The Naz says:
“One of the central reasons for creating Hezbollah was to challenge the Zionist program in the region. Hezbollah still preserves this principle, and when an Egyptian journalist visited me after the liberation and asked me if the destruction of Israel and the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem were Hezbollah’s goal, I replied: "That is the principal objective of Hezbollah, and it is no less sacred than our [ultimate] goal.” --2002
It must be so comforting for the Israelis knowing the UN stands guard on that fence while they sleep in their beds at night:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/31/wleb31.xml
"UN vehicles were in plentiful evidence yesterday, and at numerous points Lebanese soldiers scrutinized traffic."
This is awe inspiring peacekeeping work. Scrutinizing traffic, the one thing Hezbollah fears will prevent the realization of their dream to rocket Israeli citizens into submission. I'm telling you, we can't fund the UN enough. Paint our tanks white, wear blue helmets, and scrutinize traffic? Why don’t we try this with Iraq?
3 comments:
Did I hear correctly that the U.N. is revisiting, or reconsidering their charter, or mission statement?
Wouldn't be a bad idea, considering the above developments.
Why Israel will go to war again – soon
By John Keegan
There will soon be another war in the Middle East, this time a renewal of the conflict between the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Hizbollah. The conflict is inevitable and unavoidable. It will come about because Israel cannot tolerate the rebuilding of Hizbollah's fortified zone in south Lebanon, from which last year it launched its missile bombardment of northern Israel.
Hizbollah has now reconstructed the fortified zone and is replenishing its stocks of missiles there. Hamas is also creating a fortified zone in the Gaza Strip and building up its stocks of missiles. Israel, therefore, faces missile attack on two fronts. When the Israel general staff decides the threat has become intolerable, it will strike.
What happened in south Lebanon earlier this year has been widely misunderstood, largely because the anti-Israel bias in the international media led to the situation being misreported as an Israeli defeat.
advertisementIt was no such thing. It was certainly an Israeli setback, but the idea that the IDF had suddenly lost its historic superiority over its Arab enemies and that they had acquired military qualities that had hitherto eluded them was quite false. Hizbollah suffered heavy losses in the fighting, perhaps as many as 1,000 killed out of its strength of up to 5,000 and it is only just now recovering.
What allowed Hizbollah to appear successful was its occupation of the bunker-and-tunnel system that it had constructed since June 2000, when the IDF gave up its presence in south Lebanon, which it had occupied since 1982.
Although the IDF had got into south Lebanon, the casualties it had suffered in entering the fortified zone had alarmed the government and high command, since Israel's tiny population is acutely vulnerable to losses in battle. Israel's plan was to destroy Hizbollah's tunnels and bunkers, but the sending of a United Nations intervention force did not allow the destruction to be completed before the IDF was forced to withdraw.
Tunnel systems have played a crucial part in many modern campaigns, without attracting much attention. That is a serious oversight. The success of the Viet Cong in sustaining its war effort in Vietnam in 1968-72 depended heavily on its use of the so-called War Zone B, a complex of deep tunnels and underground bases north of Saigon, which had been begun during the war against the French in 1946-55.
War Zone B provided the Viet Cong with a permanent base of refuge and resupply that proved effectively invulnerable even against a determined American effort to destroy it. War Zone B has now become a major tourist attraction to Western visitors to Vietnam.
In its time, however, War Zone B was very far from being a holiday facility: it assured the survival of the Viet Cong close to Saigon and their ability to mount operations against the government forces and the Americans. Hizbollah, either by mimicry or on its own account, has now begun to employ a tunnel and underground base strategy against Israel. It was for that reason it was able to confront Israeli armoured forces in south Lebanon earlier this year.
The adoption of a tunnel strategy has allowed Hizbollah to wage asymmetric warfare against Israel's previously all-conquering armoured forces. The tunnel system is also impervious to attack by the Israeli Air Force.
Since Israel's reason for existence is to provide a secure base for the Jewish people, and that of the IDF is to act as their shield and safeguard – functions that have been carried out with high success since 1948 – it is obvious that neither can tolerate a zone of invulnerability occupied by a sworn enemy located directly on Israel's northern border.
It is therefore an easy prediction to foresee that the IDF will – at some time in the near future – reopen its offensive against Hizbollah in south Lebanon and will not cease until it has destroyed the underground system, even if, in the process, it inflicts heavy damage on the towns and villages of the region.
It is likely that it will also move against the underground system being constructed in the Gaza Strip. Hamas resupplies itself with arms and munitions brought from Egypt through those channels. Gaza is a softer target than south Lebanon, since it is an enclave that Israel easily dominates.
Indeed, the IDF may attack Gaza as a distraction from south Lebanon in an effort to make Hizbollah divide its forces and efforts.
Destroying the underground military facilities may be straightforward, but it is likely to create diplomatic complexities, particularly with the UN. Entering south Lebanon risks provoking a clash with Unifil, the major part of whose strength is provided by France. It is unlikely that such a risk will deter Israel. When national survival is at risk, Israel behaves with extreme ruthlessness. It attacked an American communications ship during the Six-Day War because it objected to America listening in to its most secret signals.
The big question hanging over an Israeli return to south Lebanon is whether that would provoke a war with Syria, Lebanon's Arab protector. The answer is quite possibly yes, but that such an extension of hostilities might prove welcome both to Israel and to the United States, which regards Syria as Iran's advanced post on the Mediterranean shore.
What is certain is that – probably before the year is out – Israel will have struck at Hizbollah in south Lebanon. And the strike will come even sooner if Hizbollah reopens its missile bombardment of northern Israel from its underground systems.
It's always a chore to decide whether the latest round of ahistorical nonsense directed at Israel is pure bigotry, or leavened with historical ignornance. So, let's take a brief stab at recalling world history: In the generation following the close of WW2, the European empires were dismantled. They were not shut down by a Europe suddenly seized by spasms of ethics. They were shut down because the rest of the world decided that empires were illegimate at a moment when the old imperials were at their weakest ebb, from a combination of economic bankruptcy, military exhaustion, and a disintegrating national consensus over the whole idea of imperialism. Africa, SE Asia, and the Indian subcontinent were in turmoil. Everyone demanded the Euros leave. In most places, people took up arms. In a few, the Euros decided they weren't up to a new fight, and quickly promised to leave. This was what happened in India/Pakistan. In most places, wars broke out. That was what happened in SE Asia and Algeria, to France. All across Africa, to Britain, France, Belgium, etc.. And, in Israel, to Britain. IOW, Israel was part of a wave of national wars which stretched across the world. In the time between the end of WW2 and the 1960s, literally hundreds of millions of refugees were created across half the world. (I'm not speaking, here, of the tens of millions of refugees created in Europe *after* the end of WW2, when the Germans were emptied from Czechoslovaki and East Prussia, the Italians from Istria, etc..) Millions died in Algeria and SE Asia, at French hands. Tens of thousands in Africa and Malaysia, in the fighting with the British. Indonesia. The Belgian Congo. etc. etc. And, yet, the *only* issue we ever hear is Israel. Does that seem, perhaps, just the tiniest bit odd? Several people have asked in several threads over the past week what "antisemitism" is? One definition is when Jews are singled out for treatment grossly different from that demanded of any other people in the world. Want another way to think about this? Does anyone recall an old admonition against becoming preoccupied with the mote in one's neighbor's eye while ignoring the beam in one's own eye?
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