A dignified young man from Lebanon

• Last Updated: March 18. 2009 8:30AM UAE / March 18. 2009 4:30AM GMT

Egypt’s Al Masry al Yawm daily carried a piece by Lamid al Hadidi who noted the words: “I do not want revenge because it is a bad feeling. I only want the truth and justice.” This was the answer of Sa’d al Hariri, the leader of the Lebanese Future Movement, when asked: “Will the International Tribunal take your revenge on those who killed your father?”

The International Tribunal’s sessions to bring the assassins of Rafiq al Hariri to justice are, in fact, “one of the few times in which the Arabs – or a group of them -– managed to impose their will on the international community to achieve justice and punish the criminals,” the author asserted.

“Sa’d al Hariri is not like other politicians, who circumvent and use ambiguous expressions, as his answers are short, direct, clear, very quiet and sometimes sarcastic. I have not asked him how he learnt politics because it is clear that he works with an intelligent, diligent and well-experienced work group that devoted its attention to the young man throughout the past four years. He has never been arrogant in learning from them although he is the son of the prime minister. Politics in his life is a fate rather than a choice.”

The old woman and the two benefactors

Najib Issam Yamani, a regular columnist for Saudi Arabia’s Okaz, wrote about a 75-year-old woman named Um-Aiman who was arrested for talking to two men who were not her relatives. “Her hair is snowy white and her bones are too brittle. Our religion, which suffered more harm at the hands of some of its believers than at the hands of its enemies, stipulated rules and measures that are merciful towards the elderly.”

Our religion knows that the elderly are too weak to take care of themselves, so it gave specific measures for their cases, urging all Muslims to help them and look after them and serve them.

Turning to the recent court case, the author said, “We hide the names of criminals and we only mention their initials yet here we are exposing this woman in such a manner because of a loaf of bread given to her by two men who came to her to ask after her welfare and they should be thanked for it, instead of this fiasco.

“We hope that this shameful incident will not prevent others from doing a good deed. We hope that the Committee for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice will reform its strategy so that we won’t have any more incidents like this one.

Obama seen to fail test in the Middle East

The Egyptian daily Al Ahram carried an opinion piece by Mustafa Sami who said flatly that “The American President Barack Obama has failed his first test in the Middle East, proving to the Arabs he could neither be neutral, nor capable of adopting balanced positions at the level of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict nor of exiting the blockade imposed by the extremist Jewish groups working for Israel in the United States.”

Mr Obama, he explained, has succumbed to the pressures of Tel Aviv and its agents in Washington and has decided to boycott the conference for the fight against racism which will be held in Geneva next month.

“The first conference against racism which was held in the city of Durban in South Africa in 2001 under the supervision of the United Nations, had condemned in its closing statement the racist Israeli policy toward the Palestini, a condemnation which had raised Israel’s anger and made it wage a propaganda campaign against the conference.”

By issuing this decision, the new American administration violated the pledges it had made to the Palestinians and the Arabs to open a new page relying on justice and balance in the Middle East, the author concluded.

Raising the Lebanese flag in Damascus

Kuwait’s Al Rai al Aam daily carried an opinion piece by Khairallah Khairallah who discussed the recent opening of the Lebanese embassy in Damascus.

The author wrote that the mere act of raising the Lebanese flag in the Syrian capital constitutes a major change in the way Lebanese and the Lebanese entity is perceived. “This change should carry repercussions on the practical level and should be efficiently translated on the ground far away from the complexes of the Syrian regime and a large number of Syrians who believe that Lebanon is part of their country. The latter are forgetting that this conception of Syria and of what Syria should be like, has long expired.”

The author asked: “Today is there one respectable Syrian who would refuse to deal with reality: the deep crises of the current regime and the problems in which the country is drowning economically, socially and politically?”

The withdrawal of the Syrian troops from the Lebanese territories in April 2005 was not an ordinary event, and the regime should have learnt from it and acted differently.

* Digest compiled by www.mideastwire.com