Posted by
J.P. Farris on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 5:29:43 PM
While the world’s attention was focused on the escalating conflict in the Middle East a Tsunami struck in Indonesia while the memory of the 1994 is still fresh in people’s memories. The death toll from an earthquake and the resulting tsunami has reached 340 with more than 200 people missing. More than 54,000 people have been displaced, and hundreds of buildings have been destroyed. Monday's quake generated waves more than ten feet high. The International Tsunami Information Center issued a tsunami watch after 7.7-magnitude earthquake rumbled in the Indian Ocean 220 miles south of Jakarta.
The early warning system that Indonesian, German and U.N. scientists began developing after a massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December 2004 killed more than 200,000 people in 12 countries has not been completed.
Though local authorities failed to issue warnings -- with one scientist saying they'd realized the quake's power too late -- a few people said they'd recognized the danger when they saw the sea recede, and fled to high ground. A black wave shot ashore half an hour later, sending boats, cars and motorbikes crashing into resorts and fishing villages, and flooding areas 300 yards inland.
While the world’s back was turned the Taliban decided to raise its head again. Scores of Taliban fighters entered the southern Helmand town of Garmser, bordering Pakistan, and surrounded a police compound, forcing a small security force to flee and taking control of the area.
On Monday, a large number of Taliban militants entered Naway-i-Barakzayi, a north of Garmser, and fought a brief battle with police before they too fled the area. One coalition soldier was killed and 11 were wounded.
I have been noticing that terrorists tend to take advantage when your back is turned. While Israel was distracted and dealing with Hamas militants Hizballah snuck up from behind to stab them in the back. While attention is turned toward Israel and Lebanon the Taliban decided to attack.
The violence in Lebanon has the world’s attention. Hizballah is the wild card. There is always the possibility it could try to order up terrorist attacks against Israeli and Western targets around the world. Israel's strikes against Lebanon have provoked Shi'ite radicals in Iraq, who are threatening to attack U.S. troops in retaliation. The most chilling scenario is that the Israeli-Lebanese dispute could grow into a wider war, if Hizballah's backers in Iran or Syria decide or are provoked to join the fray--a possibility that grew when Israeli intelligence claimed on Saturday that Iranian forces helped Hizballah fighters hit an Israeli ship off the coast of Beirut, killing one sailor. (Iran denies the charge.)
Lisa Beyer reported in Time magazine and here is an excerpt on why the Israeli’s are fighting.
The Israelis are determined to show their adversaries that they aren't cowed. That has become clear in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's announcements that Israel will not negotiate for the return of its soldiers. Israeli officials have long talked of "changing the rules of the game," and Olmert unleashed the military to do just that, setting the price for aggression against Israel so high that its enemies would be deterred from acting up in the future.
Olmert may have been influenced by President Bush, both in his stance of "no negotiations with terrorists" and in his decision to retaliate harshly for the Hamas and Hizballah actions. The post-9/11 era has marked a new high in Israeli-U.S. relations, with Washington abandoning its past practice of criticizing Israel when it acts severely toward the Palestinians or other Arab parties. Starting with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israeli officials have taken to adopting Bush's war-on-terrorism rhetoric. Justice Minister Haim Ramon last week said Israel would treat Nasrallah as the U.S. treats Osama bin Laden.
In that context, the abduction of the soldiers was particularly combustible. As it is, such acts strike deep into Israel's soul. It is practically a sacred notion in the Israeli military that nobody is left behind. And because the nation has a citizen's army and Israel's population is so small, hostage taking is felt intimately; if it's not your son or your neighbor's son, it could be.
But provoked by the hostage taking, Olmert's government is also trying to settle other scores. Palestinian militants have been regularly firing homemade Qassam rockets, a Hamas specialty, into Israel from Gaza--some 200 in June and 100 so far in July. Hizballah has occasionally also lobbed rockets across the border since the Israeli pullout. And Israel has watched in dismay as Hizballah has built border fortifications, sometimes 30 feet from Israeli outposts and stockpiled with what Israel estimates to be 13,000 rockets, including upgraded ones that can reach at least as far as the cities of Haifa and Tiberias.
Facing those threats, Israel isn't prepared to show mercy. In the case of Hizballah, especially, the Israelis are going well beyond retribution, taking an opportunity to degrade the organization's capabilities and, perhaps, cripple the group permanently. Said Defense Minister Amir Peretz: "The goal is for this to end with Hizballah so badly beaten that not a man in it does not regret having launched this incident." Most Israelis know the offensive has come at a heavy price--to civilians on both sides, to Lebanon's infrastructure and to Israel's reputation abroad. But from the government's point of view, it is necessary and it is working. Israel claims to have hit many stores of Hizballah's rockets, often within houses. What Israel wants is for the Lebanese to disarm Hizballah, but Israeli realists don't expect the Lebanese to go that far. A demilitarized zone in the south might suffice. The Israelis were heartened to hear that some Arab states and a number of Lebanese politicians were complaining that Hizballah had taken not just the Israeli soldiers but also all of Lebanon hostage.
The assault on Lebanon is intended to send a broader message too, at a time when Israel has largely given up on trying to negotiate for peace and security and instead is trying to establish them on its own. The strongest argument made by domestic critics of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year was that the country's enemies would think it was weak and frightened and thus would be encouraged to strike out. Olmert's dual counterblasts are aimed at changing that impression--among those who believe it--to make the idea of attacking Israel prohibitively scary to the other side or, as the Israelis put it, to re-establish deterrence.
Hassan Nasrallah is the secretary-general of the Hizbullah terrorist organization. In a speech back on April 9, 2000. He said, "The Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities. It is clear that the numbers they talk about are greatly exaggerated. They can speak of fabricated or exaggerated massacres that occurred during the Second World War, but we must forget the massacres that they committed against us and the peoples of the region which are documented and proven...” (He is trying to distort documented history much like Al-Jazeera does by weaving tales of a 9/11 conspiracy.)
Nasrallah also said, "All the major disasters which befell the region stem from the existence of the state called Israel. So long as there is a state called Israel, disasters and suffering will continue. This is a cancerous body in the region... When a cancer is discovered, it must be dealt with fearlessly; it must be uprooted...” (That tells you his intentions toward the nation of Israel and any Middle East peace process.)
Here are excerpts from a speech a speech he gave earlier this year on May 23, 2006:
"A year ago today I said, in Bint Jbeil, that the resistance [Israel] has more than 12,000 missiles. When I say 'more than 12,000 missiles,' it doesn't mean 13,000. It doesn't mean 13,000... I acknowledge that for many years - since 1992, to be precise - the resistance has had a significant and respectable missile capability, both in quantity and quality. Therefore, I can tell you that the north of occupied Palestine is entirely within the range of the missiles of the Lebanese resistance.
"This, of course, is the minimum. As for reaching beyond the north - the less said the better. We have no reason to say whether or not we have such capabilities. Let's keep quiet about this.
"Today the north is within the range of the missiles of the resistance - their ports, their bases, their factories, everything... This creates a balance between the north of Palestine and the south of Lebanon and Lebanon in its entirety." (He had the express intention of instigating a war before Israel crossed into Lebanon to retrieve their kidnapped soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, not to mention Gilad Shilat in Gaza.)
What type of prisoner is Hizballah wanting released? In exchange for the two Israeli soldiers it abducted in a cross-border raid last week is Hizballah wants Israel to release Samir Kuntar, who is serving multiple life sentences for an attack in which he killed a four-year-old girl by smashing her skull with a rifle butt. Hizballah said the goal of its July 12 assault was aimed at winning his freedom.
The following is excerpted from a report entitled Hizballah Wants Israel to Free Child-Killer by Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com International Editor
Samir Kuntar is one of only two or three Lebanese prisoners still held by Israel, and Hizballah said its July 12 assault is aimed at winning his freedom.
The terrorists killed eight Israeli soldiers and seized Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, taking them back over the border. Their whereabouts and condition remain unknown.
The Shi'ite group dubbed the raid Operation True Promise (Al-Wa'ad Al-Sadeq), saying it was making good on an earlier pledge to continue to capture Israeli soldiers and use them to obtain the release of the remaining Lebanese in Israeli jails.
Since the raid, the conflict has escalated, with Israel launching an air assault on Lebanese infrastructure and Hizballah targets and Hizballah firing hundreds of missiles into Israel.
The fighting and loss of life have swung some attention away from the hostage issue, and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in an address late last week that "the battle today is no longer a battle over prisoners or the exchange of prisoners."
Nonetheless, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said during a televised address to the nation Monday night that he kept photographs of Goldwasser and Regev - along with one of another soldier, Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas in a June raid across the Gaza-Israel frontier - on his desk as a daily reminder of his mission.
"We will do everything in our power to ensure their safe release and bring them back home," he said.
In past years, Israel has succeeded in winning freedom for captured soldiers, or the return of missing soldiers' remains, but only by negotiating exchanges involving large numbers of Arab prisoners.
In the most recent of these highly controversial swaps, in January 2004, Israel handed over more than 400 Lebanese and Palestinian detainees in return for one Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers abducted along the Lebanon border in 2000.
That exchange left just two Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails - Kuntar and a man named Nasim Nesser. (Lebanon claims a third man, named as Yehya Sekaf, is also being held, although Israel denies this.)
Lebanese media refer to Kuntar as the "dean" of Lebanese prisoners in Israel. He has been in prison for 28 years, and Hizballah wants him out.
Although Kuntar was jailed for an attack launched by a Lebanon-based Palestinian terrorist group before Hizballah was even established, Hizballah depicts itself as the vanguard of the Islamic campaign against Israel and regards winning freedom for the prisoners a "sacred duty."
A website set up by family members says Kuntar was jailed "for killing several Israelis in a raid on northern Israel."
Israeli media and eyewitness accounts of the incident provide much more detail. Kuntar was one of a four-man group that crossed into Israel by sea, sent on the mission by the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), an affiliate of Yasser Arafat's PLO.
In the coastal town of Nahariya, the terrorists shot dead a policeman and forced their way into an apartment building, where they captured Danny Haran and his daughter, Einat, 4.
While the terrorists rampaged through the apartment, firing weapons and detonating grenades, Haran's wife Smadar hid in a crawlspace above the couple's bedroom together with their other daughter, two-year-old Yael, and a neighbor.
In an effort to prevent Yael from crying out and alerting the terrorists to their whereabouts, Smadar kept her hand over the child's mouth, and accidentally smothered her to death.
Meanwhile Kuntar and his group took Danny and Einat Haran to the beach.
"There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see," Smadar wrote later.
"Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar."
That is not the type of man that needs to be freed. I hadn’t been so upset by a report since I saw pictures of the children of Palestine that had been caught in the cross fire. I was so upset I had to turn off the news and the computer and take a long walk.