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Hizbullah, Zionism and the Ideology of late Imperial America

by By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN Friday, Aug. 11, 2006 at 10:14 PM

Awakening the Resistance

Hizbullah, Zionism and the Ideology of late Imperial America

Awakening the Resistance

By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

Thousands of Lebanese, Palestinians and others made a kind of pilgrimage to Fatima’s gate in the summer of 2000 to celebrate the end of Israel’s 22 -year occupation of south Lebanon. ‘Fatima’s gate’ denoted a stretch of land on the Lebanon-Israel border newly controlled by Hizbullah after it pursued the retreating Israeli forces back into Israel. Yellow Hizbullah flags flew everywhere. The atmosphere was festive and light. People set up souvenir stands selling Hizbullah memorabilia – flags, key-rings, postcards, pens – to commemorate the historic event. Families strolled up and back along the road pa! rallel to the border, pointing out the Israeli towns in the distance. Friends strode along together talking politics and stopping to stare at the last wreckages of the event, the burned out jeeps and cars, the bullet holes and shrapnel wounds in the facades of the walls and buildings left behind by the retreating Israelis. Parents and children alike gazed at these remains; some took pictures posed next to them. Others passed by more solemnly, wary of disturbing the near-sanctity of these symbols of struggle and of the years of adversity they recalled.

Across a stretch of land demarcated by barbed wire and signposts stood a lone Israeli watch-tower. From Fatima’s gate one could just make out the shapes of helmeted soldiers within, behind a small rectangular window of bullet-proofed glass: the hapless targets of rocks hurled continually across the border by all who could manage to throw them and the cheering on-lookers applauding each lob.

The summer of 2000 has taken on the transient quality of a landscape brightened by a break in the clouds for an all too brief interlude.

That was the summer Lebanon began to awaken again; to bloom into a metropolis of culture and scandal, nightlife and slums, commerce and tourism, stretching, yawning and weeping with sorrow and relief. The stiflingly hot streets of Haret Hreik in the south suburbs were neighbors the of the Bourj al-Barajneh, Chatila and Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camps all full of the squalor and pulsing of life, the worlds within worlds of poverty, hope, despair and faith. There in the slums of the city a young, intelligent doctor from the camp hospital invited me to his home to meet his mother and sister and to explain why he, a Sunni Muslim and a Palestinian, had chosen to become a member of Hizbullah. Safwat was an anomaly then, or so I believed. But now, when I traverse the str! eets of Haret Hreik in my mind, the fruit and vegetable stands, the phone stores and electronics shops, the clothing stores, restaurants and cafes, the banks and Internet stops, the grocery and household supply marts where one could purchase all her daily necessities, it is clear that the seeds of a vast resistance had just begun to germinate. It was unclear to me then just how fully it would bloom; just how tenacious its roots would become.

Today, the bustling streets of Haret Hreik are gone. Where families lived and thrived, struggled and laughed, is an emptiness of rubble –the bombed ruins of a greedy imperial war that stops at nothing. Today Lebanon stands behind Hizbullah. The Lebanese have become the bitter, cheering on-lookers of the resistance which lobs its out-dated missiles relentlessly across the border as the Israeli war machine refuels again and again. But US precision guided bombs, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, unmanned aerial drones, drones to guide the bombs, helicopters armed with missiles, F-16s, gun ships and state-of-the-art armed and trained ground forces with night vision surveillance and combat goggles have succeeded in uniting far more than the Lebanese behind the daring defiance of Hassan Nasrallah.

Sixteen years of civil war, of murderous sectarian acrimony, of inter-ethnic killing, suspicion and paranoia and today –after 28 days of hell unleashed upon it by the arrogant racism of a militant and ideological Zionism— 89% of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims, 80% of its Christians, 80% of its Druze and 100% of its Shiite populations support Hizbullah’s resistance against Israel and the United States.

At least as telling are statistics showing that 97% of Palestinians support Hizbullah’s position toward Israel including 95% of Christian Palestinians. Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories and Iran are not the only places where support for Hizbullah has increased dramatically in the last month. Among the populations of the American-backed Arab states, notably Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, there is also widespread support. Indeed, seizing ! upon the corruption and obsequiousness of these regimes and their tacit support of Israel, Nasrallah intoned in a recent address, “there will be no place for [you] if you abandon your moral and national responsibility…. For the sake of your thrones I say to you gather [up your humanity] and act for one day in order to stop this aggression on Lebanon.” He understands, as do they, that their unwillingness to condemn the insouciant murder of more than a thousand people will cost them dearly. Suddenly these merciless, sell-out regimes are left scrambling to help author a ceasefire agreement less embarrassing than the Bolton-Gillerman diktat that left the Israeli military in place in south Lebanon while seeking to disarm Hizbullah.!

Are we really surprised by the vast, Hizbullah-led resistance? By the linkage it makes with people across the boundaries of national insult, defeat and humiliation? Are we really surprised that 40 years after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights and 6 years into its continued occupation of the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon that people are have had enough? Are we really surprised that 3 and a half years into the US occupation and devastation of Iraq, 5 years after the US invasion and destruction of Afghanistan and decades of killings, intrusions, violations, abductions, assassinations, meddling, economic sanctions, pilfering and exploitation of the people, lands and resources of the Middle East that the reckless, racist, power-drunk mercenaries of empire should finally be met with a legitimate popular resistance? –not an outgrowth of displaced fana! ticism, not an al-Qaeda gang of killers, but the beginnings of a grassroots pan-Arab and pan-Islamic movement seeking to heal the wounds of perpetual subjugation?

What message have the purveyors of state power brought with them that their listeners should wish to continue to bow in subservience? The conditions are not right for a ceasefire, say George Bush and Condoleeza Rice. First burn down the house and then we can discuss how to put out the flames. We are not just fighting Hizbullah, says Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, but Syria and Iran as well. Accept our vision of a Starbucked-MidEast; a Middle East with sanitized Muslims appointed by the corporate board of Ziocondriacs who break into hives at the words “Islam” and “Arab;” whose peace imposes fast food franchises; whose freedom is the right to purchase arms at the Great Mall of the Gulf States; whose riches are the oil w! ells mortgaged to Texas; and whose water resources run through the processing plants of the Ariel and Gush Etzion settlement blocs.

They tell you that a Jewish state is democratic but a Muslim state is evil; that Palestinians living in Palestine have no rights and no state but Jews living in the rest of the world can ‘return’ and live there as rights’-bearing citizens; that Jesus wants you in Palestine unless you are a Palestinian or a Muslim; that Washington, London and Tel Aviv can produce nuclear warheads but that Tehran is a global threat for daring to enrich uranium; that legitimate resistance is terrorism but state terrorism is “self-defense”; that the desert state of Syria is Nasrallah’s courier and puppeteer but that Washington is an honest broker and a partner for peace; that Iran is a rogue state for arming Hizbullah but that America is freedom-loving for arming Tel Aviv; that we cannot talk to Damascus or Tehran unless they ! renounce themselves out of existence first; that expansionism and regime change are necessary for American and Israeli national security but that the Arab and Muslim winners of free and fair democratic elections should be arrested in the middle of the night and imprisoned in secret police detention centers for attempting to rule.

They tell you that three soldiers captured by Hamas and Hizbullah are worth the collective destruction of Palestine and Lebanon but that civilians kidnapped by Israel are not worth the price of a printed page; that the tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails and the hundreds of Afghanis, Pakistanis, Arabs and others at Guantanamo Bay are worth less than the abandoned pets of the residents of North Israel fleeing to the bomb shelters. They sing sanctimonious hymns to the glory of international law as they veto it into the oblivion of a million shell fragments.

Don’t count the blackened bodies of the peach farmers of Qaa laid out in the afternoon sun along the roadside. Don’t weep for the petrified, death-stolen children under the concrete rubble of Qana. Don’t suffer the incinerated of Marwaheen, the blasted of Srifa and Khiam and Tibnine. Don’t list the villages lost or the homes destroyed; don’t number the dead of Beirut and Tyre. Don’t listen to the wailing on the beaches of Gaza. Don’t mourn the lost lives of Khan Yunis or Beit Hanoun, people of the sand and the dust; of corrugated iron and uprooted orange groves. Don’t number the fallen in Nablus or Jenin: the old shepherds, the young rebels, the pregnant wives and weary husba! nds, the somber schoolgirls and the angry boys in the lost alleys of the camps. We will hear all of their voices again; see their likenesses in the shattered streets of the Levant. They will gather beneath the cedar and the minaret; carry with them the kuffiyeh and the Qur’an; they will speak the language of the resistance that we have breathed into them like fire.

Jennifer Loewenstein is a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University's Refugee Studies Centre. She has lived and worked in Gaza City, Beirut and Jerusalem and has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, where she has worked as a free-lance journalist and a human rights activist. She can be reached at: amadea311@earthlink.net
















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The Buck Stops Where?

by By URI AVNERY Friday, Aug. 11, 2006 at 10:16 PM

The Buck Stops Where?

Who? Me?!

By URI AVNERY

Today,the war entered its fifth week. Hard to believe: our mighty army has now been fighting for 29 days against a "gang" and "terrorist organization", as the military commanders like to describe them, and the battle has still not been decided.

Yesterday, military sources in Israel announced that 400 of the 1200 Hizbullah "terrorists" have been killed. That's to say, a mere 1200 fighters have been standing against the tens of thousands of our soldiers, who are equipped with the most advanced weapons on earth, and hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens are still under rocket fire while our soldiers continue to be killed.

WHO? ME? Now everybody already admits that something basic has gone wrong in this war. The proof: the War of the Generals, that previously started only after the conclusion of a war, has now become public while the war is still going on.

The Chief-of-Staff, Dan Halutz, has found the culprit: Udi Adam, the chief of the Northern Command. He has practically dismissed him in the middle of the battle. That is the old ploy of the thief shouting "Stop thief!" After all, it is obvious that the person mainly to blame for the failures of the war is Halutz himself, with his foolish belief that Hizbullah could be defeated by aerial bombardment alone.

But it is not only at the top of the army that mutual accusations are flying around. The army command accuses the government, which is retaliating in kind.

On the eve of his downgrading, Udi Adam publicly accused the government of tying his hands. Meaning: the government is guilty. Ehud Olmert did not remain silent and declared that the army had not submitted any plans for widening the campaign. That's to say: if you are incompetent, don't blame me!

To justify himself, Olmert added a significant sentence: "From the first day of the war, the government has not refused the army a single request!" In other words, it is the Chief-of-Staff who makes policy and conducts the war, while the political leadership just rubber stamps everything that the army "requests".

But this is a sterile debate, because it ignores the main fact, which is becoming clearer from day to day: it is altogether impossible to win this war. That's why nothing is working as planned.

PLAN? WHAT PLAN? Years ago the military commentator of Haolam Hazeh, the magazine I was editing at the time, got fed up with the boast the our army excels in improvisation. "The ability to improvise," he wrote, "Is just another name for our inability to plan."

According to the reports, the Israeli army has been preparing for this war for more than three years. The last exercise took place a month before the war started and included the invasion of Lebanon by land forces. It is clear that the command did not anticipate a campaign that would last for four weeks and more. What the hell! After all, it was against a small gang of terrorists. This just confirms the dictum that even the best war plan does not survive the first day of war.

THE WAR OF THE POOR. It is quite clear that the army command's wonderful plan did not include the defense of the rear within rocket range. There was no plan for the solution of the hundred and one problems emanating from the attack on Hizbullah: from the protection of the civilian population from thousands of missiles to the necessary economic arrangements when a third of the country's population is living under bombardment and is paralysed.

Now the public is crying out, and soon the ministers and generals will have to try to find somebody to blame for that, too.

For this war is being fought on the backs of the weak, who cannot afford to "evacuate themselves" from the rockets' area. The rich and well-to-do have got out long ago - in Israel as well as in Lebanon. The poor, the old, the sick and the handicapped remain in the shelters. They are the main sufferers. But that does not cause them to oppose the war. On the contrary, they are the most vociferous group in Israel demanding "to go to the end", "to smash them", "to wipe them out".

That is not new, either: the weakest in society always want to feel that they belong to the strongest nation. Those who have nothing become the biggest patriots. And they are also the main victims.

Those who initiated and planned the war cynically flatter the inhabitants of the North, who are stuck there, calling them "heroes" and lauding their "wonderful steadfastness".

UNITED CYNICS. Now the end of the killing depends on the UN.

David Ben-Gurion called it contemptuously "UNO-SHMUNO" (UM-SHMUM in Hebrew). In the 1948 war, he violated its cease-fire resolutions whenever it suited him (as a soldier I took part in some of these actions). He and all his successors over the years have violated almost all the UN decisions concerning us, arguing (not without justification) that the organization was dominated by an automatic anti-Israeli majority, consisting of the Soviet bloc and Third World countries.

Since then, the situation has changed. The Soviet bloc has collapsed and the UN has become an arm of the US State department. Kofi Annan has become a janitor and the real boss is the US delegate, John Bolton, a raving neo-con and therefore a great friend of Israel. He wants the war to go on.

The name of the American game is: to give the Israeli army more days, and perhaps more weeks, to go on with the war, to pursue the mirage of victory, while pretending to make great efforts to stop the war. It seems that Olmert has promised Bush to win after all, if given time.

The new proposals of the Beirut government have lit red lights in Jerusalem. The Lebanese government proposes to deploy 15 thousand Lebanese troops along the border, declare a cease-fire and get the Israeli troops out of Lebanon. That is exactly what the Israeli government demanded at the start of the war. But now it looks like a danger. It could stop the war without an Israeli victory.

Thus a paradoxical situation has arisen: the Israeli government is rejecting a proposal that reflects its original war aims, and instead demands the deployment of an international force, which it objected to strenuously at the start of the war. That's what happens when you start a war without clear and achievable aims. Everything gets mixed up.

GENERALS AND COMMENTATORS. I have a proposal to solve all the problems caused by this war: to switch the generals and the commentators.

The generals have not excelled in conducting the war. But they and their comrades, the ex-generals, have proved themselves excellent commentators. They have crowded everyone else out of the studios, created a national consensus and silenced all real criticism. (Except one sort of criticism: Why do we not advance deeper into Lebanon? Why haven't we reached the Litani? Why don't we go beyond the Litani? Why don't we eradicate the Lebanese villages from the face of the earth?)

On the other side, the broadcasts prove that the military commentators know exactly how to wage the war. They have forceful opinions and plenty of expert advice. They know when to advance and where, which troops to deploy and what weapons to use.

So why not let them conduct the war?

MACHOSTAN. The battery of generals that appears every evening on all TV channels in order to give a "briefing" (a.k.a. propaganda) to the nation, are all male. They bring with them a token woman, a real beauty who bears the title of "army spokesperson" and serves mostly for diversification. The commentators on TV are, of course, tough guys, and so are almost all the other speakers.

The rule of males is underlined by the fact that the Foreign Ministry is headed by a woman. Since the foundation of Israel, the Ministry of Defense has been the realm of he-men, who look with disdain upon the Foreign Office, which is always considered feeble and effete. Now, too, the Foreign Office is a sickly limb of the "defense establishment". Tsipi Livni, who once aroused hopes, is a parrot of the army - as Condoleezza Rice is the parrot of Bush.

War is, of course, a matter for men. That's how it was from the beginning of the human race, and perhaps even before. A tribe of baboons, for example, when faced with danger, automatically adopts a defensive formation: old males, women and children in the center, young males in a circle around them. There is only one difference between them und us: their leader is always the wisest and most experienced of the tribe.

The love of the human male for war - a phenomenon we have had the opportunity to observe from close up these last few days - is connected not only with this biological heritage. War assures the total dominance of the males over society. It also assures the total dominance of the generals over the state.

If we believed that that would change with a government headed by civilians, we were obviously wrong. The opposite is true: the civilians who pose as war-leaders are no better then the generals. A veteran general might even have learned something from his experience.

I am going now to say something I did not think I would ever utter: It is quite possible that we would not have slid into this foolish war if Ariel Sharon were in charge. Fact: he did not attack Hizbullah after the withdrawal in 2000. One attempt was enough for him. Which proves again that there is nothing so bad that something worse cannot be found.

The lust for war also explains the talking choir of the hundreds of ex-generals, who think and talk in unison in favor of the war. A cynic would say: what's the big deal, after all it's the army that gave them their standing in society. They are important only as long as the conflict between Israel and the Arab world continues. The conflict guarantees their status. They have no interest whatsoever in its resolution.

But the phenomenon is more profound. The army is the crucible for senior officers. It shapes their world outlook, their attitude and style. Apart from the settlers, the senior officers' corps - in and out of uniform - is today the only ideological party in Israel and therefore has a huge influence. It can easily gobble up a thousand little functionaries like Amir Peretz before breakfast.

This is why there is no real self-criticism. At the beginning of the fifth week, the slogans are again: Forwards! To the Litani! Further! Stronger! Deeper!

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.

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