Nadine has filled this post with numerous unchallenged lies, but let's just examine this one:
And oh yes, Hizbullah has been shelling Northern Israel daily, and the IAF finally responded.
Message 19197138
A Case for Hizbollah?
by Ran HaCohen
So here we go again, it seems. Blood-thirsty Arabs –
Lebanese fundamentalists of the Hizbollah, "the Party of God"
– bombed the Israeli town of Shlomi (10.8), killing a
15-year-old boy and injuring several others. Terrorist attack
on civilians, three years after Israel has withdrawn its very last
soldier from Lebanese soil. Isn't it the ultimate proof for the
inherent terrorism of the Arabs, the decisive evidence that no
peace can be made with Muslims? If you follow the media, it
probably is. If you take a closer look at the facts – well, not
quite.
Who's Afraid of Hizbollah
Despite its name, the Hizbollah are definitely no saints.
Mother Teresa would not have been able to drive the Israeli
army out of Lebanon after almost 20 years of ruthless
occupation. The Hizbollah has its own agenda and interests,
political and otherwise, and a limited fighting with Israel may
well be among them. (But, as analysts usually forget, Israel
and its army have their interests too, and peace might not be
their top priority either.) An independent militia is indeed
something that no sovereign state can tolerate; Israel is right in
pointing that out. This, however, is not Israel's, but Lebanon's
problem – a small, weak country, torn between conflicting
religious and ethnic groups (including 300.000 Palestinian
refugees), and regularly invaded and terrorised by its stronger
neighbours Israel and Syria. When Israel expresses concern
for Lebanon's sovereignty, one doesn't know whether to weep
or laugh. The existence of Hizbollah is none of Israel's
business: It becomes Israel's business only if it violates the
rules of good neighbourliness.
Precisely this is the aim of Israeli propaganda: to portray the
Hizbollah as a terrorist group that violates the rules of the
game. The facts, however, are that the Hizbollah pretty much
follows the rules of good neighbourliness; it is Israel that
breaches them. Since Israel's withdrawal from South
Lebanon, Hizbollah has been concentrating on two kinds of
actions: anti-aircraft fire, and a limited fighting against Israel
confined to the Shaba Farms. Let's see what it's all about.
Flack
Since the Israeli withdrawal, Hizbollah has fired no missiles
at Israeli towns, though it undoubtedly possesses such
weapons. The Israeli boy killed this week was hit by an
anti-aircraft bomb that failed to detonate in mid-air and
exploded on the ground. "Collateral damage", if you like.
Hizbollah's anti-aircraft fire has a clear target: Israeli fighter
jets that regularly enter Lebanon's airspace, flying over the
entire country from south to north as if it were theirs. The
intrusion flights started in October 2000, just five months after
the Israeli withdrawal, following Hizbollah's kidnap of three
Israeli soldiers at the Shaba Farms. Last November, based on
Lebanese sources, Israeli journalist Daniel Sobelman reported
how up to seven Israeli jets at a time were flying in the skies
of Beirut, drawing smoke-pictures over the Lebanese capital
and repeatedly breaking the sound barrier in what Lebanese
citizens conceived as humiliating and enraging provocations.
Hizbollah leader Nasrallah said the anti-aircraft fire would
cease as soon as the Israeli flights stopped; Israeli army
spokesman refused to comment on its operations (Ha'aretz,
26.11.2002).
Now who is the aggressor here, who is the terrorist? Sending
fighter jets across the border is the most obvious violation of
sovereignty. No country on earth would tolerate that.
Hizbollah's ineffective flak is a totally legitimate and justified
act of self-defence. Israel's accusation that Hizbollah aims its
anti-aircraft fire so that the left-overs fall on Israeli towns –
even if true – is chutzpah incarnate: if you break into my
house, don't complain that the wall I shove you at is rough.
Just imagine Israel's reaction if a foreign jet had dared enter its
airspace. Actually, why imagine? When a Libyan airliner – no
fighter jet, mind you – entered the country's airspace by
mistake in February 1973, the Israeli Air Force shot it down,
killing 106 civilian passengers. Israel claimed that it simply
followed international law. Asked whether it would do it again,
PM Golda Meir replied: "without a doubt".
Shaba Farms
The other Hizbollah front is the Shaba Farms, a 14km-long
and 2km-wide strip along the Israeli-Lebanese-Syrian border.
The Hizbollah claims that it is occupied Lebanese soil. Israel
denies this, and is supported by the United Nations. Knockout
victory for Israel, then? Not quite. Even Israel concedes the
area is occupied, but it claims to have taken it from Syria, not
from Lebanon, and that it should therefore be negotiated with
Syria. Great excuse to keep the fighting going, isn't it. Syria,
for its part, says it has given it to Lebanon. Anyway, all parties
agree that the area is indeed occupied by Israel. Violent
resistance to occupation is considered morally and legally
legitimate; it does not matter who carries it out. (Otherwise,
the liberation of the Netherlands in World War II should have
been left exclusively to Dutch forces, etc. – obviously absurd.)
So if we put aside Hizbollah's problematic position within the
Lebanese State, Israel's northern neighbour is in fact clearly
playing by the rules. It is Israel who is breaking the rules over
and over again, both by its occupation of the Shaba Farms and
by violating Lebanon's sovereignty.
The Recent Escalation
The recent escalation was initiated by an assassination of a
Hizbollah leader in Beirut on August the 1st. Israel was the
prime suspect. As PM Sharon said when asked about
assassinations (perfectly reflecting his "integrity"): "Some of
the things we do we'll admit, other things we'll deny…" In this
case, Israel neither admitted nor denied. Typical terrorist
conduct, by the way, precisely like Al-Qaeda's: terror attacks
without taking responsibility.
In fact, the signs were on the wall well before it started: A
leading critical Israeli expert for the labour market, Dr Linda
Efroni, predicted it more than a month ago. In a television
interview regarding the rising protest in Israel against welfare
cuts, she warned that if social unrest did not stop, the
government might initiate an escalation along the Northern
border.
Whether aimed at distracting from social unrest, or (more
likely) from police investigation into criminal offences by
Sharon's closest allies including his own son, or simply
expressing the desire of the army, frustrated by a certain
restraint imposed on its actions in the Occupied Territories in
the past weeks, to open a new front in the North – we have
not heard the last of this story. Though the recent round
seems to have been contained by international diplomacy
(after all, given the fiasco in Iraq, the US doesn't need another
front right now), it will be used to prepare the hearts for the
next escalation, till the time is ripe for an overall attack on
Lebanon and Syria. After all, Israel has never made secret of
its refusal to tolerate the so-called "terrorist Hizbollah threat"
along its Northern border, and that it would sooner or later
have to "deal with it". When official Israel says "deal", it
means war – in this case, as I explained in an earlier column,
war against Syria.
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