So it is only fitting that the case of accused Israeli spy, cleric Hasan Mushaymish, is featured in the Weekly Standard.  When a Zionist publication takes up the issue of an accused Israeli spy, his guilt (in my eyes) is almost proven although one has to wait for a court proceeding.  The story in this article is laughable: just as any other story by Smith (an expert on “Arab culture” who does not know Arabic).  He interviewed two people in this article: the son of the cleric and a right-wing Shi`ite Lebanese.  That was it.  I was contacted a few months ago by this guy (the son of the accused cleric when he was still in Syria) on Facebook.

He asked for my help.  I told him I don’t deal with intelligence matters but I can see what I can find out.  The cleric was no big name and he had no political role that one can speak of.  Unlike what the article suggested, the man (how to put it) was no rival to Hasan Nasrallah–the imagination of Mushaymish’s son notwithstanding.  I contacted the security reporter for Al-Akhbar, Hasan `Illiq, who broke the story.  He knew many details about the story and he told me that the information about his espionage for Israel is solid.  I relayed what I found to the son and that was it.  The cleric was then released in Syria but was apprehended in Lebanon by Jihaz Al-Ma`lumat (the Intelligence Apparatus, the Hariri-run and controlled intelligence branch of the government).  If there were doubts about his guilt, or of there were suspicions about a political motive behind his apprehension, this particular branch of government–not known for its sympathy for Hizbullah–would not have intervened.

Furthermore, the notion that he was a political threat to the groups that garnered some 95% of the Shi`ite vote in the last election is just laughable.  More importantly, there is a better known pro-Saudi (Hariri-funded) Shi`ite cleric, `Ali Al-Amin, who is most outspoken against Hizbullah and he was not arrested and was not accused of spying for Israel.  But you know that the family is not telling the truth when you read this:  ”“I wrote about Hezbollah’s silence in this affair. When Nasrallah’s deputy Nabil Qaouk came to show us the CD of my father’s confession, he said to me, ‘If you want to write about Hezbollah, go ahead, there are 100 articles about Hezbollah everyday, let there be 101. But if you want your father back, you have to stop writing.’ ””  Where and when did Rida write about the case?  I never read anything by him.

No one knows who this guy is.  No one has ever heard of him but there is now a PR campaign on his behalf and the Lebanese right-wing, racist, and sectarian station, MTV, featured the family the other day, just as it features all agent of Israel within the former South Lebanon Army.  If Rida Mushaymish thinks that Hizbullah is threatened by his “writings”–whatever they are since i have not read a word by him or heard about his writings–he may need to hire someone else to defend his father and do the PR work on his behalf, but I am not in a position to offer advice to an accused Israeli spy.  (thanks Basil)

PS Of course, I won’t argue with Smith’s characterization of Al-Akhbar: the author is too ignorant and he knows no Arabic so he would not know that “the pro-Syria” Al-Akkhbar is banned in Syria, or that Al-Akhbar was publicly criticized by Hasan Nasrallah.  But then again, what do I expect from an author of a racist book about Arabs?

Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil

The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Hezbollah accused the United States Friday of orchestrating the suicide bombings that ripped through the Syrian capital earlier in the day killing over 40 people and wounding scores more.

“These bombings which resulted in the deaths and wounding of tens of people, mostly women and children, is the specialty of the United States, the mother of all terrorism,” Hezbollah’s press office said.

“[The U.S.] specializes in targeting the innocent, killing and terrorizing them to force them to comply to American politics to achieve the Zionist interest which Americans place above all else,” the statement added.

Hezbollah, Syria’s staunchest ally in Lebanon, maintains that a foreign conspiracy led by the United States and Israel aims to target the Syrian leadership for its alliance with Iran and its support for resistance groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

In its statement Friday, Hezbollah also said the attacks were the beginning of a series of reprisals following what the party described as America’s defeat in Iraq.

“This horrible terrorist crime, which was committed by the enemies of humanity, comes a day following coordinated blasts in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, which suggests that those affected by the major defeat of the United States in Iraq, has begun a cowardly, bloody operation of reprisal,” the statement said.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad said over 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded as a result of the attacks that struck just before midday Friday.

State TV said the explosions took place in the upscale Kfar Sousa district and targeted the building housing state security and a nearby intelligence building in the neighborhood.

jpost.com

Lebanese defense minister says Israel organized firing of rockets at Israel to undermine Lebanon’s security.   Lebanon believes that Israel organized the firing of rockets from southern Lebanese territory into the Jewish state in efforts to “undermine security and stability” in Lebanon, Lebanese English newspaper the Daily Star reported Tuesday.

Lebanese Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn told the Star that “The party that has launched mysterious rockets from the south is known,” allegedly insinuating Israel.

“Lebanon’s enemies, namely Israel, have no interest in the continuation of calm and stability in the south,” the Lebanese defense minister said.

On Monday, Lebanese Armed Forces found four ready-to-fire Katyusha rockets in southeast Lebanon.

The rockets were discovered by military intelligence on the outskirts of the village of Majidieh in Hasbaya.

Four Katyusha rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon earlier this month in an incident that sparked tensions between Beirut and Jerusalem. The IDF retaliated shortly after the attacks by bombing sites in southern Lebanon, and area largely in control by Hezbollah.   An organization affiliated with al Qaida claimed responsibility for the four 122-millimeter rockets that were fired from southern Lebanon, landing in the Western Galilee and causing extensive damage to a chicken coop and propane gas tank. The IDF said Hezbollah did not appear to be behind the attack.

According to Lebanese reports, only one rocket was fired at Israel in that attack.   Lebanon has filed two complaints to the United Nations in December over Israel, one concerning the IDF retaliation and the second over Israeli spy devices the Lebanese army said it found in two villages in southern Lebanon.

Escalating its confrontation with the CIA, the militant organization Hezbollah released what it said were the names of agency officers working in Lebanon in a television broadcast that aired there last week.

The exposure creates new security risks for CIA officers in a country where American espionage operations had already been damaged by Hezbollah’s capture of a group of agency-paid informants.

The names of the purported CIA members were broadcast Friday on the Lebanese television station Al-Manar as part of a report that claimed to expose the agency’s spying efforts as well as its collaboration with IsraHell.

CIA spokeswoman Zionist Jennifer Youngblood said the agency “does not, as a rule, address spurious claims from terrorist groups. I think it’s worth remembering that Hezbollah is a dangerous organization, with Al-Manar as its propaganda arm. That fact alone should cast some doubt on the credibility of the group’s claims.”

Zionist Youngblood declined to comment on whether the report was accurate or whether the agency had or would remove officers from a country that has long been an espionage crossroads in the Middle East.

Former CIA officials indicated that at least one of the names mentioned — that of the station chief in Beirut — appeared to be accurate. The move by Hezbollah was designed to intimidate would-be spies, they said.

“They want to dissuade people from spying in the future, show the world that they’re a very capable organization,” said a former senior CIA official. “They also want to embarrass the agency as much as possible.”

Last month, U.S. officials acknowledged that a group of informants on the CIA payroll had been identified and detained by Hezbollah. The organization apparently used software analysis of cellphone records and calling patterns to track the communications of suspected spies.

The names included in the Al-Manar report are not being published by The Washington Post.

In the past year, the CIA has recalled two of its chiefs in Islamabad, Pakistan, after their names were exposed in the country’s press.

Hezbollah says the United States has been using its Lebanon embassy as a venue to recruit informants to spy on the Lebanese resistance movement.

A report aired on al-Manar TV channel on Saturday said the CIA had mandated a team of 10 officers, including women, with recruiting Lebanese spies to gather information on Hezbollah, Xinhua reported.

The spies were to inform the officers at the US embassy in Awkar, north of Beirut, on Hezbollah officials and fighters and provide the addresses of the movement’s arms depots.

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem said that the revelation was “only a small fraction” of data at hand on Washington’s spy activities in Lebanon.

The officers, registered as diplomats at the US embassy, had served as CIA agents in Lebanon for three years.

The CIA officers were active in recruiting agents from various posts including government employees, security and military personnel, religious, banking and academic figures, the report said.

The recruitment of agents reportedly took place inside the US embassy premises while meetings were held in fast-food restaurants and coffee shops.

In November, US officials admitted that a group of CIA informants in Lebanon had been captured by Hezbollah, which served a serious blow on Washington’s spying operations in the country.

The tragic murder of Myriam Achkar on 21^st November in the town of SahelAlma generated significant turmoil in Lebanon. While the family of the victimand her loved ones cannot be blamed for the flare up of emotions and the callfor retribution in rather crude words, the reaction of the more removed publicis worth a pause for reflection. As the story unraveled, both mainstream andsocial media commentaries were awash with bigoted and racist overtones. : Atits heart the interpretation of the event as yet another symbol of thepersecution of Christianity in a hostile environment. This permanent kink inthe psyche of Arab Christian community has resurfaced recently in the wake ofthe Arab Spring but stretches back to the inception of Islam and the search foran Eastern identity that is simultaneously distinct and in tune with itsIslamic surrounding.

I contrasted the social and official reaction (as distinct from the personal one)to the murder of Myriam with the aftermath of the slaughter of 62 adolescentson a Norwegian Island earlier this year. Following a meticulous and protractedprocess, Anders Brehing Breivik, the murderer at the heart of these events hasonly this week been found clinically insane by two Forensic Psychiatrists. Moreimportantly they found that his actions could be blames on delusional beliefsemanating from a diagnosis of Paranoid Schizophrenia. Breivik is likely tospend the rest if his life in a secure psychiatric institution; an outcome thathas not pleased everyone but as one bereaved parent insisted, the importantpoint is that society will no longer be at risk from him.

The protection of others is an important function of well-established mental healthservices in European countries where specialists coordinate their work withother agencies, including law enforcement agencies and social services. It is of course fanciful to expect the development of such services in the Arab world, at least in the short term. Butas shown in the Breivik case, the use of mental health expertise to helpprovide satisfactory answers following a crime that impact society beyond theimmediate environment of the victim and the perpetrator can be a positiveinvestment for the concerned authorities.

Thereis no evidence that Fathi Jaber Salateen, the Syrian who committed the gruesome murder in Sahel Alma was mentally ill in the clinical sense. In fact the event is shocking in its simplicity, in the sense that it appears to be the pure product of a criminal psychopathic mind. Myriam, a loving and loved 28 year old who happenedto be at the wrong place and at the wrong time, was as such sacrificed to appease dysfunctional basic sexual instincts. What followed remains mostly speculation until details are further revealed.

But this is not the account reported by various media outlets, either for reason sof ignorance or ulterior motives. Instead the social and sectarian dimensionwas exploited ad nauseaum overshadowing the personal tragedy. This became astory of an innocent Christian girl killed by a Muslim Immigrant worker. The discrepancy between the real and perceived cultural and religious values of both victim and perpetrator were emphasized to explain the murder. A political solution was even sought for what is essentially a problem inherent to the human mind; the dysfunctional psyche independent of creed.

Little context or analysis wasprovided for these types of murder, which are mostly advertised in theChristian West.  For what it’s worthanother chilling parallel could be drawn between this case and the murder of 25year old Jo Yeates last Christmas in the English city of Bristol. The convictedmurderer was no other than her neighbor, Vincent Tabak, a distinctively middleclass Dutch architect who led an unremarkable crime-free existence.

The death of Myriam could not come at a worse time for the Lebanese authorities.For months, public paranoia has been at its peak fuelled by heightened local and regional political tension but also a genuine lack of security. In adesperate attempt to minimize public outcry, many in positions ofresponsibility made populist statements lumping together unrelated events andreaching erroneous conclusions. The measures suggested might reassure atraumatized community, but do little to prevent another Salateen from strikingin Sahel Alma, or elsewhere when we least expect it.

Said Hassan Nasrallah, rarely appearing in public for fear of assassination, makes first public address since 2006, to mark Muslim holy day of Ashoura.

Associated Press

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made a rare public appearance at a Beirut rally on Tuesday, saying his group was building its military capabilities and is always ready to confront Israel.

“Day by day our arsenal is developing and our numbers are growing and we are always ready to confront the Zionist enemy and their allies the United States to protect our land,” Nasrallah told thousands of supporters in his group’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut.

An image grab taken from the Hezbollah-run Manar TV shows Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah delivering a speech in southern Beirut on December 6, 2011 in first public appearance since 2008.   Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has rarely been seen in public since his Shiite Muslim group battled Israel in a month-long war in 2006, fearing Israeli assassination. Since then, he has communicated with his followers and gives news conference mostly via satellite link, and his last public appearance was in 2008.

But on Tuesday, the black-turbaned Nasrallah was seen walking through a throng of people in a southern Shiite stronghold in Beirut and then greeted crowds from the podium.

“I wanted to be with you for few minutes … to renew our pledge and for the world to hear us,” Nasrallah said. His public appearance, he said, was a message to those who believe they can “threaten us,” he added.

A smiling Nasrallah then left the podium, telling tens of thousands of supporters he will reappear in few minutes on a giant screen for a longer speech.

“See you in few minutes,” he joked to his followers before he left.

In his speech, Nasrallah told the crowds that, “The Lebanese opposition carries a power whose breadth the enemy does not know, and it will surprise it in any future clash. Since 1982 we are the ones taking the imitative, and we do not pay attention to international criticism.”

Nasrallah mainly spoke about internal Lebanese criticism of Hezbollah, and the calls for it to disarm.

“Whoever tries to go against Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal, is doing a great service to Israel,” Nasrallah said. “We will continue to hold our weapons day after day, we are only adding strength and improving our military capabilities.”

Nasrallah hinted at the situation of neighboring Syria’s President Bashar Assad. “If there is someone who is counting on the fact that our weapons are going rusty, we say to them that our arsenal is constantly renewing.

We have a clear message to all those who are weaving conspiracies and are waiting for changes in the area – we say to them that the opposition will remain and will stay active and you will not manage to break us.”

He also talked about Israel, saying that “The main threat to us is the Israeli threat and we are committed to preserve the triangle of the military, the nation and the opposition.”

His appearance is meant to portray confidence at a time of upheaval in the Middle East and particularly in Syria, which along with Iran is Hezbollah’s backer.

Syrians and Arabs around the region have in recent years elevated Nasrallah to the status of a nationalist hero after his guerrillas’ 2006 war with Israel.

Since the Syrian uprising, however, Syrians have unleashed their anger at Hezbollah over its blunt support for the regime of President Bashar Assad. Some protesters in Syria have set fire to the yellow flag of Hezbollah and pictures of Nasrallah.

Ashoura marks the anniversary of the death in the seventh century of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Hussein. His death in a battle outside of the Iraqi city of Karbala sealed Islam’s historical Sunni-Shiite split, which still bedevils the Middle East.

Ashoura is one of the holiest days of the Muslim Shiite calendar.