Those folks are just naturally brutal and vicious killers. It comes from their culture.
by Peter Bergen and Jenifer Rowland
(CNN) — A gruesome snuff video that has garnered more than 180,000 views on YouTube underlines just how grim the Syrian conflict has become.
This video appears to document one of the worst kinds of war crimes: The summary executions of wounded men. (Warning: The scenes are extremely graphic.)
Several paramilitaries in battle fatigues armed with automatic weapons — some speaking Arabic in distinctive Lebanese accents — pull wounded men out of the back of a van and drop them on to the ground, then shoot them in their heads at point-blank range.
As they shoot their victims, some of the paramilitaries seem almost giddy with excitement.A man who appears to be their commander admonishes his men, “Come on guys, we are here to carry out our duties not to seek revenge on our own. This is unacceptable.”
[………]
The wounded men lying on the ground awaiting their deaths repeat religious phrases that are commonly said just before death. They all appear to be civilians.
There has been much analysis of the al Qaeda-aligned groups in Syria fighting the Assad regime that have recruited thousands of foreign fighters from around the Arab world and a smaller number from the West, but there has been far less discussion of the Shiite militias in Syria that have recruited foreign fighters from Iraq as well as from Lebanese Hezbollah, all of whom are fighting to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Barak Barfi, an American journalist who is a fellow at the New America Foundation and who has reported inside Syria for many months, says that one of the executioners in the videotape is wearing a distinctive yellow armband that Hezbollah fighters wear. Barfi says, “This appears to be a Hezbollah video, though we cannot conclude this with high confidence.”
Similarly, Augustus Richard Norton, professor of international relations at Boston University and the author of an authoritative study of Hezbollah, says, “The only identifying marks on the uniforms are yellow ribbons, which, in theory, would identify them as Hezbollahis.”
[………]
Slim cautions, however, that the paramilitaries conducting the executions could well be members of an Alawite militia made up mostly of Syrians who have been trained by Hezbollah, but that are not part of Hezbollah itself.
Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland who specializes in Shiite militias operating in Syria, says that the fighters are likely from Hezbollah as they speak in a Lebanese accent and when they perform the executions they mention a religious edict handed down by a key Hezbollah religious guide.
[……….]
Shahbandar has been tracking Hezbollah since 2007 and he asserts that the executioners in the video are definitely from Hezbollah and that the video itself was shot in Homs province in western Syria.
An analysis done by CNN’s International desk confirms that the dialect spoken by the executioners in the videotape is Lebanese Arabic and they can be heard shouting “Fi Sabil Allah,” an Arabic phrase that means “in God’s cause,” an expression commonly used by Hezbollah fighters on the battlefield. The international desk’s analysis points out that the yellow and green ribbons tied to the fighters’ uniforms appear to mark them as Hezbollah fighters.
As is now well known, many of the players in the Syrian conflict, including most prominently the Assad regime itself, have committed war crimes against civilians.
On Friday, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting a massacre on August 4 that was perpetrated by two al Qaeda-aligned Sunni militant groups, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra.
The massacre took place in the coastal region of Latakia in a number of Alawite villages supportive of the Assad regime. According to the report “Eight survivors and witnesses described how opposition forces executed residents and opened fire on civilians, sometimes killing or attempting to kill entire families who were either in their homes unarmed or fleeing from the attack, and at other times killing adult male family members, and holding the female relatives and children hostage. ”
Human Rights Watch collected the names of 190 civilians who were killed in these attacks, including 57 women and at least 18 children and 14 elderly men.
While the world in the past few weeks has been distracted by the U.S. government shutdown and the brutal attack on the mall in Kenya by an al Qaeda affiliate that left at least 67 dead, the Syrian war has ground on.
It is a war that has now claimed as many as 120,000 lives.
Four of those deaths are documented in the appalling videotape of the Shiite paramilitaries gleefully executing wounded men who appear to be civilians. And the deaths of 190 civilians killed by Sunni militias in August are documented in great detail in the Human Rights Watch report that was released Friday.
Just when you thought the Syrian civil war couldn’t get any worse, it does.
Read the rest – Syrian wars brutality isn’t going away
There is a reason why Israel does not allow cement be shipped to Gaza.
by Gavriel Fiske and Mitch Ginsburg
An extensive subterranean passageway leading from Gaza into Israeli territory was the work of Hamas, which used some 500 tons of cement earmarked for civilian building in the Strip in the tunnel’s construction, the IDF said Sunday.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon responded immediately with a halt on the transfer of construction materials into the Strip.
Security forces last week discovered the terminus of the tunnel some 300 meters inside Israel proper, near Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha in the western Negev, and took several days to render the passage unusable. The IDF said it had been aware of the tunnel effort for some time, but had not previously found its exit point.
Brig. Gen. Shlomo Turgeman, the Southern Command head, said the tunnel, “a violation of our sovereignty,” had been built using around 500 tons of cement that “Israel allowed in [to Gaza] for civilian well-being.”
The tunnel, which began in Abbasan al-Saghira, a farming village near Khan Yunis, was described by officials as being 18 meters deep and 1,700 meters long. Officials estimate it took around a year to construct.
Contrary to initial media reports, the IDF said, the tunnel did not end near an Israeli kindergarten, nor was it filled with explosives.
The tunnel is a “gross violation of the ceasefire, [and is] against Israel and against the Palestinians,” said Brig. Gen. Michael Edelstein, Gaza Division commander.
The passageway was “definitely the work of Hamas,” Edelstein added. “Hamas is clearly in difficulty, and chooses the path of terrorism. We are dealing with the same threat as the Egyptians. We act on behalf of our people and they [act] for their people,” he said.
Edelstein went on to say that the IDF was aware of exactly from which backyard the tunnel originated, and “the man who enabled it should know that he has put himself in danger.”
Abu Ubaida, a nom de guerre for the spokesperson of Hamas’s armed wing, wrote on Twitter in Arabic that “the will engraved in the hearts and minds of the men of resistance is much more important than the tunnels dug in the mud. The former will create thousands of the latter.”
The tunnel end was found on October 7, military officials said, but the discovery was only publicized a week later, on Sunday, because a search for explosives was underway. The army said an elite engineering corps was sent into the tunnel, but no explosives were found.
Eshkol Regional Council head Haim Jelin described the tunnel as “like a New York subway.” Jelin said attacks from the tunnels could prove to be more psychologically damaging to Israeli children living on the Gaza periphery because they could occur without warning, unlike Kassam rockets fired from the Strip, for which advance warning is given via air defense sirens.“The tunnel was discovered in time, and disaster was averted,” Jelin told Ynet News earlier on Sunday.
Army spokesman Maj. Guy Inbar said a halt on all construction material to Gaza, announced Sunday, was enacted due to security considerations and was not meant as a punishing measure.
For years, Israel prevented the transfer of construction materials into Gaza because it said militants could use the materials to build crude rockets and explosives for attacks against Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday the discovery and neutralization of the tunnel was part of “an aggressive policy against terror… [that includes] prevention, intelligence activities, preventative measures, actions in response [to attacks] and, of course, Operation Pillar of Defense,” referring to the November 2012 mini-war between Israel and Hamas.
Last Tuesday, IDF Chief Benny Gantz warned that the next war could be sparked by a “tunnel packed with explosives that reaches a kindergarten.”
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Netanyahu said Sunday that 2013 so far has been “the quietest [year] in more than a decade,” but noted that “we have seen an increase in terrorist activity in recent weeks.”
This was the third tunnel discovered this year. The previous two were packed with explosives, the IDF said.
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Former national security adviser Giora Eiland, who investigated the Shalit kidnapping, said Gazan tunnels were no less a threat than the territory’s arsenal of homemade weapons.
“They have surprised us in the past with their capability of digging deep and fast,” he told Army Radio.
Tensions between Israel and Gaza have remained mostly calm since an informal ceasefire after Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012 to stem rocket fire.
[……..]
Analysts have noted that Gaza’s Hamas rulers, feeling the squeeze from a massive Egyptian operation to destroy smuggling tunnels into the Sinai, may seek to ignite tensions with Israel.
Read the rest – IDF blames Hamas for ‘terror tunnel’ from Gaza to Israel
