Posted by
J.P. Farris on Saturday, July 15, 2006 4:13:09 PM
Since I started blogging I have become a news junkie. I get multitudes of news reports delivered tomy inbox from CNN, Boston Herald, Boston Globe, the infamous New York Times, the Jerusalem Post and other news services and alerts. I go over the headlines every morning for something to blog about.
Lately my inbox has been full and all the headlines have been dominated by what is going on in Israel and the Middle East. There is a sinister connection between Hizballah, Hamas, Fatah, Syria and Iran.
"The historical ties between Iran and Hizbullah are well known, and Syria also has very close ties to Hizbullah. Again, there's a long history there and it's well known," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters this week. He added that Syria "has a very particular responsibility" for peace in the Middle East as well as for bringing about the release of two IDF soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah terrorists Wednesday morning.
McCormack said there is a clear connection between last month's kidnapping of IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit by Hamas terrorists and the Hizbullah attack and abductions. "If you look at these actions, these are deliberate attempts to try to escalate tensions in the region," he explained. "And you look at the timing...very clearly these are individuals here that are seeking to provoke a negative reaction in the region.
He also told reporters, "You have a terrorist organization that is heading the government of the Palestinian Authority that is not a partner for peace."
Lebanon urged the U.N. Security Council on Friday to quickly impose a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, but Israel said it was trying to free its neighbor from terrorist occupation and insisted the Beirut government secretly backed its actions.
Lebanese Foreign Ministry official Nouhad Mahmoud and Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman addressed an emergency session of the 15-nation council as Israel intensified attacks on Hezbollah targets and Hezbollah fighters fired more rockets across the border into Israel.
The United States on Thursday vetoed a resolution drafted by Arab nations calling on Israel to immediately end its two-week military incursion in Gaza.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton called the measure "not only untimely, but already outmoded" and biased against Israel. (I agree)
Mahmoud said Israel's actions were "aimed at bringing Lebanon to its knees and subverting it by any means."
"Ido not need to explain to you here who the victim is and who the aggressor is," he said. He asked the council "to take an immediate and clear decision calling for a comprehensive, immediate cease-fire, a lifting of the air and sea blockade imposed upon Lebanon and and calling for an end to Israeli aggression."
(I beg to differ with Mr. Mahmoud. Who instigated the aggression by kidnapping Israelis from their native soil? Who made the first move?)
Gillerman, however, said the Lebanese government had brought the Israeli actions on itself, by allowing Hezbollah to remain armed and keep de facto control over southern Lebanon, enabling it to cross the border to seize two Israeli soldiers.
Who is Hezbollah, also spelled Hizballah? I read a report from CNSNEWS.com.
Hizballah: Iran's Tool
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
July 14, 2006
(CNSNews.com) - The Iranian-created and funded organization at the center of the unfolding conflict between Israel and Lebanon is considered one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world, responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other group apart from al-Qaeda.
Since its establishment in the early 1980s, the Hizballah has carried out a proxy war on behalf of Iran and Syria against Israel, focusing on South Lebanon but also targeting Israeli and Jewish institutions in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
The Shi'ite group's involvement in terror attacks against Americans has been deadly too. The group brought the Islamist strategy of suicide bombing to the world's attention in 1983, when it killed more than 350 people, including 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French troops, in a series of attacks in Beirut.
It has also long been associated with kidnapping of Western hostages in Lebanon, including a U.S. Marine Corps colonel and a CIA station chief, both subsequently killed by their captors. Five Israeli soldiers who were captured or disappeared in or near Lebanon between 1982 and 1997 remain missing in action, with suspected involvement of Hizballah or allied groups.
Hizballah was also responsible for another hostage situation targeting Americans - the June 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner during an Athens-Rome flight. The terrorists diverted the plane to Lebanon with its 153 passengers and crew, and murdered U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, dumping his body onto the Beirut runway.
Hizballah claims as its greatest success forcing Israel's decision in 2000 to withdraw its troops from a narrow buffer zone it had maintained in southern Lebanon for 18 years.
Since the Israeli departure, the group has focused more attention on political activities while continuing attacks against Israel and refusing to disarm, despite a U.N. Security Council resolution requirement that it do. The Lebanese government has been powerless or unwilling to enforce the resolution.
In elections last year Hizballah won 14 seats in Lebanon's 128-member parliament. Along with its Shi'ite ally Amal, which won 15 seats, it's regarded by many Lebanese as the legitimate representative of the country's largest religious community.
The U.S. declared Hizballah a terrorist group long before 9/11, while Canada did in 2002 and Britain and Australia have both banned the Hizballah "External Security Organization."
As in the case with Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah and its backers have been fighting a propaganda campaign aimed at drawing a distinction between its military and political "wings."
The drive has been particularly successful in Europe, where many countries have refused to place Hizballah in its entirety on an E.U. terror list, arguing that the organization conducts political and social welfare activities too.
The Netherlands government was a notable exception, saying in a 2004 intelligence assessment that its investigation found the group's political and terrorist functions to be controlled by a single co-ordinating council.
"The Netherlands has changed its policy and no longer makes a distinction between the political and terrorist Hizballah branches," it said.
Other attacks researchers have attributed to Hizballah include a series of bombings in Paris in 1986, which killed 13; an unsuccessful attempt to carry out attacks in Cyprus in 1988; a plot, foiled by Spanish police, to carry out attacks against Jewish targets in Europe in 1989; an unsuccessful attempt to detonate a car bomb outside a Jewish community building in Romania in 1992; the bombing of a small passenger plane carrying 18 passengers in Panama in 1994; and a planned 1996 attack, also foiled by police, on an Israeli institution in Paris.
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in 2002 called Hizballah a member of the international terrorist "A-team."
Terror alliance
One of the FBI's most wanted men is Imad Fayez Mugniyah, the head of Hizballah's security apparatus since its inception.
He has been linked to the 1983 Beirut bombings, the kidnapping and torture of hostages, the death of Stethem in the TWA hijacking, the bombings of the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina in the early 1990s, at the cost of 114 lives, and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen.
A number of reports over the years have dealt with Mugniyah's intimate links with Iran, and especially with its Revolutionary Guard, whose former senior members - including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - now dominate Iran's government.
Last January, American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Ledeen reported that Mugniyah was believed to be among Hizballah figures present at a meeting in Damascus with Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Western security specialists regarded that meeting as a reaffirmation of a longstanding Iran-Syria-Hizballah terrorist alliance.
The Israeli government said Thursday the fingerprints of Iran and Syria were all over this week's events in Lebanon and northern Israel, triggered when Hizballah crossed into Israeli territory, killed eight Israeli soldiers and abducted two others.
Iran and Syria are also backers of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, whose kidnapping of an Israeli soldier last month sparked the continuing crisis in Gaza.
A number of political analysts have attributed the widening conflict to Iran's concerns about the growing international pressure on its nuclear programs.
Ledeen does not believe Iran is driven by worry over a nuclear showdown, however.
"A U.N. debate serves Iran's interest," he wrote in the National Review Online Thursday.
"It deflects attention from our growing awareness of Iran's centrality in Iraq, and the urgency of going after the regimes in Tehran and Damascus. That is where Iran's doom lies, not in the endless charade about the nukes."
Ledeen argued that Iran was the "common prime mover" behind the war now running from Gaza to Israel, through Lebanon and to Iraq via Syria.
"Iran has been at war with us all along, because that's what the world's leading terror state does. The scariest thing about this moment is that the Iranians have convinced themselves that they are winning, and we are powerless to reverse the tide."
I also read a report that Israel apealed to Lebanon to join forces with them todispel the terrorist Hizballah. There are innocent Lebanese running for cover from the escalating violence and Americans are being evacuated. Not all Lebanese agree with Hizballah, so it is my opinion that Israel and Lebanon should work together to liberate Lebanon.
Innocent Israelis in the north are hiding in fear themselves from the violence while President Bush defends Israel's right to protect itself and its people.
The down side to the violence is that Lebanese who would agree with the Israelis in this instance are angered by the aggression shown against the whole country because of a terrorist faction in its government.
When will the madness cease? When the countries involved get wise and take action against the terrorists in their midst.