Tag Archives: March 14

Lebanon’s 2012 Picture of the Year

20121128-113000.jpg

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The above picture is worth a few thousand more than that – but don’t worry, I won’t write them.

Antoine Zahra, LF MP of the Batroun Caza, sporting a Palestine solidarity scarf… on his trip to Gaza. Who knew there would come a day when such a sentence would actually be written?

As they say “3ish ktir, betchouf ktir.” I personally don’t know what to make from March 14th visit to Gaza. On one hand, some see it as an act of solidarity, on another hand others see it as absolutely useless act of propaganda.
I’m leaning more to the latter but people already think I’m overly negative lately so good on March 14th for going there.

However, Antoine Zahra, it seems, is sticking it to whoever is saying the LF hate all Palestinians. Now cue in those reminding the world of the “atrocities” the LF have done during the civil war because that is entirely the point here.

In short, for so many reasons, I guess it’s fair to assume the above picture cannot but be Lebanon’s 2012 picture of the year – by far.

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Rest in Peace Lebanon’s March 14th

My name is Elie Fares. I will soon be 23 years old. I am a Lebanese citizen. I also happen to be born into a Maronite family. My registry number is 44. I vote in Ebrine, in the Batroun Caza.

I remember prior to 2005 when a friend asked me in class: “enta 3awne aw ouwwatje?”

I looked at him blankly. Both those words were foreign to me. I didn’t know what “3awne” or “ouwwatje” meant. So I just shrugged and said neither. Why didn’t I know what “3awne” or “ouwwatje” meant? Because we never discussed such things in my household. The only thing that got transiently mentioned among my parents was the need for the Syrian army to leave from my hometown back then. And that was my only political truth back then. Get the Syrians out of my country.

Up until 2005, I never believed in anything political. I never thought I’d be interested in politics. I remember getting the news of February 14th while my school bus drove me home. I looked at the driver worryingly: what would this mean to my country?

I didn’t like Rafic Hariri. He had been with the Syrians for way too long. But I had come to appreciate him switching sides over the past previous months and the hope I saw in my parents’ faces as they spoke about voting for the “opposition” in the upcoming elections, hoping to change things.

I watched the news like every other Lebanese. I saw hundreds of thousands go down to Hariri’s funeral. I saw the youth of Lebanon run to the streets every week. I saw the army trying to stop them from gathering. I saw people sit down in Martyr’s Square to fight for a freedom my country longed for. I saw more than a million Lebanese fill the streets of Beirut on March 14th 2005. I felt my heart fill with joy as I hugged two of my friends who happened to be of opposite political affiliations (one is ouwwatje, the other is 3awne). I felt on top of the world. I felt like I could change things. I felt empowered. I felt proud to be Lebanese – and nothing, to me back then, could change that.

The following day in an Arabic class at school we started discussing what happened with our teacher. My entire class had gone down to the protest. One of the two friends I hugged told the professor that the country seems to be heading in the right direction for the first time in a long time. Everyone was united in one cause – there was a “minority” which didn’t agree.

Our teacher said similar sentiments had surfaced before in the public but were short-living. My friend shrugged his words off. My teacher was right. The 2005 elections rolled around and I found myself taking sides. I decided then to become a supporter of the “ouwwet.” My friend was “3awne.” My parents, like so many other Christians that year, voted for Aoun. I had never seen my mom that resilient about voting for someone except perhaps when she voted the opposite way in 2009. I actually feel proud of that moment too – the fact that I came into my own political opinion independently of my parents, even opposing them. Therefore, I feel offended whenever someone infers that my political opinion was instilled in me by my parents due to excessive repetition.

The people, though, were not united anymore. My friends and I became on opposite sides. And years started passing as the divide grew bigger. The July 2006 war happened and we took sides then. Following the July 2006 war, March 8 set camp in downtown and I looked upon them in disgust. They were the “bajam” hurting our economy, damaging our reputation, working against the country I wanted to build. Their sit-in lasted two years during which my hate towards them grew. And my friends stopped talking to each other. But March 14th fought onwards, or so I thought, until a few months into 2008, the country’s real crisis began.

The May 2008 events happened and we also took sides. I was an AUB student who was forced to stop going to class for two weeks. I remember braving the protests on their very first day and going to classes, which were supposedly going to be held. My chemistry class had eight people. Our Jordanian teacher gave us a lecture about the importance of our country. That lecture was probably the most memorable one in my entire three years at AUB.

Starting with 2005, politicians got assassinated and innocent people got killed and we took sides. And with each March 14 politician dying, my resolve to support them grew stronger. How could anyone not see that they were the only ones being targeted? How could anyone not see exactly how wrong it was to support those “others” who were not suffering because of their love for the country?

The 2009 elections rolled by I had so many quarrels with family members because they wanted to vote for “the others.” I had heated debates with elderly people who reverted to civil war times in their talk, telling me I was “too young” to understand. But we won and I felt happy. I felt like we could now, possibly, take the country forward.

But then it started going down hill. Forming the government took such a long time. But I blamed Bassil and his father in law for not seeing the disgrace of his son in law’s loss in my region. The government eventually got formed but it wasn’t effectively ruling. It was all color by number – let us get the wheels of the country to move as smoothly as possible without damaging the very fragile equilibrium of sects that we so proudly paraded around to show our diversity as a nation. I started blaming Hezbollah for being armed and for not letting us rule. I blamed Aoun for spinning faster than a weather vane. I blamed Aounists for being so hateful to Geagea that they couldn’t see the many problems in their leader of choice.

And I saw March 14th start to go downhill but I still had hope that one day things might change again. I saw them make mistakes but I always deflected the criticism that March 8 people ran at me with: “Shut up, you’ve done much worse.” And to me, that was the absolute truth. They were ones to talk – ruining my country with their love for Iran and Syria, two countries that I despised.

So on March 13th 2011, I braved the cold of the snowstorm that had just subsided and figured it was divine intervention that the weather was that good when it was snowing the day before and I went down to Downtown Beirut to protest my right as a citizen to live. I went down in hope that being present there would reinvigorate the political movement I staunchly supported. I went in hope that being there would get the politicians I supported to man up and know that they have people who support them and who want them to take back the country from those who stole it by the force of their black shirts. I went down and felt proud doing so. But it was all in vain.

Nothing changed after that. The country only went further downhill. I continued believing that March 14th was the lesser of the two evils, the less hypocritical bunch out of the two, the saner one. But as I saw radical Islamists become part of their base supporters, I began to wonder where was the youth that was the heart of March 14? Was it replaced by bearded men who were enabled by some of March 14th’s politicians to enact out agendas that they were too cowardly to do?

I saw those politicians start leaving the country one by one, fearing for their lives. And I was here, struggling through everyday life because I did not matter. I was nothing more than an irrelevant individual compared to them. I still am. But I still convinced myself that it wasn’t all too bad. Our current problems were all to be blamed on the one-sided government that was making our lives hell with its inaptitude. I wasn’t getting neither electricity nor water in the heart of a capital that was losing its identity to foreigners who only visited it a few months per year. I was reaching the realization that my prospects in the country were as limited as they can get. I got to the realization that Lebanon is not the country I wanted to live in. I was broken.

I went to France. I saw how it is for people to truly live without worrying about the meaningless things that cause anxiety in us in Lebanon. I lived the life that I could have been living if my country hadn’t been such a mess, if my politicians truly cared about making my country better, if my country hadn’t been in the fancy geographical location we always brag about, if my country hadn’t been this chaotic mix of segregated people who had absolutely nothing in common among them except the ID card that they believe ties them together.

But I carried on with life because that’s what you do. I went to classes, working to leave one day to a place that would appreciate what I had to offer. And then Wissam Al Hassan got assassinated.

March 14th immediate reaction was to call for the government to collapse and to blame the prime minister. And I started wondering what good would that do. March 14th called on people to start going to Martyr’s Square to protest. They had no plan except to get the people there. I expressed my concern with the matter only to have their followers barrage me about living in high towers, behind a computer, blogging, while the country burned. I was used to getting criticism from both parts of the spectrum as I criticized parties in both (yes, even though I am politically affiliated, I still managed to criticize my party.) March 14th then called on their supporters to come down to Downtown Beirut in order to turn the funeral of Wissam Al Hassan into a national event for their rejuvenation. I refused to go. They had no plan. They didn’t know what they were doing except to get the people worked up. They only wanted Mikati to resign. They couldn’t answer the simple three-word question: And after that?

The funeral was supposedly a Lebanese matter. Few were the Lebanese flags there. There were Brazilian flags, some from Bangladesh and others from Uzbekistan. I failed to see the relevance. But the majority of flags there were of the Syrian revolution. The only thing Lebanese about the funeral were the people and the location. Its heart was entirely not there. The heart of it was not the man who was about to be buried.

As I watched the funeral on TV and saw Wissam Al Hassan’s boys weep their father, I felt sorry for what they were going through. What should have been a personal matter to them became a national event. What should have been Al Hassan’s family taking their time with what remained of their father became a televised event as politicians worked the crowds that were beyond angry. Then those people that were supposedly attending a funeral decided to turn Downtown Beirut into mayhem as some irrelevant journalist became relevant when he was given a loud voice.

I looked as people from the party I supported attacked barricades and fought to get to the Grand Serail. In order to do what? I had no idea. I looked in disgust as the funeral of a respectable man suddenly became a national circus. I looked in disgust as the politicians of March 14th turned the last memory of a man whom they were milking politically into what I was seeing in front of me. Then their supporters started using the same rhetoric that I had used before to justify what was happening. And those excuses didn’t work with my conscience anymore. It doesn’t mean we should do the heinous stuff that took place just because they excel at them. This is not how you build anything, let alone a country.

There was no justification for what happened. March 8 have done worse is not a justification – but I still refuse to see a March 8 person criticize what happened. They’re ones to talk.

March 14th became a hypocritical movement. It became a movement that I didn’t want to be associated with. It’s no longer a movement that wants to build a country. It’s no longer a movement I feel as comfortable voting for as I did a couple of days ago. It’s no longer a movement of youth that make me feel proud, it’s that of youth that make me feel nauseous. It’s no longer a movement of people who got to believe in it on their own accord, but that of people who either grew up hearing their parents ramble on about it or people who support it out of pure sectarian principles. It’s no longer a movement that can drive Lebanon out of its stillbirth. It’s no longer a movement that can make Lebanon a free country by design as opposed to the free result of a lucky break in a neighboring country. March 14th is no longer there. It is a shell of what it used to be. The dream of it is dead. March 14th is dead. And this is its obituary.

The Kourah July 2012 By-elections: What It Is & What It Isn’t

In about 7 hours, the citizens of the Northern caza “El Kourah” will head to the polls to choose between basically two candidates: Walid el Azar (SSNP) and Fadi Karam (LF) to replace Farid Habib (LF) who died back in May.

This isn’t the first time I write about this issue. A previous post of mine dealt with the SSNP’s serious lack of understanding of the basic elements of the democratic game with them turning the whole elections into a matter of life and death only because the LF nominated someone from a place they consider as their “fortress.”

Check out that post here.

On Friday, LF leader Samir Geagea held a press conference during which he declared that voting for his candidate means voting:

- For the Lebanese state.

- For the improvement of Kourah as a caza.

- Against Bashar el Assad and his regime.

- To overthrow the Syrian regime.

And the list goes on.

Sorry Mr. Geagea but your electoral rhetoric, while enticing, is simply full of it. A person casting a ballot for Fadi Karam won’t lead to the Syrian regime crumbling. An extra MP for the LF won’t change the balance of powers in the country. It won’t lead to a brilliant future nor will it change the fortunes of the Koura Caza.

It’s understandable that political leaders need to charge up people before heading to the polls for maximum results. The sad thing is people believe this.

On the other hand, the SSNP is still beating around the same old story: the LF are threatening our existence in an area that we’ve historically been the strongest in, etc…. That is also useless.

The fact remains that the Kourah elections will not change things. It will not do anything worth mentioning except have the party that wins celebrate for a few days, declaring how the tides have “turned.”

However, the Kourah elections is an indicator of what we could expect in 2013 especially if the results are read from sect to sect. It will be an indicator for the Future Movement to see exactly how much popular support they still have and how much they have lost. It will be an indicator for Christian parties to check their popular tracking with different sects. It will serve as a platform to base 2013 electoral hopes upon.

The clearest proof to that is both Farid Mekari and Nqoula Ghosn (the caza’s other two MPs) maximizing their electoral machine’s yield to help the LF candidate. They want to prove that they exist, that they can bring out the vote and that they should have a say in what happens in 2013.

How many people will vote tomorrow fully thinking it’s a vote against the killers of Bachir Gemayel, against the allies of Bashar, against the allies of America and for their own view of the Lebanese “state”? I would assume the absolute majority. Will anything change come 2013? I hardly think so. I can imagine the slogans from now. Depending on whether the Syrian regime falls or not, they will range from votes against Bashar and the Islamic state in Lebanon to votes against the zionist agenda and against corruption.

But the truth remains that those claiming change and reform haven’t done that one bit. And those claiming fighting for freedom are as powerless as the poor Syrian children getting massacred in their homes. Who cares, though. Let’s go vote. And win. And celebrate. And live in bliss. And then realize that we’ve accomplished nothing.

Did I mention you should vote for Fadi Karam? Yeah, I get to bring out the vote as well. Shou we2fet 3laye? 

Hassan Nasrallah… Why So Silent?

Anyone else wondering why the head of Hezbollah is abnormally silent these days regarding almost everything going on?

I mean, a week into the Egyptian revolution and we had already gotten a speech about the greatness Egypt was going through. And yet, a week into the Syrian revolution and the Hezbollah camp is more silent that a mute person.

This takes me back to a point I made earlier, about the hypocrisy of said party and leader. When things are going their way, it’s very easy for them to come on TV and issue a speech about it. But when their second most trusted ally in the region is under fire, the same arguments given to support what was going in Egypt and Tunisia and Bahrain suddenly go down the drain.

Aren’t the Syrian people deserving of life and freedom and everything that you said the Egyptian people deserved? Aren’t they deserving of democracy and a leader that doesn’t bash them left and right? Or is that only applicable when the leader is loyal to you?

Moreover, Al Manar TV, also known as Hezbollah’s TV, said yesterday that the March 14 camp might be behind the Syrian uprising.

Syrian TV said the protests are filmed in Tripoli, Lebanon and March 14 is behind them as well.

I have a few questions to ask:

1) Do you really think this makes sense?

2) Do you think that if it did make sense, the March 14 camp has the resources to do a whole uprising in Syria?

3) Do you think if the March 14 camp even had the resources, they’d be able to use them in Syria? They’re struggling to get themselves together in Lebanon, let alone a country that is as hostile to their existence as the Iceland volcano?

Too many questions… too little answers and one whole load of bull.

13 Reasons Why I’m Participating in March 13th

1. I’m participating to let the old senile man, accusing me of not existing anymore, know that I am here to stay.

2. I’m participating to let the whole world know that I am not to be taken for granted.

3. I’m participating because I need to bring my country back to where I chose it to go in 2009.

4. I’m participating because people seem to have forgotten how horrible it was when Syrians had control on the country.

5. I’m participating because my view of the best Lebanon does not include armed militias that can do whatever they want, whenever they want and expect you not to do anything about it.

6. I’m participating because I do not approve of political hypocrisy – one that has become all too common today.

7. I’m participating because I refuse the notion that having an opinion in Lebanon makes you part of the “herd.”

8. I’m participating because I don’t want my future to be one involving being stranded on doors of embassies and getting a colonoscopy in airports where my country is blacklisted.

9. I’m participating because while we were the “angels” in this country, it’s high time we be its devils (in a peaceful and organized way, of course)

10. I’m participating because our martyrs, who died to keep this country free and sovereign, should not be forgotten.

11. I’m participating because in a world that is bleak, the concept of justice is one that will keep a light on.

12. I’m participating because I believe it’s high time we take a stand with what we believe in.

13. I’m participating because I want to.

Dear Hezbollah, I Am Not Israeli

While going back to my hometown today, I was surprised to see counter ads to the ones spread by the March 14 forces.

This is a picture I found online of one of those ads:

For those who can’t read Arabic, this reads as:

[The people want our arms surrendered]

And Israel wants our arms surrendered as well

The Islamic Resistance

The apparent meaning of this is quite clear: They want to make people notice that Lebanon’s mortal enemy *gasp* is supportive of the agenda that the protest on Sunday is adopting.

But if you think a little deeper about it, this is Hezbollah’s way of inferring that Israel might be behind this movement.

I hate to break Hezbollah’s bubble again, but Lebanese people wanting its arms to be surrendered sometimes goes beyond Israel’s existent wishes. Sure, Hezbollah being weaponless is inside Israel’s wishing scope, but the Lebanese people have gotten fed up with Hezbollah flaunting its arms left and right. This is a case of: If you got it, DO NOT flaunt it.

In addition to that, Hezbollah is also launching a counter-campaign on Facebook titled: “Mbala”, which is Lebanese for “Yes”. Yes for what? Let us see.

According to Hezbollah, we’re supposed to go down to the streets to support it and say yes to its arms because these arms have:

- returned our pride and glory,

- have liberated our land,

- have protected our families and us.

I would have gladly given those three points to them without even thinking twice about it had the date been March 11th 2001, a few months after South Lebanon was liberated from Israeli forces. However, 10 years later, where do we stand from this?

- Because of Hezbollah’s arms, I had to stay home for two weeks in 2008 because they decided to go into a near-civil strife rampage in Beirut, just because they felt like it.

- Because of Hezbollah, my family’s vote in the last parliamentary elections, against it and its allies, has basically been equated with junk. Why’s that? Because they decided on one Tuesday to send out its personnel, dressed out in black to the streets of Beirut, reminding everyone of the aforementioned point, basically telling everyone that we can do whatever we want whenever we want and there’s nothing you can do about it.

- Because of Hezbollah, our economic boom that started in late 2005 got reversed into a severe economic breakdown when Hezbollah iniated the 2006 war against Israel. Yes, Hezbollah was the main cause of that war and hiding from this fact will not change it.

So how did you, dear Hezbollah, protect me and my family since 2001? Against a war that you initiated? It was your obligation after all. Did you return my pride when you paraded around my university campus with your allies killing people left and right just because those people you killed decided to oppose you? And what land did you liberate since 2001? And do you honestly think you could have even liberated South Lebanon if Israel hadn’t been pushed into implementing U.N. Resolution 425?

As far as I’m concerned, all of this boils down to you and your arms becoming more or less useless. It’s the harsh truth, but it needs to be said. And you want people to come down on March 20th to support you? Is this your way of retaliating to those whose only reason of going down to the streets in 2 days is you attempting to suppress their voices?

Yes, we are going on March 13th. And if I hadn’t been 100% convinced, I am more than convinced now. Why’s that? Because the amount of hypocrisy in this country has become unsupportable and Hezbollah wears the hypocritical mantle with the best possible fashion.

They equate you with being a traitor or an Israeli-supporter whenever they feel threatened. And they’re a bunch of tyrants as much as Israel is. So to them we say, we are not Israelis. We are pure Lebanese, whose minds are only for Lebanon.

So on March 13th, let us all go down as a testimony of our belief that Lebanon will never prosper under a mandate of unlawful arms is unacceptable. Martyr’s Square will be our testimony on Sunday

March 14 - Ad

The Aoun Paradox

Michel Aoun

You should know by now that I’m as close to a supporter of FPM leader Michel Aoun as there is hope to explain the Holy Trinity.

Even though I’m not closely following Lebanese politics lately, I was surprised when Mr. Aoun came out of his parliament bloc’s meeting, attacking the Lebanese president left and right.

I remembered how almost two years ago, he was defending this president, saying that we need to give him more rights to fortify the role he – the representative of Maronites – has.

I’m all for increasing the administrative powers of the Lebanese president. If you ask me, the Taef agreement took too much away for the president to be of any essential need to the country. The president is more than a referee and more powers would allow him to assert his role more.

This change in stance got me thinking once again.

The most obvious paradox Mr. Aoun has had was his Syria stance. Back in 2005 and before, he openly declared his opposition to the Syrian regime, accusing it of even killing Prime Minister Hariri. Fast-forward a few months and this totally changes… a year later, he is visiting the Syrian president as a guest of honor. What’s even worse, I remember how a guy by the name “Jamil El Sayyed” used to creep everyone out. The ruthless man to whom the disappearance of many activists against the Syrian regime was staunchly opposed by Mr. Aoun. Up until very recently, of course, where they have become allies.

Mr. Aoun tries to defend his shift in opinion by saying we were “too harsh” to Syria in the first place. Personally, I don’t have anything against Syria as a country and people. However, I know way too many people who died trying to defend the country against the Syrian regime, which was trying to get Lebanon to become an unofficial Syrian province. Too many people who support Aoun as well gave everything they had to protect Lebanon against the Syrian regime. Is Aoun’s opinion shift justified by the argument he gave? Not even close. The main reason he switched sides? Hariri did not agree to allocate to him the Christian seats he was asking in the 2005 parliamentary elections.

What I believe Mr. Aoun is trying to achieve by this change in stance is a sort of coalition of regional minorities, believing that this is the best way to protect Lebanese Christians – and regardless of what he might say, Aoun is a sectarian person. By uniting a portion of Christians, the vast majority of the Shiites and now a big portion of the Druze population in Lebanon with the ruling Alawites in Syria, he believes that this would create the best front to fight the almighty regional devil: The growing Sunni influence.
What Mr. Aoun does not remember, however, is that Mr. Assad, the Syrian president, while being “kind” to his own people, will not offer anything close to that to the Lebanese Christians, as history has already taught us. Moreover, to think that someone like Hassan Nasrallah has had a serious paradigm shift since the days of him thinking Christians were “invadors to Muslim areas”, then Mr. Aoun becomes seriously delusional.

Which brings me back to the point I first mentioned: presidency. It has become Aoun’s lifetime dream to become the Lebanese president. When he saw this dream will not happen in his previous alliances, he simply switched it. Anything for the cause, right?

Aoun also believes in “change and reform”. He believes it is the way forward for the country. And it most definitely is. However, almost nothing he has done so far really signals “change and reform” and yet he preaches about it wherever he goes. It’s like a prostitute claiming virginity. Charbel Nahhas, current minister of telecommunications, even tried to ban Skype!
Part of his “change and reform” ideology is to eradicate the idea of feudalism from Lebanese politics: No more to the son inheriting his dad’s legacy and going forward with it, etc.
Aoun has no sons. He has, however, son in laws to whom he is passing down the mantle. His nephew is a parliament member in his bloc, his other son in law is head of his TV station and his daughter is head of his political bureau. I believe with all of this, it seems that the concept of feudalism has escaped Mr. Aoun.

So this is our paradox. This is a man who believes he is allowed of cursing whoever he wants, take his followers wherever he pleases and still believe he is correct in everything he does.
I blame Mr. Aoun’s followers… they seem to have forgotten why they became supporters of him in the first place. They seem to have forgotten the shared values they have with the movements they are cursing today. And for that reason, they are demoted from the a supporter to a follower. I have many friends who are FPM supporters. Some of them still are, others have seen a change in the man they once supported – one they do not approve anymore. Many of those supporters have been imprisoned, tortured, beaten down just because they had the courage to speak up. To those supporters, we can only be grateful. Supporters are critical.Followers simply follow.

Mr. Aoun switched sides in 2005, ruining everything his supporters and other free men of the country had tried to achieve for 15 years: true independence. The historical March 14, 2005 protest set the bar high for freedom fighters in the region. More than half of the Lebanese population had gone down to the streets to reclaim their country. And just because this man’s greed saw it fit, he decided that the spilled blood, the ruined prides, the oppressed freedoms were not enough to continue this movement to the end. I can only imagine where we would have been right now had Aoun remained somewhat sane in 2005. We would have brought Lahoud down, elected a president that represented us all – maybe Mr. Aoun even – and worked for the past six years of letting this country become one that we all deserve.
Apparently not. And why’s that? Because one man’s delusion is another country’s dark ages.

Open Letter to Hassan Nasrallah

Dear Mr. Nasrallah,

I was sort of surprised today to hear you defend the Egyptian revolution so adamantly. It is a revolution well deserved of all of our support, that’s for sure, but your fiery support was puzzling to me.

You see, Mr. Nasrallah, I fail to understand why you feel that you need to have a speech in support of the Egyptian revolution in the first place, when it’s not the first revolution in the area. Didn’t Tunisia have its own revolution, which was actually successful, a few weeks ago?

Second, I fail to understand why you need to include Israel as the center of your argument for the justification of an importance of a revolution. Shouldn’t the “poor and the free” be enough as cause? Shouldn’t the need for change be enough?

I understand that it is not in Israel’s best interest for change to happen in Egypt. After all, the Egyptian status quo is fine with Israel. But I’m sure that’s not what the Egyptians cared about when they went down in their millions to the streets.

Also Mr. Nasrallah, if you are so keen about defending the rights of the “poor and free”, how come you didn’t feel the need for a speech when “hundreds were being killed and thousands injured” during the Iranian protests in 2009? Weren’t those protesters also free and poor and wanting change? Or is it only relevant when it’s actually one that serves your best interests?

Dear Mr. Nasrallah, do not, if you may, lecture people about revolutions. You haven’t cared about our own need for change in Lebanon, obviously proclaimed by the majority of the people in 2005. On the contrary, you called for an anti-protest a few days earlier to thank those same people that were making us “poor” and suppressing our freedom. So for all matters and purposes, you are a hypocrit – just as many in your political side are – and I do not – nor should anyone – appreciate hypocrisy.

After all, isn’t Israel hypocritical as well?

Sincerely,

Confused Lebanese Citizen