To the indignation remaining in Suheil Idriss� eyes.
I write these words as the Israeli aggression against
Lebanon enters its seventh day, following military operation by the Islamic
Resistance which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the
killing of seven more. I flip through the television channels and the newspaper
pages. It all makes me say, �What a pity, Lebanon.�
Yet, I do not say this because I see Lebanon �stuck in a war
created by the machinations of the Syrian-Iranian axis.� Such is the claim made
by those who either neutralize Lebanon from the Israeli-Arab conflict, among
them the February 14th bloc, or make its participation in that conflict
contingent on the participation of all other Arab countries. Nor do I say it
because I am skeptical about HizbAllah�s success in achieving its declared
aims, i.e. the release from Israeli prisons of Lebanese prisoners, and perhaps
Arab prisoners, too. Nor again do I say it because I bemoan (though truly I do)
the destruction of the airport, bridges, and the rest of the infrastructure
whose construction cost we Lebanese are paying from our own pockets and will
continue to pay from our children�s and grandchildren�s pockets for tens of
years to come.
Yes, Lebanon, I pity you. And yet . . .
What I pity about you, Lebanon, is that you should be
afflicted by a leadership that did not take advantage of the liberation in 2000
to fortify the South and other areas against future Israeli aggressions. (And
anyone who took into consideration Israel�s history and ambitions in this
region could have seen that more aggression was not long in the waiting.) The
successive Lebanese cabinets failed to build shelters, pave roads, or invest in
the institutions that contribute to a populace�s steadfastness (such as
hospitals, schools, universities, etc), despite the millions of dollars that
were received from Arab regimes after each Israeli attack and were passed on to
the Council for the South.
What I pity about you, Lebanon, is that you should suffer a
leadership that does not provide its people with the means for self-defense,
though most of its governments, including the current one, have been �on
friendly terms� with the sponsors of the Cedar Revolution, the United States
and France, both of which provide Israel with whatever arms it desires. No
wonder, of course, when we consider that Lebanese authorities have consistently
held for decades that �Lebanon�s strength . . . is in its weakness.�
What I pity about you, Lebanon, is that you should be
governed�these days in particular�by a cabinet that does not �adopt� the
capture of Israeli soldiers for the sake of liberating Lebanese prisoners,
thereby officially orphaning the Resistance before the world, and indeed,
providing a cover for the Israeli aggression. It is pitiful, Lebanon, that you
should be stricken with a Prime Minister who condemns the Israeli aggression
for its being �disproportionate� to the HizbAllah�s operation. Does that mean
that he would have supported the former had it matched the latter, even though
it is Israel, as belligerent and occupier, who provoked that operation (and all
past, current, and perhaps future ones)?
How pitiful, Lebanon, that you should not be so lucky as to
have a leadership that incessantly pressures �the international community�
(whose praises it always sings) to compel Israel to pay reparations for its
acts of aggression over the course of more than four decades. Indeed, how odd
it is to hear principal members of the successive Lebanese governments praising
the �shrewdness� of the Zionist lobby in the US, forgetting (or rather
ignoring) all the while the fact that that lobby had succeeded, by 1998, in
extorting $1.25 billion from Switzerland and $60 billion from Germany as
�reparations� whose payment was forced on Europe �due to its rampant
anti-semitism� both before and after World War 2. (See Norman G. Finkelstein,
Holocaust Industry, Verso, 2000).
What I pity about you, Lebanon, is that you should endure a
class of politicians and �analysts� who try to overwhelm us these days with two
slogans: �bad timing� and �providing a pretext to the enemy.� The first has
been the main concern of the February 14th bloc politicians, and the media that
support them�as if they would have whistled and clapped for the operation had
it occurred some other day. (Whatever day that might be, they noticeably do not
specify.) The second has told us over and over that the operation presented a
pretext needed by Israelis to carry out their aggression. This absurd logic
completely ignores history: not once has the Israeli enemy sought a pretext to
expand its aggression, occupation, and vengeance against Arab opposition. On
the contrary, Shabak and the Mossad take any time they choose for aggression,
even when operations against it have ceased. Moreover, this logic swiftly leads
Arabs to submission and reliance on the same old pretenses: �realism� and �the
eye cannot fight the chisel,� (though it did fight and triumph, in fact, on May
25, 2000).
What is pitiful too about you, Lebanon, is that your
principal media outlets have been transformed into messenger boys for the
American and French embassies as these call upon their citizens to leave a
Lebanon that is no longer safe�though it has become so precisely because of US
weaponry and American and French political support for Israel. And with their
call to flee, these embassies facilitate the deployment of that weaponry
against Lebanon, and probably against Beirut in particular. Speaking of the
media, how pitiful for Lebanon too that no well-equipped television station
such as Future TV has produced a video clip in support of the steadfastness of
the Lebanese people while that television station produced more than one
hundred songs and video clips (most of them exceedingly silly) in the weeks
after the killing of Prime Minister al-Hariri. Or do the victims of Israeli
aggression (as I write these lines there are over 210 Lebanese civilians dead)
count for less than one Prime Minister Hariri?
What I pity about you, Lebanon, is your class of phony
leftists (specifically the �Democratic Left�) who have no other concern but to
suspect everything redolent of dignity and to seek out anything with which they
can denounce the Syrian and the Iranian regimes, HizbAllah, Hamas, the Islamic
Jihad, and the PFLP-General Command�anything, even that which might result in
the ultimate release of heroes who paid the price of their freedom to attain
ours. Indeed, some Hariri Leftists went as far as to claim that NasrAllah is
the one who destroyed the Lebanese economy with his daring military operation,
thus deliberately failing to remember how the policies of Prime Minister Hariri
abetted debt, squander, and corruption (in coordination with some of his allies
as well as leading figures in the Syrian regime).
This is not to say that those the February 14th Bloc likes
to criticize are blameless. Least of all the Syrian regime, whose
�strategizing� intellectuals (such as Dr. `Imad Fawzi Al-Shu`aybi) disgust me
with their pouring praise on the Lebanese Resistance without once, for example,
wondering aloud about the absence of official Syrian resistance in the Golan.
Such praise strikes me as the other face of the position taken by the likes of
MP Elias �Atallah (of the D�cor-atic Left) who criticizes both the acquiescence
of the Syrian regime in the Golan and also HizbAllah�s non-acquiescence and
resistance in Lebanon! Would Mr. �Atallah like us to follow the Syrian suit in
this case or not? Along those lines too, criticism of the Lebanese leadership,
its political right and �left,� should not keep one quiet about the twisted
logic of the Iranian regime which fights imperialism in Lebanon but
collaborates with it in Iraq.
All the same, it is truly shameful that the February 14th
bloc, along with its �theorists� and media figures, denounces the Lebanese
Resistance�s coordination with Syria and Iran, as if it were possible to stop
American-Israeli war (or at least put a limit to it) without regional
alliances. Rather, one would expect that if that bloc sincerely cared about the
persistence of Lebanon, its dignity, and the security of its lands, it would
immediately call upon the Lebanese government (of which it is the majority) to
request military support from Syria and Iran, regardless of its alleged
antagonism to religious or one-party rule. Or do the advocates of �sovereignty,
liberty, and independence� believe that it is possible to confront
American-Israeli violence with a vanguard led by tabbouleh, kibbe nayyeh, and
home-brewed `araq; a rear-guard composed of dabkeh, the �Libinese� poems of
Sa`id `Aql, and the conservative credo that rejects �the war of others on our
land� (referring specifically to Syria, Iran, and the Palestinians); and a
banner flapping in the wind above them, decorated with those symbols of
co-existence, crosses and crescents?
***
Whenever anyone says, �I pity you, Lebanon,� solely to
disparage HizbAllah, the Resistance, and all who raise their voices against
America and Israel, they should be asked these questions:
Is there any way other than capturing Israeli soldiers to
bring home Samir al-Qantar, Yahya Skaf, Nasim Nisr, and Ahmad Farran, not to
mention�and as long as we are Arab nationalists and leftists, we must
mention�thousands of prisoners of Palestinian, Arab, and other nationalities?
Yes, one other way is for the prisoners to declare their repentance, and to
swear to be decent, cooperative people. A possible second way is for the
leadership of the Islamic Resistance to follow Oslo�s suit, vow to �renounce
and denounce� armed resistance, and resort to the Security Council to request
the return of its prisoners (as well as the liberation of its territories, the
cessation of Israeli theft of Lebanese water, . . . ). I have no doubt the
Lebanese state may realize these demands after the repatriation of Palestinian
refugees (in accordance with Resolution 194, and scores of other UN
resolutions)! There may be yet a third way: if Sheikh Hasan NasrAllah changes
his identity at the nearest notary public and takes the name �Mr. Hasan Karzai�
or �General Hasan Lahd,� or �General Hasan Rajjoub.�
Other than arms, is there any way to intimidate Israel, if
only a bit, before it thinks of strolling anew in Lebanon�s lands, waters, and
skies, or expelling more refugees and committing more massacres in Al-Houleh,
Kfar Kila, Al-Mansuriyyah, Qana, Marwahin, and �Aytaroun?
It feels banal to remind hip liberalists that history (Arab
at least) has not witnessed genuine victories without bloodshed, arrests,
torture, or death. Even non-violent struggle, such as strikes, boycotts, and
divestment campaigns (in South Africa during Apartheid, in the Indian movement
against the British led by Gandhi, and in Palestine during the first Intifada)
does not escape bloodshed. Not that I think that those who oppose Lebanese
armed resistance call, for instance, for the boycott of companies that support
Israel, such as Nestle, Est�e Lauder, Caterpillar, Coca-Cola. It is well-known
that ministers in the former Hariri cabinet (such as Basil Fulayhan) ignored
complaints submitted by local civil groups regarding the opening in Lebanon of
Est�e Lauder, a company headed by Ronald Lauder, president of the Jewish
National Fund (the primary source of funding for new settlers in Israel). What
is more, Mrs. Nazik al-Hariri (the wife of the ex-Prime Minister), in spite of
vigorous public protest demonstrations, presided several years ago over the
opening ceremony of the Aishti store in downtown Beirut that markets
exclusively that company�s products.
Furthermore it will be extremely trite to remind those who
spurn HizbAllah�s operation (and armed resistance generally) in favor of
reliance upon the �international community� and �UN resolutions,� that United
States (and occasionally Western Europe) have consistently refused to implement
international resolutions against Israel. Quite the opposite, they recently
decided to starve the entire Palestinian people because it had elected, through
completely democratic procedures, the route of resistance to Israel.
If there remains no means to bring back Lebanese prisoners
beyond that of capturing Israeli soldiers (a tactic whose success was confirmed
in the recent past through operations carried out by PFLP-GC and HizbAllah
among other groups), why condemn it? And why limit its application to Lebanese
territory as long as Israel itself continues to detain hundreds of prisoners
taken from outside Occupied Palestine? And what is all the more comical is that
some politicians and the commentators in their pay (especially Future TV and
LBC) when pressed aver that they are not against HizbAllah�s operation or armed
resistance per se, but rather against undertaking resistance activities in the
absence of a prior national consensus.
What national consensus are they talking about? Resistance
needs neither national consensus nor national unity. That is a preposterous fib
that is not supported by any historical instances, to the best of my knowledge.
For example the French Resistance in World War II�a particularly important
example as the February 14th bloc adores France, its civilization, and
especially Jacques Chirac�did not by any means represent the majority in France
when it was launched. Historian Elizabeth Thompson (Colonial Citizens, Columbia
U. Press, 2000, p.196) shows that one-third of the bureaucrats in the Vichy
administration in Lebanon refused to serve Charles De Gaulle and returned to
France to serve the Vichy proxy government for the Nazis. Likewise the entire
French military forces in Lebanon abandoned De Gaulle, except for a mere 3000.
Or take an example closer to home: in 1982, most Lebanese
were terrified of the Israeli occupiers, and many tossed their weapons in
public trash for fear of being caught �red-handed.� The nationalist resistance
to the Israeli occupation of Beirut began with just a handful of fighters
motivated by their self-respect. They stood up to the occupiers in the
neighborhoods of Hamra, Concorde, and �Aisha Bakkar, . . . etc. They were
hunted down, arrested, and killed by Amin Gemayel�s regime, the Israeli proxy.
As days passed, however, that handful became a tide that freed Beirut and major
sections of Lebanon from occupation. Still the resistance was far from enjoying
any national Lebanese consensus (official or popular), despite its conjoining
people from diverse sects by virtue of its secular and leftist character.
Later, for a long list of reasons, HizbAllah came to the helm of the resistance
and liberated most of what had remained under Israeli control, yet again
without the resistance attaining any national consensus, despite its having
become a roaring popular wave. Indeed, it remained basically confined to a
single (albeit huge) sect. So why should the Resistance today seek a national
consensus about its national, legal, and religious right? And from whom?
From the �Lebanese Forces� who collaborated with the
Israelis for many years on the excuse of protecting the Christians?
From parties with ambiguous identities�sectarian and
socialist and conservative�and whose leadership coordinated with Israeli
occupation (as elaborated by Faris Abi Sa�b in an article published a month or
so ago in Al-Diyar newspaper)?
From parliamentary �representatives� who would not have
received one hundred votes in the last parliamentary elections if not for the
funding of Sheikh Sa�d al-Hariri and for the exploitation of popular sympathy
for his family following the assassination of his father?
From other MPs who confessed that they were forced to vote
for President Emile Lahhoud�s unconstitutional extension in office, out of fear
of the Syrian regime�s retribution lest they vote against it? Can people who
betrayed the trust of their constituency represent a national consensus?
Indeed, did not Hasan NasrAllah, who already had in his
possession Ra`ad, Zilzal, and Shihab missiles, show great patience in
conferring hours upon hours with various Lebanese leaders (Michel �Awn, Sa�d
al-Hariri, etc . . . ) to attain their recognition of the Lebanese identity of
the Shab�a Farms and Kafar Shuba, and the right to bring back Lebanese
prisoners? Was that not enough before HizbAllah could undertake concrete action
to obtain the prisoners� release? After the �National Dialogue� and the slew of
coordination meetings, was �national consensus� still necessary? What if a public
referendum (not of the MPs, not of the party leaders, but of the people
themselves) was held about the resistance? Would it result in anything less
than a declaration by the majority of Lebanese (not all, since that would be
impossible for any cause) in support for the armed Lebanese Resistance?
***
Lastly, what I pity about you, Lebanon is that, after your
victory in 2000, you should be reduced once again by those who criticize
Resistance to a site for mere business, tourism, and shrewdness (shatara).
Business and tourist industry were hit by Israel and the US (which provides it
with arms) not by HizbAllah�s exercising its right to free Lebanese prisoners.
Beirut airport (which, incidentally, was recently renamed Rafiq al-Hariri
International Airport without any national consensus, despite the fact that it
is the entire national populace that is paying for its construction) was hit by
Israel and the US, not by HizbAllah in 2006, nor by the Palestinian Resistance
in 1968. (By the way, does not the destruction of the airport indicate Hariri�s
gross mis-estimation of national priorities? Should the priority not be
Lebanon�s image, as a �civilized� and �advanced� nation in the eyes of
tourists, Orientalists, Gulf visitors, and the �international community,� but
rather security vis-�-vis Israel�s belligerence?)
What I pity is that it should be said, �Lebanon paid enough
for Palestine� so it no longer has to act in solidarity with the subjugated
Palestinian people, not even through an operation whose prime aim is to
liberate Lebanese prisoners but whose timing might coincide with the Israeli
military machine�s pressuring the elected Hamas government. Is it too much to
ask of you, Lebanon, that your quest to free your prisoners also relieves some
of the horrific weight of the Israeli military from the shoulders of the
Palestinian people simply by virtue of its timing? Have we forgotten already
our bitterness, we Lebanese, when �the Arabs� were cheering for the Algerian
team against the Polish at the 1982 World Cup but were utterly silent about the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon? Do intellectuals and analysts who are so tired of
Palestine want, today, to be like those �Arabs� they condemned?
Likewise, how pitiful for Lebanon that some of its residents
of Palestinian origin, who came as refugees decades ago, acquired citizenship
(contrary to hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians), attained wealth,
today stress the importance of separating the fates of Lebanon and Palestine.
Now that they have become Lebanese they even reject that the �timing� of
HizbAllah�s operation should come to Hamas� aid. This, in fact, is not so much
a case of renouncing one�s origin, or neglecting one�s tortured people, as it
is a case of forgetting an obvious historical fact: this entire region was one
common territory for its residents before it got ripped apart by mandates and
empires that separated Lebanese from Palestinians.
What would a Lebanon that is not pitiful look like? A
dignified Lebanon would be the ally of a venerable Palestine. Indeed, it would
not hurt Lebanon, but honor it, to help the Palestinian people and their
democratically elected government to prevail, whenever possible, and especially
when the principle aim is directly in Lebanon�s favor (as in the case of the Lebanese
prisoners in Occupied Palestine). Regardless, the victory of the Islamic
Resistance is �near, very near, truly near,� as swore the symbol today of Arab
dignity (yes, dignity, dear liberals), Sayyid Hasan NasrAllah. That victory
will also be a victory for Palestine. All that is necessary at this moment is a
tenacious hold on principles, unswerving support for the Resistance, and serene
patience.
It is the fate of Lebanon to be neighbor to a vicious enemy,
Israel. But it is Lebanon�s ennobling choice to stand by the side of its heroic
freedom-fighters, and by the side of Palestine.
Samah
Idriss is editor-in-chief of Al-Adab
Magazine. This article was translated from the Arabic by Kirsten Scheid. It
will be published in the July/August issue of Al-Adab magazine.