Party of God

I have always been troubled by the reaction of many in the Arab world to the terrorist tactics of militant Islam.

It seems that if they aren't active supporters of terrorist groups, they're at least likely to be apologists for them.

Where are the level-headed decent people?

Why don't they condemn the fact that Hezbollah exploits women and children as human shields and uses their neighborhoods as sites to store weapons?

Why aren't they outraged at Hezbollah for employing such a gutless strategy?

From The New York Times:

In mosques from Mecca to Marrakesh, sermons at Friday Prayer services underscored both the David-versus-Goliath glamour many Arabs associate with Hezbollah’s fight against Israel and their antipathy toward the United States and its allies in the region for doing so little to stop yet another Arab country from collapsing into bloodshed.

Glamour?

The Arabs who find glamour in Hezbollah are either terrorists, terrorist wannabes, or terrorist sympathizers.

They align themselves with terrorists. There's nothing noble about that. There's no other way to look at it.

Was there glamour in Timothy McVeigh's David-versus-Goliath act of terrorism?

I didn't see it.

There's nothing glamorous or romantic about INTENTIONALLY targeting innocent men, women, and children and blowing them up.

That's what Timothy McVeigh did; and that's what Hezbollah does.

Here are some of Hezbollah's "greatest hits":

--Hezbollah is known or suspected to have been involved in numerous terror attacks against the U.S., Israel or other Western targets, including the 1983 suicide truck bombings in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines at the Marine barracks and 58 at the French military barracks.

--In 2004, Hezbollah exchanged prisoners with Israel in a deal that took three years to negotiate. Israel released more than 400 prisoners and returned 59 bodies of Lebanese fighters. Hezbollah released a kidnapped Israeli businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers.

(Reread those numbers. A fair exchange?)

--The 1996 suicide bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 are killed, was attributed to Hezbollah.

--Hezbollah was blamed for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina, in which 85 were killed.

Here are some more:

--A series of kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon, including several Americans, in the 1980s.

--The 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, which featured the famous footage of the plane’s pilot leaning out of the cockpit with a gun to his head.

Although some of Hezbollah's victims were killed in attacks on military targets, others were most definitely not. A Jewish community center in Argentina is not a military target.

Kidnapping civilians and hijacking a commercial airliner can only be seen as the cowardly tactics of terrorists.

How can mercilessly terrorizing civilians be seen as admirable by anyone?

That takes a truly sick mind.

How can religious leaders be excusing such actions by Hezbollah and supporting that terrorist group?

How can they blame the United States and our allies for not pressuring Israel into a ceasefire to appease those terrorists?

It doesn't make sense.

“Our brothers are being killed in Lebanon and no one is responding to their cries for help,” said Sheik Hazzaa al-Maswari, an Islamist member of Yemen’s Parliament, in his Friday sermon at the Mujahid Mosque in Sana, the country’s capital.

“Where are the Arab leaders?” he said. “Do they have any skill other than begging for a fake peace outside the White House? We don’t want leaders who bow to the White House.”

The tone of the sermons suggests that the fighting in Lebanon is further tarnishing the image of the United States in the Arab world as being solely concerned with Israel’s welfare and making its allied governments look increasingly like puppets.

You can tell that The Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar is loving this.

He seems to be taking pleasure in the anti-Americanism he's finding in mosques.

The Times LOVES to point out the "tarnished" image of the United States. And when it's not directing readers' attention to the "tarnish," its aggressively engaged in its own campaign to blacken the image of the U.S.

“What is creating radicalism in the region is not authoritarian regimes,” said Mustafa Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. “Mainly it is American policy in the region — survey after survey shows that.”

If Mustafa Hamarneh wants to attribute Arab radicalism to American policy, he must blame American policy since the creation of Israel in 1948.

The current crisis didn't just spontaneously combust a few weeks ago. The roots of Arab radicalism are deep, going back generations.

Read the list of Hezbollah's major attacks and note the dates.

Contrary to the ramblings of Russ Feingold, Howard Dean, Madeleine Albright, and Helen Thomas, -- to name just a few of the anti-Bush crusaders -- the current turmoil did not arise out of any of the Bush administration's policies. Bush can't be blamed for the Arabs' hatred of the Jews, nor can the war in Iraq.

Furthermore, I'm sick of America being the scapegoat for the Middle East's problems.

Because we support Israel, a DEMOCRACY, we're to blame -- for everything.

Name a democracy that is not an ally of the U.S. We support democracies in every region of the world.

Gee, what a horrible policy that is! How awful it is that America backs nations that believe in liberty and justice for all!

...“What gives us pain is the Arab position,” said Mohamed al-Habash, a cleric who serves in Syria’s Parliament, speaking from the pulpit of Al Zahra Mosque. “They are entering a conspiracy against the Arabs, their brothers.”

No.

If there's a conspiracy, it's that radical Arabs refuse to compromise and refuse to work for peace, thereby causing great suffering to "their brothers."

In an interview, the cleric said the United States was helping religious extremists by encouraging the Israelis to continue their onslaught. By not working harder to stop the deaths of scores of Lebanese women and children, he said, the United States is abetting the recruiting efforts of the likes of Osama bin Laden and the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“The United States is creating more Zarqawis, more bin Ladens in the Mideast every day,” Mr. Habash said.

Hey! That's a really popular Dem talking point! I hear that all the time!

Kerry used that in his FAILED 2004 presidential campaign, didn't he?

Radical Arab clerics sound like American libs!

I think in the long run, by not reining in Israel now, the U.S. is actually encouraging the people of the region to finally reject terrorism and learn to peacefully coexist with Israel.

Calling for a ceasefire would amount to abetting militant Islam. It would be a stamp of approval for the "wipe Israel off the map" wing.

Every time Israelis make a concession, it gets them absolutely nowhere.

For instance, the withdrawal from Gaza didn't change anything.

Why aren't the compromises that Israel makes matched with real efforts by Arab countries to achieve peace?

Why don't those compromises satisfy the terrorist militias?


Simple. They don't want peace with Israel. That's clear.

They don't want Israel. Period.

The United States, for its part, blames Syrian support for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas as being among the root causes of such extremism.

Hezbollah and Hamas are the recruiters of terrorists, not the U.S.

They teach children to hate and to want to die in order to kill. They love their children so much that they encourage their children to kill themselves.

Of course, groups like Hezbollah and Hamas are the root causes of extremism.

The Saudi government has taken a strong public position against Hezbollah’s having brought on the crisis by capturing two Israeli soldiers, last week condemning the organization’s “uncalculated adventures.” Washington has leaned heavily on that and similar statements in explaining its own position.

Yet the senior Saudi imam delivering the sermon from Islam’s holiest mosque in Mecca, broadcast live, presented a rare if discreet criticism of Saudi royal policy.

The Muslim world should be proud of the bravery shown by the Palestinians and the Lebanese confronting Israel, said Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, who pointedly urged Muslim leaders to return to “sound reason and unify their ranks.”

Is the Muslim world proud of strapping bombs to their children and sending them off to kill as many Israelis as possible by detonating and killing themselves?

Is that the Muslim world's idea of bravery?

Sadly, the answer to both questions is YES.

He took an indirect swipe at the United States for claiming to promote human rights while leaving the mounting deaths of civilians all but unmentioned. “Where are those who filled the world with slogans of freedom and democracy?” he asked. “Don’t they fear that history will condemn them for their double standards?”

History won't condemn the U.S. for not demanding an immediate ceasefire. History would condemn the U.S. for seeing the terrorist threat and letting it go unchecked.

Protecting freedom and democracy demands that terrorist groups like Hezbollah be disbanded and disarmed.

And of course, the civilian deaths are terrible. If only the cowardly Hezbollah wouldn't hide among the innocents and put them at risk by making them targets.

In Egypt, Sheik Khalid Saoudi at the Sayyida Hafsa Mosque in the well-to-do Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, criticized the Saudis and the Arab League for trying to rely on international intervention.

“Every time we rely on the ‘big guys,’ we get slapped,” he told the gathered worshipers, suggesting that Islam was under assault around the world, with conflicts raging in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

Islam isn't under assault. Terrorists exploiting Islam are under assault.

The Iranian government — whose support of Hezbollah and Hamas as a means of widening the reach of its Islamic revolution is causing worry in some other Middle Eastern capitals — also took the opportunity to condemn Arab leaders.

Former president Hashemi Rafsanjani of Iran, speaking at the main Friday Prayer sermon in downtown Tehran, said Arab and Islamic countries “do not even bother to condemn the fact that Muslims are being butchered by nonbelievers.”

Sorry, Rafsanjani.

More Muslims are being killed by other Muslims rather than "nonbelievers."

Condemn that!

“This is a historic catastrophe,” said Mr. Rafsanjani, who is a Shiite cleric.

He went on to say that all Hezbollah fighters should be considered heroes, according to Reuters. The most radical Shiite cleric in neighboring Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr, also spoke out in support of Hezbollah.

In mosques across the region, virtually every prayer leader used the traditional call-and-response period after the main sermon to ask God to grant a victory to the Muslims. “Amen,” responded the congregations in one voice.

That's right. The death to Israel crowd is united in their hatred. Amen!

I would love to read a front page New York Times article like this:

In mosques from Mecca to Marrakesh, sermons at Friday Prayer services underscored that the David-versus-Goliath glamour many Arabs associate with Hezbollah’s fight against Israel is horribly misguided, and their antipathy toward the United States and its allies in the region for doing so little to stop yet another Arab country from collapsing into bloodshed is a shameful attempt to escape taking personal responsibility for the suffering that they have wrought due to their twisted philosophy that Israel must be destroyed.

That won't happen because the Muslim clerics praising Hezbollah and decrying the bloodshed in Lebanon also want to see Israel annihilated.

If Islam is indeed a religion of peace that has been hijacked by militants, there must be some heroes willing to storm the cockpit and fight to retake control of their religion, right?

Where are they?