Hizbullah Threatens Recipients of U.S. Funds; Lebanese Columnists Respond: Hizbullah is Trying to Suppress Freedoms in Lebanon

MEMRI
Special Dispatch No.3073
01 July '10

Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs at a June 8, 2010 hearing on Hizbullah, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman described the U.S. fight in recent years against Hizbullah, which it considers a threat to the interests of the United States, Lebanon, Israel, and the entire Middle East. Feltman said that "the United States provides assistance and support in Lebanon that work to create alternatives to extremism, reduce Hizbullah's appeal to Lebanon’s youth, and empower people through greater respect for their rights and greater access to opportunity. Through USAID and the Middle East Partnership Initiative) MEPI), we have contributed more than $500 million to this effort since 2006..."[1]

In response to Feltman's statements at the subcommittee hearing, Hizbullah launched a furious attack against him and against Lebanese elements that had accepted American aid, threatening to sue them for collaboration with the enemy, and also to sue the U.S. administration itself for endangering Lebanese national unity by instigating strife in the country.[2] On June 30, 2010, it was reported that attorney May Al-Khansa, who is identified with the Lebanese opposition headed by Hizbullah, had filed a private lawsuit against Feltman for "establishing a terrorist association aimed at changing Lebanon's social makeup, and for financing terrorism and exacerbating sectarian and racist extremism."[3]

Hizbullah's threats evoked angry responses in Lebanon. The daily Al-Mustaqbal, owned by Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'd Al-Hariri, stated that Hizbullah is trying to subject Lebanon to a regime of oppression similar to Ahmadinejad's regime in Iran. A more scathing response was penned by a columnist on the Now Lebanon website, which is affiliated with the March 14 Forces. He wrote that Hizbullah's methods were reminiscent of those used by the Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels.

Hizbullah: We Will Sue Media, Organizations and Politicians Who Received Money from U.S.

In a session of the Lebanese parliament, Hizbullah MP Nawwaf Al-Moussawi accused Lebanese media, organizations, and individuals of accepting funds from the U.S. and called upon the parliament "to conduct an investigation and find out who these elements are."[4] In a June 21 interview with the Lebanese OTV channel, Al-Moussawi announced that Hizbullah is working to find out who had accepted U.S. aid and is considering filing a lawsuit against them. He said that most of the funds had been given to politicians and political organizations in Lebanon, and that accepting them is tantamount to collaborating with the enemy.[5] On June 22, Al-Moussawi announced that Hizbullah is also considering a lawsuit against the U.S. administration itself on the basis of Feltman's statements, and repeated his accusations against Lebanese who had received American funds. He claimed that Hizbullah had known who these elements were even prior to Feltman's statements to the Senate subcommittee.[6]

In an interview for Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV, Al-Moussawi said that the funds Feltman had referred to as "assistance" were aimed at distorting and even ruining Hizbullah's image in Lebanon. He added: "Some [Lebanese] media elements are harming the journalistic profession and its honor. The elements that received the funds have a chance to recant before we toughen our position, for we are managing this campaign with patience and confidence. Hizbullah Secretary-General [Hassan Nasrallah] knows who took what and when. Those who accepted [money] received it not only from the U.S. Agency for [International] Development [USAID] but also from the U.S. Bureau for Fighting Narcotics [sic], which is actually a bureau for spreading drugs in Lebanon..." Al-Moussawi said further that the sum mentioned by Feltman was only the tip of the iceberg."[7]

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Hedgehogs and Foxes in the Middle East

Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum


Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
30 April '10

The fox, as Isaiah Berlin wrote, knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Reagan was a hedgehog because his presidency was animated by a basic belief in the superiority of democracy and free markets to Communism. When it comes to the Middle East, President Obama is what could be called a reverse hedgehog: he is animated by one grand vision, and it is completely wrong.

In this vision, the conflicts, failures, and policy difficulties of the Middle East revolve around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All roads in the Middle East, for Obama, lead back to Israel, and probably to the West Bank and the Golan Heights. As Tony Badran notes, another high-level administration official has confirmed this fixation:

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America’s “big game”

Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
27 April '10

During last week’s stormy hearing on Syria in the US House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, the Obama administration for the first time laid out its Syria policy. Unfortunately, the policy is based on a flawed, old premise that brings Washington awfully close to accepting a line the Syrians perpetually seek to sell – the politics of grievance. Distressingly, the Americans are signaling that they're interested shoppers.

Although the basic components of US policy had been hinted at earlier, this was the first time that an official openly laid out what the administration’s end game is. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, who was the official testifying before the subcommittee, outlined the administration’s conceptual framework as follows: The US is working to mitigate Iran’s regional influence, which Syria facilitates. But Syria is not Iran, and there’s a basic policy difference between them: Unlike Iran, Syria has an interest in negotiating a peace agreement with Israel. Therefore, the peace process is, in Feltman’s words, the “big game”. The administration believes that a peace deal between Damascus and Jerusalem would cure the Syria problem.

If this sounds like a familiar tune from the 1990s, that’s because in the end it's nothing but a reprise of the view that holds the conflict with Israel as the engine driving all regional dynamics and regime behavior. It’s the politics of grievance.

This line of thinking plays right into the Syrians’ hands, affording them a pass for their actions and duplicity pending the conclusion of a peace deal that may not materialize for years, if ever.

Witness, for example, this statement by Feltman: “Syria's relationship with Hezbollah and the Palestinian terrorist groups is unlikely to change absent a Middle East peace agreement.” The logic of this statement is but one step removed from justifying the arming of Hezbollah. It’s the logic that holds Syrian policy to be reactive and grievance-based. But the Obama administration’s “big game” is nothing if not a cocktail of this grievance logic and the infamous concept of “linkage”.

This toxic viewpoint was echoed by National Security Advisor Jim Jones at a recent event at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy: “One of the ways that Iran exerts influence in the Middle East is by exploiting the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict… Advancing this peace would... help prevent Iran from cynically shifting attention away from its failures to meet its obligations.”

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Shadow Play

Lee Smith
Tablet
21 April '10

Ambassador Robert Ford is a career foreign-service officer with a distinguished record who now finds himself under a strange spotlight, one that illuminates one of Washington’s most heated debates: What direction should U.S. policy on Syria take? Some argue that the United States should continue to isolate a regime that has declared itself our enemy, as we did during the Bush years; others contend that we should turn the page and engage Damascus. Ford is the man the White House has tapped as the next U.S. ambassador to Damascus, five years after the last one was withdrawn following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Hariri’s murder touched off the Cedar Revolution that seemed, for a time, as if it might herald the rebirth of a democratic Lebanon, free from the control of the Assad regime in Syria, which saw Lebanon as part of its historical inheritance. The prospect of an independent Lebanon was even less appealing to the Syrians than was the prospect of a democratic neighbor in Iraq, where Damascus also employed terrorism as part of its strategy to roll back the United States and its partners in the Middle East. Syria’s war targeted not only American allies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel, but also U.S. diplomats and military personnel. Since 2003, Syria has served as the main transit route that foreign fighters use to enter Iraq, and it has provided financial, logistical, and operational support to a wide range of insurgent forces aiming to kill American soldiers.

Accordingly, Damascus has few friends in Washington. But it nonetheless occupies a unique position in U.S. policymaking circles: Syria kills Americans and our allies, but its strategic significance pales in comparison to China, Russia, and Iran, which makes it a second- or even third-tier issue. And even as Syria policy fosters loud debate, surprisingly, that debate doesn’t break over strictly partisan lines; the split is reflected throughout Washington, even in the U.S. military, and within the Obama Administration.

The foremost proponent of reaching out to Syria is the commander-in-chief, and yet more than a year after taking office, President Barack Obama has been unable to make good on his campaign promise of engaging this adversary. The first step is to return an ambassador to Damascus, a White House campaign spearheaded, oddly, by Sen. John Kerry, who has effectively become Damascus’s voice in official Washington and the most prominent U.S. official with a soft spot for a regime that much of Washington loves to hate.

This past week was a bad one for those eager to reach out to Syria. It was reported that Damascus is believed to have transferred to Hezbollah Scud missiles that would be able to reach any part of Israel. “The threat that Syria might transfer more advanced weapons to Hezbollah has existed for a long time,” says Elliott Abrams, who oversaw Middle East affairs in the George W. Bush White House and is now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “With respect to Scuds, it has been understood the Israelis would interdict such a shipment. I do not recall the Bush Administration ever expressing disagreement with that view.”

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War and Peace in the Levant

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
01 February '10

The dramatic scale of Hezbollah’s rearmament will not be without consequences. Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told Haaretz yesterday that “he was growing increasingly worried by reports describing the quantity and types of weapons being smuggled to the terrorist organization.” The Washington Post reports that Hezbollah has dispersed its rockets throughout Lebanon, ensuring a conflict that will engulf the entire country. Tony Badran wonders whether Bashar Assad has foolishly convinced himself that he will again be held harmless if another war breaks out.

The war calculations of Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah involve an estimation of how much time the Obama administration will give Israel to fight. In 2006 — very much owing, of course, to Israel’s poor performance — the IDF fought for only a month before accepting terms from the UN. There are good reasons to believe that next time, Israel will have even less time.

A new war would explode the myth that Obama’s outreach to the Arabs and pressure on Israel have set the Middle East on a new path. Israeli-Arab wars, this narrative holds, were the kind of things that happened during the Bush years, when the president ignored the peace process and alienated Muslims, and neocons imperiled world peace before breakfast. To have a war unfold in the enlightened, post-Cairo speech era, after dozens of visits by George Mitchell to the region — that would be quite an embarrassment.

How many days — much less weeks — would pass before Obama began criticizing the Israeli operation and refusing diplomatic protection at the UN?

The resistance groups are surely counting on America to enforce a short conflict that restricts the IDF’s ability to strike back forcefully at Hezbollah. But it is not clear, given Obama’s declining political fortunes, how much leverage he will have over Israel. In private, the Arabs will be telling Obama to let Israel finish the job. What Nasrallah is counting on, Obama may not be able to deliver. Or may choose not to. Or F-16s may begin sorties over Damascus. The uncertainty about where America stands is dangerous.

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