conflict
Israel launches new form of terrorism with its exploding pager attacks in Lebanon
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
Israel worked in secret to launch, without warning, a new era of international terror. Recent exploding pager attacks in Lebanon killed or injured mostly civilian, rather than military, members of Hezbollah and many non-members, including children.
Israel has launched a new form of terrorism according to former CIA director Leon Panetta, which he says will have far reaching “repercussions” throughout the world.
The terrorist campaign is said to have killed or injured mostly civilian, rather than military, members of Hezbollah and many non-members, including children, who are not engaged in the fighting against Israel.
Describing last week’s wave of remotely detonated pagers and walkie talkies in Lebanon, Panetta told CBS News on Sunday:
“This has gone right into the supply chain. When you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question, ‘What the hell is next?’ This is a tactic that has repercussions, and we really don’t know what those repercussions are going to be.”
Panetta’s remarks, reported in the Times of Israel on September 23, referred to revelations that Israel had spent 15 years preparing the attacks, infiltrating mobile device supply chains to transform handheld electronics into remotely triggered bombs.
An indication of how far-reaching these repercussions will be was given by Panetta, also the former U.S. Secretary of Defense.
“The forces of war are largely in control right now,” Panetta continued, warning that the “ability to place an explosive in technology that is very prevalent these days” has brought the world into a new “war of terror,” in which anyone with a mobile electronic device may be targeted without warning.
“Mark my word, it is the battlefield of the future,” said Panetta, echoing reports that state “Israel’s pager attacks have changed the world,” leaving “us all vulnerable.”
The New York Times report presented a stark conclusion:
“But now that the line has been crossed, other countries will almost certainly start to consider this sort of tactic as within bounds.”
“It could be deployed against a military during a war or against civilians in the run-up to a war.”
The attacks conducted by Israel have been largely reported to have targeted members of Hezbollah. The examination of the facts tests the claim that the pagers were detonated solely against a “military” in this case. The United Nations has already condemned the tactic as a war crime.
Copycat attacks?
With the initial wave of attacks often presented as a “James Bond” style flash of brilliance, later reports considered the possibility of “copycat” attacks.
Philip Ingram, a former senior British military intelligence officer, told Britain’s inews, “There are real risks of copycat actions. A large organized crime group could do something like this.”
Yet the planting of explosives and ball-bearings in pagers requires a degree of coordination beyond the capability of non-state criminals. Ingram explained, “However, something of the scale and sophistication we have seen this week is really only the purview of a nation state actor.”
So far, only the nation state of Israel has dedicated its resources to the transformation of personal devices into instruments of death.
A war crime?
The attacks have been reported to have killed and injured thousands of “Hezbollah members,” giving the impression of a targeted wave of sophisticated assassinations of enemy soldiers. Yet two children were among the 37 dead, with a UN report showing a diplomat was killed in what it termed an act of “murder” and “a terrifying violation of international law.”
“Simultaneous attacks by thousands of devices … inevitably violate humanitarian law,” the report said, by “failing to distinguish” between civilians and combatants.
The Jerusalem Post reported that only “a majority” of the thousands injured and killed “were members of the group,” which is an admission that civilians were indeed targeted.
In addition to the “war crimes of murder, attacking civilians, and launching indiscriminate attacks,” the UN report pointed out that “[h]umanitarian law additionally prohibits the use of booby-traps disguised as apparently harmless portable objects,” and that “It is also a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians, including to intimidate or deter them from supporting an adversary.”
What is Hezbollah?
Hezbollah is not merely a military organization. It also runs supermarkets, provides education and healthcare, and has a political wing, with members elected to over a third of Lebanon’s Parliament. It is designated as a terrorist organization in its entirety by the United States, with various European nations reserving that label for its military wing alone.
The New York Post’s claim that “thousands of Hezbollah fighters” were injured in the attacks excludes this important distinction between civilian and military members, legitimizing the “horrifying wounds to the groins and hands” of people severely injured whilst at home or shopping in supermarkets.
The U.K.’s Channel Four News was more measured, reporting only that “Hezbollah fighters were among thousands injured” in the attacks, which also took place in Syria and in Iraq.
NPR’s report similarly offered no evidence that any of those killed and injured were in fact combat soldiers, stating, “Many, but not all, of the pagers and walkie-talkies that unexpectedly blew up over two days across Lebanon and in some neighboring countries were in the possession of Hezbollah fighters, functionaries or allies.”
Doctors in Lebanon reported “apocalyptic” scenes, with thousands of patients arriving at once with injuries to their eyes and hands.
A media success with no military goal?
Early reports questioned the military success of the operation, with the New York Times describing it as “a tactical success with no strategic goal.” In an additional report, the Times confirmed the operation was ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, September 17.
The wave of heavy airstrikes on Lebanon which followed the detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies have also been reported as strikes on Hezbollah. With up to 500 killed, including 35 children, Reuters warned “tens of thousands of civilians” had begun to flee Southern Lebanon. The same report repeated Netanyahu’s address to the Lebanese people, in which he stated, “Israel’s war is not with you, it’s with Hezbollah.”
Yet the claim that Israel’s attacks are destroying Hezbollah’s military capability have been strongly challenged.
“This is bunkum,” said Alastair Crooke, who lives in Lebanon. The former British diplomat explained to Judge Andrew Napolitano that most of those targeted in the pager attacks were not military members at all.
Secondly, he says, Hezbollah’s missiles are buried deep underground, rendering the airstrikes practically useless in destroying them.
Crooke’s blunt dismissal of these claims follows questions asked about the military purpose of both stages of Israel’s assault on Lebanon.
Israel has ‘no plan for peace’
Israel’s pager attacks have been recognized as a logistical and media victory by intelligence experts, but reports have also shown they have had no effect on Hezbollah’s war-fighting capability.
Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA officer who served in the Middle East told the Washington Post, “This is the most impressive kinetic operation I can recall in my career.”
“The scope was staggering.”
Yet the Post’s report goes on to cite White House and Israeli insiders expressing doubts over the move – and also concerning Israel’s apparent lack of any clear strategy at all.
“Some officials have questioned how much the United States should support Israel if that conflict spirals into a broader war that drags in the Americans even further,” said the Post, citing one anonymous “inside American adviser.”
“The U.S. will have to decide how much they want to do to help Israel, and I don’t know what the answer to that is,” said the source, who would only speak unidentified due to the “sensitive” nature of openly questioning U.S. support for Israel. The source went on:
“[The U.S. will] likely continue to supply Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself, but there are serious voices in the administration who wonder, ‘Israel did this to themselves – why should we help them?’”
As the Post also notes, “Israel did not inform its most important allies in Washington in advance, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.” Israel has neither confirmed nor denied it was responsible for the attacks.
Questions over Israeli grand strategy have persisted for months. In July, the Washington Post reported that Israel “has no plan for peace,” with no end in sight to its war in Gaza. In the wake of the pager attacks, Bronwen Maddox of the U.K.’s Chatham House concluded in a report filed from the Lebanon border, “The Hezbollah pager attacks prove that Israel has no strategy for peace.”
‘What’s the point?’
Additional reports also doubted any military rationale behind the attacks. In an article showcasing “Israel’s James Bond-style operation” former IDF officer Dr. Ahron Bregman asked, “What’s the point?”
Suggesting the goal was towards a media – and non-military impact – Bregman continued: “This Israeli operation will be at the heart of future Hollywood films, and for good reason, but let’s dive into the more grim reality.”
Bregman says in the absence of any “Israeli tanks” to follow up the attacks, their purpose may be to provoke a response from Hezbollah which “legitimizes” a major war.
“The Israelis are trying to humiliate Hezbollah – forcing it to react forcefully, which will give Israel the international legitimacy to embark on an all-out war with its sworn enemy.”
Warning of the dimensions of this conflict, Bregman, senior teaching fellow at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, said, “These are dangerous days. It might be that we are marching into a big, regional, Middle Eastern war involving not only Israel and Hezbollah but also the likes of Iran, the Houthis in Yemen, as well as Shia militias in Syria and Iraq.”
Both waves of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon have been of questionable military value. Both have left the combat power of Hezbollah largely intact. The same cannot be said for the lives of those destroyed in them.
The White House is reportedly frustrated with Israel’s actions, seeing them as attempts to provoke a retaliation from Hezbollah and even Iran which would spark a regional war. According to the Washington Post, “U.S. officials also noted with angst that, for nearly a year, the White House and allies have worked to tamp the flames in Lebanon.”
Israel appears to be desperate to fan these flames. Its often insinuated goal is to draw the United States into a regional crisis the White House says it has been working to avoid.
With no plan for peace, Israel has worked in secret to launch, without warning, a new era of international terror. In the absence of any strategy beyond escalation, Israel appears now to be openly seeking to internationalize its war by any means at its disposal.
conflict
Russia has sent the West a message: Don’t provoke us into escalating the war
From LifeSiteNews
The U.S., U.K., and NATO war alliance is desperate to provoke Vladimir Putin into expanded engagement prior to Donald Trump taking office. NATO members, sans Biden, met after the U.S. election to organize a strategy to Trump-proof their efforts.
Despite the diminutive Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky jumping around and shouting about Russians firing an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Thursday, they didn’t. Instead, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided his response to the U.S-led NATO group firing missiles into the Russian Federation would be to send a message with a multi-warhead intermediate range hypersonic missile. (Click here for background information.)
President Vladimir Putin said “one of the newest Russian medium-range missile systems was tested in combat conditions, in this case with a ballistic missile in non-nuclear hypersonic edition.” The missile has a range of approximately 3,500 kilometers, below the threshold for the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) – that’s a reach throughout western Europe, and the hypersonic message is likely, “You have no iron dome system that can prevent this.”
From Reuters:
Russia fired a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at the city of Dnipro on Thursday in response to the U.S. and UK allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons, in a further escalation of the 33-month-old war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a televised address, said Moscow struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new ballistic missile known as ‘Oreshnik’ (the hazel) and warned that more could follow.
‘A regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character,’ Putin said in an address to the nation carried by state television after 8 pm Moscow time (1700 GMT).
A U.S. official said that Washington was pre-notified by Russia shortly before its strike, while another said they had briefed Kyiv and other close allies in recent days to prepare for the possible use of such a weapon.
Regardless of its classification, the latest strike highlighted rapidly rising tensions in the past several days.
Ukraine fired U.S. and British missiles at targets inside Russia this week despite warnings by Moscow that it would see such action as a major escalation.
The U.S., U.K., and NATO war alliance is desperate to provoke Vladimir Putin into expanded engagement prior to President-elect Donald Trump taking office. The NATO members, sans Biden, previously met in Brussels after the U.S. election to organize a strategy to Trump-proof their efforts.
Increasingly it looks like Great Britain will lead the provocation effort, with full support of the U.S. war machine. We previously said to watch Moldova closely, because that strategic position would be the most likely place of Western political influence to provoke Russia.
Indeed, as things are starting to unfold with increased urgency stimulated by the U.S. election outcome, now we see the U.K. entering a new agreement for military defense of Moldova being pre-positioned. From a U.K. government press release:
A new UK-Moldova Defence and Security Partnership has also been launched today, building on extensive cooperation between the two countries and strengthening Moldovan resilience against external threats. This partnership will bolster support for the sovereignty, security and stability of Ukraine, helping to strengthen national security at home in the face of increasing Russian aggression.
…
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said:
‘Moldova is a vital security partner for the UK, which is why to reinforce their resilience against Russian aggression and to keep British streets safe, I am deepening cooperation on irregular migration and launching a new Defence and Security Partnership.
‘With Ukraine next door, Moldovans are constantly reminded of Russia’s oppression, imperialism and aggression.[‘]
As the design of the strategy appears to be unfolding, Great Britain, with U.S. covert operational support, will position themselves inside Moldova. NATO troops are already on the ground there, much to the anxiety of the average Moldovan.
The intellectually honest people of Moldova, using the reference point of prior activity by the U.S. in Ukraine, clearly see themselves being set up as cannon fodder for Western military usefulness. The Great Britain/CIA/NATO team appears likely to use the geography of Moldova to provoke Russia into some form of response.
The U.K. can then declare their troops under attack, and NATO can respond with mutual defense of the U.K. pact, via Moldova.
The baseline for the continued need to avoid any cessation of hostilities in Ukraine is financial. BlackRock and JPMorgan have exclusive rights to the “rebuilding” of Ukraine, with access to all the resources therein. Thus there is an alignment of interests between BlackRock, JPMorgan, NATO, the U.S. State Department, and the internal operatives of the Biden administration.
At the same time, the Deep State (those who control Biden), the Intelligence Community, in combination with the anti-Trump DOJ-NSD (National Security Division), are using the increased hostility to bait President-elect Trump into saying something contradictory about current U.S.-NATO policy – a Logan Act violation.
So far President Trump has remained quiet, as the provocation against our peaceful interests are ongoing. For his part, Vladimir Putin has remained reserved and careful in his response; however, as U.S./NATO missiles continue to land inside the Russian Federation, there is concern that Putin’s restrained responses may indeed escalate.
We hope there are backchannels between Moscow and Mar-a-Lago; however, without any doubt the Intelligence Community is looking to intercept any communication that might possibly be taking place. Everyone in and around the orbit of President Trump likely has national security surveillance on them.
The industrial war machine is attempting to defend itself against any peace effort.
“Troublesome” is an understatement.
Reprinted with permission from Conservative Treehouse.
conflict
Colonel Macgregor warns of world war, urges Trump to ‘tell the truth’ about Ukraine, Israel
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
Colonel Douglas Macgregor has warned that Biden’s authorization of long-range missile attacks by Ukraine has resulted in ‘the highest state of nuclear alert’ in Russia and that the U.S. faces ‘the storm of the century’ in the Middle East.
In a powerful, sobering appraisal of the escalating danger of world war, Colonel Douglas Macgregor has warned that Biden’s authorization of long-range missile attacks by Ukraine has already resulted in “the highest state of nuclear alert” in Russia, and that the U.S. faces “the storm of the century” in a direct conflict with Iran.
Following months of pressure by the U.K. government to permit the firing of NATO-guided and supplied missiles “deep into Russian territory,” outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden green-lit the strikes on Monday.
The following day, the U.S.-guided and supplied ATACMS missiles were fired 70 miles into Russia. Following this, despite U.K. government ambiguity on the issue, U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles were also launched into pre-2014 Russian territory for the first time.
Described as sign that “the West wants escalation” by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the strikes were followed by the use of a novel Russian hypersonic missile known as “Oreshnik” (“Hazelnut”). The previously unseen weapon delivered multiple warheads on its Ukrainian target and “cannot be countered” – as Russian President Vladimir Putin explained.
Putin has repeatedly warned that Russia will strike any military installation from which strikes on its territory originate, promising a “mirror-like” response to future attacks.
Putin also updated Russian nuclear doctrine following the Biden authorization. The revised doctrine now includes the use of nuclear weapons in response to an attack on Russia by a non-nuclear power – but “backed by a nuclear power” – like Ukraine.
Macgregor said the moves by the U.S. were reckless and had resulted in the “highest state of nuclear alert” in the Russian military. He condemned a statement made by U.S. Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, which claimed the U.S. was prepared to fight – and even win – a nuclear war with Russia.
Such remarks “convince the Russians we are preparing for nuclear war,” said Macgregor, stressing that this U.S. officer could not have made this irresponsible and dangerous remark if his senior officer did not support it.
Macgregor said that this must be swiftly followed by the rear admiral’s immediate removal, and also by that of his commander.
“Generals do not make policy,” he said, as he bemoaned the absence of visible leadership in the U.S. at a time of mounting crisis. “Who is in charge?” he asked, arguing that the Department of State – whose brief includes foreign and war policy – appears to be itself being led by “generals who act like Caesars.”
With NATO faced with a drawdown of U.S. commitments to European security under Donald Trump, moves towards war hysteria is one means of securing its future.
The entire liberal-global order faces a hard reckoning following defeat in Ukraine, as this promises to reveal the deep corruption, money laundering, human trafficking, and immense damage to the European economy partnered with the “hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians,” which Macgregor says the media is simply refusing to report.
“The media have never told the truth,” Macgregor said angrily.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on November 11 that “corporate media is a propaganda vessel for Big Pharma and the war machine,” summarizing his long-held position that the Ukraine war is a vast “money laundering scheme” involving the military industrial complex – and companies like BlackRock.
“The big military contractors want to expand NATO. Why? Because nations have to conform their military purchases to NATO,” he said.
Kennedy recalls Senator Mitch McConnell’s stunning response to the question of whether the U.S. can afford sending “$113 billion to Ukraine.” Kennedy explained, “He said, ‘Don’t worry,’” and then showed McConnell saying, “It’s going to American defense manufacturers.”
Kennedy’s claim that the media runs advertisements for the war machine is not a “conspiracy theory.” It is a matter of congressional record.
Kennedy has also stated that the United States blew up the Nordstream pipelines, destroying German gas supplies – and resulting in the destruction of the economy of the former powerhouse of Europe.
He said in March 2024, “It’s amazing how some refuse to admit that we sabotaged Nordstream even after Biden stated on camera that if Russia invades Ukraine, ‘there will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it.’ This is a matter of public record.”
“There is indeed propaganda at play here. But it isn’t Russian and it isn’t coming from me. It’s the war propaganda of our own government and their collaborators in the media.”
This propaganda machine is now pushing the West towards a war with Russia which cannot be won. A nuclear exchange, as Putin, Macgregor, and Trump have said, would produce no winners. Conventionally, European nations have spent so little on defense that they have no effective counter-force to a Russian land invasion – which Macgregor says the Russians “have no intention” of launching anyway.
Dr. Sumantra Maitra, the author of the “dormant NATO” policy behind Trump’s move to scale down U.S. commitments, yesterday said the result is “a very, very risky moment,” saying “Putin argues that the line of ‘strict or qualified neutrality’ is now blurred” by the authorized NATO weapon strikes.
President Putin announced on November 21st that “we reserve the right to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”
“In the event of escalating aggression, we will deliver a decisive mirror-like response.”
Why is the regime escalating to a “blurred” line between proxy conflict and nuclear war?
It is an insane gamble to prevent the U.S. from drawing down from NATO in Europe, and to prolong a war whose end would reveal the deep corruption in and around the proxy war in Ukraine. Peace would spell doom for the liberal-global order.
Nuclear war for Israel?
Hopes for another payday for the war machine are still alive, however, in the strong U.S. backing of Israel.
In his November 21 appearance on “Judging Freedom,” Macgregor describes continuing U.S. support for a nation whose leaders are now named in arrest warrants linked to genocide as a “tragedy,” saying of the announcement of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, “It’s a sad and tragic day for Israel and I think for the United States because we are complicit” in the charges made against both men.
Israel is another example of a leadership whose tenure can only be secured if the wars never end. Benjamin Netanyahu is accused by many, including his fellow Israelis, of keeping the wars going to avoid jail. Even Joe Biden agreed with this assessment.
With Netanyahu urging the U.S. into a war with Iran that Israel cannot win alone, Macgregor asks “four questions on Iran,” namely how such a disastrous war could ever be argued to be serving the interests of the United States.
It would, Macgregor said, see the “U.S. sleepwalking into disaster” so colossal as to be “the storm of the century” – and all to keep a criminal out of prison.
Macgregor has stated that all Trump has to do to stop the war in Ukraine is “tell the truth” about the corruption, lies, and reckless escalation which have sold this war to the West. On the grave matter of human losses, he said:
“We don’t know how many have died. The media have never told the truth. It’s 600,000, 700,000 dead Ukrainians at least and hundreds of thousands more wounded who will never recover. No one is telling the truth. It’s time for the truth. If President Trump does anything he’s got to tell the truth – and throw out anyone who doesn’t provide him with the truth.”
The same can be said of Netanyahu himself. If Trump were to tell even some of the truth about this man, neither Americans nor anyone else outside his influence would be willing to stand with him.
Netanyahu has urged all of the “regime change” wars which have driven mass migration into the West. The war in Iraq killed “a million historic Christians,” as J.D. Vance has said, adding that if Americans had been told this instead of WMD lies, they would never have supported Netanyahu’s call for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq.
Netanyahu has pushed the false line of Iraqi WMDs since 1990. He called for the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, whose demise smashed open the floodgates of African mass migration.
Regime change is the business model of neocons whom Trump vowed in February 2023 to remove from the U.S. government, and Netanyahu is the man who has urged regime change on the U.S. for at least 20 years. Trump made this statement almost two years ago in a video recently recirculated as if it were current news. It is to be hoped that Trump’s resolve on clearing out the “Deep State neocons …who seek confrontation” has not weakened.
Regime change has ruined the West, changing regimes at home into a permanent state of emergency governed by censorship and lawfare against critics of godless liberal-globalism. As a result, we are now morally and financially bankrupt, our isolation sealed by steadfast support of a nation whose leadership is now credibly accused of obvious war crimes.
At home, Netanyahu is accused of having backed Hamas for years, of ignoring precise warnings of the October 7 attacks, of relentlessly blocking every hostage deal – to prolong the wars which keep him in office.
His former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman also warned that “Israel will not exist in 2026” if Netanyahu remains in power, saying in June that the Netanyahu government is “only concerned with its political survival.”
Israelis themselves recognize that Netanyahu cannot survive the outbreak of peace, and “has never wanted peace,” as Donald Trump said of him in 2021. Netanyahu’s entire career is based on permanent war. He now wishes to drag Americans – and the rest of the world – into another.
To tell this shocking truth to Americans could not only save Israel from a coalition the former head of Mossad warned in 2022 was “leading Israel to self-destruction” – but also save us all from a devastating global conflict, which Macgregor says would be sparked by attacking Iran.
The U.S. faces a stark choice between oblivion and restoration. It cannot have both, as others have pointed out. So far, Trump has remained silent on Israel while Putin has signaled he is open to Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine.
With war being the lifeline of the Deep State that Trump has vowed to defeat, is he willing to tell Americans the truth to keep their dreams – and themselves – alive?
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