The Deceptive Media in Lebanon
By: General Michel Aoun
(Translated by: Elias Bejjani)

Censorship of the media and limitations on freedom of expression are basic foundations of authoritarian regimes. The deep-rooted hostility between dictatorships and truth necessitates the subversion of truth and creation of an empty slate in public opinion to be loaded with deceptive illusions, which are published and broadcast by the regime's media in order to justify illegal actions and infringments on the rights of its citizens.

Lebanese society lives in the realm of this warped pseudo-reality. Its members are abused on a daily basis in the core and essence of their existence as human beings and in their spiritual, intellectual and material faculties. In this heavily camouflaged milieu, the Lebanese currently fight their political and military battles. The officials, in their endeavours to deceive, turn virtues into sins and defeats into victories. According to the regime's media, we are destroying the enemies, achieving victories and living a crucial time period awaiting to celebrate the great victory day.

It is very painful and extremely fatal that some of the Lebanese media are participating in a conspiratorial scheme against themselves. They are burying their mission by being fully submissive to the remnants of the fascist and stalinist wishes in the Middle East.

The astonishing achievements of the collaborationist media include portraying the regime's theft of Beirut's real state as ownership. Destruction of Beirut's historical ruins is dubbed "construction." Confiscating freedoms is "reconstruction." Forging parliamentary elections is heralded as "high vote turnover." Submissiveness to the occupation forces is "coordination." The occupation is merely a "presence," the occupier is considered a "brother," and slavery is camouflaged as "brotherhood."

As a result of these remarkable achievements we now need a new dictionary to keep up with the new linguistical changes in our every day language mandated by our puppet regime and its Syrian masters. Things seem to be relatively easy until we get to the regime's new vocabulary improvised to describe the Middle East conflict, peace track and resistance in South Lebanon.

We read in the distorted media that Israel is suffering from critical diplomatic isolation. In our strive to identify those countries that severed their diplomatic relationships with the Jewish State, we learn that China promised the Israeli Prime Minster few days ago to stop all its support of the Iranian nuclear projects, and that Israel is going to participate in the International Economical conference that will take place in the State of Qattar as scheduled. We read in the facade media that Israel is extremely annoyed because of the extensive foreign investment in Lebanon,and that investments in Israel are declining. Yet, when we seek out the truth, we find that actually foreign investments are rising in Israel and diminishing in Lebanon.

We lose track of logic and rationalisation completely when we read in the same context that Israel is in a state of confusion, its army is on the verge of abandoning its posts in South Lebanon, while at the same time refusing peace. At this point of bewilderness we ask ourselves which country is in fact rejecting peace as an outlet and which army is really on the verge of running away?

They want us to believe that Israel is unable to perform a military operation in Beirut, so it performs it in Kfour village in South Lebanon. They want us to accept blindly their propaganda lies that Israeli jet fighters are shot down over our occupied land in numbers beyond our capacity to count. They expect us to believe that we are achieving military victories all around the year and scoring a victory and a half every day around the clock.

In the news of the big battles one has to be from Mars to cope with the officials' deceptive media. According to them Israel has failed in pulling Lebanon into the peace talks and in pulling Syria's into war.

You, the installed puppets of our regime, who gave Israel the glory of failure, could you tell us where, when and in what domains you were successful?

August 29/1997
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