Hezbollah & the Ummah: sublime and the pathetic

by Ayaz Amir

“You are fighting a people who have faith such as no one else on the face of the earth possesses… who take pride in their history, their civilisation and culture, who also possess material power, expertise, knowledge, calm, imagination, determination and courage. In the coming days it will be between us and you, God willing.” — Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah, Secretary General Hezbollah

WORDS such as these haven’t been heard across the Middle East for a long time. They signify the birth of a new resolve — not to suffer wrong passively, as the Arabs and Muslims have been accustomed to do for a long time, but to stand up against the oppressor and defeat him.

American and Israeli frustration is easy to understand. They have been used to dealing with puppets and tinpot figures — sonorous phrases on their lips, fear and timidity in their hearts. Now in Gaza and Lebanon they are encountering a new breed of fighters, fearless and resolute.

And so they are doing what comes most readily to them: pinning blame on Syria and Iran, plying the airwaves with the most outrageous falsehoods (helped in this most loyally by CNN and even more by BBC) and refusing to see that the attacks on Gaza and Beirut far from destroying Hamas and Hezbollah are adding more fuel to the fires of resistance.

After so much death and destruction in Gaza, support for Hamas should have crumbled. It has had just the opposite effect, Palestinians rallying round Hamas’s flag. After days and nights of relentless bombing of Lebanese cities, the people of Lebanon should have turned against Hezbollah. They haven’t. Hasan Nasrallah is a hero because Hezbollah — in Robert Fisk’s words “one of the toughest guerrilla armies in the world” — has the courage and strength to stand up to Israel.

But the contrast couldn’t be more striking: on one side Hamas and Hezbollah, and their fierce determination, the willingness to take on the most fearsome odds; and on the other, the pathetic spectacle of Arab and Muslim impotence.

Far from wanting to do anything for the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance, the kings and autocrats of the Muslim world are angry at Hezbollah for exposing their (the autocrats’) helplessness. Kings of Jordan, presidents of Egypt made their peace with Israel long ago. They are champions now of the American cause with no stomach for confronting Israel or annoying the US. How can they be comfortable with the idea of resistance? According to Ori Nir in The Forward, a Jewish newspaper appearing from New York, “In a particularly unusual move, one top Jewish communal leader, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman, visited the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, to thank him for his country’s condemnation of Hezbollah for igniting the crisis by launching a cross-border raid against Israel and abducting two of its soldiers.”

From the same write-up: “Jewish groups said that they were quite happy with the response of several Arab countries, namely Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.”

To this picture of collective impotence here’s Hasan Nasrullah’s answer: “As to the Arab rulers, I don’t want to ask you about your history. I just want to say a few words. We are adventurers… But we have been adventurers since 1982. And we have brought to our country only victory, freedom, liberation, dignity, honour, and pride… In the year 1982 you said… we were crazy. But we proved that we were the rational ones, so who then was crazy? …So I tell them simply: go bet on your reason and we will bet on our adventure, with God as our Supporter and Benefactor. We have never for one day counted on you. We have trusted in God, our people, our hearts, our hands, and our children. Today we do the same, and God willing, victory will follow.”

How can the cardboard figures presiding over the destinies of the world of Islam warm to such uncomfortable words?

Spare a thought also for the powerful republic of Pakistan with its 600,000 man army, nuclear arsenal and long-flying missiles. The hearts of the Pakistani people may beat with that of their brethren-in-faith in Gaza and Lebanon but from their government hardly a squeak has come out, its muted commentaries on the Lebanese situation couched in the softest possible terms.

But then what is to be expected from a dispensation whose foreign minister was happy to cavort with his Israeli counterpart in Istanbul last year and whose president applauded Israel’s ‘withdrawal’ from Gaza? (A picture in the papers the other day showed the US ambassador sitting amidst Pakistan army and police officers at a ceremony to ‘honour’ anti-narcotics personnel. The US ambassador showing all the condescension that one shows to a well-trained poodle, this while Israeli bombs, actually American bombs, were raining down on Lebanon. It won’t be any time soon before we come to realise what looks right and what doesn’t.)

Hezbollah is the only force in the Muslim world which can claim victory over Israel, forcing Israel to retreat from southern Lebanon in 2000. Even now while Israel commands the skies of Lebanon and blockades its waters (although even there Hezbollah has scored a triumph by hitting and crippling a sophisticated Israeli helicopter-carrying warship), on the ground Hezbollah is proving more than a match for the Israeli army.

Israel has everything in the US armoury, making its military one of the most effective in the world. It certainly has an edge over all Arab armies combined. But it is not finding it easy to fight Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

What is Israel hoping to achieve? It can kill as many innocent civilians as it wants — and already more than 200 have been killed as a result of indiscriminate bombing — but defeating Hezbollah, a phantom army which has the ability to strike but is not easy to find (classic guerrilla tactics), is another matter. If war is a continuation of politics by other means, it is hard to figure out what the politics are in this case.

Just as the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has, unwittingly, served Iranian interests — by removing from the scene Iran’s sworn enemy, Saddam, and allowing Iranian influence to grow in Iraq — the Israeli assault on Lebanon far from doing Israel any good is undermining the position of Lebanon’s anti-Syrian government and immeasurably adding to the stature of Hasan Nasrullah, not only in Lebanon but across the Muslim world.

As an Associated Press report puts it: “After fierce fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, posters of the bespectacled Nasrallah in his black turban have sprung up throughout the Gaza Strip. Demonstrators carry Hezbollah flags and chant slogans in his support. In the West Bank, Palestinians tune into Hezbollah’s Al Manar television station to hear Nasrallah speeches and follow the group’s progress in its war against Israel.”

Hamas is mainly Sunni, Hezbollah largely Shia. Support for Hezbollah transcends this sectarian divide.

There is no shortage of despised figures in the world of Islam for whom the Muslim masses (not the elites) have nothing but contempt. But something new is emerging, a galaxy of heroes of whom the masses can be proud: in Iraq the resistance which has humbled and made a mockery of American might, in Lebanon Hasan Nasrallah and glorious Hezbollah, in the Gaza Strip equally valiant Hamas, in Afghanistan a resurgent resistance and, whether anyone likes it or not, Sheikh Osama bin Laden.

The US had a splendid opportunity after Sept 11 to capture the moral heights had it conducted itself, for all its justified anger, with dignity and restraint. This would only have been possible if men of vision had been at the helm of affairs. To America’s misfortune a small-minded cabal was in charge which sought small-change advantage from that huge tragedy, thus turning monumental grief and anger into a shallow-minded policy of vindictiveness and retribution.

We have seen what has come of this course: Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the folly of Iraq, and, as a direct consequence, an arc of defiance and resistance spreading all the way from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Opportunity turned into a nightmare with the end nowhere in sight. As Byron said, “The thorns that I have reaped are of the tree I planted.”

‘Go back to Karachi where it’s safe’

An Inspiring Story

BEIRUT: “We don’t want to be a battleground for other countries,” huffed Saad Hariri, son of the slain former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, implying an unseen Iranian hand in Lebanon’s affairs. “Let those countries who border Israel take on the task of fighting them.” “This is all about Syria,” declared the equally confident George W Bush. Geography classes must have been really hard on those two. Someone ought to remind wunderkind Hariri that Lebanon shares a border with Israel. It should also be pointed out to George that what is happening in Lebanon today is not about Syria, but about Israel’s extraordinarily vicious pathology and the international coterie that constantly supports its right to violence in the Middle East.

On a personal note, things at home aren’t so good either. My grandfather is dying. We can see it in his eyes. He was ill when we first arrived in Lebanon a month ago. He has been ill for a while now — it’s cancer. When he was initially diagnosed the doctor gave him six months to live. He has been extending that death sentence for almost four years. But since this conflict with Israel started, my grandfather, Abboud Itaoui, has begun to noticeably slip away. He is dying with his country.

When Hizbollah first captured the two Israeli soldiers, he had taken to bed rest. By the time Israel began its bombardment of Beirut, he was on a morphine drip. Today, with Israeli ground troops having entered the once liberated shores of southern Lebanon, I don’t know how much longer my grandfather will last. It must seem odd, unusual certainly, for me to connect my grandfather with Lebanon, to place his health and the country’s well being on the same page. But to me, my memories of Lebanon — memories of the pebble beaches of Tripoli, the mountains in Baalbeck, and the alleyways of Hamra street in Beirut — are irreversibly connected to my grandfather. It was through him that I discovered Lebanon. When I was eight years old and my family and I would travel from Damascus, Syria to the mountain village of Akkar, where Jiddo, my grandfather, was born he would read me stories at night, mixing Arabic and English both. When I was 17 years old and shopping for a winter coat that I would take to college in New York, Jiddo took me to the stores in crowded downtown Beirut. I was 17, but he held my hand as we crossed the street. Every street. When I was 20 we travelled to the Cedars, where Khalil Gibran was born and where he wrote his most famous poems. Jiddo was beginning to suffer the onslaught of his cancer at the time, but he never had anything but Gibran on his mind that week.

Friends of ours have written to us from home asking whether it would be safer for us to bring Jiddo to Karachi during this especially painful time for him. It would, but he would never leave. He was a young man when he fought in the war of independence against the French, joining the youth of Lebanon who had had enough of France’s outdated colonialism. He was born here, his children were born here, and he would never agree to the idea of fleeing, especially not now. Five hundred thousand people have already been forced to leave their homes and become refugees in foreign lands and over 300 civilians have been buried during this conflict; Jiddo refuses to add to either of those numbers. He will not run away and he continues to cling to life, with strength formidable for his age and illness.

Today I said goodbye to friends that are leaving the country, braving the uncertain roads through Syria. Israel bombarded the Baalbeck-Homs highway today, the last open road from Lebanon to Syria, leaving the country completely under siege. I said goodbye not knowing if I would see them again. Of course I would. You’re being dramatic I was told. But death is on everyone’s mind these days, not just mine.

New TV, a liberal news channel with the Lebanese flag placed underneath an upraised fist and the Arabic “Sameedoon” — or ‘standing strong’ — as its logo was showing interviews with survivors of the assault in Dahiye, a poor suburb in Southern Beirut last night. “We will stay here and die,” said a young man “but we will never let them occupy our country again”. He was not a Hizbollah fighter or an official of any kind, just an ordinary Lebanese man, and his statement is reflective of the spirit of so many of his countrymen.

Later on Euro News, a French channel — perhaps one of the few non-Arabic channels you find — there was footage of the now commonplace destruction you see everywhere. Buildings levelled to the ground, mothers crying, and children injured and alone. But there was something else. Amidst all the rubble were a flock of white pigeons sitting on the upturned ruins of some family’s balcony. As confused as I was to see the birds sitting rather calmly in the middle of all that chaos, I was even more confused when I saw a man gingerly stepping over the rocks and the debris, a large steel cage in his hand, tiptoeing carefully towards the pigeons so that he could save them and place them in the cage, along with the yellow canaries he had already rescued.

So much of this war continues to confuse and surprise me. Friends of mine from all over the world have been frantically emailing me since Israel declared that they “would turn the clock on Lebanon back 20 years”, worried for my safety and begging me to find a way out. I’ve gotten emails from Israeli friends of mine in New York, from loved ones in Karachi, and from those across the border in Damascus. “Go back to where it’s safe.” read one email from New York, “Go back to Karachi.” This very friend, I might add, has refused to visit me for years on account of how dangerous and frightening Karachi sounded when viewed through the lens of Fox News pundits and the New York Times.

I wish I could tell everyone who emails that I am infinitely lucky. Lucky to be here with my family, to be stranded among such brave people, everyday people whose courage makes me feel like I am in the presence of giants. I am lucky for so much more. I am lucky not to have lost as the people of Tyre and Sidon have. I am lucky not to be among those 300. I am lucky that I don’t have to rely on CNN or the Wall Street Journal for information. I am lucky not to be 18 years old from Tel Aviv, about to be drafted into the IDF. I am lucky to witness the power of resistance and to have front row seats to the battle of David against the new Israeli Goliath. But most of all, I am lucky to have my Jiddo, who continues to show me Lebanon and the character of its people through his eyes.

Torching along the way!!!! But ALAS, this ain’t no OLYMPICS

By Riz Mustafa

The funerals used to be about honoring the dead with silence and prayers leading the coffin to an eternal place of silence. As far as I checked last time, this was surely the case. I am unable to comprehend till this very moment that how the denotation of funerals in Pakistan has changed so significantly over the past few years. Passing away of loved ones brings tears and a sense of vulnerability, especially when mercilessness was at very essence of that particular death. Does that unjust killing of an innocent person gives right to certain individuals to take matters in their hands and blow everyone coming their way? I feel any sane individual will have difficulty getting adjusted to this idea. The recent torch down of Pizza Hut outlet in Karachi was just one of the many incidents over the past few years, where individuals driven by insanity decided things in their own devastating approach. This incident was followed by the death of an eminent Shia Cleric in a suicide bombing attack and actually happened during the funeral procession. Earlier this year, a KFC outlet was torched down in a similar manner whereby burning half a dozen employees who were caught in blazing fire, trapped helplessly inside a cold storage room.

Coming to think about it, does all this sound like a work of a common man? Is it that easy to burn down a complete building by lighting a matchstick? This makes me think that is it all part of an organized crime, which is against humanity and serves purpose that is beside the imagination of common man. Aren’t the civil and government authorities used to the potential threats that grip the city of Karachi during a procession of such magnitude? Karachi has been host to armed and para-military forces a number of times over the past years and their gracious presence this time wouldn’t have been of any inconvenience to the inhabitants of this metropolis! Their presence may have saved the utter catastrophe, which now claims hundreds of rupees, lost employment and an ingrained distress for the people of Karachi.