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