On Memorial Day we remember our fellow Americans who passed away. We visit cemeteries, lay flowers and wreaths, and reflect over loved ones who are no longer with us. We pay special homage to our soldiers who never returned alive from the battlefields and peacekeeping missions where America sent them in defense of the nation, the principles upon which it is founded, and the freedom of other nations struggling under tyranny. They went to defend the ideals of our shared humanity, and gave their lives. Who among us, on days like this, can dare to even imagine what they went through, and the courage it took them to leave familiar places and people to go brave uncertainty?

On a day like Memorial Day, NEAL remembers those American soldiers, teachers, nurses, academics, university administrators, clergymen, civil servants, and others who gave their lives in the land of the Biblical cedars for no other purpose than to help Lebanon regain its liberty and resume its mission as a land of dialogue between nations and religions. We remember the 241 US marines who, on October 23, 1983 in Beirut, fell victim to the first suicide terrorist bombing on record. We remember the dead of the American Embassy twice bombed in Beirut in the mid-1980s. We remember Dean Stethem, the US Navy diver who was killed in 1985 on TWA flight 847 and his body dumped on Beirut airport tarmac. We remember Colonel William Higgins, William Buckley and Peter Kilburn who were kidnapped and killed by their captors. We remember American University of Beirut President Malcolm Kerr who was assassinated in his office at the most prestigious American institution outside the US. We remember those of the American hostages who never made it from the chains of inhumanity and barbarity. We remember US ambassador to Beirut, Francis Meloy, who was killed in 1976 when Syria entered Lebanon. We remember Bonnie Weatherall, the American nurse killed in Sidon last November. And many many others.

To State Department Arabists and other apologists of Syria’s 30-year-long torture of Lebanon, including the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and Lebanese-American US Congressmen Darrell Issa, Ray LaHood, and Nick Rahall, all of whom fight tooth and nail to defend Syria’s interests in this country, we say: shame on you for supporting the troika of evil that is responsible for all Americans murdered in Lebanon: Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah.

Redeem yourselves by support the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 (HR 1828 and S 982) not only because it is vital to the national security interests of the United States, but in memory of our peaceful heroes and soldiers who fell at the hands of the hate-mongers, religious fascists, racists, and purveyors of terror in Damascus, Beirut, and Tehran.

New England Americans for Lebanon

Long Live Free Lebanon