RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) - Nearly all Palestinians in the
West Bank and Gaza back Hezbollah against Israel and would oppose the unconditional release of captured Israeli soldiers to shorten the war, a poll has showed.
Hezbollah had the support of 97 percent of Palestinians, compared with three percent who said they were opposed to the group, according to the poll.
It said that 93 percent of Palestinians thought that two Israeli soldiers captured in a July 12 cross-border raid that sparked the war in Lebanon should not be released unconditionally even if it means an easing of the conflict.
Remember, previous polls showed only 4% of Palestinian Arabs opposed terror.
So no matter how the world wants to spin the Palestinian Arabs as a mostly peaceful people with a tiny minority of extremists, no matter how many politicians and clueless editorial writers say that Hamas' election was a fluke and most Palestinian Arabs only voted for them because of their social programs, just remember this.
When Arabs are killing Jewish innocents, they cheer.
MAJDEL KRUM, Israel (Reuters) - "Hizbollah has raised up our heads and lifted our spirits", said Israeli Arab Ali Manna as he mourned two nephews killed in a rocket attack by the Lebanese guerrilla group.What kind of a sick, depraved society cheers when their own people die, as long as innocent Jews die too?
Despite the fact that Arabs make up a third of the 48 people killed by rocket fire on northern Israel, the sympathies of some of the Arab minority lie very much with the Lebanese group rather than the Jewish state.
Manna's nephews, Mohammad Manna, aged 25, and Baha Fayyad, 30, were killed when a rocket hit the town of Majdel Krum last week.
Although Arabs and Jews are coming under the same hail of rockets and sometimes share the same bomb shelters, the war has further strained ties between the communities.
"Hizbollah's popularity has increased immensely among the Arabs in Israel," said Rawda Atallah, head of the Arab Cultural Association in Haifa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city that has been one of the main targets of Hizbollah attacks.
"For the first time there is a sense of regained dignity. They feel for the first time a group is resisting and standing steadfast in the face of the Israeli army," she said.
Just after the start of the conflict with Hizbollah, sparked by the group's abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12, some Arabs would rush out and cheer when rockets fell on neighboring Jewish towns These days, they are more likely to take cover when the warning sirens sound. But the fear of coming under fire has not discouraged those who supported Hizbollah.Some Israeli commentators have suggested that Arabs should be stripped of citizenship if they support Hizbollah.
Israeli media have published reports alleging that Israeli Arabs are colluding with Hizbollah and even helping the guerrillas direct their rocket fire through text messages.
How can anyone expect a real peace when there is such abject, naked hatred?
In one sense, this is even sicker than cheering suicide terror. At least suicide bombers chose to be "martyrs" - but here, some Arab Israelis celebrate the deaths of their own relatives who did not want to be killed. This is their "dignity."
Sick, twisted bigots.