"I am not saying that Muslims have not attacked and injured Israelis and Westerners in the name of Islam. But I am saying that much of what one reads and sees in the media about Islam represents the aggression as coming from Islam because that is what "Islam" is. Local and concrete circumstances are thus obliterated. In other words, covering Islam is a one-sided activity that obscures what "we" do and highlights instead what Muslims and Arabs by their very flawed nature are." -Edward Said

I think this comment speaks well to many views in the West that Hezbollah and Hamas are speaking solely out of an ideology of fundamentalist Islam. It might be helpful to trace the development of these groups...rooted in American supported Israeli wars of aggression/annexation. The situation you have today will not be solved by the classic wars Israel has been carrying out for the past half-century. The people of Palestine and Lebanon will not be silenced. This is because their cries are rooted in the demand for rights...rights to life, their homes, free movement, protection from annexation, abuse, arbitrary arrest...bombing. Such natural rights cannot be suppressed because they are at the root of our existence. Without them we will be driven to action, whether that be nonviolent protest and active work for our rights, in the best case, or militant/suicidal attacks. Hezbollah will only find more support when their children and other casualties rally once more hopeful hearts to their cause. Israel's bombing only demonizes them more in the sight of the whole world...excluding those who continue to believe in imperialism's divine righteousness. Take off the lenses of CNN/FOX/your government. Discover the history of this land and its people. I think were we to grow up in South Lebanon or Nablus, we would find ourselves not to far from their current stance in this ongoing. That being support for Hezbollah and Hamas- in a word the only groups massing active support for their rights, albeit at the cost of Israeli lives.

Might we in this light reform our handed imperialist views of these "flawed Islamist" people, and actually see them as people not unlike ourselves. Somehow by our hand and those we blindly aid we have created the call to violence if not "the need" especially in these currently abhorrent attacks. It is thus in our court to refrain from violence, or in the current case "silence", as the oppressor. Yes we are the oppressor... one only need see the US marked shells scattered throughout the dismembered streets of these places.