A Coward’s Opinion — And Happy Fucking Fourth of July, Lebanon
Life has been happening for so long that we forgot how long it's actually been going. Earth has survived extinctions, asteroids, fires, climate shifts, animal wars, human wars, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions — disasters we know about and disasters we still haven't uncovered. It has survived religious upheavals, brutal conquests, prophets and devils. And when you step back and look at everything happening right now from the outside, it really isn't that different or more catastrophic than what came before. It's all about how you choose to look at it.
There will always be a devil and a god playing a game of who wins more and who wins first. Then comes adaptation. Then change. Then more adaptation. Then rebellion. Then a final reset. What matters is which side you're standing on when all of it unfolds. How do you want to live? Which side do you want to wake up on? Do you want to go blind in this lifetime or stay awake long enough to see what actually happens? Do you want to stay on the sidelines or stay true to yourself?
If I'm being completely honest — I don't choose the sidelines. I want to express, to feel, to defend, to rebel, to change things. But I know I'm a coward. I always have been. One door slammed shut, one threat, one bark in my direction and I run. I hide. I don't fear death exactly — but I fear consequences. I fear scarcity and loss, all the things I was threatened with from childhood. All the punishments waiting if I stepped out of line or became, god forbid, free — free to act, to think, to feel, to move.
I envy people who didn't come from scarcity. People who have a voice and use it without flinching. They express freely because they always had somewhere to fall back to — and even when they didn't, life created that safety net because they never operated from fear. And when you don't carry that fear, it simply doesn't manifest. It doesn't exist. I know this. And I still can't shake mine.
I have a dream of going on social media, on television, in magazines — reading my articles out loud, in the light, instead of writing them alone in the dark. I dream of expressing my opinions and education without fear of being sanctioned, deprived, or made to suffer for it.
I wish I could stand up and say what I actually think to the Lebanese people celebrating American Independence Day — that America is a state built on settlers erasing the rights of native people to exist. It is not anyone's liberation story to celebrate. It took the land of indigenous people and turned itself into the world's most oppressive empire — like Rome, but without the education or the culture. So imagine my reaction watching a video of Lebanon, blacked out from lack of electricity, people in tents and on streets, displaced from their own homes by a country that gave itself the right to take over — and then seeing the American flag lit up across thousands of LED screens at the airport. “Happy Fourth of July.” That is how low things have descended. That is the joke Lebanon has become.
The truth is Lebanon has always been a country that needs to be led, colonised, and controlled — because its people have no collective moral compass, no human solidarity, no logic, and always one eye looking for something else to become. I say this knowing I am made of exactly that. We are so thoroughly conditioned by fear, generation after generation, that we can't accept freedom even when it's handed to us. We are terrified of not belonging. Terrified of breaking the mould.
My dear country — you deserve the people who hold you, and you deserve everything that's coming for you. We failed the land. I hope the land finally fails the people back. I hope no future generation has to keep living inside the lie of unity and uniqueness we were sold — because we are not unique, we are not free, we are not okay, we cannot lead ourselves, and we cannot live together in peace. That was always a marketing campaign. Nothing more.
I was born in 1984. In the years I've been on this earth — 35 of them spent inside Lebanon — this is the timeline I witnessed:
After independence from the French, Lebanon entered what was supposedly its golden age. Freedom, wealth, tourism, a thriving culture. But it was still operating under Syrian army control because it never built a military of its own. Nobody liked a booming Lebanon. So a civil war ignited — starting between the Druze and the Maronites, then consuming all 18 sects. People were being killed based on which book they were born into. Lebanon fractured. Crime lords carved up their pieces.
With Lebanon weakened, the devil came to play. Israel weaponised and funded a Christian terrorist militia to kill Muslims, then attacked Lebanon from the inside and from the air — all under the pretence of wanting peace in the region. Hezbollah was formed five years after Israel attacked Lebanon and began its work of targeting the corrupt political class, driving out the crime lords and Israel. Some of those figures were imprisoned — the same ones now negotiating deals with the devil. Others were sheltered by the French system, which apparently had no issue with the killing of Muslims and welcomed their killers with open arms as political asylum cases. One of those same figures later became president — the year Lebanon took its final collapse.
Lebanon then entered a long parade of pretend peace, the country cut into sectarian fiefdoms, everyone performing functionality while the whole thing rotted underneath. Then in 2005 they killed a politician — corrupt in many ways, but someone who knew how to make Lebanon move forward, which was exactly what Lebanon needed at the time. Hezbollah pushed the Israelis out of the south, liberated Lebanon from the Syrian army, and brokered the return of exiled leaders as part of a supposed peace between the sects. I was on the streets for that. Shouting for liberation. Celebrating victory. Signing off on the whole thing with both hands.
Little did any of us know we were signing the end.
People don't change — especially not from bad to good. A year later, Hezbollah went from being called the backbone of the country to being declared a terrorist organisation, the singular threat to the existence and expansion of the apartheid state of Israel. Heroes to zeroes in twelve months. Because the narrative stopped serving the Zionists. Then the mistakes started compounding — from Hezbollah, from the government — until the old warlord swept in and finished the job entirely.
Goodbye Lebanon. And thank you for your cooperation, imbecile citizens of the republic.
We lived inside a lie we never had a real chance to escape. We lived in war and fear and a never-ending cycle of false hope. And now I have Israelis — people who know nothing of this history — with the audacity to tell me they're just trying to protect themselves from us.
I am a person of opinion. And an opinion is a point of view — some built on education, some on history, some on lived experience, and some on plain and obvious logic. Because of this I have lost friends. I have lost family members. Over a simple difference of perspective. Since when is having a different opinion a crime? Since when are humans no longer capable of having a conversation without the other person withdrawing their love?
I grew up in a country that was beautiful from the outside and rotten from the inside, surrounded by people who were — and still are — deeply fake. I didn't think it was wrong for a long time because I was one of them. I grew up in a country where Muslims hated Jews, Lebanese Jews hated Jews, and Christian households had signs on their front doors that read: “If you are a Jehovah's Witness, do not enter this home."
So I suppose those signs will need to come down now — in preparation for the grand opening of Lebanese homes to all the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Well deserved, Lebanon. Well done.
And happy fucking Fourth of July to you.