"Chaos" is Not the Answer

Shortly after arriving home, Sheikh Saleh Aridi, member of the Democratic Party and aide to Talal Urslan, got into his car at 9:30 p.m. last night, and that was the last thing he did. 500 grams of TNT, placed under the driver's seat of the car, exploded killing Aridi and wounding several others.

Given that this assassination has come during a period that has seen the most positive political atmosphere since longer than a lot of us care to remember - a day after President Suleiman announced the beginning of national reconciliation dialogue on the 16th of September, Hariri's peace tour that included a reconciliation agreement in Tripoli with Bekaa as his next stop, Nasrallah's reaching out to Al-Mustaqbal, Jumblatt's reconciliatory rhetoric, and even Geagea's belief that dialogue could lead to coexistence with Hezboallah - it is easy to argue that those behind the attack are targeting national reconciliation and are only interested in maintaining a state of chaos in Lebanon.

Jumblatt accused "those who are hurt by reconciliation" (Al-Mustaqbal). PM Sanioura said the attack was meant "to divide the Lebanese," and Speaker Berri said it is a message "against civil peace in Lebanon" (Naharnet). Urslan also said the perpetrators are those who would benefit from internal civil strife in Lebanon, but he went further and directly named Israel as his prime suspect (As-Safir).

Though I'm glad Lebanese politicians agree (more or less) on something for a change, I myself find it hard to believe that someone who is against civil peace in Lebanon would go and do something like that. If the main goal is simply to divide the society and slow down reconciliation, there are far easier (and I daresay more effective) ways of doing so than a highly-professional and surgically precise assassination of one particular politician. If the goal is to target civil peace, the perpetrators would find it easier commit one or more arbitrary acts of terrorism aimed at groups of people rather than target an individual. I'm not gonna give any ideas, but I think you know what I mean.

I think there's more to this than just "someone spreading chaos." You don't spread chaos with 500g of TNT under the seat of someone's car. The questions we need to ask ourselves are: Who is Saleh Aridi? What has he done in his life? What was he doing when he was killed? Who would want him dead? Maybe if we try to answer these questions instead of yelling out "chaos", we might know where to begin looking for the murderers.

Photo by AFP taken from BBC.

Suffrage at Last!

OK, granted I haven't been living outside Lebanon for a very long time, it's still long enough for me to have never voted in parliamentary elections. So obviously I got very excited to hear that the parliamentary committee charged with drafting reforms for the current electoral law has decided to allow non-resident nationals to vote at Lebanese embassies of their respective residence (Naharnet). With more Lebanese living abroad than inside Lebanon, this decision is long overdue.

All we have to do now is wait for parliament to ratify the new reforms, among which there is also talk of reducing the legal age for voting from 21 to 18. Another welcome change as far as I'm concerned.

Poke Wars

A New York based Jewish new group called Yeshiva World News reported that Hezbollah "terrorists" are using Facebook to track Israeli soldiers and possibly befriend them with the intention of kidnapping them or stealing classified information. The IDF is apparently conducting an aggressive awareness campaign to make sure its soldiers are aware of this.

Not really sure about how close this report is to the truth, but either way I think it's funny... Plus it gives me the opportunity to make this cool mock Facebook logo.

Business as Usual

OK, it’s time I came out of my shell and commented a bit on what’s been going on in the past week. Several events took place this week; however the downing of a Lebanese army helicopter by a Hezbollah fighter and the ensuing pro- and anti-Hezbollah rants certainly stole the spotlight.

To start with, the facts (at least the ones agreed upon by everyone): a Hezbollah fighter opened fire on a Lebanese army helicopter while flying over Sojod hills in South Lebanon. The helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing. The incident resulted in the death of 25-year-old First-Lieutenant Samer Hanna. (I'm not putting a source here cause let's face it, no single source is gonna convince anyone skeptical of this version of the story)...

Hezbollah claims the attack was an unfortunate case of friendly fire, asserting that the Hezbollah fighter acted on instinct and fired at the helicopter thinking it was an Israeli commando drop (Naharnet). Others weren’t so quick to accept this story, with responses ranging the Free Shi’a movement referring to the attack as another “terrorist attack” by Hezbollah (LF - Arabic), to French daily L’Orient Le Jour reporting that the Lebanese pilot was killed on the ground “in cold blood” (Daily Star), to Saad Hariri’s simple condemnation of the attack (Now Lebanon), to Michel Aoun being quick to declare that the attack should have no bearing on the debate on Hezbollah’s weapons (Daily Star).

As diverse as these reactions are, they all have one thing in common: they are all entirely uninteresting. They induce a frustrating feeling of business as usual. Every single person or group said exactly what that person or group was expected to say. No more, no less.

But I’m no different: I readily see this incident as an unintentional accident that with no real malicious intent on the part of the Hezbollah fighter. This does not mean we can all just get over it and treat it as just another regular car accident, but it also doesn’t mean that we should build an entire political campaign on it. What I would like to see is a responsible approach to handle the matter, with the relevant authorities dealing with the matter away from political bickering. Having the Hezbollah fighter turn himself in is a good start. But there needs to be a clear, transparent and just conclusion to this incident. Anything less would leave a Nasrallah-shaped thorn in the hearts of everyone affected by this event… And we know all too well that the Lebanese have enough of these thorns hidden in our hearts and that it is unlikely any good would come out of them.

Photo from Ya Libnan.