Chavez cause-and-effect: Gee, let’s think. A nation’s president blames Jews and demonizes Israel on a constant basis. He pals around with Hezbullah, which is now said to be setting up camp there. His countrymen then perform more acts of anti-Semitism (including government-sponsored raids on Jewish centers). Somehow, I can’t figure out why that’s happening. How about you?

Oh, look: More Arab civilian deaths ignored by the world. Yemen is bombing marketplaces, but HRW isn’t getting its panties in a bunch over it. Why? Say it with me, folks: Because it isn’t Israel.

The AP notices that townhall protesters are average citizens: Oh, they push the “organized opposition” line in the first few paragraphs, but overall, they’re starting to notice that the anger is real, and that Americans don’t want socialized medicine. The media narrative is being broken. Except, of course, by the denizens of the New York Times op-ed page. This is a great thing. That healthcare bill is dead in the water.

Palate cleanser: Molly Ringwald’s tribute to John Hughes. It will make you go, “Awwwww.”

According to the sources, the aircraft was carrying a large number of modern fuses composed of 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of explosives and electrical instrumentation.

The report is in line with testimonies on explosion sounds heard before the crash. According to the sources, the plane was meant to transfer the fuses from Iran to Armenia, and from there to Syria through Turkey, and then on the ground to Lebanon. This route was chosen, according to exiled opposition sources, so as not to draw attention.

Chalk another one up to our terrorist buddies in Lebanon and Syria. And it’s just lovely that the Turks are complicit in this terror track as well. Why on earth shouldn’t we trust them to negotiate between Israel and Syria?

When this war is over and Israel’s troops are gone from Lebanon, and when the rage at Israel begins to subside, it will be Nasrallah’s turn – like Nasser’s four decades ago – to answer to fellow Arabs for his actions.

I was dismissive, as it appeared that Hezbollah had no intention of keeping its side of the deal – and it didn’t. I was also dismissive because Thomas Friedman had made a very similar point in “The morning after the morning after.”

On the morning after the morning after, Lebanese war refugees, who had real jobs and homes, will start streaming back by the hundreds of thousands, many of them Shiites. Tragically, they will find their homes or businesses badly damaged or obliterated. Yes, they will curse Israel. But they and other Arabs will also start asking Nasrallah publicly what many are already asking privately:

“What was this war all about? What did we get from this and at what price? Israel has some roofs to repair and some dead to bury. But its economy and state are fully intact, and it will recover quickly. We Lebanese have been set back by a decade. Our economy and our democracy lie in ruins, like our homes. For what? For a one-week boost in ‘Arab honor?’ So that Iran could distract the world’s attention from its nuclear program? You did all this to us for another country?”

(Not a surprising sentiment since Hezbollah wasn’t founded to fight Israel as much as it was to create an Islamic state in Lebanon.)

Frankly, I thought that Friedman was trying to be too cute, but he seems to be somewhat on target in this case. As the Washington Post reported the other day.

But the events of the past few years, voters said, made the campaign a broad referendum on Hezbollah. The group’s militia in 2008 briefly seized control of downtown Beirut in a bid to boost Hezbollah’s political power, a move reminiscent of the country’s 15-year civil war. And Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel was cited by some voters as showing the danger of allowing the group to keep its arms stockpiles.

What are some of the other factors leading to Hezbollah’s defeat? Now, Thomas Friedman even gives some credit to ex-President Bush.

While the Lebanese deserve 95 percent of the credit for this election, 5 percent goes to two U.S. presidents. As more than one Lebanese whispered to me: Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 — and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing — this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.

“People in this region have become so jaded by the ability of their states to dominate everything and hold sham elections,” said Paul Salem, analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “And mostly the world never cared. And then here came this man [Obama], who came to them with respect, speaking these deep values about their identity and dignity and economic progress and education, and this person indicated that this little prison that people are living in here was not the whole world. That change was possible.”

As I mentioned before I wonder if President Obama’s speech spurred Christians to vote in greater numbers, realizing that he was reaching out too much to the likes of Hezbollah. (I was happy to see that Michael Ledeen feels the same way.

My thinking is more along the lines of the editors of the Wall Street Journal:

This being Lebanon, talks on building a governing coalition are bound to be difficult. But in the bigger picture, this election marks a step forward since the 2005 Cedar Revolution ended the Syrian occupation. And it’s a vindication of America’s policy of democracy promotion. In Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq and now Lebanon, extremist Muslim parties didn’t fare as well as feared at reasonably free polls, and often lost ground. The outcome in Lebanon is another good reason for the Obama Administration to make democracy a priority of its so-called new relationship with the Muslim world — even if George W. Bush also happened to think it was a good idea.

Democracy promotion was decidedly not a part of President Obama’s Cairo speech.

The usually frivolous Dion Nissenbaum recalls another incident that may have hurt Hezbollah.

At the end of the day, in the battle between the pro-Western March 14 coalition and the Iran-backed March 8 rivals, the date that may have mattered more was May 7th.

That was the day last year when Hezbollah fighters easily stormed through West Beirut in a military takeover that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah later called “a glorious day.”

What Nasrallah touted as a great day many Lebanese voters saw as a betrayal.

While Sunday’s election doesn’t signal an end to the Hezbollah threat, it is a welcome development.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

This balance of power will now be transferred to the battle over the cabinet formation. M14 has a clear victory, and so will pick the Prime Minister. The battle, however, will be over the heresy of the “veto third” — which has no existence in the constitution or the Taef Accord. Hariri has been consistently rejecting its continuation in the future cabinet, and he got support today from Jumblat as well, who called it a “fallacy.” M14 will agree to a national unity government, though its principled position now is that it rejects the “veto third” formula. They are making plenty of noise about giving a boost to Suleiman, and how that will materialize remains to be seen. M8 is almost certainly going to reject it and will cite the relatively weak performance of the so-called independents/centrists as support for their position.

via Barry Rubin who writes:

Whatever the result, Hizballah and its allies, including Iran and Syria, will keep up the pressure on the moderate regime, and this could mean crises ahead. One result could be that an attack on Israel from Lebanon is less likely, at least over the next year, as Hizballah and its allies don’t want to disrupt their efforts to bring Lebanon closer to their control. I hate to say this but political assassination–or at least attempts–and other terrorism could continue to be a method of intimidation.

The West is going to be challenged to provide support for the March 14 coalition government.

Legal Insurrection posts some pictures (via Instapundit).

The New York Times reports:

The tentative victory may have been aided by nearly unprecedented turnout. The preliminary results showed that about 55 percent of the 3.26 million registered voters cast ballots. Lebanese television reported that the March 14 coalition, a predominantly Sunni, Christian and Druze alliance, held at least 67 seats out of 128 in Parliament.

The Washington Post reports:

Heavy turnout in Christian districts returned to power a Western-backed coalition in the Lebanese parliament on Sunday, thwarting a bid by the Islamist Hezbollah party to increase its influence.

and

But the events of the past few years, voters said, made the campaign a broad referendum on Hezbollah. The group’s militia in 2008 briefly seized control of downtown Beirut in a bid to boost Hezbollah’s political power, a move reminiscent of the country’s 15-year civil war. And Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel was cited by some voters as showing the danger of allowing the group to keep its arms stockpiles.

In a statement to Agence France-Presse, Hezbollah member of parliament Hassan Fadlallah did not acknowledge the group’s defeat, but said it was important that Lebanon “turn a new page, one based on partnership, cooperation and understanding.”

I noted the emphasis on the heavy voting by Christians and wonder if it’s possible that President Obama’s Cairo speech had anything to do with the result. President Obama made it clear that he was reaching out to the Muslim/Arab world; did Lebanese Christians worry more about their future after that and thus vote in greater numbers than projected?

While this victory is good, in that it’s a setback for Iran and Syria, Hezbollah still remains a force.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

More seriously, Amir Taheri considers the possibility of a Hezbollah victory:

If Lebanon comes under Iranian control it could become one arm of a pincer — the other being Hamas-controlled Gaza — designed to subject Israel to low-intensity warfare that would, in time, sap its will to resist. With the completion of the Israeli security fence along the West Bank within the next few months, suicide attacks would become increasingly difficult to organize. The fight, therefore, would shift to the skies with “an endless storm of rockets and missiles raining on Israel from Lebanon and Gaza,” as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in an election campaign message last month.

With its clients in control of Lebanon, Iran would build a naval presence in the Mediterranean for the first time since the seventh century. Experts from the Revolutionary Guards have visited the port of Beirut and prepared plans for a visit by an Iranian flotilla before the end of the summer. Six Iranian warships are already on their way to the Red Sea, ostensibly to help combat pirates operating from the Somali coast. In Tehran, there is also talk of helping Hezbollah to develop its own naval units for “resistance operations” against Israel.

And that’s not even considering how Iran would act if it would develop nuclear weapons that President Obama is anxious to convince them not to build with lots of nice words.

Crossposted on Yourish.

“[I]f (the majority) uses the report against Hezbollah,” said former Carnegie Endowment scholar and Hezbollah expert Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, “then of course we’re going to see instability in Lebanon, and that’s putting it mildly.” “One word,” said Fadia Kiwan at Saint Joseph University, “could set the streets on fire.” “If the Special Tribunal for Lebanon comes out and confirms the report,” Carnegie Middle East Center Director Paul Salem said, “we could be facing an all-out civil war.” “If these rumors are true,” my own source in Lebanon added, “expect some extremely dark times ahead in Lebanon. After all, the Sunni street hates Hezbollah enough to begin with. Once Hezbollah is officially accused of assassinating Hariri, all bets are off.”

All this raises the question: if Lebanon could plunge into war should “March 14” cite an unsourced report prematurely, what might happen if the UN officially indicts Hezbollah later?

Totten doesn’t seem convinced that the rumors are true. There does seem to be an element of whitewashing Syria’s role in the assassination attached to the rumor. (Of course, given that both Hezbollah and Syria are clients of Iran, would proof of Hezbollah’s involvement necessarily exonerate Syria?)

It does seem that Hezbollah is scared. That’s why Der Spiegel’s credibility must be undermined.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Mr. Homsi, 61, was the deputy mayor of Saadnayel, a town in the Bekaa Valley. According to a report in the Lebanese newspaper Al Safir, which has links to Hezbollah, Mr. Homsi had told interrogators he was assigned to meet Mr. Nasrallah, which he apparently failed to do. Israeli monitors planned to track his movements as he went to meet the Hezbollah leader.

Mr. Homsi, who was arrested on May 16, said that he had started working for Israel because he needed the money, the newspaper reported, and that he had been paid $100,000.

Many friends and relatives of those accused of being spies say they cannot believe the accusations. “He’s been a friend for more than 18 years,” Issam Rouhaymi, the mayor of Saadnayel, said about Mr. Homsi. “Nobodycould believe such a thing.”

Mr. Homsi was active in the Future Movement, the pro-American political party that is opposed to Hezbollah. Mr. Homsi’s brother said the charges had been manufactured to damage the party’s chances in the elections.

Mr. Homsi sounds like a convenient target. His arrest discredits a pro-American political party. It’s possible, of course, that that’s why he was recruited. But I’m skeptical. And how likely is it that someone with his political leanings would meet with Nasrallah?

The Times gives two more cases:

Some contrived elaborate schemes to avoid detection. Ali al-Jarrah, who was arrested last year and accused of spying for Israel for 25 years, had two homes and two wives who did not know of each other. Adib al-Alam, a retired general arrested in April, had established a domestic maid service at the behest of his Israeli spymasters, officials have said. He used it to disguise his telephone calls and trips abroad to meet with Israeli officers.

Ali al-Jarrrah sounds like a possibility. After all, if he has two wives, he is susceptible to blackmail. However Gen. al-Alam, the little information provided here makes the case against him sound contrived.

Perhaps most infuriating of all, for Lebanese investigators, was what happened this week. On Sunday and Monday, two people accused of being spies escaped across the southern border into Israel, one of them bringing his family with him, according to a Lebanese government complaint submitted to the United Nations. The Israeli military helped them escape, the report states. Another man staged a similar escape this month.

These sound the most likely to have been spies, as the NYT article concludes:

It must have been a daring and risky escape, passing through Hezbollah’s home terrain and across a fenced and guarded border. But it is not impossible.

“There are crossing points,” said Timur Goksel, a former senior adviser of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon. “But I don’t think the Israelis would help just anyone cross over. It would have to be someone they saw as important.”

There is another aspect of this story that’s disconcerting. Early on the Times reported:

The arrests appear to reflect a newly energized and coordinated effort by the Lebanese security agencies, which now cooperate far more effectively among themselves and with Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group based here, than they did in the past.

“New technologies have helped in catching them,” said Gen. Ashraf Rifi, the director of the Internal Security Forces. “But we have also had better cooperation with the army than we had before.”

So assuming that the spy network is real – I have to assume that it is, though perhaps not as extensive as Lebanese officials or Hezbollah claim – apparently American aid to bolster the Lebanese government has been used to thwart the Israeli espionage network. Another lesson unlearned. And if the Americans are inadvertently helping Hezbollah might they want to reconsider given the latest accusation about Hezbollah’s involvement with the Hariri assassination? (I don’t believe this gets Syria off the hook, but Syria and Hezbollah are doing Iran’s bidding in Lebanon. In the meantime, Hezbollah and Iran seem to be acting a bit paranoid.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

These are his words:

In a speech on occasion of the 61st anniversary of the occupation of Palestine broadcast on Monday, Secretary General of Hezbollah Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said the Israeli entity which is based on usurpation, massacres, displacement and occupation isn’t a legitimate entity and cannot be legitimate in any way.

Nasrallah affirmed that the Israeli entity is the cause of all wars, disasters and crises in the region, forcing the past, current and future generations to bear the repercussions and effects of this tumor festering in the region.

He stressed that the wars that happened in the region were imposed by this entity, and that the actions of the region’s governments, peoples, armies and resistance movements were reactions to the occupation of Palestine, which is the source of conflict in the Middle East, with the enemy counting on the Palestinian cause being forgotten and on forcing the Palestinian people to despair and abandon their land and rights.

If someone can explain to me how you can reach an agreement with the man who spoke those words, I’d appreciate it. Because from where I’m sitting, the only agreement you can reach with Nasrallah is the business end of a hellfire missile.

On one point, the United States agrees with Hezbollah’s No. 2 leader, Naim Qassem, and not such allies as Britain.

Neither Qassem nor Washington distinguish between the Shiite militant group’s political wing, which has members serving in the Lebanese Cabinet and parliament, and its military wing, preparing for the next round of battle against Israel. “Hezbollah has a single leadership,” said the 57-year-old cleric in a rare interview with an American reporter recently.

“All political, social and jihad work is tied to the decisions of this leadership,” he said. “The same leadership that directs the parliamentary and government work also leads jihad actions in the struggle against Israel.”

Media Backspin digs up a related, old Tony Blankley column:

. . . Al Capone set up soup kitchens during the Depression. And the Nazis provided social services to poor and starving Germans in the 1920s and early ’30s. But they both kept killing until, respectively, the FBI and the Allies put them both out of business.

Hezbollah is certainly a ruthless band of cutthroats, but there is no evidence that they are insincere in their beliefs, or that they are open to changing their minds and joining the Women’s League of Voters. If, at their heart, they oppose our objectives, then either they have to be defeated or we do.

Any political party — be it Sinn Fein, Hezbollah, Hamas or the Nazis — that has its own private army is inherently not a democratic institution. Nor is it likely to evolve into one if it holds undemocratic ideas.

Elder of Ziyon asks:

Given what Great Britain did and what Europe is doing in legitimizing Hezbollah, isn’t this kind of important? Wouldn’t a responsible Western press pick up on something like this? It isn’t as if the LA Times is a tiny newspaper. The story’s been out for more than a day.

And Israel Matzav observes:

don’t expect that to stop any European ‘peace activists’ from idolizing Hezbullah.

Barry Rubin writes that what applies to Hezbollah, applies just as much to Hamas!

Naturally, I was censorious when the UK government said it was going to meet with the political wing of Hizballah. But they’ve done even worse now with Hamas. All the main contacts with that organization so far are with Khalid Mashal who is:

1. The closest thing the organization–”political” and “military” wings–have to an overall leader. It’s like meeting with Usama bin Ladin on the pretext of engaging with the al-Qaida “political wing.”

2. He is the most hard-line leader of the group. This is not to say that the others are great moderates but if you are going to pretend to be encouraging the less genocidal (and the difference is minimal) why empower the worst of them?

One more proof that the engagement racket is precisely that.

But this isn’t really about moderating fanatics, is it? Declaring Hamas and Hezbollah “moderate” won’t change what they’re about. But it will give some high minded progressives the satisfaction of refusing to be limited by labels. And of course, politically they help terrorists become more respectable without changing their tactics.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There is a network of schools– some of them run by Hezbollah, others affiliated with or controlled by it — largely shielded from outsiders. There is a nationwide network of clerics who provide weekly religious lessons to young people on a neighborhood basis. There is a group for students at unaffiliated schools and colleges that presents Hezbollah to a wider audience. The party organizes non-Scout-related summer camps and field trips, and during Muslim religious holidays it arranges events to encourage young people to express their devotion in public and to perform charity work.

“It’s like a complete system, from primary school to university,” said Talal Atrissi, a political analyst at Lebanese University who has been studying Hezbollah for decades. “The goal is to prepare a generation that has deep religious faith and is also close to Hezbollah.”

Young women are taught their place:

Again and again, the girls were told that the hijab was an all-important emblem of Islamic virtue and that it was the secret power that allowed Hezbollah to liberate southern Lebanon. The struggle with Israel, they were told, is the same as the struggle of Shiite Islam’s founding figures, Ali and Hussein, against unjust rulers in their time.

Through it all, Ms. Halawi was the presiding figure on the stage, introducing each section of the evening and reciting Koranic verses and her own poetic homages to the veil.

“Our veil is a jewel-encrusted crown, dignified and lofty, that God made to make us blossom,” she said at one point, gazing out into the darkness with a look of passionate intensity. “He opened the door of obedience and contentment for us.”

Everyone is taught how to understand Jews.

Another difference from most scout groups lies in the program. Religious and moral instruction — rather than physical activity — occupy the vast bulk of the Mahdi Scouts’ curriculum, and the scout leaders adhere strictly to lessons outlined in books for each age group.

Those books, copies of which were provided to this reporter by a Hezbollah official, show an extraordinary focus on religious themes and a full-time preoccupation with Hezbollah’s military struggle against Israel. The chapter titles, for the 12- to 14-year-old age group, include “Love and Hate in God,” “Know Your Enemy,” “Loyalty to the Leader” and “Facts About Jews.” Jews are described as cruel, corrupt, cowardly and deceitful, and they are called the killers of prophets. The chapter on Jews states that “their Talmud says those outside the Jewish religion are animals.”

(I’d point out that “sons of pigs and monkeys” is not Talmudic in origin.)

And the main point of this illustrative article.

In the West, the image of Hezbollah is often that of its bearded, young guerrilla fighters, dressed in military camouflage and clutching AK-47s. But Hezbollah’s inner core of fighters and employees — its full-time members — is a far smaller group than its supporters. This broader category, covering the better part of Lebanon’s roughly one million Shiites, includes reservists, who will fight if needed; doctors and engineers, who contribute their skills; and mere sympathizers.

To read the article is very disillusioning. It would suggest that there is little Israel can do to make peace with its northern neighbor. The influence of Hezbollah seems pretty extensive. However,

Hezbollah’s influence on Lebanese youth is very difficult to quantify because of the party’s extreme secrecy and the general absence of reliable statistics in the country. It is clear that the Shiite religious schools, in which Hezbollah exercises a dominant influence, have grown over the past two decades from a mere handful into a major national network. Other, less visible avenues may be equally important, like the growing number of clerics associated with the movement.

And Hezbollah’s influence is presented at once as somewhat tolerant but pervasive:

But there is a limit to Hezbollah’s flexibility. All young members and supporters are encouraged to develop a hiss amni, or security sense, and are warned to beware of curious outsiders, who may be spies.

After Mr. Sayyed had been talking to a foreign journalist in the coffee shop for more than an hour, a hard-looking young man at a neighboring table began staring at him. Suddenly looking nervous, Mr. Sayyed agreed to continue the conversation on the cafe’s second floor. But he seemed agitated, and later he repeatedly postponed another meeting planned for the next week.

Finally, he sent an apologetic e-mail message explaining that he would not be able to meet again.

So what does this mean for the future of Lebanon and the Middle East. Is the Arab country that was once the most Western being inexorably drawn deeper into Iran’s orbit? Or are there countervailing forces resisting Hezbollah’s (and Iran’s) creeping annexation of Lebanese society?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.