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The Israeli-Hezbollah Lebanon War Bernas, David & Reinhart ================= US Military Intervention in the Philippine ================= ================= Second Impeachment Complaint Against Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ================= First Impeachment Complaint Against Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ================= We Don't Need the Proposed Charter Change. We Need Real Change. =================
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Understanding the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas, S.J., Inquirer, August 7, 2006
FRANKLY, I CANNOT CLAIM THAT I TRULY understand it. Let me nevertheless share with my readers what I have come to think about it even as it is only now that I have begun to pay attention to it.
One thing is certain: the conflict did not begin with the kidnapping by the Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers last July 12. It is part of a long history of two neighbors hating each other. But the kidnapping of the Israeli reservists may have served as the immediate trigger for the fighting to begin in earnest.
It is said that the Hezbollah attack on the Israeli patrol was named “Operation Truthful Promise” because the Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah had promised to capture Israeli soldiers and swap them for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. A Hezbollah statement was quoted as saying: “Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in Southern Lebanon.” Later the leader Nasrallah would say: “No military operation will return them ... The prisoners will not be returned except through one way: indirect negotiations and a trade of prisoners.”
Israel’s response has been an unrelenting series of bombing raids intended to eliminate Hezbollah’s capacity to fight or to harass Israeli villages. But this is not happening. Hezbollah continues to send rockets flying into Israel.
Those who know the history of the warring states recall earlier encounters. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to dislodge the Palestine Liberation Organization from Beirut. For 18 years Israel occupied south Lebanon, withdrawing only in 2000. In 1993 Israel invaded Lebanon in what was called “Operation Accountability,” a week-long attack against Lebanon meant to pressure the Lebanese government to intervene against Hezbollah; and in 1996, it launched what was code-named “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” a 16-day military blitz against Lebanon in an attempt to crush the Lebanese resistance to Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon.
Observers also say that both sides had long been preparing for this conflict—Hezbollah by building up its rocket arsenal, and Israel by escalating its own war capability—and that the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers was not so much a provocation as a pretext for starting a combat which both sides were eager to start.
What has been the result so far?
When you start counting the victims on both sides, they are mainly helpless civilians, the bigger number of them innocent Lebanese. (Providentially, Filipino workers in Lebanon have so far been spared.) But when you look at the pictures on television, you see south Lebanon reduced to a deserted wasteland over which are scattered craters, ruined buildings and smashed vehicles. It was reported that a third of the Lebanese victims are children and the Lebanese prime minister was quoted as plaintively asking, “Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere? Are we children of a lesser god? Is an Israeli teardrop more valuable than a drop of Lebanese blood?” Meanwhile, the United States has resisted pressure to push for an immediate truce.
The Israeli strategy calls to mind the atrocities in Bosnia. In Bosnia, the destruction of villages and the mass annihilation of civilian populations were called genocide. We seem to have something similar here, but Israel is calling it nothing more than the creation of a buffer zone for the protection of northern Israel. The rules of war require that disproportionate force must not be used. Nations have warned Israel against the use of disproportionate force. But the Israeli ambassador to the UN had a terse reply: “To those countries who claim we are using disproportionate force, I have only this to say: you’re damn right we are!” The Israeli strategy is that the task should not be left unfinished. In fact, Israel has warned that everyone remaining in south Lebanon will be regarded as terrorists. Tactically, too, the Israeli air force flattens villages before Israeli ground troops move in, to protect the latter.
An editorial in the Jesuit-run America magazine concludes thus: “The strategy of going after Hezbollah by attacking Lebanon is a return to Bush II illusions about remaking the Middle East by armed force. Lebanon was one country in the region where democracy had begun to take a fragile hold. The Cedar Revolution was the poster child of Arab democratic renewal. The Israeli assault and US acquiescence to the Israeli strategy [have] severely undermined the Lebanese state along with chances of democracy elsewhere in the region. It has weakened the hand of moderate Arab forces generally and strengthened that of the Islamic militants, including Iran’s theocratic government.
“Christians, and Catholics in particular, have reason for acute concern, because Lebanon has been the last country in the Middle East where Christians play a significant role in society. The Lebanese experiment in multi-religious co-existence, what the Lebanese call ‘conviviality,’ a promising alternative to government by the mullahs, has been dealt a crippling blow. The weakening of Lebanon means fading possibilities not only for Middle Eastern Christianity but also for interreligious coexistence. The days when the Maronites could retreat to Mount Lebanon are past. The current crisis calls for American and other Western Christians to defend Lebanon and its Christians with the strongest expressions of solidarity.”
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Hezbollah Randy David, Inquirer, August 13, 2006
ALL over the Arab world and beyond, it is Hezbollah that is on everyone’s lips these days—not the al-Qaeda, not the Taliban, not the Hamas. Israel’s army, the most powerful in the Middle East, is not fighting the Lebanese national army. It is fighting a militant armed group inside Lebanon that is possibly the world’s best-trained guerrilla force.
The role that Hezbollah has taken for itself—that of Israel’s most stubborn enemy—has shamed many leaders of the Arab League, who stood by like helpless spectators when Israel pounded Palestinians in Gaza in the beginning of July. The more Hezbollah fights, the higher its stature grows not just among the Arabs but among Muslims everywhere. While Israel seeks its total destruction, Hezbollah’s goal is modest: to continue fighting Israel and its steadfast ally, the United States. Its survival is its victory. In a world brainwashed by anti-terrorist propaganda, it has become almost instinctive to equate Hezbollah with al-Qaeda, and to treat its members as no different from the fanatical disciples of Osama bin Laden who blew up the World Trade Center using hijacked passenger jets as weapons. Its notoriety in the Western world is well-founded. It is generally believed that Hezbollah pioneered suicide bombing as a mode of struggle in the 1980s. The responsibility for the October 1983 suicide truck bombing that killed 241 US marines in their Beirut barracks has been laid at the door of Hezbollah. What is not as well known, clearly because it does not quite fit its image, is that Hezbollah condemned the 9/11 attacks. It was highly critical of Bin Laden’s disregard for civilian lives. When it became clear that Israel was withdrawing from Lebanon, Hezbollah stopped all suicide bombings in 1999, the year before the actual Israeli pullout. It claims not to have participated in any suicide bombing since then.
Israel entered Lebanon in 1982 to destroy Palestinian guerrilla strongholds. In the process, it gave rise to Hezbollah. From the beginning, Hezbollah’s goals have been twofold: to keep Israel out of southern Lebanon, and to secure the freedom of thousands of Arabs rotting in Israeli jails. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations ordered the dismantling of the Hezbollah military force as a step toward normalizing Lebanese political life. Hezbollah participated in the elections, winning about 10 percent of parliamentary seats, and even gaining positions in the Lebanese Cabinet. But, even as it became part of government, it refused to give up its arms, claiming that it had to keep them as long as Israel continued to occupy a piece of Lebanese territory (the Shebaa Farms).
Originally established as the guerrilla force of the Lebanese Shiite Islamic community, and drawing direct inspiration from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, Hezbollah quickly metamorphosed into a coordinating center for all Lebanese underground groups opposed to foreign occupation. Far from being just the spear point of militant Islam in Lebanon, Hezbollah developed into a national liberation movement, a fulcrum of Lebanese national unity.
Hezbollah quickly earned a place in the heart of the Lebanese people as Lebanon’s de facto revolutionary army. When the war ended, it became active in social development work and reconstruction. The civilian section of the movement runs hospitals, media networks and schools. They maintain programs for war widows and orphans, and those displaced by the conflict. No wonder it has been difficult to crush the Hezbollah. Far from remaining a marginal militia, it has grown into a broad social movement, performing extensive military, political and developmental functions.
The enigma of the Hezbollah captivated the University of Chicago political science professor Robert A. Pape while researching for his book on suicide bombers—“Dying to Win.” He tried to find out more about Hezbollah suicide attackers. In a recent article published in the Aug. 4 issue of the International Herald Tribune, Pape recounts how he collected videos, photos and testimonials about Hezbollah’s suicide bombers for the period 1982 to 1986. What did he find out about them?
“Of the 41, we identified 38. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.
“What these suicide attackers—and their heirs today—shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hezbollah. The only thing that has been proved to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force. Thus the new Israeli land offensive may take ground and destroy weapons, but it has little chance of destroying the Hezbollah movement. In fact, in the wake of the bombings of civilians, the incursion will probably aid Hezbollah’s recruiting.”
Israel and the United States are bent on crushing Hezbollah because if Hezbollah survives, it will be the model for all the scattered guerrilla groups now opposing the American occupation of Iraq. But what is emerging, after a month of continuous pounding of Lebanese towns, is that Hezbollah cannot be destroyed even if Israel kills half of the Lebanese population. Israel has set for itself a goal it cannot achieve. It has no choice but to leave Lebanon now and accept a UN-sponsored ceasefire.
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Israel: What are they fighting for?
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"If the invaders had lances made of metal, we, men of Mactan, had lances made of wood, with tips hardened in fire."
Lapu-Lapu
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Filipinism, nationalism: this is my unconquerable faith and my burning hope... It is the one logical and courageous answer of Filipino patriotism to all the plots and designs to keep our people forever subservient to foreign interests. It is a banner of freedom proclaiming the national interests of the people, to be promoted and safeguarded by themselves, so that the fruits of their efforts and wealth derived from their God-given resources shall, at long last, accrue to them and thus enable all of our people to rise above poverty and march on to prosperity, contentment, and dignity."
Claro Mayo Recto
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"The Philippines is our country. No foreigner - American, Russian, Japanese, Chinese - can love it more than we love it.
The Philippines is our country. Its boon and beauty belong to us first - before to anybody else.
The Philippines is our country. It is made up of an impoverished mass - farmers, laborers, workers - with a capacity, however, for great purpose and great achievement.
It is to the uplift of their lot that we must dedicate ourselves and commit our energies - to make the good life available to all of them, not limit the good life to the exploitative, self-perpetuating ruling class.
The Philippines is our country. Out of this recognition, we shall endow our people with new creed and a new spirit, translating our people’s sentiments into one binding national ideology - Filipinism, the true Filipino ideology... It is time, I say, that we cast our fledgling innocence away and chart our path by what is good for us. The call upon us is clear. We are called upon to a task just as heroic as going to battle, which our forebears did. We are called upon: to reform our government, to remake our policies, to recast our society. It is, I know, a towering job. But this - precisely - is the challenge to us. Let us not be overwhelmed. Let us fight. Let us not abdicate. Let us strive. Let us not yield to despair. Let us keep our hopes alive. Let us not be cowed by the tyrants who rule us. Let us stand up to them - and drive them out. Let us not, in Rizal’s words, be strangers in our own land. Let us - I ask, I implore - make ourselves the draftsmen of our destiny, the masters of our house. It is, in the end, I assure you, the good fight, the best fight we, as a people, shall have fought in many a year. Together, we shall prevail." Benigno Aquino, Sr. ===============
"To foster national pride and patriotism nothing is more effective than to participate actively in the process of maintaining the national defense. Military training and service build up the spirit of duty and love of country. They nurture patriotism, loyalty, courage and discipline...
From my experience, I can truthfully say that patriotic men - even true patriots - are sometimes swayed by partisanship and wittingly or unwittingly, they jeopardize the public good for party considerations...
My loyalty to my party ends, when my loyalty to my country begins..."
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