A protest by journalists in solidarity with Al-Akhbar's Afif Diab at the Ministry of Information in Beirut on Monday, June 4. The placard translates to "There are no [good] collaborators and [bad] collaborators. A collaborator is a collaborator no matter what." (Photo: Marwan Tahtah)
Four men assaulted Al-Akhbar’s Bekaa correspondent Afif Diab in Chtaura on Saturday after an article he wrote in which he criticized the release of Ziad el-Homsi, a convicted collaborator with Israel.
We all know Afif Diab as an energetic journalist who keeps track of events through his work at Al-Akhbar, and previously and simultaneously with al-Nidaa magazine and Sawt al-Shaab radio, as well as with various news agencies and channels and dozens of other journalists.
Afif has not abandoned the convictions that are engraved in his consciousness. He did not pick these up by chance, nor find them in the letterbox at his front door or by a roadside. A son of the Arqoub region, he knows Lebanon better than most. He knows its people and localities and their sensitivities. He also knows how to keep his mind and heart in balance, so he is not swept up by emotions or felled by storms.
But few people, perhaps, know Afif by his other name, Simon. As a young man in his twenties he used to patrol the roads between Beirut, the Bekaa, the South and wherever else the occupation was present. He was among the first to take up arms. He got to know the land, stone by stone, and the people, farmer by farmer, and the features of the landscape, including the malicious eyes.
Afif the resistance fighter had the opportunity, denied to a generation or more, to take up arms for the right reason and aim them in the right direction – every bullet targeting the enemy and its collaborators.
Afif, or Simon, has known who the enemy and its collaborators are ever since it set foot in our land. He never forgot the faces of the resistance fighters he accompanied or transported during their quest for freedom for most of this country’s people; nor the voices of comrades who departed, either for captivity or the grave; nor how people looked under occupation, or their faces on liberation day 12 years ago.
On that day, Afif was one of those who deserved the gratitude of every decent person in this country and the region. Instead he made for his home village in the heart of the Arqoub, and toured the surrounding area to recapture his memories of it all. When Anwar Yaseen was freed from captivity, he took him to the same place and along the same route, two comrades disappearing into the landscape, its silence broken only by the cries of mothers imploring God to protect their sons and bring them safely home.
Afif did not escape when clouds gathered in the sky. He was not overwhelmed by all the voices of sectarianism and regionalism. He was more patient than thousands whose weariness prompted them to flee. He remained close to the people he loved, and for whom he struggled and continues to struggle. He never lost sight of the clear and self-evident: that Israel remains the enemy, and that no domestic turn of events can change that. Yet he could also separate his admiration and respect for the resistance fighters who continued to face down the enemy from his opinion of the political forces, parties and currents active within the resistance.
Afif does not need anyone to explain to him the reality of what is happening around us today. He is familiar with the woes of Syria’s people, yet can sense the smell of the forces of death that are enveloping the country. And he is well versed in Lebanon’s political divisions. Nothing ever made him don a sectarian or confessional cloak to appease relatives, friends, colleagues or loved ones, or abandon the leftist convictions that underpin his concern for people’s needs. Yet he managed throughout to preserve his connection to the Arqoub, and to the Chebaa Farms to the south — which he knew as Lebanese soil before the state declared it to be so, and before the Islamic resistance affirmed our everlasting right to it. Afif did not hesitate for a moment to do what was needed to confront the enemy and its collaborators.
Being as he is, Afif was not neutral on the issue of collaborators — either those who tortured and murdered and then surfaced as though nothing had happened; those who managed to secure politicized sentences from the Lebanese judiciary mirroring the miserable state of the country; or those who continue to enjoy the protection of sectarian bosses and ill-gotten money.
After the great liberation of 2000, Afif did not bear arms. Nor did he exact revenge against collaborators, though he knew their faces and names, and where they slept and how they travelled, and had a thousand scores to settle with them. But having not kept quiet about the resistance’s unwelcome truths, Afif Diab was not going to keep quiet about the case of Ziad al-Homsi.
It is an outrage, even in this insane land, for Afif to be put on trial and assaulted for speaking out against yet more privileged treatment, yet more lies, and yet more conspiring against this country.
But neither Afif nor we imagined that the day would come when denouncing an agent becomes an offense, and writing against the acquittal of a collaborator becomes a crime. We did not imagine that a Lebanese police station would refuse to open an investigation and then inform the prosecutor that our assaulted colleague had not been to them, and then that the Minister of Justice would remonstrate against our criticism of and protest at the police’s foot-dragging.
It seems as if we’ve reached the point of no compromise, and from now on must exact our own justice. As for those who attacked Afif, they need only feel constant shame, and remember that nothing in this world will protect them from the punishment they deserve.
Ibrahim al-Amin is editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
How a Freedom Fighter become a Mossad Spy (Read the story in Al-Akbar)
Dear Collaborators: We’re Sorry for Wronging You
We all know Afif Diab as an energetic journalist who keeps track of events through his work at Al-Akhbar, and previously and simultaneously with al-Nidaa magazine and Sawt al-Shaab radio, as well as with various news agencies and channels and dozens of other journalists.
Afif has not abandoned the convictions that are engraved in his consciousness. He did not pick these up by chance, nor find them in the letterbox at his front door or by a roadside. A son of the Arqoub region, he knows Lebanon better than most. He knows its people and localities and their sensitivities. He also knows how to keep his mind and heart in balance, so he is not swept up by emotions or felled by storms.
But few people, perhaps, know Afif by his other name, Simon. As a young man in his twenties he used to patrol the roads between Beirut, the Bekaa, the South and wherever else the occupation was present. He was among the first to take up arms. He got to know the land, stone by stone, and the people, farmer by farmer, and the features of the landscape, including the malicious eyes.
Afif the resistance fighter had the opportunity, denied to a generation or more, to take up arms for the right reason and aim them in the right direction – every bullet targeting the enemy and its collaborators.
Afif, or Simon, has known who the enemy and its collaborators are ever since it set foot in our land. He never forgot the faces of the resistance fighters he accompanied or transported during their quest for freedom for most of this country’s people; nor the voices of comrades who departed, either for captivity or the grave; nor how people looked under occupation, or their faces on liberation day 12 years ago.
On that day, Afif was one of those who deserved the gratitude of every decent person in this country and the region. Instead he made for his home village in the heart of the Arqoub, and toured the surrounding area to recapture his memories of it all. When Anwar Yaseen was freed from captivity, he took him to the same place and along the same route, two comrades disappearing into the landscape, its silence broken only by the cries of mothers imploring God to protect their sons and bring them safely home.
Afif did not escape when clouds gathered in the sky. He was not overwhelmed by all the voices of sectarianism and regionalism. He was more patient than thousands whose weariness prompted them to flee. He remained close to the people he loved, and for whom he struggled and continues to struggle. He never lost sight of the clear and self-evident: that Israel remains the enemy, and that no domestic turn of events can change that. Yet he could also separate his admiration and respect for the resistance fighters who continued to face down the enemy from his opinion of the political forces, parties and currents active within the resistance.
Afif does not need anyone to explain to him the reality of what is happening around us today. He is familiar with the woes of Syria’s people, yet can sense the smell of the forces of death that are enveloping the country. And he is well versed in Lebanon’s political divisions. Nothing ever made him don a sectarian or confessional cloak to appease relatives, friends, colleagues or loved ones, or abandon the leftist convictions that underpin his concern for people’s needs. Yet he managed throughout to preserve his connection to the Arqoub, and to the Chebaa Farms to the south — which he knew as Lebanese soil before the state declared it to be so, and before the Islamic resistance affirmed our everlasting right to it. Afif did not hesitate for a moment to do what was needed to confront the enemy and its collaborators.
Being as he is, Afif was not neutral on the issue of collaborators — either those who tortured and murdered and then surfaced as though nothing had happened; those who managed to secure politicized sentences from the Lebanese judiciary mirroring the miserable state of the country; or those who continue to enjoy the protection of sectarian bosses and ill-gotten money.
 |
| Traitor Ziad al-Homsi with Hariri family Future Movement Official in Saadnayel Arrested For Spying For Israel |
It is an outrage, even in this insane land, for Afif to be put on trial and assaulted for speaking out against yet more privileged treatment, yet more lies, and yet more conspiring against this country.
But neither Afif nor we imagined that the day would come when denouncing an agent becomes an offense, and writing against the acquittal of a collaborator becomes a crime. We did not imagine that a Lebanese police station would refuse to open an investigation and then inform the prosecutor that our assaulted colleague had not been to them, and then that the Minister of Justice would remonstrate against our criticism of and protest at the police’s foot-dragging.
It seems as if we’ve reached the point of no compromise, and from now on must exact our own justice. As for those who attacked Afif, they need only feel constant shame, and remember that nothing in this world will protect them from the punishment they deserve.
Ibrahim al-Amin is editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
How a Freedom Fighter become a Mossad Spy (Read the story in Al-Akbar)
Dear Collaborators: We’re Sorry for Wronging You
Uprooted Palestinian 
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
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