Monday, August 7, 2006

Mark Steiner Show: A Discussion on Lebanon

I listen quite regularly to the Mark Steiner show on NPR (WJHU in Baltimore). Steiner's show, in my view, is generally far more balanced than other programming on NPR, which is so littered with double-speak and official apologia that it makes one's stomach turn.

Today Mark had Mayssam Zaaroura on. She is the Lebanon editor for the Daily Star, and was speaking to him from there. Mark's other guest, an Israeli Professor named Menachem Kellner, was speaking to him from Haifa. The topic was the current situation in the Middle East.

Mayssam gave a heartfelt account of how it felt to suddenly and unexpectedly be under siege, with no escape route—totally trapped, with one’s life on the line. Kellner, although he did not proclaim affiliation with the Israeli government or military, echoed the official Israeli line on how Israel really didn't want to be in Lebanon, and that it was forced to be there as a result of Hezbollah’s action.

Mayssam said the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah did not start with the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier, and that she totally disagreed with Kellner's statements. Prefacing her remarks with the standard disavowal of support for Hizbollah, she said that the organization had been created as a result of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. She said Hizbollah was the only entity providing order to the situation at the time, that the organization set up schools, hospitals, infrastructure, that it fed the Lebanese people. Remarkably similar, I thought, to the Black Panther Party in 1960s AmeriKKKa. So Maysaam continued, unknown to many Americans, there was much more to Hizbollah than just its military wing.

To his credit, Mark Steiner let her continue on at length: Lebanon had 82 bridges, she said, and Israel did not have to knock out all eighty two bridges--but it did. She said that Israel was deliberately targeting civilian areas, where there were no Hizb. Who in their right mind would not evacuate after leaflets issuing an ultimatum to do so were dropped on their village, she asked. Mainly poor people, with no transport, no money, nowhere to go.

Steiner asked the Israeli Prof to respond. In a condescending tone usually reserved for rebuking school children, he said he was very disappointed in the level of discourse, and that he did not expect to hear a propagandist on the program. He refused to refute Maysaam’s multitude of very specific and hard hitting points. Bizarrely, he accused her (and Lebanese in general) of being more interested in bridges than people, and declared that he (and Israelis in general) were more concerned about the suffering of the people than anything else. And Big Brother is right, I thought to myself. Big Brother is always right.

Mark Steiner did not seem impressed by the Israeli Prof’s attempt to label Mayssam a “propagandist.” He intervened, saying that one person’s truth might be another’s propaganda, and that this could be applied to both sides.

Prof Kellner continued that Hizbollah used civilians as a human shield. Was it Israel’s fault if Hizbollah deliberately and willfully situated their rockets on people’s front lawns or basements? Couldn’t we see, he said, what a difficult situation Israel was in, when Hizbollah did this?

Mayssam countered his argument with a first hand account of her own relatives, who were living in a village targeted for Israeli bombing. Hizbollah came to them, she said, and told them what was about to happen, begging them to evacuate. In general, she said, Hizbollah, tried their best to evacuate people from areas expected to come under Israeli bombardment. Again the Prof had no answer for her argument.

The Prof’s strategy was the classic Zionist/Neocon one, which Muslims and others of conscience should well recognize: 1) Refusal to answer your opponents specific points, and feigning of superiority; 2) Branding of the opponent as propagandist/terrorist/anti-Semite, to support one’s lack of response (or inability to respond); 3) A Big Brother style role switch, painting the aggressors as victims (eg, the Israelis are the main ones who have suffered injury, and who really never wanted to fight anyway).

The one point of consensus reached by Prof Kellner, Mayssam, and the host (Mark) was that Hizbollah should be disarmed. I found this idea—that one side, which has light arms, should be disarmed, and the other, which has cruise missiles and thermonuclear weapons, should be allowed to carry on--very troubling. Since the show accepts emailed comments, I borrowed a point from a recent New Trend edition, and emailed this in the hopes that it would be read on the air:

"I'd be very curious to know why Mr. Kellner thinks that one side in the conflict has a right to defend itself, and the other does not. If Hizbollah should be disarmed, then why not disarm Israel as well? I don't understand why both the U.S. and Israeli militaries seem to want to disarm their enemies before they fight them--quite a pusillanimous stance, totally contrary to the old days, when one would fight an equally well-armed opponent."

Unfortunately, it was the last few minutes of the show and my comment was not aired.