And I thought that I would see some kind of settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians in my lifetime. With Hamas winning elections, the PLO falling apart, and Ahmadenijad promising Palestinian Islamist organizations more financial aid (which he can afford because of recent oil windfalls), I doubt I will be able to witness that reality.
Hizballah just fired missiles at northern Israel through its Iranian-funded Palestinian stooges. It's actually quite funny how, when the Syrians occupied Lebanon, Hizballah would do their dirty work, and now that the Syrians are gone, the Palestinians are doing Hizballah's dirty work. But anyhow, the point is that Iran has no intention of allowing for a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians. Consequently, Lebanon will continue to be torn.
Just when we thought that we were going to get out of our miserable and deadly morass thanks to Syria's withdrawal, Hizballah drags us back in! I'm disgusted! Happy New Year, everyone!
Poor Palestinians think the Iranians give two shits about them. Poor Lebanese are being dragged back into a black hole of blood and treasure. Happy New Year - Happy New Year courtesy of Hizballah's deadly fireworks!
Hizballah just fired missiles at northern Israel through its Iranian-funded Palestinian stooges. It's actually quite funny how, when the Syrians occupied Lebanon, Hizballah would do their dirty work, and now that the Syrians are gone, the Palestinians are doing Hizballah's dirty work. But anyhow, the point is that Iran has no intention of allowing for a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians. Consequently, Lebanon will continue to be torn.
Just when we thought that we were going to get out of our miserable and deadly morass thanks to Syria's withdrawal, Hizballah drags us back in! I'm disgusted! Happy New Year, everyone!
Poor Palestinians think the Iranians give two shits about them. Poor Lebanese are being dragged back into a black hole of blood and treasure. Happy New Year - Happy New Year courtesy of Hizballah's deadly fireworks!
22 comments:
Hizbullah is regrouping-internally and trying to consolidate a couple of alliances, particularly with aoun. Why would they want to exert pressure upon themselves? It doesn't make sense for it to be Hizbullah. Besides, they could have done it within the rule of the game in Shebaa. This was even against the april 96 agreements.
Now who did this? A possibility is the Jabha Shaabiyya-alQiyada al Amma. Ahmad Jibril is a military man, a good one at that, but his mind works in a way that never includes political consequences as a factor while making decisions. That's how he ran the PFLP-GC all his life: a military wing of a non-existant political movement. They fired katyosha's in 2002 without Hizbullah's knowledge. But please, you may disagree with the man (I do), you may hold him to blame for so many erroneous decisions, such as:
-participating , brutally in the lebanese civil war,
-saving Junblatt's ass in the mountain wars 1983(wish he'd left him to his demise)
-sending 2000 fighters to Libya, to save Qahddafi's ass on the sourthern front, while they were needed against israel
- reducing a cultural, political, social and military fight into a solely military one
But in all that, he was not a stooge, so you can't go on calling people stooges, and reducing men and women, who, whether you like them or not, are part of the region's history, into 'stooges'.
Now about the peace, I've reached the conclusion that there will never be peace while zionism is an applied, living, breathing ideology. It simply will not work.
Without Justice, there will be no peace, even if the heavily corrupt PA tries to pass one. Remember that the palestinians are 10 million, and they're not only the 3.5 million in the WB and Gaza. For the others, the PA can never deliver the solution (esp with regard to the Right of Return).
Zionism is an idea counter to justice, and israel, founded on ethnic cleansing and terrorism, can not overlook escape this past forever. I do believe in a real peace, one based on liberty, freedom, justice and humanity. That peace will not stand on the shoulders of racist ideologies such as zionism, or islamic nationalism for that matter.
Exactly backwards! Zionism counters injustice! The idea of what is just and what is not has been made murky by years of false anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda. By returning to the Land, Israel is rectifying "ethnic cleansing", and it is only a victim of terrorism, not a perpetrator of such acts!
Rincewind, you have reason, but you lack correct facts and context. But IMO Arabs and Muslims usually reject these in favor of their own macho ego-satisfying conceptions - which is why the M.E. is so fractured by tribalism and dictatorship.
Rincewind, could you ever abase yourself and publicly admit error? If yes, then I suppose I'm wrong.
I would, and I've done so in the past.
Please do the honours of pointing me to the errors in my argument and I'll gladly acknowledge all. However, your 'Arabs and Muslims' generalization, that conveniently stuck a label on me and put me in a tidy, little, and easily
Please do the honours of pointing me to the errors in my argument and I'll gladly acknowledge all. However, your 'Arabs and Muslims' generalization, that conveniently stuck a label on me and put me in a tidy, little, and easily managable box leaves me with little room to with little room to even wiggle a little. Oh and it speaks Volumes about you, too.
Since you're so humanely against ethnic cleansing, what do you call the ethnic cleansing of 700-800 thousand palestinians? A free one-way tourism?
The only solution is the one that safeguards the rights of all the people in historical palestine (all of them, and call it israel if you like), while giving the ethnically cleansed their Right of Return. There are 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation israelis who did not choose to be born there, and as such, are now natives of the land. However, their rights should not supersede the rights of the dispossessed.
If you're such a firm believer in human rights, tell me, what is wrong with granting the palestinians the right of return? Is 'preserving the character of a state' more important than Human Rights?
They weren't "cleansed"; most left or were constrained to by their leaders, and quite a few never orginated in "Palestine" at all! Israel has a double-digit Arab population, descendants of those who stayed after the U.N. granted independence. Can you point to the same good treatment afforded Jews in any Arab country since 1948?
Jews have been kicked out of their land and abused throughout the world for 2,000 years. No displaced people anywhere has such a claim to their homeland, is that not so? Look at the Ottoman census records: palestine was pretty much a backwater before Jews started moving there in the 19th century. That's why the Jerusalem Post was originally called the Palestine Post.
The problem is that the goal of the "right of return" is to swamp Israel and its Jews and prevent their existence at all. Did you not know that the original concept of the Zionist movement was to establish a homeland under Ottoman rule, not an independent state? Only racist Arab violence pushed the Jews into complete independence.
Desecendants of palestinian arabs can live with their brethren in 22 Arab states throughout the M.E., which would be appropriate as almost all Jews were kicked out of them after 1948. Certainly the Arab World possesses enough oil riches to resettle every such family generously and productively.
And they are generally safe in those areas rapidly being colonized by Arabs throughout the world. If you believe in Human Rights, how can you deny security to the Jews, Ba'hais, Samaritans, and others who feel they can only find security and community in the State of Israel?
The argument of 'look the arabs have 22 states why won't they allow us one?' is pathetic.
These people are palestinians, they were ethnically cleansed (even if they left on their own accrod, which they didn't, don't they have a right to go back?) from a certain land, and they want to go back to it. Irrespective of what arab states did or didn't do, answer me this:
Don't they have a right to go back to the land which they were kicked out of in 1948? Some people always try to muddy the picture by bringing 'collective arabism' into it. I'm talking about individual rights, I-N-D-I-V-I-D-U-A-L R-I-G-H-T-S: A person, a single individual was kicked out from his/her home, does he/she have a right to go back to it or not?
ps: most of your facts are wrong, and no it was not 'a backwater' but there was a thriving community, with schools, hospitals and all.
ps2: The right of return does not mean kicking anyone out. The Stern, Irgun and Hagannah terrorist gangs started their atrocities before 48, so it was not 'arab' violence that instigated the 'oh-so-innocent' push to independence, but it was a a rather premeditated plan to achieve control over the land of palestine.
ps3: the jewish population in lebanon tripled after 1948. the palestinians in israel-proper were 125,000 after the ethnic cleansing of 48, and the founders of the state regretted letting them stay, in hindsight.
If you want to talk about arab states' errors, mistakes, atrocities, betrayals of the palestinians, we can talk from now till tomorrow, but let us focus on the individual rights of people, which are the most basic of human rights. Are you willing to do that?
If you are, I recommend reading a few books instead of myths and zionist pop-culture: Morris, Pappe, Shleim, Segev, Khalidi, Zureiq, Matar (to revisit the 'backwater', I recommend Matar's encyclopedia of the palestinians.
Human rights are not transferrable, and you can't rectify the expulsion of jewish inhabitants of arab countries post-48 by expelling the palestinians are claiming that this was tit-for-tat; human rights are both individual and collective, and you can't address one and ignore the other.
The argument of 'look the arabs have 22 states why won't they allow us one?' is pathetic.
O.K., I accept your position that you lack empathy.
Do Arabs have a right-to-return if that means free reign to murder or enslave their non-Arab neighbors? Not in my judgment, not as long as they have the opportunity to dwell in their own communities where they are today. Nor are you granting the Israelis who were kicked out of Arab lands the same rights as you demand for others - and human rights are supposed to be universal, not particular.
The power of the Stern and Irgun gangs did not prosper in democratic Israel, and their expulsionist philosophies were not applied. Most of the other "Jewish terror" stuff is fabrication. Jews defending themselves from attack were not and are not terrorists.
Only the twisted or deluded think Israel is expansionist; Israel's actions are consistent with a philosophy to do the minimum necessary to protect the security of its population. That's why Arabs don't fear that a nuclear-armed Israel with first-strike capabilities will suddenly blast them to smithereens without provocation. Sadly, it is difficult to conceive of any Arab political entity that would show the same restraint against its "enemies", be they Arab or non-Arab.
I don't know what you mean by "transferable". Many Israelis can trace title to their properties to deeds sold by Arabs long ago, even pre-1948; should their descendants have the right to reoccupy these areas and kick the Jews out?
One only has to to a very little bit of poking around to discover that many more Arabs claim to be from Palestine than actually lived or had parents there. Some areas, like the Syrian-controlled but U.N.-demilitarized areas of the Golan, were depopulated and their former inhabitants re-labelled "Palestinians".
It isn't fair that "Palestinians" (Arafat ruminated at Wye about the difficulties of creating an artificial history) have been treated so abominably, and almost always by their leaders or other Arabs. But justice isn't always fair, and it is only just for Israel to exist, and it is only just to put the major part of the onus for the Arabs' plight upon Arabs themselves.
Do you think that calling them 'arabs arabs arabs' will make it ok to stick them in KSA or Jordan or Iraq?
They are palestinian, irrespective of being arab or not. They'd been in palestine for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, untill the Nakba. In 1948, 92% of the land was owned by palestinians, and the 8% that was sold by corrupt feudal lords who got it unfairly under lax ottoman laws in the first place.
Do the palestinians, kicked out in 48, have the right to return under an equal-rights state? Definitely. Does any jewish person, kicked out from iraq, syria, egypt have the right to his property, citizenship, etc...? Without a doubt. Human rights are universal,... and individual.
So, the question remains: Do the refugees have the right to come back to the land they left behind in 48, if that does not trample on the rights of the current population in that land? If so, then there are so many ways to figure a solution out (85% of the land refugees left behind is uninhabited, btw).
it's amazing how two wrongs (expelling a jewish person from an arab country, expelling a palestinian from palestine) is suddenly justice.
Outremer lasted 150 years, israel is a new manifestation of the same colonial mentality. I have no doubt that, in turn, it will cease to exist in its current form.
Believe me, when that happens, lots of blood will be shed. If that time comes in my life, I'd be more than happy to give my all defending the jewish inhabitants of the land and their right and the right of their children to live there, but you'll find very few who'd be willing to do that, least of all the imperial west that created the state of israel in the first place.
Humanity First!
rw, I wish to continue this discussion, but I don't like hijacking our host. I've reproduced this thread at my site; we can continue our talk there.
“Happy New Year courtesy of Hizballah's deadly fireworks!”
Dude,
Allah and Zeus both know I’m no fan of transcendentalist Persian guerrilla, but how can you accuse Hizbullah without the shadow of a proof?
Why not blame Saniura’s Quisling-style government who spends millions to organize “coordination conferences of Arab interior ministers” [sic] in Saudi-owned Westside Beirut hotels while the security situation goes down the drain?
its always been a hizbulla problem in lebanon, got their money and weapons from syria and iran, they take orders from them and ready to ruin lebanon just to keep their weapons. I hope one day they wake up and realize they are lebanese not shia, or one day they realize that israel can take south of lebanon with the farms and the come to beirut in less than 1 week. They used to joy up and say they liberated lebanon. Lets recall the last 10 years (1990 to 2000). Fire between houses against israel and when the shelling starts, they start yelling: Innocent civilians are targeted.
They call that martyrdom, they caused Qana massacre as they fired weapons near the UN post and made israel shoot back. They always did this and they just think they are the greatest fighters ever. We agreed with them to make them happy but now they want to keep their weapons.
Dr Vega: Wakeup !!!!!!
You have nothing to do with your lives but blame the Prime Minister, and you say Saudi owned beirut. Get a life, Saudi owns 1/2 the world and no one is complaining, its basic economics, you can afford something go buy it or else shut up and watch others do it while you save enough money to get yourself something rather than whine and complain.
“Saudi owns 1/2 the world and no one is complaining, its basic economics, you can afford something go buy it or else shut up and watch others do it while you save enough money to get yourself something rather than whine and complain”
Dude,
A Yancy Street (or shall I say Yambu jetty?) whore wouldn’t speak differently: there’s more to life than dollars petro or otherwise, you know…
Michel Aoun is right: with all their faults, Bashar, Berri and Nasrallah are MUCH more secular and progressive than faux sheikhs and other real Tayef collaborators such as Saad Al-Hariri and Fuad Saniura – not to mention their newfound neo-Nazi friends Samir Geagea and Johnny Abdo…
tw. Wahhâbi: a member of a fanatical Islamist sect founded in Arabia in the 18th century and revived by ibn-Saud in the 20th century
Collaborationism: the advocacy or practice of collaboration with the enemy
Just to add to vox's comment.
An Israeli genereral has just been charged. http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=XeKpqhgbBK&Content=681
Former Head of the Intelligence Branch of the Israel Defense Forces and Chief of Staff Charged in U.S. Court with War Crimes for Shelling of U.N. Compound
Suit Follows Complaint Filed Last Week Against Former Director of Israel’s General Security Service for Civilian Deaths and Injuries in Gaza Air Strike
Synopsis
On December 15, 2005, in New York, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) served process papers on Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Ya’alon, former Head of the Intelligence Branch and former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), for war crimes and other human rights violations. The class action lawsuit is in connection with the hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries in the 1996 shelling of a United Nations compound in Qana, in the south of Lebanon. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and process was served on the defendant this afternoon in Washington, D.C. The charges include war crimes, extrajudicial killing, crimes against humanity, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Issam
Vic,
Your hate of sunnis is so obvious, but you don't have the balls to say it as it is and so you classify them as "wahhabis". I bet you have never met Rafic Hariri or any other official from the Future Movement in person, and have never been inside Future TV or any office linked to Hariri. I bet you have never been to his SECULAR schools, such as the ones in partnership with "Mission Laique Francaise", a semi-official french organism that applies french secularism "a la lettre".
Being friends with wahhabis and attending mosque sermons does not make one a wahhabi. You are simply judging of their guilt by association, and this is the weakest kind of argument there is. I will not waste my time with an ignorant hatefilled douchebag like you, but before spewing idiotic hate speech on public forums try to put your hate for sunnis and ignorance about the least religious political movement in the sunni muslim world aside so that people take the rest of what you have to say seriously.
As a sunni from beirut, I can tell you that the sectarian campaign that hariri pulled in beirut in the 2000 elections was more than disgusting and offensive, it caused irreversible damage to the entire population of beirut. Someone who plays on these filthy tunes for his own political gain is not secular by any means. I just hope that beirut will heal from his influence in the future.
Had he been truly secular, he needn't have changed the name of the school from injeeliyyeh to hariri school, btw.
Or spent $5 million on that grotesque structure in front of the Maronite Cathedral, you know, the one that makes the Cathedral look like a tiny treehouse, for that matter
Well said Anon!
Manni Hambali
Its a funny coutry Lebanon and the funniest are those who call Hariri secular and the funnier are those who mention the mosque he built in downtown beirut. I actually remember those great mosques he built in Harissa or jounieh or the greater mosques in Broumana and Rabieh and the Grand Mosque in Bekfaya.
It was a symbol of unity when a mosque is built next to a church in our country and its funny how we need to give remarks on the size only, and if that cathedral is too small for you, go to Harissa I am sure its bigger there. I am a christian and I hate how you think. To judge a man for how he spends his money while if he built a casino opposite to the church it wouldnt be a problem.
Back to the lovely Aoun. For someone who supported him during the so called liberation war, read a little behind the lines and look at things in a clearer way.
1. He used the army to hit the Lebanese forces and wiped out totaly the so called christian military power.
2. He ran out like a chicken leaving his family behind him and while aounist talk about their courage, it is something i respect the most, they continued to fight syrians and remained the only people to talk about it during the toughest times, they were even braver than all of us, but their leaders, Aoun and the gang, well I can say welcome back after 15 years of hiding like cowards in France.
And about the remarks against sunnis, i love those who complain about sunnis and especially those who forget to mention that sunnis are the only sect who were not immersed in the war and the only sect who doesnt have military power and the only people who didnt have warlords.
Get over sects for good, lets build a country and forget what happened in the past.
Druze will love Jumblat regardless of his past as will Shiaas and berri and nasrallah, but the only fact remains is that people who loved hariri were not his followers or his army, we are his students who were given a chance to learn than fight and later on he didnt ask us for the money back but gave us a chance for a decent life, and as christians we honor that more than a bigger church in downtown beirut, without actually forgetting who paid to rebuild the cathedral you mentioned, or else your forgot !!!
bullshit, the size of the mosque was the child of spite and spite alone. The original al-amin mosque was on that ground, but it was smaller, far more tasteful, and of much more architectural significance. The Mufti (kabbani) was asked, nay begged to accept building the mosque on the land opposite to the Cathedral, were it would have caused less interference with the appearance/facade of the church. He adamantly refused that. Do the five towering minarets overshadowing the cathedral tell the tale of unity? I beg to differ. My problem is not with the structure (save architecturally) as much as it is with the why/how behind it.
ps: When I said I was a sunni from beirut, I didn't mean it as to give myself a credibility I don't deserve, for I am sunni by ID alone. However, I said that because sitting in the inner circles of some beiruti sunnis, you hear things, and it changes you forever, and that's how I got first hand accounts of the mosque stories.
Also, the campaign headquarters were in the building opposite to me.
Things such as
"Ana la7 rajji3 el-3izz la Sinnit Beirut" (I will bring back to glories to the sunnis of beirut).
Were words said (by him) verbatim in one of his rallies? How secular is that?
Or (not by him, but by his tools, another rally, in karakol el druze)
"Salim el Hoss Ma Shtaghal la sinnit beirut, Shtaghal lal-Shee3a"
"Hoss wasn't working for the sunnis of beirut, he was busy working for the Shia..."
Not to mention the phone calls that he personally made to elders-of families (some families still work that way, particularly the bigger ones) inciting them in the most vulgar and sectarian of tones.
When I heard intellectuals and phd holders (again, in sunni beiruti circles) talk of a Shia crescent and how to fight it, I knew the destructive influence that man had on the hearts and minds of people.
And the money for rebuilding the cathedral came from the lebanese people (via Solidere), in the form of our 40+billion dollar debt, not from hariri's pocket. Solidere wasn't willing to pay for rebuilding the mosque save on the ground opposite to the church, and that's where hariri came in...
maybe you forget how sunnis were butchered in the famous February intifada which hizbulla and Amal remind us of those days and recently Najah wakeem was saying beirut needs another one.
For those who lost civilian family member to Amal and their allies because the ID showed we are sunnis and were killed under the Barbir bridge.
The pro-Hariri Anon. said the following:
“…. well I can say welcome back after 15 years of hiding like cowards in France”
Well I could hardly think of more preposterously collaborationist propaganda!
For the record: Hmadeh, Junblatt, Tueni and Hariri literally licked General Asad’s boots and Khaddam’s moccasins nonstop from 1989 till 2000 while “subversive anti-Taef rebels” such as MP Raymond Eddé and President Michel Aoun had to live in exile in France for fear of assassination…
And now you want us to believe this gang of hypocritical Druze ("Munafeqeen") feudal lords and pro-Saudi professional crooks are some kind of valiant knights fighting Syrian-made “Baathist terror”?
Allow me to be kind of skeptical to use a polite word!
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