Well, some believe in phone calls from heaven/hell.
Turkey intercepts Hezbollah arms
ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- Five Iranian and one Syrian aircraft were barred from flying into Lebanon by Turkey, which claimed they were ferrying arms for Hezbollah militants.
The Turkish Hurriyet newspaper reported Monday the last flight diversion was Thursday when an Iranian airlines Parsair flight was forced to land at Diyarbakir military airport in eastern Turkey. The newspaper said U.S. intelligence reports indicated the plane carried three missile launchers and containers with Chinese C-802 land-to-sea missiles, and it was ordered to turn around.
From Jerusalem, the Ha'aretz newspaper said Turkish authorities would not elaborate on whether the intervention was part of a new national policy.
In mid July, Hezbollah militants launched a month-long rain of missiles on northern Israel, which sent some 10,000 troops into Lebanon in response.
Source
Believed to have been Ilyushin Il-76s, the aircraft were forced to land at Diyarbakir airbase in south-east Turkey on 27 June and 8 August. Israel had suspected the flights were being used to deliver missiles to Hezbollah militants, but both aircraft were declared clear by the Turkish authorities following a search.
The fact that FDR and Churchill were the cordial allies of a monster such as Stalin strongly suggests that neither would have consulted reason or logic in such a matter, but only what they perceived as their self-interest. Your analogy fails at any event, because it does not describe the situation in the Lebanon. The Lebanese military has never been more than a more heavily armed police force. The various militias were the only groups approaching militarily competent forces at the time the civil war broke out. The government appealed for Syria to intervene on behalf of the Maronites by basically blackmailing Syria--although Syria has a coast, and the port of Smyrna, now Izmir, in Turkey is a source for imports, Syria since its creation as a state has always relied upon the Lebanon as an entry point for imports and a departure point for exports. Syrian troops entered, and in addition to quelling the burgeoning civil war, created a client militia among Sunnis in the Lebanon. But the largest single confession in the Lebanon are the Shi'ites, although they are not more than 40% of the population, and are themselves divided on sectarian lines. The occupation of southern Lebanon by Israel, and no appropriate response by Syria in the eyes of the Persians, lead them to help set-up Hezbollah, as there was then no effective Shi'ite militia.
Hezbollah claims to represent the Shi'ites of the Lebanon, but politically has not been able to capture even 10% of the seats in parliament, even though claiming to represent about 40% of the population. Any suggestion that 90% of the population of the Lebanon does or ever has supported Hezbollah is loony, in the kindest construction. The militias were ground to dust in the more than 15 years of civil war in the Lebanon. Israel used the Maronite militia as clients for their atrocities, and after the slaughter in the refugee camps at Sabra and Shatilla, the Syrian-sponsored "Syrian Socialist" militia, and Hezbollah, as well as the Palestinians set out to destroy the Maronite militia. They largely succeeded, except for those Maronites who fled to the south to shelter behind Israeli lines.
Since the departure of the Israelis, no militia has had the membership and equipment to challenge Hezbollah, and the regular military of the Lebanon was never well-enough equipped or staffed to challenge them. Harik Hariri, the twice-Prime Minister of the Lebanese Republic, made the gamble to put all of the nation's resources into the rebuilding of the Lebanon after the civil war, and little resource was left over for the military. His decision seems to have been justified by the speed with which the Lebanese economy recovered, and especially in comparison to the predecessor Prime Mininster, Omar Karami, who attempted to make the Lebanon a client state of Syria (there was a Prime Minister who intervened, but for less than a year, and his policies cannot fairly be judged). Hariri was Prime Minister for more than six years, and after a hiatus, was Prime Minister a second time. His popularity was enormous, and being succeeded by Karami, when he was assassinated, Karami's government fell. Hariri might be faulted for not building a powerful military to challenge Hezbollah, but it was a guns or butter situation, and Hariri chose butter--and the Lebanese people agree with him. Neither the United Nations, nor Israel nor Syria kept their engagements in the settlement of the civil war, and if they all had, there is good reason to suggest that Hezbollah would not now be the problem it has been.
Here's a possibly better analogy. Suppose that some out of control militia in Holland had started rocketing German towns and cities back when Adolf Hitler was in charge of Germany, say, around 1937. The HMFIC of Holland calls Uncle Adolf up on the phone and gives him pretty much the message I described earlier, asking him to understand that the hollandbullies or whatever the stupid mother******s were calling themselves did not represent Holland or the Dutch government, and that the actual Dutch military was simply too weak and feckless to do anything about it, and asking Uncle Adolf to refrain from targetting rocket launch sites for fear of harming Dutch civilians.....
How do you think old Uncle Adolf would have responded?
Basically, every form of terrorism, including the recent little experiment in amateur rocketry conducted by the hezbullies, depends altogether on the idea of the victim being more civilized than the perpetrators. Take that away, and the whole terrorist thing collapses like a house of cards.
And I strongly suspect that we've all just seen the last time that Israel will ever fall into such a logical trap.
You analogies continue to fail because you posit them in a vacuum. Did you posit that Holland had never had an effective military (never needing one), and that what there had been was destroyed in fighting between more powerful militias? Did you posit that Germany had twice illegally invaded Holland? Did you posit that two world class powers had sent their forces in, resulting in the destruction of the remaining militias, except your Holland Bullies? Did you posit gross violations of human rights including slaughter of thousands out of hand by the Germans during one or both of their illegal invasions?
No, you didn't, because you want to reduce this to simple-minded terms which will allow you to slander one group and praise the other. I'm not going to keep playing an analogy game with you, because you are intent on portraying all Lebanese as terrorists, and all Israelis as innocent victims--which is nowhere near the truth.
When Sunni fanatics blow up Shi'ite fanatics in Iraq, and the Shi'ites respond in like kind, is that because both sides continually make the mistake of assuming their opponents are too civilized to respond?
Ticomaya wrote:UK ---> UN ---> Iran ---> Hezbollah
Since the article you quote doesn't say anything what you wrote in bold, since latest news do neither - you got your conslusions from what exactly?
[19 hours ago - which is the latest news about this online - The Times published that all is still a mystery:
serial numbers don't fit, the kit was originally a Russian kit - but the Israelis described it different, such night-vision equipment had also been sold to Lebanon and to Israel in the past ...:
Hezbollah kit still a mystery)
Walter Hinteler wrote:Ticomaya wrote:UK ---> UN ---> Iran ---> Hezbollah
Since the article you quote doesn't say anything what you wrote in bold, since latest news do neither - you got your conslusions from what exactly?
I got my conclusions from the article ... which says the goggles were made in Briain, then supplied to Iran under a program administered by the UN, and then ended up in the hands of Hezbollah.
UK ---> UN ---> Iran ---> Hezbollah
Which link in the chain do you take issue with?
Well, since last weekend it is - more or less - clear that they might be British made but ...
I admit that it's a big 'but'.
Certainly, no-one used US-made (small) weapons against the IDF.
Just propaganda and faked photos.
Ticomaya wrote:
In 2003, Britain supplied the Iranian Anti-Narcotics Police with 250 night-vision systems and last year provided 50 suits of body armor under a program administered by the United Nation's Office on Drugs and Crime to interdict heroin and opium shipments through Iran from Afghanistan....
Once upon a time, in a cottage bordering a thick, forboding forest, there lived three pigs and a little girl......
gungasnake wrote:
Once upon a time, in a cottage bordering a thick, forboding forest, there lived three pigs and a little girl......
Yes, I always thought this to be laughable program .... from the point onwards the USA initiated the UN-initiative.
On the other hand, it's quite astonishing that William Hague is quoted now by the US-conservatives: a William Hague who has made increasingly anti-American statements of late and has been noticeably critical of Israel.
We better help Israel disarm Hezbollah or else a much larger number of non-combatants will be killed.
And that ain't no damn fairytale.
Here's an interesting document, showing the Zionist proposals towards Palestine in 1919:
Zionist Organization 3 February 1919
Statement of the Zionist Organization regarding Palestine.
5. The mandate shall be subject also to the following special conditions:
I. Palestine shall be placed under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment there of the Jewish National Home and ultimately render possible the creation of an autonomous Commonwealth, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the
http://domino.un.org/unispal.NSF/3822b5e39951876a85256b6e0058a478/2d1c045fbc3f12688525704b006f29cc!OpenDocument
ican711nm wrote:We better help Israel disarm Hezbollah or else a much larger number of non-combatants will be killed.
And that ain't no damn fairytale.
As evidenced by this latest fiasco, we'd better not help Israel disarm Hezballah else large numbers of non-combatants will be killed again.
Walter Hinteler wrote:Well, since last weekend it is - more or less - clear that they might be British made but ...
I admit that it's a big 'but'.
Certainly, no-one used US-made (small) weapons against the IDF.
Just propaganda and faked photos.
You may or may not be surprised to learn that it is the "
Iran ---> Hezbollah" part of the equation that I am most interested in, not the country of manufacture.
McTag wrote:As I recall, the original UN proposal/Resolution was "to create a home for the Jews in Palestine"
So they* must have been content with that description of the land at that time
(*they= the leaders of the Zionist movement and the UN)
and also note the phrase, IN Palestine. (not OF Palestine)
The wording, "establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people" appears in Britains Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the Zionist Federation.
McTag wrote:Here's an interesting document, showing the Zionist proposals towards Palestine in 1919:
Zionist Organization 3 February 1919
Statement of the Zionist Organization regarding Palestine.
5. The mandate shall be subject also to the following special conditions:
I. Palestine shall be placed under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment there of the Jewish National Home and ultimately render possible the creation of an autonomous Commonwealth, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the
http://domino.un.org/unispal.NSF/3822b5e39951876a85256b6e0058a478/2d1c045fbc3f12688525704b006f29cc!OpenDocument
What's interesting is that the League of Nations adopted this wording almost verbatim in their Palestine Mandate:
Preamble
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country
Article 2.
The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
Both documents are available through
Yale's Avalon Project.
Ticomaya wrote:
You may or may not be surprised to learn that it is the "Iran ---> Hezbollah" part of the equation that I am most interested in, not the country of manufacture.
I suppose, such is commonly know. But
Israel > Hezbollah seems to be a bigger surprise.
Walter Hinteler wrote:Ticomaya wrote:
You may or may not be surprised to learn that it is the "Iran ---> Hezbollah" part of the equation that I am most interested in, not the country of manufacture.
I suppose, such is commonly know. But
Israel > Hezbollah seems to be a bigger surprise.
Yes, Walter ... that would be a bigger surprise.
You have news to report?
