Tuesday, August 22, 2006
SW Exclusives on Lebanon. posted by Richard Seymour
Socialist Worker has some excellent exclusive reports from Lebanon this week: an account of how the village of Aita al-Shaab resisted the Israelis despite the enormous destruction inflicted by air bombardment, and another of how the Lebanese civilians fed one another, clothed their children and averted a massive refugee crisis. In the latter, this stands out:This new movement was also marked by class. The newly reconstructed upmarket district of Beirut closed its doors - and its extensive network of underground shelters - to refugees. Government supplies of food and essential items were hidden away in warehouses or sold at exorbitant rates.
Nevertheless the civilian resistance was able to forestall a refugee crisis. Over a million people who had fled their homes were absorbed into schools, parks and private homes. They were fed, given clothes and kept safe from areas targeted by Israeli bombers.
With the active backing of so many ordinary people, the displaced become an organised mass of angry people, rather than desperate refugees. On the morning of the ceasefire they would have the final word.
Far from snatching a final victory, the Israelis had instead manoeuvred themselves into a dangerous trap. They were faced with a mass of people descending from the north - and Hizbollah fighters still in control of the south.
By the evening refugees reached the border town of Bint Jbail, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting during the war. The roads were too badly damaged by Israeli bombs, so they abandoned their vehicles and marched to the town on foot.
The decisive role of ordinary Lebanese people and the class dynamic has simply not been touched on in other reports that I have seen.
Also of note is an interview with Egyptian activist Sameh Naguib, who talks about the decisive role that Hezbollah's fight has had on the Egyptian left and on the Arab streets. One of the more interesting effects has been that the Muslim Brotherhood's traditional hostility to Shi'ism was completely broken:
That has dissipated very quickly. Mahdy Akef, the general leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, produced a very strong statement a week after the war started, saying that all differences between Sunni and Shia were meaningless now. He said we should all support the resistance, that Hassan Nasrallah was the leader of all the Arab resistance, and that we should fight with him.
This is a historic document that will have repercussions on Sunni Islam and Islamism across the Arab world. It could even have positive repercussions within the Iraqi resistance, in terms of the possibilities for Shia and Sunni to fight together against the US.
So the more backwards and conservative side of Islamism has been set back at this point, at least for a period. People really didn’t care whether Nasrallah was Shia or Sunni - and this is new. All people would talk about before were details of religious belief and so on. This is receding now, and the force of resistance is much stronger.
There is also an obvious class dimension. People can see that it’s the poor of Lebanon who are suffering and that it’s the poor of Lebanon who are fighting. It’s not just any old resistance - it’s the resistance of the Lebanese working class. People can see this on television every day, and it’s easy for them to associate their misery with the misery of the Lebanese south.
The war has had a very strong polarising effect on the left in Egypt. For instance, there is a section of the Stalinist left, a “right wing left”, that says it is no longer important to be against imperialism, that we have to concentrate solely on winning democracy, that we can never stand with the Islamists, that Islamists are fascists, whether in Palestine or Lebanon or anywhere else.
This kind of view, which has had some influence among a section of the left, has now disintegrated completely. People have had to shift their position, and the ones who were in the middle have shifted to the left because of the war.
We still don’t know what the end results of this polarisation will be, but there are serious discussions, arguments and fights on the left. These are not sectarian - it is a real polarisation and it means something new. This will affect how the left in general deals with Islamic movements in Egypt and the whole position of the left towards national liberation in this region.
Also worth reading is this interview with an Iraqi poet. Oh, and one another thing: Why was the Liban Lait milk factory destroyed?