Some of Windsor, Canada’s Lebanese community has decided that they speak for all Canadian Lebanese immigrants and have put up a billboard of Hizbollah featuring Hassan Nasrallah, and claiming that Hezbollah wants peace.
Members of the Jewish and Lebanese Christian communities in Windsor are outraged by the appearance of a billboard that appears to promote Hezbollah — an organization the Canadian government considers terrorist.
“That organization is banned in Canada,” said Harvey Kessler, executive director of the Windsor Jewish Community Centre. “How can that billboard be up in Windsor when it represents a terrorist organization which is banned under the laws of Canada?”
Located at the southwest corner of Marion Avenue and Wyandotte Street East, the billboard does not mention Hezbollah by name, but features a central image of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the controversial political and military group that represents Lebanese Shia Muslims and has clashed with Israeli troops for more than 20 years.
Kessler said he feels Nasrallah represents “the opposite of peace.”
“It should be offensive to all people living in Windsor. It should be offensive not only to the Jewish community, but to any Canadian.”
Emile Nabbout, president of the Windsor branch of the Lebanese Christian political group Kataeb, said he also thinks Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and he feels the billboard creates a misconception of the views of Windsor’s Lebanese community.
“We really are not in support or in favour of that billboard and it should be removed ASAP,” Nabbout said.
The billboard’s sponsors defended their actions.
One of the people responsible for a controversial billboard depicting Hezbollah’s leader said he did it to honour freedom fighting families back home — and it’s their Canadian right to do so.
“In Canada we want peace,” said Hussein Dabaja, a Lebanese-born Hezbollah supporter. “We’re not trying offend anybody. We have freedom of speech. It’s a free country. We can do anything. Every Lebanese in Canada has somebody that died in Lebanon, the freedom fighters. Who is Hezbollah? Our brothers, our family, our parents, our friends. We came to Canada and they stayed there to fight.”
[…] Dabaja said the billboard was not meant to be an anti-Jewish statement.
“People who have something against the billboard don’t like Hezbollah and they don’t want peace,” he said.
Yeah, they’re lying about what the sign means.
“By just analyzing the picture, there is no doubt in my mind this is a Hezbollah activity,” he added.
Printed in English on the left side of the billboard are the words: “Lebanese and Arab communities in Windsor city congratulate the Lebanese people for their steadfastness and endeavor to establish peace in Lebanon.”
But Nabbout said that Arabic writing which appears on the right side of the billboard does not match the English translation. According to Nabbout, the Arabic writing makes a reference to fighting.
“What they mean by ‘fight’ is basically ‘guerrilla’ — using arms and weapons,” Nabbout said. “Basically, there is a very specific word… That is a definite difference between the Arabic and the English.”
And today, the sign has been removed.
The billboard depicting Hezbollah’s controversial leader, which caused an uproar across Windsor, was quietly replaced Monday morning with an advertisement for a car dealership.
So, about that peace thing… You mean like this?
Hizbollah is buying up large tracts of land owned by Christians and other non-Shias in southern Lebanon as the militant group rebuilds its defences in preparation for a new war with Israel, The Sunday Telegraph has been told.
The land grab is thought to be driven by the Iranian-backed guerrillas’ efforts to rearm themselves and fortify the strategically important ravines north of the Litani River, just north of the front line in last year’s 34-day conflict with its Jewish neighbour.
Here, Hizbollah has been free to press forward without harassment from the 13,000 United Nations peacekeepers and 20,000 Lebanese army troops who were deployed south of the Litani as part of the ceasefire agreement that ended the conflict.
Just south of the Litani, the UN is conducting hundreds of patrols each day in a bid to keep Hizbollah weapons out of the area, but the peacekeepers’ mandate ends at the river.
The Lebanese army, meanwhile, is about 50 per cent Shia and seems to be turning a blind eye to Hizbollah activities north of the river.
Yeah, that’s “peace,” all right. It’s known as the peace of the grave.
Lebanese government turns a blind eye to war preparations on its soil it incurs the blame for any attacks Hizbollah makes from Lebanon. That is actual international law, as opposed to the fanciful nonsense that gets shreiked at the US and Israel by professors and UN or EU corrupticrats to blame them for non-existent infractions of international law.
The USA learned this lesson the hard way in the 1860s, when New York allowed Irish Fenians to make guerilla attacks on the British in Canada across the lake. When diplomatic protests failed to accomplish anything the British Army crossed the lake and destroyed the Fenian base. When the US protested we found that we did not have a legal leg to stand on.
If Lebanon wants to be a sovereign nation it had better act that way. If it wants to fight Israel it will have to face the consequences. If they do not exert their soveriegn authority to stop Hezbollah they make their country the battleground for others, and they have no standing to complain.
Nabbout is the one who is lying: I have no real opinion on the billboard – one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, etc, etc – but the translation is 100% accurate.
It says, literally and uncontroversially, that the city congratulates (“tuheni”) the steadfastness (“sumoudho”) of the Lebanese people, and their aspirations/endeavours (“sa’eeyho”) to achieve peace (“Ihlal as-salaam”) in Lebanon.
Whatever you think about the billboard or the characters portrayed – in fact, only Nassrallah is from Hezbollah, the others are Lebanese of all stripes, including a leading Christian leader Michael Aoun – it is important to report ACCURATELY what this poster says and shows…
… otherwise you’re just as bad as the propagandists from the other side.
As an Arab, Mr Nabbout certainly knows the misrepresentation he is seeking to peddle….