Gillmans Lebanon Quotes

And the PRCS [Palestinian Red Crescent Society] had not lost just one hospital: thirteen clinics and nine hospitals all over Lebanon had been destroyed in this way. Only Gaza Hospital, for a reason I was to discover three years later, was still standing. At the height of the air raids, when the Palestinians found out that every single PRCS hospital and clinic was a bomb target, they put three Israeli soldiers captured in south Lebanon on the upper floors of Gaza Hospital, and radioed a message to the Israeli Army saying that any further military action on Gaza Hospital would result in Israeli lives being lost. That saved Gaza Hospital from further destruction. ~ Ang Swee Chai

Hezbollah and the government are only two of 18 political factions in Lebanon, most of them armed. There are militant Christian groups, Palestinian radicals, al-Qaida, Druze militias and even armed bands of Marxists still operating in Lebanon. ~ Richard Engel

The name Muhammad is the most common name in the world. In all the countries around the world - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon - there are more Muhammads than anything else. When I joined the Nation of Islam and became a Muslim, they gave me the most famous name because I was the champ. ~ Muhammad Ali

Nobody's life is a bed of roses. We all have crosses to bear, and we all just do our best. I would never claim to have the worst situation. There are many widows, and many people dying of AIDS, many people killed in Lebanon, people starving all over the planet. So we have to count our lucky stars. ~ Yoko Ono

The problem with our region is that there are areas with oil and too much money, and then there are places such as south Lebanon and the Palestinian territories where there is no work, and instead of developing industry, they become dependent on oil money - this results in extremism. ~ Stef Wertheimer

You in Lebanon, your power is no match to Israel. Israel, militarily, is more powerful than you and maybe it is more powerful than all the Arab countries, or most of them. ~ Bashar Al-Assad

As the current U.S.-Israel assault raged, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that Israel's tactics in the current attack, as in its invasion of Lebanon in 2006, are based on the sound principle of "trying to 'educate' Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." That makes sense on pragmatic grounds, as it did in Lebanon, where "the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians - the families and employers of the militants - to restrain Hezbollah in the future."10 And by similar logic, bin Laden's effort to "educate" Americans on 9/11 was highly praiseworthy, as were the Nazi attacks on Lidice and Oradour, Putin's destruction of Grozny, and other notable educational exercises. ~ Noam Chomsky

I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no. ~ Jimmy Carter

The military operation in Lebanon was the most successful military operation in recent Israeli history. Many in Israel don't recognise that. ~ Ehud Olmert

The invasion of Lebanon by Israel .. is a monstrous injustice. I side with the resistance to that injustice. Hizbollah is leading that resistance. I do not hesitate to say .. that I glorify that resistance. I glorify the Hizbollah national resistance movement, and I glorify the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. ~ George Galloway

We let our ship blow and drift as it will. But it sweeps up and up, with the swiftness of light. In less time than it takes a flower to open, we are carried to the parapets of ancient Heaven. We find our great-leaved, heavy-fruited Amaranth Vine, climbing up over the closed gates and high wall-towers of Heaven and winding a long way into the old forest that has overgrown the streets. We find the new all conquering Springfield vine, spreading branches through the forest like a banyan tree.

As this Amaranth from our little earthly village grows thicker, we see by its light a bit pf what the ancient Heaven has been. And it is still a solid place of soil and rock and metal. Where the Springfield Amaranth blooms thickest, shedding luminous glory from the petals in the starlight, this Heaven is shown to be an autumn forest, yet with the cedars of Lebanon, and sandalwood thickets, and the million tropic trees whose seeds have blown here from strange zones of the'planets, and whose patterns are not the patterns of those of our world. Among these, vineclad pillars and walls are still standing, roofed palaces, so gigantic that, when our boat glides down the great streets between them, they overhang our masts.

And from branches above us these strange manners of fruits tumble upon our decks for our feasting and delight. And there are beneath our ship, as it sails on as it will, little fields long cleared in the forest, where grows weedy ungathered grain.

~ Vachel Lindsay

Our dead become the photographs and words we hang on the walls, but they also hang on the walls of our hearts, the windows of our lips, and the sobs in our voices. ~ Zeina Kassem

Billy ran around with a rare old crew
And he knew an Arsenal from Tottenham blue
We'd be a darn sight better off if we knew
Where Billy's bones are resting now

Billy saw a copper and he hit him in the knee
And he took him down from six to five foot three
Then he hit him fair and square in the do-re-mi
That copper won't be having any family

Hey Billy son where are you now?
Don't you know that we need you now?
With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow
Where are Billy's bones resting now?

Billy went away with a peace-keeping force
'Cause he liked a bloody good fight, of course
Went away in an old khaki van
To the banks of the River Jordan

Billy saw the Arabs and he had 'em on the run
When he got 'em in the range of his sub-machine gun
Then he had the Israelis in his sights, went a rat-tat-tat
And they ran like shites

Hey Billy son where are you now?
Don't you know that we need you now?
With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow
Where are Billy's bones resting now?

One night Billy had a rare old time,
Laughing and singing on the Lebanon line
Came back to camp not looking too pretty
Never even got to see the holy city

Now Billy's out there in the desert sun
And his mother cries when the morning comes
And there's mothers crying all over this world
For their poor dead darling boys and girls
< ~ Shane MacGowan

The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are made of the same water. It flows down, clean and cool, from the heights of Herman and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon. the Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it, the Sea of Galilee has an outlet. It gets to give. It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again to fertilize the Jordan plain. But the Dead Sea with the same water makes horror. For the Dead Sea has no outlet. It gets to keep. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

It is important that democracy in Lebanon is protected and that Hezbollah will not be supported by outside forces like Syria and Iran. ~ Ehud Olmert

Since 1945, when Jesus granted America air superiority, we have bombed Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Granada, Panama, Iraq, Serbia, Somalia, Bosnia, The Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen. And Yemen only because the tenth one was free.
How did we inherit this moral obligation of bringing justice to the world via death from above? Are we Zeus?
It doesn't make any sense. Our schools are crumbling and we wanna teach everyone else a lesson. ~ Bill Maher

Media turned against Israel was a gradual process. And it has gotten worse over the years. I think the main development was the 1982 Lebanon War. ~ Manfred Gerstenfeld

We are very serious about imposing weapons restrictions on the PFLP and other Palestinian groups operating from their camps in Lebanon. ~ Walid Jumblatt

Lebanon can choose to be either a partner in ridding the scourge of terrorism or another obstacle that cows to the most radical elements of society. ~ Vito Fossella

In Lebanon, it's never over for anyone. You cannot write off anyone or anything in this country. ~ Saad Hariri

Lebanon is caught in a cycle of threats. And it is our duty to be strong and capable of defending our country. But we will not clarify or explain what we do or do not possess. ~ Hassan Nasrallah

The sheer size of some of the limestome foundation blocks [at Baalbek] are the largest ever quarried on the planet, conservatively estimated at 800 to 1200 tons, and the common belief that the Romans chose to do this work on such a massive scale to 'impress the locals' is absolutely ludicrous. Nowhere else in the Roman world is there any evidence of the quarrying of blocks of this size, so we can clearly presume that they were there when the Romans first appeared, and were used as foundational material. A group of three horizontally lying giant stones which form part of the podium of the Roman Jupiter Temple of Baalbek, Lebanon, go by the name 'trilithon.' Each one of these stones is 70 feet long, 14 feet high, 10 feet thick, and weighs around 800 tons. These three stone blocks are the largest building blocks ever used by any human beings anywhere in the world. The supporting stone layer beneath features a number of stones that are still in the order of 350 tons and 35 feet wide. No one knows how these blocks were moved, cut, placed, and fit perfectly together. ~ Brien Foerster

Israel is one of the most multiracial and multicultural countries in the world. More than a hundred different countries are represented in its population of 6 million. Consider how the Israeli government spent tens of millions of dollars airlifting more than forty thousand black Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1984 and 1991. Since 2001 Israel has reached out to help others, taking in non-Jewish refugees from Lebanon, the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Vietnam, Liberia, and Congo, and even Bosnian Muslims. How many such refugees have the twenty-two states in the Arab League taken in? The Arab world won't even give Palestinian refugees citizenship in their host countries. Remember, Jews can't live in the neighboring Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan or in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But Arabs are living as citizens in Israel. What does that tell you about their respect for other cultures? Over 1 million Arabs are full Israeli citizens. An Arab sits on the Supreme Court of Israel. There are Arab political parties expressing views inimical to the State of Israel sitting in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Women are equal partners in Israel and have complete human rights, as do gays and minorities. Show me an Arab nation with a Jew in its government. Show me an Arab country with half as many Jewish citizens as Israel has Arab citizens. Show me freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and human rights in any Arabic country in the Middle East the way they exist and are prac ~ Brigitte Gabriel

True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless forest of palms within the tropics. ~ Bayard Taylor

Lebanon is the only country where media kills more than bombs, injures more than guns ... and at last they say freedom of speech ... ~ Hussein S. Hariri

I rejected the armed struggle because, as a Christian, I am committed to a nonviolent and peaceful struggle. But people take their own initiatives, because it is a Lebanon type of situation here. ~ Mangosuthu Buthelezi

Arab leaders worry more about making money from the profits they get from oil and gas that they turn the other way when Lebanon is being destroyed right next to them. Their neighbours are being murdered, but they only make calculations for their own benefit. ~ Abu Bakar Bashir

During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba. ~ Amin Maalouf

We want to see Israel withdraw from our territory. But we don't want to be accountable vis-a-vis Israel on the security basis, because we don't see, in the absence of a peace agreement, that Lebanon can really be accountable to Israel if anything happens. ~ Rafik Hariri

But blaming Islam is a simple answer, easier and less controversial than re-examining the core political issues and grievances that resonate in much of the Muslim world: the failures of many Muslim governments and societies, some aspects of U.S. foreign policy representing intervention and dominance, Western support for authoritarian regimes, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or support for Israel's military battles with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. (p. 136-137) ~ John L. Esposito

I have been a long-time advocate for a just Arab-Israeli peace and for Palestinian refugees. Today, as you are aware, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan and Iraq are being overwhelmed by those fleeing the conflict in Syria, often with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Many are severely tortured - abused women and their traumatized children whose husbands, fathers, and brothers have been killed or permanently disabled. ~ Queen Noor Of Jordan