Civil Disobedience?

Hezbollah’s latest threat of civil disobedience is just a bluff.

A few weeks before “black Tuesday” -when opposition mobs cut off important streets using burning tires- Samir Geagea, the leader of the LF and a central March 14 figure had a challenge for the opposition: If you were as popular as you claim you are, why don’t you call for a general strike? This way we’ll get to see who really supports you.

To my surprise, the opposition did end up calling for a general strike. They can’t pull it off, I told myself. Where was the catch? I couldn’t figure it out until the answer came in the form of black smoke. Apparently, to our democratic “opposition”, a general strike is top-down business. It’s something you impose on the rest of the Lebanese.

In this light, it is worth looking at the threat of civil disobedience propagated by an “opposition source” in Assafir. You see, the threat the opposition is “considering” is so hollow the “source” didn’t even bother reveal itself.

The same people who couldn’t convince shop-keepers of shutting down their shops for just one day are actually trying to convince us that they can persuade their followers to quit their bread-earning jobs until further notice.

The typical argument of a civil disobediant should sound like this:
I have decided that I no longer want to teach in this school because a politician somewhere wants a bigger share of the ruling cake.