perfidy

As in "What the hell we supposed to do, ya mo-ron..."

I have friends in Beirut, and after the first runway at Rafic Hariri International Airport was bombed, I dropped a note to them to ask how they were doing. Since they're residents of the hills northeast of Beirut, the response last Saturday was somewhat reassuring:

First, let me start off by saying that we are all fine.
{...} Though Lebanon is tiny, it has very distinct areas that are variably affected. We live in the mountains in the Christian area of Lebanon and are less likely to be in danger than the Moslem areas in the South, especially those areas with Hizballah presence, which have been mainly affected.

We hope this cluster fuck started by Hizballah resolves soon so that we can get back normal life.

Mazen

By this past Friday, as the effects of this latest war had ground northward, he'd been reduced to wondering whether CNN, NYT, or anyone else was covering the action, and just in case they weren't, quoting Robert Fisk articles in the Independent. Among the snippets of the two articles he sent ("Paradise Lost: Robert Fisk's Elegy for Beirut", July 19, and "The Child Lies Like a Rag Doll: A symbol of the latest Lebanon war", July 20), Fisk complains:

And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel's "disproportionate" response to the capture of its soldiers by Hizbollah.

and then (in the latter article), "reports":

How soon must we use the words "war crime"? How many children must be scattered in the rubble of Israeli air attacks before we reject the obscene phrase "collateral damage" and start talking about prosecution for crimes against humanity?

The child whose dead body lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest Lebanon war; she was hurled from the vehicle in which she and her family were traveling in southern Lebanon as they fled their village - on Israel's own instructions. Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack, her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child.

...(includes details of a gut-wrenching set of circumstances leading to the girl's death, along with others, after Israel had warned citizens to leave)

The Israelis constantly boast of their "pin-point" or "surgical" precision in air attacks. If this is true, then there are far too many civilians being killed in the Lebanese bloodbath to make every one of them an accident. And since Israel's target list now includes obviously civilian targets - deliberately bombed to punish the civilian population - the evidence is mounting that these air raids are intended to kill the innocent as well as the Hizbollah guerrillas whom Israel claims to be fighting.

True, the Hizbollah are killing civilians in Israel, but their missiles are inaccurate and the West, which has done no more than mildly disapprove of Israel's retaliatory onslaught, must surely expect higher standards of the Israeli armed forces than of the men whom both Israel and President George Bush describe as "terrorists".

A couple of things occur to me here - because Hizb'allah are less-well-armed, we should just pass on the fact that they're killing Israeli citizens? Because any such killings are just lucky, given the presumed shittiness of the Hizb'allah arms? And not only that, we're supposed to reserve all ire for Israel, instead?

I don't know who this "we" is that Fisk refers to, but those tut-tutting about proportionality are either ignorant or, worse, wilfully ignorant of how it is that wars actually end. Lebanon is taking it in the ass, again, and that's truly something to regret. The loss of life, livelihood, and living quarters is both sad and intensely depressing.

But Lebanon has a problem that's a precursor to the present tragedy, namely the Hizb'allah "state within a state" that felt free to take action of its own, presumably without the consent of the elected government of the country. Lebanon claims not to have a militia capable of challenging the Party of God's militia, and after this latest provocation, someone had to. Israel was the only candidate - the UN sure couldn't be counted upon, and think of the howls of indignation should the US have offered to do the job, gratis, in response to the 1983 Beirut bombing which killed 241 Marines.

The sixty rockets that have rained down on northern Israel today (so far, at least, at the time I'm typing this) can't simply be ignored, and the fact that Israel has been able to effectively blockade Lebanon is an example of how proportionality must be ignored if the fighting with Hizb'allah is ever expected to end. It sucks that there's no valid way to blockade just the Shiite south of Lebanon, and in any event, that wouldn't achieve the desired effect. It sucks that such blockades include the need to damage infrastructure, such as the largest milk-producing facility in the country, in order to grind down the ability, if not the will, of the Hizb'allah aggressors. It also sucks that anyone outside the Hizb'allah militia has died, is dying, or will die.

And that suckage includes the damage to the lives of the Shiites in the south - they can't go against Hizb'allah, for several reasons. First and least important, they're all Shia. Of more importance is the fact that Hizb'allah takes good care (in a "Chicago ombudsman" sort of way) of it's civilians. Hizb'allah isn't just a terrorist organization and, in fact, may not now even be best classified as one, though they certainly were in the 1980s and 1990s, and they have terrorist adherents, still, today. They make up roughly 25% of the elected Parliament of Lebanon, and during the Cedar Revolution Mazen's brother Ziad referred to Nasrallah, the head of Hizb'allah, as among the least corrupt and most admired politicians in all of the body politic. Which says a lot, given the strict sectarianism of Lebanon, and the fact that Z & M are from a Christian family.

But, back to Fisk's "we": What are "we" supposed to do here? If "we" is the United States, are "we" supposed to shrug off their "Jew rays" and reign in "our" oft-claimed Zionist overlords from Israel? If "we" is Europe, are "we" supposed to increase the volume of "our" tut-tutting, attempting to shame Israel into accepting constant bombardment from a non-state actor? If "we" is the UN, are "we" supposed to suddenly become much less corrupt and vastly more competent, or would it be OK for "us" to just reduce the volume of piddle running down "our" legs at the thought of having to, for once, justify "our" continued existence?

Damn, I don't know the answer, but I, along with an apparent majority of my countrymen, think that, for now, it's just fine to state the obvious: Israel has a right to defend itself, and I wish there were a way to do so without such grievous damage to the Lebanese infrastructure. Short of a full-blown occupation, I don't see what alternative exists. Oh, wait - I guess Nasrallah could stop bombing Haifa and return the two kidnapped soldiers. But that seems unlikely, at least for now. Vaunted Arab ego, and all that.

Oh, and the latest dispatch from Mazen, this afternoon?

Dear Friends,

I am leaving Lebanon this Monday morning by road to Syria and then on to Jordan. From there I will fly to Egypt where I will be based for a while on a new project.

{His employer} is taking care of all travel arrangements, etc. My parents and brother are still in Lebanon and awaiting being contacted by the Canadian embassy for evacuation.

I appreciate all of your concern and if you do say a prayer or two, throw a little something my way for a safe journey and for the safety of my family in Lebanon through these difficult times.

Much love to you all.

Mazen

No tut-tutting here. Just a sense of resignation that, again, good people from a country that deserves much better have been horribly affected by forces seemingly beyond their control.

[wik]: Oops. Looks like there's a chance, according to Allah @ Hot Air, that some of Lebanon's leaders at least tacitly approved Nasrallah's adventurism. Bummer, that.