Paul Zarembka writes:
I know about Hamas, but I don't know about Hezbollah. Please explain what is meant by the latter having electoral success.
I didn't really understand the 'subject' line, but OK.
=========================== The party won 14 of 128 seats in last year's national election to the Lebanese partliament. In alliance with Amal, the other Shia party, it won all 23 seats in Southern Lebanon, where there is a large Shia concentration. It has two ministers in the Cabinet. Seats in the Parliament are evenly divided on confessional lines between Christian sects on the one side and the Sunni, Shia, Druze, and other Muslim sects on the other. The Shia parties, representing 40% of the population, are thus way underrepresented. By all accounts, Hezbollah's popularity has soared in the wake of the Israeli invasion within all Muslim and Christian segments of the population. Even within the less democratic confines of Lebanon's confessional system, it would be interesting to see how Hezbollah would fare if parliamentary elections were held tomorrow, to say the least. The subject line was meant to convey a certain distaste for sanctimonious Jewish liberals like the author of the WSJ op-ed who purport to be for peace, universal peoplehood, and social justice - which they often identify as uniquely "Jewish" attributes - up to the point these values impinge on their unconditional support for a Jewish state, at which time they assume the role of victims painfully torn, they would have us believe, between their noble ideals and the need to defend Israel despite its land grabs and use of excessive military force against its weaker Arab neighbours. I could have alternatively called the subject line: "Spare me".
