14-May-15: The calm before the onslaught?

From a May 12, 2015 article about Hezbollah in The Christian Post

Living in Jerusalem doesn't mean we know more about the gathering war-clouds in the area, or what's really behind them, than people in far-off places do. But it does mean that we probably pay more attention than most.

There's a feeling here of the calm before the storm, along with a fatalistic resignation to the way public opinion will remain completely apathetic to how the Islamists cynically deploy their civilians as human shields, confident that there will be no outrage... right up until the moment when the first Israeli fire destroys their villages, and civilians are killed. 

That will be the signal for the unleashing of those "humanitarian" demands and cries of outrage over "disproportionate response" so they can dominate the headlines and the global public discourse. Once that process gets underway, the memory of Israeli warnings like those being sounded today (see below) will be expunged from the collective consciousness.

Notice, by the way, how the NY Times article uses the term "preparing for war" only in relation to the Israeli side, even while it reports on a non-governmental army (Hezbollah - certified as a terrorist entity by most of the governments that deal in such matters) having equipped itself with enough firepower to potentially cripple Israel and cause phenomenal damage, destruction and deaths.

Israel Says Hezbollah Positions Put Lebanese at Risk
Isabel Kershner | New York Times | May 12, 2015

TEL AVIV — Viewed from the air, Muhaybib looks like a typical southern Lebanese village — a cluster of about 90 houses and buildings punctuated by the minaret of a mosque and surrounded by fields. But when the Israeli military trains its lens on that hilltop Shiite village close to the border, it sees nine arms depots, five rocket-launching sites, four infantry positions, signs of three underground tunnels, three antitank positions and, in the very center of the village, a Hezbollah command post.
As Israel prepares for what it sees as an almost inevitable next battle with Hezbollah, the Shiite Lebanese organization that fought a monthlong war against Israel in 2006, Israeli military officials and experts are warning that the group has done more than significantly build up its firepower since then.
Maps and aerial photography provided to The New York Times by Israeli military officials this week illustrate, they say, that Hezbollah has moved most of its military infrastructure into the Shiite villages of southern Lebanon and around their perimeters. Israel says this amounts to using the civilians as a human shield.
Without knowing when the next war will break out, or what might precipitate it, the Israelis are blunt about the implications: They will not hesitate to strike at those targets, so southern Lebanon will most likely be the scene of widespread destruction.
Effectively, the Israelis are warning that in the event of another conflict with Hezbollah, many Lebanese civilians will probably be killed, and that it should not be considered Israel’s fault... “We will hit Hezbollah hard, while making every effort to limit civilian casualties as much as we can,” the official said, but “we do not intend to stand by helplessly in the face of rocket attacks.”
The Israeli military says that a few miles northwest of Muhaybib, in the larger village of Shaqra, with a population of about 4,000, it has identified about 400 military sites and facilities belonging to Hezbollah, which Israel says has been armed by Iran and Syria.
Zooming out over a wider section of southern Lebanon, the Israeli military says the number of potential targets for Israel in and around villages runs into the thousands.
Israeli military officials said they were publicizing the Hezbollah buildup to put the problem on the international agenda in case there is another conflict — and to possibly decrease the chances of one breaking out... “Historically, armed forces have separated themselves from the population, in uniform,” the senior Israeli military official said. “This is not the case here or in Gaza.” ...The Israeli military says Hezbollah has increased its firepower tenfold since 2006 and now possesses about 100,000 rockets and missiles. Most are short-range Katyusha-type rockets, it says, but the arsenal also includes thousands of medium-range missiles that could reach Tel Aviv, and hundreds that could reach any part of Israel. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said in public statements and interviews that the group is far stronger now than at the end of the 2006 war...  Amos Yadlin, who was Israel’s chief of military intelligence from 2006 to 2010 and is now the director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said, “We already made it clear in 2006 that people in the villages do not have immunity if we have intelligence that they intend to fire at Israel,” particularly, he said, because Hezbollah fires rockets indiscriminately... An Israeli expert familiar with military planning said that if Israel attacked Lebanon again, it would probably do so in three phases. First, it would strike without warning at targets that pose the greatest threat, he said; then it would call for civilians to evacuate southern Lebanon. Once a critical mass of people had left, ground troops would move in. [Extracted from a New York Times article here]

An un-named Israeli official quoted in a Jerusalem Post report today (as well as by Reuters) puts it succinctly:

Each of the some 200 Shi'ite villages in southern Lebanon "is a military stronghold, even though you can walk in the street and you'll see nothing", said the official, who could not be named in print under military regulations... "It is a win-win situation for Hezbollah. If we attack them, we kill civilians. If we don't attack because there are civilians, it is good for Hezbollah as well... I know that on the first day of the next war, the international community will stand up to say: Stop this war... I have a different suggestion. Why wait for the first day of the war? Why not avoid this war?" ["Israeli official reveals Hezbollah 'strongholds' built into Lebanese villages", Jerusalem Post, May 14, 2015]

And where, astute readers might ask, is the United Nations peace-keeping force? Hard to know from where we sit, but according to a leading Lebanese news source, it's been busy. Details here: "UNIFIL helps teach children about traffic safety" [Daily Star, Lebanon. May 9, 2015].

In truth, if we didn't have a clue about how to deal with the work we had been assigned, we would probably go off and try to help little children too. The problem is many people think those UNIFIL forces have a United Nations mandate to take a key role in keeping the peace and in preventing precisely what the outlawed, hell-bent-on-more-war Hezbollah terrorists have been doing, unhampered, right under UNIFIL's noses and in broad daylight, for years.

29-Dec-13: Israel's north faces fresh round of terrorist rocket attacks

It's Sunday morning, and after several incoming rockets on communities in Israel's south, Haaretz is reporting that there has been a rocket attack on Israel's northern border. Times of Israel's report says it happened around 7:00 am.

Two rockets exploded in the vicinity of Kiryat Shmona, a town of some 23,000 people located near the border with Lebanon. Ynet says the incoming-rocket warning sirens did not sound. Haaretz, quoting the IDF, says they are Katyusha rockets, which we know to be heavily stocked by Hezbollah, and that they exploded in an open area west of the town. No casualties or damage are reported so far. Times of Israel says the landing was in forested land close to the border.

Two additional rockets, believed to be fired by the Hezbollah terrorist forces arrayed right across southern Lebanon, fell short; a Lebanese news report quoted by Times of Israel says those two other rockets fell near the village of Sarda, 10 kilometers from Marjayoun near the border with Israel. That's an area where the UNIFIL troops who are busy keeping the peace have a large presence. This being a Sunday morning, and the week between Xmas and New Years and who knows? They may have been distracted with seasonal festivities.

None of this, of course, is child's play. Though it will have gone little noticed outside Israel (which is the case with most of the near-daily terrorist-originating attacks on Israeli civilian targets), an Israeli serviceman was killed earlier in December while driving an unprotected vehicle along the Israeli side of the border road near the resort town of Rosh Hanikra. Shlomi Cohen, 31, was shot by a lone Lebanese Army soldier, close to the the spot where a bomb had blown up an army jeep, injuring four soldiers, in August of this year. Also during August, four Katyusha rockets were fired into Israel by terrorist forces in Lebanon ["22-Aug-13: Volley of rockets from Lebanon crashes into northern Israel, seeking civilian victims"].

10-Feb-13: Remember this when the fighting reignites in Southern Lebanon

Belgian de-miners in southern Lebanon and
government minister Pieter De Crem [Image Source]

We have posted several times in the last few days about the need for Hezbollah's European operations to be made illegal. The European Union has been bashful about stating openly why it continues to tolerate activities on its soil that provide invaluable support - financial, diplomatic, moral - for the terrorists who are the de facto rulers of Lebanon.

One of the reasons they can do that is that reports like the one below just don't make it onto the morning news in France, Germany and the UK. That's a great shame.

From Lebanon's Daily Star, this report today:

S. Lebanon residents snatch memory card belonging to UNIFIL

February 09, 2013 06:23 PM | SIDON, Lebanon: Residents of south Lebanon briefly blocked a road in front of Belgian peacekeepers Saturday and stole a memory card belonging to one of the patrol’s members, security sources told The Daily Star. After the Belgian unit, specialized in demining, took pictures of a mine field in the Marjayoun village of Mais al-Jabal and was on its way out of the area, residents in their car blocked the path of a vehicle belonging to the Belgium contingent of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon, the sources said. The residents then stole a memory card of a camera that belonged to the peacekeepers. The sources said there was no physical confrontation between the residents and the peacekeepers. Items belonging to UNFIL have been taken off its members in the past. The head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, Maj. Gen. Paulo Serra, has warned against intercepting UNIFIL patrols and confiscating their equipment, saying that such actions are not only illegal, they could escalate, endangering both soldiers and civilians. [more]

The wording of this report is exceedingly odd when you think for a moment. The 'good guys' in the Daily Star ought to be the peacekeepers from UNIFIL. They're there to... keep the peace. The bad guys are the 'residents' who blocked the road with their car, and then somehow managed to not only persuade the Belgian soldiers to stop and talk with them but also extracted "a memory card of a camera that belonged to the peacekeepers". This, in a area laced with lethal landmines

Residents?!

Items belonging to UNFIL have been taken off its members in the past? Really? How often? What kind of items? By "residents"? What kind of abuse of the term 'peacekeeping' is it when armed soldiers are unable to keep their cameras out of the grasp of the locals? And about those locals, everyone tuned in to what is happening in southern Lebanon knows non-uniformed Hezbollah forces are deeply entrenched in the villages of that area.  And before anyone accuses of us being unfair to the Belgians, pretty much the same thing happened with the Italian UNIFIL contingent just a month ago [see report from Islam Times]. And to the UNIFIL Finns at about the same time [see Daily Star again].

Belgian UNIFIL serviceman with villagers. We're betting these
ladies are not the residents who roadblocked the soldiers and
liberated their camera's memory card [Image Source]

While we dwell on what's really going on up north and what lies behind the almost near-unintelligible reports, let's think back to something that appeared here a few weeks ago. 

We noted [see "13-Jan-13: A French contribution to stopping the terrorists"] the words of the commander in chief of those UNIFIL soldiers:

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.

At the time, we said it was hard to escape the conclusion that the man in charge of the UN forces charged with keeping the Hezbollah terrorist forces away from the Israeli border, and to prevent yet another massive Hezbollah arms-buildup in southern Lebanon's villages, comes across as a not-so-secret admirer of Hezbollah.

Some 15 months ago, we wrote here [see "23-Nov-11: So tell us again: this is why peacekeepers are sent to the area?"] that in reality, far from preventing hostilities, UNIFIL has played a marginal role in blocking the jihadists from massively arming and planting themselves inside southern Lebanon's towns and using the Lebanese population as a human shield. Despite this, its mission was extended by the UN's Security Council to the end of August 2012, in part because

"deployment together with the Lebanese Armed Forces has helped to establish a new strategic environment in southern Lebanon". 

Recall that UNIFIL's mission is to

monitor the cessation of hostilities; accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the south of Lebanon; and extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons.

Belgium's defence minister, Pieter De Crem, paid a field visit to the mine-clearing team this past September. The photograph at the top of this post, from a Belgian website, comes with this text:

Mr De Crem met the Lebanese President Michel Suleiman in Beirut today. After the meeting, Pieter De Crem announced that he will propose the council of ministers to extend the Belgian mission until the end of 2013. "The President praised our work in the area", Mr De Crem said. If the Belgian soldiers have their stay extended, they will probably be given a new challenge [more]

We're confident the intentions of the Belgian servicemen in the field - and this is probably true of most of the UNIFIL foot soldiers - are honorable. But we wonder how much good is being done in light of the instructions they seem to get. 

When a UNIFIL convoy was bombed in southern Lebanon this past summer, this source, quoting Israeli defence sources, said it was a message to the peacekeeping force to scale back its operations against Hizbollah. As we wrote in November 2011, the message appears to have been well received in Europe.

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.

19-Dec-11: Here's a switch: rockets intercepted in Lebanon before being fired at Israel

A report from our northern neighbor, today. Note that UNIFIL, whose troops are stationed in the region mentioned below for the singular purpose of ensuring weapons like rockets are not stockpiled or fired from there by the jihadists of Hezbullah, are not mentioned.

Lebanese army discover 4 rockets near Israel border | Officials say military intelligence uncovered four projectiles near the Lebanon-Israel border | Lebanese officials said army troops have discovered four rockets near the country's border with the Israel, a Lebanese paper reported on Monday. The officials said it was not immediately clear whether the rockets were primed to fire. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that the rockets were found by military intelligence near the village of Majidieh, where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet. Monday's discovery comes a week after a rocket directed toward Israel fell short in Lebanon, injuring a woman in the southern region. Security sources said the rocket was fired from the Wadi al-Qaisiyeh area, about 2 km (one mile) from the frontier and landed in the village of Hula inside Lebanon.

You might want to read some of the background we posted here ("Up north, it's continuing to grow hotter") ten days ago.

9-Dec-11: Up north, it's continuing to grow hotter

At the scene of today's attack on French
UNIFIL soldiers [Image Source]

We noted here a week and a half ago that the terrorists who occupy southern Lebanon are raising the stakes - something that is always deliberate and calculated. [And to see why, check the end of this blog entry.] This morning, five French soldiers deployed as part of the UNIFIL presence up there, were injured by a roadside bomb in the Bourj al-Shamali area, near the port city of Tyre, the third such attack this year (so far). 

The Washington Post says “UNIFIL’s forensic and investigation teams are at the location of the explosion, working in close cooperation with their counterparts of the Lebanese Army to determine all the facts and circumstances surrounding the incident”. UNIFIL has been deployed in the area since 1978. Their task is to monitor the Lebanese border with Israel and - since the war of 2006 - to monitor a zone south of the Litani River where Hezbollah is banned from keeping weapons. Anyone with eyes and brains knows the attacks on UNIFIL soldiers are carried out by Hezbollah, and anyone who reads the news knows weapons are deployed deeply and extensively in the entire south-of-Litani region.

About those previous roadside bomb attacks:

• In May 2011, a convoy of Italian soldiers was hit, killing one, wounding six. 
• In July 2011, a convoy carrying French soldiers was hit, wounding five. 
• And in the most deadly of the recent attacks, a bomb was fired at a UNIFIL armored personnel carrier in June 2007, just near the Israeli border (where the Hezbollah are forbidden to have any weaponry - hah). It killed six Spanish peacekeepers.

The wire services laconically state time and time again that "no group has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks". But everyone understands it's the Hezbollah jihadists, acting on orders from their masters in Beirut and Teheran. 

Here's a Lebanese comment on the rising religious/military fervor in Hezbollah circles:

"Anyone monitoring Hezbollah’s rhetoric over the last several days could not but notice a spike in its apocalyptic pitch. Perhaps it was the religious occasion of Ashura, but more likely, it was the result of the tense regional situation, namely the increased paranoia in Tehran. Convinced that an attack against them is imminent, the Iranians are now preparing for war and publicly declaring that Hezbollah, and thus Lebanon, will be their first line of defense. That is why in his most recent speeches, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has been preparing the Shia community in advance for the ruin that awaits them as a consequence... The group’s first and foremost task is to be Iran’s long arm. The Iranians are now making this fact known explicitly. Two weeks ago, Yahya Rahim Safavi, former commander of the Revolutionary Guards and military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenei, declared  that in case of an Israeli attack on Iran, the Iranian retaliation will come from Lebanon, “because all the Zionist cities are within the range of our ally Hezbollah's Katyushas.” In other words, the order has been given and Hezbollah is up to bat." [More]

Clear enough?

29-Nov-11: Rockets from our north - once again

Village in Western Galilee [Photo source]

With the bloody war between the Assad regime in Damascus and Syria's civilian population moving towards the end-game stage and inevitable regime change to follow, a certain long-held view of Israeli analysts may be being proven right. Syria, according to the theory, is likely to increasingly generate regional troubles to distract from its own rapidly-worsening domestic situation. See for instance "Bloody, Bloodier Paths for Syria" in today's Wall St Journal.

Early this morning (Tuesday) at least three, possibly four, Katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanese territory, and exploded in Israel's otherwise-tranquil Western Galilee region. Ynet says there are no injuries but several structures sustained damage from the post-midnight attacks. Firefighers were called in to cool down a propane gas tank that was hit by the missiles. Ynet quotes an Israeli villager who says he saw a mushroom cloud billowing in the sky followed by the thick smell of gunpowder. "It was 20 meters from my house".

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit, in its official statement, said "The IDF Northern Command is operationally prepared, and conducting an ongoing situation assessment in light of the incident... The IDF regards this incident as severe."

There's no response that we can find so far from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. As we noted a few days ago ("23-Nov-11: So tell us again: this is why peacekeepers are sent to the area?"), the UNIFIL forces tend to hear about matters like this on the news. So their reaction might take some time.

AP is saying this is the first rocket fire into Israel from Lebanon since October 2009 and that the IDF says it doesn't expect the incident to touch off a wider conflict. It's the eighth rocket attack "since Israel's war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas ended in August 2006" writes AP in a sanitized reference to the Syrian and Iranian backed, trained, equipped and funded terrorists who are deeply entrenched among the hapless villagers of southern Lebanon.

Reuters is reporting that "some have worried about a possible spillover of tensions from a months-old revolt in Syria against President Bashar al-Assad and from a stiffening of Western sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme".

The Jerusalem Post, quoting an IDF assessment, says it was likely to have been al-Qaida and/or Palestinian terror groups rather than Hezbollah who fired the 122 millimeter rockets fired from just north of the Lebanese border with Israel. That's the area most in need of UNIFIL supervision, we would say, and the site of continued military buildup for the last several years.

23-Nov-11: So tell us again: this is why peacekeepers are sent to the area?

Irish UNIFIL soldiers at target practice, Kawakba, Southern
Lebanon - August 2001.

Yesterday was Lebanon's 68th independence day ("Lebanon celebrates Independence Day with mixed feelings"). Its media, typically, carries cryptic analyses today referring in round-about fashion to the huge influence exercised by its militant and aggressive Syrian neighbours. But the real elephant in the room is Hizbollah, the armed-to-the-teeth jihadists who have plunged the country into war and to its brink several times in the last five years.

As a reminder of how far from independence the Lebanese actually are, the Daily Star reports this morning from the terrorist-controlled south of the country (the part that borders on Israel):

"A huge explosion shook the Hezbollah stronghold of Siddiqin in south Lebanon overnight, a security source told The Daily Star Wednesday. The source said the cause of the blast, which was heard shortly before midnight, could not be determined due to the heavy security blanket that was thrown by Hezbollah. Attempts by Lebanese security forces to reach the scene so far failed as Hezbollah members created a one-kilometer radius security zone around the explosion site between Siddiqin and Deir Ames, the source added. Local media said the explosion likely took place at a Hezbollah arms cache. A spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said UNIFIL heard about the explosion on the news. "We have no information at the moment. We are checking this report," AndreaTenenti told The Daily Star by telephone. 

We're sorry for the burden the Lebanese carry. But we're infuriated at the bare-naked passivity of the armed representatives of the UN's "Interim Force" who need their radios and televisions to stay in touch with the deadly events happening under their noses.

Far from preventing hostilities, UNIFIL has played an extremely marginal role over the years in blocking the jihadists from massively arming and planting themselves inside southern Lebanon's towns and using the Lebanese population as a human shield. Notwithstanding, its mission was recently extended by the UN's Security Council to the end of August 2012, in part because

"deployment together with the Lebanese Armed Forces has helped to establish a new strategic environment in southern Lebanon". 

For the record, UNIFIL's frequently-updated mission is now said to be to -

monitor the cessation of hostilities; accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the south of Lebanon; and extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons.

On paper, anyway. Of course, no one, least of all the gunmen, the rocketry experts and the theologists of the Islamist army of Hizbollah, takes UNIFIL's figleaf role seriously.

As for the "new strategic environment in southern Lebanon", someone ought to make contact with Hizbollah's people once they get back to their prayer mats after cleaning up what's left of As Siddiqin. They're the only reliable source of what's being done down there, and they're not telling.

Not that they are doing much good or much anything. When a UNIFIL convoy was bombed in southern Lebanon this past summer, this source, quoting Israeli defence sources, said it was a message to the peacekeeping force to scale back its operations against Hizbollah. Seems to us that was one message that was well received.

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.