Very clever isn't it ? You have to take your hat off to Mossad . Their motto is simple and deadly "No one is safe "Another load of hezbollah fighters blown up today, when their walkie talkies exploded.
Probably a good time to tune up the carrier pigeons.
There must be a bit of panic going on, with communications at the moment.
Israel blew up thousands of two-way personal radios used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon in a second wave of an intelligence operation that started on Tuesday with the explosions of pager devices, two sources with knowledge of the operation told Axios.
Why it matters: The second wave of clandestine attacks is another serious security breach in Hezbollah's ranks and increases pressure on the militant Lebanese group.
- Lebanon's health ministry said 14 people were killed and 450 wounded in
- The walkie-talkies were booby-trapped in advance by Israeli intelligence services and then delivered to Hezbollah as part of the militia's emergency communications system, which was supposed to be used during a war with Israel, the sources said.
- The attack further damages Hezbollah's military command and control system.
Very clever isn't it ? You have to take your hat off to Mossad . Their motto is simple and deadly "No one is safe "
I wonder how we would react if Hamas/Hebbollah/Iran identified some Mossad headquarters and key figures and put rocket through the buildings ? Or is that just too inconceivable and outrageous to consider ?
The only redeeming fact with the sad situation is, these pager and walkie talkie explosions are targeting the actual hezbbollah operatives, rather than indiscriminate civillians.Very clever isn't it ? You have to take your hat off to Mossad . Their motto is simple and deadly "No one is safe "
I wonder how we would react if Hamas/Hebbollah/Iran identified some Mossad headquarters and key figures and put rocket through the buildings ? Or is that just too inconceivable and outrageous to consider ?
It's sad that humans have to target each other ar all, I find that sad because not everyone involved wants to be.Neither Side is Pure as Snow! you say
Well , IMHO One targets the Innocent Population
The other targets TERRORIST's in self defence
I am extremely disappointed in you
What side are you coming from?It's sad that humans have to target each other ar all, I find that sad because not everyone involved wants to be.
My parents lived through the second world war as teenagers, they said it wasn't very pleasant and I believed them.
You can be as dissapointed in me as you like, eventually retribution turns into vendetta then it makes finding a solution much harder and that applies to both sides.
Neither I just think there will be civilians and families on both sides, that just wish the whole issue was resolved.What side are you coming from?
It's No Wonder NZ was thrown out of the Federation of Australia in 1901New Zealand supports UN resolution demanding Israel leave Gaza
Good to see that our neighbour New Zealand has some balls and voted for the UN resolution.
Australia abstained from the vote to appease the Jewish lobby.
Can't believe how much rubbish Murdoch dishes up on his Sky Zionist News.
New Zealand supports UN resolution demanding Israel leave Gaza
New Zealand was one of 124 countries to support the Palestinian-drafted resolution, despite concerns with some of the text.www.rnz.co.nz
Egypt and Jordon went to war against Israel in the Six Day War, so they are hardly best buddies with the chosen ones.For those who know a smattering of geography and can read a map, a quick perusal of the area will show that Israel has among its neigbours, both Egypt and Jordan.
These two countries have border lengths with Israel that are far longer than that with Syria or Lebanon, and thus would be more difficult to defend.
And of course Iran, Yemen have no borders at all with Israel.
It should be noted that neither of these two border countries has fired missiles or rockets across the border, they have not invaded Israel and taken hostages.
And conversely, the Israeli Defence Force has not fired anything back, nor has it assassinated any of the leaders of these two countries.
there is a way to solve all this, but its unlikely to happen.
Mick
“The IDF fulfilled its Mission. If the Regime in Iran were to make the Mistake, of beginning of New Round of Escalation, we will be obligated to Respond.”Israel has started bombing military targets in iran.
Just how I see it from my reading of the situation.It currently looks like Israel have held back a little to give Iran an out, and not retaliate. I thought Israel might have gone the other way and delivered such a blow that Iran couldn't retaliate. Wait and see the damage assessment I guess and what they've really done, but so far, not much. Looks like a game of cat and mouse.
Axios.com writes about the targets struck by Israel yesterday:“The IDF fulfilled its Mission. If the Regime in Iran were to make the Mistake, of beginning of New Round of Escalation, we will be obligated to Respond.”
The world should be informed that Shani Louk’s body was found dumped in a tunnel in an UNRWA building in Gaza.
Aid funds can’t be left in hands of terrorists
Earlier this week, in a vote that united Benjamin Netanyahu’s staunchest supporters with many of his greatest critics, Israel’s parliament overwhelmingly approved legislation that would curtail the operations in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank of the UN Relief and Works Agency.
The decision comes after revelations that yet more terrorists – including Fateh al-Sharif, the head of Hamas in Lebanon, and Hamas commander Mohammad Abu Itiwi, who was involved in the rape and murder of the young men and women attending the Nova music festival – were long-time UNRWA employees. But those revelations merely highlight a fact that has been obvious for some time: that UNRWA is part of the problem, not of the solution.
The severity of the issues became apparent in the organisation’s early years. Established in 1949, UNRWA was one of the agencies set up to help address the vast population movements, involving some 50 million people, that occurred in the wake of World War II.
An influential report by Sir John Simpson had concluded that repatriating large numbers of refugees was unrealistic and ought to be “ignored in any future program of international action aiming at practical liquidation of refugee problems”. Rather, international assistance should facilitate the refugees’ resettlement in host countries.
In only two instances were geographically specific entities created to deliver that assistance: Korea and Palestine. In both cases, the entities were intended to be strictly temporary. The UN Korean Reconstruction Agency’s mandate was terminated in 1958, when South Korea, which was still in ruins, assumed the burden of refugee resettlement. And UNRWA’s mandate was meant to be terminated by that time too.
Because “sustained relief operations inevitably contain the germ of human deterioration”, said UNRWA’s establishment report, “every effort should be made to transfer relief administration to (host) governments no later than 1 July 1952”. To that end, the agency was to concentrate on works programs that would promote the refugees’ integration into their new homelands.
However, those programs never got off the ground. As early as 1950 the Soviet-aligned Congress of Palestinian Refugees denounced the works program as “a project prepared by the Imperialists”, whose goal was to deprive Palestinians of their “right of return”. By late 1951, UNRWA’s 12,000 Palestinian employees were, the agency reported, on strike “against making any improvements in (refugee) camps in case this might mean permanent resettlement”.
The Palestinians’ objections were understandable. After all, wrote journalist David Hirst, they had been assured by their leaders that “all you have to do is eat and sleep – the Arab armies will get your country back for you”. In the meantime, declared the General Union of Palestinian Students, since “the people of Palestine have been wronged, it is the duty of humanity” – that is, of the West – to “provide them with tranquillity and ease”.
The result, UNRWA reluctantly recognised, was that “the relief given by the Agency is considered a right” that could not be made conditional on any form of work. The agency therefore abandoned its public works program in 1957, refocusing on delivering ongoing welfare payments, schooling and health services.
That suited the host countries, which, with the partial exception of Jordan, refused to accept the refugees as permanent settlers. Fearing they would cause turmoil, the host countries’ security services kept the refugees, and especially the burgeoning population of UNRWA schoolteachers, under tight control, curbing their nascent militancy.
Lebanon, to take but one example, was regarded as less repressive than Egypt was in Gaza; but in his memoirs, Ahmed Kotaish recalls that his school principal was “publicly whipped and deported for raising the Palestinian flag in front of the school”.
However, the situation changed dramatically in the 1970s. In 1969, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser brokered the Cairo Agreement between the Lebanese Army and the Palestine Liberation Organisation that placed the UNRWA-run camps under the authority of the PLO instead of the Lebanese state. As well as contributing to Lebanon’s eventual collapse, the agreement effectively put the PLO in charge of UNRWA’s provision of services, with UN General Assembly resolutions 3237 in 1974 and 31/110 in 1976 then giving the PLO unprecedented standing in UNRWA’s supervision.
At the same time, Israel, having occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war, was far more liberal than Egypt and Jordan had been, granting Palestinian organisations freedoms of expression and association they had never previously enjoyed.
All that opened the road to the unchecked infiltration of UNWRA by the PLO and its splinter groups, including, in later years, Hamas. Initially, UNRWA treated that as a grave concern, with Commissioner-General Laurence Michelmore and his successor John Rennie noting that it raised “basic questions of authority”.
However, Olof Rydbeck, the Commissioner-General from 1979 to 1985, viewed the agency’s symbiosis with the Palestinians as a way of inducing the Arab states to provide UNRWA with supplementary funding, ensuring its continued expansion. While UNRWA instructed its senior staff to “adopt terminology which will ‘discourage’ (the) total identification of UNRWA with refugee camps”, Rydbeck forged so close a partnership with the PLO that Yasser Arafat (who publicly denounced UNRWA as an imperialist tool) addressed him, in their personal correspondence, as “Dear Brother”.
Matters came to a head when Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 led to the discovery that UNRWA’s Vocational Training Centre in Siblin was a well-equipped military base. Israel and the US protested but Rydbeck, with the support of the Arab states and the Europeans, made purely cosmetic changes – and, in an ominous precedent, got away with it.
There have, since then, been countless commitments to reform, including, most recently, after a review chaired by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna. The reality, however, is that under the current Commissioner-General and his predecessor, who resigned amid allegations of pervasive corruption and mismanagement, they have had no effect.
As the fact that dozens of UNRWA facilities in Gaza have been found to house military assets shows, UNRWA’s staff systematically ignore violations of its regulations. Nor is it possible, after the latest disclosures, to deny that UNRWA provides the salaries on which many terrorists rely.
But the damage is broader than that. By acting as a caretaker for generation after generation of so-called refugees, most of whose parents and grandparents were born in their current place of residence, UNRWA has converted refugee status into an inheritable entitlement well worth preserving. Having thus encouraged Palestinians to permanently depend on welfare, it has sown the very “germ of human deterioration” its establishment report decried.
Today, compared to the UN High Commission for Refugees, which copes with populations perpetually exposed to violence and starvation, UNRWA has 8.6 times as many employees per refugee served, reflecting its uniquely generous funding.
Much of that funding sustains the terrorism that has repeatedly plunged the region into devastating wars. If Western governments genuinely want to advance the cause of peace, it is high time they worked with Israel to devise a credible alternative.
UNWRA initially established to assist Palestinian and Jewish refugees / displaced people.UNRWA sent into Korea and Palestine with the same objective of assist, build and leave by the late 1950's
Korea flourished, Palestine stagnated.
In only two instances were geographically specific entities created to deliver that assistance: Korea and Palestine. In both cases, the entities were intended to be strictly temporary. The UN Korean Reconstruction Agency’s mandate was terminated in 1958, when South Korea, which was still in ruins, assumed the burden of refugee resettlement. And UNRWA’s mandate was meant to be terminated by that time too.Because “sustained relief operations inevitably contain the germ of human deterioration”, said UNRWA’s establishment report, “every effort should be made to transfer relief administration to (host) governments no later than 1 July 1952”. To that end, the agency was to concentrate on works programs that would promote the refugees’ integration into their new homelands.However, those programs never got off the ground. As early as 1950 the Soviet-aligned Congress of Palestinian Refugees denounced the works program as “a project prepared by the Imperialists”, whose goal was to deprive Palestinians of their “right of return”. By late 1951, UNRWA’s 12,000 Palestinian employees were, the agency reported, on strike “against making any improvements in (refugee) camps in case this might mean permanent resettlement”.
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