Hizballah sends out its rockets indiscriminately, just as happy to kill civilians as military personnel. Israel issues warnings, telegraphing its punches and telling civilians to evacuate areas that are about to be hit. Then the world dhimmi community, manipulated cannily by the OIC, condemns Israel for "barbaric" attacks on civilians.
In general, of course, the world is all too willing to buy into the adamantine, immovable, rocklike jihadist assumption that they never do wrong, and bear no responsibility for any of their actions. It is only the West that ever apologizes, and is ever seen to need to do so.
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
Nine people were killed in a Hezbollah rocket strike against Israel's third largest city of Haifa today, an attack likely to trigger an escalation in the Israel-Lebanon conflict.The attack came after Israeli aircraft again went into action over Lebanon before dawn on the fifth day of an assault that has killed scores and left the country almost completely cut off.
Israeli medical sources said nine people were killed and dozens wounded in the attack on the northern port city of Haifa, where Hezbollah fighters claimed they had hit an oil refinery.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there would be "far-reaching consequences" following the attack.
"Nothing will deter us," he said at the beginning of his Government's weekly cabinet meeting. "There will be far-reaching consequences in our relations on the northern border and in the area in general."
Mr Olmert also said that Israel's offensive in Lebanon was not intended to harm Lebanese civilians.
Since the fighting began five days ago, 106 Lebanese have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, most of them civilians.
Note that there is no tally given of Israeli civilian deaths.
"We want to live our lives in peace and in good neighbourly relations," he said."Unfortunately, there are those who misinterpret our wishes for peace in the wrong way. We have no intention of bending in the face of these threats."
"Our enemies are trying to disrupt the lifestyle in Israel. They will fail," he said.
They're not just trying to disrupt your lifestyle, Mr. Prime Minister. They're trying to annihilate you.
When will the people of the world give words and support to Israel?
I will have something to say about this conflict later this week. For now I just watch.
I am always on the side of Israel.
Watch out that the Muslims don't do a Srebrenica and bomb one of their own marketplaces and/or densely populated areas. By the time the UN realises it is an inside job the world will have already blamed Israel. I would not put it past them.
While the Israelis have been delivering warnings well in advance of their attacks on Hezbollah and on Hezbollah-related sites (there have been no attacks on any sites without a Hezbollah connection), one must recognize that neither the Beirut aiport, nor the other two airports, have special terminals marked "Hezbollah" that can be easily identified. Nor do the roads and bridges, linking Hezbollahland in the south to Beirut, or Beirut to Greater Hezbollahland in Syria and thence to Iran in the east, have signs indicating, in the same way that American highways do at toll-booths, that this lane is the "E-Z Lane" and that one is for "Trucks" and so on -- no markings indicating that this bridge, or this particular lane on this particular highway, is the one that Hezbollah uses. Were it so simple, there is no doubt that the Israelis would hit only that lane, only that bridge. They have no desire to make war on others outside of Hezbollah, but on the other hand, those others, Christians, Druse, and Sunni Arabs, and even some non-Hezbollah Shi'a, have had six full years to figure out how to disarm Hezbollah. And even if the excuse once was that "Syrian forces are still here" it has been a year since those Syrian forces left, and still not only did the Lebanese army and govenment not make a move to disarm Hezbollah, but Sa'ad Hariri and Fuad Siniora actually invited Hezbollah to join the government. It is absurd to expect Israel, once the casus belli of the kidnapped soldier occured, not to do everything it can to destroy Hezbollah, and to concentrate Lebanese minds so that once the active hostlilities are over, the same situation occurs, for the next time Israel has to "set back the clock" it may not be for merely 20 years. Either tranquillity on both sides, or tranquillity on neither. It is a simple, understandable, and completely justified demand.
It would be an unendurable paradox if Olmert, who was sinking in popularity before these attacks, were to see his popularity rise skywards because of the effective response of Israel's military (it is the military, with its plans, and the officers and men, and the stoic and brave civilians of Israel, who deserve all the credit, and not Olmert who was forced to allow the army to respond, who could do no other), and exploiting that new populatrity, proceed to draw all the wrong conclusions, and none of the right ones, from the attack by Hamas in the south and the much more deadly and effective ones by Hezbollah in the north. For the wrong lesson is: we can handle this. We have shown it. And now things will be quiet, and we can go back to that Road Map, as Rice ridiculously has suggested, and the Quartet, and some "solution" based on unilateral withdrawal from the "West Bank."
The correct lesson to draw from all this is the great vulnerability of Israel and its citizens. The correct lesson is the need for strategic depth. For now, in the south and in the north it may be necessary to seize and remain in territory that the Israelis once upon a time decided they should relinguish. But the same strategic depth, the same minimal buffer zone, is needed far more all along Israel's eastern border. The natural border, the least vulnerable, the most capable of being guarded, with the least ins-and-outs, is that of the Jordan River. That is all territory to which Israel has a sovereign claim as the sole intended beneficiary of the Mandate for Palestine. The intent, and provisions of that Mandate need to be re-read, reconsulted, re-understood. And the Arab propaganda that has been designed to re-package the Lesser Jihad against Israel as merely a matter of a "nationalist" struggle by the "Palestinian people" (a people invented for this very propaganda effort -- never mind that some of them have convinced themselves that they always were part of this "Palesstiian people" even when so many of them are descended from Arabs who arrived during the Mandate period (there were more Arab immigrants than there were Jewish immigrants, even though the whole point of the Mandate was to "facilitate Jewish immigration" and encourage "close Jewish settlement on the land").
The lesson is this: forget the Olmert Plan. Whether or not he remains popular, that popularity should not be translated into a return to his idiotic plan of before, and as for the Arab League, that has just declared the non-existent "Peace Process" dead, that Arab League is absolutely right.
But not in the way it assumes. Time for all concerned, even Bush and Rice, to read about the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya. Time to read Majid Khadduri on the law regulating agreements between Muslims and Infidels. Time, in other words, and not only for those trying to "solve" what they so blandly and self-assuredly call the "Palestinian-Israeli conflict" (it isn't that, and it never was), because they never expect to be required to know anything about Islam, and fully expect to pretend that the gorilla in the room, Islam, is not there -- well, that's over. Those days should be over for Israel. They should be over for India. They should be over for Christians in southern Nigeria and Buddhists in southern Thailand. And they should be over for the people in France and Italy, in England and Spain, in Belgium and Denmark and Germany and Holland, even if their benighted E.U. rulers, or their local governments, are still full of those who cannot permit themselves to recognize what is going on, and what is at stake.
Looks like the Christian Lebanese are right on the money!Good background info here.
=================================================
"Thank you Israel "
By Brigitte Gabriel
For the millions of Christian Lebanese, driven out of our
homeland, "Thank you Israel," is the sentiment echoing from
around the world. The Lebanese Foundation for Peace, an
international group of Lebanese Christians, made the
following statement in a press release to Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert concerning the latest Israeli attacks
against Hezbollah:
"We urge you to hit them hard and destroy their terror
infrastructure. It is not [only] Israel who is fed up with
this situation, but the majority of the silent Lebanese in
Lebanon who are fed up with Hezbollah and are powerless to
do anything out of fear of terror retaliation."
Their statement continues,
"On behalf of thousands of Lebanese, we ask you to open the
doors of Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport to thousands of
volunteers in the Diaspora willing to bear arms and liberate
their homeland from [Islamic] fundamentalism. We ask you for
support, facilitation and logistics in order to win this
struggle and achieve together the same objectives: Peace and
Security for Lebanon and Israel and our future generations
to come."
The once dominate Lebanese Christians responsible for giving
the world "the Paris of the Middle East" as Lebanon used to
be known, have been killed, massacred, driven out of their
homes and scattered around the world as radical Islam
declared its holy war in the 70s and took hold of the
country. They voice an opinion that they and Israel have
learned from personal experience, which is now belatedly
being discovered by the rest of the world.
While the world protected the PLO withdrawing from Lebanon
in 1983 with Israel hot on their heals, another more
volatile and religiously idealistic organization was being
born: Hezbollah, "the Party of God," founded by Ayatollah
Khomeini and financed by Iran. It was Hezbollah who blew up
the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in October,1983 killing
241 Americans and 67 French paratroopers that same day.
President Reagan ordered U.S. Multilateral Force units to
withdraw and closed the books on the marine massacre and US
involvement in Lebanon February 1984.
The civilized world, which erroneously vilified the
Christians and Israel back then and continues to vilify
Israel now, was not paying attention. While America and the
rest of the world were concerned about the Israeli / PLO
problem, terrorist regimes in Syria and Iran fanned Islamic
radicalism in Lebanon and around the world. Hezbollah's
Shiite extremists began multiplying like proverbial rabbits
out-producing moderate Sunnis and Christians. Twenty-five
years later they have produced enough people to vote
themselves into 24 seats in the Lebanese parliament. Since
the Israeli pull out in 2000, Lebanon has become a terrorist
base completely run and controlled by Syria with its puppet
Lebanese President Lahood and the Hezbollah "state within a
state."
The Lebanese army has less than 10,000 military troops.
Hezbollah has over 4,000 trained militia forces and there
are approximately 700 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in
Southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. So why can't the army
do the job? Because the majority of Lebanese Muslims making
up the army will split and unite along religious lines with
the Islamic forces just like what happened in 1976 at the
start of the Lebanese civil war.
It all boils down to a war of Islamic Jihad ideology vs.
Judeo Christian Westernism. Muslims who are now the majority
of Lebanon's population, support Hezbollah because they are
part of the Islamic Ummah-the nation. This is the taboo
subject everyone is trying to avoid.
The latest attacks on Israel have been orchestrated by Iran
and Syria driven by two different interests. Syria considers
Lebanon a part of "greater" Syria. Young Syrian President
Assad and his Ba'athist military intelligence henchmen in
Damascus are using this latest eruption of violence to prove
to the Lebanese that they need the Syrian presence to
protect them from the Israeli aggression and to stabilize
the country. Iran is conveniently using its Lebanese puppet
army Hezbollah, to distract the attention of world leaders
meeting at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, from its
pursuit of nuclear weapons. Apocalyptic Iranian President
Ahmadinejad and the ruling Mullah clerics in Tehran want to
assert hegemony in the Islamic world under the banner of
Shia Mahdist madness. Ahmadinejad wants to seal his place as
top Jihadist for Allah by make good his promise to "wipe
Israel off the map.
No matter how much the west avoids facing the reality of
Islamic extremism of the Middle East, the west cannot hide
from the fact that the same Hamas and Hezbollah that Israel
is fighting over there, are of the same radical Islamic
ideology that has fomented carnage and death through
terrorism that America and the world are fighting. This is
the same Hezbollah that Iran is threatening to unleash in
America with suicide bomb attacks if America tries to stop
Iran from developing nuclear weapon. They have cells in over
10 cities in the United States. Hamas, has the largest
terrorist infrastructure on American soil. This is what
happens when you turn a blind eye to evil for decades,
hoping it will go away.
Sheik Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, is an Iranian agent.
He is not a free actor in this play. He has been involved in
terrorism for over 25 years. Iran with its Islamic vision
for a Shia Middle East now has its agents, troops and money
in Gaza in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, and
Iraq. Behind this is this vision that drives the Iranian
President Ahmadinejad who believes he is Allah's "tool and
facilitator" bringing the end of the world as we know it and
the ushering in of the era of the Mahdi. He has a blind
messianic belief in the Shiite tradition of the 12th or
"hidden" Islamic savior who will emerge from a well in the
holy city of Qum in Iran after global chaos, catastrophes
and mass deaths and establish the era of Islamic Justice and
everlasting peace.
President Ahmadinejad has refused so far to respond to
proposals from the U.S., EU, Russia and China on the UN
Security Council to cease Iran's relentless quest for
nuclear enrichment and weapons development program until
August 22nd. Why August 22nd? Because August 22nd, coincides
with the Islamic date of Rajab 28, the day the great Salah
El-Din conquered Jerusalem.
Ahmadinejad's extremists ideology in triggering Armageddon
gives great concerns to the intelligence community.
At this point the civilized world must unite in fighting the
same enemies plaguing Israel and the world with terrorism.
We need to stop analyzing the enemies' differences as
Sunni-Hamas or Shiite-Hezbollah, and start understanding
that their common bond in their fight against us is radical
Islam.
Gramfan - Brilliant post!
Sums up the whole situation so well. With your permission I will circulate it as widely as I can and hope that others here will do likewise.
Last night I was totally depressed after reading a hundred or so Comments on the BBC website; nearly all of them so ignorant of history, so biased against Israel, so anti-American, so woefully blinkered, so illogical and unreasoning.
You have restored my faith, thank you.
Kate
Kate
thank you!!
GO FOR IT!!!!
ps forget the BBC and CNN - too depressing, too biassed!
The Israelis will probably find themselves up against the limits of air power fairly soon. Fine against entrenched armies, advancing or retreating columns, communications and bases it cam ne circumvented by camouflage, concealment and dversionary dummies when there has been plenty of time for the enemy to prepare. This was shown by the Kosovo war where the Serbs proved able to conceal whole armoured brigades and half a dozen migs - admittedly a policy of only bombing from 5 miles up didn't help. The rockets will keep coming until there are boots on the ground and if a 20 mile buffer zone is established, what happens when the range of Hezbollah's rockets becomes 30 miles, 40 miles. Only a Clausewitzian destruction of the enemy's main force will really sort this one out.
Is there any ware were i can show my support for
Israel? Like signing a petition agreeing with there actions.
>>>>So if Jews were so merciful and careful with regards to its bombing campaign, how come the dead ratio is like 10:200 people in favour of the Jews?
This.does.not.compute.
Posted by: geekpunk
Hello ProudSikh
I have found this site. It may not be what you are looking for - but it may have other links on it
http://www.onejerusalem.org/sign.asp
Thanks Gramfan there was a email link to the
Prime Minister of Israel. I whish people can email him to show support.