Syria's top army defector tells The Telegraph: Assad's forces will fall this month

Syria's most senior army defector, General Mustafa al-Sheikh, believes that President Bashar Assad's military will collapse within days or weeks, according to an interview published Sunday in The Telegraph.

"The army will collapse during February," The Telegraph quoted al-Sheikh, who has sought refuge in Turkey, as saying. "The reasons are the shortage of Syrian army personnel, which even before March 15 last year did not exceed 65 per cent. The proportion of equipment that was combat ready did not exceed that, due to a shortage of spare parts.

"The Syrian army combat readiness I would put at 40 per cent for hardware and 32 per cent for personnel," he added, according to The Telegraph. "They are sending in elements from the Shabiha (militia) and the Alawite sect to compensate, but this army is unable to continue more than a month. Some elements of the army are reaching out to the FSA to help them to defect."

Al-Sheikh's remarks come less than a week after Syrian opposition leader Colonel Riyad al-As'ad, commander of the Syria Free Army, said that around half of the country is no longer under the control of Assad’s forces....

Israeli Demonization Week

The title above may be a bit confusing, since the left and their media cohorts essentially treat every week as Israeli Demonization Week. So to be more precise: the official, organized, designated demonization of Israel known as Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is gearing up to launch later this month.

IAW is an annual (2012 is the eighth) international series of events held in cities and on campuses across the globe. It aims “to educate people about the nature of Israel” – by which it means to spread disinformation and propaganda – “and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns” in order to delegitimize it. They demand full equality for Arab citizens of Israel (who already have it), an end to what they falsely call the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands, dismantling of the security wall that protects Israelis from Palestinian terrorist attacks, and the Palestinian right of return, which would essentially mean the end of Jews in Israel.

The IAW program begins in Europe in late February, shortly afterward in the United States, then Canada, the “Arab World” (as the website refers to it) and South Africa early in March, and finally in “Palestine.” Its speakers, conferences, rallies, workshops, panel discussions, film screenings, protests, even “flash mobs” will help hammer home their monstrous lies about Israel....

Op-Ed: Israel: A Priceless Strategic Military Asset for the US

After Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, in America, there were Hitler enablers like the American hero Charles Lindbergh who publicly championed-- the Big Lie-- that England was a strategic liability to the US, was the cause of world war, and, that England needed to be dumped.

Today, there is a new crop of neo-fascist enablers by the names of Walt and Mearsheimer.  These Neo-Lindberghs espouse an analogous -Big Lie- that Israel is a strategic liability to the US, the cause of Middle East wars, and, that Israel needs to be dumped, and there are also neo-isolationists like Ron Paul who says “the US would be better off without Israel.”

I will now graphically show you in 3 simple steps that these “Professors” and these neo-Ostriches are, in fact, Neo-Lindberghs....

Why No Peace? Because the PA Tells Its People that Murdering Israeli Civilians Makes You a Hero

...Now, twice in one week, a PA television host praised Hakim Awad, the murderer of the Fogel family who, last March, carried out the bloody slaughter of an unarmed father, mother, and three children (11 years, 4 years, and 2 months, respectively) in their home. The program held him up as a good role model for Palestinians.

There are hundreds of such events--you can visit the PMW site to read about them and see them on video--yet the Western mass media, not to mention governments, never take this incitement seriously even though it violates many agreements made by the PA....

Fool me twice

Former US congressman Robert Wexler is a man worth listening to. Wexler served as then-senator Barack Obama's chief booster in the American Jewish community during the 2008 presidential campaign. He appeared everywhere and said anything to convince the American Jewish community that the same man who sat in the church pews listening to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's anti-Semitic vitriol for two decades, and listed among his closest friends and associates a host of Israel-haters as well as former terrorists, was the greatest friend Israel could ever have.

Once Obama was elected, Wexler continued to serve as his Jewish shill. Wexler traveled to Israel multiple times in the early months of Obama's presidency, to pressure Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to submit to Obama's demand and embrace the cause of Palestinian statehood. After Netanyahu finally announced his support for Palestinian statehood at his speech at Bar-Ilan University in September 2009, Wexler returned with a new demand - that Netanyahu enact a moratorium on Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post at the time, Wexler promised that Israel would be richly rewarded if it took the unprecedented step of denying Jews the right to their property in Judea and Samaria simply because they were Jewish. Even if the moratorium were temporary, Obama would view the discriminatory measure as proof of Israel's good intentions....

Artifcial Blood Vessels Created To Cure Diseases

For the first time in the world researchers at the Technion Institute of Technology and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa in Israel created new blood vessels using embryonic stem cells that were programmed in advance.

The team, headed by Prof. Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor, head of women and maternity department at the Rambam Medical Center and Dr. Ayelet Dar-vaknin, produced new cells named Pericytes, that have a crucial role in building blood vessels and ensuring their functioning.

The experiment simulated the treatment for damaged muscles or tissues, as a result of disruption in the blood supply. The research was conducted in the laboratory for stem cells research at the Faculty of Medicine at the Technion Institute. Over the course of the study, the researchers cultured the Pericytes in the lab in large quantities....

'Israel needs to engage EU, not call it irrelevant'

Czech Foreign Minister Karl Schwarzenberg, considered one of Israel’s strongest supporters inside the EU, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday that Israel needs to engage more intensively with Europe, and is not doing itself any favors by declaring that the European Union is in danger of becoming irrelevant in the Middle East.

Schwarzenberg, attending the 12th annual Herzliya Conference at the IDC, was referring to a statement put out by the Foreign Ministry last month following a communique very critical of Israel issued by Britain, France, Germany and Portugal.

The Czech Republic is considered, along with the Netherlands and Italy, among Israel’s strongest supporters inside the EU, and those countries – along with Romania, Bulgaria, and at times, Germany – form a bloc inside the EU that often tones down or stops critical statements and policies coming out of Brussels.

Jerusalem, Schwarzenberg said, could do more to win over other EU nations by engaging more actively both with the individual countries, and with the EU institutions in Brussels.

Israel has not, he added, won over friends by essentially telling the EU over the last few decades that its ally is the United States, and that “we want them to be active in the Middle East, we don’t want you to be active. Keep out.”...

Consult Jerusalem's Palestinians Before Rushing to Divide the City

Here, in one sentence, is the gist of Frank Jacob’s 1,500-word op-ed in the New York Times this week: Divided cities are bad, and we should strive to reunite them – except for Jerusalem, which we should instead strive to redivide, even though it will likely mean building a wall through its heart. “In a place where there’s no middle ground,where you’re either from one side or the other, it’s hard to see how a case can be made that both parts of the city belong together, and should grow together,” he pontificated. “Even [former West Berlin Mayor and German Chancellor] Willy Brandt would agree.”

I have no doubt Brandt would agree if he were still alive; most Europeans do. But here’s who wouldn’t agree: a sizable minority, and quite possibly a majority, of those East Jerusalem Palestinians whom Jacobs and his fellow pundits so blithely advocate tearing away from Israel.

In a November 2010 poll which 1,039 East Jerusalem Palestinians conducted via face-to-face interviews, fully 35 percent said they would prefer remaining Israeli if a two-state solution emerged, compared to only 30 percent who preferred Palestinian citizenship. The remainder declined to answer or said they didn’t know....

Israel Vice PM: Military strike can hit all of Iran's nuclear facilities

All of Iran's nuclear faculties are vulnerable to a military strike, Vice Prime Minister and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Thursday, calling the potential of a nuclear Iran a "nightmare to the free world."

At the closing day of the Herzliya Conference, Ya’alon referred to the many tools at the international community's disposal that could serve to slow down or stop Iran's advancement toward nuclear weapons capability: international pressure, economic sanctions, support of Iranian opposition, and military actions.

Speaking of the possibility of a military strike of Iran's nuclear facilities, the vice PM said that "the West has the ability to strike, but as long as Iran isn't convinced that there's a determination to follow through with it, they'll continue with their manipulations."...

Defense Secretary Concerned Israel May Attack Iran

(FOX News) - US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is expressing new concerns about Iran's underground nuclear program, this time telling Washington Post columnist David Ignatius he's worried Israel may decide to attack it as early as this spring.

Traveling with the defense secretary in Brussels to cover his meeting with NATO defense ministers, Ignatius writes, "Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June."

It is the first time such a specific timeframe has been mentioned. FOXNews.com has previously reported concerns from former members of President Barack Obama's national security team that a unilateral strike from Israel could occur sometime in 2012 and that Central Command has been planning for the possibility the US could be drawn in....