Update: 10:30 PM Fox News reporting Israel appears to have expanded the security zone through increased border activity - purposely staying light on locations. Additional report suggests Hezbollah fighters fleeing north in civilian clothes and vehicles.
Hezbollah is threatening attacks deeper into Israel, causing some to speculate they mean Tel Aviv. Most agree a hit on Tel Aviv would notch the conflict up to a level we haven't yet seen.
Iran is chiming in, again. They should choke on a nuclear bomb. As previously reported, Israel intends to establish a security zone for hand-off to an International force.
Repeated:
The Democrats are looking to filibuster the best thing that's happened to the UN in years - John Bolton. That tells you all you need to know about their resolve to make this a better world, no matter what it takes.
Still great links to follow the war news: Pajamas Media, or read a few regional blogs. I like to check the JP headlines, as well.
How can the rhetoric escalate in the Middle East? Is Allah using one of those battery-powered megaphones now? Woofers?
Posted by: Phoenix | Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 12:41 AM
So who is making and supplying the bombs to Iraq, Hamas and Hezbolla? One country only. Perhaps we need to go to the source.
Posted by: splashtc | Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 01:49 AM
Actually, two nations. Syria is supplying the Ba'athist Sunni, and Iran is supplying the Shiite militias. The two are vying for hegemonic position in Iraq by squaring off against each other with proxies. Just as they are vying for hegemonic position on the Medeterranean through proxies in concert with each other.
Going to the source[s] will be the ultimate answer, but history requires us to dick around with all the penny-ante pissants first.
Posted by: rwilymz | Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 08:38 AM
How can one go to the source for the 'ultimate answer' when that source is a mythical figure?
Posted by: Phoenix | Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 10:42 AM
Split Iraq into 3 separate regions. Give southern lebanon to the palastinians. Israel takes Gaza. Everyone sews tee shirts for wal mart to keep them busy and out of trouble. Idle hands....
Posted by: splashtc | Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 10:56 AM
http://muqata.blogspot.com/
This is a great web site directly from Israel with up to the minute reporting during the hours they are awake there.
God bless Israel.
Posted by: GodblessIsrael | Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 10:57 AM
Israeli Units Branch East, Face Heavy Hizballah Resistance in Central Sector
http://www.debka.com/
DEBKAfile Exclusive Military Report
July 26, 2006, 4:42 PM (GMT+02:00)
The Israeli military campaign against Hizballah, launched July 12 when two soldiers were kidnapped, started out in the Central Sector of South Lebanon with the conquest of Maroun er Ras, and moved on to Bin Jubeil and its five satellite villages. Wednesday, July 25, the IDF suffered a major reverse at Bin Jubeil where HIzballlah fighters regrouped and counter-attacked, inflicting heavy casualties on the Israel mopping-up force.
But other IDF contingents had meanwhile embarked on the next stage of the campaign in the Eastern Sector of South Lebanon. This came to light when a series of Israeli air strikes against Hizballah positions and installations around Khiam hit a Unifil post and killed four observers Tuesday night, July 25
Israel deeply regretted the deaths and promised a full investigation, after UN Secretary Kofi Annan accused Israel of apparently targeting the observer post.
However, DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources add: The holier-than-thou tone of outrage taken by Annan is surprising when it generally known that many UN missions are exploited as the cover for foreign agents, often hostile, to carry out spying operations in war zones. The inadvertent Israeli air strike revealed the fact that the UN force in Lebanon includes Chinese observers. One was killed along with an Austrian, a Canadian and a Finn. The presence of Chinese observers keeping an eye on the combat in South Lebanon has never before been reported.
Our intelligence experts compare the incident to the inadvertent US bombardment which destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1998, killing a number of Chinese “diplomats.” It was discovered that from that building the Chinese had operated sophisticated surveillance to track the performance of American warplanes, missiles and smart bombs.
News from the war front.
On the night of July 26, Day 15 of the Lebanon War, an Israeli force pushed towards Khiam on its way to the approaches of the large Druze village of Hatzbaya. This route has taken Israeli troops north and east for the objective of controlling a stretch of south Lebanon known as Fatahland (before the 1982 war cleansed it of Yasser Arafat’s terrorists.)
This would bring them close up to Syrian positions on Mt. Hermon and for the first time in 35 years afford the Israeli outposts at the disputed Shebaa Farms strategic depth.
Monday, July 24, Damascus warned that Israeli artillery coming within range of Damascus would not be tolerated. The statement was issued with a view to deterring Israel from entering the Eastern Sector. So far the Syrians have made no response to Israel’s advance.
Perhaps the most important gain from the crisis is Israel’s recovery of control over its main sources of water, the Wazani springs in the divided Ghajar village. This was achieved in the early hours of the IDF push in the east. Israel will not cede this asset in a hurry. Worth citing in this regard is defense minister Amir Peretz’s statement Tuesday, 25, after US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice left the Middle East, that Israel would retain control of a security belt in southern Lebanon until a multinational force takes over.
The main battle in this sector is now centering on the Majidya base in Khiam, source of Hizballah rocket attacks on Kiryat Shemona and the Galilee panhandle communities Majidya was once a Lebanese army training facility for new recruits under Israeli military instructors. It was demolished when Israel pulled out of south Lebanon in May 2000. Aside from the Hizballah concentration in Majidya, its men are fairly thin on the ground in the Eastern Sector.
The mixed village population on the Israeli units path of advance, Druzes, Shiites, Sunnis and Christians, provides a useful shield for Hizballah fighters. They take full advantage of the directives to Israeli ground forces not to touch Druze and Christian villages. By long Lebanese tradition, the Druzes shut their village doors to Shiites, while the Christians accommodate them because they don’t know how long Israeli forces will be around to protect them against the Hizballah.
As the Israelis advance through the region, they are discovering the depth and breadth of Hizballah’s war preparations. South Lebanon was divided into 176 combat squares controlled from 40 scattered command bunkers. Their latest directive orders them to fight Israeli troops from the shelter of wooded areas and bunkers using guerrilla tactics of surprise and ambush instead of hand-to-hand combat in built-up areas in which they have taken heavy casualties.
DEBKAfile’s military sources: The huge explosions that struck South Beirut Tuesday evening were caused by 20 Israeli airborne missiles dropping on large, newly-discovered Hizballah subterranean arms caches, part of this tunnel network.
The force of the secondary blasts attested to their contents and the accuracy of the Israeli intelligence pinpointing of previously unknown weapons bunkers in S. Beirut.
Buried alongside the command bunkers are vast arsenals of Katyusha rockets and launchers, and food and water for a long stay. Hizballah was itself caught napping by the extent and fierceness of Israel’s riposte to their July 12 cross-border attack. Therefore, not all the bunker posts were completely built. The night before the Israeli advance into the Eastern Sector, Hizballah personnel were seen putting finishing touches on the fortifications of the command bunkers and sowing the routes with anti-tank mines and roadside bombs. Israel guns shelled the Hizballah teams to disrupt their work on the bunkers and the roads.
Posted by: Newsfromthefrontlines | Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 11:20 AM
"How can one go to the source for the 'ultimate answer' when that source is a mythical figure?"
Iran and Syria are mythical?
Wuchoo smokin, phoe?
Posted by: rwilymz | Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 04:20 PM
Hmmm.... let me see. Allah tells them to kill the infidels? Does that work, rwilymz?
Posted by: Phoenix | Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 12:04 AM
"Allah tells them to kill the infidels? Does that work, rwilymz?"
No it doesn't.
Their **beliefs** say that allah tells them to kill infidels. Their beliefs are theirs, and no one and nothing else's. And their beliefs are promoted by a state-system embodied in the nation-states of Syria and Iran.
Exactly how willing are we to remove responsibility from people for their own actions?
Posted by: rwilymz | Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 06:35 AM
Sigh. Nuance not your thing, Rwilymz? You spoke of going to the 'ultimate source'. I went there.
If *you* have to spell it out to understand what I was talking about, that's your need.
Exactly how willing are we.........? Hell if I know. How does a nation's philosophy of free-thinking and liberty for all change religious indoctrination gleaned from a belief in a mystical being that says kill the infidels?
East Jesus Street and Allah Avenue are not exactly on the same plane of the GPS systems. One of those roads is earthly while the other is lost in some twilight zone. Fun war, eh?
Posted by: Phoenix | Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 11:24 AM
I thought that even though Israel is quite secular, the population (and gov't) was mostly Jewish. Who dragged the Christians into this?
Posted by: Rick | Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 12:16 PM
"If *you* have to spell it out to understand what I was talking about, that's your need."
I'm not the one assuming that a "mythical figure" is a source for reality.
"How does a nation's philosophy of free-thinking and liberty for all change religious indoctrination gleaned from a belief in a mystical being that says kill the infidels?"
The being is either mystical or it is real. If it is real, then it will be in the mosques exhorting the faithful to saw the heads off infidels. If it is mystical, then those in the mosques exhorting the heads to be sawn off the infidels are "the ultimate source" and the "ultimate source" you presume to exist doesn't.
I know who **I** think is exhorting the masses.
Who do **you** think is doing it?
"Fun war, eh?"
More tribalist nonsense.
Posted by: rwilymz | Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 12:20 PM
Let's try this: Suppose everyone on the planet was a Christian? Who would determine who the infidels are?
Once again, I'll point out that you asked about the 'ultimate source'. That ultimate source is a mystical/mythical figure.
What is 'tribalist nonsense'? ha ha ha..... Like maybe I'm some mystical figure with her head up her tribalist trying to find the ultimate source?? I believe we're on the same plane; just walking up rhetoric's one-way streets in different directions.
By the way, man creates the mythical figures, so it's not really a question of is 'it' real or 'it' not.
Posted by: Phoenix | Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 11:08 PM
"Suppose everyone on the planet was a Christian? Who would determine who the infidels are?"
There would be none.
"Infidel" is a muslim theocratic rationalization.
If everyone on the planet were christian, we would see foreign policy much like we saw in Europe between the Fall of Rome and yesterday afternoon about 3:35 ... people shooting others because they felt like it, because they were the wrong "nation", the wrong "tribe", because they had something that was demanded by someone else, et-freakin-cetera.
Religion does not, and has not, caused a single war in the history of mankind. Religion simply provides the moralistic cover for conducting the war under auspices of meta-justification. "Righteousness" doesn't come from nowhere.
"By the way, man creates the mythical figures..."
Bingo. So the "ultimate source", then, is man.
Like I said, I know who **I** think is in the mosques exhorting the masses...
Posted by: rwilymz | Friday, July 28, 2006 at 09:01 AM
"Let's try this: Suppose everyone on the planet was a Christian? Who would determine who the infidels are?"
The answer wouls be the same whether everyone was jewish, muslim, hindu, budhist or atheist. It's a bunch of bullshit that ANY "religion" is the cause of ANY problem. In fact it is stupid bullshit. Sort of like saying if there were no NASCAR there would be no auto accidents. The answer is ALWAYS covetous in one form or another...period. "You have oil and I want it. We're starving here and you have all that land. blah, blah, blah. Fortunately though, MOST people who have any religion adhere to it and aren't strapping bombs to their own children to murder other people's children. The answer is and always will be humankind.....only the wording will be changed.
Posted by: Rick | Friday, July 28, 2006 at 09:09 AM
whoa! That's almost scary.
Posted by: Rick | Friday, July 28, 2006 at 09:11 AM
Almost scary? It is scary.
I don't think we differ much. I'd only disagree about the religious aspect of wars. Secular wars end faster because 'reason' dictates sooner or later. People will die far more readily for their 'mythical' godhead than for some dictator, and religious wars last forever. That is my point about the 'ultimate source' in this current conflagration of civilizations. The Muslim fanatics actually believe their god wants them to kill. That is why this enemy we face is the most difficult enemy in the history of mankind. Wars can change economic circumstance, political circumstance, geographical circumstance; but war can't change beliefs.
Posted by: Phoenix | Friday, July 28, 2006 at 11:39 AM
"religious wars last forever. That is my point about the 'ultimate source' in this current conflagration of civilizations"
I guess debating you would be far less fun if you made your inarguable points to begin with. Toosh (southernese for touche') this one is yours.
Posted by: Rick | Friday, July 28, 2006 at 02:59 PM
Why, Rick, suh, you wudent be talkin' 'bout that place I tole Grouch I'd stuffed my 'tribalist mentalities' up would you? A 'toosh' is a nice, fine ass. Of which I have one.
Anyways, this one isn't mine because there was no debate. I made my point in my first post and never wavered from it.
It's just fun to debate, h'ain't it? ha ha ha.... Now, let's build a fire and re-enact that scene in Lord of the Flies..... :)
I'll be Simon. You can be Ralph. Grouch (rwilymz) can be Piggie.
Posted by: Phoenix | Friday, July 28, 2006 at 10:27 PM
"Grouch (rwilymz) can be Piggie"
I'd need to gain considerable weight first. But thanks for asking me to play. I'll ask my wife if I can go.
Posted by: rwilymz | Saturday, July 29, 2006 at 11:31 AM
Your wife might just urge you to go. You do know what happens to Piggie, right? HEH.
(Check the Cliff Notes, you twerp. You obviously haven't read the book..... HA HA HA....)
Posted by: Phoenix | Saturday, July 29, 2006 at 01:28 PM
...pardon ... I forgot the sarcasm tags.
I hate it when that happens.
Pick one: literal or figurative. I can go either way, but I'd prefer, when employing literary references, the figurative. ...since literature is figurative, and all.
...unless you're satisfied with me claiming you've made threats against me, that is.
Posted by: rwilymz | Saturday, July 29, 2006 at 02:10 PM
"...unless you're satisfied with me claiming you've made threats against me, that is."
You took the bait. I knew it. And, hell yeah, I'm better than satisfied: I'm the winner because you bit. So much for your dedication to the figurative, and all. You keep coming back to this thread for the literal, and all, hope of a nice, analytical smack-down. Guess what? You ain't gettin' that glee from me because I'll see your 'figurative' and raise it ten levels any day of the week and render you begging for mercy.
(I'll not revisit this post, so save your breath. Once someone claims 'victim', I'm with Dan - disengage.)
Posted by: Phoenix | Saturday, July 29, 2006 at 07:22 PM