Month: July 2006

NYT: Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah

More on the growing regional support for Hizbollah…

July 28, 2006
Changing Reaction
Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 27 — At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

Continue reading NYT: Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah

Hiding among civilians… really?

One of Israel’s main justifications behind its aggressive bombing of civilian targets in Lebanon has been the claim that Hizbollah is “hiding among civilians.” The Israelis’ lies, as noted before, resembles the the US army’s rubbish about “VC communitiesâ€� during the Vietnam War–rubbish that was used to justify bombing entire villages back to the stone age, and the use of Agent Orange.
Kay sent me this article from Salon.com debunking this Israeli myth

The “hiding among civilians” myth
Israel claims it’s justified in bombing civilians because Hezbollah mingles with them. In fact, the militant group doesn’t trust its civilians and stays as far away from them as possible.
By Mitch Prothero

Continue reading Hiding among civilians… really?

Haaretz on Lebanese support for Hizbollah

A good article from Haaretz on Lebanese support for Hizbollah…

28/07/2006
Analysis / The alternative to Hezbollah may be occupation
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz Correspondent

“So, you don’t want peace? You want war all the time?” asked a young Lebanese participant in a fascinating televised discussion Thursday night on Lebanon’s LBC station. She was addressing a group of young men, some with shaved heads and short beards, dressed in the latest fashions and uttering nationalist slogans. She seemed to stand no chance. Only two of those men identified themselves as Hezbollah supporters; the rest, both Muslims and Christians, proclaimed the “need for unity.”

A poll on Thursday confirmed what was apparent during the television discussion: Some 96 percent of Shiites expressed support for the abduction of the Israeli soldiers, as did 73 percent of Sunnis, 54 percent of Christians and 40 percent of Druze. Most of the participants in the poll felt that Israel will not be able to defeat Hezbollah.

Continue reading Haaretz on Lebanese support for Hizbollah

Who ghostwrites for Hosni?

Time magazine runs written answers sent by Hosni Mubarak to their questions. Nothing fascinating, but look at the language: if Hosni actually wrote or dictated those answer, then George Bush was born and raised in Menoufiya. Makes you wonder who wrote them, using American vernacular (“from day one,” “to say the least,” “a bit too little, too late,” etc.) Maybe Gamal? There’s plenty of other American-educated kids working at the presidency (as well as a few older advisors), but Gamal seems like a logical choice. He has to get his foreign affairs training at other events than impromptu visits to the White House, after all.

All out of Kool Aid

Another clear example of why things need to change in Washington in the NYT article on Arab and Israeli lobbies’ efforts to gain influence in Congress:

Although people in both diasporas are glued to their television screens, the parallel ends there. While the American Arab and Muslim groups say they are better organized than ever before, they say they have not made a dent in American foreign policy. Their calls for an immediate cease-fire by Israel have been rebuffed by the White House and most legislators on Capitol Hill.

“I’m devastated,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, in Washington. “I thought we’d come further. We’re doing well, so far, in terms of our capacity to deal with everything from the humanitarian crisis to identifying families and working to get people out. What is distressing is the degree to which this neoconservative mindset has taken hold of the policy debate. It’s like everyone has drunk the Kool-Aid.”

Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said, “This is probably the only issue in Washington where there’s no real debate.”

Which is why the fight has to be more aggressive than this.

Mais quel con!

Is there a more disgusting public intellectual anywhere in the world than Bernard Henry-Levy? Disgusting not because of his political views, but because of his smarmy prose, his idées préconçues, his affection for brutal regimes such as Algeria’s or Israel’s? There is a two-page article by him, reporting from Israel, in which you he writes the usual mixture of neo-con diatribe against “Islamofascism” (he dares to make a comparison between the current war and the Spanish civil war, started 70 years ago this month), describes Sderot as a martyred town like Lebanon, makes facile descriptions of Hizbullah as an Iranian puppet (several times for emphasis), and compares Gilad Shalit to Daniel Pearl. But most criminal of all, surely, is how he waxes lyrical about how great Shimon Peres is. Shimon Peres! Shimon Peres!

As the Angry Arab put it recently, why do I do this to myself?

Brzezinski: Israel essentially killing hostages

“I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in effect — maybe not in intent — the killing of hostages. The killing of hostages.”

“Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you’re killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You’ll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing.”

Anti-semite America-hating Hizbullah member Zbigniew Brzezinski. Also a former US National Security Advisor.

The new euro-racists

The Muslim minorities of Europe are a problem. It’s a problem of integration, culture shock, social policy and radicalization of small but vocal groups of Muslims and non-Muslims, as well as political mismanagement. This kind of analysis, though, is just pure racism. It posits a world where all Muslims are radical, none want to integrate, and glorifies the agenda of the far-right. In this world, Europeans live in constant fear of Arabs and other Muslims who conspire with multiculturalists to impose totalitarian rule. And this is a popular website! I travel to Europe several times a year, my family lives there, and never have I come across this kind of crap apart from advertisements from the former Vlaamsblok in Belgium. It insults the hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants who have earned an honest living in Europe in often difficult situations simply to make life better to their families. It insults the hundreds of thousands who are just ordinary people by trying to portray unusual incidents as routine. This is Mein Kampf, just more dangerous because it disguises itself as conservative libertarianism. They don’t even make sense because they are against making racist public statements an offense on the pretext of freedom of speech but complain of offensive material being distributed in mosques. I know where I stand: neither of these things have a role in any decent society. Close the radical mosques down and send the racists to court. But do show me those banned South Park episodes.

Weak links

Very interesting discussion of the war over at the Head Heeb, who considers Lebanon the weakest link in the conflict and worries about a possible return to civil war there — which he rightly argues would destabilize the region so much as to jeopardize any chance of regional peace for years. Let’s hope that won’t happen, and for now I don’t think it will. Now, obviously my views on these things are quite different from Jonathan’s — I have come to believe over the last few years that peace is not an Israeli foreign policy goal, only lack of aggression against it is (something that can and hopefully will change).

Continue reading Weak links