Provocative
Published by Ninth Stage August 15th, 2006 in Heh!, Illegal Immigration, The War on Terror.Post Bumped from original date of August 4.
I’ve been having an interesting exchange with commenter malavai. We disagree on so many things but the discussion has been mostly civil (I’ve been a bit snarky).
Jay Tea at Wizbang:
I have a simple question for those who say that Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization, or strictly a terrorist organization, or are a legitimate resistance group:
Under that precedent, wouldn’t it be fair to equip the Minutemen Project with rockets and missiles to help them secure the United States’ southern border?
Via the inimitable Les Jones (check his Word of the Day).
UPDATE: In comments I’m told the “truth” about Hizbolla.
Hezbulla is many things, a resistance organization, politcal party, charitable organization.
It is all those things and then some.It was created in the 1980’s to drive the Israeli army out of Lebanon.
It spent the next 20yrs fighting a brutal guerrilla war.
Their attitude was, “you are with us or you are with the infedelsâ€
Sound like a certain US polititian?By 2000 Israel pulled out of Lebanon and Hezbullah became known as the only arab army to have frorced Israel to rereat from land it had taken by force of arms.
That act makes the a resistance organization, a milita like the original and real minutemen.
That status, given to them by the Lebanese government, earned on the battlefield, gives them access and the authority to own and use military class weaponry.Hezbullah has stood for and won and lost in every lebanese elections since the 1980’s. it has won seats in parliament as well as municipal governments.
That makes them a Political organization.It runs charities, food banks, indegent care housing, hospitals, orphanages.
That makes them a Charitable organization similar to the Red Cross.
Seems that Hizbolla are Minutemen, God’s Political Party, GW Bush and the Red Cross all rolled into one. What a mess. It’s time to dis-integrate all these functions.
The original minutemen did have that.
They did have, cannons, horses, muskets. all frontline military equipment of their day.
Read your own history, the real history not the white washed versions that you were taught in High School.
Ouch! I must have forgotten to read my own history except for white washed versions I was taught in High School.
It is obvious by the term “Minuteman Project” that Jay Tea was referring to the original patriots and rebels who freed my country from the British and helped to form the United States of America and not the border watching group of the same name who, while harkening back to an earlier day, do not actively engage those who illegally enter this country.
What a dolt I was. Consider me a little bit more informed because of the awsome intellect of bad vai.
My apologies for not being clear.
Hezbulla is many things, a resistance organization, politcal party, charitable organization.
It is all those things and then some.
It was created in the 1980’s to drive the Israeli army out of Lebanon.
It spent the next 20yrs fighting a brutal guerrilla war.
Their attitude was, “you are with us or you are with the infedels”
Sound like a certain US polititian?
By 2000 Israel pulled out of Lebanon and Hezbullah became known as the only arab army to have frorced Israel to rereat from land it had taken by force of arms.
That act makes the a resistance organization, a milita like the original and real minutemen.
That status, given to them by the Lebanese government, earned on the battlefield, gives them access and the authority to own and use military class weaponry.
Hezbullah has stood for and won and lost in every lebanese elections since the 1980’s. it has won seats in parliament as well as municipal governments.
That makes them a Political organization.
It runs charities, food banks, indegent care housing, hospitals, orphanages.
That makes them a Charitable organization similar to the Red Cross.
Are they a terrorist organization?
That depends on who you ask, the US and it’s allies say yes.
To the arab street, they are not.
Where the Lebanese army will surrender to the Israelli invader without firing a shot. Hezbullah will not, it will make every effort to make an invader bleed and make their stay as horrific as possible.
They will seek to bring the pain of the lebanese to the every home of every Israeli family.
And to “the Party of God”, that is what matters.
That boys and girls is what war is about.
It is not these fantasy concepts of war against “terrorism”.
For them it is about inficting as much pain on their enemy until the give up.
And the best way to inflict pain, is to kill the soldiers wife, child.
The soldier may win, but he would have lost what he sought to protect.
As for the so called “Minuteman Project”, these proto xenephobes use the name that is sacred to cloak themselves in tha mantle of patriots.
Dig a little deeper and one finds that what they are really worried about is all them brown skins, coming across the southern border.
Their real heritage is the “know nothings” of the 19th century who rioted and physically attacked immigrants from Europe and Asia.
So i will never call them by that name, they have not earned that right and i doubt they ever will.
“Hezbulla is many things, a resistance organization” Resisting what? Israeli civilians living in Israel? Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil? Israel left Lebanon and Hizbolla alone, so when Israel was invaded and soldiers were kidnapped was Hizbolla “resisting”?
“… polit[i]cal party”? Sure I’ll buy some of that, all of Islam is a political party trying to destroy the mostly “infidel” west.
Big but, when the west thinks of political party the west thinks of an organization supported by the people in that country, both at the polls and with political donations. Where does Hizbolla get most of it’s money? When the west thinks of political party the west does not expect an entity with it’s own military with supply chains extending into foreign nations (think Syria and Iran), so Hizbolla is political in some small sense but is merely another jihadist fringe of the Shiite wing of the pan-global Islamist party.
“… charitable organization.” Funded by whom? I agree that this is similar to other political parties buying votes but it is usually done with monies originating within the party’s home state. Unlike Hizbolla.
“Are they a terrorist organization?” You are very relative on this one so I’ll give you a question to help ferret out the answer. Does the organisation in question target unarmed civilians for political gain? If you have to answer yes (”the best way to inflict pain, is to kill the soldiers wife, child”), and you do have to answer yes, then you have a terrorist organisation. Oh that’s right, for Islam all joos are legitimate targets. Nevermind.
“As for the so called “Minuteman Projectâ€, these proto xenephobes use the name that is sacred to cloak themselves in tha mantle of patriots.
Dig a little deeper and one finds that what they are really worried about is all them brown skins, coming across the southern border.” I’m not here to defend the Minuteman Project and they are not what my post was about. But I understand what brings members of the two main political parties together into this group and it is not xenophobia or skin color, it’s frustration with our government. Frustration because our government does precious little to control our borders and thereare problems with illegal immigration because of at least two things. 1) Some of “them brown skins” might be terrorists (at least as far as America’s interests go). 2) Because our political parties are true charitable organizations and it takes money from the taxpayers pocket to support some of these Illegal immigrants.
But for you to use the term “proto xenephobes” is to laugh. If your “charitable organization”, Hizbolla, is so generous, would they help Israelis who flee north for economic reasons? Why not? Must be some kind of entrenched and ancient xenophobia.
Against expectations Israel accepts the Lebanese negotiated UN cease-fire resolution allowing Hizbolla to retain it’s arms and the Lebanese cabinet balks. Getting what they asked for chokes a weak government and their conspirator Hizbolla fires 230 rockets into Israel injuring civilians. Israel now has tacit approval of the U.N. for whatever it wants to do.
If an Israelli were to show up at a Hezbollah run soup kitchen, hospital or similar facility asking for assistance or shelter.
Probablly, no example yet.
After the Israeli invasion Hezbollah made no distictions as to the religious affiliation of the people it aided.
They base this on the example set by Saladin after he took Jerusalem from the Christians. as well as the teaching of Mohammed.
“If an Israel[]i were to show up.” That’s the rub, an Israeli would have to get there and any Israeli attempting the trip would be shot to pieces, inshallah, by Hizbolloids shouting “Allahu Akbar!”
Yep,
But hey,
We are talking about two parties to a conflict, neither of whom recognize strict interpretations of the laws of war.
BTW, in recent polls there, only 3% of the Israeli public actually believes that they won this round, and more than 51% that they failed to achieve any or most of their goals.
Translation, the party of God won.
Reason.
1. They survived intact and it seem remain in good order.
2. The prevented their opponent from achieving their goal.
3. They will be able to keep their arms, so it seems so they will remain a threat.
Let’s face it they are a better combat force than the Lebanese Army, so who is going to disarm who?
4. The were able to pierce the IDF’s rep for being unbeatable. Once may have been a fluke, now twice in 20 years, might be the beginning of something really, really bad.
“… two parties to a conflict, neither of whom recognize strict interpretations of the laws of war.” Heh. Yeah one party hopes for civilian deaths as their objective and the other hopes for no civilian deaths in pursuit of their objective. Sounds exactly alike. Makes it hard to choose who to root for.
“only 3% of the Israeli public actually believes that they won this round …
… Translation, the party of [Allah] won.” Lets just say that Ehud Olmert is Israel’s Jimmy Carter. I’m sure that there are plenty of “Young Sharons” waiting in the wings. Hey! Benjamin Netanyahu is still around. He doesn’t give a chuck what francophones from Brussels say about him.
Sharon did not save Israel for being evicted from Lebanon when he was in charge of the IDF.
So how would more of him change it?
To have your soldiers stand around smoking cigaretts while your christian milita allies drag women and children into the street and machine gun them to death.
That is what happened while Sharon was in charge of the IDF.
I’m sure if that happened this time would defeat them, right?
It defeated them the last time right?
Hizbullah is probably here to stay.
Just be glad they don’t use Katushas the way they were meant to be used.
So you’re saying that hizbolla would be happy to have a new Sharon as prime minister of Israel? I remember a lot of crying and calling him something like “the butcher”. Was that meant as a compliment or a slur?
Since Sharon isn’t coming back what does hizbolla think about Netanyahu? What does hizbolla think about how they’ve hardened the hearts of ~97% of the Israeli population?
Based on what I can glean from their leaders statements.
They could care less who leads Israel.
Sharon was given the nick name “the Butcher”, the full nickname is the ” Butcher Of Sabra And Chatila”.
It refers to the massacre of Palestinian women and children at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut on 18 September 1982.
It was carried out over 3 days by Israeli allied Christian militiamen while IDF soldiers surrounded the camps, and fired illumination flares to help the see in the night.
When the villagers tried to leave the camps and escape their murderers, it was Israeli soldiers who turned them back and forced them to return to the camps.
Sharon was in the Defense Minister and the Kahana commision recomended that he be removed from his post and be prohibited from ever holding any public office again.
But as history shows, they put him back in office.
One can then assume that the Israelis don’t mind mass murder as long as they aren’t the ones being killed.
A copy of Fisk’s eyewitness account is here.
http://www.rense.com/general8/butcher.htm
I’m sure that’s true to a point. It won’t make any difference to hizbolla’s desire to kill Israeli civilians.
And the Israelis actually had an enquiry into the matter and assigned a portion of the blame to, wait for it, Israelis. While hizbolla might, I suppose, have an enquiry into it’s complicity in the death of civilians, they will assign credit and perhaps awards to their own for killing civilians. Thus pointing out the basic difference between the Israelis and hizbolla.
Hizbolla works towards civilian deaths in Israel. Endangers their own civilian supporters by launching rockets at Israel from the midst of civilians and donning civilian clothes while engaged in their heroic military “struggle”, oops jihad.
Hizbolla revels in the death of civilians. It kills Israeli women, children and old men, on purpose. It revels in the death of their own civilian supporters, parading their dead, hizbolla or truly civilian, as trophies for propoganda. It trades the lives of it’s fighters at an apalling ratio for the lives of a few Israeli soldiers. Like much of islamism, hizbolla is a death cult.
The Sabra and Shatila massacre was carried out by Lebanese Maronite Christian militias under the direct command of Elie Hobeika, who would later become a longtime Lebanese parliament member and in the 1990s also a cabinet minister. One can then assume that the Lebanese don’t mind mass murder even if it’s Lebanese who are being killed.
In this corner of the blogosphere “Fisk” is a verb and describes what I’ve done in this comment.
Very few who haven’t caught the lefty virus that the west is susceptible to have any respect for Bobby “I got beaten up by a starving Afghani child and I loved it” Fisk.
I bumped this post to todays date.
It’s simple: either one believes that being a terrorist organization trumps all other aspects, or one does not.
And if one does not, then one must start setting the currency: how many good deeds balance out a terrorist attack. For example, how many unguided rockets loaded with ball bearings can you make if you build a hospital? How many suicide bombers can you buy with a school? One sniping costs how much in charity gifts?
Of course, the dirty little secret is that the Lebanese people don’t have to pay this price; it’s paid by the Israelis. Except every now and then, when the Israelis decide they’re tired of the cost-shifting and extract a penalty back from the Lebanese (in the form of the occasional air strike and, every couple of decades, a full-scale invasion).
J.
Jay Tea has it right.
If you dip a cup into a barrel of wine and pour it into a barrel of sewage, it remains a barrel of sewage. If you dip a cup into a barrel of sewage and pour it into a barrel of wine, it becomes a barrel of sewage.
Thus also with “charitable” organizations that launch missiles against the civilian population of a neighboring state.
Does that apply to the Irgun and Stern Gangas well?
The attacks on the Israeli cities were a goad.
The objective was to get the IDF to come north and attack Hizbullah in a pre prepared battlefield of it’s chosing.
It worked.
Israel sent 30,000 men and most of it’s airforce to attack them.
Hezbullah which is thought to have around only 1,500 full time infantry and 10-20,000 part timers managed to survive with minimal losses.
The IDF originally claimed to have killed 500+ but have lowered that number to 300+, Hizbullah admits to less than 90.
Since the IDF (or anyone else for that matter) do not know who is Hizbullah and who is not, the lower number might be closer to the truth.
That is a large percentage for a 1,500 man group to sustain but in terms of a guerrilla organization it is a minor loss when compared to the acomplishment of denying one’s enemy his stated goal.
Namely
1. The destruction of Hezbullah.
2. Recovering the captured Israeli soldiers.
3. Ending the missile threat to Northern Israel.
In the end the IDF failed in the first 2 and only bought itself a few weeks of relative peace.
In turn Hezubullah ends this war riding high in morale, public aproval and increased political clout in Lebanon.
Hizbullah learned that the tactics they had been developing to counter the israeli armor worked.It still needs some refinement but it worked.
They have effectively deflated the IDF’s aura of invinciblity.
This is where the most danger lies.
Where it is said that you learn most from your defeats, Hizbullah has shown that it learns regardles of the circumstance.
It was Hizbullah that refined the suicide truck bomb, and used suicidal frontal attacks during the 80’s and 90’s.
This time neither were used.
This time they waited for the IDF tanks to pass their positions before launching multiple AT-missiles at the rear of the tanks.
They used the same AT-missiles as portable artillery, in one case to collapse a building on top of an israeli platoon that had taken shelter there.
They used command detonated mines instead of suicide bombers.
In short they’ve changed tactics to maximize the effectiveness of their available weapons.
Marc,
That was a much more balanced account of Sabra. That was in the context not just of Israel’s war against the PLO, but a Lebanese civil (tribal) war in which atrocities and asassinations were routinely practiced by all sides. The Phalangist leader who actually committed the crimes later became a Syrian ally. Guess Syria doesn’t mind mass murder either. From Frontpage:
“The Lebanese police estimated the total deaths at 460. Of these, only 35 were women and children. The rest were men: Palestinians, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Iranians, Syrians and Algerians.
Israeli intelligence put the number of dead at more like 800. Palestinian sources placed the civilian deaths at a minimum of 2,300, denying any terrorist presence in the camps.”
So you’ve got Arabs, Persians, Sunnis, Syrians, Ba’athists, Druze, Palestinians, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Shi’ites, Iranians, Christian Phalangists and Algerians all slaughtering the hell out of each other.
So naturally, it’s all the Jew’s fault.
Hezb’allah are no Minute Men. They are murdering thugs who put a bullet in Robert Stetham. Xenephobia? Hell, they INVENTED it.
They are a political party–like the Communists. They are a charity–like the Holy Land Foundation funding jihad. They are a resistance movement–like the Nazi Werewolves.
They are also Iran’s proxy army in its vassal state of Lebanon. And as “Allah’s Party”, they will not be bound by any agreement, since their god has evidently told them to kill or enslave all Jews and infidels.
And I’m the 13th Imam.
Noel,
“It’s all the Jew’s fault.” I know. It’s like that line from Repo Man(dating myself): “In the end, I blame the joooooooos!!!”
>Noel Says:
>August 20th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
>Guess Syria doesn’t mind mass murder either. From Frontpage:
No they don’t, should they? You are expecting morality to be practiced in the running of a nation state?
Morality in international affairs is an indulgence that nations take part in when there is nothing at stake.
It served their needs to have him as a clients. (he was killed btw after he agreed to testify against Sharon, by Mossad?.)
If Lebanon was not an Iranian vasal state, it would be a vasal state to Syria, the US, France or Israel.
Hizbullah is a vasal state the same way Israel is our vasal state.
Hizbullah was a resistance organization with a stated objective.
Force Israel out of Lebanon by any means.
It did exactly that in 2000.
It is officially designated by the Lebanese government as such.
Like it or not, it is.
It secured it’s holdings in during the Lebanese civil war with as much violence as was needed at the time.
The 60 second men, well, i’ve said what i think of them based on what i’ve heard from them while i sat in a diner behind some of them, I’ll leave it at that.