Maybe Now We'll Get It. "Civilians" are a weapon to them

"Civilians" are a weapon to them -- as much a part of the fight as the AK-47 or RPG they carry

Muslim guerrillas take it a step further: "Civilians" are a weapon to them -- as much a part of the fight as the AK-47 or RPG they carry.

Those who have visited any Hezbollah installation in Lebanon over the years always remark on the fact that there are always families, women and children, in and around the place. "Secret" installations are usually hidden in plain site -- in houses or apartment buildings.

Seldom, if ever, has a guerrilla movement been able to so openly and exquisitely weave itself into the fabric of a society as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon.

If the civilians in and around these operational bases happen to be of Hezbollah's own brand of Islam they automatically become a part of the "sacrificial," suicidal equation. Often without choice or foreknowledge, they die an "honorable" death in the battle against infidels or apostates.

If the civilians happen to be of some other persuasion, Islamic or otherwise, their deaths are not even worth a shrug. However, these mangled bodies and wailing women with arms outstretched do provide an immense propaganda payoff, especially in the Western "crusader" media -- which still places a quaint value on human life.

As Israel continues to "shape the battlefield" in Lebanon with its air strikes, the toll of civilian casualties mounts. How many of these are really hapless civilians and how many are Hezbollah fighters and their sometimes willing and sometimes fearfully compliant or resigned human shields will take a long time to sort out.

Suffice it to say the Israeli bombing operations are not indiscriminate. The targets, even those in downtown Beirut, are from painstakingly prepared lists compiled over years of watching the Hezbollah military buildup. The IDF is making often sacrificial efforts to pinpoint known Hezbollah installations and use precision guided weapons. They are making mistakes, yes, and they are probably victims from time to time of Hezbollah efforts to purposely mislead them into bombing completely innocent buildings.

But progress is being made, and Hezbollah will find it increasingly difficult to operate offensively with its Iran-Syrian missile inventory, especially the larger weapons. (The Katyusha rockets are inaccurate short-range artillery shells, often more annoying than deadly.) Hezbollah's greatest asset right now lies in the fact that it has been all but impenetrable to spies. However, the Israeli pounding is forcing it into movement without real freedom of movement, and that will play into the hands of the IDF in the air and on the ground.

Meanwhile, the headlines are filled with the shedding of blood, some innocent, some not so obviously innocent. But all the blood of this terrible struggle is on the hands of Hezbollah. As they have grown tactically and operationally wise in their hatred, they have shown more fully their utter disregard for human life. They have calculated the bloody effect of what they and their mentors in Tehran and Damascus have started. So what if a beautiful city, Beirut, is destroyed? So what if thousands of the hapless, the ignorant, the innocent die? The Islamofanatic "vision" of submission or extermination is worth any cost. To Hezbollah -- high on the hatred of centuries -- this is total war, and the very term "civilian" -- except for its temporary value in gulling the West -- does not apply.

Who Is Hezbollah?
By John E. Carey

FOX News Channel reporter Shepard Smith, interviewing an Israeli soldier on the border between Israel and Lebanon today (at about 1915 GMT) heard the soldier, who had recently been engage with Hezbollah fighters say, “They are an army. They are not a terror group.”

Hezbollah, throughout its history, has defined itself. Previous definitions of like “terror group” hardly apply, as the Israeli soldier noticed today.

Hezbollah's leaders distance themselves from the word terrorist. They call themselves a resistance movement and they are proud of their operations against Israel from Lebanon.

The leaders of Hezbollah view Israel as an illegal government that took land away from the people of Palestine and have no right to live in the Middle East. Hezbollah wants the Israelis to “go back where they came from.”

Everyone who comes into contact with Hezbollah members and their leaders has the same reaction: each man is tremendously dedicated.

On October 20 2000, ABC News’ Ted Koppel interviewed Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah who made these observations:

“This state [Israel] was established on the basis of occupation….If you want my opinion, I say that this is a state based on occupation, that has usurped the rights of others. We don’t want to talk about dismantling the state. We want to talk about—we prefer to talk about returning the land to people whose right it is— What is clear that I—is that I don’t believe in the State of Israel as a legal state because it was founded on occupation.”

"Would you allow a people to come from somewhere else and occupy a part of the United States, and set up an independent state, and, after 50 years, you would not be able to stay on this land? The initial point is it permissible for them to come and occupy this land or not? What is illegal cannot be legal just because it has been 50 years. Occupation remains occupation, even if it’s for hundreds of years.”

“Israel remains a foreign body in this large area, and it always proved that it is unable to coexist with this environment, because the, the scope of the massacres that it has committed does not permit it to coexist. Over the last 50 years, the State of Israel has proved that it is an expansionist state, and wants to dominate the region, and it is not convinced of what it has already. It always intervenes in the affairs of the other countries in this region, as it happened in Lebanon.”

“You can look at the West Bank. Cities are like prisons. They can be closed quickly by the Israeli forces, and everything stops in these cities. This is the result of Oslo. So what Arafat and the Israelis agree on can affect the course of events. The Sharm el-Sheikh summit did not produce an agreement. It was a failure. They brought them together just to tell them—stop fighting. The Palestinian must stop throwing stones, and the Israelis must stop firing rockets. And in the view of the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, rockets are equal to stones.”

Ever defiant, Hassan Nasrallah appeared on al-Jazeera TV on July 20, 2006, saying, "We have not been harmed." He also said Hezbollah will never be forced to release two Israeli soldiers it has capturedAnd he warned that a Hezbollah defeat would mark "a defeat for the entire Islamic nation."

On April 17, 2002, in an exclusive interview, Dan Rather of CBS News interviewed spoke to Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, about how for more than 20 years, Lebanon-based Hezbollah has waged terrorist war on Israel, and killed hundreds of Americans as well.Said Naim Qassem, “We have never been a terrorist organization. We consider ourselves a resistance movement against occupation. Israel is the terrorist because they are killing children, women and old people. And the United States too is a terrorist insofar as it supports Israel.”

On July 20, 2006, Hussein Naboulsi, Hezbollah’s chief spokesman, led foreign reporters the twisted wreckage of a Beirut suburb that had been, just last weeks, both the seat of government of Hezbollah and a residential area for ordinary Lebanese. Naboulsi said no Hezbollah members had been harmed and that the target was the construction site for a mosque.

He said all of the damage was caused by Israeli aggression. Naboulsi shrugged off the idea that Hezbollah was losing support. He said the bombings had empowered the group and that they showed the "cowardly" face of the Israeli’s who struck at a completely civilian target.

"If they think they can block our way or we will run out of rockets, they're wrong," Naboulsi said.

The big questions are: Does Hezbollah have weapons of mass destruction? Do they have ballistic missiles to deliver them? And just how far will Hezbollah go?

No one knows for sure the answers to these question, but the Hezbollah leaders have hinted for months that they have more than Israel knows about.

"Israel doesn't know our capabilities on every level," Nasrallah said. "The Zionist enemy has not succeeded in infiltrating our group. The enemy doesn't know our capabilities or what we have.”

Many outsiders view Hezbollah as a “terrorist group.” But Hezbollah is, in many ways, more like a small but sovereign and very dangerous regional power, than it is like the 9-11 terrorists.

Hezbollah controls its own media, runs hotels and restaurants, and operates a thriving economy in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah provides social services that the government of Lebanon cannot afford to supply. It controls some 25% of the Lebanese land mass and almost half a million people. It runs its own schools, elderly centers, clinics, hospitals and libraries.

They don't just hide among a population they ARE the population. They own southern Lebanon.

But what makes Hezbollah very different, in fact unique in the history of stateless terror groups to date, is its access to very sophisticated missiles and other weapons.

How else is Hezbollah more like a "state" than a terror group? According to Israel's Dr. Boaz Ganor, the deputy dean of the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy and the founder of theInstitute for Counter Terrorism in Israel said, "The Hizbullah has succeeded in creating a situation in which it deters Israel more than Israel deters it. It is unprecedented for a terrorist organization to deter a state and not vice versa. "

We do not know, and may never know, if Hezbollah possesses or has access to weapons of mass destruction or really long range ballistic missiles. But certainly Israeli military planners fear and deter Hezbollah because of what they have done in the past and what they may yet do in the future.

John Carey is a military intelligence professional at:
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/

More on Hezbollah and Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5566717

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