- As to be expected, the story about a Hezbollah drone
hitting an Israeli warship was tweaked this morning to fit the emerging
agenda. "Senior Israeli army officers said Saturday that the rocket
which hit an Israeli missile boat off the Lebanese coast Friday night was
an Iranian-built radar-guided C-802," reports the Bangkok Post.
-
- How Israel mistook an "aircraft rigged with explosives"
for a missile, as the Associated Press reports, is not explained. However,
blaming Iran certainly fits the picture, as both Israel and the United
States are trying to drag Iran and Syria into Israel's invasion of Lebanon
and thus widen the conflict, as planned.
-
- In a Market Watch article provocatively entitled "Bush
points finger at Hezbollah, Syria," we learn that our ruler, attending
a globalist confab in St. Petersburg, Russia, has blamed Syria for Israel's
invasion.
-
- "In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence
is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place," said
Bush. "And that's because Hizbullah has been launching rocket attacks
out of Lebanon into Israel and because Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers,"
Naharnet reports.
-
- No mention here of the hundreds of Lebanese held illegally
in Israeli torture dungeons. Earlier this month, the Lebanese government
complained to the UN Secretary General representative in Beirut about "the
nonstop arrest of detainees, and the hundreds of missing persons, which
poses as a violation of human rights."
-
- Israel has admitted abducting Lebanese for political
purposes, but for some reason this fact is not mentioned in the corporate
media. In the late 90s, before Israel was evicted from southern Lebanon
by Hezbollah, it was a common practice for Israel to abduct entirely innocent
Lebanese and hold them as "bargaining chips, " and not hold them,
according to Amnesty International, "for their own actions but in
exchange for Israeli soldiers missing in action or killed in Lebanon."
As usual, these facts are ignored by our appointed ruler and the corporate
media.
-
- According to the al-Hayat newspaper in London, "Israel
gave Syria 72 hours to stop Hizbullah's activity, bring about release of
kidnapped IDF troops," or else, reports Yedioth Internet, "it
would launch an offensive with disastrous consequences," in other
words Syria will suffer the same sort of attacks Lebanon is now suffering.
-
- Not unusually, word of this warning emerged from the
Pentagon, currently under the control of Likudite neocons. Al-Hayat reported
"a senior Pentagon source warned that should the Arab world and international
community fail in the efforts to convince Syria to pressure Hizbullah into
releasing the soldiers and halt the current escalation Israel may attack
targets in the country," in other words civilian infrastructure will
be targeted.
-
- As if to confirm Israel's impending invasion of Syria,
Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja of Finland said the European Union considers
"the situation to be very bad and there is still the possibility that
it could get worse and that the conflict could spread, especially to Syria.
This is in no way desirable. The consequences could be really uncontrollable,"
reports Reuters.
-
- Of course, it is eminently "desirable" for
the Israeli government and the neocon faction currently riding high in
the government of the United States, as they have plotted for some time
to go after Syria and Iran, that is to say blowing up its civilian infrastructure
and slaughtering its citizens.
-
- Al Bawaba reports "Israeli warplanes launched four
missiles at a border crossing point between Lebanon and Syria on Saturday,
witnesses said. A Syrian army position is located in the area" near
Masnaa. "Witnesses said Israeli planes fired four rockets at the Masnaa
crossing point between the last Lebanese post and the first Syrian army
position on the Beirut-Damascus road," Reuters adds. Moreover, according
to the al-Mustaqbal Lebanese news network, "the IAF hit targets belonging
to the Syrian army" prior to the Masnaa raid, Yedioth Internet reports.
-
- As if to remind us the real target is not puny little
Hezbollah and Hamas, but rather Syria and Iran, neocon kingpin William
Kristol, writing from his perch at the Murdoch funded Weekly Standard,
tells us the "war against radical Islamism is likely to be a long
one. Radical Islamism isn't going away anytime soon. But it will make a
big difference how strong the state sponsors, harborers, and financiers
of radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less on Hamas and Hezbollah,
and more on their paymasters and real commanders-Syria and Iran."
No translation is in order-the United States must attack Iran and Syria,
that is after Israel stirs up the cauldron with a provocative bombing campaign.
"For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies
of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and
weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have
thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been
too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak."
-
- Israel's enemies are the enemies of the United States,
as Israel has the White House, Pentagon, and Congress under its thumb,
from rabid pro-Israel activists in decisive positions in the Bush administration
to AIPAC's stranglehold over Congress.
-
- Syria and Iran are next on the bombing sortie. Syria
will be an easy target, as it is nearly as helpless as Lebanon, but Iran
will be a tough nut to crack.
-
- If Israel attacks Iran, as it has threatened for months
(and has acquired the military hardware to do so), all hell will break
loose, especially for the U.S. troops in Iraq, currently facing the distinct
possibility of a Shia revolt and "civil war."
-
- Expect the United States to react accordingly.
-
- Addendum
-
- According to Stratfor Intelligence, Israel plans not
only to launch "a major, sustained assault into southern Lebanon to
eliminate the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah," up to the Litani
River, of course, but also plans to "make a pre-emptive strike against
the Syrian air defense network, which Israeli planes successfully penetrated
in June, buzzing Syrian President Bashar al Assad's private residence,"
a sort of warning of things to come, as I noted the other day. Stratfor
has more confidence in Syria's air force than I do, but then I'm not an
"intelligence expert," as Strafor claims to be:
-
- Despite the political stunt flyby, Syria's air defense
network is still amply equipped and its air force boasts, among other aircraft,
80 MiG-29 and 10 Su-27 fighters. Operationally, Syria has always crumbled
when it faced the IDF, and its air defense and pilot training regimens
are certainly below par. But nevertheless, Syria's air defense network
extends over much of southern Lebanon and poses a very real danger to IAF
operations over Lebanon. Israel successfully devastated this air force
in 1982 in a pre-emptive strike. If the Israelis decide that Syria might
resist their efforts in Lebanon, Israel will not hesitate to take the network
out. A devastating pre-emptive strike is preferable to a protracted engagement
with the whole air defense network at full alert-a much more complex endeavor
that would detract from operations in Lebanon. As long as the Israelis
leave Syrian assets intact, they fight with an exposed right flank.
-
- As Strafor views it, Israel will launch a ground offensive
as soon as July 16 "when the reservists of the Israeli Northern Command
who were just activated will have had 72 hours to spin up. However, since
rockets fired from Lebanon hit Israel's port city of Haifa on July 13,
Israel's 7th Armored, Golani and Barak Brigades-some of the elite and most
decorated units of the regular Israeli army-might push ahead as far as
the Litani and let the reservists catch up later."
-
- As the Lebanese well understand, another occupation of
their country will result in human rights abuses, as the Israelis consider
the Lebanese on par with the Palestinians.
-
- In 1998, the Commission on Human Rights deplored "the
continued Israeli violations of human rights in the occupied zone in southern
Lebanon and western Bekaa, demonstrated in particular by the abduction
and ongoing arbitrary detention of Lebanese citizens [in the Khiyam and
Marjayoun torture centers], the destruction of their dwellings, the confiscation
of their property, their expulsion from their land, the bombardment of
peaceful villages and civilian areas, and other practices violating the
most fundamental principles of human rights." In short, the Lebanese
may expect the same sort of brutality meted out to the Palestinians.
-
- Of course, this criminal behavior, stretching over nearly
two decades, has nothing to do with the formation and radicalization of
Hezbollah.
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