The Great Arab Spring and Its Implications

A wave has been sweeping over the Arab world, and US Foreign Policy journal wondered that who would be the next Arab dictator to go down.

I would like to dissect the latest events and their broader implications for the long run:

The Revolutions themselves

Several Westerners considered the revolutions as sparked by a man who set himself on fire in Tunisia. This is a reductionist approach where US intelligence misread (probably on purpose given the available wrath of your average Arab “Joe” or “Omar”) with the hope that stability would prevail over the wishes of the average Arab citizen.

I have to admit, I did anticipate that Tunis would eventually go head to head with its dictator, but like many, I thought that the first spark would be in Egypt. Moubarak’s regime has bled dry his society and the Egyptian revolution informally started since 2000 against the regime. By revolution; I define people going down the streets and demanding a simple request under the threat of the gun: “Freedom of Expression.”

General Petreus warned last year that the Arab-Israeli conflict (well I would like to define it these days as Palestinian/Lebanese conflict with Israel) has serious impact on the US interests. The brutality of the Israeli conflict on different fronts and the fact Israel on daily basis is criticized for its on-going settlements, destroying the prospects of peace, and a regional bully. The fact that the US Administration blindly supports Israel; US troops are under constant threat and furthermore US interests in the region are under threat.

General Petreus’s comments came 9 years late (if not at least four decades late). As the Second Intifada exploded; its spill-over hit Egypt. Protestors hit the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian civilians while Hosni Mubarak’s apparatus simply crushed the demonstrators with an Iron Fist. Since then, solidarity with the Palestinians became the symbol of resisting Hosni Mubarak.

For those who have no clue about Palestine’s symbolism on the Arab world (and by Arab I do not mean Muslim only). Palestine proper (which includes currently Israel) has been regarded as the last of European colonialism by the Arabs; especially the Western support it harvested. The fact dictators of the Arab world (excluding Syria even though Syria and the US always flirted with each other) shook hands with the following agreement: “Pro-West alliances at the expense of the average citizen.” The Arab citizen has been oppressed by dictators who seek to renew their mandate indefinitely and the West who seek “stable Middle East” (a synonym for oil and imposing normalization with Israel on the people without Israel itself coming into terms on how it was founded on genocidal base).
In my opinion, pride as humans, economic repressions, Orientalism, and ongoing colonialism played its role. The Arab-Israeli conflict is included within all of them. The Palestinian question, as Arabs (Christians and Muslims) regard that the Palestinians historically have been most wronged among the Arabs. The fact the UN has been (till recently Libya) has been regarded a muscle show forum among the regional and international powers). They remained crippled against on-going atrocities (especially due to the veto power) and the very fact that the US-UK coalition simply by-passed the UN and invaded Iraq for securing the oils.

In a way, the average citizen lost voice; their dictators are praised as democratic or “friend of the West”. The Arab citizen has been depicted as stupid, Islamist conservative, and a hopeless case for evolving towards Western standards (as if your American average Joe as a clue at least about the geography of the world or Israel itself is really Western). There was no greater irony than Obama giving the greatest speech on Human Rights in Cairo in 2009 amidst mass demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak. Whether Obama was aloof (on purpose or not), but he did not mention the dictator of over 80,000,000 people.

Some people argued that faceook created those revolutions., I doubt that at all. In my opinion, online means of communications and reporting (in Egypt people read blogs to know what is going on and not puppy like official newspapers). If anything, the facebook phenomenon became a catalyst for the forthcoming rage of citizens oppressed for decades.

What are the implications due to the rise of the Arab spring?

For starters, there is no longer media blackout. The world became too small to cover the incidents across the Arab world. Just as the revolution resurrected on new levels in Egypt, the Western media (most of it) tried to marginalize the revolution as another factory rebellion and stressed on the peace process. Despite the fact that Tunis was the first to shoot down its dictator in the most heroic manner, Egypt was on the spotlight due to the peace treaty. Israel informed all its embassies across the world that they should pressure governments globally to support Mubarak. The US administration itself fluctuated its speeches depending whether the revolution appeared at its final breath or not. When it looked like Mubarak was about to reassert his iron grip, Clinton insisted that Mubarak should “lead” the democratic wave. When Mubarak finally fell down, Merkel appeared as ignorant as it can gets: “New Egypt should respect the peace treaty with Israel.” Israeli officials were pushing support to Hosni Mubarak without realizing that this accelerated his downfall.

The selfishness of Israel in imposing Hosni Mubarak on the Egyptian people for its own interest will have (hopefully) repercussions in the near future. Israel disregarded the beautiful images of demonstrators’ heroics because that entity expects a special treatment from the world. Even if we believe that Israel represents the interests of the Jews across the world (which we all know it is false), the number of Egyptians outnumbers the Jews globally).

Due to the dense coverage of al-Jazeera English in Tunis and Egypt forced other media outlets to follow pace with the Arab media. As a matter of fact, even US officials were depending on al-Jazeera to issue statements. With al-Jazeera proving its superiority against Western outlets, more and more non-Arabs will be exposed to the real situation in the Arab world, and actually hear Arab opinions on whatever happens anywhere (the next war on the Palestinian or Lebanese, I bet plenty of Westerns will be shocked to see the brutality of the Israeli army and its fascistic elements).

Just as Hosni Mubarak was promoted as a true friend of the West, it changed in a week as the horrible dictator. The same can be applied on Israel. It takes only a week of objective reporting to change the US mainstream towards Israel. Already the Palestinian papers showed that it was the Palestinians who were the true partners of “peace” (whatever that peace Fatah thought of) and they declined it. Pro Human Rights groups, Palestinian solidarity groups, Jewish and Arab organizations, American NGOs, the stupidity of the current Israeli leadership in not hiding its on-going genocidal policies, and other factors exerts more pressure on AIPAC to maintain its iron grip in the main hubs (DC, New York, Chicago, others).

The final question goes: “ok, what about Syria?”. Syria as I mentioned earlier as always flirted with the US Administration. The US regarded al-Assad regime as the lesser evil in the face of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. From such a view, al-Assad is a darling angel. When the tyrant Saddam hid, Bush declared that the Syrian Baathi Party shall follow the Iraqi Baathi, Tony Blair in less than an hour went on TV and gave a detailed speech why al-Assad is different than Saddam. Al-Assad regime has been brutal on its people; the difference is al-Assad gambled on a heavy security apparatus, provide the minimum of welfare (when available) to his people, and relied on the Arab-Israeli conflict to marginalize his opponents. I still find it amusing how he dubs the Syrian opposition as American or Israeli agents even though the ones accused are loud and clear Marxists.

The current situation teaches us that anything can happen in the Arab world. Just as CNN, despite AIPAC’s iron grip on the US media, tried the impossible to blackout the incidents of Egypt, started reporting the incidents as they were happening. CNN only reported objectively (despite blaming the victims themselves) was during the Qana massacres of 1996 and 2006 in Lebanon, where the CNN were present on site. Despite the challenges, Israel’s true face will one day be exposed and the US mainstream media will change its opinion (a growing fear for the past five years in Lebanon).

The current countries that have been affected by the Arab spring as follows: Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Yaman, and Bahrain. To a lesser extent, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. You never know where the Arab spring will explode.

Now when looking at the bigger picture, a different set of lessons are prevalent

1) The Arabs are not waiting for Western blessings to proceed and seek their freedom
2) The Revolutions are completely sparked from the inside.
3) Once the revolution picks up, the Arabs are willing to go seek their freedom or just die trying, as the case of Libya taught us. The Libyans from day 1 warned al-Qazzafi to step down or go ahead and kill the people; if the latter had happened, the Libyans were proud that Qazzafi would just rule empty buildings.
4) (This is my favorite part) The Arabs are teaching the whole world about freedom, human rights, and even democracy; something the average citizen has forgot about in the West or 3rd World due to media alienation and class struggle.

The other dimension to focus on is the decline of the West

Almost all the leaders facing protests and revolutions have been the friends of the West. AL-Saleh of Yamen or lunatic Qazzafi (Tony Blair’s best friend) were regarded as tyrants installed by the West. The West’s interests fluctuates and it is apparent on how they react. A dense media blackout was imposed on Bahrain (easiest way to call the Bahrain incidents as Iran led revolution, reminds us of Lebanon in 2006) as Bahrain is in the direct sphere of influence that is owned by Saudi Arabia. Bahrain in specific is a new battleground where the revolution in Al-Jazeera itself has been blacked out. Bahrain is a monarchy , and the only Arab state where the Arab spring has threatened a monarchy. While most gulf states are monarchies, they have to support militarily the Bahraini monarchy in order to maintain their own rule. Last thing the Monarchs of the Arab gulf want a domino effect spreading in their own turf (although factory strikes did start briefly in Saudi Arabia).

The other dimension to focus on is the stupidity of the US foreign Administration in approaching the Arab world historically. Their blatant arrogance of dictating terms on the dictators in returns of arms (Egypt’s entire aid from the US went to the pockets of Husni Mubarak who turned out to have more money than the Hariri family itself) cost it several allies. Whether Tunis’s Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, or excommunicating Qazzafi served as a lesson for the rest of the Arab dictators. They can be replaced. Tunis was swift and ended up in the downfall of its dictator. Egypt was a greater battle arena as Mubarak tried to contain the situation by draining the protestors’ energy, and stepped down just as the evening before the protestors started to become more militants and started to form a siege across governmental locations. Libya is the most brutal of all; because the nature of its dictator= insane with enough militias across the African continent. Anther blow for the US came when its primary ally, Saad el Hariri was ousted from the government (even though that is not related to the Arab Spring, but fits the picture of the different slaps the US administration has been facing).

As for Lebanon, the leftist youth tried to ride the wave and now are pushing for the abolition of the sectarian system. On weekly basis there has been the most beautiful demonstrations against the system. Sadly, we cannot go against our own leaders (for now) because Lebanon does not have one Hosni, one Qazzafi, or one Ben Ali. Each of Lebanon’s sects has three or four Hosni style of dictators and the battle in Lebanon is yet to rage on. In one of my greatest wishes and hopes to see the Left in Lebanon unified as the heroics of the proletariat across the Arab world inspired us.

As for the Palestinians, as hopeless as it is, especially for those in Palestine proper, their leaderships turned out to have one thing in common with the Israeli fascist government: they did their best to block demonstrators express solidarity with the Arab freedom lovers. Hamas, Fatah, and Israel are the biggest bad news for their people, with a bigger highlight on the fact that Israel is the biggest bad news for the global Jewish world as the latter bargains on the racism of the West to renew their legitimacy.

Finally , I would like to add the last lesson acquired from the Arab Spring. Several bourgeoisies in the Arab world and the West stressed that the civil society is the best option to reform the Arab world and make it democratic (for my readers’ information US AID was promoting in Tunis Ben Ali as the man for democracy). Some NGOs may achieve a tiny (irrelevant) progress but without impacting the structure of the state. In the end of the day, a class awareness is needed to demolish those dictators in power, with or without the approval of the West. The entire hopes on the civil society should be understood by now that it is false. Some NGOs are good in reporting and documenting violations or propose some changes (as long as it is not a free market or neocon logic).

The day of the proletariat in the Arab world has come. Decades of boiling wrath can no longer be subdued.

I apologize for not writing as often for different reasons that I will explain thoroughly one day.

No war but class war
MFL

Not the Final Chapter of the July War

I have not been blogging due to personal obligations but intended to return blogging in two months. Now, that a lot of events took place, I have no choice but to write...

Introduction and Cont'd of an Earlier Article

Last year, I wrote extensive analysis in "Lessons from the July War". Now, the main logo of Hezbollah for launching their July War "Operation Honest Promise" was achieved. Israel gave Hezbollah Samir Quntar in return for their two soldiers, who so far, we didn't know what happened to them till the last moment.
In Israel, the primary question was bombarded on Olmert and his allies as follows: "Why did we enter a war if there was going to be a swipe?" Hence, what started Israel's humiliation in 2000, aggravated in 2006, and climaxed in the liberation of Lebanon's national hero, Samir Quntar, a man who symbolized resistance to the Zionists, and resilience to the Zionists' attempts to crush the soul of resistance.

Samir Quntar argued in TV that his 1978 operation, the hostages were shot by Israeli soldiers. While the Israeli media hovered around how their government released him, the whole media of the world forgot how many Lebanese children the Israelis have cold-bloodedly butchered. Of course, whenever the pictures of our massacred children pop up the news, the Israelis rudely accuse the Lebanese as "faking" the picture.

The Israeli media also accused Nasrallah as shrewd, since he considered the liberation of Samir Quntar as a national victory. This was not the first time, when the Lebanese ousted the Israeli Defense Forces and their puppies, the Southern Lebanese Army, from Lebanese soil, Nasrallah argued it was a victory for the resistance, Lebanon, the Muslims, and the entire Arab World. The fact all the Lebanese politicians were there to welcome Quntar and the last Hezbollah soldiers, reflected the dimension of the long awaited victory of Samir Quntar, whom we were raised to hear his name: the man whose will never shook down.

Brief Bolshevik Point

Now for me, as a revolutionary Marxist, we oppose individual acts of operations from the view point that such operations aggravate the unity of the Proletariat across borders, hence our unity as Lebanese Proletariat, with the residents of Occupied Palestine and Israel minus the Arab reactionary leaders and the Zionists. We believe in longer run emancipation tactics which requires more patience while focusing on welfare policies and women empowerment in the short-run. What I would respect about Samir Quntar is what he did inside the Israeli prisons. The man was named "Dean of the Prisoners" not because he is the oldest of prisoners, rather, his activism inside the Israeli prisons. He was the one who organized informal networks inside Israeli prisons across nationalities whereby the prisoners self-educated themselves, resisted Israeli pressure to break the will of the prisoners, and always held their heads high in the face of Zionist brutalities.

Impact of Samir Quntar's release

The release of Samir Quntar was greeted by over a million Lebanese (mainly) citizens, among a small minority of others. Quntar's freedom brought Lebanon to the 1970s nostalgia where dreamers hoped for the crush of Israel and liberation of Palestine whereby the Palestinians can finally and peacefully return to their homes. This nostalgia which witnessed the PLO and other radical factions waging operations against Israel also included the factions of the Lebanese National Front, and the Lebanese Resistance Front (whose three pillars were the SSNP – LCP – Order for Communist Action). Now my personal opinion is known, I oppose the ideological demands of the Lebanese National Movement, while I oppose their tactics, specially going blindly behind the PLO. The higher euphoria, in the words of Jubran Arayji, an SSNP top official to NBN," was the belief in your own platform to be actualized".
While Israel wept, Lebanon celebrated. The Israelis in a pathetic manner tried to show that the Lebanese are barbaric while they are a civilized nation surviving this barbaric world is the fact that the Lebanese danced, celebrated, while Hassan Nasrallah did a sudden appearance in the festivalities to greet his own soldiers and Samir Quntar. Quntar, for a man living 30 years in prisons, always kept his head up and till now he doesn't show his real age, 47. The insistence of Quntar to remain wearing his military suit showed to what extent his will remained unbroken.

Dancing Coffins

The Israelis also were baffled on how the Lebanese and Palestinians welcomed the martyrs' bodies with rice, dancing, and flowers. To this Perez called our traditions as "shameful". The Lebanese and the Palestinians, from years of agony, learnt to welcome their beloved in a "marriage" ceremonial manner. Several Muslim and Christian traditions of funerals included whistling, dancing, clapping, throwing rice, and "dancing the coffin" whereby the people carrying the coffin get the coffin to move up and down which appears dancing. The purpose of such a process is to pay tribute to the deceased. When Samir Qassir was buried, his coffin was dancing amidst flying flowers, wedding singing called "Zalghota" in Arabic, amongst others. When George Hawwi, the ex-stalinist Communist Party leader was assassinated, everyone clapped and danced as the men "danced the coffins". Such traditions are a tribute to the deceased and paying respect. The second significance is to show for the deceased and whoever wanted him/her dead that the people are not weeping, rather they do a wedding instead of a funeral to pay respect because one popular culture includes the belief that the deceased do not want their beloved to cry for them, rather they should celebrate and rejoice. The final reason for such festivities is to prove to the deceased and to recharge amongst them that they are celebrating instead of mourning because the person involved is not dead, rather still alive in their hearts. And that is how the Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians welcomed the deceased martyrs' bodies.

Israel yet again Humiliated

Now for the celebrations of what that ugly Levni proclaimed as shameful welcome of a criminal, the Lebanese are over-joyous in welcoming a hero who made the enemy cry on their knees after killing over 60,000 Lebanese, across the years, displacing over a quarter of citizens (in 2006), and eventually proving how stupid she and her country is. They waged a war on the Lebanese, called it "War on Hezbollah" which included the killing of everyone except Hezbollah in general, such as the red cross, the foreign journalists, the Lebanese Army, and the Police, and even three members of Hezbollah's archenemies: the Lebanese Forces. Hence, that war was everything but a war on Hezbollah. The other dimension is that almost the entire Lebanese citizens across political and sectarian lines in one way or another cooperated to contain the Southern exodus. Even Palestinian camps such as Ain el Hilwi welcomed Lebanese fleeing under bombardment their homes for safety. After all, Israel used the refugee buses as target practice. Shameful and uncivilized. Hence, how can Lebanon not welcome Samir Quntar as a hero, or even as a liberator, who proved to the Lebanese and Palestinians that the Israelis are ineffective to do anything right? He even inspired to others that Israel's days are countable, so many believed that thought, happily to see their Southern racist neighbor drowning in tears, same people whose media forgot to announce how many they killed of children in Palestine and Lebanon, forgot to compare Israel's operation to Palestine in 1948 to Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in 1999 to Kosovo. In one of those few occasions Lebanon celebrated in joy and happiness while Tel Aviv drowned in tears.
Israeli reactions to the Lebanese victory were different in several manners. For starters, the Israeli intelligence added Samir Quntar's name to be assassinated next to Nasrallah. After all, Lebanon shouldn't go against the flow of Arab regimes trying to convince that Israel is here to stay. Reactions from normal Israeli citizens within Israeli media demanded that the next war with Lebanon have Beirut leveled down. I have news to them, in the last war, half of it was already leveled down. Finally, to the families of the deceased soldiers, they should expect such operations when they are wearing the military suit.

Israel since the year 2000 has had their victories cut short. All of Israel is in a way trained soldiers because all its citizens should serve the Israeli Defense Forces. Hence such an operation impacted them in 2006 because each citizen thought to himself/herself "It could have been me or my relatives". Well, to them, start changing your racist policies if you want legitimacy within your neighborhoods.

Impacts of Hezbollah and Lebanese Victory

While the entire cabinet of different political parties gathered in the airport , Israel tried to downsize Lebanon's happiness as "Nasrallah has the entire Lebanese as hostages". If that is true, I love Israel's way of dealing with a hostage crisis, burn the entire country to kingdom come (2006).

Hezbollah have been in a winning since 2000. They ousted the Israelis outside Lebanon in 2000 and proclaimed themselves as the descendants of the Resistance front forged by the Lebanese Communist Party and Order for Communist Action, and followed by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. However, the latter three's leaders were marginalized and persecuted by Syria. In the words of one Iranian Diplomat during the July war to Ahmad Fatat, "we the Iranians learnt how to resist from the Christians, such as George Habbash and George Hawwi." Hezbollah by 2004 proved their complete dominance over the Bekaa and South in municipalities elections whereby AMAL movement's influence was downsized. In the end, Syria had to intervene to face-save their allies AMAL. Hence, Hezbollah officially dominated the Shiite sect while AMAL became a relative minority. The defeat of 2006 of Israel on the infantry level reflected how the underdogs caught up with the giants. Israel's army is not indestructible. The assassination of Imad Moghnieh was again a defeat to Israel even if it is not 100% confirmed that they assassinated him. Hezbollah's alliance to the Christian bloc, the Free Patriotic Movement, moved them away from isolation as well as a Shiite sect. Their military power also remained undisputed in Lebanon when they swept Beirut against 14th of March in one evening, while Mt. Lebanon collapsed in two hours. Hence, they got the demands they have been requesting: Red lines on Hezbollah's arms, no Western power can oust Hezbollah out, got the national unity government they needed to veto any governmental decisions that might touch their arms. Finally, to complete Hezbollah's euphoria, they did the impossible and liberated Samir Quntar and left the Israelis feeling canned inside their borders. The timing of Samir Quntar was marked with the 2nd memory of the July war.
The liberation of Samir Quntar was highly valuable for Israel. Their 2006 across borders operation was called "The Honest Promise", which means the promise to liberate Samir Quntar. Olmert and his goons crumbled down at timing more perfect for Hezbollah. For starters, they pulled Lebanon in a euphoria outside the last civil war we had couple of months ago and diverted attention to this blunder operation they did whereby retribution will take a long run form between the Sunnis and Druze and the Shiites. Their and their allies' vulgar behavior "as peaceful" diverted to the liberation of Samir Quntar. Trying to erase the breach in their promise "no weapon shall be turned to the inside of Lebanon", they proved that they are the only force to inflict defeat on Israel and their arms are still needed.

As a matter of fact, the pro-14th of March are trying to pull a symbolic victory by getting Shebaa farms diplomatically. Second, Samir Quntar's allegiance to Hezbollah was also what they needed. After all, Quntar spent his time reading Israeli media, whereas the most hated to them were Hezbollah, hence, they became his favorites, specially they were the ones who liberated him. So, whereas March 14th accused Hezbollah to ignite the July war in 2006 to protect their allies Syria from the International Tribunal, now got their promise actualized and diverted attention that the war was not about Syria's attention. Although, Bashar Assad's hypocritical attitude celebrating the July war as the real victor on the ashes of Lebanon is quiet lame. Sadly, Quntar supported Syria blindly without investigating what has happened during their era. Hopefully he will have much more time to do so to fill the gap.

Now the term resistance became over-charged, Ali Kanso was bragging that the SSNP will not surrender their weapons because it is "Arms for Resistance" although we didn't see a single shot directed on Israel all this time except on other Lebanese. The election of Assad Herdan as SSNP president shows the partial return of the Syrians, and the military urgency that the SSNP are currently living in especially several Ras Beirut zones are still within the newly resurrected SSNP cantons. Hence, Hezbollah's allies are now justified to preserve their weapons while leaving the 14th of Marchers in another security dilemma to rebuild their forces, hence a new showdown coming soon within the next decade.

Now, Hezbollah can behave the Judge and Executioner if things don't go the way they don't like. Simply unleash the AMAL movement goons on those supporters.

More to the point, Hezbollah's victories have an impact on the Arab region and the World as a whole. Most of the Arab regime, dictators like Egypt's Moubarak, Jordan's King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's al-Saud, Qatar's Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, and most recently Iraq's Maliki, among others, are having aftermaths of Hezbollah and Lebanon's victories. While al-Assad, along with Libya and few other Arab nations support War with Israel, the majority don't The mentioned states are satellite regimes for the USA, who established peace with Israel on the account that "Israel is here to stay" and "let us do the best out of it". Hence, they oppressed their people under that logo plus receiving US funds as support. Egypt and Jordan are the second and third most funded governments by the US for signing peace treaties. Such victories, destabilize Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt whereby the oppressed majorities can dream of ousting their tyrants and boycott Israel.

The questions goes: how long Israel plans to distort history, for 1948 has its impact on all Arab worlds, specially Lebanon. How long they plan to remain racists and Zionists, after all Racism and Zionism go hand in hand with each other. The underdogs in a military sense are catching up, once the underdogs know how to shoot down Israeli planes, Israel's very existence is threatened with extermination and the Jewish Proletariat are threatened with another ethnic cleansing as a payback for what their Zionist leaders pushed to do throughout the British mandate. The on-going atrocities do not help on the Palestinians. Furthermore, how long can those US satellite regimes hold on, and haven't they realized the more the Israelis are brutal, the more secular and progressive forces are purged or shoved into Islamic movements, like Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Muslim Brotherhoods. Finally, Hezbollah's victories sustained the Assad regime to rule for the next decade or two with maximum peace inside his lands and oppress his own people; specially the British themselves declared that Assad is different than Saddam. The reason for this is the fact that the alternative to Assad's regime in Syria would be the three more oppressive, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Last, I hope Nasrallah would live as long as possible, because the scariest of all is the relations of Hezbollah to Ali Khamanei through the Iranian funds and Wilayat el Faqih. If Nasrallah passes away, the option is not a moderate tolerant leader like Hassan Nasrallah, rather the extremist Na'im Qassem who, all Hezbollah's allies on grassroots level from pro-Hezbollah Palestinians, Syrians, Aounis, and even the SSNP, expressed that "all hell would break loose if he takes control."

Unwanted Palestinians

What were most disgusting about 14th of March, the Opposition, Hezbollah, the Lebanese President, and others is their behavior: "Palestinians are not welcomed to stay here" hence the "Liberation".

Finally

With Nasrallah declaring that the war with Israel is an open war, following Moghnieh's assassination, and promising us future wars, paralleled with Israel's nutcases such as Olmert and Perez that new wars are coming up as retributions, a doomed nation like Lebanon has no choice but to wait for the next disaster.

MFL

Mafias and Militia Idiots

The events of today show much each and every political party is organized for war. The realist perspective would be the Security dilemma: "hey they got arms, so I will have arms as well even though I am a lover of peace!" A Small Question though, if you take the collective number of the people on the streets, it tells you that the majority of the proletariat in Lebanon do not war, and only those pathetic rug rats wants to go to war.

Whatever a demand we have, now it is 100% closed to do a progressive one because It will be tagged as messed up 14th of March or lunatic Opposition (and my middle finger is dedicated to both parties as a matter of fact!!!). Excuse me if you are party affiliated and got affended in Lebanon, but heck, it is your fault for following blindly these disgusting repulsive coalitions!!!

What started today as a general strike taught us an important lesson: even though the general syndicate union demanded a demonstration today, it shook the government by simply demanding an offer and got the Ministers awake till four oclock in the morning yesterday. Now the important lesson is that a workers' demands can shake the government (a lesson to the leftists in Lebanon, specially those idiots in the neo-conic Democratic Left and the outdated Stalinist Lebanese Communist Party. Now, it is worth to mention that the syndicate movement (general one) is a fake one and a workers' movement; however, the notion itself shook the government. Someone might argue that the government was afraid that what happened today attempted to avoid it, well not necessarily. Those demands shook the government, not sufficiently because all of these movements are a hoax time wasting organization, but if they were really a workers' movement, they would have annihilated the government and obliterated the Opposition (yes, that includes Hezbollah and its 30,000 merry missiles).

Now thinking from a 14th of March logic, the leaders are having a feast. The past two weeks all types of reports came out that a nice profitable summer is coming about, and that is the Opposition's new war coming out. Now, more importantly the Government warned that the opposition will attempt a Coup, and now it fell in their eyes with all the sudden trucks pouring sand. Of course, our friends AMAL movement they are always loaded with arms and ready, like the Orcs, to wage any form of a shoot-out war.

What was supposed today to be a demonstration was hi-jacked by the Opposition. The Syndicate attempting to sound like the opposition, realized that it was too big on them, announced that they will cut the demonstration short till further noticed and briefly blamed the government instead of the government/opposition. Despite the fact the strike was canceled at 10:45 in the morning, opposition militias carried on their work while they were countered by government militias, first exchanging rocks, then Molotov cocktails, then bullets, then rpgs (at a one point).

Now why the heck the Opposition carried on the ground, to be specific the Shiite based parties. AMAL movement were active on the soft spots, usually should be symbolizing co-existence in terms of peace but now war zones while Hezbollah adopted the collisions politically? What sprang Hezbollah into such action? We just came out from a political campaign about Hezbollah having their own monitoring process of the airport and the kidnapping of an international diplomat "Socialist'' (one of them neo-cons) at their districts. The syndicate canceled, while the opposition in a planned manner carried on, and the government ground forces carried on in "repelling" the Iranian invasion.

What happened today, specially with the expulsion of the Future and PSP parties (both 14th of March) should the quasi ethnic dimension of drawing lines and kicking the outsider. Clearly, I cannot see the logic of closing the airport if people "want to protect the resistance). The others in Bekaa valley, the government forces closed roads leading to Shiite areas. The Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces officially defended their allies in each coalition.

Damn them all!
May they all rust in hell

History of Foreign Intervention in the Lebanese Civil War (Part I & Introduction)

Please Check: Causes of the Lebanese Civil War, Lebanon and Democracy: Doomed to Repeat the Past, Investigating Lebanon: Investigating the Ethnic Dilemma

On the memory of the ignition of the Lebanese Civil War, I decided to write these several series of posts... and hopefully will have the time to finish them.

For a tiny country whose area is 10420 KM2 and a population of 4,000,000, Lebanon sure took the attention of the world, or almost the world. I will not argue what Ghassan Tuieni once described our Civil War as the War of others, rather , I will record each foreign intervention as they occurred. This will give a highlight on Syria, PLO, Israel, USA, among the countries involved.

To be honest if you want to count the number of foreign powers involved in our civil war, they can be counted as follows: Unites States of America, Palestinian Liberation Organization – Egypt – Syria – Jordan – Israel – Saudi Arabia – Libya – Soviet Union – Iran – Iraq – France – Italy – Eastern Europe – Tunis – Cyprus – China – Kuwait – Others. For a tiny country as Lebanon, it sure took a focal point of foreign powers to be interested in this country. Each power had its own foreign cliental, and supplier of funds/arms.

The Case of Lebanon

As I explained in an earlier post "Causes of the Civil War", Lebanon had several situations for having a war. Some were innate due to failed 1943 Pact, and others involved regional interest in the war. The Saddest part of the story, that all the war criminals (ie all the party figureheads) are not locked up in prisons, and their audiences still believe they are fighting for their Lebanon. For me, I think Aoun, Berri, Jaajaa should be locked up in prison and throw the key in a bucket of acid. Actually, I can't exclude anyone. They all deserve to be locked up in prison, they all are well-funded while the victims voices remain screaming from the graves unpunished. This concludes that the ones who inflicted maximum butcheries on the Lebanese were the Israelis, then invited by different Christian powers to come and rid them from the PLO. Now of course, the Israelis killed more Lebanese rather than harming PLO warriors. The Lebanese Front cadres failed to mention that there are also the Lebanese National Movement, which was strictly Lebanese raising arms in front of their "Christian-like" Lebanon.

The war to be clear, didn’t start as several Western (and even local) scholars like to describe between the Muslims and the Christians. As a matter of fact, several Shiite and Sunni leadership supported the Christians, while others supported the Left. Hence on a local level, it will be rather naïve and childish to say that the war broke out between these two religious sects. Other downsized it as the war between the PLO and the Christians, which again suits a lot of Western audience to believe so, but again, that is a bogus 'humbug' truth. The war broke out between the Lebanese among themselves. The Palestinian military became severely involved in post 1975 towards the end of it, when Tel Za'atar Camp was severely surrounded. The combatant coalitions were:

The Lebanese Front (Christian Extreme Parties):

The Phalange Party (Spearheaded by Pierre Gemayel Sr.) – The Partisan Liberation Party (Spear headed by Camille Shamoun) – The Marada (Spearheaded by Suleiman Franjieh Sr.), Guardians of the Cedars (Spearheaded by Etienne Sakr) – The Organization aka Tanzeem (Spearheaded by George Adwan).

The Lebanese National Movement included:

The Progressive Socialist Party (Spearheaded by Kamal Junblatt) - The Lebanese Communist Party (Spearheaded by George Hawi) – The Order for Communist Action (Spearheaded by Mohsen Ibrahim) – Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Spearheaded by Inaam Raad) .

Now both parties had mini-militias supporting them, such as AMAL Movement (which in fact fluctuated between both coalitions). They were part of the Lebanese National Movement, then switched sides when the Christians begged the Syrians to enter Lebanon.

Nature of the Civil War

Now the question to ask: "Was the Lebanese Civil war the same when the War broke out and it ended?" The answer is definitely not. The Progressive Socialist Party for example underwent drastic changes with the assassination of Kamal Junblatt and becoming more Durzi in nature in post 1982 era. There are of course new parties/players that changed the form of the war. The Morabitoun for example became a powerful militia then was destroyed by four parties allying briefly with each other into a single coalition. The fact it took four powerful militias in the 1980s to annihilate them shows their strength: The Lebanese Communist Party – The Progressive Socialist Party – AMAL Movement - Order for Communist Action. New parties/players would include the rise of Nabih Berri on a new more militant AMAL movement, Michel Aoun with the Lebanese Army, Samir Jaajaa for the Lebanese Forces, and Hezbollah as a whole. The war between the Left and the Christians ended up with the Christians battling each other, the Shiites battling each other, and the Left Wing battling the Shiites and Christians alike. Israel and the United States seized to be powerful players in Lebanon after 1985, and loyalties changed. Iraq and Iran became integral players in the war, while Egypt's role got marginalized.

Finally, only the stupid members of the Lebanese Forces would argue that is due to the Palestinians that the war broke out; the Palestinians lost politicially and most of their major powers in 1982 and ended up battling a Muslim Party = AMAL Movement. In fact, AMAL Movement opened fronts on all levels against almost everyone on a separate front. They battled Hezbollah on one wide, they battled the Lebanese Communist Party and the Progressive Party on another, and they battled the PLO on a third front. As for the Sunnis, there were two separate parties that were tagged Sunnis. The first is called "The Mourabitoun" while the other was the Islamist Movement of Unification (in Tripoli). Other than that, they were severely marginalized during the war. The Shiites almost lacked any organization prior to the war, eventually they immerged with two powerful Parties: Hezbollah and AMAL. Someone may ask why I write AMAL Movement in capital letters because AMAL is an abbreviation in Arabic to Affwaj Mouaqawa el Lebanieh (which means Legions of the Lebanese Resistance, which is ironic because they killed more Lebanese and Palestinians than they killed Israelis).

Methodology

To fully comprehed the civil war, the Marxist dialect has to be followed. This includes objectivity. The Sciences of Marxism are based on re-constructing history as it happened. This means as far as trashing the Soviet Union and anything else because they already happened. In the case of Lebanon, we have to document each event as it happened. Understand how we jumped from one phase to another, and of course liberate ourselves from the War mythes we inherited from our parents/friends/relatives. The core of Marxism states that the present cannot be understood unless we understand the past and how we arrived. This means I will mention the Communist parties same as I mention the other. This also means it is not enough to say there was only a Sabra - Chatila Massacre, there were massacres at Saida, Damour, Chicca, Port Beirut, Ba'abda, West Beirut, and several others equally. In the end, to carry arms in the name of the Proletariat is one thing, but shooting innocent citizens and take away 15 years of their lives means that all parties are all accountable in the civil war.

This means that the Phalange or AMAL Movement should come out clean and say: "Yes, we butchered people based on Sect". This means that the supporters of Bashir Gemayel or Camille Shamoun should admit they invited the Israelis to enter, the US archives prove so. This leads me to analyze the sources of information. We are lucky that a lot of key players displayed their information to the public, the most recent would be Joseph Abu Khalil's memoirs. Others would include the CIA archives (we have full knowledge of what happened in 1975-1976 on the party-leadership levels). Other sources would be the Israelis (yes, you read me right, their archives also are important despite the fact several Zionist scholars try to distort history to satisfy their extremist readers). Other information would be the media, documentaries, and first person witnesses. A lot of information might involve deducation, but if deducation can be avoided and reach the truth as it happened from a fixed reference, then by all means that what should happen. Finally the current politicians shouldnt impose a bad case of amnesia on the Lebanese because they shouldnt be selfish to defend their politicial interests and expose for real what they have done to a tiny country called Lebanon.

Conclusion

Now mentioning so many political parties means one thing: so many foreign cliental involved in the Lebanese Civil War, and it would be interesting to investigate (as much as possible) their role in the Lebanese Civil War.

Short Run Goals Vs. Long Run Goals

Bumping into ex-activists, personally I keep wondering how far our goals are in Lebanon. With everyone being involved in “fighting Iran” or “Fighting Israel”, no one has tackled the real core issue which haunted Lebanon (and Mt. Lebanon in the 19th Century) with blood baths, wars, and the sort.

A 14th of Marcher would tell me that “A Strong State is needed once Hezbollah is disarmed!” Fine, I can understand people are terrified from having out of the blues a war and seeing their children bombed to kingdom by a ruthless cold blooded army out of retaliation. Second, let us assume this tiny nation would assume such a strong state with a mighty army to sustain it despite all those tiny armed groups, the country will never stand economically. The Lebanese Diaspora remains to increase in number, and more than ever. Someone may say: “Services” is the solution, yet I cant imagine us competing with the Gulf, and their immense wealth. Rather, the gulf supports certain elites, and in case money would spread around, it will go to the elites. The assumption of the Liberals that wealth would be generated in large quantities can’t hold true, there is no such logic that the top elites will make so much money to the extent that money will spill downwards to the people. If that is the case, Latin America, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have witnessed a gigantic economic boom, and the welfare of the people would have expanded. Rather, unemployment rate increases, and the rich simply get richer.

However, this article is not about Political Economy and world Economics.

Ok, what about an 8th of Marcher? He/She would tell me “We are fighting Israel and protecting our land and demolish starvation from thieves!” Again, that scenario can’t stand still. The governments in the past had figureheads of 8th of March (most famous two probably would be Michel el Murr and Asa’ad Herdain). The 8th of March were always part of the economical gain to gain advantages. Now the core alliance of the Opposition is made of two parties that never stepped foot in the government during the Syrian Mandate (unless we consider the Free Patriotic Movement dating back to Aoun’s days as a ‘Prime Minister’), but all their allies were part of it. In fact, Hezbollah for almost two years were participants of the government and took part in the privatization process of the Electricity Institution. Now the other half of the hypothesis: “Resisting Israel and US imperialism”. Again, the scenario cant take place at a Lebanese scale, because even the previous more gigantic international institutions and countries failed to block US penetration on political or economical (which instigates political) level. Hezbollah’s monopoly of the resistance can be given credit to Syria, who can keep a close eye on them due to their alliance with Tehran. Furthermore, the “Resistance Movement” itself is lost due to the fact of “where is the resistance active”. When a youth was killed in hooligan riots, he was proclaimed by Nasrallah a “Martyr of the Resistance” since the whole open demonstration is aimed in fact to oust out a US supported government. Yet, the US government supported in the first two years the Seniora government, which also included directly 2 ministers of Hezbollah. In fact, resistance today is such an over-rated word, because a lot believe they are fighting for Israel while the other half of Lebanon is tagged as “traitors”. Furthermore, the FPM’s economical platform is close to that of Seniora’s.

However, the purpose of this article is not to discuss what resistance is, and who the poor people…are

And here I begin the purpose of my post… short run versus long run goals. Now of course, we all agree that part of the problem is Sectarianism. Now if we look at the problem as a whole, Lebanon as a country is doomed for constant wars and instability. Plus, Lebanon will always be a gateway for foreign powers to intervene (actually since Prince Fakhridean II with his alliance with Tuscany in the face of the Ottomans). Now, the first impression of Lebanon is that Lebanon is divided into two sectarian hostile camps that will not stop till one dumps the other in the sea. Moreover, the people love each other as long as their “Sect-Leaders” love each other. The most beautiful example is seeing the supporters of Aoun and Nasrallah loving each other (to a certain extent) when they allied with each other. Another beautiful example is the Sunnis of Harriri and Christians of Jaajaa/Gemayel loving each other because their leaders love each other. All of this, and we didn’t tackle the institutional corruption of all the parties in hiring their “own people” into the public sector (most famous would be probably Nabih Berri and his Shiite supporters). So the country is doomed… plus of course, we got resistance to Israel through a religious party that is building networks similar to the Muslim Brotherhood, and of course Syria and Israel remain destabilizing factors for the safety of the whole nation. All of this of course is accompanied with bad economical situation, almost zero welfarism, and the class breach remains expanding as the rich get richer and the poor poorer. Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, and we can add tiny terrorist groups popping out of the blues and the whole country is on the verge of war in case one member of a political group slaps the other on the cheek.

The problem is throughout Lebanon’s history, the legislators and previous governments never thought about a long-run goal. Probably the only person who did was Kamal Junblatt when he decided to annihilate sectarianism and enforce a progressive reform plan; however, the sad part of the story that he had to depend on Yasser Arafat to balance militarily against the Christian dominated Lebanese Army, and one day we will discuss in details how the PLO messed up in Lebanon since that topic deserves an article on its own.

So let us look at the first independent government spearheaded by Prime Minister el-Solh (well before he got sniped out). The President and the government were freed from the French due to the National Pact. The aim of the unwritten National Pact of 1943 is to get rid from the French. The Christians and the Sunni Muslims (along with the Druze) agreed to unite against the French for short term goals. The Sunni Muslims gave the Christians too much institutional and constitutional power to sway them that they have to get rid of the French and they don’t need the French mandate. When both Bchara Khoury and el-Solh were shaking hands, they doomed the nation for chaos in the future because such power declined to the Christians would be one of the several wars to explode in the future, primarily the Left versus the Christians. Yet, President Khoury and Prime Minister el-Solh never thought about the disasters of their National Pact, and almost lost its legitimacy in 1958 (ie 15 years later), because they were thinking of short-run gains and personal power. The fact President Khoury tried to renew his mandate proves my point, specially President Khoury’s brother was so much involved in illegal activities, that people bestowed upon him the title “Sultan”.

Now, we jump in time to the reign of the Camille Shamoun, which witnessed the birth of several institutions; however, all “civilization privileges” were made mainly in Beirut, parts of Mount Lebanon and Northern Lebanon, the rest of the country was left-out. The parts left out were primarily Shiites in nature, and they were excluded from “Shamoun’s Building Lebanon Campaign” because they didn’t generate profit and gain to that stubborn leader. Rather, they were excluded, and later suffered from Israeli retaliation and butchery due to Palestinian offensives. Actually when the Israelis invaded Lebanon in 1982, several Shiites greeted the Israelis with rice, along with the Maronites. They remained excluded from the political formula (or actually undermined with Shiite feudal puppies in allegiance with stronger Sect leaders), till 1970, when it was seen important to grant the South some attention in order to win over the Shiites towards the Christian side by creating the “South Council” and spearheaded by Moussa el Sadr (and in the same year the Council suffered from a lot of accusations related to corruption). Again, if the governments of the past thought in the long-run all Lebanon should equally benefit from the governmental welfare, none of the current leaders would have worried about Hezbollah’s rise to power because poverty, lack of a welfare system, Israeli bombing, and other factors pushed the majority of the Shiites to embrace Nasrallah as their saint.

A third incident would be of course, the case of Pierre Gemayel versus Kamal Junblatt. Kamal Junblatt wanted to strip off all Sect leaders from their privileges, and made sure that his direct allies were secular parties, such as the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Lebanese Communist Party, and Order for Direct Action, while he was leader of the Progressive Socialist Party (when Socialism meant something for that party). Pierre Gemayel didn’t want those benefits lost, because he thought the Christians would be over-run by non-Christian Lebanese. So a civil war broke out, and Kamal Junblatt depended on a swift victory since the army would weaken and lose plenty of its members to their sects, and Pierre Gemayel wasn’t simply willing to see his life’s work go down the drain and witness the Christians becoming Lebanese like all Sects (as well as fear from the Palestinian factor). So, the war broke out, and none of them expected it will last for almost a decade and a half. From the civil war itself, it has dozens of short-term goals thought over at the expense of the long-ones. Henry Kissinger discusses heavily how Israel-Syria-USA-and the Lebanese Christian Elites invited the Syrians over to disarm the PLO and save their skins (since the PLO and the Lebanese National Movement swept about 81% of Lebanon), but eventually such a short run goal cost Lebanon to be puppet for Syria till 2005 things took a different turn, and more “Sponsors arrived to the scene”.

I will not go with the details why people are Sectarian and support blindly their leaders, but the logic would flow on how to solve such a huge problem? The Taef Agreement/Constitution is barely holding on, no Camp (14th of March/Opposition) is willing to step down till the other is politically destroyed. Yet, that can never take place, with the primary leaders/actors got their own support, instead, the solution for these two camps is to dump the other in the open sea, and that means civil war, which we didn’t returned to that stage yet

So, what do we mean by long-run goals. When Lebanon was created in 1920 out of the blues, more than 80% objected to the French regarding that, and primarily the Greek Orthodox Sect and the Sunnis, and demanded a unity with Faysal’s Syria. Ever since then, chaos and sectarianism as increased, and now it means we have to listen to what Archbishop Mar Nasrallah Sfeir has to say, or Mufti Qabbani and Sheikh Fadlallah what they have to say. Moreover, short run goals and policies are being done without proposing the real issue of salvation for this messed up nation: Civil Marriage and the Separation of Religion from the State. People since childhood are brought up to think in a sectarian sense one way or another. A Durzi can only marry a Durzi is one example. Inter-Christian sects means a bit of turmoil for the families, but it is there. What equates to the Durzi in tragedy is the Tashnag ultra-nationalistic concept of “Armenians only marry Armenians”, and of course, in the cases between the Sunnis and Shiites finds the extended families rather hostile. And of course, no family in general inside Lebanon (and majority of outside) would support inter-sect marriages.

So, what is the short run goal? Saving Lebanon? Lebanon First?! What logo you want to call for? The situation remains the same, it is run by powerful Sect Leaders that need each other to form coalitions. Now, the only time Civil Marriage witnessed a proposal was in the late 1990s, it caused a drastic fiasco, while all religious figures (Muslims first, followed with Archbishop’s during a later stage aggression on Civil Marriage). The President to propose it, during the Syrian Mandate, was Elias Hrawi. Most of the Sect Leaders refuted it due to pressure from their tools of brainwashing: the religious figures. Walid Junblatt’s son got married in a civil marriage fashion, but his followers oppose civil marriage and prefer to see the a Durzi marrying a Durzi. I cant think of a more important long-run goal to save Lebanon from bloodshed other than civil marriage. At least the gates of marital marriages would be open, and the isolation of sects would not be almost complete…. It will weakens and the Sect-Leaders would be much weaker as well…

This is something to ponder upon, you want to save “Lebanon from Bloodshed”, start building a secular society. This is the long goal at least. May be then proposals can have a meaning for candidates rather blindly following their leaders because they fear ‘the other’ would kill them!!!

Short Run Goals are a waste of time and lead us to vicious circles, the long run ones are much fewer in number, but they are the cause of salvation for this devastated nation in restoring people from slitting each other’s throats under the logic of “self-security”.

MFL

Dialogue One: 14th of March "Leftist"

(An Encounter with a typical “Lebanese Leftist” who supports 14th of March)

At a certain pub 1

X : So what are your political affiliations?
Me: Does it really count?
X : Yes, everyone is something
Me: So what are you?

(X raises his head up proudly)

X : I am a Leftist
Me: Interesting, what type of a left?
X : Nothing special, just a leftist, what about you?
Me: You wont love mine, I am a revolutionary Marxist, old school
X : (shocked) really?
Me: Hell yeah, the very old school of Marx, Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky
X : Interesting, I thought you guys are extinguished
Me: Nope! People like you try to sell on the Proletariat using our name
X : You even use the term Proletariat still?
Me: What type of a leftist you are if you are not representing the Proletariat?
X : (Raising his head proudly): I am a Lebanese Leftist
Me : You mean March 14th Left?
X : Yup, the only true form of the left…
Me: Sorry, for me only revolutionary schools of the left are leftists, such as the Communists and the Anarchists,
X : These are outdated, real leftists are those who support March 14th
Me: Sorry, but I consider the greatest bullshit in the world is to say bluntly that a person is leftist out of the blues without any idea to guide it,
X : I am, I am fighting for Lebanese freedom
Me: I thought as “leftists” we opposed any form of Nationalism
X : That is the old school, it is dead…
Me: Well, we will continue our talk later, till then, rethink your ideas about the Left

(Same X at Pub II, while I was sitting and drinking my lovely Vodka on ice)

X : Excuse me, aren’t you the one who I met in Pub 1?
Me: Indeed, still surprised?
X : Well yes, you blew my mind with your words, how can you in the 21st Century call yourself a supporter of the Marx and Lenin?
Me: You may add Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and over 250 other thinkers
X : But that is illogical, how can that be? Communism is dead!!
Me: Is it? It lived shortly in the Paris Commune of 1871, Soviet Petrograd in 1905, and the early years of the Soviet Union
X : But the Soviet Union is dead
Me: But the words of Marx and Lenin are still true. Lenin predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse once the revolutions in Germany and Warsaw failed. Whatever happened afterwards, continued as predicted by Marx, and Engels
X: What do you mean by that? There have no Proletariat Revolution, and the classes still exist!
Me: What do you mean by that? In fact how do you that this is the only thing predicted by Marx or Lenin?
X : (Silently) Because Capitalism won!!
Me: Wasn’t the purpose of the Bolsheviks is to overthrow Capitalism by triggering a domino effect? Or You think they were bunch of Russian Nationalists?
X : I do not really know
Me: Allow me to ask one more question, have you ever read the German Ideology by Marx? Or Das Capital? Sort of we are living in the shadow of their books.
X : No, I haven’t
Me: Then how the heck you are judging me that Marxism failed when you refute to read Marx! By the way, didn’t you know Marxism and Communism cover everything from Historical Materialism, to Dialectical Materialism, to Poetry, to Economics, to History, Sociology, Music, Science of Revolution, Anthropology, and even were the early authors of International Political Economy?!
X : No, I haven’t, I think that the reality is to fight Syria’s claws from taking over Lebanon?
Me : By supporting one reactionary ultra nationalist camp against its similar antithesis?
X : It is not that, but this one is the lesser evil, unlike your awaited revolution!!
Me: Awaited Revolution? That is what Communism is about for you? Personally I support Communism because it is the only salvation for the people, because all other solutions would be hopping from one solution to another…. What is your alternative? Specially you seem you got no clue about economical world relations?
X : (Hesitant) I got no alternative
Me: Ok, you got no alternative, you never read neither Marx nor Lenin, but you attack them anyways, and you got no platform and no nothing. You think there is no class struggle, and it is a nationalist cause, and allow me to add, that you said the other day that the real left is to be 14th of March, which aims to bury Lebanon with the WTO. Tell me something, why the heck you call yourself leftist again?
X : Listen, my friends are waiting for me at the table
Me: Till we talk again
X : Indeed
Me: One last thing, to be secular does not mean you are a left-wing, and there was a comrade back in 1920 who said: “I say I am a socialist because there is no socialism but Communism”
X : (Smiling): Till we talk later
Me: (Raising a toast): Cheers

(X keeps bumping into me from one pub after the other; however, he just says hi and runs away, I doubt that he decided to read Marx in any case, we got a long road to go for emancipating the working class)

No War but Class War

PS: Coming Soon, a discussion with a member of the Lebanese Communist Party

Lessons From the July War (One Year Anniversary)

Introduction

The July War probably will always be remembered as what Kofi Anan, when he was UN General Secretary, “the war where children died more than the combatants”. This of course was from the Lebanese side, whereby 1/3 of over 1200 martyrs were children. Till this very day, civilians are wounded or killed from cluster bombs left from the racist Zionist nation: Israel. Best archive regarding the details of the July War, situation of the refugees, attrocities of the Israelis, media war, and everything else is the official Samidoun Website.

Till this very day, I keep remembering how I heard the sound of the Israeli airplanes hovering over Beirut, while Israeli warships remained bombed the Lebanese civilians (and not as the Zionists claim: Hezbollah). The war displaced in less than one month ¼ of the population (one million out of four million), while figures like the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch severely condemned such aggressiveness. The Israeli army, preparing for such a war, insisted to annihilate Hezbollah, and ended up as laughing stocks in the military arena, while their entire purpose ended up making Hezbollah as heroes through out the Arab world and anti-US imperialist activists (much to the dislike of the Bush Administration).

Lessons from Israel’s side

Ze’ev wrote a lot in the Israeli media that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) intercepted several Hezbollah operations but still never increased their security. The war broke out when Hezbollah militants broke through the borders of Israel, destroyed a tank, killed certain IDF soldiers, and kidnapped two hostages to be negotiated for swapping soldiers. Israel instead decides to “bring Lebanon backwards 20 years” which was in ruins and destruction from the civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion.

The Israelis were lost on what to do, Olmert (Prime Minister), Levni (Minister of External Affairs), Peretz (Minister of Defense), and their biggest clown Dan Halutz (Chief of Staff), didn’t issue a unilateral statement. Their goal was in agreement to inflict biggest damage to Lebanon under the banner of ‘self-defense’. At first, they declared that they will destroy Lebanon. Then they sharpened their speech and declared that they will do whatever it takes to restore their two ‘beloved’ soldiers. Afterwards, they decided to destroy Hezbollah, and eventually, they announced they are rebuilding a peaceful middle east whereby ‘the Jews can enjoy peace with their neighbors’. Last logo was ‘Israel is doing what it takes to protect itself and afterwards they focused their propaganda on fighting Hezbollah and terrorism. We have to keep in mind that the July war broke out amidst confrontations in the West Bank, but unlike the West Bank, the case of Lebanon was much complicated for this pathetic excuse of called soldiers. Real soldiers do not bomb civilians blindly. To be exact, the behavior of the Israelis in the July War is similar to the atrocities of the Serbian army, kill blindly anyone who carries the Lebanese citizenship.

The Israelis directly placed the residents of Lebanon as hostages by bombing 99% of the routes leading outside Lebanon (from Syria) as well as bombing the airport while the Ships performed a siege. The Red Cross constantly complained that the Israelis held desperately needed aid to the Lebanese. The atrocities were too horrific. The first large massacre was of the residents of Marwaheen (a close bordering village). The Israelis of course justified their acts by ‘claiming’ that they warned the residents to evacuate. The truth was, they gave the residents of Marwaheen one hour to evacuate, after days of bombing every available car, route, gas station, and half of the village. The people of Marwaheen didn’t have anywhere to go, so they sought asylum to their neighbors, the UNIFIL who refused to give them refugees. Afterwards, Israel bombed them as they were going to their village as they were returning from UNIFIL. Wow, how the pilots were courageous in bombing those poor civilians (of course Israel defended itself in such a situation according to Condi Rice). 90% of the times Israel never warned its residents to evacuate, or sadistically gave them short time to bomb. Churches and Mosques were bombed because refugees were hiding, while Zionists argued that the Red Cross are lying to the world. Those who condemned Israel’s atrocities on an international level were accused of anti-semitism. Israel’s butchery of over 1200 civilians was considered self-defense in the eyes of Bush. 5000 wounded Lebanese were considered as “They should have disarmed Hezbollah” logo. In Lebanon, Olmert cartoons were compared to Hitler, while the fascination is Israel took a whole year to kick out PERMENANTLY about 710,000 Palestinians in 1948 and did it in three weeks in Lebanon.

When the Qana massacre occurred (Part II), the Israelis invented all types of bullshits. Some again bluntly used it that this house witnessed a missile coming from this house to their side, others argued that Hezbollah bombed their own residents. When the CNN reporters described the horrors of the Qana massacre, the CNN head-office kept asking if the Israelis warned them to evacuate while the correspondent repeated for a hundred times that the Israelis bombed every means to escape. This also to add that the Israelis broke a three day seizes fire to bomb Lebanon (and hence they bombed with their artillery and later disregarded the whole thing and used their airplanes).

The Red Cross, UNIFIL, al-Jazeera, BBC, humanitarian aid also were bombed by the Israelis. They tried to impose a media blackout on the situation, and only gave all the journals one-side of the situation while they themselves enjoyed massive media support. The CNN for example would repeat on TV a lady weeping in Israel (despite the fact they have bomb-shelters) while CNN overlooked how Israel bombed civilians in a funeral burying their beloved (amongst other things).

When the seize fire deadline was announced by the security council, when UN resolution 1701 was announced, the Israelis used their unlimited artillery to inflict damage on Lebanon as much as possible. Most of the economic institutions were damaged, hospitals damaged, bridges torn down, greatest oil spill in the history of the Mediterranean occurred when the Jieh Generator was bombed, and worse 1200 perished without the war criminals being held accountable.

Israel, like the US in Iraq, disregarded the whole UN institution and decided to wage a war which will make them appear to be clowns in military affairs. They were over-confident that they at first sent an elite squad to Maroon Ras, and ended up annihilated. They couldn’t occupy it fully till the end of the war, so was the situation with Bint Jubail. Each time they claimed victory in this tiny village, they were kicked out. Most of the Lebanese celebrated every time an Israeli tank exploded, and henceforth, the Israeli army is no longer viewed as an invincible army. From sending a tiny military elite squad, Peretz had to afterwards recall 30,000 Reservists at the Lebanese borders, and his goal was downsized to pushing Hezbollah beyond the Litani River, rather annihilating Hezbollah.

Israel was hindered from purging the whole of Lebanon due to the fact a pro-US government was present with two Hezbollah ministers and 4 opposition ministers. Hence minor locations were spared the bombings, and these points became focal points for refugee centers.

The July war taught us different things in relations to Israel and military warfare. Other than the traditional logic of Zionists of “self-proclaiming” themselves as superior to others ethnically, they are cold-blooded murderers. They lack democracy as well, specially when a couple of Communist activists protested against the war, they were beaten up by the Zionist supporters.

Second, the IDF is no longer invincible; rather they can be defeated in face to face combat. Their greatest advantage remains their warplanes. However, the underdogs caught up against their “invincible tanks: the Mirkavas”, and this means in the near future, their planes can be solved in a military perspective. The Israelis for the first time feel they are hostages due to their government’s racial policies. Sadly, the Jewish Proletariat remain mostly in general adopting this racial ideology, and still believe what the Zionist history are trying to recreate their own history of glories. They are unaware that their atrocities and butcheries have caused Arab Nationalism to be replaced with Islamist activists.

Third, the IDF lack any intelligence and long vision preparations. The IDF and IAF (Israeli Air Forces) bombed blindly the hell out of the Lebanese Army, while they were demanding that the Lebanese Army should protect its Northern Borders. Well, how can the Lebanese Army do that if Israel tagged the Lebanese Army (like the Lebanese Civilians) as ‘terrorist targets’ despite the fact the Lebanese army was not involved except in relief activities. Well done Peretz. Bush today praises the Lebanese army, but forgot to argue why Israel should be held accountable for that butchery of the Lebanese Army.

Fourth, the Israelis lack any logic. After bombing the hell out of Lebanon, they expected that the Lebanese government would sign peace treaty. They left cluster-bombs that still explode today in innocent people. They destroyed the economy of Lebanon, and still they weep they are the victims. The UN is nothing but social forums to chat between the superpowers.
Fifth, the war with Lebanon as exposed the weaknesses of the US satellite regimes in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. Those regimes were heavily involved in suppressing their people rather boycotting Israeli goods and expelling the Israeli diplomats. Moreover, the Israelis have to consider that the more they annihilate Lebanese and Palestinian people, the weaker their allied regimes would be. Again, other than to worry on the military level, they also have to worry on the regional level. The Islamist activists of Egypt would become in the future a new headache for Tel Aviv other than Tehran.

Sixth, Hezbollah became national heroes in Lebanon. Their remarkable performance in the July war made the Israeli look military dumb. Kids while playing strategic games (such as Generals and War Hammer) use the term “Shoo, ana mastool mitl el-Israelieh” (Translation: I am stupid like the Israelis?). Anti-Imperialist activists disregarded the Islamist side of Hezbollah and adopted them as National Liberation Movement against US puppies. Hated figures like Galloway or Chavez became more popular for their opposition to the Israeli aggression. Moreover, the war proved that Israel has no where to go but to ditch this Zionist propaganda in order to sooth this Islamist surge of activists.

Seventh, political calculations were wrong. The Israelis thought that a civil war would erupt as they were bombing Hezbollah in Lebanon. What happened was the Lebanese on a grass roots level were holding hands with each other as everyone was involved in assisting refugees. Muslims and Christians interacted with each other on all scales, sadly this euphoria didn’t last much after the war. One of the rarest occasions that Lebanon witnessed such unity, despite the political division lines, was the July war.

Finally, the Zionists should learn to demolish this racial ideology. Zionism has transformed Judaism from a Sect to a race. Israel can never enjoy such a peace (which they do not want based on their brutality in the July war) if they pretend people to forget or simply subdue to US satellite puppies. First time the US and Israeli armies connected was in Lebanon in 1982, the US and the Israelis almost ended up shooting each other in separate occasions because the Zionist IDF were too racial even to the US soldiers (check Cursed is the Peace Maker, memoirs of Phil Habib).

The last theme, as Marxists, our war with Israel is not ethnic, rather it is class struggle. Those Zionist leaders abused their own people, and in the end from that side, we have no choice but gradually emancipate the Jews as part of the Proletariat so that they can get rid of their leaders/oppressors in a class awareness perspective. The July war, was the first war without having Ariel Sharon, and some speculate if Sharon was still conscious, he wouldn’t have entered this war out of the blues.

This is the first war where Israel severely suffered military losses. Not in its history they suffered most, but history witnessed how Israel managed to sneak away with its war crimes and quasi-ethnic cleansing of non-Jews. Israel has to learn to accept the fact that people are people wherever you go, and no peace can be imposed without the intent of abandoning those bulldozers of demolishing the houses of the Palestinians.

Lessons from the July War (Lebanese Side)

Lebanon’s myth of warriors and resistance became known through out the world. The war they suffered last year was the perfect example of how a people of different tendencies and political division line, stood one hand on the grassroots level to oppose Israel’s aggression. The IDF was so bloody that the majority of the Lebanese stood one hand in resisting the Israeli aggression.

The July war was not a war between Hezbollah and Lebanon. Hezbollah were not the only ones resisting the Israeli aggression, rather the whole Lebanese were involved one way or the other against Israel. The backbone of this resistance was not Hezbollah’s superb military performance, rather it was the success of the civilian resistance. How can it be a war only with Hezbollah when the Lebanese on all scales were being bombed, including the Lebanese Army? Hezbollah wouldn’t have been able to do anything if the majority of the Lebanese didn’t give shelter to their fellow displaced citizens, something Israel wasn’t anticipating.

When the war broke out, a lot blamed Hezbollah’s general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, for dragging Lebanon to the war with Israelis. He said it clearly at Day 1: “I will take responsibility for everything that happens.” Luckily for Nasrallah, the civilian resistance did everything else other than going head to head with the Israelis militarily (although we heard rumors that the Lebanese Communist Party, The Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and AMAL movement were active down there as a military support).. Just as Hezbollah inflicted maximum damage on the IDF, the civilian movement, which included all sorts of nationalities from Europe and the US. Probably the first grassroots organization to be active is Samidoun, which was made of activists involved on all scales (except of military) of resistance. As Israel’s brutality appeared on different victims through out Lebanon paralleled with Hezbollah’s ground and sea victories, everyone hated the IDF and supported Hezbollah. Some logic was that “since the Israelis are going to bomb me, I might as well support them” and the sort. Hezbollah’s popularity spread due to Israeli war crimes and military defeats.

While political division lines were hard and shining, the grassroots witnessed different issues. Shiites for the first time interacted with Christians during the relief work. When villages or Dahhieh regions were emptied, Hezbollah’s security proved powerful as no empty house was robbed. The stress and anger was directed towards the Israelis (except for few people). The TV witnessed heated debates between the politicians of 14th of March and the Opposition, while these lines popped out occasionally during the relief campaigns. Some sites publicly endorsed Hezbollah, others simply focused on how Israeli leadership is made of cold-blooded murderers and sited their atrocities. Some activists (like the Free Patriotic Movement and Democratic Left Movement) refuted to work with each other in some occasions.

Racism appeared when the Palestinians were not allowed to enter the relief areas. A lot of upper and middle class Palestinians live through out Lebanon, specially in the urban areas. They were not allowed to seek asylum in the schools and relief centers because they lacked the Lebanese citizenship despite the fact they lived all their lives in Lebanon.

Worse, the scandal of the High Commission for Relief proved to be incapable of doing anything. They lacked the stock to support this wave of refugees (suspicion of informal deals were directed towards the High Commission for Relief. They said that they were not prepared for War, but to be exact isn’t Lebanon considered to be in a dubbed earthquake region? Lebanon never signed a peace treaty with Israel, and indirectly we are still in a state of war with the Zionists. Sometimes food brought to refugees was outdated. Luckily the Civilian resistance was there to compensate that disgrace.

Despite the war, some locations witnessed regular nightlife, (safe areas from bombings). Well no safe area was present, because the Israelis bombed such places, my house danced a lot to nearby bombings in a ‘safe haven’. Majority of Christians and Muslims were pissed of the situation because Christians and Muslims were killed.

The shocking thing is the realization of a lot of Lebanese with ‘patriotic’ logic, having a second nationality and FLEEing Lebanon. I remember clearly the anger of staying in Lebanon to rot while those were running away, only to return and brag about themselves while we were left here to rot!!

The death toll and social life was horrific on everyone, but more horrific to the refugees in specific. Plenty of the activists were university graduates from top universities who decided to pitch in their experience to help their fellow kin. The daily massacres left a lot frustrated and the sensation of helpless against Israeli War planes was disgusting.

Israeli fliers were dropped mocking the Lebanese on how they will burn in hell and witness how their Lebanon will burn to the ashes used to be dropped everywhere. Children with psychological problems are not solved till now (and the number is huge), while ¼ of Lebanon would permanently clutch to Hezbollah due to their military performance in avenging their deceased loved ones and their refugee status. A lot of people walked from the borders to Beirut despite all the horrors taking place because they lacked the means to drive, or it was too risky to drive. If the Israelis bombed the BBC, al-Jazeera, and the Red Cross convoys, their cars are sitting ducks. A lot of refugee buses carrying white flags, heading to Beirut, were bombed. Tyre and Saida (two of the five major cities of Beirut) were rendered destroyed and empty. Tyre, pre-July War, had a huge anti-Hezbollah masses, witnessed the majority of these masses switching 180 degrees. Let us face it, the Zionists are dumb.

Nasrallah never the less was regarding during the July war by some as the man who opened a Pandora’s Box. “Who in the right mind would do such an operation against blood thirsty Zionists without consulting the rest of the Lebanese?” Jumblatt till this day replies to Hassan Nasrallah: “Your Divine victory ended with divine extra billions of dollars of debt” or “Your Divine victory became in the end of the war as ‘If only I knew’.

Galloway and Chavez established huge popularity among the Lebanese (and remained so among the opposition). Chavez kicked out the Israeli ambassador and cut ties with Israel, while Galloway (despite my dislikeness to him) was the only one to reflect the situation in Lebanon on Sky News (despite the imposed corporate Media block-out on Lebanon). The Arab Leaders proved they are traitors to the people living in Lebanon and to their own. Some (like couple of gulf nations) opened their land to allow US flow of weaponry to Israel. None of them boycotted Israel, rather Bolton in an interview with Marcel Ghanem said loud and clear: “A lot of Arab Nations asked the US to allow Israel to bomb Lebanon to get rid of Hezbollah”. Henceforth, the ones we can think of are Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and Jordan. They suppressed their own people to demonstrate in solidarity with Lebanon. They never exerted any political pressure on Israel during the war, rather they sent money donations (which we never saw later) to shut their people up. There couldn’t have been a great stand of an Egyptian artist, A’del Imam, carrying a candle on stage and weeping for the butchered people in Qana.

The fact that the government was 14th of March dominated, saved minor locations from being eradicated by Israel. Yet, the disgrace was the government meeting with Condi Rice at the US embassy for lunch despite the fact Rice said it loud and clear they are sending laser guided missiles to make the accuracy of the Israelis better (two days of the Qana massacre) as well as the fact she was celebrating in Tel Aviv that a new Middle East was being shaped. A day later, the Lebanese Prime Minister refused to meet with her and she had to tune down her logos to “helping Israel to defend itself”. Well, I demand that Olmert and Peretz be dumped in the Lebanese South among his victims!!!! The government also witnessed a meeting of the Arab Foreign Ministers (under US blessings of course), and then they traveled to the UN to launch UN resolution 1701. The opposition was disastrous politically, when the Minister (currently resigned) of Foreign Affairs Fawzi Salloukh went to the UN, the Israeli diplomat made a fool out of him. It was till Tarek Metri (Minister of Culture) went he reflected the situation better, “As I begin to speak, seven civilians were just killed 10 minutes ago in Marj Ayoun [Christian Village in the South].

Donations were raced to Lebanon after Lebanon remained one additional month under siege. The donations, on state level, were to assist the Lebanese Government to remain strong in its position. The relief was so disastrous that Palestinian refugees welcomed Lebanese refugees in their REFUGEE CAMP in Ain el Hilwi, while the Lebanese activists didn’t allow urban refugees to enter the schools (which didn’t have much of humanistic conditions and supplies).

After the July war was over, the division lines returned and reflected on the grassroots level.

Bashar el Assad, a president who raises logos which he cant satisfy, threatened to kick out the government. He took the whole victory of the Lebanese in resisting Hezbollah as his private own despite the fact he didn’t lay a finger to assist the Lebanese (rather his staff was busy ripping off Lebanese entering boarders). Couple of Israeli missiles hit Syrian borders, he made it clear ‘it was on the Lebanese side’ and ‘threatened if they did hit Syrian borders’ (which was totally amusing of that President since a week prior to the July war two Israeli planes flew over his head).

The Arab regimes focused on how to isolate Hezbollah, while Israeli planes remained flying over Lebanon. Three days after the July war was over, they carried an operation in Northern Lebanon and their operatives were butchered. IAF planes kept flying over Lebanon and breaches remained from their side loud and clear which caused the UNIFIL and Israel to almost enter close encounters. The first to kiss ass with Israel were the Germans, who spearheaded the Navy UNIFIL to monitor accession of weaponry to Lebanon from the sea (in the greatest military transfer since World War II) in order to erase their history of the Holocaust. Their military staff almost entered a confrontation with the Israelis (specially when Helicopters detected missile locks from IAF planes.

The war, despite this national unity, triggered a further heated division lines among the government and the Lebanese. At least from this dimension, Israel was successful in polarizing Lebanon as anti-Hezbollah (affiliated to Iran and Syria in the eyes of the Government supporters) and Pro – Hezbollah (regarded as the protectors of Lebanon in the eyes of their supporters except for a lunatic general who sees Hezbollah as a chance to make it to presidency). The UNIFIL are suspected to become part of NATO’s strike force in the long-run. People wonder why it is only from the Lebanese Side they are still present in the border since the Israelis keep breaching borders as UNIFIL remain helpless.

The Lebanese Marxists proved to be still efficient due to their outstanding performance in the relief campaign and resisting Israeli media. Fawwaz Traboulsi and Elias Khoury expressed the Lebanese sentiment during the war. Traboulsi trashed the Saudi ambassador to Washington when that ambassador said that he opposed undemocratic decisions taken by Hezbollah, Traboulsi's reply was "when Saudi Arabia had democracy before?" Elias Khoury was perfect in attacking the US satellites Arab regimes.

The Lebanese still didn’t learn to rely on themselves. Each of the two camps has its own foreign sponsors. The only time that happened, it happened during one month called the July war. Now, they await to go butcher each other. (Like Hamas and Fatah). Nevertheless, and despite all the loses on the humanistic and materialistic level, Lebanon emerged victorious in the face of the Zionists, and a lesson emerged that a bully can be taught a harsh lesson in military warfare, they still need to be taught lessons in humanity. The Lebanese need to be taught a lesson to be less racist towards the Palestinians and a lot others as well.

THERE IS NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR

For an emancipated Proletariat despite race, nationality, religion, gender, and tendency!

Hasta La Victoria Siempre
MFL

Investigating the Lebanese Left (Part III): Opportunities and Threats

Check Part I and Part II

Opportunities and Threats

The most powerful tool to build a progressive platform which emancipates the proletariat despite race, gender, color, tendency, nationality, and religion is knowledge. Without knowledge, no radical movement will take place. The Democratic Leftist Movement (DLM) tried to do a last minute patch-work and ended up supporting any party in face of Syria.

The first step in understanding how to build a movement in Lebanon depends on a two-fold dimension in terms of knowledge. The first is understanding the history and its political/sociological/economical actors through out the history. In the end, a person would come to you and say: “why do I need to understand what Presidents Helou or Shamoun did back in the 1950s and 1960s? I care about the present!!”

In a summary, the present is due to the result of the past. The whole current crisis is nothing but one pit-stop among several pit-stops, and more would come. The present is the result of the past. Whatever happens, from a Marxist historical point of view perspective, it can be analyzed in order to evaluate the present and even predict the future.

The second dimension understands the whole world in terms how it functions. As Zinoviev stressed on the notion (at the 2nd Congress of the Third International), the Capitalists got their own international, we need our own international to face theirs. Capitalism has been evolving, while class difference has been on the increase. This has been the case through out the world, and not only Lebanon (although it is funny how the DLMers think that class difference would shrink once Lebanon enters the WTO). The whole world is interrelated as what Immanuel Wallerstein would call “the grid” or our simpler definition: a Matrix. Each nod effects the other. For example, Mexico’s economy crumbled down in 1994, most of the countries received shock-waves as a result of this collapsed economy. Chavez won elections recently in Venezuela, it had its impact in the Middle East. Over 3.6 Trillion dollars rotate on daily basis, and the WTO refutes to integrate the Tobin Tax (taxation on Direct Foreign Investment) on the basis that this is intervention on the freedom of the market, which to them comes a priority over stable markets. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the global and local dynamics from a Marxist perspective in order to build a progressive revolutionary platform (unless the Anarchists want to say Anarchist, but I know even they rely on our methodology to criticize Capitalism).

This of course involves the knowledge of what each leftist school preaches. For me, for example, Social Democrats in the 21st century seized to be leftists as their entire economies are based on what Schroeder said in his final term as “hailing Blairism as a third way” which has nothing welfare oriented rather privatization and market liberation. For me I say I am a Socialist, because as comrade Serrati said at the Second Congress of the Third International (1920): “I say I am Socialist because there is no Socialism but Communism”, I agree, the rest have evolved to become Social Democrats (who afterwards evolved towards the Right-Wing”.

This leaves me with two schools who at least preserved their revolutionary aspects, the radical schools of Communism and Anarchism. A lot of reactionary trends distorted these two schools’ aims (despite my heavy disagreement), but the core essence is their aims. For me, Stalinism is not even within the leftist school, it is a form of distorted socialism merged with Nationalism, one-man-show program, and selling out the Proletariat for Party gains. Tony Cliff called it State Capitalism; Ted Grant called it simply reactionary. My primary focus would be on Marxism in facing Stalinism and some “ultra-revolutionaries” who think the left is about supporting Hezbollah or liberating Palestine.

Again, as I mentioned earlier (in Part I), no one has a clue what is Marxism but self-proclaim themselves as Marxists, and some call themselves leftists because they think secularism is a leftist ideology). In any case, the world itself shrank in size, just as competition forced capitalism in less than a century to make the world small (specially with the breakdown of the Soviet Union).

The Internet itself created a large universe and made the world smaller. A lot of us use the messenger for example to exchange information and experience with comrades from all over the world. We are blessed with the greatest archive to exist in the Marxist History. Actually even the Anarchists use the archive called: “Marxist Internet Archive” (MIA) (link: www.marxists.org) which includes all forms of information on Marxism and other thinkers, as well as historical analysis and much more diversified topics. The immense material of the website makes us fortunate in order to inherit their experiences and victories, their errors and defeats, and most importantly, we learn from them. The DLMers would say such information are irrelevant to the current situation, excuse me Mr and Ms DLM, how the heck you define yourselves as the left, if you have no clue whatsoever about what the left is really about. Another person, from the LCP, would come and say: “these material are fascinating and nice to know about, but that is it”, wrong again, how about trying to find out why their party crumbled down to ashes, and more importantly why they are Communists? Why uncountable numbers sacrificed their lives while singing proudly the International?

Communication between the different comrades over the world has always been present, but at a much slower pace. Furthermore, the revolution in mass media paved way to expose Marxism to more people than ever. Contacts between the active internationals, such as the Defense of Marxism, Committee for the Workers’ International, International Socialist Organization, and the International Socialist Tendency, have taken place. In fact, I established contacts with all of them. My advocates however are the Defense of Marxism, for they have been successful to spread in 3rd World nations such as Pakistan, and the heroics of Lal Khan and his fellow comrades. The CWI have been rather controversial during the July War, but they have been also active in Palestine and Israel, while Comrade Yossi in Israel has written one of the finest pieces in attacking Zionism and shedding light on the Zionists’ shameful racist history.

Yet, different problems rose while communicating between the Internationals and the 3rd World Countries. Some of them failed to understand the situation of the nations on domestic level. For example, the IST were trapped in a certain Cliffite framework despite the fact Tony Cliff himself at a one point was rebelling against all stagnant figures. The IST blindly were trapped in the anti-Imperialist perspective, and believe that the RESPECT coalition can take place elsewhere as simple as that. Allow me to be clear, Galloway’s famous interview with Sky News was fascinating because he did shed light to the situation we are living in, but he is no revolutionary as the Palestinian Jew Tony Cliff. We can’t just blindly raise our finger against any anti-imperialist maneuver against the US. Hezbollah are not a solution to Lebanon, specially for their Proletariat. Moreover, we will do wrong the Proletariat to simply support any feudal or sectarian feudal system for in the end, our goal is the emancipation of the Proletariat. Already all Internationals agree that al-Qa’eda are much worse as a regime than the United States administration, and will never qualify as an ally (thank heavens for that). The IST have some hard working members in Lebanon, and they are willing to get their hands dirty to achieve their goals, but again, they should avoid to fall into the fiasco of the Opposition/Government, for in the long-run our goal is to establish a new pillar of a Marxist Movement out of the ashes of the old. I had several disagreements with them, but at least they are much better grounded than the rest. Patience is virtue, and it is not necessarily at our life time establish a revolution, rather if we can pave way for the next generation, or even the next five generations, then that route should be followed. Europe and its circumstances can’t be exactly replicated. I should note that the affiliates with the IST in Lebanon coexisted a powerful relief network which hit rank 3 during the July War after the Red Cross and Karitas.

The CWI and ISO have established contacts with several Lebanese activists, and they too are well-grounded in the ideology. When discussing with an ex-member of the ISO, I was fascinated how similar we thought, sadly that was on the individual basis. The organizations have been in conflict for a while (and they in turn against the IST) for petty syndicate laws, and then worked on increasing the gaps in order to establish their own influential spheres. These too followed were affected up to a certain extent with the powerful character with Cliff, but they expanded their sphere on others as well. Most importantly, when we say we are Trotskyites, it does not mean we worship Lev Davidovich Bronstein aka Leon Trotsky, but we separate ourselves from the Stalinists and their reactionary movements. Some of the comrades in the previous three internationals fell in the error of transforming Trotsky as an icon. All three internationals should be aware not to follow a superior attitude of the West (usually undermining the Comrades intentionally/unintentionally capabilities or rush them to be active).

The most as I mentioned have been my favorites have been the Defense of Marxism. I established contacts with couple of members from North America by chance. Our logic have been parallel, and I could not have agreed more with any international. I just wish that all the internationals drop their petty clashes, and unify for the sake of the Proletariat, but sadly that can never happen. The Defense of Marxism have been utmost patient, stressing on establishing the clandestine nucleus in Lebanon, and no matter how many years it took, the clandestine nucleus should be formed and solid. It should be based on the sciences of Marxism, and all members should be ready to expand the sphere and be practical on grassroots level. No matter how many “comrades” of the DLM or LCP that tell me this is a waste of time, and real emancipation starts from above, I would reply that this is not the way of the revolutionary, this is the way of the reactionary reformists who would do nothing but sell out on their supporters. I seriously doubt that life in Tsarist Russia was better than Lebanon now, but with mass building via establishing secret debate circles in different locations, then spreading to different streets, after the clandestine was forged, they eventually became prepared till the Bolsheviks’ revolution was isolated, and treason rose from the inside under the bloody reign of Stalin. Patience was what needed. Lenin and Trotsky refuted to reconcile with any person who deviated one step away from Marxism, and eventually they both took that beliefs to their grave. Lebanon at least allows freedom of expression (unless a feudal/sectarian politician is targeted), and chances are much easier with the availability of internet, because the success of the clandestine depends highly on the success of the flow of the communication. If there is no flow of communication, no progressive movement can ever form, whether from a horizontal or vertical management perspective.

The Independent Leftist Movements did their impact for almost a decade within the leftist sphere in Lebanon, but as I mentioned them in Part I, they were meant to create space in the absence of radical parties, not someone stupid from the DLM telling me that I have to be 14th of March to join their glorious shrinking movement or an LCP telling me we have to support Hezbollah in order to oppose the CIA agents in the government. What is even sadder, almost none of the “comrades” know that Lenin was not only a revolutionist, but also one fascinating economist. These acclamations are the cowards’ path to either attain opportunities to become leaders, or to avoid the real path of hardship and pain of establishing the underground vanguard party which will REALLY seek a better life for the Proletariat. We, as “leftists”, who I define as the revolutionaries, need to establish activist space to be existent, currently, we lack that mechanism, while the different factions of the left (be that Communist or Anarchist) clashing with each other and among each other. There is a saying that is popular in Lebanon that goes: “Every six comrades gather up, they open a store” indicating to what extent the left is divided.

I must stress to the revolutionaries, in case any clandestine should begin, the deadliest enemies would be those who claim to be leftist. The LCP, ever stuck with the greed to be the axis of the Lebanese left, would fight to the skin any potential radical movement to be active in Lebanon (and I assume that is the case elsewhere) not to exclude the right-wingers DLM with their hypocritical logic that “either you are with us or you are a Syrian Baathi agent.”

A lot of proposals have been given regarding the unity of the left, but the problem is where do we begin and how do we begin? Are the Durzi sectarian Progressive Socialist Party of the feudal/Sectarian lord Walid Junblatt leftists? They lost whatever socialism they had when Lebanon crumbled into militia cantons after 1984, and eventually dissolved the Lebanese National Movement. Someone proposed that the SSNP – Ina’am Raad faction can be tagged leftist, since he aimed to transform the party from a Syrian Nationalist to radical socialist party (and tagged by several current SSNP a traitor)? Are those Arab Nationalists who attempt to revive Arab Nationalism which inspired the Stalinists in the 1960s leftists? What about the DLM, whose sole foundation was to construct a unified left but ended up as puppies to Sa’ad Harriri and Samir Jaajaa? What about the PFLP of George Habbash’s faction? We all know the PFLP-General Command ended up to be a Muslim based rather a Socialist based perspective? George Habbash’s faction was Stalinist, mixed partial Marxist revolutionary goals. This faction is highly controversial as Leila Khaled’s famous operations still win the hearts of the plenty in the Arab World (including mine to say the truth, I really respect her courage).

The last to call for the unity of the left was the Lebanese Communist Party. Yet, experience taught us that the current leadership (as well as the post-1990 command) want nothing but hegemony of the left. On the last celebration of the Birth of the LCP, its general secretary Khaled Hdaidi called for the unity of the left in Lebanon, but afterwards the LCP’s star Ziad Rahbani delivered the most Stalinist speech ever heard: “If you are not part of the party, you are a parasite.” (I guess I am a parasite in that case so are tens of thousands as well). My analysis as well as others of the fellow comrades, the LCP did such an initiation to get the free lancers in working on the project separately, while the LCP isolates them and achieves political hegemony over them. If the LCP want to establish real unity, they should start with doing serious revision within themselves, as well as their Democratic Youth League.

About four years ago, there was another attempt to achieve a similar unity, which was called the Leftist Platform. The project, like the Khat el Moubashar (Direct Line) started with great hopes, but barely lasted two months. It at least brought the first real attempt to unify the left, while its cadres were the youth. Green activists or Socialist based Gay right activists even joined, along with the Independent Leftist Movements, Trotskyites, Communist Students (an off – shoot from the LCP and ended up dissolving itself within the DLM), as well as other freelancers. The disastrous result was they fought with each other, and the Leftist Platform collapsed. It should be noted that they were all youth during those meetings, and the only old person was none-ever but the clown Elias Attallah trying to establish hegemony like he did now with the ridiculous DLM.

Other left-wing organizations became active in Lebanon despite the fact they are not 100% leftist such as Green Line. Green Line started as a tiny NGO which grew to become one of the most powerful grass root organization on the ground not only to protect Lebanon from the environmental damage generated by Capitalism, but also to be a pioneer in facing corporate globalization. They may lack a revolutionary platform, but at least they achieved some down to earth goals on the ground, and they got radical factions that oppose any negotiations with the WTO and go straight against it.

Another group, left-wing in nature, and radical, but still has a long road to go is ATTAC. ATTAC on an international scale is diversified and suffered major blows. I will not dwell on the status of ATTAC on the international level, but will focus on Lebanon. Each group of ATTAC throughout the world has its own autonomy, some have been reformists others have been revolutionary. ATTAC Lebanon has been catching my attention lately with their released brochures, and seems they adopted the revolutionary side. They would prove important in Lebanon for alter-globalization activism and in the absence of any experienced movement in such a domain. After further investigation, ATTAC started with the wrong people opening it as a social club till the radicals established the real alter-globalization movement in Lebanon. Time will tell if they can have any impact or not specially the current generation has to a challenge to clear the blunders of the older generation, but based on the brochure I read, I think they might be on the right track, but still, like Green Line they are not a revolutionary party, specially the Proletariat’s Party. Their activism is based on supporting alter globalization movement and fix the system. They like Green Line are potential activist space for the time being.

The third category are Helem, the first NGO established in the Arab world whose task is to defend the rights of the Homosexuals/Queer/Bisexuals individuals to exist equally as those who are tagged as “straights”. Helem means in the English Language as Dream. Probably they did one a hell of an entry in the Lebanese Scene when they demonstrated against the US invasion of Iraq. While all traditional parties were demonstrating, a group of independent leftists, half of them reformists in nature, along with the Gay Movement did a symbolic parade that topped the news in the campaign, spearheaded by the different factions of the Leftist Platform, under the Banner of No War! No Dictatorship! (ie No to the invasion and no to Saddam). The Rainbow flag appeared the first time in Lebanon under much controversy, specially homosexuals/bisexuals were and still are persecuted on social level (and sometimes police level). The topic of Helem would deserve another post on its own, something I will hope to do soon. I will mention briefly some inputs I gathered on that NGO. It definitely takes courage to establish such an NGO despite the Arab or religious atmosphere (be that Christian or Muslim) we live currently; I would also like to add that a lot of the leftwing themselves face difficulty to digest such activists, specially those who embrace socialism/anarchism as the path to emancipate the society. Sadly, some gay activists became isolationists and focused on establishing themselves as a minority against the “straights”, or believe that the only solution to establish their existence is through gay coalitions. The left-wing gay movements tend to believe that the only way to achieve salvation to the society is through the emancipation of the society as a whole, similar to the left-wing feminists.

There have been a fourth NGO that aims towards Secularism, the Civil Society. This aims in promoting secularism, such as the “Conference of Secularism”, under the Patronage of the “Red Priest” Gregoir Haddad, but even within these activists, people fell into the error of opposition/government or 8th of March versus 14th of March. Within the movement, there have been secular activists who went against both trends, who are against both. Yet, secularism alone can’t be simply shoved into society. In any case, as I mentioned in my first part, being secular does not make you a leftist. Most of the hard-core business oriented business elites are secular usually in nature. The movement has been isolated, but at least it is like the others provides a miniature space for activism.

I stated some of the several “space” movements that aim to achieve couple of left-wing goals, but each is focused on a tiny aspect of the overall problem. They have been active but sadly they are not revolutionary parties. They can’t do change, they can only hinder what Capitalism will eventually bombard the people in Lebanon.

The most important factor dominating the Lebanese Left is the informal connections between different left-wing activists. To say the truth, Lebanon is not such a big place, and almost everyone knows everyone. Those informal nods are probably the closest thing to do an activity, as it appeared during the July War. A person wants to know something or needs a favor; Comrade X would give him Comrade Y for info. That is the case in Lebanon, but rarely anything works on a political level. I already displayed on a national scale how all such projects crumbled down without achieving any permanent results. Those networks are usually beneficial on academic or personal level, and sometimes like the whole nation is running in such a system, employment level (and not that much too). Those informal connections usually come in handy to break the ice between different organizations, but at the same time almost all the organizations (political and social) have something against the other, and end up scavenging in a competitive form, for glory. That is the case in most of the time, sadly. If there is a general interest to really rebuild the left in a progressive manner, then these informal contacts would prove handy.

The left has a long road to go through, and their members refuse to do the first most important thing to become at least leftist (depending on the school): Learn your history, and learn your ideology. That is why I am not affiliated with anyone in Lebanon because 90% each is scavenging against the other, specially on the political level. Platforms do not attract people, it is dogmatism that brings people, and not that many in the “Lebanese Left” since Sectarian elites are doing a better job, while the “Left-Wing” are caught up to encourage this sectarian movement or that.

In the end, the Proletariat are suffering, while clowns like the DLM would tell you: “The Proletariat would be victorious if 14th of March triumphs” while the LCP would go on an anti-thesis level: “The Proletariat would win if the CIA affiliated government is trashed.” To the DLMers, either disband or change your name. To the LCP, either learn what Marxism is really about or simply join Hezbollah. The radical ones in all political and institutional ones should leave those reactionary movements and form at least a unified revolutionary front.

No War But Class War

MFL