Doblio

Looking for some sanity in an insane world. Interests in Middle East history and politics, and the rise of Islamist extremism. Back on here after a long break.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@CTVNews “War crimes”

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@mhdksafa That still hasn’t happened. When you lie, you just discredit yourself. When people inevitably lose interest, this will be why.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@lbelle212 @Mr_Andrew_Fox You don’t have an argument, you have deeply dishonest talking points you learned from that “growing cast of scholars, grifters, and moral lunatics who have made that beleaguered country their professional or psychiatric obsession.”

He got you pegged, mate!

[Doblio @DDoblio]

I could never have said it so eloquently, but Sam Harris captures my views on this conflict perfectly.

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

Sam Harris has written the best thing you’ll read today.

https://t.co/gI0wZZNH4m

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@NickCohen4 Because they have learned what happens when they do, when they left Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. But they did offer just that in 2000 and 2008, and Palestinian leadership rejected it. They have agency, which is the point of Sam Harris’ op ed.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@cultmtl There are two active separatists movements after 11 years of Liberal governments and it’s the leader of the opposition who’s a threat to national unity? You funny.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@WhitezWill @rich_toronto It’s not a concentration camp when the people living in it choose the conditions and choose to be there. Just choose to stop killing Jews. Until they make that choice, I don’t care.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@saltysa20312181 @richimedhurst Ah, we can always count on the cockroaches to come crawling out grunting lies and slogans.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@WhitezWill @rich_toronto He did. And the Jews of the Middle East paid an awful lot for that dusty dangerous corner of Ottoman Syria nobody ever cared about until they began to show up in greater numbers.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@khalidi79397 Rare are the voices willing to articulate what the future should look like. I always applaud those who offer a better vision and have the courage to stick their necks out for it, especially when doing so is unpopular.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@Arturmaks @megbuchananlunn DEI — that’s the ideological environment that created this.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@MarkJCarney Your “leadership” did this.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@terrynewman Well said!

[Doblio @DDoblio]

You can continue to repeat the lies, it won’t make them any more real. It just shows how pathetic you are — it’s all you’ve got. You know full well why Israel was in Lebanon in the 1970s, when terrorists used it as a launch pad for attacks into Israel.

Some of the most notorious attacks included the 1970 Avivim School Bus Massacre, where militants fired on a school bus near the Lebanese border, killing 12 civilians, including nine children; the 1974 Kiryat Shmona Massacre, in which terrorists crossed from Lebanon, entered an apartment building, and murdered 18 civilians, including children; and the 1974 Ma’alot Massacre, where DFLP terrorists infiltrated from Lebanon, seized a school full of teenagers on a class trip, and killed 22 schoolchildren and three adults during a hostage crisis.

The decade also saw the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre, when attackers acting on behalf of the PFLP opened fire and threw grenades in the arrivals hall of Israel’s main airport, killing 26 people and wounding dozens more. In 1975, terrorists arriving by sea seized the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv, taking hostages and killing civilians before being stopped by Israeli commandos. In 1978, Fatah terrorists launched the Coastal Road Massacre, landing on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, hijacking a bus, and murdering 38 civilians, including 13 children, in what was one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Israel’s history at the time.

Even the 1972 Munich Massacre, in which 11 Israeli Olympic athletes were murdered in Germany, was carried out by a Palestinian terrorist organization linked to the broader militant movement that had established a major presence in Lebanon.

By the mid 1970s Fatah, the PFLP, the DFLP, and the PFLP-GC were operating extensive infrastructure in southern Lebanon and using it to launch attacks against Israeli civilian targets. The biggest attacks, particularly those targeting northern Israeli communities and schoolchildren, originated from across the Lebanese border.

So fuck you.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@RabbiPoupko So many Canadians are sheep. It’s a knee jerk reflex that comes from years of droning on about Islamophobia by the Liberals. I’ve cut several people out of my life because of their “feels” on issues they know nothing about.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@SorayaMartinezF @Arturmaks Oh look. It’s another person with responsibility for allowing the hate movement to fester with empty words.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

Nobody I take seriously on this topic pretends they are. Yet conversations about extremism and widespread beliefs within Islam that are incompatible with modern society and contemporary notions of human rights are still routinely shut down with accusations of Islamophobia and similar labels.

Face it: when those claiming to speak on behalf of the Muslim community respond to uncomfortable questions by trying to silence the discussion, they are not projecting confidence in their position. To anyone knowledgeable enough to see past the Pollyanna platitudes, they present as people with something to hide.

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@lord_flavor @richimedhurst

[Doblio @DDoblio]

@tleehumphrey @AnitaAnandMP It's also why nobody in the region gives a damn what Canada has to say -- least of all Israel.

[Ahmed Al-Khalidi @khalidi79397]

What happens to Lebanon the day Iran’s occupation ends?

For decades, Lebanon hasn't been a failed state by accident. It's been a hostage. A country with a flag, a parliament, and an army, all operating in the shadow of a militia that answers to Tehran. Not Beirut.

Imagine a Lebanon where the only group with rockets is the national army. Where the airport isn't a smuggling hub for Iranian weapons. Where the south isn't a launchpad for someone else's war.

That Lebanon already exists in memory. It was the Beirut that rivaled Paris. The banking capital of the Middle East. A place where Christians, Sunnis, Shia, and Druze built one of the most cosmopolitan societies in the region.

What killed it wasn't sectarian difference. Plenty of nations are diverse. What killed it was an armed faction that placed loyalty to a foreign theocracy above loyalty to its own people.

Lebanon can't be free until the monopoly on violence belongs to the state. Not to a party. Not to a "resistance." To the state.

A free Lebanon needs three things:

A real army that doesn't share the country with a parallel one.

A border with Israel that's a border. Quiet, recognized, normal.

And a Gulf and Western world willing to pour investment into a Beirut that's finally a safe bet again.

Free Lebanese people from Hezbollah, and you don't just save Lebanon.

You hand the entire region its old jewel back.