Soccer Dad

Threat from the South; Threat from the North

Major General Doron Almog a past commander of the Southern front wrote this about the weapons smuggling from Egypt:

The term "smuggling" does not do justice to the problem of the Philadelphi corridor, and indeed, of the entire length of the Egyptian-Israeli border. Of course, some of the cross-border smuggling, overland or by tunnel, involves contraband and drugs—economic smuggling that occurs across all borders (and all of Israel's borders). But in Gaza, this smuggling has a strategic dimension. It involves the illegal importation into Gaza of significant quantities of arms and materiel, on a scale sufficient to turn Gaza into launching pad for ever-deeper attacks against Israel proper. Armed militias, awash with illegal weapons, could also undermine the balance of forces within Gaza itself, creating a situation of near-chaos and dangerous spirals of terrorist attacks and reprisals.

When it's put like that you wonder why doesn't the media focus on the possible consequences of the arms smuggling instead of how many homeless result from Israel's necessary defense of its homeland. Instead of focusing on the terror prevented by the interruption of the flow of weapons the media are more concerned with the hatred that will result from the hardship imposed by Israel. It's the Israeli defense that fuels the cycle of violence not the weapons that the Palestinian terror groups are accumulating.
And, of course, if Israel concedes to the Arabs presumably undermining any Arab claims against Israel and the Arabs threaten anyway, the media just looks the other way. Has anyone reported that Hezbollah is being armed with Iranian surface to surface missiles?

Al-Siyassa also reported that "several Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers had arrived the previous day from their headquarters at a Hizbullah military camp near the town of Qasrbana in al-Buqa' in order to unload a significant number of surface-to-surface missiles."

According to information received from the Syrian opposition in London on Saturday, August 14, the missiles "are of the most recent and improved Iranian model, with a 250- to 350-kilometer range, with which it is possible to hit any target in Israel." The sources also reported to Al-Siyassa that the two deliveries comprised 220 missiles "that Iran had not so far supplied to any foreign entity…

"Over Thursday and Friday [August 12-13], the missiles were transported in civilian Syrian and Lebanese trucks to three Hizbullah military bases" in the regions of Jenta and Yahfufa near the Syrian border, as well as to southern Ba'albek.

The Syrian opposition said that according to information they claim to have received from a senior source in the Syrian military in Damascus, "the alert level of the Syrian missile corps, deployed mostly in the North and East of the country [i.e., Syria], has been raised to high after commanders in military intelligence and in the Ba'th party in Damascus received information about the possibility that the Israeli Air Force would attack the nuclear reactors in Iran via Jordanian, Iraqi, and Turkish skies."

This is not good news.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at August 19, 2004 02:06 AM | TrackBack