I haven’t said much over here about the complete chaos going on in the Middle East — Kate (for readers who don’t venture over to my pad, my wife is half Lebanese) hasn’t heard any more information about her relatives who live over in Lebanon. Her family members from the U.S. — and other Alabamians they know — who were caught over there made their way out a few days ago, over land by car to Jordan, flew from there to Paris, then on to the States. (I was in Birmingham visiting when a lot of this was going on, see posts here and here).
For her relatives who live there, as Lebanese Christians, it doesn’t look good. They are caught in the crossfire, their homes being obliterated as Hezbollah and Israel duke it out — and the runways, bridges, ports in Beirut are being destroyed, preventing escape.
Lebanese men walk past the smoldering rubble and debris of destroyed buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. (AP Photo/Issam Kobeisi)
The Maronite Catholic Patriarch of Lebanon, Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, met with Condi Rice to plead for some kind of intervention; he has since returned to Lebanon and is expected to chair an emergency meeting of the Maronite Bishops Council.
He couldn’t have left this meeting with Rice feeling very confident about what was going to happen to the Christians there (they only make up about a 1/4 of the population) after this feeble exchange, after the flip.
SECRETARY RICE: I am so very pleased that you could join me and I am, of course, very concerned about the events in Lebanon. I’m very concerned about the people of Lebanon, about Lebanon’s freedom and democracy and a Lebanon where all Lebanese can prosper. And we are, of course, working very hard to make certain that Lebanon retains its sovereignty. We’re working very hard to try and minimize the impact of the current conflict on the Lebanese people. And I want you to know that we’re not only working hard, but we’re also praying for the people of Lebanon.
MARONITE PATRIARCH SFEIR: Thank you. Thank you for the action you have taken in favor of this small country but there are many difficulties. The world says the Resolution 1559 will it be applied.
SECRETARY RICE: Yes.
MARONITE PATRIARCH SFEIR: But it is not up to the Lebanese Government to apply it. It is so weak to do so. There is another way to apply this, but I do not know how. But our interest is that all the citizens will be equal (inaudible). When some are having arms and the others have not there is no equality and I’ve said this a long time that — how to apply this I don’t know. (Inaudible) perhaps, some other — some pressure to (inaudible).
SECRETARY RICE: Yes. Well, the international community has to help you.
MARONITE PATRIARCH SFEIR: Exactly. Exactly.
SECRETARY RICE: I mean that’s it, the international community must insist on the enforcement of 1559 which we, the international community, passed. And so we will work.
MARONITE PATRIARCH SFEIR: There’s a better way.
SECRETARY RICE: Yes, we will work.
MARONITE PATRIARCH SFEIR: Thank you.
Condi and Dear Leader plan to mind-meld about this on Sunday with his close family friend Prince (”Bandar Bush”) bin Sultan, chief of the Saudi National Security Council. Now THAT will really be helpful. (AP):
Announcing plans earlier for a Sunday meeting that Bush and Rice will have with Saudi officials, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the idea was “to provide the president and Dr. Rice a chance to continue to strategize with a key partner in the region on a diplomatic solution that will address the root causes of violence and terror in the region.”
The levels of complexity in this situation are so difficult to muddle through. It’s difficult to watch, seeing how people who have no dog in this hunt — and no real way to defend themselves — get blasted away. The home of the abovementioned Maronite patriarch is among the towns shelled.
Among the Christian cities shelled is Junieh, north of Beirut along the Mediterranean coast, regarded as the “Jewel of Lebanon” due to its natural setting. A towering statue of the Virgin Mary overlooks the city, called “Our Lady of Lebanon.”
…The Israelis argue they shelled the historic town because of concern over Hezbollah’s use of the port to bring in arms or take out the kidnapped Israeli soldiers.
Now, a predominantly wealthy Christian sector in Beirut has come under Israeli bombardment and the Israelis have shelled the small town of Zahle in the Bakaa Valley north of Beirut. During the Lebanese Civil War from 1975 to 1990, devout Christian residents in Zahle successfully repelled Syrians who sought to occupy the town. At the time, the Israelis were major supporters of the Christians.
Unlike Hezbollah, there is no Christian militia that can take on the Shiite terrorist organization.
There were air raids near that town of Zahle; this is where a branch of Kate’s relatives live. One bombing this week destroyed trucks carrying only medicine and food. Kate, who is checking all the time for news on what is going on, hasn’t heard any word about how those folks are doing.
Sigh. It’s all a big mess, and quite frankly, the U.S. looks impotent, because, well our government really can’t stop what is, at its root, a longstanding conflict over religion and territory.
A shopkeeper talks on the telephone as blood is seen on the floor at the scene of a rocket attack in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, Israel. REUTERS/Yonathan Weitzman
20 Responses to “Impotence”
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The Hell our government can’t stop it. They could stop funding the IDF, to start with.
a longstanding conflict over religion and territory.
religion is actually that involved, that’s just an Isreali/arab government framing because it helps sell it to their own citizens/foreign powers.
Palestinian jews and christian are as much a target in palestine as the muslims, and the muslims are really semitic when you want to get right down to it.
It’s jsut a political/resources thing, which makes it even worse because it’s all just so petty and greedy
I don’t think our government wants to stop it. This is their best chance to force a confrontation with Iran, and the neocons desperately want that.
God, do the Bushies add up bodies and feel like they’ve accomplished something? It seems like the more people die, the better they feel—unless they’re fetii, of course.
I am, of course, very concerned about the events in Lebanon. I’m very concerned about the people of Lebanon, about Lebanon’s freedom and democracy and a Lebanon where all Lebanese can prosper. And we are, of course, working very hard to make certain that Lebanon retains its sovereignty. We’re working very hard to try and minimize the impact of the current conflict on the Lebanese people.
‘We’re just, y’know, not working hard enough, or concerned enough, to actually do anything to stop the Israelis from blowing holy hell out of innocent Lebanese civilians.’
I am really sick and tired of hearing how America is concerned about the Lebanese civilians, concerned about preserving Lebanese democracy, recognising its borders, blah blah blah. Let’s face it, the Israelis are applying the same blisteringly ignorant and idiotic strategy the Americans pulled on Iraq; bomb the hell out of the civilian population, claim you’re doing it for their own good, expect, for reasons beyond anyone living in the real world, that once you’re done you’ll be greeted with hugs and flowers. Y’know what collectively punishing the Lebanese for Hezbollah is going to get Israeli? A lot more support for Hezbollah. And that’s if they stick to just air assaults; if Israel actually invades Lebanon, which is looking likely, and the Lebanese army tries to stop them, which they really have no choice but to try, there’s going to be two results; first, the IDF is going to massacre the ill-equipped, ill-trained Lebanese army, and second, the Lebanese are going to know that all Israel’s high talk about respecting their borders and supporting their state are the PR doubletalk that they are.
If it wouldn’t be such an unimaginable tragedy, I’d almost be rooting for it. I’m sick of seeing twenty Lebanese for every one Israeli civilian brushed off as a ‘measured’ response….
According to Juan Cole, about 40% of voting-aged lebanese are christians of one description or another. 22% are maronite catholics, others are catholics, greek and armenian orthodox believers.
Just today I read that we are sending more precision guided missiles to Israel. Make no mistake, we’re complicit is what’s happening. American support is one thing Israel cannot do without.
precision guided missiles
*snorts* Yeah, right. Get back to me when Israel isn’t killing more civilians ‘by accident’ than Hezbollah is on purpose.
Y’know what collectively punishing the Lebanese for Hezbollah is going to get Israeli? A lot more support for Hezbollah.
Mossad did everything in its power during the 90’s to kill pacfist anti-occupation forces in palestine.
Never assume that Isreal doesn’t want a more powerful hamas/hezbollah, becasue that’s the main thing keeping the Isreali and their international allies’ military industrial complexes going strong, the first world gets the arm sales and their newest toys tested for them in live conditions, and Isreali middle men and the army commanders get promotions and fat fat pay checks.
There’s a creepy symbiosis between terror scare utilising governments and terrorist organisations that is really too obvious for my liking.
Never assume that Isreal doesn’t want a more powerful hamas/hezbollah
Because, y’know, without either Hamas or Hezbollah (are those really fungible in your mind?) there’s no other reason at all for Israel to spend money on its military. None. Zip. There’s simply no other military threat in the entire world.
This is their best chance to force a confrontation with Iran, and the neocons desperately want that.
They want it on their own terms. The Jews are supposed to shut up and meekly obey their Christian allies, so that the whole conversion on Judgment Day thing comes off all right. They’re not supposed to do things FOR the neocons.
We should be, and should have been, funding the actual Lebanese government and strengthening them against Hezbollah. It’s disgusting that civilians are being killed and that their government isn’t able to drive out the terrorists who are the real targets.
There’s simply no other military threat in the entire world.
There’s no other threat that they can engage on as favourable terms or with as little risk to themselves. The arab nations’ armies may be inferior, but they’re not that inferior; engaging them is still dangerous, especially with the threat of nuclear proliferation in the region looming so severely. Terrorist/resistance groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, however, provide live-fire targets that are little to no danger, giving an excuse to test out new weapons systems on a foe that might do some damage to the civilian population, but is no real danger to the military.
I’m not saying that’s what’s happening; I’m just saying, ‘Israel and the MID wants a target/victimizer’ isn’t such an insane idea as you make it sound.
Oh, nicely done. “I’m not really saying that’s what’s happening, I’m just hinting at it strongly so that I can plausibly deny actually claiming to have out-and-out said so.” The classical rhetorical techniques are the best.
What FoolishOwl Said.
Also: why is everyone talking only about Lebanon being bombed, even though Civilians in Gaza have been killed in pretty big numbers since this started, too? Is it only not Okay when Isreal crosses a border to murder people?
How can we possibly strengthen the Lebanese government against Hezbollah? Hezbollah gains strength from popular support, this is going to make it go away? If you talk to young Lebanese, a lot of them regard Hezbollah as national heroes for driving off Isreal the last time their country was bombed and invaded and occupied. The Lebanese government can barely hold on to power and there’s nothing we can do about it. If this doesn’t plunge Lebanon into civil war we’ll be lucky.
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know, by Alexander Cockburn
Well, we *could* stop slaughtering Arabs in Iraq just long enough to tell Isreal to knock off slaughtering Arabs in Lebanon, but we probably won’t. Unless maybe if somebody explains to Congress that there are a lot of Christians in Lebanon and most weapons can’t be programmed to only kill Muslims.
The Lebanese government can barely hold on to power and there’s nothing we can do about it.
There’s always *something* we can do with the brain trust that’s running this country. Maybe we can invade ourselves, depose the government and install Ariel Sharon instead. They love him in Lebanon, that will be our most amazing success yet.
Just a comment:
The CIA World Factbook for Lebanon states that Lebanon is 39% Christian, not 25%.
I meant to clarify — the Maronite Catholic population is about 25%:
Some numerical estimates have ranged from 1.5 million to 7.5 million, but the exact population is unknown. It is estimated that 640,000 to 850,000 remain in Lebanon where they constitute up to 23% of the population.
we’re also praying for the people of Lebanon.
Yeah, that’ll do a lot of good.
R. Mildred: When you refer to Palestinian Jews, are you referring to Jews in Gaza or the West Bank that primarily identify as Palestinian and are refugees there (not a part of and Israeli settlement)? If so, why do you think such Jews exist? I ask because I was under the impression that they did, but have recently had that challenged and can offer no tangible evidence, only testimonies.
Easy there, mythago. I’m not being some kind of sneaky anti-semite, I really am just saying that there’s logical support for the idea, regardless of who’s doing it, but that I really don’t know enough about the particular workings of the Israeli MID to say that’s their motivation. If you want me to come out and say something blatantly, though, I will say that Israel’s actions in Lebanon remind me a hell of a lot of the early American invsasion of Iraq, which really was built on the tripod of giving huge amounts of cash to the MID, getting an excuse to flex some military muscle against an inferior and largely harmless enemy, and rousing the homeland by waving the bloody shirt. Hell, they even have the same stupid ‘we’re invading to save them’ and ‘they’ll thank us when this is over’ rhetoric. So tell me, what, exactly, am I supposed to think?