BRETT REDMAYNE-TITLEY—With the last shot of the 2006 war fired and the IDF moving back into Israel, Lebanon began to heal its wounds. At the same time, Hizbullah, that had so successfully turned back the tides of war, began to rebuild- this time in new ways. Using the respect it had gained by fighting for all of Lebanon, while the Lebanese army looked on from safe havens to the north, Hizbullah began the decade-long process of moving from purely a defensive military to a full faceted political organization. Leader Nasrallah has been consistent, methodical and unwavering in these nationalist goals and by doing so has dragged the previously western aligned Lebanese political parties into having to similarly support their country first or die at the ballot box. All signs point to resounding success.
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THOMAS FAZI—“Experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza show that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century. Researchers say the pace of deaths reported in Gaza during the Israeli bombardment has been exceptionally high. People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of US-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups.
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EDITOR—“I have worked in hospitals in Afghanistan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Cambodia… but I have never operated on so many injured children as I am now in the Gaza Strip. In the burns unit of the European Hospital we now have 78 patients, nearly two-fifths of them children under five. I have never seen anything like it. I have been in many war contexts where the type of wounds are the same but the number is huge. We never leave the hospital. We work round the clock. We do operations with minimal anaesthesia. If we run out, we can’t operate but there is no clear line. There are a lot of people crying, screaming with pain, but we don’t have enough analgesics. We keep them for the kids or very severe cases….”
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ABBAS JUMA—In his memoirs, Charles de Gaulle wrote that France brought civilization to Africa, helped it build nation states and educated the elites, teaching them to act based on principles of human rights and freedoms (and, of course, French interests). At the same time, the founder of the Fifth Republic wrote that Paris was supposed to become a “specially privileged partner” for Africans. In other words, the colonizers wanted to take leave of Africa but preserve their influence over it. This is probably what de Gaulle meant by “privileged partnership.”
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ALEX LO—As a former envoy for the island in Washington with plenty of connections with both the Republican and Democratic parties, Hsiao will make the perfect conduit in Taipei for anti-China hawks from the US. Instead of moderating from Tsai’s constant cross-strait provocations, the pair may well worsen them.
