Israel’s Arrogance and Muslims’ Hezbollah Handicap
By Siddique Malik
Louisville, KY

It is pointless to deliberate whether the latest conflict in the Middle East was started by Hezbollah-Hamas terrorists, or Israel; all parties in the region are suffused with hatred. Rockets supplied by Iran and routed through Syria suddenly hit people in Israeli cities. Palestinian families picnicking at a beach are suddenly blown into bits by Israeli missiles. Lately, Israeli bombs have been incessantly raining down on the people of Lebanon, and blocks after blocks of residential buildings have been leveled. How can one look at the Qana carnage and shrug it off as collateral damage?
Terrorists have no regard for life or anything else, except their fanatical and bull-headed perceptions of religion. Why is Israel, a democratic country, behaving as if it is under license from Hezbollah to distribute death and destruction? A bigger question is why is the American government pretending that innocent lives can be differentiated? Or, is no cost too big for the “cowboy” approach to foreign policy?
One gets the feeling that Israel does not really want democracy to break out in the Middle East because if this happens, she will no longer be America’s only sweetheart in the region. Israeli leaders will actually have to do something so as to maintain high standard of living to which their population has become accustomed, owing to virtually unlimited inflow of the US taxpayers’ dollars. This may be the reason that they want the region in continuous turmoil, because democracy cannot grow in turmoil. On October 5, 2003, when the Operation Iraqi Freedom was in early stages, Israeli Air Force attacked Syria without provocation. The goal may have been to complicate America’s Iraq operation by involving bystanders into the conflict. Now, by responding disproportionately to Hezbollah’s acts of terrorism, Israel may be re-trying to achieve the same goal.
During Israel’s previous operation in Lebanon that started in 1982, Israeli soldiers committed massacre in the camps of Sabra and Shatila, under the command of none other than Ariel Sharon. Israel has again unleashed the same brutality, but this time it is considering the entire country of Lebanon as Sabra and Shatila.
Washington’s nonchalance towards the Lebanon crisis is an affront to the American people and the values they espouse. On the one hand, we are trying to improve America’s image in the Muslim World while on the other, our glib attitude is at its worst as Israel, acting as the deadly godfather of the Middle East, is undermining this objective. America’s friendship with Israel may be natural because Israel is an oasis of democracy in the midst of a desert of suppression and tyranny, but this friendship must not be at the cost of America’s national security.
The evolution of America’s relationship with the Muslim world will determine how much America can relax over its security issues. Political correctness aside, if there is another 9/11, it will most probably be caused by a group of Muslims, brainwashed by Hezbollah or its likes, or born and raised right here in America but indoctrinated with hatred and bigotry. Our conduct should not provide ammunition to hate-mongers.
Having said all of the above, the world’s Hezbollah handicaps are going nowhere (indiscriminate bombings and collective punishment by Israel will only exacerbate the problem) until and unless the Muslim intelligentsia and its phantom silent majority strive to eradicate latent hatred from among their midst. On the day the British pop singer, Yusuf Islam (a converted Muslim and formerly known as Cat Stevens) was deported from a US airport owing to a bureaucratic glitch, an innocent American hostage was beheaded by his captors in Iraq. Muslims worldwide, including Muslim organizations in America, were furious over this deportation but hardly a word was heard of Muslims’ condemnation of the beheading.
Muslims need to isolate the seemingly endless source of hatred among some of them. How and why are followers of a great religion turning into cultists? How do destructive phenomena like al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, etc., emerge and sustain themselves, and at some places become symbols of heroism? What is really at work, from the caves of Afghanistan to the back alleys of Gaza and Southern Lebanon, from Madrid to London to Toronto to Atlanta to Miami? Simply saying that this is the work of a misguided few and shrugging the shoulder is not enough. A lot of soul-searching and house cleaning is in order.
I have a theory: Muslims’ obsessive self-righteousness is the culprit. This engenders a feeling of “superiority” among some Muslims. This pugnacious feeling is the precursor to bigotry which in turn gives rise to hatred and fanaticism. Such sentiments get passed on from one generation to another, knowingly or unknowingly. This is how cults are formed, and Muslim cultists are everywhere, from the legislature of Pakistan’s northern province in which official prayers were held for terrorist al-Zarqawi to the corridors of power in Tehran. From the villages of Southern Lebanon where the apotheosis of Hezbollah chief Hasan Nessrallh is a factor, to Iraq where Moqtada al-Sadr and his likes spew hate-based terror. These cultists are exploiting religion for their personal gains and Muslim masses must disallow this.
Last but not the least, here is my advice to Muslim parents worldwide: before you trust someone enough to send your child to him/her for religious education, do extensive background checking to ensure that the person is completely free of the virus of bigotry. One wouldn’t let one’s child near a science teacher who does drugs on the side; how is a teacher who harbors bigotry any different? The vicious cycle of hatred needs to break, we cannot take chances. The well-being of nothing less than your most precious asset, your children, is at stake.
Israeli hostilities in the Middle East must be condemned, but in the long run Muslims should break the suffocating grip of their satanic clerics. Extensive adversity can induce callousness, and the reason for Israeli callousness towards its neighbors may, at least partially, be in Muslims’ own control. Looking a bit deeper won’t hurt.

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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