I’m going to be honest.  I don’t agree with everything my old buddy Avi Lipkin is up to nowadays, but I think his “1000 days in Syria” talk is excellent and definitely something everyone should listen to.

Avi talks about the Arab spring, Syria and Hillary Clinton.

Heavy fighting between Syrian rebels and loyalists to Syrian President Bassar al-Assad has claimed at least 160 lives in the suburbs of Damascus the past two days as the regimes continues to use starvation as a weapon.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said deadly clashes broke out on Friday in Ghouta, east of the capital, where the government has prevented food, water and medicine from entering.

Most of the casualties reportedly were from Al Qaeda  groups trying to open the supply road. One of those killed was said to be Ammar Tabajo, who has used an alias to  transmit to Western media information, such as the chemical weapons attack last August.

More than 11,000 children have been killed in the Syrian civil war, any of them starved to death and shot and tortured, according to a new report by the Oxford research Group.

Male victims outnumber female victims by two-to-one, and most of the boys have been between 13 and 17 years of age.

“The data we analyzed indicates that bombs and bullets alone ended the lives of ten thousand Syrian children in 30 months of war,” said co-author Hamit Dardagan.

More than 120 children were killed by chemical weapons, in the attack on Ghouta last August.

“What is most disturbing about the findings of this report is not only the sheer numbers of children killed in this conflict, but the way they are being killed,” added the report’s other co-author, Hana Salama.

She added that they have been “bombed in their homes, in their communities, during day-to-day activities such as waiting in bread lines or attending school; shot by bullets in crossfire, targeted by snipers, summarily executed, even gassed and tortured.”

Syrian rebels dealt a deadly and psychological to the Assad regime Sunday by apparently breaching security at a government building and setting off a blast that killed four generals and 27 soldiers, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Unconfirmed sources said the death was 75.

The attack was carried out in  the Damascus suburb of Harasta, northeast of the capital, and blunted the recent offensive by forces loyal to Syrian President Bassar al-Assad.

A director of the Observatory said that if the bomb had gone off an hour earlier, when afternoon staff were posted, the death toll could have reached 200. The bomb brought down the entire building and was detonated in a tunnel under or inside the building, indicating that the rebels had been able foil security.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah told supporters in Beirut’s suburbs Thursday, “We won’t bargain our presence in Lebanon, Syria and the axis of resistance for some ministerial portfolios” to form a new Lebanese government.

He said he is defending Syrian President Bassar al-Assad because he backs the “resistance” against Israel.

Nasrallah appeared in public, a rare occurrence, instead of beaming his message through video links. He spoke in a Beirut suburb as hundreds of thousands of people were celebrating a Shi’ite Muslim festival.

Hezbollah has helped Assad push back the opposition in the civil war but has paid a price, with hundreds of casualties and unprecedented criticism for dragging Lebanon, already dominated by pro-Syrian elements, deeper into the conflict.

The Lebanese government was dissolved seven months ago, and the civil war already has spilled over into the country, raising fears of a repeat of the former 15-year-old civil war in Lebanon.

A Syrian woman who lives in the crossfire of the civil war gave birth to a baby boy in an Israeli hospital in Safed.

While in labor on Sunday, the woman made her way to the Israel border from her Quneitra region and asked the Israeli soldiers there for assistance. There are no midwives in her village and no one to help with a delivery, she said.

“Fortunately, the Israeli soldiers in the area saw that I was in a lot of pain, picked me up and took me to a hospital in Israel,” the woman, who is a nurse, told Ynet. “I was afraid to make it to Israel, but I was more afraid for my baby in case the birth didn’t go smoothly at home.”

Ynet reported that the woman knew of many Syrian citizens who had been treated in Israeli hospitals.

Midwives at the Ziv Medical Center coached her through the birth, according to the Times of Israel. She told the newspaper that she was treated with “sensitivity and respect.”

Since February, more than 250 Syrian civilians have been admitted to Israeli hospitals for treatment and dozens more have been treated by Israeli medics at the border.

Nearly one-third of Syria’s native Christians have fled their homes during the Syrian civil war, according to Syrian Christian leader Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III Laham.

He said that more than 450,000 Christians out of an estimated 1.75 million have been displaced or have left the country since the Syrian civil war began in early 2011.

Patriarch Gregorios, who has been criticized for supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said the international community needs to do more to block the flow of weapons into Syria. “We have to have campaign together—no more weapons, no more violence, go together to a better new vision of life,” he said.

Many Christians support President Bashar al-Assad out of fear that if he is overthrown and replaced by Islamists, they will face greater persecution, especially from the Al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra terrorist organization.

A truck bomb that was aimed at Syrian soldiers killed at least 30 people, most of them civilians, in Syria on Sunday, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It added that the Al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra terrorist organization carried out the attack on the outskirts of the central Syrian city of Hama, where some of the largest anti-Assad demonstrations took place in the beginning of the Arab Street rebellion.

On Saturday, at least 16 soldiers were killed in a suicide attack also carried out by Al Nusra.