The Voyage au Bout de la Nuit of Hezbolah and the Sunnis of Lebanon

The string of suicide bombings targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon ushers the beginning of the end of the Shiite fundamentalist organization's 30+ years of terror and undermining of the Lebanese state. From kidnappings foreign civilians, hijacking planes, car bombing peacekeeping troops, massacring Palestinians by the thousands in refugee camps, to inventing a non-existent Israeli occupation only to justify its claims of "liberating" Lebanon from that occupation and "resisting" the so-called Zionist enemy...Hezbollah's curriculum vitae is a long list of harrowing criminality whose reach went as far as West Africa's diamond trade, drug smuggling in North America, car bombings in Argentina and Bulgaria..... The list is too long.

Now that the tide has ebbed, that Hezbollah's true face and intentions have been exposed, now that the stupid Lebanese (Aoun's FPM imbeciles and Hariri's Sunni traitors) who believed Hezbollah's lies and elevated it to the level of a deity, an invincible and highly organized Mafia, with all the aura and romanticism... Hezbollah for once is on the receiving end of the same kind of violence it has inflicted on so many other people for 30 years. I am dispensing with the Israeli attacks against Hezbollah because they never really targeted Hezbollah, and instead - just as is always the case with the coward Israelis - they were intended to punish the Lebanese for having Hezbollah in their midst.

Hezbollah, it is rumored, has now moved its nerve centers to Syria where it believes it will be better protected. In so doing, Hezbollah is abandoning its Lebanese "nationalist" lie that it fed the idiots for so many years, and therefore has lost all its claims to being Lebanese, and is now avowedly what we always knew: a Syrian-Iranian proxy terror organization, founded in 1982 at exactly the same moment that Yasser Arafat's PLO terrorists were evacuating Beirut, and created for the exact same purpose that the PLO served in the 1960s and 1970s, namely to fight Israel from Lebanese territory, invite Israeli retaliations, cause Lebanon to suffer and be undermined, while those leading the charge for the "battle against the Zionist enemy" were basking in peace and tranquility, maintaining quiet on their own borders with Israel.

It is a time for those of us who knew the lies, who refused to believe them, who knew that the traitors of their country were the Lebanese Sunnis who used the Palestinians and burned Lebanon to achieve pathetic political goals, the Sunnis who then - under the criminal Hariri - used the Syrians and Hezbollah to cement their newly acquired power in Lebanon, only to discover a mere decade later that the price of treason can be steep: Hezbollah and Syria, whose occupation of Lebanon and whose turning Lebanon into the only Arab war front against Israel, killed the filthy traitor dog Hariri who bought himself into power with his Saudi money.

The Lebanese Sunnis are now at a fork: They can genuinely become Lebanese nationalists, and finally join - FOR REAL - their fellow Lebanese Christians in creating a neutral Lebanon, divorced from all Arab and Muslim causes, a Lebanon that makes peace with Israel just like the Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians, and finally cement this Lebanese entity as their final and definitive identity; or they can fall into their own form of radicalism and follow the al-Qaeda terrorists who are now attacking Hezbollah. As long as the Lebanese Sunnis blindly obey the directives of the Saudis and their American masters, they will never rise to the level of nationalism needed to build a nation. As long as their hatred of Syria and Hezbollah is based only on the fact that Syria and Hezbollah killed Hariri, and is not couched in a genuine ideological transformation that makes them only Lebanese, and not Sunnis, Muslims, and Arabs BEFORE they are Lebanese, then Lebanon will not recover from the Shiite-Sunni split it is experiencing.

Contrary to falsehoods propagated in the 1970s and 1980s by a stupid liberal western press and by Arab nationalists, the Christians of Lebanon have no other identity than their Lebanese identity. This is a constitutive character that is built into them because their Christian identity negates their Arab and Muslim identities, but also as easterners, it is not enough to make them anything else. The evidence to this is multiple: The Lebanese Christians were able to be allies of everyone at one time or another, including Syria, Israel, and the West, but they were also betrayed by everyone, including the Syrians, the Israelis, and the West. This is ample proof that they can never have any other identity by their Lebanese identity.

The Muslims of Lebanon continue in their schizophrenic search for an identity. They always placed Syrian, Arab, and Muslim causes ahead of the Lebanese. The time has come for them to make up their minds. Lebanon is a distinct nation with a distinct history, geography, and demographic constitution. It is not a temporary Arab country destined for an eventual union with Syria or Egypt or whatever other Baathist or Syrian Nationalist Socialist (Qawmiyyeh) fantasies out there. The Christians want neutrality, they want secularism, and they are ready to relegate religion to the realm of the private... Have the Lebanese Muslims, and the Sunnis in particular, reached a point in their political evolution where they can separate their religious identity from their national one?

Hanibaal Atheos

Tammam Salam and the Proverbial Bald Man

The new Prime Minister of Lebanon is a Lebanese "politician" with an average-to-mediocre background that, thanks only to his genetic background (as once a male gamete in his father's gonads that lucked out in scoring!), catapulted him into political power.

Not unlike the majority in the Lebanese political pantheon where the mechanism of hereditary transmission of political power rules supreme, regardless of inbreeding, imbecility, propensity for treason, incompetence, and other such feudal qualifications. Not to be unfair to Lebanon, this is something Lebanon shares with its Arab brothers (you know, the Assads, Mubaraks, Qaddafis.... etc, in the so-called republics, and the Sauds, the Sabbahs, etc. in the monarchies).

The sad thing, though, is that the Bald Man just dawning on us, just like all the others, will continue by incompetence and tradition to keep Lebanon the familiar cesspool of corruption and violence. I think the Lebanese proverb will aptly apply to Mr. Salam: جبنا الاقرع ليشجعنا، كشف عن قرعته وفزعنا which translates into "We brought the bald man to encourage us, instead he uncovered his bald head and scared us."

But let us not be too negative (despite all the signs): Let us give the Bald Man a chance and see whether he can make a dent in Lebanon's galactical problems.

Hanibaal Atheos.
From the Island of Sri Lanka

President Sleiman, the Virgin Mary, and the Censor-in-Chief

February 14, 2014

Lebanon's President Slime-man Calls for Prosecution of the Not-so-Virgin Mary picture kisser!

The Slimy Consensus President of the Lemon Republic of Lebanon, the one-time Syrian occupation-appointee as Army Chief, Michel Suleiman, whose country has been a cesspool of violence, genocides, massacres, ethnic cleanings, terrorism, car bombs, suicide bombs, assassinations, kidnappings and hostage-holding, all in the name of either religion or the "liberation of Palestine" for 40 years, and under whose administration, the said cesspool of Lebanon is doubled by a pit a corruption, Mafia bosses rule, feudal leadership of primitive religious sects, and an abysmal infrastructure from late 19th century vintage, that President called on Friday for the prosecution by Lebanon's corrupt and politicized kangaroo justice of a man allegedly named Ali Eitawi whose photo was aired on television kissing a statue of the Virgin Mary and saying "she is no longer a virgin."

Ponder with me, please, the "crime" on one hand, and the "environment" of Lebanon where that said crime took place. Hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, have been living in fear in Lebanon itself for close to 40 years because of all the forms of violence listed above, not to mention the massive emigration, the displacements, the disrupted lives..... the catclysmic events taking place in Syria and elsewhere in the region, and the President of the country has nothing better to do than worry about a harmless, in fact, comical skit about the Virgin Mary

And this is happening right after the other storm of the week in which the Tourism & Sports Minister of the same Killing Field of Lebanon (parading itself as a republic), one Faisal Karami - an imbecile and an idiot who became a Minister because everyone in his feudal family is entitled at birth to political power, regardless of merit, IQ, credentials and other normal criteria - called for an investigation of the "crime" committed by Lebanon's single female athlete competing in Sochi, namely to pose semi-nude for a calendar with a bunch of her fellow olympians.

And this is in a country that brags constantly about being a land of freedom in the otherwise repressive Middle East. There is something fundamentally wrong with the Lebanese: They are either absolute idiots, or they are smart but are so devious that they are capable of believing their own lies.

Under these daily threats, Lebanon's "free press" (another massive lie propagated by the Lebanese to show off how much more advanced and liberal than the surrounding Arab brutes) does in fact practice self-censorship to avoid being dragged into court by zealous ministers presidents and other politicians. One example is the English-language web site Lebanon NOW. Not only is this pipeline of Saudi-funded Wahhabi-cum-vassal Hariri English language drivel dedicated to gushing out from the Lebanese Sunni septic tank all the anti-Obama vomit for not intervening on the side of Syria's Sunni Muslim fundamentalists (you know, Al-Qaeda, America's best friend!!), but it also censors comments by ordinary Lebanese whenever it feels that publishing such comments might get it (NOW) in trouble with the Censor-in-Chief Michel Slime-man. It just tows two lines: The Saudi line of badgering the Americans for not invading Syria, and the political establishment line because it wants to stay in business.

More later....

Hanibaal Atheos

Shweifat Suicide Fiasco and Lebanon Recap

I love watching the two culprits in the destruction of my beautiful country of Lebanon - its Shiite shithead traitors to Iran, and its Sunni numskull traitors to Saudi Arabia - bludgeon one another like this. Not only are these idiots wrong ideologically, they are as incompetent as my arse at executing a mission properly. It's either innocent targets, or very nervous perpetrators that miss their targets, or any number of stupid actions that supposedly are mandated by God.

In any case, enough time has elapsed since the 1950s and 1960s (the Golden age of modern Lebanon under Christian rule),  the 1970s-1980s (when the Sunnis fought the Christian-dominated Lebanese State using the Palestinian PLO terrorists of Yasser Arafat), the 1990s to the present (when the stupid Sunnis who, having won the Lebanese War, replaced the PLO with the imbecile Hezbollah Shiites to keep the Christians down, and in the process created a monster that nhas now turned against them.)

Enough time has passed so that anyone who has followed the past 40 or so years of Lebanon's history should reach the following conclusions:
1- What is referred to as Christian rule wasn't anything close to Christian rule, since the President was Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni, and the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite, but none of these people could do anything without the approval of the others. Even today, when the system has supposedly been reformed after the Sunni victory of 1990, nothing has really changed except that the Christian president has become a powerless queen of England like figure with his powers having been transferred to the Sunni Prime Minister and some powers to the Shiite Speaker of Parliament. But before the 1975 war, the Christians set the tone for the country, and for better of for worse, they invited tourism, promoted culture and openness to the entire world. Those were the days when Beirut was literally beautiful and liberal, when gays and hippies roamed the streets alongside Arab sheiks who came for some libidinal release from their repressive societies just as Russian or American sailors who roamed the Red Light District for booze and prostitutes. I grew up in that Beirut and I know it well.
2- As soon as the Muslims took over, the merchant Sunnis and their Qaeda affiliates, then the terrorist Iranian Shiites of Hezbollah, and the Christians were pushed aside, Lebanon gradually began a descent into a third-worldliness typical of Islamic countries where personal initiative and responsibility is delegated to God, with the ensuing consequence of public and private disrepair, filth, corruption, repression, squalor, and fear. Lebanon today is a horrible place, disfigured physically by chaotic unregulated urban sprawl, horrendous traffic jams, pollution galore of the air and every body of water, super corruption under the training of Assad's army of occupation from neighboring Syria, censorship of books, movies, and anything considered "offensive" to just about anything, etc. The list is too long.
3- Lebanon can never regain its glory under Muslim rule. The problem is that Muslims know that very well, which is why they want to dominate the Christians and treat them like shit, but at the same time, they know that without the Christians, Lebanon will just be a pathetic rundown third-world country. So there is this constant balancing of the act of promoting the Christians by giving them just enough to keep them hanging in for hope, but never allowing them to resume a position of strength that would in fact restore the country on a path to prosperity.

And so it goes... Lebanon is in this limbo for decades now. Neither community is strong enough to weed out the others. Lebanon is like a real bad menage-a-trois, with everyone of the three fuckers fornicating with the other two, AND also fornicating with outsiders at the same time. Everybody is super horny and hot and bothered for action, but none of them finds satisfaction with his other bedfellows, so they seek the comfort of strangers. Now the strangers are in it not for the beautiful eyes of the Lebanese harlots, but they are in it for their own selfish base interest. Saudi Arabia is the pimp of the Sunnis. Iran is the pimp of the Shiites. And the Christians - since they believe in forgiveness and atonement - keep changing their swinging partner depending on which way the wind blows: France, then Syria, then America, then Israel, then Syria again, then America again, which shows they are desperate, even though those same partners keep betraying them and they (The Christians) keep changing partners after each betrayal.

So I will conclude with this take on one of Fairouz's songs that came to my mind upon learning of yet another Muslim anti-Muslim suicide bombing near Beirut. It is like folklore... a tradition, something that always comes back in the same way.... so instead of

w3ammir ya m3allim l3maar  w 3aamir Haretna ya ba

How about:

wfajjir ya m3allim lfjaar  w fajjir Haretna ya ba

Hanibaal Atheos
From Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile

Biology Homework - republished

Per popular demand, I re-publish this comparison of two dicks. One is a biological organ, the other is a human cognate of a biological dick going by the name of Hassan Nasrallah.

Why Obama changed his Syrian policy

There are many conspiracy theories running around in the Middle East. People, politicians and pundits alike never take things at face value: They always imagine several layers of labyrinthine, convoluted, and cryptic explanations for events, always invoking what the "real" reason is for policies, assassinations, statements, etc. Just as people in the Middle East really believe that its was REALLY Israel, not Al-Qaeda, that engineered the September 11 attacks, in order to provoke the US into invading and destabilizing the Middle East. So the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was not REALLY an act of self-defense but a Zionist-concocted devious way of causing a rift between Muslims and the West, etc...

Given this mindset, many in the Arab world are cooking up insidious multi-layered explanatory schemes for the REAL reasons why Obama is refusing to help the Syrian rebels against Assad. In this piece, I posit myself as a pundit and provide such a convoluted explanation for this puzzle, without any evidence whatsoever other than the logic of my own thinking.

Simply put, Obama figured in the middle of the Syrian crisis - circa 2012-2013 - that he could leverage the crisis to solve the Palestinian-Israeli problem. What he did initially was the usual simplistic American way of approaching similar situations: Threaten with the use of force, and Assad will back down, and then force him out of office by the combined outside threat and popular thrust on the ground, as happened in Libya. Also, one needs to keep in mind that US foreign policy - despite all appearances of otherwise - is dictated by a single paramount objective: The security and interests of the State of Israel. So, when Obama looked a little more carefully at the Syrian chessboard, he saw who the real actors were. He basically saw Sunnis asking for help against non-Sunnis. Since the Sunnis are led by Saudi Arabia, Obama sought a tradeoff for assisting the Sunnis against Assad. He asked the Saudis to recognize the state of Israel and force the Palestinians to a compromise solution with Israel, in exchange of which the US will not only pressure Israel into accepting this solution, but also agree to the use of force in Syria to kick Assad out of office and otherwise enable a victory by the Syrian rebels.

The Saudis balked and refused the deal. They insisted on keeping the Syrian situation separate from the broader Middle East question. And that is when relations between the US and Saudi Arabia began deteriorating, and that is also when Obama washed his hands from the Syrian crisis. Once this proposal fell through, the US reverted back to the traditional peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and Kerry began his renewed efforts between the two parties. Meanwhile, on the Iranian front, the US kept giving assurances to Israel over a nuclear Iran and asking it to hold off on any impending attack by Israel against Iran's nuclear facilities, for the simple reason that it was waiting for the Saudi response. If the US had succeeded, then the bulk of the Arab and Islamic worlds would follow the Saudi leadership, leaving behind an isolated Iran without its Syrian and Lebanese extensions. An isolated Iran would thus be dealt with separately from the complicated Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian issues.

The Saudi rejection of the American plan changed things radically. The Saudis became angry at the Americans for wanting to couple a US anti-Assad stance with Saudi help on Israel-Palestine. By walking away from the threat of force in Syria, the American unleashed Saudi retaliation which has taken several forms: Increased funding for Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, and Saudi funding for the Lebanese Army (which is a puppet of Hezbollah), as though the Saudis were now funding BOTH sides in the Syrian conflict. The Saudi rejection of the American proposal made the Americans angry at the Saudis and found in it a justification for walking away from any military intervention in Syria against Assad, which in turn led to turning the Syrian issue into a simple chemical weapons control question, and to the rapprochement with Iran.

In sum, if this theory is true, then the only ones to blame for the stalemate in Syria are the Saudis. They were given the opportunity to isolate Iran, solve the Syrian crisis to the advantage of the Sunnis, prevent an Al-Qaeda resurgence in Syria, and most importantly contribute to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all.

Right now, the ascendancy of Iran in US foreign policy can be seen as a tectonic shift in that policy. No longer will the "friendship" between the US and the Saudis be over oil interests because those are really archaic considerations. The Americans no longer fear a cost to displeasing the Saudis, but instead they now demand concessions from the Saudis in exchange for this friendship. And to make this new policy more readily understood by the Saudis, the Americans have arranged for a rapprochement between themselves, Iran and Israel. Given that 21 Arab countries are in the throes of revolutions, Islamic upheavals, and long term instability, the Americans find it easier to deal with two regional superpowers, both potentially nuclear-armed, strategically hemming the Arab world: Iran and Israel. Just two countries to whom it can outsource American security interests without putting a single boot on the ground. The only two downsides to this: 1 - An insoluble Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which may continue to sputter on and off for a few more decades until there is no more Palestine to negotiate over (an Israeli supreme interest by which the US will certainly abide); and 2 - a simple coup or popular uprising in Iran could topple the theocracy overnight and render it an even stronger ally of the US. The Arabs, the Sunnis, the Saudis etc. will be busy for a few decades with their own social and political upheavals that they will not pose a threat to Israel or anyone for that matter.

The Syrian war could go on for several years, if not decades. This too will be to the advantage of the Americans who must snicker silently over their joy at seeing their two worst enemies - Islamic fundamentalists of the Shiite and Sunni brands, as well as Baathists and other dictatorship-prone "rebels" - bleed each another to death.

For those idiots - Tony Badran, Hanin Gahddar, Hussein Ibish, Michael Weiss, etc. - who keep writing angry verbiage (see Lebanon NOW at:  https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en) against Obama for not helping the Syrian rebels, the above should be a plausible explanation for the Syrian status quo and it should temper your Saudi-paid drivel down to a reasonable pitch.

Hanibaal Atheos

I am not a martyr

Global Voices Online

January 3, 2014

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Lebanon: I Am Not A Martyr

Lebanon is no stranger to violence. Bombings are frequent and perpetrators are never held accountable. On December 26 and January 2, two car-bomb attacks have left at least 13 people dead and many more injured. In addition, a dual bombing in November that left over 20 dead and ongoing violence in different areas around the country make it difficult to be optimistic about 2014. Yet, after each bombing, people just go back to their everyday lives and innocent victims are soon forgotten. Because this is wrong, the #NotAMartyr movement encourages people to take a stand:

A place for all those who believe that death is not a solution.
A place for all those who do not want to be called martyrs in vain.
A place to pay tribute for all those who died; are dying and will unfortunately keep dying in the future.
A place where we show the world that we care.
A place where we show everyone that we want change.

Lebanon needed a wake up call from the state of lunacy well described on Hummus for Thoughts:

We have become a nation of justified claustrophobia and justified paranoia; we have stopped hoping that this bomb would be the last because we know that another bomb will soon follow; we are living in the not-so-discreet shadow of our catastrophic civil war and are aimlessly waking up every morning not really understanding what the hell is going on; we are engulfed in our own sectarian lunacy exacerbated by our own (suffocating) corrupted religiopolitical class; and we have never failed to remind ourselves how we’re failing to do anything about it.

Many of us are cursed with persistent hope, and more and more of us are cursed with hopelessness. Whatever your current state of mind is, let us at least be clear: we are not martyrs. We’re not dying for a cause. We’re just dying.

Continue reading at www.globalvoicesonline.org

October 23, 1983: Hezbollah truck-bombs US and French Marines in Beirut

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the twin suicide bombings by Hezbollah, Iran and Syria against the US Marine barracks (241 US servicemen) and the French Paratroopers compound (58 French soldiers) in Beirut on October 23, 1983. These two attacks were carried out against a peacekeeping multinational force that had come to Beirut, not as a crusading or occupation force, but to escort the Palestinian terrorists of the PLO out of their Israeli-besieged bunkers. This unprovoked attack by Syria, Iran and their appendage Hezbollah was, unfortunately, met with the cowardly retreat of the Republican US president Reagan who packed up what remained of his Marines, loaded them on their ships and withdrew in the face of Iran and Syria, betraying the mission and his own soldiers, and never ever sought any retribution against the killers of his own soldiers. His own Vice-President, George HW Bush, was a few years later to recruit the Syrian Assad regime (that had murdered the US Marines in Beirut) as an ally against the other Baathist dictator in Iraq, Saddam Hussein. To add insult to injury, Reagan ordered the invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada the very next day after the bombings in an attempt to deflect public attention from the disaster unfolding in Beirut. By retreating like a coward, Reagan abandoned the last bastion then still standing in the Arab world against the Islamic onslaught, namely Lebanon, to the Syrian occupation (that was to last till 2005). By so doing, the cowardly American retreat from Beirut after the slaughter of the Marines signaled the following message to future terrorists: If you bomb us, we will flee like rabbits. The bombing of the Multinational Force in October 1983 in Beirut, while being the first ever Islamic terrorism suicide bombing against a Western target, in effect was the inspiration for Osama bin Laden and drew a straight line to the 9-11-2001 bombings in the US. Abandoning Lebanon in 1983 to Syria and Iran was by far the gravest failure of US foreign policy in modern times for which we are - thirty years later - still paying the price around the globe. And there are those "patriotic" Republicans who have the gall to accuse President Obama of inaction in Syria, when their own fucking Republican hero Reagan is solely responsible for allowing, by his retreat from Beirut in 1983,  Islamic terrorism to gain so much ascendancy and cause so much havoc in our world.

Jihad Al-Nikaah or the Muslim Whore Brigades

It is now an undeniable fact that Muslim women, herded like chattel as they always have been, have now been mobilized as professional whores who provide their services to Muslim fighters around the world. After Muslim women from Chechnya, Germany, Morocco, France, Egypt, and Iraq have contributed their share to making God's rule on earth a reality, the latest evidence is pouring out of Tunisia these days, where hundreds of Tunisian girls have been repatriated from Syria, many pregnant, after serving their fellow Muslim men in the glorious Islamic uprising in Syria.

There are historical precedents, but usually the invader enslaves the enemy's women to serve its soldiers - Germany did it with Jewish women, Japan did with Korean women, and rape as a war instrument has been very common in a number of African conflicts in recent times. But to enlist your own females in the use of their expertise as whores to serve your own soldiers is a rarity. Generally, women are enlisted to serves as nurses or cooks on the war front, or as factory workers and male substitutes in all kinds of office-bound jobs. But Islam, this latest - and purpotedly the most magnificient and final prophecy of God to humans - of the monotheistic cults (Judaism, Christianism, and Islam) that have killed more people in their history than anyone can tally, is forging ahead with vanguard ideas.

I think all Muslim countries, all preparing and dreaming of the day that the Caliphate (which, by the way, disappeared 100 years ago at the onset of World War I) will rule the entire planet under the aegis of Islam, should establish formal female brigades in their armies. Such brigades would be set up for the specific purpose of providing sexual services to the Muslim fighters along the fault line of battles and hotspots around the world where Islam is trying to destroy or subjugate everyone else. These brigades would be named, for example, "The Muslim Whores Brigades" or the "Sluts for Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلّم) Brigades" or the "Umma Tramps Brigades" or "Islamic Harlots Brigades", etc... The possibilities are endless. To be sure, the enlistees into these brigades will not necessarily have a choice, since women in Islam have no real say in their lives, and families will be asked to volunteer one of their daughters or sisters, who will be subjected to intense professional training by internationally-reknowned prostitutes. This training would, in fact, be best conducted in Mecca itself under the supervision of the Ulemas and Sheikhs of the Saudi Kingdom, and where inspiration on the road to paradise will be entwined with orgasmic levitation to the heavens. There will be no need for any "safe sex" training because clearly the goal is to die while fighting for God and Muhammad. So dying from any sexually transmitted disease is a boon. Not to mention the windfall of millions of pregnancies that will obtain as a result of all this energy-consuming fornication, and the resulting addition of millions of future generations of Mulsim fighters and whores, thus ensuring the ultimate victory of Islam and its dominion over all the other lesser religions and cults.

Hanibaal Atheos

MY REASONS AGAINST A WESTERN INTERVENTION IN SYRIA

This site wholeheartedly supports President Obama's refusal to intervene in Syria. There has to be an end to the pathetic Arabs and Muslims - who otherwise spend all their energies at denouncing Western decadence, Western colonialism and interference in their affairs - begging the same West, the same Great Satan, to come and separate them from each other's throats, to rescue them from their own barbarity. Once the West intervenes and settles things as best as it can, the same people who begged it to intervene turn against it and accuse it of colonialism, of ulterior motives, of wanting to destroy Islam and all that garbage. Obama is very wise in his stance, and he is not falling for the fallacies of an America losing credibility or losing power. America's power is not in its only in its muscle and military prowess. America's power is in setting the stage for a world in which relationships between nations are on equal terms and on equal responsibilities. As such, the Arabs should themselves - if there is any truth to the fallacy of an "Arab world" - shoulder their responsibilities to 1) Not create by their barbaric ways of governing angry and frustrated societies always on the verge of exploding, 2) Not keep drilling in their people religious ideas from the Stone Age of humanity, but rather teach their people to use reason and move into the modern world, 3) When a crisis erupts, not to engage in the by now folkloric spectacle of Arab massacres, killings, beheadings, and other barbaric forms of human depravity, and 4) Not fall again and again on asking the West for help, for by doing so, they prove to the world that they are NOT the great nations they claim to be, and that they are not worthy to be countries that deserve respect from the international community.

Some Arabs and Muslims still hold a grudge at the Crusades, even though the Crusades were a direct reaction to the forcible conversion and conquest by Arab Muslims of what used to be Christian Roman Greek European lands in the Near East. The Arabic term that Arabs and Muslims use to describe the 100-year slaughter blitz that created today's Muslim world is "Al-Fath Al-Islami", the exact cognate of the Spanish term - La Conquista - used to describe the slaughter annihilation of all South American civilizations by the Catholic Church and the Spanish throne in the 16th century. The Arabic root "fataHa", from which the term comes, means to open, to conquer, to penetrate... You get the meaning.

NO TO ANY WESTERN INTERVENTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST. 

NO TO ANOTHER CRUSADE. 

NO TO NEO-COLONIALISM. 

YES TO SELF-DETERMINATION OF THE NATIONS OF THE REGION

YES TO SELF-RELIANCE ON THE DEEP-ROOTED MUSLIM AND ARAB TRADITIONS OF TOLERANCE AND PEACE (sic) TO BRING AN END TO THE SLAUGHTER IN SYRIA. 

ENOUGH HYPOCRISY BY ARABS AND MUSLIMS WHO CONTINUOUSLY ATTACK THE WEST FOR ITS SO-CALLED DECADENCE, YET THEY IMITATE IT LIKE MONKEYS, BUY EVERY LAST STUPID FAD FROM IT, AND THEN ASK IT FOR HELP WHEN ARABS AND MUSLIMS CAN NO LONGER GOVERN THEMSELVES LIKE DECENT COUNTRIES.

HANIBAAL-ATHEOS

The Medieval Chess Game in the Lemon Republic

Leaving the "banana" nomer to the Latin American realm, and remaining faithful to my Mediterranean - not Arab - identity, I proclaim Lebanon a LEMON REPUBLIC. Lemons are a staple of the Lebanese diet, and I also like the pejorative connotation borrowed from used car dealers' jargon. There are lemon laws out there that protect consumers against car dealers that sell them bad cars which are referred to as "lemons".

Right now in our much beloved Lemon Republic of Lebanon, there is an ongoing chess game in which certain pawns are gradually and slowly being replaced by other pawns.

The Druse are on their way to extinction - both demographically and politically. As heirs to the Mount Lebanon Emirates of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Druse have managed to hold on to political power in Lebanon that is out of proportion with their numbers. But this has now changed. After their "cowardly bravery" between the 1970s and 1990s - during which time they massacred and ethnically cleansed their fellow Christian villagers with whom they share the Lebanese heartland, but never fought any of the invading Syrian or Israeli armies - they were bludgeoned to death by the Shiites of Hezbollah in 2008. Walid Jumblatt's unprincipled and survivalist acrobatics made him walk the tightrope successfully for a couple of decades, changing political principles as if they were underwear. Yet he has now fallen back in the count, and the new powerful minority that is likely to move forcefully on the chessboard is the Alawite minority concentrated in the north and in Tripoli.

The Sunnis of Lebanon, meanwhile, are also losing political ground to the awakened Shiites. The Sunnis managed to wage a war against the Lebanese state between the 1960s and 1980s, using the Palestinian PLO as their militia and with the sedition of Lt. Ahmad Al-Khatib from the national army to start his own militia of the Arab Army of Lebanon. By 1990, they had succeeded in wrestling power from the Maronites, but still lacking a credible militia, they relied on the Shiite Hezbollah to bolster their power base, not realizing that this was a very dangerous strategic mistake. After destroying Lebanon by fighting the State via the PLO, Ahmad Al-Khatib's Arab Army of Lebanon, and Al-Mourabitoun, feu Rafik Hariri was made Prime Minister by the Syrian-Saudi-American alliance in reward for the Taif Accord. To maintain his power base, Hariri and his Sunnis gave Hezbollah the political cover it needed to remain the only operational militia in violation of the same Taif Accord that granted the Sunnis pre-eminence in the Lebanese political chess board.  Hariri kept defending Hezbollah as a legitimate "resistance", when we all knew it was a Syrian-Iranian mercenary tool created for the sole purpose of destabilizing Lebanon by "fighting the enemy" and "liberating occupied land" and all that Arabist Baathist jazz. The collaborator agent Rafik Hariri eventually paid the ultimate price of his collusion with the Syrian occupation and with the Shiite terrorist organization, when he decided to part ways with his former masters:  Hezbollah bombed him to shreds in downtown Beirut in 2005.

The strategic mistake was not to realize that by granting Hezbollah monopoly over the threat of violence, the Sunnis were nurturing a taste of power in the hands of the Shiites of Lebanon. Now the hens have come home to roost, and the Sunnis are paying the price. While pretending to have become moderates (because they hold the highest office in government), they still back fundamentalist Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and Al-
Qaeda types and they will again pay another price. This time, the price will be the loss of their current position to the Shiites.

While the Maronites seem to have accepted their Dhimmi status with an emasculated castrated figurehead President, it is hard to imagine transferring power from the Prime Minister (a Sunni in the Executive) to the Speaker of Parliament (a Shiite in the Legislative). Therefore, I predict that within the next 3-5 years, the Shiites will demand the Premiership as the price for putting down their weapons. Therefore, the pecking order in the Lebanese political chessboard will look as follows:

- Shiite Prime Minister with all the powers of the Executive
- Sunni Speaker of Parliament with merely powers of obtsruction, no more
- Maronite President: An impotent figurehead in the Presidency
- An Alawite as Defense Minister or Foreign Minister or some other powerful ministry
- The Orthodox and the Druse will have to be content with lesser posts of some significance etc...

The one thing that will not change is that the Lemon Republic of Lebanon will remain a religious oligarchy, a vestige of its former self as a province of the Ottoman occupation, with all the corruption and dysfunctionality of a Lemon Republic, without any real identity of its own, occasionally Mediterranean, and at times Arab, a schizophrenic paranoid republic of medieval brutes who believe that the world is constantly conspiring against them to prevent them from achieving the self-declared megalomaniacal potential and genius.

Tffhhhh malla balad mehri...
The Lemon will soon sprout a fungus and begin liquifying from within...

Hanibaal Atheos

What "Lebanese" Identity of the Diaspora-Ightiraab-Mahjar?

There was a newspiece recently in the Lebanese online media about one Lebanese-American who announced he was renouncing his Lebanese citizenship as a means to protest the incompetence and corruption of the Lebanese government and administration. He also said, though, that he will continue to visit Lebanon using his US passport to visit relatives etc.

BIG DEAL: Millions of Lebanese expatriates do this and have been doing this for decades. The primary reason is the difficulty, the annoyance, the expense, the grief to have to deal with the incompetent political appointees who man our consulates and embassies abroad. If you've ever read "The Trial" by Franz Kafka, you would know what that experience is.

But there are other more deeply-imbedded reasons. One is that most of these Lebanese emigrants, who left the country reluctantly because of war, abysmal conditions, corruption, declining quality of human relations,  racism, stupid arrogance founded on some glory from the 8th century AD (for Muslims) or from 400 AD (for Christians), or 1100 BC (for non-religious nationalists), and the general sense that, despite all the promises and the bets placed in a revival of the Lebanon of the 1960s - banking platform, tolerance, openness, liberalism, tourism, beauty...have all failed to materialize. The Lebanon - largely created by an educated Christian middle class rising out the 1920s and 1930s - in which many of us grew up is gone forever and will never come back, regardless of how many skyscrappers and shiny buildings idiots like Hariri may build in downtown Beirut, including that ugly monstrous gigantic mosque he built right next to the diminutive Maronite Cathedral of St. Georges simply to spite his fellow Christian Lebanese that created his Beirut in the first place. Those who still latch on to this romantic idea are delusional fools because they do not understand that there are moments in the history of nations that are windows of opportunity which mst be used as foundations for future evolution. That window was opened in the Lebanon of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, and it showed us all the potential that the country had - despite its paucity of economic opportunity - to shine and prosper, not by money, but by ingenuity, by big hearts, by hospitality, by intellectual integrity, free from the religious dogmatism and radicalism of today.

But now that window has closed. Lebanon is no longer unique in these attributes, and the Lebanese communities refuse to evolve, refuse to build on that foudation from half a century ago. Instead, the Lebanese, mostly but not only the Muslims, have chosen to receed into backwardness, into third world apathy and fatalism, into submission to all manner of Islamic movements and Fascist regimes in the Arab world, out of this stupid solidarity of primitive Arabs whereby أنصر أخاك ظالماً او مظلوماً which translates into "Stand by your brother, oppressor or oppressed he might be". Meaning, because of Palestine, because of the Muslim Brotherhood, because of the Baath party, because of the Wahhabis and their filth in Saudi Arabia, because of the money the Saudis, Kuwaitis and others were buying us with, we abandoned our principles and ideals and became like prostitutes and indentured slaves. We let them use us to destroy our country and turn it into the sad filth it has become.

Lebanese emigrants abroad - and I have spoken to thousands of them - do not care for Lebanon. They care for an image they brought with them, an image from the 1960s that no longer exist. Many are those Lebanese emigrants who have never been back in 20 or 30 or 40 years. Many open businesses and are ashamed of advertising themselves as Lebanese restaurants or bakeries or whatever the business they engage in. They call themselves "Mediterranean", or "Middle Eastern"....

In conversations with each other, they always inevitably start by cursing Lebanon, cursing the Lebanese (because now they no longer see themselves as purely Lebanese) for their wayward corrupt disgusting ways, and saying things like "خلص، ما بقا في لبنان. لبنان ما بقا ينعرف..." etc... On the surface - when speaking to other Lebanese - they may still hold some endearing feelings for Lebanon, but deep in their psyche they harbor hatred and animosity to the country that forced them out and into a world of exile they never really adjust to. They live on the fence between the two cultures: They take what they need from their new country (which is not always the best they could take), and they keep what they need from their old country. So, instead of blending and adjusting to their new environment, they - like all other immigrant groups in fact - cloister and barricade themselves culturally in their churches and mosques - have a very hard time when their daughters and sons born in the new country want to marry outside the community. In the most advanced countries of their exile, the Lebanese remain basically tribal villagers transplanted into these new environments. They appear modern and adjusted, by they remain deeply conservatives. In the end, their relationship with their children begin to deteriorate as soon as the children grow and want to live as citizens of their own country, and not as citizens of the old country of their parents.

Many Lebanese emigrants live in these cultural ghettos, with a lot of racism against other immigrant groups, as if they see themselves at the top of the pecking order, imagining in their stupidity that they are up there with the dominant native culture, while all the other immigrants are subhuman creatures. One Lebanese-Canadian with a PhD in Education, mind you, once told me that he is not happy that his children might be taught Spanish in their school because, in his derogatory words, Spanish is the language of "maids and Mexicans".

I don't know why we have become like this, vulgar, uneducated, arrogant even as we swim in our excrement, why we are condescending to others who share with us our exile predicament. Perhaps we have always been like this, but I never noticed it before, in my own Lebanese way.

The other huge fallacy that we - all of us emigrants and natives alike - perpetuate is that the Lebanese government, state, administration... always talks about the Mahjar as this fine example of Lebanese ingenuity and survival and excellence because of a few famous emigrants who made it big. The fact is that it is ONLY WHEN THEY LEAVE LEBANON, THAT THE LEBANESE EXCEL. As long as they are in Lebanon, they are smothered and corrupted and prevented from acheiving their potential. Those of the Lebanese who do excel rarely do anything in fact to help their country of origin. If anything, they go back to the village, build a stupid church or a mosque, dole out money right and left, oftentimes to buy people's allegiance for notoriety, fame or, worse, for political office. Lebanon kills its own people's ingenuity and creativity by forcing them to live like caged animals who would sell their mothers and eat their children to make money. I have never heard of a world famous Lebanese (actor, scientist, poltiican...) who actually achieved his fame from Lebanon. This is why when he or she becomes famous, the Lebanese is so angry at his country of origin that he does everything in his/her power to distance him/herself from it.

We brag about Khalil Gibran. But go read what Gibran had to say about the Lebanese. We brag about Ralph Nader, but Ralph Nader has always refused to do or say anything to help Lebanon. We do not brag about Issam Fares because he contributed nothing of substance to Lebanon, but he's a billionaire (he made his billions picking and hauling American garbage and trash) who spent millions on American universities (Tufts University in Boston, for example), funding Israeli and Jewish academics and scholars, all the while proclaiming - as a collaborator Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon under the Syrian occupation - that he supports Hezbollah's right as a resistance movement and upholding the law of arresting any Lebanese with dual citizenship who traveled to Israel or who "dealt" in some fashion with the "Zionist enemy". The list of famous Lebanese emigrants is too long to list here. But all you need to do is dig a little deeper than the superficial drivel you hear about those great Lebanese expatriates to find out what they really think of Lebanon.

They think that Lebanon is a pile of badly built-up garbage with a few remaining trees, a couple of heavily polluted beaches exclusively accessible to the rich and powerful, hundreds of heavily armed maniacs who are bent on liberating some other country while their own is sinking in sewage, a corrupt administration, and from which all the good people ( "awaadim" ) have fled.

Why would an emigrant send money to Lebanon - other than to an ailing mother or a struggling cousin? No reason. Lebanese emigranst have every reason to reject their Lebanese identity, to deny having ever been Lebanese, to avoid being known as Lebanese...because of the sense of shame this brings to them. So, do not believe all the crap about the Lebanese government trying to build ties to the Mahjar, or trying to put to good use the enormous potential of the Diaspora to assist the country in standing on its feet. The Lebanon these emigrants left behind no longer exist. They no longer recognize it. They hate what they see, and mostly they hate being exploited like a cash cow for money, but treated like cattle when it comes to getting a birth certificate or a passport.

Enough lies. Enough illusions. The Mahjar hates Lebanon as it is today.

Hanibaal

Fares Khashan: Lebanese-Arab-Muslim Journalism at its Worst

Fares Khashan has been a commentator in the Lebanese progressive, left wing, pro-Arab, anti-West, pro-Hezbollah, pro-Iran, pro-Syria etc... newspaper AL-SAFIR for many years and decades.

He is the ultimate traitor whose ideas and positions change with the blowing winds.

Here is an example of what he used to write back around 2001, when his hero was Hezbollah, his cause was the so-called  "liberation" of south Lebanon and the Shebaa Farms, his idol was Bashar Assad and the Syrian regime..... and his enemies were everyone else: Michel Aoun, the US, Europe, the Lebanese Christians, etc... :

http://www.bintjbeil.com/articles/ar/011107_khashan.html

and this is what he is writing today, in view of Hezbollah's intervention in the Syrian war and its plunging Lebanon into a new civil war. Khashan now rejects all his previous positions - without any acknowldegment of having made a mistake - and is now an ardent anti-Assad, anti-Hezbollah, pro-Sunni revolution in Syria... It may be because he is a Sunni (not sure?), or because the Qataris or Saudis have decided to pay him more than his Iranian clients... who knows? But this is typical journalism in the Arab-Muslim world:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6621455900124875850#editor/target=post;postID=1257562388869667931

Today, Fares Khashan has turned against Hezbollah. There is nothing wrong with changing one's position on a given matter, but shouldn;t this jackass at least acknowldege having made a mistake? Or provide some explanation as to why Hezbollah the liberator, the resistance against the savage and imperial west was an act of heroism THEN? But NOW, those same acts and actors of Hezbollah have become crimes against Arabism and Islamism to the point of begging the West for help in defeating that same Hezbollah. I have more respect for prostitutes and mercenaries than for Khashan and his ilk.

Shouldn't these "elite" thinkers and pseudo-intellectuals be prosecuted for treason to their own ideas? For dragging the thinking of people behind them in the defense of criminals, then when the criminal turns his rifle on them, drag the people's thinking in exactly the opposite direction?

Hanibaal

CHRISTIAN LEBANESE ARE RE-ARMING: LEBANON IS NOT IRAQ

Events on the ground and information garnered from various sources confirm that the Christians of Lebanon have begun re-arming and training and re-building their militias. Some of the training is taking place in Israel and in Jordan, under the supervision of American and Australian military personnel.

Weapons caches that were sealed in 1990 following the signing of the Taef Accord and the supposed dismantling of all militias, have been reopened and re-stocked in the remote mountain highlands of the Christian hinterland, particularly in those areas where the Hezbollah terror organization has made inroads during the past two decades, such as the highlands of the Byblos and Batroun districts. The few Shiite pockets (in Shiite villages isolated among Christian villages) are under surveillance, and are said to be the first targets of a confrontation between Hezbollah on one hand, and the Lebanese Army and the Christian resistance on the other hand, in a scenario reminiscent of the events of the 1970s where the PLO was the foreign destabilizing element in lieu of the Iranian Hezbollah today.

The Taif Accord stipulated the disarming and disbanding of all militias. Everyone acquiesced and complied - at least to a substantial extent - with all Sunni, Christian, and Druse militias abolished and converted to political parties. Except, that is, the Shiite Hezbollah and Amal militias who were operating under Syrian and Iranian control. With the PLO annihilated and expelled from Lebanon, the Syrian-Iranian tandem needed a substitute proxy with which to continue destabilizing Lebanon, and they created Hezbollah which took over the terror mantle from the PLO and continued the torment of the country. Since the early 1980s, Hezbollah has waged a campaign of terror, domestically, regionally and internationally: Kidnappings, assassinations, bombings, hijackings, etc.... All the other sects in Lebanon have waited patiently for Hezbollah to reintegrate the democratic process and abandon its wayward mercenary ways. But things rached a climax over the past several months, as Hezbollah's enagagement in the Syrian war turned the tables on the remaining modicum of understanding. Hezbollah's indictment by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister and Syrian collaborator Rafik Hariri has also raised the ire of the Sunni community which is now ready to engage Hezbollah in an open civil war.

The impending Shiite-Sunni bloodbath in Lebanon has raised questions as to the fate of the last free Christian community in the entire East: The Lebanese Christians. If Lebanon becomes the stage - like Iraq - of a bloodly Sunni-Shiite confrontation, will the Christians of Lebanon suffer the same fate as the Christians of Iraq whose numbers have dwindled dramatically by migration, forced exile, murder, bombings....? The short answer is probably no. The Christians of Lebanon are tougher, the terrain in Lebanon is much more difficult than in Iraq, and the Lebanese Christians have been tested before. Even though they lost the 1970s-1980s war, they managed to hold on to significant power in the new political structure that emerged from the Taif Accord.

Yet, one factor is unsettling enough to raise the anxiety level within the Christian community, and that is the Sunni fundamentalist movements (which were non-existent in the 1970s) and the Syrian civil war with its dispatch of up to one million Syrian refugees into Lebanon. All of this has ushered the re-arming and the re-forming of the Christian Lebanese militias, as a preemptive measure to deter any ideas that Islamic fundamentalists might be contemplating, namely to attack the Christian community.
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Signs of this Christian re-arming are becoming increasingly visible. A few days ago, a Hezbollah demonstration started out of the Shiite enclave of Fanar Zeaytriyeh nestled within the Christian northern suburbs of Beirut in Fanar and Jdeideh. As the loud and threatening demonstration was brandishing portraits of BAshar Assad and Iranian celrics, it walked into the Christian neighborhood and approached a Christian church. Whereas in the past, it would have made its way unhindered and unchallenged, this time, there was a sudden appearance of large numbers of military-dressed miltiamen standing guard in front of the church and blocking further access by the Hezbollah demonstrators. The militiamen appeared to be a professional group, rather than a band of local vigilantes, dressed in professional military garb and armed with combat weapons. This apparently had the effect of discouraging the Hezbollah demonstrators who returned to their enclave.

A telltale sign that Lebanon is on the verge of a repeat of the 1970s civil war, but this time it will be the final battle. Why? Beacuse the world today knows who its real enemy is, and it is not the Christians of Lebanon.

Hanibaal Atheos

From Israel with Love... to the Assad Regime

As has always been the case throughout the long Lebanese War of the past 4 decades or so, the recent Israeli incursions and attacks on weapons depot sites in Damascus, which it justifies by saying that these "arms potentially could end up in Hezbollah's hands," always raise unsettling questions about Israel's real intentions.

I am not one to immediately jump at conspiracy theories, but the Syrian-Israeli "partnership" has sustained hard times, has endured, and has kept peace on the Golan for 4 decades despite the fact that these two parties are sworn enemies on the surface or in theory. Israeli officials - who know that Syria is financing, arming and supporting all of Israel's other little enemies, from Hamas to Hezbollah and all the rogue Palestinian guerilla movements.... - have stated on many occasions that they prefer the Assad regime to any other alternative in Damascus because, apparently, Assad is more trustworthy, keeps his word, abides by agreements, is more amenable to a deal with Israel, etc... Yet 40 years of warfare in lebanon and the Palestinian territories, the hundreds of thousands of dead, the suicide bombings, the wars with Hezbollah, the occupations of lands and peoples, the proxy militias, the export of terrorism, the Iranian beachhead on the Mediterranean right at Israel's border, the hijackings, kidnappings, assassinations, etc... do not seem like a good price to pay for maintaining quiet on the Golan. Yet, this is what it all seems to be.

Now, assuming this theory has some traction, it implies that Israel will act in such a way as to protect or preserve the political order as has existed in Syria and Lebanon, for fear of a worse order should the Assad regime fall and, a fundamentalist Sunni government takes over in Damascus. In that same vein, one can view the recent attacks by Israel against Damascus-based weapons depot headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon as consistent with the consiparcy theory. Here's how:

By launching these strikes at a time when the US is beginning to edge close to some kind of increased intervention against Assad (e.g. by supplying lethal weapons to the Syrian opposition), Israel undermines the trajectory that such a policy might lead to. On one hand, it gives Assad some fresh breathing air to scream bloody murder, pose as the anti-Zionist enemy par excellence, rally the herd of Arab/Muslim nationalists around the regime, claim to be the victim of Zionist aggression, all of which turn the table on the equation inside Syria, namely that the Assad regime's enemies inside Syria (i.e the Syrian rebels) are friends of Israel, or at least are in the same trenches as Israel. Damascus and by extension Tehran regain a higher moral ground around the Arab and Muslim worlds, and so on and so forth.

However, just as this policy - still assumed under my conspiracy theory that Israel wants to protect the Assad regime - has kept peace on the Golan but wrecked havoc around the region and the world, its continuation is bound to perpetutate the violence and push peace even further back. In fact, if ISrael's fears are about some weapons falling into Hezbollah's hands, then let us consider whose hands these weapons might have stayed with if not with Hezbollah:
- The Syrian regime itself. That would be acceptable (under the conspiracy theory) because Damascus has always had these weapons and has never used them against Israel. BUT, everyone knows that Syria has been transferring similar weapons to hezbollah for 30 years across the porous Lebanese border, and ISrael has rarely, if ever, attacked such convoys or made a serious attempt at curtialing such a transfer. In other words, to allow the Syrian regime to hold on to these weapons is no guarantee of any sort for Israel that these weapons will not end up in hezbollah's hands.
- The Syrian opposition. Too many groups, ranging from the amicable perhaps to the hostile vis-a-vis Israel. Worst case scenario: These weapons might end up in the hands of Al-Qaeda affiliates or some other radical group with hatred toward Israel and with the potential of one day using them against Israel. But in such a case, these groups were the operatives of the Syrian regime for decades in the spread of terror in the region, and the fact that they split with the regime at the onset of the Syrian revolution does not change anything, because the Syrian regime could have at any other time provided these weapons to these operatives. Unless one invokes the conspiracy theory, namely that as long as the Assad regime has custody of these weapons, it will NEVER transfer them because it is in collusion with the Israelis and has given assurances to the Israelis that they will never allow these weapons to be used against Israel. Now that the Syrian regime is about to collapse, the deal between Assad and the Israelis is off, and Israel is cleaning house before it is too late.
- Hezbollah and other Iranian groups. These seem to be the immediate target of the interdiction attack. But aqgain Syria has been transferring weapons to Hezbollah for three decades and ferrying all kinds of dangerous missiles and drones from Iran to the South Lebanon-based terror organization. Sooner or later, in any hypothetical confrontation between Israel and Syria, the latter would not hesitate one second from handing these weapons to Hezbollah. So, it seems like a resonable argument for Israel to attack these weapons, just in case. But wait: Why hasn't Israel attacked these sites a month ago, 6 months ago, a year ago, 5 years ago...? Why now? Has the threat only now become a threat? The answer is Yes, because under the deal between Assad and the Israelis, only a certain level of armament is allowed to be transferred to Hezbollah, and these weapons cross the threshold of the deal between Israel and Assad.

The tightrope walking in all of this is mind bloggling, but the only one thing that is for certain is that the Assad regime has never attacked Israel in 40 years since the signing of the armistice on the Golan in 1974. Not one bullet was ever fired across the demarcation line, not by Israel, and certainly not by Syria, although both sides have engaged in bloody, mass-murder scale wars in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories, with invasions and occupations, and all kinds of human rights abuses against Lebanese and Palestinians. Not once did the Syrian army during its 35 years of occupation of Lebanon seriously engaged the Israeli army's repeated invasions of Lebanon, event though Damascus always claimed to be in Lebanon to defend it against "Israeli aggression". Not once did Israel attack Syria proper in 40 years, even though Israel knew full well that Damascus was the mother of all terrorist groups operating from Lebanon and Palestine against Israel. Neither side ever violated the mutual red lines they drew for one another in the long torment they imposed on Lebanon.

The laundry list is too long to list here to buttress the conspiracy theory... but this reminds me of something Kurt Vonnegut once said about situations like these: It's as though you are at a party with lots of beautiful people, but there is a stench wafting around. Everyone smells it, but everyone ignores it, because to do otherwise would ruin the atmosphere. Tolerate a little foulness just to keep the party going. This is how best I can summarize the strange bedfellows that Israel and the Syrian regime have been over 4 decades, and the party they both enjoyed while the stench of the torment of Lebanon and the agony of Palestine went on and on and on....

Hanibaal