The meaning of Terrorism
For those in the dark, yesterday evening the state of Israel has declared war on the country of Lebanon. This is not the first time that hostile action has been taken against Lebanon, however it does mean that 6 years of peace in the country have been brought to a devastating halt. Today we (the Lebanese) were reminded of our country 20 years ago, a recent history we’re trying to heal from struggling every day to building a better future. Some would not have this. Some will not allow this.The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organised group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
It’s an interesting word. It’s also a word which I have been made to detest because of it’s hypocritical misuse by those that benefit from it’s misuse. Whenever that word is used the instant image most people conjure up in their heads is an Arab. I conjure up a completely different image in my mind. My terrorists are well dressed politicians and ’security ministers’ living on stolen land being paid by other well dressed politicians and industry leaders the world over (who by association are terrorists themselves), I’m not going to drag the who’s because they know who they are.
Who are the terrorists flying over Lebanon readying the missiles to destroy the power stations? Ready to take out all the telephone lines. Ready to destroy all the infrastructure that thousands of people have worked so hard to build from the ground up?
I work in the construction industry. I’ve been working on one particular building for over 2.5 years now but the time it’s complete over 4 years will have passed since this project began; it takes 4 seconds to demolish a building, 4 seconds to destroy bridges, and a few seconds to snuff out countless lives. These are acts of terrorism. The fear of millions (yes we are legion) of Lebanese the world over afraid of returning back to their countries. Lebanon has been the stomping ground of other nations in the region.
To the Israeli people, if you’re glad your government has been to war then feel ashamed of yourselves. Aggression only breeds aggression, and your government has shown this aplenty in the 60 years it’s been in power. Your presence has done nothing but bring heart ache and sorrow to a region and a generation of people that have learnt to hate EVERYTHING you represent, because of what you do and how you do it.
It was as if your government was waiting for a reason to bring the country 30 years back. History repeats itself once again. Stupid provocation was there, however the response showed a complete and IMMENSE amount of stupidity. You think this will keep you safe? By destroying what others have rebuilt since the last time you YOURSELVES destroyed it? You gain nothing here but more blood on your hands and more contempt for what you are. You are being led by some UGLY human beings (calling them anything else would be disrespectful, after all only human beings can be so vile to one another), whom you voted and chose to represent you.
If you ever harboured thoughts that peace could ever be reached in the Middle East, let me be the first to wipe those ideas completely from your mind. Today’s actions proved to the world that peace in the Middle East will never be achieved except in one of two ways:- Either the Israelis leave the region, or
- All the Arabs are annihilated
I’m a natural born optimist but even I couldn’t keep my head up today, I’ve broken down into tears several times today. I feel frustrated, angry, completely helpless and have this sorrow inside me that I know many people all over the world share with me and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. War is a fucking ugly thing. For those that have never experienced it, be thankful for that fact.
It’s even more hard when you know your side is completely powerless to counter these acts in any way. Lebanon is a poor country. It’s a country in massive debt, controlled by outside forces that refuse to let it float above water. Every time the people struggle and fight their way for some air we’re pushed back down with the knowledge that if we ever thought of going back up there’s a hammer waiting to repeat it’s action.
The Lebanese people have been here before. We have fought this war before. The wounds have not yet healed. One thing that the Lebanese people have shown is just how strong of mind and will they actually are. Every time you blow things up they get built again. All that the state of Israel has done is shown it’s criminal behaviour once more.
I’m not sure how to word my response to this post because you use very confrontational language and deliver the same argument that Al-Qaeda and others use to justify their attacks. By the same reasoning should the US label the Chinese government a terrorist organization for economically supporting Iran and North Korea?. I will only say that from my perspective Israel has often had reason to act, but that their government does not respect the idea of “proportional response”. It seems reasonable to label the capture of several Israeli soldiers as an act or war, but I would expect the next step to be diplomatic pressure and threats of action. Instead, we seem to have all-out war. In that sense, you are completely right that Israel has not steered a course which has gained it any friends in the region.
It saddens me that in the span of a few years we have moved from the hope of peace back to the chaos of war. I just hope that when the dust settles there will be people left who are willing to try peace again.
↓ Quote | 13/7/2006
I’m disgusted that my government (USA) still supplies Israel with military equipment. I could understand sending in peace-keeping troops, but blatantly encouraging one country to attack others is not acceptable. (It’s not just defensive equipment.)
I don’t have anything against Israel as a nation, but some of their recent actions have been despicable. And my government is helping.
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
Tim i feel you have hit the nail on the head!
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
Khalid will you please excuse me!
“Blake” Thou vain clay-brained minimus will you please keep your opinions for yourself we don’t need others to fool us, you’re talking Al-Qaeda bush. How would you act when someone came into your house and rape all your family? will you Act the some?
STOP FOOLING errant rump-fed skainsmate!
If you can’t understand what is going on.. just stay calm!
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
You can count my opinion as polar opposite to McCormack’s. I cheered last year when Lebanon appeared ready to unshackle the yoke of Syria. I hoped and prayed I would be seeing a great improvement in Lebanon’s situation.
I feel great sadness. Hizbullah does not accept Israel’s mere existence. When people such as that are allowed to live in Lebanon, its situation can’t be a bright good one.
And that’s sad.
My good Jewish friends are fearful today and wish for nothing more than peace. But they will not live with the threat of extermination.
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
Blake, please understand that the post was written by a man in his mid-twenties that was about to witness the destruction of his country for a second time in his life. Once is unbearable. Twice is unthinkable. I’ll use any language I want.
Patrick, this has NOTHING to do with Judaism. You seem to have missed an important point here. Religion was never brought up and it’s not going to be discussed in this thread. Keep it on topic please. THe state of Israel does not speak for the Jewish people, it speaks for the Zionist ones. There is a very important difference, which I hope more people would make and understand.
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
Khaled - I’m pretty much with you on the middle eastern issue of peace. Both sides act as though, and indeed believe religiously, they have a god given right to the piece of dirt that is being occupied currently. It was forced on the region by the Allies post-WWII and paid scant regard to the displaced. The chickens came home to roost in ‘67, the 1980’s with the first intifada and again in the early 21st century with intifada II. More chickens are coming home to roost in intifada II due to the response to take out moderates who advocated civil disobedience in Palestinian territories, leaving only the underground extremists.
That said, you’ll always walk a fine line if you criticise Israel to any degree and are not Jewish - those of Jewish heritage, and a growing proportion of evangelical Christians, invariably take it as a criticism of the Jewish faith - anti-Semitism if you will.
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
Which is where my problem is. The two have seriously nothing to do with each other. The decree set down by Theodor Herzl should not be mistaken for the Jewish faith. I am clear about that distinction, those who are not should do a bit of research and learn more (btw that comment wasn’t intended in your direction at all, just saying is all).
Politics on the ‘kode have been a general taboo item since I just don’t really get into all that much except the scant comment here and there. However the above is oh so very different.
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
Khaled said:
In this case, the political has become personal.
Patrick said:
We both want peace, right? :-) I completely agree with what you have written in your above comment, so I doubt that our opinions are really so far apart. Each country wants to be left alone, to govern itself. Every person wants to keep the land they live on, and not to give it up to (or have it taken by) another person.
My only point in my previous comment was that my country should not be militarily supporting any of the countries involved unless they are in imminent danger of being destroyed or taken over. Even then, U.N. peace-keeping troops would be preferable. That is all.
Joel said:
Heh. I’m not Jewish, but my maternal grandmother is — does that get me an exemption? :D
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
The people of Lebanon, and a country that harbors every religion and faith of the world, a country that harbors every nationality and welcomes every living being, cannot be detered by the aggression of the Zionist “State” of Israel. As they did 20 years ago, we will do what we did, Rebuild.
Beirut has been destroyed and rebuilt 7 times.
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
First of all, Soufian, I am calm. Second, I am only asking people to stop the blame game. The Israeli government is full of hawks, people that only respect the law of the talon (an eye for an eye and all that). I do not support their response. However, I also do not support other governments in the region which allow organizations intent on the destruction of others to participate in their political process. But let us be careful to realize that a government is not the same thing as a people. A “nation” is a unit only in a word.
Khaled said:
Khaled, I cannot imagine what you are going through. But your faith in your people is inspiring. I hope it will carry you through this disaster.
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
For such small countries, I’m amazed at how often they’re in the news. How often there is war.
Lebanon is what, a little over 4,000 sq. miles? And Israel, a little over 10,000 sq. miles? And yet, there is such animosity.
And I don’t know why. Some will quote the Bible and say that’s the reason. But there are other views and reasons.
In the end, I can’t pretend to understand anything. Not the pain of war, not the overwhelming sadness of seeing one’s home destroyed, and I definitely don’t know how to solve a problem that has dwelled between two peoples for centuries.
But I do see your pain.
I don’t know what is right or wrong. I’m not there. It’s not my fight (from a personal standpoint). But my prayers are with you. It’s all I have to give.
↓ Quote | 14/7/2006
Zach - part of the reason is their small size.
The highest population density in the world resides in the Gaza Strip. Just a thought.
↓ Quote | 15/7/2006
Khalid,
Thank you to the person who sends his prayers to you.
Nobody can understand the ‘pain’ of war unless they have truly experienced it. Could a person cope with having their house invading by soldiers smear shitting the walls. Watching their son go and get ‘drinking water’ from a stream where sheep and goats often roam by. The enemy preventing the parents to go and help their young son. Then their son doesn’t come back and the parents wait and wait little knowing he has been sent home by another route. Thinking the worst.
Families running in their thousands, without their shoes on. Sick people being tended to by four brave doctors. The couches are school desks one on top of the other - a rickety business. A mother brings her 4 year old son through the squelch of dysentary covered land, the school playground. He has leukaemia and she doesn’t have his medicine. At another school, people and children see the doctor. There is no medicine left, the Dr. sitting on a teacher’s table; the stench of burns from napalm covered children. The Red Cross boat’s contents of medicine stranded just outside the Port by the enemy.
A whole village standing in the mid-day sun for hours. A mother had just given birth.
White flags adorn houses, cars, anything to say ‘hands-up’. An American woman refuses; she puts up a flowery sheet. I am tempted to put my husband’s unwashed undies on the roof of our house. War humour has a bitter taste and people would laugh later at what they did. It gets the lucky ones through.
Young men blind-folded at the entrance of a factory’s courtyard.
The American woman witnesses the execution of these young men. She sees one of the enemy vomit into his helmet reacting at this appalling act of ‘authorised terroism’.
There is so much more, babies burning in buckets as they ‘got in the way’ of phosphorus bombs.
People can sympathize but can never know the real pain. The enemy have to be kept out at all costs this time. So many memories are coming back to haunt those who have been there, done that and never, no, rather hoped this would not happen again. It is so hot, no electricity, etc. it is painful.
The damage has been done by the warplanes and the terrorists in their suits.
Linda-Ayah
↓ Quote | 15/7/2006
I know this topic is painful and no, I can’t really put myself into Khaled’s shoes, or my friends who live in Israel and the ones who have lived in Israel. (I hope that description is better than referring to them as Jewish?)
I want nothing more than that region and its people to be at peace, respectful of each others’ cultures and incredible diversity.
I’ve learned, am and still learning, that the image protrayed via American media of the Levant is horridly incomplete.
↓ Quote | 16/7/2006
hi khaled
we, in germany, saw, where such a hate leads to. and we have learned from our history how to do it better than the facism way! we cant help you now, but we can tell the stories (and now, yours too) to anyone we know.. the more people ask questions, the more people will wake up from the media & tv suggestion..
i pray for you and your families and all the others lebanese families too!
↓ Quote | 17/7/2006
GO AND PROTEST! FIND OUT DATES AND TIMES!
http://www.saveleb.org/Demonstrations/demonstrations.html
↓ Quote | 22/7/2006
http://www.fromisraeltolebanon.org/
enough said
↓ Quote | 22/7/2006
well khalid i understand ur plight but for now all u have to do is pray am really sorry
↓ Quote | 11/8/2006
Khali I understand your feelings, But Please For God’s sake just keep your mind away from it all. The Lord will surely console you and restore all you have lost in Jesus Name.
↓ Quote | 11/8/2006