Hezbollah rockets Haifa; Israel escalates in Lebanon
This morning’s Houston Chronicle reports that Israel stepped up attacks on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, particularly in the Beirut area.
The lede:
Airstrikes reduced entire apartment buildings to rubble and knocked out electricity in swaths of the Lebanese capital Sunday as Israel dramatically escalated the ferocity of its campaign after Hezbollah rockets hit the northern city of Haifa.
Before the attack on Haifa, Israel had already unleashed its worst bombardment yet in southern Beirut, a teeming Shiite districts where Hezbollah has its headquarters. A series of 18 explosions rocked the city before sunrise.The airstrikes started again soon after the Haifa attack, which killed at least eight people.
Note the report says the Israeli escalation in the Beirut area followed another rocket attack by Hezbollah on Haifa. Hezbollah holds more than two Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah essentially holds Lebanon hostage. It’s gangster tactic bank robbers understand– grab bystanders and use them as human shields. Hezbollah uses the whole of Lebanon in a similar manner.
UPDATE: The US prepares to evacuate American nationals. If Hezbollah gets desperate, Americans in Lebanon could become real human hostages. Don’t dismiss the terrible thought out of hand. Iranian revolutionaries took the US Embassy in Tehran hostage. As StrategyPage noted, this is an Iran-Israel war, with Hezbollah and Hamas as Iran’s proxies. Of course taking American hostages opens the door for US reprisals. George W. Bush won’t dither like Jimmy Carter.
It’s Not Their Exposure, It’s Their Availability!… No one, until this piece by Col. Austin Bay, has mentioned the duality of the exposure of American Citizens in Lebanon in the current crisis….
Trackback by Pekin Prattles — 7/16/2006 @ 1:58 pm
If Hezbollah takes American hostages, then America enters the Iran-Israel war on the side of Israel. It would be the dumbest move in the area of foreign relations since the Zimmerman telegram.
Comment by Harold C. Hutchison — 7/17/2006 @ 9:18 am
[…] No doubt if some of these kids get killed, certain of the villainous MSM will report without comment the enemy’s spin that Israel has been “targeting children” or some such rubbish. But it’s not just children who are human shields. We like the way Austin Bay put it: “Hezbollah essentially holds Lebanon hostage.” A whole country of human shields; how about that. […]
Pingback by Dinocrat » Blog Archive » Human shields — as small as children, as big as a country — 7/30/2006 @ 10:46 am