Nasrallah's Stature Grows as Hezbollah Presses War With Israel

[RedEarth]

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- ``Pride stands here,'' reads a white sheet adorned with black Arabic script hanging near the ruins of Hezbollah's Beirut headquarters. ``Submission is not an option.'' That message of defiance, flying above buildings flattened by Israeli air strikes, is enhancing the standing of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, among his Shiite Muslim followers at home and Islamic radicals elsewhere.

They don't blame Nasrallah for instigating fighting that has cost 400 Lebanese lives and forced 800,000 people to flee their homes. Instead, they see him as someone who deserves credit for making Israel end its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon while suffering personal loss -- a son's death in a 1997 attack on Israeli forces -- in the struggle.

``What sets Nasrallah apart from other Lebanese and Arab politicians is that he won a war against Israel, and he lost one of his sons in the fight,'' said Walid Charara, co-author of the book ``Hezbollah, an Islamist-Nationalist Party.'' ``This gives him credibility that Arab leaders are bereft of.''

In a sign of his standing, he's commonly called ``Sayyid,'' a title given to people believed to be descendants of Prophet Muhammad's family. In June, riots broke out to protest a political comedy show on television that impersonated him.

About 70 percent of Lebanese approve of Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in the July 12 raid that sparked Israel's offensive, according to a poll of 800 people published July 26 by the Beirut Center for Research and Information.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aDBGipyREFes&refer=home

[Jim__]

1. Where do all these anti-Israeli terrorists come from?

I can't imagine. Let's just keep dropping bombs on Lebanon.

[Igel]

2. They listen to sermons that say "Submission is not an option",

and know that the core of Islam is submission, and the most obvious root for "Islam" is "submission". To submit to Israel--even it's just because every Friday the Hezbollah clerics frame allowing Israel to exist as humiliation, and accepting Israel's existence is submission--is wrong. Muslims are not to submit to inferior religions; inferior religions submit to Islam.

Even if it's a religious issue for a minority of Shi'ites, it's enough.

Not submitting is victory, if the options are submit or not submit. The ultimate goal is the submission of the inferior. Hezbollah's absurdly clear on this point.