A few weeks ago I watched the Israeli film Beaufort, which portrayed the experiences of a handful of Israeli soldiers occupying Beaufort Castle during the last days of the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon. I found it quite interesting, because my son served in the IDF in Lebanon at the same time, and later described to me his feeling — shared by many of his comrades — that abandoning the ground to Hezbollah was a mistake.
Which it turned out to be.
Anyway, a horrific moment in the film was when a missile — an American-made TOW missile [Tube launched, Optically tracked, Wire guided]Â — struck an observation post at Beaufort, killing its occupant.
TOW missile in flight (courtesy US Dept. of Defense)
The missile slammed into the outpost at about 620 mph, instantly turning it into an inferno. I wondered: where did Hezbollah get US-made weapons? I asked my son.
“Don’t you remember,” he asked? “You gave them to Iran during the ’80’s.”
Actually yes, I do: the so-called ‘Iran-contra affair’, in which the US transferred weapons to Iran by way of Israel in return for the freedom of various hostages that Iranian-controlled Hezbollah terrorists had taken in Lebanon during the decade. Iran also paid in money, which was used to fund anti-Sandinista guerrillas (“contras”) in Nicaragua.
About 2000 TOW missiles were sent to Iran (among other items) as part of the deal.
Basically, what happened was this:
- Hezbollah killed hundreds of Americans (241 in the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing) and took numerous hostages, many of whom were Americans.
- The US sold a large quantity of weapons to Iran in violation of an arms embargo — the Iran-Iraq war was in progress — so that Iran would use its influence with Hezbollah to get hostages returned. Israel cooperated.
- Iran transferred the weapons to Hezbollah, which used them to kill Israelis.
- Hezbollah continued killing Americans (as well as Argentine Jews, Israelis, etc.) and taking hostages.
A few hostages were released, others died in captivity, some by torture (also here). It’s not clear if the arms transfer materially aided the release of hostages (indeed, it can be argued that hostages taken after the program was under way were kidnapped in order to keep it going).
In 1985 a group associated with Hezbollah claimed credit for the crash of a plane carrying about 250 US service personnel in Gander, Newfoundland. Although five members of a nine-member commission of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board ruled the crash an accident, the minority report persuasively argued that the cause was a detonation in the cargo area.
Appeasement: when will we learn?
Technorati Tags: Hezbollah, Iran-Contra, TOW missile
Appeasement as a general rule does not work. But this is especially true in the Middle East, where compromise and concession are regarded as signs of weakness. Consider the two Israeli withdrawals, and the response given them by Hizbollah and Hamas.
But in general the ‘mentality’ as far as I have experienced it here works in total opposition to the ‘compromise as sign of strength’ presumption. A concession here is taken to be a sign of weakness, and leads not to a concession on one ‘s own part but rather to a further demand. This is what Obama did not understand in thinking that getting Israel to make concessions on settlements would lead Arabs to make concessions in other areas. The concession is simply pocketed, the ante raised. The Palestinians never previously demanded an end to settlements as precondition for negotiation. Now that Obama has taken their side on it, they pocket the concession and demand more.
Apparently one of the most difficult things in the world is to understand others whose ways of thought are not built on the same presumptions and premises as one’s own.
Dear Mr. Feedman and Mr. Rosenthal:
I suspect many on the other side see us in the same light. How they see us:
1) We sign the Oslo Accords and continue to settle the West Bank and Gaza despite agreeing not to.
2) Leading up to the 1967 Six Day War, Israel bombs Damascus, Egypt masses its troops along the Sinai border of Israel to show its solidarity with Syria and hoping to give Israel second thoughts about continuing its aggression … Israel uses Egypt’s defensive maneuver as an excuse to conquer all the Sinai, the Golan and the West Bank.
3) 1947 – 1948, after massacring Arabs at Deir Yassin, Haganah proceeds to expel hundreds of thousands of unarmed Palestinians from their homes all across Palestine. Arab armies move in to try and halt the ethnic cleansing.
Of course, I do not agree with this one-sided, simplistic view of history. I don’t think I would necessarily agree with yours on these events either.
We should always be careful about what we assume others are like given that they are also making equally invalid assumptions about us. Each of our behaviors towards the other becomes a result of our misconceptions as much as it does a result of any real dangers. This feedback loop becomes self-reinforcing. That is why this conflict, like so many other similar ones (Northern Ireland comes to mind) becomes so intractable.
As for the danger of Hizbollah – yes it is real. My cousin was a commander in Southern Lebanon before we pulled out at the end of the first Lebanon War. He was born and raised on Kibbutz Ma’ayan Baruch on the Lebanese border. His motivation to protect his family as well as his country made him doubly committed to the task which I understand he carried out with great courage.
But how did Hizbollah come to be such a force? Yes it receives weapons and training from Iran, but it receives its deep motivation from the same basic source that my cousin did: the desire to protect the families, villages and land of Southern Lebanon. Hizbollah was not born in a vacuum, but rather in a state of war in which Israel was an occupier and was seen as a source of death and destruction (very much like the US Army was seen by the Viet Cong).
As for the Iran-Contra deal as an effort at appeasement; you are too kind. That was nothing but shear and unadulterated corruption. The Reagan administration’s paranoia about communists in Central America out-weighed it’s concern about appeasement of terrorists and it’s respect for US law. Reagan should have been impeached and Oliver North should still be in jail today.
David
David,
You wrote,
I seem to remember that Israel completely withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. Yet Hezbollah continues its aggression. Is it all because of a “desire to protect” the Shabaa farms?