In the name of Palestine
The use and abuse of Palestine in Hezbollah’s rhetoric
From preschool, Palestine becomes the pulse of our lives. It is portrayed to us as the collective aspiration of the people in the whole region; our ultimate goal and raison d’etre. Those who want a free Palestine are good people; everyone else is bad. It is a black and white issue—no grey area for doubt or contemplation. There’s no alternative choice to consider.
Palestine in this sense is not a country, a geographical entity—it is an abstract value we use to measure people’s morality. It is a sacred call and symbolizes hope, justice, dignity. You don’t count if you don’t believe in Palestine, its complete liberation and identity.
Everyone has used Palestine as a yardstick by which to evaluate one’s patriotism, so when Hezbollah hijacked the resistance in 1982, it had to hijack Palestine along with it. And since that moment, Palestine has been at the very core Hezbollah’s rhetoric. The party’s popularity grew tremendously because people were already hooked to the idea of Palestine and assumed that whoever carried its cause must be right and upstanding. So when Palestine found itself with services, money and jobs, Hezbollah became undefeatable.
Palestine, Yemen and Syria
But having woven the cause of Palestine so assiduously into its propaganda, Hezbollah and its regional allies cannot drop it again from their lexicon, no matter what happens; even if they don’t really care anymore.
Hezbollah has brought death and devastation to the people of Lebanon, assassinated its opponents, mass-murdered Syrians in the war in Syria, and is now helping to drag the whole region into an endless sectarian war, all in the name of Palestine.
On Friday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech in which he commented on the Saudi-led operation against Houthis in Yemen. He was obviously alarmed by this development, and the takeaway from of his speech was nothing more than a condemnation and a ridiculously pathetic call for dialogue. But every part of his speech was interlaced with the significance of Palestine.
He criticized the Saudis for abandoning Palestine. “If the aim of the war on Yemen is to save the Yemeni people, then why did Saudi Arabia abandon the Palestinian people for long decades?” He also said that the latest developments in Yemen prove that “Arab states have never considered Israel an enemy.”
The irony is that while Nasrallah was speaking, his
supporters on social media were using the same slogans the Party of God uses against Israel and simply replacing ‘Jerusalem’ with ‘Mecca.’ It was fascinating how the rhetoric didn’t change a bit. The same slogans, same graphics, and the very same choice of words were endlessly repeated, but applied to Saudi Arabia instead of Israel.
It was also ironic that while Nasrallah criticized the “foreign military intervention” of the Arabs in Yemen, his own fighters were busy killing Syrians in a country not their own. He assured us that “all invaders will lose,” while his troops carried on with an invasion of Syria that is now in its fourth year.
The power of denial
But the best part is that Nasrallah completely ignored the Palestinian refugee camp in Syria—
Yarmouk—which has been under siege by Assad’s forces since December 2012. The Palestinians trapped in Yarmouk have been without water, food or basic services for 300 days. According to the Action Group for the Palestinians in Syria, Assad has
tortured 357 Palestinians to
death, and at least 819 are reportedly detained. At least 2,679 Palestinian deaths in Syria have been documented.
Yeah, all this in the name of Palestine.
In 2010, Fayez Karam, a Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) politician, was arrested for spying for Israel. FPM leader Michel Aoun is Hezbollah’s favorite ally in Lebanon, and yet having a spy within his movement did not hamper the alliance in any way. Karam was released two years later—though not because he was innocent—and still Hezbollah did not complain.
Why would they, when the highest numbers of those arrested for spying were among the party’s ranks? Quite simply, because the whole Palestinian cause and resistance are simply tools by which to establish Hezbollah dominance. And now that the battle has shifted to the region against the Sunni states, resistance is no longer relevant. They can’t stop harping on about it, though, because their supporters still believe that all this regional war and interference in Syria is somehow part of the fight against Israel and the struggle to liberate Palestine.
So, basically, whenever Nasrallah feels that he has nothing to say and that the situation requires common sense that he doesn’t possess, he brings up Palestine and everything comes out in the wash. That his followers will cheer is a given.
If Hezbollah dropped Palestine from its rhetoric, people might realize that what Nasrallah is really telling them is to drop their lives and families and join Iran’s army to kill Sunnis in the region. That wouldn’t work, would it?