Lebanon's Hezbollah sought Thursday to show that Israel is building up defences in anticipation of another conflict, after a string of statements from Israeli officials warning of a potential confrontation.
The powerful Shiite group, which fought a devastating war with the Jewish state in 2006, brought dozens of journalists on a rare and highly-choreographed trip to the demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel.
"This tour is to show the defensive measures that the enemy is taking," said Hezbollah spokesman Mohamed Afif, on a hilltop along the so-called Blue Line.
A military commander identified as Haj Imad, dressed in digital camouflage and sunglasses, said the Israeli army was erecting earth berms up to 10 metres (30 feet) high, as well as reinforcing a military position near the Israeli border town of Hanita.
"Because their position is directly by the border and the enemy fears that the resistance will advance on it, they have constructed a cliff and additional earth berms and put up concrete blocks," he said.
"The Israeli enemy is undertaking these fortifications and building these obstacles in fear of an advance" by Hezbollah, he said.
As he spoke, an Israeli military patrol of two armoured cars and a white bus wended their way along a road behind a fence, as two yellow bulldozers moved earth nearby.
There has been rising speculation about the possibility of a new war between Israel and Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese paramilitary organisation, more than a decade after their last direct confrontation.
The 34-day conflict in 2006 led to the deaths of 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
Israel's army chief warned recently that in a "future war, there will be a clear address: the state of Lebanon and the terror groups operating in its territory and under its authority."
There have been periodic skirmishes along the UN-monitored demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon, longtime adversaries which are technically still at war with each other.
- 'We don't fear war' -
Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon in 2000, after an 22-year occupation.
Thursday's tour sought to paint Israel as afraid of a new conflict, while depicting Hezbollah as ready for war despite having committed thousands of its fighters to bolstering Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.
Journalists were taken from the southern Lebanese town of Naqura, with Hezbollah fighters in full military regalia stationed along the route alongside the group's yellow flag -- despite an official ban on any armed paramilitary presence in southern Lebanon.
Faces smeared with black and green camouflage, they stood silently holding guns and RPG launchers.
On the demarcation line, officially patrolled by the Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL, there was little sign of tension.
The scents of wild thyme and yellow gorse mingled in the air, the landscape peaceful beyond the noise produced by the sudden scrum of visitors.
While eager to discuss the measures they say Israel has been taking, Hezbollah officials refused to be drawn on their own preparations for war, beyond insisting on their ability to fight if one comes.
Some analysts believe Hezbollah would be hard-pressed to fight on two fronts, Syria and Israel, but others note the group's combatants have also gained new experience during years of battle in the Syrian conflict.
"We don't talk about what the resistance will do," said Haj Imad.
"But we do not fear war, we don't hesitate to confront it. We yearn for it and we will confront it if it is imposed on us, and God willing we will win."
Despite the bellicose tone, Afif insisted that Hezbollah believes "the chances of war are remote."
"These defensive measures show that Israel is the one who is afraid the resistance and it is not the resistance that is afraid."
An article in the Guardian last week provides more confirmation that John Brennan was the American progenitor of political espionage aimed at defeating Donald Trump. One side did collude with foreign powers to tip the election — Hillary’s.
Seeking to retain his position as CIA director under Hillary, Brennan teamed up with British spies and Estonian spies to cripple Trump’s candidacy. He used their phony intelligence as a pretext for a multi-agency investigation into Trump, which led the FBI to probe a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his people.
John Brennan’s CIA operated like a branch office of the Hillary campaign, leaking out mentions of this bogus investigation to the press in the hopes of inflicting maximum political damage on Trump. An official in the intelligence community tells TAS that Brennan’s retinue of political radicals didn’t even bother to hide their activism, decorating offices with “Hillary for president cups” and other campaign paraphernalia.
A supporter of the American Communist Party at the height of the Cold War, Brennan brought into the CIA a raft of subversives and gave them plum positions from which to gather and leak political espionage on Trump. He bastardized standards so that these left-wing activists could burrow in and take career positions. Under the patina of that phony professionalism, they could then present their politicized judgments as “non-partisan.”
The Guardian story is written in a style designed to flatter its sources (they are cast as high-minded whistleblowers), but the upshot of it is devastating for them, nonetheless, and explains why all the criminal leaks against Trump first originated in the British press. According to the story, Brennan got his anti-Trump tips primarily from British spies but also Estonian spies and others. The story confirms that the seed of the espionage into Trump was planted by Estonia. The BBC’s Paul Wood reported last year that the intelligence agency of an unnamed Baltic State had tipped Brennan off in April 2016 to a conversation purporting to show that the Kremlin was funneling cash into the Trump campaign.
Any other CIA director would have disregarded such a flaky tip, recognizing that Estonia was eager to see Trump lose (its officials had bought into Hillary’s propaganda that Trump was going to pull out of NATO and leave Baltic countries exposed to Putin). But Brennan opportunistically seized on it, as he later that summer seized on the half-baked intelligence of British spy agencies (also full of officials who wanted to see Trump lose).
The Guardian says that British spy head Robert Hannigan “passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan.” To ensure that these flaky tips leaked out, Brennan disseminated them on Capitol Hill. In August and September of 2016, he gave briefings to the “Gang of Eight” about them, which then turned up on the front page of the New York Times.
All of this took place at the very moment Brennan was auditioning for Hillary. He desperately wanted to keep his job and despised Trump for his alleged “Muslim ban,” a matter near and dear to Brennan’s heart. Not only was he an apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood, but Brennan’s Islamophilia dated to his days in college, when he spent a year in Cairo learning Arabic and taking courses in Middle Eastern studies.
He later got a graduate degree with an emphasis in Middle Eastern studies. In 1996, his ties to the Islamic world tightened after he became the CIA’s station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He once recalled that “during a 25-year career in government, I was privileged to serve in positions across the Middle East — as a political officer with the State Department and as a CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina. I marveled at the majesty of the Hajj and the devotion of those who fulfilled their duty as Muslims by making that privilege — that pilgrimage.”
Out of this Islamophilia came a special dislike of Michael Flynn, who had planned to rip up the Obama-era “reset” with Muslim countries. Furious with Flynn for his apostasy from political correctness, Brennan and other Obama aides couldn’t resist the temptation to take him out after rifling through transcripts of his calls with the Russian ambassador. They caught him in a lie to Mike Pence and made sure the press knew about it.
Intent on keeping his job in a Hillary Clinton administration, former CIA Director John Brennan ‘colluded’ with foreign spies in an effort to bring down Donald Trump’s candidacy, according to a report by American Spectator.
The deployment of unverified reports which have never been confirmed led the FBI to investigate a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his team, the report said, citing the UK’s Guardian.
Brennan, called “Brennan of Arabia” by one intelligence analyst, is known to be an apologist for the Islamic faith and was an open supporter of Hillary Clinton’s campaign even in the conduct of his official duties at the CIA.
The Guardian report confirms that Brennan received his anti-Trump intel primarily from British spies, but that the seed of the espionage into Trump was planted by Estonia. The BBC’s Paul Wood reported last year that the intelligence agency of an unnamed Baltic State had tipped Brennan off in April 2016 to a conversation purporting to show that the Kremlin was funneling cash into the Trump campaign.
FBI Admits It Was Not The Russians - Launches Manhunt For "Insider" Who Leaked CIA Docs To WikiLeaks
Having exclaimed that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” laying the blame for every embarrassing leak at Moscow’s footsteps, the FBI and CIA have admitted that they are searching for an “insider” (not a Russian) who exposed thousands of top-secret documents that described CIA tools used to penetrate smartphones, smart televisions and computer systems.
As CBS News reports, a manhunt is underway for a traitor inside the Central Intelligence Agency.
Sources familiar with the investigation say it is looking for an insider — either a CIA employee or contractor — who had physical access to the material. The agency has not said publicly when the material was taken or how it was stolen.
Much of the material was classified and stored in a highly secure section of the intelligence agency, but sources say hundreds of people would have had access to the material. Investigators are going through those names.
The trove was published in March by the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks.
Hezbollah gives reporters grand tour of new Israeli defenses
An officer in the terror group Hezbollah gave a field tour to Lebanese journalists Thursday along the Lebanese border with Israel, detailing the Jewish state’s new defenses and claiming Israel had switched to a “defensive” doctrine for the first time in its history.
The Israeli army has been changing the topography of the Israel-Lebanon border, carving and molding the landscape in order to make it more difficult for Hezbollah fighters to attack nearby border towns.
While taking queries from the journalists, the Hezbollah officer refused to answer questions about a possible next war with Israel or about the terror organization itself.
However, he said in a clip published by the governmental Lebanese Broadcasting Company, “for the first time in this enemy’s history, it’s switching from an offensive to a defensive doctrine.”
The Hezbollah officer, surrounded by a group of clamoring journalists, concentrated his talk on “the geographic reality and the spread of the Zionist enemy, and the defensive measures the enemy has taken lately.”
Standing in a position in which he is looking down at Israel, he showed off that he is familiar with the locations of the various Israeli towns in the area, including Shlomi, Avivim and Hanita.
Hanita, he said, was built by the “gangs of the Haganah” — Israel’s largest pre-state militia and the precursor of the IDF — “starting in 1932.”
“There are many colonies built over Palestinian ruins by the enemy on the pure land,” he said.
He proceeded to discuss the units operating in the area.
“There are a number military sites under the command of the Western Brigade, Brigade 300, which is subordinate to the Northern Command. Recently General Yoel Strick was appointed as its commander,” he said.
The Hezbollah officer also showed that he is familiar with the chain of command from the division level down to the smaller companies.
He pointed to what he said is the “Israeli Galilee media site, which contains the largest spying and surveillance system.”
At one point the camera focuses on an Israeli military jeep driving down a mountain road that looks not too far away.
“For the past year, the enemy has begun to build fortifications, obstacles, and extensive means of defense to stop people from moving toward him,” he said.
“The enemy assumes the resistance [Hezbollah] will use this area to penetrate into its colonies, but I do not adopt this,” he added.
Hezbollah also showed off some of its weaponry, inviting photographers to take pictures of its armed gunmen.
Thursday’s tour sought to paint Israel as afraid of a new conflict, while depicting Hezbollah as ready for war despite having committed thousands of its fighters to bolstering Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
Journalists were taken from the southern Lebanese town of Naqura, with Hezbollah fighters in full military regalia stationed along the route alongside the group’s yellow flag — despite an official ban on any armed paramilitary presence in southern Lebanon.
Faces smeared with black and green camouflage, they stood silently holding guns and RPG launchers.
On the demarcation line, officially patrolled by the Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL, there was little sign of tension. The scents of wild thyme and yellow gorse mingled in the air, the landscape peaceful beyond the noise produced by the sudden scrum of visitors.
On the less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) of border that the 300th Regional Brigade is responsible for, Israel has carried out “thousands of kilometers” of work, Israel’s chief engineering officer, Maj. Eliyahu Gabay, told The Times of Israel in a recent interview.
The Hezbollah officer said the IDF removed the greenery on the slope of a mountain, creating an open zone 1,600 meters long and seven to 15 meters high.
“It was all once green here,” the officer said.
He also said Israel has made an eight- to 10-meter-high dirt embankment between the Israeli towns of Hanita and Hamra “meant to prevent passage.”
According to Gabay, the terrorist group is constantly monitoring the IDF’s efforts to shore up defenses. “It’s normal, it’s routine, it’s regular” for its operatives to come to the border and watch our progress, he said.
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