Protestor at Beirut rally to denounce a film mocking Islam holds poster of Nasrallah and Assad (Photo: Joseph Eid AFP)
Both U.S. and Israeli ambassadors to the UN addressed Hezbollah at the UN Security Council meeting yesterday after Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah confirmed on Saturday it was Hezbollah who sent the drone shot down by Israel.
U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice’s remarks centered on Lebanon’s relationship with Syria. She accused Hezbollah of being part of Assad’s “killing machine” and Nasrallah of carrying out a “deadly form of deception” regarding Lebanese national interests. She also urged other security council members to “expose Hezbollah’s deepening involvement in Assad’s war.”
AP:
“Hezbollah’s active and growing support for Assad’s war exposes Hassan Nasrallah’s claims of promoting Lebanon’s national interest as nothing more than a deadly form of deception,” Rice said.
“The group’s leaders may try to change the subject by invoking hollow rhetoric about so-called resistance, but the truth is plain to see: Nasrallah’s fighters are now part of Assad’s killing machine and Hezbollah’s leaders continue to plot with Iran new measures to prop up a murderous and desperate dictator,” she said.
……….
Many speakers at the day-long council meeting mentioned the escalating casualty toll in Syria – now estimated by activists at over 30,000 – and the divided council’s failure to take action to halt it, but much of the focus was on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Rice also warned of the possibility that the ongoing unrest in Syria will have negative repercussions on other countries, giving Lebanon as an example of a state that is feeling the effects of the conflict.
“No one can deny that Assad’s war against the Syrian people now poses real challenges to all of Syria’s neighbors, including Lebanon. From deadly Syrian regime attacks across the border to tens of thousands of refugees, Lebanon is already suffering the consequences of this conflict,” she said.
……
Last week, Nasrallah denied reports that members of his group were fighting alongside Assad’s forces, but Rice called on the international community to dig deeper into Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian conflict.
………..
Jeffrey Feltman, U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs and former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, said that Lebanese areas near the border with Syria are still threatened by a possible spillover from Syria.
Feltman told the Security Council that the Syrian conflict is spiraling beyond its border, affecting Lebanon……. Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor said that by providing Hezbollah with sophisticated arms, Iran is turning Lebanon into an “outpost for terror.”
“Iran has provided Hezbollah with the funds, training and advanced weapons to hijack the Lebanese state and transform it into an outpost for terror,” Prosor said.
Rice referencing Lebanon “suffering” from Syria’s conflict as well as Jeffrey Feltman’s spillover remarks eerily reminded me of spillover warnings from last year in an article relating to tense border issues between Lebanon and Israel.
It follows rising concerns that conflict in next-door Syria may spill into its neighbor, where Lebanese are deeply divided between supporters and opponents of the Syrian regime. Lebanese see regional powers including Syria as having sponsored violence in their country in the past, to send messages to each other or to settle accounts.
Meanwhile, speaking of grave consequences, checkout Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor’s alarming warning to UN member states regarding support for Abbas’s efforts to renew Palestine’s bid for UN recognition:
Palestinians made a plea for non-member status, during the monthly debate on the Middle East, renewing their bid for UN recognition. To this Israel’s Prosor responded with a warning. “Every Member State that lends it hand to supporting Palestinian unilateralism at the UN will be responsible for the grave consequences that follow. You will be encouraging the Palestinian leadership to intoxicate its people with fantasy when it needs to sober them up with reality – inflating a dangerous bubble that will inevitably burst. The PA devotes 6 percent of its budget to terrorist salaries and less than 1 percent to higher education. Instead of investing in their children’s future, they offer incentives for future terrorists. Instead of using their funds for nation building, they use them for nation sinking. The EU sends more than 500 million Euros in annual EU aid to the Palestinian Authority. How many taxpayers in London, Paris, Berlin and Lisbon know that some of their money is going to convicted terrorists with blood on their hands?”
Bildt tweeted from the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg that there was “great concern among EU FM’s about continued Israeli occupation and settlement activities as well as total standstill in peace process.”
So much for scaremongering over Hezbollah and Iran, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has his priorities straight.
“Iran has provided Hezbollah with the funds, training and advanced weapons to hijack the Lebanese state and transform it into an outpost for terror,” Prosor said.
Some Western observers are developing second thoughts if it is such a good idea to provide guns and ammo to jihadist in Syria, where journalists have seen empty crates of Ukrainian ammunition that was shipped to Saudi Arabia. And indeed, Lebanon gets a spillover effect, e.g. some Alawites in Tripoli were killed.
Why do I get the feeling that this stupid woman Rice believes that Hezbollah is some alien force that has invaded Lebanon and imposed itself against the free will of the Lebanese people?
Because we have a very uneducated and ignorant bunch in our government and diplomatic services, that is the reason.
Many times I just have to shake my head on statements voiced by those persons in Washington, realizing they don´t have the faintest idea of the rest of this world outside their golf clubs and favorit cocktail bars.
Everybody was happy until outside agitators came in. Same story as ever.
I have been hoping that things might improve at State once Clinton leaves. If Rice’s incendiary rhetoric here is any sign, she’ll continue Clinton’s trajectory as SOS.
As amazing as it may seem, I find this Rice to be orders of magnitude more repugnant and bike than her namesake in the Bush administration.
The US is simply dwstroying it’s own credibility and prestige by the day at the UN. Their hopes that Assad would fall have hot a wall. Not only has Assad survived, but the opposition has fractured and is running out of arms and support.
This is turning into a disaster for Washington.
As for Hezbollah’s drone over Israel, I imagine the entire UN building tilted to one side from the collective rolling of the eyes of the general assembly as the Israeli and US ambassadors protested.
As amazing as it may seem, I find this Rice to be orders of magnitude more repugnant and bike than her namesake in the Bush administration.
The more things change, the more they stay the same…but since their “team” is in charge now, Democrats won’t complain.
Not to forget the loud roar of laughter, a mouse scared the hell out of a tiger!!
Oops ,and then Hezbollah is the big threat.
Hezbollah is the 600 pound gorilla in the room.
In 2006 ,during the Israel-Hezbollah “war”,various things happened ,that most people have forgotten;Hezbollah took out an Israeli warship with one missile,Israel is still trying to find out how that could have happened(probably Chinese technology).
Hezbollah threw two missiles in the same spot,right next to Haifa trainstation.
The “war” stopped(Israel withdrew) after Hezbollah threw a rocket next to Netanya.
This was 6 years ago,now Hezbollah’s weaponry is a lot more advanced.
Estimated Hezbollah fighters ,in tunnels lobbing rockets at Israel,about 150.
Netanyahu warned that if Hezbollah would attack,the rest of Lebanon will pay.
And he’s not joking,because the 2006 war showed that there’s not a lot more Israel can do ,besides threatening to mass murder lebanese civilians.
Depleted uranium weapons,mini nukes,real nukes?
All useless,because the wind will blow the radiation right back and living in the north of Israel (or Lebanon)will be quiet impossible for the next few thousand years or so.
Proffesor Busby claims Israel has used depleted uranium in Lebanon and Gaza.
So why do Rice and Prosor get so hysterical about Hezbollah now?
This has got to do with Syria,Turkey and the elections in the US.
An uncoordinated attack on Syria by Turkey,Nato or anybody else,without going for Hezbollah(and possibly Iran) at the same time ,will expose Israel to an extremely unpleasant confrontation with Hezbollah.
But no worry,Ehud Barak has promised us that there will be only 500 Israeli dead in such a confrontation.
By the way ,the same scenario will occur if Israel will attack Iran without controlling Syria(chemical weapons) and Hezbollah at the same time.
In short ,Hezbollah is a bigger threat to Israel than Iran or Syria.
That’s why Israel wants the world “to do something about it”,
The question is ,what can the world do?
Maybe Israel has been totally outplayed on the global chessboard,and the US(at least Obama)is not prepared to start ww3 because of Israel.
Israel will have to start ww3 alone or accept that the world is not going to swallow her behaviour anymore.
Chess is a Persian invention,and it’s best players have historically been Russians.
PS:
Why am I(sometimes) being censored ,is what I write so far from the truth?
Maybe make a list of opinions posters are not allowed to have,so they know ahead.
While the “Jihadi Salafists” are actively fighting in Syria, the US is worrying about Hezbollah?
The Salafists are linked to AlQaida, the group that the US says is responsible for 911 while the latter is a Lebanese resistance group that successfully fought to end the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, continues to defend Lebanon and has never attacked the US. Despite US govt claims to the contrary, Hezbollah denied at the time and continues to deny any involvement in the suicide bombing of the marine barracks in 1982. The difference is that Hezbollah is an obstacle to complete Israeli domination of its neighbors. It has nothing to do with US interests.
From The Angry Arab Blogspot
I want to say it’s amazing that the MSM doesn’t question the official US govt line, but it’s so common place that it’s not amazing or surprising any more, it’s just disgusting.
what i find odd is that the US would respond to hezbollah’s latest zinger (drone) with syria “spillover” remarks, which i heard as a veiled threat.
in the main text i linked to the last time i heard that link to mondoweiss.net. embedded in that article i also link to Seymour Hersh: U.S. Indirectly Backed Islamist Militants Fighting Lebanese Army
link to democracynow.org
as well as WSJ via link to moonofalabama.org
i think it is possible hezbollah brought down that israeli drone. so two drone incidents and both times we get a response/rhetoric about ‘spillovers’ into lebanon..from syria? if the US/IS create instability in lebanon it will be thru their same cohorts they employ in syria. rice and feltman are speaking in code when they reference ‘instability’ (veiled threat)and rice even says they are dedicated to stability in lebanon. yeah, right. i am not buying it.
There have been many reports about drones being susceptible to hackers. If Hezbollah was able to hack into and control the drone, that could be why there was no evidence of a crash. Hmmm
There have been many reports about drones being susceptible to hackers.
more than just ‘reports’:
link to mondoweiss.net
link to moonofalabama.org
but notice the timing AlGhorear. this happened a matter of days, probably just a week after israel’s drone went down in lebanon. was israel’s missing drone a test run? it didn’t occur to anyone the first time round. but it’s pretty hard to argue with this:
link to mondoweiss.net
i think iran/hezbollah has the technology and know how to bring down the drone. and israel can’t bring down one of irans. you know why? check the bold in the blockquote up there.”They had four years to analyze the radio signaling between the ground operator and such drones. ” so how many years has israel had the opportunity to track iranian drones? likely..none. but israeli drones? a lot. also, look at that US drone the iranians have. is this what they sent hezbollah? no wonder we’re pissed.
It should be known that last year the british and omanis trained the nucleus of 1,200 men in Libya, supplied them with plenty of cash and weapons and were smuggled into Syria through Turkey to liberate the land. Their number grew into a small army of about 15,000, all getting the same weapons through Turkey. Financing comes from “private” sources.
We make the same mistakes again and again. We armed the Taliban to fight the russians, later we had to face those same weapons. We armed Saddam Hussein with the same results and now the so called rebels, who really are foreign merceneries coming from all over the ME.
We make the same mistakes again and again. We armed the Taliban …
Haven’t you figured it out yet? Our MIC needs enemies to justify itself. We are them to provide us with serious enemies, not just a bunch of unarmed peasants.
I really don’t think terror is much a problem for the State dept. No amount of terror will ever bring down the Imperial Colossus. Now, independance and socialism, that’s a different story. And by socialism, I mean the kind that grows from the ground up. Those are definite threats.
RE: “U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice . . . accused Hezbollah of being part of Assad’s ‘killing machine’ and Nasrallah of carrying out a ‘deadly form of deception’ regarding Lebanese national interests. She also urged other security council members to ‘expose Hezbollah’s deepening involvement in Assad’s war’.” ~ Annie Robbins
LOOSELY TRANSLATED: “I’m determined to be the next U.S. Secretary of State, and I’ll do whatever I have to do* in order to keep AIPAC and the rest of the Likud Lobby from doing to me what they did to Charles Freeman when he was nominated by Obama to be Director of National Intelligence back in 2009!
* SEE: “Good career move by Susan Rice”, by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, 1/25/12
SOURCE – link to mondoweiss.net
Yes yes yes, Rice’s words are yet ANOTHER clear indication of israel’s utter panic with regards to hizbollah.
Should I laugh that a small band of resistance men and women outsmarted both israel and the USA? Sure I should cackle hahahahaha cuz it’s funny when the underdog bitchslaps back at the bullies.
I’ve always read israel’s whining like this: what israeli PM wants to go down in history as giving hizbollah good reason to bomb actual israeli cities? Can’t see any takers on that one for miles! And because they know they can’t defeat the hizb directly, they had to start wars in Syria and Iran to simply weaken the hizb. It was all and always about the hizb: not Bashar, and certainly not the non-existence of iranian WMD’s.
Today’s T-short slogan: It’s The Hizb Stupid!
It’s The Hizb Stupid!
taxi knocks another out of the ballpark!
is knocking a another taxi out of the ballpark a good thing?
and are taxi “bitchslaps” more or less offensive than are other’s?
I completely fail to understand how anyone can assert that the Israelis couldn’t directly wipe the floor with Lebanese Hezbollah if the Israelis weren’t restrained in their efforts to fight against them.
should there be another round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, while Hezbollah controls the government of Lebanon, it’s likely that the fighting would be less restrained and disastrous for Lebanon.
I simply can’t fathom the absurdity of thinking that Hezbollah wouldn’t be doing a lot more than apologizing when the smoke clears.
fathom further, hezbollah certainly wasn’t apologizing after israel’s 06 war on lebanon, i distinctly recall it was the israeli leadership in the hole in fact.
Nasrallah certainly did apologize for starting that war by miscalculating Israel’s reaction to Hezbollah’s cross-border raid.
link to haaretz.com
certainly? don’t lie. speaking in hindsight is not the same as apologizing.
Annie, I’m not lying…and stop being a disingenuous apologist for the apologizing.
provide the quote offering the apology. not a link, a quote. you do know the difference i presume. iow prove it. no worries, i won’t make you admit you’re fabricating information that does not exist.
i will literally eat my wordsif you come up with a quote that says either ‘sorry’ or apologize’.
ciao
the link provided the quote. and it includes the words saying that if they had known what their cross-border kidnap would cause, they would not have done it.
that’s an apology.
go eat something.
you are a joke. no wonder you won’t quote it, there is no apology to quote. you can’t find one msm article claiming he apologized, cuz he didn’t.
besides, hezbollah rocked in that war. they came out way ahead by leaps and bounds.
link to meforum.org
enjoy
you still haven’t a freakin clue….and I doubt that you’ll ever stumble over one.
he said had he known what was going to befall Lebanon because of hezbollah’s instigation of the war, he would not have done it….if that’s not an apology, then nothing is.
apology—-an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret.
——
Lebanon was the loser of that war….. and that Hezbollah achieved a publicity victory made the lose for Lebanon much worse.
keep eating, annie.
Screw that article.
The US Army War College report on the war is much better and isn’t written by a Likud Zionist Israeli professor.
do you have a link to it?
link to strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil
there is no admission of error. again, speaking in hindsight is not the same as apologizing. nor is it an admission of error. it is simply saying had i known then what i know now i wouldn’t have taken the same course of action. even expressing sorrow something happened is not the same as apologizing.
it was israel’s choice to go to war and they had already planned it.
you can have the final word. i am done with this conversation.
thank you for the link.
They know that if the Hizb ever get into Israel there will be revenge on the menu. The Lebanese Shia are like that guy from the 60s ad who was tired of having sand kicked in his face.
link to atheistbiblestudy.files.wordpress.com
Israel will never do this again to the Shia
link to mediastore4.magnumphotos.com
should there soon be another war between Hezbollah and Israel, it will go VERY badly for Hezbollah and Lebanon.
Tel Aviv will be damaged by the Hezbollah arsenal, but the deluded folks thinking that Hezbollah has actual military might rather than rockets and good training of their lightly-armed fighters will be left complaining about disproportional force and massacres and how awfully unfair it is that the Israelis have so many advanced weapons.
let’s hope for peace and a reduction of tensions.
[1] Rice is Obama’s rep at UN. she says what he wants her to say. He wants her to make nice to AIPAC as long as he depends on AIPAC. How long? At least til November, maybe forever. If he wants her as SoS, he may be playing that game too. But, “make no mistake”, ambassadors act for their principals or they resign, and Obama is that principal.
[2] Delicious to hear the USA (which the whole world sees as acting FOR another and unpleasant country (USA, it is universally agreed, acts for Israel) TICKING Hizbollah for acting FOR another and unpleasant country (Hizb, Rice says, acts for Syria).
Actually, Hezbollah is Iranian proxy. My interpretation is that here Levant is a laboratory setting of what could happen between USA and Iran. For example: what sense did it make to supply Hezbollah with a single good anti-ship missile? In the Levant it changed very little, but as a proof that Iran can stop Hormuz traffic — quite a lot.
Lightweight drones cannot inflict a meaningful military damage. But it does not take a lot of carefully placed explosives to put oil installations in flames (or liquified natural gas terminals etc.) Also we have read how Israel could be dropping graphite fiber to disable Iranian transformers and thus distribution of electricity. Again, a very good task for small carefully placed explosives. And Iran with Hezbollah are masters of strategic ambiguity: what is it that they really can do? We truly do not know! Do they have one drone of hundreds? A few missiles of 50,000? How good are the guidance systems?
The strange thing is that Iran/Hezbollah are most successful and feared for the use of a combination of cost effective weapons that are just modern enough not to offer easy countermeasures. This is total anti-thesis of nuclear weapons. If you think about it, you realy cannot use nukes for anything except retaliation against nukes. But a retaliation that disables industrial facilities with small cost and no reliable countermeasures — that can be done with few international repercussions. Recall what happened when car bombs targeted Israeli diplomats in the aftermath of assassinations in Tehran: mostly yawning.
De facto international law: if you can do tit for tat, good for you.
Piotr
The Shia of South Lebanon remember what Israel did to their villages in the 1980s.
Hezbollah is primarily a way of ensuring this never happens again.
Many of the SLA soldiers who killed their people now live as refugees in Israel.
My understanding is that Israel did not want all of those SLA soldiers. They are Arabs after all. Based on some anecdotal evidence, I think many have been sent on to Canada. This mere conjecture on my part; does someone out there have some better information on this?
Nobody should be allowed to monitor Israel.
Obviously. As soon as the neighbours catch up the consequences of war without rules become horrendous for the chosen ones. Imagine Tel Aviv carpet bombed. Imagine the Kirya targeted.
“The PA devotes 6 percent of its budget to terrorist salaries and less than 1 percent to higher education”
How much does the IDF/occupation/settler palaver cost the average Israeli per annum? Would 5,000 USD per head cover it ?
Taxi
Hizb are now in the space between the hammer and the anvil
Hizballah has begun depleting line of rockets and fighting units it has facing Israel from the Litani River of South Lebanon and moving them to the Syrian front line at Homs to strengthen Assad’s forces, DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal. Hizballah’s forward line against Israel is still in place among the southernmost Shiite villages, but a part of their artillery back-up is gone and, for the first time, Hizballah’s ground-to-ground rockets are moving in an eastward direction into Syria. This is a striking reversal of the usual direction taken by Hizballah hardware which, for years, headed from east to west to reach Lebanon from Iran and Syria.
DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal HAHAHAHA
oh really.
Which pretty much confirms that this story is BS.
That’s likely to be rubbish too, because DEBKA have no way of knowing that Hezbollah are up to, seeing as Hezbollah’s chain of command is deliberately segmented so as to ensure that such knowledge is impossible for outside intelligence sources to penetrate.
DEBKA made a mass of disastrously false predictions in 2006.
It’s not only Rice talking about Hezbollah’s complicity in the slaughter being conducted by Assad’s goons.
from Lebanon’s Daily Star—–
BEIRUT: Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri accused Hezbollah Thursday of fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces against rebels, saying the party can no longer hide its “crimes” in Syria.—–
Read more: link to dailystar.com.lb
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
Hariri is hardly an impartial observer.
are you?
Harari has been there and paid in blood while watching these dudes.
everyone in lebanon has paid in blood. had they not, hezbollah wouldn’t exist.
and Hezbollah insures that the blood will continue to spill, Annie. they may have been born of the blood but they’re not helping to staunch it.
subverting Lebanese sovereignty, as they have, is wrongheaded.
Annie
Perhaps you should spend some time studing the sunni way of thinking and why hizb should face north instead of assuming that my comment os pro israel
zzzz, you source DEBKAfile and give me advice? do not bother, i won’t be listening.
did you hear that loud bang in the carpark must have been that ball that got hit out of the ballpark xxx
Anything the Sunnis are doing is via Saudi Arabia, which means that Washington and Tel Aviv have signed off on it hasbrat.
Shingo
Just call me ringo hisbrit
No I’ll stick to lying hasbrat. ;-)
Two true things on Syria.
From Lang.
People have known there were foreign fighters in Syria and arms smuggled in for them since the beginning.
This is no popular revolt or Arab Spring for the people of Syria.
”The revolt in Syria has ALWAYS BEEN a Sunni sectarian rebellion ”against” a government that represents the interests of Syrians who wish to live in a multi-confessional country that is essentially secular.’
And this scuttlebutt for what it’s worth:
” In Syria the US seeks regime change without UN authority. The allies of the US in this endeavor are; Turkey (Sunni ruled), Egypt (Sunni ruled), Saudi Arabia (Sunni ruled), Qatar (Sunni ruled) Al-Qa’ida (Sunni fanatics) and NATO.
On the other side, the government of Syria (Alawi, Druze, Shia, Sunni and Christian in orientation), Iran (Shia ruled), Iraq (Shia ruled) and now apparently Hizbullah (a Shia militia)
So, the US has become the ally of Al-Qa’ida and the Wahhabi Saudis against a multi-confessional government and its Shia allies.
How clever we are! pl”‘
Another FUBAR in the wings.