Getting Started...
Getting Started...
This is my first entry in my new eblogger, after deciding to try the worldwide blogging- mania. One would expect an initial entry to be festive or gleaming but this is not the case when a first entry is written in a state of war and paralysis. For all of those who are not familiar with the situation in the Middle East, I will try to explain briefly what's happening in my area these days.
Hizbullah- [The Islamic Resistence (Terroist) Movement of Lebanon] kidnappes 2 Israeli soldiers in July 12th ---> Israel decides to attack in order to paralyze Lebanon (this way they assume that they can prevent Hizbullah from trasnferring the soldiers to Iran/Syria and also to prevent them from transffering missiles from North Lebanon to South Lebanon)----> Hizbullah attacks Northern Israeli towns, including cities which have never been attacked by them before such as Haifa---> a state of mayhem prevails in the Middle East, and each side blames the other one for initiating the war.
If I were asked to define myself these days, I would probably choose to define myself as a "consumer". I am a consumer of all the thoughts, pictures, ideologies, and scences represented in the media. I consume the interpretations of the Israeli media which usually apply to my reason. Then, I get exposed the Arab/ international media and witness the savageness of the belligerent machine, and like every other human, these pictures apply to my feelings. As an Israeli I believe that Israel has the right to defend itself against its enimies, but the current military action seems to lacks all proportions. After all, Lebanon in my opinion, is probably the greatest Arab country historically and culturally, and it pinches me to see it aching through a collective punishment. On the other hand, a terrorist like Hassan Nasrallah can not do whatever he wants whenever he wants without respecting the international decisions, and therefore a military action against him and against his organization is unavodiable, but Israel has to do as much as possible in order to minimize the damage caused to the civilians. So far Israel says that it has been sending warnings to civilians in order to give them some time to leave their villages, but this method hasn't been effective enough so far.
I admit: I have been struggling to find justice in this entire battle, but I couldn't find any, and I guess I will never find. Justice doesn't have a place in this world since the human endeavor to gain personal interests would prevail over the basic right of living. Politicians and leaders think that through their actions they attempt to bring salvation to their countries, but the reverse seems to happen. There is no salvation at a state of war, nor there is a winner. Eventually this war will over after having consumed as much casualties as possible from both sides, and one thing seems to be certain: the true soldiers from both sides are the civilians who are unwillingly paying their lives to ensure the reckless continuity of dominance...
Until next time, I will keep dreaming of a brighter Middle East.
This is my first entry in my new eblogger, after deciding to try the worldwide blogging- mania. One would expect an initial entry to be festive or gleaming but this is not the case when a first entry is written in a state of war and paralysis. For all of those who are not familiar with the situation in the Middle East, I will try to explain briefly what's happening in my area these days.
Hizbullah- [The Islamic Resistence (Terroist) Movement of Lebanon] kidnappes 2 Israeli soldiers in July 12th ---> Israel decides to attack in order to paralyze Lebanon (this way they assume that they can prevent Hizbullah from trasnferring the soldiers to Iran/Syria and also to prevent them from transffering missiles from North Lebanon to South Lebanon)----> Hizbullah attacks Northern Israeli towns, including cities which have never been attacked by them before such as Haifa---> a state of mayhem prevails in the Middle East, and each side blames the other one for initiating the war.
If I were asked to define myself these days, I would probably choose to define myself as a "consumer". I am a consumer of all the thoughts, pictures, ideologies, and scences represented in the media. I consume the interpretations of the Israeli media which usually apply to my reason. Then, I get exposed the Arab/ international media and witness the savageness of the belligerent machine, and like every other human, these pictures apply to my feelings. As an Israeli I believe that Israel has the right to defend itself against its enimies, but the current military action seems to lacks all proportions. After all, Lebanon in my opinion, is probably the greatest Arab country historically and culturally, and it pinches me to see it aching through a collective punishment. On the other hand, a terrorist like Hassan Nasrallah can not do whatever he wants whenever he wants without respecting the international decisions, and therefore a military action against him and against his organization is unavodiable, but Israel has to do as much as possible in order to minimize the damage caused to the civilians. So far Israel says that it has been sending warnings to civilians in order to give them some time to leave their villages, but this method hasn't been effective enough so far.
I admit: I have been struggling to find justice in this entire battle, but I couldn't find any, and I guess I will never find. Justice doesn't have a place in this world since the human endeavor to gain personal interests would prevail over the basic right of living. Politicians and leaders think that through their actions they attempt to bring salvation to their countries, but the reverse seems to happen. There is no salvation at a state of war, nor there is a winner. Eventually this war will over after having consumed as much casualties as possible from both sides, and one thing seems to be certain: the true soldiers from both sides are the civilians who are unwillingly paying their lives to ensure the reckless continuity of dominance...
Until next time, I will keep dreaming of a brighter Middle East.
posted by Emad @ 12:33 AM
2 Comments:
At 2:58 PM,
Anonymous said…
Cool with your own blog, hope you write much about yourself in the future and what happends in your life.
Don't understand this war, to complicated for me to understand why people kill each other.
// Your swedish friend "Kalle"
At 8:27 AM,
Anonymous said…
By Robin Wright
Washington Post
Nasrallah is a man of God, gun and government, a cross between Ayatollah Khomeini and Che Guevera, an Islamic populist as well as a charismatic guerrilla tactician.
When we met in his office, before this new battle with Israel, Nasrallah claimed to see peaceful political activism as Hezbollah's future.
"We have ministers, we have members of parliament, we have municipal council members, leaders of unions and syndicates," he boasted as we sat on faux French brocade furniture at his now-bombed headquarters. "If we are maintaining our arms until now, this is due to the fact that the need for it is still there, due to the permanent or constant Israeli threats against Lebanon. Whether we keep on with the resistance or stop the resistance, we are effectively now a full-fledged political party."
I was then 22 years old," Nasrallah told me. "We used to discuss issues among ourselves. If we are to expel the Israeli occupation from our country, how do we do this? We noticed what happened in Palestine, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, in the Golan, in the Sinai. We reached a conclusion that we cannot rely on the Arab League states, nor on the United Nations," he said. "The only way that we have is to take up arms and fight the occupation forces."
"The Israeli Air Force could destroy the Lebanese army within hours, or within days, but it cannot do this with us," Nasrallah told me. "We exercise guerrilla warfare. ... Lebanon still needs the formula of popular resistance."
Whenever Nasrallah talks about the terrorist tactics with which Hezbollah has become synonymous, the message is still tortuously two-faced. Our exchange about al-Qaida and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was typical:
"What do the people who worked in those two (World Trade Center) towers, along with thousands of employees, women and men, have to do with war that is taking place in the Middle East? Or the war that Mr. George Bush may wage on people in the Islamic world?" he asked me. "Therefore we condemned this act — and any similar act we condemn."
But the Pentagon?
"I said nothing about the Pentagon, meaning we remain silent. We neither favored nor opposed that act," he replied. "Well, of course, the method of Osama bin Laden, and the fashion of bin Laden, we do not endorse them. And many of the operations that they have carried out, we condemned them very clearly."
The use of terrorism is a difficult subject for the head of a group that succeeded in redefining extremist tactics. Hezbollah deployed the first Islamic suicide bombers in modern times. It was also the first to carry out multiple attacks simultaneously. Al-Qaida and Hamas and Iraq's insurgents — all Sunni movements — have copied these tactics.
Nevertheless, Nasrallah has only disdain for bin Laden and the Taliban. In April, an al-Qaida cell in Lebanon tried to assassinate him. And the late al-Qaida chief in Iraq this spring.
condemned the Shiite movement as an "enemy of the Sunnis" — ironically, in hindsight — for protecting Israel by preventing Palestinian attacks from Lebanon. "The worst, the most dangerous thing that this Islamic revival has encountered ... was the Taliban," Nasrallah told me. "The Taliban state presented a very hideous example of an Islamic state."
Yet Hezbollah has not abandoned its extremist origins, even as it tries to establish conventional political legitimacy.
"It is unacceptable, it is forbidden, to harm the innocent," he told me, reflecting on Iraq. "To have Iraqis confronting the occupation army, this is natural. But if there are American tourists, or intellectuals, doctors, or professors who have nothing to do with this war, they are innocent, even though they are Americans, and it is forbidden. It is not acceptable to harm them."
I asked Nasrallah how he applied his metric on civilians to Israelis. He described the issue of what he calls "occupied Palestine" as "complicated."
"It is our opinion that in Palestine, women and children need to be avoided in any case," he responded. "But it came after more than two months of daily Israeli killing of Palestinians, and the destruction of houses and schools, and the siege that is imposed on the Palestinians. There is no other means for the Palestinians to defend themselves. That is why I cannot condemn this type of operation in occupied Palestine."
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