{"id":8968,"date":"2019-10-31T20:55:39","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T20:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lavozlit.com\/?p=8968"},"modified":"2019-10-31T20:55:39","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T20:55:39","slug":"elias-khoury-letter-to-samir-kassir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2019\/10\/31\/elias-khoury-letter-to-samir-kassir\/","title":{"rendered":"Elias Khoury: Letter to Samir Kassir"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 28, 2019
\n<\/em>
\nFrom the heart of the Tishreen (October) uprising I write to you, my little brother, I sit next to you in your garden, and I see your picture in the water embracing the youth of Lebanon who have returned to clarity on the streets.<\/em>
\nBy Elias Khoury
\nThe Lebanese people were born again, one people making a major uprising is the beginning of the revolution we have long dreamed of.
\nFrom Tripoli to Tyr, from Zouk and Jbeil to Nabatieh, Baalbek, Akkar and Batroun, and from Beirut to Beirut.
\nThe people rose up against the sects and their leaders, shattered the false sanctities of holiness and chastity, and shouted against the oligarchs and mafias, who looted, humiliated, starved and insulted them.
\nThe image of racist Gibran Bassil and his mute teacher was shattered, and the aura collapsed when Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah declared that he was the covenant and protector of the thieves\u2019 government.
\nCome Samir Kassir* to Martyrs\u2019 Square, and come with me to Riad El Solh.
\nIt is a festival of freedom, come to joy, love, beauty and dignity.
\nIn Tripoli\u2019s al-Nour Square, rap music was played, and in Baalbek, people made the cry of freedom their festival, and in beautiful Tyr, on its golden beach, flames of joy burned.
\nThis is our Lebanon, male and female demonstrators chanting for Palestine and Syria, and regaining the most beautiful moments of the Arab Spring.
\nOur Damascus is here, and our Palestine is here.
\nWe waited for this moment for a long time, and when it came we went to meet her without fear. Our dream that popular unity would come and sweep the false slogans of national sectarian unity, was today embodied in the streets and squares.
\nThe system of fear, banditry, looting and foreign trustees fell on the street.
\nYes, comrade martyr, the regime has fallen.
\nPeople are not calling for the overthrow of the regime, they are bringing it down with their own hands.
\nThe moment we wiped out foolish sectarianism, and discovered that the clientelism of the leaders of the sects and mafias led us to hunger and humiliation, the regime fell under the feet of young women and men who surprised themselves with their amazing revolution.
\nWe no longer need to imagine Lebanon\u2019s secular, non-sectarian landscape.
\nI see it with my own eyes, I see it on the foreheads of young women and men who raise their heads up, and break into the sky of freedom.
\nI see love born from the rubble of our souls.
\nYou raised your heads to declare love and joy.
\nThis great class struggle of the poor, the marginalized and the children of the middle classes threatened by impoverishment is a battle of truth and human dignity.
\nAs for those fools who rode on our backs since independence and have always been foreign agents, they are the ones who brought Lebanon to its nader.
\nAnd from this lowest point we rose.
\nNothing is more insolent, nonsensical and despicable than this mafia-like sectarian system that belittles people\u2019s minds and believes it can keep them in horrid sectarian herds.
\nIn the struggle for bread, freedom and social justice, Lebanon has risen to be reborn, young, beautiful and glowing with love
\nThis is the promise that they killed you for, brother and comrade.
\nThe promise is now an engagement.
\nThis covenant and his government must go to hell.
\nThe era of the covenant\u2019s rule is faltering, revealing its truth, and the era of the imprudent racist era must end.
\nDo you remember comrades how everyone laughed when you raised the slogan of overthrowing the sectarian system?
\nDo you remember when they terrorized us on the day we cried, \u201cAll means all?\u201d
\nToday, the sectarian oligarchy has declared all its truth, trying to hold together in the face of the cry of the people, looking for a bribe to silence the thundering crowds.
\nToo late.
\nThe issue is not just taxes, taxes have revealed the reality of the compound of thieves that controls Lebanon.
\nThe issue has another name.
\nThose who want to know that name should read the lines written by Samir Kassir and the martyrs of freedom with their blood. There you find the truth triumphing over assassination and intimidation.
\nWe are at the beginning of the battle, and the ruling mafias threaten us with chaos and prepare to drown us in blood.
\nBut we will not be afraid.
\nWhatever they did, the regime fell.
\nThe system of civil war has fallen, and people in all Lebanese regions have declared that the civil war must end.
\nThe sectarian system fell, with its ideology and masks.
\nTherefore, the immediate task is to prevent the regime and its thugs from shedding blood, as did their Arab despot peers.
\nIt is a difficult but not impossible task.
\nThe accomplishment of the October uprising in Lebanon is irreversible.
\nFor in the streets a free, independent and democratic homeland was born. This is the homeland for which we live and which we die to defend.
\nThe people rose up against the sects and their leaders, shattered the false sanctities of holiness and chastity, and shouted against the oligarchs and mafias, who looted, humiliated, starved and humiliated them.<\/span>
\n <\/p>\n