[The Montana Professor 16.1, Fall 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Avi Jorisch
Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2004
106 pp., $24.95 pb
Henry Gonshak
English
Montana Tech-UM
Hgonshak@mtech.edu
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has called Hizballah, the Shiite extremist group based in Southern Lebanon, "the A-team of terrorism"--an organization Armitage believes may threaten the West even more than al-Qaeda.
Hizballah, which means "Party of God," was founded in the 1970s by Iran in order to represent Tehran's interests in Lebanon, as well as to export the Iranian mullahs' radical Islamic ideology. In 1975 conflicts between Christian, Sunni, Shiite, and Druze factions in Lebanon exploded into civil war. In response, Lebanon's president asked President Hafaz al-Asad of Syria to send troops--a move which led to Syria's de facto occupation of the country. As a result, Hizballah gained as a second client state Syria, which was happy to have the terrorist group wage a proxy war with Israel. It was a war Hizballah waged well. Fighting Israeli Defense Forces in Israel's self-declared security zone in Southern Lebanon, Hizballah ultimately forced Israel, in 2001, to pull its troops out of Lebanon. As one of the few Arab armies ever to defeat the fearsome Israelis, Hizballah gained enormous prestige in the Arab world. The group has also struck at Jews residing outside Israel; in 1994, for example, Hizballah operatives bombed a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, murdering 95 people--the largest single slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.
After Israel, Hizballah's principal target has been the U.S. Throughout the 1980s, Hizballah pursued a relentless strategy of kidnappings, bombings, and hijackings against Americans and American interests. After President Reagan sent peacekeeping forces to Lebanon, Hizballah plotted a 1983 suicide truck bombing against U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 soldiers and led Reagan to withdraw U.S. troops from the country.
Hizballah has also entered the political arena. In Lebanon's 1992 parliamentary elections, the first to be held after two decades of war, Hizballah candidates won eight of the 128 seats in the legislature. At present, Hizballah holds thirteen seats. The group has played a role as well in the current political ferment in Lebanon. On February 14th of this year, Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's leading opposition politician was assassinated in a car bombing widely attributed (both within and without the country) to Syria. In response, huge pro-democracy demonstrations calling for an end to Syrian occupation erupted in Beirut. Soon after, Hizballah staged a counter-demonstration supporting Syrian hegemony in Lebanon, which attracted hundreds of thousands of mostly poor Shiites from the south of the country. Under pressure from the United Nations and an unlikely coalition of America and France, Syria has withdrawn its forces from Lebanon. Though it seems to have backed the wrong horse by supporting Syria, Hizballah will surely play an important role in any future Lebanese government.
Hizballah's official television station al-Manar (which means "the beacon"), broadcast via satellite around the globe, is the second most watched TV channel in the Arab world--after the hugely popular al-Jazeera. Al-Manar is the subject of Avi Jorisch's Beacon of Hatred: Inside Hizballah's Al-Manar Television--the first in-depth look at the Hizballah station. In Jorisch's depiction, al-Manar comes across as a slick, well-funded, high-tech channel offering viewers a wide range of programming: news, talk shows, documentaries, historical dramas, music videos, game shows, children's programs. Jorisch sees al-Manar as a catastrophic force in the Middle East. Beacon of Hatred argues that the television station foments Islamic terrorism, undermines the possibility of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, endangers American forces in Iraq, and threatens President Bush's attempt to win over the hearts and minds of ordinary Arabs as part of the president's efforts to democratize the Middle East.
Despite its subject's importance, Beacon of Hatred is an imperfect book. For one, Jorisch, a former fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (which published the book) and ex-terrorism consultant for the Department of Defense, is a dull writer. Unfortunately, Beacon of Hatred reads like what it is--a specialized report issued by a Washington think-tank. Although Jorisch interviewed a large number of leading officials from Hizballah and top personnel from al-Manar, Beacon of Hatred eschews the first-person reportage that has electrified other recent books on current Middle East crises, such as Jon Lee Anderson's The Fall of Baghdad. As well, while Jorisch thoroughly summarizes the views presented on al-Manar, he rarely critiques them. As a rule, Beacon of Hatred tells you what al-Manar says but not why, nor what to make of the station's claims. Finally, Jorisch's brief opening chapter on the history of Hizballah itself is too sketchy to contextualize adequately his discussion of al-Manar.
Still, the book does include one excellent component: an accompanying CD-ROM, which contains 56 clips from al-Manar programming, each keyed to a different section of the book. With another work this might seem a promotional gimmick, but with Beacon of Hatred the CD proves to be an invaluable addition. It's one thing to read about al-Manar; it's another experience entirely actually to see the programming on the screen, just as it appears to the station's millions of loyal viewers.
As mentioned previously, Hizballah aims most of its attacks against two principal targets: Israel and the United States. Al-Manar's position vis-à-vis Israel has a Manichaean simplicity. The "Zionist entity" (al-Manar never calls the Jewish state by its proper name) is a colonialist, occupying force, which oppresses the region's native inhabitants, the Palestinians. (Jorisch never notes the irony of al-Manar's condemnation of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, given Hizballah's staunch support of Syria's occupation of Lebanon.) Because the very existence of Israel is illegal and immoral, peace with the Jews is never desirable. Instead, the only satisfactory outcome to the conflict is the complete destruction of the country and its replacement by a Palestinian state. One al-Manar video records Hizballah's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, ranting, "Israel is...a raping, deviant, occupying, terrorist, cancerous entity, that has no legitimacy or legality at all, and never will" (63). Al-Manar's attacks against Israel appear even in the most unlikely places. Whenever, for example, the station tells viewers the time, this appears beneath the heading, "Jerusalem Occupied Time." (Israel and Lebanon reside in the same time zone.)
Moreover, al-Manar insists that all Arabs have a vested interest in backing the Palestinian struggle, since, as Jorisch writes, the channel "argues that Palestine is the last line of defense in protecting the Arab and Muslim worlds from an ideology and culture that will infect the region with unspeakable evil" (65). While al-Manar reserves its strongest vitriol for Israel itself, the station also casts scorn at Arab countries which, in the channel's estimation, have been insufficiently supportive of the Palestinian cause.
Al-Manar also lionizes Palestinian suicide bombers as martyrs guaranteed entry into paradise. One music video contains the lyrics: "Write in running blood: Death! Death! Death to Israel! And cause with the exploding body death! Death! Death to Israel!" (63). Although the Koran prohibits suicide and the deliberate killing of women and children, the station carefully selects Koranic passages purportedly providing religious justification for terrorist activity. Al-Manar rationalizes the slaughter of civilians by insisting that, since almost all Israelis are required to serve in the military, every citizen of Israel is a legitimate target. The station's English-language editor claims that "even [Jewish] schoolchildren have guns under their desks" (67).
For all their bombast, al-Manar's attacks against Israel are often quite savvy. One way, for example, the station insists Palestinians can ensure Israel's demise is through what al-Manar calls a "human nuclear bomb" (70). Since Palestinian birth-rates are much higher than those of Israeli Jews, al-Manar urges Palestinians to continue breeding until their numbers overwhelm those of their adversaries. And, although hardly generally supportive of the democratic process, the channel urges Israeli Arabs living within Israel to vote for Arab candidates for the Knesset who will work to undermine politically the Jewish character of the state.
Not surprisingly, Al-Manar is a cesspool of anti-Semitism. For the channel, Israel's depredations are only a front for an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world--a megalomaniacal scheme which threatens Christians as well as Muslims. A guest, for instance, on an al-Manar talk show informed viewers that "Judaism is a project against all humanity.... Those who are fighting Israel are not just defending themselves; they are defending the whole world.... There is no such thing as Zionism.... There is only Judaism.... These are the people [who] killed Muslims, Christians and the prophets" (64). (The reference here to the "prophets" may be explained by another al-Manar video in which Nasrallah calls for a "Christian-Muslim alliance to confront those who show aggression toward Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad" (64-65). Moses, too--apparently, even their own prophets are fair game for the perfidious Jews!)
America, for al-Manar, is a "terrorist state" like Israel, primarily because of Washington's Middle East policies--its strategic relationship with the Jewish state, occupation of Iraq, and what is perceived as a U.S. crusade to destroy Islam. But, again like Israel, America, the "Great Satan," is seen as a country that is and always has been a threat not just to one region but to the whole world. Of course, by universalizing its clash with America Hizballah can present itself as noble defenders of all humanity, rather than a parochial organization settling private scores. One al-Manar video, for example, displays an altered image of the Statue of Liberty--her head transformed into a skull, gown drenched in blood, clutching a knife rather than a torch. The voice-over lists American conflicts from the last half-century in Afghanistan, Korea, Lebanon, Vietnam, Somalia, while images flash by of U.S. bombings and massacres. The video concludes: "America owes blood to all of humanity" (53). (It's striking that, in this and other instances, al-Manar's America-bashing is consistent with many of the ideological attacks of the Chomskyite, Euro-American left.)
Among American leaders, the Hizballah station reserves a special hatred for George W. Bush. Another al-Manar video juxtaposes images of Bush and Adolph Hitler making speeches, leaving the impression that the two leaders are communicating the same message, and ending with the slogan on the screen, in English and Arabic, "History repeats itself" (54). Moreover, just as al-Manar celebrates Palestinian suicide bombers, the station also exhorts the insurgents in Iraq to continue their campaign of suicide bombings (which primarily have killed Iraqi civilians).
Al-Manar portrays America and Israel as in cahoots, even blazoning the conspiracy theory (which, however outrageous, is widely believed in the Arab world) that 9/11 was covertly masterminded by a cabal of American and Israeli government agents. At times, the station claims American foreign policy is secretly run by Israel. One Palestinian guest on al-Manar remarked, "We might even see that the headquarters of the Israeli chiefs of staff will be in the White House someday," describing Jewish advisors in the Bush administration such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle as "Jewish-Likudist-Zionists" (55). Elsewhere, however, the channel depicts the U.S./Israel relationship as working inversely, with the Jewish state a lackey of American interests; for instance, in a speech broadcast on al-Manar, Nasrallah portrayed Israelis as "foot soldiers of our true and original enemy, [the American] Satan" (57). Either way, the message is essentially the same; for Hizballah, the U.S. and Israel are two halves of a single immutably evil entity.
Beacon of Hatred concludes with Jorisch recommending policies that could help the U.S. government combat the propaganda disseminated by al-Manar. The author realizes that the only way the station can be permanently shut down is through military means (an option he doesn't appear to favor), but he believes there are also diplomatic and economic steps which might prove efficacious. Among other proposals, Jorisch advises the U.S. to pressure Lebanese banks holding Hizballah funds to freeze these accounts; to pass legislation prohibiting American companies from advertising their products on al-Manar, and to encourage European officials to take similar steps with European companies; to discourage Western media outlets such as CNN, BBC and C-SPAN from buying film footage from al-Manar; to close down al-Manar's Washington bureau; to urge satellite providers to remove al-Manar from their networks; and so on.
No doubt, some readers will object to Jorisch's proposals. Jorisch himself notes that American commitments to free speech have made Washington reluctant in the past to pressure foreign governments to control their own media (although he insists such reluctance must be set aside because "now is a time of war" (59)). There is also a danger that American attempts to muzzle al-Manar could backfire if Hizballah responds to such efforts by proclaiming that the "Great Satan" is trying to suppress "truths" emanating from the Muslim world. Finally, the U.S. allows domestic extremists such as the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the White Supremacist Aryan Brotherhood to have their say through websites and publications, even though these organizations openly advocate the violent overthrow of an American political system allegedly secretly run by a "Zionist Occupied Government." But tolerating internal extremist speech is quite different from tolerating such speech from an external source that threatens this country and its allies. Moreover, although Americans may tend to underestimate the danger to national security posed by the indigenous radical right, clearly the threat presented by Hizballah and other Islamic terrorist groups to US lives and interests is much greater. Still, although Jorisch's recommendations are reasonable and might do some good, our government shouldn't adopt them as a substitute for its current efforts to counter America-bashing Arab media by issuing counter-speech through the Arabic language news stations the Bush administration has been establishing in the Middle East.
In short, although this is a flawed book, its subject matter makes it worth reading. I second the view expressed in the forward by former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross: "For anyone concerned with the threat posed by Hizballah and the best means of advancing the war on terror, Beacon of Hatred is an...important study" (ix).
[The Montana Professor 16.1, Fall 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]