Taboos and Objective Judgements

I just finished watching on the web a Fox news program (Fox news by the way is much worse than any Israeli newspaper I know about- I mean it by all measures) debating the ME (by debate I mean a discussion between two people or more that covers the different views out there- such debates are rare these days in the US news- everybody seem to agree.)

One of the questions that took the entire time of the show came unexpectedly and sounded so rhetorical: Is Hezbollah a terrorist organization? The answer of one guest after a lot of confusion was "no"! The host couldn't believe what he heard so he asked Levy (the other guy) why he thought it IS a terrorist organization. Not expecting the debate to be so primitive, Levy said (something like) "of course! I mean of course, they are supported by Iran and their mullahs!!!"

Aha... now we know. If you are supported by Iran, you are a terrorist organization. But actually, if you ask why Iran is on the famous axis of evil, the answer would be because they support terrorist organizations such as Hezballah (and Hamas)

hmmm... a chicken and an egg!

(the use of "such as" usually implies that there are many but for the sake of time and space we will mention one or two. In this case it has purely a propaganda effect, as these are the only two that Iran publicly supports).

So can we get to the facts?

There are many things wrong with Iran.. their regime, their ideology, some of the speeches of their new president (elected by the way more democratically than so many arabs pro US leaders). These seem to me internal problems that hopefully will be improved. What I care about, and why I assume Iran was branded part of the axis of evil, is their foreign policy. So my question is how Iran is affecting so badly our world ? what is it that Iran is doing/did that it became taboo to even ask the question or dig into it? at the risk of becoming revisionists or maybe even antisemite.

The revolution happened in 1979. Americans were taken hostages at the US embassy. The regime of Khomeini took over, like in any revolution some "cleaning" happened. 1983-4 Hezballah sees the light as a result of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Iran gives it money, weapon and support especially in later years. (I am sure one can find other events that no country will like to have on its CV, please send them to me through the comments so I can update this). But more importantly, there is the nuclear weapon issue!

Now let's spend a couple of lines on it. If we check what specialists say about Iran's nuclear weapons they all agree that the Iranians are still far away (matters of years) from the weapon. Some very trusted sources believe that Iran doesn't even want to hold weapons, but aims at getting to the level where they can quickly build the weapons if they need to i.e. in a time of war. (the reason is, if they hold weapons and some nuclear terrorist attack occurs, the US can have an excuse to bomb Iran like they did in Afghanistan). By the way there is also one solution to this matter(suggested even by Syria), which is to make the entire ME area nuclear-free. Who would veto that you think?

Finally, there are these speeches containing hatred statements that the new president make publicly from time to time. It is disturbing, I agree, but they were never put in action in any way. Harmless! Iran never went and destroyed another country (like it is happening with my country or with Irak), I don't feel terrorized by Iran (not by living in the US, or if I lived in Europe or even in all Palestine).

I wish indeed things would have been different in Iran, but this is not enough to explain the propaganda of axis of evil.. Why would I care? you might ask, why do you want to defend the mullahs? Because this same propaganda is used to brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and makes the current war part of the so-called "war on terror". Hence, the US (and its faithful Britain) have excuses to delay the cease fire and give the time for Israel to accomplish the mission and destroy Lebanon. This is not the result of my imagination. These are speeches that we hear over and over again. Now Israel is killing Lebanese! But the machinery started long time ago with propaganda campaigns. We all prefer for Iran to be more democratic (especially the Iranians themselves, but we have to question all these scary terminologies (terrorists-axis of evil nuclear weapons) because these are not innocent names. These are campaigns to prepare the public for a future attack (as it happened with Irak and is happening today with Lebanon and maybe soon in Syria and Iran).

Now what about Syria? Replace the nuclear weapon issue with Syria's role in Lebanon and its border with Irak, and replace the mullahs by the Baath unique party. But Syria again did not destroy any country, is not a threat for the world (not that I am aware of). So the campaign included them when they stopped following orders. Obviously, there is also the Rafiq Hariri issue, yet nobody proved anything. Anyway, they belonged to the axis of evil long time before his assasination...

Finally, is really Hezballah a terrorist organization? We can argue for the "yes" if we go back to 1983. There were some kidnapping in Lebanon, attacks against the US embassy (the marines and french military count as military positions). But it is not easy to prove who did all these. Many countries (including most of European countries) don't consider them as terrorists. The first reason is that (especially since 1993 with Nasrallah) Hezballah used to always target military positions essentially inside Lebanon’s borders. In 1993 and 1996 when Israel tried to break them and started attacking civilians in Lebanon they retaliated and “roquetted” Northern Israel, similar to what is happening today. The other reason is the strong popular support for the party, their presence in the parliament (and lately even in the government).

The goal here is not explain or defend wrong-doings but to put things in perspective to discuss some taboos that most of us take for granted. Indeed, if we just focus on facts, and forget about their nice beaches their strong economy their smart engineers, their occidental look, how difficult it is to prove that Israel is a terrorist state, that is a real threat to the region. It owns nuclear weapons, it destroyed entirely two countries (more than once), killed civilians (Lebanon 14000 in 1982 - Cana in 1996 - 2006 … Palestine on daily basis), kidnapped people destroyed lands and trees built the wall of hatred. Self-defense or pure terrorism? Neither, nor. But certainly "morality is not on their side". Relatively speaking morality seems to lean towards Iran, Syria and Lebanon!

So when Israel will sound at least as bad as Iran or Syria sound to you, you might then be ready for an objective judgment!