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Pan-African Postcard
There is something you can do about Lebanon
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2006-07-28, Issue 265
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/36276
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The Irish know a lot about colonialism and oppression. They know what it means to be occupied, humiliated and oppressed, denied dignity and humanity on your own God –given soil. They are the first and last colony of the British. They have rebelled, sabotaged rose up in arms, and fought many wars, against the British in order to secure their liberation. Thus one of their famous nationalists, Connolly, knew what he was talking about when he stated: ” A nation that holds another in bondage cannot itself be free”.
Ireland did win its independence from Britain but not as a united country because the British gerrymandered the borders of the Irish counties and manipulated the Independence referendum in a way that ensured that a pro colonialist (otherwise called Unionist) majority was guaranteed in six of the counties which became Northern Ireland’ within the United Kingdom. The Irish Nationalist never accepted the division of their homeland and this gave rise to armed resistance by the Irish republicans through the IRA (Irish Republican Army). After decades of armed struggle, despite protestations to the contrary, it was no less a conservative ‘Queen and Country’ party than a Margaret Thatcher led Conservative government, that began negotiations with the terrorists’ that finally led to the Good Friday agreement and ended major active hostilities between the British and the IRA in Northern Ireland.
The history of British colonial domination across is full of repeats of this pattern of public declarations that ‘we won’t talk to terrorists’ but making deals behind closed doors usually after realizing that they cannot defeat the ‘terrorists’ militarily. Former British terrorists included many Israeli Zionists like former Prime Ministers Begun, Rabin, Sharon and others who were leading members of ‘terrorist’ cells that waged a campaign of terror, murders and assassinations to chase the British out of Palestine and establish the Zionist state of Israel. Many people regarded as national heroes in Israel were at one time or the other under ‘terrorist watch’ by the British. But today all that is forgotten with Britain as the most pro –Zionist state in Europe supporting anything that the Americans are doing in their uncritical support for anything that Israel does.
The history of Israel as a Zionist state and the collective memory of pain, suffering, oppression and humiliation as a people, either in Biblical Egypt or fascist and genocidal ‘modern’ Europe, should have taught them that no matter how unequal the power balance, oppressed peoples will always rise. Even if all the powers in this world combine to hold them down they will always find a way to affirm their humanity.
Its current unjust war of destruction and campaign of annihilation in Lebanon is a glaring example of how it might be able to be right. The attacks on Lebanon are ostensibly justified as ‘retaliation ‘for the capture of two Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese resistance group, Hizbollah whom they regard as terrorists. But three weeks into the this unequal tragedy it is clear to anybody that even if the two soldiers were not abducted Israel would have found another reason for ‘reinvading’ Lebanon, a country from which they were expelled by the same Hizbollah and other patriotic Lebanese forces.
How much is the life of an Israeli worth? On the principle of a-life-for-a-life how many more Lebanese children, women and innocent men have to be killed, orphaned or widowed before Israeli lust for blood is satiated? Lebanon has been bombed continuously for three weeks, its infrastructure destroyed in a vengeance spree of collective punishment by the Israeli Army. Those that have the power to moderate Israeli militarism, principally, its biggest backer, the USA, have egged it on against all pleas by the UN and other members of the international community, for a ceasefire. Instead the US and its loyal poodle, the British Prime Minister, have speciously insisted that Lebanon somehow brought this unto itself. They have not learnt their lessons from Palestine. They humiliated Yasser Arafat in life and death, orchestrated the succession of Abbas but still gave nothing in return to show that ‘moderation’ can deliver, and were later surprised that Hamas won a democratic election. No sooner than Hamas was elected they began a campaign of blockade and sanctions that punishes the Palestinians for voting democratically!
In Lebanon only two years ago, we are made to believe a popular uprising of Lebanese democrats, eschewing foreign intervention consequent to the assassination of the popular PM, Hariri, led to the exit of Syrian forces. It is this same democratic government that is being ‘supported’ by invasion. Israel like its Anglo-American backers has a weird way of ‘bombing people for freedom’ despite trying it in Iraq and Afghanistan without evident success. Instead of securing their illegitimate occupation of Iraq through divide and rule of the population, what their occupation has done is to unite Iraqis in a patriotic resistance against foreign domination.
No fewer outcomes will come out of the current attacks and occupation of Lebanon by Israel no matter how long it takes. I saw a young woman interviewed the other day who summed up both the mixture of hopelessness and defiance when she said: “Lebanon has seen war before and we survived………… we will survive this one too and the Israelis will leave our country...”
Does this mean that there is nothing that anyone of us can do? There is a sense of powerlessness and anger by many that given the power balance even if you do not support the Israelis you have nothing but moral outrage to help the Lebanese or the Palestinians. We should not underestimate the power of moral outrage. The ANC and other Liberation Movements in South Africa like the Mau Mau fighters in Kenya before them or the Algerian Resistant Movement before that, and the Madiba, who is now venerated by everybody, used to be regarded as terrorists.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement,
Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Readers' Comments
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I read Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's article in sheer wonder and disbelief as he twisted facts and history, abused logic, and conveniently ignored other inconvenient facts to premise an illogical argument. I think in the end, the article belittled him as an intellectual.
No matter how much he likes the Hezbollah and Hamas, no matter how much he sympathizes with their cause, if he wants to make an intellectual argument on the issues, then he must respect the facts, he must be balanced, he should be fair and just, and he should try to be logical, otherwise he should simply abandon any claim to intellectualism and focus on demagogery and propaganda.
He roundly condemns Israel which, at least in this case, is exercising its right of self-defence as a nation. He cannot run away from the fact that Israel has a right to defend itself. He fails to even acknowledge that Hezbollah provoked this latest violence, with no provocation at all, six years after Israel withdrew from Lebanon. He does not have a single critical word for Hezbollah for this. He prefers to ignore the facts as it suits his purposes better to award to the Hezbollah the victory for "expelling" Israel from Lebanon. He stands logic on its head and moves into the realm of untenable speculation by declaring that "it is clear to anybody that even if the two soldiers were not abducted Israel would have found another reason for 'reinvading' Lebanon." He refuses to acknowledge that the Lebanese government bears any responsibility by omission or commission. He closes his eyes and intellectual mind to the fact that Hezbollah is continuing to fire hundreds of rockets daily into Israel, also killing innocent civilians, and remains unrepentant. Perhaps in his mind, the death of innocent Israeli civilians, women and children means nothing! They are fair game in his human rights mind. There is no suggestion in his article that Hezbollah itself, which started all this, should stop. He twists the facts and alleges "a campaign of blockade and sanctions that punishes the Palestinians for voting democratically" when the truth is that Western governments (Europe and the United States) have simply said that they cannot continue to support a government that has committed itself to the destruction of another State and refuses to renounce terrorism. He blames Britain and the United States for their "uncritical" support for Israel while himself betraying his uncritical support for Hezbollah and Hamas, despite the atrocities they are committing in the Middle East, even against Arabs!
Whatever his beef is with the Israelis, the Americans and the British, he is an intellectual and must think like one. We do human rights work, but it is based on the principles of truth, fairness and justice. If we start to propagate falsehood, or become unfair and unjust in our human rights work, we lose the moral high ground and have nothing else.
Dr Abdul-Raheem should take the pains to establish the facts fairly, he should try and see all sides to the issue, and understand the different perspectives. Otherwise, he will not stand a chance in hell of proffering any realistic or workable solution. He certainly lost me with his article.
Edetaen Ojo
Thank you again for trying to show how apparently disconnected histories are indeed connected and converging toward a world more and more emancipated from the shackles of a genocidal system. I was surprised that you referred to the Irish. Not that the example is out of place, but because the African continent continues to be the most fertile ground for comparing what the Palestinians are enduring. By African, I do mean also those who were taken away. By African I include Haiti, yesterday and today.
The collective punishment currently inflicted on the Palestinians is very much like the collective punishment which has been unleashed, and has not stopped, against the descendants of those who, against all expectations, overthrew slavery by battling all of the biggest armies of the time (France, England, Spain). From 1791 through 1804, without the help of any humanitarian organization, those who were considered less than humans rose to say no to a dehumanizing system.
For that act, the descendants of the slaves who managed the unthinkable have been severely punished. The treatment of Haitians today derives from exactly the same motivation as the one which has triggered the wrath of the Israeli state, supported to the hilt by the so-called International Community, against people who are simply asking to be treated like everyone else: with dignity WITHOUT THE CRUTCHES OF HUMANITARIANISM.
The system has not just been bankrupt. What we are observing is worse than genocide: one of the victims of genocide has been anointed to inflict collective punishment. Collectively, how did we get to this point? Before colonialism there was something else. During WWII Hitler was THE Evil and we well remember what he inflicted to the Jews. But what if EVIL did stem from something other than a mad person? What if EVIL can also be seen at work during previous phases of our collective history? What if EVIL is genetically rooted - so to speak - in the system which rose out of turning masses of humanity into fodder for the continuation of a system which seems not to know when, where and how to stop. Are we going to be reduced to being mere spectators to the next phase, namely the turning of the Planet into an unlivable place?
J.Depelchin