• Putin Officials Said to Admit Real Syria Goal Is Far Broader - Ilya Arkhipov, Stepan Kravchenko and Henry Meyer
  Russian officials now admit that Moscow's aim in Syria is far broader than the publicly announced fight against terrorist groups. The Kremlin's real goal is to help Syrian President Assad retake as much territory as possible, Russian officials said. Moscow's deployment could last a year or more, one official said.
      President Putin is willing to risk falling into the kind of quagmire that Russia faced in Afghanistan a generation ago for the chance to roll back U.S. influence and demonstrate he can dictate terms to Washington. (Bloomberg)
• Iran Backs Assad in Battle for Aleppo with Proxies, Ground Troops - Loveday Morris and Mustafa Salim
  A major assault on Aleppo, Syria's most populous city, is being coordinated by Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's Quds Force, using Iranian troops, Hizbullah forces, and Shiite militias from Iraq and elsewhere. (Washington Post)
• Ex-BBC Chairman Attacks Corporation over Israel Coverage - Marcus Dysch
  Former BBC chairman Lord Grade wrote to the BBC's director of news and current affairs, James Harding, to say its coverage of the ongoing violence in Israel and the West Bank had at times been misleading. The BBC had failed to "fulfill its obligation to viewers" by not showing Palestinian Authority officials praising the attacks, he wrote.
      Lord Grade said a report by correspondent Orla Guerin on Sunday last week had implied "equivalence between Israeli victims of terrorism and Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli security forces in the act of carrying out terror attacks....An emotional interview is conducted with the father of a dead Palestinian youth who had been killed committing a fatal terror attack. However, the report failed to show the emotional distress caused to Israelis by any of these recent attacks. This is inexcusable."  (Jewish Chronicle-UK)

• Palestinian Proposal to UNESCO: Western Wall Is Part of Al-Aqsa Mosque - Itamar Eichner
  The Palestinians will submit a proposal to UNESCO on Tuesday, backed by Egypt and five other Arab states, to establish that the Western Wall in Jerusalem is part of the al-Aqsa Mosque. It is likely that the proposal will be approved due to the automatic Muslim and Arab majority.
      The Palestinians also want the countries of the world to condemn Israel for calling on its citizens to bear arms in light of the recent terror wave. They also call for a declaration that the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem are part of Palestine.
      Israel's Ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama Hacohen, said, "The new proposal is tantamount to pouring fuel on the fire of incitement and ongoing terror instead of being responsible and calming the situation down. Of course we must not despair or get alarmed, as they have lies whereas we have the ethical, realistic and historical truth, and it will triumph. The Jewish people and the Western Wall are one and the chances of the Palestinians to Islamize the Western Wall are the same as the chances of Islamizing the Jewish people."
      "We pay a high cost for our existence in our country, but there is no responsible partner able to reduce this cost in the near future, because apart from the question of their right to a state in our country, their conduct raises a critical question regarding their ability to act as a responsible country and this is the saddest conclusion from the Palestinians' conduct at UNESCO."  (Ynet News)
• IDF Soldier Wounded in West Bank Stabbing Attack
  An Israeli soldier was wounded in a stabbing attack in the southern Hebron hills region of the West Bank on Tuesday. The Palestinian attacker, Uda al-Salamah, 24, was killed. (Jerusalem Post)
• Israeli Critically Wounded in West Bank Attack - Elisha Ben Kimon
  An Israeli was critically wounded near Hebron on Tuesday when stones were thrown at his vehicle. After he stopped his car at the side of the road and exited his vehicle, the individual was then run over by a passing car. (Ynet News)

• Ross, Dershowitz: American Policy Leaving a Dangerous Vacuum in the Middle East - Debra Nussbaum Cohen
  Current American policy is leaving a dangerous vacuum in the Middle East, former U.S. Middle East peace negotiator Dennis Ross and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said Sunday. The current violence in Israel is "qualitatively different" from the second intifada, said Ross. "Even now the rest of the Arab world is not focused on this. Palestinians feel the Arabs don't care about them. They're very disaffected with their own leadership" and "they are incited by a false narrative" in which Palestinian leaders are "spreading something that they know is not true."
      A reason that current violence has not exploded into a greater conflagration involving Palestinian security forces is that "the consequences of the second intifada still weigh on Palestinians in the West Bank," Ross said. Dershowitz said "the greatest fear Palestinians have is of an Arab Spring," which would likely see more radical leadership move in. (Ha'aretz)
• Proposed International Supervision of Jerusalem's Holy Sites Has a History of Failure - Lenny Ben-David
  France is calling for international observers on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. But the absolute failure of UN international supervisors tasked with overseeing Jerusalem's Jewish holy sites between 1949 and 1967 should serve as a warning. The UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) was established by the Security Council to be responsible for maintaining the Armistices after the 1948-49 fighting. The Armistice Agreements between Jordan and Israel, signed on April 3, 1949, called for "free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives."
      But there was no access to Jewish Holy Sites, particularly the Western Wall. Ancient Jewish synagogues in the Jewish Quarter were razed. The Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was not only off limits to Jews, but the ancient cemetery was desecrated, with tombstones used as paving stones. The writer served as Deputy Chief of Mission at Israel's embassy in Washington. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
• The Middle East Collapse - Henry A. Kissinger
  Russia's unilateral military action in Syria is the latest symptom of the disintegration of the American role in stabilizing the Middle East order that emerged from the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. Four states in the region have ceased to function as sovereign. Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq have become targets for nonstate movements seeking to impose their rule. The remaining Sunni states feel threatened by both the religious fervor of ISIS as well as by Shiite Iran.
      American policy is on the verge of losing the ability to shape events. The U.S. is now opposed to, or at odds in some way or another with, all parties in the region: with Egypt on human rights; with Saudi Arabia over Yemen; with each of the Syrian parties over different objectives. Russia, Iran, ISIS and various terrorist organizations have moved into this vacuum. The writer served as national-security adviser and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford. (Wall Street Journal)

Palestinian Leaders Have Created a Culture of Death - Tzipi Hotovely (Wall Street Journal)

• The latest surge of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis has come in the immediate wake of explicit calls by the Palestinian leadership to "spill blood."
• This well-orchestrated campaign of violence follows many years in which Palestinian children have been taught to idolize the murder of Jews as a sacred value and to regard their own death in this "jihad" as the pinnacle of their aspirations.
• Yet the apathy shown by the international community to the death-culture fostered by Palestinian elites, and the unbalanced manner in which subsequent violence is often treated by the international media - as if there is any kind of symmetry between terrorists and their victims - is doing long-term, and possibly irrevocable, harm to generations of Palestinians.
• The unending stream of blood-drenched caricatures and video clips that circulate virally through Palestinian social media is a telling indication of how profoundly the worship of violence is entrenched in Palestinian society.
• Israeli children grow up on songs of peace. Palestinian children are taught to hate.
• Changing the Palestinian death-culture is no less important for the Palestinians than for Israel.
  
  The writer is deputy foreign minister of Israel.