The International Tribunal for the Hariri Assassination

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

7/7/2011

When Will the Lebanese Feel Shame?

Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

2 June 2011

I follow events in Lebanon closely, and I see the strange capacity of the sectarian leaders and their media outlets for bickering, quibbling, and sterile argument, and for busying themselves with the pettiest, most trivial, shortest-sighted, least valuable and least useful of matters — the ones most damaging to the Lebanese people, to Lebanon’s present, and to Lebanon’s future. Lebanon’s leaders and their media never tire and never weary of mudslinging and counter-mudslinging, of insult and counter-insult, of abuse and counter-abuse, of defamation and counter-defamation. It is astonishing how much stamina, patience, endurance, persistence, wakefulness, and focus they bring to tearing Lebanon apart and wrecking it, and to turning the Lebanese people into warring factions bent on destroying themselves and demolishing their homeland.

It seems that Lebanon’s leaders are quite comfortable with this constant, unceasing mudslinging, as though their leadership could not be realized without it. I have never once heard a Lebanese leader praise an idea held by his domestic adversary, nor have I heard a media outlet say anything good about an opinion expressed by one of the rivals. Most of what I hear is a steady, pouring barrage of foul language and the dregs of discourse.

Lebanon is the only Arab state that has defeated Israel, and it seems to me that the Lebanese hate victory and insist on defeat. It is understandable that defeat tears people apart and fragments their unity, but it is not understandable that victory should fragment the people of Lebanon. Arab peoples are lifted when the president of Venezuela, or Argentina, or the South Pole speaks against colonialism and foreign domination, yet in Lebanon they do not seem to be lifted by the defeat of Israel. The Lebanese should have held their heads high after the victory, to think about their unity, their progress, the elevation of themselves, their homeland, and their nation. I have not seen, anywhere in history, a people torn apart after a war crowned with victory — except the people of Lebanon. The Palestinians were torn apart, it is true, but under the weight of failure. The victory achieved in Gaza in the Cast Lead war (or Israel’s failure, so as not to anger those who hate the word “victory”) did not unite the Palestinian people, but neither did it further scatter them; in Lebanon, however, there is a sharp insistence on the continuation of scattering, division, and fragmentation.

The Hariri Assassination and the Special International Investigation

…the assassination and the establishment of the truth. Since that time, Lebanon has not known calm at any level.

I follow events in Lebanon closely, and here I try to summarize the conclusions I have reached regarding the work of the Special International Investigation. To begin, there are two essential matters that ought to be observed by every component of the state — of any state, and I do not mean Lebanon alone:

There ought to be a general stance against assassinations, given the great corruption they bring and the great harm they inflict on the state and on society in all its components. This is what leads me to the conviction that whoever assassinated Hariri does not wish Lebanon well, and cannot be a Lebanese who loves Lebanon. He may be a sectarian Lebanese, or a foreign enemy, or a Lebanese hired by fallen domestic forces, or by external forces with their own particular aims. Assassinations, in every country in the world, have never solved a problem — they have always created more problems.

Resorting to external powers is a grave mistake that compounds the situation, inflames tempers, and creates more problems. Every external power has its own interests, and it is not prepared to gamble with those interests or let them be negatively affected for the sake of another state. External powers act according to their own interests, and I do not exclude from this the United Nations, which is an instrument of the great powers — America foremost among them — for making and implementing decisions at the global level. The United Nations is not an independent international body that carries out its work impartially and according to international standards that everyone had a hand in setting; rather, it is a body bound to the will of the great powers. And just as assassination is dangerous to the social and moral fabric of a nation, so is recourse to external powers dangerous to the state.

There are major questions surrounding Hariri’s assassination and its intended aims, which I summarize as follows:

1 — What did the assassin want to achieve? If Syria was the one behind the assassination, then it was certainly dissatisfied with Hariri’s policy and wanted total control over Lebanese decision-making. This is a foolish objective, because Lebanon cannot be controlled by a single party alone, and it is historically well known that Lebanon is…

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “المحكمة الدولية الخاصة باغتيال الحريري” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.