Public Comment

I either tuned in late, or started paying attention late, to a man with an American accent being interviewed by the BBC. My attention was grabbed by the mean spirited, chuckling and gloating over the deaths of Hezbollah leaders and troops. Even the BBC reporter seemed a bit taken aback. He asked about the future hearts and minds battle given resentment of the Lebanese heading back to their damaged homes in the south, yet still flying the Hezbollah flag. That got a snide guffawing answer comparing them to a knight who would not give up in a Monty Python movie. His message was that they were beaten and any other interpretation was laughable and irrelevant.  

But this man was not just another nasty ultra-right Israeli calling for even more bloodshed and punishment of the Arabs. The man being interviewed was the US envoy to negotiate the Hezbollah – Israel ceasefire named Amos Hochstein.  

Even in today’s climate I was surprised to hear an American so openly biased, crass and undiplomatic. If this ceasefire deal lasts for 60 days, it will be no thanks to his kind of thinking.  

The BBC reporter’s question was very relevant and to the point and deserved a real answer. Will there be any goodwill in Lebanon for peace with Israel?  

Any thinking person will realize that there will not be any reconciliation. If anything, people who might really hate Hezbollah and would rather a closer relationship with the west and some kind of accommodation with Israel will have trouble making friends in a nation full of bomb craters. The US press may be giving us a massaged description of what has just happened, but inside Lebanon the public has witnessed the indiscriminate bombings of civilians and civilian infrastructure. When you are pulling the pieces of your neighbors out of the rubble that was blown up because someone in Israel thinks that a public bank is a fair military target you don’t want to hear some far-fetched excuse from the bombers.  

As an Egyptian politician put it, the civilian suffering is building up the support for the future versions of Hamas. The same can be said for Lebanon, Syria and anywhere else being bombed these days.  

Someone in Hochstein’s job should be working on that, thinking about that, not perpetuating the cruelty that will fuel the next decade’s mid-east war.  

Lebanon is hardly the only place where things have gotten so violent that the scars and resentments will outlive us all. The successful Azerbaijani total ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh will not lead to long term peace with Armenia any more that the total subjugation of the Tamil people will in Siri Lanka.  

If Israel is so militarily victorious then why is a cease fire needed and why is there still fighting in Gaza?  

Israel is nowhere near a Siri Lanka style total victory over the Palestinians and their other Arab enemies. Ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel itself may become the final solution precisely because military repression and slow marginalization is not producing the results settler colonialism needs.  

There is no reason to believe that the Trump administration will do anything to nurture peace. Our new Ambassador to Israel is a nut who thinks that there are no real Palestinians and that the Palestinians who are there are the real occupiers of Jewish land, as determined by God. 

Maybe Amos Hochstein will be kept on.