Ministry of Interior

ذهب و لم يعد
Everyone had an opinion, statement, or declaration about what happened last Sunday, all those officials in their televisions, and those non-officials in their streets.
The government and its supporters blamed the opposition, those who died, and Syria for the massacre. The opposition blamed the government and the army.

One voice remained unheard; in fact one face has disappeared since he retracted his resignation and theoretically reassumed his responsibilities: the Minister of Interior.

Curiously no one even bothers to mention the absence of the one supposed to be responsible of security in the country. After all this is not his problem since these people who were killed are not Lebanese citizens, they are part of the Syrian-Iranian axis of evil. In fact even the location of the event is not in the “real Lebanon” where people are “100% Lebanese”, so why should the ministry of interior be concerned?

6 were killed by gunfire while the army was watching, or even participating in the hunt. Army against citizens: is this Egypt? Is this what we are to hope for? Is this what preserving stability means?

Blaming the victim can only bring more anger, and anger will bring more violence, a violence that would not always be unarmed.

Fouad Sanioura, the Lebanese Prime-Minister made it clear that there are no electricity problems in the suburbs. In fact even the Lebanese economy is doing just fine. At least he did not notice any power cuts while hiding in his office.

This is only the beginning. Disregard of the deteriorating economy and the rapidly increasing economical polarization will soon explode. At this moment political solutions will no longer be useful. When the crowd moves it sweeps everything in its way. And when a government loses control of its people (and control is not exercised by force and bullets) this unconditionally means that it has failed and that a new government is needed. One cannot pretend to be in power, to be the legitimate authority, while refusing to assume the responsibility that this authority entails. No excuses, justification, or exceptional situations can explain why this government is not assuming responsibility for the numerous assassinations, shootings, and bomb blasts that have taken place under their authority.

Where is the Minister of Interior? Did anyone call him? Is he on vacation? Or does he have family duties? Did he leave the key of the ministry with anyone we can call? Or do we no longer need the ministry of interior now that an Army General is going to become President?

So many suppressed issues have surfaced on this bloody Sunday and many more will surface in the coming days. But perhaps for the moment we can rest assured that Samir Geagea is satisfied with the way the army dealt with the situation.

Don't look there, it's Gaza

Self pity starts with the conviction that we are weak, incompetent, and unable to perform any action to deliver ourselves from the state we found ourselves in. This in short is the official “Moderate Arab” discourse. The blame falls on those who dare to take their destiny in their hands and use the capacities they have in order to deliver themselves instead of complaining and accentuating the pitiful state they are in.

When Hezbollah captured the two Israeli soldiers on the 12th of July 2006, the Moderate Arabs were immediately certain about the causality of the subsequent war: Hezbollah’s adventurous, rushed, and non-calculated decision is the cause of war. It turned out that Hezbollah’s decision was far from being uncalculated.

Gaza is under siege. The Moderate Arabs reformulate their causal statements. The siege is the result of the hand-made rockets fired by the Palestinian resistance factions on the neighboring Israeli settlement of Sedirot. Israel’s large scale siege is an act of self defense, say the Arabs. Of course, they do reject the human suffering involved in this act of self defense, but the blame is on those who dare to defy Israel.

It is not the fact that the Moderate Arabs are supporting Israel that is shameful; it is the hypocrisy that makes these Arab leaders cowardly enough not to be able to defend their decision and position. Instead they hide behind empty prose and strongly reject any accusation of being in the American-Israeli camp.

The mention of Israeli soldiers’ remains and body parts held by Hezbollah since the 2006 war instigated disgust in the stomachs of some Lebanese “leaders”. It is strange that the media consultants of these “leaders” did not realize that such statements would not resonate well in the minds of the people especially that Arab media does not refrain from showing Iraqi, Palestinian, and Lebanese body parts that no one ever expressed such disgust about. It is hard to believe that a militia leader can feel disgust from the mere mentioning of body parts.

The Arab “leaders” are not to blame. After all they need to care about the “stability” of their regimes. The blame falls on the people. The blame always falls on the people. When Ziad Rahbani’s last play blamed the Lebanese people for their destiny, it was met with an unprecedented negative critic even though it might be the most politically mature work of his. People do not like to be held responsible this is why they often prefer dictatorships. It is easier, more reassuring.

One and a half million people living in the most densely populated stretch of land in the world are under siege. They are the invisible spectacle of human suffering. No one wants to know, see, or hear about it. Only the Israeli government is honest enough to say that “we do not care if they are suffering”. Europe does not see, the United States do not mind, and the Arabs smile ridiculously because the white man smiles back; they do not speak, they cannot speak.

The Lebanese government is too disgusted by the mental image of Israeli body parts to feel disgust about the crime committed in Gaza. After all, if the suffering of their own people both during the 2006 war and amid the present economical crisis did not instigate any disgust why would the slow death of sub-human Palestinians do?

There is a definition of terrorism, and there are law texts describing what genocide means. We just need people to read it aloud.

But meanwhile we have more pressing matters: the Iranian/Shiite/Axis of Evil/Terrorism threat and the need to buy billion of dollars worth of American weapons especially now that the American economy is in trouble. Anyway there is an Arab Summit coming up, and the Arabs will certainly “object” on the situation in Gaza. When the oil stops flowing, the Arabs will start exporting “objection” to be used in Gaza’s power plant and Saudi Arabia will still be the biggest supplier of fuel.

Prostitution

Some time ago demonstrations broke in Lebanon to defend the Saudi ambassador who was the “victim” of negative criticism. It seemed and it still seems that Saudi Arabia is above criticism. The infamous Saudi regime has often profited from its control of the Muslim holly places to give itself an undeserved religious rank.

There exists a deadlock for the development of the critical and analytical perspectives in the Arab world. This deadlock is still related to tribal and tribal-like relations that define loyalty and criticism of self and the close other. If the case of Saudi Arabia is recurrent it is not because it presents a unique one, but a more visible one.

One must start with history. The Saudi Kingdom is in no way different than any other one; its history is one of conquest, political rivalry, and luck. Saudi Arabia was “blessed” by geography with an extensive amount of oil and therefore a strategic value.

It must be noted also that the Saudi regime ever since its creation in the first part of the 20th century, had been, contrary to the common belief of those who demonstrated in support of the Saudi ambassador, the main enemy of any Arab nationalist idea. In fact the Saudi regime is, like Israel, one of the main strategic allies of the United States. This does not mean that they are puppets, or that they are intrinsically evil, it means that the interests of the regime are in concordance with those of the United States. This is simply a matter of survival instinct.

The Lebanese rhetoric is unfortunately too entrenched in the hospitality myth to be able to say more than empty prose and praise when it comes to discussing the role of another country. “Saudi Arabia has always been a friend of the Lebanese people”, “the Saudi King wants what is best for Lebanon”… these are meaningless if not ridiculous sentences. If history has taught us anything, it is that there is no friendship between countries, let alone between two unequal ones.

It is a shame to see that the main enemy of any Arab renaissance in the full sense of the word is beyond criticism, and even praised as the model to look up to. Without mentioning the rotten social and political system in the Saudi Kingdom, it would be interesting perhaps to look at the recent visit of George Bush to the Middle East as an expression of the Kingdom’s great standing in the Arab journey towards prosperity.

Prostitution is perhaps the word that expresses best the attitude of the Arab moderate leaders when it comes to receiving the “white man”.

Opinion polls for the last 6 years in the Arab world have shown overwhelming animosity towards the United States. This feeling was nourished by the campaign against Islam and the Arabs in the western media and namely in the discourse of the Bush administration. The history of the word terrorism is the witness in this case.

No man has brought more misperception, destruction, poverty, and instability to the Arab world than George Bush. However, he remains the patron of the moderate Arab leaders, great men who get insulted when they are accused of working against their own people or of being puppets in the hands of the more powerful.

Such receptions make Iran and Syria, and let alone Hezbollah, appear as the ones who are acting in the interests of their people (regardless of the truth of these allegations).

The white man comes (Bush and Sarkozy) and plunders the wealth of those he despises. The great king smiles and shakes hands, prepares folk events to produce salon jokes about the Arab habits, and rejoices on the empty praise he gets from the white man.

No nation has ever been so despicable.

Billions of dollars spent on arms to fight ourselves, or someone else’s war, but none spent to support the poor, educate the illiterate, and develop one’s country.

Iran is the threat. Syria is not moderate enough. Hezbollah is unrealistic.

The question that must be asked and those who demonstrated a year ago must answer, is the following:
What have the moderate Arabs, the great Saudi King and his Egyptian republican monarch, done in their long years of peace with the international community for their people and countries?

Perhaps this video says it all