Saad Hariri

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Overcoming bloodshed — blood spilled or shed — is not easy for the human soul, nor does it yield easily to forgetting. Assassination gunfire expresses a premeditated, deliberate aggression aimed at intimidation, or at spilling blood over some terrible crime that paves the way for a long, bloody conflict and for hatreds that erupt into the dead and the wounded, burned houses, and assaults on property. It is among the harshest ways of expressing enmity and intolerance of the other. Arabs, across their various regions, have suffered from this cruelty, and have paid its price in long wars and copious blood of vengeance.

I have not listened to what stirs within Mr. Saad Hariri’s breast, but from a distance I sense the extent of the internal struggle that may be raging inside him. This is a young man who lost his father to an assassination, and it is not easy for him, nor for his sisters, his brothers, and his mother, to find themselves at the lunch table without the head of the family. He did not live in caves, nor was he accustomed to a life of confrontation, killing, and war; if he has any experience of confrontation at all, it lies in the world of finance, a world full of deals, commercial conspiracies, and financial obsession. Suddenly this young man finds himself a figure of global stature, surrounded by numerous states and important world leaders, some of whom possess nuclear power and terrifying military arsenals. And suddenly he is transformed into a Lebanese hero, with crowds chanting his name, carrying his pictures, and calling on him to lead them. States, leaders, and crowds call on him to reveal the truth behind his father’s assassination in order to pursue the perpetrator — but the call gets ahead of events, and steers his spear toward Syria instead.

The burden of pursuing the matter is heavy, requiring a very particular kind of life, along with activities, alliances, and burdens to match it; and the burden of setting it aside is difficult too, given what it involves — closing one’s eyes to the truth, and leaving vengeance for a suitable moment that may never come. If Hariri chooses to continue the pursuit, a great part of his time and effort will be devoted to the hidden workings of states, their secrets and their conspiracies, and to internal alliances with all the hatreds, faults, and polarization they entail; and if he chooses to let it go, the blood will keep pursuing him regardless, along with the eyes and tongues of all those who do not want Lebanon’s affairs to settle. Both choices are bitter — which will Hariri choose?

I have an experience in this regard that may be of some use. I am a university professor, a man with an opinion, not a man of billions; Rafic Hariri, by contrast, was a prime minister and a man of billions. If these two differences mean anything when it comes to the shedding of blood, then my experience is useless; but if blood has value in and of itself, then my experience certainly carries meaning.

…quickly in identifying who had fired at me, and who had recruited him — this within half an hour of the incident. Students from An-Najah National University, including some from the very college where I teach, had taken part alongside the perpetrator. In the hospital, many thoughts contended within me, and sometimes tremors and surges of emotion. I sometimes felt a fierce desire for revenge and killing, imagining myself holding a sniper rifle, aiming it at the heads of the perpetrators — from the head of West Bank intelligence down to the man who had pulled the trigger himself, who was from Balata refugee camp. I would seethe with inward rage whenever the thought crossed my mind that I might commission someone else to carry out the task on my behalf. At times, the idea occurred to me of setting armed men on the perpetrators, to burn down their houses and their various possessions and hunt them down wherever they went. And sometimes I would ask myself: am I prepared to become a gang leader? Of course, had I chosen to pursue the perpetrators — men without morals, belonging to the underworld that cooperates with Israel — I would have charted an entirely new path for my life. I would have had to carry weapons openly, which would effectively mean siding with Israel, coming to an understanding with it that my weapon served internal corruption rather than national struggle; I would have had to take various security precautions to protect myself and my family; and I would have had to turn to some party to finance me, or become a swindler extorting people to fund my own shameful activities. Thuggery is costly, and requires recruiting thugs and enforcers. In this way, I would have had to give up scholarly research, give up writing articles and publishing books, and my work at the university would have become nothing more than going through the motions to collect a salary.

I spoke to myself about this many times, and I had to choose between descending into a baseness that would harm the entire Palestinian people — bearing in mind that those I would be standing against possess neither conscience nor morals, and carry no notion of homeland within them at all — and enduring the injustice patiently, waiting for a moment when the scales of justice could be set right calmly, without harm. I chose the latter. And so that I could be at peace with myself, I did try, once, putting the perpetrators themselves within the sights of a rifle — and I did it. But my responsibility toward my family, toward my homeland, and toward my people was stronger than my emotions.

Saad Hariri surely realizes that his father’s blood does not matter to America and Israel, nor to certain Lebanese factions that weep over him. Had Arab blood ever truly stirred the nerves of the enemies of the nation, they would not have sent us airplanes, bombs, and missiles to kill us, and to kill our children and our women, across the Arab homeland and the Islamic world. They cling to Hariri’s blood in order to drag Lebanon to the slaughter, and in its wake, Syria and Palestine. We, most certainly, do not serve as tools for anyone, nor do we wish to be. We will work to bring out the truth, but we will not allow the truth to be used as a vehicle for smuggling in falsehood. Lebanon stands above everyone, and it will remain with its head held high, carried by its good sons. Saad Hariri needs to listen to the voice of his own inner self, far from the external voices besieging him.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “سعد الحريري” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.