Feltman Launches Lebanon’s 2013 Parliamentary Campaign

Pledging he will defeat Hezbollah this time…

Beirut – One fellow who works at the Beirut US Embassy tells the story of how, each year around the time of the vernal equinox, since 2005 when Jeffrey Feltman became the American Ambassador (given Jeff’s domination of US Middle East Policy, he is still essentially US Ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf, and much of the region although other names appear from time to time on the local US Embassy doorplates) the now multi-hatted US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs would perform a sort of ritual.

“The Lebanese people must join together to tell Hezbollah and its allies that the Lebanese state will no longer be hijacked for an Iranian-Syrian agenda.” Jeff called on Lebanese voters to organize immediately for the coming election and “to once again show the world how they can transcend fear and use the 2013 parliamentary elections to defeat the remnants of the Syrian occupation, the pillar of which is Hezbollah, and reject the apologists of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s butchery.”

Feltman, identified to the 7thanniversary of the “Cedar Revolution” (which his office named) gathering, two elements that he claimed were constant across the board in the Arab Spring countries: “Yearning for dignity and a triumph over fear.” He omitted any reference to the yearning to overcome rising poverty, corruption, lack of jobs and government neglect as well as the repression of religious and ethnic minorities that continue to fuel the uprisings against US supported regimes four of which have collapsed while four others are still teetering. One observer thought his “triumph over fear”language was a call for citizens to risk their lives and to take to the streets.

Jeff’s pep rally for the coming Lebanese Parliamentary elections that will help determine the next Lebanese government which will affect US plans for the region, has set the tone and scaffolding for his team’s soon to be announced electoral platform. Organizing the campaign for the pro-US-Israel Saudi team will likely once again be supported by staffers at US Embassy Beirut and also worked on by Jeff’s State Department Bureau.

According to Lebanese election specialists at Lebanon’s Lebanese International University (LIU), Notre Dame, and Lebanese American University (LAU) the coming US driven Lebanese elections will include:

–record prices for vote purchases that sometimes during the 2009 election saw the purchase price of a vote sometimes rise as high as $5000 plus fancy mobile phones for the sellers teenagers and cars for some dads;

–intense demonization of Hezbollah among its Shia base plus scare tactics and silly whispering campaigns claiming that the party it will ban alcohol, institute chadouri dress codes, revive the discarded idea of an Islamic republic, buy up property in other sects neighborhoods, corruption, and more indictments coming from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL);

–during the coming months of the run up to the 2013 Parliamentary election, Lebanon will also witness more cold stare visits from US bureaucrats such as US Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen who was in Lebanon this week rattling the cage of Lebanese Central Bank officials warning that the US suspects hat Lebanese banks are being used to fund the Iranian nuclear program and to finance the Syrian regime so the US may have to act against Lebanese banks and for sure the Beirut based Bank Saderat Iran and the Syrian Lebanese Commercial Bank;

–fanning the embers of Shia-Christian discord such as last week’s Maronite Antonine University incident when some Shia students prayed outside a Church on Campus and Lebanese Forces strongman Samir Geagea tried to make a political issue of it;

In support of Feltman’s 2013 Lebanese Parliamentary election launch, the Arabphobic and anti-Muslim Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, used another one of his “warn America” hearings this week (3/22/12) in which he said something Feltman may have wanted to but diplomatically did not. King declared that “the Iranian-backed and funded militant group Hezbollah has hundreds of operatives based in the United States waiting orders to strike” and he added that “Hezbollah, and not al-Qaida, poses the greatest terrorist threat to all Americans”.

Some Sunni supporters of Hezbollah, and there are many across Lebanon who support its domestic programs and Resistance stances, are urging the Party to preempt the Feltman team plans to divide Lebanon’s Muslim and to take a courageous and bold political initiative in Parliament that would reach out to the Sunni community, the international human rights movement and give heightened credence to Hezbollah moral and religious beliefs that demand human dignity for all currently in Lebanon.

That action would be to immediately enact in Parliament the right to work and temporary home ownership laws (pending their Return to Palestine at the first opportunity) for the Palestinians refugees in Lebanon, 95% of whom who Sunni Muslims. Every Sunni in Lebanon knows this is the right thing to do as does everyone else in Lebanon and beyond who know about the legalized discrimination against Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Were Hezbollah to undertake this historic and courageous act, which it currently has the political power to do, Hezbollah would earn for itself among the Sunni community vital additional respect.

Hezbollah would also thereby help thwart the U.S.-Israel effort to reset Middle Eastern politics in terms of a serious Sunni-Shi’ite schism while quite likely defeating Washington-Tel Aviv plans for next year’s Parliamentary elections. Those plans, as Jeffrey Feltman made clear this week, are to install their own team in the Grand Serail that may well determine the course of regional and Lebanese politics for years to come.

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