The International Red Cross together with the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin planted 150 trees bearing the names of “veteran prisoners” who were convicted and jailed for murdering Israelis.

Most foreign and local media call them “militants,” reserving the word terrorists for those who kill people for political gain in a media outlet’s home country.

The Palestinian Authority now has helped the Red Cross add another word to the Orwellian Middle East dictionary: “Veteran prisoners.”

The official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported last week that the Red Cross and Red Crescent “planted 150 fruit trees that carry the names of the veteran prisoners jailed in the occupation prisons.” The article was translated and published on Sunday by the Palestinian Media Watch.

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida told its readers that the two organizations “conducted a ceremony called ‘My Honor is My Freedom’ in the village of Zububa to mark the 150th anniversary of their founding. Fruit trees were planted at the entrance to the village, where the racist annexation and expansion wall that has swallowed up thousands of acres [of land] was built.”

The Red Cross has a very cozy relationship with the Palestinian Authority, where the Red Crescent has long been a member of the international organization. Israel’s Magen David rescue services were not accepted by the International Federation of Red Cross until 2005, but on a condition: Magen David has to agree not to operate in Judea and Samaria or areas in Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinian Authority.

Displaying the Jewish Star of David, the translation of the term Magen David and the symbol used on its ambulances, would suggest that the Red Cross, God forbid, acknowledges that Jews can live in Judea and Samaria and all of Jerusalem.

The Red Cross, in its devotion to protecting the rights of prisoners under the Geneva Convention, dutifully makes sure that Israel opens its jails to relatives of jailed Palestinian Authority terrorists.

It took an entirely different attitude during the five heart-wrenching years that Hamas held Gilad Shalit hostage after kidnapping him in a terrorist attack in 2006 that left two other soldiers murdered. The Red Cross went through the motions of demanding his release but did not place any pressure on the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to work for his freedom.

Shalit’s father Gilad said during his son’s captivity, “We demand that the Red Cross’ approach be more active and decisive. I would like to believe that they would give us a sign of life from Gilad. We are conducting ongoing dialogue with the Red Cross but it has not been much help. I did not hear them condemn Hamas on its crime against Gilad. The Red Cross has been a complete failure in this affair.”

It took the Red Cross almost five years until it made a belatedly public appeal for his release. When Shalit was released, the Red Cross did not even examine him.

The Red Cross also took no action against the Red Crescent and the Palestinian Authority’s assisting terrorism in the early part of this century, during the advanced stage of the Intifada that is also called the “Second Intifada” and the “Oslo War.”

IDF occasionally foiled terrorist attacks by inspecting Red Crescent ambulances before allowing them to continue from Judea and Samaria into urban Israel. More than once, soldiers discovered explosives and weapons under the beds of supposedly pregnant women, a gross violation of international law.

This did not stop the Red Cross from honoring the “prisoners.”

If anyone questions that they really are terrorists, check out the background of such “veteran prisoners” as Karim and Maher Younes, Issa Abd Rabbo, Osama Al-Silawi, Mohammed Turkeman, Nasser Abu Surour and Mahmoud Abu Surour, Zaid Younes, Ibrahim Al-Taqtuq, Ikram Mansour, Ahmed Ka’abna, Nael and Fakhri Barghouti and Samir Kuntar, Jamal Hweil, Jamal Tirawi and Jum’a Adam.

The name “Kuntar” should ring a bell.

Born in Lebanon, he joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with the stated goal of killing Jews.

At the age of 16, he helped kidnap an Israeli family from Nahariya, on the northeast Mediterranean Coast. He murdered four people, including a 4-year-old daughter, in the presence of her father, who also was killed. He was cited as a hero by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar Assad.

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.

Australian Mossad agent Ben Zygier, previously known as the ‘Prisoner X’ who committed suicide in an Israel jail, unintentionally sabotaged a Mossad top secret operation to bring home the bodies of three Israeli soldiers missing Lebanon.

One of the missing was American-Israeli Zachary Baumel, whose remains never have been located.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC), which broke the original story identifying Zygier and his suicide, reported Tuesday that his reckless and unauthorized operation, which he wanted to use to help him advance in the Mossad ranks, exposed a top Mossad agent.

Israel had been trying for three decades to locate and bring home the remains of Baumel, Yehuda Katz and Tzvi Feldman, all of whom were killed by Syrian forces in a battle in Lebanon’s BekkaValley in 1982.

The ABC report reveals why Israeli authorities jailed him in the highest security cell in Israel, in the same wing that held Yigal Amir, who assassinated former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.

The report also explains the fears that must have been going through Zygier’s mind while in jail and which led him to hang himself.

He faced 22 years in prison for espionage and treason as well as the life-long disgrace for his family in Israel and Australia.

He hanged himself in December 2010 after being secretly jailed several months earlier in the year.

Zygier butchered a detailed Mossad operation to bring home the remains thorough an agent whom he exposed when trying, on his own, to recruit a Lebanese man who then double-crossed him.

The exposed agent is Ziad Al Homsi, whom the Mossad recruited in 2007 in Lebanon. He told ABC the Mossad recruited him by using a Syrian who claimed his brother in Europe was working to return the remains of missing Israeli solders.

Al Homsi previously had led Lebanese soldiers in the war against Israel in Lebanon and knew of the battle in which the three missing soldiers were killed.

The Mossad believed they were buried in Lebanon although pictures from Syria showed their bodies being paraded through the streets of Damascus.

Israeli secret agents handed over to Al Homsi the location of the graves, and he was supposed to exhume them and leave the remains for other Mossad agents to retrieve.

But Zygier had exposed him.

The Australian native’s career as a spy was not going well in 2008, when he was put to work at a desk job near Tel Aviv.

He decided to prove himself by trying to recruit a Hezbollah operative as a double agent, who in turn pressured Zygier to prove his credentials as a Mossad agent.

Zygier obliged by informing him of the identity of Al Homsi. The would-be Mossad agent Zygier tried to recruit then double-crossed him and spilled the beans to Lebanese authorities.

They arrested Al Homsi before he could exhume the remains and sentenced him to 15 years in jail. He was released thee years afterwards. ABC said that Al Homsi claims he actually was a double agent and that Lebanon knew of his Mossad activities.

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.

An American intelligence official, speaking on the basis of anonymity, told Reuters that Israel did not notify the Obama administration before the two bombing missions last weekend that targeted Iranian missiles destined for the Hezbollah terrorist organization.

Israel informed the United States of the pre-emptive counterterrorist operation after the attacks.

Unlike many previous secret maneuvers in Lebanon and Syria, Israel has confirmed its planes flew over Lebanon and dropped the bombs that then honed in on their targets in Syria, without Israeli aircraft crossing into Syrian air space.

President Barack Obama gave Israel his full support Saturday, stating that Israel’s right to defend itself necessitates it to prevent Hezbollah getting its hands on the Iranian Fateh-110 missies that can reach deep into Israel from southern Lebanon.

Another unidentified intelligence official told Reuters, “Any sophisticated weaponry that finds its way there (Syria) that looks to be destined to fall in the hands of bad actors, I think there is a likelihood that those could be targets as well.”

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.

In light of the recent IAF activities in Syria, Israel has repositioned two Iron Dome anti-missile batteries to the country’s north.

One has been placed near Tzfat (Sefad), the second near Haifa.