Hezbollah Provocations Raise Israel-Lebanon Tensions

Video Of The Week -Tense Quiet Takes Hold Along Israel-Lebanon Border -  https://tinyurl.com/4jyu2ej2

For the full Article from BICOM go to https://tinyurl.com/56d9wmtj

 

What happened: Two incidents on the Israel-Lebanon border on Wednesday raised the tension between Israel and Hezbollah.

·        In the first incident several men approached the border fence in the area close to Zarit. According to the IDF, Israel deployed “non-lethal” measures to prevent them from damaging the fence.

·        According to the IDF, “a number of suspects approached the border fence with Lebanon and attempted to tamper with the barrier. IDF forces immediately identified them and employed measures to push them back.”

·        The IDF released surveillance footage showing four people approaching the border fence, and running away after an explosion.

·        According to Lebanese reports, three men thought to be Hezbollah operatives were taken to a nearby hospital in Tyre.

·        In the second incident, a number of suspects approached the security fence in the area near Metulla. They threw rocks and started a fire adjacent (on the Lebanese side) close to the security fence. IDF soldiers fired warning shots into the air, and the suspects withdrew.

Context: Tension has been growing for the last month, since Hezbollah placed two tents south of the Blue Line (inside Israel) in the Mount Dov / Sheba farms area.

·        Israel has so far used diplomatic channels (with the US, UN and France) which led to one of the tents being dismantled.

·        Later on Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah made a speech, marking the 17^th anniversary of the start of the second Lebanon war. Nasrallah warned Israel that Hezbollah would retaliate if the IDF were to remove the tent that remains. According to Nasrallah, the tent is inside Lebanon and he is demanding the removal of the fence Israel built around the northern part of Ghajar.

·        Ghajar is an Alawite village, on the Lebanese, Syrian, Israeli border, captured by Israel in 1967. In 1981 it was annexed by Israel and its residents offered full Israeli citizenship. The village’s northern neighbourhood has since expanded into Lebanon. The UN recognises the Blue Line runs through the village, but Israel has built the fence around the northern perimeter to ensure security.

·        Earlier in the week, US envoy Amos Hochstein met with Prime Minister Netanyahu to update on US efforts to deescalate the tension.  It was Hochstein that brokered the Israel-Lebanon maritime agreement last year.

·        Hochstein’s visit has been interpreted as a sign of a dual US approach to Israel. Whilst the Biden administration in unhappy about Israeli government’s domestic and West Bank policies, they have shared concerns when it comes to regional security.

·        As well as the erection of the tents, last week an anti-tank missile was fired close to Ghajar border area.

·        In recent months Hezbollah has set up numerous observation posts, permanent and semi-permanent structures along the border.

·        There is concern that Israel’s enemies interpret the country’s current internal divisions as a moment of weakness and will seek to exploit the security situation.

Looking ahead: US envoy Hochstein is expected to meet Lebanese political leaders in the days ahead, as part of his shuttle diplomacy to reduce tension and avoid a military conflagration.

·        Following the incidents on the border, Defence Minister Gallant said, “Anyone who tests us will get a response. We have a lot to do, and we will know how to do what is needed at the right time.”

·        The IDF believes that Nasrallah will not instigate an all-out war but may be willing to risk several days of fighting, the consequences of which are unknown, but include fears of a wider conflict.                                                                                           

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When Anti-Zionism Tunnels Under Your House

Video Of The Week - What Is Hezbollah? - https://tinyurl.com/ycf3hhzf

By Bret Stephens -

For full article go to - https://tinyurl.com/ydfd9otk

In 2002, Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, was said to have given a speech noting that the creation of the state of Israel had spared his followers the trouble of hunting down Jews at “the ends of the world.” The Lebanese terrorist group has prominentapologists in the West, and some of them rushed to claim that Nasrallah had uttered no such thing.

Except he had. Tony Badran of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tracked down the original recording of the speech, in which Nasrallah carries on about “occupied Palestine” as the place appointed by Allah for the “final and decisive battle” with the Jews. By “occupied Palestine,” he wasn’t talking about the West Bank.

Sometimes anti-Zionists are — surprise! — homicidal anti-Semites, too.

That’s a thought that can’t be far from the mind of anyone living in northern Israel, where in recent days the Israeli Army has discovered at least three tunnels dug by Hezbollah and intended to infiltrate commandos under the border in the (increasingly likely) event of war. Given the breadth of Hezbollah’s capabilities, the depth of its fanaticism, and the experience of Hamas’s excavation projects in Gaza, it’s fair to assume other tunnels will be found.

What would Hezbollah do if it got its fighters across? In 1974, three Palestinian terrorists crossed the border from Lebanon and took 115 hostages at an elementary school in the town of Ma’alot. They murdered 25 of them, including 22 children.

Another infiltration from Lebanon in 1978 left 38 Israelis dead. Given Hezbollah’s long record of perpetrating massacres from Buenos Airesto Beirut to towns and cities across Syria, it’s a playbook it wouldn’t scruple to follow in a war for the Galilee.

Note: Anti-Zionists are not advocating the reform of a state, as Japan was reformed after 1945. Nor are they calling for the adjustment of a state’s borders, as Canada’s border with the United States was periodically adjusted in the 19th century. They’re not talking about the birth of a separate state, either, as South Sudan was born out of Sudan in 2011. And they’re certainly not championing the partition of a multiethnic state into ethnically homogenous components, as Yugoslavia was partitioned after 1991.

Anti-Zionism is ideologically unique in insisting that one state, and one state only, doesn’t just have to change. It has to go. By a coincidence that its adherents insist is entirely innocent, this happens to be the Jewish state, making anti-Zionists either the most disingenuous of ideologues or the most obtuse. When then-CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill called last month for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” and later claimed to be ignorant of what the slogan really meant, it was hard to tell in which category he fell.

The good news is that the conversation about anti-Zionism remains mostly academic because Israelis haven’t succumbed to the fatal illusion that, if only they behaved better, their enemies would hate them less. To the extent that Israeli parents ever sleep soundly, it’s because they know what they are up against. And, to borrow Kipling’s line, they never make mock of uniforms that guard them while they sleep.

The same can’t be said for that class of scolds who excel in making excuses for the wicked and finding fault with the good. When you find yourself on the same side as Hassan Nasrallah, Louis Farrakhan and David Duke on the question of a country’s right to exist, it’s time to re-examine every opinion you hold.

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