The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram quoted Hamas’ political leader Khaled Meshal on Tuesday as saying his Islamist group was surprised by the force Israel recently used against it in the Gaza Strip. Meshal, who was speaking at an Arab conference on Gaza in the Qatari capital Doha, reportedly told a closed forum that Hamas had believed…
Showing all posts tagged Lebanon
Failure on every count
The conflict between Israel and Hamas should give us cause to pause and wonder what the Jewish state has become. War crimes are taking place: “There is no doubt that Israel is using phosphorous bombs over Gaza. Israel is flagrantly violating the Fourth Geneva Convention,” says Raji Sourani, head of the Palestinian Center for Human…
Another foe at the gate
While Israel fervently attempts to terrorize the Palestinians into submission in Gaza, many observers have started to wonder why Hizballah has refrained from stepping in militarily to assist its brothers-in-arms, Hamas. Such musings fail to take account of the constraints on Hizballah’s room for action, as well as the circumstances under which Hizballah would ignore…
Nobody said Israel was run by smart people
Anthony H. Cordesman, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, January 9: What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain strategic or grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it…
Israeli war crimes go way back
From the current chaos in Gaza to recent history, Israel’s futile attack on Lebanon in 2006: “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on ”¦ “We will apply disproportionate force on it [the village] and cause great damage and destruction there. From…
Who says they’re a decent fighting force?
Robert Fisk, The Independent, December 31: Israel, however – always swift to announce its imminent destruction of “terrorism” – has never won a war in a built-up city, be it Beirut or Gaza, since its capture of Jerusalem in 1967. And it’s important to remember that the Israeli army, famous in song and legend for…
History more than repeats itself
All of the below words are taken from Israeli author Jacobo Timerman‘s book The Longest War, written during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon (Operation Peace for Galilee) and first published in Britain in December 1982. Timerman returned to Argentina, where he had grown up, in 1984 and died in 1999.… On 4 October 1982,…
Defending the rights of “terrorists”
Al-Manar is the satellite television channel of Hezbollah (which much of the West regards as a terrorist organisation, a view I do not share.) The channel is currently available in many Australian homes. The Lebanese community is massive here and many people regard the group as a liberation movement. Others see it as an aggressive…
A glimmer of hope
Leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem – once again proving that some of the greatest critics of the Jewish state’s apartheid policies are Jews themselves – release a report that is damning on the country’s policies: In the past year Israel has escalated its policy of separating the Palestinian populations of the Gaza Strip and…
How to defy the regional bully
To understand the true signifinance of Israel’s loss to Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon war, this recent speech by the group’s leader Sayyid Hassan Nassrallah is essential reading: A lesson has to be internalized from the fact that a 33-day war launched by the most aggressive army in the world and backed by international support…