Arab media mocks Hizbullah 'victory'
Jul. 18th, 2008 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ymarkovBy KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Jerusalem Post, 07/17/08
[...]
While Hizbullah on Wednesday went to great lengths in its attempts to paint the prisoner swap with Israel as a victory, emphasizing the fact that Nasrallah had kept to his word and managed to release murderer Samir Kuntar, a leading Arab paper ridiculed the perceived "victory."
"The Radwan deal," the headline of the London-based pan-Arabic daily Asharq Al Awsat cynically ran on Thursday, "cost Hizbullah over $7 billion, more than 1,200 dead and 4,500 wounded Lebanese citizens." The paper referred to the exchange by the name given it by Hizbullah.
Radwan was the nom de guerre of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hizbullah terror mastermind killed several months ago in a car bombing in Syria.
In Lebanon, Al Anwar carried an editorial piece which said it was "shameful to see members of the government in Beirut join the celebrations of Hizbullah."
Jerusalem Post, 07/17/08
[...]
While Hizbullah on Wednesday went to great lengths in its attempts to paint the prisoner swap with Israel as a victory, emphasizing the fact that Nasrallah had kept to his word and managed to release murderer Samir Kuntar, a leading Arab paper ridiculed the perceived "victory."
"The Radwan deal," the headline of the London-based pan-Arabic daily Asharq Al Awsat cynically ran on Thursday, "cost Hizbullah over $7 billion, more than 1,200 dead and 4,500 wounded Lebanese citizens." The paper referred to the exchange by the name given it by Hizbullah.
Radwan was the nom de guerre of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hizbullah terror mastermind killed several months ago in a car bombing in Syria.
In Lebanon, Al Anwar carried an editorial piece which said it was "shameful to see members of the government in Beirut join the celebrations of Hizbullah."
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 06:12 pm (UTC)This, imho is quite a bit more interesting, but also is not definitive.
It looks hard to dispute that Hizbullah gained power in Lebanon as a result. That quite a few Lebanese have been disenchanted with it (esp. since their latest Beirut takeover) is also a fact, but how much it matters is not clear - they are still afraid to do anything about Hizb.
(During the last Israel-Lebanon war a Lebanese friend showed me what he said was "an openly anti-Hizbullah paper". In the last page it had a cartoon of Lebanon broken in two by Israeli bombs. Prior to that we discussed with this friend the general understanding among the Lebanese (at least not shiites) of the responsibility that Hizb bears for the war, so I asked him why the cartoon did not have at least a couple of Hizbullah markers in it. To which the friend replied with sincere astonishment of my apparent density - "they [the paper people] are not crazy, they want to live!". And when I insisted, he basically said that were they to do such a thing there were two options their fate could go - they could be brutally murdered by Hizb mob, or they could be arrested and then brutally murdered by Hizb. Since then Hizbullah improved their positions of power significantly.)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 04:37 am (UTC)Exactly. It does not seem the local arabs really care about the number of killed and wounded other than for propaganda reasons.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 04:56 am (UTC)