U.S. academic Lara Deeb wrote on July 31, 2006, in the Middle East Report Online that Hezbollah has been “cast misleadingly”  in recent media coverage.

She outlines how Hezbollah””not simply a creature of Iran or Syria”” has changed significantly since its inception, developing into a political party and an umbrella organization for social-welfare institutions, and whose popularity cuts across religious lines.

Stefan Christoff, a Montreal journalist, recently returned from reporting for the English-language Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star. In a telephone interview with the Georgia Straight, he also cautioned against oversimplification. “Hezbollah is operating within a diverse country. Hezbollah's 1985 program notes that it does not want to force the reign of Islam in Lebanon. In February 2006, Hezbollah aligned with the Free Patriotic Movement, a secular political party whose support is mostly from Lebanese Christians. We cannot conflate all organizations with Islamic foundations as al-Qaeda spinoffs.” 

According to a Beirut Center for Research and Information poll on July 26, 2006, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hezbollah's fight against Israel, including the support of 80 percent of Christians and 89 percent of Sunnis.

In an August 3, 2006, report by Fox News, Mark Malloch Brown, the UN deputy secretary general, contests characterizing Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation similar to al-Qaeda. In Adam Shatz's 2004 book In Search of Hezbollah, Dennis Ross, Middle East envoy under the George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton administrations, stated that Hezbollah's resistance to the Israeli occupation, unlike past activities aimed at western targets, is not terrorism.

Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hez?bollah, in a July 17, 2006, interview with the Washington Post, stated that “if there are American tourists, or intellectuals, doctors, or professors who have nothing to do with this war, they are innocent....It is not acceptable to harm them.” 

It is incorrect that Hezbollah deliberately targets civilians but Israel attempts to avoid civilians. An August 2006 Human Rights Watch report documents “in some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers, suggest that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians.” 

It is an ahistorical suggestion that Hezbollah was the aggressor against whom Israel was defending. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon reports that since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Israeli aircraft crossed the “blue line on an almost daily basis”  between 2001 and 2003, and “persistently”  until 2006. Furthermore, the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah on July 12 represented an attempt to attain an exchange of 15 prisoners of war held in breach of Article 118 of the Third Geneva Convention. The San Fran?cisco Chronicle released an investigative report on July 21, 2006, titled “Israel Set War Plan More Than a Year Ago” .

It is a common assumption that Hezbollah, along with other Arabs, are rabid Jew haters. Undoubtedly, anti-Semitism exists, but to believe that all Hezbollah supporters seek the elimination of Jews is an indiscriminate statement that has justified the ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon.

Within the Axis of Homeland Evil, Pat Robertson and Bailey Smith, of the Evangelical Christian Coalition, have stated: “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”  Perhaps Foreign Minister Peter MacKay will suggest we cure this “cancer”  by launching missiles upon the people of Minnesota?

Importantly, such sentiments are distinct from those made by critics of the Israeli government, including those who oppose the existence of the state of Israel on Palestinian territory and advocate for a binational state with equal citizenship for Jews and Palestinians, where not one person would be cast in the sea or displaced to a refugee camp.

Hezbollah is not the only political force in Lebanon. Lebanon: Open Country for Civil Resistance is a self-described “civilian political movement”  bringing convoys of civilians and supplies to areas in south Lebanon cut off by the Israeli offensive. “In the face of the forced expulsion of a quarter of our population, we reaffirm acts of civil resistance by asserting our right to be in our lands,”  campaign organizer Rasha Salti told the Straight.

To dismiss me, I will be labelled a Hezbollah supporter, anti-Semitic, or an apologist for terrorism, along with hundreds of thousands of Canadians who grieve and honour all the tragic and preventable deaths by not having our critical faculties distorted by catch phrases and sweeping generalizations.