LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS
BULLETIN
July 25/08
Bible Reading of the day.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to
Saint Matthew 13,10-17. The disciples approached him and said, "Why do you speak
to them in parables?" He said to them in reply, "Because knowledge of the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has
not been granted. To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich;
from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I
speak to them in parables, because 'they look but do not see and hear but do not
listen or understand.' Isaiah's prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: 'You
shall indeed hear but not understand you shall indeed look but never see. Gross
is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have
closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and
understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.' But blessed are
your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to
you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not
see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
Free
Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
Syria and Lebanon: What Has Changed?By:
Hassan Haidar.24/07/08
Blood Holiday. By: LEE
SMITH 24/07/08
Brammertz Will
Prosecute Karadzic. But Whom Will Bellemare Prosecute? By: Randa Takieddine
24/07/08
Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for July
24/08
Sfeir
for One Army in One Country-Naharnet
Sfeir tells new Maronite group emigrants 'deserve' Lebanese nationality-Daily
Star
Policy Statement Discussions
Deadlocked Over Hizbullah Weapons-Naharnet
U.N.: Hizbullah Spells Out
Prisoner Swap Terms-Naharnet
March 14 Forces Speak of
Impossibility of Coexistence with Hizbullah's Arms-Naharnet
Suleiman Pledges to
'Seriously' Deal with Issue of Lebanese Missing in Syria-Naharnet
Baabda Palace Prepares for
National Dialogue-Naharnet
Syria Buries Slain
Fighters Returned in Hizbullah's Prisoner Swap-Naharnet
U.S. Cancels Planned
Meeting with Visiting Syrian Group-Naharnet
Hariri Optimistic About
Policy Statement-Naharnet
Lebanon Forest Fire
Contained Amid Shell Blasts-Naharnet
MP
Kabbara: No Elections if Armed Factions Persist-Naharnet
Karami Urges Syria to Demarcate Shebaa Farms-Naharnet
Washington snubs Syria delegation-BBC
News
A tool for reconnecting with Lebanese emigrants-AsiaNews
Towers and ambitions-Times Online
The fine art of distinctive development-Times
Online
Rally for a hero shows a deadly disconnect-Atlanta
Journal Constitution
The facts behind the fiction of the Lebanon war of 2006-Atlantic
Free Press
Hugo Chávez's Jewish Problem-Wall Street
Journal
We need a true friend-Ynetnews
Evil & Education in Lebanon-KELOLAND TV
US wants Lebanon to talk to Israel about Shebaa-Daily
Star
Blood Holiday
LEE SMITH
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/280
Thursday 24th July 2008
Last Wednesday's pageantry in Beirut celebrating the return of Samir Kuntar
marked a black day for Lebanon. It is hardly the first time an Arab terror
outfit has held a street party for murderers - sweets were handed out in plenty
of Arab capitals on 9/11. Still, it was surprising to see the participation of
many members of Lebanon's pro-democracy March 14 movement, like Prime Minister
Fouad Siniora who has become a significant US ally over the last three years.
Now, Lebanon's friends in the international community, especially in Washington,
who backed March 14's struggle and looked to it as a model alternative to the
bin Laden version of the Middle East, must re-evaluate their continued support.
Still, not all Lebanese took part in the festival for a child-murderer.
"The celebrations caught me by surprise," says Jana, a 26-year-old Shia woman
raised in the Hezbollah cantons of south Beirut. "I don't understand how we are
celebrating the achievements of such a person. It is Lebanese schizophrenia.
Anyone who attacks us we call a criminal, but when one of ours does the same, we
call that person a hero. We don't apply the same standards to ourselves as we do
to the Israelis."
Much of Lebanon was ashamed to see fellow countrymen cheering the return of
Kuntar, and few observed the national "holiday." In the largely Christian
eastern sector of Beirut, Ashrafiyeh, stores stayed open. It was the same in
Sunni areas of West Beirut, where merchants were openly disdainful of the Sunni
Prime Minister's decision to honor the resistance.
"I assure you there are even lots of Shia who are depressed about the
celebrations," says Jana. "They're certainly not in the majority, but you won't
hear them at all because they would be identified as traitors. What kind of
support is there for them if even the government is welcoming the prisoners?"
Wadih, a 40-year-old Christian businessman agrees. "Yes, it's shameful. But if
Israel is satisfied with it, then at the end of the day I'm ok with it. The
Israelis made the deal. Why should I be more royalist than the king?"
"The Israeli political class has their own socio-political justification to
reason away releasing a murderer for two corpses," says Tony Badran, a US-based
Lebanese political analyst. "So our political class can reason it away, too. But
I am not reasoning it away. I hate everything it represents. It's a festival of
violence where everyone has to come pay homage."
The Lebanese political class - from the Maronite Patriarch Boutros Sfeir to
anti-Hezbollah Christian leaders like Samir Geagea and Amine Gemayel - has all
described Israel's release of the prisoners as a "positive" development. "They
say it is 'positive,'" explains Badran, "not because Kuntar is back but because
they want to use it to shut the door on Hezbollah's weapons. This strips them of
one of their justifications to hold on to their arms - fighting for the
liberation of Lebanese prisoners. Kuntar was the last of them so that file is
now closed."
But of course Hezbollah will not willingly abandon its arms under any
circumstances. And the events of the last week are merely a distraction on the
road to what many believe is an inevitable renewal of civil war in Lebanon.
Hezbollah can have their civil war as they showed in May by overrunning Beirut.
But as their opponents showed them in the Shouf Mountains and the north of
Lebanon, they cannot win that civil war. No one will win it.
The question then is, why did so many of the Lebanese politicians who may
eventually make war against Hezbollah feel compelled to celebrate with them.
"You can't underestimate how important the Israeli conflict is for Arabs and
Muslims," says Wadih. "It is part of the inferiority complex. Despite all the
conflicts among the Arabs themselves, this still comes first. And because of the
place it occupies in the Arab mind, there is a sacred line you need to follow to
satisfy the popular demand, whether you believe it or not. It is a sickness, to
be sure. How else can you explain that a murderer is received as a hero?"
The Lebanese are fully aware of the nature of Kuntar's crimes. While some are
truly appalled, the fact is that bludgeoning the head of a four-year-old child
is hardly anomalous in the context of a military strategy that for over half a
century has intentionally targeted civilians. After all, it is not as though
Kuntar crossed the boundaries of decency so carefully articulated by Yasser
Arafat, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Ladin. So, if the leaders of Lebanon's
pro-democracy gathering will not denounce Kuntar's crimes or Hezbollah's
celebration it is not merely because they lack courage. Rather, it is because
even the Sunnis, as much as they despise the "Party of God", are so steeped in
the same bloody history that they cannot imagine another course.
What is unique about Hezbollah's coming out party for Kuntar is that it
illustrates how the culture of death ("Death to Israel, Death to America.") may
end by consuming itself. As Hezbollah proved in its blitzkrieg of Beirut in May,
Lebanese lives, Arab lives, Muslim lives are also of little account if they
stand against the "Islamic resistance". Moreover, the Kuntar episode shows that
the Shiite militia has little regard for even Shiites. After all, insofar as
freeing Kuntar was Nasrallah's casus belli for the July 2006 war [it was to
force Kuntar's release that Hezbollah raided Israel and kidnapped two soldiers]
the Lebanese Shiite community "martyred" 1200 of its own in order to vouchsafe
Nasrallah's "faithful promise". Twelve hundred for one is a bargain suicidal in
both its math and its ethics.
Self destruction is arguably the inevitable destination for a group that, as
Martin Kramer details here, made its world debut with suicide operations during
the Lebanese civil wars.
The first car-bomb "martyrdom operation" was November 11, 1982 when a Hezbollah
fighter killed seventy-four Israeli soldiers and fourteen others. Then came a
series of spectacular attacks, culminating in the1983 US Marine Barracks bombing
at the Beirut airport. Amal, another Shiite organization, understood that
Hezbollah's martyrdom operations were winning them prestige and power in the
Shiite community, and tried to match is rival.
As the two Shiite organizations competed for martyrs, they started sending out
their young men on ill-conceived operations that failed to kill any of the enemy
and achieved only the deaths of the martyrs themselves. That is, they were
suicides.
Shiite clerics tried to qualify the religious sanction they'd granted the
operations. There was Hezbollah's one-time spiritual adviser Hussein Fadlallah:
"We believe that self-martyring operations should only be carried out if they
can bring about a political or military change in proportion to the passions
that incite a person to make of his body an explosive bomb."
But it was already too late, for it is impossible to prevent the suicide of a
society like the one Hezbollah has imposed on the Shia of Lebanon. Nasrallah
forecasts the end of Israel, comparing the Zionist entity to a frail spider's
web, destined to be swept away. The winds of history are capricious, but what
neither Arab bluster, nor Islamic martyrdom nor the "steadfastness" of
"resistance" can obscure is that the house Hezbollah built is on the precipice
of extinction, by its own handicraft.
Hezbollah seems ascendant, but not so strong that the Israelis would not welcome
a Hezbollah takeover of Lebanon, for they believe it would be easy to deter the
"Party of God". However, that is precisely why Hezbollah will not take over,
because it needs to operate behind the cover of the state, a human shield of
more than 3.5 million people.
In other words, the Islamic Resistance is surrounded by enemies - one across the
border, another at its back, and yet a third made up of the Middle East
Majority, a Sunni sea threatening to engulf them as the Shia have feared for
almost 1400 years. The situation is unsustainable, and thus as time is
calculated in the region, the days of the death cult are numbered.
According to the Israeli daily Haaretz Prime Minister Olmert's office has
produced a video about Kuntar "as part of a campaign to tarnish the image of the
Lebanese guerilla group in light of the victory celebrations.
But who is unclear about Hezbollah at this point? Unless it is Ehud Olmert
himself, who last week in Paris at the Mediterranean Summit sought a little face
time with prospective "peace partner" Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The
Israeli Prime Minister who wants to illustrate the culture of death in Lebanon
is pursuing peace with the state that equips the culture of death with weapons.
Indeed, Israel has warned against regime change in Damascus because it fears a
Sunni Islamist government next door - while it cuts deals with Shiite Islamists
in Lebanon and is then aghast at their level of brutality.
Everyone else already knew about Hezbollah. The Arabs knew. Druze leader Walid
Jumblatt and Sunni strongman Saad Hariri, both congratulated the Islamic
resistance for freeing the prisoners - and this after Hezbollah tortured and
executed their co-religionists just two months ago.
Maybe the campaign is directed toward the West. But the apologists in the
academy and editorial rooms and foreign bureaus angling for professional
advancement - i.e. access to Nasrallah and his captains - know. The same is true
of the left-wing fellow travelers of the "resistance" who, unknown to some of
their earnest colleagues, understand perfectly well that the Islamists do not
share their "progressive" ideals. The tenured Nietzscheans and Foucauldians who
seek a return to the blood, the magic, the violence, they certainly know. Those
who know what Hezbollah is, know; and those who seem not to know, know even
better.
**Lee Smith is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute where he specializes in
Levant affairs
Syria and Lebanon: What Has
Changed?
Hassan Haidar Al-Hayat - 24/07/08//
The "new page" in Syrian-Lebanese relations, which Syrian Foreign Minister Walid
Muallem spoke of from Beirut, is mostly or entirely prewritten in bold black
type since Damascus's dealing with its smaller neighbor remains unchanged, save
a few amendments in form and tone, in terms of interfering in every major and
minor detail.
While he considered the arms of Hezbollah, Syria's top ally in Lebanon, a
domestic matter, Muallem was quick to express in the same statements his
objection to the diplomatic efforts undertaken by the Lebanese government with
the United Nations and friendly nations to place the Shebaa Farms in
international custody before returning the territory to Lebanese sovereignty
after the demarcation of borders with Syria. The objective of these efforts is
to ensure that the Shebaa Farms issue will no longer be used as an excuse every
time the question of Hezbollah's arms is brought to the table for discussion now
that the question of prisoners has been closed. Muallem pointed out that this
step, if completed, will merely replace the occupation with international forces
rather than bring an end to it.
This new interpretation of the UN role could imply that the international forces
deployed in South Lebanon are also forces of occupation since they replaced the
Israeli forces that entered Lebanese territories in the summer of 2006.
Moreover, if the Shebaa Farms are Lebanese as Damascus has repeatedly confirmed,
why should Minister Muallem have a say in their fate, especially that Syria
neither consulted with nor informed Lebanon when it initiated indirect
negotiations with Israel through Turkish mediation and after decades of forcing
the concomitance of tracks on Lebanon?
When asked about Syria's readiness to rectify its approach to Lebanon, Muallem
responded saying, "This depends on the change in Lebanon." He was implicitly
referring to the upcoming parliamentary elections, which Damascus hopes will tip
the balance in its allies' favor. At the same time, the Syrian minister refused
interference by "any third party" in the relationships between the two states.
In this, he was specifically referring to the Arab party which still tries to
end the excessive Syrian meddling in Lebanese affairs. It is worth mentioning
that during his participation at the Union for the Mediterranean Summit in
Paris, President Assad promised "a third party," namely France, to establish
diplomatic ties and exchange embassies with Lebanon in return for the
normalization of Syrian relations with France.
Hence, it becomes evident from Muallem's statements that the "carrot" of
diplomatic relations - despite its symbolic significance - is no more than an
attempt to avoid the effective resolution of most problematic issues pertaining
to the relations with Lebanon, particularly those concerning the political,
military, and security ties Damascus maintains with various Lebanese factions,
parties and figures at a time when the need is for normal and transparent
relations established between two states on the basis of equality, respect and
mutual recognition of sovereignty. Such a relationship requires avoiding labels
such as "allies" and "foes," closing outlets for arms smuggling and combatants
infiltration, and refraining from treating Lebanon as the backyard of the
various Syrian intelligence apparatuses or as the battlefield ready for use in
accordance with the progress of negotiations with Israel in a manner that serves
Syria's relations and regional interests
Brammertz Will Prosecute Karadzic. But Whom Will Bellemare Prosecute?
Randa Takieddine
Al-Hayat - 23/07/08//
The arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is extremely
important because it gives a beam of hope to the peoples of the world that, no
matter how long it takes, there is something called international justice.
Karadzic is accused of ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity,
which killed more than 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. Remarkably, the
international prosecutor who will lead the case in The Hague is Serge Brammertz,
who for six months headed an international investigation into the assassination
of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. Brammertz resigned from his post
to take over from Carla Del Ponte in The Hague.
It is an encouraging coincidence. It revives hope for the Lebanese that the
perpetrators of crimes against politicians, journalists and military personnel
will be revealed and eventually tried, even if the investigation drags on a
while.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslavia fell apart and its six republics
declared their independence in 1991. Karadzic and Slobodan Milosevic tried to
join Croatia and Bosnia to Serbia; Karadzic, helped by Ratko Mladic, carried out
the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Bosnia.
Karadzic is called the "Osama bin Laden of Europe." His arrest prompts us to
hope that the crimes that have been committed in Lebanon since the assassination
of Hariri, and even prior to this, might one day see the arrest of the network
that carried them out. Prior to the assassination of Hariri, his comrades and
Minister Basil Fleihan, there were the killings of leaders and presidents in
Lebanon, which were not addressed, even though many are convinced that the same
network that killed Hariri and his comrades had equally assassinated Kamal
Jumblatt, Rene Mouawad, and Bashir Gemayel. It is true that these did not take
place during the same period, but the network that undertook the previous
assassinations, which did not spare leading journalists like Salim al-Lawzi,
used various methods during the course of political developments in Lebanon.
The assassination of Hariri and Fleihan and the subsequent crimes against
journalists Gebran Tueni and Samir Kassir, and politicians Pierre Gemayel, Walid
Eido and his son, George Hawi, Antoine Ghanem, and General Francois Hajj, and
the attempts against May Chidiac, Marwan Hamade and Elias Murr, are crimes that
fall into the framework of a spate of killings intended to keep Lebanon in the
terror camp.
With the arrest of Karadzic, we hope that the head of the international
investigation into the killing of Hariri and his comrades, Canada's Daniel
Bellemare, will speed up the completion of his investigation to create an
international tribunal by the end of 2009. Despite all of the political
developments in France and the US and the two countries' openness to Syria and
Iran, hope remains that Bellemare is keen to remain distant from politics and
conduct his investigation in a professional fashion. He is a retired judge who,
unlike his predecessor Brammertz, does not seek a post other than that of
international public prosecutor when he finishes his investigation. In the view
of some, including his predecessor Judge Detlev Mehlis, Brammertz was secretive.
However, he acted like a historian of the crime, and not an investigator. As for
Bellemare, he is leading a professional investigation and is not talking about
it with anyone. He meets with officials from the United Nations Security Council
but does not reveal any information about the investigation.
Bellemare requires testimony and evidence that should be protected, so that his
investigation can yield results. International justice takes time, since it is a
serious effort. No matter how long it takes, the punishment of the criminals, in
the end, will resemble the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially in the Middle
East. The UN resolution creating an international tribunal for the Hariri
assassination is not just words. Whoever believes that developments in the
region will abolish this tribunal can refer to what happened to Karadzic, 13
years after the search for him began. Perhaps this arrest represents hope, for
those who have been disappointed due to French and American policy developments
in the region, even though the Middle East's Berlin Wall has yet to come down