By Barry Rubin
HERZLIYA, Israel — While the media is going wild over the ridiculous “Palestine Papers” deception, Hizballah is taking over Lebanon.
Fareed Zakaria, the wildly overrated American pundit, has invented a new term, referring to Hizballah as “a quasi-terrorist group.” What does this mean? It means that Hizballah runs in elections but then if it doesn’t get its way it kills people.
At least this is better than the president’s advisor on counterterrorism and apparently chief expert on Lebanon who has explained that there is nothing to fear from Hizballah. It can’t be terrorist, he explained once, because it has lawyers among its members.
If we examine the Russian (can’t last long), Chinese (“agrarian reformers”), and Iranian (don’t worry, the moderates will soon emerge; Khomeini can’t govern) revolutions we find rationales to explain that soon things will return to normal. There’s no problem. But the historic result is decades of horror.
Here’s how Martin Gilbert, the British historian, put it:
“At bottom, the old appeasement was a mood of hope, Victorian in its optimism, Burkean in its belief that societies evolved from bad to good and that progress could only be for the better. The new appeasement was a mood of fear, Hobbesian in its insistence upon swallowing the bad in order to preserve some remnant of the good, pessimistic in its belief that Nazism was there to stay and, however horrible it might be, should be accepted as a way of life with which Britain ought to deal.”
Yes, “a way of life” that must be accepted. Just another cultural choice involving burqas, stoning, making life impossible for Christians and Jews, terrorism, and massive repression, and endless war, and the indoctrination of children to hate.
On the verge of an international investigation that will show Syria and Hizballah were involved in a dozen bloody terror attacks in Lebanon—and specifically the assassination of former prime minister (and leader of the opposition) Rafik Hariri, Hizballah provoked a government crisis. Then, winning over the Druze leader Walid Junblatt (who sees that Iran-Syria are strong and America-West are weak), it may emerge as the strongest power in a new government.
“A prime minister chosen by Hezbollah and its allies won enough support on Monday to form Lebanon’s government…culminating the generation-long ascent of the Shiite Muslim movement from shadowy militant group to the country’s pre-eminent political and military force.”
I believe the theme of his article a few days ago was that Hizballah is weak and no threat. This is a very sad day for Lebanon, the Middle East, the hope for peace and freedom, and Western interests.
Of course, Hizballah is not going to convert Lebanon into an Islamist republic. Why start a civil war with the Christians and Sunni Muslims. Just leave them alone in their territorial enclaves. But the Islamists and their partners will control the apparatus of state, foreign policy, and all the key decisions.
How did the leading Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat describe the situation? By saying that Iran will now control Lebanon.
The French government has accepted, even endorsed, this outcome.
What do you think the rest of the region is going to take away from this? America cannot or will not protect you.Islamism and Iran are the wave of the future. Submit or die. And that’s even before Tehran gets nuclear weapons. The way things are going, maybe Iran doesn’t even need them.
And where is the United States? Asleep. Determined to prove that it doesn’t throw its weight around, rationalizing a terrible defeat as insignificant, it hasn’t even taken a stance. Now it’s too late.
Last year, the United States and Europe accepted the secure establishment of a revolutionary Islamist state that is a client of Iran and Syria on the Mediterranean. This may be the year of seeing a second such state come into existence. Of course, the situation in Lebanon will be far more subtle and nuanced but in strategic terms it amounts to something very similar.
An American government that will put all of its resources into preventing the construction of apartment buildings in east Jerusalem can barely be roused to prevent the construction of an Islamist-dominated state in a country of tremendous strategic significance.
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Barry Rubin is editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org