One of the depressing aspects of reading, viewing and listening to the mass media in the United States on an extended trip, as I am doing these days, is to suffer the very superficial and often ideologically skewed coverage of important movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas. For various reasons, directly or indirectly related to American government support for Israel over Arab parties, such groups usually are referred to simply as terrorist groups.
It is possible – and desirable – that such accusations of terrorism be determined in a fair court of law one day, because any group or government that engages in terrorism needs to be held accountable for its actions. Yet such a process would only have validity and credibility if it also held accountable other groups or governments – including Israel, the United States, and some Arab regimes – for the accusations of war crimes and other atrocities that have been made against them in turn. This is unlikely to happen any time soon, because of the laws of imperial power and transnational hypocrisy that define our world, where the powerful write their own rules.
So, here in the United States one hears of Hezbollah and Hamas described in the public realm almost always only as terrorist groups. The problem with this one-dimensional focus on the anti-Israeli resistance and military aspects of these groups is that it ignores everything else they represent. The recent war between Hezbollah and Israel, in part a proxy battle between the United States and Israel, revealed that Hezbollah taps into sentiments and political forces across the Middle East that are very much wider and deeper than only its successful quest to drive Israel out of Lebanon.
Whether one likes or dislikes Hezbollah, or admires or fears it, it seems abundantly clear now that its wide support throughout the Arab-Islamic Middle East and other parts of the world reflects its ability to tap into a very wide range of forces, sentiments and political movements. This is noteworthy for two reasons: such forces and movements have never before come together as they did in the support that Hezbollah enjoyed in recent months, and collectively they represent a significant new posture of resistance and defiance of the United States and Israel that continues to reshape politics in the region.
I would mention at least the following as the political sentiments and movements that were encapsulated in Hezbollah’s battle against Israel, and indirectly against the United States:
* Lebanese patriotism, including both the liberation of Lebanon from Israeli occupation and the desire to keep it free from Western domination.
* Arab nationalism, whose themes and rhetorical symbols are increasingly evident in the speeches of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
* The Islamist political resurgence throughout the Middle East, evident in mostly Sunni-dominated movements like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish Justice and Development Party.
* Shiite empowerment, a process that has been under way since the mid-1970s in Lebanon and other parts of the region.
* Solidarity with the Palestinians, whose cause continues to resonate widely and passionately among publics throughout the Middle East and the world.
* Strategic and tactical closeness to Iran, which aims to be the regional if not the global leader of anti-American defiance.
* Close working ties with Syria, whose hard-line Baathist secular regime is among the last of the Soviet-style centralized Arab security states that defy the United States.
* Resistance to foreign occupation of Arab lands, whether the Anglo-American armies in Iraq or the Israeli army in Lebanon.
* Promotion of good governance at the local and national level in Arab lands, seeking to replace the corrupt, inefficient and often incompetent regimes that have ruled Arab countries in recent decades.
* Defiance of what they call American-dominated Western imperial aims and hegemonic designs in the Middle East to transform this into a region of compliant governments that fall in line with American-Israeli strategic aims.
These are the most important regional currents that define many aspects of popular sentiments and public opinion and that Hezbollah has been able to tap into. Never before have such different, and often antagonistic, movements and sentiments come together in a single movement, or at least a temporary tactical alliance of convenience. It remains unclear if this represents a fleeting flash of emotions, or a historic new shift of political direction in the Middle East – a new regional Cold War in which Arabs, Iranians, Islamists, nationalists and state patriots join forces to confront the Israeli-American side with its handful of Arab supporters.
What is very clear, though, is that Hezbollah’s political standing in the Middle East represents political forces and sentiments, and national issues, which far transcend the acts of terrorism of which it is accused, and that seem to totally define its perception here in the United States. It is a shame that a global power like the United States should allow itself to have such a provincial view of things in the Middle East. The toll of imperium is deep and blinding indeed, for dead Arabs and blinkered Americans alike.
Rami Khouri writes a regular commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
