It might be apt to characterize the contention between two popular schools of thought as one that stems from a divergence in how each identifies causes and interprets causality. One school understands causality through particular events and occurrences, without disregarding psychological, economic, or other backgrounds. Japan, for example, had expansionist and military ambitions in the 1940s, but it is the attack on Pearl Harbor that explains the war between Japan and the United States. As for the other school of thought, its list of reasons is drawn from inalienable, fundamental essences. Given that Japan was an expansionist power, this school asserts, war was always inevitable, and it would have broken out whether Japan attacked Pearl Harbor or not. If it had not been sparked by Pearl Harbor, some other occurrence would have led to the same outcome.
The fact is that the second school, even when its ideas are formulated in secular or even atheistic terms, is captive to interpretations that are ultimately religious. Indeed, everything that happens in this world is the result of unstoppable wills, be they virtuous wills that God stands behind or wicked wills that Satan stands behind. On the other hand, the first school emphasizes the role of human initiative and its capacity for altering outcomes, thereby allocating a more prominent role to politics, diplomacy, and stances, and, by extension, human beings’ responsibility for their actions.
Those following the two sides of the argument regarding the "defense of Lebanon" can identify the influence of these two schools of thought on these two sides and the approaches of their respective proponents.
The claims of those who defend the idea that the resistance protects Lebanon are grounded on the premise that Israel is an expansionist belligerent state that will inevitably launch on Lebanon, if not today, then tomorrow.
While Israel's propensity for aggression should not be underestimated, this interpretation dismisses tangible events and episodes in favor of assumed essences, like that suggested by Iran’s theory of "absolute evil." And so, there is never any reference to the Rhodes Armistice of 1949, which introduced a period of calm that continued until the late 1960s, nor is there any mention of the fact that the Palestinian militants’ operations from the Lebanese border- especially those launched after the Cairo Agreement in 1969- are what led to the limited Israeli incursion of 1978 and the subsequent fully-fledged invasion of 1982. The fact that the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers (six years after the Lebanese territory that had previously been occupied by Israel was liberated), is what led to the 2006 war and the destruction it left, is not addressed either, nor is how the current "support and distraction war" has caused and continues to cause the disasters that are currently unfolding.
In other words, eventual reasons for why things happen in the world do not exist; only intentions and ambitions that cannot be intervened upon, influenced, or altered exist. The only interventions available to us, in dealing with this inescapable destiny, are self-annihilation or the annihilation of the other. Just two days ago, we saw a microcosm of how this mindset works. An Israeli air raid on the Maronite village of Ayto (northern Lebanon) killed 22 people, but media outlets affiliated with the Resistance Axis have refused to acknowledge that the calamity in Ayto occurred because a Hezbollah operative, Ahmad Faqih, had sought refuge in the village. The reason for this is that the village was bound to be targeted by Israel’s evil, with or without Ahmad Faqih.
Like events, reflecting on consequences, which should be the basis upon which actions are judged, is also dismissed- from the death and destruction, the exacerbation of communal schisms, to Lebanon losing its influential friends, both politically and economically and in both the Arab world and globally, to Iran’s growing influence, which increasing numbers of assessments suggest that this influence has become a replacement for Hezbollah’s leadership. Here too, instead of discussing outcomes, we find the emergence of another mantra about the inevitable costs we have to bear for national liberation. Mind you, the extremely high costs currently being borne by the Lebanese pave the way for a world that is significantly less free, less prosperous, and less internally united.
Comparisons, all comparisons, are dismissed. It is never said, for example, that the agreement of May 17, 1983 (a treaty that had always been and continues to be, demonized and labeled treacherous) would have protected the country far more than Hezbollah's resistance is currently supposedly protecting it. Nor is it said that Egypt and Jordan, which have signed peace treaties with Israel, have not had their territory occupied nor been attacked by Israel, or that they are doing incomparably better than Lebanon and Syria, which have rejected reconciliation and peace. Nor is anything ever said about Israel handing Taba (in the Sinai Peninsula) over to Egypt in compliance with the 1988 decision of an international arbitration panel.
When people die for theories that do not explain the world through events, do not judge actions based on outcomes, and do not compare between cases in which contrasting impulses were pursued, leading to contrasting results, it is a moment in which fallacy meets death and destruction. This fallacy might reflect a dysfunctional and decrepit state of mind, but it undoubtedly ends in blatant lies that demean the mind and serve to protect only the misinformation and infantilization of citizens.
