Color me confused but I have absolutely no idea what to make of it.
News of an assassination attempt, his fourth in total, against Michel Aoun, the head of FPM, surfaced yesterday evening. It was followed by news denying it happened for security reasons apparently. Then Aoun confirmed to a crowd in Batroun that it did during an FPM dinner. Then this morning LBC denied it happened: there was no convoy passing and no shooting. And now the minister of interior affairs is saying that the assassination attempt happened. And it seems that the car that was shot hasn’t been given in to the authorities for examination yet as it is on a mission. Why would a car that was shot be on a mission?
So which is it? Was the head of FPM targeted or not?
I think Michel Aoun was targeted. Why? Because any attack against any of Lebanon’s top Christian leaders (Aoun and Geagea) would be enough to send the country into chaos and that is what many want to do. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the people targeting him were the same people who targeted previous people in the country. Of course Aoun wants you to think it’s the bad Sunnis because that would play well with his base who will eat it up.
Either way, I hope Michel Aoun, regardless of whether I like him or not, is safe and I also hope he won’t milk this attempt into electoral gains as it has become customary. But it seems to have already started. I also hope people don’t start doing what Aoun’s supporters did when Geagea was targeted and start making funny comics out of it (click here).
One thing has to be said though, the Lebanese Forces website is sure handling this way more professionally than Tayyar.org did when Geagea was targeted (click here).
Didn’t you hear? He hasn’t had electricity in his house for FOUR days! FOUR! Even his generator is busted. How unlucky can one get? You would think the other few million Lebanese have a worse electricity situation.
But no. Gebran has it worse than all of us.
In fact, he has it so bad that his wife had to go out with her friends because they couldn’t do a surprise birthday party for her at their house. He had to take care of the kids.
Such a great dad too!
And you know what’s worse?
He’s also a victim of the Summer wedding season. And he attended a wedding where the bride and groom, as well as those attending, were melting from the heat because the Church didn’t have electricity to turn on the AC.
Poor, poor Gebran Bassil. My heart is breaking. How can someone not sympathize with such candid awesomeness by the minister of energy?
And he’s got news, fellow Lebanese. The electricity situation is about to get worse. How many hours do you get it per day? 2? Make those 30 minutes. That should be enough, no?
Don’t blame Bassil for the electricity crisis. He’s providing much needed comic relief! Who needs A/C again?
And he’s got a request for you…. You need to take it down to the streets. Because he – and you – can’t tolerate this anymore.
7ayet l wazir se3be ya jame3a.
Happy birthday to his wife! Alla ywaffe2 l 3ersein.
Now in all seriousness, how can a minister fathom sharing such stories in a press conference about one of the most serious matters in the country and still be taken seriously?
There’s a limit to what you can say and, regardless of what you think about Gebran Bassil politically, sharing stories about his wife and weddings he’s invited to is not something you talk about. Never. Not even to illustrate a point.
He’s not the reason behind the electricity crisis? Sure. But his handling of it is so laughable that Gebran Bassil turns out to be quite awesome… at being a stand up comedian that is.
I told a civil war story last year that I made ambiguous on purpose to reach a certain conclusion, which was that everyone’s to blame for the Lebanese civil war if we really want to move the country forward.
However, I recently realized that Lebanese need a scapegoat for them killing each other. Their scapegoat was chosen to be Samir Geagea.
For some, Geagea killed them because they were of a certain religion, region, background, etc. For others, their sense of guilt kicks in and Geagea killed the aforementioned people because of their religion, region or background, as well as some of them who were “strong” enough to defy him.
The murderer! The liar! The assassin! The faithless! The abomination!
For many apparently, Samir Geagea was fighting the air during the Lebanese civil war. He was drawing his weapons against everyone but no one was drawing their weapons against him or his party.
For many it seems, Samir Geagea and his party were busy ruining the country all by themselves during the Lebanese civil war. No one else did anything worthy to be mentioned.
For many, the only war criminal of the Lebanese civil war is Samir Geagea. As if it’s possible for Samir Geagea to lead a whole civil war all by himself.
You defend Samir Geagea? You’re an accomplice to his murders. You complement him? They expected so much more of you. You admire him? You need to learn your history.
Because they know their history very well, I’m sure. Every single Lebanese now has a PhD in Lebanese civil war times and I was out of the loop. It’s sad.
The illusion that some people are innocent because they were legitimate needs to be removed. A bridge needs to be built and people need to get over that idea en masse. The fact that certain parties were violent to certain guests on our land can only be explained by the actions of those guests in a land that’s not theirs. The actions of certain parties cannot be taken out of the context during which they were carried out and treated as stand-alone events. It simply doesn’t make sense, regardless of how hideous those acts may be.
The civil war is an uncivil epoch.
No one in the civil war was a saint. If those involved had been as such, it wouldn’t be called a war and we would have had a very civil era. It’s far from being the case.
So let me put the situation today in the following manner.
If during the war your car was ruined? Blame Geagea. Your house was set on fire? Blame Geagea. You got stopped at a checkpoint? Blame Geagea. Your great-great-great-cousin, 2 degrees removed got killed? Blame Geagea.
Blame Geagea for everything – because that is the way we move forward.
If you’re one of those people who still consider the civil war in making their political choices today, then I pity you. If you’re one of those people who still need a scapegoat for your own mistakes just so you can please your conscience, I pity you.
Spare us the Geagea hate. Spare us the mindless, useless and retro attitude. If your mind is still in the civil war, perhaps getting it out of there is the first step towards building a country, instead of preaching about the importance of change and reform in moving Lebanon forwards.
Change and reform begin on the inside. Change your mentality. Reform your hate. And then come talk to me.
The ironic thing is that Geagea is the only one among all Lebanese political leaders today that went to jail for some of his supposed actions. Everyone else faced next to negligible consequences.
Left: Michel Aoun, center: Patriarch Raï, right: Samir Geagea
When it comes to the Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Al Raï, I feel I have to be extra careful. The line between criticizing the individual and his stances is very thin and it is one I do not want to cross because he is, first and foremost, the head of a Church I feel proud to be part of for various reasons.
The leading Maronite politicians in Lebanon have found themselves at opposite sides of the aforementioned line. Being very kind-hearted, I’ll assume the line is very blurry for proper discrimination. But don’t be fooled, there’s a very important distinction between the stances Samir Geagea took regarding the current Patriarch and those adopted by Michel Aoun towards the former one.
The year is 2005.
Michel Aoun is preparing a parliamentary bid with an almost exclusively Christian coalition of political forces. At the end of May 2005, Aoun has gotten a sizable portion of the Christian votes – 70% in some areas. The patriarch at the time, Nasrallah Sfeir, had openly endorsed Aoun for trying to bring Christians together under a political idea that was, at the time, opposite to the alliance that included Hezbollah.
The year is 2006.
Michel Aoun signed an agreement with Hezbollah as the latter slowly drifted away from the electoral alliance it had forged a few months earlier. The agreement served to create a “Christian cover” for Hezbollah’s arms. It backfired. Aoun’s popularity began to slip, whether his followers like to admit it or not. The patriarch, following the political doctrine Bkerke has always been known for, began to criticize Aoun’s drastic shift in political positions. Subsequently, Aoun began to attack the patriarch both on personal and political levels. The attacks ended in 2011 when Sfeir resigned and Bechara Al Raï took over.
The year is 2012.
Samir Geagea is being interviewed on a political talk show, Bi Mawdou3iye, on MTV. He declares that the recent pro-Syrian stances of the Maronite Patriarch do not represent the historical path Bkerke had drawn for itself. He also asserted that the position of Bkerke as a leader in Lebanese society has dramatically decreased as a result of the erroneous stances taken by the patriarch.
Moreover, commenting on recent declarations by a mufti in KSA that the Arabian peninsula should not have any church standing in the near future, he replied that the stances coming out from the Azhar are the ones to be considered as legitimate and that the xenophobic declarations of Saudi Arabia’s mufti are very similar in crude nature to what the Patriarch had said about him being afraid for the Christians of the East because of the Islamists rising around us.
The time is now.
I am faced with a torrent of people sharing certain articles about how Samir Geagea is a hypocrite in criticizing the patriarch. And it is here that I bring back the initial point I mentioned in this post: there’s a thin line between criticizing a person, which Michel Aoun flagrantly did for years, and criticizing a person’s stances, which Samir Geagea has been doing for the past year.
It is a very thin line but it exists. And you cannot compare both men with regards to how they behaved towards the Maronite Patriarch without taking that into consideration. The fact of the matter remains that when Samir Geagea’s pardon went through and he was released out of prison in July 2005, the months when Patriarch Sfeir and his party had been at odds were not marred by discordance.
The fact of the matter remains that even when Samir Geagea is in grave disagreement with the current patriarch, his critiques cannot but be considered respectful. Or need I remind people of “the patriarch must have gotten horny” comment by one of Michel Aoun’s allies, a statement which was not condemned by Aoun’s party, or when the patriarch was called senile by Michel Aoun’s close entourage, a statement that the General did not, also, condemn.
The fact of the matter remains that the patriarch, with his current stances, is not helping to elevate the position of the Church he was appointed in charge of. Many bishops have even expressed discomfort in the way he is handling things. Patriarch Raï might be taking the power his congregation vested in him for granted. You cannot simply support the regime of a man who has been killing your people for years and years and expect then not to react negatively. You cannot expect your congregation to fathom supporting one of the main reasons their role in Lebanese society has degraded this substantially and pretend as if the years of Syrian occupation had never happened.
The difference between Michel Aoun and Samir Geagea goes back to principles. One has principles, the other simply lacks them. One expected Bkerke to change the way he saw fit and was disappointed when it didn’t. The other was disappointed as Bkerke strayed from the principles it built for hundreds of years and used to cement itself as a champion for the rights of Maronites in particular and Lebanese in general.
After all, how can we forget when Aoun’s supporters stormed Bkerke in a riot years ago? And they have the audacity to criticize Geagea for speaking up.
Yet again, people tend to jump the boat of hype without looking at the underlying current. But every now and then, a slight nudge of their memories is in order.
Leave it to the Lebanese to spoof controversial ad campaigns. Soon after Benetton’s “unhate” campaign basically went viral, online pictures of rival politicians making out surfaced on line and have been already shared a gazillion times on Facebook.
In case some of you wanted to see Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea kissing Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun or Saad Hariri kissing Hassan Nasrallah (to be honest, I really hope none of you wanted to see either of those), these pictures are for you:
Hariri & Nasrallah
Geagea & Aoun
The “United Colors of Benetton” logo has been changed to “United Colors of Lebanon” to show that Benetton has nothing to do with these. I’m pretty sure Benetton wouldn’t dare to do anything of the sort with Lebanese politicians. Can you imagine the black shirts that would pop up around Achrafieh because, you know, Benetton is Italian and Italians somehow have roots in Achrafieh.
But no matter, the fact that I think ads like this are pointless aside (check my opinion here), I really hope we get to a day where rival politicians can actually find themselves in a room without wanting to kill each other.
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 