Yesterday, ex-PM Saad Hariri committed a grave political error by doing something many of us do everyday without thinking: He responded to a tweet by someone who said “Good Morning”.
There’s a problem though: That someone didn’t turn out to be any regular person. He is Avichay Adraee, the Arabic-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli ministry of defense who regularly shows up on Aljazeera to defend Israeli Military action.
Mr. Hariri later tweeted: “If it is true, I want to clearly say I wouldn’t have answered if I had known, because Israel is our enemy”. But no matter what Hariri says or does now, the damage has already been done.
There are only two possibilities here and both of them are bad:
1) Mr. Hariri knew who Mr. Adraee is.
That is a big problem because any sort of contact with the Israelis is a crime in Lebanon, not to mention a political no-no for any person in power
2) Mr. Hariri didn’t know who Mr. Adraee is.
Think for a moment what that means: Mr Hariri, who has tens of thousands of followers on twitter and knows the kind of scrutiny that entails, saw a hello message from someone with a clearly Israeli name, a name that should be familiar to anyone who watches Aljazeera or Alarabiya. Worse, that man is wearing an Israeli uniform in his twitter photo, a photo Mr. Hariri must have seen when he was responding to him because he’s using Twitter for iPhone, a program that shows you the picture of the person before you reply to him. If in doubt, Mr. Hariri could have simply clicked on his name, to see his bio clearly presented as “المتحدث بلسان جيش الدفاع الاسرائيلي للاعلام العربي”
If Mr. Hariri saw all of the above and still didn’t have any alarm bells ringing in his head, that means people will start seriously questioning Mr. Hariri’s judgment and competence to run a country and make major decisions. He will expose himself further still to the “rookie kid” slur his enemies keep heaping on him, and he will make Mr. Mikati look even more mature in comparison.
This is a lose-lose situation for the embattled ex-Prime Minister. When he first started tweeting, we knew all along that doing it himself is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, people will get to know the man and feel closer to him. On the other hand, well, just read the above.
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
its really shame !!! and ironic
I honestly don’t think it will be that damaging to his reputation. He should pay more attention indeed but it’s an honest mistake that he quickly apologizes for.
If I were in his shoes, I would not have apologizes but put the Blame on someone in the pr team for not recognizing the guy.
You think his political opponents are going to leave this alone? What universe are you living in?
I agree with all of you but pleaseeeee come on people shit happen and in regard of his opponents let them to f…. Off they are the most corrupt and double agent and spies in the country
Saad Hariri is an incompetent fool
Yeah, but Mustapha, you know that’s not him, right? No matter how funny and ‘Saad’ the tweets, this is handled by a PR team. Someone’s getting fired.
If i were him, i would just drop twitter already, or hire a better PR agency.. if you want to do social media do it well, or don’t do it at all… am not criticizing him, this goes to any brand/person/etc!
something was gonna happen sooner or later! he tweets without thinking!
Did we seriously need this incident to “start seriously questioning Mr. Hariri’s judgment and competence to run a country and make major decisions” ? If anyone in this country ever believed that Saad Hariri, or any of our idiotic leaders, have the capacity to run a country or the will to work for the benefit of the people, then he/she would be delusional and fooling him/herself.
Let’s not expect much out of a Lebanese politicain / za3eem on twitter. Essentially, they contaminate our timelines.
so damn what!
You know what the real scandal here is ?
I consume a lot of Arabic media on the Internet and countless times I’ve come across Israeli spokespersons who speak pretty good Arabic. The content of what they’re saying aside, their language capabilities are good. Some of them speak with a Palestinian dialect, some of them speak with an Egyptian dialect. They’re versatile and impressive.
It’s a gesture of good faith. Nothing convinces a people you want to genuinely connect with them more than you going through the trouble of learning to speak their language. It’s also worthy of respect, especially if a “foreigner” can come across as an expert.
Now we come to the flip-side. How many times have I come across an Arab, let alone Lebanese, spokesperson who speaks Hebrew ? NONE! Granted, I don’t consume Hebrew media, but still. I don’t even come across Arab Hebrew speakers [outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories] on an accidental basis. I’m convinced they don’t exist. Which is funny, because as we all know, the Arabs are completely obsessed with Israel.
It kinda reminds me of a lecture I went to years ago, on a very cold winter’s night, in Macalester College here in St. Paul, Minnesota! It was after the 2003 American invasion and it was about Iraq.
The speaker’s name was Dr. Sami [Something] and he was a university lecturer from London. For several hours, he completely dazzled us with Iraqi history, recitations of Iraqi literature and poetry [in perfectly fluent Arabic], the most intricate details of the Iraqi experience and Iraqi culture. We were completely mesmerized.
At the end of the lecture, during the ‘question and answer’ session, still completely dumbfounded by perhaps the most brilliant lecture about the Middle East I had ever listened to, I went to the microphone and stupidly asked the lecturer, “Doctor, perhaps this is inappropriate, but are you Sunni or Shia ?”
And of course he gave a brilliant reply to my stupid question. He responded, “I am Jewish!”
Samir, this is a very good point, I was thinking of something very similar to yours which is this.
How come hardly any of the so called experts in ME affairs from here (UK and US) can speak Arabic well enough to express themselves in it on TV? Yet there doesn’t seem to be any credibility issues with these ‘experts’. One of whom makes a point of how he’s spent 3 decades living in Lebanon yet every time he speaks on Arabic tv channels he needs an interpreter! And yet the Arabic media don’t call him out on this, they defer to him, and he’s just one of many and you all know who he is.
Yet this isn’t a scandal?
Not only do the Israeli guys speak it but they can speak it outside the usual orbit of cliches, denials, tropes and anti-logic – and at times are the only people who seem to make any sense when speaking it.
Watch, this and find me the equivalent clip of the Westerners who say the stuff you all want to hear with this level of clarity and articulateness in your own language.
This took place during the Gaza war he’s responding to Al Jazeera citing a survey carried out by Gallup! Only joking, it was carried out by the military wing of Islamic Jihad! WTF!? That would be like the BBC citing a survey from ETA or the IRA!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvDjJ-reyrc&feature=youtu.be#t=7m03s
Nobody’s saying you have to like these guys, or even agree with anything they say. But you can’t not respect that level of mastery of your language. And then compare it with the lack of command of the lingo by the so-called experts from Europe and the US who say all the right things.
now compare it to this.
http://youtu.be/i6Ivod_0JS8
3 decades and he can’t speak your lingo? And nobody seems to have a problem with this? There are no credibility issues?
Somebody please explain to me what’s going on cos I’m baffled.
Dave,
Let me start by stating for the record that every comment I make on this blog is typically against my better judgement, but seeing as we’re in the thick of it, I am going to TRY TO address your concerns to perhaps ameliorate some of the confusion which seems to be perturbing you right now.
First, I want to congratulate you on your efforts to learn Arabic. I don’t know if you were the one who translated the text enclosed above, but you did a good job with it!
However, you did seem perplexed by the word “tahadia”, which I would transcribe as “tahdi2a”. Well, I would translate that word as “CEASEFIRE”. I think ‘ceasefire’ also jives with your conjectured definition that the ‘word’ is “kind of a truce which isn’t a truce”.
Moving on to why Israelis make much better Arabic speakers than Westerners, this one is easy:
1) Don’t forget that up to 20% of Israel’s current population (supposedly within the 1948 border) consists of Arabs. Whether you call these guys Palestinians or “Israeli Arabs” doesn’t preclude the fact that they all speak Arabic. [for the record, I don't know if the Druze are counted in this 20% statistic or not. Israel considers the Druze different from, and more assimilated than, Arabs but the Druze also speak Arabic, so the "official" proportion of native Arabic speakers in Israel's population might even be higher than 20%]
2) A large proportion of Jews who made aliyah to Israel over the decades came from Arab countries. I know that at least 1 million Israeli Jews today are of Moroccan descent. Other sizable Israeli Jewish communities came from Arab countries like Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunis, Lebanon and Yemen (not to mention the 6% [at the time] Palestinian Jews who were already present before even the first Zionist set foot in the country at the start of the 20th Century).
These guys all fall under the category of Mizrahi Jews (the other two categories being Ashkenazi [German] and Sephardi [Spanish] Jews). Mizrahis also include non-Arab communities like Persian Jews, Georgian Jews (the country, not the Coca-Cola state), Ethiopian Jews, and so on.
In the case of “Arab Jews”, a lot of them had Arabic names but then changed them upon arrival to more Hebrew and Israeli sounding names to assimilate better into Israeli society. In fact, a huge number of prominent Israelis, from Ehud Barak to Ariel Sharon to Moshe Dayan and so on, changed their names over the years to obscure where they really came from.
3) Israelis have way more chronic immersion than their Western counterparts. They live in the region, their stakes are higher, their experiences more visceral, their learning more necessary, their desired outcomes more concrete, constrained, tenuous and long-term.
4) Arabic and Hebrew can be quite similar. I am actually trying to teach myself a bit of Hebrew, albeit at a glacial pace, but even at my current rudimentary stage, I’ve noticed a few things:
4.1) First the big difference, which is the radically different looking scripts. Get that out of the way and you can start addressing the similarities:
a) Both languages are written from ‘right-to-left’, instead of the ‘left-to-right’ orientation that English speakers are more used to.
b) ‘Salam’ and ‘Shalom’ both mean ‘peace’.
c) ‘Alef’ and ‘Alef’ are both the name of the first letter of the ‘alphabet’ (Arabic is technically an ‘abjad’ but let’s not even get into that right now).
d) ‘na3na3′ and ‘na3na3′ both mean ‘mint’.
e) And finally, this one kind of blew me away when I discovered it. We Arabs know that, for example, a classical word for ‘student’ in Arabic is ‘Talib’ (which incidentally forms the root of the notorious word ‘Taliban’, which is the plural of ‘Talib’). But we also know that a more Levantine Arabic word for ‘student’ is ’tilmeeth’. Well, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the Hebrew word for ‘student’ is ‘talmid’, which is derived from the name of the ‘Talmud’ texts. So basically, the Hebrew word and the Levantine Arabic word for ‘student’ are practically the same. Coincidence ? I don’t know!
So there! That’s my explanation! Take it or leave it!
Moving on to Robert Fisk, let me first state that I didn’t know who you were talking about at the time until you contributed your elucidating YouTube video.
I’ve been reading Robert Fisk for a while, and though I think he’s done some great work in the Middle East, specifically from Beirut, I also think his best days are probably behind him instead of ahead of him.
I still read him occasionally, but he comes across as cruising right now in the twilight of his career. You want to read someone younger and better? Try Anthony Shadid!
But like yourself, I never really understood how Robert Fisk could live in the region for three decades and not gain a VERBAL proficiency in Arabic. I don’t doubt that he can read and write the language. He probably, like a lot of Westerners, has reservations speaking it, especially in a place like Lebanon, where EVERYONE has an opinion on the way you talk, and they derive all sort of semantic and usually discriminating meaning from the style, grace and content of what comes out of your mouth. It’s probably just a comfort level on Fisk’s part, which might falsely indicate a lack of verbal proficiency to people who aren’t paying enough attention.
Also, it would be wrong to compare Robert Fisk’s verbal proficiency to that of an Israeli. Fisk is properly British. I’m sure maintaining that aspect of his rich cultural identity eats into the mental budget that he might otherwise allocate to being more “Semitic” (ie. Israeli or Arab).
Plus, Fisk is far more intimate with the Arabs, and fully immersed with them, albeit as a “Westerner”, than the Israeli spokesman who is typically just barking at a television camera (and even then hardly ever gets the accent and many other nuanced details right). Fisk wins on genuine affection, knowledge, solidarity, shared identity and “common cause”.
I will refrain from commenting on Fisk’s politics, only because this post is already long enough, but I would urge you to see the Middle East through the long-term prism of the past three decades, especially from a Beiruti perch, to truly be cognizant of the huge amount of pain, destruction, death and suffering that the region has endured at the hands of 1) the question of Israel/Palestine, and 2) the Cold War politics that all local players tried to exploit for their regional advantage.
The world view looks much different and more stable now, with the United States practically hegemonically in control of the Middle East, dictators either removed or confined to their borders, and the only real chronic military threat coming from terrorism and only a handful of truly rogue regimes.
But I would urge you to remember that it wasn’t always so “peaceful” and simple, and to look back to try to figure out where the wide disparity and diversity of regional opinion and sentiment might come from.
For example, I would remind you that the British had a rich legacy in the Middle East, but that they were practically kicked out by the Americans and Soviets following their involvement in the scandalous “tri-partite” Israel-French-British attack on Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Egypt during the “Suez Crisis” of 1956 (prompted of course by Abdul Nasser’s nationalization of the till-then British-owned Suez Canal and incessant hostility towards Israel).
The resulting anger and embarrassment caused protests in England that brought down the conservative government of Prime Minister Anthony Eden. So yes, it could have been argued at the time that British liberals had “common cause” with Egyptian Nasserists in the struggle against “imperialism/colonialism”.
Yes I do realize that this incident was a long time ago and therefore of questionable relevance to explaining the often bizarre political dynamics of our current moment, but I’m painting in broad strokes here. Also, please don’t misinterpret my perhaps lame attempts at explanations as apologisms for the egregious amounts of stupidity, mendacity, perfidy and just plain ineptitude which are currently plaguing the Middle East.
Having said ‘ineptitude’, that’s my cue to fade to black and get the hell out of here …
:):)
It’s incredible that such an incident is being used as a serious measure of a politician, any politician. It sounds like it is being treated as though high treason has been committed. Bans on reading material, watching a film (or film credit for Steven Spielberg), buying a product that just might have an Israeli source, or, god forbid, having actual contact with such an individual (by error or intent) – Shit – it sounds like somebody must have a pretty low impression of the average Lebanese mentality to believe that the national will can be corrupted by such behavior. If most people really are that feeble minded, then Lebanon ought to be significantly jacking up the education budget.
Anyway, does anybody know what was in Adraee’s tweet?
from the picture above Adraee’s tweet was صباح الخير (good morning).
The bastard! How could he do such a thing!?
And do you know what the treasonous response was? It was صباح النور (good morning).
I know. Shocking. I’m going to have to have a lie down to recover from what I’ve just seen. I might just have to go to the doctor to get some treatment for post traumatic stess disorder.
Give me a break- he obviously has PEOPLE responding to his tweets on his behalf and one of them wasnt thinking
I’m no expert, and I do understand that talking to Israelis is technically illegal — but do people really take such a law so seriously? A bit surprised by this. It all seems so minor. Good morning is not a state secret!
The problem is his second tweet, I think. If only he said he was being ironic…..
@Samir Nasser (man keep reading your name as Samir Nasri!)
Thanks for the response – but I wasn’t perplexed with meaning of tahadia – it’s in the dictionary تهدئة – quieting, pacification, tranquilization etc. from the verb هدأ meaning to calm down or subside.
Whereas ceasefire’s وقف اطلاق النار and that’s the commonly used phrase. Hence my trans as truce but not really a truce because there’s a diff between تهدئة and وقف اطلاق النار which I wanted to highlight. They don’t mean the same thing. Plus there’s the implicit assumption that if something subsides it can also build up.
(I know you know all this but I’m just showing you my workings, as my maths teacher always demanded, so no confusion here, ‘cept with your name
)
Hell, and then we have هُدنة – which is what? Ceasefire with built in expiry date?
Also you’re right here, which is kind of my point
(Dude, nobody gets the accent right because there is zero uselfull phonological material on how to speak the lingo and how to actually make the sounds! There’s nothing out there. Sod all. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Compare that with the vast material on English phonology, it’s embarrassing. Case in point, ask a native speaker how to prounnce ح – heh, you’ll get a million answers all of them wrong.)
The main point is correct if you show that ‘you’re one of us’- common cause – then that’s enough. Don’t ask any difficult questions, or demand any introspection, play the old blame the West game and in return we won’t demand that you speak the lingo on the telly. Quid pro quo.
But that’s not journalism that’s public relations.
Not just Fisk, here’s another example and yeah 30 years http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHyxAnnHNFI&feature=youtu.be#t=45s
and again no credibility issues.
Anyway man, thanks for the response, appreciate that. And now I better go as it’s way past my bedtime.
Dave,
Funny that you mention my name and some confusion you’re having with it! Rest assured that you’re not the first and you definitely won’t be the last!
If anything struck me about how you handled my name, it’s that you spelled it ‘Samir’ instead of ‘Samer’.
I get this A LOT! It doesn’t bother me at all at this point, but to be honest with you, I blame those damn Indians!
You see, I interpret ‘Samir’ to be ‘Sameer’. That’s how most people mispronounce my name! Again, I blame the Indians!
We Arabs have both names, ‘Samer’ and ‘Sameer’, and growing up in the Arab World, I could easily tell the difference between the two. I was ‘Samer’. My uncle, for example, was ‘Sameer’.
But then I came to the US and quickly realized that there are a lot of ethnicities out there, like the Indians and the Pakistanis and even the Iranians, who LOVE the name ‘Sameer’ but don’t have the name ‘Samer’.
And so simply by running the numbers, my name repeatedly gets mangled and mispronounced as ‘Sameer’.
Of course it’s not so easy to describe the correction pronunciation of my name to Americans who don’t realize the nuanced difference in pronunciation between the ‘hamza’ and the ‘alef’: the short, staccato-like ‘a’ and the more relaxed, prolonged ‘a’.
So I came up with a little line that I’d use when meeting someone for the first time who might later enquire about my name.
I’d say, “Samer rhymes with Hammer” !!!
:):)
That worked beautifully for the longest time. It seemed to me that I had finally solved the problem for good!
But then it backfired big-time on one occasion!
I was at a wedding, and I had just met a woman at the table I was sitting at.
I introduced myself, and gave my “Samer rhymes with Hammer” spiel.
But then I noticed a look of discomfort on my listener’s face. I figured I might have said something wrong. I enquired.
And yes, I shortly realized that the poor thing heard, “Summer rhymes with Hummer” !!!
And there you have it! … I’m telling you, there’s no winning for me! No winning at all!
:):)
Don’t be fooled by Mr. Nasser’s apparent civility . here’s a translation in what Mr. Nasser posted a few days ago on this very blog in response to a bit of banter from me:
—-
CopyCat says:
January 12, 2012 at 12:44 pm
matze3al menni bass enta shway beyekh
(Translation: Don’t be upset by me saying this, but you are a bit unfunny)
Samer Nasser says:
January 12, 2012 at 4:40 pm
It6ala3 3ala 7alak ya habibi!
(Look at yourself, habibi)
2awalan, mit2asif 3ala el nookteh illi kanat sakhifeh 6ab3an! Bas kont 3am ba7awel ala6if el jaw ou akhafef el dam 3ala hal blog el m3atar!
(first of all, i am sorry for the silly joke of course! but i was trying to ease the debate or be funny on this miserable blog!)
Yemken ana 7a2an bayekh, bas inta habibi 7a2an manyak, 7ata 3ala moustawa sha3bak il lubnani el 7aqeer! Ou mish bas heik, bas zai sha3bak inta ghabi! Kol kilmeh btiktibah 3ala hal blog ahbal min el tanyieh!
(maybe i am really unfunny, but you, habibi, are a fucker, even compared to the rotten lebanese people! not only that, but like all your people, you are stupid! every word you write on this blog is more stupid than the other!)
Don’t try too hard, Samer.
Whoa, there! I knew this would happen! I knew it! But you know what? I’m glad it did!
First off CopyCat, if you’re going to translate my post, at least include it in its entirety! You forgot my last two paragraphs to you, which read:
Ou iza inta 7a2an gada3 ou 2abaday, leish ma btista3mil ismak el ha2i2i, gheir 3an ‘CopyCat’ ? Yemken khayif yudurbook jama3tak iza 3irfoo meen inta!
(Translation: And if you’re such a hero and tough guy, why don’t you use your real name, instead of ‘CopyCat’ ? Maybe you’re afraid your people will beat you up once they discover who you are!)
Hala2 roo7 walli ou 7il 3an 6izi …
(Translation: Now go buzz off somewhere else and get off my ass!)
I don’t regret what I wrote. Not at all. CopyCat deserves much worse than this, especially after pulling this latest deranged stunt of his! His conduct on this blog is completely dreadful.
There is no contradiction here. None whatsoever. I am civil on this blog to everyone EXCEPT CopyCat. And the reason is simple: I can’t stand CopyCat. I really can’t stand him.
The only reason I made a deprecating reference to “this miserable blog” in my reply to CopyCat, a reference I knew Mustapha would understand, was that I made a corny joke on the thread of a blog post about RAPE, of all things dammit! I wanted to justify why I made a silly joke to lighten the mood, a joke which CopyCat subsequently criticized, on the thread of a subject which of course is serious, grave and not funny at all.
For anyone interested, here’s the stupid joke that started this whole mess:
http://beirutspring.com/blog/2012/01/10/why-i-support-the-demonstration-against-rape-on-january-14/#comment-26276
Yes, I stand by my assertion that at that particular moment, this blog was indeed “miserable”! Just read the damn post and its comments! I sometimes wonder why Mustapha posts some of the things that he does. I was sending him a signal of sorts, to steer him in a more positive direction and away from all the grim and sad stuff.
Now moving on to the “rotten Lebanese people” remark, this comment was directed SQUARELY at CopyCat. I might not be remembering this right, but back during the DEBACLE which was the series of blog posts about the demise of Myriam Achkar, not many people may have noticed this, but a guy with the surname of Gemayel made a comment. I don’t remember what it was. But what I do remember is that our hero CopyCat here, at the time, replied with a remark about how Bashir Gemayel was dead but that Habib Shartouni was still alive! In all monstrosity, our victim CopyCat here asked the commenter how that fact made him feel.
For those who aren’t comprehensive on their Lebanese Civil War history, the name Gemayel is as Maronite [read: Catholic Christian] as names get, and Bashir Gemayel, who at the time was the Maronite President of Lebanon, was assassinated in 1982 when a bomb tore down the building in Ashrafieh [read: Christian East Beirut] that he was in, and the assassin is thought to have been a man named Habib Shartouni who subsequently is thought to have disappeared into Syria.
In my mind, CopyCat at that moment, yes the same CopyCat who always adopts a strongly and cynically pro-Syrian line on this blog, was taunting a Christian guy on this blog with a Maronite surname about the assassination of a Civil War Maronite leader who shared that same surname. This coming from a person, CopyCat, who doesn’t even use his real name on this blog and therefore affords his readers absolutely no indication of who he might be.
This act in my opinion was going way too far, was completely REPREHENSIBLE, and at that moment I decided that I REALLY DESPISED CopyCat. And now I’m announcing it for the whole world to read!
And lest I be accused of making this stuff up, here’s the comment I am referring to in all its disgusting glory:
http://beirutspring.com/blog/2011/11/24/what-kind-of-martyr-is-myriam-achkar/#comment-24920
In fact, I can’t stress it enough, since he forced the issue and it is now in the open! CopyCat is toxic and despicable, his comments are caustic, he’s a complete jerk, and while I’m on the subject, I might as well also announce that that Jihad fella with the Zionist fixation is a complete moron as well!
I don’t want to deal with these clowns! I want to deal with the more interesting, entertaining, enlightening, classy folk around here. And that definitely DOES NOT include dumbasses like CopyCat!
Which brings me to my comment about the Lebanese people being “stupid”. I reluctantly and unfortunately stand by this as well. I am getting so fed up with all the Sunni/Shia, March 8th/March 14th, Muslim/Christian, secular/sectarian, majority/opposition talk around here. It goes NOWHERE! And that, I regret to announce, is the essence of STUPID!
Good night!
It’s more to do with this dude here – http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/samir-nasri
Samer, thanks for your complete obsession with me. This is exactly what I thrive on. Attention.
I dare you prove that I am pro-Syrian. Not once did I come in defense of the murderous Assad regime. You are confusing that with nuance.
As for Bashir Gemayel, he’s very dead. In fact, I am told there is no chance of him being resuscitated anytime soon, and that he is in fact 100 % dead. Habib Shartouni is a hero, and he is very much alive, and there is food for thought in that fact. I stand by that, and I will always taunt anyone who defends him, ya Samer.
Like I said, don’t try too hard. In or out of context, you called the Lebanese people “7aqeer” and you called me “manyak”, and you littered your comment with insults and abuse, which shows your level, all your efforts notwithstanding.
Funny stuff. In the end who cares?