To Everyone Who Thinks Israel's Campaign is Just Fine and Dandy

This is a rant I posted in a comment to Michael Totten's blog. Commenters on this site, and especially on his site have been mercilessly rude and ignorant. I shouldn't even have written it. I don't have the time, but I'm steaming mad. This was written for an American audience. Aside from being Lebanese, I'm an American citizen who believes strongly in the Constitution.

I'm having trouble not using profanity.

I guess we in Lebanon should throw away everything that the United States has taught us. I was taught in school about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was taught to stand up to oppression and not use evil against my opponent.

I was taught to empathize with those in pain.

I was taught to do things, especially when a people had been particularly brutalized.

My friends and I have braved violence. We were beaten with batons and sprayed with water cannons by the pro-Syrian Lebanese government. We watched as our television stations were closed, all the while Hezbollah's remained opened.

Did Israel help us then? Did the United States or France?

We walked over Lebanese Army barbed wire to protest against the government and the Syrian regime.

We watched as our leaders, spokespeople, AND FRIENDS were assassinated on a monthly basis. Our neighborhoods were bombed. Our elected leaders were forced to live outside of the country in fear for their lives.

We kept pushing.

We pushed against Hezbollah to disarm the entire time. Some were bigots who made sectarian slurs. We kept our Hezbollah sympathetic friends and worked to changed their minds peacefully, as we know better than anyone outside of Lebanon the strange twists that sectarianism gives to every issue and how a terrorist organization can be the only hope for people who've suffered tremendously. The State Department and the White House understood this, too, which is why they cut the Lebanese government slack in disarming Hezbollah. They knew it was impossible to do immediately on multiple levels.

We watched as big countries with big arms and big international roles CHICKENED OUT (yeah, that's you America) about confronting Syria. We continued screaming against the terrorist regime, but no one would listen. Walid Jumblatt argued for the overthrow of Syria IN WASHINGTON!!! He gave a speech calling for Hezbollah to disarm and questioning the validity of one of Hezbollah's main issues: Lebanese sovereignty over the Shebaa Farms.

We had a National Dialogue in which we were trying to prevent war by making all parties amenable to change. This was after Hezbollah froze the government and kept the country in political limbo for months.

Is this not enough for you? What the hell more were we supposed to do? Honestly, what more?

It was only in the last few months that we were able to begin discussing the debates. The last assassination occurred on 12 Dec., 2005. After that the political leadership returned to Lebanon. But Hezbollah threw the government into crisis immediately thereafter. So, we've really had since May to seriously confront the issue. But we've got a hell of a lot of other issues to work through, too, that ignorant Westerners couldn't begin understanding.

Israel knew this and knows this. Condoleeza Rice admitted that Lebanon needed time to disarm Hezbollah. She knew that we had to solve this problem and that there was little any other country could do, which includes the US, France, the UN, and ISRAEL! They all knew that Syria and Iran were the targets, which is why they wrote UN Resolutions to these ends.

The entire time this was happening, we were reaching out through the internet to Israelis creating a human bond. Perpetual Refugee actually went to Israel and wrote quite passionately about his personal experiences there.

The whole time, we were being attacked by Hezbollah members and anti-semites. I argued with people on a daily basis. I argued with government officials. I argued with the Army. I argued with Islamists. But I guess that's not good enough. If the United States, France, and the UN Security Council are too afraid to do it, I'm supposed to.

So, Israel is doing it for us, eh? I thought they would impact on the local dynamic, at first. I thought Israel was going to help prove that they would not abide with Hezbollah's weapons and wouldn't let Hezbollah continue spreading the stupid myth that they can protect Lebanon. I thought this even after they bombed the airport. Okay, it's a major symbol. I don't like it getting bombed, but I get it. At first, they hit military targets and the airport.

But the devastation they have wreaked on us is truly horrendous. The US did not do this to the Iraqis. The US didn't do this to al Qaeda in Afghanistan, for crying out loud. Want to challenge me on this? Huh, you pale, pukish punks who've never done a damn thing in your lives for your armies and constitutions and who got everything handed to you; you punks sitting in your Pajamas (yeah, you there sitting in your Beverly Hills mansions writing movie scripts and worrying about the traffic on the way to Canyon Ranch); you who call liberals in the Middle East whiny for standing up for what we believe in at all times, including when it doesn't sound good to the Israelis and those whose lives are so pathetic they live vicariously through newspaper reports about the IDF and get their exercise for the day during when their adrenaline goes through the roof watching Bill O'Reilly scream at a child. Yeah, all you who want to challenge me, know that I've been to Iraq on multiple occassions. Friends have served and died there. The same goes for Afghanistan, where a good European friend is currently coordinating NATOs operations. I know well what the US did and does in those countries, and what Israel is doing here is far more merciless.

I've seen war in many places. I've studied when it is just and when it isn't. I take these things very, very seriously. This is not just.

I shouldn't even be telling you this. I shouldn't deign to your level of stupidity and ignorance. You people think you're well informed if you can name the leader of Hezbollah. You probably couldn't name the second in command if it would save your life. You probably can't even name the commanders serving YOU in Iraq. I know for a fact I know way more commanders, officers, and men on the ground in Afghanistan than any of you. You don't know war. I'm listening to bombs right now, as I write this. And by the way, my neighborhood was bombed earlier and I live on the top of my building. I shouldn't even be writing this because my bags aren't completely packed, my power is going in and out, my internet gives out every so often, and I can't make any phone calls. But I'm sure I'm just whining and that I couldn't possibly know how wonderful it is that Israel is liberating the world from terror.

Why debate someone who doesn't even know the facts? Well, because I believe in democracy. All of you vote, whether you deserve to or not, whether you've fought to or not. Just to vote, we braved assassination. Just to speak freely we braved more assassinations. Just to gather in large crowds we braved beating and water cannons. Just to live in our houses, we braved bombs and Hezbollah patsies rampaging through our streets hitting old men with wooden sticks. You brave any of that?

And you expect me to fight Hezbollah, when I've already done all of this? You expect me to immediately solve a problem I didn't create, even though I was doing a decent job of going about doing so with significantly less power. The US and France shied away, but I kept going. I tried to humanize the Israelis to my countrymen and stop anti-semitism.

Hezbollah learned from the United States. Ask Victor Davis Hansen or Mark Steyn. They'll tell you that the US should have never backed down when proto-Hezbollah destroyed the US Embassy. The US shouldn't have backed down after the Marine Corps barracks were destroyed. I agree with them. You shouldn't have. We wouldn't have all the problems with them today if they hadn't learned from you that their system works. They couldn't do any of this if you weren't bending over backwards to appease the Syrians and cuddle with the Iranians.

And you, of all people telling me to fight terror, expect Israel - tiny Israel - to fight Syria and Iran for you? I guess shouldn't be surprised you expect me to do the same, but to do even more than them with even less. Then, as I'm doing it, you poke fun at me, call me an Islamic fascist (which I'm pretty far from), say that I apologize for terror (even though it is my friends in New York, DC, London, Moscow, Beirut, Erbil, Baghdad, Jounieh, Naccache, and Beirut - some of which you couldn't point to on a map - who have all suffered directly from terror), and make my life miserable as I'm trying to evacuate a country.

You people are disgusting and completely ignorant. Sure, I'll whine. But let's see what you would be doing if you were seeing what I'm seeing from my balcony as I write this, if you were feeling the vibrations, if you were escorting refugees to safehavens. I read your comments to Michael before I took him down to Hezbollah areas, "Don't go! They'll kill you and chop your head off. Democracy isn't worth you going there."

And you tell me to fight for democracy...

From experience, from my studies, and from my instinct as a human being, I can tell you that Israel's campaign in Lebanon has gone above and beyond any realm of acceptability.

On the bright side, it might have accomplished two very difficult things. Disarming Hezbollah, you say? Nope.

1. Truly uniting Lebanese. We were close before. Now, it seems we are even closer. Prime Minister Saniora is now a national hero, and will hopefully now have the support he needs to govern.

2. Racist Lebanese have stopped hating the Syrian people with all their hearts and souls. We still hate their political system, but before this Syrian workers had been murdered for the crime of their nationality. We know they didn't elect their government.
I still don't hate the Israeli people. But there is no way I'll ever be able to trust Israel, and there is no way I'll ever be able to feel comfortable with all of the rightwing, massacre apologists who pompously spout rhetoric at suffering people.