1. Readers will be familiar with the frequently rehearsed notion that the close alliance between Israel and the United States combined with the emotions aroused by the existence and deeds of the former country in the Arab and Muslim worlds puts the lives of members of the American armed forces in greater danger than they would otherwise be.
Archive for the 'Military Affairs' Category
Gideon Levy says that…
1. The deficiencies in Israel’s firefighting capacity shown up by the Mount Carmel fire are firm evidence that Israel has no military option against Iran.
Continue reading ‘Gideon Levy And The Dog That Doesn’t Bark’
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Crossposted from the IDF’s official blog.
Yesterday, Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010, IDF Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, sent to every commander in the IDF a letter in which he expressed his personal thoughts on ethics with regards to several recent incidents that had occurred. This letter was to be read to each and every soldier by the commanders of the IDF, as ordered by Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi.
Below, please find a translation of the letter, whereas the letter itself is originally Hebrew form:
When waged with appropriate means to achieve realistic ends, the answer is, “It’s a really effective means of imposing your will on the enemy”. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar. He classifies those who continue to fire rockets at Israel as rebels and continues:
1. If and when Iran acquires nuclear weapons the avoidance of nuclear war between it and Israel, the country it seeks to destroy, will depend on Israel having a second strike capability. That means that it must have the capacity to suffer a nuclear attack and still be able to inflict a terrible retaliatory blow. If it has this capacity then it has less motivation either to mount a conventional attack on Iran designed to prevent or delay its acquisition of nuclear weapons or, once these weapons have been acquired, launch a preemptive nuclear attack designed to prevent them being used and permanently end Iran’s capacity to threaten its security.
Continue reading ‘Norway Favors Israeli Preemptive Attack on Iran’
You’ll find a long article by Amos Harel here about Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, the current Chief of Staff of the IDF. It’s an interesting story of big egos in high places and I was particularly struck by this paragraph:
Continue reading ‘Ashkenazi, The IDF and Democratic Government’
No one who believes that the right of Jews to govern themselves should not depend on a favorable assessment by others of how they exercise it can remain unmoved by the death this week of Israel Tal.
Now that UNIFIL has substantially endorsed Israel’s account of yesterday’s fatal shooting on its border, a couple of thoughts…
A deadly conflict in Lebanon could derail the prospect of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, thus boosting Hamas at just the time that the Obama Administration is urging the PA to drop its reticence. Iran also has a vested interest in opening up a western front. In the last fortnight, a host of countries from the United States to the European Union to Japan have added a new layer of sanctions to those already agreed by the UN Security Council in response to Tehran’s continued nuclear defiance. And Hezbollah - as Sheikh Naim Qassem confessed in a 2007 interview with Iranian broadcaster Al Qawathar - invariably does Iran’s bidding, to the point of securing clearance for its operations from Iran’s leaders.
From my latest piece on The Huffington Post.
The Times of London is often sensationalist, which means that one should use a pinch of salt when reading its reports on military or intelligence affairs. With that caveat in mind, here’s Hugh Tomlinson:
In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.
UPDATE: The Saudis now deny it. To misquote Mandy Rice-Davies, “Well, they would, wouldn’t they?”
The dominant narrative of Zionist storm troopers massacring innocent peace activists on the Mavi Marmara is now so well established that no amount of evidence supporting Israel’s version of events is likely to make any difference. Still, it seems to impossible not to comment on this series of photos published by the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.
1.
The Guardian here makes great play of the fact that the autopsies carried out on those killed on the Mavi Marmara show that five of them received gunshot wounds to the head and one was shot between the eyes. The piece quotes a pro-Palestinian activist in the UK as accusing the Israeli commandos having had a “shoot-to-kill” policy.
Bravo to Philip Klein for giving General David Petraeus the opportunity to clarify the following: one, he never requested that the West Bank and Gaza be added to his remit as Commander of CENTCOM, which includes Afghanistan and Iraq. Two, the perceived pro-Israel slant of US Middle East policy is just one of many strategic factors, and not the only one, which he has to take into consideration (the other factors include, Petraeus said, “a whole bunch of extremist organizations, some of which by the way deny Israel’s right to exist. There’s a country that has a nuclear program who denies that the Holocaust took place.”) Three, that he never made the statement, widely attributed to him, that US policy endangers the lives of American soldiers under his command (“There is no mention of lives anywhere in there. I actually reread the statement. It doesn’t say that at all.”)
Ariel Ilan Roth maintains that Israel’s objection to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is not based on a fear that those weapons would be used against it as he believes that the certainty of a devastating Israeli response is likely to deter the ayatollahs.
