- There is no rational military purpose for most of the
day and night aerial bombardment of Lebanon, in particular, the civilian
Shiite neighborhoods in Beirut, non-military industrial plants, roads and
bridges. It appears that Israel has adopted the US preference for bombing
the hell out of a city or country instead of doing the important surgical
military work on the ground-rooting out terrorists house to house and from
their military bunkers.
-
- UPI outside commentator Alon Ben-Meir claims that Hezbollah
grossly miscalculated Israel's resolve when it started its latest missile
barrage against northern Israeli towns. I disagree. Hezbollah, has not
failed to notice how Israel has always been held in check by international
powers after every attack, and had every reason to believe this precedent
would continue: a quick retaliation and then a cease fire. Something different
is going on this time, and even Hezbollah could not have anticipated it.
-
- Nevertheless, Hezbollah will not be easy to bring down.
As Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar writes, "Hezbollah may be
writing the book - at least for now - of fourth-generation war. Hezbollah
had a reputation as an extremely disciplined, mobile guerrilla force. Now
Hezbollah has fully revealed itself as a more than competent asymmetrical
actor. Hezbollah controls a great deal of territory - Beirut's southern
suburbs, vast areas in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, which is
sandwiched between two mountain ranges along the Syrian border. Hezbollah
enjoys staunch popular support running to probably one and a half million
people, almost half the population of Lebanon. And Hezbollah has been capable
of unleashing some relatively sophisticated military operations against
Israel using both conventional and unorthodox weapons."
-
- Debka.com offers additional analysis on the current situation:
"The air force's hammer blows are hitting Lebanon harder than they
are hitting Hezbollah. At least two-thirds of Nasrallah's [Hezbollah's
leader] war machine remains intact. The achievements in curbing the Katyusha
fire are insufficient. There is no chance of dismantling the guerrilla
army in a matter of days ... Israeli leaders will soon discover the disadvantages
and limitations of the aerial offensive. Then they will be faced with a
tough dilemma: Should they finish off the aerial operation with a
- diplomatic process or should they finish it off with
a ground operation that could involve heavy losses and entanglement in
Lebanon?"
-
- Hezbollah operates in traditional guerrilla warfare mode:
integrating itself among an accommodating civilian population, within a
state (Lebanon) that tolerates its presence-mostly out of the personal
fear of retribution local politicians may be subject to if they challenged
Hezbollah's gunmen. Radical Arabs with a gun can be very nasty. Hezbollah,
like all other insurgencies, must have an outside source of supplies and
weapons, so they need a neighboring country or a covert supply line to
service those needs. Syria and Iran are the suppliers, as well as Russia
and China, further back up the line.
-
- All of the missiles supplied to Hezbollah, including
the C-802 allegedly used to target the Israeli patrol boat are of Chinese
design, are being manufactured in Iran and Syria. While the US and Israel
are eager to go after Syria and Iran for facilitating terror, they are
hypocritically silent about Russia and China's military transfers to these
surrogate nations.
-
- Militarily, you can't bomb guerrilla fighters to death
within their civilian hideouts without killing an inordinate number of
innocent civilians. The US does this all over Iraq, supposedly in an effort
to avoid too many combat casualties for its troops on the ground. It doesn't
seem to care that the resistance keeps growing out of these seeds of hatred
sown into the families who are victims of US air tactics. Air power is
simply too convenient and avoids the political complication of military
casualties. However, even precision delivery of aerial bombs and rockets
can't help but cause collateral damage in a tight urban environment. The
explosives in bombs are just too powerful to confine to any single house
or apartment, even when right on target.
-
- How innocent are those that live in and around insurgent
strongholds? Studies show that only a small percentage are willing collaborators.
Most people in all cultures are politically apathetic and just want to
be left alone. When they go along with guerrilla demands, it's mostly out
of fear of reprisals, or hopelessness about there being any other choice
when local government doesn't have the will or means to counter guerrilla
influence. Insurgents use verbal propaganda to whip up and maintain local
support among lowly educated people, but they also use enough fear and
intimidation to make sure everyone stays receptive or silent. They actively
hunt down people who are resistant or who feed information to the enemy.
Lebanon is no different.
-
- There are all kinds of superficial reasons being given
for Israel's bombing attacks. I will analyze each one in turn.
-
- 1) Israel states that it has no quarrel with the government
or people of Lebanon. Then why bomb so many non-military targets? The damage
count is now up to 300 civilian dead, over 1,000 wounded and 500,000 displaced
persons. The entire economy of Lebanon has ground to a halt. Shops are
shut down, whole towns deserted, people are streaming anywhere to find
refuge, and there is little fuel, no fresh food and little public water.
-
- 2) The foremost excuse is that Israel is defending itself.
Let me state clearly that I have no problem with that. I'm a staunch supporter
not only of Israel's right to exist but its right to all of its Biblical
homeland-except property actually owned by existing Arab landowners. However,
I clearly distinguish between the Jew's natural rights to a homeland, and
the Israeli government itself-which has secretly attempted to undermine
the very nation it claims to protect, as I outlined last week. Certainly,
Israel has been under attack, but that isn't the whole story.
-
- The government of Israel is in large part responsible
for allowing this build up of thousands of lethal rockets across the border
in Lebanon, and for those being launched from Gaza. Israel unilaterally
pulled out of the buffer zone they had created in Lebanon. They pulled
out of Gaza knowing that it would become a safe haven for terrorists launching
rockets and mortars.
-
- Israel betrayed its base of support in Lebanon-the Lebanese
Christian community and their Israeli-armed militia. The existing Lebanese
army is mostly composed of Shiites who would be largely unwilling to attack
Hezbollah or disarm it. Israel betrayed its base of support in Gaza when
they uprooted by force the Israeli settlers whose communities and access
roads kept Gaza semi partitioned for security, making it more difficult
to move rockets and mortars northward for launching. Israel's unilateral
withdrawal and unwise military statements about how it would honor the
border sovereignty of Gaza and Lebanon, kept it from acting pre-emptively,
to interdict the supply of rockets before they were fired.
-
- 3) Israel claims to be attacking only military targets.
This is clearly untrue, unless Israel is prepping the country for a full
scale invasion and occupation-which is clearly not justified. Israel has
been bombing and shelling all southern Lebanese towns, in most cases giving
warning for the people to flee. But whole neighborhoods are being hit,
hardly a show of discriminate bombing. In one case, after heeding a warning
to flee, a column of Lebanese people and vehicles were attacked by Israeli
jets.
-
- As CNN's Nic Roberson reported, "For the Lebanese,
the only way for them to really get out of the country is to drive. And
for many of them, even that is not an option because they would have to
drive through Syria. The only roads open are out through Syria, and there
are many Lebanese who oppose the Syrian involvement in Lebanon and they
don't feel comfortable going to that country. Also, they're very afraid
of being bombed and targeted on the roads as they drive around."
-
- 3) Israeli is hitting only Hezbollah concentrations.
Not so. Even with the unwise toleration of an enemy "safe zone"
in southern Lebanon, Israel could have limited it's response to counter-attacking
the missile firing sites in several ways that would have avoided civilian
casualties. Israel has the radar technology to backtrack and pinpoint the
location of artillery, mortar and missile launches. While its Patriot and
Arrow anti-missile batteries are ineffective against low flying Katusha
rockets, Israel can and does use artillery to counter attack launching
sites. Israel also has access to US satellites overhead that can also pinpoint
missile launch sites within 5 feet of accuracy-though the coordination
currently is not timely enough to be very useful. Israel has hit back at
many of these sites and claims to have destroyed up to 30% of Hezbollah
stockpiles of missiles (estimated at 11,000-14,000 missiles). The indiscriminate
shelling of whole villages seems unjustified.
-
- The only way to root out guerrillas is to send in paratroopers
and armored columns to surround the area and go in, search every house,
using high tech metal detectors, and root out the weapons, being careful
to harm no civilians. Barry Chamish, Israel's top commentator on the right
agrees: "If Israel really wanted to get rid of the missiles, they
are fighting the wrong war. Only ground troops can capture the enemy's
weapons. So why fight an air war?" He's right, you can target the
visible launch sites before the fact, and the hidden ones after launch,
but you can't root out the stockpiles without an invasion.
-
- 4) Israel says Lebanon must pay for harboring Hezbollah.
Frankly, I see a difference between harboring insurgents and Lebanon's
tolerating a presence that it has little power to remove, given that Hezbollah
is stronger than the Lebanese Army and also a surrogate of regional powers
Syria and Iran. Lebanon's Prime Minister Siniora said, "The whole
world must help us disarm Hezbollah. But we must first obtain a cease-fire.
We can't do anything while the bombardments continue and the situation
will just get worse,...Hezbollah has become a state within a state. We
are well aware of this and it is a serious problem. It's no secret that
Hezbollah follows the political agendas of Damascus and Tehran...But the
criminal Israeli bombardments must stop immediately. Israelis are bombing
civilians and this increases Hezbollah's popularity, even among people
who would not normally support it." PM Seniora added. One might rightly
ask, however, why he didn't make this plea for help before the crisis?
-
- Israeli military sources claim they are trying to hit
back at Hezbollah as hard as they can since they only have about "a
week left before international pressure forces them to withdraw."
In fact, one of the main goals Israel claims is to completely remove Hezbollah
as a threat to northern Israel. The problem with this statement is that,
a) you can't root them out by air power alone, and the damage they are
inflicting has done very little to the military abilities of Hezbollah;
b) It will take a land invasion to clean out Hezbollah, and that will take
months of hard searching and fighting; and c) the land invasion should
have taken place by surprise, at the beginning of the campaign. Now, Hezbollah
has had time to hide or scatter northward back to Syria-on the only roads
left intact, strangely
-
- SO WHAT IS ISRAEL UP TO? Let's examine the possible reasons
for Israel setting itself up for a wave of international criticism.
-
- 1) [The official version:] That Israel really is intent
on rooting out Hezbollah. I don't believe it, even if it were possible.
Israel has had Hezbollah in retreat before and failed to eradicate it militarily.
Later, Israeli politicians gave Hezbollah a safe haven by withdrawing-hardly
showing intent to root out terror for good. In reality, destroying a guerrilla
organization for good is no more possible than the US killing all the insurgents
in Iraq. The occupation breeds them faster than you can kill them, especially
when occupation forces never pacify the rest of the populace by solving
their day to day problems (jobs, security, hospitals, electricity and water).
It will never happen when you keep enraging the population with arbitrary
arrest, and by killing civilians (speaking of the US occupation). Israeli
troops are much more careful (on the ground) at avoiding civilian casualties,
but not with air power-especially now that they seem to be adopting the
US air power dictum of "make 'em pay."
-
- 2) Setting Lebanon up to force the fall of the current
government and replacing it with a puppet government. If Israel has bought
into the US pattern of occupying countries, not for peace and Democracy,
but for provocation and antagonism, this is a distinct possibility. But
to have sufficient power to force a puppet government upon Lebanon, as
the US did in Iraq, they will have to occupy the country. Only an occupier,
with a stranglehold on the supply of electricity, food and water, with
access to daily arm-twisting sessions with local powers is capable of forcing
a nation into the charade of independence when none exists.
-
- The longer this air attack goes on, the more likely it
is that Israel will invade and occupy. If they simply stop right now, they've
accomplished nothing but sting Hezbollah and make them really mad, as well
as all of Lebanon. Israel is more hated now in Lebanon than ever before.
Even the Lebananese Christians have stopped verbalizing any support for
Israel-which is bad for Israel in the long run. It's also likely that if
Israel makes the country ungovernable, the government will quit in disgust,
or be removed by Hezbollah. Pro-Syrian forces will surely fill in the vacuum
if Israel fails to occupy. This is what the US forced upon Serbia in the
Kosovo bombings-they kept destroying civilian infrastructure (and a few
military targets for legitimacy) until Milosovich was forced to yield to
save the country further damage.
-
- 3) Israel making itself an international pariah (bombing
civilians) to induce calls for an international peacekeeping force in Southern
Lebanon. The preliminary suggestions have already been publicized. The
AP reported that, "British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan called Monday for the deployment of international forces to
stop Hezbollah from bombing Israel" and that, "[the] European
Union in Brussels announced it is considering deploying a peacekeeping
force in Lebanon."
-
- This is one of the major objectives of the international
community of globalists-to get a foot-hold of control in Israel through
"peacekeeping" forces. Israel has always resisted international
control since the days of Menachem Begin, knowing that once installed it
is difficult to regain national sovereignty. Now that Israel has its own
globalist leaders, the government may allow it as long as it stays in Lebanon,
and not in Israel proper. It might be a way of getting Israelis to become
more accommodating of the idea.
-
- 4) Israel, in collusion with the US, may have decided
to antagonize Lebanon, in order to incite Syria and Iran into some overt
act that will finally justify a joint US/Israeli attack on Iran and/or
Syria. Webster G. Tarpley
- Online Journal Guest Writer agrees: "The escalating
Israeli assault on Lebanon clearly represents a conscious bid to provoke
a general war in the Middle East. The captured Israeli soldiers are only
the pretext for the present massive military operations.
-
- "Israeli spokesmen are making constant allegations
that Hezbollah missiles being fired at Israel have been manufactured or
delivered by Iran. At the same time, the Israelis accuse Hezbollah of wanting
to transfer the two
- captured Israeli soldiers to Syria or Iran. These statements
are an attempt to build a case for an Israeli sneak attack on Syria and/or
Iran. US spokesmen, including... John Bolton, constantly repeat the litany
that Syria and Iran are the supporters of Hezbollah."
-
- There is some evidence for this charge:
-
- A) the US has, for the first time, NOT put pressure on
Israel to halt its attacks. In the past, it has done so even when Israel
was engaged against attacking Arab military forces. Now, when Israel is
primarily smashing civilian infrastructure, with little legitimacy, the
US keeps pretending it is all self-defense. This is a definite change and
may indicate bad intent on the part of both Israel and the US;
-
- B) The US and Israel continually bring up the subject
of Iranian and Syrian backing of Hezbollah (which is true). The US is also
piggy-backing the North Korean missile threat onto this Middle East crisis.
The US conveniently leaked "intelligence" claiming that Iranians
were present to observe the launching of the seven missiles in North Korea-putting
them on the bad guy list. The US has long known of North Korean missile
transfers of both technology and parts to help Iran build its intermediate
range Shihab-2 missile. Why then was the US silent when all these missile
transfers were going on, and being tracked by US satellites? I guess they
were saving this intelligence for later, when they could provoke a fight.
-
- C) An invasion and occupation of Lebanon may not actually
provoke a reaction from Syria or Iran, who are trying to play it a little
more careful now. In that case, I would suspect Israel to directly attack
some key "Hezbollah" bases in Syria in order to induce a military
response.
-
- US Neo-cons are itching for an Iranian invasion. Rush
Limbaugh is now saying that this war in the Middle East was "never
intended to stop with Iraq....This is finally our chance to go after Iran."
As he puts it, there will be no peace until one side finally defeats the
other completely. Rush, as usual, is just shilling for the Republican establishment.
He probably doesn't have a clue about the real globalist purpose for all
this warmongering. But he ranted on about the folly of restraint and ceasefire
in the Middle East: "All of this restraint and cessation of hostilities
is just a bunch of garbage, folks.... what are we supposed to do then,
they're not supposed to avengewhat happened in the '72 Olympics?"
What does he mean by "we" avenge? It was Israel that was attacked
and they already struck back and killed most of the perpetrators. Are we
to meet out collective punishment to all?
-
- Religious evangelicals seem to be anxious to jump on
this pro-Bush and pro-Israel bandwagon-which will only harm Israel in the
long-run. Evangelical "Christians" are putting on a Washington/Israel
summit to demand, that the Bush administration show stronger support for
Israel. Rev. Hagee claimed, "There's a new Hitler in the Middle East
(referring to Iran's President Ahmadinejad). The only way he will be stopped
will be by a preemptive military strike in Iran."
-
- However ignorant Rush and pro-Bush Christian leaders
may be in their ranting, it's a different story for the original liberal
globalists who feigned being "conservative" to drive this agenda.
They know what they are promoting and why, I believe. Top Neo-con Irving
Kristol of the Weekly Standard, in an essay entitled, "Our War"
complained that the Bush administration has done a "poor job of standing
up and weakening Syria and Iran" and called on President Bush to leave
the "silly (Group of Eight) summit in St. Petersburg...[and fly] to
Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing
to fight with us, against our common enemies."
-
- Another sign that something longer-term is going on here
is the massive evacuation plans for pulling out all foreigners from Lebanon.
This is a big and expensive task that wouldn't happen unless the US knows
Israel isn't quitting soon. The US is evacuating 25,000, Britain 20,000,
and the various European countries another 20,000+. They are discharging
their refugees on the poor island nation of Cyprus, which is complaining
they can't handle all these refugees. The US could have told Israel to
hold off bombing the airport until they got people out, but they didn't.
I suspect the US wanted a humanitarian disaster and is complicit in taking
down Lebanon as the new "oasis" in the Middle East. Neo-cons
want no oasis of peace anywhere in the Middle East.
-
- Conclusion: I see little probability that Israel will
simply quit and go home and return to the status quo, as it has so many
times in the past. The blatant way in which Israel has squandered its goodwill
after being attacked by Hezbollah, indicates something bigger is afoot.
If Israel has joined in the US strategy of purposeful antagonism of the
Muslim world, Lebanon is its first target, and it's another sad day for
peace and for the Lebanese. A Lebanese American, Mohammed Shami, newly
arrived at the government holding center for refugees in Cyprus shook his
head and said it all: "I feel embarrassed to be an American. They
have given Israel the green light to destroy Lebanon. What they are doing
is wrong; it is immoral."
-
- July 21, 2006 Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations
with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs
Brief
- http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com
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