IDF: Captive involved in kidnapping

Yaakov Katz, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 6, 2006
One of the Hizbullah captives held by the IDF was involved in planning and perpetrating the kidnapping of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, head of IDF intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told cabinet ministers on Sunday during the weekly cabinet session.

According to Yadlin, the captive was a mid-level operative in the Hizbullah hierarchy.

Few reports have since generated about the fate of the kidnapped troops. Last week, special forces conducted a raid in Baalbek following information that the kidnapped soldiers were treated in a hospital in the area.

The battle lasted for several hours, following which the elite force of close to 200 soldiers, returned to Israel carrying loads of intelligence information and without any casualties. At least 10 Hizbullah gunmen were killed.

Syria 'ready for possible regional war'

Aug. 6, 2006
Associated Press

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem crossed into Lebanon Sunday for the first visit by a top Syrian official in more than a year, Lebanon's state news agency said.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting with his Lebanese counterpart, Fawzi Salloukh, Moallem said "Syria is ready for the possibility of a regional war if the Israeli aggression continues."

He added that a US-French draft resolution to end the war "adopted Israel's point of view only." Underlining his support for Hizbullah, Moallem said, "as Syria's foreign minister I hope to be a soldier in the resistance."

Salloukh said that "Israel cannot take in peace what it had failed to take in war."

"If Israel attacks Syria by any mean, on the ground, by air, our leadership ordered the armed forces to reply immediately," he said after emerging from a meeting with Lebanese President Emil Lahoud.

Israel has issued several pledges not to attack Syria.

According to Moallem, the US-French cease-fire plan was "a recipe for the continuation of the war."

Moallem's visit comes amid strained relations between Lebanon and Syria as a result of the Feb. 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. A UN investigation has implicated several Syrian officials in the murder.

Syria denied any involvement in the Hariri assassination that led to an international isolation of Damascus.

Prompted by the crisis that followed Hariri's assassination, Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon in April 2005, ending a 29-year military presence.

Wow! THat is a pretty miserable attempt at photo editorialism. It would have taken 5 minnutes to clone the smoke more asymmetrically. I probably would have missed the cloned buildings though.

Posted by Silverfuel:

Posted by firefly:

He belonds to a tiny tiny minority called the Neturei Karta. They are scum of the earth.

Oh wow! I had never heard of these guys. What a pain in the ass! People that want to suffer for no reason.

here is the link to the Reuters doctored picture: http://www.judeoscope.ca/breve.php3?id_breve=2227

Doctored Pictures

By E&P Staff

Published: August 06, 2006 5:30 PM ET updated Monday
NEW YORK Reuters admitted Sunday that it had published a doctored photograph of Beirut after an Israel strike on Saturday morning, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported. It said that it has fired Adnan Hajj, the Lebanese photographer who submitted the image.

On Monday, it added further charges, saying he had manipulated at least one other photo...

When Israel kills civilians, although they risk the lives of their soldiers not to, the world loudly complains, even though Israel apologizes.

Hezbollah targets Israeli civilians, the world remains largely silent, and Arabs rejoice.

It's f'ing sick.

DOVISH THINKING WON'T STOP HEZBOLLAH.
Passive Aggression
by Jonathan Chait
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 08.07.06
Let's face it, Israel's counteroffensive in Lebanon doesn't seem to be going very well. Liberals are saying it. Conservatives are saying it. Plenty of Israelis are saying it.

But here is the odd thing: Nobody is paying very careful attention to the alternative. The criticism of Israel's ground campaign--however sound much of it may be--takes place against an implicit assumption that peace could be at hand if only Israel stops fighting.

Let's examine that idea. The United Nations-types argue that Israel should withdraw from Lebanon and cease its airstrikes and that an international force should patrol southern Lebanon. But every country that could contribute to such a force has insisted they don't want to fight Hezbollah. Kofi Annan has said that a "cardinal principle" of any peacekeeping force would be obtaining Lebanon's consent. And neither Hezbollah nor the Lebanese government has evinced any willingness to remove Hezbollah's forces from southern Lebanon.

From the doves there is a persistent disconnect between the goals they
desire and the means to achieve them. Here is what former President Carter wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed article: "The urgent need in Lebanon is that Israeli attacks stop, the nation's regular military forces control the southern region, Hezbollah cease as a separate fighting force, and future attacks against Israel be prevented."

The passive voice in this last clause--"attacks be prevented"--is telling. Who is going to prevent them? Israel went into Lebanon because nobody else had the desire or the inclination.

So, the doves' implied solution is that Israel withdraws from Lebanon and stops bombing, and that Hezbollah goes on its way. This is why they've pointed out that not many Israelis have died from rocket attacks since 2000.

But the death toll doesn't quite capture the damage wrought by Hezbollah. The purpose of the missile attacks is to force Israelis to live under a constant threat--missile attacks or cross-border raids that, while sporadic, can occur at any time. No nation would consider that condition acceptable. And even if Israel learns to take periodic attacks from Hezbollah with good cheer, there's no guarantee that the attacks won't get worse. After all, Hezbollah is acquiring newer, more powerful rockets from Iran.

So what can Israel do? The conventional wisdom holds that any military action is counterproductive. The doves point out that the Israeli counteroffensive has boosted Hezbollah's standing in the Arab world.

Well, sure. But Hezbollah's prestige was also boosted by Israel's 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon. If aggressive Israeli actions boost Hezbollah, and conciliatory Israeli actions boost Hezbollah, then maybe Israel's actions aren't really the prime mover here. Maybe Hezbollah has figured out that it can become the champion of the Arab world by putting itself forward as Israel's chief antagonist, and it will continue to do so regardless of how Israel responds.

The doves are right that any solution that involves attacking innocent civilians is a terrible one. It's heartbreaking to see houses flattened and children killed. But when you have a nation populated in part with murderous religious fanatics who delight in killing enemy civilians and see the deaths of their own civilians as a strategic boon, any option is going to be terrible.

Israel is hoping to change the equation, to force Lebanon to take control of its border or accept an outside force that would do so. The tactic of striking Hezbollah has some chance of bringing that about. Stopping the attack and hoping for the best has no chance at all.

This column appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Death and destruction are Hezbollah's goals
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/08/08/death_and_destruction_are_hezbollahs_goals/

By Andrea Levin

SOMETIMES basic facts get blurred in a fierce, image-filled conflict such as the one spawned by Hezbollah's July 12 cross-border attack in which Israeli soldiers were killed and others kidnapped while a rain of rockets descended on homes and fields. An unprovoked act of war, this Hezbollah assault followed 19 others since May 2000, when Israel pulled out from a security zone in southern Lebanon that had been created to protect against earlier terrorist incursions. In response to those first 19 incidents, Israel had essentially held its fire.

What does Hezbollah, with some 10,000 katyushas and other long-range missiles, really want? Some say Israel's pullout from south Lebanon was incomplete (though fully certified as complete by the United Nations) and that handing over Shebaa Farms would quiet the Iranian-funded Jihadist group. But as a New Yorker story noted, even Hezbollah spokesman Hassan Ezzeddin admitted: ``If they go from Shebaa, we will not stop fighting them. Our goal is to liberate the 1948 borders of Palestine." What he means, of course, is the destruction of Israel.

Genocide seems to be the goal. This too may be lost when media focus centers on Israel's retaliation for aggression and its army's advance against Hezbollah fighters dug deep into the Lebanese hills. But listen to the words of the group's leaders and consider the relentless message of Al-Manar, the organization's richly funded satellite television network that reaches tens of millions around the world and is designated a terrorist entity by the US State Department.

Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah describes being asked whether ``the destruction of Israel and the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem were Hezbollah's goal," and replying: ``That is the principal objective of Hezbollah." He terms Israel ``an illegal state; it is a cancerous entity and the root of all the crises and wars. . ."

On Al-Manar television, Jews are termed pigs and monkeys and the Holocaust is denied. Participants in a network-sponsored symposium urge that Israel ``be completely wiped out" and ``just like Hitler fought the Jews" the ``great Islamic nation of Jihad" should ``fight the Jews and burn them."

In May, Nasrallah appeared on the network to explain that ``our nation's willingness to sacrifice their blood, souls, children, fathers, and families" is an advantage over the Jews ``who guard their lives." (All translations by the Middle East Media Research Institute.)

This blunt admission too should be remembered in the rush of reports; for there is, indeed, a crucial difference in valuing human life, whether Israeli or Arab. The innocent Lebanese behind whom Hezbollah gunmen wantonly shelter, knowingly inviting Israel's defensive return volley, have surely been sacrificed. And not by their own choice. One news report told of Hezbollah murdering a Lebanese man who sought to flee the fighting and escape being used as a human shield. Lebanese citizens, especially Christians, speak of rage at Iran and Syria for the ruin of their country caused by Hezbollah's proxy militia and of helplessness at the hands of the armed thugs. Many in the Lebanese Christian diaspora, beyond the reach of Hezbollah intimidation, speak out even more forcefully against turning Lebanon into a Shia theocracy emulating Iran.

Israel has, in fact, tried to ``guard" the lives of Lebanese civilians, dropping warning leaflets and announcing ahead its intention to target missile launchers, explosives, and gunmen. In contrast, Hezbollah fills its katyushas with lethal ball bearings to spread death and suffering as far and wide as possible.

A Boston native, David Lalchuck, was killed just days ago by this weapon as he rushed to safety from tending a kibbutz orchard. He was only the latest American to die at the hands of Hezbollah. Two-hundred-and-forty-one were killed in 1983 by a Hezbollah truck bomb at the US Marine barracks in Beirut. The Marines were part of a peace-keeping force. Until 9/11, Hezbollah had kidnapped, hijacked, tortured, and murdered more Americans than any other terrorist group.

The Great Satan and the Little Satan -- America and Israel -- are the obsession of Hezbollah, Iran, Al Qaeda, and other Islamic fascists. Closing our eyes to their brutality only assures more innocent lives will be lost before the threat is overcome.

Andrea Levin is executive director of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

>this is pretty quirky...('');



http://www.snopes.com/military/norman.htm

Claim: General Norman Schwarzkopf authored a pithy quote about whether we should show forgivenesss towards those who harbored terrorists.

Status: False.

Example:


[Collected on the Internet, 2002]

In a recent interview, General Norman Schwartzkopf was asked if he didn't think there was room for forgiveness toward the people who have harbored and abetted the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on America.

His answer was classic Schwartzkopf. He said, "I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting."

Origins: This
pithy quote began circulating on the Internet in December 2001. This wasn't an actual statement made by General Norman Schwarzkopf, then quoted by someone present ? despite the e-mail's claims of "a recent interview," mention of it doesn't appear in archives of news stories, and it's not as if the press would have let such a juicy bon mot just sit there if they'd been presented with it.

However, in an odd instance of the tail wagging the dog, in 2003 the General is on record as repeating a close version of the words years earlier attributed to him. From his comments, it appears he liked the false quote enough to adapt it into an anti-bin Laden statement, especially in light of everyone thinking he'd already said it anyway.

From a transcript of the 8 February 2003 show of Meet The Press and in
answer to a question presented by Tim Russert of NBC News:

MR. RUSSERT: General Schwarzkopf, how important is it that we capture Osama bin Laden?

GEN. SCHWARZKOPF: Well, I think it?s important only because the man on the street in the Middle East, you know, believes that he ? a lot of people believe that he is on the right track and that he is some sort of a folk hero and that sort of thing. And I think it?s necessary to bring him down, one way or another. I will confess to you that, you know, one of the statements that?s been attributed to me that I?m sort of proud of is somebody said, you know, "What do we do about Osama bin Laden?" And they asked me, "Can we forgive him?" And I said, "Forgiveness is up to God. I just hope we hurry up the meeting." And that?s the way I feel about him, really.

That the General is now repeating the remark earlier attributed to him doesn't change the past ? he wasn't the originator of the witty remark. Still, it's hard not to admire a man who knows a good line when he sees it.

As to where the saying might have come from or how it came to be tied to the General, this is likely a case of a saying's being stuffed into the mouth deemed most appropriate for it. "Stormin' Norman" Norman conqueror served as deputy commander of U.S. forces in the 1983 Grenada invasion and held a series of senior staff and field commands in the United States and Europe, but it was his command of the Allied forces in the brief desert war against Iraq in early 1991 that turned him into an overnight national hero and media darling. Those on the homefront appreciated his no-nonsense way of handling matters and grew to think of him as a straight-shooter whom they could trust to have an answer for anything, especially if that "answer" needed to be delivered in the form of decisive action taken against a dread foe.

General Schwarzkopf retired in 1991. He no longer leads the U.S. Army; that job has fallen to others. The fellow in charge of operations in Afghanistan is General Tommy Franks.

A list of "quotes" circulated in December 2001 contained a slightly different version than the one falsely laid at Schwarzkopf's feet: "It's God's responsibility to judge Osama bin Laden. It is our responsibility to arrange the meeting." This was credited to "Semper Fi," an abbreviation of "Semper Fidelis," the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps. Other newsgroup posts from the same time period attribute the saying to "United States Marines."

After violence erupted between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, this version of the fabricated quote began to travel from inbox to inbox:

In a recent interview, General Norman Schwartzkopf was asked if he thought there was room for forgiveness toward Hizbollah.

The General said,
"I believe that forgiving Hizbollah is God's function. The Israeli's job is to arrange the meeting."

It's possible the current "arrange the meeting" quote is a misremembering of a pithy saying common to ROTC training in the 1980s: "Your enemy's duty is to die in defence of his country. Your duty is to see that your enemy does his duty."

Likewise, America has always had a special fondness for its tough-talking generals. General George S. Patton Jr. was heard to say, "May God have mercy upon my enemies; they will need it."

In October 2001, a similar quote also (falsely) attributed to Stormin' Norman appeared on the Internet:

General Schwarzkopf was asked last week how it was possible to fight an enemy willing and ready to die for his cause.

His reply: "Accommodate him."

Barbara "best western accomodations" Mikkelson

Sightings: In a 27 February 2002 The Australian article titled "Messenger Killed But Message Got Through," journalist Janet Albrechtsen used the fake Schwarzkopf quote to illustrate America's "we're coming to get you" stance.

Last updated: August 6 2006

Israelis phone targeted buildings before air strikes


SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM Tuesday, August 8, 2006
TEL AVIV — Israel's military has begun calling Palestinians whose homes have been targeted as terror sites in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

Military sources said Israel had sent a telephone message to residents of a house destroyed in the northern Gaza Strip. The message warned the residents that their building would be the target of an air strike.
"There were two phone calls just to make sure they understood what we were about to do," a source said.

The sources said the method has been used in Lebanon during the current war against Hizbullah. They said Lebanese have responded to the telephoned warnings.

Mohammed Shurafa said in an interview with a Gaza radio station that he received a call from a man who identified himself as an Israel Army representative. The caller ordered the resident to leave his house.

The military has acknowledged the story. A spokeswoman said the northern Gaza house was used as a warehouse for the Islamic Jihad.

Shurafa said he and his family complied. But a few minutes later, concluding that the call was a joke, they returned. At that point, the telephone rang again.

"He said: 'Why did you return? This is not a joke,'" Shurafa recalled.

Shurafa said he and his family fled the home. Several minutes later, the house was struck by an air-to-ground missile.

Yeah I have been posting in Digg latley, too. Great website for news, especially tech news.

AP Beirut photo faces questions

Woman appears 'mourning destruction of her home' in two photographs allegedly taken two weeks apart in different locations; foreign media remains largely hostile to Israel
Yaakov Lappin

A woman has made two appearances in photographs used by the Associated Press and Reuters, allegedly wailing over the destruction of her Beirut home. US bloggers have however noticed that photographs were taken two weeks apart from each other, according to times stamps on the images, and that the photographs were taken in different locations.

"Either this woman is the unluckiest multiple home owner in Beirut, or something isn't quite right," noted the author of the Drinking From Home blog.

In the first photograph , taken by Reuters, a woman is seen in front of a bombed out building in Beirut. "A Lebanese woman wails after looking at the wreckage of her apartment, in a building, that was demolished by the Israeli attacks in southern Beirut," Reuters said in its caption. The photo was dated July 22 2006.

A second photograph of a woman who looks exactly like the woman in the first Reuters image, even bearing the same scar on her left cheek, is then supplied by the Associated Press.


Photo: AP

"A Lebanese woman reacts at the destruction after she came to inspect her house in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon," the Associated Press caption claimed. The date accompanying the photograph is August 5 2006, and the scenes behind the woman are different to those of the July 22 photo.

After receiving "some emails" about the photos, the BBC removed the Associated Press image from its own website.

The Associated Press has so far not responded to requests by Ynetnews for an explanation of the mysterious time gap.

Meanwhile, sections of the foreign media are continuing to display uneven coverage of Israeli and Lebanese casualties of war and scenes of destruction.

A BBC photo display entitled "In pictures: Conflict impact," made up of eight images, uses six out of eight pictures to illustrate damages in Lebanon , but pays scant attention to the human toll and large-scale damage sustained in northern Israel .

The photographs show images of Lebanese civilians and bombed out buildings and Beirut, and carry captions such as: "A woman in Beirut cries amid the destruction."

After the BBC says fighting is hampering aid deliveries in southern Lebanon, an image of an Israeli soldier praying is shown, covering his ears while an IDF canon goes off in the background. "But ground clashes in the area continue unabated," the BBC wrote, suggesting through the image that the Israel bore most of the responsible for clashes. There are no photographs of Hizbullah rockets, or Hizbullah members firing rockets at Israel in the series.

Criticism
Reporter: Israel deliberately not destroying launchers / Yitzhak Benhorin
Top Washington Post military reporter Tom Ricks severely criticized after suggesting Israel is intentionally leaving Hizbullah rocket launchers intact to maintain moral defense to strike civilian targets in Lebanon

Only the seventh photograph in the succession shows an image of an Israeli woman mourning at a funeral, with the caption "Israelis are also counting their losses."

The last picture in the series is of an Israeli in an air raid shelter, but the person in the photo is made black by shadows, and appears to be a silhouette of a human figure. The person's age, sex, or any human features are impossible to make out – an odd choice by the BBC considering the large number of available photographs of Israeli children and families in bomb shelters.

The BBC's website photo editor, Phil Commes, has also taken a neutral line on the faked photographs from Beirut supplied by Reuters , saying: "One man's color balancing is another man's grounds for dismissal."

Washington Post journalist: Israel wants rocket attacks on itself

Meanwhile, Washington Post journalist Thomas Ricks told CNN that Israel was deliberately allowing Hizbullah to fire rockets at its civilians.

"One of the things that is going on, according to some military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon," Ricks said.

Ricks added that "that's what military analysts have told me."

In addition, a caption provided by the AFP under a photo of rockets in Lebanon read: "Rockets fired from Israel are seen falling in the outskirts of the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre."

However, the USS Neverdock blog has spotted a contradiction, with Reuters writing under a photograph which appears to be identical: "Hizbullah missiles streak the sky as they are launched towards Israel from south Lebanon."


After analyzing the contradiction, the blog says: "Notice also the credit for the two pictures goes to two different photographers but they look like the exact same photo to me. One just has the buildings in the foreground cropped out. Was that done to disguise the fact that they are the same photo?"

Several blogs have been busy finding many more clues to forged and staged photographs, many of them taken by disgraced photographer Adnan Hajj. In particular, reports and images claiming that the IDF struck an ambulance are being challenged as false .

And in yet another suspicious case , two Reuters photographs of a Lebanese man holding a picture of Hassan Nasrallah has been challenged by the Jawa Report blog.

The same man is seen holding Nasrallah 's picture and saluting with glee, but the background for each photo of the man is dramatically different. While in one image a clear, blue sky can be seen, a second image of the man flashing a victory sign shows a dusty background, suggesting a bomb had recently been dropped in the area. Two buildings also mysteriously disappear the second photo, although both photographs seem to have been taken from the same location.

"Does this represent a dramatic change in the local architecture and air quality between the two shots, or was this yet another Lebanese stringer Photoshop project?" asks the blog's author, before
concluding: "Only the photographer knows for sure."