A new Goldstone critique

Peter Berkowitz, at the Hoover Institution, takes a different tack on criticizing the Goldstone Report in a new article. His concern is much larger - that Goldstone represents a departure from the mores of international law and represents a danger for democratic, liberal nation-states:

Another and more far-reaching issue, which should be of great significance to those who take seriously the claims of international law to govern the conduct of war, has scarcely been noticed. And that pertains to the disregarding of fundamental norms and principles of international law by the United Nations Human Rights Council (hrc), which authorized the Goldstone Mission; by the Mission members, who produced the Goldstone Report; and by the hrc and the United Nations General Assembly (of which the hrc is a subsidiary organ), which endorsed the report’s recommendations. Their conduct combines an exaltation of, and disrespect for, international law. It is driven by an ambition to shift authority over critical judgments about the conduct of war from states to international institutions. Among the most serious political consequences of this shift is the impairment of the ability of liberal democracies to deal lawfully and effectively with the complex and multifarious threats presented by transnational terrorists.

...Authoritative sources in international law assign primary responsibility for judgments about whether war has been conducted in accordance with the law of armed conflict to the judicial and other relevant organs of nation-states. That assignment is rooted in the larger liberal tradition’s teaching that nation-states — particularly those based on the consent of the governed and devoted to securing individual rights — are the best and most legitimate means of securing peace, exercising authority over the individual, and preserving political freedom. That teaching is bound up with the view that states are likely to be more sober in assessing the actions of other states than international organizations because states must bear the burden of any proposed reform or rule. In contrast, the Goldstone Report and its supporters appear to be animated by the conviction that judgments about the lawful conduct of war are best and primarily vindicated by international institutions, because of their superior objectivity, impartiality, and expertise. And they have shown themselves willing to disregard international law as it is in order to remake it as they believe it should be. One reason to prefer the allocation of responsibilities in international law as it currently stands to the Goldstone Report’s efforts to transform it are the report’s stunning defects. They illustrate that those who are responsible for the operation of international institutions are no less subject to the passions and prejudices that thwart the impartial and objective administration of law than the government officials in civilized nations, and in some cases may be more subject to such passions and prejudices.

...There is a danger that the spread of practices among international bodies and an accumulation of precedents concerning international law will weigh down the United States in the struggle that it shares with Israel and others to combat, in accordance with the law of armed conflict, transnational Islamic terrorism. Of course that will only happen if the U.S. recognizes such practices and precedents as authoritative. Encouragement to do so comes from powerful trends in American universities and law schools, where professors for going on a generation have been cultivating in their students the view, which animates the Goldstone Report, that critical judgments about the lawful conduct of war are indeed properly and in the first instance the province of international institutions.

That view is suited to a world in which all nation-states incline to peace and govern themselves in accordance with liberal and democratic principles. Unfortunately, that is not the world in which we live. Nor is it a world we can expect to emerge anytime soon.

The Goldstone report is not only flawed and biased - it is dangerous.

(h/t sshender)

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Arabs worried that US will move embassy to Jerusalem

Al Quds al Arabi reports that there is concern among Arab analysts about  the sudden US move to symbolically upgrade the status of the PLO mission in Washington.

Their fear is that this was a precursor for the Obama administration moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, a move long favored by Congress and that would give President Obama a big boost among Jews in the US.

Since 1995, every US president has issued a waiver on the Jerusalem Embassy Act of Congress every six months.

I believe that the next time this comes up is in the end of November.

The Obama administration has excised the wording that the Bush administration had inserted in every waiver, which stated "My Administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem."

I don't think that the US would consider moving the embassy unless Israel had already abandoned parts of the city.

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Is this how Israel infiltrated Lebanese telecom? (updated)

In recent weeks there has been a rash of arrests of alleged Israeli spies in Lebanon, many of whom worked for Lebanese cell phone and land-line based communications companies.

Naharnet has this interesting article:

In the aftermath of the July 2006 war, Ogero landline phone network sought a tender for the purchase a computer software called "mediation" which provides for the transfer of phone calls received from cellular phones to the landline network and vice versa, in addition to detailed bills, As-Safir newspaper reported Friday.

This attracted bids from six top companies, As-Safir said, until a French firm finally got the tender.

According to the daily, however, the French firm in turn put forward software that bears the name "Kabira" which operates under "Star Ventures," a leading Israeli venture capital fund.

The newspaper said the identity of the Israeli company was not clear at first, but the low prices it offered stirred up doubt by a Lebanese company, prompting it to search for the firm's "family tree."

Here's the surprise: well-known businessmen and Israeli officers are in charge of managing and financing Kabira.

The ministry under Telecoms Minister Marwan Hamadeh at the time gave a simple explanation to the flow of inquirers: "We chose this bid because it was less by $3,000,000 compared to other tenders, without looking into the corporate identity."

UPDATE: commenter T34zakat notices that Kabira has a lot of investors, and Star Ventures is only one of them. Star Ventures is headquartered in Germany and has an office in Israel and Silicon Valley - not surprising for a VC firm specializing in software. This is far from a smoking gun; and there is zero indication from this that the Kabira software was created in Israel.

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Who was behind Eilat/Aqaba rockets?

Zvi points out two separate Ha'aretz reports of who was behind the rockets that were shot towards Eilat on Monday.

One says that Hamas was behind it - but not Hamas in Gaza, rather Damascus leader Khlaed Meshaal, possibly itching to get back in the action:

The commander of Hamas' military wing in Rafah, Raed al-Atar, is responsible for ordering the firing of Grad-type Katyusha rockets at Eilat and Aqaba from Sinai earlier this week, Palestinian security officials say.

Security sources told Haaretz that according to an investigation by Palestinian intelligence, Atar was behind the rocket attacks authorized by the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip, without the knowledge of the Hamas military commander there, Ahmed Jabari.

But Palestinian security sources said Atar carried out the attack with the approval of the Hamas leadership abroad and with the backing of Iranian intelligence agents, who appear to have initiated the mission.

The sources said the attack had been approved by the Hamas politburo chief, Khaled Meshal, based in Damascus.

Atar, who in recent years has greatly increased his power and influence in the Gaza Strip, particularly in Hamas' armed wing, is now asserting greater authority over the tunnels in which goods are smuggled from Sinai into Gaza.

According to intelligence sources, a number of militants under his control crossed into Sinai through the Rafah tunnels, where they were met by Egyptian drivers and the Grad-type Katyusha rockets. They drove in off-road vehicles toward Taba on the Red Sea coast, avoiding security checks by the Egyptians.

Jordan has its own theories: an Al Qaeda offshoot.

A Jordanian political source told Haaretz yesterday that Jordan has exchanged intelligence with Egypt; the information Jordan now has suggests that it was not Hamas that fired the rockets, but a radical religious group that opposes the Palestinian Islamist group in charge of the Gaza Strip.

The assessment is that the group is Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, which collaborates with Sinai Bedouin who are at odds with the Egyptian authorities. The Jordanian source says Egypt is also not blaming Hamas but mentions "Palestinian factions" as responsible for the rocket attacks.

In May, a group of Shi'ite separatists in Yemen sent Haaretz documents claiming that Sami al-Mutairi, a Kuwaiti citizen known as Abdullah al-Hajj, is in charge of Al-Qaida's activities against Israel from Palestinian territory. Mutairi was convicted of killing an American in Kuwait several years ago.

Mutairi, who was released from prison in 2007, sent to his supporters in the Gaza Strip a total of $850,000 through a Saudi citizen, Abdullah al-Dusri, who visited Gaza from Sinai carrying the money in a suitcase.

Mutairi gave orders to buy weapons in Sinai for militants in the Gaza Strip, and to purchase apartments in Khan Yunis and Rafah where the militants could hide.

The militant leader ordered his contacts in Gaza to hide the arms so they would not be confiscated by Hamas. One letter mentions that Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad had already acquired 25 Grad-type Katyusha rockets, which it hid in plantations in Sinai and Gaza.

Meanwhile, Hamas says that they would have been happy to take credit for the attack if they were behind it, but that they refuse to do any operations outside of "historical Palestine" - the entity that they define according to lines drawn less than a hundred years ago.

Palestine Today says that the Ha'aretz article blaming al-Atar is a pretense for Israel assassinating him, and that no Palestinian Arab officials said that.

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Arabs resent Holocaust movies, and more from a new poll (Zvi)

From Zvi:

---

In this Shibly Telhami Brookings poll of Arab public opinion (warning - does not provide raw data or information about the methodology), slide #37 says an awful lot.  
 

When you watch a movie or program about the Jewish Holocaust, which of the following is closest to your feelings?  
 
(1) Resent that it brings sympathy toward Israel and Jews at the expense of Palestinians and Arabs  
(2) I have mixed feelings  
(3) Empathize with the Jews who suffered under the Nazis  
 

2010 Results for (1), (2), (3) in that order:  
 
Total:   59%,  29%,  5%  
Egypt: 50%, 31%, 5% (Egypt's totals amount to 80-85%; perhaps many people refused to answer)  
Jordan: 39%, 45%, 16%  
Saudi Arabia: 59%, 37%, 5%  
Lebanon: 20%, 59%, 21%  
Morocco: 85%, 15%, 0%  
UAE: 99%, 1%, 0%  
 
As Benjamin Kerstein said in the recent Michael Totten conversation:  
 
Anti-Semitism ultimately is a refusal to accord basic human decency to the Jewish people. It’s a refusal to relate to a certain group of people with the common human decency with which you would relate to anybody else.  
 
The broad swath of public opinion in most of the Arab countries is fundamentally anti-Semitic.  
 
 When reading the results for Lebanon, it is worth reflecting that despite Leb's ongoing political train wreck and Hezbollah's viciously anti-Semitic propaganda, the results for Lebanon are nevertheless the least noxious (by far) in the Arab countries polled. This may well be due, in part, to the presence of the Christian (and particularly Armenian) minority, and also the fact that Lebanon, unlike the other countries polled, is a highly cosmopolitan society with large religious minorities.  
 
Only Jordan and Lebanon have majorities who are even willing to grant the humanity of Shoah victims sufficiently that they have "mixed feelings" or sympathies rather than resentment.  
 
The rabid self-pity and complete willingness to completely dehumanize Jews that is visible in the Moroccan and particularly the Emirati results is absolutely breathtaking.  
 
Slide #39 touches on some points that we have discussed before.  

When you see Palestinian civilan casualties in the conflict with Israel, which TWO of the following best describe your feelings:


(1) Empathy with the Palestinian victims
(2) Need for revenge against Israel
(3) Helpless
(4) Angry with Arab governments
(5) Angry with the US
(6) Angry with Palestinian leadership
(7) Same as whn I see other humans suffer
(8) Palestinians brought it upon themselves

2010 results, in (1)-(8) order: (second column represents the "need" for revenge against Israel - the honor/shame/revenge dynamic; in Jordan, this supposed "need" actually exceeds the sum of columns 1 and 7 (representing empathy).

59  47  35  21  16  12  08  01 TOTAL
55  51  41  15  16  16  06  01 Egypt
43  52  38  36  13  09  08  02 Jordan
60  48  38  29  14  0?  01  00 Saudi Arabia
38  40  32  40  15  15  19  03 Lebanon
78  40  16  24  17  07  18  01 Morocco
41  43  23  23  33  32  04  00 UAE

Stop and think about the consequences of the deeply distorted reporting that exists in the Arab world and in the mainstream media, in which Palestinian gunmen are labelled as "civilians" and in which clear Palestinian crimes are whitewashed, while Israeli actions are deliberately inflated and misrepresented as "war crimes." The consequences of such blood libels, journalistic malpractice and human rights fraud results directly in the growrh of hatred and subsequent bloodshed.

In addition, when Arab regimes, media, religious authorities, pure propagandists and other opinion shapers repeatedly issue "calls to action" that involve revenge, they reinforce this response, which reinforces this dynamic in the Arab world rather than preparing populations for peace. Moroccans, so completely unready to identify or sympathize with dead Jews, are are much more likely to consider sympathy with Palestinians as opposed to revenge. On the other hand, in no country does the percentage who think that there is a "need" for revenge against Israel drop below 40%.

If you sum columns 1 and 7 (based on the guess that most survey respondents would have picked either one or the other, but not both; without more information, this is not a particularly "safe" assumption) you get the following:
67% Total
61 Egypt
51 Jordan
61 Saudi
57 Lebanon
96 Morocco
44 UAE

The differences from country to country are interesting, though.

Scores reflecting anger at the Palestinians and/or their leadership (6+8):
13 Total
17 Egypt
15 Jordan
14 Saudi
18 Lebanon
19 Morocco
33 UAE

In contrast, here is the corresponding table for empathy with Israeli civilian victims.

When you watch Israeli civilian casualties in the conflict with the Palestinians, which TWO of the following best describe your feelings:
(1) Empathy with Israeli victims
(2) Revenge for the Palstinians
(3) Angry with Israeli leaders
(4) Angry with the US
(5) Angry with the Palestinians
(6) Same as when I see other civilians killed
(7) Israelis brought it upon themselves

2010 results in (1)-(7) order:

03  59  35  18  02  09  75 TOTAL. Total Empathy score (1 + 6) is 12%
02  65  25  14  02  13  78 Egypt. Total Empathy = 15
06  68  25  04  01  17  80 Jordan. TE = 23
07  50  44  14  02  06  77 Saudi. TE = 13
04  47  50  13  03  21  63 Lebanon. TE = 25
00  52  46  33  00  02  67 Morocco. TE = 02
01  46  59  33  00  02  59 UAE. TE = 03

The number of people who regard the deliberate murder of Israeli civilians as revenge for the Palestinians is obscene. The combination of a complete lack of sympathy for Israeli civilians and a complete whitewashing of Palestinian responsibility for their own actions, particularly in Morocco and the UAE, is absolutely disgusting.


Public opinion on the Iran nuclear question yields some results that are little short of insane. 81% of Egyptians who think that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons nevertheless say it has a right to its nuclear program. The Lebanese UAE, the Lebanese and the Jordanians really do not like this prospect.

This, of course, is why Iran needs to keep hatred of Jews and Israel burning among the Arabs; as long as it can pretend that its nukes would never be turned against the Arabs - which as I write these words reminds me of Hezbollah's lies about never turning its weapons against the Lebanese - much of the Arab street will blindly and foolishly support Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons.

Most of the respondents watch al Jazeera either as their first or second choice and get the majority of their international news from TV.

There is a lot more in the presentation than is covered in this post. You can view it here: Shibly Telhami Brookings poll  

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Lebanese claim order to shoot came "from the top" (updated)

From Naharnet:

The Lebanese army was instructed to open fire at Israeli troops in the tree-pruning operation that triggered a deadly clash between Israeli and Lebanese troops, Israel News reported.

U.N. peacekeepers in front of a picture
of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah,
 with an Arabic writing:
"we are full of surprises," (h/t Suzanne)

It said that during a late Wednesday meeting between UNIFIL and representatives of the Lebanese and Israeli armies, Lebanese army officer Abdul Rahman Shaitli said soldiers who opened fire on Israeli troops Tuesday were following instructions.

"Soldiers are instructed to open fire. This is the army's decision," he was quoted as saying.

Al Manar, Hezbollah's station, said the same thing.

To Western ears, this is ironic: the Lebanese Army (and, by extension, the government of Lebanon) is essentially admitting that, in full view of UNIFIL, they planned to break the terms of UN 1701 and start what could have easily devolved into a war. This is hardly how one would expect a responsible army or government to act.

Yet there is reason to be skeptical about this claim.

I first saw a Lebanese Army official saying this yesterday, in response to Israeli claims that a Hezbollah-aligned officer (or other rogue officer) decided to do the ambush on his own. The army therefore has at least four incentives to say that it came from the top: It wants to project an image of having full control over its soldiers; it wants to erase any indication that Hezbollah influences the army; it wants to take full credit for a decision that is wildly popular in Lebanon and it wants to contradict whatever Israel says.

On the other side, as Ronen Bergman noted in a WSJ article reproduced here, the timing seems more than coincidental - the event happened hours before a scheduled major speech by Nasrallah on the fourth anniversary of the end of the 2006 Lebanon war. And the LAF - and Hezbollah - knew about this dastardly tree-pruning operation for days, if not weeks. Bergman quotes Israeli intelligence as saying that a LAF brigade commander gave the order to shoot, and the LAF is now providing cover.

Israel should call their bluff. If what Lebanese officials are now claiming is true, then they planned an act of war and Israel should call for an international investigation of the incident. Such an investigation cannot have a bad outcome for Israel: either it would show serious problems in LAF command structure, including Hezbollah influence, or it will show that Lebanon is indeed acting recklessly in violation of 1701.

(Unless, of course, it is staffed with Goldstone-type people who will end up looking for and finding only evidence Israel started shooting first!)

UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald says it has evidence that indeed the orders came form the top:

A senior diplomatic source, who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity, said preliminary investigations by UN personnel monitoring the border also indicated the Lebanese army planned the attack.

The source said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon advised Lebanese army commanders early on Tuesday morning that the Israelis would be removing a tree on their side of the border early in the afternoon.

Several hours before the Israelis moved in to begin that work, a senior Lebanese army unit arrived at the Lebanese village of al-Adeisa, which overlooks the site where the tree was to be removed, and took control of the area.

They were accompanied by several journalists linked to media outlets controlled by the radical Shiite movement Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, the source said.

Shortly after 12.15pm, when the Israelis moved a crane close to the border fence to begin removing the tree, a Lebanese army sniper took aim at the commanders who were supervising the operation from a hill on the Israeli side of the border.

"The sniper was aiming for the most senior IDF officers present, not the person operating the crane where the alleged border infringement took place," the source told the Herald.

"These were not warning shots fired towards the area of the crane. Someone took careful aim at the Israeli commanders who were standing several hundred metres away."

One shot hit Colonel Dov Harari in the head, killing him instantly. Another shot caused shrapnel wounds to the chest of a captain, who is in hospital in a serious condition.

The source said questions were being asked about why a senior Lebanese army unit had arrived in the area in the hours before the attack, and why they were accompanied by journalists close to Hezbollah.

(h/t Daled Amos via email)

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UNIFIL's silence [updated]

You would expect that after the deadly confrontation at the Lebanon-Israel border that UNIFIL would write an article or a press release about the incident. But nothing like this has happened at all. The website of UNIFIL has a press release dating May 27th, 2010. The capital letters top of the page on the left read: "LATEST NEWS", but there's nothing in the ticker. [UPDATE: The website of UNIFIl has been updated. It has now two articles on their homepage. No official press release yet, however]

However, it's not that the UN did not say anything. It's hard to find, but there is an article about the event. And also a statement by Ban ki-Moon.

The article leaves nothing to imagination as it uses the word "triggered":

During the meeting, both parties renewed their commitment to the cessation of hostilities and to resolution 1701, which ended the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese group Hizbollah and calls for respecting the Blue Line, as well as to work with UNIFIL to ensure that incidents of violence are avoided in the future.

The incident was triggered by Israel’s announcement of its intention to cut down a tree in the proximity of the Blue Line. UNIFIL said in a statement issued earlier today that the tree is located south of the line on the Israeli side.

“The exchange of fire started although we did our best to prevent it,” Alain Le Roy, the top UN peacekeeping official, told reporters in New York, stressing that UNIFIL helped to mitigate the violence, which lasted some 30 minutes, negotiating a ceasefire to end the fighting.

One might wonder how close to the truth that is. I mean... Israel did it with knowledge of UNIFIL and the next day, on August 4th, 2010 it was not a problem for Israel to do their routine work very close to the Blue Line:

The UN website has also a section "News Focus" on the Middle East. Surprisingly these are the mentioned latest developments:

Secretary-General condemns deadly rocket attack in southern Jordan
UN official calls for return of Palestinian families one year after eviction
UN urges restraint after rocket from Gaza hits Israeli city
Kites fly high over Gaza as children at UN summer camp soar to new world record
UN envoy deplores takeover of Palestinian homes by Israeli settlers

No mention of the border clash which left 4 people dead. No mention of the other rockets at Eilat which fell on the 2nd of August.....

Anyway, an interesting passage in the UN article I mentioned before, is the following:

Mr. Le Roy, who serves as Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, called the existence of the tripartite mechanism bringing together UNIFIL, Israel and Lebanon an “important achievement.”

He said that he is very glad that the two sides accepted the UN’s proposal for an urgent tripartite meeting.

If this is as good as it sounds (if it comes from the UN I have my doubts) I feel pity for torn Lebanon by sectarian military and ideologically conflicts.

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Hallucinatory anti-Israel ads

I just saw that Foreign Policy magazine published an ad from a group called "Goals for Americans," which seems to have an interesting agenda.

Its ads are a case study in poor design and breathless rhetoric, mostly against Israeli policies and the ever-present Jewish lobby.

Here is one of their many ads reproduced on their website. It is so over the top, it is hilarious. The puppet might be a little overused, but the gorilla more than makes up for it.

Naturally, I was wondering what "K.A.S.M." mentioned in the upper right stands for.

Luckily, the site has an illustrative definition:

The entire site is filled with this stuff, including their plan for cutting Israel in two parts to allow "Palestine" to be contiguous.

If the government taxed exclamation points, these guys could pay the national debt.

Yes, these nutcases are who Foreign Policy is accepting ads from!

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Guess who is teaching a course on Zionism?

From the University of Chicago website, Department of Political Science, Courses for 2010-2011:

28500. Zionism and Palestine. PQ: Enrollment will be limited and by consent of instructor. This course has three broad aims, the first of which is to explore the various strands of early Zionist thinking in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th century. The second aim is to analyze how the European Zionists who came to Palestine created the Jewish state in the first half of the 20th century. The third aim is to examine some key developments in Israel’s history since it gained its independence in 1948. While the main focus will be on Zionism and the state of Israel, considerable attention will be paid to the plight of the Palestinians and the development of Palestinian nationalism over the past century.

The instructor?

John Mearsheimer, co-author of perhaps the most highly visible anti-Israel (and, some argue, anti-semitic) tract of the past decade.

He has said publicly that any Zionist Jew is a "new Afrikaner" and explicitly anti-Zionist Jews are "righteous Jews." He knowingly lied when he wrote that the US support for Israel was the major motivation for 9/11.

As The Weekly Standard points out, Mearsheimer is known as an expert on international relations, but in not known to have any expertise whatsoever on the subject of Zionism.

But since the enrollment is only by Mearsheimer's consent, maybe he won't have to worry about being called to task by a student who knows more than he does. After all, he just has to exclude the students with Jewish or Hebrew sounding names.

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A new map of the attack

A source emailed me with a map showing where the IDF was working, where the Lebanese RPGs were fired from and where the IDF officer was hit by a sniper. I am not quite sure how to square this away with the videos and photos we have seen, but I would tend to trust this person. (For example, the place shown below would be consistent with the curve in the road from the initial AP photo.)

I recreated this map based on information I received, overlaying on top of Google maps. I might be a little off in the position of the RPG squad because I don't think they would be on the other side of the Blue Line.

The blue line is The Blue Line. The black line is Israel's fence. The yellow dots are significant - they may be sniper positions or other LAF positions - but I am awaiting clarification.

If you want to play with Google Maps, the link to this map is here.

(And on a side note - yes, it is really cool to get inside information!)

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A whole new open thread

Looks like I won't be able to post much for a while, so here's a place to deposit all your rumors, facts, suppositions and hunches.

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Photo of the area of border incident

CIFWatch has an very informative article from Israelinurse, who went to the IDF briefing yesterday at the Lebanese border.

The posting includes a high-res photo of the entire area (click to enlarge):

And if my guess is right, the tree-pruning happened where I drew the arrow:

This shows that the Lebanese were much closer to the IDF than it looked before, and also that they are on significantly higher ground,which could be seen from the video I had posted as well.

You can also see that there is a fence on the Lebanese side as well, adjacent to the road:

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Once again, Arabs go crazy over Jews praying

Palestine Press Agency reports yet again:

Last night, about 500 settlers stormed the area of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus.

Sources said the local settlers practiced biblical rituals at the grave in a provocative way, and they were under the protection of a large force of Israeli soldiers who helped them to break into the area.

Joseph's Tomb is supposed to be available for Jewish worship under existing agreements between Israel and the PA. These visits are always coordinated.

There is no reason to assume that the worshippers are all "settlers."

Hamas was really ticked off:

Minister of Waqf in the Gaza government Taleb Abu Sha’ar called the visit of 300 settlers to Joseph's Tomb in Nablus a "violation" and "provocative."

The visit, which saw military patrols enter a residential area south of Nablus at midnight and close off streets, culminated in the arrival of 20 military vehicles and six buses of religious Jews who remained under heavy guard at the tomb betwen 1 and 5a.m.

Abu Sha'ar said the military measures and the forceful visit to the holy place, believed to be the burial area of patriarch Jospeh and his two sons, was a "violation of the holy place," and took place on the "pretext that the area belongs only to them [Jewish worshipers]."

In 1993 the mosque was partitioned, half was designated for Jewish use and the other half for Muslim use.

I guess that all that talk about how Hamas has no problem with Jews is not quite accurate.

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Lebanese general arrested as Israeli spy

From Ya Libnan:

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television reported on Wednesday that Brigadier General Fayez Karam, who is a senior Free Patriotic Movement official, confessed that he has been spying for Israel since 2005 and that he has met several Israeli officials during his trips to the European Union.

Karam was arrested earlier on Wednesday on suspicion of collaborating with Israel according to local reports

Al-Manar also said that the Internal Security Forces (ISF) are still investigating with the detainee to better understand the extent of the damages incurred by Karam.

Police arrested several suspects over the past month in an expanding probe into an alleged network of Israeli spies employed in the country’s telecom sector.

The alleged spies discovered over the past month have been mainly concentrated in Lebanon's wireless and landline telecommunications networks; as far as I know this is by far the most senior person accused of spying for Israel. (Al Manar is a Hezbollah media outlet so I am not going to assume yet that the story that he admitted being a spy is true.)

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Lebanese leaders continue to contradict themselves

The backtracking of the Lebanese to save face for what was a premediated, unprovoked attack continues.

They have abandoned the lies of Israel crossing the Blue Line, of them only shooting "warning shots," and others. The latest statement from Lebanese General Jean Kahwaji shows yet again how they cannot keep their story straight:

Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) commander General Jean Kahwaji on Wednesday said that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops entered on Tuesday a disputed area along the Blue Line, despite objections from the Lebanese army and UNIFIL, the National News Agency (NNA) reported.

Lebanese and Israeli soldiers exchanges fire Tuesday at the border village of Adaisseh in the fiercest clashes since the 2006 July War. The clash resulted in the killing of two Lebanese soldiers, a journalist and a senior Israeli officer.

The clashes started after Israeli units attempted to cut down contested trees along the border, which the UN said Wednesday were within Israeli territory.

Kahwaji said the Israeli decision was a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, adding that “the army agreed to cutting down the trees today after necessary conditions were met.”

UNIFIL units supervised on Wednesday morning the removal of trees along the southern border in coordination with the Lebanese army.

So the trees that were supposedly in Lebanese territory on Tuesday were allowed to be cut down by Israel on Wednesday? Plus he claims that UNIFIL was objecting to the tree cutting even though it had all been coordinated with them?

The IDF did say that UNIFIL asked them to delay the cutting, twice, for unspecified reasons, and the IDF complied.

The only part of the IDF story that I believe might be slightly inaccurate is the map they handed out:

Looking at the famous picture of the cherry-picker, we see a curve in the road just north of the famous tree:

At the point where the road curves, the Blue Line is somewhat closer to the road (Google Maps yellow line only approximates the Blue Line; you can see what is apparently the real Blue Line right above it):

There is still no doubt that the IDF was within its side of the Blue Line, but the Lebanese were much closer - which may account for the accuracy of the sniper gunshot that hit the IDF officer in the head.

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