July 12, 2006
“On day one, they came first to the village of Dweir near Nabatiya in southern Lebanon where an Israeli plane dropped a bomb on the home of a Shia’a Muslim cleric. He was killed. So was his wife. So were eight of his children. One was decapitated. All they could find of a baby was its head and torso which a young villager brandished in fury in front of the cameras. Then the planes visited another home in Dweir and disposed of a family of seven.” (The Independent)

August 4, 2006
“Thirty something workers killed today in Qana, in the Bekaa, on the border with Homs Syria. They had just finished collecting apples, packing them to be put on board of a truck, and they were having lunch. The Israeli’s wasted 2 air strikes on them. The first one hit some of them. The others [who were killed had] gathered to try and help out the wounded and take the dead bodies out.” In this case, almost all the dead were Syrian Kurds. (angryarab.blogspot.com)

On July 12th, the Israeli army launched a massive attack on Lebanon. In one month, they have destroyed all of the key bridges and overpasses in the country, all three runways of Beirut’s commercial airport, roads, power plants, cell phone towers, and factories. The attack has killed more than 1,000 civilians (50% are children), wounded 6,000 and displaced over a million (a quarter of the population). It has destroyed Lebanon’s infrastructure, including the destruction of entire villages and neighborhoods. It has created a humanitarian disaster in Lebanon (UN and NGO’s are not able to supply people with resources since all of the major roads in the South have been hit). Ambulances cannot operate; food, gas and clean drinking water are running out; hospitals are threatened with running out of fuel.

Throughout its bombing campaign, the Israeli army dropped leaflets through fighter planes on areas of Southern Lebanon warning residents to immediately evacuate before they attack. Official Israeli discourse states that people have been killed because they refused to listen when they were told to leave. Yet Human Rights Watch reports that “many civilians have been unable to flee because they are sick, wounded, do not have the means to leave or are providing essential civil services” and because “the roads are under Israeli attack.”

In one of many such cases, when Israeli loudspeakers warned residents to evacuate the village of Marwaheen, families attempted to head for safety and Israeli boats shelled the roads, hitting a pickup, wounding the women and children in the back. Within minutes, an Israeli helicopter approached, firing a missile that blew the pickup to pieces as the passengers struggled to jump out. Twenty-three members of one family were killed and the only survivor was a four-year-old girl, who suffered severe burns to much of her body. The dead stayed in the sun for hours until people could come and collect them.

At first, U.S. and Israeli leaders justified this war by claiming that two Israeli soldiers have been captured in Lebanon. They have also justified the current invasion of Gaza that killed over 150 Palestinians -- 36 were minors and 20 were women -- in July alone on the basis that one Israeli soldier was captured (see btselem.org). Yet what they failed to report is that over 9,000 Palestinians and an untold number of Lebanese and other Arabs are being held illegally in Israeli prisons -- at least 355 are children. Now that it has become ludicrous to justify the destruction of an entire country as a means to free two soldiers, the U.S. and Israel justify this war by claiming they are fighting “Muslim terrorists” who are full of hate and evil and want to destroy Israel.

According to Human Rights Watch, “The Israeli government has blamed Hizballah for the high civilian casualty toll in Lebanon, insisting that Hizballah fighters have hidden themselves and their weapons among the civilian population. However, in none of these cases of civilian deaths documented [in the Human Rights Report “Lebanon/Israel”] is there evidence to suggest that Hizballah was operating in or around the areas during or prior to the attack.

Historical Context

Official U.S. and Israeli discourse on the “terrorists” omits any meaningful discussion on Hizballah, such as who they are, what they represent, and the historical circumstances through which they were created. This is not surprising since “fighting Muslim terrorists” has become a code word for justifying U.S. and Israeli violence against Arab and Muslim civilians and crushing all forms of resistance to U.S.-Israeli policies.

Looking beyond the corporate U.S. media’s blackout on the historical circumstances that produced Hizballah, it becomes clear that Israel was violating Lebanon’s sovereignty long before Hizballah existed, long before its capture of two Israeli soldiers -- and that Hizballah was born out of resistance to Israel’s violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty. According to Zeina Zaatari (Voices of the Middle East, August 2),“The Assault started in 1948 with a seizing of seven villages of south Lebanon alongside the dispossession of Palestinian people.” Regular incursions into Lebanon and violations of Lebanon’s water, land and air space have been a common practice by the Israeli state for decades. In 1968, Israel bombed the Beirut International Airport, destroying 13 Middle East airline planes.

Under the guise of expelling the PLO from Lebanon, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Israeli troops attacked West Beirut, killing 20,000 civilians, destroying homes and businesses, and displacing 400,000 people. This is the context out of which Hizballah was created. Following 1982, a number of small groups organized under the banner of Islam, dedicated to fighting the Israeli occupation troops. By 1985, they officially coalesced into Hizballah. That year, Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon, but continued to occupy Southern Lebanon (in violation of UN resolutions that affirm that Lebanon is a sovereign country).

Khiam Prison was a detention and interrogation camp during the years of the Israeli occupation in Southern Lebanon where thousands of Lebanese were held there without trial. According to Human Rights Watch, “Hundreds of Lebanese have been arbitrarily detained in Khiam without charge for indefinite periods of time. Many of the detainees, including women, have been tortured during interrogation and subjected to abysmal conditions of confinement…This prison is operated entirely outside the law…Israel is bound by its obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law to address the violations that continue to occur at Khiam” (October 28, 1999).

During the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon, Hizballah was at the forefront of resistance to Israeli occupation. In 2000, the resistance movement forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanese land although Israel illegally continued to take water from the Litania river and maintain control over Shebaa Farms and Sharhuba Hills. Along with their “withdrawal” from southern Lebanon, Israel left over 300,000 landmines which have, since then, maimed children and killed farmers, fisherman, and shepherds since Israel refused to provide Lebanon with a map of the land mines.

Also since the “withdrawal,” Lebanese prisoners, captured 27 years ago, remain in Israeli jails. It is in this context that Hizballah captured two Israeli soldiers. According to Lara Deeb (merip.org), “Both sides, on occasion, have broken the ‘rules of the game,’ though UN observer reports of the numbers of border violations find that Israel has violated the Blue Line between the countries ten times more frequently than Hizballah has.”

Beyond its resistance to Israel’s occupation, Hizballah represents Lebanon’s disenfranchised Shi’ite community (see Deeb, merip.org) and approximately 40% of the Lebanese population, and has profound roots in Lebanese society. According to Deeb, “Hizballah functions as an umbrella organization under which many social welfare institutions are run. Some of these institutions provide monthly support and supplemental nutritional, educational, housing and health assistance for the poor; others focus on supporting orphans; still others are devoted to reconstruction of war-damaged areas. There are also Hizballah-affiliated schools, clinics and low-cost hospitals, including a school for children with Down’s syndrome.” Destroying Hizballah would thus entail ethnic cleansing.

U.S.-Israeli Objectives

The U.S.-Israeli war on Lebanon aimed to destroy popular resistance against Israeli occupation in order to create a proxy state buffered with a “colonized zone” (Israel calls this a “security zone”). Such has been the US-Israeli design for Lebanon for decades. One might ask, if the U.S. and Israel claim they are at war with Hizballah, then why have they completely destroyed Lebanon and bombed Christian neighborhoods where Hizballah is nowhere to be found? By blaming Hizballah for the destruction, the U.S. and Israel are trying to force the broader Lebanese population into war against Hizballah, thus igniting an internal confessional strife within Lebanon (just as what we have seen in the U.S. plan for Iraq).

The Bush administration is the primary supporter of the Israeli military. It has been sending laser-guided and bunker buster bombs to Israel with full knowledge of the rising death toll and has crushed all proposals for immediate cease-fire in every stage of this war.

As in previous histories of U.S. colonization and expansion, the U.S.’s current plan of “bringing democracy to the Middle East” has meant establishing and supporting puppet governments through military force and destroying those who are freely elected by their people. The majority of people in the Arab region—and throughout the world—fundamentally disagree with U.S. and Israeli policy on the issues of Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon and disagree with the regimes that the U.S. arms. These policies are based on injustice and inequality. The more injustice the U.S. and Israel bring to the region, the more people will identify with movements that defy U.S. and Israeli plans for the region (see As’ad Abu-Khalil, Voices of the Middle East, August 2nd).

U.S.-Led Violence, Racism, and War

Since Israel has extended this war beyond its fight with Hizballah by killing civilians (including those in Christian villages where Hizballah is nowhere to be found) and destroying Lebanon, one does not need to take a position for or against Hizballah to take a stance for or against this war. One simply needs to consider supporting peace and life or supporting destruction and death. Yet when the leaders of the most powerful nation of the world use race, nation, or religion to grant some bodies more value than others; to grieve the death of some children, but not others; and to grant names and faces to some of the dead and not to others; we might ask whether calling for “life” or “peace” or “cease fire” is even enough.

In 1996, Madeline Albright claimed that the price of killing 5,000 Iraqi children per month was “worth it.” In 2006, Condoleeza Rice referred to the destruction, displacement, and killing in Lebanon as the “birth pangs of the new Middle East” and John Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the UN stated that there is “no moral equivalence” between the deaths of Lebanese and the deaths of Israelis. You may have wondered why an Arab man held up a sign at a recent Ann Arbor protest that read, “Arabs Have Stem Cells Too.” Perhaps it is because Bush claims that “every child born and unborn should be protected,” yet intentionally supports the killing of Arab children. In Lebanon, Bush’s message to the children has been: You are less than human. Your blood has no value. And pro-life doesn’t apply to you.

On August 11, the Security Council approved resolution 1701 which calls for an end to the war and a cessation of hostilities. While the resolution calls for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon “in parallel” with the deployment of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL forces in the south, it fails to give an official deadline by which Israel should withdraw. It therefore fails to guarantee Israeli withdrawal. The resolution also gives Israel a green light to enact any military operation as long as it is in “self-defense.” Yet since Israel has made no distinction between defensive and offensive wars and has historically defined all of its wars in the region as self-defense, there is no guarantee that this resolution will stop Israeli aggression in Lebanon.

While U.S. liberals celebrate the “cease fire,” a number of questions remain unanswered: Why did the Security Council wait an entire month before intervening in the attacks against civilians, and why did the Security Council resolution fail to condemn the systematic killing of civilians? In the beginning of the war, the U.S. blocked the Security Council from calling for a ceasefire on the grounds that, “we must wait for the right conditions for a ceasefire.” One month later, now that we are left with the destruction of Lebanon and no guarantee of an end to war, the U.S. accepted a “cease-fire” resolution. For Bush, what then is the difference between the right conditions for a “cease-fire” and the right conditions for bloodshed and war?

One hundred people die in Iraq per day. Over 4,000 Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis have been killed since 2000 alone. Over 7.2 million Palestinians have become refugees. How many more injustices do we need to hear about before people stop wondering why “they” hate “us?” In a message to the American people on July 31, Mayssoun Sukarieh writes from Lebanon, “We have lost faith in you because your democracy got exported to us with your missiles, and we are consuming them while you are consuming our news.”

Nadine Naber is a co-founder and board member of Arab Movement of Women Arising for Justice (AMWAJ). She is an Assistant Professor of Arab American Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.