Snake of Damascus

I have always rejected and objected the American policy in the Middle East…why?

Because Lebanon was always the scapegoat, the victim of the Americans, Israelis, Syrians and practically all the Arab countries when the time for a deal stroke…

But this time, I am with the Americans…I am glad they are forcing the Israelis not to negotiate with the Syrians…

We all know in the region why Syria is pretending to want to resume negotiations with Israel…

Nobody is fooled…except obviously some naïve Israelis…

The Golan Heights…Syrians care less about it…

It is more lucrative for them to get Lebanon back…

And this is what they will be doing if God forbids negotiations are resumed…

The settlement will be: keep the Golan Heights under the Israeli control (I am sure there are very creative lawyers and politicians that will come up with a creative deal about that) and “en contre-partie” the Syrians get back Lebanon, they bring in order again, they destroy Hezbollah (Syrians are experts in mass killing…)

And voila…peace is made…and guess what?

Soon you will see Bashar Assad getting the Noble Peace Prize…

OH NO!!!

I am so happy, delighted, jubilant, thrilled….that the Americans are preventing the Israelis from resuming negotiations with the Snake of Damascus…

Open Letter to Ms Rice

Usually the people in the Middle East are known to be polite…sometimes extremely polite that they don’t say what is really in their heart.

I would have loved to say YA AHLAN WA SAHLAN” Ms Rice to the Middle East but I can’t…I have been trying the whole week-end…but no chance…

I am wondering what have you come to do in the region?

What did you come to do in Iraq?

What did you come to do in Israel and the Palestinian territories?

To spread more chaos? I don’t think it is possible…

To bring in some order? I don’t think you are able to do that…

Ms Rice I advise you to learn from your enemies…

Look at Iran and Syria, look how efficient they are in spreading chaos, in coming up with creative ways of spreading violence, in separating people…

Ms Rice, your allies in the region need efficiency. They don’t need your moral support or your friendly smile…

Ms Rice, look around you, your allies in Lebanon, Israel, Palestinian territories, and in Iraq are sitting ducks for extremists, for dictators, for megalomaniacs…

Ms Rice, go home

Bawabet Fatmeh

Yesterday evening I went to see a play: “Bawabat Fatmeh”… “La porte de Fatma”… “Fatma’s door”...
It is the first cultural representation of the Summer War 2006 between Israel and the Hezbollah…

It was a confusing play…

The scenes were very clear, very funny, very sad and very well acted…In that sense it was a pleasure to watch the actor and the two actresses moving “sur scene”…

From the beginning, it was clear that the play was against Israel…It even went back to 100 years ago…the land was stolen by the Israelis…

There was a very powerful scene were the Christian mother that lost her son in sea… (a fisherman that might have been kidnapped by the Israelis) curses the Israelis, wishes them the worse death ever…

This was a very significant scene implying that “hating the Israelis” is not a Shiite thing but a national feeling…Even Christians in Lebanon hate Israelis…

But there was one confusing scene for me…where I felt I was getting hidden messages… and that I liked a lot…

The scene that I really liked was when an old man trapped under the rubble of his house in the South after the Israelis bombed it started talking to himself…
The monologue:
“What will I do if an Israeli soldier comes in?
I will pretend that I am dead
No, I will ask him to recite a poem…and I will answer him with a poem…
If he recites a poem; than there might still be hope…
Because whoever is interested in poetry cannot be a killer”

Even though there is an IF…there is a hope that we might have peace one day between the two people…

Even though there is an IF…the author is implying that the true peace will be the peace between people…

Exchange of cultural knowledge between the two people is an important door for peace…
Meeting the other on cultural level is a huge step towards knowing the other and perhaps liking the other and seeing the other as a human, as a person, as a partner…

IF…if…if… People could only meet and learn to know each other….

Again and again…I feel I am repeating myself…but I don’t mind…
Again and again…I ask myself: “Is peace with Israel a priority to the Lebanese now with everything that is happening in the country?”…

I am thinking of not using the word peace anymore…at least for a while…

Happy Valentine's Day

Middle East bullshit

Another explosion…this time “a l’Irakienne”…
Two buses…innocent people…BOUM!!!!!!!
Who cares!!!!!

We already said enough is enough…
We already expressed our anger…
We already condemned brutality…

We are still wondering when will this end?

But what is the result?

More chaos…

7 years ago…I was convinced that people’s politics in the Middle East is non-existent…I was convinced that people in the Middle East are unable to change when it comes to politics…

7 years ago…a teacher of mine convinced me that people’s power is unlimited…Societies have their great dynamics that sooner or later will affect their politicians…

Excuse me Salwa Ismail…I was right…

Partners of Peace

The debate between sassy and raffi.aida on the last post incited me to write again about the partners of peace in the Middle East.
I have already mentioned in one of my previous posts that we the Arabs don’t have the courage to say that we want peace with Israel despite everything. We hardly can find Arab peace activists, or lobbyers that live in the Middle East.

Partners of Peace…

Where to find those people?

I am still having problems defining where the change starts in the Middle East…
Is it a bottom-up or up-down process?

Or maybe it is a horizontal get together process?

So many studies have been conducted in the late 1990’s about the effect of AlJazeera in changing public opinions…
So many studies have been conducted on the effect of the internet in creating new public spheres…
Nowadays, there are many studies concerning the role of bloggers during the last summer war in Lebanon…

But what are the outcomes???

More extremism, more chaos, more fear of others, more separation…

Everything is being used in the Middle East to separate people instead of uniting them…

An idea

Today while sitting in bed and nagging how I ended up with pneumonia, an idea came to my mind…

Well I was watching tv, the anchor was quoting from the Israeli newspapers…
In the same time I was reading on the bottom of the screen: The Israeli media said this and this… The Israeli newspaper Haaretz divulged this and this…

So, the idea that came to my mind was…If we are quoting newspapers and so on why don’t we watch the Israeli TV too?

Why is it still forbidden to have the Israeli channels on our satellite channels?

I want to see our enemies…not just read them…

My mom’s grandfather lived long enough for me to remember him…He was one of the lucky people that escaped and survived the Armenian genocide…

He used to tell us: “You have to know your enemy…and for that you have to learn your enemy’s language and culture”… He made his kids learn Turkish…