Israel will control southern Lebanon in one week

Contrary to news reports and popular opinion, Israel does not plan to stop their fight against Hezbollah. "Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Israel plans to "expand and strengthen" its attack on Hezbollah. Israel's top ministers were to discuss widening the army's ground operation."

In fact, Fox News Channel is reporting that Israel will control the Southern portion of Lebanon within a week. Ground operations will be greatly stepped up in the next two days, according to Fox.

"I'm convinced that we won't finish this war until it's clear that Hezbollah has no more abilities to attack Israel from south Lebanon. This is what we are striving for," Justice Minister Haim Ramon said. source

Right Wing News thinks "national security and political concerns seem to match up well in this case and it makes sense for Bush to give Israel as long a leash as possible".

What do the parties involved have to say?

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

``There is no cease-fire and they're won't be any cease- fire in the coming days,'' Olmert said in a speech to a meeting of mayors in Tel Aviv late today. ``This is an almost one-time opportunity to change the rules of the game in Lebanon.'' ... `We will end it when the threat over our heads is removed, when our kidnapped soldiers return to their homes and when we can live in security,'' he said. ...

Olmert said Israel's goal is still to push Hezbollah back from the Lebanese border with Israel and for a multinational force to be deployed in south Lebanon and along Lebanon's border with Syria to prevent the organization from receiving arms.

President George W. Bush

``The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East,'' Bush said in a speech at a U.S. Coast Guard command in Miami, Florida. ``To achieve the peace that we want, we must achieve certain clear objectives.''

Lebanon

Presidential spokesman Rafik Shlala said the Lebanese government won't accept any UN decision that will impose an international peacekeeping force on Lebanon.

Hezbollah

``There is a possibility for an immediate cease-fire if Rice withdraws her conditions,'' Hussein Rahhai, a Hezbollah spokesman, said in a telephone interview. ``Israel has suspended its air attacks but it continues to fight on the ground and to bomb from the ground and by sea.''

The Lebanese have the right to respond to attacks by land and sea, Rahhai said. (Excepted from -- Bloomberg.com "Olmert Says Israel Has No Plan for Cease-Fire in `Coming Days'" by David Rosenberg and Jonathan Ferziger)

What does Iran have to say? Chad at In the Bullpen reports, "Ahmadinejad Plans to Light up Jerusalem Sky" and apparently Hassan Nasrallah has some surprises too.

We’re three weeks away from some Iranian surprise as announced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian funded Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has also repeatedly announced a surprise is on the way for Israel. Are the two messages connected?

On August 22 Iran, on their timeline, will give the world the response regarding a proposal for Iran to end it’s military nuclear program. August 22 (Rajab 27, 1427) is the day Muslims celebrate Mohammed’s ascension into Heaven called the Miraj.

According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad was carried on a Buraq, a miraculous horse with a human head, from Mecca to Jerusalem, where he ascended into heaven and met the other prophets.

A great light shone upon Mohammed’s body in the Aqsa Mosque and a prophet was received while his followers cheered. Ahmadinejad now plans on remaking that divine light over Jerusalem.

And now, according to Ghadry, Ahmadinejad is planning an illumination of the night sky over Jerusalem to rival the one that greeted the Prophet of Islam on his journey. What the Iranian President, he says, is “promising the world by August 22 is the light in the sky over the Aqsa Mosque that took place the night before. That is his answer to the package of incentives the international community offered Iran on June 6.”

What would light up the sky over Jerusalem with regard to Iranian involvement? One can conclude this means either a Hezbollah assault on Jerusalem, an Iranian war against Israel in Jerusalem or a nuclear bomb. The latter is the most far-fetched only because it’s not believed Iran has a nuclear weapon, but what else would create a series of magical lights that light up the sky over the sacred mosque, that’s built on top of a synagogue by the way? (Go read it all, it's Chad at his best)

Comments

[Anonymous]

The Moral Culpability for Qana

by Patrick J. Buchanan
"Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hezbollah," roared Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon on July 27.

"Every village from which a Katyusha is fired must be destroyed," bellowed an Israeli general in a quote bannered by the nation's largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.

The Israeli paper then summarized what the justice minister and general were saying: "In other words, a village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire." That was Thursday.

Sunday, in Qana, 57 of Haim Ramon's "terrorists," 37 of them children, were massacred with precision-guided bombs. Apparently, Katyushas had been fired from Qana, near the destroyed building.

"One who goes to sleep with rockets shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't wake up in the morning," said Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman.

Today, we hear unctuous statements about how Israel takes pains to avoid civilian casualties, drops leaflets to warn civilians to flee target areas, and conforms to all the rules of civilized warfare.

But Israel's words and deeds contradict her propaganda. As the war began, Ehud Olmert accused Lebanon, which had condemned Hezbollah for the killing and capture of the Israeli soldiers, of an "act of war." Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz publicly threatened "to turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years."

Gillerman, at a pro-Israel rally in New York, thundered, "[T]o those countries who claim that we are using disproportionate force, I have only this to say: You're damn right we are."

"His comments drew wild applause," said the Jerusalem Post.

Though Israel is dissembling now, Gillerman spoke the truth then. No sooner had Hezbollah taken the two Israeli soldiers hostage than Israel unleashed an air war – on Lebanon. The Beirut airport was bombed, its fuel storage tanks set ablaze. The coast was blockaded. Power plants, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, roads, trucks, and buses were all hit with air strikes.

Within 48 hours, it was apparent Israel was exploiting Hezbollah's attack to execute a preconceived military plan to destroy Lebanon – i.e., the collective punishment of a people and nation for the crimes of a renegade militia they could not control. It was the moral equivalent of a municipal police going berserk, shooting, killing, and ravaging an African-American community, because Black Panthers had ambushed and killed cops.

If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, a ratio of 30-1, though Hezbollah is firing unguided rockets, while Israel is using precision-guided munitions.

Thousands of Lebanese civilians are injured. Perhaps 800,000 are homeless.

Yet, whatever one thinks of the morality of what Israel is doing, the stupidity is paralyzing. Instead of maintaining the moral and political high ground it had – when even Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan were condemning Hezbollah, and privately hoping Israel would inflict a humiliating defeat on Nasrallah – Israel launched an air war on an innocent people. Now, 87 percent of Lebanese back Hezbollah, and the entire Arab and Islamic world, Shia and Sunni alike, is rallying behind Nasrallah.

And how does one defend the behavior of the United States?

When Gillerman was exulting in the disproportionality of Israel's attack on Lebanon, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton was smiling smugly beside him. When the UN Security Council tabled a resolution condemning Hezbollah's igniting of the war and Katyusha attacks, but also the excesses of Israel's reprisals, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton vetoed it. When a few congressmen sought to moderate a pro-Israeli resolution by adding words urging "all sides to protect innocent life and infrastructure," GOP leader John Boehner ordered the words taken down.

Why? Because, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, had prepared the resolution and wanted it passed the way they wrote it. Our Knesset complied. It sailed through the House 410-8.

For two weeks, Bush seemed unable to find a word of criticism for what our friends in Israel were doing to our friends in Lebanon. He publicly sent more bombs to Israel. He and Condi emphasized that America did not want a cease-fire – yet.

And because America provides Israel with the bombs it uses on Lebanon, and we refused to restrain the Israelis, and we opposed every effort for a cease-fire before Sunday, America shares full moral and political responsibility for the massacre at Qana.

Rubbing our noses in our own cravenness, "Bibi" Netanyahu took time out, a week ago, from his daily appearances on American television, denouncing terrorism, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the terror attack on the King David Hotel by Menachem Begin's Irgun, an attack that killed 92 people, among them British nurses.

This was not a terrorist act, Bibi explained, because Irgun telephoned a 15-minute warning to the hotel before the bombs went off. Right. And those children in that basement in Qana should not have ignored the Israeli leaflets warning them to clear out of southern Lebanon.

Our Israeli friends appear to be playing us for fools.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

[jack]

Israel will control southern Lebanon in one week

Well we can get ready for the caterwhauling from the muslims ... occupation. oppression, aggression, depression … mo worldwide jihad calls!