❊ 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.