THURSDAY AUGUST 3, 7:00 PMIsrael suffered its one of its worst civilian casualty death tolls of the war today, as Hizbullah’s 23 day deliberate rocket assault upon known civilian centers throughout northern Israel continued unabated. Seven Israeli civilians had been slain by sundown, even though the number of rockets fired by then was less than half that of yesterday’s record 215. Three perished when Syrian-and Iranian supplied rockets came crashing down around the hard hit border town of Ma’alot, which made world headlines in May 1974 when PLO terrorists attacked an apartment building and then took hostage over 100 Israeli pupils huddled inside the communities high school, leaving over 20 teenagers dead. Another four people were killed today in the mixed Arab-Jewish port town of Acco, located due north of Haifa.
Analysts said the relatively high casualty rate may be at least partially due to growing public weariness with having to spend many hours every day in crowded bomb shelters, made worse by an intensifying mid-summer heat wave and today’s Tisha b’Av fast day—observed by many Israelis. On top of that, the radical Shiite group fired rockets and mortar shells into Israel for the first time during the night, causing many citizens to rush to shelters where they stayed put until dawn.
Meanwhile three IDF soldiers were confirmed to have died—the third in just the past few minutes—when their tank was struck by Hizbullah fire in southern Lebanon. As of this morning, 81 soldiers were in several hospitals being treated for wounds sustained in the war, three of them in very serious condition. Nearly 30 civilians were also being treated before today’s deadly rocket blitz added to that number. Unconfirmed foreign media reports say at least two additional soldiers have also been killed during today’s fierce clashes with highly-trained Hizbullah fighters.
As more IDF troops pour into south Lebanon, the Israeli government has stated that army commanders have been instructed to establish at least a six kilometer (about three and half mile) wide enclave by this evening. The army will then use that sanitized border zone—where some 25% of the 2,000 plus Hizbullah rockets that have struck Israel have been fired from—to push forward up to the Litani River.
The action will effectively recreate the buffer “security zone” that existed from June 1982 until May 2000. IDF forces will continue to clean out local pockets of Hizbullah fighters as necessary, say army commanders, until some sort of international force can take possession of the border area—finally fulfilling UN Resolution 1559 to clear the area of non-governmental militias while allowing the Lebanese army to take control of the zone. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today that an international force of at least 15,000 soldiers will be needed to control the zone. Efforts to create such a force are beginning at the United Nations in New York.
QUESTIONABLE NUMBERS
In Beirut, several Lebanese government leaders continued to justify Hizbullah’s daily deliberate attempts to slaughter Israeli civilians. They did this while claiming that around 900 Lebanese civilians have perished in the three week war. However Israeli officials are skeptical of that claim, noting that Hizbullah militiamen often engage in battle while wearing civilian clothes, and so can more easily pass as civilian casualties. For instance they note that Hizbullah claimed that 15 civilians were killed during a daring IDF helicopter raid into Baalbek Tuesday night, whereas soldiers involved insisted, with videotape evidence, that all were armed fighters who engaged them in combat.
The number of Lebanese civilians confirmed to have been slain in an IDF Air Force bombing in the town of Qana on Sunday has been dramatically reduced today, from some 54 to 59, to 28. A local Lebanese hospital confirmed the smaller figure after the international group Human Rights Watch said it could only confirm 28 victims, 16 of them under age 20. However it said another 13 people who were earlier said to be in the building are unaccounted for, despite massive efforts to pull all of the victims out of the rubble. The group confirmed Israeli contentions that they may have previously fled the town, as all civilians were instructed to several days before the air raid was launched.
An army investigation into the tragedy released today said that some 150 Hizbullah Katyusha rockets had been launched from inside and right around the town in the days before the air bombing took place. The army report insisted that IDF commanders had hard intelligence that Hizbullah had fired and hidden rockets inside the four story civilian building that was struck, declaring again that it was not known in advance that civilian non residents of the building had taken shelter in its basement.
While various international human rights and aid organizations continued to loudly condemn Israel over the inevitable deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians in a war started by a rouge Lebanese militia operating completely away from governmental supervision along Israel’s border for over six years, the militia’s ultimate sponsor vowed again today to wipe out millions of Jewish and Arab civilians living in the world’s only Jewish-run state. The pledge also included indirect, but clear threats to overthrow pro-west governments ruling in Jordan and Egypt.
As usual, the vow to wipe Israel off of the face of the Middle East map—which experts agree could only be accomplished in a horrific nuclear war that would undoubtedly leave millions dead and injured—was made by deranged Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He told an emergency Islamic conference in Malaysia that the “main solution to the regional crisis is the elimination of the Zionist regime.” But possibly reflecting the fact that his country’s surrogate Lebanese Shiite force is currently being pummeled in Lebanon, he added that “at this stage” he was demanding “that an immediate ceasefire be implemented.”
The Iranian leader went on to condemn “regional Muslim powers” that had supposedly betrayed the Islamic cause by “doing deals under the table with the Zionist enemy”—presumably a reference to peace treaties in force between Israel, Jordan and Egypt. It should be recalled that Iran and Syria crushed an American-brokered peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon in 1983 (I actually attended the signing ceremony at a hotel in northern Israel) by unleashing a flood of Hizbullah terror attacks upon American and French peacekeeping forces, along with attacks upon Israeli forces who would have quickly evacuated the country if the treaty had not been wiped out before it could be implemented.
I will be interviewed about the ongoing Israeli-Hizbullah conflict on a Dallas-based Christian radio program that was featured earlier this week on CNN. The hour long program will air on Friday at 4:00 EST, which is 1:00 PM PST or 20:00 GMT. You may go to this link to listen live: http://www.endtime.com/radio.asp
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DAVID DOLAN is a Jerusalem-based author and journalist who has lived in Israel since 1980. His new DVD, titled “FOR ZIONS’S SAKE—REPORTING FROM THE LAND OF THE BIBLE,” is now available on both PAL and NTCS versions. Details are posted at his web site, www.ddolan.com