From Victim to Criminal

The critical importance of Israeli public diplomacy in the war against the Iran-Hizballah axis of terror.

Public diplomacy for any country, not just Israel, has gone global. While the conflict may be determined in local terms, such as Israel's fight against Hizballah, the ramifications of the action itself are global in nature. Therefore, public diplomacy must be geared toward the global scene.

Ever since 9/11, we have been in a different type of war. We were exposed for the first time to a global network of terrorist organizations, sort of a multi-national corporation of non-state actors.

On the Lebanese scene, through the careful manipulation of evidence, the theater of war has turned into a crime scene. Every action that Israel takes in Lebanon -- with its densely populated villages that Israel must operate in because that's the only way that we can uproot the terrorists in them -- creates an opportunity for the other side to use public diplomacy with global ramifications. Thus, instead of the war being about Israel's right of self-defense, Hizballah was able to turn it around so that the issue on the international agenda became Israel's destruction of Lebanon and Israel as the cause of world instability. The victim becomes the criminal.

For example, Nasrallah ordered his men to remove their uniforms and blend in and continue to fight from within the civilian population. In this way, when Israel attacks Hizballah, the scene is one of Israel moving against what appears to be civilians, even though rockets fired from these villages are striking Israel. Attacks on what looks like civilian targets can then be called "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes." In addition, by blending in with civilians, it's easier to fight the Israelis who exercise self-restraint when fighting near civilians.

other notable and quotable:

Lebanon is a testing ground -- like Spain in 1936 -- for weapons, tactics, and doctrine of how Iran is going to fight the war when it comes to confront the West. We have to alert people not only to the fact that there are 13,000 missiles threatening Israel's very existence, but that these missiles do not belong to a terrorist organization -- this is a front-line position of Iran.

Not surprisingly, the head of Hizballah, Hassan Nasrallah, reportedly found refuge in the Iranian embassy in Beirut when his underground headquarters came under Israel Air Force bombardment.

From the minute Israel left Lebanon in May 2000, Iran began to implement its initial plan for a takeover of Lebanon by Hizballah. First, it got into the political system and then from within it is trying to take over. Israel struck over two thousand Hizballah targets, and not only in south Lebanon. Hizballah is fully deployed in south Lebanon, Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and on the border with Syria. By looking at the targets that Israel struck, one can see the extent of the Hizballah takeover.

There was a discrepancy between public diplomacy and the actual fighting on the ground. From a public diplomacy perspective, Israel should have been seen as the victim. We were being attacked. We were the ones who fulfilled all of the requirements of the game. We were true to the international border, we restrained ourselves, we held back. Why should it be that once we start attacking, we immediately start to lose in the diplomatic arena? Because Nasrallah and his patrons in Iran successfully integrated the "ABCs" of public diplomacy into their long-term strategic war doctrine.

The globalization of terror under the auspices of Iran is a much more formidable and more clear and present danger than the Iranian nuclear threat. The minute the Iranians get nuclear weapons, they may not immediately send them against Israel on their missiles. But this will give them the kind of protection and deterrence to use the methods that they're using now in Lebanon. For instance, if there was an Iranian terrorist coup in Egypt, the world would have to weigh any reaction differently if Iran had nuclear weapons.

The Iranians are coming, and we better read the writing on the wall. It is not in Arabic; it is in Persian, and it is still not too late to learn.

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