Hezbolla - like "civil-rights movement of the 1960’s"

[bloom]

According to:

Ground to a Halt

By ROBERT PAPE
Published: August 3, 2006
Chicago

ISRAEL has finally conceded that air power alone will not defeat Hezbollah. Over the coming weeks, it will learn that ground power won’t work either. The problem is not that the Israelis have insufficient military might, but that they misunderstand the nature of the enemy.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Hezbollah is principally neither a political party nor an Islamist militia. It is a broad movement that evolved in reaction to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. At first it consisted of a small number of Shiites supported by Iran. But as more and more Lebanese came to resent Israel’s occupation, Hezbollah — never tight-knit — expanded into an umbrella organization that tacitly coordinated the resistance operations of a loose collection of groups with a variety of religious and secular aims.

In terms of structure and hierarchy, it is less comparable to, say, a religious cult like the Taliban than to the multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the 1960’s. What made its rise so rapid, and will make it impossible to defeat militarily, was not its international support but the fact that it evolved from a reorientation of pre-existing Lebanese social groups.

Evidence of the broad nature of Hezbollah’s resistance to Israeli occupation can be seen in the identity of its suicide attackers. Hezbollah conducted a broad campaign of suicide bombings against American, French and Israeli targets from 1982 to 1986. Altogether, these attacks — which included the infamous bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 — involved 41 suicide terrorists.

In writing my book on suicide attackers, I had researchers scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and the biographies of the Hezbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon....<more>

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/opinion/03pape.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Also see/hear Democracy Now! today for a show on the effectiveness of Israel's propaganda. Transcripts later.

[tonkatoy57]

1. Interesting article...

but I think your header is a little misleading. He's not saying that Hezbollah is like the American civil rights movement, he's saying that the loose organizational structure is akin to the civil rights movement in that it encompasses many groups with similar ambitions.

Nevertheless, it's an interesting article and if accurate, illuminates how difficult, if not impossible, it will be for Israel to accomplish what the say is their goal, eliminating Hezbollah.

[bloom]

5. To stop Hezbolla - stop occupying.

To increase Hezbolla - bomb and occupy. At least that what it sounds like to me.


"What these suicide attackers — and their heirs today — shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hezbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.

Thus the new Israeli land offensive may take ground and destroy weapons, but it has little chance of destroying the Hezbollah movement. In fact, in the wake of the bombings of civilians, the incursion will probably aid Hezbollah’s recruiting."

[furman]

2. Your subject heading is misleading

The OP says only that the structure of Hezbollah is more like a civil-rights movement than a religious cult such as the Taliban.

Hezbollah is still first and foremost a terrorist organization with the goal of establishing an Islamic republic in the mold of Iran as well as the destruction of the State of Israel.

[Totally Committed]

3. I was gonna say...

as someone who was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, I don't remember even the Black Panthers having missles.

TC

[WildEyedLiberal]

13. lol n/t

[atreides1]

4. Changed their minds on one

At least they seemed to have change their minds on one goal. Now if someone could only get them to get rid of the "destruction of Israel" agenda, it might be a basis


Hezbollah follows a Shiite Islamist ideology shared by the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, but it has abandoned its goal of establishing a fundamentalist Shiite state in Lebanon.


The organization views an Islamic republic, on the Iranian model, as the ideal and eventual form of state. However, as their conception of an Islamic republic requires the consent of the people, and since Lebanon remains a religiously and ideologically heterogeneous society (see Demographics of Lebanon), their political platform revolves around more mundane issues. According to their published political platform in 2003, Hezbollah favors the introduction of an Islamic government in Lebanon by peaceful democratic means.

[bloom]

6. I changed it.

It's part of the propaganda - as noted on Democracy Now! - to label Hezbolla as terrorists.

CNN (US) calls them terrorists. CNNi (for the rest of the world) - Hezbolla is referred to as a militia.


But this article does refer to them as terrorists - even as the author compares them more to a grassroots movement.

[dipsydoodle]

7. CNN v. CNNi

You make a very interesting observation there. As I only ever see CCNi I wasn't aware of that.

[bloom]

9. This was mentioned on the Democracy Now! show today

by somebody who studies that stuff.

Also noted - which I've heard before and noticed - is that the coverage of Israel in the US is more biased toward Israel than coverage in Israel is. In Israel - some criticism is allowed in the press - in the US - NOT.

[dipsydoodle]

11. Another oddity

is that Murdoch owned Faux News couldn't possibly be more different than Murdoch owned Sky News which is perfectly open and honest. Worth reading/viewing their videos from time to time : http://news.sky.com/skynews/worldnews

If Sky has shown any minor bias it's been toward Lebanon with almost continous live news coverage from there.

[bloom]

15. That is weird.

So much effort in keeping Americans in the dark. And it sadly works.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ShortnFiery]

12. No, that "terrorist" meme is lame ...

Powers use the term "terrorist" to define THEIR enemy.

It's a hollow shell. Bush has played that 9-11 evildoer terra-istic card one too many times. It's B.S. term to define "OUR Enemy."

However, both sides are guilty of war crimes. That is horrific behavior by BOTH waring parties. :cry:

[dipsydoodle]

8. Closer analogy may be

with the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland which also strted in the sixties.

http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/history/19631969.html start there and then go forward a page at time.

[Recursion]

14. Didn't Hezbollah and IRA train together?

Or was that PLO and IRA?

[dipsydoodle]

16. Allegation

of dubious truth. One might have helped fund the other and there may have been a weapons and munitions supply chain into the IRA. The stuff they were using apart from fertiliser had to have come from somwhere. Having said that most of the devices the IRA used were reckoned to be well within the capabilities of any 14 year old who actually listened in chemistry classes. In other words sophistication isn't always the key to success - it's the relentless pursuit of an ideal.

[bloom]

17. Snips of Democracy Now! transcripts...

Thursday, August 3rd, 2006

Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land: Documentary Examines US Media Coverage of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict

PROF. ROBERT JENSEN: Israel is really fighting a war on two fronts. The first is a military campaign being waged in the Occupied Territories against the Palestinian people. And the second is a PR campaign being waged here in the U.S. through the American media to ensure continued support for Israel's occupation. Alon Pinkas, Consul General for Israel in New York and the coordinator of Israel’s PR efforts, was recently quoted as saying, “We are currently in a conflict with the Palestinians, and engaging in a successful PR campaign is part of winning the conflict.” So you could say that in addition to the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is also involved in an attempt to ideologically occupy the American media.

NARRATOR: The roots of Israel's public relations campaign go back to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that earned it worldwide criticism, in particular the massacre of Palestinian civilians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. To the Israeli government, the problem was not the deaths of thousands of civilians. Rather, it was the damage to Israel's public image, a public relations disaster in need of damage control.

ROBERT FISK: They surrounded Beirut. In three months, 17,500 people, almost all of them civilians, were killed. I saw many thousands of their bodies. Then came the massacre of Sabra and Chatila by Israel's own allies, as the camp was surrounded by Israeli troops. And they desperately said, “What went wrong?” It was concluded that the problem was, it wasn't good enough public relations.

PROF. ROBERT JENSEN: After the public relations disaster of Lebanon, Israel decided to set up permanent institutional structures to control how Americans would think about the Middle East. In 1983, Israel launched the Hasbara Project, the aim of which was to ensure good press in the U.S. media. The goal was to train Israeli diplomats in communications and public relations. For example, they trained press officers in Israeli consulates in the U.S. to ensure that American journalists would write stories favorable to Israel. As one of these press officers said in the 1980s, he had breakfast, lunch and dinner with journalists and that a typical day would involve conversations with producers at leading news and TV talk shows about the content of the program. He described it as, in fact, quote, a “joint formulation of ideas.” This targeting of the American media goes on in the present day.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/03/1351216