US, Israeli Ugly Face and Incursion of Lebanon

Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the director of Ibn Khaldoun Center for Political and Social Studies, wrote an article on Friday August 4, 2006, in which he lashed out at the US political leadership and its decision making circles for backing the Israeli incursion into Lebanon both in 1982 at the era of former President Ronald Reagan and this recent incursion with backing from President Bush and his administration. Known among Egyptian politicians especially government apparatuses that he is one of the US men in Egypt, Dr. Ibrahim said that many didn’t believe when they read his anti- US articles, thinking that he changed his vision of the US. He countered by saying that he has always seen the US as a pragmatic state which becomes friendly or hostile according to its interests. To confirm this vision of his toward the US, he cited a serious of articles he wrote had earlier in 1982 on the ugly face of the US owing to its unequivocal support of the Israeli crimes in Lebanon .The articles, he said, raised a far reaching reaction both in Egypt and the US, so much so that President Mubarak asked him to stop writing on this issue lest it would leave negative effects on the US -Egyptian relations.
. However, Ibrahim said that he meant by these articles the US Administration rather than the American people,” Like all the world people, the American people advocate peace, justice and freedom”, he said, adding that “they are also fair and unbiased about their or other issues if only they are furnished with complete facts about the goings on around them.” 
He slammed Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert, saying that he follows the steps of his successors Menachen Begin and Arial  Sharon, sarcastically addressing Olmert that the two men have vanished, with one of them dead and the other in hospital lying unconscious for months. He recalls the two crimes Israel perpetrated in Lebanon, the first was in 1982 and the second is the current incursion by Israeli forces which turns its second month, with Israel pounding civil buildings and infrastructure, besides killing and displacing civilians. Ibrahim regarded Israel as a state with an ugly face which defies the entire world and which leadership suffers sadism, finding joy in torture and killing of others. He recalls the early eighties when Israel continued for 88 days pounding the Palestinian resistance with rockets, planes and artillery until it expelled the Palestinian strugglers from Lebanon; they had to flee to another country, mainly Tunis. He said that Israel thought that it had eliminated the fighters of the PLO (Fateh), but this led to the emergence of more ferocious resistance not among the Palestinians only, where Hamas emerged, but another resistacne also showed up in Lebanon under the leadership of Assayed Hassan Nasrullah. He hailed Hizbullah resistacne which expelled the Israeli forces from 97% of the Lebanese land in the year 2000, i.e.  After an 18 – year resistance. Israel took thousands of Lebanese as prisoners but it released most of them and some are still in prisons. Hizbullah pledges not to stop resistance until it liberates every inch of Shebaa farms and all Lebanese prisoners are released. The writer suggests that the operation leading to the abduction of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah was meant to pressure Israel into releasing the remainder Lebanese prisoners in the Israeli prisons. Israel regarded this act as unjustified, and it even regarded this as a pretext to retaliate and avenge for its two soldiers, and, once and for ever, eliminate Hizbullah as a military entity. The writer says that Israel and the US were stunned by Hezbollah’s steadfast resistance which has withstood the war for about a month now against the most powerful army in the Middle East, and even inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli side, while three Arab states combined- Egypt, Syria and Jordan- failed to withstand war with Israel for more than six days in 1967.
 The writer concluded by quoting a notion attributed to Chinese Leader Mao Tse-Tung that “A popular resistacne is victorious only if it keeps steadfast, while the regular army is a loser if it doesn’t eliminate the resistance”. The writer says that if we take Lebanon as a case study, then the resistacne in victorious while the Israeli forces are the loser party.

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