LEBANON’S DILEMMA – A revolving identity crisis

On September 1, 1920 French General Henri Gouraud proclaimed from the porch of the Pine Residence in Beirut the creation and independence of the state of Greater Lebanon under the colonial mandate of the League of Nations represented by France. France also received Syria which it separated from Lebanon, while Britain was awarded Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq.

This series of five articles was originally written in January and February this year by Ghassan Kadi. We are publishing it today on the occasion of the centenary of Lebanon to enlighten readers on the historical role played by French colonialism in the sectarian divide-and-rule strategy of the Levant (Greater Syria) and the internal forces in motion at that time and their role today. France and Britain together separated the region into Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq by secret agreement (Sykes-Picot) during World War I, which they received following the war with the defeat of Ottoman Turkey and Germany as “trustee”. The series also brings out the character of the internal institutions established in Lebanon on September 1, 1920 by the armed forces of France.

THE ANGRY ARAB: The blast (and the failed system) that shook Lebanon

The key question after the Aug. 4 explosion in Beirut revolves around the role of the Lebanese Army command, which is the sole authority with direct control over the security and safety of the port, and its surroundings | AS’AD ABUKHALIL

Devastation in Beirut | http://mehrnews.com/xSMehdi Shojaeian/Wikimedia Commons

Those who are superstitious may think that Lebanon has been recently cursed: successive disasters, catastrophes and crises have afflicted the small country uninterruptedly for several consecutive years.

Lebanon’s future: Lebanon’s Mutasarrifate Take II

Ghassan Kadi’s thoughts about the crisis facing Lebanon

(August 10) – Most of the current instability in the Levant and the whole Middle East is inadvertently and inadvertently a result of the obsession about Israel’s security; both from the Israeli as well as the American sides. That said, many of the region’s problems are deep-rooted and go back to times before Israel was created and before America had any influence.

The Beirut sea-port explosion

Ghassan Kadi’s initial thoughts about the Beirut Port explosions

(August 5) – I have mourned Beirut time and time again, but with all the cities I have lived in, Beirut will always be my favourite. After all, how can I ever forget its hustle and bustle before the infamous fifteen year long civil war that started on Sunday the 13th of April 1975? I was a student back then, with very limited financial resources, but back then, you didn’t have to be rich to enjoy the rich lifestyle of Beirut.

Canadian ‘aid’ to Beirut: Let us remember Qana

Graves of Lebanese civilians massacred by Israeli airstrikes on Qana on July 29, 2006 | Feyrouz

By Tony Seed

It is not acceptable that Canada which has troops and special forces stationed in Lebanon, Iraq and Israel is offering statements of regret and sympathy for the victims while making aid conditional on Lebanon making “reforms” dictated by the big powers. Given its hostility to Lebanon and how it has militarized aid to the Caribbean in the name of hurricane or earthquake relief such as Haiti, or arms to Saudi Arabia to attack the Yemeni people despite the endemic cholera, we need to be vigilant.

The Government of Canada’s unacceptable response to the tragedy in Lebanon

People of Quebec stand with Lebanese people at vigil at the Lebanese consulate in Montreal, August 6, 2020.

Canada has made aid to Lebanon in the midst of this great tragedy they have suffered conditional on the Lebanese government enacting all kinds of reforms demanded by the imperialist financial institutions. It blames the Lebanese government for the plight of the country for which the U.S. imperialists, Israeli Zionists, Lebanon’s former colonial power France and others are fully to blame. The conditions which exist in Lebanon today and the many tragedies the Lebanese people have suffered in the past and which they suffer today are of their making. Instead of taking up their responsibilities and putting the well-being of the Lebanese people in command of their decisions on getting aid to Lebanon, these governments blame the Lebanese people and the factional fighting in the government – a government based on the model given to them by the French imperialists in the first place. They are demanding regime change, while they channel aid through their own agencies to further undermine the unity in action of the people to deal with the tragedy which has befallen the people. Experience shows this will merely enrich these so-called humanitarian agencies while the plight of the people will remain.

Our Hearts Are with Beirut

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) expresses its deepest sympathies to the families of all victims of the August 4 explosion in Beirut, another tragedy of unprecedented proportions which has hit the Lebanese people at home and abroad including the large Lebanese community in Quebec and Canada. Our hearts go out to those living in Beirut and to the Lebanese people who have been sorely tested, and even more so within the extremely difficult conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, onerous demands and conditions imposed by the international financial institutions and continuous breaches of Lebanon’s sovereignty by Zionist and Anglo-American forces along with Lebanon’s former colonial power France and others such as Canada.

Heartfelt condolences and solidarity to the people of Beirut

Vigil at the Lebanese consulate in Montreal, August 6, 2020.

A reflection, from a Facebook post, August 5, 2020

My heartfelt condolences and solidarity to the people of Beirut, the families and victims, the comrades from Beirut, the city which I came to love, having spent a memorable week there in summer of 2014. A huge disaster and tragedy on the eve of the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am only glad that so far those whom I came to know are safe.

On a personal note, I owe a debt in addition to the Lebanese community in Halifax which dates back to the 1920s if not before and who schooled me in the tapestry of their rich history, culture and politics, beginning from the time in 1982 when we marched together to oppose the Israeli invasion. From that moment we shared weal and woe on many issues, as have the Canadian and Lebanese people. In October 2002 Father John of the Greek Orthodox Church freely provided facilities of his parish for the launch of our Dossier on Palestine, defying the united pressure of local Falange and Zionist elements, as he did on other occasions.

Crocodile tears in Beirut

GHASSAN KADI’s thoughts on anti-Syrian rhetoric coming from sectors of society in Lebanon.*

The traditional Lebanese Left and Right and their followers are united in venting out their anger against the alleged illegal transport of fuel and subsidized wheat flour from Lebanon to Syria. According to their reports, which I haven’t been able to confirm the validity of, truck loads of the above are being stolen away from the Lebanese people who are suffering immensely under rising high costs of living and devastating financial ruin, and transported to Syria to “support the Assad regime.”

Lebanon in US action movies: Beirut starring Jon Hamm

By AS’AD ABUKHALIL*

Lebanon often provided a venue for American and Western action films.  In the 1950s and 1960s, it was a place of international intrigue and espionage where spies intersected with other spies, and where car chases on mountainous roads provided for good movie scenes.  There were so many US and European movies shot in Lebanon in those times, with such titles: The Sell-out, Masquerade, Man on the Spying Trapeze, Agent 505, Embassy, among others. But that so-called peaceful Lebanon (where successive Israeli invasions and massacres don’t get a mention in Western movie accounts, and are rarely listed as the reason for undermining the old Lebanon—with all its flaws, inequities, and injustices) does not exist anymore.  The Lebanese civil war provided a totally different venue for American action films that were to come in the 1980s.

Lebanon: The fall and the fall of Hariri

This week Daniel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper that the Saudis were meddling yet again in Lebanese politics, forcing Hezbullah into greater political prominence, to provide the pretext for Israel to renew its confrontation with the Lebanese militia and thereby stoke a new war between Israel and Lebanon and Syria.

In his words: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are fully aligned in this regional struggle, and the Saudis cannot help but be impressed by Israel’s increasing assertiveness to strike at Iranian threats in Syria … When the moment of truth arrives, Israel’s allies, with the United States in the lead, should give it full backing.”

Politics in Lebanon itself is complex, largely due to the confessional system inherited from French colonialism. Ghassan Kadi gives a brief background on Saad Hariri and offers some thoughts on the reasons behind Hariri’s sudden resignation. With events in the region proceeding at a dizzying pace, and especially the news of arrests in Saudi Arabia, which happened after Ghassan wrote this article, some of the thoughts expressed may merely represent a snapshot in time as the landscape keeps changing, but essentially his article analyzes Saudi Arabia’s attempts to regain control over Lebanon. – TS

Syria: Meddling in the name of ‘empowering women’

Since the forces led by the Syrian government have gained the upper hand in Syria, Canada has been unable to justify openly going into Syria which it had sought to do in the past. Recently, Canada announced $45 million to fund programs in Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, countries that neighbour Syria.

The funding is allegedly to “assist grass roots women’s organizations and assist Jordanian and Lebanese communities in hosting over 1,660,000 registered Syrian refugees.”

A Balfour curse

Demonstration in Damascus, Syria against Balfour’s visit to the region in 1925.

Balfour. The name is synonymous with the declaration that helped create the state of Israel and with it the untold agony and suffering of a people who to this day – more than 50 years on – have yet to recover from one of history’s worst political and moral injustices. On a journey by ship and train in 1925 to Egypt, Palestine and Syria, Balfour was met by protests and demonstrations which shook streets and capitals. From the pages of the Egyptian periodical Al-Ahram, Dr Yunan Labib Rizk* takes an in-depth look at the man and a trip that made headlines.

Tale of two cities – Why silence when Beirut gets bombed but tears for Paris?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Universally, governments have condemned the attacks that took place in the French capital’s northern suburb of Saint-Denis on November 13, 2015. Unquestionably, the murder and mayhem that happened in Paris was despicable and tragic. Questions need to be asked, however, as part of an important discussion about the narrative that is emerging.

Disinformation on gas attacks in Syria (11): Whose sarin? Whose rebels? Whose cherries?

A comment by Tony Seed on the revelations by Seymour Hersh of the duplicity of the Obama (and Harper) regimes and nonsense about the “intelligence community”

(Dec. 12, 2013) – MONTHS after the mysterious gas attacks on 21 August in Ghouta near Damascus, Syria, an article about the perfidious role of the Obama government appeared in the London Review of Books last Sunday December 8th. It is reproduced below. The American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh discloses that the White House directly “cherry picked” intelligence and fabricated facts outlined in the so-called “dossier” of the Obama regime to blame the government of Bashar al-Assad for the use of chemical weapons as part of its warmongering against Syria.

An exposé of Israeli war crimes in Lebanon: impunity

One Norwegian officer left Lebanon with a typed report on torture taped to his chest, ROBERT FISK recounts in a commentary on Odd Karsten Tveit’s latest book, Goodbye Lebanon: Israel’s First Defeat.

Impunity: Israel violates Lebanese sovereignty three times a day

Israeli warplanes violate the territorial integrity of Lebanon, including the skies over Beirut, the capital city, on an average of almost three times a day, according to a study by BRENDA HEARD based on UN reports. “Yet there is rarely a mention in the international press. The UN merely stacks up the reports.” In 2009, Israel’s routine overflights were characterised by UNIFIL as not only a “humiliation to the Lebanese government and UNIFIL,” but also an “act of war.”

friendsoflebanon.org (September 16) – AS WE CHASE the latest headlines and grow dizzy from the daily crises of the Middle East, sometimes we overlook the persistent problems.  Perhaps the element of continuance makes them frustrating, perhaps just boring. But to ignore the drip-drop of Israeli belligerence toward Lebanon is to shrug off the impunity by which it persists.

Birds of prey: The record of impunity for Israeli military aircraft

Lebanese National News Ageny

Israel’s routine overflights — characterised by UNIFIL in 2009 as not only a “humiliation to the Lebanese government and UNIFIL,” but also an “act of war …

By BRENDA HEARD* 

friendsoflebanon.org (February 16) – SINCE MARCH 1978, for thirty-five years, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, has been monitoring the conflict between Israel and Lebanon— the tension, the daring, the mayhem, the killing. The enthusiastic efforts UNIFIL made in the early years soon waned. Perhaps it was the politics, perhaps it was the frustration of an ineffectual mandate, or perhaps it was losing 279 troops to-date.    Whatever the cause, public statements from UNIFIL seem to have settled into a laissez-faire yawn.

Dispatch from Damascus

A revealing report from MANUEL OCHSENREITER* of the German monthly newsmagazine ZUERST! breaks the embargo of the warmongering monopoly media about the actual situation in Syria.

Poster of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus

ACCORDING to the mainstream Western media, a ‘civil war’ is raging in Syria. Campaigning groups like the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights make extravagant claims about huge numbers of casualties (they claim that around 20,000 people have already died) at the hands of the Syrian state security forces. Independent journalists, it is alleged, are not allowed to report directly from Syria, and the regime does not permit free press activities.

Windsor Peace Coalition discusses interference in Lebanon

“There is no occupation of Lebanon by Syria. This is a bi-lateral arrangement between the two sovereign governments.”

On April 13, the anniversary of the beginning of the civil war in Lebanon, the Windsor Peace Coalition met to discuss the roots of the current situation in Lebanon in order to take a stand on current developments. Discussion began with a brief presentation of the interventionist roles various big powers, particularly the US, France, England and Israel have played following World War I to divide the Lebanese people on religious and ethnic lines to serve their empire building interests.

Martin Government’s unacceptable stand on Lebanon and Syria – Letters to MP Alexa McDonough

We are posting below two letters to NDP MP Alexa McDonough following remarks she made in support of the Martin’s government’s unacceptable stand concerning Lebanon and Syria. While in Beirut last month, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew stated: “We believe that Lebanon and Syria should contribute to … security, in order not to undermine [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas but on the contrary to reinforce him.” Pointing to “elements” he claimed are determined to undo the peace process such as the resistance organization Hezbollah, he issued threats to Syria and Lebanon to “rein in Hezbollah militants.” Such statements are aimed at covering up that it is the criminal Zionist Israeli state backed by the US imperialists which is undermining security in the region with its continued occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories.