The Siege of Ain Ebel
Michael J. Totten
AIN EBEL, SOUTH LEBANON – Amid the steep rolling hills of South Lebanon, a mere handful of kilometers from the fence on the border with Israel, sits the besieged Christian community of Ain Ebel. It is often said that Lebanon is a victim of geography; few Lebanese are as unlucky as those who live in Ain Ebel. For decades the people in this village have been caught between the anvils of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hezbollah on one side, and the hammer of the Israeli Defense Forces on the other.
I visited this small town with my American friend and colleague Noah Pollak from Azure Magazine in Jerusalem. Two men, Said and Henry, from the Lebanese Committee for UNSCR 1559 – an NGO which advises the Lebanese government and the international community on the disarmament of Hezbollah – safely escorted us down there from Beirut.
Alan Barakat from the Ain Ebel Development Association waited for us outside a small grocery store owned by his uncle. He agreed to tell us about what happened to his community during the war in July, when Hezbollah seized civilian homes and used residents as human shields.
Ain Ebel is small, and we walked the streets on foot. I didn’t see nearly as much destruction as I saw in the Hezbollah strongholds of Bint Jbail and Maroun al-Ras which I visited earlier the same day. Downtown seemed intact. This was not a surprise. The residents are implacably hostile to Hezbollah and always have been. This was not a place where the Party of God could dig in, build bunkers, and store weapons. Ain Ebel was, as they say, a “target poor” environment. That did not, however, stop Hezbollah from using it as a battleground.
For that matter, the Israelis ought to be allied to all anti-moslem forces around the entire perimeter of the arab part of the world.
All tactics are appropriate in war, except acceptance of defeat.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
If everyone in Lebanon wasn't desperate to avoid a civil war, the Sunni muslims in Lebanon would be as willing to shoot Hezbollah as the Christians would be.
But everyone in Lebanon, including Hezbollah, is desperate to avoid a civil war.
For that matter, the Israelis ought to be allied to all anti-moslem forces around the entire perimeter of the arab part of the world.
The Israelis should be allied with every anti-terrorist force around the world. We be allied with them too.
However, anti-terrorist forces would have to include anti-terrorist muslim groups, like the conservative Muslim Kurds.
Arnold, you're out of the loop on Lebanese politics here.
I must respectfully say that in my judgement, you are both wrong about Israel.
Terrorism is an established and permanent part of warfare among populations that lack the military resources to fight set-piece battlefield wars.
The Israelis should only be allied with forces that support their cause, or at least minimally are willing to avert their gaze when they take such steps as are necessary to subdue their enemies. If these allies include terrorists, then I would judge that a useful tactic so long as it brings desired strategic results.
I support the US war against al-Qaida because they attacked us -- and effectively so -- on Sep 11, 2001. But if I were in command of our situation in Iraq, and if I were convinced we could win by applying terrorist tactics against our enemies, those are precisely the tactics, weapons and personnel that I would employ. As I have written to all of you repeatedly, the only war crime is to lose one.
In 1982, Israel's armed forces under then defense minister Ariel Sharon smashed their way north all the way into central Beirut, where they trapped what was left of the PLO and Arafat himself into a small peninsula. They were openly allied with the major christian lebanese militias.
That militia, from whose activities the Israelis rightfully averted their gaze, got into the Sabra and Shatila camps in which the UN house refugees from what is now Hamastine. There, the Christians proceeded to kill a number of them, after which, the leftist liberals who control Israel's news media cut Sharon a new asshole.
In actuality, Sharon should have ordered the Israeli tanks, artillery and mechanized infantry to destroy the moslem arab part of Beirut, kill Arafat who was trapped there, and mow down as many as possible of the PLO fighters. That would have been part one.
Part two would have been Israel encouraging the christian Lebanese fighters to clean out the refugee camps and expel them all to some moslem arab country.
Then Israel would have been treated as the protector of the christian community in Lebanon, which would have been given free permanent reign to rule that country in the name of Jesus (or Mary, in the case of the Catholics).
I'm not interested in playing patty-cake in wartime. I am interested solely in decisive measures that turn the wheel of history. Anyone not prepared to fight it out on those terms ought not to get themselves in wars at all.
And I'm talking about this country as well as Israel or any other. From my perspective, the USA has engaged mostly in indecisive or lost military campaigns starting with Korea. Viet Nam was a totally lost war. And unless something seriously changes the calculus of armed force and the results of its application in Iraq, that too shall be a totally lost war.
For Israel, I fervently hope they screw up their governmental and societal courage to attack Iran's underground nuclear research facilities with a combination of hardened high-explosive bunker busters plus low yield nuclear weapons to incinerate everything reachable in the underground chambers.
Moreover, I hope they do this without asking permission of the United States or of any other outside power. Just go ahead and do it, then stand there with their arms folded and say to the world:
"What you have just witnessed is exactly what we are going to do to any country whose leader begins devoloping nuclear weapons, then talks like Adolf Hitler and threatens the Jews with doom every week or two."
"In any case, there's a whole new breed of Jews who have taken charge of their own national affairs. Leave us alone, we will leave you alone. Fuck with us, we'll put our your lights."
Someone capable of such audacity, ruthlessness and strength of purpose is the only kind of Jews I shall ever respect, and as I measure things, I thinks that's the way the rest of the world really thinks and acts.
And if there really is a god(s) that rules the affairs of humankind, then I think that is precisely why he/she/it/them created Israel in the first place, then guided a handful of Jews to rebuild their national homeland in its original place after an absence of some 1900 years.
And then reinforced their power by giving them the brains to develop an arsenal of some 200-250 nuclear weapons, out of more or less nothing, and in the face of the hostility of more or less all the rest of the world.
And if all that is so, then those who stand against them will one day be wiped off the face of this earth.
And if you will check it out, all that is part of the Rapture. Which, regardless of whather I believe it or not, I've learned not to mock.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.