Saturday, August 5

Israel's War against Hezbollah

The War between Israel and Hezbollah has reached the front pages of all the newspapers in the world as well as made headlines on TV and radio – not to mention the online newspapers on the internet. This is a war foisted onto Israel by Hezbollah. After the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah seized the opportunity to build up its weaponry and train its terrorists to carry out periodic raids into Israel and kidnap soldiers within Israel’s borders. Even the UN acted with expediency towards Hezbollah in the past by quashing investigations into the kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. Over the last six years, they built a formidable army that is no walk over for Israel. Hezbollah, theoretically, does not have an argument with Israel over territory. It is different from the Palestinians in that respect.

Hezbollah is the proxy of Iran under the rabid Iranian anti-Semite, Mahmoud Ahmadinajad, whose hate for Israel and the Jewish people is uncompromising. Israel aims for the goal of achieving a Hezbollah-free zone until the Litani River in Lebanon. Another problem is that despite the progress of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) towards that goal, there does not seem to be any abatement in the capability of Hezbollah to launch over 200 hundred rockets and mortars into Israel daily. Two rockets reached as far as the area of Hadera (I heard the rumbling explosions from my home). Sheik Hassan Nasrallah is even threatening to fire rockets as far as Tel Aviv. In other words, the area of Hezbollah rocket capability across Israel is extensive and in practical terms shows no signs of decreasing despite the heavy losses that Israel has inflicted upon Hezbollah.

There are meetings in the UN to pressure Israel to reach a cease-fire agreement with Hezbollah. Even the US is working together with France and England to engineer an agreement. The wide-ranging support that Israel received from the US is showing signs of diminishing. Israel does not want a cease-fire at this stage, as it has not reached its goal of removing the Hezbollah terrorist threat from her northern border. Evidence of that is still there with the increasing number of soldier and civilian casualties.
It should be clear that the main goals of Hezbollah are two fold:

  1. They wish to destroy Israel and the Jewish People. As far as they are concerned, Israel has no right to exist. Their supreme commander, Mahmoud Ahmadinajad, has clarified this on almost every occasion.

  2. There is also a wider goal and that is the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state faithful to sharia or Moslem religious law and the conversion of non-Moslems to Islam.

They wish to accomplish this by “the sword” which is God’s Will in their eyes. It is absurd considering a cease-fire as was suggested by Ahmadinajad. He stated that there must be a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon and, in the same breath; he continues his statements that they must destroy Israel. This is idiotic! How could Israel accept such a condition? How can Israel negotiate with Hezbollah if its main goal is Israel’s destruction? It does not make sense.

The European Union is rather expedient. Do they realize that Israel’s fight against the terrorist Hezbollah is in their interests as well? The increase in world terrorism, whether it is Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and their various cells waiting in the shadows all over the world to commit a mega terrorist act is a result of European appeasement of Islamist extremists. Every time the UN and the European Union capitulate to Islamist terror, these notorious terrorist organizations regard it as a victory. Instead of boycotting countries that harbor these terrorists, they choose the path of negotiation. They are even talking about negotiating with the evil Iranian regime by requesting them politely to cease their nuclear facility development or else! Or else what? Will they organize an ineffectual boycott of Iran?

Because of Ahmadinajad and his proxy Hezbollah’s stand, there is no room for a cease-fire! If a cease-fire is declared, Hezbollah would re-arm in a very short time and hostilities between Israel and Iran’s proxy will reoccur. The EU, by its weak and conciliatory attitude towards Iran will not render them free from terrorist attacks! Weakness towards Islamist fundamentalism is capitulation and legitimizing “conversion by the sword” to a radical Islam in the eyes of the Islamist terrorist organizations.

Hezbollah is making very effective use of human shields in their fight against Israel. They threaten innocent Lebanese civilians into allowing them to stockpile their weaponry in their homes at gunpoint. This explains the high casualty figures when Israel bombs Hezbollah weapon stores (which are private homes). Why does the world not condemn Hezbollah for using these cruel tactics? The blame for the cynical use of the sufferings of innocent Lebanese people must be laid on Hezbollah. The propaganda use of this immense tragedy bears fruit. The brutality and the scenes witnessed plays into the hands of Hezbollah and they use this cruel tactic to their advantage. It is also against the Geneva Convention, but then Hezbollah is not a state army but a terrorist organization not bound by any conventions or treaties. Israel has suffered far less casualties than Lebanon. The reason for this is that Israel’s citizens are living in bomb shelters or have moved out of the war zones in the north to safer havens in the south of the country.

It looks as if Hezbollah and Hassan Nasrallah have plenty time and will embark on a war of attrition if the fighting continues. It will be retaliation style warfare. If Israel bombs central Beirut then Hezbollah will bomb Tel Aviv. This could go on for a long time and could result in Israel becoming embroiled in a war similar to the Lebanese fiasco that lasted from 1982 until 2000. Apart from that, the Hezbollah will lay down conditions for a cease-fire.The cease-fire will consists of three components - stopping Israel's attacks, removing all Israeli troops from Lebanese soil, and returning the Lebanese refugees to the villages they fled from in the south of the country; in other words, restoring the pre-July 12 situation. With such conditions, Hezbollah wishes to clarify not only what it would consider an achievement, but also that from its own point of view, the fighting could go on. Israel would never accept this! At the emergency convention of Moslem states in Malaysia on 2nd August 2006, Nasrallah has effectively portrayed the war as a war against Lebanon rather than a war against Hezbollah. They (Hezbollah) make cynical use of the suffering of the Lebanese People, for which they are entirely accountable, as proof of that.

Meanwhile Israel has to come to terms with its Lebanese neighbours without the Hezbollah threat to its existence. It is easy for the EU and other countries far from the conflict to pressurize Israel in accepting a cease-fire. The consequences of a weak cease-fire agreement that will not be watertight and protect Israel from Hezbollah terrorist attacks do not affect the EU or the rest of the world directly in the short term. In the end, it could render the non-Moslem world more vulnerable to terrorist attacks as the Islamist terror organizations (who have established dormant terrorist cells all over Europe) see this as a victory in their militancy and desire to destroy western civilization.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The God Given War

Exodus 15:3 magnificently intones, “Yahweh is a Man of War, the Lord is His name.” Yahweh reveals himself to the embattled legions of Joshua, Moses’ general, as a man in order to sanctify and to strengthen an Israel embattled then, through the ages, right now, and doubtless forever to come, since all the road maps are illusory traps that offer only suicide to the state of Israel. One reflects that even such suicide would not appease the rapaciousness of French and other European anti-Semitism, which contrives to survive even the ebbing-away of European Christianity. (H.Bloom, Jesus And Yahweh. The Names Divine. Harold Bloom. Riverhead Books. New York 2005p. 196)

“This was God’s gift to Israel,” said Nasser Hadian, a political science professor at Teheran University and an expert in Iranian foreign policy. “Hezbollah gave them the golden opportunity to attack.” (Michael Slackman, Iran Hangs in Suspense as War OffersNew Strength, and Sudden Weakness, NYT, Jukly 20, 2006) (See also attached comment from The Arutz Sheva)

President Ahmadinejad, said in a speech that was broadcast on Iranian television in Mashad that Iran's joining the group of nations with nuclear technology derives from the Iranian nation's struggle, which is making a step forward towards the coming of the awaited Mahdi (Al-Watan magazine, May 5, 2006). So Iran needs to manufacture a nuclear bomb before that time, in order to help the Mahdi eliminate the infidels and the polytheists...

"[Ahmadinejad] found people who believe him in the Hamas movement, and especially Khaled Mash'al... The awaited Mahdi is coming, so why then defile the struggle with negotiations with Israel or with recognition of it? It may be that Mr. Mash'al hasn't noticed that he [himself] will be among those doomed to perdition, since he isn't a Shi'ite.

"It appears that Hassan Nasrallah [also] believed this prophecy, since he says that there is nothing called Israel on the world map, that he does not recognize the international community, and that he attributes no importance to the U.N. The awaited Mahdi is about to come. He will wipe out Israel and the Sunnis, the Christians, and the Druze of Lebanon, and he [i.e. Nasrallah] will be the Imam's viceroy in all of Greater Syria...

"These dreams and prophecies are madness, that bring nothing but massacres and unbalanced wars with foreign [forces]... If it were only these leaders who became possessed with this madness, then things would not be as bad as they are. But the majority of the public have been swept after them.

"The large public that supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and believed that he would redistribute the Arab wealth to all of the Arabs was surprised at the reality on the day that Saddam was defeated, although they did not admit it. This is a public that believed, relying on the analysis of the Al-Jazeera channel's experts, that Saddam Hussein would deliver a humiliating defeat to the United States. When Baghdad fell, this public came up against the bitter reality, but to this day it has not owned up to the truth. It pins all its hopes on the defeat of Israel, and seriously believes that Mr. Nasrallah will defeat it... (Excerpts from the articles by Dr. Muhammad Al-Huni, a Libyan intellectual and author who resides in Italy. To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD122706

Peace Process or Land for Peace

These two slogans are equivalent and both mean slicing Israel out of existence, until nothing is left to be sliced out. They kill softly with their gentle, Kofi Annan's -like words. Leave peace for peaceniks. Adonay is a Man of War, the Lord is His name. Let them try to slice Him out of existence. They tried it once from the top of the Tower of Babel...

A visitor from the distant days of 1993 to the political landscape of the Middle East today might scratch his head and wonder: whatever happened to the New Middle East - that glorious vision of economic and cultural integration in which decades old enmities would be buried, borders eliminated and prosperity, a palliative, gurgled down the throats of the belligerents like warm milk?

Surveying the same landscape several years further into the past, he might ponder the fate of the Zinni mission, the Tenet Plan, the Mitchell Report and myriad other European and United Nations efforts to ostensibly bridge the gulf between Arabs and Jews. He might consider the Road Map, a document still brandished as the canonical solution to the problems of the Middle East, yet producing nothing of enduring value.

Rarely would he find anyone declaring that all of these efforts were based on a false assumption of Arab and Palestinian peaceful intent or acknowledging that "peace" is simply a chimera offered by Palestinian spokesmen to bamboozle an all-too-gullible international audience.

Far too often over the past thirteen years, these would-be peacemakers have ignorantly glossed over the essential differences between Israel and its adversaries: that the former is a vibrant, if fractured democracy, responsive to peaceful proposals to end conflict, while the latter are, in the main, backward dictatorships, governed by ruthless men for whom perpetuation of conflict is the sin qua non for their own grasp on power. They have placed their faith in the intentions of terrorists for whom an agreement is nothing more than a moment to bide time before the next assault and whose quest, at least since the late 1960s, has been to obtain international sanction for the killing of Jews. (…)

But why then such astonishment and surprise about political developments among the Palestinians? The only real difference between the Fatah and its counterpart in Hamas is that the former hid its agenda behind words of peace while the latter honestly propounds it. Fatah, after all, founded and still funds the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the third most significant perpetrator of terrorist atrocities against Israeli citizens. Under Yasser Arafat, it spent eleven years instituting an educational system that primarily promoted jihad against Israel and enjoyed years of siphoning off the West's largess - funneling most of it back into secret European bank accounts controlled by its top brass. (…)

The tragic folly of Oslo was an incapacity to understand the fundamental recidivism of the terrorist mentality. French and German statesmen may well have worked out their historical differences 60 years ago and together forged a new Europe. But terrorists don't think like statesmen. Representing nothing but their own twisted world view, their jackets and ties at state dinners only dress up hearts that are full of malevolence and minds that lust for power, conquest and the spoils of war. The ready manipulation of naive peacemakers, coupled with the stumbles and mistakes of the Israeli leaders themselves, advances their cause; while dreamers continue to fantasize about a future that has no connection to reality. (Excerpts from Avi Davis’ The New Middle East, www.israelnationalnews.com

Kill ‘em all, alive and dead ones

Anti-Semitic coverage and cartoons are spreading across the globe. Norway’s third largest paper, the Oslo Dagbladet, ran a cartoon compari9ng Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the infamous nazi commander SS Major Amon Goeth who indiscriminately murdered Jews by firing at them from his balcony and was depicted by Ralph Fiennes in S. Spielberg’s film Schildler’s List (A month earlier Dagbladet published an article, “The Third Tower,” which questioned whether Muslims were really responsible for the September 11 attacks.)

Antonio Neri Licon of Mexico’s El Economista drew what appeared to be a Nazi soldier with stars of David on his uniform. The “soldier” was surrounded by eyes that he had apparently gouged out.

Finland's Swedish-language daily Helsinki Hufvudstadsbladet made absurd accusations bordering on anti-Semitic against Israel's offensive, claiming "Jewish life is worth more than Muslim (life). An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is not enough; it is meted out as eyes for an eye and teeth for a tooth."
A cartoon in the South African Sunday Times depicted Ehud Olmert with a butchers knife covered in blood. In the leading Australian daily The Age, a cartoon showed a wine glass full of blood being drunk in a scene reminiscent of medieval blood libel. In New Zealand, veteran cartoonist Tom Stott came up with a drawing which equated Israel with Al-Qaida.

At least one leading European politician has also vented his prejudice through visual symbolism. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero wore an Arab scarf during an event at which he condemned Israel, but not Hezbollah, who he presumably thinks should not be stopped from killing Israeli.

Hen live Jews can’t be found, dead ones are targeted. In Belgium last week, the urn that contained ashes from Auschwitz was desecrated at the Brussels memorial to the 25,411 Belgian Jews deported to Nazi death camps. It was smashed and excrement smeared over it. The silence from Belgian leaders following this desecration was deafening.

Some international journalists seem to find it amusing or exciting to bait the Jews. They don’t understand yet that Hezbollah is part of a worldwide radical Islamist movement that has plans, and not pleasant ones, for all those – Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Jew – who don’t abide by its wishes.

Consider a series of recent photos of Islamic demonstrators in London. Their placards read “Butcher those who mock Islam,” “Islam will dominate the world,” “Europe you will pay – your 9/11 is on the way,” “Be prepared for the real Holocaust,” and other barbarous threats. Anyone who doubts that we are at war with radical Islam – or that this enemy wants anything other than a fascistic world order and murderous brutality visited on “infidels,” especially Jews – lives in a fantasy.

Maccabi Moscow supports Israel

Team, which has several Jewish players, arrives in order to express support for residents of north. Head of delegation: Russians, too, love Israel
Roee Nahmias

From Russia with love: Sixteen members of the Maccabi Moscow sports club arrived in Israel Wednesday afternoon in order to express their support for Israel and, in particular, the residents of the north. The delegation is headed by Israeli ambassador to Moscow, Arkady Milman, and also contains senior officials in the sports club.
'Not only in US people love Israel'
"We all support Israel and we decided that this is the appropriate time to come and show that we love and encourage this country. We want to show that we don't come only when it's convenient, but also in war time. We want to show that not only in the United States, but also in Russia, there are people who love Israel," team manager Pavel Feldblum told Ynet.
The team is comprised of both Jewish and non-Jewish members. They asked to emphasize that they chose to come to Israel in order to demonstrate that international media coverage of Israel is not necessarily accurate, and that there are many Russians who believe that Israel is fighting a just war. (Ynetnews Aug. 2, 2006)
Heil Hezbolla!

Every once in a while, a photographic image emerges which captures the very essence of a major international issue. It doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, the power of the underlying problem suddenly becomes eminently clear.

One such photo (see attached) now appears on the website of Time magazine where young kids in a Hezbolla scouting troop are shown pledging to die for the cause while raising their hands in the air in a chillingly-familiar salute.

Coincidence? I doubt it. Hezbollah leaders are knowledgeable enough to understand the meaning of that pose, which was burned into the memory of the Jewish people, and that of the entire world, some six decades ago in the heart of Europe.

Hezbollah is not just “an Islamic militant group that operates in southern Lebanon” with Iranian sponsorship. Combining Islamic fanaticism with a modern anti-Semitic ideology derived from the Catholic Church and Nazism, with a media which spreads that ideology worldwide, and with a mass base and virtual state control of Lebanon, Hezbollah stands for the destruction of world Jewry and the creation of a world Islamofascist state, modeled on Iran.

Media reports focusing on civilian suffering – real, exaggerated and sometimes invented – and statements by Western leaders, all push for an armed multinational force for southern Lebanon. Such a force would likely be comprised of troops under the command of states that portray Israel’s conflict with Palestinian Arabs as the cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict (rather than the other way around), and that do not consider Hezbollah a violently anti-Semitic political army. Such a multinational force would have much in common with William Walker’s Kosovo Verification Mission. It too had the stated purpose of separating belligerents in Kosovo in 1998. And its member states were hostile to Yugoslavia. According to Kosovo historian Cedomir Prlincevic, that multinational force was used as a cover for upgrading and training the Kosovo Liberation Army (for which substitute “Hezbollah”) terrorists. Once a powerful multinatio0nal force was ensconced in southern Lebanon, it would be in position to intervene directly in Israel and the disputed territories. That would be disastrous for Israel.


Libyan Reformist Author in Essays Critical of Hizbullah

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD122706 .
Dr. Muhammad Al-Huni, a Libyan intellectual and author who resides in Italy (and who is close to Sayf Al-Islam, the son of Libyan leader Mu'ammar Al-Qaddafi), recently wrote a series of articles, dated July 16, July 22, and July 26, 2006, for the liberal website Elaph.com. In them, he criticized Hizbullah and Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and accused them of serving Iran and Syria's interests.

The following are excerpts from his articles:

"Nasrallah and his militia threaten the media and freedom of thought in Lebanon. He pulled out of his robe thousands of people to demonstrate and cause damage, just because a satellite station treated him with a certain degree of ridicule, as it had done with other leaders in Lebanon. This is because Nasrallah is above all criticism, as he enjoys the stature of the holy men and prophets... He does not recognize the Lebanese government, and thus competes with it over the most important element in a modern country – the monopoly on power, and its employment in accordance with the law and in accordance with the country's foreign treaties...

"Thanks to Nasrallah and his militia, Lebanon today is a country that does not enjoy full sovereignty, since part of its land, and its most dangerous border, are under Nasrallah's rule. One could say that Nasrallah liberated southern Lebanon in order to conquer all of Lebanon...

"So what now, Mr. Nasrallah? You kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in order to free some prisoners [held by Israel]. Have you asked yourself what the price of this adventure will be? Did you ask the Lebanese their opinion, as they see tourism completely collapse and leave behind it crowds of unemployed and a horrifying number of bankrupt businesses? Did you ask the government in which you are a member, and which you belittle, how it can show its face in international circles after your attack?... Did you ask the Lebanese taxpayers if they agree to see the money that they paid over the years evaporate within minutes in an attack on Lebanese infrastructure? Finally, did you ask the prisoners if they want to get out of prison at such a high price in blood?..."

"Hassan Nasrallah promises the [Muslim] nation victory, and he promises surprises in the field that will bring about this victory... Among those of my generation, few believe these promises, since our generation has had experience with similar legends, like Nasser's Al-Tafir and Al-Qahir missiles and Saddam's cardboard missiles. All of these Arab leaders achieved victory only over their own people, and brought nothing but more defeat and downfall to these [Arab] masses – who are psychologically, economically, and morally ruined by the never-ending mill of oppression, dictatorship, and corruption...

"First of all, we need to admit that Israel withdrew, in 2000, from all of the Lebanese lands recognized by the international community. The issue of the Shab'a farms is nothing but the trap that the Syrian regime set for Lebanon in order to embroil it in a conflict in the Middle East and in order to give Hizbullah the task of fighting, in its [i.e. Lebanon's] name, for its own interests and for the interests of Iran, which wants to be a global and regional power...

"It is likely that Iran... whose president, Ahmadinejad, says that the destruction of Israel and wiping it off the map are its supreme goal – has supplied Hizbullah with non-conventional weapons and with missiles [capable of] carrying these weapons to the major cities in Israel. If this scenario is correct... then it will be a tragedy for the entire region, and the dead will be counted in the millions, not in the thousands..."
"In southern Libya... there was a dervish by the name of 'Abdallah bin Mas'ud, who had disciples and students. One morning Sheikh bin Mas'ud gathered together his disciples and said to them: 'I dreamt that the infidels' weapons have "gone cold" – meaning they are no longer deadly – and thus I have decided that we will attack the French Army's fortress with cold arms.' Many of the dervishes who were his students went after him, armed with knives, scythes, and swords, and attacked the French fortress in Sabha, the capital of the south. The French destroyed them all, to the last man... The French can do that, unlike Israelis they are white Christians. They have a civilizing mission to fulfill -- in the name of their Holy Spirit from Diocese of Arras…

Is the Hezbollah on the verge of Defeat?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday Aug. 3, the solution to the Middle East crisis is to destroy Israel. In a speech during a meeting of Muslim leaders, he said “Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented. Is he hoping for a Christian crusade against Israel?


Poles for Israel Friday, August 04, 2006