The international FIFA soccer association totally ignored a government presentation Tuesday of Hamas’ using soccer fields to camouflage underground missile launchers and instead delivered a threat that Israel faces expulsion from FIFA if it does not allow free travel to Palestinian Authority soccer players.

Hamas bragged last year about its missiles hidden underneath a Gaza soccer field during Israel’s Pillar of Defense offensive to stop missile attacks that  reached as far north as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu hosted FIFA president Joseph Blatter on Tuesday after the soccer official attended the opening of the new offices of the Palestine Football Association in Ramallah.

If Netanyahu thought his visual presentation of missile launchers underneath a soccer field would convince Blatter that perhaps soccer fields are not always what they seem to be, he was sorely mistaken.

The exhibit impressed Blatter about as much as Netanyahu impressed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with his “red line” exhibition on Iran’s nuclear program in the United Nations last year.

The Prime Minister showed Blatter aerial photographs of Fajr-5 missile launchers in the Gaza soccer stadium.

Blatter did not utter a word.

“This is a double war crime,” Netanyahu said. “You’re firing on civilians and you’re hiding behind civilians.”

Blatter did not utter a word.

“We ask FIFA to allow Israel to play fair and not to let the organization and football to be exploited to spread lies,” Netanyahu said.

Blatter did not utter a word.

Netanyahu reminded his visitor that the head of the PA soccer association is Jibril Rajoub, who said earlier this year that, “Gee, I sure wish the Palestinian Authority had a nuclear weapon, because if we did, I would have used it.”

Blatter did not utter a word..

When he did open his mouth, he had this to say: “I will go to defend not only the Palestine Football Association but I will defend the basic principles of FIFA, (which are) to connect people and not to separate people.”

Blatter praised soccer as a way to peace. FIFA’a values are “to recognize each other through football and to live not only in peace but in harmony,” he stated.

Saudi Arabia plans to supply Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles the same time reports have surfaced that Al Qaeda already has their hands on similar missiles that are to be used against the Syrian Air Force but also can be turned against Israeli planes.

A classified report received by the German foreign intelligence service referred to by Der Spiegel Sunday states that the Saudi kingdom wants to arm rebels with shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles can target low-flying aircraft including helicopters. Saudi Arabia has in mind to send rebels the European-made Mistral-class MANPADS, an acronym for man-portable air-defense systems.

An Egyptian newspaper reported Monday that Saudi Arabia actually has been supplying  shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles to rebels “on a small scale” about two months ago. The reported Saudi supplies began shortly before the United States announced it would likely send arms to Syrian rebels.

Arming Syrian rebels negates to a certain extent Israel’s efforts to stymie the sale of Russian SA-300 anti-aircraft missiles, one of the most advanced in the world.

Israel may have kept anti-aircraft missiles out of the hands of Assad, but they are destined for both Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, which presumably already has more than few.

The Obama administration’s green light for arming rebels gave Saudi Arabia the go-ahead to send them anti-aircraft missiles. They clearly are intended to defend the rebels against the Syrian Air Force, but what happens if Hezbollah captures the weapons?

The Obama administration no doubt took into consideration that terrorist organizations have easy access to rebels’ weapons.

His official’s belated conclusion that Syrian President Bashar Assad has been using chemical weapons against Syrians perhaps left him with no choice but to lift his objections to arming rebels.

But the day-after could be disastrous.

The SA-7 missile does not come close to the SA-300 in terms of sophistication, but the downing of one Israeli aircraft by terrorists would be catastrophic from all aspects.

Besides the loss of lives, it would fuel to no end the Arab urge to annihilate Israel. Israel would have no choice but to retaliate whether in Syria in Lebanon, with the possible escalation on the side of Hezbollah and Iran.

Several defense systems have been tested to protest airplanes from the SA-7 missile, but the weapon’s heat-sinking technology would hone in on an airplane engine once the targeted craft tries to intercept the missiles.

This can be overcome by the anti-missile missile’s sending out high-temperature flares to lure the missile away from the plane. The defense system is said to be 90-percent effective, and that other 10 percent could be the catalyst for a regional war.

The Associated Press reported last week that manuals for using the missiles were discovered by France in Al Qaeda’s offices in Mali. The same missiles are believed to be in Iraq Somalia and Afghanistan, many of them having been smuggled out of Libya during the rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi.

The United States previously tried to keep the MANPADs out of the hands of terrorists. The United States was so worried about this particular weapon ending up in the hands of terrorists that the State Department set up a task force to track and destroy it as far back as 2006.

Terrorists in Kenya fired them at a plane full of Israel tourists in 2002, but the missiles missed their target, possibly due to lack of training.

The SA-7 anti-aircraft missile has been used against more than 40 civilian airplanes in the past four decades, causing more than 800 deaths, according to the U.S. Department of State.

The manuals in Al Qaeda’s hands might overcome that hurdle.

The SA-7 weighs only 30 pounds and can be packed into a duffel bag.  The total time required to fire the missile is six seconds.

The Assad regime escalated the spillover of the civil war Wednesday with a helicopter-mounted missile attack on a Sunni Muslim Lebanese urban center, wounding at least two people, including a schoolteacher.

It was the first time Syrian forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad have attacked a Lebanese city, having limited previous attacks to villages near the border.

Thousands of Syrian refugees have fled to Arsal, and the deployment of Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters into Syria has fueled tension and violence in Lebanon.

Following the Syrian Rebel attack on the UN base at Quneitra on Thursday, that left a Philippine and an Indian Observer injured, Austria announced they are pulling out their UN Observers from the Golan mission. The pullout will happen within the month.

The Austrian Observers make up more than a third of the contingent, and have been one of the more important countries in the mission. Japan and Croatia already pulled out their people months ago. The UN is holding an emergency meeting on Friday to find replacement troops. Fiji said they might send troops.

Israel pointed out that, once again, the UN has proven unable to fulfill their mission.

Israel thanked the Austrians for their years of service as peacekeepers, but expressed regret at the decisions, and hoped that the border situation won’t escalate further as a result. Israel added that they expect the UN to meet their obligations, as per UN Security Council Resolution 350.

If the UN fails on the Golan, the buffer zone between Israel and Syria will disappear, and Israel could easily find themselves in a situation where they may need to fight the rebels, or move troops into the buffer zone on the Syrian side, something Israel does not want to have to do.

Minister Yuval Steinintz added, that the lesson is very clear, “In any peace agreement, Israel cannot rely on international forces, but only on IDF soldiers.” He added that South Lebanon, under the UN’s watch, now has 40,000 missiles embedded there pointed at Israel. The UN did nothing to stop it.

The UNDOF troops have been in place on the Golan since May 31, 1974, following the decision of UN Security Council Resolution 350. The observers were put into place as a result of Syria trying to recapture the Golan in 1973, after losing it in 1967, and following the increase in border attacks from Syria starting in March 1974.

The U.S. government published on a federal website details of a top-secret base in Israel to house the Arrow 3 missile defense system.

A 1,000-page detailed description of the project, to be built by the United States for Israel, was published on a federal business opportunities website in order to allow contractors to prepare bids on the $25 million project.

“If an enemy of Israel wanted to launch an attack against a facility, this would give him an easy how-to guide,” an unnamed Israeli official told McClatchy newspapers. “This type of information is closely guarded and its release can jeopardize the entire facility.”

The bidding documents were first cited in Jane’s Defense Weekly, which discussed them in a story that provides details about the new defense system.

When it becomes operational in 2015, the Arrow 3 is expected to be able to intercept ballistic missiles at a range of up to 1,500 miles outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley Miller told McClatchy that the U.S. routinely publishes construction plans on the website to allow contractors to accurately estimate costs.

The facility is so top secret in Israel that the military will not confirm its exact location, between Jerusalem and Ashdod in the South.

The head of the Arrow 3 project, Col. Aviram Hasson, on Monday told a conference at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv that the Arrow 3 program has been accelerated due to fears of the threat from Iran.

McClatchy reported that the U.S. has built some $500 million in Israeli military facilities, including an air base, intelligence offices and underground hangars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he has not shipped any “game-changing” S-300 aircraft missiles to Syria, two weeks after Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that it will deliver the weapons to Syrian President Bashar Assad to prevent military intervention inside the embattled-country.

Speaking at a join news conference with European Union leaders, Putin stated, “As for the S-300, it is really one of the best defense systems in the world, if not the best…We do not want to disturb the balance in the region. The contract was signed several years ago. It has not been fulfilled yet.”

The original Russian announcement to go ahead with deliveries of the S-300 missiles was an angry Russian response to the European Union removal of sanctions against transferring arms to Syrian rebels.

The S-300 missile system is one of the most sophisticated in the world and can shoot down planes 125 miles away, well within the range of Israeli commercial airplanes.

Putin has used the S-300 system as his ace card, if not a bad joker, to affect, if not control, in events in Syria in the political game that is being played out at the expense of millions of Syrians whose lives have been devastated in the two-year-old protest that has turned into a full-fledged civil war.

The S-300 also has been the source of lies. Assad claimed last week that the missiles already are in Syria, although his truth meter already is around zero.

A week after several Israeli military leaders said there was no chance that the missiles are even close to being in Syria because of the complex training needed to operate them, Putin finally contradicted the claims of Assad, whose regime has been saved by Russia’s blocking Western-backed sanctions and United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Putin also has not been the most reliable source for the truth.

Human Rights Watch has described the rights climate in Russia as the worst in post-Soviet history. However, after carrying out raids on human rights organizations, Putin said they sere simply “routine events.”

He has targeted journalists and watchdog NGOs.

After Russian blogger Alexei Navalny posted documents suggesting that Russia’s state-owned oil pipeline company embezzled $4 billion called Putin’s United Russia Party “the party of crooks and liars,” the government charged him with embezzlement.

Acting with the paranoid of Middle East dictators, he threw out USAID from Russia last year, accusing it of trying to “affect the course of political processes.”

Israelis cannot count on the Iron Dome anti-missile system to protect them if enemies across the northern border launch a massive missile attack, Home Front Minister Gilad Erdan warned Tuesday. He said people should face the fact that the Iron Dome system cannot cope with hundreds of incoming missiles.

The military will examine “how to better involve civilians” in military drills, which are being conducted nationwide this week.

The bloody mess in Syria became even more potentially chaotic Wednesday with Russia’s angry announcement that it will supply Syrian President Bashar Assad with S-300 missile systems, and Israel promptly said  it ”knows what to do” to keep the weapons out of use.

The sale of the missiles, which are considered one of the world’s most advanced air defense systems, is a key card in the dangerous game pitting Russia and Assad against Israel and Western powers which have stated that Assad must go while fearful of which terrorists might replace him.

The European Union took what might have been the worst decision possible Tuesday, declaring that it will lift an arms embargo for rebels but at the same time will not directly ship weapons to the opposition forces.

Russia, which supposedly was convinced by Israel earlier this month to hold off the sale of the missiles to Assad, immediately announced it will ship them to the Syrian regime.

Even more tragic, Moscow assured the world that arming Assad with the missiles will actually contain the chaos because it will serve as a warning for “hotheads considering scenarios in which the conflict may assume an international scale with the participation of outside forces.”

The missiles easily could down a commercial airline inside Israel, so what happens if Hezbollah gets its hands on the missiles, or if the rebels get a hold of them?

Guess who will be in the crosshairs.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon answered that question within hours after the Syrian announcement, warning that Israel ”knows what to do” if the S-300 missiles reach Syria. Israel earlier this year bombed Russian-made SA-17 missiles that Syria was shipping to Hezbollah, and  Ya’alon suggested the same fate awaits the SA-300 missiles.

Assad has wanted the missiles for a long time. Russia has wanted to fatten its treasury with the sale of the weapons and also is desperate to keep its investment in Syria from going up in smoke.

Russia’s announcement of the sale also made the London Sunday Times look stupid. It reported on Sunday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin in a recent visit to cancel the sale. The next day, Britain proudly announced that Russia would indeed not sell them to Assad.

On Tuesday, the European Union angered Russia by declaring an end to the  arms embargo, prompting Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to announce the sale of the missiles.

Ya’alon immediately responded to Russia’s claim of the sale of the missiles by stating, “If God forbid, they reach Syria, we will know what to do.”

The mess in Syria has  had a diplomatic parallel. No one really knows the truth from a lie anymore, and even  Ryabkov said, “I can neither confirm, nor deny in what stage these deliveries are at.”

It is even legitimate to ask whether Russia actually will deliver the missiles or if it just rattling sabers.

The problem for Israel, and the world, is that Russia is interested in money and power more than regional stability. It is Assad’s biggest arms supplier, with current contracts worth $1.5 billion.

If Assad goes, not only does Moscow lose a lot of money but it also loses a base of influence in the Middle East.