"Dying for a Second Round." Israel Said to Plan Attack on Lebanon.
.On Friday I asked a top-level Israeli, a former IDF (Israel Defense Forces) elite unit man and prime-ministerial confidante, whether the assassination of Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh could have been done by a Lebanese group.
He snorted at the preposterous notion. This was "way too sophisticated," he said. "This [the car bombing] was a precisely orchestrated international operation," and this was the "third or fourth or fifth time in a year that Israel has carried out a military operation in Syria."
When I asked him to repeat that last part he added the word "allegedly."
But the message, or at least the boast, was clear. So why is Israel doing this?
The man said of his colleagues: "There are a lot of [Israeli] military and cabinet people just dying for a second round with Lebanon. If given the opportunity they'll take it," i.e. attack Lebanon again, not in spite of "but because of" the perception that their '06 attack failed.
Though the IDF leveled blocks and villages, dropped 4 million cluster bomblets (some of which are still exploding), and killed some 200 Hezbollah combatants and 1,000 Lebanese civilians (roughly 40 Israeli civilians were killed by Hezbollah), they apparently departed Lebanon feeling politically inadequate.
The official feeling was that they either did not destroy enough, or destroy enough of the right people and items, to avoid the embarrassing perception that they lost to Hezbollah.
So to have the option of solving this problem they've apparently staged a provocative assassination in hopes of goading Hezbollah into retaliating and providing a pretext for new -- better -- destruction that this time around will "succeed," i.e. soothe hurt Israeli feelings.
There've been attempts to put this in strategic terms, as educated killers (and those who study them) prefer. 'Israel must prove its strategic value to the United States' (What? Washington is going to dump Israel? Hezbollah's "victory" strengthened the Palestinians, or Lebanon, or put Israel's existence in danger?). Or, alternatively: 'Hezbollah must be eradicated' (which everyone knows is impossible).
In fact, the closer you look the more it looks like leaders' blood psychotherapy.
And the same thing goes for the publics that follow them. Olmert is in political trouble. If he doesn't kill some Arabs soon (who or where is secondary), his governing coalition may well dissolve. The public has to feel good, too.
The problem -- for the to-be-killed, and for the notion of murder law, not to mention (and few do) decency -- is that the Israeli body politic is now set this way: demanding -- with a few, brave, exceptions -- not just daily, routine, killings of Palestinians, but periodic dramatic strikes that thrill and let them strut like hero/ victims.
It's as if the inhabitants of a US Fox News studio had multiplied and become a nation.
It, of course, doesn't have to be that way, but it is obviously that way now. All you have to do to see it is pick up the papers or talk to a few Israelis. (For representative quotations see Gideon Levy, "Little Ahmadinejads, Haaretz," 10/06/2007).
Its one thing for a state to be murdering and/or oppressing others when their local public doesn't know about it (as was largely the case when Washington was decimating Central America in the 1980s), but it's another when the public knows about it and supports the injustices and crimes (as was the case with US whites and slavery, and in the first stages of US/Iraq, where public support seemed to turn -- as it may still -- on the question of whether the US was "winning").
In the first situation, the killing policy is vulnerable. If word gets out, the public might be angry. But in the second it is more stable, and deadly, since the public knows, and asks for more.
But people and states don't get to entirely write their own histories.
They usually interact with others.
In the case of Israel, the key interaction is with the US, their military guarantor/ mass subsidizer, and with American Jews, where, among the young, opinion appears to be slowly turning The Army in Indonesia. Questions of Logic and Activism," and February 13, 2008, "Big Killer Takes Out Smaller One. 'Wipe Out a Neighborhood.' Life by Mafia Rules in the Israeli - US Domain," particularly the plaint of Malcom Hoenlein.).
Alternatively, Palestinians and groups like Hezbollah and Hamas could join the US as important determinants, but only if they too reset their outlooks (and their willingness to kill or murder) -- as some Palestinians and other Arabs at the grassroots level are now urging, cautiously -- and switched to active, but non-violent, or minimally violent resistance (like the first intifada, or the Gaza wall-breaking) and stopped letting themselves be used as a "provocation-response" button that Israel can press when it wants a thrill.
http://newsc.blogspot.com/2008/02/dying-for-second-round-israel-said-to....
Israel 'hatching serial killing plot'
Israel is planning to assassinate senior figures of Hezbollah, Hamas and even Iran after killing Imad Mugniyah in Syria, a new report says.
The assassination of Mugniyah was only the first in a string of assassinations that Israel is planning to carry out, Israeli sources quoted by a report in the Kuwaiti daily al-Jarida on Wednesday.
"After Mugniyah there will be a second stage and a third stage, which will target Hezbollah and Hamas and perhaps even Iran," the report said.
Mugniyah a Hezbollah top commander was killed in Damascus last week. A Sunday Times report earlier had said that Mossad had killed the senior commander using an explosive device planted in the headrest of the driver's seat in his car.
The sources said that the successful assassination of Mugniyah prompted the Israeli regime to extend the mandate of Mossad head Meir Dagan.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=43969§ionid=351020202
Bonnet: "Israel Should Think Twice Before Waging War"
The former chief of the (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire DST, France's internal security service) and one of the most prominent experts in security and counter-espionage in France Yves Bonnet accused frankly a state's security apparatus of assassinating Islamic Resistance top commander Imad Moghniyeh.
Bonnet was speaking in a special interview in Paris with Al-Manar Television. He once again tackled the political and security concerns in Lebanon, mainly the assassination of Moghniyeh and its repercussions as well as the Lebanese Presidential Elections always postponed. Bonnet saw the "hands of a state's security apparatus in Moghniyeh's assassination due to the high professionalism in its undertaking". He said that the main goal of the crime was to once more raise the concept of confrontation, mainly between Hezbollah and Israel.
"The assassination of the Hezbollah official was a highly technical and very complicated one. It's much harder than any other random bomb attack that could target a popular rally for example," Bonnet said. "Assassinating a specific individual requires studying and intelligence gathering as well as full knowledge of every move the target makes," he added. "It goes without saying that the assassination was indeed a professional job done by a state security apparatus," the French security expert concluded.
Bonnet reminded that there were 25 states possessing "the will as well as the ability to kill Moghniyeh… So we have the right to think of some states being behind the murder." The former chief of the (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire) DST ruled out Syrian hands in the assassination asserting that "Syria won't commit such crime on its soil and that's why Syria, of course, cannot stand behind the crime."
On speculations that Israel could launch a new war against Lebanon, Bonnet assured that after the July 2006 Divine Victory, Israel will think twice before making such move.
"I'm not pessimistic at all. Since the July war and thanks to Hezbollah, Lebanon has proved that it could strongly repulse any Israeli military intervention and for the first time, force it to retreat.
Hezbollah really achieved Divine victory and knew very well how to preserve it and share it with fellow Lebanese citizens. So it became a triumph for the whole of Lebanon. Hence, Israel would think twice before attempting to undertake another adventure of this kind."
On the other hand, Bonnet commented on the current political situation in Lebanon. He said that "obstructing the election of a new Lebanese President will lead to exacerbating the situation in the country at all levels".
He also called for the release the four officers still held in custody over the Former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's case stating that the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) failed to press charges against them.
http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=36051&language=en
What else should one expect from these people?
Canaan |?k?n?n| the biblical name for the area of ancient Palestine west of the Jordan River, the Promised Land of the Israelites, who conquered and occupied it during the latter part of the 2nd millennium bc.
Moloch |?mäl?k; ?m??läk| a Canaanite idol to whom children were sacrificed. • [as n. ] ( a Moloch) a tyrannical object of sacrifices.