(DV) Nimmo: The Sharon-Rumsfeld Plan -- Going After Hezbollah

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The Sharon-Rumsfeld Plan: Going after Hezbollah
by Kurt Nimmo
www.dissidentvoice.org
January 24, 2004

As Jane's Intelligence Digest and the Jerusalem Post report, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld is considering "provoking a military confrontation with Syria by attacking Hezbollah bases near the Syrian border in Lebanon." The "multi-faceted US attacks" would fall under Bush's war on terrorism, according to Douglas Davis of the Jerusalem Post, the Israeli newspaper where the dual-allegiance Richard Perle, Pentagon Defense Policy Board member, serves as director.

Hezbollah is a group "that mean us no good" and "that have conducted attacks previously against U.S. personnel, U.S. interests and our allies," as the Project for a New American Century quotes Collin Powell in a letter the far right-wing organization sent to Bush on September 20, 2001.

Of course, when Powell mentions "our allies," he is talking about Israel.

Earlier this week Powell sided with the Israelis once again after Hezbollah "terrorists" killed an Israeli soldier. Hezbollah's al-Manar Television reported the soldier was killed after an IDF bulldozer crossed into Lebanon from the town of Marouahine, while the Israelis claimed the soldier was killed on their side of the border. The Washington Post, of course, played up the Israeli version of events, dedicating the majority of an article on the incident to Israeli explanations and condemnation of Hezbollah.

"The deliberate action that [Hezbollah] took, which resulted in the loss of life, once again demonstrates the nature of that organization," Powell told reporters. "I would hope the Syrians would, once again, understand that any support [for Hezbollah] is destabilizing in the region and is not in the interest of peace."

Powell neglected to mention Israel's routine violation of Lebanese airspace and territorial waters, or its long and sordid history of provocation on the border, a fact noted by Israeli historians and even that old Zionist war hawk, Moshe Dayan.

Or did Powell bother to mention the UN's confirmation of Israel's crossing the border prior to the soldier's death.

"Lebanon and the resistance are engaged in self-defense and are responding to Israel's daily aerial, naval and territorial violations." Lebanese foreign minister Jean Obeid complained after US ambassador Vincent Battle's demand that Lebanon deploy its army along the border.

In response to the death of a single soldier operating a bulldozer -- and it should be obvious by now what Israel does with US-supplied armored bulldozers, especially in towns with Arabic names -- Israeli warplanes "bombarded Hezbollah bases deep in southern Lebanon," on the following day, according to the Times of Oman.

Jane's characterized the Sharon-Rumsfeld attack plan as "a highly risky undertaking" likely to "fuel Muslim and Arab hostility toward the US at a time when US-led occupation forces are fighting the ongoing insurgency in Iraq."

The Zionists, of course, have fueled "Muslim and Arab hostility" for decades, so this is no big deal.

The "unacknowledged real reason and motive" for Bush's invasion of Iraq was "security for Israel," as Paul W. Schroeder alluded in the American Conservative, not weapons of mass destruction or democracy. Those were flimsy and easily discernible pretexts for a war fought in the name of the tiny and hostile Zionist state, a bellicose and racist state that has hijacked United States foreign policy via the Bush neocons.

Syria's support for "anti-Israel groups," including Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance organizations in Lebanon, should hardly come as a surprise. Syria has plenty of reason to be "anti-Israel."

In 1967 Israel invaded Syria and occupied the Golan. Even though the UN Security Council issued resolution 242 resolution calling for complete withdrawal from the territories occupied in the Six Day War, Israel obstinately remained on Syrian territory. Demonstrating its true intentions, on December 14, 1981, Israel formally annexed the Golan.

In fact, Israel has engaged in hostile behavior against Syria for more than half a century, beginning with the Syrian-Israeli Armistice Accord of July 20, 1949, an agreement that set up "armistice lines" or a "buffer zone" between the two countries after the 1948 war.

In 1950, Israel began a consistent pattern of violating this agreement, beginning with the drying up "project" of Alhouleh Lake, a natural military barrier in the buffer zone. In response to Syrian complaints about this egregious violation of the agreement, Israel shelled the Syrian city of Alhimmeh on April 5, 1951.

In 1953, Israel began construction on a power station in the area and Israeli workers violated the buffer zone repeatedly. General Van Beneke, then UNTSO Chief-of-Staff, requested the Israelis stop construction on the Banat Yacoub Bridge power station, but Israel refused.

In 1955, Israel attacked the Syrians again, attempting to drive them from the area. As Israeli commentator Uri Afgeari has noted, the real reason behind Israel's aggressive actions in the Golan had to do with Israel's desire to steal Arab water.

In 1956, Israel launched the "National Project," designed to transfer water from the Jordan River to Tel Aviv. In an effort to prevent this, Arabs diverted water from the Jordan. Israel's response was to bomb Arab facilities preventing water from reaching Israel.

"We might say that we could have been eventually obliged to wage a war (against Syria) if the Jordan River tributaries transfer project had been complemented, even if the 6-day War has not erupted due to the siege in Sinai," Afgeari explained later.

In short, Israel's effort to dominate water resources in the area was the primary reason the Zionist state and Menachim Begin annexed the Golan.

According to Israel's former chief of the General Staff and defense minister Moshe Dayan, the Zionist state was responsible for 80 percent of the border incidents between Syria and Israel. Dayan explained to Yediyot Aharonot journalist Rami Tal how this worked:

We would send a tractor to do some ploughing work in some spot in the demilitarized zone where farming activities were out of the question, and we knew in advance that the Syrians would start shooting. If they held their fire, we would instruct the tractor drivers to keep moving forward until the Syrians would lose their temper and start shooting. Then we would begin artillery shelling and, at a later stage, we would bring in the Air Force. This is what I did, and what Laskov and Tchera (chief of staff Zvi Tzur) also did, and what Yitzhak Rabin did as well. We thought then, and we continued to do so for a considerable while, that we could alter the armistice lines through military operations that would be just short of actual war. In other words, by seizing some land and holding it until the enemy would despair and let us keep it.

Dayan apparently later had a few reservations about stealing the Golan from Syria. "I made a mistake in allowing the [Israeli] conquest of the Golan Heights," he said before he died in 1981. "As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time... Of course [war with Syria] was not necessary. You can say the Syrians are bastards and attack when you want. But this is not policy. You don't open aggression against an enemy because he's a bastard but because he's a threat."

Following a well-established pattern of ethnic cleansing directed at Palestinians, Israel occupied the Golan and destroyed 244 of its 249 Arab villages. 147,000 people were forced to leave as a result of the Israeli occupation. Most ended up in Internally Displaced Persons camps set up around Syria.

As of 2000, nearly 20,000 Israelis lived in 42 settlements in the Golan.

At the same time, according to the Washington Post, Israel offered to return the Golan to Syria if the United States provided $20 billion in military and civilian aid, including Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Add to this nearly $135,000,000,000 the US has forked over to the tiny yet insatiable Zionist state since 1947 and it becomes obvious who's calling the shots in regard to the Middle East in Washington.

The Sharon-Rumsfeld plan of mass destruction for southern Lebanon, and possibly Syria as well, arrives a few days after Syria's Bashar al-Assad called for the renewal of peace negotiations with Israel, something the Likudites certainly are not interested in doing.

More intolerable from the Zionist point of view is Assad's suggestion that the Middle East become a "weapons of mass destruction free zone," that is to say Israel would have to give up its portentous store of WMDs, including its prized nukes developed in collaboration with racist South Africa, a fact well documented by that wholly irrelevant body, the United Nations, in the late 1960s.

Sharon, Rumsfeld, and the Bush neocons are not about to deal peacefully with Syria. As they have spelled out repeatedly, their response to Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Arabs in general across the Middle East is a policy of violence, murder, and occupation. Complete surrender or annihilation are the only two options.

Rumsfeld will not extend an olive branch to the Arabs or, for that matter, anybody else who stands in the way of US oil and resource based preeminence and the acquisitive mandates of neoliberalism.

"Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have seen," Bush warns. It will be a battle fought with "every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war."

It will not cease until al-Assad, the mullahs of Iran, the House of Saud, the warlords of Somalia, Kim Jong-il of North Korea, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and widespread and increasing resistance to corporate globalization is defeated, or if not defeated then exterminated with GBU-28/B bunker busters, cluster bombs, and Tomahawk cruise missiles courtesy of Raytheon.

In other words, it will not end so long as Bush and the neocons are in control.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer, multimedia artist and writer living in New Mexico. To see his photo work and read more of his essays, visit his excellent “Another Day in the Empire” weblog: http://www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html.