But the mood in Lebanon has drastically changed over the past few days. Very few now blame Hizbollah, or actively agree with calls for its disarmament (even though the majority of the population supported this goal prior to the recent events). And virtually no one would be pleased if the two Israeli soldiers were surrendered under the threat of Israel's continuation of its systematic destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure.

Understanding this radical transformation in mind-set can shed some light on the unintended - yet tragically predictable - consequences of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

What has happened in the span of a few days?

In the aftermath of Hizbollah's attacking and kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers across the border, Israel implemented a "shock and awe" strategy that blasted away every piece of infrastructure that the Lebanese painstakingly built over the past fifteen years. As the long-in-place agreement to restrict activities in Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel to military targets gave way to open warfare, Hizbollah also unleashed its deadly barrages of Katyusha rockets over northern Israel.

In a few infernal days, Israeli planes and warships managed to destroy the fruits of fifteen years of labour of ordinary Lebanese citizens determined to restore the country to a semblance of its pre-war level of development. Significantly, only three Hizbollah fighters were killed in the Israeli raids, while more than two hundred Lebanese civilians, including whole families, perished. It is equally sad that Israeli civilians, however fewer in number these may be, were killed and wounded by Hizbollah rockets.

In what can only be viewed as an insult to the intelligence of informed citizens everywhere, President Bush argued simply that Israel "has the right to defend itself". Luckily for Mr. Bush, Israel was able to articulate a more plausible explanation for its strategy: it was ensuring that Hizbollah will not smuggle the Israeli soldiers out of Lebanon, and it was cutting off Hizbollah's arms supply routes.

In reality, this explanation is not borne out by the facts on the ground. For example, Israeli jets bombed the highest bridge in the Middle East - a few miles from my hometown on the main road between Beirut and Damascus - disabling it and rendering it unusable for months to come. Curiously, the Israelis were not satisfied by disabling the bridge. They came back the next day and completely demolished the remainder of the structure - as if to simply add tens of million of dollars to the eventual cost of repair. Israel also bombed power generating plants, cellular telephone towers, gas stations, foodstock warehouses and purely commercial targets. I am not a military expert, but none of these seem like relevant targets if the aim is to block Hizbollah from transporting the Israeli soldiers out of the country or to prevent it from receiving arms from Syria and Iran.

The more plausible rationale for the "shock and awe" operation is to make the situation so painful for Lebanese civilians that they "take responsibility" for the actions of one of their own, the Hizbollah militia. The argument goes as follows: if the cost is made high enough, citizens will pressure their government into doing what it has been struggling to do for months: disarming Hizbollah. This strategy was beginning to work in the first day of the Israeli operation, as voices in the country began to be raised against Hizbollah and its reckless action. But as the intensity and the perniciousness of the Israeli bombing escalated, even the most moderate civilians in Lebanon experienced an emotional transformation into what can be likened to the revulsion of an innocent person being terrorised into submission by a vastly superior power. In an affront to human dignity and disregard for human life, Israel is inflicting severe pain and suffering on a huge number of civilians to incite them to do its bidding.

Hizbollah may be accused of doing the same in Israel (though with a much more limited capacity to inflict pain). But then we would expect a terrorist organisation to commit acts of terrorism. A state committing the same acts, magnified many times over, with the same intentions, must be condemned and ultimately prevented by the world community. Otherwise, we would be sending yet another message to people and nations who feel wronged yet do not have the means to win the fight against their aggressors: your only recourse is to equip yourself with whatever means necessary to deter your aggressors. It would be a return to the law of the jungle that the world can ill afford in this age of nuclear proliferation.

By failing to act on behalf of Lebanon and to call Israel to account for its actions, the US is putting the world at greater risk, and it is setting back by decades the cause of peace in the region.

To understand the sense of injustice that people in Lebanon feel about their situation, consider this analogy: black rights activists, indignant at police brutality towards fellow blacks, kidnap a white police officer and retreat into their black neighbourhood, demanding the release of detained black activists in exchange for the police officer. The state calls in the exclusively white national guardsmen who surround the neighbourhood and start firing mortars into it, destroying businesses and killing whole families. To drive their point home, the national guardsmen cut off the electricity and water supply of the neighbourhood, and announce to the inhabitants that they, the community, will be held responsible for the actions of their radical fringes, and will continue to be pounded by heavy artillery until they rise up against the activists among them. Would blacks in the neighbourhood rise against their reckless brothers, or would this response by state authorities take their fury towards their white neighbours to new and irreversibly hostile levels?

To put things in perspective, Lebanese civilians are experiencing the same type of revulsion towards Israel that American citizens felt towards Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda after September 11. But blame is also directed at the U.S. government for its political and moral support of Israel in this affair. And I am not talking here about Lebanese Shiite fanatics. I am talking about Jane and John Doe of Lebanon: your average Sunni, Christian, Shiite and Druze who may otherwise hold living in the US as their greatest aspiration.

The Lebanese are feeling tremendous indignation at the injustice they are facing. Let us not allow this indignation to fester and turn into new seeds of hatred. The US had best seize the moment, quickly and decisively, to demonstrate that it understands that there is no lasting peace for Israel or Lebanon without some measure of justice and dignity for all parties involved.

Nadim Matta*
Stamford, Connecticut (USA)

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* Nadim Matta is a management consultant and US citizen of Lebanese origin. During the civil war in Lebanon, he worked for USAID and for Save the Children Federation in Beirut. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), July 18, 2006)

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