The Victors

The massacre of Palestinian civilians by a Christian Lebanese militia at two refugee camps was the catalytic event which sent us there. That attack was coordinated with the Israeli Defense Forces who provided perimeter security around the camp. Estimates of the number of deaths range up to 4,000. There were no PLO fighters at the camp, just civilians.

There are no clean hands in the Middle East. The things the Israelis are doing now in southern Lebanon were the same things I saw with my own eyes forty-three years ago. The tactics remain the same, and frankly, so do the results. Just a continous, decades long war that ignites whoever one party or the other wants it to happen.

Hezbollah was born at that same time. They were the group responsible for the two car bombings on October 23, 1983 that killed 241 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers. The Reagan Administration did not retaliate and our presence on the ground there ended in 1984.

In the end, this is the same insane centuries long fight between the Abrahamic religions to control Jerusalem. No need to dress it up in any other way. Goodness knows that American politicians and evangelicals do their bit to support Israel and its geographic growth on the West Bank. You can't have the Second Coming of Christ without the Jews occupying all of Israel proper, you know.