Hezbollah Chief to Israel: 'South Lebanon Will Be Your Graveyard'

[Human Torch]

Nasrallah Vows 'Graveyard' for Israel if Fighting Continues
Wednesday, August 09, 2006

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207606,00.html

JERUSALEM — Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned that southern Lebanon would be turned into a "graveyard" if Israel continued its attacks and attempts to occupy the region that has been bombarded relentlessly for the last four weeks, in a speech aired on al-Manar television.

He also advised Lebanon to send its 15,000-soldier army to the Israeli border in an attempt to sway the United Nations to pass a resolution supporting its demands for a cease-fire.

"If the government is ready to sent the 15,000 soldiers to go through this region, this will help Lebanon and the friends of Lebanon. This will put some pressure to amend the draft resolution and will open the way to stop the aggression against Lebanon," Nasrallah said.

In his first comments on the draft U.N. resolution, the Shiite cleric gave a deeply negative assessment of the proposal to halt fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. "The least we can describe this (draft resolution) is as unfair and unjust. It has given Israel more than it wanted and more than it was looking for," he said in a televised speech.



Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

[The Magistrate]

1. The Fellow Over-Rates Himself Considerably, Sir

This entire episode is, in many ways, an exercise in seeing who can most egregiously over-play his hand....

[villager]

2. Hezbollah and Israel agree on the cease-fire accord!

Both of them pout cause it doesn't give them what they (think they) want!

[ShortnFiery]

4. So begins the "death spiral"

:cry:

[villager]

5. the one started with Isaac and Ishmael?

Yeah, they want to see this played out to the bitter bitter end...

[Kagemusha]

3. Personally, I think you assume he has "normal" objectives

like getting to a cease-fire for more favorable peace terms. What's peace done for Hezbollah? Almost strangled it out of existence, diluted its "heroism" in the Arab world, and prolonged the prominence of the less radical Amal among Lebanese Shiites. Assuming he's in it for normal reasons - like money, temporal power, etc - and not for advancement of the cause, doesn't seem to me to be the way he makes his decisions at all. He seems to be in a 'use it or lose it' mindset, and 'using it' requires a full Israeli invasion. Losses can be replaced later. Sure, the Lebanese people suffer for all this... but it's for a cause that he'd rather not be forgotten in favor of the comfort of a complacent civilian population.

That's how a terrorist thinks.

[The Magistrate]

6. My View Of His Intentions, Sir

Is that he seeks principally prestige, to become the living icon of Arab resistance and rejectionism, which wil, of course, act to enhance his temporal and material power and prosperity. But to enjoy the full effect of realizing this goal, his organizatiuon must emerge from this with its military power intact, for without it, he is nothing. It seems clear that the Israeli are doing real harm to his active infantry, and will do more the longer this continues. The losses are not so easy to replace as many suppose. The Hezbollah gun-men at present are a picked group, trained over years to a fine edge. Real battle costs an irregular force disproportionate losses among its leadership cadres and most ardent spirits. The supply of such men is in a fixed proportion among the common run of available recruits. A sizeable enough loss will diminish the capability of the force permanently in the future.

[Kagemusha]

8. Gunmen that never fight a war are wasted though.

And they don't exist to fight the Lebanese government for independence or something like that. Hezbollah doesn't have realistic aspirations of taking a country over. Any country. And its grip on the S. Lebanese civilian population had little to do with the fine edge and much more to do with the provision of social services where the government's writ did not reach.

Well, not that I blame you for this, but you're using, I dare say, too much normal logic in looking at this, thinking Hezbollah is a rational organization committed to the survival of its military arm in its present form. I don't see it that way. I see Hezbollah as trying to define the terms by which it will be regarded in history and paving the way for a new generation of radicals. Furthermore, goading the army of a modern state into invasion onto "your turf" cannot logically end with one's own forces "controlling" that turf in a military sense... but does put the military forces into striking distance for your own fighters, experienced and not. In fact, this invasion, once the initial phase turns into occupation, will provide the ideal training ground for the next generation of Hezbollah guerillas.

It'd be a pretty cold-hearted long-term plan, but terrorists are cold-hearted.

[The Magistrate]

12. Not True, Sir

A body in arms is a standing threat behind a leader, and the utterance of a threat is always more likely to accomplish an end than the execution of a threat is. The first, by being inchoate and pregnant with possibilities, allows the object of intimidation to fill in the blanks for himself: the second, by its very concrete actuallity, will define the limits of the menacer's power to do harm, and these will always be less than what it was feared they might be. In a very real sense, almost any actual direct exercise of power is a confession of failure to wield power in the most effective manner possible.

Without the armed body, Sir, what is to prevent the government's writ from running to some point in Lebanon? The reason it does not is fear of the gun-men, operating covertly. Mao never said a truer thing than political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

[Kagemusha]

14. Lack of money, lack of support, lack of morale...

And Mao never understood or accepted religion. His words are a poor basis for analyzing the effect of inspiration, its purpose or its reasoning. For Hezbollah, guns derive from the support of those aligned with its cause, support which has been greatly enhanced as a result of this conflict. Its ability to gain new guns, new recruits, and new power, is greatly enhanced, even while its existing power wanes as a military force.

Besides, you're just stuck on the idea that political power for Hezbollah, derives from its ability to harm fellow Lebanese with their own weaponry. That's not the point. Never was. Hezbollah's true power cannot possibly be its own membership and weapons; regardless of weapons and training, Hezbollah's power to exist is dependent primarily on the support it receives from the Shiite population of Lebanon. That support is stratospheric right now. That support would not wane even should the government attempt to crush the movement after Israel's done with it.

Good luck finding the members. Good luck executing them in public. Remember, this isn't the Peasant's Revolt of the 1300's in England - the pain to the Lebanese was caused directly by the Israelis, and only indirectly by Hezbollah. Hezbollah did not turn its arms on the Beirut government. It didn't have to.

Sorry we have to disagree, but as I see it, everything's going according to plan as far as Nasrallah is concerned, and Israel's played into it to an extent he couldn't have dared dream.

[The Magistrate]

15. We Will Have To Agree To Disagree, Sir

This is getting into waters too deep and broad to pursue properly in the time available.

The fervency of revolutionary commitment is, for purposes of morale, quite interchangeable with the religious article.

You seem to me to not give a proper weight to the value of armed force and its potential in a fragmented polity that is at bottom governed by a collection of war-lords, popular and otherwise.

[dipsydoodle]

11. The problem Sir

is that children have a habit of growing older. It is worthwhile remembering, as I do here in the UK, that the IRA bombers were, by and large relatively young. They had grown up with the problems in Ireland. A comparison was made years ago between the Irish youngsters and the Viet Cong in as much if you don't develop a fear of death by the time you are 10 years old then you may never do so.

[The Magistrate]

13. No One, Sir, Certainly Not Me

Disputes that Nasrallah will gain recruits from this episode, or that there are today children who in consequence of these events will grow up to be hard fighters, who might otherwise have been peaceable citizens. But skill at moving other men to your own will, and an aptness to battle that gives an individual exceptional performance in it, are not qualities evenly distributed among individuals: some have them, and most do not.

[Snivi Yllom]

9. Nasrallah also calls the arabs he murdered in Haifa 'martyrs'

sicko

[Kagemusha]

10. What were his alternatives?

"Statistics?"

[Kagemusha]

16. This is new news relevant to the issue:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/748424.html

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday warned all Israeli Arabs to leave the port city of Haifa so his guerrilla organization could step up attacks without fear of shedding the blood of fellow Muslims.

"I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call you to leave this city. I hope you do this. ... Please leave so we don't shed your blood, which is our blood."

---

How Israeli of him.

[Snivi Yllom]

17. "But Jews should remain in Haifa"

"this has been a public sevice announcement by the Religious Nutbag Network"

[Symphony of Freedom]

7. Let the Zionists and the Islamists rot in Hell forever...

I'm sick of choosing sides in a war over ancient Semitic mythology that should have been discarded millennia ago.