The first 300 of the Second Cedars Revolution
Tom Harb
CR News 24th Jan 2011
Washington DC
Last week Hezbollah staged a constitutional coup against the Lebanese Government headed by Saad Hariri. The pro-Iranian militia and its allies are mobilizing to seize the country on the ground as well. Few days ago Hezbollah deployed thousands of its militiamen in Beirut and some districts in the mountain. Hassan Nasrallah is acting like the Xerxes of Lebanon by ordering his forces to position themselves to crush the Cedars Revolution.
Last time Hezbollah attacked Lebanon's civil society was in May 2008. His troops entered Sunni West Beirut and seized media and Government buildings while Khomeinist militia units marched against the Druze districts of the mountain. There, as wrote then Walid Phares, the "300 hundreds of Lebanon" stopped them and inflicted casualties on them. Hezbollah's ruthless forces under Iran's new Xerxes (the Khomeinist usurper not the brave Iranian people) were stopped by few hundred Druze peasants who like the 300 Spartans of Leonidas fought back against Hezbollah and stopped the advance of the Iranian regime on the hills above Beirut.
But tonight, three years later, a new 300 young men and women stood up in Lebanon. This time coming from the Christian East Beirut, marching towards downtown to meet up with other Lebanese youth from various communities. These are the first 300 from what is going to be a second Cedars Revolution. Among the first 300 walking at night, unarmed and determined, the children of President Bashir Gemayel who like Rafiq Hariri was assassinated by the Syrians and their allies in 1982. Member of Parliament Nadim Gemayel who was on a visit to Washington last Summer
History in Lebanon is filled with irony and recurrence. I expect these new 300 to stand up to mighty Hezbollah and will be joined by hundreds and thousands of youth who have decided to rise against the return of the age of terror.
When I read The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East by Walid Phares this last December I had no idea we will be witnessing the unfolding of real revolutions against terror and oppression. But from Sudan to Tunisia and from Iran to Lebanon, it is already happening
**Tom Harb is the Secretary General of the World Council of the Cedars Revolution and the Chairman of the International Lebanese Committee for UNSCR 1550.