Hezbollixed
Via Yglesias, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ official list of “Hizbullah attacks along Israel’s northern border May 2000 – June 2006.” Two things the list confirms:
1. Prior to this month, there haven’t been that many incidents: one in May 2006, five in 2005, 3 and 4 in 2004 and 2003 respectively.
2. Almost without exception, the attacks have been against military targets, usually IDF patrols or bases. One egregious exception is what the IDF calls an attempt to kidnap two Israeli Arab citizens to pump them for information. A Katyusha attack on Kiryat Shemonah in December 2005 also appears to have had purely civilian targets. Almost all the other attacks targeted the Israeli military.
Definitions of “terrorism” are famously elastic, but it’s hard to use the term to characterize border incidents between paramilitary and military units of states formally at war. The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid this month also targeted military personnel, though it was certainly an act of war and Daniel Davies makes an excellent case that it counts as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
A mere day before the Hezbollah raid on July 12, Middle East Newsline reported on Israel’s strategy regarding the already raging Gaza fighting:
Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip was designed to limit Palestinian hostility in an arrangement similar to that with Hizbullah in Lebanon, a report said.
The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies said Operation Summer Rain, the week-long incursion in the Gaza Strip, was meant to free an abducted Israeli soldier and end Hamas missile strikes on the Jewish state. The report said Israel hoped to deter the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority and militias in the Gaza Strip.
“Israel hopes to do that by changing the rules of the game and excluding from that game rocket fire on civilian settlements,” the report, authored by senior fellow Shlomo Brom, said. “In effect, Israel wants to replicate the model that prevails on the Israeli-Lebanese border, where the ongoing confrontation with Hizbullah proceeds according to clear rules that preclude attacks on civilians and confine operations to specified sectors.”
The sequence of events since July 12 was
1. Hezbollah kills six Israeli soldiers in the course of kidnapping two.
2. Hezbollah calls for negotiations on a prisoner exchange.
3. Israel bombs military and civilian targets throughout Lebanon.
4. Hezbollah launches massive, sustained rocket attacks on military and civilian targets in Israel.
For whatever reason, Israel decided to change the rules of the South Lebanon game, responding massively against all of Lebanon for an attack on a military target where in the past it would respond narrowly at Hezbollah specifically. Israel’s reasons have been speculated on widely by people more competent than me to ponder the issue; I won’t add to the volume here. I just want to point out a possible consequence of the Israeli response and America’s unstinting support for it that I haven’t seen highlighted elsewhere.
Israel has a legitimate interest in its own self-defense and a government of its own that’s perfectly capable of managing or mismanaging it as well as any democracy. The United States has an interest in Israel’s security for a number of good reasons, but interests that go well beyond Israel’s security too – it requires good relations with a number of nations hostile to Israel; and, it ought to go without saying, has a higher interest in US security. Specifically, it has interests in the smooth flow of oil and in preventing terrorist attacks on US interests abroad and at home.
Because of Israel’s actions and our support for it, we face two problems. First, just as American hawks keep pointing out that those Hezbollah rockets falling on Israel are “Made in Iran” or “Supplied by Syria,” everyone in the Arab Middle East and the wider Muslim world are keenly aware that the bombs falling on Lebanon are American bombs, rushed to Israel for the purpose of killing Lebanese. They know further that Israel isn’t even paying for these weapons, the American taxpayer is. So the practical, financial support for Israel’s massive rather than targeted retaliation is increased hatred of the US in the Muslim world. As Leonard Dickens put it a few weeks ago, when the average Muslim is hostile to the US, the Muslim two standard deviations away will try to attack it.
We compound the practical problem with rhetoric. Arab onlookers will naturally look for excuses to see justice on the side of the Arabs in the fight; that’s how human social psychology works. But US and Israeli rhetoric around the crisis adds a further twist: by calling attacks on military targets “terrorism,” and massively retaliating in the name of fighting terrorism, the US and Israel implicitly redefine the term as Muslim violence we don’t like. The natural reaction on the other side is something like In for a penny, in for a pound, then.
If attacks on military targets bring the same kind of reaction as attacks on civilian targets, might as well attack civilian targets. It’s a lot easier to attack civilian targets. In the immediate case, an Israeli-Hezbollah arrangement that produced a handful of attacks on civilians in five years has given way to a period which produces a couple of Hezbollah attacks on civilians every hour – and of course, a lot of Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians. In the longer term case, more Muslims will decide to attack Israeli and American civilians. There’s no reward for channeling hostility away from the vulnerable.
One thing you haven’t read on this site is outrage over Israel’s current campaign against Hamas in Gaza. From a practical political perspective, it too presents problems for America’s image in the Middle East. From an ethical standpoint, it may also present problems of disproportionate response. But the fact is that Hamas initiated rocket attacks on civilian targets in Israel before its own soldier-kidnapping escapade. It was, in other words, engaged in “terrorism” under a fairly rigorous definition. And Hamas has a legacy: it spent two solid years in the recent past attempting to kill civilians at a furious rate in gruesome fashion.
But no one is going to buy the idea of a “continuum of civilianality” for thee and not for me. What people who are not already in the tank for the US-Israeli official view of right and wrong in the Middle East are seeing in Lebanon is Israel responding to a military border incident by attacking all kinds of civilian targets, human and physical, with the US government’s eager encouragement. The same justifications being trotted out for this will serve our enemies to excuse, though not justify, attacks on the taxpayers footing the bill for those bombs.
Comment by Frank —
July 30, 2006 @ 12:05 am
Yep.
Comment by vaskeli —
July 30, 2006 @ 3:28 am
The attempted kidnapping in 2005 is important to remember when neocons try to frame this one inside an elaborate Iranain-Syrian conspiracy. Like:
Comment by abb1 —
July 30, 2006 @ 4:34 am
Why would you base anything on ”Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ official list of Hizbullah attacks”?
I understand – you use it to demonstrate that there weren’t many, but even these are on the official propaganda list and most likely are lies or misrepresentation.
Vast majority of the skirmishes happened in the area of occupied Sheba farms. In some cases Israelis attacked first (in one case Israeli sniper killed a boy on the Lebanese side) and the Hezzies retaliated. Oftentimes the Hezzies would shoot at Israeli military planes violating Lebanese airspace and anti-aircraft munitions would fall on the Israeli side.
Here we have Dennis Ross saying:
”In the six years since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon to the internationally recognized Blue Line, Hizballah has essentially respected the line and not taken credit for attacks outside the disputed Shebaa Farms area.”
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2493
Comment by Sebastian Holsclaw —
July 30, 2006 @ 10:48 pm
You are reading the list incorrectly. It is:
”Chronological list of events along Israel’s northern border in which Israeli civilians and/or soldiers were killed since the IDF pullout of Lebanon in May 2000.”
It only includes incidents in which an Israeli died. It is not a complete list of cross-border Hezbollah incidents in which an Israeli was injured or maimed.
For something more comprehensive (though only updated through 2003) try here
You might especially notice the kidnapping which took place in Europe.
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 30, 2006 @ 11:41 pm
Sebastian, thanks for the list. The Tannenbaum case is certainly interesting, isn’t it?
I tried to find a similar page with more recent updates than 2003 by navigating around the MFA sidebar, but no luck. Do you know of any?
Comment by abb1 —
July 31, 2006 @ 4:04 am
Here’s Haaretz article from 2004, Hezbollah plays by the rules:
Read the whole thing.
Comment by abb1 —
July 31, 2006 @ 12:00 pm
Here’s another one:
Read the whole thing.
Comment by Roach —
July 31, 2006 @ 2:24 pm
Are there not two important terrorist aspects here:
The combatants are ununiformed and do not have a chain of command responsible for their adherence to the law of war.
Second, they are not actors responsible to a state; they are non-state actors. Isn’t all such nonstate violence terroristic in nature, when it does not aim at something like control of a particular regime in a civil war or resistance to occupation conducted according to the law of war (pretty rare, no doubt, but seen in the Polish AK for example).
As for rhetoric, frankly I think the rhetoric of proportionalitiy is mostly a pose. What would a proportionate Israeli response look like; if they sent in tanks on Day 1, which would have probably lessened the casualties from long range artillery and air strikes, one images the ”world” would have recated in the same unhinged way.
We should remain silent and quit giving Israelis weapons for free, selling our M1 Abrams tanks as much to friendly Jordan and possibly a Democratic Lebanon as to Israel. Then we should wash our hands of the whole thing and pursue our own narrow interests. Israeli is beahving more or less reasonably under the circumstances; if it has overreacted and been negligent, and I’ll concede it probably has, it takes much more than ordinary deviaitons from the ideal standard to raise alarms in a time of war. Anything else is a bit too unrealistic and it’s particularly so when one of the combatants cannot be expected to observe proportionality, as its interest is in using human shields, inviting disproportionate respones, etc.
Comment by Roach —
July 31, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
And I suppose the Shebaa farms explains why there are Hezbollah cells in the US or Jewish Community Center bombings in Argentina.
Seriously, Hezbollah sucks. They may not be directly threatening the US, just raising funds perhaps, but they don’t deserve this exquisite oh-so-perfect reasoning that puts them on the same plane as a nation-state that actually must bear responsibility for its actions because it governs the land which is being retaliaited against (or attacked as the case may be).
Comment by abb1 —
July 31, 2006 @ 2:53 pm
Oh, if they don’t yet, they will be directly threatening the US after this one, I have no doubt whatsoever.
Here’s an excerpt from bin Laden’s 2004 videotape; he’s talking about the previous Israeli/American destruction of Lebanon in the 1980s:
So, what’s your point, Roach? I don’t see the point. What’s your response to the fact that Israel violated the border ten times more often than Hezbollah? Do the Hezbollah need to be punished for defending their border in your opinion or what?
Comment by Roach —
July 31, 2006 @ 3:15 pm
Hezbollah has no right to ”defend their border” beacuse they are not part of the apparatus of the Lebanese state. They can no more rightfully do that than I can kill every illegal Mexican I see because they’re violating our borders.
States are supposed to have a monopoly on violencde, remember, particularly as that regards other states. Further no state can let its territory be used so that some non-state actor can attack a neighboring state with impunity; those acts are deemed acts of the state.
There is no purpose to Hezbollah. Israel pulled out of Lebanon in 2000. The Shebaa Farms is a piece of shit little 20KM Square swath of land once occupied and claimed by Syria and then conquered from Syria by Israel in 1967. Does anyone believe this Shebaa farms bullshit? That issue cannot be resolved until Hezbollah is disarmed which it was supposed to be under the terms of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.
Here’s a basic concept settled in the 17th Century Treaty of Westphalia: States alone can exercise violence internationally against other states with the protections of international law. Under the basic laws of war, private armies are indistinguishable from terrorists, pirates, and common criminals, especially when they are ununiformed, unaccountable, and show little regard for the laws of war. The militia likewise must be under state control, a chain of command, bear arms openly etc. to be treated as anything other than murderous crooks.
Let me once again point out the obvious: Israel withdrew from Lebanon but Hezbollah did not disband. What does that tell you about this group’s purposes and motivation?
Comment by Peter H —
July 31, 2006 @ 8:52 pm
Here’s a basic concept settled in the 17th Century Treaty of Westphalia: States alone can exercise violence internationally against other states with the protections of international law. Under the basic laws of war, private armies are indistinguishable from terrorists, pirates, and common criminals, especially when they are ununiformed, unaccountable, and show little regard for the laws of war. The militia likewise must be under state control, a chain of command, bear arms openly etc. to be treated as anything other than murderous crooks.
I agree. But when did Israel become the enforcer of Lebanon’s sovereignity? Lebanon’s sovereignity is Lebanon’s problem, not Israel’s.
Comment by Roach —
July 31, 2006 @ 10:27 pm
To point out the obvious, Israel is not enforcing Lebanon’s sovereignty. Israel is engaging in necessary and justifiable self-help in response to Lebanon’s failure to exercise sovereignty and also its failure to exercise certain treaty obligations following Israel’s withdrawal from Southern Lebanon in 2000. Someone asked, ”Do the Hezbollah need to be punished for defending their border in your opinion or what?” I think they need to be punished for existing, for kidnapping soldiers, running a private army threatening a sovereign state, etc. I think they deserve no sympathy from the international community, though I do think it’s fair to be concerned about Israeli excesses vis a vis the Lebanese nation. Even that criticism, though, should be made with a full understanding that the Hezbollah victims of Israel’s attacks deserve no quarter whatsoever.
Comment by abb1 —
August 1, 2006 @ 3:24 am
Hezbollah is a popular organized militia and it has a perfect right to defend their border since the state is not defending it.
And even if the state was defending it, Hezbollah still would’ve had the right to do it, if that was the arrangement within the state. In any case, this is between Hezbollah and the state.
You have no point. Basically you’re implying that the US national guard, for example, is a bunch of bandits.
And yes, of course: if you lived near Mexican border where Mexican army units were crossing over, kidnapping shepherds and so on – of course you would organize a militia and fight them and you would plan and execute operations similar to Hez’s. And you would consider yourself a hero too.
I don’t know how to explain such a strong animosity in this case, the only explanation that comes to mind is racism.
Comment by Peter H —
August 1, 2006 @ 5:52 am
Roach,
I’m glad that your criticize Israel’s ”excecsses”. I’m sure that the 600+ Lebanese civilians killed are grateful, too.
Comment by Peter H —
August 1, 2006 @ 6:13 am
Actually, Abb1 makes a good case for Hizbollah. Isn’t the Second Amendment all about well-regulated militias?
Comment by Roach —
August 1, 2006 @ 7:15 am
Abb1, ”I don’t know how to explain such a strong animosity in this case, the only explanation that comes to mind is racism.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket. Good reasoning there. Much like the stupid argument that any criticism of Israel is anti semitism. Maybe the fact that Hezbollah bombed the Marine barracks, Khobar towers, burns American flags, aims rockets at civilian areas deliberately has somethhing to do with it.
My animus is against disorganized terrorist groups that threaten world peace, shit for brains. And you can’t just label any terrorist group a ”popular militia.” It’s no more a popular militia than the KKK was in Georgia in the 1870s.
Comment by abb1 —
August 1, 2006 @ 7:57 am
Roach, I’m sorry, I got carried away. What I was trying to say is that it sounds illogical. There could be a variety of reasons why something sounds illogical to me.
Well, there is really no doubt whatsoever that Hezbollah is a very popular Lebanese organization with a militia. I posted a link upthread, here it is again.
I don’t have any problem with them blowing up Marine barracks in 1983, these Marine barracks were in Beirut, not in Omaha. I wouldn’t like to see Hezbollah barracks in Boston either. And certainly there’s nothing wrong with burning an American flag, that doesn’t make you a bad guy.
The other things I don’t know. If they did commit some terrorist acts decades ago – that’s bad, but who’s perfect? Again, read the links I posted – they didn’t shoot any rockets into Israel before this war started, started by Israel.
Comment by racingsnake —
August 1, 2006 @ 9:41 am
Two brief comments, as I appreciate this is a thorny area.
First: the ’terrorist/paramilitary’ status of Hezbollah is one question, but it seems to me that, especially since the elections in Gaza, the treatment of Hamas needs to be characterised differently. It’s not appropriate to treat a democratically elected government the same way as a rogue terrorist organisation, no matter how much you dislike it.
Second: the only reason I would not buy the ’Shebaa farms’ episode is that Israel systematically removed the topsoil from the ’buffer zone’ and diverted all the watercourses southwards into its own territory. At least, according to The Economist, whose objectivity I have no reason to doubt.
Comment by racingsnake —
August 1, 2006 @ 9:48 am
Two brief comments, as I appreciate this is a thorny area.
First: the ’terrorist/paramilitary’ status of Hezbollah is one question, but it seems to me that, especially since the elections in Gaza, the treatment of Hamas needs to be characterised differently. It’s not appropriate to treat a democratically elected government the same way as a rogue terrorist organisation, no matter how much you dislike it.
Second: the only reason I would not buy the ’Shebaa farms’ episode is that Israel systematically removed the topsoil from the ’buffer zone’ and diverted all the watercourses southwards into its own territory. At least, according to The Economist, whose objectivity I have no reason to doubt.
Comment by abb1 —
August 1, 2006 @ 10:07 am
Second: the only reason I would not buy the ’Shebaa farms’ episode is that Israel systematically removed the topsoil from the ’buffer zone’ and diverted all the watercourses southwards into its own territory.
And that’s the reason you wouldn’t buy – what?
Comment by Roach —
August 1, 2006 @ 10:56 am
The Marines were in Beirut as part of an international peace-keeping force keeping the warring parties in Lebanon apart after, at the point, a seven year civil war. I don’t see why they deserve to be killed on the basis of the supposed principle of justice that says Hezbollah should be able to pursue the august goal of oppressing non-Muslims in Lebanon. Because that, my friend, is basically what they’re fighting for and have done in the South.
Yes oppressive foreign invaders may be resisted with force. But there is no moral authority in would-be dictators or Islamic theocrats to do so, and there is likewise no authority to do so, moral or otherwise, when the ”invaders” are there to prevent a bunch of messianic militias from destroying a country, oppressing the locals, and pursuing the most unjust and parochial goals imaginable.
Finally, if an organization is no longer terrorist ”such as perhaps Hamas” then it must be treated like a nation-state, and if shoots rockets or kidnaps soldiers it has initiated a war and all that entails. A non-state terrorist or military group, though, deserves no quarter. This is pretty basic, from the time of Grotius at least.
You all need to get past the romantic propaganda about Hezbollah and look into what it has done and what it seeks to accomplish. It has no right to kidnap soldiers; that is a military act by a non-state actor. It demands serious retribution and any nation with any self-respect would react as Israel has.
Comment by abb1 —
August 1, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
The Marines didn’t deserve to be killed, but the US fought in that war against Lebanese Shia and others, US warships shelled their villages, killed their people and they responded in kind, it’s just that simple. There is no reason to complain, nobody forced the US administration to do it.
Islamic theocrats have exactly as much right to resist and defend themselves as everybody else – Christian theocrats, Judaic theocrats, atheists, nationalists, marxists or any possible combination of them all.
Why should Islamic theocrats be so special as not to have any rights to resist? I don’t understand this at all.
Comment by Roach —
August 1, 2006 @ 2:45 pm
You don’t have a right to punch your neighbor in the nose, and then claim a right of self-defense when he comes after you with an F-16. Your right of self-defense hinges upon you not initiating violence or, in this case, a casus belli.
Finally, I think your moral sense is completely demented if, as an American, you do not feel some pain and anger at the death of American Marines on a noble, if ill advised, foreign shore. No normal, patriotic person is completely indifferent to this saying, as you said above, ”I don’t have any problem with them blowing up Marine barracks in 1983, these Marine barracks were in Beirut, not in Omaha. I wouldn’t like to see Hezbollah barracks in Boston either.”
Will someone now say I’m out of line for questioning the patriotism of someone who says something like *that*!?!!!
Comment by abb1 —
August 1, 2006 @ 5:07 pm
You can question patriotism all you want, but it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
All you’re doing now is providing more evidence that you’re not arguing in good faith but as an apologist for something you like (for whatever personal reason) and against something you don’t like. That’s not a good way to discuss anything. That’s only good for a party meeting or something. That’s why justice is blind, you know.
Comment by Roach —
August 1, 2006 @ 5:40 pm
I don’t believe in deracinated objectivity in discussing matters like justice and foreign policy. I do not believe, strictly speaking, it is possible to have a fully birds-eye view in moral matters. One’s orientation and relationships matter; in this csae, your status as an American, an Arab, or an Israeli matters quite a bit. This is not a matter of good faith or bad faith, but of whether you have decent moral bearing that entitle you to be taken seriously. Utter indifference to the murder of 200+ American Marines puts you into freaky land, in my book.
I don’t like my country because X, Y, or Z. It’s mine. I love it like I love my family. When my countryment are killed by fanatical Jihadis bent on imposing an Islamic theocracy, I’m all the more offended, just as I’m pained if my country were to act unjustly. It acted unwisely in going into Lebanon, but there was no justice in the claims of our opponents there.
So, nice try, but go read some Burke or Oakeshott or the journal Telos or any of the post-moderns for that matter before you spout this Kantian objectivity crap that folds under the most common-sense questioning or real world tests.
Comment by abb1 —
August 1, 2006 @ 6:10 pm
I don’t see why it should be impossible to be objective.
In fact, it absolutely necessary to be objective, otherwise it’s simply your jihad against someone else’s jihad. It’s irrational.
Also, while conducting your absurd jihad your’re hiding among innocent civilians like myself and my family and endangering our lives.
I don’t like that and it makes you my worst enemy, along with those who send the marines you love so much into far-away places to kill and to die and to induce hatred against me. This is as far as my patriotism goes and I feel just fine.