Tag Archives: Lebanon

Neshan and Jon Stewart, The Zionist

Is there anything better than your healthy dose of Zionism to kick off the day?

While hosting Bassem Youssef on his show yesterday, Neshan decided that Youssef’s friend, the infamous Jon Stewart, is nothing more than a Zionist. Just because he’s Jewish.

Bassem Youssef was polite enough to tell Neshan that, contrary to popular belief, Jon Stewart’s religion has nothing to do with his political mindset, that he is a defender of the Palestinian cause, etc.

Of course, you might as well have been talking to a wall.

Not to expect the mentality set forth by the likes of Neshan in this part of the world is absurd. But what’s shocking is that someone like Neshan – a self-proclaimed educated individual (you only need to listen to his degustation of every letter in an Arabic sentence) – doesn’t know the simple and yet very important fact that we all need to grasp: Jewish does not equate Zionist.

Instead of trying to stop the perpetuation of this blatant racism and incessant ignorance, Neshan not only fuels them but helps affirm them in the minds of the millions who already believe such ideologies.

In what world is Jon Stewart a Zionist? In the world of ignorant individuals who can’t get past their hate, their prejudices, their closed-mindedness, their ignorance, their racism.

There’s nothing different between what Neshan believes and between those who believe all Muslims are terrorists. Except maybe one generalization gives the people in this area some drive, some peace of mind while the other makes them rally in anger.

In the grand scheme of things, Neshan is irrelevant compared to Jon Stewart. I don’t even like his style of interviewing. But he apparently represents a mentality that people with the exposure he has should not possess. And that mentality is more dangerous than his presumed pretentiousness.

Domestic Violence in Lebanon: A Law Isn’t Enough

Let’s call her Rachel.

Rachel is a brilliant doctor. She went to the US from a far away country, battled her way through a speciality and ended up doing a subspecialty that brought her salary to the six figures. She had what many people – not just women – around the world can only dream of: economic stability and independence, influence, power.

And yet, Rachel went to work one day with a bruise on her arm. Her secretary asked her where that bruise had come from. I bumped into a revolving door, Rachel answered. The secretary was skeptical but dismissed it because she couldn’t do otherwise. A week later, Rachel came in with a bruised eye. There was no revolving door which can cause this, so the secretary called 911 who made sure Rachel’s upcoming days were nothing short of safe, away from the monster back home who was using her as his punching bag.

Why would a woman in Rachel’s shoes, who has the prerogative of a police task-force that is willing to bring hell on Earth for her, not report the constant threat on her life?

When I was in France last August, I was taking a walk one night around Lille when I saw a shady looking man, smoking a joint with while clutching the hand of a girl who looked at him with nothing but fear in her face. He was either too stoned to see me or the night hid me well or that man didn’t care that people might see him, but he turned to the woman and tried to feel her up. She recoiled and tried to get herself off of him. So he slapped her hard across the face. As she clutched her face in pain, I heard him shouting across the street: “You stupid cunt, you better make up for this. Once we get home, you will give me a blow job. You hear me, bitch?” She nodded.

These women, in spite of the environment that enriches them: laws, jobs and possible economic security, still find it somehow fathomable not to report the threats on their lives. But they are not lone examples. Their submissive mentality is the case of many, many Lebanese women who don’t have their prerogatives.

As a future physician, I am required to learn how to take proper patient history. It also happens that I am currently rotating in obstetrics and gynecology, which is the rotation where many battered women end up for consults that have nothing to do with the battering. You’d think we should be allowed to tackle such issues – after all, medicine isn’t confined to a patient’s physical state but extends to their state of mind. Think again. An advice I got from an attending was the following: calling the police is useless. Their reply is always: let them sort this among each other. What’s worse, the question about domestic violence – which is typical in history taking in the United States – is near-forbidden over here. People are not willing to divulge such information, especially the women.

Many in Lebanon believe a law preventing domestic abuse is the solution to the problem for which people are becoming increasingly aware. Many believe the law safely tucked away in the drawers of our dysfunctional parliament is enough to prevent deaths such as that of Roula Yaacoub.

What those many fail to realize is that Lebanese women are more than just the liberated bunch who are vocal on social media, who go to the rallies asking for women rights, who believe they have the right to abort at will, who believe their body is theirs and theirs alone and who believes men are equal (if not lesser creatures).

Lebanon has the women who can’t visit their gynecologist without their husbands by their side, answering when their last menstrual period was. Lebanon has the women who let their sons badmouth them and let them be because they don’t want to break their ego. Lebanon has the women who vote the way any male component in their family wants – the more senior, the better. Lebanon has the women who stay silent to insults just because the men have seniority. Lebanon has the women who bottle things in just to avoid scandals. Lebanon has the women who would rather be some neo-martyrs than to fight for what they should have and have their reputation tarnished.

Those women are not just Lebanese. They are the ones we forget about – they are the more numerous, the ones shaping generations that will have their sons inflict such violence on other women.

Lebanon also has a police system that is as corrupt as they come. Lebanon has MPs whose minds belong in 10,000BC when it comes to women rights – our rights debate needs lightyears to be about pro life and pro choice. Lebanon has physicians who perpetuate such violence against women with mentalities that are non-medical to say the least. Lebanon has a dysfunctional legal system, where law is near-hereditary and where justice is so dragged on it’s impossible to find it anymore. Lebanon has a mentality towards laws that prevents any of the ones that do not bring upon the state some form of revenue from being strictly implemented. And even those are not implemented as well.

What does Lebanon need? We need some massive de-learning of our ways in order to learn ways that will protect our women. How is that achieved? I really don’t know. What I know, however, is the following: this domestic violence law they keep telling us about is not the definitive answer and nor will it be for our women who are losing their lives to belts and kicks and punches.

Harissa To Become Nature Reserve

The view from Harissa sure is great if you scan the bay. Look down and it’s a disaster: ugly buildings springing up everywhere, eating away the mountain and the greenery, infesting their way around like cancer cells – uncontrolled and non-stopped.

Nazem Khoury, minister of environment in our dissolved government has, therefore, issued a new decree to turn the Harissa mountain into another nature reserve to stop the pangs of urbanism and keep whatever form of nature that the mountain had intact. The conversion to a nature reserve will happen with the help of the Maronite patriarchate and the Jounieh municipality (link).

Good news? Perhaps it is. But only for Harissa, which seems is still salvageable enough despite the many concrete blocks that have ruined part of it forever.

However, the question begets itself: what about the countless other mountains which do not happen to be religious shrines, do not get similar attention and do not exist in areas which are of touristic focus?

Turning Harissa to a nature reserve is a positive step. But it’s troubling that we need to turn an entire mountain into a nature reserve just to protect it from impeding construction and real estate. Is our only environmental solution to spring up nature reserves here and there just because we do not have a grasp on existing laws and cannot really contain the corruption that infests real estate and the mentalities of people towards the environment, à la nature is God’s given poubelle of the Lebanese people?

Because the root of the problem isn’t fixed, there will be another mountain out there which causes some environmental outrage down the road, maybe even bigger than Harissa. Nature reserves are needed, sure. But what we need even more is for municipalities across the country to be more stringent in the criteria employed to give away building licenses. We need relevant ministries to be more strict with urbanism laws that require certain standards be met, along the lines of no apartment complexes should spring up in Lebanese mountains where they don’t belong.

I doubt any of the aforementioned will happen anytime soon. Such issues are forcibly ranked so low on our list of priorities they might as well be deemed irrelevant. Good news for Harissa.

 

What Lebanese People Think of the Syrian Refugees

We’ve discussed the matter of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon over and over and over again. And then some.
Every aspect of the issue has been exposed. Racism, realism, illusionism – all forms of arguments have been used.

And yet, in the midst of the 1,000,000 plus refugees that our country has received, very few polls have taken it to the Lebanese who are not on social media, who do not have blogs and who do not tweet the day away.

A recent study published by Fafo attempted to see what the Lebanese population thought of the increasing Syrian presence. You can check the study here. Some of the findings are as follows:

  • 52% believe Syrian refugees pose a threat to national security. This number rises to 80% in responders from North Lebanon.
  • 71% of responders believe sectarian clashes will erupt soon. The number is high among Sunnis and low among Shiites, expressing the ongoing divide in the country (and strengthening the study, perhaps?)
  • 67% of Lebanese believe the conflict in Syria will drive Lebanon to a new civil war.
  • 82% of Lebanese find Syrian refugees are taking away their jobs. 75% believe they are the cause of decreasing wages across the country.
  • 50% believe the Syrian refugees are receiving too much money. This number rises to 74% in the North.
  • 61% of Lebanese are not comfortable having Syrian neighbors. This number is higher among young people and among Christians as well.

    • A lot of the information revealed in the study is old news to most of us who are living among the people who fall into those many percentages. But are all the woes invalid?

    A recent lecture I attended at medical school with Doctors Without Borders revealed to us that the situation of the Lebanese citizens in Bab el Tebbane, Jabal Mohsen and Akkar is far, far worse than the worst conditions they’ve seen with the Syrian refugees, which is echoed in the disparities that responders from North Lebanon exhibited in the study at hand.
    This prompted me to ask the head of the MSF envoy to Lebanon about what was expected of Lebanon regarding the Syrian refugees given the state of many of its citizens?

    He couldn’t answer.

    What the study shows, at least to some extent, is what many of us had doubted for long: Lebanese people always want to blame others for their problems but never themselves. And the Syrian refugees are our go-to blame with the current events unfolding. Is the blame unfounded? Perhaps so. But what’s to be expected when the political rhetoric being used to command people’s mentalities uses those refugees as ammo in anyway possible?

    What’s even more disappointing is how the youth view the matter of the refugees. I thought my age group would be at least more aware. I guess not.

    What is certain, however, is that the matter of the refugees has to be regulated. By the end of 2013 the country will have 20% of its population as Syrian refugees. In other terms, that’s more Syrians than Maronites. And you know things will only go downhill from there.

    Lebanon Is Not Egypt

    The title is stating the obvious. Sadly, it’s not that apparent.

    It was 2011. The Egyptians took it to the streets. They removed Mubarak. A sense of pride swept around the Middle East. The “Arab Spring” they called it. Freedom this way comes. Everyone wanted to be Egyptian. Everyone was proud of Egypt.

    But none so more than Lebanese.

    We felt more involved in what was happening in Egypt than whatever was happening back home. Fun fact: January 2011 was our own mini coup happened. Many Lebanese wished they could become Egyptian – patriotic opioids sure run across borders.

    A few months later, as the events in Syria raged and the promise of an “Arab Spring” started quickly running down wintery lanes, Egypt disappointed as well. The Lebanese sentiment quickly turned to “Morsi” et au revoir. We had gotten over it.

    It is now 2013. The Egyptians took it to the streets again. They were protesting the Egyptian “winter” they had voted their country into. And Lebanon was involved anew. Nothing was wrong here at the time again. Fun fact 2.0: The army was fighting Al Assir only a few days ago and Hezbollah is still fighting in Syria. Morsi was uprooted very fast, with the help of the Egyptian army. And fireworks erupt in Lebanon in celebration. The same sentiments of people who wish to be Egyptian rose to the surface. Egypt, the beacon of democracy. Egypt, the torch of hope. Egypt, making us proud. Bigadd kan el manzar mofre7 awi awi. 

    Then, naturally, you get those many, many people who want whatever happened in Egypt to happen here. If they did it, why can’t we?

    Well, here’s why.

    Egypt is 100 times Lebanon’s size. It has 20 times its population. That population in question is divided in the following way: 90% is Muslim and 10% is Christian. Official positions in Egypt are not divided according to sectarian lines. The president, for instance, doesn’t need to be Muslim. He just happens to be every time by power of probability and mentalities.

    The recent events in Egypt were bolstered by a catalyst that sped up the process remarkably: the Egyptian army. Roadmap or whatnot, it is the presence of a strong army with centralized military power that helped the 30 million or so Egyptians who protested get to where we want. Which army will help us in Lebanon if we were to have similar coups? The Lebanese army with its 60,000 personnel many of whom have ammo-less weapons while militias roam the country freely, protected by their weapons and popular support?

    Moreover, I don’t believe the issues in Egypt are as politicized as they are over here. Case in point? Let’s examine the following scenarios:

    What do you want to protest about in Lebanon? Electricity? I’ve just made the issue political right there. Half of the Lebanese population won’t go to my protest, even if the demands are true, simply because they’ll see it as a protest against their poster child. Let’s say I want to protest against slow internet. That same 50% of the Lebanese population will turn a blind eye to my protest for those same reasons. Now let’s say I want to protest against people like Ahmad el Assir. I’ll be joined by that same 50% which boycotted my last 2 protests while the people that attended the first two will not. In case my protest doesn’t have some undertone supported by one of the main camps of the country, good luck finding ten people to attend it – regardless of what the activists that pop up right before elections every four years say. And God forbid I try to protest against militias and arms that exist outside the jurisdiction of the Lebanese state, which brings me to my next point.

    There are no issues in this country upon which enough Lebanese agree in order to cause change. Hezbollah’s weapons? Half of the country hates them. The other half adores them. The weapons stay. It’s that simple. The regime? the governing half doesn’t want it changed because the people it likes are in power. The other half wants it changed just because the people it likes are not. What alternative regime do we want? I’m willing to bet I can’t find a sizable portion of this country that can agree on a format. You only need to go back to the electoral law discussions and how very, very few Lebanese branched out from the rhetoric being spewed by their political party of choice (especially Christian parties) when it comes to the electoral law they see best. Party say, person do.

    Egypt not being as divided on sectarian lines as Lebanon means the sectarian sentiment that is overflowing here doesn’t exist as much there. Sure, many Egyptian Muslims hate the Copts (and vice versa) but the same exists in droves over here while we pretend otherwise. The sectarian sentiment overload doesn’t only cloud people’s judgement regarding so many things in the country, it also limits whatever actions they would be willing to do to what’s best for their sect. Sect say, person do. Case in point: the amount of non-religious Christians who wanted the Orthodox law, of non-religious Sunnis who believe their sect is being threatened and of non-religious Shia who’d be the first to take weapons if you approach Hezbollah.

    Moreover, many of those same people who want Lebanon to become Egypt would, in case elections happened next week, vote for the same people all over again. I’m not saying they shouldn’t vote for whoever they want to vote for. It’s their vote, their choice, they can do whatever they want with it. But it is downright hypocritical to preach for change and not act out on it when the going gets tough just because some people cannot fathom not voting for the people they’ve liked for years.

    What I thought people learned back in 2011 is that the models of the countries in which revolutions happened cannot be applied here: you cannot extrapolate Egypt onto Lebanon. And yet people seem to want to do it anyway. The fact that Egypt and Lebanon are incompatible doesn’t mean one is better than the other. It simply means that if any change were to be done in this country, we need to find our own formula. As of now, we have none. Lebanon is not Egypt and I, for one, don’t want it to ever be.