Gad Elmaleh and Tahranistan

July 2006…Hezbollah kidnaps two Israeli soldiers…the second Lebanon war is declared…Gad Elmaleh’s appearance in Byblos is canceled…

July 2009…Hezbollah launches a media campaign against Gad Elmaleh…the artist cancels 3 sold-out performances in beiteddine…

Is Gad Elmaleh a supporter of Israel or is he an Israeli citizen or did he serve in the Israeli army?

Hezbollah is claiming that Gad served in the Israeli army…if that is true…legally Gad should not be performing in Beirut…

If we are sanctioning the artist because of his support for Israel, then we are definitely facing a moral dilemma…

Can we separate the artist from his political views? Can we welcome Gad as the French humorist and comedian and ignore the fact that he supports the country that is at war with our own country?

However, the Gad incident should make us beware of Hezbollah’s infiltration in the cultural life of Lebanon.

We all know that Hezbollah is an Islamist party with all what it means in societal and cultural behavior…

Today, they forced a French artist to cancel his tour in Beirut (always using the Israeli pretext)...

Tomorrow it will be the Baalback festivals…

and after tomorrow we will wake up in Tahranistan…

It seems that long time ago…Hezbollah ceased to be a resistance party…only…

The Orange Tchador: When Lebanon votes

I woke up in the morning, looked around me, everything seemed so real…

Is it really Sunday June 7?

Wow! At last the glorious Sunday that we have been waiting for…

Do you think I have the time to take a shower, to have breakfast, to put my head over my shoulder?

Shouldn’t I be rushing to the polling station…to save the country from the orange tchadors?

Oh no! The commentator on the television is warning: Lebanon as you know it might not exist anymore go do your civic duty…go vote…Vote…VOte…VOTe… VOTE…

It doesn’t matter if I smell bad …I need to rescue the country…

I put on my clothes…but haha I made sure I am not wearing anything orange or yellow or green…

Blue was is and always will be my favorite colour…

The rescue team (my husband, my mother-in-law and I) –The blue Team-was on its way…

In the car, we kept on listening to our favorite CD: We will never let Iran control us…
we couldn’t stop listening to it…

Maybe if we stopped running the CD, we would have forgotten to whom to vote…

Maybe it might have crossed our minds to vote for General Michel Aoun…

Oh no! Even mentioning his name could make us lose the Lebanon we know…I put the volume up…

So again I start seeing the blue sky all over Lebanon…

We arrive to the polling station…my heart is beating…my hands are shaking…

Everybody is staring at me…

Don’t even think of changing your mind…

We can read your thoughts…These are crucial times…don’t think of reform and change…don’t review anything…Look behind you Hezbollah is chasing you with the tchador…

I looked in front of me I saw Obama, Moubarak, King Abdallah of KSA, the good people in Lebanon calling me to join them…to rescue the country…

I entered the room…I voted…I dipped my thumb into the ink…I got out of the room…proud…

Back home…I switched on the TV…I heard what I didn’t want to hear…

Even though I saved the country…they didn’t want to forget that I was Armenian…