Free Republic

"CAN I INTEREST YOU IN A HIZBALLAH-SUPPORTING SOCIAL NETWORK?" SNIPPET: "Once upon a time there was a place called Lebanon. When Hizballah is done with it it'll look a whole lot like Germany circa 1945. If Shiite expats in Montreal and elsewhere want to call that "victory" that's their business." SNIPPET: "6. Wash, rinse, repeat. This is online counter-terrorism in the social-networking age."

Heavy fighting continued Wednesday as IDF troops again battled to clean out a nest of terrorists that returned to Bint Jbeil after they withdrew from the village in the last week of July. Some of the bloodiest battles since the war began have taken place in the village which is known throughout Lebanon as the Hizbullah capital of the south. Two IDF paratroopers were killed late Tuesday evening in clashes at Bint Jbeil. Both were members of an elite reconnaissance unit; they were identified as 21 year old Staff Sergeant Oren Lifschitz of Kibbutz Gazit and 21 year old...

HAIFA, Israel -– Now that Israel has pulled back the elite paratroopers who had seized the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, soldiers are beginning to tell their stories. They are harrowing tales of a five-day-long battle, in which eight Israeli soldiers died and 22 more were wounded in a deadly Hezbollah ambush. Maj. Ro'i Klein, 31, was deputy commander of Battalion 51 of the famed Golani Brigades. He jumped on a grenade in order to save his men. "First he said the ‘Shema' prayer and then he jumped on a grenade," a family friend from...

The thing that most impressed Capt. Yisrael Friedler, commander of A Company in the Golani Brigade's Battalion 51, during the bloody battle in Bint Jbail on Wednesday, was the way the junior commanders conducted themselves after their officers had been hit by Hizbullah gunfire. "The moment their officers went down," he told The Jerusalem Post Thursday, "the sergeants took their radios and began reporting in and managing the battle, while at the same time taking charge of evacuating the wounded. It was the height of professionalism," he said. The firefight began early in the morning when two companies, A and...