In Defiance of Trump's Deal -- Israel's Survival

"[Iranian officials pushed to include a clause in the interim agreement finalized earlier this week requiring Israel to leave] the security zone in Lebanon."

"The prime minister said to the U.S. President: 'We understand the concerns, but this is a critical issue for our national security and we won't pull out'."

Zev Elkin, security cabinet member, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ally 

June 18: Khamenei okays MOU in written statement, says talks with US do ‘not mean accepting its views’

 

The agreement reached between the United States and Iran had no input from Israel. This, despite that the aerial attacks launched on February 28 on the Islamic Republic was a joint enterprise shared by both Israel and the United States in a unified stance against the Iranian regime ever breaking the barrier toward achieving nuclear weaponry through its stealth uranium enrichment enterprise. That partnership broke down when Israel was excluded from negotiations carried on between Pakistan and Qatar as intermediaries between the U.S. and Iran, to achieve a ceasefire deal and end to the conflict.

 

And because Israel was not a member of the negotiations -- even though any such arrangement as was negotiated based on Iran's 'word of honour' that it had no intention of achieving nuclear arms, even while it threatened to destroy Israel, and its terrorist militias, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the Yemeni Houthis were all delegated by Iran to take part in a pincer-movement of destroying Israel -- there was no expectation incumbent upon Israel to heed any of the conditions it felt to be inimical to its own survival.

 

President Trump made no secret of his disapproval of Israel's ongoing incursion into southern Lebanon, the stronghold of the Hezbollah-Lebanese terrorist group whose rockets continued to rain down on Israel at the behest of Iran whose proxies tend to respond to commands from the Shiite Islamist fundamentalist state that have been formed, trained and armed by the al Quds arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the power behind the Ayatollahs' throne of command.

 

Trump insists Iran deal will open Strait of Hormuz 'toll-free' as he meets world leaders  BBC News

 

That being so, Israel did not appear to hesitate when rejecting the U.S. request to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, not as long as Hezbollah controlled Lebanon, despite the complications that ensued between the 'partnership' of Israel/U.S. defense coalition. The U.S./Iran agreed-upon interim deal stipulates hostilities must ease on all fronts, including -- at Iran's insistence -- in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting a parallel war ever since Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the joint attack on Iran. 

 

President Trump's dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Netanyahu's ongoing commitment in the face of Israeli security challenged by Iran's proxies and Iran itself, to continue its defensive offences has been publicly stated much to Israel's chagrin; re-stated more emphatically by Vice-President JD Vance in fairly offensive terms verging as close to rabid antisemitism as conceivable, helping to shake Israeli confidence in steadfast American support for Israel's survival.

 

On the other hand, a senior U.S. official stated that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon did not represent a condition of the deal; that Israel, in the opinion of the U.S. administration has the right to respond to any attacks by Hezbollah. Scathing condemnation from JD Vance, aside, which assurances is Israel to pin its decision-making upon? Grin and bear Mr. Trump's truculent insults, and turn aside from his vice's commentary, or put stock in what other Trump officials interpret...?

 

Israel has committed to destroying Hezbollah's capacity to continue lobbing rockets and drones into Israeli territory. So it continues to forge deeper into southern Lebanon, to oust Hezbollah from its perch there. In discussions with the Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Israel has assured him that any territory it clears of Hezbollah's threatening presence, while degrading its weaponry stockpiles and eliminating its leaders, will be turned over to the Lebanese National Army, in 'pilot' zones.

 

Lebanon's President Aoun has accused Tehran of using Lebanon as a bargaining chip. The Hezbollah drone incursions led Israel to bomb Beirut on June 14, enraging President Trump. As insurance, Israel now focuses on new means whereby it can neutralize the threat the drones pose, hoping to be able to sidetrack responses that would once again raise tensions with Washington. According to PM Netanyahu, Hezbollah's pre-war arsenal of 150,000 rockets have been reduced to 12,000; still capable of more than ample damage.  

 

 

 Smoke rises from Israeli bombardment near the village of Kfar Tibnit in southern Lebanon on June 14, 2026. AFP via Getty Images

Lebanon At A Crossroad ... Do Or Die

"They're going to respond anytime, anywhere."

"When the Israelis find these guys, they just take them out, so you have two or three a week that are whacked."

"If  you're a soldier in the Lebanese army earning $300 a month, you have to have three jobs. You're an Uber drive, a barista and a soldier."

"So you go knock on a Shia door on Monday and say, 'I'm sorry, man, can I go into your basement and take out the AK-47s?' And you're risking your life."

"[Still], we've got to have just one army." 

US. ambassador to Turkey/special envoy to Lebanon and Syria, Tom Barrack

 

"We have an unchecked player acting as a hegemon under a leader, Netanyahu, growing stronger by the day."

"At the same time there's a new generation across the world that can no longer tolerate Israeli behaviour."

"To monitor what goes on around you, you don't need to be on top of a 700-meter hill with binoculars or a Galileo telescope!"

"Israel has satellite imagery and drones and balloons with the most sophisticated cameras."

"The Israelis say they can't leave unless Hezbollah disarms, and Hezbollah says how can we disarm as long as the Israelis don't?"

Nawaf Salam, Lebanese prime minister 

Hezbollah terrorist organization announced the death of its member Hassan Abdul Karim Shahrour, eliminated in an IAF strike, September 2025, Lebanon strike on Saturday on the Khardali-Marjayoun road in southern Lebanon

 

They prey on Israel, their goal is the Jewish state's obliteration. Hezbollah is an auxiliary force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It is a creature of the Islamic Republic of Iran, one whose reputation as a formidable foe of Israel was a well-earned reputation. Iran has quite a number of proxy militias, among them Iraq's many Shia militias whose fealty to Iran is  unquestionable. There is Yemen's Houthis with their Red Sea exploits in maritime piracy, upending a significant part of the globe's shipping industry. And there is Hamas, which though Sunni, is on the same dedicated track of totalitarian Islamofascism.

 

At a time when the Israel Defense Forces were wholly focused on destroying the attack capabilities of Gaza's Hamas following the mass terrorist atrocities in southern Israel that devastated kibbutz farming communities, Hezbollah felt it would be timely to attack on Israel's north from Lebanon, and the Houthis too felt the time was right to lob their own missiles into Israel. Missiles from Gaza, from Lebanon and from Yemen. Oh yes, let us not overlook those that were sent by Iran itself, which persuaded Israel it was time to give Iran a good drubbing.

 

One tiny sliver of a country amidst a wide field of deadly adversaries. Israeli ingenuity believes in taking its enemies off guard and it did just that with a cunning scheme of explosive pagers and walkie-talkies reminded Hezbollah and by extension others hostile to Israel's presence on its ancestral Judean geography

that lethality comes in many forms, unexpected and quite effective in delivering a chastening demoralizing message. When Hezbollah began lobbing missiles from the Golan Heights into Israeli towns below they were guaranteed a response and it targeted southern Lebanon held by Hezbollah. 

 

 

Iran, its subsidiaries and its powerfully persuasive, glad-handing ally Qatar, have been busy frantically plotting the rescue of their partially emasculated terror groups, anxious to grasp any opportunity to strike additional blows at Israel. And if Israel is unapproachable, then why not strike at Jews living in the West whose governments prefer not to invest themselves in the security of the Jews among them? Islamists are exceedingly fond of striking Israel and by extension Jews anywhere during times of major Jewish holidays when attention is elsewhere than security for the targets.

 

And so it was that for Hanukkah of 2025 Australia was the chosen site for yet another atrocity, killing and maiming and shocking and traumatizing a population of Australian Jews whose leaders have pleaded with their government to respond forcefully and within existing laws to ensure security for all their citizens, Jews included. But then, there is a problem, one linked inexorably to lax security, indifference to Jewish concerns and above all, an immigration flood of Palestinians -- including Hezbollah and Hamas operatives and other Muslims from across the Middle East and North Africa; an experience familiar to all Western democracies where sheer numbers and politics collide.

 

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam's position on Hezbollah is a disgrace. The terrorist group has destroyed Lebanon, taking advantage of a bloody civil war and a weakened alliance between Sunni and Shia Muslims, Christians and Druze. In the vacuum of the failed alliance, the presence of Palestinians, the UN peacekeeping mission in the 1980s, Israel's withdrawal once Yasser Arafat and Fatah were forced to leave and would no longer attack Israel from Lebanon, the IRGC shaped, trained and armed Hezbollah whose first suicide mission was to blow up the U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon.

 

At this point in Lebanon's history with a diminished Hezbollah licking its wounds from its conflict with Israel the opportunity is there for the Lebanese government to exert itself in the disarming of Hezbollah. Something that the government has vowed it would accomplish for decades, with little success. All the more so with Iran steadily providing greater and more sophisticated munitions to the Shia terrorist group grasping Lebanon in its stranglehold.

 

U.S. Department of War, photo of 1983 Hezbollah destruction of Lebanone-based marine barracks

 

Hezbollah can still count on tens of thousands of dedicated operatives. Like Hamas, following its 'peace agreement' with Israel to halt the active conflict, it has used that time to regroup, recruit and rearm. And like Hamas, although that peace agreement included the stipulation that both terror groups disarm, neither has, and neither intends to. In a recent address by Naim Qassem, the leader appointed to take the place of assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, he said: "The enemy is sill the same enemy, and the perpetrator of the massacre (of his predecessor) is the same. So how can we abandon weapons? How?"

 

His followers may be rapt at his presentation, feeling justified in supporting a group whose purpose is the annihilation of Israel, and whose rationale cannot stand the scrutiny of cause-and-effect, in that it is not Israel that attacks Lebanon or Hezbollah, but Hezbollah whose pledge is to destroy Israel and to that end commit endless attacks. To which Israel responds as would any country attacked by hostile entities acting as proxies for the theocratic state of Iran. 

 

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

 

 

 

Issues With Hezbollah

"We have no issue with the Lebanese people. We have issues with Hezbollah. They are our enemy."

"[The IDF was taken unawares on October 7, 2023, and will not lack alertness]. this is the strongest we've ever been."

"They're [Hezbollah] not defeated, but they're crushed."

"Lebanon is a kidnapped country, it's like a beaten spouse."

Lt.-Col. Jordan Herzberg, Israel Defense Forces (reserves)

 

"[Israel will continue to] weaken [Hezbollah]."

"We will continue to act, remove threats and weaken Hezbollah to protect the northern communities and the State of Israel."

"The Northern Command changed the security reality in the area and strengthened the security on the border."

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir

YNet News

In the battle against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces discovered the presence of 'fake homes' in Lebanese border communities, with the realization that Hezbollah had displaced the residents of those towns and taken possession of them as command posts overlooking northern Israel, and from which hundreds of rockets were fired down on the Israeli communities below where Druze and Bedouin villages and Jewish farming kibbutzim were located. Because of these attacks, the Israeli communities in the north, vulnerable to Hezbollah rocket attacks had to be vacated and moved to central Israel.

 

Inside those 'fake homes' were missiles and soldiers' rations and uniforms -- their purpose and presence reflected in settlements along the Lebanese border including the Christian towns essentially occupied by Hezbollah. The IDF's crushing assault against Hezbollah last fall in southern Lebanon resulted from the terrorist group's ongoing rocket attacks lobbed into Israel, where much of  southern Lebanon was colonized by Hezbollah. 

Israel's lack of vigilance that made their southern farming communities vulnerable to a massive Hamas attack of thousands of terrorists on October 7, 2023, was a lesson learned with a horrendous toll of human lives; a national trauma that can never fade, one that not only destroyed the lives of the immediate victims in a toll of gruesome savagery and the killing of 1,200 Israelis, but the kidnapping of another 251 children, women and men and foreign farm workers to be incarcerated deep in Gaza's tunnels, tormented, beaten and starved.

 

The experience with Hamas's infamy and brutality taught Israel not to hesitate any longer, and committing to opposing Hezbollah head on, first with a degree of caution when the first rockets were being shot into Israel on October 8, then with increasing pay-back ferocity beginning with a technological shock delivered through the medium of pagers triggering explosives, followed by the pinpoint targeting of Hezbollah leaders, and finally the full invasion of Lebanon to rout out the Hezbollah quasi-military, lethally armed threat.

Troops of the 146th Division operate on the Lebanon border in an undated photo issued on May 28, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

 

Two hours following the southern Israel Hamas invasion the IDF dispatched troops to the north to prepare for threats from Hezbollah whose arms caches were far superior to those of Hamas, and its operatives better organized and trained. And much good did it do them; in the final analysis, Israel's military's professionalism and determination far outstripping that of Hezbollah's. At the present time with Hezbollah's strength reduced by 80 percent, pushed back to the other side of the Litani River, its capacity to mount threats has been neutered.

 

What is left of the terrorist group has been removed 27 kilometres from the Lebanese border with Israel. Some of the 60,000 Israelis evacuated from the north over a year earlier are returning. Moving freely now in southern Lebanon, Israel is mopping up. "This is an Israeli village, Pro-Israel", declared a Bedouin leader in Arab al-Aramshe where over a dozen people a year ago were injured by a Hezbollah attack that hit their community centre. There was an initial rocket that destroyed the center, another hit a car and 30 minutes later a drone timed to inflict maximum damage on first responders.

 

Metres from the Lebanese border, Kibbutz Hanita established in the late 1930s, grows bananas and avocados. The kibbutz was targeted three times by Hezbollah in efforts to infiltrate Hanita last fall, aside from the continual rocket attacks. That threat has been well extinguished by the Israel Defense Forces. Abandoned for months, 60 percent of the population has now returned to Hanita. The Jewish, Druze and Bedouin towns still stand, damaged, but they will be reconstructed. "We are here. [Hezbollah] are not here. So I guess they made a mistake", said Yaki Shalom, head of community security. 

Lebanese army forces in Nabatieh; Israel helped locate and destroy dozens of Hezbollah weapons caches and positions     (Photo: Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"No Holiday Atmosphere"

 

"Three quarters of the village  has fled. The people who stayed are in a state of sadness and no one has put up decorations or even a tree in their house."

"As soon as there is a ceasefire, we will re-open the school."

"We've been living war in every sense of the word."

Sister Maya Beaino, head, Saint Joseph des Saints-Coeurs School, Ain Ebel, Lebanon

 

"The people who have children took them out of here, first of all because of their safety and secondly so they don't miss out on school."

"The ones who remained are older, like me."

Wassin Al-Khalil, municipal council member, Rashaya al-Fukhar, Lebanon

 

"[My family is] separated and scattered in different places."

"It's possible if the situation is stable that we'll get together for the holidays."

"I hope there will be peace and quiet, especially on this day of celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, who gave peace and goodwill to the Earth."

Marwan Abdullah, village resident

A priest leads mass at a church on the Lebanese southern border with Israel

It's Christmas in Beirut, Lebanon, and its Christian population is celebrating as usual. Restaurants are full of celebrants, hundreds of Lebanese have gone to Christmas markets leading up to Christmas. The mood is completely different in border towns where houses are empty and businesses shuttered, where residents have left their homes to be with relatives or to stay in rented apartments in Beirut; anywhere further from the conflict that has broken out on the border between Lebanon and Israel. 

 

A U.N French peacekeeper, centre, gives a gift to a girl at Saint-Joseph des Saints-Coeurs School in Ain Ebel, a Lebanese Christian border village with Israel, in south Lebanon, on Saturday, Dec. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

 

Israel is at war on its southern border with Gaza. Responding to the October 7 surprise attack by Hamas  terrorists on Israeli border communities. Where Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives followed by Palestinian civilians flooded through gaps they produced breaking down the protective border wall to enter on foot, by truck or motorcycle Israeli villages and kibbutzim closest to the border. The Nova music festival nearby was another target of the Palestinians, shooting to kill as many Israelis as possible.

Israel responded to the savagery of mutilation, rape, torture and mass murder by sending the Israel Defense Forces into Gaza to destroy the death-cult whose singular purpose of existence is to murder Jews and extinguish the  Jewish state. Palestinians in Gaza have paid dearly for their leadership deliberately placing them in harm's way, by using them as human shields, building tunnels for weapons storage and terrorist activities and attacks in a vast network under the towns and cities of the Gaza Strip.

 

The intentional placing of rocket launchers beside and inside hospitals, schools and dense civilian enclaves is a hallmark of the Hamas strategy to sacrifice the lives of Palestinians to their psychopathic drive to annihilate Jewish life and presence in the Middle East. And while Hamas continues to send rockets into Israeli border towns and reaching into central Israel, the Israel Defense Forces are bombing Gaza, aiming at the tunnels and the command centres of the terrorist group.

 

Hamas's alter ego in Lebanon on Israel's northern border has been busy attacking Israeli communities over the border into Israel, drawing IDF forces to the north and in the conflict there border towns in Lebanon have come under return fire causing residents to empty the villages. Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy terror group that holds Lebanon hostage to its similar aspiration to destroy Israel, has emulated Hamas, placing Lebanese lives at risk of injury and death. 

 

Clashes on a near-daily basis on the border have led to the death of around 150 people on Lebanon's border; most representing Hezbollah operatives and allied terror groups, but among them an estimated 17 civilians. Roughly 72,437 Lebanese are estimated to have been displaced. Schools in border communities have been closed as a result of the fighting. Three sisters, aged 14, 12 and 10 were killed with their grandmother when an Israeli strike hit the car they were in, in early November. 

 

It hasn't been a happy time for border Lebanese. Heavy storms flooded roads in Lebanon, cars floated on the floods, and four Syrian refugee children died in northern Lebanon when their home's ceiling collapsed and the building flooded. Smoke rises daily from surrounding hills in the southern village of Remeish, from shelling and airstrikes, leading the village mayor to say, there is "no holiday atmosphere at all". 

Hezbollah is not Christian, but Muslim, and it has no conscience over spoiling the Christmas holidays for Christian Lebanese. And far, far from the Middle East, Muslims that have settled in Europe, and in North America have been busy championing Hamas terrorism as cause for 'liberation' celebration, disrupting life in towns and cities in the West, marching into Christmas markets vociferously shouting 'Palestine will be free from the river to the sea!' and 'gas the Jews'.

 

 

Bewildered children brought to malls and shopping centres decorated with bright Christmas lights, lining up to sit on Santa's knee, become fearful, seeing loud, unruly men and women carrying Palestinian and Hamas flags, shouting and pushing people about. Christmas joy and celebrations are being disrupted everywhere by those claiming their support for Palestinians when what they are really supporting is 'death to Jews!'.

 

 

He Has Spoken

"[Hezbollah is prepared for al; options, and we can resort to them at any time. [The fighting would] not be limited [to the csale seen so far]."

"Some say I'm going to announce that we have entered the battle. We already entered the battle on October 8."

"[U.S. President Joe Biden had made a] fake argument that Hamas cut off children's heads [without] evidence, but stayed silent for the thousands of children in Gaza who were decapitated and their limbs were torn apart [by Israeli bombing]."

Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah

Reuters

To those who have imagined the Iranian proxy terrorist group Lebanese Hezbollah has not yet entered the war Hamas is waging with Israel in Gaza, its leader states otherwise. Pointing out his militia has been engaged  in fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border while threatening to mount further escalation when he feels the time is right. In his first interview his televised remarks made it clear that Hezbollah would fully engage. Should it do so there would be consequences for both Israel and Lebanon.

 

Israel will be forced to engage on another front with a well-armed, well-seasoned fighting group, interferring in its all-out determination to finally and fully destroy the capacity of Hamas (and Palestinian Islamic Jihad which has boasted that it took part in the barbaric October 7 bloodbath in Israel) to ever again threaten and commit deadly attacks against Israeli citizens. Diverting troop numbers from Gaza to Lebanon would not be Israel's first choice.

 

But having committed to a response that must be made, it will be Lebanon that will once again, but in greater measure, feel the destructive response that Israel's Defense Forces will mount, given no other choice, just as it is destroying infrastructure in Gaza in its drive to annihilate the Hamas terrorist group. Which, while under attack from Israel's military, continues to send rockets into Israel, despite a critical lack of electricity and gas sources for hospital operations in the enclave, all monopolized for the Hamas tunnel networks along with its missiles and rockets.

 

Gunshots rang out in wild celebration over Beirut as thousands of people packed into the southern suburbs of the capital to witness the speech by Nasrallah via video-link on a massive screen set up in the town square. Hezbollah fired a barrage of mortar shells and anti-tank missiles, along with, for the first time, suicide drones. All supplied to them by the Islamic Republic of Iran, ensuring it has a massive cache of weaponry, all reserved for the single purpose of attacking Israel.

 

"Don't test us", warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Any mistake Hezbollah commits to "will exact a price you can't even imagine".  Israel recognizes the reality that the Shiite terrorist group represents a serious immediate threat, with the estimation of Hezbollah being in possession of 150,000 rockets and missiles, as well as drones and surface-to-air and surface-to-sea missiles.

Full of praise for Hamas operatives' incursion into Israel attacking and marauding through farming villages, towns, military posts and kibbutzim, leaving over 1,400 children, women, elderly and soldiers dead in their murderous sweep. "Proof", he gloated that "Israel is weaker than a spider's web". That after a month of conflict Israel "has not been able to make any achievement". 

 

Funeral of Hezbollah fighter, killed by Israeli shelling, November 4, 2023    AP Photo Bilal Hussein

 

"This great, large-scale operation was purely the result of Palestinian planning and implementation", he stated admiringly. Hamas leaders have been entreating Hezbollah to expand involvement in the conflict, faced by a relentless aerial bombardment and the more recent ground incursion into Gaza by Israeli forces. Senior Hamas leaders and officials with Islamic Jihad travelled to Beirut last week to meet with Nasrallah to state their case.

No red line has yet been set by Hezbollah; instead they claim plans to join the war should they feel Hamas to be on the verge of defeat. And while Hezbollah has calculated to maintain limited attacks to keep Israel's military deployed on the border with Lebanon, over 50 Hezbollah operatives and another ten with allied terrorist groups have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border, along with ten civilians, among them a Reuters journalist.

Israeli airstrike on a Lebanese border village, November 4, 2023  AP Photo Hussein Malla

 

 

Another Blighted Rescue of Quasi-Canadians

"There has been a loss of integrity in the Canadian immigration process."

"Most of these people have been living in Sudan for years."

"Sometimes they never really lived in Canada and don't speak English or French."

Unidentified insider source asking for anonymity 

"[Statistics  on the phenomenon known as] Canadians of convenience [during the Lebanon evacuation are not readily available."

"I don't know how common it is, but it's likely not negligible. We only tend to get a sense in cases like Lebanon and now Sudan."

Andrew Griffith, former director general, Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada

Signs of a ceasefire in Sudan are scarce as the two warring factions have returned to fighting that has temporarily derailed rescue attempts for Canadians still trapped in the country.  CBC

Thousands of Lebanese-Canadian citizens were evacuated at Canadian government expense in 2006 during the war in Lebanon, to bring them back to safety in Canada. Most of whom, after the fact, turned out to be citizens in name only, who had acquired and maintained citizenship as a type of 'insurance' in case of emergencies. In this realm of convenience citizenship, Chinese Hong-Kongers represent another group from abroad who famously went to great lengths to acquire Canadian citizenship as a future haven should their lives in Hong Kong suddenly become 'complicated'.

 

For the Lebanese emergency, it cost $94 million for Canada to evacuate some 14,000 Canadians from Lebanon at war. Half that number returned to Lebanon when hostilities ceased. Now, in Africa there are sources suggesting there may be a repeat of this 'rescue' operation of 'citizens of convenience' in Sudan where a civil war has been unfolding. According to government figures, 550 people were flown out of Sudan to Kenya on Canadian evacuation flights.

 

Of that total, 175 were Canadian citizens or permanent residents. On flights organized earlier by other countries, another 210 Canadian citizens left. According to an individual familiar with the situation, it has emerged while the evacuees were being processed that as many as half of the 175 Canadian citizens and permanent residents happen to be refugees granted status in Canada who returned to Sudan, some continuing to claim welfare and child benefits.

 

A ferry transports some 1,900 evacuees across the Red Sea from Port Sudan to the Saudi King Faisal navy base in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.  (Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images)

Some are refugees who are in the process of becoming Canadians, which means they should not have left the country to return to Sudan while the process has not yet been completed. All of the evacuees in Kenya were accommodated and cared for in hotels at Canada's expense. In the past five years, Canada accepted 2,120 refugee claims from Sudan; individuals who are accepted are given protection in Canada. If they return to their country of origin, however, they effectively relinquish refugee status.

 

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada had "no response to offer" when a spokesperson was approached for clarification on the matter. Nor could the government provide cost estimates of an operation involving the Canadian High Commissioner in Nairobi, the embassy in Cairo, Egypt, the embassy in Amman, Jordan, the consulate in Djibouti and 200 Canadian Forces on the ground in the region helping to expedite the 'rescue'. 

 

The Canadian portion of the relief effort has been described as "chaos" by sources in Africa. A C-130J Hercules transport aircraft left Jordan to head to Port Sudan on the Red Sea on a mission to retrieve stranded Canadians after the Wadi Seidna Air Base north of Khartoum was seen as too dangerous. According to a Forces spokesperson, Sudanese authorities reused to permit personnel to disembark, and the flight was forced to return to Jordan empty following a "diplomatic credentials mix-up".

After the fiasco in Lebanon, the-then Conservative government in Canada, instituted limitations on citizenship by descent, limiting it to one generation born outside Canada, revoking citizenship of thousands of Lebanese who obtained status through fraudulent means. Should it be established that some Sudanese evacuated to Nairobi have similarly cheated the system, they should have their citizenship invalidated.

Status can be revoked under the Canadian Citizenship Act, if it becomes clear that the person involved obtained citizenship by "false representation, fraud or knowingly concealing material circumstances". In Canada, refugee claimants must establish they have a subjective fear of persecution should they return to their home country. Those people who obtained Canadian citizenship for the purpose of escaping persecution in Sudan should not be in Sudan.

Canada has suspended its evacuation operation at a Khartoum airfield after a ceasefire unravelled and violence escalated, but Canadians are still stranded in Sudan and escape options are limited.   CBC

Jerusalem, Intersection of Three World Religions -- Palestinian Terrorism

"It's just a matter of time, and not much time, until we settle the score."

"We acted in Lebanon, we acted in Gaza, we beefed up forces in the field."

"[Israel's response will always] exact a significant price from our enemies."

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu

 

"[IDF warplanes struck] terrorist infrastructures belonging to Hamas [in Lebanon]."

"The IDF will not allow the Hamas terrorist organization to operate from within Lebanon and hold the state of Lebanon responsible for every directed fire emanating from its territory."

Israel Defense Forces 

Many of the rockets fired from Gaza were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system  Reuters

Friday was a day dedicated to violence in the Middle East with Israel responding to attacks from Lebanon orchestrated by Hamas, leading the Israel Defense Forces to unleash airstrikes both on Lebanon and on the Gaza Strip. Bringing the area alarmingly close to a potential larger conflict following days of violence in East Jerusalem when Palestinian thugs began to put the anticipated Ramadan threats issued by Hamas and Hezbollah into action. 

Among the worshippers at the Al-Aqsa mosque were young Palestinians who had taken up the incitement urged on by the PA, Hamas, Jordan and Turkey.

Fortifying themselves in the mosque with a collection of stone projectiles and fireworks to challenge the Israeli Police stationed there to ensure an orderly and secure environment at a time when tens of thousands of Muslims customarily attend the mosque for prayers during Ramadan. Barricading themselves into the mosque, lobbing both fireworks and rocks at police, what was to have been peaceful gatherings in prayer during the sacred month was turned into a riot of violence.

Irrespective of the fact that the police reacted to restore order and maintain the safety of innocent people in arresting the thugs, the criticism for desecrating the mosque, Ramadan and those in attendance whose faith was mocked by the rioters, the Islamic world placed blame on Israel for disproportionate use of force in preventing further disruption and possibly severe injuries and death. 

Severe injuries and death did occur, however, at the terrorist hands of Palestinian jihadists targeting civilian Israelis in an ongoing series of violent attacks.

A person wounded in an attack is brought to a hospital in Tel Aviv on Friday. Israeli police said a car rammed into a group of people near a popular seaside park before flipping over. Police also said they shot and killed the driver of the car. (Gideon Markowicz/The Associated Press)

Fighting on Israel's northern and southern borders subsided allowing midday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque to pass peacefully until a Palestinian shooting attack in the West Bank killed two Israeli women, injuring their mother, all witnessed by the women's father driving separately behind them.  As well, a large barrage of rockets had been fired at Israel from southern Lebanon, bringing to mind Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In retaliation, the Israeli military sent warplanes to strike Hamas infrastructure after 34 rockets had been sent into northern Israel. The Israeli military pounded weapons production sites and underground Hamas tunnels in Gaza. Israelis living along the southern border were able to return home from safety taken in bomb shelters.Most of the missiles crossing into Israel hit open areas, with one landing in Sderot where shrapnel sliced a house.

After the cowardly attack on the three women driving in the West Bank a Hamas spokesman hailed the death of the two sisters as retaliation "for the crimes committed by Israel in the West Bank and the Al-Aqsa mosque". Over 130,000 Muslims poured into the Al-Aqsa site for midday prayers on Friday, ending without further provocation. 

Before dawn prayers, chaos had once again erupted at an entrance to the esplanade as Israeli police coped with Palestinian worshippers chanting slogans praising Hamas. Soon afterward people leaving the prayers staged a protest on the courtyard, raising fists and shouting imprecations against Israel. Security forces entered the compound after prayers, responding to masked suspects throwing rocks at officers at one of the gates.

The compound, administered by the Islamic waqf and Jordanian officials, condemn Israeli police, while having no comment about the rioters who violently confronted police in clear provocation to elicit a response, in the process trashing the mosque, setting off fireworks within the enclosed space, lobbing rocks from the sacred site, producing an unholy spectacle for Ramadan. 

Elsewhere in Jerusalem's Old City, pilgrims from around the world congregated. Christian faithful retraced the route Jesus is believed to have taken for Good Friday, while Jews celebrated the Passover holiday. The violence imposed on the ancient city by Palestinian terrorists in a sacrilegious display of violence led Israel to appeal to the international community to condemn the rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza and Hamas's incitement to violence.

Masked militants from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, perform Friday prayers in Jebaliya City, northern Gaza Strip, on Friday. (Adel Hana/The Associated Press)

 

Inshallah, Lebanon

"[Following the Beirut port explosion of August 4, 2020 is the city beginning to heal?] ...No, it's worse. Because [there has been] no justice. Nothing."

"There are so many families that have lost their children, their parents, their aunts, their uncles that are working really hard to do something about it [looking for answers]. But I don't know if we're going to get anywhere."

"Now we have to think twice about everything, everything, everything. It's very mind-boggling. But having said that, I still love Lebanon, and I still love living here."

"It could be the most beautiful country in the world. And, unfortunately, it's not today."

"We're fed up with saying to ourselves 'We need to be resilient'. No. We need to make changes. We need drastic changes."

"It's chaotic. It's difficult. It's a transition, hopefully, to better things."

"And I say this with parentheses -- Inshallah. Meaning' hopeful', in Arabic."

Barbara Abdeni Massaad, Author, photographer

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Oriana Fallaci, the verbally pugilistic Italian journalist who earned an admirable reputation as a hard-nosed, intrepid journalist whom Grand Ayatollah Khomeini agreed could interview him soon after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, also wrote a novel based on her experiences in Lebanon during and after the civil war which she titled 'Inshallah'. At that time too, when Beirut had been half-destroyed and Iran sent its al-Quds division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the country to train Shi'ite Lebanese the Islamist death cult of terrorism, there was still hope for the country.  

Fallaci succumbed to the demand placed on her to wear a face-revealing burqa to interview Khomeini for the opportunity to ask him probing, accusative questions of the route he was taking Iran toward. Finally, in the face of the Ayatollah's growing irritation with the questions she posed, she declared she was tearing the 'rags' off ("I’m going to take off this stupid medieval rag right now!”). Her novel described the dismal condition of Lebanon, its Muslim sects divided, the power struggles between Lebanese Christians, Druze and Sunnis, and the inferior status of the Shi'ites.

Shi'ite Hezbollah, Iran's terrorist proxy group is pretty well in control of Lebanon now; threat, intimidation, violence, all accomplished what originally living in a state of harmonious mutual suspicion, alternating political positions in a governing-sharing agreement between Lebanon's various communities has pretty well broken under the weight of the civil war and the inability to recover from the meddling of Syria and Iran. Hezbollah recklessly stored explosive material in dilapidated storehouses in Beirut's port.

 

Deadly port explosion rocks Beirut - Splash247

The inevitable occurred when a spark led to a massive explosion destroying part of the port infrastructure, killing over 220 Beirutis, and injuring an additional 6,500 others. Two and a half years later, bereaved families are still calling for an investigation to be launched. The originally assigned judge of the Lebanese judiciary resigned amidst threats and intimidation from Hezbollah wanting to protect itself from what would be damning conclusions of its willful neglect causing death and injury.

The February 2005 bomb-assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's investigation was finally taken over by a UN special tribunal that found, as expected, Hezbollah agents to have planned the murder of the influential and respected Lebanese politician, their strings pulled by Iran.

Hezbollah's first atrocity took place when the newly-fledged terrorist group bombed the American UN military barracks on a UN peacekeeping mission, murdering 307 people: 241 U.S. and 58 French.

 

Over time, Hezbollah has gained in strength and influence, receiving munitions and stockpiling technologically updated missiles from Iran. It has launched attacks against Israelis and Jews internationally as Iran's terrorist proxy, and it has firmly established itself as an integrated part of the Lebanese government, while maintaining its armed forces separate and apart from the Lebanese military. It is more powerful and better armed than the Lebanese military. And under its malign influence Lebanon has faltered and become utterly dysfunctional

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Fuel shortage plunges Lebanon into darkness

Following the blast at Beirut's port, the severely troubled country's economy has been destroyed, inflation has made life impossible for its residents; people cannot withdraw their savings from Lebanon's banking system. Some desperate civilians have taken to robbing banks to the extent of their savings, badly needed to pay for surgeries for ailing family members. Food, heating oil and medical supplies are scarce and people are desperately in need.

The country, once the pride of the Middle East, its coastal 'French Riviera' and 'Swiss Alps', the playground of beautiful landscapes that drew tourists from across the Middle East and further afield is now a pathetic remnant of its former glory. The kidnappings and hostage-taking, the ransom demands and 'prisoner' exchanges, the underground incarceration of Church of England Terry Waite among others, incrementally destroyed the country. It is now on its knees, its people facing starvation.

 

People are threatened daily by economic and political threats. Some 80,000 Lebanese left their country in 2021 representing an increase of 346 percent over 2020. Political instability, economic meltdown, has led to a massive deterioration of the quality of life -- to the extent that 63 percent of Lebanese would emigrate if the opportunity arose. UNICEF reports that Lebanese children "believe emigration is their only hope".

 

According to the United Nations, 78 percent of the population lives in poverty. Lebanese Civil War survivors (1975 to 1990) claim that the crisis of today is worse than the parlous times they experienced living in dread of shelling or sniper fire. 

 

Members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah take part in Ashura commemorations in a southern Beirut suburb. Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images

 

Lebanon, in Thrall to Iran's Proxy Hezbollah

"[An impartial judiciary is the guarantor of all rights]. The Lebanese people deserve no less, and the victims and the families of those lost in the port blast deserve no less."

"Today’s unacceptable violence makes clear what the stakes are."

Victoria Nuland, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs 

 

"There were protests and then suddenly gunfire began ... Shooting, RPGs, everything."

"Isn’t this a shame? They brought us back to the days of the war."

Michel Younan, resident, Ain el-Remeneh neighborhood, Beirut

 

"[Lebanon’s leaders are steering the country into civil war, it’s] the last card they have to use."

"They have [driven] us into bankruptcy, devastation and now they are scaring us with the specter of civil war."

Haneen Chemaly, Beirut resident

 

"The secretary-general reiterates the need for an impartial, thorough and transparent investigation into the explosion at the port of Beirut that took place last year."

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric 

Lebanese army special forces soldiers protect teachers as they flee their school after deadly clashes erupted along a former 1975-90 civil war front-line between Muslim Shiite and Christian areas, at Ain el-Remaneh neighborhood, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The Shi'ite terrorist group founded, trained and supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran's IRGC as its proxy militia has managed to transform Lebanon into a ruin of a nation. Where there were always  tensions between Lebanese Christians and Muslim Shi'ites and Sunnis, and Druze factions and the presence of Palestinians complicated historical animosities between the sects, tribal and clan affiliations, the Lebanese compromised, alternating their governments representing each group to maintain a balanced moderation of interests.

Since the creation of the "Party of God" -- Hezbollah -- Lebanon's fortunes took a different trajectory as the terrorist group exacted greater influence under the direction of Iran, maintaining its own militia, refusing to incorporate it into the greater Lebanese military, becoming an alternate government, as it were, to the elected one. It now holds several seats in the Lebanese parliament which doesn't really reflect the power and influence it has attained, manipulating Lebanon into vulnerable positioning with its neighbour Syria and posing an inflammatory threat to Israel.

Like all terrorist groups, Hezbollah is supplied by a benefactor nation with military-grade weaponry; in this instance, Iran. Stockpiling flammable chemicals in warehouses in crowded living areas of the city. Last year such a warehoused stockpile of material (tons of ammonium nitrate) exploded in the Port of Beirut killing hundreds of people, wounding many more and the finger of responsibility turned toward Hezbollah, even as it denied any responsibility in the conflagration and slaughter.

 

Supporters of the Shiite Hezbollah and Amal groups chant slogans against Judge Tarek Bitar, who is investigating last year's deadly seaport blast, during a protest in front of the Justice Palace, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

An ongoing internal investigation into the cause and origins of the explosion that levelled a good part of the port area and afflicted a wide swath of the population in family grief, has drawn Hezbollah's ire because the judge heading the enquiry will not be intimidated and is determined to find the source and to announce his findings that the families of the dead and the injured have been waiting for. The conclusion is rather foregone; Hezbollah's role in endangering the city and its residents through its casual disregard for their safety, is well enough known.

 

On Thursday a violent reaction took place to a protest against the enquiry's main figure of authority, Judge Tarek Bitar, lead investigator into the port blast where 200 people were killed and thousands more wounded. Hezbollah had warned repeatedly, along with its allies, that the country would be split with the verdict of the Bitar probe. Hoping that in the interests of maintaining a low profile to violence, the investigation would be shut down or shelved.

Lebanon is in a delicate position economically. Its finances have failed, its struggle with COVID is ongoing, it cannot provide reliable energy to its population, food and basic commodity prices have soared and poverty is endemic. All the while Hezbollah engages in provocative activities to push neighbouring Israel into high alert in response to threats and rocket attacks. Another war with Israel, defending itself from Hezbollah's violent strikes would be even more devastating for Lebanon than the last one.

The Beirut government efforts to maintain a level of control over its history-breaking economic crisis while trying to control the pandemic and reassure its citizens that there will be an end to the unendurable conditions they are living in is fraught with the potential for Hezbollah to continue escalating hostilities both within the country and outside it. 

 

Iran's proxies, Hezbollah and he Shi'ite Amal Movement have both accused the Christian Lebanese Forces of responsibility for the sniper fire that took place, aiming directly for the heads of Hezbollah-linked protesters. Of the six people who were killed outright at the outbreak of gun violence, two were members of Hezbollah. Just as Hezbollah denies involvement in the Beirut port blast, the LF denies involvement in this latest shooting it blames on Hezbollah 'incitement' against Judge Bitar.

 

President Michel Aoun warned those responsible for the gunfire that took place Thursday would be identified and held accountable, that it was "unacceptable that weapons are once more the means of communication among Lebanese rivals".  The violence reminded Ex-prime minister Saad al-Harri of the civil war and was "unacceptable on all levels"; a situation that would be greatly relieved if the Lebanese took any and all steps possible to defang Hezbollah, disband and disarm it; invite it to relocate to Iran before it's too late to save the country.

 

A Lebanese mother with her children hide behind a car from sniper fire outside a school, in the Christian neighborhood of Ain el-Remaneh, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. Armed clashes broke out in Beirut Thursday during the protest against the lead judge investigating last year's massive blast in the city's port, as tensions over the domestic probe boiled over. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

 

Death of a Lebanese Photographer

"This is not just about our village. Because today it's Joe, tomorrow it's someone else."

"Are we going to have to protect our own houses and villages?"

"It seems like they had been observing him every day, what time he leaves and goes. The minute he got in his car they came down the stairs and shot him."

"Obviously they had been waiting for him in this area."

"He doesn’t have any enemies at all, so we think there was something he knew with his work."

"We want to send a message. We want a quick investigation and within 24 or 48 hours we want to have information."

Jean Bejjany, head, municipal council, Kahaleh, Lebanon

"The security and judicial agencies, as well as every official, must hasten to uncover the perpetrators and their backgrounds and impose the most severe penalties on them to avoid a return to the logic of self-defence and the complete dissolution of what remains of the state."

Michel Moawad, former Lebanese Member of Parliament

Left, CCTV still   Right, Joe Bejjany

Preparing to drive his two daughters to pre-school, in the majority Christian mountain town of Kahaleh, photographer Joe Bejjany was shot to death with a silencer-equipped weapon. The motive is elusive, but hinted at. The 36-year-old, a Lebanese telecoms employee, freelance photographer and popular resident of the town seemed on the surface an unlikely target for those in the dark underground of a decayed civilization in utter thrall to a theocratic-inspired terrorist militia now essentially ruling Lebanon.

But rumours abound as they will in a country once renowned as the premier vacation resort of the Middle East where Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims and Druze managed to work things out between them all, with a rotation of government positions and a wary, shared respect. Until Palestinians arrived, who fled into Lebanon when their leaders rejected the United Nations Partition Plan that would divide the area between Israel and the Palestinians led to a Muslim multi-army failed march on the nascent Jewish state.

The Islamic Republic of Iran saw an opportunity to mobilize Shi'ite Lebanese to advance their agenda in creating a Party of God militia answerable to the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Republican Guard Corps as a proxy army that could be used to bring Lebanon into the Iranian Shi'ite fold and threaten the existence of Israel. Hezbollah proved its mettle in the 1980s when it debuted its initial suicide truck bomb to kill hundreds of American troops at a U.S. army base in Lebanon, there on a UN peacekeeping mission.

Since then it has stored munitions, rockets, ammonium nitrate and other conflict-useful items, some of which it has used in its support role at Iran's behest, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his deadly uncivil conflict with Sunni Syrians, and much of it destined -- as newer more advanced rocketry comes along supplied by Iran -- for an inevitable clash with Israel. Ammonium nitrate, used in bomb-making was stored for years in huge amounts at Beirut's harbour. Until it was sparked and the volatile stockpile detonated at the port.

Five months ago 200 people were killed by the immense fiery blast, injuring hundreds more, and ravaged areas of the capital city, adding to the financial meltdown of the country. Surveillance cameras outside the apartment building where Bejjani lived show a professional squad and a planned hit. Backs to the camera, the team appeared unfazed leaving fingerprints at the scene, eschewing gloves. They searched the car of the man they had just killed to retrieve his cell phone, leaving with it, toward a getaway vehicle.

Men carry the coffin of Joe Bejjany, a 36-year-old telecoms employee and freelance photographer, during his funeral in the village of Kahaleh

Joe Bejjani's former job at Alfa telecom was one of logistics, with no access to security data. However, according to sources, he was one of the first to arrive at the port following the deadly explosion, hired by the Lebanese Army and the international committee set to investigate the blast at the port to take forensic photographs. That, according to growing public opinion, placed his life in danger. Former chief of the drug control division at the Lebanese Customs, Colonel Joseph Skaff died suspiciously in 2017.

The Colonel had called for the removal of the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate which had arrived at the Port of Beirut in 2013. He was ignored, just as the managers at the port were ignored when they too recommended the same, pointing out the potential danger in storing such readily-ignited chemicals in such a sensitively vulnerable area, threatening the well-being of dock workers and apartment dwellers living nearby. What they had predicted and were helpless to prevent occurred earlier this year.

Early in December, Customs Col.Mounir Abou Rjeily, retired, but formerly stationed at the Beirut port, was discovered dead in his Qartaba, Jbeil home, from blows to the head by a blunt object, according to state-run National News Agency. A high-ranking executive at Byblos Bank in June was also found dead in the parking lot of his home in Hazmieh, Baabda. He too died of a massive blow to the head. Needless to say, authorities promise a thorough investigation in each of these cases.

Kahaleh's municipal chief has stated that no one among Joe Bejjany's friends or family was aware of threats or any enemies that might plan to do him harm. That he had never made any mention of anything that might conceivably have linked him to the port explosion. His daughters, aged two and four, found their father's body in the car minutes after the assassination had occurred. Mounir Bejjany, Joe's godfather spoke of the murder as "an assassination".

According to relatives, Joe had also photographed military events like parades as a freelancer while  he worked at a mobile service provider. The murder was carried out in a professional manner, validated by two security sources. Neighbours wept and threw rice as men in suits carried a white coffin to the church at the Tuesday funeral. Gaby Feghall, Joe's cousin, said Joe had received approval to leave for Canada, about a week earlier. He himself was planning to leave Lebanon to escape the never-ending crises.

Joe Bejjany was shot as he was preparing to take his children to school Monday morning. (Credit: Lyana Alameddine/OLJ)