Speaking of Sending Messages...

Last Tuesday Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, ((known locally here in Dearborn as “Our Leader!”), gave an “ultimatum” to the legitimate government of Lebanon that it must form a “unity” government with Hezbollah as a member, or else face “street protests.” Why does he want it? Because “Such a cabinet would give the Islamic militants and their allies veto power over key decisions.”

We at DU predicted something like this would happen only a few weeks ago. Not that it was exactly a challenging call, sort of like walking through a mall on the day after Halloween and predicting “Christmas is coming.”

This move was inevitable, since the cease-fire that Hezbollah loudly disclaimed any interest in being a party to is providing cover for the world’s only charitable organization with 33,000 missiles to augment its war-making capacity.

(Compare Hezbollah as a charitable insitution with, say, the Salvation Army, which has re-sale shops, uniforms, and brass bands).

In the same speech Nasrallah inadvertently admitted that Hezbollah’s plan all along had been war against Israel: “For six years, we were preparing... or rather, anticipating a war some day - a vicious, large-scale, and dangerous war.” (Oopsie! Not to worry, Sheikh. No one is listening but the UN!).

Moreover, Hezbollah partisans are not content to spread around other people’s money to fund rebuilding projects for the region of southern Lebanon they helped destroy. Hezbollah wants to reduce Lebanon to a military base for attacking Israel. Now Syria is trying to get its own Hezbollah-style group, and the Israeli Defense Force are predicting that Hezbollah and Syria, (with Iranian help) will start a war with Israel within 10 months.

On November 7, "Syria's Foreign Minister, Walid Moallem, said he hopes a Middle East peace process can be launched next year that would include Israel's relinquishing of the Golan Heights to Damascus. But Moallem warned if negotiations don't commence and yield results within months 'the countdown will begin for a new Syrian-Israeli war.'

It's always good to start peace talks with a countdown to war. But the Golan Heights are a phony excuse, anyway. Israel isn’t going to surrender the Golan Heights and Syria knows it, for the precise reason Israel was forced to take them away in the first place: because Syria refused to stop using the Heights to shell Israeli villages. (For those of you keeping a “cycle of violence” file, you will note that, since 1973, Israel has not used the Golan to shell Syria).

As if that isn't enough, the “military wing” of Hamas has decided to get into war-threatening against the USA. (The “military wing” of Hamas is one of those useful descriptors, like the "hamburger-making" wing of Burger King. It is intended to distinguish from the “political wing” of Hamas, which sponsors, assigns, and funds strictly political rocket and suicide attacks against Israel).

According to the AP,

“Signaling a change in tactics, Hamas' military wing on Wednesday called on Muslims around the world to attack American targets after an apparent misfiring of an IDF artillery shell in the Gaza Strip.
‘America is offering political, financial and logistic cover for the Zionist occupation crimes, and it is responsible for the Beit Hanoun massacre. Therefore, the people and the nation all over the globe [Islam, that is] are required to teach the American enemy tough lessons.’”

And here I thought teaching America a tough lesson was the job of disappointed Republicans who voted Democrat on Tuesday.

Either way, we're all in for the same lesson now, and these guys don't grade on a curve.