A war on the civilian population of Lebanon

As'ad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese professor of political science at California State University and Chris Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times appeared on Democracy Now - this is an excerpt.

As'ad AbuKhalil: I have returned from Lebanon only a week ago or less, and I have met and interviewed a whole number of people, including the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. And I must confess to you that, no, there was nothing in the air about what was coming, and that is because these events were not planted in Lebanon and did not originate inside the country, but outside. I must begin by dissenting by the comments of Chris Hedges, and this is one of the frustrating things watching these events here in the United States, and I don't want to talk anything about the U.S. government or about the mainstream media. I want to talk about progressives and their stances, people like The Nation magazine's editorial, about the words of Chris Hedges this morning.

He talks about the death of the peace process. No, no, no. This is not because the peace process was not ongoing. This is the peace process, Mr. Hedges. This is part of what the United States has been doing since the beginning of the so-called peace process, to subcontract the subjugation of the Arabs and all those who defend against Israeli occupation in the area. I mean, he speaks about the spiral of violence, extremists on both sides. All this language is always intended to camouflage and hide and disguise the aggressor, the nature of the aggressor.

Let me put the context for this audience here, because a lot of people have been analyzing this conflict in terms of an outside conspiracy. On the right, you have people like George W. Bush, among others, blaming it all on Iran. On the left, you have people like Robert Fisk, who believe this is all about a Syrian conspiracy. Yet the truth resides in an article yesterday by Robin Wright in the Washington Post. If there is a conspiracy in all of this, it is an American, Israeli, Saudi conspiracy that has been in planning for years in order to disarm Hezbollah as part of the 1559 United Nations Security Council resolution, and we are seeing the implementation of that resolution by force.

But we have to remind the audience about something: how Israel propaganda doesn't get updated. In 1982, I barely survived an Israeli invasion of the country. Back then, the Israelis were saying, "We are not against Lebanon. We just want to expel the PLO out of Lebanon." Now, they are saying the same, with one difference: Hezbollah is the Lebanese population here. I am from South Lebanon. I tell you that the entire population of South Lebanon stands behind Hezbollah, whether you like it or not. My 14-year-old nephew has been raised by secular leftists, like my family is, and yet he is now a passionate, enthusiastic supporter of Hezbollah. So when Israel said they want to drive them away from South Lebanon, what are they going to do? We're talking about extermination of them?

And for people who talk about the beginning of this in the arrest and capture of these two Israeli occupation soldiers, we have to remember Israel has not been sitting idly by. Israel has been violating Lebanese sovereignty for the last several years, long after its so-called partial withdrawal from South Lebanon in May of 2000. Israel violates Lebanese earth space. They kidnap shepherds and fishermen from the area where I come from, which is Tyre, at will. Some of these fishermen never come, some of them are killed. Plus, there are demands that all the Lebanese have, including the release of Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jail, the fact that Israel has refused over the last several years all pressures and demands to give Lebanon, through the United Nations, a list of the 400,000 land mines that Israel has planted during its occupation in that region.

And when people on the left, like the editorial of The Nation magazine this week, an awful editorial, when they speak about -- as if this is about the ideology of Hezbollah. No, when we leftists speak about what's going on, it is not out of sympathy for the ideology of Hezbollah. First of all, Israel is not launching a war on the ideology of Hezbollah. It is launching a war, as Rania put it very eloquently, on the whole civilian population of Lebanon. This is exactly what we are talking about. Read, listen or watch in full here