Minister claims Israel threatening Lebanese by phone

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Lebanon's new telecommunications minister on Thursday accused Israel of bombarding Lebanese people with threatening phone calls, a day after a controversial prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah.

"Hundreds of people throughout Lebanon received threatening phone calls on their landlines from Israel," Gibran Bassil said.

"The phone would ring, the person would answer and they would hear a message saying, 'This is from the state of Israel. Abandon Hezbollah or there will be another war, like there was in 2006,'" he said.

Bassil, a member of the Free Patriotic Movement, the main Christian party in the Syrian-backed opposition, said he has written a letter of protest to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

"We consider this to be a clear violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701," Bassil said, referring to the resolution which ended the devastating 34-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel's defence ministry declined to comment on the claims.

However, an official said that Israel uses "all sorts of methods to weaken Hezbollah" and that it was engaged in "intelligence and electronic warfare" against the militia."

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[IntravenousDemilo]

1. And the worst part is, they always get called just when they've sat down to supper. n/m

[Violet_Crumble]

2. Bloody telemarketers! That's why I have a silent number...

Not that I think I'm at risk of an Israel Calling phone call, but the worst of all telemarketers are the recorded message, coz there's no one on the other end to hear you tell them to fuck off and hang up on them. Maybe telemarketers are highly revered and respected in Israel, in which case someone needs to gently tell them that using recorded phone messages to try to weaken Hezbollah will more than likely backfire. Our former PM enaged in a recorded phone message campaign and it backfired badly on him, which is one of the reasons why he's now our former PM....