Stern - Shabbat Shalom...

Paula R. Stern..
A Soldier's Mother..
13 January '12..

I've got no time to write and truthfully, with something burning in my stomach, if I wrote, it wouldn't be good so I'll let it sit a while and figure if words will do justice to the injustice of others, of what a place of worship should be but all too often is not.

For now, I'll tell you that the soup is cooking, the sweet challah dough is rising. I have the heat on so the house is warm. It's gray and raining outside and I love it. So cold, so winter, so rare. It's family this weekend, quiet. Elie and Lauren cut tons of vegetables for the soup and left me instructions what to do with it this morning.

I've made three quiches (broccoli, mushroom, and corn) and soon a non-meat lasagna will go in. Today is Aliza's 12th birthday on the English calendar so I'm going to make her a case as well. The real celebration will take place in a few weeks, on her Hebrew birthday (or near it anyway).

What peace you find on a day like today comes from within the home. Yesterday and this morning, rockets were again fired at Israel; I continue to receive messages of hate. One came yesterday which I put through, insisting the Ahmadinejad didn't say he wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. It was a play on words - instead of using the name "Israel" - he called us the "occupiers of Jerusalem" - well, duh - takes a brain and a map to figure out who he is talking about.

And then last night on Twitter a former Lebanese Prime Minister told his 79,000 followers that he had, apparently, accidentally greeted an Israeli and he was certainly sorry. If he had know, he never would have spoken to him.

How silly, how immature. How incredibly filled with hatred. How clear it is that the Arabs do not want peace. They can't even stomach speaking to an Israeli by accident. "Israel is our enemy" - I have not heard such truth from an Arab leader in a long time. Yes, Israel is your enemy. It isn't a great message to hear for those who want peace. It is a sad message, a dismal one.

Saad Hariri's cautionary tale

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
14 September '10

Lebanon is a sad and desperate place. And its disastrous fate is personified today by its prime minister.

All who claim to love freedom, democracy, human rights and dignity should take note of Saad Hariri's fate. They should recognize that his predicament is a testament to their failure to stand up for the ideals they say they champion.

All those who say they seek a Middle East that is friendly to the West should see Hariri's plight as a cautionary tale. Policy-makers in Washington, Paris, Jerusalem and beyond who envision the 21st century Middle East as a place where the US and its allies are able to project their power to defend their interests should study Hariri's story.

All those who insist peace is possible and even incipient need to cast a long, lingering glance in his direction.

His story exposes all of their paradigms of peace and appeasement and compromise as nothing more than the hollow, callow, arrogant and irrelevant protestations of a transnational ruling class wholly detached from the reality of the world it would lead.

ON MONDAY, Yediot Aharonot reported that Iranian and Syrian intelligence agencies are applying massive pressure on Hariri to openly join the Iranian axis. Today that axis includes the Syrian regime, Hizbullah and Hamas. If and when Hariri openly joins, Lebanon will become its first non-voluntary member.

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Why not arm our enemies?

Soccer Dad
22 August '10

There are few analysts out there with the inside knowledge of what's going in Lebanon who know as much as Michael Young does. Still reading his description of the Lebanon, it's hard to see who the good guys are.

The Syrians never reconciled themselves to that departure and sought to prevent the emergence of a sovereign Lebanese state and effective government. Because Syrian soldiers and intelligence agents were no longer on the ground, the Assad regime came to rely on Hezbollah to destabilize Lebanon, handing the party, and Iran, major sway over the country's affairs.
This development so alarmed Arab states, above all Saudi Arabia, that early last year King Abdullah decided to "reconcile" with Syria after years of mutual hostility. The Saudi calculation was a cynical one: Mr. Assad would be given latitude to reassert Syrian domination over Lebanon in exchange for curbing Iran's influence here. The Saudis would press Saad Hariri, the son of Rafiq who became prime minister late last year, to mend fences with Damascus. This was a golden opportunity for Mr. Assad to reverse his 2005 Lebanese setback while earning an apparent certificate of innocence from the victim's family.

Politically dependent on the Saudi regime, Mr. Hariri had little choice but to accept. He knows who killed his father, but his most immediate foe in Lebanon is Hezbollah, and he hoped that the new rapport with Syria would allow him to counterbalance Hezbollah while buying him time to consolidate Lebanon's state institutions.

Hariri apparently has decided to make the bad the enemy of the worst. Assuming he's successful, that leads to certain problems. But apparently that gambles doesn't appear to be working too well.

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Analysis: The domino effect

Jonathan Spyer
Mideast/JPost
23 December 09

Last week's visit by Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri to Damascus is the latest marker in the return of the coercive Syrian presence in Lebanon. It is also an indication of Syria's successful defiance of the west.

Hariri's ritual gesture of supplication to Bashar al-Assad in Damascus was the inevitable adjustment of the leader of a small state to a changing regional balance of power. Hariri and his supporters have little reason to take pride in the gesture. But the real responsibility for it lies not in Beirut, but further afield.

The pro-western and pro-Saudi March 14 movement, led by Hariri, achieved a modest victory in elections in June. This victory was effectively nullified in the lengthy coalition "negotiations" that followed. The new government as finally announced in November represented the unusual spectacle of a wholesale capitulation of the electoral victors before the vanquished.

The Hizbullah-led opposition kept their effective veto power in the Cabinet. The government's founding statement included an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of Hizbullah's continued armed presence.

This substantive conceding by Hariri of his election victory has now been accompanied by a symbolic gesture.

It should be remembered that the process which led to the ending of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon in 2005 was set in motion by the murder of Sa'ad Hariri's father, Rafiq, in February, 2005. The murder of the elder Hariri is widely thought to have been committed by Syria or elements allied with it. The murder called forth a mass movement opposing Syrian occupation.

(Continue article)
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Assad Returns as the Strong Horse

Michael J. Totten
Contentions/Commentary
22 December 09

As Jonathan noted yesterday, Lebanese Prime Minster Saad Hariri just spent two days with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad in Damascus, and you’d think from reading the wire reports that Lebanon and Syria had re-established normal relations after a rough patch. That’s how it’s being reported, but it’s nonsense. Hariri went to Damascus with Hezbollah’s bayonet in his back.

Assad’s regime assassinated Saad Hariri’s father, Rafik, in 2005 for just gingerly opposing Syria’s occupation of Lebanon. There is no alternate universe where Saad Hariri is OK with this or where his generically “positive” statements at a press conference were anything other than forced.

I was invited to dinner at Hariri’s house earlier this year and had a long and frank discussion about politics with him and some colleagues. I can’t quote him because the meeting was off the record, but trust me: the man is no friend of the Syrian government or Hezbollah, and it’s not just because someone in that crowd killed his father. His political party, the Future Movement, champions liberalism and capitalism, the very antithesis of what is imposed in Syria by Assad’s Arab Socialist Baath party regime and the totalitarian Velayat-e Faqih ideology enforced by the Khomeinists in Iran and in the Hezbollah-occupied regions of Lebanon.

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Related: The Murdered Fathers Club
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The Murdered Fathers Club

David Schenker
The Weekly Standard
19 December 09

On Saturday, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri traveled to Damascus for a meeting with Syrian president Bashar Asad, the man widely believed to have ordered the assassination of his father, former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri. The 2005 murder sparked the Cedar Revolution, a mass protest movement that resulted in the end of the thirty-year Syrian military occupation of Lebanon, and swept the pro-West March 14th coalition to power. Although March 14 again triumphed over the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hizballah-led opposition in elections this past June, Washington's allies in Beirut are now facing a crisis. Hariri's trip to Damascus represents the return of Syrian influence to Lebanon, and perhaps, the end of the Cedar Revolution.

Six months ago, March 14 appeared to be in good shape. The underdog coalition had defeated Hizballah at the polls, and seemed well positioned to form a government. But the process dragged out for months as the opposition held out for preponderant influence in the cabinet. In the end, facing the specter of Hizballah violence, Hariri ultimately succumbed to pressure and acceded to opposition demands.

The composition of the cabinet--in which Hizballah wields veto power over government initiatives--was a political defeat for Hariri. Worse, facing continued pressure from Hizballah and its allies, Hariri was compelled to make an equally loathsome concession on the Ministerial Statement, the policy guidance for his incoming administration. In contravention to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701--which stipulates the "disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon"--Hariri was forced to accept compromise language legitimating Hizballah's weapons.

Even more damaging, during the process of forming the government, Hariri was forced to accept the condition that he would travel to Damascus to meet Asad.

(Full article)
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The Path of Least Resistance

Farid Ghadry
Farid Ghadry Blog
21 December 09

The media’s attention to the Hariri’s visit to Damascus is due, to a large extent, to the story behind the visit rather than to its mundanity. No other sitting prime minister in contemporary politics had to accept the violence of his neighbor and endure illicit appendage of his country just so other nations and their leaders wash their hands from the many problems that neighbor poses to the region. It goes to show that violence in the Middle East pays. Killing Americans pays and terrorizing your neighbors at will pays. Who wants to bother with peace and co-existence anymore?

Who else is watching Lebanon fold again into Syria’s orbit because of violence? Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, Fatah al-Islam, and 99 other organizations of terror named after catchy words from one Koranic verse or another. They watched the actions of Assad in pursuit of terror and tyranny yield some very high returns. When the west sells Lebanon short, it opens the flood gates to would-be terror groups, many unwilling to accept the central role Damascus plays in embryonic terror cultivation. Those are also paying attention when they see terror succeed. They have a new rugged territory to plan their attacks from: Yemen. They all understand that President Obama is not about to declare another war ever during his presidency.

No polls have been taken prior to the Hariri trip by any Lebanese or Arab entity to capture the mood of the Lebanese people the majority of which voted for the March 14 movement. Whether by design or by wanderment, the opinions of the Lebanese seems not to matter much to Saudi Arabia or the US. Will they acquiesce to the Assad hegemony? Or will they continue the struggle for independence and sovereignty? Which age group can Lebanon rely upon to defend its identity going forward? This time around, Assad intends to smother Lebanon’s democracy to permanently destroy the most potent and independent mechanism able to threaten his regime and no one at the White House fully grasps what they have done to this gem in the heart of extremism.

(Read full article)
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Obama’s Engagement Fallout: Lebanon Surrenders

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
21 December 09

This past weekend, one of the genuine triumphs of American foreign policy in the past decade was officially reversed. When Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Harriri went to Damascus to pay tribute to his country’s Syrian overlord, the 2005 Cedar Revolution was buried. Less than five years ago, American pressure, which encouraged those forces in Lebanon that longed to be free, helped bring about the withdrawal of the Syrian troops that had occupied that country since the 1970s. Syria had overreached when it sponsored the assassination of Harriri’s father, Rafik, who preceded him as prime minister. That, combined with the increased influence in the region of the United States in the wake of the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, had convinced the Syrians that they must retreat.

But although the Syrian army has not returned, it now doesn’t have to. Hezbollah, the potent terrorist force that serves as a proxy for both Iran and Syria, has effectively strangled any hope of Lebanon’s escaping the grasp of those rogue regimes. Syria’s influence is once more unchallenged in Beirut. Rather than witnessing an international tribunal arraigning Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his underlings for the murder of his father, as well as the transformation of Lebanon into a genuine Arab democracy, Saad Harriri has been compelled to swallow the humiliation of fawning on his father’s murderer.

What changed? According to the New York Times, the failure of Harriri to maintain his country’s independence is due to one major difference between 2005 and 2009: “since then, the United States and the West have chosen to engage with Syria, not isolate it.” As a result, those who thought they had the West’s backing for resisting the thugs of Damascus have been forced to swallow their pride and swear loyalty to Assad in order to save their lives.

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Lebanon gives Hezbollah right to attack Israel

(On the other hand, Lebanon gives Israel the right to attack Lebanon)

AlArabiya.net
26 November 09

BEIRUT (AFP)

Lebanon's new cabinet has agreed on a policy statement that acknowledges Hezbollah's right to use its weapons against Israel, despite disagreement by some members of the ruling majority.

Information Minister Tarek Mitri said late Wednesday after a cabinet committee set up to draft the statement met for the ninth time that an agreement had been reached.

He said the new statement will retain the same clause approved by the previous cabinet as concerns the arsenal of Hezbollah, which fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006 and is considered a terrorist organization by Washington. The clause states the right of "Lebanon, its government, its people, its army and its resistance" to liberate all Lebanese territory. Hezbollah is commonly referred to as the resistance in Lebanon. Mitri said that reservations concerning the clause by members of the Western-backed majority would be noted in the government program. Christian members of the majority, including the Phalange Party and Lebanese Forces, argue that Hezbollah's arsenal undermines state authority and runs counter to U.N. resolutions. However the Shiite party, which has two ministers in the 30-member unity cabinet, has made it clear that its weapons are not open to discussion. The party argues its arms are necessary to protect the country against any future aggression by Israel, which withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation. Lebanon's new cabinet is headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri, whose U.S.- and Western-backed alliance defeated a Hezbollah-led opposition supported by Syria and Iran in a June vote. .

Lebanon cabinet deal signals Syrian return

The formation of Lebanon's unity government took more than four months

A new joke has been making the rounds in political circles of Beirut: "The birth of Lebanon's new government was so long and painful that in the end, a Caesarean had to be performed."

But it is the punchline that makes some politicians here cringe: "The obstetrician was Syria," it says.

By Natalia Antelava
BBC News, Beirut

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Kiss the Independence Intifada goodbye

Michael Young
The Daily Star
19 November 09

The death of the Independence Intifada of 2005 has been prematurely announced many times. However, today we have in front of us a genuine corpse, the end of the fleeting aspiration four years ago, at least in its more restricted form, of establishing a system emancipated from Syria.

The Syrians, who left Lebanon through the window after Rafik Hariri’s assassination only to re-enter by the front door in recent months, have done so thanks to an understanding with Saudi Arabia. There are differences between what we have today and the Syrian-Saudi condominium after Taif, above all that the Syrian Army is no longer deployed in Lebanon. The latest contract is more equitable and is complicated by the fact that Iran has a powerful stake in the system through Hizbullah. However, it is familiar in leaving Lebanon with little discernible sovereignty, in large part courtesy of Lebanese divisions.

It’s no secret that the Saudis put considerable pressure on the prime minister-elect, Saad Hariri, to come to an arrangement over the new government with the opposition, one reason why he was forced to spend much time negotiating with Michel Aoun, to the irritation of his Christian partners. The Syrians, too, kept their end of the bargain, apparently with Turkish prodding, by bringing Aoun into line. After five months, the Hariri government was made in Lebanon only in the narrowest of ways.

This represents a fundamental shift from what Lebanon had between 2005 and 2009. From 2004 on, the country was placed under an effective, if highly imperfect, form of international trusteeship, thanks to a series of Security Council resolutions governing Lebanese affairs. This began with Resolution 1559, calling for a Syrian withdrawal, an end to foreign interference in Lebanon’s presidential election that year (and presumably all years), and the disarmament of armed groups. The UN decisions also included Resolution 1595, which set up an international commission to investigate Hariri’s murder, and it was followed by Resolution 1701, establishing a reinforced mechanism for the stabilization of southern Lebanon after the summer war of 2006.

That international scaffolding has been substantially eroded in recent years, by action or omission. Resolution 1559 has been implemented only in the sense that Syrian soldiers have left Lebanon. However, Syrian meddling in Lebanese affairs has been unrelenting, and in late 2007 France significantly undermined the letter of the resolution, which it had co-sponsored, by actively bringing Damascus into the Lebanese presidential election. As for the disarmament of Hizbullah or pro-Syrian Palestinian groups, nothing has happened, and the Cabinet is preparing to find a consensual rhetorical formula in its statement to evade the question.
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