country during its 1975-90 civil war.

Leaders of the anti-Syrian factions have repeatedly warned of violence if Hezbollah supporters pour into the streets.

The move, if successful, would significantly raise Hezbollah’s standing in the cabinet, where it and its Shiite ally, Amal, currently have five ministers. Such veto power and influence in decision-making would also bolster their standing in the 128-seat parliament, where the group and its allies hold less than half the seats, compared to 70 seats held by the anti-Syrian majority.

Prime Minister Siniora has repeatedly rejected the idea of a new government, contending that his cabinet achieved much for the country and did its best to stop the war. His supporters say that Hezbollah and its backers, in pushing for greater political power, are doing Damascus’ bidding and are trying to undermine the formation of an international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005.

Walid Jumblatt, a member of parliament, was quoted by Lebanese newspapers Wednesday as warning during a visit to Washington that “threats by some forces in Lebanon to resort to street [protests] in order to bring down the government” would “lead to anarchy.”

Nasrallah has played down any fears of violence in the threatened street protests, saying his campaign would be peaceful.

The Hezbollah chief further threatened to press for early general elections in the hope of winning a majority that would turn the current anti-Syrian majority in parliament into a minority, and elect a pro-Syrian premier.

Nasrallah’s comments however “do not reflect … the political resistance the government had played to ensure the Israeli withdrawal,” Siniora said Wednesday, referring to the Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon after the recent conflict with Hezbollah.

Observers say Hezbollah and its ally the Shiite Amal movement are aiming to gain control of at least a third of the cabinet, which would give them the ability to veto cabinet votes.

Next week’s talks are widely seen as the last chance to avert a showdown on the streets and threaten Lebanon’s stability.

In a related development, sources close to senior Christian political figure General Michel Aoun have claimed that negotiations are underway to prevent any demonstrations by enlarging the current cabinet.

The plan would see the appointment of ministers loyal to Aoun, himself a Hezbollah ally, as well as other representative currently outside the government, the sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

“The negotiations are on the right track and we will probably be discussing the names of the new ministers,” the sources said. Hezbollah currently has two ministers in Siniora’s cabinet.

Arutz Sheva – National News Service

*Iran-Hamas Summit in Coming Weeks

Wednesday, November 1, 2006 / 10 Cheshvan 5767

A Palestinian Authority-Iranian summit is to take place in the coming weeks with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh traveling to Iran to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The meeting was confirmed by Haniyeh’s office. This will be the first official visit of the Hamas leader to Iran, though Hamas terror chief Khaled Mashal (pictured above) met with Ahmadinejad previously.

Iran has been a major backer of Hamas throughout the period since the terror group won the PA elections. During that time, most of the PA’s Western funding sources have withheld funding pending a Hamas recognition of the Jewish state.

The top Hamas official will also be visiting Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Qatar, and Lebanon.

Analysts are concerned that the Iranian-Hamas summit will increase the coordination between the two entities, both publicly seeking the liquidation of the Jewish state.

Terror Group Claims it Fired Rocket in Samaria

A terrorist group associated with the Popular Resistance Committee declared Wednesday that it had succeeded in firing a Nasser 1 missile at a Jewish community on the outskirts of Shechem.

The IDF denied the report, saying no missile had fallen near the Jewish community of Migdalim, which was identified as the target by the Saladdin Brigades’ statement.

“This is a present to the martyrs and their soul, to the injured and the prisoners, and it is the first step toward exterminating the Zionists through the missiles of the Palestinian resistance,” the statement read.

Rockets in Sderot

Meanwhile, seven Kassam rockets were fired from Gaza toward the city of Sderot Wednesday. One of the rockets landed in the yard of a private residence, damaging cars and causing a number of residents to go into shock. Two other rockets smashed into a factory in Sderot’s industrial zone, setting a fire and causin a minor spill of hazardous chemicals. Three people were lightly injured.

Another Kassam rocket landed south of the city of Ashkelon, near a strategic facility. It failed to cause any damage or injury.

*Hamas begins to fire antitank missiles in West Bank

November 2, 2006, 3:15 PM (GMT+02:00)

Exclusive to DEBKAfile’s military sources: While the IDF continues “Operation Autumn Clouds” in Beit Hanun, and Qassam rockets continue to fall on Sderot and the Western Negev, Hamas has begun to fire rockets from the West Bank at Israeli targets. The IDF on Wednesday, Nov. 1, refuted an announcement by the Salah a-Din Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, that on Wednesday morning it had fired a short-range Nasser 1 rocket at the settlement of Migdalim, east of Ariel in Samaria. However, senior officers in Central Command told

DEBKAfile’s military sources that the Palestinians, for the first time, fired an antitank missile at an Israeli settlement, adding that it had been smuggled into the West Bank from the Gaza Strip or the Sinai Peninsula. According to the officers, Hamas has devoted tremendous resources to opening a second front by firing short-range missiles at Israeli targets from the West Bank, and has already succeeded in stockpiling a “not insignificant” number of such missiles. “The first instance of the firing of such a missile took place early Wednesday morning at 4 a.m., and now it will escalate,” one officer said. Another officer said: “What we said was that we didn’t find the missile fragments in the field. However, just because we didn’t find them doesn’t mean we don’t know what the Palestinians are up to. The missile was definitely fired, and without any doubt this heralds the opening of a new period of warfare in the West Bank and within the Green Line.” DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that senior IDF officers are saying that while the political echelon and military brass are still deliberating how to halt or lessen the influx of weapons through Palestinian-made smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor and the Egypt-Gaza border, Hamas is concentrating most of its efforts to bringing its assorted weaponry from Gaza to the West Bank. Hamas sees this as a priority, even more than bringing advanced weaponry into Gaza. Over the past few weeks, the IDF says, Hamas has succeeded in opening another smuggling route from the Sinai Peninsula to the Arava near Eilat. From there the missiles cross the Jordan River into Jordan, then are snuck into the West Bank through the Dead Sea area by Beduin smuggling networks. Hamas wants to establish in the West Bank and adjoining areas on the other side of the Green Line a zone of live fire similar to what exists along the Gaza Strip security fence. [See DEBKAfile’s article from Nov. 1 “The Russian-made antitank missile Metis-M9 is returning to the battle field – this time to the Gaza Strip”] A senior officer in Central Command said: “Now, after the first firing [of a missile] at Migdalim, the firing of antitank missiles at settlements and Israeli vehicles will escalate in Judea and Samaria. It is only a question of a short time before areas inside the Green Line become targets.”

Arutz Sheva – National News Netword

*UNIFIL Patrol Takes Nights Off, UN Admits Hizbullah Arming

Wednesday, November 1, 2006 / 10 Cheshvan 5767

Despite the 20,000 troops deployed in southern Lebanon, the United Nations admits that weapons smuggling from Syria continues unhindered. A German report finds UNIFIL does not patrol after dark.

Hizbullah terrorists are free to roam at night without fear of being identified by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to a report by the German paper Der Spiegel.

Spanish UNIFIL official Richard Ortax admitted to the paper that no patrols are carried out at night “because of the danger involved.” UNIFIL commanders said their function is to “observe changes in the behavior of the local population.”

One junior officer told Der Spiegel he was glad that his battalion had only left its camp once. “It’s absurd,” he said. “We landed here and set up our tent city, but since then we’ve only left the camp to drive around and to make sure that we’re seen.”

The report cites a long tradition of UNIFIL inaction, which it says allowed time for a Finnish contingent to construct a giant sauna and an Indian contingent to decorate its base with traditional Indian artwork.

The UNIFIL troops and the 14,000 Lebanese soldiers stationed in the region add up to a total of around 20,000 troops in the 18-by 31-mile region

of southern Lebanon. Another 6,000 troops are still expected to arrive.

The United Nations itself has admitted that Syria was still successfully smuggling arms to the Hizbullah, which neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese army plan to stop.

Israel has maintained overflights in the region in order to monitor and discourage the smuggling, yet UNIFIL officials condemn the continued Israeli maneuvers. The Lebanese army even attempted to shoot down Israeli fighter jets on Tuesday. France and the European Union have been accusing Israel of violating Resolution 1701 with its flights over Lebanon.

The current state of affairs has led Israeli officials to speak about “rethinking the implementation of Israel’s commitments” made in the context of the UN-brokered cease-fire.

The UN Security Council “noted with regret [that] non-Lebanese militias” in the country had not been disbanded or disarmed, an allusion to the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hizbullah. The statement on Tuesday was termed a “presidential statement,” which is the weakest of all available Security Council actions.

Following the meeting, UN envoy to the region Terje Roed-Larsen explicitly admitted that Syria was actively smuggling weapons into Lebanon. He said that Lebanese government officials “have stated publicly and also in conversations with us that there have been arms coming across the border into Lebanon.”

Roed-Larsen added that Syria itself does not deny the flow of weapons, claiming only that the arms are not being dispatched by the Syrian government. “The consistent position of the government of Syria has been that, ‘Yes, there might be arms smuggling over the border, but this is arms smuggling and the border is porous and very difficult to control,'” Roed-Larsen told reporters.

Roed-Larsen ducked UN responsibility for the smuggling, saying UN troops had not been asked by the Lebanese army to monitor the border.

*Iran test fires 3 new missiles in Gulf

Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST

November 3, 2006

Iran has successfully test fired three new models of missiles in the Persian Gulf, state TV reported Friday.

Television showed footage of the elite Revolutionary Guards firing the missiles from mobile launching pads on the shore, and from warships.

The three new types of missiles, named Noor, Kowsar, and Nasr, have a range of about 170 kilometers and were built for naval warfare, TV reported.

The weapons are “suitable for covering all the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian gulf and the sea of Oman” said Admiral Sardar Fadavi, the deputy navy chief of the Revolutionary Guard.

Some 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passes every day through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The Revolutionary Guards began maneuvers on Thursday, shortly after a US-led military exercise in the Gulf.

*Eye of the Storm: The ‘Iranization’ of Syria

AMIR TAHERI, THE JERUSALEM POST

November 1, 2006

While there is much talk of continued Syrian machinations in Lebanon, little attention is paid to an Iranian plan to remodel Syria into a Khomeinist state.

The Teheran-Damascus axis that challenges the United States in the Middle East was first formed in 1980 when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in the hope of destroying the newly created Islamic Republic.

At first, the Khomeinist regime in Iran and the Ba’athist dictatorship in Syria seemed unlikely allies. The Khomeinists followed a radical Shi’ite ideology aimed at global jihad in the name of their brand of Islam. The Syrian Ba’athists, on the other hand, were secularists inspired by an Arabized version of National Socialism aimed at uniting Arab countries under one flag and one party.

The Iran-Iraq war brought the two together for a simple reason: the Syrians knew that if Saddam won he would become the unrivaled Arab supremo, marginalizing the Syrian Ba’ath and eventually toppling the regime of President Hafez Assad. The mullahs knew that only Syria could prevent a unified Arab bloc to back Saddam.

The mullahs had to pay for Syrian support in the form of cut-price oil and an annual cash handout of $150 million. In 1982 the two furthered their alliance by sponsoring the Lebanese branch of Hizbullah.

All along, however, the Syrians were careful not to be totally hooked to the Iranian strategy. Hafez Assad insisted on meeting every American president and maintained close contact with Washington. He was also ruthless when it came to Islamist tendencies, even if that meant massacring thousands of people. Even in Lebanon, Assad did not put all his eggs in the Iranian basket and insisted on having his own Shi’ite outlet in the form of Nabih Berri’s Amal movement.

To underline their difference, the Syrians also made a number of small but significant gestures. For example, they refused Iranian demands that women be kept out of official ceremonies attended by visiting Khomeinist dignitaries, or that no alcohol be served on such occasions.

“Syria is Syria and Iran is Iran,” Syria’s then defense minister Mustafa Tlas told a reporter in 1986. “We cannot live like them and they cannot live like us. But we can work together.”

Today, Tlas may well have much to worry about. For there are signs that the Islamic Republic is determined to export its ideology to Syria. Teheran believes that only an Islamicized Syria would be a dependable ally in driving the US out of the Middle East, wiping Israel off the map, and creating a new Islamic “superpower” with Iran as its “core component.”

According to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad secular anti-imperialism, including Ba’athism, has failed to halt the advance of the American “Great Satan.” Today, only militant Islamism can fill the gap left by the disintegration of the USSR and Communism as global challengers to “imperialist hegemony.”

TEHERAN STRATEGISTS, working on the assumption that Israel and the Islamic Republic will clash at some point, regard Lebanon and Syria as part of the Iranian glacis. It was to secure Lebanon and Syria as strategic assets that Teheran launched its plan for the “Fertile Crescent.”

The first phase of the plan consisted of an Iranian-sponsored campaign last year to cast suspicion on elements in the Syrian Ba’ath known for their opposition to Khomeinism. Hundreds of Ba’ athist cadres, including senior figures, were retired or driven into exile.

Cadres with what is euphemistically called “better Islamic sensibilities” have taken their place. Many of the new rising stars have some experience of Iran, having served there in diplomatic, military and intelligence capacities on behalf of their government. In Syria today, having an “Iranian flavor” is as useful for an individual’s career as a Soviet one was in the old days.

President Bashar Assad’s purge of the party, the army and security services of secular elements has, in turn, increased his vulnerability to conspiracies by the excluded cadres. Some of those cadres have formed alliances with the regime’s Sunni fundamentalist and democratic opponents. That, in turn, has increased Assad’s reliance on Iranian security and the Lebanese branch of Hizbullah. Sources in Damascus claim that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Hizbullah have assigned special units to protect Assad, if and when he is threatened by domestic enemies.

Teheran has also succeeded in killing what Dr. Hassan Abbasi, Ahmadinejad’s strategic guru, has called “the American temptation” in Damascus. That “temptation” came to the fore in 2003 when Assad surrounded himself with Western-educated technocrats and diplomats who wanted him to switch to the American side in the wake of regime change in Baghdad.

Since then, however, the Syrian officials branded by Abbasi as “Emrikazadeh” (struck by America) have been silenced or force to change tune. Teheran has successfully peddled the fear that Syria may be a target for American “regime change.”

ONE OTHER development has forced Syria closer to Iran: The murder of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri in 2005 destroyed bridges between Damascus and moderate Arab capitals. Today, hardly a single Arab regime is prepared to maintain friendly ties with Syria, let alone prop up the Assad regime. At one stroke Syria lost the annual stipend of $250 million that it had received from Saudi Arabia since 1991. The more isolated Syria becomes the more its leaders are forced to depend on Iranian power.

To protect himself against alleged US plans for “regime change,” Assad is leaning on the mullahs who also want to change his regime.

Last June Syria did what it had not done even during its alliance with the USSR, and signed a defense pact with the Islamic Republic.

The pact gives Iran direct access to the Syrian military at middle and senior levels, provides for joint staff conversations, harmonization of weapons systems and training, and military exercises. Under it, any attack on either partner would be regarded as an aggression against the other. One result of the pact has been a fourfold increase in the number of Iranian military and security personnel in Syria.

“Iran is trying to play the role that the Soviet Union played in Syria during the Cold War,” says a former member of Assad’s cabinet. “It is the regional big power and behaving like one.”

Several developments confirm that view:

• Iran has increased scholarships offered to Syrians, including for military training, from a mere 200 in 2001 to over 3,000 this year.

• Assad has lifted the ban on Syrians attending Islamic seminaries in Iran, allowing over 170 Syrians to attend seminaries in the Iranian holy city of Qom.

• The ban on Iranian cultural centers outside Damascus has been lifted.

Iran has now set up 11 centers for Khomeinist indoctrination in Syrian cities including Aleppo and Latakiyah. By last September a total of 17,000 Syrians had enrolled in classes to learn Farsi and study the “philosophy of Imam Khomeini.”

• Iran is clearly flexing is economic muscle in Syria. Hundreds of Iranian companies, from banks to building contractors, are active in Syria, employing tens of thousands of people in a country hit by mass unemployment. This year the Islamic Republic is expected to become Syria’s second major trading partner, after the European Union.

• Syria has agreed to raise the number of Iranian pilgrims visiting the Zeynabiah Shi’ite holy shrine near Damascus from 150 to 1,000 a day. Critics claim that the pilgrimage is used as cover for the presence in Damascus of hundreds of Islamic Revolutionary Guard fighters at any given time.

• Iranian television and radio networks, broadcasting in Arabic, are now available in every Syrian home while other non-Syrian Arabic-language media are banned.

• Assad has granted 41 Iran-based charities permission to operate in Syria. These use the models of Hizbullah and Hamas by providing services such as clinics, schools, interest-free loan agencies and grants for weddings.

• Women who agree to wear Khomeinist-style hijabs and men who grow Khomeinist-style beards receive cash gifts and preferential treatment in getting jobs with hundreds of Iranian companies operating in Syria. Visitors to Syria would be struck by the massive rise in the number of young women and men trying to confirm to the Khomeinist “look.”

• Syria has also lifted the ban on Shi’ite proselytization, allowing hundreds of Iranian mullahs to convert Syrian Sunnis to Shi’ism. There are also reports of mass conversions of members of Assad’s own Alawite sect to Iranian duodecimain Shi’ism. Traditionally, Iranian Shi’ism considered the Alawites as heterodox because of esoteric elements in their theology. Last year, however, two ayatollahs of Qom with ties to the Khomeinist regime declared he Alawites part of the Muslim ummah, and authorized “theological exchanges” with them, opening the path for attempts at conversion.

• In Lebanon, Iran is trying to undermine Syria’s role by marginalizing Amal and establishing direct contact with the Christian bloc led by ex-general Michel Aoun. Teheran wants Berri and Aoun to put themselves under the banner of a front led by Hizbullah.

Last summer’s war in Lebanon that ended with Israel’s “greatest defeat,” according to Iran, has strengthened the supporters of a Damascus-Teheran axis within the Syrian leadership.

The Assad regime is the typical Arab set-up that cannot survive without the backing of an outside power. For a brief moment in 2003 and 2004 it looked as if the US could provide that backing. Since then, Assad has been left with no option but putting himself under Iranian protection. And that, in turn, makes a showdown between the US and the Islamic Republic that much more possible.

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We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more detailed information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. You may use material originated by this site. However, if you wish to use any quoted copyrighted material from this site, which did not originate at this site, for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner from which we extracted it.

American Troop Withdrawal should be in Full Swing by 2008!

November 12, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

I do not expect a withdrawal to have been completed by mid-2007, but I do believe a full scale withdrawal will be in full swing and accelerating by 2008. Once it is completed the stage will be set for a well coordinated unbroken chain of Islamic command along a linkage from Iran through Iraq to Syria and Lebanon.

The following Report from DEBKAfile of an attempt to withdraw our troops from Iraq within 6 months pushes the envelope from a reality standpoint.

I am sure the two Senators are not seeking full withdrawal within six months as the report seems to imply, which really would be “cut and run.” I feel cert ain they

are seeking a pullout acceleration of forces beginning in mid-2007, with a full departure being completed in 2008. This is basically the identical time scale I put out six months ago as a BLOG ON April 30, which I will include following the DEBKAfile Report. This is in line with a Jihad attack against Israel at some point in time between the troop pull out and 2012, that is,

between 2008 and 2012.

Begin DEBKAfile Report

Two key Democratic senators seek US withdrawal from Iraq within 4-6 months

November 12, 2006, 7:51 PM (GMT+02:00)

They are Carl Levin and Joseph Biden, former chairmen of the of the Senate armed forces and foreign affairs committees

, respectively.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report the Democratic Party is poised to push President George W.

Bush hard to accelerate the US evacuation of Iraq regardless of consequences.

The Baker-Hamilton Bipartisan Iraq Study Panel reports to President Bush Monday. Their White House conference signals the post-election review of US strategy in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. It will be broadly attended by the top Bush policy-makers. Among them, according to White House spokesman Tony Snow, Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Stephen Hadley, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and CIA Director Gen.

Mike Hayden, as well as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen.

Peter Pace.

Incoming defense secretary Robert Gates will attend as a member of the bipartisan committee. His seat will pass to Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state under the first President Bush. General Pace said earlier that the change in Pentagon leadership itself would not have a direct impact on the next moves in Iraq. “We continuously review what’s going right, what’s going wrong and what needs to change.”

Begin April 30 BLOG 2006

Good Information on U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Iraq!

April 30, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The article which follows from Reuters by Ibon Villelabeitia certainly fits the previous guesstimates I have made on a timetable for the full withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq.

I have contended since we went into Iraq there would be no attack launched against Israel by ten Arab Nations as long as American troops were in Iraq.

I agree with the assessment made in the following article as to the timetable it states in phases from now to mid-2008, and it is one of the main reasons I believe the attack will occur at some point in time between 2008 and 2012.

After we have pulled our troops out of Iraq, it would take an act of the Congress to suddenly send them back, and we will be quite convinced that Israel can handle the situation as it has in the past, but this time it will be different.

Begin Reuters Article

Iraqi adviser sees US troops gone in 2008

Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:35 PM ET

By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – American troops will probably be gone from Iraq by mid-2008 as the Iraqi forces they are training take over from them, Iraq’s National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said on Friday.

He said he expected the roughly 133,000 U.S. troops to be cut to less than 100,000 by year’s end and an “overwhelming majority” of them to have left by the end of 2007 under a U.S.-Iraqi plan for progressively handing over security.

“We have a roadmap, a condition-based agreement where, by the end of this year, the number of coalition forces will probably be less than 100,000,” he told Reuters in an interview.

“By the end of next year the overwhelming majority of coalition forces would have left the country and probably by the middle of 2008 there will be no foreign soldiers in the country.”

End Reuters Article

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the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more detailed information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. You may use material originated by this site. However, if you wish to use any quoted copyrighted material from this site, which did not originate at this site, for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner from which we extracted it.

Era of Dorothy’s “Somewhere over the Rainbow” for Israel without Messiah is Ended!

November 13, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

I have supported my President and will continue to do so. I believe he did the right thing and followed the right path in standing up to the ungodly tenets of radical Islam and his support for Israel against her many enemies.

I will die pro-Israel and anti-Islam. But the tide has turned from opposing evil to appeasing it, and the rest of this age is going to be a long downhill ride to oblivion on the international wave of Islam until Messiah comes.

Caroline Glick, in addition to being a very attractive lady, is also a brilliant mind with a natural ability to analyze international shifts in political policies. Her pen has a razor sharp edge that often cuts to the quick. I say that having been cut to the quick in a few of my opinions by her articles, but I actually enjoy changing my mind with I am wrong, and she has changed my mind in a few areas. Her following article from the Jerusalem Post is a collection of excerpts from the full article. Due to the length of the full article, I cut out those parts I considered not to be associated with the subject of shifts in U.S. policy.

Her article is especially timely because Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is visiting in Washington this week.

Begin Jerusalem Post Article

Column One: Olmert’s ill-timed Washington Visit

Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST

November 10, 2006

Many downplay the significance of the US Congressional elections. It is the six-year slump, they say. But the truth is nonetheless glaring. By all accounts, Tuesday the George W. Bush era came to a close.

The consequences of this turn

of events on Israel will be dramatic. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that anyone has explained them to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of his scheduled visit to the White House next week.

Across the political spectrum in Washington today there is a sense that after years of wavering, in the wake of the Democratic victory in Tuesday’s Congressional elections, President Bush transferred control over American foreign policy to his father’s anti-war advisors.

The President’s announcement of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “resignation” Wednesday signaled the transfer of control over the war against radical Islam from Bush’s team to Bush pere’s team. Robert Gates, Bush’s nominee to replace Rumsfeld, served as his father’s deputy national security adviser and CIA director. He is a member in good standing of the Arabist wing of the Republican Party which dominated the President’s father’s administration.

In recent years, Gates made one notable foray into the world of international affairs. In 2004 he collaborated with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor in the Carter administration. Like former president Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski is one of Israel’s greatest adversaries in US policymaking circles. It is hard to recall a problem, conflict, crisis or war in the Middle East over the past thirty years that Brzezinski has not managed to blame on Israel.

Gates and Brzezinski co-chaired a Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Task Force charged with recommending a US policy for dealing with Iran.

In July 2004 they published their recommendations.

The Task Force called for the Bush administration to directly engage the mullahs and to use “fewer sticks and more carrots” to convince the regime in Teheran to stop enriching uranium, and to stop supporting al Qaida and the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an effort to convince the Iranians to cooperate, the two recommended that the US discard regime overthrow as a policy option and move more forcefully to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible. They also recommended that the US pressure Israel not to take any military action against the Iranian nuclear facilities arguing that such Israeli actions would undermine US national interests.

In recent months, Gates has been serving as a member of the Iraq Study Group chaired by Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton.

The Congressionally mandated committee is scheduled to recommend new strategies for managing the war in Iraq to Bush later in the month.

In a series of recent press interviews, Baker and Hamilton have indicated that they will recommend that Bush enter into negotiations with Iran and Syria.

The proposed talks they say, will serve to motivate Iran and Syria to stabilize the situation in Iraq in a manner that will pave the way for a retreat of US forces from the country.

Since it is Iranian and Syrian sponsorship of the insurgency that is causing the war to continue, it is fairly clear that Baker is egging for a temporary ceasefire that will last long enough to enable a pullout of US forces.

The fact that the price of the temporary ceasefire will be a US defeat in Iraq and the surrender of Iraq to the tender mercies of Iran and Syria is apparently okay by Baker.

Practically speaking, Bush supported Israel’s right to take action to defend itself. (What Israel did with his support is a completely separate issue.) As to Iran, Bush distinguished himself from his predecessors by announcing his support for the overthrow of the regime in Teheran. In recent months, Bush and at least some of the members of his administration pointed fingers at Damascus and Teheran for their sponsorship of the insurgents in Iraq, for Hizbullah in Lebanon and for Palestinian terror groups in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

So when the full breadth of Bush’s policies is taken into consideration, his decision to appoint Gates does signal a strategic shift in direction. Rumsfeld was completely identified with Bush’s pro-Israel policies and with his hawkish stances towards Islamic radicalism. Rumsfeld’s ouster and replacement by a follower of Baker, Bush pere and Scowcroft signals a clean break with the policies Rumsfeld embodied. Furthermore, by sacking Rumsfeld the day after the elections, Bush sent a signal to the Democrats that he is willing to forego victory in exchange for political breathing space.

More than anything, the partyless Lieberman will serve as a constant reminder of the power of the radical Left. The radical, anti-war Left which spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting anti-war candidates and so brought about Lieberman’s defeat in the Democratic primaries, made a decisive contribution to the Republican defeat in the general election. The threat posed by radical leftist donors, like multi-billionaire George Soros who have launched a crusade against all proponents of the war against radical Islam, makes Democrats and Republicans alike want to put the Iraq war behind them before the 2008 elections.

THIS IS the Washington that will greet Olmert during his visit on Monday.

If fortunes had been reversed and Olmert were arriving in Washington after a Republican victory, had he be inclined to do so, Olmert could have used the visit as an opportunity to communicate a number of critical messages.

First, he could have recalled that Bush qualified US support for Palestinian statehood on a Palestinian embrace of democracy, peace, and active opposition to terrorism. Since by electing totalitarian terrorists to power the Palestinians have proven incontrovertibly that they oppose democratic values of freedom and human rights, support terror, and oppose peaceful coexistence with Israel.

As for Iran, if the Republicans had been victorious, Olmert could have made clear to Bush that history will judge him not only by what he has done in Iraq, but by what he will do against Iran and North Korea. Olmert could have presented a plan for a joint Israeli-American operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations.

But of course, the Republicans lost the elections. Politicians and defense secretaries who would have willingly listened to such messages from an Israeli prime minister have been booted out of office, thrown into the back benches of Congress, and fired by Bush.

Today Israel stands alone against the Palestinians. More disturbingly, the responsibility for preventing Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities has moved conclusively from Washington to Jerusalem.

If Olmert were a strong leader, in light of the Republican defeat and Bush’s response to that defeat, he could use the meeting as an opportunity to tell Bush that Israel accepts responsibility for attacking Iran’s nuclear installations. But Olmert, who spent his last visit in the US capital trying to convince the Americans to support his plan to surrender Judea and Samaria to Hamas, is not a strong leader.

He is a weak leader. The new wind blowing out of Washington will easily cast him asunder.

In truth, little good will come from Monday’s meeting at the White House. It is too bad he can’t simply cancel it. Israel would be better off if Olmert called in sick on Monday morning.

End Jerusalem Post Article

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