Anger, sorrow, fear, incomprehension, despair — these are just some of the emotions I feel when I look at the images of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, again. But most of all I sit here in Nice, France aware of my impotence: There is nothing that I can do or say that can make an ounce of difference. And certainly there is nothing that I can write that has not already been said. I could easily add to the column inches in the Arab press and compete with my fellow journalists over who can best express how angry we feel, just as I could undertake detailed political analysis demonstrating yet again the injustice that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But what good would it do?
Instead I read. I read selectively and then, like the urge to pick at a scab, I start to read authors I would not normally read. I hold back the anger and keep reading points of view that simply leave me speechless. They are defending the indefensible in my eyes but I keep reading because I want to understand. The why I find straightforward: When it comes to the Middle East everyone comes with an agenda.
Clearly there are those who want to point the finger at Iran and Syria. That is hardly news, the words “Axis of Evil” and “Syria/Iran/Hezbollah/Hama” have been thrown at us indiscriminately, to the extent that it has become an incessant refrain, just like “the right to defend itself” and “Israel” can be expected to fall out of the mouth of an American president, any American president, as surely as a reflex action.
The how I find harder. The arguments used by the supporters of Israel to justify this latest act of war are hard for me to swallow and this makes it difficult for me to comprehend how any intelligent, humane, being can be taken in by them. Mostly though I find myself hating the way language can be used as a shield.
Take for instance the word “disproportionate”. It is the strongest word you will hear a European politician use, be it France’s President Chirac or Britain’s Margaret Beckett. Hezbollah capture two Israeli soldiers and fire rockets into Israel; Israel retaliates by initiating a massive bombing campaign on Lebanon and it is neatly summed up in that awful non-emotive word: Disproportionate. No sense of this being an outrage, or an act of war, just something that is not to the right scale. But the whole conflict is disproportionate by definition. After all, here we have an army backed by the world’s only superpower, a mighty well equipped army, a nuclear power no less, fighting not even an army but militias with rockets.
Or the word “blockade”. A blockade is a line of French lorries blocking the port of Calais in an industrial dispute, it is not a country destroying the infrastructure of another country. A blockade is bloodless; it disrupts, annoys and hems in but it does not kill. To call Israel’s action in Lebanon a blockade is an understatement and shows a grave lack of respect for the lives that are being destroyed.
Nor is this a “crisis”, it is a war. You can argue about who started it, but war it is. When an army bombards another country, destroys roads, bridges, fuel depots and airports and kills scores of innocent civilians it is war.
But perhaps I should not see things from such a polarized point of view. Hezbollah are no angels. I like them about as much as I like the current American administration. Nor do I much care for Hamas, but I respect that they are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people and can understand why so many Palestinians saw them as the only way forward. I don’t much trust the Iranians either and easily accept that they pull some of Hezbollah’s strings. As for the Baathists in Syria, their track record is hardly exemplary. None of them are guiltless in this war, but Axis of Evil? I don’t think so.
Evil is the one who kills the many not the few, the one who occupies and flouts international law, the one who vetoes and bullies or the one who pushes his sponsor to whitewash international law on his behalf. Evil is not desperate people without recourse, people without electricity, food and water, people leading miserable lives with no realistic hope for relief.
Is my emotional reaction disproportionate? Is it a knee-jerk Arab reaction to the sight of Israeli planes dropping bombs on an Arab country? Am I reacting just like the pro-Israeli parrots who can be relied on to write to every newspaper and forum where the word Israel is mentioned, their words barely concealing the hate they feel for us Arabs? Or would I feel just as incensed if I came from somewhere unrelated to the conflict?
I plead not guilty to hate. I do not hate Israelis. I realize this statement will shock some of my readers, perhaps even most of my readers. In the Middle East hate is a currency but it is not one I favor. I cannot hate a people. I do not hate a people.
And since I am stating what seems obvious to me, I shall add that I am not anti-Semitic either and never have been. Of course in the strict meaning of the word, I could not be anti-Semitic since I too am a Semite, but I mean it in the every day sense of the word. I have a deep respect for Judaism and for the Jewish community. In my experience, I have always found myself to have great affinity with my Jewish cousins. Whether it was at school, at university or at work, I often found myself gravitating toward my Jewish colleagues. Last week I found myself sitting next to a Jewish girl at a workshop I was attending. She turned to me at dinner and said: “You’re sitting next to a Jew!” Her statement surprised me; it had felt entirely natural to me, unexceptional, but clearly this is not the norm.
No, I can state with confidence that my anger arises not from who is committing the aggression but by the aggression itself. I concede that I would feel it less passionately had it not been an Arab country that was being destroyed, but the principle remains the same.
It is the killing of innocent civilians — over 70 Lebanese civilians and 12 Israelis at the latest tally — the continued bombardment and the destruction of a country’s infrastructure.
It is the disproportionality of this war where on one side of the border you have a country with the capability to wipe out its enemies and on the other a country that does not even have the means to defend itself. I am proud to find that I support the side of the meek and not that of the mighty.
