Hezbollah: We're Ready for 'Open War' + Israeli warship out of action...

[General Duke]

Hezbollah: We're Ready for 'Open War'

 

BEIRUT, Lebanon Jul 14, 2006 (AP)— Hezbollah's leader said Friday that his group is ready for "open war" with Israel, and as his words were broadcast, guerrillas attacked an Israeli warship that had been firing missiles into southern Beirut.

 

Speaking defiantly in an audiotape on Hezbollah's Al-Manar television less than an hour after missiles struck his headquarters and home, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah addressed Israelis and said they must take responsibility for their actions.

 

"You wanted an open war, and we are heading for an open war," he said. "We are ready for it."

 

"The surprises that I have promised you will start now. Now in the middle of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that has attacked the infrastructure, people's homes and civilians look at it burning," Nasrallah said.

 

"It will sink and with it will sink scores of Israeli Zionist soldiers. This is just the beginning," he warned.

 

Al-Jazeera reported the Israeli military was searching for four missing troops from the ship. Israeli officials would not immediately comment on the Arab broadcaster's report; an army spokesman said earlier the ship had apparently been struck by a rocket but that the damage was minor and no one was injured.

 

Immediately after Nasrallah's message was broadcast, Arab television showed nighttime video of what it said was the Israeli warship burning. But the video was unclear.

 

The audiotape came shortly after Israeli missiles struck Hezbollah headquarters and Nasrallah's house in southern Beirut. His comments, however, apparently were prerecorded, and Nasrallah did not refer to the missile attack on his offices and residence.

 

His words were greeted with heavy celebratory gunfire that rang out across the Lebanese capital.

 

The Hezbollah leader also repeated a threat to hit the Israeli coastal city of Haifa and other towns farther south. "To Haifa? Believe me, beyond and beyond Haifa."

 

"Our homes will not be the only ones to be destroyed, our children will not be the only ones to die. … Those days are over, I promise you.

 

You (Israelis) must take responsibility for what your government has done," he added. "You will soon discover how ****** and foolish your new government is."

 

Nasrallah called on the Lebanese people to be patient and steadfast.

 

"I promise you a new victory, just as I always have," he said.

[General Duke]

Hezbollah declares war on Israel

 

 

Saturday 15 July 2006, 0:29 Makka Time, 21:29 GMT

 

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Hezbollah group, has pledged open war on Israel after it bombed his Beirut home on Friday in a dramatic expansion of the latest Israeli assault.

 

 

"You wanted an open war. You will get an open war," Nasrallah said in a telephone message broadcast live on Hezbollah television after the attack.

 

 

 

He said an Israeli navy ship was ablaze off the coast of Beirut. Lebanese security sources said two rockets had hit it.

 

A Lebanese security source said the warship, which had bombed Lebanon earlier in the day, suffered considerable damage and Al Jazeera television reported four Israeli troops were missing at sea.

 

The Israeli Haaretz news Website also said the ship was seriously damaged, although the army had said earlier that an attack from the shore had caused only light damage.

 

 

 

"Look at it burn," Nasrallah declared in his address. "It will sink and along with it dozens of Zionist soldiers."

 

Celebratory gunfire erupted in the Lebanese capital and drivers honked their horns after Nasrallah's speech.

The Syrian- and Iranian-backed Islamist group, which wants to trade its captives for prisoners held in Israel, fired more rockets across the frontier, killing an Israeli woman and child.

 

Israeli air strikes destroyed Nasrallah's apartment building and a main Hezbollah office in southern Beirut. Hezbollah said Nasrallah and his family and bodyguards were safe.

 

An Israeli army spokeswoman would not say if the intention had been to kill Nasrallah. "We targeted the headquarters of Hezbollah in southern Beirut. We attacked two structures that are used by the leadership of Hezbollah," she said

[General Duke]

Civilian targets

 

Israel has also attacked many

civilian installations

 

Israel also attacked many Lebanese civilian installations on the third day of its campaign to force the release of the two Israeli soldiers and halt cross-border rocket strikes.

 

 

 

The assault has drawn mounting international criticism, but the White House said President Bush would not press Israel to halt its military operation.

 

 

 

Asked whether Bush had agreed to a request from Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, to rein in Israel, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said that the president "is not going to make military decisions for Israel."

 

 

 

The Lebanon violence is the fiercest since 1996 when Israel launched a 17-day blitz on Hezbollah strongholds in the south, four years before its troops pulled out of Lebanon.

 

 

 

 

 

Israeli aircraft rocketed runways at Beirut's already closed international airport and bombed a flyover just to the south.

 

 

 

Israeli warplanes blasted the main Beirut-Damascus highway overnight, tightening an air, sea and land blockade of Lebanon, and bombed targets in Beirut's teeming Shi'ite Muslim suburbs, killing three people and wounding 40, security sources said.

 

 

 

Air strikes in south Lebanon killed five more people.

 

 

 

Their deaths brought to 66 the number of people, almost all civilians, killed in Lebanon in the past three days.

 

 

 

Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have now killed four Israelis and wounded more than 150.

 

 

 

The Israeli prime minister's office said such salvos "cannot and will not be allowed to continue".

 

 

 

Snow told reporters that Bush had spoken to Lebanon's prime minister among other Middle East leaders.

 

 

 

He said that Bush believed the Israelis had the right to protect themselves, but should avoid civilian casualties and damage.

[General Duke]

Unmanned drone hits Israeli ship

 

Last Update: 7/14/2006 5:55:22 PM

 

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel says one of its warships was hit by an unmanned aircraft rigged with explosives.

 

A military official says it was sent up by militants in Lebanon, aimed at the ship which was off the coast of that country. Israel isn't saying anything about the condition of the ship, or about a report that four of its sailors are missing.

 

The drone was apparently developed by Hezbollah, putting yet another weapon at its disposal. At least twice in recent years the militants have flown unmanned drones over northern Israel, an area they spent much of the day blasting with rocket fire. One of those rockets hit a house, killing a woman and her grandson.

 

In three days of fighting, since guerrillas captured an Israeli soldier, there have been at least 12 deaths in Israel and 73 in Lebanon, nearly all civilians.

[General Duke]

Israel Says Warship Attacked by Drone

By JOSEF FEDERMAN , 07.14.2006, 06:42 PM

 

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An unmanned Hezbollah aircraft rigged with explosives rammed into an Israeli warship late Friday, causing heavy damage and fire on the vessel, Israeli military officials said.

 

The attack by the remote-controlled drone indicated that Hezbollah has added a new weapon to the arsenal of rockets and mortars it has used against Israeli troops.

 

The army said a missile ship carrying several dozen sailors suffered severe damage and was set on fire. Several hours after the attack, the fire was put out and the ship was being towed back to Israel, officials said. The military officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media.

 

There was no word on casualties, though the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera reported the Israeli military was searching for four missing sailors after the ship was hit.

 

In an official statement, the army spokesman's office would say only that the cause of the attack was still under investigation.

 

Hezbollah has never before used a remote-controlled unmanned aircraft to attack Israel. But in a signal of its growing capabilities, the guerrilla group has twice managed to fly spy drones over northern Israel in recent years. The drones caused great concern in Israel because they evaded the country's air defenses.

 

Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV had reported earlier Friday that guerrillas attacked an Israeli warship that had been firing missiles into south Beirut.

 

"Now in the middle of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that has attacked the infrastructure, people's homes and civilians - look at it burning," Hezbollah's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said.

 

The prerecorded audiotape was aired shortly after Israeli missiles struck Hezbollah headquarters and Nasrallah's house in south Beirut.

 

The station showed a video purportedly showing an Israeli warship hit by Hezbollah. The video aired a few seconds of nighttime pictures of an object flying over a city and falling in the distance, where it exploded. Al-Manar said this depicted the attack on the Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon.

 

The footage was unclear and it could not be seen what the object hit.

[General Duke]

Attention Deficit Americans Are Being Misled to War

 

by Paul Craig Roberts

 

A terrible thing is happening, and not enough Americans are aware to be able to do anything about it. Zionists in Israel and in the Bush administration are leading America into war with Iran, Syria, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. The consequences for America, Israel and the Middle East will be disastrous, but as long as Washington is in thrall to Zionist paranoia, nothing can be done about it. Bush made this clear on July 14 when he rejected the plea from Lebanon’s prime minister to pressure Israel to stop its attack on Lebanon.

 

The war began when Bush’s neoconservative government invaded Afghanistan and Iraq under the pretense of "fighting terrorism." Neither front has gone well for America. The Israelis, seeing the growing domestic opposition to Bush’s wars of choice, concluded that they are in danger of losing America’s military intervention in behalf of their Middle East interests. Israel decided to force the issue.

 

Israel did this by bombing and invading Gaza, from which they had just withdrawn as part of a "Palestinian settlement." Israel’s pretext was the capture of one Israeli soldier in Gaza in retribution for Israel’s genocidal policies toward Palestine. Few Americans know that Israel has forced Palestinians into ghettos and walled them off from their farm lands, schools, and medical treatment.

 

By slaughtering scores of civilians and destroying the infrastructure of the fragile land in response to the capture of one Israeli soldier, Israel has made it clear that its policy is fire and sword.

 

Under international law – the identical law that was used to try Nazi war criminals after World War II – Israel’s invasion of Gaza is a monstrous war crime. The United Nations top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, said that Israel’s attacks on civilians and infrastructure violated international law.

 

On July 13, the UN Security Council tried to condemn Israel for its criminal invasion of Gaza, but US Ambassador John Bolton, a rabid pro-Israeli zealot, vetoed the Security Council resolution that would have required Israel to halt its illegal and criminal actions in Gaza. Bolton is the UN ambassador who could not get confirmed even in a Republican Senate and was given a recess appointment by Bush in defiance of Congress.

 

On July 12, Israel invaded Lebanon. The pretext was the capture of two Israeli soldiers in Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory by Hizbollah. In two days Israel has slaughtered scores of Lebanese civilians, destroyed bridges and power plants, attacked the Beruit International Airport and blocked Lebanese ports.

 

Israel’s over-reactions are calculated to start a wider war. Israel has asserted that the two soldiers captured by Hizbollah are being held in Iran. Israel blames Syria for Hizbollah’s acts. Both Israel and its neoconsevative allies in the Bush government blame Iran and Syria for "attacks on Israel" by Hamas and Hizbollah. No one, least of all Bush, blames Israel’s Palestinian policy.

 

Israel’s American agents, the neoconservatives, have made it clear for years that their goal is to eliminate every Middle Eastern government that is not ruled by an American puppet friendly to Israel. The people who hold the important positions in Bush’s government have frankly stated this position over and over. For example, a decade ago in 1996 a group of American neoconservatives who have comprised much of the sub-cabinet in the Bush administration wrote that Israel could gain American sympathy by blaming aggression on Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran and then seizing the strategic initiative by "engaging Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."

 

First, however, Iraq would have to be taken out. The first focus, said the neocons, should be "on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right."

 

Gentle reader, does it not strike you as strange that US citizens, most of whom have held presidential appointments in the Bush administration, are so concerned to plan how Israel can draw upon US blood and treasure to achieve Israel’s objectives in the Middle East?

 

We certainly have to hand it to Israel and its American neoconsevative agents. They have succeeded on entirely false pretenses in launching two wars in the Middle East and now they have prepared the ground for a general conflagration.

 

Who is to stop them? The Condi Rice State Department? Be serious.

 

The Democratic Party? What a laugh!

 

The power mad Republicans who have sold their souls?

 

The Christian Evangelicals who believe the destruction of huge numbers of people in the Middle East is the lead up to "the Rapture" in which they will be wafted up to Heaven?

 

The UN Security Council, where the US never fails to veto any resolution or sanction against Israel?

 

The US and Israel haven’t the troops needed to defeat and occupy Syria, Hizbollah and Iran with conventional forces. Pentagon documents have described two ways in which the Middle East can be secured for Israel. One is the use of nuclear weapons. The other is the destruction of all infrastructure – power plants, water and sewage systems, hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, ports, and a reduction of much housing to rubble by powerful conventional bombs. In other words, an air war that never ends.

 

Most Americans are incapable of identifying their own US Representative and Senators. Everything they "know" about the Middle East comes from Israeli propaganda: Israel is the innocent victim, and all Arabs are terrorists with suicide bombs.

 

America is being led by a handful of traitors into participating in "regime change" that might succeed or might dethrone our bought and paid for puppets in Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. If Pakistan were to fall to Islamist forces, Muslims would have a nuclear capability as a counterpart to Israel’s and America’s.

 

Muslims have many reasons to hate us for generations of oppression and interference in their internal affairs. As Iraq has proven, it is not easy to break their spirit. Out-gunned and out-manned, they still resist, motivated by anger and pride.

 

Many Americans may think that "ragheads" mean nothing to them. But when $200 oil means Americans cannot commute to their jobs in their gas-guzzlers from their far-flung suburbs, or Russia and China intervene because American-Israeli interests conflict with their own, the world becomes a different place for inattentive, uninvolved, complicit Americans.