Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
CNN anchor takes Israeli spokeswoman to task
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/07/cnn-anchor-takes-israeli-spokeswoman.html
Great journalist who actually does her job! Kudos to her!
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
3 more Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah.
Tally of Israeli soldiers now dead in Lebanon fighting is 36.
http://jta.org/page_view_breaking_story.asp?intid=3949
**Israeli soldiers killed **
Three Israeli soldiers died in clashes with Hezbollah gunmen. Tuesday’s deaths occurred during fighting in the southern Lebanese town of Ayta a-Shab.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
And Israel does have an ability to shoot down the Katusha rockets, it, courtesy of American extortion payments, developed a system, which was quite successful and was previously deployed to shoot down the rocket…why is it not being deployed in this latest episode Hisraeli genocidal belligerance??? the reason is to play victim, without being actually victimized and use this supposed victimization as a pretext to unleash brutal atrocities on other countries/people…
Why are you genuinetly questioning the existence of such a system or are do you wanna go into your usual, Hisraelis and Hamericans are so wonder and peace loving people trip…
At any rate, here is a link, knock yourself out:
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel's response (threads)
wow man! any link to such systems?
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
At any rate, here is a link, knock yourself out:
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel's response (threads)
This is now a moderated thread and your posts will appear once they have been reviewed by mods and approved. So if you don't see your post appearing straightaway like they usually do, don't panic. :)
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
Hezbollah fires rockets 100km into Israel.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/meastrocket02.html
**Rocket makes deepest strike into Israel yet **
Hezbollah guerrillas said they struck deeper into Israel than ever Wednesday, landing a Khaibar-1 rocket near the town of Beit Shean. Israel, which claims the rocket is Iranian-made, confirmed the hit and said at least seven people were wounded. Beit Shean is about 42 miles south of the Lebanese border. Witnesses in Israel also reported that a Hezbollah rocket hit the West Bank for the first time, striking between the villages of Fakua and Jalboun, near Beit Shean. That strike caused no injuries. Israel medics said the attack on Beit Shean was one of at least 84 rockets that were fired by Hezbollah at towns across northern Israel. Lebanese security officials said Hezbollah had fired more than 300 rockets since dawn Wednesday. The discrepancy in the number of launches could not immediately be reconciled. An Associated Press reporter standing on a hilltop overlooking the Lebanese border, saw an outgoing barrage of about two dozen rockets fly overhead at midmorning. They were fired from a region in southeastern Lebanon that was the scene of heavy ground fighting and artillery shelling in the past two days. Plumes of black smoke rose from the hills and the thud of Israeli artillery was constant. Shells were falling about once every two minutes.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
Hezbollah stronger than ever, even after 21 days of massive Israeli military actions.
http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=135950
190 rockets slam into Israel in biggest barrage so far
At least 190 rockets slammed into Israel Wednesday, the biggest single-day barrage from Lebanon since the Jewish state launched its offensive against Hezbollah three weeks ago, police said. At least one person was killed and 19 wounded, two of them seriously, in the unprecedented barrage, that saw at least 36 rockets strike populated ateas. One of the rockets hit near the city of Beit Shean, some 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the Lebanese border, the deepest strike into Israel since the start of the Lebanon conflict. The Beit Shean strike marked the first time that a Hezbollah rocket had hit close to what is considered Israel’s central region, the nation’s most populated area. Rockets also struck across the north of the country, including in the towns of Kiryat Shmona, Nahariya, Safed, Maalot, Carmiel and Acre.
Hezbollah has fired more than 2,000 rockets at northern Israel since the start of the Lebanon offensive on July 12, killing 19 civilians. Wednesday’s barrage came after a two-day lull in the salvoes – just two rounds were fired on Monday and 13 on Tuesday – that coincided with a 48-hour lull in air strikes agreed to by the Jewish state after its raid on the Lebanese village of Qana killed 52 civilians, most of them children. Previously, the largest number of rockets fired on Israel from Lebanon in a single day was 156.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
190 rockets that didn’t hit one strategic target and kills one civiliian = “strength”? 
How humiliating to be so impotent.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel's response (threads)
JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY - AUGUST 09, 2006
IDF setback at Bint Jbeil
Ed Blanche JDW Special Correspondent
Beirut
An elite unit of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) suffered a major setback in its thrust into south Lebanon on 26 July when it was confronted by fighters from the Islamic Resistance - the armed wing of the Lebanese Shi'ite Party of God (Hizbullah) - in the strategic hilltop village of Bint Jbeil.
In fierce close-quarter fighting, often hand-to-hand, two infantry companies of the IDF Golani Brigade's 51st Battalion were apparently ambushed in the village's narrow streets.
The IDF suffered eight dead - including the battalion's deputy commander, Major Roi Klein, who threw himself on a grenade - and 25 wounded; they were forced to withdraw in some of the heaviest combat since the fighting began on 12 July.
The battle of Bint Jbeil (Arabic for 'Daughter of the Mountain') underlined the difficulties the IDF faces in pushing Hizbullah out of the chain of interlocking strongpoints, including fortified bunker networks, it has built since the Israelis unilaterally withdrew from south Lebanon on 23 May.
Hizbullah is forcing the Israelis to fight on its terms on ground of its choosing, negating much of the IDF's firepower and its doctrine of highly mobile operations.
Bint Jbeil, 4 km from the Israeli border, dominates several key roads in the rolling hills and wadis east of Tyre and was a strategic objective in the armour-led Israeli thrust that began on 20-21 July to establish a cordon sanitaire to halt Hizbullah rocket fire into northern Israel.
The IDF had declared on 25 July that it controlled Bint Jbeil, which proved to be totally false. Intelligence had estimated 30-40 Hizbullahis were holding the town, when in fact there were closer to 200, including men from surrounding villages who had reinforced the garrison during the night.
After six hours of combat, two more Israeli companies were sent in to help evacuate the wounded, carrying them 3 km under fire to four waiting UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters. The IDF withdrew from Bint Jbeil on 29 July and by 31 July Hizbullah had given little ground.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
True, strength is when you take out 37 disabled kids with one strike. Now that si bravery par excellence. Hats off to such fighters.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel's response (threads)
No, I think your praise is misplaced. The kudos for bravery should be given to those who shoot rockets and otherwise use such areas as bases, daring the superior forces to attack them.
If we want ti praise great fighters for massacring women and children, then the extremists in Iraq are definitely the best in the world right now. They kill more than that on a daily basis.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
Israel has killed around 300 Lebanese kids in the last three weeks - a record on par with the worst butchers in the region.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745313.html
**The most unsuccessful war **
By Ze’ev Sternhell
No situation can continue to exist for long without an ideological reason. That’s how when once it was clear that it was not achieving its aims, an unsuccessful military campaign was upgraded with the wave of a magic wand to the level of a war of survival. When everyone understood that a moral reason had to be found both for the dimensions of the destruction sowed in Lebanon and the killing of the civilian population there, and for the Israeli dead and wounded (nobody is even talking about the exposure of the entire civilian population in the North of Israel to enemy fire while people are kept in disgraceful conditions in bomb shelters), a war of survival was invented, which by nature must be long and exhausting. That is how a campaign of collective punishment that was begun in haste, without proper judgment and on the basis of incorrect assessments, including promises that the army is incapable of fulfilling, turned into a war of life and death, if not some kind of second War of Independence. In the press there have even been embarrassing comparisons to the struggle against Nazism, comparisons that are not only a crude distortion of history, but disgrace the memory of the Jews who were exterminated.
The architect of this unsuccessful campaign has outdone himself: In order to cover up his failures, he delivered a poor man’s pseudo-Churchillian speech, and promised us more “pain, tears and blood.” There really is no limit to shamelessness. It must be said in favor of the government spokesmen who are in greatest demand on the foreign stations, from the Israel Defense Forces Spokesman to Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – that none of them has stooped to propaganda of this kind. **At the same time, the campaign’s goals have been reduced and shrunk during these three weeks. From restoring Israel’s power of deterrence, eliminating Hezbollah, and disarming it immediately – after three weeks we have arrived at the present goal, which is the dismantling of the forward outposts of Hezbollah and the deployment of an international force to defend the North of Israel from the possibility of a repeat attack. **
**At this point, the average citizen, who is not working day and night in the corridors of power and is not sunning himself near the generals’ command rooms, is at a loss. Is this how we are restoring the IDF’s power of deterrence? Haven’t we accomplished exactly the opposite? Hasn’t it become clear to the entire world that our “invincible” air force not only failed for three weeks to end the barrage of rockets, but also even needs an emergency airlift of war materiel, as during the 1973 Yom Kippur War? ** Moreover, the ordinary citizen is asking himself another question: If several thousand guerrilla fighters do constitute an existential danger to a country with a strike force and weaponry that are unparalleled in this part of the world, how is it that during the past five or six years we heard nothing to that effect from government leaders? It is true that since 2000 we have not been preoccupied with anything except the Palestinian issue. Hypnotized by the “Palestinian danger,” Israel turned its back during the past two years on all national efforts that preceded the disengagement from Gaza, and then the split in the Likud and the establishment of Kadima, as a prologue to the second major campaign, “convergence” behind the separation fence. And when the present government was formed, a national agenda was formulated for the next two, if not four, years, whose main component is fulfillment of the “Sharon legacy”: a unilateral drawing of borders in the territories, pulverizing them into cantons and in effect eliminating the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state in them. This led citizens to understand that this is the issue that will determine Israel’s future.
The clearest evidence of the national order of priorities is the situation in which the IDF’s fighting units find themselves. It was no secret that the army almost stopped training in large units and complex operations, and became totally immersed in the struggle against the Palestinian uprising. When infantry brigades turn into a police force specializing in breaking down doors and walls in refugee camps, or in pursuit of groups of terrorists in olive orchards, when the criterion for the success of a senior officer is the number of wanted men he has managed to catch rather than his operational talents and ability to command large units – the army deteriorates. I cannot recall that the reserve divisions that were drafted on Yom Kippur in 1973, or the Israelis who returned as individuals from abroad in order to join the fighting, were in need of training and refresher exercises. Nevertheless, the Agranat Commission of inquiry was established to investigate, among other things, the level of the forces’ battle preparedness. The Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War were wars of survival, and through them the IDF was revealed in all its greatness. **The present war is the most unsuccessful we have ever had; it is much worse than the first Lebanon War, which at least was properly prepared, and in which, with the exception of gaining control over the Beirut-Damascus highway, the army more or less achieved its goals as determined by then-defense minister Ariel Sharon. ** It is frightening to think that those who decided to embark on the present war did not even dream of its outcome and its destructive consequences in almost every possible realm, of the political and psychological damage, the serious blow to the government’s credibility, and yes – the killing of children in vain. The cynicism being demonstrated by government spokesmen, official and otherwise, including several military correspondents, in the face of the disaster suffered by the Lebanese, amazes even someone who has long since lost many of his youthful illusions.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel's response (threads)
Isrealis are getting really desperate and insane...
[FONT=Times New Roman]Israel's Raid on Baalbeck's Hospital
[FONT=Times New Roman]Time to Call It Quits
[FONT=Times New Roman]By SAREE MAKDISI
Israeli commandos staged a daring raid the other night on the ancient Lebanese town of Baalbeck, catching Hassan Nasrallah asleep, bundling him into a waiting helicopter, and spiriting him back to Israel.
But as the dust settled and reports from the ground began to emerge, it turned out that the Hassan Nasrallah that Israel's most elite military unit had captured-with the assistance of the formidable intelligence capabilities of the legendary Mossad-was apparently not Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah, but rather Hassan Nasrallah, the owner of a small toyshop on the dusty outskirts of Baalbeck. They also nabbed his son, another relative, and a neighbor for good measure. Israel claims that the men are members of Hizballah, albeit not the ones they were hoping for. Their relatives and neighbors, and Hizballah itself, deny this.
The raid was focused on the Dar al Hikma hospital, which was heavily damaged by the Israeli raiders and supporting fire from aircraft. The hospital, however, was found to be empty. The kidnapped men were, according to local sources, taken from their homes.
To provide cover before and during the raid on the hospital, Israeli aircraft subjected residential neighborhoods of Baalbeck and neighboring towns to a withering bombardment, in which seventeen people, almost all of them civilians, were killed. The dead included the son of the mayor of al Jamaliyeh, his brother, and five other relatives. The mayor of al Jamaliyeh, incidentally, held a distinctly anti-Hizballah position in local politics.
Israel's aerial torment of a population entirely lacking in air defenses and even proper air raid shelters has now killed some 900 people, the overwhelming majority of them civilians, and about a third of them children. It has displaced almost a million people from their homes. It has devastated Lebanon's civilian infrastructure. It has reduced entire towns in the south-including Bint Jbeil, once home to 30,000 people-to rubble. And it has left block after block after block of Beirut in total ruins. (All this while Israel is at the same time holding the 1.4 million destitute people of the Gaza Strip in the world's largest prison, bombarding them day and night, and sadistically depriving them of sleep at night by repeatedly breaking the sound barrier at low altitude).
After three weeks of devastating bombardment, Israel's much vaunted army finds itself unable to fight its way more than a few kilometers into Lebanon. The heavy resistance they have encountered on the ground is the most obvious explanation for why the Israelis prefer on the whole to go on dropping bombs on children from a safe distance: not only is it less dangerous, it also involves much less effort.
The "deep penetration" raid on Baalbeck was meant to show off the capabilities of Israel's armed forces, to make up for their humiliating performance on the ground and their repeated massacres of civilians from the air, including the refugees sheltering in Qana (an event whose cover story has gone through at least three variations, none of them convincing to anyone other than the Israelis themselves).
Instead, it left a hospital in ruins, more than a dozen civilians dead, and elite forces in possession of an unfortunate middle-aged shopkeeper and an assortment of his friends and relatives.
Surely this would be the right moment for Israel to give up and call it quits.
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
Hezbollah crushes air power theory
Israel’s failure so far to curb Hezbollah rocket attacks using its arsenal of jets, helicopter gunships and unmanned drones has cast doubt on the theory that heavy reliance on air power is the best way to win a modern war. Air force failures in the face of the militarily far less advanced Lebanese guerrilla group could also hurt Israeli exports of weapons systems whose main selling point is that they have been tested in battle. And the reputations of Israeli pilots and planners have been tarnished by the heavy civilian toll in Lebanon. For now, Israel’s top brass have avoided a public reckoning, noting the air force has carried out 7,000-odd sorties - a scale that must inevitably mean some mistakes. But eyebrows are already being raised abroad, especially in arms markets dominated by Israeli exports worth more than $3bn a year and among strategists who long thought air power the most precise and reliable means of besting any enemy. “We are talking about the holy grail of future combat, and Israel did a great job of building sophisticated, world-leading systems based on the understanding they were born in battle,” said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons. “This is certainly going to make people question the salesmen a bit more, because it appears that in the hour of need this stuff is not working as advertised,” he said.
Barbara Opall-Rome of the Defense News journal predicted upsets to Israel’s major export deals, including a recent multibillion-dollar package ordered by its top client, India. She described Israel as one of a club of militarily advanced countries whose air forces take pride of place in war planning. “Air power enthusiasts will be licking their wounds and they will surely have to go back and revise their arguments,” she said. “I’m sure there will be a lot more humility now.” The air force chief of staff, who has in the past extolled the hi-tech capabilities of his corps, struck a different tone when trying to explain the bombing of Qana village this week, when 54 civilians were killed. “The ability to handle this arena in a homogenous manner, to hit the terrorists alone and at one go, is limited,” said Brigadier-General Amir Eshel, who blamed Hezbollah for hiding its personnel in heavily populated areas. Using air forces to carry a campaign goes back at least to World War II. But with the emphasis in more recent conflicts being on reducing civilian casualties and establishing quick control of conquered foes, many Western military planners are increasingly loth to dispense with ground forces. Serbian forces largely managed to hunker down and survive the Nato bombing of Kosovo in 1999. The hundreds of innocents killed by the air strikes also meant a backlash later in Europe.
US forces, having mainly relied on air power during the first Gulf War of 1991, brought in far more tanks and troops during the 2003 push that toppled Saddam Hussain. But with an Iraqi insurgency raging since, the Pentagon was still criticised for not putting enough “boots on the ground”. “There is a growing realisation that, after the air campaign, you need men in body armour and tanks to finish the job,” Hewson said. Air power is perceived as a means of reducing the risk to ground forces - a major domestic concern in Israel given its dependence on teenaged conscripts. Israeli military planners also say advanced aerial surveillance systems and precision-guided weapons mean that Hezbollah guerrillas can be targeted while civilians in the vicinity are largely spared. But most of some 750 Lebanese killed have been civilians. “What matters in such situations is not killing the people you are trying to liberate,” said Hewson. “This is the big strategic failure of the Israeli campaign.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week ordered an expanded ground sweep of Lebanon. It remains to be seen how the troops will fare against Hezbollah guerrillas emboldened by what they see as the enemy’s reluctance to fight face-to-face. Setbacks in quelling Hezbollah could cost Olmert diplomatically as well and bolster the group’s backers, Iran and Syria, which are viewed by Israel’s US ally as shared foes. “Israeli Defence Forces clearly underestimated Hezbollah’s capabilities and overestimated their ability to degrade them from the air,” editorialised the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “American support for Israel’s strategy is far from cost-free for (US President George W) Bush, and Mr Olmert has to understand that it won’t continue if he lacks the will to prevail as rapidly as militarily possible.”
Re: Israel humiliated /Israel’s response (threads)
How humiliating - Israel’s superior military hardware being blasted by Hezbollah.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060804/ap_on_re_mi_ea/mideast_fighting_hezbollah_s_missiles
Missiles neutralizing Israeli tanks
Hezbollah’s sophisticated anti-tank missiles are perhaps the guerrilla group’s deadliest weapon in Lebanon fighting, with their ability to pierce Israel’s most advanced tanks. Experts say this is further evidence that Israel is facing a well-equipped army in this war, not a ragtag militia. Hezbollah has fired Russian-made Metis-M anti-tank missiles and owns European-made Milan missiles, the army confirmed on Friday. In the last two days alone, these missiles have killed seven soldiers and damaged three Israeli-made Merkava tanks — mountains of steel that are vaunted as symbols of Israel’s military might, the army said. Israeli media say most of the 44 soldiers killed in four weeks of fighting were hit by anti-tank missiles. **“They (Hezbollah guerrillas) have some of the most advanced anti-tank missiles in the world,” **said Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior military intelligence officer who retired earlier this summer. “This is not a militia, it’s an infantry brigade with all the support units,” Kuperwasser said.
Israel contends that Hezbollah gets almost all of its weaponry from Syria and by extension Iran, including its anti-tank missiles. That’s why cutting off the supply chain is essential — and why fighting Hezbollah after it has spent six years building up its arsenal is proving so painful to Israel, officials say. Israel’s Merkava tanks boast massive amounts of armor and lumber and resemble fortresses on tracks. They are built for crew survival, according to Globalsecurity.org, a Washington-based military think tank. Hezbollah celebrates when it destroys one. “A Zionist armored force tried to advance toward the village of Chihine. The holy warriors confronted it and destroyed two Merkava tanks,” the group proclaimed on television Thursday. The Israeli army confirmed two attacks on Merkava tanks that day — one that killed three soldiers and the other killing one. The three soldiers who were killed on Friday were also killed by anti-tank missiles, the army said. It would not say whether the missiles disabled the tanks. “To the best of my understanding, they (Hezbollah) are as well-equipped as any standing unit in the Syrian or Iranian armies,” said Eran Lerman, a retired army colonel and now director of the Israel/Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee. “This is not a rat-pack guerrilla, this is an organized militia.”
Besides the anti-tank missiles, Hezbollah is also known to have a powerful rocket-propelled grenade known as the RPG29. These weapons are also smuggled through Syria, an Israeli security official said, and were previously used by Palestinian militants in Gaza to damage tanks. On Friday, Jane’s Defense Weekly, a defense industry magazine, reported that Hezbollah asked Iran for “a constant supply of weapons” to support its operations against Israel. The report cited Western diplomatic sources as saying that Iranian authorities promised Hezbollah a steady supply of weapons “for the next stage of the confrontation.” Top Israeli intelligence officials say they have seen Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers on the ground with Hezbollah troops. They say that permission to fire Hezbollah’s longer-range missiles, such as those could reach Tel Aviv, would likely require Iranian go-ahead.