The Jerusalem Post reports that, after several hours of intense fighting in and around a hospital in the eastern Lebanon town and Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, IDF commando forces on Wednesday morning took a number of Hizbullah officials captive. After inspecting the identification of everyone in the hospital, the IDF soldiers proceeded to arrest several people described in a CNN report as Hezbollah officials, who were later transported back into Israel.
Rather an embarrassment to Hezbollah, isn’t it.
Israel said it has killed 300 of the estimated 2,000 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon during its three-week offensive. A Hezbollah spokesman said 43 of its fighters have been killed, Reuters news service reported.
“Hezbollah has taken a serious beating, and that is why the pressure of a ground offensive will produce the expected results,” Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Tuesday on Israeli Channel 10.
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, in Washington to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told reporters the end of the war was “not far away.” “You can count it in matters of weeks, not months,” he said.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israeli forces were weakening Hezbollah daily and that no cease-fire would come until Israel was safe from a future war. “Every additional day is a day that drains the strength of this cruel enemy,” Olmert said in a speech Tuesday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held the United States and Britain responsible for the bloodshed in Lebanon, The Associated Press reported. “The U.S. and Britain are accomplices in all crimes committed by the occupying Zionist regime,” he said in a speech.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair had sharp words for Iran and Syria on Tuesday. Speaking to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, he said the struggle was between moderate, benign values versus the hatred and intolerance of fundamentalism.
Even the issue of Israel is just part of the same wider struggle for the soul of the region,” Blair said. “If we recognize this struggle for what it truly is, we would be at least along the first steps of the path to winning it. But I fear a vast part of Western opinion is not remotely near this yet.”
He added:
Whatever the outward manifestation at any one time—in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Iraq, and add to that in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, in a host of other nations, including now some in Africa—this everywhere is a global fight about global values. It’s about modernization within Islam and out of it. It’s about whether our value system can be shown to be sufficiently robust, true, principled and appealing that it beats theirs. [The strategy behind Islamist extremism is based]”on a presumed sense of grievance that can motivate people to divide against each other. Our answer has to be a set of values strong enough to unite people with each other. And this is not just about security or military tactics—it is about hearts and minds. It’s about inspiring people, persuading them, showing them what our values at their best stand for. And just to state it in these terms underlines how much we have to do.
On Sryia and Iran , the British Prime Minister said:
We need to make it clear to Syria and Iran that there is a choice: Come into the international community and play by the same rules as the rest of us, or be confronted. Their support of terrorism, their deliberate export of instability, their desire to see wrecked the democratic prospects in Iraq is utterly unjustifiable, dangerous and wrong. If they keep raising the stakes, they will find that they have miscalculated.
In case you don’t all know about this. The Isreali’s have created a tool that they are using to alert all their supporters to articles, polls, surveys and other sites of interest that they feel need to have the opinion adjusted more to their favor . Go to http://giyus.org/ and download their tool “megaphone” so you will be alerted to the same sites in order to counter their countering efforts . Several days ago they had a page on the link where it says “make a “difference”” that showed a snapshot of a yahoo survey before and after they sent out their alert . It showed a totally skewed survey, of course . They pulled that page . The following link shows what they are working on this morning http://giyus.org/alerts/ . Sometimes you must use the oppositions tools . They are clever and organized, that I will give them . Many of the pro-israeli remarks are by their minions.
Blair is speaking a different language than Ahmadinejad, so I doubt the Iranian tyrant understands what the British PM is telling him. Blair is using logic, reason, and clear speech. But all Ahmad understands is religious insanity wrapped in hatred. Blair is not the type to speak that particular language, although many Brits apparently wish him to learn. Britain is having a difficult time with its own religious fanatics, which will make it more problematic with time for British rulers to act independently of the fanatical dictators of the middle east.