The IDF put soldiers along the Lebanese border on high alert Wednesday following the acknowledged bombing of Hezbollah terrorists and a weapons convoy near the Syrian-Lebanese border earlier this week.

Farmers have been told to stay away from their land that in some cases is adjacent to the border.

Hezbollah admitted on Wednesday that the Israeli Air Force successfully staged the bombing raid, it insisted there were no casualties, but other reports from Lebanon said that a major Hezbollah army officer and up to three others were killed.

The Beirut Daily Star reported that the aerial strike hit two trucks smuggling a missile and a missile launcher to a Hezbollah facility in Lebanon.

Israeli Air Force war planes launched two bombing raids on Hezbollah posts in near the Syrian border eastern Lebanon Monday, the Beirut Daily Star reported.

Quoting “security sources,” the newspaper said that four missiles were dropped in a mountainous area where Hezbollah recruits and trains its soldiers and near a known route for smuggling arms from Syria into Lebanon.

Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir, the new commander of the Free Syrian Army, secretly trained in Israel last year after being admitted into to the country for medical treatment, according to the Arabic language Al-Ahd website.

He was transferred to a hospital in Israel after he was wounded in a military operation. Rumors spread that he died and was buried in Syria, allegedly to distract attention from his training in Israel.

Americans’ views of eight important Middle East countries were fairly stable over the past year, after a decade that saw shifts in several of their ratings, a Gallup poll released Tuesday sowed. About seven in 10 Americans view Israel favorably – making Israel the only positively viewed Middle East country of those Gallup tested.

Less than half of the Americans asked view Egypt favorably, and only a third have a favorable view of Saudi Arabia. Less than 20% have a favorable view of the remaining five, including Libya, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, Syria, and Iran.

These results are based on Gallup’s 2014 World Affairs poll, conducted Feb. 6-9. Gallup’s annual World Affairs poll measures Americans’ views on a variety of foreign policy issues, as well as the favorable and unfavorable images of a number of countries. The poll was initiated in 2001 and is updated each February.

At 13%, Syria’s minimal U.S. favorable rating is similar to what it was a year ago, but down slightly from 2012, continuing a gradual slide in that country’s image since 2005.

However, Iran’s position in American public opinion has been improving, in response to the massive propaganda brainwashing of the media. As the U.S. and other world powers are engaged in high-level talks with Iran over its nuclear program, never mind the results, Gallup finds little change in the overall percentage viewing Iran favorably, remaining near 85%, but there has been a decline in the percentage viewing Iran very unfavorably, now at 42%, down from 52% in 2012.

No doubt about it, fewer Americans fear and hate Iran this year. It makes for a great slogan: Iran – you don’t hate us so much any more.

The poll shows some differences among different age groups’ view of the Middle East, with young adults aged 18 to 34 holding somewhat more positive views of some Arab countries than do adults 55 and older. This applies to Libya, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and the Palestinian Authority.

It’s also clear that older Americans have more favorable views of Israel, while there is no difference by age in views of Saudi Arabia.

Libya and Egypt, the two “Arab Spring” countries, receive positive evaluations from the youngest Americans. The older folks – not so much.

Two mortar shells exploded in open areas in the central Golan Heights Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his entourage left the area following a visit.

No one was injured, and no damage was reported.

It is not known if Syrian soldiers or rebels were the source of the mortar fire and if they intentionally aimed at Israel after learning of the visit by the Prime Minister.

Sniper fire and mortar shell attacks have been frequent events in the Golan Heights during the past year of conflict in the Syrian civil war.

Syrian rebels seized part of a major government prison near Aleppo after it staged a car bomb attack, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The official media of the Assad regime said it repelled the attack by “armed terrorists” and that a “large number of their members [were] dead and wounded,” but other sources said the rebels succeeded in taking over at least part of the prisoner and freed hundreds of prisoners.

The rebels said they freed thousands of prisoners, including women. As usual, all reports from the regime and rebels have to be taken with more than grain of salt.

The prison in Aleppo is a key part of Assad’s suppressive regime, and if prisoners were freed, they could provide first-hand accounts of torture.

President Barack Obama will fly to Saudi Arabia next month in an effort to repair a deteriorating relationship following his failure to significantly improve ties in his 2011 trip to Riyadh and in the wake of differences over relations with Egypt, Iran and Syria.

Obama will visit the Vatican on the same junket, as well as the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy.

The White House did not specifically include the Palestinian Authority as being on the agenda of issues the president will discuss with King Abdullah.

White House press secretary Jay Carney tried to make the scheduled visit seem like a routine trip, a “part of regular consultations.” He added, “The president looks forward to discussing with King Abdullah the enduring and strategic ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia as well as ongoing cooperation to advance a range of common interests related to Gulf and regional security, peace in the Middle East, countering violent extremism, and other issues of prosperity and security.”

“Peace in the Middle East” probably refers to much more violent situations than the Palestinian Authority-Israel argument, The Wall Street Journal reported. For starters, there is the Muslim civil war in Syria, with the Sunni sect, backed by Saudi Arabia, against the Iranian-backed Shi’ites.

There is not lack of work for the Obama administration if it wants to get along better with Saudi Arabia, which was extremely unhappy with President Barack Obama’s backing the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, who was replaced by a violent military regime that was succeeded by a violent Muslim Brotherhood regime, which was in turn succeeded by another violent military regime.

Saudi Arabia was upset at Obama’s appeasement of Iran and his about-face on the idea of using military force to help Syrian rebels.

The Obama administration also has lost some influence in Egypt, where Saudi Arabia has stepped in to help the current military regime deal with the crippled economy.

Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia in 2011 did little to calm the monarchy anger over the American support to get rid of Mubarak, implicitly backing Arab Spring unrest.

Obama called for changes in attitudes in the Middle East, and that is the last thing Saudi officials want to see in its own country.

Because it so often bravely challenges the Zionist narrative (read, for example, about Melanie Philips’ most recent experience) I never miss an episode of BBC’s Question Time. I ended up listening to it (as opposed to watching it) on 30 January and I have to say it was especially exhilarating because there was completely uniform acceptance (by the panel and the audience) of our leftist narrative on every single issue (although sadly, for once the Zionist entity was not mentioned). Given that the panel always includes one ‘Conservative’ you might think I am exaggerating – until I tell you that the ‘Conservative’ was Ken Clarke MP (who I think may have disagreed with some of the more heroic views expressed but was too laid back to bother saying so). I understand the other panelists were shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry MP, Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oakeshott, comedian and feminist activist Kate Smurthwaite, and director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs Mark Littlewood.Bravo to them!!

To give an example of their sharp thinking, one of the questions was about the recent decision by the UK Government to give another £600million for Syrian aid and to allow the immediate entry of Syrian refugees to the UK. The panel were in total agreement that not only was all of this obviously the right thing to do, but that it was a scandal that the UK was not doing much more. But one fool in the audience had the audacity to say something like “why are we giving all this massive support to Syrians when there are millions of old people suffering hardship in the UK and many affected by the floods who are getting no government support”. The answer (I think from Emily Thornberry) to thunderous and sustained applause was: “Because, unlike the people in the UK, the Syrians did not choose to be the victims of a terrible civil war”. Analysing the brilliance of that statement deserves a blog posting all of its own (at some point in the future I will write one about it).

There was much more brilliance along those lines, but both of the women on the panel (I was listening but not watching) sounded exactly like my marvellous best friend Camilla with every utterance more incisive than the previous way and each being greeted by even louder applause. The men on the panel simply agreed with everything they said. In fact, based on what I heard I am delighted to report that there is NO alternative voice allowed. So, based only on comments from one program, I think it is safe to assume that if you want to appear on Question Time – either as a panel member or audience member it is mandatory for you to believe all of the following:

• Global warming/Climate change is by far and away the most important problem mankind has ever confronted and all the world’s wealthy countries must use all their money to combat it. The floods in Somerset are proof that climate change is now about to completely destroy the world – and it is all entirely man made. Not a single scientist disagrees, but a tiny number of insane climate deniers are in control of things and stopping any progress.
• Second in importance to climate change is the need to allow unlimited millions of refugees – especially from troubled Muslim nations – into the UK and they must be given unlimited funds forever and we must under no circumstances attempt any kind of background check on any one of them as this is Islamaphobic. Doing this will be fantastic for the UK economy because all Muslims are peace loving with an incredible work ethic.
• Third in importance to combating climate change and solving all the world’s refugee problems by ourselves is how to confront the evil fascists of UKIP.
• It is a crime to be rich, but fortunately taxing the rich will solve every economic problem.
• Giving unlimited money to people on the doll, immigrants etc will lead to massive economic growth for the UK as it will give them spending power.
• Foreign freedom fighters convicted in the UK must never be deported
• The world is so interconnected and everybody is really so similar that we have an obligation to help every country in the world where there is conflict and poverty because doing so will lead to an improvement in the world economy. In fact, the British economy can only improve by giving all our money to poor nations because that will make them richer and they will then spend their money boosting our economy. In any case all that poverty and conflict is the fault of the rich Western nations and that is why it is our responsibility to solve it.

And, of course, you will be very pleased to known that one of next week’s guests is none other than my former employee George Galloway; so to get on the program you will also need to add the obligatory beliefs about the Middle East and Israel (see full list here and here).

If all that was not uplifting enough, following Question Time was the Andrew Neil programme where he and his guests essentially repeated everything that was agreed on Question Time (and Andrew Neil is also supposed to be a ‘conservative’). There was, however, one dissenting voice: a Syrian woman interviewed by Andrew Neil who said the Syrian refugees should go to Arab countries not the UK because their culture and language was the same whereas it was completely alien to the UK. Fortunately Andrew Neil literally laughed at her saying, correctly, that we must not allow the Syrians to go to Arab countries because they would be repressed. He said that wealthy Arab countries like Saudi Arabia were out of the question because ‘the women would be forced to cover up’ (and ‘we’ in the UK must not allow that to happen), while the ‘other Arab countries are too poor or overcrowded’. And luckily for all of us, there are no such countries called UAE, Qatar, Bahrein etc.

Visit Confronting Antisemitism and Israel Hatred in the UK.