Ayoon wa Azan (Hezbollah is making a mistake)

I support Hezbollah against Israel, but I oppose it on every other position and policy. For years, Hezbollah was able to avoid all the mistakes and sins that other national liberation movements had fallen into. However, we are now at a point where Hezbollah’s mistakes are proceeding from Syria to Bahrain to other Arab and western countries. It is as if the party is failing to see how much harm it is doing to its national cause. The Israeli government prays every day that Hezbollah will practice its terrorism around the world. Israel unjustly pinned the two terrorist operations in Argentina on the party but no one believed it. However, several armed operations in the world from Bulgaria to Azerbaijan and others followed the killing of Imad Moghniyeh in Syria. Some of these operations were linked to the party and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. I personally am hoping that Hezbollah will be eventually acquitted from all accusations of external terrorism because the consequences will be very dire to the resistance against Israel. Hezbollah flew high by countering the Israeli offense in 2006. Despite the severe damages to the Lebanese infrastructure back then, Hezbollah emerged as a victor and taught the Israelis a lesson that they will never forget. After that, I saw pictures of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in every shop of Khan al-Khalili in Cairo. I even saw pictures of him in Al-Azhar. Today, not one picture of the Sayyed is left anywhere in Egypt. Some say that Hezbollah is not master of its own destiny and cannot disobey the orders of the Ayatollah in Qum. However, my personal experience with the Sayyed and my following up on his work led me to say that this is a smart and cautious man and a skillful political player. Today, I see no skills in Hezbollah’s position concerning the parliamentary elections and the formation of a new Lebanese cabinet. Hezbollah is rather hindering the political game for no reason. Indeed, the party enjoys a wide popular base that can guarantee the success of its candidates in the upcoming elections, thus preserving the party’s power in any new cabinet. I criticised Hezbollah following its armed “showdown” in Al-Hamra Street. I said back then – and I say it again now – that I support the party against Israel regardless of whether it is right or wrong because the party is a movement of national liberation before anything else. I probably would not have written this column if it wasn’t for the party’s dispatching of young men to fight in Syria alongside the regime. I know how much Dr. Bashar al-Assad admires the Sayyed and I was hoping that the Sayyed would positively influence the president in order to rescue Syria, but he failed to do that. It should be clear to everyone inside and outside Syria that I would have opposed the interference in Syria even if Hezbollah had actually supported the opposition against the regime. There is an ongoing civil war in Syria and both sides are killing mostly innocent Syrian citizens. How did Hezbollah become a side in this worst kind of civil wars? I completely reject the killing of Lebanese young men in the Syrian war and I blame the two sides. The fighters who are killed in Syria are no martyrs and God will be dealing with them. I personally do not call for martyrdom but the resistance against the Israeli aggression is allowed by the human and divine laws. However, Britain and France are now calling for blacklisting Hezbollah based on its role in Syria. How can Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accept that a movement of national liberation with such a great history be dragged into this? Nothing justifies that a Lebanese mother should lose her son or that a wife or sister should mourn that young man who signed up for defending the country against a well-known enemy but not for taking part in a devastative civil war. I accuse Hezbollah of wasting its credits. I accuse Iran of harming Hezbollah and the Shiites everywhere. I accuse myself and everyone else because I never thought that we will be falling so low. All what is left for me to say is that I support Hezbollah against Israel, and these are mere words. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.