Minister Ezra: Hizbullah is breaking down

On eve of cabinet meeting, in which ministers are expected to decided whether to expand military operation to Litani River, cabinet member tells Ynet, 'if we stop now, it’s like we didn’t do a thing'
Ronny Sofer

Is Minister Gideon Ezra seeing something new? The cabinet ministers are expected to meet Wednesday morning to decide whether to expand the military campaign to the Litani River.

Several hours before the meeting, one of the cabinet members, Environment Minister Gideo Ezra, told Ynet that "Hizbullah is showing signs of breaking down. The Hizbullah members kidnapped by the IDF in their sleep reveal that the organization is tired."

According to Ezra, "we should wait and continue the fighting. I estimate they can be broken down. Israel cannot belittle even one quarter of a rocket, not to mention hundreds and thousands. Even one rocket a week makes the entire north crazy. If we stop now, it's like we didn’t do a thing."

Many of the government ministers share Ezra's view, and will be required to decide whether to accept Defense Minister Amir Peretz's request and the Israel Defense Forces' demand to expand the operation.

Ezra: "Israel must not agree to the ongoing rocket fire at any cost. The diplomatic activity to stop the rocket fire must be the result of out military activity. The power of the enemy standing in front of us is undoubtedly decreasing."

Minister Ezra believes that the government is doing the right thing and that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is required to measure his steps between the demands of the Americans, on the one hand, who are working to reach a ceasefire, and the Israeli military activity which is aimed at breaking Hizbullah's rocket launching capabilities.

Like Olmert , Ezra also believes that Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's proposal to station a force of 15,000 soldiers in southern Lebanon is interesting and should be examined. He expects a multinational force to be stationed in southern Lebanon with the authority to use weapons after Israel's military operation is completed.

According to Ezra, "the rockets must be eliminated and we must leave a fenced and clear area with a border in the south and in the north, into which the multinational force will enter. The border in the north can be the Litani, and in the south it is of course the Blue Line, the international borderline between Israel and Lebanon. Until the force arrives, the military operation must continue."

link

.....only because Israel wants it to.

Let's be honest about it. It's obvious that Hizballah and everyone else in Lebanon would welcome a halt to the war right now. Israel is now in full punitive mode however, and this can only lead to more and worse warfare in future. Sadly, I don't think Israel cares. What they really want is war against Iran.

7 IDF soldiers wounded in anti-tank fire in Bint Jbail

Three IDF soldiers killed in heavy fighting in southern Lebanon

By Amos Harel and Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz Correspondents, and Agencies

Three Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed and at least 15 wounded in southern Lebanon on Tuesday where heavy battles between IDF troops and Hezbollah have been raging since late Monday.

Seven IDF soldiers were wounded, one moderately when their unit came under anti-tank fire during clashes in Bint Jbail Tuesday evening. Another tank that arrived on the scene was hit by explosives, but there was no word of injuries in that incident.

The IDF said that two reservist soldiers were killed early Tuesday, during fighting in the southwestern Lebanese village of Labouna. Another soldier was moderately wounded and a fourth sustained light wounds.

One of the slain soldiers was identified as Gilad Belachsan, 28, from Carmiel.

Another soldier was killed late Monday when Hezbollah fighters fired an anti-tank missile at an IDF "Puma" armored personnel carrier in the village of Dibel, close to Bint Jbail. He was named as Philip Mosko, 21, of Maaleh Adumim. Five other soldiers were lightly wounded in the battle.

Tuesday morning, two soldiers were seriously wounded in heavy exchanges of fire in the area near Bint Jbail. Two Hezbollah men were killed in the clashes.

IDF troops began battling Hezbollah gunmen in Labouna on Monday night. Overnight, soldiers killed seven Hezbollah fighters, and captured another five Lebanese suspected of belonging to the organization.

Three IDF soldiers were killed and nine others wounded Monday in fierce battles with Hezbollah.

On Tuesday morning, the third soldier killed in the fighting the day before was named as Staff Sergeant Noam Meirson, 23, from Jerusalem.

The two other casualties were named Monday as Major Yotam Lotan, 33, of Kibbutz Beit Hashita and Staff Sergeant Malko Mosha Ambao, 22, of Lod.

An Israel Air Force strike hit the southern Lebanese village of Ghaziyeh on Tuesday, killing 14 people and wounding 24 more while mourners were burying 15 relatives killed in an IAF bombing the previous day.

At least two rockets hit Ghaziyeh during the funeral, though not in the immediate vicinity, a Reuters journalist reported.

Rescue workers said the air strike on two homes had killed one person and wounded five. They were working to save another person trapped under the rubble.

An air strike destroyed a three-storey school building in the village of Maaroub, 15 km east of the southern city of Tyre. Khalil Moussa, the school's janitor, told Reuters that his wife, three children and a teacher were under the rubble.

"I couldn't do anything to help them," he wept. "They might be still alive. We have to remove the rubble quickly."

On Monday evening, the IDF warned residents of south Lebanon that a curfew was to be imposed, saying anyone moving around outside after 10 P.M. (1900 GMT) would be at risk, a military source said.

"Anyone who does travel is taking a high risk. There is no end period," the source said. "This will allow us to track anyone potentially trying to launch rockets."

The source said the restriction on movement applied anywhere south of the Litani river, which is roughly 20 km from Israel's northern border. He did not specify how the warning had been delivered.

General Staff officers believe that the political leadership will approve an expansion of the ground offensive in the near future. Nevertheless, the officers are waiting to see how the new initiative by the Lebanese government to deploy 15,000 soldiers in the south will be welcomed.

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The Israeli army has always struck fear in Arab countries by winning its wars. This one, however, has not been won by their troops or technology. By Hizbullah resisting successfully, Israel is fearful that its loss will be interpreted by Arab countries as a victory, and there will be nothing to stop other countries and/or terrorists from launching missiles and mortars into Israel.

Sure, Iran is supplying Hizbullah through Syria, but the dominant fear is the psychological advantage of Israel's army not being able to be an intimidating deterrent against future attacks. If that was in place, they probably wouldn't hesitate to agree to the end of hostilities. They keep fighting hoping they will be able to gain the advantage--rather fruitlessly I would surmise. Hizbullah will not be destroyed. Israel deployed the wrong tactics with the air attack and when that became apparent, they launched what for them is a small ground force invasion. That isn't working either and they're desperate for a victory which won't be forthcoming despite their wishful thinking. They would have to incur massive loss of lives for Israeli ground troops and I don't believe their electorate would be able to digest that much of a sacrifice. Underestimation and poor tactics is also their villian.

from the article posted:
"According to Ezra, "the rockets must be eliminated and we must leave a fenced and clear area with a border in the south and in the north, into which the multinational force will enter. The border in the north can be the Litani, and in the south it is of course the Blue Line, the international borderline between Israel and Lebanon. Until the force arrives, the military operation must continue."

So until every village is raze to the ground, every farm wrecked, every indigenous family uprooted and made destitute refugees -from the border to the Litani- this war will continue. And why? So racist pricks from Brooklyn can make "alliyah" to a stolen land that doesn't even have enough water for the present inhabitants, and only makes do by stealing Syria's water from the Golan Heights and Palestinian water from the Westbank. And now the bastards want to finally get the Litani and, ideally, have our soldiers die for them to get it. Sick and depraved.

Them? No, like the old story, what do you expect from a scorpion? They'be been murdering and despoiling Arabs ever since the first Zionists arrived in Palestine - what else is new? I meant us for allowing our governments to aid and abet the same warcrime that our grandfathers hung the Nazis for and we supposedly bombed Serbia to prevent. And now we are helping out. What does that say about us?

"Who controls the past controls the future,ran the Party slogan, Who controls the present controls the past"

Israel names new commander for Lebanon offensive

By Allyn Fisher-Ilan

JERUSALEM, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Israel named a new top commander for its Lebanon war effort on Tuesday, effectively demoting another general after criticism of the army's handling of the four-week-old offensive.

The military said in a statement that Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, a veteran of previous Lebanon campaigns, was named "to coordinate the Israeli army's operations in Lebanon".

Israeli commentators saw the move as effectively pushing aside Gen. Udi Adam, head of northern command, at a time when some Israelis are asking why the region's mightiest army has failed to halt Hizbollah rocket fire after 28 days of fighting.

Channel Two television said Kaplinsky, the deputy chief of staff and former commander in the occupied West Bank, was named because Adam had angered Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by accusing politicians of limiting the Lebanon campaign.....

via haaretz.com

Interesting that this announcement coincides with Hizballah's latest claim to have killed 12 and wounded 10 IDF troops and disabled a number of tanks and bulldozers in today's fighting.

01:46 Report: IDF shells Lebanon`s largest Palestinian refugee camp, causing casualties (AP)

(not as tangential to thread as title might indicate)

Ashraf Khali | August 8 | GAZA CITY —

LATimes - Hamas on Monday accused Israel of a failed assassination attempt against Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh using a poison-filled letter.

Several employees in the office of Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer in the West Bank city of Ramallah were hospitalized after one of them opened a letter addressed to Haniyeh. The letter contained a tissue that gave off a strange smell, filling the room and overwhelming several employees, Palestinian sources said.

Seven employees were hospitalized, one in serious condition.

An Israeli army spokesman who declined to give his name denied any involvement by Israeli troops or officials.

During a Cabinet meeting in Gaza City, Haniyeh called the incident a "criminal and dangerous act," according to the Ramattan news agency.

He said the letter was sent from Tel Aviv addressed personally to him.

Shaer promised a full investigation, saying the tissue had been sent to a lab for analysis.

In 1997, Israeli agents tried to kill Hamas senior leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman, Jordan, by injecting poison in his ear. The attempt failed, and the agents were captured and later exchanged for jailed Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

Haniyeh, whose Hamas-led government is opposed by Israel, has been unable to leave the Gaza Strip since taking power in late March because of Israeli limitations.

Dozens of Hamas-affiliated ministers and lawmakers have since been detained without charges by Israel, most recently parliament Speaker Aziz Dweik, who was hospitalized by his captors Monday. An Israeli army spokesman said Dweik had complained of dizziness and chest pains and was being kept overnight for observation.

In Gaza City, supporters of Islamic Jihad held a rally in support of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. About a thousand protesters marched through Palestine Square downtown, waving black Islamic Jihad banners and yellow Hezbollah flags and chanting, "We are loyal to you, O Nasrallah."

They also harshly criticized the anemic response of Arab governments to the Israeli offensive in Lebanon and to the ongoing siege that has paralyzed the Gaza Strip and killed at least 170 Palestinians.

Islamic Jihad senior leader Khalid Batch condemned what he called "the international silence over Palestine that has given Israel the right to kill and commit massacres."

Nasrallah's popularity has soared throughout the Arab world during the nearly 4-week-old Israeli offensive. Hezbollah flags and posters of Nasrallah are some of the hottest-selling items in Gazan stores.

The Lebanese Shiite Muslim group has long been well regarded among opponents of Israel for its protracted guerrilla war, which helped lead to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special correspondent Hatem Shurrab contributed to this report.

_{"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"}

Read this one!
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=9381

_{repressive governments mix administrative clumsiness & inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies.}

Support for Hezbollah strengthens with every bombed Beirut building

From Daniel McGrory in Beirut
And once again the Arab League has shown itself to be completely worthless. Would they be sitting on their hands if this were Cairo instead? I think not.

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TimesOnline(UK) - AYYAD AMMAR moved among the rescuers clawing through the ruins of a Beirut apartment block yesterday morning, holding up a photograph of his 14-year-old grandson and asking if anyone had seen the boy.
Ahmed Kanj had gone to play computer war games in the internet café at the foot of the seven-storey building minutes before an Israeli missile struck.

A fireman told the old man finally that he had found the teenager’s broken body at daybreak. Mr Ammar bowed his head and began to weep as the crowd around him swore vengeance against Israel for the massacre on Hajjaj Street. The walking wounded and families searching for missing relatives began chanting the name of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, even though most who live here support Amal, a rival Shia group.

Diaa el-Husseini, 34, a market trader, who lived in the adjoining tower block, said: “We thought we were safe here so we stayed. We are not fighters. We are families who only want a peaceful life, but Israel wants to terrorise us all into leaving the southern suburbs of Beirut. Today we all feel part of the Hezbollah resistance.”

If Israel thought that by slowly strangling the life out of the Lebanese capital, by blockading it from land, sea and air, it would turn Christians against their Muslim neighbours it appears to have miscalculated. The tragedy on Hajjaj Street, which killed at least 31 and wounded 60, was Beirut’s single biggest loss of life since the war began, bringing the total to more than 1,000. It hardened the public mood. Even those in the Christian half of the capital, who were beginning to call for a ceasefire at any price, spoke yesterday of their disgust at what Israeli warplanes were doing to their city.

George Serrin, 42, a businessman, has no love for Sheikh Nasrallah and his militia, but said: “Of course I care for my family’s safety and want this war over now. But I am sickened at the needless ruination done to my city, our city.”

The blockades, fuel rationing, rising prices, power cuts and shortages in the shops affect all Beirut’s citizens.

There is a conviction shared by every community that Israel’s agenda is not solely to crush Hezbollah but to dismantle Lebanon, and particularly Beirut, just as the capital was starting to enjoy an economic and political renaissance. The criticisms of Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese Prime Minister, and of Hezbollah’s behaviour in the first days of the war by opposition figures such as Samir Geagea, the veteran Christian leader of the Lebanese Forces group, and the Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt, are muted now as the Lebanese stage a deliberate show of unity.

The priority instead is to prevent Beirut’s frustration and anger developing into another civil war. This is a city that had spent millions marketing itself as this summer’s new Mediterranean playground, but now it feels more like a prison camp.

The damage inflicted on it is colossal. More than 70 bridges and 60 big factories have been destroyed. Fishing fleets have been sunk. Hospitals turn away patients for want of fuel, beaches are deserted and scarred by oil slicks from bombed fuel tanks. There is a pervasive sense of isolation.

With most nightclubs, bars, shops and cinemas closed and with few other distractions left to them, increasing numbers are turning to the internet to express their misery, hopes and worries. Contributors work by candlelight, their computers powered by batteries because much of the city is fortunate if it gets two hours of electricity.

One site, called Electronic Lebanon, has had 2.5 million hits. Antiwar petitions and cartoons are exchanged by e-mail, along with photographs of Lebanon’s dead and injured.

The bloggers also swap their black humour about how it feels to be Beiruti today. Khalid Fouwaz, 26, a US-educated computer analyst, who watched Condoleezza Rice at a press conference on President Bush’s Texas ranch tell Beirutis what they should do, said:

“Perhaps, if she can’t get us a ceasefire, maybe she can get some hay from George W. for our donkeys, as they will be the only way we will be able to move around our capital soon.”

_{"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"}

Iran: The Next War

08:28 U.S. rejects French-proposed amendments to UN cease-fire resolution (AP)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/747483.html

Can someone fill me in on the 'strategic importance' of the Litani?

From what I've been reading, Israel wants to extend its ground operations to reach the Litani. They say that it's to stop Hizbollah rockets from being fired from there.

If this is true, then what I don't understand is why Hizbollah would be firing short range rockets from so far away. In the case of Katyushas,if they were fired from the Litani surely most of them wouldn't even make it over the border.

I'm by no means a military strategist, but it seems to me that the IDF should be concentrating, as they say they are at the moment, on the border areas where the rockets are actually being fired from.

Pushing deeper into the country will not stop the rockets, all it will do is give the IDF an easy ride to the Litani (and some good PR), once they get past the immediate border area that is, leaving a vacuum behind them that Hizbollah will fill.

Hey all, using the Stratfor map here I put together a sweet Google Earth flyover animation of the South Lebanon/Israel area. The link is at:

http://www.hongpong.com/Israel-Lebanon-conflict-August-8.kmz (2.3 MB)

I posted about it on my site with screenshots. I was going to post it here too but I didn't see how to get offsite image tags to work. Regards...
--
Hongpong.com

Aug. 9, 2006 5:30
Ambassador to Venezuela recalled in protest
By HERB KEINON
[JPost ePaper]

Ambassador to Venezuela Shlomo Cohen flew back to Tel Aviv Tuesday, after being temporarily recalled to protest what the Foreign Ministry called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's "wild slander" against Israel.

Chavez, in an Al-Jazeera interview Friday, called Israel's operation in Lebanon an "unjustified aggression that is being carried out in the style of Hitler, in a Fascist fashion."

He said Israel was "doing what Hitler did against the Jews. They are killing innocent children and whole families."

On Thursday Chavez recalled his country's charge d'affaires, who was acting ambassador, from Israel to protest the war against Hizbullah.

Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman blasted Chavez in a statement, saying he needed a "reality check when it comes to the Middle East conflict."

"It is outrageous for him to suggest that Israel, the home of the Jewish people, is behaving like Nazis," Foxman said. "Need we remind Mr. Chavez that the State of Israel, which arose out of the ashes of the Holocaust, once again is fighting to defend itself against an implacable enemy whose goal is the destruction of the Jewish state?"

The ADL sent a letter to Chavez saying it was concerned that "statements demonizing Israel and anti-Semitism cloaked in anti-Zionist terms may be used by others to justify violence against Jews, wherever they l

link to JPost

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In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg

11 Israeli Soldiers Reportedly Killed
By KARIN LAUB , 08.09.2006, 09:15 AM

AP - Arab satellite TV Al-Jazeera reported that 11 Israeli soldiers were killed Wednesday in heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas near the border in south Lebanon. Meanwhile, Israel's Security Cabinet debated a proposal to vastly expand its ground offensive in Lebanon, with key ministers arguing the military must deal more blows to Hezbollah and score quick battlefield victories before a cease-fire is imposed.

More Hezbollah rockets were fired at northern Israeli towns Wednesday - including several medium-range missiles that landed near the West Bank town of Jenin and south of the Israeli city of Afula - bringing the total during the conflict to 3,333, police said.

By mid-afternoon, the guerrillas had fired 132 rockets, but no casualties were immediately reported, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Five of the rockets landed near a Palestinian town in the West Bank on Wednesday, Palestinian security officials said. There were no casualties.

The rockets landed near the village of Arabani, on the Israel-West Bank frontier, the officials said. Clouds of smoke from the rockets could be seen 12 miles away in the town of Jenin, witnesses said.

The Israeli army declined to comment on reports about the 11 soldiers' deaths but said earlier that 15 soldiers were wounded in overnight clashes.

more

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In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg

Halutz: Major ground operation needed 'to end this war differently'

Security cabinet okays decision to expand ground operation in Lebanon

By Aluf Benn, Shmuel Rosner and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents

The security cabinet approved Wednesday a broader ground offensive by the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon, authorizing troops to push to the Litani River some 30
kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon border.

Nine of the 12 ministers in the cabinet voted in favor of the move, while the other three abstained. There were no votes against.

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Some ministers had argued that the military must deal more blows to Hezbollah before a Middle East cease-fire is imposed.

Industry and Trade Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) said after the meeting that the proposed new ground offensive in Lebanon was expected to take 30 days.

"The assessment is it will last 30 days. I think it is wrong to make this assessment. I think it will take a lot longer," he said.

However, a decision to send troops deeper into Lebanon was fraught with considerable risk. Israel would set itself up for new criticism that it is sabotaging diplomatic efforts. Also, a wider ground offensive might do little to stop Hezbollah rocket fire on Israel, while sharply increasing the number of casualties among Israeli troops.

The security cabinet met as the IDF reported casualties in battles with Hezbollah guerillas in the southern Lebanon villages of Ayta al-Shaab and Dibel.

Ahead of the meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was still debating whether to approve the proposed expansion of the IDF ground operation in south Lebanon.

Olmert was concerned that the plan presented by the defense establishment will result in hundreds of casualties, and therefore, wanted to subject it to a careful cost-benefit analysis. In Tuesday's fighting in Lebanon, five soldiers were killed and 23 others wounded, two of them seriously.

According to a government source, Olmert had also asked the army to present him with several different options for a ground operation.

While most of the cabinet was expected to back whatever Olmert decides, sources in the Prime Minister's Office said that three to four ministers were likely to oppose a large-scale ground operation regardless of Olmert's position.

The IDF's proposal is for a two-week ground operation that would involve conquering the entire area south of the Litani River, and even a few areas north of it, with the goal of significantly reducing Hezbollah's short-range rocket launching capabilities. Most Katyusha rocket launches take place from within this area.

IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said Tuesday that such an operation is necessary "in order to end this war differently."People who participated in discussions of the plan with him said they had never heard him speak as forcefully in favor of anything as he did in favor of the proposed ground operation

more

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In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg

MP George Galloway, video.

What a match he would make at the UN for Bolton. Would they drive each other to take off their shoes and pound them on the desk as Nikita Khruschev did in 1960? Nikita had up 'til that time used his fists.

Israel isolates Tyre with threat to bomb all traffic

No exemptions for humanitarian convoys says military

Jonathan Steele in Tyre and Conal Urquhart in Metulla
Wednesday August 9, 2006
The Guardian

Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over Tyre yesterday morning, warning people not to use vehicles south of the Litani river, heightening the city's sense of isolation.

All roads north and south of the port city have been cut by bombing in the last few days and Israeli authorities have refused permission for any ships to dock.

The travel ban had no time limit and mentioned no exceptions, even for ambulances and humanitarian convoys. Addressed to "Lebanese civilians south of the Litani River", it said: "Read this carefully and follow its instructions. The Israeli Defence Forces will escalate their operations and will strike with force against terrorist elements who are using you as human shields and firing rockets from inside your homes against Israel..." All vehicles would be bombed the letter said. It was signed "State of Israel".

The warning had an immediate effect. The city's streets virtually emptied yesterday. Most shops were shuttered, and there were few pedestrians on the pavements along the main roads. Only in the alleys of the medieval quarter was there an occasional group of people on chairs outside their front doors.

"I don't have any food for customers," said Abu Ali, a cafe owner. "My wife and children have gone to Beirut. No one's sleeping. They're constantly planning what to do if anything happens". He hinted that if the Israelis entered the town, he would fight them. "I'm a civilian who's ready for anything, day or night," he said. Asked if he had a gun, he repeated his comment.

Standing by his sandwich shop, Houssam Nasser said: "We normally get supplies of bread and meat every day. Now they've stopped. I'll keep my shop open but won't have anything to sell." But he was not planning to leave in spite of the siege.

At the police station, a detective said staff had not been able to move. The government had ordered all police to stay on their jobs, even if they sent their families away, but with the travel ban they could not work properly. "I don't how long this will last. It's the Israelis who decide," he said.

Local and international humanitarian organisations tried to get exemption from the travel ban by applying to the Israeli authorities for permission to go out on urgent missions. Yusuf Khairalla, Tyre's civil defence supervisor, said the city was isolated. "This is the first time this has happened," he said.

His team was denied permission to travel to Maroub, about 10 miles outside the city, to rescue five people from under the rubble of a bombed house.

At the clinic staffed by Médecins sans Frontières Dr Martial Ledecq, a surgeon, was sterilising equipment brought in from Beirut on Monday. The boxes had to be carried along a footbridge across the Litani river by volunteers because Israel destroyed the causeway on Sunday night, cutting Tyre off from road traffic.

"If there is fighting in town, we will be ready for operations. You will have noticed that the main hospitals are all on the eastern edge of town. We are the only one in the centre", Dr Ledecq said.

Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, was forced to walk across the footbridge on a visit to Tyre yesterday. Access for civilians was his major concern, he said, a point he would emphasise during meetings in Israel today.

With southern Lebanon now a virtual prison, the most fortunate people are the region's official prisoners. "We evacuated all 80 of them from Tibnin prison a week ago. They are safe now in Beirut," said a detective at the police station.

MORE

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1840140,00.html

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In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg

Commentary
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Muslim countries must be armed to match Israel's war machine
By
Wed, 9 Aug 2006, 11:06:00
The New Nation - Bangladesh

The Muslim countries of the Middle East must not remain helplessly at the receiving end of the brutalities of Israel's war machine. Admittedly, the US government has a larger plan of its own for implementation in Middle East. The devastating war machine of Israel is being maintained for attaining this objective. The Muslim countries' eagerness to maintain friendly relations with the USA is of no consideration in the mind of the present US administration. The reality is that the US administration considers Muslim power as a threat to US's hegemonistic design of an unipolar world. Assisting Hezbollah or sending peace keeping forces is not enough.

The United States blocked a quick cease-fire only to allow Israel to destroy Lebanon and kill Lebanese men, women and children in huge numbers.

Many Western observers find it difficult to reconcile bombing of Beirut's international airport, petroleum supplies, power plants and fishing fleets with combating Hezbollah guerrillas. The attacks on Lebanon's military is specially odd when Israel wants Lebanese government to rein in Hezbollah.

Fierce battles between Israeli army and Hezbollah resistance forces raged Tuesday across southern Lebanon as diplomats at the United Nations were struggling to keep a peace plan from collapsing. Arab countries including Lebanon are insisting that the peace plan must include provision for withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon. It is common sense that there cannot be any peace when parts of Lebanon remain under Israeli occupation. It is the occupation by Israel of parts of Lebanon, Syria and Palestine that is at the heart of the guerrilla resistance against Israel.

It is a gigantic lie that Muslim countries of the Middle East do not accept Israel state. Expressions of anger and terrorism are directed to restrain Israel occupying the Muslim countries

more

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In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg

explainer: Answers to your questions about the news.

How To Fly a Drone
Just pretend like you're playing PlayStation.

By Dan Kois
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006, at 1:34 PM ET

On Monday, the Israeli air force shot down a Hezbollah drone over Israeli airspace. According to media reports in Israel, the unmanned craft was preparing to drop explosives. How do you pilot an unmanned drone?

Depending on the drone, it's either like playing a video game, flying a remote-controlled plane, or doing data entry. Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, are pilotless airplanes used for reconnaissance and surgical attacks. The U.S. Army's drone of choice, the Raven, is a 3-foot-long, camera-equipped miniplane that's "launched" when a soldier winds it up and throws it. Once in the air, the Raven is controlled by a book-sized console that looks something like a 1980s-era Coleco football game. The screen at the top displays one of the drone's three video feeds, and the joysticks and buttons at the bottom pilot the craft. Operators can use the sticks to pilot the Raven like a model plane or just preprogram GPS coordinates for the drone to follow. There's even a button that automatically returns the Raven to its launch site.

More with lotsa links at Slate

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In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg

for the world to follow Venezuela's example, and indeed go further.

Much further.

In the last five years the US and Israel between them have bombed, devastated, invaded and occupied three countries, bringing death and misery to tens of thousands of people: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. They have their evil eyes on a fourth, Iran. North Korea might be a fifth, Cuba a sixth, and Venezuela a seventh.

The US and Israel are belligerent, monstrous, terrorist rogue states. The international community ought to treat them as pariahs, severing all diplomatic ties, setting up a global economic blockade and boycott against them, freezing US and Israeli physical and financial assets in their territory, forbidding US and Israeli planes from using their airspace and airports and US and Israeli ships from using their ports, and banning most US and Israeli citizens from travel to their countries, until the neocon and neolikudnik bastards are driven from power and handed over, along with Britain's Tony Blair, to stand trial before the International Criminal Court.

We basically have three alternatives: 1) perpetual conventional warfare waged by a horrifyingly entrenched neocon-neolikudnik alliance, combined with perpetual terrorism/guerilla warfare waged by Islamic and other extremist resistance movements; or 2) full-scale global warfare among several state actors, involving the use of long range missiles and at least some tactical nuclear nuclear weapons; or 3) the political destruction of the neocon-neolikudnik alliance due to its extreme isolation by the international community, as per the above.

While 3 is the least probable, it is by far the most preferable. And for those who believe that the Dems will take back Congress in November, please, spare me. Even if they did, it wouldn't make much difference given the Dems' cowardly need to be as warlike as the neocon, neolikudnik bastards when it comes to dealing with the latter's international opponents.