So what is Hezbulla?

Again, I will refer you to some of the Articles on my website HowToHelpLebanon.net.

So what did we discuss at the Katy Democrats meeting?

1) Hizbollah is a resistance organization that started in 1982, when Israel occupied South Lebanon. For 18 years, Israel ran an illegal prison on Lebanese soil, where they threw anyone in there who they suspected of being a "terrorist" without trial, and used medieval torture devices on them. I went there last year. It's a museum today that is run by Hizbollah.

In the year 2000, Hizbollah's tactics finally got the Israelis to leave. They were considered then and now, the only successful group to beat Israel. Yesterday, the emir of Qatar extolled Hizbollah as a source of pride for all Arab peoples, in that it is the only group to have beat Israel. I've heard Israel say they voluntarily "withdrew" from southern Lebanon, like they did in Gaza last summer. That's not true. Hizbollah forced them to leave. Liberation Day is a national holiday in Lebanon, when the whole country was glued to their televsions and watched, with teary eyes, those prisoners being released.

If you've been following this blog, you've heard me say this for the millionth time now.

2) Hizbollah has changed over the years. It's big time, with major funding from Iran. They have those secret, scary weapons, which I said from the beginning. Israel talking like they're going to get rid of them was stupid. And they did change that line pretty earlly in the war.

Syria does support them, but not as much. Syria claims that Israel occupies its land--the Golan Heights. Part of that is the Shebaa Farms, which Lebanon claims, but the UN says is Syrian. As long as Israel is occupying land that Syria claims, Syria will support Lebanese actions against it. But not so blatantly because it doesn't really want to get into a direct confrontation with Israel.

3) Hassan Nasrallah has a big, serious personal vendetta against the state of Israel. They killed his son. And according to Newsweek, "it took him almost a year to win his son's corpse back from the Israelis." So all this crazy language about wanting to get rid of Israel and calling them the vermin of the earth does come from him and is a major part of the Hizbollah philosophy.

But if other Arabs don't say it, they think it.

As the Syrian ambassador made very clear in his interview with Charlie Rose, until Israel accepts the land for peace plans, and goes back to pre-1967 borders, there will be no peace for it.

Does this mean it's okay to want to annihilate another group of people? No way. They are terrorists. But I consider Israel a terorist state. And I consider the U.S. and Iran terrorist states for supporting terrorists.

This whole terrorist/Islamo-fascist mindset is the Cold War of today. And makes for stupid, self-defeating foreign policy. Don't Americans think Vietnam was bad? That supporting Osama Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein, and Tito and all these bad dictators everywhere was just bad? Is there no learning from history?

So what do you think? Will the cease fire hold?

I doubt it.

Reading about the 17-year Lebanese civil war, 1975-1992, reveals how much what is going on now looks like what happened back then. There would be lulls in the fighting, and then it would just start up. My friends aren't hopeful. There's pretty much no way that Hizbolla is going to disarm. Especially now, that they are the heroes of the Arab world.

But at least with the cease fire, they now have gas for their cars, and they can start cleaning up the oil spill.

Is it going to degenerate into sectarian violence . . . civil war? We're seeing it in Iraq. We've seen it in Lebanon.

I just keep praying against it.

Even my friends who didn't leave and had the option, who stayed out of some kind of stubbornness, are saying they want to leave. There's no future for them in Lebanon.