Lebanon war fought 'morally as possible'

Jeremy Jones says nothing is more moral than a country defending itself. Picture / Richard Robinson

The New Zealand Herald editorial holds no sway with Jeremy Jones. From Tuesday's paper, it is about the war between Israel and Lebanon. The headline is "Israel loses its moral authority", and it was written after the bombing of Qana in which dozens of Lebanese died, including sleeping children.

Little by little the plausibility of Israel's conduct has been ebbing away, the editorial suggests, and following the Qana air strike "no longer is it possible for any member of the international community to think the best of the Israelis."

Jones doesn't flinch when handed a copy. "Sure," he says mildly. "But let's come to the big issue. Is it moral for a country to defend itself against attackers? Is the war essentially being carried out as morally as possible?"

His answer to both questions is yes.

Jones is tall and balding and his pinstriped blue suit gives no clue to his nationality or personality. His tie does. Aboriginal art patterns adorn both the tie and his skull cap.

Jones is a true-blue Aussie who supports South Sydney in rugby league and Israel in the war against Lebanon.

Aged in his late 40s, he has long credentials in the fields of human rights, anti-racism and inter-faith dialogue.

He is a modern orthodox Jew with another string of credentials - senior contributing editor of the Australia/Israel Review and director of community affairs of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council among them. Last year he was made a Member of the Order of Australia.

Jones is a man who campaigns for fairness and social justice and who condones this war as necessary and moral.

At school he stuck up for the bullied and volunteered at a centre for indigenous children. At university he was a founding member of the Lebanese Students' Society.

"I've always strongly believed that if somebody attacks any minority in the community, the whole community suffers. I also have a view that the best society for a Jewish person to live in is going to be a society which is extremely tolerant, culturally diverse and values the fact that people can come from different perspectives and contribute to society."

Jones was in New Zealand this week with a mission to inform both the Jewish community and the media on why Israel is again at war with Lebanon.

"Sure," was his response to the Herald editorial. But the writer and the public who agree need to dig a little deeper.

People died at Qana and that was awful. But people would not have died if there was not a war. The big question was why there is a war.

"If you don't understand what Hizbollah is, you can't understand what's going on."

Hizbollah is a fascist political party intent on destroying Israel, he says, eyes intent behind his glasses.

"[Hizbollah] has a religious element of racism, it has the genocidal intent of fascism, it has the totalitarian belief of fascism and it is an arm of the imperial fascist regime of Iran.

"The party is an organ which says we have to rule in our way; there can be no freedom of press, there can be no dissent from our opinion."

Hizbollah's programme represented the social programme for Iran, to which the organisation was linked.

"The fact is, if you're in a region under Hizbollah control and you are gay, then the death penalty is your punishment for your sexuality.

"If you want to aspire to changing your position, if you're a woman in traditional Islamic or Arabic role in an area of Hizbollah, you have no option whatsoever to do that.

"Freedom of religion ... Again, go to Iran and ask the people of the Bahai community ... Your life expectancy becomes very limited. That's all part of what Hizbollah is about."

Do not confuse Hizbollah with the idea of an army or a force trying to remove an occupying or invading army, he says

The organisation may have arisen to liberate Lebanon from Israeli occupation during the 1982 war, but Jones says Israel has been gone from Lebanon for several years. Hizbollah's intent now was simply aggression toward Israel.

"There have been a number of journalists and commentators who have spent time with Hizbollah in the past five or six years and they've all confirmed that what Hizbollah says to its own people it also says to them - that we took 22 years to get Israel out of Lebanon and now we might take up to 40 years to get Israel out of Israel."

Jones does agree that just because someone is Jewish it does not automatically follow that they support Israel. He says he is a great believer that people should know the facts of a situation and draw their own conclusions.

But in this case "the more informed you are the more likely you are to be overwhelmingly supportive of Israel's position in the current conflict".

He says Israel has no aggressive intent towards its neighbours. People just want to get on with their lives. But if neighbours are aggressive, the country will respond to a threat.

Surely, though, for someone with a long history of fighting for human rights and fighting racism, it is difficult for Jones to know that innocent people are dying in Lebanon?

Jones responds by saying he grew up in Australia and knows many Lebanese people, some who have family connections with people who are suffering.

But Hizbollah's strategy is to base their military in the middle of civilian areas, making them an enemy impossible to counter without civilian deaths.

Israel was not targeting civilians, and, compared to the American war in Iraq, civilian deaths had been extremely low. Hizbollah, he says, does not aim anywhere except at civilians.

"Israel is fighting forces that don't want Israel to exist. There is nothing more moral than saying we are going to fight those forces which don't want us to exist.

"If it was a war to gain territory or a war to capture something to negotiate later, then there's serious questions about the morality. But the basis of the war is extremely moral."

Imagine living in Israel, a tiny country surrounded by enemies, Jones says.

Rockets were being launched by Hizbollah daily, but a date which filled Israelis with trepidation was August 22.

Iran had a vested interest in the timing of this war and this week again missed a deadline on revealing its nuclear capacity.

"They have said again and again they will not make an announcement until August 22."

That date on the Muslim calendar corresponded with the 27th of the month of Rajab and was the time the prophet Muhammad ascended on his night journey from Jerusalem, lighting up the skies of the city.

Jones says Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who last year called for Israel to be wiped off the map - and Hizbollah have said they will "light up the skies over Jerusalem like the night journey."

What does that mean? If you are an Israeli or a political scientist you would say that sounds awfully like an intention to attack Israel on that date, he says.

"What people would sit back and say let's see if they have the capacity to do it.

"You wouldn't. You would try to do everything you could to stop them having the capacity to try."