Israel attacks major Iranian-Hezbollah convoy

BREAKING/UPDATE: Hebzollah chief to deliver speech tonight swearing “painful strike” against Israel

Omri Ceren, TIP

Via Lebanese media (technically the Naharnet update stream):

Information obtained by MTV: Nasrallah will tonight deliver a speech in which he will announce that Hizbullah will retaliate against Israel with a painful strike.

He has to say something after the Israeli strike, which is shaping up to be a strategic setback and PR nightmare for Hezbollah. Last week Nasrallah threatened to invade Golan-adjacent Israeli territory; then Hezbollah and Iran moved some of their top Syria guys into the theater for what Hezbollah is now describing as “field reconnaissance”; then the Israelis reportedly intercepted the convoy.

The entire thing has the feel of incompetent bluster coupled with reckless provocation. Lebanese officials and civilians are likely to be furious, in the aftermath of that incompetence and recklessness, Hezbollah overcorrects by dragging Lebanon into another war with Israel.

—

Just a reminder that early casualty figures always fluctuate as more news emerges. Earlier Turkish reports had 6 dead Iranians and 5 dead Hezbollah figures killed in the strike. That may have been confused: 6 Iranians seem to have been killed in a plane shot down earlier by rebels, while the 5 dead Hezbollah personnel would have been the onesin the convoy. Except now Lebanese sources are putting the number of Hezbollah figures killed in the convoy at 9 (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2015/Jan-18/284501-hezbollah-death-toll-in-israeli-strike-on-syria-revised-to-9-source.ashx).

Hezbollah has promised to reveal the names of those killed later tonight, so that should provide firmer information.

—

Omri.
412-512-7256
@cerenomri

 

Omri Ceren of TIP advises:

More details are emerging about what happened on the Golan Heights today, in which Israeli jets reportedly targeted an Iranian-Hezbollah convoy that included military commanders. The Israelis are of course refusing to confirm or deny anything, though the Defense Ministry told a journalist something like “if ‘top’ Hezbollah people were killed in Syria, you’ve really got to ask yourself what they were doing there” (I’m paraphrasing, but not by much).

Some reports have the count as high as 11 killed: 6 Iranians and 5 Hezbollah (Turkish media citing a Lebanese security source: http://www.aa.com.tr/en/news/452146–6-iranians-5-hezbollah-killed-in-israeli-strike-in-syria). That’s going to change as more information comes out, but without any doubt this was a convoy of top Hezbollah and maybe even Iranian figures in the theater.

In particular keep close watch on one names on the casualty list – Abu Ali Tabtabai – who may have been the head of Hezbollah operations in all of Syria. Tabtabai is a common name so it’s clear if it was that Tabtabai, but some Levant analysts are already making the call that it was (FDD’s Lee Smith – https://twitter.com/LeeSmithTWS/status/556869358048141313 – UM/LCCD’s Phillip Smyth – https://twitter.com/PhillipSmyth/status/556864330374074371/photo/1).

If so Hezbollah and their Iranian sponsors are going to have some explaining to do. What was Tabtabai doing so close to the Syrian-Lebanese-Israeli border?

In the meantime, keep in mind that Hezbollah chief Nasrallah had earlier this week given a three hour interview in which he committed to invading Israeli territory in the Galilee, an area adjacent to the Golan:

Hezbollah is prepared for military intervention in Israel’s Galilee and beyond, deeper into Israeli territory, the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV to be aired Thursday evening. “We have made all necessary preparations for a future war with Israel,” Nasrallah said… “We have military abilities that will deliver us the victory against Israel,” Nasrallah threatened. “The military capability of the resisitance has not been damaged, and if Israel thinks differently, it is wrong.”

Obviously still developing…

Omri.
412-512-7256
@cerenomri

Hezbollah prepared for war deep into Israel, beyond the Galilee

“We have made all necessary preparations for a future war with Israel,” Hezbollah chief says.

Hezbollah is prepared for military intervention in Israel’s Galilee and beyond, deeper into Israeli territory, the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV to be aired Thursday evening.

“We have made all necessary preparations for a future war with Israel,” Nasrallah said.

He vowed that the group would not stay quiet in the face of attacks attributed to Israel in Syria. “We will provide an answer for every attack against Syria,” he said.

“We have military abilities that will deliver us the victory against Israel,” Nasrallah threatened. “The military capability of the resisitance has not been damaged, and if Israel thinks differently, it is wrong.”

In excerpts of the interview that were previously released on Wednesday, Nasrallah said that Hezbollah has more types of weapons than Israel can imagine.

According to the Hezbollah leader, Israel is interested in a conflict that would be a landslide victory for it, however he claims that such a win is completely unrealistic. “If Israel attacks Lebanon, our resistance is strong and our ability to win is great.”

January 18, 2015 | 51 Comments »

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  2. January 21, 2015, 7:44 am
    Several stabbed in Tel Aviv attack
    Attacker knifes at least 10 people on bus, according to initial reports; two seriously injured; terrorist shot and caught

  7. I was supposed to be interview For a TV station but they heard I was helping Israel with the Israel Longhorn Project and it was a nonprofit. They hung-up on me. There is lot of Anti Semitism going around. Even many of the Reform and liberal Jews want to destroy Israel.

    ZOA Files Election Fraud Complaint: “HaTikvah Slate” Falsely Advertises, On WZC Election Website, That It Fights BDS

    NEW YORK, January 16, 2015 — The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) filed a false advertising complaint this week regarding the HaTikvah slates’s official platform page, which was published on January 14, 2015 on the official American election website for the World Zionist Congress elections. The HaTikvah slate’s platform page falsely states that the HaTikvah slate works to “combat the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.” The “HaTikvah” slate’s false advertising will mislead voters. In fact, the HaTikvah slate’s member organizations promote discriminatory boycotts and sanctions against Israeli Jews and international sanctions against Israeli officials that they disagree with as follows:

    (1) Partners for a Progressive Israel (PIP): (a major member of the “HaTikvah” slate) promotes discriminatory boycotts of Jewish Israel businesses in 170 industries in Jerusalem, Hebron, Ariel, Efrat, Ma’ale Adumim, etc. right on PIP’s website. Partners for a Progressive Israel’s Chairman Theodore Bikel also promotes cultural/artistic boycotts including boycotting the new Israeli-Jewish arts facility in Ariel.

    (2) Ameinu (another major member of the HaTikvah slate): lobbies U.S. and European governments to impose severe financial and visa sanctions on Jewish Israeli government officials whom Ameinu disagrees with. Ameinu’s top officials also double as J Street officials or are tied closely to J Street, which engages in extensive de facto promotion of BDS.

    (3) “Open Hillel”: The confusingly-named “Open Hillel” group tries to force the well-known and long-time campus organization Hillel International to provide platforms to promote the global BDS movement – and to bring in speakers that promote Israel’s destruction. “Open Hillel” was formed in 2012 to attempt to abolish Hillel International’s “Standards of Partnership.” Hillel International’s reasonable “Standards of Partnership” prohibit campus Hillel facilities from hosting organizations that promote BDS against Israel. “Open Hillel” brings in speakers who say that Israel should be destroyed and cease to exist. “Open Hillel” is working together with the anti-Israel anti-Semitic hate group “Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP) SJP members have violently attacked Jewish students on college campuses.

    (4) Americans for Peace Now (APN): APN openly promotes boycotts of Jewish Israeli businesses in eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.

    (5) New Israel Fund (NIF): NIF spent large sums of money erecting the BDS infrastructure, and continues to fund BDS groups and their co-conspirators. The NIF-funded Adalah organization’s “Adalah-NY and friends” participated in a “Global BDS Day of Action” with a pro-BDS “flash mob” at Grand Central Station. Adalah’s current Facebook page also brags about “the amazing things we achieved together in 2014 – BDSmovement.net,” and declares “Tell the New York City Council: Don’t Tour Apartheid Israel.” NIF grantees Adalah, B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence also provided the false information to Judge Goldstone which formed the basis of the false (and since discredited) Goldstone report that accused Israel of war crimes. The BDS movement uses the false Goldstone report as one of its chief weapons to promote BDS against Israel. The “US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel” has a web page entitled “Sections of Goldstone Report Very Useful for BDS and related campaigns.” The NIF also funds groups that hire Arabs to viciously confront young Israeli soldiers with ugly personal provocations against the Israeli soldiers, their families and Israel. There are always cameras filming these episodes, so that on the rare occasion when a young soldier responds strongly, these groups’ cameras film and disseminate the response, out of context – without showing the provocation or the rarity of such responses – to try to harm the humane IDF’s reputation.

    (6) J-Street: J Street promotes, honors, and gives major platforms to the leaders of the global BDS movement (including Mustafa Barghouti) at its national conferences and brings top BDS leaders to college campuses. J Street also promotes BDS on J Street’s website video.

    Thus, the HaTikvah slate’s official platform page on World Zionist Congress election website tells voters the exact opposite of what the HaTikvah slate members are really doing. It is unconscionable election

  16. mar55 Said:

    In Hell you are in the company of Princes, Popes,
    Prime Ministers and Conquerors.

    And old Jewish gangsters and gamblers infinitely more interesting . Including a few of my relatives.

  20. @ honeybee:
    In Heaven you are in the company of paupers, children and saints. In Hell you are in the company of Princes, Popes,
    Prime Ministers and Conquerors.

  22. honeybee Said:

    yamit82 Said:
    Hell is much more interesting
    ” Hell for the company, Heaven for the climate.” Mark Twain

    The company is a certainty the climate speculative.

  28. @ yamit82:

    Lots of holidays and weird foods)

    You got that right…..lots of holidays. I don’t find the foods weird – not compared to some other cultures – but the food is definitely in abundance. I gained 4 lbs over Chanukah – been working it off but still have 1.8 lbs to go. Purim will be here before we know it…..and then Pesach! 😉

  29. honeybee Said:

    Dicha of Deborah: Every wants to go to Heaven,

    Not me, Hell is much more interesting with the most interesting people and Heaven is most boring populated mostly by those who believe thy should be there out of convention and belief Like British elites.

    I admit being Jewish has it’s down side but belonging to the most interesting and energetic family nation in the world has compensations ( Lots of holidays and weird foods)

  31. @ yamit82:

    Dicha of Deborah: Every wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everybody want to be Jewish, but nobody wants to be tossed into ovens.

  32. honeybee Said:

    Crockett was not a TEXICAN. The MEN OF GONZALES are the real heroes of The War for Independence. But what would you Canadians know, you still bow to the Queen of England, yeh.

    The Melungeon people were reticent about their heritage and often hid their ethnic ancestry for fear of discrimination, one of the reasons the group became a “lost tribe,” even to themselves. Hirschman’s research has turned up genealogical and DNA evidence that suggests that such luminaries as Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, John Sevier (Xavier), President Abraham Lincoln, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, subject of the film “A Beautiful Mind,” were of this same ethnic ancestry. (Genetically linked illnesses, such as Nash’s schizophrenia, are the result of centuries of cousin-to-cousin marriages, a commonplace practice.)

    She notes that commercial DNA testing, which can determine a person’s male and female ancestry, will likely reveal that many people have ancestry different from what they had been told. “The Melungeons of Appalachia are part of a much larger phenomenon called crypto-Judaism which has documented the presence of many persons, likely millions, of Sephardic Jewish descent living in New Mexico and California, Texas, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Guatemala, Chile, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil,” Hirschman writes. She says a growing number of Melungeon descendants are becoming aware of their previously hidden ancestry; some are returning to Judaism.

    http://urwebsrv.rutgers.edu/focus/article/Suddenly%20Melungeon/1759/

  34. @ honeybee:

    As good or better than any of the other known potential candidates making up the menagerie of Republicans touted as candidates…. Beginning to like him even out of uniform. 😉

  41. Iranian General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi killed alongside Hezbollah fighters in Israeli air strike, Tehran says

    OMG! Someone quick send a memo to Obama, them Iranyans are trying to cut our throats. I think he didn’t know! Oh the shock – sanctions aren’t working!!!!

    Hey where’s Nastyrhalla!!! Midnight has come and gone. promises promises – I thought terrorists kept their word?!!

  44. Bear Klein Said:

    They are in bad strategical position. But I guess you prefer to let them set up terrorist headquarters on the Golan unimpeded

    Peace at all cost ????

  46. @ danost:
    Wow, killing terrorists who are dedicated to destroying Israel is a bad thing?

    War with the Hezis and company is coming before this action or not. It is a matter of time. Right now if they start a war the Sunni terrorists will overrun Lebanon and Syria after Israel delivers them a devastating blow.

    They are in bad strategical position. But I guess you prefer to let them set up terrorist headquarters on the Golan unimpeded?

  47. @ danost: IF you want to see dead Jews then your leftist anti-war stance will lead to all of Israel annihilated.
    You must be a propagandist for Hezbollah encouraging cowardice in the Israeli population.
    Any military action against Hezbollah or Hamas is a good day for Israel and maybe someday somebody will will have the smarts and courage to finish the job.

  48. I don’t think Netanyahu is that craven. The truth is Hezbollah poses a serious threat to Israel. As it was, the terrorists and their Iranian sponsors liquidated on Sunday were not on the Golan Heights for sight-seeing. They were there to assess how to plan attacks against Israel. And they were thwarted at the right moment and none of that should have anything to do with Israel’s political calendar or the absence of it.

  49. Geez, what a surprise, as Bibi’s political fortunes are waning, ipso slimeso, he pulls his muslim out of the hat; stage a provocation that Nasrallah will feel obliged to retaliate for. Thus begins yet another war, which Bibi hopes to win using “whatever tools” against 350,000 missiles in Lebanon, and then come out smelling – from his point of view like a rose. But how many Jewish lives is he prepared to sacrifice to further his political standing? And if during all this, what better could happen than also ispso slimeso, “he discovers” what has long been known, muslim tunnels into Israel in places like Dovev, Zarit, Kiryat Shmona, etc., thus providing political cover for a large hoped for win, in war and thus in the polls, but a win at what cost in terms of Jewish lives?