Who Is Violating Our Sense of Security?

Growing up in Syria in the heydays of the late 70s and early 80s, fears of an Israeli attack were not exactly the thing that was keeping me and my friends up all night, or making us refuse to return certain people’s gaze in the streets.But, then, all talk of resistance and the “national struggle” aside, the Israelis were not exactly the bogeymen which we were raised to fear and dread. Indeed, if there were any bogeymen in our lives, and, of course, there were, they were the dreaded mukhabarat, the country’s security apparatuses, and certain government officials and their children, who indeed had the ability to make you disappear from the living face of earth. Continue reading →

The Death of Hope!

When you look at the numbers, which inform us that only 300 Lebanese civilians have been killed so far, the current crisis in Lebanon doesn’t look so serious. But when you look at the pictures of the devastation in Beirut, in the South, and elsewhere, a different story emerges, that of the death of hope, a reality that represents enough victory for those whose basic industry is to prey on despair. Continue reading →

The Reasons for Our Enslavement!

People who seek military glories and who see dignity and honor in militaristic terms only are not going to bother about the humanitarian costs of their adventures. Hence, the fate of the civilians in Lebanon, the hundreds of thousands of displaced Shia in particular, is left to other civilians to worry about. Neither the Lebanese government nor Hezbollah, currently all too preoccupied in its quest for glory, are providing any assistance. Continue reading →

Standing Up to Bullies!

When I was a kid, I outwitted one of our neighborhood’s many bullies in a verbal tit-for-tat, and for weeks after that, all what the neighborhood kids could talk about was the beating I got at the hand of that bully and how stupid I was to have tried to stand up to him. Continue reading →