Tuesday May 8, 2007

Column:

Know thine enemy the phrase goes. Good advice, but to borrow from another popular saying, a little easier said than done.

One of the best ways of knowing what an enemy is really thinking, planning and plotting is to listen to what is being said. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the undisputed leader of Hezbollah, recently gave us a glimpse of his thinking, a peek into the mind of this enemy, an opportunity to see the wheels turn, to understand how his decisions are made and how his conclusions are determined. He gave us insight into his analysis and his own world view.

This true enemy of the West and Israel, and of everyone and everything outside his own religious domain regularly speaks to his adherents through the medium of television and radio. Nasrallah is most often seen and heard on Hezbollah stations, but sometimes, when he has an important message intended for greater audiences, he ventures out of home court and finds a larger arena through which to speak his mind.

The round faced cleric with the steely eyes is most often heard delivering sermons. He is a Sheikh and he is a leader and his chosen method of delivery is religiously motivated but with a modern twist. His sermons always, inevitably, deal with political and practical issues. Never are his sermons strictly theological, they are always grounded in the here and now.

I listen very carefully to most of the comments of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. I paid even closer attention to his spoken observations on the occasion of the release of the Winograd Commission, the partial report issued by Israel devoted to an analysis of the process that went into decision making this past summer in their war with Hezbollah. He began by describing to his audience what the Commission was and why it was indeed named the Winograd Report. And then he applied his own logic to the report.

Speaking on Iranian television, in his own, translated, words, Nasrallah said: "Winograd is the Israeli leader appointed chairman of the commission established following the failures of the last war, as the Israelis put it."

He went on: "The commission has determined once and for all the issue of victory and defeat. There are those in Israel who say that they won and those who say they lost. The commission has determined they lost. There are over 100 occurrences of the word defeat in the report. That is the result."

He had more to say on the issue. This time for his forum Nasrallah chose the opening of a book fair in Southern Beirut that was held on a lot that had been leveled by Israel during the summer war. Nasrallah continued his theme.
"I will not gloat," he said. But "it is worthy of respect that an investigative commission appointed by Olmert condemns him."

He was, of course, gloating. And he continued: "The first important outcome of this commission is that it has finally and officially decided the issue of victory and defeat ... This commission spoke about a very big defeat."

The Sheikh then teased Israel's Defense Minister Amir Peretz, the man who had dared to taunt Hassan Nasrallah during the first week of the war saying that the leader of Hezbollah will never forget the name "Amir Peretz."

Nasrallah said: "I stand here today not in order to attack Peretz. Peretz said that 'Nasrallah will never forget the name Amir Peretz.' I tell him, you are right, I will never forget that name."

Nasrallah has never complimented Israel - not about anything, certainly not about performance during war. These statements were intended to be perceived as a jab at Israel. Nasrallah wanted to show the Arab world the foibles of Israel. But he showed the rest of the world, the Western world, something else. Nasrallah showed us that he has a deeper understanding of democracy and a higher respect for committees of inquiry than we had ever suspected of him. Most importantly, Nasrallah showed that he monitors Israeli news very carefully and that his own policy is determined by what he sees and perceives as going on in Israeli society and government.

His perceptions, however, are not always on target. Whatever understanding of democracy Nasrallah showed was shattered by his personal conspiracy theory - a theory that the United States forced the hand of Israel during the war. The Arab world is rife with conspiracies. This one is blatantly false. The reality is that the United States did not force Israel at all into this war with Hezbollah. The United States took a step backwards giving Israel a free hand. The ultimate irony is that had Israel listened to the United States, the war would have taken an entirely different form and there never would have been a Winograd Commission. The urging of the United States to Israel during this war was to take off the kid gloves and forge ahead.

Nasrallah and the Arab world celebrated the Winograd Report without really understanding the Winograd Report. Democracies gain their power through voting. Commissions and rallies and protests can help sway governments and formulate policy - but nothing is more important than the voice of the people as heard on election day.

And that is something that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and the enemies of democracy and the West have never experienced and will never know.