What is Hezbollah?

In a seventeen minute dialogue yesterday with ex Guardian correspondent Glenn Greenwald, Holocaust Industry author Norman Finkelstein made several claims in respect of Israel having taken its war into Lebanon. Most important are these:

1. The escalation into a new front is possible because – and this puts him at odds with anti-Zionist voices as diverse as Scott Ritter and Electronic Intifada, Brian Berletic and Alastair Crooke, Douglas McGregor and Judge Napolitano – the IDF has broken the back of Gazan Resistance.
2. He heeds closely the speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom he views as one of the ablest on the planet. In his latest speech (I’ve yet to see a transcript) Nasrallah conceded that pager attacks described by former CIA chief Leon Panetta as terrorism – but a subject of infanticidal mirth for US “Antisemitism Envoy”, Deborah Lipstadt ¹ – had thrown Hezbollah into some disarray, from which it will fast recover for reasons relayed by the professor.
3. Israel’s command of the skies, courtesy its Western partners in genocide, is absolute. But let’s disregard as transparently false the stated aim of returning Israelis to homes in the north. (The settlers continue to pour south or, clutching second passports, head for Ben Gurion Airport.) If we focus instead on what unabashedly fascist elements of its criminal government say, the real aim – secured ideally by dragging the US into a hot war in the region – is to absorb Lebanon into a Greater (Biblical) Israel. For this fanatically Zionist regime, nominally headed by a desperate man renowned in equal measure for hubris and cunning, forthcoming US elections present a golden but fleeting window of opportunity. The prize cannot be won from the air though. At some point Israeli boots must hit the ground, vaporising the advantage for an IDF more accustomed to killing than dying, and pitting it against a self avowed Party of God far more formidable than Hamas.

Like Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Gideon Levy and Jeffrey Sachs (a list by no means exhaustive) Norman is of that older tranche of Jewish, in some cases Israeli, critics of the ‘Jewish State’. His is a uniquely eloquent and informed voice, though he does preface his remarks with the caveat that he is not a military historian.

But one question the professor does not address forms the title of this post. What is Hezbollah? If it is the terrorist organisation Israel and its Western backers say it is, why do so few countries agree? ² The question is side-stepped by Western corporate media, whose method of choice is to cement empire narratives – with that on Israel a powerful example – by constant repetition and evidence at best highly selective, and whose many distortions of omission include this:

The ‘international community’, as implicit in Western media depictions

It’s a child’s trick but, for reasons explored here and here, it works surprisingly well in the West, intelligentsia not excepted.

For a less evidence-defiant answer I look to that younger tranche of “formidable Jewish critics of the Jewish State”. Few are more eloquent or informed than the Grayzone’s Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal, no strangers to this site, but for my current purposes the steely Ben Norton – the Geopolitical Economy Report founder now based (sensibly) out of US reach in Beijing – will do nicely.

In twenty-eight info-rich minutes, Ben answers the question Norman – this is no criticism of the professor, who did a different job – does not. Listen, learn – and have a good weekend.

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1. Lipstadt will be kept busy as Antisemite-Finder General. Says Caitlin Johnstone today: As Israel gets more murderous we’ll be hearing even more about “Antisemitism”.
2. After writing this post I watched George Galloway’s Mother of all Talk Shows. His guest three days ago was Nick Cruse; Muslim, Afro-American and co-founder of Revolutionary Blackout Network. At one point George speaks of ethnic Lebanese police in Michigan (a state he sees as lost to the Dems thanks to Kamala Harris’s warmongering) who display photos of Hassan Nasrallah in their patrol cars! (Though off-topic it’s worth noting Nick Cruse’s interesting response that he hopes the Democrats lose. Not because he takes seriously the circus risibly posing as US democracy. Nor because Trump will be any better in the Middle East – here’s a tiny example of why. Rather, he wishes for a Trump win because, as he puts it, second terms allow the US ruling class a momentum he’d rather it be denied.)