ZNet Special

ZNet | Israel/Palestine

The Necessity of Conflict and the Primacy of Force in Zionist Thought

by Adel Safty; August 04, 2006

The ferocity of the Israeli war against the people of Lebanon and the Palestinian people, and it is a war against peoples rather than armies or guerrilla groups, is embedded in strategic orientations and founded on basic tenets of Zionist thought..

The first strategic orientation relates to the undermining of the conventional frame of international relations founded on a set of agreed upon rules and conventions. This came about principally as a result of various strategic doctrines adopted by the United States, the only remaining superpower in the world at the end of the Cold War, to deter challenges to its supremacy around the world, and especially in the Middle East. This strategic orientation became accentuated with the Bush administration’s doctrine of pre-emptive war and the so-called war on terror.

Whoever dares to challenge the imposition of imperial will is labelled terrorist or supporter of terrorism and war against them is rationalised with little or no regard to international law or the United Nations. Needless to say, this privilege of using massive violence pre-emptively is reserved only to the Empire, and its closest allies. Others must be held to the usual standards of accountability within the framework of international law and the United Nations. This double standard and disregard for law and conventions, arrogantly illustrated by the Anglo-American support for the Israeli use of force, encouraged Israel’s blatant disregard for the international community’s condemnations of its bloody conduct of the war.

The second strategic reality suggested by the Israeli conduct of the war against the Lebanese people and the Palestinian people indicates that the Israelis are wedded to the belief that the conflict in the Middle East can be resolved by a change of military strategy- massive use of aerial bombardment instead of a large scale land invasion- not by a shift in mental attitudes.

Various Israeli leaders are obviously unable to come to terms with the fact that their use of massive force may have helped them establish their state in 1948, expand and acquire additional territories, but has not enabled them to vanquish and eliminate all resistance to their project of continued dispossession and displacement.

The belief that invading Lebanon and forcibly ejecting the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and dispersing its fighters, in 1982, would eliminate Palestinian nationalism was just as mistaken then as the assumption today that assassinating the leaders of Hamas, subverting its democratically elected government, or destroying the military infrastructures of Hizbollah in a massive show of uncontrolled force would eliminate all resistance to Zionist designs in the region.

This logic is erroneous because while you can defeat armies and eliminate military infrastructures, you can not eliminate the competing will of a whole people short of extermination or total subjugation, as the experience of the indigenous people in North America, and the survival of the Palestinian people despite repeated attempts to eliminate them, illustrate.

These myopic assumptions on the part of Washington and Tel-Aviv have cemented their strategic alliance into partners in what they like to call the war on terror. The militarization of the international environment to serve the imperial interests of the US came about partly as a result of active propaganda and lobbying by Israel and its supporters in the United States, particularly throughout the 1990s when peace with the PLO threatened to derail the Zionist project of continued dispossession and displacement.

Conflict was necessarily to the promotion of ideological convictions of imperial expansion that characterise the thinking in the Bush administration. Conflict was also necessary to the continuation of the Zionist project of forcibly eliminating the Palestinian people as rival claimants for the land of Palestine.

Historically, the necessity of permanent conflict and the primacy of force have been basic tenets of Zionist thought and its approach to the Palestine conflict.

The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and the triumph of liberal ideas in Europe presented European Jews with alternate paths to social and political development. They made possible total social integration in Europe, but they also made acceptable the possibility of separate nationalist fulfilment of political aspirations.

The modernists among the Jews, particularly those of Western Europe, chose integration. Continued pogroms and persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe encouraged some East-European Jewish leaders to reject integration in favour of the nationalist solution.

The intellectual ideals, which made possible the transition from integrationism to the Zionist revolution, were articulated by a number of Jewish thinkers in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Thus, Moses Hess (1812-75), like Hegel before him, argued that history was a dialectal process and that the world was entering an age of maturity and reconciliation.

In his book Rome and Jerusalem (1862), he argued that nationalism is a natural historical growth and that Jews may be emancipated but they would never be respected so long as they denied their origins. Assimilation was no solution. "Neither reform, nor baptism, neither education nor emancipation,” he wrote “will completely open before the Jews of Germany, the doors of social life."

Without soil, there is no national life, Hess believed, and he therefore asserted that the reconstruction of Jewish life is the only solution. He was convinced that European powers would see benefits in helping the Jews and believed that France, once the Suez Canal was completed, could help the Jews establish colonies on its shores.

Jewish national reconstruction was to act as a synthesis of Jewish ideals and establish bridges between the "nihilism of the reform Rabbis who have learned nothing" and the "conservatism of the orthodox who have forgotten nothing."

It was the first systematic expression of the Zionist idea. With it, he brought the messianic ideal from the realm of idealism and spirituality to the more temporal level of practical programme to be carried out by the Jews themselves.

Leon Pinsker (1821-91) argued in his Auto-Emancipation (1882) that anti-Semitism was not a temporary phenomenon but "an inherited aberration of the human mind" and therefore the fight to eradicate it "can only be in vain".

The emancipation of the Jews was never a matter of course and its self-interested logic could be reversed anytime. He therefore concluded that "the proper and only remedy would be the creation of a Jewish nationality, of a people living upon its own soil; the auto-emancipation of the Jews...The international Jewish question must receive a national solution."
The territory on which the task of self-liberation and national reconstruction were to be accomplished must be productive and large enough for several millions but its location did not seem to matter a great deal. Pinsker thought that it "might form a small territory in North America, or a sovereign pashalik in Asiatic Turkey."

Pinsker presided over the first international Jewish conference at Kattowice (Poland) in 1884. In collaboration with Hoveve Zion (Lovers of Zion), he launched Zionism as Jewish self-assertion and nurtured the first Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine.

Although Pinsker was interested in agricultural Zionism, he was not enthusiastic about linking the Jewish national idea to Palestine, associated in Jewish minds with religious notions of messianic redemption. Political Zionism was more interested in a territory, not necessarily Palestine, on which to found an independent Jewish State.

Conflict is Essential

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), a Hungarian journalist, was also preoccupied with anti-Semitism and first conceived as a solution to it the massive conversion of Jewish children to Catholicism. He was subsequently persuaded to drop the idea in favour of a territory-based Jewish national movement.

The Dryfus affair in France, in 1894, in which a Jewish French officer was accused of spying for Germany, convinced him that anti-Semitism is a perpetual and inalterable force in Jewish life. In his search for a territory to colonise, he selected Argentina and campaigned with wealthy Jews to sponsor Jewish colonization of Argentina.

In 1896, Herzl published an influential pamphlet which he called Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). In it, he argued that anti-Semitism must be used to reinforce a Jewish identity, which could freely develop in a Jewish State either in Argentina or Palestine.

Herzl recognized that the idea was not new but that his contribution lay in the practical programme he was proposing: "I do not claim the idea is new...The only novelty lies in the method whereby I launch the idea and then organize the Society, and finally the State."

He proposed a specific scheme whose propelling force was the plight of the Jews. Herzl believed that assimilation has failed and that much as the assimilationist Jews try to be loyal citizens of their native lands they would always be considered "aliens" because the power relationship in the societies in which they live favour the majority not the minority.
Herzl was a strong believer in power politics and was contemptuous of the humanitarian ideals of the Enlightenment. His was not the humanitarian nationalism of the romantic movement of Herder, Hegel or Mazzini.

To the latter's belief in the "sisterhood of nations" and in progress born out of the collective life of the human race, Herzl opposed the view that "Universal brotherhood is not even a beautiful dream." Like the post-Darwanian militarist nationalism of Treitschk,

Herzl's was based on idealizing struggle and conflict as supreme channels of human redemption. For Herzl firmly believed that "Conflict is essential to man's highest efforts."

Might Over Right

To the idealism of romantic thinkers, Herzl opposed the realism of Nietzsche's thought that the master impulse of life was power. To achieve it no effort is too great and no hurdle too daunting.

Like Machiavelli, he firmly believed will is a moving force of events, force and craft are necessary weapons, and ultimately the state is power. The emancipation of Jews being doomed to failure, the assimilation only temporary retrieve before the unalterable ugliness of anti-Semitism struck again, the Jews had to have power; and the state being power, the Jews must have a state: "In the world as it now is and will probably remain, for an indefinite period," he writes, "might takes precedence over right."

Herzl proposed to turn Anti-Semitism to advantage and power: "Affliction binds us together, and thus united, we suddenly discover our strength. Yes, we are strong enough to form a State... The governments of all countries scourged by anti-Semitism will be keenly interested in obtaining sovereignty for us."

He proposed Argentina and Palestine but warned against the method of gradual infiltration of Jews because sooner or later infiltration "is bound to end badly. For there comes the inevitable moment when the government in question, under pressure of the native populace-which feels itself threatened-puts a stop to further influx of Jews. Immigration, therefore, is futile unless it is based on our guaranteed autonomy."

After noting that the infiltration of Jews into Argentina has produced some discontent, he turned his attention to Palestine where he proposed that a Jewish state there would "form a part of a wall of defence for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism."

Spirit the Penniless Population Out of the Country

But Palestine was already inhabited. And this fact would constitute the most fundamental problem the Zionists will have to face after securing Great Power support for their scheme.

Most Zionists and Zionist writing deliberately ignored the existence and the rights of the overwhelming Muslim and Christian majority in Palestine even though the establishment of an exclusively Jewish State which they preached would necessarily entail the expulsion of the existing population of Palestine.

Deception was, therefore, inherent in the Zionist project. Max Nordeau recounted with pride how he instructed the First Zionist Congress, which met in Basle in August 1897, in the art of linguistic deception: "I did my best to persuade the claimants of the Jewish state in Palestine that we might find a circumlocution that would express all that we meant by saying it in a way so as to avoid provoking the Turkish rulers of the coveted land. I suggested Heimstatte (homeland) as a synonym for 'state'...This is the history of the much commented upon expression. It was equivocal but we all understood what it meant. To us it signified Judenstaat (Jewish state) then and it signifies the same now."

But the first priority was to secure support for the project of colonising Palestine, whose connections to Jewish history made its appeal more powerful in the campaign of recruiting Jewish supporters for the Zionist goal.

Thus, upon being elected President of the Zionist Organisation by the First Zionist Congress, in Basle in August 1897, Herzl looked to Germany for support for "a publicly recognized, legally secured homeland in Palestine". But, Germany had neither the power nor the influence to secure the necessary support from Constantinople where the Sultan strongly rejected Herzl's request for colonization of Palestine.

The Jewish-Ottoman Land Company (JOLC) was Herzl's blueprint for the colonization of Palestine. Intrinsic to the proposed agreement between the World Zionist Organization and the JOLC was the concept of the transfer of the Palestinian Arabs from Palestine.

Herzl also had his own ploy for getting rid of the 93% Muslim and Christian majority population in Palestine. He recommended that the Zionists occupy the land in Palestine and gradually spirit the penniless population out of the country by denying it employment.

During his only visit to Palestine (October 26-November 4, 1898) Herzl noted with emotions how a group of "daring" Zionist colonists on horseback who greeted him at a Zionist colony reminded him of "the Far West cowboys of American plains."

There were to be sure Jewish leaders who refused the deception and condemned the injustice inherent in the project. Thus, Hebrew essayist and humanist Ahad Ha-am had visited Palestine in 1891 and in his report entitled "The Truth from Palestine" he perceptively identified Zionism's fundamental problem in Palestine: The Arab people.

Already, he noticed and strongly disapproved of how the early Zionist colonists were dealing with the Palestinian Arabs and warned that Jewish settlers must not arouse the wrath of the people of the country: "Yet what do our brethren do in Palestine? Just the very opposite! Serfs they were in the lands of the Diaspora and suddenly they find themselves in freedom, and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds, and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination."

But it was Herzl, and not Ahad Ha-am, who led the Zionist Organisation. His strategy of expelling the majority inhabitants of Palestine, and commitment to the principle that might took precedence over right prevailed, and, after the establishment of Israel in 1948, informed the Israeli approach to the Palestine conflict.

Prof. Safty served as Professor of International Relations and law, Dean, School President, and Head of UN Mission. He is founding President of the Global Leadership Forum, and author/editor of 16 books, including From Camp David to the Gulf (Montreal, New York, 1993, 1997), Leadership and Democracy (New York, 2004), and the forthcoming book, the Modern Machiavellians.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10709

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ZNet | Israel/Palestine

Rosy-Fingered Dawn
Hizbollah, Israel and the End of the Status Quo

by Mostafa Hefny; August 04, 2006

He described them as heroes. He praised their premier as a man held in high esteem by him and the government he represents. But there was a caveat in this generous show of goodwill to the Lebanese people by the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, who was speaking on the occasion of his government adding 56 people to the death toll of its bombardment of Lebanon – though in truth that number remains in flux, so too the bodies, whose state the Reuters correspondent on the scene alluded to when he described how “rescue workers” were still busy “lifting out the twisted, dust-caked corpses of children.”

He blamed them for the incident. And their backers in Tehran: "I am beseeching you not to play into their hands, not to provide them with what they are seeking while sacrificing their own people as human shields and as victims," he said. Quite how Hizballah, the only organized military force now left engaging the Israeli army was using this residential building as a shield, he left to his fellow diplomats’ and journalists’ stunning lack of curiosity. Pausing here to wonder at the gullibility of the “international community” and the credulity with which the Israeli claims have been met is a fool’s errand - they would sooner have asked how the kidnapping of two soldiers prompts a rampage of destruction across an entire country and the killing of 700 hundred people who happened to be living there at the time.

We would do well now, at least temporarily, to skip over the point of outrage – or, more precisely, our own outrage over its absence. The Arab-Israeli struggle is, and will remain, a moral one. The language in which arguments are put forth is, overwhelmingly, designed to appeal to the conscience of the reader and the viewer. Israel’s great success with Western governments is often attributed to its well-oiled propaganda machine that, according to this widespread understanding, is translated, through democratic means, to the decision-makers who then proceed to answer their people’s calls to support Israel. But look closer at this dynamic and you will discover its fallacy. Consider the bedrock of Israel’s support in the West, the United States. There, under the influence of the most favorable coverage of Israel in the world, the American public, according to successive polls in recent weeks, does support Israel by a reasonable majority. When it comes to legislators however, that majority turns into unanimity. On July 24th, the United States Congress passed a resolution backing Israel in its war by 410 votes to 8. Clearly, this is not an accurate reflection through democratic means. It seems that the two branches of the United States government offering blanket coverage to Israel’s actions are operating according to a different set of variables than those mandated by public opinion or the moral arguments that sway it.

Propaganda, and the moral language is which it is pouched, is then an important but ultimately secondary factor in allowing Israel to continue of what is, in effect, a siege of the Palestinian population and periodic bloody rampages across Lebanon. On a material level, this extreme and massively disproportionate violence perpetrated by Israeli society is explicable. Israel’s insistence on building a nation where citizenry is based, not on people’s relationship to land within its borders, but on religion and ethnicity, means that it cannot abide by the demographics of the region onto which it has been grafted. To maintain a status quo in which the Jewish portion of Palestine remains the majority, given that the 2.4 million Palestinians under occupation and the 20 % of the Israeli citizens who are Palestinian have a substantially higher birth rate then the Jewish portion, the only situation in which that religious/ethnic domination of the land can be maintained is through denial of Palestinians equal rights, not to mention those of the refugees that makeup the Palestinian Diaspora. In order to avoid the impending balance mandated by demographics, a constant state of imbalance is needed, and hence a constant, but, from the Israeli point of view, low-cost military confrontation. The brutal campaign in Gaza then becomes clearer in its objectives. Israel does not seek a final victory through its one sided wars and incursions. War is Israel’s victory. Or that was the case before July, when, for the first time in decades, the Israeli army’s losses are such that explaining away civilian causalities is no longer their only concern.

Now is the time to reintroduce morality. The tragedy of the Holocaust is a pro-Palestinian argument, the horror of people unwanted and persecuted on their land because of their race and their religion. In reality the Holocaust is the animating presence behind the extraordinary militarism of Israeli society. But to comprehend something is not to excuse it. As such, there will never be just solution to this struggle emanating from a democratic Israeli polity, which has combined the trappings of liberal democracy with longest military occupation in modern history and the periodic perpetration of war crimes by an army in which all its citizens, Arabs excluded, are required to serve.

Hence Hizbollah. Israel’s violent maintenance of a status quo has been matched by a maintenance of the status quo in the Arab world, aided and abetted by Western governments. The status quo powers include all of the Arab regimes, including the Syrian regime which paradoxically legitimizes itself through its opposition to Israel, and the partially dethroned Fatah plutocracy, whose collective existence now depends on things remaining as they are. In considering the unique effectiveness of Israeli propaganda on Western governments one would do better to consider the results of this great leeway granted to Israel by the West: In the countries of the Arab world, rulers whose interests are now in 180 degree opposition to those of their population, reside over marginalized dependent economies that, in the new “global economy” serve as its gas station, house its environmentally hazardous industries and provides bases for its military.

The status quo in the Arab world is sustainable through repression. What is no longer sustainable is façade of the Arab regimes seeking a just solution to the Arab-Israeli struggle. Given this final fall of the fig leaf, the Arab regimes will be busy cracking down on their populations for a while. In the meantime, Hizbollah, a Shia group, financed by non-Arab Iran, is the most representative of the Arab populations’ rejection of the status quo. The conflation of the Hizbollah with the nihilistic savagery of Al-Qaeda is an item of propaganda that maybe saleable to those who choose not to look too closely. But propaganda is secondary. Hizbollah maybe eradicated by sequential transactions amongst Israeli, Western and Lebanese actors – some of whom maybe genuinely and understandably tired of having their fragile country serve as stage on which Israel exercises its now existential need for persistent war. Here however, Hizbollah, with the wide-ranging support it has received, is the bearer of grievances rather than an independent actor or even an Iranian ploy in that nation’s convoluted wrangling with the West. Should it meet its end, Hizbollah would quickly be replaced by populations for whom the status-quo is no longer acceptable.

Mostafa Hefny
Arab Voices for Change

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10710

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ZNet | Israel/Palestine

Israel, not Hizbullah, is putting civilians in danger on both sides of the border

by Jonathan Cook; August 04, 2006

Here are some interesting points raised this week by a leading commentator and published in a respected daily newspaper: “The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert embeds his soldiers in Israeli communities, next to schools, beside hospitals, close to welfare centres, ensuring that any Israeli target is also a civilian target. This is the practice the UN's Jan Egeland had in mind when he lambasted Israel’s ‘cowardly blending ... among women and children’. It may be cowardly, but in the new warfare it also makes macabre sense. For this is a propaganda war as much as a shooting one, and in such a conflict to lose civilians on your own side represents a kind of victory.”

You probably did not read far before realising that I have switched “Israel” for “Hizbullah” and “Ehud Olmert” for “Hassan Nasrallah”. The paragraph was taken from an opinion piece by Jonathan Freedland published in Britain’s Guardian newspaper on 2 August. My attempt at deception was probably futile because no one seems to seriously believe that criticisms of the kind expressed above can be levelled against Israel.

Freedland, like most commentators in our media, assumes that Hizbullah is using the Lebanese population as “human shields”, hiding its fighters, arsenals and rocket launchers inside civilian areas. “Cowardly” behaviour rather than the nature of Israel’s air strikes, in his view, explains the spiralling death toll among Lebanese civilians. This perception of Hizbullah’s tactics grows more common by the day, even though it flies in the face of the available evidence and the research of independent observers in Lebanon such as Human Rights Watch.

Explaining the findings of its latest report, HRW’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, blames Israel for targeting civilians indiscriminately in Lebanon. “The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military’s disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians. Our research shows that Israel’s claim that Hezbollah [sic] fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel’s indiscriminate warfare.”

HRW has analysed the casualty figures from two dozen Israeli air strikes and found that more than 40 per cent of the dead are children: 63 out of 153 fatalities. Conservatively, HRW puts the civilian death toll so far at over 500. Lebanese hospital records suggest the figure is now well over 750, with potentially many more bodies yet to be excavated from the rubble of buildings obliterated by Israeli attacks.

Giving the lie to the “human shields” theory, HRW says its researchers “found numerous cases in which the IDF [Israeli army] launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives but excessive civilian cost. In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.”

In fact, of the 24 incidents they document, HRW researchers could find no evidence that Hizbullah was operating in or near the areas that were attacked by the Israeli air force. Roth states: “The image that Israel has promoted of such [human] shielding as the cause of so high a civilian death toll is wrong. In the many cases of civilian deaths examined by Human Rights Watch, the location of Hezbollah troops and arms had nothing to do with the deaths because there was no Hezbollah around.”

The impression that Hizbullah is using civilians as human shields has been reinforced, according to HRW, by official Israeli statements that have “blurred the distinction between civilians and combatants, arguing that only people associated with Hezbollah remain in southern Lebanon, so all are legitimate targets of attack.”

Freedland makes a similar point. Echoing comments by the UN’s Jan Egeland, he says Hizbullah fighters are “cowardly blending” with Lebanon’s civilian population. It is difficult to know what to make of this observation. If Freedland means that Hizbullah fighters come from Lebanese towns and villages and have families living there whom they visit and live among, he is right. But exactly the same can be said of Israel and its soldiers, who return from the battlefront (in this case inside Lebanon, as they are now an invading army) to live with parents or spouses in Israeli communities. Armed and uniformed soldiers can be seen all over Israel, sitting in trains, queuing in banks, waiting with civilians at bus stops. Does that mean they are “cowardly blending’ with Israel’s civilian population?

Egeland and Freedland’s criticism seems to amount to little more than blaming Hizbullah fighters for not standing in open fields waiting to be picked off by Israeli tanks and war planes. That, presumably, would be brave. But in reality no army fights in this way, and Hizbullah can hardly be criticised for using the only strategic defences it has: its underground bunkers and the crumbling fortifications of Lebanese villages ruined by Israeli pounding. An army defending itself from invasion has to make the most of whatever protection it can find -- as long as it does not intentionally put civilians at risk. But HRW’s research shows convincingly that Hizbullah is not doing this.

So if Israeli officials have been deceiving us about what has been occurring inside Lebanon, have they also been misleading us about Hizbullah’s rocket attacks on Israel? Should we take at face value government and army statements that Hizbullah’s strikes into Israel are targeting civilians indiscriminately, or do they need more serious investigation?

Although we should not romanticise Hizbullah, equally we should not be quick to demonise it either -- unless there is convincing evidence suggesting it has been firing on civilian targets. The problem is that Israel has been abusing very successfully its military censorship rules governing both its domestic media and the reporting of visiting foreign journalists to prevent meaningful discussion of what Hizbullah has been trying to hit inside Israel.

I live in northern Israel in the Arab city of Nazareth. A week into the war we were hit by Hizbullah rockets that killed two young brothers. The attack, it was widely claimed, was proof either that Hizbullah was indiscriminately targeting civilians (so indiscriminately, the argument went, that it was hitting fellow Arabs) or that the Shiite militia was so committed to a fanatical war against the Judeo-Christian world that it was happy to kill Nazareth’s Christian Arabs too. The latter claim could be easily dismissed: it depended both on a “clash of civilisations” philosophy not shared by Hizbullah and on the mistaken assumption that Nazareth is a Christian city, when in fact, as is well-known to Hizbullah, Nazareth has a convincing Muslim majority.

But to anyone living in Nazareth, it was clear the rocket attack on the city was not indiscriminate either. It was a mistake -- something Nasrallah quickly confirmed in one of his televised speeches. The real target of the strike was known to Nazarenes: close by the city are a military weapons factory and a large army camp. Hizbullah knows the locations of these military targets because this year, as was widely reported in the Israeli media at the time, it managed to fly an unmanned drone over the Galilee photographing the area in detail -- employing the same spying techniques used for many years by Israel against Lebanon.

One of Hizbullah’s first rocket attacks after the outbreak of hostilities -- after Israel went on a bombing offensive by blitzing targets across Lebanon -- was on a kibbutz overlooking the border with Lebanon. Some foreign correspondents noted at the time (though given Israel’s press censorship laws I cannot confirm) that the rocket strike targeted a top-secret military traffic control centre built into the Galilee’s hills.

There are hundreds of similar military installations next to or inside Israel’s northern communities. Some distance from Nazareth, for example, Israel has built a large weapons factory virtually on top of an Arab town -- so close to it, in fact, that the factory’s perimeter fence is only a few metres from the main building of the local junior school. There have been reports of rockets landing close to that Arab community.

How these kind of attacks are being unfairly presented in the Israeli and foreign media was highlighted recently when it was widely reported that a Hizbullah rocket had landed “near a hospital” in a named Israeli city, not the first time that such a claim has been made over the past few weeks. I cannot name the city, again because of Israel’s press censorship laws and because I also want to point out that very “near” that hospital is an army camp. The media suggested that Hizbullah was trying to hit the hospital, but it is also more than possible it was trying to strike -- and may have struck -- the army camp.

Israel’s military censorship laws are therefore allowing officials to represent, unchallenged, any attack by Hizbullah as an indiscriminate strike against civilian targets.

Audiences ought to be alerted to this danger by their media. Any reports touching on “security matters” are supposed to be submitted to the country’s military censor, but few media are pointing this out. Most justify this deception to themselves on the grounds that in practice they never run their reports by the censor as it would delay publication.

Instead, they avoid problems with the military censor either by self-censoring their reporting of security issues or by relying on what has already been published in the Israeli media on the assumption that in these ways they are unlikely to contravene the rules.

An email memo, written by a senior BBC editor and leaked more than a week ago, discusses the growing restrictions being placed on the organisation’s reporters in Israel. It hints at some of the problems noted above, observing that “the more general we are, the free-er hand we have; more specific and it becomes increasingly tricky.” The editor says the channel will notify viewers of these restrictions in “the narrative of the story”. “The teams on the ground will make clear what they can and cannot say -- and if necessary make clear that we’re operating under reporting restrictions.” In practice, however, BBC correspondents, like most of their media colleagues, rarely alert us to the fact they are operating under censorship, and self-censorship, or that they cannot give us the full picture of what is happening.

Because of this, commentators like Freedland are drawing conclusions that cannot be sustained by the available evidence. He notes in his article that “this is a propaganda war as much as a shooting one”. He is right, but does not seem to know who is really winning the propaganda offensive.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book, “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State” is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10711

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ZNet | Mideast

The Middle East in Flames

by Gilbert Achcar and Andrew Kennedy; August 04, 2006

Q. It seems clear that Israel was just waiting for a pretext to launch its action, and Hizbollah provided it. Is that your view?

Achcar. Israel's goal is indeed clearer than Hizbollah's was when they mounted the July 12 operation. It seems that the operation had been prepared by Hizbollah for several months, as Hassan Nasrallah said, and they regarded it chiefly as a way of obtaining the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails through an exchange. It was not meant originally as a reaction to the events in Gaza -- though it was perceived by the Arab public opinion as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian population. At any rate, Hizbollah was certainly not expecting an Israeli reaction on this scale.

Israel's goal is very clear and was stated from the beginning. The July 12 operation was seized upon as a pretext to launch an offensive that had also very obviously been in preparation for a long time. The goal, of course, was to obtain Hizbollah's destruction: what the Israeli army was not able to achieve during its occupation of Lebanon, it now wanted to obtain by forcing the Lebanese to do it and pushing the country to the brink of civil war.

The Israeli government rejected the idea of an international contingent at first, insisting that only the Lebanese Army should go south, thus indicating that it wanted the Lebanese to disarm Hizbollah. The Israeli strategy was on the one hand to deal Hizbollah direct blows and on the other hand to take the whole Lebanese population hostage in order to obtain what it wanted from the Lebanese government. In light of Israel's military failure to deal Hizbollah a major blow and its political failure so far to split the Lebanese population, they have settled for a revised objective whereby European Nato forces would be deployed in south Lebanon -- with or without a UN fig leaf.

Q. Who are the main actors here? Is this a proxy war by the US? How far does this tie in with Israel's own interests and aims?

Achcar. The coincidence of the objectives of the governments of Israel and the US has never historically been so transparent as it has been since 2001, when George W. Bush came to power in the US followed by Sharon in Israel. The degree of openness of their collusion is unprecedented. Never has the US so blatantly and openly endorsed an Israeli aggression. The Israeli army is doing the military work while the US is doing the diplomatic work, blocking ceasefire resolutions and buying Israel the time needed to fulfil its military objectives, while supplying it with the needed weaponry. The US conditions for a ceasefire are identical to those defined by the Israelis and concerted with them. As Washington puts it, this is part of the Bush administration's 'war on terror': Israel's aggression fits with the US-led imperialist war drive launched since 9/11 in this part of the world where two-thirds of world oil resources lie beneath the ground.

On the other side of the fence, what the US-Israel alliance is fighting through Hizbollah is Iran or the Iran-led alliance in the area, including Shiite forces in Iraq, the Syrian regime and the appeal of this alliance to Sunni fundamentalists like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which supported Hizbollah in the recent crisis. So there are two conflicts intertwined in the present war -- the direct one consisting of Israel's aggression against Hizbollah and Lebanon, and the indirect one consisting of the US campaign against Iran. The UN Security Council has just adopted a US-sponsored resolution on the issue of Iran's nuclear program -- quite impudently, given that the same Council has not yet called for the cessation of Israel's mass slaughter in Lebanon.

Q. What role does France play in all this?

Achcar. The French position has evolved. In 2004 Jacques Chirac offered the US a common front at the UN against Syrian forces in Lebanon. Their basic interests converged, contrary to what was the case with regard to Iraq. In this case, the French are mainly interested in Saudi money. Just a few days ago, they signed a deal for a big sale of weapons to the Saudi kingdom. Chirac's friendship with Hariri, father and son, fits very well within this framework -- as everyone knows, the Hariri clan is closely linked to the Saudis. So when Hariri, and the Saudis behind him, went into dispute with Syria, France offered Washington its help in sponsoring UN resolution 1559, which called for the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon as well as the disarming of non-government armed groups in the country, meaning Hizbollah and the Palestinian refugee camps. Since 2004 France has thus worked in close alliance with the US on the issue of Lebanon.

But the latest offensive has caused cracks in the alliance. The Saudis denounced Hizbollah at first, but as the Israeli aggression became more obviously brutal and murderous and impacted on Arab public opinion, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, all Washington's Arab clients have had to shift their stance and tell Washington: Your Israeli friends are going to spoil the whole thing, we are reaching a boiling point which is quite dangerous, it is time to stop. The crisis is getting increasingly perilous for the whole stability of pro-US regimes -- for example in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood is capitalising on the situation.

Chirac has taken the middle ground since then -- pleasing the Saudis more than Bush in calling for an immediate ceasefire and an international troop presence based on a political agreement.

Q. In your July 15 interview with Liberazione you said that Israeli military action could radicalise the Lebanese population more against Israel than against Hizbollah. Is that happening?

Achcar. It is happening indeed and beyond my expectations. The very brutality of the Israeli aggression is actually counterproductive for Israeli goals -- and is unifying Lebanon in resisting the Israeli offensive. Israel's onslaught has been so murderous, so indiscriminate, that the great majority of the Lebanese have drawn the same conclusions: firstly, that the Israeli offensive was prepared long ago so that the whole discussion of the July 12 operation is somewhat irrelevant, as it was clearly used as a pretext; secondly, that Israel is not targeting Hizbollah alone and not even the Shiites only, but the whole population. The whole country is being held hostage. The whole economy is destroyed. True, the offensive has mostly killed Lebanese Shiites -- probably over 1000 already if one includes those still under the rubble -- but in terms of lives affected, impoverished, and ruined, a huge number of Lebanese are affected, and Israel is clearly perceived as the enemy of the Lebanese people as a whole. At a more general regional level, the hatred for Israel and the US is reaching new peaks. All this will undoubtedly fuel the growth of terrorist organisations of the Al Qaeda type. I'm afraid that what we have seen up to now -- 9/11, 7/7 and Madrid -- is but a foretaste of horrors to come that will affect the civilian populations in the West.

Q. Has the Lebanese left been able to play much of a role in giving political shape to this national wave of anger and defiance? Or are they marginalized?

Achcar. The Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) is a shadow of its former self, of what it used to be in the 70s and 80s. It was one of the most important Communist Parties in the Arab world, relative to the size of the country, and one of the major actors in the civil war of 1975-1990. The LCP was the first to launch attacks against the Israeli occupation in 1982, after the invasion settled down, in the name of the 'national resistance'. Only later were the 'Islamic resistance' and Hizbollah launched. Hizbollah dealt with the LCP as a rival since the latter's main social base was among Shiites and in southern Lebanon, that is among Hisbollah's target constituency. Hizbollah built itself partially through fighting the LCP over this constituency and managed to prevail. In that, it was greatly helped by Iranian backing and by the fact that it played on the dominant ideological trend in the region that was in favour of Islamic fundamentalism since the 1970s, whereas the LCP lacked political boldness and was deeply affected by the unfolding crisis of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s the LCP itself went into deep crisis, splitting and fragmenting. What remains is not completely invisible, but it is no longer in a position to play an important role -- unfortunately, as it is the major left-wing grouping in the country. Hence, Lebanon is no exception to the general rule in the area: the historical failure of nationalist forces and the failure of the left have created a vacuum that has been filled by Islamic fundamentalists.

Q. Some on the British left would probably like to entertain the idea that Hizbollah is capable of evolving leftwards. Is that a fantasy?

Achcar. Basically, yes. Even a plebeian group like Muqtada al Sadr's organisation in Iraq is more socially threatening to the bourgeoisie than Hizbollah. The latter, of course, is radical in its opposition to Israel, as is usual with Islamic fundamentalist forces linked to Iran, but in Lebanese politics Hizbollah is integrated fully into the system. It has two ministers in the government that is dominated by Hariri-led US clients and it allies itself with quite reactionary figures. True, it organises social services, but only as churches or charities do -- they represent no social threat whatsoever to the bourgeois social order. There is not even a potential for that, given Hizbollah's ideology, its structure, its close links to Iran and to Syria. Iran, Hizbollah's model of society and state, is utterly bourgeois in its social structure. Whatever populist ranting Ahmadinejad (the Iranian president) may have given vent to, last year, in his electoral battle for the presidency against the capitalist Rafsanjani, these do not translate into any kind of concrete social measures. In that respect, Chavez's Venezuela is a far more progressive state: Iran is not a Muslim equivalent of Venezuela. Such equivalents existed in the Middle East in the 60s, but it is out of their defeat that Islamic fundamentalism was able to grow.

Q. Ben Gurion had the idea that Israel's frontiers should be natural -- the Litani river in the North and the river Jordan in the East. Is this what links the attacks on Lebanon and the Palestinians?

Achcar. The Greater Israel schemes are obsolete and have been so for a very long time. Hizbollah's rockets are a further proof of the fact that 'natural boundaries' do not mean much. Even after it invaded Lebanon in 1982, Israel could not keep the newly occupied territory under its direct control for long. These are mountainous areas suitable for guerrilla struggle, and the Lebanese population has undergone military training through several years of civil war. Hence the huge caution of Israeli troops in penetrating south Lebanon after July 12. The Israeli Defence Force took just three villages in the first two weeks and at relatively high cost; it met fierce resistance. It decided to resort to flattening the little town of Bint Jubail after proving unable to control it. The Israelis keep saying they do not want to occupy south Lebanon again -- for good reason.

In Palestine, when the cost of keeping direct control over the Palestinian-populated territories became too high after the first Intifada of 1987-88, Israel ended up relinquishing that direct control. But it plans to maintain the bulk of its colonial settlements in the West Bank as well as its direct control over the borders between the Palestinian-populated areas and neighbouring countries, whether Gaza's border with Egypt or the stretch of land along the Jordan river isolating the West Bank from Jordan.

Q. Is Israel more vulnerable now?

Achcar. This question relates to a point long made by Jewish critics of Zionism. Far from becoming the sanctuary for the Jews of the world that the Zionists promised, Israel is more and more turning into a deadly trap for its Jewish inhabitants. The old warning by anti-Zionist Jews is getting more and more relevant because of the evolution in destructive techniques and weaponry. Israel is exposing its own population to huge risks. Israel's ruthless, barbaric way of dealing with the Palestinians and the Lebanese feeds hatred against it in the whole area. This will certainly result in many people wanting to inflict on the Israelis the most painful damage possible, compared to which Hizbollah's Katyusha rockets might look quite benign. It takes some 50 Hizbollah rockets to kill one Israeli on average in the ongoing confrontation. But what if devices could be made to inflict mass destruction on Israel? That is what Israel is inciting against itself. Zawahiri, Bin Laden's second-in-command, made a statement calling for strikes against Israel as if he wanted to outbid Hizbollah. Israel is presently inflicting a terrible nightmare on the Lebanese, it has been inflicting a permanent nightmare on the Palestinians, but it is also preparing an appalling nightmare for its own people.

Q. What are the prospects for building a new Arab socialist left? What can socialists and anti-imperialists do?

Achcar. In the Arab world nowadays the space for building a socialist left is quite marginal, the left is ideologically isolated. Nonetheless there should be a permanent effort at rebuilding a socialist left and that cannot be done by tail-ending Islamic fundamentalism. Left-wing activists should not let the fundamentalists occupy alone the terrain of the fight against imperialism and the Zionist state, as some sections of them tend to do, but it is clear that the left won't become a match for the religious forces in this respect anytime soon. In many other fields, however, the fundamentalists are no competitors -- when they are not foes: in the fight for workers' and peasants' rights and interests, the rights of the unemployed, women's rights, the fight against sexual oppression, for secularism, liberty of conscience and freedom from the rule of religion in social life, etc. These are issues around which the left in the Arab world should intensely campaign -- but it should do so without expecting to achieve a breakthrough in the near future, lest it get rapidly demoralized.

The building of a new socialist left in the Arab region can be helped by the international left. Even though Latin America is quite far away, the left turn there is inspiring. But the main influence on the development of a socialist force in the Middle East will come from Europe, where there is a significant socialist left. The antiwar movement in Western countries has been very important in educating the Arab public that this is not a clash of civilisations or of religions, but an imperialist war drive serving capitalist interests and opposed as such by social movements in the West. The progress of the social movement in Europe can only have beneficial effects in the Middle East. For that, it is also crucial for the European socialist left to stand at the forefront of the struggle against Islamophobia, thus undermining the Islamic fundamentalist propaganda that is nurtured by this very same Islamophobia.


Gilbert Achcar was interviewed by Andrew Kennedy on August 1 for the September issue of Socialist Outlook (n°10, London).

GILBERT ACHCAR grew up in Lebanon, before moving to France, where he teaches political science at the University of Paris-VIII. Among his most recent works are Eastern Cauldron (2004) and The Clash of Barbarisms (2d ed. 2006); a book of his dialogues with Noam Chomsky on the Middle East, Perilous Power, is forthcoming from Paradigm Publishers.

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ZNet | Mideast

THE MIDDLE EAST BRANCH OF THE "AXIS OF EVIL":
IRAN, SYRIA, HAMAS, HIZBULLAH AND BEYOND

by Assaf Kfoury; August 04, 2006

In the demonology at work in Washington D.C. and allied capitals, the Axis of Evil is an undifferentiated collection of governments and organizations, whose biggest sin is their opposition to a Western-dominated world under the leadership of the United States. The original members of the Axis of Evil were Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and "their terrorist allies" (George W. Bush, "State of the Union Address," January 29, 2002). Shortly after, Cuba, Libya and Syria became bona-fide members (John R. Bolton, "Beyond the Axis of Evil," May 6, 2002). After violent regime-change took Iraq out of the group in March 2003, Libya quickly learned the lesson, dropped its quixotic stand against the West, and received US assurances it would no longer face the threat of regime-change. With intense bloodshed continuing unabated in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, focus is now on the remaining Middle Eastern parties of the Axis of Evil.

In an interview on July 16, 2006, four days into the Israeli military onslaught on Lebanon, Shimon Peres, former Prime Minister and current Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, referred to Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran as "those three or four parties that want to run the world and rule over it." He went on to say that, in its war against Lebanese and Palestinians, Israel should be supported "because there is a need not to let these groups take over." Of these four nefarious parties, Peres presented Hamas and Hizbollah as compliant executioners of Iran's policies, "the two are submitted to Iran," while the "Syrian army is old and weak," leaving Iran as the head of the conspiracy.[1]

There is no particular reason to invoke Shimon Peres' wisdom for how to deal with these "evil parties," except that it closely reflects the worldview and policies of the Bush administration. Indeed, if it were not for active support from the US government, Israel would not be able to pursue its violent and unrelenting campaign against Lebanese and Palestinians. This US support has amounted to between $2 and $3 billion a year since 1971, two-thirds of which has been military assistance, making Israel the largest recipient of US foreign aid. The close relationship was once more demonstrated by the rushed delivery of a large arsenal of US weapons (cluster bombs, satellite guided bombs, laser guided bombs, bunker busters, aviation fuel, etc.) just as Israel started its offensive to bring Lebanon to heel.

But so much for demonology. It is of course absurd to think that Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran want to "run the world" (Peres' words), let alone that they can. The far bigger threat to the security of the Middle East and the world is unbridled US power, controlled by what is at the end a tiny band of mean-spirited politicians. The far greater danger to Israelis themselves, if they are to live in peace with their neighbors in the long run, is to continue to let their own government and military power be instruments of empire and colonial aggression.

As for the Middle East section of the Axis of Evil, an honest examination of the record over recent decades gives evidence for different ideologies and different policies among these four parties -- Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran -- sometimes united, sometimes clashing, largely independent especially on local matters, and now together besieged by another "axis of evil," this one quite real, headed by the US, with Israel as first accomplice and Britain as first cheerleader. This other axis controls an overwhelming concentration of firepower, the kind for "shock and awe," which it has used with devastating effect and no compunction. Witness the frightful destruction of Iraq, the Palestinian territories, and now once more southern Lebanon.

What of Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran? Can they form a united front, cohesive enough to withstand repeated assaults to destroy them?

The Bush administration views Hamas and Hizbullah as proxies, which can be moved and stopped on orders from Tehran or Damascus or both. Liberal commentators are less manichean in their view of the world, but still consider Iran and Syria as the responsible parties, abetting or restraining Hamas and Hizbullah, depending on circumstances. They all ignore or dismiss as implausible that Hamas and Hizbullah may act without informing Iran and Syria, or even against advice from the latter two. That there may be local reasons, unrelated to Iran's and Syria's respective conflicts with the West, is not considered. In reality, even if it is a matter of speculation how close (or distant) relations are among Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran, available evidence does not suggest a single agenda according to which they all act in unison against the US and its allies. By comparison, the other real "axis of evil," headed by George W. Bush, has a clear chain of command and a far higher level of coordination.

SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE

Nothing illustrates better the conflictual relationship between these four parties than the situation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. The Brotherhood is a Sunni political movement founded in Egypt in 1928. The movement spread to other Arab countries and gradually grew at the expense of the nationalist parties that dominated the anti-colonialist struggle after WWII, as the latter encountered repeated internal and external failures and defeats.

Today, strong branches of the Brotherhood exist in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and several other Arab countries. The Brotherhood derives much of its popularity from various networks of services it provides to poor sections of society. Because the Brotherhood is officially banned or severely restricted in most countries, it has been generally unable to participate in government or to gain outright power through elections.[3]

In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood emerged as a strong force in the late 1960's. Along with other lesser Islamist groups, it was ruthlessly repressed by the Baathist regime in Damascus. In the late 1970's and early 1980's, there was near constant warfare between the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood and the Syrian army. In February 1982, the Brotherhood led a major insurrection in Hama, a city of about 350,000. The Syrian military responded by bombing Hama for several weeks, killing between 10,000 and 25,000 people. The massacre of Hama marked the defeat of the Syrian Brotherhood and Islamist groups in general in Syria, forcing members that escaped the military juggernaut to go underground or into exile.[4]

Many imprisoned members of the Brotherhood in Syria were pardoned and released in the 1990's. In May 2001, retreating from their earlier confrontational policy, the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood published a statement in London rejecting political violence, and calling for a modern, democratic state. More recently, the exiled leader of the Syrian branch, Ali Bayanouni, said "the Muslim Brotherhood wants a peaceful change of government in Damascus and the establishment of a 'civil, democratic state', not an Islamic republic."[5] Nevertheless, Muslim Brothers are still not allowed to function as an independent party in Syria. Political dissidents and democracy activists in Syria, who as much as sign a petition with exiled Muslim Brothers, are routinely arrested by the police. Since May 14, 2006, several of the Syrian signatories of a declaration entitled "Beirut-Damascus / Damascus-Beirut" which appeared a few days earlier in the Beirut press, have been detained by the police. The declaration was rather tame in its demands, calling for a normalization of relations between Lebanon and Syria based on respect for the independence and sovereignty of both countries, but Ali Bayanouni and other exiled intellectuals sympathetic to the Brotherhood were among its signatories -- enough to bring down the Syrian Baathists' wrath on the declaration's initiators.

For all their antagonism to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements at home, the Syrian Baathists now have a close alliance with Iran. In addition to being the only Arab state that has maintained reasonably friendly relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran since its founding in 1979, Syria is Hizbullah's main geographical link to the outside and a refuge for exiled Hamas leaders. Thus, while the Syrian regime does not brook any Islamist opposition internally, it keeps connections with Islamist movements outside its own borders, no doubt as it feels mounting external pressure from the other "axis of evil" and grows anxious about its intentions. Helping Hamas and Hizbullah, which are highly popular in Syria and other Arab countries because they have dared to stand up to American and Israeli dictates, also eases the pressure on the Syrian government from its own internal opposition.

IRAN UNDER SIEGE

The prospect of being left alone to fend off the US and its allies is as much Iran's concern as it is Syria's. In the standoff on its nuclear program, Iran has sought to build alliances with the large Asian countries (China and India) or mollify wavering Europeans. Iran's ability to withstand US and Western pressures does not depend on the survival of Hamas and Hizbullah, two relatively minor and distant forces. To resist the kind of regime-change (and destruction) that neighboring Iraq has endured, Iran will have to shore up its own internal front, finding ways to re-mobilize a population of some 70 million that is showing increasing signs of disgruntlement or even alienation from the Islamic Republic.[6]

On July 14, 2006, Saudi Arabia issued a statement harshly critical of Hizbullah's operation to capture two Israeli soldiers two days earlier. The statement was praised in Washington and Jerusalem, and well received in Cairo, Amman and other allied Arab capitals.[7] On July 15, the Iranian Supreme National Security head, Ali Larijani, was in Riyadh for consultations with King Abdullah and Saudi government officials. While Larijani and Saudi officials were discussing declarations calling for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories,[8] Hassan Nasrallah and others in the Hizbullah leadership in Beirut repeated their adamant refusal to consider an unconditional release of the captured soldiers and that they were ready for open warfare if imposed on them by Israel. Nasrallah also stressed what he has maintained all along: that Hizbullah alone -- not Iran or Syria -- is responsible for its action.

Of course, we do not have to take Nasrallah at his word. We can also ignore the significance of Larijani's consultations with the Saudi government, and if we do, we may as well dismiss the Saudi condemnation of Hizbullah as also of little consequence, on the ground that public pronouncements by government officials say little about their actual policies. Be that as it may, there are other considerations that may make the Iranian government worry more about internal conditions in Iran than about the fortunes of Hamas and Hizbullah in distant Gaza and southern Lebanon.

Perhaps the most revealing measure of internal demobilization in Iran is the steady decline of voter turnout in recent years. From the Iranian government's own figures, whereas 60 percent of the electorate voted in the municipal elections of 1999, the number decreased to 29 percent in 2003. The decline in large urban areas was far more significant: In Tehran, only 12 percent bothered to vote in 2003, giving all fifteen of the available city council seats to the "conservatives," whereas in 1999 the "reformists" had won twelve of fifteen possible seats. Iranians suffer under an economy whose stunted growth cannot keep up with the country's fast-growing working-age population. From the Iranian government's own estimates in 2003, some 900,000 new jobs are needed annually to prevent an increase in unemployment (officially around 16 percent, unofficially over 20 percent in 2003), whereas only about 500,000 are created every year.[9] Leaving aside skewed interpretations of its significance and what it portends for the future, the Western media has regularly reported on the internal grumbling in Iran resulting from a badly performing economy.[10]

To what extent dissatisfaction is the result of unfulfilled political reforms, or internal repressions, or reduced economy opportunities, is a moot question. What stands out is that Iranian internal dissatisfaction is in sharp contrast to the popularity of Hamas and Hizbullah among their respective constituencies, and for good reason.

HAMAS AND HIZBULLAH IN A STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

The parallels in the separate histories of Hamas and Hizbullah are many and go back to the time they first emerged in the 1980's. Now they have converged and the two are locked together in a deadly battle for survival with the Israeli military, touted as the third or fourth combat power in the world, a battle on which depends the fate of the entire region.

The Hamas victory in the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006 was the decisive event in the fateful sequence leading to the Israeli assault on Gaza on June 28, 2006, which was then followed by the assault on Lebanon on July 12. In the five months preceding the assault on Gaza, the US and Israel, with the silence or complicity of European countries, used every possible means to undermine the new Hamas government.

Hamas had to be destroyed because it is prepared to counter Israel's unilateral policies of encirclement and dispossession. Hizbullah had to be destroyed because it is the main force preventing Lebanon from joining the fold of the New Middle East vaunted by officials of the Bush administration.

A little retrospective shows that both Hamas and Hizbullah, now among the worst villains in the eyes of the US and its allies, were largely byproducts of Israeli interference in the internal affairs of Palestinians and Lebanese. Hamas started as the military wing of the Palestinian branch of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1987, shortly before the first Intifada, encouraged by Israel as a counterweight to the secular Palestinian nationalism of the PLO. The gradual submission of the PLO to successive Israeli dictates, as well as its ineffectual and notoriously corrupt government, led to its own demise and the eventual victory of Hamas.

Hizbullah was created in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which killed an estimated 17,000-20,000 people and caused immense destruction. By the time Israeli forces stopped their bloody rampage, they had occupied the southern part of the country, established a brutal auxiliary force (the South Lebanon Army) and opened a detention and torture center in the town of Khiam -- exactly the conditions to bolster a resistance movement, help it recruit new members, and turn the local population against the occupying army.

At the end, the resilience of Hamas, Hizbollah and other similar groups does not rest on their ability to organize powerful military wings. Tiny as they are compared to the Israeli armed forces, they cannot prevent an occupation of their own lands, but only make the price of an occupation prohibitively high. Their power rests on their ability to draw the sympathy of the surrounding populations, sustained by their vast networks of social services and charity, especially among the poor, which the Palestinian Authority (in the case of Hamas) and the Lebanese government (in the case of Hizbullah) have not been able to provide.

Long-time observers of Hamas and Hizbullah have dismissed attempts to portray them as proxies of Iranian or Syrian policy. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is a Beirut-based political scientist who has studied Hizbullah and other Shiite movements, often quite critically. She has noted that even though "historically there has been an overlap of interests between Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas, [...] the nature of that relationship has changed much over the years." According to Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbullah "has never allowed any foreign power to dictate its military strategy."[11]

Dilip Hiro, a political analyst specializing in countries of the Middle East and Central Asia, has written that "despite repeated Israeli and American claims that Iran and Syria are behind Hizbullah's moves, no solid evidence has emerged." Moreover, "the alliance between Hizbullah and Iran and Syria is informal, not institutional."[12]

Behind the fog of propaganda, government officials with a better grasp of conditions on the ground will occasionally confirm this assessment. The State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism recently said, "Syria can stop the flow of weapons, materiel and people into Lebanon. Yes, they can take a lot of action that they haven't. In terms of them controlling Hizbollah, no, they cannot put Hizbollah out of business." He estimated that Iran wielded more influence over Hizbollah, but "even there, Iran does not completely own Hizbollah."[13]

AFTER HAMAS AND HIZBULLAH

Before July 12, 2006, Hamas was facing alone the might of the Israeli military, in a hopeless struggle that elicited no more than lip-service support from Arab governments and no support from Western governments. Gradually starved of external aid, the Hamas government seemed destined to a violent end.

Before July 12, Hizbullah was just one of several players in the internal politics of Lebanon. It had its supporters, mainly among the Shiite community, just as it had its opponents across the entire confessional spectrum, including a sizable segment of the Shiite community.

As of this writing, three weeks into the war on Lebanon, the Middle East configuration has totally changed: "the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind [Hizbullah], transforming the Shiite group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements."[14] Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other pro-American Arab states, which were initially critical of Hamas and Hizbullah, are now scrambling to distance themselves from the policies of the Bush administration.

The policy of smashing popular movements in order to turn the surrounding populations against them has backfired. Blaming the destruction of Gaza on Hamas not on invading Israeli tanks, just as blaming the destruction of southern Lebanon on Hizbullah not on Israeli laser-guided bombs, was doomed to fail. And it has already. Increased sectarian tensions in Lebanon -- Christians, Sunnis and Druze against the Shiites -- did not materialize. Instead, according to opinion polls released the week of July 24, 87 percent of all Lebanese support Hizbullah's resistance against Israel, including 80 percent of Christian respondents, 80 percent of Druze respondents, and 89 percent of Sunni respondents.[15]

The tragedy now is that Israel, with unconditional backing from President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, is still intent on eradicating Hamas and Hizbullah. The policy is delusional, and will only bring more grief to all in the Middle East. Even if the protagonists are brought together to negotiate, the continuing tragedy will be that they do not talk the same language. When US diplomats speak of resolving "root causes," they refer to all parties standing in the way of a Middle East under US hegemony, where Israel is the unchallenged nuclear-armed regional superpower keeping in check subservient Arab regimes and a humbled Iran. For Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs, "root causes" mean recognition of the Palestinians' right to meaningful self-determination as well as resolution of several contending issues between Israel and Lebanon (evacuation of the Shebaa Farms, release of Lebanese detainees, handing maps showing locations of landmines left in southern Lebanon after the Israeli withdrawal in May 2000, and an end to regular incursions into Lebanese airspace and territorial waters by the Israeli air force and navy).


Notes

[1] Interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, 16 July 2006.

[2] Jim Wolf, "US Weapons, Know-How Fuel Israel's Military," Reuters, 19 July 2006. David S. Cloud and Helene Cooper, "US Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis," The New York Times, 22 July 2006.

[3] Fawaz Gerges, America and Political Islam, Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? Cambridge University Press 1999.

[4] Olivier Carré and Gérard Michaud. Les Frères Musulmans: Egypte et Syrie (1928-1982). Gallimard, Paris 1983.

[5] Rory McCarthy, "We would share power, says exiled leader of Syrian Islamist group," The Guardian, London, 26 January 2006.

[6] Iranian Dissident Akbar Ganji, "Dangers of a US Invasion of Iran," Democracy Now, 25 July 2006.

[7] Ori Nir, "Bush Urged to Give Israel More Time for Attacks," Forward, 21 July 2006.

[8] Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), "Iranian President's Message Handed Over to Saudi King," 15 July 2006.

[9] The data is reproduced in the International Crisis Group report, "Iran: Discontent and Disarray," Middle East Briefing No. 11, 15 October 2003.

[10] See for example Michael Slackman, "In the Streets, Aid to Hezbollah Stirs Iranian Fear and Resentment," New York Times, 23 July 2006.

[11] Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, "The Framing of Hizbullah," The Guardian, London, 15 July 2006.

[12] Dilip Hiro, "Hostages and History," The Guardian, London, 18 July 2006.

[13] Caroline Drees, "Syria, Iran Lack Full Hizbollah Control," from Reuters, Washington Post, 25 July 2006.

[14] Neil McFarquhar, "Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah," New York Times, 28 July 2006.

[15] Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, "As Fighting Continues, Lebanese Author Says New Poll Shows Overwhelming Support For Hezbollah," Democracy Now, 27 July 2006.


Assaf Kfoury is professor of computer science at Boston University. He returned from a three-week trip to Lebanon in May 2006.

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ZNet | Mideast

An open letter to the American president

by Salim al-Hoss; The Daily Star (Beirut); August 04, 2006

Dear Mr. Bush,

We heard you express your regrets regarding the casualties of Israel's ravaging war against my country, Lebanon.

I hope you have been furnished with a true profile of the atrocities being perpetrated in my country. You pose as being at war with terrorism. Let me honestly tell you: Charity starts at home.

Israel is wantonly indulging in the most horrendous forms of terrorism in Lebanon: indiscriminately killing innocent civilians at random; not sparing children, elderly or handicapped people; demolishing buildings over their residents' heads; and destroying all infrastructure, roads, bridges, water and power arteries, harbors, air strips and storage facilities. Nothing moving on the highways is spared, not even ambulances, trucks, trailers, cars or even motorcycles, all in violation of the Geneva Conventions and human rights.

The displaced population has reached more than one fourth of the total population of my country -- all suffering the harshest and most miserable of conditions. The victims include thousands of killed and maimed.

If this is not terrorism, what is?

Israel's savage assault has been labeled retribution for Hizbullah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers. This smacks of collective punishment, which constitutes a brazen violation of the Geneva Conventions and human rights. Furthermore, the alibi is far from plausible. The two Israeli soldiers were abducted for the express purpose of reaching a swap of hostages with Israel. In fact, Israel had acceded more than once to such swaps in the past. Why would a swap of prisoners be acceptable at one time and a taboo, rather a casus belli, at another? This created a conviction among the Lebanese that the sweeping assault against them was premeditated, and the abduction was only a tenuous excuse.

Israel is indulging in terrorism at its worst, at its ugliest, using the most lethal and sophisticated weapons you have supplied them.

We the Lebanese are justified in seeing in Israel as a most atrocious terrorist power, and seeing in you a direct partner. Mr. President: You are indeed a terrorist practicing the worst variant of terrorism as you condone the annihilation of my country, precluding a cease-fire to be announced, supporting the aggression against my people politically and diplomatically and bolstering Israel's destructive arsenal with the most lethal weaponry.

Mr. President: You are not fooling anybody with your alleged war against terrorism. In our perspective, you and Israel are the most unscrupulous terrorists on earth. If you want to fight terrorism, we suggest that you start with your administration and your hideous ally, Israel.

You repeatedly claim that Israel is acting in self-defense. How preposterous! Self-defense on other people's occupied territory is tantamount to one thing: blatant aggression.

You call Hizbullah a terrorist organization. We call it a legitimate resistance movement. There would have been no military wing of Hizbullah if there had been no Lebanese territory under Israeli occupation, if there had been no Lebanese hostages languishing in Israeli jails, and if Lebanon had not been exposed to almost daily Israeli intrusions into its airspace and territorial waters, and to sporadic incursions into Lebanese land and bombardment of civilian targets.

You cannot eliminate a party by demolishing a whole country. This would have been achieved peacefully by Israel withdrawing from the land it occupies, releasing Lebanese prisoners, and desisting from further acts of aggression against Lebanon.

Israel is the most horrendous terrorist power. And you, Mr. President, are unmistakably a direct partner, and hence a straight terrorist.

August 1, 2006


Salim al-Hoss, was former prime minister of Lebanon 1976-1980, 1987-1990, and 1998-2000.

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