The great correspondent on the Middle East, Robert Fisk, lives in Beirut. As such his current reports are copious, invaluable, and might, just might make it onto media with far greater outreach here than progressive internet. Meanwhile, we're lucky to have him, and I encourage you to pass them on to your own lists. He's honest to a fault, with many, proven-accurate connections and acute insights. Don't hesitate sending him to conflicted or opposing folks.
Ed --- If Lebanese dislike Hizbollah, they hate Israelis By Robert Fisk 07/16/06 "The Independent" -- -It will be called the massacre of Marwaheen. All the civilians killed by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That's when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children. The local fire brigade could not put out the fires as they all burned alive in the inferno. Another "terrorist" target had been eliminated. Yesterday, the Israelis even produced more "terrorist" targets - petrol stations in the Bekaa Valley all the way up to the frontier city of Hermel in northern Lebanon and another series of bridges on one of the few escape routes to Damascus, this time between Chtaura and the border village of Masnaa. Lebanon, as usual, was paying the price for the Hizbollah-Israeli conflict - as Hizbollah no doubt calculated they would when they crossed the Israeli frontier on Wednesday and captured two Israeli soldiers close to Marwaheen. But who is really winning the war? Not Lebanon, you may say, with its more than 90 civilian dead and its infrastructure steadily destroyed in hundreds of Israeli air raids. But is Israel winning? Friday night's missile attack on an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon suggests otherwise. Four Israeli sailors were killed, two of them hurled into the sea when a tele-guided Iranian-made missile smashed into their Hetz-class gunboat just off Beirut at dusk. Those Lebanese who had endured the fire of Israeli gunboats on the coastal highway over many years were elated. They may not have liked Hizbollah - but they hated the Israelis. Only now, however, is a truer picture emerging of the battle for southern Lebanon and it is a fascinating, frightening tale. The original border crossing, the capture of the two soldiers and the killing of three others was planned, according to Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader who escaped assassination by the Israelis on Friday evening, more than five months ago. And Friday's missile attack on the Israeli gunboat was not the last-minute inspiration of a Hizbollah member who just happened to see the warship. It now appears clear that the Hizbollah leadership - Nasrallah used to be the organisation's military commander in southern Lebanon - thought carefully through the effects of their border crossing, relying on the cruelty of Israel's response to quell any criticism of their action within Lebanon. They were right in their planning. The Israeli retaliation was even crueller than some Hizbollah leaders imagined, and the Lebanese quickly silenced all criticism of the guerrilla movement. Hizbollah had presumed the Israelis would cross into Lebanon after the capture of the two soldiers and they blew up the first Israeli Merkava tank when it was only 35 feet inside the country. All four Israeli crewmen were killed and the Israeli army moved no further forward. The long-range Iranian-made missiles which later exploded on Haifa had been preceded only a few weeks ago by a pilotless Hizbollah drone aircraft which surveyed northern Israel and then returned to land in eastern Lebanon after taking photographs during its flight. These pictures not only suggested a flight path for Hizbollah's rockets to Haifa; they also identified Israel's top-secret military air traffic control centre in Miron. The next attack - concealed by Israel's censors - was directed at this facility. Codenamed "Apollo", Israeli military scientists work deep inside mountain caves and bunkers at Miron, guarded by watchtowers, guard-dogs and barbed wire, watching all air traffic moving in and out of Beirut, Damascus, Amman and other Arab cities. The mountain is surmounted by clusters of antennae which Hizbollah quickly identified as a military tracking centre. Before they fired rockets at Haifa, they therefore sent a cluster of missiles towards Miron. The caves are untouchable but the targeting of such a secret location by Hizbollah deeply shocked Israel's military planners. The "centre of world terror" - or whatever they imagine Lebanon to be - could not only breach their frontier and capture their soldiers but attack the nerve-centre of the Israeli northern military command. Then came the Haifa missiles and the attack on the gunboat. It is now clear that this successful military operation - so contemptuous of their enemy were the Israelis that although their warship was equipped with cannon and a Vulcan machine gun, they didn't even provide the vessel with an anti-missile capability - was also planned months ago. Once the Hetz-class boats appeared, Hizbollah positioned a missile crew on the coast of west Beirut not far from Jnah, a crew trained over many weeks for just such an attack. It took less than 30 seconds for the Iranian-made missile to leave Beirut and hit the vessel square amidships, setting it on fire and killing the sailors. Ironically, the Israelis themselves had invited journalists on an "embedded" trip with their navy only hours earlier - they were allowed to film the ships' guns firing on Lebanon - and the moment Hizbollah hit the warship on Friday, Hizbollah's television station, Al-Manar, began showing the "embedded" film. It was a slick piece of propaganda. The Israelis were yesterday trumpeting the fact that the missile was made in Iran as proof of Iran's involvement in the Lebanon war. This was odd reasoning. Since almost all the missiles used to kill the civilians of Lebanon over the past four days were made in Seattle, Duluth and Miami in the United States, their use already suggests to millions of Lebanese that America is behind the bombardment of their country. © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited *** More than 500 protest in TA against IDF raids in Lebanon, Gaza Last update - 00:29 17/07/2006 By Tamara Traubman and Ruth Sinai-Heruti, Haaretz Correspondents http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739042.html More than 500 left-wing activists gathered in central Tel Aviv on Sunday to protest the escalating violence in Lebanon and the Israel Defense Forces' continued offensive in the Gaza Strip. Police forces blocked the protesters when they arrived at the site of the demonstration, and detained three people for questioning. The protesters called the IDF's operations an unnecessary war, and demanded that the government hold negotiations on a prisoner exchange. "We have learned from history that military solutions don't bring anything other than death and destruction," said Abir Kobti, an activist in the Coalition of Women for Peace. "We are calling on the government to regain its composure, come down from the tree, and solve these problems with negotiations to save us from more deaths on both sides," she said. Kobti said the media diminishes the attacks on Lebanese civilians as outcomes of a military offensive, thus "portraying it as a necessary war surrounded by full consensus." A women's protest was also held Sunday next to the central Haifa train depot where a Hezbollah rocket landed early Sunday, killing eight people. The women said that in the coming days, they would be assembling a new group of Arab and Jewish women against the war. ================================ Lebanon blames US for UN silence Aljazeera July 16, 2006 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6C062C97-F8D0-42B9-89A1-1C4D6963D512.htm Lebanon has accused the United States of blocking a Security Council statement calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, and said the impotence of the UN's most powerful body sent wrong signals to small countries. Nouhad Mahmoud, the Lebanese special envoy, said: "It's unacceptable because people are still under shelling, bombardment and destruction is going on ... and people are dying." Qatar, the only Arab nation on the council, received widespread support during closed council consultations for a press statement calling for an immediate ceasefire, restraint in the use of force, and the protection of civilians caught in the conflict, council diplomats said. But Cesar Mayoral, Argentina's UN ambassador, said the United States objected to any statement and Britain opposed calling for a ceasefire. The US and Britain want to wait for the outcome of this weekend's Group of Eight meeting in Russia, an Arab League foreign ministers meeting, and a mission sent to the Middle East by Kofi Annan, Mayoral and other diplomats said. No agreement Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, the French ambassador to the UN and the current council president, confirmed that "there was no agreement on a text tonight, but we will meet on Monday". But Mahmoud protested, saying while innocent civilians are killed "here we are impotent in having ... some stand to address the situation". "It sends very wrong signals not only to the Lebanese people but to all Arab people, to all small nations that we are left to the might of Israel and nobody is doing anything," he said. Nouhad Mahmoud, Lebanese special envoy to the UN: "We want a resolution. We want a ceasefire. We want very clear stand from the Security Council. But concession after concession arrived to the press release - and even the press release was not possible to issue." Change Lebanon's pro-Western government came to power after the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, the former prime minister, in February 2005. This led to Syria's withdrawal of its forces from its smaller neighbour, ending a 29-year occupation. "We have many reasons to expect much more from the Security Council," said Mahmoud, an ambassador who was sent from Beirut. And from the United States? "They were always supportive in the last one-and-a-half years, but when it comes to Israel it seems things change," he said. AP ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Great things are happening at Yahoo! Groups. See the new email design. http://us.click.yahoo.com/TISQkA/hOaOAA/yQLSAA/7gSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
