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

It all started on July 12 when Israel troops were ambushed on Lebanon's side of the border with Israel. Hezbollah, which commands the Lebanese south, immediately seized on their crossing. They arrested two Israeli soldiers, killed eight Israelis and wounded over 20 in attacks inside Israeli territory [this is disputed - most reports show that the initial attack by Lebanese fighters on Israeli soldiers was actually inside Lebanese territory].

To them, it is legitimate self-defense. They back this argument by saying that Israel still controls the Sheba Farms, which are part of Lebanon, and still has Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. Also, they add that the Israeli tank destroyed by Hezbollah, and the soldiers captured and killed on July 12, had trespassed into Lebanon's side of the border with Israel.

imemc

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It all started on July 12 when Israel troops were ambushed on Lebanon's side of the border with Israel. Hezbollah, which commands the Lebanese south, immediately seized on their crossing. They arrested two Israeli soldiers, killed eight Israelis and wounded over 20 in attacks inside Israeli territory [this is disputed - most reports show that the initial attack by Lebanese fighters on Israeli soldiers was actually inside Lebanese territory].

Atimes

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To them, it is legitimate self-defense. They back this argument by saying that Israel still controls the Sheba Farms, which are part of Lebanon, and still has Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. Also, they add that the Israeli tank destroyed by Hezbollah, and the soldiers captured and killed on July 12, had trespassed into Lebanon's side of the border with Israel.

If the soldiers were indeed in the Lebanese Republic when captured, then how can it be argued to be a "kidnapping?" The State of Israel would have made a conscious decision to send soldiers into Lebanon, and I don't understand (if this is indeed the case) why the Government of Israel would think that Lebanon had no right to prosecute those who breach their laws within their own sovereign borders.

What irks me is the growing perception that Hezbollah is winning this fight, simply by surviving...An example is this Aussie newspaper report....

There are other reports I've seen recently touting Nasrallah as the "only Muslim ever to defeat Israel".

What is being reinforced here is that terrorism used in conjunction with a nearly omnipresent press works as an effective weapon for gaining political capital and meeting political objectives. The extremely powerful but far too blunt military power of nations like Israel, US, Britain, and Russia can be defeated by hit and run tactics and cowering behind the skirts of women and children. In the end, covert assasination may become the only effective weapon against such tactics but when these powerful nations engage in assassinations, they are again soundly condemned by the press.

Over the past year or so, I was bothered a little by reports of Israeli assasinations and attempted assassinations. However, I'm beginning to see the value of such tactics. Assassinations certainly would avoid tragedies like at Qana, and probably would have less media shelf-life.

McG, the email did not say that the Hezbollah was using the UN as shields. He said that there was fighting in the area between Hezbollah and Israel.

The fact remains that 90% of the killings in Lebanon have been civilians. That means only 10% have been Hezbollah fighters. Israel must have a bad aim to miss the Hezbollah fighters 90% of the time hiding among the Lebanese citizens.

Anyone some news about what Brand X reported earlier? Is that confirmed by now?

Here, in Europe, media didn't report such as didn't sources from Israel I get here (that's from Army radio over to the print media).

One of America's most respected thinkers, Dennis Prager is an author, lecturer, teacher, and theologian with a nationally syndicated radio talk show originating from Los Angeles on KRLA 870 AM. He is a best selling author who has written four books and almost a thousand articles. His opinion pieces appear frequently in Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. He has lectured in 45 US states, 9 of Canada's ten provinces, and on seven continents.

Books By Dennis Prager
10607 The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism
49001 Why the Jews? - The Reason for Antisemitism

Israel's unintentional killing of a few hundred Lebanese civilians

It is difficult to overstate the damage done to the world by television news.

Jews don't burn down their critics' offices, issue fatwas or send death threats, let alone act on such threats.

It is when "world opinion" and its news media start liking you that you should wonder if you've lost your way.

Iran cleric calls on Muslims to arm Hizbollah
01 Aug 2006 09:31:11 GMT
Source: Reuters
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Background
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
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TEHRAN, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Muslim nations should arm Hizbollah in its fight against Israel, Iran's influential hardline clerical politician Ahmad Jannati said on Tuesday.

Iran has repeatedly said it only provides moral support to Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas and there was no immediate sign that Iran's official policy has changed.

Israel accuses Iran of providing Hizbollah with missiles used against civilian and military targets.

"We are expecting Muslim nations to provide various kinds of support, including arms, medicine and food to Hizbollah," he told the students news agency ISNA.

Jannati heads the Guardian Council, Iran's constitutional watchdog composed of six clerics and six hardline lawyers.

IDF says it may not be responsible for Qana deaths

By Amos Harel

The Israel Defense Forces indicated yesterday that it might not have been responsible for the deaths of at least 54 Lebanese, including 37 children , when a building bombed in an Israeli air strike in the village of Qana collapsed yesterday - but was unable to offer an alternative explanation.

There is an unexplained gap of about seven hours between the one Israeli air strike that hit the Qana building housing the civilians, which took place around 1 A.M. Sunday, and the first report that the building had collapsed, said the chief of staff of the Israel Air Force, Brigadier General Amir Eshel. Speaking at a press conference at the Kirya military complex in Tel Aviv last night, Eshel said that of three Israeli air strikes on Qana early Sunday, only the first strike hit the building in which the civilians were staying. The other two hit areas at least 400 meters away.

"I can't say whether the house collapsed at 12 A.M. or at 8 A.M.," said Eshel. "According to foreign press reports, and this is one of the reports we are relying on, the house collapsed at 8 A.M. We do not have testimony regarding the time of the collapse. If the house collapsed at 12 A.M., it is difficult for me to believe that they waited eight hours to evacuate it."

Eshel and Major General Gadi Eisencott, who heads the Operations Directorate in the General Staff, said Hezbollah had set up headquarters in Qana and that militants fired about 150 Katyusha rockets at parts of northern Israel, including Haifa and the Galilee panhandle, from Qana. Some of the rockets, the army said, were fired from the built-up areas of the village.

In the second IAF strike on Qana, which took place at around 2:30 A.M. Sunday, IAF planes bombed two targets located about 500 meters from the building that collapsed, and in the third strike, at around 7:30 A.M., three targets were bombed 460 meters away from the building, Eshel said. He told reporters that an analysis of photographs of the strikes, taken by cameras installed in the warplanes, showed that the four bombs dropped during the second and third strikes hit the intended targets, and that an IAF plane sent on a photo sortie in the afternoon confirmed that the intended targets had been hit.

The IDF has not released the aerial photographs, which Eshel said were being processed.

Addressing the possibility that the building may have collapsed because the IAF bombing triggered a delayed explosion of weapons stored inside, Eshel said: "I don't want to get into conspiracy theories. We will work diligently and collect every detail, so as to understand what happened there. I hope that we will know in the end, but I'm not sure. It's possible that we will never know what exactly happened there."

The IDF screened a video yesterday showing rocket launches from Qana, and said it chose the objectives in the village by analyzing the locations from which Hezbollah had fired rockets on Israel. However, the house that was hit had no direct connection to the rocket-launching cells. Nonetheless, IAF officials said that immediately after firing rockets at Israel, some Hezbollah cells hide in civilian houses in built-up areas in southern Lebanon.

IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and other senior officers expressed regret yesterday over the deaths of the civilians. They said the IDF was not aware that the civilians were in the village and had expected them to leave Qana the week before, following Israeli warnings of an impending attack.

Eisencott blamed Hezbollah for the deaths, saying the group uses the civilian population as a human shield.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744426.html

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk reporting from Beirut. After the attack Sunday, Israel released what appeared to be video footage of Hezbollah rockets being launched from Qana toward towns in northern Israel. I asked Robert Fisk about the footage.

ROBERT FISK: I've seen the video footage. It's impossible to tell from the footage if indeed this is from Qana. You know, you have to realize that last time the massacre occurred at Qana in 1996, when they killed 106 refugees who were sheltering in the then-UN base that was there -- it doesn't exist anymore, but it did then -- more than half of them children, again. They said that missiles had been fired from within the UN base. It turns out that they were fired from half a mile away. They then said that they didn't have a live time pilot-less aircraft over the UN base at the time. And, in fact, on the Independent, I found a UN soldier who did have a videotape, showing clearly at the time of the bombardment -- this is in 1996 -- a live time photo reconnaissance unmanned aircraft over the base. The Israelis were later forced to admit that they had not told the truth: indeed there was a machine over the base at the time. You know, you can do what you want with photo reconnaissance pictures and with photographs after the event. It's interesting that we weren't shown these pictures before the massacre. We were only shown them after the massacre.

But they may be correct. The Hezbollah are firing missiles from villages in southern Lebanon, just as, for example, when the Israelis entered southern Lebanon and go into places like Bent Jabail, they're using civilian houses as cover for their tanks, so the Hezbollah use houses as cover for their missile launching. But the odd thing is the idea that for the Israeli military that somehow it's okay to kill all these children; if a missile is launched 30, 90 feet from their house, that's okay then. We've got some film to show the missiles were launched; that's okay then. I mean, did the aircraft which dropped this bomb, a guided weapon, by the way -- they knew what they were hitting. It's a guided weapon. We know that because the computer codes have been found on the bomb fragments. Did they say, "Oh, well, then, the man who launched the missile is hiding with the children in the basement of the house we're going to hit"? Is it the case now that if you happen to live in a house next to where someone launches a missile, you are to be sentenced to death? Is that what Israel thinks the war is about?

I'm sitting here, for example, in my house tonight in darkness -- there's no electricity -- next to a car park. What if someone launches a missile from the car park? Am I supposed to die for that? Is that a death sentence for me? Is that how Israel wages war? If I have children in the basement, are they to die for that? And then I'm told it's my fault or it's Hezbollah's fault? You know, these are serious moral questions.

It's quite clear from listening to the IDF statement today that they believe that family deserved to die, because 90 feet away, they claim, a missile was fired. So they sentenced all those people to death. Is that what we're supposed to believe? I mean, presumably it is. I can't think of any other reason why they should say, "Well, 30 meters away a missile was fired." Well, thanks very much. So those little children's corpses in their plastic packages, all stuck together like giant candies today, this is supposed to be quite normal, this is how war is to be waged by the IDF.

The fact that when they made these comments, they went unchallenged on television, was one of the most extraordinary scenes I've seen. I got back from Tyre on a very dangerous overland journey on an open road, which was under air attack, and I got back, and just before the electricity was cut, I saw the BBC reporting what the Israelis had said, but without questioning the morality that if someone fires a missile near your home, therefore it is perfectly okay for you to die.

August 01, 2006
'World Opinion' is Worthless
By Dennis Prager

If you are ever morally confused about a major world issue, here is a rule that is almost never violated: Whenever you hear that "world opinion" holds a view, assume it is morally wrong.

And here is a related rule if your religious or national or ethnic group ever suffers horrific persecution: "World opinion" will never do a thing for you. Never.

"World opinion" has little or nothing to say about the world's greatest evils and regularly condemns those who fight evil.

The history of "world opinion" regarding the greatest mass murders and cruelties on the planet is one of relentless apathy.

Ask the 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks; or the 6 million Ukrainians slaughtered by Stalin; or the tens of millions of other Soviet citizens killed by Stalin's Soviet Union; or the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their helpers throughout Europe; or the 60 million Chinese butchered by Mao; or the 2 million Cambodians murdered by Pol Pot; or the millions killed and enslaved in Sudan; or the Tutsis murdered in Rwanda's genocide; or the millions starved to death and enslaved in North Korea; or the million Tibetans killed by the Chinese; or the million-plus Afghans put to death by Brezhnev's Soviet Union.
Ask any of these poor souls, or the hundreds of millions of others slaughtered, tortured, raped and enslaved in the last 100 years, if "world opinion" did anything for them.

On the other hand, we learn that "world opinion" is quite exercised over Israel's unintentional killing of a few hundred Lebanese civilians behind whom hides Hezbollah -- a terror group that intentionally sends missiles at Israeli cities and whose announced goals are the annihilation of Israel and the Islamicization of Lebanon. And, of course, "world opinion" was just livid at American abuses of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. In fact, "world opinion" is constantly upset with America and Israel, two of the most decent countries on earth, yet silent about the world's cruelest countries.

Why is this?

Here are four reasons:

First, television news.

It is difficult to overstate the damage done to the world by television news. Even when not driven by political bias -- an exceedingly rare occurrence globally -- television news presents a thoroughly distorted picture of the world. Because it is almost entirely dependent upon pictures, TV news is only capable of showing human suffering in, or caused by, free countries. So even if the BBC or CNN were interested in showing the suffering of millions of Sudanese blacks or North Koreans -- and they are not interested in so doing -- they cannot do it because reporters cannot visit Sudan or North Korea and video freely. Likewise, China's decimation and annexation of Tibet, one of the world's oldest ongoing civilizations, never made it to television.

Second, "world opinion" is shaped by the same lack of courage that shapes most individual human beings' behavior. This is another aspect of the problem of the distorted way news is presented. It takes courage to report the evil of evil regimes; it takes no courage to report on the flaws of decent societies. Reporters who went into Afghanistan without the Soviet Union's permission were killed. Reporters would risk their lives to get critical stories out of Tibet, North Korea and other areas where vicious regimes rule. But to report on America's bad deeds in Iraq (not to mention at home) or Israel's is relatively effortless, and you surely won't get killed. Indeed, you may well win a Pulitzer Prize.

Third, "world opinion" bends toward power. To cite the Israel example, "world opinion" far more fears alienating the largest producers of oil and 1 billion Muslims than it fears alienating tiny Israel and the world's 13 million Jews. And not only because of oil and numbers. When you offend Muslims, you risk getting a fatwa, having your editorial offices burned down or receiving death threats. Jews don't burn down their critics' offices, issue fatwas or send death threats, let alone act on such threats.

Fourth, those who don't fight evil condemn those who do. "World opinion" doesn't confront real evils, but it has a particular animus toward those who do -- most notably today America and Israel.

The moment one recognizes "world opinion" for what it is -- a statement of moral cowardice, one is longer enthralled by the term. That "world opinion" at this moment allegedly loathes America and Israel is a badge of honor to be worn proudly by those countries. It is when "world opinion" and its news media start liking you that you should wonder if you've lost your way.
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