The British ambassador to Israel and the plot to attack Iran

Craig Murray graciously authorised the republication of this article which has been blocked by Mainstream Media.  There is no need to present Craig Murray, an ex ambassador, but most importantly an insider of British politics and a courageous individual who denounced torture in Uzbekistan while he was posted as an ambassador there as well as western support for its regime.  His courage is unlike the false courage of some ambassadors in the ME today where they provoke local regimes with the full support of their governments.

 

This is Matthew Gould, second from right, British Ambassador to Israel, who was pictured speaking at a meeting of the Leeds Zionist Federation that was also the opening of the Leeds Hasbarah Centre. The Leeds Zionist Federation is part of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, motto “Speaking Up for Israel.” A collection was made at the meeting to send packages to members of the Israeli Defence Force.

On 29 May 2011 The Jerusalem Post reported: “British Ambassador Matthew Gould declared his commitment to Israel and the principles of Zionism on Thursday”.
Remember this background, it is unusual behaviour for a diplomat, and it is important.
The six meetings between British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould and Minister of Defence Liam Fox and Adam Werritty together – only two of which were revealed by Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell in his “investigation” into Werritty’s unauthorised role in the Ministry of Defence – raise vital concerns about a secret agenda for war at the core of government, comparable to Blair’s determination to drive through a war on Iraq..
This is a detective story. It begins a few weeks ago, when the Fox-Werritty scandal was first breaking in the media. I had a contact from an old friend from my Foreign Office days. This friend had access to the Gus O’Donnell investigation. He had given a message for me to a trusted third party.

Whistleblowing in the surveillance state is a difficult activity. I left through a neighbour’s garden, not carrying a mobile phone, puffed and panted by bicycle to an unmonitored but busy stretch of road, hitched a lift much of the way, then ordered a minicab on a payphone from a country pub to my final destination, a farm far from CCTV. There the intermediary gave me the message: what really was worrying senior civil servants in the Cabinet Office was that the Fox-Werritty link related to plans involving Mossad and the British Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould.

Since I became a notorious whistleblower, several of my ex-friends and contacts have used me to get out information they wanted to leak, via my blog. A good recent example was a senior friend at the UN who tipped me off in advance on the deal by which the US agreed to the Saudi attack on pro-democracy demonstrators in Bahrain, in return for Arab League support for the NATO attack on Libya. But this was rather different, not least in the apparent implication that our Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, was engaged in something with Werritty which went beyond official FCO policy.
I was particularly concerned by this because I knew slightly and liked Matthew Gould, from the time he wrote speeches for Robin Cook. I hoped there was nothing much in it. But then Gould’s name started to come up as professional journalists dug into the story, and reported Werritty’s funding by pro-Israeli lobby groups.
I decided that the best approach was for me to write to Matthew Gould. I did so, asking him when he had first met Werritty, how many times he had met him, and how many communications of every kind there had been between them. I received the reply that these questions would be answered in Gus O’Donnell’s report.
But Gus O’Donnell’s report in fact answered none of these questions. It only mentioned two meetings at which Fox, Gould and Werritty were all three present. It did not mention Gould-Werritty bilateral meetings and contacts at all. To an ex-Ambassador like me, there was also something very fishy about the two trilateral meetings O’Donnell did mention and his characterisation of them.
This led me to dig further, and I was shocked to find that O’Donnell was, at the most charitable interpretation, economical with the truth. In fact there were at least six Fox-Werritty-Gould meetings, not the two given by O’Donnell. Why did GOD lie? I now had no doubt that my informant had pointed me towards something very real and very important indeed.
Matthew Gould was the only British Ambassador who Fox and Werrity met together. They met him six times. Why?
The first meeting to which O’Donnell admits, took place in September 2010. O’Donnell says this was

“a general discussion of international defence and security matters to enable Mr Gould better to understand MOD’s perspective.”

O’Donnell says Werritty should not have been present. An FCO spokesman told me on 21 October that

“Mr Gould’s meeting with the Defence Secretary was arranged by his office as part of his pre-posting briefing calls.”

All Ambassadors make pre-posting briefing calls around Whitehall before taking up their job, as you would expect. But even for our most senior Ambassadors, outside the Foreign Office those calls are not at Secretary of State level. Senior officials are quite capable of explaining policy to outgoing Ambassadors; Secretaries of State have many other things to do.
For this meeting to happen at all was not routine, and Werritty’s presence made it still more strange. Why was this meeting happening? I dug further, and learnt from a senior MOD source that there were two more very strange things about this meeting, neither noted by O’Donnell. There was no private secretary or MOD official present to take note of action points, and the meeting took place not in Fox’s office, but in the MOD dining room.
O’Donnell may have been able to fox the media, but to a former Ambassador this whole meeting stunk. I bombarded the FCO with more questions, and discovered an amazing fact left out by O’Donnell. The FCO spokesman replied to me on 21 October 2011 that:

“Mr Werritty was also present at an earlier meeting Mr Gould had with Dr Fox in the latter’s capacity as shadow Defence Secretary.”

So Gould, Fox and Werritty had got together before Gould was Ambassador, while Fox was still in opposition and while Werritty was – what, exactly? This opened far more questions than it answered. I put them to the FCO. When, where and why had this meeting happened? We only knew it was before May 2010, when Fox took office. What was discussed? There are very strict protocols for senior officials briefing opposition front bench spokesman. Had they been followed?
The FCO refused point blank to answer any further questions. I turned to an independent-minded MP, Jeremy Corbyn, who put down a parliamentary question to William Hague. The reply quite deliberately ignored almost all of Corbyn’s question, but it did throw up an extraordinary bit of information – yet another meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould, which had not been previously admitted.
Hague replied to Corbyn that:

“Our ambassador to Israel was also invited by the former Defence Secretary to a private social engagement in summer 2010 at which Adam Werritty was present.”

Getting to the truth was like drawing teeth, but the picture was building. O’Donnell had completely mischaracterised the “Briefing meeting” between Fox, Werritty and O’Donnell by hiding the fact that the three had met up at least twice before – once for a meeting when Fox was in opposition, and once for “a social engagement.” The FCO did not answer Corbyn’s question as to who else was present at this “social engagement”.
This was also key because Gould’s other meetings with Fox and Werritty were being characterised – albeit falsely – as simply routine, something Gould had to do in the course of his ambassadorial duties. But this attendance at “a private social engagement” was a voluntary act by Gould, indubitable proof that, at the least, the three were happy in each other’s company, but given that all three were very active in zionist causes, it was a definite indication of something more than that.
That furtive meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould in the MOD dining room, deliberately held away from Fox’s office where it should have taken place, and away from the MOD officials who should have been there, now looks less like briefing and more like plotting.
My existing doubts about the second and only other meeting to which O’Donnell does admit make plain why that question is very important.
O’Donnell had said that Gould, Fox and Werritty had met on 6 February 2011:

“in Tel Aviv. This was a general discussion of international affairs over a private dinner with senior Israelis. The UK Ambassador was present.”

There was something very wrong here. Any ex-Ambassador knows that any dinner with senior figures from your host country, at which the British Ambassador to that country and a British Secretary of State are both present, and at which international affairs are discussed, can never be “private”. You are always representing the UK government in that circumstance. The only explanation I could think of for O’Donnell’s astonishing description of this as a “private” dinner was that the discussion was far from being official UK policy.
I therefore asked the FCO who was at this dinner, what was discussed, and who was paying for it? I viewed the last as my trump card – if either Gould or Fox was receiving hospitality, they are obliged to declare it. To my astonishment the FCO refused to say who was present or who paid. Corbyn’s parliamentary question also covered the issue of who was at this dinner, to which he received no reply.
Plainly something was very wrong. I therefore again asked how often Gould had met or communicated with Werritty without Fox being present. Again the FCO refused to reply. But one piece of information that had been found by other journalists was that, prior to the Tel Aviv dinner, Fox, Gould and Werritty had together attended the Herzilya conference in Israel. The programme of this is freely available. It is an unabashedly staunch zionist annual conference on “Israel’s security”, which makes no pretence at a balanced approach to Palestinian questions and attracts a strong US neo-conservative following. Fox, Gould and Werritty sat together at this event.
Yet again, the liar O’Donnell does not mention it.
I then learnt of yet another, a sixth meeting between Fox, Gould and Werritty. This time my infomrant was another old friend, a jewish diplomat for another country, based at an Embassy in London. They had met Gould, Fox and Werritty together at the “We believe in Israel” conference in London in May 2011. Here is a photo of Gould and Fox together at that conference.
I had no doubt about the direction this information was leading, but I now needed to go back to my original source. Sometimes the best way to hide something is to put it right under the noses of those looking for it, and on Wednesday I picked up the information in a tent at the Occupy London camp outside St Paul’s cathedral.
This is the story I was given.
Matthew Gould was Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Iran, a country which Werritty frequently visited, and where Werritty claimed to have British government support for plots against Ahmadinejad. Gould worked at the British Embassy in Washington; the Fox-Werritty Atlantic Bridge fake charity was active in building links between British and American neo-conservatives and particularly ultra-zionists. Gould’s responsibilities at the Embassy included co-ordination on US policy towards Iran. The first meeting of all three, which the FCO refuses to date, probably stems from this period.
According to my source, there is a long history of contact between Gould and Werritty. The FCO refuse to give any information on Gould-Werritty meetings or communications except those meetings where Fox was present – and those have only been admitted gradually, one by one. We may not have them all even yet.
My source says that co-ordinating with Israel and the US on diplomatic preparation for an attack on Iran was the subject of all these meetings. That absolutely fits with the jobs Gould held at the relevant times. The FCO refuses to say what was discussed. My source says that, most crucially, Iran was discussed at the Tel Aviv dinner, and the others present represented Mossad. The FCO again refuses to say who was present or what was discussed.
On Wednesday 2 November it was revealed in the press that under Fox the MOD had prepared secret and detailed contingency plans for British participation in an attack on Iran.
There are very important questions here. Was Gould really discussing neo-con plans for attacking Iran with Werritty and eventually with Fox before the Conservatives were even in government? Why did O’Donnell’s report so carefully mislead on the Fox-Gould-Werritty axis? How far was the FCO aware of MOD preparations for attacking Iran? Is there a neo-con cell of senior ministers and officials, co-ordinating with Israel and the United States, and keeping their designs hidden from the Conservative’s coalition partners?
The government could clear up these matters if it answered some of the questions it refuses to answer, even when asked formally by a member of parliament. The media have largely moved on from the Fox-Werritty affair, but have barely skimmed the surface of the key questions it raises. They relate to secrecy, democratic accountabilty and preparations to launch a war, preparations which bypass the safeguards of good government. The refusal to give straight answers to simple questions by a member of perliament strikes at the very root of our democracy.
Is this not precisely the situation we were in with Blair and Iraq? Have no lessons been learnt?
There is a further question which arises. Ever since the creation of the state of Israel, the UK had a policy of not appointing a jewish Briton as Ambassador, for fear of conflict of interest. As a similar policy of not appointing a catholic Ambassador to the Vatican. New Labour overturned both longstanding policies as discriminatory. Matthew Gould is therefore the first jewish British Ambassador to Israel.
Matthew Gould does not see his race or religion as irrelevant. He has chosen to give numerous interviews to both British and Israeli media on the subject of being a jewish ambassador, and has been at pains to be photographed by the Israeli media participating in jewish religious festivals. Israeli newspaper Haaretz described him as “Not just an ambassador who is jewish, but a jewish ambassador”. That rather peculiar phrase appears directly to indicate that the potential conflict of interest for a British ambassador in Israel has indeed arisen.
It is thus most unfortunate that it is Gould who is the only British Ambassador to have met Fox and Werritty together, who met them six times, and who now stands suspected of long term participation with them in a scheme to forward war with Iran, in cooperation with Israel. This makes it even more imperative that the FCO answers now the numerous outstanding questions about the Gould/Werritty relationship and the purpose of all those meetings with Fox.
There is no doubt that the O’Donnell report’s deceitful non-reporting of so many Fox-Gould-Werritty meetings, the FCO’s blunt refusal to list Gould-Werritty, meetings and contacts without Fox, and the refusal to say who else was present at any of these occasions, amounts to irrefutable evidence that something very important is being hidden right at the heart of government. I have no doubt that my informant is telling the truth, and the secret is the plan to attack Iran. It fits all the above facts. What else does?
Please feel free to re-use and republish this article anywhere, commercially or otherwise. It has been blocked by the mainstream media. I write regularly for the mainstream media and this is the first article of mine I have ever been unable to publish. People have risked a huge amount by leaking me information in an effort to stop the government machinery from ramping up a war with Iran. There are many good people in government who do not want to see another Iraq. Please do all you can to publish and redistribute this information.

Lebanon: A Tale of Two Governments and Two Visits (part III)

Part I and Part II

We divided our overnight stay in the north between a B&B in a small village high in the mountains surrounding the Qadisha (holy) valley and a hotel in Ehden.  The latter, perched at around 1800 meters above sea levels around the same valley, is the summer residence of former president Suleiman Frangie and current Marada movement leader MP Suleiman Frangie jr and an Aoun and Hezbollah political ally.  Opposite Frangie's den, and only few kilometers away, is Gea'gea's village Bsharre.  Samir Gea'gea' is the chief of the Lebanese Forces militia who fought in the civil war and is suspected of having played the main role in the slaying of the actual Marada movement leader's parents Tony Frangie, his wife and his daughter.  He was pardoned in 2005 by the new Lebanese parliament for other crimes and got out of prison to become an MP for Bsharre. Another Qadisha village, Diman, is also in the surroundings, is the summer residence of the Maronite Patriarchate.

The Qadisha valley is known for having contionuously hosted Maronite hermits and other Christian hermits since the 13th century, according to records, but probably before because there were hermits in the Maronite religion as soon as the 5th century.   Its mountains are interspersed with villages that reach for the sky.  Lebanon's mountainous regions have vibrant rural communities.  The Qadisha valley is at the heart of the Maronite religion history and yet, around it, the civil war has left the memory of dramatic events and deep divisions that run in the Maronite community until today.  There is a beautiful description with pictures of the valley on this blog.

During our stay we made frequent visits to my native village. 

On our first visit to my village, my cousin promised me that for every meal we eat with them he was going to accompany us on a tour of the land.  The land is outside the village and although I am acquainted with it, I couldn't remember its limits.  And for three consecutive days, we would arrive around 10 a.m. to the village, spend the morning visiting relatives, eat lunch with my cousin around 1 p.m. and head to the fields between 4 and 6 p.m.  

The village has expanded.  Nobody really leaves the village, even though they work outside, villagers keep houses in the village and so do their grown-up and married children.  Part of the agricultural land has been invaded by houses and I discovered the price went significantly up from what my father told us, partly because of housing expansion, partly because the dramatic increase in prices in Beirut is having a snowball effect on the rest of the country, and also because many wealthy Christians are fleeing Iraq and other Arab countries and settling in Lebanon, so much so that the Lebanese government had to set a limit on how much land and property a foreigner can buy. 

We visited the house where we were born my brothers and I.  It is uninhabitable right now, it has been empty for more than 20 years.  I arranged for an architect to visit and we are working right now on plans for renovations.  It was quite emotional to visit my parent's house.  There were some pictures and books covered in dust.  I rescued some of them.  I remember that at the start of the civil war my father, afraid that Christian Phalangist militia, who were executing their political enemies in the village, would find socialist litterature in our house, made me burn some books.  I remember my rage and my sadness but I also understood that my father was trying to protect us.  I promised myself that we would bring the house back to life.  Only thing left was to convince my brothers.

Outside our village visits, always warmly welcomed and eagerly expected, we toured the Qadisha valley, its mountains, villages, trails, fields and monasteries.  We also trekked the LMT in the area.  There  are beautiful Cedar reserves around Tannourine, Bsharre and Ehden, and we visited some of them.

One of the most beautiful monasteries is Saint Antoine of Qoshaya.  It hosts the first typographic printing machine of the ME on which the first Arabic bible was printed. 

We also went to the beach in the north.  One day we hired a fisherman boat to Rabbits' island near Mina, Tripoli (Lebanon's northern city).  The island has some insignificant ruins from the time of the crusaders and became a training ground for Palestinian factions before and during part of the civil war.  It is now a natural reserve.  

Tripoli is a very poor city and poor children were lining the Rachid Karame street begging drivers for money on red light stops.  It is also a recruiting ground for Hariri militia.  Another day on the beach was spent in Byblos. There was a big family reunion in Byblos.  My husband's niece, who was studying Arabic in Damascus, came for the day all the way from Damascus to see us. 

In the north, mostly Christian, very few were supporters of the western Saudi leaning March 14th movement led by Mr. Saad Hariri and his Christian ally Ge'gea'.  Despite the difficult situation in neighbouring Syria, and probably because of it, most Chritsians were apprehensive and wary of any western political influence and most Lebanese Christians in the north supported the Hezbollah-Aoun led coalition that was in the process of forming the next government.  Dennis Kucinich understood it better when, appearing on New TV (Lebanon) after a visit to Bashar El Assad in Damascus, one July morning, he said to the interviewer that after meeting El Assad for about three hours he was convinced that foreign intervention won't resolve tensions in Syria and that the best solution is dialogue.  The new Lebanese Patriarch, Al Ra'i, who took it upon himself to tour Maronite communities everywhere in Lebanon during this summer, visited my village on the day we left the country.  We saw the preparations and we were told that he will be met with orange scarves (orange is the color of the political movement of Hezbollah's Maronite ally Michel Aoun).  Al Ra'i got the message of the majority of Christians in Lebanon, they don't count on the West anymore.  It is no surpirse then to see his most recent statements about Syria and the necessary support for the resistance in Lebanon.

One thing is certain, Lebanese want to move forward, they don't want to make wars.  Past governments since Taef  applied neoliberal economic policies which saw Lebanese savings evaporate.  Lebanese used to be savers and not borrowers.  It isn't the case anymore.  The country is in a very difficult economic situation.  On our way to the airport, the taxi driver described to us how he lives.  He has a family of four.  He earns around 3000 dollars a month.  As real estate is high and exceeds budget he decided to live outside the city, but then gaz prices are high.  Good schools and good health are private.  By the end of the first week of every month, he has already spent most of his salary, mainly on reiumbursing borrowed money.  He goes to the bank, borrows again and waits for the next month.  Driving tourists is an additional income for him and he works as intermediary in real estate deals.  He told us that Lebanese don't possess their country anymore, they don't possess themselves.  He was hoping the new government would do something but was skeptical.  He was an angry man.  Most people who live on fixed income in Lebanon are like him.  

During our stay in Lebanon we watched on TV the debates in parliament around the confidence vote for the new Mikati government.  The debate was at times very acrimonious.  This is the first non-Hariri, non neoliberal, pro-people government since the 90s.  I had come to Lebanon in a first visit in Januray for my father's funerals with some anxiety over what might happen after the fall of the Hariri government and finished my second visit in July after a new government from a new coalition was formed.  Lebanon was in a post Hariri mood and it was hoping for some positive change.

Special Tribunal for Lebanon: A Prosecutor's "Tunnel Vision"

Al Akhbar English, strong aletrnative to non Qatari non Saudi media, is out.

This is a link to the latest article on the Special UN Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) from Omar Nashabe.

The STL is the first international tribunal to indict someone for a terrorism crime. Instead of targeting suspects affiliated to internationally recognized terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, the first terrorism indictment is aimed at Hezbollah, a Lebanese resistance movement. This does not come as a surprise for those who monitor events in the Middle East. Hezbollah represents a threat to the security of Israel, something unacceptable to the United States and other Western powers. The investigation into the assassination of Hariri may have been a golden opportunity to undermine Hezbollah.

WikiLeaks releases 349 cables on Lybia

The cables come from different US embassies around the world, most were created between 2006 and 2010 during US normalisation with Lybia.  Some date back as far as 1986.

Lebanon: A Tale of Two Governments And Two Visits (part II)

Part I

My father had died last January leaving each one of us, me and my brothers, few parcels of his land in the north. I was in Lebanon for his funerals back then and I came back this summer, this time with my family, to visit his land.

My father worked hard to acquire and maintain his land. He inherited some of it and bought the rest. He had a spiritual connection to his land. Before the Lebanese civil war he was unemployed for two consecutive years and the land saved us. With the usual olive harvest, he planted tobacco and was able to pay for our private school and maintain our living standards. During the civil war, he became unemployed again and we lived from the land. Even though we were children, we learned to acknowledge the material security the land afforded us.  In Lebanon's rural communities, the house and the land are what define persons first, no matter how much this person earns and no matter what her social position is. My father was proud of his land and he made us participate in the olive harvest every year. During the civil war he refused to sell and leave the village and Lebanon alltogether. He stayed in the village during its darkest hours while we were in safety away from him. He later sent my brothers abroad for fear of indoctrination by the militia. Even though we all ended up living and working outside Lebanon, we kept the land and the house, my father taught us to love the land.

I have vivid memories of my father's land. I remember accompanying him to the tobacco field and marveling at the sight of the morning dew hanging on the furry tobacco leaves. I remember the olive harvest, the delicious meals eaten under the olive trees, the itinerant seller of sweets wandering from one field to another and announcing his arrival with a bell and chansonnettes. I remember the donkeys carrying olive bags and children at the end of the day, the family meal of the evening with the Syrian workers who used to help in the harvest. I remember my father working late into the night after dinner to separate the olives from their leaves and the sight of olives rolling on a board to achieve this process. I remember the end of the harvest season, the goodbyes, and the sadness that settled afterward with the coming of the cold season, a sadness that would go only at easter time when the flowers came back to their trees promising another harvest. All these images were rolling in my head while we were driving from Beyrouth to the north this July.

It took some time to leave Beirut. The traffic was heavy and we were told that this was nothing. 'Wait until the gulfies show up'. Beirut was waiting for tourists from the gulf and unsure whether they were going to show up. And we learned that they did show up after all. Because of the traffic inside and around Beyrouth, the city keeps well its visitors. During our one week stay there we hardly left the city, only once for the Chouf area and another time for Kesrouane. Leaving Beirut for good this time was liberating.

The day we left Beirut, there were news that the long anticipated indictments of Hezbollah members were issued by the STL. These news appeared barely two days after rumours that the Hezbollah approved Mikati government had reached an agreement on its position of principle on the STL, and that the newly formed government was going for a confidence vote in the parliament. This positive denouement for the Mikati government was not anticipated by Hezbollah's political rivals, Hariri and March 14th. Nor did they anticipate before that Lebanon would find a Sunni politician to form a government, after the ousting of Hariri, and that Mikati would be able to form a government. The only thing March 14th and hariri could count on to cloud the political climate for their opponents were the STl indictments and here they came, divinely timely to throw suspicion at Hezbollah. However, the reality among Lebanese, relatives and non relatives, from all political backgrounds, would unravel in a different way. Nobody among Lebanese we encountered during our subsequent two weeks stay would care about the STL. The indictements, along with other measures taken by the US to criminalise Hezbollah and its members, are not affecting Hezbollah's standing in Lebanon. But then they are maybe targeting the wider Arab public opinion. This is the most relevant context within which to interpret the current campaign to criminalise Hezbollah as the battle is ongoing to control the Arab spring and transform it into a cold Sunni-Shia war.

On our way to north Lebanon, we stopped at my aunt in Kesrouane. Lebanese customs obligent, the conversation veered toward politics very quickly. My aunt and her grown up children are all for the general (Aoun). Past governments mismanaged the country, made Lebanese poor, bought Beirut downtown on the cheap, sold it to gulf money, estranged Lebanese from their city downtown by making it look like any gulf rich city center. They used the shock doctrine to implement neoliberal policies that wrecked Lebanese traditional subsistance economy and way of life. Before my two visits this year to Lebanon, the last time I was there was in 2005. And I could see that the economic situation of the people and their way of life have greatly deteriorated. Lebanon is far from being self sufficient for its energy needs. Every household pays for the electricity twice, once for the state owned electricity company and once for a private provider. The state provides barely 12 hours of electricity per day. Add to that the soaring price of gaz and you have Lebanese with good jobs scrambling to make ends meet.  Only the super rich are not affected. Talking to my aunt, I realise how much Aoun's populist discourse has touched nerve among Lebanese. My aunt's household is an integrated economy, all inhabit the same building that they own, each one has a floor in the building and share everything from meals to transport to maids...They are four adults working good jobs to make ends meet, for a family of seven in total.

My parents' house in the village, a traditional white stone house, needs extensive renovations. We had booked two locations in the Qadisha valley for our two weeks stay in the north. During this time we were going to shuttle between the village and the two locations, visit the beautiful Qadisha valley, maybe Tripoli if all is well, Byblos, and walk the cedar reserves as well as small sections of the LMT, especially the ones that follow the old trails used to connect people and animals between the mountain villages of the north.

During my stay in the north I watched parts of the parliament sessions preceding the vote of confidence and an interesting interview with Dennis Kucinich on Al Jadeed TV after he had a three hours meeting with Syria's Assad.

Part III and final to follow...

Norway Terror Accused Breivik Loves Israel

Instead of trying to exterminate Europe's Jews, Breivik suggests Hitler ought to have enforced Zionism: "He could have easily worked out an agreement with the UK and France to liberate the ancient Jewish Christian lands with the purpose of giving the Jews back their ancestral lands," Breivik writes. "The UK and France would perhaps even contribute to such a campaign in an effort to support European reconciliation. The deportation of the Jews from Germany wouldn't be popular but eventually, the Jewish people would regard Hitler as a hero because he returned the Holy land to them."

Read More about Norway terror accused and Israel.

Also, Israelis debate on the web: did Norway get what it deserved?