An Outcry to the Young Lebanese in Lebanon and Around the World

They Killed Rafic Al Hariri.

The one man who tried single-handedly to rebuild a country devastated by war and educate a youth deprived of all the priviliges it rightfully deserved.

But we all know that the assasination was not directed against one man. It was directed against a Nation. A Nation that we have been slowly letting go of, either expatriating ourselves, or staying and pathetically yielding to strikes against our pride and freedom.
All we have done thus far was to react with thoughts and words but never with actions. No actions except turning our backs and seeking personal bliss amongst strange people and in nations that are not our own.

The blood of this Man, to whom I owe my education and career, was spilled on the streets of the very city he cherished most, the city he carried on his wide shoulders and lifted out of its ashes. His burnt and disfigured body was thrown on the asphalt like an old cloth.
And I, like many others, am still sitting here, in my self-confectioned little haven of peace and political and ideological idleness.

Just sitting here watching.

He educated me and my friends, brought us all to where we are, gave us a chance to become who we aspire to be. He strived and died for the sake of our country and his own.

We would be a disgrace to humanity and life, if we all stay where we are, politically and ideologically, an ignominy if we keep looking in the same wrong direction, away from the blood and the suffering, away from danger and death, away from our identity, away from our future and from ourselves.

He did not do all he did for us to look away.

And I will not look away.

Remote preaching, and words hanging in thin air are easy, I know. But I do know that somehow and soon, we should be part of something bigger than our small individual existences, to maybe lift our chins in honor that our country has bled its way through the broiling quagmire of war and despair, and we were the sweaty, bleeding, scorched arms that eventually pulled it out of the very jaws of devastation and havoc.

To all of you who will read this, it is high time we stood up and shook the earth and the walls, it is high time we brought ourselves and our long lost independence back to life. Let's get down on the streets not just to cry and mourn but to turn around the sad reality that has been besieging us for much too long.

Let's proclaim our identity and claim back Lebanon as our own, not anymore as a theatrical set where a few headless puppets dance around in a sick celebrational display of corruption and ridicule.

Rafic Al Hariri is dead, and if we do not urgently wake up, a coffin as big as our country will be waiting for us, waiting to throw us all in the dark and rotten tombs of the shameful, best if forgotten, past.