Israeli Intelligence Chief: Syria Is Preparing To Use Chemical Weapons

AP via Fox News – “Israel’s military intelligence chief says Syria’s embattled president, Bashar Assad, is preparing to use chemical weapons.

Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi told a security conference in the coastal town of Herzliya that Assad is stepping up his offensive against rebels trying to oust him.

Kochavi claims Assad is making advanced preparations to use chemical weapons, but has not yet given the order to deploy them.

He did not disclose information about why he thinks Assad is preparing to use them.

Israel has long expressed concerns that Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons could end up in the hands of groups hostile to Israel like Hezbollah or al-Qaida inspired organizations.

Israel has kept out of Syria’s civil war, but it is concerned that violence could spill over the border into northern Israel.” Source – Fox News.

Flashback: From Bad To Worse: Syria Combining Chemicals For Sarin Nerve Gas – “Engineers working for President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria have begun combining the two chemical precursors needed to weaponize sarin gas, an American official with knowledge of the situation told Wired.com’s Danger Room on Monday. International observers are now more worried than they’ve even been that the Damascus government could use its nerve agent stockpile to slaughter its own people, the report said… ‘Physically, they’ve gotten to the point where they can load it up on a plane and drop it,’ the official told Wired.com.” Read more.

Flashback: Former Top Syrian General: Assad Will Use Chemical Weapons, Lists VX Nerve Agent As Part Of Arsenal – “A former top general in Syria’s chemical weapons program says he doesn’t doubt for a moment that President Bashar al-Assad will deploy his chemical weapons arsenal as he tries to hold onto power and crush the uprising that started almost two years ago. ‘The regime started to fall and deteriorate. It’s coming to its end,’ said retired Major General Adnan Sillou in an interview in a hotel near Antakya, on Turkey’s southern border with Syria. ‘It’s highly possible that he’ll start using [chemical weapons] to kill his own people because this regime is a killer.’” Read more.

Flashback: Israel Warns Of Possible Pre-Emptive Chemical Weapons Strike In Syria; Iran: Any Attack On Syria Is Attack On Us – “Israel could launch a pre-emptive strike to stop Syria’s chemical weapons from reaching Lebanon’s Hezbollah or al Qaeda inspired groups, officials said Sunday. The warning came as the military moved a rocket defense system to a main northern city, and Israel’s premier warned of dangers from both Syria and Iran. Israel has long expressed concerns that Syrian President Bashar Assad, clinging to power during a 22-month civil war, could lose control over his chemical weapons.” Read more.

Washington State: Muslim Convert Ready ‘To Die For Islam’ Stabs Two Men Outside Starbucks After Discussing Religion

For peaceful purposes …

By Paris Achen, The Columbian – “A 55-year-old suspect in the stabbing of two people in a Starbucks coffee shop drive-thru at one of the busiest intersections in Clark County may have been motivated by religious extremism, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Scott C. Fandrich of Ridgefield appeared Tuesday in Clark County Superior Court on suspicion of two counts of first-degree assault.

Judge Barbara Johnson set bail at $500,000. Fandrich is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges March 22. Vancouver attorney Jack ‘John’ Peterson was appointed to defend him.

Fandrich wore an orange jumpsuit and limped into the courtroom. In a low voice, he mumbled answers to questions from Senior Deputy Prosecutor Camara Banfield.

Fandrich is accused of attacking Jerry Kush, who is either 70 or 71, just before 5 p.m. in the Starbucks drive-thru at 11502 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., in Cascade Park, after the two had a conversation about religion, according to court records.

The affidavit said:

Hamza A. Shariati, 21, told police that he had met Fandrich at about 2 p.m. Monday to discuss religion. During their conversation at one of the cafe’s tables, Kush approached and chatted with Fandrich about cars and religion.

When Kush got up and left, Fandrich followed him out of the building, Shariati said. Then, Shariati said, he heard sirens.

Shariati told police that Fandrich had made statements in the past about ‘his willingness to die for Islam.’ He said he knows that Fandrich ‘has conflicts with people.’

Kush was stabbed at least five times in the neck, abdomen and the side of the chest and had to undergo emergency surgery Monday night at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center.

Bystanders tried to intervene and stop Fandrich, according to earlier reports by The Columbian. One of them, Jerry Nehnevaj, 49, was stabbed in the right lower leg when he attempted to grab Fandrich and pull him off of Kush, according to the affidavit.” Read more.

Flashback: Study: Hundreds Of Thousands Of Muslim Americans Believe Anyone Insulting Mohammed Should Face The Death Penalty – “If, for the sake of argument, we use a figure of 5 million Muslims in America and if, for the sake of argument, the poll below correctly reflects the percentage of Muslims who believe that anyone insulting their prophet should face the death penalty, then the following number we can extrapolate from this data is frightening: The United States is home to 625,000 of your ‘average-all-American’ Muslims who believe you should die for hurting their feelings. That’s more people than the number of military personnel on active duty in Australia, Canada, Germany, Poland and the UK combined …” Read more.

Jewish Prayer On Temple Mount ‘A Flashpoint Inside Israel And An Inflammatory Issue For Local Muslims And The Entire Islamic World’

By Matti Friedman, The Times of Israel – “On Tuesday, the struggle of Jewish women fighting to worship with prayer shawls at the Western Wall in Jerusalem received renewed attention when protesters at the holy site were joined by several new members of Knesset, spotlighting Israel’s ongoing policy of imposing Orthodox practice on all worshipers at the wall.

But in the coming years a different battle over Jewish prayer, one unfolding a few paces away, is likely to be of more significance — a growing debate over whether Jews should be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount itself.

The desire to pray on the Mount, also the site of Islam’s third-holiest shrine, has found more acceptance among mainstream rabbis in Israel over the past decade, spreading gradually from a tiny fringe to a broader religious public. The numbers of Jews actually visiting the Mount for religious reasons is still tiny — no more than several thousand a year, according to police estimates — but inching upward, and the sacred enclosure is slowly gaining in importance as an issue of religious and political meaning for religious Zionists, a group with outsize ideological and political clout in Israeli society.

That could make it a flashpoint inside Israel and an inflammatory issue for local Muslims and the entire Islamic world.

If the issue comes to the fore, it will be in part thanks to the activities of Moshe Feiglin, once a figure from the margins of the Israeli right and now a member of Knesset from the ruling party, Likud. On the way to his swearing-in ceremony at parliament last month, Feiglin went to the Temple Mount, where he had been detained by police in January for violating the prohibition on Jewish prayer. Early this month he was there again, freshly armed with parliamentary immunity, striding around the sacred enclosure with the purposeful air of a landlord and causing a stir when he tried to go into the Dome of the Rock, where entry is limited solely to Muslims. He has promised to be back.

Few places on earth are as potentially explosive as the Temple Mount. The shrine has been especially tense in recent weeks, with protests erupting twice after communal Friday prayers. Riots on the Mount have tended to involve protesters throwing rocks and chairs, but last week, for the first time in memory, a Palestinian threw a Molotov cocktail, pitching it from inside the al-Aqsa mosque and setting a policeman’s leg on fire. The officer was lightly wounded.

Muslims believe the Mount is where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven in a mystical night journey recounted in the Koran, and call it the Noble Sanctuary.” Read more.