THE VALIANT DEAD CONTINUE TO MANFULLY RESIST, COMRADES!

Note: this posting is meant as gentle remonstrance, and I hope to spark a slightly different perspective of recent events. I sincerely pray that my Arab and European readers will take it in the kindly spirit in which it is offered.



CIVILIANS IN COMBAT ZONES

Civilians die during military operations. This is obvious. Regrettable, but obvious.

More Europeans died as collateral damage during liberation than as actual combatants.
And no, I'm not calling the utter destruction of several German cities collateral damage.

Armies, whether invading or retreating, necessarily see civilians as either impediments or bumps on the landscape. Military organizations strike at combatants. Civilians occasionally get hit.

And civilians in war-zones are often not impartial observers, but actively involved, committed to one side or the other, and functioning in support-roles.

It is only in modern times that civilian casualties have generated much condemnation - and by modern times I mean the last forty years, during which the Europeans have not themselves been extensively involved in war, but have felt compelled to criticise allies that were.



MODERN GUERILLA TACTICS

Mao Tse-Tung argued that the civilian population was the natural hiding place for guerillas, and that the populace both needed to be co-opted, and considered expendable. To Ho Chi-Minh, civilians were the first and last line of defense, and the first group to throw into combat, as a distractive gambit and to tie the enemy down. A variation of this idea was used by Imam Khomeini to clear the minefields during the war with Iraq.


Such tactics have recently been employed in Lebanon, where many civilians were moved to support Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah (laqnatullah anhu), many civilians lambasted Israel and screamed bloody murder to the world "look what those horrid Jews are doing", and huge numbers of civilians volunteered to be human shields for Hezbollah.


I believe that such volunteering was because of the splendid 72 virgin opportunities......


In any case, I've been firmly told that no coercion whatsoever was involved ('heaven forefend and damn you for even thinking so'), and as the people who told me this are all good people and mostly European, who could never be accused of bias, I believe them.
I laud both the patriotic Lebanese volunteer shields, and their European supporters. Bravo.
The dead civilians of Lebanon continue to perform admirable services for Hezbollah and its supporters, much like the dead Muslims of Sabra and Shatila, killed by Christians, did for the Euro-communists.


This does however raise questions about civilians in the Middle-East. And suggests that dead civilians are extremely useful to their own side.



MIDDLE EASTERN ATTITUDES ABOUT ENEMY CIVILIANS

In warfare in the Levant, civilians are often more dangerous than the official combatants. Most of the deaths in Iraq have been caused by civilians expressing polite political disagreement with their brethren. More ordnance is in civilian hands in Iraq than is held by the army and police force, and it is wielded more effectively besides.

Civilians in middle-eastern countries are a force to be reckoned with, whose often inchoate blood-lust is easily channelled by political demagogues and religious leaders.


Armies and politicians in the Middle-East have never considered civilians inviolate; certainly not the enemy populace, and often not even their own - Saddam Hussein, Hafez Assad, and Husni Mubarak all demonstrated political spunk by the judicious slaughter of some of their own people, much as one trims some fruits from a tree to make the others thrive. And of course they have at times vigorously sought to trim enemy populations.

Since World War II, well-over six million people have died in military events in the Mideast that did not involve Israel.


This is how wars along the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean have always been waged - since time immemorial, regions have been depopulated, cities have been laid waste, populations transported into exile, kingdoms pulled down stone by stone, and areas left abandoned to the howling wolves. This is part of the web and woof of glorious empires and great civilizations, whose achievements we still celebrate, and whose splendid heritage still warms our breasts. Egypt, Ur, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Macedon, Rome, Byzantium.

Often the victors would slaughter the men and the elderly, and enslave and rape the women and children.


Even Islam could not stop what was a time-honoured custom - opportunities to convert were often not extended to enemy tribes, instead they were treated as booty and traded like cattle. War, in addition to being a favoured mode of political discourse, was also an economic enterprise, which fuelled expansion and rewarded the faithful.

Slave raiding (rather than proselytizing) was practiced against the heathen until comparatively recently. Several Sultanates and Caliphates were slave-empires, notably the Mamelukes in Egypt and the Ottomans in the Balkans, Asia-Minor, and all of greater Syria.

Plus, to a certain degree, Saudi Arabia, where the royal family kept slaves even in the post-war period, and is rumoured to still have a few - mostly elderly wet-nurses and middle-aged eunuchs.


The mess in the Sudan is demonstrative of Islamic ideas about warfare, and a last echo of the slave-raiding culture. Events in Darfur excite the imaginations of many, who cannot find it in their hearts to utter bruising criticisms of the pious Islamists in Khartoum.

As similarly in the past they did not criticise their brother Saddam for what he did to the Kurds and to Kuwait, or brother Hafez for chiding of the city of Hama in 1982.

[Arabs are often pained by blunt speech, and prefer gentle diplomatic tact over overt criticism.]


All of this must be borne in mind when regarding statements by Palestinian leaders.



MODERATE PALESTINIANS

For instance, here's what Jamel Abed, Fatah leader in Gaza, said recently: "I call on all the armed groups everywhere to avenge the blood of the dead with suicide bombings against Israeli civilians".

Fatah are considered moderates, by the way. People we can trust, a group we can negotiate with.


Jamel Abed also called for cross-border attacks against Israeli civilians:
"I call on all the armed groups everywhere to avenge the blood of the dead with suicide bombings against Israeli civilians ( ) attacks should be carried out with no bounds or geographical limitation, and anywhere the mujahideen can hit Israelis they should do so."

Again, I remind you that Fatah are moderates.


Here's a somewhat more nuanced statement by a Palestinian government official and Hamas spokesperson, Doctor Ghazi Hamad:
"This is not a country of humans, these are animals and a bunch of gangs, and this nation must be wiped off the face of the earth."

Doctor Ghazi Hamad has been described as a moderate member of Hamas.


The desirability of massive civilian casualties is intrinsically part of the welt-anshauung of moderate Arabs and respected by many opinion-makers.


I need not even mention what the other moderate Palestinian organizations and warlords have said, other than that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has again shown himself anxious to keep his position.

[Conceivably he fears being killed by his own people if he demonstrates independent thought? Well then he can always go live in Paris, like Suha Arafat. I'm sure that his friends have squirreled away enough money donated by the Europeans and Americans that he can live quite well, to say nothing of what the PLO has harvested from oil-sheikhs, fellaheen, and the former communist states.]


The only country for which the dead are not usefull, and not considered to be valiantly fighting the propaganda war, is Israel. Israel values the living. On both sides.

One would wish that other countries did not so treasure the dead. On both sides.


One might also wish that the Palestinians find a better use for their civilians.
Ambulatory explosives, lynchmob thugs, or cover for escaping murderers - surely some of them are capable of better things?