Hezbollah Snakeoil: Will the Obama Administration Buy It?‏

Diana West

The US ambassador to the UN and the commander of NATO can fight over "flickers" of al Qaeda and Hezbollah among the Libyan rebels, but it's clearly indisputable that enemy Hezbollah leader Nasrallah (along with al Qaeda's Abu Yahya al-Libi and MB's Qaradawi as noted here) is firmly in their camp. Which means "our" camp. This is clear from an hour-plus address the Iranian puppet and terror-master gave earlier this month in Beirut.

But there's more to it than that. I listened to about 20 minutes. After Nasrallah insists neither al Qaeda nor Iran (hah) nor, for that matter, the United States, have had anything to do with unrest in the Middle East, I heard his chilling iteration of the "R2P" driver I've been working through and writing about lately: Israel as the Umma's pricetag to "reconsider the US stance." (Nasrallah's phrase.) What's chilling is that this combination devil's-fool's bargain is one our Intelligentsia (many with big jobs in the Obama administration) seem all too eager to make, despite its immorality, strategic senselessness and sheer ignorance -- as though feeding the jihad beast will make it anything but more rapacious.

Like a snakeoil salesman at the fair, Nasrallah makes his pitch: No amount of US solicitude for the human rights of Muslims will be regarded as genuine until the United States abandons our best ally Israel. Does he have any takers? I can just hear Samantha Power presenting this "opposition" argument out of "humanitarian" concern at the next National Security Council meeting.

Nasrallah, meanwhile, remains quite suspicious of the Great Satan. These suspicions about American intentions are rooted in his naive notion that the United States under the Obama administration is pursuing, or even concerned with "American" interests. But his main point is this:

Nasrallah says:

Any American talk about protecting the people of our region, or respecting the legitimate rights of the people, the civil rights ... has no credibilty whatsoever because of the permanent American policy toward the Palestinian people, who are always suffering oppression. ...

If you take a look at the tape, notice the large audience of what appears to be all men, rows of mullahs but mostly "civilians," and consider the impact on the human brain of relentless, 24/7 anti-Israel propaganda, which is like air to these people. Here's a noxious Nasrallah sample:

"In Palestine, we have people being killed, who are being subject to bombings, whose houses are being destroyed, whose farms are being destroyed, ... 11,000 detainees. In Jerusalem-Al Quds, the Islamic and Christian sancitities are under attack. Despite this, the Americans defend the killer, they defend the criminal, they defend the attacker, the aggressor, they defend those who are bombing the civilian houses in Gaza from the air, bombing [the farms] in Gaza.

As long as the American policy toward Palestine is this way, continues, any American talk about a credible approach towards defending the rights of the people of Egypt, of Libya or Yemen Bahrain or anywhere else is a lie. Any such talk is a lie.

He goes on to discuss the US's supposed ulterior motives, all related, he says, to promoting "America's Project" -- Israel -- in the Middle East. (Boy, is he out of date. It's as if all of Obama's trashing of Israel has been for naught.) Maybe the US wants to improve its image, the Hezbo-honcho says, and "guarantee suitable alternative regimes for the American Project," and ensure oil remains in "loyal, nationalistic hands." Then back he goes to his vicious trope. Doesn't matter that Obama's is a different administration:

The Arabs must always focus on Palestine. As long as this administration supports Israel -- [Israel's] destruction, its crushing of the Palestinian people and its aggressions against the people of the region -- it is lying when it speaks about anything regarding human rights in this region.

We can reconsider our stance toward the American position when we find a fundamental change in American policies toward Palestine and towards what is going [on] in Palsestine and against their people.

Only then can we reconsider the American stance.

So we must be weary of the American policies and the American game which is being played on trying to take advantage of these revolutions, trying to take advantage of the blood of its martyrs, and the attempts to falsify the real path of these popular uprisings ....