Marina Boykis's List: Middle East

• Hezbollah’s restocked arsenal of rockets and missiles now dwarfs the inventory of many nation-states.

  • Talking point

• In Israel, too, people are speaking differently about Assad, who is perceived as a responsible and serious neighbor you can do business with.
• Most of the Israelis killed in the Second Lebanon War, both civilians and soldiers, were hit by weapons Syria had sent to Hezbollah, not by Iranian weapons.
• In a speech last week, Olmert justified the "down payment" to the Syrians. The prime minister spoke enthusiastically about the chances for peace with Syria, which he said "is not eager to be counted as part of the axis of evil and has a strong desire to emerge from its international and economic isolation and join the West." From Israel's perspective, "removing Syria from the axis of evil is of paramount strategic interest."
• Olmert praised the Syrians on Thursday, Assad reciprocated with public support for direct talks on Sunday, and Erdogan hosted Olmert on Monday, in order to discuss a draft on renewing direct talks. Olmert and his diplomatic adviser Shlomo Turgeman sat with Erdogan and his people, who occasionally left the room to phone the Syrians.
• In the face of the Syrian demand to return the Golan, Israel is demanding that Syria disengage from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.
• The situation on the ground remains as it was, and Israel isn't making efforts to develop its communities on the Golan.

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• The notion of "Islamophobia" emerged from the Islamic Republic of Iran following the revolution in 1979. According to Caroline Fourest and Fiammetta Venner, two French journalists who have written extensively on the subject, the Iranian mullahs introduced the idea of a phobia to Islam as a response to international criticism of such practices as the forcing of women to wear headscarves, and persecution of homosexuals and other violators of "Islamic morality."
• According to a 2008 BBC poll, Germany tied with Spain for the most negative attitudes toward Israel in Europe.

• Like other exponents of Islamist extremism, he has a view of the world that does not tolerate doubt or ambiguity: his opponents are guilty, and must be killed. I have met other radicals like Mr. Saeed, men who live in a dimension of absolute certainty and have contempt for the moral relativism of those who seek to excuse them. To achieve their ends, it is necessary to indoctrinate boys in the hatred of Hindus, Americans and Jews, and dispatch them on suicide missions. It is unlikely that any of the militants who were sent from Karachi to Mumbai — young men from poor rural backgrounds whose families were paid for their sacrifice — had ever met a Jew before they tortured and killed Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who was several months pregnant, at the Mumbai Jewish center.
• America’s so-called war on terror has been, in many respects, a catastrophe. In Pakistan, it has been chronically mishandled, leading to the radicalization of areas in the north that were previously peaceful.
• The prime solution to the present crisis is to force the closing of terrorist training outfits in Pakistan, and apply the law to those who organize and finance operations like the Mumbai massacres.

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• What was once an archaeological treasure and tour stop became a moonscape of craters and rubble.
• Since the start of the second intifada, looters have overrun not just Khirbet Tawas but countless other archaeological sites that crowd the West Bank
• And for billions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, it is sacred ground: the land Abraham sojourned in, Moses pressed toward, Joshua claimed, and David and Solomon ruled in glory; the place where God became flesh; the holy center to which the Prophet Muhammad took his mystical nighttime journey. Yet this priceless legacy is swiftly being lost.

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