It is true. The dragons of Lebanon’s past and
present have emerged, crawling, slithering and
craving for blood. In the afternoon sun that shone
on St George’s basilica and the Martyrs square that
you so aptly describe, they spread their wings,
licked their newly sharpened teeth and prepared to
feast.
These Dragons are not without names of course and
certainly not without titles. Deservingly, they
belong in the back pages of Lebanon’s colorful
history of saboteurs, traitors, religious fanatics,
murderers and last but not least, Journalists with
their own little agendas. I will expose them if you
grant me the same time that it took to read and
absorb your recent opine on the funeral of martyr
Pierre Gemayel.
It would also be nice Mr. Fisk, if you could
spend one day writing a piece about how happy you
are that you get to live in Lebanon. Try savoring a
moment by counting your blessings that a country
such as mine exists. Walk through Achrafieh, stare
at Sannine, wander in the Cedars and have a drink in
the old port city of Byblos as you watch the sun set
into a glistening Mediterranean. I am sure you have
done all of these at least once.
Now go find a closet that is about 5 feet by 10.
Try and find one that is three stories under ground
and has keepers who were trained in your beloved
Syria. Therein, Mr. Celebrated Journalist, you may
imprison yourself for 11 years. Before you enter,
blindfolded and tortured, remind yourself that you
have the choice and could have traveled to any
country in the world or been a celebrated Lebanese
minister instead.
Pretend, if you could, that you had the guts and
the perseverance to endure this, and that you
actually cared for this country enough to risk it.
If there is a slim possibility that upon your
emergence, you still have your health and your wits
about you, then you would have some approximation of
what Dr. Samir Geagea sacrificed for the cause of
Lebanon’s independence and the sovereignty of its
people.
There are sins Mr. Fisk that are worthy of such
prisons, and being a revisionist of History and the
struggles of a people should be one of them.
I will not go further into the Kangaroo court
that framed Dr. Geagea for the heinous church
bombing and the murder of Dany Chamoun or the fact
that despite all their fabrications and coerced
testimonies, he was acquitted of both of these
crimes. I will not question why he was offered two
ministerial positions if only he would tow the
Syrian line that you are so eager to make amends
for. I will not delve into the reasons for your
slander and misrepresentations about his guilt, nor
surmise the root of the derisive and cynical remarks
about a tribute for a terrible tragedy that befell
my country in the assassination of Pierre Gemayel.
But this I will say to you Mr. Fisk,
The Dragons who have emerged in Lebanon are
identifiable. Their claw prints are on the Marine
Barracks in Beirut, on buildings in Buenos Aires,
they are on the psyches of western hostages. They
are on the Graves of Kamal, of Bachir, of Rene, of
Rafik, of Pierre and all over the soul of Lebanon.
Their culpability and complicity are as clear as the
outcomes of Syrian presidential elections, as
deafening as the chants of Hezbollah war cries that
wail “Al mowto li Amreeka, Al mowto li Amreeka”
(Death to America, Death to America).
When, in the past 30 years of Lebanese history,
almost every one of the 20 or more assassinations
are of outspoken, anti-Syrian, Lebanese patriots,
one can certainly take Arab conspiracy theories,
pro-Syrian accusations of the Mossad , suspected CIA
plots, and questionable Robert Fisk editorials and ,
to misquote George W Bush , “throw them in History’s
unmarked trashcan of forgotten lies”.
I urge you to look back on your 25 years of
Journalism in Lebanon and realize that if it weren’t
for the Christians of Lebanon and the bravery of men
like Dr. Samir Geagea, your writings would be
censored by a fundamentalist Shiite in a post called
the Ministry of Information designed by a Syrian
president who was elected by 98.2% of the populace.
On second thought, with the quality and
inequality in your writing, you might very well be
that minister himself.
Sincerely,
Hareth Raad
Dragons Of Lebanon's Past Emerge For Gemayel Funeral
By
Robert Fisk - 25 November 2006
The
Independent
Amin
Gemayel wept and swooned in front of us. The tens of
thousands of Christians and Muslims burst into
applause before the improvised stage. Gemayel - a
foppish man with little charisma when he was
President of Lebanon - held up his right hand and
suddenly became a symbol of nobility, still swaying
on his feet, his left arm supported by the tall, far
younger figure of Saad Hariri. Only two days
earlier, Gemayel's MP son, Pierre, had been blasted
to death by gunmen in Beirut; his body still lay in
the Cathedral of St George a few metres from where
we were standing. But nothing became Gemayel like
his courage yesterday as he told the vast mass of
Lebanese in front of him that, yes, there would be a
second revolution in this country which would end
only when the pro-Syrian President had been removed.
The
knightly St George gave his name to the great
Italianate basilica - yes, he is supposed to have
slain the dragon in Beirut - but Amin Gemayel's
bravery was one of the few moments of humanity on
this brightly sunny, politically overcast,
disturbing day. For alas, the dragons that move
through the dark underworld of Lebanon's politics
are still alive. One of them, the gaunt and
murderous old militia leader Samir Geagea - he spent
14 years in an underground prison for blowing up a
church - talked ominously of Lebanon's enemies,
international and domestic. "They wanted a
confrontation - so be it," he shouted.
The
terrible pain of Lebanon's body politic was all too
evident in the figures silhouetted in the evening
light alongside the bullet-proof box from which
Gemayel spoke. Gemayel himself had lost his son and,
in 1982, his president-elect brother Bashir, whose
baby daughter was slaughtered in a bomb explosion
during the civil war.
There
was Marwan Hamade, almost killed by a car bomb
explosion in October 2004, and Saad Hariri, whose
father Rafik's murder - in an even bigger car bomb
explosion in Beirut last year - set off the first
"revolution" which brought democracy to Lebanon and
the withdrawal of Syrian troops. And there was Walid
Jumblatt, the eloquent, nihilist Druze leader, whose
father Kemal was murdered by armed men in March of
1977. And Nayla Moawad, whose president-husband,
Rene, was blown to atoms by a bomb in November of
1989.
They
all stood together on the sad little podium,
Pierre's broken body in the basilica behind them,
Rafik's burned corpse in the flowered grave beside
them.
But
yesterday's funeral bore some of the attributes of
the Roman games, partly, I suspect, because the
informality of Islam has, over the years, brushed
off on the Christian Maronite Church.
Old
political enemies embraced each other beside priests
and sweating paramilitary police while the huge
crowds applauded and roared their approval of Messrs
Jumblatt and Hariri and, especially, Dr Geagea, but
booed with derision Ali Hassan Khalil of the Shia
Amal party and a sinister Christian ex-militiaman
who once hurled his equally Christian civil war
prisoners into the Mediterranean with concrete tied
to their legs. They were, of course, alive at the
time.
Like
everything Lebanese - to misquote Evelyn Waugh - the
day's pageantry was very impressive, but went on far
too long. We had to listen to church music, church
bells, Islamic chants, the music of Majida el-Roumi
(the new Fairouz) and the tinny band of the Internal
Security Forces as it whump-aad its way through the
Lebanese national anthem against the thump of army
helicopters. There were forests of flags, happily
more Lebanese than militia-oriented and thousands
and thousands of Lebanese troops, reservists,
gendarmerie, riot police, interior ministry goons,
traffic cops and ISF men.
All
these, needless to say, to safeguard the lives of
that most endangered of species, Lebanon's surviving
politicians, from - so most of the crowd assumed -
the assassins of Damascus.
In
fact, when the bodies of Gemayel and his bodyguard,
Samir Chartouni, were removed from the cathedral for
burial, there were another hundred heavily armed
security men standing around the coffins. If only, I
couldn't help asking myself, they had been as
enthusiastic to protect the occupants of the caskets
when they were alive.
May
Chidiac, the Christian journalist who is a harsh
critic of Syria's hegemony of Lebanon and lost a leg
and a hand in the bombing of her own car last year,
bravely gave the crowd a blond, Academy Awards
smile.
Watching the great and the good enter the basilica
was a bit like spotting the stars. Grey-haired Dory
Chamoun, whose militia-leader brother, Dany, was
assassinated in 1990, along with his wife, Ingrid,
and two of their children, Tariq and Julian. Boutros
Harb and Nasib Lahoud (no relation to the hated
President) and Charles Rizk, all of whom would like
- heaven knows why - to be president of Lebanon when
Emile Lahoud either finishes his term in the Baabda
palace or is turfed out by the anger of these
crowds.
"To
Baabda, to Baabda," they shrieked. A march on Baabda
is often threatened, not least by Dr Geagea, who
does not seem to associate it with the march on
Rome. But it is Lahoud who is now regarded as the
unconstitutional ruler of Lebanon.
Posters demanded his dismissal - a demand made ever
more harshly by Hariri and Jumblatt since Gemayel's
murder - and one eloquent banner even addressed the
President. "Oh Caesar of Baabda," it proclaimed,
"get the hell out!" Less of a Caesar, I would have
said, than an attendant lord of Damascus.
Geagea
was chilling in his denunciations. "We will not
accept that this government shall be changed for a
government of murderers and criminals," he shouted.
And since it is Sayed Hassan Nasrallah of the Shia
Hizbollah who has been abusing the Siniora cabinet
as the government of "the US ambassador" - and since
it is the Shia ministers who have withdrawn from
this same cabinet - one could conclude, could one
not, that Dr Geagea's "murderers and criminals" were
Shia.
Indeed, dwelling on his bloody wartime sins, most of
which were amnestied, one has to reflect why
Geagea's lads blew up the congregation of the Church
of Our Lady of Deliverance in 1994; the court said
that he wanted to persuade Christians that Hizbollah
had committed the crime.
Funny
how these things come back to us. Oddly, Pierre
Gemayel's murder has had exactly the same effect on
Christians and Sunni Muslims; it has persuaded many
of them that the Hizbollah, on Syria's behalf,
committed the crime. A distressing thought.
