Hizbullah, the Party of God, puts the fear of God in the followers of Satan

Developing Just Leadership

Zafar Bangash

Jumada' al-Akhirah 14, 1418 1997-10-16

Special Reports

by Zafar Bangash (Special Reports, Crescent International Vol. 26, No. 16, Jumada' al-Akhirah, 1418)

Lebanon has become a graveyard for the Zionists. Thanks to the Hizbullah’s courageous resistance, the Zionist occupiers and their South Lebanese Army (SLA) surrogates have been dealt repeated blows sending them into panicked frenzy. That the two sides - the Zionists and Hizbullah - should be so unevenly matched in weapons and equipment makes the latter’s achievement all the more impressive.

Escalating military losses have led to demands in Israel for a unilateral withdrawal from South Lebanon. The so-called security zone, which the Zionist occupiers have maintained since 1985, has become a zone of insecurity for them.

It is a telling reflection of the changing circumstances that both South Lebanon and Occupied Palestine (commonly referred to as Israel) are the least safe places in the world for Zionist Jews today. The Hizbullah’s just cause and their eagerness to court martyrdom have enabled them, as indeed the Islamic strugglers in Palestine, to put the fear of God into the arrogant Zionists.

While the Israelis routinely kill innocent people by aerial bombings or artillery fire - for example the massacre of 109 civilians in the UN compound in Qana on April 18, 1996 - they are unable to bear even military losses. When 12 elite Israeli navy commandos were killed in a single operation in Lebanon on September 5, it sent the entire Israeli society into a frenzy of grief.

Once the grief-stricken Zionists and their western friends had recovered somewhat, voices began to be raised about the futility of Israel’s Lebanese entanglement. Even Ariel Sharon, architect of the June 1982 invasion, who earned the title of the ‘Butcher of Beirut,’ said that the so-called security zone no longer served Israel’s interests and it should pull its troops out.

1997 Casualties

Israel

SLA

Hizbullah

Death toll (Military)

39

13

48

Death toll (Civilians)

0

0

30 (Lebanese)

Injured Civilians

5

0

132 (Lebanese)

Between January 1 and October 8 of this year, 39 Israeli soldiers and 13 SLA members were killed by the Hizbullah. The Zionists also lost 73 soldiers on February 4 when two of their helicopters collided as they were about to take off on a murderous mission in Lebanon.

During the same period, 48 Hizbullah fighters achieved martyrdom including Hadi, the 18-year-old son of Hizbullah chief Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah, who died in an operation on September 12. Thus, the Hizbullah losses are actually less than those of Israel and its surrogate militia put together.

For a guerrilla force, this is quite remarkable given the fact that Hizbullah casualties result almost entirely from Israeli air strikes against which they are virtually defenceless. In fact, Hizbullah fighters operate with small arms - M-16 rifles and 82mm rockets - while the Israelis have every lethal weapon in the world supplied by the US. American spy satellites also give them detailed information on a regular basis.

Despite this, the Hizbullah have inflicted heavy losses on the Zionists. The real difference lies in morale. The Hizbullah are highly motivated, secure in the knowledge that theirs is a just cause. They are not only not afraid to die but long for martyrdom. The Zionists, on the other hand, do mind dying.

Throughout history, the Zionists have deliberately targeted civilians. Since their military assault on Lebanon in March 1978, they have killed tens of thousands of innocent villagers. Israeli officials have never denied this, boasting that they wanted the civilians to exert pressure, first on the Palestinian fighters and later on the Hizbullah, to quit resisting.

In September 1982, all Palestinian fighters were expelled from Lebanon under a deal brokered by the Americans, but not before 24,000 civilians - Palestinians and Lebanese- had been butchered by the Zionists. Another 10,000 were murdered in cold blood by their Phalangist allies in Sabra and Shatilla (September 12-14, 1982). The massacre at the two camps will go down in history as one of the most gruesome ever perpetrated.

The Hizbullah emerged after the Israeli invasion of 1982. By February 1985, enough casualties had been inflicted on the Zionists to force them to abandon all Lebanese territory except the strip in the South. The Zionists, however, had already rounded up thousands of Muslim youths and thrown them into the Ansar and Khiam concentration camps. The former has since been closed but hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese youths, including dozens of Muslim women, still languish in Khiam.

From a rag-tag band of guerrilla fighters, the Hizbullah have become almost a professional army. They are now able to wage war on several fronts for prolonged periods. They give a good account of themselves. Even the Zionists admit as much.

If February 1985 was the first turning point for the Zionists forcing them to flee much of Lebanon, July 1993 was the second. For the first time, the Zionists did not use ground troops to invade. Instead, aerial and artillery strikes were carried out against civilians. More than 300,000 Lebanese civilians were forced to abandon their homes and flee north. Then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin admitted that Israel’s policy was to use the civilians to force the Lebanese government to disarm the Hizbullah.

This is the classic definition of terrorism - State terrorism, in fact. It did not work. The Lebanese government rejected the Zionist demand as blackmail and said people had the right to defend themselves against alien occupiers. Ultimately a deal was brokered under which both the Hizbullah and the Zionists agreed not to attack civilian targets. The Hizbullah have scrupulously adhered to this despite repeated violations by the Israelis.

In the 15-year period since 1982, Hizbullah rocket fire has killed only 15 Israeli civilians. According to UN figures, between 1993 and 1996 alone, the Israelis killed 321 Lebanese civilians; a murder rate of 107 civilians each year.

The Lebanese civilian dead include four-day old babies, 60-year-old men blasted in apartment buildings and children blown to pieces in ambulances. There is no crime the zionists have not committed yet it is the Hizbullah who are accused of ‘terrorism.’

The April 1996 Israeli bombing of Lebanon, especially Qana on April 18 in which 109 Lebanese civilians were burned to death, surpassed even Israeli standards of brutality. The villagers had taken refuge in the UN compound in the mistaken belief that the zionists will not attack it.

An American official quoted by Newsweek magazine (May 6, 1996) admitted that the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon was perpetrated with the knowledge and blessing of the US. Only a few weeks earlier (March 6), leaders of some 20 western and Arab countries had gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to sympathise with the Zionists after a series of bombings by Hamas had killed 62 Zionists in Occupied Palestine.

The Israeli onslaught on Lebanon was designed to win Shimon Peres votes in the May 29, 1996 general elections. Israeli votes are naturally more precious than Lebanese lives. When the onslaught, code-named ‘Grapes of Wrath’, turned sour, Uncle Sam rushed to save his terrible surrogate.

Through a deal brokered jointly by the US, France, UN, Syria and Lebanon, both Israel and the Hizbullah once again agreed not to attack civilians. This was merely to face Israel’s face; the Hizbullah do not target civilians. In fact, they prefer not to attack even the SLA surrogates, in order to fight the Zionist occupiers.

Israeli attacks against Lebanese civilians, however, continue unabated. By mid-September, 62 raids had been carried out in 1997 in which 30 civilians have been killed and 132 injured. On the Israeli side, not a single civilian has been killed this year. This alone speaks volumes for the behaviour of the two sides.

The writer is Editor of the Canadian-based Crescent International newsmagazine.

Muslimedia: October 16-31, 1997

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