The First Camp on the Middle East Question: Washington, Tel Aviv (both Likud and Labor), Cairo, Amman, and Riyadh, plus (indirectly) Tokyo and Beijing, the financiers of the multinational empire
The Second Camp: Hizballah and its secular left allies like the Lebanese Communist Party, Hamas and its secular left allies like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Mahdi Army, Tehran and Damascus, and the Arab masses, plus (indirectly) Moscow (which has sold Tehran and Damascus first-rate weapons, against the wishes of the Tel Aviv-Washington axis)*
The Second and a Half Camp: Civilian Resistance in Lebanon, <http://www.lebanonsolidarity.org/>; and secular left Palestinian believers in the one state solution, e.g., The Electronic Intifada, <http://electronicintifada.net/>
The Third Camp: the Israeli Left, e.g., The Alternative Information Center, <http://alternativenews.org/>
What is to be done in the West? Love and cherish the Second, Second and a Half, and Third Camps, and explain and publicize their doings, equally at the same time, regardless of what the camps feel about one another; and do what we can to resist the First Camp. I'd call this a Two Thirds Camp position. :-> And that's what I do at MRZine.
* It looks like Moscow is getting all the advertisement it can possibly want for its weapons industry in the Lebanon War. Memo to Putin: You had better repay Tehran and Damascus for this once-in-a-lifetime free advertisement and become the second coming of Mr. Nyet.
<blockquote>On Dec. 26, 2003, a powerful earthquake leveled most of Bam, in southeastern Iran, killing 35,000 people. Transport planes carrying aid poured in from everywhere, including Syria.
According to Israeli military intelligence, the planes returned to Syria carrying sophisticated weapons, including long-range Zelzal missiles, which the Syrians passed on to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia group in southern Lebanon that Iran created and sponsors.
As the Israeli Army struggles for a fourth week to defeat Hezbollah before a cease-fire, the shipments are just one indication of how — with the help of its main sponsors, Iran and Syria — the militia has sharply improved its arsenal and strategies in the six years since Israel abruptly ended its occupation of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters "are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians," said a soldier who just returned from Lebanon. "They are trained and highly qualified," he said, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and sometimes Israeli uniforms and ammunition. "All of us were kind of surprised."
Much attention has been focused on Hezbollah's astonishing stockpile of Syrian- and Iranian-made missiles, some 3,000 of which have already fallen on Israel. More than 48 Israelis have been killed in the attacks — including 12 reservist soldiers killed Sunday, who were gathered at a kibbutz at Kfar Giladi, in northern Israel, when rockets packed with antipersonnel ball bearings exploded among them, and 3 killed Sunday evening in another rocket barrage on Haifa.
But Iran and Syria also used those six years to provide satellite communications and some of the world's best infantry weapons, including modern, Russian-made antitank weapons and Semtex plastic explosives, as well as the training required to use them effectively against Israeli armor.
It is Hezbollah's skillful use of those weapons — in particular, wire-guided and laser-guided antitank missiles, with double, phased explosive warheads and a range of about two miles — that has caused most of the casualties to Israeli forces.
Hezbollah's Russian-made antitank missiles, designed to penetrate armor, have damaged or destroyed Israeli vehicles, including its most modern tank, the Merkava, on about 20 percent of their hits, Israeli tank commanders at the front said.
Hezbollah has also used antitank missiles, including the less modern Sagger, to fire from a distance into houses in which Israeli troops are sheltered, with a first explosion cracking the typical concrete block wall and the second going off inside.
"They use them like artillery to hit houses," said Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, until recently the Israeli Army's director of intelligence analysis. "They can use them accurately up to even three kilometers, and they go through a wall like through the armor of a tank."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The antitank missiles are the "main fear" for Israeli troops, said David Ben-Nun, 24, an enlisted man in the Nahal brigade who just returned from a week in Lebanon. The troops do not linger long in any house because of hidden missile crews. "You can't even see them," he said.
With modern communications and a network of tunnels, storage rooms, barracks and booby traps laid under the hilly landscape, Hezbollah's training, tactics and modern weaponry explain, the Israelis say, why they are moving with caution.
The Israelis say Hezbollah's fighters number from 2,000 to 4,000, a small army that is aided by a larger circle of part-timers who provide logistics and storage of weapons in houses and civilian buildings.
Hezbollah operates like a revolutionary force within a civilian sea, making it hard to fight without occupying or bombing civilian areas. On orders, some fighters emerge to retrieve launchers, fire missiles and then melt away. Still, the numbers are small compared with the Israeli Army and are roughly the size of one Syrian division.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have helped teach Hezbollah how to organize itself like an army, with special units for intelligence, antitank warfare, explosives, engineering, communications and rocket launching.
They have also taught Hezbollah how to aim rockets, make shaped "improvised explosive devices" — used to such devastating results against American armor in Iraq — and, the Israelis say, even how to fire the C-802, a ground-to-ship missile that Israel never knew Hezbollah possessed.
Iranian Air Force officers have made repeated trips to Lebanon to train Hezbollah to aim and fire Iranian medium-range missiles, like the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, according to intelligence officials in Washington. The Americans say they believe that a small number of Iranian operatives remain in Beirut, but say there is no evidence that they are directing Hezbollah's attacks.
But Iran, so far, has not allowed Hezbollah to fire one of the Zelzal missiles, the Israelis say.
The former Syrian president, Hafez al-Assad, was careful to restrict supplies to Hezbollah, but his son, Bashar, who took over in 2000 — the year Israel pulled out of Lebanon — has opened its warehouses.
Syria has given Hezbollah 220-millimeter and 302-millimeter missiles, both equipped with large, anti-personnel warheads. Syria has also given Hezbollah its most sophisticated antitank weapons, sold to the Syrian Army by Russia.
Those, General Kuperwasser said, include the Russian Metis and RPG-29. The RPG-29 has both an antitank round to better penetrate armor and an anti-personnel round. The Metis is more modern yet, wire-guided with a longer range and a higher speed, and can fire up to four rounds a minute.
Some Israelis say they believe that Syria has provided Hezbollah with the Russian-made Kornet, laser-guided, with a range of about three miles, which Hezbollah may be holding back, waiting for Israel to move farther into southern Lebanon and extend its supply lines.
Despite Israeli complaints to Moscow, "Russia just decided to close its eyes," a senior Israeli official said.
(Steven Erlanger and Richard A. Oppel, Jr., "A Disciplined Hezbollah Surprises Israel With Its Training, Tactics and Weapons," 7 August 2006 <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07hezbollah.html>)</blockquote>
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>