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

When Shi'ites Welcomed Israel Into Lebanon: P.L.O. Mass Murder, Torture & Rape in "Fatah-land"

By Debbie Schlussel

How oblivious we are to the hypocrisy of the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslims, who in 1982, welcomed Israel into Lebanon to rescue them.

To rescue them from the P.L.O., whose Palestinian supporters their Hezbollah is now allied with. To rescue them from these people who then allowed their fellow co-religionists in Iran to found a terrorist group in their country, Hezbollah, to attack their rescuers.

Rapes, torture, murders. In 1982, that's what Shi'ite Muslims (and Christians) in Lebanon suffered daily and en masse at the hands of the Palestinians who controlled the country from West Beirut to Lebanon's southern border. Their rescuers were the "evil Zionists" whose elimination they and their Hezbollah now seek. South Lebanon was known as Fatah-land. The P.L.O. dominated--allied with a brutal leftist Lebanese militia, the Morab Eitoun, headed by Ibrahim Pleilat.
hezbollah4.jpgploemblem.jpg
In Lebanon, Today's Hezbollah Replaced Yesterday's P.L.O.

Hezbollah was founded by Shi'ite Muslims in Iran and injected into their country ostensibly to "get Israel out of Lebanon." But in 1982, Lebanon's Shia--who now wholeheartedly support Hezbollah--were desperate for rescue from their murderous Palestinian captors. When Israel did invade Lebanon (to stop the P.L.O. and its attacks from Lebanon onto Israel), the now-reviled Israeli Defense Forces were welcomed by Shi'ites with open arms--as liberators.

Yesterday--mass rapes, torture, and murder of thousands of Shi'ites at the hands of P.L.O. soldiers who took over their country. Today--through Hezbollah and HAMAS--they are partners. But in the '80s, it was a different story.

In a front page story on July 25, 1982, "Lebanese Tell of Anguish of Living Under the P.L.O.," The New York Times detailed how Arafat and company nearly established a Palestinian State . . . in Lebanon. The article is by David K. Shipler, no friend of Israel.

The hypocrisy of Lebanon's Shi'ites is thickly evident when reading that account now.

For about six years (beginning in 1976), the P.L.O. controlled Lebanon with Syria. P.L.O. terrorists controlling Lebanon had an army, police, a "judicial system," and a number of agencies that harassed and sanctioned violence against Shi'ites and Christians. Reported the Times then:

Those who lived within its [the region of Lebanon controlled by the P.L.O.] rough boundaries said they were too terrified then to describe it to outsiders. Now . . . they are telling of theft, intimidation and violence. . . . The major tool of persuasion was the gun, according to those who lived through it. . . . [They] said they felt powerless in their own homes.

Example after example of what the Palestinians--Sunni Muslims--did to the Shi'ites was reported by the New York Times. Example after example of what the Israelis saved them from, which they seem to have forgotten:

* Ali Bader El-Din was imam of Harouf, a Shi'ite village near Nabatiye. When he returned to town after 12 years of religious study in Shi'ite institutes in Iraq, he refused Palestinian demands to "inject Palestinian themes in to his sermons in the mosque." As a result, in 1980, during Ramadan fasting, he was murdered by the P.L.O. After days of searching, his family found his body, shot through the head, underneath a bridge in Deir Zaharani, a village four miles away.

Fearing a large turnout for his funeral, the P.L.O. forced his family to hold the funeral at night, which is not done in Islam. Yasser Arafat visited El-Din's family, told his 10-year-old son "the Zionists killed your father," and gave him a gun, telling him to "take revenge."

* Sheikh Mohammed Al-Masri, of another Shi'ite village near Nabatiye, refused to comply with Palestinian encroachment on his land. So, they raped and murdered his 15-year-old daughter.

* Hussein Hatib, a 19-year-old from Shi'ite village Harouf, was murdered by Palestinians. His 70-year-old father, Ali Ismaili Hatib, said his son was shot in the back at a P.L.O. checkpoint. They wanted gifts he'd bought for his family after returning from working in Libya.

* Zouhair Ladki, a Shi'ite from Khalde (just south of Beirut), was detained at a P.L.O. checkpoint, blindfolded, and questioned for 36 hours for the crime of having an American visa stamped in his passport after study in the U.S. One day, Palestinian and Syrian troops seized his family's home, ordering them out and saying they had to find an "American spy" hiding inside. After the "search," much of the house's property and furnishings were gone, stolen by the Palestinians.

Later, because Ladki and his friends did rescue work for the International Red Cross in Lebanon and wore red crosses on their shirts, they were detained by Palestinians in Beirut. According to the Times, the Palestinians asked them, "Why are you a Moslem and put a cross on yourself?" Then, they killed three of his Red Cross team in front of him. "I lost too many dear friends [to the Palestinians controlling Lebanon]," he said. "For nine months I have been afraid to make friendships again."

* The town of Nabatiye, where there were 35,000 Shi'ite Muslims dwindled to just 4,000 due to Palestinian murders of many and fleeing by the rest.

* Dolly Raad, a Christian Lebanese, said her father's home in Lebaa (east of Sidon) was seized by the Palestinians and turned into a restaurant and casino. She told the New York Times, "[T]hey [Palestinians occupying Lebanon] stopped a bus and said that those who were Christians, come down. My cousin stepped down, and was killed. When we saw the Palestinians were killing us and threatening us and having barricades and shooting innocent people, then came the hatred."

And other examples from other media in the days of Israel's welcomed entry into Lebanon are legion:

* An Israeli soldier liberating Lebanon from the P.L.O. in 1982 said saw a P.L.O. tank parked in front of a Shi'ite Muslim's house. He asked the Shi'ite, "Why did you allow this tank in front of your house?" The man replied that after he initially complained about it, the Palestinians murdered his son and raped his 15-year-old daughter, whom the soldier saw. She was pregnant.

* A Shi'ite OB/GYN doctor at a South Lebanese hospital complained to P.L.O. soldiers after they deliberately entered and watched each time he helped a woman give birth, in violation of Islamic modesty rules. In response, they killed his daughter.

These and a myriad of other stories like them are what Israel--now the enemy of Shia Islam and Hezbollah--rescued Lebanon's Shi'ite Muslims from. That's why, in 1982, when Israeli shortwave radio interviewed a local shi'ite military leader from a small town in southern Lebanon, he said, "We'll gladly join the Israeli Army to attack Beirut."

As renowned moderate Shia commentator, Fouad Ajami, recently wrote in U.S. News and World Report, of Israel then:

They boarded ships firing in to the air, freeing the Lebanese to embark on a new history of their own. . . . Israel had done for Shi'ites--Lebanon's largest and most disadvantaged community--what they had been unable to do for themselves. In a chapter now long forgotten, those villages in the southern hinterland had welcomed Israel's push into Lebanon.

Lebanese shia memories are short, indeed.

When Palestinians controlled Tyre (and maintained an outpost there), they begged Israel to rescue them. Now, Israel enters Tyre to protect itself from Shia Muslim shelling on Israel, and it's the enemy.

In 1982, the Palestinians had already taken over Tyre. As in most other locales under their control, the entire City Council complied with the P.L.O.'s demand to resign, May Ali Khalid Shaalan told the New York Times:

"The Palestinians pressured me to resign and to leave everything in their hands. But of course I refused and told them I was ready to die before giving them the municipality." Instead of killing him, they worked around him, stripping him of Authority.

Tyre's Shia Mayor Shaalan and his entire police force were restored to full power by the Israelis who liberated them. One of the policemen told the Times that under the Palestinians it was deeply humiliating:

"I worked only with paper," [he said] fingering a crime report. "If somebody shot somebody, he would be protected by the Palestinians."

How soon the Lebanese Shi'ites forget how desperate they were under their new-found Palestinian buddies, then in the P.L.O. and now reconstituted as HAMAS. How soon they forget that when Israel liberated them from the Palestinians, there was no Hezbollah to do the job instead.

The July 1982 New York Times piece says it all:

Some are still circumspect, afraid the P.L.O. will return after Israel withdraws; others open up in a spirit of relief [about the Israeli liberation].

24 years ago, who knew these same Shi'ite Muslims would show such little appreciation and complete absence of a memory bank? Who knew that instead of the P.L.O.'s return, they'd fervently support their own barbaric Shia version and use it to murder those who rescued them from total destruction?

It's the epitome of chutzpah.

He said he agreed with the Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells that it was 'very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics used by Israel', adding: 'These are not surgical strikes but have instead caused death and misery amongst innocent civilians.' Straw said he was worried that 'a continuation of such tactics by Israel could destabilise the already fragile Lebanese nation'.

The Israeli army said it targeted Qana because rockets have been repeatedly launched from the area on Israel. "We were attacking launchers that were firing missiles," said Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman.

He said the army dropped leaflets several days ago telling civilians to leave Qana....

Days of darkness

By Gideon Levy

In war as in war: Israel is sinking into a strident, nationalistic atmosphere and darkness is beginning to cover everything. The brakes we still had are eroding, the insensitivity and blindness that characterized Israeli society in recent years is intensifying. The home front is cut in half: the north suffers and the center is serene. But both have been taken over by tones of jingoism, ruthlessness and vengeance, and the voices of extremism that previously characterized the camp's margins are now expressing its heart. The left has once again lost its way, wrapped in silence or "admitting mistakes." Israel is exposing a unified, nationalistic face.

The devastation we are sowing in Lebanon doesn't touch anyone here and most of it is not even shown to Israelis. Those who want to know what Tyre looks like now have to turn to foreign channels - the BBC reporter brings chilling images from there, the likes of which won't be seen here. How can one not be shocked by the suffering of the other, at our hands, even when our north suffers? The death we are sowing at the same time, right now in Gaza, with close to 120 dead since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, 27 last Wednesday alone, touches us even less. The hospitals in Gaza are full of burned children, but who cares? The darkness of the war in the north covers them, too.

Since we've grown accustomed to thinking collective punishment a legitimate weapon, it is no wonder no debate has sparked here over the cruel punishment of Lebanon for Hezbollah's actions. If it was okay in Nablus, why not Beirut? The only criticism being heard about this war is over tactics. Everyone is a general now and they are mostly pushing the IDF to deepen its activities. Commentators, ex-generals and politicians compete at raising the stakes with extreme proposals.

Haim Ramon "doesn't understand" why there is still electricity in Baalbek; Eli Yishai proposes turning south Lebanon into a "sandbox"; Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, proposes an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses and the next day to conduct a parade of prisoners in their underwear, "to strengthen the home front's morale."

It's not difficult to guess what we would think about an Arab TV station whose commentators would say something like that, but another few casualties or failures by the IDF, and Limor's proposal will be implemented. Is there any better sign of how we have lost our senses and our humanity?

Rice's diplomatic gamble has already deepened the chasm between the United States and the Islamic world, where recent surveys show that public opinion of Washington is at an all-time low and many feel the Bush administration is not genuinely committed to a fair peace, specialists and former diplomats said. Lebanon's most prestigious paper, an-Nahar, recently ran a cartoon that showed Rice using an eyedropper to put out the fires of strife.

"The U.S. is alienating even more world opinion, not to mention allies, for the sake of a strategy that is very likely to fail," said Augustus Richard Norton, an expert on Lebanese Shiite politics and a former U.N. peacekeeper in Lebanon.

The U.S. framework for resolving the current conflict is most vulnerable on at least three broad fronts -- political, regional and military...

Beyond Lebanon
This Is the Time for a U.S.-Led Comprehensive Settlement

By Brent Scowcroft
Sunday, July 30, 2006; B07

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has stated that a simple cease-fire in Lebanon is not the solution to the current violence. She says it is necessary to deal with the roots of the problem. She is right on both counts. But Hezbollah is not the source of the problem; it is a derivative of the cause, which is the tragic conflict over Palestine that began in 1948.

The eastern shore of the Mediterranean is in turmoil from end to end, a repetition of continuing conflicts in one part or another since the abortive attempts of the United Nations to create separate Israeli and Palestinian states in 1948. The current conflagration has energized the world. Now, perhaps more than ever, we have an opportunity to harness that concern and energy to achieve a comprehensive resolution of the entire 58-year-old tragedy. Only the United States can lead the effort required to seize this opportunity.

The outlines of a comprehensive settlement have been apparent since President Bill Clinton's efforts collapsed in 2000. The major elements would include:

· A Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with minor rectifications agreed upon between Palestine and Israel.

· Palestinians giving up the right of return and Israel reciprocating by removing its settlements in the West Bank, again with rectifications as mutually agreed. Those displaced on both sides would receive compensation from the international community.

· King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia unambiguously reconfirming his 2002 pledge that the Arab world is prepared to enter into full normal relations with Israel upon its withdrawal from the lands occupied in 1967.

· Egypt and Saudi Arabia working with the Palestinian Authority to put together a government along the lines of the 18-point agreement reached between Hamas and Fatah prisoners in Israeli jails in June. This government would negotiate for the Authority.

· Deployment, as part of a cease-fire, of a robust international force in southern Lebanon.

· Deployment of another international force to facilitate and supervise traffic to and from Gaza and the West Bank.

· Designation of Jerusalem as the shared capital of Israel and Palestine, with appropriate international guarantees of freedom of movement and civic life in the city.

These elements are well-known to people who live in the region and to those outside who have labored over the decades seeking to shape a lasting peace. What seems breathtakingly complicated, however, is how one mobilizes the necessary political will, in the region and beyond, to transform these principles into an agreement on a lasting accord.

The current crisis in Lebanon provides a historic opportunity to achieve what has seemed impossible. That said, it is too much to expect those most directly implicated -- Israeli and Palestinian leaders -- to lead the way. That responsibility falls to others, principally the United States, which alone can mobilize the international community and Israel and the Arab states for the task that has defeated so many previous efforts.

How would such a process be organized? The obvious vehicle to direct the process would be the Quartet (the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations), established in 2001 for just such a purpose. The Quartet, beginning at the foreign-minister level, would first organize the necessary international force for southern Lebanon and Gaza and then call for a cease-fire. The security force would have to have the mandate and capability to deal firmly with acts of violence. Ideally, this would be a NATO, or at least NATO-led, contingent. Recognizing the political obstacles, the fact is that direct U.S. participation in such a force would be highly desirable -- and perhaps even essential -- for persuading our friends and allies to contribute the capabilities required.

With a cease-fire and international security force in place, the Quartet would then construct a framework for negotiating the specific elements of a comprehensive settlement, after which Israel, the Palestinian Authority and appropriate Arab state representatives (e.g. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon) would be added to the process to complete the detailed negotiations.

The benefits of reaching a comprehensive settlement of the root cause of today's turmoil would likely ripple well beyond the Israelis and the Palestinians. A comprehensive peace settlement would not only defang the radicals in Lebanon and Palestine (and their supporters in other countries), it would also reduce the influence of Iran -- the country that, under its current ideology, poses the greatest potential threat to stability in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan.

A comprehensive settlement also would allow Arab leaders to focus on what most say is a primary concern: modernizing their countries to provide jobs and productive lives for their rapidly growing populations.

Removing the argument that nothing can be done because domestic constituencies are fixated on the "plight of the Palestinians" would allow creative energy, talent and money to be rechanneled into education, health, housing, etc. This would have the added benefit of addressing conditions that encourage far too many young Arabs to glorify terrorism as a legitimate means for dealing with the challenges of the modern world.

It is even possible that a comprehensive settlement might help stabilize Iraq. A chastened Iran, bereft of the "Israeli card," might be more willing to reach a modus vivendi with the Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, and with the United States as well. All countries in the region -- not to mention Iraq itself -- need a stable, prosperous and peaceful Iraq. The road to achieving this may well lead eastward from a Jerusalem shared peacefully by Israelis and Palestinians.

This latest in a seemingly endless series of conflagrations in the region just may present a unique opportunity to change the situation in the Middle East for the better for all time. Let us not shrink from the task.

The writer was national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. He is now president of the Forum for International Policy.

Personal religious question. Of course, you can choose not to reveal this if that's your preference. And I promise to make to comment regarding your answer, now or in the future.

Do your christian beliefs hold with the End Times theology?

Sub-question... are you familiar at all with the writings of John Walvoord?

fox

Thankyou kindly for your candid reply. I appreciate it.

fox

Thankyou kindly for your candid reply. I appreciate it.

I don't think Israel gives a damn what anybody else thinks.

gungasnake wrote:

I don't think Israel gives a damn what anybody else thinks.

as demonstrated by the slaughter of 50+ civilians (more than half children) cowering in the basement of a housing block in Qana today. I wonder if it was one of the bombs pictured above with Hebrew script direct from the USA? Even the rescue workers broke down in tears.