Interesting story in the Boston Globe about a Shia intellectual who has sparked a storm with an essay denouncing Hizbullah. If anyone has the link to her original essay, please share.
Meanwhile, here in Cairo, last night I walked past a car that had a poster of Hassan Nasrallah on its side window. I looked closer at the poster, which described Nasrallah as “the man who vanquished Israel,” I saw it was from the liberal-ish weekly Al Destour. Al Destour is edited by Ibrahim Eissa, one of the most vibrant voices against the Mubarak regime and a self-described liberal. Somehow all the paradox of why most Arabs cheered Hizbullah is there: even if people don’t like Hizbullah’s ideology, they’re always going to cheer for it when it is responding to attacks that tried to destroy an entire country.
Update: Praktike has photos.
“Somehow all the paradox of why most Arabs cheered Hizbullah is there: even if people don’t like Hizbullah’s ideology, they’re always going to cheer for it when it is responding to attacks that tried to destroy an entire country.”
Well said Issandr….!
Issandr, seems that accessing the webpage you’ve provided requires membership login. Anyway, the essay referred to here is the one published in An-Nahar, under a title that translates “To be a Shiite Now”. Here is a link: http://www.annaharonline.com/htd/KADAYA060807-1.HTM
Alternate links: http://www.metransparent.com/texts/mona_fayad_to_be_a_shiite_now.htm
http://www.14march.org/news_details.php?newsid=5076
Issandr, seems that accessing the webpage you’ve provided requires membership login. Anyway, the essay referred to here is the one published in An-Nahar, under a title that translates “To be a Shiite Now”.
Here is a link: http://www.annaharonline.com/htd/KADAYA060807-1.HTM
Alternate links: http://www.metransparent.com/texts/mona_fayad_to_be_a_shiite_now.htm
http://www.14march.org/news_details.php?newsid=5076
Loss of memory is really a painful disease indeed.
Less than forty days after you wrote about the gamble the Hezbollah attack on Israel, in clear violation of the UN Resolution 1559 , my friend Issandr is now saying that it is”responding to attacks to destroy an entire country”.
This may be fashionable to say but it is not true and you know full well that this is a lie, a lie, a lie.
to say the least I am shocked at this twist of mind, and no matter how deplorable this whole conflct is and will likely remain to be, the least you can do to enlighten this blog is to display intellectual honesty and historical accuracy. Something that has been clearly LACKING since this conflict began. Peace
just to complete, I am quoting your post from 12 July:
“My first instinct after I saw this morning that Hizbullah had conducted a raid on Israel’s northern border was to think, shit, the Israelis are going to bomb Lebanon like they’re bombing Gaza. And, sure enough, the bombing started. My reaction was anger at Hizbullah for provoking Israel to do this — which clearly it has wanted to do for a while — and dragging the rest of Lebanon into a mess. I don’t really see the point of the raid beyond a symbolic gesture of support for the Palestinians — which, fair enough, considering the icy silence or hypocritical posturing of most Arab governments, is a welcome change. I don’t think this will either distract Israel from Gaza (it’s quite capable of waging war on two fronts) nor do I think it’s a clever form of asymmetric warfare. I doubt Israel will release any prisoners because of it.”
I see no intellectual dishonesty there, Olivier. I still maintain that Hizbullah miscalculated in its July 12 strike and took a gamble for the whole of Lebanon because of the context (the Gilad Shalit incident). But the way Israel reacted (and, in any case, Israel isn’t really the one to give listen about respecting UN resolutions or the integrity of the Lebanon-Israel border) has rendered Hizbullah’s action on July 12 IRRELEVANT. They kidnap two soldiers and kill three (four more were killed by a landmine, I believe), but Israel has killed some 1300 Lebanese, the vast majority of which were not linked to Hizbullah whatsoever, as well as destroying the coutnry infrastructure and economy. Israel’s reaction was the real escalation that expanded a border skirmish into a full-scale war — not the opposite.
Allow me my own addendum – in today’s post I write about why people across the Arab world are cheering for Hizbullah. They are indeed supporting Hizbullah not because of its July 12 ambush but because of their sympathy for Lebanese victims of the war and disgust at the way Israel decided to punish an entire nation.
Yeah, I picked up one of those bad boys yesterday. Ramz al-moqawama indeed.
I also liked “alhamdulillah … wil shukr li hizbillah.”
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2006/08/in-search-of-good-and-decent-muslims.html
http://www.annaharonline.com/htd/DAYA060810-3.HTM
Indeed, I consider both Hizbullah and the Israeli government and its armed forces to be a bunch of criminals. But it was the Israeli government, not Hizbullah, that widened the war to include civilians. Hizbullah did not fire any rockets at Israeli cities until after Israel had bombed the Beirut airport, killing several innocent civilians who had done nothing against Israel, and injuring several dozen other similarly innocent people.
People ask me, “whose side are you on?”. I answer that I am on the side of the majority of people who just want to live their lives in peace without armed gangs of criminals (whether posing as “states” or not) killing them or destroying or taking their property.
I have no doubts that if Hizbullah had the capability, they would have struck equally hard at innocent Israeli civilians. They are criminals, after all. But they are not the gang of criminals that started killing civilians in this particular war. That unsavory honor goes to the criminal Israeli regime.
When criminals fight, the only winners are criminals, and the real losers are the innocents that the criminals slaughter. When people ask me “who won”, I say “the criminals”. That says enough.
-BT
Issander, I don’t understand your logic. I just don’t know what constitutes an “appropriate response” in this case. This is not Hezbollah’s first incursion into Israel and not its first rocket attack since Israel’s withdrawl in 2000. It has been arming itself unmolested for six years to accomplish its goal of wiping Israel off the map. when Israel largely ignores the incursions and occassional rocket attacks, Hezbollah is imboldened and ups the ante. When Israel responds with some of its military might, it is chastised when civilians used as human shields by Hezbollah are killed. It’s interesting that, while Israel builds bomb shelters for all of its citizens, Hezbollah has only built shelter for its fighters – and mostly under civilian structures. And the Arabs never take them to task for that. Nor do the Arabs hold Hezbollah responsible for any of its provocations. The lauding emboldens them, they pick another fight with Israel, more Arabs die. Rewind, replay. How can you operate under this faulty logic?