Jihadi Du Jour

Naharnet has the following about how public opinion is starting to turn against the Palestinian “refugees” in Lebanon:

Nahr al-Bared Battle Fuels Anti-Palestinian Sentiment
As the list of dead soldiers grows, anger mounts in villages of north Lebanon where the army has been locked in a deadly showdown with Islamist militants for more than two months.

Black-clad women shout angrily as men in sombre mood sit in heavy silence next to portraits of the “martyred” soldiers in impoverished villages in the remote north — a main reservoir for the country’s armed forces.

Elite unit soldier Bassam Jawhar, 29, was killed on July 14 during the ongoing battles around Nahr al-Bared refugee camp where Fatah al-Islam militants have been under army siege since May 20.

He was killed when a booby-trapped building collapsed on a patrol in Nahr al-Bared and it took the army six days to retrieve his body from under the rubble due to the intensity of the battles.

Like Jawhar, six other soldiers from Bebnin fell in combat in Nahr al-Bared in two months.

At his family home in the village, his widow Mariam, wearing a black dress and an embroidered headscarf, sits near the giant portrait of the “Shahid” (martyr in Arabic) standing proudly in full combat gear and holding a rocket-launcher.
“I delivered our baby the day he left, 50 days ago exactly,” said Mariam, 23. “He only saw the baby twice.”

Why was Jawhar killed? Because pro Syrian/Iranian militias from within the refugee camp decided to flex muscle, to flaunt how little they care for Lebanon… or for their own people, for that matter.

In another room, the grandfather holds his newly-born granddaughter in his arms as an endless queue of men flock in to present their condolences.

The procession takes place in silence, but anger is boiling.

“Don’t say Fatah al-Islam, it is an insult to Islam. Say ‘the criminal gang of Shaker al-Abssi,’” the Islamist group’s commander, said Mohammed Jawhar, a cousin of the slain soldier.

Across the dusty villages of the impoverished northern province of Akkar, the men enroll in the country’s armed forces by local tradition but mostly by necessity.

“There is not a single house where there is no soldier,” explained 42-year-old Zeina Sufain, who lost her 19-year-old son Firas on May 22.

“There is no work here. Even for those who go to school,” she said.

The list of soldiers killed in Nahr al-Bared has painfully reached 116, including 27 servicemen on the first day of the clashes when the Islamist extremists attacked most of them in their beds.

116 soldiers died defending their country from the enemy… within. Yes… the enemy is within Lebanon, within the refugee camps which for about 40 years now have been independent enclaves where neither the Lebanese police nor the Lebanese Army were allowed to go in, by mutual agreement, and this is their show of gratitude…

Reports of “massacres” against off-duty soldiers by Fatah al-Islam, including harrowing stories of servicemen executed at gunpoint or slaughtered with knives seemed to have at least momentarily ended decades of good relations with the Palestinian refugee camp.

“Let them go to hell,” shouted Sahar, Bassam’s aunt.
“We will never let the camp be rebuilt. We will never accept that the Palestinians come back. We used to buy from their shops, but they are traitors. They harbored these criminals, they helped them,” Mohammed Jawhar said.

“Some of them even married their girls to the terrorists” from Fatah al-Islam, shouted another man.

But despite their grief and great losses, Akkar villages continue to back the army and its military campaign on Nahr al-Bared.

“In Akkar we love the army,” said a cousin of one of the slain soldiers in Bebnin.

But in a poor house further down the street, Zeina Soufain voices rare criticism of the army.
“They sent them (soldiers) there (to Nahr al-Bared) like cannon fodder. They had no experience, and they only had a Kalashnikov,” she said.

Back at the Jawhar reception hall, a soldier came to present his condolences before returning to Nahr al-Bared after a six-hour leave, his first in 14 days.

“Morale is high, even the wounded soldiers want to return” to the battlefront, the soldier who did not wish to be identified told Agence France Presse.

“With our meagre means, we are combating a very well-trained enemy that kills with unbelievable savagery,” he said.

The soldier said the army was surprised by the “very sophisticated arms” of Fatah al-Islam which he said had “high-precision rifles, infra-red goggles and remote-controlled landmines.”

He said the soldiers “stay three days in the camp. They take turns to sleep. Then they leave and others replace them.”

Over the last few months we saw not only Palestinians fight savagely, ruthlessly, against Palestinians (Hamas vs. Fatah), we see them fight with the same hatred and ferocity against Lebanon, a country that extended its hospitality… Yes, gentle reader, you may argue that Lebanon, like Syria, like Jordan, like Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, did everything possible to keep them poor and unable to integrate into regular society. Let’s not forget however that only Lebanon gave the Palestinian camps sovereignty over their own land, and to what results?

Naharnet also reported today:

Army Seizes Explosives during Raid on Militants’ Shelter
The Lebanese army on Tuesday continued to tighten the noose around diehard Fatah al-Islam militants, pounding the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared with heavy artillery barrages. It The army’s guns bombarded the remaining Islamists’ pockets at the camp with long range artillery fire.

It said troops occasionally fought fierce house-to-house battles with the militants.

The state-run National News Agency said the Lebanese army on Tuesday also seized explosive materials as well as weapons, detonators and electronic devices during a raid on a shelter inside the camp on the outskirts of the northern port city of Tripoli.

It said a number of militants were killed in the attack.

NNA said troops also blocked most exits to a sanitary sewer system after they discovered that it had been used as routes of escape by the terrorists

There was no word on casualties from Tuesday’s fighting. NNA said the army’s guns bombarded the remaining Islamists’ pockets at the camp with long range artillery fire.

It said troops occasionally fought fierce house-to-house battles with the militants.

They do not let up, they are intent in dying and killing. Bloodshed seems to be all they care about! Can a people that embraces such a culture, endure long?

The only Arab country that actually welcomed them and gave them everything necessary to integrate them into their own society was Kuwait. What happened in Kuwait during Saddam’s invasion on August 2, 1990? Who turned out to be Saddam’s greatest cheerleaders in Kuwait? Those same Palestinians that had been received with open arms… such gratitude!

Unless the Palestinians choose a leadership that truly represent the healthy aspirations of the average man on the street, unless they are willing to lay down their weapons, get rid of their hatred against all and everyone they are destined to forever remain a world pariah. Will the plight of Palestinians continue to be dismal or will they succeed in bettering themselves and their future? The choice is theirs!

Chaim

Crossposted at: Freedom's Cost