Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
What’s up on the Gender Inequity Front
by Trudy W. Schuett
John Stossel has a good piece on divorce and parental alienation here. Of course the thing that triggered the piece was the Alec Baldwin answering machine message. If you’re interested in showing your support for “deadbolted dads,” Alec Baldwin has a court hearing scheduled for May 4 at 8:30 a.m. at the Stanley Mosk Court House, Department CE60, 110 Grand Avenue, LA 90012. Members and supporters of NCFM, CRISPE, California Men’s Center and others will be there!
This week is National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. There are events acknowledging the week all over the country right now. It’s ironic that this week, the Yuma county attorney is having discussions with the Bill Kirkham family regarding a plea bargain for the woman charged with his murder. I’ll let you know the upshot of the discussions, but as Duane Kirkham, Bill’s brother (and BTW, pre-VAWA board member for Safe House, our local women’s shelter) said in an e-mail, “I'm thinking the Prosecutor doesn't want to do all the work that would be required to prosecute a Complex Case like this one.”
This is the second in a two part article. Read Part One, Where Kurdistan Meets the Red Zone, here.
KIRKUK, IRAQ – Kirkuk, like Baghdad, is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Car bombs, suicide attacks, shootings, and massacres erupt somewhere in the city every day. It is ethnically divided between Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmens, and is a lightning rod for foreign powers (namely Turkey at this time) that interfere in the city’s politics in the hopes of staving off an ethnic unraveling of their own.
The city’s terrorists are mostly Baathists, not Islamists, and their racist ideology casts Kurds and Turkmens as enemies. They’re boxed in on all sides, though, and have a hard time operating outside their own neighborhoods. In their impotent rage they murder fellow Arabs by the dozens and hundreds. They have, in effect, strapped suicide belts around their entire community while the Kurds and Turkmens shudder and fight to keep the Baath in its box.
Kurdish and Turkmen neighborhoods are safer than the Arab quarter, but the city is out of control. Car bombs can and do explode anywhere at any time.
I spent the day with Peshmerga General “Mam” (Uncle) Rostam and Kirkuk’s Chief of Police Major Sherzad at a house Mam Rostam uses a base in an old Arab neighborhood that now belongs to the Kurds. Just after lunch Major Sherzad’s walkie-talkie began urgently squawking.
“There has been a shooting,” he said. “Two men on a motorcycle rode down the street and fired a gun at people walking on the sidewalk. One of the men was apprehended. They are bringing him here.”
For some reason I assumed when the chief said “here” he meant the police station. He did not. He meant Mam Rostam’s.
“They will be here in two minutes,” the chief said.
“Here?” I said. “They’re bringing him here? To the house?”
“They will bring him here before taking him down to the station,” he said. “I’ll interrogate him here. I’m not going to feel good until I slap him.”
An Iraqi Police truck pulled up in front of the house and slammed on the brakes.
“Here he is,” the chief said.
I grabbed my video camera, flipped the switch to on, and ran out the door.
"If Turkey allows itself to interfere in the matter of Kirkuk, we will do the same…in Turkey." — Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani.
KIRKUK, IRAQ — Just south of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq's northernmost provinces lies the violence-stricken city of Kirkuk, the bleeding edge of Iraq's "greater" Kurdistan, and the upper-most limit of the asymmetric battleground known as the Red Zone. Kirkuk is claimed and counterclaimed by Iraq's warring factions and is a lightning rod for foreign powers — namely Turkey --- that fear a violent ethnic unraveling of their own that could be triggered by any change in Kirkuk's convulsive status quo.
I spent a day there with Member of Parliament and Peshmerga General "Mam" Rostam, Kirkuk's Chief of Police Major Sherzad, my colleague Patrick Lasswell, and our driver Hamid Shkak. You could stay a month in Kirkuk hunkered down in a compound or a house and not see or hear signs of war. But violence erupts somewhere in Kirkuk several times every day. If you go there with a Kurdish army general, as we did, and spend your day with the city's chief of police, as we also did, you will see violence or at least the aftermath of some violence. This isn't a maybe. So I brought my video camera as well as my Nikon along.
From the safety of the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya — where the war is already over — Kirkuk looks like the mouth of Hell. It's outside the safe fortress of the Kurdistan mountains and down in the hot and violent plains. The city doesn’t look much better up close, and you can feel the tension rise with the temperature in the car on the way down there.
Patrick and I woke Mam ("Uncle") Rostam first thing in the morning at his house in Suleimaniya. He told us we could follow him to Kirkuk, where he works every day, so we hired a world class driver to do the job.
Hamid Shkak spent years driving foreigners around war zones in south and central Iraq. He has more experience than anyone I know steering clear of IEDs, barreling through ambush sites at 120 miles an hour, and veering around spontaneously exploding firefights. He was perfect for the job, and we had little choice but to trust him and Mam Rostam with our lives.
Skywalk Real, Amazing. Still Damn Near Impossible To See Without Going There.
by Dean
So, it appears that the Grand Canyon Skywalk is real. After Peggy's investigation last year, it appears that the company making this thing, being two years late, finally managed to get a structure up.
Michael Demmons was also kind enough to email me this link about it, within minutes of Peggy sending her update to me.
Then my antannae began quivering: this was all well and good, but I examined both links carefully, and the supporting links. This thing is supposedly the 8th wonder of the World. An amazing and truly unique construction. So where the photographs?
I'm not alleging a conspiracy here. I'm certain the structure exists now, too many say they've seen it. But this has to be simply the worst, most incompetent job of marketing and press relations that I have ever seen in my life. To whit: where are the clear and impressive photos of the marvelous Skywalk?
The lack of any photo evidence--other than "artist's conceptions"--along with the apparently huge construction delays was what had me wondering what the heck was going on in the first place.
I understand that Arizona is a dark, primitive land steeped in backwardness and barbarity, and that the natives there fear the evil juju of a decent camera. Still, you'd think some Christian missionary somewhere would have managed to smuggle one past the guards in order to snap a few clear shots from a few different angles using a decent lens.
This is driving me batty. How can you have story after story after story about this amazing new structure, unique in world history and a huge tourist attraction, and not have any decent goddamned photos of the thing?
It's this that led me to wonder whether the whole thing was a business boondoggle/hoax in the first place--something some underfunded and/or unrealistic entrepreneur dreamed up but never actually produced, like the Moeller Sky Car.
When I first raised the question, the Grand Canyon Skywalk home page had no actual photographic evidence at all. Even now, it's mostly dominated by artist's depictions. Good lord. Who is in charge of this project? Where are the spectacular, awe-inspiring photos of this amazing and unique construction?
I repeat: I no longer doubt that it exists. But I wonder (A) who is the incompetent person on charge of press relations on this, and (B) why do Arizona reporters apparently not know how to use cameras?
I actually think this is a pretty cool construction project. I'm just dazzled at the fact that apparently no one on the entire internet--including the people who own this structure!--can supply a clear shot of this breathtaking marvel that's much better than your average smudgy picture of Bigfoot.
*Update*: Okay, here's a video. Which isn't exactly impressive, but hey, at least it's clearly Buzz Aldrin and he's walking on something. Note to Hualapai tribe: I can probably find you a cheap photographer who would give you shots that look like something more than an ex-astronaut walking around on a bridge with a microphone in his hand. Give me a call.
*Update 2*: Here is the very best photo I have managed to find so far, in all its glory and majesty:
Wow. Just... wow.
*Update 3*: Okay, this video is sort of cool:
Finally. That actually does look like something it would be cool to walk on. Not exactly like the artist's depictions, but nothing ever is.
I spoke recently with an Israeli Defense Forces intelligence officer about last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah in South Lebanon. He still serves in the IDF and therefore must remain anonymous. I’ll call him David, which isn’t his name.
David works in a fire control unit stationed in the Northern Command. During the war he managed intelligence pertaining to Hezbollah rocket fire, selected targets for air and artillery strikes, and occasionally assisted in real-time control of fire. He is familiar with some of the high-level decision-making and hints at some of what he knows that is officially classified.
MJT: Let's start with a general question. What, exactly, did Israel accomplish in the summer war with Hezbollah? Are there any tangible lasting benefits?
David: Well, to understand what was accomplished we need to look at the starting point. Virtually all Israelis were very happy the IDF withdrew from Lebanon -- many think it was foolish to have gotten in there in the first place and even those that don't agree we overstayed our welcome, so to speak. Following the pullout Hezbollah established itself very firmly in South Lebanon -- of particular worry to the military was their ground-ground rocket and missile array, ranging in various calibers and ranges. I cannot go into all the intelligence data, but Hezbollah's capability to hit Israeli population centers was well known for quite some time. So this was the primary problem -- only it was never tackled by any Israeli leadership, not that there was much that could have been done. That remains a problem today, though from what I hear they're having a much more difficult time restoring their abilities. I wouldn’t call it a success story, though. The problem's still there. Another worry was Hezbollah's attempts at kidnapping Israeli soldiers.
There have been several attempts made, and each one was more calculated and planned than the last. Apart from the famous instances in which IDF soldiers did in fact die or get kidnapped, there was one memorable attempt that was foiled due to good thinking and alertness in the tactical levels. There were also "anti-aircraft” barrages that hit inside Israel, killing one boy in one instance if I recall correctly. Hopefully, the last conflict sent a message that will make these acts less desirable.
There were also general shows of force at the border, usually organized "demonstrations" or throat-cutting gestures at soldiers from armed persons. There's a road that passes a few meters from the border and they made sure to build a position right on top it with Hezbollah flags, just as a gesture. We no longer have Hezbollah right on the border, and that is the most tangible benefit.
I’ll be spending some quality time in Iraq over the next two and a half months doing consulting work, journalism, and video – first in the northern Kurdistan region and then in Baghdad and the heart of the Sunni Triangle.
My first job starts two weeks from now and will be another private consulting gig in Kurdistan with my business partner Patrick Lasswell. This will be my fourth trip to the region, which is becoming a regular beat for me now. I’m more comfortable there than I was when I first visited. The people, the terrain, the logistics, and the job are all familiar. The learning curve has flattened out, which means I can multitask now.
Last time I went there as a consultant I had no time for reporting or writing. This time I will because I know how to squeeze it in, even though my first obligation will be to my employers, not to my blog. I won’t be able to write full time, but I will be able to give you something now and then.
This time I’m going to give you some video as well as writing and photographs. Stay tuned for taped interviews with Kurdish civilians and officials, and also some video postcards of what this place actually looks like. Kurdistan always shocks people when they see it for the first time. It doesn’t look anything like the hellish images that come out of Baghdad.
Power, Faith, and Fantasy -- An Interview with Michael Oren
by Michael J. Totten
PORTLAND, OREGON – Renowned American-Israeli historian and best-selling author Michael Oren is touring the United States promoting his new book Power, Faith, and Fantasy, a sweeping history of America’s involvement in the Middle East from 1776 to the present. It’s the first and only book on the subject ever written, and it’s current inching toward the top of the New York Times best-seller list for non-fiction.
I first met Michael Oren under Katyusha rocket fire when he worked as a Spokesman for the IDF Northern Command in Israel during last summer’s war against Hezbollah, and I met him again when he came to my home town of Portland, Oregon, last week on his book tour.
MJT: So tell us, Michael, why does America’s involvement in the Middle East 200 years ago matter today? What does it have to do with September 11 and Iraq?
Oren: Well it matters, Michael, because many of the same issues that Americans are facing today in the Middle East were confronted by America’s founding fathers – Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington. For example, they had to confront the issue of state-sponsored terrorism in the Middle East. They had to face a threat to the United States, and decide whether to generate military power and then project that power thousands of miles from the United States. They had to decide whether to involve the United States in an open-ended and rather expensive bloody war in the Middle East. This was, of course, the Barbary War, America’s first overseas military engagement and America’s longest overseas military engagement. It lasted from 1783 to 1815. During the course of this engagement, as my book shows, the United States was confronting a jihadist state-sponsored terrorist network that was taking Americans hostage in the Middle East. It’s very similar to what is going on today.
MJT: They were more than hostages, they were slaves, weren’t they?
Oren: They were slaves. But beyond the military component – the book is not a military history, it’s also a diplomatic, cultural, artistic, and economic history – I wanted to show Americans today that our experience in the Middle East has very deep roots. Overall it’s a story of magnificent things that America did for the Middle East. It wasn’t always about confrontation, it was also about schools and hospitals and building for development and artistic inspiration and cooperation.
BEIRUT – I met the wizened Druze warlord and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt during Hezbollah’s ongoing slow-motion putsch to topple Lebanon’s government. No other high-profile “March 14” leader matches Jumblatt’s fierce opposition to Syria’s Assad regime, its Iranian patron, and its Hezbollah proxy militia. He spends most of his time in his castle at Mukhtara high above Beirut in the Chouf mountains, but he took time out between meeting members of the Socialist International at his house in the capital to meet me for coffee in his salon.
Jumblatt’s history with the imperial Baath government is a long and twisting one. His father Kamal was assassinated by Syrian agents during the civil war in 1977. The details of the assassination are shrouded in mystery even today. In the most common version Baath-aligned terrorists in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party pulled the trigger. Another (unreliable) version of the story goes like this, as told to me by a young Druze friend while we stood on the murder site in the Chouf: Kamal Jumblatt was ambushed on the forested road by two Palestinian gunmen. The Palestinian hit men reported to Damascus after the deed was finished. Two Syrian exterminators then shot Assad’s Palestinian agents and buried them in the desert. The two Syrian hit men were then murdered by yet two more Syrian hit men, all the better to cover the tracks of original and cover-up crimes.
I don’t know what actually happened. Syria’s decades-long assassination and terrorist war in and against Lebanon has always been fought, serial killer style, from the shadows. Diabolical theories about the precise methods of Syrian terrorism serve Syrian interests just as much as the murders themselves serve Syrian interests.
Shortly after inheriting his father’s leadership position, Walid Jumblatt was summoned to Damascus by its ruthless ruler Hafez Assad. When he meekly objected to what the Syrian regime expected of him, Assad smiled and lovingly said “You know, Walid, I look at you sitting there and you remind me exactly of your dear father.”
A Lebanese friend drove me to his house and warned me that security would be tight at the gate. “The Syrians, Michael, if they catch him they will cut off his head.”
Sure enough Jumblatt’s security agents leapt from their plastic chairs and aggressively approached me at the entrance. They weren’t hostile, as Hezbollah’s security agents often are, but they moved fast as though they expected I might draw a weapon and open fire at any moment.
BEIRUT -- On March 14, 2005, Lebanon captivated the world when one-third of the country demonstrated in downtown Beirut and demanded free elections and the withdrawal of the occupying Syrian military dictatorship.
A nakedly imperialist Baath government was defeated by its foreign subjects, and it was defeated live on TV. Lebanon had pushed itself far out of the Middle East mainstream and liberated itself from what Ghassan Tueni calls "the great Arab prison." Later that year Ghassan would see his son Gebran, An Nahar newspaper editor and a member of Lebanon's parliament, murdered on a hillside road above the city by a Syrian car bomb. Beirut's spring was a short one, and may yet go the way of a similar uprising that exploded in Prague in the late 1960s before it was smashed under the treads of Soviet tanks.
The Assad regime in Damascus brooded over its loss of face, property, and cash flow in Lebanon, and responded with a vicious campaign of terrorism and murder in the streets of Beirut. The city started to look once more like its old frightening self when it epitomized urban disaster areas. Hezbollah's unilateral instigation of war with the Israelis and their ongoing now-violent push to topple the government make Lebanon look more like Iraq than it looks like Prague.
I've contributed to this image myself with my own writing and photographs, though I try not to do so. The unspoken media rule "if it bleeds, it leads" applies to blogs and independent journalists as much as it does to mainstream media reporters. Warmongers, terrorists, and jihadi fanatics are more interesting to read about than quiet shopkeepers who never hurt anyone and wished they lived in a normal country. I am well aware that my recent work portrays a skewed image of Lebanon, but it's hard to avoid in the media business.
So I met up with Eli Khoury, one of my old acquaintances from the Beirut Spring, who I met immediately after March 14 two years ago while the Syrians were still rulers of Lebanon. Eli was one of the elite of the movement back then. He still is today even while he and his kind get almost no press. They are, for the most part, staying home, hugging their flags, and waiting for the darkening Hezbollah storm to blow over or explode in conflagration.
BEIRUT – Hezbollah has killed more Americans than any terrorist organization in the world after Al Qaeda. In 1983 a suicide-bomber drove a truck into a U.S. Marine barracks south of Beirut and killed 241 Americans with a single gigantic blast.
President Ronald Reagan then withdrew American forces from Lebanon which had been sent as a peacekeeping force during the civil war. The U.S. won’t likely ever return. Hezbollah has calmed down, somewhat, and no longer poses a serious threat – military, terrorist, or otherwise – to the United States.
More Lebanese than you probably think want Americans to return, even so. Not the majority, to be sure, but a sizeable minority, perhaps no smaller than the those who wish to be ruled once more by the Syrians, or by the Iranians. You will meet these people if you go to Beirut, and you will meet lots of them.
One prominent Lebanese who wants to see the U.S. come back is Toni Nissi. He heads up the Lebanese Committee for UNSCR 1559, an NGO which advises and lobbies the Lebanese government and the international community for the disarmament of illegal militias in Lebanon as required by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559. Hezbollah, of course, is at the top of that list.
Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has ramped up his criticism of Toni and his NGO lately by bullying journalists into putting him on a blacklist and by denouncing him on television as “the Beirut branch of the Mossad.” Pay Nasrallah’s slander no mind. He also, hysterically, says Lebanon’s Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Seniora is a “Zionist hand” for slowly, with baby steps, moving toward Hezbollah’s disarmament.
If there were an appetite in the United States for more military action in the Middle East, Iran and Syria would be far more likely candidates than little Lebanon. The worst of Lebanon’s problems would largely disappear with the Syrian and Iranian regimes anyway if it comes down to that. An adventure in Lebanon would require effort more productively spent somewhere else.
Lebanon’s pro-American interventionists are worth listening to, even so. They have their reasons for wanting the superpower back in. Seeking foreign patronage is an old habit in that country. Many say it’s Lebanon curse, and they’re probably right. Either way it is, for good or for ill, typically Lebanese. Every major religious group in Lebanon – Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shia Muslims – are a minority. All have, or recently had, foreign sponsors. Those who don’t play along suffer relative to the others.
I met Toni Nissi in his office in Beirut. No Israeli flag hung on the walls, nor did portraits of Ariel Sharon or even George W. Bush. My American colleague Noah Pollak from Azure magazine joined us.
I went to South Lebanon looking for Lebanese civilians who witnessed the July War between Israel and Hezbollah and who could, perhaps, clarify some controversial claims. Did Israel bomb indiscriminately? Did Hezbollah use human shields?
Lebanese civilians, though, weren’t the only witnesses to the war. Hezbollah was there, too – although I’m officially blacklisted with the organization and am denied access to interviews.
The Israeli Defense Forces also were there. I found a soldier who spent the entire war in and out of South Lebanon. He was willing to talk to me by phone even though our interview was illegal – he’s still in the army and is not supposed to talk to anyone in the media about what he did and what he saw. He did anyway, though, and he did not say what I thought he would say. The number of people killed in South Lebanon may be more heavily tilted toward Hezbollah fighters than most of us realized.
To preserve his anonymity I can only identify him as “an Israeli soldier in a long-range patrol unit.” So I’ll just call him Eli, which isn’t his name. Our conversation by phone was recorded. Here is the transcript.
HARET HREIK, LEBANON - I have been to Haret Hreik, Hezbollah's dahiyeh and de-facto "capital" south of Beirut, many times. But I didn't expect to see it on my most recent trip. Every Lebanese person I know warned me to stay out of there. The destruction from the summer war is severe and Hezbollah's fear and loathing of visitors, especially Americans, is even more so. The most paranoid party in Lebanon is more paranoid than ever before. Best to steer clear of their base.
That was before I met the resident moderate Shia cleric Sayyed Mohammad Ali El Husseini, an outspoken enemy of Hezbollah from within the community. I interviewed him in his modest apartment, and afterward he showed me around the bombed out parts of his neighborhood.
"You can take pictures," he said. "Don't worry. No one will do anything or say anything to you if you are with me."
This was important. Hezbollah's media relations office explicitly warned me never to take pictures in the dahiyeh. Even local people aren't allowed to take pictures. You never know who might be working for the CIA or the Mossad. Lebanon has more Israel supporters and "collaborators" than any other Arab country by far.
Husseini is a Sayyed, which means he is supposedly a descendent of the Prophet Mohammad. He can take pictures if he damn well pleases, and so can anyone who is his guest. He is as close to untouchable as a person can be in an assassination-plagued country like Lebanon.
So we went downstairs and hopped in his sporty SUV outfitted with tinted black windows.
Our first stop was only a few streets from his house. Whole blocks of towers were missing.
HARET HREIK, LEBANON – In the dahiyeh, the suburb, of Haret Hreik south of Beirut, where Hezbollah built its command and control center and the “capital” of its illegal state-within-a-state, lives Sayyed Mohammad Ali El Husseini, a moderate Shia cleric with a doctorate in religion from Qom in Iran, who steadfastly and publicly opposes Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s doctrine of war and jihad. He uses the Koran and the Islamic religion as the basis for an alternative vision of peace, independence, and democracy for the people of Lebanon.
My translator Henry informed me that Lebanese journalists are no longer allowed to publish or interview Sayyed Husseini. Dissent from the likes of this man is intolerable and has to be smashed. Hezbollah issued its threats. After the two-year spree of car-bombs against journalists, threats from Nasrallah pack weight.
Foreign journalists, though, are allowed to meet with Husseini. Foreign journalists can’t be managed and bullied the same way local journalists can. Foreigners like me are, so far anyway, outside the bounds of car-bombs and murders.
I met with Husseini in his modest apartment in the dahiyeh, within walking distance of the rubble that recently was Hezbollah’s “Security Square.”
AIN EBEL, SOUTH LEBANON – Amid the steep rolling hills of South Lebanon, a mere handful of kilometers from the fence on the border with Israel, sits the besieged Christian community of Ain Ebel. It is often said that Lebanon is a victim of geography; few Lebanese are as unlucky as those who live in Ain Ebel. For decades the people in this village have been caught between the anvils of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hezbollah on one side, and the hammer of the Israeli Defense Forces on the other.
I visited this small town with my American friend and colleague Noah Pollak from Azure Magazine in Jerusalem. Two men, Said and Henry, from the Lebanese Committee for UNSCR 1559 – an NGO which advises the Lebanese government and the international community on the disarmament of Hezbollah – safely escorted us down there from Beirut.
Alan Barakat from the Ain Ebel Development Association waited for us outside a small grocery store owned by his uncle. He agreed to tell us about what happened to his community during the war in July, when Hezbollah seized civilian homes and used residents as human shields.
Ain Ebel is small, and we walked the streets on foot. I didn’t see nearly as much destruction as I saw in the Hezbollah strongholds of Bint Jbail and Maroun al-Ras which I visited earlier the same day. Downtown seemed intact. This was not a surprise. The residents are implacably hostile to Hezbollah and always have been. This was not a place where the Party of God could dig in, build bunkers, and store weapons. Ain Ebel was, as they say, a “target poor” environment. That did not, however, stop Hezbollah from using it as a battleground.
BINT JBAIL, SOUTH LEBANON – I drove to Hezbollah’s stronghold in South Lebanon to survey the devastation from the war in July, to check in on the United Nations peacekeeping force, and to talk to civilians who were used as human shields in the battle with Israel. My American journalist friend Noah Pollak from Azure Magazine in Jerusalem went with me. We went under the escort of two professional enemies of Hezbollah who work for the Lebanese Committee for UNSCR 1559, an NGO which closely advises the Lebanese government and the international community on the disarmament of illegal militias in Lebanon.
The two men picked us up at our hotel first thing in the morning.
Said (pronounced Sah-EED) rode up to the front door on his motorcycle. Henry arrived in his car.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Said said as he shook our hands. “Shall we go in your car?”
“If you prefer,” I said.
It was probably better that way. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah hysterically accuses Toni Nissi, the man Henry and Said work for, of heading up “the Beirut branch of the Israeli Mossad.” Best, I thought, to show up in Hezbollah’s bombed-out southern “capital” of Bint Jbail in a rental car rather than one that might be recognized.
It’s not worth taking Hezbollah’s “Mossad” accusation seriously. Nasrallah also says Prime Minister Fouad Seniora is a “Zionist hand” because he is pushing for Hezbollah’s disarmament.
“Let me drive,” Said said. “It is better. We know the best roads to take.”
Toni insisted these guys were the best. Not only do they know their way around the back roads of South Lebanon, they are battle-hardened infantry veterans of Lebanon’s civil war. I seriously doubted we would need their services as trained killers, but it was nice to have that skill set in our back pockets while venturing into the heartland of an illegal warmongering militia.
BEIRUT - While Hezbollah occupied the Beirut city center in an attempt to bring down the government, I teamed up with my American friend Noah Pollak, who works as assistant editor at Azure Magazine in Jerusalem, and took a trip to Hezbollah's stronghold in South Lebanon. We wanted to survey the devastation from the July War and see if we could find civilians who had been used as human shields by the Party of God.
Before we went to the south, however, Noah wanted to meet Hezbollah members downtown. He had never been to Lebanon before, and I was happy to show him around and introduce him to the "party" that fired missiles in our direction when we covered the July War together from the Israeli side of the border.
He arrived in Beirut at 2:00 a.m. His taxi driver took him alongside the edge of Hezbollah's downtown encampment. Even in the middle of the night demonstrators were out the streets screaming slogans.
"What are they saying?" Noah said to the driver.
The driver rolled down his window and told the demonstrators an American was in the car and wanted to know what they were saying. One of the men in the street came up to the taxi.
"We will cut Seniora," he said, referring to Lebanon's elected prime minister. "We will cut him!"
Noah laughed to himself and knew he had come to Lebanon at the right time.
“If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” – Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, October 23, 2002
BEIRUT – After Hezbollah mounted a protest aimed at bringing down Lebanon’s elected government, several thousand demonstrators remained downtown and camped out in tents, effectively occupying the center of the city. They first tried to seize and occupy Prime Minister Fouad Seniora’s office in the Ottoman-era Serail. But Seniora warned Hezbollah that if his office were taken he could not control his “street.” Translation: If you seize the state’s institutions, the Sunni Muslims of Lebanon are going to kill you. Hezbollah knew this was true, and so they backed off. It didn’t hurt that the government of Saudi Arabia backed up Seniora on this point. But Hezbollah’s occupation of the neutral parts of downtown continues even into 2007.
I ventured downtown myself the day after the made-for-TV protest was over, when Hezbollah and friends no longer wanted attention from foreign media. Their lack of interest, if I could call it that, was instantly obvious. Ubiquitous security agents with the tell-tale sunglasses and earpieces stared at me coldly and turned their heads as I walked past.
Hundreds of tents were set up in parks, parking lots, and squares downtown, most of them made of white canvass. I snapped a few pictures, and nobody stepped in to stop me.
One group of tents in a parking lot across from the Hariri mosque were all made of black canvas. What’s up with the black tents, I wondered. So I walked over and lifted my camera to my face.
Five ear-pieced Hezbollah agents aggressively pounced on me at once.
BEIRUT – I returned to Beirut after eight months and a hot summer war and found that the city had little changed on the surface. My old neighborhood in West Beirut was intact. Civil war reconstruction continued downtown. More restaurants and pubs had opened close-in on the east side of the city. Solidere sported a brand-new Starbucks. Beirut did not appear to be reeling from war. Post-Syrian gentrification had proceeded as scheduled.
On second glance, though, all was not well. I was the only guest in my eight-story hotel, and I genuinely shocked the staff when I stepped into the lobby first thing in the morning. “Why are you still here?” one bartender asked me. Almost all my friends and even acquaintances left the country during the July War and hadn’t returned. Milk was still hard to come by in grocery stores and even some restaurants because the Israeli Air Force destroyed Lebanon’s milk factory. Party and sectarian flags were flown on the streets in abundance, a tell-tale sign that the post-Syrian patriotism and unity were coming apart.
All that and, you know, the private army of an enemy state was threatening to topple the government.
"we use different methods of resisting, among which is using explosives."
by Mary Madigan
- the Lebanon-based Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP)
On the way home from Hezbollah's Million Mom march, I noticed a group of protesters holding flags, heading downtown. My usual routine was to walk alongside these flag-carrying groups, visibly take a few pictures, see if anyone had anything to say.
I didn't do that when I saw this group. Something about their manner, their ominous-looking flag, and especially the way people leaning out of their balconies were looking at them told me to stay away. I quietly took a few pictures using my zoom lens, from a distance.
That was probably a good idea. These Hezbollah/Syria supporters were members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a fascist group allied with Syrian Baathists. Car bombing, assassination and basic rabid "resistance" is their specialty.
BEIRUT: Lebanese security forces arrested seven members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) on Thursday after confiscating large quantities of explosives, detonators and timers during raids on the members' homes in North Lebanon. Party leader Ali Qanso responded within hours of the Internal Security Forces raids on his home, saying that although the party did indeed own the stash of weapons, the raid was unjustified and that the party was being "targeted" for its pro-Syrian stance.
Speaking during a news conference at the party's office in Ras Beirut, which was heavily surrounded by police at every street intersection, Qanso admitted the party had weapons that it had kept "just in case" since the early 1980s when it took part in fighting Israeli forces in South Lebanon.
"We are innocent," he added, "so stop your campaigns against us. We are not a militia and we are not a party of murderers. We are a resistance force."..
...The SSNP is allied with the Hizbullah-led opposition forces that have been staging an open-ended demonstration in the heart of Beirut in a bid to force the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to resign.
Qanso also rejected what he called "rumors" that the SSNP had played a role in the assassination of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, who was shot dead in his car in a Beirut suburb on November 21.
Just hours after Gemayel's death, a mob of his supporters attacked an office of the SSNP...
.."We don't want any clashes with anyone or the security, but we are only human, and can only withstand so much and have a right to defend ourselves if anyone invades our homes," he said.
Asked about the seized explosives, he said, "we are a resistance force, and we use different methods of resisting, among which is using explosives."
