Watching the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, I find myself thinking what the reaction would have been if something similar had happened in my own country during the Troubles.
Imagine the scenario: It is 1986 and the IRA have kidnapped two British soldiers and smuggled them across the border to the Irish Republic, saying they will only be freed if republican prisoners are released in return. Eschewing negotiation and lacking the intelligence to mount a rescue operation, the British bombard the border counties with artillery and order the population to flee. They duly do, jamming the roads to Dublin, whose airport has been bombed and whose port is under blockade. As RAF jets streak above the night sky of the capital, a tearful Irish prime minister begs the outside world for help, rightly protesting that he does not control the IRA.
The IRA themselves launch mortar attacks across the border to show that they have not been beaten. By the end of the first week of hostilities hundreds of innocent Irish civilians lie dead with thousands more injured, homeless or unemployed as a result f the conflict. Given the scale of this suffering, no-one outside of Britain, cares any longer about the two captured soldiers.
The comparison is not without its complications, but I do believe it is illuminating. For it is striking just how many people are cheering on Goliath against David in this current conflict. In some sections of the media, in Britain as well as the US, the gross disparity in deaths between the Lebanese and the Israelis is barely mentioned. News programmes lead with Haifa while the many more dead across the border are relegated to second spot.
Here on Joeuser, most articles and comments have focused on Israeli suffering and Lebanese aggression, rather than on the far greater Israeli aggression and Lebanese suffering. In my hypothetical scenario above, world opinion would have been outraged at the Irish suffering. Why then is there so little outcry in the west at Lebanese suffering?
Well, it’s really rather simple. We Irish are white, so we are not supposed to die by the hundreds and, if we did, it wouldn’t be news, it would be the news. Fate however has not been so kind to our swarthy Lebanese friends. They were born to suffer and they get plenty of practice. It is unfortunate that their children are maimed by hot pieces of metal in the same way that a lemming’s suicide is unfortunate.
What’s more, the Lebanese, unlike we noble Irish, are terrorists, not by choice, but by birth. Terrorists are evil and terrorists must die. Lebanon, all of it, is a terrorist target, from its missile launching pads, to its airports, to its paper factories.
Terrorist. It is no longer a word but a piece of punctuation, a full stop which demands an end to all discussion. It is simply not possible for Israel to do wrong because Israel fights terrorists, simple as that. The terrorist has no motive beyond hatred of the Jews and anyone who thinks differently probably hates the Jews too. At the very least they are appeasers. On and on this mentality goes, strengthening those whose job, one way or another, is to fight the terrorists.
Very few people here on Joeuser stop to ponder why Hezbollah might wish to attack Israel beyond simple anti-Semitism. But if the Lebanese Shia do hate the Jews, they have a funny way of showing it. In the 1970s Israel was attacked from south Lebanon, not by the Shia, but by the Sunnis and Christians of the PLO. Israel drove Arafat’s men out in 1982 only to create Hezbollah in its wake. But where was Hezbollah before the Israeli invasion? Why did people so given to anti-Semitism take so long to strike out against the Jewish state?
But all of this is history, ancient history even. And history matters little to those who fight terrorists, and those who cheer them on. They care only about making terrorists history. If we are to believe Ehud Olmert, the bombardment will continue until terrorism is consigned to Lebanon’s past. For the conflict is no longer about rescuing the two captured soldiers (remember them?). Rather, it is about re-shaping Lebanon. Mr Olmert has assured us that the war will go on until Hezbollah disarms. But how is this to be achieved? Guerrilla armies, unlike conventional ones, can not be surrounded en masse and forced to throw down their weapons.
Instead, if I understand Mr Olmert’s ‘logic’, the Lebanese themselves will pressure Hezbollah to disarm once they have experienced enough of Israel’s wrath. What curious behaviour this would be. People under foreign attack tend to band together. When the working-class, right-wing, Sephardic town of Sderot is hit by Qassam rockets from Gaza, its citizens become more, not less, militant. They do not suddenly become limp-wristed Arab-loving peaceniks. Why should the Lebanese be any different?