ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

For those who find them a suspect source, Walter's source is the Jewish Virtual Library (a source i have frequently used, and have quoted in this thread), and it agrees in all particulars with the borders proposed by the Zionists in 1919, as shown in the map above.

Not a lot of room for the Arabs in that version of the Jewish state.

...
So if they chose only a small portion for themselves before they were attacked, what was that small portion? Or is everyone saying that they declared a state with the borders defined in the partition plan?

The 1947 UN partition resolution proposed to divide the territory of Mandatory Palestine--the area between the Jordan River Valley and the Mediterranean Sea--into a Jewish state and an Arab state in economic union, with Jerusalem established as an international enclave. Although the 650,000 Jews in Palestine owned only 7% of the land, 55% of it was to go to the Jewish state, whereas the 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs would receive 45%. The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected both the concept of partition and the terms of the resolution and decided to oppose it by force. In the armed struggle that followed, the Arabs, in spite of the intervention of Arab armies, were defeated by the better organized and equipped Jews, who ended up with 77% of the land.

...

The General Assembly approved partition on November 29, granting to Jews some 5,500 square miles, mostly in the arid Negev.

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents.

After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to building nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.

Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that "incorrect," noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.

When the congressional report was released last month, Hoekstra said his intent was "to help increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat." Spokesman Jamal Ware said yesterday that Hoekstra will respond to the IAEA letter.

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the report was "clearly not prepared in a manner that we can rely on." He agreed to send it to the full committee for review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before then, he said in an interview.

The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report "took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire -- and the Intelligence Community's assessments as more certain -- than they are."

Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office "reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06." He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.

"This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors."

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

It concluded that the lack of intelligence made it impossible to support talks with Tehran. Democrats on the committee saw it as an attempt from within conservative Republican circles to undermine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has agreed to talk with the Iranians under certain conditions.

The report's author, Fredrick Fleitz, is a onetime CIA officer and special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department. Bolton, who is now ambassador to the United Nations, had been highly influential during President Bush's first term in drawing up a tough policy that rejected talks with Tehran.

Among the allegations in Fleitz's Iran report is that ElBaradei removed a senior inspector from the Iran investigation because he raised "concerns about Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program." The agency said the inspector has not been removed.

A suggestion that ElBaradei had an "unstated" policy that prevented inspectors from telling the truth about Iran's program was particularly "outrageous and dishonest," according to the IAEA letter, which was signed by Vilmos Cserveny, the IAEA's director for external affairs and a former Hungarian ambassador.

Hoekstra's committee is working on a separate report about North Korea that is also being written principally by Fleitz. A draft of the report, provided to The Post, includes several assertions about North Korea's weapons program that the intelligence officials said they cannot substantiate, including one that Pyongyang is already enriching uranium.

The intelligence community believes North Korea is trying to acquire an enrichment capability but has no proof that an enrichment facility has been built, the officials said.

I consider that piece to be highly relevant, Revel, because many of the extreme right in the United States were eager to use the Israeli war on the Lebanon as a justification for an attack on Iran. Fortunately, they are in a minority in this country. I don't doubt, though, the the radical right would like to see an attack on Iran. Claiming that the Iranians were behind the Hezbollah raid to kidnap IDF members was part and parcel of this attempt to justify attacking Iran.

Amnesty: Israeli military action massively destroyed Lebanon's infrastructure

Quote:

The human rights group said initial evidence, including the pattern and scope of the Israeli attacks, number of civilian casualties, widespread damage and statements by Israeli officials "indicate that such destruction was deliberate and part of a military strategy, rather than 'collateral damage.'"

Amnesty International, whose delegates monitored the fighting in both Israel and Lebanon, said Israel violated international laws banning direct attacks on civilians and barring indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.

"The scale of the destruction was just extraordinary," said Amnesty researcher Donatella Rovera, who visited Lebanon during the war and co-authored the report.

"There is clear evidence of disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks."

The group urged the United Nations to look into whether both combatants, Israel and Hezbollah, broke international law.

Amnesty International said it would address Hezbollah's attacks on Israel separately.

LONDON (Reuters) - Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah committed war crimes in its conflict with
Israel by targeting civilians with rockets packed with metal ball bearings, rights group Amnesty International said on Thursday.
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It said around a quarter of the nearly 4,000 rockets that Hizbollah launched into Israel during the 34-day war were fired directly into urban areas.

"The scale of Hizbollah's attacks on Israeli cities, towns and villages, the indiscriminate nature of the weapons used and statements from the leadership confirming their intent to target civilians make it all too clear that Hizbollah violated the laws of war," Amnesty's Secretary-General Irene Khan said.

"The fact that Israel has also committed serious violations in no way justifies violations by Hizbollah," she said in a statement. "Civilians must not be made to pay the price for unlawful conduct on either side."

Hizbollah parliamentarian Hassan Fadlallah said that by criticizing Hizbollah's actions alongside those of Israel, Amnesty "has tried to equate the executioner with the victim."

Fadlallah said Hizbollah was exercising "its legitimate right of self-defense." At the start of the war it had targeted only Israeli military sites, he said, but later fired at Israeli towns in response to Israeli strikes.

"We urge Amnesty International to make a simple comparison between the number of women and child victims in Lebanon ... and in Israel," he said.

In its report, Amnesty dismissed Hizbollah statements that their rocket attacks on northern Israel were a reprisal for Israeli attacks on civilians in Lebanon. "This line is totally rejected by Amnesty International," it said.

Nearly 1,200 people were killed in Lebanon during the war, the great majority of them civilians. More than 150 Israelis were killed, mostly soldiers.

The conflict was sparked by Hizbollah's seizure of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

Amnesty's criticism of Hizbollah came three weeks after the London-based group leveled similar charges at Israel.

It said the Jewish state purposely destroyed food shops by shelling and air attacks, deliberately blocked aid convoys and put hospitals and public utilities like water and power plants out of action to force people to flee.

Israel says it did not target civilians and had warned non-combatants to leave south Lebanon.

The Hizbollah rocket salvoes forced between 350,000 and a million northern Israelis to flee their homes, Amnesty said. The hundreds of thousands who remained behind spent much of the war in bomb shelters. A million Lebanese were also displaced.

The total damage to Israel from the rockets was $1.8 billion, a parliament panel found. The war damage to Lebanese buildings and infrastructure was estimated at $3.5 billion.

Amnesty has called for the
United Nations to quickly set up an independent inquiry into breaches of international humanitarian law it says were committed by both sides.

"The fact that Israel has also committed serious violations in no way justifies violations by Hizbollah," she said in a statement. "Civilians must not be made to pay the price for unlawful conduct on either side."

And it does not escape those willing to see it that Amnesty International had no intention of criticizing Hizbollah at all until they were accused of being to biased against Israel.

Foxfyre wrote:

And it does not escape those willing to see it that Amnesty International had no intention of criticizing Hizbollah at all until they were accused of being to biased against Israel.

Just your opinion, Foxy, or anything to back that up?

AI has a pretty good track record of reporting on violations of human rights.

AI has a pretty good track record of reporting on violations of human rights.

old europe wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

And it does not escape those willing to see it that Amnesty International had no intention of criticizing Hizbollah at all until they were accused of being to biased against Israel.

Just your opinion, Foxy, or anything to back that up?

AI has a pretty good track record of reporting on violations of human rights.

The first article McG posted was dated 8/22/06 and I saw many similar to it during that period. The second article McG posted was dated today, and I believe it is the first MSM reporting of any A.I. criticism of Hizbollah.