So, is Israel winning?

[kage]

Can you believe the arrogance of these cunts...

"Israel says the decision by diplomats not to call for a halt to its Lebanon offensive at a Middle East summit has given it the green light to continue."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5219360.stm

 

[TAE]

Why not go for option 3 and support peace

Indeed.

 

[Wookster]

This is Gal Aizenman. She was 5 years old when a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered her and her grandmother at a bus station in Jerusalem.

I'm sure she agrees

Maybe if Israel wasn't occupying land it has no right to that wouldn't have happened. You reap what you sow.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The longer the war now goes on, the weaker and less relevant the Lebanese government will become, and the less able to exert pressure on Hezbollah and a Shia community seething with anger at the devastation visited on it.

Source

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Robert Fisk in today's Independent seems to think the Israelis are having a tough time, although he is surprised by this.

Was it this article?

In Bint Jbeil, meanwhile, another bloodbath was taking place. Claiming to "control" this southern Lebanese town, the Israelis chose to walk into a Hizbollah trap. The moment they reached the deserted marketplace, they were ambushed from three sides, their soldiers falling to the ground under sustained rifle fire. The remaining Israeli troops - surrounded by the "terrorists" they were supposed to liquidate - desperately appealed for help, but an Israeli Merkava tank and other vehicles sent to help them were also attacked and set on fire. Up to 17 Israeli soldiers may have died so far in this disastrous operation. During their occupation of Lebanon in 1983 more than 50 Israeli soldiers were killed in just one suicide attack.

The battle for southern Lebanon is on an epic scale but, from the heights above Khiam, the Israelis appear to be in deep trouble. Their F-16s turn in the high bright sun - small, silver fish whose whispers gain in volume as they dive - and their bombs burst over the old prison, where the Hizbollah are still holding out; beyond the frontier, I can see livid fires burning across the Israeli hillsides and the Jewish settlement of Metullah billowing smoke.

It was not meant to be like this, 15 days into Israel's assault on Lebanon. The Katyushas still streak in pairs out of southern Lebanon, clearly visible to the naked eye, white contrails that thump into Israeli's hillsides and border towns.

So is it frustration or revenge that keeps Israel's bombs falling on the innocent? In the early hours two days ago, a tremendous explosion woke me up, rattling the windows and shaking the trees outside, and a single flash suffused the western sky over Nabatiyeh.

The lives of an entire family of seven had just been extinguished.

source

 

[kyser_soze]

So Spion, what do you suggest is done with the millions of Israelis who will be displaced by your amazing 'Give the Land Back' plan?

Or for that matter, the small fact that the Zionist mindset is the result of MILLENIA of slavery, pogroms, attempted genocides, always-first-scapegoating?

You say the Israelis stole land 68 years ago. What about the culture, wealth and property stolen from the Jews over the last 3000 years around the world? Are you going to oversee a programme whereby Israeli Jews are forcibly returned to continents where they have 000s of years of bad memories?

While I agree your point is a good one, you really have no concept of the Zionist mindset and how it came about or how it can be resolved.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Here's a useful interview from 2000 with Lebanon expert Gilbert Achcar, about the implications of Hezbollah driving the Israelis out the previous time.

Q: Hizbollah's victory gives a broad blueprint of a comprehensive strategy (military, political) in defeating Israeli occupation. Can you evaluate the possibility of its reproduction elsewhere?

Achcar: In order to do so, one has to separate the various elements of this "broad blueprint" as you call it. Let us start with the military aspect, since you mention it: I would say that the peculiarities of the Lebanese terrain should be as obvious to anyone in the Arab world as the peculiarities of the Iraqi terrain are now to anyone in Washington who took the 1991 Gulf War as a "broad blueprint" for further US interventions. I mean that, just as the desert is the ideal terrain for taking full advantage of the superiority in air power (as proven by the great contrast between the six weeks of carpet-bombing of the Iraqi troops in 1991 and the poor results of NATO's air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999), the mountainous and populous character of southern Lebanon should be taken into consideration before generalizing its experience into a "broad blueprint".

This being said, what should be emphasized in the first place is that the victory in southern Lebanon was not a "military" victory. The Israeli army has not been defeated militarily: it was much less exhausted than the US forces in Vietnam, and even in the latter case it would be quite improper to talk of a "military defeat." In both cases, the defeat is primarily a political defeat of the governments, against a background of an increasingly reluctant population in the invader country. In that regard, the military action finds its value in its political impact, and not primarily in its direct military impact. The guerrilla actions of the Lebanese Resistance against the occupation -- which was very far, even proportionally, from matching the scale of the Vietnamese Resistance -- were mainly effective through their impact on the Israeli population, just as the coffins of GI's landing back in the US were during the Vietnam War. In both cases, the population of the invader country became more and more opposed to a war effort that was clearly devoid of any moral justification.

This had already been experienced by Israel since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The withdrawal from Beirut in 1982, and later on from most of the occupied Lebanese territory in 1985, were mainly motivated by the fact that the Israeli population could not endorse a situation in which Israeli soldiers were facing death every day for the sake of an occupation which could hardly be justified, even from a mainstream Zionist view. So the key issue is that of the balance between the cost and benefits of an occupation: whereas in the Golan the benefits for Israel exceed the present costs, in southern Lebanon the reverse was very obviously true.

source

 

[big footed fred]

Maybe if Israel wasn't occupying land it has no right to that wouldn't have happened. You reap what you sow.

It's fucking idiots like you that will keep this thing going for years.

Like a 5 year old kid on the israeli or palestinian side has the slightest thing to do with this shit.
"You reap what you sow" - what a fucking twat.

 

[Spion]

It's fucking idiots like you that will keep this thing going for years.

Like a 5 year old kid on the israeli or palestinian side has the slightest thing to do with this shit.
"You reap what you sow" - what a fucking twat.

Why do you not address the issue of the refusal to allow the return of Arab refugees and the theft of land that is at the root of the whole problem?

Why do you think an act of thievery and racism on a colossal scale should go without any reaction on the part of those wronged?

It's fucking idiots like you who fail to address the causes of the problem that will keep this going for years

 

[fishfingerer]

List of stuff destroyed in Lebanon so far:

Airports
Beirut International
Qaleiat domestic
Rayak military

Ports
Beirut
Tripoli
Jounieh

Other transport
Lighthouse, Beirut
Bridges: 62
Fuel stations: 22
Overpasses: 72
Dams: 3
Roads: 600km

Military
Radar installations: 4
Army barracks: 1

Civilian
Private homes: 5,000

Commercial
Tissue paper factory, Bekaa
Bottle factory, Bekaa
Other businesses: 150

Communications
Hezbollah's al-Manar TV station, Haret Hreik, Beirut
MTC mobile phone antenna, Dahr al-Baidar

Utilities
Jiyeh power plant
Sibline power station
Sewage plant, Dair al-Zahrani

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/5218106.stm

 

[big footed fred]

Why do you not address the issue of the refusal to allow the return of Arab refugees and the theft of land that is at the root of the whole problem?

Why do you think an act of thievery and racism on a colossal scale should go without any reaction on the part of those wronged?

It's fucking idiots like you who fail to address the causes of the problem that will keep this going for years

So what.
I know all of this and agree with much of it but please tell me why that is any justification to kill a 5 year old girl regardless of what nationallity or religion she is
Or more to the point - was.

 

[Spion]

So Spion, what do you suggest is done with the millions of Israelis who will be displaced by your amazing 'Give the Land Back' plan?

Why would anyone have to be displaced? I would suggest a solution where new land is brought into cultivation and new industries built using the kind of billions that is chucked at Israel currently solely for Jewish use. The land area is clearly viable as a home for more people than are there already as the Zionists are and have been receiving incomers at quite a rate.

Or for that matter, the small fact that the Zionist mindset is the result of MILLENIA of slavery, pogroms, attempted genocides, always-first-scapegoating?

Are you saying that Jews are incapable of mixing with other people? It sounds like you're buying into the Zionist myth that integration of Jews with other people is impossible. That's the argument people like the BNP use about white Britons and foreigners and I just don't buy it.

You say the Israelis stole land 68 years ago. What about the culture, wealth and property stolen from the Jews over the last 3000 years around the world?

If there are cases of this type where there is evidence they should be dealt with just as any other injustice is.

Are you going to oversee a programme whereby Israeli Jews are forcibly returned to continents where they have 000s of years of bad memories?

I shan't address the ludicrous suggestion that I will oversee anything of the sort. And as you have seen I don't wish anyone to be displaced if at all possible, certainly not by force unless circumstances dictate.

While I agree your point is a good one, you really have no concept of the Zionist mindset and how it came about or how it can be resolved.

You really haven't got a clue about what I know about the Zionist mindset. In fact I have a longstanding relationship and experience if and time spent living in Israel and some Arab countries as well as academic qualifications in the field.

 

[Spion]

So what.
I know all of this and agree with much of it but please tell me why that is any justification to kill a 5 year old girl regardless of what nationallity or religion she is
Or more to the point - was.

I didn't say it was justification, but the original injustice toward the Palestinians is the cause of it. Anyone who wants to see an end to this conflict should have that at the forefront of their mind.

 

[big footed fred]

I didn't say it was justification, but the original injustice toward the Palestinians is the cause of it. Anyone who wants to see an end to this conflict should have that at the forefront of their mind.

Again I agree so a point.
Problem is other backing groups just want all israelis (and jews for that matter) dead and israeli gone. (who mentioned iran?)
The US feeds israeli with money and weapons by the ship load to keep israel going and there is no one able to stop it.
OR perhaps no one wants to stop it.
The US gets it's instability in the area that it seems to like and the extremists on the other side get to kill jews.
Perhaps they all like it except the poor bastards in the middle that can do sod all about it and just want to live a peaceful life.

The UN is a pathetic joke as they can do sod all unles the yanks agree so who the fuck will stop it ?

It's odd that if anyone can stop this it's likely to be bin ladin.
A few well placed bombs in US mainland soft targets would change US public opinion quicker that I can change my socks.
Sound like he may well have a go too.

Hell of a pity as it's people with sod all to do with all of this that will get hurt as usual while the politicians and religious nutters look on from their well protected offices.

Wish I had an idea that could end it but I don't.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said the Israeli air force must bomb villages before ground forces enter, suggesting this would help prevent Israeli casualties in the future.

Asked whether entire villages should be flattened, he said: "These places are not villages. They are military bases in which Hezbollah people are hiding and from which they are operating . . ."

"What we need to activate in south Lebanon is tremendous firepower before ground forces enter," he said. "Our great advantage against Hezbollah is firepower, not hand-to-hand combat."

source

 

[Bernie Gunther]

For me that quote from the Israeli minister tells the whole story. Israel had to pull out of Lebanon last time, at least in part because their population was getting sick of pointless IDF caualties with no end in sight. So they, like the US in Iraq, are trying to use firepower rather than using up their troops lives.

Against a well-armed, dug-in, totally committed guerilla army of religious fanatics, who have been training, stockpiling, planning, fortifying, preparing e.g. tank and anti-aircraft ambushes and practicing for a fight like this since they chucked the Israelis out of Lebanon in 2000, and with so much local support that they can elect a score of MPs to parliament, this is a) going to fail, b) going to kill fuckloads of innocent bystanders and c) going to drive up tension all over the middle east and hence cause even more terrorism.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Meanwhile, the FT has thinks Hezbollah may be 'winning the battle for hearts and minds'

The world has been seized by the tragedy of Lebanon, many believing that the small Mediterranean country is paying the price for the standoff between the US and the axis of Syria and Iran. Envoys have rushed to Beirut to offer their sympathy to a government dominated by a pro-western coalition that, while not endorsing Hizbollah’s actions, has implored the world to intervene to halt Israel’s retaliation. A similar show of support will be mounted today when foreign ministers from the US, Europe and Arab states gather in Rome to try to hammer out the shape of a possible ceasefire.

But most of the ideas for a cessation of hostilities assume that Israel will be able to neutralise Hizbollah, paving the way for the implementation of UN Security Council 1559, which calls for the group’s disarmament.

The comments of those who have found a temporary home in Keyfoun help to explain why that assumption is flawed, ignoring as it does the nature of Hizbollah. The US considers Hizbollah a conventional terrorist organisation like al-Qaeda that is ripe for obliteration. But in Lebanon it is viewed as a legitimate resistance movement that forced Israel out of southern Lebanon in 2000. As well as being one of the country’s largest political parties, it is also its most organised.<snip>

So far, at least, Hizbollah has not felt under pressure to negotiate an end to the conflict. Israel’s offensive has entered a new phase, emptying Lebanese areas close to its borders of residents and sending troops on missions to take over Hizbollah strongholds.

The group, however, has perhaps 5,000 fighters but many more reservists – and, Israel suspects, more longer-range missiles than it has deployed so far. As Anthony Cordesman, security expert at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says, Hizbollah can easily disperse, replace its fighters, then regroup and improve its ambush techniques.

His assessment is that Israel’s strategy could only succeed if the Shia population turned against the group, something which he and many analysts in Beirut believe is unlikely.

source

 

[Bernie Gunther]

According to William Lind, hardly a hand-wringing liberal (in fact arguably well to the right of GW Bush)

A Hezbollah success against the hated Israelis will give governments throughout the Islamic world a stark choice. They can either snuggle up as close to Hezbollah and other Islamic 4GW entities as they can get, hoping to catch some reflected legitimacy, or they can become Vichy to their own peoples. Since the first rule of politics is to survive, I think we can look forward to a great deal of the former.

From that perspective, the Tea Lady, aka U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice, may just have uttered the most significant words of her remarkably empty career. Departing on her meaningless “shuttle diplomacy,” meaningless because we will only talk to one side, she said current events mark “the birth pangs of a new Middle East, and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one.” Don’t worry; we are, we are.

source

 

[Jonti]

... the Zionist mindset is the result of MILLENIA of slavery ...

Thousands of years of slavery, eh? Don't mean to question the accuracy of your historical understanding, but when was this, please, and where?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Paddy Ashdown, on much the same theme as Lind

From now on, Hizbullah does not have to win. It merely has to survive as a potent force - and it appears to be doing just that. Meanwhile the political damage done to Israel through miscalculation, overreaction and targeting errors is incalculable. But there is no comfort to be taken in the thought that Israel may be reaping the whirlwind it has helped to sow. A defeat for Israel and a victory for Hizbullah would have terrifying consequences for the Middle East, which would probably begin with regime change on a wide scale (but not the kind Washington looks for) and could end with the very battle for survival that Israel has always claimed that its use of military force was designed to avoid.

Alongside Israel's failure sits the failure of what I suspect was the strategy of Blair and perhaps Bush. The most positive construction that can be put on this is that they hoped Israel would weaken first Hizbullah and then Iran and Syria, and thus create the context for a wider Middle Eastern settlement, incorporating Palestine and easing our problems in Iraq. Israel's failure so far to achieve its war aims means that this strategy too is in danger of being frustrated.

The world should get very nervous when the US feels frustrated and Israel faces defeat. This is when miscalculations of even greater magnitude become even more possible. There are powerful voices among the neocon Christian right - now very influential in Washington - that the US policy aim should be to use Israel's excesses to draw in Iran and Syria, so that the US could "take them down" as a prelude to reshaping the Middle East for democracy. This is the Clint Eastwood-style "C'mon punk, make my day" strategy. If it were adopted it would be bound to lead to a widening conflagration that would embrace the fragile tinderboxes of central Asia and goodness knows where beyond. I have to believe that no responsible government, in Washington or elsewhere, would follow such a path. But I wish I felt more sure in that belief.

source

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The Lebanon Daily Star has been doing some opinion polling.

The survey showed 87 percent support for Hizbullah's retaliatory attacks on northern Israel. Such a high level of support must be attributed to Hizbullah's political and military performance, in addition to a national consensus identifying Israel as Lebanon's main enemy.

The survey suggests that Hizbullah's military performance has bolstered confidence in the resistance's abilities as 63 percent of respondents expected a Hizbullah victory over Israel.

The survey showed that a large majority of Lebanese do not consider the US to be an honest mediator (89.5 percent).

source

 

[Bernie Gunther]

In connection with the same poll data, but giving a bit more context.

Hizbullah has had six years - ever since Israel withdrew from south Lebanon - to prepare for this climactic showdown. Instead of storing weapons and ammunition in vulnerable stockpiles, they are scattered throughout the south in natural caves, tunnels, and homes. Hizbullah officials say they have sufficient ammunition and high morale tofight for months.

Hizbullah's frontline fighters are battle-hardened veterans after fighting Israeli forces in the 1990s. They are armed with advanced Russian antitank missiles, which have proved deadly against Israel's vaunted Merkava tanks and use classic hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

"Hizbullah is doing what it does best, harassing the enemy," says Timur Goksel, who served 24 years with the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon.

Indeed, Nasrallah has announced the launch of the "second phase of our struggle" in which his long-range rockets would "go beyond Haifa," Israel's third-largest city. Israeli officials have been bracing for possible rocket attacks on Tel Aviv, which would mark a major escalation in the conflict.

"If Hizbullah hits Tel Aviv, I think that Israel will totally wipe off the map Bint Jbail, Khiam, Tyre and Nabatieh," says Nizar Abdel-Kader, a columnist for Ad-Diyar newspaper and a retired Lebanese army general.

The stakes are high for Hizbullah, but it seems it can count on an unprecedented swell of public support that cuts across sectarian lines.According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah's fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah's resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.

Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead.

The latest poll by the Beirut Center found that 8 percent of Lebanese feel the US supports Lebanon, down from 38 percent in January.

source

 

[moono]

Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead.

Nice post, Bernie.

I can't see anybody denying, with any conviction, that the touch-paper to this war was the Palestinian elections, democracy in action, and the lighted taper was the Hamas victory followed by American and Israeli economic terrorism.

Other events, the beach shelling causing Hamas to pick up the sword again, the capture of Shalit ( remember him ?), the collective punishment of Gaza followed by the Hizb Allah intervention, these are all important but not the initiators of war. That was an anti-democratic decision taken by Bush's Zionist advisers.

 

[TAE]

The Lebanon Daily Star has been doing some opinion polling. source

The survey showed 87 percent support for Hizbullah's retaliatory attacks on northern Israel.

87 percent support the killing of israeli civilians?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Apparently. Guess they must be annoyed about something.

No doubt it's mutual.

Edited to add: actually, I think it would be very useful to know how many Israeli citizens approve of their government's military policy right now. If the figure is lower, it's a significant indicator that Israel is going to lose the political battle to Hezbollah yet again.

I checked and it's 65 to 95% depending on who and on what question you ask, 65-70%, 82-95%

So, no solution any time soon then, both sides are angry enough to lose all qualms about the war crime of civilian reprisals.

 

[TAE]

Coventry and Dresden all over again.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Plus there is the obvious concern of this spreading.

This week, the yellow flags of Hezbollah have been fluttering in the streets of Gaza, while portraits of its bearded, turbaned and bespectacled leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, are on public display in Damascus souk.

All this is very annoying for the moderate, pro-Western governments in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.

They don't like violent change and they don't like Hezbollah, they don't like Iran's current regime and they are wary of a new axis of Shia power stretching across the region, from Iran, through Iraq, to Lebanon.

The last thing those pro-Western governments wanted to see was a resurgent guerrilla force upsetting the political chessboard in the region.

Their rulers are all too aware of Hezbollah's appeal to their own populations, who grumble privately that this Lebanese militia has done more than their own timid governments have to confront what they call "Israeli aggression".

source

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Walid Jumblatt thinks a Hezbollah victory is now a foregone conclusion.

MUKHTARA, Lebanon, July 29 -- From his hilltop citadel, Walid Jumblatt was a worried man Saturday. In Lebanon's Byzantine, ever-shifting politics, the leader of the country's Druze community has emerged as one of Hezbollah's harshest critics. But a savvy veteran, he understood the arithmetic of the Middle East these days: In war, survival often means victory. And after 18 days of the conflict with Israel, he was bracing for what Hezbollah's survival would mean for a country seized with volatile uncertainty.

Lebanon's survival, he said, was now in the hands of Hezbollah and its leader, Hasan Nasrallah.

"We have to acknowledge that they have defeated the Israelis. It's not a question of gaining one more village or losing one more village. They have defeated the Israelis," he said. "But the question now is to whom Nasrallah will offer this victory."

source

 

[FruitandNut]

Hamas in government in Palestine, and now the possibility of Hezbollah in government in Lebanon; I wonder if the Israeli politicians are saying to eachother, "WTF, this is not what we had in mind."

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Interesting article in the IHT about the upsurge of pro-Hezbollah feeling that all of this is generating around the muslim world:

At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for 15 days, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah's main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.

An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting U.S. plans for a "new Middle East" that they say has led only to violence and repression.

Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.

source