Much of Israeli Top Brass in Quarantine as Health Minister gets Virus……
03 April 2020
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some of Israel’s other top officials in managing the country’s response to the coronavirus crisis will enter quarantine after Health Minister Yaakov Litzman was confirmed to have contracted COVID-19, amid concerns that other senior officials could also be forced into isolation.
Netanyahu will work from his Jerusalem residence until Wednesday in accordance with Health Ministry instructions and the advice of his personal physician, Dr. Tzvi Berkowitz, the Prime Minister’s office said in a statement.
Health Ministry head Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, who has become the face of Israel’s management of the crisis with near daily briefings and media appearances, announced on Thursday morning that he would self-quarantine, due to the contact he had with Litzman in recent days.
Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen, whose spy agency has been instrumental in obtaining medical equipment for Israel, and National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, who has been coordinating the government’s response to the pandemic, will also be sent into isolation, according to Hebrew news reports.
IDF chief of staff Aviv Kohavi is already working from quarantine, due to exposure to an infected officer, but has tested negative for the virus.
Under Health Ministry orders, tens of thousands of Israelis are in self-quarantine due to possible exposure to the virus and the entire country is in an almost total lockdown that has seen most of the population confined to their homes, only allowed out for essential needs.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in Israel rose Thursday to 31, and the number of people diagnosed with the coronavirus increased to 6,211.
Netanyahu & Gantz Meet to Form Unity Government…
03 April 2020
With Gantz on patio and PM quarantined inside, progress made toward unity deal
Two leaders forced to yell to each other with PM in precautionary isolation; main disagreement is still over annexing parts of West Bank, which Netanyahu wants as his ‘legacy’
Quarantined Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz met — albeit at a distance — on Friday to advance negotiations toward a unity government, with both sides saying afterward that significant progress was made.
The meeting was described as a “positive” one during which “understandings were reached,” according to a rare joint statement from their offices.
The two party leaders instructed their negotiating teams “to try and bring about a coalition agreement between Blue and White and Likud as soon as possible,” it added.
The billboard above shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, Avigdor Liberman, centre, and Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz, wearing masks in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan on March 29, 2020.
Inside the White House…
By William Koenig
White House Correspondent
04 April 2020
Life in America before and after the Trump peace plan was delivered on January 28, 2020;
The perspective on what life and the economy was in the United States when President Trump introduced the “Peace to Prosperity” plan for the Israelis and the Palestinians on January 28, 2020—and what it is now is horrific.
Today the United States and the world are experiencing a massive coronavirus epidemic with over 3 billion people asked to stay at home.
The massive shock to the American economy and the financial markets runs into the trillions of dollars and is growing daily.
The United States had 5 confirmed coronavirus cases on January 28 and on April 3, 261, 438 cases with the numbers growing daily.
American presidents’ actions have played a significant role in accelerating us to this prophetically important time.
President Trump has done more for Israel than any other presidents combined.
But America has paid an enormous price for our presidents’ active role in the peace process, which has continued despite warnings.
A peace deal will be made by a world leader and/or the Antichrist and not likely an American president.
The Bible speaks of a final-day peace deal, but I don’t believe an American president will be the sponsor;
Every president who has been active in the peace process has paid an enormous price. Our country has too.
Especially affected were those actively working on the boundary maps, such as President G.H.W. Bush, President G.W. Bush, and President Donald Trump.
President G.H.W. Bush went from the highest approval of an American president in history before the land-for-peace Madrid Conference of October 30–November 1, 1991, to being voted out of office 12 months later.
President G.W. Bush never recovered from the 9-11-2001 terror events when he was completing his two-state plan with the dividing of Jerusalem. And after that event, 9500 Jews were forced from their homes in Israel followed by the rapid formation of Hurricane Katrina, which became the costliest storm in U.S. history.
President Trump is facing the largest crisis in modern presidential history: a disruptive event due to a highly contagious pathogen from China that has caused massive economic consequences and a disruptive impact on life in America as never before experienced.
For thus saith the Lord of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye. [Zechariah 2;8]
The Middle East is Still Too Immersed in its Own Wars to Fight Coronavirus….
04 April 2020
The supposedly dread coronavirus plaguing the world has not doused the flames of at least four conflicts enveloping the Middle East.
Indeed, the fires are burning higher than ever over Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya.
As one Shiite militiaman put it: “The virus is no reason to lay down arms.”
A ray of light and sanity did come from an unexpected quarter.
Hizballah sources announced this week that “the resources and capacities that had been dedicated to confront a potential war with the Zionist enemy have now been diverted to the plan for confronting corona virus.”
The statement added: “The Party’s plan involves 500 individuals including doctors, nurses, paramedics and other service-related, healthcare, social and field cadres.” The sum of 3.5 billion Lebanese pounds has been allocated to the plan.
It is doubtful that Hizballah or Lebanon, already in desperate straits, command the resources to support this pep talk, however belatedly.
No help may be expected from Hizballah’s sponsor, Iran, which is growing into the chief exporter of the virus across its borders (See separate article below.)
In tracking the various warfronts, we can report unrelenting belligerency all around.
In Iraq, US forces are under rocket attack from pro-Iranian Shiite militias; in Syria, pro-Turkish Syrian rebels clash with Syrian government forces in the contest for Idlib;
in Yemen, while Saudis and Houthi rebels discuss a truce in almost daily phone calls, heavy Saudi bombardments were directed against Sanaa and Houthi arms missile depots after ballistic missiles targeted Riyadh on March 29.
In Libya, a UN-sponsored ceasefire agreed on March 22 held for barely two days.
That’s it in a nutshell. We will now home in on specific arenas:
Iraq
American forces are being evacuated from small bases and regrouped in larger US military compounds in an effort to protect the troops from almost daily militia rocket fire.
This evacuation program is going forward at a snail’s pace for three reasons:
1. Patriot anti-missile batteries are not being delivered to the compounds quickly enough – only one has so far arrived at the big Ain Al-Asad Air Base in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. Two more are stuck in Kuwait awaiting transfer orders.
2. President Donald Trump has not bought into the plan put before him by General Mark Milley, Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff and General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of CENTCOM. [pictured below]
They are urging a swift and crushing operation to obliterate the pro-Iranian Iraqi Kataib Hezballah, which they blame for the systematic attacks on US military centres in Iraq and which they warn is revving up for a major offensive.
All Trump is willing to permit for now is for the generals to draw up a plan of operation for knocking down the militia, but to hold back from an assault, lest it precipitates a straight US-Iranian fight in the Iraqi arena.
The generals say that this in any case is what the militia is driving at.
3. Trump is also convinced that a major US military operation against an Iran-backed militia would further jeopardise the effort under-way for establishing a stable government in Baghdad. Iraq’s entire ruling system might fall apart and become easy prey for Tehran.
Syria
The Idlib truce agreed between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan at their March 5 meeting is more or less holding up.
But this has not stopped Turkey from pouring troops into the northern sector of the embattled province to pre-empt any attempt by President Bashar Assad’s army to finish the job of recovering all parts of Idlib.
To the east, Iran continues to concentrate forces in the Deir-Ez-Zour region for maintaining the stream of Iraqi Shiite militias entering Syria from Iraq.
Yemen
Houthi rebel forces continue their push north into Maarib up to the Saudi border while the Saudi-Houthi talks show no sign of yielding a truce.
Houthi chiefs are evidently acting under pressure from the extremist factions urged by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanese Hizballah to keep going.
Moreover, when the Kataib Hezbollah shelled the Saudi capital of Riyadh from Iraq, the Houthis hurled missiles at the southern Saudi town of Jezzan. [pictured above]
Not only was this Riyadh’s first taste of a Shiite militia assault from Iraq, it was also the first known synchronised dual Yemen-Iraqi operation against the oil kingdom to be set up by Tehran.
Libya
Fear of coronavirus initially scared the warring forces in Libya.
The Tripoli government’s General National Army (GNA) and its adversary, General Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) agreed to the ceasefire that was put in place by the UN and several countries on March 22.
But that incentive soon wore off. On Monday night, March 24, the clashes revived amid mutual blame.
On Wednesday, the UN Support Mission in Libya bemoaned the fact that “while the whole world is fighting covid-19, attacks and counterattacks in Libya are inflicting more suffering and civilian casualties.”
Someone on Haftar’s side must have taken notice.
As his army advanced towards the heart of Tripoli, he had a chemical unit disinfecting the positions seized from the pro-GNA militias in the al-Mashrou and al-Hadaba areas as precautions against coronavirus infection.
Developing daily……
US and Pro-Iranian Militias Set for Head-on Collision in Iraq………
04 April 2020
Just two months after the US terminated Qassam Soleimani, Iran’s schemes are again rolling forward.
On Monday, March 30, his successor, Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, arrived in Baghdad determined to bar the way for a candidate who was unwilling to dance to Tehran’s tune to become prime minister of Iraq.
In a round of urgent meetings, Ghaani, the new chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Al Qods Brigades, leaned hard on influential Iraqis.
He was quite unmoved by the country’s lock-down against the spread of the coronavirus, or the popular voices complaining that Iraq’s ruling elite is openly corrupt and indifferent to the country’s basic needs.
So far, no candidate has gained endorsement from the political parties represented in parliament.
President Barham Salih [pictured below] first nominated former communications minister Mohammed Allawi as a candidate without success.
On March 16, he named Adnan al-Zurfi with 30 days to form a cabinet. Since like Allawi, he is pro-American, he is also likely to be voted down by parliament.
Persistent rumours in Baghdad, cited here, quote General Ghaani as warning Iraq’s party chiefs that if the president persists in putting forward such candidates, Tehran will not hesitate to stage a military coup in Baghdad and install its tame Shiite militias chiefs in power.
The second item on the Al Qods chief’s Baghdad agenda was a check on whether Iran’s satellite militias in Iraq were prepared to withstand potential American retaliation for their almost daily rocket attacks on US bases.
For better protection, US troops are being pulled out of small bases in the country and regrouped in the large military compounds.
Already emptied out are the Qayyarah airbase 60 miles south of Mosul, the former presidential palace north of Mosul, the K1 airbase and the Qaim base near the border with Syria.
The Al Qods chief referred to the fresh intelligence received by the Shiite militia chiefs and Iraqi military agencies that President Donald Trump has come to a decision to strike back at the “rocket force” groups’ locations – ten in all.
They belong to Hadi al-Ameri’s powerful Badr Organization, [pictured above] Qais al-Khazali’s Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Akram al-Kaabi’s Al-Nujabi movement and the Hezballah-Iraq faction.
According to that intelligence, American attacks are imminent and they are planned to target those militias’ bases in Syria as well as in Iraq.
Before visiting Baghdad, the al Qods chief therefore made a trip to Homs in central Syria to inspect the Revolutionary Guards and Shiite militia forces based there.
On April 1, President Trump confirmed the intelligence data regarding his intentions when he said in a White House briefing that Tehran should expect a bold US response if Iran or Iranian-backed groups attacked American forces or assets in Iraq.
He also tweeted: “Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on US troops and/or assets in Iraq. If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price indeed.”
Iran as World Class Exporter of Covid-19 to Its Neighbours……..
04 April 2020
Tehran is fudging the figures, Damascus is in denial, Lebanon is looking to Hizballah for help; Iraq is getting help from China, and Afghanistan is swamped with the largest cross-border repatriate migration ever from plague-ridden Iran.
These countries have limited or no capacity for testing and tallying the scale of the coronavirus pandemic or the medical facilities to cope with it.
Anyway, Iranian officials and their militias continue to criss-cross their borders on Islamic regime business.
US sanctions have been accused of hobbling Tehran’s capacity to contend with the virus plague, which by April 1 had accounted for 3,000 deaths and 64,000 confirmed cases.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended the administration’s penalty policy on Tuesday, March 30. He stressed that the sanctions do not apply to humanitarian and medical supplies.
However, according to Human Rights Watch, “broad restrictions on financial transactions… have drastically constrained the ability of Iranian entities to finance humanitarian imports, including vital medicines and medical equipment.”
The UN secretary general has moreover repeatedly called on Washington to ease economic penalties on Tehran for combating the virus.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Pompeo did not rule out the possibility of lifting some sanctions on Iran and granting waivers to other nations to help fight the pandemic. “Would we ever rethink? – Of course,” he said.
The Islamic regime in Tehran meanwhile appealed for the first time to the International Monetary Fund for $5 billionn in emergency aid to battle the virus.
Any such aid will be too late to save Iran’s neighbours, especially Afghanistan.
Close to 200,000 Afghans have fled across the border from Iran bringing an unknown scale of infection with them.
Some are labourers; others recruited by Iran for the Shiite militias that fought for Assad in the Syrian civil war and who brought their families over.
The government in Kabul warned this week that the refugees scattering across the country could bring uncontrolled infection to many millions of people and cause tens of thousands of deaths.
The official figure of 174 confirmed Afghan cases is not taken seriously by the World Health Organisation, any more than the figures of Iran’s other neighbours.
Iraq is trying to get a grip on the crisis. A countrywide lock-down was enforced up until April 11, after 728 cases and 52 deaths from the respiratory disease were officially confirmed.
The real figures are believed to be much higher but could not be established without broad tests in the population of 40 million.
Therefore, in response to an appeal from Iraq, a new covid-19 testing lab built by Chinese experts was inaugurated in Baghdad on March 25. with equipment donated by Beijing to provide the missing testing facilities.
Iraqis are among the dozens of Shiite militiamen deployed to Syria to fight for the Assad regime under the command of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards officers.
Although the forces posted near government military positions in the northern Idlib and Aleppo battlefields were ordered to observe quarantine conditions, militiamen of Kataib Hadrat Zaynab, Kataib al-Imam Hossein and Liwa al-Imam al-Rida staged religious ceremonies and sports events in the last two weeks.
Syria’s Assad regime itself spent two months in denial until on March 17, Damascus finally admitted to the presence of coronavirus in the country.
While its propagandists turned the virus into a rallying call for domestic and international support, Damascus continued to mess with the facts.
On March 30, its health ministry reported 10 cases and 2 deaths, whereas four days earlier, doctors reported 50 deaths of the coronavirus at a single Damascus hospital
The Lebanese Hizballah alone appears to have come around to confronting the deadly plague, after initially keeping the truth dark in obedience, like Syria, to Tehran’s orders.
In Deir ez-Zour in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, Hizballah has tried to impose restrictions for containing the spread of covid-19. The Shiite group is also trying to control the disease on its home turf, Lebanon.
There, no more than 400 cases are officially confirmed, but the disease is believed to be rife, especially in the teeming Shiite community where there may be thousands of unrecorded cases.
The secret finally outed when Hizballah acted to enforce quarantine on the badly hit Shiite towns and villages of southern Lebanon, sending its fighters to enforce isolations and forcibly evacuating suspected carriers to unknown locations.
However, Hizballah and Lebanon are badly short of doctors, nurses, hospitals and equipment for beginning to contain the spreading disease and treating the victims it has struck down.
Turkey Finds Flaws in Russian S-400's - A Ploy to Get US Patriots?…..
04 April 2020
Turkey is complaining that the advanced S-400 air defence missiles purchased from Russian - in defiance of US wishes – don’t match up to Moscow’s sales promotion pitch.
Sources in Ankara say they have even found “fatal” defects in their operational capabilities.
For instance, they cite the Russians as touting the system’s data as able to “track targets at a distance of up to 400km that are the size of jumbo jets flying over suitable terrain at an altitude of 20 kilometres”.
“When the target is below 5 kilometres, the system’s effectiveness drops by 30-40%. This, say the Turks, enables the enemy’s stealth planes to attack their S-400 missiles and destroy them.”
Their effectiveness drops more steeply by 70% against attacking stealth planes flying one kilometre over the target.
Officials in Washington are wondering why Ankara is suddenly disparaging its new, highly recommended acquisition from Moscow.
Are the flaws in the S-400 missiles [pictured above] a genuine cause of those gripes?
Or perhaps it is a ploy dreamed up by the wily President Recep Erdogan to turn aside the Trump administration’s refusal to let Turkey have F-35 stealth planes as punishment for a NATO ally who went shopping for Russian missiles.
Or is Ankara hoping to get Washington to supply the two Patriot batteries requested in February for deterring Syrian attacks near Turkey’s southern border?
The request came after the Turkish army lost two troops in one such Syrian attack in Idlib.
The Pentagon spokesman’s initial response was that Turkey “is not going to receive a Patriot battery before it sends back the S-400.”
Erdogan’s devious tactics have landed him in hot water both in Washington and Moscow.
The Kremlin is already fuming over the Turks’ disparaging remarks about its prized S-400 air defence missile which reflect badly on the Russian arms industry at large.
They spoil Moscow’s aggressive campaign to promote the system to such interested clients such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and India.
To them, the Russians tout the S-400 Triumf ((also known as the SA-21 Growler by NATO) as capable of downing American-made stealth planes.
The Americans are still furious over Ankara’s decision to be the first NATO member to buy arms from its adversary, Russia.
Deployment of the S-400 in Turkey affords that adversary the opportunity to learn how to confront the advanced US F-35 stealth plane. [pictured above]
Erdogan has wriggled out of his scrapes in the past by playing one power against the other. How will he manage this time?
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