JULY 25, 6:30 PMShalom from Jerusalem,
Below is my latest commentary for the World Net Daily web site, to be published this week. It naturally concerns the current Mideast crisis, focusing especially on how American policy toward Iran over the years has contributed to the crisis. Some readers in particular may not like my comments as to how the war in Iraq has affected the situation, but it has been my consistent position regarding that controversial issue since before the battle began in March 2003. I warned then in a WND commentary that the situation there would probably end up closely resembling what Israel encountered in Lebanon in the 1990s, as has sadly been exactly the case.
In today war news, as visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meeting with Israeli officials in Jerusalem—calling for a “sustainable ceasefire,” in other words not necessarily an immediate one—a 15 year old Druze girl was sadly slain when Hizbullah rockets crashed down on a mixed Arab-Druze village in the Galilee region. The rocket made a direct hit on her family home in the village of Marar, located next door to the community mosque. Several other residents of the mixed Arab Muslim, Druze and Arab Christian village were wounded in the strike. (By the way, the Haifa worker that was killed in a rocket strike on a Haifa carpentry shop on Sunday was actually not an Arab as initially reported in the Israeli media, but an Armenian Christian).
In Haifa, an elderly Jewish man suffered a heart attack and died this afternoon as he was rushing to a bomb shelter while sirens sounded yet again in the port city, signalling a second wave of Syrian and Iranian-provided rocket strikes today (16 rockets landed earlier, most in open spaces next to apartment buildings and a hospital in what Mayor Yonah Yahav called a “miraculous” development). However one apartment building did sustain heavy damage in a direct strike, and another rocket struck next to a city bus. Overall some 50 people had sustained wounds by early evening as dozens of Hizbullah rockets rained down once again all across northern Israel. Overnight, a longer-range Iranian-made rocket was fired at Israel, but thankfully landed harmlessly in the sea.
Israeli military officials announced that they had taken out a number of Hizbullah rocket launchers in air strikes around the Lebanese port city of Tyre this afternoon. Air force jets were also in action for the first time in two days around the Lebanese capital, Beirut. This came as IDF Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the situation in the region is "explosive.” He added that although intelligence officials do not believe that either Syria or Iran wants to become directly involved in the conflict, Syria has placed its military forces on “the highest state of alert.” He warned that Hizbullah leaders are “trying to instigate, to force, another front for Israel with Syria.” Yadin said Iran provides around $100 million in direct aid to Hizbullah each year, and opined that it is probable both Iran and Syria have urged that longer-range rockets that can strike Tel Aviv be mostly held in abeyance until the final phase of the conflict, in order to drag it out as long as possible.
Meanwhile army officials said they were certain that Iranian personnel had joined the two day fight for control over the south Lebanese Shiite town of Bint Jabail. They said the Iranians were spotted commanding the Lebanese militiamen. An army spokesman said the IDF was now in basic control of Bint Jabail, although he admitted that dozens of Hizbullah fighters are still thought to be holed up in buildings in the town of some 20,000 residents, who had mostly fled north before the fighting began. He added that an estimated 40 to 50 Hizbullah fighters had lost their lives in the intense battle. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed, along with two air force pilots killed in a mysterious helicopter crash on the edge of the battle.
I will be interviewed on radio programs this week in both the UK and New Zealand, along with frequent updates on the US Moody radio network. The interview in New Zealand can be heard on the nationwide Rhema radio network at around 11:10 AM on Wednesday morning. The UK interview will air throughout Europe on UBC Europe (Satellite/NTL Cable channel 0125) on Thursday at 6:15 AM and 11:00 PM UK time, and will also be repeated on Sunday at 1:00 PM.
THE ROARING IRANIAN RAT
By David Dolan
Ultimate responsibility for the intense fighting between Israeli and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon can be directly traced to several American presidents, especially to one Democrat who has been busy building houses ever since he left the Big Bungalow on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Fearing an East-West clash of apocalyptic proportions, Lyndon Johnson thought it best to confront the powerful Soviet Union and China in an indirect manner. He would inflate John F. Kennedy’s mini-war against Soviet and Chinese-backed fighters in relatively insignificant Viet Nam into a major conflict. His successor, Richard Nixon, further fanned the flames before finally agreeing to a ceasefire in January 1973. After the Communist north violated it, Nixon rushed to pull remaining war weary US forces out of the southern half of the divided Southeast Asian country, climaxing with a humiliating final retreat in April 1975. As expected, South Viet Nam was then completely overran by Communist fighters, who subsequently proved uninterested in conquering their neighbors as part of the dreaded “domino” disaster that had long been forecast if America did not decisively win the costly war.
Tired of overseas adventures, a majority of American voters were then ready to scale back their country’s international policeman role. This led to Jimmy Carter’s election as Commander in Chief in 1976 after running on a fairly pacifist platform.
During the latter years of his watch, a turban bound mullah named Ruhollah Khomeini took over a Middle East country called Iran. His January 1979 Shiite Islamic Revolution was met with shocked surprise in Washington, which was then obsessed with Soviet designs on nearby Afghanistan. After all, the radical Muslims were our allies against the red superpower giant that was preparing to end all life on planet earth in some insane nuclear showdown—not!!
The Muslim fundamentalist leader was fit as a fiddle to move to Tehran and take over the reigns of power. This was largely because Carter had naively allowed him to come to America the previous October to receive first class medical attention.
After ousting the pro-West Shah, the Shiite Ayatollah repaid Carter’s kindness by sanctioning the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. Over 50 Americans, mostly government diplomats and employees, were taken captive in the November 1979 action, being held hostage for over one year. Operating in the still strong shadow of the Viet Nam fiasco, Carter refused to see the seizure for what it was—a clear act of war—and ordered relatively feeble (and definitely ineffective) military measures to free the hostages, who were only released when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president in January 1981.
Flagging American resolve to take on its declared enemies when actually necessary was thankfully reversed during the Reagan years. But the tall ex-actor also contributed to the current Mideast crisis. Fearing an atomic showdown with Moscow, he ordered Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to cancel his Defense Minister’s rational plan to fully oust Syrian occupation forces from all of Lebanon in 1982. Thus Ariel Sharon’s prescient goal to free Lebanon from Syrian (and thus Iranian) domination was thwarted, which opened the door for Khomeini to establish an enduring alliance with Syria that rapidly led to the formation of the extremist Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
The Shiite force quickly proved to be a faithful Iranian-Syrian anti-American puppet when its operatives destroyed US Marines barracks in Beirut in October 1983—the deadliest terrorist atrocity against American servicemen to this day. But this clear act of war was also basically ignored by Soviet-obsessed White House personnel, who simply ordered a humiliating retreat from the battle zone. Hezbollah-Iran-Syria had won, and this fact would set the tone for their later “victory” over war weary Israeli forces that were rushed from the Land of the Cedars in a virtual summer re-run of the US flight from Saigon.
The May 2000 Israeli getaway left its faithful Maronite-run South Lebanese Army allies dazed and confused, and in instant mortal danger from advancing Hezbollah forces. This guaranteed that no Lebanese Christian groups would ever fully ally themselves again with the Jewish-run state.
Meanwhile Iran had succeeded in crushing the US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian “land for peace” process. It began supplying weapons and training to Hamas and Islamic Jihad Palestinian terrorists—mainly via Hezbollah channels—soon after the 1993 Oslo peace accord was signed on the White House lawn by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. Emulating Hezbollah’s mushrooming suicide attacks against IDF soldiers in Lebanon, Hamas launched its first deadly bus bombing in April 1994, followed by a flood of such wicked assaults in early 1996. Two months later, Hezbollah let loose with a massive rocket blitz upon northern Israel, leading to the election of Binyamin Netanyahu in May, and the total collapse of the peace process four years later.
And so we come to today. Israel has been forced to re-enter Lebanon and the Gaza Strip with its relatively big guns blazing, leading to inevitable Arab and international condemnation. Its unilateral pullouts from both places—demanded by Lebanese and Palestinian leaders—have been tragically reversed amid a flood of blood. All this as Iran’s outrageous “president,” under orders from Chief Dictator Ayatollah Khameini, repeatedly vows to wipe Israel off of the Middle East map, probably with nuclear weapons.
Is the current White House occupant finally ready to admit that the insidious theocratic Iranian regime has long ago declared war to the death not only against its main Mideast ally Israel, but also against America? Stay tuned. I’m not overly optimistic that the gravity of Iran’s threat to Western interests is fully understood yet in Washington’s halls of power, given that so much time, money and military lives have been spent going after a regional mouse named Saddam, followed by hopeless attempts to bring enduring “democracy” (how about simple stability?) to his basket case, internally divided country. All of that has only served to divert vital attention from the far more dangerous Regional Rat lurking right next door—Iran—and its supplicant surrogates Syria and Hezbollah.
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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