The Lebanese Government Doesn't Stand A Chance
Obviously I support Mobius 100 percent in assisting alternative relief efforts in Lebanon.
But it’s going to be quite hard to outdo this:
On Monday, Sheik Nasrallah announced in a televised speech on Hezbollah’s al-Manar television that payments would be made immediately to the families living in 15,000 homes completely destroyed by Israeli bombardment.
“We believe every word he says,” said [Suheir Balqis], 40. “He’s an honest person and he has never lied to us. Everything will be compensated,” she said.
Hezbollah militants — still dressed in military camo fresh from the war — are busy all over Lebanon: gathering dead cows, bulldozing rubble, and they are the only ones in Tyre cleaning the streets. Lebanon’s government seems to be continuing with the same MO that got it into this mess — neglect of municipal and human services vis-a-vis the Shi’a community.
The monetary payments from Hezbollah are as simple to receive as filling out a claim form and waiting to “get money in an envelope.” Also, as the CS Monitor notes, much of the money to fund these things is coming from wealthy Shi’a individuals within Lebanon. No need to wait for those pesky wire transfers from Iran.
Legitimate money, on the other hand, is trickling in. Whereas the government has estimated a rebuilding cost upwards of some US$2 billion, so far of the $154 million “Flash appeal” on behalf of UN agencies, only $52 million has come in, and whereas they are distributing “high-energy biscuits”, Nasrallah is giving “money in an envelope”.
If the Lebanese government doesn’t get it together soon, I fear the next Hezbollah revival.
Great, this way we can make the payments directly to hezbollah instead of the refugee fund mobius suggested. Let’s cut out the middleman.
Does hezbollah have a paypal account?
Frankly, I think that Jews, Druze and those Israeli Arabs who are loyal to Israel should file claim forms for damage to their homes. Frankly, they should hire attorneys and sieze assets in whichever countries Hezb’allah has them.
people often forget that the reason many terrorist groups are so successful in gaining support has a great deal to do with the services such as these that they provide to their communities. it becomes very easy for people to accept a gun (or a bomb vest) from a person who gives you money and shelter because they believe that these organizations, since they have helped them in this way, have their best interests in mind. I believe it is important that we not give so much credit to the assertion that Jihadism is fueled mainly by religious fanaticism.
The fact is that people will die for the contiuance of an organization which they believe will support their families.
It believe it is imperative that a push be made by the peoples living in G8 leader states to cancel out a good deal of the debt accrued by underindustrialized nations, because it is precisely because of the conditions made by such debt that allow for organizations such as these to take advantage of the poverty of the people and gain influence through social work where the host state is lacking and thus create a state within a state, a terrorist state.
I think many people in positions of power would like to shove it all on extremist ideology because they wish to continue to the neoimperialist policies of globalization that allow for global elitist dominance and nearly absolute corporate license in these countries through the neoliberal economic policies enforced by entities such as the World Bank.
Red State Jews
Mugged by Mideast reality.
BY THANE ROSENBAUM
Sunday, August 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
read it all here
This is a soul-searching moment for the Jewish left. Actually, for many Jewish liberals, navigating the gloomy politics of the Middle East is like walking with two left feet.
I would know. For six years I was the literary editor of Tikkun magazine, a leading voice for progressive Jewish politics that never avoided subjecting Israel to moral scrutiny. I also teach human rights at a Jesuit university, imparting the lessons of reciprocal grievances and the moral necessity to regard all people with dignity and mutual respect. And I am deeply sensitive to Palestinian pain, and mortified when innocent civilians are used as human shields and then cynically martyred as casualties of war.
Yet, since 9/11 and the second intifada, in which suicide bombings and beheadings have become the calling cards of Arab diplomacy, and with Hamas and Hezbollah emerging as elected entities that, paradoxically, reject the first principles of liberal democracy, I feel a great deal of moral anguish. Perhaps I have been naive all along.
And I am not alone. Many Jews are in my position–the children and grandchildren of labor leaders, socialists, pacifists, humanitarians, antiwar protesters–instinctively leaning left, rejecting war, unwilling to demonize, and insisting that violence only breeds more violence. Most of all we share the profound belief that killing, humiliation and the infliction of unnecessary pain are not Jewish attributes.
However, the world as we know it today–post-Holocaust, post-9/11, post-sanity–is not cooperating. Given the realities of the new Middle East, perhaps it is time for a reality check. For this reason, many Jewish liberals are surrendering to the mindset that there are no solutions other than to allow Israel to defend itself–with whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, the inevitability of Israel coincides with the inevitability of anti-Semitism.
This is what more politically conservative Jews and hardcore Zionists maintained from the outset. And it was this nightmare that the Jewish left always refused to imagine. So we lay awake at night, afraid to sleep. Surely the Arabs were tired, too. Surely they would want to improve their societies and educate their children rather than strap bombs on to them.
If the Palestinians didn’t want that for themselves, if building a nation was not their priority, then peace in exchange for territories was nothing but a pipe dream. It was all wish-fulfillment, morally and practically necessary, yet ultimately motivated by a weary Israeli society–the harsh reality of Arab animus, the spiritual toll that the occupation had taken on a Jewish state battered by negative world opinion.
Despite the deep cynicism, however, Israel knew that it must try. It would have to set aside nearly 60 years of hard-won experience, starting from the very first days of its independence, and believe that the Arab world had softened, would become more welcoming neighbors, and would stop chanting: “Not in our backyard–the Middle East is for Arabs only.”
It is true that Israel has entered into peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan that have brought some measure of historic stability to the region. But with Israel having withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza, and with Israeli public opinion virtually united in favor of near-total withdrawal from the West Bank, why are rockets being launched at Israel now, why are their soldiers being kidnapped if the aspirations of the Palestinian people, and the intentions of Hamas and Hezbollah, stand for something other than the total destruction of Israel? And if Palestinians and the Lebanese are electing terrorists and giving them the portfolio of statesmen, then what message is being sent to moderate voices, what incentives are there to negotiate, and how can any of this sobering news be recast in a more favorable light?
The Jewish left is now in shambles. Peace Now advocates have lost their momentum, and, in some sense, their moral clarity. Opinion polls in Israel are showing near unanimous support for stronger incursions into Lebanon. And until kidnapped soldiers are returned and acts of terror curtailed, any further conversations about the future of the West Bank have been set aside.
Not unlike the deep divisions between the values of red- and blue-state America, world Jewry is being forced to reconsider all of its underlying assumptions about peace in the Middle East. The recent disastrous events in Lebanon and Gaza have inadvertently created a newly united Jewish consciousness–bringing right and left together into one deeply cynical red state.
Mr. Rosenbaum, a novelist and professor at Fordham Law School, is author, most recently, of “The Myth of Moral Justice” (HarperCollins, 2004).
Shmuel, are you being sarcastic?
Absolutely not.
“[B]ecause it is precisely because of the conditions made by such debt that allow for organizations such as these to take advantage of the poverty of the people and gain influence through social work where the host state is lacking and thus create a state within a state, a terrorist state.”
A common leftist interpretation but not at all accurate. Poverty does not cause terrorism. In fact, in the poorest countries of the world, there is not much terrorism at all. The majority of Islamist terrorists are educated men, they are not members of the lumpenproletariat.
Walter Laquer, writing in “Policy Review Online” has this to say:
http://www.policyreview.org/aug04/laqueur.html
“It is not too difficult to examine whether there is such a correlation between poverty and terrorism, and all the investigations have shown that this is not the case. The experts have maintained for a long time that poverty does not cause terrorism and prosperity does not cure it. In the world’s 50 poorest countries there is little or no terrorism. A study by scholars Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova reached the conclusion that the terrorists are not poor people and do not come from poor societies. A Harvard economist has shown that economic growth is closely related to a society’s ability to manage conflicts. More recently, a study of India has demonstrated that terrorism in the subcontinent has occurred in the most prosperous (Punjab) and most egalitarian (Kashmir, with a poverty ratio of 3.5 compared with the national average of 26 percent) regions and that, on the other hand, the poorest regions such as North Bihar have been free of terrorism. In the Arab countries (such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also in North Africa), the terrorists originated not in the poorest and most neglected districts but hailed from places with concentrations of radical preachers. The backwardness, if any, was intellectual and cultural — not economic and social.”
More:
http://www.juandemariana.org/article/196/
Poverty Does Not Cause Terrorism
A study by Alan Krueger, from Princeton University, and Jitka Malečková, from Charles University, reached empirical conclusions showing terrorism does not come from poverty.
And More:
http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/terrorism2.pdf
Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is
There a Causal Connection?
Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Malecˇkova
Still More:
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/povterr.pdf
Poverty, Political Freedom and the Roots of Terrorism
Alberto Abadie
“This article provides an empirical investigation of the determinants of terrorism at the country level. In contrast with the previous literature on this subject, which focuses on transnational terrorism only, I use a new measure of terrorism that encompasses both domestic and transnational terrorism. In line with the results of some recent studies, this article shows that terrorist risk is not significantly higher for poorer countries, once the effects of other country-specific characteristics such as the level of political freedom are taken into account. Political freedom is shown to explain terrorism, but it does so in a non-monotonic way: countries in some intermediate range of political freedom are shown to be more prone to terrorism than countries with high levels of political freedom or countries with highly authoritarian regimes. This result suggests that, as experienced recently in Iraq and previously in Spain and Russia, transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy may be accompanied by temporary increases in terrorism. Finally, the results suggest that geographic factors are important to sustain terrorist activities.”
“[B]ecause it is precisely because of the conditions made by such debt that allow for organizations such as these to take advantage of the poverty of the people and gain influence through social work where the host state is lacking and thus create a state within a state, a terrorist state.”
This is a common leftist interpretation but it is not accurate. Their is no causal link betweem poverty and terrorism. In fact, in the poorest countries of the world–with far greater debt-burdens than any of the Middle Eastern countries–there is little or no terrorism.
Walter Laquer, writing in “Policy Review Online” has this to say:
http://www.policyreview.org/aug04/laqueur.html
“It is not too difficult to examine whether there is such a correlation between poverty and terrorism, and all the investigations have shown that this is not the case. The experts have maintained for a long time that poverty does not cause terrorism and prosperity does not cure it. In the world’s 50 poorest countries there is little or no terrorism. A study by scholars Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova reached the conclusion that the terrorists are not poor people and do not come from poor societies. A Harvard economist has shown that economic growth is closely related to a society’s ability to manage conflicts. More recently, a study of India has demonstrated that terrorism in the subcontinent has occurred in the most prosperous (Punjab) and most egalitarian (Kashmir, with a poverty ratio of 3.5 compared with the national average of 26 percent) regions and that, on the other hand, the poorest regions such as North Bihar have been free of terrorism. In the Arab countries (such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also in North Africa), the terrorists originated not in the poorest and most neglected districts but hailed from places with concentrations of radical preachers. The backwardness, if any, was intellectual and cultural — not economic and social.”
More evidence poverty does not cause terrorism:
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/povterr.pdf
Poverty, Political Freedom and the Roots of Terrorism
Alberto Labadie
“This article provides an empirical investigation of the determinants of terrorism at the country level. In contrast with the previous literature on this subject, which focuses on transnational terrorism only, I use a new measure of terrorism that encompasses both domestic and transnational terrorism. In line with the results of some recent studies, this article shows that terrorist risk is not significantly higher for poorer countries, once the effects of other country-specific characteristics such as the level of political freedom are taken into account. Political freedom is shown to explain terrorism, but it does so in a non-monotonic way: countries in some intermediate range of political freedom are shown to be more prone to terrorism than countries with high levels of political freedom or countries with highly authoritarian regimes. This result suggests that, as experienced recently in Iraq and previously in Spain and Russia, transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy may be accompanied by temporary increases in terrorism. Finally, the results suggest that geographic factors are important to sustain terrorist activities.”
Still more evidence:
http://www.juandemariana.org/article/196/
Poverty Does Not Cause Terrorism
A study by Alan Krueger, from Princeton University, and Jitka Malečková, from Charles University, reached empirical conclusions showing terrorism does not come from poverty.
Here is the study referenced above:
http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/terrorism2.pdf
Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is
There a Causal Connection?
Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Malecˇkova
Here is the study referenced above:
http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/terrorism2.pdf
Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 17, Number 4—Fall 2003
Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is
There a Causal Connection?
Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Malecˇkova
WEVS1, you’re confronting us with too much facts! The server for this website isn’t designed for huge amounts of factual information.
Yeah, it isn’t poverty, it is oppresion:
“Researching my book, which covered all 462 suicide bombings around the globe, I had colleagues scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and biographies of the Hizbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. We were shocked to find that only eight were Islamic fundamentalists; 27 were from leftist political groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union; three were Christians, including a female secondary school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.
…
There is not the close connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism that many people think. Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.”
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1838199,00.html
“If the Lebanese government doesn’t get it together soon…”
Lebanese government? What about the Israeli government getting it together soon? The IDF has definitely taken a blow from this engagement, as most Israeli newspapers readily admit and most Israelis generally feel. Olmert’s “leadership” has only helped Israel’s enemies rather than Israel.
Having the Chief of Staff of the armed forces thinking more about selling off his investment portfolio than about destroying the enemy is…well…not very reassuring.
A Prime Minister who pulls a Bush and declares the enemy’s capabilities destroyed when they most obviously aren’t is also…not reassuring.
Now Israel realizes it has been attacked by RUSSIAN made arms, funneled in by Iran and Syria, and will have a cease fire to be enforced by (among others) Indonesia and Malaysia (countries that refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist)? The Leabanese “terrorists” are handing out stacks of US dollars to victims of home destruction and sweeping the streets while Olmert concretely and resolutely….what? Attends another cabinet meeting? Oh and by the way, the unilateral plans to pull out of Gaza ain’t gonna happen now, but don’t you get any ideas, Hamas?
Bummer Summer. Let’s hope the Fall is softer on Israel (no pun intended).
Kyleb, I read the Robert Page piece and he is definitely a well-informed authority on terrorism. But in his most well-known book, “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” he argues that terrorists are just like the rest of us i.e. they are rational political actors. This perspective is not completely foreign to departments of political science. In some departments, e.g. the University of Chicago where Page received his Ph.D., this paradigm was and, to the best of my knowledge, still is dominant.
Notions of rational, self-interest and utility maximization do have strong and persuasive power, especially in regards to economic activity. But it is a major mistake to think that terrorists–people who are willing to kill themselves and others for a political cause–think like the rest of us. Another problem of Page’s work is that it is too broad, lumping disparate episodes of terrorism together in an attempt to draw causal links between U.S. military policy and terrorism. Or, in your words, terrorism is caused by our “oppresion” of people in the Islamic world. Page agrees, “The bottom line, then, is that suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation†(Dying to Win, 23).
In focusing on the policies of the United States, and, by extension the West, Page fails to look at the internal, autonomous dynamics of Islamism. Page is not unique in this regard. Historian Efraim Karsh (Islamic Imperialism: A History) notes that this perspective is hegemonic in most departments of Middle East Studies in the United States and Europe:
“Muslims, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere, are merely objects—the long-suffering victims of the aggressive encroachments of others …This perspective dominated the widespread explanation of the 9/11 attacks as only a response to America’s (allegedly) arrogant and self-serving foreign policy, particularly with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict.â€
Historical context matters. So does ideology, specifically the totalitarianism of the Islamists. To dismiss the desire for establishing a global caliphate as “pure fantasy†(Dying to Win, 244-245), really misses the point. All totalitarian ideologies share an element of dystopian fantasy.
Hamas is neither the embodiment of pan-Arab aspirations nor of Palestinian self-determination. It is not a political movement for national liberation that contains an armed wing. Hamas has articulated the far broader goal of establishing a global Islamist empire. This is in line with it’s ideological parent organisation, ‘which viewed its violent opposition to Zionism from the 1930s and 1940s as an integral part of the Manichean struggle for the creation of a worldwide caliphate rather than the defence of the Palestinian Arabs’ national rights’ (Islamic Imperialism, p. 213-4).
According to Karsh, ‘Arab and Muslim anti-Americanism, have little to do with U.S. international behaviour or its Middle Eastern policy. America’s position as the pre-eminent world power blocks Arab and Islamic imperialist aspirations. As such, it is a natural target for aggression. Osama bin Laden’s … war is not against America per se, but is rather the most recent manifestation of the millenarian jihad for a universal Islamic empire (or umma)’ ( p. 234).
As you can probably tell, Karsh’s historical evidence and grasp of the ideology of Islamism are more convincing to me than Page’s explanation (blame the West).