NPR buries interesting details in the middle of a story about Lebanese-Americans:
New Support for HezbollahSo half of the Dearborn Muslim community attends demonstrations with explicit death threats against Jews. NPR calls them "strident."Osama Siblani runs the Arab-American News, America's largest such newspaper. He says the fighting is fueling anger in his community -- not at Hezbollah, but at the Bush administration.
"The anger that you see in the Arab community, you do not see in the eyes of the American community," says Siblani. "They're not viewing the same thing. And the perspective you get out of Jazeera or Arabiya, you do not get it out of Fox News or CNN."
Siblani says many in the community who opposed Hezbollah before the fighting have now changed their minds. The U.S. State Department has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Siblani disagrees.
"The terrorist here is the Bush administration," he says.
Daily Demonstrations
Daily protests occur in Dearborn. At one recent demonstration, organized by the Congress of Arab-Americans, about 1,000 people attended. College-age men asked, in call and response fashion, "Who is your army?" Protestors responded: "Hezbollah." "Who is your leader?" they were asked. "Nasrallah," the chanters responded. Many carried placards of the Hezbollah leader. A few days earlier at an even larger demonstration, more than 15,000 turned out, about half of Dearborn's Arab community.
Those who regularly attend the demonstrations tend to be the most strident.
"Oh, Jews, remember Khaibar," the marchers chant. "The army of the Prophet will return."
The line is a reference to Khaibar, a Jewish town north of Medina that, according to Islamic tradition, was overtaken by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. Once defeated, the surviving Jews of Khaibar were forced into serfdom. Two decades later, they were expelled from the Arabian peninsula.
As usual, Debbie Schlussel is all over this story, and her regular reports covering the Muslim communities in Michigan are chilling.
One must also ask: if the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, how come the biggest terror supporters almost invariably come from the largest Muslim communities, and terrorists invariably hide in those same communities? One would think that the peaceful majority would have a moderating effect.