Woes of Lebanon Worsened: The Middle East Mephistopheles "Israel" Strikes Again
The machinations of the imperialists yielded yet another fruit of the poison tree they planted. When the issue was that of forming a homeland for the much beaten, tormented and almost everywhere maltreated Jews, the human appeal of the issue among us, Asians, was unswervingly on the side of that. A little sarcasm could be brushed aside: Well then, you civilised Europeans and Americans of the US, and Australians... all the white people couldn't find a place in your midst as that homeland! Couldn't convince the Jews, humiliated, suffered, tortured not only in Germany but also in all of your countries, to live in their homes in your midst with peace of mind!! However, few thought about what might be the consequence of a 'good' thing if that is done by the 'evil'. That the evil imperialist hands could not make "God's beloved" Israel, rather they would certainly make a Mephistopheles out of that, was, at that time, only to be proven by history in future. Israel turned out to be the demon implanted in the Middle East, in spite of whatever the uprooted Jew workers and toilers who found home in Israel desired. As the seed itself contained the venom: a nation, a state, defined based on religion.
Not only that! As the British imperialist carefully nurtured the two-nation concept based on religious divide in their India, of course, they couldn't do that if there were no religions and divides based on them at all, the French (who boast of superior culture and sophistication) imperialist did the same in their Lebanon. Religion-wise 'reservation' of parliamentary seats, religious reservation of the president too — was of course the French 'solution'! The British and the French etc imperialists plundered, divided, subdivided... the whole world and so also the Arab World, more nakedly and disastrously after the defeat and consequent break-up of the Turkey's Ottoman Empire; they continued their dominations after the 2nd World War 'post-colonisation' period too by their pet rulers, and continued to play with the divide-and-rule game. Even when Lebanon entered a phase of a bit long peacetime after the end of civil war and Israeli invasion and Syrian counterbalancing intrusion, the religious divide was institutionalised — a Lebanese President is always a Christian, the Prime Minister is always a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of the House always a Shiite — what a democracy invented by the French [whose Great Revolution in the end of the Eighteenth Century made a secular republican state possible] in the 1920s and at last further institutionalised by the Arab League in the 1990s.
Lebanon is perhaps the only Middle East country that is not oil-based economically, rather thrived on manufacturing and other industries and of course as a banking hub of the whole region, plus there were magnificent tourist spots by the Mediterranean, earning Beirut the nickname 'The Paris Of East'. But sadly, Lebanon is a victim of both the processes: internal turmoil implanted and cultivated in the history by the French imperialists, which gave rise to the serious infightings leading to the civil war from the mid-197� needless to mention that the internal religion-specific divide, disputes and discriminations were all 'used' and manipulated by the external forces, particularly the US-Israeli axis; and external assaults from Israel time and again — which resulted in almost total destruction of the capital city Beirut in the mid-1970s and also massive casualties. It can safely be said that Lebanon got a good part of the burn of the Palestinian independence movement, Lebanon being the shelter of Palestinian refugees and PLO activism. Israel subjugated and occupied South Lebanon forcibly until 2000; thereafter too they occupied some area. Lebanon got harsh treatment also from Syria, whom they requested to come in aid to counterbalance chances of Israeli invasion. All Syrian troops were pulled out in April 2005 following a controversy of their alleged involvement in the assassination of the Lebanese PM in February 2005; not only that, it is alleged that several 'anti-Syria' Lebanese MPs were assassinated in preceding four months! Though many of the Lebanese do not share any negative impression about Syria. A massive pro-Syrian rally was sponsored by Hezbollah and was attended by at least half a million people at Beirut's Riad Al-Solh square on 8th March 2005. It is that Hezbollah, which is blamed by Israel for abduction of 2 Israeli soldiers, and on this plea Israel started attack on Lebanon again since mid-July this year, resulting in killing of nearly 1000 innocent Lebanese civilians within the first 20 days of assault and destroying many villages of south Lebanon!
But How And Wherefrom This Israel-US Blamed 'Terrorist' Outfit Hezbollah Was Created?
Hezbollah was crystallised within a time span of 1982-1985 with the aim of fighting Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. It follows Shiite religion; it admires and gets inspiration from the chief architect of the Iranian 'Revolution' of 1979 — the Ayatollah Khomeini. But Hezbollah does not have any aim of making Lebanon a Shiite Islamic Republic — they are not that unrealistic to ignore the majority Lebanese, the Christians and Sunni Muslims. It has an armed wing, it can repel Israeli attack by force to some extent, and thus it earned fame even among the anti-US anti-Israel Sunni Arabs. It participates in parliamentary elections also. In 1992, it participated in Lebanese elections for the first time, winning 12 out of 128 seats in parliament. It won 10 seats in 1996, and 8 in 2000. In the general election of 2005, it won 14 seats nationwide, and an Amal-Hezbollah alliance won all 23 seats in Southern Lebanon.
Mohamed Fneish was appointed Energy and Water Minister in the cabinet and has been quoted as saying "We are a political force that took part in the polls under the banner of defending the resistance and protecting Lebanon and got among the highest level of popular backing ... Hezbollah's resistance (against Israel) does not in any way contradict its political role. If joining the government and parliament is a national duty, then so is defending the country". Hezbollah provides many social services in Lebanon. According to CNN: "Hezbollah did everything that a government should do, from collecting the garbage to running hospitals and repairing schools." ...On May 2006 as UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published: "Hezbollah not only has armed and political wings — it also boasts an extensive social development programme. The group currently operates at least 4 hospitals, 12 clinics, 12 schools and 2 agricultural centres that provide farmers with technical assistance and training. It also has an environmental department and an extensive social assistance programme. Medical care is also cheaper than in most of the country's private hospitals and free for Hezbollah members." Even during the war with Israel during July 2006 when there is no running water in Beirut, Hezbollah was seen arranging supplies all around the city. [Data Source — WIKIPEDIA — the free, online and perhaps world's most popular encyclopaedia]
The Probable Result Vs The 'Presently Impossible' Solution
No doubt that all US-backed Israel's attacks on Hezbollah and all US-sponsored media's virulent attempts to portray Hezbollah as villain will only fortify Hezbollah's position, credibility among the people of Middle East, even if those attacks succeed in weakening Hezbollah's armed forces temporarily. It was Israel's occupation that gave rise to Hezbollah and its armed resistance. It was US-Israeli continuous repression in Palestine and PLO's surrender that gave rise to Hamas. When the so-called anti-imperialist bourgeois-'secular' leadership fails and surrenders to imperialism, the ground of 'religious' 'fundamentalist' resistances are bound to crop up: Because the thing that could successfully fill up the vacuum and could do that without any 'religious' basis or ideology — the international communist movement — is there no more; in the sense that it had suffered a tremendous defeat. Included in that defeat are: the betrayal, utter right-shift of the so-called old and established 'lefts' including the old 'communist' parties, and the failure of the 'revolutionary' forces that were born, roughly, by the mid-1960s. And this defeat of the international communist movement helped obliquely the rise of leadership with alien ideology, it is behind the aberrations of the present day 'national' movements, behind the built-in 'narrowness' within these latter movements, behind non-fulfilment of 'liberation' in the true sense even where these distorted movements apparently succeed, e.g., Iran.
Can the working class of the developed countries, of Israel, of the USA, of Europe, reorganise themselves and rekindle the international communist movement with all its glories 'sans the errors of the past movement', and show a beacon of light, instil inspiration and hope among the oppressed masses of what was called the third world? Can the communist revolutionary forces of the 'other' i.e., underdeveloped world, regenerate working class movements in those countries and thus win over the toilers from and liberate them from nationality-religion-sect-caste-etc wise splitting up, which only yielded one-distrusting-the-other syndrome, infightings and wallow-in-the-quagmire? Can they imbue the toilers of the world with true humanism? These are the pertinent questions; and not only that — these are the challenges too. And it is also a relevant duty at this very moment; we must try to that end with whatever means and resources we have now: it is through fulfilling this duty 'to win over the toilers' we can reawaken the communist movement. On you, the working class, the future real solution depends.
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