Hezbollah's Existential Threat to Lebanon's Christians

Najwa Abi-Haydar – Al-Markaziyah, May 31, 2023

Translated from Arabic

The French presidential statement, which was issued by the Elysée after French President Emmanuel Macron met with Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Beshara Ra’i, contained a significant provision more important than the call to elect a President. This provision speaks of “the necessity for Lebanon’s Christians to remain at the core of the sectarian and institutional balance within the Lebanese State.”

Prior to the Elysée, the Maronite Patriarch heard similar words in the Vatican which is very concerned about the survival and endurance of the Christians in Lebanon, particularly with the very high rates of emigration within the younger generation. The concern is that Lebanon is being voided of its Christian younger generation with a view to alter the balance of force by demographic change, with simultaneous efforts to settle the Palestinian and Syrian refugees permanently on Lebanese soil. The Vatican expressed its attachment to the shared-living formula and its rejection of the power imbalance [in favor of  the Shiites] that is leading some Christians to call for federalism, partition, separation and putting an end to the unique Lebanese formula of shared-living.

Beyond the presidential election stalemate now in its 6^th month, there is an existential threat to Lebanon as a whole, according to Christian political sources. The threat consists in a systematic voiding of the constitutional institutions in an attempt to force a constitutive conference which would consecrate constitutionally and permanently the gains acquired by the force of weapons.

The sources add that the obstruction by the Shiite duo [Syrian Amal and Iranian Hezbollah] of the election of a president by insisting on its candidate Sleiman Frangiyeh, despite the rejection of the latter by a large Christian consensus, and unlike the situation when Michel Aoun’s candidacy was compelled by his leading the largest Parliamentary bloc, confirms the intention of the Shiite duo to maintain the vacancy in the presidential seat and use it as a master card with which to negotiate new and significant political gains.

An observation of the recent postures by the Shiite duo, specifically after the Beijing Agreement [between Saudi Arabia and Iran] which the Shiites claim to be to their advantage as evidenced by the unconditional return of Syria to the Arab League, suggests a significant development: Tensions, broken promises, displeasure at the accord between the Free Patriotic Movement [FPM] and the opposition and vicious campaigns against their candidate, closure of Parliament to prevent the holding of an electoral assembly, intimidating military demonstrations, etc. This landscape reflects a trend toward imposing new facts on the ground as a prelude to a systematic toppling of the Lebanese formula such that the Shiite duo consecrates its political gains in the constitution in exchange for ending the presidential vacancy.

However, the sources say that Hezbollah fears that secret provisions may be contained in the Beijing Agreement or other public or secret accords aiming at a gradual settling of problems and imposing stability. A general trend toward peace between the countries in the region will undercut all non-state militias and armed organizations, particularly those affiliated with Iran like Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is fully aware of these facts and is preparing itself to seize all the cards available to it to consecrate its gains before the “D-Day” when those secret provisions are implemented. It may be that Hezbollah may compensate its potential military losses with political gains for the Shiite community through a change in the Lebanese system, by a constitutive conference that sees the Shiites on the rise and the Christians in decline. Will the Shiite duo’s plan succeed? Or will it be defeated by the vigilance of the Vatican and other leaders keen on preserving the Lebanese formula of coexistence?

 

Terrified Bassil Dumps Hezbollah. Deserves 2023 Nobel for Treachery

Gebran Bassil says his ill-named “Free Patriotic Movement” (FPM) has agreed with the Lebanese opposition on a name for a candidate for the presidential elections, though the political program remains incomplete. Bassil, however, being terrified at the prospect of being a target of assassination by his former ally, the Iranian terrorist militia of Hezbollah, continues to lick the flip-flops of Hassan Nasrallah and says, “it is necessary to find an agreement with everyone else, including Hezbollah.” Lick, Gebran, lick, it may save your life from the wrath of Beelzebub with whom you struck a Faustian deal in 2006.

After spending close to two decades as a Christian Dhimmi slave to the Iranian terrorist organization, when he should have known that there are consequences to dealing with an unlawful, criminal and terrorist organization, Bassil is now walking back from his love affair with the Iranian mullahs. Why? Because his Christian base has deserted him and is now squarely in the camp of the Christian opposition, the Lebanese Forces of Samir Geagea.

As is typical in primitive tribal Lebanese politics, Bassil doesn’t find it necessary to explain to his followers and the Lebanese people his turnaround on his 20-year-long treasonous relationship with Hezbollah, in which he and his father-in-law, former traitor president Michel Aoun, have spoken ill of the Lebanese army as an incapable institution and used this as a justification for defending the unlawful existence of Hezbollah. Once a defender of Israel against Palestinian suicide operations, and an enemy of Syria and Iran, Michel Aoun became an enemy of Israel and an ally of Syria and Iran overnight after the idiot Bassil convinced him to betray his principles and his country to become president. Hezbollah then proceeded to paralyze Parliament for 2.5 years to force Aoun into the presidential palace.

Now Bassil, always the reliable imbecile, thought that his blood covenant with Hezbollah included securing him the presidential seat in Baabda after his senile father-in-law's term ended. But in this treacherous masquerade, Hezbollah is the puppeteer and Bassil the puppet, and now the puppeteer has found another more reliable traitor to deal with in the person of the medieval feudal lord from the north, Sleiman Frangiyeh, and has therefore ignored Bassil’s constant drooling and groveling at the feet of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The scorned lover and cuckold Bassil is angry but cannot express his anger freely because the puppeteer is prone to using violence, including assassination, against former puppets who wash dirty laundry in public.

But Bassil is desperate, very desperate. His Christian base has all but deserted him, and his popularity with that base is waning as the old geezer Michel Aoun slips into oblivion, while Bassil's apparent political buoyancy was strictly dependent on his tactical alliances with those he now claims are his enemies, as the May 2022 elections showed. As Hezbollah is dumping him, Bassil finds himself without any ally, so he is trying to cling to a few fibers of Nasrallah's robes while at the same time walking away - or pretending to walk away - from Hezbollah. In other words, he wants his cake and eat it too. He's such an idiot.

For example, he recently declared what he is asking Hezbollah to put aside its coercive confrontational posture and adopt an acceptable national consensus, or alternatively to agree to a democratic competition in parliament by voting. Wow, Bassil used to defend Hezbollah’s coercive and often lethal methods when they favored him and Michel Aoun. Now that it is no longer the case, he is critical of them. He further says that the current performance of the Shiite duo (Amal movement and Hezbollah) is uniting the Christians! Indeed, Bassil’s Christian followers have rallied the Christian base of Bassil’s rival, the Lebanese Forces of Samir Geagea, and any Christian unity will be without him personally. Too bad for Bassil who is begging anyone and everyone to save him from his own self-inflicted political demise.

As his ship is sinking, Bassil continues to flail about by begging former friends and foes. After cursing and badmouthing the Saudis for decades to satisfy his Hezbollah masters, Bassil is now engaged in heavy bootlicking at the feet of the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs. He now says that his FPM never meant to harm the Gulf countries (while he previously remained mum on Hezbollah's manufacturing and smuggling drugs like Captagon to the Arabian Gulf), but that today, faced with the ongoing changes in the region, he has a responsibility to bear. Not short on groveling and brown-nosing given his self-inflicted pathetic situation, Bassil went unusually far in praising Saudi Arabia for its new policies: If the Saudis’ great evolution can be disseminated across the region, we could see a new Europe in its humanitarian concept and its civilizational development, which would have huge repercussions on Lebanon including a rejection of the project of an alliance of minorities.

Bassil and Aoun should be inducted into the “Greatest Traitors Hall of Fame” of the history of Lebanon. To betray, knowing that you are betraying, then when the winds turn, to crawl back on your knees to kiss the feet of those whom you betrayed…is the height of treason and betrayal. Bassil should be given the 2023 Nobel Prize for Betrayal and Treachery.

 

Lebanon's Fascist Shiites: Frangiyeh or Else

Lebanon’s Fascist Shiites to the Lebanese People:  There Shall be No Other Candidate than Frangiyeh

Freely translated from Omar Rassi's piece in “Akhbar Al-Yom”.

At a time when the opposition and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) have not yet publicly announced their agreement to back presidential candidate, Mr. Jihad Azour, former Minister and current Director for the Middle East and Central Asia at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Fascists of the two Shiite parties Amal and Hezbollah have declared their opposition to Mr. Azour. The head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc [i.e. Hezbollah] in parliament, Mr. Mohammad Raad, categorically declared: “The candidate whose name is circulating is a candidate of a scheming maneuver whose task is to confront  and bring down our candidate [Sleiman Frangiyeh].” Raad called on the opposition to “cease wasting time and prolonging the crisis”.

In an equally rabid statement, the member of the Liberation and Development [i.e.Amal Movement] bloc, MP Hassan Khalil [who is a prime suspect in the Beirut Port explosion] called the agreement of the opposition as “political spitefulness in a logic of obstruction… Domestic conspiracies do not build a nation, and these political forces’ sole agreement is to bring down our candidate.”

Sources of the opposition say, through the Akhbar Al-Yom Agency, that there are three messages that the Shiite duo [Nabih Berri’s Amal and Hassan Nasrallah’s Iranian Hezbollah] is addressing to those concerned by the presidential election, namely that you, the Lebanese people, should know the following:

1- There shall be no other candidate than our candidate, Sleiman Frangiyeh;

 2- Jihad Azour must withdraw his candidacy; and

 3- The head of the FPM Gebran Bassil [an on-off ally of Hezbollah] must reevaluate his position…

The opposition sources further explain that the first message above means that Hezbollah and Amal insist on Frangiyeh’s candidacy and there is no other choice but him as the candidate of consensus and partnership. Any other candidate represents submission and surrender. Raad’s words suggest specifically that the Shiite duo has no problem waiting as this allows it to impose the formula of “either Frangiyeh or open vacancy in the presidency, and there is nothing the opposition can do about it."

The second message is addressed to Azour himself to pressure him into withdrawing his candidacy and not be a confrontational candidate. Should Azour decline to proceed with his candidacy, the opposition is back to the drawing board. The Shiite duo seems to believe that Azour is hesitating as he does not want confrontation with the Shiites, but his withdrawal would place the opposition and the FPM in a bind and force them to look for another candidate.

The third message is a warning to Gebran Bassil that his endorsement of Azour is a hostile act toward Hezbollah, at which point the FPM becomes an enemy of Hezbollah.

It is worth noting that Bassil has been very dilatory in his desperate attempt to extricate himself from his very cumbersome alliance with Hezbollah, often hinting that his 2006 Memorandum of Understanding with the Iranian militia isn't properly working and needs updating, or that Hezbollah has broken its promises [to name Bassil for the presidency], but without ever having the courage to openly divorce himself from Hezbollah.

Another important point to make here is that Hezbollah’s criminal record is replete with assassinations of political opponents, journalists, and others, but more importantly assassinations of former allies who turned against Hezbollah, as was the case with prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. Thus, the third message above to Bassil is more than a warning, it is a threat.

Finally, the logic of the Lebanese Shiite parties is Fascist, just like their masters in Damascus and Tehran. Instead of a democratic process in which more than one candidate fight it out inside Parliament, these Shiite terrorist Fascists want to impose one candidate - theirs - on everyone else. They want everyone to first consent to Hezbollah's candidate (Frangiyeh) then go to Parliament for a stamp vote. They can't stand a fair fight. It is not that they are against the opposition's candidate like rivals do in a normal democracy; they are against the idea of more than one candidate presenting themsleves in the elections. They want one candidate - theirs - and they want to coerce everyone with their weapons to concede the field to him before even voting. Voting is simply a bureaucratic formality, as is done in Baathist Syria, in Communist China, in Islamic Iran and other dictatorships and totalitarian countries. Credit should be given to Turkiye for holding normal elections, even under Erdogan's authoritarian rule.

The Butcher is Back

Can someone please explain the mystery of the Assad regime's longevity? If the regime was a kind, responsible, democratic, well-integrated into the international community, respectful of human rights, economically successful... then one might understand that such a begnin dictatorship might last more than 50 years.

BUT,

The Assad regime is a cruel, barbaric, dictatorial, pariah in the international community, a consistent and chronic violator of human rights, a decrepit socialist economic system, a familial oligarchy of profiteers and cronies, whose power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority (the Alawite Shiites) ruling by terror over the remaining Syrian population.

The Assad regime invaded Lebanon in 1976 and contributed more than any other party to the destruction of the country by undermining the country's institutions, shelling Lebanese cities for months on end, kidnapping and forcibly disappearing innocent people whose whereabouts remain unknown, and in recent years working hand in hand with the terror organization Hezbollah to dismantle the little bit left of a functioning Lebanese state.

Syrian jails are notorious for their babarity and their arbitrary detention and torture of people, and for making an extortion business out of the families of the detained. Lebanese detainees from the 1970s and 1980s are no longer identifiable because their Syrian jailers change their names and neither their families nor human rights organizations can find them.

Syria has scuttled any apparent move toward peace with Israel, being the only Arab country with borders with Israel to have rejected a peace treaty with Israel while forcing tiny Lebanon to follow suit by arming and funding Palestinian terror organizations since the 1960s, then Iranian terror organizations like Hezbollah.

The only thing that the Assad regime can be credited with - from a Western standpoint - is that it has never fought Israel after 1973. Having fought and lost the 1949, 1967, and 1973 wars with Israel, Hafez Assad (the father of current butcher Bashar) made a deal with Henry Kissinger, the criminal former US State Department Secretary, in 1974 over the Golan Heights which was occupied and annexed by Israel: The US will not remove you from power and will surrender Lebanon to you as long as you keep peace on the Golan Heights with Israel. And both sides have kept their word on that deal ever since. And that is why the Assad regime is still alive and kicking when all other Arab dictators have fallen and, unfortunately, been replaced by a new generation of pro-Western dictators.

Assad has never challenged Israel over its occupation of the Golan, has never fired a bullet attempting to liberate the Golan, and has never allowed any resistance - Palestinian or Iranian-backed - to operate and fire from the Golan on Israel (like has always been the case in Lebanon), while shoving Lebanon into becoming the only active war front against Israel.

And now, the filthy Arabs have again embraced the Assad regime, forgiving it the murder of half a million of its own people, the detention and torture of hundreds of thousands, and the eviction of 12 million Syrians out of their country into refugee camps. Other dictators with such a record would be sitting in a criminal court facing charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

But not Assad. The West and the Arabs seem to find merit in the Assad regime that they can never articulate. The West, especially the Americans and their European poodles, take a tough tone in their public statements about vague sanctions that never deter Assad or change his behavior. They go haywire about every other dictator in Asia and Africa, sending armies and peacekeeprs, bringing criminals of war to the Hague for prosecution.... But not Assad. They go after terrorist leaders, killing them with drones and bombings. But not Assad.

What is it that protects the Assad regime? Is it the deal that Henry Kissinger made with the regime in 1974 to protect Israel and implant the Palestinian refugees permanently in Lebanon so they no longer make a claim to the Right of Return? 

Are the Arabs and the West making a new deal with Assad in which the 2 million Syrian refugees and illegals in Lebanon will be permanently settled in the country just like the Palestinian refugees, transforming Lebanon into a Sunni Muslim majority country that is friendly to Israel, now that all the Sunni arabs have sold Palestine and become allies of Israel? 

Lebanon is again being sold to the Assad regime in exchange for concessions elsewhere. The pattern of Western and Arab treachery vis-a-vis Lebanon has not changed since the late 1960s. The Lebanese don't seem to understand that Syria is Lebanon's Enemy Number One and Lebanese politicians are afraid of the Syrian regime's propensity to assassinate those who disagree with it, like it did between 1975 to date. It took Syria six decades to recognize Lebanon's right to exist as an independent country and agree to post an ambassador in Beirut. Syria's Assad sees and treats Lebanon exactly as his friend Vladimir Putin sees and treats Ukraine: Just as Putin believes Ukraine to have always been part of his imperial and soviet Russia, Assad believes Lebanon was always part of some Greater Syria fantasy spawned from his Baathist ideology.

How long can a diminishing native Lebanese population last in the face of the Syrianization and Islamization of the country? Can the Lebanese people really stand up to the long term objective of the West to eliminate the annoying Lebanese formula that complicates its simpleton views of the Middle East, what with its recalcitrant Christian community that refuses to disappear like Iraq's and Syria's Christians? In their ignorance and greed, Western decision-makers have convinced themselves that the Middle East would be simpler to understand and manage if it is reduced to a Jewish (Israel) versus Sunni Muslim (Saudi Arabia) duality. The "uniqueness" of Lebanon, namely its Christian community, the last free Christian community in the entire East, has been a thorn in their primitive cerebrums and they have decided to finish with it once for all. Lebanon's Christians used to be Catholic Europe's foothold in the Near East back from the early centuries of the Church and the European Kingdoms. But now the prevailing anglo-saxon protestant winds coming from the United States and the United Kingdom have founded a new foothold in Palestine, a colony called Israel, and have no use for Lebanon and its Christians.

Saudi Sunnis, Lebanese Sunnis and Lebanese Christians

A Saudi woman astronaut is now working on biomedical research aboard the International Space Center. Who would have thought it possible? Saudi Arabia is achieving nothing short of miracles in its push to modernize the country.

Lebanon's Sunnis, meanwhile, who look up to Saudi Arabia as their reference since the Kingdom is Sunni Muslim, continue to regress backwards into barbaric traditions. Last week in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, Sunni Muslim clergymen harassed two women who were sunbathing on a beach, claiming that the wearing of bathing suits is "indecent".

As usual, the Lebanese - in all their sects and confessions - prove their backwardness. They never lead with new ideas they come up with themselves. They look to the outside, then like monkeys copy-paste the worst of the outside, never the best. It usually takes the Lebanese 20-30 years, i.e. a whole generation, to adopt new ideas from the outside world which they initially disagreed with. It's a primitive reflex innate to Lebanese arrogance to dismiss new ideas at first, then when they see others distancing them or the dollar signs flickering from the new ideas, they rush to adopt them. Still worse, they adopt them out of context because, in the rush, they haven't thought through them.

You name it: the environment, individual rights, separating state and religion... 

I reside in a middle class neighborhood somewhere in the Matn region where Maronite and Orthodox Christians are the majority. They condescendly look down on Syrians and other foreigners (yard workers, maids, etc.) who work with their hands. Having surfed on the fake booming economy of the past 30 years, these Christians have forgotten what it is to work hard. They get their fresh dollars from their children and relatives who have fled the cesspool, they hire maids, drive in huge gas-guzzling SUVs to show off, and are convinced that "loving life" means sit down in cafes, smoke the water pipe and eat. Life is all about show-off in Lebanon. People rarely do things because they are convinced of them; they do them to prove that they are not "low class", that they are successful (even if only in appearance), and that they are better than their neighbors. Now that the economy has tanked, they are having a hard time adjusting to what I consider "normal" life, in which you clean your own house, cook your own meals, walk your dog - Yes, they all have dogs, but they have the maid take the dog out on its daily walk. 

They spurn public schools and prefer to send their children to religious schools where they are taught to believe just enough science to get a job later. But forget about teaching the children human rights, the environment, real science like Darwinian theory and quantum physics.... because all these "western fads" are against God and the Church. These children and young adults trash their own villages and towns. Right next to my house is a long street flanked by wooded areas. I go out every day and pick up the trash - tissue papers, plastic bottles and bags, wrappings of US-style fast food, chocolate and candy wrappings, etc.- that these children or maybe even adults dump around them when they come here to play and fornicate in their souped up noisy cars. I don't mind the play and the fornication, but I abhorr the trash and the abject contempt for the environment. These are the same kids who grab their shotguns during migratory bird seasons and shoot at any stork, pelican, hawk, etc that passes overhead.

So I ask myself: What do these parents and schools (nuns and priests who fill their heads with barbaric religious beliefs) teach the children about the science behind the environment, about their place in the world, about mutual solidarity with their fellow Lebanese and human beings? The local municipality is a den of cronyism, corruption and incompetence that has left the town marred by potholes and garbage strewn everywhere. So I understand why the children behave the way they do.

But these people who call themselves Christians are not Christian in the substantive meaning of the word. They are politically Christian, but do not put any of the Christian teachings in practice in their daily lives. To them, to be a Christian is like going to a restaurant: You pick and choose from a menu those items which you like. As soon as they are out of the church on Sunday, they resume their Mafia-like lives of clients to the boss, of conniving merchants searching for a dollar here and there, without any consideration for solidarity and cooperation. In a village nearby in the region, there are three churches built right next to one another. Each church was built by one of the two dominant families of the village over silly disputes. The first two churches were both named after Saint Elias. When another dispute erupted within one of the two families, a third church was built to be named, again, after Saint Elias. But they finally perceived the riddicule, common sense prevailed and it was named after Saint George. 

If the Christians of Lebanon claim to be "more advanced" than the Muslims because they tolerate women in bikinis on their beaches, it doesn't mean that they are civilized. They have a long way to go, and it seems that the heart of Sunni Islam, Saudi Arabia, is far ahead of any of those religious numskulls in Lebanon that can't even run a country properly.

Tourists to Lebanon: Do Not Go South

Muslim religious radicals in the southern city of Sidon attacked two women who were bathing on a beach wearing standard bathing suits. The argument of the Muslim sheikhs is that wearing bathing suits is contrary to the "city's values and decency". As always, Muslim neanderthals attack primarily women, accusing them of "inciting" or "provoking" men, which implies that Mulsim men are animals that cannot control themselves and will sexually attack women who provoke them with "indecent" wear.

I call on those daring tourists heading to an otherwise decaying Lebanon this summer not to take these attacks on liberties lightly.

TO FOREIGN TOURISTS: 

AVOID THE CITIES OF SIDON AND TYRE IN THE SOUTH, AND THE NORTHERN CITY OF TRIPOLI IN THE NORTH.

AVOID LEBANON'S MUSLIM AREAS. GOING THERE EXPOSES YOU TO GRAVE RISKS.

DO NOT SPEND YOUR DOLLARS IN MUSLIM AREAS. 

DO NOT ENCOURAGE ISLAMIC FASCISM BY CONTRIBUTING TO THE ECONOMY OF AREAS UNDER CONTROL OF SUNNI AND SHIITE EXTREMIST MUSLIMS.

PUNISH THE RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS WHO WANT TO KEEP LEBANESE WOMEN SLAVES TO PATRIARCHAL ISLAM.

To tourists coming to Lebanon this summer: Head to the beaches and resorts north of Beirut, and avoid going south where Muslim radicals (both Sunni and Shiite) continue to try and impose their barbaric beliefs on others. They once in a while try to shut down liquor stores, impose strict dress codes on women, and such other practices from the Stone Age. The south is dangerous country, especially for foreign and western tourists.

This incident is an example of the deep divide between the two Lebanons that have yet to coalesce into one nation. [https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-two-lebanons.html]. This incident is symptomatic of the causes of instability and wars that have plagued Lebanon for decades. After its liberal golden age under Christian-dominated governments, when liberties were sacred and the country was a haven for all dissidents from the drab Arab dictatorial and ultra-religious regimes, Lebanon fell victim to Islamic radicalization and to an absurd impotent Arab nationalism that continues to fail both domestically (with dictatorships that brutalize their people and deny them basic human rights) and internationally (civil wars, coup d'etats, defeats by Israel, etc.). Having failed to defeat Jewish Israel in several wars, the Arabs turned on the other "alien" in their midst, Christian Lebanon.

The recent Arab Summit in Jeddah saw the same stale discussions and statements, made in grandiose gold-laden settings and venues, that have never produced anything worthwhile. The Summit in fact re-invited the Syrian butcher dictator Bashar Assad who has destroyed his own country, killed half a million of his own people and displaced millions of them as refugees in Turkiye, Lebanon, Jordan and everywhere else in Europe. Yet, the Arab Summit did not seek to hold Assad accountable for his murderous regime. Why? Because most Arab regimes are similar to Assad's, despite all the thick veneer of modernity they cover themselves with: When necessary to maintain their hold on power, they will crush their peoples. That is why all the revolutions of the Arab Spring have failed. 

Again: if you are a foreign tourist, do not venture into those areas of the country where ultra-religious Islamic radicals rule.

To Visitors through Beirut Airport - إلى المسافرين عبر مطار بيروت

One early morning this past week, our plane landed at Beirut Airport at 4:30 am. A couple of planes had landed at the same time, so there were about 400 passengers who lined up at the passport control booths. People had obviously flown all night, some from nearby Europe but many from as far as the Americas, and everyone was exhausted.

Only three inspectors were processing the passport checks, one for Lebanese passports, one for foreign passports, and one special booth for diplomats, flight crews etc. The latter was not that busy but they were all taking their time, working very slowly. Occasionally, there would be a passenger who needed a visa or further control, so the inspector would leave his booth and walk, again very very slowly, with the passenger to an office behind a glass door, a few meters away, wait for some 5-10 minutes while the passenger's papers were being processed, then walk back with him to the booth, again very slowly.

Children were crying, some passengers complained loud, and everyone's nerves were frayed. The chief inspector, the one behind the glass door, would not allow an older lady to accompany a wheelchair-bound passenger through the special booth, and a yelling match erupted while all the other passengers, particularly the foreign visitors, were watching. But the inspectors continued to work at a snail's pace, as if to deliberately unnerve people. At the very least, they did not seem to make any effort at speeding up the process.

It took 1.5 hours for my turn to go through. When I walked out to go get my luggage, I noticed that all the luggage carts were located at the extreme other end of the hall, except for a few in the hands of porters. To get a free cart, I had to walk all the way to the other end, past the running carousels. I yelled at the porters whom I suspect herd the carts far away to force you to hire their service. Cruel! I also went to a Baggage Claim counter to complain but I was told it is not their business to make sure carts are easily available to passengers. The carousels were not marked as to which plane's baggages were where. In fact, it seems there is one very long carousel that runs all across the hall, and passengers have to run back and forth to see where their luggage is.

To all visitors this summer to Beirut: Prepare yourself for incomptence and deliberate cruelty on the part of airport officials and employees who continuously broadcast a stale 30-year old insincere message over the speakers that says, "welcome to Rafik Hariri airport, we are honored ...." all blah blah that no one really means.

BE PREPARED: EVERYONE HERE JUST WANT YOUR MONEY! While TV ads bombard people with smartass slogans of hospitality, the reality is otherwise. Store and restaurant owners and waiters will rarely greet you with a smile or a kind word, they will throw a QR code on your table and will humiliate you if you dare ask for a paper menu. The contrast between western hospitality and Lebanese hospitality is as follows: In the west, the guest is treated with professionalism and a minimal but not invasive expression of hospitality, with simple hellos and goodbyes and polite conversation. In Lebanon you'll get the extremes: Either absolute rudeness, or a fake insincere and invasive hospitality that tramples on your privacy. GOOD LUCK.

Defunding Jewish Terrorism Masquerading as Charity

After September 11, 2001, the US went after Islamic charities that were fund-raising and suspected of sending money to Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations. Now is the time for the US to go after Zionist and Jewish terror-funding organizations claiming to be charities that are funding Jewish terrorist settlers in the West Bank. Bottom line: Jewish terrorism and Islamic terrorism are identical in their modes of operation.

Finally, after decades, justice is only beginning to be served.

New York’s state assembly is to consider legislation to stop registered charities from sending tens of millions of dollars a year to fund illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

State assembly member Zohran Mamdani has introduced the “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence” act to prohibit tax-deductible donations from being used to expel Palestinians from their land and other activities widely regarded as war crimes under the Geneva conventions.

The United Nations security council has called Israeli settlement construction “a flagrant violation under international law”.

“This legislation makes it clear that New York will no longer effectively subsidize war crimes and the flouting of international law,” Mamdani told the Guardian.

“What we have is a number of New York state-registered charities that are sending at least $60m a year to Israeli settlement organizations which then use that funding to continue the history of expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians in the occupied territories that has been going on for decades.”

The bill was denounced by pro-Zionist members of the New York State legislature who characterized it as an attack on charities that "provide care for victims of terrorism and clothe orphans", when in fact they fund all manner of illegal acivities in occupied Palestine, including stealing Palestinian lands, uprooting millennial olive orchards to push the Palestinian owners out of their land, demolishing homes, terrorizing the indigenous Palestinian population, all aiming at eventually ethnically cleansing the West Bank and annexing it to Israel.

The legislation is backed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Jewish Voice for Peace, among others. Vince Warren, CCR’s director, said: “Aiding and abetting war crimes is not charitable, period. This bill goes a long way toward ensuring that New York is not inadvertently subsidizing war crimes, but rather creating paths for accountability.”

Mamdani named several New York-based organizations as targets for the law, including the Central Fund of Israel which describes itself as “promoting charitable causes in Israel”. CFI makes specific mention of its money going to the “land of Israel” which is often used to refer to the occupied territories as well as the state of Israel. The CFI disperses donations to an array of settler organizations including the Israel Land Fund responsible for the expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers, which was - and continues to be - the fundamental modus operandi of Jewish and Zionist organizations that led to the creation of the State of Israel.

Another US group, Friends of Ir David, funds Elad, an Israeli settler organization responsible for the forced removal of Palestinians as it seeks to “Judaize” occupied East Jerusalem. “These organisations masquerade as charities while funding illegal activities,” said Mamdani.

In 2015, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that at least 50 organisations across the US were involved in fundraising for Israeli settlements. Haaretz said some of the money also went “toward providing legal aid to Jews accused or convicted of terrorism, and supporting their families” through a “legal aid society” called Honenu.

“Among those who benefited from the group’s support in 2013 were the family of Ami Popper, who murdered seven Palestinian laborers in 1990, and members of the Bat Ayin Underground, which attempted to detonate a bomb at a girls’ school in East Jerusalem in 2002,” Haaretz reported.

The proposed legislation would give New York state’s attorney general the power to sue groups funding settlements. It would also give Palestinians harmed by settler organizations funded by New York-based charities the right to seek damages in American courts.

Mamdani said that explicit legislation is necessary because, while there may be other laws on the books that could be used to prevent Americans funding illegal activities abroad, the politics of support for Israel in the US means they have not been applied.

“There’s a phrase that I grew up hearing: PEP, progressive except Palestine. You’d see how, time and again, politicians who espoused universal beliefs would always seem to find an exception when it came to the question of Israel and Palestine. We see that sadly in terms of how our laws are applied in terms of how our policies are applied. What this legislation does is it reckons with reality,” he said.

For that reason, Mamdani acknowledges he will struggle to get the law passed at this time. But he said successive US presidents have opposed settlement expansion and public opinion is increasingly shifting toward support for the Palestinians.

“I think it will be a long fight. I do not have any illusions. But if you look at the attitudes of Americans towards Palestine and towards Israel, and specifically to the question of settlements, it is very clear that this is also a fight that is broadly popular,” he said.

Commemorating the Nakba

"I think it’s very hard for Israelis to admit that they commit war crimes. Because basically, the project of Zionism has a problem…You cannot create a safe haven by creating a catastrophe for other people." Ilan Pappe, professor emeritus of Haifa University.   

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The UN has for the first time expressed its regrets for the criminal creation of the State of Israel over the ashes of historic Palestine.

Israel is just a clone of South Africa under apartheid. Time to rectify the fake history propagated by the Zionist movement: Either a full-fledged independent Palestinian State over the remaining 22% of historic Palestine, or one bi-national country that is both Israeli and Arab, non-sectarian for all religions, including the three Jewish-Muslim-Christian religions. Otherwise, especially if the dumb Americans and their British poodles continue to blindly support Israel and its barabaric occupation, Israel is bound to proceed unabated with its violent apartheid policies of massacre and displacement, with the inevitable eviction of the remaining 5 million Palestinians in a gigantic ethnic cleansing campaign in order to achieve the purely Jewish State it says it wants. 

Is this what the world wants? A third ethnic cleansing of Palestine for so-called religious reasons?

1- Back in Bronze Age Palestine, the biblical garbage tells us that God gave the land to the Hebrews and commanded them to massacre the Canaanites (ancestors of the Palestinians), which Joshua did, killing men, women and children and taking their towns and villages.

2- Late 19th century - present time: The Zionist colonialist movement, based in part on the same biblical garbage of a "return" in addition to a mercantile colonial project, invaded Palestine and created the artificial state of Israel over the ashes of Palestine, massacring and evicting the native Palestinian population.

3- If the US and Great Britain and their poodles continue their blind support of apartheid Israel, the 21st century may itself be a witness of a third and final ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians out of their ancestral lands.

Just like former colonial countries have in recent years expressed their regrets for all the barbarity they inflicted on the native populations of African, Asian, and Latin American nations and peoples, the UN - but unfortunately not the barbaric Americans and English - continue to defend the Eastern European barbarians who invaded, massacred, displaced the native indigenous Palestinian people, herding them into refugee camps all across the region. Israel continues today, under a bigoted hypocritical facade of a tailored rule of law, prohibit Palestinians from returning to their towns, villages and lands, including both those who fled to neighboring countries and those who were evicted from one town to another inside Palestine itself. Do you ever wonder why there are refugee camps inside Israel itself? Do you ever wonder why Palestinian places are called "villages" while Israeli places are called "settlements"?

The Zionist movement is just another colonialist movement among many that sprung up in the mid-to-late 19th century in Europe, bearing the so-called "white man's burden" to civilize the rest of the world. The Zionist movement is one of many European nationalist movements that wrecked havoc around the world with barbaric wars, genocides, colonial seizure of entire nations and peoples, stealing their cultural heritages, forced religious conversions, etc.

In twenty years between 1920 and 1940, the Zionist terrorist movements of Haganah, Stern, Lehi and others attacked Palestinian villages, massacred their populations or forced them to flee, seizing their homes to install Jewish colonists who were entering Palestine illegally. In urban centers, the entire infrastructure of Palestine was built over centuries by an energetic, active Palestinian population, yet living under Ottoman occupation: local governments, courts of law, banks, museums, schools, cultural centers, hotels, etc. in addition to a productive agricultural sector. In the villages, Palestinian generations had for thousands of years, as evidenced by the millennial olive orchards that the barbarian Israelis keep uprooting, lived in traditional harmony with their environment. They, unfortunately, did not muster the wealth and sophistication of the invading hordes of European Jews, nor did they understand the violence that was being inflicted on them by these foreign barbarians who had learned everything, especially the violent repression of people, from their racist and violent Nazi European environment. Just like the native Amerindians when the white Europeans arrived. That is why the invaders won, and the natives lost. The Palestinians tried to mobilize against the invading hordes of European Jewish barbarians, but they were no match. Especially since the British racists had hypocritically sold Palestine to Jewish European bankers in exchange for loans with which the British fought the World Wars, and then allowed hundreds of thousands of Jews to enter mandatory Palestine illegally and massacre and evict the indigenous Palestinians.

For the decades since 1948, the State of Israel and its tentacles in Hollywood, Wall Street, the American and British media, the Jewish Agency, and others, have propagated the lies that everyone at first believed. Calling Palestine a land without people, referring to the Palestinians as squatters from the surrounding Arab countries, saying that the Palestinians left of their own will, continuously labeling the Palestinian National Movement as terrorist, Islamic, or in cahoots with other terrorist nations, saying that the Jewish European invaders were poor refugees from the death camps of Nazi Europe, etc.. All lies that most people believed because there were only very few sources of information, all held by the Zionist lobbies. 

But now the Internet has democratized information. Over the past few decades, the truth about the monumental crime of the 20th century, namely the creation of colonial Israel, has been exposed. Paid Zionists continue to haunt discussion forums on the Internet and other places where they continue to disseminate hateful lies about the Palestinian people; but no one believes them anymore. The truth is out of the box and it is unstoppable. And that is why it took the cowards of the international community and the UN 70 years to finally call Israel for the crime it constituted against the Palestinian people. After righfully voting in the 1970s the "Zionism is Racism" resolution, the General Assembly was forced, again by the powerful Zionist lobbies, to repeal that vote. But the Zionist endeavor of murdering an entire nation continues. The fight, however, is not over. The world is finally coming to terms with the crime of the 20th century: The creation of the western colony of Israel in the heart of the Near East over the ashes of historic Palestine.

For more:

http://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/02/tantura-israels-independence-as.html

http://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2023/02/israel-us-british-colonial-enterprise.html

http://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2023/02/one-example-of-israels-racist.html 

http://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2023/02/apartheid-israels-state-terrorism.html

http://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/02/totalitarian-american-zionismno-end-in.html

Racist English Amnesty has Gall to Call Lebanon Racist

Check out the findings of a 2021 inquiry into Amnesty International UK: "Racist, white privilege, colonialist....". 

This for an organization that has not ceased to suggest that the Lebanese people are "racist" because they can no longer bear the burden of 2 million Syrian refugees in a country of 4 million people. While the English SOBs are selling their human migrants and refugees to Rwanda, they have the gall to demand that Lebanon "absorb" and settle 2 million Syrians, half of whom are not even refugees, but are illegal thugs and criminals who cross the Syrian-Lebanese border and smuggle all kinds of goods. How can you be a refugee if you can commute daily between your host country and your home country?

The pricks of Amnesty International are salon human-rights-defenders, bourgeois leftwingers, bigoted Anglican atheists,  ... who have never experienced hardship, yet who claim to be holier than thou in matters of the human condition, just like pedophile Catholic priests who counsel couples on marriage issues. High-brow British snobs whose own society is steeped in racism, class discrimnation, forced integration of other peoples (Welsh, Scots, Irish) into a so-called union, colonial oppression of nations which they leave divided and mutilated (India, Palestine...). Oh yeah, and that idiot Charles is being crowned as "King by Divine Right". Of course! By none else than the Big Zombie in the Sky himself.

Just like that asshole Robert Fisk, of the cretin concentration camp and toilet paper called The Independent, who spent a lifetime as a modern-day "orientalist" in a Lebanon under the Assad regime's vulgar occupation, kicking the agonizing country and calling it artificial and torn out by the French from a fallacious Syrian entity. Imagine the depth of hypocrisy of the English who plundered the earth for several centuries and who still find fault with French colonialism.

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Amnesty International UK is “institutionally racist”, “colonialist” and faces bullying problems within its own ranks, a damning inquiry has concluded.

Initial findings of Global HPO’s independent inquiry into the charity were published in April [2021] but now the scale of the organisation’s issues with race have been laid bare in their final report.

Released to Amnesty staff members on Thursday, the 106-page document explains that equality, inclusion and anti-racism are “not embedded into the DNA” of the organisation.

“White saviour”, “colonialist”, “middle class” and “privileged” were among the words most used during the testimony and focus groups to discuss Amnesty.

Diversity was also found to be a major problem within the charity itself, with white applicants more likely to be appointed to roles within the charity than all other groups – and black people least likely to be given a job.

Examples of racist incidents that left black and Asian staff uncomfortable include:

• Being regularly mistaken for other colleagues with similar skin tone
• Negative comments about fasting during Ramadan
• Treating black skin, hair and appearance as matters of fascination and touching hair without consent
• Rude comments about minority celebrities, politicians or events

“Our view is that ‘white saviour, middle class and privileged’ is a perception that forms an important part of the AIUK narrative about its history and legacy,” the inquiry found.

“A perception that has not been addressed and as such manifests in the negative cultural paradigm of exclusion and racism at AIUK. There is a need for the impact of this legacy to be acknowledged and addressed as part of the transition to becoming anti-racist.”

Recommendations for improvement include refraining from collating diversity data into one homogeneous black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) group and providing training to improve equality monitoring.

“Dysfunctional internal activism” – in which staff view anti-racism and fair treatment as “unwinnable” endeavours – also needs to be addressed, the report adds.

Particular attention should paid to the employment and retention of black African and black Caribbean staff at AIUK , the inquiry ruled, as these groups fare the worst within the charity.

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, said: “It is critical in the change that we need to make at Amnesty UK that we acknowledge that this report makes abundantly clear the scale of the transformation we must make to change lots about Amnesty UK as a place to work.

“GHPO have helped us to identify where we must make changes and we will not shy away from this work, especially as it is clear it is long overdue.

“I am glad that the inquiry team have recognised that some improvements have started here in the last year, but that doesn’t in any way diminish the seriousness of the findings nor should it make us at all complacent about the task ahead of us.

“But I do believe that with a transformation we can make Amnesty UK an example of a cause-driven organisation with an excellent working environment and culture for all colleagues.

“That should be our goal, and it is our duty not just to our colleagues but to our hundreds of thousands of supporters that we deliver it.”

The independent inquiry conducted by Global HPO was commissioned by a joint group drawn from different parts of Amnesty UK, including the Section Board, Amnesty activists, the staff trade union shop, management and former staff, in October 2021. 

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Amnesty International has culture of white privilege, report finds

This article is from 2021

Amnesty International has a culture of white privilege with incidents of overt racism including senior staff using the N-word and micro-aggressive behaviour such as the touching of black colleagues’ hair, according to an internal review into its secretariat.

It came as eight current and former employees of Amnesty International UK (AIUK) described their own experiences of racial discrimination and issued a statement calling on senior figures to stand down.

One of the whistleblowers, Katherine Odukoya, said: “We joined Amnesty hoping to campaign against human rights abuses but were instead let down through realising that the organisation actually helped perpetuate them.”

Representatives of both arms of the UK-based human rights organisation apologised and pledged to make changes, with the director of AIUK citing “the uncomfortable fact that we have not been good enough”.

The internal review at Amnesty’s international secretariat, commissioned following the Black Lives Matter movement, recorded multiple examples of workers reporting alleged racism including:

Senior staff using the N-word and P-word, with colleagues labelled over-sensitive if they complained.

Systemic bias including the capability of black staff being questioned consistently and without justification, and minority ethnic staff feeling disempowered and sidelined on projects.

A lack of awareness or sensitivity to religious practices resulting in problematic comments and behaviour.

Aggressive and dismissive behaviour, particularly over email and often directed towards staff in offices in the global south.

In June last year the international board of Amnesty International sent an email to staff addressing the Black Lives Matter movement and racism. Citing the killing of George Floyd, it said racism was encoded into the “very organisational model” of the human rights body, which had been shaped by the “colonial power dynamics and borders” that were “fresh” at the time of its founding in 1961.

It continued: “Despite some notable and hard-won changes in recent years, control and influence over our resources, decision-making … has remained overwhelmingly in the hands of … people from the white majority Global North.”

It said there had been bias and insensitivity in the way some people were treated at the international secretariat – the arm of the organisation which sets policy and hires researchers from hubs across the world, with headquarters in London.

The board went on to inform staff that an independent review would take place. Over the next few months, workplace experts from the consultancy Howlett Brown conducted a “temperature check”. They were given access to staff surveys and carried out six focus groups made up of 51 staff including two exclusively attended by black staff.

Published in October 2020 but not press released, the 46-page internal report by Howlett Brown, focused on Amnesty’s international secretariat, summarised: “Remarks (in the focus groups) were consistently shared that the external face of Amnesty (International Secretariat) is very different to its internal face.” The experts recommended that to resolve issues there would need to be a recognition of the “systemic privileges that exist”.

A statement released alongside the report by the Amnesty International coalition leadership team said it was “sobered” by the findings, adding: “It is a timely reminder that discrimination, racism and anti-Black racism exist in our organisation. It has highlighted both the extent and systematic nature of racism and indicates we must address white privilege wherever it exists.”

Separately, staff at AIUK, which is also based in London but has a separate employment structure from the international secretariat, made claims of racial discrimination, telling the Guardian there were similarities between their experiences and the culture at the international secretariat.

They described feeling “dehumanised” over their race and ethnicity over a number of years, with some reporting official grievances.

In a joint statement, two current and six former employees of AIUK called for the director, senior management team and board to resign, claiming the leadership “knowingly upheld racism and actively harmed staff from ethnic minority backgrounds”.

Odukoya, who worked within the campaigns and community organising teams at AIUK, said that as a black woman she was constantly mentally exhausted navigating an environment that was “hostile to blackness”. “There’s a hegemonic white middle-class culture that seemed to be protected and reproduced. White privilege was pervasive,” she said.

Odukoya described colleagues at AIUK commenting on her hair and requesting to touch it, making negative references to her “urban” accent and referring to her as the “black girl”.

In 2019 she raised a grievance concerning racial and gender discrimination, alleging that she had been manipulated into working above her pay grade without the correct remuneration. AIUK did not uphold the claim but reached a settlement with Odukoya in May last year.

Kieran Aldred, who worked for AIUK as an advocacy officer for three years until 2018 and is now head of policy at the gay rights charity Stonewall, alleged along with the other current and former employees that AIUK’s leadership was actively harmful to staff from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Aldred, 31, claimed that minority ethnic staff were overlooked for promotions, with pay reviews consistently favouring high-earning white senior leaders. He said the leadership had exonerated themselves of wrongdoing.

“Working for AIUK destroyed my self-confidence, my belief in my capabilities. I didn’t think I was skilled enough to do my job, that any organisation would ever hire me, let alone promote me, and I suffered from ongoing depression and anxiety,” said Aldred.

Kate Allen, the director of AIUK, apologised, saying these were serious and challenging concerns and, although she could not discuss individual cases, the allegations of discrimination would be taken seriously and investigated. “We know that institutional racism exists in the UK and, like any other organisation, we aren’t immune to this very real problem,” she said.

“We recognise that we have not done enough to ensure that our organisation is a truly inclusive one where everyone receives the same level of respect and opportunity, is valued equally and is able to be heard. We are reckoning with the uncomfortable fact that we have not been good enough and from this, we understand that we must change to become better.”

In response to the Howlett Brown report, Allen said the international secretariat had also taken significant measures to act on its findings. While the report did not look at AIUK, Allen recognised that it must also adapt, and had undertaken a review of its structure and governance in relation to racism.

Amnesty International said it wholeheartedly apologised to any staff who experienced discrimination. It said the accounts detailed in the Howlett Brown report were “unacceptable” and it acknowledged that across many levels there was not full equality. It said that allegations of racist language had been dealt with in line with its human resources policies and following the report it had committed to actively tackling the root causes of the issues identified.

In February 2019, it was revealed that Amnesty International had a “toxic” working environment. A review into workplace culture, commissioned after two staff members killed themselves in 2018, found widespread bullying.