Daily Archives: August 9, 2010

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❊ My Reaction To Sayyed Nasrallah's Presentation

I’ve been watching the speech on Aljazeera and tweeting my (unvarnished) instant reactions. Here I’ll try to gather my thoughts and summarize my reactions to the speech.

- Sayyed Nasrallah looked like didn’t have good sleep. He appeared drawn and exhausted.

- Sayyed Nasrallah did not present a convincing reason for why it took them so long to produce this presentation. He blamed time-consuming technical difficulties, but I don’t think anyone will buy that.

- In general, I found that the presentation was targeting emotions more than intellect. The entire thesis can be summarized in the phrase: “The Israelis are very evil. They are capable and motivated to Kill PM Hariri”. The dramatic background music, dark blurry footage and mug shots only add to the sinister image Sayyed Nasrallah wanted to project about the Israelis. This is similar to a prosecutor painting a very dark picture of a defendant’s character during a trial.

- It is not clear how much Sayyed Nasrallah will allow access to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to the material he presented. I think the burden of proof falls on Hezbollah to prove that the aerial footage was authentic, but they can always claim that the footage was hacked and is of a “sensitive” nature.

- I found the aim of the presentation was not to prove that the Israelis killed P.M Rafik Hariri, but to plant a seed of doubts in the heads of a specific segment of Arabs and Lebanese. Namely arabist Sunnis who are predisposed to blaming Israel, and who so far have been sticking to the side of the Hariri family’s version of events. I think in that respect, the presentation could have made inroads into impressionable souls.

- The point which I found most valid was this: Why didn’t the STL investigate Israeli spies who were proven to be operating around the time of Hariri’s killing? In other words, why was the STL so uninterested in the Israel line of investigation? The STL could still provide a conclusive answer to that question, but like I said, the aim of the presentation was to plant doubt in the heads of Arab viewers.

- In general, I was underwhelmed. I did not get out of this learning anything new, and I’m very interested to see the reactions in tomorrows newspapers.

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Note: Posts with titles starting with an ❊ (asterisk) are my opinion posts. I used this system to separate long posts from quick links and comments.

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Saudi Arabia Reaches Compromise With BlackBerry. Don't Hold Your Breath For Lebanon

From Canada’s The Globe And Mail:

The Associated Press reported over the weekend that RIM reached an agreement with the Saudi government. Under the reported terms, which have not been confirmed by the company, RIM would place one or more local servers within Saudi Arabia.

The fact that there was an agreement however does not mean that the same will apply to all countries with objections to BB services. Saudi Arabia has 700,000 BlackBerry users, and was in a strong position of leverage with RIM.

The Lebanese market of Blackberry users is tiny and expendable from RIM’s perspective. In other words, unless there was some sort of pan-Arab “we’re all in this together” negotiation with RIM, don’t expect any RIM servers to be set up in Beirut soon.

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Beirut's Synagogue And Lower Manhattan's Mosque

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of the kerfuffle surrounding the building of a Mosque in lower Manhattan near the site of the 9-11 attacks. Pretty much all angles of the story have been covered to death, but here’s an interesting one that uses Beirut as a higher standard to follow. It comes from a reader of the widely read Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog:

The synagogue was dilapidated and decrepit [..] Recently, with Hezbollah approval, what remains of the Lebanese Jewish community and several outside sources have begun a restoration project [..] If even Hezbollah allows a synagogue to be built in Beirut, maybe Gingrich should lay off the mosque in lower Manhattan. Surely that’s not too high a standard.

Sounds like a fair argument to me. Of course cynics would retort (and this is the land of cynics) that Beirut’s Synagogue was approved for its propaganda value to the west. That the Lebanese and Hezbollah want to show the world that we don’t hate jews, we only hate Zionism and the Israel government’s vicious policies.

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We Don’t Want Your Filthy Money

This is more or less the message Lebanese politicians have been (publicly at least) relaying, in response to America’s purported intention of withdrawing aid money from the Lebanese Army because it shot at Israel.

Here’s how Assafir reported M.P. Walid Jumblat’s position. (My translation and my emphasis)

Jumblat stressed the importance of the Lebanese army getting decent weapons from any source in the world, and keeping its military doctrine squarely against Israel. That doctrine has been reached at after long years of a destructive civil war and national division. So we shouldn’t squander that doctrine because it was the result of great sacrifice.

I understand the “we have other options” part of his opinion, but the part about military doctrine has me a bit confused. Is he saying that the only reason we fight Israel is because it’s convenient for Lebanese unity?

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Waiting For Nasrallah

Today is the day we’ve been waiting for. The day where the Sayyed will “prove” to us in hours of live TV that it is in fact Israel, not Syria and not Hezbollah who killed Prime Minister Rafik Hariri 5 years ago.

Make no mistake, today is a very important day. As one blogger puts it, “this speech promises to be one of the most significant political events of the past five years”. So make sure to stay tuned for what Hezbollah’s leader has to say.

The stakes are high. This event will either prove that in the last 5 years more than half of the Lebanese population was manipulated by Israel, or it will be the final nail in Hezbollah credibility, causing the “party of god” a huge loss of face.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if, for “technical reasons” or any other unforeseen last-minute event, the event will be “postponed”.