US and EU can't leave Israel to confront Syria threat alone

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    Israeli warplanes hit Syria

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    Israel launches airstrikes targeting Syria’s capital

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    Where does President Obama stand on Syria?

“How did you do it?” Pentagon officials asked their Israeli counterparts after Iraq’s Osirak nuclear site was destroyed in 1981. “The mistake then, as now, was to underestimate Israel’s military ingenuity,” wrote Gen. Amos Yadlin in The New York Times last year.

Though he was referring to persistent speculation about a possible military response to Iran’s ongoing quest for nuclear-weapons capability, the former head of Israeli military intelligence was emphasizing an essential characteristic of his country’s security posture: Israeli leaders will determine how best to defend their people, and act on it.

That approach certainly applies to Syria, where an increasingly complex and violent civil war endangers neighboring countries. Syria shot down a Turkish air force jet in June 2012, and a skirmish along Syria's southern border left one Jordanian soldier dead in October.

Israel, which is not a party to the war in Syria, should not be left alone to take responsibility for confronting the threats emanating from Syria.

Two years ago this month, Syrian President Assad encouraged Palestinian demonstrators to mass on the border with Israel and climb over the fence. To be sure, occasional shelling from IDF tanks on the Golan Heights has kept at bay Syrians contemplating any direct encounters with Israel. However, a side door is still open, and despite the civil war, Syria, colluding with Iran and Hezbollah, has kept the threat alive.

The alliance between Hezbollah, Syria and Iran has been a concern starting long before the Syrian uprising started in March 2011.

Israel has preemptively intervened, with air power, more than once to disrupt the arms supply line to Hezbollah in Lebanon. But the direct involvement of Hezbollah and Iran in boosting Assad – Sheikh Nasrallah finally admitted last week that Hezbollah is engaged on the ground in Syria – raises the stakes higher.

After the latest strikes inside Syria, President Obama declared that Israel has the right to defend itself. “The Israelis justifiably have to guard against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah,” he said.

The neighborhood around Israel has become ever more perilous since political upheavals erupted more than two years ago across the Arab world. Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons and advanced missiles pose a special dilemma. Neither can be left unsecured or allowed to fall into the hands of Hezbollah. Those are Israel’s red lines.

“When we say something we mean it,” Ehud Barak, then Israel’s defense minister, warned in February, acknowledging that Israel had hit a convoy in Syria carrying missiles to Lebanon.
The U.S. says Israel did not alert it in advance of the recent strikes, though America supports Israel’s right to take defensive measures. But the question is why Israel took military action again, not just once, but twice in recent days.

In the 2006 war, initiated by Hezbollah, rockets and missiles from southern Lebanon hit Haifa and much of Israel’s north. Rockets fired from Hamas-ruled Gaza reached Jerusalem last November and the Israeli Mediterranean city of Ashkelon. 

Understandably, curtailing if not eliminating the rockets and missiles in the hands of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations is an Israeli priority.

Yet Hezbollah, with Iranian and Syrian assistance, has significantly restocked its arsenal. It controls southern Lebanon, where Iranian President Ahmadinejad visited in October 2010 and then went on to see Assad in Damascus. The Hezbollah-Iran-Syria alliance of terror is just as strong today, and factoring in the chaos inside Syria, all the more dangerous.

But Hezbollah and its Iranian patron pose a threat not only to Israel. 

Hezbollah was responsible for the bombings 30 years ago of the U.S. Embassy, and the U.S. and French marines barracks in Beirut. Now, despite Bulgaria fingering Hezbollah for a terror attack last July and the recent conviction of a Hezbollah operative in Cyprus, the European Union remains reluctant to designate Hezbollah a terror organization.

Similar resistance to engaging the crisis in Syria has emboldened Assad and his Hezbollah and Iranian allies. Both the U.S. and the EU have demanded that Assad step down and warned him not to use chemical weapons, but have been reluctant to take firmer action, such as establishing a no-fly zone or creating safe havens for the millions of Syrian refugees seeking safety from Assad’s forces.

Obama’s own red lines on Syria have proven ambiguous, and sooner rather than later the U.S. will need to reconsider current strategy and act. Empathy for Israel is welcome, but Israel, which is not a party to the war in Syria, should not be left alone to take responsibility for confronting the threats emanating from Syria.

Lest we forget the essence of the conflict, it all began with the Assad regime’s brutal response to schoolchildren and parents protesting his rule. For the sake of Syria’s innocents and in the hope of holding together this fragmented country, the U.S. and its European allies should determine how best to end the conflict, restore order and rebuild – and then act before the situation becomes even worse.

Kenneth Bandler is the American Jewish Committee’s director of media relations.

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Boston attack underscores growing threat of IEDs in America

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    Boston Bombing: A primitive bomb caused damage

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    Boston Bombing: What does the smoke tell us about the bombs?

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    Boston Bombing eyewitness account

The deadly bomb attack on the Boston Marathon highlights what may be a growing threat to American cities -- the use of IEDs to target large gatherings, inflicting mass damage with a device that is difficult to detect. 

Security experts say the use of IEDs is becoming a preferred tool of terror in both domestic and global attacks -- or attempted attacks -- against the United States. 

"The reason to use an IED or multiple IEDs is that you're trying to create an oversized impact, and as much panic and disruption as possible," Bill Braniff, the executive director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, told FoxNews.com Tuesday. 

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday sent an intelligence bulletin to law enforcement across the country noting that the Boston attack follows a pattern. 

"The activities in Boston highlight the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to target large gatherings, including at special events, in order to inflict mass casualties," said the bulletin, obtained by Fox News. 

IEDs are usually makeshift bombs that are extremely destructive when detonated. They are designed to propel shrapnel and are sometimes used in combination with toxic chemicals, radiological material or biological toxins, and are often packed with metal fragments. This pattern of terror has been seen on a global level for years but is becoming more common in the U.S.   

In recent years, several of these attacks have been plotted but not successfully carried out.   

The DHS/FBI bulletin highlighted the following plots since 2009: 

• In 2011, authorities discovered an undetonated IED along the planned Martin Luther King Jr. unity parade route in Spokane, Wash. 
• In November 2010, FBI agents and the Portland police stopped a Somali teenager's plan to blow up a van full of explosives at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Dwight Holton, U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, said at the time that the "defendant's chilling determination is a stark reminder that there are people -- even here in Oregon -- who are determined to kill Americans." 
• In May 2010, New York authorities thwarted an attempt to detonate an IED left in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square. The crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered by authorities and quick-thinking vendors. 
• Nine months earlier in 2009, New York City police stopped a plot to blow up the city's subways using IEDs. 

The bombing Monday shattered what may have been a false sense of security, after law enforcement successfully foiled plots year after year. 

In the attack, two IEDs went off back-to-back near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 170 others. Reports say the bombs were made out of pressure cookers and packed with ball bearings, nails and other metal scraps that blew dangerous debris in every direction. It's a pattern of terror security experts have documented in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. They say it was only a matter of time before the devices made their way here. 

"Most people in law enforcement believed we would see these IEDs begin emerging in the U.S.," Craig Dotlo, a retired FBI agent who helped investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said. 

According to a recent report by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, IEDs were the most common weapons used in the 207 terrorist plots and attacks in the United States from 2001 to 2011. The study also found that incendiary devices accounted for more than half of all weapons used over the last decade, representing a large increase in the type of weapons used in terror attacks. 

The perpetrators are often domestic groups -- with the environmental Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front responsible for the most attacks in that 10-year window, according to the report. Al Qaeda was involved in four of them. The Pakistani Taliban claimed involvement in the Times Square bombing case -- but has said it had no role in the Boston attack Monday. 

Authorities are still searching for suspects in the latest attack. President Obama said Tuesday that while the strike was an "act of terrorism," it's not clear whether a foreign or domestic group or individual was behind it. 

"At this time there are no claims of responsibility," FBI officials said in a press conference Tuesday. "The range of suspects and motives remains wide open." 

The dual devices used in Monday's marathon bombing in Massachusetts are similar to those used in attacks in Sri Lanka in 2008 as well as a series of blasts in Lahore, Pakistan in 2006. 

IEDs were also used in attacks in Ireland in May 1998, May 2003 and May 2005.  

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N. Korea puts artillery forces at top combat posture in latest threat on S. Korea, US

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SEOUL, South Korea –  North Korea's military warned Tuesday that its artillery and rocket forces are at their highest-level combat posture in the latest in a string of bellicose threats aimed at South Korea and the United States.

Seoul's Defense Ministry said it hasn't seen any suspicious North Korean military activity and that officials were analyzing the North's warning. Analysts say a direct North Korean attack is extremely unlikely, especially during joint U.S.-South Korean military drills that end April 30, though there's some worry about a provocation after the training wraps up.

The rival Koreas have had several bloody naval skirmishes in disputed Yellow Sea waters since 1999. In November 2010, a North Korean artillery strike on a South Korean island killed two marines and two civilians. A suspected North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship earlier that same year, killing 46 South Korean sailors. North Korea denies the warship sinking.

North Korea, angry over routine U.S.-South Korean drills and recent U.N. sanctions punishing it for its Feb. 12 nuclear test, has vowed to launch a nuclear strike against the United States and repeated its nearly two-decade-old threat to reduce Seoul to a "sea of fire." Despite the rhetoric, outside weapons analysts have seen no proof that North Korea has mastered the technology needed to build a warhead small enough to mount on a missile.

On Tuesday, the North Korean army's Supreme Command said it will take "practical military action" to protect national sovereignty and its leadership in response to what it called U.S. and South Korean plots to attack.

The statement, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, cited the participation of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in South Korea-U.S. drills.

North Korea's field artillery forces — including strategic rocket and long-range artillery units that are "assigned to strike bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor troops in the U.S. mainland and on Hawaii and Guam and other operational zones in the Pacific as well as all the enemy targets in South Korea and its vicinity" — will be placed on "the highest alert from this moment," the statement said.

The North's recent threats are seen partly as efforts to strengthen internal loyalty to young leader Kim Jong Un and to build up his military credentials.

Kim "needs to show he has the guts. The best way to do that is to use the military might that he commands," said Lee Yoon-gyu, a North Korea expert at Korea National Defense University in Seoul. "This paves the way for greater praise for him if North Korea makes a provocation later and claims victory."

Kim will eventually be compelled to do "something provocative to prove the threats weren't empty," Lee said.

Tuesday is the third anniversary of the warship sinking, and new South Korean President Park Geun-hye urged the North again to abandon its nuclear weapons program. "Focusing its national strength on the development of nuclear weapons while its people are suffering starvation ... will only bring international isolation to themselves," Park said in a televised speech at a national cemetery south of Seoul where the 46 sailors are buried.

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Liberal media attacks as Woodward 'threat' seen as political threat to Obama

Former hoops star Dennis Rodman is on a diplomatic mission to North Korea and Watergate legend Bob Woodward is being defended by Republicans for his reporting.

Maybe the Mayans were right after all.

The stranger of the two is Woodward’s new-found star status with the right and his persona non grata status with the left. 

Bob Woodward was just the latest example of an Obama administration that has run roughshod over a press that caters to its every whim.

It was all Woodward’s fault. He committed apostasy, not once, but twice. 

He called out Obama’s lie about the sequester and reminded the world the whole ridiculous plan had been the president’s idea. Then, when the White House gave him heat, he told Politico that they had threatened him, though he never used the “T” word.

That “threat” came in email form after a 30-minute yell fest from White House economic adviser Gene Sperling. 

Many in the media have said Woodward overreacted. 

Former Obama adviser David Plouffe set in motion a Woodward is over-the-hill theme: “Watching Woodward last 2 days is like imagining my idol Mike Schmidt facing live pitching again. Perfection gained once is rarely repeated,” he Tweeted. (Yes, only Obama is allowed to be perfect more than once.)

The result was a social media feeding frenzy, followed by enormous coverage on the left and the right with Woodward even appearing on “Hannity.” 

The broadcast networks talked about the controversy in their morning shows, but were completely silent the following evening, less than 24 hours later. -- It was hardly the way old style media have treated big news from Woodward in the past.

Even the morning show coverage was less than stellar. 

“Today” gave the story just 16 seconds out of the 14,400 it had available on February 28. 

CBS “This Morning” did a bit better and noted Woodward was “accusing the White House of threatening him.” 

At least ABC treated it seriously, with ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl mentioning Woodward’s importance. “Woodward isn't just any reporter. He's the one portrayed, along with Carl Bernstein, in the movie ‘All the President's Men’ as taking down Richard Nixon.” Karl also included the White House “threat.”

None of this is new – neither the actions of the administration or the media under-reaction.

The Obama administration has intimidated journalists since before it won in 2008. Intimidation, harassment and lack of access have been tools it’s used all along. But when the lefty icon of D.C. political journalism is the victim, it sets the gab-osphere aflame.

Liberal talking heads targeted the long-time journalistic celeb as only a betrayed lover could.

MSNBC host Ed Schultz called Woodward’s actions “a total failure by a legendary journalist” and Woodward himself “nothing but a drama queen.”

MSNBC goofball Internationalist Martin Bashir dug deep for a metaphor. “I’m actually reminded of that British parliamentarian who, when he was attacked by Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, described it as the equivalent of being ravaged by a dead sheep.” (It was vintage MSNBC. There aren’t enough viewers for that to have to make sense.)

“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski made fun of Woodward during the left’s favorite morning show, asking: “is he really afraid of a little aide who said that to him? Really?”

The liberal outlet Huffington Post, which operates like a voice of the administration, was quick to dismiss someone the left used to love. “Bob Woodward Emails Show White House 'Threat' Was Not So Threatening,” read one headline. After Woodward appeared on “Hannity” on February 28, the site called it “Fox & Friend.” (In the lefty world, being friends to Fox is a mortal sin.)

CNN’s John Avlon was just as dismissive, he was just on a theoretically neutral network. “This is Bob Woodward who fought with the Nixon White House? I mean Chuck Colson and H.R. Haldeman would be ashamed to see Gene Sperling not come at Bob with anything stronger than that.”

Even The Washington Post, which has prospered about four decades on Woodward scoops, made light of the battle, saying, “only in Washington does the back and forth between a legendary journalist and a White House wonk turn into an epic talking-head fest and trending Twitter topic.” An Alexandra Petri column on “How to Threaten Bob Woodward” actually included a color-coded graphic of “The General Scale of Threateningness” with the Sperling quote listed under the “Mickey Mouse” category.

Once more, the media are choosing to bury a major issue in garbage, rather than address it.

Woodward was just the latest example of an administration that has run roughshod over a press that caters to its every whim. If Obama was the head of a political party whose name began with an R instead of a D, the American media would have declared war on him years ago.

Instead it’s the reverse. 

The liberal press adore Obama no matter how poorly he treats them. And anyone in the media – from CNBC stars Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer to Matt Drudge and, yes, Woodward – gets targeted if they dare challenge our thin-skinned overlord.  

Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. He writes frequently about media for Fox News Opinion. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.

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