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Mark Silverberg is the author of "The Quartermasters of Terror: Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Jihad" (Wyndham Hall Press, 2005), a listed author with the Ariel Center for Policy Research, a featured writer for the New Media Journal (Chicago), and a regular contributor to Arutz Sheva, Midstream and Outpost Magazines on American foreign policy in the Middle East.
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By Mark Silverberg
July 27, 2008
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There is something to be learned from the frenzied love-fest given in Beirut in mid-July to the most notorious of the Lebanese prisoners released by Israel. Samir Kuntar was sentenced to 542 years in prison for killing four people during a raid in 1979. Kuntar executed a father (Danny Haran) in front of his 4-year-old daughter, then killed the little girl by smashing her head against a rock with a rifle butt.
But to the Lebanese, Kuntar is a returning hero. He walked down a red carpet in Beirut. He was kissed by the Hezbollah leader and cheered like a rock star. In the southern port city of Sidon, posters of Kuntar adorned the streets and walkways as children rode by on their bicycles, no doubt dreaming of the day that they too could become "heroes" by murdering "Zionist" children.
When a banner in Beirut (according to the New York Times) proclaims "God's Achievement Through Our Hands"; when The Beirut Daily Star (in other respects a decent newspaper) headline reads: "Nation Unites for Heroes' Homecomings"; when the Free Patriotic Movement (supported by more than 70% of the Christian population in Lebanon) supports pro-Syrian forces in the May battles that took place in the streets of Beirut; when the second-in-command of the Lebanese Armed Forces (George Adwan) attends the Kuntar ?homecoming" (in his words); when elected officials of the Lebanese government including its President Michel Suliman (who referred to Kuntar as a "freed hero"), prime minister Fouad Siniora, government ministers and many members of Lebanon's pro-democracy March 14th Movement call on the Lebanese people to participate in the public celebration, declare it a national holiday, issue statements that the prisoner swap was an "historical victory . . . against the Israeli enemy and its hostile policies,? and call on all those participating to "raise the Lebanese flag" as a show of unity; when Parliamentary Speaker and Amal Shiite leader Nabih Berri and Progressive Socialist Party and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt declare the release of Kuntar to be "a day to celebrate freedom, martyrs and human rights"; when public departments, unions, businesses, municipalities and educational institutions across the nation close for the day in his honor; when shouts of joy and support fill the streets of Beirut and al-Manar television celebrates the "divine victory" over Israel -- it is clear that these events are not merely being celebrated by Hezbollah supporters alone; they are being celebrated with Hezbollah by the Lebanese people to honor the advocates of genocide and the enemies of Israel.
Barry Rubin of the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel stated: "What horrifies me most are not radicals cheering terrorist Samir Kuntar, but that most relative moderates feel compelled to do so. At the airport to greet him were leaders of Lebanon's anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian Druze and Christian groups as well as the ambassadors from Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Morocco. To avoid being discredited, relative moderates must affirm that anyone who murders Israeli children is a hero." Perhaps so, but while there may have been many Germans in Nazi Germany who despised Adolf Hitler and falsely proclaimed their fealty to him for fear of losing their lives, these deceptions did not prevent the total devastation of their country by the war brought upon them by the Nazis. There is a lesson to be learned here and the Lebanese had best learn it. The apparent support of the Lebanese people for genocidal terrorists as epitomized in the Kuntar celebrations will result in a terrible reckoning should a Third Lebanon War unfold.
During the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, the Siniora government was internationally recognized as a moderate counter-balance to Hezbollah in Lebanon. That international respectability prevented Israel from attacking Lebanese state infrastructures and placed the Israelis in the unenviable position of fighting a well-trained, well-armed non-state actor with a violent messianic ethos that used innocent Lebanese civilians as human shields to protect its leaders and military assets. But events in recent months have altered the Lebanese political equation in favor of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, not to mention adding another political defeat for American foreign policy in the region.
Hezbollah together with its foreign paymasters is now seen as the undisputed power-broker of Lebanon and the Lebanese government is gradually being relegated to puppet-status. Hezbollah holds veto power in the Lebanese parliament. The Lebanese Army is working with Hezbollah in south Lebanon and recently refused to intervene when pro-government forces were confronted by Hezbollah militias. The true military power in Lebanon today rests with Hezbollah. The important decisions relating to matters of war, peace and diplomacy are being made and conducted by Hezbollah. The border region with Israel is now under the increasing control of Hezbollah, and the power to carry out acts of war against Israel such as further kidnappings and the firing of missiles from southern Lebanon into Israeli civilian population centers rests solely with Hezbollah. In effect, by celebrating the return of Kuntar, the Lebanese have made (or at least created the perception of having made) common cause with Hezbollah against Israel and in so doing, they risk sharing Hezbollah?s fate.
The massive support for Kuntar throughout the country has effectively re-defined the status of the Lebanese government (and, by extension, the Lebanese people) as the enemy of Israel. As Giora Eiland, the former chief of Israel's National Security Council noted in Ynet News: "The only way to prevent another war is to make it clear that should war break out, Lebanon may be razed to the ground. Not only will the Lebanese government fear it, so would Hezbollah . . .This will deter the group, if it realizes that aggression on its part would result in destruction that would outrage the population and turn it against Hezbollah."
In effect, Lebanon would no longer be immune from Israeli retaliation as it was, for the most part, during the Second Lebanon War. By making common cause with Hezbollah, the country itself stands to reap the whirlwind. To deter further conflict, Israel should make it clear that should war occur, it is the country as a whole not just Hezbollah which will suffer.
The national celebrations for Kuntar in Lebanon, and that nation's embrace of this murderer and his genocidal compatriots, not only reveal (again) the depths of Hezbollah's moral bankruptcy, but also the readiness of other Lebanese to follow it into the abyss.
Views expressed by the author do not
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