What's the matter Mr. Chapter director? I was told that you raised your voice in front of those outranking you at the headquarters.
He was looking angrily at me. However, his anger didn't show any signs of hatred, which accompanies anger most of the time. I felt like I was in front of my father. I felt like a brother in front of his older brother. I felt like somebody who is about to be affectionately warned about a mistake he made.
His words emptied the anger from within me. I felt miserable and ashamed from the way he looked at me. I was perplexed and couldn't answer. Finally I got my courage and said:
For three days now I toured walking on all party cells and groups in Marjaayun and the peaks of Mt. Harmon. I didn't have time to shave as you can see Sir. Now I am ashamed to return and tell our people that we are not participating in the war. Why didn't Headquarters send a word to me regarding this so that I could have stopped registering volunteers? Why is the party taking this stance regarding Palestine? This is something that I and many party members couldn't understand. I was surprised when the vice director of defense told me that we aren't going to participate in the battle. I momentarily and unintentionally exploded in front of him. Yes, I put him in a corner and went out. I will be found a criminal in front of SSNP members in my own area.
I will talk about that and about the party's stance in a moment. However, before that, I want you to know that under no circumstances you have the right to raise your voice in front of those who outrank you in the party. That is against the rules of our organization. What would you do if somebody bellow your rank spoke like that to you? Do you accept such behavior in your chapter?
Sir, I know that I want to say for the record that I have done nothing like this throughout my party membership
I know how disciplined you are and I am also aware that you will struggle to the end for our party and its causes. However, I can't accept what happened and pretend that it didn't happen. This time I will ask you to write an apology letter to the person you insulted at headquarters
But sir, he knows me very well. I think he understood me and knows that my intentions were pure.
Don't be the judge of other people's feelings. The issue is not a personal one with the outranking member in question. It is something that goes to the core of our organization. I want our party members to be highly disciplined and each of them to be an example to the others.
Sir, I will write the apology letter
Write it and leave it at headquarters before returning to Marjaayun. Give it directly to the vise director.
Then he continued:
Now let us return to the party's stance that you say you and other SSNP members didn't understand. This means that you also didn't understand me when I proclaimed that “the southern catastrophe has already happened.” Not only you didn't understand me, but you went even further in not distributing my two letters to part members and the population because you thought that I was very pessimistic and that I was perhaps exaggerating. However, let me tell you that the opposite was true. All events show that the Arab governments were not serious in their effort to liberate Palestine. Al this hoopla from the newspapers and radio stations about the big preparation and the huge armies advancing from all sides towards Palestine was nothing but a big lie to agitate the people. The Jews had planned in a very systematic, disciplined and scientific manner. We have a saying that “a letter can be read from its headline. These reactionary Arab governments with their personal politics are not at par to fight the Jews regardless that the latter are fewer in number. These Arab governments are not governments that can plan a war, let alone to seriously administer one... Do the people really feel that it is in a war? Or that the war is in one valley and they are in another? Tell me, did you see if our country is in a state of war? When there is a war being announced the people must feel it and support it. Did you feel anything in this regard in Marjaayun, so near to the battlefront? Did you see the Lebanese army attacking Palestine at the midnight appointment? Or was it that the soldiers remained in their barracks?
We waited further than midnight-said comrade Rahhal-we waited for the magnificent attack to start. We saw nothing.
And nothing will you see. Even if you had waited for a week or two after the agreed upon hour and even if you saw some shaggy troops movements, they would only be the acts of a drama being played along the border and nothing else.
Sir, regardless of this you were too quick to announce that the Palestinian Issue will end in a catastrophe and that we will lose Palestine
That is emotional talk only. Reality will come to prove it. When I announced what I announced I didn't do that out of pessimism but out of calculated and analytical thinking. I know that wars can't be won with emotions alone. Nor can they be fought with old and reactionary politics. I don't even hide from you my doubt that some of the Arab leaders were conspiring with the Jews. Thus, they hid their heads in the soil [like ostriches do] so that their retreat would not be considered a shame and working with the enemy itself.
But Sir if this was the stance of the Arab governments why doesn't our party form brigades of its volunteer members and send them to Palestine to fight and resurrect the nation's pride?
The party tried to do that. It also took upon itself the formation of its own platoons to fight under its banner, the Zawbaah [the Hurricane, or the Twister]. However we got the answer from those responsible for the war effort that there is going to be no arms delivered to the SSNP. This was the reason that we were cut from our aim to go south and fight. How can we fight without weapons?
And why can't the party fight with its own weapons. Sir, it was you who taught us not to be afraid of death for the sake of life…
It is true that I taught you not to be afraid of death when it is the road to life. That is right…However, I didn't teach you to die for the sake of death itself. I can't advocate a path that would lead to our members' death and demise and I can't tell them to go and fight without weapons or with outdated weapons. That would mean that I am telling them to go and commit suicide. Let those who announced that they will start-- and who have the means to-- a war to start it. We will be solid in our stance and will not be moved by empty drum beats and trumpets. We will follow the events and watch carefully. Then we will decide what we will do.
It is being said Sir that you are adopting this stance to show your opposition to Arab leaders and governments and to show that they are bankrupt. However, you can't take such a stance toward an issue as important and as central such as the Palestinian Issue.
Who says that except you and the likes of you who are only emotional in their thinking and are quickly taken by superfluous appearances? Those who don't analyze my words and don't understand them can never understand the core of the issue
I am not the only one who thinks that way. There are central committee members of the party who are whispering such things.
