As anyone who has spent time in or seriously studied the Middle East and the Arab world knows, the default option for many a political leader or struggling dictator in that region when the going gets tough is to kick the Zionist cat.
Rising opposition from within? The Zionists must be behind it. Economy going off the rails? The Israelis are of course to blame. Indeed more or less anything can be attributed to the Jews, often in a manner which would not seem out-of-place in a Monty Python sketch, because the conspiracy theories about them have been cultivated for so long that they have become part of the region’s folklore and mindset.
So when self-declared anti-Zionist, one-stater, promoter of apartheid analogies and would-be dismantler of the Palestinian Authority Ahmed Moor appears on the pages of CiF America promoting Jewish/Zionist conspiracy theories, we can be sure that here is one American who has well and truly imbibed the culture surrounding him in his chosen new home in Beirut.
According to Moor, both the Israeli government and pro-Israel American Jewish organisations are leaning heavily on the US administration to confront Iran, if not directly then by way of its proxy in Lebanon, Hizbollah.
“Josh Block – a former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) – recently argued that President Obama ought to confront Hezbollah in Lebanon in order to confront Iran.”
“Only last week, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew across the Atlantic to ask Vice President Joseph Biden to launch a war against Iran on Israel’s behalf.”
“The pro-Israel lobby is aware that America is too over-committed to attack Iran. But America is evidently capable of taking on Hezbollah, an Iranian ally”
In actual fact Josh Block seemed to be arguing in favor of strengthening and supporting the Lebanese people who do not want their country taken over by proxies of a theocratic dictatorship – the link in Moor’s article is broken – see here. The Lebanese are of course not the only ones in the region concerned about Iran’s growing influence on the area and the possibility of its gaining an upper hand in the Middle East power struggle; there are several Arab countries who have no less interest than either Lebanon or Israel in containing the neighborhood bully before it is too late to prevent yet more violence. Moor completely ignores the bigger regional picture, however, in favor of a trite kick to the local cat; Israel.
Like many of the Lebanese people at present, Moor appears to be running scared, and for good reason. It is truly sad to see a country which has known so much strife in its short history poised once more on the brink of what seems to be an impossible choice between an inevitable civil war and a Hizbollah coup d’etat. Saad Hariri’s backtracking on the subject of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigation of the murder of his father and Nasrallah’s pathetic attempts to implicate Israel in the assassination are both symptoms of the volatility of the situation there. Ahmed Moor’s whitewashing of Hizbollah as just another political party in the mosaic of Lebanese politics is also symptomatic of the all-pervading level of fear which the Iranian proxies have managed to instill into the local population.
“Lebanese suspect that the STL is foreign-sponsored attempt to undermine Hezbollah’s democratic – it’s a political party with elected parliamentary members – support among Lebanese citizens.”
“Hezbollah is a legitimate political party that reflects the aspirations of many Lebanese people. European leaders understand that and frequently meet with the party’s representatives to discuss political differences.”
“The pro-Israel lobby is aware that America is too over-committed to attack Iran. But America is evidently capable of taking on Hezbollah, an Iranian ally”
Maybe one should not judge too harshly those Lebanese who, like Ahmed Moor, rearrange the facts in their heads in order to try to desperately cling on to hopes for calm and normality. Sometimes, the ostrich approach can have comforting short-term advantages. Ahmed Moor is obviously keen to persuade America to quash any indictments by the STL, claiming that to do so will conserve stability in Lebanon, but the fact is that what he is really telling us is that if the results of the Tribunal’s findings are not to Iran’s liking – which there is every reason to suspect will be the case-violence will ensue as already promised by Hizbollah. The trouble is that on no occasion has Hizbollah committed itself to any non-violent vision of Lebanon’s future, even if the STL’s findings are not published.
One can, and should, however take the Guardian to task for presenting such obvious self-preservationist pragmatism as legitimate analysis of international affairs. By promoting this version of events rife with baseless conspiracy theories, choosing to blur the real picture of what is happening in Lebanon and the wider region, and by soft-selling Hizbollah as some sort of legitimate political entity instead of the terror group it really is, the Guardian is deliberately misinforming and misleading its readers. Maybe, apparently like the BBC, it is afraid to inflame tempers or arouse controversy. Or maybe the Guardian’s editors actually have no objections to the idea of an Iranian take-over of the Middle East and the expansion of a human-rights abusing theocratic dictatorship.
And of course, just like Ahmed Moor or many a Middle East despot, the Guardian has never had any qualms about kicking the Zionist cat when that served its purpose.
