The Middle East Continues...

[DinoDoc]

Kidnapped Fox News journalists released after two weeks

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Two Fox News journalists were released Sunday, nearly two weeks after being seized by militants, ending the longest-running drama involving foreign hostages in the Gaza Strip.

Cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, and correspondent Steve Centanni, 60, were dropped off at Gaza City's Beach Hotel by Palestinian security officials. A tearful Centanni briefly embraced a Palestinian journalist in the lobby, then rushed upstairs. Wiig walked into the lobby behind Centanni, briefly turned when someone pulled him by the arm and shouted "get off" before heading upstairs.

Centanni later told Fox News in a phone call from Gaza City that during his capture, he was held at times face down in a dark garage, tied up in painful positions, and that he and Wiig were forced at gunpoint to make statements, including that they had converted to Islam.

"I'm a little emotional because this is overwhelming, but I'm fine," Centanni said. "I'm so happy to be freed."

The journalists had been seized in Gaza City on Aug. 14 by a previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades. However, senior Palestinian security officials said Sunday the name was a front for local militants, and that Palestinian authorities had known the identity of the kidnappers from the start.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh dismissed speculation that the kidnappers had ties to foreign groups. "The kidnappers have no link to al-Qaida or any other organization or faction," Haniyeh said. "Al-Qaida as an organization does not exist in the Gaza Strip."

The Popular Resistance Committees, a Gaza militant group, claimed Sunday it had helped mediate the release of the journalists.

The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has insisted it had no clue about the identity of the kidnappers.

However, in recent days, Hamas government officials signalled that the release of the journalists was imminent and that they had won assurances from the kidnappers the hostages were being treated well.

On Sunday, before the journalists' release, a new video was released, showing Wiig and Centanni dressed in beige Arab-style robes. Wiig, of New Zealand, delivered an anti-Western speech, his face expressionless and his tone halting. The kidnappers claimed both men had converted to Islam.

Several hours later, the two men were dropped off at Gaza City's Beach Hotel, wearing Western-style clothing. Their captors had demanded the release of all Muslims imprisoned by the U.S. by midnight Saturday in exchange for freeing the journalists. It was not immediately clear whether the kidnappers received anything in return for freeing the journalists.

In the past two years, Palestinian militants have seized more than two dozen foreigners, usually to settle personal scores, but released them unharmed within hours. The holding of the Fox journalists had been the longest.

Good news. I wonder if the Hamas government will bring the kidnappers to justice.

[MOBIUS]

Nice to see I've been proved right on everything I said before and during this conflict...

Olmert an amateur.

Airstrikes alone useless.

Israel guilty of multiple war crimes and geneva convention violations.

Total mismanagement of the war, basically from the fact it even started in the 1st place.

Hizb NOT destroyed - only strengthened.

That Israel would LOSE!

Yep. As I have said it, let it come to pass...

The Sunday Times August 27, 2006

Humbling of the supertroops shatters Israeli army morale
HUNDREDS of feet below ground in the command bunker of the Israeli air force in Tel Aviv, a crowd of officers gathered to monitor the first day of the war against Hezbollah. It was July 12 and air force jets were about to attack Hezbollah’s military nerve centre in southern Beirut.

Among the officers smoking tensely as they waited for news, was Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, 58, a daring fighter pilot in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war who had become chief of staff a year earlier and now faced the biggest test of his career.

Over the Mediterranean, west of Beirut, the elite F-15I squadron made its final preparations to strike with precision guided weapons against Hezbollah’s Iranian-made long-range Zelzal rockets, aimed at Tel Aviv.

Just before midnight, the order “Fire!” — given by the squadron leader — could be heard in the Tel Aviv bunker. Within moments the first Hezbollah missile and launcher were blown up. Thirty-nine tense minutes later the squadron leader’s voice was heard again: “Fifty-four launchers have been destroyed. Returning to base.”

Halutz smiled with relief and called Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, who was enjoying a cigar as he waited by a secure red phone at his residence in Jerusalem.

“All the long-range rockets have been destroyed,” Halutz announced proudly. After a short pause, he added four words that have since haunted him: “We’ve won the war.”

Even as Halutz was declaring victory, 12 Israeli soldiers from the Maglan reconnaissance unit were already running into an ambush just over the border inside Lebanon near the village of Maroun a-Ras.

“We didn’t know what hit us,” said one of the soldiers, who asked to be named only as Gad. “In seconds we had two dead.”

With several others wounded and retreating under heavy fire the Maglans, one of the finest units in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), were astonished by the firepower and perseverance of Hezbollah.

“Evidently they had never heard that an Arab soldier is supposed to run away after a short engagement with the Israelis,” said Gad.

“We expected a tent and three Kalashnikovs — that was the intelligence we were given. Instead, we found a hydraulic steel door leading to a well-equipped network of tunnels.”

As daylight broke the Maglans found themselves under fire from all sides by Hezbollah forces who knew every inch of the terrain and exploited their knowledge to the full.

The commander of the IDF’s northern sector, Lieutenant-General Udi Adam, could barely believe that some of his best soldiers had been so swiftly trapped; neither could the chief of staff.

“What’s wrong with the Maglans?” Halutz demanded to know. “They are surrounded,” Adam replied quietly. “I must send in more forces.”

As the reinforcements of the Egoz brigade prepared to enter Maroun a-Ras and rescue their comrades, however, several were mown down in a second ambush. Hours of battle ensued before the Maglan and Egoz platoons were able to drag their dead and wounded back to Israel.

Hezbollah also suffered heavy casualties but its fighters slipped back into their tunnels to await the next round of fighting. It was immediately obvious to everyone in Tel Aviv that this was going to be a tougher fight than Halutz had bargained for.

As the war unfolded his optimism was brought crashing down to earth — and with it the invincible reputation of the Israeli armed forces.

In five weeks, their critics charge, they displayed tactical incompetence and strategic short-sightedness. Their much-vaunted intelligence was found wanting.

Their political leadership was shown to vacillate. Their commanders proved fractious. In many cases the training of their men was poor and their equipment inadequate. Despite many individual acts of bravery, some of the men of the IDF were pushed to the point of mutiny.

Last week, in an contrite letter to his soldiers, Halutz admitted to “mistakes which will all be corrected”. It is far from clear whether Halutz will remain in position to correct them.

As calls mounted this weekend — not least from the families of many of the 117 fallen Israeli soldiers — for the resignation of those deemed responsible for the failures, Olmert was expected to set up an inquiry into the conduct of the war. A poll showed that 63% of Israelis believed Olmert should quit, while 74% called for Amir Peretz, the defence minister, to go, and 54% wanted Halutz out.

“Olmert faces a serious risk of a no-confidence vote in the Knesset,” said Hanan Kristal, a leading political commentator. “A State Commission will give him four to six months of critical breathing time.”

Meanwhile the Israeli public are struggling to accept that the country’s security might now depend on whether a French-led United Nations peacekeeping force proves able to disarm Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. In addition to 7,000 troops already promised by EU states, the UN has received offers from several Muslim countries, some of which do not even recognise Israel. The force is unlikely to reach full strength for at least two months.

Much attention is being paid, however, to the deployment of these forces and especially to Israel’s apparent over-reliance on air power under the command of the Halutz.

Critics of Halutz, a former air force commander, believe he should have sent in overwhelming forces on the ground to drive Hezbollah back from border areas where they remained active right up to the end of the 34-day conflict.

“The air force can only assist ground forces; it can never win a war — any war,” said one veteran Israeli officer last week.

Another critical factor under consideration was that Hezbollah seemed so much better prepared. They launched nearly 200 rockets a day at Israel. They used advanced anti-tank missiles with lethal professionalism and stunned their opponents with their coolness under pressure and their willingness to “martyr” themselves in battle.

Apparently using techniques learnt from their paymasters in Iran, they were even able to crack the codes and follow the fast-changing frequencies of Israeli radio communications, intercepting reports of the casualties they had inflicted again and again. This enabled them to dominate the media war by announcing Israeli fatalities first.

“They monitored our secure radio communications in the most professional way,” one Israeli officer admitted. “When we lose a man, the fighting unit immediately gives the location and the number back to headquarters. What Hezbollah did was to monitor our radio and immediately send it to their Al-Manar TV, which broadcast it almost live, long before the official Israeli radio.”

Hezbollah appears to have divided a three mile-wide strip along the Israeli-Lebanese border into numerous “killing boxes”. Each box was protected in classic guerrilla fashion with booby-traps, land mines, and even CCTV cameras to watch every step of the advancing Israeli army.

“Our brass stupidly fell into the Hezbollah traps,” said Raphael, an infantry battalion reserve major. “The generals wanted us to attack as many villages as possible for no obvious reason. This was exactly what Hezbollah wanted us to do — they wanted to bog us down in as many small battles as possible and bleed us this way.”

The casualties from Russian-made anti-tank missiles have caused particular concern. An Israeli-invented radar defence shield codenamed Flying Jacket and costing £200,000 was installed on only four tanks. None of them was struck by anti-tank missiles.

But Hezbollah hit 46 tanks that lacked the shield. “£200,000 per tank is not beyond Israel’s means,” noted one military source acidly.

While the regular army was reasonably well equipped, the reservists were not. “We arrived at our depots only to find that our combat gear had been opened and equipment given to regular soldiers,” revealed Moshe, a fighter in the Alexandroni brigade. “The equipment was, of course, never returned.”

The Alexandroni fought in the west, near the Mediterranean, and did well initially. But logistics were appalling. “We had no fresh water as it was too dangerous to ship it to us,” Moshe added. “I’m ashamed to admit we had to drink water from the canteens of dead Hezbollah, and break into local shops for food.”

The Israeli leadership became determined to destroy the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil because of its powerful symbolism to the enemy.
This was the place where Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s general secretary, had given his keynote speech after Israel withdrew in 2000, ending 18 years of occupation. Nasrallah said in Bint Jbail that Israel would be destroyed. Now Israeli leaders wanted to show him how badly mistaken he had been.

“Conquer Bint Jbail,” Halutz told Adam, the northern sector commander. Adam is said to have replied: “Hold on, Halutz. Do you know what that means? Do you realise that the casbah [old quarter] of Bint Jbail alone contains more than 5,000 houses? And you want me to send in one battalion?”

Adam nevertheless did as he was told and sent the 51st battalion of the Golani brigade to fight a heroic but hopeless, battle.

As the Israeli soldiers approached the town from the east they fell straight into yet another ambush. Hand grenades killed battalion commanders. Then a rescue operation was mounted, which took all night.

Hezbollah fighters were also hit but retreated and waited for Israeli reinforcements to arrive. Brig Gen Gal Hirsch, the commander of the 91 Galilee division, announced: “We control Bint-Jbail.” The next day more Israeli soldiers died as they, too, were ensnared in Hezbollah’s trap.

The Israeli media began to attack the army. “Idiotic military manoeuvres,” was how one commentator on TV1, the state-owned station, summed it up.
Tension now set in among the top brass. Halutz dispatched his deputy, Maj Gen Moshe Kaplinsky, as his special representative to the north, placing him above Adam.

Adam threatened to resign if Kaplinski issued orders to his units. Kaplinski nevertheless did so. Adam did not resign but is expected to go public soon with his story of the war.

Relatively inexperienced reservists were called up. Oded, 27, a reservist from Jerusalem in a combat infantry brigade, was among those summoned to active duty. “In the past six years I’ve only had a week’s training,” he revealed.

“Soon after we arrived, we received an order to seize a nearby Shi’ite village. We knew that we were not properly trained for the mission. We told our commanders we could control the village with firepower and there was no need to take it and be killed for nothing.

“Luckily we were able to convince our commander,” he concluded with a faint smile.

Oded blamed the Palestinian intifada for his unit’s insufficient training. “For the last six years we were engaged in stupid policing missions in the West Bank,” he said. “Checkpoints, hunting stone-throwing Palestinian children, that kind of stuff. The result was that we were not ready to confront real fighters like Hezbollah.”

On the day the chaos in Bint Jbail reached its peak, Amir Peretz, the new and inexperienced defence minister, flew to the northern border to meet reservists about to go into action.

Aviv Wasserman, a reserve major with the 300 brigade who is about to study for a doctorate at the London School of Economics, asked Peretz not to throw them into “unnecessary adventures”.

Lieutenant Adam Kima, of the combat engineering battalion, was in even more rebellious mood after being asked to take his men and clear the road leading to Bint Jbeil from the west. Studying the plan, Kima rejected the idea — 10 Israeli soldiers had already died there “We were foolishly told it was all right — there are no Hezbollah forces ahead of us,” said Corporal Nimrod Diskin, one of Kima’s soldiers. “We didn’t have the equipment to clear this road. We were not ready for the mission.”

When the brigade commander realised that Kima and his soldiers would not carry out their orders, he called the military police. The men were sentenced to 14 days in jail, although they were released a few days later. The soldiers, most of them fathers of small children, believe Kima saved their lives.

“I noticed behaviour I’d never heard of in the Israeli army,” Kima said last week on Israeli television. “In my training I got used to the idea that the commander shouts ‘Advance!’ and is the first to face the enemy. Here my battalion commander was in the back of the group and the brigade commander didn’t even cross the border into Lebanon.”

As the fighting dragged on, some veteran officers lost patience with what they saw as the inexperience of the chief of staff and defence minister. “What are you doing in Lebanon, for God’s sake?’ the former defence minister, General Shaul Mofaz, asked Olmert. “Why did you go into Bint Jbeil? It was a trap set by Hezbollah.”

Mofaz proposed an old-fashioned IDF assault plan to launch a blitzkrieg against Hezbollah, reach the strategically important Litani river in 48 hours and then demolish Hezbollah in six days. Olmert liked the idea but Peretz did not appreciate his predecessor’s intervention and rejected it.

Olmert appeared to lose confidence and began to issue conflicting orders. “Our mission changed twice, three times, every day,” complained one soldier.

Many Israelis have been left furious that the legendary deterrent power of their army has been shattered. Even though Hezbollah has lost a quarter of its fighters, its military base in Beirut and its bunkers in the south, Israelis feel less secure.

They hear President Bashar al-Assad of Syria warning that he may retake the Golan Heights by force and the Iranians threatening that if the Americans attack them, Tel Aviv will be hit by ballistic missiles in retaliation.

On the final day of the war, Halutz was sitting in his favourite seat at the air force bunker in Tel Aviv, waiting for the results of a massive airborne operation. Then the news came through that a Sikorsky CH-53 helicopter had been shot down by a Hezbollah rocket. He is said to have felt defeated, both personally and professionally.

Halutz and his political masters may now be living on borrowed time. Israeli’s military elite, such as its fighter squadrons and commando units, may still be among the best in the world but the mediocrity of much of the army has been exposed for all in the Middle East to see.

Israelis can forget and forgive many things, but not the perceived defeat of an army that commanded worldwide respect but suddenly no longer strikes so much fear into its enemies.

See, if it were down to me, hundreds of women and children would never have been killing and Israel wouldn't have got their asses handed to them on a plate...


P.S. Did they get their soldiers back in the end, cos I've been too busy being on holiday to keep track...

[MOBIUS]

Oh and that was from the Sunday Times owned by Rupert Murdoch, so even the right-wing rags are sticking the boot in...

[GePap]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
Warfare against terrorism according to GePap:

OPTION 1 - Precision strikes agaisnt terrorists in civilian areas

WAR CRIME - Unlwaful execution without trial which puts civilian standbyers at risk.

OPTION 2 - Entering civilian areas with ground troops

WAR CRIME - That would be a disproportiante use of force which risks civilian lives and violates their daily habbits

OPTION 3 - Asking citizens to temporarily leave to allow clean military operations

WAR CRIME - That constitutes unlawful collective punishment and disruption of civilian lives.


Solution?

LET THE TERRORISTS WIN!!!

HOORAY FOR FREEDOM fighting!

Oh, and Option 2 is actually what should be done. And no, it would not be a war crime, if carried out according to the rules of war, ie. using troops to specifically target militants and find weapons while not destroying the civilian infrasctructe they need to live. Ergo the Iraq example I mentioned.

[MOBIUS]

As I said earlier...

All Israel has done is rally the whole country behind Hezbollah through its use of indiscriminate destruction and murder of women and children - really, those elections next year are looking highly interesting now that Hezbollah is making political capital out of its victory against Israel...

The Sunday Times August 20, 2006

Hezbollah seizes initiative as Israel is racked by doubt
Hala Jaber, Taibe, southern Lebanon
Militants rebound as the 'heroes' of Lebanon
SOON after 34 days of ferocious fighting in Lebanon came to a sudden halt last Monday, Salim al-Tayeb made his way cautiously to the edge of his village in the south of the country to retrieve the bodies of three Hezbollah comrades-in-arms from beneath a heap of rubble.

His friends had been among the last of more than 1,300 people to die in the war and al-Tayeb wanted to make sure they were not left to rot where they lay, as so many others had been.

One by one, he hauled the bodies into the sunshine. Then he bowed his head as a Red Crescent ambulance drove them away.

It was two days before he allowed himself to share in the exultation that swept through Hezbollah ranks at the end of a conflict that many of the men had not expected to survive.

Yet for al-Tayeb, 40, there was a special reason to savour the moment. “I haven’t even seen my newborn baby boy,” he explained with a smile when I found him feasting on kebab sandwiches at a “victory” lunch laid on by the mayor in Taibe, their village two miles from the border.

Al-Tayeb had just telephoned his wife in Beirut. It was the first time they had spoken since the birth and he admitted shyly that he had said he missed her, loved her and yearned to see her. He had held back tears, he said, for fear of seeming weak to his other children, a girl of eight and a five-year-old son. “All they know is that their father is away working.”

A different type of work now awaits al-Tayeb. He is not one of Hezbollah’s 2,000 or 3,000 full-time military elite, but serves in its reserves, estimated at between 8,000 and 13,000 strong. For 20 years, he has fought when the need has arisen. But in civilian life he is an engineer and his skills are in urgent demand as Hezbollah launches a new battle to lead the reconstruction of the group’s shattered Shi’ite strongholds in south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The campaign was getting under way in earnest this weekend. Fighters exchanged rocket launchers and military fatigues for bulldozers and brooms as they confronted the destruction they had brought down on Lebanon when they captured two Israeli soldiers during a cross-border raid on July 12.

Far from resenting Hezbollah’s provocation, most of those returning to their ruined villages seemed to admire the fighters’ resilience in having prevented the mighty Israeli army from rolling effortlessly through south Lebanon as it has in the past.

Despite their grief for family and friends who died and their shock at the heart-stopping scale of the devastation, Hezbollah is rallying them to its cause by offering cash, comfort, professional expertise and slick organisation that less efficient government officials can only marvel at.

In these critical first days after the war, Hezbollah and its financial backers in Tehran have seized the moment. They are appeasing those who might have been expected to denounce Hezbollah from the wreckage of their homes. And they are entrenching their support among a growing army of sympathisers.

Iran’s money is crucial. Estimates vary widely, but one Hezbollah source said as much as $1 billion had been made available by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president; another that the Iranian leader had placed no limit on the money pouring in.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has promised the Lebanese government $500m and Kuwait another $300m. But Hezbollah is giving Iran’s money directly to the people — a year’s rent for a homeless family here, a bundle of notes for some new furniture there, up to $12,000 per family within 48 hours of registration. The money buys loyalty to the “Party of God” as well as the basic necessities.

The peace, like the war, is shedding new light on the organisation. Hezbollah has been widely portrayed in the West as a ragtag army of terrorist hotheads. Yet it has withstood the Israeli onslaught that was intended to crush it.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader that Israel set out to kill, has not only survived but has also resurrected Hezbollah’s operations on the ground within days of the ceasefire. Nasrallah is being praised in Lebanon and across much of the Middle East for having achieved the simple objective he set his group at the start of the conflict: to remain viable.

Nasrallah’s declaration of “historic victory”, though derided by Israel, has raised questions about the feasibility of enforcing the United Nations resolution that ended the conflict — and about Hezbollah’s future role in Lebanon and the wider Middle East.

Security council resolution 1701 envisages that Hezbollah will remove its fighters from southern Lebanon and allow the Lebanese army and a beefed-up UN force to take their place; and that it will surrender its weapons. “Anything less would mean that the resolution is not being implemented,” said Mark Regev, Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman.

Yet last week Nasrallah vowed that his group would not be disarmed by “intimidation or pressure”.

The Lebanese army pressed on with an operation to establish 15,000 soldiers in towns and villages south of the Litani river, an area that has been Hezbollah’s preserve for the past 24 years.

But nearly 60% of the soldiers are Shi’ite. Many of them are from the same southern villages as Hezbollah’s fighters and support them. Some have brothers and cousins in the organisation.

Mindful that any confrontation would split the army and raise the spectre of civil war, Elias Murr, the defence minister, has declared emphatically that his soldiers have no intention of disarming Hezbollah. “The army is not going to the south to strip Hezbollah of weapons and do the work Israel did not,” he said.

Instead, a compromise of “hide and not seek” has been reached: Hezbollah will keep its weapons out of sight so that the army is not obliged to confiscate them.

The United Nations is trying to assemble a force of 15,000 but only the first 3,500 are expected to arrive within the next 10 days and some might take up to a year to arrive. Hezbollah perceives no greater threat from the UN force than it does from the Lebanese army.

Officials point out that it has lived with UN forces for years and expects to cohabit just as comfortably with this one. Apart from Italy, which has offered 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers, the biggest contingents pledged so far are from Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia which, like Hezbollah, do not recognise Israel’s right to exist.

The Israelis have protested and the UN’s deputy secretary-general, Mark Malloch Brown, called for more European countries to send troops in the first wave. Although 50 French troops arrived yesterday, Malloch Brown expressed disappointment that France, which originally offered to lead the force, had promised only 200.

Nor does there appear to be any imminent prospect that Hezbollah will release the Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26. Nasrallah said no power on earth would make him set them free unless Lebanese and other Arab prisoners held in Israeli jails were released in return.

As for the demand that Hezbollah be removed from southern Lebanon, the reunions of fighters with their families in villages south of the Litani river last week emphasised the practical difficulties.

On his return to Taibe, Haider Fayad, a lean fighter aged 27 with sparkling green eyes, was embraced first by his mother Hajeh Zainab. In her elation after 35 days apart, she kissed his head, shoulders and chest, crying: “My love, my heart, my eyes.”

Then Fayad’s wife Fatima appeared, dressed in a black chador. She hugged him fiercely from behind, kissing his back again and again in an unusual display of intimacy. “I love him to bits. I love him to death,” she said.

Fayad’s four brothers are also in Hezbollah and their mother is proud of what they do. Many of the organisation’s fighters are men like these who grew up in the southern villages. They live and work there when not fighting. Their families have been rooted in these villages for generations and intend to remain for generations, whatever any UN resolution might say.

From interviews with fighters in the past few days, three reasons emerged as to why they feel no pressure to leave southern Lebanon, let alone lay down their arms.

The first is their euphoria over what they regard as the triumph of the military tactics they deployed to resist Israel’s offensive. They had prepared meticulously, stockpiling ammunition and training highly mobile units of ambush and anti-tank specialists to evade Israeli ground forces while maintaining contact with their commanders. These units proved particularly elusive from the air.

“Every step we made, every rocket we fired was following specific orders from the leadership,” said Abu Mohammed, a Hezbollah medic who took part in anti-tank operations. “The Israelis forgot that this is our land. We know every contour of the landscape.”

The second reason for Hezbollah’s defiance is the reaction of 1m people to having been driven from their homes. Thousands streamed back last week to find entire areas flattened and their houses pancaked and pulverised. Many wept and railed, yet their anger was directed not at Hezbollah for picking the fight with Israel, but at the Israeli forces for wreaking such devastation.

Children summed up the mood as eloquently as anyone. Hassan Mussa, 14, and his 11-year-old brother Hussein, searched the debris of their home in vain for their PlayStation and a new bicycle. “The Israelis must pay us back,” Hassan said angrily.

I accompanied Yunis Awdeh, a 47-year-old father of three whose flat in Beirut’s southern suburbs had been destroyed, on his journey back to the town of Khiam, where he found the family home in ruins.

Scrambling over the stones, he squeezed himself into what had been the sitting room. “Where are my mother’s sofas, where is the bedroom, where are the beds? Look, that was my favourite blanket,” he said, pointing to a blue rug outside.

Then he intoned a phrase which is strange to western ears but was repeated over and over again by people who had lost everything: “The sacrifice is worthy of the resistance and Nasrallah’s shoes.”

The loyalty commanded by the belligerent yet humble Nasrallah constitutes the third reason for Hezbollah’s air of resolution. Some fighters cried during a broadcast in which he said he kissed their feet in honour of their bravery on the front lines.

Hezbollah’s ability not only to withstand the Israeli attacks but to create mayhem in northern Israel has earned Nasrallah stellar status in much of the Arab world. Babies are being named after him, jewellery stamped with his face is suddenly in fashion and mobile ringtones can be heard of songs in praise of him.

Hezbollah’s performance has emboldened the leaders of Syria to talk of retaking the Golan Heights from Israel and Iran to dismiss the latest international demands for a halt to its nuclear programme. Little wonder that Nasrallah shows no sign of yielding to critics at home or abroad.

One such critic, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, warned that Hezbollah, which controls 14 of Lebanon’s 128 parliamentary seats and two cabinet posts, had achieved a dangerously disproportionate influence that could condemn the south of the country to remain a battleground.

“We don’t want Lebanon — or south Lebanon specifically — to be a testing ground for pre-emptive wars by America and Israel against Iran and Syria or the other way around,” he said.

For now the fighters’ families are celebrating reunions. But if the violence returns, they will not stand in Hezbollah’s way. “Our wives understand the men they are married to,” said al-Tayeb, the engineer. “In general they are women who have been brought up with the same mentality and ideology: Israel is our enemy, fighting the enemy is a religious and moral duty and martyrdom is an honour.”

The most ironic thing in this entire story is that the US is effectively the paymasters of Hezbollah because of its dependency on Middle East oil...

BTW, when is Israel going to start paying war reparations for its destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure???

[SlowwHand]

We've addressed that.

Where's your wisdom in the Tories thread? Too close to being your business?

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
We've addressed that.

By graciously admitting Israel was wrong, and by extension you were wrong in supporting them?

How very good of you to admit your failings, so refreshing on this forum...

Where's your wisdom in the Tories thread? Too close to being your business?

Ain't read it yet. And I'd post more non US threads if you lot weren't so ignorant of what was going on in the rest of the world.

[Sirotnikov]

Wow, I think that one more terribly long article post by Mobious, and all my Israeli friends and me will concede defeat.

After all, who can withstand it when Mobious is proven right once again, by the same journalists that shape his opnion in the first place?

Oh, and Option 2 is actually what should be done. And no, it would not be a war crime, if carried out according to the rules of war, ie. using troops to specifically target militants and find weapons while not destroying the civilian infrasctructe they need to live. Ergo the Iraq example I mentioned.

Yes it is a wonderful idea to send ground troops into a boobytrapped maze of buildings and underground tunnels. Not to mention the added benefit of every house blown up by boobytrap is considered "civilian infrastructure" and can be blamed on Israel's shoulders.

Almost all houses in the south Lebanese villages contained weapon and ammunition stocks, often secret bunkers and tunnels - and at times - live Hezbullah guerillas.

Does this make them all viable targets of air strikes?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
really, those elections next year are looking highly interesting now that Hezbollah is making political capital out of its victory against Israel...

Well yeah. Look at how well Pyrrhus of Epirus is remembered for his great victory over Rome at the Battle of Asculum.

[MOBIUS]

Hey Siro...

LOSER!

[MOBIUS]

...and just by the way these are Rupert Murdoch's journos I'm quoting so...

LOSER X 2

[germanos]

In contrast

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5291420.stm

Nasrallah is a very clever man. He's much better at PR then every Arab leader I've seen so far.

[notyoueither]

Let's hope what he said is true and that Hezbolah will respect the Israeli border.

[DinoDoc]

Until Iran tells them not to.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov

Yes it is a wonderful idea to send ground troops into a boobytrapped maze of buildings and underground tunnels. Not to mention the added benefit of every house blown up by boobytrap is considered "civilian infrastructure" and can be blamed on Israel's shoulders.

Beyond the troll about "blame it on Israel" crap, sorry but no sympathy. So Hizbullah uses those kind of defenses to neutralize the fact they lack a modern mechanized army backed by an modern airforce. BOO HOO for you. Yes, if what it takes is a long hand to hand struggle, then that is the cost that must be paid in order to fight a clean war.

Almost all houses in the south Lebanese villages contained weapon and ammunition stocks, often secret bunkers and tunnels - and at times - live Hezbullah guerillas.

Does this make them all viable targets of air strikes?

RIGHT, every house, business, everywhere had weapons stocks..... and given how good Israeli intelligence about Hizbullah showed itself to be, you guys knew this....

But beyond that:
1. What does that have to do with the bombings in Southern Beirut, central beirut, Northen Lebanon, Tyre, Baalbek, the entire freaking country? What, every business in Baalbek, every building in southern Lebanon, obviously they were hidding weapons too, right??And those water pumps too, Oh, and the bridges, tunnels, cars of fleeing refugees, all moving vehicles in fact, I know, EVERYWHERE!

2. Hidden weapons are weapons not being used, they are not an immidiate threat, and the rules of keeping civiliasn safe in that regard outweights the dormant "threat" possed by such stockpiles. Airstrikes might fail to even destroy those weapons in the first place, only seizure would actually clearly remove the threat, yet another reason why boots on the ground would be the right thing to do.