An Open Letter to Patriarch Sfeir from NEAL
04 August 03
NEAL - Boston, Massachusetts

Your Beatitude,

In an August 1, 2003 editorial in An-Nahar, you are quoted as saying "that the Lebanese people have nothing to do with the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act" and criticizing "those who are betting on it against Syria".

With due respect to your position, and as members of the Lebanese Diaspora, we beg to differ with you on these and previous comments (e.g. Al-Hayat, May 11, 2003) you made on the role the United States plays in supporting a free, sovereign, and independent Lebanon. Your qualification in the past of the US Administration in this regard as "extremist" is disingenuous at best and puts you in the position of defending the Syrian dictatorship with all the harm it has caused your own people. As to "the Lebanese people having nothing to do with the bill", our daily interaction with the Lebanese people and the Lebanese American community across the US suggests otherwise, which implies a disturbing disconnect between yourself and the people you claim to represent. The Lebanese American support for the bill is overwhelming, and the pressure the community is applying on its representatives in all 50 states has resulted in a binding congressional majority of co-sponsors now standing behind the legislation. 

Perhaps like you, the resident population in occupied Lebanon supports the bill but is muffled and silenced by fear, and we can understand that. However, it is preferable in this case to remain silent if one cannot speak the truth, because to do otherwise is to rub salt in the wound of the Lebanese people. Those of us who live in countries that respect our right to free speech support the bill because it gives the Lebanese people the hope that you fail to give them. Hope of restoring sovereignty and returning to the Lebanon they were forced to leave. In the past, you were alarmed by the tide of emigration of Lebanonıs youth and you called for measures to stem it. Yet, unless blunt instruments are used, like the Syria Accountability Act, against the tormentors of Lebanon, the countryıs vital force will continue to bleed until a day will come when your churches will be empty of the faithful you now lead.

How can you deny the Lebanese people their natural right to freedom, justice, and life in dignity? How can you deny the Lebanese people their right to use every diplomatic and otherwise peaceful avenue at their disposal to achieve their objectives? The Lebanese people are not in a horse-racing contest for "betting" on the American or the Syrian horse. They are simply driven by the impulse to live in the dignity that all human beings have by birth, and which no one, in the least the Syrian dictatorship, can take away. How long must the Lebanese people wait? What are the accomplishments that have been achieved under the Taef agreement other than further and further down the road of poverty and hopelessness?

Where do we go from here? How many more decades of empty promises and outright lies? These and many questions that remain unanswered, year after year, and after 30 years in which the ambiguous positions of the Church in Lebanon have driven more Lebanese to atheism than at any time in history. Many of the young people who arrive here from Lebanon seeking asylum, freedom, and opportunity have given up on the ideas of salvation, hope, and redemption. They have seen hell and no longer fear it. They expect leadership from a Church that seems to have become part and parcel of the corrupt political establishment, but they just canıt find it.

The American Lebanese have been working very hard for years to change American attitudes, perceptions, and policies about Lebanon. All their work has one focus, and that is the liberation of Lebanon and the restoration of its sovereignty, and we believe that Lebanese sovereignty is your goal too.

But as Lebanese Americans who lobby for and support the bill, we find the label of "betting on the Americans to pressure the Syrians" simply laughable. After all, we are as much Americans as Lebanese, and betting on ourselves is natural and is what we do best! We remain determined to use every tool in our reach to influence the decision-making centers in favor of Lebanon. By the same token, we will not desist from using these same political and diplomatic tools against the Syrian regime as long as it refuses to recognize Lebanonıs right to exist as a nation and as long as it acts to threaten its existence and independence.

The Lebanese people have everything to gain from the Syria Accountability and Lebanon Sovereignty Restoration Act. Conversely, they have nothing to do with the predicament of Syria panicking under mounting American pressures.

The bill is Syriaıs problem and of her own doing because it supports the use of terrorism in conducting its foreign policy, it seeks to acquire chemical and biological weapons, and it continues to illegally occupy Lebanon. The Syrian regime has to understand that it will not liberate the Golan with Lebanese blood, and that its occupation of Lebanon is doomed to fail as it has for the past 30 years. Syria must leave Lebanon alone, establish diplomatic relations with it like all civilized and independent neighbors do, and resolve its problem with Israel on its own and not over the backs of the Lebanese people.  The Syria Accountability and Lebanon Sovereignty Restoration Act goes a long way to help Syria reach this conclusion.

We are very proud to contribute to the efforts of the Lebanese American community leading to the overwhelming support for the bill in both houses of the US Congress, and eagerly await its inevitable passage into law. Your decision to deny its importance to the Lebanese people is immaterial to its success or failure. In the end, history will judge you for the path you chose and whether you lived up to your obligations as a leader. For now, and with the short hindsight we have on this moment in Lebanonıs history, the Church has failed its people by hiding behind its religious cloak to avoid its political responsibilities. Unless the principle of the separation of church and state is one day adopted in Lebanon, you remain as much a political leader ­ albeit an unelected one ­ as a religious one, and like the other politicians of Lebanon you have failed your people. For our part, our simple hope is that one day soon many of us who chose a life of exile to escape the Syrian Gulag will return to reaffirm Lebanonıs universal identity.

Long Live Free Lebanon