Hezbollah and Self-Defense

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

What could you do — sir or madam — if your neighbors surrounded you on three sides and agreed among themselves to get rid of the fourth neighbor, the one who lets you bring water into your house? And what is Iraq, for example, supposed to do if states besiege it from every direction, and then work to close off the one remaining outlet it has to the outside world? Or let us ask: what would we expect Israel to do if the Jordanian regime — which opens a wide gate for it into the Arab homeland — were threatened with removal?

And what do we expect Hezbollah to do if Lebanon’s 14 March forces and their allies are lying in wait for it, if Israel is threatening it, and as long as the Syrian opposition forces threaten and warn it that they will enter Lebanon after their victory in order to finish it off? If you were in its place, what would you do: would you flee to the sea, or climb to the sky? Or would you look at things through the eyes of life or death? There are those who remember exactly what Hamas did in 2008, when the Gaza Strip was strangled by Israeli and Egyptian forces and warships out in the Mediterranean. Did Hamas not breach the artificial border with Egypt, bearing all the accusations that rained down on it from every direction? Was the Palestinian resistance supposed to accept a slow death, or to test its own muscles in order to live?

From a security and military standpoint, the problem does not lie with Hezbollah, but with the Syrian opposition, which was careful from the outset to increase the number of its enemies — both by appealing to the West for help, and by heaping threats and warnings on Hezbollah. Appealing to the West means that a considerable number of Syrians, Arabs, and Muslims will hesitate to support the opposition or will stand against it, and threatening Hezbollah means inviting Hezbollah to prepare for war in self-defense. When states wage wars, they work to reduce the number of their enemies through neutralization or by winning friendship, and to increase the number of their friends and strengthen relations with them — and it does not appear that the Syrian opposition was calculating matters with precision.

The Roots of the Hostility

After the Arab regimes had relaxed once the PLO and the Palestinian factions were gone from Lebanon, they were startled by the assassination of Bashir Gemayel on 14 September 1982 — a man who had been elected president of Lebanon and had decided to sign a peace treaty with Israel. A peace treaty with Israel was in fact signed under his brother, President Amin Gemayel, on 17 May 1983. But the greater surprise came on 23 October 1983, when the headquarters of the American and French forces in Beirut were bombed, forcing France and America to flee Lebanon because of the two bombings. It later became clear that Hezbollah, then a newly formed party, was responsible for the two bombings, and for bringing down the 17 May 1983 agreement, which resembled the Camp David accords with Egypt and the Wadi Araba treaty with Jordan.

Alarm bells rang among the Arab regimes, the Americans, and the Europeans, given that Iran and its allies had come to have a say in the region, and that the departure of the PLO from Lebanon had brought in forces that could prove even more hostile to Israel. The Arabs had long feared an Islamic awakening, and the emergence of states or organizations hostile to Israel that reject its existence, and the emergence of Hezbollah confirmed those fears. Arab leaders always feared a Sunni awakening following the Shia awakening in Iran and Lebanon, and feared the emergence of forces that would obstruct their historic drift toward recognizing Israel and making peace with it — and the emergence of the party did indeed spoil these leaders’ surrender-bound momentum.

The Arab regimes had to expect an escalating movement of Sunni Islamic groups, and more pressure on Israel. For this reason they began adopting a policy of absorbing Islamists’ anger through various means, including encouraging outward displays of piety and focusing on building a clerical, monastic form of Islam that remains preoccupied with secondary jurisprudential matters — like the length of a man’s beard, women’s hair, and the rewards for reciting certain chapters of the Qur’an — and with matters of the unseen, like the torment of the grave and the horrors of the Day of Judgment. They found religious men with scant knowledge of God to carry out the task of turning Islam into a monastic religion, reducing it to a faith concerned with trivial matters at the expense of nation-building — and these were the very men who later took on the task of spreading strife between Sunni and Shia.

As for Israel, the task was extremely difficult, since the regimes could not, at that time, stand openly against the resistance confronting Israel, and had to remain within the circle of conspiracy.

The Dialectic of Rejecting Islam While Accepting Israel

The Arab regimes are, for the most part, a product of Western colonialism, and they are now under the tutelage of the United States of America; they therefore do not exist to serve the Arab peoples, but to look after the interests of the states that placed them on their thrones of power, and if they do serve ordinary people at all, that is only under the umbrella of Western interests, never outside it or above it. Of course there are Arab regimes that emerged over time through military coups, but they have been marked by a great deal of injustice, tyranny, and ignorance, and their failure has been proven over time — including the Syrian regime. In other words, the Arab regimes are divided into two categories: one an agent of Western colonialism, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Morocco, and the other ignorant — and neither is fit to lead a people or a nation.

Islam is incompatible with servitude to others and with ignorance, and this is why every Arab regime has been keen to turn Islam into a religion of menstruation and postpartum bleeding, so to speak, so that its energies do not develop to the point of trampling the regimes underfoot. Islamic movements themselves have contributed to making the Islamic message appear naive, and at times murderous and criminal, repelling people and turning them into helpless souls absorbed in ritual instead of doing good. This is the greatest obstacle facing Islamic thinkers today, in that what they propose does not correspond to what people imagine religion to be.

Two pseudo-Islamic schools developed as a result of the policies of the Arab regimes: the school of monasticism and the school of criminality, both of which harm Islam and Muslims. The purpose behind the rise of these two schools is to turn people away from the path of God and to make Islam appear ugly in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of Muslims themselves — thereby reassuring the Arab regimes, and along with them the people of the West and Israel.

As for Israel, the matter is entirely clear. If it was the colonial powers that created the Arab regimes, and the same powers that created Israel, then these powers must adopt the appropriate policies to preserve Israel’s survival. The existence of many Arab regimes is bound up with their defense of Israel, and if any Arab regime that owes its existence to the West should deviate from this rule, the West is capable of changing its leadership quickly. This is why it has never been possible for Arab summit conferences to make any tangible effort to deter Israel, and it was not expected that people would overcome their naivety and grasp this bitter truth except after many years. Israel is the enemy of the Arab nation, yet it is a friend to most Arab regimes, and it works with all its strength to support them against their internal rivals. So which is better for the Arab regimes: offering support to Israel and staying in power, or standing with the Arab nation and risking their thrones?

Hezbollah’s Rejection, and the Resistance

The resistance now taking shape on the land of Bilad al-Sham, in Palestine and Lebanon, constitutes the back of Arab-Islamic resistance, the force that defies Israel and those with it. The resistance defends the Arab nation, while Israel defends the Arab regimes, and it is unintelligent for anyone to imagine that the Arab regimes will make peace with any form of resistance, whether popular or armed.

This is why many Arab states cooperated with Israel — including Palestinians among them — in order to defeat Hamas and the entire Palestinian resistance in the 2008/2009 war on Gaza. They supported Israel morally and in terms of security, and prayed to God that Israel would succeed in its war, but their prayers were not answered. Their prayers also failed again in 2012, despite the appearance, put on by some Arab regimes allied with Israel, of supporting the resistance.

As for Hezbollah, the matter is more complicated, particularly because it is allied with Iran, which stands accused of trying to encroach upon the Arab homeland. The Arab regimes were unable to do anything against Hezbollah while it resisted the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, for several reasons, chief among them that they were powerless, and because of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon. Hezbollah fought Israel free of the burden of Arab betrayal, right up until the year 2000, when the Israeli army turned and fled Lebanon.

The fangs of most Arab regimes, and of a large part of the Lebanese population, were bared after 2000 to tear into Hezbollah and be rid of it, but the party was strong enough, and nothing came to the aid of Arab hopes and that segment of the Lebanese people except the July 2006 war, on which the Arabs pinned great hopes of crushing Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the forces of Siniora and Hariri, along with the domestic forces allied with them, all cooperated — but all of them returned in defeat. Nor was Hezbollah spared concentrated media attacks against it; thousands of media outlets across the breadth of the Arab world and the Western world drew their pens and launched their programs, inciting against it, distorting its image, threatening it, and wishing for its disappearance. Even many Palestinians — who, of all people, should wish for the existence of an effective armed resistance — took to attacking Hezbollah.

Forbidden to Hezbollah

There are more than sixty factions and states taking part in the fighting in Syria alongside the opposition — not out of love for the opposition or for Syria, but with the aim of destroying Syria. I had previously addressed the opposition, saying that it should not bring outside powers into the conflict, because this prolongs the life of the regime, and that keeping the conflict local would hasten the process of political change in Syria. America, the states of the European Union, numerous armed organizations, and Lebanon’s 14 March forces all intervened. None of those now weeping crocodile tears called on any party to leave Syria, but everyone was mobilized the moment Hezbollah intervened. The reason is clear: it is Hezbollah’s head that is wanted.

Hezbollah is now besieged by Israel, by Lebanon’s 14 March forces, by the opposition forces in Syria, and by the sea to the west. So what is it to do?

And a word to the Palestinian resistance: if there is anyone within the Palestinian resistance who imagines that the Arab regimes will pat a resistance fighter on the back, he needs to reconsider. If Hezbollah is slaughtered, the Palestinian resistance is slaughtered with it.

The Criminal Sectarian Strife

I had written the first book to appear anywhere in the world on the Iranian revolution, in 1979, and I said in it that America and the Arab regimes would use sectarian strife between Shia and Sunni as their sharpest weapon to confront Iran and shatter its new system. I was, at the time, a lecturer at the University of Jordan, and one morning in 1979 we found copies in our offices discussing the differences between Sunni and Shia, heaping insults and abuse on the Shia, and reciting the insults the Shia in turn heap on the Sunni.

Since 1979, there have been desperate attempts by corrupt Shia and Sunni alike, who know nothing of God, to spread bloody strife, the price of which is paid by simple, ordinary people, while corrupt rulers in the service of Israel and America mount the throne built upon their skulls. There are those who resist this trend toward strife, but the ability of the corrupt to mobilize the media, employ religious men, and allocate funds is far greater. Over these long years, the forces of transgression have managed to convince broad masses that the other sect is an infidel one that must be gotten rid of, even through cooperation with the Zionists and America. And I do not doubt for a moment that many of the abusive websites, whether Sunni or Shia, and many of the suicide bombers, fall — educationally and culturally — under the influence of the Israeli, American, and Arab intelligence services.

The fire of sectarian strife intensified after Hezbollah’s victory in 2006. The circles lying in wait believed that Israel would finish off Hezbollah easily, but their expectations were disappointed, so they compensated by intensifying their efforts to stir up strife instead, in order to justify tearing apart and crushing Hezbollah and everyone who sided with, supported, or allied with it.

In the face of this strife, all Muslims — Sunni and Shia alike — across the land of Islam, and particularly in the lands of Bilad al-Sham and Iraq, must unite. Confronting strife is a religious, patriotic, and national duty, and all who believe in the unity of people, and the unity of the Arab and Islamic nation, must stand as a single rank against those who stir up strife. Strife does not strike only those who did wrong; it strikes, in particular, those who did no wrong at all.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “حزب الله والدفاع عن النفس” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.