A New Voice

A couple of days ago the Pensacola Beach Blogger recommended the blog of Daytona Beach News-Journal columnist, Pierre Tristam. I read Candide’s Notebooks and liked it.

I have been questioning the story of the original battle of the current round of the Israel-Lebanon War, and Holden picked up on it with Mom, He Hit Me First!.

Pierre’s post, A Premeditated War-Planned in 2005 adds more evidence that makes me doubt the official version even more by pointing to an article published before the incident.

Mideast Democracy: One Violent Group Finds It Works Fine is an article by Karby Legett in the Wall Street Journal on July 10, 2006 that indicates that Israel had put the border on “high alert” in anticipation of a possible Hezbollah attack. The WSJ is not exactly known as a hotbed of bleeding heart liberal haters of Israel, so I assume they are reflecting information from the Israeli government.

So to the original scenario of crossing open ground across a mined strip of land, the Hezbollah unit is facing an Israeli army on heightened alert to exactly this threat. This is as opposed to an Israeli unit making a small penetration into southern Lebanon and running into a Hezbollah minefield that disables the vehicles and results in the capture of two Israelis by the local Hezbollah garrison.

Avedon Carol highlights another portion of this post in which Pierre makes the important point that Israel’s actions are helping to strengthen Hezbollah.

Pierre Tristam was born in Lebanon and is an Arab. He doesn’t want Hezbollah strengthened and neither do I. Hezbollah has the same vision for Lebanon that Khomeini had for Iran, and the Taliban have for Afghanistan. Israel is pushing Lebanon away from democracy towards theocracy. That is not a good outcome for anyone in the area.