The Druze Chameleon Strikes Again

Just like Inspector Clouseau, Walid Jumblatt has always been a clown of Lebanese politics. With looks somewhat reminiscent of Gollum Smeagol of Lord of the Rings fame, Jumblatt is a dangerous clown whose hands are drenched with Christian blood from the massacres and wholesale ethnic cleansing his militia carried out in the Shouf mountains in the 1980s. Naturally, these neanderthal “bosses” of Lebanese politics, Jumblatt and his other fellow criminal warlords, voted themselves a general amnesty after the war. 

Rather than fade into the background of their sordid history, they have the gall to remain in power, adulated by their dumb anencephalic followers of the Lebanese people. Jumblatt in particular is one special warlord. He is not even ambivalent about his own ambivalence. He changes political opinions and stances like he changes his unmentionables, which is every day. Like a master weathercock, he flip-flops between pro-Syrian and anti-Syrian, between pro-Saudi and anti-Saudi, between pro-US and anti-US, between being a primitive feudal lord of 12^th century vintage and being a “progressive socialist”, between being a people’s man to his herd of mountain brutes and being a member of the sophisticated educated Beiruti elite. His son Taymour was educated at American University of Beirut then at the Sorbonne before inheriting his father’s position as feudal lord and chief of the Progressive Socialist Party, whose membership, strangely enough, consists exclusively of the Druze faithful. Can you imagine for instance if the members of the French Socialist Party were exclusively Catholic, AND if ALL the Catholics of France were members of the French Socialist Party? This is the case with the "Socialist Progressives" of Lebanon: They are all members of the Druze sect, and all members of the Druze sect are members of the Socialist Progressive Party. Why doesn't Jumblatt simply call his party,  the "Feudal Druze Party"?

Walid Jumblatt led his “Socialist” Druze thugs into massacring their fellow Christian villagers in the 1980s after his father Kamal was assassinated by the Syrians. He later “reconciled”, twice, with the Maronite Church in 2000 and again in 2023. Yet, Christian villagers refuse to return to their homes in the Shouf mountains out of fear of the notorious treachery of their fellow Druze villagers. After the 2005 Hariri assassination, also by the Syrian dictator Assad, Jumblatt became pro-US and anti-Syrian, hurling insults at the Syrians and their leader. When the dust settled and Syria recouped its influence in Lebanon thanks to the Iranian militia of Hezbollah, Jumblatt went so far as to travel to Damascus and beg the said dictator for forgiveness. Survival might explain this odd duplicitous behavior, but we can all agree there is not a single ounce of principle behind it.

Some might label his behavior as “pragmatic”. But his positions on the presidential vacuum stalemate are all the more weird. Jumblatt’s age might suggest an undiagnosed dementia, doubled by the typical Lebanese megalomania. His recent rants are aimed at Saudi Arabia and the Lebanese Forces Party leader, even though his men are in permanent meetings with both sides. Jumblatt’s MPs in parliament say their candidate is Jihad Azour, backed by a plurality of Christians and some Sunnis and whom Hezbollah rejects. Yet, Jumblatt keeps parroting Hezbollah’s call for so-called “dialogue” to reach a forced consensus over Hezbollah’s candidate, Sleiman Frangiyeh, who is nothing but another feudal warlord from the north and a vassal of Bashar Assad of Syria.

Jumblatt described the constant calls by the Christian parties to go to Parliament and vote in successive sessions to elect a president as “unachievable” and accused these parties of having aborted Speaker Nabih Berri’s initiative for dialogue. "Dialogue" for these people means backroom deals to bypass the constitution, in a new form of government that the Lebanese brag about having invented, "consensual democracy". In this smartass democracy, the dumb Lebanese people vote for candidates appointed by the unelected religious and political Mafia bosses, like Walid Jumblatt. After the election, the bosses meet behind closed doors and make decisions that are then communicated to their "men", the newly elected MPs,  who then vote in the rubber-stamp parliament to approve the bosses' decisions. In other words, elections are a farce and there is no will of the Lebanese people to be gauged and respected. The bosses make the decisions, not the parliament. 

Simultaneously, Jumblatt argues, “let Saudi Arabia tell us what it wants”, when the Saudis are mere mediators who have been keen to remain neutral and call on Lebanese leaders to adhere to their own constitution and find a solution in genuine elections, not through backroom deals. Jumblatt also declared the other day, “there is nothing more stupid or ridiculous or dangerous than those who do not facilitate the solution to the presidential elections stalemate” in an attack on the Christians who refuse the so-called dialogue and insist on voting in a democratically contested ballot. Jumblatt knows Hezbollah is obstructing the election and violating the constitutional order by exiting the chamber after one round of voting, killing the quorum, and postponing the election until the next charade.

One needs a tea-leaf reader to guess where Jumblatt stands on principle, but one thing is certain: He is playing all bases at the same time, hoping that regardless of where the chips fall, his fake "Socialist Progressive" Druze party will be able to claim to have been on the right side. When a political leader appears to be flailing about like a headless chicken, it means he is afraid. Jumblatt is afraid that Iran and Syria, through their Lebanese proxies, Hezbollah and Amal, are preparing something insidious for Lebanon. He is afraid that Syria’s Assad might retaliate in Lebanon for Jumblatt's Druze co-religionists of the southern Syrian region of Sweidah who are leading yet another uprising against the Syrian butcher. Syria killed his father Kamal in 1977 after using him to launch a seditious attack against the Lebanese State in collusion with Yasser Arafat’s PLO. As the noose is tightening around Hezbollah, now unable to impose its will as it used to do for 30 years, Jumblatt fears a reaction by Syria’s Assad and Hezbollah that might include sending Walid off in his father’s footsteps in less than natural proceedings.

A chameleon’s specialization is to change its skin color to match the substrate on which it treads, a defensive strategy called “camouflage”. Jumblatt is the Chameleon-in-Chief of the Lebanese lemon republic. Yet, this chameleon does not know what to do when the substrate itself is variegated or multicolored, so it changes colors haphazardly and randomly in quick succession. He's in panic mode, a politician who doesn’t know what stance to take because he has no principles. I doubt that a biological chameleon has any principles, driven as it is by survival. But so is the political chameleon Walid Jumblatt: No principles, just a basic primitive mercantile opportunism despite the facade of elitism, feudalism, faux patricianism, pseudo-progressivism and salon socialism of the Jumblatt dynasty.  

La France-Autruche au Liban

Dans ses allées et venues incessantes au Liban, Yves le Drian dit vouloir aider le Liban à surmonter sa « crise ». Combien de fois avons-nous entendu ce refrain sur les 4 ou 5 décennies précédentes ? Le même refrain que les Américains dont l’antipathie pour le Liban, le chrétien surtout, a des racines profondes. 

En tant que tremplin pour l’Occident colonial pendant le 19eme siècle, le Liban a servi la France du fait de la pseudo-catholicité des Maronites. Les américains, eux, avaient une légère longueur d’avance : l’université américaine, baptisée alors le Syrian Protestant College, est née en 1866, une décennie avant l’université Saint Joseph des jésuites (1875), moins pour des objectifs politiques que par un souci obsessif de promouvoir leur protestantisme puritain, combattre le « papisme » catholique, et gagner des fidèles, non seulement parmi les Musulmans, mais aussi parmi ces faux Chrétiens, les maronites. Eventuellement, ce Petit Liban multiconfessionnel, déjà atomisé par d’innombrables sectes chrétiennes, et n’ayant pas de place pour encore une autre secte, en l’occurrence protestante, fut une déception pour les missionnaires américains qui finirent par détourner leur mission religieuse vers une entreprise avec un but soi-disant pédagogique.

La naissance du Grand Liban, on se rend compte aujourd’hui, fut une erreur magistrale de la part de l’église maronite qui imposa ce monstre hybride à la France mandataire. La gauche française ne cessa d’avertir les Maronites contre leur dessein d’élargir la Mutassarifiyah autonome du Mont Liban de 1865 en y incorporant des régions syriennes musulmanes, car cela ferait d’eux une minorité. Pour les inciter à renoncer à leur projet du Grand Liban, cette France de gauche leur offrit le statut de Protectorat. Par contre, la droite française - catholique, coloniale et monarchique - favorisait l’idée du Grand Liban et finit par se rallier à la cécité stratégique de l’église maronite qui était motivée par deux objectifs : le premier, idéologique, était de donner une identité moins arabe au Liban en y ressuscitant l’idéologie phénicianiste, qu’elle revendiquait à moitié puisqu’elle risquait d’évincer le religieux au profit du paganisme ; le second, économique, était de rendre le pays auto-suffisant dans son agriculture par l’annexion de la Békaa et du Akkar après la famine de 1916.

A la naissance du Grand Liban en 1920, les Américains furent obligés, à contrecœur puisqu’ils préféraient avec les Britanniques une grande Syrie ou une grande Arabie, de changer le nom du Syrian Protestant College en American University of Beirut, une appellation où le nom du Liban est criant par son absence. Pour les anglo-saxons, le Grand Liban était, et reste, une aberration dont il valait mieux éviter le nom.  Ayant compris qu’ils n’avaient pas de place parmi les innombrables sectes chrétiennes du Liban, les Américains se tournèrent par dépit ou par défaut vers les druses, chez qui ils fondèrent en 1922 la Presbyterian mission school a Souk El-Gharb, suivis par les Britanniques avec leur Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (MECAS) qui fut transféré de Jérusalem à Shemlane, tout près de l’école américaine, en 1947 avec la naissance d’Israël.

Avec la déchéance de la France comme super puissance après la deuxième guerre mondiale, et l’animosité grandissante entre la France de De Gaulle et Washington, la France fut graduellement évincée de son rôle de protectrice des maronites du Liban sans pour autant que l’Amérique ne prenne le relais, d’abord du fait de son antipathie historique envers les maronites, puis par la disponibilité d'une minorité plus complaisante et nouvellement implantée dans la région, l’Israël juif, comme tremplin alternatif pour assoir sa politique pétrolière envers le Moyen-Orient musulman.

Alors commença le long déclin du Grand Liban moderne, malgré une brève période de prospérité entre les années 1940 et 1960. Il y eu d’abord les revendications nationalistes arabes de Nasser, suivies par la « révolution palestinienne » de Arafat, puis l’intervention des syriens du Baath, et enfin la « résistance » iranienne du Hezbollah, toutes soucieuses de réduire à néant cette aberration chrétienne en terre musulmane, d'autant plus qu'elle etait plus facile à tourmenter que les juifs d'Israël. Pourtant cette dégradation du Grand Liban fut voulue autant par l’hostilité arabo-musulmane que par l’indifférence impuissante des Français et l’animosité des Américains envers les maronites.

Les démarches de Mr. Yves Le Drian, envoyé spécial d'Emmanuel Macron pour le Liban, commencent d’abord par soutenir le candidat du trio Iranien-Syrien-Hezbollah, le chef féodal du nord Liban Sleiman Frangiyeh, un vassal du boucher de Damas Bashar Assad. Cette solution française fut clonée sur l’accord de Doha de 2008, ce qui suggère que la France n’avait que faire du Liban et le traitait du bout des lèvres, qui consistait à jumeler un président pro-Syrien comme Frangiyeh avec un chef de gouvernement pro-Saoudien, Mr. Nawwaf Salam. Un bel exercice d’équilibre au dessus du gouffre croissant. Cette formule avait longtemps fait ses preuves de faillite monumentale dans le cadre de la farce de la « démocratie consensuelle ». Alors que les Syriens s’assuraient de la pérennité de cette farce jusqu’en 2005, elle fut reprise en 2008 dans l’accord de Doha, au Qatar, après que le Hezbollah déploya son armée sur le terrain pour empêcher toute velléité libanaise de s’affranchir de la tutelle irano-syrienne. Elle servit même en 2016 lors de l’élection de Michel Aoun, girouette anti- puis pro-Syrienne, à la présidence.  Cette formule de « consensus » maintenait au pouvoir l’ensemble de la classe politique corrompue qui, depuis des décennies, ne cessait de gangrener la gouvernance du pays. C’est une « solution » façonnée sur ces échecs que Le Drian proposa d’abord aux libanais. L’opposition chrétienne la rejeta.

Dans une deuxième phase, les Français reculèrent légèrement mais continuèrent à amadouer l’Iran et la Syrie en soutenant l’appel au dialogue du duo Shiite, le Hezbollah pro-iranien et le parti pro-Syrien Amal du président de la chambre Nabih Berri. Il faut comprendre, et les français ne sont pas dupes pour prétendre ne pas comprendre, que le « dialogue » au Liban a longtemps été l’arme préférée des anti-démocratiques afin de contourner la constitution. Dans l’histoire de la démocratie, les parlements ou assemblées représentatives étaient elles-mêmes conçues comme lieux de dialogue, après quoi la décision finissait par un vote et une adoption par majorité des voix. Alors comment expliquer que la France soutienne ceux qui appellent au « dialogue » tout en bloquant et empêchant le dialogue-vote au parlement ? Un vote en séances successives jusqu’à l’élection d’un président est l'essence même du dialogue en democratie parlementaire; pourquoi donc est-il rejeté par les mandataires libanais (Amal et Hezbollah) des irano-syriens ?  Pourquoi la France continue de s’engager avec le Hezbollah, pourtant une organisation terroriste aux yeux de la majorité des états européens, responsable de l’assassinat de plusieurs citoyens français lors des enlèvements et des attentats-suicides des années 1980, notamment l’attaque d’octobre 1983 qui tua 58 parachutistes français du Drakkar qui étaient venus au Liban en force de maintien de la paix ?

En l’état actuel des choses, l’opposition libanaise – la pluralité des chrétiens et une bonne partie de sunnites – en a ras le bol de la mainmise du Hezbollah sur le Liban, et ne demande qu’une seule chose très évidente at simple : aller au parlement et suivre l’ordre constitutionnel en séjournant dans la chambre en sessions successives, sans sortir de la chambre, jusqu’à l’élection d’un président. L’appel au "dialogue" par Hezbollah et Amal n’est qu’un leurre. Lors des assemblées précédentes du parlement pour l’élection d’un président, les députés du Hezbollah et Amal, n’ayant pas obtenu l’élection de leur candidat Frangiyeh lors d’un premier vote, quittent la chambre, abolissent le quorum, et avortent les séances successives.

La France n’est pas honnête dans ses approches avec le Liban. Elle se doit d’exiger que le "dialogue" consiste en des séances de vote successives au parlement jusqu’à l’élection d’un président. L’opposition a nommé son premier candidat, Mr. Michel Moawad. Face aux obstructionnistes qui le considéraient comme un candidat de « confrontation », l’opposition a nommé un second candidat, un économiste non-politicien, Mr. Jihad Azour, que le duo Shiite se dépêcha aussitôt de rejeter. L'intransigeance du duo Shiite n'a qu'un but: miner la republique et détruire ses institutions, tant qu'il y a une chance que le Liban échappe aux tenailles des regimes vulgaires de la Syrie et de l'Iran.

Est-ce que la France et tout autre ami du Liban vont finalement comprendre que le mal qui ronge le Liban est l’existence même du Hezbollah, une organisation armée a l’allégeance exclusive à l’Iran, plus forte que l’armée libanaise, et qui ne déposera jamais ses armes tant qu’Israël existe ? Quand est-ce que tous ces soi-disant amis du Liban vont se rendre à l’évidence que nulle de leurs initiatives et démarches ne réussira dans les conditions actuelles ?

Tant que le Hezbollah est ce qu’il est, et qu’il continue à faire ce qu’il a fait depuis des décennies – terrorisme, assassinats, guerres avec Israël, blocage du processus democratique…. – Le Liban continuera à s’enliser dans des sables mouvants de violence, migrations illégales, contrebande, corruption, trafic de drogue, armes et mercenaires, et ingérence extérieure. La politique française et occidentale de l’autruche ne fera que retarder l’inévitable. Si l’intention est de vraiment sortir le Liban de sa prison iranienne et syrienne qui dure depuis une quarantaine d’années, soit le Hezbollah doit désarmer, par la force s'il le faut, soit couper le cordon ombilical qui le nourrit à partir de l’Iran via la Syrie, soit faire tomber les deux régimes. Il n’y a pas d’autres solutions. Convaincre ces terroristes baathistes ou ultra-religieux par des arguments de raison a jusqu’à présent échoué.

Sinon, les appels des chrétiens du Liban à un retour vers le petit Liban de l’avant première guerre mondiale, à la neutralité, au fédéralisme, ou toute autre forme de séparation avec les musulmans vont continuer en crescendo. Le calvaire des chrétiens arméniens depuis plus d'un siècle vient de se prolonger avec la perte et l'exode du Haut Karabakh, grâce à une soumission des intérêts occidentaux aux diktats de la dictature musulmane de Ilham Aliyev en Azerbaijan. Les libanais chrétiens sont depuis des decennies pris dans le même engrenage et risquent un même sort du fait de l'emprise, d'abord militaire et maintenant demographique, de la Syrie et de ses multiples alliés arabo-muslumans. Le moment venu, le Liban sombrera dans la violence, et des millions de libanais, syriens et palestiniens, longtemps tourmentés par les malaises chroniques qui ronge la région, prendront la mer vers l'Europe. L'Europe, la France en particulier, ne doit plus se targuer, comme les tartuffes américains, de promouvoir des "valeurs" aux senteurs de pétrole. Il est vrai que le Grand Liban n’a jamais bien fonctionné, mais c'est en grande partie à cause de cette duplicité occidentale. Reste qu'il est encore possible de le sauver, mais il y a un prix à payer. Mieux le payer maintenant qu'attendre que les énergies renouvelables déplacent les intérêts occidentaux ailleurs.

Armenia, Western Values and Islam

(updated 01-Oct-2023)

Inside the territory of the Muslim country of Azerbaijan is the Christian Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh where 120,000 Armenians have been besieged by the Azerbaijani army of the dictator Ilham Aliyev.  

A new trauma is unfolding for the Armenian people as Azerbaijan has finally taken over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Most of the Armenians of the enclave are currently leaving their ancestral lands out of fear of ethnic cleansing and atrocities that the Azeris are likely to commit.

For centuries the Armenian people, whose territory was once much larger than the current territory of the Republic of Armenia, have been the victim of the Muslim countries surrounding them: Turkey, Iran and Azerbaijan. After the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks at the turn of the 20^th century, accompanied by death marches across the desert into Syria and Lebanon where Armenian refugees have settled and constitute large communities, Armenian Christians are again the target of genocide, this time at the hands of the Muslim Azeris.

Just as the circumstances of the genocide of 1915 allowed its perpetration by Turkey, with the chaos of World War I, the present world-wide tensions in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region are leaving the Armenians alone in their struggle to survive. For the decades during Soviet rule, the Armenians found protection with the Russians. Now that Russia is itself isolated as a result of its invasion and annexation of Ukrainian territories, it has abandoned the Armenians. The large-scale flight of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh is a continuation of a decades-long process of territorial loss by historic Armenia, a good chunk of which has been annexed by Turkey after the genocide of 1915.

Just as the West abandoned the Armenians during the 1915 genocide, the West today is watching with indifference another chapter in the loss of Armenian territories and an unfolding ethnic cleansing. Azerbaijan is finally integrating Nagorno-Karabakh to its territory, leading to serious fears of atrocities and flight of Armenians from their ancestral lands to join their brethren in Armenia proper.

US secretary of State Anthony Blinken declared that he was “deeply concerned” about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, like many other Western nations have done. “Deep concern” means in diplomatic language that the West is not going to do anything to stop the Azeris from seizing the Armenian territory and evicting its people out. This posture invites a contrast between how the West handled a similar situation in Kosovo, a Muslim enclave of Christian Serbia.

Kosovo is historically an integral part of Serbia, and the Serbs were among those Europeans who stopped the Muslim Turks who were on their march to conquer and forcibly impose Islam on Europe. In the Balkans, where Serbia is located, the marching Muslim armies managed to convert the populations of today’s Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania, leaving a patchwork of interlaced Christian Orthodox (Serbia, Montenegro), Christian Catholic (Croatia, Slovenia), and Muslim (Albania, Bosnia and Kosovo) communities and territories.

When the Balkan wars of the 1990s erupted, the West sided against the Christian Serbs in defense of the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The US administration of Bill Clinton dispatched a malignant and pernicious envoy, Richard Holbrooke, who did all he could to dismember Christian Serbia, leave Serbs trapped under Muslim rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and later forced the seditious secession of the Kosovo province of Serbia to create a new  Muslim State in Europe. In one strike of unexplainable diplomacy, the West created two new Muslim States in the heart of Europe – Bosnia and Kosovo - while Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism were growing and already sowing terror across Europe and the Middle East. The US seems to be on a path of sowing the seeds of future strife in Europe as a way to weaken the Old Continent, prevent it from challenging American hegemony, and manipulate it into submission. Current events in Serbia prove this hypothesis right, as the 1990s US-brokered Dayton Accords are crumbling and threatening another war in the heart of Europe.

Is the objective of this US diplomacy to please oil-rich Arab Muslim states? Is it to appease Islamists for fear of terrorism? How can the West send its NATO forces to forcibly detach a province (Muslim Kosovo) from a sovereign country (Christian Serbia) to create a brand new Muslim country that could be a potential threat down the line? Why doesn't the US apply the same diplomacy to forcibly detach the province of Nagorno-Karabakh from Muslim Azerbaijan and either re-attach it to Armenia or create a brand new Christian Armenian country? Could it be that the US is afraid of nearby Russia? In fact, Nagorno-Karabakh was always a part of Armenia, but the Russian butcher Joseph Staline "gifted" this Armenian territory to Azerbaijan during Soviet rule as a way of sowing division and maintaining Soviet grip. Could the Americans be following Stalin's method by creating two new Muslim countries in the heart of Europe as a way to sow the seeds of future strife, weaken Europe and keep it towing the American imperialist line? At the time of this writing, Serbia is massing its troops along the Kosovo border. Thank you, Richard Holbrooke for a lousy treacherous job.

In the same manner, the West handled the endless crises of Lebanon: The Lebanese Christian community has been beleaguered and under siege by relentless Muslim hostility from Lebanon’s Stalinist neighbor, the Syrian dictatorship of the Assad dynasty. Since the 1960s, the Lebanese Christians who had built a liberal, tolerant, and prosperous country, were gradually abandoned to their fate as they fought for their survival against the Egyptian "Arabs" of Nasser in the 1950 and 1960s, the Palestinian "revolutionaries" of Arafat (1960s-1980s), the Syrian "Baathists" of Assad (1970s-2000s), and the distant but effective onslaught of the Sunni Muslim Gulf Arabs who financed the Lebanese War from the late 1960s through the 1990s while also financing mosque building, radicalization with Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and sowing their terror reign in Europe and the Middle East. In more recent times (2000s-present), the Iranian Muslims have taken over the task of threatening the existence of the Christian community through their proxy terror organization of Hezbollah. 

Throughout that period, not only did the US (and its European poodles behind it) show indifference, but it allied itself with the Muslim Arabs against the Christians. In four separate and consecutive crises, American republican administrations (Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.) sold the Christians out to Syria and Saudi Arabia by imposing on the Lebanese Christians exacting solutions that they knew would not work on the long term, simply to appease the Arabs and gain short term benefits (oil, coalition against Saddam Hussein, etc.).

It is therefore not quite a mystery why the West, in places like the Balkans, Lebanon, and now Armenia, has been on a course of appeasement with Muslim nations that are otherwise ideological enemies of the West. These are the same Islamic nations that never stopped attacking the West militarily with terror attacks and the implant of Islamic centers and mosques throughout Europe and the US. In contrast, when the aggressor is Christian (e.g. Russia) and the victim is Christian (e.g. Ukraine), the West adopts a clearer, more or less ethical posture of defending the victim against the aggressor.

And now in Armenia the same scenario is unfolding. Why doesn’t the West demand the secession of Christian Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh (area: 3,170 Sq. Km) from Muslim Azerbaijan and create a new Christian country, just as it forced the secession of Muslim Kosovo (10,900 Sq. Km) from Christian Serbia? While the Bosnia and Kosovo secessions from Serbia could not have been directly driven by mercantile interests like oil, it is the backing of countries like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations to the Muslims of Kosovo and Bosnia that forced the oil-subservient West to agree to dismember Serbia. Same with Lebanon. But in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the subservience to interests is flagrantly obvious. Azerbaijan has major oil and gas resources in the Caspian Sea, and neither the West nor Russia wants to alienate the Azerbaijani dictator Aliyev.

I wish that diplomats and officials of certain countries stop claiming that their foreign policies are driven by “values” when they themselves trample those same values for mercantile interests. The enduring torment of Muslim Palestine at the hands of the barbarian Jewish Israelis is another case in point of Mafia-style blackmail politics, and not one of so-called values.

Highly Unlikely Saudi-Israeli Normalization Deal

Chatter is increasing about progress toward a landmark normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis hope for a defense pact with the US and for help developing their own civilian nuclear program.

Formal recognition of Israel, an American Jewish colony, by the influential Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would usher a seismic shift in the region, keeping in mind that the US presidential elections are a little more than a year away, which may be prompting an oversized mediatic optimism.

Foremost among the hurdles facing such a deal is the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, short of which a deal, assuming it is reached, would face tremendous headwinds against its sustainability on the medium and long terms, and could in fact result in a backlash. The Arab springs of a decade ago have died down with little achievements, but such large scale historical phenomena follow an oscillation pendulum with wide amplitudes of time. At the current state of affairs, Arab governments are still very unpopular with their peoples, with new dictators having replaced toppled dictators. Should a Saudi-Israeli deal be made over the Palestinian cause and seal the fate of the Palestinian people to live forever under Israeli repression, it would add fuel to the fire of popular dissatisfaction among Arab peoples.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is no dupe and he will not fall in the trap of a deal with Israel that would give the Palestinians a few crumbs and diminish the validity and justness of their cause. Even if he is given security guarantees by the US, which it seems include the positioning of US troops on Saudi soil, and even if he obtains help in developing a nuclear program, these two gains might not be sufficient to offset what might be perceived as a treason to the Palestinians who, so far, have not been involved in the negotiations.

The reason for this pessimism is the extremist right-wing and violent government in power in Israel which has not yet shied away from declaring Palestine dead and voicing its ultimate objective of annexing the West Bank and Gaza. Though we don't know how far the Israelis might go in making concessions to the Palestinians, it is very difficult to imagine that government conceding on a full-fledged independence and sovereignty of Palestine. The Israeli government consists of a hodge-podge coalition of extremist religious ultra-nationalist partners who cannot fathom reversing their current violent policies of suffocating the Palestinians and forcing them to surrender the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Netanyahu's granting the Palestinians significant concessions to achieve a deal with the Saudis is a non-starter.

Other hurdles include more greedy demands by the Israelis beyond the current $4 billion a year in U.S. military assistance. Sources say that Israel too wants a defense treaty with the U.S. to match any new treaty with Saudi Arabia. Also, more than half of polled Americans oppose an agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that would commit U.S. soldiers to defend the Saudis in the event of a war.

Then there is Iran. As long as the Islamic theocracy in Iran maintains its hostility laced with a potential nuclear threat vis-a-vis the Saudis, the Americans can leverage the Saudis' fear to force a deal on them that might not rescue the Palestinians. But should the regime of the ayatollas vacillate or fall, then the present deck of cards would be reshuffled.

In New York for the UN general assembly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed as “delusional” the idea of peace in Israel-Palestine without full rights for the Palestinian people. Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesperson for President Abbas said, “Peace begins with Palestine, and stability begins with the Palestinian people obtaining their legitimate national rights and establishing their independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Without that, there is no peace, no security and no stability in the region". An agreement that doesn’t include real concessions to the Palestinians could feed anger in the region, increase sympathy for the Iranians and hatred to the Saudis. Some of the warming relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia (as in opening Saudi skies to Israeli airlines) have been driven by mutual acrimony toward Iran. On the other hand, the parallel Chinese-brokered rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran may be only for show, and for Saudi Arabia it might simply be a way to poke the eye of the Americans and their Israeli poodles and leverage its negotiating posture.

Bin Salman appears to favor "some" concessions to the Palestinians and he understands the risks involved in doing so. In an interview, he vowed to work with “whoever is there” in the Israeli government as long as the deal ensures the “needs” of the Palestinians. His use of the word "needs" indicates he might be willing to accept Israeli concessions that fall short of satisfying the Palestinian "wants".

All in all, the deal faces so many difficulties that it might falter and fall through faster than expected, despite the US elections-driven optimism. But even if a deal is reached that does not address the core issue of the fate of Palestine, and only offers cosmetic patchups to the Palestinians, the medium and long terms are sure to guarantee its ultimate failure.

 

Student Critics of Apartheid Israel? or Campus Antisemites?

In an opinion posted September 23, 2023, on CNN entitled “When will colleges stand up to campus antisemites?”, Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), claims that Jewish students on US college campuses are facing a rise in antisemitism. Mr. Greenblatt says that as a parent he worries about sending his own children to college.

Yet, again and again, Zionists like Mr. Greenblatt hope to continue injecting a false narrative in the national discourse by deliberately degrading legitimate opposition and criticism of the state of Israel's dehumanization policies vis-a-vis the Palestinian people down to baseless antisemitic attacks on Jewish people.

He says, "The threat of antisemitism has been growing across American society, and colleges are not immune. But while antisemitism nationally has diverse causes, often including ties to White supremacy, campuses more frequently witness boycotts and demonization of Israel that lead to attacking or ostracizing Jewish students because of their own perceived or actual support for Israel".

In substance, therefore, Mr. Greenblatt is suggesting that American students stop criticizing Israel for its apartheid repressive regime against the native Palestinian people in the Near East, in order to protect Jewish students on US campuses against attacks and ostracization. This is akin to demanding that US citizens stop criticizing the repressive regimes of Islamic Iran or Saudi Arabia in order to fight Islamophobia here in the US. This is a standard Zionist modus operandi.

Mr. Greenblatt says that his American Zionist organization - ADL - tracked 665 “anti-Israel incidents” at US university campuses during one academic year (2022-2023), including the “vilification of Zionism”. He defines Zionism as the “belief that Jews have the right to self-governance in the historic land of Israel”, which is a belief based solely on Stone Age biblical trash fiction. In ancient Canaan-Palestine, Hebrews (not Jews) had two separate and enemy kingdoms (Judah and Israel) for some 300 years about 3,000 years ago. Before them the Canaanites - ancestors of the Palestinians - were massacred by the nomadic Hebrews on orders from frikin' Yahweh in the first ethnic cleansing campaign in recorded history, though no reasonable person should believe the fictional self-serving ramblings of the Old Testament-Torah. After the Hebrews, it was the successive turns of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Seljuks, Ottoman Turks, British crooks and finally colonial Zionist settlers to establish kingdoms and empires. Modern Jews are not the genetic descendants of Stone Age Hebrews. They are East Europeans and Russians who converted recently (a few centuries ago) to Judaism. Even if we grant that these non-native modern invaders of Palestine are cultural Jews, their claim to Palestine is so puny that any of these other civilizations that have ruled in historic Palestine can make at the very least an equal claim to Palestine. And even if one accepts that modern Jews have some claim to Palestine, it is disgusting to see that such a claim has become a license to kill, displace, terrorize, evict, and otherwise ethnically cleanse the land of its native indigenous population.

As he defends Zionism, Mr. Greenblatt speaks not as a Jew but as a European-American Zionist whose late 19th century colonial project began in 1897 to invade and conquer Palestine, massacre, displace and dispossess its indigenous Palestinian people of their millennial villages, towns and cities, and erect a brand new state over a land that last saw a Jewish person some 2,000 years ago. Not unlike all the other European colonial conquests in Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America that reached their climax in that same 19th century when each European state had its “empire”: Invade, conquer, massacre, displace, dispossess the natives and erect a brand new state ruled by the invaders, not by the indigenous owners of the land. With Zionism, European Jews embarked on a me-too mercantilist colonialist enterprise to build themselves an empire like their fellow French, Belgians, Dutch, Portuguese, Spaniards, British and other Europeans.

Is it “antisemitic” to analyze the creation of the state of Israel from the lens of a colonial enterprise like so many others that came out of the Europe of the 19th century? Is merely questioning in an academic setting the historicity of the creation of the state of Israel a crime? Is Israel infallible simply because, though born as a colonial enterprise, it came of age partly - not entirely - as a result of the Holocaust?

Just to be clear to my readers: There is a huge difference between antisemitism and criticism of Israel. Please read carefully and understand the distinction: 

“Antisemitism” is a longstanding hatred of Jews by Europeans based on abhorrent false claims of blood libel, rejection and killing of Christ, conspiracy theories of world control, financial greed and so on. But these are not the arguments that today's critics of Israel put forward;  

"Critics of Israel" make no such nonsensical claims; they simply argue that Israel is a documented practitioner of horrible policies against the colonized Palestinians that include walled separation, harassment, sieges, rampant discrimination, home demolition, dispossession, land theft, identity-denial… all with the openly stated objective by Israeli officials to one day annex the remaining Palestinian lands, declare Palestine dead, and deprive the 4 million Palestinians of their right to a state of their own on their own land. Israel is thus not only a colonialist settler enterprise; it adheres to an expansionist ideology for future land theft and ethnic cleansing. That is why in fact Israel does not have a constitution because writing one would force it to define its borders and legally prohibit it from stealing more land from the Palestinians and its neighbors.

Having not mentioned antisemitism early in his opinion, Mr. Greenblatt moves quickly to amalgamate criticism of Israel and vilification of Zionism with antisemitism, thus insidiously bridging the civilized pillars of freedom of opinion and defense of victimized people with the universally denounced and condemned belief in racist antisemitism. And this is where the crux of the matter is: Zionists continuously conflate a desire for debating the apartheid policies of the state of Israel with hatred of Jews. What does Mr. Greenblatt then call all those Israelis and Jews who condemn Israel for its policies? Is there such a thing as a Jewish antisemite?

According to Univstats, [ https://www.univstats.com ], there are 6,543 colleges and universities in the US. Therefore, the statistic of 665 “anti-Israel” incidents says that 10 out of each 100 colleges and universities have experienced some poorly defined “anti-Israel” incidents, which Mr. Greenblatt himself attributes largely to white supremacist actors, i.e. white anglo-saxon protestant racists who have sympathy neither for the Israelis nor for the Palestinians. Just read further below how a university conference on Palestinian literature is included in Mr. Greenblatt's list of "anti-Israel incidents".

Then the sneaking around the core argument begins with a pretentious waiver: “To be sure, criticism and debate over the policies of the State of Israel, just like criticism of the policies and actions of any country, is part of a healthy campus ecosystem. The First Amendment protects the right to boycott, as well as the right to engage in harsh and divisive rhetoric. Undoubtedly, one can criticize Israel’s leaders and actions without being antisemitic.” How civilized of Mr. Greenblatt! We ought to be grateful!

So I urge Mr. Greenblatt to put an end to the obfuscation and make two side-by-side lists: One list is for actions and arguments that critique Israel without being labeled antisemitic, and another list of actions and arguments that critique Israel and are antisemitic. Many around the world are utterly confused by the Zionist arguments – indeed confusion and obfuscation are probably the objective of Zionists since it allows them to say the same thing and its opposite at once - because it seems that any time someone criticizes Israel, they are immediately attacked as antisemitic by a wide range of Israeli apologists, from paid Zionist trolls on the web to senior officials in the Jewish government. A most recent and flagrant example was accusing the UN, Human Rights Watch and even the Israeli organization B’Tselem of being antisemitic for issuing their 2022 report calling Israel an apartheid state [See: https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/01/israeli-apartheid-report-can-critic-of.html ]

Next, Mr. Greenblatt unleashes his dual nature venom. Believing that he has firmly equated antisemitism with Israelophobia, he states, “One of the worst examples of campus anti-Israel activity in recent memory is the Palestine Writes Literature Festival set to take place at the University of Pennsylvania this weekend”. Notice that he labels this activity as “anti-Israel”, not as “antisemitic”, thus contradicting his own supposed welcoming of healthy debate on the Israel-Palestine question.

He then goes through a long list of outrageous extremist statements and positions by anti-Zionists on US campuses, essentially parading a tiny minority of extremist white Christian American supremacists and suggesting that they somehow are representatives of the Palestinian movement for justice. This is the same Zionist propaganda that equated the legitimate Palestinian national movement with a minority of “communist terrorist subversives” during the 1960s and 1970s, then with a minority of “Islamic terrorists” in the 1980s and 1990s. Hiding under these fake arguments, Israel has continued to steal Palestinian land, dispossess the Palestinians, deny them an identity, demolish their homes, expel them to no return, uproot their millennial olive orchards, kill them with indiscriminate bombings and assassinations, dispossess them of property in Jerusalem to the benefit of foreign settlers, etc.

But now that it has ran out of scarecrow labels to attach to the Palestinian national movement, and that the label of antisemitism has worn out its utility, Zionists are promoting an alternative lie and new misleading terminology, namely that criticism of Israel is hatred of Israel or “Israelophobia”, a new term Zionists have coined to malign anyone who dares criticize Israel for its endless torment, racism and hatred toward Palestinians – let's call it, in a tit-for-tat, "Palestinophobia". Zionists hope to surf on this new one for the next two decades or so until they exterminate or expel all the Palestinians and achieve their pure Jewish supremacist colony they call Israel.

But the 2020s are no longer the 1950s and 1960s when Zionists could blatantly disinform and misinform a captive audience with their monopoly on information; the Zionist jig is up. People now can see for themselves through the Zionist lies couched in guilt-infliction on the European Holocaust criminals. Palestine is today everywhere and on everyone’s mind. Sympathy for Palestine is quickly overwhelming the 1950-vintage pity for Israel. The Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement worked very well with apartheid South Africa. Despite outrageous lies and disinformation, the BDS movement will eventually work well to rescue Palestine from the claws of European Jewish racism and religious extremism. Apartheid South Africa did not have an international Zionist movement to lie and misinform on its behalf, but it allied itself with Apartheid Israel and its dumb American sponsors which aided it with finance and weapons. Israel was the only country in the world to defend Apartheid South Africa's dehumanization of the native African population.

The Zionist Movement was founded like many other European corporations, like the British East India Company, the Dutch East India Company and others, whose task was to colonize, subdue and exploit colonies anywhere they could around the world. The Zionist Movement first targeted Uganda in Africa, but later changed its target to Palestine when the British crooks offered Palestine to the Zionists (Balfour letter) in exchange for financial loans to aid the British war effort. The Basel Conference in 1897, which laid the groundwork for the Zionist Colonial Corporation, was a follow-up to the Berlin Conference of 1884 which effectively divided Africa among European powers like Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy and Spain. Always "special ones", the non-state European Zionists wanted their share of the pie.

In the post Word War II period, colonialism effectively came to an end. Virtually all former colonies of Europe have gained their independence, which leaves Israel today as perhaps the only British, now American, colony to remain a barbaric foreign racist implant of repression and dehumanization of native indigenous people. To paraphrase Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian people are the only remaining colonized people on Earth who are asked to guarantee the security of their colonial occupier, while Israel is the only colonial occupying country that demands to be protected from its own colonized victims.

Regardless of how long it might take to bring justice to Palestine, injustice will never prevail. As long as this monumental injustice persists in Palestine, perpetrated by foreign invading settlers and targeting a native indigenous population, there will never be peace.

President Biden: Do not Run in 2024

I am an admirer of President Joe Biden, for a number of reasons and regardless of his kiss-ass policies vis-a-vis Israel.

But his more and more frequent awkward moments clearly show that even if he is capable of running a successful campaign and win in 2024, his second term will very likely be very wobbly and will stain his legacy. 

If he remains alive as a second-term President between 2025 and 2028, his term in office will suffer from his declining condition. It is truly a sad sight to see someone you admire failing in front of cameras before the world. Why would he want to go through this ordeal?

If he dies during his second term, VP Kamala Harris will be sworn in as President and she might turn out to be an excellent president. But, for the first woman to become president of the US as a consequence of the current president's death somehow diminishes the achievement. And given the fact that she is not white, the right-wing conservative extremists of the GOP are likely to torment her more than they currently torment President Biden, just as they did with Barack Obama, the first African American president of the US. 

If Biden decides NOT to run in 2024, this opens the door to all sorts of scenarios. The Democratic Party will have to choose a substitute: A brand new candidate or stick with VP Kamala Harris. Of course, another Democrat or independent might contest an automatic Harris nomination. 

Given the convulsions that the GOP is going through because of the idiot Donald Dumb, the entire political landscape is going to start looking like a circus if the Democratic Party too enters a period of instability. 

Joe Biden ensures stability for the Democrats, for now, but not for the next 2-3 years. I'd take the bitter pill now to avoid collapse later. President Biden: DO NOT RUN IN 2024. Let a younger, stronger, more dynamic candidate face off with the equally senescent dumb traitor of the GOP. 

How to Build a Political Family Farm in Lebanon

Most political family farms in Lebanon have been around for generations. 

Some go back to medieval times, like the Jumblatts, whose practices remain truly medieval and feudal. You go to visit the "castle" in Moukhtara and, were it not for some suits and modern attire, you'd think yourself in the 1500s.

The Lord of the Castle stands behind a large desk in a grand square inside the castle, surrounded by two rows of chairs arranged in a circle around the desk. Guards in civilian dress are everywhere, and some of the Lord's representatives in parliament are also around. Some people are dressed in today's attire, but many still wear the traditional Druze garb: bouffant pantaloons, white shirt, a skullcap, and long long white beards. 

Then, upon receiving a cue from the guards who control the flux of "petitioners", one of the latter who are sitting in the circular court get up and move toward the Lord, present him with papers and their case. He, without any emotion, hands over the papers to a scribe/secretary sitting at the desk or to the men, listens to their entreaties, utters a couple of words and dismisses them politely. Then it's the next petitioner, and so on. I do not know what these petitions are about, but they can be about a dispute over land or water, a plea to find employment for a junior member of a family, a request to have a dirt road paved or some other request for help against the Ottoman-vintage bureaucracy in decrepit Lebanon. The institutions of the state (municipality, police, etc.) are for show only: the Lord makes all the decisions and they execute.

Some may find this process romantic or traditional, but it supplants what a modern bureaucracy should be about: equal access, services, institutional independence without the intercession of tribal lords, no begging at the feet of a Lord for crumbs, etc. Yet, this is the daily routine of one Taymour Jumblatt, the 41-year old heir to the Jumblatt dynasty to whom the Druze tribe recently "pledged allegiance" in the Shouf Mountains during a ceremony in which his father, Walid Jumblatt, a warlord during the 1970s-1990s, handed over the reins of power to his son. It is common knowledge that Taymour, when attending American University of Beirut and the Sorbonne in Paris, repeatedly expressed his dislike of  the feudal system and his desire not to follow in the political footsteps of his father, grandfather, great grandfather etc. 

Yet, here he is, his personal wishes and desires notwithstanding, a tribal feudal Lord ruling over a herd of Shouf Mountains peasants. If one looks at pictures of grandfather Kamal, father Walid and son Taymour, one notices that they rarely smile. They have a terse and resigned look in their faces, which makes me think that they all are unhappy with the role they're made to play. As a ruling lordly family, they are all generally well educated, which explains the tension they live with between what the individual ideas that education grants on one hand, and the tribal duties they have to endure on the other hand. Their women are also very modern and educated but rarely play a political role. They are seen at social, charity, art promotion and similar events mingling with the beautiful people of the Lebanese tribal and sectarian elites.

The Shouf Mountains southeast of Beirut have a mixed Christian and Druze population, oftentimes within the same village. In January of 1976, the Druze of the Shouf looked with indifference as the islolated Christians of the coastal town of Damour were massacred by the Palestinian and Syrians. Then the Druze themselves carried out a campaign of massacres and ethnic cleansing carried against their fellow Christian villagers during the 1980s. In spite of two "reconciliations", one in 2000 and another one last week, under the aegis of the religious dinosaurs of both sides, many Christians refuse to return to their homes and villages in the Shouf out of fear of future massacres by the Druze.

There are, of course, many other similar political family farms in Lebanon, and one would have to write an encyclopedia to describe all of them. This pattern of tribal feudal governance is engrained in the Lebanese DNA, regardless of faith, sect or political ideology. The latter, in fact, is used as a camouflage to cover the shame of the tribal structure. For instance, the Jumblatt's political party is known as the "Progressive Socialist Party". Now, there is nothing "progressive" about being a feudal lord of medieval vintage. Second, there is nothing "socialist" about the Jumblatts whose political performance does not seem to be couched in socialism. Economically, the Jumblatts have amassed millions of dollars in many commercial and business ventures and, to the extent that they publicize or promote their ideals, I personally have never heard them talk about workers' rights for example. In fact, on our trip to Moukhtara, our host pointed to a huge hulk of an unfinished cement building next to a roundabout and said that the deal between Walid Jumblatt and the owner of the project (some large department store) fell through because Jumblatt demanded an extravagant payola to allow the project, which the project owner rejected, leading to a stop in the construction. That is the kind of progressive socialism that the Jumblatts hide behind. 

Fast forward into modern times. One army general by the name of Michel Aoun, who is of modest non-feudal background from the destitute southern suburbs of Beirut, had a huge run-in with the political class during the late 1980s. Without going into the details, his venture into the political world was met with lots of condescending derision by the political class that had allied itself with the Saudis, the Syrians and the Americans: who is this plebeian dwarf pretending to be a prime minister? he is a mad man for daring to hinder our collusion with the Saudis who pay us good money to serve their interests, or with the Syrians whose occupation army protects our interests, against payments of course, and the world rulers the Americans whose proclaimed "value-driven" politics is anything but. 

After 15 years of exile, Aoun returned to Lebanon after the Syrian army was washed off Lebanese soil with sewer-water and lots of four-letter words. He had opposed the Syrian occupation during his long exile, so his opportune return was laden with promises of better future, more transparent governance, fighting corruption, etc. If you read all of Aoun's writings (pamphlets, testimonials in foreign parliaments, weekly "Lebanese Bulletin" issues, etc.), you'd think you're reading the words of a prophet whose wisdom will take Lebanon forward into the modern world. But something happened. And that something is based on another thing that didn't happen when Aoun had children: He did not have a son, which is a political death sentence in Lebanon. No son means no perennial family farm in the future. However, Aoun had three daughters, whose French names testify to the Lebanese lack of identity and to their monkey-imitation of the dominant culture of their time. In this case, Aoun (born 1935) named his three daughters at a time when traces of the French mandate were still present: Claudine, Chantal and Mireille. Nowadays, people would be ashamed to use these names on their children. The "trend" as it were is for American movie-inspired names like Kevin, Rebecca, Steve, Angelina, Miley, etc. You get the idea. 

Anyway, the key to a male-dominated culture is to have a male son, or short of one, to marry your daughters to "real" men who could substitute for your unborn son. That is exactly what Michel Aoun did. He married his daughters to promising men. He gave Chantal away to a man of short stature (like Aoun in fact) but of gargantuan political ambition by the name of Gebran Bassil, an engineer by training. His other two daughters also married "important" men, one a former army commando whose physical stature doesn't match his intellect, and the other the current CEO of Aoun's family television station OTV. 

Having made a 180 degree turn in his politics since returning to Lebanon, Aoun allied himself with the Iranian terror organization Hezbollah and his former enemy Syria. Then, after two years of obstruction of Lebanese Parliament by Hezbollah, parliament was forced to elect Aoun to the presidency. Now, everything was in place to start a dynasty, a political family farm. Despite his modest social background, Aoun managed to graduate himself and his family to the club of tribal, feudal, elitist families who run the politics of the country. His daughters became advisors, other sons-in-law became MPs.

Despite declarations that he and his party will be the first "really" democractic party in Lebanon, the structure and inner workings of the Aoun party (Free Patriotic Movement, FPM) have slowly become just like any of the other family political parties. With Aoun old and senile, Gebran Bassil, the son-in-law, hijacked the leadership of the party, having banned anyone else among his party's very capable cadres from running against him. For three terms in a row, Bassil has run uncontested and is essentially bestowed the party's presidency. To preserve a fake image of "democracy", the party goes through marketing acrobatics, with polls of the membership and fake primary elections etc. Even though his performance has been abysmal at best, switching alliances, never committing to a single path, meandering through shady deals, contradicting himself between a declared secularism and a vow to protect Lebanon's Christians against its enemies, real and theoretical, Bassil remains in command of a fast degrading party. Much of its Christian base has switched to its Christian rival, the Lebanese Forces Party, primarily on account of Bassil's close alliance with the Hezbollah terror organization that continues to harass and murder critics, especially Christians, as it has done since the 1980s. In fact, the FPM lost several seats in the latest parliamentary elections (May 2022), and it is only thanks to Bassil's alliances with terror Hezbollah and corrupt Amal (the two leading Shiite parties allied with Iran and Syria, respectively) that he managed to hold on to some seats in parliament. Whereas in 2016, Bassil and Hezbollah obstructed the elections of a president for 2,5 years and succeeded in bringing Bassil's father-in-law, Michel Aoun, to the presidency, they are now still able to obstruct elections but have been unable to impose their puppet candidate.

What a wasted opportunity for Lebanon's Christians to distinguish themselves from the other feudal tribal communities of this miserable country: The FPM represented as much the Christians of the interior as those of the diaspora whose ideas are more progressive. Having promised us a truly modern non-sectarian political party, the FPM is now just another political family farm.

The Jews of Uganda: One of Many Stories of Fake Judaism

There is a community in Uganda called the Abayudaya – which means “the Jews of Uganda” in the Luganda language. It is a Black African community that adopted the Jewish faith some 100 years ago. For the past century, this community has integrated Jewish traditions into their native Ugandan culture. For example, women bake challah, a traditional Jewish bread, in outdoor ovens.

This is a typical community of non-Semitic, non-Hebrew people around the world who converted in recent times to Judaism, including many of the European and American "Jews" who make up the Israeli people today. Though unrelated genetically, historically and culturally to the Near East and Palestine, the simple fact of their conversion to Judaism makes them eligible to rape Palestine, steal its lands and displace its native people, based on the fictional tales of a Stone Age set of writings assembled together in the Torah (Old Testament).

The Ugandan "Jewish" community, for example, was founded by Semei Kakungulu in 1919 who converted to Judaism to spite the English colonial power that was trying to convert him to Christianity. He reportedly tore the Bible in half so that it contained only the Old Testament, circumcised his sons, and declared himself a Jew. Based on biblical accounts, he made a list of rules to be followed, then brought foreign Jews to teach the community Hebrew and prepare Kosher foods.Following in the footsteps of Mr. Kakungulu, the current rabbi serves as the spiritual leader of the community. He was ordained by the Conservative Jewish movement in the United States in 2008, and then he spent a year studying in Israel.

But the community’s relationship with Israel has been difficult – Israel’s Ministry of the Interior does not recognize the Abayudaya’s members as Jews, which means they are denied the right to immigrate. On what criteria does the State of ISrael decide who is Jewish and who is not? Since most modern day Jews are nearly all converts to Judaism, except the so-called "Arab Jews" of Yemen and the Arabian peninsula, what right do the Ashkenazi Jews - East European converts during the 14th-17th centuries - have to decide who is Jewish and who is Israeli? The answer: White racism.

The Ugandan "Jewish" community is growing: a group of converts from northern Uganda has recently joined. Another group of Black African Jews lives in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. Shmuel Mugisha serves as leader of the Kampala community. He says, "We face the challenge of assimilation", a fake challenge for these native Ugandans who share their own ancestral traditions with the rest of Uganda, but who deliberately changed their culture just to spite the colonial occupier. One would assume that they are de facto assimilated to their native culture, but their decision to convert somehow distanced them from it, and now they claim to want to assimilate?

It is noteworthy that Ugandan people are a very religious bunch, both Christians and Muslims. They are very conservative and reject all social advances that they believe contradict religious dogma. For example, the Lord's Resistance Army ( LRA) is a Christian extremist organization which operates in northern Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its stated goals include ruling Uganda according to the Ten Commandments, in a manner eerily similar to the Muslim Salafist movements like Al-Qaeda and Daesh-ISIS that want to rule under Sharia Law.

In conclusion, religious fervor is only a fine line away from extremism. Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity, and Israel was founded on the basis of a religious belief from the Stone Age of humanity. The fact that recently converted European Jews were subjected to the Holocaust by their fellow white Christian Europeans does not entitle them to Palestine, let alone massacre a third of the native Palestinian population, displace another third, and rule over the rest with the same abject violence of their own former Nazi tormentors. Israel was founded by a monumental crime against the Palestinian people, and based on Stone Age religious beliefs that any reasonable person ought to find anachronistic.

By the way, when European Zionists initially began their campaign to start their me-too Jewish European colony (similar to the other European colonial empires), they set their eyes on Uganda. But the crooked British found a convergence between the archaic religious argument of a "return" to Palestine by the fake European Jews on one hand, and their own oil-thirsty ambitions over the oil fields of Arabia nearby. That is when Balfour wrote his infamous letter, a simple sheet of paper addressed to the British Jewish community that was not debated in the British Parliament nor was it officially sanctioned, specifically stating that in the process of establishing a Jewish British colony in Palestine, it will be "... clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". Clearly, the British "Empire" crooks kept their filthy word: Nothing has been done to the Palestinians other than land theft, genocide, displacement, occupation, denial of identity.... Perfidious Albion.

IMF Issues Warning to Lebanon

Lebanon still facing enormous challenges.

Ruling class unwilling and incompetent to enact reforms.

Can one ask the fox to guard the henhouse?

Four years after Lebanon’s historic meltdown began, the small nation is still facing "enormous economic challenges", with a collapsed banking sector, eroding public services, deteriorating infrastructure and worsening poverty, the International Monetary Fund warned Friday.

In a statement issued at the end of a four-day visit by an IMF delegation to the crisis-hit country, the international agency welcomed recent policy decisions by Lebanon's central bank to stop lending to the state.

The IMF said that despite the move, a permanent solution requires comprehensive policy decisions from the parliament and the government to contain the external and fiscal deficits and start restructuring the banking sector and major state-owned companies.

In late August, the interim central bank governor of Lebanon, Wassim Mansouri, adopted stricter measures than his predecessor, Riad Salameh who retired under a cloud of malfeasance and under investigation by a number of European countries.

Mansouri called on Lebanon's ruling class to implement economic and financial reforms. Unlike Salameh, he has refrained from providing hard currency loans to the state, a policy that has stabilized the exchange rate between the Lebanese Lira and the US dollar. He also said the Central Bank does not plan on printing money to cover the huge budget deficit to avoid worsening inflation.

Lebanon is in the grips of the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history. Since the financial meltdown began in October 2019, the country’s political class — blamed for decades of corruption and mismanagement — has been resisting economic and financial reforms requested by the international community, particularly the International Monetary Fund. 

The ruling class has on occasion said it will turn for help from China, Russia, Iran and other non-Western sources, but that has not materialized. It also hurried earlier this year to strike a deal with its arch-enemy Israel - which it does not even recognize - over maritime borders, with a view to extract gas and/or oil from offshore fields shared by both countries, and thus find a source of funding that would bypass the need for help from the IMF. But the country is in collapse, its institutions are all paralyzed, it has no president and only a caretaker government, and achieving a reliable source of money from gas and oil is ten years away at the very least.

Lebanon started talks with the IMF in 2020 to try to secure a bailout, but since reaching a preliminary agreement with the IMF last year, the country's leaders have been reluctant to implement needed reforms. "Lebanon has not undertaken the urgently needed reforms, and this will weigh on the economy for years to come", the IMF statement said. The lack of political will to "make difficult, yet critical, decisions" to launch reforms leaves Lebanon with an impaired banking sector, inadequate public services, deteriorating infrastructure and worsening poverty and unemployment.

Although a seasonal uptick in tourism has increased foreign currency inflows over the summer months, it said, receipts from tourism and remittances fall far short of what is needed to offset a large trade deficit and a lack of external financing. The IMF also urged that all official exchange rates be unified at the market exchange rate.

The structural deficiencies of the Lebanese political system - sectarian, tribal, feudal - are serious obstacles facing the needed reforms. A boss-client system of governance, and a grip on power by the religious institutions, maintains corrupt sectarian leaders in power against the wishes of the population. The private system by far overrides the public sector in the economy, education, and other sectors. When the public sector manages to steer itself away from the greedy and equally corrupt private sector, it often falls short of providing adequate modern services and is beset with politically-appointed incompetent civil servants who perpetuate the endemic corruption.

Unlike Greece, Sri Lanka and other countries that have benefited from IMF aid in recent years, reforms in Lebanon are unlikely to happen because the international community is asking the corrupt barbarians in power to reform themselves. Like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. It is rumored that Riad Salameh, the previous governor of the central bank, detains secrets of mismanagment, corruption and pilfering of public funds by the ruling political class. The question is: Will he open Pandora's box and reveal these secrets, at least to save his own legacy? Or does he fear retribution (in Lebanon this often takes the form of a car bomb or of assassination at close range by the thugs in power)?

 

Cyprus to EU: If Lebanon Collapses, Europe will have a problem

Update 28-Sept-2023:

As the Syrian regime of the war criminal Bashar Assad (who was recently re-admitted to the Arab League by his fellow Arab dictators, and was welcomed like a king by the Chinese Communist dictator) is sending thousands of illegal Syrian migrants across the lawless Lebanese Syrian border, it is a certainty that some these migrants will try to ride boats en route to EU member state Cyprus.

His occupation army having been evicted like dirty rats by an angry Lebanese population in 2005 for the assassination of dozens of Lebanese journalists, MPs, and critics of the Syrian occupation, including then-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Assad is retaliating with a "demographic" invasion and occupation. In addition to these illegals migrants, networks of criminals (Syrians and Hezbollah operatives) along the border are issuing fake Lebanese ID cards to these illegals. Meanwhile the UNHCR is issuing refugee cards to Syrian illegal migrants who are not refugees. With the beginning of the school year, Lebanese education authorities estimate that Syrian students now number 700,000 attending Lebanese schools and colleges, alongside some 1,250,000 Lebanese students. 

The EU and the UN are willfully trying to keep these Syrian illegals inside Lebanon for two objectives: 1- they fear a new massive wave of Syrian migration into Europe via Turkey, Cyprus and Greece, and 2- they want to force Lebanon (4 million native population) to settle upwards of 2.5 million Syrian illegals, a number growing every day, to deliberately change the demographics of the country and bring an end to Lebanon as we know it. 

Instead of dealing with the problem by forcing the dictator Assad to take his people back, this criminal policy of the EU, the UN and international non-governmental organizations is spreading the problem to all the countries of the region. They refuse to aid the refugees if the refugees decide to move back to Syria which has now large parts of its territory safe for return. Syrian families that settle in Lebanon get paid thousands of dollars, with an increase of the aid for every newborn child, thus not only giving the Syrians an incentive to stay in Lebanon, but also an incentive to have more children. The average Syrian woman of child-bearing age gives birth to 8 children in the illegal migrant camps, compared with 3 for her Lebanese counterpart. Which means that in one generation, the Syrian population inside Lebanon will outnumber the native Lebanese population. EU member states like Cyprus are raising the alarm.

Add to the growing influx of illegals moving into Lebanon to benefit from European and UN financial assistance, the economic collapse of Lebanon caused by the Syrian regime's proxies, namely the Iranian-Syrian Shiite duo Hezbollah-Amal, is in turn causing the emigration of thousands of Lebanese citizens. 

In sum, it seems that the international community appears to have taken on the job that Henry Kissinger failed to accomplish: During the 1970s and 1980s the American war criminal Kissinger, in collusion with the Syrian Baathist regime and the Zionist colony of Israel, sent the PLO and the Syrian army to occupy Lebanon with the objective of dismantling it and turn it into a substitute Palestine in order to relieve Israel of the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed out of Palestine by Jewish terrorism when the artificial state of Israel was fabricated.

Now the UN and the EU have embarked on a similar scheme: They are deliberately trying to decimate what remains of the State of Lebanon, force the Christian population to flee, and create a new Muslim majority Lebanon that would more readily integrate the Syrian and Palestinian refugees who are Muslims. Just like the international community did with the creation of the artificial Muslim state of Kosovo in the heart of Europe at the expense of Christian Serbia, and just like the international community is doing with the ethnic cleansing of the Christian Armenians from their ancestral lands in Nagorno-Karabakh in order to appease and buy gas and oil from the Muslim dictatorship of Azerbaijan.

EU member Cyprus continues to warn Brussels that it, Cyprus, will be the prime destination of these illegals who will seek to continue on to Europe. Cyprus is asking the EU to offer financial and technical aid to Lebanon to help it cope with the influx of Syrian illegals and keep them from reaching the island, its interior minister said on Wednesday.

Constantinos Ioannou also said Nicosia had offered to donate speedboats and conduct joint patrols with Lebanon after recent arrivals by sea suggested trafficker routes had shifted away from Turkey and towards the Lebanese coast.

"It's estimated that there are about 2.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon so you can imagine the scale of the problem Lebanon itself faces, with a population of 5 million and which isn't even receiving technical or financial aid from the EU," Ioannou told Cyprus state radio.

In retaliation for the existential threats caused by EU and UN policies, Lebanese security forces have issued a warning that they will no longer intercept boats carrying illegal Syrians and Palestinians out of the Lebanese coast en route to Cyprus or Greece. Cypriot authorities say they expect new inflows of Syrian and Palestinian illegal migrants based on interviews with recent arrivals from Lebanon.

Some 800,000 Syrians are registered with the UNHCR in Lebanon, but Lebanese authorities say the real number of Syrian refugees in their country is 2.5 million.

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Cyprus asks EU to Allow it To Repatriate Syrian Faux-Refugees.

"Lebanon is a barrier. If Lebanon collapses, then all of Europe will have a problem" (Cypriot Interior Minister Ioannou)

The European country of Cyprus - divided between Christian Greeks and Muslim Turks since 1974 - said Friday it has asked the bloc to review whether Syria really is an unsafe country. Cyprus wants to rid itself of the thousands of Syrians, the vast majority of whom are not refugees but economic migrants. It needs the approval of the EU to begin repatriating asylum-seekers.

Whereas Cyprus is reeling under massive Syrian migration which has led to a rise of racially-motivated attacks on foreigners in recent weeks amid growing anti-migrant sentiment, Lebanon's calls for the UN to officially publish the numbers of Syrian refugees registered with it have been ignored, and UN officials of various agencies have called for the permanent settlement of the Syrians in Lebanon. The number of Syrians entering Lebanon in recent weeks has reached levels which, combined with the very high birth rates among the "refugees", could turn Lebanon into a majority Syrian country.

Lebanon's native population is 4 million. There are 2.5 million Syrians present on Lebanese soil, and these numbers are increasing by about 3,000-5,000 a day - mostly young men who did their military service in Syria - through illegal entry across a lawless border controlled by Hezbollah and the Syrian regime. Of these 2.5 million Syrians on Lebanese soil, only about 800,000 are eligible refugees. The rest are economic migrants, terrorists, Syrian regime-informants, smugglers, and affiliates of the terrorist Hezbollah organization. More dangerously, there are rumors that the Syrian regime, which occupied Lebanon militarily for 30 years, is dispatching these militarily-trained young men into Lebanon for the ultimate objective of "demographically" occupying the country, mobilizing  them for war, and Syrianizing Lebanon's population. 

Cypriot Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou said he would try to persuade the EU and the United Nations to end Syria’s status as an unsafe country for refugees to be returned to. "We, as Cyprus, consider and find it conducive, along with other member states, that the status of Syria should be re-evaluated," he told reporters. He said the EU has had Syria's status unchanged for 11 years, and a review is needed to declare many areas inside Syria as safe for the migrants to be deported back there.

"There are already two areas recognised by the EU Asylum Agency (EUAA) as safe areas," he said. “.... it must now also be recognized at the level of the European Union [that it should] allow us to deport or return people to Syria. At the moment, no country can do so.” 

Lebanon for its part has often been accused by the EU and the UN of being a racist country because it is suffocating economically as a result of the large numbers of Syrian refugees and migrants. The UN and the EU have turned deaf ears to Lebanon's appeals for help, considering the alarming demographic threat to the existence of Lebanon. If the Syrian population in Lebanon becomes equal to, or suprasses, the native Lebanese population, the country stands to disappear by becoming a province of Syria: A major ideological platforms of the Syrian Baath Party is the "reunification" of Lebanon with Syria. The other more likley possibility is that Lebanon, again, descends into conflict. During the 1970s, the Palestinian refugees tried to turn Lebanon into a substitute Palestine (with help from the Americans, Saudis, and Syrians), but they have failed to defeat the Lebanese resistance. Right now, many Lebanese are calling for dividing the country into separate entities (with terms like "decentralization" or "partition"), some of which might want to integrate the Syrians while others reject the idea.

In a letter to the European Commission, Cypriot Minister Ioannou did not mince his words regarding the disaster facing Lebanon. He said he raised the urgent need for aid to Lebanon, where it is estimated that 2.5 million Syrians have taken refuge. "The information we have from the authorities in Lebanon is that there is an increase in Syrians moving to Lebanon".

"Lebanon is a barrier. If Lebanon collapses, then all of Europe will have a problem," he said.

In recent months, Cyprus has seen a surge of asylum seekers, most of them Syrian, arriving by sea from Syria and Lebanon.

The government argues that Cyprus is a "frontline" country on the Mediterranean migration route, with asylum-seekers making up six percent of the 915,000 population in government-controlled areas - the highest proportion in the bloc.

 

Hasbara: Zionist Fake News Propaganda

Be very careful about what you read. Fake news are everywhere, and are not just a recent development in the dissemination of false information. Like the Russian misinformation campaign of our time, Zionists have been at it, lying to the gills, for more than a century. And they continue today to dehumanize the Palestinian people by denying them a national identity, while inventing a new one for the haphazard multi-faceted bastards who illegally migrated to Palestine, killed its people and stole its land. 

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1- I happen to read the following piece of news today:

"Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed a mysterious Canaanite arch and vaulted stairway sealed inside a well-preserved mud brick building that dates to 3,800 years ago, during the Middle Bronze Age. The archaeologists have no idea why the arch was built. "Of course you never know what you find at a site that has never been excavated, but I can say with confidence that nobody … expected to find what we did," one aracheologist said.

The ancient Mesopotamians are known for using bricks to make such corbelled construction, but it's never been found in the southern Levant, the region east of the Mediterranean, from this time, he said. Not long after the corridor and stairway were built, ancient workers backfilled both with sediment. However, it's unclear why these structures were sealed off, and it deepens the mystery as to why the Canaanites erected it in the first place.

"Why the passage went out of use so soon is a matter of speculation, fact is that it was done with full intent, and not because there was some imminent danger of collapse," Martin said. "For us archaeologists, the quick backfill is the most lucky piece of the whole story, since it is the only reason the feature is so incredibly well preserved almost 4,000 years later."

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2- "Hasbara" Zionists are paid workers who are hired by Zionist propaganda agencies and whose job is to troll chat rooms and news outlets and disseminate false information serving the Zionist colonialist project of destroying Palestine and replacing it with a purely Jewish state. For more details on Zionist deception, see: [ https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-art-of-deception-how-israel-uses-hasbara-to-whitewash-its-crimes-46775 ]. They've been at it since the founding of the colonial project in Basel in 1897 and have largely succeeded because they had a monopoly over the information. Unfortunately for the Zionists but fortunately for the Palestinians, the Internet has liberated information from the Zionist monopoly and the truth is now out for everyone to see. Here is the response to the above article by a Zionist Hasbara troll going by the name of "Boo". Notice that his reply is unrelated to the newspiece; the Hasbara have pre-packed texts that they just randomly insert into the conversation without even reading the subject matter. Their only object is to denigrate the Palestinians and deny them an identity:

"Lol. The ultimate in cultural appropriation. The Canaanites were not even of a single ethnic group but, somehow, the present day “Palestinians” are descendants of all of them. Lol. Plenty of archeological evidence that Jews had a prominent presence in the Levant and no evidence that Palestinians of today are anything but nomadic tribes from Arabia. " 

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3- Here is what one reader responded to Boo:

Zionist propaganda, Boo. Just as Phoenicians or Arabs or Hittites or Europeans or Slavs etc. do/did not form a single ethnic or national group, Canaanites weren't one either. The Hebrews and today's Jews do not form a single ethnic group either: Jews can be Black Africans, blond blue-eyed East Europeans, Mediterranean northern Africans, Arab Jews from Yemen, Persian Jews from Iran, etc... they constitute a religion but cannot make up an ethnicity. Remember that back in the Bronze Age, one "polity" was a walled city, not a country as we think of it today. It is disingenous of you to deny a Palestinian identity and suggest that they are nomadic tribes when they have lived in their cities for millennia. As Israeli scientists have not been able to find evidence of a massive Jewish migration after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, today's Palestinians are the direct descendants of the Jews who stayed under Rome's occupation, became Christians when Rome became Byzantine Christian, then Muslims when the Arabs arrived. After all, Jews are themselves an Arab tribe that Abraham led out of Ur, a suburb of Baghdad today, and wandered as a nomadic tribe in the desert before plundering Canaan and ethnically cleansing it of its original inhabitants, the Palestinian Canaanites. Of course, the neighboring Phoenicians, Arameans, Nabateans, etc. were all part of the larger Canaanite group in the Near East. Canaanites were also part of the even larger Semitic population stretching from Iraq in the northeast all the way down to Ethiopia. Hebrews, and "genuine" Jews (not the fake europeans pretending to be Jews), are also part of that same Semitic family.

4- Here is what another reader responded to Boo (addressed to the Palestinians):

Zionists, who for the most part are east European caucasians and not Semites, and are new converts to Judaism, want to deny you an identity and want to portray you as "outsiders". Israeli scientists have never found a shred of evidence of the exodus and return from Egypt, hard as they tried. There was once two sworn enemy Jewish kingdoms, Judah and Israel, in the historic land of Palestine (ca. 900 BC) - they weren't even united - some time during the first millennium BC, that barely lasted 300 years after the Assyrians conquered the land, followed a series of other occupiers (See below). These Hebrew kingdoms, who fought bloody battles with one another and sided with the occupiers against one another, were themselves initially built by plundering nomadic tribes who ethnically cleansed Palestine of its original inhabitants, the Canaanites [Just read about Joshua's bloody campaign in the Torah itself]. After the Hebrew kingdoms, Canaan-Palestine was successively occupied by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, pagan Romans then Christian Romans, Arab Muslims, Crusader Christians, Seljukid Turks, Ottoman Turks, British colonial crooks, and finally these East European barbarian colonists from the Russian steppes who had converted to Judaism a couple of centuries prior and pretending to be "true" Jews. Therefore every one of these civilizations have at least an equal claim to the land than the fake Israelis of today.