posted August 05, 2006 11:36 AM              

Tyre: After the Bombs Have Fallen ( Note: nothing gory or bloody in this gallery just devastation and misery )

[url] ]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2006/07/26/G A2006072601592.html?referrer=emaillink[/URL]

Israel drops leaflets telling people to leave the areas they are about to bomb...then they bomb the roads so the people can't leave.

Hizballah's chief sees influence rise
Muslims in many places support him

August 4, 2006

BY SHASHANK BENGALI

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

BEIRUT -- In Bahrain, they sing songs about him. In Egypt, he's compared to their greatest modern hero. In distant Tunis, where an estimated 7,000 people marched peacefully to protest Israel's action, some of them held up his photograph.

In Muslim countries as different as Syria and Malaysia, they wave his picture like the national flag.

So far, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah, is the only person to emerge from the wreckage of Lebanon not only unbroken, but seemingly strengthened.

As his Shi'ite Muslim militant group battles Israel's powerful military into an improbable fourth week, his stature in the Muslim world has never been greater.

In Washington and throughout the West, the rise of this charismatic, broadly popular Islamist is being watched closely. As his stature grows, his pronouncements will increasingly influence how the Muslim world views itself and its relationship with the West.

"Nasrallah has assumed legendary proportions," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, one of Lebanon's foremost experts on Hizballah.

Bridging the Sunni-Shi'ite divide

Nasrallah has been a hero to Arabs since 2000, when an 18-year Hizballah guerrilla campaign drove Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon. That earned him a place in the same breath as Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president whose seizure of the Suez Canal from colonial control in July 1956 launched the Arab nationalist movement.

For years, Nasrallah's speeches have been watched across the Middle East on Hizballah's satellite TV station, Al Manar. Its alliances with fundamentalist Iran, which is nearly all Shi'ite, and secular Syria, which is mostly Sunni, give Hizballah regional reach.

Now, as the face of a resistance movement that has tested Israeli forces more than they expected -- waging tough ground battles in stronghold towns and firing defiant barrages of Katyusha rockets in response to Israeli air strikes -- Nasrallah's popularity transcends his Shi'ite base in southern and eastern Lebanon.

Muslims from Pakistan to Nigeria have demonstrated in support of Hizballah. Last week, Ayman al-Zawahri, the No. 2 man in Al Qaeda, a Sunni group that has no love for Shi'ites, called on jihadists to wage war against Israel.

"Nasrallah isn't the head of a state but a small guerrilla organization," Saad-Ghorayeb said. "Yet he has been able to bridge the Sunni-Shi'ite divide, as well as the Arab-non-Arab divide. The Israelis have inadvertently led him to this very unlikely stature."

Little in common

Experts say Nasrallah has little in common with the world's most-wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden. Unlike bin Laden, the son of a construction magnate, Nasrallah was born into a humble family in 1960, and he was classically schooled in Islam in Najaf, Iraq, until the Iraqis expelled him in 1978. Nor has he advocated worldwide jihad; Hizballah's main aims are battling Israel in Lebanon and establishing an Islamic republic in Lebanon.

Some, however, see Nasrallah's growing influence as part of a larger Shi'ite axis extending from part of Afghanistan through Iran, Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean. The fundamentalist Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia fought U.S. forces for control of parts of Baghdad and southern Iraq in 2004, has modeled himself on Nasrallah.

"Some of the Arab countries, particularly in the (Persian) Gulf, are concerned by the assertiveness of this Shia axis," said Magnus Ranstorp, a Hizballah expert at the Swedish National Defense College. "It can create trouble for the West."

The making of a legend

Hizballah was founded in 1982 to oppose Israel's occupation of Lebanon. Ten years later, Nasrallah succeeded his mentor, Abbas Musawi, whom Israel had assassinated.

Under Nasrallah's leadership, Hizballah entrenched itself among Lebanon's underprivileged Shi'ites, expanding schools and other social programs, and began fielding national political candidates. Hizballah went from being a mere guerrilla group to what analysts describe as "a state within a state."

He also was quick to recognize the power of television. In September 1997, Israel killed his 18-year-old son, Hadi, a Hizballah fighter, in southern Lebanon. Hours later, Nasrallah appeared on Al Manar and thanked God for taking a martyr from his family so that he could sympathize with the families of others who'd died for the resistance. The moment made him a legend.

Israel has tried repeatedly to kill Nasrallah, whose whereabouts remain secret. Rumors have had him in Syria or hiding in the Iranian Embassy in Beirut.

Bush can't find Osama bin Laden either

posted August 05, 2006 12:02 PM              

Will also keep reinforcing the fact that Lebanon has the largest Christian population in the Middle East and they are not forced to keep their religious preference a secret as in Saudi Arabia. 40% of Lebanon is Christian. Israel is killing Christians over there with U.S. support.