Dear Mr. Blankfort,
Long a reader of this list, I've long been fascinated by -- and learned much
from -- your very studied and informative posts. Your latest, responding to
Mr. Lerner, however, gave me tremendous pause. This line in particular:
"The notion that Hizbollah is a terrorist organization is as valid as
calling the French and Italian partisans terrorists which, of course, is
exactly what Israel's Third Reich predecessors did."
By speaking of the Nazis as "Israel's Third Reich predecessors," you seem to
imply that Israel is somehow the successor of the Nazis, who, as we all know,
tried to annihilate Jews anywhere its malevolent armies and influence
reached. The analogy, if you intended to draw it in any strict or even loose
sense, seems to me ill-advised and insupportable. All kinds of states act
abusively towards internal minorities, those they see as external enemies,
and populations whom they can abuse or exploit. Assuming, for the sake of
argument, that this describes in part Israel's relationship to the
Palestinians, I don't see why Israel's conduct must somehow be put on any
kind of par with that of the Nazis. Oppression is always ugly and immoral;
but it varies in degree and kind, and I needn't, I think, even deign to
describe the obvious differences between the Third Reich and the Israeli
state. It's become sadly popular lately to brand Israel as the Nazis reborn
-- whether you intended it or not, your phrase suggests this facile and
reductive equation.
Moreover, your reading of Hezbollah seems rather naive. It was spawned by
Iran's Revolutionary Guard in 1981-2 and, so far as we know, continues to be
funded by Iran. It's main mission -- a valid one, I think -- was to expel
the Israeli occupiers from Southern Lebanon, which it succeeded in doing,
supported, at least in principle, by various UN resolutions and much of the
international community. Its official ideology, however, is Islamic
fundamentalist; its ultimate, stated goals (found in its original and
enduring charter, from which I would quote if I had the appropriate texts at
hand) include destroying the state of Israel (dubbed "the Zionist entity" so
as to deny rhetorically Israel of any legitimacy); to establish a theocratic,
Shiite-dominate state in Lebanon (something to which the Syrians objected, to
the point of a civil war in Lebanon); and to spread\the Islamic revolution of
Iran's Khomeni -- to whom Hezbollah orginally pledged a kind of fanatical,
"we will follow and die for our supreme leader, the Ayatolla" support. None
of these goals seems good ones, unless one advocates a war for Israel's
destrcuction (a leader of Hamas recently suggested that there are plenty of
wide open spaces in the US where Jews can resettle once Israel is driven into
the sea) and the kind of religious repression/terrorism that has been
wielded against Iranians for over 20 years, and in whose name hundreds, even
thousands of members of the Iranian left have been assassinated, tortured,
and persecuted (FIRST they came for the Iranian Marxists! Does no one weep
for them?).
If one insists on analogies with the World War Two era, one might choose the
right-wing nationalist resistance in Poland. They wanted and did a good
thing -- attack the Nazi occupiers by means of guerrilla war. But they made
war also against the communists and joined the Nazis and many common Poles in
being aggressively, even murderously anti-Semitic. Not exactly my heroes.
Bear in mind also that Hezbollah was perhaps THE pioneer of suicide bombing
-- though typically aimed at military targets, a crucial distinction, it
seems -- and that brutal kidnappings -- including of clergy and members of
int'l NGOs -- was another of their chosen means. The FLN, NLF, Sandanistas,
FSLN, Pathet Lao, etc. waged wars of liberation by both necessary and
unnecessary, at times insavory, but most often defensible means. The kinds
of actions depiced in the Battle of Algiers are disturbing -- at the
absolute, outer limit of what one might consider morally acceptable.
The current craze of sending teenagers with bomb belts to blow civilians to
bits -- in its relentless intensity and the righteousness accompanying it --
may well have crossed the line, whatever we think of the Israeli occupation.
Hezbollah must also be judged with respect to this disturbing and complicated
legacy.
And does "arms for hostages" ring a bell? These "heroic" liberation
fighters, akin, you seem to think, to Italien and French Partisans (!),
seemed to get on well (via Iran) with Ollie North in his sick effort to
overthrow the Sandanistas.
We, as a left, can argue better, I'm sure.
Respectfully,
Jeremy Varon
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