Comments on: Lebanon’s “Disappeared”

By: Blacksmith Jade

Blacksmith Jade — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:48:45 +0000

Great post Harry and DavidM. Keep it up!

By: Comstock

Comstock — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:02:41 +0000

Perhaps we should offer Assad a new chin as a “health tourist” to bring him in from the cold?

By: Mike S

Mike S — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:44:04 +0000

“Tony Badran from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies writes a very good article in Foreign Policy on how engagement with Syria in order to entice the Assad regime to come in from the cold is a waste of time.”

The biggest favour any US administration could do would be to listen carefully to any advice from this grubby little neo-con front and then do the opposite.

By: Was

Was — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:48:09 +0000

HB is right about unavoidable cultural affiliations structuring political affiliations.

How that makes the left, during apartheid, for example, more cynical than conservatives or the apathetic is beyond me.

By: Israelinurse

Israelinurse — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:53:25 +0000

Not wishing to take this thread off course, but since the Shabba Farms have been mentioned, it must be pointed out that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for the Left to throw wobblers on this issue.
The UN ruled that the Shabba Farms area belongs to Syria and therefore when Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, this area was not returned to Lebanon because it isn’t theirs.
If and when there is ever a peace agreement between Israel and Syria, the Shabba Farms will be returned to Syria.

By: vildechaye

vildechaye — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:22:19 +0000

It isnt “cynical” of the left, it’s racist. end of story. I’m kind of blown away that a little prick like HB can actually admit it and not recognize the implications for his great anti-zionist cause. Because that’s also why Israel is of such great interest to hard lefties, whereas Congo, Darfur, Tibet, Chechnia (russian whites don’t count); and the countless examples of muslim on muslim violence don’t matter either.

By: marcyg

marcyg — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:15:55 +0000

thats incredibly cynical of the left HB, why is it like that?

By: The Hasbara Buster

The Hasbara Buster — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:40:46 +0000

Except that Leftists were and remain intently interested in Lebanon — so long as Israel can be blamed.

The Lebano-Israeli conflict interests Western leftists because Israelis (Israel’s ruling classes, at any rate) are white and Western-like.

The required condition for a conflict to interest the Western left is that at least one of the sides be white. That’s why the Apartheid regime, with less than 2,000 blacks killed by whites, enraged people much more than the Second Congo War, in which 5.5 million people died.

By: The Hasbara Buster

The Hasbara Buster — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:13:46 +0000

I was not silent about it; that's why I said that their mothers were Catholic or Jewish. The 794 Jewish desaparecidos in fact constitute almost 9% of the 9,000 Argentinians who ment missing, as compared to 1% in the population at large. This can be attributed to the regime's antisemitism, as well as to the very high involvement of Jews in Argentinian politics. Be it as it may, the left protested all disappearances, including those of Jewish people. This is further proof that there's no antisemitism in the left's approach to the phenomenon of politically-motivated abductions. By the way, did you know that Israel sold weapons to the very same Argentinian dictators who were kidnapping and killing Jews? It's a crazy world.

By: Uncle yo-yo

Uncle yo-yo — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:10:21 +0000

Another sad and unpersuasive attempt by Buster, who says: “The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo were Catholic or Jewish, spoke Spanish, were light-skinned and their children belonged to leftwing movements. It’s only logical that their plight should interest European leftists more than that of people whose culture they don’t understand. Not moral, mind you; just logical.
Don’t look for complicated explanations when there’s a straightforward one.”

Except that Leftists were and remain intently interested in Lebanon — so long as Israel can be blamed. In 2006, the left were all chanting “We are all Hezbollah” and quite willing to overlook cultural, religious, and skin-color differences. Similarly, the words Shebba Farms are still words that make your average leftist quiver with rage. The victims of Syria and Hezbollah, not so much.

DaveM (who I note speaks Arabic, while you, Hasbara Buster, just pretend to be an Arab sometimes when it suits your fantasies) has it right. The difference here is that the Left cannot shoehorn these persons into their Anti-Israel animus.