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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 11/27/19

Viewpoints 3 Lebanese Maronites: an exile, a warlord and the 'Arab Nelson Mandela'

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Geagea has remained the head of the Lebanese Forces, obviously ready to re-warlord immediately. After 35 years Abdallah wants to go back to his job as a schoolteacher.

Why is the Maronite Abadallah seemingly going to serve a life sentence while the Maronite Geagea, the undoubted epitome of 1980s Lebanese carnage, got released? Clearly, the sectarian/identity analysis pushed so strongly by Israel, the US and France does not truly trump all.

Burning US, Israeli flags, Lebanese slam foreign intervention. Hundreds of Lebanese protesters in front of the US embassy in Beirut slam foreign intervention in their domestic affairs.
Burning US, Israeli flags, Lebanese slam foreign intervention. Hundreds of Lebanese protesters in front of the US embassy in Beirut slam foreign intervention in their domestic affairs.
(Image by Press TV)
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The problem is that Abdallah had the "wrong" enemies - the US and Israel. Abdallah's pro-Palestinian stance, as well as his socialist demand that the lower classes are more important than the 1% and central bankers, are why France's leaders willingly collude to condemn Abdallah to death in prison.

Contrarily, Geagea obviously had the "right" enemies: anyone opposed to imperialism, ruthless capitalism, racist sectarianism and the idea that Palestinians deserve to be treated like humans. Who upholds these ideologies more than Israel and the US?

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah is indeed the Arab World's Nelson Mandela because both were leftists who used violence in defense (not in attack) and because Abdallah has been imprisoned so long and so very unjustly. Without any doubt Abdallah, who has always refused to renounce his actions, has stood up for justice longer than any person in Europe today.

Geagea's release and public rehabilitation show how Lebanon has granted amnesty to all their wartime leaders - only Abdallah does not walk free. French judges granted Abdallah parole long ago and he was ordered to be released multiple times, but France's executive branch will seemingly always work on behalf of Washington and Tel Aviv.

The sad reality which must be changed is that the prominent parties in Lebanon are not pushing for Abdallah's release.

Hezbollah and Amal simply do not have any leverage to put pressure on Paris, but they should immediately do all they could to draw more attention to Abdallah - they obviously support Abdallah's fight against imperialism and injustice, and they are present at pro-Abdallah demonstrations in Lebanon. Making Abdallah a more prominent symbol would also help demonstrate to their shameless accusers that their ideology is not sectarian, but universal and moral. The Maronite Church fought extremely hard to get Geagea released but have done nothing for Abdallah because of his pro-Palestine and pro-socialist stances - Hezbollah's members need to fill their regrettable, shameful void.

Clearly, all of protest-wracked Lebanon needs Abdallah more than ever.

Lebanon's protests are extremely Westernized in the sense that they have no class component - they rightly reject Aounist "semi-sectarian patriotism" as inadequate, but how could a movement based on patriotism galvanize a Lebanon that is no longer under occupation? Answers to what many young Lebanese are blindly groping against - an end to Salemeh-led inequality, French-led sectarianism and US-Israeli accommodation with imperialism - can be found personified by Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.

Abdallah is the man of this moment in Lebanon, yet he cannot be there to help.

But is this not the case for the anti-imperialist left in so many countries? Their leaders have been jailed or killed by Western nations. Don't young Lebanese realize that they are no different?

Many believe that the only way to keep Abdallah from unjustly dying in prison is via a hostage exchange. Abdallah is undoubtedly a hostage held by France's leaders, but I don't know who could be exchanged for him in 2019?

Abdallah is also Europe's oldest political prisoner and the hero of this article's trio. His case disproves Western lies about "sectarian-religious conflict" in Lebanon, but also in Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, Ukraine, Bolivia, Western China, etc.

When viewing Lebanon, actions and ideology are the only proper lenses, not religion. French neocolonialism, Israeli Zionism and Western anti-classism all reject this modern view.

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Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, (more...)
 

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