[Peace-discuss] Jihad Against Hezbollah

[Paul Patton]

*Jihad Against Hezbollah *
  *by Stephen Zunes*


The Bush administration and an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress
have gone on record defending Israel's assault on Lebanon's civilian
infrastructure as a means of attacking Hezbollah "terrorists." Unlike the
major Palestinian Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic *Jihad*, Hezbollah
forces haven't killed any Israeli civilians for more than a decade. Indeed,
a 2002 Congressional Research Service
report<http://www.opencrs.com/document/RL31119/>noted, in its analysis
of Hezbollah, that "no major terrorist attacks have
been attributed to it since 1994." The most recent State Department
report<http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/c17689.htm>on international
terrorism also fails to note any acts of terrorism by
Hezbollah since that time except for unsubstantiated claims that a Hezbollah
member was a participant in a June 1996 attack on the U.S. Air Force
dormitory at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

While Hezbollah's ongoing rocket attacks on civilian targets in Israel are
indeed illegitimate and can certainly be considered acts of terrorism, it is
important to note that such attacks were launched only *after* the
U.S.-backed Israeli assault on civilian targets in Israel began July 12.
Similarly, Hezbollah has pledged to cease such attacks once Israel stops its
attacks against Lebanon and withdraws its troops from Lebanese territory
occupied since the onset of the latest round of hostilities. (The Hezbollah
attack on the Israeli border post that prompted the Israeli assaults, while
clearly illegitimate and provocative, can not legally be considered a
terrorist attack since the targets were military rather than civilian.)

Indeed, the evolution of this Lebanese Shiite movement from a terrorist
group to a legal political party had been one of the more interesting and
hopeful developments in the Middle East in recent years. Like many radical
Islamist parties elsewhere, Hezbollah (meaning "Party of God") combines
populist rhetoric, important social service networks for the needy, and a
decidedly reactionary and chauvinistic interpretation of Islam in its
approach to contemporary social and political issues. In Lebanese
parliamentary elections earlier last year, Hezbollah ended up with fourteen
seats outright in the 128-member national assembly, and a slate shared with
the more moderate Shiite party Amal gained an additional twenty-three seats.
Hezbollah controls one ministry in the 24-member cabinet. While failing to
disarm as required under UN Security Council resolution 1559, Hezbollah was
negotiating with the Lebanese government and other interested Lebanese
parties, leading to hopes that the party's military wing would be disbanded
within a few months. Prior to calling up reserves following the Israeli
assault, Hezbollah could probably count on no more than a thousand
active-duty militiamen.

In other words, whatever one might think of Hezbollah's reactionary ideology
and its sordid history, the group did not constitute such a serious threat
to Israel's security as to legitimate a pre-emptive war.

Having ousted Syrian forces from Lebanon in an impressive nonviolent
uprising last year, the Lebanese had re-established what may perhaps be the
most democratic state in the Arab world. Because they allowed the
anti-Israel and anti-American Hezbollah to participate in the elections,
however, the Israeli government and the Bush administration—with strong
bipartisan support on Capitol Hill—apparently decided that Lebanon as a
whole must be punished in the name of "the war on terror."
Inverse Reaction to Threat

Just as Washington's concerns about the threat from Iraq grew in inverse
correlation to its military capability—culminating in the 2003 invasion long
after that country had disarmed and dismantled its chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons programs—the U.S. focus on Hezbollah has grown as that party
had largely put its terrorist past behind it. In recent years, the
administration and Congress—in apparent anticipation of the long-planned
Israeli assault—began to become more and more obsessed with Hezbollah. For
example, not a single Congressional resolution mentioned Hezbollah during
the 1980s when they were kidnapping and murdering American citizens and
engaging in other terrorist activities. In fact, no Congressional resolution
mentioned Hezbollah by name until 1998, years after the group's last act of
terrorism noted by the State Department. During the last session of
Congress, there were more than two dozen resolutions condemning Hezbollah.

In March of last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a
resolution<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:1:./temp/%7Ec109g2mXpU::>by
an overwhelming 380-3 margin condemning "the continuous terrorist
attacks
perpetrated by Hezbollah." Despite contacting scores of Congressional
offices asking them to cite any examples of terrorist attacks by Hezbollah
at any time during the past decade, no one on Capitol Hill with whom I have
communicated has been able to cite any.

Adding to the hyperbole is the assertion that Hezbollah threatens not just
Israel but the United States, despite never having attacked or threatened to
attack U.S. interests outside of Lebanon. Cited as evidence in the nearly
unanimous March 2005 House
resolution<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:1:./temp/%7Ec109g2mXpU::>is
testimony from former CIA director George Tenet (who also insisted
that
the case for Iraq having offensive weapons of mass destruction was a "slam
dunk"), in which he made the bizarre accusations that Hezbollah is "an
organization with the capability and worldwide presence [equal to] al-Qaida,
equal if not far more [of a] capable organization … [t]hey're a notch above
in many respects … which puts them in a state sponsored category with a
potential for lethality that's quite great."

In reality, other than a number of assassinations of political opponents in
Europe during the 1980s and 1990s, it is highly debatable whether Hezbollah
has ever launched a terrorist attack outside of Lebanon. The United States
alleges as one of its stronger cases that Hezbollah was involved in two
major bombings of Jewish targets in Argentina: the Israeli embassy in 1993
and a Jewish community center in 1994, both resulting in scores of
fatalities. Despite longstanding investigations by Argentine officials,
including testimony by hundreds of eyewitnesses and two lengthy trials, no
convincing evidence emerged that implicated Hezbollah. The more likely
suspects are extreme right-wing elements of the Argentine military, which
has a notorious history of anti-Semitism.

Not every country has failed to recognize Hezbollah's evolution from its
notorious earlier years. The European Union, for example, does not include
Hezbollah among its list of terrorist groups. As a result, in yet another
effort to push the U.S. foreign policy agenda on other nations, last year's
House resolution<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:1:./temp/%7Ec109g2mXpU::>also
"urges the European Union to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist
organization." This may be the first and only time the U.S. Congress has
sought to directly challenge EU policy on a non-trade issue.

The Europeans have had far more experience with terrorism, are much closer
geographically to the Middle East, and historically have had stronger
commercial, political, and other ties to Lebanon than the United States and
are therefore at least as capable as the U.S. Congress of assessing the
orientation of Hezbollah. Furthermore, the European Union has had no problem
labeling al-Qaida, Islamic *Jihad*, or Hamas as terrorist organizations,
which suggests that it would have extended the same designation to Hezbollah
if the facts warranted it. Both Republican and Democratic House members,
however, most of whom have little knowledge of the complexities of
contemporary Lebanese politics and apparently fearing European criticism of
a U.S.-backed Israeli attack on Lebanon, arrogantly insisted they knew
better and that they had the right to tell the European Union what to do.
The Rise of Hezbollah

Hezbollah did not exist until four years after Israel first invaded and
occupied southern Lebanon in 1978. The movement grew dramatically following
Israel's more extensive U.S.-backed invasion and occupation of the central
part of the country in 1982 and the subsequent intervention by U.S. Marines
to prop up a weak Israeli-installed government. In forcing the departure of
the armed forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization and destroying the
broad, left-leaning, secular Lebanese National Movement, the U.S. and
Israeli interventions created a vacuum in which sectarian groups like
Hezbollah could grow.

During the early 1990s, following the end of the Lebanese civil war, a
revived central Lebanese government and its Syrian backers disarmed most of
the other militias that had once carved up much of the country. By contrast,
as the Israeli attacks continued, Hezbollah not only remained intact, it
grew. Years of heavy Israeli bombardment led hundreds of thousands of
Lebanese Shiites to flee north, filling vast slums in the southern outskirts
of Beirut. From these refugees and others who suffered as a result of these
U.S.-supported Israeli assaults Hezbollah received the core of its support.
The Hezbollah militia became heroes to many Lebanese, particularly as the
U.S.-led peace process stalled.

The Hezbollah also periodically fired shells into Israel proper, some of
which killed and injured civilians. Virtually all these attacks, however,
were in direct retaliation for large-scale Israeli attacks against Lebanese
civilians. The United States condemned Hezbollah not just for occasional
attacks inside Israel but also for its armed resistance against Israeli
soldiers within Lebanon, despite the fact that international law
specifically recognizes the right of armed resistance against foreign
occupation forces. The United States was apparently hoping that enough
Israeli pressure against Lebanon would force the Lebanese to sign a separate
peace treaty with Israel and thereby isolate the Syrians. U.S. officials
greatly exaggerated the role of Syria in its control and support for
Hezbollah, seemingly ignoring the fact that Syria had historically backed
Amal, a rival Shiite militia. By contrast, while the radical Iranian
Revolutionary Guards did play a significant role in the initial formation of
Hezbollah in 1982, most direct Iranian support diminished substantially in
subsequent years. The emphasis by the United States in subsequent years on
Hezbollah's ties to Iran has largely been to discredit a movement that had
widespread popular support across Lebanon's diverse confessional and
ideological communities.

By the mid-1990s, greater casualties among Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in
occupied southern Lebanon led to increased dissent within Israel. In
response to public opinion polls showing that the vast majority of Israelis
wanted the IDF to withdraw unilaterally, Martin Indyk—President Clinton's
ambassador to Israel who had also served as his assistant secretary of state
for the Middle East—publicly encouraged Israel to keep its occupation forces
in Lebanon. In other words, the United States, while defending its sanctions
and bombing against Iraq on the grounds of upholding UN Security Council
resolutions, was encouraging Israel—against the better judgment of the
majority of its citizens—to defy longstanding UN Security Council
resolutions demanding Israel's unconditional withdrawal. In an interesting
display of double standards, the wording of the 1978 resolution demanding
Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon was virtually identical to the resolution
passed twelve years later demanding Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait, for which
the United States went to war.

The Hezbollah militia finally drove the Israelis and their proxy force out
of Lebanon in a hasty retreat in May 2000. In the wake of the failure of
those advocating a more moderate ideology and a diplomatic solution, the
military victory by Hezbollah greatly enhanced its status.

For more than a dozen years, the Hezbollah militia had restricted its armed
activities to fighting Israeli occupation forces, initially in southern
Lebanon and—following Israel's withdrawal in 2000—in a disputed border
region with Syria still under Israeli military occupation. Both the Bush
administration and Congress, however, have sought to blur the distinction
between armed resistance against foreign occupation forces, which is
generally recognized under international law as legitimate self-defense, and
terrorism, which—regardless of the political circumstances—is always
illegal, since it targets innocent civilians. (Few Americans, for example,
would have labeled the sporadic attacks by Kuwaiti resistance fighters
against Iraqi occupation forces during the six months Saddam's army occupied
their country in 1990-91 as acts of terrorism. By contrast, had the Kuwaiti
resistance planted bombs on buses or in cafes in Baghdad or Basra, the
terrorist label would have been quite deserved, however illegitimate Iraq's
invasion and occupation of Kuwait may have been. The same holds true for
apologists for Palestinian terrorism who attempt to justify the murders of
innocent Israeli civilians on the grounds that it is part of the armed
struggle against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.)

Despite some unconfirmed reports linking individual Hezbollah operatives
with Palestinian terrorist groups, it appears that the movement as a whole
had become another one of the scores of former terrorist groups and
political movements with terrorist components that have evolved into
legitimate political parties in recent decades. These include the current
ruling parties or ruling coalition partners of the governments of Israel,
Algeria, Uruguay, Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan. Indeed, some prominent leaders
of the U.S.-backed Islamic coalition in Iraq were once part of organizations
labeled terrorist by the U.S. State Department and a few have even
maintained longstanding ties with Hezbollah.

Rather than welcoming Hezbollah's important shift away from the use of
terrorism to advance its political agenda, however, the Bush administration
and Congress—in apparent anticipation of a U.S.-Israeli assault against the
group and its supporters—instead became increasingly alarmist about the
supposed threat posed by this Lebanese political party. And, given the
refusal by the Lebanese government to ban the political party and their
inability to disband the militia, the United States has given Israel the
green light to attack not just Hezbollah militia, but the civilian
infrastructure of Lebanon as well.
Why Hezbollah?

Given the number of dangerous movements in the Middle East and elsewhere
that really have been involved in ongoing terrorist activities in recent
years, why this obsession over a minority Lebanese party that had, prior to
last month's assault by Israel, largely left terrorism behind?

A key component of the Bush Doctrine holds that states supporting groups
that the U.S. government designates as "terrorist" are as guilty as the
terrorists themselves and are therefore legitimate targets for the United
States to attack in the name of self-defense.

This doctrine applies not just to Lebanon, but to Syria and Iran as well,
the two countries that the neoconservative architects of the U.S. invasion
of Iraq have proposed as the next targets for attack. Though outside support
for Hezbollah has declined dramatically from previous years, Syria and Iran
have traditionally been Hezbollah's primary backers. By formally designating
Hezbollah as a "terrorist organization" and exaggerating the degree of
Syrian and Iranian support, the Bush administration and Congress are paving
the way for possible U.S. military action against one or both countries some
time in the future. Just as Soviet and Cuban control over leftist movements
and governments in Central America and Africa during the 1980s was grossly
exaggerated in order to advance the Reagan administration's global agenda, a
similar, bipartisan effort is afoot to exaggerate Syrian and Iranian control
over Hezbollah.

During the Cold War, nationalist movements that coalesced under a
Marxist-Leninist framework, such as the National Liberation Front in South
Vietnam, were depicted not as the manifestation of a longstanding national
liberation struggle against foreign domination, but part of the global
expansionist agenda of international communism. As such, sending more than a
half a million American troops into South Vietnam and engaging in the
heaviest bombing campaign in world history was depicted as an act of
self-defense for "if we do not fight them over there, we will have to fight
them here." Once American forces withdrew, however, Vietnamese stopped
killing Americans. Similarly, Hezbollah stopped attacking French and
American interests when they withdrew from Lebanon in 1984. As noted above,
they largely stopped attacking Israelis when they withdrew from Lebanon in
2000 (with the exception of the Shebaa Farms, which they claim is part of
Lebanon).

Therefore, a second reason for the U.S. government's disproportionate
hostility toward Hezbollah may be to convince Americans that radical
Islamist groups with a nationalist base will not stop attacking even after
troop withdrawal. The Bush administration has insisted that the United
States must destroy the terrorists in Iraq or they will attack the United
States. But the rise of Islamic extremist groups and terrorist attacks in
Iraq came only *after* the United States invaded that country in 2003. And
if Americans recognized that attacks against Americans by Iraqis would stop
if U.S. forces withdrew, it would be harder to justify the ongoing U.S. war.
Similarly, if Americans recognized that terrorist attacks by Hamas and
Islamic *Jihad* would likely cease if Israel fully withdrew its occupation
forces from the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip and
allowed for the emergence of a viable independent Palestinian state, they
would no longer be able to defend their financial, military, and diplomatic
support for the ongoing occupation, repression, and colonization of those
occupied Palestinian territories by the right-wing Israeli government. (As
with Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic *Jihad* did not come into existence until
after years of Israeli occupation and the failure of both secular
nationalist groups and international diplomacy to end the occupation.)

This, of course, is not what the Bush administration or Congressional
leaders want people to think, however, since it would make it far more
difficult to defend the wars in Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon. Therefore, it
is politically important to convince Americans that Hezbollah is a terrorist
group engaged in "continuous terrorist attacks" that constitute an ongoing
threat to the national security interests of the United States and its
allies.

The tragedy is how easily the mainstream media and the American public are
willing to believe these simplistic misinterpretations of the complex
Lebanese political situation, and how easily the war on terrorism can be
manipulated to justify a U.S.-backed offensive against a small democratic
country's civilian infrastructure.

*Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy In Focus
Project. He is a professor of Politics and the author of *Tinderbox: U.S.
Middle East Policy and the Roots of
Terrorism<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00082763E/commondreams-20/ref=nosim>
* (Common Courage Press, 2003).*


(c) 2006 Foreign Policy in Focus
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