From Beirut to the Beltway

A Lebanese prosecutor on Wednesday ordered the arrests of three Guardians of the Cedar members for reportedly issuing calls to expel/kill Palestinian refugees and withdraw Lebanon from the Arab League. Habib Younes, Naji Awdeh and Joseph Khoury held a press conference Tuesday in Kaslik and handed out CDs containing their party’s ideology and principles. According the As-Safir and the National News Agency (NNA), the CD carried messages declaring it a duty for every Lebanese to kill a Palestinian.

“Lebanon is not part of the Arab world and we don’t belong to Arabism,” the NNA quoted one of the members as saying. He reportedly also preached against having ties with “Arabs” on grounds they aren’t the kinds of people Lebanon should be having relations with.

PM Siniora on Wednesday condemned these statements by a “group that still lives in the illusions of the past despite all what Lebanon has been through.” He said Lebanese people reject these “terrorist” calls, adding that Palestinian refugees will remain under the protection of the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people until their "dignified return to their country."

Siniora’s own delusion about the right of return apart, the resurgence of the Guardians of the Cedar is a bit unsettling.

For those who are too young to remember them, the Guardians of the Cedar are an ultra-nationalist, anti-Arab, anti-Islam, anti-Palestinian Lebanese Christian party. Formed in 1969 by Etienne Sakr (Abu Arz) following the Cairo agreement that allowed the PLO to launch attacks against Israel from Lebanese soil, it took upon itself the task of liberating Lebanon from Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians, Arabs and all their associates (at the time, that meant the rest of Lebanon). Some of their accomplishments in that regard included participating in massacres at Tal el-Zaatar, Jisr el-Basha, Nabaa and Karantina. They became part of the Lebanese Forces in 1976 when Bashir Gemayel brought all Christian militias under his command. Some of their members are believed to have taken part in the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982.

Abu Arz summed up his party’s ideology (developed in part by Lebanese poet Said Akl) and mission in an interview with the Jerusalem Post during the Israeli invasion on 23 July 1982:

The Lebanese are not Arabs. In fact God, in His Wisdom, gave us the eastern mountain range to separate us from the Arabs… What the situation calls for is a strong leader to replace the old rotten politicians like Pierre Gemayel, Suleiman Franjiyeh and Camille Chamoun, corrupted by Ottomanic self seeking Levantinism… We don’t care about the PLO, it is the Palestinians we have to deal with. Ten years ago there were 84,000; now there are between 600,000 and 700,000. In Six years they will be 2 million. We can’t let it come to that. [the solution is] very simple, monsieur. We shall drive them to the borders of ‘brotherly’ Syria and tell them to keep walking. Anyone who looks back, stops or returns will be shot on the spot.

After the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, Sakr held a press conference in Jerusalem and took responsibility for carrying out the massacre with the Israelis: "No one has the right to criticize us; we carried out our duty, our sacred responsibility."

Sakr, who I think is currently hiding in Israel, was sentenced to death by a Lebanese court for treason and dealing with enemy. There's a lot about their ideology on their many web sites that I won't bother repeating here, including a "Lebanese alphabet" developed by Akl. I personally find their "ideology" laughable, illogical and scientifically obsolete.