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Here's the Thing About the Anti-Israel Media: They Lie - Hezbollah Hides Among Civilians Edition

There is a world in which facts actually help to shape the directions that arguments take. That world is obviously not the world of mainstream liberal journalism, where major liberal outlets publish articles with titles like "The 'hiding among civilians' myth":

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

Unbelievable! Can it really be true that Israel really is just a bully on the warpath, seeking to maximize civilian casualties? That would be awesome - the Middle East conflict would become really easy to understand, and it would be really obvious who the good guys and who the bad guys were. Israel would be caught flat out lying.
Except that Hezbollah does hid among civilians. And that someone has finally smuggled out the incontrovertible evidence that - and we've never let this hackneyed phrase on this blog before, but in this case it's justified... someone has finally smuggled out the incontrovertible evidence that the liberal media doesn't want you to see:

This is the picture that damns Hezbollah. It is one of several, smuggled from behind Lebanon's battle lines, showing that Hezbollah is waging war amid suburbia. The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.

It seems that every week, there's another absurd, demonstrably false argument in the liberal press - and it seems that all those mistakes turn out to be ones that slander the IDF or excuse for Israel's enemies. Last week it was the Guardian's breathless, too-good-to-be-true "Hezbollah is not connected to Syria or Iran" contrarian wisdom qua terrorist apologism. It was too good to be true because it wasn't true.
Now it's this Salon "Israel is just lying about Hezbollah using human shields so they can murder civilians" garbage. And don't email us with the usual "there is no liberal media - these are diverse outlets" nonsense. Salon provides the talking points for every leftist, self-styled sophisticate who needs something to spout as his own informed-but-contrarian wisdom at middlebrow art shows. When arguments are premised on lies, there can be no room for debate. These people have strayed very, very far off the reservation - yet they still demand (hell, they feel entitled) to make policy recommendations about things that actually matter.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

Here's the Thing About the Anti-Israel Media: They Lie - Visual Version

We all know that the anti-Israel media lies. But sometimes, it behooves us to have it demonstrated to us at length:

Whatever else, the event in Qana was a human tragedy. But the photographs do not show it honestly. Rather, they have been staged for effect, exploiting the victims in an unwholesome manner. In so doing, they are no longer news photographs - they are propaganda. And, whoever said the camera cannot lie forgot that photographers can and do. Those lies have spread throughout the world by now and will be in this morning's newspapers, accepted as real by the millions who view them.

Thirteen pictures, pages of text, and the conclusion is the same: the anti-Israel media lies. LGF linked to this page as Pallywood in Lebanon - a Hezbollah version of the Palestinian trick whereby human rights tragedies are choreographed for international media outlets. Good to know that the Palestinians were able to contribute something to the Hezbollah war effort - it's the least they can do for all the training, personnel, and arms that Hezbollah has donated to them.
Omri | |

UPI International Editor Lives in a Pathetic, Anti-Israel Fantasy World

How could this guy ever be biased:

But much as Hezbollah and the Israelis are at the forefront of this conflict, that is not the root cause of hostilities by any length of imagination. The root cause of the conflict was, and remains, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Solve it and you solve 90 percent of the region's problems. Ignore it and Secretary Rice and future secretaries of state will be shuttling back and forth to the Middle East for decades more to come.

It'd be nice if the Left could get their terrorist-apologist line straight. We just finished making fun of the SF Chronicle for saying that there's absolutely no connection between Hezbollah and Hamas, and now we find ourselves having to point out that Hezbollah is unlikely to give up their declared goal of wiping out every Jew in Israel. But maybe we just underestimate their good will.
This article is such a naked, blatant hack piece that it's almost unworthy of taking apart. But two tactics bear attention. The first is the confession by Editor Salhani that he more or less refuses to talk to people who support Israel:

In any case, it would be a one-sided conversation following the massacre of some 54 Lebanese civilians, including 37 children, in Qana Sunday by an Israeli air strike... This is not the first time the Israelis have targeted Qana.

It's cute when journalists pretend that there's just one side to a conflict simply because they don't know anyone on the other side. How about this argument: this is not the first time that Lebanese civilians in Qana have suffered because Hezbollah uses their town as a military base.
Omission is bad. But it's not as embarrassing as sheer logical contradiction.
First sentence of paragraph 12: "Israel never accepted that Hezbollah forced them out of south Lebanon, and in short, won the first hand in this new war."
First sentence of paragraph 13: "Israel never forgot the feeling of humiliation the country... experienced".
We understand: it's tough to both celebrate the victory of genocidal thugs over the Middle East's most civilized country ("Hezbollah gave the Palestinians living in the occupied territories hope") and demonize Israel as responsible for all the problems in the Middle East. But surely the obligation that journalists have to their readers - not to treat their readers like total idiots - should have caused Salhani to put these two statements a little farther away from each other.
Omri | |

It's Not That the Anti-Israel Media Lies, It's Just That They Don't Tell All The Truth

Something is missing from the SF Chronicle's concise primer on the Middle East conflict:

Q: What is Hezbollah's beef with Israel?
A: Israel's military involvement in Lebanon began during Lebanon's civil war, when Palestinian militants were using Lebanon as a base for attacks on Israel. Israel withdrew most forces from Lebanon in 1985, but occupied a buffer zone in the south until 2000. Hezbollah contends that Israel continues to occupy territory that has historically belonged to Lebanon. Hezbollah has also sought the return of Lebanese being held in Israeli prisons.

What a roundabout way of stating that Israel left the buffer zone in 2000! You know what else would have been nice? Some kind of statement like "everyone on the planet - even the State Department - open;y mocks Hezbollah's claim that Israel continues to occupy Lebanese terroritory". And by nice, we mean true.
Omri | |

More Fun With the Chronicle's "Concise Primer on the Middle East Conflict"

This part is also kind of dishonest:

Q: Is the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict linked to fighting between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank?
A: Analysts believe Hezbollah had been planning its incursion into Israel for many weeks before the kidnapping of the Israeli troops. The operation took place, though, just weeks after Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier in Gaza. No direct link has been established between the two kidnappings, but some form of coordination can't be ruled out. As for the groups themselves, similarities are largely superficial. In both cases, Israel is fighting militant Muslims that both Israel and the United States regard as terrorists. At the same time, Hezbollah, which based in Lebanon, and Hamas, based in Palestinian areas, are very different organizations.

This phrase reminds us of nothing so much as when Anthony Cordesman, commenting on the Axis of Evil speech, said that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were "very different countries." How insightful!

Hamas and Hezbollah have the following things in common:
(1) They are both funded and supplied by Iran and Syria
(2) They both started as terrorist organizations
(3) They've both moved on from that starting point to being armies
(4) They both attacked, kidnapped, and killed Israeli soldiers within a couple of weeks of each other
(5) They both demanded that Israel release terrorist prisoners to get the kidnapped soldiers back
(6) They're both wildly popular with their respective publics - the largest political parties in their respective areas

They have the following differences:
(1) They live in different places
(2) There are different letters in their names

More seriously:

"Certainly there was strategic coordination," said another senior Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "If Hamas is attacked, then Hezbollah comes to its aid, and vice versa." Furthermore, according to Meir, "the ideological support, the weapons, everything comes from Iran, and in the case of Hezbollah, through Damascus." However, he added, "I'm not saying they had an operational hand in it."

"Very different organizations" indeed.
Omri | |

It's Funny Because It's True. And By Funny, We Mean Sad.

This is brutally accurate:

A young man was walking the streets of Paris. Suddenly he saw a Rottweiler attacking a young girl. He jumped on the dog, struggled with him and strangled it. Both he and the girl escaped with minor scratches.
Immediately, excited journalists surrounded him and said: Tell us your name! All Paris will know of you! The headlines shall be: "Parisian hero saves little girl from savage dog"
But the man said: I am not from Paris.
The journalists surged with nationalistic pride: OK, so all France will hear of you! The headlines shall be: "French hero saves little girl from savage dog"
But the man continued: I am not from France.
The journalists changed gears, and tittered with post-national excitement: Even better, we will tell all Europe about you! The headlines shall read: "European hero saves little girl from savage dog".
Yet the man insisted: But I am not from Europe.
Now confused, the journalists demanded: Where are you from?
The man said firmly: I am from Israel.
All at once, the journalists seemed to come to a consensus: Indeed, the whole world will hear about you. The headlines will be: "Israeli murders little girl's dog"

No seriously, it's true. That's precisely how it would go.
Omri | |

Breaking: Muslims Shooting Jews Still a Hate Crime in US!

We're thinking of starting a blog called "Oh You Think So Doctor: A Blog of Really Obvious Things". We don't want it to be too political, but how could you pass up something like this:

A lone gunman burst into a Jewish organization in downtown Seattle on Friday, killing one woman and wounding five others in what authorities were calling a hate crime... The gunman is a U.S. citizen, and police said initial contacts with him by phone while he was inside the building indicated that he was a Muslim... "This was a purposeful, hateful act as far as we know, by an individual acting alone," said Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels at a news conference, adding "This is a crime of hate."

No kidding.
Omri | |

FBI Wouldn't Know Terrorism if it Walked In and Blew Itself Up

Is an act of violence committed against civilians with the purposes of achieving political ends an act of terrorism? Not when it's committed by Muslim fanatics against Jews:

A man claiming to be an "American Muslim" who was "angry with Israel" was arrested after six people were shot yesterday at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, authorities said. One of the victims was killed. The gunman was arrested without incident, authorities said. "We believe it's a lone individual acting out his antagonism," said David Gomez, who heads the FBI's counterterrorism efforts in Seattle. "There's nothing to indicate that it's terrorism related," he added. "But we're monitoring the entire situation."... After the shootings, the man said to call 911, according to a witness who declined to give her name.

Actually, there's a lot to indicate that it's terrorism related - like the fact that on that 911 call (and this is something that this report fails to pass on) , he said that he "wanted us to get our weapons out of Israel".
This is just like the time that an Egyptian national attacked the booth of the Israeli National Airline in the city that has the most ex-pat Israelis on the planet. FBI analysis: no indication of terrorism.
Omri | |

Hezbollah Admits: Appeasing Violent Hatred Doesn't Decrease Violence or Hatred

We missed this part of this story when it came out four days ago, but we wanted to post it so you see it and so that we have somewhere to link to when we make this obviously true but somehow controversial argument in the future. When Israel's genocidal enemies are appeased after attacks and atrocities, they're more likely to repeat those attacks and atrocities:

Mahmoud Komati, deputy chief of Hezbollah's political arm, also told The Associated Press in an interview that his group will not lay down arms... In the past, he said, Israeli responses to Hezbollah actions included sending commandos into Lebanon to seize Hezbollah officials or briefly targeting specific Hezbollah strongholds. He said the Shiite group had anticipated there would be negotiations on exchanging the Israeli soldiers for three Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, with Germany acting as a mediator as it did before.

He doesn't mention that he also expected that the world would more or less quickly side with Hezbollah's demands for negotiations because that the world had more or less quickly sided with Hamas's identical demands for negotiations just two weeks before. Listen - Israel's anti-Semitic Muslim enemies really do believe all the way down in their black little hearts that the world hates Jews just like they do. That's why you get these insane letters from Ahmadinejad to Germany, saying that they should cooperate in eradicating Zionism. They really, really believe that the world would like to get rid of the Jewish problem - and that, if someone just overcomes the Jews' control of the media and proposes genocide out loud, then eventually people all over the world will openly proclaim their support.
We don't want to sound paranoid. But even a cursory examination of anti-Israel Leftist activism - from inexplicable zeal in fabricating imaginary Israeli human rights violations to incoherent arguments about blame and "cycles of violence" to the breathtaking venom of anti-Semitism qua anti-Zionism... even a cursory examination raises the horrible possibility that Ahmadinejad is less than completely wrong.
(hat tip: Stan Shivell)
Omri | |

Russia: Hamas and Hezbollah Aren't Terrorist Organizations. We Have No Objections in Principle.

In Russia, terrorist organizations are only those organizations that are really unpopular. If you're a popular terrorist organization, then you get to be a political party:

The International Terrorism top official at the FSB (ex-KGB) told reporters that Hezbollah and Hamas aren't considered terrorist by Russia as they actively take part in their country's politics. Indeed, Russia delivered a list of 17 groups it designates as terrorists. As the United States considers both groups as being terrorist and still puts on the pressure on the European Union to list Hezbollah as terrorist group too, Russia says the two groups aren't a threat to the world and are no threat for Russia's national security. Most groups listed as terrorist by Russia are Chechnya-based or operate in Central Asia... Russia has cordial relations with Hamas which leaders have met with President Putin earlier this year.

Again, we have no objection in principle to the idea that Hamas and Hezbollah represent the governments of the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon, respectively. We just insist that the logic be followed to its obvious conclusion: that the attack and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers on sovereign Israeli land constitute acts of war, and that Israel is fully within its rights to launch such war until the other side sues for peace. So no more of this nonsense about "proportionate" or "disproportionate" "retaliation". When you're fighting terrorists, you retaliate. When you fight a war, you attack with everything short of war crimes - and you keep attacking until the other side surrenders.
(hat tip: Esther)
Omri | |

If Israel Goes to War with Iran, You Can Be Quite Sure that Journalists Won't Be Discussing the Iranian Weapons and Troops in Lebanon

And yet, somehow, it's still true:

After a number of Katyusha barrages hit northern Israel over the course of the morning, five Iranian-made Fajr-5 missiles landed near Afula shortly after 3:30 p.m. Friday. This was the first time missiles of this type have been fired at Israel by Hizbullah. Police in the North said in an official statement that one of the missiles, which landed near Afula, contained 100 kg. of explosives - an amount that could have caused extensive damage and casualties had it struck a building.

We have Iranian proxies using Iranian weapons to attack a country that Iran is trying to wipe off the Earth. Still not enough to convince you that Iran is directly responsible (and in fact started) whatever escalation will eventually occur? How about the fact that there are actual Iranian soldiers engaged in active combat with Israel - and by "active combat with" we mean "indiscriminate bombing of".
Omri | |

VDH On International Diplomacy and Israel

It really makes you wonder why the rest of us even bother writing anything at all:

"Collateral damage" refers mostly to casualties among Hezbollah’s human shields; it can never be used to describe civilian deaths inside Israel, because everything there is by intent a target...
“Disproportionate” means that the Hezbollah aggressors whose primitive rockets can’t kill very many Israeli civilians are losing, while the Israelis’ sophisticated response is deadly against the combatants themselves. See “excessive.”
Anytime you hear the adjective “excessive,” Hezbollah is losing. Anytime you don’t, it isn’t.

Go read the whole thing. Obviously.
Omri | |

MR Gets Threatened By a Canadian

A commenter calling herself lebanesechica, with an IP resolving to Laval, Quebec, left this more or less incoherent contribution in response to our most recent IsraPundit post.

Oh shut the [deleted] up will you?... honey im lebanese and We all know the activity that hizbullah does in the region so stop with ur stupid propaganda!!!!! Kofi anna made that statement because UN peacekeepers spoke your stupid army 12 times u morron... Why don't u stop ur lies and propaganda cuz u will regret it!!!!!!!!

Besides the less conventional double-r spelling of moron, the rest is largely a rant about free speech. If you click through, look for the similarly less conventional 'w' spelling of 'hole'.
Omri | |

Speech Given to Golani Brigade's 13th Battalion Company by Captain Ori Lavie

As reported in this morning's Ha'aretz:

"It's our turn now... It's our turn to protect the border. And we'll carry out any mission we need to, against any force, in the best way possible. If we don't, we have no right to exist."
"We will not lose this war... We did not start it, but it's our duty to protect the Jewish nation and see to it that the residents of Metula and Haifa can live in peace. If we don't do it, no one will. We waited 2,000 years for our own state, and we won't fold because a group of terrorists think that they can scare us."
"Someone who cannot protect his freedom does not deserve it... When missiles and rockets land on all the northern cities and reach Haifa, and when two of our soldiers have been kidnapped and ten have been killed and dozens have been wounded - this is no time to talk, it's time to fight. From the moment we cross the border, you must be super alert, super sharp. We are threatened from every side. Each of you is responsible for his comrades."

Eight soldiers from a different Golani Battalion (the 51st), lost their lives on Wednesday, protecting Israelis from the openly genocidal intentions of Hezbollah.
Omri | |

UN Peacekeepers Begged Hezbollah to Stop Using Them As Human Shields. UN, LA Times Blame Israel Anyway.

The Los Angeles Times's coverage of Israel is, as always, shrill with hand-wringing hysteria:

Under Fire for 6 Hours, U.N. Peacekeepers Pleaded for Help Before Being Killed, U.N. Says
The United Nations post where four peacekeepers were killed by Israeli fire Tuesday was hit at least 16 times over six hours, including five direct hits on the base as its unarmed staff repeatedly notified Israeli liaison officers and begged for help, U.N. officials said Wednesday. On Tuesday U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the airstrike that hit the post in southern Lebanon was "apparently deliberate."

Actually this story - again, almost as always with the Los Angeles - is incomplete to the point of arguably being an outright lie. The UN post did indeed plead for help, but not just for six hours. Rather, they had been pleading for help for more than a week. And they weren't pleading for protection from Israeli aircraft. Quite the opposite - they were begging Hezbollah to stop using them as human shields:

Annan's... 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... the UNIFIL press releases [states] that Hezbollah has not just shot at and seriously wounded UNIFIL observers... [but] that UNIFIL has repeatedly reported Israeli shelling and bombing near UNIFIL outposts because Hezbollah fighters were shooting from right beside them . Says the UNIFIL press release of 20 July:
Hezbollah firing was also reported from the immediate vicinity of the UN positions in Naquora and Maroun Al Ras areas at the time of the incidents (of Israeli return fire)...
Retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie says he recently received emails from the Canadian peacekeeper killed at the UN post who’d told him that Hezbollah was using his post as cover.

The closest that this Los Angeles Times piece gets to being not a lie is "the nearest known Hezbollah activity was more than three miles away, although in the past there have been Hezbollah weapons caches in the area, a senior U.N. official said.". Which is like saying "According to official UN press releases, Hezbollah had been using those peacekeepers as human shields for days" - except the latter statement is true.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

If the UN Doesn't Want to Get Bombed Like Hezbollah Allies, Maybe They Should Stop Being Hezbollah Allies

As a rule - and with only minimal exceptions - we tend to eschew even the hint of satisfaction regarding any deaths on any side of any war. Still, about this UN getting bombed by Israel thing: maybe UNIFIL should reconsider their apparent policy of morally supporting and militarily aiding thugs who are trying to commit genocide. Just sayin.
Also: "observers" do not repair roads for proxy armies, and people who repair roads for proxy armies are not observers. If UNIFIL was storing the materials for repairing Hezbollah's roads in that "observer post", then as far as we're concerned it was a military target.
Omri | |

UN: Sure Hezbollah is Bad, But Have You Considered How Much Israel Sucks?

It's a cycle of violence!

he UN humanitarian chief accused Hezbollah late Monday of "cowardly blending" among Lebanese civilians and causing the deaths of hundreds during two weeks of cross-border violence with Israel... Jan Egeland spoke with reporters at the Larnaca airport in Cyprus after a visit to Lebanon on his mission to coordinate an international aid effort... During that visit he condemned the killing and wounding of civilians by both sides, and called Israel's offensive "disproportionate" and "a violation of international humanitarian law." On Monday he had strong words for Hezbollah, which crossed into Israel and captured two Israel Defense Forces soldiers on July 12, triggering fierce fighting from both sides. "Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," he said. "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men.

We agree! So it'd be really nice if the United Nations - the body that's supposed to be the highest monitor of humanitarian crimes - placed the blame for this situation on Hezbollah. That's not an unreasonable suggestion - after all, it's Hezbollah that's putting up all the roadblocks to keep civilians trapped in their villages. But of course, the UN is way too busy condemning Israel to really notice that other "Arabs are trying to commit genocide" stuff.
Omri | |

Secretary Rice's Busy Day

Secretary Rice told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas that the US supports a Palestinian state:

The secretary of state told Abbas that while she and other allies were engaged in resolving the situation in Lebanon, the US had not forgotten the Palestinians' plight. "I assured the president that we had great concerns about the sufferings of innocent people throughout the region," she told reporters.

Good to see that she's keeping her eye on the ball. Of course, establishing a Palestinian state won't stop Hezbollah, Iran, or Syria from trying to commit genocide by murdering all the Jews in Israel - but wouldn't it be nice if it did?
Omri | |

It's Official - Everything Is Israel's Fault

A proxy army based out of Lebanon (in fact, the militia of the largest Lebanese political party) and backed by Syria and Iran attacks Israel. Before the attack begins, then, four countries are already involved in a war. That attack is then apologized for by (at a minimum) historical rivals Iraq and Kuwait. Six countries. That's before the IDF has done anything. So obviously, it's the IDF that's going to cause a Mideast war:

Saudi King Abdullah... said he was warning the world, particularly the US, that "if the option of peace fails as a result of Israeli arrogance, then the only option remaining will be war, and God alone knows what the region would witness in a conflict that would spare no one."... "It must be said that patience can't last forever, and if the brutal Israeli military continues to kill and destroy, no one can foresee what may happen," the king said.

Has anyone in the diplomatic community ever considered that Middle East wars could be avoided if Israel's Arab enemies stopped crossing borders and killing Israelis? Seriously - even a single person?
Omri | |

UN Finally Does Something Productive in Lebanon

They figured out how to stay out of the way:

Bint Jbail, also smoking, could be glimpsed in the distance. Below the kibbutz, on an outcropping, sat a United Nations observer outpost, built of cinder blocks and concrete blast walls. The United Nations observers, meant to monitor the border after Israel’s withdrawal, could do nothing but watch.

Poor babies. Maybe when Israel leaves, they can go back to having tea with Hezbollah.
Omri | |

Tucker Carlson is to Israel Supporter as Flag Burner is to...

NewsBusters is surprised and disappointed that Tucker Carlson is using his show to toe the anti-Israel line. This is because they have a poor sense of pattern recognition:

When the announcer ended the intro by intoning "Now from Limasol, Cyprus, Tucker Carlson," the stage had been set: yes, the Bush administration might be condemning Hezbollah, but on the ground, it's the Israelis who are inflicting the suffering. Hey, so long as MSNBC is in the market for a conservative, why not give Tucker's hour to Pat Buchanan? He'll give an even more 'fair [and] balanced' take on Israel's aggression!

At least as far back as a year ago, Carlson was claiming to "be on Israel's side" even while he turned his program into a megaphone for anti-Israel myths. He's on Israel's side in the same way that the refusniks are... which is the same way that anti-Iraq-liberation flag burners in the US claim to be "the true patriots" because they're "showing dissent". In other words, if you make up your own meaning of what a country's true interests are, then of course you can always claim to be on their side (even if the vast majority of that country's citizens have lost their way, of course... you're the one who's stayed true to the country's values even while they've strayed!)
All quotes are from Lexis transcripts, going back as far as a year ago. As our high school English teacher used to say, once is a coincidence...

After 9/11 almost all renounce scholars in Muslim world, including Sheik Kaladowi, Islamic movements, even the ones that are considered terrorists in the United States of America, like Hezbollah and Hamas denounced the attacks on 9/11. They disassociated themselves from any of these acts

Obviously false.
Twice is a happenstance...

TAMIMI: No. You referred to Israel. What's happening in Palestine is that because the Palestinians have been displaced from their land, because their land is taken by somebody else...

That's always been false, but the matter is now definitively closed since Hezbollah declared that their intention is outright genocide.
And of course, after the coincidence and the happenstance, the third time has to be considered enemy action...

TAMIMI: If you want to be fair, compare the casualties on both sides. Compare how many Palestinian children versus Israeli children, how many Palestinian women versus Israeli woman... But I'll tell you what. I have a better idea for both of us and for the world. Why don't we bring about an end to all of this violence in Palestine? Get Hamas and the Israelis to agree on a truce.

And didn't that work out well? Here's a memo: when Israel's enemies say "truce", they mean "time for them to regroup". That's what they've always meant (Bonus: this is the show where, instead of questioning any of the falsehoods and idiocies being spouted, Carlson meekly said that he doesn't "speak for the Israelis." No kidding).
Omri | |

Arab Machismo-Inspired Escalation Watch

Quick review:

How will escalation in this war happen? It will happen in part because the lunatics that are attacking Israel don't really know what they're doing. They're a combination of braggadocio and machismo built on a foundation of incompetence and fanaticism... Various spokesmen from various factions speak for the entire organization - but since these Arab fanatics speak in terms of honor and martyrdom, no one can ever say "that other spokesman who said we were going to launch rockets at Haifa... yeah, actually we'd rather not risk that escalation."... Now we have this Iranian idiot - knowing that an Syria must attack Israel and that Israel must respond - committing Iran to attacking Israel if Israel attacks Syria.

And now we have it yet again:

Iranian threats against Israel continue: Iranian media outlets published sections of interviews given by Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad-Reza Sheybani, who said that Hizbullah's military capability has greatly increased in the last decade, and threatened that if Israel harmed Syria, the Iranians would respond with force. Sheybani stressed that Iran would support Syria if it is attacked by Israel. "There should be no doubt on this issue: If Syria is harmed, even in the slightest way, we will respond with force. This, on the basis of the joint defense agreement in effect between the two countries and already signed by the two ministers of defense," he said.

And with Syria promising to attack Israel if Israel moves toward the Lebanese-Syrian border - which just happens to be a Hezbollah stronghold that Israel must inevitable move towards...
Omri | |

Israel Does Everyone's Dirty Work, Gets Condemned Anyway

Remember when we made fun of Saniora's plan to have "the world" disarm Hezbollah - because the plan was really stupid?

What's this talk about a ceasefire? Does Saniora think that a well-maintained Hezbollah militia will be easier to disarm than one that's been leveled by the IDF? And if he does, does he have an idea of who in "the entire world" is going to do his dirty work for him? Even if they were willing to risk another dust-up in Lebanon (which they're not), the US isn't going to move troops from Iraq to Lebanon. Russia has warmer ties with Syria and Iran than they do with Lebanon, so they're out... let's be honest: Europe, armed forces - discuss. So that's not going to work... Saniora knows that nobody but Israel is going to take on Hezbollah... when he says "Israel should declare a ceasefire and other people should take on Hezbollah".. he actually means is "Israel should declare a ceasefire".

Not to brag, but it turns out that we were right:

Support is building quickly for an international military force to be placed in southern Lebanon, but there remains a small problem: where will the troops come from? The United States has ruled out its soldiers participating, NATO says it is overstretched, Britain feels its troops are overcommitted and Germany says it is willing to participate only if Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia which it would police, agrees to it, a highly unlikely development. "All the politicians are saying, 'Great, great' to the idea of a force, but no one is saying whose soldiers will be on the ground," said one senior European official. "Everyone will volunteer to be in charge of the logistics in Cyprus."

Obviously. But that certainly won't stop European politicians and diplomats from pretending that their idea for an Israeli ceasefire followed by a multinational force is actually viable. It's a stark example of how diplomacy operates in the Middle East: everybody pretends that all sides will equally toe the rule of law's line, even while everybody knows that the solution will be inequitable and that Israel will end up disadvantaged. The real question isn't how the dynamic works. The pattern for international interventions has been the same since at least 1967:
(1) Israel's Arab enemies try to destroy Israel
(2) They start losing
(3) They get the UN to quickly impose a ceasefire
(4) They regroup
(5) They throw out the peacekeepers (Nasser) / violate international law (Hezbollah) / declare themselves unfettered by treaties (Hamas) / etc
(6) They try to destroy Israel again.
The real question is how Middle East diplomats can be so shameless as to pretend that international law is anything but a rigged game where Israel repeatedly fights its way out of the gallows, only to be required to quietly put its head back in the noose within a few days.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

Memo to People Who Say Violence Doesn't Work: Yes It Does

Oh are they now?

All groups in Gaza, including Hamas, would now accept a cease-fire deal with Israel which would include releasing Gilad Shalit, according to the Palestinian Agriculture Minister, who also heads the coordinating committee of Palestinian organizations there. Ibrahim Al-Naja said the factions were ready to stop the Qassam rocket fire if Israel's ceased all military moves against the Palestinian factions in Gaza. They are also ready to release Shalit in exchange for guaranteeing the future release of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas leaders did not confirm this report on Monday, but if it is true, then this is the first time that Hamas has indicated its acceptance of the Egyptian proposal to solve the crisis.

Sure, it'd be nice if Israel had decapitated the Hamas leadership in retaliation for their little stunt, but doing about half of that and getting Shalit home in the meantime seems acceptable while there's an actual war going on in the north.
Omri | |

"Little is Overt About the Relationship Between Hezbollah and the goverment in Tehran" Still Maybe the Dumbest Thing Ever Written

If you think we're done mocking that caricature of head-in-the-sand journalism that was the Guardian's story about no one being sure if Hezbollah and Iran are working together... well, you must be new here. Check out what the New York Sun is writing about:

The bodies of Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers killed by the Israeli army in Lebanon have been transported to Syria and flown to Tehran, senior Lebanese political sources said. Israeli and Egyptian security officials confirmed the news... Iranian forces posted to southern Lebanon have been aiding Hezbollah terrorists in their attacks against Israel, including helping to fire rockets into Israeli population centers...
Israeli officials said Iranian Revolutionary Guards directed the firing two weeks ago of a radar-guided C–802 missile that hit an Israeli navy vessel off the coast of Lebanon, killing four soldiers... Jordanian officials told the Sun they are "100% sure" Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers have fired rockets into Israel... A Baath Party official operating out of the Golan Heights told the Sun he has information that Iranian soldiers have been firing rockets into Israel... At times, Revolutionary Guard soldiers have been seen operating openly at Hezbollah outposts in plain view from the Israeli side, military officials say.

See, here's the thing about the anti-Israel media: they lie.
Omri | |

NYT Definition of Diplomatic Progress: What Hezbollah Wants

The implication that this is news seems a little strange:

Moreover, in Lebanon the talk was of exchanging the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah for prisoners in Israel, while the Israelis clearly want a more comprehensive deal that will end the risk that Hezbollah poses on their border.

The Times acts as if these are two equal bargaining positions (the implication being more or less that a compromise should be found somewhere in the middle). But of course, "exchanging the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah for prisoners" isn't a bargaining position to end the war - it's the motive that began the war in the first place. In other words, that 'peace deal' is nothing short of full victory for Hezbollah (in exactly the same way that 'compromise' with Hamas meant 'full victory for Hamas').
Moreover, Israel's demand for a 'more comprehensive deal' isn't something that they should have to trade Hezbollah terrorists for - it's what Lebanon has been obligated to do since Israel left the Security Zone over half a decade ago. This entire setup seems to have a strangely familiar feel, in which the sophisticated diplomatic and journalistic position is that Israel should cave to its enemies' demands in return for something that they were supposed to get the last time that they caved to their enemies' demands.
Omri | |

We Get Visitors

A visitor found us this morning by searching on why is France against Israel. Obviously, this is funny in and of itself - but the fact that Google generates 50,900,000 hits for the phrase makes it especially funny.
Omri | |

Our Favorite Part of this AP Story is the Phrase "Hezbollah's representative in Iran"

Hezbollah wants to murder all the Israelis in Israel:

Hezbollah's representative in Iran struck a defiant tone Monday, warning that his Islamic militant group plans to widen its attacks on Israel until "no place" is safe for Israelis.Hossein Safiadeen also reinforced earlier threats by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to widen the scope of attacks, which have included unprecedented missile strikes deep into northern Israel.
"We are going to make Israel not safe for Israelis. There will be no place they are safe," Safiadeen told a conference that included the Tehran-based representative of the Palestinian group Hamas and the ambassadors from Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority. "You will see a new Middle East in the way of Hezbollah and Islam, not in the way of Rice and Israel."

(1) That's a really great resistance group that the Arab and Muslim world has developed. Promising to hunt down all Israelis and murder them - how very resistance-oriented.
(2) No, passing on this Guardian story really never gets old.
(3) In her surprise visit to Beirut today, Secretary Rice praised Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora for his courage. All well and good, but maybe she could have found a way to be a little more circumspect on the same morning that Hezbollah - which everyone seems to forget is actually a member of Saniora's government - threatened to murder all Israelis everywhere.
Omri | |

Picture You Won't See on CNN

CNN has actually added pictures to their hand-wringing "expose" about Lebanese civilians. The current picture caption is especially heavy-handed on pathos: "Nuhader Monsoor cries over her wounded baby, Maria" - see Meryl Yourish on why this caption is so typical and significant. On the other hand, this picture is one we have yet to see on CNN:


That's the funeral of rocket victim Shimon Gliklich, and that's his wife and daughter sobbing. CNN has yet to deign to pass it on, let alone to give it the kind of prominence that it gives to injured Lebanese civilians - many of whom are only still in their towns because Hezbollah won't let them leave. So we ask again: what media bias?
Omri | |

Hezbollah Radiological Weapons - That Would be Especially Stupid

We pass this on not because we trust the source, but because it's really scary:

The British intelligence service MI6 has established that Hezbollah is poised to launch a new "rain of terror" on Israel with rockets equipped with "dirty bomb" nose cones, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. "The nose cones will contain spent nuclear rods from Iran's nuclear programme. The rods are wrapped with conventional explosives. The dirty bombs are primarily intended to create increased panic across an already nervous population in northern Israel," claimed a senior intelligence officer in London.
Meantime, Mossad undercover agents are desperately trying to locate where the "dirty bomb" arsenal is located. It is believed to be in the Bekaa Valley. The Israeli intelligence service has also told MI6 that it believes Hezbollah now has "up to a thousand" other rockets poised for launch.

Nobody could be that stupid. We hope.
Omri | |

NYT is Right: The US Really Should Finally Deal with Damascus

New York Times headline:U.S. Must Deal With Damascus and Hezbollah to Ease Mideast Crisis, Syrian Says. We couldn't agree more.
This is like the time when, on the eve of the Six Day War, Prime Minister Eshkol declared that "peace lies in Damascus". Syria responded by pretending that he meant that he was going to bomb Damascus (rather than, you know, the truth - that he was asking the Syrians to make peace with Israel). This is just like that time - except we actually mean that the US should Damascus. So it's more the opposite
Omri | |

Israel is Starting to Win - Quick, Someone Impose a Ceasefire

Israel is slowly but surely destroying Hezbollah military strongholds. The Iranian and Syrian-backed militia is running out of rockets.
Suddenly, Arab and Muslim countries that reflexively excuse Palestinian mass violence by talking about "root causes" and "provocations" have transformed themselves into peace-loving members of the international community. Saudi Arabia is desperately begging for a ceasefire, while even Syria (aka "one of the countries that started this war") has become a potential partner for peace in Arab eyes.
What could possibly be the motive behind these frantic peace efforts:

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah acknowledges that Israeli troops can sweep across south Lebanon. But if he and his militants can survive and keep fighting, he will cement his image as the unlikely new hero of Arab nationalism. Israeli troops backed by tanks fought their way into southern Lebanon Saturday at the start of a ground assault to drive the Islamic guerrilla group away from the border and put Israeli cities beyond the reach of its rockets... Anticipating the ground assault, Nasrallah sought to ensure his group's survival and safeguard its widening base of support in Lebanon and abroad by lowering the bar for what would constitute victory. In a television interview broadcast Friday, he defined victory as a successful defense. And he acknowledges the gravity of defeat. "A defeat in Lebanon will end the region's resistance movements, the Palestinian cause and impose Israel's conditions for a settlement," he warned.

Even Malaysia has gotten into the act, asking the UN to impose an immediate ceasefire. The United Nations: where Israel's enemies go when Israel starts firing back.
Omri | |

Hezbollah Unit in Tyre Trapping Civilians To Use As Human Shields

Ha'aretz security guy Ze'ev Schiff has an article up on the Hezbollah cell based in Tyre - the one that's been bombing Haifa since the war began and that killed two Israeli civilians today:

We can say without a doubt that the war of attrition against the city of Haifa and its residents is a tale of two cities: Tyre in Lebanon versus Haifa in Israel. The Hezbollah unit deployed in Tyre and its environs has been bombarding Haifa with Syrian rockets and upgraded Iranian-made Katyushas. If this unit is not destroyed, it will continue to target Haifa. As such, it is odd that the Israel Defense Forces ground operation that began Sunday was not immediately directed against the threat from Tyre.

By the end of the article, he answers his own implicit question - the IDF is loath to really go after Hezbollah's infrastructure in Tyre because Hezbollah has been keeping Lebanese civilians in the city. This is consistent with what Hezbollah's been doing all over Lebanon - setting up barriers and roadblocks so that civilians are placed in the way of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah. So yesterday, obviously the British Foreign Office minister condemned Israel for endangering Lebanese civilians.
Omri | |

Hezbollah Might Just Have Ties to Iran After All

We pass this on because we still can't get over how the Guardian suggested that there is no explicit connection between Hezbollah and Iran. Turns out, there is:

A former CIA officer, who spearheaded U.S. efforts to crack down on Hezbollah... Gary Berntsen... said Saudi Hezbollah members have played major roles over the years, such as in the attack on the Khobar Towers... Imad Mugniyah is seen as the terrorist leader of Hezbollah, said Berntsen. U.S. officials believe Mugniyah was behind attacks on a U.S. Marine barracks and U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983, and an Israeli embassy and Jewish community center in Argentina in 1992 and 1994. He is on the U.S. most wanted list, but has been difficult to find. He "stays in the Hezbollah areas of Lebanon and he spends a lot of time in Iran," said Berntsen. "The Iranians are owners, of a sense, of Hezbollah and, almost, owners of the terrorist wing. It's a proxy force for Iran."

We seem to have reached a point where terrorist apologists in the media are just outright making things up.
Omri | |

US Politics Roundup - 2006-07-23

* Secretary Rise is off the Middle East. No way this can go badly

* Stan from Dejafoo is following domestic US politics more closely than we are, and he's taken time out of his busy day to mock John Kerry's idiotic statements on the Middle East. Or as we like to call him, John "I'd send Jimmy Carter to fix things in the Middle East" Kerry. Seriously, it's beyond absurd to suggest - as he does - that his spineless, let-the-State-Dept-set-US-policy approach would have done anything but encourage Arab intransigence.

* John Bolton tells the rest of the world to go to hell. Good.

* Howard Dean is suggesting that the Israel-Hezbollah war is Bush's fault. This is a statement so mind-bogglingly ignorant that Slate uber-liberal Jacob Weisberg went so far as to explicitly warn liberals agianst making it a few days ago.
Omri | |

We Get Email... For Christian Singles

Usually we wouldn't pass on spam, but this is too good:

Welcome to Relationships.com, Where We Bring Christian Singles Together. At Relationships.com we're more than just a site for Christian dating, we're a Christian personals community where you can find singles that share your values and love for God in Christ. We are always working to help you build a strong relationship with other Christian singles. This is an ideal destination for Christian men and women to find friends, dates, and even soul mates, all within the faith.

How much do you want to bet that there's like a billion less New Yorkers on this one than on JDate?
Omri | |

CNN Wants You To Know That Lebanese Kids Are Suffering Because of Lebanon's Act of War. Israeli Kids Suffering for Lebanon's Act of War Not Discussed.

CNN has a sobby, first-hand expose on all of the Lebanese kids suffering because Hezbollah decided to attack Israeli troops and launch missiles at Israeli homes. The expose about the two Israeli kids who were killed last week when Hezbollah decided to drop a bomb on the street they were playing on - well, maybe some hand-wringing reporter will convey that news some time in the future. Somehow, though, we doubt it.
Omri | |

Syria Threatens to Go to War With Israel


On the 16th, we wrote:

For the last two decades, Syria has been strutting around and insisting that they were Lebanon's protectors from Israel. Their justification for turning Lebanon into a Syrian colony was that they were Lebanon's big brothers, and that they would come to Lebanon's aid in case of an Israeli attack. Well, now Israel is attacking - and Syria has to either slink back home with its tail between its legs or attack the IDF. Arab pride being what it is, they can't just admit "you know, starting a potential world war seems like a steep price to pay just so that we don't look stupid for making up excuses to meddle in Lebanese affairs." So Syria is committed to at least a confrontation with Israel's military.

This morning, Syria announced that they would respond to the impending Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon by attacking Israeli forces:

Syria will enter the Israeli-Hizbullah conflict if Israeli ground troops enter Lebanon and approach Syria, Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal said in an interview published on Sunday. "If Israel invades Lebanon over ground and comes near to us, Syria will not sit tight. She will join the conflict," He told newspaper ABC.

Because not starting a war with the Jews just seems unreasonable.
Omri | |

Ahmadinejad: Israel Doomed to Destruction

Eh - he's probably just speaking in code:

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared Sunday that Israel had "pushed the button of its own destruction" by launching its military campaign against the Iranian-backed Hizbullah in Lebanon. Ahmadinejad didn't elaborate, but suggested Islamic nations and others could somehow isolate Israel and its main backers led by the United States. On Saturday, the chairman of Iran's armed forced joint chiefs, Maj.-Gen. Sayyed Hassan Firuzabadi, said Iran would never join the current Middle East fighting.

We eagerly await the official State Department explanation as to why Ahmadinejad is just playing power politics and how he doesn't really mean what he says. Because it's so inconceivable that a tyrannical thug threatening to wipe out 6 million Jews would mean what he says. That's just insane.
Omri | |

There Are Many Arabs That Support Hezbollah? No Way!

We tend to think of public diplomacy scholarship as barely-disguised terrorist apologism - but that's not to say that it's not well-informed barely-disguised terrorist apologism! And it's pretty much a consensus among the public diplomacy people that Marc Lynch is near-unparelled in terms of being well-informed. So when even he says that the majority of the Arab world supports violent terrorist militias...

What do those publics think? Hard to say conclusively, of course. Outside of Lebanon (where Hizbollah is a local, not a regional, issue). The Arab public clearly does not share the 'official' Arab irritation with Hizbollah - Hassan Nasrallah is widely admired, and appears frequently on al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, and surveys which have asked about Hezbollah have generally shown that it is considered a legitimate national resistance movement and is admired for its "victory" over Israel in 2000.

... we tend to take that as a kind of admission that maybe anti-Israel violence is about something more than "root causes".
Omri | |

So, There's Going to be This War in the Middle East...

* Israel is building a home for Lebanese POWs:

Preparing for an extended ground operation: The IDF has started constructing a temporary detention center designed to hold the Lebanese prisoners that will be captured during army operations in Southern Lebanon... A truck convoy carrying barbed-wire fences, containers, and mobile showers and toilets started unloading equipment at the Filon military base near Rosh Pina Friday, and construction works at the place are already underway. According to plans, the structure should be able to hold up to hundreds of Hizbullah prisoners at any given time.

This is in stark contrast to what Hezbollah does, which is closer to "committing war crimes by torturing and executing Israeli soldiers that they capture".

* The IDF has told residents of southern Lebanon that it would behoove them to get out of the way:

In message to 13 southern Lebanon towns, broadcast by Arab radio stations, residents informed their lives in danger, told to move north of Litani river... The IDF indicated Saturday evening that it intends to expand operations in Southern Lebanon in its call to 13 villages in Southern Lebanon to relocate north of the Litani by the same evening. As of now, tens of thousands of Southern Lebanon residents have already left the area. The IDF plan to 'clean' the area of terror nests, using both ground and air offensives.

This too is in stark contrast to what Hezbollah does, which is closer to "shelling Israeli civilians with no warning and with the intention of inflicting maximum civilian casualties".

* Israel is importing more precision munitions from the United States in preparation for an extended anti-Hezbollah campaign:

The US is rushing a delivery of "smart bombs" to Israel after Israel indicated it needed the bombs for its military campaign against the Hizbullah. The New York Times reported Saturday that the decision to rush the shipment was reached after little debate within the administration. The "smart bombs" - bombs which are equipped with precision guidance devises, are part of an arms deal reached months ago between Israel and the US, but the fighting in Lebanon led Israel to ask for an expedited delivery of the bombs, before the agreed scheduled of supply.

Yet again, we draw a stark contrast with Hezbollah, where the phrase "precision munitions" is a synonym for "things we wouldn't waste money on, since it doesn't matter what Israeli apartment building our rockets hit - just as long as they hit civilians". Also: shocking that the NYT would leak sensitive military information, huh?
Omri | |

The UN Should Stay the Hell Out of Israel's Way

We've pointed out our utter antipathy toward the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon more than once. This is the post where we remind you just how much they collaborate with Hezbollah and what a total lie their "neutrality" is:

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been deployed since 1978, not long after Israel first entered Lebanon in pursuit of PLO terrorists...
UNIFIL's most notorious collaboration with terrorists involved the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli soldiers, and the subsequent cover-up. On October 7, 2000, Hezbollah terrorists entered Israel, attacked three Israeli soldiers on Mount Dov, and abducted them Lebanon. The kidnapping was witnessed by several dozen UNIFIL soldiers who stood idle... Clad in UN uniforms, the terrorists called out, "Come, come, we’ll help you." The Israeli soldiers approached the men in UN uniforms. Then, a Hezbollah bomb... wounded the disguised Hezbollah commander, and three Israeli soldiers... Two other terrorists in U.N. uniforms dragged... the three wounded soldiers into a getaway car.
"Dozens of UN soldiers from the Indian brigade came around"... the brigade knew that the kidnappers in UN uniform were Hezbollah... the brigade did nothing... According to the Indian soldier, the UNFIL brigade in the area "could have prevented the kidnapping... we saw what happened," he said. Hezbollah "were wearing our uniforms and it was too bad we didn’t stop them."
[A]t least four of the UNIFIL "peacekeepers,"... received bribes from Hezbollah in order to assist the kidnapping by helping them get to the kidnapping spot and find the Israeli soldiers. Some of the bribery involved alcohol and Lebanese women... An Indian government investigation sternly criticized the brigade's conduct. There is evidence of far greater payments by Hezbollah to the UNIFIL Indian brigade, including hundreds of thousands of dollars for assistance in the kidnapping and cover-up. The UN cover-up began almost immediately.

And by "cover-up" we mean "cover-up":

The Indian UNIFIL began removing the contents of the cars. The Range Rover was soaked with blood. Among the contents of the vehicles may have been a cell phone belonging to the terrorists. The UNTSO officer confirmed that the cars contained "extremely sensitive" items which included "current and relevant information that could have been easily linked to the incident."
A UNIFIL peacekeeper videotaped the removal of the contents, and attempted to tow one of the cars... The end of the UNIFIL videotape featured armed Lebanese men confronting the UN forces, and taking the cars away from the UN. The UN personnel did not resist... the UN ordered its personnel to destroy all photographs and written reports about the incident.
The U.N. did not provide the Israelis with the automobile contents, or the videotape, both of which might have helped the Israelis rescue the kidnap victims. Instead, the seized contents of the cars were taken to a town in Lebanon, stored in a safe, and some were eventually returned to Hezbollah. Israel found out about the videotape, and demanded that the UN let Israeli investigators see it. Kofi Annan and his Special Envoy denied that any videotape existed... nine months after the kidnapping, July 6, 2001, the UN admitted that is had the videotape... the UN [actually] had two additional videotapes - one of which contained still photographs from the kidnapping itself... Annan refused to allow Israel to view [the video]. He claimed that letting Israel see evidence about the kidnapping would undermine the UN’s neutrality.

This being the definition of UN neutrality, it's not exactly a wonder that Israel is less than eager to accept even more UN peacekeepers - aka more potential Hezbollah collaborators and more people that will get in Israel's way when Israel launches counter-terrorism operations.
Omri | |

Slate Seems a Little Confused about the Israeli-EU Relationship

How Stupid Does Liberal Make-Believe Have to Get Before the Jewish Journal Won't Publish It? The perennially frustrating Slate.com (they always get so close to being reasonable, just before they pirouette back to liberal-conventional-wisdom land) has an interactive chart up. The chart purports to explain "who likes whom, who can't stand each other, and who's not sure". For the Israel-EU relationship, the chart lists them as the highest kind of relationship - friends - and then has this description:

With hopes of a peace settlement now looking grim, the EU called the air and naval blockade Israel imposed on Lebanon this week a "disproportionate use of force" that "cannot be justified".

Now maybe words like "disproportionate" and phrases like "cannot be justified" are signifiers of friendship in some places on this planet, but among civilized western nations they're marks of deep disagreement and potential hostility. In a surprise to no one who didn't have a hand in making this chart, the relationship between Israel and those EU countries doing the criticizing has been endangered - precisely because the criticisms that Slate seems to be describing as acts of friendship. Still, this Slate analysis is better than some of the other coverage we've been reading - it's not so much dishonest as just plain incoherent.
Omri | |

How Stupid Does Liberal Make-Believe Have to Get Before the Jewish Journal Won't Publish It?

The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles is running an opinion piece declaring that war is not the answer. You know what… we're not so sure about that. After all, it kind of depends on what the question is, doesn't it? Rachel Ben-Dor (founder of Four Mothers and therefore not a little bit responsible for the shameful way that Israel withdrew from Lebanon the first time around) is probably right that war cannot eliminate terrorist "once and for all". So it's not the answer to that question.
But if the question is "how can we set back Hezbollah a decade or two", then a war just might be what's called for. And besides, this article is just so pathetic:

A strong state that has a strong army like Israel's surely has the means to come up with a solution that is better than merely hitting back harder. I am sure the Israeli army knows how to keep our borders and soldiers safe, so that small groups of terrorists will be unable to cross and kidnap soldiers.

Which brings up our question: if Ben-Dor got to publish this opinion piece, who exactly is the Jewish Journal not publishing? Because, with due respect, this is kind of stupid. This is more or less an explicit claim that Israel simply isn't trying hard enough to protect its soldiers - and that if the IDF really wanted to, it would have no problem securing its border. This claim is, of course, in complete disagreement with the consensus of security experts, the sum of Israeli history, and anybody who has eyes. But wait, she has a better solution:

On Tisha B'Av we will read again the texts the sages developed after the destruction. They teach us how to try to engage in dialogue, even with your worst enemy. As they say: "Who is the greatest of heroes? He who converts his enemy into his friend" (Avot d'Rabbi Nathan 23). Is it still possible? Just a thought.

Answer: no. It is not possible. But wouldn't it be nice if it was? On the other hand, it'd also be nice if Jewish liberals had to recognize the existence of things like reality instead of just publishing their fantasies as serious policy recommendations.
Omri | |

Visual Representation of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

We got this from Stan, who was our former co-blogger back when we wrote at Dejafoo. It's meant to illustrate the dynamics of this conflict in a way that even the densest of casual Israel haters can understand:

Omri | |

Did You Know That International Journalists Are Biased Against Israel?

No really, it's true:

A group of Israeli journalists renounced their membership in the International Federation of Journalists yesterday, after the organization's general secretary refused to retract his condemnation of the Israel's bombing of Hezbollah's Al-Manar television station in Beirut. IFJ General Secretary Aiden White proposed coming to Israel to settle the dispute, but Israeli journalist and IFJ member Yaron Anosh told him that as long as the censure remained in effect, White would be unwelcome in Israel.
The Israel Air Force attacked Hezbollah's television station shortly after it began its offensive in Lebanon last week. The IFJ said in a statement last weekend that the strike is "a clear demonstration that Israel has a policy of using violence to silence media it does not agree with." IFJ members in Israel demanded that this statement be retracted immediately and asked why the IFJ did not condemn Hezbollah for firing rockets at Israeli journalists. After the IFJ refused to retract its condemnation, six Israeli members announced their immediate resignation.

The fact that the official organization of international journalists is on record endorsing a double standard between Israel and the Arabs that attack it probably has nothing to do with the crazy idea that international journalism seems to consistently endorse a double standard between Israel and the Arabs that attack it. Because journalists are objective - they told us so themselves!
Omri | |

Juan Cole Accuses Israel of Trapping Lebanese Civilians. This is Because He Is More or Less a Shameless Liar.

Today's Informed Comment link is brought to you by the letter M, as in mendacity:

So let's get this straight. The Israelis warn the small town Shiites of the south to flee their own homes and go hundreds of miles away (and live on what? in what?). But then they intensely bombing them, making it impossible for them to flee. The Lebanese have awoken to find themselves cockroaches.
I repeat, this is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of the Shiites of southern Lebanon, an assault on an entire civilian population's way of life. Aside from ecology, it is no different from what Saddam Hussein did to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons that Saddam did.
The economy of downtown Beirut has been murdered by the Israelis.

(1) It's Hezbollah, not Israel, that's forcing Lebanese civilians to stay in their villages as human shields against Israel. In fact, Israel is actively undertaking humanitarian gestures, while Hezbollah sets up roadblocks to prevent people from leaving their houses - which have already been transformed into Hezbollah armories.
(2) If Prof. Cole is honest, he'll take this information (which of course he probably knew, and just failed to pass on to his readers) and apply it consistently - and therefore accuse Hezbollah of risking the ethnic cleansing of Shiites from southern Lebanon.
(3) We're pretty sure that Cole just implied that the Kurds crossed an international border, attacked a Iraqi army envoy, killed and kidnapped soldiers, and then fired thousands of rockets at Iraqi civilians. Because if he didn't, then the phrase "the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons" would be a bald lie.
(4) How stupid can Cole's moral equivocation between Hezbollah thugs and Israeli soldiers get? Wrap your mind around the phrase "the economy of downtown Beirute has been murdered", and consider that it's a heavy-handed and kind of pathetic attempt to link what Hezbollah did to Israeli soldiers to what Israel did to buildings.
Omri | |

Did You Know That the Palestinians Are Still Sending Suicide Bombers Into Israel?

No really, it's true:

Police special forces arrested a woman and another person suspected of being involved in a planned suicide terror attack in central Tel Aviv on Friday night. The two were reportedly arrested near the beach-side Dan Hotel on Hayarkon Street in central Tel Aviv after the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) passed an intelligence alert to the Israel Police of a possible suicide terrorist inside central Tel Aviv.

And here we thought that the Palestinians were busy preparing for statehood...
Omri | |

Israel Trying to Get Civilians Out of Lebanon, Hezbollah Trying to Keep Them In

Hezbollah:

The IDF has found that Hizbullah is preventing civilians from leaving villages in southern Lebanon. Roadblocks have been set up outside some of the villages to prevent residents from leaving, while in other villages Hizbullah is preventing UN representatives from entering, who are trying to help residents leave... Hezbollah: the party of human shields.

Israel:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni approved late Thursday the establishment of a "humanitarian corridor" between Lebanon and Cyprus in order to relieve the humanitarian crisis that was claimed to be present in Lebanon... Also on Friday, some 500 Canadians who were evacuated from Lebanon arrived at a Mediterranean Turkish port, the Canadian Embassy said. The first group of Canadian evacuees arrived in the port of Mersin by ship late Thursday and were flown home from the nearby city of Adana, the embassy said.

The UN is preparing to charge Israel with war crimes for taking actions that may count as "foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians". Israel, not Hezbollah. Because when civilians get killed after Hezbollah traps them in their village/Hezbollah military base, that's not forseeable. So no war crime charges there because really, how could you see that coming? On the other hand, when Hezbollah sets up a rocket launcher in someone's front yard, Israel is supposed to use magic powers and divine whether there's still a family inside the house.
Omri | |

Turns Out, Its More of a 'Jewish' Than 'Israeli' Thing for Hezbollah

All this time, we've been laboring under the impression that Hezbollah was murdering Israelis because they are a "resistance organization" and they're trying to defend Lebanese territory. Activists and journalists everywhere insisted that Hezbollah was an anti-Zionist organization bravely targeting Israelis, rather than an anti-Semitic organization genocidally targeting Jews. Imagine our shock this morning to discover that this whole time we were being lied to, and that Hezbollah really is focused on killing Jews:

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah apologized for an attack that killed two Israeli Arab children in northern Israel, saying the youngsters were "martyrs for Palestine." In a Thursday interview with Arabic-language news network Al-Jazeera, Nasrallah accepted responsibility for the Wednesday attack, while conceding that an apology to the family was not sufficient. "To the family that was hit in Nazareth -- on my behalf and my brothers', I apologize to this family," he said. "Some events like that happen. At any event, those who were killed in Nazareth, we consider them martyrs for Palestine and martyrs for the nation. I pay my condolences to them."

Just think - if they were wrong about Hezbollah, what else could all of the anti-Zionists be wrong about? You don't think... you don't think that it might turn out that the Palestinians hate Jews too, do you?
Omri | |

UN Building Hit in Lebanon. UN, AP blame Israel. Yawn.

We can't exactly figure out whether we want to accuse the AP of making up this source or just wearily point out that of course UN employees reflexively blames Israel. But anyway, here it is:

A United Nations-run observation post just inside Israel was struck during fighting between Israel and Hizbullah operatives on Friday. The army blamed Hizbullah rockets, but a UN officer said it was an artillery shell fired by the IDF. A UN officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said an artillery shell fired by the IDF "impacted a direct hit on the UN position overlooking Zar'it." The post is part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. But an IDF spokesman said the position, located just inside Lebanon, was hit by rockets fired by Hizbullah that fell short of their targets in northern Israel...
The mission of UNIFIL, which has nearly 2,000 military personnel and more than 300 civilians, is to patrol the border line, known as the Blue Line, drawn by the United Nations after Israel withdrew.

Israel better watch out. If this happenes 20 or 30 more times, sentiment in the UN might turn against Israeli self-defense. Also, screw UNIFIL:

An Israeli commander at the Lebanese border recalls peering through binoculars one afternoon to see U.N. peacekeepers sipping tea with Hizbollah guerrillas... Israel and the United Nations have rarely seen eye to eye, and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), created in 1978, has been a frequent flashpoint in relations. "Dysfunctional and a failure" is the way the force was characterized by one Foreign Ministry spokesman. Some Israeli leaders accuse UNIFIL of providing legitimacy to Hizbollah, allowing it to build up arms while turning a blind eye when Israeli soldiers were seized at the border in 2000.

If by "turning a blind eye" Reuters means "UNIFIL filmed the entire thing then hid the tape from the Israelis so that they wouldn't be able to tell if the soldiers were alive or dead" then yeah, that's about right.
Omri | |

Hey, Did You Hear that Hezbollah Is Hiding Weapons In Mosques? It's OK, the UN Hasn't Either.

Of course you haven't:

Ground troops were sent across the border to the same sector as where two soldiers were killed the previous day, in order to engage Hizbullah guerillas that were firing mortar rounds towards Avivim. Soldiers operating in Maroun a-Ras reported finding rocket launchers, explosives and other weapons in a mosque there.

The militarization of either civilian or religious facilities is a war crime. So of course, the United Nations has jumped into action by threatening to investigate Israel for war crimes.
Omri | |

You Have to Admit, Ms. Coulter Has a Point

Ahhh... Ms. Coulter:

Some have argued that Israel's response is disproportionate, which is actually correct: It wasn't nearly strong enough. I know this because there are parts of South Lebanon still standing... According to Dean, the Democrats would have the "moral authority that Bill Clinton had" - no wait! keep reading - "when he brought together the Israelis and Palestinians." Clinton really brokered a Peace in Our Time with that deal — "our time" being a reference to that five-minute span during which he announced it. Yasser Arafat immediately backed out on all his promises and launched the second intifada.

If Howard Dean really said that, then he still hasn't learned anything about the Middle East. Which is likely.
Omri | |

Lebanon PM Has a Plan - Israel Will Stop Defending Itself, and Then Hezbollah Will Be Disarmed By the Make Believe Army that Exists Only in His Mind. Brilliant!

Just as the Robin Williams declares about Aladdin, Israel has managed to prove that leaders of even the densest Arab countries can be taught!

Hizbullah has created a "state within a state" in Lebanon and must be disarmed, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said in an interview published Thursday in an Italian daily. Saniora told Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera that the Shi'ite group has been doing the bidding of Syria and Iran, and that it can only be disarmed with the help of the international community and once a cease-fire has been achieved in the current Middle East fighting.
"It's not a mystery that Hizbullah answers to the political agendas of Teheran and Damascus," Saniora was quoted as saying by Corriere. "The entire world must help us disarm Hizbullah. But first we need to reach a cease-fire."

First of all, and this is just pure snark, Hezbollah's connection to Tehran does actually seem to be a mystery to that shining star of British journalism, the Guardian. But more importantly...
What's this talk about a ceasefire? Does Saniora think that a well-maintained Hezbollah militia will be easier to disarm than one that's been leveled by the IDF? And if he does, does he have an idea of who in "the entire world" is going to do his dirty work for him? Even if they were willing to risk another dust-up in Lebanon (which they're not), the US isn't going to move troops from Iraq to Lebanon. Russia has warmer ties with Syria and Iran than they do with Lebanon, so they're out. Usually we'd suggest that the valiant French army would help out, but they're going to be busy invading Israel. And besides, let's be honest: Europe, armed forces - discuss. So that's not going to work. Hey, maybe China's available to help.
Saniora knows that nobody but Israel is going to take on Hezbollah. So when he says "Israel should declare a ceasefire and other people should take on Hezbollah", what he actually means is "Israel should declare a ceasefire". Suddenly, this deal doesn't sound so great any more.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

UPDATE: Opps... Siniora is taking it back:

The office of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora on Thursday denied a report in the Milan-based daily "Corriere della Sera" that quoted him calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah. Siniora`s office said in a statement that his words were distorted in translation from Italian to English. "What the prime minister said is that the international community has not given the Lebanese government an opportunity to deal with the problem of Hezbollah`s arms, since the continuing presence of the Israeli occupation of Shebaa Farms is the reason for the weapons' location."

He doesn't even have the diplomatic manuevering room to pretend that he wants to disarm Hezbollah.
Omri | |

What More Could Italy Want?

Someone from Google's Italy page found us by searching on the terms stupid germans. Apparently utter victory on the soccer field wassn't enough material for this lady or gentleman, and they're looking for some more self-esteem boosting material. We would suggest that they contemplate things like fine wines. On the other hand, we would strongly discourage them from noticing that trained ferrets could run Rome's public transportation system better than it's currently being run.
Speaking of Italian soccer, here's some of what it looked like in Rome the night that Italy won the World Cup. That doesn't have anything to do with anything, except us bragging that we were in Rome the night that Italy won the World Cup:

Omri | |

Why Is Israel's Response So Disproportionate?

There are at least two possible answers to this question:
(1) "Who cares?" As we've been insisting, this is a war (perhaps the most just war that Israel has ever faught), not some sort of tit-for-tat anti-terrorist retaliation. If we can burden you, our overly patient audience, with this example one more time: after Pearl Harbor was bombed, the Japanese didn't get to say "now you get to bomb one of our bases, and then you have to stop because that's all we did to you". When you 'respond' to something, you have to be proportionate. But this is not a response, it's a warfighting situation. No country would ever suggest that, once war has been initiated, it has to give the other side a sporting chance. If someone thinks that Israel is commiting war crimes, let them make that precise accusation - otherwise, people should shut up about proportionality.
(2) "Because Hezbollah is making it that way". Maybe this has something to do with it:

The IDF has found that Hizbullah is preventing civilians from leaving villages in southern Lebanon. Roadblocks have been set up outside some of the villages to prevent residents from leaving, while in other villages Hizbullah is preventing UN representatives from entering, who are trying to help residents leave. In two villages, exchanges of fire between residents and Hizbullah have broken out.

Hezbollah: the party of human shields.
Omri | |

The Phenomenon of Moderate Terrorists

Only the Palestinians have figured out how to be moderate terrorists:

In the West Bank, Israeli troops backed by armored vehicles surrounded a Palestinian security compound in the city of Nablus and killed three gunmen from moderate President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, medics said.

Those "gunmen" - or, if you prefer the term from a different Reuters report on this incident, "militants" - were of course part of the same group that ambushed an Israeli patrol on Monday. But hey, at least we know they're on the side of the moderates!
Omri | |

Guardian: We're Not Sure that Hezbollah and Iran are Working Together

Head in the sand doesn't even begin to cover it:

But western officials who claim that the Iranian and Syrian governments support Hizbullah say little is overt about the relationships between Hizbullah and the governments in Tehran and Damascus. Some senior officials have gone as far as accusing Iran of orchestrating the current conflict, pointing to Israeli claims that Iranian-made missiles have been used by Hizbullah and that Iran's elite revolutionary guards have assisted Hizbullah on the ground in Lebanon. Officials claim Tehran is trying to deflect international attention from its suspected nuclear weapons programme.

And indeed, the article does find at least two "western officials" (who of course remain anonymous, so as always we're just going to assume that the Guardian just made them up)... anyway, there are at least two "western officials" who ostensibly say "little is overt about the relationships" between Hezbollah and Iran. Fair enough.
But for some reason, the Guardian didn't bother to quote Western officials who do see much that is overt about the relationships between Hezbollah and Iran. For instance, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain certain counts as a "Western official", and he thinks that "Hezbollah is supported by Iran and Syria". And the United States Senate is filled with Western officials - many of whom hold "the governments of Syria and Iran responsible for the acts of aggression carried out by Hezbollah". Could it be... bias?
Omri | |

Does Kos Just Get to Make Things Up Now?

After a month and a half out of the country, we're trying to get a feel for where the national election is heading. So we go to Kos to read what the Left's best-case scenario is, and there at the very top is this very predictable, very stereotypical leftist garbage:

So we've got Israel attacking Lebanon. Israel attacking Palestine. Hezbollah attacking Israel. Palestinians attacking Israel. Israel threatening to attack Syria and Iran. Iran meddling in Iraq. The US meddling in Iraq. Lots of terrorists and insurgents targetting the US. The US threatening Iran. Sunnis attacking Shiites. Shiites attacking Sunnis. The US and NATO fighting a resurgant Taliban in Afghanistan. Kurds attacking Turks.

First of all, that little implicit timeline at the top is very pointedly wrong. Not to nit-pick, but Hezbollah and the Palestinians attacked Israel first - not the other way around. Sure, he doesn't lie outright - but certainly that little stream of thought flirts with a bit of intellectual dishonesty.
More to the point though, what the hell is he talking about "Israel threatening to attack Syria"? That's just a lie:

"We have no intention of operating against Syria at this time," Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday. According to Halutz, "Hizbullah has been trying to pull Syria into the conflict." The chief of staff said, "It will take time to determine the effectiveness of the IDF operation in Lebanon. We do know, however, that we crippled Hizbullah's major transportation points and prevented them from transferring more weapons to their artillery units. We also know that we cleared out Hizbullah's major support networks."

That's from the 17th. It's the identical statement that Israel made on the 15th. Which is exactly what you'd expect, since Israel does not want to topple the Syrian regime.
But hey, let's not let that get in the way of pretending that Israel really is the out of control Zionist regime that so many liberal activists pretend it is. If Israel isn't really warlike enough for them, they'll just play make-believe that it is. And you know what - we don't mind letting these angry, vulgar whiners live in their own world... although it is kind of annoying when they read and write articles as if that world is the real world. But we liked it better when they were just making up things about secret 'sources', who were leaking them news about how Rove was about to be frogmarched out of the White House. With Israel's international position being as precarious as it is, having a blog with tens of thousands of readers lying about what's going on in the Middle East could actually do some damage.
Omri | |

UN: Maybe Hezbollah is a Terrorist Organization and Maybe They're Not

We actually expect to get flack for this, but we kind of agree:

The United Nations High Representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) Javier Solana said during a press conference with Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni that the UN has no sufficient data to determine whether the Hizbullah can be included in the list of terror organizations. He also added that the issue at hand is legal, not ethical. (Ronny Sofer)

We happen to think that Hezbollah is far more of an army committing war crimes than they are a terrorist organization. So as long as the UN is willing to follow this legal thread to its logical conclusion, we have no problem per se with Hezbollah not being (just or only) a terrorist organization. Now, the UN is never going to take that logical and obvious step - but wouldn't it be nice if they did? (hat tip: Barry)
Omri | |

Hezbollah Atrocity: Two Children Killed in Missile Barrage

More children have been killed by Hezbollah's indiscrimate shelling of north Israel:

Three people were killed, two of them children when several Katyusha rockets fell on the Arab Israeli town of Nazareth on Wednesday evening... According to witnesses, the rockets hit in the street while the children were playing outside... Four people were also wounded, one seriously, when a Katyusha rocket landed near Safed earlier Wednesday afternoon.

UN condemnation for this atrocity in... 5, 4... never.
Omri | |

French Lawmaker Wants to Go to War Against Israel

So, the French took time this week to announce that they're really sorry about the whole their entire country was anti-Semitic and persecuted innocent Jews thing. Oh, and that some of them want to go to war against Israel for trying to defend its citizens:

adies and Gentlemen I give you Jacques Myard, a full blown member of the French Parliament, elected by the people (from the Paris suburb of les Yvelines) to his very own seat at the Assemblée Nationale, publishing on his website a communiqu ewhere he calls for France to undertake military action against Israel. Under "Guerre au Liban - Israel a-t-il perdu la raison?" ('War in Lebanon - Has Israel lost her mind?'), the link "Lire la suite" opens a popup with the following full text communique

Sometimes, you really have to struggle to remember that Israel didn't actually start this war.
PS - Alternative headline for this post: "Another Muslim country threatens to go to war against Israel"
Omri | |

US Clarifies How Much It Supports Israel

Disclaimer: obviously, this could be wishful thinking on the part of European diplomats and fear on the part of Israeli diplomats. But does sound about right, given that the US doesn't even believe that Lebanon is responsible for Hezbollah's attack.
The United States is giving Israel one whole week to win the war that Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, initiated:

The United States is giving Israel a window of a week to inflict maximum damage on Hezbollah before weighing in behind international calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, according to British, European and Israeli sources... "It's clear the Americans have given the Israelis the green light. They [the Israeli attacks] will be allowed to go on longer, perhaps for another week," a senior European official said on Tuesday. Diplomatic sources said there was a clear time limit, partly dictated by fears that a prolonged conflict could spin out of control.

And a non-prolonged conflict, on the other hand, means that Israel has to sulk back across the border leaving behind the two soldiers that Hezbollah kidnapped. In other words, a non-prolonged conflict means that Israel doesn't achieve its military objectives - it will lose the war that Hezbollah started.
Someone needs to explain this slowly to whoever is in charge of the Israel desk at Foggy Bottom: the IDF is not throwing a temper tantrum. This campaign is not the kind of measured, pinpoint retaliation that Israel uses to respond to terrorist attacks. This is a war - a war that was started for particular reasons and that has particular objectives.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the US didn't bomb a Japanese naval base and call it even. Once a war is initiated by one side, the other side is fully justified in using all of the means at its disposal to win that war (barring the commission of war crimes, obviously). The world has seen Israel's military capability shackled for so long against the Palestinians that it has forgotten that wars are fought according to different rules: rules that don't set absurd limits like time frames for winning.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

Palestinian Terrorists Still Trying to Murder Jews

Just in case you thought that they were taking the week off - not so much:

The high alert level declared on Wednesday morning was lowered in the afternoon following action by security forces. Roadblocks set up by police in the center of the country, particularly in the Sharon region, were removed. The alert level was declared after security officials on Wednesday morning received an alert that a Palestinian terrorist infiltrated Israel with the intention of carrying out an attack.

The "action by security forces", incidentally, was to arrest the would-be suicide bomber. And they got the car that was used to drive him.
In possibly related but most likely unrelated news, a car exploded east of Tel Aviv. The fact that this is likely unrelated news gives you some idea of what daily life has become in Israel in the last few weeks. Good thing that the US is giving Israel a whole week to wipe out the terrorists and militias.
Omri | |

Blog Roundup

Not so much a roundup as a single link, but IMAO has a Know Thy Enemy up on Hezbollah:

* Hezbollah is situated in southern Lebanon at the border with Israel. If they hate Jews so much, you'd think they wouldn't live so close.
* Hey, maybe their attacks on Israel are just Hezbollah's immature way of showing they have a crush.
* Not that Israel shouldn't slaughter the lot of them; I'm just suggesting another way of looking at all this.

Done and done.
Omri | |

US State Department: Lebanon Is Not Responsible for Hezbollah

According to the professional sophisticates helping to decide the US State Department's Middle East policy, the Lebanese government doesn't really have much to do with this whole regional war thing. Alberto Fernandez (Director of Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department) took pains to be very clear on this point in a conversation with Jim Zogby's Arab American Institute:

Fernandez rebuk[ed] Israel's position toward the Lebanese government. He specifically said: "If it gets me in trouble, it gets me in trouble. I don't care. The Israeli Government has said 'we hold the Lebanese government responsible.' The US Government has not said that, and we don't believe that."...
Clearly Mr. Fernandez was also mirroring President Bush's attempts to continue to express verbal support for the Lebanese government under Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. He added: "We have been cognizant of the efforts of the Lebanese Cabinet to be responsible and to act in a mature and serious way. This is one of the best governments Lebanon ever had, it's a serious government, and the result of a democratic process. They have made it clear that they do not endorse the actions Hezbollah took...They recalled their ambassador, who publicly took the Hezbollah position vs. The official Lebanese Government position."

We don't mean to put too fine a point on this, but we think that the current Lebanese government (best ever?) would be a lot more fantastic if Hezbollah wasn't actually one of its members. Like if Hezbollah didn't actually have cabinet ministers with portfolios and voting rights and stuff, that would be really great - and the State Department's declaration that the Lebanese government has nothing to do with this would seem a lot less convuluted.
We're not even talking about how it's near-black letter international law that if you let a militia use your country to start a war, you're responsible for that war. Or about how the Lebanese government created this situation by refusing to lift a finger while Hezbollah was transforming southern Lebanon into a gigantic military base and launching pad. Forget all that.
All we want to know is how it could possibly be the case that the Lebanese government is not responsible for Hezbollah's actions - when Hezbollah is actually part of that government. But maybe we're just not sophisticated enough to figure this out - if someone from the State Department could explain it very slowly, we'd be much obliged.
In fairness, the rest of the conversation is actually kind of gratifying. For instance, it's nice to see that people at Foggy Bottom recognize that Hezbollah is using Israel's presence in the formally Syrian Shebaa Farms as a pathetic pretext to continue killing Israelis. Gratifying, because about a year ago, the State Department wasn't even willing to go that far.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

UN Reports 'Promising' News for Ceasefire

They think they might be able to get Hezbollah off the hook again:

The UN team negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah said on Monday that it had achieved "some promising first efforts" to end hostilities. Vijay Nambiar, special political adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, told reporters that there had been "some promising first efforts on the way forward".

The UN: where Israel's enemies go when Israel starts firing back.
Omri | |

Al Jazeera: Not Just Journalists Any More

The news of Al Jazeera being pulled aside for suspicion of aiding the enemy has made it to English media... because the crew has been detained for the third time in 24 hours:

Police detained Al Jazeera crew members three times in twenty-four hours, the last being on Monday. The official cause for the brief arrests was suspicions against the crewmembers of reporting on the location of rocket hits in order to assist Hezbollah... On Monday police detained Al Jazeera manager Walid al-Omri for reporting of rocket hits in the Upper Galilee village of Kfar Yasif. Al-Omri was also detained late on Sunday.

This begins to wear thin.
Omri | |

Which of the Following Can't Be Trusted to Obey a Ceasefire?

The United Nations has called for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. That's very good and nice of course (who doesn't like it when people cease firing at each other?) but see if you can spot the hole in that plan:

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Hezbollah's al-Manar TV on Sunday that his group's fight against Israel just began. "Our fight against the enemy is just a beginning," Nasrallah said in the video tape. He said that Hezbollah's strength was not harmed by Israeli massive offensive in the past five days. "We are in full strength and we'll give them more surprise on the land." He vowed to use all means to exercise the right of resistance.

The "right of resistance" to what, we're not sure (actually, we're quite sure), but that's not the point. The point is that when you have people who don't even pretend to operate within the international rule of law, it's absurd to expect their victims to play by those rules. Only in the context of the fantasy land that is Middle East diplomacy could people actually expect Israel to act as if declaring a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon would stop the rain of missiles being launched by Hezbollah (not because Hezbollah isn't part of the Lebanese government - they are - but just because they'll ignore the UN's ceasefire while demanding that Israel obey it).
Omri | |

What Bad Anti-Israel Argument Will the LA Times Come Up With Today?

Sigh:

Many Lebanese scoff at criticism of Hezbollah's Iranian-made weaponry, pointing out bitterly that the U.S. manufactures much of Israel's arsenal.

Ohhh... Laura King, crack journalist, sure caught the US and Israel this time! Gotcha! Except that the US doesn't deny that it trades weapons to Israel like Iran does with regards to Hezbollah. Also, Israel isn't an internationally recognized terrorist entity - that's probably the other difference.
Omri | |

Breaking: Al Jazeera Crew Cited in Haifa for Broadcasting Impact Locations

Israeli officials have been very careful not to broadcast more than very local images of the rocket impacts in Haifa. It's obviously critical that Hezbollah be denied that kind of information - any knowledge of where the missiles are falling can be used to aim at Haifa's vulnerable chemical plants and oil refineries. Guess what news channel's reporters were picked up by Israeli officials for taking very broad, very precise images of the missile sites and beaming them directly to TV stations around the Muslim world.
Reshet B TV seems to have had this story first, and broadcast it over evening TV. Officials noticed an Al Jazeera team being a little too eager in their work: the camera crew seemed intent on taking very broad pictures of entire areas around the impact sites. The behavior was suspicious enough that the officials picked up the crew for questioning. The story has also made it to the web, and Walla is carrying the next stage of the story - the Al Jazeera whining (Hebrew):

Al-Jazeera: Reshet B is inciting against us. The crew of the Arab channel had been interrogated about the transmission of images from the rocket point of impact in Haifa.

It's not the first time Israel has had to address Al Jazeera's less than entirely journalistic motives.
Omri | |

NYT Finds the Single Person In Israel Opposed to Attacking Hezbollah

No seriously - even this person admits that nobody agrees with them:

"This attack was terrible, but I feel that if we hit back the shooting will only get worse," said Limor Avrahami, an occupational therapist at the hospital. "I know most people in Israel disagree with me, but I think this would be the best way to quiet things down."

The only thing we wonder: how long did it take Greg Myre to find this self-admittedly marginal opinion-holder? And what was his motive for making such an enormous effort?

UPDATE: We were wrong. There are actually thousands of idiots in Israel:

Some 1,000 people take part in march held in protest of Israeli operations in Lebanon, Gaza. Demonstrators call on government to cease military actions, negotiate for release of hostages

We expect them to become a "growing organized peace movement" in the Western media - in the same way that a couple dozen refusniks became a veritable tidal wave of anti-Sharon sentiment a couple of years ago. The other snarky thing we have to say: we wonder if they could hold this kind of peace demonstration in Lebanon against Hezbollah's acts of war. And by wonder we mean of course they couldn't.
Omri | |

Today's News from the Fantasy Land of International Diplomacy

We're not going to make you wait for it - this is really as good as it gets:

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi telephoned Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani on Sunday to urge Tehran to take an "active role" in diplomatic moves to solve the crisis in the Middle East. An Italian government source said the Iranian had not given an immediate response but would respond "in the coming days". Lebanon's government said Sunday that Italy has relayed Israeli conditions to stop its assault on Lebanon: release the two captured Israel Defense Forces soldiers and pull Hezbollah back from the Israeli border.

Of course, everything else must pale in comparison after something of such sublime beauty as that - asking Iran to help neutrally negotiate the end of a war that it and its proxies started. Still, it's probably worth noting that the G8 thinks that Israel has the right to self-defense... but only self-defense exercised with restraint (yes, that kind of restraint). Also that Europe wants another UN obsrever force sent to Lebanon:

"We are convinced that the government of Lebanon must be given all support and that the relevant UN resolutions regarding the south of Lebanon must also be implemented," Merkel said. "We also demand that in addition to the UN activities, another observation and security mission is established. That must be worked out through the UN," she said.

The current observer force was only been complicit in helping Hezbollah get away with attacking and kidnapping the last batch of Israeli soldiers. Let's send another one in!
Omri | |

This War Will Set Its Own Pace - Arab Machismo and the Coming Escalation

How will escalation in this war happen? It will happen in part because the lunatics that are attacking Israel don't really know what they're doing. They're a combination of braggadocio and machismo built on a foundation of incompetence and fanaticism. These organizations and entities - Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, etc - are not totally in control of all of their people. Various spokesmen from various factions speak for the entire organization - but since these Arab fanatics speak in terms of honor and martyrdom, no one can ever say "that other spokesman who said we were going to launch rockets at Haifa... yeah, actually we'd rather not risk that escalation."
And so you have anonymous Hezbollah people reading statements on the air promising that Hezbollah would attack Haifa if Israel attacked Beirut. Now of course Israel was going to attack certain neighborhoods in Beirut - that's where Hezbollah has their 20 story office buildings and all the rest of their logistical network. So because Hezbollah can't ever look like they want to do anything but trigger a major war in the region, any Hezbollah idiot has the power guarantee massive escalation by committing Hezbollah to doing something incredibly stupid in reaction to something Israel was already in the process of doing.
Ditto for the Iranian lunatic who committed Iran to attacking Israel if Israel attacks Syria. An Israeli-Syrian confrontation is inevitable - not because Israel wants it, but because Syria has to trigger it. For the last two decades, Syria has been strutting around and insisting that they were Lebanon's protectors from Israel. Their justification for turning Lebanon into a Syrian colony was that they were Lebanon's big brothers, and that they would come to Lebanon's aid in case of an Israeli attack. Well, now Israel is attacking - and Syria has to either slink back home with its tail between its legs or attack the IDF. Arab pride being what it is, they can't just admit "you know, starting a potential world war seems like a steep price to pay just so that we don't look stupid for making up excuses to meddle in Lebanese affairs." So Syria is committed to at least a confrontation with Israel's military.
Now Israel obviously cannot just let it be attacked because the Syrian leadership is too worried about its masculinity not to try to kill Israelis. They will not fight this war with a hand tied behind their back, and they will respond to Syrian aggression with force. And now we have this Iranian idiot - knowing that an Syria must attack Israel and that Israel must respond - committing Iran to attacking Israel if Israel attacks Syria. And once Iran launches their missiles at the dense Israeli population centers, we're talking hundreds of thousands of deaths. After that first attack, the Jewish State will not allow a regime that promises to eradicate it from the planet a second chance.
Omri | |

Ahmadinejad: The Middle East's Charmer

Lunatic or not a lunatic, puppet or not a puppet... this guy is just a total douchebag:

"The Zionists think that they are victims of Hitler, but they act like Hitler and behave worse than Genghis Khan," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday. He was quoted by the Iranian News Agency. Earlier, Iran denied Israeli claims that it had troops in Lebanon and that it helped Hizbullah to attack an Israeli warship, saying the guerrilla group could fend for itself without outside help.

Well, as long as the massive package of nuclear incentives that the world is giving him will make him think that he has to change his behavior, we're sure everything will work out just fine.
Omri | |

Hey Did You Hear About Massive Israeli Humanitarian Efforts in Gaza?

If Israeli humanitarian efforts aren't written about by the press, do they still exist? Yes:

Foreign Ministry Director General, Aaron Abramovich, notified representatives of the international donor community and humanitarian relief organizations of the new contact structure and its planned role at an urgent meeting convened this evening at the MFA in Jerusalem. Abramovich briefed the international representatives on Israel's efforts to help meet the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza and Israel's commitment to working with the international donor community and the humanitarian relief organizations to that end. Representatives of the aid community were also invited to share their views with the Israeli side, and related their concerns and needs.

In all honesty, there really is a risk of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But it's tough to know how great that potential is - to say nothing of working to avert it - as long as the Palestinians keep cynically rejecting Israeli aid just so they can paint an extra-miserable picture for journalists.
And as for the journalists themselves: if they would stop mindlessly parroting and rewarding these cynical Palestinian leaders, then the leaders would lose their incentive to sacrifice their populations for a photo-op.
Omri | |

European Definition of Disproportionate - We Think We Get It

You know, for a long time it's been baffling to us how - no matter how little force Israel uses in self-defense - it's always too much for the Europeans. Usually, Europe can be counted on to just wholesale condemn any Israeli campaigns. But in this case, the justification for Israeli actions is so overwhelmingly obvious that they can't say that Israel isn't allowed to retaliate. So instead they've come up with condemnations for disproportionate force:

President Jacques Chirac said Friday that Israel's military offensive against Lebanon is "totally disproportionate" and asked whether destroying Lebanon was not the ultimate goal.

So Israel is allowed to retaliate against really obvious, really vicious attacks - but they're not allowed to retaliate so much that they can actually win. But it got us thinking: how much retaliation against Muslim extremists is too much for European nations like France? And then we remembered... oh, that explains it.
Europe: where any force against Muslim extremism is too much force.

UPDATE: Speaking of which, have you noticed that Hezbollah is only really being criticized for kidnapping the two soldiers and not for all of the other things it's doing... like committing acts of war or launching hundreds of rockets into Israeli cities. Sure Europe is saying that it's not nice to launch rockets, but how come that isn't a "disproportionate response" to what's pissing Hezbollah off - all those Israeli civilians' insistence on just being so damn Jewish.
Omri | |

Blog Roundup - 2006-07-14

Some posts that you might have slipped through the cracks the last couple of days...

* In fact, twice is barely enough to cover the UN chief's outrageous denial of a UN member state's basic right of self-defense (a right, we might remind the Secretary General, that is enshrined in the UN charter). Extensive mockery over multiple posts from Meryl (starting here) and fundamental reaction from Lynn.

* Jawa Report passes on Stratfor saying that the reserve callup that just happened means a long-term war. Yes, a full mobilization does mean that because Israeli society literally grinds to a halt when that happens. But so far only one battalion has been activated. Which is not to say that a long-term war isn't on the horizon: just that Stratfor may have jumped the gun on pointing to this callup as proof.

* Allison Kaplan Sommer on the Haifa missiles: "the rubicon has been crossed". Yes, that Allison Kaplan Sommer - the left of center one that every sane person on the planet thinks is the epitome of reasonability.

* LGF links to a DKos post about how great it would be if Israel was destroyed. Apparently, the reason that people want to kill Jews is because of how Jews act. If Jews acted differently, then (and seriously, this is a direct quote, there would be "no more suicide bombers or sniper fire, and no more dead civilians... Palestinians and Jews could live together and the world could address other issues"). The pathetic activist who penned this post, of course, announced in advance that he knew he would be called anti-Semitic just for taking his anti-Zionist stance, which means that he must be very brave. Or he's a self-obsessed, attention deprived clown who struts around with faux machismo, declaring conspicuously anti-Semitic positions just so he can get offended when it's pointed out to him that those things sound anti-Semitic. Could be anything, really. * Meryl Yourish ends the prisoner swap debate before it begins. Warning: this post might give you nightmares. At a minimum it will turn your stomach. No joke. * KesherTalk has been on a tear about opposition to Hezbollah throughout the Arab blogosphere. We'd like to think that (a) it's a reflection of the mood of the Arab street or (b) that the public mood could make a difference in the actions of Iran's proxy armies. We don't. But here's the link anyway, because the opposition of Arab bloggers is the theme of Slate's blog roundup this morning (and Instapundit is interested in this angle too)... but KesherTalk seems to have done the roundup first. * Donald Sensing might as well have title his Winds of Change post "Israel is Screwed". We're not quite sure, but as we read it a mere five paragraphs are all that seperate his "disengagement sucks" assertion from his "occupation and annexation is impossible" quote, and at least a couple of those paragraphs are about Vietnam. Then again, of course, if you think that both controlling and not controlling large chunks of land will equally fail for Israel, then yeah, Israel does seem inevitably screwed. We're not sure we agree, but the post has the exact same line and link - "Kofi Annan has already condemned Israel's counterstrikes against Hezbollah" - pasted in twice.

* Also on disengagement: M. Simon opines:

I watched NBC news for the first time in a long time to catch the latest on Israel. The commentary at the end of segment went something like this: "Israel left Lebanon 6 years ago. They left Gaza a year ago. Why can't they leave Israel alone?" Which goes back to my previous points about Sharon. He has created a situation where even a weak leader can take strong measures.

We're not sure we agree that this sentiment is at all widespread, but really, really we'd like to.

* And finally, we're not on board with this new practice of dropping Andrew Sullivan insults as a way of demonstrating membership in the conservative bloggers' club, but the line "who knew the garden of Gethsemane had wi-fi?" is objectively funny.
Omri | |

Hezbollah: All of Israel is Occupied Palestine

We expect that in the coming days journalists will slowly start dropping references to what Israeli could do to convince Hezbollah to stop, you know, trying to kill them. And while it's not exactly a newsflash that Hezbollah seeks to wipe out all of Israel, somehow that fact will get lost in the stories (no doubt accidentally, in the rush to meet a print deadline). So just a reminder: as of yesterday, Hezbollah still considered all of Israel to be Occupied Palestine:

The Lebanese group said on Wednesday that it had captured the pair to secure the release of detainees held in Israeli prisons. "In order to fulfil a promise to free the prisoners and detainees, the Islamic Resistance captured at 9:05am [0605 GMT] two Israeli soldiers at the borders with occupied Palestine," Hezbollah said referring to its military wing.

Hey, maybe if Israel just gave back a little more land, its Arab enemies would accept its existence.
Omri | |

Things That Don't Meaningfully Exist: Divisions Among Arab Terrorists, Divisions Within the Arab Public, and Unicorns

The Washington Post doesn't seem to realize that Hamas controls the Palestinian government. Seriously, will someone please send a fax or something:

By pounding the Beirut airport and other civilian targets yesterday, the Israelis have taken a step back in time - to tactics that have been tried repeatedly in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories without much success... the outcome is likely to be similar to what has happened in Gaza over the past several weeks: Israeli attacks to free a captured soldier further weakened the Palestinian Authority without much damaging the terrorists.

The Palestinian Authority is controlled by Hamas, who are... wait for it... yes, the terrorists who kidnapped the soldier. This paragraph represents a flavor of the "divisions among Arab groups that want to destroy Israel (should be exploited)" theme that provides the fodder for shallow cocktail and hallway conversations among self-styled sophisticates.
A more explicit version of the "division among Arab groups" theme is that weird LA Times pipe dream qua assertion qua blind quote that Hamas and Hezbollah are in competition. We'll pass on the same NYT link that Slate did when they talking about this article - the one that carefully explains the lines of financing, training, and support between the groups.
As to this mass political movement in the Arab public against anti-Israel violence: sure, there might be divisions between different Arab groups or between any particular Arab group and a particular part of an Arab country. But those are all debates and dynamics that happen on the margins. The main dynamic is this: a majority of Palestinians just voted for Hamas in a democratic election, while Hezbollah is Lebanon's largest political party. There might be reasons for Israel not to massively retaliate against Hamas and Hezbollah, but this fantasy that there is some kind of mass, public opposition that Israel is setting back is not one of them.
We're almost beginning to suspect that all of the bad arguments against Israeli self-defense are being driven not by clear-headed analysis, but rather as a desperate search for... reasons Israel's shouldn't defend itself.
Omri | |

News Roundup - 2006-07-14

* The United Nations, where Arab countries go when Israel starts to fire back:

Lebanese Communications Minister Ghazi Al-Aridi told local media outlets Thursday afternoon that the Lebanese government has asked for a ceasefire to immediately end the IDF attacks in its territory. Al-Aridi said his country is interested in an immediate and total ceasefire and will make use of all available channels towards this end. Meanwhile, the Lebanese government has demanded that the UN convene an emergency session to discuss the Israeli offensive. The Katyusha fire on Israel is continuing, as are the Israeli bombardments in Lebanon. As a result of the escalation UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has announced that he is dispatching a three-person delegation to the Middle East in an attempt to ease tensions.

You know why ceasefires don't work? Because the Arab terrorist organizations and militia groups don't obey them. Or rather, they obey them just until they regroup and are ready to try their hands at murders and kidnappings again. And do you know how we know that's true? Because a couple of months ago, Hezbollah launched some rockets at Israeli cities. The IDF immediately went over the top, and threatened to knock out large chunks of infrastructure in Beirut. A ceasefire was immediately offered to Israel and accepted - which held, just until Hezbollah was ready.

* In between considering how best to condemn Israel for defending itself in Lebanon, the Security Council also found time to vote on a resolution condemning Israel for defending itself in the Gaza Strip Bolton vetoed. Obviously.

* We're quite sure that the fact that Hezbollah directly hit Maccabi Hospital with a missile is not something you're going to be able to learn from most news outlets.

* Aww... Laura King is back. We missed Laura King. We haven't seen her on a byline in a while, and she's our favorite! But now she's back to lend her famous dispassionate eye to the situation. Simply going by quotes in her article, it would seem like Israeli opinion is running 2 to 1 against attacking Lebanon. We wonder if she only quotes political sources from Meretz and way left Labor politicians because she's trying to stack the deck, or whether she just doesn't know anyone on the other side of the political spectrum to talk to.

* Charles Krauthammer tries to slowly explain to "gullible and historically ignorant Westerners" that the coordinated Arab violence against Israel can't be about the Occupation: (1) it is mostly coming from areas that aren't occupied, (2) Arab campaigns of war and terrorism began before 1967, and (3) Arab countries and terrorists openly insist that the issue at stake is Israel's very act of coming into existence in 1948. We presume that the answer of diplomatic sophisticates would be to just insist that Israel is at fault with more vehemence, or to insist that he accused them of anti-Semitism and that they're not going to be intimidated by him.

* On the same day that Iran threatens to declare war against Israel, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany reveal a package deal that would give Iran nuclear reactors. That is all.
Omri | |

New York Times Changes, Scrubs Stupid Headline Designed to Set Up Israelis as Warmongers. MR Provides Screenshot.

Of the myriad the stupid and misleading ways to describe Hezbollah, yesterday morning's New York Times web headline - "Lebanese Rebels" - was truly spectacular (Update 4). It's not just that the headline slides somewhere between the demonstrably wrong and the outright incoherent - its that like most factual journalistic errors about the Middle East, the mistake somehow reflects negatively on Israel (what a coincidence!)
First, the error. It really is a sad day for the Grey Lady when someone can go to Al Jazeera and get more accurate reporting about Hezbollah's descriptions to Syria and Lebanon:

The Syria-backed group... refused to comment but its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, will announce the group's position at a news conference in coming days. Hezbollah, the only Lebanese faction to retain its weapons after the 1975-90 civil war, is also a political party with 14 members of parliament and two cabinet ministers.

Since Hezbollah is actually a member of Lebanon's parliament and is backed by Lebanon's ruler Syria, Hezbollah militia are rebels only if rebel no longer mean "soldier who fights against his own government". And since it does still mean that, the New York Times headline seems kind of silly (besides, even if that wasn't the case, Hezbollah is committed to attacking and destroying a country that the Lebanese government is in a state of war with - which makes them in the very, very, very worst case military allies of the Lebanese government).
But like many mischaracterizations of the Middle East, this is a mistake with a purpose. If Hezbollah is really on the other side of the vast majority of Lebanese, then Israel's actions against Lebanon would be the actions of irrational warmongers. You can can almost hear the fashionable cocktail party faux indignation now: "well you know, Hezbollah is actually a rebel army - Israel would be much better off appealing to those moderates than alienating the Lebanese people" (the bonus, of course, is that Israelis are not only blamed for the level of violence in the region, but also for the very fact that large numbers of people on the other side want to kill them). There's nothing parctircularly original about what this headline was trying to set up, although the utter hash he or she made of even the most basic Middle East fact should make them reconsider journalism as a career. At the very least, they should read some more coverage of the conflict before trying their hand again at setting up Israel to be demonized: there are plenty of far more seasons journalists out there who make their living framing stories in far more subtle anti-Israel ways, and this headline writer ever wants to get anywhere, he or she would do well to study their style. Here, we'll even help: here's Meryl Yourish's AP Bias archive. Don't say that we never did anything for you.
One more thing before we forget. When someone with a brain at the New York Times woke up and looked at the headline, they obviously rushed to change it. The original headline isn't even in the Google News cache, although you can see a link to the old headline by clicking on the cache of this old menu. Or, even easier, here's a screenshot of this pathetic attempt at journalistic bias:

Omri | |

BBC Slips, Proves Liberal Gaza Occupation Fetish

A little over a week ago we pointed out the strange linguistic phenomenon, where journalists keep talking as if Israel had never withdrawn from the Gaza Strip at all. Specifically, journalists kept talking as if Shalit was captured in the Gaza Strip, instead of what really happened: Hamas crossed the international border into Israel and attacked an army base on Israeli land. We don't think this is necessarily a concious thing. Rather, the reflex to blame Israel is so strong that, if there isn't a coherent way to do it (and since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, there isn't one)... if there isn't a coherent way to do it, their minds just make on up. Here's the last paragraph from a BBC story that went up a little while ago:

The operation comes as Israel continues a separate offensive in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli soldier was captured there last month.

Uhh... no he wasn't. He was captured on his army base - which is not in the Gaza Strip - and brought there.
Omri | |

Breaking: Haifa Hit - The Definition of Escalation

* Updated and bumped *

UPDATE 11 (15:35 EST) Now they're saying the missile was an Iranian Fajr-7 missile. The Moderate Voice had listed those kinds of missiles in an inventory of Hezbollah munitions not more than an hour ago.

UPDATE 10 (15:20 EST): BBC reports that the rockets landed in Stella Marris, a Christian (technically right - we think they mean Carmelite though...) area of Haifa.

UPDATE 9 (15:00 EST): Missile size definitely revised down to 122mm.

UPDATE 8 (14:45 EST): The size of the missiles is being estimated downward by Israeli sources... could've been Katyushas after all

UPDATE 7: We missed this announcement from this morning:

And what about the threat of long-range rockets, which are threatening population centers inside Israel? "Even if they have thousands, we have at least 10 times more," the officer clarified. "If they attack Haifa and Hadera, it will constitute a reason to severely damage Lebanese infrastructures, including Hizbullah's 20-story buildings inside Beirut."

There are entire neighborhoods in Beirut that are literally office buildings and logistical bases for Hezbollah. You'll know when the IAF knocks them down, because it will be reported with headlines like "Israeli air force bombs Beirut neighborhoods" by mainstream news sources.

UPDATE 6: And now this: these missiles were NOT Katyushas. They were far bigger, and Israeli sources are speculating (still just spectulating) that it was a version of Iran's Raad-1 missile. It seems to have been loaded with explosive power equal to 100KG of explosives.

UPDATE 5: Israeli news reporting that a third missile has hit Haifa.

UPDATE 4: Israeli news is passing on statements from Nasrallah's #2 guy saying that Hezbollah didn't fire the missiles at Israel. Now they'll probably try to blame it on some rogue terrorist or something. We don't know what he's so worried about - as long as everyone keeps thinking that Haifa is just a small port in the north, it shouldn't be a problem...

UPDATE 3: Oh for crying out loud! This is CNN's lede on the missiles that hit Haifa:

Two rockets struck the northern Israeli port of Haifa Thursday... The missiles were fired from inside Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said, in a sharp escalation of attacks launched by Hezbollah guerrillas. The attack on the city of 280,000 was the first time Hezbollah rockets have hit so deeply into Israeli territory.

And if this lede hadn't been written by either a complete idiot or someone dedicated to minimizing the absolutely earth-shattering scope of this attack, here's how it would have read:

Two rockets struck the northern Israeli city of Haifa Thursday... The missiles were fired from inside Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said, in an unprecedented escalation of attacks launched by Lebanon's Syria-backed Hezbollah milita. The attack on the city of 280,000, Israel's third-largest city and the home to several global technology and manufacturing firms, was the first time Hezbollah rockets have hit so deeply into Israeli territory.

But of course, that's not how it read. Because when people can't find Haifa on a map, it's relatively easy to write stories that will leave them absolutely unprepared to anticipate or appreciate what Israel must now do to respond to this outrage.

UPDATE 2: Missile attack on Haifa is now 100% confirmed.

UPDATE 1: The mayor of Haifa is now on the news, saying that he saw a missile hit the city with his own eyes.

CNN frontpage - CNN / AP report that Hezbollah rockets have landed on Haifa. Also being reported on Walla and... now over Israeli news channels.
Omri | |

The Nation Comments on the Middle East Situation

In an email from a couple of minutes ago, The Nation explains to its readers the real source of all of the bloodshed and violence in the Middle East. And wouldn't you know it, it's a cynical Israeli ploy to get more land:

The Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has exploited the capture of Army Corporal Gilad Shalit to restore the country's diminished deterrence against militant Palestinian factions, to break the elected Hamas government and to impose its unilateral territorial solution on the West Bank. But, as Marwan Bishara writes, when the dust finally settles, Israel's offensive against the besieged territories--and now Lebanon--will have left the region with more destruction and death and the Israeli government with the same strategic deadlock.

What - exactly - has to happen before Western liberal sophisticates will be willing to listen to the argument that maybe... just maybe... there might be something to this whole "there are Arabs who just want to wipe out Israel" theory? Because apparently, coming across a border to commit kidnap and murder isn't enough while declaring that you intend to liberate all of "Occupied Palestine" isn't enough.
Seriously, we're just asking.
Omri | |

News Roundup - 2006-07-13

World reactions and the journalists who pass them on... * Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour having a little chit-chat in the hallway with Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman: Gillerman responded: "Your own people, your government had two choices. Take care of its people or turn it into a terrorist. You chose the latter, and you're paying the price." "No, that is not true," Mansour said. "The problem is occupation," Mansour said. "Once occupation is completely out, then peace and freedom will prevail. Consider it seriously." Oh yeah, obviously. We mean, that's exactly what happened when Israel completely ended its presence in Lebanon - the terrorists put down their weapons, and peace and freedom prevailed. Wait, no - that's not right. The terrorists armed themselves, kept up their anti-Jewish lunacy, and now there's a war going on.

* President Bush defended Israel's right to defend itself... right before his State Department issued calls for restraint. Let's see, where have we heard that before... calls for restraint, calls for restraint... oh, calls for restraint!.

* It's almost cute to watch shallow, reflexively liberal newspapers - outlets not used to covering things like wars with any more depth than that provided by knee-jerk anti-Americanism - publish editorials advising Israel on diplomatic-military strategy. The Boston Globe announces that Iran is behind the multi-prong conspiracy to draw Israel into a regional war (no kidding? Maybe if we sent European diplomats to Iran they'd change their minds). And then, applying their Bismarck-like geopolitical instincts, they conclude that Israel shouldn't attack Lebanon. Because the best way for Israel to foil Iran's plans to murder Israelis is to let Hamas and Hezbollah murder Israelis. And before you ask, no - there are no suggesting in the article for what Israel could do instead of attacking Lebanon.

* The New York Times thinks it might be the case that Arab and Muslims countries are working together to coordinate attacks on Israel. This is news that still news to the Los Angeles Times, which quotes a blind source that we're going to assume they totally made up to the effect that Hezbollah and Hamas are in competition with each other (link is to Slate... quote might be from LAT print edition because we can't find it online)

* Speaking of the New York Times, this is from about 20 minutes ago:

The Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah surprised Israel with a bold daylight assault across the border on Wednesday, leading to fighting in which two Israeli soldiers were captured and at least eight killed, and elevating recent tensions into a serious two-front battle. Early on Thursday morning, Israeli warplanes fired missiles at the runways at Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut, shutting the airport and potentially stranding thousands of visitors at the peak of tourist season.

We leave you with this question: what's more annoying? The totally irrelevant little thing about tourists, or the propaganda-like poetry celebrating the boldness and heroics of Hezbollah thugs? We think it's the tourist thing because it's just so random, but we can see an argument going the other way
Omri | |

Palestinians Threaten Massive Israeli Civilian Casualties. No One Really Seems Surprised.

We live in a world where it is more or less accepted as a basic reality that Israel will be condemned for military actions no matter how careful they are. People can split hairs and talk about how, at the margins, massive Israeli efforts might sway a few people here or there - but does anyone doubt that any Israeli action no matter how justified would not be an excuse for the majority of the UN to condemn the Jewish State?
Sometimes - as in the case of the Israeli invasion of Gaza - the justifications are so overwhelming and compelling that even recogning them would make a condemnation seem silly. To deal with those cases, Qatar came up with a billiant solution in the United Nations: simply ignore them. Can't condemn Israel for going into Gaza after a kidnapped soldier? Just pretend that there is no kidnapped soldier. Brilliant! A surreal fantasy land...
And now we have this morning's declaration from moderate Palestinian President Abbas's own party that they intend to intentionally target Israeli cities with rockets:

While Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip have been contending with almost daily missile attacks, Palestinian rockets will now be launched regularly on other side of the country aimed at Jewish communities a few miles from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Abu Oudai, a chief rocket coordinator for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview.Abu Oudai claimed major Israeli cities and the country's international airport would eventually become Palestinian rocket targets.
"Our goal is to cover all Israeli regions and to bring them inside the distance of our rockets," said Abu Oudai, speaking from Nablus. "Every Israeli site or city is inside our capabilities and if some sites are not yet they will be very soon. The Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem every site and city will be targeted. We are speaking about a new era in the conflict between us and the enemy."

When Israel was still in Lebanon, an attack on Hezbollah positions hidden among civilians caused Israeli rockets to go astray and land in Palestinian population camps. Over a decade later, Israeli officials and generals are still discussed in Europe as war criminals. These terrorist thugs boast about being able to wipe out Israeli cities, and it's not even recognized as out of the ordinary.
We have little doubt that the Palestinians will try to launch rockets at as many Israeli houses and schools as they possibly can. And we have no doubt that Israel will retaliate. The only question we have is: when the international community condemns Israel for that retaliation, will they say that it was a disproportionate reaction to the Palestinian atrocities, or will they just pretend that those atrocities never occurred?
Omri | |

Breaking: Israel Attacks Hezbollah Infrastructure, Engages Lebanese Army

What is going on in Lebanon is not a terrorist attack or an air strike. It is an actual war, like the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. Something on a scale that has not occurred in at least some of our readers' lifetime. Israel has not yet issued a general call-up, but it is no longer pretending that there's a difference between Hezbollah and the country that funds, supports, and supplies it. Already last night, Israel began to cut off Hezbollah's supply lines - supply lines that bear a curious similarity to civilian infrastructure:

Beirut's main airport was forced to close after Israeli fighter jets hit all three of its runways, leaving huge craters and making them unusable. Other airfields also were attacked Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said, but details were not immediately available. Israel said it targeted the airport in the capital's suburbs because it was used to transfer weapons and supplies to Hezbollah, the militant group that captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in raids earlier this week. Lebanese Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat called the airport strikes a "general act of war," saying they had nothing to do with Hezbollah but were instead an attack against the country's "economic interests," especially its tourism industry.

Now JPost and Ha'aretz pass on news of Israeli airstrikes against Lebanese military bases:

Israel Air Force warplanes blasted runways at the main Lebanese army air base in eastern Lebanon near Syria's border Thursday evening, Lebanese police said. Jets dropped two bombs on the runway at the Rayak air base in the eastern Bekaa Valley, damaging it, police said. There were no reports of casualties. Rayak, 50 kilometers east of Beirut and about seven kilometers west of the Syrian border, is home to the country's main military air base and is military headquarters in eastern Lebanon. Shortly afterward, the IAF also bombed the small military airport of Qulayaat in northern Lebanon, security sources and witnesses said.

No doubt Israel will be condemned roundly for this aggression against the Lebanese military. That the Lebanese military was already taking potshots at Israeli forces yesterday will, we suspect, somehow get lost in the news coverage (no doubt accidentally, in the rush to make the print deadline!)
Omri | |

Breaking: Toll from Hezbollah Rockets Fired at Israeli Cities Now 2 Dead, 90 Injured. UN, EU Investigate Condemning Israel.

Just a few of the 12,000 Syrian and Iranian rockets that Hezbollah has set up in southern Lebanon (set up right in front of UN monitors and with full Lebanese support) are now finding their targets in Israel's population centers. The toll is rising quickly:

Katyusha rockets landed in the northern Israeli towns of Karmiel, Hatzor, and Majd el-Kurum, as well as several other communities, throughout the north on Thursday afternoon... At least 90 Israelis have been wounded since the onset of Operation Just Reward Wednesday afternoon. A 70-year-old Safed woman died of her wounds after arriving at the hospital, raising the civilian death toll to two. Hospitals throughout the North were ordered to raise their readiness level to Level Three, the second highest possible.

The Lebanese government committed to the full demilitarization and dismantling of Hezbollah after the United Nations certified that Israel had withdrawn all of Lebanon in 2000. Instead, Lebanon gave Hezbollah free reign to turn southern Lebanon into an arms depot, preparing for the day when they could fire indiscriminately at Israeli civilians.
Of course, when Lebanon promised to disarm a fanatical anti-Israel militia, nobody really believed them. In the same way, nobody had believed that Hezbollah would stop trying to murder Israelis once Israelis left Lebanon. But nonetheless, diplomats and spokespeople were willing to act and talk as if they believed that - and thus is international law conducted in the Middle East.
This would also be a good time to point out that there are considerable efforts being made in the EU and the UN today to find Israel in breach of international law. No word yet on whether or not Lebanon will be condemned for sanctioning and logistically supporting an act of war against Israel or for enabling the indiscriminate bombing of Israeli civilians. And by "no word yet" we mean "there is not a snowball's chance in hell".
Omri | |

MR Translates Journalistic Cliche - "Compromise" Means "Israeli Surrender"

Even before they officially became a news outlet for recognized terrorist organizations - so before roughly some time last week - the Washington Post was already publishing utterly indefensible characterizations of the current Gaza situation. June 5, 2006, headline: "Hamas ready to compromise if Israel swaps prisoners":

Syria and Hamas have told mediators that the Islamic movement will show flexibility in a confrontation over a captured Israeli soldier if Israel accepts a prisoner swap, political sources said on Wednesday. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal also said at a meeting with a visiting Turkish official that Hamas was ready to resist an all-out Israeli attack on the Gaza strip but preferred a deal to end the crisis, the sources told Reuters.

This, we submit to you, is a pretty stupid thing to write. Let's break it down. The democratically eleted, legitimately empowered, internationally recognized government of whatever it is the UN has declared the Palestinian entity to be ordered its army to commit an act of war against a neighboring stat. In promulgating this order, they sought to advance both their political and military situation viz a viz that state, which just happens to be Israel.
Militarily, Hamas successfully effected a spectacular attack on a military installation in their enemy's territory, murdering two soldiers. They demonstrated surprising military flexibility, while their enemy was tactically leaden and diplomatically hampered. Before and after, they literally shell Israeli cities indiscriminately, in violation of all norms of warfare. The effect was both partly tactical (the marginal but actual depletion of their enemy's infrastructure and army), but moreso psychological: they undermined Israel's deterrent by demonstrating that they could be successfully attacked with impunity. This was their ultimate military goal.
To achieve their political ends - the massive boost in credibility and power that comes with being on the side of "the Prisoners" - the Palestinian government effected the kidnapping of a third soldier to ransom in exchange for prisoners.
To deny Hamas any military from their act of war, the Israeli government has prepared a military reaction to demonstrate that Israeli cities will not be bombed and Israeli soldiers will not be bombed with impunity. In the political sphere, they have more or less declared their refusal to negotiate a prisoner exchange.
Finally, let's examine the Hamas proposal that the Washington Post described as a "compromise". It's terms are: Israel releases thousands of criminals and Israel agrees not to retaliate to the Palestinian government's willful bombing of Israeli cities and military invasion of Israeli land. In plain words, they give Hamas what it wants and allow Hamas to get away with murdering Israelis. In this context, the "compromise" would allow Hamas to succeed without reservation on the political front while even more dramatically solidifying the impression that Israel is a paper tiger that can be attacked in the most brazen form - without fear of retaliation. And what does Israel get back? In return for Israel's total capitulation, Hamas agrees to... release the soldier that they kidnapped with the intention of trading away in the first place! Hamas gains massively, while Israel forgoes retaliation for two boys who are in the ground and humiliatingly lets pass having rockets fired at its factories and schoolhouses.
A ceasefire deal where one side gains everything it went to war for and the other side doesn't even get back to zero is not a compromise, it's a surrender.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

MR Translates Diplomatic Nicities - "Restraint" Means "Israel Not Allowed to Act"

There's this reflex among journalists and diplomats to urge restraint on both sides right after an attack occurs. Which would be reasonable, if it wasn't almost always the case that the first attack is committed by Israel's enemies. So in the actual context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "urging restraint" is in almost every case "urging Israeli restraint". And why would people be "urging Israeli restraint"? Usually because Israel is about to let go of that restraint in response to attack or atrocity. We give you, as a pathetically predictable example, France:

France also expressed concern at the escalation. "I am very concerned about the latest developments on the Israel-Lebanon border," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said in a statement. "I condemn the rocket strikes this (Wednesday) morning on the town of Kyriat Shmona. I also condemn the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and I ask for their immediate and unconditional release," he said. "I call on all parties to show restraint and not engage in a cycle of violence in which civilian populations would be the first victims," he said.

Now, the fundamental problem is that - contrary to the insistence of, well, exactly who you'd expect - the Israeli-Arab conflict is not really a straight-forward cycle of violence. Both sides do engage in violence, yes, but that violence is not ongoing (seriously - if Israel was to launch an ongoing military campaign against the Palestinians, do you really think the war would last very long?) Rather, the violence is episodic - and almost every major turn of the wheel has is initiated as an attack or an escalation by Israel's enemies. The call for restraint does not happen in a vacuum - it happens after Israelis have already been attacked or kidnapped, but before Israel has retaliated. Maybe in a very, very abstract sense it's all very nice and good to always advocate restraint - but when real life diplomats get up on stage, it's way too often with a spliced CNN feed: half on the diplomats abstractly urging restraint from both sides and the other half showing the lights of ambulances and fire trucks in front of where an Israeli cafe used to be.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

1 Killed, 15 Injured as Hezbollah Bombs Israeli Civilian Centers

Having watched Hamas launch bombs and rockets at Israeli homes and schools for weeks - and having seen how journalists and diplomats rushed to blame Israel - Hezbollah continued in their terrorist brethren's footsteps and launched their own rockets. One Israeli civilian was killed in the indiscriminate bombing, another 15 were injured. We're sure that at this moment, a resolution is being crafted in the United Nations to condemn these obvious crimes. After all, these are the people who condemn Israel for precision missile strikes against terrorists - surely the directing of bombs towards houses in order to murder civilians will draw the same kinds of condemnations that Israel's elimination of terrorist leaders does.
Omri | |

Special Cabinet Communique - July 12, 2006

Don't know how long ago this went up on the MFA site, but it just got distributed over email. Money grafs:

This action, along with the events of the past month, creates a new and complex reality that compels us to deal with it. Today's attack, like the 25 June 2006 attack at Kerem Shalom, is the product of those who perpetrate terrorism and those who give it shelter. Israel views the sovereign Lebanese Government as responsible for the action that originated on its soil and for the return of the abducted soldiers to Israel. Israel demands that the Lebanese Government implement UN Security Council Resolution #1559 (http://tinyurl.com/dlejl).
However, there is no doubt that Hizbullah, a terrorist organization operating inside Lebanon, initiated and perpetrated today's action; Israel will act against it in a manner required by its actions... Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: "Due to the sensitivity of the issue, I ask that the Cabinet approve the recommendations that have been submitted by the security establishment and authorize myself, Defense Minister Peretz, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Vice Premier Shimon Peres, Industry, Trade and Employment Minister Eli Yishai, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz and Public Security Minister Avi Dichter to approve the detailed actions that have been presented by the security establishment."

Other than the fact that the MFA is embedding tinyurl links into official communiques of staggering historical import, 2 other things seem worth mentioning.
First, and this might be news only to us, but we didn't realize until now just how irrelevent Peretz's job as Defense Minister really is. It was quite public at the time that Olmert made Peretz Defense Minister only because the other alternative - letting the Commie run the Finance Ministry - was certain economic suicide. But the move also seemed to have the benefit of effectively rendering Peretz meaningless, since the IDF brass was unlikely to be influenced in their deliberations by a guy who knows nothing about anything military. Now on top of that, this is the first time we've actually noticed the composition of the Security cabinet - the body that will be making many of the day to day decisions in the upcoming war: five Kadima members, the leader of Shas, and Peretz.
Second: we still have no idea whether the Israeli government is threatening Syria or not. We started the morning quite convinced that Olmert was a couple of hours away from bombing Syrian military installations. Then late in the morning IDF brass emphasized that Syria was off the hook this time. But now there's this weird language from the Communique about how Israel recognizes that Hezbollah is more than just Lebanon and will act accordingly. In the end, it's probably all moot anyway because Syria can't not get involved.
Omri | |

Confusion About Whether Israel is Going to Bomb Syria: Not Just MR

See? It's not just us. Even JPost See?is confused:

The question, however, is who the other side is. If the air force buzzed Syrian President Bashar Assad's summer palace after Hamas killed two soldiers and kidnapped Gilad Shalit two weeks ago, then one could expect the IAF to level the palace - and more - after Hizbullah killed seven soldiers and captured two others. Syria, after all, is - together with Iran - Hizbullah's sponsor. And, indeed, Olmert had some harsh words to say about Syria. Throughout the recent period, Syria has proven that it is a terrorist government," Olmert said with Koizumi standing at his side... But to do so, to go on a strong military offensive against Syria, Israel would need international legitimacy, and getting legitimacy to declare war on Syria for an act perpetrated from Lebanese soil by a party within the Lebanese government, would be difficult to obtain.

Of course, as loyal MR readers you knew all that by 6:30 EST, since our comment when we passed on that press conference was exactly the same thing: "we don't see how Israel can avoid military strikes against Syria. If Hamas's actions were enough to justify the IDF buzzing Assad's house... look, the Hezbollah rockets used in this morning's attack are either Syrian in origin or came from Iran through Syrian lands with Syrian blessing".
Incidentally, this is a neat little example of just how surreal Middle East diplomacy has become: (a) everyone openly admits that for all intents and purposes Lebanese policy is what Syria wants it to be and (b) everyone openly admits that Hezbollah is backed by and takes its order from Syria. Yet everyone goes around busily pretending otherwise, lest someone point out the obvious: that the little fantasy world of international law - where Arab countries actually obey the rules that they hysterically (and usually falsely) accuse Israel of violating - is not just disconnected from, but is very close to the opposite to, reality.
Omri | |

Destination: Not Syria, but Lebanon?

Walla's ticker has some quotes from a press conference given earlier by General of the Northern Command Udi Adam. The one that is potentially the most problematic for Mere Rhetoric is: "we have no intentions of involving Syria. I hope that in Syria, they (Syrians) understand that they had better not intervene. This issue is with Lebanon". If true, this will make us look quite silly.
On the other hand, if Hezbollah TV is to be believed (and, in all fairness, the answer is no)... but if they are, then Lebanon may have just committed itself to something it might have wanted to avoid:

Air Defense forces of the Lebanese Army fired at IAF airplanes over the city Sidon, in Lebanon, as reported by the television station of the Hizbollah.

When the IAF hit Syria's radar station a little while ago, Syria didn't even bother scrambling their jets. If Lebanon really intends to engage Israeli arms with its own assets (let alone to send its army out to meet Israel) - if Lebanon is really going to get in the IDF's way, things could go quite badly for them quite quickly.
Omri | |

Updates 1 - Hezbollah's Act of War

*bumped and closed - future updates in next update post *

UPDATE 12: From Israel at Level Ground: "IDF ground forces enter southern Lebanon in massive show of force; tank runs over hidden land mine, killing three soldiers, according to initial reports."

UPDATE 11: Reports are that was a seperate loss of up to seven Israeli soldiers after the IDF crossed the border in pursuit. This might be where Hezbollah is claiming they destroyed a tank.

UPDATE 10: Not a tank:

Three Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed and two others were abducted Wednesday morning in an attack by guerillas from the militant Hezbollah organization. The militants attacked two IDF armored Hummer jeeps patrolling along the border with gunfire and explosives, in the midst of massive shelling attacks on Israel's north.

You know, in normal countries the idea of "massive shelling attacks" would itself be something out of the ordinary. People throughout the world might even comment on this situation - perhaps by noticing how strange it is that the proxy militia of one country should be routinely launching rockets and bombs at the houses and schools of another country. But not in Israel. No, where Israel is concerned it's just kind of taken as a given that there are days when fanatical Muslim soldiers will wake up grumpy and try to murder Jews, because that's just what they do. For instance - and we obviously don't agree with these people - but we can kind of sort of see how, if one ignores things like history, justice, and recent polling data... how one might think that the Palestinians are victims.
But Hezbollah? Seriously. This is a political party which actually sits in the Lebanese parliament. Let's imagine for a second that their wild excuse that Israel is still occupying parts of Lebanon was even colorable - in that case, they should still go to the UN instead of launching armed attacks. But Hezbollah is willing to act on what the rest of the world only silently acknowledges: international law works a little different in Israel's case. Israel does not have to be afforded the same deference that other countries do. And so now we have this passage, where the phrase "in the midst of massive shelling" is a description of the landscape, not a news item in and of itself. We've reached a point that we've been tending towards for many years now: the notion that Israelis will occasionally be shelled for no other reason than their existence has now become part of the background.

UPDATE 9: Still can't find anything definite about casualty figures, but the best guess based on everything we've read is that Hezbollah hit a tank and then went in to grab what they could - living hostages or, failing that, bodies (which is what they did last time). Three soldiers are confirmed dead in the attack.

UPDATE 8: Small reference in aYNet article from a couple hours ago said that Hezbollah was claiming to have destroyed an Israeli tank. It seemed like bluster, but now there are reports in Israeli media that attack helicopters are clearing out an area for an extraction team.

UPDATE 7: Hey, do you think that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is now going to get to write a column for the Washington Post like Hamas Ismail Haniyeh just did? That's the deal right - kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers, get a column? Or do you think that the WaPo won't take Nasrallah because his thugs didn't manage to murder any Israeli soldiers in their attack like Haniyeh's managed to do? That might be the question: Is Nasrallah not a successful enough terrorist for the Washington Post to turn over column inches to him?

UPDATE 6: When U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch just told Hezbollah to give back the kidnapped soldiers and stop bombing houses, do you think that they didn't take him seriously because he's currently scheduled to visit the Palestinian territories (which, some of you will recall, are actually controlled by a government that kidnaps Israeli soldiers and bombs Israeli houses?) And if you answered no to that question, was it because you think that Hezbollah already didn't respect Welch because he's become State's go-to guy for weasley back-tracking on US anti-terrorism stances?

UPDATE 5: In the least shocking news ever, Hezbollah continues their "hey, if the world will make absurd excuses for Hamas's acts of war..." routine by calling for a prisoner exchange. Yeah but you know, this probably has nothing to do with many media outlets' surprisingly crude and heavyhanded opposition to Israel's campaign to get Shalit back.

UPDATE 4: Is there anyone actually in charge of the New York Times Middle East section? Or is it just a ferret on meth, randomly jumping on combinations of sentences that all somehow come out misrepresenting things in exactly the way that downplays the depth and breadth of anti-Israeli hatred in the Arab world. Headline on the Hezbollah attack: Lebanese Rebels Seize 2 Israeli Soldiers at Border. Rebels? Seriously? Hezbollah is Lebanese political party, recognized as totally legitimate by the state. And even if they weren't, they still wouldn't be rebels: rebels fight their own governments, not the enemies of their governments. But we suppose that "Lebanese / Syrian / Iranian proxy army seizes 2 Israeli soldiers" wouldn't really have that sophisticated "cycle of violence" oomph. And they say there's no culture of mentorship any more at the Times any more...

UPDATE 3: The EU has asked Hezbollah to please return the Israeli soldiers they just kidnapped. You know what we think? We don't think that Hezbollah really believes that the EU actually impose consequences against groups that kidnap Israeli soldiers and bomb Israeli towns. And the reason Hezbollah won't really believe that Europe cares about those things might have something to do with several EU countries' odious coddling of Hamas - a group that promised to and did kidnap Israeli soldiers and bomb Israeli towns.

UPDATE 2: English version confirming that a unit of reserves has been activated.

UPDATE 1: And there's the callup of reserves. Story is from 6:43am EST, with a blind quote from a military source that the callup will "change the rules of the game on the northern front".
Omri | |

Statement by FM Livni on attack from Lebanon

Reproduced from email. Should be on the MFA site relatively soon:

Israel was attacked today from Lebanon.
Hizbullah is a terrorist organization, which is part of the Lebanese government. The international community, including the Security Council, has demanded, repeatedly, time and again, that the government of Lebanon dismantle Hizbullah. Lebanon has failed to act and today's aggression is the result.
Israel views the government of Lebanon as responsible for today's unprovoked aggression.
There is an axis of terror and hate, created by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas that wants to end any hope for peace. The world cannot let them succeed.
In these circumstances, Israel has no alternative but to defend itself and its citizens. We also expect the international community to act.
We will fight back, in order to fight for peace.

Being Israel's lead diplomat has to be one of the most difficult and surreal jobs on the planet. On one hand, you have to observe diplomatic nicities - "we also expect the international community to act". And yet occassionally, brute reality intruds and causes you to let slip that international diplomats seem far more willing to let Arab states slide on their obligations than, say, they are when it comes to the Jewish state - "the Security Council, has demanded, repeatedly, time and again, that the government of Lebanon dismantle Hizbullah" but no one seems to care..
Omri | |

Round Up - Hezbollah Commits Act of War: 2 Israeli Soldiers Kidnapped in Cross-Border Attack, Civilian Locations Bombed

This post is a small roundup on Hezbollah's Wednesday cross-border, summarizing some of the more salient themes that were blogged (or missed) earlier this morning. The earlier posts have deeper analysis on each of these angles, but updates were getting lost because they were being added to various posts according to topic (Syria, Hamas, etc). Future updates will just be blogged bottom-up in update posts.

Hezbollah Attack: On Wednesday, the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah militia launched a coordinated rocket attack and ground assault on Israeli positions across the internationally recognized Israeli-Lebanese border. This naked act of war was a tactical success, and they managed to kidnap 2 Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah also launched rockets and bombs at Israeli civilian targets, resulting in numerous injuries. That this strategy is a near-replica of what the Hamas government has more or less gotten away with for the last few weeks has not been lost on commentators - or on Israeli military officials.

Israeli response: IDF ground troops and aircraft were sent into Lebanon to recover the soldiers. Rumors are circulating that a general callup of reservists is immanent, Halutz having legally established the preparation for a callup earlier in the day.

Syria: We place ourselves within what appears to be the wide consensus that Israel will hold Syria responsible for the Syrian made and Syrian transported weapons used in the Hezbollah attack. There's also a quote from a Syrian official that we don't think has made it into English yet. He states that the attack and kidnapping causes "every Arab wakes up in the morning and feels lost respect returning to him".
Omri | |

Halutz Done Playing Games

IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz has seen enough to convince him that relative tolerance towards numerous Palestinian and Lebanese acts of war has only emboldening Israel's enemies.

Order to enlist reserves

"Hezbollah's period of quiet has ended"

"If the soldiers aren't returned we're going to set Lebanon back 20 years" (Hebrew, it's the update at 13:03)

[Cross-posted to IsraPundit]
Omri | |

Destination: Syria

Incidentally, we don't see how Israel can avoid military strikes against Syria. If Hamas's actions were enough to justify the IDF buzzing Assad's house... look, the Hezbollah rockets used in this morning's attack are either Syrian in origin or came from Iran through Syrian lands with Syrian blessing. We're not sure if the actual return address for this particular attack is in Damascus or Tehran, but does anyone believe that Syrian military intelligence is innocent in this outrage? And if you are for some reason that naive, it still doesn't matter - because the Israeli military is not, and it's beyond certain that they are well convinced on this point.

UPDATE: And right one cue, via Walla (Hebrew): Imad Shuabi, head of Syrian Strategic Research said: "Today is a day in which every Arab wakes up in the morning and feels lost respect returning to him". Is it possible that Syria doesn't know that several of their military installations are hours away from being leveled?

UPDATE 2: We refuse to claim any kind of special insight from blogging the prediction that Israel is going to hold Syria responsible. We're just the ones who are awake right now. For what it's worth though, the obvious sometimes turns out to actually be true (Walla, Hebrew):

Syria has proven during the latest period that its government is terrorist in character - a government that supports terror - a government that strengthens terror - a government that supports the murderousness of terror forces that are inside of Syria. We have all along said that we will not be blackmailed and we will not negotiate with terrorists about anything related to the lives of the Israeli soldiers.This was true yesterday and it is true today
Omri | |

Just To Be Clear: Today's Hezbollah Attack is Partly a Result of Olmert Not Acting Against Hamas

We're not sure when this blog became known as a bastion of left-wing Peace Now sentimentalism. Please stop sending us emails (ok, it's just been two of you - but it's two in the last 20 minutes) saying that this is the consequence of Olmert's weakness in response to the Shalit kidnapping. We know. Really we do. Which is partly why we've been saying for the last week and a half that Israel ought to launch a full scale war in response to the Palestinian government's casus belli.
Omri | |

Civilians Hit By Rockets that Won't Get Sobbing, Sympathetic New York Times Articles

As Israel begins to go to what is a sadly familiar war footing, journalists everywhere are feverishly working through their own pre-conflict routines. Indeed, in newsrooms throughout the world this morning, journalists are steeling themselves toward their usual task of mindlessly parroting trumped up civilian casualty figures provided by Arab militias and terrorists. Sure, they could write about the civilians hit by a Hezbollah rocket...

One rocket scored a direct hit on a house in Shtula. Magen David Adom said they had treated six people so far. Both soldiers and civilians have been wounded. The wounded were being evacuated to Nahariya hospital.

...but that's not the way the words usually fit into their paragraphs (in fact, we're quite sure that these victims will come nowhere close to a soppy, hand-wringing New York Times leds about how scared their children are and how much they want peace?)
So if not stories accurately passing on information about Hezbollah's vicious rocket attack on Israeli homes, what kind of stories are we likely to see today? Remember that you read it on Mere Rhetoric first: journalists will try to present both the Israeli and the Hezbollah sides of the conflict as if these were two equal disputants. Already we imagine that the word processors are warming up and the faux sophisticates are finishing their last cups of coffee. Soon we will all be treated to what we're always treated to: "Hezbollah said this totally absurd untrue thing. Israel denied it. Oh well, there are two sides to every story". Hezbollah kidnaps Israelis, Israel tries to recover them - see, it's a cycle of violence!
These stock media descriptions will of course be chosen over descriptions that could fairly be called, err, accurate: one side keeps attacking and the other side keeps getting attacked.
Omri | |

Hezbollah Becomes the Latest Arab Militia to Commit An Act of War Against Israel

In the last month, Israel has been attacked from the south and the north. Civilians as well as soldiers have been targeted, and the perpetrators have ranged from ragtag terrorists to well-trained militias. This morning brought the latest open act of aggression against the Jewish State, as the Iranian and Syrian supported Hezbollah militia launched an attack on Israeli positions and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.
We eagerly anticipate the UN condemnation of this naked act of war, and are quite sure that all civilized nations will affirm in no uncertain terms the right of any nation-state to defend itself militarily - even the Jewish State.
Actually, that’s a bit of a fib. It’s not even snark any more: just a sad recognition that exactly the opposite will happen. Hezbollah was emboldened precisely because they saw how the world scrambled to make excuses for Hamas when Hamas did the very same thing a few weeks ago. These thugs are fanatics, but they're not stupid. Israel, too, is beginning to understand that international diplomacy is worse than a shell game: it's a no-lose proposition for its enemies, tying Israel's hands with negotiations that are always anticipated and ongoing. Instead of negotiating, Israel has sent its military into Lebanon to search for the two boys:

The Defense Ministry confirmed early Wednesday afternoon that two soldiers had been kidnapped by Hizbullah after an attack. IDF ground troops had been sent into Lebanon to search for the two. IAF jets, helicopters and UAVs were also flying above Lebanon searching for the soldiers. Hizbullah's Al Manar TV broadcast earlier Wednesday that the organization had kidnapped the two soldiers. A senior Hizbullah official said that at least one of the allegedly kidnapped soldiers was still alive.

Not that it matters, but Hezbollah had more or less agreed not to engage in these acts after Sharon negotiated the last prisoner swap. Of course, they also more or less admitted at the time that they were lying about that. Which makes them, if nothing else, a good deal more honest than many of Israel's other enemies.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

UPDATE: We usually don't cross-post the intro blurbs that we put at the top of IsraPundit stories, but this one made a claim that we believe will probably be borne out in the coming days and weeks:

In the coming days, it will be interesting to see how international diplomats and journalists claw for a “fair and balanced” middle ground that lays equal responsibility at the feet of Hezbollah - which just committed an act of war - and Israel - which was just the victim of an act of war. And by “interesting” we mean “predictable”. Make no mistake: there is a straight line starting with much of the world’s determination to recognize Hamas’s kidnappings and rocket attacks as legitimate and going straight to - unsurprisingly - Hezbollah’s kidnappings and rocket attacks. If we had to guess, the pretext will be the claim that the Sheba Farms are occupied Lebanese land: a claim that even the UN has rejected as a laughable pretext, but that many will find to be suddenly very reasonable in the coming weeks. Not that it has to be the Sheba Farms - if history teaches us anything, it’s that even the thinnest excuse will convince most people to play along as if the real motive for Hezbollah’s continuing attacks against Jews was mysterious and inscrutable. We used to think it has something to do with their fanatical anti-Semitism, but then University professors told us that accusations of anti-Semitism were just meant to stifle “legitimate criticism of the Zionist regime”. So now we’re back to square one.
Omri | |

White House: Sure Abbas is Powerless, But That Doesn't Mean Israel Shouldn't Give Him Land

And right on cue for the news that Abbas's party has organized a literal brigade of female suicide bombers, the Bush White House is counting on him to establish peace - and is pushing Israel make concessions:

A senior administration official said that the US would like to hear more about Prime Minister Olmert's "ideas" regarding unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank, but stressed the need to "explore what can be done bilaterally" as suggested in the May meeting between Olmert and President Bush at the White House.

We don't actually think that Abbas is all that vicious or violent. We do think that many of the leading Fatah members are, which makes Abbas a leader without a party - powerless and irrelevant.
Omri | |

Uhh... When Did the Washington Post Start Letting Terrorists Publish Propaganda?

You know what's arguably the most annoying thing about the rant that the Washington Post let Hamas arch-terrorist Ismail Haniyeh publish in its pages this morning? It's that it barely even qualifies as dissembling or propaganda:

Palestinian priorities include recognition of the core dispute over the land of historical Palestine and the rights of all its people; resolution of the refugee issue from 1948; reclaiming all lands occupied in 1967; and stopping Israeli attacks, assassinations and military expansion. Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner. This means statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun.

He's not even trying to pretend. Hamas will not recognize intrenational Israeli-Arab agreements. They will not move the discussion past the Palestinian obsession with passing the keys of houses that no longer exist from father to son. They demand their own state, and they demand that Israel effectively be destroyed anyway.
Oh, and do notice that he is unequivocal on unity between Hamas and Fatah. Given that Fatah is, you know, organizing battalions of suicide bombers - and that this organization was not exactly unpredictable, given the less than subtle Palestinian terrorist division of labor policy - we fully trust that international diplomats and journalists will do their best to ignore these obvious organizational, tactical, and strategic links.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention one other thing: how is it that normal people are still letting slightly-to-very-fanatic people get away with dropping phrases about Zionist expansionism (see inter alia: Cole, Juan). Every single strategic decision that Israel has made this century has been to reduce the land that it controls. In fact, wideeyed anti-Zionist conspiracy theories aside, that was true for most of the end of the last century too. So the question arises: when "Zionists" (not "Jews", of course) are accused of cunning and shadowy conspiracies meant to sow discord among otherwise peaceful neighbors, is this the product of a linguistic habit borne of a rhetorical comfort zone that plays on certain, shall we say, unsavory registers? Or are some of these people so far gone that they actually believe those mysteriously predictable conspiracy theories? We think we might know the answer.
Omri | |

Moderate Fatah Party Announces Moderate All-Women Suicide Bombers Unit

The "moderate Fatah" party (see here or here or really anywhere) isn't even trying to fool anyone anymore:

A group belonging to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party announced on Monday that it had recruited 100 Palestinian women to launch suicide attacks against Israel. A woman who identified herself as Um al-Abed told reporters in Gaza City that so far about 100 women had expressed their desire to carry out suicide attacks against Israel. She claimed she was a spokeswoman for the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah.

And always remember - Palestinian suicide bombers develop as spontaneous, voluntary responses to Israeli actions. Especially the female suicide bombers:

Yes, that's her in her suicide bombing video with the 3 year old toddler she abandoned when she blew herself up. She left that child motherless explicitly at her husband's urging, because otherwise he would have had her stoned to death for cheating on him. Instead of being the victim of an honor killing, she chose to "restore her honor" by killing herself and trying to take some Jewish mothers with her.
Omri | |

Call On Us! We Know the Answer!

Yeah, OK:

On Sunday Ynetnews reported that Natalie Portman is about to appear fully naked in her new feature film, and on Monday ContactMusic reports she is keen to teach her future children about her Jewish religion, even though she is still struggling to meet the right Jewish man. The Israeli-born star immigrated to the United States when she was a 3-year-old toddler. But sadly for Portman, she discovered that her interest in the ancient religion wanes when she is not in the Holy Land.

YNet's got this whole good girl / bad girl Natalie Portman thing going. Which is obviously totally awesome.
Omri | |

Jews for Jesus Campaign Targets New York Jews. Awkward, Forced Hilarity More or Less Ensues.

In a not particularly delicate article, JPost reports on really enthusiastic Jews for Jesus missionaries:

"Jesus for Jews," reads the advertisement on the F train speeding through south Brooklyn's subway tracks toward Coney Island. It's a confusing configuration. But then it becomes clear it is simply "Jews for Jesus" inverted and that the change is only the beginning of what is new, stream-lined, and more expansive about the well-known - and to most, highly annoying - Christian missionary group... It's not the first summer that these missionaries have made their presence felt in New York City... But this year is different. With a budget of $1.5 million and determined to make their month-long New York crusade the grand finale of their five-year global "Behold Your God" campaign, Jews for Jesus has pulled out all the stops... instead the usual core of 25 volunteers, more than 150 have arrived from Jews for Jesus headquarters around the world

The joke we were going to tell was "good - maybe those douchebag hipsters young New York Jews will actually learn something about Judaism". But then it turned out that the Jews for Jesus campaign is being targeted at Orthodox New York Jews, so that joke doesn't work. Also, it means that we definitively really could not care less.
Omri | |

Palestinians Intentionally Create Humanitarian Crisis, Red Cross and Reuters Parrot Their Claims

Four days ago, we wrote that the Palestinians were willfully rejecting Israeli humanitarian efforts in order to create a humanitarian crisis. When Israel closed the Palestinian border following the Palestinian government's act of war, thousands of civilians who weren't in Gaza were stranded. Israeli leaders, seeing that this situation was unjust collective punishment, offered to let some of them back through The Palestinian leadership would have none of it:

The Palestinians, on the other hand, would rather reject those gestures so they can demonize Israel: Israel offered on Friday to allow the opening of the Kerem Shalom border crossing, to let 500 Palestinians, waiting on the Egyptian side of the border, into the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians rejected the offer out of their refusal to allow Israel to monitor the people passing through the crossing, Israel Radio reported.

As the Palestinian leadership intended, a humanitarian crisis has indeed developed. And of course - and again precisely as the Palestinian leadership intended - Israel is being blamed:

Nearly 580 Palestinians in need of medical care have been stranded for up to two weeks inside a terminal on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip, the Red Cross said Monday. Because of a border dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, the Red Cross has proposed escorting them into Gaza by boat from el-Arish along the Egyptian coast, a Red Cross spokeswoman in Cairo said. But it has yet to receive a response from either side... At least two stranded Palestinians have died so far, including a 15-year-old boy who was waiting to cross into Gaza after undergoing heart surgery in Cairo, an Egyptian official at the border said.

You have to get well past the lede before you even find a mention that the Palestinians rejected the Israeli offer (which like nobody ever gets past - that's why reporters put troublesome things like facts down there in the first place for plausible deniability). It's OK though - people probably don't need to know that the Palestinians are willing to intentionally murder their own people if there's a chance it will help them demonize Israel.
Omri | |

Explosion in New York

CNN's red alert: "Fire officials say an explosion and fire has caused a three-story building to collapse between Park and Madison avenues in New York City. There are reports of people trapped in the building."

UPDATE: AP has a wire on this:

(AP) NEW YORK An explosion and fire sent a three-story building collapsing into rubble Monday just off Madison Avenue, the Fire Department said. It was not immediately clear whether people were trapped inside. Thick, black smoke rose high above the building on 62nd Street between Park and Madison avenues on Manhattan's East Side. Ambulances, rescue units as well as police and fire department officials responded just before 9 a.m. TV host Larry King, who had been in his hotel room nearby, described the explosion to CNN as sounding like a bomb and feeling like an earthquake. "I've never heard a sound like that," King said."


UPDATE 2: This sounds a lot like the kind of confusion that was seen the morning of 9/11 (with rumors of missing planes, accounts of other attacks, etc) but we've got friends in Manhattan who are passing on stories that some of their co-workers who are having problems getting to work because of subway problems. Again, probably just usual MTA inefficiency, but for what it's worth...

UPDATE 3: K-Lo has begun posting on the explosion. They're on the scene and have TV access (which we, stuck as we are in a Rome airport, don't), so no more updates from us.
Omri | |

Palestinians Reject Israeli Humanitarian Efforts - Easier to Demonize Israel That Way

The United Nations continues to pretend that Israel woke up one morning and decided to invade the Gaza Strip. Their objective and fair members have spent much of the last week searching for ways to condemn Israel on humanitarian grounds, ignoring the fact that Israel i, you know, responding to an act of war. Israel, meanwhile, has genuinely tried to make life easier on teh Palestinians by sending in food and water and by trying to reunite Palestinian families. The Palestinians, on the other hand, would rather reject those gestures so they can demonize Israel:

Israel offered on Friday to allow the opening of the Kerem Shalom border crossing, to let 500 Palestinians, waiting on the Egyptian side of the border, into the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians rejected the offer out of their refusal to allow Israel to monitor the people passing through the crossing, Israel Radio reported. The offer was made out of humanitarian concerns, after the three-way crossing had been closed for nearly two weeks, since Cpl. Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Palestinian operatives.

International law is a beautiful thing.
Omri | |

Update: Palestinians Commit More Acts of War

Acting on their hatred for the occupation Jews, the Palestinians have continued their indiscriminate bombing of Israeli cities:

Two Kassam rockets fell on Sderot on Friday afternoon. One of the Kassams fell in the city's central market, wounding seven. Three people were hit by shrapnel from the rocket, while four were in shock. Three of the wounded were evacuated to Barzilai Hospital. The second rocket landed in an empty soccer field. During the day numerous Kassams were launched into the western Negev, falling near several kibbutzim, including Sa'ad, Nahal Oz, Gevim and the southern development town of Netivot. Reports on the precise number of rockets varied between seven and 12.

But hey, Israel is trying to stop the bombings, which the Palestinians started again weeks ago after months of post-disengagement quiet. It's a cycle of violence! UN condemnations of recent Palestinian atrocities and outrages: 0.
Omri | |

Iran: Israeli Self-Defense is a Cause for War

Jews are not allowed to defend themselves, lest Iran make things difficult for their Western allies:

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned on Friday that continued Israeli strikes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip could lead to an "explosion" in the Islamic world that would target Israel and its supporters in the West. Again, Ahmadinejad questioned Israel's right to exist. "This is a fake regime ... it won't be able to survive. I think the only way [forward] is that those who created it (the West), take it away themselves," the president told a rally in Teheran in support of Palestinians.

For those of you keeping track at home, UN condemnations of Iran: 0. Apparently, threatening to start a war with some UN members because another UN member tries to survive against multiple acts of war is no longer distasteful to the post-nationalists at the United Nations.
Omri | |

NYT Not Even Trying to Pretend to Be Objective Any More

This is the kind of soppy, sentimental hackjob you rarely find outside of college newspapers that assign activists to cover their own protests:

Israeli Apache helicopters were hovering overhead, firing heavy machine guns down toward Palestinian militants nearby, and Mahmoud Abu Eid could only talk about his son, Izzedine, 4 years old. "He sleeps holding onto my arm, hanging onto me," Mr. Eid said. "How did he sleep last night?" Mr. Eid got up and mimed. "Hanging on to my shoulder. I couldn't sleep at all." Izzedine is frightened, Mr. Eid said, frightened of the gunfire, the sonic booms in the darkness without electricity, the buzzing of the surveillance drones overhead. "Normally he's very peaceful," said Mr. Eid, 30, a primary school English teacher who grew up in this southern Gaza area of farms and open fields. "I know psychologically he's very upset, and it's making us all upset. As an adult, we don't cry for our lives, but how can you see a child screaming and shaking?" Mr. Eid stopped and smiled shyly, running a hand over his short-cropped beard.

Apparently he has no trouble sleeping through the boom of rockets taking off toward Israeli schoolhouses, but the "buzzing of surveillance drones" keeps him awake all night. Indeed, his insomnia seems strictly limited to Israeli self-defense measures. Psychologically, it makes them all "very upset". At least he has the sympathy of the New York Times.

UPDATE: Wow! We didn't even see this part in the middle of the article:

"I don't think the Israelis know where he is," Mr. Eid said, then grew angry. "Will the sonic booms find the soldier? It's something crazy and cheap." Then he apologized again. "It's my passion speaking," he said, but "everyone is very anxious, and I fear for my son. Resistance comes from the womb of suffering."... He thought for a moment, then said: "It's not that we want to fight. It's because they are killing us and we need to defend ourselves and we are helpless."

Ladies and gentlemen, there you have it - Palestinian resistance comes from the suffering that the Israelis inflict on them. That Israel wasn't actually in Gaza when this new round of "resisting" started in the form of attacks on Israeli army bases and rockets at Israeli schoolhouses is beside the point according to the gentle, shy, sympathetic Mr. Eid. Just remember what the New York Times wants you to know: Palestinian resistance (read: vicious terrorism) only happens because of all of the suffering that Israel puts them through.
Omri | |

Palestinian Goal-Post Moving in Action

* 1994: Interim Gaza pullout will cause Palestinians to stop killing Israeli soldiers, bombing Israeli schoolhouses *
2005: Full Gaza pullout plus autonomy will cause Palestinians to stop killing Israeli soldiers, bombing Israeli schoolhouses *
July 6, 2006: Full Gaza pullout plus autonomy plus ending assassinations plus releasing prisoners will cause Palestinians to stop killing Israeli soldiers, bombing Israeli schoolhouses:

Jibril Rajoub, who served as national security adviser in the Palestinian Authority and is considered one of the leading Fatah figures in the West Bank, told Haaretz Wednesday that Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader in Damascus, would agree to the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit and an end to the Qassam attacks if Israel releases a group of prisoners of women and veteran detainees, pulls out of the Gaza Strip and ends its assassinations and bombings.

And yet international diplomats keep pressing Israel to make security concessions on the basis of Palestinian promises that - this time - they'll really keep their commitments. This obsessive focus on pressing Israel for concessions is evidence either of rampant stupidity or mendacity, and with Palestinians dropping rockets on schoolhouses the difference seems largely irrelevant.
Omri | |

Israeli Government: Spring Rain is about More than Shalit

The Israeli government is saying it...

The cabinet statement listed the goals of the current operation as "the release of abducted Cpl. Gilad Shalit and the ending of the firing of rockets and mortars from Gaza." The security cabinet reiterated Israel's refusal to negotiate a release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit.

... but we're quite sure that few people are listening. When Shalit is finally taken from the Palestinian criminals and warmongers who kidnapped him, there will be a united global outcry that Israel's goals have been accomplished and that the IDF must now quit Gaza. The groundwork for this tactic is already being prepared.
We anticipate hundreds of headlines like:
* "Despite soldier release, Israeli attack on Gaza continues"
* "Two days after kidnappers release soldier, Israeli attacks continue"
* "Israeli PM: Invasion of Gaza to continue despite Palestinian concessions"
* "Palestinian leaders broker soldiers' release despite Israeli invasion"
These headlines are premised on the assumption that Shalit’s kidnappers are not - God forbid - stupid enough to murder him. Not that such an outrage would change the headlines much - you just substitute "soldier’s body" for "soldier" and the stories will still insist that Israel got what it came to Gaza for, and that it should now get out. That a bound, captured soldier would have actually murdered in cold blood will make hardly a difference.
There are two things to remember.
The first is that, even if Israel's invasion of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip was originally instigated only by Shalit's kidnapping (which it wasn't), Israel would still be under no obligation to stop waging war against Hamas once Shalit was free. That's how war works - once a country starts one, they don't get to call a time-out when it starts going badly for them (Arab experiences in the United Nations notwithstanding). Once an act of war has been committed against a country, that country is free to - you know - wage a war. This isn't a tit-for-tat snowball fight. After Pearl Harbor was bombed, the Japanese didn't get to say "now you get to bomb one of our bases, and then you have to stop because that's all we did to you". And there's a reason for this: starting a war shouldn't be a zero-cost proposition to the aggressor. Otherwise there would be no disincentive to starting wars, and that's a bad thing.
The second thing to remember is that even if the invasion of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip was originally instigated by Shalit's kidnapping, as of yesterday it's about much, much more. Major Israeli cities are now being bombed with regularity by an enemy committed to destroying the state. Demanding that Israel do anything less than launch a full-scale attack against the government that did this would be equivalent to telling Churchill that Britain could only respond to the rocket attacks on London by taking out German rocket centers, but not the rest of the German military.
The Palestinians should not get to commit outrages and then hide behind the world's skirts. Acts of war should carry consequences.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

Middle East Diplomacy: Fatah Good and Bad at the Same Time

On the same day, it's announced that Fatah is working closely with Hamas and that the US is transfering $100 million to Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. Sometimes it's hard to really wrap your mind around the true Orwellian brilliance of international Middle East diplomacy, so here it is visually:

But hey, at least the money's not going to Hamas! And yet somehow still as dumb as last week when the US said that Israel is not allowed to kill terrorists who hide inside buildings...
Omri | |

Memo to World - Israel Not Occupying Gaza Any More. Please Stop Using That Excuse.

Obviously, no one expects pathological scapegoating to be rational. But is it also too much to ask that it actually make sense? >Blaming all things Palestinian on the Occupation - from hardships they suffer to atrocities they inflict - is embedded pretty deeply in anti-Israel rhetoric and political activity.
Palestinian terrorist murders children by shooting up a schoolbus? It's the Occupation.
Palestinian population celebrates indiscriminate violence against Israeli civilians by dancing on the roofs as Iraqi missiles head to cities? It's the Occupation?
Palestinian government rejects a peace plan to end the Occupation? It's the Occupation. Obviously.
So what happens when Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip, depriving the world of this reflexive anti-Israel rhetorical habit? Well first, confused bumbling:

Sometimes, the way that international sophisticates think makes itself very, very plain. Let's review: Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip a long time ago. That many ISM activists don't know this doesn't make it less true... Today's attack occurred on Israeli soldiers in an Israeli base on internationally recognized Israeli territory. So you wouldn't think that respectable news outlets would describe it as a "Gaza attack"

From confusion, it appears that international diplomats and human rights lawyers have simply moved into outright denial:

Switzerland said Monday that Israel has been violating international law in its Gaza offensive by heavy destruction and endangering civilians in acts of collective punishment banned under the Geneva conventions on the conduct of warfare... "There is no doubt that Israel has not taken the precautions required of it in international law to protect the civilian population and infrastructure," it said. The statement did not name the Geneva Conventions, but it referred to provisions of the 1949 treaty, which is regarded as the cornerstone of international law on the obligations of warring and occupying powers... Both the principle of proportionality and the ban on collective punishment are found in the Fourth Geneva Convention, which spells out the obligations of occupying powers toward the civilian population under their control.

(1) This concern for legal warfighting seemed remarkably absent while the Palestinian government's forces were shelling Israeli homes and schoolhouses in the past month.
(2) Seriously, we could not be more sick of this "the Palestinian people should bear absolutely no cost for electing a government that promised to attack Israel and then attacked Israel". Collective punishment is wrong even in warfare and it should be avoided - point taken. But must sparing the Palestinians any hardship because they deliberately choose to empower warmongers be at the top of every international diplomat and groups' agenda?
(3) You know how Israel says that no matter how far beyond their legal or moral obligations they go (say, by giving food, water, and supplies to people who want to kill them) they still get attacked diplomatically? This is that.
Israel is not collectively punishing an occupied population. It is preparing to launch an attack against an enemy entity whose government committed acts of war and terrorism after being elected on a platform of warmaking and terrorism.
At some point, the international sophisticates who make a career out of demonizing Israel are going to have to come to grips that the Palestinians in Gaza are not under Israeli occupation any more. Not to worry - we're confident that the international press will soon form a consensus on what new Israeli policy they can use to excuse Palestinian terrorism.
Omri | |

NYT, LAT: Hamas Popularity is Israel's Fault

This might be simply the most awesomest "everything is Israel's fault" journalistic angle ever. There's the irrelevance, the covert smuggling in of false assumptions, and the shameless willingness to excuse even the most willful Palestinian aggression. Seriously, this one is a gem - everything we've come to expect from some of America's leading journalistic outlets.
This New York Times story is headlined Israel Squeezes Gazans, Who Turn to Hamas in the news feeds. Apparently if Israel just let Hamas succeed in murdering Israelis, then Hamas would lose support in the Palestinian public. And the LA Times article is just as egregious:

Still, amid the uneasiness in Beit Hanoun was defiance over the possibility of a broadened Israeli incursion. Some voiced what they said was newfound support for Hamas in its showdown with Israel.

Israel is now being blamed for the popularity of the Palestinian government... among the Palestinians who elected that government! It's the combination of reflexive anti-Israeli journalism ("it's all Israel's fault") and the total lack of concern for logic (Hamas was elected by a majority of the Palestinian people) that makes these little asides trully awesome.
Incidentally, the NYT web blurb puts the same angle on the story, but it's actually a little more mendacious:

Many Palestinians believe Israel is trying to make them so miserable that they turn against the Hamas government.

This is such a bad explanation of Israel's impending Gaza campaign that one begins to suspect that the journalist has some sort of interest in misleading readers about the situation. The Palestinian government - the elected representatives of the Palestinian people - ordered an act of war against a neighboring state. The New York Times seems to believe that Israel should respond by saying ouch, looking pathetic, and asking the Palestinians very nicely not to do it again.
We think that Israel is done trying to convince the Palestinian people to stop supporting terrorists seeking the destruction of Israel - now they just want to be left alone, and are willing to enforce that separation. Why, after more than a decade of trying, should it be Israel's obligation to convince religious psychopaths or their supporters to give up their dreams of genocide?
Israel's goal is not to "make them so miserable that they turn against the Hamas government." Their goal is to bring Shalit home and to uproot the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure. This isn't a propaganda campaign - there is there a single credible person who's claimed that. But to the New York Times, it's very important for you to know that (a) Israel is making the Palestinians miserable and (b) Israel will fail and the brave spirit of the Palestinian people will live on.
That the framing is especially stupid because Israelis are actually doing the opposite of trying to starve out the Palestinians is - of course - largely beside the point by now. But here's the blurb anyway, so that you know that the New York Times wasn't just misleading you about motive, but also more or less lying to you about fact:

Israel opened the border to Gaza on Sunday to a limited supply of fuel and food, while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert repeated that his military would turn to ever-stronger actions to gain the release of a 19-year-old Israeli soldier captured last week.


[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

Hamas Leader has Better Grasp of Democratic Theory than White House, Europe

Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh complained loudly about the recent Israeli attack on his terrorist endorsing / act-of-war enabling office. If you think about a little, he kind of has a point:

Israel hit the office of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader. The office was empty at the time. Haniyeh decried the attack. He said that "targeting the Cabinet office means targeting the Palestinian people" and called upon the international community to restrain Israel.

In a very real sense, an attack on an opposing government's property (like, say, an army base on soverign territory) is an act against the population as a whole. Especially in a democracy, the people are the government - the assumption being that if the people didn't endorse the government's actions, they would have voted the government out of office.
Only the Palestinians get an exception - they elect a terrorist government committed to all out war against Israel, and the entire world immediately begins to devote itself to ensuring that "the Palestinian people do not suffer" because of their choice.
We can't find the exact quote right now, but Abba Eban once observed that international diplomacy in the Middle East seemed devoted to always ensuring that Israel's head was in a noose. Every time Israel seemed on the verge of fighting its way out of the noose - '48, '67, '73 - the United Nations would immediately step in to force an end to Israeli progress and a return of Israeli gains. The run-up to 1967 was the clearest example: Arab diplomats publicly threatening to annihilate Israel and explicitly demanding that the UN stay out of the way, and then literally sobbed after begging for a ceasefire immediately after the war began. And, true to form, the UN immediately took up action to protect Arab nations from the consequences of their belligerence.
This coddling of the Palestinian public comes from the same sensibility, but it's slightly more pathological. It's still a matter of "it must be Israel's fault", but it's even more incoherent. At some point, the "Palestinian people" have somehow become the pristine victims of the international community. So when they do things like, well, overwhelmingly supporting and committing terrorism and acts of war - well, some excuse must be found so that the golden-haired children of anti-colonialism don't have to be at fault.
Omri | |

US Will (Yet Again) Shield the Palestinians from their Consequences

Not to go all blog meta on everyone, but Charles Johnson is not going to be happy about this:

United States officials said Saturday that U.S. funds would be used to pay for the damages caused by the strike. The power station was insured by a U.S. government agency, according to The Boston Globe... The power station in Gaza was built over a period of five years, at a cost of $150 million. In 1999, the Enron Corporation, along with Palestinian businessman Said Khoury, began working on the project. In 2000, Khoury's Morganti Group purchased Enron's share of the project.


UPDATE: Someone (us) hadn't done their blog reading for the morning (give us a break - we're in Zurich, and the weather is more than a little OK). LGF story on this humorous anecdote here.
Omri | |

US: Israel Basically Not Allowed To Kill Terrorists

Awesome:

The United States government has laid down three rules for the current Israel Defense Forces operation in the Gaza Strip, according to senior sources in Jerusalem: No harming Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas; no harming civilians and avoid damaging infrastructure.

So as long as the terrorists don't hide behind civilians or get inside a building, they're fair game. What's that? They do get behind civilians and hide in buildings? Well fuck.
Omri | |

MR Attempts an Answer at the Question: Why Would They Be So Stupid? (Summer Rain Is Not Just About Freeing Shalit)

Everywhere we turn, all we see are statements that Summer Rain is a campaign "to free a soldier abducted by Palestinian militants". This statement, as we've indicated elsewhere today, fails to rise even to the level of a half-truth. Israel has suffered through an incredible array of attacks and provocations in the last few months from Hamas: bombings of Israeli cities, attacks on Israeli military bases, the murder of Israeli soldiers not in the field, and indeed, the kidnapping of Shalit. Any of these acts would justify a military campaign by any other country on the planet - only Israel seems to be denied the right to self defense.
On the other hand, pretending that Israel is arrayed on the Gaza border only because of Shalit's kidnapping does have one effect: it prepares everyone to be shocked at "Israel's continued military campaign, despite having achieved the IDF's stated goal of rescuing" Shalit. We'll fill in the hyperlink to that quote when the article finally comes out, which should be about two weeks from now.
Of course, journalists have to pick and choose frames, and some relevant facts always have to be excluded. But it does seem - with unusual consistency - that the facts chosen for exclusion would be the ones that help to explain and justify Israel's cause.
Omri | |

MR Attempts an Answe to the Question: How Could They Be So Stupid? (Summer Rain Is Not Just About Freeing Shalit)

What total crap:

Israeli troops and Hamas gunmen clashed inside southern Gaza on Saturday in one of the worst exchanges of fire since Israeli forces launched an assault to free a soldier abducted by Palestinian militants.

Nothing but total myopic, ahistorical crap:

Military planners dubbed their Gaza attack plan "Summer Rain." It's a fitting image for how many Israelis have followed the operations to shake Hamas: watching closely as the storm gathered, then losing interest as it rolled on. Creating much noise but few casualties, the offensive to free a kidnapped teenage soldier has not come close to stirring Israel's collective spirit like the Lebanon invasion in the 1980s, or the wave of Palestinian suicide bombings that tailed off last year.

This passage is like what a good newspaper article would be, if the goal of the article was to give you exactly the wrong idea of what's actually happening.
Read this slowly: Summer Rain is not a rescue mission. Rescuing a single kidnapped soldier is part of it, but that rescue is not the cause of the campaign. Summer Rain did not begin as a rescue mission. Were Shalit to be released today in good health, it would do nothing to vitiate the justice of Israel's impending Gaza campiagn.
"Summer Rain" is the result of months of Hamas and Fatah military and terrorist action against Israel, which included at one point sustained bombings of Israeli towns and villages. Israel - having often been told that it has little to fear from Arab intransigence because it has the region's most powerful military - intends to make use of part of that military to redress these harms. .
This is a military reaction by a sovereign nation state in response to an act of war committed by the sitting party of an internationally recognized government. Israel is undertaking what will hopefully be a full-fledged military campaign. That Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier and is holding him captive would certainly justify that campaign. But so would:
* infiltrating an internationally recognized border and attacking a military base
* killing two Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil
* rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets
Simply freeing Shalit can't resolve "the" crises, because Summer Rain is a response to several independent attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians by the government of the Palestinian Authority. The only way the sophisticates who get their news from the MSM could think otherwise is if the MSM never bothered including all of those other justifications in their stories. Hey, wait a minute...

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Omri | |

Hey Gals, Check This Out: Forced, Fake Virginity - or You Might Have To Die

Well obviously, this makes perfect sense:

Chastity can exact a painful price from young Muslim women, forced into lies or surgery to go to the marriage bed as virgins. Hymen repair, fake virginity certificates and other deceptions, said to be commonplace in some Muslim countries, are practiced in France and elsewhere in Europe, where Muslim girls are more emancipated but still live under rigid codes of family honor. Such ploys have saved many a young woman from scorn and worse. But they also clash with the more liberal social mores of France and Europe, where some decry it as an attack on human rights.

By "worse" they mean "honor murder". Just in case there was any confusion.
Omri | |

Why Must the French Destroy All That Is Good and Beautiful in the World?

For you, the new HateWatch (full index will be up tomorrow).
For us, the bottle
Worst. Semis. Pairings. Ever.
Omri | |

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