Who are the Christians of Lebanon?

To be a "Christian" in Lebanon is a political identity, not a religious one. Just as an Irish Catholic is not necessarily a practicing Catholic but is "Catholic" only in opposition to "Protestant", a Lebanese Christian is not necessarily a practicing Christian, but is Christian only in opposition to the Lebanese Muslims who have been threatening the existence of the Christians ever since the Muslim Arabs invaded Lebanon in the 7th century, drove the Phoenicians-turned-Christians from the seacoast into the mountains where they hid and maintained their faith and traditions.

When the Jewish sect known as "Christians" seized power in Rome around 300 AD and imposed its religion on the Roman Empire, the Romans who occupied Lebanon for nearly 500 years forced us Phoenicians to convert to Christianity and embarked on eradicating every aspect of Phoenician culture which they deemed inferior, barbaric and pagan. Our temples became churches, our gods were baptized: Baal became Yahweh, Adonis became Jesus, Ishtar became Mary, and all the way down to every little god that became one saint or another. So we gradually ceased to be Phoenicians as we mutated into Christians. Once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Church became a tyrannical dictatorship, the equivalent of what Daesh (ISIS, Islamic State) is today for the Muslim religion: radical, barbaric, extremist, murderous, violent, etc.. Whereas Christians were persecuted prior to Emperor Constantine (who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire), it was now the turn of the Christians to persecute anyone who was not a Christian. Look up what those early Christian bishops did to the mathematician and astronomer Hypatia of Alexandria, and you'll get a flavor of that early and oppressive Christian love that persisted well into the 17th century when it began wilting by force of reason and revolution.

The Romans, who practiced human sacrifice in their religion, became condescending and racist toward the Phoenicians whom they had been occupying here in Lebanon. The Phoenicians, like most human cultures of their time, practiced human and animal sacrifice. In their efforts to forcibly convert people to Christianity, early church leaders began attacking Phoenician culture on the ground that human and animal sacrifices made to their gods were abhorrent pagan practices. But what is the crucifixion of Jesus other than the apex of human sacrifice, with the same objective as all human sacrifices in all human cultures, namely to "save his people and bring them redemption"? Ancient cultures sacrificed animals and humans to appease the gods. They often chose a goat (or a virgin woman), metaphorically dumped on it all their sins, and either killed it or sent it to wander in the desert to die, for the purpose of cleansing themselves of their sins. Hence the term "scapegoat". Isn't this why Jesus supposedly was killed? In the Christian narrative, didn't God dump humanity's sins on his son and sacrificed him to cleanse humanity of its sins? Isn't Jesus the ultimate scapegoat? Doesn't this belief trace itself back to the biblical account of Abraham and his aborted sacrifice of Isaac? Hasn't this practice been humanity's universal way to shirk personal responsibility for one's actions, supposedly by unloading it on someone else who is then sacrificed to atone for my sins and take them with him? 

If the Christian religion was a revolution, as is claimed by its adherents, it may well have been a revolution against the Roman occupation, but in terms of the code of morality, it was nothing more than a continuation of the same barbaric beliefs held by preceding cultures and religions, including for that matter such concepts as being born of a virgin. If one catalogs all the gods of antiquity who were born of virgins, the number is astounding and is across a large number of ancient religions, and Jesus ends up being just another boring virgin-born star among many. For example, the Persian god Mithra was made the “Protector of the Empire” by the Romans in 307 AD, right before Christianity was declared the official religion. Some versions of Mithra’s story, predating Christianity, make him the son of a human virgin. His birth, on December 25, was seen by shepherds and Magi, who brought gifts to a cave, the place of his birth. [For more see: https://gsgriffin.com/2016/12/08/other-gods-born-to-virgins-on-december-25-before-jesus-christ/].

From the early European perspective of the Romans, the opprobrium and chastising aimed at the Phoenicians because they practiced human sacrifice is nothing short of an early form of European anti-semitism. As they became the recipients of the new Christian religion that migrated from the Semitic Near East to Rome, the Romans became more royalists than the king himself, and tried to assign their own barbarity to those who had given them Christianity.

I ask our contemporaries not to place "Lebanese Christian" on a par with "American Christian". The label of "Christian" to a Lebanese is a passive qualifier; it does not mean that the person is a fundamentalist or devout or practicing Christian. In their daily lives, Lebanese Christians are by all definitions pagan; they sometimes attend church on Sunday and worship statues and shrines, but they implement none of the claimed Christian beliefs in their daily lives. Theirs is a barter-motivated faith, which they share with many other religions, and their prayers to God often sound like this: Grant me health and I'll make an offering; make me rich and I'll build a church for you; etc. Typical Semitic religious mercantilism, like all the biblical garbage we grew up with: "Worship me and I'll make you numerous; worship a golden calf and I'll spank you; Obey me and I'll give you another people's land." I am a Lebanese Christian by birth, but I have deliberately discarded that kind of trash from my life. Since the country of Lebanon is based on religious identities, I therefore have no other way to distinguish myself from other Lebanese except by my otherwise unwanted label of Christian. The day when Lebanon becomes a civilized place where religions are dumped aside, I will become a Lebanese, and only a Lebanese, without any qualifiers. 

There are no proselytizing Lebanese Christians running around the world trying to convert people. In fact, we live with Muslims on a daily basis, and while Muslims and Christians periodically go at each other's throats, no one tries to convert anyone because the hostility is not grounded in dogmatic religious differences. Over the centuries, other Christians in the Near East kept their ethnic identities - we speak of Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Armenians, etc... who maintained their pre-Christian identities after converting to Christians. For some reason, the ancient Lebanese lost the "Phoenician" ethnic identifier (Phoenician referring to the ancestors of the Lebanese who lived along the seacoast and built powerful seafaring empires across the Mediterranean and beyond). It eventually mutated into "Lebanese" (that is, inhabitants of Mount Lebanon) when our Phoenician ancestors fled the seacoast from the barbarity of the Christian Roman (Byzantine) and Muslim Arab occupations to find shelter in the highlands of Mount Lebanon.

Though the vast majority of Americans are Christians by birth, the term "American Christian" has nowadays become confined to a specific group of people known today as "evangelicals": Active proselytizing ultra-conservative political missionaries, fighting what they call "liberal" rights (women's, abortion, civil rights, gay rights, etc.) and generally hailing from the southern US states where the ignorance inherited from the early English peasant settlers remains untouched. The ultimate objective of the evangelicals is to make the US a "Christian nation" in opposition to the US constitution which outlaws religion in the public sphere. Which is why the evangelicals have teamed up with the ultra-orthodox Zionists to make Israel a "Jewish nation", a trait they both share with radical Muslim fundamentalists like the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and the Shiites of Iran, both of whom claim out loud that they are "Islamic Nations".

In their ignorance, American Christians have no idea that they are the last in a long series of Christian sects that kept mushrooming ever since the rebel rabbi Jesus of Palestine mounted a failed revolt against the Roman occupation. They think they are the ones who discovered Christ and are trying to convert the non-Christian world - and also all other Christians - to their brand of the religion. In America, you have Methodists, Adventists, Evangelicals, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Anglicans, Jehovah's witnesses, Quakers, Lutherans, Calvinists, Mormons, Amish, etc., all of whom are protestant American sects constantly trying to convert each other and other people. It's like a primordial soup of barbarian idiots who keep spawning new sects, such that one day a few of them gave up trying and declared themselves "Unitarians", i.e. they believe in everything and nothing at the same time: An à-la-carte supermarket of religions where you pick and choose whatever beliefs you like. American dumbness at its best! Mormons in fact added a new book to the Bible, in an adorable but imbecilic act of arrogance! 

Evangelicals are active missionaries and just like Muslim preachers invading the west, they are on a campaign to convert everyone everywhere to their brand, and in doing so they are altering the politics of many countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and dumbing down people with more regressive American-type beliefs. In effect, as a copycat of Donald Trump of the US, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro's followers are evangelical Brazilians newly converted from Catholicism by American evangelical missionaries who brainwash them into ignorance, racism, and other Fascist qualities. That is also why in every hotel or hospital room around the world, you'll find an American bible sitting in the top drawer by your bed "donated" (how charitable is that?) by the Gideons, another emanation of American missionary Protestantism who can pay their way into your own bedroom. Obviously, they are in bed with corporate and white supremacist America and try to subject the world to the "American way of life", which may be succinctly summarized as the way of life of a fat, white, redneck, meat-eating, moon-shining, one-toothed, inbred, incestuous Appalachian who drives a pickup truck, gets drunk on Friday evenings, and occasionally mows a lawn.

As the world is sinking into violence, and Lebanon is again on the verge of a war against its unwanted guests, I ask westerners not to believe the ignorant or insidious propaganda that portrays Lebanese Christians as some right wing fundamentalist Christians trying to forcibly convert others. In fact, Lebanese Christians are by far the most liberal community in the country, when compared with the Lebanese Muslims who have for the most part turned into radical Sunni (Saudi followers) or radical Shiite (Iranian followers) militants. In contrast, Lebanese Christians look to the western world for their political and social references, even though they still remain backward and conservative in many aspects of their lives. For example, Muslims try once in a while to ban alcohol sales in their regions, or mount attacks against liquor stores owned exclusively by Christians, or chastize women who wear bathing suits on the beach. But the Lebanese Christian churches too demonstrate intolerance and monopolistic barbarity by opposing any effort to implement civilian laws for the personal status (marriage, divorce, inheritance...). But tourists, mostly Arab Muslims, flock to the Christian regions of Lebanon because there are more freedoms (unfortunately equated with prostitution, gambling, alcohol...) there than in the more austere and depressing Muslim regions, which is why Lebanese Muslims find it hard to separate themselves from the Christians: they want them because they bring money and reputation, but they want them only as storefront hostages they can rule and parade around and pretend to be "tolerant" of them. Without the Christians, Lebanon would quickly become another repressive and depressing Muslim Arab country, and Lebanese Muslims know that.

During the 1975-1990 War, Lebanese Christians were tagged as extremists by ignorant and hostile western media that favored the extremists of the other side, namely the left-wing-Muslim-Syrian-Palestinian-Communist coalition that perpetrated massacres, shellings, kidnappings, and terrorist bombings against the Christians. In the end, the Christians lost the war and were badly bruised, but survived. It's happened before: During the 1840s-1860s, Muslims carried out wholesale massacres of tens of thousands of Christians in Lebanon and Syria, with the backing of the barbarian Ottoman Turks, which prompted an uprising of the Christians with the backing of the Powers of the time (Russia, Prussia/Germany, France, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary), which led to Christian Lebanon's independence from Istanbul.

Today, Lebanese Christians remain the last bastion of a free liberal Christianity in the east. The Muslims - led by the Shiite Hezbollah terror organization affiliated with the theocracy in Iran - have taken power since 1990 and have led the country into the abyss in which it finds itself today: an economy in shambles, collapsed state institutions, political stalemates, etc. Between the 1940s and the 1970s, when the Christian president had the same powers as any other president in any presidential-parliamentary system, the country was prosperous, liberal, cosmopolitan, open to all cultures. Then the Muslims convinced a credulous and oil-blackmailed West that the Lebanese Christians were dictatorial Fascists like Somoza, Pinochet, Stalin, Franco, or Hitler bent on tyrannizing their fellow Muslims, when the fact is that Christians and Muslims had agreed to a power-sharing agreement in which the President is a Christian who shares power with a Sunni Muslim Prime Minister and a Shiite Muslim Speaker of Parliament. But, as they often do, the Muslims reneged on the agreement, waged war against the Christians, and took power in 1990, relegating the Christians to a "tolerated" (Dhimmi) community, and the country quickly became a typical third-world Muslim country: corruption, Islamic radicalism, ultra-conservatism, destitute institutions, and is right now in a total economic and social meltdown. 

Under the Christian-led administrations between the 1940s and the 1970s, the country had all the features of a successful liberal democracy that attracted investments, with a functioning infrastructure and a booming economy based on tourism and agriculture. Indeed, Lebanon was a donor country: In 1954, it gifted Holland one million dollars after a major flooding event (according to the former ambassador of Holland in Beirut) and loaned India a few million dollars. Lebanon is also one of the founding countries of the United Nations in 1945 when its Christian representative Charles Malek co-wrote the UN Charter and was one of the eight representatives that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today, after 32 years of Muslim rule, Lebanon has become a den of terrorism and a beggar country economically on its knees.

When the Muslims took over in 1990, they invited God to take charge because Islam is based on surrendering everything, including one's free will and personal responsibility, to the Big Zombie in the Sky (a.k.a. God, Yahweh, El, Allah, Dieu, Gott, Dios, Astvats, Jainko, Atua, Chúa, etc.). Since God is a somewhat capricious manager of public affairs, everything began collapsing. Today, the Muslims continue to reject Lebanon as their ultimate national identity, just as they refused to join Lebanon when it became independent in 1920. They are divided between the Shiites who want Lebanon to be Iranian, and the Sunnis who want it to be Saudi. The Christians don't want Lebanon to be anything else; they have no identity reference other than their own. They want the country to run like any genuine democracy: individual freedoms, separation of church and religion, under the rule of law, free of corruption, and adherence to international laws and treaties. They want Lebanon to be sovereign over its entire territory and borders, after the Muslims surrendered it to the Palestinians and the Syrian and Iranian regimes. 

As an example of how Lebanese Muslims simply do NOT understand how democracy works, picture their current actions: Lebanon has now been without a president for the past two months. By law, Parliament elects the president who is by custom and constitution a Christian. But through their victory in 1990, the Muslims politically castrated the president into a figurehead without any real authority. Led by the Shiite Muslim Speaker, Parliament is convened every week to elect a president. The Christians show up and vote for candidates, while the Muslims attend a first round of voting (requiring a 2/3d majority) but drop blank votes instead of a candidate's name. Since no candidate crosses the 2/3d threshold in that first round, an immediate and mandatory second round (with a 51% majority) should be held according to the constitution. But in collusion with the Muslim Speaker, Muslim MPs withdraw from the assembly just before the second round and kill the quorum, and the Speaker violates the constitution by adjourning until the following week when the same masquerade is repeated. Why? Because the Muslims, who relied for three decades on the Syrian occupiers to bring their own puppet Christian presidents to office, no longer have the Syrians on the ground to impose their candidate, and lost the legislative elections last May and with it a majority to elect their own candidate. Fearing an anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian, anti-Hezbollah independent president, the Muslims are obstructing the election and are calling instead for "dialogue", which is code word for a backroom deal over an ineffectual puppet president whom they can manipulate. They reject the democratic process and want what they call a "consensus" president, i.e. a weak, ineffective president who will cower to Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, just like that traitor Michel Aoun did during his 6-year term. 

Thanks to Saudi military help and oil-driven American hypocrisy, the Lebanese Muslims defeated the Christians in 1990 and transferred the prerogatives of the Christian president to the Sunni Prime Minister and the Shiite Speaker of Parliament, producing a three-headed Cerberus that can't possibly govern. Just like the Americans did in the Balkans in the 1990s, where the same problems continue to fester. But these victories are never enough: With Muslims, it never ends, you give them an inch, and they want the whole nine yards. 

Also, please do not compare the real plight of Lebanon's Christians under Islam to the fake plight of Israel's Jews under Islam: The Christians of Lebanon have always been in Lebanon since before the birth of Christianity as Phoenicians, they never left, and they never needed to "return". Unlike the European Israelis who are recent converts (17th-18th century) to Judaism, and who claim an unfounded genetic and historic link with the ancient Hebrews upon which they claim ownership of, and "return" to, Palestine. Contrary to Zionist lies, when the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD, there was no massive Jewish exodus out of Palestine. As hard as Israeli scientists have tried, they have never found any historical, genetic, or archaeological evidence suggesting an en masse displacement of the Jews of Roman Palestine after 70 AD, or for that matter any evidence of that ocean-splitting, frog-raining, plague-inflicting, exodus from Egypt as related in the fictional garbage of the Bible. After the Romans quelled the Hebrew uprising and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, the Hebrews stayed in Palestine, and just like their northern neighbors the Phoenicians, they were eventually forcibly converted, first by the Romans to Christians, then a couple of centuries later they were again converted to Muslims when the Arabs arrived. 

Which means that the Muslim Palestinians today are the direct descendants of the original Hebrews. The so-called Jewish Israelis of today are recent converts to Judaism who decided in the late 1880s to copycat other 19th-century Europeans by colonizing some territory somewhere. Just like Leopold II of Belgium who wanted his own personal colony and found it in the Congo where he proceeded for 100 years to enslave Africans in the industrial production of chocolate and rubber, cutting off the hands of lazy slaves among other atrocities he inflicted on the Congolese. In a me-too kind of impulse, European Jews wanted their own colony, just like Leopold II. And just like him, they initially targeted Latin America and Africa, but ended up aiming at Palestine during WWI because they offered financial support to both the Ottoman Empire and Britain in exchange for a land grab in Palestine over which Britain eventually obtained a mandate from the League of Nations in 1920. Today, after conquering and colonizing Palestine, the Israelis treat the Palestinians worse than Leopold II treated the Congolese: You throw a rock, we demolish your house; you protest, we kill you; you expose the terror we inflict on the Palestinians on the ground (e.g. journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh), we shoot you dead; if you travel, you cannot return; you want to add a room to your house, we deny you a permit, etc.... It is truly ironic that those foreign fake Jews who call themselves Israelis are in fact murdering the original Jewish inhabitants of Palestine who have become Muslim Palestinians.

[Clarification: Lebanon's largest Christian community are the Maronites - named after their founding saint, Saint Maron. Early on in the development of the Christian religion, the Maronites adopted the dogmas of Western Roman Catholicism, while other nascent Christian communities in the East were followers of the Eastern Roman or Orthodox Byzantine Church. Hence, before the Muslims arrived from the Arabian peninsula, the Maronite Catholics of Lebanon were persecuted by the Byzantine-Orthodox Church].

Condolences for the Killing of Private Rooney

Text of my condolences for Private Sean Rooney's killing by Hezbollah in an ambush in south Lebanon (posted on some Irish news sites):

 

25/12/202

Please accept my heartfelt condolences for Pte Rooney's killing. I am always devastated when a foreign peacekeeper is killed in my country, like the US Marines and the French paratroopers who were killed in 1983 by the same organization that killed Sean two weeks ago. Peacekeepers are sent to Lebanon because the country is on the fault line between civilization and barbarity. The Maronite Catholic community in Lebanon holds Ireland deep in its heart because we equate what the English did to the Irish with what the Arabs have done to Lebanon. But I highly respect the Irish for keeping their language and traditions despite their adoption of English and Christianity, while we lost our Aramaic language to Arabic and our Phoenician heritage to become Arabs. Despite losing 324 brave soldiers since 1978, UNIFIL has not accomplished its mission. Its soldiers are sitting ducks who merely tally the dead and count the rockets. 44 years of UNIFIL and still no peace in south Lebanon. The UN should end this disgrace and terminate UNIFIL's mission. Private Rooney, may you rest in peace. 

UNIFIL is unpopular because it has not accomplished its mission since 1978. 44 years of UNIFIL and billions of dollars wasted on separating the Apartheid State of Israel from Yasser Arafat's PLO first (1968-1982), then Hassan Nasrallah's Hezbollah (1982 - to date), while the Lebanese government watches like a village idiot this farce unfold for decades on its own territory, and still no peace in south Lebanon. The UN knows that the Lebanese State is an empty shell, a fake non-existent entity that can't even deliver water and electricity to its people, let alone protect its own sovereignty. The Lebanese State has an army which it uses internally as a police force, but never against outsiders to secure its lawless borders with Syria or Israel. So why does the UN lie and make deals with an incompetent, inept and fake nation governed by the Mafia? In fact, it knowingly doesn't. All the deals and UN Security Resolutions pertaining to Lebanon were made between non-State actors like the PLO and Hezbollah and hegemonic and hyper-militarized State actors like Israel and Syria. Lebanon's signature on all these deals was known by the other co-signatories to be a joke. These resolutions were never implemented and the UN has wasted billions of dollars that could have been used for real needs around the world. If the UN gave the billions it wastes on Lebanon to the women of Afghanistan, they may topple the Taliban.

TERMINATE UNIFIL's MANDATE. WITHDRAW THE FORCE. 

DECLARE LEBANON A FAILED STATE THAT WAS ESTABLISHED ON THE FANTASY OF COEXISTENCE BETWEEN CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS WHOSE CULTURES ARE INCOMPATIBLE AND SEPARATED BY CENTURIES OF EVOLUTION.

LEBANON IS NOT A GENUINE NATION-STATE ABLE TO DEFEND ITSELF. STOP BACKING THIS MONSTER. LET IT IMPLODE AND COME WHAT MAY. 

 

Lebanon's Christians and Hezbollah: Whose Survival is it Anyway?

Just like the extremist Jewish Zionists in Occupied Palestine who continue to steal land from the Palestinians, the extremist Muslim Fascists of Hezbollah are stealing land from Lebanese Christians in south Lebanon, with the specific objective of altering the demographics of the region. Lebanon’s Christians have seen their geographic presence across the country shrinking, ever since the 1975 war.

The Druze chased the Christians out of the Shouf district in the mid-1980s with wide-scale massacres and atrocities, and while today some have returned, the majority continue to fear future massacres and displacement and try to assert their ownership of the land without resettling for good. They show up intermittently at their villages and homes to tend to their orchards and publicly exercise their presence, but spend the least time possible there, returning to safer places within the Christian heartland.

The Shiite Muslims, led by the terror organization of Hezbollah which has effective control over the region south of the Litani river, have also embarked on a land-stealing program aimed specifically at various Christian regions of Lebanon.

In the highlands of the majority Christian Byblos District, there is a handful of Shiite villages (accounting for 19% of registered voters) like Bazioun, Afqa, Frat, Aalmat, Hjoula, Ras Osta, Lassa, and others. For the past two decades or so, with the Christians weakened by the 1975 war and Hezbollah’s strategic decision to mutate from a “militia” to a “political party” that now dominates all politics in the country, Hezbollah has encouraged its Shiites in the district to steal land from Christian owners, particularly lands owned by the Maronite Church or the various municipalities. In the case of the Byblos District, the process is simple: Shiite villagers approach the Church and ask permission to temporarily use plots for agriculture. Though reluctant, the Church grants permission with the objective of easing relations and avoiding tensions between the two communities. Yet, in the background is Hezbollah’s military sway over the entire country and the fear it strikes in anyone who opposes the group. For the past 40 years (Hezbollah was founded in 1981, soon after the Iranian Islamic revolution), acts of kidnappings, assassinations, hijackings, car bombings etc. have been carried out by Hezbollah against various targets. While initially aimed at all forms of western presence in Lebanon in the 1980s – peacekeepers, clergymen, university officials, journalists, diplomats, and others – Hezbollah turned against the Israeli occupation of the south during the 1990s. When Israel withdrew in 2000, followed by the popular uprising  that evicted the Syrian occupation army in 2005, Hezbollah’s mutation into a political party did not alter its terrorist nature: It targeted several Lebanese politicians, journalists, and critics, including the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri who was blown to shreds in a car bomb in downtown Beirut.

After taking permission to exploit plots of land from the Church, Shiite villagers slowly turn their agricultural operations into permanent settlements. They start by building seasonal homes, which turn into permanent residences. Then a mosque is built and more people move in, creating a new status quo that the owner of the land, the Church in this case, would be hard pressed to contest. Occasional eruptions of tensions with neighboring Christian villagers are quickly pacified. But the harm is done. It will probably take a military force one day to dislodge the usurpers of the land.

In Beirut, the road leading to the airport was flanked by beautiful sandy dunes that were occasionally used by the Lebanese army for training purposes or as a staging area for driving schools and driving tests. During the 1960s and 1970s, massive migrations occurred from the villages to the city. The sandy dunes of Airport Road were slowly transformed into a maize of shantytowns, and when the Islamic Republic of Iran began funding Hezbollah in the early 1980s, the shantytowns became full-fledged residential suburbs with tall buildings, hospitals, and schools. Airport Road is used by Hezbollah these days to control who goes in and out of the country’s only airport.

In more recent months, the southern border Christian village of Rmeish was the scene of clashes last July between its Christian residents and Hezbollah members. The incident started when a Rmeish resident was chopping wood in the Qatmoun area on the outskirts of the village. Armed Hezbollah thugs opened fire and prevented him from continuing his work, arguing that he was clearing areas with the goal of “exposing a resistance [i.e., Hezbollah] post to Israeli surveillance”. A week ago, the residents of the village reported the rape and appropriation of their lands by Hezbollah operatives disguised as an eco-friendly organization with the name "Green without borders", an insult to all the other NGOs with the "without borders" tag, like reporters or doctors. The Iranian Muslim thugs bulldozed large plots of village-owned land, cleared wooded areas, and built installations using heavy machinery. The sad and revealing aspect of this is that all this activity was within sight of Lebanese army positions operating in an area subject to UN Security Council resolution 1701. Despite warnings and calls for help from the village municipal authorities, the Lebanese army and government did not take any action, underscoring the fact that the entire Lebanese government and its institutions, including the Lebanese Army, are cowered by Hezbollah and its weapons. Neither did Church authorities do anything to stop the land-grabbing operation, other than give vaguely phrased sermons.

Within this past week, another incident in the south saw Hezbollah members ambush and attack a peacekeeping UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) convoy, killing one Irish soldier, Private Sean Rooney, and injuring three others [See: https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/12/unifil-is-to-blame-for-private-rooneys.html]. No one has yet been arrested, despite several ongoing investigations by the Lebanese government, by the UN, and by an Irish delegation. Like all the other terrorist attacks carried out by Hezbollah, no one is ever found guilty and Hezbollah’s criminal acts remain unpunished. Why? Because everyone is afraid of Hezbollah’s retaliation if confronted. Fear of Hezbollah is not as much because it might use its weapons against the Lebanese people and their institutions; the main fear, especially by the international community, is that Hezbollah might launch its missiles into Israel. The international community cares more about the safety of the radical Jewish terrorist racists of Israel (now crowned by Netanyahu's extreme right-wing government) than about the helpless innocent Christian people of Lebanon. The only conviction of Hezbollah members occurred about a year ago when the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) in the Hague found three men (who, in the perfidious opinion of the STL, happen “incidentally” to be Hezbollah members) guilty in absentia for the killing of Prime Minister Hariri in 2005. The cowardly nature of western institutions in the face of terrorism prevented the STL from directly holding Hezbollah itself responsible for the Hariri assassination. The three men of course are in hiding in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon and their arrest and extradition cannot be carried out by the fearful and colluding Lebanese authorities. Just like the Hezbollah killers of Private Sean Rooney who have gone hiding in the same lawless Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon.  

A few years ago, hypocrite British and European governments invented the scheme of separating Hezbollah into a political wing (i.e. respectable) and a military wing (i.e. terrorist) in order to be able to condemn Hezbollah’s military wing without upsetting the political wing, something they did with Hamas as well, again for fear of retaliatory assassinations and bombings. I wonder if, again, they'll blame the military wing, but not the political wing of Hezbollah, for Private Rooney's killing, hoping in a cowardly way to avoid retaliation.

The Christians of Lebanon are a very patient community. For decades, they have taken the blows against their security and liberty, but continue to demand justice by civilized means. The international community is again, like in the 1975 war, committing the crime of blaming the Christian victims out of fear of the Muslim criminals. Lebanese Christians who call for repatriating the 2 million Syrian Muslim refugees back to Syria are tagged as racists and islamophobes, when Lebanon's Christians have for the past century worked with their fellow Muslims to establish a fair system of division of power, which unfortunately the Muslims keep challenging every time Saudi Arabia or Iran prods them to do so. Unlike the Zionist thugs of Israel who invaded and conquered historic Palestine, exterminated the native Palestinians, herded what remains of them into refugee camps, and have condemned them to a life of absolute inhumanity, Lebanon's Christians tried from the start to find an accommodation with the Muslims. For some reason that only Freud can explain, the "Christian" west loves to blame other Christians around the world while crawling at the feet of their Muslim enemies. The Balkan War of the 1990s is an example, where not only did they blame Serbia for trying to maintain its territorial integrity, the West dismembered Serbia and created two new Muslim entities in the heart of Europe: Bosnia and Kosovo, something that will likely come back to haunt the West. 

For the past 5 decades, Lebanon's Christians have been on the defensive. The Sunni Muslims first challenged the power-sharing formula of the Lebanese system in 1975. They won with the backing of Yasser Arafat's PLO and all the Arabs and the West, and reduced the Christians to a tolerated "Dhimmi" community. Now the Shiite Muslims, backed by Iran, are challenging whatever little power the Christians have left, in an effort to displace them and evict them by emigration and attrition, just like the Zionist Jews are doing in Palestine. But one day, when enough becomes enough, beware the retribution of the Christians of Lebanon. They've been in the country since the dawn of Christianity, having survived many a conqueror. There is a reason why they are the last "free" Christian community in the East.

To the West: Do not underestimate the wrath of Lebanon’s Christians when “enough becomes enough”, and do not accuse them of Islamophobia and racism like you did back in the 1970s because they tried to salvage their nation from the likes of Hafez Assad, Mouammar Kaddafi, and Yasser Arafat, despite your betrayal and your cowering to Arab oil and Zionist blackmail.

UNIFIL is to Blame for Private Rooney's Death

UNIFIL - the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon - is a long-standing failure. The death of 324 of its soldiers between 1978 and 2022 (44 years), often as a result of attacks by inimical forces, can only be blamed on those who agree to dispatch such forces into missions they know are short-term band-aid patches to deeper and more complex problems.

In Lebanon, the main problem is a constitutive deficiency of the Lebanese entity, which is a "State" only in name, in ensuring its sovereignty over its territory. By acquiescing to both State actors (Syria, Israel) and non-State actors (the Palestine Liberation Organization 1967-1982, then Hezbollah 1982-present) controlling entire areas of the territory from which the State is excluded, the Lebanese State ceases to be a functioning entity, unless it is itself an accomplice in the assisted-suicide it is engaged in.

By giving free rein to rogue organizations like the PLO, Hezbollah and other smaller and less known groups, the Lebanese State invites other State actors (Israel, Syria, Iran, etc.) to intervene, fund, interfere, and direct the workings of the State. 

Given all the above, one wonders what should be the role of the international community. 

There is no reason to doubt that the UN and its backers know that Lebanon is a failed State because it cannot ensure its own defense and sovereignty. So what options are there to deal with a failed State?

Why did the UN subscribe to a deal between Israel and a Lebanon it knows is not autonomous in its decision-making and is controlled by Hezbollah, Iran and Syria?

Why did the UN engage in negotiations with Lebanese officials whom it knows are puppets or figureheads of the real actors (Syria, Hezbollah etc.)? Doesn't the UN realize a priori that these negotiators cannot guarantee the implementation of any agreement it makes with them?

If the UN agrees to the proposition that Lebanon is a failed State, as the past 70 years have amply demonstrated, why does it then engage with a non-sovereign Lebanon that cannot uphold any agreement it makes?

If the UN "wishes" or "hopes" that Lebanon become a truly sovereign entity, why does the UN not help Lebanon acquire the characteristics of a sovereign nation? Which implies the use of some coercive mechanisms against the obstacles to full sovereignty.

In essence, it has now been more than 50 years - nearly 70 years if you include the mini-civil war of 1958 - that Lebanon is treated as its own agent and decision-maker. International community members and international institutions make agreements, sign contracts, pass resolutions, fund projects etc. with it. Yet, the international community knows that Lebanon is an entity that is predictably not the master of its own destiny and that it could never uphold the terms of any such agreement, contract, or resolution. So why does the international community continue to do it? 

The reason for this reflection is the perennial failure of Lebanon on one hand, while it is treated by others as if it were a political entity with rational and predictable modes of operation on the other hand. 

Should the UN abandon Lebanon to its fate? Should the international community cease dealing with a failed state?

I know one thing for sure: The international community should at least tell Lebanon that it is a failed state and that it will treat it as such. The international community can give Lebanon a deadline after which ALL ASSISTANCE, ALL AGREEMENTS and ALL RECOGNITION of Lebanon as a functioning state will cease. 

The Lebanese people are exhausted from several decades of instability, mismanagement, lack of internal cohesion and unified decision-making. They ricochet from one crisis to the next, with interludes of pseudo-stability that are always forced from the outside.

Lebanon is the sick man of the international community. It just doesn't work the way it is set up and is organized and managed. Over the past century (1920 - the present), Lebanon seemed to function for about 20 years only (mid-1940s to mid-1960s). Is it worth it to keep trying to resuscitate such a passing moment of normality when all signs indicate that these efforts are futile? 

Perhaps the answer to all these questions is that, deep down, the international community wishes Lebanon dead and gone, or absorbed into Syria or Israel, but does not have the courage to tell it so. It's like a dying person whom the doctors know is dying but do not have the courage to tell family members and the person itself that death is inevitable and that there is nothing they can do, except perhaps a faint chance that radical surgery might have some success.

That is why I suggest that the UN and UNIFIL put an end to Lebanon's miseries by withdrawing from it. Stop propping up this fake dysfunctional political entity with doses of bigoted friendship and haphazard minimal support. Let this recalcitrant Lebanon be the way it is, regardless of the consequences that might ensue. Civil war? War between Israel and Hezbollah? A Syrian invasion leading to the annexation of former Syrian provinces back to Syria? A breakdown of Lebanon into two or more smaller entities? An Israeli invasion and annexation of parts of Lebanese territory? Perhaps as a result of such a "positive shock" something new could emerge that might work.

How much worse can things get? Can they get any worse than the endless heartache and torment for the entire life of this Lebanon that no one recognizes as a viable state anymore? 

Enough brandishing Lebanon as an "experiment" in shared-living and coexistence between Christians and Muslims. The Lebanese people are not guinea pigs and their lives cannot continue to be one failed experiment after another. It is time for the old and sick guinea pig to retire in dignity. Muslims and Christians cannot, and will never, coexist in one country on an equal footing. Look at Bosnia-Herzegovina with three mutually hostile religious communities cobbled together as a "nation" by that other, now dead, idiot of State Department Richard Holbrooke. It's a gigantic failure. As long as Islam cannot separate religion from the affairs of government, there can be no coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims. In its evolution, Islam is still roughly in the 1500s in comparison with Christianity. The vast majority of Christians today can reconcile between their religious identity and their national identity, since the latter overwhelms the former. But Islam, and Judaism as well, are far from reaching this stage in their evolution. Apartheid Israel is a case in point where non-Jews are treated like animals while Jews are elevated to a super-human species. And they have the gall to call it a democracy. Yes, just like Apartheid South Africa was a democracy before the African National Congress proved it otherwise.

History has shown us over and over again that good lasting solutions more often than not come after major disasters, and not from applying temporary, ineffectual band-aid solutions.

I tell the UN: Leave us to our own demons. Stop trying to help us with half-ass solutions that benefit more your continued operations and your jobs than they solve our problems. Treating us, the patient, with Aspirin and Valium no longer works. It is time for some re-engineering and gene editing in our deteriorating DNA. Maybe some hope can finally come out of the bottomless pit in which we find ourselves. The Lebanese have an apropos saying, "If it doesn't get worse, it cannot get better" - إذا ما بتكبر، ما بتصغر. 

Please let it get worse. In nature, biologists either intervene with radical means to save a species from extinction or they let evolution take its course within a protected environment. To the UN: Either intervene to rescue a fast-disappearing species in this Near East ecosystem, or create a protected area in which this species can continue to evolve in peace. Your on-off, half-ass interventions over decades have only succeeded in making things worse, just like UNIFIL has been in south Lebanon.

Something good could emerge from the depth of despair. Even if the cost is high. At least it will be more permanent.

Hezbollah, Again, Attacks UNIFIL

Yesterday, Fascist Hezbollah Muslim hoodlums, disguised as village "residents", attacked a UNIFIL convoy in a village in south Lebanon. An Irish soldier, Private Seán Rooney, 23, a native of Newtowncunningham in County Donegal, was killed, and three others wounded, one seriously. 

 "UNIFIL" stands for United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon. There is nothing "interim" in this United Nations force that has been deployed in south Lebanon since 1978, separating ultra-religious Jewish fascist racists in Israel from ultra-religious religious Shiite Muslim fascist racists in Lebanon. [See: https://unifil.unmissions.org/faqs]

It's a sad day for Lebanon to be the stage where a peacekeeper from the friendly country of Ireland is killed for the sake of peace. Because of Iranian hatred and instigation, because of the soldier's own hierarchy's incompetence, because no one dares challenge the endless status quo of ineffectiveness, because it takes courage for Antonio Guterres to admit his institution's failure. But all these bureaucrats who send soldiers on unachievable missions are cold heartless politicians with well-paying jobs that can only be justifiable by futile and deadly missions. That was how America handled the Vietnam War back in the 1960s and 1970s. Had the leaders of the US accepted their failure earlier, the lives of 50,000 American soldiers would have been spared. But rare are those leaders who have the guts to admit a mistake. Instead, they dig their heels deeper in their mistake and end up responsible for so many wasted lives.

But the ultimate victim is the country which is the object of UNIFIL's mission: Lebanon has not improved one bit because of UNIFIL. Counting the shells and the bullets exchanged by the two protagonists, as well as the tally of victims, is what UNIFIL's mission has become. Lebanon needs more than a ceasefire or a temporary cessation of hostilities. Why can't UNIFIL be a real fighting force that imposes on Israel and Syria respect for Lebanon's borders? Why can't UNIFIL be used to shoulder a re-possession by the Lebanese Army of its own country's borders with Syria and Israel? Since the late 1960s, when the cowardly Muslim Arabs led by Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya and others were defeated by Israel, they forced tiny and Christian-led Lebanon to become the sole war front with Israel. Since that time, the Lebanese Army was denied access to its own borders with the two terrorist countries of Israel and Syria. Why can't the world, which has rescued tiny East Timor from the claws of Indonesia, rescue Lebanon from the claws of filthy Israel and Syria?

Read my post from January 2022, "UNIFIL: Get the Hell out of Lebanon" [https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/01/unifil-get-hell-out-of-lebanon.html] to understand why the presence of UNIFIL's forces is not only futile but has also enshrined the lawlessness along Lebanon's borders with its two aggressive neighbors:

- It never protects the residents when fighting erupts. Ten of thousands have died.

- It never brings an end to the root conflict which has festered - under the UN watch - since 1967.

- It wastes billions of dollars; and 

- It exposes the soldiers of decent civilized countries (who are dispatched under the UN flag) to the barbaric behavior of Jews and Muslims with Bronze Age beliefs. As of January 14, 2022, UNIFIL has had 324 fatalities since 1978.

Doesn't anyone find it outrageous that, after 45 years of UNIFIL's existence, NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN SOUTH LEBANON. IN FACT THINGS HAVE GOTTEN MUCH WORSE ?

SO WHY IS THIS FORCE STILL ON THE GROUND?

TO MAKE PEACE, STOPPING THE FIGHTING IS GOOD, BUT NOT ENOUGH. FINDING A GENUINE SOLUTION AND IMPOSING IT BY FORCE IF NECESSARY IS MUCH BETTER.

WHO/WHAT IS UNIFIL PROTECTING? An untenable status quo? The two warring sides, i.e. ultra-religious Jewish fascist racists in Israel? And ultra-religious religious Shiite Muslim fascist racists in Lebanon? 

IS IT THE MISSION OF UNIFIL TO PROTECT THE TWO WARRING SIDES? OR LEBANON?

IS THE SEDATION OF THE LEBANESE STATE INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY WITH THE PRESENCE OF UN FORCES WHAT IS REQUIRED? OR A MORE MUSCLED APPROACH TO DETER ISRAEL AND SYRIA FROM FURTHER INTERFERENCE IN LEBANON?

Once in a while we hear "nice" and "cute" stories of UNIFIL soldiers building a road, or setting up a village with solar panels, or even falling in love with local girls and getting married. How cute! But is this the point of UNIFIL's existence? Why not send a regiment of boy scouts instead? Or Salvation Army volunteers? Or Mother Teresa's nuns?

Instead of contributing to a permanent solution, UNIFIL has insidiously preserved the status quo of hostility and violence. Why is it that "good" human institutions never achieve their objectives or achieve them far too late for them to be useful? I'm thinking of the Justice system in many countries. They say, "Justice delayed is justice denied". It took nearly 20 years for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) to find a handful of Hezbollah thugs responsible for the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Yet the convicted criminals, hiding somewhere in Lebanon in Hezbollah's restricted areas, remain at large. And the STL turned out to be a cowardly form of justice, refusing to directly name Hezbollah and its sponsors, Iran and Syria, when the three operatives who were found guilty are members of the terror Hezbollah organization and are now evading sentence by hiding in Hezbollah territory inaccessible to the security apparatus of the Lebanese state.

UNIFIL: GET THE HELL OUT OF LEBANON AND LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY.

Iran Occupies Lebanon via Proxy, But the Lebanese Still Have Agency

Hanin Ghaddar
The Hoover Institution, The Caravan Symposium
December 14, 2022

Lebanon as a state entity all but collapsed some time ago. It’s not official yet, and no one seems ready to declare it a failed state, but the government institutions are practically broken and nonfunctional. The economic crisis that has led to the depreciation of the lira by more than ninety percent meant that the salaries of public servants are not even enough for transportation to and from work. Many vital public institutions, such as the Lebanese University, the Electricity Company, service ministries and municipalities, are barely functioning. The crisis had caused a serious exodus from civil service across the board. The core of the state institutions – its public service – is gone.

Lebanon has never seen a collapse of this magnitude – even during the civil war. And the dreadful part is that this is not the worst scenario. More deterioration of the economy, depreciation of the lira, and a serious social explosion are on the horizon. Stopping this collapse and starting the long and thorny road to rehabilitate the Lebanese state requires more than reforms. Yes, reforms to the economy, banking, fiscal, and security systems are vital; however, we all know by now that none of this will happen as long as an armed Hezbollah is overseeing this decline.

This sudden and severe collapse did not happen because of corruption alone, and it will not be completely resolved by economic and financial reforms. Corruption and a weak state apparatus are the core of Hezbollah’s policy. Reforming certain sectors, electing a president, or forming another government that looks a little better than the last, all are important steps to maintain a sense of agency; nevertheless, the clash is not between two Lebanese political parties. It is a clash between a kidnapper and a hostage. It is as a hostage that Iran views Lebanon – there’s no need to have a socio-economic policy for Lebanon – or for Iraq or Syria for that matter. On the contrary, a prosperous Lebanon means a stronger state, and that’s not in the interest of Iran and Hezbollah – a hostage needs to stay weak and frightened. What matters is how to maintain and strengthen Iran’s grip on these countries, whether their citizens stay, leave, or die trying. In this context, the institutional tools that Lebanon is using to show the world that it is still functioning as a democracy have been rendered worthless by Hezbollah’s arms, or threat of armed force. In the formula of ballots vs. bullets, the latter is always louder and more heard.

The Lebanese people decided to challenge this status quo on October 17, 2019, when people from all sects and regions took to the streets to say no to corruption, the political system, and for the first time, to Hezbollah and Iran. The status quo didn’t change much, and the protests were hit by COVID and then the Beirut Port blast, but they did manage to achieve a number of important outcomes, such as the removal of Saad Hariri from the political scene. Most importantly, the protests exposed the true face of Hezbollah: the protector of the system, and the guardian of corruption, violence and injustice. Eventually, this translated into Hezbollah’s loss of its parliamentary majority in May 2022.

The group’s popularity took a dramatic hit, and criticism against their practices and policies intensified on both social media and in the streets. However, between seeking the people’s love and instilling fear, Hezbollah chose to instigate fear. The group threatened, attacked, and harassed activists and constituents who expressed discontent. Then they killed Lokman Slim – and the wall of fear went up immediately, and a sense of control was reestablished.

The Challenges for Hezbollah

Hezbollah’s goal today is to maintain their control and regain the power they lost in the parliamentary elections by imposing their choice for the next president and their vision for the next government. They will continue to prohibit attempts to reform institutions and will become the party with the best access to hard currency in Lebanon. They will use all tools possible to establish a long-term control over Lebanon, even if this means a change of the constitution or the elimination of the Taif Agreement. This will be the last nail in the coffin for Lebanon as we know it.

For Hezbollah, a new constitution for Lebanon could be the only guarantee for Iran’s power and entrenchment. And further deterioration of the state institution and the economy could pave the way for the group and its allies to call for this scenario.
But this phase in Lebanon’s chapter, and Hezbollah’s strategy to deal with it, comes with many risks and challenges.

First, the Lebanese realize today that Hezbollah’s weapons are directed at the Lebanese people. This has transformed them from being the “resistance” and “liberators” of 1982 and 2000 to the new occupiers. This shift in perception will lead to a serious change in the dynamics between them and the Lebanese people, mainly the Shia community. Without the embrace of the Shia, Hezbollah cannot thrive.

Second, Hezbollah’s popularity could erode further, and this will continue to influence the upcoming municipal and future parliamentary elections. They could continue losing voters and allies, and eventually, the risk of losing decision-making power will be real.

Three, it has become a liability to ally with Hezbollah. Its current allies either lost the elections, got sanctioned, or both. And in return, Hezbollah can no longer guarantee presidencies, ministries, or business deals. Michel Aoun left the presidential palace, and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil has not replaced him.

Four, the group understands that they can threaten with their arms without using their arms, but not indefinitely. They know that once they use them, they lose them. Iran is no longer in a good place to restock Hezbollah with money and weapons the way they used to and Hezbollah had to come up with alternatives. The drug and smuggling business to which they resorted in the past also harmed their image and transformed the “resistance” into the biggest drug cartel in Lebanon and possibly the region.

Five, the maritime deal Lebanon signed with Israel in October 2022 was approved by Hezbollah in order to avoid a conflict with Israel. But this had implications for the group’s rhetoric: Hezbollah had to acknowledge the existence of an enemy state and accept a diplomatic deal with it. The image of resistance took a hard hit.

These challenges are not going to force Hezbollah to change its policy or its allegiance to Iran. As long as it has the weapons, the strength and power over Lebanon, and most importantly, works with the absence of international concern over Lebanon, the group and its sponsors in Tehran will probably find a way to walk the line between power and popularity.

Opportunities and Recommendations

The Lebanese, Syrians, and Iraqis look today at Iran and feel a sense of hope because they know a change in Iran means change in their own countries. This might take a long time, but there are ways to make Hezbollah more vulnerable in Lebanon. This requires a comprehensive policy towards Lebanon – between the United States, Europe (mainly France) and Saudi Arabia – it also needs to involve the Lebanese opposition groups – no policy has ever worked in Lebanon without active internal involvement. So far, the discussion on Lebanon is already underway among all these states but it is still focused on the humanitarian program. A serious policy should hit Hezbollah’s three main pillars of power in Lebanon: the Shia community, the allies, and the weapons. More sanctions on Hezbollah’s allies’ certainly helps. But it is time for Europe – France in particular – to start issuing the sanctions they’ve been discussing since 2019. In addition, Hezbollah’s allies should not be allowed to visit the US or Europe or even have bank accounts and assets in any of these countries. It should be made very risky to ally with Hezbollah.

As for the Shia community, this is the perfect time to work directly with the Shia, listen more to the voices of discontent, and give political and material support to the new opposition among the Shia – mainly those with socio-economic visions. These also need protection and support – without protection, Hezbollah will kill them as they killed Lokman Slim and others.

The existence of large supplies of weapons is a different game altogether. No one really can target this arsenal without a war. Israel has been taking care of Iran’s weapons factories and facilities in Syria, but the ones in Lebanon have been stored underground since 2006. Some expired but many still constitute a serious risk in the next war with Israel. There are two ways of dealing with these: either targeted attacks by Israel that would destroy weapons without killing civilians, or exposing the weapons facilities built under civilian infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals. The Lebanese people have no idea what’s under their homes and land, and they certainly do not want to risk anything anymore.
These pillars are already shaking – Hezbollah’s allies lost during the elections, Iran is facing its own challenges, and the Shia community has lost faith in Hezbollah. Now is the time to hit hard. Ultimately, the Iranian people might be the only hope left for the region, but as we wait, constraining Hezbollah in Lebanon could help.

The alternative is alarming – a new Lebanon, with a new constitution that would guarantee Hezbollah’s power and control – with or without Iran.

*Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Fellow in The Washington Institute’s Program on Arab Politics, where she focuses on Shia politics throughout the Levant.

Lebanese People Deserve their Misery

When you talk to the average Lebanese these days, the conversation inevitably concludes in a hypocritical blame addressed at the ruling establishment.  Hypocritical, because after the six disastrous years of Michel Aoun, the 2019 uprising, the collapse of the country's institutions, the continued lies and incompetence of the various administrations, and all the ills that the country is suffering from, it is the average Lebanese who voted the ruling Mafia back to power in last May's elections. 

The Lebanese people had a chance to topple the ruling class, but they didn't. With only a 10% renewal in the makeup of Parliament - only 12 new "reformist" MPs were elected that have yet to coalesce into an effective challenge to the establishment - the bulk (116 out of a total of 128) of the elected MPs were the same ones who have managed Lebanon's descent into destitution for years, if not for decades. The same political parties, the same corrupt servants of the feudal sectarian lords who waged the war of 1975, who came back in 1991 with a general amnesty they granted themselves after the war to resume their rape of the country, and who continue to be beholden to foreign countries, are in Parliament today. 

What can 12 new, and disorganized, reformists do in the face of entrenched mentalities from the late 19th century? The masquerade of unproductive presidential elections that has been on display in Parliament for nearly two months shows that nothing has changed and the Lebanese people can only blame themselves. The Lebanese people deserve their misery.

The voters in this country have been cowered by textbook examples of control-by-fear politics. The life of the Lebanese cannot be worse. Nothing works here. No courts. No administrations. No public life. No services (electricity, water, Internet.... ). Life in Lebanon is a life on hold. Waiting. Waiting. After decades of mismanagement and corruption to which the Lebanese have had ample time to adjust, they no longer want change. They have found their comfort zones inside the abysmal concentration camps created for them by their politicians, in a gargantuan Stockholm syndrome. The Christians of Bassil hate the Christians of Geagea, and vice-versa. They both hate the Christians of Frangiyeh, and they all hate the Muslims, and the Muslims evidently reciprocate. The Shiite Muslims hate the Sunni Muslims, both hate the Druze, and the stupid religious hatred merry-go-round goes on. The Muslims by and large vote like a herd of brainwashed camels without any desire to change their leaders because the latter tell them that it would be un-Islamic or un-Arab to do so, brandishing the specter of an outside world constantly conspiring against them and causing all the ills they are suffering from. "It's not us", say the politicians, and depending on which outsider is paying them, they blame "the Christians, America, Israel, the Saudis, the Iranians, the West, etc.".  Shiite Muslims brandish the Saudis on top of their list of conspiring enemies, while Sunni Muslims top their list with the Iranians.

The Christians for their part, though identical to the Muslims in the backward way their community is organized (feudal, sectarian, mercantile, individualistic, corrupt...), show some diversity in their political class. There are four or five Christian political poles, but when you look carefully, their differences are not based on ideological grounds. They are not, as it is elsewhere in civilized countries, divided into Democrats, Socialists, Liberals, Communists, Greens, etc. who operate over the same territories and across the country. They are all conservatives and are identical to each other in every respect, except perhaps for their treacherous relations with foreign countries: Each is a tribe with its lord, his extended family, his vassals, and its own geographical territory, in what amounts to a medieval fiefdom that can be extremely difficult to undo. Lebanon is pretty much stuck in the Middle Ages, primarily because religion is in the background of all this, just as it was in the rest of the world many centuries ago.

And beneath this social-sectarian-political structure survive a people who are educated but uncultured and chained by archaic beliefs. The Lebanese in general can read and write, but there is no cultural or scientific literacy beyond the minimum needed to get a job, to emigrate, or to show off and brag. You will never see a Lebanese reading a book in public. There is no intellectual creativity that can transcend the hellish status quo of their pathetic incarceration inside their sectarian concentration camps. Many new ideas or ways of thinking about the world are imported, albeit often distorted and haphazardly implemented, and never carry the seeds of transformation or evolution beyond the established religious-feudal order. That is what the religious orders, both Christian and Muslim (nuns, imams, priests, etc.) teach Lebanese children every day in their schools: Learn just enough to get a job or emigrate, but don't believe any of that western stuff that make you sin against God and his holy books. Science is only good to make you an engineer, but don't let mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology deviate you from the unfathomable ways of God and his true religion(s), which are any one of the 18 Bronze-Age religious cults that the primitive Lebanese constitution recognizes and the primitive Lebanese people adhere to. Instead, let your brains be immersed in fables of prophets, saints, mahdis, disappearing imams, messiahs, and other such doom-tellers, fortune-tellers, mediums, and charlatans. 

The height of the winter season's holidays for the Lebanese consists in sitting glued to their television sets on New Year's eve to listen to any one of a number of mind-numbing "predictors of the future", like Michel Hayek, who tells them, with spooky Hollywood music in the background, what he "sees" happening around the world over the coming year. And the Lebanese take his words very very seriously. Never mind that this pagan ritual goes against their religious convictions. It's serious stuff. This is what happens to people who live in complete intellectual - and nowadays material - destitution, under a constant threat of war and unrest, abandoned by their decrepit government and the very representatives they elected, with nary a thought to self-organize in solidarity and take their lives in their own hands. They expect God, messiahs, prophets and, of course, others to come to their help.

Sometimes, the world-traveling Lebanese bring new ideas from their countries of exile, but they try to implant them in Lebanon as occasional isolated bursts of shallow creativity, in a sort of a cultural me-too imitation of western memes. They do not understand that it is an entire ecosystem that has to change before such ideas can deliver on the ground of their daily lives. That is why you suddenly see islands of pseudo-civility or pseudo-intellectualism popping up here and there, without any coordination with other one-off islands, only to die soon afterwards without the sustenance of an ecosystem that could ensure their longevity. I will not dwell on the hyper-bragging by the Lebanese when they see or hear about such individual successes, going so far as to constantly claim Lebanon as a haven of freedom, democracy, culture, enlightenment and such hyperbolic claims of grandeur, however much they may be wading in a sea of garbage, pollution, archaic beliefs, social and religious repression, mismanagement, aggressiveness, and hostility to members of one's own community, let alone to those of the other communities.

A few years ago, a Lebanese-American friend of mine in the US was eager to run for elections in Lebanon. He had money and enthusiasm. He had tons of ideas from his American experience that he wanted to instill in Lebanese politics. He asked if I could help him and I agreed. But his very first agenda item for his campaign was to - and this is where I flipped out and walked out - visit with, and pay respect to, all the religious, feudal, political neanderthals of the district where he wanted to run as a candidate. I couldn't convince him that he is basically running against these people, so why would he want to have their blessing? In the end, he failed lamentably, earning a number of votes you could count on your fingers, even though his ideas could at least have brought fresh blood and ideas into the system. He never ran again.

It is very hard to change mindsets fashioned by Bronze Age beliefs, especially those grounded in fear. The Lebanese have no genuine solidarity with one another. Not within their families, not within their villages, and not across their own community at large, and therefore not with the other "alien" communities. Solidarity is an "effeminate" character for the patriarchal macho culture of this country. If a member of your community tries a novel approach to problem-solving, you do everything you can to ensure his failure. Covetousness, jealousy, me-too-envy. Then when he's down and fails (they generally fail, otherwise this country would not be the fossil that it is), you kick him hard. But if he succeeds or looks like he's succeeding (typically on his own, and often by unorthodox ways), you crawl like a slave and beg at his feet hoping for some benefit to reap. There is no empathy among the Lebanese. Every other Lebanese is a competitor, never a collaborator. And if you see media coverage of non-profit and charitable actions, it is more often than not from either religious entities (who in fact are the source of all the miseries by keeping their human herds in check and in fear) or "socialite" personalities who are often the wives of politicians whose wealth and beneficence derive from all the corruption they have engaged in over the years.

Every Lebanese individual is a kingdom. Every Lebanese is a political party. Every Lebanese is a general, never a soldier willing to do the hard work. Getting two Lebanese to work together toward a common goal is much more complicated and harder than sending a manned spaceship to Mars. How could a people like this have come together to make a country? The simple answer is to imagine a cage, just one cage, in which several wounded animals of different species have been crammed together. This is Lebanon, a cage in which several (18 according to the fluid Lebanese constitution) injured minorities in this diverse Near East have come to live and shelter since the Bronze Age. If you can show these animals that collaborating together would heal their wounds, I'll nominate you for a Nobel Peace Prize.