Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 1

message: : The portion of the article which states that Hezballah most likely bombed the US embassy is uncited, and for good reason. It is true that a number of groups took credit for the attack, including Hezballah. Further, in the gangland of Beirut, everybody is a suspect. However, a National Security Estimate that was released under the Electronic Freedom of Information Act of 1996 gives the CIA's internal account of the attack. This report states that a group named the Islamic Justice Organization (IJO) participated in attacks, at least insofar as providing the driver of the truck-bomb. The Islamic Justice Organization is a cover group for the Pasdaran. One of the Pasdaran's officers, Hossein Mosleh, was responsible for the attack. There is no intell on the extent to which he was responsible but we do know that he organized the IJO. I wanted to allow a rebuttal on the talk page before I made any edits.
:Sources: Hostage Task Force Report 094A, National Security Estimate
: Central Intelligence Agency
: Near East Group
: Paragraph 3
: May 20, 1982
: Baer, Robert "See No Evil" P265 Crown Publishing 2003. New York, NY
: Middle Eastern Quarterly V13 P35. University of Chicago Press 1998. Chicago, IL
AaronXavier 08:38, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hezballah and the US embassy bombing of eighty-three

message: In the current section on allegations of terrorism, the following allegations are listed in that paragraph:
1)kidnapped and tortured to death... U.S. Marine Colonel William R. Higgins and the CIA Station Chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley
2) kidnapped around 30 other Westerners between 1982 and 1992, including the American journalist Terry Anderson, British journalist John McCarthy, the Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy Terry Waite and Irish citizen Brian Keenan.
3) responsible for the April 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63
4) being behind the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing
5) a suicide truck bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines
6) bombing the replacement U.S. Embassy in East Beirut
7) killing 20 Lebanese and two American soldiers
8) carrying out the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847
Of these eight incidents, numbers 1, 4, 5, and 7 are categorically not terrorist acts, even if the accusations are true.  They are strikes against legitimate military targets. Number 1 is a violation of various standards of treatment of military prisoners, but it isn't terrorism per se.
Numbers 3 and 6 might be terrorism, depending on whether one considers an embassy to be a legitimate military or strategic target in wartime. In any case, they aren't attacks aimed at purely civilian targets in order to solicit terror among the populace for political purposes (terrorism).
Number 2 is probably terrorism, unless there was some strategic reason why these particular figures had a military strategic value. I don't know the specifics of that situation.
Number 8 definitely appears to be terrorism.
All in all, Hezbollah seems to be more of a resistance movement aiming at militarily significant targets, than a group like Hamas or Al Queda, which seeks to attack civilians in public places for terror purposes.  However, they might dabble in terrorism from time to time and this would make them terrorists. I really can't tell by reading this article.  In any case, two things are clear: (1) all military operations will often involve the deaths of civilians, but only the intentional targeting of civilians makes an act terrorism, and (2) "terrorism" doesn't simply mean any small militia whose cause is unpopular.  It has an objective meaning.--Daniel 01:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't care if the allegations are true or not, that's not my point. My point is that several of those listed aren't terrorist acts, so it makes no difference as to the subject of "allegations of terrorism" and doesn't belong under that section.--Daniel 12:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Perhaps you've been away from news sources for the past few days, but just open your TV to CNN , and you'll hear that for the past 4 days Hezbollah has been firing rockets at Israeli towns - in other words, "the intentional targeting of civilians" - per your own definition  of terrorism. I don;t see what problem you;d have with Hezbollah being labeled a "terrorist organization". Isarig 01:39, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Why would you think I have any "problem" with Hezbollah being labeled anything? If you read all of my comment above, you'll see that 1 or 2 of the points I listed, I say they are terrorist acts. But what they are or aren't isn't even the point.  The point is that this is a section called "allegations of terrorism" and most of the points within it aren't terrorism, and therefore are out of place in that section.  It would be like having a section on cooking called "making pastries" and then listing instructions for making a steak, a salad, a lasagna, and doughnuts.  Only one of those is a "pastry". The rest should be in another section. And, by the way, the recent rocket attacks SHOULD be listed in this section. --Daniel 12:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Daniel.  His claim is entirely one of precision in using words.   --66.227.111.238 14:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Current section "Allegations of... terrorism"

message: On an unrelated note, I think we should add this sentence (I can't, as the article is protected):
This article is about the Hezbollah based in Lebanon.  For an article about the unrelated Hezbollah in Turkey, see Hezbollah (Turkey). 
If for no other reason, it will clarify that these two are not the same organization.
DanKeshet 21:29, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
Since this is of an administrative nature, I will do it.
-- Toby Bartels 05:21, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Disambiguation

message: This article is remarkable for not mentioning the group's beliefs and driving motivations. That is an oversight which needs to be corrected. Some of the following information needs to be incorporated into this article. (Source: Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger by Robert S. Wistrich)
:A similarly radical ideology motivates the Lebanese Shi'a movement, Hizballah ("the Party of God"), which rose to prominence following its resistance to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Its total negation of Israel's existence and its view of Judaism as the oldest and bitterest enemy of Islam owe much to the Ayatollah Khomeini's "anti-Zionist" preaching and the movement's symbiotic relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In accordance with this doctrinal source of inspiration, Hizballah opposes nationalism, imperialism, and "Western arrogance" while laying special emphasis on the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem as a major strategic aim.
:As with the Hamas and other fundamentalist groupings, Israel is depicted as a Western puppet installed in the Middle East to enable imperialism to continue its domination and exploitation of Arab regional resources. Israel is invariably seen as the source of all evil and violence in the area and as the main obstacle to Islamic unity. Hence it must be totally eradicated.44  The recent Israeli departure from Lebanon is no more than a prelude to this future obliteration of the great "usurping enemy" of Islam-frequently described by Hizballah (as in Iranian propaganda) as a "cancer" and poison that affects the entire world. 
:Hizballah's most senior cleric, Sheikh Husayn Fadlallah, continually emphasized through the 1990s that Israel was not just a Jewish state in the formal sense of the word. It was the ultimate expression of the corrupt, treacherous, and aggressive "Jewish" personality. Jews were indeed "the enemy of the entire human race," congenitally "racist" and condescending in their attitude to other peoples, and ruthlessly bent upon global domination. In an interview in the late 1980s, Fadlallah already expressed a widely held fundamentalist attitude toward allegedly boundless Jewish ambitions: 
:"The Jews want to be a world superpower. This racist circle of Jews wants to take vengeance on the whole world for their history of persecution and humiliation. In this light, the Jews will work on the basis that Jewish interests are above all world interests." 45
:Hizballah's consistently intransigent philosophy of all-out war against Israel, Zionism, and the Jews has an unmistakably virulent anti-Semitic underpinning linked to its overall pan-Islamic, revolutionary perspective. Its special venom also draws from the traditional Iranian Shi'i attitudes toward Jews as unclean, impure, and corrupt infidels. This is a theme that pervaded the outlook of the Ayatollah Khomeini and still influences the present Iranian leadership.46 
:Like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Hizballah engages in a total demonization of the Jewish and Zionist enemy, eagerly embracing violence, "suicide bombings," martyrdom, and terror as the only path to "liberate" Palestine, destroy Israel, and defeat the West.47 Everything is made subordinate to the supreme imperative of the jihad-the holy war that must be waged to the death against the infidel-until all Islamic lands are liberated and a truly Islamic state is restored.48 
:The Western media, as is its custom, has been extremely reluctant to relate the current terrorist war against Israel and the West to its ideological roots in Islam or to the sources and meaning of jihad. It is equally averse to connecting terrorism with the anti-Jewish obsessions that currently animate millions of Muslims.49 Amazingly little attention has been paid to the sheer abundance, energy, and viciousness of contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism from Cairo and Gaza to Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and Lahore. The seemingly endless parade of grotesque falsehoods exhibited in Arab and Muslim defamation of Jews and the Jewish state scarcely seems to impinge on Western consciousness. At most it is perceived as a footnote to the raging storm of anti-Americanism or as a form of "political opposition" to Israeli actions. Not even the rampant Arab claims that the Holocaust was a fabrication invented by Zionists and Jews (which attracts much attention in the European media when made by neo-Nazis or far rightists) stir more than the faintest of responses in the West.50
:Footnotes:
:43. Esther Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizballah and Hamas (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, 1994), pp. 17-22. 
:44. Ibid., pp. 8-9. 
:45. Middle East Insight, March-April 1988, p. 10. 
:46. David Menashri, "The Jews of Iran: Between the Shah and Khomeini," in Sander Gilman and Steven T. Katz, eds., Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis (New York: New York University Press, 1991), pp. 353-71. 
:47. Raphael Israeli, "Islamikaze and Their Significance," Terrorism and Political Violence 9:3 (Autumn 1997): 96-121, emphasizes the planned, premeditated style of the "suicides" organized by Muslim terrorists, which are designed to wreak maximum damage on the "abominable" Zionist enemy. 
:48. Ibid., pp. 110-11. 
:49. See Raphael Israeli, The Terrorist Masquerade (Shaarei Tikva, Israel: Ariel Center for Policy Research, 2001). 
:50. See Holocaust Denial in the Middle East: The Latest Anti-Israel Propaganda Theme (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 2001). 
:Source: Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger by Robert S. Wistrich
::I would hope that something from a source with a less obvious political motivation could be found. --zero 03:01, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Excerpt from ''Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger''

message: Why is this article protected? —Frecklefoot 15:51, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Why protected?

message: removed copy and paste into article from external source ... put the link in the in the list ... 
:See Ozleft articel
:Hezbollah is not on the European Union list of terrorist organisations The Europeans hold the view that, among others, Hezbollah is a party to an official agreement with Israel not to fire on each other's civilians. Israel does not sign agreements with terrorists.
:The Israeli court in Upper Nazareth is currently evaluating a legal submission that Hezbollah is a guerrilla organisation and not a terrorist one. The court has decided to accept the affidavit and to rule on its validity. To quote the relevant Haaretz article: "The affidavit, prepared by Prof Moshe Maoz, the head of the University of Tel Aviv's school of government and an expert on Syrian affairs, stated, 'Hezbollah is a typical guerrilla organisation, whose operative goal is to fight the Israeli occupation in Lebanon. Its activities made a significant contribution to the change in public opinion and led to a turnaround in the attitude of decision makers,' Maoz said." 
:The Israeli court in Upper Nazareth is currently evaluating a legal submission that Hezbollah is a guerrilla organisation and not a terrorist one. The court has decided to accept the affidavit and to rule on its validity. To quote the relevant Haaretz article: "The affidavit, prepared by Prof Moshe Maoz, the head of the University of Tel Aviv's school of government and an expert on Syrian affairs, stated, 'Hezbollah is a typical guerrilla organisation, whose operative goal is to fight the Israeli occupation in Lebanon. Its activities made a significant contribution to the change in public opinion and led to a turnaround in the attitude of decision makers,' Maoz said. (June 2002)
Sincerely, JDR
"Qubth Ut Alla (The Fist of God), the monthly magazine of Hezbullah's paramilitary wing. Reportedly, this has more detailed than Israel's Bahamane (In the Camp) monthly magazine of the IDF."  - Anyone got a clue what that sentence means?  Something obviously got deleted... Mustafaa 06:54, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: copy and paste

message: An IP has recently added a lot of stuff to this article, most of which appears to be delusions.  This needs sorting out - but I'm not really sure what is delusion and what is real?  Morwen - Talk 16:18, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Fantasy

message: Can you source the claim that Israel denied killing him? - Mustafaa 02:18, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Ghaleb Awwali

message: It is impossible to change this article. If you change it at the next minute someone re-enter the article that is here showed. ----
Nope - it's not impossible to edit the article, it's just impossible to get away with deleting most of it.  The flip side of free editing is that, if your edits seriously damage the article, they will be reverted. - Mustafaa 12:41, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Attention 

message: After several reverts and counter-reverts regarding whether the article should be linked to the Islamic terrorist organizations category, I suggest we discuss this instead of changing the article all the time. I'm restoring the link. Clearly, Hezbollah is generally considered a terrorist organization. Though personally I don't consider them as such, I think the category link would be helpful for most users. It is a mere link, and the article discusses this controversy thoroughly, so if you wish to enlighten us with new ideas on the subject, that section in the article would be the right place to put them. Almost any category would have someone disputing their applicability, the purpose of defining categories is to help users by (crudely) generalizing. - doron
Generally considered?  I dispute that strongly.  This illustrates a fundamental weakness of categories: they are inappropriate in instances such as these, where the category is disputed.  What is clear is that the current page offers no good reason to classify them as such. - Mustafaa 10:47, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to add something re Hezbollah being a terrorist group. It's also considered such by the EU. Just FYI. --Penta 04:24, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  It is officially recognized as a TO in many countries, but we don't include it in that category. Why don't we reflect the facts (it is in the list), simply because some don't like them? The fact they run hospitals is irrelevant: Hitler and Pol Pot also ran hospitals. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 08:23, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  category:Islamic terrorist organizations 

message: Hey User:Jayjg, can you stop following me and reverting everything i write?  Even though, everything i put is NPOV, or facts, you just revert them, either without explination or saying pov and npov and etc....
Just leave me alone! I added some info and facts in operation Litani, then you came and revert them... even that they are facts, and reality that everyone has in their archive...
Then when you finished "attacking my articles" in operation litani, you followed me here, in article about Hezbollah... Just a small sentence saying that "Hezbollah is a politic and military group aimed to fight israel in lebanon", and you revert it.. where is wrong in it? nothing... Is it pov? NO.. Everyone say Hezbollah has as objectives to fight israel in Lebanon.. See Israeli archives and us ones.. they also say the same...
I am thinking that you are just reverting what i write, because it is me that i wrote them...  Please see Wikipedia:No personal attacks ... Addoula 00:29, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  User attack on me 

message: There seems to be a quarrel whether the Hezbollah only attacked US forces (US Marines) in Lebanon, or US and other international (French, Italian, ...) forces. David.Monniaux 09:31, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Multinational force?

message: This structure of this article is very difficult to follow. It also says very little about Hezbollah. It does say much about other issues, this is presumably included under other entries?
Could this article please be restructured?
:Possibly, but please don't delete relevant information.  Also, "militant" is the accepted NPOV word here; both "guerilla" and "terrorist" imply a POV. Jayjg (talk) 19:06, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The former, which is why you shouldn't be trying to bias the article by using POV words and deleting negative links. Jayjg (talk) 00:09, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: If your issue was only the links, then you should have at least left an edit comment while removing them.  However, you made other deletions as well, and made POV changes besides, which is why I reverted.  I've removed the links since they are not particularly encyclopedic; however, what is odd is to use the word "guerilla" or "militant" to describe what just about everyone on the Western world (including the U.S., Canada, E.U., etc.) describes as a "terrorist".  Should we change the description to "terrorist" to reflect that opinion?  And by the way, "guerillas" are people who are fighting either a government or foreign troops in their own country; exactly which "geurilla" war are the Hezbollah militants involved in, a fight against the government of Lebanon? Jayjg (talk) 15:53, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just referring to your last point - those regarding Hezbollah as a guerilla (including myself), claim so because Hezbollah has mostly fought against the IDF during its occupation of the Security Zone in southern Lebanon. Although there have been Hezbollah attacks targeting Israeli communities in northern Israel, they were an exception, most of their attacks were against Israeli military outposts in Lebanon. There were probably attacks targeting civilians in every war in history, but surely you can't call everyone a terrorist, so I think that in general, calling Hezbollah a terrorist group is wrong. This is in stark contrast to the tactics of Hamas and the likes, who attack civilians almost exclusively. Since the IDF's withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah's pretext for continuing the war is the Shabaa Farms issue, which is perhaps a slim excuse, but on the other hand there have been very few attacks against Israel, nearly all against military targets. I think "guerilla" describes Hezbollah perfectly during the Israeli occupation. Since the withdrawal, Hezbollah is just a militant group trying to keep its power after losing its purpose. The fact that it is labeled as "terrorist" by politicians does not make it so. Given the facts listed in the article, it is not clear at all that Hezbollah ought to be labeled "terrorist".--Doron 21:30, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Your points are well taken.  As I have been saying from the start, I think, given the current state of affairs, that the term "militant" is a reasonable compromise between "guerilla" (a function it certainly does not perform any more, if it ever did), and "terrorist" (a function it has definitely performed in the past, and the designation of most western nations).  By the way, lobbing mortars and missiles at Israeli civilian towns isn't a military action, and that's still going on. Jayjg (talk) 21:58, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that "militant" is the way to go, I just thought for a moment that you were contemplating to change it to "terrorist". As for Hezbollah's actions since the withdrawal, I can't remember any attack against Israeli civilians (though I may be wrong). Assuming this list is exhaustive, there is only one attack (the infiltration near Shlomi) that I'd consider "terrorist", and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility for that attack, so even since the withdrawal, Hizbollah generally seems to stick to military targets. On the other hand, there are some claims of Hezbollah support and involvement in Palestinian terrorist activity.--Doron 18:23, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The Article

message: I don't really think that this paragraph should be in the article. It's based on really weak facts. Aslo, we don't usually put external links in the text of a wikipedia articles. Most of the info comes from the website axisglobe.com
:The pro-Iranian Hezbollah stands out among those who benefit from the Kremlin's support. Vladimir Putin's declarations about "Russia's uncompromising battle against international terrorism" are taking place simultaneously with the contacts of the Russian Ministry of foreign Affairs with the leaders of Hezbollah. Their emissaries in Russia recruit potential suicide bombers without restraint or opposition on behalf of the local authorities. They purchase arms in the areas of the ex-USSR, which are now under Russian control. Russian ex-military experts train militants of Hezbollah before they infiltrate Iraq.
--equitor 15:32, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
: I removed this paragraph. This seems to be anti-Russian propaganda and should never have been allowed in this article. Count Iblis 00:00, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, it seemed pretty silly to me and was going to do something about it myself eventually.John Z 01:22, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  axisglobe.com 

message: To those who revert the antisemit qualification to antizionism, you can see the controversial broadcasts of the Hezbollah here: Blood Libel, Al Shatat and a knight without a horse.
Is Hizballah a terrorist organization?
Although considered as a terrorist group by the United States, Israel and some other European countries, Hizboallah has never targeted civilian as the Israeli army did during all of the period that followed its creation as a state. This party was created mainly to counter the foreign presence in the lebanese territories and its political agenda does not refer anymore to the suppression of Israel as a foreign body from the Arab majority lands. Hizballah proponents believe that their party is mainly a defense shield against attack committed by Israel against the territorial sovereignty of the Lebanese territories.
137.165.28.200 05:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anti-semitism or Anti-zionism? 

message: * The article says the Lebanese based group "Partisans of God" took responsibility for the AMIA attack in Argentina. The AMIA bombing article says the same thing. Could this not be a translation of "Hizbullah" - "Party/Partisans of God"? I know they are accused of the attack, but also that they deny responsibility. So whether they did it or not, their name would probably not have been used in claiming the bombing. I suspect it is actually a mistaken/mistranslated reference to Hizbullah, but if there actually was another group (or a front for Hizbullah) by that name, could someone please source it?
* Hm, an update. This page claims that "Ansar Allah" claimed the attack. That could be maybe be translated as above, but the website itself suggests the much more appropriate "God's Helpers". "Aiders of God" would be another interpretation. To avoid confusion and avoid giving the impression that Hizbullah took direct responsibility, I suggest we change into one of those forms. Arre 07:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Argentinian bombing/"Partisans of God"

message: Why is it that, when I click on the Ansar Allah link, I am redirected back to the Hezbollah wiki? 
--SeanMcG 05:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, I nominated it for deletion. CG 18:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ansar Allah 

message: Slightly OT, sorry: iranmania.com posts a picture with the label "Members of the Iran Basij Militia"  (site takes long to load). Somebody uploaded it to wikipedia claiming it to depict "Lebanese Hezbollah Members" [2]. Can anybody help? --tickle me 06:52, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Picture's label and info are now fixed. --Filius Rosadis 16:55, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture of Lebanese Hezbollah members?

message: this sentence makes little, if any sense. i would correct it but i cant really figure out what exactly the author wanted to say:
On January 25, 2004, Hezbollah successfully negotiated through German mediators Israel agreed on an exchange of prisoners. 
is it 2 sentences jumbled together or what?
Morphine 14:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarity of Language 

message: Does anybody know about Martyr's Day, celebrated on November 11 by the Lebanese Hezbollah? Who instituted it and which martyrs specifically are honoured? --tickle me 13:50, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: According to Amal Saad-Ghorayeb's book (p.132), it commemorates all the party's martyrs. It takes place on 10 (not 11) November, the date of the party's first martyrdom operation, carried out by one Ahmad Qasir, referred to in Hezbollah rhetoric as "the prince of martyrs", an operation which killed some 90 Israeli military personnel on 10 Nov. 1982. Palmiro | Talk 16:21, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Martyr's Day

message: Hello, you made this edit to the Hezbollah article, claiming that it was more neutral that way. I see that in the old version, H. was described as a "Islamist group" that is "regarded" "as a legitimate resistance movement" "by many in the Arab and Muslim world" but as "a terrorist organization" "by the United States and some other Governments". In your version, this became "a national resistance movement" "perceived as a" "Islamist group" "by many Zionist and neo-conservative analysts". I would argue that this is a strong introduction of POV, and by no means an introduction of more neutrality, as "resistance" clearly is a positive view upon what Hezbollah does, and the claim that all who oppose its methods or ideology were zionists or neocons is plain nonsense. To find some sort of compromise, I have changed the article, so that it now claims that Hezbollah as a "militant group", regarded by those and those as such and such, etc.-- 790 07:00, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If HezbAllah is not an Islamist org, then what is? ←Humus sapiens ну? 07:16, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: @ H. sapiens: Well personally I would agree that Hezbollah is an Islamist group, but it should be clear that some people may regard this label as POV, so I wrote that it is a "militant" group - no question on that - that some call "islamist" and others call a "resistance group". Wouldn't you agree on that? -- 790 08:20, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

text: @ Fares S: I pointed out that I think your definition is completely inacceptable, and you won't make it more acceptable by jsut reverting to it. -- 790 08:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  We cannot please everyone, but need to reflect NPOV. In this case, it its safe to call them Islamist. We may say that according to scholar A, they are X; organization B designated them as Y, etc. ←Humus sapiens ну? 08:30, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: yeah, well... that is just what I suggested, isn't it, just that I would abstain from refering to it as "being" islamist and rather say that many "regard" them as islamist, while many muslims reject that designation. That passage could be changed insofar that "many" regard them as islamist, not only the US and some other governements. Cheers -- 790 08:35, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

text: OK. I can live with the last version of 790/Tamams Fares S 08:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm with Humus and Moshe here. "Islamist" has a recognised meaning, while militant is close to meaningless and getting closer every time it is used as a code-word for terrorist. I've put Islamist back in the first line, but in any case I've expanded on Hezbollah's ideology, the link with Iran, and a little more info on the terrorist thing. If people don't like the term "Islamist", and I know a lot of people don't for perfectly valid reasons, maybe the best place to point that out is on the page about Islamism (or else, can we say fundamentalist instead?)? I suppose saying an "Islamic" movement would be an OK alternative. Palmiro | Talk 13:50, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Isarig that their alliance with secular groups is irrelevant. They are allied with the Lebanese Communist Party; that doesn't make them communists, nor does it stop the LCP being communists. They're also allied with the Syrian Social Nationalist Party - does that mean that the SSNP are no longer a secular Syrian nationalist party? The structures of Lebanese politics mean that parties are always allying with those they disagree with. That doesn't mean they have given up on their ideology. I would ask those demanding to remove "Islamist" two questions: 1. Would "Islamic" be an acceptable alternative?; 2. If we can't say "Islamist", how should we describe HA's political outlook? Just calling it a resistance organization misses a lot of the point, and fails to distinguish it from the LCP, OCA, SSNP, etc, which surely we can all agree are quite ideologically distinct from HA despite all being involved in the resistance. Palmiro | Talk 10:31, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I mostly agree with Palmiro, however I think "Islamic" doesn't really capture the point,  especially in a situation like Lebanon where politics are pretty much only divided between Christian, Druze, and Islamic. When seeing the designation of "Islamic" a reader might be left with the impression that it is onlt saying that most of their support comes from Muslims, if we use "Islamist" it really shows underscores the fact that being Muslim is central to their organization's identity.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 10:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see that as a big problem (and don't forget that in Lebanon, Druze are a Muslim group!); it's quite common to refer to the Murabitoun and other secular groups as largely "Muslim", they are rarely called Islamic, while on the other hand groups such as the Islamist nuts in Tripoli that Arafat cosied up to in 1982 as well as the Hizbullah are often termed "Islamic". Nevertheless, my preference too is for "Islamist". By the way, "scientific transliteration" is common terminology, and many linguists not to mention Arabists of my acquaintance could get quite annoyed by your taking issue with it;). Palmiro | Talk 11:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not saying transliteration isn't a difficult and important subject, but when I think of science I think of people using the scientific method- that is they come of with a hypothesis to answer a question then set about proving it. To transliterate someone just has to have a suffcient command of both languages, then figure out how to phonetically write a word of one language with the characters of the other.  Also even if Druze are classified as Islamic, they are still usually in groups by themselves.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 10:07, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV introduction

message: I would propose putting the gory detail about Persian and Arabic H's, etc, into a footnote. It hardly belongs in the main body of the article, and certainly should not be the first paragraph of the main body. The second paragraph currently under the heading "Alternative spellings and names" could judiciously be incorporated into the following section about "Designations". Any remarks? Palmiro | Talk 16:04, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Palmiro | Talk 11:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names 

message: Just looking again at the intro, which I think I more or less wrote in its current form and was happy enough with at the time, it strikes me that it gives a somewhat misleading impression in bluntly stating that HA wishes to establish an Islamic state in Lebanon. It is quite an important point that HA has since the mid-80s accepted that this canonly come about through the consensus of the Lebanese people - which of course relegates it to a purely idealistic level as various commentators have pointed out, since there's little prospect of the Lebanese people as a whole agreeing to such a development in the foreseeable future.  Palmiro | Talk 15:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ideology and goals

message: I always had this question in mind, what if in the place of Hizbullah, was another resistence, and it was all of christians, would USA put it on the terrorism list?
If you don't know, or maybe you know but you didn't mention, the villages that were occupied by israelians in south lebanon, were of christians, muslims and drouz, and Hizbullah was fighting not only for Shia, or Islam, they were and still fighting for a land that they know that it belongs to them, and to all lebanese people, and only lebanese people.
The french resistence, any difference between this resistence and what Hizbullah is doing? or only because they are Muslims, or because they are fighting against Israelians, or Jewish?
Did any of you watch the "Naked News", this is something very funny, but very important and dangerous at the same time. A nice beauty girl, reading the news while stripping and removing her clothes one after the other. It is nice, but, what news is she talking about? All about Bin Laden, Hizbullah, and islams... and try to guess why.
:: I think it has to do more about the fact that Hizbullah is acting against the interests of Israel. Note that the US never considered Pakistani organizations that directly targetted civilians in Kashmir, as terrorists organizations. The US used to have much better relations with Pakistan than India.
:: If a country has good relations with the US, then the US will judge them by a different standard than other countries. E.g. the US urged Saddam to attack Iran. When Saddam did that, the US took Iraq off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Count Iblis 12:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What if it was a christian resistance? 

message: Substituted at 20:30, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment