Month: July 2006

From the BBC today:

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon “said that in order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops moved in.
He added that Israel had given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and therefore anyone still remaining there could be considered a Hezbollah supporter.

“All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah,” Mr Ramon said.

****

Ramon made these comments on Israeli Army radio. He was apparently not asked about the IDF’s practice of blowing up the cars full of civilians fleeing south Lebanon.

Ramon has made stark the standards that the Israelis are using, and there is no excuse for any American politician or citizen to continue denying that the Israelis are intentionally targeting civilians en masse.

Bush again embraced Israel’s effort in Lebanon today – even after the Justice Minister’s comments.

Interesting developments in the town where I was born:

As the fighting continues overseas, some lessons from the Middle East conflict are hitting home right here in Alabama. Members of the Montgomery Police Department SWAT team are in a five day counterterrorism school taught by a former Israeli servicemember.

Out at the practice range, the 12 member team learns that timing is everything. SWAT team member Todd Wheeler notes, “The way the Israelis do it, it’s extremely dynamic. It’s extremely fast and that’s the only way to fight counterterrorism.”

That’s also why the Montgomery SWAT team is training with Aaron Cohen. He’s a veteran of the Israeli counterterrorist unit. Now his four year stint with that team will work for this team. Cohen says he wants, “to be able to help them reduce risk while responding to terrorist threats while in crowded areas.” Cohen says these drills and the current situation in the Middle East are a powerful combination for him. He explains,”It’s tough. It hits home for me because my unit is working there right now.”

Doing this perhaps? Yep, residents of Montgomery can expect some mighty “dynamic” drug busts from now on.

That “robust” multi-national force Condolezza Rice wants to take over from the IDF in crushing Hezbollah is looking sicklier by the moment: NATO says it is otherwise engaged, and no one except the Italians and possibly the Turks has stepped forward to apply for the job. While Rice has so far denied there would be any American participation, the wording of her statement – as I explained in this blog post – suggested a reversal might be in the works.

And so it is. Ken Silverstein, writing in Harper’s, reports:

“A well-connected former CIA officer has told me that the Bush Administration is in fact considering exactly such a deployment. … According to the former official, Israel and the United States are currently discussing a large American role in exactly such a “multinational” deployment, and some top administration officials, along with senior civilians at the Pentagon, are receptive to the idea.”

If and when American troops take on Hezbollah, at least there won’t be any debate about whether we’re fighting a war for Israel’s sake.

From the London Times:

“Three young girls and a disabled man were among 16 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip today.”

Against my better judgement tonight I was watching Larry King Live, and was witness to something that gave me a feeling that approached satisfaction — as close to such a feeling as one can get watching CNN.

Thanks to CNN transcripts, I don’t even have to paraphrase what I saw:

KING: Christiane Amanpour is in Jerusalem, Christiane, Kofi Annan is usually very diplomatic and careful. Were you surprised that he was so strikingly against Israel today?

And then here, as I watched, Christiane’s face displayed total shock — for an instant. She stuttered for about three seconds and then quickly cleaned herself up.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well I mean, you know, you make that judgment about being against Israel. I’m not sure that’s what his statement said. It asked for a full investigation and it did say that it was apparently deliberate targeting.

And then he went on to say in the statement that the observation post was clearly marked, that his top general there had been in touch with the Israeli authorities all throughout the day about this and asking them to protect it. And the UNIFIL statement that was put out about these casualties said that they had had 14 very close firings in just this afternoon alone.

Larry quickly moved on to another correspondent after being all but handed his overtly pro-Israel ass.

Later in the show, he had two vomit-inducingly identical Senators on the show, one Democrat and one Republican, of course — one must have a “balance” of opinion. They each spat at different points the requisite “Israel has a right to defend herself,” and they each repeated many, many times that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization and that “they started it.”

I shut the TV off when an Israeli spinmeister came on screen. The weird part is the two American Senators were 10 times more disgusting.

Anyway: Dear Christiane,

We almost forgive you for Kosovo.

Nah.

The disturbingly graphic photographs tell only half the story: What many found more horrifying was that these civilian victims of an Israeli attack had earlier been refused shelter at a UN base. But would they really have been “safer” there or just luckier?

In what Kofi Annan today described as “apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces” of a well-known, UN observer post in Southern Lebanon, four UN peacekeepers died. Whether or not this attack was an “accident” will apparently be left up to the Israelis to investigate, but the bombing recalls another incident in Israeli-Lebanese relations. A little over ten years ago, the IDF shelled a UN base at Qana, Lebanon, where 800 refugees had sought shelter. More than 100 died. Despite witness accounts to the contrary, Israel called that an accident as well.