Conflict: Israel and Lebanon part 4

Something new gaining traction…

[quote]Lebanese website blames Hizbullah for Qana deaths
(08.01.06, 07:53)

Anti-Syrian elements in Lebanon openly point finger at Hizbullah as guilty of killing of dozens of civilians in order to curtail plans for disarming group. ‘Hizbullah has placed rocket launcher on building’s roof and brought invalid children inside in bid to provoke Israeli response,’ they write
Roee Nahmias

Is Hizbullah behind the tragic incident in the village of Qana that claimed the lives of some 60 people? While the Israeli army continues to investigate the circumstances leading to the building’s collapse, some in Lebanon do not hesitate to point the finger at the Shiite organization and claim it is to blame for the death of dozens.

The Lebanese website LIBANOSCOPIE, associated with Christian elements in the country and which openly supports the anti-Syrian movement called the “March 14 Forces,” reported that Hizbullah has masterminded a plan that would result in the killing of innocents in the Qana village, in a bid to foil Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s “Seven Points Plan”, which calls for deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon and the disarming of Hizbullah.

‘Disabled children placed inside building’

“We have it from a credible source that Hizbullah, alarmed by Siniora’s plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations.
Knowing full well that Israel will not hesitate to bombard civilian targets, Hizbullah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the negotiation initiative,” the site stated.

The site’s editors also claimed that not only did Hizbullah stage the event, but that it also chose Qana for a specific reason: “They used Qana because the village had already turned into a symbol for massacring innocent civilians, and so they set up ‘Qana 2’.” Notably, the incident has indeed been dubbed “The second Qana massacre” by the Arab media.
ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 … 14,00.html[/quote]

First there was regime change in Afghanistan. Then came Iraq. Now there’s talk of Syria and Iran.

The US have already overthrown 2 governments, and you want them to go at 2 more.

If that’s not meddling with governments throughout the region, I don’t know what is.

[quote=“cfimages”]First there was regime change in Afghanistan. Then came Iraq. Now there’s talk of Syria and Iran.

The US have already overthrown 2 governments, and you want them to go at 2 more.[/quote]

Ideally, yes.

Nobody is denying that we are meddling in others’ governments.

So it’s ok for the US to meddle, but not anyone else?

fred smith:

This is the “Israel and Lebanon Conflict” thread remember? I haven’t said anything much about it but I’ll comment now. Israel should have shown more restraint, and the US government, as their biggest supporter, should have “encouraged” them to do so. Their failure in this regard will lead to more rather than less of the extremism that the US government “says” it is trying to fight. But then, of course, they know that and so do you. Oil profits still up? How are the defense contractors making out I wonder? Do I need “evidence” to ask these questions?

[quote]Lebanese website blames Hizbullah for Qana deaths
(08.01.06, 07:53)

Anti-Syrian elements in Lebanon openly point finger at Hizbullah as guilty of killing of dozens of civilians in order to curtail plans for disarming group. ‘Hizbullah has placed rocket launcher on building’s roof and brought invalid children inside in bid to provoke Israeli response,’ they write
Roee Nahmias.[/quote]

Somebody needs to tell the Israeli Air Force Chief of Staff then because he’s apparently not aware of this ‘fact.’

"The raid between midnight and 01:00 AM attacked the vicinity of the building which was hit. Precise hits of the target were noted. So this poses a question, for which we don’t have an answer: What happened between midnight/ 01:00 AM and approximately 08:00 AM? There is a time gap which, at the moment, we are unable to explain. The IAF attacked this building, as far as we understand, as an identified target. In a moment, I will tell you in what context. The IAF attacked this building between 12:00 midnight and 01:00 AM. This is the level of resolution that we achieved at this time. One of the major problems was to try and understand from the pictures of the foreign media television in Lebanon which building had been hit, and to try and link it to our raids or rule out the possibility. We got to this relatively very late. It is a very complex process of taking a television picture and comparing it to an aerial photograph and trying to understand the connection. As far as we understand, this building was attacked between 12:00 midnight and 01:00 AM, and it took about seven hours before it was severely damaged.

As I said, the targets were carefully selected, and this village had extensive activity in it. Some of the targets attacked during the night are related to storage locations. Some are related to the command center in the vicinity of this building. Not far from the building attacked yesterday, the building where people not involved in the fighting were killed, another building very close by was attacked two days ago. You can see it in the aerial photographs. In the vicinity of the same targets that we attacked 500 meters from there; also, several days ago other targets were attacked that were linked to command functions in this village."
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Perhaps the tactics used by Israel are out-dated in this new form of non-State vs. State warfare.

I hope Israel does not believe the Christian faction in Lebanon will shower them with flower pedals when they enter Beirut.

Ideally, no. Ideally, perhaps we’d all live like Laozi said we should, i.e., aware of the next village but having nothing to do with it. But, I never said it was ideal to meddle in another’s government. Did I?

Is there some point you’d like to make about the subject matter?

Ideally, no. Ideally, perhaps we’d all live like Laozi said we should, i.e., aware of the next village but having nothing to do with it. But, I never said it was ideal to meddle in another’s government. Did I?

Is there some point you’d like to make about the subject matter?[/quote]

Talking about ideals, but not actual US policy and thinking begs the question, no?

Not to say that I disagree with EVERY intervention by the US, BUT there are pretty bad counterexamples to that. cough. latin america. cough. contras.

[quote]Others are concerned about the indiscriminate Israeli bombing of civilians, but not our government. British Foreign Secretary Kim Howells commented while in Beirut recently: "These have not been surgical strikes. It’s very, very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics that have been used.
“You know, if they’re chasing Hezbollah, then go for Hezbollah. You don’t go for the entire Lebanese nation.” [/quote]

Further disagreement between the IDF and Libanoscopie (who, I guess, disagree with the other 80% of Lebanese Christians who support Hizbullah’s fight against Israel.)

[quote]As the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.[/quote]

haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745185.html

Twatting Iran became more likely while I staggered the beach, wine in hand last night.

HG

Now, you want us involved. I thought we were supposed to stop interfering. I am perfectly happy to accept the endless advice that I have been given on this subject and encourage our government to sit this one out but now that is something that you don’t want. haha Too bad.

I doubt it. The more we “meddle” the quieter the Arab street is. The more we appear to be bogged down or using negotiations, the more active the terrorists become.

Hmmm. Wonder where this is going?

How trite. It is like watchnig a little three-year old clutching his blankie. Yes, it is all about oil Bob and no one is making more money of this than the Iranians. Doh! How did that happen!

I have no idea.

No, you do not need evidence to ask these questions but you will have a very hard time proving that this has any relevance to what is going on. I know in your simplistic, I’m a lumberjack world, that evil corporations are plotting nefarious deeds with the military industrial complex. Meanwhile on planet earth, some of us are saying that hmmmm Hizbollah, like Hamas, like the Iranian government, like the Syrian government, like the Taliban and like Saddam’s Iraq are certainly not nice moral actors or good international citizens so what do people like you want? More respect for their “rights” and more dialogue to hear their “concerns.” That is like asking a rape victim or the family of someone who has been murdered to go to counseling sessions to better understand and sympathize with the objectives of the perpetrator of the crime. No thanks. Spank your masochistic ass on your own.

[url=http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2006/07/iain_duncan_smi.html]The ‘world community’ asks Israel to act proportionately but what will ‘world community leaders’ do in order to protect Israel if it does act in a way that Annan, Chirac and Putin think appropriate? Not, of course, that these leaders act proportionately in defence of their own interests. Putin almost bombed Grozny back to the stone age when Chechnya wanted independence. Chirac ignored world opinion when France tested nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. Annan turned a blind eye to the corruption of the oil-for-food programme - corruption that contributed to the loss of thousands of lives every month in Saddam’s Iraq. The best clue to understanding how the world will protect Israel in the next few years is to reflect on recent history. The best thing the world community does is talk. Disproportionate talking is in fact the only thing it does but jaw-jaw has not stopped the suicide bomb or missile attacks on Israel. After Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in accordance with UN resolutions the world community promised to disband Hezbollah and protect the northern territories of Israel from shelling. It didn’t. The promise never evolved into action. $100m has been sunk into the UN’s interim force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in every year of the last six but Hezbollah has only grown stronger. The only newsworthy story generated by UNIFIL was a recent financial scam.

Israel played by the international rules for six years but ‘disproportionate diplomacy’ did nothing to stop attacks on civilians or its soldiers being kidnapped. Israel now watches the same international community engage in a ‘disproportionate dither’ over Iran’s nuclear programme. Tel Aviv has seen the world fail to protect Israel from Hezbollah. Why should it have much hope that we will protect it from a nuclear Tehran?[/url]

http://www.fromisraeltolebanon.org/

[quote] August 1, 2006
The Moral Culpability for Qana

by Patrick J. Buchanan

“Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hezbollah,” roared Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon on July 27.

“Every village from which a Katyusha is fired must be destroyed,” bellowed an Israeli general in a quote bannered by the nation’s largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.

The Israeli paper then summarized what the justice minister and general were saying: “In other words, a village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire.” That was Thursday.

Sunday, in Qana, 57 of Haim Ramon’s “terrorists,” 37 of them children, were massacred with precision-guided bombs. Apparently, Katyushas had been fired from Qana, near the destroyed building.

“One who goes to sleep with rockets shouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t wake up in the morning,” said Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman.

Today, we hear unctuous statements about how Israel takes pains to avoid civilian casualties, drops leaflets to warn civilians to flee target areas, and conforms to all the rules of civilized warfare.

But Israel’s words and deeds contradict her propaganda. As the war began, Ehud Olmert accused Lebanon, which had condemned Hezbollah for the killing and capture of the Israeli soldiers, of an “act of war.” Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz publicly threatened “to turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.”

Gillerman, at a pro-Israel rally in New York, thundered, “[T]o those countries who claim that we are using disproportionate force, I have only this to say: You’re damn right we are.”

“His comments drew wild applause,” said the Jerusalem Post.

Though Israel is dissembling now, Gillerman spoke the truth then. No sooner had Hezbollah taken the two Israeli soldiers hostage than Israel unleashed an air war – on Lebanon. The Beirut airport was bombed, its fuel storage tanks set ablaze. The coast was blockaded. Power plants, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, roads, trucks, and buses were all hit with air strikes.

Within 48 hours, it was apparent Israel was exploiting Hezbollah’s attack to execute a preconceived military plan to destroy Lebanon – i.e., the collective punishment of a people and nation for the crimes of a renegade militia they could not control. It was the moral equivalent of a municipal police going berserk, shooting, killing, and ravaging an African-American community, because Black Panthers had ambushed and killed cops.

If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, a ratio of 30-1, though Hezbollah is firing unguided rockets, while Israel is using precision-guided munitions.

Thousands of Lebanese civilians are injured. Perhaps 800,000 are homeless.

Yet, whatever one thinks of the morality of what Israel is doing, the stupidity is paralyzing. Instead of maintaining the moral and political high ground it had – when even Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan were condemning Hezbollah, and privately hoping Israel would inflict a humiliating defeat on Nasrallah – Israel launched an air war on an innocent people. Now, 87 percent of Lebanese back Hezbollah, and the entire Arab and Islamic world, Shia and Sunni alike, is rallying behind Nasrallah.

And how does one defend the behavior of the United States?

When Gillerman was exulting in the disproportionality of Israel’s attack on Lebanon, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton was smiling smugly beside him. When the UN Security Council tabled a resolution condemning Hezbollah’s igniting of the war and Katyusha attacks, but also the excesses of Israel’s reprisals, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton vetoed it. When a few congressmen sought to moderate a pro-Israeli resolution by adding words urging “all sides to protect innocent life and infrastructure,” GOP leader John Boehner ordered the words taken down.

Why? Because, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, had prepared the resolution and wanted it passed the way they wrote it. Our Knesset complied. It sailed through the House 410-8. :notworthy:

For two weeks, Bush seemed unable to find a word of criticism for what our friends in Israel were doing to our friends in Lebanon. He publicly sent more bombs to Israel. He and Condi emphasized that America did not want a cease-fire – yet.

And because America provides Israel with the bombs it uses on Lebanon, and we refused to restrain the Israelis, and we opposed every effort for a cease-fire before Sunday, America shares full moral and political responsibility for the massacre at Qana.

Rubbing our noses in our own cravenness, “Bibi” Netanyahu took time out, a week ago, from his daily appearances on American television, denouncing terrorism, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the terror attack on the King David Hotel by Menachem Begin’s Irgun, an attack that killed 92 people, among them British nurses.

This was not a terrorist act, Bibi explained, because Irgun telephoned a 15-minute warning to the hotel before the bombs went off. Right. And those children in that basement in Qana should not have ignored the Israeli leaflets warning them to clear out of southern Lebanon.

Our Israeli friends appear to be playing us for fools. :bravo:

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.[/quote]

http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=9453

If everyone in Lebanon is a civilian…who is firing all these Katuska’s?
More news…

[quote]Israel ‘seizes militants in raid’
From correspondents in Jerusalem, August 02, 2006

ISRAELI commandoes seized several militants during an airborne operation in the eastern Lebanese town of Baalbek overnight, the army said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said the captured militants were brought to Israel. No other details were made available.
“During the night, (Israeli) forces operated in the town of Baalbek. In the activity, they identified hitting a number of terrorists. A number of terrorists were also arrested and taken to Israel,” the spokeswoman said.
The spokeswoman said none of the Israeli troops who took part in the operation were injured.
“The soldiers returned home safely,” she said. At least 15 Lebanese casualties in Israeli strike
But Lebanon security sources said at least 15 civilians were killed or wounded in an Israeli air strike near Baalbek,.
They said warplanes bombarded the village of Jammaliyeh during clashes nearby between Israeli airborne commandos and Hezbollah guerillas, destroying seveal houses."
theaustralian.news.com.au/st … 09,00.html[/quote]
The MSM is using ‘militants’ so much its pretty well established as code for Hezbians.(Hezbollah)
and…

[quote]IDF commandos capture Hizbullah members after battle
Yaakov Katz, jpost staff, and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 1, 2006

After several hours of intense fighting in and around a hospital in the eastern Lebanon town of Baalbek, IDF commando forces on Wednesday morning took a number of Hizbullah officials captive.

Reportedly, an IAF helicopter dropped special forces soldiers at the hospital late Tuesday night. Heavy shooting with Hizbullah operatives on the premises ensued.

After inspecting the identification of everyone in the hospital, the IDF soldiers proceeded to arrest several people described in a CNN report as Hizbullah officials, who were later transported back into Israel. The officials names and positions in the organization were not revealed.

No IDF soldiers were wounded in the operation, an army spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post.

Earlier Wednesday morning, Hizbullah spokesman Hussein Rahal said, “A group of Israeli commandos was brought to the hospital by a helicopter. They entered the hospital and are trapped inside as our fighters opened fire on them and fierce fighting is still raging.”

In a statement released Wednesday, the IDF confirmed that Hizbullah operatives had been captured and that others had been killed. This is the first confirmation by the IDF of operations so deep inside the Bekaa Valley, a known Hizbullah stronghold.

Meanwhile, clashes between IDF forces and Hizbullah guerrillas were reported Wednesday morning in Bekaa Valley villages as the IDF continued to push deeper into Lebanon. In the village of Mahbiv, north of Manara, at least seven Hizbullah operatives were reportedly killed.more at link
JPost.com[/quote]

Headlines you won’t see - “Hezbollah forces fire on Hospital”

emphasis added.

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]

[quote]IDF commandos capture Hizbullah members after battle
Yaakov Katz, jpost staff, and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 1, 2006

After several hours of intense fighting in and around a hospital in the eastern Lebanon town of Baalbek, IDF commando forces on Wednesday morning took a number of Hizbullah officials captive.

Reportedly, an IAF helicopter dropped special forces soldiers at the hospital late Tuesday night. Heavy shooting with Hizbullah operatives on the premises ensued.

more at link
JPost.com[/quote]

Headlines you won’t see - “Hezbollah forces fire on Hospital”[/quote]

Because it’s the Israelis that attacked the hospital?

[quote=“fred smith”] Now, you want us involved. I thought we were supposed to stop interfering. I am perfectly happy to accept the endless advice that I have been given on this subject and encourage our government to sit this one out but now that is something that you don’t want. haha Too bad. [quote]

Oh, you are involved. You are involved with every penny of support you give Israel to buy weapons. At no point did “I” say that you should not interfere with Israel. Your problem is that you talk to everyone as though they are the same person, the same figment of your imagination.

Yeah right. We have all, I’m sure, by now noticed how quiet Arab streets are. :unamused:

Good question. Perhaps you are in it together.

What we want is for you to quit encouraging extremism at every opportunity. You encourage it among your own people and you encourage it on the other side. Is it any wonder people think that what you really want, what you really really want, is war.

After reading that post, I have suddenly come to the conclusion that YES, I do want war, a war against illiteracy!!!

Yes, I’m sure that if everyone could just bring more critical reading skills to the task we would all suddenly agree with everything you say. :unamused: You are a nut.

Ain’t it the truth but be careful lest you get lectures from driveby moderators on attacking the messenger and not the message.