"Flamboozle". It's what politicians do to their people when they go to war

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2006/08/13

Robert Fisk: Tea and rockets: café society, Beirut-style



This week: A close shave in downtown Beirut and why you'll never find our man in a flak jacket.

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Ceasefire? Will Hizbollah fire more rockets into Israel? Photographs on the Lebanese front pages show burning Israeli tanks near Khiam. Shortage of newsprint. One of my morning papers is now only four pages - it was blown off my balcony by the wind this morning and I had to run down the street to retrieve it. But a bad thought. I like small newspapers. Less to read. More time to report.

A long radio interview with an Israeli professor who says "the number of people killed doesn't reflect morality". Well, at more than a thousand Lebanese civilians dead against a few dozen Israelis, it can't reflect morality because, if it did, that would suggest Israel was committing war crimes.

But Hizbollah will also have their day of reckoning. Who gave them the right to bring this cruelty down upon the head of every Lebanese? Who gave the Shias permission to go to war for Lebanon? There will be questions in Israel too. How come the Israel Defence Forces, famous in legend and song, could not defend the people of Israel, despite slaughtering so many Lebanese civilians?

Cody has invented a great new word: to "flamboozle". It's what politicians do to their people when they go to war. Ehud Olmert has been flamboozling the Israelis and Sayed Hassan Nasrallah has been flamboozling Lebanon's Shias. We may have a ceasfire at the weekend. So the end of the flamboozling may be nigh.


full article: http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=541678

[tocqueville]

1. or maybe "Hizboozle" is the right word in that case.. nt

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2. The author spoke of the complicity of both leaders

in leading their 'followers' to a folly of violence.

Robert Fisk gives moving accounts of his experiences in Lebanon in these reports. This is another insightful account of life in Beruit, Aug. 12.