The Resistance Option

It has been 22 days since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon, yet I couldn’t get myself to write about it until now.

Through the last 3 weeks I have been following the war minute by minute on Arabic news networks as well as western ones, and this time I just couldn’t talk anymore, as I saw devastation and death creeping through our beloved Lebanon, I felt that anything I say will be kind of (nidal magani) or a free struggle as some Egyptian activist had called it. What will anything I say do to the families of the victims? What will it say to the mother who lost her one day old daughter in an Israeli raid? she didn’t even have time to name her! How will my words deliver the much needed humanitarian aid to the devastated Lebanese villages?

On the day of the second Qana massacre, I was watching news as usual and I just couldn’t stop my tears as I saw a man carrying the body of a 10 or 12 year old girl from the wreck. I felt a chill when I saw the body of this little girl frozen on a certain position and I just couldn’t stop thinking of what was she doing in her last moments before she was hit by the Israeli rock that destroyed her home. How did she cope with the sounds of the fight around her? Was she alone when the raid started? Did she understand what was going on around her? What was she doing before the raid, perhaps holding her little doll and hiding afraid in a corner of the house?

Before that day I thought I have lost the ability to shed tears for an Arabic cause. I mean the news of death in Palestine and Iraq unfortunately turned into a “normal” fact of life. So may died in Iraq everyday that I wondered if there is any Iraqi left in the country yet.

When I saw this little girl, I felt furious because I am helpless, I mean what can I do, other than talk and donate money, as a young working mother of an 8 months old twin, to this girl and her pears?

As I tried to overcome the sad feelings that kept creeping on my soul I started to see some hope in the future.
The Hezbuallah’s withstanding against Israel is remarkable, and it exposes to the Arab people the lies of their regimes that are quick to remind us of the “great “ Israeli army that no one can beat, whenever someone talks about resisting Israel.

Hizbuallah’s stand gave the Arabs a card to play with in any negotiations with the Israeli side. It proved that Israel can be beaten and that the Israeli army may be more advanced than the Arab armies but it can’t stand a guerrilla war.
And that’s the reason behind the shameful statements of some so called “moderate” Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt that provided the Israeli aggression on Lebanon with legitimacy. Lebanon is being punished, as some Lebanese official phrased it, because it chose the “resistance” option. The option that the Arab regimes tried so hard to eliminate from our minds.
And now, many of the Arab youth that were born in the “peace” era and that thought of fighting Israel as an irrational and (antari) option are now realizing that “force” is the only language understood by Israel.

Isreal must understand that as long as it continues its aggression on Lebanon, it will be the only loser, there will be more and more Israeli deaths, a much stronger Hizbuallah and more and more convinced of the resistance option.

And if they think that continuing their atrocities in Lebanon will divide the Lebanese people and make them shift away from supporting Hizbuallah, it better think again. In his book “dying to win: the strategic logic of suicide terrorism”, author Robert Pape found that from the 38 Hizbuallah “Fida'een, as I call them”, that he identified their names and birth places and other personal data, only 8 were “Islamic fundamentalists”, 27 were from leftist political groups and 3 were Christians, including a female high school teacher with a college degree. And all were born in Lebanon.

A conversation I had with one of my Lebanese colleagues only confirms these findings. My friend only came from Lebanon some week ago and as we drove to work together I was cautious not to express my support for Hizbuallah, after all I am sitting in the comfort of my home with my family, while she had to escape the Israeli raids and risk her life by traveling in a car to Damascus to reach her work. But to my surprise she started by saying... If Isreal think that she will make us turn against Hizbuallah by what she is doing, then she is wrong. She continues… and what did Hizbuallah do to provoke this Israeli response? It captured 2 Israeli soldiers, what about our prisoners, that amount to thousands, in the Israeli jails? They have the right to destroy a whole country to get back their two prisoners and we don’t have the right to try and free ours?
She also said that after all, Hizbuallah is moral in its response to the Israeli aggression and that she admires that…… by the way, my friend isn’t a shi’a as some must have speculated, she is a young Christian Lebanese.