Hezbollah drone batters Israeli warship

Alarming new weapons in the hands of Hezbollah. From AP:

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah rammed an Israeli warship with an unmanned aircraft rigged with explosives Friday, setting it ablaze after Israeli warplanes smashed Lebanon's links to the world one by one and destroyed the headquarters of the Islamic guerrilla group's leader....

Israel again bombarded Lebanon's airport and main roads in the most intensive offensive against the country in 24 years. For the first time it struck the crowded Shiite neighborhood of south Beirut around Hezbollah's headquarters, toppling overpasses and sheering facades off apartment buildings. Concrete from balconies smashed into parked cars, and car alarms set off by the blasts blared for hours.

The toll in three days of clashes rose to 73 killed in Lebanon and at least 12 Israelis, as international alarm grew over the fighting and oil prices rose to above $78 a barrel. The U.N. Security Council held an emergency session on the violence, and Lebanon accused Israel of launching "a widespread barbaric aggression."

In addition to the fighting in Lebanon, Israel pressed ahead with its offensive in the Gaza Strip against Hamas, striking the Palestinian economy ministry offices early Saturday.

The ramming of the Israeli warship indicated Hezbollah has added a new weapon to the arsenal of rockets and mortars it has used against Israel. The Israeli army said the ship suffered severe damage and was on fire hours later as it headed home. There were no details on the ship's crew, though Al-Jazeera TV said the Israeli military was searching for four missing sailors....

Hezbollah rained dozens of rockets on towns in northern Israel. One rocket hit a home in Meron, killing a woman and her grandson. Some 220,000 people in northern towns hunkered down in bomb shelters....

The attack on the warship was apparently timed to coincide with Nasrallah's message on the militant group's television station. "The surprises that I have promised you will start now. Now in the middle of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship ... look at it burning," Nasrallah boasted.

Israeli military officials said the drone apparently was developed by Hezbollah. The Lebanese guerrilla group has managed to fly unmanned spy drones over northern Israel at least twice in recent years.

"If they kill us all, we will still not give them back the prisoners," said one resident, Nasser Ali Nasser, as palls of smoke rose from fuel depots hit farther south. "We have nothing left to lose except our dignity. We sacrifice ourselves for Sheik Nasrallah," he said....

"We know it's going to be a long and continuous campaign and operation, but it's very clear. We need to put Hezbollah out of business," Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan told The Associated Press.

Israel's army chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, said Hezbollah has rockets that can reach as far as 43.5 miles or more, which would bring more Israeli cities, such as Hadera, within range....

"We are on the right and we shall avenge every attack we endure," said Fadi Haidar, an American-Lebanese who swept up the shattered glass outside his store in south Beirut. "I have huge debts and now my store is damaged. ... But as time goes by, they will all realize that Sayyed Nasrallah is right and is working in the interest of Muslims."

There was some resentment that Hezbollah had dragged the Lebanese into another bloody fight with Israel. "As long as Hezbollah has its weapons and acts according to its leader's whims, there is pretext for Israel to keep on destroying Lebanon," said Ibrahim al-Hajj, a Christian shop owner in the southern village of Qleia.

 

Olmert: Operation will stop when Hizballah disarms

Olmert attempts to keep the world's focus where it should. I hope he will be successful in this, for the problem the West faces now is that so many of its leaders do not even recognize the evil that must be resisted. The world outcry against Israel is a prime example of this. "Olmert: Operation will stop when Hizbullah disarms," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Israel will not halt its offensive in Lebanon until Hizbullah is disarmed, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Friday.

Olmert made the comments during a telephone call with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Israeli government officials said Friday. Olmert agreed to allow a U.N. team come to the area to try to mediate a cease-fire, an official close to Olmert said....

Olmert said he would only cooperate with the U.N. team if its mandate would be to free the captured Israeli soldiers and force Lebanon to comply with a U.N. resolution that calls on it to deploy its forces along its border with Israel, moving Hizbullah guerrillas out of the area, the official said.

Boston: Judge widens review of city mosque deal

It looks as if there now might actually be review of the sweetheart deal the city of Boston gave to the Islamic Society of Boston on land for a mosque -- sold to the ISB for substantially below market value.

See here for details.

"Judge widens review of city mosque deal," from the Jewish Advocate, with thanks to MB:

The case against the City of Boston and a Muslim group over a controversial mosque project in Roxbury could get stronger, after a judge admitted new documents raising questions about the city’s conduct in the deal.

“This is a significant step forward,” said Evan Slavitt, the lawyer representing James Policastro, the Mission Hill resident who originally filed a lawsuit against the city and the Islamic Society of Boston in October 2004. The suit charges that the city’s sale of public land at a significant discount for the construction of a mosque in exchange for a package of benefits, including an Islamic lecture series, violated the separation of church and state.

The ISB is suing The David Project, which played a role in bringing about the Policastro suit, along with the Boston Herald and Fox 25 News, for defaming the organization and conspiring to block its mosque project. Construction on the Islamic center, which is about three quarters complete and is projected to cost more than $24 million, is currently stalled due to lack of funds.

In issuing her decision late last month, Judge Regina Quinlan rejected the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s claim that only materials it submitted as part of an administrative record of the deal could be reviewed. Policastro’s claims, the judge wrote, were of “constitutional dimension” and other documents that have recently come to light could be used to support the case.

Among the documents the BRA did not include in its administrative record was an opinion from the BRA’s legal counsel in the early stages of the project warning that discounting the sale price of the land for a religious group could pose constitutional problems. An Ethics Commission opinion also noted that the close involvement of a Muslim BRA official, Muhammad Ali Salaam, could create the appearance that decisions were “unduly influenced by personal loyalties.”

Other documents indicate that Ali Salaam was intimately involved in many aspects of the deal, traveling to the Middle East on a fund-raising trip with ISB officials and writing letters on behalf of the ISB on BRA stationary.

Slavitt said that he now plans to file a motion that would compel BRA and ISB officials to provide testimony. So far they have refused to comply.

Citing the litigation, BRA officials also refused to participate in a public hearing on the deal called by a Boston city councilor in May.
Slavitt said that it’s too early to say what the outcome of the lawsuit will be but, he said, it could ultimately invalidate the transaction, meaning that the ISB would “have to tear down the establishment.”

Keep your fingers crossed.

Suseelan: Close the Door on Jihadi Terrorism

Dr. Babu Suseelan writes with searing intensity about the Mumbai jihad bombings and the necessity for the Indian government (like the governments of the West) to wake up to the reality of jihad:

I saw the naked, deadly Jihadi bombing on commuter trains in Mumbay and I feel an odd combination of anger, bewilderment and embarrassment (for being from a country in which such insanity is tolerated).

Can't a country as India get its priorities straight and get this Jihadis out of our streets? Is this what the taxpayers really want to pay legislators, police and courts to do? What utter madness. I have come to believe more and more that Jihadi terrorism and other problems in India won't get better until law abiding citizens turn their rage on the stupid, third rate gutter politicians and arm chair secularists.

Continue reading "Suseelan: Close the Door on Jihadi Terrorism"

West: Connecting the dots on Islam

Diana West once again speaks truth to power:

...That's because this is just life as we know it, and, worse, life as we expect to know it in America, land of the free and stomping ground of the Islamic terrorist. Frankly, I hardly recognize the old place. The "home of the brave" becomes something else again when "brave" necessarily constitutes booking that domestic flight, taking that commuter train and sitting like ducks wondering whether we'll reach our destination in one piece -- unlike hundreds of innocents in Bombay. An Indian railway laborer made the carnage vivid to the Washington Post: "We collected scattered limbs with our own hands and put them in bundles and sent them to hospital."

Noting the ensuing security upsurge in American cities, Islamic expert Robert Spencer wrote the following at his must-read Web site, JihadWatch.org:

"This is the effect of terror, and this is just what the terrorists want that effect to be. It ties up their enemies' time and money, and it strikes fear in their hearts, in accordance with the Qur'an: 'Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly (8:60).'"

Spencer continued: "Of course, from the infidels' standpoint all anti-terror measures must be undertaken. But they should be accompanied by a strength of will that realizes that it is precisely fear and the loss of the will to resist that the jihadists are ultimately hoping to bring about."

He's right. The will to resist is indeed the target of jihadists from India to Israel, from New York City to London. But, as Spencer would undoubtedly agree [sho nuf would -- RS], security measures alone -- walking through metal detectors (in our socks), submitting our belongings to random searches -- don't constitute policy. They don't solve the problem of global jihad: the war of terrorism. At best, security measures thwart acts of terrorism -- and thank goodness -- but only for another day, another trip, another short hop home.

Besides the will to resist, then, we need the knowledge to resist -- the knowledge that there is in the religion of Islam itself the historical, inexorable and driving force behind what the entire non-Muslim world is now experiencing as jihad terror. Whether most Muslims wouldn't hurt a fly is an increasingly irrelevant footnote to the hostile aggression of other Muslims who, in a very short time, have actually transformed civilization as we used to know it.

If the will to resist allows us to manage the threat of violence, the will to connect the dots would compel us to eliminate it. How? By carefully examining and, I would hope, reconsidering and reversing, through foreign, domestic and immigration initiatives, what should now be seen, gimlet-eyed, as the Islamization of the non-Islamic world. Such an assessment, however, is all too vulnerable to catcall-attacks of "bigotry," even "Nazism" -- a deceptively inverted assault given the doctrinal bigotry and similarities to Nazism historically promulgated by the Islamic creed....

How's That Democracy Project Going?

The ever-perspicacious Andy McCarthy at The Corner:

We've been told for some time now — against common sense and the weight of our own national experience — that the way to defeat international jihadism is to spread democracy.

So now the Lebanese democracy can't control Hezbollah (which has been freely elected and controls about a fifth of its legislature), while the Palestinian Authority IS Hamas (the Palestinian people having democratically put them in power).

How much do we figure that Israel is hoping democracy breaks out in Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad waiting in the wings? All it needs right about now is yet another democratic neighbor.

Democracy has many enduring benefits, but it doesn't stop terrorists from operating — and in many ways, it makes life easier for them. When are we going to stop talking about it as a national security cure-all?

We have to kill al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and the rest. This is harder work than the administration's rhetoric is preparing the nation for. We are not going to democratize these savages into submission.

Hizballah HQ in Beirut hit

But Nasrallah survived, and he is still full of threats and murder. "Nasrallah vows to strike south of Haifa; Hezbollah HQ in Beirut hit," from Haaretz:

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah vowed Friday to strike Israeli targets south of Haifa, after an Israel Air Force attack left the group's headquarters in Beirut in ruins.

The group was quick to announce that Nasrallah had been unhurt in the strike.

"Hezbollah's secretary-general, family and bodyguards are safe and sound," a Hezbollah statement said. Nasrallah's residence and office were destroyed in the attack....

In a speech aired live shortly after the attack, Nasrallah said the group would strike deeper inside Israel, which it charged with launching the operation in Lebanon to avenge its failure in preventing the abduction and killing of its soldiers by Hezbollah earlier in the week.

Hezbollah would also strike "beyond Haifa and what is beyond, beyond Haifa," Nasrallah said. He made reference to a new strike on an Israeli naval boat in Lebanese waters. The warship was lightly damaged in the strike, and there were no injuries, the IDF said.

"You wanted an open war and we are ready for an open war," the Hezbollah leader said. "You have chosen an all-out war with a nation which... has the capability, the experience and the courage."

Nasrallah said that Lebanon could either surrender or "have faith in Allah and victory," and said he was sure that most of Lebanese would want to stand side by side with Hezbollah....

A senior General Staff official told Haaretz that the IDF is planning to bomb Hezbollah headquarters in a densely populated area of south Beirut on Friday.

The IDF said it has dropped leaflets warning civilians of the impending attack and that many of them have left the Shi'ite Dahiya quarter of south Beirut, where thousands of people live in multi-story residential buildings.

"We will atack more significant targets than we have attacked until now," the officer said. "If we had chosen to bomb earlier, it would have ended with hundreds of civilians killed, and we took ethical considerations into account. On the other hand, we will not adopt a naive approach, and the model of terrorists hiding behind civilians will not be accepted."

He said any civilian who chooses to remain in the area is putting his life in danger....

Hezbollah official Ghaleb Abu Zaineb reiterated Friday the militant group's commitment to attacking Haifa if Israel attacks Beirut.

"We are committed to what we say, but we will decide the manner and timing of our response," said Abu Zaineb, a member of the Hezbollah political bureau. "The enemy must expect an attack on Haifa at any time."

Israel is attempting to put pressure on the Lebanese government and force Hezbollah to free two Israeli soldiers the group captured Wednesday. Israel has already bombed Lebanon's airports and blockaded the country from the sea, bringing trade and tourism to a halt....

IDF spokeswoman Miri Regev said Friday that the IDF has hit "dozens of rocket storehouses and stockpiles" belonging to Hezbollah. She also said the Hezbollah stronghold is "the place where the Hezbollah leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah, are located on a regular basis."

Friday's raids took place after Katyusha rockets slammed into the northern port city of Haifa on Thursday. Earlier that day, two Israelis were killed and 120 were wounded when scores of Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah guerillas rained down across northern Israel.

"We cannot tolerate a situation where a terrorist organization is operating from a sovereign country on our northern border and threatening well over half a million Israeli civilians," said army spokesman Capt. Jacob Dallal.

The Thug-In-Chief's big plan?

"If the Zionist regime commits another stupid move and attacks Syria, this will be considered like attacking the whole Islamic world and this regime will receive a very fierce response," said Ahmadinejad.

That means the dhimmi nations of Europe (which has been set against Israel for years as it is), with their large and restive Muslim populations, as well as the countries of the OIC.

Ahmadinejad may see this as his big chance to unite the Islamic world behind Iran, positioning the Shi'ite mullahocracy as the best candidate to lead the jihad against the Great Satan. Did he set Hizballah loose on Israel with particular virulence in recent weeks in order to provoke Israeli attacks against civilian targets -- which jihadists have for years tried to provoke from Israel by launching attacks from areas heavily populated by civilians? Perhaps he was hoping to unleash the full force of the world's dhimmi leftist media against Israel, and to shame Europe, if not America, into refusing to lift a finger in Israel's defense -- and/or to provoke Europe's Muslims into full-bore jihad against the dhimmi non-Muslim Europeans.

Perhaps we are witnessing an attempt to resurrect the Shi'ite Fatimid caliphate.

I am not saying that Israel should not retaliate strongly. Just the opposite. I am saying that President Bush and others should not be fooled into playing into the hands of the Thug-In-Chief by portraying Israel as indiscriminately killing civilians in its response to Hizballah acts of war. Bush, Blair and the rest should stand up at the upcoming G8 Summit and say forthrightly that they stand with Israel against the global jihad that targets their countries as well as Israel, and that they recognize that Israel is not targeting civilians but is doing what it must do in order to destroy the jihadists' ability to continue to wage war against them.

But they won't.