From Newsgroup: nyc.politics

by Eric Margolis

April 20, 2026

Once upon a time there was a magical little country named Lebanon. It
was created by French imperialists out of the post-World War 1
wreckage of the Ottoman Empire as a mountainous stronghold for
Levantine Maronite and Orthodox Christians.

Imperial Russia sought to assert its influence as defender of
LebanonAs Christians. The British and French thwarted RussiaAs efforts
and created two new states, Syria and Jordan. After the war, Israel
was created by Britain. Some 750,000 Arabs who had been living in what
was known as Palestine and Syria were driven from their homes by
Jewish settlers. The LevantAs map was redrawn. What was to have been
an Arab state was annexed by an expanding Israel and
British-influenced Jordan, with little Lebanon sitting amid the
geopolitical leftovers. Sixty percent of JordanAs population was
Palestinian. Nearly 60% of LebanonAs population was Sunni and Shiite
Muslim. The rest was Orthodox, Catholic, Druze and Armenian.

In 1975 I landed in Beirut, LebanonAs capital, just in time for the
first day of the 15 year long civil war that tore that nation apart
and killed up to 200,000. All the pressures and hatreds that had been
building up across multiethnic Lebanon exploded into one of the
ugliest, most sadistic conflicts I had seen as a long-time war
correspondent.

Women and children and unarmed men were routinely massacred. Rape,
which was rare in the Muslim world, was used to punish Muslims.
Torture of all sorts was a daily horror. Maronite Christians became
crazed killers. One former business associate, who owned a chain of
successful perfume shops, turned into the knife-wielding chief of the Maronite-Phalangist combat group. He boasted to me about the many
Muslims he had killed. He offered to show me his collection of Muslim
ears. This from a Paris-educated gentleman who had just previously
been selling Chanel perfume.

Muslims battled Maronites; Druze fought Shiites; Armenians fought
Muslims; Sunnis battled Druzes. It became a madhouse of slaughter and
hatred, and then Israel invaded. IsraelAs plan u as it is today u to
annex parts of southern Lebanon. I was with the Israeli Army when it
attacked the key town of Nabatiyeh. Its Shia citizens were celebrating
their high Day of Ashura as Israeli mechanized troops burst through
the worshippers spraying them with gunfire.

Until then, the Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah had been cooperating
with Israel. Now, they began firing at their former allies. Before
long, IsraelAs all-powerful information machine and its US allies
branded the Shia movement aterrorist.A Hezbollah became IsraelAs enemy
number one u where it remains today even after Israel assassinated
HezbollahAs leadership.

Into this maelstrom charged the Reagan administration. 220 Marines and
18 American sailors stationed at the Beirut Embassy were killed by a
large truck bomb. They had no business being in the midst of LebanonAs
civil war.

The next horrors were the massacres of Palestinians at the Shatila and
Sabra refugee camps outside Beirut in 1982. Over 3,500 Palestinians
were slaughtered by Lebanese Christian troops backed by Israeli
forces. This crime helped end LebanonAs ghastly civil war. But now,
thanks to IsraelAs latest invasion of Lebanon, the nightmare civil war
may be about to come to life again u all thanks to Netanyahu and
Trump, the so-called amen of peace.A


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