Lebanon-Israel Round2 could be avoided ?
I ve posted earlier that a second round is very probable, and listed the causes for this asumption, but the past few days have shown success of Lebanese diplomacy on many levels which is reassuring and could avoid us a second round or at least could result in a concentrated second round.
The situation in Israel is still the same and is even getting worse with lots of scandales showing up and the different parties asking the government and the army for justifications on the military partial failure they faced.
As for Lebanon, the army is still deploying in the South and the government is taking drastic measures, in fact after the LF minister reported spotting Hezbollah armed men dressed as civilians in several villages, the government ordered the army and security to resolve the issue on the spot and spot those armed men and even Hezbollah ministers admitted their presence. Of course we need time for testing the efficiency of the army and i believe general surety and police members should be sent to help the army.
But what is more reassuring are the 7000 troops coming to Lebanon in 10 days time, along with the help being proposed by Germany to monitor the coasts in order to stop any weapons from getting to Hezbollah, added to the UNIFIL troops that will monitor the borders with Syria along with the Lebanese army.
I strongly support the government’s efforts which are showing that Lebanese diplomacy was the only winner in Lebanon.
We have an international support no country in the world ever had, and if we are stupid enough to spoil this opportunity, then maybe we are not worthy being helped.
The only parties that could trouble this diplomacy are Iran and Syria and their agents (Hezbollah and co ) in Lebanon.
Regards,
Interesting blog
Check out ours:
http://theitrevolution.blogspot.com
August 27th, 2006 | #
i am realy wish that the lebanon gov go well with it step in south lebanon. .
our inside politic shouldnt make any diffrent to the lebanon people-just keep our northen border free from any threat from one of your “great courageous and partiyot” armed nuts and everything will be great.
August 27th, 2006 | #
Rebuild your country. We will rebuild ours. Get on with your lives.Leave us alone and we will leave you alone.
August 29th, 2006 | #
What are we seeing when we watch events from the Middle East
on our television screens? Is it news or is it terrorist
theater?
Let us observe two media events which occurred on Sunday in
Gaza. Sunday afternoon released hostages and Fox News
journalists Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig spoke before the
cameras. The fact of their release and their statements were
reported by more than 1,000 news organizations throughout
the world.
At the press conference, Centanni and Wiig, who were forced
by their Palestinian captors to convert to Islam, praised
the Palestinians. Centanni said, “I just hope this never
scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover
this story because the Palestinian people are a very
beautiful, kind-hearted and caring people that the world
need[s] to know more about.” Wiig similarly praised the
Palestinians.
While their remarks were covered extensively, no one seemed
to think that the fact that their first post-release
statements were made at a Palestinian Authority sponsored
media extravaganza in Gaza was significant. No one noted
that the men were flanked by Palestinian “security forces,”
and stood next to Hamas terrorist leader and Palestinian
Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. No mention was made
of the fact that the two were initially kidnapped by just
such PA “security officials,” or that Haniyeh is one of the
leaders of one of the most fanatical jihadist organizations
in the world, an organization that the majority of the
“beautiful, kind-hearted and caring” Palestinians voted into
office last January.
That is, no mention was made of the fact that until the two
men left Gaza, they remained unfree. No one asked whether
they had been given the option of not giving a press
conference in Gaza. And now that they have spoken, there can
be little doubt that a second press conference by the two
men, in Israel or the US where no one will force them to
convert to Judaism or Christianity or threaten to kill them,
will draw far less media interest. After their press
conference, the two men became yesterday’s news.
Conveniently, the same day the PA released the men who its
own forces had kidnapped, Reuters reported that the IDF had
shot a missile at its press vehicle and wounded two
cameramen - one from Reuters and one from Iranian World TV
network - while they were en route to a battle taking place
between IDF forces and Palestinian terrorists. Reuters,
which is demanding an independent investigation into the
attack, is portraying its cameraman Fadel Shada as an
embattled hero who would do anything to bring the truth to
the world.
Yet it is unclear why anyone should believe either Shana or
Reuters. Shana told Reuters that as he was driving to the
battle scene, “I suddenly saw fire and the doors of the jeep
flew open.” He claims to have been wounded by shrapnel in
his hand and leg. These are minor injuries for someone whose
vehicle was just hit by a missile.
But then, the photographs taken of his vehicle after the
purported missile attack give no indication that the car was
hit by anything. There is a gash on the roof. The hood is
bent out of shape. But nothing seems to have been burned.
Cars hit by missiles do not look like they have just been in
a nasty accident. Cars hit by missiles are destroyed. Yet
the glass on the windshield and the windows of Shana’s
vehicle isn’t even shattered. In the photographs taken of
Shana on the way to the hospital in Gaza, he lies on a
stretcher, eyes closed, arm extended in full pieta mode. He
is not visibly bleeding although there are some blood stains
on his shirt, but then his undershirt is completely white.
I did not see these pictures in the media coverage of the
purported IDF attack on the Reuters and Iranian cameramen. I
saw them on Powerlineblog Web site. I did not see any
questions raised from either the Israeli or the
international media on the veracity of Shana’s tale, which
of course, provides a nice balance to the Centanni-Wiig
hostage story.
AS IS the case with the Palestinian war against Israel, one
of the most notable aspects of Hizbullah’s latest campaign
against Israel has been the active collaboration of news
organizations and international NGO’s in Hizbullah’s
information war against Israel. Like their rogue state
sponsors, subversive sub-national groups like Hizbullah,
Fatah and Hamas, see information operations as an integral
part of their war for the annihilation of Israel and defeat
of the West. And their information operations are more
advanced than any the world has seen. As becomes more
evident with each passing day, they have successfully
corrupted both the world media and the community of NGOs
that purportedly operate in a neutral manner in war zones.
It is not a coincidence that I saw the pictures of the
Reuters’ vehicle on Powerline and not in the media coverage
of the purported attack. Both the global media and the
international NGO community abjectly refuse to investigate
themselves. As democratic governments and their militaries
have proven incapable of dealing with the phenomenon (in
part because they seek to curry favor with the media and the
international NGO community), the blogosphere has taken upon
itself the role of media watchdog.
BLOGGERS HAVE become a critical component of the free
world’s defense in the current war. During the Hizbullah
campaign in Lebanon, bloggers scrutinized coverage of the
war in a way that has never been done before. Their work has
exposed the dirty secret of the Middle East that the media
has hidden for so many years: The global media and the
international NGO community, which profess to be neutral
observers, are in fact colluding with terrorist
organizations.
The blogosphere, and particularly Little Green Footballs,
Powerline, Zombietime, Michelle Malkin, and EU Referendum,
have relentlessly exposed the systematic staging of news
events, fabrication of attacks against relief workers, and
doctoring of photographic images by Hizbullah with the
active assistance of international organizations and the
global media.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, with its
internationally mandated status as a protected organization,
is particularly culpable. The blogoshere - and specifically
EU Referendum and Zombietime Web sites - have shown that Red
Cross employees in Tyre and Kana fabricated from whole cloth
a tale of an Israeli airstrike against Red Cross ambulances
in Kana on July 23. In an exhaustively documented report,
“How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax and Changed
the Course of a War,” Zombietime showed how Red Cross
employees took an old, rusty ambulance and alleged that the
IAF had attacked it with a missile that blew a hole straight
through the middle of the red cross on the ambulance’s roof.
The Red Cross allegation was reported as fact by such
“credible” news organizations as Associated Press, Time
magazine, the BBC, ITV, The New York Times, The Guardian,
The Age, MSNBC, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both published
accounts of the attack as evidence of Israeli “war crimes”
in Lebanon.
Zombietime clearly proved from simple scrutiny of the
photographs taken of the ambulance, that the hole in the
cross was not the result of a missile attack but the work of
the ambulance manufacturer. It was the hole for an air vent.
The pock marks on the roof were the result of age and decay.
There had been no fire in the ambulance. There was no
attack. It was a complete fabrication, concocted by Red
Cross employees who enjoy their protected status because
their organization has pledged its neutral status in this
and all wars.
ONE WEEK later, as EU Referendum reports in a similarly
detailed investigation of the much condemned IAF bombing of
Kana on July 30, (which actually happened a mile north of
Kana at Khuraybah village), Red Cross relief workers
actively participated in the staging of a perverted media
extravaganza where the bodies of dead children were paraded
about before the waiting camera crews for hours and hours.
Rather than demand that the ICRC account for the clear
breach of its binding commitment to neutrality, and rather
than attack the Lebanese Red Cross for its active
collaboration with Hizbullah, the international media has
attacked the bloggers. They are brushed off as “Israel
supporters,” and “right-wing extremists.” The aim of these
brush-offs is to convince “right thinking” citizens that
they oughtn’t have anything to do with these champions of
truth and human decency.
As each day passes, the governments, formal and informal
legal apparatuses, and media of free societies show
themselves to be less and less capable of contending with
the information operations conducted against their societies
by subversive forces seeking their destruction. As each day
passes it becomes clear that the responsibility of
protecting our nations and societies from internal
disintegration has passed to the hands of individuals, often
working alone, who refuse to accept the degradation of their
societies and so fight with the innovative tools of liberty
to protect our way of life. The vigilance of just a handful
of bloggers brought us the knowledge of the corruption of
our media and the network of global NGOs that we have come
to rely on to tell us the “objective” truth.
It is up to all citizens of the free world, who value our
freedom to recognize this corruption, applaud the bloggers
and join them in refusing to allow these corrupt
institutions to cloud our commitment to freedom
August 29th, 2006 | #
Why I am proud to be a Jew
With war raging in the Middle East, with global
terror reaching new
heights, with global anti-Semitism on the rise, I
thought it might be a good time to reflect on why I’m proud,
more than ever, to be a Jew.
I’m proud to be a Jew because Jews don’t kidnap.
I’m proud to be a Jew because Jewish education does
not consist of teaching martyrdom and hatred.
I’m proud to be a Jew because my religious leaders
and religious services
don’t whip me into a frenzy to kill others.
I’m proud to be a Jew because in the middle of a
war, Jews still demonstrate
and protest to protect the rights of the
Arab-Israeli minority to voice
their opposition to the war.
I’m proud to be a Jew because even when Israel is
wrongly and falsely
accused of killing innocent civilians, Jewish
leaders apologize immediately for any loss of life - instead
of celebrating these deaths
by passing out candy and shooting celebratory
gunshots into the air.
When the world accuses Israel of massacre in Jenin -
when the world
accuses Israel of bombing civilians on a Gaza beach
- when the world accuses Israel of shooting a child cowering
against a wall - when the
world accuses Israel of bombing a Lebanese
apartment building killing 56 civilians - when all of these
accusations turn out to be totally false - to be
vicious anti -Semitic lies - and when all along
I knew in my heart that these stories justcould not be true
- and I’m later proven to be right - then I’m
proud to be a Jew.
I’m proud to be a Jew because the Israeli Army is
so, so good, that when
it takes more than four weeks to wipe out a
sophisticated enemy who has
prepared six years for this war, the world
criticizes the IDF for not getting the
job done quickly.
I’m proud to be a Jew when my army, the Israeli
army, drops leaflets and makes calls to Lebanese citizens
on their cell phones to warn them to evacuate
before bombing begins.
I’m proud to be a Jew when the democracies of the
world talk about fighting
the war on terror, but only Israel is left alone to
bear the burden of
eradicating Hezbollah, the proxy army of Iran and
Syria.
I’m proud to be a Jew when entire Israeli towns in
the north-Nahariya,
Kiryat Shimona, Safed, are reduced to ghost towns
due to the constant shelling, and yet not one looter has
appeared to empty out the property of others.
When Israel must defend its very right to exist,
when it must fight a well
armed enemy representing the Islamic fascists, as
President Bush has
called them, when Israel must conduct this war on
terror with its hands tied
behind its back so as not to take an innocent life
lest the media have something true to report,
that it must fight this war of survival under
the cloud of “disproportionality”, as if thousands of
Katusha rockets falling on its
citizenry is somehow “proportionate”- when
Israel simultaneously pushes back these threats both in the
North and in
the South under the added pressure of a biased
media, then I’m proud to be a Jew.
I’m proud to be a Jew when the Edinburgh Scottish
film festival tells an
Israeli director to stay home although his film is
being screened and the
director says “No, I’m coming.”
I’m proud to be a Jew because Mel Gibson is not a
Jew.
I’m proud to be a Jew when the UN’s Human Rights
Commission consists of
countries like Syria, Libya and Iran and Israel is
not asked to join.
I’m proud to be a Jew when magician David Blaine
announces his trip to
Israel next week to entertain the children living in
bomb shelters and tells
the press he’s doing it to encourage other
performers to stand up for Israel
and its right to defend itself.
I’m proud to be a Jew when a Russian/Israeli
businessman single-handedly
creates not one but two tent cities on the beach to
house Israelis fleeing the
North and provides shelter, bedding, food and drink,
showers and bathrooms - all done
without red tape in a matter of 24 hours - to
house over 6,000
Israeli’s, one of whom described it as a “poor man’s
Club Med.”
I am proud to be a Jew when Israelis on the left and
on the right
support the government’s decision to fight - when
97% of the country is united in its own defense -
when Israeli’s from Jerusalem give shelter to
families from Haifa - when food from the Negev is donated to
feed soldiers at the front -
when the IDF deploys soldiers on special
assignments to deliver diapers to shelters and to entertain
and calm the frightened children.
I’m proud to be a Jew when the three weeks preceding
Tisha B’Av reminds
us of the terrible things we have endured as a
people and as a nation - and
yet immediately thereafter, Hashem offers us
consolation, redemption and
hope - plus the promise that we shall defeat our
enemies, that we shall endure, that Am Yisrael Chai.
And I am proud to be a Jew because when we proclaim
that God is on our
side, we have the book to prove it.
September 3rd, 2006 | #
Dudi Cohen Published: 08.30.06, 18:31
Hizbullah representative in Iran Muhammad Abdullah Sif al-Din, said Wednesday that Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah has a new strategic plan to rearm ahead of the “next round against Israel .”
In an interview with the Iranian news agency Fars, al-Din said: “No one can promise us that Israel won’t attack again. Whoever lives as a neighbor to the Zionist regime is in danger and must not save any effort to obtain all of the means to defend himself. We are convinced that there still danger and the situation has not yet been solved. We must, all the time, prepare ourselves for self-defense and to plan for the next stage.”
‘Situation is good’
During an interview, al-Din was asked about Hizbullah’s military situation after the war.
“Our situation is very good, the Israelis didn’t manage to strike Hizbullah’s military command and our ability to launch missiles. In the first days we launched 100 missiles and in recent days we fired 350 missiles a day. So we have no problem from a military perspective,” he replied.
War in Lebanon
Hizbullah: We were surprised by Israel’s response to kidnapping / Roee Nahmias
Deputy secretary general of Hizbullah, Sheikh Naim Kassem, says that organization surprised by strength and duration of Israeli response to kidnapping of two soldiers on July 12. Kassem also says organization does not intend to disarm, but to maintain weapons clandestinely
Full story
Unlike Nasrallah, the Hizbullah representative in Iran expressed no regret for kidnapping soldier, the operation which caused the outbreak of the war. “In retrospect, if Israel would have attacked again and we had to defend ourselves, we could have done it again and with great vigor,” he said.
Regarding UN Resolutions 1559 and 1701, calling for, among others, the disarmament of Hizbullah, Sif Al-Din said that his organization had no intention of disarming, as the issue was an internal Lebanese one.
“From the perspective of the parliament and government in Lebanon , Hizbullah is not a military militia, but a resistance force. Therefore, the clause in resolution 1559 (calling on the disarmament of armed militias – D.C.) can’t include Hizbullah. The Lebanese agreed among themselves that Hizbullah’s disbanding is an internal issue and should be solved among one another,” he said.
He added that pressure from the West on Hizbullah would not be effective.
“After the murder of the Lebanese prime minister, Rafik al-Hariri, and resolution 1559, heavy pressure was placed on Hizbullah in order to disarm. We all understood that no one can disband Hizbullah, even Israel’s foreign minister admitted this,” said al-Din.
‘Lebanese army can’t deal with Israel’
The Hizbullah representative to Iran added that Lebanon had one problem and that was “a possible attack by the Zionist regime on Lebanon. We have to discuss the way to defend ourselves. Our main problem is how to use force to defend Lebanon,” he said.
Despite his remarks on the arming of Hizbullah for a second round with Israel, al-Din said that he was not interested in war.
“We are not interested in war, because we have families. We want to live. But so long as there is a danger called the Zionist regime we’ll continue to protect ourselves. The current way is best way to remove the danger from the direction of the Zionist regime,” he added.
Addressing the deployment of the Lebanese army in south Lebanon, al-Din said that his organization had no opposition to the move so long as it would not be asked to disarm. He added that there was no possibility that Hizbullah would join the Lebanese army.
“One of the reasons we didn’t agree in advance to the deployment of the army in south Lebanon is that we are worried for the army, because it doesn’t have the capability of dealing with Israel. If the Lebanese agree that the army deploys in the south, we have no problem. But the entrance of the army to this area is dangerous for it and we are worried from this perspective,” he said
September 3rd, 2006 | #
To Dudi Cohen
Your text shows clearly that Hezbollah’s strategy is defensive in nature not offensive.
That indicates that any future would be round is to be started by Israel (like the last 5 wars it started on Lebanon) not the Lebanese.
September 4th, 2006 | #
Which 5 wars were those?
September 4th, 2006 | #
1- 1968 Israeli soldiers blows MEA civilian airplanes in Beirut airport under the pretext that the palestinians who hijacked an elal plane in Athens planned their attack in Lebanon (It would be like theUS bombing Hamburg in Germany after September 11 because the Al qaida team that planned it was based there!!)
2- 1978 first invasion
3- 1982 second invasion
4- 1996 April operation (grapes of wrath) that ended with the Cana massacre that a UN report said was without any doubt a deliberate act.
5- 2006
I’m not mentioning all the other skirmishes, assasinations, spying, almost daily space and water violations, kidnappings, bombing cells uncovered by the lebanese army secret services and Hezbollah (including bombings in christian areas)….
September 5th, 2006 | #
Only 1978 and 1982 count as anything near a war. All the other actions are due to Lebanon failing to control its borders ( a familiar story, part of the Lebanese character). Sam, you comparison of Hamburg is absurd. A more apt comparison is the attack of Israel on Uganda’s airport to release hostages held with permission of the Ugandan government. pity that good old Idi Amin isnt still around. He has more intelligence and integrity than any Lebanese leader except Rafik Hariri. As for you Sam, I have a career tip. Convert to Islam and become a footstool for journalists at AL Manar, the Lebanese “national” media
September 6th, 2006 | #