لماذا “يقاتل” حزب الله في سورية؟
Pourquoi le Hezbollah combat en Syrie, le point de vue de l’organisation
traduction en anglais ci-dessous
http://www.almanar.com.lb/adetails.php?eid=481099&cid=31&fromval=1&frid=31&seccatid=171&s1=1
Article explains Lebanese Hezbollah’s involvement in Syrian armed conflict
Text of report by Lebanese Hezbollah Al-Manar TV website on 2 May
[Article by Isra al-Fas: “Why is Hezbollah ’fighting’ in Syria?”]
Media exaggerations about battles Hezbollah is waging in Syria and about the number of the party’s martyrs in those battles or the number of those killed from the other side made people ask: Is Hezbollah really fighting in Syria? Why? Under what headline? Does the fight have a sectarian dimension in which the resistance, which often warned against sectarian strife, fell?
These are legitimate questions given the good reputation that Hezbollah built and entrenched over long years, during which it managed to change the equation and impose its balances of power in the face of the Israeli occupation, and given the ferocious media campaign that has Hezbollah’s “fight” in Syria as its main headline and the relentless media incitement that has been going on for two years now and that finds it easy to give the conflict a sectarian dimension.
Critics say that Hezbollah sends fighters under the headline of protecting holy shrines, which means that the party fell in the trap of a sectarian strife. They claim that through the party’s participation, the battle took a Sunni-Shi’i dimension. But how do those who are not influenced by this incitement read the situation?
Hezbollah’s record, to which the party’s secretary general implicitly referred in his speech the day before yesterday, gives answers to all these questions. The party, which in its repeated positions warned against sectarian strife, did not declare holy war when Iraq’s sanctities were violated and shrines of some infallible imams were bombed. Hezbollah did not support the demands of the Bahraini protesters when they went beyond the call for political reforms to a call for the removal of the king after the authorities demolished 30 Shi’i mosques, sabotaged dozens of worship places, and burned copies of the holy Koran.
In all those events, Hezbollah repeated its warning against sectarian strife, showing understanding each time for the sentiments of the followers of the sect, stressing that holy places do not belong to a certain Islamic group to the exclusion of the others, and always emphasizing that “greater jihad” must be directed towards the Zionist occupation.
Hezbollah’s policy did not change, just as the sentiments and feelings of the masses towards their holy places did not and will not change. But the conflict in Syria has another dimension that everyone near and far realizes - except, that is, for those who are under the full influence of the tendentious propaganda.
Hezbollah, which from the beginning of the events in Syria said it understood the reform demands that were raised and presented initiatives along with its allies to ease the tension, saw a new dimension of what Syria was witnessing. It warned others against riding the wave and spoke about a conspiracy targeting Syria and its role in the region and about attempts by some regimes to settle scores with the Syrian regime because of the support it offered for the resistance movements. Hezbollah also saw in the events an attempt to target an entire axis of which the party is a mainstay.
Hezbollah stresses that the conflict in Syria has an international dimension linked to the regime’s options with regard to the issue of resistance and opposition. The party sees itself as the next target. Perhaps the kidnapping of the Lebanese in A’zaz helped validate and entrench the party’s vision among the party’s supporters, who came to realize that sectarian affiliation is enough justification for attacks and blackmail in the bazaar of the international conflict with the resistance, the tools of which are armed groups affiliated with the intelligence agencies of countries that played a key role in the escalation of the crisis, without the crime of kidnapping civilians affecting the positions of those who supported the “Syrian revolution” as a “freedom-seeking” movement.
The prevailing conviction today is that any success in dismantling the resistance axis militarily, through the toppling of the Syrian regime, would not spare Hezbollah and others, especially after the failure of previous diplomatic efforts to distance Syria from this axis. Hezbollah’s supporters realize the dimensions of the battle and know its backgrounds. This is reflected in people’s acceptance of the fall of Hezbollah martyrs who confronted military attacks on their villages and property in border regions. Hezbollah supporters accepted to wage those battles in order to protect their lands and property, as they did in the past, after the State failed to carry out this mission.
Hezbollah and its supporters are paying the price of their enlightened reading of the events and their dimensions. The media propaganda, which fabricates news to produce reactions, portrays their self defence as “fighting” and “war crimes”. As a result of this propaganda, those who yesterday denounced “the Iraqi democracy that was imposed by the American tank” are the same ones who are today inviting this tank to come to Syria. The administration that “sponsors democracies” in the region is the same administration that refused to recognize a government produced by a popular will in Gaza in 2006 only because it is a resistance government.
Source: Al-Manar Television website, Beirut, in Arabic 0000 gmt 2 May 13
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