Articles

Nearly a year after assuming the Apostolic See at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV met with American Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the first meeting between him and a senior official of President Donald Trump's administration, amid an atmosphere of mounting tensions fuelled by mutual declarations on the war against Iran and immigration policies. The first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church demonstrated firm and classical positions of the Church in promoting the values of peace and dialogue, and had to face the criticism of President Trump, who claimed that he "exposed the Church, Catholics and peoples to danger", holding that the Pope's positions suggested he "saw no objection to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons". Leo hastened to deny these accusations, reaffirming the Church's rejection of nuclear weapons and dismissing Trump's statements as "inaccurate".

A gallows had been erected by protesters in front of the Palace of Justice in Damascus. It was Sunday, April 27th, in the Syrian capital: a large crowd was present at the first hearing of trials intended to determine the fate of criminals from Bashar al-Assad's fallen regime. The protesters were crying for revenge: they would not have hesitated to carry out their own justice! This speaks to the overheated general atmosphere that could cast doubt on the course of future developments. A special tribunal for Syria, modeled on the one established for former Yugoslavia, would have raised fewer concerns.

As a brief naval confrontation between American and Iranian forces unfolded in the Strait of Hormuz, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, declared on Friday that this maritime passage, through which 20% of the world's crude oil transits, represented 'an opportunity as valuable as an atomic bomb'. 'We have neglected for years the advantage that the Strait of Hormuz represents. Having a position that allows us to influence the global economy with a single decision is a major opportunity,' said Mohammad Mokhber, who is considered close to the hardline faction of the clerical regime.

That the various factions in Lebanon should be directly concerned by the existential battle currently unfolding there is entirely natural. The contrary would be unhealthy. Yet between apathy and unbridled enthusiasm, or even blind enlistment, there lies a whole emotional spectrum which, as usual, is obscured in favour of alignments that are deadly for the country — alignments with a conflict that inhabits it, but that utterly surpasses it. As has always been the case, for that matter. The Lebanese body is immunodeficient. It attracts every virus, every disease. Hence its propensity to flirt permanently with death.

This series of articles will allow for a better understanding of the current situation in light of the past, moving beyond impassioned, ideological, or romanticized rhetoric that misses the mark, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions. Furthermore, it is high time to seriously counter the sterile rhetoric of resistance, not with counter-rhetoric, but with serious work by promoting the rule of law, which can only be established through sovereignty. In the previous four installments, we revisited the events that shaped Hezbollah’s rise following the Taif Agreement, its first two wars with Israel, and the grinding war of attrition it has waged for more than a decade.

When I used to travel to Canada, I was always provoked by Israeli propaganda that claimed falafel, tabbouleh and hummus as part of traditional Jewish-Israeli heritage. It was an appropriation of culinary traditions that have belonged to the Levant for centuries, and not merely the theft of a patrimony: it was the confiscation of an identity and a memory. No people in history has invested in memory as the Jews did in the aftermath of the Holocaust. They built one of the most powerful systems of memorial preservation the world has ever seen, turning memory into a total apparatus: material, pedagogical and legal, designed to be indelible. They catalogued personal belongings in museums, gathering thousands of objects that had belonged to the victims: shoes, bags bearing the names of their owners, eyeglasses, hair shorn from prisoners, clothing and small personal items (combs, watches, rings); all in order to attest that the victims were real individuals, and not merely numbers.