Hezbollah-Hamas rift quietly widens further

[Originally posted at NOW]

There are, arguably, more important things going on in the Middle East at this moment, but no one who takes an interest in (or is simply entertained by) the fratricidal frictions between the region’s self-described “Islamic Resistance” movements brought on by the Syrian conflict can afford to ignore this ‘Letter to Hamas’ penned on Monday by Al-Akhbar’s editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin.

It takes the conventional Stalinist form of the apparatchik sternly reprimanding a comrade for deviancy from ‘revolutionary’ doctrine. Hamas, warns Amin, is “straying from the path of resistance.” Specifically, in siding with the Syrian opposition against the Assad regime, the movement has “implicated” itself “in questionable activity against the Resistance in Lebanon.”

Well, we knew that much already. What’s new now is Amin’s explicit accusations of violence carried out by Hamas not just against the Syrian regime, but Hezbollah’s civilian constituency in Lebanon itself:

“It is common knowledge […] that a Palestinian named Ahmad Taha was behind the rocket attack on Dahiyeh several months ago. He was assisted by many, among them a prominent member of Hamas in Rashidiya refugee camp in South Lebanon by the name of Aladdin Yassine. When Lebanese army intelligence asked for Hamas’ cooperation, they helped with Taha but refused to surrender Yassine, claiming that he had left the camp and his whereabouts are unknown.

It’s hard to imagine what Hamas is thinking – does it not understand the repercussions of dragging its feet in such a critical matter? Does it not know that its actions could cause a major rift with Hezbollah – the main target of the Dahiyeh rocket attack – and supporters of the Resistance, who have never hesitated in their commitment to the liberation of Palestine and all those forces that are struggling to that end?”

For Amin to all but accuse of treachery the foremost Palestinian militant group strikes me as rather significant. Also interesting is what it reveals about his attitude to “resistance” in general. Apparently when Hamas – which fought a week-long war with Israel as recently as last November – goes to fight in Syria on behalf of a popular uprising, this marks its “decline as a resistance movement.” Yet, when Hezbollah – which hasn’t traded serious blows with the Zionists in over seven years now – intervenes (on a far greater scale) on the side of the incumbent dictatorship, this leaves no blemish on its “resistance” credentials whatsoever. This might well make perfect sense to Amin, but for those of us without the benefit of his peculiar perspicacity, it begs again that old question: against whom is this “resistance?”

A note on the Al Akhbar/STL question

[Originally posted at NOW]

One never knows quite how seriously to take the emissions of Al Akhbar’s editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin – a caricature of the puritanical, prolier-than-thou pseudo-leftist; who laments the collapse of the Soviet Union; who says with a straight face that all Lebanese who oppose Hizbullah’s private arsenal are “working for Israeli military intelligence”; who could outbid even George Galloway in admiration for the careers of Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad – but his recent attempts to excuse the publication of the names, photographs and addresses of 17 alleged witnesses in the upcoming Special Tribunal for Lebanon trial are not much to chuckle about.

On Sunday, he published the first of two responses to STL spokesman Marten Youssef’s criticism of Al Akhbar’s conduct at the SKEyes Media Coverage of International Justice conference over the weekend, in which he argued that the public had a “right” to know the information, before changing the subject to the litany of alleged foul play on the part of the prosecution (or, as Amin calls it, the “international campaign of fabrication targeting the Resistance”).

In his second piece on Monday, Amin boasted that “We Will Not Be Silenced”, painting Al Akhbar as heroic whistleblowers, hounded and demonized once again by the global conspiracy “to damage the Resistance”.

Of the many points to make against this outrageously misplaced self-pity and dishonesty, let’s take just the two most obvious:

- A whistleblower is someone who exposes the crimes of the powerful, on behalf of the powerless and innocent. Al Akhbar, by contrast, put the powerless and innocent in potentially lethal danger, the only possible consequence of which is the protection of the guilty and powerful.

- Youssef’s criticism did not come from some morally compromised political bias, but from basic, fundamental respect for the process of international justice. As someone who attended all three days of the MCIJ conference, I can confirm that Youssef’s was not a minority opinion – all legal experts present, most of whom had extensive experience in international tribunals such as the ICTY and ICTR, and had no personal connection to or stake in Lebanese politics, were of the unanimous opinion that anything jeopardising the protection of witnesses was condemnable and a potential breach of the law.