DO NOT PAVE LEBANON

Yesterday I was rather intemperate in my posting. I wrote: "I am sorry that Sharon did not pave over all of Southern Lebanon in 1982. He should have driven the population northwards and salted the earth. "

This was not the most sane and rational thing I have ever written.

As reader Charles Malik subsequently pointed out.

Charles Malik wrote:
"Come, now.
You don't truly want to turn pristine villages into parking lots. Why let your emotions go to such extremes?

Obviously, you need to show your anger to Lebanese extremists, but as your blog shows, your media is not the way to go about doing that.

You attract Lebanese moderates, who will undoubtedly be upset by your rhetoric.
You can make the weak Western/ Israeli accusation that Arab moderates merely apologize for extremism, but there is a reason why we liberal bloggers attract attention, and it is not for our pro-regime agenda.

The Arab world is not diverse. You are right to be skeptical of your Egyptian and Saudi readers. However, Lebanon is relatively free, and Lebanese abroad (the majority of Lebanese citizens) participate in the discussion.
We don't take kindly to being stereotyped, and we enjoy being ourselves without others telling us what we should be doing.

Your politics may correspond with ours, but make sure that you are truly online to make friend not debating partners before you begin advocating specific platforms.
I will gladly debate you, but only after you indicate you are worthy of such an exchange. If we even disagree... ;)
"

He is right. Yesterday's text was not exactly geared towards a rational discussion of issues.
I will freely admit, despite my sense that all the Arab opinions regarding the United States and Israel are wrong, some bone-headedly so, that there are grey zones, and areas where discussion can begin. And that there is much we have in common.


And there most certainly are Arabs with whom one can actually get along, whom one can even admire. In that vein I should point out that Saudi King Abdullah yesterday argued in favour of tolerance and reconciliation.

A cynic might say that if this is believable, it's about time. A skeptic would dismiss it as merely an obfuscatory trick, part of the strategy for softening up the future dhimmis, and not nearly a bold enough statement.

Perhaps it did not go as far as could be desired. Indeed, given the audience at that conference, it may have been little more than a diplomatic politeness. A courtesy suited to the crowd.

Let us instead admire him for having the courage to say it. The opinion he ventured will win him no friends among the extremists, and will not affect the hard-core on our side who have already rigidified into anti-Islamists. It was not pandering to powerblocks or threats. It was a rational observation in an age which is not entirely welcoming of such things.


There are others in the Arab and in the Muslim world who are worthy of respect. We should not be blind to that fact, or deaf to their voices. And in castigating them all for the unseemly and obscene triumphalist Hezbollah orgy yesterday, I was incorrect.


So, other than keenly desiring that all members of Hezbollah and their pals in Hamas, and much of the Syrian and Iranian leadership, plus their sympathizers in Europe and the Arab world, should die horrible deaths, soon and in our days, and that their names be forgotten, their heirs be outcastes and paupers, and their graves by plowed under and used for dung heaps, I do not wish all of Southern Lebanon to be paved over. It is a beautiful place, I've been told, and I've known some very nice Lebanese. I wish them well. And I wish them to be rid of their yokes.

We've got a couple of our own yokes that we too need to be rid of.