God and the Mossad (Written in 2002) at The Ouwet Front: A Lebanese Forces Blog

God and the Mossad (Written in 2002)

Posted by Lebanonjon

God and the Mossad are interchangeable in Lebanon.

A car bomb in a crowded street that ripped through innocent civilians killing entire families, destroying houses, demolishing shops could have only two possible perpetrators and occasionally these two worked in collaboration.

If it wasn’t blamed on the Zionist meddling then it was God working in mysterious ways. Only the Mossad had plastic explosives and could plant a far more sophisticated car bomb than God could in all his mysterious ways, consequently they got most of the credit for those. God made up the difference taking responsibility for the fatal car crashes, wayward shrapnel, droughts, corrupt politicians and any other mishap that could not be pinned directly with irrefutable Arab logic to the all encompassing evil of Israel.

Because of all the Good he did, the blame put on God was indirect. Mitl ma Allah be reed, which translates to “as God wishes”, is a forgiving Lebanese version of “ the lord works in mysterious ways”. This was and still is the most popular saying in the country. I never could see the mystery in someone flying off a mountain road but apparently there was some fateful profound lesson to be learned from it. The fact that they had one headlight working, drank half a bottle of arak and were driving seventy miles per hour with slick tires around a hairpin turn on a rainy night while talking on a cell phone had no bearing on this inexplicable tragedy God had so cruelly ordained .No, the Almighty had taken the poor mans life for a specific purpose, and so as people milled about the spot staring down at the fireball in the ravine, someone would invariably say very profoundly; Mitl ma Allah be reed. And that settled it, everyone could go home.

All told God and the Mossad shared a very special place in our culture; nothing could go wrong without one of them being responsible. Conspiracy theories in Lebanon abounded and the Arabs were the kings. No world catastrophe should not or could not be blamed on Israel. From an earthquake in Japan to a mangy camel in Baghdad, Israel was to blame. If the Arabs put half the effort and the imagination into solving their own problems that they did blaming Israel and the Mossad for their woes then they would be ruling the world today. But no, the Arabs are content in their brilliant conclusions, Bill Clinton was an Israeli agent and Monica Lewinsky being a Mossad operative sucked the information out of him. Aids, Foot and Mouth disease, Ebola; all the work of the Israeli intelligence. J.F.K., Elvis, Oklahoma bombing; Zionist meddling. They could have started their own T.V. series to compete with the X-files, call it the Camel-Files “The truth is out there, where it belongs”

I never considered myself an Arab though many in the western world have this common misconception that anyone who speaks Arabic is an Arab and most probably has a Camel parked in his driveway. The only camels I ever saw were the ones I smoked in college. Generalizing and blanket accusations are lovely excuses for not learning the truth. For years, Coca-Cola, Ford cars, Estee Lauder and Levi’s jeans as products, were banned by the government in Lebanon for having ties to or operating a factory in Israel. It was not just this arbitrary choice of products that made it so hilarious but the belief that this exclusion in anyway affected the worldwide success of these brands. I could have named a dozen other products that were found on every supermarket shelf in the country that were more deserving of this Jewish Product ban and again, naturally the Mossad was to blame for this. Though he could be blamed for much God did not deal in smuggling Jewish merchandise.

I can’t forget the joke my father used to tell about the way the Arab propaganda distorts reality and can turn the most miserable defeat into victory. One Arab warrior is bragging to his friends “ I rode my camel into the middle of the ocean and when I reached the deepest point, the water was just below my knees, there, I engaged the enemy and beat them severely until the blood poured from my body “. A perfect exaple of this is found in Egypt.To this day there is a monument in Cairo that honors the great Egyptian victory over Israel in the Yom Kippur war, where they, the Egyptians, not only lost most of the Sinai and the Gaza strip but also half of their standing army. There is no way to describe the neurological process that arrives at these conclusions. I call it the wonderful Arab logic of nothing for no one. An example of this is a recent air raid by Israeli fighter jets directed against a Syrian radar base in the hills of south Lebanon. Nothing was left of the building after the raid. The Syrian media responded immediately utilizing the Logic of nothing for no one by issuing a statement .An official said, “Syrian air defenses retaliated against the planes, “forcing the Zionist threat to flee”. Of course the “fleeing” part came after the Zionist threat reduced the radar base to a sand lot for kids. The reality that a few innocent Lebanese bystanders were killed during the Israeli bombing was as one lamenting old lady said; Mitl ma allah be reed.

The Lebanese by and large do not consider themselves Arabs, claiming Phoenician ancestry as the origin of choice. With so many different civilizations conquering and settling this part of the world over the last few thousand years, you wouldn’t know your if you were the descendant of a Canaanite pimp, a Turkish prince or a roman candle stick maker, still it seemed more romantic and as far removed from Arabs to call themselves Phoenicians than any other conquering culture. Unfortunately, and mostly against their wishes, the Lebanese people have been lumped with the Arabs under one leaky umbrella, condemned to be referred to as sand monkeys, camel jockeys and towel heads by the rest of the politically incorrect citizens of the civilized world. The reality is as far from that as the Arabs are from winning a war against Israel. In reality, the Lebanese are not Arabs and I would venture to say that if you took law enforcement out of Florida, threw in a few mosques, three churches, a couple of Ayatollahs and bombed the Delano, South Beach, and Beirut would be identical.

God and the Mossad (Written in 2002)

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