Noted Shift in Political Discourse from Mainstream Unanimity in Support of the US Agenda on Mideast Policy

By: Nathan Jaco

In a shocking shift in the direction of political discourse, mainstream American news magazines have actually contained stories about the “Middle East Crisis” that were not full of patriotic, or worse even outright nationalistic, drivel. In the 7 August 2006 issue of time, there was an article by Lisa Boyer actually titled “Why the Middle East Crisis Isn't Really About Terrorism.“ Futhermore, the subtext on the articles title page actually criticized the President: “By insisting it is, President Bush clouds the real issues, which are how much the U.S. should do for Israel and what it should do to Iran.“ Which, by the way, the Middle East scholar Vali Nasr actually was published in the Christian Science Monitor, a neoliberal establishment publication, saying that the US should engage Iran diplomatically, though he admitted on C-SPAN that it should be in a context that facilitates political change in the country toward US “positions” on the region. I digress, in the article in Time, Boyer begins by discussing former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's comments at a Washington forum on the State Department-labelled terrorist organization Hezbollah, which essentially amounted to - we will get them eventually. This is why the US's support for Israeli aggression in Lebanon could be considered natural, and they have made it overt to the international community by, along with only Britain, not calling for an immediate cease fire. Their logic behind this is that they do not want to rush a settlement in lieu of establishing a lasting peace, though it is hard to imagine sitting at the negotiating table to discuss establishing a lasting peace while rockets are flying and killing their respective civilian populations, which it should be obvious the US does not care about.

Boyer says that Hezbollah falls under the “every terrorist group with global reach” categorization outlined as the enemies of the US in the Global War on Terrorism, but she goes on to say that neither Hezbollah nor Hamas actually threaten the US. Hezbollah formed in 1982, ironically in reaction to the Israeli invasion and occupation which occurred under very similar circumstances to the current war. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was purportedly to drive out the PLO, and killed many civilians while the US provided diplomatic cover for Israel in order to buy enough time from the international community for them to stamp out PLO. The distinction between the 1982 invasion and the current one is that this endeavor was tauted as being successful in driving out the PLO, while the current invasion is not being tauted as successful in routing Hezbollah. Robert Kaplan of Atlantic Monthly speaking on the 15 August airing of Lou Dobbs Tonight said that never in Israel's history have their military efforts been perceived as being so unsuccessful.

Boyer makes the distinction between Hezbollah as an organization which seeks the destruction of the Zionist state, and the Salafists - the radicals who are now being referred to as Islamo-fascists who seek to restore the Islamic empire to the prominence it once held, controlling lands from Spain to Iraq. The Salafists are Sunni, like Al-Qaeda and the insurgents in Iraq, while Hezbollah is Shiite, who al-Zarqawi used to say are worse than Americans. There have been systematic links between Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda, in fact Hezbollah has been accused of providing Al-Qaeda with explosives, yet the two are not currently in alliance, though Boyer rightly fears divergence among the groups may minimize as a result of Bush's rhetoric and America's support of Israeli aggression.

Bush's “with us or with the terrorists” position has alienated Hezbollah's supporters Syria and Iran to US diplomatic efforts. Both the Syrian and Iranian presidents have declared that the 34-day war in Lebanon was a success for Hezbollah against both Israel and the Israelis' military supplier and current parent state, the US. Boyer summarizes the logic against Bush's myopic and overly-simplistic handling of the situation by saying, “By failing to distinguish between groups, Bush feeds paranoia that his war is really a war on Islam.“

Another article, “The Wider War” by Christopher Dickey and Rod Nordland, appearing in another mainstream publication, Newsweek, says that

“The conflagrations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq risk converging, if not on the ground, then in that virtual reality - on satellite television and the Web - where Al Qaeda and Hizbullah find recruits for their global networks. Israel can bomb Lebanon's infrastructure, but Hizbullah, which operates beyond the limits of a state, ultimately has no infrastructure. Hizbullah's own rockets and missiles can miss nearly all their targets, with comparatively little loss of life, but so long as they keep firing, they shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility and win friends and admirers in a radicalized Muslim world.“

This is the kind of assessment that, though honest, does not appear supportive enough of jingoistic neoliberal foreign policy ambitions in the Middle East to have typically found its way into mainstream American press - and one would expect this kind of honest assessment to appear only in the European business press, independent media, or Al-Jazeera. Though, certainly not in Newsweek, which has on its cover a more patriotically-oriented topic, Oliver Stone's 9/11 and the subheading, “The Controversial Director Chooses Courage Over Conspiracy...“

There is a bit of trickery in this article though. In the graphics on page 27, the Israeli and Lebanese deaths are represented by man-figure graphics, each representing 10 deaths. The Israeli graphics are divided into “civilian” and “troops” categories, with two figures in the civilian row and three in the troops row, demonstrating that Hezbollah has actually been more effective in killing Israeli war fighters than civilians, something the Israeli's claim but that claim is disputed. The Lebanese deaths are not divided into categories, and preceding text explains that Israeli military estimates 200 Hezbollah war fighters have been killed, but says “other sources” place the figure around 35. This graphic does not attempt to make that distinction, though it would be quite plausible to rely on “other sources” in the plural as satisfactorily objective to allow for consistency in the graphics, rather than the Israeli military, not an unbiased source, in the singular. This type of thing can certainly be reasonably expected.

The reasons that all of this is so striking has already been outlined. However, it is worth reiterating that anything that is not part of the pro-Israeli and thus pro-US interests consensus is not usually found in American mainstream media. There is even some disagreement in the Zionist community, as Wolf Blitzer reported that American Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have recently criticized Pat Robertson for his calling the cease fire a mistake and stating that the Israeli invasion of Israel has accomplished nothing. They said that Pat Robertson should stick to praying and not get involved in political matters which are not his expertise. These developments may show that public opinions about Israel are shifting, but unfortunately do not bring the world any closer to a binational solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.