Samir Kuntar is a Convicted Killer and Not a Hero
By: Elias Bejjani

July 21/08

It is really sad, shocking and shameful when a convicted murderer is decorated as a hero. Shame on Lebanon's leaders, parties, dignitaries, politicians and officials who boldly and evilly distanced themselves from the hopes, aspirations, education, and culture of their own people and welcomed Samir Kuntar as a hero. By doing so they have alienated themselves from the majority of the Lebanese people and negated the deeply Lebanese rooted standards and criteria for what is wrong and what is right, and for what is good and what is evil.

They are stupidly blemishing the actual peaceful image of Lebanon and the historically known role  of the Lebanese people as lovers and advocates for peace, democracy, coexistence and multicultural principles. In the eyes of the majority of the Lebanese people Samir Kuntar is a mere convicted murderer and not a hero.

The Ottoman Turks occupied Lebanon for almost 400 years (1516-1918) with an iron fist, yet despite their bloody repression, persecution, injustice, and blatant bloody oppression means, they failed to impose “Ottomanization” on the Lebanese people. Nor did they succeed in imposing the Turkish language as a replacement for the Lebanese language.

The Ottomans’ condescending and suppressive repression was confronted by the Lebanese stubborn attachment to their culture, their identity, their history. And most of all, their faith, hopes, values and morals, their humanistic standards for Good and Evil. The Lebanese triumphed and the Ottomans were defeated.

After the Ottomans, the French mandate shined its civilized and peaceful administration, with respect to human rights, and seeking the public good in harmony with Lebanese culture and beliefs. The French mandate ushered a spring of Lebanon lasting 30 years of consenting cooperation. It produced with the Lebanese people a Franco-Lebanese common, solid Franco-Lebanese culture that continued to thrive even after France’s exit. This culture is still very rooted in the spirit, conscience, and practices of the Lebanese.

On the other hand, 30 years of a Syrian barbaric and savage occupation backed by collaborators, imported terrorists and ideologies, and dishonest theatrics, also failed to uproot any of the Lebanese cultural constants for they are deep rooted in their being, and merged with the holy earth of Lebanon, so, just like the Ottomans, the Syrians were also defeated and were forced to leave Lebanon trailing their disappointment and humiliation.

For 7000 years, holding to their culture, values, faith and stubbornness, the Lebanese people struggled and defeated the greed, plans, and oppression of hundreds of invaders, occupiers, and conquerors whose traces are carved on few stones in Lebanon’s famous “Nahr Kalb” river.

Based on all the above, it is a moral duty to judge all those celebrators who chanted like parrots the mantra of Samir Kuntar’s heroism, and accepted in obedience and subservience to celebrate Kuntar’s crime as heroism, in contradiction to standards of the Lebanese culture, civilization, and values, and in violation of all religious and legal charters.

We believe strongly that it is a patriotic duty and ethical obligation to hold accountable all the Lebanese leaderships, whether officials or religious parties and intellectuals. We, as Lebanese people in both Lebanon and Diaspora must hold accountable all those who participated in the “ festival of lies and falsehood” while at the same time claiming their adherence to the framework and foundations of Lebanon’s message of civilization, to its constitution, its laws of the land, to the principles of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention regarding civilians in times of war, and to the teachings of their religions, values, principles, and morals inherited from our forefathers.

They have shamelessly “sinned” reneging the Lebanese culture and its values, and all its moral and legal humanistic constituents. They threw to the wind the sacrifices of thousands of venerable Lebanese sacrificed at the altar, so that Lebanon remains Free, Sovereign, and Independent. A civilized country. A model of openness, tolerance, and coexistence.

Through their “Dhimmitude” action, they walked the path of Hezbollah’s fundamentalist and Iran's mullah-isolationist culture. The culture of the “"Wilayat al-Faqih."   ” which totally negates the Lebanese Culture. It is the opposite of civil societies, human charters, freedoms, democracy and civilization.

(Wilayat al-Faqih is a religious theology that is divisive amongst the Muslims themselves. It is a bizarre, autocratic concept created and tailored by the late Ayatollah Khomeini in the early seventies. The basis of this system provides all the ruling powers and authorities with unlimited vetoes on every aspect of life and governance into the hands of one man, the Highest Shiite Imam, whose headquarters is located in the Iranian city of Qom).

A prisoner’s family, regardless of his crime, has the right to celebrate their family member’s release. But the politicians and parties who brandished the banner of the Cedars Revolution, who struggled for freedom and for the “Lebanese culture” in face of  “Wilayat al-Faqih” Iranian education and doctrine, who opposed Hezbollah’s fundamentalist agenda, do not have the right to run breathlessly behind Hezbollah’s travesties. No right to accept the “standards and criteria of heroism” as defined in Hezbollah’s religious-sectarian philosophy and education. These leaders cannot overturn the universal set standards and criteria of true heroism, and subjugate themselves to Hezbollah’s logic and its heretical doctrine.

They have no right promoting the “Dhimmitude” education and logic to their practices and public statements. Their acceptance to be subservient in Hezbollah’s musical band desecrates the Lebanese people numerous heroic stands since 2005, when one and a half million Lebanese descended the streets in civilized peaceful demonstrations, and gave these politicians the mission of standing guardians to protect us from Hezbollah’s culture, education, schemes and Iranian terrorist agenda.

Yet it is the right of the sovereign Lebanese to request public accountability from all the Cedars Revolution leaders, cabinet ministers, MPs, and party leaders, as well as all the state officials who celebrated Hezbollah’s Kuntar’s heroism which is totally alien to the Lebanese culture. We have the right that they offer either their apology and repentance for their ugly action, or resign from their positions and join Hezbollah.
 

Elias Bejjani
Chairman for the Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council (LCCC)
Human Rights activist, journalist & political commentator.
Spokesman for the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation (CLHRF)
E.Mail phoenicia@hotmail.com
LCCC Web Site http://www.10452lccc.com
CLHRF Website http://www.clhrf.com