Calm down.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather see Hezbullah crushed to dust, but IMHO the cease-fire is not unalloyed Bad News for Israel, nor is it IMHO any sort of betrayal by the Bush Administration, which to my eye herded the primping fops of the UN in an artful manner to give Israel enough time to emasculate Hezbullah and regain the buffer territory Barak had unwisely given away.
Consider the following three items, the last a satirical thing on an Egyptian's blog.
1)
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=9025 Peres: the agreement is good for Israel
Deputy Prime Minster Shimon Peres said yesterday that UN Security Council resolution 1701 was "very good for Israel and takes a firm stance against Hizballah’s terrorist aggression and gives Israel full support, including recognition of its force and military capabilities."
"Hizballah started this conflict in full power and ends it with the entire world against them seeing their weaknesses and limitations, whereas Israel has acted from the beginning with only limited force without realizing its full military force," he said.
Peres added that on Friday afternoon, the draft proposal was transformed from a stammered document to a positive document with real diplomatic power and international recognition in Israel's demands and rights. Without the military pressure we would have not reached a diplomatic solution, and without the diplomatic solution, there would have been no point for the military pressure."
Peres expressed his appreciation for the Prime Minister who managed the crisis and said that we were able to block an effort in the UN to de-legitimize Israel. We managed to turn things around and the resolution which was adopted gives Israel legitimacy with the support of the Lebanese government and the Arab League. This is the maximum we can get from the UN," said Peres.
Peres added that the Security Council Resolution gives authority back to the Lebanese government, stops the supply of arms to the Hizballah, pushes them away from the border, brings 30,000 troops to the area and calls for the immediate release of the kidnapped soldiers.
2)
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1201 Tehran Takes Gloomy View of the Lebanon War and Truce
August 14, 2006, 3:35 PM (GMT+02:00)
While the damage caused Israel’s military reputation tops Western assessments of the Lebanon war, DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report an entirely different perception taking hold in ruling circles in Tehran.
After UN Security Council resolution 1701 calling for a truce was carried Friday, Aug. 11, the heads of the regime received two separate evaluations of the situation in Lebanon – one from Iran’s foreign ministry and one from its supreme national security council. Both were bleak: their compilers were concerned that Iran had been manipulatively robbed of its primary deterrent asset ahead of a probable nuclear confrontation with the United States and Israel.
While the foreign ministry report highlighted the negative aspects of the UN resolution, the council’s document complained that Hizballah squandered thousands of rockets – either by firing them into Israel or having them destroyed by the Israeli air force.
The writer of this report is furious over the waste of Iran’s most important military investment in Lebanon merely for the sake of a conflict with Israeli over two kidnapped soldiers.
It took Iran two decades to build up Hizballah’s rocket inventory.
DEBKAfile’s sources estimate that Hizballah’s adventure wiped out most of the vast sum of $4-6 bn the Iranian treasury sunk into building its military strength. The organization was meant to be strong and effective enough to provide Iran with a formidable deterrent to Israel embarking on a military operation to destroy the Islamic regime’s nuclear infrastructure.
To this end, Tehran bought the Israeli military doctrine of preferring to fight its wars on enemy soil. In the mid-1980s, Iran decided to act on this doctrine by coupling its nuclear development program with Israel’s encirclement and the weakening its deterrence strength. The Jewish state was identified at the time as the only country likely to take vigorous action to spike Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
The ayatollahs accordingly promoted Hizballah’s rise as a socio-political force in Lebanon, at the same time building up its military might and capabilities for inflicting damage of strategic dimensions to Israel’s infrastructure.
That effort was accelerated after Israeli forces withdrew from the Lebanese security zone in May 2000. A bunker network and chain of fortified positions were constructed, containing war rooms equipped with the finest western hi-tech gadgetry, including night vision gear, computers and electronics, as well as protective devices against bacteriological and chemical warfare.
This fortified network was designed for assault and defense alike.
Short- medium- and long-range rockets gave the hard edge to Hizballah’s ablity to conduct a destructive war against Israel and its civilians – when the time was right for Tehran.
Therefore, Iran’s rulers are hopping mad and deeply anxious over news of the huge damage sustained by Hizballah’s rocket inventory, which was proudly touted before the war as numbering 13,000 pieces.
Hizballah fighters, they are informed, managed to fire only a small number of Khaibar-1 rockets, most of which hit Haifa and Afula, while nearly 100 were destroyed or disabled by Israeli air strikes.
The long-range Zelzal-1 and Zelzal-2, designed for hitting Tel Aviv and the nuclear reactor at Dimona have been degraded even more. Iran sent over to Lebanon 50 of those missiles. The keys to the Zelzal stores stayed in the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers who were in command of Hizballah. Nasrallah and his officers had no access to these stores.
But Tehran has learned that Israel was able to destroy most of the 22 Zelzal launchers provided.
That is not the end of the catalogue of misfortunes for the Islamic rulers of Iran.
1. The UN Security Council embodied in resolution 1701 a chapter requiring Hizballah to disarm – in the face of a stern warning issued by supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in person in the early days of the war. Revolutionary Guards commanders went so far as to boast: “No one alive is capable of disarming Hizballah.”
The disarming of Hizballah would therefore be a bad knock to the supreme ruler’s authority and prestige as well as a disastrous blow for the deterrent force so painstakingly and expensively fashioned as a second front line to protect the Islamic republic from a safe distance.
2. Hizballah’s ejection from South Lebanon, if accomplished in the aftermath of the ceasefire, would moreover deprive Tehran of the sword hanging over Israel’s head of instantaneous attack.
For the sake of partial damage control, Tehran handed Nasrallah a set of new instructions Sunday, Aug. 13:
First, to find a way of evading the ceasefire and keeping up war operations against Israeli forces.
Second, to reject the proposal to disarm before the Lebanese government meets on this Monday afternoon. In fact, that meeting was called off after Hassan Nasrallah sent a message to the Lebanese ministers flatly refusing to have Hizballah give up its weapons in the south. He also turned down a compromise proposal handed him later, whereby the Lebanese army’s first mission after deploying in the south would be to help Hizballah evacuate its fighters with their arms to positions north of the Litani River.
The strategy evolving in Tehran since the ceasefire went into effect Monday morning requires Hizballah to employ a range of stratagems – not only to prevent the truce from stabilizing but to stop the Lebanese army from deploying n the south and, above all, the entry of an effective international force.
Furthermore, Hizballah is instructed to stretch the military crisis into the next three of four months, synchronously with the timetable for a UN Security Council sanctions-wielding session on Iran.
According to exclusive reports reaching DEBKAfile’s sources, the Iranian government believes that Israel and the United States are preparing a military operation for the coming October and November to strike Iran’s nuclear installations. It is therefore vital to keep the two armies fully occupied with other pursuits.
Iranian leaders’ conviction that the Lebanon war was staged to bamboozle them rests on certain perceptions:
As seen from Tehran, Israel looked as though it was carrying out a warming-up exercise in preparation for its main action against Iran’s nuclear program. The Israeli army was able to explore, discover and correct its weak points, understand what was lacking and apply the necessary remedial measures. They therefore expect the IDF to emerge from the war having produced novel methods of warfare.
They also have no doubt that the United States will replenish Israel’s war chest with a substantial aid program of new and improved weaponry.
From the Iranian viewpoint, Israel succeeded in seriously degrading Hizballah’s capabilities. It was also able to throw the Lebanese Shiite militia to the wolves; the West is now in a position to force Nasrallah and his men to quit southern Lebanon and disarm. The West shut its eyes when he flouted the Resolution 1559 order for the disarmament of all Lebanese militias. But that game is over. The Americans will use Resolution 1701 as an effect weapon to squeeze Iran, denied of its second-front deterrence, on its nuclear program.
Tehran hopes to pre-empt the American move by torpedoing the Lebanon ceasefire and preventing the termination of hostilities at all costs.
3)
http://www.sandmonkey.org/2006/08/13/jumping-on-the-bandwagon Jumping on the bandwagon
Dear Nasrallah,
I am writing you this letter because I owe you sir an apology: I didn't support you or your blessed organization when this conflict started. Hell, even before that. And for that, sir, I was wrong, and I apologize. From this day forward I am the biggest Hezbollah supporter, ever. I will wear those T-shirts, I will wave your yellow flag, and go to every pro Hezbollah rally and chant with the chanters. I am converted now. You made a believer out of me, with your victory over Israel, which totally destroyed the legend of the Israeli army, just like it was destroyed in 2000 and 73. what a fuckin resilient legend, huh? It's like the Freddy Kreuger of legends. Everytime you kill it, it just keeps coming back. This is why I urge you to destroy it once and for all this time around, and not accept the cease-fire agreement.
You see sir, we in Egypt accepted a cease-fire agreement once in 73, and that is why Israel still exists, as many nasserites and syrians have told me repeatedly. Had we not accepted the cease-fire and continued fighting, we would've eventually liberated all of palestine. But alas, that pussy Sadat and his concern over war cost, the mounting casualty rates and that second army in the Km 101 have cost us that victory. Never again. We should learn from our mistakes sir. Every Newspaper I read in the middle-east and every arab satalite news channel, especially yours, keeps informing me of how much Israelis you are killing, how few men you are losing and how you are accomplishing what no arab country has accomplished and are winning this war against Israel, and you know how the arab media never lies and always tells the truth. What I don't understand is this: if you are winning, why stop now? I say continue fighting, until, god willing, you destroy the accursed zionist entity and liberate Jersualem. I am sure that your army of 5000 fighters and your 10000 rockets can do it. I have faith in you, especially after all the victories you have achieved, like having the israeli army inside of Lebanon again, right where you want them of course, and having your neighborhood in Beirut destroyed, which saved you all the demolition costs it would've cost you for the Hezbollah Paradise Towers project, which will provide every shia family with a luxury High-rise apartment in a premium Bierut location. It was a fantastic business decision I must say. Die with envy Christians and sunnis. You didn't think of that, did ya?
Oh, those christians and sunnis and druze make me sick, with their "support" on one side and their pushing for cease-fire the other side. If they really supported You and Your party, they wouldn't even called for a cease-fire. Everyone knows you don't call for a cease-fire when you are so clearly winning. Those people are defeatists and possibly zionists agents, especially that Jumbalatt. He even looks like a jew, with his nose and his hair and his dislike of Syria. So what if they assassinated his father, huh? Is that enough reason for him to be such a freakin traitor? Hell NO. He should be the first on the butcher's block that one.
However, it is quite impossible that everybody who is calling for a cease-fire is a zionist traitor. I think the problem is that those people don't have any dignity, or at least have the wrong definition of dignity. Don't be hard on them, god knows I was one of them before I saw the light. I always thought the definition of dignity was that you have a good job, a decent house, could afford your kids a decent living in a peacefull country with a future. What american zionist propaganda. Dignity is getting attacked due to the actions of your leader, to the point of losing everything, and still refusing to hold that leader accountable. Dignity is having your entire neighborhood bombed, your children killed, and your only reaction is to dance in the streets like zulu warriors in support of Hezbollah. That's what dignity, pride and honor are all about. I get that now.
But we can help them get it too. Think about it: those people- cursed christian, sunnis and druze-who call for the cease-fire don't have dignity for a very good reason: Their houses are still standing. Hell, more than 80% of the country is still not destroyed. That's a lot of people without dignity oh great ayatollah Nasrallah, and we need to teach it to them. So please, for their own sake, continue bombing Israel from their villages and eventually those zionists will fall into your trap and bomb them as well, giving them instant dignity. Don't worry about any backlash on the short or long run. I mean, look at Nasser: He too entered wars against enemies far stronger than him, and caused the death of thousands of egyptians and the economic destruction of the country for decades to come. Do the people hate him? Noooooo. They love him, because he gave them dignity. Hell, your biggest supporters in Egypt keep comparing you to him, and they love you for reminding them of the dignity they feel whenever arabs die. Thank you for reminding them how it feels like to have dignity. Thank you.
And please, don't listen to those people who talk to you about the mounting lebanese civilian casualties due to Israeli bombing. Those people are idiots. First of all, you can't have an omlet without breaking some eggs. What? They thought liberating Palestine was going to be achieved with no people dying? Helloo, we have to kill 8 million jews to do it, and they are not big fans of getting killed. Deaths are inevitable. But, unlike them, our dead go to Heaven. Instant martyrs. Even the israeli muslims we kill are martyrs, as you said yourself. Those people are the same people who complained about the half a million iraqi children that died from malnutrition and lack of medicine from the sanctions imposed on the glorious regime of Saddam. They don't understand that Saddam gave them Dignity for breakfast, Honor for lunch and Pride for dinner as one Iraqi friend once told me, or that those half a million children are now playing in Heaven, after dying with the dignity that Saddam's rule gave them. But don't get mad at the ignorant my dear sir; they just don't know any better, since they don't understand dignity. Just like those arab leaders of ours, curse their names and faces.
Those so called leaders are all zionist american agents and have absolutely no dignity what so ever, as my nasserite friends have repeatedly told me. And you know what? They are right. A true arab leader, a leader with dignity, should immediatly go to war against Israel the moment they attempt to respond to your glorious and justified acts of resistance. Hell, they should throw all caution to the wind, not care about how unprepared they might be, or how such a war would effect the country economically, or even how many people would die because of it, and like Nike, just do it! A true leader shouldn't care about such trivial things like the welfare of his country or the safety of his people, as long as he engages in wars of dignity and inflicts some damages against the evil nazi zionists. That's what your glorious role model showed them, and the egyptian people have looked around, saw the peace and quiet we have been living in for the past 27 years and screamed: I DON'T WANT THIS HONORLESS PEACE! GIVE ME WAR! GIVE ME DEATH! GIVE ME DIGNITY. You are teaching all arabs what it means to be a leader with dignity, not one of those pansies that govern Egypt, Jordan or the arabIAN Gulf, with all of their sissy talk of peace, development and economic stability. What a bunch of pussies! Seriously! You will show them when you liberate Palestine. Oh yes you will.
And finally, don't listen to all of those poeple who talk about the difference in your army and the israeli army, and how they have superior weapons, like aircrafts and nuclear warheads. Those fools don't understand that you have the most powerful weapon of all: You have GOD ON YOUR SIDE. You even hinted at your special relationship when you omnipotently spoke about how the Israelis were going to attack in 2 months anyway, so it was a good thing to provoke an attack from them now while they were unprepared. Many people wonderd how you knew that, but only I figured it out: God told you. What? Do those people think he placed you as the leader of his party for no reason? HA! Foolish know-nothings! You have a close personal relationship with him. He talks to you and tells you stuff. This is why you don't do any filed fighting anymore, and reserve your energy for those TV appearances. You are in no hurry to die in order to meet him; he comes to you every night. And people wonder why the rest of the planet is in such bad shape: GOD IS BUSY, DAMN IT! He is occupied with making sure his party survives. And despite all that, you have those people who keep asking him for things like a better world, Justice and peace on earth, while he is busy helping you fight his chosen people. Don't people understand what Priorities mean anymore? People today man, I tell you, no manners!
And finally, If those negative defeatists naysayers continue their misguided rhetoric, refusing to believe that God is really on your side and will hand you your victory on a plate of silver, I would like to remind them what your name means. You are called Nasrallah, which means God's Victory. Come on people. Do I have to spell it out for ya? God's victory, waging the war using God's party? You are so gonna win this. It's not even a discussion!
So please, dear great supreme leader Hassan Nasrallah, for all of those reasons, don't accept the cease-fire. Continue fighting, and the gates of Jerusalem are yours to pass through. I will be here, standing right behind you, well, in front of the Television really, but I will be cheering really really hard for every Israeli death you inflict for every 10 death they inflict upon your people. And I will also pray very hard for God to help you out more and hasten the destruction of Israel. I hear they are considering bringing back Bibi as Prime Minister, so it really shouldn't be long now, since he will do most of the damage for you anyway, probably all in God's plan of giving you that victory. He works in mysterious ways, doesn't he? Oh yes. Yes, he sure does. And his victory and total annihilation of the jewish people is nigh and will be on your hands, god willing. Just keep fighting Nasrallah, and keep firing those rockets. I am sure the Israelis will just roll over and play dead any minute now!
Your new supporter and faithful scribe,
Sandmonkey