U.S. BOMBS RAIN DOWN
on LEBANON and PALESTINE
ISRAEL and U.S. MAKE WAR on ARABS and MUSLIMS
"The Israelis were yesterday trumpeting the fact that the missile was
made
in Iran as proof of Iran's involvement in the Lebanon war. This
was odd
reasoning. Since almost all the missiles used to kill the
civilians of Lebanon
over the past four days were made in Seattle,
Duluth and Miami in the
United States, their use already suggests to
millions of Lebanese that
America is behind the bombardment of their
country."
MER -
MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 16 July:
What is happening today will reverbate for years if not decades to come
in the Middle East and in our world at large.
Hatred for Israel and the U.S. will escalate further. Memories of
what is happening today will propel forward still more Arabs and
Muslims determined to take on the invaders, the colonialists, and the
neo-imperialists. This is the way history works, especially in the
Middle East.
Remember this: Hezbollah itself was created in reaction to the
Israeli/U.S. invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Their goal then was to
destroy the PLO and recreate Lebanon as a client-regime of Israel and
the U.S. What happened is quite different, including the advent of
the era suicide bombers and then through many twists and turns 9/11 and
the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions.
Remember as well that Hamas was a creation of the Israeli military
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip which goes back to the 1967
war. After some 20 years Hamas arose in the occupied territories.
And in its early days, playing the classic divide and rule, infiltrate
and confuse, games the Israelis actually helped Hamas get a foothold.
Then the idea was to use Hamas to undermine support for the PLO and
those associated with Yasser Arafat.
Militarily Israel and the US today are more powerful than ever,
the Arab elites -- as represented by the client-regimes in Jordan,
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt -- more divided and confused than
ever.
But politically and economically things are not quite like they
once were not that long ago. The U.S. is more isolated in world
opinion than ever, its treasure is being frittered away at quite a
pace, its army is bleeding and bunkered down in Iraq, its financial
debt to other nations has already reached levels unprecedented in
history.
Robert Fisk: Hizbollah's response reveals months of planning
Israel's top-secret military air traffic control centre in Miron and the
nerve-centre of the Israeli northern military command destroyed by
Hizbollah missiles.
Since almost all the missiles used to kill the civilians of Lebanon over
the past four days were made in Seattle, Duluth and Miami in the
United States, their use already suggests to millions of Lebanese
that America is behind the bombardment of their country.
07/16/06 "The Independent" --
It will be called the massacre of Marwaheen. All the civilians killed
by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border
village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they
were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of
civilian cars. That's when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them,
killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children. The local fire
brigade could not put out the fires as they all burned alive in the
inferno. Another "terrorist" target had been eliminated.
Yesterday, the Israelis even produced more "terrorist" targets - petrol
stations in the Bekaa Valley all the way up to the frontier city of
Hermel in northern Lebanon and another series of bridges on one of the
few escape routes to Damascus, this time between Chtaura and the border
village of Masnaa.
But who is really winning the war? Not Lebanon, you may say, with its
more than 90 civilian dead and its infrastructure steadily destroyed in
hundreds of Israeli air raids. But is Israel winning? Friday night's
missile attack on an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon suggests
otherwise. Four Israeli sailors were killed, two of them hurled into
the sea when a tele-guided missile smashed into their Hetz-class
gunboat just off Beirut at dusk. Those Lebanese who had endured the
fire of Israeli gunboats on the coastal highway over many years were
elated.
Only now, however, is a truer picture emerging of the battle for
southern Lebanon and it is a fascinating, frightening tale. The
original border crossing, the capture of the two soldiers and the
killing of three others was planned, according to Hassan Nasrallah, the
Hizbollah leader who escaped assassination by the Israelis on Friday
evening, more than five months ago. And Friday's missile attack on the
Israeli gunboat was not the last-minute inspiration of a Hizbollah
member who just happened to see the warship.
It now appears clear that the Hizbollah leadership - Nasrallah used to
be the organisation's military commander in southern Lebanon - thought
carefully through the effects of their border crossing, relying on the
cruelty of Israel's response to quell any criticism of their action
within Lebanon. They were right in their planning. The Israeli
retaliation was even crueller than some Hizbollah leaders imagined, and
the Lebanese quickly silenced all criticism of the guerrilla movement.
Hizbollah had presumed the Israelis would cross into Lebanon after the
capture of the two soldiers and they blew up the first Israeli Merkava
tank when it was only 35 feet inside the country. All four Israeli
crewmen were killed and the Israeli army moved no further forward. The
long-range Iranian-made missiles which later exploded on Haifa had been
preceded only a few weeks ago by a pilotless Hizbollah drone aircraft
which surveyed northern Israel and then returned to land in eastern
Lebanon after taking photographs during its flight. These pictures not
only suggested a flight path for Hizbollah's rockets to Haifa; they
also identified Israel's top-secret military air traffic control centre
in Miron.
The next attack - concealed by Israel's censors - was directed at this
facility. Codenamed "Apollo", Israeli military scientists work deep
inside mountain caves and bunkers at Miron, guarded by watchtowers,
guard-dogs and barbed wire, watching all air traffic moving in and out
of Beirut, Damascus, Amman and other Arab cities. The mountain is
surmounted by clusters of antennae which Hizbollah quickly identified
as a military tracking centre. Before they fired rockets at Haifa, they
therefore sent a cluster of missiles towards Miron. The caves are
untouchable but the targeting of such a secret location by Hizbollah
deeply shocked Israel's military planners. The "centre of world terror"
- or whatever they imagine Lebanon to be - could not only breach their
frontier and capture their soldiers but attack the nerve-centre of the
Israeli northern military command.
Then came the Haifa missiles and the attack on the gunboat. It is now
clear that this successful military operation - so contemptuous of
their enemy were the Israelis that although their warship was equipped
with cannon and a Vulcan machine gun, they didn't even provide the
vessel with an anti-missile capability - was also planned months ago.
Once the Hetz-class boats appeared, Hizbollah positioned a missile crew
on the coast of west Beirut not far from Jnah, a crew trained over many
weeks for just such an attack. It took less than 30 seconds for the
Iranian-made missile to leave Beirut and hit the vessel square
amidships, setting it on fire and killing the sailors.
Ironically, the Israelis themselves had invited journalists on an
"embedded" trip with their navy only hours earlier - they were allowed
to film the ships' guns firing on Lebanon - and the moment Hizbollah
hit the warship on Friday, Hizbollah's television station, Al-Manar,
began showing the "embedded" film. It was a slick piece of propaganda.
The Israelis were yesterday trumpeting the fact that the missile was
made in Iran as proof of Iran's involvement in the Lebanon war. This
was odd reasoning. Since almost all the missiles used to kill the
civilians of Lebanon over the past four days were made in Seattle,
Duluth and Miami in the United States, their use already suggests to
millions of Lebanese that America is behind the bombardment of their
country.