Hariri's murder and Lebanese politics

G eorge W. Bush’s presidency is characterised by a more clearly expressed form of imperialism. Also as a result of the deterrent role carried out by the existence of the Soviet Union, infact, the previous American administrations were much less explicit in introducing the dominion plans which however they did not lack pursuing. On the other hand, also for the most rotten product of the Bush Jnr. government, that is the preventive wars, naturally various justifications have been found and then all of them have gradually been denied by History. A new, possible target of the preventive wars and/or changes in political address piloted by the Americanists is at present Lebanon. The given occasion has been the recent assassination of the ex-Prime Minister of that country, Rafik al-Hariri. Even if, particularly in this case, one would be likely to ask oneself the classic question “Qui prodest?”, “Who benefits?”. Infact, the United States of America would like to take this opportunity to put the blame on Syria, a nation with a historical influence on Lebanon, to impose a political change of address in the country of the cedars, probably by means of direct intervention, even with arms, against Syria, which counts so much in Lebanon. Yet, Syria itself shows the strength that it would have had the least interest in ordering this crime against the Lebanese Ex-Prime Minister. Infact, Hariri, although he was following the politics for a greater independence towards Syria, he was certainly not an Anti-Syrian. A politician well-known since the 1980s, he was an entrepreneur and promoter of the liberalist politics, not always considered to be without shadows. Hariri was part of the Sunnite community: infact in Lebanon, for a pact between different communities, the President of the Council must be actually Sunnite, the President of the Republic a Christian and the President and the President of the Parliament a Shiite; Lebanon however being a Parliamentary Republic, the President of the Republic counts less than the President of the Council: the role that Hariri played was therefore particularly in the forefront. However, the vision of Hariri was still different to that of the Druse Walid Joumblatt, he is decisively dedicated towards a separation from the Syrian politics, together with some Christian factions. The first parties interested in obtaining benefits from the assassination of Hariri are exactly Israel and the U.S.A., but as early as ten hours after the terrorist attack, without any proof of responsibility at all of the Syrian President Bashar el Assad, the Americans withdrew its ambassador from Damascus. Many Americans are moreover behind demonstrations in Beirut which associated the assassination of Hariri to the Syrians (on the model of some of the demonstrations carried out recently in Georgia and the Ukraine), and yet against the American interferences in Lebanon and Syria almost all Lebanon poured into the streets to demonstrate..... For the moment the Americans have asked for the withdrawal of the 15,000 Syrian soldiers in Lebanon, considering them to be like an occupational force, whilst the Lebanese government considers them to be operational basing themselves on an agreement between two independent populations, contradicting also with a resolution of the United Nations Organisation, piloted by the United States of America, and wanted by almost any party in Lebanon. In this way, one has arrived, at present at a redeployment of the Syrian soldiers in Lebanon. It is clear that Lebanon has the right to safeguard its own independence both with respects to Syria and to Israel and also to the U.S.A., but it is natural that here the Americans would only like to oust Syria to install one of their satellite regimes in Lebanon. On the international front, however, Syria is not totally isolated, given that, for example, the Russian government has declared that it will proceed, despite the objections of Sharon, in the sale of land-to- air missiles SA-18 to the government of Damascus. Obviously, all this may have had a deterrent value for the Washington government, discouraging it to proceed towards new military steps. Instead, how does the situation in Lebanon present itself, more in detail? It is important to consider that the internal situation in Lebanon sees the interference of the so-called United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL), founded in 1997 by a Wall Street banker, Ziad K. Adbelnour, with dual nationality, Lebanese and American. Adbelnour comes from a family where there are several politicians, and in particular one of his acquired cousins, Karim Pakradouni, is the president of the Phalange, the principle expression of one of the Christian communities of Lebanon, and that is that of the Maronite Christians, of which also Adbelnour is part. This Committee is deeply filo-Israeli and filo-American, and his supporters, it is sad to remember him, have been neoconservatives, through the American Enterprise Institute, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affaires (Jinsa), the Jewish association linked with Likud, Ariel Sharon’s party. For the USCFL an intense propaganda is essential, and so, since 1999, the organisation has its own bulletin, the Middle East Intelligence Bullettin (Meib), that has made it stand out from the crowd by accusing the Syrian Ba'athists of the assassination of Hariri. This is not a novelty, given that in the past Phalangist environments (that is the Kataeb) had accused the Syria of being responsible for the massacres in Sabra and Chatila: this was found out to be a totally unproven accusation, given that the zone around Beirut where the refugee camps had been militarily occupied by Israeli and Phalangist troops, that is by both the parties that were really responsible for the crime. This unscrupulousness of the filo-Imperialists and the Americans one should not be marvelled at, unfortunately, due to the fact that in those years the American President Reagan usually nicknamed Lebanon <<a box of worms>>, unjustly attributing the responsibility of the degeneration of the conflict in that land to the Lebanese progressist formations and the Palestinians. All this has influenced, in the form of propaganda, also the countries linked to the United States of America. An example of particular inaccuracies and alterations of the matter is for example given by the text of Giovanni Desio contained in the following link in Internet: http://www.giovannidesio.it/riflessioni/giugno%2005/0627%20sabra%20e%20chatila.htm. This is really the fruit of the same style of thought of who, at present, wants to attribute to the Syrian a responsibility of taking part in the terrorist attack on Rafik Hariri. Pakradouni, in the meanwhile, realising the exposure he was risking, had started to put himself in a lower profile position as regards the Hariri matter, even associating himself with the demonstration of a million and a half Lebanese people in favour of Syria! And still, in the background Pakradouni continues to plot against Syria and in favour of Israel. The Maronite Christian environment frequented by Pakradouni, is then impregnated with the spirit of the crusades in the most literal sense of the word and is the supporter also of Christian-Zionism, that is of that aberration, spread even more in reality by means of Protestant sects of Anglo-Saxon roots, which do not read the Bible in the light of the New Testament, and can, for example, even now, retain the Anti-Christian concept of the elected population still valid, in order to give just one example amongst the many possible ones available. It is important to remember, then, that the Maronite Community in Lebanon historically considers that it descends from non-Arabic ethnic groups, which have mingled with the Crusaders: and in effect in Lebanon the Maronites participated in the Crusades with the exception of the other oriental Christian groups which fought them, and amongst the Maronites there are many groups of cavaliers dating back to the Crusades. Then there are people belonging to the Maronite rite (an oriental Catholic rite founded well before the Crusades: in the 5th century A.D. by means of the Syrian Saint Maron) of Pre-Arab origins, effectively: in Cyprus there is this small minority, that, even though it speaks the Greek language throughout its daily life, it has infact the Aramaic language as a liturgical language, a sign of its ancestry. Furthermore, there are many Arabs of Maronite confession and of many nationalities, that is, they are Egyptians, Syrians and Palestinians. The latter group in particular have always fought side-by-side with their co-nationals, and their refugee camp, Jisr Al Basha, has been, on various occasions, bloodily besieged just by Phalangist Maronite Crusades, in a particularly intense way in 1976. There are also several Maronite confession communities which have immigrated to other continents. The position of the Maronites in Lebanon is certified by many interesting sources, amongst which, only to quote two of the many possible articles to consult, one by Sandro Viola in the Repubblica of April 1995, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Lebanese Civil war, and the book <<I am a Fedayn>> by Mahmoud Issa alias Selim, a true story of a manager of the Palestinian Popular Liberation Front, edited in Italy by Ciarrapico (Roma, 1976, but it was published for the first time in France). Issa, who at first still hoped that the conflict with these could be avoided, then he had to reconsider the situation, and he writes, also regarding their then leader of the Phalange, Gemael (Gemayel) : <<Who is Pierre Gèmael? Is he the representative of a faction [...] whose only worry is to defend their own privileges [...] and he is supported by American Imperialism and by Zionism [...] He has founded a group of young Kataeb, who receive a less intensive training than our <<Little Lions>>, but they wear a uniform. They are taught that they are not Arabs and that they must not accept any Arab presence.[…] Since they were children, the adolescents of a Kataeb family learn to hate us […] The President of the Arab League comes personally to Lebanon in order to try to put an end to the conflict. He was engaged in not making contacts with the Kataeb, from the moment that they represented a small faction of the country, a member of the Arab League. Mahmoud Ryad met up therefore, with all the political leaders. […] We received hundreds of letters from the Kataeb who said that they were in disagreement with Pierre Gèmael. Many of them instead sent us their arms, saying that we should use them against Israel and that we should have notified them in case of conflict. So the battle was not useless at all. Pierre Gèmael had lost politically and militarily. We, on our behalf, had a precise plan, to ignore the phalangists, not to speak to them and to fight until they had not been excluded by the government. The Kataeb are not people with whom you can negotiate, they only understand the voice of the weapons >>. Furthermore, it is important to know that, during the Israeli invasion of 1982, the Maronite extremist try to cut themselves a slice of the Lebanese territory, in a their enclave named Marunistan, to settle into a State guided by only Maronites, in theory totally independent, infact satellites of the Jewish State. Also on the occasion of the barbarous crime of which Hariri Tel Aviv was a victim it could try to take advantage, maybe by accusing of anti-Semitism whoever did not support the objectives: and yet, a part from the improper term, also the Palestinian Arabs are part of the Semitic population.... Only by means of the sureness of getting away with it one can for example explain a recent statement made by the journalist and Jewish colony Fiamma Nirenstein (she lives alternatively in Italia and in Ghilo, an expropriated settlement on Palestinian ground near Bethlehem, which would like to make itself thought as part of Jerusalem), who on the second channel of the RAI has stated that in Jenin no massacre had taken place. Evidently for Nirenstein approximately 200 Palestinians killed in the refugee camp in Jenin (Mohaian Jenin) in 2002 can be explained as being carried out by self-defence on behalf of the Jews, who instead strangely did not have almost any victims... In reality the international delegation which had to investigate the event at Mohaian Jenin was not left to operate freely, therefore it could not arrive at a conclusion that a voluntary order of massacre on behalf of Sharon: but if Sharon had not anything to hide one could not understand why he would have had to hinder the investigations. The reality of the massacre of about 200 inhabitants of the Jenin refugee camp remains, most of which bled to death and they were underneath the ruins of their own destroyed shacks. There are not many hopes of changes when the Israeli Jewish deputy Yehil Hazan openly states: <<Arabs are worms. Wherever they are they are worms, underground or on the face of the Earth >>. These false statements made by Hazan were expressed openly also due to the dogmatic American protection of the Jewish State, and that can be made dramatically more evident by these sad statements made by Zbgniew Brzezinski, who in his book <<The great chess master >> summarises in this way the stars and stripes imperatives: <<To prevent the union of the satellite States keeping them in their state of dependence, to keep the subordinates obedient and under protection, to stop the barbarians meeting with each other >>. However the hope that things will not indefinitely go this way remains alive: as regards the rest, the very Brzezinski, who was part of the Reagan administration, wrote the famous text <<Farewell OLP >>, but the OLP still exists and so does the self-determining Palestinian movement of liberation. (Translation into English by Terry Marshall) [This article was published on these Italian journals: il Quotidiano di Caserta, Avanguardia, Rinascita, L'Altra Voce, Deasport, Caserta24ore, Il Popolo d'Italia]