I’m not going to give a blow-by-blow of what has occurred today. Multiple news sources are available for this.
Israel has laid siege to Lebanon, which is cut off by land, sea and air. The Beirut-Damascus Highway, the main road leading to Syria, often used for bringing in weaponry, has been bombed. We are close to Beirut and have bombed the airport, taken out bridges, gasoline depots, missiles batteries, and more. The residents of south Beirut have been warned to leave. Olmert is calling what Hezbollah did an act of war and not a terrorist act. Bringing in ground troops has not been ruled out.
Katyushas are raining down in the north of Israel, from Lebanon. Haifa has now been hit. Sfat has taken a hit that injured 19 and killed one — a hospital was damaged and according to one report there is a child trapped in the rubble there. Nahariya was hit — with one killed and several injured; Kiryat Shmona has been hit. It will go on this way for a while….
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The hardest thing to deal with in all this is the knowledge that what is coming down is the result of years of Israeli indecision and weakness — of governments that relied on international community and tried to make nice with this community at the cost of no longer protecting our nation. This is close to unbearable.
Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, who was Deputy Chief of IDF Intelligence and the head of its Research and Assessment Department, in an interview with IsraelNationalNews today, said that for six years the IDF has known this day was coming:
"It was always understood that Hezbollah is preparing something against us; the only question was exactly what and when.
"…Ever since our retreat from Lebanon, Israel’s political decision-makers decided that Israel would not take the initiative anywhere on the Lebanese border. We were able to see, hear, and detect what Hezbollah was preparing, but we would not take the initiative against them. Because of the political arrangements with the international community, it was decided to let them shoot first – and the consequences are now very clear."
How to assimilate this information and deal with it?
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This does seem to be a wake-up call, however, and if the response continues with strength it will not be too late to redeem ourselves. The IDF is saying that the goal of the current operation is to take out Hezbollah and force the Lebanese government to dissociate itself from it.
Public sentiment is very much in favor of strong action here — except for the extreme left, whom I consider traitors.
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Predictably, the international community is giving tepid lip service to the injustice that has been done to us, and then moving on to request "restraint," so that there is no "escalation" of the situation. Spain, for example, spoke about the fact that this will cause a further deterioration of the peace process. Nonsense, no? But it’s this sort of thinking that our government has catered to for the last six years.
Of everyone, President Bush is coming out strongest in terms of our right to respond.
The Security Council will be meeting tomorrow, at Lebanon’s request, to consider the situation here. That despicable man, Kofi Annan, is sending an investigating team.
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It should be noted that the road here leads, finally, to Iran, which influences and supports both Hamas and Hezbollah. Let the world not think that this is just our local battle. Let them wake up and see the larger ramifications as well.
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And this needs to be said, here and now, in the midst of this pain:
It’s time, finally, for those who imagined further withdrawals from Judea-Samaria might be a good idea to now see the danger of the path that has been taken for so long and to rethink this insanity. Leaving a terrorist entity at your border and watching it build its arsenal and its capability simply is not a smart thing to do. That is what would happen if we were to withdraw. It’s time to re-establish our strength now, our sense of ourselves and our entitlement, to take whatever actions are needed to keep us safe.
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The two soldiers who have been kidnapped into Lebanon have been identified: Ehud Goldwasser, 31, from Nahariya, and Eldad Regev, 26, from Kiryat Motzkin. My heart goes out to them, and their families. Reports are that Hezbollah would like to move them to Iran. Ay!
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Hamas has contacted Egypt in the hopes that it will resume mediation efforts and get Israel to release prisoners in return for Shalit. Fat chance, now.
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This posting can be found at: https://41k.82b.myftpupload.com/current-postings/2006/7/13/posted-july-13-2006.html
