DID AUSTRALIA’S PRIME MINISTER AND THE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE HAVE THE AUSTRALIAN DRUG SMUGGLERS SENTENCED TO DEATH BY PROXY?

Back in February of this year I asked if Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard, in collusion with the Australian Federal Police (AFP), had the Australian drug traffickers known as the Bali Nine, deliberately set up so that they could be arrested, tried and sentenced to death by Indonesian courts.[1] I noted that the reason Howard and the AFP did this was specifically for the express purpose of deterring Australian drug smugglers from going to Indonesia in order to bring drugs back into Australia.
Australia no longer has a death penalty and has never had one for drug trafficking. Indeed, Australia’s sentencing history on drug traffickers is nowhere near as harsh as those of Indonesia.
Two of the Bali Nine, the ringleaders, were eventually sentenced to death while all of the others got lengthy jail terms including life imprisonment which in Indonesia usually does mean ‘life’. As a result of these harsh sentences all but one of the Bali Nine, one that had been sentenced to a comparatively lenient twenty years, appealed their sentences. Since all were caught literally red handed smuggling heroin, none of them were in any position to appeal against their convictions – only their sentences. Yesterday the results of those appeals were revealed and they shocked Australia. Instead of having their sentences reduced, the two that were sentenced to death had there sentence upheld while four others that had received lengthy prison terms will now have to face the death penalty. The other two that had appealed will serve life sentences.
The point is, however, that these people would not have to be facing the death penalty if the AFP, who had known of the Bali Nine’s plans to smuggle drugs into Australia from Bali, had arrested them in Australia. Instead, the AFP opted for informing the Indonesian authorities and did so in the full knowledge that Indonesia has the death penalty for drug trafficking. Furthermore, not only was the AFP aware of Indonesia’s harsh penalties for drug trafficking but it was also aware that the Indonesian government were having a major crack down on drug trafficking by making full use of the harsh penalties, including the death sentence, on offenders and, in particular, foreigners.
Just as Howard exposed his hypocrisy about the issue of the death sentence when he received news of the original sentences, so yet again he has shown himself to be unmoved by the plight of those sentenced to death reasserting only that Australian policy with regard to the death sentence and that if people are silly enough to get involved with drugs then there is little sympathy from him other than to formally apply to the Indonesians for a commutation of the sentence but even then not to expect too much.[2]
There is little doubt that Howard and the AFP deliberately set up the Bali Nine to be caught red handed in Bali in order that they serve as a deterrent to those who aspire to bring drugs into Australia. Howard and the AFP in making the decision to allow the Bali Nine to go ahead with their plans have deliberately sentenced these people to death by proxy.


ENDNOTES
[1] Damian Lataan, ‘Have Howard and the AFP deliberately sentenced Australian’s to death by proxy?’, 15 February 2006. Available online: http://lataan.blogspot.com/2006/02/have-howard-and-afp-deliberately.html
[2] ‘Don’t expect death row rescue’, AAP via Sydney Morning Herald, 7 September 2006. Available online: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/dont-expect-death-row-rescue/2006/09/07/1157222228302.html# Accessed 7 September 2006.

WEBDIARY OBSERVATIONS – THE REAL REASONS FOR THE IRAQ WAR?

There seems to be one or two people at Webdiary who are completely unable to understand what the Iraq war has been all about. The one commentator there that has any sense of what it really is all about is Roslyn Ross.
Ross argues:

“The US has acted in ways in Iraq which are either utterly and completely incompetent or designed to create as much chaos as possible and tip the country into civil war or a semblance of civil war.
The litany of 'errors' or maybe not errors committed by the US in the handling of its invasion and occupation are legion. Either they are thoroughly incompetent, and that is certainly possible, or the 'plan' was to make Iraq so unstable that an occupying presence could be justified in the long term.” Ross goes on to assert: “…an army plan to divide Iraq – remember the line divide and conquer – was seen as the best way to control the region.”[1]

Ross is correct in her assumption; the name of the game is indeed divide and rule. Shortly after the war got under way John Howard inadvertently let the cat out of the bag when he said that there “…may well be a case for a federation, with the Kurdish elements, the Sunni and the Shia.”[2] Fortunately, for Howard anyway, nobody paid much attention. Nonetheless, it’s certainly looking as though that may well be the only alternative. It certainly would be the one that would best suit the coalition because it would then allow the US to remain in Iraq at the behest of any one of the three groupings that would form such a federation – the Kurds, the Shia’s and the Sunni’s.

The US has no intention of leaving Iraq and certainly not at any time soon. Ross is right. The Americans have built up an infrastructure within Iraq that is designed specifically for the long term. The US government has no interest in what the world thinks of its role in Iraq. The methods used to gain its foothold of hegemony is fait accompli and the US has set up a very sophisticated propaganda machine that is able – at least so far – to have just been able to keep on top of the worlds negative public opinion over the current state of affairs in Iraq.

Hamish Alcorn has demonstrated yet again his childish naiveté and knowledge of Middle East affairs when he states thus: “….a f**k up it is in Iraq, from the beginning, and yeah, there's been lies and cover-ups all along too, mostly from the hip otherwise they wouldn't have been so clumsy and obvious. Let's keep exposing these as we spot them. But a grand conspiracy to f**k up on purpose? I really don't think so. For me it was clear that it was merely a f**k up when they did not find WMDs, despite everything riding on it politically.”[3] The statement is, of course, an absurdity. How can one ‘f**k up' not finding WMDs if one knew they didn’t exist in the first place and stating that they did was merely lie to create a casus belli to invade Iraq? There now exists plenty of evidence to suggest that the entire war was based exclusively on deliberately constructed lies designed to gain the support of US public opinion. There is even now a massive 36% of the American people who now suspect “…that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.”[4]

The real aims of US Middle East foreign policy have nowhere near been met. The three main aims are to project US hegemony to the region, to secure, at least, influence over the natural resources of the region and to secure the interests and long term goals of Israel – and each and all of these aims are mutually contingent upon the other.

The entire project of bringing Israeli/US dominance into the Middle East has been planned by an alliance of Jewish-American neoconservatives who have Israeli interests as a priority in their policy plans, and non-Jewish American neoconservative pragmatists who have as their priorities the energy and economic interests that can be derived from a successful alliance of US-Israeli foreign policy in the Middle East. Part of that policy is to maintain a major foothold in Iraq for the long term by whatever means is most convenient given any set of international/regional/domestic prevailing agential conditions at any given time. For the Israelis and their pro right-wing Zionist neoconservative allies both in the US and around the world, the aim is to create a Greater Israel that is inclusive of an at least pacified West Bank, but preferably with a non-existent Palestinian population, and a similarly Palestinian-less Gaza Strip. A pacified and powerless Syria would allow Israel to maintain control of the Golan Heights and may even allow the Israelis to yet again think about including south Lebanon up to the Litani River as part of a Greater Israel particularly if Hizbollah were neutralised.

Much of this, of course, very much depends on a subdued and ineffectual Iraq and a toothless or even benign Iran.

For any one to believe that the US has simply blundered ahead with plans for the Middle East that have not been thought out is a really big mistake.


ENDNOTE
[1] Roslyn Ross, ‘Ridiculous It May Be But Right It May Also Be’, Webdiary, 5 September 2006. Available online: http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1599#comment-54588 Accessed 5 September 2006.
[2] ‘Aussie system could suit Iraqis: PM’, ABC Lateline, 14 April 2003. Available online: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2003/s832152.htm Accessed 5 September 2006.
[3] Hamish Alcorn, ‘I’m With Jenny On This’, Webdiary, 5 September 2006. Available online: http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1599#comment-54590 Accessed 5 September 2006.
[4] Thomas Hargrove, ‘Third of Americans suspect 9-11 government conspiracy’, Scrippsnews.com, 1 August 2006. Available online: http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll Accessed 5 September 2006.

WEBDIARY GAINS, THEN LOSES, IT’S FREEDOM!

The egotistic liar Hamish Alcorn of Webdiary threw a tantrum a few days ago which many thought and hoped would see the back of him from that blog. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be. No sooner had he said ‘goodbye’, accompanied by a reasonable amount of childish foul language that reflected his frustrated ‘no one is listening to me’ cry for attention, than he was back eating only a very small amount of humble pie and claiming that he was back by popular demand.

Webdiary would have benefited greatly from the liar Alcorn’s departure from it. Webdiarists may have had the opportunity to open up discussion of various aspects of history that he had closed down; like alternative ideas relating to the events of 11 September 2001, ideas that are now gaining momentum within the mainstream press which are now seriously questioning, albeit somewhat tentatively at the moment, the ‘official government version’ of what happened on ‘9/11’.

Alcorn came to prominence within Webdiary when his sister, Margo Kingston, the founder and originator of Webdiary, left it through ill-health. It was at this point that Alcorn as a liar was exposed. The details can be found elsewhere on this blog.[1] Basically, Alcorn denied on Webdiary that there had been any threats to Margo Kingston when in fact, Alcorn had told both me and Sid Walker personally by email that there had been and that these threats were from ‘very powerful people’ inferring that they were from Zionists within the Australian ‘Israeli Lobby’. It was at that point that Hamish Alcorn lost all credibility as far as I and a few others were concerned. I stopped posting there and vowed never to return while the liar Alcorn had any semblance of control over Webdiary.

Margo Kingston, when she made the break from Fairfax to go out on her own, made it quite clear that she needed those right-wing commentators that posted regularly at WebDiary to move with her to her new site to make it viable. This they did together with quite a large following of other commentators that had used Webdiary at Fairfax. It did not take too long however, before the right-wing got uppity about the power the left wing posters were seemingly having at the new Webdiary particularly in relation to views about the Holocaust and also in relation to so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ especially those that discussed the events of 9/11. Some right-wing posters threatened to desert Webdiary if such discussion continued. Discussion of this soon became off limits. Webdiary, whether they wanted to or not, had caved in to the right-wing for what turned out to be purely commercial – not political – reasons.

In his latest spat Hamish Alcorn has shown himself to be an egotistical manipulator (nothing new there). He has also demonstrated his inability to think laterally and has shown his willingness to be himself manipulated by the mainstream western propaganda press. He has fallen for the latest garbage about Muslim fundamentalists being ‘Islamofascists’. Alcorn, like most others that have been sucked in by this latest rhetoric from those that are themselves displaying fascist tendencies, clearly has no idea what fascism actually is. Alcorn also has problems distinguishing what is ‘left-wing’ and what isn’t. I, for example, have always argued that not all that proclaims to be ‘left-wing’ or have been commonly been held up as being ‘left-wing’, such as Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China, is actually ‘left-wing’. Both of these totalitarian dictators, in my view were exactly the sort of people that gave ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ a bad name! They stopped, as soon as they became totalitarian dictators, being left-wing and became right-wing despite the fact that they wished to continue seeing and proclaiming themselves as ‘left-wing’. Alcorn is too narrow-minded to be able to see this view.

These are all things I am happy to debate but the problem with Alcorn is that he is unwilling to debate anything that falls outside the square of his comfort zone – like discussion on 9/11. He won’t allow discussion on that because the rule has already been set. But it seems that anything else he disagrees with but can’t shut down on, he simply throws a very childish bluey especially when those such as Angela Ryan, Bob Wall and Roslyn Ross, among others, get the intellectual better of him.

It’s a shame Hamish Alcorn still has some pull at Webdiary because without him Webdiary would be a much better intellectual place where the likes of the warmongering right-wing Israeli Zionist supporters like Chris Parsons, Geoff Pahoff, Mike Lyvers, et al, can get their intellectual comeuppance and their Islamaphobic nonsense shot down in flames.

The lying, manipulating and rather childish Hamish Alcorn should step aside from Webdiary and let people who are willing to debate the woes of the world have complete freedom to have their say.


ENDNOTE
[1] Sid Walker, ‘Has Webdiary been threatened by Zionists or not?’, lataan.blogspot, 11 March 2006. Available online: http://lataan.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_lataan_archive.html

MORE OUTRIGHT LIES AND HYPOCRISY FROM AUSTRALIA’S FOREIGN MINISTER, ALEXANDER DOWNER.

Alexander Downer has been Australia’s Foreign Minister since 1996 following a controversial career in Liberal Party politics which included him becoming, albeit for a short time only, the leader of the Liberal Party.

Downer is one of the most prolific of the Howard governments’ liars and the most hypocritical. His most recent example of combined lying and hypocrisy is when, in a speech to the National Newspaper Publishers’ Conference in Australia, he told his audience that:

“There were… widely-reported claims that Israel had bombed deliberately a Red Cross ambulance. In subsequent weeks, the world has discovered those allegations do not stand up to even the most rudimentary scrutiny. After closer study of the images of the damage to the ambulance, it is beyond serious dispute that this episode has all the makings of a hoax. Yet some of the world's most prestigious media outlets, including some of those represented here today, ran that story as fact - unchallenged, unquestioned.”

That was the lie. It was followed moments later in the same speech with this amazing piece of hypocrisy:

“…we who have responsibilities in government also have the right to call it as we see it - and to point out that, even in the most free of societies, the first duty of a responsible media is to get the facts straight, and to get the story right, even when that story might not necessarily conform to your own opinions or prejudices.”[1]

The reality is that Downers assertion that the incident does not stand up to even the ‘most rudimentary scrutiny’ itself doesn’t stand up to the most rudimentary scrutiny. Downer’s lie was so transparent that even Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper, The Australian, was unable to support Downer’s claims.[2] The newspaper had sent one of its own journalists to check up on the story only to find that it was no hoax and that, indeed, the ambulance in question had been targeted by the Israeli air force despite being clearly marked with a large red cross on its roof.

Downer’s clanger was so obvious that The Australian really had no option but to reveal the truth of it. Despite that, however, the newspaper tried to let Downer down as gently as they possibly could by saying that “Mr Downer may himself have fallen for the propaganda trick he is keen to warn against.”

It’s at this point that the newspaper itself becomes complicit in the lies and the hypocrisy. Downer hadn’t ‘fallen for the propaganda trick’ as The Australian newspaper suggested; far from it. Downer was actually trying to perpetuate the propaganda and had got caught out. The proof of this is in the source that Downer had used to make the assertion that the ambulance story was a lie. He had sourced the story from a pro right-wing Zionist site called zombietime.com which serves to propagandise news in Israel’s favour labelling ‘anti-Israel’ news stories as ‘lies’ by lying about them.[3] The point is; one would have needed to cast a fairly large trawl net across the www to have found a story that claimed the rocketing of the ambulance was not true. For a government minister to then cherry-pick that story, that one particular story out of the hundreds in the mainstream press that were to the contrary, and then use it to both perpetuate the lie and then claim some kind of moral highground by talking up ‘media honesty’ is the grossest of hypocrisies.

It is also the grossest of hypocrisies for The Australian newspaper and its editor to try and protect Downer by telling Australian’s that Downers clanger was an example of how even a senior politician could ‘fall for the propaganda trick’.

More lies and hypocrisy from one of Australia’s most prolific liars. And more lies from a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch that is very adept at spinning and perpetuating those lies and hypocrisy.


ENDNOTES
[1] Alexander Downer, ‘Foreign Policy Values and the Media’, Speech to the National Newspaper Publishers’ Conference, 28 August 2006. Available online: http://www.foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/2006/060828_nnp_conf.html Accessed 31 August 2006.
[2] Editorial, ‘Red Cross rocket snares Downer’, The Australian, 31 August 2006. Available online: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20308892-7583,00.html Accessed 31 August 2006.
[3] ‘The Red Cross Ambulance Incident: How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax and Changed the Course of a War’, zombietime.com, 23 August 2006. Available online: http://www.zombietime.com./fraud/ambulance/ Accessed 31 August 2006.

WITH THE FAILURE OF PLAN ‘A’, WHAT NOW FOR THE CHANGING FACE OF THE MIDDLE EAST?

The Israelis and their allies in the US are looking for an outcome that will involve ‘regime change’ in both Syria and Iran. However, the right-wing Israeli Zionists within the Likud and other right-wing Israeli parties and their neoconservative allies in the US, some of whom are within the Bush administration, are seeking ‘regime change’ specifically using direct military confrontation at least or, preferably, the direct use of military power; that is, a military strike against Syria and Iran.[1]

World opinion at the moment is in no mood, despite the neoconservatives and the right-wing Israeli Zionists best efforts to change that opinion, to accept any kind of preemptive strike against Syria or Iran. It is clear that the recent war between Hizbollah and Israel was a deliberate attempt on behalf of the Israelis and the US to provoke Syria and then Iran into a broader conflict that the Israelis and the US hoped would be some kind of defining war that would determine the future of the Middle East. Just as clear is the fact that the attempt failed. But its failure has demonstrated that the Israelis are reluctant to actually make the first strike against Syria without some good reason such as the Syrians launching a direct attack against the Israelis or very clearly and overtly helping Hizbollah. It was with an even greater degree of reluctance that slightly cooler heads in Washington DC declined from launching any kind of attack against Iran despite the neoconservative hawks all but pleading for Israel to strike Syria[2] and the US to strike Iran.[3]

Since the so-called ceasefire the rhetoric against Syria and Iran from the Israelis and the US has continued with renewed vigour particularly in light of the news that Iran will not be ceasing its ‘nuclear enrichment’ program.[4] Israel, despite the ceasefire, launched a raid into Lebanon on the pretext that it was trying to stop arms being supplied to Hizbollah from Syria. The raid in reality was more likely for some other purpose – some observers suggesting that it may have been an abortive attempt to kidnap a senior Hizbollah leader, Sheik Mohammed Yazbek,[5] to exchange for the two Israeli soldiers that were captured by Hizbollah on 12 July 2006. Israel is also demanding that the UN monitor the Lebanon-Syria border, ostensibly to halt the flow of arms from Syria to Hizbollah, a move that Syria rejects.[6]

From Israel’s point of view it is essential that it not be seen to cast the first stone in any of its wars. Israel must always manipulate situations so that its casus belli for war always appears to be only defensive. It is by this means that it justifies its occupation and colonisation of lands that are otherwise not theirs. It is how they justify their occupation of the Shebaa Farm, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and, of late, the retaking of the Gaza[7] and what they had hoped would have been southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. In finding some trivial provocation to attack Hizbollah in south Lebanon Israel were hoping to kill two birds with one stone. First, they could, with the help of a compliant western media and the support of the US and a generally kowtowing UN, have made a case for having fought a ‘defensive’ war with a resultant ‘legal’ occupation of the lands invaded just as they had done with the Shebaa Farm, and the Golan Heights, etc. Second, it was Israel’s hope that in attacking Hizbollah and Lebanon as viciously as it did that it may have provoked Syria to once again come to the aid of Hizbollah. Israel could then have retaliated – again, defensively – and then waited for Iran to have enjoined Syria in its defence against Israel which, in turn, would have induced the US to enter the conflict. As I have noted in previous articles, it is clear that such a scenario was pre-planned between the Israelis and the US.[8] What is now equally as clear is the fact that both the Israelis and the US grossly underestimated the tenacity and resilience of Hizbollah and the Lebanese people and also the restraint that Syria showed in not becoming directly involved despite the rhetoric and the provocation. It was this that thwarted not only all of Israeli and US covert ambitions of expanding the war to include Syria and Iran and to invade and occupy south Lebanon, but also of causing Israel to be unable to realise its overt and stated war aims of having its captured soldiers returned and destroying Hizbollah.

What remains to be seen now is whether or not these failures are simply a minor setback in their overall strategy and long term aims or a disastrous setback that is likely to upset both Israeli and US Middle East foreign policy for the future. Since the rhetoric of Syrian and Iranian support of Hizbollah and the rhetoric against Irans so-called nuclear weapon ambitions is continuing unabated it would seem that Israel’s failures, while seriously hampering the overall strategy of eliminating Syria and Iran as a threat to US and Israeli long term interests, is being regarded only as a minor setback that has caused them to rethink their tactics.
One of the issues that will need to be considered as the US and Israel rethink their tactics is the way in which the Middle East pecking order has changed since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. A recent report from Chatham House, home of the UKs respected Royal Institute for International Studies, has shown that, since the US has failed to subjugate Iraq in the aftermath of its invasion and with the resurgence of the Taliban in an almost ungovernable Afghanistan, Iran is now seen as the dominate power to be reckoned with in the Middle East.[9]

This is a worse case scenario as far as the US and Israel is concerned. Had the US been able to complete what they set out to do in Iraq, and had done it quickly, they would have succeeded in isolating Syria from Iran strategically. Furthermore, had the US been successful in Afghanistan and been able to assert its authority there across the entire land, it would have succeeded in isolating Iran and surrounding Iran with US hegemony. Iran would at least then have become compliant having been surrounded by nation states that were heavily reliant clients of the US or even have been subject to ‘regime change’ via internal dissent or uprising supported by the US. All this would have left Syria unsupported by Iran and therefore at the mercy of Israel and/or internal regime change resulting in a state unwilling to resist Israeli regional ambitions.
The US is now painfully aware that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is any time soon going to come to heel to produce the kind of strategic environment that would induce the Iranians to become compliant. It is for this reason that the US and Israel is going to have to find some other way of removing Iran and Syria as a threat to their interests.

As was the case with Iraq, the international community in the form of the UN is unlikely to push the matter of Irans ‘nuclear ambitions’ to the point where the UN would allow US military intervention. Despite all the rhetoric, the IAEA has found absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Iran is aiming to produce or has produced any uranium enriched beyond that which can be used for anything other than fuel for electricity generation. Nor has the IAEA found any evidence to suggest that Iran has or is intending to have a facility which will enable Iran to produce weapon grade material specifically.[10] Unlike the run up to invading Iraq, the UN is also unlikely to support economic sanctions against Iran though the US will have no alternative to at least be seen to be going down that road. The upshot in the end however, seems to be that the US will have no alternative but, at some time or another, to confront Iran. The US with its own rhetoric seems to have painted itself into a corner.

Meanwhile, there are other options. The most obvious one is that the US and Israelis revert to Plan ‘A’ inasmuch that they try again under some pretext or another to crush ‘once and for all’ the ‘ever threatening’ Hizbollah organisation and hope that such an attempt will this time draw Syria into the fray. But, as I have continually pointed out, Israel cannot be seen to cast that first stone. If it does, then any claims to subsequent lands occupied as a result of such a war would be null and void under international law which so far the Israelis have gone to great pains to manipulate and even outright lie over in order to achieve an outcome favourable to their interests.

The other scenario that could well be the last desperate act of a government on the ropes is to hope that the rest of the world accepts as fait accompli a joint preemptive attack by Israel on Syria and by the US on Iran of such devastating proportions that both nations would surrender to Israeli and US terms without the need to invade.

This, of course, can only mean the use of nuclear weapons.

That’s Plan ‘C’.

ENDNOTES
[1] Jim Lobe, ‘Hard-Line Neocons Assail Israel for Timidity’, antiwar.com, 12 August 2006. Available online: http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=9530 Accessed 21 August 2006.
[2] Max Boot, ‘Let Israel Take Off the Gloves’, Los Angeles Times, 19 July 2006. Available online: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-boot19jul19,0,3628616.column Accessed 22 August 2006.
[3] William Kristol, ‘It’s Our War; Bush should go to Jerusalem – and the US should confront Iran’, The Weekly Standard, 24 July 2006. Available online: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/433fwbvs.asp Accessed 22 August 2006.
[4] ‘Bolton tells UN: Time to address Iran, Syria over Hezbollah’, Rawstory.com, 22 August 2006. Available online: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/UN_Ambassador_speaks_on_Iran_nuclear_0822.html Accessed 23 August 2006.
[5] Patrick Martin, ‘An outlaw state: Israel breaks ceasefire, threatens to assassinate Hezbollah leader’, Axisoflogic.com, 22 August 2006. Available online: http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_22811.shtml Accessed 23 August 2006.
[6] Aluf Benn and Mazal Mualem, ‘Assad rejects Israel’s demand for UN troops on Syria-Lebanon border’, Ha’aretz, 23 August 2006. Available online: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/753639.html Accessed 24 August 2006.
[7] Michael I. Krauss and J. Peter Pham, ‘Why Israel Is Free to Set Its Own Borders’, Commentary, July/August 2006, Iss. 122, No. 1.
[8] Damian Lataan, ‘The US and Israel have failed to provoke war with Syria and Iran’, lataan.blogspot.com, 16 august 2006. Available online: http://lataan.blogspot.com/2006/08/us-and-israel-have-failed-to-provoke.html
[9] Robert Lowe and Claire Spencer, eds., ‘Iran, its neighbours and the regional crisis’, Chatham House, August 2006. Available online: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/pdf/research/mep/Iran0806.pdf Accessed 24 August 2006.
[10] Atul Aneja, ‘IAEA says no evidence of Iranian n-weapons plan’, The Hindu, 3 March 2006. Available online: http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/01/stories/2006030104411600.htm Accessed 23 August 2006.

THE US AND ISRAEL’S PLAN ‘A’ FAILED TO PROVOKE WAR WITH SYRIA AND IRAN, SO WHAT’S PLAN ‘B’?

Despite Israel in the recent conflict pushing it right up to the edge militarily against Lebanon in order to provoke Syria into taking a more direct part in supporting its client Hizbollah which, in turn, would give Israel an excuse to attack Syria, the Syrians stood their ground and resisted the temptation to be drawn into the fighting. And, because Syria resisted getting into a fight with Israel, this meant that Iran would not be drawn in to support its ally Syria, which, yet again in turn, meant that the US would not have a legitimate excuse to come in to the fray to support their client, Israel, the end result being that Plan ‘A’, to start an all-defining war against Syria and Iran, just didn’t work. One now has to ask; so what’s Plan ‘B’?

The most important aspect of Plan ‘A’ – an aspect which led ultimately to its failure – was that it relied on Syria casting the first stone which would lead to the all-defining Middle East war that both Israel and the US are looking for. There was absolutely no way that Israel could be seen to actually cast the first stone directly against Syria. Such a scenario would have been far too obvious and there would have been a World-wide public opinion back-lash against it.

The Israelis and the US clearly believed that a massive pummelling of south Lebanon, Hezbollah heartland, involving the destruction of roads, villages, community resources, etc., would be enough to lure the Syrians in. When the Syrians didn’t bite the Israelis soon ramped it up. They started to deliberately target civilians including vehicles flying white sheets which civilians were using to flee the areas being bombed. The Israelis thought that maybe this would infuriate the Syrians enough to react. It infuriated them all right – and, indeed, the rest of the world – but still the Syrians resisted getting involved. At the same time as the Israelis were ramping up the destruction of Lebanon, and by now not just south Lebanon, so the US administration kept up with the rhetoric about the whole crisis being the fault of Syria and Iran.

Soon the entire world could see that this whole mess was just becoming a turkey shoot of the Lebanese people but the US, with the help of its ally the UK, allowed the carnage to continue by simply refusing to demand that the Israelis stop the onslaught. By the end of the fourth week it was becoming clear to the US and the UK that the Syrians were not going play ball. Still they dithered however, in the hope that if the Israelis invade and push hard enough up to the Litani River and the Syrian border they might just still get the Syrians to react and then have their war. But, no; it wasn’t to be. The UN eventually came up with a peace plan and the Israelis lost the war, not only by virtue of not even having realised any of their stated war aims of getting back their soldiers, something that still hasn’t happened at the time of writing, but also they did not get anywhere near destroying Hizbollah. And that was just their stated war aims – never mind the un-stated ones of trying to provoke war with Syria and Iran and drawing in the US for an all out battle to redefine the Middle East.

So what is Plan ‘B’?

The details of Plan ‘B’ are probably still being worked out but will more than likely consist of pushing for direct conflict with Iran rather than trying to get a war off the ground via proxy wars, i.e., as has already been tried with Israel fighting Hizbollah. It could however, be instigated by something in between like Israel attacking Iran direct because of Iran’s perceived nuclear threat which many Israeli right-wingers and pro-Israeli neoconservatives see as being quite intolerable. The American people would most certainly not support the US directly launching a surprise offensive against Iran. It would need first to go down the lengthy road of pushing for sanctions via the UN. President Bush simply hasn’t got time to do that especially if he was thinking of getting this thing out of the way by the November Mid Terms. Another alternative is some kind of ‘false flag’ terrorist operation whereby the US could point the finger at Iran and then make a retaliatory strike against Iran though, after the fiasco of 9/11 and the at first creeping but now snowballing doubts that are now sweeping America about that particular event, any future ‘attack’ on the US would have to be pretty convincing to get the American people on side again.

Of all of the possible scenarios it seems that the only alternative now is for the Israelis to attack Iran direct. As soon as it does, of course, the US will be there to help out.

There could also be a Plan ‘C’, but the world doesn’t really want to go there.

THE US AND ISRAEL HAVE FAILED TO PROVOKE WAR WITH SYRIA AND IRAN.

Apart from using the excuse of wanting to secure the release of the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah on the 12 July 2006 to launch an all-out attack on south Lebanon, the Israeli government within just a few days announced that the aim of the attack was also to destroy Hezbollah ‘for good’.[1] A little over a month later as a brokered ceasefire tenuously takes hold, it is clear the Israelis have failed in their stated war aims and as a result Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, has claimed an ‘historic victory’.[2]
On the surface Israel’s war aims seemed straight forward; they wanted their soldiers back and they wanted to destroy Hezbollah. They have certainly failed to destroy Hezbollah and, at the time of writing, the Israelis have as yet not had their soldiers returned to them, so, as the ceasefire takes hold, neither of Israel’s stated war aims have been successful.
But then, were Israeli war aims as simple as that? Could Israel really have been so naïve as to think that it could destroy forever the Hezbollah organisation by simply destroying physical structures and killing hundreds of Lebanese civilians? How could Israel have so utterly underestimated the tenacious strength and the support that Hezbollah has demonstrated that it has when for decades Hezbollah had shown itself to be more than capable of resisting Israel’s military might?
Clearly Israeli war aims were more than a simple hot pursuit of guerrillas that had captured two low-ranking Israeli soldiers. Yet the capture of the two soldiers, as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quickly announced, was indeed the given Israeli casus belli for war after saying that the capture of the soldiers constituted ‘an act of war’.[3]
However, the speed at which the conflict escalated exposed the shallowness of Israel’s stated casus belli. The extent and rapidity of the escalation demonstrated that Israel had prepared for their attack on Lebanon well before the two Israeli soldiers had been captured.
A revealing article in the Jerusalem Post on 12 July 2006 – the very same day that the two Israeli soldiers were captured – told readers that: “Only weeks ago, an entire reserve division was drafted in order to train for an operation such as the one the IDF is planning in response to Wednesday morning's Hizbullah attacks on IDF forces along the northern border.”[4]
Initial news bulletins that were published on 12 July 2006 reported that the two Israeli soldiers had been captured inside Lebanon at the village of Aitaa al Chaab.[5] Even Forbes.com, a neoconservative-sponsored media outlet owned by staunch Israeli supporter, Stephen Forbes, initially reported: “The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon…”[6]
The story about them being captured inside Lebanon however, was quickly denied and virtually all later articles reported that Hezbollah fighters had crossed into Israel to seize the two soldiers. The earlier reports that they had been caught inside Lebanon were barely mentioned again. By the following day when Israel were already letting loose with their attacks against southern Lebanon, the mainstream media had already ‘adjusted’ history in the mind of the news hungry public to suit Israel’s rationale and stated casus belli for war.
In order to increase the pressure on Hezbollah the Israeli government issued a statement to the effect that it held the Lebanese government responsible for what was happening because it, the Lebanese government, had allowed “Hezbollah to operate in its sovereign territory”.[7] By Friday 14 July 2006 the Israelis were ramping up the war aims publicly with Isaac Herzog of the Israeli security cabinet saying: “We’ve decided to put an end to this saga and to change the rules of the game whereby a terrorist organisation that is part of the Lebanese government can push the region to the abyss”, while Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan of the Israeli general staff said bluntly: “We want to put Hezbollah out of business.”[8]
Meanwhile, the neoconservative commentators in the US and elsewhere had already begun to work themselves up into frenzy blaming Syria and Iran for the conflict. Michael Ledeen wasted no time in launching into a predictable rant telling readers: “No one should have any lingering doubts about what’s going on in the Middle East. It’s war, and it now runs from Gaza into Israel, through Lebanon and thence to Iraq via Syria. There are different instruments, ranging from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon and on to the multifaceted “insurgency” in Iraq. But there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable.”[9]
It did not take too long for the Bush administration to also point the finger of blame toward the Syrians and the Iranians. At a press gaggle on board Air Force One on 12 July 2006, Tony Snow, the Presidents press secretary, said when asked to respond to the situation in Lebanon and the Israeli soldiers: “A couple of things. Number one, the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers -- we saw this in Gaza, but also in Lebanon -- is simply unacceptable. And that the governments of Iran and Syria implicated in this; Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. We are hoping that the Lebanese government is going to be able to get control of the situation. But certainly Israel has the right to defend itself and it has assured us that it is trying to proceed us in a way as to avoid civilian casualties…” And then when asked if the US is troubled by Israelis going into Lebanon, he answered: “We believe that Israel has the right to protect itself.”[10]
A Presidential statement issued the same day said: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms this unprovoked act of terrorism, which was timed to exacerbate already high tensions in the region and sow further violence. We also hold Syria and Iran, which have provided long-standing support for Hezbollah, responsible for today's violence.”[11]
By Saturday 15 July 2006, the Israelis were expanding their assault and bombing Beirut airport. At a press conference the following day Condoleeza Rice made a significant statement. In response to being asked; “Why not call for a cease-fire…?” Rice answered, “We want a sustainable cessation of violence.” Then, to an interjected question saying, “you want the violence to end?” Rice replied: “I can tell you that -- of course, we want violence to end. But I can tell you right now if violence ends on the basis of somehow Hezbollah or Hamas continuing to hold in their hands the capabilities anytime they wish to start launching rockets again into Israel, if violence ends on the basis of no change in the underlying political support for Resolution 1559 or for the work that President Abbas is doing, if violence ends on the basis of Syria and Iran being able to turn on the key again anytime, we will have achieved very, very little, indeed, and we will be right back here, perhaps in a worse circumstance because the terrorists will assume that nobody is willing to take on what has been a very clear assault now on the progress that is being made by moderate forces in the Middle East.”[12] Secretary Rice will no doubt be hoping that these words are not well remembered as Hezbollah remain armed and remain in place.
Now let’s examine the bigger picture. It is Syria and Iran that seem to be the key to any real analysis of the cause for this particular crisis. From day one of the war on Lebanon both Syria and Iran have featured heavily in the rhetoric of Israel and its backers, the US and Britain. Indeed, as one examines the actual and circumstantial evidence retrospectively, the picture that emerges is not one of Israel wanting so much to primarily destroy Hezbollah but that the real reason for Israel’s attack on Hezbollah was to deliberately provoke Syria into the fray which, in turn, would have brought Iran in as well, which in turn again would have involved the US as it rushed to protect Israel, in what would become the determining final battle that would dictate the long term future of the Middle East.
Every day as the war on Lebanon progressed and escalated there seemed to be an ever increasing reluctance from the US to demand a ceasefire and a stop to the carnage and destruction Israel was inflicting on Lebanon. Every day as Hezbollah increased its retaliatory attacks against Israel so the US and its allies sought to increase their rhetoric against Syria and Iran accusing them of supplying arms and weapons to Hezbollah but neglecting to mention their own seemingly inexhaustible supply of arms and weapons to Israel that was being used against the Lebanese people.
The problem for the US and Israel however, was that neither Syria nor Iran were biting. Nothing came of claims that Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops were on the ground in Lebanon fighting Israel[13] and Israeli claims that Iranian troops had been found among Hezbollah dead on south Lebanon’s battlefields.[14]
As it became apparent that neither Syria nor Iran were going to be drawn directly into the conflict and the carnage continued in Lebanon, so the US and the UK tried to play for more time by agreeing to be part of UN talks that would end the conflict. But while they agreed to talk they still did not demand an immediate ceasefire. Israel entered and pushed into Lebanon with tanks and ground troops but still the Syrians and Iranians refused to be drawn. There eventually came a point for the US where there was simply no more time left to play with and they could dither no longer over creating a peace plan that would ultimately see Israel the loser. Syria and Iran were steadfast in holding back from entering the war. Neither Israel nor, especially, the US could be seen to make a first strike against Syria or Iran.
The moment had passed. The opportunity to breathe fresh life into an old plan had again moved out of reach. The Israeli and US nerve had failed and the neoconservatives that had initially planned the ‘Clean Break’ will now, as William River Pitts observes, be seeking new opportunities and excuses to attack Syria and Iran.[15]
It may well be some time before all of the facts are known well enough for the events of the past few months to be documented as a lasting history but one can rest assured that that no matter what the propagandists of Israel and their neoconservative backers around the world say, nobody risks World War Three just because a few low ranking soldiers go missing. No. The real reasons for this war can only be surmised at the moment but there is much evidence already to suggest that it was well planned in advance, that it had the backing of President Bush and indeed, was likely planned, as Wayne Madsen has recently suggested, in collusion with the most senior members within the Bush administration and also with the most influential and senior Israeli Zionist politicians and their neoconservative cohorts in the US.[16]




ENDNOTES
[1] ‘Israel aims to destroy Hezbollah’, ABC Online, 16 July 2006. Available online: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200607/s1687756.htm Accessed 15 August 2006.
[2] ‘Hezbollah claims ‘historic victory’’, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 August 2006. Available online: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hezbollah-claims-historic-victory/2006/08/15/1155407772106.html# Accessed 15 August 2006.
[3] ‘Hezbollah seizes Israel soldiers’, BBC News, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5171616.stm Accessed 15 August 2006.
[4] Yaakov Katz, ‘Reservists called up for Lebanon strike’, Jerusalem Post, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885978380&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Accessed 13 July 2006.
[5] Weedah Hamzah, ‘Hezbollah back in the spotlight after capturing soldiers’, via Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/article_1180404.php/Hezbollah_back_in_the_spotlight_after_capturing_soldiers Accessed 23 July 2006.
[6] Joseph Panossian, ‘Hezbollah Captures 2 Israeli Soldiers’, Forbes.com, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/07/12/ap2873051.html Accessed 15 August 2006.
[7] Yaakov Katz, Herb Keinon and Sheera Claire Frankel, ‘Peretz vows to Hizbullah hard’, Jerusalem Post, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885977735&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Accessed 15 August 2006.
[8] Steven Erlanger, ‘Israel Vows to Crush Militia; Group’s Leader Is Defiant’, New York Times, 14 July 2006. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/world/middleeast/14cnd-mideast.html?ex=1310529600&en=e919252e8ebee9cb&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss Accessed 15 August 2006.
[9] Michael Ledeen, ‘The Same War’, National Review Online, 13 July 2006. Available online: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDE4MDA3NDUyYjA0ZGY1MzQ4NjM5NjM1MWY4NDVkZGM Accessed 15 July 2006.
[10] Press gaggle by Tony Snow aboard Air Force One en route Heiligendamm, Germany, White House Press Briefings, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060712-1.html Accessed 15 August 2006.
[11] ‘Statement on Condemnation of Hizballah Kidnapping of Two Israeli Soldiers’, White House Presidential Statement, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060712.html accessed 16 August 2006.
[12] ‘Press Briefing by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’, White House Press Briefing, 16 July 2006. Available online: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060716-2.html Accessed 16 August 2006.
[13] Ira Stoll, ‘Hundreds of Iranian troops Fighting in Lebanon’, The New York Sun, 19 July 2006. Available online: http://www.nysun.com/article/36326 Accessed 16 August 2006.
[14] ‘Iranian Forces Among the Dead in Lebanon’, Arutz Sheva, 10 August 2006. Available online: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=109678 Accessed 16 August 2006.
[15] William River Pitt, ‘Everything Old is New’, Truthout.org, 15 August 2006. Available online: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081506A.shtml Accessed 16 August 2006.
[16] Wayne Madsen, ‘The Israeli invasion of Lebanon was planned between top Israeli officials and members of the Bush administration’, via GlobalResearch.ca, 24 July 2006. Available online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MAD20060724&articleId=2801 Accessed 16 August 2006.

I WAS FLYING ACROSS THE ATLANTIC, QUIETLY MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS, WHEN SUDDENLY NOTHING HAPPENED!*

Just when the entire world was becoming increasingly frustrated with the Israeli’s methodical and deliberate destruction of Lebanon and the killing of its people and the UNs inability to stop the onslaught, suddenly several aircraft flying over the Atlantic don’t blow up! There was a totally unprecedented lack of loss of life and this complete lack of loss of life, so we are told, was on an unimaginable scale.

It certainly seems as if Mossad have been working overtime to get this transparent piece of distraction off the ground. Seeing what evidence the UK and US police and security services come up with is going to be interesting. One wonders if there are likely to be any ‘protected’ witnesses among those arrested. My bet is there will probably be three or four of them whom the police will rely on to provide the ‘evidence’ to convict the patsies that were drawn into the ‘plot’.

The British and American security services and governments have played their role perfectly maximising the fear factor to the limit with overwhelming displays of overt security presence at major airports on both sides of the Atlantic. The mainstream media have also played their part to the hilt giving maximum air-time to the total non-event and stirring the fear pot for all its worth with graphic worst-case scenarios being described to the world by ‘terrorist experts’ and ‘security experts’ from only the very best universities.

As a result of the security clampdown there has been massive disruption to transatlantic air services which, in turn, and with the amplification effect of the media, has served the purpose of directing anger at the wannabe non-existent terrorists specifically and, far more importantly, the world of Islam generally thus reinforcing the idea of the seriousness of the ‘war on terror’ and all that that represents, especially when the connection is made directly by the simple expedient of the ‘terrorist experts’ and ‘security experts’ saying words to the effect that the ‘terrorists’ were acting in solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people.

One does not need a massive IQ to see where all this is coming from!


*I acknowledge a certain Monty Python sketch as part inspiration for the approach used in this piece.

THE REAL REASONS FOR ISRAEL’S WARS AGAINST THE LEBANESE AND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLES

In 1919 Chaim Wiezmann, later to become head of the World Zionist Organisation, declared that the Litani River in Lebanon was ‘essential to the future of the Jewish national home.’[1] Today the Zionofascist dream of controlling the resources of the Litani River is on the verge of becoming a reality if the Israelis have their way as they invade and occupy southern Lebanon. The importance of Israel having control over the resources of the Litani River when considering Israel’s dream of a Greater Israeli cannot be over-emphasised.[2]

Israel as a nation has a critical water supply and it has been estimated the Latani could supply up to 800 million cubic metres to Israel.[3] Having control of the area south of the river down to Israel’s borders would also consolidate its control over the Golan Heights which currently is the source of some one third of Israel’s water supplies[4] which Israel stole from Syria after the 1967 war and failed to return to Syria – despite UN resolution 242 demanding that the lands be returned to Syria.[5] Control of the southern eastern areas of Lebanon would also give the Israelis control over the Kinneret Basin which is part of the watershed for the waters from the Golan Heights.[6]

Despite the numerous claims from the Zionofascist Israeli government that this war is a response to the capture of Israeli soldiers, (now known to have been a lie since we know that the war was planned weeks BEFORE the soldiers were arrested)[7] and despite their claims that their war is against Hizbollah and not the Lebanese people, (which we also now know to be a lie especially since the Israeli air attacks against obviously civilian infrastructure and even against civilian neighbourhoods in the Christian northern sections of Beirut, areas that prior to the war were home to people that were sympathetic to the Israelis) it is becoming clear that this war is about clandestine occupation of lands that are a part of the Zionofascist dream of a Greater Israel.[8]

Also as part of that Zionofascist dream of a Greater Israel are the Israeli Zionofascist operations that are continuing in the Gaza. The mainstream media seems to have all but forgotten the Israeli destruction and occupation of the Gaza Strip – an occupation aimed at destroying the desire and will of the Palestinians to want to continue living there thus forcing them to leave for either the West Bank or Jordan. But when the two wars in the Gaza and Lebanon are seen together the bigger picture emerges. And as it does, so too are the lies exposed. The Israeli Zionofascist bigger picture, far from wanting to simply have three of their Zionofascist troopers returned, can now be seen for what it really is – an all-or-nothing attempt to grab as big a chunk of their Greater Israel dream as they possibly can and to be able to do this with the planning and cooperation of the US and UK governments and the full help of the American neoconservative and Israeli Lobby and their associates around the world.

The Israelis have attempted a master lie to the world by insisting that the current war has flared spontaneously as a result of certain random events that have somehow culminated in a, from the Israeli point of view, defensive war. As we look back retrospectively to those days – and remember they were only just a few weeks ago – we can now clearly see that this war has nothing whatsoever to do with missing soldiers, and, far from being as a result of random and spontaneous events culminating in a process of escalation, it is abundantly clear that everything that has happened since that day the Israelis lobbed a shell onto the beach on the Gaza killing a Palestinian family and then attempted to blame Hamas for it, has been carefully planned, right down to the last detail, well in advance.

The size and complexity of the current Israeli operations in the Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon, and the policies that the US and the UK have adopted in ‘handling’ the crisis also make it abundantly clear that they have been involved heavily in the planning and logistics of the Israeli all-or-nothing grab for land and their attempt, yet again, to realise their dream of a Greater Israel. The logistics of mounting such an extensive and relentless offensive against the Lebanese alone demonstrates the complicity of the US by virtue of their supply of weapons and fuel to the Israeli’s in order to fulfil their well-planned offensive, all of which shows that this offensive is all about Israeli/US hegemony in the region, the re-establishment and enlargement of a Greater Israel – and has absolutely nothing to do with the capture of three lowly ranked foot-soldiers.


ENDNOTES
[1] Weisgal, M. W., ed. ‘The letters and papers of Chaim Weizmann,’ vol. 9. (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1977.) p. 267.
[2] Angela Joy Moss, ‘Litani River and Israel-Lebanon’, November 1997. Available online: http://www.american.edu/ted/ice/litani.htm Accessed 5 August 2006.
[3] Hussein A. Amery, ‘The Litani River of Lebanon’, Geographical Review, July 1993, Vol. 83, Issue 3, p.9. Also available online: http://web.macam.ac.il/~arnon/Int-ME/water/THE%20LITANI%20RIVER.htm Accessed 5 August 2006.
[4] Israel’s Lifeline the Northern Water Sources’, Peace with the Golan. Available online: http://www.golan.org.il/water.html Accessed 5 August 2006.
[5] United Nations Resolution 242, 22 November 1967. Available online: http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/240/94/IMG/NR024094.pdf?OpenElement Accessed 5 August 2006.
[6] ‘Why is the Kinneret Basin So Vital to the National Water Economy?’ Peace with the Golan.
Available online: http://www.golan.org.il/water.html#1 Accessed 5 August 2006.
[7] Yaakov Katz, ‘Reservists called up for Lebanon strike’, Jerusalem Post, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885978380&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Accessed 13 July 2006.
[8] Kaveh L Afrasiabi, ‘It's about annexation, stupid!’, Asia Times online, 5 August 2006. Available online: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH05Ak01.html Accessed 5 August 2006.

WHY WAR WITH SYRIA IS INEVITABLE

It is very difficult to see how Israel can actually avoid attacking Syria. They and their US backers have set up Syria as the proverbial monster which they now have no option but to destroy. To a certain extent the same applies to Iran though, because Syria is closer, the logistics of Israel striking Syria are a lot less complex than trying to attack Iran, something the Israelis would prefer the US to do for them.

I stated in an earlier article that the Israelis are playing an extremely dangerous game.[1] I said this in the context that Israel, if they continued pushing their weight around in the way that they are, will at some stage have to rely on some sort of major support from the US, particularly if the Syrians and/or the Iranians are physically drawn into the conflict.

However, the game that they are playing at the moment in Lebanon is not one that they can possibly win in the end, despite their military superiority, even if they shattered all of Lebanon by bombing it and then invading and occupying it from the south.

In invading Lebanon they will simply force Hizbollah to move northwards. Syria then will continue to arm them and Hizbollah will continue to respond to Israeli occupation by launching attacks against the occupying Israelis from their side of the Israeli created ‘buffer zone’ which, of necessity, will then need to be continually increased.

The Israeli strategy of hitting Lebanese infrastructure and calling it ‘Hizbollah infrastructure’ in the hope that Hizbollah will crumble does not work because Hizbollah are not buildings or bridges or roads or airports but people. So far the Israelis have succeeded in killing well over 400 people; very few of them, however, are actually Hizbollah fighters. Rather than hit Hizbollah where it hurts, Israel in fact has done a very good job of demolishing what little goodwill the Lebanese people did have toward the Israelis. The Israelis can kiss that goodbye for many years to come. Israel has also succeeded in creating a new generation of Hizbollah fighters and volunteers. If Israel continues its occupation of southern Lebanon as it did before, then these new recruits will be the ones they will need to face in the future as they avenge the loss of parents, homes, land, jobs and ‘infrastructure’.

Meanwhile, Hizbollah will continue its battle against the Israelis as the Israelis attempt to create their buffer zone and to consolidate their position inside of southern Lebanon. The US has allowed the Israelis time to do this by simple virtue of Condoleeza Rise not being in any rush to either demand that the Israelis halt their attacks or to convene further meetings to discuss how a peace plan can be put in place. How this can be done without any of the major players like Hizbollah, Syria or Iran being involved remains to be answered.[2]

It is this factor that goes to the heart of the problem; there will be a diplomatic stalemate during which period the Israelis will continue to push into Lebanon. The Israelis clearly will do no deals with Hizbollah and Hizbollah will not be budging or giving away their land without a fight – a fight that inevitably will draw in Syria.

From the Israeli side there are some that are able to see that indeed Israel will have to attack Syria with some extreme right-wing Zionists insisting that the sooner this is done the better. Efraim Inbar, for example, an Israeli academic with neoconservative connections in the US and who advises the Israeli government, told Aljazeera.net “I advocate attacking Syria – to some extent we are wasting ammunition in Lebanon.” When asked if the peace process is now dead he replied, “Forget about it, it’s over.”[3] Whether or not Inbar was privy to the Israeli government’s long term plans to attack Lebanon is not known, though, had he had any input to such planning, he would clearly have advocated taking on Syria as well or attacking Syria directly.

The problem with that scenario is that Israel would have had to have set up a pretext for doing so that would have to have been far more plausible than the story that their attack on Lebanon was in response to the capture of a couple of Israeli soldiers after Hizbollah fighters had ‘crossed into Israel’. (We now know, of course, that in fact the Israeli soldiers had actually crossed in to Lebanon when they were arrested[4] and that the Israelis had planned their attack on Lebanon long before the Israeli soldiers were captured.[5])

The big problem as far as the Israelis are concerned is that a wide enough buffer zone would have to be created that would out-range any missile that Hizbollah have. This would be almost impossible without over-running Lebanon entirely since no matter where the Israelis are in Lebanon, Hizbollah will always be able to launch their missiles against them even if it’s into occupied territory. Israel, with all its military superiority, does not have anywhere near the wherewithal to be able to launch a full scale invasion and occupation of all of Lebanon to be able to succeed in eliminating Hizbollah. Nor indeed would Syria allow it to.

The buzz words now coming from Israel, the US and their Western and Arab allies is of a ‘sustainable peace’.[6] It has, however, become a euphemism serving two purposes. First, it buys more time for the Israelis to continue attacking Lebanon because the Israelis, the US and their allies have said that there is no point in having an immediate ceasefire until a ‘sustainable peace’ can be achieved. Second, one needs to ask; what does a sustainable peace actually mean? On what terms would a ‘sustainable peace’ be achieved? Does ‘sustainable peace’, from the Israelis point of view, mean that they continue to have the upper hand in controlling the Palestinians and their lands and unilaterally making decisions about where borders are going to be?

And, of course, therein lies the rub. The only terms on which Israel are likely to disengage are those that see Hizbollah not just disarmed, but dismantled as an organisation bearing in mind that the US, Israel and their Western allies regard Hizbollah as a ‘terrorist’ organisation. This simply will not happen.

The other question that needs to be asked is; with whom will this ‘sustainable peace’ be negotiated? Clearly Syria and Iran will need to be at the table. But this is hardly likely to occur considering the stance Israel and Iran have adopted against each other.

The Rome meeting of 26 July 2006 that was arranged to discuss how a ‘sustainable peace’ might be organised ended in failure with no agreement being reached other than an agreement that somehow at some time an agreement does have to be reached. On the major issue of who should and shouldn’t be involved, there was major disagreement between the UN and the US. The UNs Koffi Anan, furious over the deaths of four UN peacekeepers deliberately killed by the Israelis, insists that Syria and Iran must be involved in talks while Rice insisted they should not be involved because of their ‘role in the region’.[7] Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the Gaza and the West Bank the killing goes on unabated.[8]

The only ‘sustainable peace’ that will be acceptable to the Israelis and their US allies is one where Israel continues to occupy and annex the Gaza and the West Bank on a permanent basis without interference from the Palestinians, the Lebanese or any of the surrounding Arab states – particularly Syria.

Every day that now goes by puts the Israelis in an increasingly weaker position despite its military superiority. As Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times reports, “with each passing day, the sight of an Arab force hitting Israel with rockets makes Hezbollah increasingly popular across the region and therefore more costly to restrain, particularly because the Israelis have labelled the struggle a death match.”[9]

Israel has expended a massive amount of effort to achieve their aims of eliminating Hizbollah without any success whatsoever. All they have achieved is massive amounts of civilian deaths in Lebanon, massive amounts of damage to the Lebanese people’s infrastructure, and they have brought death and destruction upon themselves in doing so.

The aim of the Israeli attack on Hizbollah and the Lebanese people was to drag the Syrians into the war and get the US to attack Iran.

This is still yet to come. The Israelis had not expected Hizbollah to resist as long as they have in the face of such terrible bombardment and invasion without asking Syrian forces to help directly defend Lebanon. The Israelis, unable to accept their own surprise losses in their limited invasion of southern Lebanon, have faltered and reverted to aerial and artillery bombardment. They are losing in Lebanon despite the massive damage and loss of life. They now either need to pull back entirely and sue for peace or attack Syria and hope that the US will attack Iran.

Either way it will all end in disaster all round. Particularly for the Israeli people.


ENDNOTES
[1] Damian Lataan, ‘It seems Israel planned deliberate provocation of Hamas and Hizbollah’, lataan.blogspot, 13 July 2006. Available online: http://lataan.blogspot.com/2006/07/it-seems-israel-planned-deliberate.html Accessed 24 July 2006.
[2] Simon Tisdall and Ewan MacAskill, ‘Iran warns the west: ignore us at your peril’, The Guardian, 26 July 2006. Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1830139,00.html Accessed 26 July 2006.
[3] Rachel Shabi, ‘The focus should be on Damascus’, Aljazeera.net, 24 July 2006. Available online: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/554FAF3A-B267-427A-B9EC-54881BDE0A2E.htm?printguid=%7b010676D6-1F09-456F-8C16-6BD44499A644} Accessed 26 July 2006.
[4] Joseph Panossian, ‘Hezbollah captures 2 Israeli soldiers’, Forbes.com, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/07/12/ap2873051.html Accessed 26 July 2006.
[5] ‘An Israeli spy network arrested in Lebanon’ Syrian Arab News Agency, 22 July 2006. Available online: http://www.sana.org/eng/22/2006/07/22/50010.htm%20Accessed%2026%20July%202006. See also:
Yaakov Katz, ‘Reservists called up for Lebanon strike’, Jerusalem Post, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885978380&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Accessed 13 July 2006.
[6] Condoleeza Rice, ‘Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice With Israeli Foreign Minister Livni in Jerusalem’, US Department of State, 24 July 2006. Available online: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/69409.htm Accessed 27 July 2006.
[7] Robin Wright and Fred Barbash,’ Nations Fail to Reach Agreement on Middle East Ceasefire’, Washington Post, 26 July 2006. Available online: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072600289.html Accessed 27 July 2006.
[8] ‘Israel strike on Gaza kill 24’, Yahoo!news, 27 July 2006. Available online: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/060726/1/42co4.html Accessed 27 July 2006.
[9] Neil MacFarquhar, ‘Why Syria Has Much to Lose if Hezbollah Is Finally Halted’, New York Times, 25 July 2006. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/world/middleeast/26syria.html Accessed 26 July 2006.

SOME EXAMPLES OF AUSTRALIAN RIGHT-WING PRO-ZIONIST HATE SPEECH

Here are a couple of examples of Australian right-wing pro-Zionist hate speech as used by the Australian wing of the ‘Israeli Lobby’.

There’s this from Noelene Konstandinitis, an Australian Israeli pro-Zionist blogger that has posted at Webdiary and Harry Heidelberg’s, from Heidelberg’s blog:

“Of course it is EXCELLENT news that Israel is FINALLY sticking up for itself!What neither the Pals, nor the western bourgeois left, seems to be able to get their think [sic] heads around is that Israel could have destroyed Egypt, Syria, AND Jordan AND kicked the Pals out in 1948, 56, 67, 73, etc. The only thing stopping them every single time was the US!All this would have been over DECADES over [sic], if the U.S. had just let nature take its course.The wretched camel-jockeys have NO right to be in the Holy Land and the sooner they catch the next magic carpet or camel sleigh to Jordan, Syria, or Egypt the better! The Israelis MUST seize this opportunity to totally turn around the whole tedious farce of the middle east. It is time to bitchslap the fetid Mohammedans into next week. Vaporize the pigs!A world without Muslims would be a lovely world indeed!”[1]

Then there is this from Australian Israeli pro-Zionist blogger Geoff Pahoff, also a regular at the popular Australian blog Webdiary, describing his thoughts on the death of the elderly wheel-chair bound spiritual leader of Palestine’s Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin:

“I celebrated wildly when that filthy bag of puss, ‘the old blind wheel-chair bound spiritual leader’ finally kissed what was left of his miserable fanny and did the world the enormous favour, albeit somewhat forced, of departing from it for all eternity. Thereby correcting a major anomaly in the order of things by being born in the first place. Or not drowned slowly at the first opportunity. The slimy ignorant lying slice of toxic shit.”[2]

Australia too has an ‘Israeli Lobby’ that uses hate speech as part of its rhetoric of lies and deceit.

ENDNOTES
[1] Noelene Konstandinitis, Comment at Harry Heidelberg’s blog, 28 June 2006. Available online: http://kramgasse.typepad.com/harry_heidelberg/2006/06/israel_moves_in.html#comment-19084996 Accessed 29 June 2006.
[2] Geoff Pahoff, Comment at Harry Heidelberg’s blog, 13 July 2006. Available online: http://kramgasse.typepad.com/harry_heidelberg/2006/07/america_hegemon.html#comment-19691619 Accessed 19 July 2006.

DID THE PALESTINIANS REALLY DIG A TUNNEL UNDER THE NOSES OF THE ISRAELIS?

I don’t know what has happened to Cpl. Gilad Shalit. I don’t know if he was captured, or, if he was, I don’t know how he was captured. Frankly, I don’t even know that he actually exists apart from the pictures of him that we have all seen. One hopes that these are all questions that will eventually be answered.

I do know, however, that there is something extraordinarily odd about the story the Israeli Defence Force claim is behind his disappearance. In particular it’s the part about the tunnel which I can’t get to grips with.

As an engineer I’ve given the notion of digging a tunnel which the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs tells us was some 650 metres long,[1] dug under sand across the Gaza border into Israel some thought. I’m beginning to wonder whether this is actually feasible especially considering that it would have to be built covertly and across the terrain that Israel claims. A 650 metre long covert tunnel being constructed under sand is a considerable undertaking the logistics of which would be enormous. The tunnel, even a crawl tunnel measuring 900mm x 900mm in cross section, would require 100% full shoring if actually constructed in sand and at least 60% if constructed in clay/soil. That means all that shoring material, literally tonnes of it, would have to be loaded down the shaft of the tunnel head and then transported along the tunnel to the tunnel face where one man at the face would have to position it and then excavate out the next section of tunnel with all the problems that that involves in shifting the excavated material back down the tunnel to the head shaft where it would have to be disposed of. Rock would be out of the question because of the noise of hammering through it and the extra logistics of getting hammer equipment to the face.

Now, 0.9m wide x 0.9m high x 650m long tunnel would require 526 cubic metres of excavation to be removed at, say, 1.3 tonnes per cubic metre if dry, that’s 684 tonnes of dirt to dispose of. A good three-axle semi trailer would take about 30 tonnes a load so that’s about 23 semi-trailer loads.

A tunnel this size will also require ventilating. This could be done by boring vertical holes to the surface and simply casing the holes with flexible plastic pipe. However, there is a very large section of ploughed-up no-mans land that is under constant surveillance and a few bits of pipe sticking up out of the ground could arouse a suspicion that we be an unacceptable risk. Alternatively, a simple fan could be used to pump air along the tunnel but to fully ventilate a 650m long tunnel would require a fairly large fan to counter the back pressure of such a long pipe. Not impossible, but a lot of work.

The real problems in building a tunnel under these conditions is 1) the problem of disguising the head shaft of the tunnel, which could be solved by building from within an existing structure like a house or a shed, though this would not solve the problem of 2) disguising the delivery of equipment and shoring material and, worse, disposing of the excavated material.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in their communiqué have included a photo-map of where they claim the incident took place and even where the tunnel is supposed to be. From this it is very easy to locate the same spot on Google Earth.[2]

The images for this area are exceptionally clear and one can see very clearly the area being referred to and the adjoining and adjacent areas including the old and now disused Gaza airport. (One can clearly see that sections of the runways have been ripped up rendering them unserviceable.) One can also see clearly the area of no-mans land between the paddocks on the Israeli side of the fence where the Israeli soldiers were said to be and the sole small building that appears to be no larger than a shed where, if a tunnel was built at all, the head shaft would be located. Running the computers cursor from the paddocks to the shed and surrounding area one will notice that elevations vary only a few feet over many hundreds of metres. In other words the land is all but flat. One will also notice that it is featureless in terms of trees. All of this means that Israeli observation conditions of the area is very good. Very little over a period of time would escape surveillance their.

The bottom line is that it would be impossible to build a tunnel, especially under these conditions of secrecy that one needs to ask; was there really a tunnel? And, if not, then what’s the real story? Why have the Israelis lied – again?



ENDNOTE
[1] Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Communiqué, ‘Two soldiers killed, one missing in Karem Shalom terror attack’, 25 June 2006. Available online: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2006/Two%20soldiers%20killed%20one%20missing%20in%20Kerem%20Shalom%20terror%20attack%2025-Jun-2006 Accessed 15 July 2006.
[2] Go to ‘Google Earth’, 31° 14’ 22.34” N, 34° 17’ 03.50” E,* Zoom in to Eye Altitude of around 10,000ft for clear view of entire area then zoom in for closer detail as required.

*This position is the correct one. My apologies to readers for any inconvenience caused by my typo. I hope everyone was able to locate the proper place despite the error.

IT SEEMS ISRAEL PLANNED DELIBERATE PROVOCATION OF HAMAS AND HIZBOLLAH

A report in the Jerusalem Post today proves very revealing. It claims that, ‘Only weeks ago, an entire reserve division was drafted in order to train for an operation such as the one the IDF is planning in response to Wednesday morning's Hizbollah attacks on IDF forces along the northern border.’[1]

The news is revealing because it was only a little over two weeks ago that Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured by Palestinian fighters. One needs to ask how the Israelis knew at, or even before, he was captured that it would be taking action against Hizbollah in Lebanon.
This revealing piece of news comes on top of an earlier revelation that the Israelis had planned the arrest of top Palestinian Hamas leaders some time well before Shalit was captured as Ha’aretz reported: “The detention of Hamas parliamentarians in the early hours of Thursday morning had been planned several weeks ago and received approval from Mazuz on Wednesday. The same day, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with the list of Hamas officials slated for detention.” [2]

This entire crisis has all the hallmarks and is beginning to unravel as a carefully orchestrated ploy to create a casus belli for Israel to attack and occupy the Gaza, neutralise Hamas, the democratically elected government of the Palestinians to deprive the Palestinians of any power to resist reoccupation of the Gaza, possibly on a permanent basis, and, at the same time, to neutralise Hizbollah in pursuit of regime change in Lebanon.

Since the Israelis are now also making noises about Syrian and even Iranian involvement in the Hizbollah actions against Israel that has prompted Israel’s attacks against Lebanon, there are indications that these noises are intended to foment US involvement in attacking Syria and Iran on Israels behalf.

If, indeed, this crisis has been orchestrated to deliberately provoke two Arab organisations to the north and south of Israel to attack Israel in an attempt to gain US involvement then the Israelis are playing an extremely dangerous game… unless, of course, the Israelis have already colluded with the US.


ENDNOTES

[1] Yaakov Katz, ‘Reservists called up for Lebanon strike’, Jerusalem Post, 12 July 2006. Available online: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885978380&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Accessed 13 July 2006.
[2] Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel, ‘AG refuses to OK use of Hamas officials as ‘bargaining chip’’, Ha’aretz, 30 June 2006. Available online: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/732528.html Accessed 13 July 2006.