Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

World Press Photo of the Year 2006
Spencer Platt, USA, Getty Images. Young Lebanese drive through devastated neighborhood of South Beirut, 15 August, 2006

Munson: The main reason for recording human brutality, in pictures or in words,  should be to induce humans to become more humane. It should obviously never be a form of “voyeurism.” Those who record the agony of others violate their privacy in a way that can only be justified if it induces others to recognize the need to eliminate or at least curb unnecessary violence. Violating people’s privacy simply to take a prize-winning photograph is wrong.  But if a picture portraying human brutality can both induce humans to become more humane and win prizes, that is fine. Indeed, the prize may well increase exposure to the picture and the basic message it is intended to convey.

Mai Ghoussoub, Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award, openDemocracy

Four stylish young women, an open-topped car, the rubble of war-torn Beirut … but where is the real power of Spencer Platt’s prize-winning image, asks Mai Ghoussoub.

(This article was first published on 13 February 2007)

I am certain that Spencer Platt’s picture which won the World Press Photo prize for 2006 looked disturbing and even repellent to most viewers at first glance. I admit that it bothered me when I first saw it on my screen. But I also admit that I kept on looking at it. What was it that intrigued me in this picture despite my unexplained revulsion? Why did I feel that I had to write about what I saw in the picture?

…I went to a housewarming party and I overheard two young Lebanese arguing about the same photo. Both were in their 20s and very “cosmopolitan”. One said: I think this is a great photograph, it shows us as we are, not people associated only with war and destruction. The second one was appalled and said: this is the “new orientalism” - instead of the women depicted in Delacroix’s classic orientalist paintings, today we have these modern, model-type Lebanese women against a background of war and poverty….I believe that the photo is stunning in the metaphor it creates about war photography. It tells us about the voyeurism of the photographer, of the act of taking photos in tragic situations: if there is a contradiction, it is in the encounter between art, beauty and tragedy. Covering a disaster in order to create a striking image is what Robert Capa did best, he became an icon for it and we, the viewers are becoming addicted to this art form.

Argentina: Iran behind bombs at Israeli embassy, Jewish center - Haaretz, December 8, 2007

Iran was behind the bombings over a decade ago in Argentina against the Israeli embassy and Jewish community center, according to the country’s chief prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who served as a special prosecutor investigating the attacks.

“I have no doubt that the most senior Iranian leadership, with the help of Hezbollah, is responsible for the attacks in Buenos Aires against AMIA [the community center in 1994] and the Israeli Embassy [in 1992],” Nisman said Tuesday night at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.

While investigating the two attacks, Nisman found the necessary legal evidence pointing directly to former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani and his chief of intelligence, Ali Falahian, for their role in the decision to target the community center.

Daniel Sobelman, Lebanon 2007: Old Realities, New Uncertainties, Strategic Assessment, December 2007, Vol. 10, No. 3

Several events converged to bring twenty-nine years of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon to a finale: the string of political assassinations, the withdrawal of the Syrian military from Lebanese soil, and of course the Second Lebanon War. The end of this Syrian hegemony also brought to a close what had been an era of domestic stability. Surrounded by regional crises, and with an ever-present threat of civil conflict looming, Lebanon is struggling to recover from the 2006 war and to stem further disintegration. The future status of Hizbollah, at least in the short term, and its political and military room for maneuver will be largely determined by the way in which Lebanon resolves the current crisis.

Internal Strife
In an inconspicuous column entitled “Secrets of the Gods” in late 2003, the Beirut newspaper al-Nahar – at the time the Lebanese newspaper most outspoken in its criticism of Hizbollah – published a one-line item that “one of the prominent organizations” was engaged in digging in towns along the border in order to lay the infrastructure for a private phone system. The report noted that “official and civil authorities” objected to the operations.[1] Four years later, Hizbollah’s operational telephone infrastructure is no longer a guarded secret but rather an openly debated topic on the agenda of the Lebanese government, which in recent months has been exposing and dismantling the Shiite organization’s telephone infrastructure in Beirut and other parts of the country.[2]

Middle East Report Online: Rallying Around the Renegade by Heiko Wimmen, August 27, 2007

Back in the fall of 2006, student elections at the American University of Beirut produced an unexpected aesthetic: female campaigners for the predominantly Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of the ex-general Michel Aoun sporting button-sized portraits of bearded Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah on their stylish attire. “Hizballah stands for the unity and independence of Lebanon, just as we do,” went the party line, as reiterated by Laure, an activist business student clad in the movement’s trademark orange. “And imagine, the Shi‘a and us,” she mused, off-script and with a glance at her co-campaigners, covered head to toe in the black gowns of the staunchly Islamist party, but spiced up with bright orange ribbons for the occasion. “How many we will be.”

Just how many became clear soon enough, when Aoun joined Hizballah’s attempt to bring down the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora through public pressure later that year. While actual numbers are notoriously hard to come by,[1] the two main rallies held on December 1 and 10 clearly rivaled the demonstration that brought about the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon 18 months before. Followers of Aoun, who stand out in their blazing orange gear, accounted for an apparent third of the masses. Once again, predictions that Aoun’s alliance with the “Party of God” would dispel his support in the Christian community were proven wrong.

RETURN OF THE RENEGADE

Throughout his political career, Michel Aoun’s bold maneuvering, boisterous, often ranting discourse and utter disregard for the complex rules and false niceties of the Lebanese political scene have made him one of the most divisive figures therein. To his admirers, he is the strong leader who can rise above the fray of perennial internecine conflict, clear out a divided and despised political class bent on the pursuit of factional and personal interest, and achieve longed-for, but ever elusive national unity. Likewise, Aoun has earned himself the intense loathing (even by Lebanese standards) of the members of exactly this political class (and their followers). Rather than a champion of secularist nationalism, they consider Aoun to be an irresponsible rabble rouser who threatens to upset the delicate balance of sectarian power sharing, and his calls for reform and a shakeup of public institutions to be thinly veiled Bonapartism. Aoun’s loud populism is seen as not only gauche but also a challenge to the country’s Byzantine political game, whereby decisions and distributions of spoils are supposed to be worked out behind impenetrable smokescreens of lofty principles and diplomatic cant. For the Christian part of this political class, he is also an upstart trespassing on territory that is rightfully theirs. “To his supporters,” as one journalist sums it up, “he is a Lebanese Charles de Gaulle seeking to unite this fractious country and rebuild trust in its institutions. To his critics he is a divisive megalomaniac willing to stop at nothing to become president of Lebanon.”[2]

Paolo Pellegrin’s Photographs of Lebanon during the war of 2006 (in the book Double Blind (Trolley, 2007)

5 Myths About Terrorism - washingtonpost.com, September 16, 2007

In fact, terrorists are typically motivated by geopolitical grievances, not blind hatred. The agendas of individual terrorist groups vary, but their tactical goal is always more or less the same: to sow fear and confusion by deliberately targeting civilians in order to intimidate a country into changing its policies and ways….

Jitka Maleckova of the Russell Sage Foundation and I found that members of the military wing of the radical Shiite group Hezbollah who were killed in action in the 1980s and early 1990s were better educated and less likely to be poor than their Lebanese countrymen….

Every major religious faith has had followers involved in terrorism. (Sri Lanka, for instance, has grappled for decades with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group that pioneered suicide bombing as a terrorist tactic and hopes to create a homeland for the country’s mostly Tamil minority, who are largely Hindu.)

While it is important not to assume that Muslim hostility to Israel is simply the result of anti-Semitism, it is also important to recognize that Islamist rhetoric is often anti-Semitic.

anti-semitic-motifs-in-the-ideology-of-hizballah-and-hamas.htm

Themes borrowed from European Christendom were adapted by incorporating explicit Islamic references in them. The most important example of this process, according to Prof. Bernard Lewis, was the restating of the story of Muhammad’s relations with the Jews. “Instead of being a minor nuisance, ineffectual and unsuccessful in their plots against him,” as they were traditionally depicted, “they [the Jews] are depicted as a dark and evil force, conspiring to destroy the Prophet, and continuing as the main danger to Islam.”6 Yehoshafat Harkabi calls this trend the “Islamization of the hatred of the Jews.”7

Hostility to the State of Israel and to Zionism as an ideology arising from the Arab-Israeli conflict, while not in itself necessarily a manifestation of anti-Semitism, gradually gave rise to a deeper, irreconcilable hatred that does not differentiate between Israelis, Zionists or Jews.

Daniel Sobelman - STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT, Vol 7 No 2, 2004
The exchange of fire that takes place every few months on the northern border between Israel and Hizbollah evokes time and again extreme comments in the Israeli political scene, such as calls “to put the lights out in Beirut” or to attack Syria, and other demands for sweeping strategic retaliation against Hizbollahs tactics. In practice, Israel adopts a far more moderate approach to the complex situation along the Lebanese border. The caution employed by Israel and Hizbollah - each in its own initiated moves and responses to the other - contributes to the relative stability maintained along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Le Monde.fr, 30 août 2007

Le Hezbollah lance une campagne contre l’organisation Human Rights Watch

Mouna Naïm

LE MONDE | 29.08.07 | 15h00, Article paru dans l’édition du 30.08.07

Le Hezbollah a lancé, mardi 28 août, une virulente campagne contre l’association de défense des droits de l’homme Human Rights Watch (HRW), en prévision du rapport de 120 pages qu’elle doit publier sur les violations, par le Parti de Dieu, des lois de la guerre lors du conflit qui l’a opposé à l’armée israélienne pendant l’été 2006. Un autre rapport, début septembre, concernera les violations commises par Israël. La campagne a été lancée par la chaîne de télévision Al-Manar, du Hezbollah, à quarante-huit heures d’une conférence de presse que HRW entend tenir à Beyrouth. “Cette conférence (…) affaiblit le sentiment national et constitue une incitation contre les droits de la résistance (le Hezbollah)“, a annoncé Al-Manar. “Des organisations estudiantines, des associations de la société civile ainsi que les familles des martyrs, des blessés et des personnes lésées (par la guerre) vont organiser une protestation” pour empêcher la tenue de la conférence, a ajouté la chaîne, qui a ouvert son bulletin d’informations de la soirée sur cette affaire.

Versant dans un anti-américanisme et un antisémitisme primaires, la chaîne a qualifié HRW d’“association américaine greffée de juifs”.

HEZBOLLAH’S CREEPY NEW MUSEUM
Exhibition Game
by Zvika Krieger
The New Republic

Post date: 08.17.07
Issue date: 08.27.07
Beirut, Lebanon

Earlier this week, I found myself standing in the courtyard of Beirut’s newest museum in front of the warped propeller of a Yasur CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter. The propeller, a placard helpfully explained, had been “destroyed by the resistance” during last summer’s war, a fate that had also befallen the half-dozen charred Israeli military vehicles surrounding it. A group of hijab-clad women nudged me out of the way so they could snap some photos with the propeller.

The downed helicopter is on display at the Spider’s Web, Hezbollah’s new war museum. The free exhibition commemorates the group’s “divine victory” over Israel last summer by offering up a professional and slickly curated collection of war paraphernalia–the work of over two dozen conceptual artists, graphic designers, engineers, musicians, and lighting technicians. Since opening last month, it has become this summer’s hottest tourist destination, attracting, mostly by word of mouth, over 200,000 visitors. “We don’t even remember the war in the Christian area where I’m from, but I felt like it is something that should not be forgotten soon,” explains Danya, a 26-year-old Christian financial consultant, as she made her way into the museum past a busload of schoolchildren. “Also, I wanted to see what all my friends were talking about.”

And that’s exactly Hezbollah’s intention. The militant group has struggled to maintain its wartime popularity since it withdrew from the government last fall, occupied downtown Beirut, and threw the country into political turmoil. The Lebanese government has condemned Hezbollah, claiming it dragged the country into war. It has also refused to mark the war’s anniversary this month. The Spider’s Web, by contrast, won’t let the Lebanese forget it.

Entering the museum, visitors are greeted by massive posters of the war’s most reviled villains. A menacing picture of Condoleezza Rice announces that “This war is part of birth bangs [sic] of the new middle east [sic],” while a jester-like George W. Bush assures viewers that “[o]ur nation is wasting no time in helping the people of Lebanon.” Former Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, in Israel’s crowning moment of the war, gazes pensively through capped binoculars. “Hassan Nasrallah won’t forget the name Aameer Peretz [sic],” quotes the caption under his larger- than-life portrait.

The main hall is lined with a panorama of crisp, glossy photographs: scenes of the bombed-out Al Manar building (Hezbollah’s TV station); floor-to-ceiling portraits of Lebanese refugees bawling in front of their leveled homes; a couple taking their wedding pictures in the rubble of south Beirut. One of the installations contains photos of bloody Lebanese children and infants covered in bandages and IV tubing, all surrounding a teddy bear recovered from a bombed-out Lebanese house. Lest anyone fail to realize who could possibly be so bloodthirsty, another display–which includes pictures of Israeli children excitedly signing missiles and a Hasidic man pumping his fist in front of an Israeli tank–proclaims, “This is their culture, this is their belief.”

The museum simultaneously tries to portray Hezbollah as helpless victims and brave warriors. The Spider’s Web draws its name from a Nasrallah speech in which he boasted that Israel is “more feeble than a spider’s web”–a theme he reiterated in a speech to tens of thousands of screaming fans outside the museum this week. Throughout the exhibition, glass cases sunk into the ground display some of the Israeli spoils captured by Hezbollah: helmets, boots, machine guns, radios, oxygen tanks, and even personal items such as iPods and tefillin (Jewish prayer straps) looted from dead Israeli soldiers. “Watch it burn,” proclaims a poster of a capsized Israeli warship. “It will sink taking with it dozens of Zionist Israeli soldiers.”

Perhaps fearing that the deaths of just dozens of Zionists won’t make enough of an impression, the Spider’s Web design team has made sure that pictures of bloodied and limbless Israeli soldiers make up the largest part of the exhibit. Some are digitally altered to be surrounded by hellish flames; others are rendered with anguished faces into art deco portraits; still others are engulfed in spider webs constructed with Koranic verses. “The invincible army!” gloats one of these montages. “It’s Lebanon, you fools,” reads another. A Warhol-esque portrait of Nasrallah presides contentedly over the display.

The museum’s main event is a sound-and-light show around Hezbollah’s prized artifact–a Merkava tank bombed during the war–displayed in a recreated bomb crater lined with mannequins of (what else?) dead Israeli soldiers. Every few minutes, the lights dim for an effects-laden video extravaganza that shows the explosion of the tank, up-close shots of Hezbollah militants launching Katyusha rockets, and Hezbollah’s missiles raining down on the Israeli city of Haifa. After the show, the lights come up on posters of crying Israeli soldiers.

Following this grand finale, visitors are quickly ushered out of the museum to a grassy, serene “Martyr’s Oasis.” This installation is filled with white pillars and a white staircase leading up to a white doorframe, perhaps a subtle nod to the glorious fate in store for those who died fighting for Hezbollah last summer (and whose pictures line the streets surrounding the museum).

The museum’s visitors, however, are relegated to worldly pleasures for the time being: The Hezbollah gift shop is located conveniently near the exit of the museum. For sale are fashionable Hezbollah hats, DVDs of Nasrallah’s speeches, and Hezbollah’s latest video game, “Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge”–available in Arabic, English, French, and Farsi.

Nasrallah’s Speech to “VICTORY RALLY” 9/22/2006 as Translated by BBC

Le Liban-Sud sous la coupe du Hezbollah, Figaro, 14/8/2007

hezbollah_program.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Harb and Leenders, Hizbullah, Terrorism, and the Politics of Perception, TWQ, 2005

Norton, Hizballah of Lebanon: Extremist Ideals vs. Mundane Politics, CFR, 1999