The Real Nasrallah /according to Newsweek

photo via Israellycool

Newsweek Aug. 21-28, 2006 issue

How a son of Beirut's slums became one of the most engaging and dangerous leaders in the Muslim world.

Remember this about Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah: he grew up very poor but very smart, and although he wears the robes of a minor Shiite cleric, he is a world-class politician. The U.S. government defines him as a terrorist, but that is only one of his faces. If he survives the war he started with Israel—a war that may now be in its final stages, following the U.N. Security Council's passage of a ceasefire plan—he will remain what he has become during these last weeks of combat: perhaps the most charismatic figure in the Muslim world, and very possibly the most dangerous.

Nasrallah's guerrilla force of a few thousand men has done what no Arab army has ever done before: stood up to the power of Israel's vaunted military week after week and kept fighting. Arab presidents and kings are humbled. Some of them spoke out against Nasrallah when the fighting began. Now they don't dare....

UPDATE: I have some news for Newsweek. It's from today's FrontPageMagazine. Quotes of what the HezBully Head has said:

– “There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.”

– “Peace settlements will not change reality, which is that Israel is the enemy and that it will never be a neighbor or a nation.”

– “And on this last day of the century,[1999] I promise Israel that it will see more suicide attacks, for we will write our history with blood.”

– “I am against any reconciliation with Israel. I do not even recognize the presence of a state that is called "Israel." I consider its presence both unjust and unlawful.”

– “The Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities...Anyone who reads the Koran and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history... Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948 but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment.”

– “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli.”

– “If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

Comments

[Stevin]

He's a peace partner in the mold of Arafat. Perhaps they'll award him a Nobel prize as well. I cringe at the thought of Olmert shaking his hand at Camp David as they sign another worthless peace accord.

[fathi]

Nassrallah is the all time muslim leader. Us the muslims are waiting for one word of his mouth ,"al-jehad", and when that day ,i must say "jews beware of the muslim's rage "