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years of traditional YHWH destruction......

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) plans to soon enter southern Lebanon, ABC News reported on Saturday, citing an unnamed senior US official. The US outlet described the supposed operation as “very limited” but provided few details about its nature or when it may begin.

On Wednesday, the IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, announced a potential ground operation in the neighboring state as he talked to troops stationed at Israel’s northern border. The airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the past week were in particular aimed at preparing the area “for the possibility of your entry,” the general told the troops.

According to Halevi, Israel was still seeking to return displaced residents from the northern regions to their homes. “To do this, we are preparing the [ground] maneuver,” the general said, without revealing a time frame for the operation.

You will go in, destroy the enemy there, and decisively destroy their infrastructure,” Halevi said, adding that Hezbollah had supposedly turned villages into “large military outposts, with underground infrastructure, staging points, and launch pads into our territory.”

Israel and Hezbollah have sporadically exchanged fire over the past year, as the latter has supported the Palestinian cause in light of West Jerusalem’s military operation against Hamas.

West Jerusalem drastically escalated its campaign against the Shia militia earlier this month, wounding thousands in a sabotage operation targeting the group’s handheld communication devices and subsequently bombarding southern Lebanon with airstrikes. The Israeli attacks have claimed at least 1,300 lives, according to the Lebanese health authorities.

The ABC report came just a day after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a large Israeli airstrike targeting what was described as the group’s main headquarters in the southern suburb of the Lebanese capital of Beirut. The militia confirmed its leader’s death early on Saturday. No successor to Nasrallah has been named.

West Jerusalem stated later on Saturday that almost all of Hezbollah’s military leaders had been eliminated. It also shared a list of a dozen top commanders of the militia killed over the past few weeks.

Washington reacted to Nasrallah’s death by calling it “a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.” It also reiterated its full support for West Jerusalem’s “right to defend itself” but also stated that the US sought to “de-escalate” the conflict.

Russia condemned the Israeli attacks in Lebanon, warning that such actions risk plunging the entire Middle East into a “big war.”

 

https://www.rt.com/news/604885-israel-invade-lebanon-media/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

wong's fig leaf....

 

Penny Wong’s fig leaf reveals more than it hides    By Daryl Guppy

 

Around 1541 the “Fig Leaf Campaign” was begun by Catholic fundamentalist, Cardinal Carafa. Between 1758 and 1759, Pope Clement XIII delicately covered  the offending parts of even more sculptures in the Vatican’s collection with fig leaves.

Under instruction from Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Australia’s UN ambassador James Larsen has continued this tradition of distraction by cover-up in pushing for a new Declaration for the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel.

The Declaration is designed to provide support and protection for human rights defenders in the context of their work. The proposal  was announced with grandiosity as a solution to a problem that is glaringly obvious. It is directly related to the attack, deliberate or otherwise, on Australian UN aid worker, Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom. In reality, it is not a step on a grand new policy. It is a fig leaf of distraction which brings no credit to its movers.

Humanitarian aid workers do not need a new set of pretty words authored by Australia or anyone else to assert protection from adverse regimes. Such protections already exist.

The Declaration on human rights defenders was adopted by consensus by the General Assembly in 1998. It was a  collective effort by a number of human rights non-governmental organisations and some state delegations helped to ensure a strong, useful and pragmatic final text. The adoption of the Declaration by the General Assembly by consensus represented a very strong commitment by states to its implementation.

As recently as May, the Security Council adopted a resolution calling on states to respect and protect United Nations and humanitarian personnel in accordance with their obligations under international law.

Consistent with these existing provisions, the  Australian proposal aims to  provide  for the protection of civilians, including the protection and respect of humanitarian personnel who assist and protect the victims of armed conflict, and notably provide the food, water and medical care that civilians in conflict zones need to survive. Perhaps in the arcane world of UN procedural negotiations these represent a significant change, but for others it is a fig leaf covering the need for enforcement  of already existing declarations.

Like the fig leaf, the Australia initiative is designed to cover the obvious and unpalatable fact that the existing protections already written into UN  agreements are being almost daily ignored by the Israeli military and some others. The Australian initiative seeks to obscure rather than reveal these transgressions with the fig leaf pretence that a new set of written protections to replace those so egregiously and studiously ignored.

There seems to have been no serious consideration given to Australia leading an aggressive campaign to support the enforcement of the already existing agreements that cover the neutrality of UN and humanitarian aid workers and their protection. Rather than support the enforcement of existing UN conditions, Australia has chosen, with a unwarranted level of self-righteousness given is silence on Gaza war crimes, to undermine those conditions by promoting a new statement that  does little to substantively expand the current protections.

But what it does do, if adopted, is ensure that the proposal will enter a lengthy UN process of  discussion prior to adoption. And then there is an even longer process to achieve ratification by UN member countries. All in all, these changes advanced by Australia with some degree of urgency could take three to ten years to be ratified and adopted if the progress with other UN proposals is any guide.

Enforcement of the existing UN protections and the shaming of member countries which do not abide by these protections provides a faster path to preventing these transgressions. It would also actually show that Australia is serious in its support for existing UN structures.

The continued and persistent abuse of these agreements  by a UN member nation cannot be effectively countered by a new set of proposals to replace those that can, and should, be enforced. Rogue nations, as Israel has become, who defy UN conventions do not get to change those regulations. Australia gains no credit from its attempts to shelter behind the fig leaf fiction that the solution is new regulations rather than the enforcement of existing agreements.

Wong’s Australian fig leaf is designed to cover Australia’s lack of support for the enforcement of the existing agreements and protections for humanitarian aid workers and, as such, shows the low level of support for the UN as a mechanism for managing global affairs.

Cardinal Carafa would be pleased with this cover that delays confronting offensive activity from a  UN member state.

https://johnmenadue.com/penny-wongs-fig-leaf-reveals-more-than-it-hides/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.