All Jews are targets warns Hezbollah : AZ IMC

More than 50 Hizbullah terror cells believed to be spread across the globe could be activated and used to strike at Israeli or Jewish targets in retaliation for Tuesday's assassination of Hizbullah arch-terrorist and operations officer Imad Mughniyeh in Syria, a senior defense official said Thursday.

As Hassan Nasrallah vowed "open war" to avenge Mughniyeh's death, the Israeli Counterterrorism Bureau issued a travel advisory on Thursday that made plain the seriousness with which it is taking the Hizbullah leader's threats. But Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said "Israel is a strong country" and that there was no need to panic.
FBI anti-terror units raised their alerts for fear of attacks on synagogues and other Jewish targets.

Sources in the US administration reiterated that there were no specific warnings of a terrorist attack; nonetheless, an FBI source said that the raised alertness of the Anti-Terrorism Unit, which operates in about 100 cities around the US, is not a routine step.

The counterterrorism bureau recommended that citizens abroad avoid staying in areas where there is a large concentration of Israelis. It advised Israelis overseas to strictly avoid visiting Arab and Muslim states where existing travel warnings are in force; to reject any tempting suggestions, unexpected gifts and offers of free travel from suspicious people or unknown elements; to reject proposals for unscheduled meetings, and to travel to meetings accompanied by someone known and trusted.

The bureau also reiterated previous warnings about the risk of Israelis abroad being kidnapped, including businessmen - particularly those involved in deals with Arabs or Muslims. El Al has also beefed up security, and additional safety measures are being employed at Israeli embassies and institutions abroad.

At home, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi ordered the Northern Command to raise the level of alert and beef up forces along the Lebanese border, for fear that Hizbullah might retaliate by kidnapping soldiers or attacking forces deployed along the border.
The defense establishment, The Jerusalem Post has learned, plans to hold daily security assessments over the coming days and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) is considering deploying additional security personnel at embassies deemed at high risk.

Nasrallah delivered a videotaped eulogy at Mughniyeh's funeral in Beirut on Thursday and vowed to retaliate against Israeli targets abroad. Mughniyeh and Hizbullah were responsible for the deadly bombings of Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s.

"You have killed Hajj Imad outside the natural battlefield," Nasrallah said, in reference to Hizbullah's contention that it only fights Israel within Lebanon and along their common border. "You have crossed the borders," he continued. "With this murder, its timing, location and method... If you want this kind of open war, let the whole world listen: Let this war be open."

Nasrallah warned Israel that its alleged killing of Mughniyeh was a "very big folly" which would be avenged. "Mughniyeh's blood will lead to the elimination of Israel. These words are not an emotional reaction," he said.

Livni, speaking during a visit to Washington on Thursday, commented on Nasrallah's speech, saying "Israel is a strong country; the Jewish people are a strong people and our response to terror is clear. Comments from this or that terrorist will not change this and we will not enter into a state of panic.

"Hizbullah is a terrorist organization that has carried out terrorist attacks in the past and is trying to carry out attacks all the time. Israel has lived under threats from the day it was established. We know how to cope with such threats and will do so now," she asserted.

While the assumption within the defense establishment is that Hizbullah will try to retaliate overseas, a senior officer said Thursday that Israel needed to be prepared.

"You can never know with Hizbullah," the officer said. "We need to be on high alert, just in case."

The IDF Spokesman's Office released a statement saying that Ashkenazi had ordered the Navy, IAF and ground forces to be prepared along the northern border. "The IDF is following developments and taking the necessary precautions," read the statement.

Defense officials said Thursday that Hizbullah had advanced infrastructure overseas, mainly in South America and Africa. One former senior intelligence officer said that Hizbullah maintained a presence in over 50 countries worldwide.

"Hizbullah has assets around the world and it can mobilize them on a moment's notice," State Department counterterror official Frank C. Urbancic told a congressional hearing in September 2006. "I am quite sure of that."

In his testimony, Urbancic said America believed that Hizbullah had strongholds in the Tri-Border area - connecting Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay - where Hizbullah supporters were actively involved in drug smuggling, arms trafficking, money laundering, fraud and intellectual property piracy. Hizbullah operatives, he said, were also active in the Sierra Leone diamond industry.

Hizbullah also maintains a strong presence in West and Central Africa within Shi'ite communities whose members have significant control over the import of basic commodities and the diamond trade, Urbancic told the committee.

A few hours before Mughniyeh's funeral, hundreds of thousands of pro-Western Lebanese gathered in the main Martyrs' Square of downtown Beirut about eight kilometers from the site of the ceremony to commemorate the third anniversary of former prime minister Rafik Hariri's assassination. The anti-Syrian rally appeared larger than the crowds at Mughniyeh's funeral, but it had been planned weeks in advance.

Mughniyeh's killing exacerbated tensions at a time when Lebanon is already entrenched in a long-running political crisis between the Hizbullah-led opposition and the Western-backed government. Government backers accuse Hizbullah of seeking to restore Syrian domination of the country, while the opposition says the government is putting Lebanon in the hands of the United States and Israel.

Fearing clashes, authorities deployed thousands of troops. But the two mass gatherings ended without violence, though the two camps appeared even more deeply entrenched in their divisions, which have left the country without a president since November and the parliament paralyzed.

Saad Hariri, leader of the parliamentary majority and the late premier's son, launched a scathing attack against the Syrian government. But he spared Hizbullah and its opposition allies, apparently in deference to the funeral. He even reached out to the opposition, saying: "Our hand will remain extended no matter what difficulties and conspiracies there are."
When Hariri alluded to Mughniyeh's funeral on the other side of the city, the crowd booed.

Druse leader Walid Jumblatt, a sharp critic of Hizbullah, said the government would not succumb to opposition efforts to deliver Lebanon "to the Iranian-Syrian black evil world."

Hariri's supporters blame Syria for killing the prominent politician in a massive suicide truck bombing in Beirut and for a series of bombings and assassinations since. Hariri's assassination ignited mass protests and international pressure that forced Syria to withdraw its army from Lebanon after 29 years of control.

Mark Weiss and AP contributed to this report.

This article can be found at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203019387469&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Is there really any difference between the terrorist accomplices at home and Hamas and Hezbollah? We don't think so

Nessie's photo? Walks his dog on Ocean Beach alone? Cool!

No one said that was Nessie's photo. It could be any aging san Francisco anarchist who is friends with Barbara Lubin....

Please confirm, anything could happen

Just a face in the crowd. There are others, as well.

San Francisco is filled with aging anarchists.
Next week it will be filled with young ones , too. Apparently they are planning quite a bit of mischief.
March 19 should be lots of fun.
I'm sure Nessie will be sequestered safely away, encouraging the younger and more able bodied to break windows on his behalf, because, after all , the streets are dangerous and you could get hurt out there.

If you must know, I'll be on my knees. On Stevenson Street.

Look me up. I'm cheap.

barbara lupin was best known for boinking the mayor of Berkeley a few years back.

1. Not everything is about Israel
2. No one cares about your personal life

Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, is engaged in the broadest and most significant military buildup in its history with help from Syria and Iran. It adds that Hamas is restructuring more hierarchically and using more and more powerful weapons, especially longer-range rockets against Israel's southern communities.

The study, by an independent research group with close ties to the Israeli military establishment, says that though the buildup will take some years to complete, it is in an intensive phase that has already led to better infiltration into Israel and a rise in the breadth and precision of rocket fire.

“This is the first comprehensive analysis of the Hamas buildup,” said Reuven Erlich, a retired colonel in military intelligence who heads the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, the institute that produced the study. “It is based on a wide range of sources. And what is very clear is that Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, is aiming to use rocket fire to draw the Israeli military in.”

The 52-page study, to be released publicly on Thursday, says that after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, Hamas began a consolidation of power. It won the Palestinian elections against the more secular Fatah party in 2006, after sharing power uneasily with Fatah, then routed Fatah forces from Gaza last summer.

A copy of the study was provided to The New York Times.

According to a report by the Shin Bet internal security services quoted in the study, Hamas has smuggled at least 80 tons of explosives into Gaza since last summer. That smuggling accounts for more than half the amount moved into Gaza since Israel’s withdrawal, evidence of the intensification, the study asserts.

The study also says Hamas has obtained advanced anti-tank devices like those used by Hezbollah against Israel in its war in 2006, as well as powerful roadside bombs for use in border areas where Israeli vehicles might be expected to pass in pursuit of rocket launchers. It added that hundreds of fighters had been trained in Iran, Lebanon and Syria. The study cites few sources other than several media reports, but Israel is known to be engaged in intelligence collection in Palestinian areas.

Israel is engaged in an internal debate about whether to pursue a truce with Hamas, whose charter calls explicitly for Israel’s destruction but some of whose leaders say they want a mutually agreed period of calm.

Some Israeli analysts say that is what Israel should do. The study, however, asserts that any kind of truce would allow Hamas to build its military structure further, although it also says Hamas’s big worry is that Israel will reinvade Gaza. Such a concern is one motivation for the buildup, the study says.

A senior Israeli official in the prime minister’s office, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, said that what he took from the report was that when there was relative quiet in Gaza, Israel ran the risk of playing into Hamas’s hands by allowing it to continue its military buildup.

Asked about the study’s assertions, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, called them “an exaggeration, a clear step aiming to scare the region by selling an image of Gaza as a military place.

“The aim,” he continued, “is to employ all in the region to support an Israeli assault.”

He said some assertions in the study as described to him were correct but misunderstood. The training abroad, for example, was for police and administrative skills, not for combat, he said.

“It is a fact that our defensive tactics are developing, and it is not a secret,” he said. “But such tactics can be learned from books and the Internet.”

The study says Hamas has about 20,000 men it can mobilize under arms, about half from its military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam, which, it says, includes a special suicide bomb unit. The other half consists of a combination of police and other internal security services and other militant groups, like Islamic Jihad, that take part in big operations. The core of armed men is several hundred.

It also says the military buildup is being run largely from Damascus, where Hamas has a base, because there is better access there to Syrian and Iranian money and weapons. Nonetheless, it says, political power within Hamas is increasingly moving to the Gaza Strip.

One focus of the study is the improved nature of the rockets available in Gaza as a result of smuggling through Egypt and dozens of underground tunnels leading from Egypt into Gaza. The report does not accuse Egypt of cooperating in the smuggling, only of ineffectiveness in stopping it.

Some rockets, it says, are clearly made outside Gaza, factory-produced with larger diameters and ranges, probably in Iran. Israel has been very worried by rockets that can reach into major population centers in the south like Ashkelon and Ashdod. Simpler rockets are made in Gaza from material, like piping, that is brought in legally or illegally from Israel or Egypt.

The study also says Hamas has gotten more clever at hiding rockets in densely populated neighborhoods. Its tactic, the study suggests, will be to fight only lightly when Israeli units enter Gazan territory, then lure them into the heavily populated areas where booby-traps and roadside bombs will be waiting.

>Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza,

Hamas was legally elected in a fair and honest election. They subsequently lost control of the West Bank, and nearly lost control of Gaza, to an illegal coup by the Abu Abbas clique (the Vichy Palestinians) who backed by Israel and America.

>is engaged in the broadest and most significant military buildup in its history with help from Syria and Iran.

With help from America, the UK and France, among others, Israel has been engaging in broadest and most significant military buildup in the entire middle East. It includes, fleets of jet fighter-bombers, attack helicopters, tanks, rockets and hundreds of nuclear bombs.

Yet here they are whining because a few of their victims have managed to scrape together a handful of small arms.

What hypocrites.

The study also says Hamas has obtained advanced anti-tank devices like those used by Hezbollah against Israel in its war in 2006, as well as powerful roadside bombs for use in border areas where Israeli vehicles might be expected to pass in pursuit of rocket launchers. It added that hundreds of fighters had been trained in Iran, Lebanon and Syria.

Yeah. thats a bit more than 'small arms"