A Syrian military document was leaked that exposes Assad’s efforts to suppress democracy activists with lethal force and hide behind from it by using hidden snipers – basically planning to do what has been reported by activists all week – killing peaceful protesters but doing so from undeclared sources, and then pointing the blame to “Americans,” “Zionists” and “Saudis and Lebanese.”
I just read a New York Times article that reminded me think that it is astonishing how deep is the cult of ‘resistance’ in the Arab world that thugs like Nassrallah are seen as heroes. He is among the most popular figures in Egypt and Palestine (and all across the Mideast) and seen as an upright honest leader. It is fascinating how human beings can rationalize facts away when they interfere with their romantic notions. The way Hezbollah has been bullying Saad Hariri and the Lebanese people to stop seeking answers for who was behind the assassination of the former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri should disgust any human being who cares about justice. Nassrallah is to Lebanon what an organized Mafia family head would be to a jury investigating their crimes if he publicly threatened the jury in court.
Too bad the Saudis, the Sunnis and the Americans among many others who should compose civil society and the police have done so little to protect them.
by Adeena Schlussel on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky
Security sources report that Syria has been delivering arms from clandestine depots in Syria to bases in Lebanon. This accusation heightens fears that Syria’s President Bashar Assad is becoming close with Hizbollah, and by extension, its friend, Iran. As part of this concern, some worry that should a clash erupt between Lebanon and Israel, Syria would be entered into the fighting. The UN Security Council Resolution 1701 bans providing arms to Hizbollah and many Western leaders are pressing President Assad to stop undermining this provision.
In a prior blog entry here, I shared an insight from Linda Gallanter, that your goal when raising children should be to give them purpose, rather than for them to be "happy." If they find purpose, they will find happiness. If you obsess with their immediate happiness as a goal, they may just end up spoiled or feeling self-entitled.
But in reading an excellent article from Andrea Elliot, The Jihadist Next Door, and in remembering some concepts from a novel (OD&H) I started trying to write a decade ago but never finished, one should remember that "purpose" is a double-edged sword. A lot of the most dangerous people find purpose alright - to destroy or vanquish or eliminate.
So the caveat should be that Purpose needs to be Positive. And since Positive is a normative word whose definition may be in the eye of the beholder (ie, for Omar Hammami, killing infidels in Somalia is a Positive act), I would define Positive as rooted in TOLERANCE AND RESPECT TOWARDS OTHER HUMAN BEINGS - or the golden rule of doing onto others as you would want to be done on to you.
Elliot’s article also highlights that the same attributes of leaders in society - being smart, curious, introspective, analytical, charismatic, determined - can be dangerous if not rooted in tolerance.
Ironically, Omar Hammami was brought up by a Muslim Dad and Christian Mom. So you would think that environment can foster diversity and respect (as it has in countless of PeaceWorks and OneVoice team members I have met over the years whose parents come from different backgrounds. Alas, in this case, the teachings that Hammami got from Islam and from Christianity were exclusionary and rooted in intolerance. He would be warned by his Mom’s family and church in Alabama that he would go to hell unless he accepted Christianity. And he would be warned by his Father’s family in Syria that he would be cursed if he didn’t accept Islam. Repressive religious upbringings can boomerang and catch up with your offspring.
Elliot’s article also points how "a constant in Hammami’s life [is] his striving for another place and purpose."
The zeal to transcend one’s life in this world - the search for purpose and posterity - can be the greatest inspiration for good or evil.
In a remarkable sermon, Syria’s highest Sunni religious authority spoke courageously and powerfully about religions requiring humanity and respect, including these statements:
“If the Prophet Mohammed had asked me to deem Christians or Jews heretics, I would have deemed Mohammed himself a heretic."
Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun also “said Islam was a religion of peace, adding: ‘If Mohammed had commanded us to kill people, I would have told him he was not a prophet.’”
Good summary by IPF of Iranian efforts to arm Hezbollah and Hamas, and the stunning Israeli interception of 320 tons of weapons. The world community needs to do more to prevent the Iranian regime from sabotaging peace efforts.
Julian Brody wrote an interesting piece for IPF about US Govt’ envoy Fred Hoff’s innovative proposal on how to resolve the Golan Heights controversy between Israel and Syria. What is insightful and creative about it is that it takes each party’s core priorities into consideration and not only addresses them but potentially even resolves the issue in a way that creates the foundations for a warmer peace, and a more vibrant & ecologically-sound economy.
Ethan Bronner of the New York Times wrote an interesting - and sobering - article about the dwindling numbers of Christians in the Middle East.
Read the entire article pasted below or in this link about Hezbollah’s Boy Scouts - to appreciate the challenge before society: the institutionalized hatred and seriousness of the threat posed by Hezbollah, its backers, and other movements with such nihilistic visions. It is chilling. We have no alternative but to counteract this in a smart and tenacious way.
To defeat absolutism and terrorism, force is only a partial answer. Far more important than force is a better ideology that can trump and expose dark movements as unworthy of the young people they prey upon. It is not easy, but it can be done.
Like we are doing through OneVoice for millions of Israelis and Palestinians to reframe the conflict and understand the enemy is not each other but violent extremism and militant absolutism that denies the rights of both peoples to a State and Freedom and Security, we need to also build a countervailing movement and philosophy that moves the Mideast (and other regions) away from the us-vs-them hatreds and into the post-Obama world of globally shared human values.
If we are to tackle the challenges that the 21st century will present to humanity – from climate change to nuclear proliferation, from resource scarcity to nihilism and militant absolutism – we need to ensure that new generations worldwide share this recognition that they have to work together – realizing their shared humanity.
More on this soon - but in the meantime read this article…
Generation Faithful
Hezbollah Seeks to Marshal the Piety of the Young
New York Times, November 21, 2008, By ROBERT F. WORTH
RIYAQ, Lebanon — On a Bekaa Valley playing field gilded by late-afternoon sun, hundreds of young men wearing Boy Scout-style uniforms and kerchiefs stand rigidly at attention as a military band plays, its marchers bearing aloft the distinctive yellow banner of Hezbollah, the militant Shiite movement.
They are adolescents — 17 or 18 years old — but they have the stern faces of adult men, lightly bearded, some of them with dark spots in the center of their foreheads from bowing down in prayer. Each of them wears a tiny picture of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shiite cleric who led the Iranian revolution, on his chest.
“You are our leader!” the boys chant in unison, as a Hezbollah official walks to a podium and addresses them with a Koranic invocation. “We are your men!”
This is the vanguard of Hezbollah’s youth movement, the Mahdi Scouts. Some of the graduates gathered at this ceremony will go on to join Hezbollah’s guerrilla army, fighting Israel in the hills of southern Lebanon. Others will work in the party’s bureaucracy. The rest will probably join the fast-growing and passionately loyal base of support that has made Hezbollah the most powerful political, military and social force in Lebanon.
In a watershed development, Syria recently condemned radical Islamists as responsible for a terrorist act in Damascus. And Pakistanis are increasingly rejecting Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (as opposed to a regrettable situation where a significant portion of that population was empathetic in the past). Across the Arab world and Muslim society, more and more citizens are recognizing the imperative of standing up against all forms of violent extremism…
