[ Middle East News Service Comment: The following item is taken from the Al Jazeera website. It is however not their own report but that of the highly reputable French news agency AFP. This news service would not normally run such a report unless we could confirm it from another source.

'10 buildings for every rocket'
Monday 24 July 2006, 13:54 Makka Time, 10:54 GMT

The Israeli air force has been ordered to hit 10 buildings in south Beirut - where Hezbollah has its headquarters - for every rocket the group fires at the Israeli port of Haifa.

"Army chief of staff Dan Halutz has given the order to the air force to destroy 10 multi-storey buildings in the Dahaya district (of Beirut) in response to every rocket fired on Haifa," a senior air force officer told army radio on Monday.

On this occasion we can as it is almost word for word translation of the first report I saw in Einyan Merkazi. A Hebrew Google News search is showing that the story was report by News First Class, Ma’ariv and Ynet. Ma’ariv’s report refers directly to the Dahiya neighbourhood of south Beirut. The following sentence is in the cached version only (it being presumably being removed by the paper for whatever reason):

Eighty building have been destroyed so far In this neighbourhood where the Hezbollah offices, terrorists’homes and war materiel storage site where located. A further fifty building remain standing.

Ynet reports that the IDF has denied the story but that the Association of Civil Rights in Israel is not convinced by the denial and has continued its approach to the Defence Minister over it. (The paper does not comment on the way ACRI was not impressed by the denial. In recent days the patriotic Ynet would have made a disparaging comment about it. To me it suggests that the paper is not impressed by the denial either. –translator)

A further report has just come out in the Jerusalem Post: (see below)

No further comments are necessary. –Sol Salbe.]

High-ranking officer: Halutz ordered retaliation policy

Yaakov Katz, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 24, 2006

A high-ranking IAF officer caused a storm on Monday in an off-record briefing during which he told reporters that IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut in retaliation to every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa.

The officer said that the equation was created by Halutz and that every rocket strike on Haifa would be answered by IAF missile strikes on 10 12-story buildings in the Beirut neighborhood of Dahiya, a Hizbullah stronghold. Since the beginning of Operation Change of Direction, launched on July 12 following the abduction of two soldiers during a Hizbullah cross-border attack, over 80 buildings in the neighborhood have been destroyed.

After the officer's remarks were published on The Jerusalem Post website as well as other Israeli news sites, the IDF Spokesperson's Office released a statement insinuating that reporters had misquoted the senior officer and claimed that the publications were false and that Halutz had never issued such a directive.

The IDF Spokesperson's Office later retracted its accusation that reporters had misquoted the officer and issued a second statement claiming that the high-ranking officer had made a mistake and was wrong in claiming that Halutz had issued such a directive.

[The independent Middle East News Service concentrates on providing alternative information chiefly from Israeli sources. It is sponsored by the Australian Jewish Democratic Society. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the AJDS. These are expressed in its own statements]

Deaf Ears: Speaker On Support For Mojo Mathers

Scoop Audio: In a press conference this afternoon Speaker Lockwood Smith defended his handling of requests for support for profoundly deaf MP Mojo Mathers' participation in Parliament, and said he was "deeply concerned" by the way the issue had been portrayed.

Earlier today the Greens said they had been told they would have to fund support Mathers requires out of their own budget. More>>