The Price of Hezbollah's Social Services

The The New York Times, aka The Song of Hezbollah writes an interesting article that seems to declare Hezbollah the winner of the month long conflict with Israel for the simple reason that they have not been slaughtered to the last man. They make the claim that Hezbollah has the "hard-won reputation as the only Arab force that fought Israel to a standstill" omitting the fact that Israel was quite content to pummel the shit out of Hezbollah until the U.N. asked for a ceasefire (pretty please with cherries and whipped cream and sprinkles on top, but only for Hezbollah because they are too bat-shit crazy to deal with like rational men, so we must treat them like menstruating teenage girls).

In this (and let's not mince words here) Hezbollah puff piece, they trot out the idea that Hezbollah provides valuable social services for the local population in Lebanon. Writes the author:

"Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network — as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well — was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.

“Hezbollah’s strength,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University here, who has written extensively about the organization, in large part derives from “the gross vacuum left by the state.”

Let's analyze this briefly. There are several gross omissions in this article.

Firstly, Lebanon's government until very recently, was an undemocratic Syrian puppet government. Secondly, Hezbollah was created by Syria, armed by Syria (and Iran) and was comprised of Syrians. Thirdly, the social services magnanimously handed out by Hezbollah (aka Syria and Iran) came at the price of having their guerilla army bases and weapons stored among the very civilian populations who needed the social services.

It doesn't take a New York Times reporter to grasp the fact that Hezbollah was distributing it's largesse to the tune of "We will give them food and medicine so we can attack Israel from their neighborhoods and then draw the Israelis fire so that they will kill children. Then we will pose the dead bodies for television cameras so the whole world can see what monsters the Pig-Woman-Jews are."

Please tell me there are intelligent people who can see through this bullshit.