Lebanon Quotes

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

In the time that we're here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel or Lebanon. So, after September 30, you won't need the UN - you will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones. ~ George Clooney

Those who liberated the South from Israel must show allegiance to Lebanon. ~ Walid Jumblatt

Everybody with a gun has a checkpoint in Lebanon. And in Lebanon, you'd be crazy not to have a gun. Though, I assure you, all the crazy people have guns, too. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

In Palestine, the Israelis claim they found a land without people,' a Syrian officer explained to us. 'Now they will take southern Lebanon and claim they have found another land without people if these refugees do not return. ~ Robert Fisk

It's as though you had lost an arm or leg but still instinctively reach out to feel your missing limb or try to walk again, placing your entire weight on something that no longer is there. ~ Zeina Kassem

Do our dreams carry messages from the great beyond, sent by the people we have lost, or are they a reflection of our desperation and wishful thinking? ~ Zeina Kassem

I am from Lebanon, from Beirut and Saida

I am from the ground underneath my home

I am from the trees, the cedar tree

I come from Tabouleh and brown eyes, from Karim...

Kassar and Kassem

I come from happiness and culture

From "Habibi" and "Hayete"

I am from all religions

I am from the room beneath the stars. ~ Zeina Kassem, Talal Kassem

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

Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northern Ireland or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state? ~ Barry Goldwater

My Lebanon is a flock of birds fluttering in the early morning as shepherds lead their sheep into the meadow & rising in the evening as farmers return from their fields and vineyards.You have your Lebanon and its people. I have my Lebanon and its people. ~ Khalil Gibran

Those reporters, writers, photographers, and editors are the best Americans I know. They cherish the ideals of their imperfect profession and of the Republic whose freedoms, equally imperfect in practice have so often made those ideals real. They want desperately to do good, honorable work. In spite of long hours and low pay, they are insistently professional. They are also brave.

I can't ever forget that in Indochina 65 journalists were killed in the course of recording the truth about that war. . . .Reporters and photographers did not stop dying when Vietnam was over. They have been killed in Lebanon and Nicaragua, in Bosnia and Peru, and in a lot of other places where hard rain falls.

I can't believe that these good men and women died for nothing. I know they didn't. They died because they were the people chosen by the tribe to carry the torch to the back of the cave and tell the others what is there in the darkness. They died because they were serious about the craft they practiced. They died because they believed in the fundamental social need for what they did with a pen, a notebook, a typewriter, or a camera. They didn't die to increase profits for the stockholders. They didn't die to obtain an invitation to some White House dinner for a social-climbing publisher. They died for us.

As readers or journalists, we honor them when we remember that their dying was not part of a plan to make the world cheaper, baser, or dumber. They died to ~ Pete Hamill

I love the Middle East and have been lucky enough to visit a few of the countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Jordon and the U.A.E. ~ Nadia Ali

The most important, what I believe myself to do, is what is the interest of Lebanon, what is the interest of my country and my nation? And I'm going to do it fully. ~ Najib Mikati

Israel's shooting down of a civilian airplane and then the killing of 107 innocent peopel aboard, and their raid into neutral Lebanon are very dangerous developments. There's only one way I can see to stop it ... is for the United States to take a very strong stand that this has to be settled ... politically settled. ~ J. William Fulbright

And as I was looking at those towers that were destroyed in Lebanon, it occurred to me that we have to punish the transgressor with the same, and that we had to destroy the towers in America, so that they taste what we tasted and they stop killing our women and children. ~ Osama Bin Laden

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

Middle East by the Arab Muslim caliphate, ending with Muslim fragmentation and the Iranian Buyid capture of Abbasid Baghdad, saw Muslim and Maronite establishment in Mount Lebanon. ~ William Harris

Lebanon: the country where everyone wants a piece while we want peace. ~ Sandra Chami Kassis

Israel has many hopes, and faces extreme dangers. The most prominent danger is Iran, which is making every effort to acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and establishing an enormous terror network together with Syria in Lebanon. ~ Ariel Sharon

Lebanon does not have a powerful army. ~ Richard Engel

That is why if Lebanon concludes a peace agreement with Israel and brings that accord to the Parliament our deputies will reject it; Hezbollah refuses any conciliation with Israel in principle. ~ Hassan Nasrallah

No militia or political leader is so powerful - his name never so influential - as when he is dead, enshrined on wall posters and gateposts amid naively painted clusters of tulips and roses, the final artistic accolade of every armed martyr in Lebanon. ~ Robert Fisk

America's real plan is to fuel a civil war, while the national plan is for all Lebanese to live in peace with one another. There will be no return to civil war. All the political powers as well as the media must work to reduce religious tensions and make everyone understand that they will not allow Lebanon to be destroyed again. ~ Hassan Nasrallah

Cervantes told me history is the mother of truth.
Borges told me historical truth is not what took place; it is what we think took place.
So Billy Shakespeare was queer.
Ronnie was the greatest president in history, right up there on Mount Rushmore.
AIDS is mankind's greatest plague.
Israel only kills terrorists.
America never bombed Lebanon.
Jesus was straight. Juda and he were just friends.
Roseanne's parents molested her as an infant.
Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat deserved their Nobels.
And Gaetan Dugas started the AIDS epidemic. ~ Rabih Alameddine

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

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

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

There is something very consistent about governance in the Arab world. Among the Arab countries today in which there is a modicum of internal stability, each is controlled by an Arafat-type figure - an anti-democratic strongman who is able to crush all challenges to his authority. Likewise, among those Arab countries that aren't ruled by a despot, the political dynamic is also consistent: In Lebanon, Iraq, and now Gaza, sectarian violence is the dominant form of political expression. ~ Michael Totten

When we would visit, the ritual was the same. My grandfather would put out a spread on the kitchen table: six or eight kinds of lunch meat, including Pennsylvania esoterics like Lebanon bologna and souse; white and rye bread; pickles; two mustards; and mayonnaise. We would all sit around that kitchen table and construct our sandwiches and then eat those sandwiches in silence, because that is how white people show affection. ~ Phoebe Robinson

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

Israel is becoming a fortress. Fences along the borders with Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. ~ Richard Engel

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

When Lebanon started its resistance it was a small and divided country. ~ Bashar Al-Assad

Turkey, Lebanon, Pakistan and Ethiopia each take care of millions of refugees, and between them, outweigh the numbers of refugees taken in by all the 50 countries of Europe combined. ~ Onjali Q. Raúf

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

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

I was 12 when my parents told me we were moving to Lebanon. I remember thinking, 'Leba-who?' I had absolutely no concept of the place. ~ Greg Kinnear

There must be some security arrangement in the south of Lebanon so northern Israel is not threatened anymore. ~ Menachem Begin

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

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

That's when it hit me; my sunglasses were buried in the grave where my Talal lay.

Yes, my sunglasses were buried with him. But oh, how I wish my eyes had gone with him instead. ~ Zeina Kassem

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

Lebanon, of course, is a country with great problems. Traditionally, they have religious-national groups or ethnic-national groups. They have the Druses. Even the two Moslem sects, the Sunnis and the Shiites, are apart. Then they have the armed groups. Everybody's got a private army. ~ Menachem Begin

Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt that there was a force capable of dominating the situation and ensuring basic order. ~ Noah Feldman

Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon now presides over the UN Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world's security. You couldn't make this thing up. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

I never felt totally, 100%, patriotically English ... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon, and Damascus, and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London ... Done a fair bit of traveling really. ~ Andy Serkis

Israel will not and should not leave until it is clear that the West Bank can be policed by Palestinians and that the region will not be a source of terrorism against Israel, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Israel left there. ~ Elliott Abrams

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

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

Lebanon will be engulfed again in a huge power game that will last quite a long time. This is the tragic destiny of Lebanon. ~ Walid Jumblatt

I think there are hard-liners inside of Iran that think it is the right thing to do to oppose us, to seek to destroy Israel, to cause havoc in places like Syria or Yemen or Lebanon, if they don't change at all, we're still better off having the deal. ~ Barack Obama

We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai. ~ David Ben-Gurion

Ah, sinner, may the Lord quicken thee! But it is a work that makes the Saviour weep. I think when He comes to call some of you from your death in sin, He comes weeping and sighing for you. There is a stone that is to be rolled away
your bad and evil habits
and when that stone is taken away, a still small voice will not do for you; it must be the loud crashing voice, like the voice of the Lord which breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. ~ Charles Spurgeon

[Iranians] are destabilizing governments in the region. They continue to support Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon against Israel. A lot of work that we have do is going to be incredibly hard. I'm prepared to do that work, but I believe, just as I did with imposing the sanctions, you have to get action for action. ~ Hillary Clinton

What is being talked about now is the probability of the Sharon government launching an attack against Lebanon to eliminate the resistance of Hezbollah by using the American war against Iraq. But, of course, in this case, we will certainly fight with all our strength. ~ Hassan Nasrallah

The minute we leave south Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hezbollah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hezbollah was sheer folly from the outset. It most certainly no longer will be relevant when Israel returns to her internationally recognized northern border. ~ Amos Oz

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

Did you ever notice they never take any fat hostages? You never see a guy coming out of Lebanon going: I was held hostage for seven months and I lost 175 pounds, I feel good and I look good and I learned self-discipline. That's the important thing. ~ Denis Leary

Biggest mistake Reagan ever did re: foreign policy? 1984 decision to appease Hezbollah with Lebanon withdrawal ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

I don't think I ever fully understood before now the old saying that goes: "A mother's heart loves her young one until he grows; her ill one until he heals; and her traveler until he returns."

I have experienced all kinds of waiting; I've waited for my young to grow and the sick to heal, but I am still waiting on my little traveler and I do not know how long it will be until I see him again. ~ Zeina Kassem

Another thing they talk about a lot is water - and that's a very crucial thing, which is not discussed very much in the United States but it's probably the main reason why Israel is never going to give up the West Bank. See, this is a very arid region, so water is more important than oil, and there are very limited water resources in Israel. In fact, a lot of the wars in the Middle East have been about water - for instance, the wars involving Israel and Syria have usually been about the headwaters of the Jordan, which come from Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. And as a matter of fact, one of the main reasons why Israel is holding on to the so-called "Security Zone" it seized in southern Lebanon [in the 1982 invasion] is that that area includes a mountain, Mount Hermon, which is a big part of the watershed that brings water to the region. ~ Noam Chomsky

If you want peace and well-being to be in place in the Middle East and you want terrorism to be uprooted, then there's no path other than the presence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, you saw that in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen that the power that was able to help the people of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen in the face of terrorist groups was the Islamic Republic of Iran. ~ Hassan Rouhani

10How fair is your love, My sister, my spouse! How much better than wine is your love, And the scent of your perfumes Than all spices! 11Your lips, O my spouse, Drip as the honeycomb; Honey and milk are under your tongue; And the fragrance of your garments Is like the fragrance of Lebanon. ~ Anonymous

My mother was an immigrant from Lebanon to the United States. She came when she was 18 years old in 1920. ~ George J. Mitchell

Any assassination is an assassination. It's cold, it's terrible. I'm against any capital punishment. Only the Lord has the right to take away life because he's the giver of life. And assassination stands against democracy, against civilization, against a civilized life of people. Alas, the situation in Lebanon is very chaotic and many innocent people lost their lives because they have a state within a state, an army within an army and the respect for life is not high enough. ~ Shimon Peres

The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world. ~ Sara Paretsky

We believe that Lebanon has been the first real experience for all the Arabs. ~ Bashar Al-Assad

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

The main problem that we have in Lebanon, and in the region, is we don't have a real peace process and I think this is the main focal problem that we have in the region. ~ Saad Hariri

Take a look at the Supreme Court decision that just authorized an effort by U.S. claimants against Iran for terrorist acts. What are the terrorist acts? The terrorist acts are bombings of U.S. military installations in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, which Iran is claimed to have something to do with. Well suppose they did. That's not terrorism. I mean if we have a military base in Lebanon that while we're shelling Lebanese naval ships, the Navy is shelling Lebanese installations and somebody attacks [that's not terrorism]. ~ Noam Chomsky

We had Taiwan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Oman open their markets to our beef, and we're excited about that. ~ Mike Johanns

In the wake of World War I, however, the British and French took out their imperial pens and carved up what remained of the Ottoman dynastic empire, and created an assortment of nation-states in the Middle East modeled along their own. The borders of these new states consisted of neat polygons - with right angles that were always in sharp contrast to the chaotic reality on the ground. In the Middle East, modern Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan and the various Persian Gulf oil states all traced their shapes and origins back to this process; even most of their names were imposed by outsiders. In other words, many of the states in the Middle East today - Egypt being the most notable exception - were not willed into existence by their own people or developed organically out of a common historical memory or ~ Thomas L. Friedman

In the past there was a difference between the conditions in which Hizballah operated in Lebanon and the conditions of resistance operated in Palestine. ~ Ahmed Yassin

Nothing is safe [in Lebanon], as simple as that. ~ Dan Halutz

If I'm still walking, I am not dead. So I have to still walk and run towards the benefit of Lebanon. ~ Najib Mikati

I wish I had lost an arm or a leg. It would have been much easier than losing a part of my heart, which lives on, but now beats to a different rhythm. ~ Zeina Kassem

Fear and hatred are the legacy of Ronald Reagan. America's vision of peace and freedom [is being] blasted by the guns of the U.S. Navy in Lebanon, the guns of U.S. paratroopers in Grenada, and the guns of U.S. helicopters in Honduras and El Salvador. ~ Alan Cranston

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

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

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

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

I announce the resignation of the government, perhaps as the only way for Lebanon's main political blocs to assume their responsibilities and come together to pull Lebanon out of an unknown tunnel. ~ Najib Mikati

Because I know about the Holy Land, I've taught lessons about the Holy Land all my life, and - but you can't bring peace to Israel without giving the Palestinian also peace. And Lebanon and Jordan and Syria as well. ~ Jimmy Carter

The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it's likely to harm them. ~ Noam Chomsky

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

We must now make clear to Lebanon that it will not benefit from U.S. assistance and support as long as it harbors this brutal terrorist and murder. ~ Jim DeMint

Our priority is still the liberation of our land and the protection of Lebanon from the Israeli threat. ~ Hassan Nasrallah

Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank. ~ Nelson Mandela

I think you can take the recent war in Lebanon as a very good example of how this plays. The Americans and their allies clearly stood back - clearly in the eyes of Muslims - and basically said to the Israelis, "Do what you need to do, and we'll hold the ring for you and not call a cease-fire." That perception in the Muslim world very much played to the anti-American sentiment. ~ Michael Scheuer

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

I have defended Syria for a long time, so I was admiring Syria, I have admired your president very much. I hope at some point to be able to meet him and shake his hand. I think he is the greatest man in a very difficult period, and especially with what's going on right now, in terms of Lebanon and its relations with Syria. But absolutely, even from my perspective, and it shows you how the Zionist media around the world controls and affects all of us. Even those of us who are aware of it - it's subtly affecting. ~ David Duke

If you go into Hasakah province in northeast Syria, that's an area that's as big as Lebanon. It's controlled by the Kurds, the Christians and the moderate Sunnis. And there are airstrips and hotels. You could settle a lot of people there.All we would have to do is be willing to provide them with some weaponry, some defensive weaponry. ~ Benjamin Carson

I opposed the U.S. involvement in Lebanon. We ended up having to withdraw our marines after our barracks were blown up. ~ John Kasich

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the U.N. vetoed several resolutions right away, calling for an end to the fighting and so on, and that was a hideous invasion. ~ Noam Chomsky

There are only two ways to remove the president - if he violates the constitution or commits high treason. How could anyone accuse me of treason after I had terminated Israel's occupation of South Lebanon in 2000. ~ Emile Lahoud

If Israel sent the IDF three kilometers into Lebanon and started digging trenches and building bunkers it would make news all over the world. But Syria does it and everyone shrugs. Hardly anyone even knows it happened at all. ~ Michael Totten

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

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

Grief is shameless; it refuses to be ignored. If you let it have its way, it becomes fatal. If you try to remove it piece by piece, it only multiplies like a tumor. And if you try to fight it, it becomes like quicksand; you try to claw your way back to the surface, and for a second you feel the fresh air against your face, thinking you've survived, only to be pulled fiercely back down again, swallowed whole, nothing left. ~ Zeina Kassem