[Dialogue] Lebanon: Analysis of 2 New York Times op ed articles

[jim rippey]

I emailed this critique to both op ed columnists tonight.    --Jim Rippey



A strange symbiosis 

There is a strange symbiosis between Tuesday's op-ed columns by John Tierney and Nicholas B Kristhof. In their differences, I believe Kristhof has the better of the argument. He cites examples of the benefits that flowed from Israel's previous restraint in responding to Hezbollah outrages. He notes similar benefits from India's restraint when terrorists bombed train lines in Mumbai, India, recently, killing nearly 200 people (about 10 times as many as had been killed in all the Hezbollah attacks on Israel since the withdrawal from Lebanon.) Kristhof notes that India's prime minister wisely recognized that military action would only make the problem worse.

On the other hand, Tierney quotes from James Bowman's new book, "Honor: A History." "The honor system in Arab culture is the default honor system, the one you see in street gangs in America - you dis me, I shoot you," says Bowman, a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "We need a better system that makes it honorable to be protective of those who are weaker instead of lording it over them."

When you're confronted with an honor culture like the one in the Middle East, there are two rules to keep in mind, he says. One is that you are not going to placate the enemy with the kind of concessions that appeal to Western diplomats. "Hezbollah is fighting for honor, to humiliate the enemy, not for any particular objective," Bowman says. "Israel has no choice in what it's doing. Nothing short of victory by either side will change anything."

In contrast, Kristhof states that "For now Israel's Lebanon adventure is playing out a bit like America's Iraq adventure. It is bolstering hard-liners (like Bashar al-Assad of Syria) and undermining moderates (like King Abdullah of Jordan), while handing propaganda victories to Iran and Shiite militants. Arab television channels have shown an unending stream of pictures of dead Lebanese children. We put our Arab allies in an impossible position when militants ask how they can work with a U.S. government that supplies the munitions that kill those children?" He might also note worldwide revulsion over, and condemnation of, what Israel is doing.

It seems clear to me that Hezbelloh is not not simply acting out an Arab "honor" system. It goes deeper to a universal human failing, a bitter determination to seek revenge when wronged. Bear in mind that many of today's Hezbelloh's fighters have long memories for Israel's previous treatment of Arabs in Lebanon.... the expulsion of Palestinians from what it now Israel, the continued building of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian land , the ongoing harassment of Palestinians, and, most particularly, the Sabra-Shatilla massacre in September 1982. 

In that, Israeli soldiers invading Lebanon encouraged, or at least allowed their allies, the Lebanese Christian Philangist miliatia, to enter the refugee camp there and brutally slaughter thousands of unarmed Arab refugees, including many women and children. Israelis guarded the entrances to the camp, even fired flares at night to illuminate the camp for the attackers, according to various new reports. The Red Cross listed the dead at 2700, other estimates varied widely. An Israeli investigation eventually blamed Ariel Sharon and demoted him for allowing the massacre, but he was soon rehabilitated.

It's human nature that friends and relatives bitterly remember atrocities like these. And it seems obvious to me that the wholesale destruction of Lebanese buildings, bridges, airports and the killing of hundreds of innocent Lebanese will create more militants bitterly seeking revenge. As Tierney quotes author Bowman, "We need a better system that makes it honorable to be protective of those who are weaker instead of lording it over them." What Israel is doing is just the opposite, and is producing the dire results Kristhof predicts. Military action only makes the situation worse.

Obviously there is no easy solution. But as Tikkun's Rabbi Lerner has stated, "we need to communicate to the Israeli people that the mass punishment of a million people for the acts of a few is as unacceptable when it comes from a democratic society as when it comes from the willful oppression of entrenched authoritarian dictators." However, if the U.S. and the UN would insist that Israel dismantle its illegal settlements and withdraw totally from occupied Palestine, it would be a big start. Huge financial assistance will be needed to make it work, but that will be cheaper than what we are spending on our losing battle in Iraq. And it probably is essential that there be an international peace force kept in the area for years, to restrain those seeking revenge. But surely that would be preferable to the widespread war in the Mideast that we are plunging toward now. 

James C. Rippey Sr., 702 Ft Crook Rd S, Bellevue, NE 68005 402-291-3868
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