When Resistance Becomes a Forbidden Question

There are certain keywords whose mere utterance is enough to put your interlocutor from the camp of the Momana’a on alert: the moment one pronounces “Palestine,” “resistance,” “America,” or “Israel,” something triggers within him, a kind of mental switch, and he stiffens to the point where any calm, objective discussion becomes impossible.

The problem in Lebanon today is no longer that of divergent opinions, but rather the absence of the thinking process itself. Ready-made positions are summoned instantly, discourses repeated unchanged, choices maintained in spite of everything that shifts around them. As though we never questioned ourselves, never re-evaluated anything, never asked: are we still genuinely thinking about what we are doing, or are we merely repeating what we have grown accustomed to, simply because it has become part of our identity? This is precisely where the danger begins, when repetition substitutes itself for thought.

What occurs in the mind of the Momana’a partisan is closer to a programmed psychological defence mechanism than to a mere political opinion. When one pronounces any of the following words — “Palestine,” “resistance,” “America,” “Israel” — something happens within him that resembles the activation of a preset programme, in the manner of prêt-à-porter, and this operates on several levels.

First: the exclusivity of identity and its reduction. The cause — Palestine — has ceased to be a political question open to debate, where one might weigh which position would serve it best; it has become a component of personal identity. Any debate on the subject is therefore received as an attack on the self, rather than as political analysis.

Second: the conditioned response. Modelled on what psychology designates by the term stimulus, at the mention of the word “Israel,” the immediate response is “absolute enemy,” one that would have attacked us before we attacked it — without analysis, without examination of possibilities, without reflection on the best way to confront it, or on the results of that confrontation to date.

Third: cognitive dissonance. When facts contradict conviction — for instance, the effects of the axis’s policies on Lebanon — an inner tension takes hold, an ambivalence, whose resolution is the adoption of the most convenient solution: denying reality by reinterpreting it, or attacking directly the one who articulates it.

Fourth: collective closure and conformity. Alignment with the group prevails: within an environment such as that of Hezbollah, opinion is not individual but collective, and any deviation from the line is treated as betrayal. Critical thinking becomes a threat to cohesion.

What sometimes appears to us as rigidity or refusal to engage in debate cannot therefore be reduced to a merely hardline political stance; it is the result of a coherent discursive and psychological structure, built with care, repeated and reformulated with insistence, until it transforms into an automatic reflex of thought.

This structure departs from a decisive point, that of the prior definition of reality. All fundamental terms — “the enemy,” “the resistance” — are not put forward as subjects for debate, but as definitive truths. Within this framework, America and Israel are presented as an absolute enemy, and “the resistance” is accorded absolute legitimacy. The debate no longer concerns choices, but operates within boundaries drawn in advance that may not be crossed.

Once this framework is installed comes the second stage: loading language with affect. Words such as “sacrifices,” “steadfastness,” “dignity,” and “aggression” are employed not to describe reality, but to provoke an intense emotional response. When emotion takes the lead, analysis retreats, and objection becomes less a difference of opinion than a form of moral betrayal.

Upon these foundations is built a “closed binary” that tolerates no gradation: one is either with the resistance or with the enemy. The grey zone disappears, the natural complexity of any political reality is effaced, and there is no longer any space to think about compromises, provisional arrangements, or even a national interest independent of this sharp divide.

For the circle to close, every alternative is discredited in advance. Any differing proposal is immediately labelled a “deviation,” a “conspiracy,” or a “betrayal of history and of the sacrifices.” The idea is not discussed on its own terms, but pre-emptively distorted, so that the mere act of reflecting upon it already carries a moral risk.

In parallel, the notion of “community” is invoked as the supreme reference. One speaks in the name of “the people,” of “national constants,” of “the honourable” — as in the discourse of Hezbollah — implying that whoever dissents is not merely diverging in opinion, but placing himself outside the community itself. This is where fear enters: the fear of exclusion, of the accusation of treason, or of the loss of belonging.

But what is most dangerous in this structure is the articulation of the inside and the outside. When internal dissent is presented as a graver danger than the external threat — as emerges from the declarations of certain Hezbollah MPs — the internal opponent is transformed into an existential threat, rather than a partner in debate. At this point, internal escalation is pre-emptively justified.

At the end of this trajectory, a single choice is presented as the only solution: no alternative to “the resistance” in its current form, whatever the circumstances, the balance of power, or the contradictions with the country’s interests. The circle closes entirely.

As this structure repeats itself over time, it comes to resemble a “button” pressed in the mind: a single word is enough to trigger a complete chain of prefabricated judgements. Thought is no longer necessary, because the conclusion is known in advance. The debate then ceases to be a confrontation of ideas and becomes a collision of identities. And it is precisely at this level that the mind stops functioning, not because it is incapable of doing so, but because it was never trained to step outside this closed framework.