Dead Air Live - Lebanon: The Bloody Road to Democracy (1984)

Jean Butterfield: On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. Ten days prior to the invasion, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon visited Secretary of State Alexander Haig in Washington, D.C. and told him, we do not see any alternative but to go into Lebanon and clean up. We don't want you to be surprised. The so-called cleanup began in the south. Massive bombings of Sidon, Tyre, Nabatea, and the refugee camps of Ain al-Hilwa, Al-Bas, Burj al-Shamali, and Rashidiyah left thousands dead or homeless. By June 10, the siege of Beirut had begun. Emergency relief supplies could not be delivered by the International Red Cross. Food, fuel, water, and electricity were completely cut off to West Beirut. By early July, children were not dying from bombs, they were dying from thirst. The US had no reason at all to be surprised. Not only did it give a green light to the Israeli invasion, but it supplied the internationally prohibited concussion bombs, phosphorus bombs, cluster bombs, vacuum bombs, and fragmentation bombs that rained down on over half a million Palestinians and Lebanese in the 15 square kilometer area of Beirut for more than eight weeks. Phosphorus bombs were the napalm of the Israeli invasion. Phosphorus is a yellowish powder which sprays out of the shell casing and ignites when it hits air. It continues to burn in human flesh for more than 24 hours. The only way to stop the burning is to treat the wound with chemicals, medicine which could not get through the Israeli lines surrounding Beirut, or to cut away the burning tissue, or to amputate. The slaughter did not end with the siege of Beirut. On September 16th, 17th, and 18th, Falange militias trained, armed, and directed by Israel massacred thousands of utterly defenseless men, women, and children in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. The twisted, torn, and mutilated bodies piled in the alleys and under the rubble of homes showed the world that those who sealed off those camps and prepared them for the knife and bullet no longer think of Palestinians as human beings, but as statistics that have to be reduced. It is the consensus of international observers that more than 80% of all Palestinian settlements were destroyed in the invasion, and that no less than one-third of all Palestinians in Lebanon were killed, evicted, or made homeless. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon left more than 18,000 dead, 30,000 wounded, and 600,000, more than one fifth of Lebanon's population, homeless. Welcome to Dead Air Live. My name is Jean Butterfield, and I'm the guest host for tonight's program on Lebanon, the Bloody Road to Democracy. Today, nearly two years after the Israeli invasion, Israel still occupies the southern third of Lebanon. the Israeli-installed Falange president, Amin Jemayel, struggles to maintain his rule as progressive forces try to consolidate their recent gains. The Lebanese economy is in shambles, and the U.S. 6th Fleet sits off the coast with its recently silenced guns and redeployed Marines in retreat. We in the United States have to understand Lebanon. Any of us who are opposed to nuclear weapons need to know that an aircraft equipped with the type of cluster bomb that Israel used in Lebanon has the same immediate destructive effect as a lance missile equipped with a one kiloton nuclear warhead. We who are opposed to the deployment of Euromissiles need to understand that the target range of cruise and Pershing missiles scheduled for deployment in Camiso, Italy, squarely includes Beirut, Damascus, Algiers, and Cairo, and that the Carter and Reagan doctrines are very explicit in their threats to use nuclear weapons to maintain US domination in the Middle East. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon did not involve only Israelis, Palestinians, and Lebanese. It involved especially all of us in the United States, whose tax dollars and elected officials funded and supported that invasion. And peace in the Middle East will not only involve Israelis, Palestinians, and other Arab people. It must involve every one of us who know that peace and justice will only be possible when US intervention and aggression end. If we here in the United States are going to build an effective peace movement, we have to understand Lebanon and the struggle of the Lebanese and Palestinian people for justice and democracy, a struggle which tonight's program will hopefully help to illuminate. We have with us three guests representing local Boston area groups which are actively working on issues relating to the Middle East. I'm Jean Butterfield, and I work with the June 6th Coalition To my left is Mustafa Hassan from the Committee for a Democratic Lebanon. To his left is Alia Arasuli, representing Women for Women in Lebanon. And to her left is Bob Lang, who works with the Lebanon Emergency Committee. Would you each say a few words about the work of your groups as an introduction? Mustafa?

Mustafa Hassan: The Committee of Democratic Lebanon is just a group of concerned Lebanese. And they wanted to do something about what's going on in Lebanon. And it's mainly concerned of, consists of a few students, you know, activists in various schools. surrounding Boston, and they would like to establish somehow a contact with the American people and tell them more and explain about what's happening in Lebanon, and that's the purpose.

Alia Arasuli: Women for Women in Lebanon is a group of Palestinian, Lebanese, and North American women, and it was formed as a response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. in order to respond to the amazing needs of Palestinian and Lebanese women in the wake of that invasion. The kind of work we do is really three-sided. We do projects in Lebanon and in Palestine that support women's attempt to become self-sufficient and independent. And we do work in the Arab-American community here by trying to get Palestinian and Lebanese women involved. in doing education around the issue. And our third work is to try to build linkages between the women's movement in the Arab world and the women's movement in the United States. Thank you. And Bob, the Lebanon Emergency Committee.

Bob Lang: Well, we were a group of people who, at the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, sort of got together in an emergency state of mind, very concerned. Those who had been working in Middle East political work before that were sort of worried about that there might be an invasion, and so they were ready to try to organize something. And then other people who were just involved in other areas of politics sort of joined in at that moment. And the committee started off trying to prepare literature, hold meetings, just trying to get something going in response to the emergency situation. Since then, We've kept active, and we realized that our main task, perhaps, was to break down the isolation between the people who work in the Middle East politics and who worry about US intervention there and Israeli policies and those issues, and the rest of the American peace movement, because there was a tremendous isolation that we felt immediately and had experienced before even the invasion. So the Lebanon Emergency Committee, in connection with other groups like the American Friends Service Committee, Mobilization for Survival and the Catholic Connection and individuals from even more groups have formed a coalition to try to to get some things going with the peace movement, to educate the peace movement, to get it interested in the Middle East, to get the rest of the peace movement to realize the same issues that they're concerned about in Latin America and southern Africa should be their concern in terms of US policy in the Middle East. So that's our main activity now, is to try to work with the general American peace movement to get them connected to the Middle East question.

Jean Butterfield: Good. And as most of you already know, the June 6th coalition is a coalition of Arab and Jewish and other progressive North American groups in the Boston area. We came together in the spring of 1983, although many of us had been active prior to that, in order to plan some kind of activity on the first anniversary of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, both to protest that invasion, to commemorate it, and to protest the continuing Israeli occupation. We've done several programs over the past year, primarily bringing speakers and films to the Boston area, trying to deepen our own understanding of the key issues in the Middle East. And our focus has been both US intervention, opposition to that, and solidarity with the progressive movements in the Middle East, particularly with the Lebanese and Palestinian progressive movements. The groups currently active in the coalition include two that are here tonight, Committee for a Democratic Lebanon and Women for Women in Lebanon, as well as the Committee for a Democratic Palestine, Jews for Justice in the Middle East, Matai, which is a Jewish women's group, the US Anti-Imperialist League, and the Boston Mobilization for Survival. And we also have many individuals who work regularly with us as members of the coalition. So if we can turn to some discussion then, I wonder if we could start with maybe saying a few words about what was particularly striking to us viewing the footage of the documentary and being reminded once again of the incredible devastation that that invasion represented and brought. Alia?

Alia Arasuli: Looking at the footage again, it makes me remember the summer of 1982 and seeing that footage daily on the morning news, on the noon news and on the evening news. And I remember very, very distinctly going down to South Station when the June 12th peace march was going to be in New York. And we went down, a group of us, very early in the morning to try to get people who were leaving on buses and on trains to New York. And we had leaflets with us explaining the invasion had begun six weeks and it was an amazing, amazing blitzkrieg through the south of Lebanon. And we tried to explain... The leaflet had information about the invasion, about the tremendous human loss, the devastation, and people would refuse to take it from us. It was somehow not pertinent to the peace march that was happening in New York that had several hundred thousand people. What they were doing was protesting something else. And what was going on in Lebanon was something else entirely, as if there was no relationship between that. And it makes me just aware of how... how there is such prevalent and pervasive racism here that if if this was not beirut if this was a european city that was bombed like that that was being leveled and destroyed that there would be such a i mean it would have been stopped long long before it would have gone on like that but because it was a city that was inhabited by a third world people and many of these third world people palestinians which the media here has managed to make seem as inhuman as terrorist, and it was somehow all right on a level that is very hard for me to understand as a person. And this brings this feeling, yeah.

Mustafa Hassan: Well, for sure, I might talk about it. The Israeli abuse in the Middle East, nothing new to our people. Since the 20s, Israel has been using, I mean, the fascist regime in Israel, I should say, been using a lot of weaponry, and it's not allowed to be used. They've been using phosphoric bomb, cluster bomb, napalm, of course, with the acknowledgement of the United States government. And they've been using that and so many ways to kill and eliminate the people from growing because they really know that at one time the Arab are revolting They've used, between 73 to 76, they used to use kind of doll bombs, you know, throw them in the fields for children to pick them up and just explode. In Beirut, obviously, they used a phosphoric bomb. And that day... They continue doing that now through the Lebanese regime. The kind of fascism is always tied to a regime in the area, which is they created the phalanges. They were trained and made in Israel. And Sharon was responsible for them. And those two together, they're responsible for so many massacres, and yet we talk about human rights. And yet we say, oh, well, people, I mean, nobody killed dogs, you know. It's a crime to kill anybody. And they don't see it over there as a crime. They see it as the American army, they had an interview, and proudly showing that their weaponry, the American weaponry, is superior to the Soviet weaponry in Beirut. I mean, you know, they need a big hand clap, you know. A lot of people died, and it's still the same issue. That's my only comment about the Israeli, you know, fascism in there.

Jean Butterfield: I think I think part of what jumps out at me from the documentary out of that is just that the situation there is political we get so much in the media here about how it's a conflict it's a religious conflict it's a sectarian conflict it's a conflict between. Arab people, Jewish people. And the political content of all of that has dropped out. And I think that's maybe one of the more confusing things to a lot of the U.S. population, the progressive movement included. And I think part of Paul's narration and some of the history that he was trying to draw out really helps us understand that the conflict is not religious, it's political. There's progressive forces there and people who are struggling for reform, for change. As he said, the change is inevitable. It's going to come. But it's not an east-west conflict and it's not a religious conflict it's a conflict between the right and as you're saying the fascist forces explicitly in lebanon and the progressive forces um particularly at this point the lebanese and palestinian people who are struggling to make some headway and i think that's that's one thing for me that we really need to register here in educational work that we do you see for

Mustafa Hassan: For the media in this country, for sure, they misrepresent Lebanon, definitely. They misrepresent the Palestinians. They misrepresent Arabs, period. The thing is always either the Palestinians are terrorists or the Lebanese are killing each other, Christians, Shia. I mean, how so? And the Lebanese nationalists are Christians, Muslims, and they are Shia, Sunna, Jews. There are varieties of people just struggling against fascist forces. To me, it's the same as Lebanese or Palestinians. I don't differentiate simply because we see fascist forces supported by certain groups, and we should fight them. Because Amin Jemayel, he's hopeless in Lebanon, and nowhere, I mean, there is... There's no election. For the last six years, there's no election in Lebanon. He was just put there, and we're talking about democracy. He is forced by his militiamen, supported by the United States and the New Jersey battle ships, just to quiet down the Lebanese people and try to crush down the Palestinians so Israel will be happy and sovereign.

Jean Butterfield: You know, I know one of the things, Ali, that you were saying about the June 12th demonstration in New York was really striking. I think that since then, at least in our work here in Boston, we can see that the peace movement in particular has made some gains. It's begun to move toward taking up some of these issues. And, Bob, I know in your work that's a particular concern. Do you think that there's been some motion there?

Bob Lang: Yeah, I think there's been tremendous motion. There has to be more, but... The atmosphere in meetings now is very, very different from what it was a couple of years ago. the kinds of questions that people ask, their willingness through a program, and their ability to realize that they have to hear a whole coherent point of view. Two, three years ago, there was an instantaneous demand every time anybody opened their mouth, but what about the other side? Why isn't this balanced? It's biased, and so forth. And now people realize that in Middle East, in understanding the Middle East, just like understanding any other political problem, any other area where the United States is intervening and enforcing bad policies, that they have to sit quietly and listen and hear a point of view and then ask their questions. So the atmosphere has changed tremendously. There's still an awful lot more to do, but every time I go to a meeting, I remember what it was like for three years ago. I think a lot of that's due to the invasion of Lebanon. I mean, Israel really exposed what it was all about in terms of its relationship to the Palestinians and to the neighboring Arab countries in a way that they hadn't done before. And it took a very strong will to go on with the same myths about the Middle East after that invasion.

Jean Butterfield: very strong will and that will is breaking down people are starting to want to learn they want to know they don't want to be ignorant anymore yeah i think part of our experience in june 6 has been that the the connection that the peace movement is able to make at least now is in the direction of some of the nuclear threat so realizing you can't talk about or the danger of war unless you understand and can talk about what's going on in the Middle East and how that area represents a real hair trigger in terms of a potential nuclear conflict. We've also found that Zionism is the big sort of block in terms of trying to deal here in the U.S. in the peace movement with people's concerns about the Middle East. We often get the challenge that to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Semitic. And I think it's real important, I know it's been real important in our work to try to distinguish those two things, to talk about the fact that we have to understand what's the logic of Zionism, what does it look like in practice today, what is the discrimination that goes on inside Israel and to really help people understand that the Palestinian people are not saying that they're opposed to living side by side with Israeli Jews if that's under conditions of democracy and secularism. What they're opposed to is an exclusively Jewish state defined on those terms. And I don't know in terms of some of the other work that you all do if you found that to be a major block, but I know that's one thing that we're working hard at, understanding ourselves and then trying to begin to do work here around some of those issues.

Mustafa Hassan: Well, I think definitely Zionism is the first block in the Middle East. Zionism is creating a state of Israel which is only... That's kind of racism only for certain people. And yet trying to create in Lebanon the same things, which is okay, let's see. The Druze, they have an area, the Shiite will have an area, and they divide. Yeah, that's what ultimately they want, so they can control everybody. But I'm sure every, you know, I see in America for the last couple of years, a lot of people are rising up and asking questions about, a lot of Jewish people have been confused about, well, Zionism represents the Jewish people, which is wrong, because Zionism represents to me fascism, definitely. And far away, there's no way to present the Jewish people. And they try all the time to confuse this, so they will mislead a lot of people out of line. But I believe we can, you know, the American people started to see a lot of things. A lot of way now to help understanding, you know, these issues, the issue of Lebanon. We can all contribute, you know, to these, to the peace, if we are talking about peace. And this year, Everybody's talking about the threat of peace. We can do a lot by contacting congressmen, by just groups and support meetings, support celebration that happens all the time, and have more work with other groups. I think this is very useful.

Jean Butterfield: I mean, it's clear we need to build stronger ties among the groups who are active. As sort of a wrap-up here, because we are running out of time, What kind of thing can you say about how people here can become involved at this point?

Bob Lang: Well, in terms of the work that we're doing, contacting the Mobilization for Survival at 727 Mass Ave in Cambridge, would be one way to tie into it. Speakers can be provided. People can come to meetings. People can provide literature to help any groups or any individuals sort of move toward, without making any big commitment or taking on any obligations, just to move toward thinking about these issues and trying to move their groups into a possibility of learning more about it. So that would probably be the simplest thing.

Alia Arasuli: The emphasis of Women for Women has been on trying to make contact with American women's groups in this area. And we do informal gatherings, like teach-ins in people's homes. At the same time, we do activities. Our address is Post Office Box 9, Porter Square Station, Cambridge 02140. and we provide speakers the same, and we have some visual material. And our emphasis really is on informal education rather than on doing big events. And anyone who would like to be involved with us can contact us. Okay.

Mustafa Hassan: Our message simply is we would like a democratic, secular Lebanon. And we believe in democracy and we are fighting for democracy. And we would like everybody to be concerned about Lebanon because they are concerned when they pay their taxes. I mean, and all this money going into weaponry. They should know what it's doing to our people. And Lebanon can have peace and will have peace, definitely. And the Lebanese nationalists are moving ahead with a lot of other groups. And we're trying to do the best. But we expect, you know, we would hope that people would just give us more of their time a little bit and their knowledge and help.

Jean Butterfield: Okay. Thank you.