Who is this paramilitary extra-governmental terror organisation that has occupied Southern Lebanon for the last six years in preparation for this war without the Lebanese military or the Southern Lebanese or Robert Fisk taking any action against them?Just who in hell are they, this organisation funded from Iran and supplied from Syria not to build civilisation but to attack Israel and other western targets (yet seemingly exempt from analysis or criticism themselves)?
In answer to that primary question 'The Objective Standard' points to an excellent Daniel Byrman piece from Foreign Affairs in 2003 'Should Hezbollah Be Next?' Here's the briefest of excerpts:
In the U.S. demonology of terrorism, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are relative newcomers. For most of the past two decades, Hezbollah has claimed pride of place as the top concern of U.S. counterterrorism officials. It was Hezbollah that pioneered the use of suicide bombing, and its record of attacks on the United States and its allies would make even bin Laden proud: the bombing of the U.S. marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and the U.S. embassy there in 1983 and 1984; the hijacking of TWA flight 847 and the murder of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem in 1985; a series of lethal attacks on Israeli targets in Lebanon; the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992 and of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center in 1994."And here is a paragraph on Iran's profound support of Hezbollah..." Read on for more.More recently, Hezbollah operatives have plotted to blow up the Israeli embassy in Thailand, and a Lebanese member of Hezbollah was indicted for helping to design the truck bomb that flattened the Khobar Towers U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia in 1996. As CIA director George Tenet testified earlier this year, "Hezbollah, as an organization with capability and worldwide presence, is [al Qaeda's] equal, if not a far more capable organization. I actually think they're a notch above in many respects.
LINKS: Hezbollah analyzed - 'Principles in Practice,' the blog of 'The Objective Standard.'
Should Hezbollah be next? - Daniel Byrman, 'Foreign Affairs'
RELATED: War, Israel, Politics-World, History-Modern
Picture Credits: Cartoon from 'Hellblazer.' 2003 Hezbollah swearing-in ceremony from 'Aussie News & Views'
6 comments:
PC, you may be interested in this link
2 points regarding the link posted in the comment by "judge the obscure":
1. It shows how innocent people are affected by conflict on both side of the border
2. It shows how cowardly the murderous Israeli soldiers are, they are in complete fear of receiving the same punishment they are dishing out to the Lebanese. Criminals will always be cowards.
Regarding Hizbollah, they are not pioneers in suicide bombing. The Tamil Tigers and Kamekazi pilots were the pioneers of suicide attacks. Give Hizbollah and Hamas the artillary of the Israeli army and the support of a super power then let's talk about who plays a dirty war.
No no mike - JUDE the Obscure. Not judge. JUDE! However, after reading your post, you may be interested in sending up a prayer to St Jude (the patron saint of hopeless cases).
Mike said...
[ It shows how innocent people are affected by conflict on both side of the border]
That is well known. Don’t restate the obvious. Come and say something that no one here knows about.
Mike said...
[It shows how cowardly the murderous Israeli soldiers are, they are in complete fear of receiving the same punishment they are dishing out to the Lebanese]
No, Israeli soldiers are courageous in combating terrorism from Hezbolla. IDF are not in complete fear, because they know that any war with its enemy it will always come on top.
Mike said...
[Criminals will always be cowards.]
No criminals are people like you who criticize Israel from a far and had not experienced the chaos caused by missiles that rained down on Haifa, Tel Aviv, etc. How about this proposal. You volunteer yourself to the IDF that you want to lock yourself in a building that within range and direct target from Hezbolla missiles. Let you experience first hand what an Israeli citizen go thru in their daily lives about the non-stop missile strike from Hezbolla. Say, you will have an agreement with the IDF that you will remain in that building of the Hezbolla targeted area, until such a time where a cease-fire is implemented. If you will say no, to the proposal, described above, then you are one of the real cowards, simple as that.
Mike said...
[Regarding Hizbollah, they are not pioneers in suicide bombing. The Tamil Tigers and Kamekazi pilots were the pioneers of suicide attacks.]
Irrelevant. Does it matter? Suicide bombing causes deaths to innocent civilians, end of story.
Mike said...
[Give Hizbollah and Hamas the artillary of the Israeli army and the support of a super power then let's talk about who plays a dirty war.]
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. Where did you get such bizarre idea? You must have been asleep during the technology revolution within the last 20 years or so. Israel is a small country but they are leading at the forefront of technology revolutions. This shows that the people of Israel have brains compared to its enemies that surround itself. This means, that if Israel and its enemies are provided with same weaponries from a super-power, Israel will still come out on top. WHY? Because modern weapons is only a part of the solution for victory in the battlefield and not the total solution. The brains of the IDF personals will see them defeat their enemy; even the enemy has the same state of the art war machines as the IDF. When the USSR was a super-power, they supplied weapons to Israel’s enemies, the sukhoi jets, the MIGS, the tupolev aircrafts, the T-72 tanks and so on. The Israeli with their F-16s , F-14s managed to shoot all the Syrian MIG jet fighters, without a single loss of aircraft during the 1960s & 1970s war. Does that tell you something? It is the brains that win the war at the end helped by modern weapons and not the modern weapons. Besides if the US will stop supporting the Israeli militarily, the Israeli themselves will still invent state-of-the-art weapons that are in the same par and capable as the US made ones. Again, this is due to the brains of Israeli researchers. Israel is a nation of modern technology inventions. They will stand on their own 2 feet if not supported by a super-power. Do want to know the reason? Follow, the description below.
Israel is a small country (comparable to NZ in population), but the freedom that its citizens have, thus allow them to innovate. You might be wondering why Israel is the only country in the whole mid-east that IBM chose to establish a research centre there at Haifa. IBM realised that Israel’s education systems over-produced the number of PhD graduates in computing technology per head of population’s even more than most European countries. This vast available human resources for computing technology, is what made Israel appeal to IBM to tap into and set up an R&D centre there. There are a number of cutting-edge IBM software products, which were developed at IBM Haifa. There is no such centre in any Arab country, and you can only infer why.
The other notable fact about Israel’s modern technology revolution are the number of peer-review publications that come out from their R&D industries. I am amazed at the number of peer-review publications that are being published from Israel. There are tons of engineering & science papers ranging from modern electronics to state-of-the-art computing technology. I have never been to Israel, but someone who scour peer-review computing journals looking for interesting algorithm to implement for the type of work I do, I have to say, that Israel’s researchers have made their mark on the world stage of cutting-edge technology. Some institutions in Israel that I am aware of, because world-class researches are being done there are Ben-Gurion University, Technion Institute of Technology & Tel Aviv University. There are a huge number of papers appeared in engineering, science, computing technology coming out from these 3 institutions in Israel. The number of technology peer publications is directly correlated to the advancement of technology in any society. I have noticed similar situation from Ireland. Research papers produced from Ireland is huge, as I have seen papers coming out of different Irish Universities. So, Israel will be Israel with or without the support of the US, because the citizens of Israel have brains where they can design state-of-the-art weapons to defend themselves against its enemies.
Here are some of the peer publications coming out of Israel in the field of computing & artificial intelligence (AI). A lot of modern weapon systems of today adopted AI technology and you can figure out that the Israelis can invent superior technology themselves without the help of the US, in comparison to its enemies, where inventing how to make suicide belt is more important. A society that hell-bent on inventing how to mask a suicide belt from being detected will always be a society that follows, and not leads and that means, all technologies that they used are bought (or borrowed) from other societies (from the WEST).
You can find these periodical series at Auckland University, School of Engineering library. In that library, try looking for NZ published research in the same computing peer review periodicals and to your surprise, it is less than 5. In comparing to the number of published papers originated from Israel, you will be shocked that there are more than 100. Israel & NZ are comparable in population size, but Israel is far more innovating than us.
Some Computing Peer-Review Publications Originated Israel
[1]"FIGHTING TERROR IN CYBERSPACE"
http://www.worldscibooks.com/compsci/5934.html
[2]"INTRODUCTION TO PATTERN RECOGNITION"
http://www.worldscibooks.com/compsci/3641.html
[3]"NEW APPROACHES TO FUZZY MODELING AND CONTROL : Design and Analysis"
http://www.worldscibooks.com/engineering/4446.html
[4]"ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE METHODS IN SOFTWARE TESTING"
http://www.worldscibooks.com/compsci/5549.html
[5]"DATA MINING IN TIME SERIES DATABASES"
http://www.worldscibooks.com/compsci/5210.html
"COMPUTATIONAL WEB INTELLIGENCE
Intelligent Technology for Web Applications"
http://www.worldscibooks.com/compsci/5525.html
[6]"Decomposition Methodology for Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
Theory and Applications"
http://www.worldscibooks.com/compsci/5686.html
[7]"GRAPH-THEORETIC TECHNIQUES FOR WEB CONTENT MINING"
http://www.worldscibooks.com/compsci/5832.html
falafulu, I'm sorry you had to waste so much effort into writing your post.
Regarding the cowardness, I lived in Baghdad during the 1990 Gulf war, so don't you talk to me about rockets flying over your head. At least what Israel receives are primitive rockets compared to what rained on Baghdad in 1990. Also, for your little bet regarding joining the IDF, if I joined a murderous gang then I've entered the cowardly state of mind of a criminal, I will kill everything that may hurt me.
You are absolutely right regarding the Arabs lacking in technological success, that is a true reflection of the image today. It's something that will take them plenty of time to get over, but the opression of their countries by the United States and their best buddy Israel, and the acceptance of their leaders to this opression is making things a heck of a lot harder.
I have to say, the world is doing a good job at moralizing the killing of Lebanese people - they seem to be playing a very insignificant role in this conflict, even though they're the ones paying the expensive price.
"the world is doing a good job at moralizing the killing of Lebanese people"
Yup. I buy it. The Hez are mostly Lebanese. The Lebanese government does nothing to stop the criminal militias. The Lebanese voted in some Hez as part of the government. The 3500 rockets launched so far have come from Lebanese territory, mostly Lebanese towns and villages.
What do you expect?
So Israel should just wait for the "Lebanese" to acquire even more weapons?
Personally I think the US should have several carrier groups off the coast pummelling all of Lebanon. After all the Hez bombed their marine barracks and their embassies and did other stuff. Get the Hez out of Lebanon much like the Japs were driven from Manila in WW2. Once the problem is approached seriously then the nonsense will stop.
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