Who Has the Right to Self-Defence?

Tonight I went to this event about the war in Lebanon, in order to table for an organization I'm part of. Somehow my roomate got wind of this and asked me if this was "anti-Israel" and "pro-Hezbollah". I quipped "I hope not" in answer to the last question. However, I have to say that there was definately a "pro-Hezbollah" vibe, with salutations to the "resistance".

My feelings about Hezbollah have been ambivilent at best. But the fact remains that Hezbollah did resist Israeli aggression in Lebanon. One can say that it was wrong to kidnap Israeli soldiers. But then, why is Israel detaining thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese without charge? People say that Hezbollah is a terrorist group. Why? Because it doesn't recognize Israel? Who calls Israel terrorist when it refuses to recognize the Palestinians as a people with full political rights? Is it because Hezbollah has fired rockets into northern Israel, killing and terrorising civilians? OK, we've got a better argument here. But do you know how many civilians Hezbollah killed during the war? 30, or a bit more. How many civilians did Israel kill in the last war? Over 1000! Think about that, and then consider- who are the terrorists?

Those who say that Israel had the right to defend itself by invading the territory of others deny those others the right to self-defence.

I still believe, as I've stated before, that Hezbollah as well as Israel committed war crimes. However, as the figures above indicate, the gravity of the crimes are not of the same magnitude. This is mainly due to the power imbalance between the two sides, although there is also the fact of Israeli aggression, which is itself a crime. Still, Hezbollah could not have killed that many civilians. Perhaps if they could have they would have but now we are in the realm of the hypothetical. In the real world, in the world of what is and what has been done, Israel had the power to kill that many people and they used it. They had the power to terrorize the population and destroy the infrastructure of a country and they used it.

During the war, the people subjected to this onslaught were almost alone. If they praise Hezbollah's resistance, let us ask ourselves- who else was on their side? And Israel would have sent troops deep into Lebanon, were it not for the fact that Hezbollah was putting up fierce resistance on the ground. No one else was resisting the Israeli invasion. And there's something else. We're not the only ones with pride. We're not the only ones who don['t like being always kicked around. Israel has long seemed militarily invincible, able to beat up on Arabs with impunity. People admire Hezbollah for stopping the Israeli military in its tracks- although of course it was unable to stop the air massacre.

What people have to recognize, before they start with their labels of "anti-Israel" and "pro-Hezbollah", is that if we are going to only recognize the rights of certain select groups of people, like Israeli Jews, then we should at least not kid ourselves into thinking that we are being humanists or bravely resisting anti-Semitism. In fact, we are being racist. Israeli Jews have the right to live in peace with political rights but then so does everybody else. If it's just us and our friends, then we are the oppressors.