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Not everyone can be a revolutionary! Not everyone going through a belated teenage crisis is a rebel! Not everyone who doesn’t rise up against the hostage-taking of the country by Iran’s henchmen is a protestor!
On September 18, the morning press informed us that outgoing Prime Minister Najib Mikati called on the international community to support Lebanon, that the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) denounced political-judicial complicity at Nahr el-Kalb, that the judicial year began with discontent within the judiciary, that Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai declared from Australia that our leaders had lost their sense of power, and that Hezbollah was an agent of the Iranian occupation, according to Saydet al-Jabal.
All of this on the same day: September 18. Business as usual, except for the alarming news that Najat Aoun Saliba ended her sit-in at Place de l’Étoile! This scoop signaled the end of a 243-day “lock-out.” Let us recall that the representative of the nation had launched this iʻtissam (sit-in) initiative in partnership with her colleague, former Bar Association President Melhem Khalaf. It was deduced that the latter will continue his media “strike” but alone, until “an open parliamentary session based on successive rounds is convened to elect a president.” In short, the thawra (Lebanese protest movement), as envisaged by some protesting MPs, proves to be flexible and malleable at will, but it does not deflate. And as proof, Khalaf chose to continue living in the discomfort of Parliament rather than give up on his convictions, as if to say, “I’m here to stay.” It requires panache!
The “thawra,” wrongly named
Was it not a mistake to label the events that started in October 2019 as a revolution and its participants as revolutionaries? Yes, there was an expression of frustration in public squares, debates were organized, slogans were chanted, and inspired street art covered city walls. But it was primarily a spectacle of fair, good-natured processions, with the exception of a few incidents. The repression in front of the National Assembly by the praetorian guard of the Speaker of Parliament did not ignite a general uprising. And in the end, was there anything other than the bitter taste of failure and derision left in our mouths? Today, we are nowhere near sedition, and “dollarization in supermarkets” is our major concern.
Not everyone can be a revolutionary! Not everyone in a late adolescence crisis is a rebel! Not everyone who doesn’t rise up against the hostage-taking of the country by Iran’s henchmen is a protestor.
The art of evasion
Fencers and politicians both cultivate the art of evasion, which involves avoiding confrontation or collision through maneuvering body movement and the subject at hand. What better example than the feint that Saliba has just served us by announcing that she has abandoned the sit-in to implement an “environmental plan in collaboration with environmental specialists, international organizations and local agencies across the entire Lebanese territory?” Ecology and the preservation of natural balance are of great importance, but there are other priorities that need to be urgently addressed.
Our country is being bled dry. Instead of directly naming the aggressor, we use circumlocutions; isn’t this to avoid hurting sensitivities? Rather than coming together in a united front against subjugation to the ayatollah regime, we stand out through the peaceful squatting of Parliament, a rather clever way of absolving ourselves in the eyes of the public by putting on a show. And even if the crux of the matter lies elsewhere, the protagonists of this farce can always exonerate themselves by claiming, “We were the first to rise up against the blockade of the constitutional process.” But the Moumanaa [reference to Hezbollah and its supporters] couldn’t care less about their childish antics; they stick to their positions and mock the scattered protesting deputies and their sit-in.
While in Europe, some nations are being prosecuted for climate inaction, the representatives of the thawra could be charged with “constitutional inaction.”
To avoid playing into the hands of sovereignists, presumed to belong to the nationalist right or even the Christian right, the protesting deputies did not go so far as to denounce the Iranian threat. They preferred to flutter around and sprinkle the political stage with their futile proposals during brief appearances on the airwaves. They chose not to get involved and opted to distract themselves with gadgets, trifles, and Schmilblicks.
Who said that the thawra only generates righteous individuals?
