ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

If only Hezbollah thought so, but they hate Israelis more than they love their own children or care about all the people in Lebanon that they put in harms way.

Same goes for the President and the PM of Lebanon.

Brigitte Gabriel Speech at Duke University

Remarks of Brigitte Gabriel, delivered at the Duke University Counter Terrorism Speak-Out

I'm proud and honoured to stand here today, as a Lebanese speaking for Israel , the only democracy in the Middle East . As someone who was raised in an Arabic country, I want to give you a glimpse into the heart of the Arabic world.

I was raised in Lebanon , where I was taught that the Jews were evil, Israel was the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea.

When the Moslems and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started massacring the Christians, city after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17, without electricity, eating grass to live, and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.

It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon . My mother was wounded by a Moslem's shell, and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room, I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Moslems, Palestinians, Christians, Lebanese, and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn't see religion, they didn't see political affiliation, they saw people in need and they helped.

>For the first time in my life I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would not have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital. Those days changed my life and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to television. I realized I was sold a fabricated lie by my government, about the Jews and Israel , that was so far from reality. I knew for fact that, if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched and thrown over to the grounds, as shouts of joy of Allah Akbar, God is great, would echo through the hospital and the surrounding streets.

I became friends with the families of the Israeli wounded soldiers: one in particular Rina, her only child was wounded in his eyes.

One day I was visiting with her, and the Israeli army band came to play national songs to lift the spirits of the wounded soldiers. As they surrounded his bed playing a song about Jerusalem , Rina and I started crying. I felt out of place and started waking out of the room, and this
mother holds my hand and pulls me back in without even looking at me.
She holds me crying and says: "it is not your fault". We just stood there crying, holding each other's hands.

What a contrast between her, a mother looking at her deformed 19 year old only child, and still able to love me the enemy, and between a Moslem mother who sends her son to blow himself up to smithereens just to kill a few Jews or Christians.

The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It's barbarism verses civilization. It's democracy verses dictatorship. It's goodness verses evil.

Once upon a time, there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now, the intentional murder of Israeli children is legitimized as Palestinian "armed struggle".

However, once such behaviour is legitimized against Israel, it is legitimized every where in the world, constrained by nothing more than the subjective belief of people who would wrap themselves in dynamite and nails for the purpose of killing children in the name of god.

Because the Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that murdering innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic for advancing their cause, the whole world now suffers from a plague of terrorism, from Nairobi to New York , from Moscow to Madrid , from Bali to Beslan.

They blame suicide bombing on "desperation of occupation". Let me tell you the truth. The first major terror bombing committed by Arabs against the Jewish state occurred ten weeks before Israel even became independent.

On Sunday morning, February 22, 1948 , in anticipation of Israel 's independence, a triple truck bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists on Ben Yehuda Street , in what was then the Jewish section of Jerusalem . Fifty-four people were killed, and hundreds were wounded. Thus, it is obvious that Arab terrorism is caused not by the "desperation" of "occupation", but by the VERY THOUGHT of a Jewish state.

So many times in history in the last 100 years, citizens have stood by and done nothing, allowing evil to prevail. As America stood up against and defeated communism, now it is time to stand up against the terror of religious bigotry and intolerance. It's time to all stand up, and support and defend the state of Israel , which is the front line of the war against terrorism.

You can keep bringing past actions or even present actions, but it ain't going to erase what Israel is doing now to the Lebanese citizens and country. Just because you (or you ancestors) were victims at times in history don't mean you are forever free to just wreak havoc wherever you go and then cry "holocaust."

(not you in particular, just a figure of speech)

A lot times it seems violence in the ME is more of a tit for tat sort of a thing. So bringing up one action, one would have to go back and see what the other side did before it and on and on it goes.

The bottom line in this thread about Lebanon is that Israel is not caring how many people they kill and how much they destroy the country and that is against international law regardless Hezbollah.

That doesn't hold water because Lebanon was going to be destroyed and ppl were going to be killed eventually either way because Hezbollah were going to have to be removed sooner or later.

It's their strategy, as with all terrorist, to pit you against your own morals so that it is a lose-lose situation for whoever removes them.

Memri TV has a translated interview with Hezbollah leader Nasrallah...where he admits the Lebonon Government's complicity in the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers.

Even more interesting in terms of Hezbollah psychology...Nasrallah expresses surprise that Israel reacted so vigorously to his kidnapping operation. He figured that in response he anticipated a "harsh but limited Israeli response". Mistaken on this count, he then goes on to blame the Lebanese government for not warning him against kidnapping. When asked by the reporter if he was sure he clearly told the Lebanese Government that he intended to abduct Israeli soldiers, he said words to the effect that the only way to resolve the "prisoner issue" was to abduct Israeli soldiers. Then he states:



Amusingly, he also mentions the two issues which he had earlier stated would lead to war....first the issue of prisoners "on account of suffering". Second, is "attacks against civilians". Quite a statement from leader of a movement which targets civilians as a daily course of business. And he wonders why Israel attacks them?!

Revel, please be fair. Israel doesn't just wreak havoc when it feels like it. Hezbollah, with the Lebanese govt. being complicit, has periodically rocketed Israel for many years. The group recently invaded Israel, killed 18 soldiers, and kidnapped two. Israel felt it has to make a strong statement to stop this once and for all. Any other country, able to do so, would have done the same thing.

advocate

It's worthwhile checking into this lady and her organization.

Trying to get that through to revel is like putting toothpaste back in the tube.

Walter,
You pulled this statement out of context. He was talking about the timing of the kidnapping, not the actual deed itself. His point was he didn't consult with the Lebanese government nor Syria, nor Iran that he intended to kidnap on a particular day in July. He minces no words that the Lebanese government knew he intended to kidnap Israeli soldiers and in fact states that he will make public the names of those Government officials who knew in due time.

Blaltham, I did a cursory check on her and found nothing really negative. Do you have something significant?

Israel bomb hits UN base in Lebanon
26 July 2006

BREAKING NEWS - 9.05am
BEIRUT: An Israeli air strike destroyed a United Nations base in southern Lebanon and injured peacekeepers, a UN spokesman today.


"One aerial bomb directly impacted the building and shelter in the base of the United Nations Observer Group in Lebanon in the area of Khiam," said Milos Strugar, spokesman for the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in the area.

"There are casualties among the observers. A UNIFIL dispatched rescue team on the spot is still unable to clear the rubble."

Strugar declined to say if anyone was believed to have died, but it appears that the entire building collapsed while the UN observers were in the shelter below.

"There were 14 other incidents of firing close to this position in the afternoon from the Israeli side and the firing continued during the rescue operation," he said.

An Israeli tank shell hit a UNIFIL position in southern Lebanon on Monday, wounding four Ghanaian soldiers. Shrapnel from tank shells fired from the Israeli side seriously wounded an Indian soldier last week and Hizbollah fire wounded an Italian observer on the border on Sunday.

In 1996, during Israel's Grapes of Wrath campaign in Lebanon, an Israeli jet bombed a UNIFIL compound in the southern village of Qana, killing 106 civilians sheltering inside.

AdvertisementAdvertisementUNIFIL was created in 1978 after Israel's first major invasion of southern Lebanon and has been there ever since. The United Nations has called for a bigger, better armed, more robust international force in the area.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3744500a14298,00.html

Check out the Board of Advisors of her organization. Woolsey tops it....that kindly old key neoconservative and AEI figure, kindly enough to write the forward for a Laurie Mylroie screed trying to tie Sadaam to 9/11 etc.

Just type the other Board members into google.

That's clearly wrong, in the same way that a "Men Working" sign is wrong in places where a "Men Loafing" sign would be more appropriate.

Those clowns were CLEARLY not keeping any sort of peace or this whole thing would never have happened. Referring to them as "peacekeepers" is dishonest.

Israelis killed a top Hezbollah commander, that's likely where he was.

Those UN observers have been there all this time and apparently haven't done jack crap so you know they were on the take.

How the UN legitimizes terrorists

By Alan M. Dershowitz
Published July 25, 2006
ChicagoTribune.com




Excerpt:



Source

Per Blatham's condemnation of R. James Woolsey, I feel compelled to stick up a bit for this individual even allowing for the fact that I think Blatham considers anybody to the right of Karl Marx to be a skin headed, Confederate flag flying, wild eyed conservative determined to destroy the world. The man has had impressive appointments from two Republican and two Democratic presidents--sounds sort of neutral doesn't it? His wife is a bigwig with the National Academy of Sciences and he's on several commissions working on clean fuels etc. And he's an Oxford Rhodes scholar. His biography just doesn't read like a wild-eyed conservative.

I believe his testimony connected at least one Iraqi with the first World Trade Center bombing and that may be where somebody got a notion that he connected Saddam Hussein and 9/11. I don't believe he did.

This PBS INTERVIEW is informative

Also interesting biographies

HERE

and

HERE

and

HERE

I think the fact that the Lebanese lady could attract people of this stature to serve with her organization speaks rather highly of her.

Blatham, you seem to be assigning guilt by association a la Joe McCarthy.

Gabriel related a personal story, the truth of which has evidently not been challenged. It is a powerful story that is in line with other things I have heard.

The idiot heabullies and leb govt. started this ****. The question is, how many times can a mouse walk up and kick the cat in the balls and expect the world to feel sorry for him (the mouse) because he's simple-minded?

Listen I agree with you on most other subjects but on this one, Brandon's right, my mind is pretty fixed. I just don't see the justification in Israel killing all these innocent, men, women and old people and children and destroying the whole country like they're doing. I bet there were some things done to by Israel to Lebanon during those twenty years; there always is when we are talking about the ME. How many people did they kill in those rockets immediately before all this by Israel? Two measly Israeli soldiers certainly don't justify all the carnage that I have seen on my TV set on BBC news and on the internet (most AlterNet places like the BBC and the Guardian...)

I am sorry if this is going to affect things in other threads where we views in common, nevertheless..no hard feeling from my part.