{"id":1145,"date":"2006-07-15T20:31:07","date_gmt":"2006-07-15T20:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:49","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:49","slug":"hezbollah_exper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1145","title":{"rendered":"Hezbollah ‘Experts’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m watching the events in the Middle East like the rest of us, and trying to put them into some kind of order in my own mind. Expect a post Monday…<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, I have to ding Laura Rozen, over at the Prospect. She interviews Mark Perry<\/a>, “co-director of the Conflicts Forum, a Beirut-based nongovernmental organization that has, over the past three years, put former senior American and British policy-makers and intelligence officials in talks with Hezbollah and other militant political Islamic groups in Lebanon”:<\/p>\n

Q: We\u2019ve been hearing the theory that the timing of Hezbollah\u2019s Tuesday kidnapping of the two Israeli Defense Force soldiers was planned well in advance and with coordination from Tehran or Damascus. Can you speak to that?<\/b><\/p>\n

\nOy vey. There are a lot of people in Washington trying to walk that story back right now, because it\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n

\nHezbollah and Israel stand along this border every day observing each other through binoculars and waiting for an opportunity to kill each other. They are at war. They have been for 25 years, no one ever declared a cease-fire between them. \u2026 They stand on the border every day and just wait for an opportunity. And on Tuesday morning there were two Humvees full of Israeli soldiers, not under observation from the Israeli side, not under covering fire, sitting out there all alone. The Hezbollah militia commander just couldn’t believe it — so he went and got them.<\/p>\n

\nThe Israeli captain in charge of that unit knew he had really screwed up, so he sent an armored personnel carrier to go get them in hot pursuit, and Hezbollah led them right through a minefield.<\/p>\n

\nNow if you’re sitting in Tehran or Damascus or Beirut, and you are part of the terrorist Politburo so to speak, you have a choice. With your head sunk in your hands, thinking “Oh my God,” you can either give [the kidnapped soldiers] back and say “Oops, sorry, wrong time” or you can say, “Hey, this is war.”<\/p>\n

\nIt is absolutely ridiculous to believe that the Hezbollah commander on the ground said Tuesday morning, “Go get two Israeli soldiers, would you please?\u201d <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mark needs to get out and talk to his Hezbollah buddies more, because Lebanese blogger Raja was watching Nasrallah on Lebanese TV and says<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Update 31: Nasrallah says that Hizballah has been working on this operation for five months.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um, Mark? Over to you, Laura…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Rozen cites a Hezbollah apologist as explaining that the kidnapping was opportunistic. Hezbollah says different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}