From: Ricshulman@aol.com

Hizbullah (which used to assassinate journalists) now guides journalists on tours of Lebanon. It seeks Media recognition as a guerrilla resistance movement, no longer a terrorist organization (NY Times, 3/2, A3 et al).

Whitewash is attainable. After all, journalists are beginning to call Arafat "president" instead of buccaneer. The "Times" always calls Arab terrorist organizations "guerrillas." The Israeli government and Media always refer to Hizbullah as "terrorist." Which term is accurate?

In the past couple of years, most Hizbullah attacks have been on Israeli military units. Should it still be deemed terrorist?

I think so. It still singles out Israeli civilian areas for bombardment, now and then. In the current round of fighting, Hizbullah did initiate attacks on civilian areas. The Israel-Lebanon Monitoring group has determined that Hizbullah's firing Katyusha rockets into an Israeli town and its firing of 70 mortar shells from a civilian village were violations of the agreed-upon rules of conduct (Arutz-7, 3/3).

Hizbullah sometimes attacks Israeli civilians with the excuse that it is retaliating against an inadvertent Lebanese civilian injury during an Israeli reprisal. Lebanese civilian injuries are inevitable, inasmuch as Hizbullah deliberately places its forces near the civilians. After facilitating civilian Lebanese casualties, how cynical is the indignation which Hizbullah expresses as justification for attacking Israeli towns!

The next question is whether the Hizbullah terrorists are Lebanese nationalists or Islamic imperialists. One might excuse an Israeli editor's thinking that the Arabs had limited objectives in Lebanon if not for the Arabs having struggled

against Zionist independence for almost 80 years.

Coached by Media experts and by Jews, including Israelis, the Arabs have learned to limit public mention of goals to limited goals. Since "Yediot Ahronot," for example, suffers from the Western myopia of seeing as far as the Arabs' long-range goals, and since it believes in the discredited policy of appeasement, it seizes upon the excuse of describing Arab strategy in terms of its short-term agenda. There is no excuse for this, inasmuch as the Arabs still rehearse their real goals amongst themselves and in easily de-coded cliches.

Aside from the Arabs' anti-Zionism, their aggressive culture would impel them to keep on attacking from any new vantage points relinquished by Israel. If Israel surrendered the Golan, Syria would attack from there and from Lebanon. Before Israel reclaimed the Golan, Syria did attack Israel from there. Considering how arbitrarily Syria's boundaries were set in the first place and that it is ruled by ambitious dictators, there is no reason to expect the Golan to satisfy Syria. Syria is like an amoeba, one which already engulfed most of Lebanon. As a state of Muslims, Syria cannot abide losing any territory nor allowing an independent non-Muslim state in their midst.

Just because we Jews want peace does not mean that Syria does. Jewish discussion of a "peace process" and what concessions to make to the Arabs has little echo from Damascus. The Arabs want to liquidate Israel, not assuage unjustified grievances. Arab culture is not one which cares about peace. That culture doesn't foster what we consider a rational and humane value for human life. Arabs wallow in gore, persist in terrorism, and glory in battlefield death (or at least in the deaths of their cannon fodder.)