Mahjabeen Islam

July 28, 2006

The Lebanon Crisis

Who started this madness in the Middle East depends on whom you talk to. Factually though, Israel killed a family picnicking in Gaza, Hezbollah reacted by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and Israel has responded by unleashing the fourth most sophisticated army in the world on the civilian population of Lebanon.
Television brings wars into our living rooms and makes one’s helplessness to affect the situation unbearable. David Brooks of the New York Times derides Israel being labeled as “overreacting”. Israel’s enemies, he writes, have gone “completely berserk and the Arab world has ceded control of this vital flashpoint to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Bashar al-Assad”. When faced with the overreacting label, General Dan Shalutz, Chief of Staff of the Israeil army, said that the issue was not the kidnapped soldiers; Israel is trying to remove the Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.
That the means to this end is killing civilians seems to be totally glossed over. Hundreds of Lebanese civilians have died, its infrastructure has been destroyed and the pounding continues. The world looked away in the Holocaust, now it quibbles over blame while the innocents are massacred.
With the graphic woes of war, comes the collateral damage of watching world leaders and the notably powerful make fools of themselves. I reach for the mute button as President Bush reels out by rote, for the nth time: “Israel has a right to defend itself and the world cannot deal with terrorists like the Hezbollah, Syria and Iran”.
My acid reflux intensifies as Senator Trent Lott (Republican, Pennsylvania) and Senator Diane Feinstein (Democrat, California) repeat again by rote, “Israel has a right to defend itself” and “Hezbollah is the worst terrorist organization in the world”. As far as the Middle East is concerned there is no partisan politics; it is one of the few issues in which you cannot separate a Republican from a Democrat. Money filling campaign coffers is like a nuclear missile to consciences.
The greater tragedy is that there is essentially no representation of Muslims in the US Congress. The few Christian Arabs that are elected have no sway in terms of the larger agendas of the two parties.
The United States and Britain are expected to be blatantly partial. Germany seems to have joined them. Russia is appropriately neutral and still able to call for calm, and France states clearly that Israel’s was an overreaction and civilians should not be attacked. Perhaps the last is powered by the six million Muslims in France and their political clout.
That the partiality of the powerful is driven by money is proven by the stance of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal said, “Hezbollah’s acts are unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible. These acts will pull the whole region back to years ago, and we cannot simply accept them”. The American media uses this to reverberate that the Muslim world is with Israel. And my acid reflux reaches the point of emesis.
And just as I stewed, Wolf Blitzer of CNN interviewed Imad Moustapha, the Syrian Ambassador to the United States. This article is an unabashed tribute to his articulate voice in all this cacophony. Blitzer quotes President Bush saying that we needed to get to the root cause of terrorism. Moustapha’s response: “I was so happy to hear the President say that we needed to get to the root cause of terrorism, for the root cause is the occupation of Palestine and the humiliation of Palestinians by Israel. But no, he immediately blamed Syria and Iran. He never goes to the root cause of terrorism. We need peace and it can only be achieved if the Israeli occupation of Palestine ends as well as the daily infringements on Lebanese sovereignty”.
Syria is painted as such a villain and yet it has opened its borders to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Lebanon and Americans are allowed into Syria without the usual hassles of visa constraints. And yet, Syria is helping Lebanese-Americans and being that Arabs and Muslims are fairly insignificant to the hearts of American leaders; appreciating Syria for this gesture is out of the question, for beating it for sponsoring the Hezbollah is the idea of the day.
“Does not Syria provide training to the Hezbollah?” asked Blitzer. “No we don’t. This only serves to ignore the big elephant in the room which is the aggression and atrocities of Israel against Lebanese civilians.”
Undaunted, Ambassador Moustapha continued: “President Bush says that he is the friend of Lebanon. When Lebanon moved the Security Council to stop the massacre, the United States objected.”
“Does Syria allow the transshipment of equipment from Iran through Syria into Lebanon?” asked Blitzer equivalently persistent. Ambassador Moustapha: “While the whole world’s attention is focused on the massacre in Lebanon, Israel is trying to change the paradigm and trying to refocus the attention by saying Damascus-Tehran, Damascus-Tehran. Stop this! Damascus and Tehran are not the problem; it is Israel’s aggression on its neighbors.”
Ambassador Moustapha mentioned the Israeli Vice-Premier as saying that he wanted to be friends with Lebanon. “While a rapist is raping his victim he tells her that he wants to be friends with her and she is supposed to hear his message?”
A particularly powerful point in the interview came when Blitzer read out a State Department statement accusing Syria of funding Palestinian terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Ambassador Moustapha said that this was just as credible as the US allegation about Iraq’s WMD and Saddam’s relations with Al-Qaeda. Then Ambassador Moustapha turned directly to the camera, as it unwittingly closed in on him and said so very poignantly, “Stop bluffing the American people, the issue is the occupation, help us end the occupation, you are the closest ally to Israel, you have influence and leverage on Israel. Convince the Israelis to end the occupation of Palestine and peace will be achieved in the Middle East.”
Very interestingly, whenever Ambassador Moustapha hit sensitive issues or became superbly articulate, Wolf Blitzer would say, “We are almost out of time”. The world is certainly running out of time as the conflict escalates and the blood of innocents finances the agendas of the stone-hearted.
(Dr. Mahjabeen Islam is a physician, freelance columnist and co-founder of UMAT, United Muslim Association of Toledo. Her email address is mahjabeenislam@hotmail.com)