DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Syrian Army at its Highest State of Alert - Gideon Alon (Ha'aretz)
    Syria has placed its military at its highest state of alert in recent years, Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday.
    While Syrian forces remain on a defensive rather than offensive alert, Hizballah is interested in opening another front for Israel with Syria, Yadlin said.
    See also Israeli Military Intelligence: Syria, Israel Uninterested in Clash - Sheera Claire Frenkel (Jerusalem Post)

Ahmadinejad: "Lebanon Is the Scene of an Historic Test which will Determine the Future of Humanity" (MEMRI)
    Iranian President Ahmadinejad said on July 23: "Lebanon is the scene of an historic test, which will determine the future of humanity....It is inconceivable for anyone who calls himself a Muslim and who heads an Islamic state to maintain relations under the table with the regime that occupied Jerusalem."
    "England was the founder of this sinister regime. It is an accomplice to all its crimes. America, which supports it now, is an accomplice to all its crimes."

Shin Bet Warning Families of Palestinian Terrorists Ahead of Airstrikes - Avi Issacharoff and Yuval Azoulay (Ha'aretz)
    Shin Bet security service agents have begun telephoning Palestinian terrorists and warning them to leave their houses, so that they and their families will not be hurt when Israel bombs them, Palestinian sources said Tuesday.
    The houses are targeted because Israel believes they are being used to store or manufacture weapons, including Kassam rockets and rocket-propelled grenades.
    The Israel Defense Forces bombed two such houses on Tuesday that served as weapons factories, one belonging to an Islamic Jihad operative in Gaza City and one belonging to a Hamas operative in Rafah.
    The IDF has also interrupted local radio broadcasts in several parts of Gaza in recent days, including some by Hamas' Radio Al-Aqsa, overriding the scheduled programing with warnings about planned attacks on houses that serve as arms caches.

Hizballah and Main Street - Diana West (Washington Times)
    In the U.S., a good stretch of Main Street in Dearborn, Mich., which writer Debbie Schlussel has described as the heart of Shia Islamic America, follows the Israeli war on Hizballah via Al Jazeera.
    Hizballah itself is popular in Dearborn, where Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Arab American News, considers members of Hizballah - along with Hamas and other jihadist groups - as freedom fighters.
    And, as Siblani tells the Detroit News, he's not alone: "If morally supporting Hizballah...is a crime, 'there is not going to be enough buses to haul the people out and take them to jail.'"

Hizballah Gives Guided Tours to Foreign Journalists - Howard Kurtz (CNN)
    CNN's Nic Robertson in Beirut says: "Hizballah has a very, very sophisticated and slick media operation.... They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath."
    "There's no doubt that the bombs are hitting Hizballah facilities.... When you hear their claims they have to come with more than a grain of salt."

Army of Volunteers Strengthens Northern Residents - Rebecca Anna Stoil (Jerusalem Post)
    A civilian force of hundreds of volunteers has streamed steadily northward throughout the past two weeks of daily shelling, leaving their jobs and their families to offer help to the beleaguered residents of Nahariya, Safed, and Kiryat Shmona.

Hewlett-Packard to Buy Israeli Software Company Mercury for $4.5 Billion (Bloomberg)
    Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's second-biggest personal-computer maker, agreed to buy software maker Mercury Interactive Corp. for about $4.5 billion.
    "Mercury has some interesting technology that ties into HP's systems management realm,'' said Brent Bracelin, a securities analyst.

Useful Reference:

Video: Prime Minister Olmert Addresses Visiting American Jewish Leadership (Jerusalem on Line)

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

Israel Is Within Its Rights - David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey (Washington Post)

• In its operations against Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Israel's conduct has been fully compliant with the applicable norms of international law. In determining the existence of a legitimate casus belli, a state is entitled to consider the entire context of the threat it faces.
• Hizballah is not simply a terrorist gang, like Germany's Baader-Meinhof or Italy's Red Brigades. It is a substantial political and military organization that has more than 12,000 short- and medium-range rockets and that has operated freely on Lebanese territory for many years, whose stated goal is Israel's destruction, and is the client of a major regional power - Iran - whose government appears dedicated to the same goal.
• Moreover, although international law requires a state to have a lawful reason to use force - such as self-defense - it does not mandate that a state limit its military response to "tit for tat" actions. Once a country has suffered an armed attack, it is entitled to identify the source of that attack and to eliminate its adversary's ability to attack again. It is not required to accept a limited conflict that fails to meet and resolve the danger it faces.
• No state has the right to permit a foreign military force to use its territory to launch attacks against another country. Lebanon's failure to expel Hizballah would in and of itself have been a legitimate cause for Israeli military action. It was the Taliban's sheltering of al-Qaeda that was the basis of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in 2001.
• Although there is some grim humor in the spectacle of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose troops have ravaged Chechnya, criticizing Israel for a "disproportionate" use of force, the claims are without merit. In NATO's 1999 war against Serbia, airports, bridges, and the power grid were attacked - with the agreement and approval of the European governments involved. In the current conflict, Israel's primary military purpose in attacking these targets appears to be to cut Hizballah's supply lines, not to punish Lebanon.
• Hizballah intentionally operates from civilian areas, both to protect its military capabilities from attack and to increase civilian deaths, which can then be trumpeted for propaganda purposes. But the presence of a large civilian population does not immunize Hizballah or Hamas forces from attack. Responsibility for any additional civilian casualties must be attributed to those groups, not to Israel.
• The legal rights Israel is exercising to defend itself today are the very same legal rights on which the United States must rely in the war on terrorism. Attempts to revise the traditional laws of war so that law-abiding states cannot effectively protect their own populations from attack or even defend their territory from armed incursion are not humanitarian advances. They simply make the world safer for those who reject any notion of law in war.

  The writers are Washington lawyers who served in the Justice Department under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.