The Real War

A rather curious piece appeared on the website of the Islamic Republic News Agency yesterday (9 August 2006). The story concerns an address by the chairman of the Iranian Expediency Discernment Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani was the Parliamentary head from the founding of the Iranian theocracy until 1989, and then served as president of Iran from 1989 to 1997. The Expediency Council is the body that manages disputes that arise between the elected Majlis (parliament) and the theocratic Council of Guardians. Rafsanjani, often seen as one of the more pragmatic of the Iranian clerics, also serves as chief advisor to the “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. According to the report (bolding is mine):

Expediency Council (EC) Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a message addressing the inaugural ceremony of the `Information and Technology Service Bank' said that today, it is impossible to be an island separated and isolated from the rest of the world.

In his message, which was read at the ceremony on Wednesday, the EC chairman said, "In a world called International Village' on account of the broad-based information dissemination tools currently available, it is not possible to be isolated.

"We should go along with the world through gradual change from the current national and regional position to globalization, since otherwise the current gap between the Third World and the advance world can never be narrowed."

This is all rather . . . un-Islamic and hardly seems newsworthy enough, given the other international stories surrounding it, to warrant a posting on the IRNA website. Note Rafsanjani’s embrace of globalization, as well as the view that industrial, commercial, and technological development (and not the end of western imperialism and Zionism) offers the means to close “the current gap between the Third World and the advance[d] world.”

There was a joke about Rafsanjani that made the rounds in the 1980s. An Iranian government chauffeur is driving three ayatollahs around Tehran. The three clerics in the back seat are arranged with the most radical cleric sitting on the left, and the most moderate cleric on the right. Rafsanjani is sitting in the middle. The chauffeur is lost as he approaches a “T” intersection—he cannot continue on but must turn either right or left. He confesses that he is lost and asks for directions. The radical cleric demands that he turn left. The moderate cleric demands that he turn right. In a panic, the chauffeur looks into the rear-view-mirror and his eyes meet those of Rafsanjani, who instructs the driver: “Signal left; turn right.”

I would not make too much of a single address by Rafsanjani. Nevertheless, I cannot imagine President Ahmadinejad giving the same speech without ranting about Jews, “The Zionist entity,” and “The Great Satan.” And there remains the question of why the article about the address was considered newsworthy enough to post, given the current crises. How great (or little) influence Rafsanjani actually holds over the Supreme Leader may be dependent on the extent of President Ahmadinejad’s policy successes, or failures, in Lebanon and over Iran’s nuclear program. If Iran finds itself isolated internationally, Ahmadinejad’s future may be at stake. If, however, his gambits succeed—the international community folds—his position will become unassailable.

I was channel hopping this evening when I landed on Spike TV, which was showing one of my old favorites—“Goldfinger.” There’s a terrific scene in the film, one of the best known in all the James Bond movies. Sean Connery (Bond, for those of you who are young) is strapped to a table being cut by a laser beam that, unless interrupted, will slice 007 in half from his groin to his head. The ensuing dialogue goes like this:

Bond: I think you made your point. Thank you for the demonstration. Goldfinger: Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr. Bond, it may be your last. Bond: Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger? Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!

It struck me that the scene epitomized the West’s inability to conceptualize what it is up against in its war against the jihadists. Too many people keep searching for ways that will allow us to talk—to negotiate—our way out of our situation. But the jihadists, much like Auric Goldfinger, don’t really care if we talk; they expect western civilization to die. They want a global khalifate in which all people, Muslims and non-Muslims, live under Shari’a. And, again like Goldfinger, they are eager to explain to us in clear language their global dreams.

The West needs to listen, and to recognize that the jihadists want to destroy our way of life. Unless we break the shackles that bind us, shackles that are mostly self-imposed, we will be destroyed. But once the West unshackles itself, the jihadists are doomed.

What is happening will sow the seeds of hatred and extremism in the area and provide a pretext for those who feel that the international community is taking sides and lacks fairness as to this dispute.

All I can say is . . . wow! Is the fact that the United Nations stands idle in the midst of war something new? That’s typical UN-mode. What was UNIFIL doing while Hezbollah set up its missiles in southern Lebanon, despite the fact that the mandate that put UNIFIL in Lebanon spoke of the necessity for the Lebanese government to establish a monopoly on military power in the south? And as far as this crisis sowing the “seeds of hatred and extremism” in the region, would this be something new? Am I to understand that before the current crisis the Arab Middle East was a vast field of love and respect for Israel and the United States?

The draft of the recent (August 5, 2006) UN Security Council Resolution, worked out by the United States and France, has not been well received throughout the Islamic world. What are the details of the draft that so many find unacceptable?

First, the draft points a finger at Hezbollah. If accepted as is, the Security Council will express (bolding is mine) “its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in Lebanon and in Israel since Hizbollah's attack on Israel on 12 July 2006, which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons. . . .”

Second, the draft calls for a ceasefire in place. The Lebanese/Hezbollah position is that a resolution must call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal.

Third, the only actual action called for in the draft, other than the ceasefire, is the “unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers. . . .” Hezbollah’s issue, “settling the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel,” is left to a future resolution.

Fourth, the draft leaves to the future any possible resolution of the Lebanese claims to the Shebaa Farms region and instead calls for all sides to respect the “Blue Line,” i.e., the de facto Lebanese-Israeli border, less the Shebaa Farms area.

Fifth, the draft calls upon “the international community to take immediate steps to extend its financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and, under the authority of the Government of Lebanon, reopening airports and harbours for verifiably and purely civilian purposes. . . .” In other words, the draft ties reconstruction to the willingness of the Lebanese to stop the shipment by sea and air of weapons from Syria and Iran to Hezbollah. Elsewhere, the draft resolution calls for the “establishment of an international embargo on the sale or supply of arms and related material to Lebanon except as authorized by its government. . . .”

Sixth, the draft “[e]mphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords [1989], for it to exercise its full sovereignty and authority. . . .” The resolutions and accords mentioned here, among other things, called on the government of Lebanon to establish its monopoly on military power in the south of Lebanon. In short, the Lebanese government was supposed to disarm Hezbollah, along with all other Lebanese or non-Lebanese militias. The draft, for example, calls for (my bolding) “security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Lebanese armed and security forces and of UN mandated international forces deployed in this area . . .” as well as “full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006) that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state. . . .”

The lack of enthusiasm among the Arab states (and Iran) for the draft resolution is thus understandable. Nevertheless, excepting the absence of a call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal, the other demands in the draft reflect nothing more than restatements of previous and numerous UN and other agreements going back for the better part of two decades. For a recent example, the January 2006 resolution that kept UNIFIL in Lebanon urged “the Lebanese Government to do more to assert its authority in the South, to exert control and monopoly over the use of force and to maintain law and order on its entire territory and to prevent attacks from Lebanon across the Blue Line including through deploying additional numbers of Lebanese Armed Forces and Internal Security Forces. . . .” The call for an arms embargo is new, but if Hezbollah was disarmed, as the UN has been demanding for years now, that would no longer be an issue.

I would argue that the United States and France (I admit, here, my surprise at French cooperation in this instance) have placed the Security Council in a difficult position. If the UN—an organization of states—is to retain any semblance of consistency and relevance, it has to stick to the draft wording that reflects past resolutions aimed at insuring that the Lebanese state holds a monopoly on the possession and use of force. If the Security Council proves unwilling to do that, it will offer Hezbollah and other non-state jihadists everywhere an enormous victory and drive yet another nail into the coffin in which the UN ideal can be, and will be buried.

But no matter how the Security Council ultimately acts, adopting a resolution will only be the beginning. No matter which way the Security Council moves, there exists a substantial possibility that one side or the other will ignore the UN. I do not see the Israelis accepting any agreement that permits Hezbollah to remain armed in south Lebanon with continued access to Iranian weaponry. Conversely, I find it hard to believe that Hezbollah will disarm itself, and even harder to believe that the Lebanese army or any thrown-together UN force will possess the will to forcibly disarm Hezbollah.

Given the situation, the safest scenario for the Security Council may well be to take no action and to allow the fighting to continue until either the Israelis or Hezbollah signal their desire to call it quits. Of course, while that might be the best course for the UN, it is not the best course for the people of Lebanon, nor is it a course likely to minimize the risk of the war expanding, or to defuse tensions and divisions in the region.

Genocide—Definition: “The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.”

One aspect of the myriad problems plaguing the Middle East is the ease with which commentators accuse the Israelis of carrying out policies of “genocide” against the Palestinians or, more recently, the Lebanese. For example, earlier this week, Mohamed Ashab wrote in the Arab-language paper (English edition) Dar Al-Hayat, that American diplomatic maneuvers had assured that “Israel has been given one more week in its war of genocide” against the Lebanese people. In 2003 the Muslim Council of Britain refused to participate in a “Holocaust Memorial National Day” remembrance in Great Britain because of the failure to acknowledge the genocide being carried out against the Palestinian people.

I’m sorry, but this is pure bullshit. Even if you work with the broader UN definition of genocide—“acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”—the charge doesn’t pass the proverbial “duck” test. The current population of Lebanon is about 3.8 million. The number of dead Lebanese after three weeks of “Israeli genocide” is nearing 1,000, or at most about 300 per week. Does anyone truly think that if the Israeli government actually wished to carry out a genocidal campaign against the Lebanese that the best the IDF could do would be to kill 300 civilians a week? And how about some perspective? During the Lebanese civil war of the ‘70s and ‘80s nearly 150,000 Lebanese died. In fact, more Arabs died during the Lebanese civil war than have been killed by the Israelis in all the wars since 1948.

When you hear or see someone accusing the Israelis of “genocide,” that person is insulting your intelligence. If someone wants to lecture me about genocide committed against Jews, Armenians, or the native peoples of the Americas, I’ll listen. But I have no ear for tales of Israeli “genocide” committed against their Arab neighbors.