Israellycool

In the wake of yesterday’s Qana tragedy, Israel agreed to a suspension of air strikes in Lebanon beginning early today, allowing for an investigation into the bombing, and will also coordinate with the UN to allow a 24-hour window for residents of southern Lebanon to leave the area if they wish. However, Israel has reserved the right during the suspension to attack any terrorist who poses an immediate threat. No doubt, Hizbullah will try to take advantage of this situation, and my prediction is that we will see an unprecedented number of rockets landing in Israel today.

 
11:30PM: Ever noticed how the anti-Israel demonstrations contain scenes of hatred and violence, such as flag burning, show of weapons, nazi comparisons, and general nastiness, while the pro-Israel demonstrations don’t?

I’m thinking that perhaps that tells you something about the different agendas.

10:43PM: Unless I am mistaken, Hizbullah have fired 2 Katushas into Israel today. And if I am mistaken, it is not a lot more than that.

9:58PM: Introducing our latest weapon: Zionist Death Llamas.^TM

It may have one of the world’s mightiest militaries, but Israel has turned to imported beasts of burden to help troops wage a 20-day-old offensive against Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Israeli newspapers carried pictures of South American llamas accompanying commandos out of southern Lebanon, their saddlebags full of fighting gear.

Yedioth Ahronoth daily quoted a senior Israeli military commander as saying the white-furred pack animals could carry up to 27 kg each over rough terrain, were quiet and required feeding only once every two days.

I have managed to track down this picture of IDF soldiers with some Llama-ish creatures, which I found on Dan’s site. Dan seems to think they are Alpacas, and I’ll be darned if I can tell the difference.

9:52PM: Some palestinians, obviously feeling a bit left out of Hizbullah’s game of Kill-a-Jew, have opened fire on an Israeli vehicle north of Ramallah.

9:42PM: Syrian Dorktator Bashar Assad:

“The aggression, killing and destruction committed by the Israelis in Lebanon are part of an operation that was planned and organized by the large forces dominating the international community.”

Hmmm…I wonder who those “large forces dominating the international community” are. I am guessing they are, to quote our friend Mel Gibson, the “F****** Jews.”

9:35PM: A sane voice from Europe: Charles Moore in the Telegraph:

Sir Peter Tapsell is, if the phrase is not a contradiction in terms nowadays, a distinguished backbencher. He first entered the House of Commons in 1959. Noted for his grand manner, he is the longest-serving Tory MP.

At foreign affairs questions in Parliament on Tuesday, Sir Peter rose. He wanted Margaret Beckett to tell him whether the Prime Minister had colluded with President Bush in allowing Israel to “wage unlimited war” in Lebanon, including attacks on civilian residential areas of Beirut. These attacks, he added, were “a war crime grimly reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter in Warsaw”.

Mrs Beckett firmly rejected the premise of the question - that Mr Bush had permitted “unlimited war” - and moved on, but I found myself winded by Sir Peter’s choice of words.

What is happening in Lebanon? After the kidnapping of two of its soldiers and the firing of hundreds of rockets against its people from across the Lebanese border, Israel is trying to crush the Hizbollah fighters who have perpetrated these acts. In doing so, it has also killed civilians. Some 500 people have died in Lebanon as a result.

What was the “Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter in Warsaw”? There were many, of course. But Sir Peter was probably referring to the events of April-May 1943. The Nazis had earlier deported 300,000 Polish Jews to Treblinka. As news of their fate reached Jews in Warsaw, they decided to revolt against further round-ups. For about a month, they resisted. They were subdued: 7,000 of them were killed and 56,000 were sent to the camps.

Sir Peter surely knew this, yet he chose to speak as he did. Here is a man who has been in public life for more than 50 years (he was an assistant to Anthony Eden in the general election of 1955), and yet he compared Israel’s attack to the most famous genocide of the 20th century. What possessed him?

I ask the question, not because I am interested in Sir Peter - he is not an important figure in the current debate, though he may differ on this point. I ask, rather, because his remark seems to me a symptom of a wider unreality about the Middle East, one that now dominates. It tinged the recent Commons speech by William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary. It permeates every report by the BBC.

You could criticise Israel’s recent attack for many things. Some argue that it is disproportionate, or too indiscriminate. Others think that it is ill-planned militarily. Others hold that it will give more power to extremists in the Arab world, and will hamper a wider peace settlement. These are all reasonable, though not necessarily correct positions to hold. But European discourse on the subject seems to have been overwhelmed by something else - a narrative, told most powerfully by the way television pictures are selected, that makes Israel out as a senseless, imperialist, mass-murdering, racist bully.

Not only is this analysis wrong - if the Israelis are such imperialists, why did they withdraw from Lebanon for six years, only returning when threatened once again? How many genocidal regimes do you know that have a free press and free elections? - it is also morally imbecilic. It makes no distinction between the tough, sometimes nasty things all countries do when hard-pressed and the profoundly evil intent of some ideologies and regimes. It says nothing about the fanaticism and the immediacy of the threat to Israel. Sir Peter has somehow managed to live on this planet for 75 years without spotting the difference between what Israel is doing in Lebanon and “unlimited war”.

As well as being morally imbecilic, this narrative is the enemy of all efforts to understand what is actually going on in the Middle East. It is so lazy.

Thus, for example, you would hardly know from watching the television that most Arab nations in the region, with the notable exception of Syria, detest the power of Hizbollah. You would barely have noticed that Hizbollah is a Shia faction, actively supported by Iran, and therefore feared by most Sunnis and by all who resist Iranian hegemony.

Nor would you have seen investigations of how Hizbollah places its missile sites in civilian areas, or coverage of the report in a Kuwaiti newspaper that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, was expected in Damascus on Thursday for a meeting with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. You would also not have gathered that the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, which the television so recently invited you to admire, cannot possibly be carried through if Syria and Iran and Hizbollah are able to operate in that country.

Behind the dominant narrative of Israeli oppression is a patronising, almost racist assumption about the Arabs, and about Muslims, which is, essentially, that “they’re all the same”. Public discussion therefore does not stop to consider whether the immediate ceasefire called for by most European countries might hand a victory to Hizbollah, which, in turn, would ultimately lead to a much greater loss of life. It just postures.

Part of the same attitude-striking is the attack on Tony Blair for being the “poodle” of America, instead of pursuing an independent foreign policy.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the last Middle East crisis in which Britain acted without concerting with America. On July 26, 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt, nationalised the Suez Canal. Britain accounted for a third of the ships passing through the canal at that time, and we feared that Nasser had put his foot on our windpipe. Eden, perhaps reeling from his good fortune in having employed the young P. Tapsell, concocted a secret plot with France and Israel to regain control of the canal by violence and bring about the fall of Nasser.

Ignoring the delicacies of a presidential election in America and a president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had publicly made it clear that his country opposed force, we went ahead and invaded Egypt on November 5. Furious at having been deceived, America immediately refused to support the pound in the markets, and we crumpled almost overnight.

The then chancellor, Harold Macmillan, who supported the attack from the first but ratted on it in November, wrote in his diary on August 18: “‚Ķif Nasser ‘gets away with it’, we are done for‚Ķ It may well be the end of British influence and strength for ever.” Well, Nasser did get away with it, and British power in the Middle East did collapse.

We have now passed half a century in which the ultimate responsibility for these decisions has passed from us (and from France) to America. Unless we seriously propose to try to regain that responsibility, either alone or in concert, we do well to try to work closely with America rather than acting like a querulous octogenarian. Mr Blair’s efforts in Washington yesterday to search for a ceasefire that prefers durability over immediacy are perfectly sensible.

Yet Mr Blair is bayed at by all parties and most of the media. It is as if, having relinquished power, we Europeans now wish our own powerlessness upon the rest of the world. We make vaporous and offensive Nazi comparisons. We preach that unilateral action is always wrong. That position can be maintained only by people who do not have to make life-and-death decisions. It is cheap and immoral.

The ensuing comments below this piece are also overwhelmingly supportive of Israel.

9:22PM: Israeli-Australian soldier Assaf Namer was buried today with full military honors. 

This article pretends that the reason for Assaf joining the Israeli army is

some secret he will take with him to his grave. However, the article itself answers the question Why did he do it when it quotes a friend of Assaf, who is also an Australian in the IDF.

Another former Bondi resident, Jarryd Rubinstein, who remembered Namer from school, is also serving in the Israeli military.

“I knew where he was coming from when he joined the Israeli army; it was the same reason I joined,” Private Rubinstein said.

“I’m a Zionist, (a) patriot and I want to give back something to this country. I want to fight terrorism until it doesn’t exist anymore. I believe if we don’t stop them here and now we will all suffer the consequences for a long, long time.”

Private Rubinstein, 23, is part of the same battalion, although not the same infantry unit, to which Namer belonged.

He added: “His death has not frightened me, it has inspired me. I don’t worry about dying as he died; I am proud to be fighting for Israel and for freedom.”

Young heroes on the front lines, fighting on behalf of the western world.

This theme is dealt with in this great editorial by Piers Akerman of the Daily Telegraph:

Namer was fighting to keep world safe

Another young Australian has been killed fighting in the global war against Islamist terrorists but he will certainly not be the last.

Assaf Namer, 27, wasn’t killed in Afghanistan or Iraq, he wasn’t a passive victim of the Bali bombings or 9/11.

He was killed as he fought with the Israeli army during a fierce battle against the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Born in Israel, he moved to Australia when he was 12 but returned to fight for the nation of his birth. He was a dual citizen.

No doubt there will be some who claim he must have had divided loyalties. Others might try to claim there is some moral equivalence between Namer and self-confessed terrorist recruit David Hicks.

However there is no basis for this absurd claim.

Australians are fighting jihadists like Hicks in Afghanistan and Iraq, Namer was fighting them in southern Lebanon.

Bint Jbeil, where he was killed was a terrorist stronghold.

It may have been the command post for the Hezbollah raid into Israel which Iran and Syria used to trigger the current conflict with the abduction of two Israeli soldiers just over a fortnight ago.

It doesn’t matter.

Hezbollah effectively controls Lebanon and Tehran and Damascus have decided to use the struggling nation as the staging ground for their proxy war against Israel and the civilised West, and the Israelis were entirely within in their rights to pursue the criminals who kidnapped their citizens.

Namer was engaged in the battle the jihadists vow to prosecute until the whole world is converted to its violent Islamist doctrine.

And as long as the jihadists continue to claim “We love death, you love life”, offering no future for their orphaned children but a world filled with hate, others who believe in an alternate world, a world of peace and harmony between people of all races and religions like Namer, like our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, will enlist to fight to keep the world safe from their evil.

They can promise no prospect of peace, no one can, but they do offer to stand between civilians and those who would kill them for refusing to accept their hateful ideology.

The Qana tragedy  

 

On Sunday, the Israeli Air Force launched missiles at the Lebanese town of Qana, killing at least 54 civilians, most of them children. It was a horrible tragedy, one that unleashed understandable fury among the people of Lebanon, and sincere expressions of regret among Israeli political and military officials.

 

Some are calling this a war crime, and they’re right. But the culpable party is Hezbollah, not Israel.

 

While it was Israeli planes that launched the missiles, these attacks did not materialize out of thin air. Since this conflict began on July 12, about 150 rockets have been fired from the vicinity of Qana, with the launchers hidden among civilian targets in the town itself. Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening, Israeli Air Force Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Amir Eshel produced video footage showing the launchers being driven into Qana following fusillades.

 

For Hezbollah, this is a clever tactic. If Israel doesn’t attack Hezbollah’s human shields, the group keeps its weapons. If Israel does attack, Hezbollah scores a propaganda victory. From a terrorist’s point of view, it’s win-win: Hezbollah’s leaders don’t care about the lives of innocent Lebanese civilians any more than they care about the lives of Jews.

 

The global community shouldn’t let Hezbollah get away with this cynical, deadly game. In its primer on the current conflict, Human Rights Watch (hardly a pro-Israeli outfit) makes it clear which side is guilty of war crimes in Qana: “Hezbollah must take all necessary precautions to protect civilians against the dangers resulting from armed hostilities, and must never use the presence of civilians to shield themselves from attack. That requires positioning its military assets, troops and commanders as much as possible outside of populated areas. The use of human shields is a war crime.”

 

It also bears mention that Israel has done its best to separate Hezbollah from those human shields. On Thursday, three days before the deadly Qana attack, Israeli military radio broadcast repeated warnings into southern Lebanon telling residents their villages would be “totally destroyed” if missiles were fired from them. On Saturday, a day before the attack, Israeli planes dropped leaflets containing the same message.

 

In many cases, civilians had difficulty acting on these warnings, because Israeli air-strikes on roads made the journey north too difficult and risky. But most people have gotten out. And no reasonable observer can accuse the Israelis of deliberately targeting civilians (as Hezbollah has been doing for three weeks now). If Israel really were seeking to exterminate Lebanese civilians, the body count would be well into five figures.

 

Nothing that we or anyone else write will ease the agony wrought in Qana and the many other places — on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border — where innocents have perished. But mercifully, we in Canada are not in that situation. Our removal from the conflict gives us the ability to look beyond the immediate carnage, and examine the deeper intentions of the parties to this war. And according to both civilized morality and international law, it is not Israel that has the blood of innocents on its hands, but Hezbollah.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy held a press conference in Beirut, in which he said that Iran was “a stabilizing element in the Middle East.”

 

According to the French minister, “Iran is an outstanding country with great people and a honorable civilization. It has a crucial role in the region.”

The IAF struck 130 targets overnight, including 57 building used by Hizbullah, 6 rocket launchers, a Hizbullah base in the Lebanon valley, and homes of terrorists (after warning residents to leave their homes in order to escape injury).

Earlier, the IAF took out Hizbullah’s missile command center deployed in Tyre - located on the 12th floor of a building - which had been primarily responsible for targeting Haifa and surrounding areas. The command center (one of many) controlled a large number of Syrian-manufactured rockets, which had caused most of the Israeli civilian fatalities. The full impact of this important strike on Hizbullah’s capabilities is still unknown, although it has not affected Hizbullah’s ability to launch short-range rockets against northern Israel, which they have continued to do this morning.

Meanwhile, the wife of a Canadian peacekeeper killed

when the IAF hit the UNIFIL post, has demanded answers, and invoked her

inner Kofi Annan by stating she thought the attack was deliberate. I

guess she never read her husband’s emails.

On the southern front, the IDF troops and tanks reportedly pulled out of northern Gaza, after a two-day sweep in which a dozen terrorists and several weapons depots were hit., and the IAF hit a weapons storehouse and a rocket manufacturing shop. For their part, the terrorists fired more Kassams at Sderot. And in the West Bank, palestinian sources in Ramallah reported that a large IDF force, apparently searching for a wanted person, was surrounding a number of buildings.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

Saturday updates here.

5:15PM: That does it from me today. The Sabbath is approaching, and I need to start getting prepared.

Here’s to a peaceful Sabbath.

4:50PM: The Jerusalem Post reports that 5 missiles of a new and as yet unidentified type landed in and around Afula.

4:40PM: Here is a really amusing parody of Israel’s Channel 2. Warning: Only people familiar with Channel 2, and able to understand Hebrew, will find it amusing.

4:32PM: It has been remiss of me to have not posted this already: part of a transcript from CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees. But many other bloggers already have. In case you have’t seen it yet, here is an account that suggests that Hizbullah are very much controlling the images coming out of Lebanon, and are exaggerating the extent of damage there.

(On camera): We’re not allowed to enter Hezbollah territory really without their permission. They control this whole area, even after the sustained Israeli bombing campaign. We’ve arranged with a Hezbollah representative to get permission to come here. We’ve been told to pull over to the side of the road and just wait.

(Voice-over): We’d come to get a look at the damage and had hoped to talk with a Hezbollah representative. Instead, we found ourselves with other foreign reporters taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah.

Young men on motor scooters followed our every movement. They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings. Once, when they thought we’d videotaped them, they asked us to erase the tape.

These men are called al-Shabab, Hezbollah volunteers who are the organization’s eyes and ears.

(On camera): You still see their CD’s on the wall still.

Hezbollah representatives are with us now, but don’t want to be photographed. We’ll say — we’ll point to something like that and they’ll say, well, look, this is a store. The civilians lived in this building. This is a residential complex. And while that may be true, what the Israelis will say is that Hezbollah has their offices, their leadership has offices and bunkers even in residential neighborhoods. And if you’re trying to knock out the Hezbollah leadership with air strikes, it’s very difficult to do that without killing civilians.

As bad as this damage is, it certainly could have been much worse in terms of civilian casualties. Before they started heavily bombing this area, Israeli warplanes did drop leaflets in this area, telling people to get out.

The civilian death toll, though, has angered many Lebanese. Even those who do not support Hezbollah are outraged by the pictures they’ve seen on television of civilian casualties. (Voice-over): Civilian casualties are clearly what Hezbollah wants foreign reporters to focus on. It keeps the attention off them. And questions about why Hezbollah should still be allowed to have weapons when all the other militias in Lebanon have already disarmed.

After letting us take pictures of a few damaged buildings, they take us to another location, where there are ambulances waiting.

(On camera): This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they’ve been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians. That’s the story — that’s the story that Hezbollah wants people to know about.

(Voice-over): These ambulances aren’t responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.

When a man in a nearby building is prompted to play Hezbollah resistance songs on his stereo, we decide it’s time to go.

Hezbollah may not be terribly subtle about spinning a story, but it is telling perhaps that they try. Even after all this bombing, Hezbollah is still organized enough to have a public relations strategy, still in control enough to try and get its message out.

4:20PM: The Katusha tally for today so far: Over 60 rockets.

4:12PM: Hizbullah have fired rockets at our northern communities, including Kiryat Shmona, Safed, Tiberias, Afula, and Nazareth. So far, 2 people have been wounded.

4:02PM: Ha’aretz has now changed the headline:

3:52PM: Ha’aretz shows that when it comes to moral obfuscation, they can match it with many of the international mainstream media.

3:00PM: Another must-read piece, this time from Charles Krauthammer.

Life in an Orwellian universe

What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?

What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities ‚Äî every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians ‚Äî and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?

Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world — governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats — has completely lost its moral bearings.

The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is “disproportionate,” as in the universally decried “disproportionate Israeli response.”

When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel “proportionate” attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a cinder, and turned the Japanese home islands to rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right ‚Äî legal and moral ‚Äî to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one’s security again. That’s what it took with Japan.

Britain was never invaded by Germany in World War II. Did it respond to the blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with “proportionate” aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest land invasion in history that flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process.

The perversity of today’s international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides.

In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do.

But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty.

On Wednesday, CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas?

Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead, it attacked dual-use infrastructure ‚Äî bridges, roads, airport runways ‚Äî and blockaded Lebanon’s ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. Ten-thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more.

Israel’s response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in south Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed.

Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?

(hat tip: Dave).

1:02PM: The IAF has fired 30 missiles at suspected Hizbullah hideouts in southeast Lebanon.

12:57PM: Dan Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, has ruled out UN involvement in any potential international force in Lebanon, as well as in any investigation of the IAF strike that killed some UN observers.

And if you are wondering why I think he is probably Israel’s best spokesperson at the moment (it’s a close call between him and Bibi Netanyahu), read the following:

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations ruled out Thursday major UN involvement in any potential international force in Lebanon, saying more professional and better-trained troops were needed for such a volatile situation.

Dan Gillerman also said Israel would not allow the United Nations to join in an investigation of an Israeli air strike that demolished a post belonging to the current UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. Four UN observers were killed in the Tuesday strike.

“Israel has never agreed to a joint investigation, and I don’t think that if anything happened in this country, or in Britain or in Italy or in France, the government of that country would agree to a joint investigation,” Gillerman said.

He apologized for the strike that killed the four UN observers, but said the conflict was a war and that accidents happen.

“This is a war which is going on,” he told reporters. “War is an ugly thing and during war, mistakes and tragedies do happen.”

—-

Gillerman was highly critical of the current UN peacekeeping force, deployed in a buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon since 1978, saying its facilities had sometimes been used for cover by Hezbollah militants and that it had not done its job.

“It has never been able to prevent any shelling of Israel, any terrorist attack, any kidnappings,” he said. “They either didn’t see or didn’t know or didn’t want to see, but they have been hopeless.”

Gillerman even mocked the name of the force - the UN Interim Force in Lebanon.

“Interim in UN jargon is 28 years,” he said.

The flaws with the UN force make it imperative that any UN force come from somewhere else, though it could have a mandate from the United Nations, he said.

“So obviously it cannot be a United Nations force,” Gillerman said. “It will have to be an international force, a professional one, with soldiers from countries who have the training and capabilities to be effective.”

That’s what I’m talking about.

12:40PM: An IDF official has stated that at least 200 Hizbullah terrorists have been killed so far.

12:30PM: Lebanon’s Druze leader Walid Jumblatt believes that Iran is using Hizbullah’s confrontation with Israel to test the abilities of Iranian weapons and to observe Israeli military capabilities, and fears Syria will take advantage of the situation to reassert its influence in Lebanon and convince the international community that Syrian domination of Lebanon is crucial to the stability of the Middle East.

I think he makes some valid points.

12:23PM: Palestinians have attacked an Israeli truck driver who entered their village. he managed to escape, but they stole his truck.

I think my fellow Israelis who think it is a good idea to enter palestinian-controlled areas should think again.

12:20PM: Terrorists have fired a Kassam rocket next to a kindergarten in a community south of Ashkelon. 2 children have been lightly wounded, and 8 more people have suffered shock. The kindergarten building was also damaged.

11:28AM: Dr. Danny Yaakovi, a 59-year-old father of 4 children and grandfather of 12, was murdered last night, apparently due to nationalistic motives (i.e. terrorism). His burned body was found in the trunk of his car, near the West Bank village of Abos, between the cities of Qalqilya and Nablus.

It seems as though Danny went to the palestinian village of Funduk yesterday afternoon to have his car fixed. It is suspected that he was then attacked and murdered, and his body was burned very shortly thereafter.

So far, no palestinian terrorist organization has taken responsibility.

11:13AM: From the Two Jews/Three Opinions Department: Mossad and IDF disagree over damage to Hezbollah

The Mossad intelligence agency says Hezbollah will be able to continue fighting at the current level for a long time to come, Mossad head Meir Dagan said.

However, Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin disagrees, seeing Hezbollah as having been severely damaged.

Both intelligence chiefs agree that Hezbollah remains capable of command and control and still holds long-range missiles in its arsenal, they said at a security cabinet meeting Thursday.

11:05AM: A bit of humor to brighten things up: Hizbullah Video Dating Service.

10:58AM: The Australian has a couple of great editorials today.

First up is this editorial from Frank Devine:

Israel, that oasis of modernism in a region often driven by remnant medievalism, has been a nation for 58 years. When it is in danger from its enemies, this relatively brief span tempts the weak-willed to think of Israel as only a blip on history’s screen.

Thus the tears (conclusively DNA-tested as crocodile) shed by a commentator here in Australia for the great cities of Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, at the civilised centre of the world 3000 years ago and now under threat from Israeli bombers.

In the first place, the civilised centre of the world was, by modern standards, pretty uncivilised 3000 years ago. It was economically dependent on slavery, for instance. A lot of change occurs over 30 centuries, including the relocation of civilisation’s centre.

Byblos, Sidon and Tyre (and much else of ancient civilisation) were wrapped up by the Byzantine empire as the province of Syria, which French and English mapping pens disassembled and remade into Lebanon, the present Syria, Jordan and Palestine in the 1920s: League of Nations-mandated territories rather than independent states. At 58, Israel is older than or roughly contemporaneous with more than 40 per cent of the world’s 190 nations, many of them the outcome of the withdrawal of European colonialism from the Third World, the collapse of the Soviet Union and partition following civil war.

Since 1990, 27 new nations have arrived. This year Montenegro supplanted East Timor as the newest.

Israel is a thoroughly modern state in every sense. Votes by the almost brand-new UN, partitioning Palestine and ending British occupation, brought it into being. Western guilt over the Holocaust helped enable Israel’s creation.

Such guilt is difficult to avoid. When I learned of the Holocaust at the age of 13 or 14, before rational self-interest got a grip, I worried that it might not have been so bad if I’d been the prayerful boy Sister Aidan tried to turn me into. Guilt and the desire to make reparation mark a civilised condition more advanced than Tyre’s and Sidon’s.

Four times Israel has established its borders with counter-offensives against attacks by Arab alliances attempting to destroy it. It has been as resolute as Spain, Ireland and Sri Lanka (not to mention Russia and the US) in maintaining its national integrity against terrorist attacks within these borders.

Israel is an accommodating and credentialled member of modern global society, as demonstrated by the repeated (and invariably betrayed) withdrawals it has made from buffer territories, prompted by the desire to live in peace with its neighbours.

The acceptance it has won internationally is reflected by the now suddenly notorious UN Security Council Resolution 1559, passed by a 9-0 vote in 2004 and calling, in the third of its seven clauses, for “the disbanding and disarmament of all” militia on Lebanese territory, which includes Hezbollah, Israel’s declared enemy and present attacker.

The resolution contains the oddly phrased but forceful undertaking by the UN to “remain actively seized of this matter”.

When non-disbanded, non-disarmed Hezbollah started its present assault, you would have expected at least the nine nations who voted in favour of 1559 - Angola, Benin, Chile, France, Germany, Romania, Spain, Britain and the US - to declare immediate and unanimous support for Israel, and the six who abstained - Algeria, Brazil, China, Pakistan, The Philippines and Russia - now to back the majority decision.

The last thing you’d have expected is for the UN Secretary-General to accuse Israel of using “disproportionate” force against Hezbollah, the Muslim equivalent of Sinn Fein, the Irish political party dominated by its gangster/terrorist wing, the IRA.

What is the right proportion of force to use against an antagonist who crosses your border to seize hostages, indiscriminately bombards you with explosive rockets from an arsenal of 13,000 or so and maintains an underground network of bunkers and arms depots whose existence reveals years of planning your destruction?

In step with the Secretary-General’s ingenuous (or contemptibly disingenuous) words, there’s been a reappearance of that meaningless cliche “mounting international pressure”, often a euphemism for anti-Israel propaganda. This “international pressure”, actually coterie urging, always mounts, never subsides, but only the appeasement-inclined feel pressed.

William Kristol, in Washington’s The Weekly Standard, characterises present hostilities as “Islamists versus Israel” rather than the “Arabs versus Israel” conflicts of the past: a plausible diagnosis, given Iran’s creation of Hezbollah in 1982 and support of it ever since.

If it is the case, Iran and Islamists take a risk by bringing war so openly to the gates of Jerusalem, rather than relying on their usual lies, vague bloodthirsty threats and furtive surrogacy.

Sunni Arabs, alarmed by Iran’s reckless ambition, have withheld denunciation of Israel, vituperatively expressed in previous crises. Modern civilised values make intervention by the West acceptable only if it includes keeping Hezbollah at bay and neutralising it militarily.

Next up is this editorial:

At first glance, no one seems to be distinguishing themselves much

in the present conflict in the Middle East. Not the UN, who in

deploying a largely useless peacekeeping mission alongside Hezbollah

installations in southern Lebanon made their own soldiers the

accidental targets of an Israeli missile and created the strong

impression that the international body has taken sides. Not Hezbollah

or its backers in Tehran and Damascus, who, in touching off the present

conflict and deliberately stationing military assets in civilian areas,

reveal the true value they place on the lives of those they aspire to

lead. Even Israel, with its historic restraint and willingness to make

peace in the face of several hundred million Arabs and Iranians who

would happily push the Jewish state into the sea tomorrow, is now seen

by many as the bad guy. But the outrage over Israel’s recent conduct in

Lebanon ignores the twin messages Jerusalem is sending, first to

Lebanon and second to Iran and its progressive cheer squad in the West.

While Israel’s attacks on Lebanon have sparked the usual outcry from

those who are appalled whenever the Jewish state has the gall to fight

back, from the perspective of Jerusalem they make perfect strategic

sense. Since withdrawing from southern Lebanon in 2000, Israel has been

at the receiving end of countless attacks from Hezbollah. In quitting

Lebanese territory, Israel unwittingly delivered a propaganda coup to

Hezbollah’s Iranian backers, who trumpeted their “first victory of

Islam over the Zionist crusader camp”. And there is no mistake to be

made about Iran’s role in Hezbollah or its strategy of using the Shia

militia to pursue its aims around the Middle East. Former Iranian

intelligence minister Ali Yunesi put it best when he said: “Iran is

Hezbollah and Hezbollah is Iran.” Although last year’s Cedar Revolution

in Lebanon was a great precedent for the non-Israeli Middle East,

ultimately Lebanon will not be a viable country if it cannot meet the

definition of a nation-state that is controlling the territory within

its borders. It only makes sense for Israel to pressure the Government

in Beirut to do what it should have been doing all along – kick

Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian masters out of the country – if

you accept the legitimacy of that Government.

If the first part of the message is a blunt one delivered at the

pointy end of Israeli artillery, the second part is more subtle and has

at its roots competing visions for the Middle East. In the militia’s

kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers a fortnight ago, Iran used Hezbollah

to leverage what it perceived as Western weakness stemming from the

Bush administration’s concessions over Tehran’s nuclear program. Iran

is actively trying to promote a radical Shia takeover of the Middle

East and sees fighting Israel as the way to attract support among Sunni

Arabs who are also being courted by an American program of

democratisation and liberalisation. Thus Israel’s response is as much

directed at Iran as it is to Lebanon and its resident Hezbollah

supporters, including 8000 active and 30,000 reservist militants. This

is not 1967, and Israel’s real enemy is not massed across the border

but, rather, 1500km away in Tehran. There, President Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad regularly declares his desire to destroy Israel while

pursuing a nuclear weapons program that many Western leftists –

especially in Europe – see as a useful moral and military

counterbalance to the Jewish state. This is the second part of Israel’s

message: Iran’s twin ambitions of obtaining nuclear weapons and

dominating the region will not be allowed to proceed. Morally, there is

no doubt that Israel had a right to respond to what was the latest in a

long string of provocations by Hezbollah since Israel pulled out of

southern Lebanon. Strategically, a heavy response was warranted to

re-establish Israel’s deterrent credibility. And it is natural that

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would want to signal his willingness to use

force despite his lack of military experience.

In responding to Hezbollah, Israel is doing something constructive

to solve a problem the rest of the world has indicated it cannot or

will not. UN Security Council Resolution 1559 calls for Hezbollah’s

eviction from southern Lebanon. The biggest danger for Israel is that

it could go too far and further alienate an otherwise sympathetic and

anti-Hezbollah Lebanese population through its actions. In relying so

heavily on missiles and air power, Israel weakens its case. If Israel

felt truly in danger, its citizen-soldiers would be quickly sent into

the maw; so far Mr Olmert’s strategy appears focused on minimising

Israeli Defence Force casualties, even as nine Israeli soldiers –

including one raised in Australia – were killed in a Hezbollah ambush

on Wednesday. In the meantime, an international force to keep the peace

seems unlikely. Yesterday, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer

characterised any UN mission without an existing and lasting ceasefire

as a “suicide mission”. And were one called immediately, a ceasefire

would leave behind an even worse mess than existed before. Even if a

negotiated ceasefire included a disarming of Hezbollah, it would be

very difficult to prevent Iran from waiting for world attention to

focus itself elsewhere before sending another few boatloads of weapons

and missiles to its clients in southern Lebanon. In the meantime,

Israel must make sure that even as it attacks Hezbollah it does not

alienate other foes of the organisation. It would be a terrible thing

if Israel’s security and the containment of Tehran were compromised by

a misinformed military strategy.

But it’s not all good from The Australian today. Greg Sheridan just doesn’t “get it,” and cartoonist Bill Leak is exploiting the infamous photo of the Israeli girls writing messages on artillery shells to make a dubious point.

10:30AM: Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald has a report on Australians in the IDF.

Up to 100 Australians could be in active service with the Israeli army but that number could grow as Israel steps up its offensive against Hizbollah guerrillas.

—-

Guy Spigelman, who left Australia 12 years ago to serve in the Israeli army for which he is now a spokesman, told Southern Cross Broadcasting the number of Australians in active service could grow after Israel decided to boost its attack.

“There’d be several dozen, if not 100 (Australians) in active service and probably several hundred, 200, 300, in reserve duty,” said Captain Spigelman, son of the Chief Justice of the NSW Supreme Court, Jim Spigelman.

10:25AM: The Age has more on fallen IDF soldier Assaf Namer, who held dual Israeli-Australian citizenship. As does The Australian, who interviewed his mother.

10:10AM: Yesterday, I posted (9:50AM update) about MrModchips, a company that voided an Israeli customer’s order and wrote a very nasty justification for their actions. A reader of Brian’s blog wrote to them, and received this even nastier reply:

“From: MrModchips To: Scott Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 9:58 AM Subject: Re: Transaction VOID - What’s your problem?

This is an automated reply
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MrModchips”

Their email is sales@mrmodchips.co.uk.

10:04AM: Ynetnews reports that the IDF is setting up a special security area in the northern Gaza Strip, aimed at curbing attempts by terror groups to dig tunnels into Israel.

10:02AM: The IAF has struck approximately 10 Hizbullah targets in southern Lebanon.

As Israel mourns the 9 soldiers killed yesterday - 8 in Bint Jbail, and 1 in Maroun Ras - it has been revealed that the troops had been ambushed by Hizbullah terrorists, as they approached several homes on the outskirts of Bint Jbail. Many of the casualties occurred during this initial encounter at close range. It is believed that anywhere from 15-50 terrorists were killed in the fighting.

“Just because no exact time frame was set for stopping the violence does not mean the summit failed. We discussed the important preconditions needed to reach a cease fire and there was an agreement on the necessity to deploy a mass international force in Lebanon, the details of which will be discussed next week,” Rice told reporters on the plane on her way to a meeting with South East Asian leaders in Malaysia.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Israel’s deadly attack on a UN observation post in Lebanon, which claimed the life of a Canadian soldier, was a “terrible tragedy” and he doubts whether the bombing was deliberate.

—-

The prime minister also said he wants to know why the post was still manned even though it was in the middle of an obvious war zone.

—-

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has suggested Israel deliberately targeted the UN outpost despite repeated calls to stop the shelling.

 

But Harper said the facts suggest otherwise.

 

“I certainly doubt that to be the case, given that the government of Israel has been co-operating with us in our evacuation efforts, in our efforts to move Canadian citizens out of Lebanon and also trying to keep our own troops that are on the ground, involved in the evacuation, out of harm’s way,” he said.

 

“We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war during obvious danger to these individuals.”

We received emails from him a few days ago, and he was describing the fact that he was taking fire within, in one case, three meters of his position for tactical necessity, not being targeted. Now that’s veiled speech in the military. What he was telling us was Hezbollah soldiers were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them. And that’s a favorite trick by people who don’t have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields knowing that they can’t be punished for it.

What makes Annan’s allegation so unforgiveable is that his UN Interim Force in Lebanon has been warning for days about what almost certainly caused this tragedy. Hezbollah fighters, who have already been firing behind screens of women and children, have also been shooting from behind and next to the UN positions, presumably hoping Israel will not dare shoot back and risk exactly this kind of propaganda disaster.

—-

UPDATE 3: Hezbollah is listed here and in the US and Canada as a terrorist group. Yet The Age today gave one of its spokesmen, Ali Fayyad, a senior member of Hezbollah‚Äôs executive committee, a quarter of a page to put his case against Israel. Am I alone in finding this shameful? I guess the paper at least ‚Äúbalanced‚Äù it by running alongside it a piece by an Israeli minister. Can someone older than I tell me if it was the habit of The Age in World War 2 to run pieces by Mr Hitler alongside ones by some Jewish spokesman not yet dead for the sake of a ‚Äúbalanced‚Äù argument?  We can‚Äôt be far from the day that The Age hires Mr Osama bin laden as a columnist. When Michael Leunig retires, perhaps?

In a highly symbolic gesture of friendship, the central Polish city of Lodz has offered to host a group of 15 youngsters from northern Israel for a
two-week vacation in Poland to give them a respite from the war in the North, Polish officials said Thursday.

 

The initiative, which was the brainchild of Lodz Mayor Jerzy Kropiwnicki, has been passed on to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs for final approval, Polish Ambassador to Israel Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska said.

 

The all-expenses paid vacation will include relaxation and recreation in the Polish countryside for the youths from the northern coastal town of Nahariya and three of their educators after two-weeks of non-stop Hizbullah rocket attacks.

 

Relations between Israel and Poland are considered to be among the best in Europe.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was to visit Damascus on Thursday to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad and the head of the Iranian national security council, Ali Larijani, the Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al-Seyassah reported.

 

The report, which quoted Syrian sources, said Nasrallah would arrive in disguise and not wearing his customary traditional garb.

Lt. Col. Roee Klein, 31

 

In his community, friends told of how his most prominent characteristics were his gentleness, his peacefulness, and his ever-present smile.

—-

Those who knew him mention his quest for self-awareness, improvement and personal progress. “Anyone who looked at Roee saw before him a tender and quiet guy, but when he entered the fight, he demonstrated an outburst of strength and decisiveness that could not be withstood. His great love for his country and people is what drove him to invest so much of himself in his military service and, in the end, to sacrifice his life to protect them,” added other friends.

 

Shulik Leshem, from Mitzpeh Iron, knew Roee well. “I studied will him from about the age of 15, we later served together and traveled together in Africa.” Leshem tells: “He was a spectacular man, a go-getter with a great sense of humor, there’s no one who doesn’t remember his rolling laugh..”

—-

Eventually, he left the army and pondered whether to rejoin the army or go into academia. “He really debated over this. This was a moral and idealistic guy and, moreover, his family was important to him. He thought how he could best contribute to Israel and how to manifest himself in ways that would help those less fortunate. He was very intelligent; he wanted to learn in the university and his family background gave him a leaning towards academia. But he didn’t get the chance. He decided to return to the army because that’s what he loved and that’s what he wanted to do.”

—-

“He was striking, with his gravity, his charisma and his quiet nature. He was someone with a quiet presence.”

 

Capt. Amichai Merhavia, 24

 

“Amichai was head and shoulders above the crowd. One glance at his walk and manner of speaking was enough for anyone to recognize his leadership skills. His ever-present smile, good hear, and love for his friends and students made Amichai truly special,” said Ali residents.

 

Shimon Adega, 21

 

Shimon Adega, 21, from Kiryat Gat, arrived with his parents from Ethiopia 16 years ago. His last phone call with his family was Saturday night. His brother David tells: “Saturday evening he told us that they were going to Lebanon, and that he couldn’t give us details. He was drafted in March of 2004 and the IDF wanted to give him a desk job but he fought to be drafted to a combat unit. He was given a month of leave and, afterwards, was drafted to the Golani division.”

 

Shimon Dahan, 20

 

His friends told that “he was a special person, who loved to help and never complained about difficulties. Shimon was psyched about the army. He thought of signing on more when his three years were up. He loved army service and stood out during the squad commander course and the sergeant’s course.”

—-

Shimon’s cousin, talked of how much he loved the army. “A few months ago, Shimon got sick and had to stay home. The whole time, he stubbornly insisted on returning to the unit. In the end, he returned and made up the stuff that he’d missed. He loved to help people. When he came home one leave, he would volunteer in a charity organization and distribute food to the needy.”

 

Idan Cohen, 21

 

One of the neighbors said that “Idan was a modest boy, who wanted to join Golani. His parents worried about him a lot and left him a lot of messages, but didn’t manage to speak to him.” Another neighbor added “he was the sweetest boy you ever met, a good boy who was about to finish his service and had his whole life ahead of him.”

 

Idan’s friend, Eran Agison, told of their last conversation. “A second before he entered Lebanon he said to me ‘We’re going in. What’ll I tell me mom? I’ll tell her that it’s an exercise.’ I asked him if he was scared and he answered that there isn’t anyone who isn’t afraid, but that he has to do it.”

 

Sergeant Assaf Namer, 27

 

Sergeant Assaf Namer, 27, an Israeli youngster with an Australian citizenship, had left Israel with his mother and sister when he was 10 year-old and returned to Israel two and-a-half years ago in order to enlist in the army and serve in the Golani division.

 

Assaf was due to be discharged a month from now, and was planning to settle down in Israel with his girlfriend, Revital, who lives in Tel Aviv.

—-

Kiryat Atta’s mayor, Yaakov Peretz, visited the father on Wednesday night to offer his condolences. Peretz said that Assaf, who did not have to join the army, made it a pint to come to Israel in order to live her and serve. “Although his life was in Australia, he was a Zionist who chose to come to Israel in order to do his part,” he stated.

 

First Lieutenant Alexander Schwartzman, 24

 

Schwartzman moved to Israel with his family at the beginning of the ’90s from Ukraine.

—-

 ”He was the pride of the family,” told his neighbor, Larissa Shabtaib. “He was a quiet boy who liked to go to the gym. He always smiled and said ‘hello’ to anyone he passed on the street.”

 

Alexander’s friend, Alex Glutzky, said, “We learned together from elementary school through to the air force technical school. This September I am getting married and Alex was supposed to drive me to the wedding. I still am not processing what happened and don’t understand how within one moment I lost my best friend.”

—-

Alex was a role model for all the neighborhood kids as an ambitious young person, who from the streets of Akko got to a commanding position in Golani. It is hard for us to think about the difficult days the family and their friends are going to go through,” said one of the neighbors.

 

First Sergeant Ohad Klausner

 

“He was only 21 and a half,” said his mother, Orit, yesterday. “Every time I see bereaved parents speaking on television about how wonderful their children were. They are all wonderful and great. It really is true.”

—-

After finishing his studies at in Jerusalem, Ohad chose the combat track. A year and four months ago he enlisted. He was the youngest of three sons, one of the founding families of the settlement Beit Horon.

 

Yiftach Schrier, 22

 

Yiftach, 22, a paratrooper, was killed on Wednesday in battle near the village of Maroun al-Ras in Lebanon.

—-

“He was a sensitive child,” his mother said, and his father added: “He kept telling me ‚Äì ‘don’t worry dad, it’ll be fine.”

—-

Yiftach was born and raised in Haifa, went to the Hugim school and was a coordinator at the local Scouts branch. “They were the most handsome twins in Haifa. Everybody knew them, our youngest sons. I don’t know what Yarden will do now, without Yiftach,” Yaffa said about her two sons.

 

Yiftach’s parents said that “he loved the army, took care of his troops like a father. When a soldier was sick, Yiftach would phone him to see how he was. When we dropped him off at the base, one of the soldiers’ parents approached us and said: ‘We never saw anyone like your son before’.”

In a taped message broadcast by al-Jazeera television, Ayman al-Zawahri, second in command to Osama bin Laden, said the al-Qaida now saw “all the world as a battlefield open in front of us.”

You are viewed as a fraud risk and it is company policy not to support people whos government kill innocent civilians and children.
Thank You

Sending an international peacekeeping force into southern Lebanon without a commitment that Hizbullah guerillas will withdraw from the area would amount to a “suicide mission,” Australia’s foreign minister said Thursday.

 

“There’s no point in sending an international peacekeeping force on a suicide mission,” Downer said. “It’s only in the environment of a peace settlement that you can send in peacekeepers, otherwise of course you’re going to send them into the path of destruction.”