by Iran Forever » Sun Jul 23, 2006 1:26 am
[quote="cypezokyli"]you seem to be well informed iran forever.
would you say that there is currently a split between sunnis and shiites ?
starting from iraq and spreading throughout middle east.
is there a rift between hizpollah and al quada (i ve read that in a couple of papers) ?
and how to sunnis (especially the saudis) see the current power politics of iran ?
saudis and egyptians seem to be extremely quiet in the current conflict.[/quote]
Hi there Cypezkoli!..Cypez,..Hezbollah and Al-Qa'eda have many differences...Hezbollah is mainly concerned with Lebanese issues, and MOST of their activities are limited to Lebanese soil and the Lebanese/Israeli border. It started out as a political organization which carried out charity work for the poor, downtrodden Shi'ites of Lebanon, who are the LARGEST sect in the country and the again, the most disenfranchised. They built schools, hospitals and libraries for the Shi'ite community in Lebanon. They did not have an army per se back then, but a small group of armed men whose job was to protect Shi'ite neighborhoods in Beirut and Shi'ite towns and villages in southern Lebanon. Then in 1982, Sharon invaded Lebanon in "Operation Peace for Galilee", under the pretext of "rooting out the PLO". This attack was provoked by the shooting of Shlomo Argov who was Israel's ambassador to the U.K. at the time...Argov survived the shooting, and the link between his shooting and the PLO was never successfully established. Nonetheless, Sharon violated an already existing ceasefire, bombed the heck out of Shi'ite southern Lebanon as well as West Beirut where many Shi'ites lived, and the Israel army occupied Shi'ite southern Lebanon, in the process rounding up common ordinary Lebanese Shi'ites (including a man who had lived most of his life in Liberia, and was only coming back home to Lebanon to visit relatives he hadn't seen in ages before going back to West Africa), and in violation of international law, sending them to Atlit Prison in northern Israel. The Shi'ites had initially welcomed the Israelis thinking they were there to liberate them from the PLO that had taken over their territory...instead Israel began persecuting Lebanese Shi'ites, even attacking a crowd commemorating Ashura, the holiest day on the Shi'ite calendar, and diverting water from the Litani River in southern Lebanon to northern Israel, and taking over entire towns and even conducting tours of "Upper Galilee and southern Lebanon"! To add insult to injury, Israel illegally ANNEXED Chebaa Farms, a piece of Lebanese territory that was never a part of historical Palestine even, and began restricting movement in southern Lebanon and making Lebanese Shi'ites go through Israeli checkpoints on their own land and in their own country. In response to this, Hezbollah developed a militia (initially with Iranian help, later with Syrian help) to resist Israel and drive them out of southern Lebanon, which they finally managed to do after 18 years.
Israel continues to hold Lebanese citizens without any charge in her prisons, and Hezbollah has asked that they be returned. Israel has refused, resulting in the abduction of two soldiers (NOT civlians). Israel then began bombing Lebanese towns suspected of harboring Hezbollah militants. Then Hezbollah started targetting northern Israeli towns in retaliation. I wish the targetting of civilians would stop on both sides, personally, but now Hezbollah has called for a ceasefire, and Israel refuses to comply, making its goal the impossible objective of getting rid of Hezbollah, perpetuating the violence. But, bottom line is, Hezbollah operates locally.
Al-Qa'eda is a Sunni, Wahhabi, Salafi, organization that considers even Shi'ites as heretics and hates them as much as Christians and Jews. Al-Qa'eda is also very dangerous, because it operates internationally and globally, unlike Hezbollah whose activities are mainly confined to the Middle East, particularly the Levant, and whose main target has traditionally been the IDF, not Israeli civilians...Israel changed the rules of the game by targetting Lebanese civilians, and unfortunately "legitimized" the counterpart by doing so (it is sad when civilians on both sides get caught in the middle and are sacrificed). In Lebanon, Israel has destroyed infrastructure and the very fabric of life.
Al-Qa'eda's targets are innocent civilians. They are cowards who attack soft targets, kill scores of innocent people, and even in battling the U.S. army in Iraq, they have resorted to using I.E.D.'s and roadside bombs instead of facing American troops man-to-man, soldier-to-soldier.
I may not support U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, but I respect the U.S. army for not using Israeli-style tactics in their war against insurgents in Iraq. You don't see the U.S. army destroying civilian infrastructure in the "Sunni Triangle" or towns and villages that harbor Sunni insurgents. In fact, the U.S. army has tried to keep it clean as much as it can, avoiding civilian casualties, resulting in over 3, 000 dead American soldiers. However, even those who see their presence as an occupation respect them for not stooping down to Israel's modus-operandi. Israel has done the opposite, targetting civilians, indiscriminately bombing cities, towns, villages, infrastructure, power stations, water pipes, even hospitals, in order to bring Lebanon to her knees and break the spirit of the Lebanese people. Over two soldiers! The insurgents in Iraq have held ten times as many U.S. soldiers hostage...you don't see the U.S. army doing what Israel is doing. If those two were civilians, it would be quite different. But soldiers...warring countries and factions have always held each others fighters hostage...it is nothing new.
Hamas is a Sunni Palestinian organization whose activities are limited to the region again (Israel, West Bank, Gaza). Unfortunately they have inadvertantly strengthened the right-wing in Israel by making bad choices and attacking Israeli civilians, but one must mention that 30 times as many Palestinian civilians have been butchered by Israel, and those with a myopic vision of the conflict (like the Israel apologist Miltiades) seem to overlook the fact that over 5, 000 Palestinian civilians (by now it must have reached between 6, 000 and 7, 000 out of a population of only 1.5 million) have died since the Second Intifada began. Hamas made a grave mistake by carrying out suicide attacks three months before Shimon Peres was to be re-elected. That was political suicide for the Palestinians, as Peres was a little more approachable than the idiot who replaced him (whose political career was greatly helped by Hamas, albeit inadvertantly), and while Barak's plan had millions of holes in it, the Palestinians should have come back with a counter-offer or counter-proposal as they did later in Taba (by that time it was too late), instead of having Arafat appear on TV telling Barak to "go to hell". Nonetheless, none of the mistakes made by the Palestinians makes their cause less valid...they have been in Palestine for centuries, they fought alongside the British against Ottoman rule, mainly because of the lies they were fed by Lord MacMahon, British High Commissioner, who promised them an "independent Arab state" in Palestine once the Turks were gone. Add to this King Abdullah I of Transjordania (later renamed Jordan) who was a British stooge, and who secretly negotiated with Zionists, promising them Palestinian land in the "Nablus Triangle"...he was finally shot by a Palestinian in Jerusalem for his betrayal. Had the Arabs not employed British help in liberating themselves from Ottoman tyranny (the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs anyways, and the Arabs should have waited), Israel would have never been created. So the Arabs' only crime is unknowingly spilling their blood in order to pave the way for the creation of a Zionist state. Israel has taken 78 percent of historical Palestine, and built settlements on the remaining 22 percent, (save Gaza), stealing the land and water resources. Golan Heights, Syrian land, was annexed, not even occupied, and Israel was then able to steal water from Lake Galilee (Lake Tiberias), leaving southern Syria dry and parched.
One final note about Hamas...back when the PLO had become the only legitimate Palestinian group Israel could negotiate with, Israel tried to undermine the secular PLO by allowing the radical Islamist Hamas to gain strength...that way they would not be under pressure to negotiate with the PLO (since Hamas would syphon away support from the PLO and draw former PLO supporters to itself), and if Hamas were to become the main popular force in the territories, Israel could successfully argue they are extremists who could not be a party to negotiations...this goes back to long before the Rabin-Arafat handshake in Washington, and back when Israel steadfastly refused to negotiate with the PLO.
There is no banding together yet between the three groups you mentioned Cypez...Shi'ites and Sunnis do converge ideologically however when it comes to battling Israel's bully tactics, but unfortunately do collide in other places (Bahrain for example, where a Sunni family rules over a Shi'ite majority) and in Iraq, where a Shi'ite majority is trying to assert itself for the first time ever.
Sunnis despise Iran...Egypt and Jordan, Sunni majority countries have been total hypocrites in the current Lebanese quagmire...when Sunni Hamas kidnaps an Israeli soldier, they are silent, but when Shi'ite Hezbollah kidnaps two Israeli soldiers, they are quick to criticize Hezbollah.
The Sunni-dominated Arab media is hypocritical too...when Shi'ites are victims of Sunni insurgents in Iraq, they forget that Iraqi Shi'ites are fellow Arabs and fellow Muslims (they focus more on Palestinians killed in Gaza, than twice the number of Shi'ites killed the same day in Iraq, and instead of condemning terrorist insurgent attacks on Shi'ite civilians, they blame the "U.S occupation"). When Shi'ites are victimized and brutalized by Israel however, as they are now, only then do SOME Arab papers begin to recognize Shi'ites as fellow Arabs and fellow Muslims.
Last edited by
Iran Forever on Sun Jul 23, 2006 2:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
