Israel downs unmanned aircraft

[Alamuti Lotus]

35. let me clarify.. (long)

I don't have a wikipedia link (is that even a valid source to anyone?), but I know the history.. they are two entirely seperate and unrelated organizations.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a group formed by Fathi Shaqaqi and Abdelaziz Awda in the 1970s, among others, currently led by Ramadan Shallah after Shiqaqi was murdered by Mossad agents in Malta in 1995. Based from a more radical branch of the Muslim Brotherhood than Hamas (roughly from the same climate that produced the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group that assassinated the collaborator Sadat and eventually merged with al-Qai'dah and marched into obscurity and splintering as a result), they focus more on armed resistance than on statecraft & charity work. Shiqaqi was a fairly prolific theorist on the armed combat aspect of the conflict at a time when early Hamas leaders focused mainly on building their following through humanitarian work in collaboration with the Israeli occupation forces. It's an ugly period of time that neither Hamas nor Israel really likes to admit really happened, but it did. The PLO/Fateh was more of a secular/leftist/revolutionary movement (now they are without idealogy except collaboration for profit), PIJ/Hamas represented the forces oriented largely by religion, and the Brotherhood was the more organized force for this ideology at the time due to its ties to the parent group in Egypt and funding from Gulf oil tyrants who supported the reactionary forces against the potential for leftist/communist movements gaining sway anywhere.

Some branches of the Brotherhood (not all, and not dominantly so) were inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran and Khumayni(RA) reached out to them at the time in the spirit of a more pan-Islamic political revolution than focusing on any one particular sect or another; Saudi oil money at the time and especially now made sure it was always about particular sects, so the gesture was ultimately less than successful. The deeply conservative (and ancient, these fuckers were old even at that time) leadership of the Brotherhood preferred to keep tight their reigns of power over the group, and refused Khumayni(RA)'s offers of friendship at a time when the US-Zionist pet dictatorship in Egypt really could have been overthrown before Mubarak and his generals could have really cemented power. Instead of working for the best interests of the revolution, they got 30 years of the Mubarak dictatorship before they got their own chance to fuck things up in power now that they're even older. But I'm getting off track..

All the same, PIJ is closer to Iran (I think may even officially be based there now that Damascus has gotten noisy) than Hamas (which is now in the process of being fully coopted by the wahhabi dictatorship of Qatar), but officially of the Sunni schools of doctrine. Unrelated to the Lebanese group (see below), except in choice of what goes at the top of official company letterhead. They have a presence in Lebanon because several thousand Palestinians live there as refugees, and many of which are affiliated with the group. Occasionally fighting takes place on the border from PIJ members and other armed Palestinian factions with a presence there, but Hizbu'llah largely keeps a lid on those things. Some of the more firebrand Wahhabi/Salafi militants there (composed mainly of foreigners with a few locals on the Saudi payroll) greatly resent Hizbu'llah for this, and there has occasionally been conflicts between them based on this and other facts. The conflicts between these forces are much deeper now that the volume has been turned up next door.

The so-called "Islamic Jihad Organization" was (past tense) a shadowy front group primarily led by Imad Mughniyah and Mustafa Badreddin, composed mainly of Lebanon-based militants of an Iraqi Shiite organization called al-Daawa (currently the ruling party in Iraq, oddly enough--and the history of this group is truly fascinating, from its birth in the 50s/60s, to its period of blowing up embassies and being called by the US as the "most dangerous terrorist group in the world"--they were fighting important US ally Saddam Husayn at the time and fighting the Gulf dictators--, to its present collaboration period). Though Mughniyah is later referred to as a high commander of Hizbu'llah's military wing, at the time he was very independent and conducted a variety of operations completely seperate (and occasionally quite harmful to) the nascent Hizbu'llah command structure, then led by a now-grossly unpopular figure named Subhi Tufayli. Tufayli was a bit of a reckless firebrand at the time and following his fall from power in favor of the martyred Abbas Musawi and eventually Hasan Nasrallah. Tufayi has since made occasional trouble for Hizbu'llah and the state with his limited, but heavily armed, following in the Bekaa. Haven't seen much of him lately, but I don't think he's dead yet.

The IJO group, such as it was, conducted strategic kidnappings and high-profile bombings against foreign forces in Lebanon. They mostly made headlines (mostly of the "bad" kind), and did not really alter facts on the ground--aside from the smoldering ruins of certain embassies and foreign invader Marines installations. The famous kidnappings were very specifically intended to be a reaction and resolution to the kidnapping of many al-Daawa/other members in Kuwait (google "Kuwait 17" for an elaboration on this situation), Saddam Husayn's Iraq, and by the zionist occupation forces in Lebanon, but was viewed with negativity from the formal Hizbu'llah command structure and their primary backers in Iran. The organization's independent wings were eventually clipped and absorbed under the formal Hizbu'llah command structure following the ascent of their truly brilliant present leader Hassan Nasrallah. They were never more than a shadowy front for the operations of a couple prolific commanders to begin with, but have nothing to do with the Palestinian organization of similar name.

As an aside, nothing published by Ynet should really be taken too seriously. Merely referring to al-Mayadeen as "Hizbu'llah-affiliated" displays their relative absence of valid knowledge of the matter, and the Israeli writers cloud their piece with inflammatory, biased terminology that is not news reporting but mere editorializing. They probably refer to al-Akhbar newspaper in the same terms, despite the slight hostility that in fact exists between these papers and the party. It is slightly pro-Syrian gov't oriented in the present environment, but anything that isn't overflowing with Saudi/Qatari oil money and supporting the so-called "revolutionaries" is slandered, smeared, and crudely generalized as such.