In Support of Terrorism
In Windsor, Ontario, of all places, close to the Detroit, Michigan border can be found an in-your-face billboard celebrating Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Both the Islamist movement and its leader have been labelled within Canada as terrorist-inspired and -dedicated. Yet there is the billboard, front and centre, defying Canadian law as well as sensibilities. Its initial appearance was met with disbelief and confusion.Community groups in the area are angry at the presence of this overt sympathy and support for a terrorist group whose core tenets are completely foreign to Canada, and whose mandate is viewed with extreme distaste by ordinary Canadians. Yet here is a Lebanese-born Hezbollah supporter in Windsor, claiming "In Canada, we want peace"...however... he also justifies the presence of the sign to 'honour' freedom-fighter families in Lebanon.
"We're not trying to offend anybody. We have freedom of speech. It's a free country. Every Lebanese in Canada has somebody that died in Lebanon. Who is Hezbollah? Our brothers, our family, our parents, our friends. We came to Canada and they stayed there to fight." All of which statements pinpoint Hussein Dabaja and his cohorts as immigrants psychologically and culturally unsuitable for this country, incapable of understanding this Canada's values, let alone to uphold them.
For what they have decided, between them, to place in full view of an entire community, and which has waves of disbelief radiating out from the community into the larger congregation of Canadians is utterly and completely in defiance of the Canadian sensibility. This is not an expression of Canadian multiculturalism. It is a direct importation of vicious ethnic/religious warfare; anathema, and entirely contrary to Canadian values of equality, acceptance, and peaceful co-existence.
The billboard and the message implicit in its existence does not support peace, but rather an ongoing determination to bring bloodshed and violence to the country and to the geography which the Windsor-Lebanese community of which this spokesperson is a part, decided to leave behind. Having left the turmoil of war behind in Lebanon they should also, having taken up residence in Canada, have left behind the violently incendiary baggage of Hezbollah.
If the immediate reaction to the presence of this billboard by the Windsor Jewish Community Centre, on behalf of its members, and the Lebanese Christian political group Kataeb, along with other groups was outrage, this reaction should have put Hussein Dabaja and his group on notice, alerted them to the fact that their ill-considered sign of solidarity with Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah is seriously out of place in their community, let alone anywhere within Canada.
The threat implicit in his statement that several of Windsor's Lebanese citizens will do what it takes to keep the sign up, short of violence does little credit to himself or to those whom he purports to represent. They just don't get it. Sheik Nasrallah has made the purpose of Hezbollah abundantly clear in his incitement of anti-Israel violence, in his preaching of hatred, and his support of terrorist groups in the PA. He has singularly inspired these groups to launch a holy war of lethal intent against Israel.
He has amply demonstrated that Hezbollah will itself continue to provoke, to kidnap and murder, to infiltrate Israel's defences, to launch attacks, aided and happily abetted by his sponsors, Iran and Syria. In the process imperilling the lives of ordinary Lebanese behind whom these brave Hezbollah jihadists are wont to hide themselves. Initially cool to the influence of both these countries in Lebanon, Sheik Nasrallah has cast his lot in with them, supremely comfortable to be a pawn in Iran's arsenal of deadly assaults against the Jewish State. So, tell us again about peace, please do.
Yet there is Hussein Dabaja, assuring those who condemn his group's offensively violent action in confronting Canadians with symptoms of a violent jihadist offensive against a legal national entity in the Middle East: "It's going to stay up until the last minute. If someone comes to take it down, they're ready to fight for it, to protect it to be up there." And, unbelievably, "We're not trying to offend anybody."
Oh, good thing we have that straight.
How can people imbued with normal cognitive abilities fail to conceive that by stridently supporting a terrorist group whose intent it is to destroy the inhabitants of a legitimate nation, they are committing an error in judgement and by so doing offending the humanity in any onlookers? This defies reason and rationality. However, according to this spokesperson, everyone must come to the understanding that his group is merely engaged in offering respect and honour to Hezbollah.
"This sign means to me remembrance for the people who are looking for peace in the Middle East. It's a point of view. It's paper on the board. It's not a weapon. Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese people", according to another spokesperson.
One: Hezbollah and its supporters are not, as purported 'looking for peace'; their actions are deleterious to the establishment of peace. Two: the 'point of view' is emotionally linked to a foreign tradition that celebrates violent upheavals. Three: this represents a lethal type of propaganda and as such it is indeed a weapon. Four: Sunni Lebanese, Christian Lebanese and Kurds would take issue with that statement branding the Lebanese people as Hezbollah supporters en masse.
The last nail in the coffin of this Lebanese group's support of Hezbollah within Canada is the statement by Mr. Dabaja, pathetic in the extreme, and indicative of his group's utter lack of understanding of what Canadians value in the protection, encouragement and support of pluralism in this society is the whine that such controversy wouldn't have been sparked "if Canada's government hadn't labelled Hezbollah a terrorist group".
"That is hard for many Lebanese to swallow", said he.
Indeed, by all accounts so it appears.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 13, 2007
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