Posted by
J.P. Farris on Monday, August 07, 2006 9:39:56 PM
A buddy of mine that I discuss current events with refers to the UN as “having no teeth”. In other words it offers a lot of words but no action or authority to back up those words. They told North Korea to cease with its missile testing. North Korea just grinned and did it and conducted the tests anyway. Back on July 12 there was a report that the UN Security Council was going to confront Iran about “its failure to respond quickly enough to an incentive package aimed at defusing the current nuclear dispute”. Iran just ignored them.
{http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060712-014737-9281r}
Now the UN is talking about a multinational force going in to stabilize the Israel/Lebanon border. However, they seem to be spouting a bunch of words with no actions. They talk about getting a force together, but they keep putting it off. Meanwhile, people are dying while Israel fights to defend itself from Hezbollah attacks like the recent barrage of rockets it rained down upon Israel recently.
At least 15 people have been killed in a barrage of Hezbollah rocket strikes on northern Israel.
A number of rockets later landed on the Israeli port of Haifa, killing three people and injuring dozens. Reports said at least one building collapsed.
Meanwhile, the UN is debating a draft resolution on the crisis, demanding Hezbollah halt all attacks and Israel stop all offensive military operations. (Words, words, words!)
However, Lebanon has formally asked the UN Security Council to revise its proposed resolution and diplomats in New York say a vote might not now come until Tuesday. (Another delay…and more words.”
Eyewitnesses said the Hezbollah rocket barrage on northern Israel had lasted more than 15 minutes.
Shortly after dark, several rockets landed in residential areas of Haifa, Israel's third largest city, killing at least three and injuring dozens.
One rocket hit an apartment block which partly collapsed, trapping residents inside. Rescue teams were shifting rubble by hand to free them.
Hezbollah has fired more than 3,000 rockets into northern Israel since the conflict began. {http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5249972.stm}
DID RESOLUTION 1559 HAVE ANY MEANING?
The Security Council declared on September 2, 2004 its support for a free and fair presidential election in Lebanon conducted according to Lebanese constitutional rules devised without foreign interference or influence and, in that connection, called upon all remaining forces to withdraw from Lebanon.I believe “without foreign interference or influence” would mean without an Iranian and Syrian backed terrorist group like Hezbollah.
What did Resolution 1559 stipulate?
1. Reaffirms its call for the strict respect of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity, and political independence of Lebanon under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon throughout Lebanon; (Hezbollah has been described as a “state within a state’.)
2. Calls upon all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon; (I believe that would mean Syrian forces and the forces they back…Hezbollah.)
3. Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias; (This is the one they are talking about…more words…Why in the past couple of years has Hezbollah been able to further entrench itself and increase its arms cache with provisions from Iran?)
4. Supports the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory; (I believe that includes southern Lebanon where Hezbollah has entrenched itself.)
5. Declares its support for a free and fair electoral process in Lebanon’s upcoming presidential election conducted according to Lebanese constitutional rules devised without foreign interference or influence;
6. Calls upon all parties concerned to cooperate fully and urgently with the Security Council for the full implementation of this and all relevant resolutions concerning the restoration of the territorial integrity, full sovereignty, and political independence of Lebanon; (Hezbollah has not cooperated and abided by the resolution.)
7. Requests that the Secretary-General report to the Security Council within thirty days on the implementation by the parties of this resolution and decides to remain actively seized of this matter.”{http://www.lgic.org/en/help_1559.php}
Desperately needed food and supplies for trapped and displaced Lebanese are piling up undelivered because Israel won't guarantee security for aid convoys, relief workers said Wednesday.
Their complaints came on one of the heaviest days of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. The United Nations says 800,000 people have been displaced by Israeli ground, air and artillery attacks.
The U.N. World Food Program, which began moving supplies into Lebanon from Syria on Saturday, said it has delivered aid to 80,000 people — roughly 10% of those it has deemed in need.
Israeli officials have not agreed to safe delivery corridors, insisting instead that each convoy get permission to travel and limit its stay, program spokesman Robin Lodge said.
“So many of the main roads are not passable,” said David Holdridge, a program director for Mercy Corps, which reached the village of Marjayoun with cooking oil, canned food and blankets this week.{http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060803/1a_bottomstrip03_dom.art.htm}
It sounds like they are trying to put all the blame on Israel. However, Hezbollah plays a part as well by using those same supply routes to smuggle in Iranian supplied weapons from Syria. Will Hezbollah cease its attack while aid convoys come in? Can Hezbollah provide any guarantees? It’s unlikely. Can anyone logically blame Israel for being cautious?
Meanwhile, the Jewish community all over the world is beginning to experience the tension.
The Islamic Movement warned Wednesday against the possibility that Jewish groups would try to reach the Temple Mount on Thursday (The Ninth of Av) and damage the Al Aqsa Mosque.
The group's warning follows a Supreme Court decision made earlier this week, ordering police to allow whoever wants to visit the Temple Mount during regular visiting hours on the Ninth of Av.
Two MKs from the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsur (Ra'am-Ta'al) and Sheikh Abbas Zkoor (Ra'am-Ta'al) sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, requesting that the government prevent members of the Temple Mount Faithful from reaching the area outside the Al Aqsa Mosque.
"Extremist Jewish groups may damage the Al Aqsa Mosque. If this were to happen, heaven forbid, it would inflame the region," the MKs wrote.
The Islamic Movement's Northern Branch also warned of what could take place Thursday in the vicinity of the Temple Mount. The head of the movement, Sheikh Raed Selah, said in a radio interview that the Supreme Court does not have the authority to rule on the matter.
According to Selah, "The Supreme Court isn't worthy of deciding on matters pertaining to the Al Aqsa Mosque, because Israel does not have sovereignty over it. Selah called on Islamic Movement supporters to reach the Al Aqsa Mosque on Thursday. {http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745740.html}
Israeli director Yoav Shamir said Thursday he has been advised by organizers of the Edinburgh film festival in Scotland not to attend the screening of his new work due to Israel's offensive in Lebanon.
Shamir's previous films include the critically acclaimed documentary "Checkpoint," which showed the daily travails facing Palestinians at crossings in occupied territory interspersed with interviews with Israeli military personnel.
In an email seen by Reuters, Shamir was informed by the organizers that due to expected protests over Israel's attacks on Lebanon, "it might be in your best interest not to attend the festival this year for your own sake, rather than for ours."{http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746155.html}
Last Thursday, in the midst of a heat wave, the tranquility of the city's Jewish community and its institutions was shattered by a single beer bottle, which was filled with rags and gasoline and then thrown at a side door of Joseph Meyerhoff Library. Baltimore Hebrew University was awakened from its summer slumber by the sound of the bottle breaking on the metal door of the library and the police sirens that followed. The library sustained very minor damage, estimated at about $200.
On Friday, Jewish life in Baltimore appeared to be business as usual, but nevertheless something was different. Park Heights Blvd., which extends from the center of the city northward, is the address of many Jewish institutions. The community is vibrant and represents the full range of Jewish expression. Arthur Abramson of the Baltimore Jewish Council was appointed official community spokesperson on the incident. He explained that the community was aware of the constant need to protect its institutions and that, in times of crisis in the Middle East, this need increases.
Gil Kleiner, executive director of the Conservative synagogue Beth El Congregation of Baltimore told Haaretz before the Sabbath that Shabbat prayers would take place in a state of "heightened alert," but he repeatedly stressed that the Molotov cocktail was a lone incident and not part of a trend. Many signs point to the amateur nature of the attack, perhaps on the part of neighborhood teens who have had run-ins with the community in the past.
Still, the firebomb came just one week after the assault on Jewish Federation offices on the other side of the continent, in Seattle. Pam Waechter was killed and several people were injured when Naveed Afzal Haq, a Muslim-American with a history of mental illness, opened fire on them. Since then, there have been other disturbing incidents: an incendiary bottle was thrown in Queens and vandalism was reported in Brooklyn, Miami and Chicago. Arab-Americans demonstrating in Detroit carried effigies of Hassan Nasrallah on their shoulders, and the FBI said that security must be heightened in the area.{http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746681.html}
There is also another battle going on against mainstream media giving sway to Hezbollah propaganda and not getting all the facts before reporting.
An Israeli strike hit a south Beirut street on the edge of the city's eastern district Monday evening. The strike hit a building near a mosque in the upscale southern suburb of Shiyah.
Video of the scene which aired on Lebanese TV, showed rescuers digging for survivors in the rubble of the collapsed building.
The strike came shortly after Israel warned residents south of Lebanon's Litani River to stay off roads after 10 p.m.
The warning came in a message broadcast through the media, sources said.
Earlier Monday, an Israeli air-strike killed at least seven civilians near the southern city of Sidon, Lebanese officials said.
The IDF in recent days had dropped leaflets on Sidon, urging civilians to evacuate.
Israel is attempting to establish a buffer zone between Israel and the Litani -- about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of the border -- to halt the Hezbollah cross-border rocket attacks into Israel.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Monday that one person was killed in an Israeli air-strike on the southern village of Houla, not 40 as he had earlier reported. (There is a big difference between one and forty.)
Once — and it seems bizarre to have to point this out — it was self-evident that Hezbollah was civilization's foe. Indeed, it was an unremarkable, innate expression of civilization itself to think so. No more. It is a measure of the moral attrition of the West that this "point of view" now becomes openly contested, a matter of nuance, degrees, and complexity, punctuated by clinking water glasses at conference tables the world over.
All of which leaves the so-called war on terror exactly where? Muddled beyond measure. For the war on Hezbollah is, if it is anything, a crucial front of the "terror" war. If the Israelis lose — and by lose I mean if the Israelis allow the crooked court of world opinion to bar them from crushing Hezbollah and its ability to make war — we all lose. That is, "we" who wish to triumph over "terror" all lose. And here we go again, bumping up against the clumsy imprecision of politically correct language that fails to define the enemy as adherents of the doctrine of Islamic jihad. Such as Hezbollah, for instance. In addition to destroying Israel, the vicious Iranian proxy also aims at imposing an Iranian-style Shariah state in Lebanon. As just one more contemporary manifestation of jihad doctrine, Hezbollah, which has killed more Americans than any jihad group except al Qaeda, should easily make the blacklist of enemies in a post-September 11 world.
But no. Most of our traditional "allies" (or whatever they are) quiver at the thought. "Given the sensitive situation, I don't think we will be acting on this now," said Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja, speaking for the 25 member states of the European Union, which this week rebuffed a plea from 213 U.S. congressmen to brand Hezbollah a terrorist group. Russia — no traditional ally but oddly treated like one — also balks at designating Hezbollah (or, for that matter, Hamas) an outlaw group. France, meanwhile, goes so far as to call nuke-seeking, Jew-hating, Hezbollah-sponsoring Iran a "respected" country and "stabilizing" force in the region.{http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0806/west080706.php3}
As the conflagration in southern Lebanon rages on, open calls for an annihilationist jihad to eradicate the State of Israel are once again echoing across the Muslim world. There is no confusing the intent expressed in such brazen statements:
[Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Commander] There is a need to topple the phony Zionist regime, this cancerous growth [called] Israel, which was founded in order to plunder the Muslims' resources and wealth
[Iranian President Ahmadinejad at an “emergency” meeting of the 57 Muslim member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia] …the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime
These pronouncements from Iran’s Shi’ite regime and President Ahmadinejad, complemented by an independent statement from the immensely popular Sunni cleric, and “spiritual” leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf Qaradawi, make clear that this jihad transcends the sectarian Shi’ite-Sunni divide within Islam. “The Lebanese resistance is a Jihad (holy war). It is being waged by Shiites, who are also part of the Islamic Ummah [global community]” Qaradawi maintained. He further stated, “Shiites agree with almost all the fundamental principles of Islam, and the differences [between Sunni-Shi’ite] are only in supplementary matters.”
Moreover, Yemen’s President Ali Abdallah Saleh speaking on Al-Jazeera TV Tuesday, August 1, 2006 expressed the hope,
…that all the countries bordering with Israel, not just Syria, would enter the war…We will not enter the war officially, but we will open the borders to the fighters. We will allow the transfer of money and equipment, to support the Lebanese resistance and the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
In accord with the principles of jihad, President Saleh further stated,
This war has become a duty incumbent upon us. Every Muslim has the individual duty to fight on this front… I believe this is a battle for the Islamic nation, not the Arab nation.{http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=3682&sec_id=3682}
Israel is fighting terrorists which many in the mainstream media and some in the European Union fail to acknowledge. But even more-so they are fighting for their right to survive as a nation with peace and security.
There is a lot mentioned about Nasrallah, but today I read of another key player in Hezbollah. And though the EU will not recognize Hezbollah for what it is this high-ranking Hezbollah figure is on their list of terrorists.
Imad Fayez Mugniyah (born December 7, 1962) is a senior member of the Lebanese group Hezbollah. He is alternatively described as the head of its security section, a senior intelligence official and as a founder of the organization. He's widely believed to be heading the international branch of the Hezbollah. This discrepancy can be traced to the limited information known about him. He uses the alias of Hajj. Mugniyah is also included in the EU list of wanted terrorists.
Mugniyah has been implicated in many of terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, primarily American and Israeli targets. These include the April 18, 1983 bombing of the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 63 people including 17 Americans. He was later blamed for the October 23, 1983 simultaneous truck bombings against the French paratroopers and US Marine barracks (see: Marine Barracks Bombing). The attacks killed 58 French soldiers and 241 Marines. Almost a year later on September 20, 1984, he attacked the US embassy annex building. The United States indicted him for the July 14, 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, which resulted in the death of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem. He was also linked to numerous kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut through the 1980s, most notably that of Terry Anderson. Some of these individuals were later killed such as U.S. Army Col William Francis Buckley. The remainder were released at various times until the last one, Terry Anderson was released in 1991.
Mugniyah has been accused of being an ally of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. According to the testimony of Ali Mohamed, he arranged security for a meeting between Mugniyah and al-Qaeda operatives in 1993. This connection has lead some to believe he was also behind the 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers complex, which resulted in the deaths of 19 American service members, 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole bombing in 2000.
Many foreign policy experts including Michael Ledeen have speculated that Mughniyah has had a strong working relationship with Al Qaeda and Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, especially in recent years with the invasion of Iraq. However, other experts speculate that Zarqawi's intense hatred towards Shia Islam, which Mughniyah belongs to, would have prevented such an alliance.
He has also been linked to Palestinian actions, such as the Karine A incident in 2002, where the Palestinian Authority was accused of importing fifty tons of weapons. He was previously a member of Force 17, an armed branch of the Fatah movement charged with providing security for Yasser Arafat and other prominent PLO officials.
On October 10, 2001 Mugniyah appeared on the initial list of the FBI's top 22 Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by President Bush. A reward of $25 million dollars was offered for information leading to his arrest.
The Israeli government has also made several alleged attempts to assassinate Mugniyah. His brother Fuad Mugniyah was killed in 1994 by a Lebanese allegedly working for Israel.
In 1999, the Argentinean government issued an arrest warrant for Mugniyah for his involvement in the 1994 AIMA culture center bombing.
Mugniyah has been formally charged by Argentina with participating in the March 17, 1992 bombings of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 and the AMIA cultural building in July 1994, killing 86 people. He has been accused of orchestrating the 2000 abductions of three Israeli soldiers in the southern part of Lebanon and abduction of Israeli Colonel Elchanan Tenenbaum, and the more recent attack on israel, killing 8 soldiers and abducting two.
Recent articles by the Counter-terrorisim Blog, and by the New Yorker Magazine, suggest that Imad Mugniyah recently attended a meeting between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mugniyah was there representing Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to the same articles, Mugniyah has been informed that he is currently at the top of a US Military and CIA assassination list. For this reason he is said to avoid certain areas of Beirut for fear of being killed by CIA SAD paramilitary operatives, or US Special Operations Hunter/Killer teams. {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imad_Mugniyah}
There are a lot of players in this complex scenario which I feel was brought about by the UNs inability to enforce its own Resolution 1559 while it had the chance. Now they are drafting more resolutions instead of taking action to enforce 1559 and resolve the conflict.