Beneath the anguished sounds of destruction in the Levant, a new Lebanon is being born. This Lebanon will be freed from the savage hordes of Hezbollah jihadists, snatched from the jaws of Syrian and Iranian hyenas, and liberated at last from Palestinian Arab maggots who for 50 years masqueraded as freedom fighters and poisoned everything they touched.

As we watch this magnificent tragedy unfold amid so much blood, tears, guts, rockets, and smoke, we, the long silenced Arab majority, must insist that it bring down the curtain on the barbarians in our midst.

Given the enormous stakes, it is imperative that the collective will of Israel, America, France — indeed, all of Europe — and the many Arab nations quietly backing the fight does not weaken before the job is done. It was Lebanon’s misfortune to be the experimental theater where jihadists first spread mayhem back in the 1980s, killing American and French soldiers, initiating the long, dark nightmares of hostages and terror, and placing Lebanon under Syria’s boot for 30 years. It is only fair, then, that in the past week Lebanon has witnessed the return of American Marines, 22 years after their flight, and of the Israeli army, back this time to liberate, not occupy. By all indications, these troops are laboring hand in hand with Arabs who want to roll back the march of Islamic fundamentalism and its kingdom of darkness.

We should view the events now unfolding not as a local battle for Lebanon but as a larger fight for the future of the entire Arab nation. For two decades, this nation of 350 million has been hijacked by a bizarre collection of Neanderthals, pseudo-revolutionaries, illiterate imams, and “Mad Max”-style Palestinian Arab terrorists of every hue, all united only in their desire to pillage in the name of a religion they expropriated.

Their manifest failure, which we hope will be delivered in resounding military terms, should come as a hard knock on the head of any Arab drifters. Cynics and cowards are already shouting “Enough!” but we know it will only be enough when the madman of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, and all the other turbaned, bearded bats of the night are found, nailed down, and killed, and the whole Hezbollah movement in Lebanon — as well as Hamas and the other freelance Palestinian Arab factions — is convincingly discredited.

These groups are already running on empty. A glance at any Arab paper or news network other than the fundamentalist Al-Jazeera is enough to gauge the torrent of abuse on both Hamas and Hezbollah by Arab pundits, raining on the jihadists’ parade in commentary as stinging as a cobra’s bite.They have been accused of juvenile behavior, corruption, and incompetence, and blamed for dragging Arabs into pirate wars and bringing pain and misery to their people.

The first phase of their path to disgrace is complete: Sheik Nasrallah and various Hamas leaders have joined the growing club of Arab terrorist fugitives in hiding, sneaking their videotapes to Al-Jazeera like Osama bin Laden. Gone are the days when they could find hideouts among their patrons. Unless the Israeli campaign in Lebanon collapses, Sheik Nasrallah will have to be smuggled into Iran, where he will be kept under wraps.

By far the biggest surprise in this debacle has been Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf Arab states’ unstinting denunciation of their would-be fundamentalist minions.

One after another, senior Saudi princes — as well as Egyptian, Jordanian, Kuwaiti, Bahraini, and other Arab decision-makers — have made it clear they will not support Hezbollah. Many of them have described it openly as Iran’s Shiite agent in a Muslim Sunni Arab world.

While they have been critical of Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, none have championed Hezbollah’s unilateral rush to war. Nor have they objected to Israel’s determination to rout Hezbollah — or, for that matter, Israel’s hounding of Hamas.

Indeed, both jihadist groups have been described repeatedly as an embarrassment to Muslim governance. Behind it all is the Arab world’s growing impatience with the concept of “eternal struggle” and the heavy price paid after September 11, 2001. Today’s Arab world is a much younger and more prosperous place, one that is eager for modernization and globalization. This Arab world has graduated from juvenile pursuits of Palestinian Arab causes, dreams of Arab nationalism, and hopes for a Muslim super-nation.

And guess who these Arabs are now following into liberation from their ghosts? Israel.