They’ll lay up baskets, lay your women, and execute their well laid plans..before reporting back to Mossad headquarters!

Hezbollah’s mouthpiece Al-Manar TV aired a report criticizing Lebanese authorities for allowing eight foreign basketball players who had previously played in Israel to play for teams in Lebanon. One of the players, Sam Hoskin, plays for Lebanon’s national team. Hoskin, an American, previously played for Israeli basketball club Hapoel Galil-Elyon.

Abd el-Malek Sachriya, who heads an organization promoting legislation aimed at boycotting Israel, told Al-Manar’s website that Lebanese authorities are responsible for the “scandal” in which Hoskin was allowed to become a citizen of the Arab country.

He said Lebanon was “half-asleep” and wondered “how can it be that eight players who have played in the Zionist entity come to play in Lebanon – and one of them is even granted citizenship – without anyone knowing who they really are?”

Sachriya said he would meet the Lebanese sports minister next week to discuss the matter. “Any player who entered the Zionist entity and came to Lebanon must be expelled immediately,” he said.

“Players who came from Israel may have been recruited by Mossad – this is a danger to national security,” Sachriya continued. “As we know, the enemy uses all the means at its disposal to achieve its goals and harm the Lebanese resistance.”

Among the players mentioned in the report were ex-Macabbi Tel Aviv forward Rodney Buford; Alpha Bangoura, who played for Givat Shmuel; former Ramat Hasharon player Derek Trevor; John Thomas (what a great name for a basketballer – Aussie Dave) and Tony Dawson, who was Israel’s leading scorer during the 1991-92 season when he played for Betar Tel Aviv.

Dickie Sliverstein adds: Thanks for beating me to my post, you moral pygmy.

Today, they uncovered our insidious plot to fire rockets at ourselves. 

REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Lebanese Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn Monday blamed Israel and its agents for the firing of mysterious rockets from Lebanon into the Jewish state in an attempt to undermine security and stability in south Lebanon.“The party that has launched mysterious rockets from the south is known,” Ghosn told The Daily Star by telephone, in a clear reference to Israel and its agents. However, he did not elaborate.

“Lebanon’s enemies, namely Israel, have no interest in the continuation of calm and stability in the south,” he said.

Dickie Sliverstein adds: I knew it!

A massive explosion rocked a Hezbollah stronghold near Siddiqin in the southern coastal city of Tyre in southern Lebanon overnight Wednesday, a security source told The Daily Star. There were no reports of injuries.

Local media said the explosion likely took place at a Hezbollah arms cache. 

The source told the Lebanese newspaper that the cause of the blast could not be determined because Hezbollah cordoned off the area.

American blogger Richard Silverstein claimed Israel was behind the explosion. Quoting an Israeli official with “considerable military experience,” the blogger wrote “IDF military intelligence (Aman) has out foxed Hezbollah by deliberately crash-landing a booby-trapped Trojan Horse drone in southern Lebanon.

“For over a year, Hezbollah has been attempting to discover how to jam the ground signals commanding the drone so as to disable them in flight. When it discovered the downed craft, its operatives must’ve crowed that they’d finally discovered the key to success. This bit of hubris is how Aman drew Hezbollah into its net. Its soldiers dutifully collected the imagined intelligence trophy and brought it to a large weapons depot it controlled in the area. Once inside the arms cache, Aman detonated the drone causing a massive explosion,” Silverstein claimed.

I am not sure if this propensity to quote Silverstein as a trustworthy source is a general problem at Ynet, or has afflicted only Dudi Cohen, who wrote the previous piece and contributed to this latest one. Either way, it makes me want to ignore Ynet altogether.

Meanwhile, Ynet has conveniently left out the following quote from El Doucherino’s post:

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/11/23/exclusive-israeli-military-intelligence-caused-massive-explosion-in-hezbollah-south-lebanon-arms-cache/

Given the size of the explosion, we should expect that a good deal of its weapons cache in the south has been destroyed.

—-

At any rate, as soldiers, even brilliant ones, often do, Hezbollah made a fatal error which the IDF exploited.  And before Israel’s supporters jump for joy at another Israeli victory in the unending war on terror, remember that in 1999, a Hezbollah cell phone was brought to the vaunted IDF Unit 8200 headquarters for examination.  The soldiers preparing to view it joked “If it explodes, we’ll know.”  It did indeed explode seriously wounding the two senior Israeli intelligence officers.  Not to mention the major amount of egg it splattered on the face of Israel’s renowned intelligence agency.

The moral being, in this dirty game called asymmetrical warfare, you and your enemy circle each other warily seeking to exploit any weakness.  And you will make mistakes because you are only human.  The fatal assumption is that your opponent is the only dumb one who will make them, and you never will.

In other words, Silverstein considers Hizbullah to be an army of soldiers – not a terror organization – and considers their attacks on Israel to be part of legitimate warfare. And despite acknowledging that the explosion likely took out “a good deal of its weapons cache in the south” – reducing the number of rockets to be fired at innocent Israeli civilians – he doesn’t seem overly happy about it, and considers it part of a “dirty game.”

Just so you realize, this is the scum Ynet has chosen as their go-to guy.

It would appear that a very large “secret” weapons dump of Hezbollah has gone bang.

Isn’t it comforting that UNIFIL, the UN agency that is supposed to watch out for Israel’s security by preventing Hezbollah from re-arming, “heard about the explosion on the news”.

THE DAILY STAR :: News :: Politics :: Huge blast rocks Hezbollah stronghold in south Lebanon.

SIDDIQIN, Lebanon: A huge explosion shook a Hezbollah stronghold near Siddiqin in the southern coastal city of Tyre overnight, a security source told The Daily Star Wednesday.

The source said the cause of the blast, which was heard shortly before midnight, could not be determined due to the heavy security blanket by Hezbollah.

Lebanese security forces were unable to access the scene of the explosion after the resistance group set up a security perimeter around the blast site, which is located in a valley called Wadi Al-Jabal al-Kabir between Siddiqin and Deir Ames, the source added.

Local media said the explosion likely took place at a Hezbollah arms cache.

“There are no comments so far,” Hezbollah’s office said when contacted by The Daily Star.

As four Israeli warplanes flew over Siddiqin at around 10.00 a.m., patrols by the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon were active in the area, where village life has returned to normal. A UNIFIL helicopter could also be seen flying over the village.

A spokesman for U.N. peacekeeping force said UNIFIL had heard about the explosion on the news.

“We have no information at the moment. We are checking this report,” Andrea Tenenti told The Daily Star by telephone.

h/t the sorely missed Challah Hu Akbar

Thanks to Israellycool commenter Juvanya, we see they are not alone.

Egypt:

Iraq:

AFP/MTV

Rival Lebanese politicians came to blows live on national television over the crisis in neighboring Syria, hurling insults — and chairs — at each other before the show cut to a commercial break.

Fayez Shukr, representing the Baath Party — which has links to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s party of the same name — and opposition MP Mustafa Alloush locked horns over Assad’s credibility in a late night talk show Monday on Lebanon’s MTV station.

“You don’t listen. I wish you would listen to what Assad says,” said Shukr, to which Alloush responded: “I heard him. I don’t believe a word he says.”

“Who are you to believe or not believe him?” Shukr said, prompting Alloush to call Assad a “liar.”

The two then proceeded to hurl insults and swear at one another, before Shukr chucked a glass of water over the talk show host’s head at the MP.

Papers and insults flying, both men then jumped out of their seats and charged at each other, with one picking up a chair as their bewildered host urged them to calm down before the show went off the air

Apparently, the knife at the end of that video was part of a commercial, and not the main event.

Lebanese anti-Israel activists are being sued by a concert promoter for their boycott campaign against a popular British rock group.

Samah Idriss, director of Dar al-Adab publishing house, received a court summons this Thursday from Beirut’s commerce court. Idriss is implicated in a lawsuit for his involvement in a Lebanese boycott campaign against the British rock group Placebo last year. Jihad el-Murr, who heads the company that organized the event, filed the suit on 10 July 2011.

El-Murr is suing Idriss, as well as three other groups involved in the campaign: the Aidoun Refugee Rights Center, the Campaign to Boycott the Supporters of Israel in Lebanon, and the Global BDS Campaign in Lebanon. El-Murr, a self-described famous businessman from a prominent family, is demanding US$180,000 compensation for his company’s financial losses allegedly caused by the boycott campaign.”

El-Murr was on record as opposing the boycott last year:

Idriss said the Lebanese activists were also demanding concert organizer and radio mogul Jihad al-Murr cancel the Placebo gig and reimburse all those with tickets.

But Murr pointed out that most bands performing in Lebanon, which remains technically in a state of war with its southern neighbor, had also performed in Israel.

“Placebo has entered Lebanese territory legally and with the knowledge and consent of General Security,” Murr told AFP.

“This is music, a concert, and has nothing to do with politics,” he added. “Shall we boycott every minister, official or artist that has ever visited Israel? That’s ridiculous.”

Meanwhile, just for the BDS-holes, here is Placebo in Israel – complimenting Israel for its hummus and attractive people.

Rather, Israel did.

An Israeli raid during the 2006 war in Lebanon killed two Israeli soldiers held captive by Hezbollah, according to a senior aide to a Lebanese leader allied to the group.

Ali Hassan Khalil, who is now health minister and top aide to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, wrote in his memoirs of the 34-day war being published by As-Safir daily in Beirut that news of the death of the two soldiers was relayed by senior Hezbollah official Hussein Khalil.

Hezbollah guerrillas captured the two soldiers in a cross border attack on July 12, 2006, with the aim of exchanging them for Lebanese and Arab prisoners held in Israel. Israel responded by launching a war against Hezbollah demanding the freeing of the soldiers and the disarming of Hezbollah.

The Jewish state failed to achieve its goals and had to exchange the remains of the soldiers with the last Lebanese prisoners it held two years later.

It had been assumed that the soldiers were killed in the original Hezbollah attack. Hezbollah never commented on the condition of the soldiers until it handed over their remains, and it never discussed the issue since.

But Khalil wrote in As-Safir Wednesday that he and Berri were holding a meeting with the Hezbollah official on August 3, 2006, to assess the developments of the war when he told them that the two soldiers had recently died as a result of an Israeli raid on an unidentified location.

 “There is another subject that is known to very few brothers who are directly linked to the issue and no one other than us will find out about it later,” Hussein Khalil was quoted as saying. “Israeli bombardment during the past few days have led to the death of the two Israeli captives… The brothers had taken all precautions to avoid something like this happening but the (Israeli) expansion of bombardment and the use of heavy rockets have led to this.”

Berri aide wrote that Hezbollah’s Khalil continued, saying: “What an irony…  Israel kills the captives that it declared war (to free) them. From our side as resistance, we will continue the battle of negotiations as if nothing has happened.”

The minister did not say why the allegation was not revealed earlier but described the incident as one of the biggest secrets of the 2006 war.

Given our enemies’ disdain of the truth and use of lying to achieve their goals, I am inclined to dismiss this as pure propaganda. Nevertheless, I look forward to the Israel’s response to this allegation.

Update: As I fully expected, the IDF Spokesperson has confirmed this is a blatant lie.

remarks made by Hezbollah rep were blatant lies & just another psychological warfare attempt by the terror org

Update: I totally beat the mainstream media to this story. Booya!

Lebanon’s Daily Star reports:

‘Devil worship’ suspects arrested in Mount Lebanon

And no, this as nothing to do with Lebanese who are fans of the US or Israel (Big Satan and Little Satan respectively).

Eight people, including a Lebanese Army soldier, were arrested Friday on suspicion of blasphemy and drug possession in Mount Lebanon and handed over to the military prosecutor’s office.

A judicial source told The Daily Star that the detainees are believed to be “devil worshippers”. The suspects – five of whom are male and three female, all under the age of 25 – were also found to be self-harming.

Military Judge Saqr Saqr will charge the eight on Saturday, according to the source.

So-called devil worship can be prosecuted under the section of the penal code which outlaws blasphemy and immoral conduct.

In 2003, more than 50 people, mainly teenagers, were arrested on suspicion of devil worship and drug abuse. A handful were convicted.

The government said at the time it had adopted measures to confront what it described as the rise of the phenomenon, with the arrests following weeks of monitoring by Internal Security Forces.

Having said that, it is only a matter of time before the Lebanese accuse Israel of supplying the Zionist Death Drugs^TM or Zionist Razor Blades of Death^TM involved (hat tip: Blazing Cat Fur).

Update: This is not the first time devil worshippers have been arrested in Lebanon. From 2003 (with bonus reference to both Big and Little Satan):

A young man playing guitar near a cemetery in Beirut was arrested and referred to court Wednesday on suspicion of being a follower of “devil worshippers.”

Lebanese general prosecutor Judge Adnan Addoum referred the man, who was not identified, to the General Prosecution for further investigation.

The suspect was arrested while he was taking drugs and playing guitar near a cemetery. Police forces also found with him masks, symbols and documents that allegedly encouraged worshipping Satan.

His arrest came after a series of rumors that swept the country recently about the killings of some children by devil followers.

Addoum denied the incidents and blamed them on “rumors being spread” in a dramatic way to create chaos and sabotage the Lebanese society. He said the government was adopting measures to confront such a “devil worshipping phenomenon.”

Several people, including teenagers, have been rounded up in the past few days in various regions, but they were later freed after their families promised to watch them. They were accused of taking part in “devil worship” practices and of taking drugs.

Suspicious tapes, twisted crosses, bones and skulls were also seized.

Similar arrests of suspected devil worshippers have taken place in Morocco, where a court sentenced 14 people Thursday for participating in such rituals as listening to hard-rock music that purportedly glorified Satan. Human rights groups protested the sentences, which ranged from a month to a year, as violations of humanitarian law.

The same Beirut judge on Wednesday referred a Lebanese journalist for interrogation by the General Prosecution for writing an article deemed harmful to religion.

Akel Aweet, a writer with Lebanon’s leading An Nahar newspaper, wrote a front-page article published Tuesday titled “Letter to God” in which he defied God to prove he exists by stopping the United States and Israel from pursuing their “evil” plans against Iraq, the Palestinians and other parts of the world.