Media intimidation and exaggeration in talking about battles in which Hezbollah is involved in Syria,raised the following questions: Is Hezbollah really fighting in Syria? And why?

Israa Al-Fass

Media intimidation and exaggeration in talking about battles in which Hezbollah is involved in Syria, as well as the numbers of the fallen martyrs and the killed insurgents among the opposition groups, raised the following questions: Is Hezbollah really fighting in Syria? And why?... under which title? Do the combats have a sectarian trend that dragged the resistance, often warning of sedition?

These questions are legitimate amid the good reputation promoted by the party along many years; the reputation which allowed Hezbollah to overturn the equation and impose its power in the face of the Israeli occupation, amid a vehement media campaign where the subject of Hezbollah’s “fighting” dominates many of media headlines. The two-year old tireless media agitation finds easy giving the struggle a sectarian trend.

Some media outlets say the party sends fighters under the pretext of protecting holy sites, which eventually trapped it into sedition. They also allege that the battle, with Hezbollah’s involvement, took a Sunni-Shiite trend. Then, what do the non-abettors see?

Hezbollah’s history, as its Secretary General stated in his latest speech, could answer every single raised question. Hezbollah that warns repeatedly from sectarian sedition didn’t announce the holy jihad when the Iraqi holy sites were vandalized and the shrines of the Infallible Imams were blasted. The resistance party didn’t support the Bahraini demands which surpassed the limit of calling for political reforms but called for “ousting the king” after the authorities had damaged more than 30 Shiite mosques and ruined dozens of houses of worship, not to mention burning some copies of the Holy Quran.

During each event mentioned above, Hezbollah repeated its warning of sedition, understanding in each time the emotional status of the Shiite people, and stressing that sanctities doesn’t not belong to one Muslim sect, and that the “greatest jihad” compass spins toward another place, i.e. the Zionist occupation.

Hezbollah’s policy didn’t change, exactly like people’s emotions toward their sanctities. But the struggle in Syria has another trend noticed by everybody, except those who were taken far away by the well-known goals of the media propaganda.

Hezbollah, showing understand to the reformative demands since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, and proffering an initiative with other allies to blow off the steam, did notice another trend of the ongoing events. The party warned from moving within the stream, talked about a conspiracy targeting Syria and its role in the region, as well as regimes reckoning against the Syrian regime for the support with which it provided the resistance movement. It also noticed a targeting operation for an entire axis in which the party is considered a main pillar.

Hezbollah stresses that the struggle in Syria has an international trend related to the choices adopted by the regime on the level of resistance and reluctance.

Thus, it considers itself the following target. Perhaps the civilians kidnapped from Azaz contributed to boosting Hezbollah’s vision and deepening it among its followers. The sectarian affiliation, according to the public, became an excuse for targeting and extorting in the bazaar of international struggle with the resistance, whose tools are some militants related to intelligence apparatuses of some countries that significantly contributed to escalating the crisis without denouncing the crime of kidnapping civilians by those who supported the “Syrian revolution” for it “calls for freedom.”

Today, it is widely assured that any success in the dissociation operation of the axis of resistance on the military level, by toppling the Syrian regime, won’t exclude Hezbollah and some other sides, especially after some previous diplomatic efforts to exclude Syria from this axis didn’t bear fruits. Hezbollah’s followers are aware the battles trends and its background. This is represented by the popular consent about the death of Hezbollah’s martyrs who fought off military operations that targeted their villages and properties on the borderline.

They willed to engage in those battles, as in the past, to protect their lands and properties after the government decided to self-distance itself from performing this duty.

Within the media propaganda that invents news to result in interactions, Hezbollah and its followers are paying the costs of their mindful reading of what is in between the lines and behind the scene. Self-defense, with respect to the propaganda’s standards, is now “fighting” and a “war crime.”

Perhaps among the results of this propaganda, those who denounced yesterday “the Iraqi democracy imposed by the American tank” will be the same to send for it but this time to Syria. The tank of the “democracy-sponsoring administration” in the region is the same one that refused to recognize a government that resulted from a popular will in the Gaza strip in 2006, only because it is a resistant government!

Translated by Zeinab Abdallah
To read the original version in Arabic click here