The Lebanese Truth

There is no justification for this Lebanese existence other than freedom. Either Lebanon is to be a country of freedom on this eastern shore, or it is not to be. And by freedom we mean the freedom of the Lebanese citizen to say and to do what he wills, and to be and to become as he wills.

Hence, whoever works, negatively or positively, on Lebanese soil or outside Lebanese soil, to injure this freedom, is working — he alone and no other — to undermine the pillars of Lebanese existence.

In the light of this truth, the Lebanese Lebanese declare that the work of undermining the pillars of Lebanese existence was carried out, deliberately or not deliberately, on the twenty-fifth of last May.

For on the twenty-fifth of last May, freedom in Lebanon was violated. And is there any violation of this freedom more insolent, more tyrannical, than that the Lebanese citizen should be prevented from exercising his right to state his opinion as to whom he wants for his representatives and rulers? Truly, Lebanon today — unless the traces of this offense are wiped out and its perpetrators cast out — is living in a condition that justifies no existence for it at all...

Hence, that this offense be wiped out and that its perpetrators be cast out is, for the Lebanese, one of the most sacred of duties. And every Lebanese man and woman who does not perform this duty truly is conspiring with those who have offended against freedom, and is working with them, thereby, to bring about Lebanese nothingness.

The Lebanese Lebanese, women and men, have resolved to perform this duty truly. And no day shall dawn bright for them until they restore to freedom, in its stronghold on this shore, its dignity and its glory. As equipment it is enough for them that they want Lebanon to be, not to not-be. And this will of theirs is nothing but the inevitable consequence of their faith in the unique mission which the being of Lebanon performs, and ought to perform, for this Arab East of which it is, for which it is, and in which it is.

And so, those who fancy that Lebanon is mere politics, or a mere arbitrary historical and geographical fact, or a mere sectarian bloc of any kind, have gone far astray. Lebanon is pure freedom, and purely what this freedom imposes of the virtues of mind and spirit. And so long as it is such, it will remain... it will remain until this blessing spreads over the world to which it belongs. For that reason, the Lebanese truth says: woe to him who offends against freedom in Lebanon...

Woe to him!