Lebanon’s Chernobyl Moment
Ali Hashem
Al-Monitor, Aug. 5, 2020A deadly time machine took Lebanon’s capital back in history to the scenes of its notorious civil war that lasted from 1975 until 1990. An unprecedented massive explosion at Beirut’s port on the evening of Aug. 4 destroyed almost half the city, according to Beirut Gov. Marwan Abboud, who burst into tears while speaking on camera.The blast left at least 100 people dead and over 4,000 injured, according to the latest toll released by the Red Cross.Abboud likened the blast to those of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan during World War II; video footage on social media showed a blast that was nothing like the country has witnessed over the past century during various tragic events.In the southern village of Haris, located nearly 60 miles southeast of Beirut, a Lebanese man told Al-Monitor that he had heard the blast. Mohammed, who asked to be indentified only by his first name, said he first thought the explosion was related to the recent tensions on the southern border between Lebanon and Israel. When he saw what had happened in Beirut on the news, he “realized this was the same explosion as in Beirut’s port. I never ever thought I would hear a blast 100 kilometers away occuring in the capital. It is frightening.”
In Beirut, where some people initially mistook the blast for an earthquake, thousands of families spent the night in the streets. Thousands waited until the early hours of the morning in front of the city’s hospitals for news about their loved ones who were either injured or missing.
The exact number of casualties is still unknown, as several people remain buried under the rubble of the country’s main port that was leveled to the ground. Lebanon’s Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmi and the country’s Director of General Security Abbas Ibrahim both confirmed the blast was caused by the ignition of 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate that was stored in one of the port’s warehouses.
Official documents that emerged after the incident showed that the chemicals were confisicated by the Lebanese authorities in 2014 and were kept in Hangar 12 of Beirut’s port. A picture of several men welding the door of the hangar shut made the rounds on social media, with bags in the background that say “nitroprill hd.”
Jeffrey Lewis, a renowned American expert in nuclear non-proliferation, tweeted out the photo, stating, “The bags say ‘NITROPRILL HD,’ which may be a knock-off of Nitropril made by Orica. Orica sets the TNT equivalence for fire at 15 percent. 0.15 x 2750 = 412.5. One more data point that suggests the explosion was a few hundred tons.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Terry Glavin: In Beirut, an Explosion Six Years in the Making
Terry Glavin
National Post, Aug. 5, 2020
“We’re keeping you in our thoughts and we stand ready to assist in any way we can,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said following Tuesday’s horrific blast in Beirut that killed more than 100 people, injured more than 7,000 and left 300,000 people homeless.
“We stand with the people of Lebanon and the diaspora during this difficult time,” Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne added, “and we are ready to assist however we can.”
This is all well and good, so long as Canada doesn’t start pouring any money into the incompetent cabal of warlords, oligarchs and kleptocrats who run the constitutionally sectarian government of Lebanon. Canada should step up, in a big way, but our aid should go straight to the Lebanese Red Cross, or any number of the many reputable non-governmental organizations that were pleading for help in alleviating Lebanon’s misery long before Tuesday’s catastrophe.
For starters, Foreign Affairs might contribute to Impact Lebanon, an organization that raised $5 million in a crowdfunding effort within 24 hours of the blast. Anything would be better than to pour more money into the corrupt, inept and bankrupt Hezbollah-backed government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab, who’s been running the show for the useless President Michel Aoun since January.
The day before the blast, Lebanon’s foreign minister, Nassif Hitti, resigned, warning that Lebanon was on the verge of becoming a “failed state.” In the throes of an Arab Spring-like revolt since last autumn, Aoun’s government responded by digging itself deeper in the abyss. And after what happened on Tuesday — an ammonium nitrate time bomb had been left to tick away for six years, despite repeated warnings — it’s hard to imagine that the Lebanese people will manage to contain their rage.
For months before the coronavirus pandemic added plague and death to the country’s agony, trash was piling up in the streets, the electrical supply in parts of Beirut was available for only four hours a day, unemployment had shot up to 35 per cent, the cost of food had gone through the roof and the Lebanese lira was reduced to a fifth of its value against the American dollar.
Lebanon had become another Venezuela, even before the country defaulted on its debts in March. Talks with the International Monetary Fund have gone nowhere. Lebanon’s national debt now stands at $92 billion — 170 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product — and Transparency International ranks the country at 137 out of 180 countries on its corruption index. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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The Unanswered Questions about Hezbollah and the Beirut Explosion (Shurat HaDin)
Eldad Tzioni
MAG, Aug. 6, 2020
As the Lebanese people struggle to recover from the catastrophic deaths and destruction wrought by the Beirut explosion, more questions than answers continue to arise. The official story, that in 2013, Lebanese port officials impounded a Moldovan flagged ship bound for Mozambique, laden with explosive chemicals, does not address other facts which have emerged and must be investigated:
Sections of the Beirut port are under the control of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Israeli officials have long complained that the Beirut port, “the Hezbollah Port” was being utilized by the terrorists to smuggle contraband and weapons into Lebanon. As UN Ambassador Danny Danon recently stated: “Israel discovered that Iran and its Quds Force have been exploiting civilian maritime channels, and specifically the Port of Beirut.”
2. Hezbollah has a long history of illegally acquiring and stockpiling ammonium nitrate in civilian areas. In 2015, Britain’s M15 and Metro Police carried out a raid on a secret Hezbollah warehouse in London that contained 3 tons of ammonium nitrate. The British government shamefully covered-up the raid in order not to damage relations with Iran shortly after signing the dangerous Nuclear Deal. It is believed Hezbollah was planning on using the chemicals for an attack in the UK. Click here
3. The same year, police in Cyprus discovered a Hezbollah warehouse storing 8.3 tons of ammonium nitrate. A Hezbollah operative was arrested and charged with planning a terror attack. “A state prosecutor said Lebanese-Canadian Hussein Bassam Abdallah admitted that Hezbollah aimed to mount terrorist attacks against Israeli interests in Cyprus using the ammonium nitrate that he had been ordered to guard at the Larnaca home of another official of the Iranian-backed group.” Click here
4. Israeli intelligence gave German police information, earlier this year, of the location of a Hezbollah stockpile of ammonium nitrate in southern Germany. The fact that the Iranian terror group was warehousing the explosives on German soil helped to push Berlin to outlaw all wings of the Hezbollah organization. “Mossad reportedly gave Germany information about warehouses in the south of the country where Hezbollah stashed hundreds of kilograms of ammonium nitrate, a material used to make explosives.” Click here
5. Hezbollah has a long history and deliberate strategy of stockpiling rockets, weapons and explosives in civilian areas. Hezbollah intentionally utilizes civilian neighborhoods including the basements of schools, mosques, residential buildings and hospitals as missile depots. The terrorists understand that the Israeli air force would be hindered in responding to rockets launched from civilian centers during the next war with Lebanon. And if Israel does attack the launchers and kills civilians, Hezbollah is counting on the UN, the Europeans and the ICC to immediately accuse Israel of war crimes. Hezbollah calls it this “Human Shield” program. Click here … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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As Lebanon Reels, Long-Awaited Hariri Assassination Verdicts Loom
Marlise Simons and Vivian Yee
NYTimes, Aug. 8, 2020
The blast ripped off balconies along the Mediterranean, smashed windows blocks away and echoed across Beirut, leaving a city shattered by the immeasurable loss.
It happened 15 years, five months and three weeks ago, when Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister, was assassinated along with 21 others by a suicide bomber in an explosives-packed van that devastated the waterfront of the Lebanese capital and roiled the Middle East.
Now, as Lebanon’s 6.8 million people grapple with the trauma of the enormous explosions on Tuesday that killed more than 150 people and leveled wide stretches of Beirut, they are also bracing for the verdicts in Mr. Hariri’s assassination from a special U.N.-backed court in the Netherlands.
But just as few people in Lebanon trust their government to hold officials to account for this week’s blasts, almost no one is expecting the full truth about the massacre of Mr. Hariri and his entourage on Valentine’s Day in 2005.
Already, in the aftermath of the latest explosions, political factions are bickering over whether to call for an international investigation along the lines of the one into Mr. Hariri’s assassination.
The Hariri proceedings cost nearly $700 million, took many years and became a virtual industry unto itself, with a staff of nearly 400 and 11 full-time judges — all for a trial never even attended by the four defendants. They are all low-level operatives of Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite political organization. Their whereabouts is unknown and they were tried in absentia.
Even more fundamentally, prosecutors have not addressed the basic underlying question of who — or which government, if any — ordered the attack and why.
The case, much like the blasts that devastated Beirut this week, is a searing example of the debilitating lack of accountability, government dysfunction and volatile political divisions that have long plagued Lebanon.
Even before the explosions on Tuesday, the country had been reeling from enormous debts, a precipitous economic crisis, corruption, the coronavirus pandemic and the burden of absorbing more than a million war refugees from Syria.
Then came the tremendous shock wave that swept across the city. Officials have attributed its terrifying force to a giant stockpile of highly explosive material that the government had neglected for years, allowing it to sit in a dense urban area despite the obvious risks.
President Michel Aoun said the authorities would examine “whether the explosion was a result of negligence or an accident” and “the possibility that there was external interference,” including a bomb or other deliberate act. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Israel’s Offer of Aid to Lebanon is Normal, Minister Says, as Some Question Help: Times of Israel, Aug. 5, 2020 — A former Swedish leader sparked a flurry of protest online after appearing to suggest Tuesday that Israel does not normally offer aid to enemy countries during disasters, as Israel continued to offer to help treat Lebanon’s injured.
Hezbollah Stored Ammonium Nitrate for ‘Third War’ on Israel, Report Says:Paul Shindman, WIN, Aug. 10, 2020 — The ammonium nitrate that blew up last week in Beirut was owned by the Hezbollah terror group that intended to use the material in a war against Israel, a top investigative reporter said Friday.
After the Blast, Nasrallah and Hezbollah Remain in Control of the Failed State of Lebanon: Yoni Ben Mordechai, John Batchelor Show, Podcast, Aug. 6, 2020
Lebanon Government on the Brink as 4th Minister Quits Over Beirut Port Blast: Times of Israel, Aug. 10, 2020 — Lebanon’s government was teetering Monday, as ministers’ resignations over the deadly Beirut port explosion threatened to snowball, and protesters’ fury on the scarred streets showed no sign of abating.
As U.N. Warns of Catastrophe, Lebanon’s Leaders Debate Cause of Blast: Marc Santora, NYTimes, Aug. 7, 2020 — As rescue workers continued to comb the debris for survivors of the deadly explosion in the port of Beirut, and as the United Nations warned that Lebanon faced a humanitarian catastrophe, the nation’s leaders debated the possible cause of the blast but provided little new information.
Behind the Beirut Explosion: Seven Years of Official Neglect: Dion Nissenbaum, Nazih Osseiran, Georgi Kantchev and Benoit Faucon, WSJ, Aug. 7, 2020 — The 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate sailed into the city nearly seven years ago. The ship’s captain at the time called it a “powder keg.”
Life Liberty & Levin 8 9 20 (Full Show) Breaking News Today Aug 9 2020: Interview with US Attorney William Barr
