Why Arab streets see Nasrallah as Nasser

By Ameen Izzadeen

Fifty years after Gamal Abdul Nasser took on the mighty West by nationalizing the Suez Canal and faced the combined fire power of the British, French and the Israelis, another hero has emerged in the Arab world - from the rubbles of Lebanon.

South African Muslim supporters of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah demonstrate outside the Israeli embassy on Friday. AFP

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, is an icon on the Arab streets. For fifty years, the Arab world did not have a real hero to defy Western hegemony and challenge Israel's expansionism. Syria's Hafez al-Assad, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi made an attempt to portray themselves as a 20th century Saladin, but they only mouthed empty rhetoric with little action. Hafez al-Assad is today replaced by his son Bashar, but Syria lacks the firepower to check Israel - with Russia being not a powerful ally of Damascus as the Soviet Union had been during the cold war period. Saddam Hussein is a prisoner who is facing charges of crimes against humanity and Colonel Gaddafi is pandering to the West.

With Arab leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states being American allies who have no guts or gumption to oppose US hegemony and Israel's expansionism, the Arab world was without a leader who reflected the will of the Arab people. It is in this vacuum that Nasrallah is emerging as a champion of the masses, although he is accused by pro-western Arabs of adventurism and triggering the present crisis.

The valiant and courageous fight of Hezbollah against a powerful Israel which is backed by the United States, Britain and other western nations, is seen in the Arab streets as the birth of a new resolve to fight oppression and the death of passive submission.

While innocent Palestinian people, including women and children, are killed and their houses bulldozed, Arab rulers remain mere onlookers, restricting their action to issuing statements of condemnation of the Israeli attack. They throw a fraction of their oil revenue on the Palestinian people to show they are caring for the oppressed people, but they make no effort to stop Israel's aggression on innocent Palestinians or Lebanese by using their influence on the United States. The inaction of the Arab leaders and their pro-US policies make one wonder whether they are hand-in-glove with the United States and Israel.

Take for instance, the attack on Iraq. If the Arab states had in unison protested, the United States would never have launched its invasion, which according to one school of thought was an Israeli plan. When US President George W. Bush made his plan known to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top US generals, they said that an invasion would be successful only if they could get certain Arab states on board. When the invasion took place on the pretext that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, we saw Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Jordan allowing the United States to either set up new command facilities or use existing bases. One can understand the position of Kuwait, because it is indebted to the United States for liberating the country from the Iraqi invaders in 1991. Other Arab countries went along with the United States because the rulers there depended on America for their security. If there is a rebellion in any one of these countries, it will be Uncle Sam that the ruling elite will turn to.

The United States and the West sell armaments worth hundreds of billions of dollars -- the latest weapons in their armoury -- to these oil rich Arab countries which keep the US and western arms factories humming. But the irony is that none of these weapons would be used to promote the Arab cause or help the Palestinian and Lebanese people.

Even if these countries come under attack by Israel, it is doubtful that they will be able to use their state-of-the art weapons. The big question is: What are they doing with these weapons which are gathering dust? Egypt's Hosni Mubarak last week said he would not go to war with Israel, while Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations blamed Hezbollah for starting the crisis. Their condemnation of Hezbollah is seen on the Arab streets as not only pro-American but also pro-Israel.

The way the Arab leaders are responding to the Lebanese crisis today reminds one of the politics of the region just before and during World War 1.

Just before World War 1, Sheriff Hussein of Makkah and ruler of Hejaz (now part of Saudi Arabia) betrayed the Ottoman emperor and sided with the British who had promised him that they would make him the ruler of Arabia.
During the British advance from the South against the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the third son of Sheriff Hussein, Emir Faisal, met Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and pledged to support the Jewish settlements in Palestine. After his meeting with Faisal, Weizmann is reported have said that Faisal was "contemptuous of the Palestinian Arabs whom he doesn't even regard as Arabs". The two later signed an agreement to set up a Jewish state in Palestine. Faisal was later installed as the "puppet" king of Iraq by the British after the pro-British Ibn Saud family - the present Saudi ruling elite -- defeated Sheriff Hussein and expelled him. Another sibling of Faisal, Prince Abdallah, became the "puppet" king of Jordan.

When Saudi Arabia and Jordan lashed out at Hezbollah, one wonders whether the tendency to back the West is coursing through the blood of the progeny of these rulers, too. Besides, Saudi Salafi and Wahhabi imams are issuing fatwas, telling the Sunni Muslims that it is not their religious duty to back the Shiites. When the Cairo-based Al-Azhar university has issued a fatwa declaring the Shiite version is another school of thought in mainstream Islam, the Saudi imam's attack on the Shiites only helps Israel and its western backers which seek to divide the Arab and Muslims along sectarian lines.

Eighty-nine years after Zionist leader Weizmann met Emir Faisal, another Jewish communal leader and Anti-Defamation League National Director, Abraham Foxman, met Saudi Arabia's Washington ambassador, Prince Turki al-Faisal. The meeting was reported in The Forward, a Jewish newspaper in New York. According to the newspaper, Foxman met the Saudi ambassador to thank him for his country's condemnation of Hezbollah for igniting the crisis.

Nasrallah responded to the Saudis and other pro-American Arab rulers when he was interviewed by the Al-Jazeera television. "As to the Arab rulers, I don't want to ask you about your history. I just want to say a few words. We are adventurers... But we have been adventurers since 1982. And we have brought to our country only victory, freedom, liberation, dignity, honour, and pride... In the year 1982 you said... we were crazy. But we proved that we were the rational ones, so who then was crazy? ...So I tell them simply: go bet on your reason and we will bet on our adventure, with God as our Supporter and Benefactor. We have never for one day counted on you. We have trusted in God, our people, our hearts, our hands, and our children. Today we do the same, and God willing, victory will follow."