by Fady Noun

Demonstrations and clashes in Lebanon after the Ashrafieh attack that killed Gen. Wissam al-Hasan. The opposition has called for the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Risk of division among the Lebanese communities and a spiral of violence in the Middle East increases. But in the country of the cedars, there are also those who speak of prayer for the Syrian people and civic responses to political violence.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - Protests and violence were reported in Beirut and other cities, after the attack on Ashrafieh on 19 October that killed Lebanese intelligence chief, Gen. Wissam al-Hasan. Last night there were clashes in west Beirut and in the southern suburbs. Opposition groups demonstrated at 8pm, immediately after the funeral, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Mikati, considered too close to Syria, because there are pro-Syrian Christians and Hezbollah members in his government.

The most widespread opinion is that Syria is behind the attack on al-Hasan, even though the Lebanese security services are ruling nothing out (including an Israeli or Salafi track, as al-Hasan had destroyed their spy networks) .

Yesterday the United States offered to work with the Lebanese investigators to find those responsible for the attack. Mikati has offered his resignation, but President Michel Suleiman has not accepted it to avoid a power vacuum in such a tense situation.

At the funeral of al-Hasan were his widow and two children. The general was buried in Martyrs' Square, next to Rafic Hariri, the Prime Minister killed in an attack-bomb in 2005. Al-Hasan's investigations had led to a clear implication of Damascus in the assassination.

Al-Hasan's murder has heightened the risk of further division in the country. The President, speaking at the slain General's funeral, said that the government and people have to work "shoulder to shoulder" to overcome the challenges created by the murder. Even Saad Hariri, leader of the opposition, who took refuge abroad for security reasons, has asked his supporters to demonstrate, but without violence. Save Lebanon from the spiral of violence that is likely to involve the entire Middle East is the urgent task which drives Fady Noun, a great Lebanese journalist, in this analysis.

Of all the reactions to the Achrafieh attack, the most admirable is that of a woman hospitalized in Hotel-Dieu hospital, given to LBC: she said that at the time of the explosion that she was praying for the Syrian people, and said, "What wrong have these people done to justify such desolation?".

Exactly. What wrong did this people do to justify such suffering?

The words of a Syrian worker on a construction site were also admirable: "See, today we are paying the price of all the violence done to Lebanon."

In this double generosity of the heart is the key to peace in Lebanon - and why not, even that of Syria. The forgiveness offered by this woman of the people, whose leaders inflict such suffering is the key for an end to violence in Lebanon.

Walid Jumblatt said as much in his own way. It is with politics, the art of the common good and the possible, a noble and pragmatic art, that we must respond to the attack in Achrafieh.

"Let us not fall into the game of the instigators of the attack," warned Michel Sleiman, who fears an internal strife. They are wise words that bring some light into our dark night. The night of those on television, drunk with grief, who say that their suffering will only be met on the day when they will see the corpse of Bashar al-Assad trampled by his people, recognizable but almost destroyed, as was the case with Wissam al-Hasan, who rescuers only recognized by the wristwatch he wore and a fragment of his weapon.

That's not how you stop the violence. Is not that what Ghassan Tueni said at the burial of his son, who was assassinated in 2005. Ghassan Tueni said: "We must end revenge. Take in the violence we have received and learn to hope that it will be the last. Learn not to take revenge, learn that violence leads to more violence and that in the vicious circle, we can become prisoners of violence, perpetrating it and ending up looking like our opponent, so that nothing distinguishes us from our enemy. "

Stop the violence by responding to it with civility. Allow me to mention here to quote Michel Eddé's funeral eulogy of Ghassan Tueni, when he said that "the only lasting revolutions are white revolutions" that violence as an engine of historical change is a lost ideology.

In his book "Journey into violence," Samir Frangié cites René Girard, trying to show that there is a more atavistic violence in our violence, and that the only way of taking charge of it is by accepting it as part of us.  Yes, the assassin is in each of us and the journey to the heart of the violence is a journey into ourselves. Just like the injured woman at the Hotel-Dieu, whose heart has over taken ideologies, like Ghassan Tueni, like the advise of those wise men and women still among us: we can redeem this violence that has targeted us by responding with a civilized behavior.

This does not mean being blind to the origin of the attack or its authors. The murderers are among us, as well as beyond our borders. But it means mastering the art that can stop the violence, preventing it from destroying us from within, after having destroying all those outside. We must first defeat our own violence if we want to defeat the violence of our enemy. We can and must show the world in a peaceful manner, as we have done so many times, that Lebanon really exists.

 

• lebanon
• Syria
• attack
• violence
• murder
• assasination