Guardian Newspaper Equates Palestinian
Terrorist With Israelis Who Were Killed
A headline in The Guardian newspaper equates two Israelis murdered in Palestinian terrorist attacks with Palestinian terrorist suspects reportedly eliminated while attempting to attack Israeli forces during arrest raids.
“Two Israelis and two Palestinians killed in West Bank violence,” is the title of The Guardian’s article. The two Israelis referenced were both killed when a Palestinian terrorist opened fire at a bus stop near the West Bank Jewish outpost of Givat Assaf. A third Israeli was gravely injured in the assault. It would later be reported that the two victims were identified as off-duty Israeli soldiers – Staff Sgt. Yovel Mor Yosef, 20, and Sgt. Yosef Cohen, 19.
The two Palestinians referenced in the headline as being “killed” alongside the two Israelis were Salah Barghouti and Ashraf Naalwa – both terrorists wanted for deadly attacks who were reportedly killed while attacking or attempting to attack Israeli security forces conducting arrest raids.
The article never mentions that Barghouti was reportedly shot dead after attempting to attack the arresting Israeli soldiers, or that Naalwa was reportedly killed in a shootout. The piece simply relates that Barghouti was “one of the Palestinians” killed, while Naalwa “was killed when forces tried to arrest him.”
Iran And The Terror Tunnels
For the last week, Middle East headlines have rightly been dominated by Israel’s Operation Northern Shield to destroy Hezbollah attack tunnels that snake into Israeli territory.
Almost entirely missing from the dialogue surrounding the tunnel threat, however, is that Hezbollah does not make a move without the full backing of the Shiite terrorist organization’s Iranian patrons and controllers. Indeed, Hezbollah is for all intents and purposes an international extension of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and could not possibly have engaged in the terror tunneling without direction from Iran.
To be clear, a de facto military arm of Iran has just been caught violating Israeli sovereignty, likely for years, and prepping future guerilla warfare in which an untold number of Israelis could have been murdered. The ramifications of Iran’s unspoken but obvious fingerprints on the Hezbollah tunneling project are enormous.
These unmistakably Iran-backed tunnels are a blatant violation of ceasefire agreements that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War as well as other agreements negotiated in previous years. The militant excavations expose the uselessness of the 10,400-member UNIFIL “peacekeeper” force tasked with monitoring border violations in keeping with the even more useless United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.
That same resolution is violated on a daily basis. The text calls for the dismantlement of all armed groups inside Lebanon, making Hezbollah’s very existence illegal. The UN resolution singles out Hezbollah as being barred from deploying south of the Litani River, meaning within 12 miles of the Israeli border (exactly where Hezbollah was caught tunneling).
Despite its mission, the industrious UNIFIL says it had no evidence of tunnels that were constructed under the very zone where its forces are deployed. So the tunnels show the world that only Israel can ultimately ensure its own security.
More than that, the tunnels expose Iran’s Hezbollah foot soldiers as brazenly preparing offensive warfare inside Israel. The IDF says that it spotted militants still inside one tunnel. Building terror tunnels that open inside the Jewish state is almost an act of war itself. Israel must calibrate its response carefully while taking Iran’s hostile actions into full consideration.
For now, Israel has restricted Operation Northern Shield to destroying the tunnels on its own side of the border. However, Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz implied that the IDF could extend the critical mission inside southern Lebanon if that becomes necessary.
Iran has been humiliated and strategically devastated by Israel’s repeated strikes against Iran-run military bases in Syria, and has been feeling the pressure. Israel seems to be calculating that Iran will restrain Hezbollah for fear of igniting a larger Israeli operation that could unleash massive damage on Iran’s illegal military infrastructure inside Lebanon.
At the same time, the tunneling shows that an increasingly desperate Iran is willing to take dangerous risks to achieve its goal of strangling Israel from the south and the north. If the IDF operation moves to a second phase inside Lebanon, which could become necessary, it is doubtful Iran would not order some response. And while that response could be intentionally limited, Iran’s unpredictability and the recklessness of the tunnels make clear that the IDF must be prepared for any eventuality.
