Bruce Rux - Ronald Reagan - Tip O’Neill - CIA Declassified TV - Judges 9:15 - Noam Chomsky - Robert Fisk - States of Terror: Men of God TV - Roger Ebert - Adam Curtis TV - The Beirut Spy TV - World in Action TV -
Baalbek is a very good example that has ... the largest stones in the world ever used for construction. They’re so large so we don’t even know their actual weight. Those stones were somehow quarried, moved five miles, lifted twenty-five, thirty feet in the air and placed together so closely you can’t fit a razor blade or a piece of paper in between them. We have no idea how they did it. We don’t have a crane in the world that can lift weights anywhere near what those things are. Bruce Rux, author Architects of the Underworld
The charge has been made that the United States has shipped weapons to Iran as ransom payment for the release of American hostages in Lebanon. That the United States undercut its allies and secretly violated American policy against trafficking with terrorists. Those charges are utterly false. Ronald Reagan, televised address
The deaths lie on him [Reagan] and the defeat in Lebanon lies on him and him alone ... The trouble with this fellow is he tries to be tough rather than smart. Tip O’Neill
1983 Beirut, Lebanon ... also present in the city is a substantial CIA presence. CIA Declassified s1e5: Beirut Bomb, AHC 2014
CIA director William Casey is considering an operation against the Lebanese Cleric, Sheikh Mohammad Fadlalla. ibid.
Hezbollah has been created by America’s greatest enemy in the region – Iran. ibid.
Let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon. Judges 9:15
When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the UN vetoed several resolutions right away, calling for an end to the fighting and so on, and that was a hideous invasion. Noam Chomsky
1985-6, the US and its Israeli ally was responsible for the most serious acts of international terrorism in this region, not to speak of the leading role of the United States in international terrorism elsewhere in the world, and in earlier years. The worst single terrorist act in the region in 1985 was a car-bombing in Beirut that killed eighty people and wounded 250. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
Israel had subjected southern Lebanon to violent and murderous attacks since the early 1970s, often without even a pretense of provocation, killing thousands of people and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. ibid.
After its 1978 invasion of Lebanon, which left the southern sector under Israeli control, Israel carried out extensive bombardment of civilian targets. ibid.
After the 1982 invasion, Israel returned to the traditional practice of bombing Lebanon at its pleasure, with ample terror in its southern ‘security zone’. ibid.
In 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon, killing several thousand people, driving out hundreds of thousands more, and placing the southern zone under the rule of a murderous client force. Israel remains in defiance of UN Security Council resolution 425 (March 1978) ordering it to withdraw from Lebanon immediately and unconditionally. ibid.
It was a US/Israeli war which essentially levelled the southern part of the country. Noam Chomsky, New York Peace Action Benefit lecture, ‘Obama’s Imperialist Policies’, Youtube 56.24
Lebanon: It was called by the [Israeli] high command in fact a War for the West Bank: we have to stop the negotiations and the diplomacy which was becoming an embarrassment and let’s get back to terror … sort of a mixture of corruption, terror, violence, bad judgment and a continuing drive towards what has to be. Noam Chomsky, Conversation with Charlie Rose 2003, Youtube 54.54
Including of course the 1982 war fought in Lebanon killing 20,000 people in order to secure Israeli control over the occupied territories and other atrocities, all of them international terrorism. Noam Chomsky, lecture Northeastern University April 2002, ‘The Emerging Framework of World Power’, Youtube 1.29.03
Lebanon 1982: I’d never seen anything on this scale of [Israeli] war crime before. Robert Fisk, This is Not a Movie, 2019
When I arrived in Beirut from Europe, I felt the oppressive, damp heat, saw the unkempt palm trees and smelt the Arabic coffee, the fruit stalls and the over-spiced meat. It was the beginning of the Orient. And when I flew back to Beirut from Iran, I could pick up the British papers, ask for a gin and tonic at any bar, choose a French, Italian, or German restaurant for dinner. It was the beginning of the West. All things to all people, the Lebanese rarely questioned their own identity. Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, 1990
In Palestine, the Israelis claim they found a land without people,’ a Syrian officer explained to us. ‘Now they will take southern Lebanon and claim they have found another land without people if these refugees do not return.’ ibid.
Never before have we seen anything like it in Lebanon. Never before have we seen anything like it in the Arab world.
Almost a third of the population of Lebanon was there; they walked many miles through the city to Martyrs’ Square, they arrived by bus from the far north and from Sidon in the south, most of them young, many of them children.
This was not just a game of power. Nor was it, per se, a democratic revolution. It was an insurrection by the people against the lies and corruption of government as well as the foreign control they have lived under for so many decades.
Yes, they wanted the Syrian army out – they are leaving anyway – but they also wanted President Lahoud of Lebanon to resign. They wanted no more compliant Lebanese governments led by weak old men; and most of them – to tell from the lapel badges they wore – were demanding the truth about the murder of the former premier Rafik Hariri on 14 February.
There was an ocean of Lebanese banners. And never before had those flags, used with such cynicism and so much derision in the past, appeared so magnificent. It wasn’t just the green cedar tree in the centre – always so refreshing after the black stars and governessy eagles that grace the flags of so many Arab regimes – but the fact that it was raised in protest at dishonesty and murder. It was the young of Lebanon, so often courted by the elderly and guilty men of this country, who were using their flag to get rid of them.
Up in the palace at Baabda, President Lahoud and his entourage seem as isolated from their country’s mood as the Americans and their appointees in the Baghdad ‘green zone’ do from Iraq’s tragedy. Indeed, from the Baabda ‘green zone’, there had emerged one of those spectacularly inappropriate statements that only exiled presidents usually make. ‘Any small firecracker could lead to a catastrophe,’ President Lahoud said.
But what did this mean? Was it a threat? A warning? Did he know something the Lebanese did not? Or was he merely showing his concern for the million who want him to step down – or, in the words of Lebanon’s now-returned opposition leader Walid Jumblatt, to leave with the Syrians.
But no, it turned out he feared that Hariri’s murderers might throw a hand-grenade into the crowd. ‘What will become of our children?’ he asked.
But it was for their children that so many hundreds of thousands of Lebanese protested yesterday. And one could not fail to notice so many hopeful aspects of their demonstration. They were happy and smiling and laughing; some even brought picnics or marched to trumpets and drums. Robert Fisk, article March 2005, ‘The People Make a Stand Over the Lies of Lebanon’
People in Beirut have been more than physically wounded, they are invisibly mutilated. As surely as the buildings of the city have been damaged. Robert Fisk, From Beirut to Bosnia: Muslims and the West I: The Martyr’s Smile, 1993
I’ve watched a friendly Muslim population turn to hate the West. I’ve watched it happen among the Palestinians and in Egypt too. I’ve been a witness to that same Muslim hatred from the West in Bosnia. ibid.
1982: Violent terrible days, journalists are witnesses to history … I watched Muslims die in their thousands. Killed by the Israelis by weaponry which was for the most part made in America. ibid.
Massacres are difficult to forget when you’ve seen the corpses. ibid.
For the West there was an especially dark side to militant Islam. ibid.
‘The fire engulfed us because they were using phosphorous bombs.’ ibid. hospitalised woman
A message sent from Beirut by Cohen in the 1940s to the Intelligence section of the Jewish agency … the agency would later become Mossad. The Beirut Spy: Shula Cohen, Al Jazeera World 2017
She had blue eyes, was attractive and classy, with a strong presence. ibid.
It’s not entirely clear how Shula became a spy. ibid.
‘There was a private network to smuggle people, run by Shula Cohen.’ ibid. dude
Lebanese Intelligence sets a trap for Shula Cohen contrived by the man with whom she had fallen in love. ibid.