Einmal ist Keinmal

I don’t know why I keep checking the BBC news, at times it just doesn’t seem to make sense at all. Now I expected some other bloggers to mention this but no one did and I just had to say a few things. This woman decides to go to this clinic cause it’s closer to home, right? That’s natural, we all do that anyway. Then she is informed that she must be a Muslim to receive treatment in this clinic AND that she needs to put a scarf too… What does she do? Instead of calling the police and informing them of this unethical and illegal act, she just goes there never the less and just wears some decent cloth. I don’t know if I were her I would inform authorities about it don’t you think? You see this reminds me of the time when I used to go to church every week, some priests, including ours, insisted that women should wear decent cloths and refused to give the girls undecently dressed the Eucharist… Remember that the only thing that denies you the grace of receiving the Eucharist is sin. So in other words not being dressed according to the codes decided by the priest is passable for sin, however, no priest is given the right to deny anyone the Eucharist, cause the priest might be god’s representative on earth but he is not god. The same goes for this doctor, he is not allowed to deny anyone medical treatment… right?

But let’s not insist on that point. So the woman goes there, without the veil, enters the clinic, then meets the dentist who gives her a lecture about Islam and the relationship between the man and the woman (typical religiously concealed sexism, I bet he even told her about how men can’t control themselves in the presence of promiscuous women!). Then, surprisingly, the woman accepts! Like Holly Fuck!! WHY?! I Why the hell does she take this shit from anyone?!

Wait wait, that’s not all, the dentist then demands her to go to the waiting room, wearing the scarf, and wait for a while before entering for the surgery! Like maybe he is giving her time to purify herself? But this time the woman finally revolts and refuses to go on and just leaves, without the scarf!

When the woman pressed charges the dentist certainly denied everything.

Being a woman that actually lives in an environment and encourages and glorifies such pudic acts, I have to say this, something doesn’t feel right in this story. In any normal situation the woman could have refused to go all together. The fact that she did go and she did accept to wear the scarf… But not in the waiting room! With all due respect I find this to be repulsively hypocritical! It’s her legitimate right to get the treatment she needs and no ultra religious sexist with power issues has the right to impose arbitrary rules on her, if she accepted then she must have some other motives behind her act! Now of course I support the fact that she would press charges against the idiot as late as it was, the guy should have his license canceled or something. He should be castrated then he won’t have any filthy desires towards women regardless of their dressing, now why doesn’t he do that?

But there is one last thing that intrigues me… When the woman went to the police, before making this whole subject public, why didn’t any female officer call the guy and try to arrange an appointment, just to check if the guy does refuse to treat some women?

Well, I promised to keep you people updated on my situation so far. Well here’s what happened: When I stopped updating a while back, it was because the month was over and I had to pay the internet bill, but back then I had made the decision to move to another provider but needed an additional 75$ for installation and stuff, so I decided to wait a month and then register. Then by the end of the month I realized that there is no need, I could move to my uncles’ place by the start of winter and they already have internet connection.

No, I wouldn’t be moving just to get internet access (that would be funny). In fact I am planning to move for three reasons. The first and most compelling reason is that I have a plan to start a small biotechnology lab and I have so many ideas how to develop it and everything, but I need the space, since my home in Jounieh is too small hopefully my grandparent’s home in Beirut is a better option.

In addition, I have started writing articles in the Beirut Marathon magazine: Running Middle East. Though I have no direct contact with the administration being in Beirut will help me more than staying in Jounieh.

Finally, I have become active in a growing and active society in Lebanon, the LBTQ women society (LBTQ standing for Lesbian Bisexual Transexual and Queer). All our weekly meetings are help is private and secret places in Beirut which makes it much easier for me to move to Beirut.

Now about our LBTQ society… The seed of this activism had started blooming exactly one year ago with the help and support of the helem association (The association for the protection of homosexuals in Lebanon. Quickly our community grew in numbers and in projects. During this summer it finally resulted in the launch the very first Middle East community for Lesbian rights, active on an Arabic soil: Meem.

Meem being a symbolically feminine letter in Arabic, symbolizing everything that the woman is in our community from her identity to her suffering, we had decided that Meem would only have one public aspect, our website: Meemgroup.org. The website is still under construction but some of its main features are already up and running.

Now the community is certainly secretive and private for the obvious reasons, first of all the privacy of our members is a need, considering the difficult situation in which we live and plan on improving. Second, our first goal is not advocacy of Lesbian rights, it is the internal empowerment of the girls to help them overcome the scars of a sexually repressed and repressive environment. Not that we don’t believe in the need to educate the general public on what we are and what we are not, no! Our advocacy will mainly be channeled through our cooperation with supporting organizations such as Helem or Aswat (the Palestinian Gay Women).

In addition to our website and our blog we have been organizing weekly support groups dealing with our communities problems and issues. We do have many other projects summarized here.

Now Meem is still young, it has succeeded in a very short while to gather a significant number of ladies (around 129) who simply appreciate other ladies but in order to sustain the ongoing effort we do need support, though financial support is certainly needed we most of all need recognition inside Lebanon and outside to ensure additional protection and additional efficiency.

So if you are interested in supporting, helping, encouraging, bashing us feel free to contact either me in person on my gmail account: Xie.medusa.stheno @gmail.com or directly contact the big bosses on the email: meem@meemgroup.org. And spread the word for others that I cannot contact myself.

Now of course I do admire the Big Pharaoh, if I haven’t why would I lurk around in his blog? Now what a better, obviously pseudo-diplomatic introduction to prepare the reader of the entry to accept my utter dislike to the Big Pharaoh? Not that I dislike him, that’s just an illustrative example because that’s practically how the Big Pharaoh started his entry by saying:

With all my due respect to Lebanon

Ok that seriously went very close to sarcasm or even hypocrisy. What respect? If the Big Pharaoh’s arguments made much more sense he wouldn’t have resorted to such an obnoxious start. You see, when my mom was hailing the army’s victory I said the same thing that the Big Pharaoh was stating, I told her that the victory came to a very high price. But unlike him, I actually do admire the Lebanese army for what it did. I admired them for actually being brave enough to go into this war though they knew that it’s going to be very expensive. I admired them for going into a war they were not supposed to enter, up until the last day many were just trying to bribe the terrorists away. Everyone stood against the army, Palestinian bashed us by nurturing such repulsive monsters then backing them in battle, then crying infanticide when the army fired back. The army was attacked by Hezbollah who explicitly refused the camp to be attacked. Many politicians believed they could just solved it “peacefully” by begging the terrorists to be merciful! But the army against all odds refused to back off and demanded to avenge the fallen soldiers! I remember the dark years before 2005 like for example when 4 judges were shot inside the courtroom by similar terrorists who hid in… A Palestinian camp… (some things never change!) And the army was not allowed to go into the camp, everyone said no Lebanese army would ever enter the camps, and indeed no one EVER entered and cleaned any Palestinian camp since Arafat chose to pass through Jounieh to reach Kods! No one except for the Sabra and Chatilla massacre… As far as I am concerned this victory is far better and more worthy of praise and celebration! Don’t you think?
So please DO respect the souls of the dead, they did choose to die bravely holding their Lebanese flag high not hiding like mice, hiding between civilians and blowing corpses… Yes I am talking about Hezbollah’s divine victory. This army fought with everything it had, it didn’t have enough? True, but they are celebrating their unexpected victory… Respect!

I simply cannot understand how the Lebanese army can be so weak

He said, but didn’t really bother thinking of why and how the army could be so weak so I’ll attempt to think for him just this time:

• Our army is weak because, for the past 30 years, the army was ordered to be weak. Keep in mind that we had a civil war, the army can’t enter the war… Who wants the national army to go into the war anyway? That’s suicide! At the start of the civil war the soldiers received the order to each join the closest military station which would mean that each would join stations from the same sectarian group. Of course one might say that the army was already weak, if it wasn’t weak then the war wouldn’t have fallen upon us, true. Which takes us to the second point…


• The Lebanese army was weakened upon international request. When Abd El Nasser was celebrating his Arabic dream he was forcing his Arabizing upon us by smuggling weapons, in accord with the Syrian regime back then, into Lebanon, through the Syrian/Lebanese borders of course (yes some things just never change). Back then the Lebanese army was overwhelmed and asked for the UN’s aid, they sent a commission to investigate, they were witnesses to one raid over a smuggle attempt in the Bekaa, they were smuggling weapons over mules from Syria to Lebanon. The attempt was intercepted and the Lebanese army officials thought this, and other incidents would ensure international support. No! the report concluded that there were no sufficient evidence of an organized smuggling process. They just turned away their looks and allowed others to give weapons to the parties who opposed Abd El Nasser…


• Yes the Syrians didn’t allow the army to grow any stronger during the post-Ta’ef period… Which is predictable and needs no explanation!


• Lebanon’s an undeclared confederacy, centralizing the power before reaching genuine secularism in politics would mean that sects would control sections. The Maronite, for instance, would monopolize the military force… As maronite as I am I don’t want to see that happen. In fact the army was only fortified for an ephemeral phase in the Lebanese history: Michel Aoun’s monarchy years! Michel Aoun, unlike what most Lebanese would accept to admit, built the concept of a strong army he was the only one that raised the soldiers’ salary back in the 80s and he was the only one to actually build a strong army. But where did that lead to? Well, it led Aoun taking over the government (in a legal but unwise manor). In the end, as a result we had the famous 2 governments, one being legal and the other viable. Aoun soon lost the resources to sustain his claims, since he was surrounded by enemies that he had created for himself and the rest is history, I just thank god that Hoss was wise enough back then to prevent any further schism by refusing to create another Lebanese army in West Beirut, but no thanks for Aoun! This my friend the Pharaoh shows you how delicate the Lebanese situation is


• Lebanon has only two bordering countries, with one of them holding a knife under our nose (yes I am talking about Syria). This situation means that the army is in fact crippled in its role to preserve the Lebanese/Syrian borders, cause on one hand our tiny army is very tiny in comparison to the Syrian one, on the other hand any move from the army to put the Syrians at bay would automatically result in a diplomatic crisis=closing the borders=chocking of the transit activity=more bad news for us. Ever wondered for instance why doesn’t San Marino have an army? Or even Monaco?


• The Lebanese army, in the space of only 3 years had to lose a lot of soldiers (because the forced military service was canceled), stretch to go cover the southern border and deal with internal turmoil starting from the 14th of march challenge, ending with the Downtown Beirut occupation, passing through the January 23rd failed coup d’état (trust me you had to be there to know how delicate and dangerous the situation was!)…. I believe that this is part of the respect bit that you claim to have for us. Respect means that you respect the army that was overwhelmed… Afterall shit happens man!
  

Now that I have stated the reasons that first popped into my head as I was trying to think for you, let’s move to the next part of our conversation:

Was the Lebanese army as weak as you are actually stating?

Well comparison is required. But allow me to detail your entry:

I remember going to the Lebanese army’s club in Jounia in Lebanon in 2002. My mom and I were only allowed to enter after the security guard at the gate knew that my father was a general in the Egyptian army.
Upon entering the club and checking out the swimming pool, my jaws literally dropped. Lebanese babes in bikinis were sitting around the pool french kissing their soldier boyfriends. I turned to my mom and told her: mom, A huge difference from the Egyptian army right? But do you know why Hezbullah is in the South? Do you know why Syria is occupying this country? Because of how weak this army is.

1. It’s Jounieh not Jounia, pronounced like Jounié… ok lol let’s get serious.


2. Now let’s see… What has the jaw-dropping-babes have to do with the fact that our army is weak? I don’t know if you are calling us immoral for wearing bikinis and French-kissing in social gatherings (even military ones) thus weak because we french kiss or are you calling our army undisciplined? Or are you saying that since there’s a war in the south then soldiers shouldn’t French kiss? What the hell are you trying to prove with this? I honestly fear that this is a masked expression of how you have a problem with our modernism and liberated lifestyle (sorry).

People just think of it. 155 Lebanese soldiers lost their lives while fighting 360 Fatah al-Islam terrorists. 155. That’s almost half the size of their foes. And today over 20 militants where killed as they were trying to escape the besieged refugee camp. Of course 2 Lebanese soldiers had to be killed in the gun battle that erupted.

1. As far as I know it’s 424 terrorists either killed and captured and an unidentified number of terrorists that had fallen in battle. Plus, unlike what all Palestinians say, many other factions actively participated in the battle. Oh and keep in mind that more than 20 soldiers were killed on the first day when the terrorists attacked their post, before the war had even effectively started.


2. Let me see, you say these casualties were too big, right? In comparison to which other victory in the Arab world?
   Iraqi victory against Iran ? Um no, that was no victory, it looked nothing like the army v/s guerilla war that went on in Lebanon.
   Egyptian victory against the Israelis in Sinai? That isn’t even funny to say the truth. That war was lost my friend… With all respect at least the Lebanese army achieved victory!
   Hezbollah’s victory against Israel? Oh fuck no! that’s a major loss in denial!
   American victory in Iraq? Afghanistan? This is getting ridiculous…. How about you be the smart person and let me know to which mighty victory are you comparing our army’s victory to conclude that we were THAT weak!
   We were not prepared: yes!
   We were taken by surprise: yes!
   But seriously where are you living Big Pharaoh?! If the Lebanese army was so perfect, if Lebanon was all so jolly and happy would’ve 14th of march demonstration been necessary? If we didn’t have problems we wouldn’t have needed to work on solving, am I wrong?
   In fact, usually the greatest military victories are usually are in either resisting conquest or repressing demonstration… I can’t believe that you people are forgetting what it is like that you loved about Lebanon in the first place!

I just can’t believe it. An entire nation’s army besieging a refugee camp cannot solve a problem caused by 360 people!

Why do I get the impression you are talking about the soviet army! A Nation?! Like seriously man! How many soldiers in the Lebanese army is there according to your opinion?

Lebanon’s friend, especially the US and France, must really help the Lebanese army grow some claws if this nation was to cease being abused.

Oh thank you for that wise advice… Friends?

I apologize Big Pharaoh but with all respect your statement was closer to an insult and it was absurd.