As they did in the 1970s, Lebanon's Christians who were facing an assault by a US-backed coalition of Muslims-Communists-Palestinians-Syrians, kept calling on the Lebanese state and its useless army to enforce the rule of law against the coalition's militias which consisted essentially of the Palestine Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat and an assortment of affiliated Islamic and leftwing terror militias and organizations. With the failure of the state and its army, the Christians waited and sustained attacks for 10 years before forming their own militia to defend themsleves.
During that period (1970-1990), the Muslim-Communist-Palestinian-Syrian coalition undertook to expel all westerners from Lebanon with hijackings, kidnappings and hostage-holding, bombing of embassies (US and France) and of peacekeeping forces (US and France).... until Lebanon fell entirely under the Syrian Gulag of the Assad family to the satisfaction of the US Republican administrations that referred to the Syrian occupation, not as an occuption but as a "presence" and a "factor of stability". It was akin to granting the Russian army a free hand in Ukraine by agreeing with Putin that his invasion is a "special operation" that was needed to "stabilize" Ukraine and defeat the "Nazis" there.
In other words, the US and its European poodles were willing to sacrifice their values, their soldiers and citizens, and a harmless and diverse democratic Lebanon to crawl at the feet of the absolutist Arab dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others (for their oil), as well as the barbarian Zionists in Israel, all of whom wanted to protect the butcher of Damascus. Why would they want to protect Assad? Because, he "kept his word" (according to every Secretary of State since war criminal Henry Kissinger) of protecting Israel's annexation of his own Golan Heights in exchange for taking Lebanon and turning it into a cesspool of terrorism, corruption and lawlessness.
Today, the same scenario is in place, except the PLO has been replaced by Hezbollah, the Iranian militia. Since as early as 1990, with the blessing of America and its Saudi allies, Hezbollah was the only militia not to disband as required by the 1989 Taef Agreement and kept its arsenal pointing both at Israel and at the Christians on the domestic front. Hezbollah has assassinated dozens of vocal opponents to the Iranian hijacking of the country and dragged the country into two failed wars with Israel. Hezbollah by now has dismantled the Lebanese state and has taken over its administrations and the decision of war and peace. The country is ruined and is at the mercy of Iran and Syria. During the period of time since 1983 when Hezbollah killed 243 US servicemen and Marines with a truck bomb, the US has done exactly what it shouldn't do: Betray its own values and sacrifice Lebanon's Christians to placate the Arabs (for their oil) and its own enemies like the Assad regime in Syria. It watched Hezbollah take over Lebanon and for 30 years it watched the Iranian terror organization grow and build itself a terrifying arsenal, which was used by a colluding Israel to maintain instability, itself a pretext for intervening. Just as it did in Gaza and Hamas where Netanyahu has nurtured Hamas to divide the Palestinian resistance against it. Didn't the US know in the 1980s that by not standing up to Hezbollah and by not trying to seriously back its own allies in Lebanon in order to limit Hezbollah's growing threat for 30 long years, the US, Israel and the Arabs have in effect empowered Iran and enabled it to wreak havoc in the region? It is as though the US, Israel and the Arabs wanted things to climax into the violent torment we are all living today.
Lebanon's Christians are just about ready to repeat their 1975 history of resistance to radical Islam, Iran, Syria and all the other barbarians in the region. Unlike the Christian communities of Iraq, Syria and Israel that have all but disappeared because of Islamic and Jewish terror, and unlike the Christians of Egypt that have been reduced to a "dhimmi" community living under constant threat, Lebanon's Christians will not relent in their fierce defense of their free - repeat "free" - existence with a major role in the power structure in place, a role that has been slowly degraded by the Muslims of the country.
Even as they warned the West that what was happening to them in the 1970s will happen to Europe and America, they were ignored and abandoned. Since then, the West has tasted Islamic terror and Lebanon's Christians hope that the West has learned its lessons. In the upcoming sequel to the Lebanese War of 1975, Lebanon's Christians hope they will not be ignored and abandoned again. They are not populist right-wingers as the depraved western media
portrayed them when they, alone in the 1970s, fought against the Islamic
terror that had not yet descended on the West. The Christians hate Trump and the US republicans who stabbed them in the back time and time again: The coward Reagan fled Beirut after Hezbollah and Iran killed 243 of his Marines; Bush Sr. and his Rasputin James Baker the Turd prevented a democratic presidential election from taking place in 1988, issuing an ultimatum to the Christians to surrender and elect a pro-Syrian stooge or else face "chaos". The Christians chose chaos instead and the Americans allowed the Stalinist regime of the Assads in Syria to take over Lebanon. Even perfidious Israel removed its red line over Syrian airforce flying over Lebanese airspace to permit the Syrians to bomb the presidential palace where the last free Lebanese government was holed up. Imagine if the Americans had allowed the Russians to do the same in Ukraine during its Orange Revolution!
The Christians of Lebanon are only worried about their existence and their freedom. They have no specific political or religious ideology on the right or on the left. They have no plans to seize other people's lands and annex them. They don't want to fall under Islamic rule with its accoutrements of banning alcohol, dehumanizing women, and the rest of it. As a minority, they understand that the salvation of their free existence cannot be through the violent hyper-militarized approach taken by the criminal Zionists next door. Unlike the Zionists who fabricated their mythology of a "return" to Palestine after thousands of years of absence, Lebanon's Christians never left, do not need to "return", were not converted to Christianity by colonial empires, have always existed in their country since the birth of Christianity (and long before it as the legendary Phoenician people), and therefore have precedence over other minorities that later joined them to shelter in the mountainous terrain of the country. They are not ideological Christians, they strive for a secular state where religion is pushed out of the public domain.
From the inception of modern Lebanon in the 1500s, they have taken the path of accommodation and coexistence with the Muslims: They share power with them, unlike the Jewish savages of Israel who think they can survive by bunkering themselves and brutally repressing the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians. The Christians have not yet taken up arms; instead, they keep calling for the rule of law, for Hezbollah to surrender its weapons to the army and desist from its Iranian-mandated "resistance", for Syria and Israel to cease their encroachments and to take back the millions of Palestinian and Syrian refugees they expelled, and for Lebanon to be internationally recognized as a "neutral" country. But for how long should the Christians wait before it is too late?
If the Muslim threat becomes existential to the Christians - as the assassination below exemplifies - the Christians will take up arms and defend themselves if, and only if, the Lebanese State and its army fail to protect them and restore the rule of law. But time is running out. Fast.
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Thousands of Lebanese mourn slain Christian political official
Mourners and supporters of the Lebanese Forces wave their party's flag at Sleiman's funeral (Ibrahim CHALHOUB)
Thousands of Lebanese on Friday mourned a slain Christian political official authorities said was killed by a Syrian gang, with supporters pointing the finger at Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah group.
Pascal Sleiman was a coordinator in the Byblos (Jbeil) area north of Beirut for the Lebanese Forces (LF) Christian party, which opposes the government in neighbouring Syria and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
On Monday, the army said that Sleiman, who had gone missing the day before, was killed in a carjacking by Syrian gang members who then took his body across the border.
His party said it would consider Sleiman's death a "political assassination until proven otherwise".
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has denied that his party was involved.
Speaking after Sleiman's funeral, LF leader Samir Geagea called for the "failed, corrupt" authorities in Lebanon to be changed.
Geagea blamed their failure, among other things, on "illegal weapons" -- a barely veiled reference to Hezbollah.
The Iran-backed group is the only party in Lebanon that has kept its weapons arsenal after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, and it wields great influence on the country's political life.
Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in actions opposed by the LF and other parties.
"We don't want to wake up one day, as we did now, and find ourselves involved in a never-ending war," Geagea said Friday.
Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai, spiritual leader of Lebanon's largest Christian sect, held back tears as he presided over Sleiman's funeral in Byblos.
Outside the St Georges church, LF supporters waved the party's white flag with its cedar tree -- the symbol of Lebanon -- circled in red.
Mourners told AFP they were unconvinced by the army's version that car thieves killed Sleiman.
"This story never convinced me. It is not coherent at all," said Jean Habshi, 50, who came to pay his respects.
"Enough with Hezbollah, enough with the illegal weapons," Roba Hajal, 24, told AFP outside the church.
"If they (Hezbollah) did not kill him, at the very least they allowed the Syrians in. We are all at risk of meeting Pascal's fate," she said.
Lebanon has a long history of political assassinations that have taken place with impunity.
Years of economic meltdown have further strained a weak judiciary that has been widely accused of succumbing to political interference.
Ziad Hawat, an LF lawmaker from Byblos, on Friday called for a "serious, transparent" probe into Sleiman's murder, adding that the party had concerns "based on past experiences".
"We do not want the killer to be known to all," he added, while "remaining unknown to the judiciary".
On Tuesday, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi vowed to get tough on Syrians after several were arrested on suspicion of involvement in Sleiman's killing.
jos/aya/srm
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