Fred Halliday, at Open Democracy, recalls his two-day visit with Hezbollah in 2004. In engrossing detail, he describes his “relations with [Lebanon] and its left intelligentsia,” then recounts his interview with a senior Hezbollah official, Sheik Naim Qassem:
On the matter of political relations with Iran, the sheikh was absolutely clear. Hizbollah regards the Iranian spiritual leader, in this case Khamenei, as its ultimate authority. […] [Qassem] did not, however, wish to imitate the Iranian Islamic model in Lebanon too closely. Hizbollah itself accepted that Lebanon was a multi-confessional society and that what was appropriate for Iran was not suitable for Lebanon.
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This was all the more rational in that for a Shi’a group like Hizbollah, the most immediate enemies within its own society were not Christians, but radical Sunnis of the kind inspired by Saudi Arabia, for whom Shi’a are apostates and polytheists who (as in Iraq, Pakistan and formerly in Afghanistan) can be attacked and killed without compunction. Hence Hizbollah’s hostility to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, including their adoption of the theory of the “clash of civilisations”.
This tone of tolerance and flexibility did not, however, extend to the discussion of Israel or of Jews in general. …[T]here was no margin of doubt in the sheikh’s view that Israel was an illegitimate state and that it should be abolished. This position was bolstered, as evident in his book, by the deployment of quotes from the Qu’ran denouncing Jews and calling for a struggle against them.
I put it to the sheikh that this use of the Islamic tradition, in a context of modern political conflict, was racist, a point he evidently did not accept. An alternative, open and respectful, attitude to Jews can also be derived from other parts of the Islamic tradition, but this, like the racist reading, depends on contemporary political choice.
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I long ago decided, in dealing with revolutionaries and with their enemies, in the middle east and elsewhere, to question their motives and sense of reality, but to take seriously what they stated to be their true intentions.
Also at Open Democracy is Paul Rogers on “the failure of Israel’s long-standing security paradigm.” A challenge to the liberal hawk stance, which I find more exasperating every day.
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