Landing at Beirut’s international airport, Ahmadinejad’s motorcade passed near the site where Hizbullah murdered 241 American marines and 58 French soldiers in dual suicide truck bombings in September 1982. These peacekeeping forces had been dispatched to monitor the exit of Yasser Arafat and the PLO, following the Israel-Lebanon war, and to assist in restoring peace to this small, battered country.
But the void left by the PLO departure, and subsequent withdrawal of American and French forces, was quickly filled by Hizbullah, born during that war. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, emboldened by the shah’s overthrow and eager to export their ideology across the Middle East, seized an opportunity to plant revolutionary seeds. Lebanon, a nation torn by civil war, was particularly vulnerable to outsider machinations, especially any seeking allies intent on Israel’s eradication as part of the larger crusade to spread radical Islam across the region.
From my op-ed in today’s Jerusalem Post, examining the ramifications of Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Lebanon.
I don’t think many will contradict me if I say that the verb “resist” is usually transitive. That means, for example, that it doesn’t make sense for me to praise “Mike’s resistance” unless I am sure that my interlocutor knows about Mike’s attempts to stop his landlord from evicting him.
Continue reading ‘Resisting What In Lebanon?’
There’s a school of thought, if I may so dignify it, that holds that there’s nothing racist or fundamentally objectionable about anti-Zionism because opposing Zionism just means being opposed to a political system. The collapse of the Soviet Union is often proferred in this context as an example of one political system being replaced by another. “So what’s the problem?” they say, “After Zionism is defeated all the people currently resident in what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories will be able to live together in peace and equality”.
Continue reading ‘Ahmadinejad: An Honest Anti-Zionist’
Now that UNIFIL has substantially endorsed Israel’s account of yesterday’s fatal shooting on its border, a couple of thoughts…
Continue reading ‘Israel, Lebanon And Deterrence’
A deadly conflict in Lebanon could derail the prospect of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, thus boosting Hamas at just the time that the Obama Administration is urging the PA to drop its reticence. Iran also has a vested interest in opening up a western front. In the last fortnight, a host of countries from the United States to the European Union to Japan have added a new layer of sanctions to those already agreed by the UN Security Council in response to Tehran’s continued nuclear defiance. And Hezbollah - as Sheikh Naim Qassem confessed in a 2007 interview with Iranian broadcaster Al Qawathar - invariably does Iran’s bidding, to the point of securing clearance for its operations from Iran’s leaders.
From my latest piece on The Huffington Post.
The IDF has released a photograph of Lt. Col. Dov Harari, who was killed today in an unprovoked attack against the IDF by the Lebanese army.
Note that Colonel Harari is standing here in front of a monument to the Warsaw Ghetto fighters. You can make out the name of Mordechai Anielewicz, who led the Ghetto’s fight against the Nazi occupiers. For those who don’t read Hebrew, the cover on the Torah scroll he is carrying bears the name of Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who perished in the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003.
Continue reading ‘Dov Harari: Another Victim of Hezbollah and its Allies’
This morning’s deadly clash between the Lebanese army and the IDF isn’t the first time that fatalities on a contested border have resulted from attempts to deal with an inconveniently located tree.
Continue reading ‘Israel, Lebanon, Korea, Border Clashes And Trees’
This is piece by Kenneth Bandler of AJC is cross-posted from JTA.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is not likely to take a seat at the U.N. Security Council’s horseshoe table, but the Hezbollah terrorist organization he has led since 1992 now has a toehold inside the world body’s most prestigious room.
Continue reading ‘Hezbollah gains a toehold inside U.N. Security Council’
War, when practised by Israel, is frequently seen as having paradoxical consequences. The more often it inflicts damage and defeat on its enemies the stronger they are held to become. Never mind that Egypt and Jordan long since grew sick of defeat and signed peace treaties with the Jewish state, never mind that Syria, with the partial exception of the First Lebanon War, hasn’t risked a direct confrontation with Israel since 1973 and never mind that part of the leadership of the Palestinians accepts Israel´s existence; victory is still seen as making Israel weak and its enemies strong.
Continue reading ‘Long Live the Dahiya Doctrine!’
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We often hear that violence breeds violence, that if states use it against their enemies then they only succeed in radicalizing those enemies and storing up trouble for the future. This view is usually held to be self-evidently correct and not to require either supporting argumentation or consideration of alternative analyses. It is a thesis frequently resorted to by those commenting on the use of force by Israel.
Continue reading ‘A Thought About the Lebanese Elections’
The anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian bloc has won around 70 of the 128 seats in Lebanon’s election. More here.
Writing in the Washington Post, former President Jimmy Carter says the advancement of human rights was a cornerstone of United States foreign policy until the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Continue reading ‘Jimmy Carter: Human Rights and the Middle East’
The appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff hasn’t taken long to bring the creepy crawlies of racial hatred out from under the nearest rock. An Argentine national newspaper has today headlined a piece about him with the words “The ‘Jewish Rahmbo’ brings more war.”
Continue reading ‘More Reaction to “Rahmbo”’
Israel, not before time, is switching from the cheap and nasty imported cluster munitions which have caused such problems for civilians in south Lebanon, to domestically produced alternatives which come closer to working as they are supposed to.
Continue reading ‘Cluster Munitions That Work’
There’s an excellent paper here by Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman about the military performance of Hezbollah in its 2006 conflict with Israel. Its main focus is on the extent to which this performance represented a shift on the part of the Shiite militia from the sort of irregular warfare long practised by terrorists and guerillas, to a more conventional form of fighting, such as that which has usually been been the preserve of the armies of nation states.
Continue reading ‘Hezbollah in South Lebanon, 2006′
