The Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and the crimes that have gone without punishment in Argentina - by Clifford D. May and Toby Dershowitz

...That investigator, just days before he was assassinated, said prophetically: "With Nisman around or not, the evidence is there." Argentines now face a choice: to act on that evidence or to surrender to terrorists and murderers. To put it another way, they must decide what kind of nation Argentina is, and what kind of nation Argentina will become.


Clifford D. May/Toby Dershowitz..
Israel Hayom..
28 January '19..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/crimes-without-punishment-in-argentina/



For more than a decade, Alberto Nisman had been investigating the worst terrorist attack ever committed on Argentine soil: the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Eighty-five people were killed and hundreds wounded.

Four years ago this week, the federal prosecutor was putting the finishing touches on a report that would accuse then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and a dozen others of helping cover up the Islamic Republic of Iran's responsibility for the attack.

On Jan. 18, the day before he was to present that report to Argentina's Congress, Nisman was found dead in the bathroom of his locked 13th-floor apartment. A .22-caliber bullet had been fired at close-range into his head.

Kirchner initially called his death a suicide – even though his fingerprints were not found on the Bersa pistol left close to his body, and there was no gunpowder residue on his hands.

Just over a year ago, however, an investigation by 28 forensic experts and law enforcement officials conclusively determined that he did not kill himself. In fact, they were able to deduce, two people roughed him up, sedated him, and then shot him.

Who were those people? And from whom were they taking orders? Argentines attempting to answer such questions place themselves in danger.

Late last month, Federal Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, who also is Nisman's former wife and the mother of their two daughters, withdrew from formal involvement in the investigation. The reason: ongoing threats – the "need to guarantee the protection and safety of the family," as she phrased it in a written statement.

Nisman used wire-tapped conversations to build his case against Kirchner. Among them was one concerning an ally, former intelligence official Antonio Stiuso. Kirchner says on tape: "We have to kill him." Her defenders claim she did not intend to be taken literally. Stiuso, unconvinced, subsequently fled the country with his family.

In September 2017, former Argentine Ambassador to Syria Roberto Ahuad revealed in testimony that Foreign Minister Hector Timerman had visited Syria in January 2011 to finalize an agreement with Iran, at a meeting hosted by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. A message sent to Ahuad asked: "When are you committing suicide?" Another warned: "Beware of an induced suicide."

And Eduardo Taiano, the head prosecutor investigating Nisman's murder, has received messages threatening to do to him and his son what was done to Nisman.

Nevertheless, Taiano is continuing to investigate, focusing most immediately on calls made over more than 150 phone lines – many of them reportedly to intelligence agents – on the day Nisman's body was found.

Long before implicating Argentine officials in a conspiracy, Nisman had found solid evidence that officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran planned and financed the AMIA bombing, and that Hezbollah, its terrorist proxy, carried it out.

Israel and the Perils of Postponing Preemption - by Dr. Martin Sherman

Israel is approaching a point when it must decide to destroy the capabilities of the Hezbollah, rather than attempting to deter the enemy from using them.

Dr. Martin Sherman..
MiDA..
04 March '18..
Link: http://en.mida.org.il/2018/03/04/perils-postponing-preemption/

No government, if it regards war as inevitable, even if it does not want it, would be so foolish as to wait for the moment which is most convenient for the enemy. – Otto von Bismarck (1815–1890)

Senior IDF officers have publicly warned in the past few days, that the chances of war on Israel’s northern border in 2018 are growing significantly (see for examples here and here.) The specter of renewed fighting presents Israel with a daunting dilemma.

100,000 Missiles Just for Show?

Since the end of the 2006 Lebanon War, poorly conducted—and even more poorly concluded—by the Olmert government, the arsenal of the Iranian terror proxy, Hezbollah has grown exponentially in both the quantity and quality of its weaponry. It is now reportedly over ten times its pre-war size, and vastly enhanced in terms of its precision and destructive capacity.

Indeed, no one even vaguely familiar with the brutal nature of the organization—its gory past, and chilling proclamations of future intent—could even remotely entertain the hopelessly naïve belief that it was stockpiling over 100,000 missiles just for show.

Accordingly then, the working assumption underlying Israel’s strategic planning must be that, at some stage, they will in fact be used against Israel and its civilian population centers. Certainly, any policy discounting such a possibility as implausible would be wildly irresponsible.

As Israeli military sources point out, the likelihood of such a grim scenario has been increased by several other factors, over which Israel has little to no control.

The one is the winding down of the civil war in Syria, in which Hezbollah has been embroiled to support their ally, Bashar al-Assad, who appears to have regained control of much of the country. This allowed Hezbollah forces to begin disengaging from the fighting and to refocus their attention on the hated “Zionist entity” to the south.

The other is the undisguised efforts of Iran to establish a permanent military presence in both Syria and Lebanon. This includes the deployment of troops and the production of weapons in these two client states and the completion of a Shia crescent, creating an effective land bridge from Iran to the Mediterranean coast.

Who Decides When?

Given the assumption that, bolstered by its patron’s pervasive physical presence, Hezbollah will in all likelihood eventually use the vast arsenal at its disposal, the inevitable question is: Will Israel allow its deadly adversary to choose the time, place and circumstances for a major attack against it? Indeed, more to the point, can Israel afford to allow Hezbollah such a choice?

To grasp the consequences of permitting Hezbollah the chance of a large-scale first-strike, it is necessary to understand that the organization now poses a much graver threat than that of an asymmetric war with a guerrilla army, as it did in the past. Thus, a study prepared in July 2017 by a well-known security studies institute warned:

“…military buildups by Iran and Hezbollah – in Syria, and the production of high quality weapons in Lebanon – could mark the start of a new era… and could be seen as an attempt by Iran and Hezbollah to create a symmetrical strategic equation with Israel, if not more than that, i.e., achieving the capability to inflict significant damage to critical military and civilian systems in Israel”.

Accordingly, Hezbollah has become a strategic danger to Israel. While on its own it is clearly unable to invade and conquer large tracts of territory, it is eminently capable of wreaking massive damage on Israel’s civilian population and its strategic infrastructure.

A Third Lebanon War? It will be the Last Lebanon War - by Vic Rosenthal

...Evil is growing stronger and good is retreating. Deterrence may put off the reckoning for a time, but unless something completely unforeseen happens, the day will come when our PM will have to give the order to save one nation by destroying another. I’m glad I’m not the one to do it.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
09 December '16..

If I’ve learned anything in my relatively comfortable and placid life it is that despite my good luck, evil is real. Sometimes it grows and sometimes declines. Today it’s gathering strength.

Hezbollah came into being in 1985, as a response to the Lebanese Civil War, Western interventions, and the Israeli invasion and its aftermath. Its stated goals were the elimination of Western influence, the assertion of Islamic (Shiite) dominance over Lebanon, and the destruction of Israel, which its founders saw as a tool of the West and an ally of Lebanese Christians.

Its attitude toward Israel is shown by this snippet from an “open letter” published by its founders in a Lebanese newspaper:

The month-long Second Lebanon War in 2006 was fought by an IDF grown complacent from years of occupation duty and a leadership team (PM Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz) who were only marginally competent. While Hezbollah suffered heavy losses and much Lebanese infrastructure was destroyed, Israel was unable to stop the heavy rocket fire on the northern part of the country, which continued until a UN-brokered cease-fire came into effect. 120 IDF soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians were killed, and as many as a half-million Israelis were displaced as a result of Hezbollah rocket attacks. Israel tried to destroy Hezbollah’s leadership both from the air and by commando operations, and failed to do so. UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which was negotiated by Livni to end the fighting, proved worthless in preventing Hezbollah from rearming and rebuilding military infrastructure. Wikipedia called the result a “stalemate,” and I agree.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

The war of 2006 was not a Lebanese war. It was an Iranian war. - by Caroline Glick

The war Israel fought in the summer of 2006 against Hezbollah was not the same as the war Israel fought against the PLO in 1982. The war of 2006 was not a Lebanese war. It was an Iranian war.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
11 July '16..
Link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-World-The-first-Iran-war-460106..

July 12, 2006 was the first day of what has become known as the Second Lebanon War. The name of the war, like most of the lessons taken from it, is off.

The war Israel fought in the summer of 2006 against Hezbollah was not the same as the war Israel fought against the PLO in 1982. The war of 2006 was not a Lebanese war. It was an Iranian war.

It was the first Iran war.

Hezbollah, acting as Iran’s foreign legion, initiated the war with a massive mortar and rocket assault on communities in northern Israel. Under mortar cover, a Hezbollah unit crossed the border and attacked an IDF convoy traveling close to Kibbutz Zarit.

Five soldiers were killed in the missile attack. Members of the Hezbollah squad stole the bodies of two of the dead, IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser and spirited them to Lebanon.

A rescue mission to bring them back failed, after the tank, tasked with the job was hit by a land mine. Five more soldiers were killed.

Hezbollah’s assault was not the opening salvo of the war. That happened two and a half weeks earlier along the border with Gaza. The July 12 attack was a carbon copy of Hamas’s June 25 assault.

At dawn that day, Hamas forces opened a salvo of mortar fire on IDF positions along the border with Gaza. Under cover of the fire, a Hamas cell penetrated Israel through an underground tunnel. The terrorists attacked a tank, killing two soldiers and abducting IDF corporal Gilad Shalit.

Following the opening assault, Hamas maintained its mortar, missile and rocket offensive against Israel for weeks.

In 2006, Hamas acted as a wholly-owned and operated Iranian proxy. Iran began massively funding the Muslim Brotherhood group in 2005. Hamas operatives, like their Hezbollah counterparts and colleagues from the Muslim Brotherhood in Sinai, were brought to Iran for training. Iran smuggled massive quantities of weaponry to Gaza, through Egypt.

In other words, the misnamed Second Lebanon War was a two-front war. It was a coordinated assault on Israel by two Iranian controlled terror armies. They operated with a near identical doctrine and operations guide, albeit, with different capabilities.

Failing to recognize this fact, either during the war or afterwards, Israel’s military leadership has yet to learn the appropriate lessons from the war. Both then and now, the IDF senior brass takes a myopic view of war. The enemy is not a larger force, coordinating and directing operations on the ground that it is the IDF’s job to defeat, the enemy is what you see. And you don’t need to think past your rifle sights.

How US actions emboldened and empower the terrorists of Hezbollah - by Arnold Roth

If you're not deeply concerned about what this means and how it happened, you might not understand what terrorism does to civilized societies. And if you think it's a problem that impacts only Israel, you might not understand the Iranian game-plan. Here's a little suggested homework.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
26 June '16..

In a public speech broadcast on Friday and reported the following day, ["In first, Hezbollah confirms all financial support comes from Iran", Al Arabiya, June 25, 2016], the supreme head of the Lebanon-based terror organization Hezbollah made several revelations that ought to have an impact on how the world views the Iranian menace.

Figuring out who the terrorists are and what to do about them is, as we keep saying here, not such a straightforward thing.

Hezbollah illustrates the point: it is formally classified as a terrorist organization by the Arab League, all the monarchic Gulf states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), United States, France, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Israel.

On the other hand, the European Union, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have decided they view only its so-called military wing as terrorist; the rest of they are presumably OK with. Russia says Hezbollah is legitimate and China "remains neutral" [source; Wikipedia].

It's hard not to be deeply cynical about how diplomats and politicians, aware and informed of what the terrorists are doing with their improbably vast arsenal - currently estimated at an astounding 150,000 rockets and ramping up - play games with people's lives.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

The Importance of Samir Kuntar by Jonathan S. Tobin

...Israel has repeatedly tried to trade land for peace with the Palestinians and gotten only more terror in return for their efforts. But one needn’t rehearse the history of Israeli offers of statehood and far-reaching territorial withdrawals to understand why they all failed. All you have to do is to ponder why Samir Kuntar could have been treated like a hero while alive or acclaimed as a martyr after his richly-deserved punishment was finally meted out.

Image by © Wael Hamzeh/epa/Corbis

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentay Magazine..
21 December '15..

In a world where there is precious little justice to be found, some was done this past weekend in the form of a missile strike on a building in Damascus on Saturday, Samir Kuntar was killed. Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze, had spent 30 years in prison for leading a terror attack on northern Israel that resulted in the deaths of four people, including two children. Released in 2008 in an exchange with Hezbollah, Kuntar returned to Lebanon and was acclaimed a hero by both the Lebanese and Palestinians. Since then, he’s been a leading Hezbollah operative credited with helping to build a terror network in the Golan Heights as well as playing a role in the defense of the murderous Assad regime in Syria. It was in Syria, where he had reportedly been operating under the instructions of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, that what was almost certainly an Israeli mission brought his bloody career to a close. Reportedly, the motivation for the strike was not so much a belated reckoning for Kuntar’s crimes as the fact that he was believed to be part of new terror plots against Israel.

But while this action will generate the usual hypocritical broadsides about Israel’s anti-terror operations, it’s important to place Kuntar’s life in perspective. His record and popularity speaks volumes about what is wrong with the culture of the world that venerated him as a hero.

Hezbollah has threatened to retaliate for his death and has already fired some missiles at northern Israel. But while Israel’s critics will condemn the attack and blame it for doing something that might escalate tensions in the region, the chances of a new war with Hezbollah over Kuntar are not considered great. Hezbollah is in no position to try and replay its 2006 conflict that devastated much of Lebanon. With the terror group having reportedly lost up to one-third of its armed strength fighting as Iranian mercenaries on behalf of Bashar Assad, they can’t afford to pick a fight with the Israelis. Nor is Iran likely to want its Lebanese auxiliaries to waste their carefully hoarded arsenal of rockets on futile attacks on Israeli targets that will be defended by Iron Dome batteries that will likely shoot most of them down. Tehran also isn’t going to want to let Hezbollah do anything that might conceivably undermine efforts to keep Assad in power with the acquiescence of the Obama administration.

Instead, as it has done with various Revolutionary Guard figures that have been slain, Iran will write off Kuntar’s death as part of the price of funding terror and now treat him as a “martyr” to the anti-Zionist cause. His fate will be used to whip up more anti-Israel sentiment. And it is that fact that ought to be of greater interest to foreign observers than Hezbollah’s vows of revenge.

That Kuntar is a hero to Hezbollah’s legions of supporters as well as to Palestinians can’t be denied. He was released in exchange for the dead bodies of two Israeli soldiers who were killed in a cross-border raid carried out by Hezbollah in 2006 that helped set off what was called the second Lebanon War. Like the more than 1,000 Palestinians who were released in an Israeli deal with Hamas that ransomed captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Kuntar emerged from prison to acclaim throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. His seniority as the captured terrorist that had spent the most time in an Israeli jail seemed to confer on him a status that put him above most other prisoners. Though he was not considered the most effective Iranian/Hezbollah operative, he remained popular.

But it’s useful at this point to revisit, at least for a moment, what were the actions that made him a legend. As the Times of Israel writes:

Connecting the Dots Between Iran Talks and Hezbollah Violence

...An Iran that is permitted to become a nuclear threshold state will not only be vastly more powerful than it is today but in a position to directly threaten Israeli security and that of Jordan and perhaps even Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The fighting along Israel’s northern border is just a tease of what may come once Hezbollah is protected by an Iran that believes the U.S. has granted it impunity to pursue its aggressive agenda.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
28 January '15..

The instinct in Washington is to dismiss the latest flare-up in violence along Israel’s northern border as just another incident in a long-running cycle of violence involving Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces. The State Department will condemn the attack on Israel but it will call for restraint and calm. Their expectation, echoed in much of the media, is that once the smoke clears, the combatants will return to an armed and hostile truce enabling diplomats to concentrate on more important things like the administration’s pursuit of détente with Iran. But whether or not the shooting continues in the coming days, this incident, in which two Israeli soldiers were killed by terrorists firing over an international border, must be understood as intrinsically connected to the broader issue of U.S. relations with Iran and its nuclear program. The fighting is a wake-up call to the West alerting it to the fact that Tehran’s real purpose is not, as President Obama hopes, “to get right with the world,” but to dominate the region and threaten Israel and moderate Arab nations.

The border violence is generally being reported as part of a tit-for-tat exchange between Hezbollah and Israel. Today’s incident, in which anti-tank shells were fired at Israeli vehicles travelling on a civilian road from three miles away inside Lebanon, is seen by many as retaliation for Israel’s strike at a Hezbollah missile base inside Syria last week in which, among others, an Iranian general was killed. Iran has warned Israel that it would retaliate and it is thought that today is proof that they meant what they said.

But there is more to this than the need for Hezbollah to do the bidding of its Iranian paymasters or even for it to gain revenge for the death of the terrorists slain with Tehran’s ballistic missile expert, one of whom was the son of a slain commander of the group. The point of setting up that base in Syria, near the Golan Heights, was to create a launching pad to hit the Jewish state without bringing down the wrath of the Israel Defense Forces on Lebanon, as was the case during the 2006 war that was set off by similar cross-border raids. But the reason why Hezbollah and Iran were so interested in strengthening their ability to rain down destruction on Israeli civilian targets is that Tehran sees itself as being locked in a permanent war with Israel as well as with Arab states in the region.

This is more than obvious to anyone who pays the slightest attention to Iranian policy as well as its use of terrorists to advance its policy goals. Hezbollah is an arm of Iranian foreign policy as proved by its use as shock troops in the effort to preserve the rule of Tehran’s ally Bashar Assad in Syria.