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Israel 'presses US on bomb sale'

By Nick Miles

BBC News, Washington

 

 

Israel has been bombing suspected Hezbollah sites in Lebanon

Reports from the US suggest Washington has been asked to speed up a shipment of precision bombs sold as part of a deal with Israel last year.

 

According to a report in the New York Times, Israel made the request after it began its air assault on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon 12 days ago.

 

The weapons, including five-tonne laser-guided bombs, are part of a sale signed last year.

 

Unnamed US officials say the request to speed up delivery is unusual.

 

The disclosure is likely to anger Arab governments because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding Israel at such a sensitive time.

 

Precision-guided missiles are playing a key part in Israel's military strategy, which has included attempts to destroy bunkers it says are used by Hezbollah.

 

Israel is one of the largest customers for US armaments.

 

It also receives several billion dollars a year in direct and indirect aid from Washington.

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yeah, the ones who got this whole shebang started after WW1

the ones who continue to facilitate military action

and the ones who are doing the miltary action

 

hell, it's us v them just in time for WW3

 

 

:(

 

good cover.

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looks like in addition to the june 14th abduction of a civilian doctor and his bro by idf that was hardly reported, now there are reports that israel was actually the one who provoked the attack. according to the reports, israel sent a commando force into southern lebanon (before the IDF soldiers were captured) and was subsequently attacked by hezbollah near the village of aitaa al-chaab, which is where the soldiers were killed and the other 2 were taken prisoner.

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looks like in addition to the june 14th abduction of a civilian doctor and his bro by idf that was hardly reported' date=' now there are reports that israel was actually the one who provoked the attack. according to the reports, israel sent a commando force into southern lebanon ([i']before[/i] the IDF soldiers were captured) and was subsequently attacked by hezbollah near the village of aitaa al-chaab, which is where the soldiers were killed and the other 2 were taken prisoner.

 

didn't i tell you guys that a couple of pages back? yeah, i've read a few articles in an

israeli paper about this very thing. i think those are the links i posted.

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links to the abductions that weren't reported or the accusation israel sent a tank of commando's into south lebanon?

sorry casek, i completely missed your post on that. it's not looking like the truth quite yet though..

i actually read about it earlier in the month, which was nbc or msnbc, but i couldn't find it afterwards, which is why i didn't post links or mention it earlier. on the weekend i read a couple of other pieces, which also gave a different account than that of israel's and essentially told the same account, but again, i can't find them right now, so it's a bit fishy still. sorry, usually i post links. keep in mind though that the official story that virtually all media is going with came from the israeli military and was not formulated independently.

as for the abduction(my bad, it was june 24, not the 14th), i do not have time to fetch links right now, but it was reported in the following papers: the jerusalem post(they thought it was a great idea), the baltimore sun, and the l.a. times, all very brief and dismissive. also the turkish daily news and haaretz reported on it, both of which gave the most serious account of the crime.

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Israel 'presses US on bomb sale'

By Nick Miles

BBC News, Washington

 

 

Israel has been bombing suspected Hezbollah sites in Lebanon

Reports from the US suggest Washington has been asked to speed up a shipment of precision bombs sold as part of a deal with Israel last year.

 

According to a report in the New York Times, Israel made the request after it began its air assault on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon 12 days ago.

 

The weapons, including five-tonne laser-guided bombs, are part of a sale signed last year.

 

Unnamed US officials say the request to speed up delivery is unusual.

 

The disclosure is likely to anger Arab governments because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding Israel at such a sensitive time.

 

Precision-guided missiles are playing a key part in Israel's military strategy, which has included attempts to destroy bunkers it says are used by Hezbollah.

 

Israel is one of the largest customers for US armaments.

 

It also receives several billion dollars a year in direct and indirect aid from Washington.

 

Shit. I'm sure it's pissing Iran off too. After all we supplied Saddam with all those weapons that he used to blast the crap out of Tehran neighborhoods.

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yeah, the ones who got this whole shebang started after WW1

the ones who continue to facilitate military action

and the ones who are doing the miltary action

 

hell, it's us v them just in time for WW3

 

 

:(

 

good cover.

 

Wasn't it Europeon and Japanese Facism and Nationalism that stirred things up after WWI. The Spanish Civil War, invasion of Poland, and nationalist politics. Not, U.S. U.K. and Israel (which didn't really exist at that time).

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Its a fucking WAR zone people' date=' as tragic as it is civilians are going to get killed. Its not like this is a new concept that the 'jews' just started...[/quote']

 

You don't get it. Isreal is deliberately attacking civilians. They are bombing appartment buildings and convoys of refugees trying to flee. That's called war crimes. It's also called terrorism.

It's blatantly obvious that their goal is, not to find their soldiers, but to drastically reduce the number of Arabs under the guise of "self defense". This is called Genocide.

 

 

 

 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if their kidnapped soldiers are already dead from their own bombs.

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Wasn't it Europeon and Japanese Facism and Nationalism that stirred things up after WWI. The Spanish Civil War' date=' invasion of Poland, and nationalist politics. Not, U.S. U.K. and Israel (which didn't really exist at that time).[/quote']

 

Yes. And now it's us.

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Its a fucking WAR zone people' date=' as tragic as it is civilians are going to get killed. Its not like this is a new concept that the 'jews' just started...[/quote']

 

 

 

it's not the jews.

 

the whole thing is so sad, i cant even read a paper anymore

 

rip heeb & jabi

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You don't get it. Isreal is deliberately attacking civilians. They are bombing appartment buildings and convoys of refugees trying to flee. That's called war crimes. It's also called terrorism.

It's blatantly obvious that their goal is, not to find their soldiers, but to drastically reduce the number of Arabs under the guise of "self defense". This is called Genocide.

 

.

Do you know how Insane that theory sounds, so much so that i need not debate it.

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Do you know how Insane that theory sounds' date=' so much so that i need not debate it.[/quote']

 

 

What theory? Insane? I'm talking about what's going on in Lebanon you jackass. have you even been paying attention to whats been going on the past week or two?:dunce:

 

 

 

 

 

.

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Five Myths That Sanction Israel's War Crimes

Written by Jonathan Cook

Wednesday, 26 July 2006

Source: http://www.jkcook.net

 

This week I had the pleasure to appear on American radio, on the Laura

Ingraham show, pitted against David Horowitz, a "Semite supremacist" who

most recently made his name under the banner of Campus Watch, leading

McCarthyite witch-hunts against American professors who have the

impertinence to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Arabs have minds and

feelings like the rest of us.

 

It was a revealing experience, at least for a British journalist rarely

exposed to the depths of ignorance and prejudice in the United States on

Middle East matters -- well, apart from the regular wackos who fill my email

inbox. But five minutes of listening to Horowitz speak, and the sympathy

with which his arguments were greeted by Laura ("The Professors -- your

book's a great read, David"), left me a lot more frightened about the

world's future.

 

Horowitz's response to every question, every development in the Middle East,

whether it concerns Lebanon, the Palestinians, Syria, or Iran, is the same:

"They want to drive the Jews into the sea." It's as simple as that. Not even

a superficial attempt at analysis; just the message that the Arab world is

trying to finish off the genocide started by Europe. And if Laura is any

yardstick, a lot of Americans buy that stuff.

 

Horowitz is keen to bang the square peg of the Lebanon story into the round

hole of his claims that the "Jews" are facing an imminent genocide in the

Middle East. And to help him, he and the massed ranks of US apologists for

Israel -- regulars, I suspect, of shows like Laura's -- are promoting at

least four myths regarding Hezbollah's current rockets strikes on Israel.

Unless they are challenged at every turn, the danger is that they will win

the ground war against common sense in the US

 

The first myth is that Israel was forced to pound Lebanon with its military

hardware because Hezbollah began "raining down" rockets on the Galilee.

Anyone with a short memory can probably recall that was not the first

justification we were offered: that had to do with the two soldiers captured

by Hezbollah on a border post on July 12.

 

But presumably Horowitz and his friends realized that 400 Lebanese dead and

counting in little more than a week was hard to sell as a "proportionate"

response. In any case Hezbollah kept telling the world how keen it was to

return the soldiers in a prisoner swap.

 

Hundreds of dead in Lebanon, at least 1,000 severely injured and more than

half a million refugees -- all because Israel is not ready to sit down at

the negotiating table. Even Horowitz could not "advocate for Israel" on that

one.

 

So the chronology of war has been reorganized: now we are being told that

Israel was forced to attack Lebanon to defend itself from the barrage of

Hezbollah rockets falling on Israeli civilians. The international community

is buying the argument hook, line, and sinker. "Israel has the right to

defend itself," says every politician who can find a microphone to talk

into.

 

But, if we cast our minds back, that is not how the "Middle East crisis," as

TV channels now describe it, started. It is worth recapping on those early

events (and I won't document the long history of Lebanese suffering at

Israel's hands that preceded it) before they become entirely shrouded in the

mythology being peddled by Horowitz and others.

 

Early on July 12 Hezbollah launched a raid against an army border post, in

what was in the best interpretation a foolhardy violation of Israeli

sovereignty. In the fighting the Shiite militia killed three soldiers and

captured two others, while Hezbollah fired a few mortars at border areas in

what the Israeli army described at the time as "diversionary tactics." As a

result of the shelling, five Israelis were "lightly injured," with most

needing treatment for shock, according to Haaretz.

 

Israel's immediate response was to send a tank into Lebanon in pursuit of

the Hezbollah fighters (its own foolhardy violation of Lebanese

sovereignty). The tank ran over a landmine, which exploded, killing four

soldiers inside. Another soldier died in further clashes inside Lebanon as

his unit tried to retrieve the bodies.

 

Rather than open diplomatic channels to calm the violence down and start the

process of getting its soldiers back, Israel launched bombing raids deep

into Lebanese territory the same day. Given Israel's worldview that it alone

has a right to project power and fear, that might have been expected.

 

But the next day Israel continued its rampage across the south and into

Beirut, where the airport, roads, bridges, and power stations were

pummelled. We now know from reports in the US media that the Israeli army

had been planning such a strike against Lebanon for at least a year.

 

In contrast to the image of Hezbollah frothing at the mouth to destroy

Israel, its leader Hassan Nasrallah held off from serious retaliation. For

the first day and a half, he limited his strikes to the northern borders

areas, which have faced Hezbollah attacks in the past and are well

protected.

 

He waited till late on June 13 before turning his guns on Haifa, even though

we now know he could have targeted Israel's third largest city from the

outset. A small volley of rockets directed at Haifa caused no injuries and

looked more like a warning than an escalation.

 

It was another three days -- days of constant Israeli bombardment of

Lebanon, destroying the country and injuring countless civilians -- before

Nasrallah hit Haifa again, including a shell that killed eight workers in a

railway depot.

 

No one should have been surprised. Nasrallah was doing exactly what he had

threatened to do if Israel refused to negotiate and chose the path of war

instead. Although the international media quoted his ominous televised

message that "Haifa is just the beginning," Nasrallah in fact made his

threat conditional on Israel's continuing strikes against Lebanon. In the

same speech he warned: "As long as the enemy pursues its aggression without

limits and red lines, we will pursue the confrontation without limits and

red lines." Well, Israel did, and so now has Nasrallah.

 

The second myth is that Hezbollah's stockpile of 12,000 rockets -- the

Israeli army's estimate -- poses an existential threat to Israel. According

to Horowitz and others, Hezbollah collected its armory with the sole intent

of destroying the Jewish state.

 

If this really was Hezbollah's intention in amassing the weapons, it has a

very deluded view of what is required to wipe Israel off the map. More

likely, it collected the armory in the hope that it might prove a deterrence

-- even if a very inadequate one, as Lebanon is now discovering -- against a

repeat of Israel's invasions of 1978 and 1982, and the occupation that

lasted nearly two decades afterwards.

 

In fact, according to other figures supplied by the Israeli army, at least

2,000 Hezbollah rockets have already been fired into Israel while the army's

bombardments have so far destroyed a further 2,000 rockets. In other words,

northern Israel has already received a fifth of Hezbollah's arsenal. As

someone living in the north, and within range of the rockets, I have to say

Israel does not look close to being expunged. The Galilee may be emptier, as

up to third of Israeli Jews seek temporary refuge in the south, but Israel's

existence is in no doubt at all.

 

The third myth is that, while Israel is trying to fight a clean war by

targeting only terrorists, Hezbollah prefers to bring death and destruction

on innocents by firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

 

It is amazing that this myth even needs exploding, but after the efforts of

Horowitz and Co. it most certainly does. As the civilian death toll in

Lebanon has skyrocketed, international criticism of Israel has remained at

the mealy-mouthed level of diplomatic requests for "restraint" and

"proportionate responses."

 

One need only cast a quick eye over the casualty figures from this conflict

to see that if Israel is targeting only Hezbollah fighters it has been

making disastrous miscalculations. So far some 400 Lebanese civilians are

reported dead -- unfortunately for Horowitz's story at least a third of them

children. From the images coming out of Lebanon's hospitals, many more

children have survived but with terrible burns or disabling injuries.

 

The best estimates, though no one knows for sure, are that Hezbollah deaths

are not yet close to the three-figures range.

 

In the latest emerging news from Lebanon, human rights groups are accusing

Israel of violating international law and using cluster grenades, which kill

indiscriminately. There are reports too, so far unconfirmed, that Israel has

been firing illegal incendiary bombs.

 

Conversely, the breakdown of the smaller number of deaths of Israelis at the

hands of Hezbollah -- 42 at the time of writing -- show that more soldiers

have been killed than civilians.

 

In fact, although no one is making the point, Hezbollah's rockets have been

targeted overwhelming at strategic locations: the northern economic hub of

Haifa, its satellite towns and the array of military sites across the

Galilee.

 

Nasrallah seems fully aware that Israel has an impressive civil defense

program of shelters that keep most civilians out of harm's way. Unlike

Horowitz I won't presume to read Nasrallah's mind: whether he wants to kill

large numbers of Israeli civilians or not cannot be known, given his

inability to do so.

 

But we can see from the choice of the sites he is striking that his primary

goal is to give Israelis a small taste of the disruption of normal life that

is being endured by the Lebanese. He has effectively closed Haifa for more

than a week, shutting its port and financial centers. Israeli TV is speaking

increasingly of the damage being inflicted on the country's economy.

 

Because of Israel's press censorship laws, it is impossible to discuss the

locations of Israel's military installations. But Hezbollah's rockets are

accurate enough to show that many are intended for the army's sites in the

Galilee, even if they are rarely precise enough to hit them.

 

It is obvious to everyone in Nazareth, for example, that the rockets landing

close by, and once on, the city over the past week are searching out, and

some have fallen extremely close to, the weapons factory sited near us.

 

Hezbollah seems to have as little concern for the collateral damage of

civilian deaths as Israel -- each wants the balance of terror in its favor

-- but it is nonsense to suggest that Hezbollah's goals are any more ignoble

than Israel's. It is trying to dent the economy of northern Israel in

retaliation for Israel's total destruction of the Lebanese economy. Equally,

it is trying to show Israel that it knows where its military installations

are to be found. Both strategies appear to be having an impact, even if a

minor one, on weakening Israeli resolve.

 

The fourth myth is a continuation of the third: Hezbollah has been

endangering the lives of ordinary Lebanese by hiding among non-combatants.

 

We have seen this kind of dissembling by Israel and Horowitz before, though

not repeated so enthusiastically by Western officials. The UN head of

humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, who is in the region, accused Hezbollah

of "cowardly blending" among the civilian population, and a similar

accuation was levelled by the British foreign minister Kim Howells when he

arrived in Israel.

 

In 2002 Israel made the same charge: that Palestinians resisting its army's

rampage through the refugee camps of the West Bank were hiding among

civilians. The claim grew louder as more Palestinian civilians showed the

irritating habit of gettting in the way of Israeli strikes against

population centers. The complaints reached a crescendo when at least two

dozen civilians were killed in Jenin as Israel razed the camp with Apache

helicopters and Caterpillar bulldozers.

 

The implication of Egeland's cowardly statement seems to be that any

Lebanese fighter, or Palestinian one, resisting Israel and its powerful

military should stand in an open field, his rifle raised to the sky, waiting

to see who fares worse in a shoot-out with an Apache helicopter or F-16

fighter jet. Hezbollah's reluctance to conduct the war in this manner, we

are supposed to infer, is proof that they are terrorists.

 

Egeland and Howells need reminding that Hezbollah's fighters are not aliens

recently arrived from training camps in Iran, whatever Horowitz claims. They

belong to and are strongly supported by the Shiite community, nearly half

the country's population, and many other Lebanese. They have families,

friends, and neighbors living alongside them in the country's south and the

neighborhoods of Beirut who believe Hezbollah is the best hope of defending

their country from Israel's regular onslaughts.

 

Given the indigenous nature of Hezbollah's resistance, we should not be

surprised at the lengths the Shiite militia is going to ensure their loved

ones, and the Lebanese people more generally, are not put directly in danger

by their combat.

 

If only the same could be said of the Israeli army and airforce. One need

only look at the images of the victims of its strikes against residential

neighborhoods, cars, ambulances, and factories to see why most of the dead

being extracted from the rubble are civilians.

 

And finally, there is a fifth myth I almost forgot to mention. That people

like David Horowitz only want to tell us the truth.

 

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book

"Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democatic State" is

published by Pluto Press. His website is http://www.jkcook.net

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