Destruction,
Death,
And Drastic Measures
By Dahr Jamail
10 August, 2006
Dahrjamailiraq.com
Damascus, Syria
-- "I care about my people, my country, and defending them from
the Zionist aggression," said a Hezbollah fighter after I'd asked
him why he joined the group. I found myself in downtown Beirut sitting
in the backseat of his car in the liquid heat of a Lebanese summer.
Sweat rolled down my nose and dripped on my notepad as I jotted furiously.
"My home in Dahaya is
now pulverized," he said while the concussions of Israeli bombs
landing in his nearby neighborhood echoed across the buildings around
us, "Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them.
I am a Shaheed [martyr]."
He asked to remain anonymous,
and that I refer to him only as Ahmed.
The late afternoon sun was
behind him as he told me just how hard his life had been. When he was
eleven years old, he and his youngest brother had been taken from their
home by Israeli soldiers and put in prison for two years. I asked him
what happened to him there, but that was a subject he wouldn't discuss.
One of his brothers was later killed by Israeli soldiers. After his
release from an Israeli prison Ahmed was spending his teenage years
in southern Lebanon when he was caught in crossfire between Hezbollah
fighters and Israeli soldiers near his home. He was shot three times.
Many years before, his father had been killed by an Israeli air strike
on a refugee camp in south Beirut.
"What are we left with?"
he asked, while the angle of the sun through the windshield highlighted
tears welling in his eyes, "I know I will die fighting them, then
I will go to my God. But I will go to my God fighting like a lion. I
will not be slaughtered like a lamb."
A Widely Misunderstood
Group
Leaving on this trip to Syria,
I never intended to go to Lebanon. When my plane took off from San Francisco,
Lebanon was still a peaceful land; by the time my plane touched down
in Damascus, however, everything had changed. That very day, I learned
on landing, Hezbollah had taken two Israeli soldiers captive and killed
eight others. While the mainstream media have taken it as fact that
the Hezbollah raid occurred inside Israel, many Arab outlets claim the
Israelis actually entered Lebanon before being attacked. The exact location
of the clash remains in dispute.
Clearer, however, are the
effects of the subsequent Israeli attack on Lebanon. Physically, Lebanon
has been bombed if not yet back to the Stone Age, then at least to a
point where much of the country now looks as it did in the worst periods
of its brutal civil war, which lasted from 1975 until 1990.
According to statistics provided
by the Lebanese Government on July 24th, there had already been well
over $2.1 billion of damage to the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon
-- all three of its airports and all four of its seaports had by then
been bombed, and in the weeks to follow it was only to get worse.
By estimates that go quickly
out of date as the brutal bombing campaign continues, there has already
been nearly $1 billion of damage done to civilian residences and businesses,
with over 22 gas stations as well as fuel depots bombed and the major
highways along which fuel resupply would take place badly damaged. Scores
of factories, worth over $180 million, have also been damaged or destroyed.
Red Cross ambulances, governmental
emergency centers, UN peacekeeping forces and observers, media outlets,
and mobile phone towers have all been bombed, each a violation of international
law. Mosques and churches have been hit; illegal weapons such as cluster
bombs and white phosphorous used; and, as far as can be told at this
early point, over 90% of the victims killed have been civilians.
As of this writing, the Lebanese
government had already announced at least 900 deaths, and that number
is now certainly well over 1,000. At least 60 Israelis are also dead
from Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel and fierce fighting inside Lebanon.
Tom Engelhardt recently wrote,
"As air wars go, the one in Lebanon may seem strikingly directed
against the civilian infrastructure and against society; in that, however,
it is historically anything but unique. It might even be said that war
from the air, since first launched in Europe's colonies early in the
last century, has always been essentially directed against civilians.
As in World War II, air power -- no matter its stated targets -- almost
invariably turns out to be worst for civilians and, in the end, to be
aimed at society itself. In that way, its damage is anything but 'collateral,'
never truly 'surgical,' and never in its overall effect 'precise.' Even
when it doesn't start that way, the frustration of not working as planned,
of not breaking the 'will,' invariably leads, as with the Israelis,
to ever wider, ever fiercer versions of the same, which, if allowed
to proceed to their logical conclusion, will bring down not society's
will, but society itself."
The government of Israel
stated at the outset that the goal of their massive air campaign, leveled
directly at the infrastructure of Lebanese society and at its economy,
was essentially psychological -- meant to increase popular pressure
against Hezbollah; but, as might easily have been predicted, exactly
the opposite has occurred.
"I never supported Hezbollah
before," a young student at the American University of Beirut told
me shortly after I arrived in the capital city. "But now they are
defending us against Israel." His view of Hezbollah is quickly
becoming the norm for hundreds of thousands of previously unsympathetic
Lebanese as American-made Israeli bombs and missiles continue to rain
down on the country.
During my time in Lebanon
I drove to Qana. On the way there, I passed one small hilltop village
after another, all of them resembling bombed out ghost towns. Chunks
of buildings littered the roads, which our car had to carefully negotiate.
Powdered rock from shattered homes seemed to cover everything like a
thin film. No one was walking the deserted streets, even in the middle
of the day. The few who remained, mostly the elderly and children, hid
in basements. For whole stretches, only occasional stray cats and dogs
were seen, along with a flock of goats whose herder had long since fled.
The villages looked like
ghost towns as the irregular thumping of bomb explosions continued in
the distance. The roar of Israeli F-16's overhead was a constant reminder
that no place in the south of this country was safe. After witnessing
this level of destruction, the literal tearing apart of a society, it
was clear to me so many more people were supporting Hezbollah.
Enter Nasrallah
To grasp the unfolding events
in Lebanon, you have to begin with an uncomfortable fact. Hezbollah,
widely known throughout much of the West as a "terrorist organization,"
is seen as anything but in Lebanon. This was obviously true of most
Shiites, especially in southern Lebanon, before this round of war began.
Now, even many in the conservative Christian population in parts of
northern Lebanon and West Beirut have come to hold its leader, Sheikh
Hassan Nasrallah, in high regard. With seats in the Lebanese parliament,
Hezbollah is seen as a legitimate political group.
Hezbollah first came into
existence as a result of the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon,
which began on June 6, 1982. The group draws most of its popular support
from southern Beirut and south Lebanon, where the majority of the country's
Shia population live. Downtrodden, impoverished, and largely overlooked
by a government in Beirut in which they had inadequate representation,
the Shia were primed for a leader who would promise them a better future.
The group was officially
founded on February 16, 1985 when Sheik Ibrahim al-Amin proclaimed its
manifesto. Hassan Nasrallah would only come to power after the Israeli
military assassinated al-Amin. A charismatic leader, he promptly solidified
his base and swelled Hezbollah's ranks by working to satisfy the most
essential needs of his followers. Hezbollah soon started providing the
basic social-service infrastructure in the neglected Shia areas of southern
Beirut and southern Lebanon -- hospitals, schools, construction projects,
welfare programs, and, above all, a well-trained, highly disciplined
militia for protection.
After years of brutal guerrilla
war against the Israeli military, which had occupied part of southern
Lebanon, Hezbollah succeeded in doing what neither the Lebanese government,
nor their impotent army could possibly have done. Its fighters wore
down the Israeli military and finally forced it out of the country in
2000. This, not surprisingly, lent it even greater popularity.
While the coming years also
brought it more significant political representation and respect, the
Druze and Christian populations, continued to distance themselves from
or oppose the group.
Now, the staggeringly disproportionate
Israeli response to the detention of two of its soldiers and the killing
of others in mid-July has changed even this. In a sense, the Israelis
are accomplishing the previously inconceivable -- uniting the otherwise
hostile power centers of the country behind Hezbollah. Last week, the
Israelis actually began bombing key bridges in the Christian part of
the country for the first time -- a clear statement that no Lebanese
are to be spared their attentions. Most of the Druze and Christian leadership
have by now condemned the Israeli response. Many have even gone so far
as to state that they believe Hezbollah is working to defend the country's
sovereignty.
Thus, the Israeli response
has played a huge role in strengthening the already strong hand of Hassan
Nasrallah.
The View from Damascus
Hezbollah enjoys massive
popular and political support in Syria. Everywhere in the ancient city
of Damascus the yellow and green flags of the group hang from storefronts,
flutter in the wind from television antennae, and fly from the radio
antennae of cars. Portraits and photos of Nasrallah are taped to the
back windows of Mercedes and BMW's. Key chains of his bearded, smiling
face, along with iconic t-shirts in which he is portrayed between the
Syrian flag and that of Hezbollah are now selling like hotcakes.
"We know the Americans
are trying to smash our dignity," a man named Faez told me in the
coastal Syrian city of Latakia. Inside a heavily air-conditioned European-style
coffee shop, while sipping espresso, the businessman did what so many
Syrians do nowadays – he used "America" and "Israel"
interchangeably.
The head of the Syrian Union
of Engineers, Hassan Majid, was no less frank as we sat in his plush
office in downtown Damascus. "Hezbollah has our greatest respect
now," he said softly.
Hundreds of thousands of
Lebanese refugees have flooded the capital. You can see them inhabiting
schools and crowded into various offices for Middle East Airlines, Lebanon's
air carrier. They are always to be found at Syrian Red Crescent shelters
hoping to acquire lodging, food, or other assistance. The support they
receive here is of a far better kind than is available to the tens of
thousands of internal refugees who have fled no farther than Beirut,
where they sleep in the dirt in city parks or, if they are lucky, on
thin foam mats in still empty schools; yet their accounts of suffering
and loss are no less heart-wrenching. These stories ripple across Syria
daily, broadcast far and wide by state television.
At the headquarters of the
Syrian Red Crescent, you can still see a plaque from the Red Cross thanking
them for their efforts assisting Hurricane Katrina victims. When I asked
about it, one of the volunteers told me Syria had donated medical supplies
to aid the desperate residents of New Orleans.
An old man named Hassan Hamdan
has just arrived from southern Lebanon and is waiting for volunteers
to find him somewhere to sleep. He catches the spirit of the moment
when he takes my very first open-ended questions as an opportunity to
vent his rage.
In a sense, it never feels
as if he's talking to me at all. As he begins, he promptly stands up.
His voice rises instantly into the shouting range and he quite literally
yells, "The Israelis are attacking and killing everything which
moves!" I involuntarily take a step back, fearing he's so angry
he might actually assault me. "It's total destruction! They just
shredded our city!" For a moment he calms slightly and explains
that he's just left his village near the southern Lebanese city of Bint
Jbail. Immediately, his voice rises and he's off again: "Everyone
is now with Hezbollah! Even Jesus is with Hezbollah! Insha'Allah [God
willing], Hezbollah will smash the Israelis and kick them from Lebanon
once and for all!"
I've seen similar rantings
broadcast on Syrian state television as people crowd around to watch
inside sweaty falafel restaurants and I automatically dismissed it as
so much state propaganda. But here that "propaganda" is alive
and unbelievably vociferous, with not a screen in sight.
In fact, it hardly matters
any more what anyone says or does. Sometimes you can feel a tidal pull
in events -- in this case, a strong one flowing in but a single powerful
direction. When one Israeli general recently aimed some pointed barbs
at Syria for supporting Hezbollah, and President Bashar Assad promptly
put the Syrian military on high alert, popular support for Hezbollah,
further galvanized, only grew accordingly. It's no longer hard to imagine
a whole region in which the shouting might reach previously inconceivable
decibels and nobody will be listening.
Drastic Measures
After visiting a hospital
in Beirut where I saw dozens of horribly wounded children, women, and
the elderly, their skin burnt, often from the flames of their own devastated
homes, their bodies shredded, possibly by the cluster bombs the Israelis
have reportedly been using, I walked outside and wept.
Shortly after, I met with
Ahmed again and briefly described the experience while, once again,
tearing up. "This is what I've been seeing my entire life,"
he replied, staring into my eyes. "Nothing but pain and suffering."
Now, this is also what so
many Lebanese, sheltered these last years of reconstruction from life
experiences like Ahmed's, are seeing first-hand, and this is why Hezbollah
is viewed by almost all Lebanese as a legitimate resistance movement,
not a "terrorist organization." This is what the Israelis
have actually done to the Lebanese, other than dismantling their society
and turning them into refugees in their own land.
When you are in Syria or,
I suspect, in most Arab states today, and utter the words "terrorist
organization," it doesn't even occur to people that Hezbollah might
be the topic of conversation. They take it for granted that you're referring
either to Israel or the United States.
As Israeli pilots continue
to drop American made precision-guided bombs from F-16's and Hezbollah
launches barrages of rockets ever deeper into Israel, the radicalization
of both populations -- and of the region -- only intensifies amid the
spreading devastation.
When this war finally ends,
the societal, economic, and environmental destruction will undoubtedly
be staggering -- it already is -- as well as long-lasting; but it will
pale in comparison to the psychological damage which has already been
done. Rather than sowing the seeds of a future peace, it's painfully
clear to an observer that the seeds of everlasting bloodshed, resentment,
and resistance are now sprouting amid the ruins.
Arab leaders continue to
earn the scorn of their populations for not putting their all into stopping
the Israeli campaign against Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah appears committed
to doing so until the very end -- and, based on what I saw in my days
in Lebanon, that "end" of mutual destruction seems all that
is left on the minds of those involved. The Israelis, over-valuing the
technology of war and, in particular, of air power (as so many have
done before them), began their campaign against Lebanon by using perfectly
real bombs and missiles to achieve largely psychological ends -- the
humiliation of Hezbollah in the eyes of the Lebanese population. As
it turns out, they have indeed changed the psychology of Lebanon --
and possibly of the region. Just not in ways they ever imagined.
As Tarad Hamadé, the
Lebanese Minister of Labor and official representative of Hezbollah
told me in Beirut recently, "We might not be as powerful as the
Israeli army but we will fight until we die."
Copyright 2006 Dahr Jamail