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Note: Hezbollah
has denounced the Nasrallah interview as a fake. The Turkish
Daily, Evrensel, has also acknowledged that the interview, which
originally appeared in their paper, is a forgery.
Snap Judgments
About
That Nasrallah Interview
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
On August 17 we published a very interesting
interview with Sayyid Hassan
Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. A CounterPunch reader
had found it on the Marxmail list, moderated by Louis Proyect,
and passed it along to us. The interview was translated from
Turkish, in which language it had appeared in the Turkish socialist
daily, Evrensel, on August 12 and 13. We didn't publish the full
interview, which had some sections on the war that had been somewhat
overtaken by events. Of interest to us was the very radical timbre
of Nasrallah's language and his remarks about the world struggle
against imperialism.
The interview hadn't been up
our website for long before it was the target of a rather blustering
denunciation by As'ad AbuKhalil, on his Angry Arab website, claiming
that this was clearly a forgery and was perhaps an interview
with the Nasrallah kidnapped by Israelis in a raid on the hospital
near Ba'albek. Around the same time a few readers forwarded to
us a note to his list sent by Gilbert Achcar, the Paris-based
writer on Middle Eastern politics, saying "the interview
seemed quite bizarre for people familiar with the topic".
Achcar said he'd contacted "a source in Beirut in close
touch with Hezbollah" who "has confirmed to me that
it is a forgery."
We established that the interview
had indeed appeared in Evrensel, a serious newspaper, and Nasrallah's
remarks had aroused some comment in the Turkish press, particularly
because of his homage in the interview to the Turkish revolutionary
Deniz Gezmis. CounterPuncher Ali Tonak in Beirut confirmed that
the English translation from Turkish was good.
Of course there are always
fakes floating around, but we weren't particularly impressed
with the outburst on Angry Arab which seemed to verge on a sort
of "proprietary" bark, almost as if he owned Nasrallah
and resented trespass. There was even a whiff of orientalizing,
about what a Shi'a leader should or should not be capable of
saying. Our view is the Nasrallah is a very smart fellow, and
knew perfectly well he was addressing a left Turkish audience.
Then Professor Idris Samawi
Hamid who teaches at the Department of Philosophy at Colorado
State University forwarded us a note that he had sent to Angry
Arab:
There is no prima facie reason
to suppose this interview is fake. There is nothing in it that
conflicts with the revolutionary Shi`i ideology of the Hawzah.
A close reading shows that Sayyid Hassan [Nasrallah] is subtly
but clearly critical of socialist movements and is trying to
bring/return them into a common platform.
Dear Brother Abdollah Irani
is apparently not very familiar with revolutionary Shi`i, or
even revolutionary Islamic, discourse. Even the martyr Sayyid
Qutb was close to many socialists. His letter to Ayatollah Kashani
during the Mosaddeq crisis is illustrative.
There have been at least one
other interviews with Sayyid Hassan since the start of the war,
with al-Jazeera.
Unfortunately academic leftists
in the West (and that apparently includes Khalil) have for the
most part refused to truly study Islamic liberation theology
(especially the school of Imam Khumayni) and its categories;
the disbelief in the interview stems largely from believing their
own anti-Muslim/anti-Islamic movement propoganda which, often,
is no less venomous than that of their right-wing opponents.
As a professor of Shi`i studies
and philosophy I can confidently state: A careful study of this
interview shows that, even if it is fake (possible but unlikely),
the faker has a very strong knowledge of Islamic revolutionary
discourse and the mindset of Sayyid Hassan. There is not a single
sentence that is out of place.
Instead of shouting "fake!"
we should be encouraging the kind of broad anti-imperialist front
that this interview encapsulates. This includes the toning down
of the generally virulent, hostile (and mostly false) anti-Islamic
movement propaganda of Western leftists and socialists.
Professor Hamid, who is editor-in-chief
of International Journal of Shi`i Studies emphasized in a later
note to us that "as an academic in the field I can state
that there is no compelling reason to assume the interview is
fake. A careful study of this interview shows that, even if it
is fake (possible but unlikely), the faker has a very strong
knowledge of Islamic revolutionary discourse and the mindset
of Sayyid Hassan. There is not a single sentence that is out
of place."
Professor Hamid remarked to
us that:
"the diversity of Islamic
movements, and the distinction between Islamic movements and
extreme anarchist anti-movements like al-Qaedah (the mirror image
of the neocons) needs more analysis and discussion. For example:
it has been popular in the corporate media to associate Bin Laden
and Sayyid Qutb, though there is in fact very little in common
between them. If you read his letter to Kashani the chasm between
them will become apparent (economic justice, for example, where
Qutb is a virtual socialist)."
Meanwhile we asked Ali Tonak
in Beirut to contact the interviewers, which he duly did. According
to Tonak, they form a radical "anarcho-communist" film
collective which did solid work during the war. They told him
that they'd sought an interview with Nasrallah from the outset
and that (of course) it was genuine. They ridiculed Achcar's
admittedly very vague reliance on an unnamed source, relying
in turn on another unnamed source in Hezbollah. They said that
in fact no one in Hezbollah had denounced the interview which,
so they told Ali Tonak, had been read out - presumably in
Farsi -- on Iranian state radio.
Ali Tonak relayed to us the
collective's lengthy Turkish statement, flush with militant rhetoric,
mostly as Ali reports -- a diatribe against Zionism and
the authoritarian left.
Title: Dedicated to Internet
Revolutionaries and Intellectuals
We were able observe the 33
day attempt to invade Lebanon and the resistance against it on
the ground. We did this in the face of the monopoly of the imperialist
information outlets of the west, we had the privilege of observing
a people's resistance against occupation in the battlefield while
as if they were honorably proclaiming "enough talk it's
time for action."
While bombs and nuclear death
rained upon people, the west, underneath the mask of human rights
and anti-war rhetoric was busy chastising Nasrallah and therefore
Islam and his resistance to invasion. All these were done in
the name of Marxism and the left. By using talk along the nonsensical
lines of 'Israel is a commiting a crime but (but...but...but...)
Hizbullah is a religious fundementalist, backwards etc.' the
western intellectuals had no shame in merely observing the fire
raging in the region.
While we were in the region
we observed the incredible difference and the wall of comprehension
between east and west. While a fire was raging in the east, in
the west there were commentaries on the virtual Internet battlefields
that were littered with but...but....buts and occasionally racist
language.
Even though neither Nasrallah or Hizbullah has refuted the interview,
the supposed internet intellectuals of the west, hiding behind
a mask of so-called human rights and anti-war position, are trying
to drive a wedge between the possible unity of oppressed people.
If they think they are successful in their animosity towards
Islam and the East, they should remember that in the actual battlefield
there are honorable oppressed people of the east who have obliterated
imperialism and Zionism...they should think of this African saying
"Until the lions have their own historians, stories of the
hunt will always glorify the hunter.
It is easy to smear and rhetorize
on internet battlefields. It is easy to win a war and make a
revolution in the virtual world.... it is easy to make prejudiced
political analysis in the virtual world.... we don't have the
time to bother with so-called internet intellectuals or revolutionaries
but we had to make this short statement and while withholding
our right to privacy on certain subjects we dedicate this to
the online revolutionaries and intellectuals."
Reading this, one thought we
have here at CounterPunch is that on their original account the
Seyh Bedreddin Film Kolektifi was told by their Hezbollah escorts
that no recording devices would be permitted very understandable
in the age of homing devices and Israel's oft-expressed intent
to murder Nasrallah. If the interview was in Arabic and the interviewers
taking notes, some of their own idiom could have found its way
into the text. But this is merely a speculation.
Another very well placed person,
politically and intellectually well attuned, also made direct
enquiries to a senior member of Hezbollah on CounterPunch's behalf,
thus far eliciting no response. As our intermediary remarks:
"Perhaps [he]is too busy with other things now, or perhaps
he is puzzled I would ask about the authenticity of an interview
that in fact occurred." In our intermediary's opinion Gilbert
Achcar had been "too eager to declare the interview a forgery".
That's what we know at this
point about the Nasrallah interview. The remarks of Idris Samawi
Hamid bear repeating:
Instead of shouting "fake!"
we should be encouraging the kind of broad anti-imperialist front
that this interview encapsulates. This includes the toning down
of the generally virulent, hostile (and mostly false) anti-Islamic
movement propaganda of Western leftists and socialists.
And who knows, suppose now
there comes a denial from Hezbollah? Maybe there could have been
a subsequent feeling that the interview was impolitic in the
Turkish context. In the late 1970s I and Jim Ridgeway, working
at the Village Voice, went to interview William Winpisinger,
head of the International Association of Machinists and a powerful,
left-ish labor leader. At that time organized labor's feelings
against Jimmy Carter were running high. Jim and I laid our tape
recorder on Winpisinger's desk, turned it on and asked, "What
can Jimmy Carter do to redeem himself in your eyes?" Without
hesitation Winpisinger answered, "Die." There was a
long pause and then, reluctantly, he added some decorous qualification.
When the interview was published on the front page of the Voice
a couple of days later Winpisinger's press guy called up, frantic,
and vehemently denied Winpy had said any such thing. But he had,
right there on the tape.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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