LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – "ISIS has plants in Baghdad. That’s why the archbishop wanted us gone. The other day, they discovered 150 bodies of people who had been shot. Nobody knows who did it, but we know that ISIS is already operating in Baghdad," White said in a recent interview.  White related how the Islamic State burst into the house of one of "his families" and offered the parents a choice: "Convert right now or we will kill your children in front of you."

Visiting a different family, White recalls, "The kids were told to convert or be killed. They refused. There were four of them from 15-years old and younger. They beheaded all of them," he related crying. "They were all our children. That is how evil these people are. So evil. They have no respect for anyone. The other day, they chopped a four-year old boy in half. He didn’t do anything. What can a four-year old boy do? He was just a boy ."

The 50-year-old Anglican vicar, from London is the president of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, an aid and advocacy group that works for peace between different religious groups in the Middle East. The foundation, which has 260 centers around the world, has worked with Nigerian Christians and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians and different groups in Germany.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has specified the types of equipment it can present to the Lebanese army in a letter to the foreign ministry and the foreign ministry has submitted the letter to Moqbel," a report by al-Akhbar said on Saturday.

"Iran is ready to deliver a number of TOW (anti-tank) missiles and its special rockets, night goggles, 120-mm mortar rounds, and munitions, 60-mm artillery and its shells, munitions of T55 and T62 tanks, munitions of 155-mm cannon and DShK (Dushka) and its munitions," the letter said.

The newspaper also reported that the US has sent official and unofficial messages to Lebanon and threatened Beirut not to accept the military gift, or Washington would stop its aids to the Lebanese army.

Last week, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani announced that Iran plans to gift a military tool or weapon to the Lebanese army in the near future.

Celebrating 50 years

The National Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon, 2759 N. Lipkey Road, North Jackson, is celebrating its 50th anniversary and the elevation of the shrine as a minor basilica by Pope Francis. The shrine becomes just the second Maronite Catholic basilica in the world, the other being the original shrine in Lebanon. The observance began Aug. 15, recalling that date in 1964 when ground was broken for the shrine. The celebration will conclude Aug. 15, 2015, on the golden anniversary of the dedication. Aug. 15 is significant because that is the observance of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. The shrine is a Maronite Catholic Church under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Maronite Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon in St. Louis, Mo.

Celebration details: A Divine Liturgy will be celebrated at 5 p.m. today followed by a banquet, by reservation, to be attended by some 400 people. The shrine will be consecrated by the Most Rev. A. Elias Zaidan, Bishop of the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles. Also attending will be Bishop Gregory Mansour, Eparchy of St. Maron, Brooklyn; and Bishop Robert Shaheen, bishop emeritus. Assisting chorbishops, monsignori, priests, deacons and subdeacons also will attend.

In the beginning: In June 1960, Maronite priests of America met in Washington and proposed a Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon. When the Rev. Peter Eid was returning to the Mahoning Valley, he suggested that the Maronites in the Youngstown and surrounding areas would buy land and build a shrine. He saw a sign for 75 acres for sale on Lipkey Road, but the owner did not want to sell to a Catholic. Father Eid enlisted fellow priests to pray a novena for the intention of the land, which the owner ended up selling to him. The shrine gave 10 acres and existing farmhouse to the Antonine Sisters, who established an adult day care.

  LONDON: Human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney, fresh from her marriage to Hollywood heart-throb George Clooney last month, is heading to Athens to advise the Greek government in its battle to repatriate the ancient Elgin Marbles statues from Britain. The Lebanese-born Alamuddin, who married Clooney in a star-studded ceremony in Venice, will meet Greece’s […]

  After her mysterious death shocked the public opinion, investigations revealed Thursday that the toddler girl Celine Rakan had been murdered more than a week ago at the hands of the family’s Ethiopian maid, who was caught red-handed by the child while stealing house items. “The Ethiopian domestic worker confessed to the Msaitbeh police station […]

  MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Six U.S. military planes arrived in the Ebola hot zone Thursday with more Marines, as West Africa’s leaders pleaded for the world’s help in dealing with a crisis that one called "a tragedy unforeseen in modern times." "Our people are dying," Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma lamented by videoconference […]

In 2007, Peter Kassig, a nineteen-year-old from Indianapolis, Indiana, left the Army and embarked on a period of deep searching. His deployment to Iraq, as a member of an élite Ranger battalion, earlier that year, had been cut short for medical reasons, but it had left a lasting impression: he knew that waging war was not for him.

Kassig returned to Indiana, where, in the course of the next five years, he tried college and marriage, but neither took. During a break from classes in the spring of 2012, he travelled to Lebanon, and, as the crisis in Syria swelled, he decided to stay in the region. On October 1, 2013, Kassig was captured by Syrian militants, and he has been held by them since. Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which has been steadily executing Western hostages, now says that he will be the next to be killed.

Kassig was one of many itinerant idealists in Beirut, Syrian and foreign alike, who were drawn to the uprising: students gave up their classes to stand in front of tanks, doctors left lucrative practices to treat patients on the front lines, Western journalists wanted to share the war with the world. What set Kassig apart from many of them was his intense drive and restless engagement with his surroundings. While friends drank beer at bars on Gemmayze Street, Kassig grabbed camping gear and set out for the mountains. He visited the Palestinian refugee camps that dot the landscape around Beirut, thinking about ways to bring solar power and other utilities into those neglected communities. Later, as the war in Syria encroached on Lebanon’s borders, sending desperate and wounded civilians into rural communities in the north, Kassig travelled to Tripoli to volunteer his services at a clinic, suturing wounds and comforting the dying. (He had received medical training in the Army and had studied to be an E.M.T. in Indiana.)

 

By Marwan Muasher and Kim Ghattas

Global debate in recent weeks has centred on United States President Barack Obama’s initiative to prevent the advance of the Islamic State. But another force has emerged as an unlikely rampart against the barbaric and delusional leaders of the self-proclaimed caliphate: Lebanese pluralism. Indeed, despite the shortcomings of its political system, Lebanon can provide a template for managing cultural diversity and rejecting radicalism in an unstable and fragmented setting.

In August, the Lebanese army showed considerable fortitude as it fought Islamic State militants in the village of Arsal, near the border with Syria. Though the army has sustained heavy losses — including two soldiers that were beheaded — it has managed to compel the militants, who were operating inside a Syrian refugee camp, largely to withdraw. And it continues to fight when the need arises. International aid is now flowing towards the army, with Saudi Arabia alone pledging more than US$3 billion (S$3.83 billion).

But the international community should move beyond military aid to support Lebanon’s real strengths: Its moderate, pluralist and vibrant society. After all, that is what has enabled the country, against all odds, to avoid all-out conflict, making it a beacon — however faint — of hope in a crisis-ravaged region.

HOW THE LEBANESE RALLIED TOGETHER

Lebanon’s resilience has confounded expectations, given its lack of a shared national identity — a result of deep social divisions that resemble, to some extent, those besetting Iraq — and notoriously weak state institutions. In fact, Lebanon’s political system has been paralysed by disagreements over Syria’s civil war, the consequences of which have been pouring over the Lebanese border. The country has not had a President since May, the Parliament is not functioning and the Cabinet is practically powerless.

  BEIRUT: About a minute from the end of Richard Strauss’ tone poem “Don Juan,” the music reaches a climax, then comes to an abrupt and dramatic halt. It is clearly not the end of the piece – it doesn’t sound remotely like an ending – yet, as the members of the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra […]