Talk:Hezbollah

If "peacekeeping" is put in scare quotes all the time, then "defensive" and all the other claims regarding Hezbollah should also be put in scare quotes. Either adhere to NPOV or stop pretending to.

NO. The Hezbollah was formed gradually after 3 years of Israeli state terrorism and Israel's outrageous refusal to leave Lebanon in defiance of UN Security Council's Resolution 425. So they were truly defending themselves and their territory. The US presence at that time, however, was clearly to support Israel (what else is new?) under the dastardly guise of "peace keeping". If USA truly wanted to create peace in Lebanon at that time, it would pressure Israel to withdraw its occupying forces from Lebanon. Therefore, editorially speaking, "defense" in the article needs not be enquoted, but "peacekeeping" clearly does.

Hey anon user-- you seem like a reasonable and articulate person, why dont you get a login and sign your name with four of these:~ That way...its clearer, not clutter. -戴&#30505sv 19:40, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)

As you saw on Talk:Israel discussion page, they have already blocked some of the dynamic IP's that I have used before, for no reason at all other than the fact that I have had the audacity of presenting some facts that are unfavourable to Israel. So getting a login ID would be nothing short of entering a game predisadvantageously ... and that would not be smart. For this reason I prefer to work with dynamic IP's. And just in case that limy (and slimy) lush is reading this, allow me to mention that I can come in with a more variegated range of IP's from different blocks than he can imagine.

Please, don't be a jerk. Your uncompromising attitude is preventing anyone from editing this page, which doesn't allow anyone to correct bias in either direction. This is Wikipedia. You can't have it your own way. Most of us are not Zionists, and in fact some of us are anti-Zionists. But all of us should be committed to making a good, neutral encyclopedia (i.e., not propaganda which selectively omits or colors facts). Please, please, your attitude that this is a "game" will forever leave this page locked. It's not a game, we're trying to produce a serious article. If you can't live by this, go away, and let us edit in peace. Graft 16:53, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The current article (00:42GMT 13 August 2003) is another failure in neutral point of view. It seems that all that happens are partisan swings in favor of or against, but nothing else.

This article states that "[The Hezbollah is] seeking to create a fundamentalist Islamic republic to remove all non-Islamic influences in Lebanon" ..... this is an outrageous lie. Why should such lies and decpetions be tolerated in Wikipedia? Isn't the mainstream media enough?? The article is so grossly false and biased it's actually entertaining.

The Hiballah came into existence as a reaction to the Israeli invasion in 1982. I would like to add this. Btw. I was in Lebanon at the time. --RS

Isnt this a Copyright infrigement?

Antonio Here comes Martinez!! Here Comes Martinez!! Martin

That text is everywhere on the Internet and has been in Wikipedia for well-over a year. If anything everyone else copied from us - but it probably is public domain US government text. --mav

Well, I wanted to stop people from bashing back and forth, and instead start moving forward. It might be a case of "I don't write 5 words but I change 7", but let's try to add to things instead of (just) delete them/revert them.
~ender 2003-05-07 01:45 MST

I still think that we should pare the history of invasion out of this article, and put it elsewhere. This should only be Hizballah stuff. Maybe just put something to the effect that Americans were on the scene, and as part of the occupation forces (to the residents) they were targeted. I'm willing to re-put in that much of the world media depicts Hizballah differently, but I'd really like some cites for that. That's implied when we put 'American media says' but not stated.
I'd also like some current information... but I ain't been following that too much.
~ender 2003-05-07 02:15 MST

Is it really true that hizbullah is also known as the "Islamic Jihad Organisation"? I know there is an organization of this name in Palestine, but as far as I know that originated from Egypt and has nothing to do with Hizbullah. So, is this merely a name overlap? Do they need to have disambiguation? "We are not that Islamic Jihad, we're another group of the same name." Or, more likely, is this incorrect information? Graft

(Can't help myself...) No, we're the People's Front of Judea! (stifled snicker) -- John Owens

Why have we chosen this spelling? Google finds 17,400 hits for "Hizballah" and 151,000 for "Hezbollah", and a search for Hizballah says, "Did you mean: Hezbollah" - Zoe

I deleted several paragraphs and links discussing accusations of Israeli bombing of south Lebanon. Although those items might belong in some other article, they seem out of place here. -- Zoe

Accusations?? Umm, those are news reports.

Damn, you guys are making me start to side with that anonymous guy who can't spell.

~ender 2003-05-11 21:12 MST

As I said, put it into an article in which it is more relevant. -- Zoe

If you're gonna be deleting it, then *you* put it in an article that would be more relevant.

And deleting source documents is not very NPOV.

~ender 2003-05-11 21:24 MST

Also, I don't see where it could be much more relevant than in an article on Hizbullah... that would be like saying that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was not relevant to an article on Operation Desert Storm... Graft

Please explain how bombings in May of 2003 have anything to do with Hezbollah. If you want to include discussions of other events which led up to the creation of Hezbollah, then that's fine, but this is a current event which, unless it's because of Hezbollah attacks on Israel, or are direct attacks against Hezbollah which somehow are more important than any other attacks on Hezbollah, then how is it relevant? -- Zoe

Who's talking about May 2003? I didn't see any specific dates in the relevant text, actually, but as far as I'm aware the last time Israel bombed southern lebanon was when Barak was in power. Anyway, it doesn't matter much.. the article really just needs to be rewritten from the ground up. Graft

The rationale by the non-western contigent complaining that we're just spewing department of defense rhetoric is that the Hizballah is a self-defense organization, and that they only operated on lebanese soil (which I tried to disprove using some sources). Part of the rationale behind the Hizballah existing is the terror attacks by Israel, to 'eliminate' terrorists, by bombing power plants and radio stations. Kinda like the US in Iraq, if you look at Gulf war 2 & 3....

But ya know what, have it. Stupid revert wars aren't acceptable. Add information, make information more correct, add new articles. If you want to delete. Have fun. Point is to be adding stuff, and making it better, not removing it. It was an attempt at trying to be more inclusivist to other non-state department views.

~ender 2003-05-11 21:38 MST

Oh yeah Zoe you should also mention that you completely removed all references to American peacekeeping forces entering the fray, UN resolutions, and the like :)

~ender 2003-05-11 21:47 MST

Sheez, ender, create a damn login already! Graft

Bah, hate logins :P

This is the internet, we're all allowed to be cranks. :)

~ender 2003-05-11 21:47 MST

The last sentence of the article is pretty awful. I'm not sure what it's trying to say, exactly, so I didn't want to unilaterally change it, but it's a terrible sentence. john 04:05 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Moving my comments to the bottom instead of continuing to post in the middle. Please tell me what American peacekeepers have ever been involved in Lebanon/Israel. -- Zoe

Consider reading before editting.

FYI: [1]

Which is why Americans have been attacked by the Hizballah.

I've had enough with wasting my time on this.

~ender 2003-05-11 21:52 MST

Claiming that there were US peacekeeping forces in the area doesn't make it true. -- Zoe

How did US Marines come to be bombed by the Hizballah in Lebanon? They magically appear? Maybe they're some other 'US' forces I don't know about.

Tell that to Congress and the Department of Defense who awarded those forces medals for excellent conduct. Claiming it is not true doesn't make things false either. I gave you specific references to look up and prove or disprove, that should be enough. I didn't merely claim 'american forces' although that would read cleaner, which is what you seem to be shooting for - delete everything you can get your hands on. Minimal information. I'm not sure that those specific references should've been in there (note above), but I did include them. Because we're talking about the rationale for attacks on Americans in Lebanon.

~ender 2003-05-11 22:01 MST

"Peacekeeprs" implies that they were there to engage in action against either the Israelis or the Lebanese or both. Their sole purpose there was to remove Americans safely from the action. They never engaged in battle against Hezbollah. -- Zoe

Try reading again, you'll like it.

non-combatants -> combatants.

Also, I don't make up these names, you have issues with it, tell it to the US Department of Defense & the UN. I don't think invading a country should be called peacekeeping either, but that's what we like to call it.

~ender 2003-05-11 22:23 MST

Basically I guess my complaint is this: I don't see people attempting to adapt to/address other points of view and refute them with facts. In the places where there may be different interpretations of events, I don't see both sides being given air-time. I don't think that the clueless non-speller user has been taken seriously enough. Yeah *e has issues - but that doesn't mean *ier viewpoint is irrelevant.
I believe this article is pretty much US propoganda at present - that doesn't mean it's without merit, but the suppression of disenting voices/views does not make me feel good that it is even half-way accurate.
But underlying this is a larger problem. I see people deleting information they don't agree with. Removal of sources, etc, etc. I don't believe some people are actually reading what's written before editting/reverting (as is apparent above, re: American forces). I think it's disingenous to imply that all the information is still there, when it's buried in the history page and not visible.
And I'm unhappy with the way the Wiki system seems to be dealing with these issues. Which is an indictment of the people who watch recent changes and do nothing.
~ender 2003-05-11 23:05 MST

And who might those people be? -- Zoe

Seems to me the main problem with this article is that it's very poorly organized, and not especially well written, at least at present. The last sentence/paragraph remains dreadful, and much of the rest of it isn't much better. I don't know that much about the subject, so I don't really want to get into rewriting it, but I think what really needs to be done is a thorough rewrite that tries to give information about Hezbollah in basically chronological order. As it is, the chronology is extremely garbled and its full of bizarre statements and scare quotes. john 06:06 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

(American Media) That is only the result of edits :)

Check the history and see the progress before recent reverts. If Zoe had completely reamed all the information in the article, you wouldn't have been bothered at all.

~ender 2003-05-11 23:15 MST

There ya go, almost completely back to US state department stance.

C'mon, you guys can delete the rest too...

"the whole article needs rewriting (but I'm not the man to do it)"

But you are the man to prevent others from doing it... :D

~ender 2003-05-11 23:24 MST

Why don't you revert it back the way you want it, if you're so upset? The fact is that that sentence was just bad. I have no ideologic stance about this, but the article as is is terrible (probably due to the ongoing edit war, I suppose, although it doesn't seem to have ever been particularly good). If you restore what you had before, I could try to work it up into a better-organized and more NPOV article, if you'd like, but as I said, I don't know enough about the subject to contribute anything of my own. Again, I'm really not trying to make the article be the State Department/Israeli view of Hezbollah at all. It's just that that once sentence really grated with me. On your last comment (written while I was writing this), I'm not preventing anybody from doing anything. I'm certainly not the one who deleted most of the content you added. john 06:22 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Because it won't stay that way without some consensus. I hate revert/edit-wars. I think they're dumb. I'd rather people edit up than delete.

Nope you didn't delete most of the content that I *modified*, but you didn't bother to look at it either. Instead of trying to grasp the point that was trying to be made you just deleted it.

~ender 2003-05-11 23:56 MST

I did look at it, but I'm not much good with this whole reverting concept, so I wasn't sure what to do (especially since it's not really my fight). In any event, I've tried to edit your material in with the original material to form a cohesive article (and I've changed around the wording a bit), although I'm not sure how good it is at the moment. It still needs work, I think. john 07:01 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Hey *I* think it needs a lot of work myself. However, it is hard to work on the article when it's not there. I'd like to see enough done on it that the anonymous poster is happy with it. Or have points lined up to refute their allegations. I think we could say that Hizballah has not restrained themselves to Lebanese borders (disputed or otherwise) with the Argentina attack + Israeli stuff, which make the anonymous poster wrong in stating that they have only done things within Lebanon. I will grant that poster that mostly they've stayed in Lebanese or Israeli territory (embassies are part of a country's territory), and I guess I need a list of hostages they've taken. From what I've seen they've limited themselves to military and political targets. Not sure, but i believe they may have held a journalist for a really long time... They might construe that as a quasi-governmental operative. But that should be stated (if it's true).

~ender 2003-05-12 01:47 MST

On a separate note, there is not a single shred of evidence that the Hizbullah (or any other group for that matter) were involved in the bombings of the Israeli facilities in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is ONLY Israeli insistence that it is the Hizbullah (and at the same time they say it is Iran!), and naturally, USA also supports the Israeli claims as usual. But who else believes them? Even more and more Amercian people are awakening to the facts that Israel and their incredibly powerful US lobby keep lying, deceiving and misguiding the Americans with misinformation, fabrications and flat out lies. Also, both Iran as well as the Hizbullah have consistently and categorically rejected the accusations about the blasts in Buenos Aires since day one.

How irritating. I edited the article to merge the two versions together into one (not-)seamless whole, and it disappears without a trace, not even appearing in the page history. How the hell did that happen? john 18:11 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

What's with the name? I know Arabic names appear in many Latinized forms, but this article deals badly with it. While Hezbollah is the only form I've ever seen it in (until now), I don't really know or care what the best name is, but it's a mess right now. The article's header gives three names (Hezbollah first), but the title of the article's not even among them. In the rest of the text, Hezbollah is mostly used, but Hizballah shows up a several times. I don't know what the name should be, but to those who do, please do the following:

make the first mentioned term the same as the title
mention all others forms in the header
use only the title term in the article

Jeronimo 13:00, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Jeronimo, I think no one is listening to you: from following the edit histories, it appears that a couple of anonymous individuals have decided to force their preferred version of the article onto the rest of Wikipedia. (Oddly enough, the version they keep removing is not very favorable to Isreal.) A clue to their intentions are the statements, "Reverting game with the Zionists again" & "Wikipedia does not belong to you Jews".

To the partisans involved -- If I am wrong about your intentions, & please prove it by cleaning up the following sentence from your favored version:

Hezbollah is profesedly anti-Zionist]].

-- llywrch 19:12, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

About the name: the official name of the organization is Hezbollah, but Hizbullah is also correct and is used. The reason you see "Hizballah" here is because someone, obviously unfamiliar with Arabic, wanted to make sure that "allah" is present in the name, so they came up with the odd "Hizballah" spelling on their own. Apparently that happens to be the person who initiated the article.

As for reverting, just read the differences between the versions yourself and you will see that theh version the pro-Israeli folk try to enforce, is full of lies, deceptions and misinformation. For example, they say the Hezbollah is trying to get rid of all other groups in Lebanon, and make Lebanon an Iranian-style Shia Islamic state. This is so ridiculous that doesn't even desreve an argument.

The pro-Israel people, in typical fashion, try to villify the victims of Israeli atrocities, and play down or excuse the atrocities perpetrated by Israel. They do that in mainstream American media all the time, because over there they have direct or indirect control or influence. In the Internet, they have less of that luxury, but sadly, it seems this is also changing. Hezbollah's website was first blocked at most major ISP's and now it will refer you to some pornographic sites.

If the part concerning making "Lebanon an Iranian-style Shia Islamic state" is incorrect, why don't you just correct that part of the page, while leaving the rest alone? There are a lot of misspellings & grammatical errors in the version you (or someone within your internet domain) keeps reverting to.

BTW, I'm puzzled why you had to keep editting & saving this page so many times. Are you aware of the "show preview" button? Frankly, I use it a lot. -- llywrch 21:43, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Why don't I just correct that one line? Because that was just one example out of many obvious and subtle lies crafted in their "contribution" to the article.

And what do you consider are the other ones? -- llywrch 19:51, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Would anyone object if I delete Hezbollah and redirect this article to there? RickK 06:41, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I have no objection; best wait a while -- maybe a week -- to see if there are any objections, Rick. If there are none, go for it. -- llywrch 19:51, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I object. You fuckers have reverted to a disgusting pro-Israeli version of this article, have locked it so nobody else can edit it, and now are trying to eliminate it. You are abusing you admin status in Wikipedia, and because of ficking racist morons like you, lies and depections are permeated in our world. This article should be here, but without any lies and deceptions. Only with facts, not from a particular angle or point of view. FACTS ARE FACTS. Fuck you cowards.

Language like that isn't going to convince anyone. And for the record, I do not have admin status -- I'm just another contributor, who was trying to find a middle ground & end this edit war.

BTW, why don't you sign these statements where you call everyone cowards? -- llywrch 20:48, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A few comments:

The section "American involvement" seems to be disconnected from the rest of the article to the extent that its relevance is unclear. It is also written in a sort of cheerleading style. It should be replaced or deleted (I would vote for deletion).
That Hezbollah has an Islamic state as one of its aims is supported by their own web page: http://www.hizbollah.org/english/frames/index_eg.htm . Clicking "Introduction" we get a summary that states this quite explicitly.

-- zero 12:13, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I clicked on the URL that you gave, and then read the entire Introduction section. There was not a single thing suggesting they have an Islamic state in mind .... I read the whole seciotn. I found this:

....

Today, Hezbollah is one of the most prominent Lebanese political parties that has its presence in the parliament with 8 MPs.

Hezbollah today also commands respect politically after it proved its strength with its presence by respecting the values of others in the field.

Hezbollah also sees itself committed in introducing the true picture of Islam, the Islam that is logical. Committed to introduce the civilized Islam to humanity.

...

Hezbollah does not wish to implement Islam forcibly but in a peaceful and political manner, that gives the chance to the majority to either accept or refuse. If Islam becomes the choice of the majority only then will it be implemented. If not it will then continue to co-exist with others on the basis of mutual understanding using peaceful methods to reach peaceful solutions. And that is how the case should be to the non-Islamists as well.

Were you smoking weed or drinking something when you read that section?

Ahhh ... I just checked your "contributions" .... all of them to Jewish or Israeli-related issues .... wow, what a surprise that one of God's Chosen People should prevaricate !

As a matter of fact, the Shiites in Lebanon are not even the second largest group, demographically. They are the thrid or the fourth. Lebanese Constitution requires that the President must be a Maronite Christian, the Primse Minister, a Sunni Muslim, and Speaker of the Parliament, a Shia Muslim (not necessarily from the Hizollah).

There was not a single thing suggesting they have an Islamic state in mind -- Sorry, I was mislead by the sentence that says "Another of its ideals is the establishment of the an Islamic Government." Silly me to not realise it was just a typo for "Another of its ideals is to NOT have an Islamic Government".

what a surprise that one of God's Chosen People should prevaricate -- Actually that's pretty funny.

Now, looking at the Wiki article we see Reportedly, the organization is seeking to create an fundamentalist Iranian-style Islamic republic and remove of all non-Islamic influences. . -- The final part of that sentence is quite unacceptable. I suggest a replacement like this:

According to its stated policy, Hezbollah favors the establishment of an Islamic government in Lebanon by democratic means.

-- zero 00:41, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

From my understanding of Hezbollah's statements, they are far more liberal about the whole matter than others - they want Islamic rule and government for Muslims, but others should not be governed by Islamic law, since they are not Muslims. Whether this is PR or not, I don't know, but this is what they say they want: Islamic rule for Muslims, self-government for everyone else. Graft 05:24, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There is a clear distinction between state and government. The Hezbollah is not only fully in accordance with the Lebanese present state and constitution, they in fact take pride in having made political progress within that framework. It's not like they are racist like Israel or anything .... kinda like how last week Israeli parliament passed a double-standard racist law for citizens of Israel that if the citizen is a jew marrying a non-Israeli, the spouse can become an Israeli citizen, but if the citizen is an Arab-Israeli marrying a non-Arab-Israeli, the rules are different. To me it seems that the Hezbollah are fair and tolerant and they just want to protect their own rights and religious and cultural interest in a traditionally difficult environment.

On an unrelated note, I think we should add this sentence (I can't, as the article is protected):

This article is about the Hezbollah based in Lebanon. For an article about the unrelated Hezbollah in Turkey, see Hezbollah (Turkey).

If for no other reason, it will clarify that these two are not the same organization. DanKeshet 21:29, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Since this is of an administrative nature, I will do it. -- Toby Bartels 05:21, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This article is remarkable for not mentioning the group's beliefs and driving motivations. That is an oversight which needs to be corrected. Some of the following information needs to be incorporated into this article. (Source: Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger by Robert S. Wistrich)

A similarly radical ideology motivates the Lebanese Shi'a movement, Hizballah ("the Party of God"), which rose to prominence following its resistance to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Its total negation of Israel's existence and its view of Judaism as the oldest and bitterest enemy of Islam owe much to the Ayatollah Khomeini's "anti-Zionist" preaching and the movement's symbiotic relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In accordance with this doctrinal source of inspiration, Hizballah opposes nationalism, imperialism, and "Western arrogance" while laying special emphasis on the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem as a major strategic aim.

As with the Hamas and other fundamentalist groupings, Israel is depicted as a Western puppet installed in the Middle East to enable imperialism to continue its domination and exploitation of Arab regional resources. Israel is invariably seen as the source of all evil and violence in the area and as the main obstacle to Islamic unity. Hence it must be totally eradicated.44 The recent Israeli departure from Lebanon is no more than a prelude to this future obliteration of the great "usurping enemy" of Islam-frequently described by Hizballah (as in Iranian propaganda) as a "cancer" and poison that affects the entire world.

Hizballah's most senior cleric, Sheikh Husayn Fadlallah, continually emphasized through the 1990s that Israel was not just a Jewish state in the formal sense of the word. It was the ultimate expression of the corrupt, treacherous, and aggressive "Jewish" personality. Jews were indeed "the enemy of the entire human race," congenitally "racist" and condescending in their attitude to other peoples, and ruthlessly bent upon global domination. In an interview in the late 1980s, Fadlallah already expressed a widely held fundamentalist attitude toward allegedly boundless Jewish ambitions:

"The Jews want to be a world superpower. This racist circle of Jews wants to take vengeance on the whole world for their history of persecution and humiliation. In this light, the Jews will work on the basis that Jewish interests are above all world interests." 45

Hizballah's consistently intransigent philosophy of all-out war against Israel, Zionism, and the Jews has an unmistakably virulent anti-Semitic underpinning linked to its overall pan-Islamic, revolutionary perspective. Its special venom also draws from the traditional Iranian Shi'i attitudes toward Jews as unclean, impure, and corrupt infidels. This is a theme that pervaded the outlook of the Ayatollah Khomeini and still influences the present Iranian leadership.46

Like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Hizballah engages in a total demonization of the Jewish and Zionist enemy, eagerly embracing violence, "suicide bombings," martyrdom, and terror as the only path to "liberate" Palestine, destroy Israel, and defeat the West.47 Everything is made subordinate to the supreme imperative of the jihad-the holy war that must be waged to the death against the infidel-until all Islamic lands are liberated and a truly Islamic state is restored.48

The Western media, as is its custom, has been extremely reluctant to relate the current terrorist war against Israel and the West to its ideological roots in Islam or to the sources and meaning of jihad. It is equally averse to connecting terrorism with the anti-Jewish obsessions that currently animate millions of Muslims.49 Amazingly little attention has been paid to the sheer abundance, energy, and viciousness of contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism from Cairo and Gaza to Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and Lahore. The seemingly endless parade of grotesque falsehoods exhibited in Arab and Muslim defamation of Jews and the Jewish state scarcely seems to impinge on Western consciousness. At most it is perceived as a footnote to the raging storm of anti-Americanism or as a form of "political opposition" to Israeli actions. Not even the rampant Arab claims that the Holocaust was a fabrication invented by Zionists and Jews (which attracts much attention in the European media when made by neo-Nazis or far rightists) stir more than the faintest of responses in the West.50

Footnotes:

43. Esther Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizballah and Hamas (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, 1994), pp. 17-22.

44. Ibid., pp. 8-9.

45. Middle East Insight, March-April 1988, p. 10.

46. David Menashri, "The Jews of Iran: Between the Shah and Khomeini," in Sander Gilman and Steven T. Katz, eds., Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis (New York: New York University Press, 1991), pp. 353-71.

47. Raphael Israeli, "Islamikaze and Their Significance," Terrorism and Political Violence 9:3 (Autumn 1997): 96-121, emphasizes the planned, premeditated style of the "suicides" organized by Muslim terrorists, which are designed to wreak maximum damage on the "abominable" Zionist enemy.

48. Ibid., pp. 110-11.

49. See Raphael Israeli, The Terrorist Masquerade (Shaarei Tikva, Israel: Ariel Center for Policy Research, 2001).

50. See Holocaust Denial in the Middle East: The Latest Anti-Israel Propaganda Theme (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 2001).

Source: Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger by Robert S. Wistrich

I would hope that something from a source with a less obvious political motivation could be found. --zero 03:01, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Why protected?

Why is this article protected? —Frecklefoot 15:51, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

From the page history, it sems that an anon IP was going ga-ga with a revert war a couple of weeks ago. On the assumption that the anon has got bored and gone somewhere else now, I have unprotected the page again. Tannin 15:57, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Where does the State Department say that Hezbollah is "seeking to remove all non-Islamic influences"? It does not appear in the document mentioned at the bottom of the page and I could not find it on the S.D. site in half an hour of looking. The closest I found was "Hizballah formally advocates ultimate establishment of Islamic rule in Lebanon" which doesn't even contradict what Hezbollah claims. --zero 10:15, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I couldn't find the exact phracse on the dept of state page ... but on other pages i did find the reference ...

heres a few links ...

(link to item and google's cache of it in [])

http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/research_pubs/terorism.pdf [2]

http://www.ltcconline.net/lukas/handouts/terrorism.doc [3]

http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk1/1992/9235/923504.PDF [4]

I'll modify the statement accordingly ...reddi 12:58, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ah I found one page from the US dept of state page with the reference to the "seeking to remove all non-Islamic influences" ... http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/fto1999.htm ... reddi 13:20, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I exposed the one external link at the bottom. I didn't know if there was a reason the rest were hidden, so I left them like that. But I had to find that link through the talk page here, and that's not good.

Also, I removed the following sentence:

According to the United States Department of State, it has been called the Islamic Jihad, Revolutionary Justice Organization, Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, and Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine.

Does anybody beside the US Department of State (and the legions of websites that copy their information wholesale) say that Hezbollah have been called these names? If not, then there is no reason for us to include erroneous state department information, even if it is properly attributed. This question was asked above, by Graft, and nobody answered.

DanKeshet

Please don't remove this information ... it is relevant ... I am reinstating this information reddi 14:27, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

You haven't even tried to answer my question. Does anybody other than the US Department of State (and people citing or copying their information) say they go by these names? Can you give me any references I can look up that would say the same thing? Why would it be relevant whether the US Department of State erroneously attributes various other names to the organization? DanKeshet

the history of what Hezbollah has been called is very relevant to this article. The US Department of State is a very reputable source and the inclusion of their informaiton is generally accepted through out wikipedia. reddi 14:34, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)