Cheering
To The Beat
Of The Palestinians' Misery
By Sami Hermez
28 May, 2007
Electronic
Lebanon
A
few days ago I woke in the morning to find the following email in my
inbox asking for my support and signature:
- Our Army is our pride --
Petition
- Our support goes to the Lebanese Army, our soldiers, our national
pride
- We send our condolences
to the families and the martyrs
- Always proud, always in
our hearts, always in our prayers! God Bless YOU and your families for
the sacrifices you make each and every day
- We bow in respect in front
of their courage and devotion -- We are a witness to the strength, honour,
wisdom and patriotism of the Lebanese Armed Forces as well as its glorious
history and magnificent skills and tremendous heroic sacrifices it gave
our beloved Lebanon.
- Support our army and our
soldiers for all the sacrifices they are making. They are the guarantee
to our salvation.
In times of conflict people
believe in writing petitions as a way to protest or show their political
positions nonviolently. However, this particular petition infuriated
me because it clearly reflects a lack of moral compass pervasive in
Lebanese society.
What is more disturbing is
that the petition, with over 10,000 signatories thus far, echoes the
general mood in the country, where we have seen people take to the streets
in support and celebration of the army; and where people are expressing
their hatred for the Palestinian refugees by uttering such things as:
"Let the army finish us from the Palestinians once and for all."
In other words, the "salvation" that we are to be guaranteed
of by our support of the army in this petition is a salvation from the
Palestinians. In our habitual, almost instinctive resort to religious
imagery, this petition claims the army as Jesus Christ and the Palestinians
as all things evil.
In Lebanon we have seen this
before. In the 1970s it was the Christian Phalange party among others
who resorted to this language; today we are hearing it across sectarian
lines. Perhaps, as proof of a lack of any moral direction, the Lebanese
national narrative will once and for all be determined through the claim
of a common Palestinian enemy. And I will remain disgusted!
Have those who signed the
petition and who have celebrated the Lebanese army in the streets not
drawn any connections between the army they are so fond of and their
Zionist neighbors? In the first three days of the recent events involving
the Lebanese army and Fateh el-Islam in the Nahr el-Bared camp, the
Lebanese army committed what would amount to war crimes in a similar
fashion to that of the Israeli army in Gaza and in Lebanon last summer,
firing on a civilian population indiscriminately. When the Israelis
do this, we scream at the injustice, but when the Lebanese army does
it we applaud them. These are double standards.
It is sad and distressing
that over 30 Lebanese soldiers have been killed as they pursue the fanatic
group, Fateh al-Islam, but the blood of those soldiers is on the hands
of the Lebanese government who would send them into combat without armor,
training or proper intelligence. Is no one blaming the government, internal
security forces or the Lebanese army itself for either their incompetence
or complicity in allowing this group, which is not Palestinian, to enter
the country in the first place? The onus is on the government which
was responsible for overseeing the borders, and, disregarding the conspiracies
of having been involved in arming this group in the first place, Fateh
el-Islam could only be what it is today because certain Lebanese figures
or groups allowed this to happen. Is anyone else finding it hard to
believe that a militia of a few hundred fighters could form in a country
the size of Lebanon, without the army or internal security's knowledge?
I wonder why it is, then, that the Palestinians alone must pay the price
while we cheer to the beats of their misery with utter callousness?
However, as many have argued,
the deed is done, and the army was attacked. At this point the army,
realizing it was not trained for ground combat, and that it could not
enter the camps largely for political reasons, decided that the only
way to fight was by shelling the entire camp. To gain popular and political
support, it began using the same language as the Israelis in the Occupied
Territories and the US army in Iraq: that of "terrorists"
using "human shields" and of civilian casualties as a regrettable
necessity in the pursuit of these terrorists.
I recall last summer that
when Israel realized it could not successfully enter Lebanon with ground
forces to fight Hizballah it decided to bomb the entire country. That
summer, the country was the camp. Today Lebanon enforces Israeli military
policy on a smaller scale. Rather than the annihilation of a country,
what we were seeing in the Palestinian camp of Nahr el-Bared was the
collective punishment of an entire civilian population through the indiscriminate
use of force on a hermetically sealed camp.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice echoed what many Lebanese were likely thinking, saying that "Lebanon
is doing the right thing to try to protect its population ... to assert
its sovereignty and so we are very supportive of the Siniora government
and what it is trying to do." The rhetoric seems all too familiar
if one thinks back to last summer and her position on Israel's targeting
of the Lebanese population. At least she is consistent. One friend tells
me that it all seems like a trap to bait the Lebanese into becoming
a stronger ally in America's "war on terror." I find it hard
to disagree. Like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Arab countries before
it, there will be (or there already has been), in Lebanon, a sudden
increase of terrorist activity that will force the Lebanese government
into aligning its interests with the United States, thereby receiving
weapon shipments, which benefits the US government and arms manufacturers,
and perhaps later on, joint military training. Once this occurs Lebanon
will find its hands tied to other American encroachments, primarily
economic ones.
So now is not the time to
be proud of our nation or to support our troops. It is time to reflect
and feel shame. Our government sent our soldiers, weak and untrained,
to their death and then stood by and allowed them to commit war crimes.
It sent our army into combat with no clear goals or objectives, repeating
Israel's mistakes from last summer.
Sadly, accountability does
not exist in Lebanon, and thus, there will be no equivalent to the Winograd
commission, no call for the prime minister to resign, and no trial of
the government or those responsible for starting the current conflagration.
The best way to support the army and honor the dead Lebanese soldiers
is to call for an internal investigation. Anything short of that is
clear proof of our society's moral bankruptcy.
Sami Hermez
is a doctoral student of anthropology at Princeton University researching
violence and armed resistance in Lebanon and has been active in relief
and redevelopment projects in the south of Lebanon. Sami can be reached
at
shermez at princeton.edu.
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