Hezbollah Deeply Divided Over Supporting Assad
October 28, 2012 18:07 by Pesach Benson
Everything you need to know about today’s coverage of Israel and the Mideast. Join the Israel Daily News Stream on Facebook.
Today’s Top Stories
1. The Sunday Telegraph reports that Hezbollah’s deeply divided over supporting Bashar Assad:
The most dramatic sign of dissent within Hizbollah is the cancellation of a forthcoming party convention that is usually held every three years – the first time anybody can remember it being dropped. The official explanation is that it would be a security risk.
But a Shia politician from an important political family said: “They are not able to hold their convention because they are afraid they cannot agree on Syria.”
Disagreement is said to be strongest between civilian Hizbollah members, who are more likely to favour cutting links with Damascus, and its powerful military wing, trained and indoctrinated by Iran and still fiercely loyal to the Syrian regime.
2. Irish TV3 news anchor Vincent Browne said on air that “Israel is the cancer in world affairs” and that it stole Arab land.
In the face of condemnation, Browne’s digging in his heels. HonestReporting has more.
3. Big media put Sudan-Iran ties in the spotlight. And according to the Sunday Times (paywall), the Khartoum factory destroyed last week was producing Iranian missiles capable of hitting Israel from Sudan.
Under Revolutionary Guard supervision, the Iranians were building advanced Shahab ballistic missiles and rockets at a plant in the factory compound. . . .
The threat of a new source of missiles set off alarm bells in Israel. “These ballistic missiles could be launched towards Israel from either Sudan or from the Sinai peninsula,” an Israeli security expert said. “They pose a direct threat.”
Israel and the Palestinians
• When I was a kid, cancelling school for snow was the best. But things are different in Israel: Beer Sheva schools closed as rocket fire continues.
As for botched headlines, I’m calling Voice of America onto the carpet. It’s the old It All Started When Israel Fired Back phenomenon.
• Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini brilliantly takes apart Haaretz and Gideon Levy’s apartheid survey. Haaretz columnist Yehuda Ben Meir also raises objections to the poll too (paywall). Meanwhile, Irish Times correspondent Mark Weiss uses the survey as “context” for reporting the merger of the Likud/Israel Beiteinu parties.
• For some counter-intuitive views, Elliott Abrams discussed the emir of Qatar’s Gaza visit with former Israeli National Security Advisor, Giora Eiland:
He thinks the visit and the aid were perfectly acceptable. He does not believe Israel has any particular interest in reuniting the West Bank and Gaza, rather than seeking a greater integration of Gaza with Egypt. He also notes that efforts by Israel to strengthen the PA and its leader, President Abbas, against Hamas quite often have the opposite effect.
He also believes that weakening Hamas does not strengthen Abbas and Fatah in Gaza, because they are so weak there and unable to improve their situation. Instead, weakening Hamas strengthens even more extreme salafist and jihadi groups. He argues that to the extent that Hamas comes to be more like a stable government for Gaza, with a decent economy, it will have that much more to lose from confrontations with Israel. When many more valuable targets are at risk, he believes, Hamas will be more careful.
• Credit where credit is due: Mondoweiss changed its reader comments policy
Obviously this decision is a result of the recent flap over anti-Semitic comments posted from the Free Gaza Movement Twitter account. That incident has prompted a lot of soul searching inside the movement for Palestinian human rights, because it showed that a significant part of the community wants to talk about Israeli policy in the context of Jewish history and Jewish identity, and do so in a highly critical manner. Clearly a lot of people, including many in our community, want to have these conversations and regard them as necessary to resolving the Middle East conflict. We don’t. We are tired of serving as a platform for this discussion, including in the comment section, and don’t see the conversation as a productive one. From here on out, the Mondoweiss comment section will no longer serve as a forum to pillory Jewish culture and religion as the driving factors in Israeli and US policy.
We are making this change because this discussion makes for a toxic, often racist, discourse, and scares off others who would otherwise be drawn to the issues this site concerns itself with.
Would that The Guardian and its Comment is Free section come to a similar realization.
Frank Adam
8:08 pm
Oct 28, 2012
Vincent Browne has simply shown that he is politically short-sighted, deaf and under-read in his history.
What narks the Moslem World especially the Arabs, is Western dominance these three centuries, and they resent that they are not the planetary hegemons which situation seems to be a sort of insult to Islam to them having been toppled or superseded when Islam promises them to be the top dogs – but they are not. Israel is just the nearest bit of the West that they can actually strike and its understandable readiness to strike back is insolence to Moslems and Arabs’ eyes in particular.
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
17 
0
spartacus !!!!!!!
8:24 pm
Oct 28, 2012
Islam is just a “cancer” that needs to be removed at the behest of a weapon !!!!!!! ( 1 samuel 15 : 2,3 )
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
17 
0
IDNS: Hezbollah Deeply Divided Over Supporting Assad | Blogs about Israel aggregation
10:14 pm
Oct 28, 2012
[...] Continued on Page 2 [...]
Agree or Disagree:
1 
0
Moll
11:20 pm
Oct 28, 2012
Vincent Browne (b.1944) in his ~50 yr. rapidly cycling bipolar career, forgot that the words he speaks/writes — words, such as ““Israel is the cancer in world affairs” & etc become seeds that germinate into events the speaker/writer finds himself living — heavy debt, no pension ill health, become reality. Brown has forgotten that G-d caused it to be written that He would “bless those who bless Israel, & curse those who curse Israel (Genesis 12:3); that the prophets of old wrote “as you have done [to the jew] so it will be done to you; your dealiings [vis-a-vis the jew] shall return upon your own [gentile] head…” (Obadiah verse 15ff).
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
9 
0
Melvin
1:44 am
Oct 29, 2012
I think perhaps vincent browne has dipped a bit too much in his Irish whiskey!
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
8 
0
Liliane
2:51 pm
Oct 29, 2012
I agree Melvin
Agree or Disagree:
1 
0
Jeffrey Nakar
3:43 pm
Oct 29, 2012
If the Shahab missiles being built in Sudan were to be deployed in Sudan, they would be capable of hitting countries in the European Union. Let us all be grateful for the Israeli action.
Hatemongers in the European Parliament and bureaucrats take note. Time to face the truth.
Agree or Disagree:
2 
0
IDNS: PA Frees Prominent Hunger-Striking Prisoner | Blogs about Israel aggregation
5:13 pm
Oct 29, 2012
[...] Gaza rockets and Israeli retaliation continue. See latest updates at the Jerusalem Post, YNet, Times of Israel and [...]
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Jerry
11:44 pm
Nov 03, 2012
This guy Vincent Browne,( for lack of a better name) does not play with a full deck of cards. It is apparent, that his genetic make -up is terribly flawed. We have yet to determine, what planet he is from, but one thing is for sure, we do not have to worry about the intelligence of aliens. He is proof enough!!
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0