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Originally Posted by lokken
I don't believe for a minute that these islamic organisations care a jot about the lebanese people or territory - if you do so, I think you are a bit naive.
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Hmmm. I'm not sure about this. This is not to say that there is not a fair amount politicking going on, and "extremists" of whatever type might see their cause as more important than individual people or territories, but I think Hezbollah are primarily a resistance movement. They're heavily religious, but I wouldn't even say they were a religious movement per se. Consider the following quote from Richard Pape, an American author :
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In writing my book on suicide attackers, I had researchers scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and the biographies of the Hezbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.
What these suicide attackers — and their heirs today — shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hezbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.
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Now it might be that the above information is out of date, or just irrelevant because there is some grand leadership which is entirely Islamic and entirely undevoted to Lebanon. But I would say that we would be making a mistake if we assumed the organisation as a whole is this way inclined. The groups which are formally Islamic (Hamas / Hezbollah) are the ones resisting Israel. Therefore, the people who want to fight Israel will join them, even if they are secular leftists, or Christians or whatever. In WW2 not every member of the Italian or Yugoslav partisans were communists (in fact, the majority weren't) but a lot of the time, if you want to join the fight against fascism, the only ones doing anything useful were the reds, and so you joined up - regardless what you thought about Stalin.