Israel wants Assad to stay

The Washington Post published an article by Janine Zacharia under the title "Israel, long critical of Assad, may prefer he stay after all." The article included a "map of alleged Hezbollah installations provided to The Washington Post this week by Israeli military officials identifies more than 550 underground bunkers, 300 surveillance sites and 100 other facilities."

The same article reported: As one member of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet put it, “We know Assad. We knew his father. Of course, we’d love to have a democratic Syria as our neighbor. But do I think that’s going to happen? No.”

Israelis are coming to the rescue of the embattled Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad who is facing a growing uprising at home. To help him out, the Israeli are trying to trump up the "resistance" narrative that Assad has been referring to as part of his cover up to brutally oppress Syrians demonstrating in the streets for freedom.

Lebanon's Assafir daily, an Assad supporter, got the Israeli clue and translated only this following sentence from Zacharia's Post article: "Our [Israeli] interest is to show the world that the Hezbollah organization has turned these villages into fighting zones," the senior Israeli commander said.

In its lead story, Assafir planned to show that Israel was preparing for war on Lebanon, and therefore Assad was needed to help support Hezbollah in the coming war. Needless to say, Assafir ignored the part where an Israeli minister (most probably Defense Minister Ehud Barak, an openly staunch supporter of Assad) praises the Assad regime. Assafir and the Israeli military officials who passed on the map to The Washington Post are on the same page: They both want Assad to stay.

The Israeli defense establishment, with Barak at its helm, has long been known for its affection toward Assad. It is going out of its way to help him stay. Passing a map on to the Washington Post was part of the Israeli effort in defense of Assad.

-- News from Washington