Thank you Mr. Harper, You are the right man for the right
job.
By:
Elias Bejjani
LCCC Chairman
December 23/06
Thanks to our honest and courageous Prime Minister, His
Excellency Mr. Stephen Harper Harper. Thanks from the Lebanese Canadian
Coordination Council (LCCC) and all the members of the Canadian Lebanese
community all over Canada who fully share the Council's love for peace and
freedom, their honoring of democracy and the rule of law, and their commitment
to Human Rights, tolerance, diversity and the acceptance of others.
Thank you, Mr. Harper, for standing tall like the Holy Cedars of our homeland
Lebanon. Thank you for declaring loudly and strongly Canada's firm stance
against terrorist organizations and the states of the axis of evil. Thank you
for saying a big NO to any dialogue with the terrorist Hezbollah organization,
which is Iran's army in Lebanon and which, through force and against the will of
the majority of the Lebanese people, has erected a state inside the state. This
fundamentalist organization is fully run, financed and controlled by Iran and
Syria, and has dragged Lebanon and its people into a devastating and crippling
war last July. Its leadership, and in response to military instructions from
Iran and Syria, has been for the last three weeks resorting to scare tactics to
topple Lebanon's legitimate elected Government.
Mr. Harper, you have proved again that you are a great leader and that your
dedication to worldwide peace and to the fight against terrorism in all its
forms is genuine and committed. Yes it’s impossible to negotiate with groups
that advocate violence and want to wipe out other countries and other peoples.
Yes, Mr. Harper, you are right when you say that under previous governments
Canada has been “completely absent” from Mideast peace efforts, rather than
playing the role as a neutral, honest broker. Yes. Mr. Harper, we share with you
our full conviction in a strong, neutral and honest Canadian broker role in the
Middle East in general and in Lebanon in particular.
Mr. Harper, we take this occasion to wish you, your government and our Canadian
people a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year, and share with you the following
concerns and facts:
1- Hezbollah is leading an open-ended sit-in in downtown Beirut aimed at
toppling the government of Premier Fouad Saniora. This militant group and its
subservient accessories and allies have rejected repeated calls by
pro-government groups to go back to the dialogue table. They are adamant at
taking over the whole country under the threat of their 30,000 missiles and
heavy weapons that they refuse to surrender to the State. Hezbollah's General
Secretary had made his scheme so clear when he said: "We will lead two million
Lebanese citizens to starvation, and instead of bread we will give them swords
to cut the politicians' necks and thus bring the condition of Jihad to
maturity."
2- The entire free world should understand without a shred of doubt that as goes
Lebanon, so goes the Middle East. That's why Lebanon's democracy must not be
allowed to succumb to Syrian - Iranian dominance and, more ominously, to the
growing influence of Iran's theocracy through Hezbollah. Yet many don't
recognize just how serious the situation is. The 2005 Cedars Revolution, which
restored democracy to the only Middle East country that has ever truly
experienced it, is in great jeopardy.
3- To the public eye, Lebanon's democratically elected leaders are merely locked
in a contest of wills with mass demonstrations. But these protests are fueled by
Hezbollah, the Shiite militia group sponsored by Iran. This fact makes the
situation nothing short of a Tehran-backed coup attempt - a counterrevolution
with grave consequences for the region.
4- To help prevent this course of events, Canada, the US and all the Free World
countries have an obligation in not compromising on Lebanon's democracy by
considering talks with Syria and Iran, as recommended by the US Iraq Study Group
(ISG). It's also imperative that the Free World countries stop making
"fact-finding" trips to Syria and talking with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The only language that the Syrian Baathist regime understands is firmness and
deterrence.
5- Lebanon as well as the entire Middle East will know neither tranquility nor
peace before UN Resolutions 1559 and 1701 are fully implemented and Hezbollah is
disarmed with the rest of the Syrian sponsored Palestinian and Lebanese
militias. Meanwhile, with enormous financial and military support from oil-rich
Iran, Hezbollah is said to have restored its military capabilities after
suffering major losses this past July. Iran's riches are also helping Hezbollah
win additional loyalty from Lebanon's Shiite underclass. With it, Hezbollah
mobilizes the masses to call for increasing the opposition's share in the
cabinet. Such a move would give opposition members the power to dissolve the
cabinet and block the institution of UN tribunals that would try those who
assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and other democracy advocates.
It would also enable them to block cabinet efforts to disarm Hezbollah, as
required by two UN resolutions. If this expansion isn't granted,
counterrevolutionaries threaten to demand Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's
resignation or create their own shadow cabinet.
6- Hezbollah and its cronies have misrepresented Mr. Saniora's attempts to
govern by consensus as weakness. They have also misinterpreted the ISG report,
which calls for talks with Iran and Syria, as a sign of the Western "need" for
those countries' cooperation. They see a Western "deal" in the offing that would
allow them to control Lebanon. All these wrong conceptions need to be clarified.
7- Changing the government in Lebanon is a legitimate and constitutional
democratic issue, but not by force and threats and by striking at the
institutions of the State and casting the free and the pro-sovereignty activists
among our people as traitors. It is by the same token certainly illogical to
change the government by way of Hezbollah which has erected a State within the
State, which possesses power that is greater than that of the State in money,
weapons and institutions, and which has organic and ideological ties to each of
Syria and Iran.
*Elias Bejjani
Chairman for the Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council (LCCC)
Human Rights activist, journalist & political commentator.
Spokesman for the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation (CLHRF)
E.Mail phoenicia@hotmail.com
LCCC Web Site
http://www.10452lccc.com
CLHRF Website http://www.clhrf.com