Lebanon (Superthread)

[paracowboy]

fair dealings act

http://start.shaw.ca/start/enCA/News/WorldNewsArticle.htm?src=w082027A.xml
Lebanon warns rogue Palestinian rocket teams against attacks on Israel
at 15:20 on August 20, 2006, EST.
By STEVEN R. HURST
BEIRUT (AP) - Lebanon's defence minister said Sunday he is certain Hezbollah will not break the ceasefire but warned all militant groups of harsh measures and a traitor's fate if they incite Israeli retaliation by firing rockets into the Jewish state.
Defence Minister Elias Murr's strong remarks indicated concern that Syrian-backed Palestinian militants might try to restart the fighting by drawing retaliation from Israel.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, meanwhile, toured the devastated Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut and decried the destruction by Israeli bombs as a "crime against humanity." Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite and Hezbollah backer, stood at the Sunni premier's side and said they spoke with one voice.
In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would name a panel to investigate the military and government's performance during the war, which has been criticized by many Israelis as weak and indecisive.
A day after Israeli commandos staged a pre-dawn raid deep into Lebanon, prompting UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to declare the Israelis in violation of the Security Council ceasefire resolution, no new clashes were reported.
Residents in the mountains east of Beirut, however, described continued overflights by Israeli warplanes on the truce's seventh day.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Saturday's raid was aimed at disrupting arms shipments to Hezbollah and such operations may continue until international peacekeepers arrive to enforce an arms embargo.
"In the situation where there was a flagrant violation of the embargo, Israel had the right to act. Had there not been a violation, Israel would not have to respond," he said Sunday, expressing impatience with the slow international response in offering troops for the peacekeeping force.
Siding with Jerusalem, the U.S. government also said the Israeli raid underscored the importance of quickly deploying an expanded UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.
"We've seen the press reports and noted the Israeli statement saying that the operation was a reaction to arms smuggling," White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said, adding that preventing the resupply of weapons to Hezbollah by Syria and Iran is a key provision of the ceasefire plan.
The Lebanese defence minister insisted that Hezbollah would hold its fire.
"We consider that when the resistance (Hezbollah) is committed not to fire rockets, then any rocket that is fired from the Lebanese territory would be considered collaboration with Israel to provide a pretext (for Israel) to strike," Murr said.
He added that "the Lebanese army will decisively deal with" any attack on Israel and that anyone arrested for violating the truce "will be considered by the military tribunal as an agent of the Israeli enemy."
Murr did not repeat his threat of Saturday to stop the deployment of Lebanon's army in the south to protest Israel's helicopter-borne commando raid near the town of Boudai on the west side of the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Such a halt would be a blow to the UN ceasefire plan, which calls for the army and a strong UN peacekeeping force to police the truce and separate Israeli troops and Hezbollah's guerrillas.
Murr apparently was satisfied by a declaration from Annan warning Israel against a repeat of the raid.
Townspeople in Boudai said 300 residents grabbed guns after the Israeli raid began at 3 a.m. and fought at the side of 15 Hezbollah guerrillas for 90 minutes before the commandos retreated and were flown back to Israel. Residents said there were no casualties on the Lebanese side. One Israeli officer was killed and two soldiers were wounded.
Under the UN ceasefire that took effect a week ago Monday, Lebanon has started deploying 15,000 soldiers in its southern region, putting a government force there for the first time in four decades.
It is to be joined by an equal force of international peacekeepers, but wrangling among countries expected to send troops has delayed the mission and UN officials are pleading for nations to participate to bolster the fragile truce.
France, which commands the existing UN force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, on Sunday called for a meeting of European Union countries this week to determine the number of troops they are prepared to contribute to the UN mission.
"We are asking that Europe express its solidarity toward Lebanon as rapidly as possible," Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told radio Franco Info.
The Israeli prime minister complicated the effort with a reported decision Sunday to reject peacekeepers in Lebanon from countries that don't have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh - Muslim countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel - are among the only countries so far to have offered front-line troops for the expanded force.
The UN ceasefire resolution does not explicitly give Israel authority to block countries from joining the peacekeeping mission, but it does say the force should co-ordinate its activities with the Lebanese and Israeli governments.

 

[paracowboy]

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, meanwhile, toured the devastated Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut and decried the destruction by Israeli bombs as a "crime against humanity." Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite and Hezbollah backer, stood at the Sunni premier's side and said they spoke with one voice.

yeah. The Lebanese forces are gonna do a WHOLE lot to stop Hezbollah.  :

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would name a panel to investigate the military and government's performance during the war, which has been criticized by many Israelis as weak and indecisive.

well, he's gone next election.

"In the situation where there was a flagrant violation of the embargo, Israel had the right to act. Had there not been a violation, Israel would not have to respond," he said Sunday, expressing impatience with the slow international response in offering troops for the peacekeeping force.

see, now he's trying to explain by applying logic to people who don't function logically, and their appeaser/fellow travellers who don't understand logic. THERE'S his problem!

"We consider that when the resistance (Hezbollah) is committed not to fire rockets, then any rocket that is fired from the Lebanese territory would be considered collaboration with Israel to provide a pretext (for Israel) to strike," Murr said. He added that "the Lebanese army will decisively deal with" any attack on Israel and that anyone arrested for violating the truce "will be considered by the military tribunal as an agent of the Israeli enemy."

see?

a strong UN peacekeeping force

a what, now? Can someone explain this one to me? "Strong" and "UN" in the same sentence? "Strong" and "peacekeeping" in the same sentence?

Hezbollah's guerrillas

still can't call a spade a spade, I see.

Annan warning Israel against a repeat of the raid

ooohh! Scaaary. Go back to counting your Oil-For-Fraud money, punk.

putting a government force there for the first time in four decades.

you'd think they would want to thank Israel for giving them control over heir nation again, wouldn't you?

but wrangling among countries expected to send troops has delayed the mission

sit: No Change. NSTR.

"We are asking that Europe express its solidarity toward Lebanon as rapidly as possible," Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told radio Franco Info.

yup. France is gonna be good and neutral. Nice to see. Sit: No Change.

The Israeli prime minister complicated the effort with a reported decision Sunday to reject peacekeepers in Lebanon from countries that don't have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

well, that limits it quite a bit, now don't it? He's bein' all unreasonable. He wants to ensure that the referee will deal fairly. That's not how it's supposed to work.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh - Muslim countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel - are among the only countries so far to have offered front-line troops for the expanded force.

Hmmm, you know, if I were a cynical man, I'd think that these nations are just sending their troops to get the money. Kinda like they do everywhere. Naaah!

 

[tomahawk6]

Israel has returned 5 people that were taken in an IDF raid on Baalbek. Hopefully this leads to the return of the 2 Israeli soldiers held by Hizbollah.

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/753123.html

 

[a_majoor]

Comparisons:

http://phantomobserver.com/blog/?p=287

So What Do I Know About Israel?
It occurred to me that, even though Israel’s been in the news quite a lot lately, I really don’t know much about the place. I mean, I know that it’s a primarily Jewish state and that a lot of countries in the Middle East resent that, but I don’t know about Israel as an actual nation-state.

Fortunately, what I don’t know I can’t find out. One of the functions of the American CIA is to publish profiles of the world’s nations in The World Factbook, which is available online. (I’d prefer to use a Canadian source, but Foreign Affairs doesn’t publish anything similar.) I figured it’d be a good idea to compare the country stats of Israel, Lebanon (since that’s where Hezbolla is) and Canada (for a baseline).

So what can we learn?

Area:

Israel — 20,770 sq km
Lebanon — 10,400 sq km
Canada — 9,984,670 sq km
So Israel is twice the size of Lebanon, but they’re both pretty small.

Population:

Israel — 6,352,117
Lebanon — 3,874,050
Canada — 33,098,932
That six million figure I find somewhat disturbing, no doubt because that’s the figure commonly used when describing the Holocaust. The population figures are roughly proportional with the land area, though.

Median age:

Israel — 29.6 years
Lebanon — 27.8 years
Canada — 38.9 years
This means that, on average, the population of both Middle Eastern countries is younger than ours, by about nine years. They also have a lower proportion of the population aged 65 and over, compared with us (9.8 and 7 respectively, compared with 13.3 for Canada).

Population growth rate

Israel — 1.18% (2006 est.)
Lebanon — 1.23% (2006 est.)
Canada — 0.88%
Both Israel and Lebanon have higher birth rates than Canada (17.97 and 18.92 births per 1000, respectively, compared with 10.78 for us), which makes for a more robust population. Canada makes up for the difference via net migration; both Israel and Lebanon are stable when it comes to immigration / emigration, whereas Canada has migration rate of 5.85 per 1000.

Literacy rate:

Israel — 95.4% (2003 est.)
Lebanon — 87.4% (2003 est.)
Canada — 99% (2003 est.)
For Lebanon, part of this lower rate is a reflection of culture, in that its female population has the lowest literacy rate of the three countries at 82 percent. A good part of it is also economics, as we’ll shortly see.

Suffrage (who can vote):

Israel — 18 years of age; universal
Lebanon — 21 years of age; compulsory for all males; authorized for women at age 21 with elementary education
Canada — 18 years of age; universal
Interesting disparity there, on the part of Lebanon. Again, a cultural thing.

GDP (purchasing power parity):

Israel — $154.5 billion (2005 est.)
Lebanon — $23.69 billion (2005 est.)
Canada — $1.114 trillion (2005 est.)
It’s interesting to note that, although Israel has double Lebanon’s population, it has about six times the purchasing power.

Unemployment rate:

Israel — 9% (2005 est.)
Lebanon — 18% (1997 est.)
Canada — 6.8% (2005 est.)
Granted, this isn’t a fair comparison because Lebanon’s figures are older. Even so, it’s evidence that poverty is a bigger issue in Lebanon than it is in Israel and Canada.

Population below poverty line:

Israel — 21% (2005 est.)
Lebanon — 28% (1999 est.)
Canada — 15.9%; note - this figure is the Low Income Cut-Off (LICO), a calculation that results in higher figures than found in many comparable economies; Canada does not have an official poverty line (2003)
This is the other reason for Lebanon’s lower literacy rate.

Current account balance:

Israel — $2.385 billion (2005 est.)
Lebanon — -$4.239 billion (2005 est.)
Canada — $24.96 billion (2005 est.)
Lebanon is a net importer, while Israel and Canada are net exporters.

Exports (commodities):

Israel — machinery and equipment, software, cut diamonds, agricultural products, chemicals, textiles and apparel
Lebanon — authentic jewelry, inorganic chemicals, miscellaneous consumer goods, fruit, tobacco, construction minerals, electric power machinery and switchgear, textile fibers, paper
Canada — motor vehicles and parts, industrial machinery, aircraft, telecommunications equipment; chemicals, plastics, fertilizers; wood pulp, timber, crude petroleum, natural gas, electricity, aluminum
How many of us knew that Israel and Lebanon were in the jewelry business? I certainly didn’t.

Imports (commodities):

Israel — raw materials, military equipment, investment goods, rough diamonds, fuels, grain, consumer goods
Lebanon — petroleum products, cars, medicinal products, clothing, meat and live animals, consumer goods, paper, textile fabrics, tobacco
Canada — machinery and equipment, motor vehicles and parts, crude oil, chemicals, electricity, durable consumer goods
That bit about military equipment doesn’t really surprise me at all, when you consider this figure:

Military expenditures (dollar figure):

Israel — $9.45 billion (2005 est.)
Lebanon — $540.6 million (2004)
Canada — $9.8017 billion (2003)
I find it a bit disconcerting that, although our economy is a lot bigger than Israel’s we spend roughly the same amount on the military (give or take a few hundred million). Granted, we’re nowhere near any nations actively hostile towards us, but still . . .

Anyway, one of the things we have to remember about the Middle East situation is that there’s an economic dimension to this as well (namely, Lebanon’s poverty problem) that needs some examination. It’s worth your while to have a look at these country profiles, to get a better-informed view of the situation.

 

[a_majoor]

Center of gravity, CENTRE OF GRAVITY, CENTRE OF GRAVITY

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hezbollah-has-few-fans-among-bitter-christians/2006/08/22/1156012541229.html#

Hezbollah has few fans among bitter Christians

Photo: Sarah Smiles

Sarah Smiles Herald Correspondent in Ain Ibl, south Lebanon
August 23, 2006

WISSAM ANDRUOUS'S family home lies in ruins after the war between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite Muslim militia, Hezbollah.

Plastic sheeting flaps over a hole where a bomb ripped the side of the house in the Christian village of Ain Ibl in southern Lebanon. Only the mattress springs remain of a charred room where three of his younger brothers used to sleep.

"We are Christians. We did not not belong to any party," said Mr Andruous, 31, a video technician and father of two, whose younger brother, Rany, 21, is studying in Sydney. "What if we rebuild this house and they make war again? How can I live with my children here?" he said.

While Hezbollah has claimed victory - propaganda posters across southern Lebanon declare: "Our Blood Has Won" - it is no triumph for many who have lost their livelihood and property in the violence. Although many Shiite Muslims support Hezbollah, members of other communities caught in the crossfire of this war do not.

"How can it be a victory when most of [southern Lebanon] has been destroyed?" asked Elias Hasrouni, a Maronite Christian, who manages the local electricity company. "There's no work, many people left, many people died, the houses were damaged. Is this a victory?"

Ain Ibl is next to the flattened village of Bint Jbeil, where there was heavy fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

Imad Khoury, 38, the head of the local council, said the town is surrounded by Hezbollah missile batteries.

Hezbollah is dispensing up to $US12,000 ($16,000) to people who have lost property in the war, but Mr Hasrouni says he will not accept it. "We don't want to be indebted to Hezbollah," he said.

Residents who fled the town during the war returned to find bloodstains on their couches, or dirty handtowels where Hezbollah fighters had used their toilets, Mr Hasrouni said, adding that although many locals did not support this war, they could not stop it. Three years ago Hezbollah seized his olive groves for military purposes. He could do nothing.

"I do not like Hezbollah," said Mr Hasrouni, who still is afraid to visit his groves.

"I am disappointed with this war because Israel didn't really do the job … And I really don't believe anyone could disarm Hezbollah."

When Israel ended a decades-long occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah assumed control of the rural area. Its intelligence networks prevailed and people grew fearful of speaking out against the Islamic party.

Mr Andruous, who is not interested in politics, wants to leave Lebanon with his young family. "I visited Australia in 2004," he said, standing in the ruins of his living room. "I like the country and I have a little money. And I cannot live here any more."

 

[Infanteer]

Center of gravity, CENTRE OF GRAVITY, CENTRE OF GRAVITY

On another note:

http://www.ausa.org/PDFdocs/LPE01-1.pdf

 

[geo]

reading in the papers this AM that Syria has it's shorts tied in a knot over the UNs intention to monitor / patrol their border with Lebanon.....

Wonder what that's about ???

 

[a_majoor]

A regional analysis

http://www.reason.com/links/links082406.shtml

Hoodwinked by Hezbollah
Turning the stench of defeat into the smell of victory
Michael Young

Hezbollah beat Israel in the latest war in Lebanon, and if you have any doubts, listen to what a certified expert on defeat, Syria's President Bashar Assad, had to say:

"We tell [Israel] that after tasting humiliation in the latest battles, your weapons are not going to protect you—not your planes, or missiles, or even your nuclear bombs... The future generations in the Arab world will find a way to defeat Israel."
Some pundits agreed. This unqualified, air-punching evaluation is from one Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese-American University and author of a book on Hezbollah: "In military terms this is a victory that the Arabs haven't tasted in decades by Israeli standards even. Hezbollah is fully aware that it has emerged victorious. The Lebanese government has called it a victory and it is a victory that is unprecedented and if anything it is going to change the balance of power here."

Iran's ambiguous response on Tuesday to an international request to cease uranium enrichment, underscores the regional dimension of the recent Lebanese conflict. The author of a New York Times story on the Iranian counteroffer, Helene Cooper, offered up this assessment: "Iran has emerged stronger from the Lebanon crisis by showing the world that it is capable of wreaking havoc through its support of the Hezbollah militants"—a view echoed by George Perkovich, the director for nonproliferation at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Well, since it's all settled that Hezbollah has won, let's just open a six-pack of non-alcoholic beer and drink to the health of the party's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, the Arab world's latest Che Guevara.

But what kind of victory is this that, even by Hezbollah's unexacting standards, must qualify as a major setback? In its public appraisals of the conflict, Hezbollah has ignored what Israel did to those parts of Lebanon the party cannot claim as its own. Its cries of triumph have been focused on the stubborn resistance put up by Hezbollah combatants in south Lebanon. Nothing has been heard from party leaders about the billions of dollars of losses in infrastructure; about the immediate losses to businesses that will be translated into higher unemployment; about the long-term opportunity costs of the fighting; about the impact that political instability will have (indeed has already had) on public confidence and on youth emigration; and about the general collapse in morale that Lebanon faces.

Let's forget such trifles for a moment and use Hezbollah's own benchmark. Even there, the evidence points to a net loss for the Shiite militia.

Take the rationale for Hezbollah's rockets. For some time it has been obvious that the weapons, estimated to number between 10,000 and 15,000, were mainly there to help deter an American or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear facilities. Nor did the Iranians distinguish between aggressors. Last May, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Rear Adm. Muhammad-Ebrahim Dehqani stated, "We have announced that wherever America does something evil, the first place that we target will be Israel." He didn't mention Hezbollah or Lebanon, but it didn't take much discernment to see that Iranian retaliation would at least partly come from across Israel's northern border.

Does that deterrence option still exist? Yes and no. Hezbollah is believed to have many more rockets in storage and its network of bunkers in south Lebanon is probably mostly intact. However, it cannot initiate a conflict without facing the political fallout of imposing new suffering on its already traumatized Shiite community. Almost a million Shiites were thrown into the streets by Israeli bombardments between July and August. Hezbollah has started distributing money to the community, but that won't pay for much of the horrendous suffering—lives lost, profitable businesses closed, self-respect gone for those without homes or livelihoods, and much else that cash handouts cannot remedy.

Nasrallah would likely obey an Iranian request to attack Israel once again if the Tehran regime deemed that to be necessary. However, Shiites making up Hezbollah's base of support may not be so eager to be turned into cannon fodder for a country thousands of miles away. That's why the party's deterrence capacity has suddenly become very costly.

It has also become more costly because the month-long fighting brought the Lebanese Army into south Lebanon, after an absence of several decades—soon to be accompanied by an expanded United Nations force. Nasrallah, in order to protect Hezbollah's autonomy in the south, has sought in recent weeks to empty those deployments of their meaning, even as he has pretended to welcome the army. That is hypocritical. Hezbollah had repeatedly refused to allow the army to go south, and only agreed to do so because this was seen by an increasingly impatient Lebanese public as a means of ending the Israeli onslaught. If Hezbollah brings out the rockets again, however, it will mean not only confronting the Lebanese consensus, but also the international community, and that's before a shot is fired in anger against Israel. Again, the party's deterrence capacity, while still there, will be much tougher to revive.

Nasrallah also has accounts to settle with Iran. The regime in Tehran has not only seen its main reason for supporting Hezbollah go up in smoke in a largely futile endeavor, but must now dole out large sums of compensation money to Lebanese Shiites so the party can hold on to its base of support, even as Iran's poor complain their regime has left them by the wayside. Iran will probably pay out the money (though I've heard unconfirmed reports of delays), but of what value is this if Hezbollah cannot fire on Israel in the event of an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities? Or, to the contrary, of what value is the compensation if, by firing on Israel at Tehran's behest, Hezbollah only brings new destruction down on the heads of Shiites, who might then turn against Nasrallah?

Some analyses suggest Iranian officials are livid with Nasrallah for having squandered massive Iranian investment in Hezbollah. Missing from this, however, is that the party has also managed to turn the Lebanese consensus squarely against the party. Despite Saad-Ghorayeb's assertion that the balance of power will change in Lebanon, in the past week the opposite seems to have been true, as both the government and the parliamentary majority, made up of the so-called March 14 forces hostile to Syria and critical of Hezbollah, have worked to curtail any effort by Nasrallah to transform his so-called victory into political gains. Indeed, as the costs of the war are tallied, there has been a noticeable lack of enthusiasm in Lebanon to see the war as anything but a calamity. With the party itself deeply occupied with the Shiites' rehabilitation, it has not been able to reverse this mood.

So perhaps a victory it is, but in that case Hezbollah's victory is no different than most other Arab victories in recent decades: the "victory" of October 1973, where Egypt and Syria managed to cross into Israeli-held land, their land, only to be later saved from a thrashing by timely United Nations intervention; the "victory" of 1982, where Palestinian groups were ultimately expelled from West Beirut, but were proud to have stayed in the fight for three months; the Iraqi "victory" of 1991, where Saddam Hussein brought disaster on his country but still held on to power. Now we have the Hezbollah "victory" of 2006: the Israelis bumbled and blundered, but still managed to create a million refugees, to kill over 1,000 people, and to kick Lebanon's economy back several years. One dreads to imagine what Hezbollah would recognize as a military loss.

Reason contributing editor Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon.

 

[Kirkhill]

Taheri's Take - Fair Dealings etc.

Hezbollah Didn't Win
Arab writers are beginning to lift the veil on what really happened in Lebanon.

BY AMIR TAHERI
Friday, August 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The way much of the Western media tells the story, Hezbollah won a great victory against Israel and the U.S., healed the Sunni-Shiite rift, and boosted the Iranian mullahs' claim to leadership of the Muslim world. Portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the junior mullah who leads the Lebanese branch of this pan-Shiite movement, have adorned magazine covers in the West, hammering in the message that this child of the Khomeinist revolution is the new hero of the mythical "Arab Street."

Probably because he watches a lot of CNN, Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei, also believes in "a divine victory." Last week he asked 205 members of his Islamic Majlis to send Mr. Nasrallah a message, congratulating him for his "wise and far-sighted leadership of the Ummah that produced the great victory in Lebanon."

By controlling the flow of information from Lebanon throughout the conflict, and help from all those who disagree with U.S. policies for different reasons, Hezbollah may have won the information war in the West. In Lebanon, the Middle East and the broader Muslim space, however, the picture is rather different.





Let us start with Lebanon.
Immediately after the U.N.-ordained ceasefire started, Hezbollah organized a series of firework shows, accompanied by the distribution of fruits and sweets, to celebrate its victory. Most Lebanese, however, finding the exercise indecent, stayed away. The largest "victory march" in south Beirut, Hezbollah's stronghold, attracted just a few hundred people.

Initially Hezbollah had hesitated between declaring victory and going into mourning for its "martyrs." The latter course would have been more in harmony with Shiite traditions centered on the cult of Imam Hussain's martyrdom in 680 A.D. Some members of Hezbollah wished to play the martyrdom card so that they could accuse Israel, and through it the U.S., of war crimes. They knew that it was easier for Shiites, brought up in a culture of eternal victimhood, to cry over an imagined calamity than laugh in the joy of a claimed victory.

Politically, however, Hezbollah had to declare victory for a simple reason: It had to pretend that the death and desolation it had provoked had been worth it. A claim of victory was Hezbollah's shield against criticism of a strategy that had led Lebanon into war without the knowledge of its government and people. Mr. Nasrallah alluded to this in television appearances, calling on those who criticized him for having triggered the war to shut up because "a great strategic victory" had been won.

The tactic worked for a day or two. However, it did not silence the critics, who have become louder in recent days. The leaders of the March 14 movement, which has a majority in the Lebanese Parliament and government, have demanded an investigation into the circumstances that led to the war, a roundabout way of accusing Hezbollah of having provoked the tragedy. Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has made it clear that he would not allow Hezbollah to continue as a state within the state. Even Michel Aoun, a maverick Christian leader and tactical ally of Hezbollah, has called for the Shiite militia to disband.

Mr. Nasrallah followed his claim of victory with what is known as the "Green Flood"(Al-sayl al-akhdhar). This refers to the massive amounts of crisp U.S. dollar notes that Hezbollah is distributing among Shiites in Beirut and the south. The dollars from Iran are ferried to Beirut via Syria and distributed through networks of militants. Anyone who can prove that his home was damaged in the war receives $12,000, a tidy sum in wartorn Lebanon.





The Green Flood has been unleashed to silence criticism of Mr. Nasrallah and his masters in Tehran. But the trick does not seem to be working. "If Hezbollah won a victory, it was a Pyrrhic one," says Walid Abi-Mershed, a leading Lebanese columnist. "They made Lebanon pay too high a price--for which they must be held accountable."
Hezbollah is also criticized from within the Lebanese Shiite community, which accounts for some 40% of the population. Sayyed Ali al-Amin, the grand old man of Lebanese Shiism, has broken years of silence to criticize Hezbollah for provoking the war, and called for its disarmament. In an interview granted to the Beirut An-Nahar, he rejected the claim that Hezbollah represented the whole of the Shiite community. "I don't believe Hezbollah asked the Shiite community what they thought about [starting the] war," Mr. al-Amin said. "The fact that the masses [of Shiites] fled from the south is proof that they rejected the war. The Shiite community never gave anyone the right to wage war in its name."

There were even sharper attacks. Mona Fayed, a prominent Shiite academic in Beirut, wrote an article also published by An-Nahar last week. She asks: Who is a Shiite in Lebanon today? She provides a sarcastic answer: A Shiite is he who takes his instructions from Iran, terrorizes fellow believers into silence, and leads the nation into catastrophe without consulting anyone. Another academic, Zubair Abboud, writing in Elaph, a popular Arabic-language online newspaper, attacks Hezbollah as "one of the worst things to happen to Arabs in a long time." He accuses Mr. Nasrallah of risking Lebanon's existence in the service of Iran's regional ambitions.

Before he provoked the war, Mr. Nasrallah faced growing criticism not only from the Shiite community, but also from within Hezbollah. Some in the political wing expressed dissatisfaction with his overreliance on the movement's military and security apparatus. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they described Mr. Nasrallah's style as "Stalinist" and pointed to the fact that the party's leadership council (shura) has not held a full session in five years. Mr. Nasrallah took all the major decisions after clearing them with his Iranian and Syrian contacts, and made sure that, on official visits to Tehran, he alone would meet Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei.

Mr. Nasrallah justified his style by claiming that involving too many people in decision-making could allow "the Zionist enemy" to infiltrate the movement. Once he had received the Iranian green light to provoke the war, Mr. Nasrallah acted without informing even the two Hezbollah ministers in the Siniora cabinet or the 12 Hezbollah members of the Lebanese Parliament.

Mr. Nasrallah was also criticized for his acknowledgement of Ali Khamenei as Marjaa al-Taqlid (Source of Emulation), the highest theological authority in Shiism. Highlighting his bay'aah (allegiance), Mr. Nasrallah kisses the man's hand each time they meet. Many Lebanese Shiites resent this because Mr. Khamenei, a powerful politician but a lightweight in theological terms, is not recognized as Marjaa al-Taqlid in Iran itself. The overwhelming majority of Lebanese Shiites regard Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in Iraq, or Ayatollah Muhammad-Hussein Fadhlallah, in Beirut, as their "Source of Emulation."

Some Lebanese Shiites also question Mr. Nasrallah's strategy of opposing Prime Minister Siniora's "Project for Peace," and instead advancing an Iranian-backed "Project of Defiance." The coalition led by Mr. Siniora wants to build Lebanon into a haven of peace in the heart of a turbulent region. His critics dismiss this as a plan "to create a larger Monaco." Mr. Nasrallah's "Project of Defiance," however, is aimed at turning Lebanon into the frontline of Iranian defenses in a war of civilizations between Islam (led by Tehran) and the "infidel," under American leadership. "The choice is between the beach and the bunker," says Lebanese scholar Nadim Shehadeh. There is evidence that a majority of Lebanese Shiites would prefer the beach.





There was a time when Shiites represented an underclass of dirt-poor peasants in the south and lumpen elements in Beirut. Over the past 30 years, however, that picture has changed. Money sent from Shiite immigrants in West Africa (where they dominate the diamond trade), and in the U.S. (especially Michigan), has helped create a prosperous middle class of Shiites more interested in the good life than martyrdom à la Imam Hussain. This new Shiite bourgeoisie dreams of a place in the mainstream of Lebanese politics and hopes to use the community's demographic advantage as a springboard for national leadership. Hezbollah, unless it ceases to be an instrument of Iranian policies, cannot realize that dream.
The list of names of those who never endorsed Hezbollah, or who broke with it after its Iranian connections became too apparent, reads like a Who's Who of Lebanese Shiism. It includes, apart from the al-Amins, families such as the al-As'ad, the Osseiran, the al-Khalil, the Hamadah, the Murtadha, the Sharafeddin, the Fadhlallah, the Mussawis, the Hussainis, the Shamsuddin and the Ata'allahs.

Far from representing the Lebanese national consensus, Hezbollah is a sectarian group backed by a militia that is trained, armed and controlled by Iran. In the words of Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the Iranian daily Kayhan, "Hezbollah is 'Iran in Lebanon.' " In the 2004 municipal elections, Hezbollah won some 40% of the votes in the Shiite areas, the rest going to its rival Amal (Hope) movement and independent candidates. In last year's general election, Hezbollah won only 12 of the 27 seats allocated to Shiites in the 128-seat National Assembly--despite making alliances with Christian and Druze parties and spending vast sums of Iranian money to buy votes.

Hezbollah's position is no more secure in the broader Arab world, where it is seen as an Iranian tool rather than as the vanguard of a new Nahdha (Awakening), as the Western media claim. To be sure, it is still powerful because it has guns, money and support from Iran, Syria and Hate America International Inc. But the list of prominent Arab writers, both Shiite and Sunni, who have exposed Hezbollah for what it is--a Khomeinist Trojan horse--would be too long for a single article. They are beginning to lift the veil and reveal what really happened in Lebanon.

Having lost more than 500 of its fighters, and with almost all of its medium-range missiles destroyed, Hezbollah may find it hard to sustain its claim of victory. "Hezbollah won the propaganda war because many in the West wanted it to win as a means of settling score with the United States," says Egyptian columnist Ali al-Ibrahim. "But the Arabs have become wise enough to know TV victory from real victory."

Mr. Taheri is author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002).

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008847

 

[Kirkhill]

And a couple of bits of miscellany -

The Red Cross Ambulance Incident - http://www.zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/
Anti-Semitism as Strategy - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjUzMGU4NTMyOTdkOTdmNTA1MWJlYjYyZDliODZkOGM=

 

[geo]

Interesting spin on the BBC news this evening..........
Leader of Hezbolah in now saying that, if he had understood how Israel was going to react to their kidnapping the 2 israeli soldiers (bombs, tanks, arty, planes, etc nuking Lebanon) he wouldn't have done it)..............

Dumb ass!

 

[a_majoor]

Not really; he is still fighting the information war as he knows victory will be determined by the actions and reactions of the West. He certainly does not want hard headed analysis like in the previous page detailing the defeat of the Hezbollah, but he knows that useful idiots like the BBC will play the anti-Israel message and far fewer people read Army.ca for detailed analysis.

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

Still has not facilitated the release of those 2 Israeli soldiers....

 

[couchcommander]

The above mentioned story from CBC:

Reproduced here under the auspices of the fair dealings provision of the Copyright Act.

Attack on Israel was mistake, Hezbollah leader says
Last Updated Sun, 27 Aug 2006 18:37:27 EDT
CBC News

The leader of the militant group Hezbollah says that if he could do it all over again, he wouldn't order the capture of Israeli soldiers that ignited the war in Lebanon.

    Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah in the Aug. 27 TV interview. (New TV/Associated Press) Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah in the Aug. 27 TV interview. (New TV/Associated Press)

"You ask me, if I had known on July 11 … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not," Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview with Lebanon's New TV station broadcast Sunday.

"He more or less admitted that he miscalculated," CBC Radio's Mike Hornbrook reported.

The war devastated Lebanon, where at least 850 militants and civilians died in Israeli bombardments and land attacks, while Hezbollah rockets and fighters killed at least 157 Israeli civilians and soldiers. Estimates of the cost of repairing damage to Lebanese buildings, roads and infrastructure run into the billions of dollars.

Hezbollah fighters crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel on July 12, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two more. Israel responded with attacks that lasted until a UN-organized ceasefire took effect on Aug. 14.

"We did not think, even one  per cent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Nasrallah said.

While Nasrallah claimed victory over Israel when the ceasefire took hold, he apologized in the interview for the suffering of the Lebanese people.

Talks on prisoner swap

Nasrallah also said negotiations with Israel on a prisoner swap are in the early stages.

"Contacts recently began for negotiations," he said.

"The Italians seem to be getting close and are trying to get into the subject. The United Nations is interested," Nasrallah said. The speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, is in charge of negotiations, he added.

Israel won't comment on a prisoner exchange, but officials have said that Israel has 13 Hezbollah prisoners, and dozens of bodies of guerrillas.

On Sunday, Vice-Premier Shimon Peres said there were no negotiations underway at the moment, but he suggested there could be talks once the Lebanese government is in control of the country's south.

Nasrallah, who has been in hiding since the first day of the war, said he believed the Israelis would try and kill him if they knew his whereabouts.

When the ceasefire took effect, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olhmert pledged to "continue pursuing [Hezbollah] everywhere at all times."

Nasrallah also said he did not think fighting would break out soon in Lebanon. "The current Israeli situation, and the available givens tell us that we are not heading to another round," he said.

French soldiers rebuild bridges

French soldiers in Lebanon are helping the Lebanese army rebuild bridges knocked down or damaged during the fighting. That's a necessary first step to being able to move supplies and people around southern Lebanon.

The 240 soldiers are not part of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, which will reinforce the Lebanese army as it tries to maintain the ceasefire.

The troops are expected to work on 15 bridges during at least six weeks they'll remain in  Lebanon.

France is also contributing 2,000 soldiers to the 15,000 the UN wants in its peacekeeping force.

With files from the Associated Press

Interesting development.

Have the Israeli's managed to inflict such damage that a restort to arms against them, even by groups like Hezballah, is now seen as unacceptable affair by the leaders of these groups? That seems to be message coming across, but it could also be yet another facet of the information war being waged against us.

In the end, it would certainly go a long way towards stabilizing the region, too bad it took another war to prove a point that was effectively demonstrated more than half a century ago.

Does this validate their strategy of massive retaliation?

Interesting question, in my opinion. If what this man is saying is true, how many lives have now been saved?

 

[Kirkhill]

"We did not think, even one  per cent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Nasrallah said

Seems like the best time and the best way to hit somebody - hard when they least expect it.

 

[Kirkhill]

Apparently using techniques learnt from their paymasters in Iran, they were even able to crack the codes and follow the fast-changing frequencies of Israeli radio communications, intercepting reports of the casualties they had inflicted again and again. This enabled them to dominate the media war by announcing Israeli fatalities first.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2330624,00.html

Forget all the rest of the strategic posturing - at a tactical level this sounds serious to me.

Also there was this quote:

“We expected a tent and three Kalashnikovs — that was the intelligence we were given. Instead, we found a hydraulic steel door leading to a well-equipped network of tunnels.”

And this:

Hezbollah appears to have divided a three mile-wide strip along the Israeli-Lebanese border into numerous “killing boxes”. Each box was protected in classic guerrilla fashion with booby-traps, land mines (haven't they heard of the Ottawa Protocol?  : ), and even CCTV cameras to watch every step of the advancing Israeli army.

On the other side of the coin there is this note:

The casualties from Russian-made anti-tank missiles have caused particular concern. An Israeli-invented radar defence shield codenamed Flying Jacket and costing £200,000 was installed on only four tanks. None of them was struck by anti-tank missiles.

But Hezbollah hit 46 tanks that lacked the shield. “£200,000 per tank is not beyond Israel’s means,” noted one military source acidly.

200,000 UKP is about 400,000 Canadian Dollars - per vehicle.  While that may not be beyond Israel's means, depending on the number of tanks it wants to field, I am willing to bet it would put a serious crimp into the Canadian defence budget.  IIRC that is about the price of an entire Stryker/Turretless LAVIII.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...

If there is one thing Nasrallah would want, it would be "hard-headed analysis". An analysis showing civilian casualties, destroyed infrastructure, and damaged economy would show just how one-sided this battle really was.

One-sided is precisely how wars are supposed to be: we want to pound the enemy into submission as quickly as possible.  Speed, violence and brutally overwhelming force are the keys to a successful attack.  The entire nation in arms (which is what Hezbollah looks like to any trained military observer is a legitimate military target - just as the Ruhr basin, all of it, women and children and hospitals included, was a legitimate target in 1944: remember the Dam Busters?

A campaign which is not one-sided is called a draw; that's what the Israel/Hezbollah dust up looks like at first glance and that's what it might become if the criminals in the UN allow Hezbollah to rearm and, thereby, require Israel to pound the Lebanese, all of 'em, again.

I believe that the ‘one-sided’ hand wringing is the result of the use of air power.  For some strange reason people – terminally stupid people with zero military skill and knowledge – think that battles should be fair and balanced and, above all, bloodless.  Rubbish! Arrant nonsense!  War means destroying the enemy’s will to resist; anything less is just random violence.  If we will not, cannot prosecute a war to that end then we have no business fighting at all.  To destroy the enemy’s will to resist we have, since time immemorial, used civilians as targets and tools.  Consider Cæsar’s Siege of Alesia (I may be repeating myself - sorry about that): was Vercingetorix a war criminal because he sent his women and children, all them – thousands of them, out of the safety of his besieged city and into the no-man’s land between his impregnable walls and Cæsar’s siege lines?  He counted on Cæsar being soft-hearted and equally soft-headed; Cæsar was, according to Vercingetorix’ plan, supposed to open his gates and allow the women and children to pass through his lines – slowly.  In that period Vercingetorix planned to attack and effect a break out.  Not a bad plan, considering his position.  Should he be condemned for practising asymmetrical warfare over 2,000 years ago?  Cæsar was hard-headed; Vercingetorix’ women and children died, slowly, of starvation and exposure – in full view of their men-folk; it must have been hard on morale – Roman and Gallic.  Was Cæsar a war criminal for not falling into the trap?  I suppose Louise Arbour would say "Yes" - I say "NO!" - as emphatically as I can.  My point is that there is nothing new and nothing wrong with ‘using’ civilians provided one does not:

• Target them indiscriminately – as civilians, just to terrorize the military.  I saw no evidence Israel did this – indiscriminate being the operative word; or

• Use them as shields by, for example, living amongst them and fighting without uniforms, etc, so that one can hide in plain view.  That appears to one of Hezbollah's’s tactics.
One-sided wars are blessing, for everyone: they end more quickly than the fair fights.

 

[tomahawk6]

As we speak Iran/Syria are resupplying Hizbollah with a variety of missiles including the Shahab-3 and ammunition. The plan would be to launch these Scud type missiles from the Bekaa while UNIFIL and the LA were in place. The IAF would have a hard time locating these mobile weapons as Israel's cities were hit. The Patriot batteries would get some of these but invariably there would be leakers. Meanwhile the IDF would have to punch their way through UNIFIL and the LA to get to Hizbollah, more of a pr disaster than a military challenge. If you have to do that then the IDF might as well head for Damascus.

 

[geo]

well..... given that Syria and Israel never signed a peace treaty after their last dust-up, they are still in a state of war with one another (Mind you, Syria doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist).

WRT Iran & Syria rearming Hezbolah.... t'is one of the reasons that the PM of Lebanon is asking for UN troops to be stationed on the Syrian border.

 

[a_majoor]

More on the Information war:

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/thornton082306.html

Inside the “Cease-fire”
U.N.’s looming failure reveals West’s moral confusion.
by Bruce Thornton
Private Papers

With every crisis in the war against Islamic jihad, the West displays a suicidal appeasement that heartens the enemy and lessens any chance of victory.

The absurd “cease fire” the U.N. recently hammered out between Israel and the murderous Hezbollah is a case in point. The resolution forces Israel to suspend its destruction of Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon, while at glacial speed an international force is assembled and then deployed. This means one thing and one thing only: Hezbollah will rebuild that infrastructure and thus undo the considerable damage to it achieved by Israel.

Despite U.N. Resolution 1559, which in 2004 called for disarming Hezbollah, no one made the slightest attempt to enforce its provisions, forcing Israel to deal with the problem of murderers lobbing missiles into its territory. And no one entrusted with enforcing the cease-fire called for in Resolution 1701 — neither the international troops nor the Lebanese army — is any more able or willing to prove that the U.N. means what it says, that its resolutions are anything other than diplomatic fig leaves hiding the West’s failure of nerve.

Consider the surreal lunacy of this new resolution and its “cease fire”: under its terms Hezbollah is to disarm and vacate southern Lebanon, and no weapons from Iran and Syria are to be allowed in. But the French, the Lebanese, and other potential enforcers of the Resolution have stated explicitly that they will not disarm Hezbollah, which has made it clear it has no intentions of abiding by those terms of the resolution. In other words, the enforcers of a U.N. resolution have said they will not enforce the terms of a U.N. resolution.

In the short term, Israel is the loser in this diplomatic shell game. The damage done to Hezbollah’s ability to attack Israel, achieved at the cost of Israeli blood and treasure, will be quickly repaired as arms pour into Lebanon from Iran and Syria — under the noses of whatever U.N. force (if any) is finally put in place, and with the likely complicity of the Lebanese army. Worse, the U.N. and Lebanese troops will now be shields for Hezbollah, for if Israel attempts to resist the rearmament they will have to fight around these forces. I can already see the CNN footage of dead U.N. “peace-keepers,” proving once again the liberal media’s scenario of Israel’s callous indifference, its willingness to do anything to hang on to the lands it “stole” from peace-loving Arabs.

In the long term the West loses, for once more it has allowed the jihadists to manipulate our weaknesses to achieve their aims. One has only to look at Western media coverage of the conflict to see how the moral confusion of many Westerners has left us vulnerable to jihadist fanatical certainty.

Western reporters were completely manipulated and managed by Hezbollah, who told them where to go, where to point their cameras. and when to turn them off. Pictures were doctored and “atrocities” manufactured, such as the highly suspicious number of children killed at Qana, which recalls earlier frauds such as the Jenin “massacre.” Understanding the Western media’s appetite for photogenic suffering and their dislike of Israel, Hezbollah brilliantly provided the raw material for validating Western received wisdom, the sanctioned narrative of Arab innocence and Zionist neo-colonialist wickedness.

This same loss of Western nerve is also on display in the response to the plot by British Muslims to blow up several airplanes. Recently while traveling through London’s Heathrow airport, I watched as elderly European and American women were aggressively frisked and their shoes swabbed for explosives residue. Massive and intrusive screening of people from demographics never associated with terrorism continues to cost billions of dollars and disrupt the travel of millions. Why? So that young Muslim men, the demographic that does provide all the terrorists, aren’t “profiled” and their feelings hurt. This is as silly as the police rounding up elderly black men when they are searching for a teen-aged white rapist.

Apologists and supporters of Islamic jihad, however, know exactly which cultural dysfunctions to exploit in order to achieve their stated aim of replacing liberal democracies with a caliphate governed by Koranic sharia. Our obsession with “racism,’ based on white guilt and noble-savage idealizations of the dark-skinned “other,” is itself a sign of Western malaise.

Having been told by professors and intellectuals that their culture is depraved and oppressive, many Westerners are eager to atone for presumed historical crimes and prove how sensitive they are to superior non-Western cultures. Rather than accepting and asserting the superiority of Western ideals of freedom and individualism and showing a willingness to fight for them, instead these tinhorn Hamlets bend over backwards to accommodate people who explicitly have said they hate the West and want to destroy it, even as they flock to the West to enjoy its freedom and prosperity.

Make no mistake, every such attempt to show the jihadists how much we respect their wonderful faith, how eager we are not to hurt their feelings, how sensitive we are to our own historical sins that supposedly account for their faith-driven violence, does nothing but increase the jihadists’ contempt for us and a culture so depraved that it will grovel before those who want to destroy it. They see this despicable cowardice as proof positive that the Western way is doomed to fall before Allah’s chosen people, and that we Westerners have three options: die, convert, or live on as oppressed dhimmi.