A punching match erupted yesterday on live Lebanese television (MTV's "It's About Time" program). A heated argument between Christian political analyst Simon Abi Fadel and pro-Syrian Druze politician Wiam Wahhab, turned into a fight.
Wahhab is already under US sanctions, and the show was centred around the seemingly imminent threat of imposing western (US and EU) sanctions on Lebanese politicians accused of obstructing the presidential election process in Parliament, most notably the pro-Syrian Shiite dinosaur Speaker of Parliament and warlord leader of the pro-Syrian Amal movement, Nabih Berri.
When Abi-Fadel reminded him that he - Wahhab - is already under US sanctions, the latter replied that "the sanctions are beneath my shoe" (متل سرمايتي). Simon Abi-Fadel then retorted that "your shoe is your problem", which inflamed Wahhab who proceeded to launch the first blow by throwing a glass of water at Abi Fadel, igniting a full-blown fistfight within the studio. The chaos prompted the audience to intervene, leading the show’s host to halt the live broadcast for safety reasons.
The fight resumed outside the studio, prompting the Lebanese Army to intervene. In Lebanon, the police is essentially non-existent. There are four or five security apparatuses, each affiliated with a sectarian political movement, which makes the use of these security forces potentially dangerous if they have to separate rivals from two different sects. So, the army, which cannot defend the country's borders against Israeli harassment in the south and Syrian refugee lawlessness and smuggling of goods, arms and mercenaries along the Syrian border (east and north of the country), the army serves as a domestic police force.
This fight is a symptom of the cancers that ravage the Lebanese body politic, and it is incidents like this one, in addition to the lawlessness and inapplicability of the laws for fear of triggering a civil war, that end up raising the chances of an actual civil war.
For example, I imagine the Druze "men" of Wahhab cooking up a scheme to "eliminate" Abi-Fadel. It's happened before. So many people - politicians, dissidents, journalists, academicians, finance experts, etc..- have been killed, murdered, assassinated... for having expressed displeasing opinions about Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, etc. And no one has ever been found guilty or prosecuted. Only two such crimes have ever been exposed: The assassination of President-elect Bashir Gemayel in 1982 by a pro-Syrian member of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) still hiding in Syria, and the assassination of then Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 which the Special Tribunal for Lebanon concluded was perpetrated by pro-Syrian members of the Iranian militia of Hezbollah, also hiding in Hezbollah-controlled territory inside Lebanon.
Just google a list of assassinations in Lebanon since the late 1960s and early 1970s to date, and you'll see the monumental terror that Syria has inflicted on Lebanon during those decades. This is the same Syria - under the vulgar and criminal Assad regime - that the West admired as "cunning" and "keeping his word", with which the American war criminal Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a deal in 1974 to let Syria occupy Lebanon in exchange for leaving Israel alone on the Golan, with which the other war criminal George HW Bush and his lackey James Baker made a deal to crush the last free Lebanese government in the late 1980s and seize all of Lebanon, the same Assad regime that operated the western hostage taking during the 1980s in Lebanon to extract every possible concession from a cowardly West.... Too much to list exhaustively here. But this is the same regime which, after having murdered half a million of its own people and destroyed nearly all Syrian cities with the help of Vladimir Putin, has been recently rehabilitated and forgiven by the filthy Arabs and probably soon by an obsequious and deferential West.
The crescendo of assassinations and incidents is ongoing, and given the virtual collapse of the Lebanese state and its institutions, we might be witnessing the disappearance of Lebanon as we know it, thanks primarily to the collusion between the West (fearful to displease the Muslim Arabs) and regimes like Assads.
I applaud Lebanon's Christians who, despite their own backwardness, are standing firm this time. No more compromises as they did over the past five decades, indeed over the past century. No more sacrificing the rule of law, no more back payments and shady deals, to avoid civil strife and evade pressures. The Christians continue to call for a neutral Lebanon, a decent normal country that harbors no harm to anyone, but the Muslims continue to drift and drag everyone into every fucking Arab or Muslim cause that raises its head around the world. Not because the Lebanese Muslims genuinely believe in these causes, but only to harass the Christians and keep them subdued into a Dhimmi community. "Dhimmi" is the Arabic term ذمّي for those non-Muslims whom Muslim rulers deem worthy of being tolerated - instead of being killed - as second degree citizens of the Muslim State. Lebanon's Christians do not want to become Dhimmis like Egypt's or Iraq's Christians, always living on the edge of disaster at the mercy of the Muslims. Lebanon's Christians want to remain free.
The summer season is in full swing. The mercantile-minded Lebanese keep things quiet when tourists and expatriates come to spend a few dollars in this miserable place on earth. But when the tourists and expatriates go back home, when there are no more dollars to be made, then all hell might break loose.
The West remains wavering and hesitant. It always says it is against Iran, its nuclear ambitions, against its theocracy and repression of the Iranian people. It is even working with the Saudis to resolve the Yemen war which Iran started. But for some reason (Israel maybe?) it remains subservient to Syria and its proxies in Lebanon - the Shiites of Syrian-paid Nabih Berri (Amal Movement), and the Shiites of Iranian-paid Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah). Why not deal a blow to Iran in Lebanon? It will weaken both the Iranians and the Syrians. But dirty Israel might need those presumed threats to keep milking every ounce of sympathy from a guilt-inflicted West. Palestine paid. Time to make Lebanon pay.
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