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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 524
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WCL 524 August 2006
Terrorists official and unofficial
The current military operations in Lebanon give the opportunity to compare and contrast the behaviour of two groups that are not only in armed combat but also fighting a propaganda battle.
With the full weight of most U.S. media outlets the Israelis remain firm and united in their denunciations of Hizbollah illegality and barbarism - terrorism at its worst in the eyes of their partisans. But this is counter-balanced by television images of the fighting.
The counter-propaganda, less strident in the West but probably of far greater moment in Muslim countries, points to Israeli terror and the illegality of an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Nor do the pictures of bombed buildings all over the country suggest anything other than Israeli atrocities. The final contrast is the near regular toll of 10-1 casualties, with the Israeli score of Arab civilians mounting every day.
If the Israelis were actually trying to kill civilians and not simply destroy buildings they could greatly increase their number of kills. That is not likely to impress with their humanity.
So is there any equality of awfulness? Are both contending sides of equal frightfulness? Should both be denounced as barbarous and uncivilized? Are both to be condemned and seen as unworthy to be part of any international community, however misguided and backward that entity usually proves itself to be? Hardly.
The Israelis claim to be a law-abiding, democratic society and to respect norms of international relations. They complain that they are fighting a ruthless and illegal enemy that is covertly supported by two terrorist regimes. Should that be taken as conclusive?
Leaving aside that Israeli is backed to the hilt by U.S. power and money (which enables the purchase of support from the U.K. and most arms exporters across the world), there is more. Hizbollah was built, virtually from nothing, as a resistance to Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. It created the first force more or less capable of fighting the Israeli army (the misleadingly named Defence Force) on its own terms. That, more than the terrorism, is what nettles the Israelis.
We rightly expect that those who claim to uphold truth and justice should behave by higher standards than those they oppose and label as evil. If the supposedly good behave badly, what is there to choose between them and the evil-doers? Unfortunately the Israelis, whose high standards of military discipline have not been equalled by their adherence to international law or standards of humanity while turning a million Lebanese into refugees, are too taken up with their own smaller-scale injuries to notice their own shortcomings.
The Israelis and probably most Jews elsewhere see themselves as beleaguered, in danger of being overrun and their state and people wiped out. Every spluttering outburst from their mostly impotent neighbours is treated (and used) as a vow of undying intent. The reality is probably quite different. As long as the Palestinians are denied a state and some redress the protestations will be shrill and over-pitched. Only serious discussion can bring such rhetoric down to earth and negotiation.
Arabs see the record of the United States, which turned Vietnam and Cambodia into deserts and had already shown its capacity for inhumanity in 1945. The destruction of Hiroshima and even more the Christian city of Nagasaki was an act of state terror designed to warn another state (the Soviet Union) of the danger of war with America. With its chosen and favoured ally Israel possessing nuclear weapons, the Arab adversaries can rightly fear the barbarity that the Israelis have already demonstrated.
The solution to war and peace in the Middle East begins in Palestine. If the official Israeli terrorists want their children to live without threat of final destruction, they have to move to legality and renounce their present low standards of international behaviour. If they cannot set a better example, they cannot hope that the unofficial terrorists will ever be converted to a better way of seeking justice. World citizens cannot take sides in a conflict that shows both contestants behaving in so appalling a way.
John Roberts
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