Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Fighting on Israel's Northern Border, An Apparent Hizbullah Provocation


Ziontruth.blog

The peace process means peace of mind for antisemites

Snipers working for Hizbullah or for the Lebanese army which is highly infiltrated by Hizbullah and subservient to it, shot at Israeli officers overlooking a rather routine operation of clearing vegetation from the border area. The soldiers doing the brush-clearing work, perhaps also removing a tree, were on the Israeli side of the border. For much of the northern border, the border fence is well within Israeli sovereign territory. The fence was built within Israeli territory precisely to allow such brush-clearing operations without needing to cross the UN-designated blue line border into Lebanon.

The sniper did not shoot at the soldiers doing the work but at Israeli officers overseeing the operation. Hence, the object was to kill "high value" Israeli targets. In fact, an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel was killed, and a captain was wounded. Three Lebanese soldiers or, more likely, Hizbullah gunmen, were killed plus one Lebanese journalist.

The operation had been announced ahead of time to UNIFIL, the UN truce-supervisory force in southern Lebanon, by the Israeli army. In some of the photos, UNIFIL troops are seen close to Israeli troops. Why do I say that Hizbullah was directly involved??

For two reasons:
1) the "Lebanese soldiers" hit in the Israeli retaliation are heavier, and older-looking than the ordinary Lebanese conscripts. Those in the photo look like they are in their mid-thirties, maybe over forty. The man on the ground is clearly balding [is, that is, if he was not already dead in the photo]. The standing man wearing combat pants and an army T-shirt is obviously heavy.


[photo from Il Giornale 8-3-2010; vedere qui]

This can be explained by the fact that the Hizbullah is a fairly good source of income, a livelihood, for some Lebanese Shiites. And a family man wants a livelihood of course. So Hizbullah paramilitary-cum-terrorist service becomes a career. Lee Smith, author of The Strong Horse, has also pointed out that Hizbullah gunmen are older and noticeably heavier than the Lebanese army draftees. Given the cooperation between the Hizb and the Lebanese army, getting army uniforms for Hizb gunmen would be no problem.

2) The next reason to believe that the ambush was a Hizbullah operation, not merely a Lebanese army action --bearing in mind that the two bodies can and do often collaborate-- is that a pro-Hizbullah journalist was killed in the incident by Israeli retaliation. Corriere della Sera gives not only the name of his paper, al-Akhbar, but identifies it as being close to the positions of the Hizbullah. Corriere also gives the journalist's name, Assaf Abu Rahhal [qui].

IL REPORTER - Tra le vittime, c'è anche il giornalista libanese Assaf Abu Rahhal, del quotidiano al Akhbar, vicino alle posizioni del movimento sciita libanese Hezbollah. Il reporter era stato ricoverato nel vicino ospedale di Marjuyun, ma è deceduto in seguito alle ferite riportate dopo - sembra - essere stato colpito da schegge di un proiettile di mortaio. [qui]

Why was the journalist there at that time and place?

It seems that Israeli retaliation came fairly quickly, thus it seems likely that the journalist was killed in an Israeli retaliation not long after the initial attack. Hence, it seems that the journalist was there, was assigned there, sent there, knowing that "action" was coming.

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