Holocaust survivor stages hunger strike for Gaza

Originally posted by thedeadtruth
reply to post by mmiichael

 

At least I have the moral fortitude to call it like it is. No pussy footing around my opinions like you.



Here is a questions for you I bet you do not answer.

(1) Do you believe God made promises and promised land to the Jews and no-one else ?

It is a Yes or No question.

who gives a stuff what the Jews claim some irrelevant mythical fantasy they themselves made up may or may not have said according to them. They can just change it tomorrow to say "God said all iPhones belong to Jews" - thats the power of making up stories, peddling them for so long you end up believing them - no matter how incredibly senile they sound.

My God told me " All of Saudi Arabia belongs to me" - I have a piece of paper which i wrote this down upon - hence proving my claims. I am now amassing weapons, which I will get from the US by convincing them they are evil if they do not support me as 50 million non jews were killed by Germans in the second world war and therefore I deserve to have Saudi Arabia and the US has to help me otherwise they are just Anglophobes who are self loathing NAZIS - ......

Its pretty much the same.

Originally posted by audas

who gives a stuff what the Jews claim some irrelevant mythical fantasy they themselves made up may or may not have said according to them. They can just change it tomorrow to say "God said all iPhones belong to Jews" - thats the power of making up stories, peddling them for so long you end up believing them - no matter how incredibly senile they sound.

My God told me " All of Saudi Arabia belongs to me" - I have a piece of paper which i wrote this down upon - hence proving my claims. I am now amassing weapons, which I will get from the US by convincing them they are evil if they do not support me as 50 million non jews were killed by Germans in the second world war and therefore I deserve to have Saudi Arabia and the US has to help me otherwise they are just Anglophobes who are self loathing NAZIS - ......

Was this you PhD thesis argument at Yemen University?

Can you provide a coherent English translation?

I just found the open letter written by Gaza Freedom activist to Egypt President..thought you may be interested.

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT MUBARAK FROM THE GAZA FREEDOM MARCH

December 26, 2009

Dear President Mubarak;

We, representing 1,362 individuals from 43 countries arriving in Cairo to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, are pleading to the Egyptians and your reputation for hospitality.

We are peacemakers. We have not come to Egypt to create trouble or cause conflict. On the contrary. We have come because we believe that all people -- including the Palestinians of Gaza -- should have access to the resources they need to live in dignity. We have gathered in Egypt because we believed that you would welcome and support our noble goal and help us reach Gaza through your land.

As individuals who believe in justice and human rights, we have spent our hard-earned, and sometimes scarce, resources to buy plane tickets, book hotel rooms and secure transportation only to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza living under a crushing Israeli blockade.

We are doctors, lawyers, students, academics, poets and musicians. We are young and old. We are Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and secular. We represent civil society groups in many countries who coordinated this large project with the civil society in Gaza.

We have raised tens of thousands of dollars for medical aid, school supplies and winter clothing for the children of Gaza. But we realize that in addition to material aid, the Palestinians of Gaza need moral support. We came to offer that support on the difficult anniversary of an invasion that brought them so much suffering.

The idea of the Gaza Freedom March—a nonviolent march to the Israeli Erez crossing-- emerged during one of our trips to Gaza in May, a trip that was kindly facilitated by the Egyptian government. Ever since the idea emerged, we have been talking to your government through your embassies overseas and directly with your Foreign Ministries. Your representatives have been kind and supportive. We were asked to furnish information about all the participants—passports, dates of birth, occupations—which we have done in good faith. We have answered every question, met every request. For months we have been working under the assumption that your government would facilitate our passage, as it has done on so many other occasions. We waited and waited for an answer.

Meanwhile, time was getting short and we had to start organizing. Travel over the Christmas season is not easy in the countries where many of us live. Tickets have to be purchased weeks, if not months, in advance. This is what all 1,362 individuals did. They spent their own funds or raised money from their communities to pay their way. Add to this the priceless time, effort and sacrifice by all these people to be away from their homes and loved ones during their festive season.

In Gaza, civil society groups—students, unions, women, farmers, refugee groups—have been working nonstop for months to organize the march. They have organized workshops, concerts, press conferences, endless meetings—all of this with their own scarce resources. They have been buoyed by the anticipated presence of so many global citizens coming to support their just cause.

If the Egyptian government decides to prevent the Gaza Freedom March, all this work and cost is lost.

And that's not all. It is practically impossible, this late in the game, to stop all these people from travelling to Egypt, even if we wanted to. Moreover, most have no plans in Egypt other than to arrive at a predetermined meeting point to head together to the Gaza border. If these plans are cancelled there will be a lot of unjustified suffering for the Palestinians of Gaza and over a thousand internationals who had nothing in mind but noble intentions.

We plead to you to let the Gaza Freedom March continue so that we can join the Palestinians of Gaza to march together on December 31, 2009.

We are truly hopeful that we will receive a positive response from you and thank you for your assistance.

Tighe Barry, Gaza Freedom March coordinator
Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK, USA
Olivia Zemor, Euro-Palestine, France
David Torres, ECCP, Belgium
Germano Monti, Forum Palestine, Italy
Ziyaad Lunat, Gaza Freedom March, Europe
Ehab Lotayef, Gaza Freedom March, Canada
Alessandra Mecozzi, Action for Peace-Italy
Ann Wright, Gaza Freedom March coordinator
Kawthar Guediri, Collectif National pour une Paix Juste et Durable entre Palestinens et Israeliens, France
Mark Johnson, Fellowship of Reconciliation
Thomas Sommer, Focus on The Global South, India

Source: www.maxajl.com...

How stupid.

Why dont the palestinians do a hunger strike instead of an 85 yr old outsider.

[mod edit: irrelevant imagery removed]

Im sure they laugh to themselves.












[edit on 29-12-2009 by 12m8keall2c]

reply to post by mmiichael


Can you provide a coherent answer to my question ?

Or you going to squirm around it like a worm.

reply to post by GaryGlitterRules


When you are being deliberately starved of food and water by an occupying force on a daily basis, a hunger strike is not much of a statement.

Would you have said that to the Jews in the camps ?

Sicko.

I can remember being very impressed in 1971 by a holocaust survivor, Anna Taylor, who went on a hunger strike in Lafayette Park to protest the genocide in East Pakistan. At the time Washington was overrun by antiwar demonstrators so it wasn't well documented by the media, even in those days the media would carefully ignore key issues that the public wasn't supposed to know about. Three million people died in East Pakistan at the hands of the CIA-directed Pakistani Army as just another experiment in mass murder. It should be old hat by now.

One of my pet hates is the patriarchal system in India and Pakistan.

More people should speak out about it and shame them into chaging their ways. Glad to hear of someone who was once persecuted sticking up for someone else.

Better than the sick supremacist who in tun perpetrate the abuse.

It's amazing how these threads about the "evil" nation of Israel attract the same members using the same arguments through the same perspective over and over again. It seems almost like a fetish.

I think I can sum up pretty well what most of the people in this thread are implying. If I am off the mark, please correct me.

"The creation of Israel was illegal. They stole land from the Palestinians in 1948, and have continued to do so up until today. Because of this factor, Palestinians have the moral high ground to launch terrorist attacks against Israel, whether it be their army or civilians. Israel has no right to defend her land because all the land she has was obtained illegally. Those who feel Israel does have a right to defend the land that she now has are pro-genocide activists with no heart."

This is pretty much the backbone argument when anybody dares to defend Israel's right to exist, is it not? If this is the case, then there are MANY countries today that should give back land to the native people who originally lived there.

[edit on 29/12/2009 by Dark Ghost]

reply to post by Dark Ghost


You must have been reading only what you wanted to read.
selective reading I guess.

how many are going so far back as to the creation of israel?

most people are talking about the horror's of today and operation cast lead
and today's destroying 900 palestinian homes and building 700 jewish homes

stop the selective reading please

reply to post by ModernAcademia


this man has my respect. he understands whats happening.

anyone who can see what he has seen, and what we can learn from him.

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
reply to post by Dark Ghost

 

You must have been reading only what you wanted to read.
selective reading I guess.

how many are going so far back as to the creation of israel?

most people are talking about the horror's of today and operation cast lead
and today's destroying 900 palestinian homes and building 700 jewish homes

stop the selective reading please

Yes, but you are only highlighting one side of the conflict. Why was there no Operation Cast lead, no road blocks, no check points before the events of the 2nd Intifada? Why don't you do a bit of unbiased reading and see what events lead to the current situation. To say that Israel since its inception has sought the genocide of Palestinians is a blatant lie. Israelis and Palestinians lived in relative peace for years before the events of the 2nd Palestinian uprising.

Eh, what exactly is a "Jewish home"? I think you unintentionally let the cat out of the bag right then...

[edit on 29/12/2009 by Dark Ghost]

Originally posted by Dark Ghost
Eh, what exactly is a "Jewish home"? I think you unintentionally let the cat out of the bag right then...

Not at all bro

Ok so check this chain of events please

Israel will destroy 900 houses in Jerusalem
this thread

Israel to build housing in eastern Jerusalem

Israel has invited proposals to build nearly 700 new apartments in Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem.

jta.org...

Destroy 900 palestinian homes and build 700 new homes for jewish people instead

Israel: 16, 200 Jewish Immigrants Arrived in 2009

Israeli authorities say 16,200 Jews moved to the country in 2009,
it said in 2008, almost 14,000 Jews came to live in Israel

Sunday's statement said a total of 221,000 Jews immigrated over the past decade.

Israel offers automatic citizenship to Jews who move there. About 80 percent of the nation's 7 million residents are Jewish.

www.nytimes.com...

Interesting chain of events isn't it?

See i'm just making a wild guess perhaps that if they destroy homes only to rebuild them it's not for the same occupants.

Perhaps i'm wrong, what do you think?

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
reply to post by mmiichael

 

The Stern Gang was founded to fight against the British in Palestine, not the Nazis, and only the Arabs to a lesser extent.

This is documented as was the Stern Gang’s terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that functioned as the headquarters for the British Mandate.

Your arguments are always useless Proty because you just open the history box and pick anecdoteal examples to promote arguments.

At a n isolate period in time WWI- WWII, Jews were in conflict with Britain over immigration quotas to the British Palestine Mandate. The Stern Gang were 60-70 years ago. Repeat, 60-70 years ago. They're gone, things have changed. Britain has dissolved their colonial empire and has a different relationship with Jews of the world now.

Jusat like things are different in the Sinai peninsula. The Arabs in the West Bank occupied by Jordan 1950-66, reinvented themselves in 1967 as Palestinian homeless victims. They have mercilessly been manipulated as pawns for corrupt beyond redemption Middle East leaders. Iran is just the most recent.

The Middle East is culturally, politicially, intellectually, socio-economically Africa North. They will be drained of their vital resources and return to the poverty they have mired themselves in for a millenium.

Israel has done something with what it has in the last 60 years. Neighbouring Arabs nostalgic for the 7th Century, are still wrestling with their inability to win tribal wars against Jews war or even lose with dignity. Who loses wars and sits in camps for half a century?


You can open your toy box of historical factoids and try to show Jews worldwide are responsible for the abominable resource and domestic mismanagement of Middle East leaders since oil became the critical resource in the world.

But only the politically naive and haters on conspiracy sites buy into that currently popular mythology.

reply to post by mmiichael


Who might my arguments be useless for?

Lets see how on the money old Protoplasmic Traveler is and let us look at what the "Psuedo Intellectual Rabid Anti-Semites of the CIA had to say in 1947 regarding the Stern Gang"

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b47b421eccae.jpg[/atsimg]

Wow imagine that my Psuedo Intellectual Rabid Anti-Semite Knowledge comes from good old Langley Virginia and the CIA!

As evidenced through this Freedom of Information Act Document.

Go ahead Michael tell us how emotionally damaged they are and about their inferiority complexes!



Edit to add: By the way Michael the CIA considered a potential Zionist Jewish State a disaster in the making for both the United States and the Middle East.

This 17 page document rendered by the CIA in 1947 is amazingly prophetic in its assessment of just what effect a Zionist nation would have both on the United States and the Arab Middle East and the Muslim World in general.

It predicted that the Zionists would never be satisfied with the borders allotted to them through the British Mandate but would eventually never stop until they absorbed all of Palestine and likely beyond.

They predicted that this would eventually lead to distribution in oil supplies through both acts of sabotage and embargos and we have seen both over the years.

They predicted that this would lead to an ever increasing price and importance put on oil, and this has also come to pass.

They predicted that the chauvinists and religious moslem radicals would eventually supplant frustrated Arab Statesmen.

The document is available on Cia.gov and is a fascinating, insightful read that was written for the President of the United States.

Not only does it foretell of many of the consequences of the U.S. supporting a Zionist State in the middle east it highlighted the dangers to the U.S. of having one because of our infrastructure’s and economy’s dependency on oil.

This latter part made Operation Ajax and the Shah of Iran absolutely vital to U.S. strategic and economic interests to offset and mitigate the damage that they knew would be caused by the Jewish Zionist State to our own vital interests.

They also calculated and assessed the capabilities and dangers of the Zionist and Jewish Groups operating within the United States and the dangers of not appeasing them and the likely methods they would employ against the United States if we did not support the Israeli State.

The emotionally driven propaganda and blatantly manipulative efforts of the Israeli Internet Defense Force here on ATS is an absolute affront to intelligent people of moral integrity, intellect, wisdom and fairness.

I would like to say their arguments are useless but the reality is they are destructive and have had a deadly and costly impact not just here in the U.S. but around the world.
The shame is on those agent provocateurs and their emotional manipulations, frauds, lies, revisions, and attempts at emotional domination.

For shame!


[edit on 29/12/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
reply to post by mmiichael

 

Who might my arguments be useless for?

Lets see how on the money old Protoplasmic Traveler is and let us look at what the "Psuedo Intellectual Rabid Anti-Semites of the CIA had to say in 1947 regarding the Stern Gang"

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b47b421eccae.jpg[/atsimg]

Wow imagine that my Psuedo Intellectual Rabid Anti-Semite Knowledge comes from good old Langley Virginia and the CIA!

As evidenced through this Freedom of Information Act Document.

You prove my poits over and over again Proty.

A 62 YEAR OLD DOCUMENT - fer Chrissake.

Check your calendar. Mine say it's 2010 at the end of the week. The Stern Gang has receded into history. Out of operation since 1948.

The World has changed.

Oil has been discovered in vast quantities in the Middle East in the last half century. It has changed how their regional kings and ruling warlords operate.
It has change the political importance of this dead end of the developed world.

In the last 60 years a billion Muslims have been born. Most still live in Third World level poverty, ignorance, misery. But their whacked out corrupt beyond redemption leaders play power games fulfilling their tribal destruction fantasies on each other, Jews in the neighbourhood, Christians elsewhere - like America.

It's 2010. A lot has happned in the last decade. People everywhere - Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, are concerned some nutcase Muslim extremists with access to a nuclear warhead or two and might decide to blow up Bombay, London, Tel Aviv, New York, Tehran, Riyadh, who knows where.

Self-loathing anti-American Konspiracists feel compelled to kiss ass to every pleading innocent eternally victimized Muslim - and somehow explain it all away.

"It's a false flag." "The Jews are doing' it." "It's the CIA." "It's the NWO."

No one wants to be at war with Islam. But when people are attacked, intimidated, threatened, only the blind will ignore what is in their face.

reply to post by mmiichael


I guess you had trouble understanding the part that 62 year old document in fact outlines everything that has come to pass in the way of the ills you speak of as a direct result of the birth of an Israeli State.

Wisdom is timeless Michael.

The TRUTH is timeless.

The propaganda and emotional ploys that the Israeli Internet Defense Forces use come and go with the shifting of public opinions.

If you have not read the source document referenced you really aren't in a position to comment on it beyond the typical slanders and defamations always aimed at making the wise and the relevant seem anything but.

These tactics are as predictable as they are ineffective Michael. It’s just one more in an endless series of dismissive attempts to deflect away from the issues at hand and to try to turn the bad publicity that the truth creates for Israel in to a platform to disseminate unrelated propaganda and sell it through coordinated attempts at emotional domination.

Ultimately it will prove to be a failed and disastrous strategy that just allows bad policies and bad diplomacy and dysfunctional thinking to drag the world into a progressively worsening abyss that has no logical outcome other than an apocalyptical one.

If the actual agenda is phoenix oriented where through fire and chaos and destruction something better will emerge from those ashes and ruins I grant you it’s brilliant. To bad so many people have to first suffer and die in those fires, by the sword both mental and steel and love, wisdom, truth, and human decency have to perish along with it.

Your arguments are counterproductive in avoiding that disater. The choir that supports them is small yet the message is always one of extolling people to hate Muslims, to persecute Muslims, to not converse in productive ways with Muslims, ultimately to kill Muslims.

It is almost as if you imagine that all this is said in some kind of a vacuum that the Muslim world is unaware of and they have no idea of this warmongering, and fear mongering, and intense prejudicial hate against them in a war of Muslim attrition that the so called irrelevant CIA source document in 1947 predicted would be the eventual and only outcome of a Zionist Israeli State in the Middle East.

Wisdom and the Truth are in fact Timeless and for the Ages Michael. To believe otherwise is the folly of deluded and ego driven fools despots and tyrants.

The power of Wisdom and Truth is what the Zionist Internet Brigades try so hard to suppress in their attempts at emotional manipulation and domination and deflection. They do that for a reason.

As I have stated to you many times before Michael some people simply imagine themselves to clever for their own good.

I am not a shoe salesman mind you but it certainly appears to fit when it comes to Zionist propaganda agents!




[edit on 29/12/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

White supremacists

Black supremacists

Patriarchal supremacists

Zionist supremacists


They all end up winning a few battles but losing the war. Why ? Because the people will rise up and act eventually.

It is the one thing that helps me sleep,.....

THEY ARE ALL DOOMED TO GO DOWN IN HISTORY, JUST LIKE ALL THE REST.

I'll make a wager the descendants of the Stern gang. the Lenin gang have had a busy schedule of late.
And MM has no concept of the reality of history as Proto has pointed out repeatedly.
Be that as it may----
This thread is about a courageous lady of the elder age of wisdom.
She and the un- selfish, generous folks that strive to help folks in need is what this thread is about.
Sure it is a part of the cruel and unusual punishment of civilians that are suppressed by a rouge state
but I don't think that's the point here,
It should be about praise for a group of folks that give a damn about making a positive difference for their fellow human beings.
Hedy Epstien "YOU GO GIRL"

reply to ProtoplasmicTraveler

It's 2010 this week Proty.

Some things don't change. But the critical ones involving the Middle East have/

You hate Jews, use the word Zionists to get under the Political Correctness tripwire. There's no ambiguity to that. Everything the lunatic fringe Muslim leaders do you somehow rationalize as being a response to something some Jews did or said somewhere in the past.

You should really expand your horizons. Get a life.

The Muslim world is filled with many fine people. No one wants a war on Islam. But the unfortunate decisions and management styles of the leaders the Muslim world finds itself saddled with, will mean the destruction of many, possibly tens of millions. Almost all the innocent victims will be Muslims not involved in the decision process.

You're too mad-dog rabid to see what's really going on. And that's too bad. You want to implicate the American government in the self-destruct paths the Middle East kings and crooks in charge have chosen.

The US exploits these people's vulnerabilities and ignorance. But that is not news. The Russians do the same, the Chinese the Saudi kings.

Their only defense is to become smarter and stronger.

But Middle East leaders, even with their advantages of newly found oil revenues continue to be stupid and weak. It's not 1947 or 12 47 or 747 AD, it's 2010. To feed tens of millions you need modern agriculture and industry. Exchanges of goods. Education, technology, culture. Otherwise the best people will leave. It's been happening for half a century.

s self-aware self-preserving Muslim population is slowly figuring out what the problem is. But many still gravitate towards paternalism, admiration of brutal strong men. So the solution does not come quickly.

But there is only one solution "Throw the bums out." Representative governments and Western models are the only ones that keep tens of millions of people together.

It may be happening in Iran now. The unholy alliance of fanatical Ayatollah and their exploitive Revolutionary Guard may be gone soon. We can only hope.

Replaced by what, we don't know. But will be something better, because it couldn't be anything worse.

Here's an interesting perspective on what's happening in the volatile Middle East right now. You will hate and reject it because it doesn't paint the Evil Zionists picture you want to see. But I recommend reading and absorbing the message.

samsonblinded.org...

Peace, where from?

The peace process might turn either way. Arab governments have accepted Israel, but those governments are crumbling. We should expect Islamic revolutions in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. The last two are particularly doomed, like any monarchies. In Syria, the population will revolt against Alawite dominance.

The ayatollahs’ regime is crumbling, but at the same time it is taking over other states: Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Sudan. In Egypt, too, Iranian influence is rising. It remains unknown whether the Iranian satellite regimes will become viable before the ayatollahs lose their power. Hamas operated for many years without Iranian assistance before Israel assassinated the fiercely independent Sheikh Yassin, and Hezbollah also proved capable of surviving by selling drugs and low-level money counterfeiting.

In any entropic system, the overall trend is toward moderation, and we would expect the Middle East to moderate just as Europe did. On other hand, there will be many pangs on the road to moderation, and even Europe is arguably still capable of producing violent outbursts.

[...]

Even as Arab oil income is rising, it is falling in relative terms; Arab economies continue to shrink compared to Western ones. Oil buys the Arabs progressively less Western weapons and corporate shares. The dwindling of their oil income is particularly painful on the background of exploding Muslim populations and their ever-increasing demands for welfare. Rural populations stream into cities where they get used to welfare. The increased political awareness of the population requires the unpopular governments to continuously increase welfare allocations in order to buy compliance.

Economic troubles won’t preclude the Arabs from developing high-ticket nuclear weapons as the development became cheaper due to the proliferation of nuclear technology. Iran won’t become so poor as to be unable to spare a few hundred million dollars per year for subversive movements in other countries. If Israel’s nuclear deterrence holds, and wars are limited to conventional weapons, the economic downturn will preclude Muslims from maintaining capable armies, and diminish the chances of a large-scale war. On other hand, cash-strapped Iran waged a Chinese-style war with Iraq, in which the ayatollahs relied on insufficiently equipped but suicidally-minded soldiers. Though primitive mass armies might fight wars between Arab states, there is little chance of a similar attack on Israel: Egypt, potentially a Muslim Brotherhood country, cannot march its troops across the vast Sinai desert to attack Tel Aviv; Hezbollah cannot amass that many suicidal soldiers in laid-back Lebanon, and Syrians are very far removed from the level of religious indoctrination necessary to push them by the millions over the Golan Heights into Israeli population centers.

Whatever is the long-term trend, in the short term Israel’s enemies will become more radical. Iran is besieging Israel from almost all sides: Hamas is dependent on it for weapons, Hezbollah for money, Assad is just in love with the ayatollahs, and Egyptian radical groups have developed substantial ties with them. Bringing democracy to Lebanon and the Palestinian territories dealt a mortal blow to moderates: now they cannot brutally suppress their radical opponents and must compete with them in elections. Abbas cannot afford to be seen as less anti-Israeli than Hamas. He lacks Hamas’s credibility, which was won by unrelenting struggle against the Zionists and which can justify compromises. Abbas therefore cannot agree to any concessions whatsoever, ever the minor territorial exchanges that Olmert offered him. Even if Abbas signs a deal with Israel, even if he pushes it through his corrupt PLO Council, Hamas and PIJ won’t accept the deal—and it is only their acceptance which matters in terms of ending terrorism. Fatah’s younger terrorists of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Tanzim cannot look inferior to Hamas, and would join it in rejecting a deal with Israel—unless Israel cedes the Temple Mount to the Palestinians and allows potentially millions of refugees to return. Israel’s crackdown on Hamas in Gaza created a situation in which the terrorist group’s Syrian leadership became its international mouthpiece, and with Iranian help, the financier. Heavily dependent on Iran, and lacking independently minded leaders of Sheikh Yassin’s caliber, Hamas cannot be made to change its rejectionist stance any time soon—not until the ayatollahs’ regime falls down.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah has to remain militant. The terrorist group has developed a reasonably sophisticated military wing, but has no civilian agenda. In peacetime, when the Shiites do not need its protection from Israelis, Palestinians, or local Christians, Hezbollah has no platform with which to attract voters. Even though Lebanon slipped toward Islamization after much of its middle-class Christian population emigrated, the country is still far removed in its religious fervor from the Shah’s Iran. There are no significant centers of Islamic studies in Lebanon such as were available in Iran. Despite the influence exerted by armed fundamentalists, Lebanon remains a secular country. That, however, is not a guarantee against a Hezbollah takeover. The terrorist group has built a parliamentary bloc of over 30 percent, amassed significant arsenals, and infiltrated the US-backed Lebanese army, thus credibly positioning itself for a putsch.

Many revolutionaries have faced dilemmas similar to the Hezbollah’s: once they come to power, they have to enforce their values on society or they will quickly disappear in political competition. The Bolsheviks and ayatollahs imposed their values upon their respective societies, but Hezbollah stands very little chance of repeating their ugly successes. It is inconceivable that Lebanese Christians, Druze, Sunnis, and atheists would accept Hezbollah’s fervent religiosity or pan-Islamic patriotism. Hezbollah’s only option if it wishes to remain a prominent force is to continue its militancy. Judging by its tremendous military buildup in the absence of Israeli designs on Lebanon, the terrorist group clearly aims to take the fight into the Galilee, first to liberate former Shiite villages, then to return the refugees, and finally to help the Palestinians regain their entire country.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood might take power in transparent elections, or through riots if the central power is weakened; the first scenario is more likely. The Brotherhood will renounce the peace treaty with Israel, or at least circumvent it with extensive aid to Palestinian terrorists.

In Syria, young Assad is an admirer of Hezbollah and Iran. Less pragmatic than his late father, he is also smarter and more daring. It might be possible to woo Assad away from Iran with strong economic incentives

[…]

No one is willing to fight a war. Syria stands no chance against Israel. As for the guerrillas, a large-scale confrontation would turn them from an efficient terrorist force into an inept army. It took Khomeini’s persuasion to churn out tens of thousands of suicidal soldiers; Hamas and Hezbollah cannot scramble more than a handful of martyrs who only inflict statistically minor damage on Israel. The state of extreme hostility will persist, ruptured occasionally by violent outbreaks.

[edit on 29-12-2009 by mmiichael]