Why Lebanon’s Fragmented Society Must Unite in Supporting Hezbollah
Janna Kadri, Orinoco Tribune, August 24, 2024 —
The imperative for unity has never been more acute, as the stakes at this momentous crossroads transcend the mere survival of the Lebanese state and reach into the broader potential for restoring a just and enduring peace.
There is more at stake in betraying one’s own than simply standing on the ‘other’ side of history. One’s own, however, is not one with whom one shares a cultural identity of sorts. Cultural identities are fluid and can hardly be pinned down as a characteristic of a group without a heavy dose of arbitrariness. After all, it is capital or the political power in charge that empowers selected cultural traits politically to divide the masses. One’s own is not what capital empowers politically to rule – one’s own is the people with whom one shares the conditions for survival.
When people of different cultures, which is the natural state of things, do not own their means of survival and must work for moneyed incomes to survive, these same people gain more when united because they reap a bigger slice of the wealth they produce: wealth which is necessarily usurped by the rentier class as rent or profits and is then redistributed to individuals as individual wage, workers, as a matter of priority. One could imagine the case of Lebanon where the colonially imposed identitarians unite to increase their share of income from the total product and, subsequently, enhance the social and environmental conditions. They altogether earn more to live better and longer lives.
After all, it is not each individual who gains a wage, it is the working class that produces and thence earns a share of the total product determined by its political power standing at the bosom of the class struggle; why so? First, a person is usually a product of society like a father and a citizen, etc., and so that person is a subset of the society that invested in her and brought her into being. Secondly, imagine that we have the best machines, and we produce the most wealth, our share of that wealth will not depend on how hard we worked, but on how much power we exercise or how we control, since control is synonymous with owning.
So, at an ontological level, at the level of real survival as opposed to the hallucinatory identity that reduces the individual to few traits that separate him or her from such survival-reality, working people earn more if they unite and fight against imperialism and its instruments. One worker could earn more than another per chance due to hard work, but without working class unity his and other wages would be declining over time. In a nutshell, since the wage is social as opposed to private, that is, all of society earns and what it earns altogether depends on labor’s power in politics, it therefore must confront the owner class or the class in control, which includes inter alia the power of imperialism and its ally “Israel” sitting at the helm.
If anything, there is more to gain in struggle and in reframing class alliances in an anti-imperialist fashion than otherwise. This is a lesson frequently overlooked, particularly in times of crisis when the temptation of immediate gains obscures the enduring repercussions of anti-imperialist class alliances. In Lebanon, this divisive reality is all too familiar, as various sectarian groups have historically aligned themselves with “predatory classes”—foreign entities that seek to cannibalize the lives and resources of the South for their own gain.
Lebanon is easy prey since it produces little on its own and survives by vying for geopolitical rents in an process of auto-destruction. Sects and sectarians whose job is to devour each other in an act of self-emaciation re-empower imperialism on a global scale. The owner class or the imperialist class engages in the active destruction and consumption of the regions they exploit, and these industrial scale acts are paid/moneyed processes and generate returns by the degree of destruction they leave in their wake; how so?
First, the imperialist military and its NGO’s are waged war/austerity workers and, secondly, the once disempowered masses leave more of the global products in rents for the imperialist class. The prosperity of the North must be secured by the exponential annihilation of Southern lives; hence, the structural genocide on a global scale or people dying for trivial reasons way before their historically determined time. Although imperialists pursue the oil and other raw materials, little is said that there is no land without people and to extract the oil they must aggress the people. Sure enough, the extraction of life becomes an industry on its own. The process is ongoing, and the masses will naturally resist. People’s premature destruction sparks resistance. Franz Fanon once remarked that through a spiritual volte face, the masses turn their indigenous language and culture of submission into a revolutionary ethos with which they combat the imperialists – combat they must since their lives depend on the struggle.
A call for unity against Zionism
Ten months have passed since the onset of the genocidal war on Gaza, and much of Lebanon realigns with the resistance. The Sunni-Shia schism has withered and the South, in particular, bears the burden of a whole nation. Still, some smaller factions inadvertently express their alignement with “Israel,” viewing Hezbollah as a greater threat than the Zionist regime. These are identity groups whose leadership flaunts the blood of their members for higher geopolitical rents.
Going by the premise of the ideas expressed above, that true solidarity and survival depend on the unity of the working class across cultural and sectarian lines, the war with “Israel” is a de facto war of existence. It will not end until imperialism is defeated. And huge masses of the third world will always invoke the Palestinian question as a focal point of resistance. In short or long term, smaller pro-Zionist factions will certainly lose in the process. In reality, such pro-Zionist positions are a kind of mass death wish since the struggle of the working class in this region will have significant Islamic/Arabic overtones and will certainly be a matter of survival for the international working class.
In a sense, such imperialist cronies produce nothing and survive by the avails of pro-Zionist posturing; hence, they are an incarnation of the settler colonial mentality and eventually go down with it. What is worse, one cannot wean people adopting the settler colonial mindset who live off the blood of the poor from the blood of the poor.
These pro-Zionist groups slander Hezbollah. Forgetting that the South has been constantly aggressed, Hezbollah has been systematically demonized in the mainstream media, often portrayed as an offshoot of Iran with the alleged aim of establishing an Islamic empire under Tehran’s tutelage. Some subjected it to various conspiracy theories bordering on the delusional, especially that it has a culture of death.
This narrative not only seeks to overshadow the movement’s political and social contributions in Lebanon, particularly among the marginalized southern population that has long suffered under occupation and neglect, but also aligns with broader US and Israeli interests by framing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization to justify policies of containment and aggression. Such demonization distorts the perception of some within Lebanon, but only those whose lifeline is the US-EU geopolitical rents.
Pro-Israeli sectarian factions internalize external narratives that frame Hezbollah not as a legitimate defender of Lebanese sovereignty, but as an alien force. The dichotomy alien and local is, like all dichotomies, a mental exercise, and here it is definitively a false dichotomy. By the ontological argument above, alien is that which fights alongside Zio-imperialism to reduce the share of what is available in the form of the social wage for survival. Any international anti-imperialist force is more relatively local/national than a village cousin in Lebanon promoting “Israel” as a democracy. Such internalization fractures social unity and weakens the ability to resist external threats, ultimately serving imperialist agendas that seek to prevent the formation of a unified resistance capable of challenging external exploitation and domination.
The unfortunate reality is that these divisive narratives lead some factions to tacitly acknowledge their perceived inferiority to “Israel.” In some instances, this mindset drives certain groups to portray themselves as victims of Hezbollah’s resistance, rather than recognizing the broader struggle against foreign domination.
“Whoever doesn’t support us in Lebanon, we ask them not to stab us in the back,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, stated on August 6. These words evoke the bitter memory of the South’s protracted years of occupation when the region was subjected to the relentless domination of Zionist forces. During this period, the South endured the full weight of oppression and violence, while some in Lebanon, either through indifference or tacit complicity, allowed this injustice to persist. The silence and inaction of these factions during the occupation only deepened the sense of abandonment felt by in the South, creating wounds that have yet to fully heal.
At this critical juncture, Sayyed Nasrallah’s words serve to remind that Lebanon cannot afford to re-enact the fractures of its past. This urgency is reinforced by the unprecedented reality that, for the first time in nearly a century, the Zionist entity is beginning to sense the contours of its own retreat. The imperative for unity has never been more acute, as the stakes at this momentous crossroads transcend the mere survival of the Lebanese state and reach into the broader potential for restoring a just and enduring peace.
One is reminded once more that “Israel” is the imperialist baton of the region and its demise is at the same time the condition for the reproduction of global society on better terms. Certainly, terms that do not mean that the premature death of the environment and man, the conditions of the law of profit that drives global accumulation, must persist in space and time.
Challenging imperialism and sectarian divides in Lebanon
Hezbollah is not merely a political faction within Lebanon’s vast sectarian landscape. It embodies the understanding that resistance is an existential necessity—a vital act of self-preservation in the face of imperialism’s relentless onslaught. In an interview in 2014, Sayyed Nasrallah said out that our understanding of Islam is not merely limited to customs and rituals, many follow Islamic rituals but support “Israel.” For us resistance is in how we understand US and “Israel’s” approach to encroach on oil and the resources if the region. Such is development in theory based on correct revolutionary practice. How is this different from Chavez or Castro?
It is not theoretically plausible for either Iran or Hezbollah to harbor an expansionist agenda. In light of the balance of forces and the fact that imperialism expands by destruction, their actions are defensive and rooted in the imperative to protect against imperialist encroachment rather than seeking territorial control. Hezbollah’s primary focus has always been on defending Lebanon’s sovereignty and supporting regional allies in resisting common threats.
The narrative of expansionism is a distortion propagated by imperialist powers to legitimize their own interventions and maintain dominance in the region. This portrayal obscures the reality that Iran and Hezbollah are reacting to, rather than initiating, geopolitical aggression.
It is worth recalling that imperialism functions as an exploitative force systematically dismantling the social, economic, and political fabric of nations. It is characterized by the relentless extraction of resources, the subjugation of labor, and the imposition of external control over sovereign states.
This exploitation involves the erosion of local economies through neoliberal policies, the enforcement of debt that chains nations to perpetual underdevelopment, and the manipulation of social and political divisions to maintain dominance. Imperialism thrives on the disintegration of indigenous economies and the cultural dislocation of communities, where entire populations are reduced to mere instruments in the service of global capital. Its destructive power lies in its ability to transform entire regions into zones of conflict and deprivation, ensuring the flow of wealth from the periphery to the core, while leaving behind a legacy of poverty, inequality, and social fragmentation. In essence, imperialism is an engine of accumulation by dispossession, perpetuating a global order where the prosperity of a few is built on the systematic exploitation and destruction of the many.
In the case of Lebanon, imperialist forces have systematically exploited and exacerbated sectarian divisions to weaken national cohesion and exert control over the population. By deepening religious and ethnic fissures, these powers have thwarted the development of a unified national identity capable of mounting effective resistance to external domination.
This deliberate strategy has entrenched a political system marked by sectarianism, perpetuating corruption and inefficiency as sectarian elites collaborate with imperial interests. Economically, this manipulation has stunted development, consigning large segments of the population to poverty while enabling a parasitic class to thrive. Socially, the persistent reinforcement of sectarian boundaries has eroded the fabric of national solidarity, rendering Lebanon increasingly vulnerable to external interference. The lasting consequence is a nation mired in fragmentation, instability, and a diminished capacity to assert its sovereignty against imperialist encroachments.
The masses must come to terms with the fact that factions whose rulers pay allegiance to imperialism are deliberately aiming to weaken the resistance, thereby reinforcing Zionism. These allegiances serve to align local elites with the broader goals of Western imperialism, which includes the suppression of any effective resistance to Zionist expansion. By undermining the Resistance, these groups not only betray their own people but also bolster the very forces that seek to under-develop the region literally by banking on the shorter and more miserable lives the masses will experience if they lose the war.