P.S: This post was written by Bambi on Tuesday, November 19, 2019 before a trip to the Middle East and before the latest development in the area. As she got too busy, she did not have the time to post it. Thus, it is only being posted now as it is, that is without any editing.
The post begins below:
A few weeks ago, Bambi came across a picture from the South border of Lebanon, similar to the one below. Next to the Lebanese beautiful flag (that looks like the Canadian flag to a great extent), we can see the yellow flag of the Hezbollah party:
Why is that still the case, even after 19-20 years since the end of a 20-year-Israeli occupation?
In any sovereign country, the only flag that tourists, migrants, and/or enemies should see must be the official flag of a country. The latter usually has a single army.
Bambi is not an expert of Lebanese political parties. She knows that there are too many of them, from the left to the right wings. There are even some parties that have an ecological platform, including a green party. Nevertheless, there are two of them that are the strongest (Hezbollah and one allied to it) and maybe a third closed to the Hezbollah as well.
To come back to the yellow flag of the Hezbollah, the latter literally means “God’s party”. Do you see the irony that Bambi sees? In her mind, God is all about love, forgiveness, kindness, and peace. It is surely not about rifles and weapons.
Even resistances, they do not have to take a violent form all the time and endlessly. They can take all sorts of forms, from poetry to arts, from pacific actions to deep reflections. We have all resisted in our own ways to this or that injustice. We even resist to collective stupidity sometimes.
Anyhow to come back to the Hezbollah flag, a Wikipedia page describes it as follows:
“The first letter of “Allah” reaches up to grasp an assault rifle, which has elements of the H&K G3 battle rifle and the AK-47 assault rifle combined. The logo also incorporates several items, includingy a globe, a book, a sword, and a seven-leafed branch. The text above the logo reads فإن حزب الله هم الغالبون fa-inna ḥizbu llāh hum al-ġālibūn) and means “Then surely the party of God are they that shall be triumphant” (taken from the Quran), which is a reference to the name of the party. Underneath the logo are the words المقاومة الإسلامية في لبنان al-muqāwamah al-islāmīyah fī lubnān, meaning “The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon”.
The Wikipedia page continues: “The flag was designed by Mr. Ali Salih who is an artist from Brital, with the assistance of Mr. Abdul ar-Rahman Mazlūm from the same village. The flag has some similarity with the emblem of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard”.
Two questions beg each other here: 1. Who said that God needs a party, a heavily armed one on top of that? And 2. Why would a so-called resistance have to be just Muslim or…rather Islamic? How about Lebanese for a change? How about the country’s own army? An army that is as diverse as Lebanon?
Bambi asks these questions, knowing that there is a risk in doing so. People can be too narrow-minded sometimes. You criticize an entity like Hezbollah. So, you must be fond of Israel then. A bit like when we used to criticize the Israeli occupation, someone could say to us, well you prefer the Syrian occupation, don’t you? Or you criticize the latter, then you prefer the former. We criticize Iran, so we are fond of Saudi Arabia or vice versa.
The truth of the matter is that we can love all the above. At the same time, we can dislike them all, for almost the same EXACT reasons: Extremism breeds extremism. Often, these entities project their hate onto each other. Usually, innocent populations (here and there) suffer from extremism.
Another milder example may be: You love Canada so you cannot love Lebanon or vice versa. You love your mom. So, you do not like your dad. You like Montréal, so how can you love Toronto at the same time ?? Or both Montréal and Québec City? Well, Bambi loves all Canada at once from Coast to Coast to Coast, including Sackville.
To come back to the picture above, with all due respect to all the political parties of the world, that is including the political wing of the Hezbollah (despite the weird name of the latter), Bambi thinks the following: Only one flag should be flying above the Lebanese nation and its borders, from the North to the South to the East (the beautiful Mediterranean sea is to the West side). Yes, the Lebanese flag ONLY.
