This is how we brew it: A culturally caffeinated guide on International Coffee Day

Copyright ABC Photo Archives

By David Mouriquand

Published on 01/10/2024 - EURONEWS

Today of all days, it’s time to be livin’ la vida mocha...

Happy International Coffee Day, a day dedicated to the promotion and celebration of that magic varnish remover that gives you the jolt you so badly need in the morning.

Whether you like it black, au lait, iced, or like several members of the Euronews Culture team, are partial to a café bombón (a shot of coffee with condensed milk at the bottom), coffee takes centre stage on most days. That said, the International Coffee Organization wishes to not only champion Go Juice but to promote fair trade coffee.

This year, it’s all about “embracing collaboration for collective action,” as the organisation highlights the often unseen collaboration that brings us our favourite cup: “In 2025, a challenging year around the globe, we reaffirm our commitment to walk side by side, in favour of the common good. Every act of knowledge sharing, every joint effort, and every mutual support initiative paves the way towards a resilient, inclusive and thriving coffee sector. That's why our central theme to celebrate the International Coffee Day this year is to embrace collaboration more than ever."

Time for us here at Euronews Culture to share our cultural guide to drinking coffee. So, while you’re enjoying your very own Frapper’s Delight, consider the following music, films, series, books, snacks and facts that can potentialise your cup.

Best song to listen to with your coffee: Otis Redding – 'Cigarettes and Coffee

An oldie but a goodie. Plus, everything is a good excuse to listen to the soul legend. Released in 1966, this beautifully simple but effective song about a man and a woman chatting over late-night coffee and cancer sticks is tailormade for enjoying your jitter juice – at whatever time of day.

“It’s early in the morning / About a quarter til three / I’m sitting here talking with my baby / Over cigarettes and coffee.”

Essentially an ode to the simple things in life and how we need to remember to enjoy what some foolishly dismiss as trivial, the song is also about that moment when you realise there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.

“And I've got you / And you've got me / And we'll have each other / And we don't, we don't want nothing but joy, y'all / Nothing but joy,” concludes the song. A coincidence that joy is indirectly equated to coffee? We think not.

Best song to listen to with your coffee – Pt 2: Sabrina Carpenter – 'Espresso'

There are so many coffee songs out there - you wouldn’t begrudge us a second pick, would you?

From Ella Fitzgerald’s 'Black Coffee' to Bob Dylan’s ‘One More Cup of Coffee’ via Blur’s 'Coffee & TV' and The Beastie Boys’ 'Intergalactic' (“I like my sugar with coffee and cream!”), the options for our second pick were numerous. But even a year since it was released, Sabrina Carpenter’s earworm deserves an inclusion on this list.

After all, no song in recent memory has done for coffee what ‘Espresso’ has – on top of reminding everyone that it’s not ‘expresso’.

We're choosing to interpret the hit song's lyrics as equating the feeling of attraction to the addictive (and sleepless) state caused by caffeine. Message us if you feel differently.

Best film to watch with your coffee: Coffee and Cigarettes

Coffee And Cigarettes MGM

Could it have been anything else?

Sure, we could have picked Heat, with that infamous diner coffee tête à tête between De Niro and Pacino; there’s Holly Golightly drinking from that takeaway coffee cup in the iconic Breakfast at Tiffany’s; the scene in Pulp Fiction when Jules is impressed with Jimmy’s “gourmet” coffee; or Will Ferrell’s Jacobim Mugatu throwing his foamy latte all over Todd in one of the best (and most homoerotic) scenes in Zoolander... But Jim Jarmusch’s superb 2003 anthology film can’t be beaten.

It’s a series of 11 comedic sketches which share coffee and cigarettes as a common thread. Starring Roberto Benigni, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Cate Balnchett, Bill Murray, GZA, RZA and The White Stripes, this quirky and unexpectedly poetic film (especially when Mahler gets played) is the ideal viewing companion with your Cuppa Joe. And before you accuse us of being sponsored by a cigarette company, considering our first song pick, we assure you we haven’t sold out.

Relate

Best series to watch with your coffee: Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks Lynch/Frost Productions - Propaganda Films / Spelling Television

Watch any David Lynch film, and you’ll quickly notice that food always has symbolic importance. Nowhere is this more blatant than in his seminal TV show Twin Peaks.

From cherry pies to doughnuts, the mysterious Garmonbozia and that baguette-administered state of bliss that sends Ben Horne into Proustian ecstasy, everyone is obsessed with food. And it always means something.

Much like asparagus is a harbinger of doom in the series, representing the death of innocence and the dissolution of the family unit, coffee plays an important and frequent role in the show – a far more positive one. It leads Agent Cooper to utter the immortal celebration of coffee that is: “That’s a damn fine cup of coffee” (which he prefers “black like a moonless night”).

Coffee becomes not only the ultimate symbol of goodness but also about the appreciation of life’s simple pleasures. As Coop tells Harry: “I’m going to let you in on a little secret: every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it; don’t wait for it; just let it happen. It could be a new shirt in a men’s store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black, coffee.” 

In Twin Peaks, food and coffee has a direct correlation to the virtue of characters, and our hero Cooper’s childish wonderment when he indulges in pies and sips the perfect cup of Java The Hutt is a quasi-religious experience for him, and essentially the epitome of integrity and kindne

Lynch never hid his own personal love for coffee: he was reportedly a 20 a day man, and once launched his very own coffee brand. For him and his characters, coffee seemed to be a way to be present in the moment. To come full circle, it’s no surprise that Otis Redding features on the soundtrack of Twin Peaks: The Return...

Related

• Nostalgia and cherry pie: Finding solace from anxiety at Twin Peaks' Double R diner
• No neat answers for David Lynch: How my scariest scene in Twin Peaks reminds me to let go

Best series to watch with your coffee – Pt 2: Friends

Friends NBC

Much like Cooper’s love of coffee reveals a curious man who enjoys the moment, connection and community, coffee serves as the great unifier in the hit 90s show Friends. It’s basically the seventh friend, who gathers our six favourite New Yorkers in Central Perk.

Quite how they could spend that much time in the fictional coffeehouse with full-time jobs is still a mystery... And how in Regina Phalange's good name they could afford to spend that much money on coffee as well as keep up the rent on those apartments is also quite the headscratcher.

However, coffee plays an important role in the 10 seasons and 236 episodes of the show, highlighting the importance of social connections and stressing how a communal experience is a soothing moment of conviviality, one that can make life’s troubles seem trivial – even for just a few moments.

Coffee also gave viewers one of the most underappreciated lines in the show: Phoebe’s then squeeze Roger, a psychiatrist, sits in Central Perk and dishes his candid thoughts on the group of mates: “This kind of co-dependent, emotionally stunted, sitting in your stupid coffee house with your stupid big cups which, I'm sorry, might as well have nipples on them, and you're like all 'Oh, define me! Define me! Love me, I need love!"

There’s someone who needed more coffee. Decaf though. Hold the nipples.

Best book to read with your coffee: “Before The Coffee Gets Cold” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Before the Coffee Gets Cold Picador - Canva

This novel by Japanese author Toshikazu Kawagushi turns 10 this year and it's well worth celebrating. It tells the story of a café in Tokyo, Funiculi Funicula, that allows its customers to time travel and interact with people form their past, including dead loved ones, or even poeple in the future. They can do this from one specific seat in the café and only for the duration of a cup of coffee.

Specifically, they have to return to the present before their cup of coffee... you guessed it, gets cold.

Whether it’s a businesswoman who tries to repair her relationship with her ex-boyfriend; a customer trying to find a lost letter from her husband; a man attempting to talk with his sister; or one of the café owners who endeavours to talk to her unborn daughter, this gorgeous and poetic book has a simple but resonant message: the past is the past, while the future remains open to all possibilities. It asks the question: ‘How do you choose to spend your time?’ With coffee being the one (necessary) constant. The ends justify the beans.

Best coffee table book to browse with your coffee: “Crap Taxidermy” by Kat Su

Crap Taxidermy Cassell - Canva

96 pages of spectacularly bad attempts at taxidermy. And it gets funnier with each page flick.

Kat Su is also the creator of the website Crappy Taxidermy, and we warn you – once you’re on there, it’s hard to stop scrolling.

Best snack to have with your coffee: Hard cheeses

Cheese + coffee = joy Canva

Coffee goes with everything – scrambled eggs, bacon, doughnuts, bagels, pancakes, chocolate, fruit of all kinds and sizes... And who could forget the dependable biscuit or biscotti...

Tapioca and rice pudding works too, especially when you add some vanilla or cinnamon to the mix, as those flavours go well with a dark roast coffee.

But did you know that coffee and hard cheeses make for the perfect pairing? Whether it’s aged Swiss cheese, a mature cheddar or a fruitier tomme des Aravis, when you combine strong coffee with a nice slice of intense-tasting cheese, it’s a combination for the ages – one which unearths hitherto unappreciated aromas and levels to the curd.

Bean there, done that? Good for you. If not, try it out sometime.

Best recipe to make when you’re done drinking coffee: Espresso meringata

The ideal coffee recipe Canva

Once you’re done with your cup of Espresso Patronum and have made good on our cheese recommendation, the options are endless if you fancy another coffee kick

Desserts are your go-to: coffee cake, tiramisu, coffee brownies, torta, cofee crème brulée... But for our money, get thee baking an espresso meringata. It’s a decadent meal-ender with layers of meringue and softened coffee gelato, all topped with caramel sauce and some crushed coffee beans scattered on top...

If you’re salivating right now, you’re only human.

Best facts to know about coffee

Favourite coffee facts Canva

To send you off on a high, here are 10 of our favourite coffee facts: 

1. Coffee was discovered in the 1500s by goat herders, who noticed the animals eating the fruit and getting all riled up, dancing and unable to sleep. And yes, we say fruit. Because...  

2. Coffee beans aren’t beans – they're the pit of a fruit, the coffee cherry. 

3. The word "coffee" comes from the Arabic word “qahwah”, which referred to a type of wine. The word became “khave” (used by Ottoman Turks) and then “koffie” from the Dutch.  

4. Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world. Native to Indonesia, the coffee is roasted after being eaten, digested and pooped out by the Palm Civet – a musang native to southeast Asia. Because it’s naturally fermented through the animal’s intestines, and therefore has a distinctive flavour, genuine Kopi Luwak beans will set you back about €540 per 0.50kg.  

5. It’s not just David Lynch who loved his brew – Beethoven was apparently obsessed and used to count each bean that went into his coffee. The ideal number per cup for the composer? Reportedly 60.

6. Brazil may grow the most, but it’s the Netherlands which consumes the most coffee in the world, followed by Finland and Sweden. Speaking of which...

7. Coffee was once banned in the 18th century by Sweden, as the government thought it stimulated radical thinking.

8. The first home espresso machine was invented in 1938 by Italian inventor Achille Gaggia – think of him today.

9. In 2023, the world consumed 173.1 million bags of coffee.

10. If you're really cool and not averse to a nerdy project, ever thought about counting who drinks the most coffee in the series Friends? Just us? OK... Well, it's Phoebe who downs the most cups of liquid gold. Now you know.

Happy International Coffee Day!

 

Deja vu-Lebanon

43rd commemoration of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Sabra Shatilla

by Heather Stroud / September 1st, 2025

In 1982 the world watched as Israeli troops invaded Lebanon, taking over the capital city of Beirut. The Americans and International Community made a deal with Israel that if the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) withdrew from Lebanon, Israel would retreat from Beirut.

Under a guarantee that the women, children and elderly would be protected by an International peace keeping force, all Palestinian men of fighting age left Lebanon for foreign shores. What happened after the PLO left is well documented. September 1982, Israeli forces surrounded Sabra/Shatilla allowing their proxy Christian Phalange militia to massacre over three thousand civilians.

There are credible witness accounts of rapes of young girls, mass slaughter, and incidents of pregnant women having their unborn babies ripped from their wombs. Israel provided bulldozers to scoop up the bodies and bury them in mass graves. Palestinians in Shatilla Refugee Camp, describe night as becoming day, because the IDF fired flares to light up the sky making escape for many Palestinian civilians impossible. The massacre lasted three days before the US and international community ordered a halt.

Forty three years have passed: the US, along with their allies Saudi Arabia and Israel, are telling the Lebanese they should disarm the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. On this occasion there is no requirement for Israel to stop it’s military attacks in South Lebanon and the Bekka Valley. There is no promise of stopping the Al-Jolani, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) attacks on the northern broader of Lebanon, or the eastern border region. The Lebanese are being told that disarming Hezbollah will be better for them since Israel is an ally of the West, as is Al-Jolani, (formerly ISIS) the newly recognised leader of Syria.

Western mainstream media reports on the current US demands are deplete of historical context. There is no recognition that Hezbollah represents a third of the Lebanese Government and the role it plays in protecting the sovereignty of Lebanese territory. There is no mention either, of Israel’s expansionist ambitions of establishing its Greater Israel (Eretz Yisrael), even though the Israeli political leadership speak openly about it.

Hezbollah formed as a direct result of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the massacre of Palestinian civilians. Ordinary Lebanese citizens – teachers, doctors, builders, tradesmen and so forth, joined Hezbollah in order to create a resistance movement capable of protecting Lebanon from Israel’s recurring attacks on their country.

Israel’s ambition to expand its territorial borders into all of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, connects the people of these three countries in a bond of brotherhood.

No American, Saudi or Israeli official has a right to dictate policy to the Lebanese on how they should govern their country. They have no right to interfere on matters relating to security and defence. Only the Lebanese Government, with the full support of the people, have a right to make such decisions.

Political Zionism, is a fundamentalist doctrine that holds to the belief that historic Palestine and beyond, belongs to the Jews. The implementation of this doctrine has resulted in a settler colonialist enterprise that is supported financially and militarily by the US, Christian Evangelicals and most of the Western Establishment. Missing from this enterprise for it to be legally and morally binding, however was the pre-requisite that the transfer of statehood from Palestine to Israel be ratified by the people whose country was requisitioned.

Resistance Movements that have grown out of this initial injustice and the humanitarian crimes committed over the last hundred years by modern-day Zionist Israel, have been labelled as terrorist organizations by Israel, US, and its close allies. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Ansarullah and more recently Palestine Action, a U.K. group, all fall within this framework of being a proscribed terrorist organization, hence anyone who speaks out in support of their actions is arrested under section 13 of the terrorism act of 2000.

It has become evident that International Law, once perceived as a moral law set up to address international war crimes, has, in the case of Israel, been repeatedly undermined. The International Court of Justice in coming to the conclusion that plausible genocide was taking place in Gaza, along with the International Criminal Court at The Hague, have faced enormous political opposition in their attempt to give the proper name to the crime of genocide and serve arrest warrants on those deemed guilty.

In International Law those who live under occupation- (and in the case of Palestinians under a brutal genocidal occupation,) have a legal and moral right to resist that occupation in whatever form they decide – including armed resistance. As a deeply criminal occupying power, Israel does not have the right to defend itself against those under its occupation. Furthermore, in International Law, all states and movements that are aware that a genocide is being committed are obligated to take action to prevent that genocide from continuing.

In contrast, to the resistance movements that have found themselves listed as terrorist, it is well documented that the US, along with UK and Israeli, have at different times, financed, trained and supported mercenary terrorist militants, such as al-Jolani’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), ISIS, and Al-Qaeda.

The International infrastructure is geared toward sustaining the ability for israel to commit genocide and expand into its neighbouring countries . For justice to ever be achieved, the legitimacy of resistance movements needs to be recognised. Lebanon is currently being given the message: ‘go along with our demands to disarm Hezbollah or resist and face the consequences’. In reality, as with the withdrawal of the PLO from Lebanon in 1982, there are no guarantees that Lebanon will be safe from Israeli military incursion and occupation.

Given the current threat posed by Israel’s clear expansionist ambitions, disarming Hezbollah would be akin to leaving the back gate open for the thieves to enter. Most Lebanese support Hezbollah, including non-Shia. Short of an absolute dismantlement of the Zionist Israeli enterprise it is unlikely that Hezbollah will agree to disarm.

 

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Heather Stroud, the author of The Ghost Locust and Abraham's Children, has been involved in human rights issues for a number of years. She lives in Ryedale where she is increasingly drawn into campaigns to keep the environment free from the industrialization and contamination of fracking. Read other articles by Heather.

Hezbollah demystified

Despite relentless Israeli attempts to misrepresent and dismantle Hezbollah, the organization has endured. A look at the group's history and goals explains its enduring power and shows how much of what’s said in Western media is not true.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 November 15, 2024 

MONDOWEISS
A Palestinian man waves Hezbollah’ flag during a rally in Gaza city on January 28, 2015, after two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper were killed in an exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel. The soldiers were killed when Hezbollah fired a missile at a convoy of Israeli military vehicles on the frontier with Lebanon. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)


Hezbollah, Arabic for “The Party of God”, also named “The Islamic Resistance of Lebanon,” has been increasingly making headlines in recent months, as Israel continues its war on Lebanon. Earlier this week, Israel’s new war minister Yizrael Katz announced the “defeat” of Hezbollah. The group responded with unprecedented rocket barrages and more drone attacks on Haifa and Tel Aviv, showcasing its fighting capacity.

In early October, Israel started its offensive on Lebanon with the pager explosion attacks that killed dozens of Lebanese, mostly civilians. The attacks were followed by a series of assassinations of Hezbollah’s top military leaders, culminating with the assassination of Hezbollah’s secretary general Hasan Nasrallah, and then of the strongest candidate to succeed him, Hezbollah’s executive council chief, Hashem Safiyyudin. Israel then began a massive bombing campaign on the south of Lebanon, which expanded to the Beqaa Valley and Mount Lebanon, allegedly targeting Hezbollah’s rocket arsenals.

But Hezbollah didn’t collapse. On the contrary, it has been increasing its military action on a daily basis, introducing farther-reaching and heavier rockets to the fight, and offering a stiff resistance to Israeli incursion attempts in the south.

As during the ten-year-long Syrian war, in which Hezbollah played a major role, and as in 2006, when Hezbollah fought off another Israeli offensive on Lebanon, the group has become the object of speculations, curiosity and contradictory narratives about it. So, who is Hezbollah? What does it want? How does it work? And how much of what is said about it in the West and the media is true?
Lebanese, Shia, or pro-Palestinian?

In a way, Hezbollah is the product of the crossing of political, sectarian, class, and regional conflicts in Lebanon in the 1980s. The group was born as a response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982, but its roots go back to the Shia movement that started as a social protest movement. Most of the founders of Hezbollah had made their first steps as activists in the ranks of the ‘Movement of the deprived’, started by the Iranian-Lebanese cleric and social leader Mousa Sadr in the mid 1970s, when the Shia were among the most marginalized and impoverished communities in Lebanon.

As Israel repeatedly attacked Lebanon to counter Palestinian resistance fighters based in the south of the country, Mousa Sadr was among the first to call for organized Lebanese resistance, and founded the ‘Legions of Lebanese Resistance’, which acronym in Arabic reads ‘Amal’, that also means ‘Hope’. The group soon became the Shia militia engaged in the civil war, especially after Sadr’s disappearance in 1978.

After Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut in 1982, the Lebanese communist party launched the ‘Lebanese National Resistance Front’ that was joined by other leftist and nationalist parties, and became the main resistance force to Israel. It is then that several Islamic activists from Amal, other Shia groups, charities, mosques, and neighborhood associations met in Al-Muntazar Islamic religious school in the city of Baalbek, and decided that they needed an Islamic force dedicated only to resist Israeli occupation. They named it ‘Hezbollah’, in reference to verse 56 of the surat 5 of the Quran, which says that “The partisans of [or those loyal to] God will be victorious.”

The founding group had two things in common: the priority of resistance to Israel, putting aside all other political differences, and their agreement on who their religious reference should be. The ‘religious reference’ is a centuries-old Shia tradition, where every community chooses a religious scholar that meets certain qualifications, and they accept their religious judgment in major issues in which the community can’t reach agreement. The founding members of Hezbollah who met in Baalbek agreed that they accepted, as religious reference, the Iranian cleric and leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.
“Iranian proxy”?

Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran has always been a contentious topic, as the group has been accused of being Iran’s proxy in Lebanon and in the region. However, the relationship between Hezbollah’s roots and Iran is older than the establishment of the current Iranian regime and more complex than it is often presented. In fact, it was Lebanese religious scholars, mystics, and preachers from Mount Amel, known today as the south of Lebanon, who introduced Shiism to Iran in the 17th century. The bond between Shiites in both countries continued, exchanging religious leaders, scholars and students, and forming family links. But in 1982, that relationship took on a new level.

As Israeli forces besieged Beirut, the recently-established Islamic republic of Iran sent members of its revolutionary guard to nearby Syria and offered the Syrian government to help fight the Israeli invasion. That Iranian force later changed its mission, after it became clear that Israel was not planning to invade Syria, and began to offer training to any Lebanese who wanted to resist the occupation. The newborn organization, Hezbollah, became the main recruiter of volunteers, and the main organizer of the newly trained fighters, and thus was able to grow its militant body in a short time. That relationship between the Lebanese group and the Iranian revolutionary guard grew, and continued to this day.

However, Hezbollah’s late leader Hasan Nasrallah explained multiple times in media interviews the distinction between the group’s relationship to the Iranian state and to its supreme leader. According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah considers Iran as a country a ”friend and ally”, while it considers the supreme leader, Khomeini and his successor Khamenei, its “religious reference” to whom it goes back only in matters that require a religious ruling to decide. This distinction remains blurry to many, as the supreme leader is also the head of the state in Iran, and because on the ideological level, he is also the “religious reference” of the Iranian state. However, other Lebanese parties have more unbalanced, dependent, and explicit relations to foreign countries. One example is the relation between Saudi Arabia and the ‘Future’ party of the assassinated Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, which competes to represent the Sunni community. Another is the far-right anti-Palestinian Lebanese Phalanges party, who monopolized the representation of Maronite Christians during the civil war, and its relations with the US, France, and even Israel itself during the 1982 invasion. A complex context which makes Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran far from strange in the Lebanese political culture.
Hezbollah in politics

In its forty-two years of existence so far, Hezbollah has evolved as a major political force in Lebanon. It remained only a resistance movement until 1995, when it ran for parliamentary elections for the first time. At the time, the Lebanese civil war had just ended, and the new generation of Lebanese youth were looking for something new to believe in and to be united around, and the battle for the occupied south provided them that, increasing Hezbollah’s popularity. The group had also begun to develop social programs to assist the families of its fallen fighters, like health care institutions and schools, which also provided help for poor Lebanese.

This popularity increased even more after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in the year 2000, which marked the first unconditional liberation of an occupied Arab territory. Hezbollah continued to score successes in elections, maintaining a growing presence in the Lebanese parliament and in many municipalities, especially in Shia areas like the south and the Beqaa, forging alliances with other Lebanese parties.

In 2008, Hezbollah struck an alliance agreement with the emergent new Christian force, the ‘Free Patriotic Movement’, led by the veteran former army general Michael Aoun, who ironically had built his heroic image in the 1980s for standing up against Syrian military presence in Lebanon. The unusual Shia-Christian alliance gave Hezbollah unprecedented leverage in Lebanese politics when Aoun became president of Lebanon in 2016. The president in Lebanon’s constitution must be a Maronite Christian, and Hezbollah suddenly had a powerful ally who made it to the presidential Baabda palace, with Hezbollah’s support. This, among other things, like the military capacity of Hezbollah to start or prevent war with Israel, earned it the accusation of controlling the Lebanese state.

However, Hezbollah has never been the only party with such an influence in Lebanese politics, and the overall position of the Lebanese state is unmovable on several issues, against the position of Hezbollah. For instance, Lebanon never accepted Hezbollah’s proposals to seek Iranian assistance to modernize and strengthen the Lebanese army, or to buy fuel from Iran to solve the fuel crisis in the country in 2021. Most importantly, Hezbollah only accessed state offices that can be reached through elections, in the parliament or municipalities, but it was never given any key administrative position in the government agencies, or in the judicial system. This is due, according to Hezbollah and its allies, to external pressure on Lebanon, mostly from western countries, who consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

More than a militant group

A designation of “terrorism” that has put Hezbollah in the crosshairs of successive US administrations, who have systematically given unconditional support to every Israeli war aimed at destroying Hezbollah, even if it caused destruction to the rest of Lebanon. In the latest ongoing attempt, Israel has tried its best by targeting the head of Hezbollah’s pyramid, Nasrallah, and several key leaders surrounding him. However, the Lebanese party’s capacity to sustain the blows and continue the fight, without wavering, has demonstrated that contrary to popular belief about Arab and Middle Eastern organizations, Hezbollah is not an ideological cult led by one or a few charismatic men. In fact, Nasrallah himself said multiple times that Hezbollah did not have a leader, but a “leadership system”, run by institutions, with a continuous process of forming new leaders, ready to step in whenever there is a vacancy.

But the most important aspect of Hezbollah, and the most overlooked too, is that it is far more than a militant group with a cause and guns. Hezbollah represents the tradition and the decades-long struggle of a key component of Lebanese society. It is also the strongest representative, today, of the political choice of resistance to the US and Israel in Lebanon, which is much older and much more diverse than Hezbollah itself. It is also a social force with a strong presence in all fields of Lebanese public life, from politics, to education, to charity, to art and culture. And in times of war, it represents the feelings of large parts of the Lebanese society, that extend beyond the limits of religious communities or political sectarianism.

Israel and the U.S. are interfering in Lebanese politics to oust Hezbollah — here’s why it won’t work

Israel and the U.S. are trying to install an anti-Hezbollah leader as president of Lebanon, hoping to eliminate the military presence of the resistance in southern Lebanon. But it's not the first time Israel has interfered in Lebanese politics.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 November 12, 2024 
MONDOWEISS
Hezbollah supporters attend a mass rally and a televised speech by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, to mark the third anniversary of the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, January 3, 2023. (Photo: Marwan Naamani/dpa via ZUMA Press/APA Images)


In his first speech as Secretary General, the new leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said that the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon had been meeting leaders of Lebanese political parties opposed to Hezbollah. According to Qassem, the ambassador was trying to convince them that Hezbollah’s collapse in the face of Israel’s offensive was imminent, urging the Lebanese parties to oppose Hezbollah.

“You will never see our defeat,” Qassem said, addressing the ambassador, Lisa A. Johnson, directly and ignoring the Lebanese parties in question.

Two weeks earlier, a group of anti-Hezbollah parties gathered in the town of Maarab in Mount Lebanon, the headquarters of the Lebanese Forces — a far-right Christian party headed by its chairman, Samir Geagea. The parties in attendance issued a joint statement that indirectly blamed Iran for pushing Lebanon into a war it had no stake in, hijacking the decision of peace and war in Lebanon, and recruiting Lebanese citizens and using them as soldiers and “human shields.” The latter phrase was a veiled reference to Hezbollah, its social support base, and the people of southern Lebanon in general. The parties in Maarab also called for the election of a new president to the country.

Heading the meeting was Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian known for his brutal suppression of Palestinian and Lebanese adversaries, including Christian rivals, during the Lebanese Civil War that took place between 1975 and 1989. He is also known for his collaboration with Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon after 1982 and for having spent 12 years in a Syrian prison on charges of collaboration with Israel.

Geagea has also been openly voicing his will to run for president of Lebanon, which under the Lebanese constitution must be held by a Christian Maronite. The president’s chair has been vacant for two years now, as the opposing political forces have failed to agree on a candidate. The president in Lebanon is elected by the parliament and thus needs a degree of consensus between represented parties, which has been absent since the latest president, Michel Aoun, finished his term in October 2022.

Aoun was an ally of Hezbollah and represented an important trend of Christian support for the resistance group in Lebanese politics since 2008. During his presidency, Hezbollah’s adversaries in Lebanon, like Geagea, continued to accuse the resistance group of taking over the state, especially during the height of the Syrian Civil War, in which Hezbollah was actively involved in defending the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. After Aoun’s presidency, several political parties were unwilling to accept a president who would be close to Hezbollah and its allies. This presidential vacancy has extended to the current day.

Why the Lebanese presidency is important for Israel

When Israel began its offensive on Lebanon with the exploding pager and electronics attacks in mid-September, some Lebanese politicians seemed to have sensed that the influential role of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics was approaching its end. Calls to elect a new president increased, as the U.S. envoy, Amos Hochstein, brought his plan for a ceasefire.

Hochstein’s proposal included the retreat of Hezbollah’s fighting units north of the Litani River, essentially clearing Hezbollah’s stronghold in the south, and deploying more Lebanese army forces along the provisional border between Israel and Lebanon.

Hochstein’s plan, however, included another component — he called for electing a new president for Lebanon, even considering it a priority before a ceasefire with Israel.

The president in Lebanon is also the commander-in-chief of the army, which is why many many army chiefs of staff were elected to the presidency in the past. Historically, the president’s relationship with the army’s command influenced the role played by the armed forces, and this relationship has been especially crucial in the case of Hezbollah.

In the last years of Hezbollah’s guerrilla campaign against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon between 1998 and 2000, the Lebanese army played a role in covering safe routes for Hezbollah’s fighters in and out of the occupied area and in holding key positions. This support by the army to Hezbollah’s resistance was the result of the direction and influence of the country’s president, Emile Lahoud, who had served as chief of staff of the army a few years earlier and refused to obey orders to clash with and disarm Hezbollah’s fighters.

The position of the Lebanese president, his influence on the army’s performance, and his relationship with the resistance have always been at the heart of Israeli and U.S. attempts to intervene in Lebanese politics. It is not the first time that the U.S. and Israel have pressured for the election of a new Lebanese president as it is under Israeli attack. The presidency ploy is a worn U.S. tool for attempting to change Lebanon’s political landscape and to make it more Israel-friendly.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied its capital, Beirut, after the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Lebanese parliament met to elect a new president — quite literally, under the watchful eye of Israeli tanks. The parliament building was non-functional, and the Lebanese representatives had to meet with an incomplete quorum in the building of the military school to elect Bashir Gemayel as president.

Gemayel was the leader of the far-right anti-Palestinian Phalange party, or Kataeb. The Phalangists had helped Israel plan the invasion of Lebanon and fought on Israel’s side in the 1982 war. Gemayel had traveled to Israel several times to meet with Israeli leaders and committed to signing a peace treaty with Israel as soon as he became president.

Gemayel was the strongman of the anti-Palestinian Lebanese right, and he was the only leader with enough support and force to carry out Israel’s strategy in Lebanon. His assassination 22 days after his election and before he was sworn in was one of the most devastating blows to Israel’s plans to bring Lebanon under Israeli influence. In revenge for Gemayel’s death, the Phalangist militias entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in the periphery of Beirut under Israeli cover. There, they committed the now infamous Sabra and Shatilla Massacre, slaughtering between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees.

Following the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1989, the parties who had fought against each other entered into a power-sharing arrangement. Meanwhile, the nascent Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah — which started as an offshoot of the Shiite Amal militia during an episode of violence called the War of the Camps — increased its popularity and political influence. This influence grew exponentially after Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Lebanese south, which marked the first victory of an Arab resistance force against Israeli occupation. By the beginning of the 2000s, Hezbollah had become a political party that ran for elections, secured parliamentary representation, and forged alliances with other Lebanese forces. Political divisions in Lebanon began to appear once again on both sides of the question of the resistance, often assimilated by its antagonists to Syrian, and later Iranian, influence in the region.

The identity of Lebanon’s president became a central issue again, especially after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, during which Emile Lahoud’s presidency provided strong political support for Hezbollah. Lahoud finished his term the following year amid strong political division. The state of fragmentation in Lebanese politics was so endemic that the president’s chair remained vacant for an entire year. The crisis was partially resolved with the election of the army’s chief of staff, Michael Suleiman, in 2008, who remained neutral.

Forty-two years after the first election of a Lebanese president at the behest of Israel, not much has changed. Lebanon is again under attack, and the resistance continues to be a central point of division over the future of the country and its position in the broader region. Although Hezbollah insists that its resistance is tied to the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, both Israel and the U.S. continue to look for ways to neutralize Lebanon through internal divisions and political disagreements.

As Israeli army officials begin to voice their demands to end the war — a war that is hitting a wall in the villages and mountains of southern Lebanon — it seems that Hezbollah’s adversaries continue to bet on Israel’s military capacity to bring about a “day after Hezbollah.” Perhaps more confidently than Israel itself.

Thousands of Lebanese mourn slain Christian political official

Byblos (Lebanon) (AFP) – Thousands of Lebanese on Friday mourned a slain Christian political official authorities said was killed by a Syrian gang, with supporters pointing the finger at Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah group.

Issued on: 12/04/2024 - 

Mourners and supporters of the Lebanese Forces wave their party's flag at Sleiman's funeral © Ibrahim CHALHOUB / AFP


Pascal Sleiman was a coordinator in the Byblos (Jbeil) area north of Beirut for the Lebanese Forces (LF) Christian party, which opposes the government in neighbouring Syria and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.

On Monday, the army said that Sleiman, who had gone missing the day before, was killed in a carjacking by Syrian gang members who then took his body across the border.

His party said it would consider Sleiman's death a "political assassination until proven otherwise".

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has denied that his party was involved.

Speaking after Sleiman's funeral, LF leader Samir Geagea called for the "failed, corrupt" authorities in Lebanon to be changed.

Geagea blamed their failure, among other things, on "illegal weapons" -- a barely veiled reference to Hezbollah.

The Iran-backed group is the only party in Lebanon that has kept its weapons arsenal after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, and it wields great influence on the country's political life.

Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in actions opposed by the LF and other parties.

"We don't want to wake up one day, as we did now, and find ourselves involved in a never-ending war," Geagea said Friday.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai, spiritual leader of Lebanon's largest Christian sect, held back tears as he presided over Sleiman's funeral in Byblos.

Outside the St Georges church, LF supporters waved the party's white flag with its cedar tree -- the symbol of Lebanon -- circled in red.

Mourners told AFP they were unconvinced by the army's version that car thieves killed Sleiman.

"This story never convinced me. It is not coherent at all," said Jean Habshi, 50, who came to pay his respects.

"Enough with Hezbollah, enough with the illegal weapons," Roba Hajal, 24, told AFP outside the church.

"If they (Hezbollah) did not kill him, at the very least they allowed the Syrians in. We are all at risk of meeting Pascal's fate," she said.

Lebanon has a long history of political assassinations that have taken place with impunity.

Years of economic meltdown have further strained a weak judiciary that has been widely accused of succumbing to political interference.

Ziad Hawat, an LF lawmaker from Byblos, on Friday called for a "serious, transparent" probe into Sleiman's murder, adding that the party had concerns "based on past experiences".

"We do not want the killer to be known to all," he added, while "remaining unknown to the judiciary".

On Tuesday, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi vowed to get tough on Syrians after several were arrested on suspicion of involvement in Sleiman's killing.

© 2024 AFP

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