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Off the West's Trajectory
The war in Lebanon must have come as a disastrous bargain for Israeli ruling clique that draws its sustenance from a leadership that has risen from former terrorist organizations Irgun and Haganah. Sense of unease is also palpable in the neo-cons ruling Washington and the Whitehall who cannot find any solace from the latest bout in the Middle East. Israel launched its onslaught under the pretext of avenging the kidnapping of altogether three soldiers. But lost 158 of its men, 119 of them soldiers. Lebanon has of course taken the battering in a major way with almost nine lakh people having been displaced, around 850 deaths and with major infrastructure destroyed under the barbaric bombing by the Israelis. It has suffered much grievous destruction on all these counts. The war has made deeper scars on the morale of the Jewish state and its major patron, Bush and Blair both of whom have developed lies as the trademark of their foreign policy. Every Katyusha fired from the southern Lebanon has made deeper hole in the credibility of the West in the eyes of the world that was deeply suspicious of the duo’s intention of leading ‘a war against terror’ in the post 9/11 world. The duo has failed miserably in ‘creating a new Middle East’ in the words of Bush’s Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. The rise in the morale of Hizbollah carries the promise of undoing all the Bush-Blair stratagems. Its tenacity, stubborn resistance of the Israel terror and steadfastness against what was mildly put ‘disproportionate response’ has won it all round accolades.
It was clear from the day one of the war that the Jewish state was being used by the evil empire of the West to crush the democratic rise of Islam in the Middle East. Rise of Hamas in Palestine, sound grip of Hizbollah in Lebanon, and significant victory by the Islamist groups in Egypt last year had indicated that Middle Easterners were not being ‘liberated’ the way the West desired.
The new Middle East that seems to be rising will neither be cordial nor peaceful for the comfort of the West. Hizbollah has clearly emerged as the new saviour of the Arabs. It is evident from the chart-busting 82 per cent popularity rating of the Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah who has emerged as the Hero of the Arab World in an opinion poll conducted by Ibne Khaldoun Centre for Development Studies among Egyptians. Iranian President Ahmedinajad (72 %), Palestinian leader Khaled Al-Meshal (60%) and surprisingly Osama Ben Laden (52%) follow Nasrallah. None of the current heads of Arab states made the list of the 10 most popular public figures.
All these must be sad news for Washington which has propped up the corrupt, inept and the latest sobriquet to add-impotent-leaders of the region. Democracy in the Middle East does not seem to fall into the Western pattern. Last year the showing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian polls had chilled the Western aspirations from the Arab street. The new-cons must be planning end of all that sanctimonious posturing on liberty and democracy in the region with more cataclysmic news pouring from ‘Liberated Iraq’ and Afghanistan.
The new leadership in the Middle East is rising on the strength of its pious character, their austere living, their social welfare activities, the interest free loan schemes and the refusal to be brow-beaten by the tyrant rulers imposed by the West. This leadership has learnt to practise democracy better than the West, has implemented the welfare measures to liberate the people from the yoke of MNC-guided capitalism and is better aware of the grassroots social and economic problems of their people than the West thinks it does. Their rise should not bring comfort to the West and Israel. But that is the reality of the new Middle East, however off the track it must be from Rice’s trajectory.
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