The smoke has barely cleared from Israel’s bombing of Lebanon and the chattering/scribbling classes are already climbing over one another to claim the “master narrative” (in po-mo language), telling us what lessons may be drawn (and quartered) from the recent bloodletting. 
I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard plenty of the official Israeli line — about attempting to create a “new reality” in southern Lebanon; about the international community’s responsibility to implement all provisions of the ceasefire (i.e. take up the fight that Israel could not win); about how the U.N. had ignored Israel’s warnings about the build-up of arms in Lebanon over the past six years. (Israel’s deputy U.N. ambassador Daniel Carmon even questioned on DemocracyNow! whether “all the civilians in southern Lebanon were purely innocent civilian(s).” All of this constituting a rationale for not lifting their naval blockade of Lebanese ports, not allowing even western organizations to clean up the massive oil spill the IDF created, and not entirely removing its forces from Lebanon. I think the amazing thing is that Israel can arrogate to itself the right to block shipping and aid to Lebanon without any serious international consequences. Who died and left Olmert god, anyway?
We are supposed to see the malevolent hand of Tehran and Damascus in Hezbollah’s success, but this is a very weak gambit. Sure they get money and arms from Iran… just as Israel gets much more of both from the United States. But I think Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery is right when he points out that the biggest reason for Israel’s poor performance in the second Lebanon war is the corrosive effect on the IDF of Israel’s 39-year occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. They no longer have the skills to fight a reasonably well-organized and adequately armed adversary because they’ve been using their tanks, missiles, and helicopter gunships mainly against civilians and lightly-armed militants, as well as stone-throwing boys. What tactical sophistication is needed in a place like Gaza, where your bulldozers, tanks, and pilotless drones can lay waste to any housing unit you care to target? There has been almost a sense of outrage at Hezbollah’s capacity to resist the Israeli invasion. They’re not fighting fair! (Translation: they’re fighting back.)
The fact is, the only meaningful military capacity Hezbollah possesses is a defensive one, as well as a largely random retaliatory one. So their real offense in this conflict has been not to crumble like so many Arab armies before them. This is getting up Dubya’s nose in a serious way, because he cannot attack Iran now without having missiles rain aimlessly down on northern Israel. It’s not just the fact that these people can repel an attack — it’s that they now have some semblance of a deterrent; a primitive variant on Mutual Assured Destruction, like the North Koreans, whose massed artillery casts a shadow over Seoul (not to mention Washington’s desire to “take them out”… and I don’t mean to dinner.) So “Project Democracy” is in trouble. Of course, Dubya’s concept of “democracy” is fully congenial to Israel’s taking 30 democratically elected Palestinian parliamentarians prisoner and the PAN evidently stealing a presidential election in Mexico.
Just try to remember: when Viktor Yushchenko rallies the masses against a fraudulent election in Ukraine, it’s a good thing. When AMLO does the same thing south of the border… not so good.
luv u,
jp
