English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 08/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 12/10-12/:”And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.’”.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 07-08/2020
Beirut explosion: Trump tells Lebanon's Aoun that he will attend aid conference
Trump, Macron Discuss Immediate Aid to Lebanon
UN Wants Independent Probe into Beirut Blast as More Aid Pours in
Beirut explosion: Interpol sending team to Lebanon to help with investigations
Lebanon: Voices Mount Demanding Int’l Probe into Beirut Blast
Aoun Argues against Int'l Probe in Port Blast, Vows Accountability, Truth
Nasrallah Denies Storing Arms at Beirut Port, Calls for Benefiting from Int'l Support
First Arrests Made after Beirut Blast
Rescuers Recover More Bodies Days after Beirut Blast
Ambitious Macron Wants Aid and Change for Battered Lebanon
Owner of Cruise Ship Sunk by Beirut Blast Sues
Abul Gheit Could Visit Beirut this Week
Seething Volunteers Oust Ministers from Ravaged Beirut Districts
Beirut blast: Lebanon navigates food challenge with no grain silo and few stocks
Colonel who died suspiciously had asked for removing ammonium nitrate: Lebanese media
Beirut explosion fake footage: Original video analysis exposes new details
Beirut explosion: Destroyed port used as quarantine center long before coronavirus
Le crime se poursuit Crime perpetuates/Charles Chartouni/August 07/2020
Beirut explosion: France’s Macron interfering in Lebanese affairs, says Iran official
Lebanon to import glass, wood for rebuilding Beirut at over double exchange rate
Analysis: Will the Beirut explosion be a catalyst for change in Lebanon?
Beirut explosion sweeps away bride and groom posing for wedding pictures
Without dismantling Hezbollah’s arsenal, Lebanon will always be at risk/Jonathan Schanzer/FDD/August 07/2020
Qatar’s Suspicious Role with Hezbollah/Salman Al-Dossary/Asharq Al-Awsat/August 07/2020
Beirut, Hezbollah and Ammonium Nitrate/Jebril Elabidi/Asharq Al-Awsat/ August 07/2020
The Beirut explosion is the latest disaster – Lebanese ruling elite must face justice/Nadim El Kak/Al Arabiya/August 07/2020
Massive Explosion and Massive Truth/Elie Aoun/August 08/2020
The Hon. Andrew Scheer, Leader of Canada’s Conservatives and of the Official Opposition, issues statement on the explosions in Beirut
Letter To The Secretary-General of the United Nations
How will Hezbollah react to this week’s massive blast in Beirut?/Seith J.Frantman//Jerusalem Post/August 07/2020
The 2003 meeting that set the stage for Hariri’s assassination/Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/August 07/2020
Lebanon as Paradise Lost/Jeffrey Feltman/Brookings/Wednesday, August 05/2020
Beirut explosion will hasten Lebanon's meltdown/Rami Rayess/Al Arabiya/August 07/2020
With Hezbollah in charge, the destruction of Beirut was matter of time/Yaakov Hatz/Jerusalem Post/August 07/2020

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 07-08/2020

At least 16 killed, 123 hurt as Air India plane from Dubai skids off runway in India
After Hook’s departure, Iran says US envoys ‘bite off more than they can chew’
Coronavirus: Turkish lira hits another historic low amid pandemic
US official raises concern over election threats from China, Russia and Iran
U.S. imposes Libya-related sanctions on individuals, company
Egypt, Greece sign maritime deal to counter Libya-Turkey one
Syrians Treat Themselves at Home to Avoid State Health Sector Confusion
Top U.S. Envoy for Iran Talks Stepping Down as Tensions Escalate
Iran Is No. 1 Sponsor of Terrorism, U.S. Says Ahead Of UN Arms-Embargo Talks
Question: "How should a Christian deal with feelings of guilt regarding past sins, whether pre- or post-salvation?"/GotQuestions.org/August 07/2020
 

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 07-08/2020

Hagia Sophia and Cathedral of Córdoba: The Jihad Factor/Raymond Ibrahim/August 07/2020
For Syrians, death comes from hunger, conflict, or coronavirus/Hossam Elsharkawi/Al Arabiya/August 07/2020
Gold Is Expensive, and May Be Just Warming Up/John Authers/Bloomberg/August 07/2020
When Memory Becomes a Prison of Nations/Amir Taheri//Asharq Al-Awsat/August 07/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 07-08/2020

Beirut explosion: Trump tells Lebanon's Aoun that he will attend aid conference
Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English/Friday 07 August 2020
US President Donald Trump told his Lebanese counterpart Michel Aoun Friday that he would attend the international aid conference organized by France after the deadly Beirut explosions. "President Trump confirmed to Aoun that he would participate in the Paris conference, which French President Emmanuel Macron proposed to help Lebanon," a statement from Aoun's office said. Trump offered his condolences and reaffirmed that Washington would stand by Lebanon and would send urgent assistance to Lebanon, the statement added.

On Thursday, Macron visited the Lebanese capital and walked through the destroyed streets and buildings. He said he would organize an international aid conference to garner immediate assistance for the Lebanese people. Macron promised that aid would not go to "corrupt hands," as hundreds of protesters called for him not to deal with the Lebanese government. The Lebanese political elite has long been seen as corrupt with the state unable to provide basic services and needs to the Lebanese citizens.

Trump, Macron Discuss Immediate Aid to Lebanon
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 7 August, 2020
US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday discussed working together with other countries to send immediate aid to Lebanon, the White House said. The two leaders spoke by phone and "expressed their deep sadness over the loss of life and devastation in Beirut," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. Tuesday's massive explosion in Beirut's port killed 154 people, injured 5,000 and smashed a swathe of the city. France and other countries around the world have rushed emergency aid to Lebanon, including doctors, and tons of health equipment and food. Trump said this week Washington stood ready to help. Washington has pledged over $17 million in initial disaster aid, the US embassy said on Friday. It said in a statement that the aid included food assistance, medical supplies and financial assistance for the Lebanese Red Cross. “Announcements of additional aid and assistance are forthcoming,” it added. On Thursday, Macron visited Beirut and assured angry crowds that aid to rebuild the city would not go to "corrupt hands". Macron said France would lead international efforts to provide aid but would not give “blank checks to a system that no longer has the trust of its people.” The cause of the blast remains under investigation.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Friday said the probe would examine whether it was caused by a bomb, a prospect first raised publicly by Trump on Tuesday, hours after the blast. Asked about the issue again on Wednesday, Trump said nobody could say for certain whether the explosion could have been caused by an attack.

UN Wants Independent Probe into Beirut Blast as More Aid Pours in
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 7 August, 2020
The UN human rights office is calling for an independent investigation into the Beirut explosion, insisting that “victims’ calls for accountability must be heard.”
Spokesman Rupert Colville of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights cited the need for the international community to “step up” to help Lebanon with both a quick response and sustained engagement. He said Lebanon is facing the “triple tragedy of a socio-economic crisis, COVID-19 and the ammonium nitrate explosion" that devastated the capital on Tuesday. Colville also called for the poor and most vulnerable to be respected as Beirut and Lebanon rebuild, and urged Lebanese leaders to “overcome political stalemates and address the grievances of the population.” That was an allusion to large protests that broke out in Lebanon in October. The death toll from the blast has risen to 154, state news agency NNA cited Lebanon's health minister as saying on Friday. Minister Hamad Hasan said one in five of the some 5,000 people injured in Tuesday's blast had required hospitalization, and 120 were in critical condition, NNA reported. A team of 22 French investigators has started work in Beirut to search for evidence and bodies from the explosion and help Lebanese authorities determine what caused it. President Michel Aoun said an investigation into the explosion was looking at whether it was caused by negligence, an accident or possible external interference, his office cited him as telling local media on Friday. "The cause has not been determined yet. There is a possibility of external interference through a rocket or bomb or other act," Aoun said in comments carried by local media and confirmed by his office. He said the probe into the blast at a warehouse housing highly-explosive material was being conducted on three levels. "First, how the explosive material entered and was stored ... second whether the explosion was a result of negligence or an accident ... and third the possibility that there was external interference."
Based on information from Lebanon so far, France’s No. 2 forensic police official Dominique Abbenanti said the explosion “appears to be an accident” but that it’s too early to say for sure. In an interview with The Associated Press, he predicted that “the death toll will grow” as more bodies are found.
French investigators are involved at the request of Lebanon, and also because one French person died and at least 40 were injured. Eric Berot, chief of a unit involved in the investigation, said the zone the investigators cover "is enormous. It’s a titanic job.” He added the investigation is complicated by the huge scale of the damage and “the Lebanese situation,” referring to the political and economic crisis in the country.
More aid
Meanwhile, international aid continued to pour in for the stricken country.
The United States has pledged over $17 million in initial disaster aid, the US embassy said on Friday. It said in a statement that the aid included food assistance, medical supplies and financial assistance for the Lebanese Red Cross. “Announcements of additional aid and assistance are forthcoming,” it added. The World Food Program plans to import wheat flour and grains for bakeries and mills to help protect against food shortages across Lebanon, the United Nations agency said on Friday.
"WFP is concerned that the explosion and the damage to the port will exacerbate an already grim food security situation – that has worsened because of the country's profound financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic," a spokeswoman said in notes prepared for a UN briefing in Geneva, adding it would be providing food parcels to thousands of families. "WFP also stands ready to offer supply chain management and logistical support and expertise to Lebanon," it said. The World Health Organization (WHO) is appealing for $15 million to cover emergency health needs in Lebanon following the explosion, which destroyed 17 containers holding WHO medical supplies including personal protective equipment, the agency's regional office for the Middle East said in a statement late on Thursday. Five hospitals in the area affected by Tuesday's blast are either not functioning or partially functioning, and early reports indicate that many health centers and primary care facilities are also damaged or out of action, it said. Up to 300,000 people have been displaced from their homes and need food or shelter, which "also risks accelerating the spread of COVID-19 and the outbreak of other diseases," said Iman Shankiti, WHO Representative to Lebanon. The WHO said that, together with the American University of Beirut, it was planning an environmental assessment on the impact of the fumes caused by the explosion of ammonium nitrate.

Beirut explosion: Interpol sending team to Lebanon to help with investigations
Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English/Friday 07 August 2020
Interpol said Friday it would deploy a team to Lebanon to assist in emergency response and investigation into the Beirut explosions that killed more than 150, wounded over 5,000 and left many missing. “At the request of Lebanese authorities, INTERPOL is deploying a specialized IRT to Beirut following the explosion that resulted in the death of more than 150 people and destroyed a large swathe of the city,” a statement from the international agency said. The Incident Response Team (IRT) is being sent, the statement, said to assist local authorities in their emergency response and investigation. “INTERPOL’s IRTs are deployed at the request of a member country during a crisis situation and are tailored to the specific nature of the disaster or crime and the requirements of the requesting country.” Last Tuesday, multiple explosions at the Port of Beirut destroyed buildings and large parts of the capital. Lebanese officials revealed that there were 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored inside a warehouse. The cause of the explosions is still unclear, and Lebanese authorities have opened an investigation. However, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Friday that an international investigation would be violating Lebanon’s sovereignty, rejecting attempts to internationalize efforts to find out what happened. Lebanese residents have called for an international investigation, casting doubt over the transparency of any government work or institutions.

Lebanon: Voices Mount Demanding Int’l Probe into Beirut Blast
Beirut - Caroline Akoum/Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 7 August, 2020
Calls for an international investigation into the Beirut Port explosion have mounted over the people’s lack of confidence in the Lebanese judiciary. Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulatif Derian, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party, former MP Walid Jumblatt, and Lebanese Forces Party chief Samir Geagea joined the chorus demanding a UN-led probe. Amnesty International has also called for an international mechanism to investigate the circumstances of the blast. Although the government announced a Lebanese inquiry, former Prime Ministers Saad Hariri, Fouad Siniora, Najib Mikati and Tammam Salam were the first to call for an international investigation. “Beirut has become a stricken and wounded capital, and it is bleeding. All the Lebanese must join hands to confront the repercussions of this great disaster,” Derian said on Thursday. He also called for an “international probe to determine responsibilities with transparency”, stressing “we don’t trust a local inquiry, nor do we trust the government at all.”Jumblatt said that his Democratic Gathering parliamentary bloc would not resign “because our mere resignation will pave the way for the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Hezbollah to control the entire parliament.”
“There must be effective control over the state facilities and border crossings, and we need a neutral, not hostile government to get Lebanon out of the policy of the axes,” he added. For his part, Geagea said: “Based on our complete loss of confidence in our rulers and our firm knowledge that it is interfering with the judiciary; and because the political authority in Lebanon in addition to the judicial, military, security and administrative departments are all subject to accusation; and based on the enormity of the disaster that occurred, we call for an international fact-finding committee to be dispatched by the United Nations as soon as possible based on the Charter of the United Nations.”The LF chief also demanded the establishment of an international relief fund under the direct supervision of the United Nations “because we do not have confidence in the Lebanese authorities.”

Aoun Argues against Int'l Probe in Port Blast, Vows Accountability, Truth
Naharnet/August 07/2020
President Michel Aoun on Friday said calls for an international probe into the catastrophic blast that rocked Beirut’s port are aimed at “distorting the truth,” as he said the disaster was caused by either negligence or an attack. “There is no meaning for any verdict if it takes too long to be issued and the judiciary must be swift, because late justice is not justice,” Aoun said at a press conference. “Like the Lebanese people, I’m angry about the blast that occurred at the port and our goal today is to unveil the truth,” the president added. “In war as well as in peacetime, no one can push me to commit a mistake and no one can prevent me from unveiling the facts,” Aoun went on to say. “I do not come from palaces but rather from the people,” he said. Offering the Lebanese warm condolences, Aoun said “the real consolation is the fulfillment of justice,” stressing that “in the face of this justice, no senior or low-rank official will enjoy impunity.”As for the explosion, the president said it could have been "negligence or foreign interference through a missile or bomb."“I have personally asked the French president to provide us with aerial images so that we determine whether there were aircraft or missiles in the air. If the French do not possess such images, we will request them from other nations,” Aoun added. As for the local probe, Aoun said 20 people are being interrogated. “But no one can be arrested or put in jail before investigations,” he added. Asked about French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks Thursday about change in Lebanon, Aoun said Lebanon's “paralyzed” political system should be reconsidered. “We are before changes and a reconsideration of our current system that is based on consensus,” the president added. “If we don’t manage to rule ourselves, no one can rule us… and Lebanese sovereignty won’t be violated during my tenure,” Aoun emphasized.

Nasrallah Denies Storing Arms at Beirut Port, Calls for Benefiting from Int'l Support
Naharnet/August 07/2020
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday categorically and strongly denied the presence of any arms or ammonium nitrate belonging to Hizbullah at the site of the deadly mega-blast that rocked Beirut’s port and devastated parts of the capital.
"We have nothing in the port: not an arms depot, nor a missile depot nor missiles nor rifles nor bombs nor bullets nor ammonium nitrate," said Nasrallah in a televised address, adding that the investigation can prove his rebuttal.
“The official authorities said there were no arms or missiles, but rather ammonium nitrate,” Nasrallah said, noting that the story of how the ammonium nitrate had been stored at the port since several years is well-known. “Those who insisted that there was a Hizbullah arms depot sought to tell the Lebanese people that Hizbullah is to blame and this is a false accusation,” he added. He also stressed that Hizbullah “does not run or control Beirut's port and it does not interfere in it.”“We might have knowledge of what exists at Haifa's port (in northern Israel), but not at Beirut's port, because this is not our responsibility,” Nasrallah added. Nasrallah also noted that the “technical probe” does not need a long time, hoping the result will be known soon. Describing the cataclysmic explosion as a “major catastrophe and humanitarian tragedy,” Nasrallah said it has “major humanitarian, health and economic consequences,” urging an “extraordinary approach” in dealing with the fallout. “The destruction of Beirut's port will aggravate Lebanon's crisis at all levels,” he said, while lauding the popular solidarity that the Lebanese showed after the tragedy. “The blast was cross-confessional and there are martyrs from all sects… The destruction of Beirut's port will aggravate Lebanon's crisis at all levels,” Nasrallah added.
Thanking all the countries that sent aid to Lebanon, Nasrallah said his country “looks positively to every visit to this country during this period,” in an apparent reference to French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Lebanon on Thursday.
As for the investigation, Nasrallah said “the approach towards this incident would decide whether or not there is hope in building a state in Lebanon.”“It is unacceptable to politicize or sectarianize this incident which affected all people,” Hizbullah’s leader added, suggesting that “all security agencies can take part in a joint investigation.”“If all Lebanese trust the Lebanese military institution, it should be tasked with the probe,” he said. Nasrallah stressed that “there should be a firm and strong probe and anyone involved must be held accountable, regardless of their positions.”As for the political situation, Hizbullah’s secretary-general said the parties in any country would suspend their disputes whenever a catastrophe happens. “Unfortunately in Lebanon, from the very first moments after the incident, some media outlets and political forces claimed that what exploded at Beirut's port was a Hizbullah arms depot,” he said. “Most of those who endorsed such claims have backpedaled on them, except for some Lebanese and Arab media outlets,” he added. Lamenting that there has been “political exploitation of the incident,” Nasrallah stressed that Hizbullah does not want to engage in any debates with anyone. “This is a moment for solidarity and cooperation,” he said. “The resistance, through its credibility and the Lebanese people's confidence in it and its national and regional position, is bigger than being affected by some liars, instigators and those pushing for civil war,” Nasrallah emphasized.
“I tell all those who tried to start a battle with us based on this incident that they will not achieve any result,” he said.

First Arrests Made after Beirut Blast
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 07/2020
Investigation into the huge blast in Beirut made its first arrests with authorities saying 16 people had been detained, according to Friday reports. With destruction from the blast extending over half of the capital and the damage expected to cost more than $3 billion, world leaders have backed calls from ordinary Lebanese for those responsible to be held accountable.  In his snap visit on Thursday, Macron stressed the need for an international investigation after meeting Lebanese politicians, including representatives of the powerful Shiite Hezbollah movement, whose leader Hasan Nasrallah was scheduled to speak later on Friday. Lebanese authorities had announced their own inquiry into Tuesday's explosion and a military prosecutor on Thursday said 16 people had been detained. They included the port's general manager, Hassan Koraytem, a judicial source said.The central bank also ordered an asset freeze for seven port and customs officials, an official and a banking source told AFP.The measures did not dampen the anger in Beirut's streets, where dozens of demonstrators scuffled with security forces late Thursday drawing a volley of tear gas. Lebanon's leadership was already deeply unpopular, with a wave of mass protests that erupted in October last year only abating in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rescuers Recover More Bodies Days after Beirut Blast
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 07/2020
Rescue teams were still searching the rubble of Beirut's port for bodies on Friday, nearly three days after a massive explosion sent a wave of destruction through Lebanon's capital, killing nearly 150 people and wounding thousands. At least four more bodies have been recovered in the last 24 hours, and authorities say the death toll has risen to 149. The blast shredded a large grain silo, devastated neighborhoods near the port and left several city blocks littered with glass and rubble. French and Russian rescue teams with dogs were searching the port area on Friday, the day after French President Emmanuel Macron paid a visit to the site, promising aid and vowing to press for reforms by Lebanon's long-entrenched political leaders. The blast was apparently caused by the ignition of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used for explosives and fertilizer, that had been stored at the port since it was confiscated from an impounded cargo ship in 2013. The government has launched an investigation as it has come under mounting criticism, with many Lebanese blaming the catastrophe on negligence and corruption. Search and rescue teams have been sent from several countries to help locate survivors of the blast. Among those located in the rubble near the grain silo was Joe Akiki, a 23-year-old port worker who had been missing since the explosion. A team of 55 French rescuers that began work Thursday has found four bodies, according to Col. Tissier Vincent, the head of the mission. Lebanese firefighters are also working at the demolished port, where bulldozers and excavators were churning through the rubble. Dozens of people are still missing, and at the entrance to the port a family waited for news of a relative. Some 300,000 people — more than 12% of Beirut's population — are unable to return to their homes because of the explosion, which blew out doors and windows across the city and left many buildings uninhabitable. Officials have estimated losses at $10 billion to $15 billion. Damaged hospitals, already strained by the coronavirus pandemic, are still struggling to deal with the wounded. The investigation is focusing on port and customs officials, with 16 employees detained and others questioned. But many Lebanese say it points to much greater rot that permeates the political system and extends to the country's top leadership. For decades, Lebanon has been dominated by the same political elites — many of them former warlords and militia commanders from the 1975-1990 civil war. The ruling factions use public institutions to accumulate wealth and distribute patronage to supporters. Thirty years after the end of the civil war, power outages are still frequent, trash often goes uncollected and tap water is largely undrinkable. Even before the blast, the country was mired in a severe economic crisis that was also widely blamed on the political class. Unemployment was soaring, and a collapse of the local currency wiped out many people's savings, That will make the task of rebuilding after the blast even more daunting.

Ambitious Macron Wants Aid and Change for Battered Lebanon
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 07/2020
French President Emmanuel Macron has set the bar high in its strategy on Lebanon after the port blast that devastated Beirut, upping the pressure on the country's political elite by not just promising aid but also demanding radical reform. Macron's visit to the capital on Thursday, just two days after the blast that left over 150 people dead and left hundreds of thousands without homes, was one of the most visually symbolic moments of his three years in power. He rubbed shoulders with ordinary people on the streets of Beirut in a way no Lebanese leader has done, expressing empathy with their anger over corruption and inefficiency which has been intensified to new levels by the blast. Macron, who made clear his visit was to express solidarity with the people and not politicians, emphasized that Lebanon needed more than aid. He said the country required "deep" change and a "new political order" to resolve years of political and economic crisis. Lebanese in the streets of Beirut, many of whom are tired of political powerbrokers whose influence dates back to the 1975-1990 civil war, chanted slogans against their leaders and "Vive La France!" as Macron inspected the devastation. Analysts and media said his visit had upstaged President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Hassan Diab, already under immense pressure over why a giant stock of ammonium nitrate blamed for the blast was allowed to rot in the Beirut port for years. Macron can now take what he sees as the natural role for France in leading the recovery of Lebanon, which was under French mandate from 1920 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire until independence in 1943. "Eight historic hours of Macron the savior that shook the authorities," said the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar."Macron in Lebanon; Hope and slaps in the face," for the authorities, added the French language daily l'Orient-Le jour.
'Strong signal from Europe'
Macron, the first world leader to visit Beirut after the explosion, now plans as early as this weekend to host virtually an aid conference aimed at drumming up rapid help for Lebanon. "Lebanon remains the principal stage where France has important weight," said Ziad Majed, professor at the American University of Paris."France speaks to all the Lebanese actors, unlike a good number of Europeans and the Americans, and also speaks to the regional actors including the Iranians and Arabs from the Gulf", he told AFP. Even the German weekly Der Spiegel was impressed how Macron had seized the initiative and also stolen a march on the United States. "It's a strong signal from Europe," it said, adding that France was "the only country in the EU which has true geopolitical ambition and which displays it."
- 'Regional parameters'
But despite the rapturous welcome in Beirut -- a refreshing break for a president who has struggled in popularity ratings at home -- Macron is still regarded by some with suspicion as the head of Lebanon's former colonial power. And while France's historic and linguistic ties with Lebanon still give Paris clout, Macron will have to deal not only with the Lebanese leadership but also Iran and its regional foe Saudi Arabia who hold immense sway over the Shia and Sunni communities in the multi-confessional nation. Iran wields great influence in Lebanon through Hizbullah, with whom Aoun's party has an alliance. "Macron has nothing to give us except lessons that reflect a paternalistic mentality," said the daily Al-Akhbar, believed close to Hizbullah. One of Macron's key pleas -- for an international probe into the blast -- already appeared to have fallen on deaf ears Friday when Aoun rejected such an investigation. Stephane Malsagne, a historian specialized in Lebanon, said Macron had to deal with regional factors over which he has lesser influence, notably the role of Iran. "Political stability in Lebanon does not just depend on its political class but on regional parameters," he said.

Owner of Cruise Ship Sunk by Beirut Blast Sues
Naharnet/August 07/2020
The Lebanese owner of a cruise ship that was sunk by the huge explosion that destroyed the port of Beirut is filing a lawsuit, the National News Agency said Friday. Two crew members of the Orient Queen were killed and seven others wounded Tuesday when a huge shipment of ammonium nitrate caught fire and caused an explosion that leveled the port and gutted entire swathes of the city. "Entrepreneur Merhi Abou Merhi, the owner of the Orient Queen cruise ship, has filed a lawsuit against all those responsible for this catastrophic blast," the agency said. The state agency said the suit was the first of its kind and could pave the way for similar legal action in the coming days and weeks. The large cruise ship, which can accommodate at least 300 guests and houses a casino, was docked in its home port when disaster struck. The provisional death toll for the explosion is 154 but the figure is expected to rise since dozens of people are still reported missing and large numbers of injured are still hospitalized in critical condition.

Abul Gheit Could Visit Beirut this Week
Naharnet/August 07/2020
Secretary-General of the Arab League Ahmed Abul Gheit reportedly will visit Beirut on Saturday following a cataclysmic blast that ravaged central Beirut, MTV TV station said on Friday. Tuesday's blast at Beirut port that killed more than 150 people, wounded at least 5,000 and destroyed entire districts of the capital. French President Emmanuel Macron was the first world leader to visit Beirut on Thursday for a snap visit of support following the explosion.
 

Seething Volunteers Oust Ministers from Ravaged Beirut Districts
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 07/2020
Two Lebanese ministers who tried to visit Beirut neighborhoods ravaged by the deadly blast at the city's port were chased out by seething volunteers clearing up debris in the days after the cataclysmic explosion. The shock at Tuesday's blast has turned to public rage directed at the political class, already accused by many Lebanese of rampant corruption and incompetence. Education Minister Tarek Majzoub sought to change that perception on Friday, bringing a broom to the ruined Karantina neighborhood to join crowds sweeping up shards of glass and other debris. But he was met with furious chants of "Resign," "The people want the fall of the regime," and "Prepare the gallows!"Although the explosion's exact cause remains unclear, the Lebanese public has accused the entrenched political class of failing to protect civilians and falling short in the relief response. Officials have said a huge shipment of hazardous ammonium nitrate had languished for years in a warehouse at the port and somehow caught fire, leading to Tuesday's earth-shaking blast. President Michel Aoun vowed "swift justice," but few citizens have faith in the government's probe. On Thursday, Justice Minister Marie-Claude Najm had tried to walk through the Gemmayzeh neighborhood, a few hundred meters from the port. "Minister of corruption, not minister of justice!" chanted young people who were volunteering to clean up the hard-hit district. "If you had any honor, you'd resign," one woman yelled, her face twisted in rage. Majzoub and Najm are freshmen in Lebanese politics, joining a cabinet that has only been in power since January. But they have not been spared from the public outrage following the port catastrophe. French President Emmanuel Macron had visited Gemmayzeh too, wading through throngs of people displaced by the explosion or helping clear the rubble. A day after the blast, former prime minister Saad Hariri had toured the remains of the port before heading to his father Rafik tomb. The elder Hariri, who also served as premier, was assassinated in 2005 and is buried in downtown Beirut. During Saad's visit, an enraged woman kicked and slammed her fists against a car in his convoy. The younger Hariri resigned following a mass protest movement launched in October, which has since dimmed due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the port blast has reignited calls to oust the political elite, with new protests planned for Saturday afternoon with the slogan, "Hang them by the gallows."

Beirut blast: Lebanon navigates food challenge with no grain silo and few stocks
Reuters, Dubai/Beirut/Saturday 08 August 2020
Beirut’s blast destroyed Lebanon’s only large grain silo, with plans for another in the country’s second biggest port Tripoli shelved years ago due to a lack of funding, the UN’s FAO, Tripoli port director and a regional grain expert told Reuters. The destruction of the 120,000-tonne capacity structure and disabling of the port, the main entry point for food imports, means buyers will have to rely on smaller privately-owned storage facilities for their wheat purchases, exacerbating concerns about food supplies. Lebanon, a nation of an estimated 6 million people, imports almost all of its wheat. “There are smaller storage sites within the private sector millers because they have to store wheat before it is milled into flour,” Maurice Saade, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in Lebanon told Reuters. “In terms of grain silos, that was the only major one.”
Dozens are still missing after Tuesday’s explosion at the port that killed at least 154 people, injured 5,000 and left up to 250,000 homeless, in a country already staggering from economic meltdown and a surge in coronavirus cases.
With banks in crisis, a collapsing currency and one of the world’s biggest debt burdens, Economy Minister Raoul Nehme has said Lebanon had “very limited” resources to deal with the disaster, which by some estimates may have cost the nation up to $15 billion. The lack of a dedicated grain terminal, silo or grain elevators in Tripoli illustrates a hand-to-mouth approach to food security.
It mirrors how the state has resorted to emergency planning rather than long-term solutions in other key areas, such as the infamously flawed power sector and messy garbage collection, moving from one quick fix to another without the right resources or funding since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. “It is risky of course,” Hesham Hassanein, a Cairo-based regional grain consultant said. The country’s private millers, around eight in total, will have to navigate new logistics fast for the supply chain to run smoothly, even after some of them suffered damage from the blast. This means trucking wheat to nearby warehouses at a time when most of the traffic meant for Beirut, not just wheat, will also be diverted to Tripoli.
Lebanon’s government also did not keep a strategic reserve of grains. “What happens is the private millers store what they don’t have enough space for in their own storage in that Beirut silo and take from there when needed,” Hassanein explained. “This was the inventory in the country, not a government strategic reserve in that sense and it was usually enough for two-and-a-half to three months of consumption.” Economy minister Raoul Nehme has said that only 15,000 tons were stored at the silo at the time of the explosion and that Lebanon needed an inventory of around three months’ supply at any time for food security purposes. With a consumption rate of around 35,000 to 40,000 tons a month, that translates into over 100,000 tons. Lebanon imports 90 to 95 percent of its wheat, mostly from the Black Sea region. The bulk of its local wheat production is durum, a type of wheat more suitable for pasta. On Thursday, Nehme told Reuters his ministry had been planning to create a strategic reserve of around 40,000 tons but had not done so yet. “I saw we didn’t have a strategic stock, decided to buy one and got the approval of the council of ministers,” he said, adding that they had been in the final stages of negotiations. “Luckily we did not, it would have been destroyed.”

Colonel who died suspiciously had asked for removing ammonium nitrate: Lebanese media
Tuqa Khalid, Al Arabiya English/Friday 07 August 2020
A Lebanese official who died under suspicious circumstances in 2017 had called for the removal of the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate which arrived at the Port of Beirut in 2013, according to a 2014 document shared by Lebanese media on Thursday.
Colonel Joseph Skaf, Chief of the drug control division at the Lebanese Customs, wrote at the time: “We inform you that this division received information about the presence of the Rhosus ship at the Port of Beirut. It is loaded with ammonium nitrate, which is used in explosives, is highly dangerous and constitutes a threat to public safety.”He asked the authorities to move the ship away from the port’s docks and to place it under supervision, according to the document. Skaf died in 2017, but the cause of death wasn’t determined definitively as there were two conflicting autopsy reports. Major Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar reported at the time: “Did the retired Colonel Joseph Skaf’s foot slip or was he thrown off a height of three meters? A question which remains unresolved, especially after the two contradictory forensic reports commissioned by the Public Prosecution from two medical examiners,” citing a source in Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF). The ISF source said at the time: “One of the two reports rules the incident an accident, and the other confirms that it was deliberate due to finding bruises on the deceased’s head.” The ammonium nitrate stockpile at Port of Beirut exploded on Tuesday, killing at least 137 people and injuring more than 5,000. Lebanese President Michel Aoun said the explosion was due to the stockpile being stored at the port for years without safety measures.

Beirut explosion fake footage: Original video analysis exposes new details
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2020/08/07/Beirut-explosion-fake-footage-Original-video-analysis-exposes-new-details.html

Leen Alfaisal & Ahmad Kadi, Al Arabiya English/Friday 07 August 2020
An Al Arabiya English investigation into the details of a fake viral video showing doctored footage that alleges a missile struck the port of Beirut on Tuesday has revealed new details about how the fake footage was put together. Social media users widely shared a video in negative colors and alleged that it was shot on a thermal camera, allowing it to “spot the missile” that they claim hit the port and killed at least 154 people. Other media outlets had quoted experts as saying the footage was fake, but by comparing the original, undoctored videos to the new video, Al Arabiya English has helped reveal how the footage was doctored and spread online. The investigation took place in three stages: Finding the original videos before they were altered to include the missile, inverting the video’s colors to show that it was not shot on a thermal camera, and previewing missile experts’ comments on the matter.
Finding the original videos
Al Arabiya English went through hundreds of videos of the Beirut explosion to find the ones that exactly matched the fake viral video frame-by-frame. The fake video consists of a montage of two videos showing different angles of the explosion, with the same fake missile doctored into both of them.
Below is the fake video which went viral on social media with captions like: “You still believe that was an accident!!??” and “proof that this was a strike.”In the videos below, three versions of the two videos are combined into a split screen to show the difference between the original videos, the doctored videos, and the inverted doctored videos.
Thermal imaging
The individual who doctored the video made its colors negative, seemingly to better hide the reality of the video and make it look infrared. Social media users widely captioned the video as “thermal footage showing…etc.”By inverting the fake video through an editing software, Al Arabiya English was able to produce the original colors of the video. The interactive slider below shows the doctored negative video and the doctored inverted video: To see how a real thermal video would look like if inverted, Al Arabiya English applied the same effect to a Reuters video that shows a robot that detects people’s fever through taking thermal videos of them in South Korea.
Missile experts
Experts said that the missile plastered into the video is far too large to be real and is not an identifiable missile type, which proves that it is fake. “The missile looks far too large to be physically plausible and there is no motion blur on the missile as would be expected given the speed at which it would have been traveling,” Hany Farid, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who focuses on digital forensics, told The Associated Press. “It’s basically a cartoon missile that doesn’t look anything like a real missile striking a target,” Jeffrey Lewis, a missile expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California confirmed to the AP. “If it were less amateurish, we could identify the actual missile type, estimate the reentry trajectory and speed, as well as look for digital artifacts,” Lewis said. “But this isn’t good enough to bother with. This is more derp fake than deep fake.”

Beirut explosion: Destroyed port used as quarantine center long before coronavirus
Lauren Holtmeier, Al Arabiya English/Friday 07 August 2020
The Port of Beirut – the site of the disastrous explosions that shattered Beirut on Tuesday – came to prominence as a Mediterranean trading hub facilitating commercial activity for Lebanon.
But 200 years ago, during a time of political uncertainty in which Lebanon was occupied by an Egyptian dynasty, the port was developed as a way to quell epidemics. At the time, cholera was the primary concern, but today, Lebanon – and the rest of the world – must again grapple with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic while it clears out the rubble left from the blasts. Two days after the blasts, Lebanon recorded its highest single-day coronavirus infection tally, with 255 new cases.
While parts of Beirut lie in ruin, citizens have picked up brooms and taken to the streets. Meanwhile, the government seems absent from the scene, although security forces made an appearance Thursday night to blast protesters with tear gas after they gathered to protest the government negligence that led to the explosions. While the port’s history stretches back to the 15th century, the city's rulers paid particular attention to the development of the port in the 19th century as the city expanded, wrote the late Samir Kassir in his book Beirut.
It was luck and a concern for public hygiene that subsequently saw the port’s commercial activity expand, according to the well-known Lebanese journalist and professor Kassir. Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian leader in charge of Lebanon at the time, sought to establish a network of quarantine centers throughout the Levant to slow the spread of epidemics. While religious figures in Damascus and Tripoli protested, a lazaretto – a quarantine station for maritime travelers – was installed near Beriut at Cape Khodr along Saint George Bay – an area that would later be incorporated into municipal Beirut.
It would keep the name Qarantina. Situated in a northern suburb of Beirut, before the blasts that shook Beirut to its core, the Qarantina of 21st century Beirut was a quiet neighborhood separated from the busier Mar Mikhael by a highway that hosted the city’s famed nightclubs in old industrial buildings that once attracted Lebanese and tourists alike before they shut for what was supposed to be temporary amount of time to quell the modern pandemic.
Back in 1834, arrivals in Qarantina were required to quarantine for 12 days – two days less than the recommended self-isolation period for the novel coronavirus today. At the time, cholera was the major concern as two epidemics hit from the 1830s to 1860s. “In principle it was obligatory for all visitors, but difficulties were not slow in emerging,” wrote Kassir.
French consul Henri Guys was charged with devising a system of sanitary regulations, and consuls from Austria, Denmark, Spain and Greece were part of a supervisory committee. “However limited the effectiveness of the quarantine may have been from a medical point of view, it undeniably benefited the economic development of Beirut, which from now on was an obligatory port of call for ships in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Kassir wrote. While the Egyptians quit Beirut, and the city fell back under Ottoman control, warehouses were built and wharves were enlarged to handle the increased traffic to the port, and port and customs procedures were regularized, which helped Beirut attract a larger share of trade with Europe.
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By the 20th century, Beirut had become a major regional seaport, serving the oil trade and passenger and cargo traffic in the Levant and the Gulf, Australian-based outlet The Conversation reported.
“The port has played a key role in Beirut’s history and stands at the centre of the city, surrounded by some of its most important neighbourhoods,” Sara Fregonese wrote in The Conversation.
Up until Tuesday, the Beirut port had been responsible for 60 percent of Lebanon’s imports, as well as the storage of its food and medical reserves. Lebanon imports between 80 and 85 percent of its food.
As nationwide protests kicked off against government corruption and neglect in October during an ongoing currency and economic crisis, reports of medical shortages began to surface as importers could no longer secure dollars needed to pay for goods. The dollar shortage has also spurred inflation, and food costs have skyrocketed. Even bread, a subsidized good, has been subject to minor price increases.
Expecting the collapse: Meet Lebanon’s young political party ready to take power
The blasts at the port – which were also the subject of gross government negligence – took out a wheat silo that was capable of holding 120,000 tonnes of grain. At the time of the blast, it held only around 15,000 tonnes, but the country’s Minister of Economy Raoul Nehme said the country only had enough supplies for less than a month. An official investigation is yet to determine the cause of the blast, but initial reports suggest that 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored at the port caught fire and caused the explosion that destroyed Beirut neighborhoods, left 137 dead, 5,000 injured, and some 300,000 homeless.
Sidon, Beirut, Tripoli ports After Tuesday’s devastating blast, it seems like the country’s main commercial hub will become Tripoli in the north, though the port in Lebanon’s second largest city does not have the capacity of Beirut.
Public Works Minister Michel Najjar told local TV that Tripoli’s port may be backed up by Sidon and Tyre in the south. In the 1820s, Sidon was bypassed for Beirut as a hub for trade, as the south was in decline, and the Egyptians viewed Beirut as a rising international city with the first foreign consuls and diplomats arriving in the city. French merchants began to favor Beirut over Sidon at this time as well, and Beirut became seen as the gateway to Europe – a title it still holds today, despite coming under immense strain.

Le crime se poursuit Crime perpetuates
Charles Chartouni/August 07/2020
L’ONG française Secouristes Sans Frontières ( SSS ) ayant mis au point une mission d’assistance médicale comprenant une équipe médicale composée de médecins, infirmières et logisticiens et une tonne et demi d’équipement médical, se fait débouter par le gouvernement libanais sous prétexte d’endiguement de la pandémie du COVID 19, quel lien ? Ces justificatifs fallacieux émis par un gouvernement fantoche qui opère sous le mandat du Hezbollah, n’est qu’un acte de sabotage qui vise la démarche française, à commencer par l’aide humanitaire et finir par la sanctuarisation politique du Liban. Le Hezbollah entend affirmer sa mainmise sur le Liban, punir la recalcitrance des libanais, et asseoir le pouvoir hégémonique de l’Iran, le message est bien reçu, le temps est à la réponse.
The French NGO ( Assistance with no Borders ) has put in place a well rounded mission of medical assistance which includes, physicians, nurses and logistics experts to assist in the Lebanese. Their mission is cancelled, at the last minute, by the puppet government under the fallacy of containing the COVID 19 pandemic, what’s the link? This Hoax is a sabotaging act to thwart the French political dynamic in its humanitarian and political components. The Hezbollah is reaffirming its control over Lebanon, punishing the Lebanese for their recalcitrance, and sealing off the Iranian hegemony, the message is well received and it’s retaliation time

Beirut explosion: France’s Macron interfering in Lebanese affairs, says Iran official
Tuqa Khalid, Al Arabiya English/Friday 07 August 2020
French President Emmanuel Macron’s statements during his visit to Lebanon in the wake of the deadly Beirut explosion are an “interference” in Lebanese internal affairs, an Iranian official said on Friday. “Macron’s speech is an interference in Lebanese internal affairs, increasing the suffering of Lebanon’s people. Macron must apologize to the Lebanese nation,” said Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, a powerful state body and a former the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). “Instead of focusing all of his attention on finding out what led to the explosion, Macron is pushing for political change and an explosion of the stability in Lebanon,” Rezaei added. Lebanon, a country already reeling from an unprecedented economic crisis, and a surge in coronavirus infections, was struck by the massive explosion at the Port of Beirut on Tuesday which killed at least 154 people and injured more than 5,000.
Macron arrived in Lebanon on Thursday and visited sites of the wreckage caused by the blast where he was swarmed by Lebanese people asking for his help and demanding that whatever aid France sends not be given to the government for fear of it being stolen by corrupt officials.
He reassured angry citizens that no blank cheques will be given to its leaders unless they enact reforms and end rife corruption. “I guarantee you, this (reconstruction) aid will not go to corrupt hands,” Macron told the throngs who greeted him.
At the end of his visit, Macron called for an international inquiry into the explosion, saying it was an urgent signal to carry out anti-corruption reforms demanded by a furious population. “If reforms are not carried out, Lebanon will continue to sink,” Macron said. “What is also needed here is political change. This explosion should be the start of a new era.” Iran has a long history of arming and financially supporting its network of proxies – Shia militias across the Middle East – to further its influence in the region. Most notably, Tehran backs Hezbollah, a Shia militia in Lebanon which has a powerful grip on the Lebanese government. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah strongly denied on Friday claims that his group had stored arms at the Port of Beirut. "I categorically deny" such rumors, Nasrallah said in a televised speech. "We have nothing in the port: not an arms depot, nor a missile depot nor missiles nor rifles nor bombs nor bullets nor ammonium nitrate," he added. - With Reuters, AFP

Lebanon to import glass, wood for rebuilding Beirut at over double exchange rate
Al Arabiya English/Friday 07 August 2020
The Lebanese government will offer dollars to importers of materials essential to rebuild the shattered city of Beirut at a rate more than double the official currency peg that still governs most Lebanese people’s salaries, amid hyperinflation caused in part by the government’s economic mismanagement and corruption. A central bank circular issued July 6 set the fixed exchange rate for importers and manufacturers of essential food items at 3,900 lira to the dollar, higher than the official peg of 1,507.5 to $1 that the government continues to promote despite black market rates of 7,500 to 8,000 to $1. Aluminum, wood, and glass – all essential materials needed by people to reconstruct Beirut following the widespread destruction caused by a massive blast in the port on Tuesday – will now fall under this circular, Nassib Ghobril, chief economist at Byblos Bank, told Al Arabiya English.
Faced with dwindling foreign currency reserves after decades of economic mismanagement, the central bank must now prioritize and “has to choose how to support companies and individuals who have damages,” added Ghobril.
The rate will affect the prices of the essential goods for the Lebanese population as they attempt to recover, with many already suffering from a drop spending power as the black market rate of the lira has rocketed while prices continue to rie in shops.
Hyperinflation takes its toll
As dollars needed to buy goods for the import-dependent country began to dry up in mid-2019, the official peg slipped. Last month, Lebanon became the first Arab country to enter hyperinflation. Reverting to its reserves, Lebanese banks continued to block depositors from accessing their US dollars after nationwide anti-government protests broke out last October. The government, defaulting on its $1.2 billion Eurobond in March, entered into talks with the International Monetary Fund to restructure its $90 billion debt and has asked for a $10 billion bailout, and is also hoping to cash in on $11 billion in soft loans pledged at a 2018 donor conference. However, the government has failed to enact the required reforms to release the desperately needed funds, with critics blaming corruption and cronyism.
The country’s central bank has long refused to officially devaluate the currency despite setting various rates below the black market rate to try to tamp down inflation, including the 3,900 rate for importers of essential food items.
Recovery plan appears unsustainable
As well as subsidizing imports of essential goods, the central bank has said it has instructed banks and financial institutions to extend exceptional dollar loans at zero interest to individuals and firms affected by the explosion.
But according to experts, the loans will not be enough. “The actual interest-free loans don’t matter, so remember they’re lending the money in lollar – or virtual currency that can only be moved around in Lebanon,” economist Dan Azzi told Al Arabiya English.
Since the Lebanese pound began to tumble, banks have implemented a series of illegal and ad hoc capital controls, limiting depositors’ ability to access or transfer funds holed up in Lebanese banks abroad. Azzi said that unless the loans are able to be transferred outside the country to pay a supplier or an importer who would be able to bring in wood or glass, the loans are a nominal step. “It’s helpful in paying salaries and stuff like that, for stuff within Lebanon, but it’s not useful to import supplies to fix a shop that just got blown up,” he said.
Ghobril, the chief economist at Lebanon-based Byblos Bank, added that the loans are the first step to supporting individuals and businesses who suffered property damages in the blasts, although some aspects of the details remain unclear.
But other analysts have pointed to the government’s disastrous economic governance as making it unlikely that it can steer the recovery.
“The Lebanese government is definitely not able to provide a recovery package, it has lost all credibility and legitimacy not only amongst the people but amongst foreign governments,” said Nadim El Kak, a Researcher at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS), who noted that the government was already unable to provide long before the crisis. With the country’s foreign reserves critically low – the product of years’ worth of government negligence and corruption – it is unclear how the new rate and interest-free loan plan will be sustainable.
The currency’s nosedive has translated into slashed salaries and families prioritizing putting food on tables rather than buying other items, including medicine. As families can no longer afford to pay school fees or make minor home or business repairs, they now face the gargantuan task of rebuilding entire homes.
While ordinary Lebanese have taken up brooms and hit the streets to sweep away the rubble, the government has been seemingly absent – with French President Emmanuel Macron visiting disaster-stricken areas of Beirut before his Lebanese counterpart. “The Lebanese people clearly realize that they have no one but themselves to take care of them, they are the ones mobilizing on the ground, rebuilding, cleaning. Traditional parties of the state don’t have the means, nor are concerned about the plight of the people there,” said El Kak.
And while Ghobril said to expect to see additional central bank circulars issued in the coming days as authorities grapple with how to rebuild a broken country, with anti-government protests erupting on Thursday evening, it seems many Lebanese people have lost already lost faith.

Analysis: Will the Beirut explosion be a catalyst for change in Lebanon?
The Associated Press/Friday 07 August 2020
The massive explosion and devastation triggered by thousands of tons of chemicals improperly stored in Beirut’s port is the culmination of decades of corruption that has driven one of the Middle East's most spirited countries to ruin.
The staggering destruction, with losses in the billions of dollars, will compound Lebanon’s multiple humanitarian catastrophes. Its people are seething with rage as they are pushed into even more poverty and despair by an accident that appears to have been completely avoidable.
But it remains to be seen whether it will serve as the long-awaited catalyst to dislodge an entrenched political class responsible for years of graft and mismanagement. Even if it does end up being the spark for change, it will likely take years of instability and unrest, spurred by dismal economic conditions, to get there. Lebanon’s rulers, many of them warlords and militia holdovers from the days of the 1975-90 civil war, have proven to be extremely resilient. They hang on to their seats from one election to the next, largely because of the country’s sectarian power-sharing system and an antiquated electoral law that allows them to behave with virtual impunity while guaranteeing their political survival.
The Lebanese people rose up many times before, including 15 years ago when former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in a truck bombing; in 2015's “You Stink” protest movement during the garbage-collection crisis; and most recently in October, at the onset of the economic crisis. Each time, they eventually became disillusioned and beset by divisions as political parties hijacked and co-opted their protests.
Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics, said the interests of Lebanon's politicians were far too deeply entrenched in the system.
“Even though historically speaking, such national catastrophes or ruptures serve as a catalyst for transformative change, I am deeply skeptical about the governing and ruling elite in Lebanon instituting change on their own. This is delusional,” he said.
Some say this time could -- and should — be different.
The gigantic explosion that ripped through Beirut on Tuesday was the apparent result of an accident that ignited 2,750 tons of an ammonium nitrate stockpile that had been stored for six years in a seaside warehouse, apparently with the knowledge of port officials as well as political and judicial authorities. More than 135 people were killed and more than 5,000 injured. Many are still missing and around quarter of a million people are now without homes.
As the nation mourned, a collective feeling has taken hold that this time, its leaders must be held accountable for committing a crime and rendering the capital unlivable. On Thursday, the shock gave way to fury as Beirut residents realized the full scale of the disaster and scattered protests erupted.
“Hang them from the gallows in the streets,” someone etched in the layer of pulverized debris covering a wrecked car in a devastated street.
The pent-up emotions erupted when French President Emmanuel Macron came to Lebanon to show support, visiting the epicenter of the blast and then touring some of the worst hit neighborhoods. He was quickly accosted by anxious and emotional residents pleading with him to help free the nation from its rulers. France is the former colonial power in Lebanon and maintains historically good ties with the country.
Macron made it a point to say he was not here to support Lebanese leaders and would make sure that any assistance from France would go to the people. He reiterated that no financial assistance would be given to the government to help ease a deepening financial crisis without substantial reforms.
“There is a need to create a new political order in Lebanon,” Macron said after meeting with political leaders, calling for a complete overhaul of the system and urgent reforms in all sectors.
He did not address the steep challenges of doing this in a broken and divided country that's nearly bankrupt as a result of an unprecedented financial and economic crisis along with the coronavirus pandemic. At this point, the state is barely able to provide any electricity, collect garbage or provide basic security and food needs.
The scale of the national destruction is sure to further weaken Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government. It has struggled to implement any significant reforms since coming to power in January because of a lack of will on the part of political parties in ending the corruption from which they profit.
He has assigned an investigative committee that he said should submit its findings within a few days. But it is highly unlikely that any senior leaders will be punished. Instead, officials were shifting blame about who was responsible for the catastrophe.
“What was destroyed in 15 years of war, was re-destroyed in one second,” said Tony Sawaya, who heads an insurance brokerage firm. He had little to no hope that anything would change.
“Nothing will change. It will be business as usual,” he said, adding that all corrupt politicians are supported by their followers and the international community.
Others have called for a resumption of the “thawra” — Arabic for revolution.
Gerges said the main question is whether the Lebanese people will collectively rise up and say “enough is enough,” which would mean implementing a new electoral process, a new government and a new system of governance.
All those raise massive challenges. Sustained mass protests must continue, Gerges said, even if it takes years to force out the elites and change the system.
“It’s a choice between death, or renewal through struggle,” he said.

Beirut explosion sweeps away bride and groom posing for wedding pictures
Tuqa Khalid, Al Arabiya English/Saturday 08 August 2020
Social media users shared videos of a bride and groom posing for wedding pictures being swept away by the deadly Beirut explosion that shook the Lebanese capital on Tuesday. The video shows how the couple looks up when noises are heard, before the window displays of the store they were standing in front of shatter and they duck for cover. The footage then shows clouds of dust in the air, debris on the street and people running away. Other videos shared online showed another newly-wed bride who was also posing in her wedding gown in the streets of Beirut being swept away by the blast. Lebanon, a country already reeling from an unprecedented economic crisis, and a surge in coronavirus infections, was struck by the massive explosion at the Port of Beirut on Tuesday which killed at least 154 people and injured more than 5,000. The blast was so intense it smashed masonry, shattered windows, sucked furniture out of apartments onto the streets and left almost 300,000 people in disaster-stricken Beirut without homes fit to live in, according to Lebanese officials.
 

Without dismantling Hezbollah’s arsenal, Lebanon will always be at risk
Jonathan Schanzer/FDD/August 07/2020
Tuesday’s massive explosions in Beirut were a tragedy. But as is often the case in Lebanon, this tragedy was preventable.
The reported 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that sat unclaimed and uncontrolled since at least 2014 in a warehouse is yet another sign of failed leadership and mismanagement by the Lebanese political elite. At minimum, it was ineptitude.
The fact that a massive amount of explosive material was just sitting in the Port of Beirut – long suspected to be exploited by Hezbollah for illicit trade and smuggling – raises troubling questions about whether the Iran-backed terror group, which is the political glue that holds together Lebanon’s current government, had any intentions of deploying that material in an attack. While we now know that the explosion was a terrible accident, most analysts of the region (whether they admit it or not) had to briefly wonder whether the explosion was a military strike. The notion that an outside actor, notably Israel, might have targeted a weapons depot at the Port was all too easy to imagine, given the history of conflict over the last four decades. The Lebanese almost certainly understand that the inadvertent deaths of an estimated 135 Lebanese and the massive destruction of property could be a prelude to much, much worse for Lebanon. A terrible military conflict is still quite possible.
Hezbollah continues to stockpile weapons at an alarming rate. Estimates suggest that the group has an estimated 150,000 rockets of varying capabilities scattered across Lebanon, often in high-density population areas. The group has turned the Lebanese population into human shields for its arsenal that is designed to wage war against Israel. In recent months, Israeli officials have warned that Hezbollah is also stockpiling lethal precision-guided munitions (PGMs) that could evade Israeli defenses and hit sensitive targets that could lead to mass casualties. The Israelis have therefore made it clear that pre-emption might be necessary. In other words, they are warning of war.
To be clear, the Israelis don’t want war. For this reason, the Israeli military has held off on striking Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, even as it has expanded alarmingly in recent years. In the wake of Tuesday’s catastrophe, the Israeli military went to great pains to convey that it was not responsible, and that it was even willing to help. Defense Minister Benny Gatz took the unusual step of announcing on Twitter that, “Israel approached Lebanon through international defense and diplomatic channels to offer the Lebanese government medical humanitarian aid.”
This show of goodwill notwithstanding, the explosion in Beirut should be a wake-up call. If Hezbollah’s arsenal is not dismantled soon, more explosions are likely to come.
For Lebanon, the timing of all this could not be worse. Lebanon is more than $90 billion in debt, thanks to the corruption, greed and illicit financial activities of Hezbollah and the country’s political elite. The rescue package will not be easy to assemble, given the demands of the global coronavirus pandemic and a world economy in recession. A financial rescue is even harder to imagine while a terrorist group,
Hezbollah, remains at the center of Lebanon’s politics and economy. Frustration is now boiling over in Lebanon. Many in the country are laying the blame for Tuesday’s blast at the feet of the political elite and Hezbollah. These frustrations are not unfounded, and they are not new. The people have been protesting against the government’s failures, off and on, for years.
The time is now to act on these sentiments, and to capitalize on the fact that the world has turned its attention to this tiny corner of the Arab world. International pressure can play a role in demanding political reform in Lebanon. But that will only happen if Hezbollah’s weapons, illicit finance and political influence can be diminished. The Arab world, in particular, has a leadership role to play. But ultimately, the prospect for meaningful change rests with the beleaguered people of Lebanon.
*Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Jon on Twitter @JSchanzer.

Qatar’s Suspicious Role with Hezbollah
Salman Al-Dossary/Asharq Al-Awsat/August 07/2020
On the same day the Qatari leadership sought to show its humanitarian side by sending medical aid to Lebanon in wake of the Beirut blast, Fox News reported on the Gulf state’s involvement in financing Hezbollah. The party, in turn, appears responsible for the blast, in what Fox News described as a “sprawling terror finance scheme.”Doha has not only provided Hezbollah with funds to buy weapons, but its ambassador to the European Union sought to bribe a private security contractor to “hush up the role of Qatar’s regime in supplying money and weapons” to the party. Fox News revealed that two Qatari charities furnished cash to Hezbollah in Beirut “under the guise of food and medicine.”
Qatar’s role in providing funds to a party - that is designated as terrorist in many countries across the globe – and then feigning political interest by providing medical aid after a national catastrophe - which was caused by the practices of the very party itself - demonstrates the ideology adopted by Qatari authorities in approaching foreign political issues and meddling in the internal affairs of countries. This policy is much more dangerous than the direct funding of allies or exaggeratedly claiming adversity to rivals. Deceit is, after all, the political trademark of Qatari foreign policy.
Qatar’s policy is based on balancing contradictions. It is host to the largest American military base and openly flatters its president, while covertly inciting against the American administration through its media and diplomats. It financially and militarily supports the Houthis, while also taking part in the Arab coalition, before it was kicked out of it in June 2017. It signs a United Nations agreement that bars countries from supporting or financing terrorism, but is involved in backing terrorist groups after agreeing to pay a 1-billion-dollar ransom to an Iraqi terror organization. Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani claims to be leading a Qatari mediation in Bahrain after the 2011 developments, while he secretly orders the Wefaq organization to fuel protests on the streets.
These are just a few examples of Qatar’s contradictory moves that have become an integral part of its political ideology.
Qatar’s involvement in financing Hezbollah is nothing new. Germany’s Die Zeit had previously reported on Doha’s support to the party. Qatari policy is not limited to supporting Hezbollah alone, but also includes several groups and parties that may not be in power, in an attempt to implement the Qatari agenda through official and non-official means.
In the Lebanese case, the Lebanese people could do without further meddling in their affairs and further support to a party that is actually occupying the state and ruling it through its weapons, which are at the heart of its problems. Then a country comes along - and what a country – to bolster the party and support it financially and militarily.
At this, everyone has the right to wonder: What is the difference between Iran and Qatar’s support to the party? There is no difference really, except that Iran does it over the corpses of martyrs, while Qatar does it in the shadows and through extreme double standards and odd bravado.
Meanwhile, the last thing Lebanon and the Lebanese need is for someone to further deepen the internal divide, support one side against the other and back the party that is already the target of so much anger. Doha, without any shame, is continuing its suspicious role in deepening divisions within countries, in total disregard of the consequences of its actions. If Hezbollah were directly responsible for the deaths and injury of thousands of people and displacement of 300,000 after the Beirut blast, then Qatar and Iran are both responsible as well because they both back and finance the party that has a hand in this disaster that has befallen all Lebanese.

Beirut, Hezbollah and Ammonium Nitrate
Jebril Elabidi/Asharq Al-Awsat/ August 07/2020
Lebanon is in despair and Beirut has been devastated by the return of explosions in the midst of a suffocating economic and political crisis. The calamitous explosion in Beirut’s port is a crime and a humanitarian disaster, regardless of whether it was set off intentionally or as a result of neglect, though the second possibility is doubtful given the perpetrator’s fingerprints on the scene, despite the attempts to conceal evidence and meddle with the crime scene.
The Lebanese authorities announced that ammonium nitrate caused the massive explosion, though the Lebanese government’s announcement of the existence of thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate was delayed, and information about its owner and how he was able to store it inside the port, in the heart of the capital, for more than six years, is shrouded in secrecy. This raises a series of questions, as ammonium nitrate does not readily burn. According to experts’ reports, for it to detonate, a catalyst is required. A lot needs to go wrong for ammonium to ignite in storage without extreme heat, as it is difficult for it to ignite by itself.
The Port of Beirut explosion, which created a shake equivalent to a magnitude five earthquake on the Richter Scale, left more than 3000 wounded and 150 dead, destroyed the facades of many buildings, and produced a large cloud over the sky of the capital.
Considering the timing and location, we cannot rule out Hezbollah and Iran’s hand in Arab countries. The explosion detonated on the eve of the announcement of the verdict of the Hariri Tribunal, so the theory that the explosion was the result of the negligent storage of 2,700 tons of the material, which needs a catalyst to explode, is far-fetched.
Why was this massive amount of explosives stored in the port of Beirut? Who owns it? And why did they remain in the port’s hangars, explosive materials, in a critical site next to a densely populated neighborhood?
The responsibility lies with Hezbollah, as most of the port’s operations are under their undeclared control. According to Lebanese politicians, the port’s administrators do not have the authority to inspect all containers. Only those bearing a "green tag" are searched by customs workers, while everything "red", the majority, are not the custom officials’ prerogative, according to officials’ statements. This means Hezbollah is responsible, even assuming that the explosion was caused by careless storage.
The accusations raised against Hezbollah emerged after activists shared a clip of Hassan Nassrallah in which he compares bombing a port to a nuclear bomb. In the clip, he says, “The nuclear bomb (that he is referring to) will be detonated by missiles (launched by Hezbollah) on ammonium containers in the Port of Haifa in Israel, which will create an explosion similar to that of a nuclear bomb."
Hezbollah has a long and rich history with ammonium nitrate according to many international intelligence reports, which means they are primarily responsible for the tragedy in Beirut. The British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, reported that British security forces raided sites linked to Hezbollah after its affiliates were discovered to be storing tons of ammonium nitrate. The same happened in Larnaca in Cyprus, where Hezbollah members were arrested with tons of ammonium nitrate, and then in Bolivia, Germany, and Kuwait, all countries where Hezbollah elements were caught smuggling the material.
Hezbollah’s hostile actions, within and without Lebanon’s borders, have turned it into a regional phenomenon, almost international. It has caused many crises and problems as it turned into a regional Iranian vassal and went beyond its role.
Lebanon is devastated and busy picking up the pieces at the port. Its people had been protesting, before the coronavirus began to spread, calling for ending sectarianism, a type of permanent internal strife which external powers manipulate as they please. It is reinforced by the presence of an armed militia called Hezbollah that does not work to improve Lebanon’s stability or that of its neighborhood. But Lebanon, because of the determination of its people, sooner or later, will defeat its internal enemies before its external enemies. Like a phoenix, it will rise again.

The Beirut explosion is the latest disaster – Lebanese ruling elite must face justice
Nadim El Kak/Al Arabiya/August 07/2020
There are no words to describe the atrocities caused by the tragedy that struck Beirut and its people on August 4 at 6:08 p.m. Hundreds dead or missing, thousands injured, and even more left homeless. The physical and infrastructural damage is massive, yet the psychological toll may be even worse. In the past ten months, the Lebanese rose against a decades-old system of sectarian, economic, and social violence, only to be silenced yet again by an oligarchy that dug an ever deeper grave for an already ailing population. The desolate narrative of resiliency that has so often accompanied the Lebanese people must finally be put to rest. No society can repeatedly withstand governance failures, exploitative policies, the pillaging of its state, the disregard for its basic rights, and all forms of violence it’s subjected to.
Those fortunate enough to have survived who are not still dealing with the immediate aftermath of the explosion are consumed by pain, anger, and despair, but also one main question: Who is responsible?
The timing of the catastrophe is particularly conspicuous: one week after clashes between Hezbollah and Israel, three days before the verdict of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon regarding the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, and in the midst of Lebanon’s worst economic and financial crisis. A range of theories have been circulating: The main one concerns conflicting reports regarding the involvement of Israeli fighter jets in setting off the initial fire that led to the explosion in Warehouse 12 of the Beirut port. While many witnesses claim to have heard the sound of jets in the air, no conclusive and verified evidence has been made public yet.
What we do know, however, is that the hazardous presence of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate a handful of kilometers away from the heart of Beirut is the result of utter incompetence, perilous corruption, and a fatal political leadership.
The ammonium nitrate had reportedly been stored on board of a ship headed from Georgia toward Mozambique in 2013. The ship was forced to dock in Beirut’s port for technical reasons and its owners abandoned it. In 2015, the ammonium was unloaded because the ship was in poor shape, under the condition that the substance would be stored somewhere safe until it was resold. According to an investigation by journalist Riad Kobeissi, evidence signals that the explosive material was never resold because the chief of Customs, Badri Daher, was looking to sell it to a specific entity, but failed to get a judge’s approval because it fell outside the jurisdiction of the court. Daher was told by the judge to refer to the Judicial Council, yet neither he nor the concerned government ministries followed up on the matter. Once again, corruption and profiteering plague Lebanon, except that this time, the outcome was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever.
It would be inaccurate, though, to treat this as a one-time accident for which the Lebanese Customs are solely responsible. The Ministry of Public Works and Transport, the Ministry of Interior, the Port Authority of Beirut, and the Lebanese Customs all hold authorities and responsibilities in the mishandling of the situation.
This event is also reflective of the broader logic that shapes governance dynamics and political decision-making in Lebanon. The explosion is the most recent manifestation, unfortunately, of a chain of systemic and structural disasters and crises. A wretched oligarchy that is incapable of governing has presided over socioeconomic inequalities in the pre-civil war period, the sectarian massacres of 1975-1990, the never-ending waste management crisis, and the theft of people’s deposits in the ongoing financial collapse. It has been said before and it must be said again: The Lebanese establishment – political and financial – is incapable of representing the interests of the people without compromising itself.
With that said, any kind of official investigation – transparent or not, through international channels or local – will not yield the outcome the Lebanese are owed. In fact, concerned political actors have already begun denying responsibility and pointing fingers at others, as they always do. To put it simply, an accountability process that does not bring the real oligarchs to justice, and that is not overseen by a transitional authority brought to power by the people without political interference, is void of legitimacy.
In addition to the shock and devastation surrounding the explosion, Lebanon is also dealing with the looming dangers of the financial elites’ economic plan, not to mention a highly dangerous second wave of COVID-19. With the apocalyptic ruins of Beirut not enough to shake elites from their thrones, hope has become increasingly difficult to come by. The people of Lebanon need all the help and solidarity they can get to save themselves from the claws of those in power. In these moments, it feels like all we have to hold onto is each other and our romantic, fainting memories of an October 17 uprising that was robbed from us – like so many other things in this country.

Massive Explosion and Massive Truth
Elie Aoun/August 08/2020
ايلي عون: انفجار مرفأ بيروت الهائل والحقيقة الهائلة
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/89248/elie-aoun-massive-explosion-and-massive-truth-%d8%a7%d9%8a%d9%84%d9%8a-%d8%b9%d9%88%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%86%d9%81%d8%ac%d8%a7%d8%b1-%d9%85%d8%b1%d9%81%d8%a3-%d8%a8%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%88%d8%aa-%d8%a7%d9%84/
Various explanations were given to what caused the massive explosion at the Beirut Port. Two things are clear: (1) if the cause of the explosion is ammonium nitrate (as being stated), such a product does not explode by itself; (2) the videos of the incident clearly show small multiple explosions prior to the major explosion.
On that basis, few questions can be asked.
Why did Mr. Ghazi Zaiter, the Minister of Public Works and Transportation in 2013 and 2014 (and who is from the Amal Movement), authorized that the 2,750 tons cargo of the ammonium nitrate be removed from the ship to be stored at the Beirut Port? It would have been more logical to resolve whatever issues that existed with the ship and allow it to continue its course (if their official story is true that the ship was headed to Mozambique). The obvious reason for the Minister’s action is that the ship’s cargo was intended to be downloaded in Beirut.
Mr. Zaiter would not have made such a decision without the prior approval of Mr. Nabih Berri, the leader of the Amal Movement, who apparently knew his own guilt when he made an announcement after the explosion by asking his supporters to donate blood.
Secondly, why were not the products re-exported from the country, sold to an interested buyer, or discarded in an environmentally safe manner?
If the exploded ammonium was only about 300 tons of the 2,750 tons (as a Russian expert stated), then who transported or “stole” more than 2,000 tons of ammonium from the port? That could not have been done without the knowledge of the Minister of Public Works and those in charge of the Port’s security. Where is the stolen quantity now? Most likely, they are with Hizballah.
Thirdly, who planted explosives with the ammonium to cause the major explosion?
The leaders of all political parties, and all those who continue to support them, are to blame for what happened in Beirut. All the political parties were represented in the Cabinet of Ministers since 2013. The President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the Speaker of Parliament, and the leaders of Hizballah all knew of what was stored in the Beirut Port, its danger, and did nothing. They should all be prosecuted and imprisoned for the killing of Lebanese citizens and destroying their properties.
Even without an investigation, it is clear who is responsible. The leader of Hezballah and all three “presidents” did NOT deny knowledge of what was stored at the Beirut Port. They simply seek to avoid responsibility, without clarifying their intent of why they failed to take the proper action. The intent is clear: what took place was intended to take place. That is the massive truth!
Another problem with this political class is their appointment of unqualified individuals in key positions of power – creating widespread incompetence on all levels of the Lebanese government, leading to widespread disasters.
All problems in Lebanon have solutions, but this political class cannot be entrusted. Instead of implementing solutions, they are intentionally destroying the country. To imply lack of responsibility is their own confession for their unfitness to assume responsibility and to rule.

بيان صادر عن رئيس حزب المحافظين في كندا يتقدم من خلاله بأحر التعازي لأهالي الشهداء ويعلن تضامن الحزب مع الشعب اللبناني في أعقاب الكارثة التي أصابت مدينة وسكان بيرون جراء الإنفجارات الهائلة التي وقعت في المرفأ
The Hon. Andrew Scheer, Leader of Canada’s Conservatives and of the Official Opposition, issues statement on the explosions in Beirut
August 6, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ENG Statement: https://www.conservative.ca/the-hon-andrew-scheer-leader-of-canadas-conservatives-and-of-the-official-opposition-issues-statement-on-the-explosions-in-beirut/
FR Statement: https://www.conservateur.ca/lhonorable-andrew-scheer-chef-des-conservateurs-du-canada-et-de-lopposition-officielle-emet-la-presente-declaration-au-sujet-de-lexplosion-qui-a-frappe-beyrouth/

Ottawa, ON – The Hon. Andrew Scheer, Leader of Canada’s Conservatives and of the Official Opposition, issued the following statement on the explosions in Beirut:
“On August 4, 2020, the world was shaken by news of the explosions at the Port of Beirut.
“On behalf of my family and the entire Conservative caucus, I would like to offer my deepest condolences to all those affected by this tragic incident that has sadly claimed at least 135 lives and left over 5,000 injured. We understand that Lebanese officials continue to investigate the cause of these horrific explosions and look forward to the outcome of those efforts.
“Many Canadians of Lebanese descent have family and friends in Beirut and throughout Lebanon. We stand with the Canadian Lebanese community during this difficult time, as they gather across Canada to remember the victims and organize aid deliveries and offer any support they can.
“We extend our sympathies and condolences to the family and colleagues of Montreal businessman Nazar Najarian, who was killed in the incident. We are also praying for the speedy recovery of all those who were injured, including a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.
“With much of the city devastated and many in dire need of medical help, we stand with the people of Lebanon as they continue to clear the debris and search for people affected by the explosions.
“Throughout their history, the Lebanese people have endured great hardships. Yet through their incredible strength and resilience they have overcome. Working together, this time will be no different.
“We will continue to monitor the situation and offer any assistance we can to those recovering from this tragedy.”
For more information, please contact:
Anton Sestritsyn
(613) 995-9054
Anton.Sestritsyn@parl.gc.ca

Letter To The Secretary-General of the United Nations
His Excellency António Guterres , Secretary-General of the United Nations, The United Nations Security Council
7 August 2020
Your Excellency,
On 4 August 2020, one or more explosions occurred at the Port of Beirut, resulting to date in more than 135 fatalities, five thousand other casualties, three hundred thousand of Beirut’s residents displaced and a large swath of the city substantially damaged. The bigger explosion is reportedly one of the largest ever recorded. Monetary damages run into billions of US dollars. This comes at a time when Lebanon is suffering financial, fiscal, social and economic crises, unprecedented in scope.
In the face of this disaster, the people of Lebanon require:
1.a professional, independent, transparent and timely investigation which will look into the causes of the explosions and assign responsibility for this tragedy;
2 a fair and transparent distribution of urgent aid to the victims; and
3 a truly professional and independent government, with extraordinary powers, enjoying the support of the Lebanese people and able to deal with the ongoing crises.
The signatories of this letter, who represent a cross-section of civil society and activist groups in Lebanon and abroad, do not believe that the current Lebanese Government has the willingness and ability to conduct a proper investigation for the following reasons:
a) a professional investigation into an event of this scale and magnitude requires a high level of expertise and technological know-how, which Lebanon currently lacks. The Lebanese political, administrative and judicial systems have proven unable in the past to satisfactorily conduct and resolve the substantial majority of investigations relating to the assassination of political leaders and journalists;
b) on 5 August 2020, the Council of Ministers appointed an administrative commission to investigate the explosions and render its conclusions within five days, thereby showing an utter lack of intent to conduct a credible investigation;
c)the Government of Lebanon has direct conflicts of interest in that it exercises authority over the Port of Beirut and the Customs Administration. It also counts among its ministers representatives or nominees of an organisation which may be implicated in the events to be investigated and is deemed to exert significant influence over Government actions. As a result, an impartial investigation by the Government of Lebanon is impossible.
In light of the foregoing, the undersigned hereby respectfully request that, at its scheduled meeting of 10 August 2020 convened to discuss the Beirut explosions, the Security Council adopt the following resolutions:
i)establishing, and providing the funding for, an international commission to investigate the causes of the explosions and report its findings to the Security Council at the earliest possible date;
ii) establishing a UN-sponsored commission and trust fund to effect a detailed survey of the damages, collect international aid from donor countries, international organisations and the Lebanese diaspora and disburse such aid to the victims in a fair and transparent manner, as well as oversee and regulate development and reconstruction efforts; and
iii) supporting the demand of the people of Lebanon for the appointment of a truly independent government to manage the aftermath of the explosions and the financial situation in Lebanon.
The people of Lebanon have suffered greatly. They are looking to the United Nations to alleviate some of their suffering and restore hope.
Thank you,

How will Hezbollah react to this week’s massive blast in Beirut?

Seith J.Frantman//Jerusalem Post/August 07/2020
For Hezbollah, the terrorist army that occupies southern and central Lebanon and maintains and arsenal of 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel, the explosion is a mixed blessing.
A wedding photographer was flying a drone in Beirut on Tuesday. As the drone maneuvered over the head of the bride and then circled next to her dress, a massive explosion kilometers away caused a burst of air that sent dust gusting into the frame and caused the bride to run for cover. The camera crew and the bride were the lucky ones. Across Beirut at least 137 were killed, thousands were injured, and the city was laid waste.
Prime Minister Hassan Diab declared three days of mourning from Thursday as early investigations blamed negligence for the explosion at Beirut port.
Up to a quarter of a million people were left without homes fit to live in, officials said, after shock waves smashed building facades, sucked furniture out into streets and shattered windows miles inland. The death toll was expected to rise from the blast, which officials blamed on a huge stockpile of highly explosive material stored for years in unsafe conditions at the port.
The explosion was the most powerful ever in Beirut, a city still scarred by a civil war that ended three decades ago and reeling from an economic meltdown and a surge in coronavirus infections.
“No words can describe the horror that has hit Beirut last night, turning it into a disaster-stricken city,” President Michel Aoun said in an address to the nation during an emergency cabinet session.
IT HAD already been a tough week for Lebanon. In the throes of a financial crisis widely seen as the biggest threat to its stability since the 1975-90 civil war, and with hard currency growing ever scarcer, the Lebanese pound has lost some 80% of its value, depositors have been shut out of their savings, and unemployment and poverty are soaring. A report at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies revealed that it will take $93 billion to rescue Lebanon from its enormous debt.
A UN investigation, 15 years in the making, was supposed to finally release details on who murdered Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. He, too, was incinerated by a massive bomb blast. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, a UN-backed court located outside The Hague, Netherlands, decided to delay its verdict “out of respect for the countless victims of the devastating explosion.”
The country had been bracing for the verdict in the case of the men charged with planning and arranging the bombing 15 years ago. The four defendants, who are not in custody and are being tried in absentia, are linked to Hezbollah.
For Hezbollah, the terrorist army that occupies southern and central Lebanon and maintains and arsenal of 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel, the explosion is a mixed blessing. It could capitalize on the ruination brought to the more liberal parts of Beirut by sinking its fangs into reconstruction efforts.
It has done this in the past. Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, are masters at turning crisis to opportunity. For instance, after the murder of Hariri, Hezbollah appeared to lose out on its Syrian regime ally. The Syrians, occupiers of Lebanon since the 1970s, had helped midwife Hezbollah to run part of the country. But the murder of Hariri was widely blamed on a nefarious alliance of Damascus and Hezbollah. Protests caused the Syrians to leave. Hezbollah lay low initially.
But Hezbollah is always plotting. A year and a half after Hariri was killed, Hezbollah launched an attack on Israel. The goal here was for Hezbollah to showcase its abilities. Hezbollah claims to be “defending” Lebanon from Israel. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, potentially ending the raison d’être of the terrorist group. It wasn’t “resisting” anymore. But for jihadist groups, whether Sunni or Shi’ite like Hezbollah, “resistance” always takes the form of aggression, terrorism, ethnic cleansing and swallowing up countries. Therefore, Hezbollah attacked Israel in 2006, and a vicious, destructive war resulted.
But Hezbollah always finds a way to win, even if it loses. In 2008 it occupied Beirut after clashes with rival political parties, showing its muscle. The government, with support from Rafik’s son Saad Hariri, had challenged Hezbollah’s use of an independent telecommunication network. Hezbollah had likely used this network to plot the murder of Rafik Hariri. Hezbollah responded with force.
After the 2006 war and 2008 clashes, it sponged up investment in Lebanon, including likely leveraging Qatari and other investment to its own ends. It built up a shadow economy so as to route money to drug trafficking in South America and through corrupt banks linked to Iran. It gained a new opportunity with the Syrian civil war. In 2012 it began to send hundreds of fighters to Syria and basically took over Lebanon’s foreign and military policy. Hezbollah hijacked the parliament and presidency, refusing to name a successor to the Christian president Michel Suleiman. Not until 2016 did Hezbollah get what it wanted, when its ally Michel Aoun was appointed president.
By 2016 Hezbollah was entrenched in Syria, and it had mobilized itself to receive new precision-guided munitions from Iran. It benefited from the Iran deal and likely benefited from the Gulf crisis that pitted Qatar against Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Saudi Arabia, a guarantor of the peace process that ended the civil war in Lebanon in 1989, tried to pressure Lebanon by appearing to pressure Saad Hariri during a trip to Riyadh. But nothing worked to sideline Hezbollah. It always seems to grow and grow, even if it suffers setbacks like having key members killed in Syria.
THIS WEEK, the massive explosion represents another possibility for Hezbollah. While it may initially get some criticism and heat for the explosion, because it also maintains dangerous stockpiles of weapons all over Lebanon, it will find a way to leverage this to its benefit. Hezbollah wants China, Russia and Iran to help rebuild Lebanon. Turkey and Qatar are also rebuilding the country, but Hezbollah has amicable relations with Doha.
Now Hezbollah may have to wait some time before making its moves clear. This is because it can’t raise its head too much and appear to gloat over the destruction. It will instead try to send volunteers to help and portray itself as the responsible party. It will try to shift blame to Israel and the US. While others are distracted with solidarity for Beirut, Hezbollah will increase its stranglehold elsewhere. This has always been the Hezbollah model. It may increase trafficking in weapons from Syria and construct new bases.
Israel would be reticent to carry out any actions in Lebanon amid tensions with Hezbollah, because Israel will not want to be seen as harming Lebanon more. This means the explosion becomes a perfect smokescreen and solidarity shield for Hezbollah. For average Lebanese, it is yet another disaster in a long series of disasters.
While Hezbollah will pretend to be patriotic, it will work behind the scenes to corrupt everything that comes into Lebanon in the next year.
Reuters contributed to this report.•

The 2003 meeting that set the stage for Hariri’s assassination
Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/August 07/2020
Rafik Hariri was summoned to Damascus in December 2003. Bashar al-Assad was purposely rude and crude with Hariri.
The latest blast in Beirut which turned it into a disaster-stricken city has driven the last nail in the coffin of the poor city that Rafik Hariri had tried to revive and, in fact,succeeded in doing so after the reconstruction of its city centre.
Hariri’s success was short-lived though and his assassination in 2005 killed the concept of Beirut, and practically eliminated Lebanon altogether.
Last Tuesday’s blast was but the final touch in a systematic process that destroyed the city, originating from the same spot that was one of the reasons for its prosperity, namely its port.
Rafik Hariri’s goal was to restore Beirut to its former glory, that is to say, a Lebanese-Arab-European-international city open to everything civilized in the world. Beirut has resisted for a long time multiple attempts at its demise until the knockout of August 4, 2020.
Everybody knows who stands behind Beirut’s demise. This will be confirmed by the expected International Tribunal for Lebanon’s verdict, later this month, in the case of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and his companions. The court will reveal the names of the persons who had perpetrated the crime and who will turn out to be members of Lebanese Hezbollah, which is nothing less than a brigade in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Some even say that the The Hague court might even go further and name those who directed the group that carried out the bombing of Rafik Hariri’s convoy on February 14, 2005, in a place not far from the location of the latest blast that killed Beirut.
It is no longer a secret who assassinated Hariri, nor who ordered it, and why it is always possible to place the crime within a broader context that goes beyond Lebanon. But what seems necessary to highlight is the prelude to Rafik Hariri’s assassination, since the latter was allowed to move and operate freely only between 1992 and 1998.
In 1992, Rafik Hariri formed his first government and started in practice and in earnest the enormous tasks of reconstructing Beirut and Lebanon and of fixing the value of the Lebanese Lira. At that time, the Arabs started coming back to Lebanon and Lebanon went back to the Arab fold. Even the Lebanese who were driven out by Michel Aoun in 1988, 1989 and 1990 started coming back home.
In 1998, however, and with the election of Emile Lahoud as President of the Republic, Syria’s cold war on Rafik Hariri picked up pace. In 1998, Bashar al-Assad became Syria’s strong man in light of his father’s illness.
Bashar simply disliked Hariri. He was influenced to a large extent by Hezbollah’s and other parties’ hostility towardsthe man, a hostility that was mainly due to the party’s association with Iran’s expansionist project. At its essence, the project aimed at killing Lebanon’s Arab and international identities.
From Baabda Palace, Emile Lahoud launched a tacit war on Rafik Hariri, who was successful at the time in forming a popular base for his government on the one hand, and in forging for himself the reputation of a patriotic leader who crosses and supersedes sectarian limitations, on the other hand.
By mid-2003, and following the fall of Baghdad and the US conditions conveyed to Bashar al-Assad by none other than the US Secretary of State Colin Powell himself, the Syrian regime moved to the stage of a direct war against Rafik Hariri.
The Syrian regime had an obsession called Rafik Hariri. The latter explicitly opposed extending Emile Lahoud’s term, supposed to end in 2004, and Bashar al-Assad started to feel that Lebanon had begun slipping through his fingers, despite Hariri’s repeated assurances to the contrary.
A few months before the issuance of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which among other things called for the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon and for the dissolution of the Hezbollahmilitia, just like all of the other Lebanese militias that had accepted to surrendered their weapons to the Lebanese state or sent them outside Lebanon, an important meeting took place between Bashar Al-Assad and Rafik Hariri. Rafik Hariri was summoned to Damascus in December 2003. He met with Assad and three Syrian officers: Ghazi Kanaan, who was in charge of Lebanon before his replacement; Rostom Ghazaleh who replaced him, and Muhammad Khalouf, who was in charge of the Syrian observers in Lebanon.
Bashar al-Assad was purposely rude and crude with Hariri. He even called him a “traitor”. He asked him: “How many days a week do you work against me and how many do you work with me?” And just like that, he ordered him to sell his shares (about 36%) in the Al-Nahar newspaper, leave the file of Al-Madina Bank alone, as heavy suspicions of money laundering weighed heavily on this bank because of its links to Maher al-Assad and his friends, and to stop objecting to extending Emile Lahoud’s term as president.
Hariri later told some of his friends that Bashar had told him verbatim “Extending Emile Lahoud’s term is a card in my hand; do you want to burn this card? In other words, burn my fingers?”
Rafik Hariri was so angry that his blood pressure shot up and he started bleeding from the nose. He returned to Beirut heartbroken. He realised that day that his relationship with the Syrian regime was permanently broken and that Bashar al-Assad was not Hafez al-Assad.
It was just a matter of time for conditions to deteriorate and reach the stage of deciding to get rid of Rafik Hariri, especially after Iran realised that the Americans handed it Iraq on a silver platter and that it was unfettered to do whatever it wanted in the region. Bashar al-Assad was in the end only a front for the real crime of killing Lebanon. His hatred for Rafik Hariri and for Lebanon, which he used to describe as a “fragile” country, led him to make the mistake that drove him out of Lebanon.
Barring last minute hindrances, the International Tribunal will pronounce its verdict, fifteen and a half years after Rafik Hariri’s assassination.
However, the question of why Bashar al-Assad had committed the mistake that cost Syria and Lebanon dearly will remain unanswered. It cost both countries a lot to the point of putting their fate at stake. What a waste. It reminds one of a comment made by Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s interior minister, upon hearing about the execution of a dissident who had taken refuge in Germany instead of interrogating him for specific information. Fouché said: “What happened was worse than a crime, it was a mistake.” What a waste for poor Syria and Lebanon.

Lebanon as Paradise Lost
Jeffrey Feltman/Brookings/Wednesday, August 05/2020
Lebanese and foreigners alike have long nurtured nostalgic images of what Lebanon supposedly represents. But the tragic explosions in Beirut on August 4 demonstrate again how far that reality is from the truth.
A self-reverential joke once common in Lebanon posited that God bestowed Lebanon with beautiful mountains, stunning beaches, freshwater resources, fertile soil and fruited plains, and creative, attractive people: paradise. But then God realized that heaven is reserved for the afterlife — so he created Lebanon’s neighbors. Indeed, the history of Lebanon, approaching its centennial on September 1, is a story of vexed relations with its neighbors.
The comforting myth of Lebanon as a would-be paradise was shattered well before this week’s astonishingly destructive back-to-back port explosions. Videos and testimonials from Beirut are simultaneously shocking and heartbreaking. Preliminary information about the blasts suggests that the Lebanese are most likely culpable, not the Syrians and not the Israelis. This appears to be yet another example of irresponsible or even criminal neglect on the part of Lebanese officials. As if the Lebanese people needed more evidence of the abysmally low performance of their successive governments.
And yet, it does not take a creative conspiracy theorist to devise a logical explanation that involves Lebanon’s frequent antagonists: Hezbollah and Israel. Without question, Hezbollah plays a dominant but murky role at the Port of Beirut (as well as the international airport). Israel has concentrated on interrupting Hezbollah arms smuggling across the Syrian-Lebanese border. If Israel has been sufficiently successful in disrupting Hezbollah’s illicit arms flows — the arms flows that Hezbollah claims protect Lebanon, when they actually put Lebanon at grave risk of war — then perhaps Hezbollah relies increasingly on importing and storing arms via the Beirut port. The port, if it contains Hezbollah arms depots, then becomes an irresistible target for Israeli sabotage, setting off the conflagration that killed scores and injured thousands.
Hezbollah’s interest in the port has primarily been linked to its economic network, perhaps including drugs, more than its arms smuggling. Hezbollah’s economic tentacles are widespread and extend to Africa and Latin America: used car smuggling, independent telecom and internet networks, and so forth. By having effective control of, or dominance in, Lebanon’s ports, Hezbollah masks its activities and avoids paying customs and taxes — mafia-like behavior of less concern to Israel than precision-guided missiles. Israel blockaded but did not destroy Lebanon’s ports in 2020. Perhaps Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu seeks a “wag-the-dog” diversion from political protests in Jerusalem, but it seems more likely that Israel does not seek to initiate war with Hezbollah — especially over Hezbollah’s economic networks, which the port represents. Quick Israeli denials of involvement cannot be verified but seem credible.
Other theories posit that Hezbollah initiated the port explosions as a deadly diversion from the upcoming August 7 verdict announcement of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which indicted four Hezbollah operatives in the February 14, 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others. While Hezbollah’s disdain for the safety of Lebanese citizens is well documented, it would be quite a leap to go from providing murderers-for-hire (as has been alleged before the STL) to willfully destroying a large section of Lebanon’s capital, at tremendous human cost. Unlike the deaths during the 2006 war with Israel that Hezbollah unilaterally provoked, these deaths can’t as easily be pinned on Israel.
The more mundane theory is that a fire in a port warehouse or workshop (perhaps holding fireworks) caused the initial blast, and then flames and heat from that blast ignited stores of ammonium nitrate used for fertilizer (and for explosives) that were stored at the port. The alleged ammonium nitrate explosion accounted for the larger blast that damaged and destroyed buildings — structures that had survived Lebanon’s civil war and the 2006 war with Israel — and broke windows all across the capital, sending thousands to hospitals with glass shard wounds. Prime Minister Hassan Diab has said that around 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate, confiscated from a ship years earlier, were at the port. This compares to the two tons of ammonium nitrate that destroyed the Alfred E. Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
The warehouse fire ignition theory is not as sexy as those involving Hezbollah and Israel, but it is plausible — and it is consistent with the overall sense that Lebanon suffers from deep, pervasive, self-inflicted rot. If this theory proves correct, then successive Lebanese governments — whether they were pro-West, or (as now) pro-Damascus, or a muddled amalgam of the two — are culpable for, at a minimum, neglect. Criminal neglect. Someone took the decision to place ammonium nitrate next to Lebanon’s grain storage silos, and others were surely aware, or should have been, of the dangers. Now, during a financial crisis, Lebanon’s grain reserves, purchased with dwindling foreign currency reserves, are reportedly all contaminated by the explosions, with the grain storage silos damaged and unusable.
When the dead are buried and the injuries addressed, the port explosions will surely further deepen Lebanese cynicism and despair about their government and political system.
When the dead are buried and the injuries addressed, the port explosions will surely further deepen Lebanese cynicism and despair about their government and political system. A responsible government would launch an investigation and demand accountability. People would overcome political divisions and forge solidarity to uncover the truth. A legitimate inquiry would necessarily shine light into how Hezbollah has privileged itself in the port and how others involved have long evaded public scrutiny, with deadly consequences.
But this tragedy, this crime, happened in Lebanon, Paradise Lost. Given the powerful interests in keeping the port operations in shadows and avoiding public accountability, it seems improbable that this Lebanese government — which relies on Hezbollah and its allies for its parliamentary support — or any Lebanese government would be courageous enough to take on an honest reckoning of why scores of families are now mourning. Nor is it likely that this Hezbollah-reliant government would turn to outsiders to conduct a comprehensive investigation, as happened in 2005 when the Lebanese accepted a series of U.N. probes into the Hariri assassination — probes that eventually morphed into the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. (At the time, the fear was that Lebanese investigators and judicial officials would be intimidated and even liquidated, should they uncover the truth. Those risks remain.) Instead, expect dismal, predictable finger-pointing by Lebanese political figures as they seize on this tragedy to score political points. With so much evidence of governmental paralysis, weakness, and even venality, it is hard to imagine that even a good-faith probe by Lebanese authorities would be deemed credible by the beleaguered citizenry.
The enormous truck bomb that killed Rafik Hariri in 2005 devastated a smaller part of Beirut than this week’s port explosions. Yet it caused a political earthquake that changed Lebanon’s history, with the forced departure only a couple of months later of Syrian troops and intelligence operatives who had occupied Lebanon for years. (Unfortunately, the pro-Damascus tilt of the current government demonstrates that the Lebanese forgot to lock the door once the Syrians left.)
One hopes that the shock of the August 4 port explosions will provoke a new political earthquake in Lebanon, one that gives the Lebanese authorities no way out but to conduct a credible investigation or — as in 2005 — forces them to turn over the forensic task to credible outsiders. A political earthquake that at last forces Lebanese leaders and warlords to clean up the governance and financial mess they have created. But will the Lebanese react in mass, as they did in 2005? Even before a large section of their capital was leveled with horrific human casualties, the Lebanese already suffered from a culmination of their country’s financial collapse, de facto currency devaluation, coronavirus, soaring poverty rates, food insecurity, and more. One can hardly blame the Lebanese if, instead of mobilizing for accountability and political change, they hasten to find an exit from their once beautiful but seemingly doomed country.
*Jeffrey Feltman, Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy, The Brookings Institution
*John C. Whitehead Visiting Fellow in International Diplomacy - Foreign Policy

Beirut explosion will hasten Lebanon's meltdown
Rami Rayess/Al Arabiya/August 07/2020
Long years of corruption and mismanagement have dragged Lebanon to where it is now. The enormous blast that hit Beirut Tuesday evening was just a new horrific example of how detrimental corruption can be. More than 2,750 tonnes of confiscated ammonium nitrate exploded, leaving 154 dead, more than 5,000 injured, and some 300,000 homeless, as of Friday.
The explosive ammonium nitrate material has been stored in Beirut’s Port for more than six years in a row. Had such a blast happened elsewhere, the president, the prime minister and the concerned ministers would have immediately resigned, taking responsibility of what happened. However, in Lebanon where accountability is absent, such steps were not even contemplated by the concerned officials. No matter what decisions were made by the Higher Defense Council or by the Council of Ministers, damage has been done. Unimaginable scenes that emerged in the aftermath conjure mental images similar to those from Hiroshima in 1945 at the end of World War II. Before the blasts, Lebanon’s situation was already dire. Historically, the country has been penetrated by foreign interference and has been seen as the backyard for regional and international powers. In addition to that continued threat, it must now confront an unprecedented economic crisis that is restructuring the country politically, socially and economically.
Lebanon is quickly approaching the classification of a failed state. It defaulted on its debt last March, and its local currency lost almost 85 percent of its former value, its international credit has been downgraded to C by Moody’s, the lowest classification ever, placing it in the same basket with Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Almost half the population is now considered to be in poverty.
For a country that has historically relied on tourism and banking services, it is now in a dire situation. After the blast, that situation will become worse.
The debt-ridden country has fallen into a vicious cycle in which a lack of confidence in the ailing banking system reduces the cash flow into the country – especially fresh dollars. Simultaneously, the lack of cash flow into the banking system has diminished the cabinet’s capacity to borrow money to finance its basic functions and to support the stability of the national currency. With weak industry and productive sectors, the country imports most of its basic needs and commodities, a process that has become even more difficult and complicated with the scarcity of American dollars in the market.
Above all that, Lebanon has failed to attract foreign aid to overcome this impasse. The international community expressed support for Lebanon and has said it will send support, primarily in the form of food and medicine.
But in the long run, and in regard to its dire economic crisis, international lenders are no longer willing to extend a helping hand to Lebanon, at least not before drastic reforms are launched, and despite the economy’s freefall, the government has failed to make reforms for years.
Paris, one of the only Western capitals that is still willing to conditionally help Lebanon, sent its foreign minister to Beirut last week in a final attempt to push the Lebanese Cabinet to introduce reforms. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hassan Diab harshly and undiplomatically declared after his visitor adjourned back to Europe that the French minster has a distorted image and insufficient information on the Cabinet’s reform plans. The visit paid by the French President Emmanuel Macron to Beirut after the blast, in which he toured the damaged neighborhoods, has left all Lebanese officials embarrassed and exacerbated the Lebanese people further.
The incumbent cabinet is strongly supported by Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), the latter of which is the party of Lebanese President Michel Aoun. The FPM has headed the Ministry of Energy and Water for the last twelve years and has still failed to provide 24-hour electricity to its citizens. This failure in annual total has cost an estimated no less than $2 billion.
Beyond failing to reform the electricity sector, it has also failed to crack down on the smuggling of food, oil and fuel to Syria – another reform that if made would contradict the interests of its stakeholders, though it would help alleviate poverty.
Smuggling from Lebanon into Syria has been ongoing for years, but it has intensified as Syria’s economy deteriorates and as additional American sanctions are imposed.
This illegitimate trafficking is a huge burden for the Lebanese economy.
It is a clear, well-defined problem, and it is documented by ordinary citizens who watch trucks cross the border. However, Cabinet has done little on the subject despite taking numerous decisions with the Higher Defense Council. All has remained ink on paper, and nothing has been implemented. This is an area of influence for the so-called Axis of Resistance extending from Beirut to Tehran through Damascus. Nevertheless, Lebanon cannot afford to – and should not have to – finance two economies at home and in Syria.
The incapacity of the incumbent Cabinet is not negotiable anymore. The government has failed to achieve one accomplishment since it took office few months ago. It has increased the country’s seclusion on all scales. Diab has failed to make a single foreign visit to an Arab or Western country. He wasn’t invited, and his requests to visit any foreign capital were not welcomed. Replacing the current Cabinet with a new one is no easy task. Erecting new governments in Lebanon has been a tedious mission in the last ten years or so. The various factions have developed their own veto powers that have complicated the matter further. Long months of negotiations have been consumed as factions vie to distribute portfolios and nominate preferred candidates.
Now, it is worse.
As regional governments, which serve as patrons to local players, have turned a blind eye and local political divisions deepen, the resignation of the Cabinet would likely lead to a caretaker government with a prolonged tenure in which lawmaking is nearly impossible. This term might well extend until the end of the term of President Aoun in October 2022. Whether the “blast has broken the siege on Lebanon” as its president announced Friday, or not, the country is devastated regardless. The only way out would be a new Cabinet of independent professionals that can win the support of all the factions on the political spectrum. This new set of leaders would have to be capable of introducing drastic reform measures that might gradually pave the way for regaining international and regional confidence in the country, thus allowing for new cash flows that might balance the ailing economy that is falling apart. Is this wishful thinking? Maybe.

With Hezbollah in charge, the destruction of Beirut was matter of time

Yaakov Hatz/Jerusalem Post/August 07/2020
What did Lebanon expect? What did the citizens of a country sadly known for years of civil war and internal strife think would happen, after they let their country be taken hostage by terrorists?
In the afternoon of July 12, 2006, Amir Peretz, Israel’s defense minister, convened the IDF General Staff. Earlier that day, two IDF reservists on a standard patrol up North had been abducted by Hezbollah and skirmishes were breaking out along the tenuous Lebanese border. Israel needed to come up with an aggressive response.
Peretz’s military secretary at the time, Gen. Eitan Dangot, placed some maps on the large wooden table in the conference room on the 14th floor of the Defense Ministry and began discussing options. One of them was an operation known by a secret code word – Density.
Operation Density had been years in the making and was based on intelligence collected over a long time by the Mossad and Military Intelligence. What it included were the exact locations of close to 100 long-range Iranian artillery rockets, what were supposed to be Hezbollah’s secret weapon in a future war with Israel. Almost all of them were stored in the private homes of top Hezbollah operatives.
Some of the generals were against attacking the homes. The casualty toll, they warned, would be disproportionate, and that taking out so many targets would immediately escalate the conflict and lead Hezbollah to aggressively retaliate.
For Peretz, none of this made sense. If Israel knew where these advanced rockets were located, how could it wait? He approved the operation. “If someone goes to sleep with a rocket in their bedroom, they shouldn’t be surprised to wake up with a missile on their head,” he told the military officers.
Carried out in the early hours of July 13, The mission was a massive success, one of the few during a bloody war that would last 34 days and end with a state-appointed commission of inquiry. But that night, in the span of 34 minutes, dozens of F-15 and F-16 fighter jets bombed 90 targets with amazing precision. All of the sophisticated long-range rockets supplied by Iran and hidden by Hezbollah had been destroyed.
I WAS reminded of that mission and Peretz’s quip after watching the destruction in Beirut on Tuesday, reportedly caused by the explosion of 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate at the Port of Beirut.
At least 157 killed, more than 5,000 wounded, hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed – the Lebanese already suffering under the toll of a grave economic crisis and the continued spread of the coronavirus are now hurting even more. A terrible tragedy indeed.
But one can’t help but ask: What did Lebanon expect? What did the citizens of a country sadly known for years of civil war and internal strife think would happen, after they let their country be taken hostage by the terrorist Hezbollah organization?
Even if this specific explosion was not caused by Hezbollah – which remains to be seen – it’s no secret that the group stores weapons and missiles across the country: underneath soccer fields, in hangers at Hariri Airport, and even at the main port where diplomatic officials said that Hezbollah operates its own terminal – a place it can unload containers filled with missiles and explosives without needing to go through customs or other inspections.
These weapons often stay at the port for weeks before they are moved. Is it possible some of that equipment was damaged in Tuesday’s blast? No one is saying.
The writing has long been on the wall, with Israeli leaders openly saying for years that such devastation was likely to happen in Lebanon. They weren’t talking about an explosion like at the port, but rather in the context of a future war where Hezbollah would instigate against Israel, and the IDF would have to retaliate with unprecedented force to stem the rocket fire that is expected to reach 1,500-2,000 missiles a day.
This would mean bombing the airport, the soccer fields, the port, private homes, office buildings, schools and more. Israel, of course, would take all steps to minimize collateral damage. But in a war anticipated one day against the Iranian-backed terrorist group, the constraints we usually see in Gaza operations would have to be lifted. With so many rockets hitting Israel – all across the country – the IDF will have no choice but to act with a ferocity never before seen.
The question for Israel now is can this unfortunate disaster be used to change the balance of power in Lebanon, and encourage/inspire the Lebanese people to turn against Hezbollah and remove it from power.
Dangot – who after working with Peretz later became Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories – believes that Israel now has a unique window of opportunity to transfer to Lebanon the core of its covert operations to undermine Iran in Syria. The explosion in Beirut, he believes, has the potential to significantly restrain Hezbollah, and make it think long and hard before embarking on a military adventure against Israel that would only bring more destruction to the impoverished country.
“Israel has diplomatic and military tools,” he explained. “If you work with the United States to put pressure on Lebanon; work with Russia, which also wants to stop the Iranian adventure in Syria; work to create an international economic recovery plan for the country while intensifying the sanctions against Hezbollah and Iran; and operate militarily under the radar using operations with low signature – you can get results.”
For this to happen, Israel will have to change its state of mind and be prepared to take risks, which IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi seems to be advising against today. One illustration of this is the way the IDF has pretty much paralyzed itself for the last two weeks in the North because of a threat that Hezbollah was about to attack the country. A threat. That is all it took.
All you have to do to understand what has happened over the last two weeks is drive along the Lebanese border. The IDF state of alert there is unprecedented in scope and size not seen since the Second Lebanon War 14 years ago, with the number of troops, intelligence collection capabilities and firepower allocated to the northern front in the event of an escalation.
Of course, Israel has to be ready to defend itself and should take all precautions to prevent an attack against civilians or soldiers. But does it serve the country’s national interests when Hezbollah sees how the military reacts to what so far is just a threat? Does this boost the country’s deterrence, or in the long run undermine it? Over the last 14 years, Hezbollah has amassed an unprecedented stockpile of rockets and missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel with amazing precision, and warheads the size of which have never been seen before. In the face of that threat, Israel needs to always project strength and resilience. That is how you win.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck goes the old abductive reasoning. The same can be said about Israeli elections. If it looks like we are heading to an election, if politicians show up at places they usually do not attend unless they want an election, and then when they get there talk like they are preparing for one – yep, we’re probably going to an election.
If anyone had doubts: first was the continuing fight between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Monday over the state budget, which needs to be passed by August 25.
Netanyahu continues to dig in his heels and insist on a one-year budget, which is really just a budget for four months. Gantz is insisting on a two-year budget, firstly because that is what Netanyahu agreed to in the coalition agreement that they both signed a few months ago, and secondly, because it is the only real chance he has left to become prime minister.
On Tuesday, the prime minister visited a shwarma joint in Ramle and videotaped it, making a point of showing Netanyahu paying for his own food with cash. This kind of visit, at this point in time, can only be viewed as a campaign stop. Nothing more.
Finally, there was Netanyahu’s speech on Wednesday at the Knesset, where he launched an attack against the Left, the opposition, the protesters outside his home (whom his son calls aliens) and made it even clearer that a new Election Day – it’s been, what, 159 days since the last one? – is the direction this country is headed.
There is near unanimity in the political establishment that Netanyahu has decided to take Israelis to the voting booth. Even if Gantz decides to suddenly cave and agree to a one-year budget, Netanyahu – many of his fellow politicians believe – will find some other excuse to ensure that the Knesset disperses at the end of the month. The reason is simple: Netanyahu has one thing on his mind and one thing only. No, it’s not Iran, Hezbollah or the coronavirus, but rather how to avoid his trial, which Judge Rivka Feldman decided will start in January with three hearings a week, from morning until late evening. That is the last place Netanyahu wants to find himself, and he has one last chance to try and avoid it: an election that ends with 61 seats on the Right, legislation of a retroactive immunity bill, and his trial being put on ice for the duration of his premiership.
Of the three judges in Netanyahu’s case, Feldman concerns him the most. She was the minority opinion in the verdict against former defense minister and IDF general Itzik Mordechai when he was convicted of sexual harassment in March 2001. While Mordechai received a suspended sentence, Feldman believed he needed to do real jail time. “A senior official,’’ she wrote then, “needs to serve as a role model.”
Netanyahu seems to think that one last election is worth the risk because if he fails to get 61 seats, he still won’t lose. No one, according to polls, has the ability to form an alternative government without him. So, he will simply take the country from one election to another, dragging the nation through the mud, through his trial, and from one ballot box to the next.
This does not mean a new election is set in stone. If Israelis have learned anything over the last two years, it is that when it comes to politics, anything can happen. Two elections, three elections, and even a unity government between two people who despise one another.
But Netanyahu seems determined, and there is no reason to think he won’t take Israel to its fourth election within two years – even if it is not in the country’s best interest. In his list of priorities, there is only one that stands at the top right now: survival.
 

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 07-08/2020

At least 16 killed, 123 hurt as Air India plane from Dubai skids off runway in India
The Associated Press, New Delhi, India/Friday 07 August 2020
An Air India Express flight with 190 people on board skidded off a runway and split in two while landing on Friday in heavy rain in southern India. Police said at least 16 people were killed and 123 others injured. Abdul Karim, a senior Kerala state police officer, said the dead included one of the pilots. He said at least 15 of the injured were in critical condition, and that rescue operations were over. Rajiv Jain, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Ministry, said no fire was reported on the Boeing 737 aircraft after it landed and broke into two pieces. The NDTV news channel said the plane flew from Dubai to Kozhikode, also called Calicut, in the state of Kerala in southern India. It was a repatriation flight carrying Indian citizens back to the country, officials said. Regular commercial flights have been halted in India because of the coronavirus outbreak. Jain said there were 174 adult passengers, 10 infants, two pilots and four cabin crew on board the aircraft. Amitabh Kant, who heads the government's planning commission, said the runway is on a hilltop with deep gorges on either side, making it difficult to land. “The incident happened because of heavy rains and poor visibility. This is truly devastating,” he told NDTV. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was “pained by the plane accident in Kozhikode,” and that he had spoken to Kerala’s top elected official.Air India Express is a subsidiary of Air India.

After Hook’s departure, Iran says US envoys ‘bite off more than they can chew’
Reuters/Saturday 08 August 2020
A senior Iranian official said on Friday there was no difference between the outgoing and incoming US special envoys for Iran because American officials “bite off more than they can chew.”US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Thursday that the top US envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, was leaving his post and the US special representative for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, would add Iran to his role. Hook’s surprise departure comes at a critical time when Washington has been intensely lobbying at the United Nations to extend an arms embargo on Iran and as the UN Security Council prepares to hold a vote on the US resolution next week. Pompeo did not give a reason for the change but wrote in a tweet that Hook was moving on to the private sector. “There’s no difference between John Bolton, Brian Hook or Elliott Abrams,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a tweet under the hashtag #BankruptUSIranPolicy. “When US policy concerns Iran, American officials have been biting off more than they can chew. This applies to Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump and their successors,” Mousavi added. President Donald Trump last year fired his national security adviser, John Bolton, a veteran hardliner on Iran who advocated military action to destroy Tehran's nuclear program.

Coronavirus: Turkish lira hits another historic low amid pandemic
The Associated Press/Friday 07 August 2020
Turkey's currency tumbled further Friday, hitting another record low.
The Turkish lira dropped to 7.3677 against the dollar before making a recovery. The lira is down about 19 percent versus the US currency since the beginning of the year. It was trading around 7.17 on Friday afternoon. The drop is fueled by high inflation, a wide current account deficit and the Turkish government’s push for cheap credit to drive an economy that was already fragile before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Analysts have expressed concerns over the level of Turkey's reserves and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aversion to high interest rates. Turkey had been hoping for an influx of foreign currency through exports and tourism revenues, but the pandemic has sharply undermined the tourism industry and disrupted global commerce. Speaking after Friday prayers at the recently reconverted Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, Erdogan said “there are serious zigzags in the global economy after the pandemic.”He added: “I believe the Turkish lira will fall into place ... these are temporary fluctuations."

US official raises concern over election threats from China, Russia and Iran
The Associated Press, Washington/Saturday 08 August 2020
The director of US intelligence on Friday raised concerns about interference in the 2020 election by China, Russia and Iran. UA intelligence has assessed that China is hoping President Donald Trump does not win reelection, Russia is working todenigrate Democrat Joe Biden and Iran is seeking to undermine democratic institutions, said Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence Security Center. In a statement, Evanina provided the US intelligence agencies’ most recent assessment of election threats to the November presidential election.
Foreign actors
“Many foreign actors have a preference for who wins the election, which they express through a range of overt and private statements; covert influence efforts are rarer,” Evanina said. “We are primarily concerned about the ongoing and potential activity by China, Russia, and Iran.” China views Trump as “unpredictable” and does not want to see him win reelection, Evanina said. China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of the November election in an effort to shape US policy and pressure political figures it sees as against Beijing, he said. “Although China will continue to weigh the risks and benefits of aggressive action, its public rhetoric over the past few months has grown increasingly critical of the current administration’s COVID-19 response, closure of China’s Houston consulate and actions on other issues,” he wrote. On Russia, USintelligence officials assess that Russia is working to “denigrate” Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia “establishment” among his supporters, Evanina said. He said that would track Moscow’s criticism of Biden when he was vice president for his role in Ukraine policies and support of opposition to President Vladimir Putin inside Russia.
On Iran, the assessment said Tehran seeks to undermine US democratic institutions as well as Trump and divide America before the election. “Iran’s efforts along these lines probably will focus on on-line influence, such as spreading disinformation on social media and recirculating anti-US content,” Evanina wrote. “Tehran’s motivation to conduct such activities is, in part, driven by a perception that President Trump’s re-election would result in a continuation of US pressure on Iran in an effort to foment regime change.”
 

U.S. imposes Libya-related sanctions on individuals, company
Reuters/August 07/2020
The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on three individuals and a Malta-based company, accusing them of acting as a network of smugglers and contributing to instability in Libya. The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement said it blacklisted Faysal al-Wadi, accusing the Libyan national of having smuggled drugs and Libyan fuel into Malta. Also blacklisted were two associates, Musbah Mohamad M Wadi and Nourddin Milood M Musbah, Malta-based company Alwefaq Ltd, and the vessel Maraya, which the Treasury said Wadi used in his alleged smuggling operations. The Treasury said that “competition for control of smuggling routes, oil facilities, and transport nodes is a key driver of conflict in Libya and deprives the Libyan people of economic resources.”
Thursday’s action freezes any U.S. assets of those blacklisted and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. “Faysal al-Wadi and his associates have smuggled fuel from Libya and used Libya as a transit zone to smuggle illicit drugs,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Justin Muzinich. “The United States is committed to exposing illicit networks exploiting Libya’s resources for their own profit while hurting the Libyan people,” he added. Libya descended into chaos after the NATO-backed overthrow of leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Since 2014, it has been split, with an internationally recognized government controlling the capital, Tripoli, and the northwest, while military leader Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi rules the east.
Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis

Egypt, Greece sign maritime deal to counter Libya-Turkey one
AP/August 07/2020
Egypt and Greece on Thursday signed a maritime deal that sets the sea boundary between the two countries and demarcates an exclusive economic zone for oil and gas drilling rights.The deal is a response to a similar agreement between Turkey and Libya’s Tripoli-based government last year that has spiked tensions in the East Mediterranean region. The Turkey-Libya deal was widely dismissed by Egypt, Cyprus and Greece as an infringement on their economic rights in the oil-rich sea. The European Union says it’s a violation of intentional law that threatens stability in the region.
Greece and Turkey have been at odds for decades over sea boundaries but recent discoveries of natural gas and drilling plans across the east Mediterranean have exacerbated the dispute. “This agreement allows Egypt and Greece each to move ahead with maximizing their benefits from resources available in this exclusive economic zone, namely promising oil and gas reserves,” said Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shukry after Thursday’s brief signing ceremony in Cairo. He added that “Egyptian-Greek relations have been crucial to maintaining security and stability in the East Mediterranean region and for countering threats caused by irresponsible policies that support extremism and terror,” a reference to Ankara’s support for the Tripoli government. In Libya’s proxy war, Egypt has been on the opposite side from Turkey and has backed the rival administration based in eastern Libya and the east-based military commander Khalifa Hifter. Cairo claims Turkey is backing extremists on behalf of the U.N.-supported government in Tripoli. With Turkish military support, the Tripoli government has repelled Hifter’s 14-month-long military campaign to capture the Libyan capital. After Turkey turned the tide in the Libyan war, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi threatened a military incursion into Libya, leading to concerns of a direct Egyptian-Turkish confrontation. Greece’s Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias hailed the Egypt-Greece deal as as “an exemplary agreement.” However, neither minister revealed any details of the deal.
“It is the complete opposite of the illegal, invalid and legally non-existent memorandum of understanding between Turkey and Tripoli,” Dendias added. Turkey argues that Greek islands should not be included in calculating maritime zones of economic interest — a position Greece says violates international law. Greece has around 6,000 islands and smaller islets in the Aegean and Ionian Seas, more than 200 of them inhabited. Last month, the Greek government was alarmed by plans by Turkey to proceed with an oil-and-gas research mission south of Greek islands in the eastern Mediterranean.
*Associated Press writer Elena Becatoras in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.

Syrians Treat Themselves at Home to Avoid State Health Sector Confusion
Damascus - Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 7 August, 2020
Thousands of people infected with Covid-19 in Syria are treating themselves at home amid difficult conditions caused by the lack of medicine, electricity, and even water during the summer heat. As the Ministry of Health in Damascus continues to struggle in the face of the rapid spread of the coronavirus, Syrians are mourning dozens of people every day without announcing the cause of death. Official figures on the number of infections seem far from reality. During the past two days, the Ministry of Health said that only 15 infections were recorded in Aleppo, eight in Homs, seven in Tartous and Hama, and five infections in each of Damascus, Rif Dimashq and Quneitra. It also noted that 13 recovery cases were recorded in Damascus and its countryside against two deaths, one in Homs and the other in Tartous. In a statement earlier this week, the Doctors’ Syndicate in Damascus announced the death of three doctors after they came into contact with people infected with the coronavirus, bringing the number of medics who died in Damascus as a result of Covid-19 to ten within two weeks. Meanwhile, dozens of obituaries are plastered every day on the walls of streets in Damascus for people who died from the pandemic, most of them elderly.
A university professor in Damascus, who is infected with the coronavirus told Asharq Al-Awsat in a phone conversation that she and three of her brothers were being treated at home under the supervision of doctors over the phone.
She confirmed that they did not perform a PCR test, but rather that they were diagnosed in a clinic. She also said that about ten of her colleagues with Covid-19 were receiving treatment at home, except for one case, who was hospitalized and passed away on Thursday.
 

Top U.S. Envoy for Iran Talks Stepping Down as Tensions Escalate
Nick Wadhams/Bloomberg/August 07/2020
Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s top envoy for Iran, is stepping down after almost two years helping to oversee the “maximum pressure” campaign that has crippled the Iranian economy but brought the world no closer to a new deal limiting its nuclear program. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced Hook’s departure on Thursday, saying in a statement that he had “achieved historic results countering the Iranian regime.” After a short transition, Hook will be replaced by Elliott Abrams, who also will continue to be the State Department’s envoy for the Venezuela crisis, Pompeo said.
Hook’s departure comes at a tense time in the global effort to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions, more than two years after President Donald Trump quit the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was meant to keep it from obtaining the ability to make a nuclear weapon. On Wednesday, Pompeo said the U.S. was preparing to introduce a resolution in the United Nations Security Council to extend an arms embargo against Iran that expires in October. If that fails -- as may happen with Russia and China vowing a veto -- Pompeo has threatened to invoke a “snapback” provision in the 2015 nuclear deal to reimpose all UN sanctions against Tehran. But a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, said there was still hope for a compromise on the embargo before the U.S. would seek to invoke a snapback. Hook joined the State Department as former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s director of policy planning and wielded great influence as a top adviser until Trump fired Tillerson in early 2018. Hook sought to negotiate a deal with European powers to strengthen the nuclear deal, an effort that Trump cut short when he decided to quit the agreement months after Tillerson’s firing.
Since then, Iran has scrapped many of its obligations under the multinational accord, including caps on its low-enriched uranium stockpile, and denied international inspectors access to some sites. Critics have pointed to those moves as signs that the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Iran has only brought it closer to being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

Iran Is No. 1 Sponsor of Terrorism, U.S. Says Ahead Of UN Arms-Embargo Talks
RadioFreeEurope/August 07/2020
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has called Iran "the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terrorism," a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States plans to hold a UN Security Council vote next week to extend an arms embargo against Iran.
Ambassador Kelly Craft also warned Russia and China that they will become "co-sponsors of the No. 1 state that sponsors terrorism" if they use their veto to block the resolution to extend the embargo.
The United States hopes Russia and China "will see the importance of peace in the Middle East," Craft said. But she added that the partnership between Russia and China was clear: "They're just going to be promoting chaos, conflict, and mayhem outside their borders, so we have to just corner them."
Craft and Brian Hook, the top U.S. envoy for Iran, briefed a group of reporters following Pompeo's announcement on August 5 that the United States will call for a Security Council vote next week on a U.S.-drafted resolution to extend the arms embargo that is due to expire in October.
Hook announced hours after the briefing that he was stepping down. The foreign ministers of Russia and China have indicated they intend to veto the resolution if it gets the minimum nine votes in the 15-member council. In letters last month to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council the two countries were sharply critical of the U.S. effort. Pompeo told reporters on August 5 that there were countries "lining up" to sell weapons to Iran and warned that this would further destabilize the Middle East, put Israel and Europe at risk, and endanger U.S. lives.
If the Security Council doesn't prevent Iran from buying and selling weapons when the embargo ends, Washington has said it will trigger a "snapback" of all UN sanctions on Iran. The snapback mechanism was included in the 2015 nuclear agreement in the event Iran was proved to be in violation of the accord, which provided sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Russia and China, as well as European allies that signed the pact, have questioned the U.S. claim it is still a participant able to trigger the snapback mechanism. The United States quit the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran. In response, Iran gradually started breaching its nuclear commitments. Pompeo and other Iran hard-liners in Washington claim the United States remains a participant in the accord because it was listed as such in the 2015 resolution that enshrined the deal and can therefore bring back sanctions since Iran has not fully complied with its nuclear commitments. Britain, France, and Germany are concerned about the arms embargo being lifted but have said they are trying to reach a compromise out of concern Iran will completely exit the nuclear deal and act on threats to pull out of a key nonproliferation treaty.
*With reporting by AP

Question: "How should a Christian deal with feelings of guilt regarding past sins, whether pre- or post-salvation?"
GotQuestions.org/August 07/2020
Answer: Everyone has sinned, and one of the results of sin is guilt. We can be thankful for guilty feelings because they drive us to seek forgiveness. The moment a person turns from sin to Jesus Christ in faith, his sin is forgiven. Repentance is part of the faith that leads to salvation (Matthew 3:2; 4:17; Acts 3:19).
In Christ, even the most heinous sins are blotted out (see 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 for a list of some unrighteous acts that can be forgiven). Salvation is by grace, and grace forgives. After a person is saved, he will still sin, and when he does, God still promises forgiveness. “But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One” (1 John 2:1).
Freedom from sin, however, does not always mean freedom from guilty feelings. Even when our sins are forgiven, we still remember them. Also, we have a spiritual enemy, called “the accuser of our brothers” (Revelation 12:10) who relentlessly reminds us of our failures, faults, and sins. When a Christian experiences feelings of guilt, he or she should do the following things:
1) Confess all known, previously unconfessed sin. In some cases, feelings of guilt are appropriate because confession is needed. Many times, we feel guilty because we are guilty! (See David’s description of guilt and its solution in Psalm 32:3-5.)
2) Ask the Lord to reveal any other sin that may need confessing. Have the courage to be completely open and honest before the Lord. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).
3) Seek to make restitution, where possible, of the sins committed against others. Zacchaeus, in repenting of his sin, promised the Lord, “If I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount” (Luke 19:8). This is part of the “fruit in keeping with repentance” that John preached (Luke 3:9).
4) Trust the promise of God that He will forgive sin and remove guilt, based on the blood of Christ (1 John 1:9; Psalm 85:2; 86:5; Romans 8:1).
5) On occasions when guilty feelings arise over sins already confessed and forsaken, reject such feelings as false guilt. The Lord has been true to His promise to forgive. Read and meditate on Psalm 103:8-12.
6) Ask the Lord to rebuke Satan, your accuser, and ask the Lord to restore the joy that comes with freedom from guilt (Psalm 51:12).
Psalm 32 is a very profitable study. Although David had sinned terribly, he found freedom from both sin and guilty feelings. He dealt with the cause of guilt and the reality of forgiveness. Psalm 51 is another good passage to investigate. The emphasis here is confession of sin, as David pleads with God from a heart full of guilt and sorrow. Restoration and joy are the results.
Finally, if sin has been confessed, repented of, and forgiven, it is time to move on. Remember that we who have come to Christ have been made new creatures in Him. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Part of the “old” which has gone is the remembrance of past sins and the guilt they produced. Sadly, some Christians are prone to wallowing in memories of their former sinful lives, memories which should have been dead and buried long ago. This is pointless and runs counter to the victorious Christian life God wants for us. A wise saying is “If God has saved you out of a sewer, don’t dive back in and swim around.”
 

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 07-08/2020
Hagia Sophia and Cathedral of Córdoba: The Jihad Factor
Raymond Ibrahim/August 07/2020
What’s ours is ours; and what’s yours is ours, as well. This is one of the primary messages coming from Muslims following the recent decision to transform the Hagia Sophia museum—which was originally built, and for a millennium functioned, as a Christian cathedral—into a trophy mosque again.
For starters, consider the recent and deliberate display of the symbols of conquest and the overall sense of Islamic triumphalism:
The first day of prayer since the Hagia Sophia’s change in status was last Friday [July 24]. Thousands gathered under dark drapes covering the once glittering mosaics depicting Christ and the Virgin Mary. The top imam of the country, Ali Erbas, carried a sword while delivering his sermon from the tall minbar. When questioned about this he said: “This is a tradition in mosques that are the symbol of conquest.” Outside thousands more gathered chanting anti-Greek slogans. Commemorative coins were made in celebration of the event.
Rather than (or at least pretending to) reject this emphasis on the jihadist nature of their religion, emboldened Muslims around the world are calling for the “return” of other structures.
“At the very least,” Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qasimi, one of the rulers of the United Arab Emirates, said days after Turkey’s Islamic annexation of Hagia Sophia, “we demand the return of Córdoba Mosque [currently the Cathedral of Córdoba in Spain], which was granted to the church, as this is a gift which doesn’t belong to those [Christians] who don’t deserve it.”
Similarly, in response to Pope Francis’s immensely succinct if not timid reflection concerning the Hagia Sophia’s transformation into a mosque— “I think of Hagia Sophia, and I am very saddened”—
Turkish historian, Mehmet Özdemir, retorted in an interview that Pope Francis “should also feel sad for the mosques converted to churches during Al Andalus.” Another Turkish historian, Lütfi Seyban, reiterated the same point, stating an injustice is being perpetrated against the world’s Muslims for not being allowed to pray in what was once the Grand Mosque of Córdoba, which is now serving as the Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption.
The message is clear: If the Hagia Sophia, which everyone knows was built and served as a cathedral for a thousand years can, without challenge, be transformed into a mosque—with sword waving imams to boot—surely the Cathedral of Córdoba, formerly the Grand Mosque, should be returned to a mosque.
But was it, in fact, originally built as a mosque, as so many claim, or was it, too, originally a conquered church?
In a recent Catholic World Report interview devoted to this question, Darío Fernández-Morera, an associate professor at Northwestern University, and author of The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, provides much evidence to support the conclusion that “not only was the [Grand] mosque built on a Christian site, but it was also built using materials from the sixth century Christian building destroyed by Muslims in the ninth century.”
The interview is worth reading in its entirety, as it gives lots of detailed information on Islam’s historic treatment of churches:
[W]henever Muslim chronicles mention Christian churches in Spain, it is only to gloat over their destruction or their conversion to mosques. But turning Christian churches into mosques has been standard practice during the Muslim conquests. For example, the famous Umayyad mosque of Damascus was built with materials from the great Greek basilica of Saint John the Baptist, which stood on the site and which was demolished by the Arab conquerors….
The origins of the Grand Mosque are no different:
[The] Christian basilica of Saint Vincent of Córdoba [erected in the sixth century] was demolished by celebrated Umayyad ruler Abd-al-Rahman I (731-788), whose statues adorn several places in today’s Spain. With its materials he had the Mosque of Córdoba built on the [same] site.
The fact that the Grand Mosque was, like so many other mosques, originally a Christian church—and returned to being one during the Reconquista—should put to rest any Muslim claims to the site of Córdoba. Thanks, however, to what should by now be a very familiar reason, this is not the case. Fernández-Morera continues:
Not surprisingly, the archaeological and documentary evidence [validating the view that the Grand Mosque was originally the St. Vincent basilica] is rejected by archaeologists commissioned by the left-wing municipal government of Córdoba, by an archaeologist from the Spanish Centro Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, and by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), who do not want to admit anything that might undermine the Muslim claim to the Cathedral of Córdoba. They are on the same ideological side of those academics who deny the existence of a Reconquest. Nothing can be allowed to undermine Islam.…
It’s important to keep in mind that not only has the unchallenged conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque emboldened calls to transform the Cathedral of Córdoba into a mosque again; but this latter demand is meant to exonerate Turkey’s recent Islamic takeover. Consider Turkish scholar Khalid Yacinen’s logic on this symbiotic relationship:
When Spain expelled Muslims in the inquisition, it changed the Grand Mosque of Córdoba into a cathedral, where Muslims are forbidden to pray to this day … Turkey [on the other hand] has ruled to allow [Muslim] people to carry out prayers in Hagia Sophia. That hardly compares to getting arrested in the Grand Mosque of Córdoba for saying something in Arabic or converting it into a cathedral.
As Fernández-Morera observes, however,
A true analogy with the history of the Cathedral of Córdoba would be to turn the site of Hagia Sofia and the building back into what it was before the Muslim conquest, namely a Christian site with one of the greatest churches ever built—the Basilica of Hagia Sofia, Holy Wisdom.
In other words, the only real connection between the two buildings in Spain and Constantinople is that they were both conquered by Muslims and transformed—or in the case of St. Vincent’s, cannibalized and regurgitated—into mosques. While one, the Hagia Sophia, was recently turned into a mosque, thereby re-signifying the triumph of Islam over “infidels,” the other remains a cathedral—and this is apparently intolerable, not just for Muslims but the Left, which thrives on denying and rewriting history.
 

For Syrians, death comes from hunger, conflict, or coronavirus
Hossam Elsharkawi/Al Arabiya/August 07/2020
They were perhaps 2,000 stranded Syrian returnees. Women, children and men sheltered on hilltops from the heat, trying to find shade under the scattered olive trees that offered no shadow. They carried half-empty jerry cans with water and waved at passing cars to ask for help.
This is not a scene from a Hollywood movie.
This is no man’s land between Syria and Lebanon – a stretch of a few kilometers where people are stuck as a result of COVID-19 politics or other legal issues, encapsulating the cruelty of conflict and the pandemic.
As the fiercest fighting winds down, Syrians are now hit by another wave of suffering – this time economic. Sanctions and rising unemployment have spurred an economic collapse as inflation rises and businesses that scraped by during the conflict are now shutting down. Hunger is rising as families skip meals and medicine shortages increase. The Red Cross is working to increase humanitarian access to provide much needed aid.
A few days ago, I traveled to Syria from Lebanon by land, crossing a border closed for citizens but open for humanitarian organizations, including the Red Cross and Red Crescent personnel. I saw the same people in the same place under the scorching sun several days later on my way back to Lebanon from Damascus. While some have gained legal entry, others are still out there, sleeping under the open sky. As I write, my colleagues in Syria are looking for ways to assist those that may still be stranded.
The devaluation of the local currency and the constraints placed on international money transfers are driving Syrians to extreme poverty. Syrians living abroad now struggle to send $100 to $200 to family members still living in Syria.
Concretely, what does this mean?
It means that for so many reliant on aid sent from abroad, life has become significantly harder. Daughters and sons who would typically tend to their elder parents, as tradition has dictated for centuries, are no longer able to do so.
My message is not a political one, it is purely humanitarian. We at the Red Cross and Red Crescent have a neutral stance against the sanctions. Our work as humanitarians aims to ensure that people do not die or suffer because they lack access to basic needs, including food, water and medicine.
In Syria, innocent civilians are paying the price of failed diplomacy and as a consequence suffer unnecessarily.
During my visit to Damascus, many Syrians told me, “Either we die of hunger, of war, or we die of COVID-19. It doesn’t matter.”
Between conversations, people asked if we could send them coffee and tabasco sauce. These items don’t make it into Syria anymore. While some may say these items are luxuries, it is our view that access to basic goods is essential to preserving human dignity. In Damascus, I met the Syria Arab Red Crescent (SARC) team whose primary concern was a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) as they continue to carry out their work in the communities and refugee camps amid the ongoing pandemic. They use the available PPE as best they can and reuse supplies. Between missions, they sterilize the PPE if there is time before the next emergency call. With some 11,000 SARC volunteers at work across the country, our current PPE supplies and resources are being exhausted at high speed.
In the dialysis wing, doctors told me how they lack spare parts for dialysis machines and how some patients are unable to access the facility because of the conflict. In another ward, adults and children who had been disabled by the conflict tried on prostheses.
Yet another floor was being converted to boost ICU capacity as medical workers anticipated additional patients infected by COVID-19 would be arriving.
Near the main doors of the SARC headquarters is a wall displaying the names of the 62 staff and volunteers who lost their lives in the line of duty.
During the trip, I met with Syrian officials, UN, and International Committee of the Red Cross colleagues to discuss increased access to expand humanitarian reach in Syria. Serious international diplomacy efforts are needed to halt the suffering and address the challenges that Syrians face, including security, economic, and the added stressor brought by coronavirus. Increased humanitarian funding and ceasefires will allow us more access, save more lives, and simply offer more protection to average people. We, as humanitarians we will continue to do our part to alleviate the suffering, but it will not be enough. An urgent, just, and durable political solution is what is needed to put the country on a path to recovery that would see livelihoods returned.

Gold Is Expensive, and May Be Just Warming Up
John Authers/Bloomberg/August 07/2020
As I write, gold has surged to yet another record, topping $2,050 per ounce. Is it overpriced?
The question is impossible to answer. Gold’s value rests in the eye of the beholder, and over recorded human history people have continued to find it beautiful. It pays no income, and its intrinsic value is set by the market. Valuation techniques that work for other assets won’t work for gold.
The fact that we will never scientifically arrive at a “correct” price need not stop us from trying, however. And after going through the various valuation exercises, the rally looks rational. While the current price looks expensive, it could easily rise further.
One way to measure gold is to compare it to other commodities. Back in the 1970s, the oil-price shocks could be seen as a way for petroleum exporters to keep the value of their product constant in gold terms, once the dollar’s peg to the metal had ended. On this basis, gold looks expensive. The ratio of oil to gold, or the amount of metal it would require to buy a barrel of crude, hit its lowest since the peg’s end earlier this year as oil tanked. There has been a rebound since, and a further recovery for oil would help gold, but the shiny metal is plainly not cheap on this basis.
Another possibility is to look at money illusion. The gold price in dollars depends on the value of the currency as much as on the value of the metal. The dollar has weakened sharply in the last few months. But if we look at gold in euro and yen terms, there is more to this than dollar weakness. Gold hit an all-time high against both these currencies last year. It is currently at a record in all three.
Then we come to the issue of inflation. Gold is seen as a store of value. This value will naturally tend to rise when people expect inflation ahead. On this basis as well, gold might initially seem overpriced. The Federal Reserve has received a lot of deserved criticism for its handling of the US economy over the last two decades. But on one important measure, it has been undeniably successful — nobody has ever thought that inflation will take off. The Fed’s target is to keep inflation between 1% and 3%. Since 1998, 10-year inflation expectations derived from the bond market have never exceeded 3%, and have dipped below 1% only very briefly.
Inflation expectations have been rising fast following the Covid shock, which helps explain the rise in gold, but remain at a level that makes an all-time high look hard to justify.
But now we come to the most important influence on gold, which is the real yield available on bonds. Gold doesn't pay an income, and this becomes less and less of a problem as bonds pay less in real terms. At present, real 10-year yields are more negative than they have been since inflation-linked bonds became widely available. One crucial development of the last year is that the US has joined Germany in having very negative real yields (which presages a weaker dollar, as well as higher gold prices).
Real yields form the backbone of one of the most interesting models of “fair value” for gold, produced by City of London veteran Charles Morris, the founder of ByteTree.com. The model is essentially a zero-coupon 20-year Treasury inflation-protected security, or TIPS, and thus rises as long-term real yields fall. In brief summary, the factors included are:
Major factors:
1. Realized inflation
2. Real interest rates (20-year expected)
3. Speculative premium/discount
Minor factors:
1. US dollar (consequence rather than cause)
2. Central banks, wars, bad news
3. Jewelry demand (counter cyclical)
4. Mine supply
The key points are that fair value has risen sharply to reach its previous record in recent weeks, and that the actual price is significantly higher. The premium as of early trading Aug. 5 was 23.7%.
The point for a trader is that when gold is in a bull market, it has shown a propensity to move even further above fair value. So gold is expensive, but it is still significantly less expensive than at the previous peak in late 2011.
For those wanting to play the dangerous game of predicting a speculative surge, Morris offers another important data point. Equity bull markets tend to peak when retail investors are sucked in, a process that appears to be happening for stocks. The same was true for gold during its massive peak in real terms in 1980, when news bulletins were full of footage of people happily emerging from shops having converted their life savings to a small pile of gold sovereigns (transactions that would have taken decades to work out), and again in 2011 when the weight of gold-buying through exchange-traded funds reached a high. This rally has plainly been fueled by something other than ETF-buying.
The bullish scenario is that central banks keep doing what they’re doing. squashing real yields ever lower, and continuing to raise the fair value for gold. Then inflation at last begins to come untethered and rise toward or even above its upper 3% target (which is conceivable but still some years away). And then retail buyers enter in a big way. A while after this, gold would probably go splat, but the ride to get there would be lucrative.
The risks would come in a change of central-bank behavior — just as the last gold peak turned into a bear market once the Fed started to try to move away from its unlimited asset purchases. Such a change looks less likely this time. Gold does look expensive then, but there is little reason to expect it to fall much anytime soon.
Some good news on the coronavirus. The Sun Belt’s single scariest Covid-19 outbreak came in Arizona, where the state health department’s website added to confusion by adopting a very conservative policy over when to add new cases and hospitalizations to its running totals. The single most useful data it offers are the number of positive or suspected Covid patients in hospital. As physicians know how to recognize Covid symptoms these days without waiting a week for test results, this is the best real-time indicator. And it is obvious that the virus is now coming under control.
Meanwhile, cases are worryingly on the rise in the upper Midwest and the virus is showing signs of establishing itself in rural areas.
Rather than focusing on cases in the Sun Belt, I suspect we need to get used to looking at some new charts. First, and very hopefully, far fewer people are dying of Covid-19. Will this continue, or will deaths begin to rise as patients in the Sun Belt who have been hospitalized for weeks finally succumb? If deaths in Florida and Texas, two states in focus because their Republican governors made a big deal of reopening their economies, stay at current levels, it will suggest that risks are more manageable than had been thought.
Beyond the US, developments in Europe are of growing importance. Spain and Greece, two Mediterranean countries with huge tourism industries, have had differing experiences to date. Greece largely avoided Covid-19 while Spain had one of the world’s worst outbreaks. But attempts to reopen for tourism have seen daily new cases rise to a fresh high in Greece, and also increase in Spain. These are worrying developments. It begins to look as though we cannot rely on the coronavirus to stay stamped out. It also looks as though it is proving too early to reopen for tourism, so prospects for a return to other forms of travel look grim.If lockdowns won’t make the disease go away, and medicine cannot eradicate the harm done (which it cannot), then two options lie ahead to return us to normality. One is the prospect of “herd immunity,” where enough people have the disease and develop immunity that it can no longer spread; the other is in a vaccine. It is possible that the Sun Belt states have unwittingly adopted a “herd immunity” strategy. But the most interesting test will be in Sweden, the one significant developed economy that deliberately eschewed lockdowns in favor of attempting to build herd immunity. Denmark, joined to Sweden by a bridge, provides a natural comparison. It went through a strict lockdown. Until now, this doesn’t appear to have helped Sweden much economically. But it should be well positioned for herd immunity.
So what of the vaccine? There is intense interest in the numerous different attempts to develop one. The looming issue is that it may prove impossible to get enough people to take a shot. A recent poll in Canada found that a third of Canadians would wait, and try to make sure there were no side effects. In the US, a Politico/Morning Consult poll found 64% of Americans saying they were prepared to wait and wanted developers to take their time. In the UK, a poll by YouGov found about 6% of Britons would definitely not get vaccinated, while 10% would “probably not,” and 15% weren’t sure.
Such levels of hesitancy are far too high for the pandemic to be eradicated, even if an effective vaccine with minimal side effects can be found. The notion that the hunt will have a binary outcome, with a successful vaccine meaning the end of Covid-19, is wrong. Distrust of the vaccine, of the profits that the manufacturers could make, and the speed with which they are working, is even more prevalent than the coronavirus. This isn't great cause for confidence.

When Memory Becomes a Prison of Nations
Amir Taheri//Asharq Al-Awsat/August 07/2020
Should the writing of history be treated as a governmental project? French President Emmanuel Macron and his Algerian counterpart Abdul-Majid Tebboune seem to think so. They have ordered the creation of a joint commission to write the history of relations between the two countries since the French annexed that strand of North Africa in 1832.
Macron and Tebboune are not the first rulers to seek an officially vetted and approved narrative of our human story. However, their case is unique because other rulers just wanted to tell their side of the story while Macron and Tebboune demand a two-voices, presumably parallel, narrative.
There is one more difference between the old official histories and what we are likely to see this time. Old official histories were often presented with the modesty they merited as chronologies. And because they carried a heavy load of hagiography, they never pretended to be scientific. Macron and Tebboune, of course are not looking for props to build a cult of personality with. However, they may be seeking something even less dignified: the presentation of history in the colors of current, and necessarily transient, fads of political correctness.
Macron has already shown those colors by stating that colonialism was “a crime against humanity”. Benjamin Stora, the historian chosen to represent the French side, goes even further by labelling colonization as
“violent, unequal and illegal.”
Tebboune, for his part, has cast Algeria as a helpless and innocent victim of Imperialism.
What Macron does not realize, or perhaps chooses to ignore, is that because colonization has been a constant feature of history from the start we might suggest that mankind has always lived in the context of a crime against humanity. When they invaded Gaulle, the Franks, a Germanic tribe, were colonizers who subdued the natives by force, imposed their language and culture on them, and ended up giving their own name to the country they had colonized. Even on the eve of the French Revolution only 12 percent of the population had French as mother tongue, although most used it as lingua franca.
In any case, the concept of crime against humanity is a new one, having taken shape in the aftermath of World War II and to apply it retrospectively would be confusing at best and dishonest at worst.
President Tebboune might also want to rethink his victimhood narrative. To imply that the Algerian people, in their rich diversity, were nothing but objects in their own history for some 130 years is not very flattering.
The French could not have colonized Algeria without the participation of large chunks, perhaps even a majority, of the population. Tens of thousands of Algerians of all ethnicities helped the French build the infrastructure needed for a colonial presence. Algiers, a beautifully French-style city, was built by Algerian labor supervised by the French.
Over the decades large numbers of Algerians who served in the French armies fought in two world wars and a number of colonial wars notably in Indochina. In the meantime, Algerians of all ethnicities adopted French as their lingua franca creating a rich literature and press. Algerian friends tell me that they regarded the French language as “war booty”, presumably the same as English which has made India the largest English-speaking country in the world.
Writing or re-writing history should not be a means of making the French of today feel guilty or humiliating today’s Algerians.
Stora says the Macro-Tebboune project aims at a reconciliation of memories. This means imposing a single monochord narrative that, rather than fostering reconciliation, could injure everyone’s memory. The nostalgia-stricken adepts of Algerie-francaise (French Algeria), the Harkis driven out of their homes and made stateless for decades, the Pied-noir (black foot) settlers who had been born and bred in Algeria for generations, would not have the same memories as the thousands of Algerian freedom fighters who were tortured by the French or the many more Kabyle and Arab peasants who had their villages burned by colonialists.
Keeping alive the narrative of victimhood, successive Algerian leaders have tried to divert attention from their own shortcomings not to say misdeeds. Covering the 1990s troubles in Algeria I was often told by Algerian politicians of all colors that all of their country’s troubles including terrorism in the name of religion and police brutality were due to French colonial rule. After a while, having gotten tired of that shibboleth, I suggested to Algerian interlocutors to fix a certain date up to which everything was the fault of the French but after that regard Algerians as responsible for their own troubles.
Almost two decades later, that suggestion has not gone anywhere. The new project is partly designed to “probe the colonial roots of Algeria’s socio-economic problems” as if six decades of independence didn’t count.
Can governments play a role in the writing of history?
The answer is yes. The first thing they need to do is to refrain from trying to dictate history. Next, they could make their archives accessible to researchers. They could also loosen the rules of “official secrets acts” to make as many “sensitive” documents as possible available for scrutiny.
Interviews with officials could also help provided they are not under gagging orders. In some cases, especially in closed societies, granting visas to historians could also help.
Above all, governments should not use the writing of history as a means of advancing partisan political aims, noble or ignoble. To say that the object of the Macron-Tebboune project is “reconciliation” is an abuse of history for a laudable political aim. If France and Algeria need reconciliation, Macron and Tebboune should find their ways of achieving their objective, leaving history alone to do its work.
In any case, as an outsider but a friend of both sides, I don’t think France and Algeria need reconciliation. Millions of French citizens of Algerian descent provide a human bond that is rare between any other two nations.
Today’s French, many of whom descendants of European and other immigrants over the past century were in no way involved in the conquest of Algeria or anywhere else, and thus have nothing to apologize for unless today’s Germans also apologize for the invasion of Gaulle by the Franks. Today’s Algerians also have no need of masquerading victimhood because, looking to the future, they don’t want to become prisoners of the past.