Courage
Guest post by davem
On the 9th May Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, along with their allies, attempted an armed coup in Lebanon. They closed the airport and port, blocked major roads and besieged West Beirut.
Hezbollah acted after the government’s decisions to shut down Hezbollah’s phone network, which is independent of the Lebanese phone system, and to sack head of airport security, who is close to Hezbollah. (Both these decisions were later reversed.)
There are many blogs dealing with this, written by people far more knowledgeable than me about Lebanon– see here, here, here and here.
What got my attention was that in this coup attempt, Hezbollah and their allies– including Amal and the Syrian National Social Party (generally translated as Syrian Social Nation Party, but I figure my translation gives you a better idea of this party’s ideology)– attacked a TV station.
Hezbollah-allied gunmen raided and trashed Future TV, owned by Sa’ad Hariri, forcing it off the air along with their website and newspaper. The Lebanese army just sat and watched, failing to protect them.
Like all groups which adhere to a totalitarian belief system– fascists, Islamists, Ba’athists, millennial cults, etc.– death doesn’t worry them. However ideas and free speech terrify the crap out of them. So naturally the first thing they attack is any source of ideas contrary to their ideology, especially those which highlight their shortcomings.
Unfortunately this isn’t anything new; journalists allied to Lebanon’s independence movement have been killed before, including Gibran Tueini and Samiir Kassir from An’Nahir newspaper.
LBC’s May Chidiac survived an assassination attempt leaving her without an arm and part of a leg.
Rather than letting themselves get bullied into silence, Future TV’s Sahar Al-Katib broadcast this moving plea on LBC that very day.
Not only that but Future TV made the courageous decision to begin broadcasting again and a few days later it was back on air, headed by Sahar Al-Katib. (Notice the masked man with the quasi-swastika armband in the picture behind her. That certainly brings back memories.)
Her speech roughly translates as follows:
“So they wanted us silent, without a voice, but here it is and this time it’s louder. We bring back speech so that people can hear us, all of us [who will be] returning. And we have returned, come back from Future [Future TV] to the future– where light has been waiting for us. Light which is stronger than darkness and oppression.
“We have returned to speak freely, to speak loudly in the face of coercion and oppression and attempts to humiliate and take away our dignity. We will not be silent in the face of tyranny. We will not be terrorized by weapons– weapons which are loaded at night then fired during the day. Sowing fear in the hearts of the honest people of Beirut. Beirut! The princess of all capital cities. Beirut that embraced the resistance and people of the south…[in 2006]”
Future newspaper is now being published again, and the Future TV website is back online.
Written underneath the logo in Arabic: “The truth will not be silenced.”
That’s what courage is. Standing up to bullies with guns. Standing up to people knowing it’s putting you at serious risk. Standing up to the sort of thugs you know you cannot win against when push comes to shove, but doing it anyway because it’s the right thing to do.
Courage isn’t the sort of crap you see on TV and films where people like Kiefer Sutherland in “24” go into some enemy lair, shoot everybody and save the world in time for the commercial break. Nor is courage wearing a bomb and immolating yourself in a train or bus or crowded market so you can go to some perfect afterlife without the ambiguities, compromises and difficult decisions prevalent of this life. That is, in truth, the ultimate cowardice, the ultimate cop-out.
No, courage is people like Sahar Al-Kitab saying publicly “No. You will not frighten us into submission with your weapons”. That courage is truly humbling.
If any good has come out of the recent events in Lebanon, it is that finally the myth of Hezbollah as some sort of Lebanese “resistance” has been exposed for the sham that it is.
Hezbollah has shown its true colours. Now it is publicly seen for what it really is– a sectarian murder squad acting in the service of the despotic regimes of Syria and Iran at the expense of the Lebanese people.
These events have also exposed the Middle East “experts” who repeat the same old “anti-imperialist” clichés, knowing there is a receptive audience for that sort of crap.
Hell, some of them, for all their claims of adhering to the “the Arab cause” (for that read dictators like Saddam Hussein and Bashar Al-Assad) can’t even speak the language.
Comments
| 21 May 2008, 3:44 am |
Excellent post as always from DaveM.
How true his description of courage rings.
We have seen this sort of courage before now: magistrates resisting bombs and intimidation in Sicily, priests and workers founding Solidarnozc to fight the might of the state in Poland, MDC activists risking rape and smashed bodies to defy the tyrant Mugabe, the Monks on the streets of Burma marching for truth against the geriatric generals.
They are all one in my book, standing up for civilised values against the murderous embezzlers and bullies of the world.
It’s time our governments started supporting them properly.
| 21 May 2008, 9:34 am |
I’m sure Galloway claims to speak Arabic.
Oh well, translating Dinars into Dollars was probably what he meant.
| 21 May 2008, 9:37 am |
Good post, Dave (and I decided that before reading it). On R3 0800 hrs today they talked of “Western backed government and Iranian backed opposition”. Gads.
| 21 May 2008, 10:10 am |
I see George is too busy to attend the recent Commons votes on abortion and embryology:
Too busy, perhaps. It’s noticeable, however, that he has been absent for every vote involving abortion:
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpn=George_Galloway&mpc=Bethnal+Green+%26amp%3B+Bow&dmp=813
P
| 21 May 2008, 10:25 am |
coup attempt
Not a terribly good attempt, though, was it? Easily occupying large chunks of the country, wrecking a TV station then handing the whole lot over to the Lebanese army… It doesn’t really make any sense at all if you try to see it as a coup.
…a sectarian murder squad acting in the service of the despotic regimes of Syria and Iran at the expense of the Lebanese people.
Aha, I see your problem - you’re completely ignoring the political situation in Lebanon and wedging this into your Intellectual Struggle Against Fascisticals, a tactic that’s quite popular these days.
Surely it’s obvious that the Hezbos have a lot of popular support amongst the Lebanese Shi’ites? It’d be a pretty odd terrorist/militia sect that didn’t have the support of the community it lives in - they’d stick out like a sore thumb and would be easily picked off by the army, as the Al Qaeda loons in Iraq are discovering.
General Petraeus would tell you that the more succesful an insurgent group is in winning the support of the people, the more successes it will have conducting operations. Given that the Hezbos grabbed an entire country by the nuts, gave them a hard squeeze then let go just to make a point you can probably guess what the situation is in Beirut, right?
Anyway, I’m sure the grandstanding denunciation of evil is all good fun, but it’s not particularly illuminating, is it? If you applied your usual standards, Lebanon would be about mid-table on HP’s shit list since its government is specifically structured to ensure enough power, kickbacks and payola go to the various ethnic and religious factions and most of the major political figures are essentially local mafia types with nice suits.
What we’ve got here is an intra-Lebanese power struggle, with Hezbollah being only the nastiest and most powerful of the local militias. It may be politically useful to wedge the Hezbos into the Ooooh, nasty Islamisses international conspiracy, it’s all those bloody Iranians, isn’t it? category, but it doesn’t really make much sense when you look at the facts on the ground.
The unfortunate reality is that the Lebanese are now going to try to come to a political accommodation with Hezbollah, which practically will mean handing them more power - IIRC they have been rather blunt about this, pointing out that the Shi’ites have the highest birth rate and there hasn’t been a census since the mid-seventies. Hopefully that can be done without setting the country on fire.
You want this in a shorter format? Okay, how about Idiots who held forth with a load of ideological nonsense about Iraqi politics before that country went into meltdown are unlikely to be even-handed experts on any other country in the region.
Or, even shorter - What? That’s just bullshit, isn’t it?
| 21 May 2008, 10:26 am |
Cue TheIrie to tell us why this brave woman is actually wrong, and that the clerical fascists are right.
But I wouldn’t expect this woman to get any help from the likes of the Conor Foley’s of this world - they’re too busy feathering their nests out of the new Westphalian fetishization to actually do anything to help her.
| 21 May 2008, 10:45 am |
And, as if by magic…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7411835.stm
I’m sure there’s a word missing from that article. Oh, wait, I know - it’s “Iran”, isn’t it?
| 21 May 2008, 10:46 am |
An excellent post, and it is worth following the links in the third paragraph to get some of the real story about what happened. The reporting of this whole affair in the mainstream UK media has been so superficial and simplistic as to be completely misleading.
| 21 May 2008, 11:10 am |
Unfortunately, it seems as if, to all parties in Lebanese politics
it is more important to be anti-Israel than to be a civilized society.
| 21 May 2008, 11:27 am |
Saluting the staff at future tv, It seems as if Hezbollah have gotten most of their demands tragically
| 21 May 2008, 12:05 pm |
Yes, she is brave but I’m afraid that thomas k is right.
| 21 May 2008, 3:49 pm |
the pro war apologists of Hezbollah seemed to freely accept that as a military organisation it is entitled to have its own private fibre optic telephone and data network, along with stockpiles of missiles, armaments and armed footsoldiers?
dual power eh? and they can’t see the downside to that? or if they can, don’t really care one way or the other?
| 21 May 2008, 5:38 pm |
Mod-
probably covered by some insulting connection to the Soviets or the Ratebewegung
| 21 May 2008, 8:13 pm |
v brave woman indeed.
in that gg speech from memri tv, he claims that nasser was called the “mad dog of cairo” in the house of commons by anthony eden. i suspect that he’s invented this quote because if you google “mad dog of cairo” you only get two hits other than the memri transcript. one is gg himself making the same claim in a parliamentary debate in 1998. the other is from the guardian website who no doubt nicked it off gg.
| 22 May 2008, 9:01 am |
Middle East “Expert” Repeating “Anti-Imperialist” Cliches, we are all Hezbolla, aren’t we?
| 22 May 2008, 9:31 am |
we are all Hezbolla, aren’t we?
Of course. I always describe groups of people I have great sympathy with as nasty… terrorists and describe their ascendency as unfortunate.
Dumbass.
| 22 May 2008, 7:40 pm |
“Dumbass” - Describes you prefectly. Useful idiot.
| 23 May 2008, 1:36 am |
Useful idiot.
What, Andy, you mean you have a critique of what I’ve written? Well, be my guest - fire away.
Type it up, let’s see whose analysis is closer to reality. A warning, though - paragraphs are harder than sentences. It’s all about construction, you see… You have to, like, offer a coherent argument and stuff. It’s a total bummer.
| 23 May 2008, 6:38 pm |
“Saddam And Nasser will live in history”..so will Mr. George Feckin Gallaway. Hey you too Mr. Expert knobhead, can you just be less arrogant ya tizi!
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