Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Nakba Parties

1. Since a lot of people requested the citation for that Asad Grandpa
quote supporting Zionism in a posting of mine last week, it is from a book
by Daniel Pipes:
It is from his
Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition, page 179.


2. Got THAT one right!

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=ca1e7fab-d433-402c-b47d-412b9f140158

3. Israeli campuses this week are full of anti-Israel .Nakba.
ceremonies, organized by leftist Jewish students and faculty and Arabs, to
mourn Israel.s existence. All on campus facilities paid for by Israeli
taxpayers and by Jewish donors from outside Israel.

Meanwhile, I thought it of interest that Jordan has BANNE anti-Israel
Nakba ceremonies in its territory.
Jordan often bans such anti-Israel events lest the protesters get uppity
and attack Jordanian police or officials or building:

Jordan bans 'Nakba' commemorations
Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST May. 9, 2008
www.jpost.com
/servlet/Satellite?cid=1209627042533&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Jordanian authorities have banned all events marking the "Nakba," or
Catastrophe, as Arabs refer to the creation of Israel 60 years ago.

Several pro-Palestinian groups and Jordanian opposition parties has been
planning to hold a rally in Amman on Friday.

But the authorities informed the organizers of the decision to ban the
event, as well as other "illegal public gatherings."

The Islamic Labor Front, which was planning a major rally in the capital,
condemned the ban as unconstitutional.

The party expressed outrage over the decision, noting that the Jordanian
government had allowed the Israeli Embassy in Amman to celebrate Israeli
Independence Day.

Earlier this year, Jordan banned relatives of Ala Abu Dhaim, the
Palestinian

who killed eight students and wounded eight at Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav
Yeshiva on March 6, from mourning him in public.

The relatives were warned against receiving mourners in a public place or
erecting a monument to commemorate the gunman, who was killed in the
attack.

The family expressed outrage at the decision, pointing out that Israel had
allowed their relatives in Jerusalem's Jebl Mukaber neighborhood to hoist
Hizbullah and Hamas flags and to identify publicly with the gunman.

4. Tel Aviv U's Prof. Sand denounces Jewish peoplehood:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Shlomo%20Sand%20-%20denys%203000%20years.htm

5. Orange County Nakba:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=74CD0F7B-6133-4DA4-82F2-FFE826C1A861

6. Jews for a Second Holocaust:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=11B8941E-DAB3-4FB4-AE2C-400B9C4A0A81

7. Whose land?
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3542500,00.html


8. Boteach on Dawkins:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1209627067540&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


9. GLOBAL VIEW
By BRET STEPHENS

From Lebanon to Hezbollahstan
May 13, 2008; Page A15
On Friday, Hezbollah gunmen set fire to the Beirut offices of Future TV, a
Lebanese broadcaster. On a purely symbolic level, it was an apt
demonstration of where the Party of God stands in relation to the future
itself.

But that wasn't the worst of what has happened in the past week in
Lebanon, where scores of people have been killed in interfactional
violence. More ominous was the role of the Lebanese army, avowedly neutral
and nominally under civilian control. "An army officer accompanied by
members of Hezbollah walked into the station and told us to switch off
transmission," an unnamed Future TV official told Reuters. So much for
army neutrality.


AP
Shiite gunmen patrol the streets in Chouweifat, south of Beirut, May 11.
The army also countermanded government orders to dismantle Hezbollah's
telecommunications network at the Beirut airport and remove the brigadier
responsible for airport security, who is said to be a Hezbollah pawn. "I
have called on the army to live up to its national responsibilities . . .
and this has not happened," Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's increasingly
irrelevant prime minister, said on national TV.

Future historians will look for the precise moment the Lebanese Republic
began to transmogrify into Hezbollahstan. Was it the June 2005 murder of
anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir . the earliest sign that Syria, whose
29-year military occupation of its neighbor had ended just two months
before, intended to reinsert itself by stealth and terror (and with the
connivance of Hezbollah)? Was it the role played by the Maronite Gen.
Michel Aoun, a hero of the last Lebanese civil war, who returned from
exile in 2005 intending to play the part of de Gaulle only to become,
after striking a bargain with Hezbollah, another Ptain?

Was it the summer war of 2006, when Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah
militarily and, in so failing, gave Hezbollah an aura of invincibility?
Was it the unwillingness of international peacekeepers to patrol the
Lebanese-Syrian border, thereby allowing Hezbollah to rearm itself after
the war? Was it the absence of an effective, or even intelligible,
American policy toward Lebanon, epitomized by Condoleezza Rice's decision
to rehabilitate Damascus by inviting it to November's Annapolis Middle
East conference?

The answer is all of the above: An accumulation of policy mistakes,
political dodges and moral atrocities that have nearly killed the "new"
Lebanon in its crib.

Demography has also played a role. Christians in particular have been
fleeing Lebanon for decades. And though a census hasn't been taken in
Lebanon in 75 years, Nizar Hamze of the American University of Beirut
estimates that there are between eight and nine live births per Shiite
household. The comparable figure for Lebanon's Sunnis is about five; for
Christians and Druze, about two. These numbers must ultimately count
against an outmoded constitutional order geared to favor Christians first,
Sunnis second, Shiites third.

But even if Lebanon cannot escape its Shiite destiny, it is not ordained
that it must also become a Hezbollah state, taking its orders from Tehran.
So what are the U.S.'s policy options?

Inside Lebanon, they are few. No American president will send American
troops back to Beirut and risk a reprise of 1983. Supplying the Lebanese
army is a nonstarter; it is no longer clear whose side that army is on.
Should the U.S. arm the anti-Hezbollah factions in the event of an all-out
civil war? Some of them, like Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces, have
well-earned reputations as war criminals.

A more productive thought comes from Dwight Eisenhower, who observed that
"if a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it." The reason the U.S. lacks for
options in Lebanon is because it has no policy toward Syria.

In 2003, Congress passed the Syria Accountability Act, but the
administration has observed only its weakest provisions. They could be
enforced in full. A Syria Liberation Act, similar to the Iraq Liberation
Act of 1998, would be a step forward. So would international sanctions for
Syria's violations of the Nonproliferation Treaty, exposed by Israel in
its raid last year on an unfinished nuclear reactor. Bombing the runway of
the Damascus airport for the role it plays in serving as a conduit for
Iranian arms to Hezbollah would also be an appropriate signal of American
displeasure.

None of this is likely to happen, however. U.S. policy toward Syria will
continue to vacillate between partial engagement and partial ostracism,
achieving neither. And Lebanon will continue its transformation into
Hezbollahstan, a sad fate for a country that might have stood for
something fine.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com1

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on
Opinion Journal2.

And add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum3.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121063617750986741.html


Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto: bstephens@wsj.com
(2) http://online.wsj.com/opinion
(3) http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php? t=2516






<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?