Netanyahu Is Killing Us To Set Us Free? Logic, Grief And Resistance In Beirut

-OpEd-

BEIRUT — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed us, the Lebanese people, and offered us a gift: a massacre. He sent soldiers to the Lebanese border town of Maroun al-Ras, raised an Israeli flag there, and sent the picture to the whole world.

Netanyahu, who has so far killed more than 40,000 Palestinians and about 3,000 Lebanese, addressed us directly — and said that he is killing us for the sake of our future. He hinted at our dispute with Hezbollah and said that now was our chance to die at the hands of the Irgun (a reference to a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated between 1931 and 1948).

No, occupier, we will not postpone our dispute with Hezbollah. But those you are fighting against in Maroun al-Ras are repelling an occupier for us.

Now is the time for us to articulate the clear difference between our dispute with Hezbollah and that with the occupier who planted his flag in our chests. The scene at the border is very clear: an occupier plants his flag on our plateau, and a fighter tries to repel him. Another scene is also clear: a party has taken away our right to decide, and it has protected a corrupt system that has stolen the future of three generations.

We need a degree of naivety to not link the two scenes. But naivety is necessary at the moment of occupation — naivety without which our humanity is not valid.

​The Massacre Doctrine

Netanyahu tells us that he wants to give us after killing us, a homeland, one that is no more than a graveyard and no less than a colony. This speech he addressed to us is truly amazing, a summary of what awaits us if Netanyahu, owner of the “massacre doctrine,” achieves what he wants.

We are in a very complex position: stuck between an occupier who has planted his flag in our chests, and the resistance, which is waiting for victory over us. We have no choice but to bet on the latter, which is trying to repel the occupier, and on a country that is open to hostility with a party that has dissolved the borders of our country and turned it into an arena and a reserve for others.

We must not fall into the trap set for us by the occupier.

Yes, we are not well. And what awaits us is dark and bleak. The distance that separates us from the massacre has become the distance between us and the face of the occupier.

We must prepare and think of a way not to lose sight of the reality of the bitter years with Hezbollah, and not fall into the trap set for us by the occupier who addressed us on Tuesday with a tempting offer to exterminate us.

It is not just what is happening on the border that is affecting us.

​Collateral damage

Here we are in Beirut, witnessing a war of unprecedented genocide; targeting the innocent is part of this massacre doctrine. When the Israeli army spokesman says that he killed a Hezbollah member in a raid on his home, he does not mention that he also killed children and women with him, because they are collateral damage.

This is not a mere incident of war but a continuous and systematic practice that has its role in the gift the Irgun man is offering us. The killing of families is a daily occurrence across the war map.

What we witnessed in Maroun al-Ras is nothing less than an occupation.

It is a terrifying part of the doctrine Netanyahu has established in Gaza and is transferring to Lebanon: uprooting the enemy, which requires tracking down his family, and his environment is an “objective enemy” that may have resurfaced there.

What Netanyahu offered the Lebanese on Tuesday was not just a poisoned gift, and the death that accompanied his speech was not wrapped in another claim. There is nothing more clear than the image of a soldier planting his flag on the land of another country.

What we witnessed in Maroun al-Ras is nothing less than an occupation, and what we witnessed at the same time in Ghobeiry, in the suburbs of Beirut, is nothing less than a massacre.

That is how we must understand Netanyahu’s speech to us.