"... When the bombs started falling on the Shiites, they assumed that the American 'referee' had taken sides against them ..."

Notes on the late Muhamad Hussein Fadlallah from

Mideastwire:
"..... One should consider comments by former secretary of state Colin Powell regard-
ing the 1983 marine barracks bombing, which killed 241 U.S. service personnel: “What
we tend to overlook in such situations,” he writes in his autobiography, “is that other
people will react much as we would. When the shells started falling on the Shiites, they
assumed the American ‘referee’ had taken sides against them. And since they could not
reach the battleship, they found a more vulnerable target, the exposed Marines at the
airport.” Recent comments by the marines’ commanding officer at the time are perhaps
even more illustrative of Powell’s point that, instead of being a simple terrorist attack,
the bombing was part and parcel of exactly the kind of brutal conflict that the United
States had decidedly entered with its shelling of opposition areas. “It is noteworthy that
the United States provided direct naval gunfire support––which I strongly opposed for a
week––to the Lebanese Army at a mountain village called Suq al-Garb on 19 September
and that the French conducted an air strike on 23 September in the Bekaa Valley.
American support removed any lingering doubts of our neutrality, and I stated to my staff
at the time that we were going to pay in blood for this decision.” ?......
“relations between Nasrallah
and Fadlallah are strained, and they have met only once since al-Hariri’s assassination.
On [one] issue [Nasrallah’s pre-election fatwa calling for Shiites to vote for the Shiite

list] in particular, Fadlallah appeared to be seeking to curb efforts by Hizbollah to assert

a hegemonic position among Shiites”—Fadlallah having vehemently criticized the fatwa
as irrational and ultimately leading to corruption. ICG adds that Fadlallah, “has also been
critical of Hizbollah’s close ties to Iran, in particular its relationship to Supreme Leader
Ali Khameini, considered by the movement as its marjaa taqlid. He paid a heavy price
for his critique: he was harshly attacked and pressured by Hizbollah and Iran.” ?.."