Hezbollah and US / Israel interference in Lebanon
by Giuseppe Sini
The perception of Hezbollah is in "information" and in some fringes of the Western left
The explosion that devastated Beirut on 4 August 2020 causing, according to a still provisional toll, about 200 dead, 6,500 injured and leaving at least 300,000 thousand people homeless [1] , represented yet another opportunity for the Western information sideshow. to honor one's totemic animal: the jackal. The aim of the clumsy ritual is to associate Hezbollah more or less explicitly with the tragedy, usually by reprising insinuations about alleged purchases of ammonium nitrate and weapons by the Lebanese movement, insinuations spread by "sources" ranging from the Israeli army to " experts "ex-FBI, passing through US" anti-terrorism "officials [2] .
Allegations amalgamated in recent months with the usual mash - compulsively regurgitated by the press and TV every time they turn their distracted gaze to Lebanon - whose fundamental ingredient consists in reducing Hezbollah to an Iranian prosthesis; a foreign body to a mythical and young civil society anxious to free itself from the yoke imposed on the country of the cedars first by Syria, then by Nasrallah and his puppeteers in Tehran, the only obstacle to the modern and pro-Western nation glimpsed in the fabled era of the governments of Rafiq al- Hariri. It was, which lasted from 1992 to 1998, in the re-enactment of which we are careful not to understand details such as the architectural and urban disfigurement of the Lebanese capital, the result of a building speculation in which the then prime minister and associates had their hands in the dough,[3] .
A part of the left, predominantly Anglophone and Francophone but also influential in Italy, does not fail to take up this approach, albeit seasoning it with apparently refined analyzes of the class composition of the Hezbollah base and leaders, as well as pointing to the latter as an obstacle to a genuine and non-denominational mobilization of the Lebanese masses; adding also the minimization of US and Israeli aggression in the region, particularly in Syria and Lebanon, and therefore of the movement's role in countering it. The derision of concepts such as "Axis of Resistance", when evoked by Hezbollah and Syria on the part of this left it appears today - also in the light of the certainly unsurprising normalization of relations between Zionist entities and puppets of US imperialism such as the United Arab Emirates - ungenerous. Even grotesque, if coming from geopolitical punishers such as Joseph Daher, who nevertheless does not disdain the hospitality of the "Fondation pour la recherche stratégique",geopolitical think tank and haunt of Atlanticism in French sauce, or even, by Michael Karadjis, on other occasions so not picky as to speak in reference to Jabhat al-Nusra of “decent revolutionaries” [4] .
Anxiety to belittle Hezbollah's leading role in the resistance to US imperialism and its main bastion in the Middle East, Israel, which borders on mystification when a news organization highly respected by a certain left, International, gives space to the cliché that " the populations of the region no longer care about the Palestinian cause ” [5] . Thus, not only the role of the movement led by Nasrallah, or the opposition of many states - Tunisia, Algeria, Kuwait and Syria - to that de facto renunciation of any Palestinian claim that is the so-called Agreement of the Century is thus hidden., but also popular demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinians; which also speaks volumes about a left intent on invoking the "agency" of the masses as soon as the imperialist exploitation or co-option of certain "revolts" is denounced, only to spread rumors that deny subjectivity to those same masses by reducing the Arab world to regimes reactionaries like the United Arab Emirates, which, moreover, have never shone for their support for the Palestinians.
To return to Hezbollah and its effectiveness in facing the Zionist entity, it is enough to listen to the clearest Palestinian voices, such as Abdul Sattar Kassem, to see it indicated as an alternative model to the now almost thirty-year and exhausting strategy of agreements, almost always to the decline, carried out by the PA [6]. Among other things, with reference to the Israel / United States dynamic, at least part of the leadership of the Lebanese movement - in fact, there is no lack of the opposite idea or one that tends to identify the two subjects - takes a correct position, identifying the first as a "tool" or "external base" of US imperialism; the latter are often attributed primary responsibility for Israeli crimes in the Middle East, albeit within a rhetoric in which the condemnation of the "great satan" is wrapped up, as is obvious for a party that appeals to religion right from its name, from cultural and religious as well as political elements [7] .
Role of the United States in some episodes of Lebanese history
The role of the United States in Lebanon, it was said, today undervalued by the left but also recognized in academia - albeit at times in order to downsize it - and documented as dating back well before the founding of Hezbollah. The historian Irene Gendzier, for example, investigates its development even before the sending to Beirut, in 1958, of about 15,000 marines.by the Eisenhower administration, in the context of an interventionism that struck from Latin America to Southeast Asia, passing through Africa and the Middle East; therefore, writes the same author, even after Lebanon does not have oil, since the Second World War "its integration into the oil economy of the region, dominated by the US international cartel, indicated it as a strategically important state". Landed on the escort of the Eisenhower Doctrine, the marinesthey served to shore up the pro-Western president Camille Chamoun, a Christian-Maronite - whose political bloc had won the 1957 elections also thanks to the massive funds provided by the CIA - from the shocks inflicted on him by a vast opposition front, including Muslims (very Sunni, Shiites than Druze) also Christians. All this with the bogeymen in the background, for the United States and their Lebanese protege, of Nasserism and above all of the nationalist and anti-imperialist revolution which in 1958 in Iraq, under the leadership of General Qasim, had overthrown the Hashemite monarchy [8] .
In the 1960s, US concern about Lebanon was caused by the further growth of parties, however weak, inspired in various ways by Arab nationalism, such as the Pan-Arab Movement of Arab Nationalists and other Nasserian or Baathist groups, or more. or not on the left like the Lebanese Communist Party and, above all, Kamal Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party, which enjoyed broad support among the Druze community; trying to overcome ideological divisions and internal conflicts, these subjects tried to reach some form of cooperation, especially with regard to the modalities of support for the Palestinian cause. While on the other side of the political spectrum the leadersChristian-Maronites Pierre Gemayel, Raymond Edde and the aforementioned Chamoun - hostile to the albeit tenuous concessions to Nasserism in relations with Israel made by President Chehab and his successor Helou - converged, in 1967, forming the tripartite alliance, also competing with the several governments of the country in seeking the favors of the US embassy. In particular, in the climate of growing hostility towards the United States created after the Six Day War, with the recall of their respective ambassadors, and which materialized among other things in attacks on symbols of Western economic interests in Lebanon, the Christian-Maronite right distinguished by its enslavement to Washington and Israel.
Thus, that of the Sixties was a period against US and Israeli interests in Lebanon, in particular, in 1968, the Israeli attack on Beirut airport strengthened the determination of leftist groups about defending the country from the Israeli threat - with respect to the which the government was deemed flawed - as well as with regard to support for Palestinian fighters, who, under the agreement obtained by Nasser in Cairo in 1969, could now act on Lebanese territory. In this context, the US trained and supplied the Lebanese army and internal security forces, including through the arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, in order to thwart activities in Palestinian refugee camps; in some circles of the Nixon administration, meanwhile, the possibility of favoring a military solution - similar to that undertaken by King Hussein in Jordan in September 1970 - in the presence of the Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon, as well as supplying weapons to Christian militias, was beginning to be considered. US Embassy official Robert Oakley argued that the United States financed and armed Christian parties before 1973, and again between that year and the next, armaments reached the same formations by more less indirect ways - through theDeuxième Bureau , ie the then Lebanese military intelligence , and again through Soghanalian - but always with US support and well before the outbreak of the civil war in 1975 [9] .
We will not dwell on the conflict that in various phases has bloodied Lebanon for fifteen years, there is certainly no shortage of reconstructions on its development, with the Syrian intervention following the Ryad summit in 1976 - Damascus will navigate unscrupulously supporting according to the circumstances different communities and imposing their own presidential candidates - and the Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982, the latter culminating in the brutal siege and bombing of Beirut, followed by the withdrawal of PLO fighters from the Lebanese capital. Nor is it intended to support the thesis of some re-enactments according to which Kissinger and the CIA pushed the country towards civil war, however the proximity with the latter and Israel of leading figures of the Christian-Maronite right, such as Bashir Gemayel - son of Pierre,leader of the Lebanese Phalangist Party - are well known. Equally well known is the Israeli complicity, and the US acquiescence, in the massacre carried out by the Falangist militias in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982; not so well known is the involvement of the CIA in the 1985 attack on the Shiite cleric close to Hezbollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, who emerged unscathed from the attack in which around eighty civilians were killed [10] .
Hezbollah in the resistance against Israel
After the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, the multinational force, made up of Americans, French and Italians, charged with overseeing the withdrawal of Palestinian fighters - the West in fact endorsed the presidency, sponsored by Israeli bombs, of the phalangist Bashir Gemayel and then, after his killing, of his brother Amin - returned for the second time to Lebanon, also on that occasion showing his partiality, leaving the Israeli army and the Falangist militias to act undisturbed. Multinational force that will suffer a severe attack in 1983, with the attacks on the Marines barracksUSA and the headquarters of the French paratroopers, usually attributed to the Islamic Jhiad group, sometimes referred to as one of the many formations later part of the Hezbollah embryo. In the emergence of the latter, however, the role of a splinter fringe of Amal is certain - born as the armed wing of the Disinherited Movement animated by Musa al-Sadr, a movement rooted above all in the Shiite community, but with an openly interfaith political-social vocation - disagree with the choice to support the Israeli invasion and Amin Gemayel. Without denying the weight in its foundation of the thought and action of leading figures of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it can be said that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was an unavoidable and decisive factor in the formation of Hezbollah;
The 1989 Ta'if agreements, while putting an end to the civil war, did not affect the confessional system, but reduced the pre-eminence of the president in favor of the prime minister - respectively, according to what was agreed at the end of the French mandate in 1943 Maronite and a Sunni, with a Shiite presiding over the parliament - also legitimizing the Syrian presence. Above all, the Israeli occupation in the south of the country remained, also through the Falangist militia Army of South Lebanon, which between 1978 and 1984 had operated under the puppet entity of the self-styled Free State of Lebanon. Although Hezbollah harshly condemned the Lebanese state's sectarian approach, the movement opted pragmatically, under the leadership of Secretary General Sayyed Abbas al-Moussawi,Accountability and Grapes of Wrath ) of 1993 and 1996 [11] .
The electoral program for the 1996 parliamentary elections, regarding the so-called peace process sponsored by the United States, correctly defined by Naseer Aruri as "co-belligerents" and certainly not mediators, today appears premonitory in stigmatizing a logic that "[...] aimed at consecrate a joint Israeli-American hegemony over the Arab world, in exchange for the restitution […] of a small part of the territories occupied in 1967 ”. In 2000, the Israeli occupation of the south of the country, increasingly unsustainable due to the Hezbollah guerilla warfare - as well as effective propaganda, with the movement's TV, al-Manar, showing Israeli citizens the humiliation of their army - it ended after twenty-two years except for the area, bordering the Golan Heights, of the Shiba farms.[12] .
Hezbollah's rooting in Lebanese society and the illusions / delusions of Western information
The previous year, in 2005, Rafiq al-Hariri was killed in an attack which was followed by his almost sanctification by Western news, the same that magnified the anti-Syrian demonstrations - which would have led to the withdrawal of Damascus, hastily accused of the death of the prime minister - and ignored a part of the country that was anything but a minority, the protagonist of mobilisations of opposite sign, in which Hezbollah was the pre-eminent though not the only component. An attitude in the following years repeated punctually on the occasion of any expression, more or less spontaneous, of popular indignation, constantly and superficially presented as a sign of intolerance towards Hezbollah; the latest example following the explosion in the port of Beirut, with the well-tested exploitation of anti-corruption issues to target people unpopular with the United States and Israel, in this specific case the movement led by Nasrallah, indicated by some press as the only or main target of the anger following the tragedy. These are pathetically disappointed illusions at every electoral round - in the 2018 general elections Hezbollah reaffirmed and in some cases, with its allies, strengthened the good results of the previous ones in 2009 - confirming a rooting in Lebanese society that is clear to anyone. you take off the blinkers of the stars and stripes disinformation. by some press indicated almost as the only or main objective of the anger following the tragedy. These are pathetically disappointed illusions at every electoral round - in the 2018 general elections Hezbollah reaffirmed and in some cases, with its allies, strengthened the good results of the previous ones in 2009 - confirming a rooting in Lebanese society that is clear to anyone. you take off the blinkers of the stars and stripes disinformation. by some press indicated almost as the only or main objective of the anger following the tragedy. These are pathetically disappointed illusions at every electoral round - in the 2018 general elections Hezbollah reaffirmed and in some cases, with its allies, strengthened the good results of the previous ones in 2009 - confirming a rooting in Lebanese society that is clear to anyone. you take off the blinkers of the stars and stripes disinformation.
Hezbollah's social commitment is a fact mentioned even in Western news, although it is dismissed more often as a kind of clientelism in an Islamic guise or, at best, to a state within a state; while it would be more accurate to say that the movement takes the place of the state where - in the south of Lebanon, the Beqa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut, where part of the poorer Shiite community resides - the latter is absent or fugitive, in particular in the fields of health care, education and housing, but also agriculture and the economy in general. Although the financial contribution of Iran is important, the fact remains that these are initiatives usually conceived, implemented and managed in Lebanon and which benefit large sections of the country's population. not infrequently regardless of religious denomination, confirming that Hezbollah's criticism of the sectarian character of the Lebanese state is not merely propaganda. Intervention in the social field is also fundamental in alleviating the disastrous consequences of repeated Israeli aggressions, as well as today, in the context of a very serious economic situation - precipitated as a result of the explosion, and aggravated by further US sanctions against the movement in addition to those against neighboring countries and its allies - crucial to ensure the resistance not only of the Shiite community but of the entire country[13] .
US imperialism, main threat to the Lebanese and Middle Eastern masses
The sanctions, moreover, are nothing more than the latest act of the decades-long US interference in Lebanon, aimed as we have seen above all at disarming the resistance - at the time of the PLO guerrillas based in the land of the cedars, today of Hezbollah - against their right hand in the region; the words of the aforementioned Dhaer therefore sound all the more singular when he writes: "Hezbollah's armaments have been increasingly oriented towards objectives other than the military confrontation against Israel". It is a reference to the participation of the movement in the defense of Syria from aggression - because this was, as amply documented by even the most compromised press - launched by US imperialism. That the inscription of this intervention in the concept of "Axis of Resistance" is anything but a "propaganda tool", as Daher still defines it, is attested by the events of the last few days, with the announcement by Sudan that it wants to normalize relations with Israel, in exchange for removal from the ridiculous list of "terrorist sponsors"; all made even more grotesque by the agreement under which the country will have to pay out millions of dollars to compensate the "American victims of terrorism", basically blackmail and extortion. An outcome of this kind is clearly one of the reasons for Washington's work in the Middle East, it does not matter that it materializes in various forms of economic bullying, the case just mentioned in Sudan and the sanctions against Hezbollah for example,
The one brought by the United States in Lebanon is, as stated by the scholar of the movement Amal Saad, not so much a "regime change, but a change of party", aimed at ousting Hezbollah from the country's institutions, undermining its role in Lebanese society and regional level, putting an end to what, at least in the last two decades, has proved to be one of the most concrete and effective challenges to their interests, as well as their main ally / instrument in the Middle East. All this through the now customary combination of economic abuse - the collective punishment of sanctions which, as already stated in our previous articleon the issue, is a continuation or continuation of the war itself -, manipulation of "civil society", with the US embassy openly boasting its proximity to the sectors of protest most hostile to Hezbollah and, finally, mystification, painting this 'last as an alien and corrupting entity, heterodirected from Iran [14] .
The task of the left and the communists of the central countries is certainly not to get involved in this narrative, perhaps by adding some Marxist nuances, or worse by raving about Iranian imperialism, thus equating aggressors and assailed; but if anything, resolutely oppose any measure already in place, or proposed under Israeli-US pressure, against the Lebanese movement - whether it is blacklisting, imposing sanctions or otherwise - as well as the interference of subjects, in in particular, Macron's France and the IMF, with demands for political and economic reforms, to which Hezbollah has already declared its opposition. Furthermore, if you really care about the Lebanese and Middle Eastern masses in general, and sincerely trust in their non-sectarian mobilization,[15] .
1)
https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1 ... morts.html ;
2)
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/26/beir ... ror-plots/ ;
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mi ... /c3ed5ce2- d714-11ea-a788-2ce86ce81129_story.html ;
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mi ... /c3ed5ce2- d714-11ea-a788-2ce86ce81129_story.html .
3) Georges Corm, The Arab World in Conflict. From the Lebanese drama to the Kuwayt invasion , Jaca Book, 2005, pp. 158-162; Georges Corm, American Hegemony in the Near East , Jaca Book, 2004, pp. 135-140;
https://www.persee.fr/doc/ecofi_0987-33 ... s_3_1_1944 .
4)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/hezb ... tion-labor ;
https://jacobinitalia.it/author/daher-joseph/ ;
https://www.frstrategie.org/programmes/ ... orts-avec- israel-2017 ;
http://links.org.au/node/4346 ;
https://web.archive.org/web/20161105044 ... ir-strikes .
5)
https://www.internazionale.it/opinione/ ... io-oriente .
6)
https://mondoweiss.net/2020/05/palestin ... omes-next/.
7)
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/i ... est-enemy/ ;
https://ottobre.info/2020/02/12/la-ques ... una-lotta/ ; Marco Di Donato, Hezbollah: History of the Party of God, Mimesis , 2015, p. 61; Amal Saad Ghorayeb, Hizbu 'lahh. Politics and Religion , Pluto Press, 2002, pp. 91-93.
8) James R. Stocker, Spheres of Intervention. US Foreign Policy and the Collapse of Lebanon, 1967-1976 , Cornell University Press, 2016, pp. 6-9; Irene L. Gendzier, Notes from the Minefiled. United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958 , Columbia University Press, 2006, pp. 3-7; Eugene Rogan, The Arabs , Bompiani, 2016, pp. 432-439; Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars. The Secret Struggle for the Middle East , Oneworld Book, 2017, pp. 68-70.
9) Stocker, 2016, pp. 23-25, 28-29, 32, 39-40, 63-64, 66, 71-72, 84-85, 89-91, 131-133; Rogan, 2016, p. 486.
10) Rogan, 2016, p. 536-537, 574-576; Corm, 2004, pp. 34-36; Di Donato, 2015, pp. 44-45, 50-51; the hypothesis that Kissinger has “decided to push Lebanon towards civil war” is supported in the volume of the journalist Dilip Hiro Fire and Embers: a History of Lebanese Civil War , St. Martin Press, 1993;
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 2122db88ce ; Georges Corm, Contemporary Lebanon. History and Society , Jaca Book, 2006, pp. 132-133;
https://www.thenation.com/article/archi ... in-beirut/ ;
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/09/1 ... velations/ ; Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs. Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam , Serpent's Tail, 2010, p. 168.
11) Corm, 2006, pp. 133-134, 153; Rogan, 2016, p. 568; Di Donato, 2015, pp. 32, 45, 48-49, 61, 92-97, 101, 127-131; Amal Saad, Challenging the sponsor-proxy model: the Iran-Hizbullah relationship , in Global Discourse: An interdisciplinary journal of current affairs, Vol. 9, N. 4, November 2019, p. 631-632.
12) Naseer H. Aruri, A dishonest broker. The United States between Israel and Palestine , Il Ponte, 2006, p.23; Di Donato, 2015, p. 138; Augustus Richard Norton, Hizballah and the Israeli Withdrawal from Southern Lebanon , in Journal of Palesine Studies, Vol. 30, N. 1, Autumn 2000, pp. 22-35; Rogan, 2016, pp. 662-663;
https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/10/13 ... -israel-2/ .
13) Corm, 2005, pp. 160-161;
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-leba ... SKCN25E18R ; Di Donato, 2015, pp. 74-83, 168-170;
https://twitter.com/amalsaad_lb/status/ ... 4664961030 ;
https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2020/0 ... 264106361/ ;
https://www.lcps-lebanon.org/publicatio ... _1_eng.pdf ;
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/0 ... lks-stall/ ;
https://fair.org/home/hiding-the-impact ... n-lebanon/ ;
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/n ... ated-areas .
14)
https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/hezboll ... uprisings/ ;
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/worl ... trump.html ;
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mi ... ww.youtube. com / watch? v = XEXu_u4JPKE & feature = youtu.be & fbclid = IwAR29pa6fFgsa1DmRbS9fuvHfFUZxXJYYqfUTDCG-htw8RT9bUDmrOHowEi4 ;
https://twitter.com/usembassybeirut/sta ... 3610875904 ;
15)
https://it.euronews.com/2013/07/22/hezb ... ento-della ;
https://aic.camera.it/aic/scheda.html?n ... ERA&leg=18 ;
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN25O14A ;
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-leba ... SKBN20Q2II ;
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/ ... ed-many-59 .
https://ottobre.info/2020/10/29/hezboll ... in-libano/
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