by Yochanan Visser
When PM Bennett's anticipated strong reaction to Hezbollah rockets on Friday did not occur, Israeli media saw it as due to leftist Meretz and Arab Ra'am parties being part of the coalition.
The “Iranian threat to Israel and the rest of the world is increasing and international waterways such as the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Arabian Sea are no longer safe, especially for Israeli and American ships,” was the main conclusion in the analysis. The situation has worsened, as we will see.
Iran, of course, denied it had anything to do with the brazen attack on the oil tanker Mercer Street, but Israel sent irrefutable evidence (most likely satellite images) that Iran carried out the attack to the governments of the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and, Romania.
The latter two countries were involved since the two victims of Iran’s attack on the Mercer Street, the captain, and a security officer were citizens of Romania and The UK.
The Mercer Street is owned by a company in Japan, but Zodiac Maritime, a London-based company, operates the oil tanker. Zodiac Maritime is part of the Zodiac Group, a conglomerate owned by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer.
The Israeli response to the Iranian attack was an attempt to mobilize the international community against the Iranian regime by using the Security Council of the United Nations (UNSC).
Israel pushed for a condemnation of Iran by the UNSC and sent letters detailing the evidence of Iran’s responsibility for the bombing of the Mercer Street written by Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the US and UN, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and, Yair Lapid Israel’s alternate prime minister and minister of Foreign Affairs.
CENTCOM, the US Central Command in the Middle East, later confirmed that Israel was telling the truth and said it had determined that Iranian drones had carried out the attack.
A strong international and Israeli response to Iran’s act of terrorism in international waters has yet to come, however.
Iran, from its side, continued to provoke Israel, however, and stepped up its aggression against the Jewish State via its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah last week.
Hamas resumed its incendiary balloon attacks from Gaza and sent a delegation of high-ranking officials to Tehran for talks with the newly inaugurated president Ibrahim Raisi.
Hezbollah did the same and also sent a delegation to Raisi while attacking Israel with crude rockets on Wednesday and Friday last week. Contrary to what the Israeli media reported, the first attack was Hezbollah’s response to a new mysterious explosion at an Iranian base near Damascus early Wednesday last week.
The delegates of the terror organizations were the first foreign officials Raisi invited after becoming president of Iran. This doesn’t bode well for Israel’s future.
By meeting officials of these terror organizations in the days following his inauguration as president of Iran, Raisi showed he is first of all the leader of the so-called axis of resistance.
Already in 2017, while touring the Israel Lebanon border, Raisi exclaimed that “Jerusalem’s liberation is near” and encouraged Hezbollah “to play a role in various and diverse tasks in building an Islamic culture.”
Therefore it came as no surprise that Hezbollah launched a major attack on northern Israel by lobbing 19 rockets at the Jewish state last Friday morning.
Hezbollah took this risk despite knowing it could end up in another bloody war with the Israeli military and despite the unprecedented crisis in Lebanon where the population is beginning to show signs of being fed-up with Hezbollah’s belligerent activities.
This became apparent after Druze residents of southern Lebanon attacked a Hezbollah squad that had launched a number of rockets from within the Druze village of Chouya.
Four members of the Hezbollah squad were briefly detained while the rocket launcher was confiscated.
The Lebanese terror organization later claimed that it intentionally had chosen to launch the rockets in the direction of open fields in the Har Dov region on the Golan Heights.
This was a blatant lie since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used its Iron Dome anti-rocket shield to down 10 of the 19 rockets fired by Hezbollah.
The IDF only uses the Iron Dome system to intercept missiles that are fired upon population centers. Missiles that are bound for an explosion in open fields are never targeted by Iron Dome.
Hezbollah’s brazen attack was apparently meant to test Israel’s new government, headed by Yamina politician Naftali Bennett.
When Bennett was in the opposition, he always called for stronger Israeli responses to terror attacks perpetrated by both the Palestinian Arab terror groups in Gaza and Hezbollah.
That’s why, after becoming Israel’s Prime Minister, Bennett ordered the Israeli air force (IAF) to launch attacks on Hamas targets in Gaza whenever the terror group uses incendiary balloons to set afire fields and forests in southern Israel.
Hezbollah is apparently another story for Bennett, since the anticipated and promised strong reaction to the rocket attacks on Friday never came.
The only Israeli military action that was recorded was an artillery bombardment on the places from which the rockets were launched in southern Lebanon and heavy IAF activity in northern Israel late Friday evening.
There was speculation in Israel that the Israeli PM didn’t want to risk a major war at this point of time when thousands of Israelis are spending their vacations in northern Israel and helping the local tourism industry to survive the COVID-19 crisis.
The Hebrew language media in Israel had a different explanation for the lack of a powerful Israeli response to Hezbollah’s aggression, however.
The N12 news site of MAKO, the Israeli TV broadcaster (Channel 12) reported that the far-left party Meretz and the Islamist Ra’am party, which are both members of Bennett’s coalition, had warned that the government would fall if the Israeli military embarks on a wide-scale action against Hezbollah.
“Bennett knows that if the government goes to a military confrontation, the coalition will fall, because neither Meretz nor the RAAM will agree to such a thing. The presence of Meretz and Ra'am in the coalition limits the sharpness of any military decision," Jida Rinawi-Zoabi, Meretz’ Arab member of the Knesset, told Israel radio, according to N12.
By making this statement, Rinawi-Zoabi played into the hands of both Hezbollah and Iran that had already claimed that Israel’s power of deterrence had been severely harmed by the lack of response to the rocket attack on Friday.
Here’s what the regime in Tehran thinks after the events of the last two weeks:
“Recent clashes between the Zionist regime and the resistance groups indicate a significant weakness and decline in the intelligence capabilities of this regime, which in turn shows the development of the resistance-oriented capabilities in the field of intelligence.”
Yochanan Visser
Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/311372
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