A boat carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza has arrived in Lebanon after being turned back by the Israeli navy.The Dignity set off from Cyprus on Monday carrying three tons of emergency and medical supplies.Activists on board say it was rammed by an Israeli ship but the navy says it was an accident.Mohammed Vall reports.
For years, Lebanon has been in political crisis. Civil war, political assassinations and all-out war with Israel shattered any hopes of peace this tortured nation may have had. Until now. Within days, leaders from all the parties gathered in Doha and reached a momentous agreement. Lebanon: The Audacity of Hope with Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, asks if the agreement will hold and if it could be a model for the region.
Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American political scientist and author, specializing in Jewish-related issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular talks about the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and openly supports and praises their resistance: "They (Hezbollah) show courage, they show discipline, I respect that"On Israeli defeat and consequential withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Finkelstein says:"But the reality was -- and everyone understood it -- that the Israeli attitude was: We are going to knock out Hizbullah. They began planning for a new war right after they were forced to leave in 2000. They found their excuse, their pretext, in July 2006, but there is no question among rational people that Israel was never going to let the Hizbullah victory go by.""There is no way that the United States and Israel are going to tolerate any resistance (to their hegemony) in the Arab world."On the damage caused to Lebanon as a result of the resistance: "It's better to die on your feet than to walk crawling on your knees....how can I not respect those (Hezbollah) who say they would rather die on their feet? How can I not respect that?"Finkelstein then goes on to slam the stances taken by some sell out Arabs who continue to admire George Bush like 'Servants' despite Bush being the man behind the carpet bombing of Lebanon and says that Bush should be classified as 'persona non grata':"Who (would) roll out the red carpet less than two years after your whole country was destroyed by them (the US)? ""You (sell out-arabs) have NO self respect"---------------------- ----------------------------How Hezbollah achieved victory over IsraelPart 1: The Intelligence War http://www.atimes.com/atimes/M ddle_East/HJ12Ak01.htmlPart 2: The Ground War http://www.atimes.com/atimes/M ddle_East/HJ13Ak01.htmlPart 3: The Political War http://www.atimes.com/atimes/M ddle_East/HJ14Ak01.html
For years, Lebanon has been in political crisis. Civil war, political assassinations and all-out war with Israel shattered any hopes of peace this tortured nation may have had. Until now. Within days, leaders from all the parties gathered in Doha and reached a momentous agreement. Lebanon: The Audacity of Hope with Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, asks if the agreement will hold and if it could be a model for the region.
March 2005Lebanon may be one of the most liberal Arab countries but this tolerance does not extend to homosexuals. Now, Beirut's gay community is fighting back. "There's no doubt that homosexuality is the idea of Satan," proclaims an Imam. Gay people are believed to be possessed by demons and homosexuality can still lead to a year in jail. But a small revolution is slowly taking place. Helem, the Arab world's first public gay rights organisation, is fighting to end the discrimination.
In an interview on CNN International's Your World Today, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh explains that the current violence in Lebanon is the result of an attempt by the Lebanese government to crack down on a militant Sunni group, Fatah al-Islam, that it formerly supported.Last March, Hersh reported that American policy in the Middle East had shifted to opposing Iran, Syria, and their Shia allies at any cost, even if it meant backing hardline Sunni jihadists.A key element of this policy shift was an agreement among Vice President Richard Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, whereby the Saudis would covertly fund the Sunni Farah al-Islam in Lebanon as a counterweight to the Shia Hezbollah.Hersh points out that the current situation is much like that during the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980's -- which gave rise to al Qaeda -- with the same people involved in both the US and Saudi Arabia and the "same pattern" of the US using jihadists that the Saudis assure us they can control.When asked why the administration would be acting in a way that appears to run counter to US interests, Hersh says that, since the Israelis lost to them last summer, "the fear of Hezbollah in Washington, particularly in the White House, is acute."As a result, Hersh implies, the Bush administration is no longer acting rationally in its policy. "We're in the business of supporting the Sunnis anywhere we can against the Shia. ... "We're in the business of creating ... sectarian violence." And he describes the scheme of funding Fatah al-Islam as "a covert program we joined in with the Saudis as part of a bigger, broader program of doing everything we could to stop the spread of the Shia world, and it just simply -- it bit us in the rear."
Today on CNN, Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, the one who mainstreamed the Abu Gahrib story, has confirmed with insiders that Bush and the Israeli Government planned months in advance that any incident, no matter how small, would ignite a broad and punishing response by Israel in a preemptive move to start a war with Iran. Bush's Neocon advanced plan actually included Israel destroying Hezbollah's missles as pre-cursor to an attack on Iran. The war with Iran is on the assembly line. Only a mass (I mean millions of people marching) protest will stop this insane neo-dictator in the Whitehouse. Hersh even says that Bush doesn't even regard Congress or the people when deciding foreign policy. I think this little vid is an ominous insight. Make this TUBE go viral far and wide.
Christians in Iraq are under attack. The United Nations says 13,000 Christians have fled the northern city of Mosul in the past two weeks alone.Most have moved elsewhere in Iraq but some have fled to Lebanon, as Nayla Khoury has been finding out.
Tiësto's Entrance at the concert at Eddé Sands in Lebanon.2nd of July, 2007It starts from the moment they start introducing Tiesto, till the end of the fireworks.I included subtitles of the intro speech.
A documentary filmed in late 2005 that brings the viewer close to the living conditions and unresolved problems for Palestinian refugees in the Lebanon camps. Viewers see the camps with a focus on the issues of health, unemployment, education and the cultural memory of this community of refugees expelled in 1948 and 1967 from their homes in historic Palestine. Producer: Red Hill FilmsAlternate Focus is available on the Dish Network, Free Speech TV, Channel 9415, Saturdays at 8:00pm EST and on cable stations near you. Check website for details.
