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Posts Tagged ‘hezbollah’

The day the Americans leave Iraq

Posted by Richard on March 17, 2007

Abdallah Safialdeen, Hizbullah's representative in Iran, appeared on Iranian TV on March 4, 2007, and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which operates the MEMRI TV Monitor Project, has a video clip and transcript. Safialdeen was crowing about how Hizbullah's "victory" in Lebanon set the stage for U.S. withdrawal from the region and the end of Israel:

Do you know what an American withdrawal from Iraq will mean? It will mean that Israel will lose its support. It will mean that the Lebanese Hizbullah will not need a large-scale war in order to enter Palestine. Hizbullah will be able to simply walk into Palestine. Rest assured that the day the American forces leave Iraq, the Israelis will leave the region along with them. What was one of the reasons for Olmert's recent visit to America? He went there in order to say to the Democrats: "Don't say that the American army will leave Iraq, because this would mean the annihilation of the Zionist regime." This is because the annihilation of the Zionist regime has begun. Like some of our friends say, Palestine is no longer a problem for us, because the Americans will be forced to leave Iraq. With or without a war against Iran, they will be forced to do so. The moment they leave Iraq, you, the Muslims of the world, can walk into Palestine, because Israel will no longer exist.

Do all the Jews out there who are still liberal Democrats have any questions? 

HT: American Congress for Truth  

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Thugs and crazies

Posted by Richard on November 22, 2006

There isn’t really any doubt that the thugs of Syria, the crazies of Iran, or both are behind the attempt to topple the Lebanese government via assassinations. Gateway Pundit has a good roundup of what’s happened, with lots of updates and links.

The prospect of civil war in Lebanon — or a quick Hezbollah takeover — follows closely on the heels of rumors that Baker’s Iraq Study Group will recommend making deals with Syria and Iran. Mary Madigan wrote a great analysis of the situation:

Discussions about Middle East politics remind me of a bit from a comic, Pearls Before Swine. One of the characters is a Zebra, who can’t understand why the lions keep eating his fellow Zebras. So, he writes a letter to the lions filled with philosophical questions about peace, understanding and the nature of being, asking why can’t they all get along, why can’t they be friends..

The answer comes back from the lions "we eat Zebras becuz you taste gud."

One of the main reasons why we’ve been so ineffective against the mob politics in Syria, Iran, Hezbollahland, Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc. is the way we allow ourselves to be distracted by their propaganda and by our own desire for peace. We don’t pay enough attention to their goals and their actions.

If we listen to their propaganda, we can tell ourselves that we’re dealing with a group of people who are motivated by religion and philosophy. We’re fighting an ideological war.

If we pay attention to their actions, we realize that we’re dealing with a bunch of gangsters. They’re well-organized gangsters, funded by millions in oil money, but they’re gangsters all the same. They want more money and power (as much as they can get), and they use guns to get them. Some are knuckle draggers and some wear suits and move money, propaganda and religious dogma around.

If the Gottis and Gambinos had wised up to the power of multicuturalism, leftist self-loathing and the multitude of hiding places provided by the skirts of religion, they could have ruled the world.

Reading Madigan’s piece, I was reminded of how Ayn Rand used to speak of the Witch Doctor and Atilla (symbols of faith and force), and how they seemed so different, but were very much alike in their rejection of reason. The Islamofascists — enemies of modernity, the Enlightenment, and Western Civilization — are actually a dangerous fusion of the Witch Doctor and Atilla into one. Crazed thugs, if you will. All the more reason they must be taken seriously and opposed with all our might.
 

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Children’s crusade 2006

Posted by Richard on September 3, 2006

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has posted translated excerpts from an investigative article in the Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Yusuf entitled "Hizbullah’s Children’s Militias." Hizbullah (I’ll follow MEMRI’s spelling here; these transliterations are pretty arbitrary anyway) has long had its Mahdi Scouts youth organization. The kids are trained to fight at an early age and ideologically indoctrinated ("The first lesson that the children are taught by Hizbullah is ‘The Disappearance of Israel,’ …"). But according to Roz Al-Yusuf, some of them are now armed and prepared for action:

According to Roz Al-Yusuf, "Hizbullah has recruited over 2,000 innocent children aged 10-15 to form armed militias. Before the recent war with Israel, these children appeared only in the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations, and were referred to as the ‘December 14 Units,’ but today they are called istishhadiyun [‘martyrs’]…"

"The children are selected by Hizbullah recruitment [officers] based on one criterion only: They must be willing to become martyrs."

According to the article, Na’im Qasim, deputy to Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, said in an interview on Radio Canada: "A nation with child-martyrs will be victorious, no matter what difficulties lie in its path. Israel cannot conquer us or violate our territories, because we have martyr sons who will purge the land of the Zionist filth… This will be done through the blood of the martyrs, until we eventually achieve our goals."

This is the organization that Western reporters write flattering stories about describing its social welfare, community relations, and rebuilding efforts. Have you seen any stories about its effort to create 10-year-old martyrs?

These are the people that liberal commenters and pundits think we should dialog, negotiate, and find common ground with. What should we negotiate and arrive at common ground about — a minimum age for suicide bombers? A compromise on how many of the "Zionist filth" are purged?

The other day, I heard someone on the radio suggest a "modest proposal" for the liberals who insist that negotiation and compromise are always preferable to war: The Islamists insist that we must all submit to their interpretation of sharia law or die. What if we offer them a compromise, meet them halfway, and agree to some aspects of sharia law? For instance, we could offer to deny women all legal rights and adopt the death penalty for homosexuality and adultery. Would the liberals agree that such a compromise is preferable to continued fighting? If not, how much of a compromise would be?
 

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Is it 1938 again?

Posted by Richard on August 8, 2006

Here is Victor Davis Hanson’s "The Brink of Madness." Read every word. Read it several times. This may be the most important thing you read all year:

When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism.

Of course, the trauma of the Great War was all too fresh, and the utopian hopes for the League of Nations were not yet dashed. The Great Depression made the thought of rearmament seem absurd. The connivances of Stalin with Hitler — both satanic, yet sometimes in alliance, sometimes not — could confuse political judgments.

But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.

Not any longer.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in Iraq, the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists in Afghanistan. European police scramble daily to avoid another London or Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would have to be discreet — and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well. Canadians’ past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan. India is routinely attacked by Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist — not an Israeli bomb — might kill him if he utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago.

In nearly all these cases there is a certain sameness: The Koran is quoted as the moral authority of the perpetrators; terrorism is the preferred method of violence; Jews are usually blamed; dozens of rambling complaints are aired, and killers are often considered stateless, at least in the sense that the countries in which they seek shelter or conduct business or find support do not accept culpability for their actions.

Yet the present Western apology to all this is often to deal piecemeal with these perceived Muslim grievances: India, after all, is in Kashmir; Russia is in Chechnya; America is in Iraq, Canada is in Afghanistan; Spain was in Iraq (or rather, still is in Al Andalus); or Israel was in Gaza and Lebanon. Therefore we are to believe that “freedom fighters” commit terror for political purposes of “liberation.” At the most extreme, some think there is absolutely no pattern to global terrorism, and the mere suggestion that there is constitutes “Islamaphobia.”

Here at home, yet another Islamic fanatic conducts an act of al Qaedism in Seattle, and the police worry immediately about the safety of the mosques from which such hatred has in the past often emanated — as if the problem of a Jew being murdered at the Los Angeles airport or a Seattle civic center arises from not protecting mosques, rather than protecting us from what sometimes goes on in mosques.

But then the world is awash with a vicious hatred that we have not seen in our generation: the most lavish film in Turkish history, “Valley of the Wolves,” depicts a Jewish-American harvesting organs at Abu Ghraib in order to sell them; the Palestinian state press regularly denigrates the race and appearance of the American Secretary of State; the U.N. secretary general calls a mistaken Israeli strike on a U.N. post “deliberate,” without a word that his own Blue Helmets have for years watched Hezbollah arm rockets in violation of U.N. resolutions, and Hezbollah’s terrorists routinely hide behind U.N. peacekeepers to ensure impunity while launching missiles.

If you think I exaggerate the bankruptcy of the West or only refer to the serial ravings on the Middle East of Pat Buchanan or Jimmy Carter, consider some of the most recent comments from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah about Israel: “When the people of this temporary country lose their confidence in their legendary army, the end of this entity will begin [emphasis added].” Then compare Nasrallah’s remarks about the U.S: “To President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert and every other tyrannical aggressor. I want to invite you to do what you want, practice your hostilities. By God, you will not succeed in erasing our memory, our presence or eradicating our strong belief. Your masses will soon waste away, and your days are numbered [emphasis added].”

And finally examine here at home reaction to Hezbollah — which has butchered Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia — from a prominent Democratic Congressman, John Dingell: “I don’t take sides for or against Hezbollah.” And isn’t that the point, after all: the amoral Westerner cannot exercise moral judgment because he no longer has any?

An Arab rights group, between denunciations of Israel and America, is suing its alma mater the United States for not evacuating Arab-Americans quickly enough from Lebanon, despite government warnings of the dangers of going there, and the explicit tactics of Hezbollah, in the manner of Saddam Hussein, of using civilians as human shields in the war it started against Israel.

Demonstrators on behalf of Hezbollah inside the United States — does anyone remember our 241 Marines slaughtered by these cowardly terrorists? — routinely carry placards with the Star of David juxtaposed with Swastikas, as voices praise terrorist killers. Few Arab-American groups these past few days have publicly explained that the sort of violence, tyranny, and lawlessness of the Middle East that drove them to the shores of a compassionate and successful America is best epitomized by the primordial creed of Hezbollah.

There is no need to mention Europe, an entire continent now returning to the cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who promise to wipe Israel off the map (“In the region there is of course a country such as Iran — a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region”) — and manages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich. One wonders only whether the prime catalyst for such French debasement is worry over oil, terrorists, nukes, unassimilated Arab minorities at home, or the old Gallic Jew-hatred.

It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel.

These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.

Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around.

 

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News flash! Islamofascists hate Jews!

Posted by Richard on August 2, 2006

How ignorant and stupid can you be and still be a successful mainstream journalist? How totally clueless? Apparently, pretty ignorant, stupid, and clueless. At least, that’s the conclusion suggested by a segment on Tuesday night’s Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN, in which the big-shot news anchor, Cooper, interviewed the esteemed foreign correspondent  for The New Yorker, Jeffrey Goldberg:

Jeffrey, thanks very much for being with us. You know, I reread your article from several years ago about south Lebanon. It is just a fascinating look at life under Hezbollah, and of the inner workings and the message of Hezbollah.

I think what’s been lost in a lot of this coverage is just how anti-Semitic Hezbollah is in the rhetoric.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG, "THE NEW YORKER": Yes, it’s absolutely fascinating, Anderson. The anti-Semitism — there’s two things that are fascinating, rather. One is how embedded in the core of Hezbollah ideology, anti-Semitism is. And I don’t mean anti-Israel thinking or anti-Zionism. I mean frank anti-Semitism.

The other thing that’s so interesting about it is how blunt they are and how frank they are about their anti-Semitism. They don’t hide it. They don’t try to mask it in any way. They state very openly to you when you ask their exact feelings about Jews, which are quite extreme.

COOPER: It’s interesting because I talked to a representative news editor from al-Manar TV, and I asked him, you know, does Hezbollah still want to destroy the state of Israel? And I know Larry King has asked him that same question, and he rarely — he basically doesn’t answer that question. He sort of seems to avoid it. Which is so at odds because I mean Nasrallah himself is very point blank and matter of fact and open about his hatred of Jews.

GOLDBERG: Well, you know, al-Manar is an interesting place. They are slightly more schooled in let’s say obfuscation or public relations. The leadership — I mean, one of the things about Nasrallah that’s so interesting is how straightforward he is. And you see that in all of his statements on Israel. And even his statements on America. There’s no attempt to soften the language.

And the other thing about it that’s so shocking, I think, when you first hear it — is I always notice this — and one of the first things I noticed, was the use of epidemiological metaphors to describe the role of Jews in the world. Not just Israel, but Jews. Talking about Jews as a cancer, talking about Jews as a parasite on society. And they generally are very forward about this.

Is that truly bizarre? High-profile professional journalists amazed — shocked, even — that radical Islamists hate Jews and openly express extreme views about Jews? I hardly know what to say — it’s like a Saturday Night Live parody. What reality do these people inhabit?

(HT: Rush)
 

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Dead children and bloody shirts

Posted by Richard on August 1, 2006

On July 18th, in The war for public opinion, I noted neo-neocon’s contention that Hezbollah isn’t just indifferent to civilian casualties, it wants them, and I speculated that they might do more than just put civilians at risk (emphasis added):

The Islamofascists will make sure, via their tactics, that even a cautious and measured response results in sufficient collateral damage for their propaganda purposes. Heck, I suspect that if there weren’t enough collateral damage, they’d secretly create it.

It now seems to me that there’s a real question about the civilian deaths at the village of Qana: did Hezbollah merely manipulate the media and exploit an unfortunate event with cheap theatrics, or did they go even further?

Item: We’ve had numerous reports of Hezbollah holding civilians hostage, using them as human shields. The spokesmen from Qana/Hezbollah said the civilians couldn’t leave because the Israelis had destroyed all the roads and bridges. But rescue workers and media crews by the score had no trouble getting to Qana when summoned in the morning.

Item: A remarkable story in Australia’s Sunday Mail, documented with clandestine photos smuggled out of Beirut, shows how Hezbollah fighters operate amidst apartment buildings and homes.

Item: Initial news reports made it sound like the 3-story house was destroyed immediately when hit by an Israeli missile. But it turned out that the building was hit between midnight and 1 AM, and it collapsed around 8 AM. The delay could be explained in several ways. But it’s hard to explain the inconsistent stories of the purported survivors (who said the missile strike and collapse were contemporaneous). It’s even harder to understand why more than 50 people would remain in a severely-damaged building after the attack, apparently just going back to sleep (since rescue workers have told us the children were killed in their sleep).

Item: A pair of remarkable posts (warning: lots of pictures of the dead) by Richard at EU Referendum — Milking it? and Who is this man? — illustrated just how staged, manipulative, and contrived the news photos of the dead children are. People without a smudge on them emerged from the rubble with bodies. The same "rescue worker" posed with the same dead kids in photos taken hours apart, displaying them to the cameras like bowling trophies. Richard even discovered that the same gentleman posed with dead kids in Qana in 1996!

Item: Reuven Koret at israelinsider laid out the case for suspecting a hoax — or at least embellishment of the incident, perhaps by adding bodies killed elsewhere. There’s enough to make you wonder. Riehl World View and Confederate Yankee offered additional thoughts on the possibility of a fraud.

Regardless of what exactly happened at the village of Qana, one thing’s for sure: there is no better commentary on the situation than Gerard Van der Leun’s The Weaponization of Children. Of course, it’s usually the case that there’s no better commentary on anything to which Van der Leun turns his attention. On this subject, he’s understandably somewhat grim:

THE NEW BATTLE FLAG now being waved high over the armies of Allah mustering across the world is not the banner of Muhammad, but a flag almost as ancient as the prophet, the Bloody Shirt. Among the weak in arms and courage and righteousness, the Bloody Shirt is their weapon of mass distraction; their attempt to storm the moral high ground and hold it as they wait for their reinforcements of love, peace, compassion and truce to flow in from the far corners of the world screaming "Stop this barbaric war that slaughters, for God’s sake, innocent women and children!"

The cynical create and present the daily dead baby exhibit. And the fools of the world oblige them with their compassionate echoes sent out with the numbing predictability and regularity of a New York Times editorial or, worse still, a mushy screed from our high-priest of compassion, Jimmy Carter.

Am I marooned forever on John Donne’s continent where "any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in all mankind?" I suppose that, since I am yet of the world, this remains true in some sense. But at the same time I am convinced that while compassion remains within me, the expression of it is currently overwhelmed and what I feel, much more than compassion, is a grinding sense of "compassion fatigue."

I feel this not so much because of the platters of dead babies being served up in Gaza and Lebanon, but rather because I know it for what it is — the cynical attempt by a weak and cowardly cadre of killers to manipulate my compassion gland that is just as base and unrelenting as the attempts of pornographers across the internet to manipulate my lust. …

If you aren’t sure exactly who has the moral high ground in the current struggle in Lebanon, you might reflect that while it is possible to see a grown man on the Lebanese side of the struggle dangle a shredded child by an ankle for the world’s cameras, you don’t ever see that sort of thing at an Israeli funeral, do you?

Needless to say, you should RTWT. For one thing, you’ll learn the origin of the concept of "waving the bloody shirt" — I suspect you’ll be surprised.
 

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A subtle distinction

Posted by Richard on July 28, 2006

Gil Milbauer, A Reasonable Man, posted a cartoon that he said has been around for a long time. I haven’t seen it before, but I like the stark simplicity of it. It illustrates perfectly the subtle difference between Israel and its enemies:

UPDATE:  I’ve noted before that it’s difficult to satirize the left nowadays because they’re such moonbats that you can’t exaggerate them. Likewise, I think it’s becoming hard to demonize the Palestinian terrorists. When this cartoon was created, it was undoubtedly intended to be hyperbole — an exaggeration for effect, not a literal depiction of how Palestinians fight.

Reality may have caught up with the exaggeration. Yoni Tidi posted the following update on the shooting that took place yesterday at an entrance to Jerusalem:

An Arab man approached the check point holding an infant in one hand, when he came to the Police Officers that were checking peoples identification this “gentleman” that was holding an infant in his one arm pulled a handgun out from it’s position of concealment and opened fire hitting two Police Officers.

The Police returned fire killing the man without hurting the infant.

We’ve already seen Palestinian boys and girls — teenage kids as young as 12 — turned into suicide bombers. In Iraq, a retarded youth was outfitted with a bomb and sent toward a polling place. What will the Islamofascists come up with next — exploding babies?

[Note: Tidi didn’t cite a source, and his account is unconfirmed. But his information generally seems to be pretty reliable. An IDF reserve officer currently living in the U.S., he has extensive personal contacts in the Israeli government and military, and frequently posts information obtained from those sources.]
 

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Phoning the targets to warn them

Posted by Richard on July 27, 2006

The other day I noted that Hezbollah was not just launching attacks from civilian homes, apartments, schools, and hospitals, in some cases it was preventing the residents from leaving, holding them hostage to its desire to maximize civilian casualties for public relations purposes. Hamas has long used the same strategy of surrounding its attackers with civilians, preferably role-playing, brainwashed "human shield" children eager to fulfill their destiny and become martyrs.

Contrast the tactics of those groups with how the Israelis prepare for attacks on nominally civilian targets (and note the source for this report):

Shin Bet security service agents have begun telephoning members of Palestinian terrorist organizations and warning them to leave their houses, so that they and their families will not be hurt when Israel bombs them, Palestinian sources said yesterday.

According to the sources, Shin Bet agents have contacted members of various armed organizations over the last few days and warned them that Israel plans to attack their houses. The houses in question are being targeted because Israel believes that they are being used to store or manufacture weapons, including Qassam rockets and rocket-propelled grenades.

Before dawn yesterday, the Israel Defense Forces bombed two such houses – one belonging to an Islamic Jihad operative in Gaza City and one belonging to a Hamas operative in Rafah, on the Gazan-Egyptian border. According to the army, both houses served as weapons factories.

In addition, the IDF has interrupted local radio broadcasts in several parts of Gaza in recent days, overriding the scheduled programing with warnings about planned attacks on houses that serve as arms caches. The interrupted broadcasts have included some by Hamas’ Radio Al-Aqsa.

I’m simply astonished — and of two minds. On the one hand, it warms my heart that the Israelis are — despite many years of unspeakable barbarism and provocation by their enemies — so goddamned civilized, honorable, and decent.

On the other hand, a part of me wonders if they’re too civilized, honorable, and decent. As I said the other day, "It’s not only unwise, it’s downright wrong to stay your hand so much that the aggressor might win — or survive to prey on more victims in the future." Isn’t that what this level of solicitude leads to?

There aren’t any easy answers here. War is at best a terrible thing that inevitably kills innocents, so one ought to favor actions intended to minimize the number of innocents killed. But what if those spared by these warnings aren’t innocent? And the warnings enable them to move their rockets to another location, and kill some Israeli teens in a pizza parlor a few hours later?

No easy answers, that’s for sure…

But I do know this: I know which side I admire and which I despise. I know which culture and community I’m proud to share the planet with.

If you’ve served in the IDF, or IAF, or Shin Bet, or any other part of the government of Israel — heck, if you’re one of the 99% of Israelis who support the fight against these Jew-hating 7th-century barbarians — and you’re ever in Denver, look me up. I’ll buy you a beer. Or two or three…
 

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Hezbollah’s human shields

Posted by Richard on July 20, 2006

At The American Thinker, Clarice Feldman pointed out a brief Ynet News story which confirmed that Neo-neocon and I (The war for public opinion) were right about Hezbollah wanting to create civilian casualties (emphasis added):

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 is holding the residents of these villages hostage, using them as human shields.

"Speaking of human shields," Feldman wondered, "why aren’t the brave folks who stood between us and Saddam in Afula or Safed or Haifa or Kiryat Shemona?" Good question. I guess these "peace activists" aren’t as troubled by rockets falling on Israeli Jews as they were about bombs falling on Saddam’s Revolutionary Guard.

Regarding Hezbollah taking whole villages hostage — good luck finding any mainstream news stories that mention the IDF report. You think the IDF told only Ynet News about it? You think Ynet News made it up? I don’t.
 

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Justice requires a disproportionate response

Posted by Richard on July 19, 2006

On Tuesday, I mentioned Neo-neocon’s post about the danger of proportionality. Well, Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna wrote brilliantly about this nonsense of proportionality on Monday:

If you could cut through all the Kofi-speak to the heart of the matter, what do you think would be a “proportionate” response to the provocations Israel has endured? Do the Israelis have to fire Qassam rockets into Gaza at Hamas? Do Jewish kids have to strap on bomb belts and blow themselves up in Ramallah?

As someone recently said, it’s like a bank robbery — when the call comes in that three men are robbing a bank, then the cops can only send in three patrolmen to stop them.

Or imagine that you’re woken up in the middle of the night by a burglar in the living room. You grab your twelve-gauge and creep down the stairs very quietly. But when you flip on the light and surprise the burglar, he’s armed with only a knife! What do you do? Why, you drop the shotgun, rush to the kitchen, and rummage through the drawers for a knife. And not just any knife — it has to be no longer or sharper than the one the burglar has!

The contemptible blather about "disproportionate response" comes from people who refuse to distinguish between the aggressor and the victim — who remain morally neutral as to which one ought to prevail, and thus believe that "fairness" requires each to have an equal chance.

I'm a fan of disproportionate responseFor those of us who insist that there is no right to rape, mug, burgle — or murder (again!) six million Jews — the concept of proportionality of response is a moral abomination. The correct response to aggression is whatever is necessary to stop it, to punish the aggressor, and to prevent repetition of the aggression in the future. The correct response to Islamofascism is to wipe it out.

Decent people, of course, do their best to minimize harm to innocent bystanders — and the extremely low number of deaths, given the number of air strikes and artillery bombardments, makes it clear that Israel is taking extraordinary measures in this regard. Perhaps too much so.

It’s not only unwise, it’s downright wrong to stay your hand so much that the aggressor might win — or survive to prey on more victims in the future. Don’t those future victims have just as much claim on your concern as the bystanders today? More so, in my opinion, if the bystanders aren’t so innocent — and that’s certainly the case for most of the "civilian casualties" counted up by the media in southern Lebanon. These are the people who support Hezbollah, store Hezbollah weapons in their houses, and cheer on and resupply the Hezbollah fighters — likely, their brothers and sons — firing rockets from their doorsteps.

I’m joining the good Baron, and saying to our friends in Israel, "Bring on the Disproportionate Response!"

UPDATE: Welcome, visitors from The Atheist Jew — please have a look around. You may see some post titles in the left sidebar that interest you.

UPDATE 2: The latest version of the proportionality complaint, blathered about endlessly on MSM outlets on Thursday, is the disparity between the number of Israeli deaths and Lebanese deaths (which are almost all Hezbollah deaths). The morally neutral "fairness" advocates object to the fact that Israel wages war more effectively than Hezbollah!

Would these asshats like to see an international Handicapper General, a la Harrison Bergeron, reduce the effectiveness of Israel’s weapons, tactics, and troops so that they don’t have an unfair advantage over the genocidal maniacs on the other side?

If you’re not familiar with Kurt Vonnegut’s short story masterpiece, Harrison Bergeron, click that link and read it right now.
 

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Are we rescuing Hezbollah supporters?

Posted by Richard on July 18, 2006

The U.S. is promising to evacuate 1,000 Americans per day from Lebanon, starting Wednesday, but some people who ought to know are expressing concern about just who it is we’re rescuing. Brigitte Gabriel, whom I wrote about before, grew up as a Lebanese Christian and experienced Islamist persecution and violence first-hand throughout her youth. Now head of American Congress for Truth, she expressed concern that the media coverage is giving us a false picture:

I am speaking with Lebanese Christians in Lebanon and they are all fine. Israel is not bombing them or their towns. Israel is bombing the Shiite radical strong holds. This is what the news is not telling you. Israel bombed the airport, the port and the bridges to Syria because they are used to transport weapons and support to Hezbollah. …

As sad as I feel watching what is happening in Lebanon, it is absolutely necessary to support Israel to kill the cancer that has spread and is killing the Lebanese body. Israel is not targeting civilians. Israel is targeting terrorists. Israel has launched 3000 air strikes on Lebanon since the beginning of the Operation and inflicted only 122 casualties. If Israel’s intention was to kill civilians you would have seen many more civilian deaths than only 122. They are being extremely careful, even dropping flyers and urging civilians to leave before they bomb. These casualties are terrorists and terrorist families and sympathizers.

Please read the below article from Debbie Schlussel. She hits the nail on the head. Not all American-Lebanese there are terrorist sympathizers. There is a minority of Christians vacationing there too. However the majority of the Muslims have connections to Husballah.

The Debbie Schlussel article she referred to argued that we’re about to rescue a lot of Hezbollah supporters. Schlussel, a Michigan attorney, columnist, and talk show host, is an expert on radical Islam and especially knowledgeable about the Islamists in and around Dearborn, MI (she once infiltrated a radical mosque there disguised as a Muslim woman). In this new article, she argued (emphasis in original):

One thing is lost in all the press coverage of the whining Americans who went to Lebanon of their own accord and now want us to pick up the tab to get them out.

THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS IN LEBANON ARE HEZBOLLAH SUPPORTERS.

Most of them are Shiite Muslims, many of whom hold dual U.S. and Lebanese citizenship. Many are anchor babies born here to Muslims in the U.S. illegally. Some are illegal aliens who became citizens through rubber-stamping Citizenship and Immigration Services (and its INS predecessor) coupled with political pressure by spineless politicians.

Of the 25,000 American citizens and green-card holders in Lebanon, at least 7,000 are from Dearborn, Michigan, the heart of Islamic America, and especially Shia Islam. These 7,000 are mostly Shi’ite Muslims who openly and strongly support Hezbollah. Ditto for many of the rest of the 25,000 that are there.

Many of the 7,000 plus Detroiters in Lebanon are active in Dearborn’s Bint Jbeil cultural center (the Lebanese American Heritage Club also features mostly Hezbollah fans). Bint Jbeil is a Hezbollah-dominated city in the South of Lebanon, a frequent destination of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who is very at home there. Bint Jbeil is a frequent source of shellings on Northern Israel.


Given this information, and the fact that several Shi’ite Muslim Lebanese U.S. citizens from Dearborn have been indicted and/or convicted of laundering money to Hezbollah, is it a good idea to rush to bring 25,000 such persons back to the U.S. at a time when Hezbollah is at war against our strongest U.S. ally? Does the fact, that Hezbollah numerous times–and especially now–has announced veiled and not-so-veiled intentions to attack Americans on U.S. soil, make the case to quickly bring these terror-sympathizing Americans back to U.S. soil? …

Schlussel seems to be something of a shoot-from-the-hip type, so she may be painting with too broad a brush regarding the 25,000. But her credentials suggest that she knows what she’s talking about regarding the Dearborn Islamic community and its radicalism and support for Hezbollah. Her concerns ought to be taken seriously by our government.

Do the U.S. embassy staff and the American military realize that they may be be about to save some Hezbollah members from their well-deserved fate? That some of the people they’re going to evacuate tomorrow may have been firing rockets at Israel yesterday? That they may be about to transport Hezbollah terror cells into the U.S. at taxpayer expense? Do they have any safeguards or screening mechanisms in place to prevent this?

Just wondering.
 

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The war for public opinion

Posted by Richard on July 18, 2006

Neo-neocon made an important point yesterday about civilian deaths in Lebanon. Yes, Hezbollah has been storing rockets in civilian homes and apartments, and launching them from just outside. But Iran (which calls the shots) and Hezbollah aren’t doing this merely because they’re indifferent to civilian casualties — they’re doing it because they want civilian casualties:

Hezbollah is well aware that if, by taking out the missile launchers, Israel kills Lebanese civilians–which is every bit as much Hezbollah’s goal as the initial killing of Israeli civilians by the rockets themselves–then, as sure as day follows night, this fact will be reported heavily by the Western media (mostly without the all-important background context), flashed around the globe, and widely condemned. Civilians are not only expendable on the part of the terrorists, they are important and vital tools–stage props. …

Read, as they say, the whole thing. Then, in the context of this Hezbollah tactic, consider her earlier post about the danger of "proportionality" in war. Israel — like the U.S. in Iraq — gains nothing by fighting cautiously, half-heartedly, and timidly. The Islamofascists will make sure, via their tactics, that even a cautious and measured response results in sufficient collateral damage for their propaganda purposes. Heck, I suspect that if there weren’t enough collateral damage, they’d secretly create it.
 

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Palestinian madness

Posted by Richard on July 17, 2006

Two recent columns about the Palestinian situation are must-reads. David Horowitz, in his FrontPageMagazine column, began with a bit of hyperbole (but you can’t blame a guy for slamming the Euroweenies and UN), pulled no punches in describing the insane and dysfunctional nature of Israel’s enemies, and proposed a drastic, but humane, solution:

Americans need to take a hard look at what is going on in the Middle East, because it provides the clearest picture possible of the war we are in. On one side are al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbollah, Syria and Iran and their allies: Russia, France, Greece, and the UN majority. On the other is the only democracy in the land of Muslim and Arab terror. The origins of this front in the war on terror are crystal clear: the desire of the Muslim terrorists — the elected majority among Palestinian Arabs and the occupying Shi’ite army in Lebanon, backed by Syria and Iran — to destroy Israel and push the Jews into the sea.

The war reveals the impossibility of a Palestinian state and the necessity of a civilized occupying force in a region that is populated by a people who have been terminally brainwashed into an ideology of hate, which makes their self-government a crime waiting to happen.

By all means, go read the rest.

Milder and gentler, but in some ways even more striking, is Youssef M. Ibrahim’s To my Arab brethren, an open letter to the Palestinians:

Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.

… You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.

Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.

This one, too, deserves to be read in full. In fact, it ought to be printed up in Arabic on millions of flyers and air-dropped over every Palestinian town, village, and 60-year-old "refugee camp."
 

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Does Hezbollah have Saddam’s drones?

Posted by Richard on July 15, 2006

UPDATE (7/15): As Emily Littela used to say, "Oh. That’s different. Never mind!" Initial reports were wrong. Apparently, the Israeli ship was hit by a sophisticated, radar-guided Iranian missile. Apparently, Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops are aiding Hezbollah, which lacks the sophistication and skills to use such a weapon without help.

An Israeli warship off the Lebanese coast apparently was severely damaged by an unmanned drone carrying explosives (emphasis added):

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hezbollah rammed an Israeli warship with an unmanned aircraft rigged with explosives and set it ablaze Friday, Israeli military officials said, after attack jets smashed Lebanon’s links to the world one by one and destroyed the headquarters of the Islamic guerrilla group’s leader.

The Israeli warship, which had been carrying several dozen sailors, was towed to Haifa after suffering heavy damage. The fire was put out after several hours. The military confirmed news reports that four sailors were missing and said a search for them was underway.

The Israeli army said the source of the attack was still under investigation. But military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the probe, said the ship had been targeted by an unmanned drone.

The explanation indicated Hezbollah has added a new weapon to the arsenal of rockets and mortars it has used against Israel.

I wonder if Hezbollah’s drone looked like this:

Iraqi drone (UAV) with 25-ft. wingspan
Or like this:

The one on the left is, I believe, a Quds-10, the 25-ft.-wingspan drone that Hans Blix’s weapons inspectors discovered in March, 2003. Secretary of State Colin Powell included it in his testimony to the U.N. about the Iraq threat, arguing that it could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons. U.N. weapons inspectors were quite interested in Iraqi drones because Iraq had experimented with using them to deliver chemical weapons in the 80s. It may have a range greater than 150 km. (93 mi.).

The one on the right is a smaller, 12-ft.-wingspan "prototype" drone that the Iraqis trotted out to reporters immediately after the U.S. made public Blix’s discovery, claiming it was what the fuss was about. Reporters and commentators subsequently dismissed Powell’s claims, pointing out that the (smaller) drone couldn’t carry much more than a video camera, batteries, and electronics and was little more than a big model airplane.

Well, guess what? Even with just line-of-sight control (such as in a model airplane radio controller you could buy at Radio Shack), either drone could easily be flown into an Israeli ship a few miles off the Lebanese coast. The larger plane could obviously carry more high explosives, but even the "toy" on the right could probably carry 10-15 lbs., enough to cause a serious fire and damage on a small warship.

I wonder how many drones Hezbollah has and what size they are. You think Hezbollah’s drones were built in the Palestinian National Drone Factory? Me neither. I’m guessing they come from either Iran or Syria. Either way, don’t you think there’s a good chance that the "country of origin," as those little labels put it, was Saddam’s Iraq?

(HT to Jan of Denver for reminding me about Powell’s drone testimony.)
 

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