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No matter what your position is on the Israel/Lebanon war you just can't help but be wowed a little by the power and emotion of this speach from Lebanon. I had to post it here after reading it as it was that amazing.





Tearful PM pleads for Lebanon not to be 'punch bag'
AFP - Monday, August 07, 2006 20:19 IST




BEIRUT: Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora broke down in tears on Monday as he appealed to Arab foreign ministers not to allow his war-torn country to remain a conflict zone and a "punch bag" for Israel.



Siniora's voice choked and his hands shook as he held a copy of his speech in which he said "we do not want the Lebanese state and the Lebanese people to remain the punch bag of Israel or anyone else."



"We are determined not to be the arena for conflicts and confrontations from now on, whatever the justification," he said at an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the 22-member Arab League.



After stopping for moments of tearful silence, Siniora said: "We are basing our arguments on the sorrows of the widowed women, the dead children, the wounded and the homeless people."



"This setback threw our country decades back," said Siniora, who took office barely a year ago after the first elections in Lebanon since former powerbroker Syria pulled its troops out in April 2005.



He said he condemned "the destruction of the country's infrastructure, the killing of about 1,000 citizens, a third of whom are children under 12 years old, while the refugees and the displaced people is nearly one million people."



"One hour ago there was a horrible massacre in the village of Hula, a deliberate massacre, in which there were more than 40 martyrs," he said.



"Massacres did not spare anyone, from Lebanon's south, to its mountains, valleys, north, east, Beirut and its great and steadfast suburbs. The Israeli army did not spare any bridge, institution, road, civil defence centre, populated area, hospital and United Nations position. They even hit humanitarian convoys and the assistance sent to us by our Arab brothers, for no other reason but rancor and revenge," he said.



In an appeal to the ministers, he said: "Your position with us, your standing with us, is a right and a duty."



"Arab security is interlinked, Arab future is interlinked," he said, before removing his glasses and wiping tears from his cheeks with a white handkerchief. His impassioned plea ended with a spontaneous standing ovation from the Arab ministers.

while first saying that i don't agree that violence is the answer, and i'm anti-war, you'd have to be pretty damn naive to believe that if you loan out your country to be the training ground for terrorists (of all kinds, not just arab terrorists) that some day there wouldn't be repercussions. it's sickening what's happening to the lebanese people, but renting out the bekaa valley as a finishing school for terrorists wasn't the wisest choice.

they have been warned time and time again to throw that bunch of terrorist trash out before something like this happened. some of these blubbering officials surely lined their pockets with money paid to them by these terorist organizations.

same thing that happened in Afganistan you want to look the other way as terrorists use your country as a training ground you are going to have to pay the price in some way or another. The best part is that the terrorists use the regular people as human sandbags and then run the bomb shelters, hospitals. Isrial is no Saint but as the only stable and democratic country in the mid East, they are hated by pretty much all of their neighbours. So they are just looking out for their own interests. What it all comes down to is that most of that part of the world is FUBAR and there is nothing that we over here can do about it, If i can find the motivation I will find some of the cartoons they show to kids glorifying suicide bombing and killing Jews/ Americans and post the links

I guess I'm just heartless, because I don't have alot of sympathy. Maybe if he didn't embrace the cause of their destruction, he might gain some sympathy from me. To call Hezbollah a "resistance group" and embrace them can only complicate and worsen the situation. I don't know of many resistance groups that call for annihilation of their enemy, sounds more like a fascist group with a "solution" to a problem.

The problems in the Middle East will never end until the extremist groups are destroyed or accept the existence of Israel. They are more likely to be destroyed. It’s just about that simple. Even if Israel created a completely independent state in Palestine along pre-67 lines, the extremists would still call for the destruction of Israel. All that would ensue would be more wars of incursions into the same places.

The extremists need to be pointed out for what they are and not embraced. I can’t think of another course of action besides the destruction of Hezbollah that would be appropriate.

"One hour ago there was a horrible massacre in the village of Hula, a deliberate massacre, in which there were more than 40 martyrs,"

A completely false statement btw.

totalmotorcycle wrote:They even hit humanitarian convoys and the assistance sent to us by our Arab brothers

And this is the reason why Lebanon will remain a "punching bag".