Israelis will get a real time drill next week, including how to act in a chemical weapons attack, in the annual Home Front national Emergency Preparedness drill.

Tensions on the northern border postponed the drill, which was supposed to take place three weeks ago.

“Our opponents hold long-range missiles with large warheads and a carrying capacity of hundreds of pounds,” and a “large volume of rocket fire” is a certainty in the event of an attack from the north, said Home Front Command Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg.

The last time Israel was under an aerial attack was last November, before the Pillar of Defense counterterrorist campaign ended Gaza terrorist missiles attacks that struck as far north as Tel Aviv and in the Jerusalem area.

In 2006, Hezbollah pounded the Galilee area, Haifa and Hadera with approximately 4,000 missiles and rockets that killed 44 civilians and more than 120 soldiers.

Since then, Hezbollah is estimate to have increased its stockpile of rockets to more than 60,000 missiles.

IDF officers have said it is only a matter of time until Hamas and/or Hezbollah put their missile stockpiles to work. “The question is no longer will rockets be fired at the large populated areas in Israel, the question is when it’ll happen,” according to Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan.

Next week’s drill will test Israel’s preparedness, especially in urban areas such as metropolitan Tel Aviv.

Sirens will sound at 12:30 p.m. and 19:05 p.m. on Monday, and citizens will be instructed to enter bomb shelters or protected rooms for 10 minutes.

The annual drill is going high-tech this year and will include text messaging and social networks.

“Everyone will hear the siren,” the Home Front said in a preparatory message to Israelis. “There will be announcements on television and radio.  A ‘personal message’ will be sent to all those with cell phones that are capable of receiving them and cell phone providers that participate in the program.”

The Syrian regime has shown off an IDF jeep, allegedly captured from rebels, as evidence that Israel has been aiding opponents to the regime. A video aired by the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen television channel clearly shows the jeep with an IDF license plate, complete with Hebrew letters.

Even someone not familiar with military vehicles would immediately see that the jeep has seen better days, or years.

In addition, if indeed Israel were deploying special forces in Syria, as Syrian President Bashar Assad claims, they would not be roaming around the country with a jeep.

The vehicle apparently dates back to the 1990s, when Israel maintained a security zone in  southern Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah terrorists from attacking the Galilee.

“The jeep seen in the video has not been used by the IDF for many years,” an IDF spokesman said. “What this really shows is how deeply entrenched Hezbollah is in Syria.”

Israel abruptly left southern Lebanon in 2000, and the jeep probably was left behind.

Hezbollah may have used it in Syria, where it is fighting along side Assad’s army. The jeep was “captured” during a fierce battle between rebels and the regime at the village of al-Qseir near the Lebanese-Syrian border.

The Syrian official news agency SANA claimed, “The seizure of an Israeli military vehicle which terrorists had been using in al-Qseir refutes the allegations made by Israel to justify its aggression on Syria and proves the scale of Israel’s military and intelligence involvements in the events in Syria.”

Al-Mayadeen also claimed that the Syrian regime recovered military uniforms and communications equipment, but the veracity of the report can be discounted because  it did not show any pictures, except that of the dilapidated jeep.

Another dubious claim comes from the Iranian-controlled Press TV claimed that the Syrian army found Israel-made rockets. Considering the source, it can be assumed that if any rockets were found, they belonged to Assad’s regime or to Hezbollah.

Wendy Sherman, Under Secretary for Political Affairs testified today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She said she wanted to use this opportunity to speak clearly about the challenges facing U.S. foreign policy, especially from Iran. Here is her entire written statement to the committee:

The Nuclear Challenge

Iran’s nuclear activity – in violation of its international obligations and in defiance of the international community – is one of the greatest global concerns we face. A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the region, to the world, and to the future of the global nuclear proliferation regime. It would risk an arms race in a region already rife with violence and conflict. A nuclear weapon would embolden a regime that already spreads instability through its proxies and threatens chokepoints in the global economy. It would put the world’s most dangerous weapons into the hands of leaders who speak openly about wiping one of our closest allies, the state of Israel, off the map. In confronting this challenge, our policy has been clear: we are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Our preference is to resolve this through diplomacy. However, as President Obama has stated unequivocally, we will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, and there should be no doubt that the United States will use all elements of American power to achieve that objective.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has asked why it is that the international community does not believe that Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. The answer is simple: Iran has consistently concealed its nuclear activities and continues to do so, denying required access and information to the International Atomic Energy Agency. As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has responsibilities to the international community, and it is that blatant disregard for those responsibilities that has made Iran the subject of four UN Security Council resolutions imposing mandatory sanctions.

From his very first months in office, President Obama put forward a clear choice to the Iranian government: Meet your international responsibilities on your nuclear program and reap the benefits of being a full member of the international community, or face the prospect of further pressure and isolation. Unfortunately Iran has so far chosen isolation. There is still time for it to change course, but that time is not indefinite. I want to be clear that our policy is not aimed at regime change, but rather at changing the regime’s behavior.

The Dual-Track Policy

Since this Administration took office in 2009, we have pursued a dual-track policy. Working with the P5+1 – the five members of the UN Security Council – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus Germany, under the auspices of the European Union – we have actively pursued a diplomatic solution to international concerns over Iran’s nuclear program. As a result of Iran’s continuing disregard for its international obligations, we have ratcheted up the pressure on the Iranian government. We have built and led a global coalition to create the toughest, most comprehensive sanctions to date on the Iranian regime. The international community is united in its determination to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.

Today, Iran is isolated and sanctions are having a real impact on the ground, exacerbated by the regime’s own mismanagement of its economy. Iran exports over 1 million fewer barrels of crude oil each day than it did in 2011, costing Iran between $3-$5 billion per month. All 20 importers of Iranian oil have either significantly reduced or eliminated oil purchases from Iran. Financial sanctions have crippled Iran’s access to the international financial system and fueled the depreciation of the value of Iran’s currency to less than half of what it was last year. Foreign direct investment into Iran has decreased dramatically as major oil companies and international firms as diverse as Ernst & Young, Daimler AG, Caterpillar, ENI, Total, and hundreds more have divested themselves from Iran. The International Monetary Fund projects the Iranian economy will contract in 2013, a significant decrease from the over 7 percent growth six years ago, and far below the performance of neighboring oil-exporting countries. Put simply, the Iranian economy is in a downward spiral, with no prospect for near-term relief.

Check out the front page of last Monday’s (May 6th, 2013) edition of the Guardian and your hair will be blown back by this scorching headline: “Syria Accuses Israel of Declaring War.” The fact that the Guardian chose to legitimize the Syrian narrative is a relatively minor nuisance in an article that effectively intertwines one nation’s right to self-defense with the looming threat of a wider regional conflict.

The article, written by Julian Borger and Joel Greenberg, does not deny the Israeli version of events leading up to the recent air strikes against military targets around Damascus. Rather, and much more insidiously, the piece draws an incongruous parallel between terrorism’s enablers and the chief regional check against its expansion.

First, the Guardian quotes an Iranian army ground forces commander as saying that, “Iran was ready to train the Syrian army if necessary.” Next, the winds of war are further fanned with this bit of sabre rattling, courtesy of the office of the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, which denounced the attack, declaring it illegal and a threat to “security and stability in the region.” Meanwhile, Nabil Elaraby, chief of the Arab League, appealed to the U.N. Security Council to “move immediately to stop the Israeli aggressions on Syria.”

The Guardian fails to frame the most recent conflagration between Israel and the forces of terrorism with appropriate historical context, therefore distorting coverage enough to publish inaccurate information. Exhibit A: whilst Hizballah is mentioned several times, no space is dedicated to defining what Hizballah is: an extremist Shiite Muslim group that receives financial and political support from Iran and Syria. Borger and Greenberg also neglect to note that the governments of the U.S., Netherlands, Bahrain, France, U.K., Australia and Canada classify Hizballah as a terrorist organization.

Next, the Guardian piece spends a good couple of paragraphs describing the effects of Israel’s unleashed war machine on the average Syrian citizen:

“Mohammed Saeed, another activist who lives in the Damascus suburb of Douma, said: ‘The explosions were so strong that earth shook under us.’  He said the smell of the fire caused by the air raid near Qasioun was detectable kilometers away.”

Heart-wrenching. However, the Guardian simply ignores recent history by not including any background as to what precipitated the Second Lebanon War, which is important if readers are to gain a comprehensive understanding as to the geo-political forces currently at play.

Here’s a dose of inconvenient reality to consider: on July 12th, 2006, the Second Lebanon War began when Hizballah terrorists opened fire with rockets on the Israeli border towns of Zar’it and Shtula, wounding several civilians. This was a diversion for an anti-tank missile attack on two armored Humvees patrolling the Israeli side of the border fence. The purpose of the attack was to capture Israelis who could be used in a prisoner exchange barter.

Under cover of this diversionary shelling, two IDF (Israel Defense Forces) patrol vehicles were ambushed. Three soldiers were killed in this attack, two were hurt and two others – Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev – were taken prisoners.

Following the kidnapping, IDF forces opened a massive attack on Hizballah posts near the border. An armored force entered Lebanese territory seeking to retrieve the abducted soldiers, but a short time later it hit a mine and its four crew members were killed. Attempts to extricate the tank back to Israel ended with another soldier dead.

Shortly after the kidnapping, the Israeli Government unanimously authorized a military operation against Hizballah forces in Lebanon.

Following a 33-day war, Israel agreed to abide by the terms of United Nations’ Security Council resolution 1701 for an armistice between it and Hizballah. The resolution called for “a complete halt of acts of aggression, and especially those committed by Hizballah and the military actions on behalf of Israel.”

Furthermore, Lebanon was asked to implement the already existing resolution 1559 dealing with disarmament of armed militias – first among them being Hizballah.

It is the article’s historical myopia that makes it possible for the Guardian to downplay the moral imperative behind the recent Israeli military strike and to frame the story as a no-win situation pitting one country’s security against larger regional stability.

And Israel’s right as a sovereign nation to defend its citizens is thus neatly nullified.

Fortunately for Israel, it has the United Nations as an ally. Article 51 of the U.N. Charter states the following: 

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of collective or individual self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security…

Good, worthy journalism is based on journalistic objectivity, which has been defined as a “genuine effort to be an honest broker when it comes to news. That means playing it straight without favouring one side when the facts are in dispute, regardless of your own views and preferences.”

When a front page news story about Israel and Hizballah omits both the background and the staggering results of the previous conflict between these two regional players – 4,000 rockets fired upon northern Israeli cities, 164 Israeli citizens (119 soldiers and 45 civilians) killed and hundreds injured – one is compelled to question the qualifications of the journalists on duty to deliver just the facts and allow their readership to draw its own conclusions.

Going forward, Julian Borger and Joel Greenberg would be well advised to keep their opinions firmly within the confines of the Guardian’s op-ed page.

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Hezbollah supreme leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted on Thursday that the Syrian regime will ship to the terrorist organization “game-changing” weapons, a week after Israel bombed Iranian missiles that were sent to Syria for delivery to Hezbollah.

Nasrallah’s rhetoric came a day after Syrian President Bashar Assad’ bravado that he will strike Israel but only when he wants to.

Israel has taken all measures to refrain from getting involved in the Syrian civil war and in the ongoing political and often violent instability in Lebanon, where Hezbollah and its allied pr-Syrian parties play a dominating force.

Hezbollah sucked an unprepared Israel into war in 2006, and his warning Thursday that “Syria will give the resistance special weapons it never had before” challenged Israel to strike again and risk repercussions if Assad tries again to send “game-changing” weapons to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah may be losing some of  its shine among its ranks as a result of reportedly heavy casualty figures in Syria, where it is fighting along side Assad’s forces.

Israel officially was not bothered by Nasrallah’s rant.

“We don’t respond to words. We respond to action,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.

The IDF has taken its fingers off the panic button and has lifted Sunday’s ban on civilian aircraft in the north following the weekend bombing attacks on missiles in Syria.

The closure grounded Arkia’s Haifa-Eilat flights as well as private planes, and it was supposed to stay in effect at least until Thursday.

An army spokeswoman told the French news agency AFP that the closure was expected to end later on Monday, while the IDF confirmed to the Jewish Press that the ban already has been lifted.

“Civilian aviation in northern Israel will resume regular operation following security assessments,” a statement said.

Headlines around the world are screaming that Syria, Lebanon and Israel are prepared for war, and that is correct to the extent that every normal country beefs up its defenses in the face of a perceived threat.

But a sure sign that everyone, particular Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar Assad, are basically huffing and puffing is that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took off for China Sunday night.

It is extremely unlikely that the Prime Minister of Israel would trek off the Far East to promote trade relations if political and military analysts expected war.

Just to make sure Syrian President Bashar Assad understands Israel’s intentions of self-defense by bombing in Syria of Iranian missiles that were about to be handed over to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel reportedly sent him a soothing  “don’t worry” message Monday.

Israel has no intention of trying to help the rebels and is not trying to intervene in the civil war, said the message, sent through diplomatic channels, according to the Hebrew language Yediot Acharonot newspaper.

Israel has rarely, if ever, intervened in another country’s political affairs, although critics charge that Israel’s political leaders’ love of American politics has proven the United States to be an exception.

Prime Minister Netanyahu knows full well that it will not relish whoever might replace Assad, termed a “butcher” this week by no less than his former short-lived fair weather friend Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Similarly, Israel uncharacteristically shut up during the Arab Spring rebellion against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The war rhetoric mainly is coming from the other side of the border, with Syrian television even calling on “Palestinians to act against Israel” from the Golan Heights.

However, there are virtually no “Palestinians” in the Golan, where most of those who are not Jewish are Druze.

If Syria meant that the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Syria would cross the Golan Heights border like tourists, of it meant that the Druze are going to fight for Assad, that only shows how much the Syrian regime is living in its own world.

The IAF attacks on missiles and other weapons caches in Damascus have led yesterday to a particularly tense day up north, perhaps the most tense since the Second Lebanon War. The Air Force ordered the closure of Israel’s northern airspace until Thursday. This despite unofficial military evaluations that there will be no serious retaliation on the part of Syria or Hezbollah, who are both too busy fighting the Sunni rebels to care for a second, deadly front against Israel.

Israel’s concern is primarily Hezbollah, the more volatile member of the northern, unholy alliance, and the intended recipient of those demolished Fateh-110 long-range missiles. So the level of readiness was increased for the entire north, which included an IDF request that residents of the Western Galilee to avoid fireworks and loud music.

Talk about nervous trigger fingers.

The Northern Command, which had been planning a major exercise of civilian defense response to a Syrian rocket attack—decided to shelve it for the time being. As it is, folks started to form lines to get their gas masks and the rest of the official defense kit.

According to Maariv, the Golan Heights residents have been less nervous after the two successive IAF attacks on Syria. Possibly because the Syrian border has been the quietest for the past 40 years. But things in the Middle east have a tendency to change rapidly, especially with news of Al Qaeda and other fanatics moving south as part of their encounters with the Syrian army.

Meanwhile, the Home Front Command’s Information Center has announced the inauguration of a new call-routing system enabling speakers of foreign languages to talk to a representative of the Home Front Command and a translator on the phone. Should the IDF be unable to provide a translation to a particular language in real time, the operators will record the caller’s phone number and call back with a translator on the line.

“Ultimately, what’s important is that each of the information platforms be available to civilians, who will know that there is an address for every question,” Col. Sigal Tidhar, Head of the Home Front Command’s Population Department, told the IDF Website. “The center is available 24/7, and now we have also successfully addressed [foreign] languages through a translation company that gives us this service. Right now, the response is provided immediately, and even during Operation Pillar of Defense we reinforced the stations so there would be no waiting time.”

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 18 percent of Israelis speak Arabic as their mother tongue, 15 percent Russian, followed by Amharic, English, French, German, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and Yiddish.

In contrast to the desert that covers most of the Middle East, the Fertile Crescent has been an area that kingdoms thrived in since the dawn of history. The reason is simple: it was possible to maintain a reasonable and stable community life in this area because communities could establish an economy based on agriculture and raising herds of animals. The children of Israel in the Land of Israel, the Phoenicians in Lebanon, the Assyrians in Syria, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and the Chaldeans in Iraq, all established kingdoms with a strong and effective central government, based on an agricultural society dwelling in permanent communities from which it was possible to collect taxes and enlist its sons into the ruler’s army. The desert, on the other hand, was not a place of kingdoms and regimes because its nomadic residents do not represent a civil and economic basis upon which it is possible to establish a permanent, central framework.

The modern era is a continuation, to a large extent, of the classic picture of the Fertile Crescent: Lebanon, Syria and Iraq were established as states that should have been frameworks for legitimate states with governmental systems based on a egalitarian and shared civil society, that would include the tribes and the many ethnic, religious, and sectarian groups that populate the area. The objective data of the area -plentiful precipitation, comfortable weather, flowing rivers and fertile ground – could have provided a comfortable life for the people of these states, if only they could have lived with each other in peace. The borders of the states were drawn by the colonial forces that ruled in the area, and these borders define their territories, the area of their sovereignty and the identity of their citizens. Protection of the borders is a prerequisite for the existence of every state in the world.

But in the past decade – and especially in the past two years – the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are continually being penetrated, undermined, dissolved, eroded and annulled. Those who are undermining the states are its neighboring states, organizations and individuals, who relate to borders of states as if there is no need to respect them. It is important to note that great sections of borders exist only on maps, while in reality, there is no fence, wall or any real barrier that would enable the state to protect its borders from invasion of evildoers and prevent their entry.

The efficacy of border protection is an effective indicator of a state’s overall condition: a state that protects its borders and prevents the entry of hostile elements is a state with the power to live and survive even if it is situated in an unfriendly environment. On the other hand, a state that does not succeed in protecting its borders from foreign and hostile elements  penetrating into its territory is a state in the process of deterioration that might end in its demise. The recent events in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon fully confirm this assumption.

Iraq

For the whole of the twentieth century there were factors that undermined Iraq’s borders, mainly Iran of the Shah: He supported the Kurds in the North of Iraq until 1975 and channeled weapons, equipment, fighters and money to them via the border. This undermined the integrity of Iraq, and ever since the Kurdish area was declared as a no-fly zone for the Iraqi air force in 1991, the Kurds of Iraq have lived almost totally independently. They have a parliament, government, political parties, an army, police, communications media, mass media and independent economic viability. From a practical point of view, the borders of Iraq do not include today the Kurdish area that was once the northern part of the state.

The border between Iraq and Iran has been wide open ever since the beginning of 2004, less than a year from the day when Iraq was occupied by the Western coalition led by President Bush. After the Iranians understood that the Americans did not want an additional front in Iran, they began to transfer weapons, ammunition, explosives, money and fighters into Iraq by way of the border in order to strengthen the Shi’ite militias to the detriment of the badly defeated Sunni militias, and so that the Shi’ites could successfully resist with the occupation armies and act against the influence of al Qaeda, which had established an organization called “The Islamic State of Iraq.”

Thousands of fighters from the United States and its allies were killed in Iraq with weapons and explosives that Iran smuggled into the Land of the Two Rivers. The border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia as well, served as a conduit for weapons, ammunition, money and jihadists for the Sunni organizations, chiefly al Qaeda. Only in recent years did Saudi Arabia set up  a fence on the length of its border with Iraq in order to prevent the Iraqi chaos from seeping into its territory, but the fence did not prevent Saudi Arabia from transferring anything that the Sunni Jihadists could think of, into Iraq.

Turkey never respected its border with Iraq, and its forces would often cross the border into Iraqi Kurdistan to attack the bases of the “Kurdish Workers Party” (PKK), which would send its fighters into Turkey.

Syria

The border of Iraq with Syria has served for more than ten years as a two-way membrane. Between the years 2004 and 2011 the porous border served as a passage for Hizballah fighters who crossed from Lebanon into Iraq by way of Syrian territory in order to support the Shi’ites. Since March of 2011 the border has served as a passage for Shi’ites from Iraq to support the regime in Syria, but Iraqi Sunnis also cross it freely with their weapons and explosive material in order to help their Syrian brothers in their struggle against the Assad regime and indirectly against Iran, which controls Iraq.

Since 2011, fighters, weapons and equipment have also been freely transferred by the tribes of northern Jordan to their brothers in the area of Hauran in southern Syria.  And until today almost a half million Syrian refugees have fled the Syrian inferno to Jordan.

The border between Syria and Lebanon has never been taken seriously on either side: smuggling of goods from Lebanon to Syria has provided livelihood for many thousands of Lebanese ever since the two states were established in the forties, and many Syrians have crossed the border illegally into Lebanon, fleeing the oppression of the regime, mainly since Hafez al Asad rose to power towards the end of 1970. Many Syrian workers have moved to Lebanon illegally via the porous borders, and in peak years the number has been estimated at a million.

Syria’s border with Turkey is not sealed either and many have crossed it unofficially over the years: Syrian and Turkish Kurds have always crossed it almost without restriction, just as the border between Iraq and Turkey has served as a passage for the Kurds on both sides. In the past two years Turkey has been sending to the Syrian rebels support and jihadists  who come from Saudi Arabia, from Qatar, from North Africa and from other areas, even from Europe.

Not in vain have the rebels against Assad captured the border crossings in the early phase of the rebellion, because having control of the border crossings makes it possible for them to bring into Syria people who support them in the fighting against the regime.

Lebanon

Hizballah has turned smuggling into an art form: in broad daylight as well as in darkness, in the paved streets as well as the dirt roads, at official as well as unofficial  border crossings from Syria to Lebanon, large amounts of missiles, light and heavy weapons and ammunition have been transferred from Iran, China and Russia, through Syria into Lebanon, and fighters from Hizballah have crossed by way of the Lebanese-Syrian border into Syria and Iran in order to train for their jihad against their Lebanese brothers as well as against Israel.

In the past two years Hizballah fighters have crossed with their weapons  and equipment into Syria via the breached border, in order to help Assad. In the beginning, Hizballah snipers shot demonstrators in the streets of Dara’a from the roofs, and afterwards the Hizballah people joined in the street fighting, primarily in the streets of Homs, Hama and Damascus. The “shaheeds” of Hizballah who were killed in Syria were usually smuggled into Lebanon via the open border and were buried temporarily and secretly in the Buqa’a valley, near the border, primarily to avoid media exposure. Lately, since Hizballah’s involvement in Syria has become common knowledge, the shaheeds are brought to their families for burial.

The only border of Lebanon that looks like one is the coastline, but by any effective test this border does not exist: On the breached shores of Lebanon are tens of unofficial mooring places that have served for many years in the smuggling of goods – primarily automobiles – that are stolen in Europe to Lebanon, and are transferred by agents to the Lebanese market and other Arab states. Since 2011 these moorings, along with the port of Triploli, have served the Sunnis, as a transfer point for the smuggling of weapons and ammunition to the rebels in Syria. These weapons come mainly from Libya, from two sources: Qadhaffi’s military storehouses and surplus European and American weapons that Qatar sent to the anti-Qadhaffi rebels in 2011. On the other hand, Alawites who live in Lebanon – chiefly in the  Jabal Mohsen quarter of Tripoli – cross the border between Lebanon and Syria illegally in order to support Assad.

The conclusions that can be drawn from all of the above is that the borders of the Arab states in the Fertile Crescent – Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – are increasingly losing their effectiveness, and that this phenomenon has been increasing in the past two years, since some of the Arab regimes have been under attack, but this time from within. When the borders of a state are breached, its existence as a state is undermined, and the more violated its borders become, the more its existence and its meaning are threatened.

The architecture of the fertile crescent that was bequeathed by colonialism is changing before our eyes: Iraq is breaking up, Syria is crumbling and Lebanon for some time has lost the pluralistic character that its constitution was supposed to ensure.

On the ruins of these countries new bodies arise with many and varied agendas. Some have an Islamist slant, and see the modern states as illegitimate creations that were born in the basements of colonialism, and therefore must be totally done away with. Some have a local slant – ethnic or tribal – and they are interested in establishing new frameworks based on the demographic data that colonialism tended to ignore completely.

In recent months, the battles in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have taken on an old-new hue that these states – as long as they were effective states – had relegated or marginalized, which is the religious hue, and the historical conflict between the Sunni and the Shi’a floats on the surface and becomes the name of the game, or – preferably – the name of the conflict. In Iraq, the Shi’ite government bombs the Sunni citizens using fighter jets. In Syria, the regime of Alawites, a sect that broke off from the Shi’ites and are supported by Shi’ites, bombs its Sunni citizens with jets and even uses chemical weapons against them. In Lebanon the Shi’ite group threatens to take over the whole state, and because of this threat, the state conducts itself in such a way that no one is willing to gamble on its democratic future.

The struggles along the fertile crescent have become dirty, filthy and bloody, while all of the traditional limitations increasingly collapse and man becomes an unbridled predator. The forces of the governments are not righteous, and the forces of the rebels are not pious. Both of them murder, maim, rape and cruelly violate the rights of many victims, most of whom are not involved in active fighting.

In comparison: Israel’s borders serve as an almost absolute seal against foreign invaders, with various and sundry intentions. The border with Egypt has been closed off and the number of infiltrators has become negligible. The border with Jordan is well protected by right of the joint interest of the two states. The border with Syria in the Golan Heights survives, despite the chaos in Syria, the border with Lebanon holds firm by right of Israel’s deterrence versus Hizballah, and if it weren’t for the drug smugglers, this border would be hermetically sealed. The coastal border also is protected effectively by the Israeli Navy, and only the border with the Gaza Strip serves as a point of tension because of the jihadists that have taken over the Strip.

In comparison with her neighbors, the State of Israel is an island of stability and normal life, and the borders of the state testify to this clearly and accurately. The situation in our days gives an interesting meaning to the passage from the poem in the weekly Torah portion “ha’azinu” (“listen”): “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” (Deuteronomy 32:8).

Originally published at Israel and Terrorism. Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav.