Sabra and Shatila massacre, 1982.
Even though Christians carried it out,
Israel can possibly be blamed.
So this is the only massacre the world ever talks about.
Muslim massacre of Muslims:
War of the Camps, Lebanon, 1985-88.
4,000 people killed in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
(Including in Sabra and Shatila!)
Israel cannot be blamed so no one cares.
"An entire family had been killed, the Can'an family, four children all dead, and the mother, the father, and the grandfather. The mother was still hugging one of the children. And she was pregnant. The eyes of the children were gone and their limbs were cut off. No legs and no arms. It was awful."
"But on that day, when the final onslaught came, hundreds of the Christians were killed. Father Labaky goes on: 'The attack took place from the mountain behind. It was an apocalypse. They were coming, thousands and thousands, shouting
'Allahu Akbar! God is great! Let us attack them for the Arabs, let us offer a holocaust to Mohammad '
And they were slaughtering everyone in their path, men, women and children.'
Whole families were killed in their homes. Many women were gang-raped, and few of them left alive afterwards."
UNIFIL
is the only engagement of the Irish army that I think is actually
harmful and should stop.
Everyone should simply support Israel
against its enemies.
We should not be neutral.
UNIFIL do not help the IDF fight Hezbollah.
(Just as previously they did not help the IDF fight the PLO.)
They do not help disarm Hezbollah.
They in effect give cover for Hezbollah re-arming and re-building their military infrastructure in South Lebanon.
(Just as previously they in effect gave cover to PLO attacks on Israel and on Lebanese Christians.)
They restrict IDF operations against Hezbollah.
(Just as previously they restricted IDF operations against the PLO.)
During the Israeli invasion in 1982,
UNIFIL (including Irish troops)
were actually under orders to try to stop the Israeli force.
UNIFIL are harmful and should be disbanded.
The Irish army force
should be brought home from the Lebanon.
No brave Irish soldier should risk his life for the UN's false political view
of the Israel-Lebanon situation.
I support the IDF in Lebanon.
I don't support the UN mission.
It should be shut down, and all UN troops should leave.
Irish troops have been in the Lebanon for
a completely insane
years.
47 Irish soldiers have died on the Lebanon mission.
But this is all deaths, including
medical problems, falls, gun accidents,
road accidents,
and in one case murder by an Irish soldier.
In fact, 17 Irish soldiers were killed by hostile fire or bombs. They are as follows.
8 killed by anti-Israel forces (Islamic terrorists).
2 soldiers killed probably by the PLO in 1981.
Aonghus Murphy, killed by an anti-Israel militia in 1986.
3 soldiers killed by a Hezbollah-backed militia in 1989.
Peter Ward, killed by Hezbollah in 1992.
Sean Rooney, killed by Hezbollah in 2022.
1 killed by unknown group.
Michael Nestor, killed by an unknown group in 1982.
2 killed in crossfire.
Michael McCarthy, killed in crossfire between Hezbollah and the SLA in 1991.
Billy Kedian, killed in crossfire between the Amal militia and the SLA
in 1999.
Some count this as a direct killing by the SLA rather than crossfire.
As a result of the above Irish deaths in Lebanon at the hands of Israel
or Israel-backed Lebanese Christians,
many in the Irish military have become anti-Israel,
and of course pro-UN.
Being Irish military is now almost a red flag for me
for bad opinions on the Middle East.
Examples:
Irish UNIFIL soldiers honour their dead at the memorial in
Tibnin,
Lebanon, 2011.
No more should be put at risk.
Israel should manage her own security.
Irish troops should come home.
From UN.
Also found here.
Hezbollah (or Hizbollah)
are an Islamic terrorist group
funded and armed by the terrorist state of
Iran.
They act as an agent of Iran's foreign policy in Lebanon
and as part of Iran's northern front against Israel.
They are supported by the terrorist state of Syria.
They aim to destroy the country of Israel,
expel or exterminate the Jewish population,
and enslave Lebanon under Islamic rule.
Lebanon will never be free as long as Hizbollah exists.
Another protester:
"I love America. Tell Bush to come here. Thank him, thank Chirac.
This is a great day for all Arab people."
More protesters:
"Thank's Free World.
... We thank Mr. Bush for his position.
... We love the American people. Please don't let Bush forget us. Your support is very important.
... We want to change. We need freedom. Please don't let Bush forget us.
... Our hope is America. We believe in democracy in the Middle East."
The openly pro-jihad Irish leftist
Richard Boyd Barrett laughs at the Lebanon revolution, 14 Mar 2005.
He is delighted that Islamist Hezbollah is fighting back:
"US propaganda about democracy in Lebanon has been answered by 500,000
[Hezbollah supporting]
Lebanese on the streets rejecting calls for Syrian withdrawal
and telling the US to stay out of their affairs."
He smears the democracy protesters:
"The smaller US-supported protests were in large part organised by the same Christian Phalange
forces that carried out the massacre of Palestinians with Israel's assistance
in Sabra and Shatila in 1982."
The same day he wrote this,
1 million brave Lebanese came out to protest for democracy, against Syria
and against Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
Many people were struck by a quote from
Walid Jumblatt,
the America-hating, Jew-hating,
Lebanese Druze leader, Feb 2005:
"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq.
I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them,
it was the start of a new Arab world.
The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing.
The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."
He also
claims now to admire the Iraqi election,
yet in 2004 he was a
supporter of the Iraqi "resistance"
who were trying to stop democracy!
With American troops on his border ready to intervene,
the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad
is getting scared:
"Please send this message: I am not Saddam Hussein. I want to cooperate.",
said the unelected thug.
The revolution was a moment in time, but it did not last.
By 2011, Hezbollah was in the Lebanese government.
By 2023, Hezbollah controlled much of Lebanon.
The Israel-Hezbollah
conflict continued sporadically after the 2006 war,
blowing hot and cold, with Hezbollah largely deterred,
until the explosion of violence in 2023.
From the paper:
"The paper .. shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness
and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control
of the daily message of journalism and propaganda."
From commentary:
"Kalb painstakingly details how
Hezbollah exercised absolute control over how journalists portrayed its side of the conflict, while Israel became "victimized by its own openness."
...
Kalb .. points to the challenges to journalists in future "asymmetrical" conflicts
in which a radical militia provides access only to journalists agreeing to the strictest of rules.
Journalists did Hezbollah's work, offering little resistance to the Islamic militia's effort
to portray itself as an idealistic and heroic army of the people,
...
With Hezbollah's unchallenged control of journalists' access within its territory,
it managed to almost completely eliminate from the narrative crucial facts,
such as the fact that it deliberately fired its weapons from deep within civilian population centers,
counting on Israeli forces to have no choice but defend themselves by targeting rocket launchers
where they stood.
...
armed Hezbollah fighters were all but invisible to the media.
Also invisible were Hezbollah's thousands of rockets and rocket launchers
strategically positioned near schools, hospitals and apartment buildings.
...
The Harvard paper shows the need for journalists to brace themselves and remain vigilant
when they cover conflicts between open societies on one side,
and media-controlling militias on the other."
Hizbullah would have surrendered if the fighting had continued for another 10 days
- Interview with Hizbullah officer, July 2007.
"The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization".
He said that Hizbullah
"had been running low on food and water and facing rapidly diminishing arms supplies."
He said Hizbullah
"were forced to fire Katyusha rockets from inside urban populations because of the IDF's efficiency in destroying launchers minutes after a launch had been detected.
He said that when the gunmen relocated to cities and villages, they knew innocent civilians would be hurt as a consequence."
Jan 2010 report.
Hezbollah now has long-range rocket sites in central Lebanon, not just in the south.
Hezbollah rocket sites possibly extend north of Beirut.
Hezbollah has about 40,000 rockets.
Feb 2012: Israeli Intelligence estimates that 1 in every 10 houses in south Lebanon is a missile storage facility or launch pad.
Optimism:
On the other hand, Hizbollah clearly doesn't want another round
at the moment.
They have been quiet since 2006.
Nasrallah's Defeat in the 2006 War, Eyal Zisser, Winter 2008-09:
"since the 2006 war, quiet has prevailed along the Israeli-Lebanese border such as has not been known there since the late 1960s, prior to the arrival of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) forces in Lebanon. This quiet derives above all from Hezbollah's wariness of Israel."
Israel estimates they killed about a third of Hezbollah's trained fighters.
They did not even help their terrorist brethren in
Gaza in 2008-09.
Victor Davis Hanson, January 14, 2009, on Israel doing to Hamas in 2008-09 what it did to Hizbollah in 2006:
"[Israel] are gambling that they can establish another quid-pro-quid protocol in which a Hamas or Hezbollah understands that every time they wish to start another round of killing and fighting, they will kill only a few Israelis at a cost of hundreds of their own and billions in material losses".
Pro-freedom and anti-freedom forces in Lebanese politics:
Lebanon in 2012 is a terrorist state:
Hezbollah (part of the Lebanese government) suicide bombs Jewish tourists on a bus in
Bulgaria, July 2012.
From here.
Beirut explosion, Aug 2020.
A load of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate was
removed from a ship in 2013
and held in Beirut port for years.
It seems likely, though unproven, that Hezbollah was holding onto it
for terrorist uses.
In 2020 it
accidentally exploded.
It was one of the
largest accidental non-nuclear explosions
ever.
A picture paints a thousand words:
U.N. "peacekeepers" salute the coffins of Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists, July 17, 2008
(on a trailer with a picture of slain Hezbollah leader
Imad Mughniyeh),
in the
Samir Kuntar
prisoner swap between Israel and Lebanon.
And these pointless UN troops will "disarm" and "contain" Hezbollah. Sure.
AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari.
See here.
Even worse,
the commander of UNIFIL
was due to appear at the Lebanese state "celebrations" for the returned Jew-killers.
Disgusting.
A picture paints a thousand words:
Hizbollah flag flies at
U.N. compound on Israel-Lebanon border, 2002.
Photo by Paul Vallely.
From here.
See
Tell It to the Marines, Jed Babbin, 26 July 2002.
After the barbaric Hamas attack on Israel
in Oct 2023,
Israel looked weak to its jihadist enemies,
and hence ripe for attack.
Hezbollah immediately started attacking Israel,
and a low-level war emerged on the Lebanon front,
while Israel tried to deal with Gaza first.
Due to unbelievable supply-chain sorcery,
Israel detonated thousands of Hezbollah pagers at the same time,
killing over 30 and injuring around 3,000 Hezbollah fighters
with almost no civilian casualties,
and no Israeli casualties.
What an incredible attack.
Israel even managed to seriously injure
Mojtaba Amani, Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon.
Pure genius.
It was perhaps the most targeted, least indiscriminate
major attack on the enemy in the history of war.
And how humiliating for the targets.
The big brave terrorist, viciously injured and mutilated in his own home by his own pager, like an idiot.
In the "strong horse, weak horse" thinking of the Middle East,
Israel looks like a strong horse, and
Hezbollah looks like a useless weak horse.
Ibrahim Aqil killed, 20 Sept 2024
(Chief of Staff of Hezbollah).
He was killed at a meeting along with many senior commanders.
Hassan Nasrallah killed, 27 Sept 2024
(Leader of Hezbollah).
Also killed along with many senior commanders.
Ali Karaki killed, 27 Sept 2024
(Commander of Hezbollah's Southern Front).
In 10 days in Sept 2024, Israel completely decimated Hezbollah.
Amazing power and skill.
And a sign that Israel is serious now, after 7 October.
Enemies will receive an overwhelming, disproportionate response.
Mohammad Afif killed, Nov 2024
(Chief Propagandist and Spokesperson of Hezbollah).
Israel will destroy mosques if it needs to in Lebanon, as in Gaza.
After the barbaric 7 October attack, Israel is not messing around.
If mosques are used for terror, they are levelled, both in Gaza and in Lebanon.
Israel is not messing around any more.
Hezbollah must withdraw north of the Litani River, with nothing gained,
and most of their leaders killed.
Seems like a clear defeat for Hezbollah.
Elder of Ziyon, 1 Dec 2024,
argues this was a big win for Israel.
People were afraid Hezbollah would inflict massive damage on Israel, with thousands of Israeli dead.
But Israel managed to crush Hezbollah before that happened.
Arguments why this is "a massive victory for Israel"
by Shaiel Ben-Ephraim.
Including:
"Destroying Hezbollah is impossible. ... Hezbollah is present not only all over Lebanon but also in Syria. Israel would have to occupy two entire countries to even dream of destroying the organization."
"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
- Hussein Massawi,
senior Hezbollah leader (until killed by Israel),
summing up what Islamists want from the West.
"The Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities.
...
So long as there is a state called Israel, disasters and suffering will continue.
This is a cancerous body in the region.
... When a cancer is discovered, it must be dealt with fearlessly; it must be uprooted.
...
Anyone who reads the Koran and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions
sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and slaughter
the Jews carried out throughout history.
...
Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with them,
or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948
but even in a small village in Palestine,
because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment."
-
Hassan Nasrallah,
leader of Hezbollah (until killed by Israel), Apr 2000.
"It is an open war until the elimination of Israel
and until the death of the last Jew on earth."
- Hezbollah,
March 1992,
taking responsibility for the suicide bombing of the
Israeli Embassy in Argentina.
"If they" [the Jews]
"all gather in Israel,
it will save us the trouble of going after them world wide."
-
Hassan Nasrallah,
leader of Hezbollah, October 2002.
See here.
"a few years ago, a great French philosopher, Roger Garaudy, wrote a scientific book.
He did not offend, curse, or insult anyone. He wrote a scientific research of an academic nature,
in which he discussed the alleged Jewish Holocaust in Germany.
He proved that this Holocaust is a myth."
- Hassan Nasrallah,
February 2006.
Someone called
"The AngryBlogger"
complains about the one-sidedness of these quotes,
and I reply.
His blog seems to have vanished,
so here is the discussion:
Jews Turn into Apes and Pigs in an Clay-mation Film for Children on Hizbullah TV.
Al-Manar TV (Hezbollah TV).
Dec 7, 2005.
This
portrays the story in the Koran where
Jews are turned into apes and pigs.
"Jews Murder A Christian Child and Use His Blood for Passover Matzos."
The
blood libel
in the Syrian drama "Al-Shatat",
first aired on Al-Manar TV (Hezbollah TV) in 2003.