Outcry over Lebanon

August 16, 2006

Outcry over Lebanon

Shock, anger and disappointment were felt by many inside and outside Israel – by Israel-loving Jews and Israel-loving Christians – at the unsatisfactory and premature outcome of Israel’s latest war.

The nation has been severely shaken, and a process has already begun that could well lead to a new political and military change of direction, possibly even a change in Israel’s government.

Many people, among them Lebanese – especially that country’s real Christians who have suffered for years from the Hizbollah and other Muslim extremists occupying their country – are also deeply disappointed in the half-baked outcome of this recent war.

To give you a glimpse of the feelings and opinions, chiefly Israeli and Lebanese, I have listed some of the most remarkable heartfelt outcries expressed by them:

Joseph Farah writes (in WorldNetDaily, August 2006)

“When Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization tried to take over the country and make it his terrorist playground, nobody cared.
When people were dying by the thousands in the civil war, nobody cared.
When Syria had its boot on the neck of its tiny neighbor for 25 years, nobody cared.
When Iran dispatched Hezbollah terrorists into the country to undermine home rule by Lebanese, nobody cared.
When Muslims chased millions of Christians from the country, tipping the balance of power, nobody cared.
But now, all eyes are on Lebanon.
Do you know why?
Because Israel has tried to clean up this hornet's nest. Yet all we hear about is how many Lebanese are dying.
The whole world is going nuts over this "slaughter."
Does any of this make sense?
Do you think those screaming about the bloodshed in Lebanon really give a hoot about Lebanon? If so, where have they been for the last 30 years?
Why is Lebanon the top story in every newscast? Why is Lebanon on the front page of every newspaper? Don't you get the impression that the violence there is probably worse than anywhere else on the planet from this focus?
Clearly it is not.
And the only difference is who's doing the butt kicking in Lebanon.
As for me, an American of Lebanese and Syrian heritage, I don't want to see a "cease-fire." I want to see Lebanon freed of the terrorist blight, once and for all. I want to see Lebanon freed from domination by Iran and Syria. I want to see Lebanon be Lebanon. I don't want to see Lebanon suffer for another 30 years. It's time to clean up the mess and allow this poor, little country to heal.
And that means getting rid of the disease of Hezbollah – now.”

And the courageous Brigitte Gabriel, a Christian Lebanese writes:

“While the world protected the PLO withdrawing from Lebanon in 1983 with Israel hot on their heels, another more volatile and religiously idealistic organization was being born: Hezbollah, "the Party of Allah," founded by Ayatollah Khomeini and financed by Iran. It was Hezbollah who blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in October, 1983 killing 241 Americans and 67 French paratroopers that same day. President Reagan ordered U.S. Multilateral Force units to withdraw and closed the books on the marine massacre and US involvement in Lebanon February 1984.

The civilized world, which erroneously vilified the Christians and Israel back then and continues to vilify Israel now, was not paying attention. While America and the rest of the world were concerned about the Israeli /PLO problem, terrorist regimes in Syria and Iran fanned Islamic radicalism in Lebanon and around the world. Hezbollah's Shiite extremists began multiplying like proverbial rabbits, out-producing moderate Sunnis and Christians. Twenty-five years later they have produced enough people to vote themselves into 24 seats in the Lebanese parliament. Since the Israeli pullout in 2000, Lebanon has become a terrorist base completely run and controlled by Syria with its puppet Lebanese President Lahood and the Hezbollah "state within a state."

The Lebanese army has less than 10,000 military troops. Hezbollah has over 4,000 trained militia forces and there are approximately 700 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Southern Lebanon and the Beka’a Valley. So why can't the army do the job? Because the majority of Lebanese Muslims making up the army will split and unite along religious lines with the Islamic forces just like what happened in 1976 at the start of the Lebanese civil war.

It all boils down to a war of Islamic Jihad ideology vs. Judeo Christian Westernism. Muslims, who are now the majority of Lebanon's population, support Hezbollah because they are part of the Islamic Ummah-the nation. This is the taboo subject everyone is trying to avoid. The latest attacks on Israel have been orchestrated by Iran and Syria driven by two different interests. Syria considers Lebanon a part of "greater" Syria. Young Syrian President Assad and his Ba'athist military intelligence henchmen in
Damascus are using this latest eruption of violence to prove to the Lebanese that they need the Syrian presence to protect them from the Israeli aggression and to stabilize the country. Iran is conveniently using its Lebanese puppet army Hezbollah, to distract the attention of world leaders meeting at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, from its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Apocalyptic Iranian President Ahmadinejad and the ruling Mullah clerics in Tehran want to assert hegemony in the Islamic world under the banner of Shia Mahdist madness. Ahmadinejad wants to seal his place as top Jihadist for Allah by make good his promise to “wipe Israel off the map.”

No matter how much the west avoids facing the reality of Islamic extremism of the Middle East, the west cannot hide from the fact that the same Hamas and Hezbollah that Israel is fighting over there, are of the same radical Islamic ideology that has fomented carnage and death through terrorism that America and the world are fighting. This is the same Hezbollah that Iran is threatening to unleash in America with suicide bomb attacks if America tries to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapon. They have cells in over 10 cities in the United States. Hamas, has the largest terrorist infrastructure on American soil. This is what happens when you turn a blind eye to evil for decades, hoping it will go away.”

Suzy Goldy insightfully writes:

“It has been a continual downhill fall, from their fundamentally flawed Oslo Plan to the dances of Arafat, to giving weapons to the Palestinians to getting out of Lebanon and allowing Hezbollah to arm for years with 12,000 missiles, to getting out of Gaza while uprooting and abusing peaceful Jewish Farmers and on and on until their incompetent handling of the current war with Hezbollah.

It is unbelievable but it has taken the Israeli Leftists and intellectuals over 55 years of wars, terror attacks and Oslo to finally realize the Arabs mean what they say – that they want to destroy (D-E-S-T-R-O-Y) Israel!!! Even Amos Oz and the “Peace Now” think-tanks finally get it!!!!”

Rachel and Moshe Saperstein formerly from Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif write:

“Moshe and I have the remains of a Kassam rocket which exploded near our home in Neve Dekalim. The words Al Kuds were printed on its tail fins. Al Kuds is Arabic for Jerusalem. The message is quite clear. The war was not about Gush Katif. It was about Jerusalem. Just as the war in the north is not about Lebanon. It is a war to destroy Israel. Last year the people of Israel and Jews from abroad chose to ignore the message. They let Gush Katif fall. Today our country is in ruins.
Last week a plot to destroy airliners from Britain to the United States was foiled. The message is clear. The war, of which ours is a part, is of the east determined to destroy the west. The west chooses to ignore the message. Just as Gush Katif led straight to Lebanon, so the war against Israel will lead straight to the war against the west.
While the war rages in the north, we have been receiving signals that Syria is stockpiling huge quantities of weapons along its border with Israel. The weapons are deadlier and have a longer range. Yet our prime minister still speaks of his ‘convergence’ plan to remove 100,000 Jews from Judea and Samaria and to give our Biblical homeland to our enemies, bringing the heartland of the country into the range of enemy weapons. Win or lose, the Arabs win.
Is it any wonder that we, the refugees of Gush Katif, are still angry, hurt, bewildered and horrified by the results of our expulsion?
Excuse me if I’m still crying. When we see the direct results of this horrible crime of expulsion against us now visited on the entire people of Israel, of course I cry. When I recall that our rabbis and political leaders worked with the government to commit this crime, yes I cry. When I recall that our soldiers and police chose to carry out this crime, I cry. And today I cry as I see innocent Israelis left without food and water in bomb shelters. And when our young soldiers are killed and wounded, I cry.
When we begged, pleaded and warned the Jewish world that this is what will eventually happen if we are expelled, we were met with indifference. The Jews would not listen to us. Today they rush to raise money for the refugees of the north huddled in their shelters. Monies that will largely disappear into organizational coffers as did most of the funds raised for us.
To those who criticize my outcry, my “whining”, my despair, please understand I do it for you, the next victims of Islamic hatred. The Sudden Jihad Syndrome shooting in Seattle will be repeated many times over.
No more prizes to our enemies! No Convergence Plan!! At stake is not the survival of Judea and Samaria. At stake is the survival of Israel. At stake is the survival of our world.”

And the forthright courageous journalist Ari Shavit wrote in Ha’aretz August 13th 2006:

“A simple thing happened: We were drugged by political correctness. The political correctness that has come to dominate Israeli discourse and Israeli awareness in the past generation was totally divorced from the Israeli situation. It did not have the tools to deal with the reality of an existential conflict. It did not have the tools to deal with a reality of an inter-religious and inter-cultural conflict. That is why it focused entirely on the Palestinian issue. It made the baseless assumption that the occupation is the source of evil. It assumed that it is the occupation that is preventing peace and causing unrest and perpetuating the instability.

On the other hand, the Israeli elites of the past 20 years have become totally divorced from reality. The capital, the media and the academic world of the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, have blinded Israel and deprived it of its spirit. Their repeated illusions regarding the historical reality in which the Jewish state finds itself, caused Israel to make a navigational error and to lose its way. Their unending attacks, both direct and indirect, on nationalism, on militarism and on the Zionist narrative have eaten away from the inside at the tree trunk of Israeli existence, and sucked away its life force. While the general public demonstrated sobriety, determination and energy, the elites were a disappointment.

Instead of being constructive elites, in the past generation the Israeli elites have become dismantling elites. Each in its own area, each by its own method, dealt with the deconstruction of the Zionism enterprise. Step by step, the top 1000th percentiles abandoned the existential national effort.

They stopped doing reserve duty, they stopped sending their sons to the fighting units. They mocked those officers who warned about unilateral withdrawals. They mocked those officers who warned that the emergency warehouses were emptying out and the enemies were becoming stronger. And they deceived themselves and those around them that Tel Aviv is in fact Manhattan.

Israel tried with all its soul and all its might to be Athens. However in this place, in this era, there is no future for an Athens without a speck of Sparta. There is no hope for a society-of-life that does not know how to organize itself to deal with death. Therefore, after decades during which the right and the left and the center took Israeli power for granted and wastefully exploited it, now there is no escaping the need to place the renewed building of Israeli power at the top of the agenda. We are returning to the encounter with our fate; returning to what is decreed by the reality of our lives.”

And a courageous journalist in Beirut wrote: (English – Translated from the French by Llewellyn Brown)

“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 that 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.

Lebanon a victim? What a joke!

Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed; it was no more than a hologram. At Beirut innocent citizens like myself 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 . 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 US 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 shiah 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?

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.

I will end this all with a very serious and alarming quote from another Arab Youseef Ibrahim on August 7th, 2006.

“For years, Israel claimed that its survival was at stake, surrounded as it was by Arab armies. In fact, it had already destroyed each of them, in a matter of days. Now, however, anyone can see that Israel is indeed facing an existential threat - call it death by a thousand paper cuts. Israel's economy and a million of its citizens in the north cannot survive a war of attrition. Unless it is reinstituted with extreme ferocity, Israel's aura of invincibility will give way to a feeding frenzy of Jihadi sharks and the collapse of a peacefully inclined but weak Lebanese government.

The apocalyptic scenario of an enemy within and a Shiite militia without comes with impressive numbers to back it up. Together with Hezbollah's sister Lebanese Shiite militia, Amal, and 1 million Shiites in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran's combined Shiite population of 100 million looms large. This huge force is poised to fight foes selected by the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, and his masters.

I am not an alarmist, just an egoist. For after these jihadi hordes finish their work in Lebanon and Iraq, they'll come for the rest of us: moderate Arabs, secular Arabs, Christian Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Druze, and eventually the Sunni Muslims (whom they are already cutting to pieces in Iraq).

In this "Spartacus"-like Shiite uprising, which began with the Iranian Revolution of 1979, those hanging on crosses all the way to the gates of Rome will be all the non-jihadists among us. This time around, the barbarians at the gate aren't just coming for the Jews, but also for what is left of Arab secularism and liberal Islam. That, again, is why a cease-fire will not do.”

If we were to affix red pins to wherever jihadists are operating today on a map of the Middle East, red would be the color of Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. So, once again, a cease-fire will not do.

If the mythology of Hezbollah survives the war in Lebanon without a demonstrable humiliation or defeat, the notion will spread that jihadists don't need armies, just some fighters and a bit of momentum.

That momentum has spread to Al Qaeda, which is now rallying to Hezbollah's side, as well as Hamas; the Muslim Brotherhoods of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria; Iran's mullahs, and all the jihadi franchises around the world. This is why a cease-fire will not do in the Israel-Hezbollah war.”

What can one add to all these words of outrage and of sorrow? I feel like crying like Jeremiah: “O my soul, my soul I am pained in my very heart. My heart makes a noise in me. I cannot hold my peace, because You have heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.” Jeremiah 4:19

Only G-d Himself can save Israel out of her present predicament! May we all fervently pray for that to happen pleading His mercy which endures forever!

Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center

INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN ZIONIST CENTER
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Gershon Salomon, chairman of the Temple Mount Faithful, once invited me to accompany him in Jerusalem for a brief meeting with Jan Willem van der Hoeven, as a member of the Temple Mount Faithful.