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Over 160 rockets pounded into Israel today. Rockets hit Haifa, Afula, Kiryat Shemona, Shlomi, the Hula Valley, Nahariyah, Maalot, Carmiel, Safad, Beit Shean, Accra and the Jezreel Valley. 11 Israeli civilians were wounded.
Kiryat Shemona was hit with 80 rockets during the day, making it impossible to carry out the proposed evacuation. Every time the evacuees got on buses, another barrage would come in and they would have to run for the shelters.
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15 IDF troops were killed and 37 more were wounded today. This is the worst days so far for IDF casualties.
9 were killed in Dibel when an anti-tank rocket on a building housing IDF troops caused an arms cache to blow up and collapsed the building. 4 were killed when their tank was destroyed in Ayta Al-Shaab. 1 was killed by friendly fire in Taybeh. Another was killed in a mortar attack in Qulayah, near Marjayoun. Qulayah is 3 miles due north of Metulla in Israel and 2 miles southwest of Marjayoun.
At least 17 soldiers were wounded in Dibel and at least another 8 were wounded in Ayta Al-Shaab. Another 12 soldiers were wounded, 2 in Klia, 7 in Taybeh and the rest in unknown locales.
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The IDF says they killed at 50 Hezbollah fighters today.
117 Israelis have been killed so far in this war, 80 soldiers, 36 civilians in Israel and 1 civilian in the Diaspora.
The Lebanese death toll still stands at around 1000
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I would like to take this time to point out, if I have not done so already, a very good blog, No Quarter, written by former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson.
I know that sounds bad, but he is part of the reality-based community, he has superb knowledge of the Middle East, and he and his co-author(s) have nothing but contempt for the neoconservative madness that reigns in Washington and Tel Aviv.
Johnson runs a counterterrorism consulting firm, but before you get twisted out of shape about that, note that it continues to be focused on Sunni Salafists and Takfiris associated with Al Qaeda.
This is a menace, despite the disgusting lies from Muslim (fundamentalist) apologies that only Muslims can understand Muslims, that there is no such thing as Salafism, or Wahhabism, or Salafi-jihadism, and that all of these are the fervid lies of Western "Orientalists".
This lie that is echoed by Arab ethnocentrists like Angry Arab, who ignorantly and arrogantly insists that any attempt to understand Arabs or the Arab World in any way by anyone who does not have 100% pure Arab blood is a case of "Orientalism".
Despite this ethnocentric BS, outsiders are indeed capable of observing, analyzing and yes (gasp) even understanding Arab and Muslim cultures without converting to Islam or getting Arabic blood transfusions.
For instance, it is not "Orientalism" to note, astutely, that there is a variety of radical Sunni Islam, loosely allied with the ideology of Al Qaeda, that must be fought to the death and destroyed everywhere it menaces its enemies on this planet, no matter how matter Takfiri maniacs are slaughtered in the process. I am serious. If a million dangerous Takfiris need to die, let's get on with it. Hama, Part 2, let's rock and roll.
Edward Said, for all his fine work, did the world a disservice with his ethnocentric lead balloon "Orientalism", and poisoned the minds of a generation of Arab intellectuals.
Larry Johnson understands who the Salafi and Takfiri enemy is and who are the Muslims and Arabs who need to be left in peace.
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Let us start out with a very important article by journalist Robert Parry, who did some important research on Iran-Contra. A voice of calm reason, we need to listen carefully to him. The topics of this piece have also appeared in a variety of other pieces lately, but this article sums things up pretty well.
First of all, whether or not Hezbollah attacked the Israeli forces inside Israel or inside Lebanon is not really important because this war was planned for months by the US and Israel. On May 23, Bush met with Olmert and Israeli sources say the go-ahead was given to fight the Lebanon War.
All they needed was a pretext. Three days later, a bomb went off in Lebanon, killing 2 Islamic Jihad activists. Hezbollah was furious and responded to the attack with a rocket barrage on Israel. Israel responded with bombardments of Hezbollah positions. This sort of thing has been going on from time to time ever since 2000.
The objective here was to increase the tensions along the border, to provoke the enemy into attacking, and then to use the attack to launch the Destroy Hezbollah War. This is the sort of thing that Israel has done over and over all throughout its history. As this comment here notes:
Israel is a freak nation founded on ethnic cleansing and war - that cannot exist without war.I realize that that comment sounds insane, but my years of research have concluded that there is a lot of truth to that. Anyway, on June 10, Lebanese authorities rolled up a Mossad cell in Lebanon that had conducted the assassination of the Islamic Jihad officials.
The objective here was to provoke a situation of tit for tat violence that would escalate the pressure on Hezbollah, the Palestinian guerrillas, Syria and Iran.
At the May 23 summit, Olmert and Bush agreed to make 2006 the year to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue (even though an Iranian bomb is at least 3-10 years away). The way to get to Iran is through Syria and Hezbollah.
Although I do not like to make predictions, a US or Israeli or US-Israeli attack on Iran before the Bush Presidency is up is possible and may even be likely. Both the Americans and the Israelis seem to be determined to pull off this attack. Now whether their plans will actually come through or not is uncertain, but that an attack on Iran is clearly their objective.
The idea here, the piece notes, is to create a wider conflict. The brilliant but erratic Xymphora sketches out the neoconservative plan to transform the Middle East here into 10 steps. Some of them are quite unlikely, but others are already done.
We have seen repeated neoconservative blueprints for these plots in the past decade.
Just take a look at various documents out of Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum, especially this eye-opening document called, Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The US Role, by Pipes and Ziad Abelnour (former Lebanese Phalangist and head of the neoconservative US Committee for a Free Lebanon - web site here).
Listing all of the players in these schemes goes beyond the scope of this post, but the Right Web links above contain lists of many of the relevant plotters and the organizations they are involved with.
The single paper that sums up the whole neoconservative game plan well is A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared for former Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu in June 1996.
It is essential that anyone who wants to understand the Middle East madness that has ensued since George Bush came into office read this paper.
In this paper, the invasion of Iraq is plotted. In the same paper, the destruction of Hezbollah is urged. It's not too often that conspirators lay out exactly what they intend to do before hand, and when they do, is important that all concerned citizens read up on these mad plots, understand them, and formulate strategies to resist them.
In fact, reading through any of the papers on the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies page should give a careful reader tremendous insight into the thinking of the current US and Israeli governments.
Reading Securing the Realm shows you the mad vision of "The New Middle East" that these ultra-Zionist psychos contemplate. With that knowledge in mind, we can understand Condoleeza Rice's slip of the tongue when she called the orgy of mad death and destruction in Lebanon as "the birth pangs of the New Middle East".
As I have noted previously, since this pre-planned Lebanon War began (just looking for an excuse to trigger it off), the Bushies have been urging Israel to attack Syria. If you read Securing the Realm, you will note that Syria is targeted for regime change after Iraq. The Israelis have balked, reportedly because they lack an immediate excuse.
However, perusing the rightwing blogs, websites and Israeli comments section in the past few weeks, I have been inundated with calls to attack Syria and also to attack Iran. Turn on Fox News, and one breathless, psychopathic Zionist talking-head nutcase after another urges an attack on Syria, Iran, or both.
Clearly, the "Destroy Hezbollah War" is meant to be a way to get at Iran and/or Syria, either by provoking them into the conflict, or just attacking them for their logical behavior in resupplying their Hezbollah ally. Indeed, Israeli sources note that Bush is praying that Iran and Syria will get overtly involved in the Hezbollah War, in order to give a green light to attacks on them.
It is useful to note that Bush tried a similar "pretext war" against Iraq before he attacked it. Endlessly, with no-fly zones and continuous bombings of Iraqi targets, the US and Britain (British imperialism to be precise, apparently trying to long-lost colonial glory) tried to goad Saddam into a war.
Wisely, Saddam refused to react to the countless smacks to his face by defending himself. Not that it mattered, as he got attacked anyway. Which suggests a similar end for these similar provocations, if it comes down to that endgame. It is clear that the US is determined to attack not only Iran, but also Syria.
At this point, judging by the Iraqi experience, it is not clear what these 2 countries can do to stop these planned attacks, short of complete surrender to US and Zionist hegemony.
Although the Iraq War seems to have set the neocons back a bit, with the ascension to power of rightwing hack Olmert in Israel, Bush apparently saw a kindred spirit who believed that Zionist and imperialist ultraviolence could solve the problems of the region.
It is useful to note here Paul Krugman's brilliant formation of the neoconservatives and Bushies as revolutionaries, based on his analysis of Henry Kissinger's astute dissertation about revolutionary powers. We must also bear in mind Hillary Clinton's comments at a private fundraiser in Los Angeles when she described the Bushies as "relentless and ruthless".
They are! You cannot understand these people until you get that through your head. Have you noticed that when the Bushies have a goal, they just keep pushing it and pushing it, even after failure upon failure, no matter how little support it has, until they finally bash the door down and get what they want? They don't stop, they don't take no for an answer, and they never quit.
You will never understand the Bushies until you figure this out.
Anyway, back to the US-Israeli ratchet game. The day after this fateful May 23 meeting, Olmert stood up and said "a moment of truth" had come for addressing Iran's purported nuclear bomb program.
The very next day, Olmert went to the US Congress and gave a surreal speech in which he described the nonexistent Iranian nuclear bomb as an "existential threat" to the Zionist racist settler-colonial rogue state that is itself armed with 300-400 nuclear weapons.
In this bizarre speech, Olmert was interrupted scores of times by standing ovations by a Congress in deadly thrall to the Zionist outlaw killer state. This does not usually happen when a foreign leader addresses Congress. It is like a surrealist play by Alfred Jarry.
On June 23, the IDF kidnapped 2 sons of a Hamas legislator, who are apparently completely innocent, and despite the cacophonous Zionist screeching that they are "terrorists", they seem to be guilty of nothing more than having a father who is a Hamas leader. A day later, Hamas tunneled out of the Gaza open air prison, attacked a Zionist base, killed 2 IDF soldiers and took 1 more POW.
This was apparently the pretext needed to destroy Gaza and wipe the democratically elected Hamas government out completely. At the time, Palestinian President Abbas had apparently coaxed Hamas into accepting a 2-state solution, formally anyway (they have repeatedly said they would accept such a solution).
The Israeli response, as we have seen over and over whenever any kind of peaceful settlement comes up that seems to curtain the ongoing Zionist colonization project, was massive violence. In the midst of the madness, Israel kidnapped 1/3 of the elected Hamas Parliament, who have nothing to do with military operations at all. These are apparently some kind of sick bargaining chips for the IDF POW.
The tension mounted, and on June 12, Hezbollah attacked, apparently partly in solidarity with the Palestinians, for which they ought to be commended. Israel responded to the attacks, deaths, injuries and POW's with a wild bombardment of Lebanon from one end to the other. Hezbollah responded by launching a Katyusha barrage.
Israel responded with a 10,000-man ground invasion and plans to occupy land all the way up to the Litani River, along with creepy warnings telling all civilians to flee the area.
These warnings are creepy because many times in past, Zionists have told the civilian population to flee, then attacked cities and villages, conquered them and annexed them to the Zionist colonial state, while permanently preventing the natives from returning to their homes and lands.
While we do not have any clear evidence that Israel intends to annex southern Lebanon to the Litani River, or steal the water from the Litani, at this point, we need to consider this out of control madman state as capable of these things, whether or not they actually do it or not.
Parry's article notes that the US-French-Israeli UN plan is apparently designed to fail from the start, thereby creating a pretext called,"Hezbollah (and Iran and Syria) are violating UN resolutions". Recall from the Iraq War what nefarious purposes Machiavellian US imperialists and Zionists use failure to comply with UN resolutions (it's a green light to attack the parties not in compliance).
Specifically, the resolution calls for Hezbollah to completely disarm, hand back the POW's and cease all hostilities. In return, they get zero.
They don't get their 15 Lebanese POW's back, Israel does not have to hand over the Lebanese land they are occupying, colonizing and stealing water from (the Shebaa Farms), and most insane of all, Israel does not even have to leave Lebanon!
Not only does the racist, colonialist, militarist, belligerent Israeli state get to camp out on occupied land again, but they have a right to engage in "defensive" attacks" (Hezbollah has no such right). Any student of Israeli history knows what mad offensive operations Israel has endlessly engaged in the name of self-defensive.
So, while the US is purporting to try to stop a war that the US in fact started, and relieving a humanitarian crisis that the US caused in the first place, the devious machinations here appear to be to force some sort of a showdown (apparently an armed one) with the axis of Hezbollah-Syria-Iran-Hamas in some kind of wild roll the dice endgame.
The reason those four parties are targeted is simple. Those are the last holdouts in the Arab World that not only oppose Zionist racist colonialism, expansionism and apartheid, but are well-armed and willing to stand up to this evil with gun in hand.
Strangely, the US and Israel actually feel that they have the support of so-called "moderate" regimes - regimes that have abjectly surrendered to Zionist colonization and occupation of Arab lands - in taking on the recalcitrant parties above.
As hard as that is to believe, looking at the cringing, terrified, supplicant, pro-US regimes that litter the sands of the Arab World, it is actually possible the Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia may be urging the US and Israel to attack the principled radicals above.
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11:23 PM: The IDF destroyed 500 homes in Bint Jbeil (in other words, they flattened the entire town). But all of those homes were really Hezbollah headquarters and bases. So, just about every home in the town was a Hezbollah headquarters or base, right?
10:51 PM: 25 IDF troops were wounded in extremely heavy fighting in Dibel and Ayta Al-Shaab.
10:39 PM: A large number of IDF tanks started moving into Lebanon, as the start of the mad "expansion of the war" by the crazed rightwing Israeli regime.
10:30 PM: 2 Katyusha rockets landed in Maalot. There were no casualties.
10:01 PM: The IDF attacked a guerrilla training camp in Gaza in the Shajeyah District. 2 Palestinians were killed and others were wounded.
9 PM: Fox News, on the border with Lebanon, has footage of a burned out Merkava tank where reportedly 4 IDF troops were killed. The reporter, Shephard Smith, said they had been watching IDF casualties, killed and wounded, go by all day long. The sound of heavy fighting could be heard in the background. Smith said that today looked to be the worst day so far for IDF casualties.
8 PM: 1 IDF soldier was killed and 2 others were wounded in a mortar attack in Kalia, near Marjaroun.
6:04 PM: The IDF bombarded the studios of Al Manar TV in Beirut. Several other buildings were also hit. Al Manar broadcasts "incitement and war propaganda", so therefore it got hit. In that case, Hezbollah has a right to attack the Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz , Ynet, Maariv and Arutz Sheva offices with missiles, correct? Not to mention all Israeli TV stations. Fair is fair.
3:29 PM: The IDF said they killed 20 Hezbollah fighters in very heavy fighting in Bint Jbeil.
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3:01 PM: Several IDF troops are wounded in fighting in southern Lebanon. Fighting is ongoing in Bint Jbeil, Aita Al Shaab, Qantara, Tayba, Aytarun, Debel and Rajmin.
The IDF said they killed 2 Hezbollah fighters in Rajmin. Qantara is 5 1/2 miles west of the border near Metulla and 3 miles west of Taybeh. Rajmin is actually known as Ramyah on most maps. It is located 1 mile north of the Zarit on the border.
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2:50 PM: Heavy fighting was reported in Debil, west of Bint Jbeil.
2:46 PM: Fires continue to burn out of control from Katyusha attacks at Kiryat Shemona and Maalot. A building in Nahariyah sustained a direct hit by a missile but there were no casualties. Several Israelis in the Galilee were wounded.
2:42 PM: 2 rockets slammed into a populated area of Carmiel. There were no casualties.
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2:21 PM: The Khaiber-1 330mm Syrian-made rockets fired on Afula landed mostly in the West Bank near Jenin, in general along the Green Line.
One rocket landed in the Palestinian village of Faqua, which could not be located on a map. Another such rocket hit that town a week ago. There are apparently no casualties from these strikes, although they rained shrapnel all around. They carry a 200-pound warhead, whereas, the Katyushas only carry 40-pound warheads.
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2:17 PM: A Katyusha rocket barrage hit Safad but landed in open areas. Nevertheless, 5 Israelis were wounded.
2 PM: Over 6 Katyushas rained down on Maalot and Kiryat Shemona. There are no casualties but fires are burning in the area.
1:12 PM: A number of IDF soldiers have been wounded in the intense fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas in Aita Al Shaab and Taybeh. There are no details on the number of casualties or their nature. In fighting elsewhere, the IDF said they killed 4 Hezbollah fighters.
12:25 PM: Hezbollah fired over half a dozen missiles at Haifa and Nahariyah, but they all landed in open areas. A Khaiber-1 rocket blew up over Haifa before it hit ground.
12:06 PM: Hezbollah fired missiles at a number of targets across southern Lebanon. Missiles hit Haifa, Nahariyah,and Kiryat Shemona. For the second time, Hezbollah fired Khaiber-1 rockets on Israel. This time, the rockets hit in the Gilboa Hills, 1/2 way between Afula and Beit Shean, just north of the West Bank.
12 PM: Hezbollah guerrillas fired anti-tank missiles into a building where Israeli soldiers were hiding in Dibel, killing 9 IDF troops. The missile caused an arms cache to blow up inside the building. A short while later, the building collapsed. 17 troops were wounded. IDF forces had a hard time digging them out for some reason. It is not known if some of the wounded are still trapped there.
AM: The IDF killed 2 Hezbollah guerrillas in Aita Al Shaab, another village the IDF has been in for weeks. Let me know when the mighty IDF takes this measly village?
11:30 AM: The IDF says it killed a top Hezbollah official and 6 members of his family in an air strike on his home in the town of Masjara (I am not sure where that is). If this is ok, then why is it not ok for, say, "terrorists" to rocket homes where Israeli soldiers reside. If their family gets killed too, then so what?
11 AM: Hezbollah fired a Kornet anti-tank missile at IDF forces in Ayta Al-Shaab, killing all 4 crew members. The tank burst into flames and other soldiers were not able to approach it.
10:38 AM: IDF gunships shelled targets in southern Lebanon.
10:02 AM: Palestinian guerrillas opened fire on IDF troops in Jenin. There were no casualties.
9:55 AM: An IDF helicopter fired a missile at 2 Islamic Jihad in a home in Jenin. Both of them were killed in the air strike. Both were wanted for suicide bombings.
9:40 AM: 1 IDF soldier was wounded in fighting in Bint Jbeil. Excuse me, but the IDF is still in Bint Jbeil? They have been there for how long now? A month? Come on, now.
8:22 AM: The IDF arrested 3 Palestinian guerrillas in Nablus and Ramallah. The guerrillas were in Tanzim and the PFLP. This blog strongly supports the PFLP and DFLP in Palestine and urges all progressives to consider doing the same.
8 AM: 1 IDF soldier was killed and 7 more were wounded in a "friendly fire incident in Taybeh.
7:31 AM: The IDF hit what they said was Hezbollah's headquarters in in home in Bint Jbeil. There were reportedly 10 Hezbollah fighters in the home at that time.
7:23 AM: Palestinian fighters threw firebombs at IDF troops in Nablus in two separate attacks. There were no casualties.
Early AM: A number of Katyusha rockets rained down on Kiryat Shemona. There was damage but no injuries. Kiryat Shemona is devastated. 50% of its population has fled and there are plans to evacuate another 10,000 residents.
4:28 AM: There is heavy fighting ongoing in Ayta Al Shaab, which should have been conquered long ago. Hezbollah fighters are using antitank weapons.
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3:59 AM: The IDF bombarded the Ein Al Hilwe refugee camp in southern Lebanon. One shell hit the camp and another hit an amusement park next door. 1 Palestinian was killed and 3 more were wounded. The IDF attacked the offices of the Fatah in the camp.
Can someone please tell me why that office is a legitimate target in this war? The IDF seems to be out to settle scores across the board, as they do in most of their ramped up offensives. Israel claims they hit a Hezbollah fighter in the camp.
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1:15 AM: Palestinian fighters threw rocks at IDF troops near Nablus. The troops responded by firing at the feet of the protesters. 3 Palestinians were wounded.
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