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1) How can you tell the difference between a terrorist organization and a liberal democracy?

The title is a trick question. In international fora, the terrorist organization gets a lot more respect.

Last week the Ireland led the way to prevent the European Union from designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Ireland is reportedly blocking efforts inside the European Union to formally blacklist Hezbollah as a terror organization. Britain recently initiated procedures to add the Iran-backed terror group to the E.U. blacklist, after Bulgarian officials linked Hezbollah to the July 2012 Burgas bombing that killed six civilians and a Cypriot court convicted a confessed Hezbollah member on terrorism-related charges. The U.S. has repeatedly called upon the E.U. to follow its example and ban the group, which has established deep roots on the Continent.

Even as Hezbollah’s reach is seen in South America and Syria the European Union refuses to sanction the terror group operating within its borders.

But when it comes to Israel, the world is more intent on preparring a final solution. In the farcically named UN Human Rights Council, 67 nations and organizations heartily approved the report of asylum escapee, Richard Falk, condemning Israel. In a just world someone like Falk would issue his statements from behind the walls of an institution, but in the topsy-turvey world of the UN he is a respected “Special Rapporteur.” Naturally, in this venue he received support from even the world’s worst rights abusers. Look at how they piled on.

During the interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur, speakers condemned Israel’s persistent refusal to cooperate with the Special Rapporteur and expressed concerns at the persistence of settlement activities and human rights violations, including restrictions on movement, arrests and harassment of Palestinians, and the particular effects on children. They highlighted the need to put an end to impunity for human rights violations. Speakers regretted the deterioration of the situation in Gaza due to the ongoing blockade and the loss of civilian lives. Some delegations echoed the proposal of the Special Rapporteur to investigate the activities of businesses connected with Israeli settlement activity. Others complained about the unbalanced mandate of the Special Rapporteur and the presence of political considerations in his report. Mr. Falk was accused of being anti-Semitic.

Speaking in the discussion were Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the European Union, Mauritania, Egypt, South Africa, Algeria on behalf of the Arab Group, Indonesia, Iceland, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Iran on behalf of the Non Aligned Movement, Iraq, Qatar, Cuba, Ecuador, Angola, Venezuela, Kuwait, Chile, Morocco, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Syria, Algeria, Turkey, Iran, Maldives, Zimbabwe, the United Nations Children’s Fund and Malaysia.

No, you didn’t misread. Syria – whose government has killed more than 80,000 over the past two years – and its patron, Iran (of the laughably named “non-aligned movement) sit in judgment of Israel in this venue. In the asylum that is the UN, this is hardly remarkable.

There were, however two speeches that weren’t anti-Israel and were, instead, indictments of the “human rights” establishment.

.@AliAbunimah Thank you for condemning the antisemitism endorsed by #RichardFalk. We quoted you again @UN today: http://t.co/eGiNcl3Ah9

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) June 10, 2013

One was by Anne Bayefsky; the other by Hillel Neuer.

Mr. Falk, in the first page of your report, you attack my NGO and ask this Council to launch an investigation in order to shut us down.

Does your report allege a crime? No, you simply object to our words. We are the only watchdog at the UN, and we report what you say. In reprisal, you now seek to muzzle our voice, to avoid being held accountable.

The real issue is whether your work, conducted under the banner of human rights, actually exonerates and exculpates the perpetrators of terrorism.

2) Smacking Friedman down, again

Last week I took issue with Thomas Friedman’s Israel lives the Joseph Story.

https://twitter.com/soccerdhg/status/342316938485174272

But I missed a major goof.

And the world for the most part would not begrudge Israel keeping its forces on the Jordan River — as will be necessary given the instability beyond — if it ceded most of the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Elder of Ziyon:

Oh, and don’t forget Friedman’s other “if-then” fallacy here – that the world would allow Israel to keep the Jordan Valley as a buffer if only it would offer the Palestinian Arabs a state. Wasn’t that already offered and rejected?

Meryl Yourish:

The bolded phrase contradicts all of the Palestinian statements made about Israel keeping any soldiers in the West Bank. In point of fact, the Palestinians absolutely begrudge Israel a force on the Jordan.

My Right Word:

Well, I do not know about the “world” but the Pals. would certainly not agree.

Friedman loves to pose as someone who understands simple truths that those in power (especially in Israel) fail to appreciate. But here he shows that he hasn’t been paying attention to the past twenty years of the peace process. Maybe in 1993 an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley was an accommodation would have made. It is no longer.

3) Soccer news

Despite efforts of anti-Israel activists to prevent it, Israel hosted this year’s UEFA (European soccer’s governing body) under 21 championship. Israel did not advance in the tournament. However, the Israeli team did win its final match in Jerusalem against England. Ofir Krieff, of the Israeli team, scored the game winning goal.

To score in the capital city, in my home town, in front of my home fans, is a fantastic feeling. We did a really good job. The credit goes to the team and not to me even though I scored. It’s all thanks to the great work of the staff and the players.

I think that we had a really good tournament overall. To win four points against these kind of teams is a big achievement. We had some criticism and it wasn’t always right. This team has a lot of potential and we proved it today against England which is nothing to take for granted.

When I scored I just thought that we had finally got the win after this hard work. The credit goes to Guy [Luzon]. It was highly important to finish with a good taste because of him and I’m happy that we gave him this goodbye present. “I wanted to run over to him but afterwards I saw nothing because everybody was all over me”.

One of Israel’s top players was Taleb Twatha:

This is a 20-year-old, after all, from a world far removed from the one he now inhabits as a professional footballer. Defender Twatha is from a Bedouin family, born and brought up in Jisr az-Zarqa, a coastal town in the north of Israel which did not even have a football pitch when he was growing up.

“We have only 13,000 people in Jisr,” the left-back explained to UEFA.com. “Jisr is a very poor town and when I was young there was no football there – not even a football field. I’m the youngest in my family. My eldest brother studies medicine in Italy. My other brother does the same but in Germany. My sister finished nursing school in Jordan. My father is the school principal and my mum is also a teacher. I’m the only one to have gone into professional sport.”

That he ended up playing UEFA Champions League football for Maccabi Haifa FC aged just 17 was the result, he says, of a serendipitous moment seven years earlier – namely, a random phone call from a family friend. “I tried gymnastics, tennis, karate, but only in the fifth grade did I start playing football. I had some luck because I was in the car with my dad one day when a friend of his saw a newspaper ad about a football school and phoned him about it. I interrupted the call and told him I wanted to go. Just a year later I moved to Maccabi Haifa.”

4) Erekat’s Latrun gambit

In commemoration of the 46th anniversary of the start of the Six Day War, the New York Times published a press release for the Palestinian Authority, On Anniversary of Arab-Israeli War, a Palestinian Plea:

It was here on the wooded slopes of Latrun on Tuesday that Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, chose to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1967 war and to call for an end of Israeli occupation.

“I am sure many of you are asking why is Saeb Erekat bringing you to this point,” Mr. Erekat said to a group of diplomats and reporters as he stood against a backdrop of green fields, a reservoir and an Israeli settlement of red-roofed houses in the valley below.

“It is not because I want to demarcate the maps or finalize the negotiations,” he said, referring to the intensive efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry to get the Israelis and Palestinians to return to peace talks. “I just want to stand here and say, ‘It is 46 years later.’ ”

Control of Latrun was critical for control of the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and at the time, Arab forces had been poised to to attack Irael’s narrow coastal corridor. Much as Erekat obfuscates the issue, control of Latrun was essential for Israel’s survival.

The New York Times continues.

If nothing else, Mr. Erekat’s selection of Latrun spoke to the great distance between Palestinians and Israelis. Many Israelis consider Latrun to be an integral part of Israel. Drivers heading to either Tel Aviv or Jerusalem speed across the unmarked armistice lines along the main highway, slicing through several miles of West Bank territory and designated stretches of buffer zone, oblivious to the area’s fraught history.

The reporter tells us the obvious, but leaves out something else that is obvious. The Palestinians once again are seeking to “move the goalposts.” Erekat’s press conference was apparently the first move in a new campaign.

Israel Matzav writes:

The ‘Palestinians’ have responded to US Secretary of State John FN Kerry’s pressure on Israel for concessions… by seeking even more concessions. The ‘Palestinians’ are now seeking two of Israel’s biggest tourist attractions: Mini Israel and the Latrun tank museum. In fact, they’re seeking the whole area around Latrun…

A favored Palestinian official gives a press conference and a reporter for the New York Times dutifully records his statements without explaining what he is doing. She simply writes, “here’s one more Palestinian that needs to be addressed by Israel,” and not “the Palestinians keep changing their demands.”

Jonathan Tobin comments:

Erekat’s candor is in a sense quite commendable. Latrun is a potent symbol of the nature of the Israel that existed in those halcyon days before the obstacle to peace was the presence of Jews in the West Bank and in which a small state with indefensible borders and a capital that could be isolated with ease stood on the precipice of destruction as Arab armies began to mass on its borders. Erekat was sending a clear message to Israelis that if they thought the PA would ever accept the fact that the world had irrevocably changed in those 46 years they could just keep dreaming.

As Erekat well knows there now exists a broad consensus within Israel about the desirable nature of a two-state solution. That consensus includes Prime Minister Netanyahu and most of the members of his government. Indeed, even the Israeli right knows that if the Palestinians ever offered a complete end to the conflict and recognized the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders were drawn they would find the majority ready to make painful territorial sacrifices. But by laying down a marker on Latrun—a place that no Israeli in his right mind would ever consider leaving—Erekat was making it clear their real priority was not peace but an effort to merely continue the conflict on more advantageous terms.

Indeed, reminding Israelis of the Israel that existed from 1949 to 1967 is not exactly the way to reassure his ostensible peace partners of the PA’s good intentions. But of course what else can you expect of a peace negotiator that has boycotted peace talks for the past four and a half years?

Israel begged Jordan not to join the war. King Hussein convinced of Egypt’s early success against Israel joined in seeking to cut Israel in half. western Jerusalem was bombarded. Israel did not decide “we will dispossess the Palestinians” and seek war. War was forced on them and they fought to survive. Erekat wishes for the world to forget that.

Elder of Ziyon asks a very important (rhetorical) question:

If the Six Day War hadn’t happened… Would there be a Palestinian Arab state today on the West Bank and Gaza?

Perhaps that’s something that Erekat ought to consider. If Jordan hadn’t attacked Israel in 1967, would he now be an international celebrity for promoting Palestinian nationhood?

The rest of the New York Times article is a lament about how both sides are being unreasonable and how this mutual stubbornness will sink Jonh Kerry’s peace plan. When it’s one side that refused to negotiate and then changes the parameters of negotiations isn’t that the side that is uninterested in peace?

1) Tom the dreamer

In Israel lives the Joseph Story, Thomas Friedman uses Stephen Hawking’s recent boycott of Israel (an action he didn’t take against China or Iran) as a chance to lecture Israel once again.

This global trend, though, is coinciding with a complete breakdown in Israel’s regional environment. Israel today is living a version of the Biblical “Joseph Story,” where Joseph endeared himself to the Pharaoh by interpreting his dreams as a warning that seven fat years would be followed by seven lean years and, therefore, Egypt needed to stock up on grain. In Israel’s case, it has enjoyed, relatively speaking, 40 fat years of stable governments around it. Over the last 40 years, a class of Arab leaders took power and managed to combine direct or indirect oil money, with multiple intelligence services, with support from either America or Russia, to ensconce themselves in office for multiple decades. All of these leaders used their iron fists to keep their sectarian conflicts — Sunnis versus Shiites, Christians versus Muslims, and Kurds and Palestinian refugees versus everyone else — in check. They also kept their Islamists underground.

So what does Friedman suggest?

In my view, that makes resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more important than ever for three reasons: 1) to reverse the trend of international delegitimization closing in on Israel; 2) to disconnect Israel as much as possible from the regional conflicts around it; and 3) to offer a model.

There is no successful model of democratic governance in the Arab world at present — the Islamists are all failing. But Israel, if it partnered with the current moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, has a chance to create a modern, economically thriving, democratic, secular state where Christians and Muslims would live side by side — next to Jews. That would be a hugely valuable example, especially at a time when the Arab world lacks anything like it. And the world for the most part would not begrudge Israel keeping its forces on the Jordan River — as will be necessary given the instability beyond — if it ceded most of the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Together, Israelis and Palestinians actually have the power to model what a decent, postauthoritarian, multireligious Arab state could look like. Nothing would address both people’s long-term strategic needs better. Too bad their leaders today are not as farsighted as Joseph.

Let’s address Thomas’s three points.

1) When Friedman brought up Hawking’s boycott he allowed:

I strongly disagree with what Hawking did. Israelis should be challenged not boycotted.

Of course, superficial as he is, Friedman doesn’t acknowledge that the BDS movement isn’t about criticizing Israel but about destroying it. He should be condemning Hawking, not merely disagreeing with him. The “trend of delegitimization” is based on opposition to (or hatred of) Israel, not opposition to occupation. That he accepts Israel’s culpability in the delegitimization campaign shows that he is more aligned with those who wish to destroy than he is willing to admit.

https://twitter.com/soccerdhg/status/342316938485174272

2) The growing Shi’ite/Sunni divide manifest over Syria shows how wrong this is. When Sheikh Qaradawi calls Alawites worse infidels than Jews or Christians, and Hezbollah casts its participation in Syria’s civil war as a defense of a Shi’ite shrine, Israel is a non-factor. He acknowledges the growing political power of Sunni Islamists. If Israel makes peace with the Palestinians, who is more likely to be ruling the PA in ten years? The ideologically coherent Islamists of Hamas or the more secular Fatah? Israel is a footnote to the main currents of Middle East right now.

3) Did you notice a name missing from this column? Salam Fayyad. Remember how Friedman promoted “Fayyadism” as the future of the Palestinian Authority? Well now Fayyad has been replaced and he’s gone done Friedman’s memory hole. The problem was that he was a fig leaf. His seriousness made him a fig leaf for Western governments who wanted to pretend that their aid to the PA wasn’t being misspent. But more importantly he wasn’t Mahmoud Abbas. And Abbas got his position because he wasn’t Yasser Arafat. The more moderate Palestinian leaders go their positions because of who they aren’t rather than because of what they do. But that’s why they don’t accomplish much. The model of democratic governance in the Arab world is illusory. If the Palestinians were governed by those they supported politically, they would be governed by Hamas.

What Thomas has in common with Joseph is that both had dreams. Joseph, however, correctly predicted the future, Thomas, with his infinitely repackaged lectures of Israel shows that he has little grasp of past or present events and is, therefore, much less likely to foresee the future accurately.

I’d also point out that this column wasn’t appreciated by the anti-Israel crowd.

Crap from Tom Friedman. http://t.co/afhHdQ1CE0

— Scott Roth (@scottroth76) June 5, 2013

This column proves that he doesn’t really know what they’re about.

@tomfriedman "strongly disagree[s] w/what Hawking did" but doesn't mention real objectives and moral bias of #BDS.http://t.co/62624qmyv4

— (((MarcoCSermoneta)))?? (@MarcoCSermoneta) June 5, 2013

2) The GCC’s case against Hezbollah

While he doesn’t expect that it will make any difference Abdulrahman Al-Rashed explains why the Gulf Cooperation Council declared Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization.

Although Hezbollah is involved in terrorist operations against Kuwait, Saudi and Bahrain, and has been for decades, these countries did not do anything against it. Hezbollah was completely involved in the attempt to assassinate Kuwait’s emir in a car bomb in 1985. The major culprit in that crime is Mustapha Badreddine. He was the perpetrator and he is also wanted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in their investigation of the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. The paradox is that Saddam Hussein released him five years later after he invaded Kuwait! Hezbollah also hijacked a Kuwaiti airplane in Muscat and killed two Kuwaiti passengers.

Several Hezbollah terrorist plans in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have also been uncovered, and the party was not punished for any. Only the U.S., which categorized Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in 1995, placed it on the list of sanctioned organizations. Gulf countries chose to remain silent regarding Hezbollah’s crimes against its governments and citizens, because it was seen as a resistance organization with popular support among Arabs, when in fact it was a helpful hand of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards helpful hand. Gulf countries also wanted to maintain the balance of power in Lebanon and it maintained minimal relations with Hezbollah in order to support civil peace in Lebanon.

Gulf countries have finally decided to categorize Hezbollah as a terrorist organization after it became a major party fighting along Bashar al-Assad’s regime and is involved in the murder thousands of Syrians. Although the move comes late, I doubt that it will be implemented on different levels, and it will remain simply a political decision.

Hezbollah is a Shi’ite terror organization sponsored by Iran. It isn’t all that surprising that GCC countries would be among its foremost enemies.

3) Talkin’ Turkey

Claire Berlinski provides the recent background for the foment going on in Turkey:

Of late, almost every sector of the electorate has felt unease about one part or another of Erdo?an’s agenda. Restrictive new alcohol legislation, rammed through parliament, as usual, with contempt for the minority opposition, has prompted outrage; the so-called peace process with the PKK, which no one understands, has caused great unease. Anxiety is growing as well, not only about press censorship, but also about the prosecution of those who insult government officials or “Islamic values” on social media. There is outrage about the bombing in Reyhanl? that left 52 Turks dead and which appears to have been attributable to a series of inexcusable police and intelligence blunders (but no one knows, and no one believes what the press writes); there is fear of war with Syria; there is concern about strange reports that al-Nusra, a Syrian militant group affiliated with al-Qaida, has been cooking up Sarin gas in Adana, five miles east of the United States’ Incirlik Air Base; and there is deep skepticism about Erdo?an’s plans for grandiose construction projects—such as a third airport, a second Bosphorus canal, and a gigantesque mega-mosque intended to exceed in size every mosque left behind by his Ottoman predecessors. The thing will dominate Istanbul’s already-martyred skyline, and replace yet another pleasant and leafy park.

The recent announcement that a new bridge over the Bosphorus was to be named after Sultan Selim the Grim, slayer of the Alevis—a substantial and beleaguered Turkish religious minority—didn’t help matters. Nor did it soothe fears when a minor AKP official from the sticks wrote on Twitter that “My blood boils when spineless psychopaths pretending to be atheists swear at my religion. These people, who have been raped, should be annihilated.” Two weeks ago in Ankara, a disembodied voice on the subway, having apparently espied them by means of a security camera, denounced a couple for kissing. The voice demanded that they “act in accordance with moral rules.” In return, incensed Ankara lovers staged kissing protests: as the couples shyly smooched outside the subway station, a group of young men confronted them, chanting “Allahu Akbar!” It was reported but not confirmed that one of the kissers was stabbed; but given the mood of hysteria here right now, it would be unwise to believe every rumor one hears.

Erdo?an, it seems, severely underestimated the degree of his subjects’ displeasure, confident that God, a strong economy, and a weak opposition were all he needed to ensure his hegemony. He brusquely dismissed the tree protesters’ concerns: “We’ve made our decision, and we will do as we have decided.” An AKP parliamentarian then unwisely announced that some young people “are in need of gas.”

Michael Rubin explains that there isn’t unanimity in Turkey’s government:

Turkey’s been a pressure cooker for quite some time. Turks have radically different visions about their future. While the spark for the current unrest was an environmental protest against building a shopping center over a small Istanbul park, the greater issue is unease about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s religious agenda and the rollback of rights inside Turkey. It is also a clash between visions. While Istanbul’s elites have traditionally looked toward Europe and the West for inspiration, the core of Erdogan’s constituency is Anatolian, and tends to look toward religion.

At the same time, it’s useful to think about a tripartite clash going in within the Turkish government. There are three main factional leaders: Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul, and Islamic thinker Fethullah Gulen who, depending on the analyst, is either a malicious cult leader or the leader of a movement promoting tolerance. All three are Islamist, but Erdogan seems most interested in personal power, and Gül is most tolerant. Gulen — who lives in a heavily guarded compound in Pennsylvania and whom Turks believe has long had American government support — dominates the security services. Whether people hold him accountable for the police abuse seen on the streets of abuse remains to be seen.

(Still Rubin doesn’t believe that Erdogan is likely to lose power.)

Not exactly what you’d want from President Obama’s best friend in the region.

1) Music lives in Israel

Arsen Ostrovsky interviewed Zubin Mehta about performing Israel:

According to Mehta, “it’s hard to find an emblem of cultural, national pride that burns as bright as Israel’s success in classical music.” He adds “the amount of culture going on in a small country like Israel is amazing.”

Mehta, who is a Parsi Indian from Bombay, first performed in Israel “by chance” in 1961, when at the age of twenty-five, he filled in as a substitute conductor for Eugene Ormandy.
…

Asked what draws him to Israel, Mehta says: “I keep on coming back because the people love music. They need it and that’s why I’m here, to do whatever I can.”

NJ Woman: ‘Show Alicia Keys Support for Supporting Israel’ http://t.co/JkgJAGF9WE

— Lori LowenthalMarcus (@LoriLMarcus) June 4, 2013

This is especially notable in light of what Alicia Keys told the New York Times on Friday, explaining why she would perform in Tel Aviv despite pressure to boycott Israel.

In a statement to The New York Times, Ms. Keys said on Friday: “I look forward to my first visit to Israel. Music is a universal language that is meant to unify audiences in peace and love, and that is the spirit of our show.”

The New York Times mentioned a number of celebrities who urged her not to go to Israel or who boycotted Israel recently.

(On June 4, 2013)
Roger Waters – 16177 Twitter followers
Elvis Costello – 45933 Twitter followers
Stephen Hawking – 189276 Twitter followers
Alicia Keys – 13926058 Twitter followers

Alicia Keys is a lot bigger than her critics.

2) The Hezbollah hatefest continues

Nearly a year and a half ago, New York Times reporter, David Kirkpatrick profiled Sheikh Yussuf Qaradawi. After allowing that Qaradawi supported suicide attacks against Israel, as if it were some eccentric belief of the cleric, Kirkpatrick portrayed him as a virtual Thomas Jefferson of the Arab spring:

On Friday, he struck themes of democracy and pluralism, long hallmarks of his writing and preaching. He began his sermon by saying that he was discarding the customary opening “Oh Muslims,” in favor of “Oh Muslims and Copts,” referring to Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority. He praised Muslims and Christians for standing together in Egypt’s revolution and even lauded the Coptic Christian “martyrs” who once fought the Romans and Byzantines. “I invite you to bow down in prayer together,” he said.

He urged the military officers governing Egypt to deliver on their promises of turning over power to “a civil government” founded on principles of pluralism, democracy and freedom. And he called on the army to immediately release all political prisoners and rid the cabinet of its dominance by officials of the old Mubarak government.

“We demand from the Egyptian Army to free us from the government that was appointed by Mubarak,” Sheik Qaradawi declared. “We want a new government without any of these faces whom people can no longer stand.” And he urged the young people who led the uprising to continue their revolution. “Protect it,” he said. “Don’t you dare let anyone steal it from you.”

I wonder if Kirkpatrick would find Qaradawi’s latest remarks as uplifting. Last week in Qatar, Qaradawi called for a jihad against Syria.

“Every Muslim trained to fight and capable of doing that (must) make himself available” to support the Syrian rebels, the cleric said at a rally in Doha late Friday.

“Iran is pushing forward arms and men (to back the Syrian regime), so why do we stand idle?” he said, branding Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which means the party of God in Arabic, as the “party of Satan.”
…

“How could 100 million Shiites (worldwide) defeat 1.7 billion (Sunnis)?” he exclaimed, “only because (Sunni) Muslims are weak”.

For good measure Qaradawi also singled out the Alawites:

He denounced Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, as “more infidel than Christians and Jews” and Shiite Muslim Hezbollah as “the party of the devil.”

Philip Smyth noted last week the way Hezbollah portrays the war they’re fighting exacerbates the sectarian divisions.

An undeniable trend, which has also become much more widespread, is the insistence that every dead Hizballah member was a “Defender” of Damascus’s Sayda Zaynab Shrine. During earlier announcements and funerals, the Zaynab Shrine and it’s protection were invoked quite regularly, but this shift demonstrates a more full acceptance of the narrative that all Hizballah members who are dying in Syria are “Protecting the Lady Zaynab”. On Facebook, albums holding the pictures of Hizballah’s dead from Syria have been entitled, “The Campaign to Defend Saydah Zaynab’s Shrine” to “Zaynab’s Defenders”. The narrative disregards whether these fighters were serving in the countryside near Qusayr, Damascus, or elsewhere within Syria. Instead, the main theme is that all actions executed in Syria are done to protect the Zaynab Shrine. Of course, this promotes more sectarian aspects of the war in Syria and with Hizballah’s involvement.

Two years ago, Barry Rubin wrote:

The Islamists will be weaker, subverting each other’s attempts to take over or control various countries and movements. Yet growing sectarianism can also lead to really nasty communal massacres of Muslims by Muslims, as has already happened in Iraq. Syria is the place to watch for that development.

Finally, in competing to show their militancy and effectiveness in backing terrorism, the rate of attacks by both sides could well increase. Trying to prove that one is the “proper” Islamist side representing “authentic” Islam will also likely lead to reckless risk-taking, which a naïve West—assuming everyone wants to be a moderate and acts “rationally” according to their own definition—will be ill-equipped to handle.

With the increasing sectarianism

Maybe now that GCC labeled Hezbollah a terrorist group Saudis will do more re Hezbollah recruitment at Hajj http://t.co/4o2NgmYnRi

— Matthew Levitt (@Levitt_Matt) June 3, 2013

Assad: “Arabs Have Forgotten… Real Enemy is Still Israel” http://t.co/46paxFLWJ2

— AJC in the Gulf (@AJCintheGulf) June 3, 2013

and violence …

Qusayr meat grinder continues – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion http://t.co/J8NDihO3Hg

— Lebanon Blogs (@lebanonblogs) June 4, 2013

we are seeing that scenario play out.