Israel threatens to destroy hostile Lebanese border positions

Israel has handed Lebanon an ultimatum. Before a line can be drawn on the Lebanese-Israeli clash which flared Tuesday, Aug. 3, the Lebanese Army 9th Brigade commander responsible for sending snipers to shoot at Israeli troops clearing brush on their side of the border and killing Lt. Col. (Res.) Dov Harari, must be dismissed or court-martialed, debkafile's military sources report.
This burst of Lebanese sniper fire triggered the clash.
The ultimatum was delivered at a three-way meeting at UNIFIL headquarters in Naqura on Wednesday night, August 4, attended by UN, IDF and Lebanese Army officers, after Israel learned that the guilty Lebanese officer is a Shiite who hangs out with Hizballah commanders in South Lebanon. The possibility is not precluded that his Hizballah friends tipped him off to the presence of high Israeli officers within firing distance from the Lebanese border.
This information runs contrary to the IDF's official line on the incident, which absolved Hizballah of involvement in the clash and claimed the Shiite terrorists were taken by surprise no less than the Israeli military
UNIFIL carried a warning to Beirut that if the Lebanese army failed to punish the officer, Israel would deem it an enemy force and feel free to destroy its military positions along their border.

Our military sources reveal that the Naqura conference was also attended unofficially by the American, French and German military attachés stationed at their embassies in Beirut. They were sent to apply the brakes on any further escalation of the Israeli-Lebanese military showdown.
A UNIFIL spokesman announced early Thursday morning, August 5 that Israel and Lebanon had both pledged to work with the UN to avoid violent incidents in the future. However, on the quiet, our sources report the UN peacekeepers agreed to convey the Israeli ultimatum and warning to Beirut with their own recommendation to remove the Lebanese officer responsible for the outbreak from the South in the interests of restoring calm.
The ultimatum did not give the Lebanese army a deadline for punishing the officer or say what action Israel would take if it was not met, but the Israeli officers at Naqura presented a tough and unyielding front. Jerusalem will not let the death of a high officer go unpunished.

The Lebanese high command and Hizballah were reminded of Israel's reprisal Saturday Aug. 1 against Hamas, for firing a Grad missile at Ashkelon on July 30: Israeli Air Force bombers struck a number of targets across the Gaza Strip, one of which killed the high-ranking Hamas commander, Issa Batran, commander of the organization's missile batteries.
It was to avenge his death that Hamas' military wing, Izzedin al-Qassam, launched half a dozen Grad missiles from Sinai against Eilat on Monday, August 2. (In the event, they missed their aim and hit Aqaba, killing one Jordanian.)

Far from winding down the Lebanese-Israel border crisis, the Israeli ultimatum looks more like the opening move for the next round. The Beirut government is not expected in Jerusalem, Washington or Naqura to punish the Shiite 9th Brigade officer lest Hizballah throw its weight behind him and canonize him as a national Shiite hero. Israel will then feel free to exercise its options for the Lebanese act of aggression.

The state of play between Israel and Lebanon was described by high Israeli military sources Thursday, Aug. 5, as fluid and incendiary. A single tree or rocket could blow up into a major conflagration and spread across the Middle East.
Time is rushing toward another flashpoint: Hizballah's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, has threatened to pass the buck for the five-year old assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri to Israel to ease the pressure of guilt preying on his own organization. He promises to present "proof" of Israeli secret service complicity at a press conference on Monday, August 9.

Western military and intelligence circles in the Middle East agreed Thursday that Israel cannot afford to let a second casus belli from Lebanon go unanswered after the unprovoked death of its officer.
A tense Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set the scene Thursday night with his first ever videotaped speech that was broadcast on three Israeli TV channels.
He held Hamas and the Lebanese government responsible for three cross-border attacks in as many days. While the third was staged by Lebanon, Netanyahu placed the Grad attacks on Ashkelon and Eilat squarely at the door of the Palestinian Hamas.
He made it clear that Israel would make both answerable when he said: "Don’t test our resolve to defend our citizens."

-Debka File

Boat trip is exercise in Israel bashing

Article via The Calgary Herald - July 19, 2010

Charity is supposed to be fuelled by a selfless desire to help others, but it's hard to see any such motivation in the plans advanced by members of Gaza Freedom March (GFM) to charter a boat and sail to the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, the idea reeks of self-aggrandizement and narcissism, along with the usual helping of contempt for Israel.

Canadian activists belonging to the group launched fund-raising efforts last week with the aim of mustering $300,000 to hire and staff a vessel in an all-Canadian effort to sail to Gaza despite the Israeli blockade. The trek's primary aim is "to bring attention to the suffering of the people of Gaza," presumably without going into much detail as to why Israel believes its security requires it to take a stand against Gaza's Hamasrun government, which still refuses to accept the Jewish state's right to exist.

Whether the boat will actually carry any goods on its supposed mission of mercy or sail empty has yet to be decided. This might reflect the fact that Israel has largely lifted the blockade, allowing in most consumer goods, or it might be a tacit admission that the trip is more about egoism than compassion. Why spend money on supplies when the goal is swift, efficient martyrdom? What these activists seek is a self-serving stint in Israeli custody, which amounts to both a badge of honour and a battle scar.

The GFM has talked vaguely of using an empty vessel to transport Palestinian goods abroad for export, but they are undoubtedly aware that regardless of whether they arrive with their holds bulging or yawning, Israel will not permit them to make landfall. The fate of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was halted in May and resulted in the deaths of nine activists aboard a Turkish vessel during a struggle with Israel special forces, is surely very much on the Canadians' minds.

The GFM has been quick to proclaim that its mission will be peaceful, and doubtless the Israeli response will be similar after the fiasco in May, but all this careful talk on the activists' part fails to mask their other goal, shared by the earlier convoy: putting on a show meant to prompt the rest of the world to heap obloquy on Israel.

As a liberal democracy in the Middle East in a region awash in authoritarian regimes and militant puritanism, Israel has had to fight for its survival right from its inception.

Despite being a beneficiary of the very same freedoms Israel is defending, the GFM is anxious to lend its support to the other side in a struggle half a world away. These activists could do with a little less selfishness and a lot more self-reflection.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Boat+trip+exercise+Israel+bashing/3294452/story.html#ixzz0vr8ELQTd

We Owe The Jews

Written By Andrew Roberts, National Post · Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010

What follows is an edited version of a speech delivered by historian Andrew Roberts to the Friends of Israel Initiative in the British House of Commons on July 19, 2010.

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From Morocco to Afghanistan, from the Caspian Sea to Aden, the 5.25 million square miles of territory belonging to members of the Arab League is home to over 330 million people, whereas Israel covers only 8,000 square miles, and is home to seven million citizens, one-fifth of whom are Arabs. The Jews of the Holy Land are thus surrounded by hostile states 650 times their size in territory and 60 times their population; yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution -- the State of Israel -- has somehow survived. When during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Medal for bravery. Today Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted 20 times as long.

Jerusalem is the site of the Temple of Solomon and Herod. The stones of a palace erected by King David himself are even now being unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem. Everything that makes a nation state legitimate -- blood shed, soil tilled, international agreements -- argues for Israel's right to exist, yet that is still denied by the Arab League. For many of their governments, which are rich enough to have economically solved the Palestinian refugee problem decades ago, it is useful to have Israel as a scapegoat to divert attention from the tyranny, failure and corruption of their own regimes.

The tragic truth is that it suits Arab states very well to have the Palestinians endure permanent refugee status; whenever Israel puts forward workable solutions they are stymied by those whose interests put the destruction of Israel before the genuine well-being of the Palestinians. Both King Abdullah I of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt were assassinated when they attempted to come to some kind of accommodation with a country that most sane people now accept is not going away.

"We owe to the Jews," wrote Winston Churchill in 1920, "a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together." Although they make up less than half of 1% of the world's population, between 1901 and 1950 Jews won 14% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded for literature and science, and between 1951 and 2000 Jews won 32% of the Nobel Prizes for medicine, 32% for physics, 39% for economics and 29% for science. This, despite so many of their greatest intellects dying in the gas chambers. Yet we tend to treat Israel like a leper on the international scene, threatening her with academic boycotts if she builds a separation wall that has so far reduced suicide bombings by 95% over three years.

Her Majesty the Queen has been on the throne for 57 years and in that time has undertaken 250 official visits to 129 countries, yet has not yet set foot in Israel. She has visited 14 Arab countries, so it cannot have been that she wasn't in the region.

After the Holocaust, the Jewish people recognized that they must have their own state, a homeland where they could forever be safe from a repetition of such horrors. Since then, Israel has had to fight five major wars for her existence. Radical Islam is never going to accept the concept of an Israeli State, so the struggle is likely to continue for another 60 years, but the Jews know that that is less dangerous than entrusting their security to anyone else.

I recently visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. Walking along a line of huts and the railway siding, where their forebears had been worked and starved and beaten and frozen and gassed to death, were a group of Jewish schoolchildren, one of whom was carrying over his shoulder the Israeli flag. It was a moving sight, for it was the sovereign independence represented by that flag which guarantees that the obscenity of genocide will never again befall the Jewish people.

No people in history have needed the right to self-defence and legitimacy more than the Jews of Israel, and that is what we in the Friends of Israel Initiative demand here today.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/Jews/3352058/story.html#ixzz0vkn7RQzP

Time To Wake Up

This is in New York City on Madison Avenue, not in
France or the Middle East or Yemen or Kenya.

This is an accurate picture of every Friday afternoon in several
locations throughout NYC where there are mosques with a large
number of Muslims that cannot fit into the mosque - They fill the
surrounding streets, facing east for a couple of hours between
about 2 & 4 p.m. - Besides this one at 42nd St & Madison Ave,
there is another, even larger group, at 94th St & 3rd Ave, etc.,
etc. - Also, I presume, you are aware of the dispute over building
another "high rise" Mosque a few blocks from "ground zero" -
With regard to that one, the "Imam" refuses to disclose where the
$110 million dollars to build it is coming from and there is a lawsuit
filed to force disclosure of that information.

Is there a message here???? Yes, there is: Muslims are
claiming North America for Allah.
If we don't wake up soon, we are going to "politically correct"
ourselves right out of our own country!

Former Muslim Speaks Truth On Israel - Islam

SUPPORT ISRAEL : IF IT GOES DOWN, WE ALL GO DOWN - By José María Aznar, ex Prime Minister of Spain

The Times June 17, 2010

Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region

For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel . In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean , it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion.

In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey , would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel : making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.

In our dealings with Israel , we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.

Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.

Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.

Sixty-two years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival. Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel , it seems, is never to have a moment’s peace.

For years, the focus of Western attention has understandably been on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. But if Israel is in danger today and the whole region is slipping towards a worryingly problematic future, it is not due to the lack of understanding between the parties on how to solve this conflict. The parameters of any prospective peace agreement are clear, however difficult it may seem for the two sides to make the final push for a settlement.

The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel ’s destruction as the fulfilment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran , as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel , but also the wider West and the world at large.The core of the problem lies in the ambiguous and often erroneous manner in which too many Western countries are now reacting to this situation.

It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East . Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.

Israel is our first line of defence in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down.

To defend Israel ’s right to exist in peace, within secure borders, requires a degree of moral and strategic clarity that too often seems to have disappeared in Europe . The United States shows worrying signs of heading in the same direction.

The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith.

To abandon Israel to its fate, at this moment of all moments, would merely serve to illustrate how far we have sunk and how inexorable our decline now appears.

This cannot be allowed to happen. Motivated by the need to rebuild our own Western values, expressing deep concern about the wave of aggression against Israel, and mindful that Israel’s strength is our strength and Israel’s weakness is our weakness, I have decided to promote a new Friends of Israel initiative with the help of some prominent people, including David Trimble, Andrew Roberts, John Bolton, Alejandro Toledo (the former President of Peru), Marcello Pera (philosopher and former President of the Italian Senate), Fiamma Nirenstein (the Italian author and politician), the financier Robert Agostinelli and the Catholic intellectual George Weigel.

It is not our intention to defend any specific policy or any particular Israeli government. The sponsors of this initiative are certain to disagree at times with decisions taken by Jerusalem . We are democrats, and we believe in diversity.

What binds us, however, is our unyielding support for Israel ’s right to exist and to defend itself. For Western countries to side with those who question Israel’s legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel’s vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude.

Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too.

Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.

Israel's Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace