Though the roots of the conflict are centuries old, for the last 60 years, the Middle East has been awash in spot fires eager to erupt into a full-blown conflagration. Ever since the founding of Israel in 1948, a region-transforming event brought about by the flight of Jewish Europeans from the deadly antisemitism of the Third Reich, the region's Arab populations have felt aggrieved not only by the Jewish state's aggressive policies, but by the unconditional support they've earned from guilty, Western nations. Hobbled by their own societal inequities and angered by Jewish intransigence, the Arab Street agitated for war with Israel, to reclaim, in the name of justice and religion, the Palestine they believed they owned. But rather than bring about glorious victories over young Israel, these engagements largely resulted in crushing defeats for Arab nations, some of which even found their lands occupied by the very Jews they were confident of destroying.
Though the reverberations of these defeats have impacted on every Arab nation in the region, none have felt its brunt more than Lebanon which has given birth to a phenomenon that promises to have a mighty impact on the 21st century. I speak of Hezzbollah, the subject of this thorough and frightening history.
Mr. Blanford, a British-born journalist who has spent decades corresponding from the Middle East, here assembles the nearly 30-year history of the world's most successful and provocative resistance movement. Vivified by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon which required only nine days to reach and occupy the country's capital, Beirut, Hezzbollah, literally "party of god," has since become the region's most powerful paramilitary organization and Lebanon's mightiest institution. Financially and ideologically nourished by the Shi'a Islam brought to prominence by the 1979 revolution in Iran, Hezzbollah considers itself above the Lebanese state, operating unilaterally and without sanction within every aspect of its society.
Helmed by Hassan Nasrallah, a Shi'a cleric and Hezzbollah's patriarch, the movement, which seeks to sew the ideology of resistance to Israel into the very fabric of Lebanese culture, has been widely credited with forcing Israel to end, in 2000, its 18-year occupation of Lebanon. But not content with its territorial gains, Hezzbollah has since pressed its advantage by launching hundreds of rockets, provided by Iran via Syria, into northern Israel, terrorizing the Jewish population there and provoking a second war with Israel in 2006 which annihilated much of southern Lebanon. However, unlike every other occasion in which Israel's technological advantage has allowed it to claim victory over its opponents, Hezzbollah is widely felt to have strategically defeated Israel in this most recent conflict. For it has not only managed to repair much of the damage done by Israeli bombs, it has not only succeeded in acquiring modern weapons capable of holding their own against state-of-the-art Israeli materiel, it has mastered the art of psychological warfare by maximizing civilian casualties and by terrorizing Israeli populations and sending them to their bunkers with the mere firing of a missile. Given these advancements, not only must Hezzbollah be considered a significant evolution in resistance fighting, it must also be given the benefit of the doubt in future conflicts with Israel. For it has promised that the next engagement will not play out in war-weary Lebanon, but in the here-to-for sacrosanct territory of Israel itself.
Published in the fall of 2011, Warriors of God is an exquisitely detailed and up-to-date history of Hezzbollah as both a terrorist organization and a resistance movement. But while the reader is profoundly informed about the nature of Hezzbollah, its fundamentalist roots, its charismatic leaders, its ingenious structures and its frightening achievements, he is also educated in the anatomy of an occupation, both its destructive necessities and its inevitable outcomes. For here, with the benefit of hindsight, we are witness to Israel's foolish 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon and how its claim to such territory only fuelled existing resentments towards Israel from within Lebanon. Every wrong step, every provocative act on the part of the Jewish state only swells Hezzbollah's ranks, popularizes its ideology and deepens the divide between it and its sworn enemy. In this, the account is utterly convincing that peace and justice can never flow from occupation. There are simply too many destructive elements nourished by such conflicts.
This is a terrifying read. Mr. Blanford does nothing to dissuade the reader from the notion that all-out war in the Middle East is but a few years away. For while Hezbollah has had its individual successes and is fuelled by the ingenuity of its members and its leadership, it is only effective as a result of being sustained by Iran. If Mr. Blanford knows this, then surely Israel does as well which means that, as Hezzbollah grows more and more antagonistic towards Israel, it is only a matter of time before Israel considers it necessary to strike at Iran as a means of isolating Hezzbollah. And given that it seems likely that the United States would militarily support Israel in any conflict of this severity, there is little doubt that the next war in the Middle East, involving Israel, might well be the biggest and perhaps even the last. And at the heart of all this, Hezbollah... Exceptional work. (5/5 Stars)
No comments:
Post a Comment