Links July 16th to July 17th

Links from my del.icio.us account for July 16th through July 17th:

0 thoughts on “Links July 16th to July 17th”

  1. It’s a great and disturbing mystery to me why, of all the prisoners in Israel, Hizbullah and the rest of the Arab world has picked Samir Kuntar to celebrate. I’m really like to hear an explanation.

  2. And please understand, I’m someone who thinks kidnapping Israeli soldiers to try to get prisoners released in a semi-war situation has a certain logic to it. I don’t call kidnapping Shalit an act of terrorism because he was a military target. I just want to know: Why Kuntar?

  3. it is sickening- Kuntar enters Israel, kills policemen, enters an apartment and kills a woman’s husband and then kills a four year old girl by hitting her in the head with a rifle butt numerous times…Israel receives the bodies of kidnapped soldiers in return.

    but Kuntar? How could anyone celebrate this guy? How is that ‘resistance’? Attacking occupation forces is one thing but a four year old girl in her home? what a man! What a show of strength! those who celebrate him should be very proud.

  4. Well, obviously – because he’s Druze. By getting him released, Hezbollah makes itself look like it stands up for all Lebanese, not just for the Shia. They know most Arabs watching will pretty much assume anything Israel says about atrocities to be propaganda, on the Boy Who Cried Wolf principle, and may not be hearing it anyway.

  5. Well it pretty much does not matter what he did — Arab public opinion is so pro-Hizbullah these days that the apparent victory of his release (and that of the others) will be celebrated no matter what. Very few believe anything that the Israelis say anyway, perhaps with some good reason since their account of what Kuntar was doing that operation, and the way the father and daughter died, has been questioned (notably by Kuntar himself). But in this Arab-Israeli war the propaganda has long taken over from the truth, on both sides.

  6. In 2005 Kuntar gave an interview in Hebrew to the reporter Chen Kots-Bar ( http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART/955/909.html) – I have not found a translation to either Arabic or English, which is a shame, because (a) the interview is very interesting and (b) the target audience was, at least in part, Lebanese public opinion.

    For me, what was most interesting was his ideological stand – not on the question of Israel/PAlestine but on Arab politics. He makes it clear there: he is a secular person, with Marxist education. He does not pray, despite his fellow prisoners repeated attempts to get him to. He believes that Lebanese should leave behind the politics based on ethnic/religious divisions and form a real democracy, on nationalist/secular lines, and indeed this is what he wants to see the Arab world doing. He says that he wants the Lebanese government – not a certain ethnic group – to lead a non-violent struggle to his release.

    And then you have his speech from yesterday, with clear Islamic tones, and his Hizbullah uniform. I wonder if he wrote the speech himself; the whole event was staged by Hizbulla to deliver an effect. I am sure he is grateful to Hizbulla. But what he had to say is far from how he articulated himself in that interview.

  7. oh yeah, what was I thinking? Kuntar is a very good source to challenge the accounts of the Israeli police, internal security services, and the widow. AIPAC probably made up the story to cover up the fact that the girl smashed her own face in with a rifle butt. my bad…

  8. Hi, i am a media researcher from China. I am doing a project on global media now and want to make comparison between different channels. Could anyone tell me name of the “flagship” news program on Al-Jazeera Arabic? It should be a program covering current world news affairs on a daily base, like NewsHour in Al-Jazeera English.

    I want to know the name of the program (both in Arabic and English translation) and the show time.

    Many thanks.

    xinrenl@sfu.ca

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