Do You Support the State or Hezbollah?
In South Lebanon, the faces of the massacre's survivors were terrifying and harrowing. Amid the rubble of what used to be homes, the people are visibly apprehensive, in pain, and broken. No one was celebrating Eid-Al-Adha, not even the children. Both north and south of the Litani River, everyone in the South is deeply apprehensive about the future. This anxious anticipation- before or after defeat- has manifested itself in many forms, reflecting its causes and implications in various ways. Everything in the south feels unsettling, as though the ground were shaking.
On the second day of the holidays, my daughter Nadia returned to our home after visiting our relatives in Nabatiyeh, and she told me about a conversation she had had with one of her young cousins. No older than eleven, this cousin asked: 'Do you support the state or Hezbollah?' My daughter's full account is not for publication, but it was alarming. The joint efforts of physicians, sociologists, and educators would be required to explain how a child could understand how to distinguish between a state and a militia, prefer the latter, and try to convince another child that 'Nawaf Salam is a bad guy, while 'The Sayyed' (Nasrallah) is a hero who died for us.'
Before I continue, I should point out that I have not chosen to share the children's conversation because I believe that 'Truth comes out from the children's mouth,' and to expose the community's secrets through their words. My daughter defended Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, saying that he is a good man, while the other child firmly affirmed that Nasrallah is the one true leader. In an era of hyper-sectarianism, the words or behavior of children cannot be understood with the social virus of their environment- children are always innocent at heart. Sheikh Yasser Aoudeh was assaulted due to his enlightened ideas and audacity. We all know who had been behind this crime which exposes just how indoctrinated the community has been, as well as a state of lawlessness.
This assault might not have come from the top, and Hezbollah's apology to Sheikh Aoudeh could be sincere. Still, it bears full ideological, social, and moral responsibility for the assault, exactly the same way that it is to blame for the child's words.
Had it not been for years of indoctrination and incitement against difference- if it were for the demonization of other political and cultural views as a threat to the faith- this brazen attack against a religious figure in broad daylight, in front of many witnesses, would never have happened.
The same applies to the assaults on the UNIFIL forces operating in the south. They are not simply spontaneous reactions of locals, as Hezbollah always claims. They were likely deliberate acts. Worse still, they may be the result of a power struggle within Hezbollah, and they could be linked to regional escalation.
The important question is: how can we explain, from a sociological perspective, Hezbollah's success in pushing "locals" to carry out this assault and others like it? How could its support base aggravate the distortion of South Lebanon's relationship with the world? How could they fall into the trap of reinforcing its image as a lawless community that is hostile to outsiders? How can it be so vicious with anyone who criticizes or opposes the party?
To analyze the direct and indirect causes of the three events, we need to deconstruct Hezbollah's social and cultural discourse- not just to understand its so-called ideological base but the Shiite community as a whole, both before and after the massacre of the "support war." That is, we must compare and contrast the two different phases in which displays of dominance, strength, and chauvinism accumulated over more than three decades. How can Hezbollah come to terms with the fact that its power had been an illusion? It suffered a crushing defeat within a week, forcing a retreat to its rhetoric of victimhood and existential fear to defend its weapons. Arms are now treated as part of the doctrine, and whoever objects (be they from the sect, the state, or the international community) is deemed an enemy of the faith.
Between the rise and fall of ideological groups- throughout the years in which they strive to maintain their hegemony over sectarian their community- they have consistently stubbornly insisted on clinging to the same rhetoric of the massacre. They insist on shunning any effort to go over their mistakes and a reckless escalation, eventually reaching a point where they lose control over their reactions or emotions.
At one stage, Hezbollah may indeed have succeeded in undermining the concept of statehood among Shiites, simultaneously consolidating a narrow and exclusive identity. It justified its monopoly over power under the pretext of 'empowering the sect' and 'protecting the faith,' tying both its arsenal. It then turned those arms into a tool needed to maintain a powerful 'parallel statelet' built over the ruins of a weakened state. This is the narrative it pushes on the young and the old, and it is now seeking to reimpose this narrative by force, attacking anyone who dares try to repudiate it.
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