Let the people march for peace
"I have very few words left to say. The cycle of violence is feeding on its own blood. Hundreds, if not thousands of innocent lives are, and will be falling in vain, victims to our arrogance and misguided ideologies. I wish that the people of Lebanon and Israel, who stand against hatred and war, would all walk on a Peace March towards the Lebanese-Israeli border, and hold hands across the separating line. Maybe will that send a message to the rocket-yielding, blood-thirsty powers that be. Nothing can stand in the way of two million people marching together, towards each other, for peace. Not an ideology, not a guerilla, not an army, not the most powerful country in the world. I believe that the people's fate lies within the people's hands, and as elusive as it seems, Peace, of all the goals set on either side of the conflict, remains, by far, the easiest goal to achieve."
As suggested by Fouad
posted by Unknown @ 8:48 AM
7 Comments:
I am ready to walk behind u Mirvat and behind Fouad and am sure a lot of true Lebanese will follow us! No comment... I hope you're not serious both of you :)I suggest you get some sleep. YOu know it is not true what they say:"More than a post a day, does not keep the Israelis away." Keep up the good work as am sure you will :)
Dear Dr. Sultan:
I have only recently seen your widely-circulated video, and must applaud your clarity and forthrightness. Thank you. I have also just today read an article by Dr. Walid Phares, referenced below, in a message I have just sent to him.
After pondering these matters deeply, continuously, for the last month and more, I am of the conviction that a world wide movement of the type of Cedar Revolution is not only required, but possible. I request your advice, as the first armament in this type of action would be clarity of thinking and articulation of the real threat and the offering of a real vision.
I am an insignificant person, far removed from any conflicts, but in a role as networker among an international community of humanitarian-oriented people, I do believe that there is a possibility for calling on a ressurection (smile) of the Cedar Revolution, and that momentum may be effected, and effective, long-term.
If you have any thoughts on this matter, especially in terms of a vision for all those in the world -- inclusive and immediately for, but then beyond the current circumstances in Lebanon, please contact me with your thoughts, and I will bend all my efforts to assist in getting the word out.
Without the vision, the people perish -- and I do love how clearly you speak!
Thank you for your light,
Victoria Stone Kaufer
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: To Dr. Phares: A Cedar Revolution ... II?
Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 19:20:07 +1200
Dear Dr. Phares:
I've been reading and appreciating your insights, intensively, for months now. With the recent re-activation of events in the Middle East, my attention has been drawn to researching this every day.
After pondering on your recent interview with the National Review (details appended) I am wondering if it is possible for a Cedar Revolution to again be engaged by the people of Lebanon? Is the ground still fertile? I think the timing of the world's attention now may be in place to realize that more support was needed, and that a new way of approach -- beyond and in support of the legitimate governments. Could this be begun anew?
There are, as I'm sure you are aware, many peaceful international events and the world's attention is focused on, and hopeful of a vision for resolving this peacefully. I think that -- I feel that -- it may be done 'by the people" -- if intelligence may be mobilized and vision may be articulated.
The Lebanese have demonstrated that terrorists 'can' be ousted, at least temporarily or partially, and so I am hopeful that, beyond the borders of Lebanon, that this could be time for ALL the PEOPLE, all over the world, to actively, peacefully "say no" to harboring any form of terrorism and action based on hate and anger and revenge, and being manipulated by any powers that are not definitively 'to the good'.
I not only see no other way (as the UN isn't able, frankly), but think it is the right way, and that the intensity of the plight world wide suggest that such an approach is due. I'm nearly hopeful that momentum could be raised, and would deeply appreciate any response you could make upon this Idea.
With all respect,
Victoria Stone Kaufer
______________________________________________
August 02, 2006, 4:56 a.m.
Tehran & Damascus Move to Lebanon
Walid Phares on the Mideast.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDFmOWE0MTkzOTUyOGY4NGE2MGY3N2M3YmU4MzlmZDk=
An NRO Q&A
ok, I understand the cynicism, and believe it could be rationale! If not a safe thing to 'not do' with your family. However, let me ask, because I am ignorant of this. But who did turn out to Beirut during the Cedar Revolution? And I ask about ... well, many other places and times ... Tiananmen Square in China did not turn out well for those involved, but it was a sign, there were brave folks who 'we still remember'. And this may not be a hopeful remembrance, but ... 'as one world now', what are we to do?
Tiananmen Square was 1989, we are nearly 20 years on from that, and that was (and is) a communist country? (June 3/4, 1989)
Certainly the voices of 'it can't be done' may reign, and may be right -- but what alternative do we have? To rest to Hezbollah's or Israel's or the UN's style of peacekeeping?
I can only, no. I can not only just hope, but place my resolve that 'we the people', all of us, all over the world, can do this. I am deeply saddened that it is your country that is in this, but I strive every moment of my day to come up with some solution, and this is the only thing that not only seems sane, but seems human. Humanity itself must be humane. And here, on this blog, with your hearts and minds, I see hope -- for all of us.
Skeptics and Idealists, too, may walk as one.
If not us, if not now, who will it be, and when?
The cycle of bombs is predictable, and the cycle of hate and more revenge and more educating of the children to hate and revenge is something that is beneath us all. May we leave it behind.
I trust that you are vanguard. I hold in my heart that you are. And I see it. I can see the hundreds of thousands as buffer zone. And I am sorry that it is your land, and your lives, and I can try in a country far far away to write or rally to impotent politicians -- or I can say to you, me, Vic, to you ... I am with you, and each night I know (if not hear) that bombs are falling. Cynicism, too, must one day end, and it won't be the politicians, or even statesmen to do that, but the people. Of that only I have become convinced. And I have no idea how hard it is for you, I realize that -- but I will do what I can, in every hour of my waking day.
with love,
Victoria
yeah...but be careful as the Israelis will most probably bomb you into pieces....that all what they know it seems.
Fakty - thanks for the replies. No, I am not optimistic either. Frankly, I think the whole world is going to hell. That road is paved with good intentions and liberal pacifism, and guttered with hate and anger and revenge. Lebanon and Israel are a primary focus, but as we know, the underlying issues stretch well beyond the latest borders of any country, and well into the past, and somehow deeply rooted into the nature of mankind.
I think this is the state of the world. I'd love to be made wrong though, and I'm seeking out what I believe is a miraculous side of the human spirit. I see some of that on some of the posts here.
Surely there are people who will work non-violently and diligently for 'good' everywhere, and people who will seek to destabilize any status quo or impose a regime of intolerance and revenge -- until there is no such thing as civilization or culture left. World Anarchy is a definitely possible scenario.
I live on my own, and can observe and communicate (this way) with people around the world, with various views, and I am not really heartened that the human race can do much better than it is now. And isn't that a sorry statement! However, while I have the luxury to ignore this, as my life is not at all affected, my conscience, or soul (if you like) cannot turn away, and although believe in an afterlife, it seems that trying to make the world a better place is unavoidable in my daily motivation.
But I am at a loss -- as on any side, or from those who profess no 'side' at all, politically or morally, there is very little light or vision. I'll continue to look, though, and keep in touch. Somewhere a light of hope must still burn and I have a glimmer of trust that people, can rise above 'the past' and even 'the present', and can boldly rise above even logic and rational decisions. Logic and wise thinking, while a high step beyond emotional reactiveness, also no longer seems to serve.
It is that conclusion I've temporarily arrived at, at least, that some sort of '5th Estate', a unified global movement of active denial and isolation of evil (i.e., hatred and revenge), must be invoked.
listening,
Vsk
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
This is just the start of a showdown between the West and The Rest
Amir Taheri, The Times Online:
MANY IN THE WEST see the mini-war between Israel and Hezbollah, now in its fourth week, as another episode in a tedious saga of an Arab-Jewish conflict that began with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, a political version of the “original sin”. [b]The conventional wisdom in the West is that the whole tale would end if Israel were to return the occupied territories to the Palestinians, allowing them to create a state of their own.
But that analysis does not reflect the Middle East’s new realities.[/b] All the wars in that region of the past century, including the one between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, revolved around secular issues — border disputes, the control of territory and water resources, security and diplomatic relations. [b]Although fought in the name of nationalism or pan-Arab aspirations, none had a messianic dimension. [/b]
The first two wars of the new century in the Middle East, however, were ideological ones. The United States toppled the Taleban in Afghanistan and the Saddamites in Iraq not in pursuit of territory but in the name of an idea: democracy.
[b]Since 2001 the region has been turned into an ideological battleground between two rival camps with global ambitions.
One camp, led by the United States, claims to represent the modern global system of open markets, free elections, religious freedoms and sexual equality.
The other camp is represented by radical Islam, which regards the Western model as not only decadent but dangerous for the future of mankind. It hopes to unite the world under the banner of Islam, which it holds to be “ The Only True Faith”.[/b]
In the Lebanese conflict, Israel and Hezbollah are the junior proxies for the rival camps. [b]Israel is not fighting to hold or win more land; nor is Hezbollah. But both realise that they cannot live in security and prosper as long as the other is in a position to threaten their existence. A Middle East dominated by Islamism could, in time, spell the death of Israel as a nation-state. A westernised, democratic Lebanon, on the other hand, could become the graveyard of Hezbollah and its messianic ideology.[/b] And if the US succeeds in fulfilling George W. Bush’s promise of a “new Middle East” there will be no place for regimes such as the Islamic Republic in Iran and Syria’s Baathist dictatorship.
The present rupture in Lebanon has much to do with who will lead the fightback against the West. For almost a quarter of a century there has been intense competition within the Islamist camp over who could claim leadership. For much of that period Sunni Salafist movements, backed by oil money, were in the ascendancy. They began to decline after the 9/11 attacks that deprived them of much of the support they received from Arab governments and charities.
[b]In the past five years Tehran has tried to seize the opportunity to advance its own leadership claims. The problem, however, is that Iran is a Shia power and thus regarded by Sunni Salafists as “heretical”. To compensate for that weakness, Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made the destruction of Israel a priority for his regime. The war triggered by Hezbollah is in part designed to show that President Ahmadinejad is not bluffing when he promises to wipe Israel off the map as the first step towards defeating the “infidel” West.[/b]
The broader aspects of the Lebanon crisis are better understood in the Middle East than in the West. For the first time, Israel is under attack from Islamist and Arab secular radicals as “an American proxy”. Writing in Asharq Alawsat, a pan-Arab daily, a Syrian Cabinet minister, makes it clear that the war in Lebanon today is between “the forces of Islam and America, with Israel acting as an American proxy”.
[b]
Iran’s “supreme guide”, Ali Khamenei, expressed a similar view this week during an audience he granted in Tehran to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President. “What we see in Lebanon today represents the revolt of Muslim nations against America,” he said. “Hezbollah is backed (by Iran and others) because it is fighting America.” President Chávez endorsed that analysis by calling on Muslims and non-Muslim revolutionaries to unite to “save the human race by finishing the US Empire”. Iran’s state-controlled media has said that Lebanon would become “the graveyard of the Bush plan for a new Middle East”.[/b]
Tehran believes that a victory for Hezbollah in Lebanon will strengthen President Ahmadinejad’s bid for the leadership of radical Islam. A number of recent events have made his attempt to wrest control more likely. This week several leading Sunni theologians at the Al-Azhar seminary in Cairo issued fatwas that allow Sunnis to fight alongside and under the command of Shia Muslims. The fatwas came in response to a Saudi fatwa that had declared any association with and support for Hezbollah to be haram (forbidden).
More significant was a message from Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two. The Salafist radical tried to get hold of Hezbollah’s tailcoats in the hope of winning a share of the expected spoils of victory. He endorsed the idea of a global campaign against the “infidel”, thus abandoning his previous strategy of focusing the jihad on countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. More significantly, he dropped the al-Qaeda claim of fighting a defensive war against the infidel by designating a vast area of jihad from Spain to India.
All that is good news for President Ahmadinejad, who claims that Sunni radicalism has reached the limits of its capabilities in the fight against the global system led by the US and that it is now the turn of the Shia, led by Iran, to be in the driving seat.
“Hezbollah has fought Israel longer than all the major Arab armies combined ever did,” President Ahmadinejad told a crowd in Tehran this week. He also promised that Muslims would soon hear “very good news” about the jihad against the United States.
The idea of Shia leadership for the jihad was further boosted this year when Iran took Hamas under its wings. As a branch of the global Muslim Brotherhood movement, a Sunni outfit, Hamas has exerted its influence to win wider support for Iranian leadership at least as a tactical choice.
[b] Many in the Middle East are alarmed by these shifts of power and dread the prospect of the region entering a new dark age under radical Islamist regimes. [/b]
For this reason, there seems to be much less hostility towards Israel in the wider Arab world than we might expect in the West. There may be no sympathy for Israel as such but many Arabs realise that the current war is over something bigger than a Jewish state with a tiny territory of 10,000 square miles, less than 1 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s land mass.
This war is one of many battles to be fought between those who wish to join the modern world, warts and all, and those who think they have an alternative.[b] This is a war between the West and what one might describe as “The Rest”, this time represented by radical Islamism. All the talk of a ceasefire, all the diplomatic gesticulations may ultimately mean little in what is an existential conflict.[/b]
I have set up a bulletin board of current articles and commentary, sourced from a variety of researchers knowledgeable in the areas concerned and also English transcripts of recent interviews and shows. These are at www.makara.us/bb -- under world events. I am updating this several times a day. Most recent post are excerpts from a Libyan expatriat that is critical of Hezbollah, here: http://makara.us/bb/viewtopic.php?p=198#198 -- all originating sources for the articles should be listed.
take care everyone, may your hearts be at peace.
Vic
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