This article is, in a way, a follow up on my previous article entitled ‘The sad truth about Hezbollah tactics’.

I am writing it for several reasons, the main one to clear many misunderstandings created by my previous document, and also to shed more light as to why I am doing this.

In the following lines, I will try to describe in the best way possible, what is meant by the article.

I broke it down into three main parts to enable the reader to fully grasp the ideas I am trying to convey:

• Who I am and a general background about me
• Why I am doing this
• The facts used to reach the conclusions

Firstly, let me introduce myself. I am a Lebanese citizen. I am a Christian, of Maronite confession.

For me, Lebanon comes first before anything else. This is how I was raised.

For close to two years, as a fighter in the Lebanese Forces, I resisted the Syrian plans to occupy the Christian sector of Beirut, then, when the inevitable happened and they finally took the whole country, I endured their occupation for nearly fifteen years, and resisted in the shadows alongside many of my fellow Lebanese brothers.

The last civil war that ravaged my country taught me a very important lesson, and that is, no foreign country wishes any good for Lebanon. They all seek to complete their own agendas, at the expense of the Lebanese people, regardless of religion:

• The Arabs (Gulf and Egypt): after two unsuccessful wars against Israel, in 1967 and 1973, found it easier to fight Israel using Lebanon as a proxy
• The Palestinians: after seeking refuge in Lebanon, they used it to launch attacks against Israel
• The Americans: they usually made sure Israel’s best interests were kept , and they also wanted to resist the spread of communism to the Middle East Region.
• The Soviets mainly supported the Arab countries in their fight against Israel, as they saw it as an opportunity to export communism to the area.
• The Israelis: even though they assisted the Christian militias in their fight against the Palestinians (PLO) from the mid seventies to the early eighties, they were doing so for their own benefits
• The Syrians: many of them refuse to consider Lebanon as a free sovereign state and consider it a part of Syria. In 1976, they entered Lebanon as a peace keeping force and soon turned into an occupation force, an occupation that lasted to the year 2005.
• The Iranians: after the Iranian revolution in the late seventies, they saw the Lebanese Shiites as a medium to expand their Islamic revolutionary ideologies and export them to the other countries.

It is important to note that there is a very big struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a struggle that has its roots in the differences between the Shiite and the Sunni confessions dating back to the assassination of the grandson of the Prophet, Hussein ibn Ali by the Sunnis in Karbala’ which is now in Iraq (around the 7th century AD)It is also important to note that throughout the Lebanese Civil war, many Lebanese militias and groups were supported by the different countries listed above, and finally that the war was actually an extrapolation of the Cold war that opposed at the time the two super powers, namely USA and the USSR.

A third point worth mentioning is that 1990, as a reward for its participation in the first Gulf war, Syria was given the green light by America to take over Lebanon. It was by agreement with Israel that Syrian planes flew over Beirut, for the first (and last time), to bombard Christian sectors thus opening the way for Syrian troops to advance.

Also, there has not been a single shot fired in the Golan heights which are originally Syrian but have been occupied by Israel since the six days war of 1967 and war of Yom Kippur in 1973.

So the reader can see why, as a Lebanese citizen, I look at any kind of foreign intervention or assistance with a great deal of skepticism and reluctance.

This said, I will now dive into the second section, which is why I condemn Hezbollah for its use of civilians as shields in the latest conflict that is ravaging Lebanon.

Firstly, I would like to stress that in no way is this a mea culpa or a form of attenuating the impact of my first article which ruffled some feathers among readers who support Hezbollah.

Another important point is that in this is not meant to help, assist, or excuse the Israeli actions. I consider their attack on Lebanon an infringement of Lebanese sovereignty and I demand that this useless bloodshed be stopped immediately.

All the Lebanese agree that there are more peaceful ways in solving the Hezbollah weapons issue, most important being that Syria officially acknowledges the Lebanese identity of the Shebaa Farms, thus allowing it to fall under the mandate of UN resolution 425, which would lead to Israel pulling its troops out, and removing any excuse for an armed resistance within the Lebanese territory.

Throughout the years, the subject of Hezbollah has become somewhat taboo in Lebanon and ill speaking of the Party of God can, even to this very day, land you in a jail cell courtesy of the Military Intelligence service, or much worse, a bullet in the head ( Ten days after the beginning of the conflict, a major Lebanese broadcasting station announced that eighteen people were summarily executed by the Hezeb after having been accused of spying for Israel).

Because of this, many of the party’s actions are swept under the proverbial carpet, including the usage of civilians as shields. Had this topic been brought to the open, many lives would have been spared.

To further understand the modulus operandi of this armed faction, it is important to go deeper in their religious beliefs.

Shi’ite religion was founded as a cult of mourning around Hussein, the third Imam. It is dominated by black flags and veils, the ubiquity of mourning, penitence and death, a conspicuous enthusiasm for self-sacrifice, the celebration of suffering, the reverence for martyrdom and the veneration of individual martyrs.

The Shi’ite religion is rooted the concept that while each Shi’ite shares in guilt for the death of the martyrs, one can nevertheless find redemption through a properly repentant attitude – above all through the intercession of an Imam, that is to say: a martyr. And naturally also by following Hussein into martyrdom itself. [1]

Thus, for the Shi’ite, martyrdom is the key to heaven, and this is the main creed of the Hezbollah fighters who do not fear death on the battlefield, but rather seek it.

This is the main key behind the strength of the Party of God and behind their formidable standoff against the repeated onslaught of the Israeli army, and also the main key to understanding the concept of death for those people. To be killed in the war is an honor for them, be you a militant or a civilian.

The main form of fighting used by Hezbollah fighters is guerilla warfare. In fact they have no apparent bases, no barracks where they regroup or any of the standard military formation that is seen in most armies. As guerillas, they fight a mobile war based on hit and run operations. They know that a war of attrition is the worst kind of war Israel can endure and therefore make the most of it. They also know what kind of impact the death of civilians has on the international community and make use of it to the extreme.

I believe that enough has been said about the conflict in the different news medias, so I will not go into how it started or why.

I would like to concentrate more specifically on the latest incident, the massacre of Qana which took place on Sunday July 30, 2006 and where fifty-five civilians, thirty-seven of which were children, and the rest women, perished when a building that sheltered them was bombarded by the Israeli Air force.

In my previous article, I had discussed why, in my opinion, Hezbollah was to blame for this massacre although it was carried out by the IAF. Now, I will describe how, not only myself, but many other Lebanese, have come to this conclusion.

Firstly, as in any investigation, we have to ask the question “who benefits from this”.

Although perpetuated by Israeli war planes, and the victims are Lebanese citizens, the beneficiary of this horrible deed is not Israel, this being for many reasons:

• Despite the American green light, and the UN turning a blind eye, claiming that Israel has the right to defend itself, the Israeli attack on Lebanon was criticized by many communities world wide
• Anti-Israeli sentiments, initially large among Arab communities, have grown even larger in the aftermath of the Qana tragedy.
• Israel has much to gain in a swift, surgical victory over Hezbollah, and the longer the conflict lasts, the more innocent civilians are killed, the less surgical and precise the Israeli operation appears.

On the other hand, Hezbollah has a lot to gain in making the conflict last longer since:

• It demonstrates its efficiency and might in battles lead on the ground.
• It humiliates the IDF and at the same time, the Arab countries that initially criticized the abduction of the two soldiers in the cross border raid of July 12th. The reader recalls that the combined Arab armies were unable to defeat Israel in two wars.
• The more civilians are hurt in the conflict, the greater the humiliation of IDF since it appears clumsy, inaccurate and unable to finish off a militia made up of a couple of thousand fighters, when its army counts around fifteen thousand soldiers
• In addition, the higher the civilian casualty count leads to greater anti Israeli sentiments amongst the Lebanese population and other countries, specifically Arab Muslim ones and therefore to more support for the Hezbollah cause.
• According to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s scope for political maneuvering had been reduced following the events in Qana, as was the amount of European support Israel is receiving for its operation in Lebanese soil[2]

Once the beneficiary has been established, we can move to the second point and that is the evidence on hand.

On the second day of the Israeli attack (July 13th 2006), an inhabitant of one of the southern villages called the Lebanese Broadcasting Cooperation to inform them about Hezbollah militants firing rockets at Israel from the center of the town. Israel retaliated by bombarding the location from which rockets were fired. Luckily, no casualties were reported.

As the days went by, more and more reports were coming from the South about how Hezbollah fighters would fire rockets from locations amidst civilian homes, causing retaliatory bombardment.

The reports came in shyly at first as many people feared retaliation from the fighters, and communications with the rest of the country were cut off by air raids.

But as refugees started to poor into the capital, the stories grew more concrete, yet all the people refused to talk in front of cameras or to be quoted.

The writer had interviewed many of those refugees and the stories told were shocking:

“They would come in on bikes, set up the launcher, fire and then disappear before the airplanes could arrive” said one man from a Christian border village.

“I start to shiver any time I hear a humming noise as it could either be an Israeli Drone plane filming the location in preparation for a raid or the bikes used by the fighters as they come in to shoot their rockets” said a young mother nursing her two month old infant…

A third witness told of how Hezbollah fighters had shaved their beards and come to live in with them in their houses:

“They would leave at sunset to go to the battle field and return at dawn to rest… until the mayor issued a curfew forbidding any one to leave their homes after 19:00h” he added, eyes looking around as if fearful that a word would have been heard by anyone.

“My two sons were shot at as they attempted to leave the town and were forced by the fighters to return to their home” all those reports told of people held prisoners in their own homes as the fighters hid among them.

Some international papers featured articles with pictures. Those papers included:

• The New York Times, dated July 28th, had an article by Sabrina Tavernise about Hezbollah actions in a southern Christian village named Ain Ebel.
• The Sunday Herald Sun in the July 30th edition ( ) which showed three pictures of Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.
• The Guardian which featured an article about Hezbollah modulus operandi ()
• CNN which showed footages obtained from cameras in drone and fighter planes that clearly indicated how civilian homes were used to hide rocket launchers
• The Lebanese Forces Blog Site featured many articles describing the actions of Hezbollah guerillas and warning of carnages like the Qana massacre. Some articles include reports from one of the villages where those acts were commited.

Besides the above, it is very interesting to note that Sunni border villages like the village of Shebaa (not to be mistaken with Shebaa farms), where the presence of Hezbollah guerillas is not tolerated nor welcome, was virtually unharmed throughout the onslaught.

In terms of motives, what could have been the motives of the Party of God to commit such a horrible act?

Firstly there is the aspect of causing more humiliation to the IDF as well as provoking the international community into a stronger condemnation of the Jewish state.

But if one was to look closely at the timing of the operation, one would realize the magnitude horror and the cold calculations that took place:

On the nineteenth day, Hezbollah appeared to be making a heroic defense stance, warding off every single advancement attempt by the IDF, while demanding an unconditional cease fire.

For them, an immediate and unconditional cease fire would have been very beneficial since it would allow them to “catch their breath”, rearm and reorganize and possibly make a comeback to the battlefield.

Yet, things were seen differently on the international scene.

The Lebanese government, along with the United Nations, had proposed a seven-point plan for the hostilities to cease. The plan was a total solution to the problem and not a simple request for cease fire. The major points were deployment of the army to the south, resolving the Shebaa farms issue, which would lead to the disarmament of Hezbollah.

At first, the plan was vehemently opposed by Hezbollah ministers and representatives, then, on the day following the announcement of the plan by Lebanese Premier Siniora (Thursday July 27th), Hezbollah declared that it supported the seven-point plan.

The declaration surprised many, yet was welcome as a sign of goodwill.

Three days later, the massacre occurred and Hezbollah declared that the seven-point plan was void, that they rejected any talks with Israel as long as there was no UNCONDITIONAL cease-fire. The region was back to square one.

So we have beneficiary, evidence as well as motives determined, I guess that we can clearly rest the case.

Let it be a lesson for the future, keeping silent about such wrong doings will only open the door to more massacres of innocent civilians.

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[1] “Roots of Terror: Suicide, Martyrdom self-redemption and Islam” By Navid Kermani