War in The Middle East

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Islamic Resistance destroys five Israeli tanks, 2 bulldozers and an armored military vehicle

31/07/2006

The Islamic Resistance said in a statement that its fighters have destroyed five Israeli tanks, two bulldozers and an armored vehicle Monday afternoon, on the Kafarkila-Odaiseh-Taybeh front, killing and injurig their crews. Earlier, Israeli Maarif daily said that 11 Israeli soldiers were injured in ongoing confrontations between resistance fighters and Israeli forces in the region of "Taybeh." The Islamic Resistance said that after the Israeli defeat in Maroun el-Ras, Bint Jbeil and Taybeh, resistance fighters targeted an infiltrating B-9 bulldozer between the town of Kafakila anf Odaiseh, to open a road for tanks. The tank was destroyed and its crew were killed and injured. And on Monday morning, a convoy of tanks tried to advance between the two Lebanese towns and they were confronted by Islamic Resistance fighters who destroyed two of them while a third one flipped over and crashed on a road in occupied Palestine. The crews of the three tanks were killed and injured.

Link: http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/N...00&language=en

Hizbollah field reports seem to be more accurate than Israeli ones.

(TOP LEFT) July 31: Israeli tanks stop next to an overturned vehicle that was carrying supplies when it went off the road in Lebanon. (TOP RIGHT) July 31: Israeli soldiers take positions next to a rocket-damaged tank in Lebanon (BOTTOM LEFT) July 31: Israeli soldiers run across the border after Hezbollah guerrillas attacked troops. (BOTTOM RIGHT) July 31: Smoke rises after Israeli missiles struck the Lebanese village of Kila during fights between Israelis and Hezbollah

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Israeli Commandos Raid Hezbollah Hideout in Baalbek Hospital

BOURJ AL-MULOUK, Lebanon — Israel launched its deepest ground attack into Lebanon with Israeli commandos raiding a Hezbollah-run hospital in the eastern city of Baalbek on Wednesday.

The Israeli army would not comment on the operation in the ancient city, which was once a Syrian army headquarters some 130 kilometers north of Israel. The Web site of the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that "helicopters put down IDF (military) commandos near Baalbek," without adding details. Hezbollah's chief spokesman, Hussein Rahal, told The Associated Press that Israeli troops landed near Dar al-Hikma Hospital and that fierce fighting ranged for more than one hour.

"A group of Israeli commandos was brought to the hospital by a helicopter. They entered the hospital." He said Hezbollah guerrillas fought the commandos inside the hospital. Hezbollah was using automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and Israeli jets were attacking the surrounding guerrilla force with rockets, Rahal said.

Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,206627,00.html

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

20/20 Vision in Paris

France Praises Iran's 'Stabilizing Role'

By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
August 01, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - The French foreign minister, whose government is positioning itself to play a leading part in Mideast peace efforts, has described Iran as a respected country that plays a stabilizing role in the region. Philippe Douste-Blazy told a news conference in Beirut Monday that Iran was "a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region."

Hours later, the Frenchmen met with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, at the Iranian Embassy. Tehran's mission in the Lebanese capital has been a key channel for Iran's support for Hizballah, and last week Iran denied reports that Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah had taken refuge inside the building. The U.S., Israel and several other countries accuse Iran of being the world's leading sponsor of terrorism and the primary backer of Hizballah in Lebanon. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called repeatedly for Israel's annihilation.

Iran also is at odds with the international community over its nuclear programs, with France one of three European countries involved in the standoff. The French minister's praise for the Islamic regime came on the day Hizballah's representative in Iran told a gathering in Tehran that his organization would put into effect the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's call for the "cancerous tumor" (Israel) to be eliminated.

Abol-Hassan Zo'aiter was quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency as saying Hizballah's resistance against Israel in recent weeks was the greatest victory ever of the "Islamic ummah." Zo'aiter's threats are not the only ones to be heard in Iran this week. On Sunday, Fars quoted the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, as urging his troops "to keep this sacred hatred of the enemies of Islam alive in our hearts until the time of revenge comes."

"Hizballah and Lebanese people are invincible and this cancerous tumor [Israel] should die," said Safavi, calling on leading Islamic clerics to "clarify the duty of Muslims against Israel." The 130,000-strong Revolutionary Guards, or Pasdaran, was designated guardian of the Islamic revolution after 1979, and is accused by the State Department of involvement in planning and supporting terrorism. It has particularly close ties to Hizballah, which it helped to establish in 1982.

According to exiled Iranian opposition groups, 13 out of 21 Iranian cabinet ministers, including Mottaki, have backgrounds in the IGRC. Ahmadinejad, the president, is a former senior Pasdaran officer. Several hundred Revolutionary Guards officers are reported to be advising and fighting alongside Hizballah in the current conflict, although Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a briefing Sunday Iran had not and would not dispatch forces to Lebanon, and again denying the Tehran arms Hizballah.

Israeli security officials say many of the 2,500 missiles Hizballah has fired into northern Israel since July 12 came from Iran, and that Iran also supplied a C-802 missile that damaged an Israeli Navy vessel two weeks ago, and longer-range Zelzal missiles which have yet to be used, but could possibly bring Tel Aviv within range. The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli officials were bewildered by Douste-Blazy's remarks about Iran, and quoted one diplomatic source in Jerusalem as asking "what planet is he on?"

Before his departure to Lebanon, the French minister told Le Figaro that there was no need to forbid contacts with the Iranian authorities, although he said President Jacques Chirac had ruled out contacts with the Syrians, Hizballah's other major sponsor. Mottaki's trip to Beirut was the first public visit to Lebanon by a senior Iranian leader since the Israel-Hizballah conflict began.

Apart from his French counterpart, he also met with Lebanese government leaders, including President Emile Lahoud and Foreign Minister Fauzi Salloukh, whom the Iranian Irna news agency reported had voiced appreciation for "the selfless contributions of the Islamic Republic of Iran" to Lebanon. Salloukh, a Shi'ite, is close to Hizballah and has argued against the need for the terrorist group to disband, saying it is a "national resistance movement" and not a militia, and thus not covered by U.N. Security Council resolution 1559's requirement for militias to be dismantled.

France, Lebanon and Hizballah

At the U.N. Security Council, France is playing a leading role in diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. It has drafted a resolution calling for the creation of a multinational force and a buffer zone, but only after the fighting stops. France has strong historical links with Lebanon, a country it administered between 1920 and 1943. After the Iranian revolution, however, its ties with the small Mediterranean nation were severely strained when Hizballah killed 58 French troops in a series of deadly 1983 bombings that also targeted U.S. Marines and the American Embassy.

Hizballah - and by extension Iran - subsequently carried out terrorist attacks against French targets including the French Embassy in Kuwait and the Marseilles railway station. Late that year, France expelled half a dozen Iranians attached to the embassy in Paris, accusing them of links to terror. lmost two decades later, Chirac endorsed the presence of Nasrallah at a Francophone summit in Beirut in Oct. 2002. Nasrallah sat in the front row, among religious leaders, and his participation was hailed in Lebanese media as evidence that for France and the fifty-plus other full and observer members of the bloc, Hizballah was not a terrorist organization.

(The Hizballah leader was invited by the Lebanese president Lahoud, but the country's Al-Safir newspaper pointed out that invitations went through the organizing committee of the French-speaking grouping. There was no record of Chirac - who spoke during the opening session about the need to fight terrorism - protesting his presence. Canada's then prime minister, Jean Chretien, was later criticized at home for giving a speech while Nasrallah sit a few feet away, but pleaded ignorance. Under pressure, Chretien's government outlawed Hizballah two months later.)

France has led opposition within the European Union to moves for the 25-nation bloc to outlaw Hizballah and cut off its European sources of funding, as requested by Israel and the U.S.

Link: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstor...20060801a.html

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Israel Needs War With Syria, Iran for Regional Stability

By Jonathan Ariel
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem----July 31, 2006 .... The current Mid-East crisis offers a unique opportunity to achieve what the invasion of Iraq failed to accomplish, the defeat of fanatical Islamism, and the accompanying creation of a new regional strategic status quo. The current war between Israel and Hezbullah, which has been raging for the past 15 days, is, in reality an Israel - Iran war, the first war between Israel and a non Arab state. It is also the first war in which Israel is not fighting a national entity. Israel’s previous wars, were either against one or several Arab states, the Palestinians or a combination of both, all national entities.

This time the motivation for the conflict is not a conflict between national entities over control of territory, but a religious outlook and ideology, radical fundamentalist Islamism. This is an ideology that, by its very nature cannot accept the existence of any non–Islamic sovereignty in any territory which used to be under Islamic rule, what is called Dar al Islam. Since the rise of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, Islam has only permanently lost one territory which it controlled for any major length of time, Spain. The creation of Israel marked only the second time in history that Islam has lost part of Dar al Islam. Unlike Spain, which was at the extreme edge of Dar al Islam, Israel is at its heart. This is a development which no Islamist entity can accept. In effect history has made a full circle.

The initial Palestinian hostility to Zionism and significant xxxish resettlement of Palestine was not based on nationalism, for the simple reason that apart from Egypt, Arab nationalism did not exist. It was based on religion, the fear that a non Islamic entity was attempting to establish a sovereign state in the heart of Islam. The prime instigator of the three Arab revolts against xxxish settlement in Palestine was the Mufti, the main religious leader representing the interests and ideas of traditional Islam, not a Palestinian nationalism or Nasserist pan Arabism, neither of which existed at that time. The bottom line of this is that this is the first time since 1936-39 that we are witnessing a war between Israel and an enemy motivated by Islamist ideology.

The last time it was against the Mufti, this time it is against Hezbullah, a proxy of Iran and the Shiite terrorist movement of global Jihad, (its Sunni counterpart, and sometime ally is Al Qaeda). This means that this war is another theater of the current world war raging between the USA, the vanguard of a political system and ideology called Western Democracy, and the forces of an opposing political ideology, that of Islamic Jihad. It is also the first war between Israel and Iran, in that for the first time the belligerent party that initiated war against Israel is an Iranian proxy, and did so at the specific behest of Iran, in order to assist the Iranian agenda of replacing its clandestine rogue nuclear program as the focus of international diplomacy. The outcome of this war will therefore determine what goes on far beyond our borders.

Since 1979, when the US, under the inept stewardship of President Carter allowed Khomeini to depose the Shah, momentum has been with the forces of Islamic Jihad. For over two decades things went their way. Islamic regimes took total control of Iran and Afghanistan, and achieved major penetrations into the power structures of other countries. In Pakistan, currently the world’s sole Moslem nuclear power, it succeeded in gaining control of the country’s main intelligence agency, the ISI, and some control over the country’s atomic agency. Islamic Jihad also had successes in Africa. Islamic regimes rule Sudan and what’s left of the failed country of Somalia, using these countries as bases to export terrorism, spread instability and ignite sedition in neighboring pro western countries such as Kenya and Uganda. The climax was 9/11, when Islamic Jihad succeeded in carrying out a major assault on the US, in which over three thousand Americans lost their lives.

Although the Sunni wing of Jihad has experienced setbacks, primarily the defeat of the Taliban regime, its forces are still coherent and powerful enough to remain a not insignificant presence in several Afghan and Pakistani provinces, drawing on tribal loyalties among the Pashto (Pushtun) tribes that inhabit the border provinces. Iran, the Shiite wing of Jihad, has, continued to have things go its way, both at home and abroad. Abroad it succeeded in thwarting American plans to build a democratic Iraq. Iran, which knows it would face utter defeat in a showdown with either Israel or the US, has, like any good godfather, succeeded in getting others to do its dirty work.

Its junior ally Syria has been given the task of aiding and abetting the insurgents in Iraq. Hezbullah Iran’s Lebanese proxy was armed and funded to the point where it was able to hijack Beirut’s foreign policy, turning that country Iran’s forward outpost against Israel. At the same time it succeeded, until very recently, in hoodwinking the world into benignly ignoring its rogue nuclear program. The trigger for ordering Hezbullah to create a crisis was to divert world attention from this issue, once it had become clear to the ayatollahs that they could no longer fool all the people all the time. At home the hard liners have gained total control of the state, having politically outmaneuvered the reformists, and brutally suppressing a popular uprising initiated by students and labor unions. This war could mark the turning point. Its proxy, Hezbullah is taking a shellacking, and unless the situation takes and unforeseen turn, will be effectively defanged within a few weeks.

This however, although a desirable outcome, would not constitute a strategic victory, unless it was accompanied by the total disarming of Hezbullah as mandated in UN resolution 1559. There is currently much talk of having an international force come in to assist the Lebanese military in carrying out this mission. However it is doubtful whether such a development would solve the Hezbullah problem. Given the nature of Lebanese politics, and ample past experience, it would not take too long before the Iranian-Syrian axis would be able to begin manipulating the fragile and fractured Lebanese political landscape, in which mothers, political principles and allies are sold as easily and quickly as vegetables in the souk, to begin rebuilding Hezbullah.

Israel and the US, the only two countries with both the acumen to comprehend the Islamist threat to humanity and the willpower to openly confront the Islamist axis, are actively fighting a war against it at the same time. So far however, these two allies have refrained from creating a coordinated and synchronized alliance. It’s time to change that. The first step is to recognize the current war for what it is, the latest theatre in an ongoing religious war between two inherently incompatible visions. On the one side, what can be best described as a Judeo-Christian alliance that promotes the core western values of democracy, freedom and individual rights. Lined up against it is an Islamist-fascist axis whose prime values are Jihad, dictatorial theocracy and the utter subservience of the individual to the state and its religion.

The next step is to coordinate tactics and strategy. The most logical move would be an Israel offensive against Syria, which has already created a casus belli by continuing to supply Iranian arms to Hezbullah while the war rages. Israel risks relatively little in such a move. Militarily Syria is no match for Israel. The IDF would probably have an easier time fighting a regular army with state of the art 1990s equipment, than an irregular guerrilla force like Hezbullah. All Syria could do is launch missiles at Tel Aviv. It is precisely against such long range missiles that the Patriot and Arrow systems are most effective. Under the kind of constant aerial offensive the IAF could carry out, Syria may be able to launch 100 missiles.

From previous experience, they will either be intercepted by the new ABM systems, or fall in open spaces. Bottom line, maybe 10-20 will hit something, if the Syrians get really lucky they may succeed in inflicting 100 casualties. Not pleasant, but considering the potential strategic gains, a far from excessive price. As soon as Israel started dealing with Syria, Damascus would run to Iran to come to its defense, as it committed to doing under the mutual defense pact the two countries have signed. Iran’s military capabilities are no match for Israel’s. Its air, ground and sea forces are all technologically inferior to Israel’s, and its access to Syria is blocked by the US forces in Iraq, which could eliminate the Iranian military, including the 175,000 Pasderan (Revolutionary Guards), the regime’s SS, loyal not to the country but solely to the Islamic regime.

Bottom line, all Iran could do is to launch missiles at Israel’s cities, and try and carry out terror attacks. If there is one thing history has shown, it is that such methods do not win wars. The ayatollahs of Teheran would then be between a rock and a hard place. If they choose to renege on their pledge to Syria, they risk losing their sole ally, and making a conspicuous show of weakness. Fascist regimes cannot easily afford to show that kind of weakness. If they choose to come to Syria’s aid by launching missiles at Israel, the US and Israel would have the justification they need to attack Iran, and destroy its military capabilities, economy and nuclear program until either the regime surrenders, or an angry populace fed up with the Islamo- fascist regime that has misruled the country for so long, oppressing and impoverishing the population, rises up in anger.

While Israel would undoubtedly suffer both civilian casualties and economic damage, these would not be that much more than what we are already experiencing. We have already irreversibly lost an entire tourist season. Any Iran and Syria missile offensives would be relatively short, as they are further from Israel, and therefore would have to be carried out by longer range missiles. These, by their very nature are much bigger and more complex weapons than Katyushas. They cannot be hidden underground, and require longer launch preparations, increasing their vulnerability to air operations. In addition it is precisely for such kinds of missiles that the Arrow system was developed. The end result would be moderate economic damage, and perhaps 100 civilian casualties. It may sound cold blooded, but we can afford such casualties, which would be less than what we sustained in any of our wars (for the record, in 1948 we lost 6,000, 1% of the entire population, and in 1967 and 1973 we lost respectively 1,000 and 3,000 casualties).

The gains, however, would be enormous. First and foremost, the elimination of the Iran nuclear threat, which is the most dangerous existential threat Israel has faced since 1948. It would mark the first major reverse suffered by the ayatollahs, changing the momentum and probably the course of history, which until now has been in their favor. With the specter of radical Islam gone, the Israel - Palestine conflict would reverse to its natural proportions, a territorial conflict between two nations, solvable, or at least manageable by the implementation of a “two states for the two nations” solution. At best it would be solved, at worst it would be the geo-political equivalent of a chronic disease, a nuisance, unpleasant, but something one can live with.

Link: http://www.israelnewsagency.com/wari...ria880801.html

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Even Turks see what is going on.

Israel lost in Lebanon Turkish Newspaper Stresses
Tuesday, August 01, 2006 - 08:55 PM ANKARA, (SANA) –

Turkish newspaper Hurriyet stressed on Tuesday that Israel is defeated in Lebanon on the tactic and strategic levels, saying the massacre that committed in Qana is the strongest evidence of that.

"Israel has lost from the tactical side on the ground because the military punishment that it started under the pretext of liberating its soldiers in Lebanon has failed on the ground and turned into a true disappointment." The paper added in an article.

Hurriyet pointed out that the military operations have entered the third week while Hizbullah is launching its missiles on the north of Israel passing through Haifa and beyond it, the matter that obligated the Israeli Soldiers to withdraw from Bint Jabeil due to the resistance they didn’t expect.

"By this development, the army's legend that it can't be defeated have dealt a strong blow despite the strong intelligence net and all analysts on which the General Staff established its military operations ." The Turkish paper added.

[dsarkasian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Sorry, but nothing about your post makes any sense whatsoever. All I see is every other post you jumping up and down about being half j-ewish. I am sure many Armenians are half this or that or one-fourth this or that, but you don't see them jumping up and down twenty times in one thread proclaiming that fact. I find this highly suspicious.

J-ews are masters of deceit and always need to be looked apon with suspicion. This is a historical fact.

[ARTAK]

Re: War in The Middle East

Nemesis

I like your avatar. The only things is the Armenian letters around it are unfortunately unreadable. What's written there?

[Nemesis]

Re: War in The Middle East

The "hiding among civilians" myth

Israel claims it's justified in bombing civilians because Hezbollah mingles with them. In fact, the militant group doesn't trust its civilians and stays as far away from them as possible.

By Mitch Prothero

Jul. 28, 2006 | The bombs came just as night fell, around 7 p.m. The locals knew that the 10-story apartment building had been the office, and possibly the residence, of Sheik Tawouk, the Hezbollah commander for the south, so they had moved their families out at the start of the war. The landlord had refused to rent to Hezbollah when they requested the top floors of the building. No matter, the locals said, the Hezb guys just moved in anyway in the name of the "resistance."

Everyone knew that the building would be hit eventually. Its location in downtown Tyre, which had yet to be hit by Israeli airstrikes, was not going to protect it forever. And "everyone" apparently included Sheik Tawouk, because he wasn't anywhere near it when it was finally hit.

Two guided bombs struck it in a huge flash bang of fire and concrete dust followed by the roar of 10 stories pancaking on top of each other, local residents said. Jihad Husseini, 46, runs the driving school a block away and was sitting in his office when the bombs struck. He said his life was saved because he had drawn the heavy cloth curtains shut on the windows facing the street, preventing him from being hit by a wave of shattered glass. But even so, a chunk of smoldering steel flew through the air, broke through the window and the curtain, and shot past his head and through the wall before coming to rest in his neighbor's home.

But Jihad still refuses to leave.

"Everything is broken, but I can make it better," he says, surrounded by his sons Raed, 20, and Mohammed, 12. "I will not leave. This place is not military, it is not Hezbollah; it was an empty apartment."

Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.

But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.

For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they'll get some fighters, too. The almost nightly airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut could be seen as making some sense, as the Israelis appear convinced there are command and control bunkers underneath the continually smoldering rubble. There were some civilian casualties the first few nights in places like Haret Hreik, but people quickly left the area to the Hezbollah fighters with their radios and motorbikes.

But other attacks seem gratuitous, fishing expeditions, or simply intended to punish anything and anyone even vaguely connected to Hezbollah. Lighthouses, grain elevators, milk factories, bridges in the north used by refugees, apartment buildings partially occupied by members of Hezbollah's political wing -- all have been reduced to rubble.

In the south, where Shiites dominate, just about everyone supports Hezbollah. Does mere support for Hezbollah, or even participation in Hezbollah activities, mean your house and family are fair game? Do you need to fire rockets from your front yard? Or is it enough to be a political activist?

The Israelis are consistent: They bomb everyone and everything remotely associated with Hezbollah, including noncombatants. In effect, that means punishing Lebanon. The nation is 40 percent Shiite, and of that 40 percent, tens of thousands are employed by Hezbollah's social services, political operations, schools, and other nonmilitary functions. The "terrorist" organization Hezbollah is Lebanon's second-biggest employer.

People throw the phrase "ghost town" around a lot, but Nabatiya, a bombed-out town about 15 miles from the Lebanon-Israel border, deserves it. One expects the spirits of the town's dead, or its refugees, to silently glide out onto its abandoned streets from the ruined buildings that make up much of the town.

Not all of the buildings show bomb damage, but those that don't have metal shutters blown out as if by a terrible wind. And there are no people at all, except for the occasional Hezbollah scout on a motorbike armed only with a two-way radio, keeping an eye on things as Israeli jets and unmanned drones circle overhead.

Overlooking the outskirts of this town, which has a peacetime population of 100,000 or so -- mostly Shiite supporters of Hezbollah and its more secular rival Amal -- is the Ragheh Hareb Hospital, a facility that makes quite clear what side the residents of Nabatiya are on in this conflict.

The hospital's carefully sculpted and trimmed front lawn contains the giant Red Crescent that denotes the Muslim version of the Red Cross. As we approach it, an Israeli missile streaks by, smashing into a school on the opposite hilltop. As we crouch and then run for the shelter of the hospital awning, that giant crescent reassures me until I look at the flagpole. The Lebanese flag and its cedar tree is there -- right next to the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It's safe to say that Ragheh Hareb Hospital has an association with Hezbollah. And the staff sports the trimmed beards and polite, if somewhat ominous, manner of the group. After young men demand press IDs and do some quick questioning, they allow us to enter.

Dr. Ahmed Tahir recognizes me from a funeral in the nearby village of Dweir. An Israeli bomb dropped on their house killed a Hezbollah cleric and 11 members of his immediate family, mostly children. People in Lebanon are calling it a war crime. Tahir looks exhausted, and our talk is even more tense than the last time.

"Maybe it would be best if the Israelis bombed your car on the road here," he said, with a sharp edge. "If you were killed, maybe the public outcry would be so bad in America that the xxxs would be forced to stop these attacks."

When I volunteered that the Bush administration cared little for journalists, let alone ones who reported from Hezbollah territory, he shrugged. "Maybe if it was an American bomb used by the Israelis that killed an American journalist, they would stop this horror," he said.

The handful of people in the town include some from Hezbollah's political wing, as well as volunteers keeping an eye on things while the residents are gone. Off to the side, as we watch the Israelis pummel ridgelines on the outskirts of town, one of the political operatives explains that the fighters never come near the town, reinforcing what other Hezbollah people have told me over the years.

Although Israel targets apartments and offices because they are considered "Hezbollah" installations, the group has a clear policy of keeping its fighters away from civilians as much as possible. This is not for humanitarian reasons -- they did, after all, take over an apartment building against the protests of the landlord, knowing full well it would be bombed -- but for military ones.

"You can be a member of Hezbollah your entire life and never see a military wing fighter with a weapon," a Lebanese military intelligence official, now retired, once told me. "They do not come out with their masks off and never operate around people if they can avoid it. They're completely afraid of collaborators. They know this is what breaks the Palestinians -- no discipline and too much showing off."

Perhaps once a year, Hezbollah will hold a military parade in the south, in which its weapons and fighters appear. Media access to these parades is tightly limited and controlled. Unlike the fighters in the half dozen other countries where I have covered insurgencies, Hezbollah fighters do not like to show off for the cameras. In Iraq, with some risk taking, you can meet with and even watch the resistance guys in action. (At least you could during my last time there.) In Afghanistan, you can lunch with Taliban fighters if you're willing to walk a day or so in the mountains. In Gaza and the West Bank, the Fatah or Hamas fighter is almost ubiquitous with his mask, gun and sloganeering to convince the Western journalist of the justice of his cause.

The Hezbollah guys, on the other hand, know that letting their fighters near outsiders of any kind -- journalists or Lebanese, even Hezbollah supporters -- is stupid. In three trips over the last week to the south, where I came near enough to the fighting to hear Israeli artillery, and not just airstrikes, I saw exactly no fighters. Guys with radios with the look of Hezbollah always found me. But no fighters on corners, no invitations to watch them shoot rockets at the Zionist enemy, nothing that can be used to track them.

Even before the war, on many of my trips to the south, the Lebanese army, or the ubiquitous guy on a motorbike with a radio, would halt my trip and send me over to Tyre to get permission from a Hezbollah official before I could proceed, usually with strict limits on where I could go.

Every other journalist I know who has covered Hezbollah has had the same experience. A fellow journalist, a Lebanese who has covered them for two decades, knows only one military guy who will admit it, and he never talks or grants interviews. All he will say is, "I'll be gone for a few months for training. I'll call when I'm back." Presumably his friends and neighbors may suspect something, but no one says anything.

Hezbollah's political members say they have little or no access to the workings of the fighters. This seems to be largely true: While they obviously hear and know more than the outside world, the firewall is strong.

Israel, however, has chosen to treat the political members of Hezbollah as if they were fighters. And by targeting the civilian wing of the group, which supplies much of the humanitarian aid and social protection for the poorest people in the south, they are targeting civilians.

Earlier in the week, I stood next to a giant crater that had smashed through the highway between Tyre and Sidon -- the only route of escape for most of the people in the far south. Overhead, Israeli fighters and drones circled above the city and its outlying areas and regular blasts of bombs and naval artillery could be heard.

The crater served as a nice place to check up on the refugees, who were forced by the crater to slow down long enough to be asked questions. They barely stopped, their faces wrenched in near panic. The main wave of refugees out of the south had come the previous two days, so these were the hard-luck cases, the people who had been really close to the fighting and who needed two days just to get to Tyre, or who had had to make the tough decision whether to flee or stay put, with neither choice looking good.

The roads in the south are full of the cars of people who chose wrong -- burned-out chassis, broken glass, some cars driven straight into posts or ditches. Other seem to have broken down or run out of gas on the long dirt detours around the blown-out highway and bridge network the Israeli air force had spent days methodically destroying even as it warned people to flee.

One man, slowing his car around the crater, almost screams, "There is nothing left. This country is not for us." His brief pause immediately draws horns and impatient yells from the people in the cars behind him. They pass the crater but within two minutes a large explosion behind us, north, in the direction of Sidon, rocks us.

As we drive south toward Tyre, we soon pass a new series of scars on the highway: shrapnel, hubcaps and broken glass. A car that had been maybe five minutes ahead of us was hit by an Israeli shell. Three of its passengers were wounded, and it was heading north to the Hammound hospital at Sidon. We turned around because of the attack and followed the car to Sidon. Those unhurt staked out the parking lot of the hospital, looking for the Western journalists they were convinced had called in the strike. Luckily my Iraqi fixer smelled trouble and we got out of there. Probably nothing would have happened -- mostly they were just freaked-out country people who didn't like the coincidence of an Israeli attack and a car full of journalists driving past.

So the analysts talking on cable news about Hezbollah "hiding within the civilian population" clearly have spent little time if any in the south Lebanon war zone and don't know what they're talking about. Hezbollah doesn't trust the civilian population and has worked very hard to evacuate as much of it as possible from the battlefield. And this is why they fight so well -- with no one to spy on them, they have lots of chances to take the Israel Defense Forces by surprise, as they have by continuing to fire rockets and punish every Israeli ground incursion.

And the civilians? They see themselves as targeted regardless of their affiliation. They are enraged at Israel and at the United States, the only two countries on earth not calling for an immediate cease-fire. Lebanese of all persuasions think the United States and Israel believe that Lebanese lives are cheaper than Israeli ones. And many are now saying that they want to fight.

-- By Mitch Prothero


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http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/f.../salon025.html

I am bumping this for the benefit of the poster that asked about this topic.

[Nemesis]

Re: War in The Middle East

nemisis, are you J-e-w-i-s-h? i didn't think so.

what if i said that all armenians are hateful of turks. what about newborn turks? what about turks adopted by an armenian family. get over this obsession with turk and focus on the politics if you want to be mad at someone. this is politics, not nationality. newborn turks know nothing about anything they aren't taught. 20 years ago, there were newborn turks. brainwashing could have stopped with their generation. that is the same with any of this. anywhere. we need to prevent future war right now. that could have been done generations ago if people would give up the vengence drive.

i get your point, al franken is left. however, he isn't the left that rush is right (or is that reich?)

al is funny. rush is both scary and dangerous.

Sorry, but nothing about your post makes any sense whatsoever. All I see is every other post you jumping up and down about being half j-ewish. I am sure many Armenians are half this or that or one-fourth this or that, but you don't see them jumping up and down twenty times in one thread proclaiming that fact. I find this highly suspicious.

[Nemesis]

Re: War in The Middle East

"hezbollah is stationing around civilians, SO THAT THE ISRAELIS WILL ATTACK THEM AND CAUSE CIVILIAN DEATH, it makes israel look bad and helps hezbollah's cause."

I can't find any info on this, but is this true?

NO, absolutely NOT true. israel swore up and down that they saw rockets being shot from Qanna but they are eating CROW now.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745185.html

As the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.