‘God wills it’: Lebanon in the crossfire

What do Peter Hegsmith, US Secretary of Defence, Naim Qassem, secretary-General of Hezbollah, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli Minister of National Security, have in common?  They all believe that military force is there to fulfill their version of God’s will.  That their use of force does not conform to the laws of war does not seem to bother them.  Their own might is always right because it has a divine purpose, whether inspired by Christian nationalism, extreme forms of Islamism or of Zionist Judaism.

Modern warfare itself has become an exercise in increasing the distance between those perpetrating the killing and the reality on the ground. “Collateral damage” sounds like storm damage — to a building.  But those words frequently indicate dead and maimed children, women and other non-combatants.  Political leaders, military chiefs and nuclear scientists, called “high value targets”,  are “taken out”, not assassinated.  With them often die their wives, children, and friends; it has been reported that Israel calibrates the number deemed acceptable against the estimated importance of each target. States have “capabilities”, meaning the vast array of technical resources capable of overwhelming an enemy, not their ability to resolve conflict diplomatically.  All the vague euphemisms, the “cuttlefish ink” Orwell described  in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language”, are spurted out daily, trying to obscure what television news reveals thanks to courageous war correspondents.

At the opposite pole from military euphemism is the word “terrorist”, covering a multitude of sins.  The once functional definition of terrorism — violent actions by a sub-state actor to achieve political goals by instilling fear in communities — is increasingly inadequate.   States themselves can, and do, terrorise their citizens.  Iran is an obvious example.  Sub-state actors become a part of a government, or at some point take over the state itself.  If terrorism simply means violence to achieve political aims, there is no moral reason not to accuse brutal states of “terrorism”.  Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton (1997-2001) pointed out – at a later date — that the United States has often had “limited success when declaring war against nouns”.

Slovenly use of language creates a pernicious loop with what Orwell called “foolish thoughts” and what we today call “spin”.  This loop characterises the arsenal of disinformation and propaganda used to quieten citizens’ moral concerns about today’s wars.  Had he not been a “Christian atheist” confronted by totalitarianism, Orwell might have added how misuse of language and poor theology links to “foolish thoughts” about war and God’s will.  Christian nationalists are a good example.

Just war theory, both Islamic and Christian, depends on a distinction between combatants and non-combatants.  But the nature of today’s weapons,  modern warfare, the relationships within civil society created by Islamist dispensations, or implanted in other religious communities by propagandists, makes distinguishing actual combatants more difficult.  Today’s war in the Lebanon makes it almost impossible.   If a war is God’s Will, it seems, the Divine Will overrides moral restraints.

It  looks as if Trump and his circle convince themselves with their own misleading language.  Given the information available to his Intelligence agencies, the US Administration’s misconception about  the likely reaction to their attack on Iran is startling.  The CIA knew Iran had been prepared for war for many years and would prove a resolute opponent, drawing in Hezbollah, yet the White House doesn’t seem to have anticipated blocking of the Straits of Hormuz.

The origins of Hezbollah lie in the long running war between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel’s 1978 and 1982 invasions of Lebanon targeting refugees and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) militia.  Lebanon had fallen apart into a civil war between ten different religious communities and their militias, segregated along sectarian lines.

Export of its 1979 Islamic revolution was the foreign policy of the new Islamic Republic of Iran lead by Ayatollah Khomenei.  Hezbollah initially saw itself as an integral part of this new dispensation.  In 1983 it killed 241 Americans by bombing the US embassy and marine barracks.   The Ta’if Agreement mediated by Saudi Arabia and brokered by the Arab League, designed to end the civil war, was signed in 1989:  Hezbollah was recognised as the sole militia responsible for future resistance.

Modelled on Iran, Hezbollah created a  multi-layered pyramidal structure of governance: a Majlis Shura al-Qarar, a consultative council of seven primarily clerical members, Sheik Naim Qassem amongst them, elected every three years by a convention of some 250 Hezbollah top cadres.  Decision-making divides into five areas of responsibility: executive, political, judicial, jihad/security and the parliamentary work councils. By 1992 Ayatollah Khamenei, successor to Khomenei, was recommending Hezbollah change policy to Infitah, participation — in Lebanon’s elections.   They maintain on average ten deputies in Lebanon’s parliament and are guaranteed two Government Ministers.

According to Joseph Daher’s Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God (Pluto Press 2016), Hezbollah developed organisations for health, education, seminary training,  orphans, and emergency aid.  Islam compliant loans, zakat tithing, donations and discount cards aided the poor.  An extensive education system plus a TV network, radio station and publishing outlets inculcated the principal of Iltizam, religious commitment and adherence to strict Islamic practice, including the duty of supporting Hezbollah.

Houses were rebuilt after bombing raids honouring the slogan “reconstruction, resistance and rebirth”.  Disciplined lives became prosperous lives; a Shi’a middle class grew. The vision was a pure society uncorrupted by the West, an Islamic milieu, hala islamiyya, a “resistance society” against the Zionist enemy. The provision of public services and charitable outreach, a  “combination of consent and coercion”, in Daher’s words, encouraged Lebanese Shi’a acceptance of Hezbollah’s authority.

Southern Lebanon, predominantly Shi’a, dotted with small towns with some ancient Christian villages, now under Israeli attack, has an agricultural economy.   Its people are farmers plus well-off entrepreneurs, landowners and Hezbollah local government officials.  There are possibly 60,000 fighters including part-time reservists and a UN peacekeeping force reduced to 7,500 mandated to create a buffer zone south of the Litani river.   There is also a significant Shi’a community in the more mixed northern Beqaa Valley.

It is easy, especially in wartime, to interpret attempts to understand a party to a conflict as support for that party.   Support is clearly not the intention of Daher’s book Hezbollah.   Nor is it mine.  But for several reasons, including future negotiations, ignorance is not bliss, as the Middle East today demonstrates.

With its armed wing, trained by the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hezbollah poses an intractable problem for Lebanon’s army and government.  Its rocket attacks on Israel provide perennial justification for invasions of Lebanon and the bombing of “Hezbollah strongholds”.  Over one million people, 18% of Lebanon’s population have had to abandon their homes as the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) again invades the South.  Further north, Dahieh, a densely populated southern suburb of Beirut, is controlled by Hezbollah.  The residents cannot easily be sorted into combatants and non-combatants.  In Dahieh, as in Gaza, bombs hit buildings which collapse burying people under rubble.  The death toll is already above 1,350, 10% of them children, with over 3,500 wounded.

An infinite gulf exists between the Will of a loving, merciful and compassionate God and the will to power that States, and non state actors, exert in war.  It cannot be bridged — least of all by euphemistic language, ignorance and disinformation. On his right biceps, Peter Hegseth has a Deus Vult (“God wills it”) tattoo.  It marks the clear and present danger of Christian Nationalism.

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