Tag Archives: Israel

IAF Video

Posted on August 19, 2006 | Comments Off on IAF Video

Wish I could figure out how to post this good Israeli air force video, but will have to settle for the link to Yoni the Blogger. As he says it’s in Hebrew but easy enough to figure out what this two-seat F-16 ground crew is talking about as they re-arm the bird — especially when they inscribe one of the bombs to the intended recipient.

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A new Israeli political party?

Posted on August 15, 2006 | Comments Off on A new Israeli political party?

Yoni the Blogger thinks a new one is needed.

"We have gone from highs to lows over the last month as together we have watched Israel suffer.

"The people in the north of Israel have suffered deaths and injuries as well as losses of income and production in the billions of dollars, due to the rain of thousands of rockets that have fallen on their homes.

"All of Israel and those that love Israel around the world, have suffered through a month of the worse leadership in Israel’s history…The government’s on again and off again fighting of this war, has caused wide spread suffering in Israel and Lebanon without the destruction of Hizballah."

Others speak of Israel’s broken heart. (Requires free registration.)

"This is a nation whose heart has been broken: by our failure to uproot the jihadist threat, which will return for another and far more deadly round; by the economic devastation of the Galilee and of a neighboring land we didn’t want to attack; by the heroism of our soldiers and the hesitations of our politicians; by the young men buried and crippled in a war we prevented ourselves from winning; by foreign journalists who can’t tell the difference between good and evil; by European leaders who equate an army that tries to avoid civilian causalities with a terrorist group that revels in them; by a United Nations that questions Israel’s right to defend itself; and by growing voices on the left who question Israel’s right to exist at all."

Via An Unsealed Room

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The IDF moves north

Posted on August 9, 2006 | Comments Off on The IDF moves north

Forty thousand troops against an estimated 8,000 hez dug-in in about 130 villages in terrain that’s been mined and booby-trapped. Israeli blogger Yoni Tidi concludes:

"From here on it is going to get bloody on both sides. The fighting till now has been the warm up and now we are going to go for the knock out.

"Both sides are going to take it all the way there will be a winner and a looser.

"Look for Haifa to get harder and look for Tel Aviv to get hit in the next few days and I think that the chance of Syria getting involved has now gone up to a 70% chance."

Other good sources are here and, in Haifa, here and a site whose Hebrew name is scribbler here.

UPDATE Then US pressure forced a delay, which Olmert seems to want, according to this analysis in Haaretz: "Israel is telling the UN ‘hold me back,’ in efforts to prevent itself from getting swept up in any one decision and hoping for the best. Olmert’s moment of truth has been postponed, at least until Friday." 

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Tit for tat

Posted on August 5, 2006 | Comments Off on Tit for tat

Human Rights Watch, which has already condemned Israel, interestingly now condemns Hez. About time.

“’Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime,’ said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. ‘Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war.’  
 
"Hezbollah claims that some of its attacks are aimed at military bases inside Israel, which are legitimate targets. But most of the attacks appear to have been directed at civilian areas and have hit pedestrians, hospitals, schools, homes and businesses." 

Good Update links on the war via the Hashmonean: "On Israel, and many Jewish bloggers covering the situation, at the Truth Laid Bear which is also highlighting the other side, and at Pajamas Media. Soccerdad consistently does HQ round ups as well."

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R.I.P. Michael Levin

Posted on August 3, 2006 | Comments Off on R.I.P. Michael Levin

"At age 16, Michael Levin stunned his Bucks County [Pa.] family by announcing that he would settle in Israel after high school and join the military there."

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Cutting through the propaganda

Posted on August 3, 2006 | Comments Off on Cutting through the propaganda

"Putting his political future on the line," reports the Jerusalem Post (which offers a transcript in Word format), "British Prime Minister Tony Blair came out with all his might against radical Islam during an address on Tuesday before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

"In his speech, Blair called for a ‘complete renaissance’ on foreign policy and unequivocaly stood by Israel: "The purpose of the provocation that began the conflict in Lebanon was clear. It was to create chaos and to provoke retaliation by Israel that would lead to Arab and Muslim opinion being inflamed, not against those who started the aggression but against those who responded to it."

Not unusual for Blair, whose courage knows no bounds, but odd considering that the British government’s BBC is putting its resources at Hez’s disposal while ignoring the rockets falling on the Israeli homefront. 

"The BBC world service…has come to sound like a virtual propaganda tool for Hezbollah."

At any rate, these are looney tunes days at the Beeb: "The BBC has been urged to pull a ‘sick’ new comedy show which features spoof news reports of Tony Blair being assassinated and a 9/11-style video of terrorists crashing an airliner into the Houses of Parliament."

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Posted in The War

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Has the IDF lost its nerve?

Posted on July 19, 2006 | Comments Off on Has the IDF lost its nerve?

From the Jerusalem Post:

"IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz is known to be opposed to a ground incursion into Lebanon, which he has said would only be carried out as a last resort. Harel also said that while the possibility existed, the chances the IDF would launch such an incursion were slim."

I’m just an old combat infantryman, but Haluzt seems to be worried more about his casualties than eliminating the Hez rocket launchers. Which he’s trying to do from the air and sea, and with massed artillery  and small-unit special operations, rather than in large movements of infantry and armor.

It fits in rather unpleasantly with something else in the JP edition, commentator Daniel Pipes’ opinion that the IDF has lost the touch that once made it great, and his conclusion that all of this will mean little in the long run.

"Deterrence cannot be reinstated in a week," he writes, "through a raid, a blockade, or a round of war. It demands unwavering resolve, expressed over decades."

But there aren’t any decades left before Iran gets the bomb and gives Hez a really nasty warhead for its rockets, and Nazareth, for instance, is not merely rocketed but turned into glass. Casualties now or nuclear war later?

Israel blogger Meryl Yourish ( who lives in Virginia and may have finally found a job she wants and best wishes to her) notes that Hez has extensively mined the southern Lebanon borderland which would make it deadly to invade even in a Merkava tank. Yet she thinks IDF morale is high, and saves a taunt for Hez bossman Hassan Nasrallah, otherwise known as "Chipmunk Cheeks."

There’s a last chance feel to this latest Israeli war on its terrorist tormentors and, hesitant chiefs of staff or no, I hope Olmert’s otherwise dovish government takes it while the taking’s good.

UPDATE  There’s at least one company-grade IDF officer saying battalion or division size invasion isn’t out of the question. "’There is a possibility _ all our options are open. At the moment, it’s a very limited, specific incursion but all options remain open’ Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman, told The Associated Press on Wednesday."

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