Hezbollah rewriting history, past and present
As Israel continues to pummel Hezbollah, the terrorists are demanding negotiations:
Israeli military officials have refused to rule out a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, while Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said two captured Israeli soldiers will only be freed through a prisoner exchange.
Nasrallah said only indirect negotiations for a prisoner exchange will work to gain the soldiers' freedom.
It'll be interesting to witness those sorts of negotiations, should they occur. I say that because Hezbollah is populated with the sort of people who can't imagine that they are wrong. There is no room for compromise. They can't even tolerate that other people don't believe in the things they do.
That attitude is displayed on the Hezbollah website.
Voice of America posted a story about the limits of free speech, discussing the issue of the Muhammad cartoons. In this piece, the author considers that Western societies have long limited free speech. Indeed, the piece is somewhat sympathetic to Muslims who wonder why free speech is not limited to protect their Prophet as it is in other contexts. Consider Holocaust denial:
According to Robert Kahn, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who has written extensively about laws governing Holocaust denial, free speech in the West is not an absolute right. It is tempered, Kahn says, by a complex system of legal and self-imposed censorship that's almost always derived from a society's history.
"The countries that tend to have the laws that specifically ban Holocaust denial -- France, Germany, and Austria --- either participated in the Holocaust or had serious problems with collaboration," he says. "Even though the United States and Canada have large Jewish communities, and have survivors and people who experienced the Holocaust, it's not the same type of thing."
This article was reprinted on the Hezbollah website, since it makes points that would please most Muslims. But here is the same excerpt:
According to Robert Kahn, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who has written extensively about laws governing Holocaust denial, free speech in the West is not an absolute right. It is tempered, Kahn says, by a complex system of legal and self-imposed censorship that`s almost always derived from a society`s history.
"The countries that tend to have the laws that specifically ban Holocaust denial -- France, Germany, and Austria --- either participated in the Holocaust or had serious problems with collaboration," he says. "Even though the United States and Canada have large Jewish communities, and have (alleged) survivors and people who (allegedly) experienced the Holocaust, it's not the same type of thing."
I checked. The article is otherwise faithfully reproduced.
Faithfully, except for the statement by Professor Kahn that the Holocaust happened, and that there were survivors. I guess you aren't free to say that in the presence of the Hezbollah.
The Holocaust allegedly happened, and there are alleged survivors. Anyone who says different is going to be corrected.
If you're lucky, you're just having the correction to your mistaken view of history added to something you have written (your words being your contribution to history). Without your permission, of course. Or even an acknowledgment that your words have been altered.
If you're not lucky, you're in the room with a Hezbollah terrorist when you make a slip of the tongue like this. One shudders to think how your mistake will be...fixed.
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Comments
They have been demanding negotiations from the outset so this is hardly a new development as you are want to seem to spin it.
Posted by: Goodwin Ginger at July 20, 2006 10:59 PM
the terrorists are demanding negotiations
Which ones; the Israeli government terrorists or the Hezbollah terrorists?
Posted by: Robert McClelland at July 20, 2006 11:55 PM
Bobby, I think he means the ones that are breaking UN resolution 1559 calling for Hezbollah to disarm. Which was never enforced. Which is why Israel has to go into Lebanon now and make Hezbollah grab their own ankles.
Posted by: Levesque at July 21, 2006 12:44 AM
Unfortunately for Robert the Israeli government is hardly considered a terrorist organization. Throwing about labels doen'nt make it so. You need supporting verification to make the case that Israel is a terrorist organization.
Seeing that Robert tossed out a flippant facile comment one can't take it with any seriousness.
Posted by: Hans Rupprecht at July 21, 2006 01:59 AM
do do do do do do do do (twilight zone intro)
Imagine if you will, a neighbour, who shoots at you and your children. Then you take the neighbor who's being shot at (this is where robert fits in)and he invites the bad neighbour in for tea and biscuits saying he's just misunderstood, and needs compassion. Of course, the shooting will start as soon as bad neighbour goes back home.
I guess it must be nice to see the world through the eyes of an IDIOT!
Posted by: Dave at July 21, 2006 02:23 AM
Curious that Mclelland is silent on the bastardization of the written text, while being petulant on the "negotiations". An NDP characteristic (fatal flaw?) - unable to hold an intellectual concept in their heads without the truth of it leaking away. Hezbollah and Israel ARE negotiating a ceasefire - they are just not doing it using the NDP skills originally attributed to Quisling and Chamberlain.
Posted by: Skip at July 21, 2006 07:29 AM
"Indirect" negotiations, huh? As in "out of the public eye"? Sounds a lot like Hezbollah wants to save face.
I'm not entirely certain how strong the concept of "losing face" is in the Middle East, but if Hezbollah wants to survive it better think seriously about the sackcloth-and-ashes route.
Posted by: PhantomObserver at July 21, 2006 07:54 AM
Where does the 6 billion number come from, re objective historiography? The number is a lot more. but to prove this, the data must be unearthed. This was impossible in 1945-48, as the Soviet bloc held most of the data, particularly Poland. The files of who lived where and so forth are now available and should be examined so that an accurate number can be established, a number not ending in a guess ending in six zeros.
From the basis of my family history, the number must be a lot more, and this should be accurately researched and documented. This has never been done, and could only be done after the fall of the Soviet Union. The cartoon version of the horror that was mid-century Europe needs to be objectively assessed now; a truth commission needs to open up scholarship to examine the millions of records exported to the US and held in secret for so long by Soviet regimes.
Posted by: hoff at July 21, 2006 08:09 PM
Phantom, in the Arab part of the ME, "saving face" is fundamental.
Hezb'allah can't back down out of this now for that very fact.
Posted by: Shaken at July 21, 2006 08:40 PM
Robert McLelland: Why are you commenting when you obviously have no grasp of the situation? To suggest Israelis are terrorists is outrageous, shameful and sickening. You can join the rest of the dunderheads in the NDP and Liberal camps and go over to Lebanon and arrange a group hug with the real terrorists,they call themselves "Hezbollah". They are responsible for the crisis, it's their call. Israel has a right to defend her tiny democratic state against these sub-human bastards fighting a dirty little war fed by Iran and Syria.
Posted by: Liz J at July 21, 2006 10:27 PM
...I sometimes wonder if my growning lack of patience towards leftist ideologies is causing me to move away from the centre - till I realize the bell curve is trying to adjusting to their test pattern of a brain which is moving farther and farther away from reality...
Posted by: tomax7 at July 22, 2006 05:11 AM
Liz, even better question. Since Robert has declared that he is suing Steve, then I am surprised that his lawyer hasn't urged him to refrain from posting here in the interests of not prejudicing his suit.
How is that lawsuit progressing, Robert?
Posted by: Shaken at July 22, 2006 05:35 AM
Interesting about the face-saving -- that's associated primarily with Arabs. Hizbollah is controlled by Iran, which is Persian and Azeri. Are Hizbollah fighters Arabs or Persians? Do the same cultural rules apply?
Posted by: Steve Janke at July 22, 2006 05:39 AM
Steve, it doesn't matter whether they are Arabs or Persians they are fighting the same fight. They are a culture of extreme hate for the existence of the Jewish state of Israel and you are seeing their rules in action. Hate supercedes all reasoning, all humanity, all rules in their world. They have to be brought to heel for the safety of the globe and we better have a plan to ensure the defeat of the culture of terrorism embraced in factions of Islam spawned in the Middle East and imported into our civilized world of 2006.
Posted by: Liz J at July 22, 2006 07:52 AM
 
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