Originally published in JO.

IN 2008, Zeina Daccache made headlines by doing the impossible: she got access to one of Lebanon’s toughest men’s prisons and staged a play there, starring the inmates. After months of work, she brought the great and good of Beirut society, from the Prosecutor General to the Minister of Interior, to sit in a makeshift theater and watch a group of convicted murderers, rapists and drug dealers act out a parable about the failure of criminal justice.

The play was Daccache and the inmates’ own adaptation of Twelve Angry Men, by Reginald Rose. The original is an American classic in which a jury debates the fate of a young man accused of murder. Eleven men agree on a guilty verdict, but one dissents; by analyzing the evidence he slowly wins the others over. Adapted to a Lebanese environment, the drama cuts back and forth between the arguments of the fictional jury and real-life stories told by the prison inmates.

One prisoner, the diminutive Youssef Chankar, plays a narrator, whose comments help bridge the different sections of the play. In his opening monologue he points out that, although called 12 Angry Lebanese, the cast also includes a Bangladeshi, a Palestinian, a Nigerian and a Syrian.

“We all came to Lebanon to be angry,” he says.

The production generated a huge amount of attention, and was followed up in 2009 with the release of a documentary film, “12 Angry Lebanese.” The movie tells the story behind the production, and examines the effects of this “drama therapy” on the 45 inmates involved, and the enclosed world of prison society itself. At the 2009 Dubai International Film Festival it won both the People’s Choice award and the Muhr award for best Arab documentary. It screened in Amman at the end of January.

So how exactly did Daccache manage to walk into a prison and get nearly 50 mostly violent offenders to do something requiring so much dedication and cooperation?

In one surprising scene in the film, viewers get to see Daccache taking her actors to task quite harshly.

“All I ever hear is ‘I want,’ or ‘I need,’” she says. “This is the language of children.” Shockingly, there’s no riot. The inmates bow their heads?one even agrees. What the audience may not quite appreciate is that such minor miracles represent years of work.

Daccache has lived in Paris, Italy and the United States, as well as Lebanon. She speaks four languages, and stars as the clownish character Iso in the popular Lebanese political satire show “Bassmat Watan.” In 2000 she studied clowning with Phillippe Gaulier, a French physical theater guru in London. Shortly thereafter she assisted in a drama therapy project in an Italian prison. The following six years were spent working in rehab centers, until 2007, when she studied drama therapy at Kansas State University; she’s also earned an MA in Clinical Psychology.

Of course none of this would have been much use without a sense of humor.

“You need to be confident, a gentleman,” she says at another point in the film, gesturing in an exaggerated fashion as she teaches Bangladeshi inmate Hussein Al Mawla how to walk without slouching. “Haven’t you seen those people who are like: ‘How are you darling, so good to see you,’” she continues, prancing around the room and playfully shaking the hands of the inmates. “Trust me, these people are everywhere in Beirut.”

It’s one of the more light-hearted scenes, but perhaps also one of the more telling. What exactly made Daccache abandon a world of coffee-shop boulevards for Roumieh prison, or the Beirut in-set for society’s outcasts?

“I don’t believe in art for art’s sake,” says the sprightly young director, dismissing the question as a distraction. “Why do you write, or why does a singer sing? I work with people like this because it’s right for me and because I think it’s important.”

It’s only when pressed that Daccache reveals the insight that seems to drive the work behind the 12 Angry Lebanese project, and Catharsis, the drama-therapy company she runs.

“People like this are naked,” she explains. “We know their sin, we know what they have done, and they can’t hide?they’ve been caught. But [for us] on the outside, our wrongs are hidden and we can fake so many things.”

Neither the play nor the documentary is arguing the rapists and murderers in Roumieh are innocent, or that they should not be held to account. What these works question is the presumed innocence of those outside the prison walls, and their readiness to sit in judgment on those within.

The more explicit aim of the documentary, however, was to chart and champion the effects of drama therapy on the inmates involved. Perhaps the most convincing case for a therapeutic effect is Majdi Sirjani, a murderer sentenced to death in a country where the death penalty, although not implemented, remains on the statute books. Sirjani describes his “psychological crisis,” and his overwhelming and constant preoccupation with death, but by the end of the film his features seem somehow lighter, his eyes less hollow. Another inmate, called simply “Haweelo,” who was convicted of drug dealing, learned to read and write for the play with the help of his cellmates.

The residents of Roumieh aren’t much given to artifice (or else they’re very good at it) but their reflections on prison life and the drama project don’t seem scripted.

12 Angry Lebanese shows that in some ways prison life is a microcosm of the world outside.

“Inside I’m a servant, and outside I’m a servant,” says Al Mawla, the Bangladeshi inmate.

“You’ll find exactly the same prejudices inside a prison as outside,” explains Daccache—mentioning how at first, some of the inmates at first didn’t like taking direction from a woman. “They call me Abu Ali,” she recounts. In the documentary itself, she quips that she “can never procreate with such a nickname.”

Then there’s Chankar, the play’s narrator, who was given a life sentence for murder. In Lebanon a life sentence means just what its name implies—it’s of indeterminate length. With nothing to look forward to, Chankar can only look back. He counts up the 18 years he’s spent in prison in days, hours, minutes and seconds.

Rateb Al Jibawi, imprisoned for rape, will be released one day—but he regards the prospect of freedom with ambivalence. “Another prison awaits me,” he tells audience, “a prison without walls.” He fears the censure of the society, the life of a pariah in the crowd.

Technically, “12 Angry Lebanese” is neither filmed, edited or scripted particularly well. Footage of the play is incorporated rather awkwardly into scenes from the rehearsals, and interviews with the prisoners’ in which they describe the process. More background—for example, on how Daccache found herself at Roumieh, or the struggle to launch the project in the first place—might have helped the narrative along.

But such criticisms are very minor. In fact, it’s in large part by avoiding the structure of a “journey story,” and instead focusing on what the inmates have to say for themselves, that makes the documentary at once so compelling and so different.

John Lillywhite is an Oxford History graduate with a law diploma he’s determined to never use, a Walmart laptop that remains the bane of his life, and a tongue so irreverent its best kept closed.

He has experience in Film, Talent, New Media and Book Publishing, and currently works as Art’s Editor for JO. John is a ‘culture vulture’ who’s loves creative things and creative people.

You can contact John by sending him an E-mail at john[at]jo[dot]jo. You can also add him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter.

Alright, some of you out there will point out that a similar election exists in Iraq. But we must say that there aren’t many in the Arab world who are ready to sing the praises of a fragile democracy that literally came on the backs of hundreds of thousands of lost innocent lives, not to mention that the war in question was brought about by a certain W, whom the world is desperate to consign to the dark corners of the brain’s memory.

On the other hand, there are the details of the Lebanese elections. And in so many of those details Arabs cannot help but find signs of concern.

There is concern that the Arabs are perhaps historically and genetically unsuited to liberal democracy. While it is common to have long-lasting political dynasties in places as far and wide as Argentina, the US and India, the Lebanese have taken the art of political succession to new heights or, more accurately, unparalleled lows!

We are not talking here about one or two political dynasties. In Lebanon, it seems that a large number of the seats in Parliament have turned into family fiefdoms. Father passes on the mantle to the son, or the son to the brother, or the husband to the wife, and on and on. And we cannot help but marvel at how the Lebanese electorate is so ready to align its support in line with wherever the movement of genes takes them.

It has to be acknowledged that many of the political acts of inheritance were brought about after spates of assassinations that have marked Lebanese history since the 1950s. While the human angle to these tragedies is heartbreaking and must be condemned in the clearest terms, it should not serve as a justification for the persistence of a monarchical form of democracy. In fact, it can even be argued that a system that honours legacy over principle is the worst form of memorial for those who gave their lives for Lebanon.

Let us survey some of the leading illustrations of this democratic system of neo-feudalism:

Obviously, world famous Saad Al Hariri has inherited both the business and political leadership of the Lebanese version of Camelot. He controls the 14 March coalition, currently holding the majority of the outgoing parliament. As for the Phalangist party, also members of the 14 March coalition, political powers have been passed on vertically, horizontally and in every other possible direction. First cousins Sami Gmayel and Nadim Gmayel, both sons of former presidents, are running in Matein district and Beirut’s first district respectively. Not to mention that Sami’s father, Amine, is still the leader of the Phalangist party. After a long successful career as university students, supporters and friends, not to mention relatives, have unanimously agreed that the time for Sami and Nadim to bring change to Lebanon has come.

Without any doubt, the star of the 2009 elections is Nayla Tueini, the political child prodigy par excellence. Nayla, 26, is crowning a long and memorable 2-year career as a journalist by running the leading newspaper in Lebanon and by running to succeed her father in Beirut’s first district. If successful, she can look forward to sharing a cozy family experience in Parliament with fellow candidate and grandfather, Michel Al Mur (running in Matein district), and uncle Marwan Hamade, running in El Chouf district.

This political inheritance business is not limited to the forces of the March 14 majority, as it applies in equal measure throughout the list of candidates of the Opposition Alliance. Names such as Suleiman Frangieh (Zgharta), Omar Karami (Tripoli), Ahmad Karami (Tripoli), Raafat Ali Eid (Tripoli), Karim Al Rassi (Akkar), Prince Talal Ursulan (Aley) and Maarouf Saad (Saida) come to mind, all having inherited their political power and right to run from their families. As for Ghassan Rahbani (Matein), he is practicing the arts of asymmetrical political succession. For his authority does not stem from family members long steeped in the world of politics, but from the sound of music.

The list goes on and on. There are no guns or tanks on the streets that impose these hereditary choices on the people of Lebanon. And it is there that the heart of the deadlock lies. The people are voting, with a free will, for representatives on the basis of name and rights of succession.

However, it must also be said that the system in Lebanon has encouraged the perpetuation of such narrow choices. The electoral system, adopted in the Doha Agreement of 2008, served to limit the districts along narrower family and communal lines.

Any observer of the Lebanese political scene would agree that it seems rather utopian to foresee any change of the current status quo in the near future. In fact, any call for a white revolution à la Obama would most likely be labeled as unrealistic or naïve.

Yet history has proven that change will come as soon people will want change. Voices calling for independent choices in Lebanon have always existed. One could only hope that our cynicism will be swept away by 2013.

The announcement came a day after Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh announced that seven Arab countries are set to reopen their embassies in Baghdad this year. These countries include Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Algeria and Morocco.

Jordan also recently announced that it would reopen its embassy to Iraq after the historic visit of King Abdullah, who became the first Arab head of state to do so since the 2003 invasion that toppled the former regime.

Lebanon is only one of five Arab states to currently have an embassy in Iraq, alongside Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon and Tunisia, which it opened in 2006. Official relations had been strained for six years between 1994 and 2000 when Lebanon broke its relations with Iraq in 1994 following the murder of an Iraqi dissident in Lebanon.

Sinioria travelled to Baghdad to discuss trade and energy, his spokesman quoted by the AFP as saying: “The discussions with Iraqi leaders will be on bilateral relations and particularly trade and oil.”

Renewed relations with Lebanon would be a positive sign for Maliki’s government, and both countries share a similar recent history. In the late 1960s and early 70s Beirut was considered the ‘Switzerland of the Orient’ and was home to a Riviera as opulent and international as any in Southern France, as well as being an Arab financial and medical centre, with Shia, Sunni and Christian living together in relative harmony.

Iraq was an oil rich state with high rates of education, renown for its industry and culture and pro-Western outlook, seemingly combining the best of East and West, as well as combining a mixed population of Shias, Sunnis and Christians. The ties that bind are the brutal and punishing conflicts both countries have endured since then, reducing these once prosperous nations to sectarian battlegrounds, divided internally and used as pawns in a regional power struggle.

As the war rages in Iraq and simmers in the Levant, commentators have been quick to point out the similarities, and many believe that a solution to either, or both, conflicts may hold the key to lasting peace in the Middle East. The reality is of course different. Regional power Saudi Arabia is an ally of the Lebanese government, but shows indifference and hostility to the power brokers in Baghdad.

Politics aside, Iraq and Lebanon have in the past few decades shared a strong trading relationship. In the 1970s and 80s the Iraqi market accounted for over a quarter of Lebanese total exports, interrupted by the first Gulf War.

In the late 1990s however, many Lebanese companies turned to Iraq in a time of economic downturn and uncertainty, seeing opportunity for manufactured goods and foodstuffs in a country crippled by sanctions but rich with petrodollars. The two countries signed a bilateral free trade agreement in April 2002, abolishing tariffs on goods traded between the two countries.

According to official figures provided the Center for Economic Research at the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture of Beirut, exports to Iraq (including both the public and private sectors) totalled $71,117. However an article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs journal in 2002 claimed that “the actual number was close to $400 million. Some even go so far as saying it exceeded $1 billion—a huge figure, considering that Lebanon’s public debt amounts to around $30 billion.”

The article went on to say that “hundreds of other Lebanese companies could suffer as a result of the war on Iraq.” Since 2003 though, Lebanon has played a minor role in the U.S.-controlled Iraqi economy, despite some optimism shown by Lebanese commentators in 2003, who believed that Lebanon was poised to benefit strongly from lucrative U.S. reconstruction contracts.

The past 12 months though have been a different story, and as I wrote recently, Lebanon has been one of the few consistent Arab sources of private capital into Iraq. Although Lebanese investors missed out on the privatisation of Iraq’s mobile phone network in 2003 and 2007, entrepreneurs have been leading the way in a variety of non-energy sectors including construction, tourism, banking and industry.

Lebanon is a major exporter of cement to Iraq, and Make Oil, a prominent Lebanese firm, has expressed its desire to build a cement factory in Dohuk, northern Iraq in addition to a $3 billion oil refinery. Byblos Bank opened an Iraqi branch in Erbil in 2007 and has announced expansion plans. A sponsor of the Iraq Industry summit in Dubai earlier this year, Byblos’ operations in Iraq include financing trade and infrastructure projects. Byblos also acts as an intermediary for Iraqi banks trying to do business overseas.

Tourism and Iraq are not often mentioned in the same sentence, but in the virtually autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, it has taken off in a big way due to relative security. Lebanese companies over the year have announced plans for a massive mountain resort in Shaqlawa County, Erbil and a $55m 5-star hotel in the city of Erbil, to be managed by a major Gulf hotel group, Rotana Hotels.

Investment into Iraqi Kurdistan is nothing new, however. Earlier this year, UAE property giant DAMAC announced a $15 billion residential project for the region, showing just how much confidence the region has attracted. Undoubtedly this attracts attention to Iraq as a whole but the uncertainty over the oil and gas law and, more significantly, the status of Iraqi Kurdistan does not guarantee that the benefits will spill over into the rest of the country either in the short to medium term.

Many Lebanese companies, such as Sfeir Industries which has a contract with the U.S. military to supply food services in Baghdad, operate out of Jordan or Turkey.

Carlos Sfeir, general manager of the company told Oxford Business Group in an interview that “The growth is very interesting and the potential is huge so we take the risk,” but admitted that “We never send company personnel to Baghdad.”

Alongside boosting diplomatic acceptance of the current Iraqi administration, Lebanese firms could in many ways offer far greater support by venturing south in search of commercial opportunities and setting a precedence for Arab companies who are better equipped with cultural ties and physical proximity than international firms. They can also show that there is money to be made outside of the energy sector.

Before 2003 Lebanon exported to Iraq over 97 articles, including food products, leather, wood, cement, iron, books and newspapers, clothes, and machinery: products desperately needed in 2008.

Corrupt and unmanned border crossings have made the Iraqi market an easy target for Turkish and Iranian manufacturers and merchants, peddling everything from tinned food, radios and other consumer items to the detriment of Iraqi industry and consumers alike. A colleague in Baghdad often complains of shoddy imports, and wishes that the government would take action. He was delighted recently with the purchase of a Lebanese made petrol-powered generator for his basement, and wants better quality goods to return to the general market, without premiums demanded by blackmarketeers.

As much as Iraqi consumers or Lebanese exporters would wish to focus on trade and commerce, and for agreements to be made, yet oil and gas dominate the headlines.

Iraq was a major exporter of oil to Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s but output was cut after the first Gulf War. In 2000 Iraq and Syria agreed to build a pipeline to Syria’s Mediterranean port of Banias, including Lebanon in the process, and it courted controversy for flouting UN imposed sanctions with the volumes exported. It was shut by the U.S. soon after the 2003 invasion.

The 200,000 – 300,000 bpd Iraq-Syria-Lebanon Pipeline (ISLP) has been closed and the Iraqi portion reported unusable since 2003. The initial capacity of the pipeline was approximately 700,000 bpd, with potential to expand to 1.4 million bpd, according to data obtained from the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration.

Government statistics put Iraq oil production at 2.46 million bpd in July 2008, with exports at 1.89 million bpd.

On August 11th 2008 the Iraqi Ministry of Trade released a statement saying that Iraq and Syria have agreed on terms to revitalize an idle pipeline that used to carry Iraqi crude to Syrian terminals on the Mediterranean. Discussions have been ongoing since the beginning of the year to re-open the pipeline and a Russian company has been widely tipped to win the contract for renovation works after carrying out a survey of the remaining pipeline and facilities. There have also been talks to add a second line parallel to the existing one.

Whilst Lebanese investment in Iraq is on the up, what of Iraqi interests in Lebanon? After all a healthy trade relationship is a balanced one.

There are no exact figures to measure trade between the two countries, but it is reported that millions of dollars flow between the two on a monthly basis: the more exports from Lebanon the better for it; Lebanon’s exports surpassed $5.96 billion in the first four months of 2008, but the trade deficit widened to $3.65 billion in the same period.

During the Israel-Lebanon conflict in the summer of 2006 the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a statement saying that the current conflict in Lebanon was having a negative impact on the Iraqi economy as most of its trade with Lebanon has been frozen and business with Syria has decreased.

It quoted Muhammad Rushi, an economic analyst and professor at Baghdad University, as saying: “Lebanon and Syria were Iraqi’s most important trading partners…Hundreds of contracts had to be cancelled or postponed due to the current violence in Lebanon.”

Iraqi refugees in Lebanon number only 20,000 – 50,000, U.N. data shows. Such small numbers are unlikely to make a significant economic impact on the local economy compared to their counterparts in Jordan and Syria. Iraqi capital has flowed steadily into Jordan and the influx of refugees into Syria has sent house prices soaring. To compare, only 20% – predominantly Christian – of Iraqi refugees in Lebanon said they want to integrate into the country.

Last Monday, the influential Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star published an article on the progress of the Iraqi investment law that was designed to encourage the development of Iraq’s private sector and to reassure foreign investors. Passed in 2006, it has still not been implemented, and this failure is almost a big a barrier to foreign investment as the conflict itself. It has also not helped that private sector growth in Iraq has been low key at best.

“It is the nature of capital to favour markets in which a single, clear, comprehensive law is applied regarding investment, and where a single authority is responsible for this law,” the article states, “Therefore, stability, clear principles and rules that govern investment operations, and modernizing laws to simplify regulations are considered the main means for providing a suitable investment climate.” Where there is no comprehensive law, it sums up, “there is chaos.”

The solutions it offers are simple: Reduced bureaucracy, investment timeframes to prevent foreign monopolies, increased tax exemption and investor protection from exploitation and corruption.

It may be wishful thinking but if regional investors, led by companies from Lebanon with a long history of trading with Iraq, make a real effort to enter the Iraqi market and nurture private sector growth, it would surely be in the interest of the government of Iraq to legislate for a better trade and investment climate.

Oliver Pearce is an editor at a leading Middle East focused business information service. You can contact him at: olivercpearce [at] gmail [dot] com.

The other story in the news on the very same day was the gun attack at the Roman Amphitheatre in Amman, where a deranged Islamist opened fire at the audience of a musical concert. How the two stories are closely connected, I shall reveal after I share with you the totally new kind of emotion that enveloped me as I followed the parade of the liberated men on TV (alongside the coffins of the fallen fighters, inside one of which lay Dalal Mughrabi, whose corpse Ehud Barak personally mutilated in 1978 and invited the cameras to record his primeval act).

As I watched this historic event, I didn’t know how to define the overwhelming jolt of elation that swept my own sun-mutilated corpse. Why did it seem so unusual to belong to a nation that gave birth to a dedicated group of fighters who refused to abandon their captured comrades, I asked myself? Why was I so surprised to feel that way? Indeed, the extraordinary nobility of those who persevered and offered their lives to twist the arms of the captors of their brothers-in-arms was a manifestation of military valor and gallantry in combat that I have not witnessed in recent memory from my own nation folk. Then I realized what this sensation was like

The only people in this region who have always lit a candle of solidarity for their missing sons and daughters were not the Arab countries. Finally, I could feel as privileged as Jews do. For the first time in my life, and although I never wished for it, I felt like an Israeli. Indeed, one of the reasons the Israelis have always conquered their Arab adversaries was because their soldiers go into battle knowing that their leaders and their people shall never rest until they return them to their families, whether living or dead.

And now, this most honorable trait with its noblest values of gratitude to your fighting brethren combined with the solemn vow to leave no man or woman behind, is no longer monopolized by our enemies. The sweltering Aqaba sun became cooler all of a sudden as the refreshing breeze of redeemed dignity penetrated my soul.

But some people want to snatch that pride away from us, using the most ridiculous and shameful of arguments to tarnish the only bright spot of hope across a demoralized and defeated nation. They keep shedding their crocodile tears over the wanton destruction that Israel inflicted upon Lebanon in its aggression two summers ago, and never cease to blame Hizbullah for inviting such a war on that beautiful Mediterranean nation. But how can Hizbullah be responsible if an irrational beast chose to punish all of Lebanon for no justifiable reason? What would the Cypriots have said if Israel decided to bomb Cyprus in July 2006 because there is a substantial Lebanese community living there? Would you imagine having one single Cypriot clown coming out and blaming Hizbullah for such unprovoked attacks by Israel?

Did Britain blast Ireland to smithereens to fight the IRA? Did Spain flatten the Basque country to avenge the actions of ETA? Nevertheless, you have rabid local columnists – the ones who still insist that Israel did not lose the last war despite Israel’s own admission of defeat – who took it upon themselves to advocate the US stance in demonizing anyone connected to the new public enemy no. 1, the evil Persians.

To perform their new dirty role, these agitators must, against all evidence and reason, keep undermining the role of Hizbullah in Lebanon, despite the fact that this Shiite group is allied in an unprecedented manifestation of national unity with the majority of Lebanon’s Christians against a gang of war criminals and warlords who still have not been held to account for their cruel devastation of their entire nation during 15 years of civil war. Hizbullah is implementing a Shiite Iranian agenda in Lebanon, these quasi-journalists would tell you, and not a whimper you would hear from them about the sponsors of the Fateh Al Islam Sunni group that burnt down Nahr Al Bared refugee camp last year (for a full exposé of the parties behind the funding and arming of Shaker Al Ibsi and his followers, read Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s article in the New Yorker magazine, March issue, 2007).

It is no longer acceptable not to speak out with outrage against this nauseating vilification of Iran’s role in our region, for the Wahabist alternative we are asked to swallow is downright horrendous and, frankly speaking, absolutely indigestible. And let me begin here by reminding everyone that I am not a fan of any group that proclaims religious values in its earthly endeavors, whether it be Sunni or Shiite, Judaic or Christian. I have in fact risked myself several times in the past by taking a public stand against the excesses of religious zealotry, and have endured my fair share of defamation in the process.

But in this case, I sense there is something profoundly perverse in the current campaign to denigrate all Shiites as subversive agents of an expansionist Persian empire, as it serves only one divisive purpose obvious for all. The latest blatant exaggerations of this off-beat circus band betrayed its members when one usual suspect wrote recently that moving the exhumed bodies out of Israel in the latest prisoners swap was deplorable in his opinion. This columnist, who shifted in his late life to the extreme right wing ranks, and in order to score a cheap point against Hizbullah, suddenly proclaimed that those buried in Israel, meaning the land occupied in 1948, were in fact laid to rest in “Palestine”, because “Israel never demarcated its borders”, and therefore the dead should have stayed there (although this shifter would never even be heard referring to land occupied in 1967 as Palestine, let alone to now deny Israel’s existence in order to make his sanctimonious argument).

For the shifter who made a career for himself out of his daily Iran-bashing rants to claim that Dalal Mughrabi was dignified in her unmarked Israeli grave is quite astonishing, since he knows too well that Dalal was displayed by the mutilators of dead corpses in a glass coffin at the Judicial Institute of Autopsy for Zionist students to peek at her before she was dumped without ceremony in an anonymous graveyard in what Israel termed the “Enemy Combatant Cemetery”. To pretend now that the fact that her family can finally afford her a proper burial is somehow lamentable, defies all human norms of decency and simply beggars belief.

But let me get back to the imaginary Iranian threat being propagated by the scaremongers in our midst. As I said, I have absolutely no interest or desire to defend the Iranians or what their revolution stands for, but we owe it to ourselves to examine in depth what the ideological counterpart that is being offered on the menu for our children’s future is all about.

If it’s going to be the reinforcement of the Wahabist stranglehold of the Sunni sect of madness that produced the likes of Bin Laden and Zarqawi; if it’s going to be the stream of insanity that wants to ban all aspects of beauty, art and splendor in Islam; if it’s going to be the deformed version of our great religion that prevents women from driving cars and has a grudge against all elements of refined civilization; if it’s going to be the cult of hate and death that declares all Shiites, Christians and Jews as apostates who must be killed; if it’s going to be the same ignorant hordes who have bulldozed and erased every single physical remnant of Islam’s history in Mecca and Medina; and, finally, if it’s going to be the uglification brand of Islam that brainwashes our youth to become cold-blooded murderers by opening fire at a musical concert in downtown Amman on a peaceful summer night, then without a doubt, I salute the glorious brigades of Hizbullah in this battle of ideologies.

To be totally honest, I am not too concerned to take sides in an historic squabble that took place more than fourteen centuries ago, and don’t particularly enjoy the sight of bloody chest-beatings today by those who still can’t get over the outcome of that dispute. But if I am seriously asked today whether I would stand with Mu’awiya or his enemy in that ancient battle, then by all means I solidly stand with the Hashemite household of the Prophet Muhammad, the Shiites of Ali and his sons, as any human being with any sense of justice would.

And today, despite all its shortcomings that I would be the first to denounce, Iran is still a country that at least has a cinema industry competing in Cannes and Venice, and its Tehran Philharmonic Orchestra leaves a lot to be desired in the Sunni dominated world. They not only allow their women to drive, but they have women Ministers and women Members of Parliament, and you would never hear that an Iranian woman would get sentenced to one hundred lashes after she was gang-raped by seven men, or that little school girls would be forced back to their deaths inside a burning school to avoid them exposing their hair in public.

Iran never invaded any Arab country, nor has it facilitated the invasion of an Arab country, and if its only crime is in supporting the first and only Arab party to give Israel its first taste of defeat and humiliation, then I smell a rotten rat in all this dubious war-drumming, Persian-punching extravaganza.

May all our martyrs rest in peace, wherever in God’s earth they may be resting.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

The last annual summit of Arab Heads of states in Damascus, in March this year, was met with a chorus of apathy on the streets of Amman, Cairo, Casablanca, Gaza and every other corner of the Arab world. The only thing that seems to get people to turn on their TV sets is the perennial (and always entertaining) Gaddafi speech, with the average Arab viewer wondering just how far the Colonel will go in his latest oration.

It is difficult to blame the Arabs for deriding their league. The seeming impotence of the Arab League in the face of adversity is quite legendary. As the situation in Palestine, especially Gaza, deteriorates, as the cruel civil war wages in Iraq (not to mention the illegal invasion that sparked it), as the Darfur situation worsens, the Arab league stands totally powerless. And this is just a snapshot of the current crop of crises in Arabia. The history of the last six decades since the founding of the League in 1945 is deluged with examples of the Arab League’s inefficiency and incapacity to resolve any of the major issues facing the region.

But then, in the midst of all this inaction, we woke up one morning last week to the sight of a truly extraordinary and improbable achievement: a real Arab League success. The Arab League’s success in brokering an agreement between the endlessly feuding Lebanese factions is a major triumph of unprecedented caliber. Of course, particular credit is due to the Qatari Government and the few Arab Foreign Ministers who devoted their time and energy towards the attainment of this goal in the period leading up to the agreement. But it was the institution of the Arab League that made this entire effort possible and, despite all our instincts to disbelieve, we should all recognize that.

The success is particularly laudable in light of the initial inability of the Arab League to put a meeting together quickly enough to respond to the surge of violence in Lebanon that started earlier this month. When the decisions of the Lebanese government to dismantle the telecommunications network of Hezbollah and to remove the security chief of Beirut airport unleashed an unprecedented reaction by Hezbollah on the streets of Beirut, it took the Arab League almost a week to get the Foreign Ministers of its members to meet.

When the Foreign Ministers finally managed to congregate, most Arabs didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. With Beirut burning for several days, the sight of this belated meeting was discouraging to say the least. And we all were betting on the usual result, i.e. a few speeches, a couple of incidents, and then the dignitaries pack up and head home on the earliest flight.

Somehow, Arab will manifested itself, with the rival factions of Lebanon compelled to agree to attend a meeting in Doha, Qatar, as a direct result of the meeting of the Arab League. Even then, we all thought it was a meeting doomed to failure. As the days wore on in Doha, we were sure it was all going nowhere. As leaks broke through informing us of the latest disagreement, we all shook our heads with the usual air of resignation mixed with disbelief.

And then, despite all of our misgivings, the Arab League managed to do what Sarkozy, Bush, the United Nations and many others have failed to do: Secure a deal amongst the forces of the great Lebanese divide that had brought the country to a standstill for 18 months and was about to take the country down the dark tunnels of civil war.

Lebanon is now celebrating the election of Michel Suleiman as its new President, filling a vacancy that has persisted since November last year and that could not be resolved through 19 previous attempts in Parliament.

In all of this, credit is due to the indefatigable nature of the Arab League’s Secretary General, Amr Moussa. I have always marveled at his extraordinary capacity to soldier on despite the failure of Arab countries to reach agreement on any major political issue.

As we reflect on this achievement, there is a lesson for us Arabs that is worth noting. We seem to have taken cynicism in the Arab world to new highs. We are artists of self-deprecation, and not of the charming, Hugh Grant variety!

I am not belittling the reasons for our cynical or defeatist outlook. We sure have tons of reasons to be downcast about the present Arab predicament. From coast to coast, Arab countries face daunting challenges ranging from civil wars to a seemingly unstoppable and downright scary proliferation of religious extremism. The helplessness with which we watch crisis unfold is enough to put anyone in a state of anxiety or depression.

But it is time to try and snap out of it. And one way to do that is to try and inject a few more ounces of self-belief and belief in some of our institutions. Or, to be more precise, perhaps part of the answer to all the problems we face in the region lies in applying ourselves to work patiently to improve the lot of our institutions and systems, such as the Arab League and various national institutions.

The answer could be in a little bit of application and effort towards our current systems. For example, many Arabs rightly worry about the chronic lack of democracy in Arab countries. And in this state of eternal concern and sarcasm, they leave any institutions that have some semblance of democracy to fall prey to either the thoughtless or the extremists amongst us. Any knowledge of the history of true democracies shows that many of the oldest democracies developed with time, with Parliaments and their processes improving through the effort of citizens. The British Parliament was a highly imperfect institution and it took the dedication of people throughout centuries to work within that institution and lead it to where it is today.

The same is true of more effective models of regionalization. The European Community did not reach where it is today without the commitment of people to its symbolism and the effort of a number of thought leaders. This process managed to turn centuries of war into a period of great economic harmony that was unimaginable to most in the aftermath of World War II. The Gulf Cooperation Council is fast becoming almost EU-like in its ideals and practice. The Arab League could in turn yet prove itself to be the nucleus of a major change in Arabia. One important area is that of the economic role of the Arab League.

HH Sheikh Mohamed Bin Rashed, the Ruler of Dubai, suggested two years ago an idea that could prove pivotal if applied. He suggested an annual summit of Arab leaders that focused purely on economics, and ways to improve the economic situation of all in the region. In other words, the League could have one annual summit for politics and one for economics. How refreshing would that be? With Arab Presidents and Kings gathered to focus entirely on economics, the room for rhetoric would diminish further and the opportunity for effective brainstorming would widen.

And so, today, as we reflect on a major achievement of the Arab League, and the sense of timid hope that prevails in Lebanon as a result, let us for one small moment exercise that emotion that has eluded us Arabs for so long: Optimism.

There was a war over there.

Her father had once stood with her and spun their globe. His finger covered the entire country. He pointed it out with the white crescent at the top of one nail. Sirena had squinted at the small blot, its name printed in a nearby sea. She imagined that the whole country was probably the size of her elementary school and pictured the blue and red hallways packed with tall men and women who looked just like her dad.

Sirena couldn’t remember when the war had begun. Her father said it started a long time ago. Her sister Aisha was ten now, two years older than Sirena. Aisha couldn’t remember when the war started either, but she said she was six when the first phone call came, and she could remember how things were before it happened. Aisha said Baba smiled a lot more and he used to read stories and sing songs before bedtime. Now he just tucked the covers around you and said, “I love you, baby. Sleep well,” before flipping down the light switch and pulling the door almost shut.

“The war,” Aisha had said, and she said it with authority, “changed everything.” In the last four years, there had been five phone calls, each reporting the death of yet another cousin, aunt or uncle that the girls would never meet. Of the calls, Sirena could only remember two. She was afraid this might be the third phone call she would come to remember.

Sirena knew about war because her Baba had explained it to her when she asked him about it a few weeks before. He told her that lots of people argued about God. He said that sometimes they had the same religion, but there were small differences between what they believed, and when they disagreed, the trouble would start. When people got really angry, they would try to hurt each other.

“That’s what happened with the Jews,” Aisha had told her. “I heard Baba say that if it wasn’t for the Jews there would be no war in Lebanon and we would be there instead of here. But the Jews are greedy and they want to kill everyone. I was playing spy and listening while he was talking to Mama, but she caught me and asked me what I heard. Then she told me that there was a bad man named Hitler and he hurt the Jews. Baba got mad and said it was no excuse. Just because the Jews felt sorry for themselves, that didn’t mean it was okay for them to hurt the Palestinians like they did. And now they’re hurting the Lebanese.”

“Then what happened?”

“Mama sent me outside while she and Baba had a talk.” Aisha put her hands over her heart and made sure Sirena was looking in her eyes. “Right now, Jews are over there hurting our family.”

Sirena felt sad and angry at those Jews. “Why?”

Aisha shrugged and flicked something from her fingers. “Dunno. Some people are just mean.”

“Do all Jews hate us?”

Aisha shrugged again. “Maybe. Joshua at school doesn’t like me, and he’s a Jew.”

“Oh,” Sirena said, and thought of a girl at school who was really nice, and wore one of those stars on her necklace.

Her father had talked to her about the war one other time. He said it was the reason their family had never been to Lebanon and might never have the chance to go. Baba had told her this over breakfast one morning, sipping coffee and scooping up eggs and beans in a folded piece of bread. Sirena had leaned forward, fist under her chin, wide eyes narrowed in concentration, the way she always did when Baba explained any matter of life to her. There had been a stack of buttered toast in the middle of the table. After Baba finished counting off his friends and family members who had been killed so far and whether by bomb or bullet, his face a mask of resignation, every piece of toast had become cold and wet, but it didn’t matter to Sirena because she had lost her appetite anyway.

The disturbed rumble of her father’s deep voice filtered into her room. Sirena pushed her yellow-flowered sheets aside and put her narrow feet on the floor. She peered over her shoulder at her bedroom door. It was open just a crack, and, if she squinted, she could see across the hall into the darkness of her parents’ bedroom. She inhaled deeply and held her breath, waiting for their doorway to light up. Light would mean nothing was wrong; that her father was going to use the bathroom and then go back to sleep. Maybe this would a prank call or wrong number. She waited until her eyes became accustomed to the dark before releasing her breath. Her mouth tasted like she’d touched her tongue to a battery, and her stomach was in knots.

There would be no light tonight. She’d known it from the second the volume of her father’s voice spiked—he had to talk at a near shout to be heard over a bad connection.

Sirena stood up and straightened her blue “Daddy’s Girl” nightgown, letting it fall down over her knees. Occasionally, in her dreams, she was the one bravely calling her father and hearing his courageous reply. She was issued a rifle like the ones in the U.S. Army ads and fought alongside her relatives whose faces she knew from the black and white photographs Mama kept in a music box on her dresser. She made the call with mud smeared across her cheeks and some faceless cousin lying dead in a puddle of blood beside her, one hand reaching up and grasping her own. These dreams made her chest tight and her face wet with tears. Mama said it was because she had a kind soul.

The cool material of her nightgown against her warm skin reminded her that she was awake. This wasn’t a dream. She needed to know what was happening. She pushed her wild, dark hair out of her face, and sinking one hand into the mass to hold it back, tiptoed around the corner of her bunk bed toward the doorway.

She heard Aisha moving around with their younger sister Hadeel in the next room. She stopped, listening through the silent wall separating them, glad she was alone to investigate. Sirena opened her door very slowly, stopping it before it creaked, and stepped onto the worn carpet in the hallway. She inched toward her parents’ brown door, halting suddenly. The crackle of whispers invaded her ears. Her mother’s lips were producing comforting noises, her hand rustling against Baba’s shirt, on his shoulder, between his shoulder blades. The places where Mama always put her soft hands to comfort seemed ominous and threatening as Sirena squinted at them through the dark. The sounds were uncomfortable. The air smelled wrong, night-breathing that had turned sour. She waited.

She heard a man’s voice—like her father’s but pitched higher. Sirena moved closer to their doorway, freezing mid-step. Was someone else in the house? She hadn’t heard anyone come in. She peered into her parents’ room. The streetlamp outside their window cast enormous shadows on their bare, white walls. Mama said they wouldn’t waste money on decorations when the family overseas needed it. Sirena pushed their door open a little further so that she could see the stranger who must have come with the phone call.

Streetlight fell across her mother’s solemn face. And her father’s shaking shoulders. Her mother’s hands worked rhythmically on his back as Baba’s shoulders trembled harder and harder. The stranger’s voice was his.

He turned to look at Mama, and Sirena saw a tear on his thickly bearded face. Baba put a dark hand up in the air, the palm facing his cheek, and shook it gently forward and backward in a failed attempt to slice away whatever pain had come with the phone call. He turned his face down and placed his hand on it. The stranger’s voice stopped for a moment. A deep breath rasped against his dry lips and soggy throat, then the voice came again, in whimpers.

“Froggy throat, soggy throat,” Aisha would have teased, but Sirena wasn’t laughing. With warm shame on her face for witnessing her father in a moment of weakness, Sirena stared at her feet, sundark and olive. She tunneled her toes into the thin gray carpet outside her parents’ door for a moment before turning away.

Aisha had come out into the hallway and was poised in front of her bedroom door. Her hair was like Sirena’s; thick and dark, and standing off her head from sleep. She had one arm around little Hadeel’s shoulder. Hadeel gazed into the darkness. Brown curls sprang angrily from her head in all directions. Her pink nightshirt was twisted around her small body and partially tucked into her ruffled panties. She kept her tired eyes wide open, and she looked at Sirena suspiciously.

“Who was it?” Aisha asked quietly, taking a small step in front of Hadeel. Sirena looked at her younger sister, who was now peeking around Aisha’s side, clutching at the hem of her oversized, tie-dyed Spring Fling T-shirt. This would be Hadeel’s first phone call. She was old enough to remember this one.

Aisha leaned forward and gently poked Sirena’s shoulder. There was a probing, unanswered fear in her eyes that Sirena responded to with a lone nod. The two looked at the floor silently for a moment, mourning the loss of yet another family stranger. Aisha’s eyes tightened and she ushered Hadeel, who stood tense with awareness that something was wrong, back into their room. Hadeel went silently but with a thoughtful look on her face, as though she were piecing together a puzzle in her mind, as though she almost understood and had suddenly aged past four-and-a-half as a result.

Sirena headed back to her own bed, pausing briefly to listen to her sisters crawl under the same set of sheets. Aisha would take the outside of the bed to make sure Hadeel wouldn’t roll off while sleeping. Sirena considered joining them but left them to each other when she heard Aisha singing Hadeel “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

A vicious anger took her so that she trembled with the memory of her own first phone call, of waking up in the middle of the night, cold because it was winter. Aisha had squeezed her hand and piled extra blankets on the bed they were sharing, but Sirena couldn’t stop shivering. The cold in the air wasn’t just from the frost outside. Now she felt hot and stifled. She wanted to bang on the wall and yell at Aisha to stop singing, or maybe to change the words.

It should be: “There’s a land that I heard of where all our family dies.”

Sirena bunched up her pillow and focused on the cool of her sheets blanketing her legs. She turned from side to side, pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped the covers around her head to block out the still sour air. It was just her and her pillow in here. Her sisters were already asleep. Her parents too. The apartment was again silent. No ringing phone, no muffled cries. It seemed even the crickets and cicadas had stopped chirping.

She thought of how she would go with her sisters in the warm, Texas summer morning and collect the cicadas’ shells from the back yard. They would gather them with spoons and forks and put them in empty ice trays, then crush them up just because they made a crunching noise. Later their mother would scold the girls for using her good silverware. It was a joyful game the sisters played every day. But Sirena wasn’t looking forward to the joys of tomorrow. She could still hear her father’s small cries in her mind. She stared at the empty bunk above her, wishing that it was Hadeel’s week to sleep in her room, and willed her father’s voice to fade from her ears. Instead, she fell asleep to the remembered rhythm of his pain.

When morning came and they were collecting their cicada shells, Sirena and her sisters were asked to please come back inside. In the dining room, where they could still see the small square of brightly lit, fenced-in yard behind their condo, Baba told them their great aunt was shot by a sniper. His words scratched at the air and he spoke between stilted breaths. They waited, standing side-by-side, oldest to youngest, staring at him. They waited for some sign that everything would be okay. But Baba just looked beyond them. His eyes were swollen and his face was hard. The girls stared until Mama ushered them back outside.

Sirena and her sisters began to file through the sliding door. Sirena went first, but paused. Hadeel bumped into her and Aisha whispered harshly, “What’s the hold-up?” Sirena toed the doorframe, one hand resting against the glass.

“What is it, baby?” her Baba asked.

Sirena hesitated, uncertain but needing to know. Finally, she said, “Was it the Jews?”

“What?” Mama asked, her voice a bit panicky. “What?”

“The person who shot Aunty Samira. Was it one of those Jews?” Sirena repeated.

Her father hung his head and shook it from side to side. Her mother stood away from him, the hands that had been quietly massaging his back now hovering uncertainly in the air, her mouth silently working.

“It probably was a Jew,” Aisha said matter-of-factly, ready to steer Sirena outside. “Everyone knows they’re a bunch of lunatics. It’s their fault there’s a war. All they want to do is hurt people—”

“It wasn’t a Jew.” Their father cut her off before Aisha could make the triangle on her face with her thumb and pointer finger; the secret sign she and Sirena had come up with for a big Jewish nose.

“Then who was it?”

He looked up at Sirena from under his bushy eyebrows and sighed, “A Druze.” At the same time Mama said, “It doesn’t matter.”

Sirena looked back and forth between them. Baba spread his hands, then straightened up. “Your mother’s right,” he said, “It doesn’t matter.” His voice became deep and resonant. “Go ahead, girls. Go outside and play.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Mama called after them, already turning her angry eyes on Baba.

Sirena wanted to ask what a Druze was, but her mother’s voice had that edge of finality that caused even Aisha to shrink in on herself. She bit her lip, angry and confused, and followed her sisters outside. The three moved in a silent line, crouching forward like a small army. Outside, they collected more cicada shells, this time crushing them under bare feet and between fingers, pretending they were gunshots crackling through the air.

S. M. Ayoub is a Lebanese-American mother, wife, writer, and recent graduate of Indiana University’s Creative Writing Program with an M.F.A. in Fiction. She keeps a daily life blog at “The Days Are Just Packed” and is currently putting together Islam on My Side – an anthology of Muslim American experience post 9/11. Ayoub lingers on themes of the Lebanese Civil War and resulting diaspora, as well as islamophobia. Her poetry has been published in The Oxford Review.

Being Muslims, many of our brothers and sisters are not working for peace. They are misguided, mistaken and spreading the virus of hatred and revenge through telling deliberate lies, disinformation and false accusations, which is resulting in death and misery for number of innocent people living around the world at the hands of merciless

KILLER MUSLIMS and also bringing bad name to Mohammed (PBUH) who never killed anyone in his life time.
Instead of teaching about Good & Evil, certain Radical Muslim Clerics are only “Trading in Religion”. They teach us about accusing, abusing and killing the non-Muslims. They try to hypnotize us to Hate and Kill the non-Muslims and brethren of other sects or be killed and without using any common sense, we readily believe in whatever is being said

by these Hate Mongers. Actually, they are “Agents of Satan” who is paying them heavily and in return they are cutting at the very roots of the Ummah. Instead of “Mourning” most of the Muslims are rejoicing on the brutal killings of the non-combatant innocent civilians and “The Murderers” have always been “Our Great Heroes”.

Before it is too late and the Curse Of God falls upon us, we should use common sense, find out the TRUTH and must change ourselves to save Muslims from becoming the most “Hated, Isolated, Discredited and Suspicious” people in the world. We must start working for promoting “Sectarian Harmony and Religious Tolerance” in the society

and should prove to the WORLD through our deeds that Islam is not a religion of Zero Tolerance and Mohammed (PBUH) teaches “Love & Peace” and not Terrorism, Barbarism, Extremism, Sectarianism, Cruelty, Inhumanity and “Hatred & Killing” of the innocent civilians.

Islam is a religion of peace. Islam teaches respect and love for all even the animals. But many narrow-minded Muslims have so far failed to learn anything good from the teachings of Mohammed (PBUH) who preaches love for the peoples of all religions. We are far away from the basic principle of Islam i.e. “Enjoining the people to do Good and

forbidding them from Doing Evil” and thus, possess no quality of the civilized society. Unfortunately, many of us show Zero Tolerance towards others and have wrongly learnt few thing to be called as good Muslims and those are “hate” the non-Muslims and “Accusing, Abusing and Cursing” the non-Muslims. …act of madness?

The killing of others in the name of religion is a Sin. Can a FATHER ever teach his Children to be the permanent Enemies of each other? The time has come for us to stop readily believing in whatever is being said, read and written by the LIARS / Hate Mongers. Unfortunately, some misguided-Muslims believe that the Holy Koran and Holy Prophet

(PBUH) both have instructed Muslims that the opponents be KILLED and that they are simply following the orders. We should use our own common sense and only believe which is logical, convincing and in the best interest of the humanity.
Why do we hate others so much, may be they are better humans then what we are. My feeling is that the Muslims should unite to discredit and deactivate the fringe mullahs (Preachers of Hate) who promise a quick trip to paradise to people who have little and sacrifice themselves with bombs strapped to their bodies. If the mullahs (THE LIARS)

thought that it really was a way to paradise they would be strapping bombs to themselves! Their followers are kept too ignorant to see this for themselves and enlightened Muslims should educate them. We must promote understanding and peace. We are all watched by the same God and need to help one another, not Hate and Hurt.

Our contention is that the WORLD should resolve the conflicts facing the Muslim World to stop the terrorism. Unfortunately, all the disputes facing the Muslim World are our self created. The root causes of all the disputes are based on the Muslim Philosophy of Hate against the non-Muslims. The Muslim literature, teachings and preaching are

spreading and injecting this hatred in hearts and minds of the Muslims. Our intolerant behavior is further proved by the root causes of all the pending conflicts that we (Muslims) cannot live side by side in peace with the non-Muslims. All the disputes facing Muslim World can be resolved easily, only if we (the Muslims) are able to condemn the

“Philosophy of Hate” created in us by our past and present elders who have divided the peoples of the world in the name of “Religion, Cast and Creed”.
Fellow Muslims! If God is one and he loves mankind, we should value each others life and strive to protect each other than thinking that if we kill we shall have reward. God looks at human beings not as belonging to different religions; that is why the rain falls to all, the sun shines to all and we all breathe the air freely. We are all created or given life in the very same way- whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew etc. Let us learn to love each other sincerely. The change of heart and mind is possible to achieve if we keep up our

relentless efforts for a violence free and peaceful world. We need to preach love, kindness and humanity with extremist devotion and mission. The mullahs (THE LIARS) and the preachers of HATE must be excommunicated at every level and we should stop giving them donations as it is our money which is being used by them to spread HATRED for

killing of the innocents.
We must also stop dividing the World into Muslim and non-Muslim blocks. Our political leaders and religious teachers must offer positive ideas. Without the ability to imagine a better world, we cannot build anything together. Tolerance of the beliefs of other peoples in the world, warmth and friendship across racial cultures MUST be the objective of all peace loving people worldwide. What is being offered today through religion is “Death, Destruction and Suffering”.

MY PRAYER FOR PEACE:

Merciful God, please give to peoples of the world, the required wisdom and determination, to Forgive and Forget the bitterness of the past and learn to live in peace like brothers and sisters, by condemning the divisions and hatreds created in us by our past and present elders.

(Amen)

2. Israel as a strategic ally is a fallacy and U.S. tax payer’s money is wasted. Israel was not able to help out in the first or the second Gulf War and was not able to help itself in Lebanon. Israel is strongest against the weak, but Hezbollah ate their lunch with chutzpah.

3. The assertion of Israel from the river to the sea is a pipe dream. To expand you need to occupy and subjugate. This is no longer in the realm of reason.

4. This war was inevitable and part of a broader strategy to engage Syria & Iran into a wider war. Hezbollah should not carry the blame for it.

5. Hezbollah should not disarm as Israel will attack unarmed people and break U.N. resolutions at will and with impunity.

6. Hezbollah gave us pride and confidence at the expense of destruction to their homes and their peoples. Yes, parts of Lebanon were devastated but Lebanon will be rebuilt with Arab money and within a short period of time and will endure to be the shiniest democracy in the Arab world.

7. Popular resistance is more effective than traditional armies. Ministers of Defense in the Arab World need to retool: Junk your airforce, tanks, destroyers and submarines and buy some useful hand held antitank and antiaircraft missiles and a lot of rockets. Build intricate tunneling, draw your enemy in, and ravage it.

8. Infantry is your lethal weapon, not the air force, nor the Navy, nor the armored units. Build the Man and turn him into a Knight.

9. Two democracies in the Middle East, Palestine & Lebanon, have been habitually violated. Palestine holds the unique position of being the only occupied democracy in the world; an occupation sanctioned by the U.S. Human Rights abuses in both countries are rife. One wonders how the U.S. can stand up to China and Russia henceforth when it advocates for democracy or preaches on human rights abuses.

10. A policy of conflict resolution worldwide is in the west’s interest, not creative chaos, if there was ever a more stupid term or policy. We have seen what creative chaos engendered in Iraq and Lebanon, to name a few.

11. There will not be a new Middle East. However, we suspect and hope that there will be a new America whose power will be curtailed by other peoples aspirations and where reason, common sense, and a sense of history will prevail.

Conclusion: The U.S. has not been an honest broker. The sooner a tamer Israel wakes up to this fact and closes ranks with its neighbors, the better for them. Arabs and Muslims, who are both chivalrous and merciful, may forgive but will never forget.

What a shame, for the comrades.

Here is an example of the unfortunate consequences when such an unnatural marriage takes place.

A venerable Lebanese writer and political activist who often appears on Arab satellite stations is as secular as they come. However, she also chose to become a columnist for “Assabeel.” Her choice of newspaper is symbolic of this unholy alliance.

Assabeel, the voice of Jordan ‘s Islamist movement, is also the unabashed official spokesperson of Al-Qaida in Jordan , on whose pages Osama Bin Laden is sometimes seriously compared to the four Caliphs and even blasphemously praised with the phrase “radiya Allah anhu” by some of its columnists, a traditional reverence reserved for the companions of Prophet Muhammad.

In her last week’s column, this Lebanese writer made an impassioned plea for the release of the two French journalists in Iraq whom she knew personally and whom she described as being more actively dedicated pro-Arabs than the Arabs themselves.

The kidnappers, the Islamic Army of Iraq (you can call yourself the Islamic Starship Enterprise if you wish and get away with it in the current bazaar of masked kidnapping gangs in Iraq) are nothing but a bunch of barbaric throat-slashing thugs with a camcorder, despite their sick joke about the welfare of Muslim schoolgirls in Western Europe. As comic as it sounds, these imbeciles in war-ravaged Iraq want to interfere in the French education system and impose on French schools what and what not to wear.
This is not an Austin Powers hilarious twist; this tragicomedy is real life. And our secular columnist – whose heart is in the right place but her pen obviously isn’t – wanted to appeal to these deranged criminals through their ideological twin and main voice in Jordan, “Assabeel.”

In one heartfelt line, she asks, “why France , the country that defended us more than we defended ourselves”?

To be fair, her Islamist co-writers in Assabeel, along with many Islamist figures in the Arab world who have been hitherto silent on other murders and decapitations, also made an exception and pleaded for the life of the French journalists – not for any sanctity they espouse for innocent human lives, but purportedly because of the French government’s stance on the Iraq war.

So, are Spanish and Italian journalists fair game because of what Aznar and Berlusconi perpetrated? Did Enzo Baldoni, the Italian journalist who was also a Red Cross volunteer, deserve to be decapitated by this same group a few days ago? What about British Robert Fisk, God bless him, fearlessly exposing the travesties of this American fiasco war? If he is captured for his blue eyes and British passport, should the greatest and most prolific champion of the Arab cause in history be made to pay for the debauchery of Tony Blair?

Of course not, our secular writer would respond, all kidnappings and videotaped executions are atrocious.

Granted. So why on earth do you still ally yourself with Islamist ideologues who do not distinguish between the hills of Nablus and the mountains of Tora Bora?

Why do you associate your name with Islamist groups who insist on drawing a connection between the ruins of Jenin and the train wreckage of Madrid ?

Why do you write in a newspaper that reported the Bali bombing with a front page headline stating that Al Qaida has struck a blow to the prostitution center of South East Asia ?

Why do you ignore the unconditional comradeship and support given by the same newspaper in which you write to any gang of butchers, from Khobar to Casablanca , with the prefix “Islamic” stuffed before their name – despite this paper’s belated and implausible change of heart for the nationality of these two Frenchmen?

Many Islamist apologists would claim that Islamist moderate factions do not support the kidnapping festival in Iraq , and would argue that it is unfair to lump all Islamists, moderates and fundamentalists, together in one bag. But it is they who lump themselves together as such in one united front, most notably on the pages of Assabeel.

Indeed, how can a newspaper that until this day portrays the remnants of the Taliban as the true saviors of Afghanistan claim to harbor any moderate opinion?

How can a newspaper that openly glorifies Bin Laden and tacitly champions Abu Musab “head-chopper” Al-Zarqawi claim to be against these horrendous snuff movies?

Even if Assabeel now proclaims that it opposes this devilish slaughter, can we really believe them? Can the Ku Klux Klan Weekly Gazette pretend to be against lynching and cross-burning rallies, and expect readers to believe a word?
While the above publication is imaginary, in Jordan we have a real newspaper spreading a different venom under the name of Islam. It is a real shame that liberal and leftist icons can have anything to do with such an outlet for backward literature.

For example, these Islamists never uttered a word of condemnation of the recent blowing up of the two Russian civilian planes in the sky? Now, after the single most stupid and cowardly act in the history of all liberation movements, would the Islamist hypocrites bow their heads in shame for the siege of the Russian school? Far from it. They would probably issue a special edition about the Chechen mujahideen and the mythical glories of their Jordanian commanders, as they have done in numerous issues.

While it is natural for Arabs to be outraged by the murderous war waged by George W. Bush and his obedient servant Tony Blair, secular thinkers and writers need to draw clear lines of moral certitude in order not to stoop to the demented level of our enemies, and thus become no different than them.

Few people would disagree that the blame for the current mess and destruction in Iraq lies entirely and squarely at the doorsteps of the two war-mongering governments of the US and Britain , for it is they who irresponsibly opened the Pandora’s box of armed chaos in Iraq without having a clue on how to stop it or contain it.

However, none of this should ever make us lose track of who our real internal enemies are. For not in the wildest fantasies of Bush & Co. could they have imagined a more valuable gift than that provided on a golden platter by Osama Bin Laden and his ilk. Any party who shows sympathy to these eternal enemies of our nation are either willing accomplices, or worse, ignorant demagogues who do more damage.