Saving the Bashar al-Assad regime by getting it to junk weapons of mass destruction it doesn’t need while vastly improving Russia’s international image is a good deal for them

Syria U-Turn Sends Troubling Message of American Weakness – Forward.com, by Hillel Halkin, September 22, 2013

(Reuters) – In the photograph the two robed men stand shoulder-to-shoulder, one tall and erect, the other more heavyset. Both smile for the camera. The picture from Tehran is a rare record of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meeting Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite paramilitary group.

Special Report: Hezbollah gambles all in Syria | Reuters, by Samia Nakhoul, September 26, 2013

A family in Israel’s Arab minority is mourning the death of their son, killed fighting in the Syrian civil war.

Zaki Agbariah said he is proud of his 28-year-old son Mueid. The family told Channel 1 television Wednesday that Mueid didn’t tell anybody that he was going to Syria to fight.

Israeli Arab Killed in Syrian Civil War – ABC News, AP, September 18, 2013

Syria has deterrent weapons, more advanced than anything in its chemical arsenal, that could blindside Israel in mere moments, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed Thursday.

“Originally, we produced chemical weapons in the 1980s as a deterrent to Israel’s nuclear capabilities,” Assad said in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated, Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar newspaper, adding that “today, we have weapons that are far more important and sophisticated and that can blindside Israel in the blink of an eye.”

Assad: We have weapons that could blindside Israel | The Times of Israel, September 26, 2013.

Suddenly there is a volley of fire. “Get down guys,” the soldiers say. Some dive for cover in a concrete trench.

A sergeant explains that bombs and bullets from the Syrian war regularly land inside Israeli territory. The shooting may have been warning shots, or maybe just some stray bullets from a gunfight on the outskirts of Quneitra.

Israel eyes Syria warily from border buffer zone in Golan Heights – World News, by Geraint Vincent, September 25, 2013.

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When it’s the people in the apartment next door, one monitors the loud voices, the character of the yelling, something breaking like a plate or glass.  Then something big and heavy pounds against the wall.

Him?  Her?  The kid?  Furniture?

Time to call the police.

Even that level of involvement may not be so easy.

If the domestic combatants figure out it was you called the cops, watch your back.

If there are children involved, you have not only called the police but social services and probably initiated a separations investigation, and some suffering mama or papa may not be too happy about that — and might figure you convenient for blaming first.

And all you was doin’ was watchin’ tv.

* * *

In the big bad ol’ world, states don’t intervene in wars so much as get sucked into them, rather like ships trying to sail on their way past the darkest of expanding vortex.

So the Jews, who were just watchin’ the tv too, stand beside the conflict in Syria not exactly unhappy to see Hezbollah invested in the battle while Russia and the United States stand outside the bloody sandbox trying to keep to keep the flying shit from spilling out farther into their own affairs.

That’s not really neighborly, but what’s a good and highly functioning state or two very powerful ones to do?

* * *

Israel has stepped up its sensitivity to potential activity on its borders; beyond that, and some sales of gas masks, it’s busy with being.  With life.  It has its security arrangements in place; it’s people — Jewish and other Israelis — have taken steps to be helpful to those in need of help — e.g.,

Israeli raising funds to help Syrians ‘dying near us’ – Israel News, Ynetnews, Yitzhak Benhorin, May 10, 2013

Israel sets up ‘field hospital’ to treat injured Syrians – Israel News, Ynetnews, Yoav Zitun, AFP

Israeli organization delivers hundreds of tons of food, medicine to Syrian refugees | JPost | Israel News, September 9, 2013: “Nobody asks permission to kill. We do not ask permission to save lives,” says NGO’s founder.”

* * *

Delusional narcissistic reflection of motives — as with propaganda, the aggressor claims defense from what he himself has in mind for his target — would seem to have organized the Assad mentality to believe itself the target of Israeli aggression, a belief and posture abetting and motivating the state’s and state culture’s own aggression against Israel.

Give that a moment to settle.

______

Within the framework of “civilizational narcissism”, Haider Mobarak’s term, this nifty nugget that you will find only here — “Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motives” — accounts much for the form of rhetoric embraced (language) and combat pursued (behavior) throughout the Islamic Small Wars.

The social grammar — the hidden rule learned early — is probably the message that if not defended, something will be taken from the child (e.g., “If you don’t eat your supper now, I shall give it to your brother” — a common enough phrase according to Raphael Patai).

What happens with the ancient and modern House of Israel with its civilizational psychology operating quite differently is that it’s outside of and unconcerned with this mess that is of intense interest to someone else enveloped in what might be called a narcissistic trap, that is the world spun around the narcissist’s delusions in such a way that it organizes the surrounding social architecture.  In essence, the dictator at some point cannot escape his own dictatorship: he’s created too much myth, made too many corrupt deals, bargained himself right into a prison of the soul.  The flow down is to fighters who cannot refuse the fight however absurd and surreal its imagined basis.

Who needs Pharaoh, that most magnificent construct of the malignant narcissist around whom the world revolves?

The Jews, and with a mixed multitude suffering the same insight, walked.

Who needs Assad?

The Jews, and the Israelis who are not only Jews, stand to the side eager only to help the bereaved, injured, and lost and otherwise maintain their defenses.

* * *

“Two mad wasps in a bell jar” — those who go into Syria to fight other than the one dictatorship go to combat over issues irrelevant to existence, the humanity of humanity, and probably to God as well, to whom, in the ancient manner, they may serve as illustration for the ages.

Additional Reference

Syria war, refugees to cost Lebanon $7.5 billion – World Bank | Reuters, by Dominic Evans, September 19, 2013.

The Arab Mind: Raphael Patai: 9780967201559: Amazon.com: Books

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