From the Other Side of the Border

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.
July 21, 2006

Israel awoke this morning to more rocket attacks, nearly one million of its citizens are living underground or in safety rooms, civilians have been killed, businesses are damaged and no end in sight. We also heard today:

Nasrallah said: the two Arab children from Nazereth who were killed by a Katyusha rocket on Wednesday were "martyrs for the Palestinian cause." A simplistic and disingenuos explanation for the rockets he sent to kill Israelis, they murdered instead two Arabs-he does not care whom he kills.
Lebonon's Defense Minister Elias Murr said on Al-Jazeera television Thursday: Lebanon's army, which so far has sat on the sidelines of the violence raging in the country, will fight an Israeli ground invasion.
Please understand that Hizbollah is not a "faction" as reported in some media, it is part of the Lebonese government. The Lebonese government had come out and declared itself as defenseless aganist Hizbollah. It appears that the situation has changed.

The notion that Lebanon is simply an "innocent bystander" could not be further from the truth. Evelyn Gordon offers this:

First, of course, Hezbollah remains a member of the government, with seats in the cabinet. In any normal country, a junior coalition member that attacked a neighboring country without its partner's consent would be swiftly disavowed and ousted from the government.
Second, the Lebonese government has passionately defended Hezbollah's actions on the international stage. Civilians in Beirut handed out cakes and cookies in celebration of the 8 dead Israeli soldiers and the two kidnapped ones.

One can only conclude that the government is either incompetent or it does side with Hezzbollah and as such is complicit with Hezzbollah's actions to date and must also be held accountable.

Why is not the connection between Hezzbollah and Iran receiving more media play? Iran is Hezzbollah's sponsor and manager. It was no coincidance that Hezzbollah launched its attack upon Israel when it did-international attention quickly shifted from Iran's developing nuclear bomb ability and Iran's stated intention to destroy Israel and take over the Western world. Those who remember history understand that Hizbullah's first attack was in 1983, against the US Marine barracks that killed 241 people. The Hizbullah-Iranian terrorist axis is not just an Israeli problem as it involves the entire Western world.

Iran's strategy is clear - use agents like Hezbollah to "disrupt the possibility of normal life in various countries and bring down their social and economic structure to its knees.

Hezzbollah is attacking Christian holy sites and killing Muslims in a sovereign country called Israel. It is thus a clear and present danger to anyone it deems is in their way. However, the media seems to forget all of this, disavow that it exists and is intentionally misleading its consumers. They appear to now conceal the genocidal motivation of Iran and its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. The indiscriminate missile attacks by Iranian-trained terrorists on Israeli civilians in Haifa and other towns or kibbutzim are the opening salvo of what Islamists hope will be a second Holocaust.

Instead of repeating, without definition, that Israel has responded disproportionately and is collectively punishing the citizens of Lebanon, why does the media not present the Arab tactics of using human shields, hiding within civilian populations, storing rockets, rocket launchers in living rooms of the Lebonese people as well as storing munitions in childrens' bedrooms? Why are these atrocities of behavior left out of the reporting?

An Israeli soldier recently shared this: The world is full of naive bleeding hearts that will bash Israel for doing what it has been FORCED to do. They forget the fact that when soldiers go into an Arab town for the sole purpose of finding a group of terrorists, the "civilians" are suddenly not so civil. They have guns, they throw molotov cocktails, and rocks, big large cement blocks at soldiers. That is what we experience everyday in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. We are fighting a guerilla and civilian army at ALL times.

The soldier went on to say: Do you know why so many soldiers die in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon? Not because the enemy's army is better, they are not even close to the IDF. We have better equipment, more equipment, better training, so how is it that soldiers are kidnapped and killed? That's a good question. It is the international community keeping such a close look, and bias toward Israel's defense tactics, that our hands are tied in defending ourselves properly. We take so many dangeous steps in order to protect civilians, that in return, we are killed and kidnapped. Did you know that at the Lebanon Border for the last ten years, because of "International" pressure, that if you see 500 Hizbollah terrorists with AK47's and rocket Launchers and missles coming up to the actual border fence, 50 feet from the Israel soldiers, 50 feet from Israel's soil, that the IDF cannot fire unless they fire first! They can aim, set up shop 50 feet from you, but until they fire and shoot at you, the Israeli soliders cannot defend themselves. Is that logical? No, it is insane.

Perhaps you can begin to understand our upset when we turn on the news, talk with friends and family overseas who wonder why Israel is acting so brutally towards the Lebonese people. I conclude with the following information, my hope is that you will share it with your friends.

At the airport, the runways were taken out, so that arms couldn't come in for Hezbollah, but control towers and terminals were left in place for future Lebanese use.

Roads between Lebanon and Syria have been bombed to prevent reinforcements from coming in, but one road has been left open to allow civilians to flee.
The radar stations were bombed but theLebanese soldiers operating the stations were first advised to flee. (One group didn't listen and suffered 10 deaths, others did and escaped without harm.)
There is a naval blockade to keep Iranian or Syrian ships from re-arming Hezbollah by sea, but Amercian and French ships are permitted in and out.
There has been no blanket bombing of villages. The area of Beirut that has been bombed is "where Hizballah command and control facilities share space with the families of their senior officers."

Civilians have not been targeted by the Israeli military-it is against their rules of engagement and is contrary to their code of ethics. For reporters and the media to continue this charade is unethical and does nothing more than ignite the hostilities thus escalting the events on the ground. It is time for truth in reporting.