Originally published at Rubin Reports.

In a new development, the Obama Administration is apparently not only arming (indirectly, technically) but now training Syrian rebels. We know that the weapons are going to radical Islamists–both Muslim Brotherhood and smaller groups.

We don’t know which groups are now being trained militarily by the CIA in Jordan. It has been suggested that these are only Syrian army defectors who are thus likely not to be from radical Islamist groups including the Brotherhood. But is that selectivity certain? Finding out who is receiving this military training–which they are sure to use for other purposes in future–should be a priority in the national debate and in questions from Congress.

What might be happening is this: Qatar backs the Muslim Brotherhood; the Saudis who hate the Brotherhood are backing the smaller Salafi groups; and Jordan which is terrified by the Islamists is supporting the Free Syrian Army which is run by ex-army officers.

Such is the nature of U.S. policy that it goes along with all three rather than directs the process toward a specific goal. The State Department is trying to find people who are relatively moderate while also able to have links to the Brotherhood.

You can imagine how tough that is to achieve. What a mess. In the 1980s the United States was convulsed by a scandal because the Reagan Administration was providing arms–through Saudi Arabia–and training to the pro-American Contra group in Nicaragua that were fighting against the Marxist regime there. It was alleged that the Contras participated in some torture and killing of civilians. Well, today the Obama Administration is conducting the same strategy–with Saudi and Qatari help–in Syria, with much more likelihood of atrocities by those it is helping. On top of that, those being helped are largely anti-American and radical Islamist. Yet there is no serious concern being raised.

Largely due to the local situation but reinforced by U.S. policy, radical Islamists will one day rule Syria. What will follow will not be real democracy but another Islamist dictatorial state. Islamist militias armed with U.S. weapons and that new regime might well use U.S. weapons and training to kill Christians and Alawites; enforce second-class status on women; and intimidate moderates as well as to attack Israel. While the mass media has widely reported the U.S. role in arming the rebels and is now picking up the training story, virtually nowhere is the significance of this policy and its escalation analyzed.

As I have repeatedly explained, the issue regarding Syria is not whether the United States should help more—it is already helping to supply arms indirectly through Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—but to whom the arms and help flow. In principle, the Syrian opposition is fighting against a terrible dictatorship (see my book, The Truth About Syria for details, available free here). Yet for all practical purposes, it is dominated by radical Islamist militias (except for the Kurds who are faced with local rule by a radical Marxist militia).

The reality, then, is that the United States is helping arm and perhaps helping to train radical Islamist guerrillas who want a Sharia state in Syria, who believe Israel should be wiped off the map, and who may soon be murdering and oppressing Christians and other groups in Syria itself.

Shouldn’t this be an issue–one day it might be a scandal–that’s widely discussed in Congress and the mass media? There might be a way around this, as is being hinted, if the Americans, British, and French are only training former Syrian army soldiers, relatively few of whom would be in Islamist groups. The excuse would then be that only regular soldiers are qualified for the training but that would also be designed to keep out Islamists. This would be a better approach though it still has dangers.

This brings us to the second problem: the Islamists are getting more international military help than the moderates.

While the nominal Syrian opposition leadership backed by the United States is better than before (up until recently the Obama Administration openly backed the Brotherhood-dominated Syrian National Council!) it is powerless on the ground. The guys with guns—fully automatic weapons by the way with large magazines—are a nightmare.

Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, a leading Saudi cleric, who was imprisoned in the 1990s for speaking in favor of change, and whose Twitter is accessed by 2.4 million believers, published an open letter on the social media site, with a warning to the government of Saudi Arabia—which isn’t accustomed to receiving public criticism—that it would be facing “the spark of violence” if it didn’t act quickly on burning issues like detained dissidents, bad public services and corruption, Reuters reported.

In reaction to the “Arab Spring” of the past two years, the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, pledged $110 billion in social spending, in return for a religious ban on protests.

But according to the conservative Sheikh, nothing significant has changed so far. He described a stagnation, caused by a lack of housing, unemployment, poverty, corruption, bad health and education services, the suffering of political prisoners and the fact that Saudis see no hope for political reform.

“If revolutions are suppressed they turn into armed action, and if they are ignored they expand and spread. The solution is in wise decisions and in being timely to avert any spark of violence,” al-Awdah wrote.

Dissidents have been detained as political prisoners in Saudi Arabia during the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. The issue of the detainees has united some Saudi Islamists and liberals against what they see as a punitive state security apparatus.

As of 2012, estimates are that as many as 30 thousand dissidents are sitting in Saudi prisons. They included tribal leader Mukhlif al-Shammari, who was charged with “annoying others” for his op-eds, assistant professor of law Muhammad al-Abdul Karim who published an article on “The crisis of conflict amongst the governing wings in Saudi Arabia,” in 2010.

A week ago, two prominent human rights activists were jailed, having campaigned for years on behalf of detainees. Most demonstrations in support of detainees involve only a few dozen Saudis, but now and then, such as in a late February rally in Bureidah in the central Qassim Province, many more show up. In that instance, 161 protesters were arrested.

Sheikh al-Awdah wrote that his Saudi countrymen “like people around the world” aren’t always going to remain ” silent about forfeiting all or part” of their rights, adding that “when someone loses hope, you should expect anything from him.”

The Saudi authorities do not tolerate public dissent, this is, most likely, because signs of public rage are being closely monitored by the world’s oil industry experts, who make their futures purchases with said dissents in mind.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is skipping over Israel because of the government coalition uncertainty, but Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will catch up him in Saudi Arabia Monday.

A PA official said Abbas will take the opportunity to “present the Palestinian point of view to the new US administration ahead of Obama’s visit,” assuming a government coalition will be in place by the scheduled March 20 arrival of the President.

Two timely columns in different publications have me thinking about humanity’s most basic obligation to ourselves – integrity. Are you honest enough to ask yourself if you are truly confident in the statements you are making – or are we all just going through the motions of a pre-set script and playing the parts that are expected of us?

My close friend and colleague Avi Zimmerman, who heads up international relations on behalf of the city of Ariel, published a column in the Times of Israel on the theme of Purim. On this holiday, it is customary to wear a costume and to drink alcohol. Both traditions, the writer explains, raise questions and expose who is really hiding inside the individual’s body. The sages of the Talmud are quoted as saying that when wine goes in, secrets come out. Hiding behind a mask can be a reminder that while this might be fake, there is a real you.

Avi challenged his readers to ask themselves a truly hard question. “What masks are we wearing? Have we chosen the ‘Israel-is-flawless’ position or the ‘Israel-is-lawless’ approach? Do we genuinely consider the issues at hand, or do we blindly recommend or condemn a news report or Op-Ed on the basis of our emotional attachment to the author? Is Israel the subject of honest debate – or the object we use to advance a personal agenda?”

Wow. Asking those things does take a lot of intellectual courage. I am sure that many members of the choir were not overly pleased to hear this preacher’s message. It is so much more fun when we can all gather around and pound on our chests and expect only words of encouragement and pats on the back.

Dr. Amal Al-Hazzani of King Saud University in Riyadh recently published a column in Asharak Alwaset, in which she questioned Arab society’s ignorance of Israel. Under the headline “Know Your Enemy,” she apologizes to her readers for her previous article titled “Israel We Do Not Know,” in which she wrote:

“A simple means of demonstrating our ignorance of Israel can be found in the fact that its neighboring states are ignorant of the Hebrew language. In Lebanon and Syria, people prefer to study French rather than the language of a country that continues to jeopardize their own security every day. In Egypt and Jordan, people do not prioritize or publicize the study of the Hebrew language, while in Israeli educational institutions, there is ample opportunity to study the Arabic language. It is for this reason that we find a considerable number of Israeli politicians and media representatives who speak Arabic fluently. I do not know many Arab foreign ministers in Israel’s neighboring states that can speak Hebrew. As for those who say that the Israelis speak Arabic because the language is more common than Hebrew, or because the Israelis have intruded on our region, this justification is irrelevant. The reason why Israel enjoys superiority over the Arabs is because it has sought to understand them through their language; it can gauge the thinking of the young and old. Israel is well aware of the Arabs’ strengths as well as their weaknesses, and it can understand them simply because it has immersed itself in their culture.”

Apparently, she came under a hail of criticism for daring to report on Israel’s democratic process, in which, contrary to the norm in the rest of the region, citizens actually elect their leadership.

In response, she wrote:

“I would like to thank those who showered me with a torrent of angry correspondence about my previous article on Israel, who accused me of calling for a normalization of relations, promoting the Hebrew language, and glorifying Israeli liberalism. This response was to be expected, because I breached a taboo. However, I am sorry to say to those people, despite my appreciation of their opinions, that their outrage will not change the reality. Israel will remain as it is; a small state but stronger than the rest of the Arab world.”

While criticizing Arabs for not knowing enough about the Israeli “enemy” might not sound so positive, the mere fact that the writer needed to respond shows that many Arabs fear that opening this topic for discussion breaks an opening in the wall of non-normalization with Israel. Could her critics be saying, “we would rather be ignorant of Israel than take a chance of knowing the truth” – and  possibly finding out that we have common interests?

It seems that both writers – from opposite sides of the fence – are offering similar challenges to their own “choirs” by suggesting that they ask themselves to examine their positions and be sure that they understand why it is that they believe as they do. The authors give excellent encouragement to a practice of self-examination we should all engage in regularly, in order to promote more authentic discussion between sides.

Originally published at Your Middle East.

Israeli and Saudi-backed intelligence agencies are behind Syrian rebel suicide bombings, according to a Syrian website that is loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. The accusations are a new twist on Syrian government accusations that Israel and the United States are behind the suicide bombings.

Quoting “informed” sources in the Syrian opposition, Dam Press said a join operation room in northern Lebanon serves as headquarters for coordinating attacks on Assad’s security forces.

The website stated that “Ayman Abdel Nour, a well-known Zionist hireling,” provided logistical support for a recent suicide bombing in Damascus.

He supposed received explosive devices “from Mossad-affiliated Hungarian agents and delivered the Israeli and Hungarian made lethal materials to the Nusrah Front, which is backed by the Saudi intelligence service.”

Iran’s regime mouthpiece Press TV added its own re-writing of history, stating that six months after the Arab Spring uprising began, “Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means.

It added that the Palestinian al-Manar weekly reported that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been financing and supplying armed rebels in Syria with more explosive materials they have recently purchased from the US, Israel and Britain.

Sec. of State John Kerry is headed for London to launch his first tour in his new post after four years of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee shuttles to Syria, where he insisted that Syrian President Bashar Assad was a key to bringing Hamas together  with the Fatah movement, headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

His view of Assad may have changed, as did that of his predecessor Hillary Clinton, who called Assad a “reformer” two months after the current two-year uprising broke out. However, his view in 2010 that the dispute between the Palestinian Authority and Israel is the “single most important” stability issue in the region remains rock-solid.

Kerry, like President Barack Obama soon after he was elected, is determined to bring his views on how to combat Islamic terror, the Syria civil war, Iran’s nucleate threat and, of course, how to make peace between Israel and the PA.

His trip will take him to Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar.

Israel is not on his itinerary, ostensibly because the United States does not want to appear it is influencing the current coalition government attempts by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. It remains to be seen if a new government is in place when President Barack Obama visits next month.

Kerry’s trip to Europe and the Middle East  as Secretary of State is termed by US officials as a “listening tour.”

Previously, he listened to Assad.

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry was a frequent  traveler to Syria.

Among his other far-from-prophetic pronouncements on Middle East affairs, he said three years ago after meeting with Assad, “Syria could be, in fact, very helpful in helping to bring about a unity government. If you achieve that, then you have made a major step forward not only in dealing with the problems of Gaza but you have made a major step forward in terms of how you reignite discussions for the two-state solution … I think that Syria indicated to me a willingness to be helpful in that respect.”

A few years ago, a Saudi friend told me of the existence of a Jewish cemetery, or maqbarat al-yahud in Arabic, in the al-Ihsaa region in the eastern part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  The friend had been surprised to discover it and knew nothing about its history–about how the cemetery came to exist. The mystery was answered with the publication in 2012 of a well-documented work by Yusuf Ali al-Mutairi on al-yahud fi al-khaleej (the Jews in the Gulf). The book provides a balanced and well-documented review of the history of the small Jewish communities in the Gulf region from the start of the 19th century through the middle of the 20th.  The book states the obvious: that, unlike the large Jewish communities in Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and North Africa, the number of Jews in the Gulf countries had never exceeded a few hundreds in any one country.

Most of the Jews who settled in the Gulf countries, primarily in Kuwait and Bahrain, were of Iraqi origin, and many of them were seeking either to escape military conscription under the Ottoman Empire or to explore economic opportunities. Of these Jews, only a few have remained and probably only in the Kingdom of Bahrain, which, in fact, is represented in Washington by Ambassador Houda Ezra Noonoo, a Jew who speaks Iraqi Jewish Arabic dialect quite fluently.

Saudi Arabia was a special case. The Ottoman authorities brought a number of Iraqi Jews to fill administrative and financial posts in the al-Ihsaa region, the key source of its oil. Al-Ihsaa had been incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1871 and governed under the Wilayat of Basra (Iraq) and remained so through 1913. A Saudi royal decree issue in 1956 changed the name of al-Ihsaa Region into the Eastern although local population continues to refer to it as al-Hasa.

In his study on the Jews of the Gulf, Al-Mutairi relates that Jews occupied important positions in al-Ihasaa–notably that of the treasurer (during the Ottoman Empire the post was known in Turkish as sanduq amini). Three successive occupants of the post were Jews–Yacoub Effendi (1878-1879), Daoud bin Shintob (the Arabic version of the Hebrew word Shemtov) (1879-1894), and Haroun Effendi (1895-96). During their tenure, many of the entries into the books were made in Hebrew (most likely in Arabic transliterated in Rashi script).  Al-Mutairi has suggested that keeping the financial records in Hebrew may have been intended to prevent an audit of the accounts possibly to protect their Ottoman superiors. My own grandfather was a sanduq amini in the Province of Basra for more than two decades until the occupation of the city by the British in 1917. Like many people in his generation, he studied Torah and learned to write Hebrew in the old Rashi script.

Jews were also employed in al-Ihsaa as treasurers in the Sunni office or in the court of cassassion of the district (liwaa).  One Jew, known as “Elyahu the Jew,” served as the collector of customs in the port of Oqair, one of the most important ports in al-Ihassa at the time. But perhaps the most significant post held by a Jew was that of Director of Customs for the whole province, a post that was sought after by many individuals both inside and outside al-Ihasaa because it offered the potential for illicit income.

Daoud bin Shintob (Shemtov) is thought by Al-Mutairi to have been the best-known Jew in al-Ihsaa because of the strong relationship he maintained with the Ottoman and local officials–in particular, with Mohammad Sa’id Pasha, the governor of the Liwa (province) of al-Ihsaa, during the latter’s third term as governor, 1896-1900.  Complaints against Sa’id Pasha relating to his special relationship with Shemtov ultimately led to his dismissal despite the absence of any viable evidence of misconduct.

ACCORDING TO our Saudi sources the cemetery is located behind Riyadh Bank main branch and across from Beirut restaurant in the city of Hufuf.  In his book, al-Mutairi includes a photograph of a walled area taken by him on September 29, 2009, which he describes as the Jewish cemetery.

Our Saudi friend in al-Ihsaa suggests that the photo was perhaps of an area known as Koot [in Turkish, it means the fenced area.] which used to be the center of government for the province of al-Ihsaa. The Ottomans built high walls and watch towers to protect the governing bodies located in Koot. Given that only few Jews lived and died in the area the cemetery itself could not have been large. The Saudis have largely dismantled the walls around Koot and the area has become commercialized. The land on which the cemetery was located is largely deserted and our correspondent maintains that no one has made a claim to it although locals continue to refer to it as “maqbarat al-yehud.”

The very first post that I wrote in this blog back in 2006 was about the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group and its non-sequitur assertion of the “linkage theory.” You will recall that the war in Iraq was going badly at the time, with Sunni and Shiite ‘insurgents’ killing large numbers of each other’s people as well as American soldiers. Here’s part of what they said:

Iraq cannot be addressed effectively in isolation from other major regional issues, interests, and unresolved conflicts. To put it simply, all key issues in the Middle East—the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, Iran, the need for political and economic reforms, and extremism and terrorism—are inextricably linked. In addition to supporting stability in Iraq, a comprehensive diplomatic offensive—the New Diplomatic Offensive—should address these key regional issues. By doing so, it would help marginalize extremists and terrorists, promote U.S. values and interests, and improve America’s global image…

The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict. There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush’s June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. This was followed by a series of specific recommendations to “solve” the conflict, by forcing Israel to give up all territory it took control of in 1967, including the Golan, Judea and Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem. Of course this didn’t happen, and the bleeding in Iraq was stanched by the “surge,” the temporary deployment of additional troops plus the strategy of buying the support of indigenous Sunni elements in Iraq.

The opportunistic invocation of the linkage theory during the Iraq war crisis was yet another example of its persistence, despite the fact that even before the “Arab Spring” there was no reason to believe that it was true. Today it has been further falsified by events, as Jeffrey Goldberg made clear recently in a discussion of Chuck Hagel, another linkage theory advocate:

Come with me on a quick tour of the greater Middle East. The Syrian civil war? Unrelated to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The slow disintegration of Yemen? Unrelated. Chaos and violence in Libya? Unrelated. Chaos and fundamentalism in Egypt? The creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank would not have stopped the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, nor would it have stopped the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorism in Algeria? Unrelated. The Iranian nuclear program? How would the creation of a Palestinian state have persuaded the Iranian regime to cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons? Someone please explain. Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq? The unrest in Bahrain? Pakistani havens for al-Qaeda affiliates? All unrelated. I’ll add that with regard to Iran, the theory is not only wrong, it is backwards — rather than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict influencing Iran to misbehave, Iran exacerbates the conflict by financing Palestinian terrorists!

As recently as 2010, President Obama professed belief in some form of the linkage theory, and Goldberg correctly asks,

Hagel wants to lead the U.S. Defense Department. I would like to know if he still believes in linkage. More important, I would like to know if Obama is still captive to this same, flawed concept.

The linkage theory was always a good excuse to pressure Israel, because it was an appeal to American interests, not Arab or Palestinian ones. This was especially useful between 1973 and the 1990s when Arabs and Palestinians had a very poor image in the U.S., being associated with astronomical oil prices and terrorism. Since Oslo, it’s become more acceptable to say things like the following (from Obama’s notorious 2009 Cairo speech):

On the other hand [compared to the Holocaust!], it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. Suddenly, it’s all about caring for the Palestinians. But why are the Palestinians in particular so deserving of help compared to other groups around the world, many of whom are much worse off?