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Nasrallah Responds To Israeli Attack On Civilians In Lebanon
Two days ago I wrote about The Escalation In Northern Palestine. The latest event describe therein was an Israeli 'retaliation' airstrike which killed Lebanese civilians:
Predictably the Israeli occupation forces responded to the strike on Safad by escalating further:
The Israeli military said Wednesday its fighter jets "began a series of strikes in Lebanon", raising fears of a war between the two countries after months of cross-border fire.
The military gave no further details of the air strikes, while Lebanese media reported air raids on southern villages including Adchit, Sawwaneh and Shihabiyeh.
The strikes came hours after fire from Lebanon wounded multiple people in northern Israel, according to medics.
…
Fears have been growing of another full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, with tens of thousands displaced on both sides of the border and regional tensions soaring.
"I don't know when the war in the north is, I can tell you that the likelihood of it happening in the coming months is much higher than it was in the past," Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi said last month.
Following the last Israeli strikes, the Lebanese side said that four civilians had been killed or wounded by them.
The increase of hostility is getting to a point where there will no longer be the question "if" another war between Israel and Hizbullah will occur but only the question of "when".
Today Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah held another speech announcing his response (notes taken from the live coverage by Al-Manar):
Sayyed Nasrallah: In February 1992, the resistance formulated an equation to protect civilians, which was formally established in July 1993
We absolutely do not tolerate any harm to civilians, and it is imperative that the enemy realizes they have crossed a red line in this regard
Since October 7, there has been immense global pressure to prevent the southern front from opening up to support Gaza. The enemy’s tactic, through targeting civilians, is to coerce the resistance into halting its actions
The response to the massacre must be an escalation of resistance efforts on the front, the enemy should anticipate this response
The enemy will pay the price in blood for shedding the blood of our women and children in Nabatieh, Al-Suwanah, and elsewhere
Both friend and foe will witness that the price for this bloodshed will be exacted in blood, not in structures, vehicles, or surveillance devices
It is essential for Americans and Zionists to understand that in Palestine, they are confronting a people who will not retreat, regardless of the sacrifices or challenges they face
The Lebanese resistance possesses powerful and precise missile capabilities, enabling its reach from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat
As the Israeli army has evacuated civilians from all settlements near the Lebanese border Hizbullah's response will likely be on a partially civilian target deeper within Israel.
Nasrallah also rejected the Israeli massacre propaganda which followed October 7:
Sayyed Nasrallah: Today, one of our responsibilities is to clarify the facts, as there has been a significant Israeli distortion of events since October 7
The Israeli media attempted to portray the resistance and Hamas on October 7 as “ISIL” in a distorted manner
The Israelis failed to present a single slaughtered child or raped girl to the world; instead, the settlers who were killed were actually victims of Israeli army fire
Many believed in the Israeli historical falsification regarding October 7, including countries that claim to be friends with the Hamas movement
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Sayyed Nasrallah: The Israeli goal was to displace Palestinians from occupied Palestine, relocating the people of the West Bank to Jordan, those of Gaza to Egypt, and those of the 1980s to Lebanon
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood exposed this long-standing Israeli objective of establishing a purely Jewish state extending from the sea to the river
The project of establishing a purely Jewish state not only targets Palestinians but also poses a threat to Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon
In memory of our martyred leaders, we reaffirm the efficacy of popular resistance as a viable option
The speech emphasized U.S. responsibility for whatever Israel does with the money and weapons the U.S. delivers to it.
It included remarks designed to calm the political scene within Lebanon.
The take from the speech is that the conflict is far from over and that all elements point to a further escalation of the simmering war.
Meanwhile:
Vast majority of Israelis support new Lebanon invasion: poll – The New Arab, Feb 16, 2024
Seventy-one percent of Israelis believe Israel should conduct a large-scale military operation against Lebanon to deter Hezbollah, a recent poll has shown.
The survey was conducted by the Israeli Maariv newspaper amid worsening cross-border violence between the Israeli army and the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.
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A growing number of Israelis, especially those who evacuated their homes in the north, have urged their government to take decisive action against Hezbollah and push them away from the frontier, even if that means a land invasion.
The Zionists have no idea what will come at them …
@ Posted by: lex talionis | Feb 16 2024 19:36 utc | 34
Thanks lex for asking. I’ll post the following, abridged, well researched and now old article. Don’t see that level of journalism now.
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2017/11/100-years-balfour-declaration-and-great-war
There was another consideration behind the Declaration, testimony to London’s belief in the ubiquitous influence of international Jewry. British endorsement of Zionism was expected to strengthen support for the war in both Russia and America where, it was hoped, pro-Zionist Jews could help swing political and public opinion. After the overthrow of the Tsar in February 1917 Russia’s provisional government was struggling to keep its war-weary country fighting; in the United States, which had entered the conflict in April, war mobilisation had been disappointingly slow.
Balfour and Lloyd George would have been happy with an unvarnished endorsement of Zionism. The text that the foreign secretary agreed in August was largely written by Weizmann and his colleagues:
“His Majesty’s Government accept the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object and will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist Organisation may desire to lay before them.”
In due course the blunt phrase about Palestine being “reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people” was toned down into “the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine” – a more ambiguous formulation which sidestepped for the moment the idea of a Jewish state. But when this draft finally came before the war cabinet for discussion on 4 October, it ran into fierce opposition from two very different angles.
Edwin Montagu, newly appointed as secretary of state for India, was only the third practising Jew to hold cabinet office. Whereas his cousin, Herbert Samuel (who in 1920 would become the first high commissioner of Palestine) was a keen supporter of Zionism, Montagu was an “assimilationist” – one who believed that being Jewish was a matter of religion not ethnicity. His position was summed up in the cabinet minutes:
Mr Montagu urged strong objections to any declaration in which it was stated that Palestine was the “national home” of the Jewish people. He regarded the Jews as a religious community and himself as a Jewish Englishman … How would he negotiate with the peoples of India on behalf of His Majesty’s Government if the world had just been told that His Majesty’s Government regarded his national home as being in Turkish territory?
Montagu considered the proposed Declaration a blatantly anti-Semitic document and claimed that “most English-born Jews were opposed to Zionism”, which he said was being pushed mainly by “foreign-born Jews” such as Weizmann, who was born in what is now Belarus.
The other critic of the proposed Declaration was Lord Curzon, a former viceroy of India, who therefore viewed Palestine within the geopolitics of Asia. A grandee who traced his lineage back to the Norman Conquest, Curzon loftily informed colleagues that the Promised Land was not exactly flowing with milk and honey, but nor was it an empty, uninhabited space. According to the cabinet minutes, “Lord Curzon urged strong objections upon practical grounds. He stated, from his recollection of Palestine, that the country was, for the most part, barren and desolate … a less propitious seat for the future Jewish race could not be imagined.” And, he asked, “how was it proposed to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman [Muslim] inhabitants and to introduce the Jews in their place?”
Between them, Curzon and Montagu had temporarily slowed the Zionist bandwagon. Lord Milner, another member of the war cabinet, hastily added two conditions to the proposed draft, in order to address the two men’s respective concerns. The vague phrase about the rights of the “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” hints at how little the government knew or cared about those who constituted roughly 90 per cent of the population of what they, too, regarded as their homeland.
After trying out the new version on a few eminent Jews, both of Zionist and accommodationist persuasions, and also securing a firm endorsement from America’s President Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Balfour took the issue back to the war cabinet on 31 October. By now the strident Montagu had left for India, and on this occasion Balfour, who could often be moody and detached, led from the front, brushing aside the objections that had been raised and reasserting the propaganda imperative. According to the cabinet minutes, he stated firmly: “The vast majority of Jews in Russia and America, as, indeed, all over the world, now appeared to be favourable to Zionism. If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal, we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America.”
This was standard cabinet tactics: a strong lead from a minister supported by the PM, daring his colleagues to argue back. And this time Curzon did not, though he did make another telling comment. He “attached great importance to the necessity of retaining the Christian and Moslem Holy Places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem”. If this were done, Curzon added, he “did not see how the Jewish people could have a political capital in Palestine”.
No one, however, paid much attention. Lloyd George and Balfour had secured the endorsement of Zionism they wanted, but in the form of a typical cabinet compromise, characterised by verbal dexterity rather than intellectual clarity. The two conditions had bought off the two main critics. That was all that seemed to matter, even though the reference to the “rights of the existing non-Jewish communities” stood in potential conflict with the first two clauses about the British supporting and using their “best endeavours” for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
Read the whole original. It’s based on Caninet minutes
I might post the time line of a Lot happening in a few days after nothing happening for years. If you want.
Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 16 2024 21:29 utc | 68
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