An Apology to Bashir and Lebanon’s Martyrs by M.Akl -
14th September 2009
An Apology to Bashir and Lebanon’s Martyrs
There are things that happen only in Lebanon. Our beloved country is known for being a place where contradictions meet. It is a place where you no longer ask questions, where you waive your right of knowing why. It is a place where no argumentation is convincing enough, and no rationale reasonable enough. It is a place where running out of logic to explain issues and situations is a perfectly Cartesian outcome.
Our beloved country is a place where rating is top notch. We rate everything that moves, including each other: adjectives, comparatives, and superlatives. We spare none. But we also rate death. We rate martyrdom. Our country is the only place where death has become a selective event according to which the deceased are rated as less important, important, more important than, and the most important of all.
We are the only country in the world in which people do not die equally, let alone live equally. As such, the late president-elect Bashir Gemayel, was one of the “unfortunate” martyrs of Lebanon, one who was never entitled to a decent treatment, one to whom the country’s successive governments never devoted a day of national mourning, or a decent national remembrance event.
To the eyes of Lebanon’s officials, the then 33-year old president is just one of the thousands martyrs who died during the war. Only the late prime minister Rafik Hariri stands out in the martyrdom arena. It is certain that the horrific assassination of the late premier with what he stood up for and his regional and international magnitude shook Lebanon just as much as Bashir Gemayel’s. In fact, February 14, the day of his horrendous assassination, has been institutionalized as an official day of mourning. There is nothing wrong with that. But what is wrong is the “preferential” treatment that the deceased have been receiving in our country. If Bashir Gemayel, Rachid Karameh and the numerous other officials who left their homes in suits and ties and came back in death bags were not “important enough” to deserve a mourning day, why should Hariri be? If Gemayel and Karameh were considered part of the 200,000 or so Lebanese war martyrs, why should Hariri be treated any differently?
Lebanon’s history did not start on February 14, 2005. It started 35 years earlier. It started 100 years, 200 years earlier. But today we commemorate the assassination of Bashir. Regardless of bloody acts that were perpetrated by the late president’s militia after the two-year war of 1975-1976, he was still Lebanon’s president-elect.
It is our duty to remember our martyrs, all of them, including Gebran, Samir, Pierre and all those who died in “peaceful” times. But it is abnormal to rate them. They all died for Lebanon, whatever their background, whatever their political belongings, whatever their religious beliefs. But it is also our duty to move forward, to quit living in the graveyard, while still keeping their memory alive. It is our duty to know that we are all equal in the eyes of death and it is about time we treated each other as such.
A final apology to Bashir, to all other politicians, journalists, ambassadors, school children, moms, dads, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who were blown up to pieces during and after the war: no martyr is more important to Lebanon than you are, and nobody’s blood is more sacred than yours. But our successive governments have distorted visions of both life and death; after all didn’t our previous cabinet cancel Great Friday? I guess the martyr of the Christians, the son of God, is not entitled to a proper mourning either…
Dr May Akl is the Press Secretary for General Michel Aoun, former Lebanese Army Commander & Prime Minister, current MP and leader of the Free Patriotic Movement Party and Change & Reform Bloc in Lebanese Parliament.
he had to pay the price for the corruption and traitorship of Pierre Gemayel, Kamil Chamaoun,Sleiman Frangieh and the lebanese mercenaries allied with the PLO.
So you like bachir gmayel because?
mech 3a ases entou dod Israel w muqawami w allah w akbar w osas?
you cant compare Bachir's era to the current one. When someone corners you
with Saudis, Somalis, Pakistanis, Afghanis and Japanese commandos, I dont
expect you to be an angel.
The big difference now is that Israel are actually allied with the arabs now to ship us out of here.
27 years already ... like it was yesterday!
R.I.P Chekh Bach-the dream
A dream of what? remember my friends long before Geagea starts to kill fellow christians Bashir Gemayel was doing it in a very professional way. You tell me it was ok because it's for the sake of Lebanon? So I tell you let's stop talking about how criminal Gegea is because last year he apoligized and said that what he did was a "national duty"...The crime my friend is a crime... We love and respect Michel Aoun as a national and a christian leader because he's a warrior not a killer who sends another minor killer to exterminate the entire family of his political opponent...
Let us clean our memory let's us remember that from 1978 till 1981 bashir Gemayel was only busy killing all his christian opponents...dying the way he died doesn't make him a saint, just like Hariri will never be what his mourtaza2a claim him to be just because he died the way he died
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when bachir was faced with dealing with israel or the arab countries
HE DECIDED STAY AWAY FROM ISRAEL which costed him his life.
I can not but respect his decision ( albeit late), i wish that the christians will learn that israel and the west BODE US NOTHING BUT BAD FEELINGS AND WORST SCENARIOS.
he did a lot of killings and many to his fellow rivals, but that will not change the fact that he still HARBORED THE BEST FEELINGS FOR HIS SECT AND LEBANON.
An Apology to Bashir and Lebanon’s Martyrs by M.Akl -
14th September 2009
