By Gilad Atzmon for Information Clearing House
In the last week we have been following British and French’s desperate attempts to push for a military intervention in Syria. It is far from being a secret that both British and French government are dominated by the Jewish Lobby. In Britain it is the ultra Zionist CFI (Conservative Friends of Israel) – apparently 80% of Britain’s conservative MPs are members of the pro Israeli Lobby. In France the situation is even more devastating, the entire political system is hijacked by the forceful CRIF.
But in case anyone fails to grasp why the Jewish Lobby is pushing for an immediate intervention, Debka, an Israeli news outlet provides the answer. Seemingly, the Syrian army is winning on all fronts. Israel’s military and geo-political calculations are proved to be wrong.
According to Debka, “the battle for Damascus is over”. The Syrian army had virtually “regained control of the city in an epic victory”. The rebels, largely mercenaries, have lost the battle they “can’t do much more than fire sporadically. They can no longer launch raids, or pose threats to the city centre, the airport or the big Syrian air base nearby. The Russian and Iranian transports constantly bringing replenishments for keeping the Syrian army fighting can again land at Damascus airport after months of rebel siege.”
But it isn’t just the capital. Debka reports that “Hezbollah and Syrian units have tightened their siege on the rebels holding out in the northern sector of al Qusayr; other (Syrian army) units have completed their takeover of the countryside around the town of Hama; and a third combined Syrian-Hizballah force has taken up positions around Aleppo.”
Debka maintains that senior IDF officers criticized the Israeli defense minister (Moshe Ya’alon) who “mislead” the Knesset a few days ago estimating that “Bashar Assad controlled only 40% of Syrian territory.” Debka suggests that Israeli defense Minister drawn on a “flawed intelligence assessment and were concerned that the armed forces were acting on the basis of inaccurate intelligence.” Debka stresses, “erroneous assessments… must lead to faulty decision-making.”
Debka is clearly brave enough to admit that Israeli military miscalculations may have lead to disastrous consequences. It reports, “the massive Israeli bombardment of Iranian weapons stored near Damascus for Hezbollah, turned out a month later to have done more harm than good. It gave Bashar Assad a boost instead of weakening his resolve.”
Debka is obviously correct. It doesn’t take a genius to predict that an Israeli attack on an Arab land cannot be accepted by the Arab masses, not even by Assad’s bitterest Arab opponents.
Debka maintains that the “intelligence focus on military movements in Syria especially around Damascus to ascertain that advanced missiles and chemical weapons don’t reach Hezbollah laid to a failure of in detecting major movement by Hezbollah militia units towards the Syrian-Israeli border.”
Israel is now facing a new reality. It is facing Hezbollah reinforcements streaming in from Lebanon towards the Golan heights and its border with Syria.
Israel, Debka concludes, will soon find itself “face to face for the first time with Hezbollah units equipped with heavy arms and missiles on the move along the Syrian-Israeli border and manning positions opposite Israel’s Golan outposts and villages.”
Debka is correct to suggest that instead of “growing weaker, Iran’s Lebanese proxy is poised to open another warfront and force the IDF to adapt to a new military challenge from the Syrian Golan.”
Rather than The Gurdian or the Le Monde, it is actually the Israeli Debka that helps us to grasp why Britain and France are so desperate to intervene. Once again, it is a Zionist war which they are so eager to fight.
Sadly enough, it isn’t The Guardian or The New York Times that is there to reveal the latest development in Syria and expose Israeli lethal miscalculations. It is actually a ‘Zionist’ Israeli patriotic outlet that is providing the good. I actually believe that this form of harsh self-criticism that is embedded in Israeli culture, is the means that sustains Israeli regional hegemony, at least monetarily. This ability to critically examine and disapprove your own leadership is something I fail to encounter in Western media. Seemingly, the media in Israel is far more tolerant toward criticism than the Zionist dominated Media in the West.
Gilad Atzmon’s latest book is: The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics – http://www.gilad.co.uk/
Have you ever thought about doing a post about the structural, ethnic, ideological and political make up of Hezbollah?
Interesting to know their ideology besides being pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel and other things including:
How much control/influence the organisation has independent of Iran?
The political and ethnic environment and influences both foreign and domestic in Lebanon?
The ethnic composition of Hezbollah and how it is structured?
How it maintains an active militia fighting force comprised of cells of guerrilla fighters while maintaining strong centralised authority over it during combat operations and not resorting to fragmentation and infighting among the various clans/groups like the Palestinians, Chechens, Afghans, etc?
The technical and financial capability of the group?
@Jack:Have you ever thought about doing a post about the structural, ethnic, ideological and political make up of Hezbollah?
This sounds less like a post and more like a PhD thesis :-)
If you want, I can recommend a few books (in English) to you. Would you be interested in that?
Cheers,
The Saker
@VINEYARDSAKER:
This sounds less like a post and more like a PhD thesis :-)
Just the basic statistical info like % of different ethnic and religious groups that comprise Hezbollah’s militia, there numbers, how much money they receive from Iran and other sources and there military capability and core regions of support and areas were they are most active like a STRATFOR report.
If you want, I can recommend a few books (in English) to you. Would you be interested in that?
Sure as long as they are impartial and not from pro or anti-Hezbollah authors or sources.
Have you read them yourself?
@jack: ok, here are some book you should consider reading:
“Voices of Hezbollah” Edited by Nicholas Noe
“Hizbullah: Politics and Religion” by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb
“Hezbollah: A Short Story” by Augustus Richard Norton
“In the Path of Hizbullah” Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh
“The 33 Day War” by Gilbert Achcar and Michel Warschawski
“Hezbollah: the Changing Face of Terrorism” by Judith Palmer Harik
“Hizbullah: the Story from Within” by Naim Qassem
and one book not directly linked to Hezbollah but the Lebanese Shia:
“Fadlallah: The Making of a Radical Shi’te Leader” by Jamal Sankari
Sure as long as they are impartial and not from pro or anti-Hezbollah authors or sources.
Jack, there is no such thing as “impartial about Hezbollah”. Never was, never will be. Hezbollah is too unique, to compelling, to groundbreaking, to mystifying also for anybody to remain impartial. You can hate it, or love it, but you cannot be impartial about it. The ONLY person which can be impartial about Hezbollah is one who truly knows nothing about it, understands nothing, and is utterly unaware of that.
However, partial or biased does not at all mean blind or one sided. You WANT a person partial to Hezbollah as a source to understand that absolutely unique movement.
All the authors of the books above have their biases and very strong views about Hezbollah. Heck, one of the – Naim Qassem – is himself a senior Hezbollah official. That is *precisely* why I highly recommend his book. The book by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is pretty good too, an honest effort to try to explain Hezbollah to a Western audience.
Lastly – a Stratfor approach is useless for the understanding of Hezbollah. Why? The figures are meaningless, often wrong anyway, ethnicity plays no play, religion a very minor one, but the ethos of the Martyrdom of Husain in Kerbala is crucial, and Stratfor would never mention it.
You cannot approach the study of Hezbollah by trying to squeeze it into western analytical categories. This is as useless as to try to smell a painting or touch a musical composition. If you want to understand Hezbollah, you need to start “from the bottom up” and aquire the categories which they – Hezbolllah – judge themselves. And from that point of view you should begin by carefully parsing the speeches of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. This guy is a *GIANT*, a leader of a magnitute which happen only every few hundered of years, at best. If you can, get some of his speeches subtitled, just to get a “feel” for the man, his demeanor. Look for his interviews. Its all out there, on YouTube and elsewhere.
This is all time consuming, but there is not “fast food” approach to this, and its well worth the time spent. Any other “quickie” approach will yield only a deceptive illusion of knowledge.
HTH, cheers,
The Saker
Jack, I fully agree with what Saker says about Hizb, and the books that he recommends are excellent. The one truly in depth, is Amal Ghoraeib’s books and articles…very objective and wide ranging , and touches upon most issues related to Hizb….but all of the books listed are worth the effort.
Best,
Joe
“Lastly – a Stratfor approach is useless for the understanding of Hezbollah. Why? The figures are meaningless, often wrong anyway, ethnicity plays no play, religion a very minor one, but the ethos of the Martyrdom of Husain in Kerbala is crucial, and Stratfor would never mention it.
Nonsense that is Hezbollah propaganda ethnicity always has relevance in every conflict throughout history and to an extent religion from which a unifying ideological framework can be created under an umbrella from which various aligned ethnic groups can operate under a single core ideology. This is especially true in Lebanon where the core of support most noticeably from Iran is from Shia Muslims and its opposition is from the Sunni states and Israel.
The core of Chechen support is not from Wahhabis but from Turkey and ethnically aligned communities and states that emigrated during the Caucasus war Khattab claimed Chechen ancestry through his mother, In Afghanistan the Northern Alliance and Massoud from ethnic groups from Central Asia, Ireland – Catholic and Protestant, Balkans – Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and of course in Israel/Palestine Jews and Arabs.
@Jack:Nonsense that is Hezbollah propaganda ethnicity always has….
Ok, I wasted my time on you. I mistakenly believed that you finally wanted to learn something meaningful and instead your re-spew your usual excreta of certitudes and cliches. Nevermind, maybe somebody else will benefit from the post.
Stratfor-type of “analysis” is all you deserve, really.
@VINEYARDSAKER:
“Ok, I wasted my time on you. I mistakenly believed that you finally wanted to learn something meaningful and instead your re-spew your usual excreta of certitudes and cliches. Nevermind, maybe somebody else will benefit from the post.”
C’mon anyone with half a brain knows there is a clear split in support in Lebanon and the region for Hezbollah among the Sunni and Shia that Hezbollah is regarded as mainly a Shia organisation and that it acts as a proxy for Iranian influence who get there core support financial and training from the Iranian state.
@jack:anyone with half a brain knows…
Yes, indeed, that appears to be the problem.
George Friedman and Robert D. Kaplan on the Rise of Sectarianism in the Middle East
http://youtu.be/N8VLIDNt57o
Stratfor is CIA Disinformation wall to wall, Texas funded and texas based. Using half truths, innuendoes and shiny graphs and great ivy league prose…doesn’t make it objective, nor truthful…
Stratfor is barely better than Debka… :)
Best,
Joe