Funny how I didn't hear about this before it happened, didn't read about it in the Lebanese press, and didn't hear about it on Tele Liban, Future, or New TV news.
I found out from a Cuban American living in Miami, and a Ghanaian blogger (of the Lebanese variety).
As usual in Lebanon, we will never get everyone to agree on anything, but the country must work. Rather than legitimize homosexuality, civil marriage, non-sectarian identification, etc. we simply ignore them instead of challenging the clergy and fanatics. That's pretty much because groups are the most powerful political entities in Lebanon. Once the gays and the civilly married groups become large and powerful enough, they'll be able to compete against the religious and conservative authorities.
Aside:
Doesn't Israel normally take credit for their assassinations? I haven't scrutinized the news, but I saw politicians on Future claiming that the bomb was "obviously" Israeli.
The conspiracy theorist in me says: Syria killed a disposable leader to enrage the Palestinian militias, increase tensions in the camps, stop the de-arming of Palestinians outside the camps (especially after Palestinians killed a Lebanese soldier and enraged the country and brought political urgency to disarmament), and de-legitimize the newly appointed Palestinian Ambassador, who is close with Mahmoud Abbas and the Hariri's.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
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20 comments:
Interesting sidenote. Your conspiracy may be true and not in fact a conspiracy.
However, in answer to your question: no, Israel does not normally take credit ...
actually israel does. and props to lebanon for the gay pride parade, im not pro homosexuality my self, but i believe ppl should be free to do what they want. and thats why I love lebanon. despite all thats going on, it is the center of liberty in the arab world, and im coming to visit this summer!:) awesome blog.love from egypt.
Israel has been having gay pride parades for years. Sorry, but this is something that Israel always takes credit for, as for assassinations, it depends. When the IAF does it, Israel takes credit, when it's a carbomb, often not.
I have to agree that's true. Israel has hosted many gay pride parades before, But Lebanon is the first Arab country to host such a thing.
And perhaps your very interesting conspiracy theory is true...Israel usually take claim for their actions, so I don't understand why would Future say it's Israeli. Perhaps to lower the tension I guess.
The assasination does seem odd. What is the importance of the individual that was killed to Israel? Would his death be a severe blow to immediate operations against Israel? Was he an individual of such great importance? If no, perhaps the Israelis killed him as a warning or for symbolic purposes? Or indeed, perhaps the Syrians killed him for these very reasons that you state. I guess we will never know. However, there is no love lost for his death, no matter who killed him, however, we all want such acts on Lebanese soil to end at once.
Besides this, let the evil powers that be know that a national decision has been taken regarding Palestinian arms, with the mainstream Palestinian factions such as Fatah agreeing and supporting such a decision. This means that the Lebanese government is not dealing with all the Palestinians, only some of them. Luckily for us, these Palestinians are the ones who are alligned with Syria. Would anyone in Lebanon be passionate about the disarming of such Palestinians? I hardly think so.
The Lebanese Army is more than capable in dealing a swift blow to such elements. Hopefully it will not come to this, but if it must, so be it.
Who was assassinated? What did I miss?
didn't know about the homophobia conference? perhaps if u read the daily star instead of just criticising it all the time, u'd have noticed the banner advert announcing the conference that was featured on its website for at least two weeks before it took place
I'm glad that the parade (if you could call it that) went through. Start off small, get bigger. More power to them. Nasrallah must be either (a) consulting with his masters on how to wage a holy war on Helem or (b) working out in order to be fit for the next parade.
As for your conspiracy theory, it has merit. Unfortunately we'll never know. I personally believe that any murder/assassination/etc. should be investigated thoroughly before someone is blamed. However the fact that our so called 'brothers' hit Israel today kind of gels with your theory. A perfect excuse to escalate tensions ahead of the Brammertz report.
Israel did take "credit," if that is the word, for the hit on the PFLP in the Bekaa Valley. It was a response to an attack by...Hezbollah.
There was more fighting on the border, as well.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/720450.html
Micheal, what everyone is talking about is the assasination of an Islamic Jihad leader by a car bomb in Sidon.
Omega80,
I see. Israel denies the car bomb and takes "credit" for a hit on the pflp base.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=2&cid=1148482056375&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Anon 11:56,
Going for the low blows, it seems. My boycott of the paper continues.
Michael,
Sorry I haven't been around in awhile. It's been really busy, and I hit the beach hard today - first time in a year.
It seems you're now more up to date on the situation than I am. Thanks for taking care of answering the question Omega80.
PR,
Nasrallah's got a long, long way to go to meet option (b). But if his kirish starts disappearing...
The only possible answer to your question on whether Israel normally takes credit for its assassination is "yes". If someone answers "no", then they would be forced to look for a an example. But how can they look for an example where Israel DOES NOT take credit for an attack if it carried an attack WITHOUT taking credit for it.
It is very well known fallacy called "begging the question" and it is related to circular reasoning. Your reasoning goes as such: Israel always takes credit for its attacks. I know because Israel has not taken credit for an attack it has not carried out. I know that it did not carry attacks it did not take credit for since it always take credit for its attacks.
Ralph,
You make an excellent point. However, my intention was not to push the claim that Israel didn't do it, but rather to criticize the knee-jerk reaction to blame the Israelis.
Given the pride the Israeli government showed when assassinating Yassine and Rantisi, and their talk about assassinating Arafat, I wondered why the Israelis wouldn't claim this assassination had they actually carried it out. For awhile, they weren't denying it, which was suspicious. However, they later said they didn't do it.
Who knows?
Will the government investigate? Probably not. They've already got a culprit. They don't investigate anything else anyways.
Ralph,
you do make an interesting argument. However, it does not take into consideration recent research done in israeli archives (that were released recently) by Benny Morris and his ilk, in which several "secret" assassinations which Israel had not originally taken credit for were "noted" to have been orchestrated by israel, .i.e. it took several decades before the "truth" was known.
i don't know what the answer is in this case, but to categorically state that "yes" is the answer is incorrect.
regards,
l.
Why would Israel kill someone with a car bomb when a missile would have worked just as well? And not endangered any Israeli lives?
Israel only takes credit for assassinations when there is no plausible way to deny what happened. When a car is hit with a missile launched from 12,000', well, that isn't going to be anybody but the IAF, so Israel takes responsibility. When a car just explodes, well, that could have been anybody.
The Mossad used to assassate people in person, but Israel now has a greater reluctance to endanger its own citizens.
LP, I see, you are addressing an audience of skeptics who blame everything on Israel. Considering your readership, I wouldn't have guessed.
I am not a conspiracy theorist either way myself. But this one resembles two other assassinations carried out against Hizballah operatives with links to Palestinian militants (2003 & 2004, I believe). And those were the days before we could comfortably blame everything on Syria instead of Israel, so everyone believed it was Israel.
But who knows? It could be Syrians mimicking Israeli attacks. It could be Israelis mimicking Syrians mimicking Israeli attacks. It could be Syrians mimicking Israelis mimicking Syrians... well, you know what I mean.
Hold on! There was no gay Pride parade...Beirut has NEVER had one. The pic is of gay people walking in the Bairut marathon in 2005. What happened last month was NOT a pride parade!
And yes, Israel has had many Pride parades.
As for the bombing, I hate it when politicians say the culprit os "obviously" this person or that person...it just makes everyone more infuriated and may cause retaliation, which may be unreserved. The Emirate paper AL-Sharq just reported that Syria might not be involved in Rafiq Hariri's killing...while I don't necessarily believe this is true, it will certainly make anti-Syrians look bad if it is.
Last weeks bombing could have been the fault of Syria, Israel, Palestinian in-fighting, or little green men. Speculation takes us nowhere useful, only investigation does.
And there was no damn Pride!
Please refer to www.BlueprintAsia.com for a fresh solution to the conflict based on an All Asia Accord. The region must have a higher level of potential to sooth the territory problem. My commentary (near bottom)
Thanks
denisbraun@hotmail.com
«In Iran, stoning a person to dead is not against the law. Using the wrong stone is. »
This is not my sentence, it comes from Amnesty International
What kind of moral authority has the Muslim world altogether to criticize Israel and support Hezbollah, which is the Iranian agent in Lebanon? Please watch this 2004 stoning video in Iran. We are dealing with a bunch of barbaric scumbags and no force would be small to stop them -- as Churchill often said before the entire world realized he was right.
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