Gabriel "Gaby" Issa, an otherwise useful idiot ally of Michel Aoun, was appointed Lebanese ambassador to the U.S. in July 2017 as a reward for serving Aoun financially for decades. He also spent much of his years in the US begging the pro-Israeli Zionist lobby in the US congress for help against the Syrian occupation of Lebanon and pouring money into the Aoun coffers. But then, circa 2002, he was instructed by Aoun's son-in-law Gebran Bassil to switch sides, and overnight became an ardent supporter of the Syrian-Iranian occupation of Lebanon as embodied by Hezbollah and a hater of Israel.
Aoun himself had made the same magical transformation around that time. In addition to interview statements in which he expressed sympathy for the Israelis as they were targeted by a wave of suicide bombings (see: https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/07/aouns-legacy-unprincipled-greed-for_11.html), Aoun twice made statements into my own ears completely opposite to his current metamorphosis: once pitying the poor Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism, and another time when he said "he is one of us" (هيدا منّا وفينا) about the leader of the Guardians of the Cedars Etienne Sacre (aka Abu-Arz), exiled in Cyprus and condemned for treason because he fled to Israel, along with thousands of other southern Lebanese, after Israel treacherously handed the Lebanese South to the Iranian terrorist militia Hezbollah in 2000.
In an interview on April 14, 2022 with Aoun's OTV television channel, Issa said that he not only supports the presence of Hezbollah's weapons on the Lebanese border with Israel, but that he believes that Hezbollah should increase its arsenal dozens of times over because it protects the Lebanese people.
Rebuttals:
- If the Aoun administration believes that stockpiling weapons on the border will protect the Lebanese people, why doesn't he [Aoun] send his army, instead of his ally the Iranian militia Hezbollah, to the border? Why subcontract the defense of the nation to an unlawful terrorist organization acting on behalf of Iran?
- If Aoun and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, head of the Free Patriotic Movement [FPM], believe that the south of the country is a "national", and not only a "Shiite", territory worthy of defense, why haven't they mobilized their Christian FPM followers to build their own militia or join the ranks of Hezbollah along the border to fight against Israel, instead of hurling insults from behind their cell phone screens and the comfort of their couches? Why is a matter [the supposed continued Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms] of such national gravity as territorial integrity or national defense left to a radical fundamentalist Muslim organization? Perhaps those Christians of the FPM do not wish to fall under US sanctions, and are hiding like coward Dhimmis behind the Muslim Shiite Hezbollah. Perhaps those Christians of the FPM - including Gaby Issa himself, a Lebanese-born US citizen who lived in the US for 40 years before losing his US citizenship to become ambassador - have a lot of money and assets in the US that they do not wish to jeopardize their own little self-interests. It may be that after 40 years in the US, Gaby has become just another dumb American..
Issa said that it is hypocritical of the U.S. to "grumble" and call for the dissolution of Hezbollah and other Lebanese militias because today's situation in Lebanon is America's doing.
- Issa should at least adhere to the Lebanese constitution of the Taif Agreement that his boss Michel Aoun first opposed, then accepted after he decimated the Christian population of Beirut in futile internecine battles that he lost, fleeing like a coward to the basement of the French embassy. The Taif Agreement called for the dissolution of ALL - not some - militias; yet of all wartime militias, only Hezbollah was allowed to remain armed and active. The Taif Agreement called for the Lebanese Army to take control of the entire border zone, yet to date Hezbollah has full control of the southern border and continues to harass and threaten the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) present on the ground.
Issa explained that the issue of Hezbollah's weapons will be resolved when all regional issues are resolved...
- This idiot wants Lebanon to wait for the resolution of all regional issues - Iran's nuclear stalemate, Iranian-Saudi rivalry, Palestine/Israel, Yemen's civil war, Syria's civil war, Iraq's smoldering civil war, etc. - before Hezbollah's weapons are dealt with. Let's see: Every one of these conflicts has been smoldering for decades; in fact the Saudi-Iranian conflict has been simmering since the 7th century with no end in sight.
- Mr. Issa's ally, Hezbollah, has only one resolution in mind when it comes to all these conflicts: Eradicate Israel from the map and establish a Shiite Muslim Caliphate over the entire Near East. So Mr. Issa, a Christian Dhimmi ("tolerated" by Muslim rulers), is asking the Lebanese people to remain under the constant threat of war until Israel disappears and the Iranian mullahs rule over the entire region. Very sagacious and realistic goals.
Issa said that by pressuring Lebanon on Hezbollah's weapons, the U.S. is trying to push Lebanon towards civil war.
But Lebanon has been in a chronic civil war between Christians and Muslims long before there even was an America worthy of any influence. Let's see:
- 1842-1860 - Christians and Druze massacre one another. Country is partitioned into 2 mini-states, one Druze, one Christian. It fails. Massacres resume, European powers intervene and a small Christian Mount-Lebanon Protectorate is declared from which Turkish Ottoman troops are excluded.
- 1914-1918 - Ottoman Turkish troops re-invade and requisition everything, one third of the Mount Lebanon Protectorate dies of famine and a third emigrate to no return.
- 1920 - Contrary to French advice, Mount Lebanon is enlarged into a Greater Lebanon that reduces the Christians to 50% of the population.
- 1943 - The stupid Lebanese Christians chase their WWII-weakened French protectors out of Lebanon. Modern Lebanon is born.
- 1958 - Crisis with Abdel-Nasser of Egypt leads to a brief civil war. Lebanon's Sunni Muslims want to join a Greater Arabia entity.
- 1961 - Failed coup d'état attempt by the Near East Nazi Party (Syrian National Socialist Party) close to the Syrian Baath Party. Leads to the militarization of the Lebanese government under the Chehab and Helou presidential terms.
- 1970 - Yasser Arafat and his PLO move their headquarters from Amman to Beirut and attempt to seize power and make Lebanon a substitute homeland in lieu of Palestine, leading to the war of 1975-1990 between Lebanon's Christians and the Palestinian organizations.
1982-present time - By force of weapons and terrorist actions (kidnappings, hijackings, bombings, assassinations, etc.), the Iranian Hezbollah militia - apparently Mr. Issa's favorite terrorist organization - evicts all Western presence from Lebanon and subdues the entire country under the pretext of "defending" Lebanon. Mr. Issa's shallow cerebrum makes him think that Hezbollah is the answer to Lebanon's chronic problems. Good luck with that.
Issa also said that the U.S. threateningly told the Lebanese that they must not contribute to the reconstruction of Syria in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war, even though Lebanon was impacted by the war more than any other country.
- While he doesn't cite who exactly of "the Americans" told him not to contribute to the reconstruction of Syria, this remark points to where Mr. Issa's priorities are: Money-making schemes, while the country is floundering. It is Lebanon that needs to be reconstructed from the abysmally corrupt governance of the very Aoun administration that Gaby Issa flaunts. No amount of money, whether from the reconstruction of Syria or from begging the IMF, will fix Lebanon's constitutive structural problems. Mr. Issa and his buddies stand to make lots of money from reconstructing Syria if, and only if, his Iranian allies in Hezbollah keep the upper hand in Lebanon: The reason being that Hezbollah and Syria have elevated the art of smuggling across the porous border (thanks to Michel Aoun's laxity with his Syrian allies) to new heights, combining ancient donkey caravans, trucks and modern drones. So Issa and Bassil stand to make a good cut of Syria's reconstruction because they are counting, as Issa said, on the many long years still to go before all regional conflicts are resolved. Peace and the rule of law are not to their advantage, but anarchy, lawlessness, war, or even just the constant threat of war that Hezbollah perpetuates definitely works to Bassil and Issa's advantage.
Below are excerpts from an interview with Gabriel Issa, the former Lebanese ambassador to the United States,
on the Lebanese OTV channel on April 14, 2022.
Interviewer: "So you are in favor of keeping the weapons of the resistance?"
Issa: "Not just keeping them. I support increasing them dozens of times over. I confronted senior American officials who came to talk to me. I said to them: 'You allowed for this.' They said it was the Syrians, not them. So I said: 'You allowed Syria to invade Lebanon.' The same thing happened with regard to the Taif Agreement. I said to them: 'You imposed the ruling system of the Taif Agreement on us.' Their answer was: 'It was the Saudis, not us.' The Americans always deny responsibility. They say that they did not allow Syria to invade Lebanon, that they did not allow Saudi Arabia to impose the Taif Agreement on us... All the Americans who say today that we do not have the right to do this – they themselves formed a militia and invented the concept of a militia and of a mini-state within a state. Not only did they invent this notion, but they have imposed it on us for many years, and now they grumble about the existence of the Hezbollah militia? You have the same background. You said that you were defending Lebanon, and Hezbollah also says it defends Lebanon ... Okay, so there are weapons that not held by the Lebanese army. Sure, there is a problem and it will be resolved when the regional issues are resolved. But today, in the elections, all you hear is people suggesting to take away the weapons of the resistance, as if this is the only problem."
Interviewer: "It is also noteworthy that no one mentions the weapons of the Palestinians in the refugee camps."
Issa: "Absolutely. We talked about when the mini-states within the state began, and when the Lebanese army came to restore its control of this Lebanese land, everybody opposed it. Today, the Americans are inciting us to send the Lebanese army to take away the weapons of the resistance. What does this mean? That they want to push us towards a civil war. This is what I am against.
[...]
"The Americans pressured us with regard to many issues. For example, they pressured us with regard to our dealings with Syria. We were directly informed about this in a threatening tone. I was at the meeting when they said: 'Don't even think about contributing to the reconstruction of Syria.' This is the language they used. They threatened to impose sanctions on us. Lebanon was forbidden from helping in this reconstruction, even though this was an opportunity for the Lebanese. We paid a higher price for that war than other countries, considering the size of Lebanon, its economy, and its population. We were the country impacted the most by that war, so at least, when the reconstruction begins, let us offset some of it – I'm not talking about benefiting from this but at least some offsetting some of our losses. No. We were completely prevented from doing this. I am not saying that we accepted this, but this was the language they used with us – not only with me. Officials more senior than me were also present, and they were told to their faces by the top American in charge of the Syrian portfolio: 'I came to tell you that you are forbidden from participating in the reconstruction of Syria.' During the discussion, we said: 'Why? We have the right to do this.' But he said: 'I did not come to negotiate with you. I came to inform you.' This was the language he used."
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