Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The Little Lebanese Nazi: AlJazeera's Documentary on his assassination

So I finally managed to watch the AlJazeera documentary on the assassination of the little Lebanese Nazi, Bashir Gemayyel (or the WLE, Worst Lebanese Ever). I was angry just watching that little Lebanese Nazi speak. I detested him from his early rise: he lied to the Lebanese about all his plans and objectives. This is an Israeli tools who would audaciously tell interviewers that he would never "deal" with Israel (see the reference to him in Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes and in Bob Woodward's Veil). But the program on AlJazeera was quite lacking in background and in key critical information that it can be considered a whitewash of Bashir Gemayyel. Where do I begin: the narrator for example--echoing the bogus claim by the Phalanges' Joseph AbuKhalil--that the 1976 trip to Israel by AbuKhalil was the first contact between the Phalanges and Israel. Are you kidding me? The contacts between the Phalanges and Israel preceded the establishment of the usurping entity in 1948. In fact, the Phalanges received their first Israeli cash payment for elections in 1951. Joseph AbuKhalil should not be permitted to reiterate his lies without any rebuttal: and the rebuttal by SSNP's Jubran `Urayji was not sufficient. And the entire relationship between Bashir and Amin was also mischaracterized. There was nothing in the program about the war of the Phalanges not only against the Palestinians but also agianst Muslim Lebanese (the program only referred to Bashir's wars against his rival among the Maronite militias). And this is an important fact to Arab viewers because the Lebansese Forces and the Phalanges are now trying to claim that they only fought against the Syrians and the Palestinians (as if their war on the Palestinians justified their massacres in all the refugee camps in East Beirut). Amin Gemayyel is a congenital liar and he was allowed to lie in every word he said. You felt that the producer didnt prepare well for the program. The most infuriating moment was when LF's As`ad Ash-Shaftari (deputy to the notorious Elie Hubayqah who swtiched from being an Israeli agent to being an agent for Rafiq Hariri and the Syrian regime) claimed that Elie Hubayqah did not torture Habib Shartuni, who killed Bashir. Let me tell you this: Habib Shartuni was so mercilessly tortured that a senior figure called Pierre Gemayyel on the phone and told me in clear terms that if Shartuni dies in their custody, Pierre would lose another son. The torture continued but he was kept alive. When Shartuni was finally freed in 1990, it required several months to rehabilitate him by specialists due to the long years of torture and mistreatment. Also, the account of his release by SSNP leader Jamal Fakhuri was rather funny: he said that the Syrian forces entered and opened the gates of the prison. That was not what happened: in fact, an armed group of 400 showed up at the gates and threatened to storm the prison if Shartuni was not released. He was immediately released. Some people have asked me whether "the Dangerous Man" that I had written about is in fact Habib Shartuni.