August 23, 2006
Excerpts from "The 'hiding among civilians' myth" by Mitch Prothero, in salon.com, 28 July 2006
The Israelis are consistent: They bomb everyone and everything remotely associated with Hezbollah, including noncombatants. In effect, that means punishing Lebanon. The nation is 40 percent Shiite, and of that 40 percent, tens of thousands are employed by Hezbollah's social services, political operations, schools, and other nonmilitary functions. The "terrorist" organization Hezbollah is Lebanon's second-biggest employer.
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Although Israel targets apartments and offices because they are considered "Hezbollah" installations, the group has a clear policy of keeping its fighters away from civilians as much as possible. This is not for humanitarian reasons -- they did, after all, take over an apartment building against the protests of the landlord, knowing full well it would be bombed -- but for military ones.
"You can be a member of Hezbollah your entire life and never see a military wing fighter with a weapon," a Lebanese military intelligence official, now retired, once told me. "They do not come out with their masks off and never operate around people if they can avoid it. They're completely afraid of collaborators. They know this is what breaks the Palestinians -- no discipline and too much showing off."
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So the analysts talking on cable news about Hezbollah "hiding within the civilian population" clearly have spent little time if any in the south Lebanon war zone and don't know what they're talking about. Hezbollah doesn't trust the civilian population and has worked very hard to evacuate as much of it as possible from the battlefield. And this is why they fight so well -- with no one to spy on them, they have lots of chances to take the Israel Defense Forces by surprise, as they have by continuing to fire rockets and punish every Israeli ground incursion.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/world/middleeast/25sunnis.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
At Funeral, a Sunni Village Condemns Hezbollah’s Presence
New York Times
By Hassah Fattah
MARWAHEEN, Lebanon, Aug. 24 — For months, the residents of this predominantly Sunni village near the Israeli border watched anxiously as the Shiite Hezbollah militiamen brought arms and rockets into town in preparation for battle. The residents grappled with whether they should accept the fighters’ presence and face a possible Israeli attack or try to eject them, with the more probable risk of retribution by Hezbollah.
On Thursday, as the village buried 23 people who were killed by Israeli warplanes while trying to flee on July 15, many had belatedly made up their mind.
“We kept beseeching them, ‘Stay out! Stay out!’ ” said Zainab Ali Abdullah, 19, who lost her father, brother and several other members of the family in the attack. “They said, ‘We’re all in the same boat together, so deal with it.’ But why should our children die for their cause?”
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For many, the gathering on Thursday also became a chance to air grievances against Hezbollah, whom they blame for having brought trouble to their quiet community.
Criticism of Hezbollah is rare in southern Lebanon, where the group exercises significant influence and economic power. Villages like Marwaheen — which largely supports the Future Movement of Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri — often miss out on Hezbollah’s largess but pay the price for its politics.
“There is no way for us to stop them,” said Ibrahim, who lost several relatives in the attack and who asked that his last name not be used for fear of retribution. “These are not people you can say no to.”
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The town’s troubles began sometime last year when a local resident who had converted to Shiism was appointed the local representative of Hezbollah, residents said. Soon strange things began to occur: strangers came through for late-night meetings; trucks would come and go in the middle of the night; and a suspicious-looking white van was parked at each end of the village.
When the war broke out, rockets flew out of the village and a hilltop nearby, and the fears of many residents that trouble would come grew stronger.
On Thursday, one of the suspicious white vans was sitting next to the town mosque. The van had apparently been hit by an Israeli missile, but the launching platform for a Katyusha rocket could still be seen inside. A rocket that lay next to the van a few days earlier had been removed.
Elsewhere, villagers showed off a weapons dump that included heavy machine guns, mortar rockets and launchers, and numerous other rockets left behind. Part of the weapons store had been bombed, but a much larger store down the street was intact.
Residents said Hezbollah was using them as human shields. “One man in this village was able to turn all our lives upside down for just a bit of money,” Ibrahim said. When the villagers left, he said, the fighters did too, as evidenced by the limited damage done to the town.
“We want the army and the United Nations to come in here and protect us,” he said. “Israel is our enemy, but the problem is that Hezbollah gave them an excuse to come in and kill our children.”
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