Deadly Fighting Between Hezbollah and Israel, Fox News with Oliver North via You Tube, January 29, 2015
(Obama: acting like a “petulant child.” — DM)
Posted tagged ‘Hezbollah’
Deadly Fighting Between Hezbollah and Israel
January 30, 2015The Imaginary Islamic Radical
January 28, 2015The Imaginary Islamic Radical, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, January 28,2015
(Ask Secretary Kerry.
Please see also Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department. — DM)
Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.
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The debate over Islamic terrorism has shifted so far from reality that it has now become an argument between the administration, which insists that there is nothing Islamic about ISIS, and critics who contend that a minority of Islamic extremists are the ones causing all the problems.
But what makes an Islamic radical, extremist? Where is the line between ordinary Muslim practice and its extremist dark side?
It can’t be beheading people in public.
Saudi Arabia just did that and was praised for its progressiveness by the UN Secretary General, had flags flown at half-staff in the honor of its deceased tyrant in the UK and that same tyrant was honored by Obama, in preference to such minor events as the Paris Unity March and the Auschwitz commemoration.
It can’t be terrorism either. Not when the US funds the PLO and three successive administrations invested massive amounts of political capital into turning the terrorist group into a state. While the US and the EU fund the Palestinian Authority’s homicidal kleptocracy; its media urges stabbing Jews.
Clearly that’s not Islamic extremism either. At least it’s not too extreme for Obama.
If blowing up civilians in Allah’s name isn’t extreme, what do our radicals have to do to get really radical?
Sex slavery? The Saudis only abolished it in 1962; officially. Unofficially it continues. Every few years a Saudi bigwig gets busted for it abroad. The third in line for the Saudi throne was the son of a “slave girl”.
Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? The “moderate” Islamists we backed in Syria, Libya and Egypt have been busy doing it with the weapons and support that we gave them. So that can’t be extreme either.
If terrorism, ethnic cleansing, sex slavery and beheading are just the behavior of moderate Muslims, what does a Jihadist have to do to be officially extreme? What is it that makes ISIS extreme?
Our government’s definition of moderate often hinges on a willingness to negotiate regardless of the results. The moderate Taliban were the ones willing to talk us. They just weren’t willing to make a deal. Iran’s new government is moderate because it engages in aimless negotiations while pushing its nuclear program forward and issuing violent threats, instead of just pushing and threatening without the negotiations. Nothing has come of the negotiations, but the very willingness to negotiate is moderate.
The Saudis would talk to us all day long while they continued sponsoring terrorists and setting up terror mosques in the West. That made them moderates. Qatar keeps talking to us while arming terrorists and propping up the Muslim Brotherhood. So they too are moderate. The Muslim Brotherhood talked to us even while its thugs burned churches, tortured protesters and worked with terrorist groups in the Sinai.
A radical terrorist will kill you. A moderate terrorist will talk to you and then kill someone else. And you’ll ignore it because the conversation is a sign that they’re willing to pretend to be reasonable.
From a Muslim perspective, ISIS is radical because it declared a Caliphate and is casual about declaring other Muslims infidels. That’s a serious issue for Muslims and when we distinguish between radicals and moderates based not on their treatment of people, but their treatment of Muslims, we define radicalism from the perspective of Islamic supremacism, rather than our own American values.
The position that the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and Al Qaeda is extreme because the Brotherhood kills Christians and Jews while Al Qaeda kills Muslims is Islamic Supremacism. The idea of the moderate Muslim places the lives of Muslims over those of every other human being on earth.
Our Countering Violent Extremism program emphasizes the centrality of Islamic legal authority as the best means of fighting Islamic terrorists. Our ideological warfare slams terrorists for not accepting the proper Islamic chain of command. Our solution to Islamic terrorism is a call for Sharia submission.
That’s not an American position. It’s an Islamic position and it puts us in the strange position of arguing Islamic legalism with Islamic terrorists. Our politicians, generals and cops insist that the Islamic terrorists we’re dealing with know nothing about Islam because that is what their Saudi liaisons told them to say.
It’s as if we were fighting Marxist terrorist groups by reproving them for not accepting the authority of the USSR or the Fourth International. It’s not only stupid of us to nitpick another ideology’s fine points, especially when our leaders don’t know what they’re talking about, but our path to victory involves uniting our enemies behind one central theocracy. That’s even worse than arming and training them, which we’re also doing (but only for the moderate genocidal terrorists, not the extremists).
Secretary of State Kerry insists that ISIS are nihilists and anarchists. Nihilism is the exact opposite of the highly structured Islamic system of the Caliphate. It might be a more accurate description of Kerry. But the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood successfully sold the Western security establishment on the idea that the only way to defeat Islamic terrorism was by denying any Islamic links to its actions.
This was like an arsonist convincing the fire department that the best way to fight fires was to pretend that they happened randomly on their own through spontaneous combustion.
Victory through denial demands that we pretend that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. It’s a wholly irrational position, but the alternative of a tiny minority of extremists is nearly as irrational.
If ISIS is extreme and Islam is moderate, what did ISIS do that Mohammed did not?
The answers usually have a whole lot to do with the internal structures of Islam and very little to do with such pragmatic things as not raping women or not killing non-Muslims.
Early on we decided to take sides between Islamic tyrants and Islamic terrorists, deeming the former moderate and the latter extremists. But the tyrants were backing their own terrorists. And when it came to human rights and their view of us, there wasn’t all that much of a difference between the two.
It made sense for us to put down Islamic terrorists because they often represented a more direct threat, but allowing the Islamic tyrants to convince us that they and the terrorists followed two different brands of Islam and that the only solution to Islamic terrorism lay in their theocracy was foolish of us.
We can’t win the War on Terror through their theocracy. That way lies a real Caliphate.
Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.
Our enemy is not radicalism, but a hostile civilization bearing grudges and ambitions.
We aren’t fighting nihilists or radicals. We are at war with the inheritors of an old empire seeking to reestablish its supremacy not only in the hinterlands of the east, but in the megalopolises of the west.
Iran-Syria-North Korea Nuclear Nexus
January 28, 2015Iran-Syria-North Korea Nuclear Nexus, Front Page Magazine,
As Iranian and American chief diplomats continue to meet to find ways to speed up nuclear negotiations and strike a final nuclear deal that would lead to the removal of all international sanctions on the ruling clerics, the Obama administration persists in ignoring the recent revelations about the Islamic Republic and its covert operations in the region.
A new Western intelligence assessment points to efforts by the Syrian government to renew its operations in an underground and clandestine nuclear facility near Qusair, close to the border of Lebanon, in order to produce nuclear weapons. Citing the Western intelligence assessment, the German weekly Der Spiegel pointed out that the reconstruction of the nuclear facility is being conducted with the assistance of the Islamic Republic, North Korea, and Hezbollah.
The intelligence report indicates that dialogue between Ibrahim Othman, head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission of Iranian, and North Korean and Hezbollah affiliates were “intercepted.” In addition, according Abu Muhammad al-Bitar, the Free Syrian Army has also noticed the “unprecedented” presence of Iranian and Hezbollah security members in the town of Qusair on the suburbs of Homs.
If Iran is engaged in such operations assisting Syrian President Bashar al Assad, it is breaching the protocols of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as well as posing a great threat to security in the region.
If, even before obtaining nuclear weapons, the ruling clerics of Iran are assisting their allies to become nuclear states, how can we trust the Islamic Republic in nuclear negotiations and how can one rely on their claim that they are not seeking to build a nuclear bomb?
Iran-Syria and North Korean-Syria military and nuclear cooperation has been going on for a long time. When it comes to the issues of ballistic missiles, Syria has previously cooperated with both Iran and North Korea.
Syria possess approximately 50 tons of uranium which could be adequate enough to create 5 nuclear bombs. For developing nuclear weapons either highly enriched uranium or an adequate amount of plutonium is required.
Some might make the argument that Syria developed the uranium by itself without the assistance of other countries or other non-state actors. Nevertheless, technically, pragmatically and realistically speaking, Syria does not possess the capability of developing an estimated 50 tons of natural uranium. This suggests that the role of other states and non-state actors have definitely played a significant role. Some of the only allies that the Syrian government has still kept are Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah.
It is crucial to point out that, without a doubt, becoming a nuclear state for the Syrian and Iranian government would be a formidable tool in to suppress opposition, maintain power, and deter foreign intervention in case of crimes against humanity.
There are two major nuclear site in Syria. The first one is the Al Kibar reactor in the northeast of the city of Deir Ezzour and the second one is Marj Sultan in the outskirt of Damascus where the fuel is reportedly stored.
News with respects to the Syrian government renewing its nuclear program were previously reported in 2013. There had been reports that some activities were being carried out at an alleged Syrian nuclear facility close to an eastern suburbs of Damascus, Marj Sultan.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported previously that Damascus was building a nuclear reactor in Deir Ezzour. Reportedly tons of enriched uranium in Damascus are being protected by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.
According to Der Spiegel, “Syria’s dictator has not given up his dream of an atomic weapon and has apparently built a new nuclear facility at a secret location…..It is an extremely unsettling piece of news.”
In addition to the aforementioned concerns about the undeclared Syrian nuclear site and nuclear proliferation, one of the crucial issues is that the nuclear material might fall in the hands of multiple other players and Islamist groups. In other words, if these nuclear sites are seized by some radical groups or Al Qaeda-linked affiliates, they might be capable of utilizing the highly enriched uranium and produce nuclear weapons.
Iran’s other indisputable and multi-layered activities and engagements in Syria — including the military, financial, intelligence, and advisory assistance to the Syrian government which have further radicalized and militarized the ongoing Syrian war — persist. In addition, the recent intelligence report and satellite images of secretly renewing nuclear activities with the assistance of the Iranian and North Korean governments poses a grave threat to stability and security in the region. Unfortunately, despite the seriousness of this issue, the Obama administration continues to ignore these issues and persists on trusting the Islamic Republic in the nuclear negotiations.
IDF sends reinforcement to north amid tensions with Syria, Hezbollah, Iran
January 22, 2015IDF sends reinforcement to north amid tensions with Syria, Hezbollah, Iran
After airstrike attributed to Israel kills top Iranian general alongside six Hezbollah fighters, IDF shifts forces to north.
Yoav Zitun
Published: 01.22.15, 16:41 / Israel News
via IDF sends reinforcement to north amid tensions with Syria, Hezbollah, Iran – Israel News, Ynetnews.
The IDF is sending reinforcements to the north Thursday and Friday amid tensions along the border with Syria and Lebanon in wake of a deadly attack attributed to Israel by foreign media on military officials from Hezbollah and Iran in Syria.
Military vehicles travel north (Photo: George Ginsburg)
Massive IDF movement is expected in the upcoming day within Israel’s northern communities, top IDF sources told Ynet. The forces, they said, are part of the IDF’s attempt to address growing tensions in the north, which have seen both Hezbollah and Iran vow to take revenge for the alleged Israeli attack.
IDF forces in the north on Thursday (Photo: Avihu Shapira)
Meanwhile, reports in Lebanon claimed that supposed Israeli military aircraft were flying over the country’s south. According to the reports, the planes were launching decoy balloons that leave a white trail of smoke.
Report also said IAF helicopters were spotted flying at low altitude over Lebanese villages in the south of the country.
Security forces on the Lebanese border went on high alert briefly on Wednesday evening over an initial fear of a suspected infiltration in the upper Galilee, after suspicious figures were identified near the border fence.
Close to 6pm, residents of Manara, Yiftah, Malkia, Dovev and Avivim in the Ramim mountain range area were instructed to stay in their homes, while kibbutz security squads from Malkia to Metula were called to the area. Roads in the area were also closed for traffic.
After sending troops to the area, the IDF Spokesman announced no infiltration has occurred, but asked that residents remained in their homes.
Al Arabiya reported that five people, who were suspected to be infiltrators, disappeared when the IDF arrived in the area.
A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander said Israel will be punished for killing one of its generals in the airstrike in Syria that also killed six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.
Nasser Soltani says “Israel will certainly pay for what it did.” He spoke during a ceremony Wednesday for Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, who will be buried in his hometown of Sirjan in southeastern Iran on Thursday.
Soltani is quoted by the state TV as saying Allahdadi was “martyred while performing his advisory mission” in Syria.
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported Thursday morning that – despite an Israeli official denying the claim to Reuters – Israel was well aware of who was in the convoy and that the Iranian general was the intended target.
Roi Kais, AP and AFP contributed to this report
Iran’s New Terror Base against Israel
January 22, 2015Iran’s New Terror Base against Israel, The Gatestone Institute, Yaakov Lappin, January 22, 2015
The new base in Syria gives Hezbollah the option of attacking Israel and drawing Israel’s return fire away from Lebanon, where its most precious assets are hidden: well over 100,000 rockets and missiles that might be saved for a future battle over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Hezbollah, exploiting its presence in Syria, has been attempting to open a new front against Israel.
Over the past 18 months, Hezbollah and its enablers from the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] have begun launching a series of attacks on Israel from their new center of operations in southern Syria.
After Sunday’s air strike (attributed by the media to the Israel Air Force) that killed 12 high-ranking Hezbollah and IRGC operatives near Quneitra, Syria, along the Israeli border, Israel is bracing for the possibility of an attack by Hezbollah and Iran.
Although Israel has not officially taken responsibility for the strike, it would make sense to view the action as a preemptive move designed to remove a clear and present danger arising on Israel’s border with Syria. The danger is the formation of a second Hezbollah terrorism base, in addition to Hezbollah’s home base already in Lebanon.
The IRGC and Hezbollah have begun playing a dual role in the geographical area once known as the Syrian Arab Republic, a country that no longer exists as it appears on world maps. Iran and Hezbollah are acting as the life support machine for the shrunken but still functional Assad regime, now in control of just Damascus, Aleppo, and the Syrian Mediterranean coastline.
Since moving into Syria to rescue the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, Hezbollah, acting on orders from Iran, has expanded its presence in several areas of Syria. Iran too has boosted its presence in Syria, primarily though the presence of members of its Revolutionary Guards.
At the same time, the IRGC and Hezbollah have begun building a terrorism base in Syria that is directed against Israel, in addition to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah semi-state entity in southern Lebanon.
The new base in Syria, at Israel’s northeast border, gives Hezbollah the option of attacking Israel and drawing Israel’s return fire away from Lebanon, where its most precious assets are hidden: well over 100,000 rockets and missiles that might be saved for a future battle over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Hezbollah is also under domestic Lebanese pressure not to drag Lebanon into a new devastating conflict with Israel.
The Hezbollah and IRGC operatives that were targeted in Sunday’s airstrike were in the midst of significantly stepping up these attacks. Their plans included rockets and cross-border raids by terror cells. These attack plans were seriously larger in scale than past assaults.
It is in this context that Sunday’s air strike occurred.
Now, all eyes are on northern Israel to see whether Hezbollah and Iran retaliate there. The leader of the IRGC, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, on Tuesday threatened Israel with “devastating thunderbolts” — threats Israel cannot afford to take lightly.
Israeli soldiers take part in a training exercise near the border with Syria, December 2013. (Image source: IDF)
It would be safe to assume, however, that Hezbollah wishes to avert the outbreak of an all-out conflict. Such a war would expose Lebanon to unprecedented Israeli firepower, and would also expose Israel to unprecedented Hezbollah rocket attacks and cross-border infiltrations by land, air and sea.
If such a conflict were to break out, many parts of southern Lebanon could lie in ruins, and Hezbollah’s many Sunni enemies in next-door Syria could seize on the weakness of their Shi’ite foes and pounce, dragging Lebanon into the Syrian war.
That kind of outcome would not benefit Hezbollah or Iran in any way. But in the Middle East, miscalculations have led to costly errors in the past, and events can take on a life of their own.
800,000-strong Shiite militia calls for formal recognition by Baghdad
January 18, 2015800,000-strong Shiite militia calls for formal recognition by Baghdad, RUDAW, January 18, 2015
(RUDAW is a Kurdish media network. Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. From the inception of Hezbollah to the present, the elimination of the State of Israel has been one of Hezbollah’s primary goals. [Footnotes omitted.] — DM)
Thousands of Shiite men responded to a call for jihad after ISIS stormed across Iraq in June and captured a third of the country. AFP photo.
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The leader of Iraq’s Hezbollah met with Shiite clerical authorities in Najaf Sunday to discuss formal recognition of hundreds of thousands of militiamen by the government and putting them on official payroll, a Hezbollah statement said.
Sheikh Abbas al-Mahmadawi, leader of the Shiite militia group Hezbollah, said that he met with Shiite clerics in Najaf, including Ayatollah Muhammad Saeed al-Hakim, to seek recognition “for the success of the militia groups in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS).”
Al-Mahmadawi added that the Shiite volunteer militia should be recognized by the authorities and compensated financially “because many of them do not have any salaries and many have been wounded and handicapped.”
According to al-Mahmadawi, there are 800,000 volunteer Shiite fighters in Iraq who joined the fight against ISIS last June.
But he added that “the numbers have been inflated by some political parties” by more than double.
“We do not have any such numbers on the ground which is put down as 2 million volunteers,” he said in a statement following his visit to Najaf.
Al-Mahmadawi hoped that Baghdad would put the Shiite militia on its payroll now that the country is about to pass this year’s budget.
Thousands of Shiite men responded to a call for jihad against ISIS by Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani last year, when the extremist Sunni group captured Mosul and made a lightening advance towards Baghdad and important Shiite shrines.
A great number of Shiite militiamen are based in the towns of Jalawla and Saadiya, north of Diyala, which they jointly liberated from ISIS in November.
Local residents, mainly the Kurdish population, have remained apprehensive about returning to their homes for fear of the armed militia groups, which operate outside government control and have been accused by Sunnis of acting as vigilantes.
On Saturday, Iraq’s parliament speaker Salim al-Jibouri met with Kurdish leaders in Sulaimani on forming a joint committee to facilitate the return of displaced peoples to Jalawla and Saadiya.
Meanwhile, around 200 tribal and political figures in Diyala met on Saturday to discuss normalizing the situation in the province after some of the fiercest battles between ISIS and a joint force of Peshmerga and Shiite militia groups.
The Islamic State and Hezbollah Fight For Lebanon
November 8, 2014
Is Hezbollah preparing large assault on Israel?
October 22, 2014Is Hezbollah preparing large assault on Israel? Al-Monitor, Ben Caspit, October 21, 2014
An Israeli soldier stands guard at a checkpoint near the Lebanese-Israeli border, Oct. 8, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Baz Ratner
This assessment is based on the possibility that Iran will indeed reach an agreement with the West by November or January — an agreement that’s good for Tehran, allowing it to preserve its nuclear capability as well as the potential for a fast break — within a matter of months — toward a bomb. Such an agreement, the senior minister told me, will set Iran free from all the shackles and brakes that have restrained it thus far. We think that it might consider siccing Hezbollah on Israel.
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Stirring the pot of threats Israel is facing from Iran’s nuclear program began with a speech Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered Oct. 19 at a dedication ceremony of a new road named after the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. The next day, Minister for Intelligence Affairs Yuval Steinitz published his own statement, which came out a day after The New York Times published his op-ed. He was joined by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, who evoked the cliche, “If you want to shoot, shoot; don’t talk.”
At the same time, the Israeli media (Yedioth Ahronoth) addressed this matter with questions raised by security officials who wondered “what awoke Netanyahu in terms of the Iranian issue.” The queries were raised on behalf of top Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials who did not quite agree with the pessimistic forecasts provided by Netanyahu and his senior ministers to the effect that the world powers, chief among them the United States, were about to reach a “capitulation agreement” with Tehran on its nuclear program.
The New York Times later published an article answering this question: It reported that US President Barack Obama was contemplating reaching an agreement with Iran that would not consist of totally lifting the sanctions but only suspending them. Such a move, the newspaper said, lies within the president’s purviews, allowing him not to seek the approval of the Congress (as opposed to lifting the sanctions). Thus, the president will be able to bypass the intractable Congress, which may or may not endorse a “bad” deal with Iran. It is believed that this information reached Israeli intelligence officials before being published in the Times, which is what set off Netanyahu, Liberman and Steinitz.
Following a talk I held Oct. 20 with a senior minister from the diplomatic-security Cabinet, further details came to light. As we discussed the possibility of early elections in Israel, the minister made a surprising comment, noting that a war in the north was more likely to break out before new elections were held. Some of Israel’s top Cabinet ministers estimate that Hezbollah and Iran are fast approaching a fateful watershed, which might prompt them to drag Israel into another confrontation, far broader than the previous ones. This assessment is based on the possibility that Iran will indeed reach an agreement with the West by November or January — an agreement that’s good for Tehran, allowing it to preserve its nuclear capability as well as the potential for a fast break — within a matter of months — toward a bomb. Such an agreement, the senior minister told me, will set Iran free from all the shackles and brakes that have restrained it thus far. We think that it might consider siccing Hezbollah on Israel.
This information comes amid many previous reports regarding the marked change in Hezbollah policy in terms of its conduct along the confrontation line with Israel — to wit, the Israeli-Lebanese border as well as the Golan Heights sector, into which Hezbollah has been infiltrating little by little. Lately, the Lebanese Shiite organization has claimed responsibly for attempted terrorist attacks in the Golan Heights, for the first time in many years. Hezbollah no longer hides behind proxy “subcontractors.” It is no longer ambiguous nor does it try to go under the radar. On the contrary, it operates openly against Israel, publicly acknowledging its responsibility. It seems to have gained a great deal of confidence and is no longer apprehensive of an unexpected conflagration vis-a-vis the IDF.
What this means is that the era of Israel’s deterrence in the north is over. Achieved after the Second Lebanon War in 2006, this deterrence lasted more than eight years. Its remnants remain noticeable on the ground, but according to all indications Hezbollah has lost its brakes and its restraint and has started looking for a confrontation instead of running away from one. Until lately, most Israeli intelligence elements estimated that Hezbollah was unready to open a second front against Israel, given that it is up to its neck in the war in Syria and now in the fighting in north Lebanon. While this assessment has yet to be officially scrapped, the voices coming from top political officials in Jerusalem nevertheless point to a plausible possibility of another war with Hezbollah in the coming months.
The organization’s militants openly carry out patrols along the border. Its presence in friction-prone areas has been beefed up considerably. It is now engaged in planning and executing micro-guerrilla warfare against the IDF also on the Golan sector, while setting new rules of deterrence: Any Israeli activity that crosses Hezbollah’s “red line” will be met by an appropriate response.
As for the question whether the heavy fighting in Lebanon has not burned out Hezbollah capabilities, the senior minister told me: “On the contrary; it has gained confidence and operational experience. Now it can fight like any other state military, employing forces on a division scale or even broader, relying on intel, airborne vehicles, etc.” And there’s something else: The Israeli performance during Operation Protective Edge apparently did not impress Hezbollah. Even the threats made in recent weeks by senior Israeli officials such as chief of staff Benny Gantz and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, namely that “Israel will knock Lebanon back 70 or 80 years” in the event of a confrontation with the IDF, make no special impression on Hezbollah.
Are we on the way to an all-out confrontation in the north? There’s no need to scurry for shelter just yet. Such a confrontation would result in casualties and devastation at proportions we have never witnessed to date. This time around, Israel, too, will sustain heavy casualties and great devastation in view of the fact that Hezbollah’s rocket capabilities are much more improved than those of Hamas. The Iron Dome missile defense system will not provide an effective and complete response to curb the rocket offensive on Tel Aviv and its environs. The last thing the blazing Middle East needs right now is an Armageddon between Israel and Hezbollah, which might also draw Syria, and possibly Iran, either overtly or covertly.
We must also bear in mind that there is another possibility, whereby Jerusalem is trying to create a warmongering spin to heat up the atmosphere, to wield pressure on the world powers to toughen their positions vis-a-vis Iran. Or maybe Jerusalem just wants to scare Israelis who are starting to move toward a socioeconomic agenda, thus making it harder for Netanyahu to get re-elected.
The truth could be composed of a colorful mosaic consisting of all the existing possibilities. In every truth there is a grain of spin, and vice versa. And yet, the possibility of a very hot winter in the north exists more than it has.
Why Europe Must Not Be Trusted to Monitor Hamas
September 2, 2014Why Europe Must Not Be Trusted to Monitor Hamas, The Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, September 2, 2014
Hamas would likely resort to violence to thwart any attempts to disarm the group. It is therefore highly unlikely the Europeans would confront Hamas in any meaningful way.
Spanish intelligence agents met secretly with Hezbollah operatives, who agreed to provide “escorts” to protect Spanish UNIFIL patrols. The quid pro quo was that Spanish troops would look the other way while Hezbollah was allowed to rearm for its next war with Israel. Hezbollah’s message to Spain was: mind your own business.
If the European experience with Hezbollah in Lebanon is any indication, not only will Hamas not be disarmed, it will be rearmed as European monitors look on and do nothing.
What is clear is that European leaders have never been committed to honoring either the letter or the spirit of UN Resolutions 1559, 1680 and 1701, all of which were aimed at preventing Hezbollah from rearming.
European leaders are calling for a greater European role in enforcing the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. They say their focus should be not only on rebuilding Gaza, but also on monitoring the demilitarization of Hamas and helping to secure the border crossings between the Gaza and Egypt to ensure that Hamas cannot be rearmed.
But if the European experience with Hezbollah in Lebanon is any indication, not only will Hamas not be disarmed, it will be rearmed as European monitors look on and do nothing.
French President François Holland, in a major foreign policy speech in Paris on August 28, said Europe should play a greater role in Gaza. “Since 2002, Europe has done a lot to rebuild and develop Palestine […] but it cannot simply be a cashier used to heal the wounds after a recurring conflict,” he said.
Referring to a nascent proposal for creating a Gaza observer mission under the auspices of the European Union, Hollande added: “Gaza can no longer be an army base for Hamas, or an open-air prison for its inhabitants. We have to go towards a progressive lifting of the blockade and the demilitarization of the territory.”
The EU observer mission—which is being promoted by Britain, France and Germany and would be established by a United Nations Security Council resolution—would be based at the Rafah border crossing, the main crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. The mission would be charged with preventing the smuggling of weapons into Gaza and ensuring that building supplies such as cement and metal products are used for civilian reconstruction projects and not for building tunnels and rockets.
According to German media reports, the mission would be “more political than military,” which implies it would not be tasked with disarming Hamas.
The Israeli government has insisted that the reconstruction of Gaza must be linked to its demilitarization. “The process of preventing the arming of terror organizations must be part of any solution, and the international community must demand this aggressively,” Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said on July 28.
This demand has been repeated by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. In an article entitled, “Take Away Their Guns—Then We’ll Talk,” published by Foreign Policy magazine on August 27, Lieberman wrote: “It should thus be entirely obvious that unless Hamas is disarmed and its only tools of control removed, there can be no peace and security.” He continued:
Any discussion on opening up entry points into Gaza, increasing access to the sea for Gazans, or any steps necessary for the revitalization of the Strip and its inhabitants cannot take place while it is occupied and terrorized by Hamas.
Israel fully supports a broad international effort to provide all the necessary means to rebuild the civilian infrastructure and economy in Gaza, provided there is a concerted parallel effort to prevent Hamas from rearming itself with weapons systems and rebuilding its terrorist infrastructure. Hamas cannot be allowed to rebuild its military force and prevent the essential international aid being directed to the Palestinian residents.
Lieberman also pointed out that the disarmament of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups has been an essential element of a long list of agreements and understandings between Israel and the Palestinians. These include the Oslo II Accord signed in 1995, the Wye River Memorandum negotiated in 1998, and the so-called Road Map accepted by the Palestinian Authority in 2003.
But the exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, has vowed that the group will never disarm. “The weapons of the resistance are sacred and we will not accept that they be on the agenda” of future negotiations with Israel, he said on August 29. “The issue is not up for negotiations. No one can disarm Hamas and its resistance.”
Meshaal also said the conflict between Israel and Hamas is not over. “This is not the end. This is just a milestone to reaching our objective [of destroying Israel], we know that Israel is strong and is aided by the international community,” he said. “We will not restrict our dreams or make compromises to our demands.”
Hamas—an Islamist group whose raison d’être is the destruction of Israel—would probably resort to violence to thwart any attempts to disarm the group. It is therefore highly unlikely the Europeans would confront Hamas in any meaningful way.
The reluctance to disarm Hamas has much in common with the failure to disarm Hezbollah.
In September 2004, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1559, which, among other demands, called for the disarmament and disbanding of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has flatly rejected Resolution 1559; he says he considers his organization to be a “resistance movement.” Nasrallah has said:
We do not consider ourselves a militia. The Lebanese government does not consider us a militia, the parliament does not consider us a militia, and most of the Lebanese people do not consider us a militia. Therefore the resolution does not apply to us.
In May 2006, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1680, which reiterated the “call for the full implementation of all requirements of Resolution 1559 […] and called for further efforts to disband and disarm all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias and to restore fully the Lebanese Government’s control over all Lebanese territory.”
In August 2006, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1701, which ended the 34-day war that began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid into Israel. During the war, Hezbollah fired more than 4,000 rockets and missiles against Israel, killing 44 civilians. The resolution called for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, including Hezbollah. It also called for the:
full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.
Then—as now—world leaders seemed more concerned about preventing Israel from defending itself, than about disarming the Islamic terrorist groups that initiated the fighting in the first place by attacking Israel.
While visiting Haifa in July 2006, then French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy had to take cover from Hezbollah-launched Katyusha rockets. At the time, Douste-Blazy said: “The first condition for a cease-fire is of course the disarming of Hezbollah.”
Then French President Jacques Chirac also warned against a continued Hezbollah armed presence in southern Lebanon. “It is absolutely normal to have a current which expresses politically what the Hezbollah part of Lebanese public opinion thinks,” Chirac said in a radio interview in Paris. “What is unacceptable is to express it by the use of force, with armed militias. No country accepts that part of its territory be controlled by armed militias.”
Chirac’s defense minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, promised that French peacekeepers would be operating with “strong rules of engagement” so that the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon [UNIFIL] could act “with rigor and strongly if it is necessary.” She said: “These are the conditions necessary for the Force to be credible and dissuasive.”
But as soon as France assumed command of an “enhanced” UNIFIL, one that included a new contingent of 7,000 European troops, the disarmament of Hezbollah was no longer on the agenda. Apparently, French officials became afraid that Nasrallah might activate Hezbollah sleeper cells in the cities of France.
“The disarmament of Hezbollah is not the business of UNIFIL,” the French commander of UNIFIL, Major General Alain Pelligrini, said in September 2006. “This is a strictly Lebanese affair, which should be resolved at a national level.”
Several days later, France became Hezbollah’s chief protector, as French Air Force jets were reportedly patrolling the skies over Beirut during Hassan Nasrallah’s victory speech. The French were apparently seeking to protect Nasrallah from Israeli assassins.
In late September, four UNIFIL tanks manned by French soldiers shielded Hezbollah terrorists by blocking Israeli tanks trying to stop the firing of mortar shells into Israel. A few weeks later, commanders of the French contingent in UNIFIL warned that they would open fire on Israeli warplanes if they continued their reconnaissance flights over Lebanon to search for clandestine shipments of arms to Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, the UN Secretary General at the time, Kofi Annan, also disclaimed responsibility for disarming Hezbollah. “UNIFIL troops are not going in there to disarm, let’s be clear,” he said. “The understanding was that it would be the Lebanese who would disarm Hezbollah,” he said, knowing full well that the Lebanese government—outmanned and outgunned by Hezbollah—lacked the power to do so on its own.
UNIFIL not only did nothing to disarm Hezbollah. UNIFIL also did nothing to prevent the group from rearming, even after Hezbollah’s representative in Iran, Muhammad Abdullah Sif al-Din, bragged that Nasrallah had a new strategic plan to rearm ahead of the “next round against Israel.”
Italian UNIFIL soldiers on the beach in Lebanon, September 2006. (Image source: Julien Harneis/Wikimedia Commons)
As early as October 2006, Terje Roed-Larsen, the special UN envoy for Lebanon, reported that “there have been arms coming across the border into Lebanon.” In April 2007, Walid Jumblatt, a senior Lebanese politician, told Al-Jazeera television that Lebanese security agents were helping Hezbollah guerrillas smuggle weapons across the porous border with Syria. In June of that year, Roed-Larsen warned the Security Council of an “alarming and deeply disturbing picture” of “a steady flow of weapons and armed elements across the border from Syria.”
At the same time, Hezbollah began to push back hard against UNIFIL. In June 2007, for example, six Spanish troops were killed by a car bomb, just days after Spanish peacekeepers discovered a secret Hezbollah weapons depot in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah’s message to Spain was: mind your own business.
Less than a month after those killings, it emerged that Spanish intelligence agents had met secretly with Hezbollah operatives, who agreed to provide “escorts” to protect Spanish UNIFIL patrols. The quid pro quo was that Spanish troops would look the other way while Hezbollah was allowed to rearm for its next war against Israel.
In November 2009, Israel’s Navy intercepted a ship carrying 500 tons of Iranian weapons, rockets and missiles intended for Hezbollah. In April 2010, former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Hezbollah “has more missiles than most governments in the world.” In March 2011, an IDF intelligence report revealed that Hezbollah had built close to 1,000 military facilities throughout Southern Lebanon. The installations included more than 550 weapons bunkers and 300 underground facilities.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah stepped up its attacks against European peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. In May 2011, six Italian peacekeepers were wounded by a roadside bomb in the southern city of Sidon. In July, five French troops were wounded by a bomb in the same area. In December, five French peacekeepers werewounded by a roadside bomb in the southern coastal city of Tyre.
Rather than confront Hezbollah over the attacks, however, the governments of France, Italy and Spain cowered and announced the withdrawal of significant numbers of their troops from Lebanon.
In January 2012, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon demanded that Hezbollah be disarmed. “I am deeply concerned about the military capacity of Hezbollah and the lack of progress in disarmament,” he said. “All these arms outside of the authorized state authority, it’s not acceptable,” he declared.
Nasrallah responded with mockery and contempt: “Your concern, secretary-general, reassures us and pleases us. What matters to us is that you are worried, and that America and Israel are worried with you,” he said.
In July 2013, the European Union announced that it would place part of Hezbollah on its terrorism blacklist, ostensibly to cut off the Shiite militant group’s sources of funding inside Europe. But in a classic European fudge, EU governments agreed only to blacklist the “military” wing of Hezbollah, thus maintaining the politically expedient fiction that a clear distinction can be drawn between Hezbollah terrorists and those members of the group’s “political” wing.
Following the EU’s decision, the editor of the pro-Hezbollah newspaper Al-Akhbar, Ibrahim al-Amin, issued thinly-veiled threats of “military” consequences for UNIFIL’s European members, whom Amin said were now “operating behind enemy lines.”
All the while, Hezbollah has continued to build an arsenal of ever-more powerful weapons that can reach deeper into Israel than ever before. According to the Israel Defense Force (IDF), Hezbollah has obtained sophisticated long-range surface-to-air missiles from Syria. The group has also acquired advanced guided-missile systems in preparation for its next conflict with Israel.
According to Brigadier General Itay Baron, director of military intelligence research for the IDF, Hezbollah now has around 65,000 rockets and missiles, many times the number it had on the eve of the 2006 war. Nasrallah hinted at this rearmament when he proclaimed that a future Hezbollah assault on Israel would “turn the lives of thousands of Zionists into a living hell.”
During the past eight years of European leadership of UNIFIL, Hezbollah has more than fully rearmed itself while European soldiers have stood by and done nothing. What is clear is that European leaders have never been committed to honoring either the letter or the spirit of UN Resolutions 1559, 1680 and 1701, which were all aimed at preventing Hezbollah from rearming. So why would anyone now trust the Europeans to ensure that Hamas is disarmed or not rearmed?
Iran Begins Arming Palestinian Terrorists
August 29, 2014Iran Begins Arming Palestinian Terrorists
Promises ‘the annihilation of the Zionist regime’
BY: Follow @Kredo0
August 28, 2014 6:20 pm
via Iran Begins Arming Palestinian Terrorists | Washington Free Beacon.
Iranian military leaders say that they have begun weapons deliveries to Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank and elsewhere in the region after months of promising increased military support for Israel’s enemies, according to regional reports.
A top Iranian military commander confirmed that weapon shipments to the West Bank have already begun and that more will be sent to other “Palestinian resistance groups.”
“Arming the West Bank has started and weapons will be supplied to the people of this region,” Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the commander of Iran’s volunteer Basij force told the state-run Fars News Agency on Wednesday.
The announcement was made after weeks of inflammatory statements from Iranian leaders threatening war on Israel and promising to rearm Palestinian militants such as Hamas so that they can continue their war on the Jewish state.
The military leader also confirmed what has long been suspected by Israeli intelligence agencies: That Iran is responsible for training and arming Hamas with highly advanced rockets that were used to penetrate deep into Israeli territory during the most recent conflict.
Much of the arms Hamas deployed “were the products of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Fars reported Naqdi as saying.
Iran is arming terrorists in the more moderate West Bank of Israel—as opposed to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip—because attacks on Israel from this area will ensure “the annihilation of the Zionist regime.”
“The Zionists should know that the next war won’t be confined to the present borders and the Mujahedeen will push them back,” Naqdi said.
An Iranian General this week vowed to launch a surprise attack on Israel in retaliation for an Israeli drone that was reportedly shot down near an Iranian nuclear site.
Anger at the incident has also prompted Tehran to step up its military support for Palestinian terrorists.
“We will accelerate arming the West Bank and we think that we are entitled to give any response (to the recent aggression) which we deem appropriate,” Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) Aerospace Force, was quoted as saying on Monday.
Iran also is considering military force, according to Hajizadeh.
The IRGC claims to have shot down the Israeli drone with a surface to air missile. It lashed out at Israel in vitriolic terms in a statement issued earlier in the week.
“This mischievous attempt once again made the adventurous nature of the Zionist regime more evident and added another black page to the dark record of this fake and warmongering regime, which is full of crimes and wickedness,” the IRGC said in its statement.
Iran has been promising to arm Palestinian terrorist for weeks as the most recent conflict between Israel and Hamas escalated.
“The West Bank must be armed like Gaza,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in late July. He echoed these comments on Twitter.
Iran also has boasted of its past arming of Hamas terrorists.
“Today, the fighters in Gaza have good capabilities and can meet their own needs for weapons,” an Iranian lawmaker reportedly stated on television in July. “But once upon a time, they needed the arms manufacture know-how and we gave it to them.”
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