This is preposterous rubbish. If any fool on the left was running around advocating non-violence when the Vietnamese were being murdered and the only people stopping it were the Viet Cong, they should have been ex-communicated, if not executed. Zinn, Chomsky, Ali - all of the soixant-huitards supported the right of the Viet Cong to fight. And since when was violent resistance so heterodox on the left? Has this creep never heard of the International Brigades? Heaven forfend that one should ever get one's hands dirty!> It's hard to endorse > violence when you're anti-war, but if you're anti-imperialist there's a > long history of violent struggles to "inspire" you (although supporters > of this path seem to forget the most successful anti-imperialist > struggles, such as Gandhi's in India and Mandela's in South Africa, > were almost entirely non-violent, while others, like Algeria or > Vietnam, produced corrupt and violent regimes in their wakes).
More glib fatuities: if imperialism is not the problem here, then perhaps this pious polemicist can tell us exactly what is? If pacifism is the solution everywhere, perhaps he can explain what happened to the Jews? I mean, since he raises Ghandi, and since we know what Ghandi recommended for those people, I think it would be interesting to know how the Jews could have pacifically resisted the Nazis? I suppose had they resisted by force, they might well have ended up with a corrupt and violent regime...
> At the very moment they were being > threatened with beheading, leading anti-war activists attended a > Hezbollah sponsored conference in Beirut where they declared the > organization to be the best model of resistance against the New World > Order, and proclaimed their support for the very Iraqi resistance that > was threatening to kill their comrades.
Here is the racist imaginary at work, in which metonymy becomes a substitute for logic. Hezbollah is not the same as the takfiri organisations in Iraq, and the nationalist resistance is not to be confused or conflated with those people either. Yet, for the racist, it's all the same brown horde.
> As for Hezbollah, while > I've done research on the movement for almost half a decade, and > understand the important role it has played in building democracy and > even empowering women, it can't be denied that it is also a military > organization that regularly engages in violence, some of it (although > by no means all) terroristic, to advance its aims.
Yes, it has engaged in defensive violence. The problem is?
> But even if we accept that that Lebanese and Palestinians have the > right to resist the occupations they are suffering, how can Hezbollah > be said to be winning from any score-card that would make sense to the > signers of the Guardian letter?
At last - Levine reluctantly and belatedly accepts that the Lebanese and Palestinians have a right to resist. The basis of his complaint now is...?
> Whatever its motivation and Israel's > actions leading up to its kidnapping of two IDF soldiers, Hezbollah's > attack has produced an unimaginably terrible price for the people of > Lebanon
This is outrageous - and from a man who actually has the chutzpah to question the sanity of the left? Hezbollah's attack "produced" Israel's pre-planned murder.
> much as Hamas's violence has allowed Israel to achieve many > goals it otherwise could not have in the Occupied Territories.
Why is this guy fixated on Hamas? Doesn't he know that secular groups like Al Aqsa, the PFLP, the DFLP etc have conducted suicide attacks? And since when did non-violence produce results from Israel?
> Even if Hezbollah "wins" the war against Israel by surviving the > onslaught and re-cementing its power with Lebanon and the Muslim world, > Lebanon can only lose.
Lebanon's losses are inflicted by Israel. It's losses will be greater if Israel succeeds. The only forces stopping Israel at the moment are the armed Lebanese resistance. What part of this escapes Mr Levine?
> Why should we be encouraging Hezbollah when Lebanon > is paying so dearly for the massive miscalculation-in moral, human and > financial, if not in political terms-of Nasrallah and the Hezbollah > leadership? Can't the Lebanese people, and the anti-war movement, do > better?
They are paying dearly for Israel's calculated atrocities, and Hezbollah, along with Amal, the communists, Aoun's men etc are the only thing preventing Israel from taking the whole country.
> The simple fact is that today more than ever violence begets violence, > and the support and solidarity from Western-based activists and > intellectuals can't change a dynamic in which violent resistance, > whether to military or economic occupation, almost always winds up > strengthening the powerful at the expense of the weak.
This guy is a candle in the wind - he's dim and illuminates fuck all. Support and solidarity during the Vietnam war almost certainly changed the dynamic - the Viet Cong could never have won militarily. They took the country from the US because they US lost at home.
> If progressives > really want to show solidarity and support for Palestinians, Lebanese, > and Iraqis, we should be willing to travel to their countries, put our > bodies on the line to stop the violence, and help develop the > techniques of non-violent resistance, solidarity, and potentially at > least, reconciliation, that made the anti-globalization movement so > successful.
Yes, these techniques that stopped the Seattle hoe-down: ever so peaceful. Genoa: peaceful. London: peaceful. Prague: Nirvana. Mark Levine's preferred mode of argument appears to be to baldly assert patent falsehoods, leaven it with emotional blackmail and spice it up with a soupcon of bad faith, casuistry and insinuation. You'll know the American left is picking up when people like Levine are laughed out of every conference hall and off every platform in the country.
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