Middle East scare-quotes

I've been wondering about the much-publicized Iranian and Syrian connections to Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon. Hezbollah captures two Israeli soldiers, and the US connects the action to Iran. Hezbollah manages to send a drone aircraft into an Israeli ship and Israel claims it couldn't have done it without Iranian help. Indeed, this is perhaps the sole claim that gives any legitimacy at all to Israel's bombing of Beirut, and this would still require that the Lebanese state had direct control over Hezbollah and that Hezbollah is indeed an Iranian agent. In the case of Syria, wasn't Syrian influence largely pushed out of Lebanon (which, incidentally, also brought Hezbollah into the government) at the constant urging of the US? How can the Lebanese, then, be attacked for the reason that Syria operates by proxy through the Lebanese state to control Hezbollah?

Is this all of the nature of the self-fulfilling prophecy? As Juan Cole says,

Israeli spokesmen are saying that they want to finish off Hizbullah. But you can't finish off a mass movement among 1.35 million people. Besides, there wouldn't be any Hizbullah if Israel had not invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the south for 18 years. Israel's grabby occupation radicalized and helped mobilize the Lebanese Shiites. They aren't going to become less radical and less mobilized as a result of the current hamfisted Israeli assault...

But even anti-Syrian, anti-Hizbullah cabinet members like Walid Jumblatt are blasting Israel's "brutal aggression."...

Some press reports suggest, moreover, that a lot of Lebanese, seeing their capital under attack from Israel, are rallying behind Hizbullah. Even many formerly pro-American Christian Lebanese are deeply upset that Bush seemed to say it was all right for the Israelis to bomb their civilian airport and blockade the whole country.

Israel and the US seem to be itching for a new world war or broader regional war. But when it comes to what we the public actually know, we're being led down the road of deceit (break out the "misleading" language) once again. This is an example of the kind of information we have to go on:

U.S. and Israeli officials have gone a step further, publicly charging -- without offering direct evidence -- that Iran and Syria had a hand in the operations. A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the United States had intelligence that Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah traveled from Beirut to Damascus to visit Hamas political chief Khaled Mashal shortly before Wednesday's Hezbollah raid, suggesting the operations were linked, the official said.

Of course, I don't know any better than anyone else what the true links are between Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah. All we truly have are claims made by political players and those with particular interests in portraying political affiliations in certain ways: that is, Israel and the US. Frankly, I don't trust anything these two administrations have to say.

I simply urge caution in jumping to conclusions about:

1. How we characterize "terrorist." There's good reason to say that Israel's unprovoked attacks on civilian populations in Beirut are as terroristic as Hezbollah rockets falling in Israel. Or perhaps worse, given their deadliness and disproportionality.
2. The alleged connections between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas (and toss in al Qaeda in Iraq for the hell of it). There are, of course, common sympathies, but sympathies do not a casus belli make. The rest of our information is "top-secret." The US citizenry has pretty bad recent experience with trusting secrets maintained for reasons of "national security" and dribbled into the public sphere only as political opportunism allows. See: Iraq.
3. Rushing to war or allowing Israel to rush to war as a proxy. War will not solve anything, especially not in the Middle East. One commenter below suggests total submission of the anti-Israel population in the region. I cannot begin to count the ways in which this is overly-simplistic, ridiculous, and morally execrable. Troutsky has the appropriate response.
4. Allowing war to cloud perceptions of what the upcoming domestic elections are about. You can be played for the fool some of the time, but you can't be played for the fool all of the time (I sure as hell hope).

UPDATE:

See this blog published by a Swede who is thus far remaining behind in Beirut.

See also this clearinghouse for blogs on Lebanon: Open Lebanon.

See also this very interesting letter from an Israeli in Beirut in 3 Quarks Daily.