6-Sep-06: Lebanese Underground

Tom Gross provides an invaluable service by publishing the results of the monitoring of the BBC's Arabic service for this article.

On August 1, retired Egyptian Major General Hussam Suwailem, the main studio guest for the daily "Hadith al-Saa" program on the BBC Arabic World Service (the equivalent of the "Newshour" program on the English-language BBC World Service) said Israel's airstrikes were failing because Hizbullah was "invisible". Hizbullah's underground network where they were hiding, he said, was so extensive that it amounted to an underground city. He said the network had been built by North Korean companies in the six years since Israel left Lebanon. The tunnels, he added, were dug deeper than the penetration ability of the GBU-28 bomb used by Israel; they each linked to three small military cities, and in some places the network goes as far as to reach inside Syria. Inside this network, he continued, communications structures were built with the co-operation of German companies. Suwailem further stated that the central command center of Hizbullah is in the Harmal area (in the Northern Beka valley), in which the al-Manar TV transmitters were also placed.

Six years of preparation. A vast underground city. North Korean and German technology. A cross-border structure reaching all the way into Syria. Sort of suggests they had a fairly serious war in mind - perhaps a war that isn't over yet.

As Tom Gross points out:

Hizbullah fired 4,228 rockets at Israel during the 34 days of fighting, leading to 53 fatalities, 250 severely wounded, and over 2,000 less seriously wounded. There was extensive damage to hundreds of dwellings, several public utilities, and dozens of industrial plants. One million Israelis lived near or in shelters or security rooms, with over 250,000 civilians evacuating the north and relocating to other areas of the country.

And with all of this, we're treated to the spectacle of prominent politicial scientists speaking at an Islamic-sponsored conference in the US last week and blaming the entire catastrophe on Israeli premeditation and on its "influential Washington lobby". What's the world coming to if you can't form your political opinions on the basis of academic objectivity? Suggested answer: a fairly dangerous place. See CAMERA's research data for some disturbing indicators of how and why. And Benny Morris' powerful analysis "The Ignorance at the Heart of an Innuendo".