A sea of protesters wave Lebanese flags in Riadh el Solh square in Beirut on Friday in a bid to topple the government. ©2006 Christopher Allbritton
BEIRUT -- In a massive show of force, Lebanon's protestors loyal to Hezbollah and its political allies poured into the streets of downtown Beirut by the hundreds of thousands, dwarfing last weeks show of support for the government and delivering a sweeping rebuke to Lebanon's political establishment.
The streets, squares and bridges of several neighborhoods were a sea of red and white Lebanese flags as supporters of the Shi'ite groups Hezbollah and Amal, as well as the Christian groups Marida and the Free Patriotic Movement, took to the streets in an attempt to topple the U.S.-backed government.
"The real problem with this government is that they did not stand with us during the war," said Muhammad Obaid, 40, a Hezbollah supporter, echoing a common complaint of the opposition, which is also called the March 8 coalition.
Hezbollah, which is supported and armed by both Syria and Iran, captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12, prompting a massive retaliation by the Jewish state that turned into a 34-day war. More than 1,000 Lebanese died -- mostly civilians -- and the country's infrastructure and industries were devastated. Hezbollah feels that the government in Beirut, which is led by Sunni politician Fuad Siniora, didn't support it enough and even quietly hoped for it to lose the war so that the Shi'ite group would no longer be a viable political opponent.
Hezbollah emerged stronger than ever, however, and demanded more power in the government for itself and its allies in the March 8 coalition. After six cabinet ministers from their political bloc resigned, and Christian industry minister Pierre Gemayel was murdered, the March 8 forces hope to force the resignation of the Siniora government so that new elections can be held -- which they feel they will win.
"The government will fall today," Obaid said confidently.
Obaid comes from a small town in the Bekaa Valley east of Beirut, a stronghold for Hezbollah. He said that the group had paid him to drive his bus to ferry protestors to Beirut. From his village alone, he said there were four large buses and 15 minibuses.
By any count, the crowd was massive, easily topping 1 million people. It was unclear how many people were in the streets because of the sheer numbers, but today's protest may have surpassed the original 2005 protest that gave Siniora's bloc its name -- the March 14 movement. That protest, coming exactly a month after the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri, led to the end of Syria's 29-year occupation of Lebanon, a defeat the regime in Damascus would like to undo with its allies in Lebanon, such as Hezbollah.
Packed and partying crowds of mostly young people stretched from the Christian neighborhood of Gemayze to the east, to the government buildings ringed by concertina wire on the other side of downtown toward the west, and from the site of Hariri's grave near the port up to Sodeco Square in the Christian enclave of Achrafiye. They filled alleyways and overpasses, and all seemed to carry a flag of some sort.
Most carried the Lebanese flag, its red and white stripes framing a green cedar, but becoming a dramatic sweep when thousands upon thousands of the banners waved. But the Lebanese could not resist putting their own party's stamp on their outfits, with Hezbollah members draping the milita's flag about their shoulders and Michel Aoun's Free Patriot Movement supporters wearing orange sweatshirts or baseball caps.
The crowd for the most part was friendly and respectful of the call by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah not to damage property or resort to violence, but a group of young toughs did celebrate the murder of Pierre Gemayel, by saying, "Congratulations to Pierre, when is Geagea next?" Samir Geagea is the leader of another Christian political party called the Lebanese Forces and is particularly hated by the Shi'ites of Lebanon. "We want your wife, Hakim," they chanted referring to Geagea's nickname and his wife, considered one of the more beautiful women in Lebanon. Their jibe was an ugly, sexist chant.
They called the interior minister a Jew while Hezbollah security stood by, watching impassively. It was only after I asked the youths why they were chanting such things -- and their violent reaction when I said "I'm a reporter" in my badly accented Arabic -- that the Hezbollah security guard intervened.
"They are not polite," the guard said as he pushed me away roughly. "I don't want you talking to people who aren't polite."
The March 8 movement has vowed to stay in the streets, staging sit-ins until the government resigns. As night fell, trucks carrying portable toilets and water tanks arrived while tents were being set up in Martyrs' Square.
"If they don't step down, we will stay here," said Hayan Ismael, 22, a physics student from the Bekaa village of Bednayel and a supporter of another Christian group. He said protest organizers had timed the protests for Friday afternoon before the weekend to minimize the economic impact of shutting down the heart of Beirut, indicating that March 8 may be expecting a resolution by Monday morning. Downtown merchants have been complaining for months since the war about all the disruptions to business.
"Every day the government stays and doesn't step down, it makes the economy suffer," said Ismael.
Siniora, however, vowed last night not to step down.
"We will not allow a democratic government to be toppled or its institutions," Siniora said in a televised address. "Nor will we allow a state within a state. We are the legitimate government and responsible for all Lebanese."
I got a kick out of the guard who told you he didn’t want you to talk to someone that wasn’t polite. Ooookay. That’s one way of putting it I suppose. It wasn’t like you were expecting a welcome party. Anyways, you are one brave man. Take care!
How do the Hezbollah-Amal-Aoun alliance expect to force Siniora government out of power? Siniora could ignore the protests and stay put. What levers do the opposition alliance really have without resorting to force?
On 2.8.06 the Israeli news paper “Yedioth Ahronot” quoted a letter to the editor, which had been published at the German newspaper “Der Spiegel”. It writes:
Dr. Mounir Herzallah wrote to “Der Spiegel in Berlin. He described how the Hezb’Allah entered the village a short while after the Israeli pullout of Lebanon in 2000, and took over it, just like it took over the rest of the villages and towns in southern Lebanon.
Herzallah: “The Hezb’Allah men were greeted as victorious resistance warriors and a short while after that started building bunkers and other missile launching and storage facilities in the village.
“They dug a huge hole in the ground and set an ammunition and Katyushas storage in it. Right above the storage they built the school and a residence. I had turned to the local Sheik, and asked him: why are they allowed to do that? He laughed and said:
“This way the Jews will loose any way: either because of the missiles launched at them by Hezb-Allah, or because of the citizens who will get killed when the missile launching and storing spot is attacked, in which case global public opinion will condemn them harshly for the killing of innocent civilians.”“
Dr. Herzallah added and wrote that Hezb’Allah uses the population as human shields, and once the citizens get killed it uses them for propaganda: “The Hezb’Allah doesn’t care at all they die. As long as the Hezb’Allah is there, we won’t have any peace and quiet”.
Dr. Herzallah was left with no choice. It was either that or leaving. He therefore left his village at 2002.
If anybody wants the scan of the original letter from the German newspaper, you can write to me and I’ll attach it to the reply.
Albritton suggests that it is America’s fault for the mess in Lebanon, I think he ignores his own part of the fault, by automatically boarding on to the wagon launched and prepared in advance by Hizb-Allah for all clueless reporters to come, and waiving every journalistic duty to ENQUIRE beyond the cynical, paid for with Lebanese canon fodder blood, propaganda of Hizb-Allah, reorters of his kind hold a great deal of responsibility to the Lebanese being held hostage by Hezb-Alla. people such as Dr.Herzallah have absolutely no other aid than the hope of global media to make it unprofitable for Hizb-Allah to use them as canon fodder. They can’t turn to their government and they can’t turn to local press. The journalists who sit in Beirut are really their only hope of aid. But as you can see, they show no interest of looking to that direction. It amazes me to see no second thoughts in Albritton’s report as he approaches the question of who’s to blame, even when he sees first handedly the kind of threat Lebanese are under if they dare to talk. No thought about his duty to help them get their stories out.
During the war I posted links here to some very courages of them, to try and challenge him to those truths, among which the following:
http://www.menapress.com/article.php?sid=1479 (This one is in French:) http://www.libanoscopie.com/FullDoc.asp?Doccode=1017&Cat=2 (and an English coverage of it is:) http://newsbusters.org/node/7019
But their brave attempts to be heard were ignored by reporters such as Albritton, because they were unfortunate enough to have a story which doesn’t fit the comfortable wagon Hizb-Allah had prepared fo the lazy or the guide line of reporters of some global agenda, concerning Irack and USA, that they seem to think is so important, that little people like Dr. Herzallah and his kids can be ignored for “the greater good” of their nobel cause.
Well now, that these reporters have proven this strategy, explained to Dr. Herzallah so clearly to be so worthwhile, Syria had started to take the same approach as well, and as I’m writing these words Syrian people under their tyrant’s oppression face the same dreadful dilemma their neigbhours in Lebanon had faced, as Assad has decided to adopt this strategy seeing that it proves to overcome any military inferiority when fighting Israel. Just have a missile launched at Israeli citizens from within an building with Syrian citizens and Israel will have no choice. The rest of the work will be done by reporters such as Albritton who will consistently ignore your own responsibility for commiting a crime against those civilians by storing missiles under and within their homes and risking their lives intentionally. It’s OK, you no longer need to take Israel’s word for it, Lebanese Gen. Elias Hanna, will be more than happy to confirm it: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/world/middleeast/05mideast.html?ex=1322974800&en=e2cd69ca78012301&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Since it seems Israel’s version is treated here as the absolute trivial lie, seeing that Albritton for example repeats AP’s version “Lebanon’s war caused 1000 Lebanese casualties, most of them civilians” as if it were something he checked and can confirm, without at least having the decency to qoute the AP representor him self saying they had to rely on Lebanese officaisls that had a very big interest to count Hizb-Allah as civilians once they were dead, and even if they wanted to be honest would be damned if they attempted to contradict Hezb-Allah’s PROVEN FALSE ridiculous count of 70 Hezb-Allah fighters dead. The least a reporter should do, even if for some reason he has no intention to check the contradiction, or even if he really really can’t bring him self for some built in loathing of any information from Israel, is to at least mention that there’s another deferent version to the casualty count, even it he seems to think a cynical fascist terror organization’s version should be automatically preferred over a democracy’s one, even though the terroe organization’s version is so ridiculously easily refuted.
And another thing (addition to my comment): the thing Albritton did get right, though, is that this isn’t a war between religions. Dr. Herzallah whose letter I quoted for example is Shiite. These days it is commonly assumed that the Shiites in Lebanon fight the other religions, or other streams in Islam such as the Sunnis. But there are two factors might make that impression: 1) most of those who opposed the Hizb-Allah’s hardcore indoctrination of their children in schools and schoolbooks and on Al-Manar, or opposed the risking of their lives for some Islamic cause of exterminating the Jews* have simply left. 2) The few who might have stayed without embracing Nasrallah’s agenda really have not the luxury of daring to act according to their belief. They can either keep a low profile or join the stream. For Hizb-Allah is their actual state. Their government abandoned them to the full sovereignty of Hizb-Allah in all aspects of life: from education, through welfare, to practically every service a state provides its citizens. Hizb-Allah’s state within a state is a full copy of Nazi Germany: it tolerates NO sign of opposition, incites the whole population from early age through any aspect of life, and controls every aspect of their lives. Just as there were silent opposition that couldn’t rise up in Nazi Germany, there no reason to believe all Shiites in under the “autonomy” of Hizb-Allah in Lebanon are willingly or soberly (as oppose to brain washed state) support Hezb-Allah.
The source of that might not be them being Shiites, but rather the factors that make the whole Shiite population either indoctrinated or forced to cooperate because of their government’s (I think) criminal negligence of them to the abuse of Hizb-Allah both phsycal (by committing the crime against humanity of storing weapons and military facilities within them and delibiratley promoting their death and educating to die for the cause of the extermination of the WHOLE of the Jewish state, and of ALL of the Jewish people), and menatally, just like Nazi Germany’s kids grew up robbed of their sanity, to do things that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
(*)”If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide”. (Daily Star, Oct. 23, 2002). “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli”.( Nassrallah ,New Yorker, Oct. 14, 2002)