Conflagration

The doomsayers are out in the streets again, proclaiming the end is near.

Some say Armageddon has come. Others proclaim the Third World War is upon us. Still others quote the predications of Nostradamus, especially the one about a character wearing blue headgear leading the world to chaos (the leader of the Hezbollah habitually wears a blue turban).

At the start of the Israeli offensive last week, I listened annoyed to stupid chatter on AM radio – much of which devoted, as usual, to berating our government’s efforts to evacuate Filipino nationals as bombs rained down on Lebanon.

At that time, no one had any indication about the scale and intensity of the Israeli offensive. Our diplomatic personnel on the ground were trying very hard to make sense of the situation, accounting for our nationals and finding out if they indeed wanted to be evacuated. Yet the semi-literate commentators on AM radio seemed like they would be satisfied only if Philippine authorities hire every ship in the vicinity and charter every plane in the Gulf region.

Fortunately, Philippine authorities acted with prudence and began processing the safe exit of Filipinos who wanted to return. Imaginably, the greater number of Filipino workers in Lebanon were in the Christian areas that were left generally unscathed by the Israeli offensive even if the bombing did seem horrifying on television. The damage to infrastructure wrought by that offensive made life miserable for everyone, of course, regardless of their color or religion.

By the latter part of last week, the major western powers had moved in ships to the vicinity of Beirut to remove their nationals. A reasonable number of Filipinos were streaming down the road to Damascus where chartered planes could take them home.

As this was being written, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has massed armor and troops on their northern border, calling up their reserves and mobilizing the whole nation for war. From early indications, however, the "invasion" of southern Lebanon was composed largely of small-unit incursions across the border aimed at destroying specific Hezbollah strongholds. Those strike units returned to Israeli soil after completing their missions.

Over the next few days, we will likely see more of the same: small-unit incursions, moving with lightning speed and attacking with forceful precision. Israel has one of the best fighting forces in the world. It is an army that, to the last man, is highly trained for commando operations.

Needless to say, it is an army that learns valuable lessons from past wars and innovates tactical doctrine incessantly.

Reoccupying southern Lebanon will be, for Israel, the equivalent of the US invading Vietnam all over again. The lessons from that occupation are simply too clear and the IDF does not have a record of repeating the same mistakes.

Calls for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire are naïve.

Among the lessons Israel learned the past few years is that the Hezbollah cannot be allowed to sit unperturbed just north of the border. In the six years since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon after occupying the area for nearly two decades, the Hezbollah has gathered about 30,000 rockets that they could rain on Israel’s northern cities and settlements at will.

Hezbollah is a fanatical Shiite organization with a powerful militia armed and paid for by Iran and Syria. It has established itself as a state within a state, making a mockery of the formal democracy that the rest of Lebanon is trying to consolidate.

With its immense armory and what seems to be an endless stream of money from her patrons, the Hezbollah runs a shadow government. It maintains schools and hospitals as well as runs large charities – thereby cultivating its base of support for its insane crusade of annihilating the state of Israel. It has recently enjoyed more robust support from the fundamentalist government at Tehran.

Israel has made clear its objective. The capacity of the Hezbollah must be degraded decisively before this offensive abates. If Lebanon wants a cessation of the bombing, the Lebanese Army must be prepared to exercise sovereignty over southern territories where the terrorist Hezbollah runs its own virtual state.

It is easy to buy terrorist propaganda that paints Israel as the villain in this affair as some of our own fanatical cults would rather have us do – using the plight of our terrified migrant workers as the excuse for illogical agitation. These fanatical leftist cults have used the troubles in Lebanon as a tool for building anger against our own government because we have not sided with the terrorists.

After all, Israel enjoys clear military superiority here. It has been ruthlessly calculating in deploying that superiority to achieve its security objectives. That ruthless calculation has produced civilian casualties the past week of hostilities. The offensive has made life hell for many Filipinos working in the area of conflict.

But it should be easy to understand Israel’s concerns as well. No one wants a hostile force, now armed with an incredible amount of rockets, sitting just outside your fence.

The Hezbollah is a terrorist force with a fanatical ideology. This is the group that invented suicide bombing as a tactic. It has perfected kidnapping and cruel execution as a method.

Hundreds of Israelis have been killed or badly maimed by suicide bombing. Nearly a million Israelis have now fled southwards because of the Hezbollah rockets. Their security concerns have valid ground.

This is a nasty and distressful war. It is rooted in centuries-old conflicts that cannot be easily resolved. But the conflict is not something adept international diplomacy cannot manage.

True, this nasty little war could precipitate a larger conflagration, a general clash of civilizations. But that possibility is reduced by the availability of many institutions and forces available for managing the conflict. The bottom line, however, is that Israel’s security concerns in the face of weapons build-up by hostile regimes in the region ought to be assuaged.

Meanwhile, it is correct that the Philippines remain neutral in this conflict. We have much to lose and none to gain by taking sides.

Our diplomacy must remain sober and the agitators in the streets are best ignored.