After Shabbat.
The war intensifies. We are hitting Hezbollah installations in south Beirut and have taken out radar installations.
In the north of our country, we are still taking hits from Katyusha rockets. Now Tiberias (on Lake Kinneret) and Carmiel have been hit.
Hezbollah fired a missile at the IDF missile ship "Ahi Hanit" on Friday. A fire broke out on board, and while it was put out, four sailors were then reported missing, and one of them has since been found dead. The missile was C-802 rocket, a sophisticated radar-guided weapon that comes from Iran. At about the same time this happened, an Egyptian commercial ship sailing in international waters was sunk by an explosion — it is a near certainty that this was another missile from Hezbollah that missed its intended mark.
Peretz is prepared to declare a state of emergency in the north, with over a million people potentially affected. In Haifa an alarm system that will give a warning before a Katyusha lands is being set up, and a battery of Patriot anti-missile missiles have been brought in.
There are estimates that this might go on for weeks or even months
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Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is calling for an immediate ceasefire, claiming his government had no knowledge of what Hezbollah planned and should not be held responsible, and blaming Israel for damage to his country.
He said, "We call (for) … working to extend the state’s authority over all its territories, in cooperation with the United Nations in south Lebanon…and exercising full sovereignty of the state over those territories."
Now this is an exceedingly telling statement that sheds light on the current situation. In 2000, when we pulled out of south Lebanon — where we had maintained a security zone to keep Hezbollah from getting close to our border — the Lebanese army was supposed to take over for us. But that didn’t happen, and Hezbollah was allowed to move in. For six years, the Lebanese government (army) has not controlled this region of its country; particularly was there a lack of action in this regard when Lebanon was under Syria’s thumb. So, perhaps Siniora had no knowledge that Hezbollah was planning on kidnapping Israeli soldiers. But his government knew that Hezbollah was establishing a significant arsenal of rockets on Lebanese soil, including within Beirut. Is there no culpability in this?
As to the UN — which maintains a "peacekeeping" force in south Lebanon, where Hezbollah operates — I have the greatest contempt and anger. They have looked the other way. There are obscene stories that can be told as to how they have operated there, tilting, always away from Israel’s interests.
Israel’s goal, aside from demolishing Hezbollah capabilities, is to make association with Hezbollah a liability for the Lebanese government and see the Lebanese army deployed along its southern border.
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I do not believe this qualifies as an official response to the demand for a ceasefire, but YNet is reporting that associates of Olmert, speaking from his office, have said that there will be no ceasefire until the kidnapped soldiers are returned.
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There is no fighting force in the world as humane as Israel’s. We know that. The world chooses not to.
Please see the JINSA report that provides detailed information on all that Israel permitted to be brought into Gaza from July 7 to July 13. This puts the lie to the cries of humanitarian crisis, hunger, etc.
Writes JINSA: "IF Israel had chosen to make the Palestinian people pay a heavy price for electing terrorists to govern them, and IF Israel had told the Palestinian people that there would be consequences when their elected government went to war against the State of Israel, we would not fault Israel for its choice. BUT THAT CLEARLY WAS NOT THE CHOICE ISRAEL MADE. Israel instead has worked under extraordinary circumstances to provide for the Palestinian people what their elected government chooses not to provide for them. We are dumbstruck; we have vast admiration for Israel’s humanity even as we wonder what kind of way this is to run a war."
If you are outside of Israel, please! use the information provided by JINSA to make the case for Israel — by telling others, writing letters to the editor, calling international news editors, etc.
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/650/documentid/3459
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Once again, the western world — which much prefers not to be — will be in our debt, as we proceed to take out a proxy of Iran, which is what Hezbollah is. There is so much focus on Iran now. It is imperative to stay mindful, always, of the connection between what we are dealing with and the world’s concerns regarding Iran. We are the canary in the mine.
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This posting can be found at: https://41k.82b.myftpupload.com/current-postings/2006/7/15/posted-july-15-2006.html
