This Week: Thinking About Lebanon

Quote of the Week

Recommended Sources for Understanding the Lebanon Crisis

Lebanon: Root Causes and Unconventional Thinking

 

Greetings,

The issue this week is Lebanon. There are many great sources of news and analysis out there, so I offer a short list of what I think are some of the best. The original piece I offer this week is not more "analysis" of the problem, really. Instead, this issue of Nygaard Notes is devoted to helping people figure out how to think about the idea of "the real problem" and why it is not what most commentators and news reporters in this country say it is.

This week's "Quote" of the Week has Rashid Khalidi suggesting the first step in moving away from war in Lebanon and toward what he calls "aggressive, multilateral diplomacy." He suggests that the first step involves understanding "the real problem." I agree.

Welcome to all the new subscribers to the Notes this week! I look forward to your feedback, if you have any.

By the way, I also have a short piece on Lebanon and "Why Americans Care" that appears this week in the Twin Cities Daily Planet, a new online newspaper. Check that out at http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/media

Never a dull moment!

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week

On July 22nd the editors of the New York Times asked seven "experts with experience in the region" about "what should be the first step in defusing the crisis" in Lebanon. One of those experts was Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, in whose brief piece called "The Terrorism Trap" appeared these words:

"Washington needs to understand the real problem in Palestine and Lebanon. Viewing the current crisis through the distorting lens of terrorism, as the Bush administration and the Israeli government do, leads to the unreflective use of force. Starting from the premise that as long as there is an occupation, there will be resistance, might instead lead the United States to undertake aggressive, multilateral diplomacy with the goal of ending Israel's presence in the West Bank."

Recommended Sources for Understanding the Lebanon Crisis

Here are just a few of the sources that I have found for good information on what is happening in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip right now:

Breaking News and updates on the current crisis:

Probably the best news source I have seen for the humanitarian effects of this war comes from IRIN, the Integrated Regional Information Networks. It's part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, but its news service is editorially independent. They point out that "Its reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations..." IRIN does all sorts of regional reports, and you can get daily or weekly email updates about any region of the world you like. They have just set up a special "Lebanon Crisis" page at http://www.irinnews.org/lebanon-crisis.asp

The Palestine Chronicle is worth looking at. http://palestinechronicle.com/ For a day-by-day overview of events since July 12th, click on "Timeline of the Crisis in Lebanon."

The excellent group Electronic Intifada has set up a sub-site about the Lebanon crisis. Find it at: http://www.electronicintifada.net/lebanon/

You might think, if you live in the U.S., that Aljazeera is nothing but naked and shameless propaganda. Not so. Actually, a lot of the news from Aljazeera is taken from the same news agencies that the corporate press uses, like AFP and AP. One of the headlines that I just saw on the Aljazeera website was "Hezbollah blamed for civilian deaths." In the "In Pictures" section, you can see photos of a burning Beirut airport and bombed-out suburbs, as well as mourners carrying the coffin of an Israeli soldier and "An Israeli girl is comforted by a paramedic after her father was wounded by a rocket." Check it out at: http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage Note: This site is so busy you may have trouble accessing it. Keep trying.

The Cairo weekly Al-Ahram is also worth a look: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/index.htm

Anything you can find written by Robert Fisk of the London Independent is good to read. Fisk has lived in Beirut for almost 30 years and has done some of the best reporting from the Middle East for any Western media over the years.

History and Context of the current crisis:

The folks at the Middle East Research and Information Project have their feet on the ground in the Middle East. Their "Middle East Report" magazine may well be the best English-language publication on the region that there is. Right now they have a good collection of pieces on the background and context of the current madness. Specifically, I think a July 21st piece by the editors called "Letting Lebanon Burn" is worth a look. http://www.merip.org/

A consistently good amalgamation of pieces, both news and analysis and history, can be found on the "Middle East Watch" page of the ZNet site. Go to http://www.zmag.org/meastwatch/meastwat.cfm

The Larger History and Context of the region:

I recommend "The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict" by Jews For Justice in the Middle East. http://www.wrmea.com/jews_for_justice/

Radical Jewish perspectives on the current crisis:

One of the many tragic aspects of Israel's belligerent and outrageous behavior is that it stokes the ever-present and very dangerous anti-Jewish sentiment that has caused so much suffering for the Jewish people for centuries. While it may seem obvious to readers of Nygaard Notes that opposition to the policies of the state of Israel and anti-Jewish hate are completely separate things, it is not obvious to everyone. In that spirit, it's always good to check out Jewish and/or Israeli sources of news and analysis of any crisis involving Israel. Here are a couple:

Bat Shalom, the Israeli national feminist grassroots organization of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli women, has released a statement on the Lebanon crisis. http://coalitionofwomen.org/home/english

B'Tselem has made a statement on Lebanon as well: http://www.btselem.org/english/special/20060723_Lebanon.asp

The English-language site of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom is at http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en

To Take Action:

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign is at http://www.palestinecampaign.org/ Click on "Urgent Action - Crisis in Gaza and Lebanon."

Lebanon: Root Causes and Unconventional Thinking

Here's what you must believe if you want to go to war, or if you support a war: You must believe that there is an "enemy" that can be "defeated" by force. This belief reflects a way of thinking that is behind much of what we are faced with in the United States in recent years.

The way of thinking that forms the basis for many of our misguided approaches to social problems in this country has three interesting features. It tends to be 1. Dualistic, or, having only two sides; 2. Simplistic, or, able to be reduced to a "sound bite"; 3. Static, or, tending to stay exactly as it is, or as we would like it to be. Let's call this the "DSS" way of thinking, for Dualistic, Simplistic, and Static.

So, is a nation's decision to go to war based on DSS thinking? I say it is. Consider: A war has two sides – Dualistic. A war has a clearly-defined enemy – Simplistic. And, finally, warmakers think that, after the war is over, there will be a "winner" and a "loser" – Static.

That may be how things work, sometimes. But, usually, it's not.

To use an example in the news right now, let's look at the tragic war in Lebanon that's going on as I write this (I could include Gaza, as well, but for purposes of illustration I will limit this piece to Lebanon). If you listen to the U.S. or Israeli government, you'll hear them say things like this:

* George Bush, July 18: "... the root cause of the problem is Hezbollah."

* U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, July 21: "It is important to remember that the cause of the current violence was Hezbollah's illegal attack from Lebanese territory."

* U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, July 21, as reported by the news service Agence France Presse: "We know the root cause of the present conflict is Hezbollah's terrorist acts supported by Iran and Syria..."

* Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman on July 21: "Terror [by Hezbollah] is the root cause of what is happening in Lebanon today."

Solving The Problem and The Root Cause

Certainly the first step in solving a problem is to attempt to understand what led to the problem. And the closer one gets to understanding the "root cause," the more effective and long-lasting the solution will be.

But the idea that U.S. and Israeli leaders would have us believe — that the "root cause" of what is happening now in Lebanon is Hezbollah's actions on July 12th — is simply absurd. It's doubtful that the people who say this believe it, and it's hard for me to imagine that anyone who knows even a little bit about the history of the region believes it. But I'm sure that the people who say this expect other people —voters, constituents, legislators — to believe it, and many apparently do.

These various propagandists are counting on this absurd idea being believable because they are counting on their target audience to think in the conventional way. That way is the DSS way: 1. Dualistic; 2. Simplistic; 3. Static.

"We Challenge Conventional Thinking"

Check out this quote from the Washington Post of July 21:

"Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress, said Bush's statements reflect an unambiguous view of the situation. ‘He doesn't seem to allow his vision to be clouded in any way,' said Rosen, a Democrat who has come to admire Bush's Middle East policy. ‘It follows suit. Israel is in the right. Hezbollah is in the wrong. Terrorists have to be eliminated, and he sees Israel fighting the war he would fight against terrorism.'"

I couldn't ask for a better illustration of DSS thinking.

Dualistic: There is Israel, and there is Hezbollah.

Simplistic: "Israel is in the right. Hezbollah is in the wrong."

Static: Terrorists can be "eliminated." Then they are gone. The end.

This man, by the way, is on the board of a "non-partisan policy research organization" called the Hudson Institute, whose mission statement says that "We challenge conventional thinking."

Now for something completely different. I hope you'll be able to see how utterly conventional is the thinking of Mr. Rosen and the U.S. politicians he "admires" after I indicate a different way of thinking about this war.

In contrast with the Dualistic, Simplistic, and Static way of thinking that is prevalent in the media and elsewhere, I prefer a method that is 1. Multi-faceted; 2. Complex; and 3. Dynamic. I'll call it "MCD."

1. MULTI-FACETED: Rather than imagining that there are simply two opponents involved — and the thinking goes beyond "Israel vs Hezbollah" to mean "civilization vs barbarism" and "the West vs Islamofascism" and "us vs them" and so forth — any attempt to understand the root cause of the current violence has to imagine that the history of the region involves many players. U.S. spokespeople like to talk about Syrian and Iranian support for Hezbollah, but how about United States support for Israel? And the situation can't be fully understood without some knowledge of the current or historical involvement of previous colonial powers France and England, the OPEC nations, the United Nations, and other nations across the globe. To frame this matter as simply a conflict between two opposing sides is a dangerous delusion.

2. COMPLEX. Could it possibly be as simple as Secretary of State Rice said on July 21st? She said then that "the decision of a terrorist group can drag an entire country, even an entire region, into violence." (She was talking about Hezbollah.) Or as simple as "Israel is in the right. Hezbollah is in the wrong"? Of course it's not that simple.

Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi said it better than I could in the July 22nd New York Times: "Although the violence that has killed hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinians and more than a dozen Israeli civilians must be halted immediately, no good can come from focusing exclusively on recent events rather than on the underlying problems, which include the denial of rights to Palestinians and the occupation of Arab lands. This crisis is rooted in Israel's nearly 40-year occupation of Palestinian lands and its occupation of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000."

Khalidi's comment about not focusing EXCLUSIVELY on recent events is the key here. By assuming that the root causes are complex and by allowing time to think about that complex reality, we give ourselves the chance to look at recent events and the chain of history that has led up to them.

There are other factors that complicate matters: The U.S. occupation of Iraq; the fact that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. economic and military aid in the world; the history of British and French colonialism in the region; Israel's flouting of various UN resolutions; and much more.

3. DYNAMIC. While the DSS way of thinking likes to imagine that force can be used to "eliminate" terrorism, or that we can have a war until we "defeat" terror, force doesn't work that way. All indications are that the current Israeli use of force is actually increasing the popularity of Hezbollah, much as the U.S. use of force in Iraq is strengthening the resistance there (and may be strengthening al-Qaeda, as well). As Samar Assad, Executive Director of The Palestine Center, put it on July 21, "Israel, as a superior military power, may succeed in the crippling of these two resistance movements [Hamas and Hezbollah] and may even destroy them, but as long as the root cause of their existence, popularity, and support remains, other such groups will emerge."

In political terms, the very concept of a "final solution" has a negative connotation, as it should, since it often implies massive displacement, "ethnic cleansing," or genocide. An acceptance of the dynamic nature of history allows us to let go of the idea of the type of "victory" that is the promise of war, and move instead to an engagement in a process of dialogue and what Khalidi calls "aggressive, multilateral diplomacy." While the world offers no "final solutions," smart and principled work will allow us to find the many small solutions that we need to build a more just and peaceful world.

A Brief and Oversimplified Summary

Any summary of a different way of thinking will be too simple to really be true (!), but I'll do it anyway:

Dualistic: "Good Guys vs Bad Guys" OR Multi-Faceted: Lots of human beings, each with important needs.

With the MCD Method, instead of "Either/Or," it becomes "Both/And."

Simplistic: Right and Wrong, Good and Evil OR Complex: A belief that there is a history, both recent and ancient, that created the current situation.

With the MCD Method, instead of "Good vs Evil" it becomes "Struggling to address competing needs."

Static: If we can defeat the "Bad Guys" then Good will prevail over Evil once and for all. OR Dynamic: With lots of work and communication and commitment we can address enough of people's needs to reduce the need for force, and increase the chances for peace.

With the MCD Method, instead of "Defeat the enemy," it becomes "Engage with the world as it is now, and as it is becoming."

In the next issue of the Notes, I hope to apply the MCD method to a bunch of other current issues, just to see if it really is a better way of thinking.