26-Jun-16: Confirmed: How US actions emboldened and empower the terrorists of Hezbollah

The foreign ministers of the Islamic Republic of Iran
and the United States of America, together at a gathering
in Oslo eleven days ago [Image Source]

In a public speech broadcast on Friday and reported the following day, ["In first, Hezbollah confirms all financial support comes from Iran", Al Arabiya, June 25, 2016], the supreme head of the Lebanon-based terror organization Hezbollah made several revelations that ought to have an impact on how the world views the Iranian menace.

Figuring out who the terrorists are and what to do about them is, as we keep saying here, not such a straightforward thing. 

Hezbollah illustrates the point: it is formally classified as a terrorist organization by the Arab League, all the monarchic Gulf states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), United States, France, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Israel. 

On the other hand, the European Union, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have decided they view only its so-called military wing as terrorist; the rest of they are presumably OK with. Russia says Hezbollah is legitimate and China "remains neutral" [source; Wikipedia]. 

It's hard not to be deeply cynical about how diplomats and politicians, aware and informed of what the terrorists are doing with their improbably vast arsenal - currently estimated at  an astounding 150,000 rockets and ramping up - play games with people's lives.

Key points made in Hassan Nasrallah's Friday speech:

• All its funding and all its arms come from the Islamic Republic of Iran...
• And therefore US and other Hezbollah-directed sanctions will have no impact. 
• "We are open about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, come from the Islamic Republic of Iran..."
• "As long as Iran has money, we have money..." 
• "Just as we receive the rockets that we use to threaten Israel, we are receiving our money. No law will prevent us from receiving it."

This is startling in its bluntness. (As far as we know, no one from the White House or the State Department has responded to it yet.) 

The Al Arabiya report reminds us that Iran was instrumental in creating Hezbollah - oriented, like Iran, to the Shi'ite strand of Islam - 1982. Iran’s financial, military, intelligence, logistical and advisory help to Hezbollah has "well known" in the years since. Iran's Revolutionary Guard along with its Quds "elite" force transformed Hezbollah to become one of Iran’s most important and powerful regional and international proxies. 

So now we have public confirmation from an unimpeachable source that Hezbollah terror is fully funded, fully enabled and fully equipped by the money and the arsenal of Iran. As the principal beneficiary of Iran's tender attentions, there's no room for doubt on the matter. For perfectly understandable Arab/Iran reasons, Al Arabiya makes some effort to clarify how the actions of the current United States administration play into this Iran/Hezbollah reality. 

An American law, the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act, went into effect on December 18, 2015. It ambitiously targets banks and financial institutions that facilitate money transactions for Hezbollah. Its existence is probably one of the factors that brought the Hezbollah fuehrer to make his speech.

But the reality is that a very different US foreign policy initiative, the JCPOA is achieving pretty much the exact opposite effect. In the words of the Al Arabiya article

the US is now seemingly playing a critical role in assisting and facilitating the ways through which Hezbollah receives this significant aid from the Iranian government. The Obama administration and Hassan Rouhani ’s government were two key players in getting the nuclear agreement signed. When the nuclear terms started being implemented, the Obama administration began immediately transferring billions of dollars to Iran's Central Bank. One of the payments included 1.7 billion dollars transferred, in January 2015. Two of the major primary beneficiaries of these sanctions reliefs and flow of money are Hezbollah and the IRGC. Iran also immediately increased its military budget by $1.5 billion... Nasrallah’s speech also indicates that the US money transfer to Iran’s bank and the sanctions reliefs appear to have empowered and emboldened both the Iranian government and the Hezbollah leader… Thanks to Washington, the money that Iran is receiving from the US or the market is again going on its way to Hezbollah, the major benefactor.

If you're not deeply concerned about what this means and how it happened, you might not understand what terrorism does to civilized societies. And if you think it's a problem that impacts only Israel, you might not understand the Iranian game-plan. Here's a little suggested homework:

• 21-May-16: Darker sides of the JCPOA, the agreement that never was, emerge
• 25-Aug-15: Hard to ignore how much Iran believes its old goals are the right goals
• 29-Jul-15: Built not on trust but on... verification [a key document]
• 29-May-15: Wary eyes on Hezbollah's Cyprus and Southern Lebanon battlefields
• 01-Apr-15: More under-reported aspects of the Iranian reality
• 8-Oct-13: Neither a state nor a government, Hezbollah has a phenomenally large missile arsenal and means to attack

18-Jan-15: Meanwhile on Israel's Syria front

Nasrallah

It's too soon to know what is actually happening in southern Syria tonight. The Hezbollah-affiliated media are busy spinning their own reality while Israel, as usually happens in such situations, remains officially non-committal, with the media doing plenty of speculating and un-named insiders connecting dots in creative ways.

Lebanon's Daily Star reported during the Sunday evening hours that a military strike by Israeli forces in the general area of Quneitra in the Golan Heights scored a hit on two Hezbollah vehicles, destroying one, damaging another. Using the Lebanese paper's language, "a number of mujahedeens were martyred"; only some of the names have been publicized, adding to the confusion of what happened.

Quneitra has been the site of heavy fighting between forces loyal to the Bashar al-Assad regime on one side, and forces connected to Al-Qaeda on the other. The Daily Star article does not say it, but the battle raging in the vicinity is over control of  a border crossing nearby which connects Syria to Lebanon, and therefore has real strategic value. Lebanese sources, not named by Daily Star, say Hezbollah's "top commander" Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the late Imad Mughniyeh is one of the dead. The older Mughniyeh's name is invoked frequently whenever Hezbollah announces plans for a 'revenge attack' or acknowledges having just done one. Imad Mughniyeh died as he walked past an exploding car in Damascus, Syria, in 2008. A Reuters obituary ascribes a long list of blood-soaked atrocities to him.

The son, evidently killed today, was mentioned in news reports just four months ago that said he had become Hezbollah’s Golan District commander. The same source said Jihad Mughniyeh was "close to current Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, his father’s brother-in-law and successor Mustafa Badreddine and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps". AP estimates he was about 25 years old.

Another of the dead is Mohammad Issa, a senior field commander for Hezbollah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Issa. He was the commander responsible for Hezbollah's Syrian and Iraqi operations, according to this report.

Then the startling revelation that another of the dead is "Iranian field commander Abu Ali Tabtabai", about whom we will probably be hearing soon. Other names: Mahdi Nasser al-Moussawi, Ali Fouad Hasan, Ghazi Ali Dawi, Hussein Hasan Hasan and Hussein Ismail al-Ashhab. What were those 'mujahedeen' doing there? Busy with "an inspection mission", says the Lebanese paper. 

Ynet quotes an unnamed Israeli official confirming today's attack which "targeted terrorists planning attacks against Israel." That's about the extent of Israeli comment tonight.

The Hezbollah media arm, Al-Manar, led its evening news bulletin with a item that calls the Israeli strike "a foolish venture" that reflects Israel's "madness" in light of Hezbollah's growing military might and that could lead to a costly adventure that puts the entire Middle Eat region in jeopardy."

The head of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, is said to be about to deliver a speech tonight threatening Israel with retaliation via "a painful strike". His last round of warnings to Israel came just a few days ago, when he said Hizbullah

"has had Iranian Fateh-110 missiles that can hit the whole of Israel since 2006, adding that it is always ready to fight Israel."

A different source quoted Nasrallah just two days ago:

"The axis is capable of responding. This can happen any time... [Hezbollah has] "all (the weapons) you can imagine... and in great quantities... We are now stronger than we ever were as a resistance movement."

Iran, the nuclear face-off with the Americans: Syria, Hezbollah: commentators are going to have plenty of scope for unraveling the complexities in the hours and days ahead.

30-Jan-13: In fighting terrorism, fear cannot be a substitute for moral clarity: Two political figures speak from personal experiences of terror

Trimble and Aznar [Image Source]

We posted here yesterday ["29-Jan-13: What their view on Hezbollah tells us about Europe's counter-terrorism strategy"] about the European Union's pusillanimous stance on banning one of the world's most dangerous and active terror organizations, Hezbollah.

The Times of London has a leading op ed column today written by two former political figures who have deep first-hand experience of terrorism. In their essay, entitled "Don’t mince words. Hezbollah are terrorists", José María Aznar who was was prime minister of Spain from 1996 until a few days after the Madrid railway massacre of 2004, and Lord Trimble, First Minister of Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2002 and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1998, begin with the antithesis to yesterday's Guardian op ed about which we blogged last night: "29-Jan-13: Is the threat of terrorism greater now, or less?". They open with these words:

Jihadi terrorism is still alive and, as events in Mali and Algeria show us, poses a direct threat to us. The turmoil in North Africa reminds us that jihadism has no boundaries and that when confronting terrorism it is always better to prevent it rather than deal with its consequences. 

As we noted yesterday, the EU prefers not to face the reality of terrorism. Trimble and Aznar point to what is and is not being done about Hezbollah to make their case. About last summer's terrorist bombing in Bulgaria of a bus-load of Israelis, they point out that

despite this atrocity some European governments are not willing to declare Hezbollah a security threat and put it on the EU terrorist list. This refusal is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the group. Hezbollah is not just a Lebanese militia group and political party. It is the long arm of Iran. From its conception by Tehran in 1982, it has been committed to the revolutionary goals of the international expansion of Shia Islam, as dreamt of by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The fact that it holds seats in the Lebanese Parliament and posts in the Cabinet does not mean that its leaders see themselves as just another Lebanese faction — albeit one that murders its political opponents (a UN tribunal found that the assassination of Rafic Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister was a Hezbollah plot). On the contrary Hezbollah has a global vision and reach. It has perpetrated attacks in places as distant as Argentina, Georgia, Israel, Thailand, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as Lebanon. It has been involved in illegal but very lucrative activities in Latin America and West Africa. 

They then address a dimension of this issue that often drives us crazy - the willingness of many to make an artificial distinction between the so-called "military wing" of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and their political, charitable and who-knows-what-other front activities. People who think like that, say the authors, are wrong. Hezbollah is a single body and needs to be condemned and blacklisted in all its manifestations:

...Every part plays a role in the overall strategy. The leaders in charge of its hospitals and schools, the military leader and the political representatives all sit together under the secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah. His deputy, Naim Qassem, was quoted as recently as October, saying: “We don’t have a military wing and a political wing. We don’t have the Party of Allah and the Party of Resistance. These differences do not exist and are rejected.” Hezbollah is committed to violent revolution. It sees itself as being in total confrontation with our way of life. The idea that engaging Hezbollah through the Lebanese political process and institutions would moderate it has proved to be a dangerous illusion. And today it is actively intervening in Syria on behalf of Bashar Assad; we will know soon about the atrocities conducted by its militants there... We know from our own experience in Spain and Northern Ireland that terrorism cannot be defeated unless you tackle all the tentacles that serve the purposes of the terrorists, and that includes the political and financial front organisations. Make no mistake — terrorist groups use all the means at their disposal to survive, flourish and achieve their plans.

About the claim by certain European governments that this is somehow not the right time to put Hezbollah on the EU terrorist list, they correctly ask:

But what more is needed to let us take such a decision? Official bodies, private research, parliamentary inquiries, one after another, have revealed the terrorist connections.

Addressing one of the reasons European states have held back from condemning Hezbollah, they write

We understand the caution of nations that have citizens living in Lebanon or peacekeeping troops deployed there. But fear cannot be a substitute for moral clarity. We need to remember that Unifil II (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) was deployed in 2006 to disarm Hezbollah, not to become its hostage... Hezbollah is already present and active on European soil; its illegal activities and networks cover the continent. It has shown that it is willing to strike in Europe. That is why European governments must move now to stigmatise Hezbollah and its activities, vision and goals.

What more must happen before that view is heard and comprehended?

13-Jan-13: A French contribution to stopping the terrorists

Hezbollah's fighters, fully aware of the public relations impact,
routinely salute the German Nazi way [Image Source]. What is it that
they are trying to tell us? Now let's think... hmmm. No, couldn't be that.

Benjamin Weinthal writes in today's Jerusalem Post ["French FM: No EU consensus on Hezbollah ban"] about French efforts to block the European Union designating Hezbollah as a terror entity. France, his article says, seeks "to preserve its diplomatic leverage in Lebanon" and "is also concerned about Hezbollah retaliation".

The Jerusalem Post analysis quotes a French official who refers to "the common position of the Council of the European Union" dating back to December 2001 which requires that "specific measures to fight against terrorism", including adding new names to the list of proscribed terrorist organizations in the EU, must be based on "a consensus among Member States. This consensus is not currently met”, says the official, evidently referring to his own office.

Certain voices in Lebanon (at least) might be pleased to know of France's obstructiveness. In "Should Europe Classify Hezbollah As a Terrorist Group?", published December 27, 2012 on the Washington-based al-Monitor website, Nasser Charrah, a Lebanese whose bio includes a stint at the Palestinian Research Center (formed by the PLO in Beirut in 1965 when Lebanon was the nerve-center of the Arafat-led terrorists) delivers some interesting first-person observations about what Hizbollah does and does not stand for, and likewise for UNIFIL. Some readers may be as surprised as we are by what he reveals.

• Gen. Alberto Asarta, the Spanish general who for the past three years has served as commander of UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon, calls the area of southern Lebanon under his operational control "the best and most stable in the whole of the Middle East".
• Asarta attributes the extraordinary "stability" in the area to Hezbollah’s cooperation with UNIFIL and Hezbollah’s willingness to play host to the UNIFIL presence. (It's hard to escape the conclusion that Asarta, the man in charge of the very UN forces who are supposed to keep Hezbollah away from the Israeli border, and to prevent yet another massive Hezbollah arms-buildup in southern Lebanon's villages, comes across in the direct quotations of this piece as a major admirer of Hezbollah.)
• In fact, UNIFIL's "stay in southern Lebanon" is no less than "the most successful model when compared to the experiences of other UN peacekeeping missions around the world". But that's not all!
• Hezbollah has aided UNIFIL in "combating terrorist cells of Islamic extremism in the region who plot against the blue-helmeted soldiers. The best evidence of this last point can be found in the establishment of the four-pronged organization dubbed, “The Partnership against Radical Islamic Terrorism,” which includes the Lebanese army, UNIFIL, Hezbollah and its popular base." 

Actually this makes sense. Though it originates with a Spanish source, it just might persuade the French. Let's get the EU to outsource all of its anti-terrorism strategy to the ideally-named “Partnership against Radical Islamic Terrorism”, and get Hezbollah, UNIFIL and the army of Lebanon to deal with the Islamists. A sure-fire, winning European plan!

But seriously.

We can hardly expect everyone to embrace the neatness of this solution. The Bulgarian Sofia News Agency noted this past week that diplomats in Europe say 

the results of Bulgaria's probe in July's bombing of an Israeli tour bus, including a possible Hezbollah lead, will be "essential" for the EU process to list the Lebanese organization as a terrorist entity... However, Bulgarian officials, including the President, the Prime Minister, and the Foreign Affairs Minister, have been very wary of directly involving Hezbollah, reiterating it all depended on the findings of the ongoing investigation.

That bus bombing was the subject of several posts we made in July 2012, including "20-Jul-12: US says Hezbullah and its primary sponsor Iran executed the Burgas, Bulgaria, killings". Do we know who carried out the airport bombing that brought about the deaths of five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver? Hezbollah says it certainly wasn't them: see "Hezbollah on bus bombing: We wouldn't target tourists for revenge", Christian Science Monitor. And the Bulgarians are still investigating. The Washington Post said last Monday that Bulgaria had fired the leader of its investigation into the Burgas airport attack because she leaked "sensitive information" about the probe.

Stanelia Karadzhova told Bulgaria’s 24 Chasa daily that one of three suspected terrorists who carried out the attack at the airport of the Black Sea city in July has been identified and that all the suspects were foreign nationals. The office of the District Prosecutor in Burgas said in a statement Monday that Karadzhova was removed because “she spoke to the media without clearing her statement with the supervising prosecutor.”

For the record, Hezbollah was designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department in October 1997, and is proscribed as a terrorist organization by Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Egypt, Israel, the Netherlands and (Hezbollah's military wing only) the United Kingdom. As for the rest of the European Union, it currently does not list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization though the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution in 2005 recognizing "clear evidence" of "terrorist activities by Hezbollah" (in the wake of the murder of Lebanese leader Rafic Hariri) and urging the EU Council to brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The Council has been reluctant to do this (says Wikipedia) because France and Spain fear such a move will further damage (wait for it...) the prospects for Middle East peace talks.

Assuming he has access to European cable TV, Hassan Nasrallah who heads Hezbollah from a pit somewhere in Lebanon must be thoroughly enjoying himself.

26-May-11: "Lebanon's terrorist forces have more missiles than most sovereign states"

Just a few weeks before he leaves office, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a punchy speech on Tuesday to the American Enterprise Institute. Speaking of the need to ensure appropriate budgets, he said keeping quiet would be "managerial cowardice."

"Our record of predicting where we will use military force since Vietnam is perfect - we have never once gotten it right... There isn't a single instance... where we knew and planned for such a conflict six months in advance." [The examples offered by Mr Gates: Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, the Balkans, Haiti... "You can just keep going through the list."] Gates pointed to the Mideast radical group Hezbollah, armed with more missiles and rockets than most states, possibly armed with chemical or biological warheads. Hezbollah cruise missiles could threaten U.S. ships with anti-ship missiles with a range of 65 miles. [Source: CNN]

Two months ago, an Israeli security official provided the Washington Post with a map detailing the phenomenal war preparations completed by Hezbollah's terrorist forces and fully in place: 550 bunkers, 300 surveillance sites; 100 additional offensive facilities - all owned and operated by Hezbollah under the noses of the sovereign government of thoroughly-impotent Lebanon and of the United Nations peace-keeping forces in the area. Most of the sites marked on the map are located in the southern part of Lebanon, next to Israel's border and south of the Litani River. Israeli intelligence, expressing a view that Mr Gates seems to be echoing, says the Hezbollah forces have deployed thousands of Israel-facing missiles.

In the interests of seeming to be fair, we will quote a different view:

UNIFIL has not found any evidence of Hizbullah military activity and smuggling or the presence of guerilla fighters in its area of operations in Southern Lebanon, the commander of the multinational peacekeeping force, Maj.-Gen. Alberto Asarta Cuevas [Source]

On the other hand, United Press International issued a report during the past hour quoting Israel's claims that Hezbollah has installed tens of thousands of missiles and rockets in Lebanon. Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, is quoted confirming that missiles "will remain part of the Arab equation and nobody can take them away... No one will be able to grab them, neither in Lebanon nor in the world."

Hezbullah's own website goes further today, quoting the bold and boastful Nasrallah in greater detail:

“Our missiles are not 12 thousand; your information is too old.” His eminence vowed, meanwhile, that these rockets are ready and will remain in place. “They will remain effective and will protect Lebanon. They will remain present in the equation of the region, and no one will be able to grab them, neither in Lebanon nor in the world,” his eminence pledged. Our missiles today, which Netanyahu talked about before Congress, represent our honor, our blood, our money, our dignity and our pride,” Sayyed Nasrallah said, and added that this resistance will remain faithful to its goals, to its path, to its hopes, to its sufferings and to the blood of its martyrs."

Israel, unlike the United States, cannot tolerate the risk of having "never once got it right" when it comes to preparing for attacks by the religiously-inspired jihadist zealots on our country's borders. Making an error of judgement about a terrorist enemy with so much death and malice on its mind would be unthinkable.

20-Jul-10: Protecting the lives of ordinary people... who happen to be Arabs

It's not often that the plans of exquisitely-armed terror groups can be anticipated and potentially even overturned. But that possibility has arisen in our neighbourhood and those who stand to benefit the most are our Arab neighbours.

In a thought-provoking essay carried in today's Wall Street Journal, Dr. Stephen P. Cohen of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development (which set up the first secret official negotiations between Israel and the PLO involving Arafat and Peres back in the nineties) argues that the life-threatening actions of one of the world's major terrorist organizations can be thwarted - if only the states in the area choose to do so.

His article is called "Preventing the Next Lebanon", and Cohen makes some cogent observations about the past and present Lebanons:

Israel recently embarked on an extraordinary form of deterrence against the possibility of a second Hizbullah war. Instead of engaging in a pre-emptive military strike, the Israeli military launched a public relations offensive. It publicized highly detailed intelligence maps and aerial photographs depicting exactly where Hizbullah constructs and maintains missile and rocket caches, as well as command centers. These maps show that Hizbullah's bases are located in villages in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border, in very close proximity to schools and hospitals. Its weapons are aimed at Israeli cities and civilian targets. If these missiles were to be launched, Israel would be required to defend its population by destroying the missile emplacements and depots. Because of its deliberate placement of these weapons, Hizbullah is condemning Shiite villages to destruction. Israel is offering the governments of Syria, Lebanon and their Arab supporters, as well as world policy-makers, an opportunity to protect Arab lives instead of blaming Israel after the fact for what can be prevented.

The whole article is here (needs WSJ subscription).

Just how serious is the Hizbullah threat to Israelis? The terrorists on our northern border have the ability (see Jerusalem Post analysis) to fire some 800 rockets into Israel on each day of the next war... and possibly many more than that, given that they have 40,000 rockets in their arsenal, deployed in some 160 villages scattered throughout southern Lebanon.

How this looks in just one of those villages is graphically depicted in an IDF video, recently declassified and now available for anyone who wants to comprehend:



This video is part of a file of evidence handed by Israeli diplomats to diplomats from several countries, and to the new Spanish commander of UNIFIL, Maj.-Gen. Alberto Asarta Cuevas.

A terrorist organization equipped with 40,000 missiles cannot be stopped, period.

So what is the government of the country that is the target of all that hatred to do? The answer is clear: you do something really devastating, because you have absolutely no choice. The terrorists and their arsenals, with the full knowledge and complicity of the authorities in Beirut, are implanted deeply among civilian settlements in Lebanese territory. Any response by Israel to a rain of incoming rockets will exact Lebanese vast numbers of lives and bring massive destruction - arguably the response of which the jihadists dream. And the rockets will keep coming. Israelis will not tolerate being at Ground Zero of Nassrallah's plans. So Israel will do what its technology allows it to do.

Better our neighbours should comprehend this before the Hizbollah doomsday scenario evolves beyond the point of no return.

15-Feb-08: "We Arabs churn out the same boastful speeches..."

The MEMRI Blog performs an invaluable service in throwing light on articles and speeches that, because they are expressed in Arabic for an Arabic audience, are rarely received in non-Arabic circles.

Today's "open war" speech by arch-terrorist Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah will undoubtedly come in for its share of analysis within the Arab world. (The BBC's report describes him speaking to a vast crowd of Lebanese from his hiding place via a recorded video projected onto a giant video screen, blaming Israel for the death of the mass murderer Mughniyeh, and saying Hizbullah's war against the Jewish state is not over.)

Until then, here's MEMRI's report of an article from Saudi Arabia, criticizing Nasrallah for an earlier speech of his.The notes below come from the Saudi daily Al-Watan, where columnist 'Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa harshly criticized Nasrallah for expounding in mid-January on the strategic value of possessing the body parts of Israeli soldiers. Courtesy of MEMRI, some excerpts from the Saudi article.

Could Nasrallah Have Said Anything More Brutal or More Harmful to Our Image?

"'We have the remains of Israeli soldiers. Severed heads. We have some arms and legs and a nearly complete body – from the head to the middle of the torso.' Read the ugly details in the previous sentence and judge: Could Nasrallah have said anything more brutal, anything that does more to distort the image of our people, our religion and our nation?

"Mr. Hassan [Nasrallah], I do not think that our glorious religion [of Islam] has ever, throughout its history, described human beings as [collections of] spare parts. In our rich heritage – from the glorious battle of Badr to [Operation] True Promise [Nasrallah's name for the 2006 Lebanon war], I never read of any military commander who went into such disgusting details. Believe me, I would have kept silent had I not felt great shame at hearing the entire world – East and West – quoting this line at the head of its news broadcasts and in the main headlines of the newspapers.

"I know, Mr. Nasrallah, that the cruel Israeli administration places great value on any remains of Israeli soldiers, and that you mention these body parts for bargaining purposes. I am aware that in return for the severed head of the Israeli [soldier], we may receive dozens of living Arab [prisoners]. And I am also aware that even the [severed] leg of a Zionist may constitute a [valuable] bargaining chip, leading to the release of several living Arab prisoners from Israeli jails.

"[But] we also know that [the Israelis] place more value on, and have more respect for, the bones of their soldiers than we have for [living] Arabs. Life has become so cheap for us that the body parts of a dead Israeli are [exchangeable for] dozens of living Arabs."

Operation "True Promise" Yielded Nothing but False Promises Enveloped in Rhetoric

"Let us see why this is so: I have not the slightest doubt, Allah forbid, as to the justice of our [cause] and as to the sanctity of our wars against the oppressive and occupying Zionist entity. But what is the cause of this humiliation and devaluation [of life]? The reason, honorable sir, is that we continue to churn out the same boastful speeches which leave us with nothing but imaginary victories. The battles we wage yield nothing more than a few body parts [of enemy soldiers], or a couple of hostages. And what price [do we pay]? [The price is] hundreds, even thousands, of Arab youths in Israeli jails, whose numbers multiply with every [war] like [Operation] 'True Promise' – while our only reward is false promises enveloped in rhetoric!

"[But] the chief reason [for our humiliation] lies in [the fact that] our enemy knows how to speak] the language of the world. It knows how to tap into the world's emotions, and to sugarcoat its oppression, tyranny, occupation and violence, presenting itself as a victim surrounded by savage beasts... And our statements provide [our enemies] with a golden opportunity. If they now tour the world, spreading your famous line about the remains of bodies and human spare parts, they will consider it the greatest achievement of their [entire] long war. [It will enable them] to present themselves as the victims, while [in reality] it is we who are the victims.

"Honorable sir, war is not [fought with] Katyusha rockets alone. Half of it is [fought with] words, and it is words that will decide [the final outcome]."

He makes some interesting points. So does Kirschen in his Dry Bones comment from 2006 below.

8-Oct-06: Cluster of Critics Assails Israeli Self-Defence

In the wake of a war claimed as a "divine victory" by "Shiite and Hizbullah [forces] over the Zionist regime", Israel is now in the cross-hairs of global critics for what are claimed to be a million unexploded cluster bombs scattered across the Lebanese countryside.

A syndicated UPI story from Friday ("Unexploded Israeli bombs threaten Lebanese") covers the main issues:

"U.N. officials said it will take more than a year to clear out the estimated 1 million unexploded Israeli bomblets, The New York Times reported Friday. The Times said the bomblets outnumber the 650,000 people living in the southern Lebanon region where they are located. Unexploded cluster bombs had injured 109 people and killed 18 others as of Sept. 28, Lebanese officials said. The U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center in southern Lebanon said unexploded bombs have been found in 745 locations across the south and 4,500 of the estimated 1 million unexploded bombs have been disposed of. Israel has faced criticism from U.N. officials, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for using the cluster bombs, which are legal for use against military targets. However, the groups say the bombs are difficult to focus exclusively on military targets and can harm civilians. Israel has also been criticized for allegedly dropping most of the bombs in the final days of the conflict, while peace negotiations were ongoing."

Dr Gerald Steinberg directs the Program on Conflict Management at Bar Ilan University and is the editor of www.ngo-monitor.org. He has some pungent comments -- better to describe them as home truths -- in response. They're not yet published, but probably will be by the time this blog item reaches you:

Self-Defence and the Rules of War - Gerald M. Steinberg

Jerusalem: In the recent Lebanon war, Israel was attacked with daily barrages of hundreds of rockets, launched indiscriminately by Hezbollah from trucks and other platforms located in towns, villages and fields. These weapons struck Israeli hospitals, schools, houses, workplaces, streets, and even civilians in their cars. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had the obligation to stop these deaths and injuries. In the effort to meet this requirement, the IDF used different tactics and weapons, including cluster bombs, which break into multiple sub-munitions in order to hit weapons, including rocket launchers whose precise location is unknown or changing.
During and after the war, the United Nations Human Rights Council and powerful NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, condemned Israel repeatedly for using cluster bombs. The NGOs are running a campaign for a treaty to ban the use of these weapons, and has issued a barrage of press releases, reports and statements on the injuries caused to Lebanese by the remnants of these weapons. According to HRW, the US government heeded its demand to halt deliveries of these weapons to Israel during the war. On the surface, it would seem that the campaign on this issue was both morally justified and effective.
But a deeper examination of the issues shows fundamental flaws that undermine both the moral argument and NGO claim to a central role in negotiating arms limitation agreements.
Morally and logically, every nation under attack has the right to self-defense, and the rules of law, including various weapons bans that have been adopted, cannot result in greater slaughter of civilians. The first treaty banning the use of chemical weapons after the mass casualties of World War I was adopted in large part because they were also ineffective and did not fulfill any military objectives. Other agreements and prohibitions, such as those placed on aerial bombardment, were short-lived and largely ignored because of their military importance, both for offense and self-defense. The efforts to expand partial agreements on the prohibition of land mines have failed precisely because in many cases, no one has presented a better way to protect people, facilities, and nations from attack. Morally and tragically, in an environment of bitter conflict and terrorism, the use of land mines for security can be the lesser of the evils.
Similarly, in repeated condemnations of Israel for the use of cluster munitions, activist groups such as Amnesty and HRW failed to suggest a realistic and effective alternative against deadly rocket attacks. Although largely missing from HRW's campaigns, there is no question that morally, Hezbollah's arsenal of thousands of Syrian and Iranian-made rockets purposely used to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible constitutes the core violation of human rights and an obvious violation of international law. Massive Israeli ground and air attacks designed to find and destroy the rocket-launchers scattered throughout Southern Lebanon would have taken many more lives. This is the ugly calculus of war, and attempts to ignore this reality of human existence are both irrational and unethical.
In their campaign against Israeli use of cluster munitions, HRW and Amnesty are also coming with unclean hands and a not-so-hidden agenda. Officials from both played an active role in the infamous NGO forum of the 2001 Durban conference, which adopted a strategy to delegitimize the very existence of Israel. Their numerous publications and statements condemning Israeli responses to Palestinian terror far outnumbered the organization's reports condemning suicide bombings.
In this context, HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth [not related to the authors of this blog], who clearly has no military expertise or experience, demanded that Israel arrest Palestinian terrorists in Gaza and Jenin, and bring them to trial – a policing approach, which, when attempted, often resulted in much greater violence. In the case of the cluster bomb campaign, HRW is not even suggesting an alternative.
These NGO officials have also used the millions of dollars at their disposal to join the political crusade against Israel's security barrier and in promoting dubious claims that fed boycott campaigns. The allegations in these reports were based on false or unverifiable claims of Palestinian "eyewitnesses" – a pattern repeated in by HRW and Amnesty during the Lebanon war. When Israel tried to use larger single-explosive weapons against Hezbollah rocket attacks, this was condemned as "indiscriminate force". Every Israeli defense is labeled as unacceptable.
HRW's central role in promoting international agreements to ban land mines is also tainted by a strong dose of anti-Israel propaganda. In a conference on this issue that took place in Geneva in 2000, in which I participated, HRW-funded participants from Palestinian, Egyptian, and other NGOs ignored the land mine issues and instead used this opportunity for unrelated Israel-bashing. The annual report on landmines distributed at the conference, and published by an HRW affiliate, featured a bogus cover photo related to Israel, and the chapters on Israel and the Palestinians included false or misleading information.
In contrast, those who are motivated by genuine humanitarian concerns must present workable alternatives in pursuing prohibitions on specific weapons, including cluster bombs. A treaty that effectively prevents nations and people under attack from acting in legitimate self-defense is worse than useless – it is also immoral.

Whether or not it's possible or credible for anyone to state with accuracy (is there some way for them to know?) the number of unexploded bombs in Lebanon, it's an undisputed fact that the Hizbollah leadership states very proudly, very publicly that it holds an enormous arsenal of death. And that it is preparing to deploy it against Israel's civilian population again. In his widely-reported speech in Beirut on 21st September, Hizbollah chief Nassrallah rejected international calls to disarm his terrorist army, telling a huge "victory" rally his forces have more than 20,000 rockets pointed at Israel - five times more than the total number fired by Hizbollah into Israel during the war, and higher than any previous figure Nasrallah has given. "...There is no army in the world that can (force us) to drop our weapons from our hands, from our grip."

HRW and Amnesty are presumably gearing up for a full-press media attack on his murderous plans.

In your dreams.

25-Aug-06: Tied together but by what? Israeli Jews and Arabs

In 1999, an attractive 21 year-old young woman called Rana Raslan was awarded the Miss Israel title, the first time in the nation's history an Arab woman had been so crowned. "I am totally Israeli, and I do not think about whether I am an Arab or a Jew", she said at the pageant. "They wanted a beauty queen, not a political queen."

The relationship between Israel's Jewish and Arab segments is far more nuanced, more political and more complex than you might guess from reading the foreign tabloids or Miss Raslan's speech. Depending on where you choose to buy your political analysis, you can find Israel's Arab communities compared (unfavourably) with blacks in Apartheid South Africa, and Israel being blamed for everything that's wrong in the Arab world and beyond. Or you can ponder the implications of data like these.

In the Arab countries as a group (averaging out the data for individual countries):

• One in four children do not attend school
• Literacy: 50 percent for women, 70 percent for men
• Life expectancy overall: 63.5 years
• Infant mortality is 550 for every 10,000 births.

On the other hand, in Israel:

• One hundred percent of Arab children in Israel attend school.
• Literacy: 95% - the highest for any Arab community in the Middle East.
• Life expectancy for Arab males 74.7 (2002); lower than for Israeli male Jews (77.9), higher than for American number (74.6 years).
• Infant mortality is 2.7 per 10,000 births (the American figure is 6.8).

We could go into detailed health, welfare, standard of living and other such data. We'd get to about the same conclusion.

A little over a week ago, we wrote here about the impact of the Hezbullah War on relations between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis. At about the same time, an academic study from a peace research centre at Tel Aviv University found that 68 percent of Arab citizens of Israel defined Israel's war in Lebanon as unjustified. Almost 80 percent said they believed Israel's air attacks on Lebanon were unjustified. 56 percent believed Hassan Nasrallah's declarations, and 53 percent said they regarded Israel Defence Force reports as not credible.

Reflecting on this, Prof. Elie Reches who has been among Israel's most thoughtful observers of relations between the Arab and Jewish segments of Israeli society, wrote an important article that appears in yesterday's Haaretz. Reches runs the Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation at the Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University. In an article tellingly entitled "One might have expected solidarity", he says "the dilemma of the national identity of Israeli Arabs grew sharper during the war. The stark contrast between their Palestinian and Arab identity and their Israeli citizenship was intensified, and was reflected by the setback in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel."

"At first glance, one might have expected to see expressions of solidarity and a deepening of internal unity between Jews and Arabs, given the sense of shared faith and partnership. But the bereavement did not draw hearts closer. It only deepened the rifts. The statement that missiles do not discriminate between Jewish communities and Arab communities remains an empty slogan... The Jewish public expected the Arab minority to identify with the state and condemn Hezbollah, but such a response never came. Instead, there was an increase in Arab criticism of government policies, which were seen as overly aggressive and warmongering, and as carrying out the imperialist policies of the United States. Israel's losses and inability to defeat Hezbollah enhanced the image of Hassan Nasrallah in the eyes of many Israeli Arabs. The lack of bomb shelters and warning sirens in Arab towns, and the overall sense of having being deserted, contributed to the feelings of frustration. Spokesmen for the Arab sector insisted on their right to criticize government policies without this being interpreted as an expression of dissociation from the state. But the majority of the Jewish public rejected this approach. Given the conduct of the Arab Knesset members, who did not miss an opportunity to express their opinions and stir up a storm of emotions, there was an increase in expressions of repulsion, dissociation and hostility by the Jewish public toward Arabs.

Also in yesterday's Haaretz, the results of a new poll that highlights the very divergent views of the Jewish and Arab communities:

A majority of the Jewish Israeli public believes Israeli Arabs supported Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah during the war in Lebanon... Some 18% of Israeli Arabs polled said they supported Hezbollah during the month-long war in the north. Some 15% of Jewish Israelis polled said all Israeli Arabs supported Nasrallah, while 40% claimed that most Israeli Arabs supported him... When asked whom they supported in the second Lebanon war, 27% of the Israeli Arabs polled said they backed Israel, 18% said they supported Hezbollah and 36% said they did not support either side. When asked to what extent Arab MKs represent the views of the Arab public, 44% of Israeli Arabs polled said the MKs do not represent them at all, 28% said they represent them to some degree, and 20% said they were well-represented by the Arab MKs.

Not a very promising scenario. Most Israeli Jews are left feeling that their Israeli Arab neighbours supported the enemy in overwhelming numbers. And via their elected parliamentary representatives, Israeli Arabs reinforce this view by fiery and aggressive speeches filled with hatred of Israel and its institutions. On the other hand, the Arab voters who put them there seem to say they don't regard those members of parliament as representing them.

Trying to make sense of the view of Israel's Arab minority was never going to be easy, and isn't. The former head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University Yossi Alpher summed this up a week ago this way:

The readiness of a sizable majority of Israeli Arabs, who are predominantly Sunni Muslims, to identify with a Lebanese Shi'ite movement that rejects Israel's right to exist and is indiscriminately bombarding the Israeli north, which is about 50 percent Arab, must give us pause... The only time we heard serious and vocal Israeli Arab objections to Nasrallah was when he advised Arab residents of Haifa to leave their homes temporarily to avoid harm, implicitly admitting that he had little control over where his rockets fell. In fact, despite 17 deaths (as of August 10) and dozens of injured in Arab communities from Haifa to Nazareth and Mrar, few Israeli Arabs left their homes (unlike Jewish residents of the north, most of whom moved south if they could afford to), thereby attesting to their determination not to be displaced again as Palestinians were in 1948. None of this behavior stopped Israeli Arab communities hit by the rockets from complaining that the government had not provided them with adequate early warning facilities and shelters.

It's also worth reminding readers (borrowing some comments made by Prof. Amon Rubenstein) of the way Israeli Arabs enjoy collective group rights that ethnic and linguistic minorities unsuccessfully fight for in other countries. Arabic is a second official language. Arab schools, totally financed by the state, teach in Arabic - including Islamic studies. Islam is a recognized religion. The Sharia courts have jurisdiction in all family law matters; an Israeli stamp celebrated one of Islam's holiest mosques; a room in the Knesset has been designated a mosque; an Islamic theological college is recognized by the state; Islamic holidays are official days of rest for the Arab population. The Israeli Supreme Court has recently decided the rule of equality should govern budgetary allocations.

None of this changes the nature of the Israel-Arab conflict. But the fact that Israel's basic decency in these matters is routinely ignored by our enemies and critics is an endless aggravation.

This might also be an appropriate time to remind readers that the Malki Foundation, which the writers of this blog established nearly five years ago, provides practical help to all parts of Israeli society. Almost a third of the families we help happen to be Arab. Given the democratic and nature of Israel, the only thing remarkable about this is the general lack of understanding outside of Israel that this is how things are in our country.

Now if we could get those Arab members of the Knesset to understand how it works, we might all be ahead of the game.

16-Aug-06: For Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, a moment of truth

An exchange of emails with friends in Australia this morning got us thinking about how the state of relations between Israel's Jews and Israel's Arabs was impacted by the Hezbollah War. It surprised us to know that, from a distance, there's a perception of a "we're all in the same basket" state of mind.

Our Australian friends believed Israel's Arabs had been united with us Israeli Jews by a shared perception of the threat to all of us from the lunatic to the north. Nasrullah's missiles, after all, did not distinguish between victims, and many Israeli Arab families are now freshly bereaved as a result.

It would have been encouraging if this happened, but in truth the public perception here is the opposite, with a lot of angry resentment that is likely to fester for a long while.

There were stand-up shouting matches in the Knesset, with Arab MKs exercising their democratic right to be heard screaming abuse at the IDF and the Israeli leadership. Several MK's and prominent leaders from the Israeli Arab sector took the opportunity to run to the international media (the BBC had its welcoming arms open especially wide for stories like this) with appalling stories of how Israel is deliberately discriminating against the Arab sector, and is placing its armaments near Arab villages in the Galilee in order to draw Hizbollah fire. Inveterate Israel-bashing Israeli Arabs like Ahmed Tibi, Ibrahim Sarsur and especially Azmi Bishara have been on fast-forward for the past four weeks, doing a great deal of damage to good relations between the social segments of Israeli society. Even when Lower Nazareth - the Arab section of town - was bombed by Nasrullah, just about the only media comments to be heard were Arab Israeli voices like this one expressing their understanding of the "resistance" in Lebanon and their hostility to Israel.

If we had to point to a single quote the captures the mood of the past month, it would be like this one from the BBC:

While opinion polls show that the Israeli public overwhelming supports continued military action in Lebanon, many of the Jewish state's approximately one million-strong Israeli Arab community blame Israel for the violence. "We're caught in the middle," says Ms Sheikh. "We are on the wrong side of the battle... Even while suffering a disproportionately high number of casualties in Hezbollah rocket attacks, Dr Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab Knesset member and leader of the Balad political party, says that most Israeli Arabs empathise with the Lebanese. "The division between us and the Lebanese is artificial," he says. "They are Arabs, they look like us, laugh like us, and eat the same food." Some Israelis are angered by what they see as Israeli Arab sympathy with their enemy... "

The handful of prominent Arab Israeli journalists have also been singularly out of step with overwhelming Jewish public sentiment. A good example of this is Faiz Abbas, latterly of Yediot - see this report. The Druze sector on the other hand did their customary job of being loyal and patriotic, making a positive contribution above and beyond their numbers.

The picture is not uniformly bleak, of course. Riad Ali who works at Israel Television's Channel One has written a series of opinion pieces for Haaretz in the past four weeks that deserve wide circulation. Here's what he wrote a week ago, in the depths of the suffering on both sides occasioned by the fires of war:

In the name of Allah
By Riad Ali
It tears one's heart and stills one's breath to see the images coming from Lebanon. The same goes for the images in Israel, and this is not added for the sake of balance.
But sorrow and grief over the war's victims shouldn't blur its prime objectives, both in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories. When the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza adopted suicide bombing as their strategy in fighting Israel, I concluded that their war against the occupation is over, and an indiscriminate war on Jews has begun. I was convinced then, as I am now, that at that moment, the Palestinians lost the war, at least in the moral sense.
In one of my reports from Gaza, I talked to a Palestinian boy by the name of Haled. He was 10 years old at the time. He said he wanted to be a teacher. When we switched to the topic of the intifada, Haled said that he had another dream - to be a shahid. I asked him how could he be a teacher and a shahid at the same time. Ten-year-old Haled had no answer. He was only a child. It was then I realized that the Palestinian people have lost their inner compass. A whole generation of children was born and reared in their midst, and all their hopes and aspirations are to die a holy death.
A Palestinian moral-ethical debate on the status of the suicide bomber never took place. The saboteur was and remained a shahid, with all of the positive attributes that the word carries in Islamic terminology. Palestinians who still opposed the bombings did so on tactical grounds; that is to say, if it had furthered their cause, they would have seen no wrong in it.
A similar process happened with Hezbollah. If before 2000 the organization could have had the benefit of the doubt and claim it is fighting Israeli occupation of Lebanon, today it is clear to see that its war is against Jews wherever they may be. You have to be deaf in order not to hear the voice of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as it emerges from Nasrallah's throat, and naive in order to believe that the purpose of the arsenal Nasrallah has accumulated is the release of prisoners and the liberation of the Shaba Farms.
This is the time to address the Arab citizens of Israel, and tell them that the time has come for them to decide where they stand. And they should do so for their own sake, and not for the sake of the Jews. For the sake of the values they want to instill in their children. For the sake of retaining their intellectual dignity. It is clear to all that a Hamas-led Palestinian government and a Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon will not bring democratic societies with a flourishing political and social pluralism. It is clear that in regimes such as those, the rule of law, human rights, the freedom of religion and worship, women's rights, the freedom of creation, the freedom of movement, the freedom of expression and thought - all will be alien, ridiculed concepts, to say the least.
Ideological Islam has long been master of the Palestinian society's agenda in the West Bank and Gaza. But what worries me is that the same Islamic agenda that rules there rules also here in Israel, and crosses all parties and movements including those who consider themselves to be secular. The spirit of battle has overtaken the believers, and all who consider themselves as part of the Islamic nation also have to take part in its war. If not with guns, then with funds, and if not with funds, then through words, and if not through words, then in heart, as the Muslim preachers tell the masses.
I am not at war with the Jews, nor with the people of Israel. I have an argument with the Jews, and I have an argument with the State of Israel. On one point I do not argue, and that is the right of the Jewish people to their own independent state. To the best of my understanding, this war, as with the intifada, has to be judged from this perspective.
Arab citizens of the state who truly believe in the principle of two states for two peoples and those who believe in a democratic liberal society must ask themselves if the Islamic ideology that is leading the war today against Israel and the West in the guise of a war against the occupation and heathens is representative of their ambitions. We must separate the pain and sorrow for the innocent victims from the purpose of the war, as seen by those who lead it - in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and in any place where people seek to liberate land in the name of Allah.

In today's Haaretz, Riad Ali develops the idea further. Here's a brief extract:

The time has come to admit that the mother of all ills in the Arab world is the absence of a secular alternative that has the power to offer people a different way of thinking. An option that is an alternative to the one offered by political Islam. It is not the Israeli occupation that needs to be ended, but rather the fanatic religious occupation of the Arab-Muslim intellect, which is blocking the masses from the pleasure of thinking. This is an occupation that makes astonishingly effective use of the term "Israel" as a wonder nostrum to neutralize the capacity for critical vision among the many who have frozen the clock of history at the picture of Kfar Kana, and pointed without thinking in the direction of Israel. The cancerous tumor from which the Islamic world is suffering must be initially sought in the bunkers of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and not in the maw of the cannon on the Israeli tank. And no - I'm still not saying that Israel is as pure as the driven snow. In one of his brilliant comments, Ra'am-Ta'al MK Ahmed Tibi said that Israel is a country that is "democratic for its Jews and Jewish for it Arabs." You know what? My life's dream is to see one Arab country that is at least "democratic for its Muslims, and Muslim toward its minorities." Amen.

Read the entire piece and share it with your friends.

Now if there were another, say, thousand voices like Riad Ali's emanating from the Arab world, constructive dialogue and co-existence might be a lot more reality, a lot less slogan.

On the whole, this past month has done far, far more harm than good to the sense of shared destiny among Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. Almost everyone agrees it's better to have the cannons and missiles silenced. But there's strikingly little optimism here right across the political spectrum that the quiet will last long.

12-Aug-06: The peace toll

The toll from yesterday's missile attacks on Israel:

• 68 missile landings
• Injured by shrapnel: 8 people
• Treated for shock: 17 people
• The damage toll since 12th July: Missiles striking Israel: 3,650; Missiles landing in an urban area of Israel: 835

Missile strikes in the area of:

• Kiryat Shmona: 930
• Nahariya: 730
• Maalot: 584
• Safed: 448
• Tiberias: 181

And of course many deaths and many injuries.

The civilian toll so far today (Sunday):

• Heavy missile barrages all morning in the general direction of Israel's northern communities, with several landings in the Haifa suburbs. (UPDATE: Yediot says there have been 153 missile landings so far today, Sunday.) (5.45pm UPDATE: The tally of missiles has risen to more than 210 for the day. The havoc and hatred that every one of them delivers is incalculable.) (8.15pm UPDATE: 250 missile so far; 6 hits on Haifa at 7pm, and some sixteen separate rounds fired at Haifa throughout the day)
• One person, a man of about 70, killed following a direct missile hit on a house in Shlomi (the town itself is pictured above)
• Nine injured - most of them treated in Safed and Nahariya public hospitals, both of which have been struck several times themselves by Hizbollah's missiles.
• Street demonstrations in the United States and Europe yesterday, supporting the people who launch these missiles at Israel, are extensively photographed in Sunday's media. What puzzles us most about these images and reports is that AP and Reuters consistently refer to the people holding Hizbollah posters and pictures of the fanatical Shi'ite leader Nasrallah in these often-violent demonstrations, as 'peace' protesters.

We check routinely, and have yet to see a single caption referring to Israeli efforts at stopping Nasrullah's monumentally large missile arsenal as being related to peace. But the fact is, for anyone close enough to the action to not be misled by distorted reportage, that when Nasrullah's arsenal is destroyed, there will be peace. We Israelis expect little more than the peace of the graveyard until that time.

31-Jul-06: Why We Will Win This War

We're grateful to our insightful neighbour and friend George M. Stanislawski for sharing with us the reflections below. He sent them out today to his email list, and they are excerpted here with his permission.

George's note began by referring to the heroic-tragic death of Major Roi Klein (on which we published Dr. Nathan Cherny's tribute a few days ago here), a friend of George's son's brother-in-law. In that connection, he referred to a Torah shiur (a lesson) given by the rabbi of his synagogue, reviewing the halachic rulings of Rambam (Maimonides) and Ramban (Nachmanides) on warfare when fighting for the Land of Israel. The rabbi opened his remarks by relating how, just two and a half weeks ago, he came home to find a young man, in uniform, barely 21, waiting for him.

The young soldier cheerfully greeted the rabbi and said "My name is Yiftach. I'm your son's commanding officer. Can I meet the rest of your family?"
Perplexed, the rabbi introduced the young officer to the rest of the family. After learning all the family members' names, Yiftach asked if he could inspect the son's bedroom. The rabbi agreed and led him upstairs to his son's bedroom. While in the bedroom, he browsed through the books on the shelf for several minutes, taking some down and thumbing through the pages. Yiftach then requested to be allowed to go through the Rabbis son's closet. Agitated, the rabbi asked "What do you want!?"
Politely, Yiftach answered: "I'll tell you when we get downstairs.
The two continued downstairs where Yiftach continued: "Our unit will be going into battle shortly. This is my first field command. I believe that to be a good officer… I must first be a good educator and lead by example. I can only do that by getting to know every detail about every man in my squad. That's why I came here today."
Our rabbi stood amazed by Yiftach's caring, insight and emotional maturity.
Unfortunately Yiftach's military career was cut short 12 days later. He and 7 of his soldiers were killed in an ambush in the southern Lebanese village of Bint Jbail as they were looking for Hizbullah missiles and rockets that have wreaked havoc in Israeli population since this war began.
Unlike our superpower portrayal in the western media, Israel is a small country outnumbered 200 to one by over a billion Moslems. Everyone in Israel knows someone fighting on the front at this moment. We don't have to look far to know somebody who is connected to one of this war's casualties. Our son's brother-in-law and our rabbi are just two examples.
Nevertheless, against all odds, we will achieve victory because we have no other choice. Unlike other nations we are not allowed the luxury to lose a single war. Against all odds, we will be victorious because of brave men like Major Roi Klein and Lieutenant Yiftach Shrayer who valued life above death.
Hassan Nasrallah has often bragged that Hizbullah will win this war because "the Jews consider life holy – we [Hezbollah] glorify death".
But soldiers like Roi and Yiftach will prove Nasrallah wrong. We will be victorious because, historically, sanctifying life has always triumphed over glorifying death. Intuitively, Roi and Yiftach felt this way when they went to and gave their lives in battle to help save others.
We owe it to them to continue their legacy.

Thank you, George.

23-Jul-06: Fallacies and fabrications - nutshell responses

Like most of Israel's friends, we're fairly appalled at the disinformation, superficiality and distortions that characterise a good deal of the media's coverage of the war between Hizbullah and Israel. Here's our nutshell review of a handful of the key issues and how they're being mangled.

Q. Isn't Israel's approach to the fighting disproportionate?

It's claimed that Israel's military response to, initially, the provocative kidnapping of two Israeli servicemen on Israeli soil and, almost immediately afterwards, the Hizbullah missile barrages, is disproportionate. Also, that Israel is striking at civilians and infrastructure and in doing so, is irretrievably and unfairly pushing the fragile Lebanese economy and social infrastructure back into the dark ages of the eighties when civil war devastated the country.

But as we have pointed out in this blog, the IDF reports to the media every day, and in its briefings it discloses the nature and number of the targets it has attached that day. There's no doubt there are civilian casualties on the Lebanese side. But the vast majority result from the deliberate Hizbullah policy of placing its military equipment and its fighters among civilians, embedding them as deeply as possible within the civilian infrastructure. Katyusha launch pads are usually located in residential areas. Katyusha missiles are stored in villages, often inside or underneath civilian homes. Those are strategic realities that no one denies.

The IDF routinely gives advance notice of its plans to attack some emplacements by dropping leaflets onto those residential areas. Paraphrasing the message conveyed by those leaflets, here is what Israel says to its neighbours to the north:

You have terrorists among you, and they are firing on our homes. We would like them to stop but they're not stopping. Indeed, we don't see anyone - and most certainly not your Lebanese government or any third party in our neighbourhood - who is going to step in and stop these barrages. No one is as interested as we are to stop them, and we're going to do it now. So take your families and your possessions and get out immediately, or be prepared for the consequences. Is this fair? No, but the possibility of fairness and a happy outcome ended when Hizbullah took control of your neighbourhood six years ago. So now one of two bad things is going to happen. Either we Israelis are going to engage in self-help and remove the men and the armaments that are raining destruction down on our homes and our families. Or else we are going to remain on the sidelines with our arms folded while the Hezbullah in your midst pack up, move out and leave your neighbourhood restored to its previously peaceful state. Our experience tells us that only one of these possibilities is real; the other is fantasy, and we are suffering too much damage in Haifa, Nahariya, Tsfat, Meron, Acre, Kiryat Shmoneh and all the other towns, cities and settlements now under fire to allow fantasy to dictate policy. So unfortunately our bottom line is: leave now for your own sakes and allow us to exercise the most basic, elemental right which a sovereign state has - indeed which every sovereign state in the history of mankind has reserved to itself since time immemorial. The right to defend its population. If there's going to be damage and unhappiness, we prefer it be yours than ours, though we would much rather avoid all unhappiness and all damage. But in the current circumstances, that's just fantasy.

It ought to be self-evident, but evidently is not, that Southern Lebanon would be tranquil and safe if Hizbullah had not moved in, grabbed control and turned it into a war zone. The Lebanese authorities will have to give an account at some future moment for their complicity in this appalling state of affairs.

Q. Yes, but isn't Israel grossly over-reacting to the kidnapping of its soldier? If Israel would exercise more restraint, this crisis would have blown over sooner or later.Western journalists who hold to this line, and there are many, deserve our contempt. The relevant facts are beyond dispute and journalists who ignore them are ignorant or working to a personal political agenda.

Hezbollah's vast arsenal throughout the southern half of Lebanon comprises thousands of missiles with short, medium and and long range capabilities. Though the organization is not a sovereign state, has no elections and answers to no one, it is lavishly well-supplied in an active manner by Iran and Syria and in a less-active, but no less important, manner by Lebanon. The ability to exploit its uninterrupted control of half of the territory of a supposedly independent country (Lebanon) provides the sharpest possible contrast with the Palestinian Authority which has been miserably ineffective in garnering tangible support from sympathetic neighbours. In this sense, Nasrallah - Hezbollah's supreme leader - has demonstrated world-class political skills and business acumen. The ranks of his well-disciplined terror organization are equipped with outstanding quantities and quality of arms, explosives and training. Without a doubt, Hezbollah today constitutes a concrete and substantial threat to Israel and its people. The kidnappings were the opening gambit; the missile attacks which immediately followed were the fruit of six years of careful planning.

Q. Then what do you believe Hezbollah's strategy is?

Hezbollah has never tried to hide its goal. It's explicit, simple and public. Everything Hezbollah does is calculated to bring about the destruction of Israel. Hezbollah did not commence its operations yesterday, and has been involved in countless terror attacks in Israel and outside Israel (in Argentina, for instance, where scores of Buenos Aires Jews were murdered in two Hezbollah showcase operations in 1992 and 1994).

In practical terms, what's truly life-threatening and intolerable is Hezbollah's unparalleled missile capacity. Where else in the world, or in history, is there a stockpile of tens of thousands of missiles controlled by a self-appointed non-governmental association? And one with an agenda calling for the literal destruction of a nation? Established inside six years' worth of cement infrastructure and scattered throughout a compliant countryside, Hezbollah is the face of terrorist wars to come. It's the prototype.

So far, more than 1,600 missiles have been fired into Israeli towns, homes, cars and hospitals since the Hezbollah war began. 734 were fired between July 13th and July 19th. Pause for a moment and imagine what it feels like to live with a rain of deadly missiles going on for day after day.

More than a million Israelis live and work in communities that are under missile attack right now. Tens of thousands of Israelis will spend tonight in bomb shelters. Hezbollah's strategy, if that's what we can call it, is to do more of the same. They have demonstrated that they will keep doing it until they're stopped. No one is about to stop them, other than Israel. And while there are very few Israelis who believe a resolution can come from military actions, Israeli society from one end of its political spectrum to the other has demonstrated a historically unparalleled unanimity around the idea that - while resolution is something we all want to see - we'll settle right now for taking Nasrallah and his Party of Gd out of the game any way we can.

The sooner this happens, the sooner our neighbours, the Lebanese, will get their country back. And the sooner both countries can get on with developing long-range solutions for living side by side with or without the involvement of outside help.