hahah ET, good joke...im glad to see you retaining your sense of humor when everything around you is going up in flames!
cf, i guess you should be the one to understand humor, as many of your posts can be considered rude and inappropriate....
“In some respects, the Iraq war and the current global mission of the US government seem to repeat the old European imperialist projects. The present efforts not only to impose new regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq but also more generally to remake the political landscape of the Middle East and even “reshape the global environment†are conceived and presented using the old terms of the civilizing mission of European powers. President Bush might imagine himself donning the cloak of the great noble imperialists, educating the savages and bringing civilization to the world. We must have the courage to help them, he says, and they will thank us later. Or, in a more venal vein, the efforts to control the vast oil fields in Iraq and the Middle East certainly recall numerous imperialist wars to accumulate wealth, such as the British attempts a century ago in the Boer War to gain control of the great South African gold mines- blood for gold yesterday, blood for oil today.â€
Second Empire by Michael Hardt p.350-351 Content, Rem Koolhaas
“Control
This system is not merely bureaucratic and Kafkaesque. Again, a psychological explanation can be useful: in an obsessive disorder, fear of death plays a central role and there is a deeply held belief that certain actions prevent impending death of the self and of loved ones. The body’s orifices are conceived as danger zones, through which hostile agents may penetrate, infect, and cause disease or death. In fantasy, total control of the orifices is achievable, preventing all penetrations and thus protecting the self from fear of disease, death, and feelings of helplessness. The fantasy of keeping orifices clear of germs is well illustrated by the military concept of controlling the openings along the wall.
The obsessive control of the body’s openings is a typically modern control mechanism, associated with metaphors of hygiene, purity, and defense from bacteria infection. Rituals are created with the aim of self-preservation from contamination, diseases, and death. These rituals are constantly refined in arbitrary ways. The person knows deep down that there is no total control; thus, the anxiety is ever present, reinforcing these rituals, which may take over an obsessive person’s life, achieving precedence over all other aspects of life, requiring an ever-growing investments of resources.†Transparent Wall, Opaque Gates Ruchama Marton and Dalit Baum, Against the Wall, edited by Michael Sorkin
eyallll go to ur shelter... geeez.. ur such an idiot u realy dnt know a thing about the way israel was created.. go c how did you started... see dar yassine..
bla bla bla .. lololol maybe u feel better like that shutting ur ears.. welll truth hurts...
regarding internet.. mmmmm welll im on the net 24h/day .. dnt worry babe.. we lived in war during 30 years.. dnt u think that we can find ways to det power?.. lolol idiot..
Qana has already largely accomplished what it was supposed to. It will now take its place beside the Danish cartoons, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and all the rest as a useful focal point for Muslim outrage and a magnet for jihad recruitment. The dhimmi Leftist Western press is happy, for it can again show America and Israel as guilty in the world’s site. The mujahedin are happy, for jihad and Sharia will advance still more. The only people who couldn’t possibly be happy with this are the Israelis and others on the front lines of the jihad worldwide.
northern Israel found itself pummeled by Hizbullah fire on Wednesday. One person was killed and at least 11 wounded as a result of the more than 200 rockets that rained down.
52-year-old David Martin Laucher was killed on Wednesday afternoon while riding his bicycle in Kibbutz Sa'ar, near Nahariya, after a rocket scored a direct hit on one of the kibbutz homes.
Bringing another city under Hizbullah's sights, A Khabar-1 rocket landed near Beit She'an Wednesday. Israel, which claims the rocket is Iranian-made, confirmed the hit and said at least seven people were wounded.
Beit Shean is about 70 kilometers (42 miles) south of the Lebanese border and marks the farthest town to date to come under fire.
The death marked the first fatality since rockets began raining down all over the North on Wednesday morning after a relative lull in rocket attacks for two days.
At least eight people were wounded by shrapnel - one in serious condition - in the morning's attacks, and 20 people were treated for shock.
More than 200 rockets have fallen on northern cities so far.
A barrage of at least six rockets reportedly fell in Haifa late Wednesday afternoon.
Problem is all about Israel attacking Lebanon, isn't it?
Yep, it's all about Israel and...
India and the Sudan and Algeria and Afghanistan and New York and Pakistan and Iraq and Russia and Chechnya and the Philippines and Indonesia and Nigeria and England and Thailand and Spain and Egypt and Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia and Ingushetia and Dagestan and Turkey and Kabardino-Balkaria and Morocco and Yemen and Lebanon and France and Uzbekistan and Gaza and Tunisia and Kosovo and Bosnia and Mauritania and Kenya and Eritrea and Syria and Somalia and California and Kuwait and Virginia and Ethiopia and Iran and Jordan and United Arab Emirates and Louisiana and Texas and Tanzania and Germany and Pennsylvania and Belgium and Denmark and East Timor and Qatar and Maryland and Tajikistan and the Netherlands and Scotland and Chad and Canada and...
Talk about a polarised argument. Even the local radio (BBC) has stopped having phone-ins on the subject as each side competes to justify their war crimes. We are all involved, I mean the US are flying in armaments to the Israelis and stopping to refuel here in the UK.
swarm ... should I start by counting all the countries the U.S. and Israel have been attacking on ???
I mean HONESTLY R u really up 4 that ???
and i dn't c the relation between all that and hizbollah.. then again all u know abt hizbollah is thru some reports u happened to c for a couple of minutes on the news.. and we have to listen to ur shit now !
How typical.. it reminds me of the cowboy, he has no clue whatsoever about the middleeast yet he throws those famous speeches to cover one failure after another,,
"We're invading Afghanista:
We're invading Iraq
We're invading Beirut now.. all justified by the War on Terror...."
one failure after the other..
hasn't it been like 5 years since the War on Terror started..
where's osama?
and i agree by sameolddoctor and aphro_al
swarm, what are you talking about?
Israel is a nation that was attacked in a raid by a terrorist group.
When Israel withdrew from Lebanon, part of the deal was for southern Lebanon to function as your normal non-terrorist peaceable sector. Instead, Hezbollah has used it for years as a safe house for people obsessed with killing Jews.
Just like when Israel withdrew more recently from Gaza, Palestinian terrorists used it quite literally as a launching pad for terror.
Israel is not responsible for the fact that Hezbollah hides themselves behind their own women and children. Hezbollah's rocket launchers are located inside of barns, farm buildings, etc... Those rockets are raining death on Israeli civilians.
Hezbollah is, for all practical purposes, a terrorist outfit, The Secret Agenda of The Soldiers of Allah ( The Hezb - Ul-Allah ) is to cleanse the middle east of all traces of anything UnIslamic --that would include Jews, Christians and secular muslims...
Hassan Nasrallah announced on October 22, 2002:
"if they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide
"It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."
yes sure ET, If Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah are killed than its Israel's atrocitiesand if Israelis are killed than its 'cowboy' propaganda. LOL
Enough is Enough.
Do yourself a favor, ET and aphro-al ,put on your headphones , tune into your favorite Hezbollah shit talk radio station Al- Nour ..and Thank your stars , thats its only the hizbollah who are our enemy becos If Israel really wanted,could have overrun Lebanon in less than a day.
"Hezbollah is, for all practical purposes, a terrorist outfit, The Secret Agenda of The Soldiers of Allah ( The Hezb - Ul-Allah ) is to cleanse the middle east of all traces of anything UnIslamic --that would include Jews, Christians and secular muslims..."
I'm a christian swarm... have been living quite well with Hezbollah.. so don't believe all the crap u see on ur tv.
"If Israel really wanted,could have overrun Lebanon in less than a day"
I don't doubt that it can and is already ! I don't know what u call the death of 1000 civilians by today ! (maybe civilians of a lesser god?)
""It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.""
And if this is the case ! wouldn't it be easier for Hezbollah to eliminate Israel with a nuclear bomb.. Hell we all know Iran has them, and we all know Iran backs hezbollah as well.. but that's not the goal of the party !!!
P.S. Check the thread for earlier posts, since some of ur comments have already been discussed !
its like another rerun of a practiced argument. seriously, let more lebanese, israelis and sooner or later americans die. soon this will be a chronicle, things will change and never to anyone's liking. the funniest is america with its youthful hope to change the middle east to its liking. israel has a complex, nationally and culturally apropos the shoah.. that is known: the . lebanon..corpses on the margin of its history. but america, sweet candyass america with its beaming bushes , the heroic optimism of its rumsfield's its kristol's and its pearl's. . welcome to the Project for the New American Century. what if the consequence of american sunshine is the shadow on the middle east. soon, we will know democracy, soon america will know more terrorist attacks...the tragedy of spilled milk. i hope they speed it up, i want to be living to see what comes after.
'i hope they speed it up, i want to be living to see what comes after'
History repeating shows that israel will agree to a UN resolution then mostly ignor it. Peacekeeping troops will enter and be impotent.
Maybe the whole thing will flare up again in a continuous cycle of hate and death as Israel proceeds to progress it's illegal activities of the wall and the settlements while the islamic fundamentalists become more fundamental.
How fundamental can you go? I suppose it will all end with the death of America. i blame them for everything including my last AutoCAD crash 5 mins ago.
"Israel proceeds to progress it's illegal activities of the wall "
Wow i 4got all abt that wall..
maybe a good way of ending this thru the israeli perspective would be building another wall on the lebanese israeli borders !!!
NO NO wait i have an even better idea... how about making israel an island 8-) ... !
"History repeating shows that israel will agree to a UN resolution then mostly ignor it. Peacekeeping troops will enter and be impotent"
not likely this time. there will be a u.n. resolution, but the american-french accord is tailoring it out to be in support of 'potent' troops. in effect, and being on lebanese soil, it is prominently to keep hizbollah from throwing across the border rather than the other way around...in case of any violation on the latter's part, this could start a military feud between the troops , troops contracted by the UN but not Unifil:
This means several divisions worth of battle-tested troops (some experts put the number at 25,000). The soldiers would need heavy equipment, intelligence capabilities, air support and artillery: things most previous missions in the region were never given, making them too easy to brush aside. They'd also need robust rules of engagement and authorization under the U.N. Charter's Chapter VII, which would let them go after Hezbollah if necessary and would prevent their premature withdrawal (from http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008746)
the realization that this could very well fuel a complex war in lebanon and possibly split it apart is obviously not a factor. things are not looking too well...and i don't mean in the present sitation, but in forthcoming situations. damn it, if only they gave chebaa and the pow's back...stupid stupid people.
America to blame? if only i could suck your irony dry...
"On 15 May 2000, the United Nations received a map, dated 1966, from the Government of Lebanon which reflected the Government's position that these farmlands were located in Lebanon. However, the United Nations is in possession of 10 other maps issued after 1966 by various Lebanese government institutions, including the Ministry of Defense and the army, all of which place the farmlands inside the Syrian Arab Republic. The United Nations has also examined six maps issued by the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, including three maps since 1966, which place the farmlands inside the Syrian Arab Republic." UN Document S/2000/460
"In the 1923 Anglo-French Demarcation Agreement, which set the borders between the British and French mandates in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, the area was included in Syria.[3] Documents from the 1920s and 1930s indicate that some local inhabitants regarded themselves as part of Lebanon, for example paying taxes to the Lebanese government, but that French officials often expressed confusion on the actual location of the border.[3] One French official in 1939 expressed the belief that the uncertainty was sure to cause trouble in the future"
The maps of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Syria and Israel designated the area as Syrian.
Border disputes arose frequently. Starting in the late 1950s and ending in 1964, Syria and Lebanon formed a joint council to determine a proper border between the two nations. Shebaa Farms was not unique, as several other border villages had similar discrepancies of borders versus land ownership. In 1964 the joint Lebanese-Syrian border committee suggested to their governments that the Shebaa Farms area be deemed the property of Lebanon, and recommended that the international border be reestablished consistent with its suggestion. However, its suggestion was not adopted by Syria or Lebanon, and the countries did not take any actions along the suggested lines. Thus, the maps of the area continued to reflect the Farms as being in Syria. [4] Even maps of both the Syrian and Lebanese armies continued to demarcate the region within Syrian territory. [4]
A Lebanese military map, published in 1966, showing the Shebaa Farms as being on the Syrian side of the border.A number of local residents regarded themselves as Lebanese, however. The Lebanese government showed little interest in their views. The Syrian government imposed itself on the region, at one point forcibly replacing villagers' Lebanese identity cards with Syrian ones. On the eve of the 1967 war, the region was under effective Syrian control.
In 1967 most Shebaa Farms landowners and farmers (Lebanese) lived outside the Syrian-controlled region, across the Lebanon-Syrian border, in the Lebanese village of Shebaa. During the Six Day War, Israel captured the Farms from Syria. After Syria lost the land (to the Israelis) in 1967, the Lebanese land owners were no longer able to farm it.[5][6]" wiki
all of which shows that the situation is much more complex than one set of paperwork against another. in any case, be it syria's or lebanon's it is certainly not israel's. and eventually, if the people in shebaa themselves say they're lebanese...? for them its a funny surreal status quo.
also:
"However, on May 16, 2000, the Syrian Foreign Minister, Farouq al-Shara, indicated to Annan in a telephone conversation that the Syrian Arab Republic supported Lebanon's claim.[11] Nevertheless, Syria still has not taken any official steps necessary to demarcate the border. When the UN asked Damascus for a formal document stating that the area had indeed been legally transferred to Lebanon, Syria balked - and it has still not supplied such a document. This may be due to the fact that Syria does not recognize Lebanon. Not only does it not have diplomatic relations with Lebanon, but in Syrian textbooks Lebanon appears as part of "Greater Syria."
aphro, eyall, yenafar, et al (latin does seem appropriate) hope you all make it to the far side of these dark days, to when we beat the swords of hate back into plowshears and we can thrive again.
a moth in the mouth, the tongue flutters in the dark. on parting of lips, it flutters towards the light. in attempting to consume the light, it wants to disspell darkness from its depth. the light, nonchalant and invariable, subsumes it. so i quote below:
"With a variable key
you unlock the house in which
drifts the snow of that left unspoken.
Always what key you choose
depends on the blood that spurts
from your eye or your mouth or your ear.
You vary the key, you vary the word
that is free to drift with the flakes.
What snowball will form round the word
depends on the wind that rebuffs you." Paul Celan (trans. by Michael Hamburger)
the key: language
the house: truth/ the self/ meaning
the snow: we remember celan's 'black snow'... literally the ashes of corpses intermingling with snow: nuances of snow as a soothing nothingness (we remember celan's god: both a nothing and a particular jewish resolution: god praying to humans:the extreme volume of the shibboleth) after murder. the snow as detached evidence; the detached silence of nature becomes the silence of language. an impossible entrapment; to live one must speak but how to measure the horror of events and murdering language in the language of the living victim and his history. later on, celan drowns himself.
there is no snow falling on southern lebanon, haifa, southern beirut, 'aka, baalbeck, ghaza....but fire and cement; the clots of the house itself, that is having to commingle with the dead, hide,and bury them. in the meantime, and everytime, there is everyone else's talk and talk and talk happening to another dying family. and of course, words, an epitaph, from one kid carried by a wingless dove, a parody of peace, to another. again, language killing and language dying.
so yes, there will be so many more killings. a lot. oh yes; blood baths as they pontify. and charred corpses. we should serve them up to wine and dine the 'international community'. i propos that the lebanese befriend the israelis and help them declare war on the other arab regimes. get hezbollah to fire into iran pretending to be israel. get america to engage directly and snoozing cells to germinate in europe and america. the people in egypt in a bloody unprising against the toad demigod mubarrak, the dormant terrorists in all the muslim world to awaken, the syrian baathists to start slaughtering their own people saying israel did it and israel slaughtering its own saying hezbollah did it . keep on stabbing the corpses of hassan and hussein, christ and the living corpse of izhak; more please.
so i also find myself changing: from waiting for a ceasefire to waiting for more death, death now being practiced as nothing less or more than maths. build higher, travel further, kill more. what is the difference between wanting and expecting, the difference between one massacre and two. its all news.
">> Did you know that non-Jewish Israelis cannot buy or lease land in
Israel?
>> Did you know that cars owned by Palestinians are colour coded to
distinguish Jews from non-Jews?
>>Did you know Palestinians are not allowed to move from one city, say
Gaza to Bethlehem, without first getting a 'visa' from Israel?
>>Did you know that Israel routinely confiscates Palestinian bank
accounts,businesses and land and refuses to pay compensation to those who suffer confiscation?
>>Did you know that Israel stands in defiance of over 80 United Nations Security Council Resolutions?
>>Did you know that Sharon (the 'elected' leader of a democratic
society)was held responsible for the massacre of more than 2750 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila? The UN qualified the massacre by Sharon as GENOCIDE.
>>Did you know that Sharon's commando unit in 1953 razed the
Palestinian village of Qibya killing all its citizens and bombed all the houses, mosques and schools?
>>Did you know that Israel's settlement-building on Palestinian land
>>increased considerably since the signing of the Oslo agreement?
>>Did you know that settlement building of Jewish only homes under
Barak doubled compared to settlement building under Netanyahu?
>>Did you know that Palestinian refugees make up the largest portion of the refugee population in the world?
>>Did you know that between 1967 and early 2002 Israel expropriated some 79% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Estimated figures published by
Amnesty
International in 1999 show the following:
Year Land Confiscated in the West Bank
1984 42%
1991 60%
1998 74%
>>Did you know that since between 1967 and early 2002 Israel
demolished or sealed over 8500 homes, of which 2500 were in East Jerusalem alone?
Houses are demolished as punitive measure or under the pretext of 'lack of building permit' - permits are rarely granted.
>>Did you know that Israel allots 85% of the water resources for Jews
and the remaining 15% is divided among all Palestinians in the territories?
>> For example in Hebron, 85% of the water is given to about 400 Jewish settlers, while 15% must be divided among Hebron's 120,000
Palestinians?
>>Did you know that the Ha'aertz Israeli paper estimated in 1998 (31
July) that a population of 5800 Jewish settlers in Hebron consumed 547 liters of water a day each? By contrast, a population of 119,230 Palestinians in the same area consumed or had access to no more than 58 litres per day each.
>>Did you know that since 1967, (and of course not counting the
atrocities committed since March 2002) over 600,000 Palestinians have been jailed in Israeli jails and over 200 have died while in Israeli jails? During the first year of the second intifada alone, Israel arrested over 1900 Palestinians, of which 600 were children under 16.
>>Did you know that Israel uses torture routinely in jails (only against
>>non-Jews of course) despite the Israeli High Court outlawing it?
>>
>> NOW YOU KNOW!!! "
[ Editor's Note: This article was originally published by the Metula News Agency, for whom it was translated from the French by Llewellyn Brown, and is reprinted with permission. ]
Beirut, Lebanon
The politicians, journalists and intellectuals of Lebanon have, of late, been experiencing the shock of their lives. They knew full well that Hezbollah had created an independent state in our country, a state including all the ministers and parallel institutions, duplicating those of Lebanon. What they did not know--and are discovering with this war, and what has petrified them with surprise and terror--is the extent of this phagocytosis.
In fact, our country had become an extension of Iran, and our so-called political power also served as a political and military cover for the Islamists of Teheran. We suddenly discovered that Teheran had stocked more than 12,000 missiles, of all types and calibers, on our territory and that they had patiently, systematically, organized a suppletive force, with the help of the Syrians, that took over, day after day, all the rooms in the House of Lebanon. Just imagine it: We stock ground-to-ground missiles, Zilzals, on our territory and the firing of such devices, without our knowledge, has the power to spark a regional strategic conflict and, potentially, bring about the annihilation of Lebanon.
We knew that Iran, by means of Hezbollah, was building a veritable Maginot line in the south, but it was the pictures of Maroun el Ras and Bint Jbail that revealed to us the magnitude of these constructions. This amplitude made us understand several things at once: that we were no longer masters of our destiny; that we do not possess the most basic means necessary to reverse the course of this state of things; and that those who turned our country into an outpost of their Islamic doctrine's combat against Israel did not have the slightest intention of willingly giving up their hold over us.
The national salvation discussions that concerned the application of Resolution 1559, and which included most of the Lebanese political movements, were simply for show. Iran and Syria had not invested billions of dollars on militarizing Lebanon in order to wage their war, simply to give in to the desire of the Lebanese and the international community for them to pack up their hardware and set it up back home.
And then, the indecision, the cowardice, the division and the irresponsible behavior of our leaders are such that they had no effort to make to show their talent. No need to engage a wrestling match with the other political components of the Land of Cedars. The latter showed themselves--and continue to show themselves--to be inconsistent.
Of course, our army, reshaped over the years by the Syrian occupier so it could no longer fulfill its role as protector of the nation, did not have the capacity to tackle the militamen of the Hezbollah. Illustration courtesy Michael Behe/Metula News AgencyOur army, whom it is more dangerous to call upon--because of the explosive equilibrium that constitutes each of its brigades--than to shut up behind locked doors in its barracks. A force that is still largely loyal to its former foreign masters, to the point of being uncontrollable; to the point of having collaborated with the Iranians to put our coastal radar stations at the disposal of their missiles, that almost sunk an Israeli boat off the shores of Beirut. As for the non-Hezbollah elements in the government, they knew nothing of the existence of land-to-sea missiles on our territory ... that caused the totally justified destruction of all our radar stations by the Hebrews' army. And even then we are getting off lightly in these goings-on.
It is easy now to whine and gripe, and to play the hypocritical role of victims. We know full well how to get others to pity us and to claim that we are never responsible for the horrors that regularly occur on our soil. Of course, that is nothing but rubbish! The Security Council's Resolution 1559--that demanded that our government deploy our army on our sovereign territory, along our international border with Israel and that it disarm all the militia on our land--was voted on September 2, 2004.
We had two years to implement this resolution and thus guarantee a peaceful future to our children, but we did absolutely nothing. Our greatest crime--which was not the only one!--was not that we did not succeed, but that we did not attempt or undertake anything. And that was the fault of none else than the pathetic Lebanese politicians.
Our government, from the very moment the Syrian occupier left, let ships and truckloads of arms pour into our country. Without even bothering to look at their cargo. They jeopardized all chances for the rebirth of our country by confusing the Cedar Revolution with the liberation of Beirut. In reality, we had just received the chance--a sort of unhoped-for moratorium--that allowed us to take the future into our own hands, nothing more.
To think that we were not even capable of agreeing to "hang" Émile Lahoud--Al-Assad's puppet--on Martyrs' Square and that he is still president of what some insist on calling our republic. ... There is no need to look any further: We are what we are, that is to say, not much.
And when I speak of a catastrophe, I do not mean the action accomplished by Israel in response to the aggression against its civilians and its army, which was produced from our soil and that we did strictly nothing to avoid, and for which we are consequently responsible. Any avoiding of this responsibility--some people here do not have the minimal notions of international law necessary to understand!--means that Lebanon, as a state, does not exist.
The hypocrisy goes on: Even some editorialists of the respectable L'Orient Le Jour put Hezbollah's savagery and that of the Israelis on a par! Shame! Spinelessness! And who are we in this fable? Poor ad aeternumvictims of the ambitions of others?
Politicians either support this insane idea or keep silent. Those we would expect to speak, to save our image, remain silent like the others. And I am precisely alluding to General Aoun, who could have made a move by proclaiming the truth. Even his enemy, Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, has proved to be less ... vague.
Lebanon a victim? What a joke!
Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed, it was no more than a hologram. In Beirut, innocent citizens like me were forbidden access to certain areas of their own capital. But our police, our army, and our judges were also excluded. That was the case, for example, of Hezbollah's and the Syrians' command zone in the Haret Hreik quarter (in red on the satellite map). A square measuring a kilometer wide, a capital within the capital, permanently guarded by a Horla army, possessing its own institutions, its schools, its crèches, its tribunals, its radio, its television and, above all ... its government. A "government" that, alone decided, in the place of the figureheads of the Lebanese government--in which Hezbollah also had its ministers!--to attack a neighboring state, with which we had no substantial or grounded quarrel, and to plunge the United States into a bloody conflict. And if attacking a sovereign nation on its territory, assassinating eight of its soldiers, kidnapping two others and, simultaneously, launching missiles on nine of its towns does not constitute a casus belli, the latter juridical principle will seriously need revising.
Thus almost all of these cowardly politicians, including numerous Shia leaders and religious personalities themselves, are blessing each bomb that falls from a Jewish F-16 turning the insult to our sovereignty that was Haret Hreik, right in the heart of Beirut, into a lunar landscape. Without the Israelis, how could we have received another chance--that we in no way deserve!--to rebuild our country?
Each Irano-Syrian fort that Jerusalem destroys, each Islamic fighter they eliminate, and Lebanon proportionally starts to live again! Once again, the soldiers of Israel are doing our work. Once again, like in 1982, we are watching--cowardly, lying low, despicable, and insulting them to boot--their heroic sacrifice that allows us to keep hoping. To not be swallowed up in the bowels of the earth. Because, of course, by dint of not giving a damn for southern Lebanon, of letting foreigners take hold of the privileges that belong to us, we no longer had the ability to recover our independence and sovereignty. If, at the end of this war, the Lebanese army retakes control over its territory and gets rid of the state within a state--that tried to suffocate the latter--it will only be thanks to the Tsahal [Israeli Defense Force], and that, all these faint-hearted politicians, from the crook Fuad Siniora, to Saad Hariri, the son of Lebanon's plunderer, and general Aoun, all know perfectly well.
As for the destruction caused by the Israelis ... that is another imposture: Look at the satellite map! I have situated, as best I could, but in their correct proportions, the parts of my capital that have been destroyed by Israel. They are Haret Hreik--in its totality--and the dwellings of Hezbollah's leaders, situated in the large Shia suburb of Dayaa (as they spell it) and that I have circled in blue.
In addition to these two zones, Tsahal has exploded a nine-storied building that housed Hezbollah's command, in Beirut's city center, above and slightly to the left (to the north west) of Haret Hreik on the map. Image courtesy Metula News AgencyIt was Nasrallah's "perch" inside the city, whereby he asserted his presence and domination over us. A depot of Syrian arms in the port, two army radars that the Shiite officers had put at Hezbollah's disposal, and a truck suspected of transporting arms, in the Christian quarter of Ashrafieh.
Moreover the road and airport infrastructures were put out of working order : they served to provide Hezbollah with arms and munitions. Apart from that, Tsahal has neither hit nor deteriorated anything, and all those who speak of the "destruction of Beirut" are either liars, Iranians, anti-Semites or absent. Even the houses situated one alley's distance from the targets I mentioned have not been hit, they have not even suffered a scratch; on contemplating these results of this workyou understand the meaning of the concept "surgical strikes" and you can admire the dexterity of the Jewish pilots. Beirut, all the rest of Beirut, 95 percent of Beirut, lives and breathes better than a fortnight ago. All those who have not sided with terrorism know they have strictly nothing to fear from the Israeli planes, on the contrary! One example: Last night the restaurant where I went to eat was jammed full and I had to wait until 9:30 p.m. to get a table. Everyone was smiling, relaxed, but no one filmed them: a strange destruction of Beirut, is it not?
Of course, there are some 500,000 refugees from the south who are experiencing a veritable tragedy and who are not smiling. But Jean Tsadik, who has his eyes fixed on Kfar Kileh, and from whom I have learned to believe each word he says, assures me that practically all the houses of the aforesaid refugees are intact. So they will be able to come back as soon as Hezbollah is vanquished.
Moreover, Hassan Nasrallah's organization has not lost 200 combatants, as Tsahal claims. This figure only concerns the combats taking place on the border and even then the Israelis underestimate it, for a reason that escapes me, by about a hundred militiamen eliminated. The real count of Hezbollah's casualties, that includes those dead in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, Baalbek and their other camps, rocket and missile launchers and arms and munition depots amounts to 1,100 supplementary Hezbollah militiamen who have definitively ceased to terrorize and humiliate my country.
Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I pray that no one puts an end to the Israeli attack before it finishes shattering the terrorists. I pray that the Hebrew soldiers will penetrate all the hidden recesses of southern Lebanon and will hunt out, in our stead, the vermin that has taken root there. Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I have put the champagne ready in the refrigerator to celebrate the Israeli victory.
But contrary to them--and to paraphrase [French singer] Michel Sardou--I recognize that they are also fighting for our liberty, another battle "where you were not present"! And in the name of my people, I wish to express my infinite gratitude to the relatives of the Israeli victims--civilian and military--whose loved ones have fallen so that I can live standing upright in my identity. They should know that I weep with them.
i'm assuming reedtimothy u haven;'t read the thread in its entirety.. !
so u came out with a false interpretation of what i believe in or not !
and yes i do agree, not every1 in lebanon think the same regarding the country's politics. !
But then again , they all have to feel the same about the death of the civilians..
it's good to lecture.. but what's on the ground is totally different - exactly the same case with the UN draft resolution... ( fantasies ... id like to c the americans come make that come true tho.. that would be my ultimate real tv experience )
listening to bbc right now and they are doing a story/interview regarding the potential of a cease fire and about deploying troops in southern lebanon. first, i heard the absolutely ridiculous proposal about putting american troops there??? wtf is that. bad bad bad idea. and now i am hearing a lebanon's health minister saying that they should be lebanese troops, deployable in two hours to keep the peace. question why the hell isnt the lebanese army there now figthing the israelis? or deployed to the south earlier disarming hezbollah?
because they lack the numbers to actually enforce anything in the south.
Trying to disban the hizbolla would pretty much engage a civil war in Lebanon, and with their past it is not something they wanted to jump into. Especially since most political offices held in the south are through hizbollahs political arm.
could we please ease off the hitler analogies. my god, give some of history's other notorious despots their due. please substitute, hitler with pol pot, joe stalin, idi amin, mr. mao, robespierre for example.
I agree however lets not constrain our analogous name calling to histories notorious despots. Lets give credit to the current crop of despot leaders who have invested so much of their energies in human suffering such as Putin, Kim Jong il, Hu Jintao, Bush.
the famed logician, mathematician, and philosopher Kurt Gödel had discovered a way in which a dictatorship could be legally installed in the United States. maybe its finally come to fruition.
Patrick Marckesano, what a bunch of unobjective crap.
If Fascism has to be perverted to characterize the Hezbollahs, Zion isn't too far off in that approach. Count Theodor Herzl, Moses Hess and the zionist poet Bialik.. Herzl 'founded' zionism on the very model of National-Socialism. He believed antiSemitism was not an aberration, but a natural reaction by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and attitudes.
"We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question, take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will have to be dealt with by most European peoples ...
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the cultural domain, we -- having been brought up in the German language and German culture -- can show an interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration and internal sympathy ...
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment especially the German people ... "
- The Zionist Federation
There were alliances and influences borrowed on both sides - the Arabs and the Jews. So I'll cut it short there for erroneous equivocations of 'any absolutism = fascism = zionism = hezbollah = US= communism =...'
The need to see similarities in everything and trying to not only clump them but make them the same is a sign of organizational incapacity.
> Absolutism and fascism are the same, in any time or context.
That is an absolutist statement - are you a fascist?!
To you who write,
> The reason people bring up Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany so much is that we just fought a global war against these regimes some 60+ years ago to decide the question of fascism versus democracy, once and for all. Of course a greater part of the world did NOT take heed of this lesson and now we're facing the same questions again, and again... and again.
and @ Atsama, who writes,
> however, when i see the political cartoons being posted on this site, my stomach turns. i feel that all of a sudden i have been thrown back to nazi germany where such anti-zionist and anit-semitic were published on a regular basis. go check out the holocaust museum in DC, or the heritage museum in NYC. such cartoons were published then. i am horrified to see them being posted on a site such as this one, where i assume the enlightened architects/designers that discuss on these forums should be above such mud-slinging "art."
I suggest practising some objective historic rigour in such matters, should you care to:
Rule # 1: In the Middle East, it is always the Arabs that attack first, and it's always Israel who defends itself. This is called "retaliation".
Rule # 2: The Arabs, whether Palestinians or Lebanese, are not allowed to kill Israelis. This is called "terrorism".
Rule # 3: Israel has the right to kill Arab civilians; this is called "self-defense", or these days "collateral damage".
Rule # 4: When Israel kills too many civilians, the Western world calls for restraint. This is called the "reaction of the international community".
Rule # 5: Palestinians and Lebanese do not have the right to capture Israeli military, not even a limited number, not even 1 or 2.
Rule # 6: Israel has the right to capture as many Palestinians as they want (Palestinians: around 10000 to date, 300 of which are children, Lebanese: 1000s to date, being held without trial). There is no limit; there is no need for proof of guilt or trial. All that is needed is the magic word: "terrorism".
Rule # 7: When you say "Hezbollah", always be sure to add "supported by Syria and Iran".
Rule # 8: When you say "Israel", never say "supported by the USA, the UK and other European countries", for people (God forbid) might believe this is not an equal conflict.
Rule # 9: When it comes to Israel, don't mention the words "occupied territories", "UN resolutions", "Geneva conventions". This could distress the audience of Fox.
Rule # 10: Israelis speak better English than Arabs. This is why we let them speak out as much as possible, so that they can explain rules 1 through 9. This is called "neutral journalism".
Rule # 11: If you don't agree with these rules or if you favor the Arab side over the Israeli side, you must be a very dangerous anti-Semite. You may even have to make a public apology if you express your honest opinion (isn't democracy wonderful?).
War on Lebanon by bastard Zionists !
hahah ET, good joke...im glad to see you retaining your sense of humor when everything around you is going up in flames!
cf, i guess you should be the one to understand humor, as many of your posts can be considered rude and inappropriate....
few interesting articles
“In some respects, the Iraq war and the current global mission of the US government seem to repeat the old European imperialist projects. The present efforts not only to impose new regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq but also more generally to remake the political landscape of the Middle East and even “reshape the global environment†are conceived and presented using the old terms of the civilizing mission of European powers. President Bush might imagine himself donning the cloak of the great noble imperialists, educating the savages and bringing civilization to the world. We must have the courage to help them, he says, and they will thank us later. Or, in a more venal vein, the efforts to control the vast oil fields in Iraq and the Middle East certainly recall numerous imperialist wars to accumulate wealth, such as the British attempts a century ago in the Boer War to gain control of the great South African gold mines- blood for gold yesterday, blood for oil today.â€
Second Empire by Michael Hardt p.350-351 Content, Rem Koolhaas
“Control
This system is not merely bureaucratic and Kafkaesque. Again, a psychological explanation can be useful: in an obsessive disorder, fear of death plays a central role and there is a deeply held belief that certain actions prevent impending death of the self and of loved ones. The body’s orifices are conceived as danger zones, through which hostile agents may penetrate, infect, and cause disease or death. In fantasy, total control of the orifices is achievable, preventing all penetrations and thus protecting the self from fear of disease, death, and feelings of helplessness. The fantasy of keeping orifices clear of germs is well illustrated by the military concept of controlling the openings along the wall.
The obsessive control of the body’s openings is a typically modern control mechanism, associated with metaphors of hygiene, purity, and defense from bacteria infection. Rituals are created with the aim of self-preservation from contamination, diseases, and death. These rituals are constantly refined in arbitrary ways. The person knows deep down that there is no total control; thus, the anxiety is ever present, reinforcing these rituals, which may take over an obsessive person’s life, achieving precedence over all other aspects of life, requiring an ever-growing investments of resources.†Transparent Wall, Opaque Gates Ruchama Marton and Dalit Baum, Against the Wall, edited by Michael Sorkin
The Beirut Southern suburbs ! b4 and after plans
eyallll go to ur shelter... geeez.. ur such an idiot u realy dnt know a thing about the way israel was created.. go c how did you started... see dar yassine..
bla bla bla .. lololol maybe u feel better like that shutting ur ears.. welll truth hurts...
regarding internet.. mmmmm welll im on the net 24h/day .. dnt worry babe.. we lived in war during 30 years.. dnt u think that we can find ways to det power?.. lolol idiot..
Qana has already largely accomplished what it was supposed to. It will now take its place beside the Danish cartoons, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and all the rest as a useful focal point for Muslim outrage and a magnet for jihad recruitment. The dhimmi Leftist Western press is happy, for it can again show America and Israel as guilty in the world’s site. The mujahedin are happy, for jihad and Sharia will advance still more. The only people who couldn’t possibly be happy with this are the Israelis and others on the front lines of the jihad worldwide.
But who cares about them?
ooh aah ooh aah
The jews are killing us !! The jews are killing us !! The jews are killing us !!
northern Israel found itself pummeled by Hizbullah fire on Wednesday. One person was killed and at least 11 wounded as a result of the more than 200 rockets that rained down.
52-year-old David Martin Laucher was killed on Wednesday afternoon while riding his bicycle in Kibbutz Sa'ar, near Nahariya, after a rocket scored a direct hit on one of the kibbutz homes.
Bringing another city under Hizbullah's sights, A Khabar-1 rocket landed near Beit She'an Wednesday. Israel, which claims the rocket is Iranian-made, confirmed the hit and said at least seven people were wounded.
Beit Shean is about 70 kilometers (42 miles) south of the Lebanese border and marks the farthest town to date to come under fire.
The death marked the first fatality since rockets began raining down all over the North on Wednesday morning after a relative lull in rocket attacks for two days.
At least eight people were wounded by shrapnel - one in serious condition - in the morning's attacks, and 20 people were treated for shock.
More than 200 rockets have fallen on northern cities so far.
A barrage of at least six rockets reportedly fell in Haifa late Wednesday afternoon.
Problem is all about Israel attacking Lebanon, isn't it?
Yep, it's all about Israel and...
India and the Sudan and Algeria and Afghanistan and New York and Pakistan and Iraq and Russia and Chechnya and the Philippines and Indonesia and Nigeria and England and Thailand and Spain and Egypt and Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia and Ingushetia and Dagestan and Turkey and Kabardino-Balkaria and Morocco and Yemen and Lebanon and France and Uzbekistan and Gaza and Tunisia and Kosovo and Bosnia and Mauritania and Kenya and Eritrea and Syria and Somalia and California and Kuwait and Virginia and Ethiopia and Iran and Jordan and United Arab Emirates and Louisiana and Texas and Tanzania and Germany and Pennsylvania and Belgium and Denmark and East Timor and Qatar and Maryland and Tajikistan and the Netherlands and Scotland and Chad and Canada and...
swarm, what are you talking about?
ya what are u talking about?
Nice sorkin quote, sr.
This thread makes me think they should bomb the middle-east with xanax.
Talk about a polarised argument. Even the local radio (BBC) has stopped having phone-ins on the subject as each side competes to justify their war crimes. We are all involved, I mean the US are flying in armaments to the Israelis and stopping to refuel here in the UK.
WTF
Complicity all round then…
http://waronlebanon.blogspot.com/
http://mazenkerblog.blogspot.com/
swarm ... should I start by counting all the countries the U.S. and Israel have been attacking on ???
I mean HONESTLY R u really up 4 that ???
and i dn't c the relation between all that and hizbollah.. then again all u know abt hizbollah is thru some reports u happened to c for a couple of minutes on the news.. and we have to listen to ur shit now !
How typical.. it reminds me of the cowboy, he has no clue whatsoever about the middleeast yet he throws those famous speeches to cover one failure after another,,
"We're invading Afghanista:
We're invading Iraq
We're invading Beirut now.. all justified by the War on Terror...."
one failure after the other..
hasn't it been like 5 years since the War on Terror started..
where's osama?
and i agree by sameolddoctor and aphro_al
swarm, what are you talking about?
lol
Israel is a nation that was attacked in a raid by a terrorist group.
When Israel withdrew from Lebanon, part of the deal was for southern Lebanon to function as your normal non-terrorist peaceable sector. Instead, Hezbollah has used it for years as a safe house for people obsessed with killing Jews.
Just like when Israel withdrew more recently from Gaza, Palestinian terrorists used it quite literally as a launching pad for terror.
Israel is not responsible for the fact that Hezbollah hides themselves behind their own women and children. Hezbollah's rocket launchers are located inside of barns, farm buildings, etc... Those rockets are raining death on Israeli civilians.
Hezbollah is, for all practical purposes, a terrorist outfit, The Secret Agenda of The Soldiers of Allah ( The Hezb - Ul-Allah ) is to cleanse the middle east of all traces of anything UnIslamic --that would include Jews, Christians and secular muslims...
Hassan Nasrallah announced on October 22, 2002:
"if they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide
"It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."
yes sure ET, If Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah are killed than its Israel's atrocitiesand if Israelis are killed than its 'cowboy' propaganda. LOL
Enough is Enough.
Do yourself a favor, ET and aphro-al ,put on your headphones , tune into your favorite Hezbollah shit talk radio station Al- Nour ..and Thank your stars , thats its only the hizbollah who are our enemy becos If Israel really wanted,could have overrun Lebanon in less than a day.
"Hezbollah is, for all practical purposes, a terrorist outfit, The Secret Agenda of The Soldiers of Allah ( The Hezb - Ul-Allah ) is to cleanse the middle east of all traces of anything UnIslamic --that would include Jews, Christians and secular muslims..."
I'm a christian swarm... have been living quite well with Hezbollah.. so don't believe all the crap u see on ur tv.
"If Israel really wanted,could have overrun Lebanon in less than a day"
I don't doubt that it can and is already ! I don't know what u call the death of 1000 civilians by today ! (maybe civilians of a lesser god?)
""It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.""
And if this is the case ! wouldn't it be easier for Hezbollah to eliminate Israel with a nuclear bomb.. Hell we all know Iran has them, and we all know Iran backs hezbollah as well.. but that's not the goal of the party !!!
P.S. Check the thread for earlier posts, since some of ur comments have already been discussed !
its like another rerun of a practiced argument. seriously, let more lebanese, israelis and sooner or later americans die. soon this will be a chronicle, things will change and never to anyone's liking. the funniest is america with its youthful hope to change the middle east to its liking. israel has a complex, nationally and culturally apropos the shoah.. that is known: the . lebanon..corpses on the margin of its history. but america, sweet candyass america with its beaming bushes , the heroic optimism of its rumsfield's its kristol's and its pearl's. . welcome to the Project for the New American Century. what if the consequence of american sunshine is the shadow on the middle east. soon, we will know democracy, soon america will know more terrorist attacks...the tragedy of spilled milk. i hope they speed it up, i want to be living to see what comes after.
'i hope they speed it up, i want to be living to see what comes after'
History repeating shows that israel will agree to a UN resolution then mostly ignor it. Peacekeeping troops will enter and be impotent.
Maybe the whole thing will flare up again in a continuous cycle of hate and death as Israel proceeds to progress it's illegal activities of the wall and the settlements while the islamic fundamentalists become more fundamental.
How fundamental can you go? I suppose it will all end with the death of America. i blame them for everything including my last AutoCAD crash 5 mins ago.
ho hum
"Israel proceeds to progress it's illegal activities of the wall "
Wow i 4got all abt that wall..
maybe a good way of ending this thru the israeli perspective would be building another wall on the lebanese israeli borders !!!
NO NO wait i have an even better idea... how about making israel an island 8-) ... !
SIGHHHHHH !
correction: perle's
"History repeating shows that israel will agree to a UN resolution then mostly ignor it. Peacekeeping troops will enter and be impotent"
not likely this time. there will be a u.n. resolution, but the american-french accord is tailoring it out to be in support of 'potent' troops. in effect, and being on lebanese soil, it is prominently to keep hizbollah from throwing across the border rather than the other way around...in case of any violation on the latter's part, this could start a military feud between the troops , troops contracted by the UN but not Unifil:
This means several divisions worth of battle-tested troops (some experts put the number at 25,000). The soldiers would need heavy equipment, intelligence capabilities, air support and artillery: things most previous missions in the region were never given, making them too easy to brush aside. They'd also need robust rules of engagement and authorization under the U.N. Charter's Chapter VII, which would let them go after Hezbollah if necessary and would prevent their premature withdrawal (from http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008746)
the realization that this could very well fuel a complex war in lebanon and possibly split it apart is obviously not a factor. things are not looking too well...and i don't mean in the present sitation, but in forthcoming situations. damn it, if only they gave chebaa and the pow's back...stupid stupid people.
America to blame? if only i could suck your irony dry...
another erratum:(could start a military feud) between the troops and hizbollah. cheerio.
"On 15 May 2000, the United Nations received a map, dated 1966, from the Government of Lebanon which reflected the Government's position that these farmlands were located in Lebanon. However, the United Nations is in possession of 10 other maps issued after 1966 by various Lebanese government institutions, including the Ministry of Defense and the army, all of which place the farmlands inside the Syrian Arab Republic. The United Nations has also examined six maps issued by the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, including three maps since 1966, which place the farmlands inside the Syrian Arab Republic." UN Document S/2000/460
tit for tat:
"In the 1923 Anglo-French Demarcation Agreement, which set the borders between the British and French mandates in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, the area was included in Syria.[3] Documents from the 1920s and 1930s indicate that some local inhabitants regarded themselves as part of Lebanon, for example paying taxes to the Lebanese government, but that French officials often expressed confusion on the actual location of the border.[3] One French official in 1939 expressed the belief that the uncertainty was sure to cause trouble in the future"
The maps of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Syria and Israel designated the area as Syrian.
Border disputes arose frequently. Starting in the late 1950s and ending in 1964, Syria and Lebanon formed a joint council to determine a proper border between the two nations. Shebaa Farms was not unique, as several other border villages had similar discrepancies of borders versus land ownership. In 1964 the joint Lebanese-Syrian border committee suggested to their governments that the Shebaa Farms area be deemed the property of Lebanon, and recommended that the international border be reestablished consistent with its suggestion. However, its suggestion was not adopted by Syria or Lebanon, and the countries did not take any actions along the suggested lines. Thus, the maps of the area continued to reflect the Farms as being in Syria. [4] Even maps of both the Syrian and Lebanese armies continued to demarcate the region within Syrian territory. [4]
A Lebanese military map, published in 1966, showing the Shebaa Farms as being on the Syrian side of the border.A number of local residents regarded themselves as Lebanese, however. The Lebanese government showed little interest in their views. The Syrian government imposed itself on the region, at one point forcibly replacing villagers' Lebanese identity cards with Syrian ones. On the eve of the 1967 war, the region was under effective Syrian control.
In 1967 most Shebaa Farms landowners and farmers (Lebanese) lived outside the Syrian-controlled region, across the Lebanon-Syrian border, in the Lebanese village of Shebaa. During the Six Day War, Israel captured the Farms from Syria. After Syria lost the land (to the Israelis) in 1967, the Lebanese land owners were no longer able to farm it.[5][6]" wiki
all of which shows that the situation is much more complex than one set of paperwork against another. in any case, be it syria's or lebanon's it is certainly not israel's. and eventually, if the people in shebaa themselves say they're lebanese...? for them its a funny surreal status quo.
also:
"However, on May 16, 2000, the Syrian Foreign Minister, Farouq al-Shara, indicated to Annan in a telephone conversation that the Syrian Arab Republic supported Lebanon's claim.[11] Nevertheless, Syria still has not taken any official steps necessary to demarcate the border. When the UN asked Damascus for a formal document stating that the area had indeed been legally transferred to Lebanon, Syria balked - and it has still not supplied such a document. This may be due to the fact that Syria does not recognize Lebanon. Not only does it not have diplomatic relations with Lebanon, but in Syrian textbooks Lebanon appears as part of "Greater Syria."
war sucks-
aphro, eyall, yenafar, et al (latin does seem appropriate) hope you all make it to the far side of these dark days, to when we beat the swords of hate back into plowshears and we can thrive again.
id like to thrive long and hard wiv u
a moth in the mouth, the tongue flutters in the dark. on parting of lips, it flutters towards the light. in attempting to consume the light, it wants to disspell darkness from its depth. the light, nonchalant and invariable, subsumes it. so i quote below:
"With a variable key
you unlock the house in which
drifts the snow of that left unspoken.
Always what key you choose
depends on the blood that spurts
from your eye or your mouth or your ear.
You vary the key, you vary the word
that is free to drift with the flakes.
What snowball will form round the word
depends on the wind that rebuffs you." Paul Celan (trans. by Michael Hamburger)
the key: language
the house: truth/ the self/ meaning
the snow: we remember celan's 'black snow'... literally the ashes of corpses intermingling with snow: nuances of snow as a soothing nothingness (we remember celan's god: both a nothing and a particular jewish resolution: god praying to humans:the extreme volume of the shibboleth) after murder. the snow as detached evidence; the detached silence of nature becomes the silence of language. an impossible entrapment; to live one must speak but how to measure the horror of events and murdering language in the language of the living victim and his history. later on, celan drowns himself.
there is no snow falling on southern lebanon, haifa, southern beirut, 'aka, baalbeck, ghaza....but fire and cement; the clots of the house itself, that is having to commingle with the dead, hide,and bury them. in the meantime, and everytime, there is everyone else's talk and talk and talk happening to another dying family. and of course, words, an epitaph, from one kid carried by a wingless dove, a parody of peace, to another. again, language killing and language dying.
so yes, there will be so many more killings. a lot. oh yes; blood baths as they pontify. and charred corpses. we should serve them up to wine and dine the 'international community'. i propos that the lebanese befriend the israelis and help them declare war on the other arab regimes. get hezbollah to fire into iran pretending to be israel. get america to engage directly and snoozing cells to germinate in europe and america. the people in egypt in a bloody unprising against the toad demigod mubarrak, the dormant terrorists in all the muslim world to awaken, the syrian baathists to start slaughtering their own people saying israel did it and israel slaughtering its own saying hezbollah did it . keep on stabbing the corpses of hassan and hussein, christ and the living corpse of izhak; more please.
so i also find myself changing: from waiting for a ceasefire to waiting for more death, death now being practiced as nothing less or more than maths. build higher, travel further, kill more. what is the difference between wanting and expecting, the difference between one massacre and two. its all news.
and sometimes it happens to you, whats new?
"and sometimes it happens to you, whats new?"
let's hope not ! 8-)
via the huffington post.
A forward i received from a brit friend :
">> Did you know that non-Jewish Israelis cannot buy or lease land in
Israel?
>> Did you know that cars owned by Palestinians are colour coded to
distinguish Jews from non-Jews?
>>Did you know Palestinians are not allowed to move from one city, say
Gaza to Bethlehem, without first getting a 'visa' from Israel?
>>Did you know that Israel routinely confiscates Palestinian bank
accounts,businesses and land and refuses to pay compensation to those who suffer confiscation?
>>Did you know that Israel stands in defiance of over 80 United Nations Security Council Resolutions?
>>Did you know that Sharon (the 'elected' leader of a democratic
society)was held responsible for the massacre of more than 2750 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila? The UN qualified the massacre by Sharon as GENOCIDE.
>>Did you know that Sharon's commando unit in 1953 razed the
Palestinian village of Qibya killing all its citizens and bombed all the houses, mosques and schools?
>>Did you know that Israel's settlement-building on Palestinian land
>>increased considerably since the signing of the Oslo agreement?
>>Did you know that settlement building of Jewish only homes under
Barak doubled compared to settlement building under Netanyahu?
>>Did you know that Palestinian refugees make up the largest portion of the refugee population in the world?
>>Did you know that between 1967 and early 2002 Israel expropriated some 79% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Estimated figures published by
Amnesty
International in 1999 show the following:
Year Land Confiscated in the West Bank
1984 42%
1991 60%
1998 74%
>>Did you know that since between 1967 and early 2002 Israel
demolished or sealed over 8500 homes, of which 2500 were in East Jerusalem alone?
Houses are demolished as punitive measure or under the pretext of 'lack of building permit' - permits are rarely granted.
>>Did you know that Israel allots 85% of the water resources for Jews
and the remaining 15% is divided among all Palestinians in the territories?
>> For example in Hebron, 85% of the water is given to about 400 Jewish settlers, while 15% must be divided among Hebron's 120,000
Palestinians?
>>Did you know that the Ha'aertz Israeli paper estimated in 1998 (31
July) that a population of 5800 Jewish settlers in Hebron consumed 547 liters of water a day each? By contrast, a population of 119,230 Palestinians in the same area consumed or had access to no more than 58 litres per day each.
>>Did you know that since 1967, (and of course not counting the
atrocities committed since March 2002) over 600,000 Palestinians have been jailed in Israeli jails and over 200 have died while in Israeli jails? During the first year of the second intifada alone, Israel arrested over 1900 Palestinians, of which 600 were children under 16.
>>Did you know that Israel uses torture routinely in jails (only against
>>non-Jews of course) despite the Israeli High Court outlawing it?
>>
>> NOW YOU KNOW!!! "
ET - do you believe everything everyone forwards you? If so, I have a friend in Nigeria who needs to transfer some money to a foriegn account...
Not all Lebanese feel as ET does. An interesting article reprinted by The New Republic:
http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=w060807&s=behe080706
THE ABDICATION OF LEBANESE LEADERS.
State of Denial
by Michael Béhé
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 08.07.06
[ Editor's Note: This article was originally published by the Metula News Agency, for whom it was translated from the French by Llewellyn Brown, and is reprinted with permission. ]
Beirut, Lebanon
The politicians, journalists and intellectuals of Lebanon have, of late, been experiencing the shock of their lives. They knew full well that Hezbollah had created an independent state in our country, a state including all the ministers and parallel institutions, duplicating those of Lebanon. What they did not know--and are discovering with this war, and what has petrified them with surprise and terror--is the extent of this phagocytosis.
In fact, our country had become an extension of Iran, and our so-called political power also served as a political and military cover for the Islamists of Teheran. We suddenly discovered that Teheran had stocked more than 12,000 missiles, of all types and calibers, on our territory and that they had patiently, systematically, organized a suppletive force, with the help of the Syrians, that took over, day after day, all the rooms in the House of Lebanon. Just imagine it: We stock ground-to-ground missiles, Zilzals, on our territory and the firing of such devices, without our knowledge, has the power to spark a regional strategic conflict and, potentially, bring about the annihilation of Lebanon.
We knew that Iran, by means of Hezbollah, was building a veritable Maginot line in the south, but it was the pictures of Maroun el Ras and Bint Jbail that revealed to us the magnitude of these constructions. This amplitude made us understand several things at once: that we were no longer masters of our destiny; that we do not possess the most basic means necessary to reverse the course of this state of things; and that those who turned our country into an outpost of their Islamic doctrine's combat against Israel did not have the slightest intention of willingly giving up their hold over us.
The national salvation discussions that concerned the application of Resolution 1559, and which included most of the Lebanese political movements, were simply for show. Iran and Syria had not invested billions of dollars on militarizing Lebanon in order to wage their war, simply to give in to the desire of the Lebanese and the international community for them to pack up their hardware and set it up back home.
And then, the indecision, the cowardice, the division and the irresponsible behavior of our leaders are such that they had no effort to make to show their talent. No need to engage a wrestling match with the other political components of the Land of Cedars. The latter showed themselves--and continue to show themselves--to be inconsistent.
Of course, our army, reshaped over the years by the Syrian occupier so it could no longer fulfill its role as protector of the nation, did not have the capacity to tackle the militamen of the Hezbollah. Illustration courtesy Michael Behe/Metula News AgencyOur army, whom it is more dangerous to call upon--because of the explosive equilibrium that constitutes each of its brigades--than to shut up behind locked doors in its barracks. A force that is still largely loyal to its former foreign masters, to the point of being uncontrollable; to the point of having collaborated with the Iranians to put our coastal radar stations at the disposal of their missiles, that almost sunk an Israeli boat off the shores of Beirut. As for the non-Hezbollah elements in the government, they knew nothing of the existence of land-to-sea missiles on our territory ... that caused the totally justified destruction of all our radar stations by the Hebrews' army. And even then we are getting off lightly in these goings-on.
It is easy now to whine and gripe, and to play the hypocritical role of victims. We know full well how to get others to pity us and to claim that we are never responsible for the horrors that regularly occur on our soil. Of course, that is nothing but rubbish! The Security Council's Resolution 1559--that demanded that our government deploy our army on our sovereign territory, along our international border with Israel and that it disarm all the militia on our land--was voted on September 2, 2004.
We had two years to implement this resolution and thus guarantee a peaceful future to our children, but we did absolutely nothing. Our greatest crime--which was not the only one!--was not that we did not succeed, but that we did not attempt or undertake anything. And that was the fault of none else than the pathetic Lebanese politicians.
Our government, from the very moment the Syrian occupier left, let ships and truckloads of arms pour into our country. Without even bothering to look at their cargo. They jeopardized all chances for the rebirth of our country by confusing the Cedar Revolution with the liberation of Beirut. In reality, we had just received the chance--a sort of unhoped-for moratorium--that allowed us to take the future into our own hands, nothing more.
To think that we were not even capable of agreeing to "hang" Émile Lahoud--Al-Assad's puppet--on Martyrs' Square and that he is still president of what some insist on calling our republic. ... There is no need to look any further: We are what we are, that is to say, not much.
All those who assume public and communicational responsibilities in this country are responsible for this catastrophe. Except those of my colleagues, journalists, and editors, who are dead, assassinated by the Syrian thugs, because they were clearly less cowardly than those who survived. And Lahoud remained at Baadbé, the president's palace!
And when I speak of a catastrophe, I do not mean the action accomplished by Israel in response to the aggression against its civilians and its army, which was produced from our soil and that we did strictly nothing to avoid, and for which we are consequently responsible. Any avoiding of this responsibility--some people here do not have the minimal notions of international law necessary to understand!--means that Lebanon, as a state, does not exist.
The hypocrisy goes on: Even some editorialists of the respectable L'Orient Le Jour put Hezbollah's savagery and that of the Israelis on a par! Shame! Spinelessness! And who are we in this fable? Poor ad aeternumvictims of the ambitions of others?
Politicians either support this insane idea or keep silent. Those we would expect to speak, to save our image, remain silent like the others. And I am precisely alluding to General Aoun, who could have made a move by proclaiming the truth. Even his enemy, Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, has proved to be less ... vague.
Lebanon a victim? What a joke!
Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed, it was no more than a hologram. In Beirut, innocent citizens like me were forbidden access to certain areas of their own capital. But our police, our army, and our judges were also excluded. That was the case, for example, of Hezbollah's and the Syrians' command zone in the Haret Hreik quarter (in red on the satellite map). A square measuring a kilometer wide, a capital within the capital, permanently guarded by a Horla army, possessing its own institutions, its schools, its crèches, its tribunals, its radio, its television and, above all ... its government. A "government" that, alone decided, in the place of the figureheads of the Lebanese government--in which Hezbollah also had its ministers!--to attack a neighboring state, with which we had no substantial or grounded quarrel, and to plunge the United States into a bloody conflict. And if attacking a sovereign nation on its territory, assassinating eight of its soldiers, kidnapping two others and, simultaneously, launching missiles on nine of its towns does not constitute a casus belli, the latter juridical principle will seriously need revising.
Thus almost all of these cowardly politicians, including numerous Shia leaders and religious personalities themselves, are blessing each bomb that falls from a Jewish F-16 turning the insult to our sovereignty that was Haret Hreik, right in the heart of Beirut, into a lunar landscape. Without the Israelis, how could we have received another chance--that we in no way deserve!--to rebuild our country?
Each Irano-Syrian fort that Jerusalem destroys, each Islamic fighter they eliminate, and Lebanon proportionally starts to live again! Once again, the soldiers of Israel are doing our work. Once again, like in 1982, we are watching--cowardly, lying low, despicable, and insulting them to boot--their heroic sacrifice that allows us to keep hoping. To not be swallowed up in the bowels of the earth. Because, of course, by dint of not giving a damn for southern Lebanon, of letting foreigners take hold of the privileges that belong to us, we no longer had the ability to recover our independence and sovereignty. If, at the end of this war, the Lebanese army retakes control over its territory and gets rid of the state within a state--that tried to suffocate the latter--it will only be thanks to the Tsahal [Israeli Defense Force], and that, all these faint-hearted politicians, from the crook Fuad Siniora, to Saad Hariri, the son of Lebanon's plunderer, and general Aoun, all know perfectly well.
As for the destruction caused by the Israelis ... that is another imposture: Look at the satellite map! I have situated, as best I could, but in their correct proportions, the parts of my capital that have been destroyed by Israel. They are Haret Hreik--in its totality--and the dwellings of Hezbollah's leaders, situated in the large Shia suburb of Dayaa (as they spell it) and that I have circled in blue.
In addition to these two zones, Tsahal has exploded a nine-storied building that housed Hezbollah's command, in Beirut's city center, above and slightly to the left (to the north west) of Haret Hreik on the map. Image courtesy Metula News AgencyIt was Nasrallah's "perch" inside the city, whereby he asserted his presence and domination over us. A depot of Syrian arms in the port, two army radars that the Shiite officers had put at Hezbollah's disposal, and a truck suspected of transporting arms, in the Christian quarter of Ashrafieh.
Moreover the road and airport infrastructures were put out of working order : they served to provide Hezbollah with arms and munitions. Apart from that, Tsahal has neither hit nor deteriorated anything, and all those who speak of the "destruction of Beirut" are either liars, Iranians, anti-Semites or absent. Even the houses situated one alley's distance from the targets I mentioned have not been hit, they have not even suffered a scratch; on contemplating these results of this workyou understand the meaning of the concept "surgical strikes" and you can admire the dexterity of the Jewish pilots. Beirut, all the rest of Beirut, 95 percent of Beirut, lives and breathes better than a fortnight ago. All those who have not sided with terrorism know they have strictly nothing to fear from the Israeli planes, on the contrary! One example: Last night the restaurant where I went to eat was jammed full and I had to wait until 9:30 p.m. to get a table. Everyone was smiling, relaxed, but no one filmed them: a strange destruction of Beirut, is it not?
Of course, there are some 500,000 refugees from the south who are experiencing a veritable tragedy and who are not smiling. But Jean Tsadik, who has his eyes fixed on Kfar Kileh, and from whom I have learned to believe each word he says, assures me that practically all the houses of the aforesaid refugees are intact. So they will be able to come back as soon as Hezbollah is vanquished.
The defeat of the Shia fundamentalists of Iranian allegiance is imminent. The figures communicated by Nasrallah's minions and by the Lebanese Red Cross are deceiving: firstly, of the 400 dead declared by Lebanon, only 150 are real collateral civilian victims of the war, the others were militiamen without uniform serving Iran. The photographic report "Les Civils des bilans libanais" made by Stéphane Juffa for the Metula News Agency constitutes, to this day, the unique tangible evidence of this gigantic morbid manipulation. Which makes this document eminently important.
Moreover, Hassan Nasrallah's organization has not lost 200 combatants, as Tsahal claims. This figure only concerns the combats taking place on the border and even then the Israelis underestimate it, for a reason that escapes me, by about a hundred militiamen eliminated. The real count of Hezbollah's casualties, that includes those dead in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, Baalbek and their other camps, rocket and missile launchers and arms and munition depots amounts to 1,100 supplementary Hezbollah militiamen who have definitively ceased to terrorize and humiliate my country.
Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I pray that no one puts an end to the Israeli attack before it finishes shattering the terrorists. I pray that the Hebrew soldiers will penetrate all the hidden recesses of southern Lebanon and will hunt out, in our stead, the vermin that has taken root there. Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I have put the champagne ready in the refrigerator to celebrate the Israeli victory.
But contrary to them--and to paraphrase [French singer] Michel Sardou--I recognize that they are also fighting for our liberty, another battle "where you were not present"! And in the name of my people, I wish to express my infinite gratitude to the relatives of the Israeli victims--civilian and military--whose loved ones have fallen so that I can live standing upright in my identity. They should know that I weep with them.
As for the pathetic clique that thrives at the head of my country, it is time for them to understand that after this war, after our natural allies have rid us of those who are hindering us from rebuilding a nation, a cease-fire or an armistice will not suffice. To ensure the future of Lebanon, it is time to make peace with those we have no reason to go to war against. In fact, only peace will ensure peace. Someone must tell them because in this country we have not learnt what a truism is.
Michael Béhé is a writer for the Metula News Agency.
i'm assuming reedtimothy u haven;'t read the thread in its entirety.. !
so u came out with a false interpretation of what i believe in or not !
and yes i do agree, not every1 in lebanon think the same regarding the country's politics. !
But then again , they all have to feel the same about the death of the civilians..
it's good to lecture.. but what's on the ground is totally different - exactly the same case with the UN draft resolution... ( fantasies ... id like to c the americans come make that come true tho.. that would be my ultimate real tv experience )
reedtimothy - I wonder who Martin Peretz supports?
listening to bbc right now and they are doing a story/interview regarding the potential of a cease fire and about deploying troops in southern lebanon. first, i heard the absolutely ridiculous proposal about putting american troops there??? wtf is that. bad bad bad idea. and now i am hearing a lebanon's health minister saying that they should be lebanese troops, deployable in two hours to keep the peace. question why the hell isnt the lebanese army there now figthing the israelis? or deployed to the south earlier disarming hezbollah?
because they lack the numbers to actually enforce anything in the south.
Trying to disban the hizbolla would pretty much engage a civil war in Lebanon, and with their past it is not something they wanted to jump into. Especially since most political offices held in the south are through hizbollahs political arm.
American troops, see Beirut.
could we please ease off the hitler analogies. my god, give some of history's other notorious despots their due. please substitute, hitler with pol pot, joe stalin, idi amin, mr. mao, robespierre for example.
I agree however lets not constrain our analogous name calling to histories notorious despots. Lets give credit to the current crop of despot leaders who have invested so much of their energies in human suffering such as Putin, Kim Jong il, Hu Jintao, Bush.
We should be ashamed of our comfort?
Decadence- a moral and cultural decline, based upon what datum line?
Can we not say that the terrorists are decadent, the luxury of taking others lives?
much as i dislike his nation building strategies and his administration being coopted by the neocon agenda, george ain't a despot.
no, he is only a de facto despot, because his party controls all three branches of government.
So the U.S. form of government has the possibility of a de facto despot president?
the famed logician, mathematician, and philosopher Kurt Gödel had discovered a way in which a dictatorship could be legally installed in the United States. maybe its finally come to fruition.
That means Hillary can be a sexy president.
Patrick Marckesano, what a bunch of unobjective crap.
If Fascism has to be perverted to characterize the Hezbollahs, Zion isn't too far off in that approach. Count Theodor Herzl, Moses Hess and the zionist poet Bialik.. Herzl 'founded' zionism on the very model of National-Socialism. He believed antiSemitism was not an aberration, but a natural reaction by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and attitudes.
"We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question, take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will have to be dealt with by most European peoples ...
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the cultural domain, we -- having been brought up in the German language and German culture -- can show an interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration and internal sympathy ...
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment especially the German people ... "
- The Zionist Federation
There were alliances and influences borrowed on both sides - the Arabs and the Jews. So I'll cut it short there for erroneous equivocations of 'any absolutism = fascism = zionism = hezbollah = US= communism =...'
The need to see similarities in everything and trying to not only clump them but make them the same is a sign of organizational incapacity.
> Absolutism and fascism are the same, in any time or context.
That is an absolutist statement - are you a fascist?!
To you who write,
> The reason people bring up Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany so much is that we just fought a global war against these regimes some 60+ years ago to decide the question of fascism versus democracy, once and for all. Of course a greater part of the world did NOT take heed of this lesson and now we're facing the same questions again, and again... and again.
and @ Atsama, who writes,
> however, when i see the political cartoons being posted on this site, my stomach turns. i feel that all of a sudden i have been thrown back to nazi germany where such anti-zionist and anit-semitic were published on a regular basis. go check out the holocaust museum in DC, or the heritage museum in NYC. such cartoons were published then. i am horrified to see them being posted on a site such as this one, where i assume the enlightened architects/designers that discuss on these forums should be above such mud-slinging "art."
I suggest practising some objective historic rigour in such matters, should you care to:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5467701992662742210&hl=en
Its funny that recently the Zionists celebrated the British terror bombings over their occupation,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-2277717,00.html
and they do the same, occupy, expand, and expect the world to see the fairness of this. Ridiculous.
cf:> Can we not say that the terrorists are decadent, the luxury of taking others lives?
Cf, I think you are spot on.
Taking other peoples lives is their law.
First: The Ground Rules
Rule # 1: In the Middle East, it is always the Arabs that attack first, and it's always Israel who defends itself. This is called "retaliation".
Rule # 2: The Arabs, whether Palestinians or Lebanese, are not allowed to kill Israelis. This is called "terrorism".
Rule # 3: Israel has the right to kill Arab civilians; this is called "self-defense", or these days "collateral damage".
Rule # 4: When Israel kills too many civilians, the Western world calls for restraint. This is called the "reaction of the international community".
Rule # 5: Palestinians and Lebanese do not have the right to capture Israeli military, not even a limited number, not even 1 or 2.
Rule # 6: Israel has the right to capture as many Palestinians as they want (Palestinians: around 10000 to date, 300 of which are children, Lebanese: 1000s to date, being held without trial). There is no limit; there is no need for proof of guilt or trial. All that is needed is the magic word: "terrorism".
Rule # 7: When you say "Hezbollah", always be sure to add "supported by Syria and Iran".
Rule # 8: When you say "Israel", never say "supported by the USA, the UK and other European countries", for people (God forbid) might believe this is not an equal conflict.
Rule # 9: When it comes to Israel, don't mention the words "occupied territories", "UN resolutions", "Geneva conventions". This could distress the audience of Fox.
Rule # 10: Israelis speak better English than Arabs. This is why we let them speak out as much as possible, so that they can explain rules 1 through 9. This is called "neutral journalism".
Rule # 11: If you don't agree with these rules or if you favor the Arab side over the Israeli side, you must be a very dangerous anti-Semite. You may even have to make a public apology if you express your honest opinion (isn't democracy wonderful?).
an interview you must see, before they censore it...
an interview you must see, before they censore it...
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