Roundup: Historians' Take

Juan Cole: What Is Hizbollah?

Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com. Western and Israeli pundits keep comparing Hizbullah to al-Qaeda. It is a huge conceptual error. There is a crucial difference between an international terrorist network like al-Qaeda, which can be disrupted by good old policing techniques (such as inserting an agent in the Western Union office in Karachi),

Jonathan Zimmerman: What would Lincoln do? -- Trading our liberties for security

[Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches history and education at New York University, is the author of Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century, to be published this fall by Harvard University Press.] LIKE MOST of my friends and colleagues, I'm outraged by President Bush's assault on basic civil liberties in the so-called War on Terror. We invoke Thomas Jefferson on the rights of man, James Madison on checks and balances, and, most of all, Benjamin Franklin on the danger

Daniel Pipes: Hold Damascus Responsible

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.]"There will be an international force [in Lebanon], because all the key players want it," an American official asserted recently. He appears to be right, as even the

John Keegan: It's Not Another World War One

[Military historian John Keegan is author of "The First World War" (Vintage).] Is the conflagration in the Middle East a repeat of the escalating global hostilities of almost a century ago? Newt Gingrich asserted as much soon after the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted, saying "We're in the early stages of what I would describe as the Third World War." More than 60 percent of Americans now believe that the conflict in Lebanon will lead to

Timothy Garton Ash: Middle East War: Made in Europe

[ TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is professor of European studies at Oxford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.] WHEN AND WHERE did this war begin? Shortly after 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday, July 12, when Hezbollah militants seized Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev — Israeli reservists on the last day of their tour of duty — in a cross-border raid into northern Israel? Friday, June 9, when Israeli shells killed at least seven Palestinian civilians o

Juan Cole: Sistani Threatens US over Israeli War on Lebanon

The US punditocracy and ruling elite is fixated on Hizbullah as a"terrorist group" even though the organization hasn't engaged in international terror against American civilians in many years. What they forget about Hizbullah is that it is also a Shiite religious party, and that that is how it is perceived for the most part by Iraqi Shiites. Some 45 percent of Lebanese are probably Shiites.The other thing to remember is that the United States is now a Shiite Power in part, insofar

Lara Deeb: Hizballah: A Primer

[Lara Deeb, a cultural anthropologist, is assistant professor of women’s studies at the University of California-Irvine. She is author of An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon.] Hizballah, the Lebanese Shi‘i movement whose militia is fighting the Israeli army in south Lebanon, has been cast misleadingly in much media coverage of the ongoing war. Much more than a militia, the movement is also a political party that is a powerful actor in Lebanese politics and

Patrick McGreevy: Islands in Arabia

[Patrick McGreevy, who is serving as director of the Center for American Studies and Research at American University of Beirut, is professor of geography at Clarion University.] Sitting on my balcony staring down at the Sea Gate of the American University of Beirut, and to the Mediterranean beyond, I am in no danger. The bombs are in the distance. The fighting is in the south. In Tel Aviv, Israeli citizens are staring at the same sea, in perfect safety. The missiles are landing in H

Tom Engelhardt: Air War, Barbarity, and the Middle East

[Mr. Engelhardt is the author of The End of Victory Culture and co-editor of History Wars, the Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past.] Barbarism seems an obvious enough category. Ordinarily in our world, the barbarians are them. They act in ways that seem unimaginably primitive and brutal to us. For insta

Victor Davis Hanson: Don't think good times for U.S. will last forever

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.] We Americans don't seem to worry that we owe billions of dollars to the Chinese, or that our oil hunger is enriching hostile, rogue regimes, or that our annual budget deficit keeps adding to our national debt. Why fret now? For nearly a quarter-century, Americans have come to expect the good life. Unemployment should never go above 5 percent. Interest rates are expected

Arthur Herman: What Nasser wrought when he seized Suez a half century ago

[Arthur Herman is the author, most recently, of To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World (Harper Collins/Perennial).] ON JULY 26, 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, at that time the most vital international waterway in the world. The Middle East, and all of us, still live under the shadow of the fateful events his decision triggered 50 years ago. Even more than the Cold War, the Suez crisis has shaped the world we live in.

Juan Cole: Congress Expects Islamic Dawa to Support Israel, Condemn Hizbullah

The AIPAC Democrats in Congress came after Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday, condmening him for his refusal to condemn the Lebanese Hizbullah. Al-Maliki had on the contrary complained (quite rightly) about naked Israeli aggression on Lebanon and had called for a cease fire. At his news conference on Tuesday he dodged questions about the issue and said his main concerns were humanitarian.

Daniel Pipes:  Arabs Disavow Hizbullah

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] The current round of hostilities between Israel and its enemies differs from prior ones in that it's not an Arab-Israeli war, but one that pits Iran and its Islamist proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, against Israel.This points, first, to the increasing power of radical Isla

Richard Gott: The brutal story of British empire continues to this day

[Richard Gott is author of Cuba: A New History, and is writing a book about imperial resistance Rwgott@aol.com.] Many of the present conflicts in the world take place in the former colonial territories that Britain abandoned, exhausted and impoverished, in the years after the second world war. This disastrous imperial legacy is still highly visible, and it is one of the reasons why the British empire continues to provoke such harsh debate. If Bri

Steve Carol: U.S. history provides insight into current Israeli situation

[Steve Carol, retired professor of history, is a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Middle East Studies and the official historian for the Middle East Radio Forum.] As we witness much of the world decrying the “lack of proportionality” in Israel’s response to the unprovoked attack on its military personnel and civilians within the State of Israel, it would be important to recall a similar episode in United States history. On March 6, 1916, a group of 360 Vi

John Voll: The "Guns of Lebanon 2006" are NOT the "Guns of August 1914"

[John O. Voll is the Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.] The beginnings of World War I in the summer of 1914 are seen by some analysts as similar to the outbreak of fighting in Lebanon and Israel this summer. The trigger for the conflict in 1914 was a terrorist act and countries were drawn into the developing war by the pressures of perceived security threats and existing alliances, and this seems to be similar to what is

Neve Gordon: Talking down the war

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com.] BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL ONLY AFTER A Katyusha rocket killed her neighbor did she agree to come. For more than a week, I had been pleading with my mother and her 80-year-old partner, a veteran of many Israeli wars, to leave their home in the northern city Nahariya and spend time in our small two-bedroom apartment far from the line of fire

Walid Phares: Hezbollah's Iranian War in Lebanon

[Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a visiting Fellow with the Foundation for European Democracy, the author of Future Jihad (English) and of books on Lebanon and Iran.] When Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah held his press conference to declare his new victory over his enemy, Israel, he was triggering –probably without knowing- a new era in the history of Lebanon and the region. “We will continue in faithfulnes

Daniel Pipes: Israel's Unnecessary War

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] The blame for the current fighting falls entirely on Israel's enemies, who deploy inhuman methods in the service of barbaric goals. While I wish the armed forces of Israel every success against the terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon and hope they inflict a maximum defeat on Hama

Gil Troy: Israeli attacks followed months, even years, of provocation

[Gil Troy - currently in Israel - teaches history at McGill University.] Even after Hezbollah launched hundreds of Katyusha rockets on Thursday, wounding 90 Israelis and killing at least two, Jerusalemites remained calm. Where you stand regarding Israel's unsought two-front war depends on how quickly you say "Kassam" and "Katyusha" when telling the story. True, Israel's supporters - and civilians -- can take pride in a country which will go to Hercu