Defence Force Members past & present

[PMC]

G'day folks,

The story that our left wing anti Jewish friends do not want you to read!

Regards

PMC

ISRAEL’S NEXT TUNNEL THREAT IS FROM HEZBOLLAH.

After destroying Hamas’ infiltration network, eyes shift to northern border Posted on August 20, 2014 at 12:08 AM EST By Aaron Klein.

Israel, at great cost, believes it has destroyed the complex tunnel network built by Hamas to smuggle arms and other contraband into Gaza and send suicide bombers into the Jewish state, but the possible existence of a similar and perhaps even greater underground system remains a threat to its national security.

The Israeli government is quietly concerned the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization has excavated tunnels that snake under the Jewish state’s northern communities in the Golan Heights. A Hezbollah tunnel network under Israel could mirror or even dwarf the Hama terrorist tunnels in the county’s south, along the Gaza Strip border. Such tunnels could enable Hezbollah to carry out previous threats to use commandos to storm northern Israeli communities in an attempt to hold positions within the country.

After Israel’s nearly month-long military campaign in Gaza aimed in large part at destroying Hamas’s tunnels, Israeli officials seem careful to avoid publicly addressing the potential for Hezbollah tunnels. A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on Hezbollah’s possible tunneling in the north.

The Shiite terrorist organization is known for its vast, sophisticated tunnel networks in Lebanon.

Indeed, Hezbollah taught Hamas its tunnel-warfare tactics and helped supervise the construction of its network. It therefore must be assumed Hezbollah has at least attempted to tunnel under Israel in the north. The organization may not have drilled any openings into Israeli cities yet, however, fearing discovery or retaliation from Israel.

Northern Israeli residents have for years reported hearing drilling sounds underground. However, the Israeli military has said it has not discovered any tunnels.

Last week, the mayor of Kiryat Shmona, a city near Israel’s border with Lebanon, reportedly asked the IDF to investigate the possibility of Hezbollah tunnels. Asked by KleinOnline for more information on the Hezbollah tunnel threat, an Israeli security source speaking on background said there is fear that after the Gaza conflict, Hezbollah will attempt to convert its defensive tunnels into offensive networks that can snake under Israel.

The source said that while no tunnels were yet discovered under Israeli towns, the working assumption is that Hezbollah will attempt to tunnel there. The source said Hezbollah is bogged down with the ongoing insurgency targeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and that Israel does not believe Hezbollah wants a direct conflict with the Jewish state any time soon.

However, the source added the assumption within the Israeli defense establishment is that Hezbollah has incorporated into its future war plans the potential to raid Israeli cities via tunneling, learning lessons from the most recent Gaza conflict.

Hezbollah’s underground highways

Knowledgeable sources told KleinOnline that Lebanon is virtually catacombed with sophisticated tunnels from the northern part of the country into the Bekaa Valley, throughout Beirut and in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has specialized in tunnel boring to move fighters and supplies in various conflicts with Israel. Some of the tunnels, especially in mountainous areas, not only are used to store military supplies but to move more sophisticated weaponry undetected from overhead surveillance, the sources said.

Updates were made for the tunnels to host missile launch pads after the 2006 Lebanon War, when Israel took out scores of above-ground Hezbollah missile and rocket launchers. Throughout the Bekaa Valley, there are tunnels known to hide military equipment from continuous Israeli and U.S. surveillance.

Sources say the Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon, which are capable of withstanding some aerial bombings, store missiles and rockets and other military hardware to respond to an Israeli attack. Even under Beirut itself, especially in the Hezbollah stronghold of south Beirut, military supplies are stored in bunkers and tunnels estimated to be some 40 to 50 feet below the ground.

Up above, there are regular businesses masking the existence of the tunnels. Because Hezbollah controls south Lebanon, sources say the region has been the subject of extensive tunneling, some of which can be bored quickly to allow troops to move secretly into Israel.

At its Museum for Resistance Tourism, for example, Hezbollah has demonstrated its tunneling capability and conducts tours through underground bunkers. A 200-meter tunnel displays complete living and working quarters for fighters, replete with kitchens, electrical generators and communications equipment. The war museum, which is operated by Hezbollah near the village of Mleeta in southern Lebanon, is the site of a former Hezbollah base utilized to ambush Israeli troops.

North Korea

Hezbollah has a relationship with North Korea’s communist dictatorship, which is known to have constructed tunnels that snake underneath the demilitarized zone with South Korea.

The northern Israeli landscape, with its rocky hills and mountains, is geographically different than beachfront Gaza. However, numerous geologists told Israeli media outlets in recent years that Hezbollah has the capability to tunnel under the Israeli north. Just last week, geologist Col. Yossi Langotsky, a former adviser on terror tunnels, explained to Israel National News that the ground in Israel’s northern Galilee is easier to dig than in the Koreas.

“For nine years I raised hell, and said [terrorists are] digging tunnels into Israeli territory, and the state security system is not organized with enough seriousness required to deal with the intensity of the threat,” Langotsky said.

A warning to Israel during operation

“Protective Edge”: a senior in the US defense ministry responded to the suggestion made by some Israeli ministers to remove Hamas, and warned that if Hamas will fall, the outcome will be a more extreme and more dangerous organization replacing it, which will continue the conflict in a worse manner.

Michale Flin, a senior in the pentagon intelligence, admitted that Hamas has infrastructure and funding that allows it to build tunnels t Israel and cause a major threat, but added that removing them from Gaza is not the solution.

“If Hamas disappears, it is probable that we will have to deal with something worse. The area can create something worse”, said Flin in a security conference in Colorado. “It might cause something like ISIS to rise there, the extreme organization took over large areas of the Middle East and created its own Islamic state in Iraq and Syria.”

Flin described the problematic conditions, poverty and population density in Gaza, and said that the locals see a little chance to remove the siege that Israel has over them with Egypt. His prediction to the ending was very pessimistic: “Peace in the middle east? Not in my life time”.

Yesterday( Saturday) the British “Telegraph” reported that Hamas is having negotiations to purchase rockets and advanced warfare gear from North Korea. According to the report, which is based on information from security officials in the West, Hamas already paid for some of the communications technology and for tunnel building knowledge, also to refill the depleted rocket supply after the engagement with Israel.

The officials claimed that the discussed amounts of money between Hamas and Pyongyang are around the hundreds of thousands of dollars and are transferred by company located in Lebanon, coordinating between the sides. Israeli security officials believe that experts in North Korea helped Hamas in designing the tunnel infrastructure towards Israel, so it won’t be detectable and suitable for weapons transferring.

“Hamas wants to resupply its rockets and missiles since he fired so much towards Israel in the last weeks”, said an official in the West. “Pyongyang is the natural location to turn to, because North Korea has connection with radical Islamic groups in the Middle East”. Also he claimed that the officials in North Korea are experienced with tunnel building since they built a complex tunnel network under the demilitarized zone between them and South Korea, and Hamas wants to learn the same expertise.

[PMC]

G'day folks,

Further reading that our left wing anti Jewish friends do not want you to read!

Regards

PMC

The Underground War on Israel
By Lee Smith

During the first two weeks of the Gaza conflict, Hamas landed at least two significant punches. In firing missiles at Ben Gurion Airport, Hamas convinced the Federal Aviation Authority and European air carriers to temporarily suspend flights to Israel. The fact that relatively primitive rockets falling far short of their targets are nonetheless capable of at least briefly severing an advanced Western democracy with a leading tech economy from the rest of the world is a psychological blow. But perhaps the even greater concern for Israeli officials is the revelation of Hamas’s extensive tunnel network.

Until Operation Protective Edge, it was generally assumed that Gaza’s tunnel system was simply a feeding tube for a community of 1.8 million people. With both the Egyptian and Israeli borders closed, as well as Israel’s naval blockade, goods entered Gaza mainly through the tunnels from Egypt. So did weapons, including missiles made or designed by Iran, which, as the last two weeks have shown, are capable of reaching any site in Israel. The tunnel economy flourished under former Egyptian president and Hamas sponsor Mohamed Morsi but has suffered under his successor, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has won praise from Jerusalem for shutting down as many tunnels as he can find.

However, there is another system in Gaza as well, a network of attack tunnels that end not in Egypt but in Israel, where over the last two weeks Hamas commandos have attempted several terrorist operations.

“Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that we are not under siege, we are imposing a siege,” says retired IDF officer Jonathan Halevi, now a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “What he meant was that [Hamas] can use tunnels as a strategic weapon. If you multiply tunnels, you can use them to send hundreds of fighters into Israel and create havoc, totally under cover. According to Hamas, the tunnels have changed the balance of power.”

Israeli officials have expressed amazement at the extent of the tunnel network. “Food, accommodations, storage, resupply,” one astonished official told reporters last week. “Beneath Gaza,” he explained, there’s “another terror city.” That is, Hamas’s tunnel network is evidence of a military doctrine, both a countermeasure to Israel’s clear air superiority and an offensive capability that threatens to take ground combat inside Israel itself, targeting villages, cities, and civilians as well as soldiers. Israel perhaps should not have been surprised to discover the size and seriousness of Hamas’s tunnel network because they’ve seen something similar before, in the aftermath of the 2006 war with Hezbollah. And indeed it was Iran’s long arm in Lebanon that helped build Hamas’s tunnels.

“The spiritual father of Hamas’s tunnel system is Imad Mughniyeh,” says Shimon Shapira, a Hezbollah expert and senior research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Mughniyeh, assassinated in 2008 in an operation believed to have been conducted by the Israelis, is credited with directing Hezbollah’s 2006 war. He was the head of the organization’s external operations unit and responsible for countless terrorist attacks. He also served as liaison to the top Iranian leadership as well as other Iranian allies and assets, including Hamas. “Mughniyeh sent instructors to Gaza and took Hamas members to Iran,” Shapira explains.

While Hamas and Hezbollah’s tunnel technology, equipment, and funding are mostly Iranian, the knowledge and the doctrine date back to the earliest days of the Cold War.

The North Koreans

“The North Koreans are the leading tunnel experts in the world,” says North Korea expert Bruce Bechtol. They learned as a matter of necessity. “The U.S. Air Force basically exhausted its target list after the first eight months of the Korean War,” Bechtol explains. “All the North Korean cities were turned to rubble, so they got good at building large tunnels and bunkers, some of them 10 or 11 square miles. In effect, the North Koreans moved their cities underground for three years, with hundreds of thousands of people living down there.”

“There is no better protection than the earth,” says David Maxwell, associate director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University. But Pyongyang also has an offensive doctrine. “Defectors tell us that the North Koreans built 21 tunnels under the demilitarized zone, but only 4 have been discovered,” says Maxwell, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served in South Korea. “Our concern is that the North Koreans would infiltrate, sending thousands of men through the tunnels in an hour, maybe dressed in South Korean uniforms. You can’t imagine the kind of havoc that would wreak.”

Just last week Hamas tried the same tactic, sending commando units disguised as IDF troops through two tunnels. For a short time, they fooled real Israeli soldiers in an observation post

It’s nothing new for the North Koreans to work with terrorist groups, as Bechtol explains. It started with the Polisario, the North African, and at one time Soviet-funded, terrorist group fighting the Moroccan government. “The North Koreans built them underground facilities, command and control, hospitals,” says Bechtol. “All of it was supported by Soviets, but that changed with the end of the Cold War, when the North Koreans offered their services on a cash and carry basis only.”

Their top customer is the Islamic Republic of Iran. The North Koreans, Bechtol says, have helped build some of the Iranians’ underground nuclear weapons facilities, as well as Hezbollah’s underground network. “They built it in 2003-04, coming into Lebanon disguised as houseboys serving the Iranians. Maybe nobody asked, hey, how come these houseboys are speaking Korean?”

The significance of the tunnels became clear in the 2006 war, as Bechtol explains. “It lowered Hezbollah’s casualty rate. The Israelis wondered why the air force was not inflicting more damage and it was because of those tunnels. It was the first time Hezbollah was ever truly protected.”

Last week a U.S. federal judge ruled that North Korea and Iran were liable for providing support to Hezbollah during the 2006 war. According to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, North Korea and Iran assisted “in building a massive network of underground military installations, tunnels, bunkers, depots and storage facilities in southern Lebanon.” Lamberth noted that one Hezbollah commander who received training in North Korea was Mustafa Badreddine, Mughniyeh’s cousin. And as with North Korea, Hezbollah’s heavily reinforced underground network has also given rise to an offensive doctrine—to invade northern Israel.

“Hassan Nasrallah says Hezbollah has a two-part operational plan,” says Shimon Shapira. “One is rocket fire on Tel Aviv and two is conquest of the Galilee. I wondered what he meant by that—how is Hezbollah going to invade the Galilee, take hostages, capture villages, and overrun military installations? But we’re learning from what is happening now. Nasrallah means Hezbollah is going to penetrate Israel through tunnels.”

The difference between Hamas’s underground network and Hezbollah’s, explain experts, is the topography. It’s easier to dig tunnels in the Gaza sand than in the rocky pastures and rich soil of the Galilee. The catch is that the latter are also harder to destroy since they are further fortified by nature.

Several Israeli journalists are reporting that “the fiasco of the tunnels,” as Yossi Melman calls it, might have been avoided. Either military and security officials were aware of the extent of Hamas’s network and didn’t do enough about it, or they ran up against bureaucratic roadblocks. Whether the IDF needs to detail a specific unit to monitor and uproot the tunnels that cross into Israel on its southern and northern borders, one fact is plain: For decades Israel’s traditional military doctrine has been to fight its enemies on the other side of the wire. However, its enemies’ new North Korean-inspired doctrine is to go under the wire. If Israel doesn’t deal with first Hamas’s tunnels and then Hezbollah’s, the next war it faces may well be inside Israel itself.

[PMC]

Multiple media outlets report that Hamas’s offensive tunnel network – now known to have been composed of over forty attack tunnels dug underneath Israel’s border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip – was set to be activated during the Jewish High Holidays (September 24th) as a mass terror attack.

The attack was meant to generate as many as ten thousand casualties, men, women and particularly children and hundreds of captives. Explosives were particularly placed underneath kindergartens to make certain that these “institutions” would be the first struck, even before anything else.

The IDF recently published the below map showing that tunnels were created in pairs, to empty out on both sides of nearby communities. The known cost of the infrastructure – each tunnel costs upward of some $1 million – clearly shows that Hamas was planning a coordinated mega-attack. It must be understood that use of even one tunnel would inevitably trigger Israeli retaliation against the entire network.

http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/up...4/07/Gaza1.jpg
A map of a small portion of the tunnels meant to be used 9 weeks from now.

Revelations regarding the planned tunnel attack magnitude played a decisive role in the Israeli government’s rejection of a ceasefire proposed late Friday by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Unbelievably, Kerry actually proposed in his latest “cease-fire proposal” – none of which have been honored by Hamas so far – that Israel refrains from degrading remaining attack tunnels. This mind-boggling concept would necessarily be rejected by any sane government, of any country.

Israeli security sources, citing information acquired in interrogations of captured brigands, described a scenario under which hundreds of heavily armed Hamas fighters would have spilled out into Israel in the dead of night and within 10 minutes been positioned to infiltrate essentially all Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Waiting then in hiding until schools and kindergartens were occupied, the terrorists would then attempt to kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible. The plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on September 24.

“It’s like the Underground, the Metro or the Subway,” Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said. “These tunnels are all connected. I would describe it as Lower Gaza .”

Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said, “A whole city of terror tunnels has been found. Without the ground operation, we would have woken up one day to an Israeli 9/11.”

Except, the actual objective was to be five times 9/11.

http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/up...4/07/Gaza2.jpg
This picture shows clearly the width of one of the tunnels, sufficient for wheeled vehicles to transverse it. Hamas did not build a “subway” system for Gaza residents. They built an infrastructure for one purpose, and one only, an industry of death.

Israeli military officials reported that the tunnels are stocked with tranquilizers, handcuffs, syringes, ropes and other materials used for subduing abductees, civilians and soldiers. The tunnels also had fantastic quantities of explosives and additional military materiel meant to be used in the up-coming mega attack. Much of these explosives had already been placed underneath Israeli kindergartens. Some of these tunnels were as deep as 30 meters underground.

http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/up...4/07/Gaza3.jpg
Fantastic quantities of explosives were stored in every tunnel, meant to be used in a mega-attack on civilian communities and infrastructure.

Sources say the Gaza Strip war, Operation Protective Edge, could serve as a prelude for a more extensive underground war with the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah. Perhaps, not ‘just’ in the Middle East .

The tunnels inside Gaza and under the Israeli border are not a secret project Hamas ran under the noses of Israel and the Palestinian public. Everyone in Gaza , knew that beneath Gaza , the City and all of its environs, a network of tunnels was being dug over the past five years, with an investment of tens of millions of dollars. Yet no one in Israel , public or military, was prepared for the scope of the tunnels – the danger that became clear in the past week or two.

http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/up...4/07/Gaza4.jpg
Senior Hamas operatives show off their offensive tunnels to their spouses. Unbelievably, this is actually a picture of a Marriage taking place in the ‘place of death’.

In order to create this monstrosity, Hamas needed significant professional help; and this help had to have come from a large organization or state entity. This is not just the monetary aid it received from Qatar , America ’s ally. This is professional guidance for the performance of such an underground feat. Perhaps Hamas could have used experts from the tunnels dug at Rafah under the Gaza-Egypt border, but those were significantly simpler, and did not demand any extraordinary investment or effort.

http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/up...4/07/Gaza5.jpg
A Hamas operative climbing upward in a pier of one of the major tunnels. Notice the work on the sides of the tunnel.

Who supplied these quantities of material? Who planned what would be needed? How did Hamas acquire thousands of ampoules of tranquilizer, syringes and other, additional drugs to be used? These are far beyond the quantities and variety of what is needed by any civilian medical service.

How was all this brought in to the Gaza Strip? The logistics of this planned attack are the work of a well-organised military, not that of a militia or club. This was no amateur plan.

Observers note that attack scenarios lined up with recently revealed data about the sophistication, scope and nature of the offensive tunnel network. As previously reported here, this sophistication and know-how is being copied right now by Mexico-based Hezbollah agents along the Southern US border. Tunnels in Southern Lebanon, as in South US , are significantly more difficult to detect than those in the sandy terrain of the Gaza Strip.

“Hamas planned these tunnels for years, and planned to use them to kidnap soldiers,” Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mordechai Almoz said. “[Now] they see the tunnels collapsing one after the other.” For the last two years, the Israeli army has sought to develop skills and equipment to fight in enemy tunnels and bunkers. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have used tunnels to operate command and control, to infiltrate Israel and abduct soldiers, to fire rockets and to conceal fighters amid invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Why has so much bias reporting occurred against Israel? Why is India the only country reporting and filming Hamas tunnels and firing rockets into Israel.

It was only 70 years ago when one of the world's greatest atrocities occurred, the 6.7 million Jews exterminated by HITLER and the Nazi Party!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[PMC]

G'day folks,

Sorry for not been active on this thread. Unfortunately, I have been inundated with young Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans suffering awful psychological and debilitating service related injuries.

Since I got home from hospital in Sydney, I have been flat chat with work. I have currently 16 claims before the department of Veterans affairs and the Veterans' Review Board.

PS, the following below in the latest news from DVA regarding pension increases.

Friday, 19 September 2014VA075

PENSION INCREASE FOR THE VETERAN COMMUNITY

From 20 September 2014, veterans, their partners, war widows and widowers across Australia will see an increase to their pensions.

I am pleased to confirm that the Abbott Government has delivered upon its promise to annually index the income limit for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC) to CPI. This will provide a fairer income limit for card holders and will mean around 120 additional DVA clients will now be eligible for the Card in 2014-15.

As pension rates are calculated on a daily basis, the next pension paid after the 20 September increase (on payday 2 October 2014) will be paid partly at the old rate and partly at the new rate. The first full payment at the new rates of pension will be payday 16 October 2014.

The table below highlights the key changes to fortnightly rates.

Pension IncreasePension Old Rate (per fortnight) New Rate (per fortnight) Increase
Service Pension—single $842.80 $854.30 $11.50
Service Pension—couples (each)
(combined) $635.30 $1,270.60 $644.00 $1,288.00 $8.70

War Widow(er)’s Pension $856.20 $868.00 $11.80
Income Support Supplement $252.40 $256.00 $3.60
Special Rate (TPI) of Disability Pension $1,293.20 $1,311.30 $18.10
Intermediate Rate of Disability Pension $877.80 $890.10 $12.30
Extreme Disablement Adjustment $714.10 $724.20 $10.10
100 per cent General Rate Pension $459.60 $466.10 $6.50

These are the maximum rates of payment and include any Clean Energy Supplement payable.

Pensions are indexed twice a year in March and September. A full list of pension rates are available on www.dva.gov.au or by calling 133 254 or 1800 555 254 from regional Australia.

Regards,

PMC


Media inquiries: Minister Ronaldson: Jordi Procel 02 6277 7820 or 0448 232 908
Department of Veterans’ Affairs Media: 02 6289 6203

[NP99]

Australian military personnel should carefully consider wearing their uniforms in public, the Defence Department says, after an officer reported being attacked in Sydney.

The 41-year old Australian Defence Force (ADF) officer said he was threatened and assaulted by two males in Sydney's north-west and suffered minor bruising, NSW police said.

The man called police to report the incident early this morning and later spoke to officers at the Kings Cross station.

The two alleged assailants have been described as being of Middle Eastern appearance, police said.

The Hills Local Area Command was investigating.

While the Defence Department has said it would not discuss details about any threats against ADF personnel or their families, a spokesperson said members had been advised to exercise their judgement about wearing a uniform in public.

"ADF members have been advised to consider where they are going, to be aware of their surroundings, and to exercise commonsense and judgement when considering where and when to wear uniform in public," the spokesperson said.

The incident comes amid concerns about the safety of police officers following an attack in Melbourne on Tuesday which saw two officers injured and their apparent attacker shot dead.

[PMC]

G'day NP99,

So sad that this kind of incident is happening in our alleged peaceful land!

Regards,

PMC

[NP99]

G'day NP99,

So sad that this kind of incident is happening in our alleged peaceful land!

Regards,

PMC

I had an idiot set his dog upon me at a railway station in Melbourne during Gulf War 1.....

[macca]

There are probably much deeper ramifications, but instead of not wearing their uniforms how about wearing their side arms?

I am so sick of this nanny state of affairs, that bloke from the other day has his family bagging the police response, bloody hell what would it be like where they escaped from?

If we are that bad then tootle off "home", you wont be missed!

[jack]

If we are that bad then tootle off "home", you wont be missed!

Not exactly the words I would use.

[NP99]

Not exactly the words I would use.

Doc Neesen and the Angels summed it up well