Lebanon

The Buns and Guns café

Ségolène Team Observers — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:18:02 +0200

In Beirut, the restaurant "Buns and Guns" markets its sandwiches by giving them questionable names. Why don’t you try a Kalashnikov burger served on terrorist pita bread? In Lebanon, nobody seems to find the trend shocking or offensive.

This small fast food place opened early June in Dahiyeh, a suburb south of the Lebanese capital. The neighbourhood, heavily targeted during the 2006 war against Israel, is a stronghold of Islamic activity. The restaurant’s owner uses war and dark humour as marketing tools. After crossing a barricade of rice bags in front of the store, the customer sits in a camouflage-printed room and eats to the sound of dropping bombs. The menu, illustrated with photos of weapons, offers a wide array of choices, from a “B-52” to a “Magnum 357” (see video). The restaurant’s motto is “A sandwich to die for”. It’s a successful concept – the restaurant is always full – and Lebanese people don’t seem overly shocked by it.

Report aired on June 12 2008 by Hezbollah's television channel, Al Manar TV. It was transplated and posted on Memri TV, an organisation that depends on the American Middle Eastern Institute.

Samir Qantar – hero for Lebanon, monster for Israel

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:41:34 +0200

In exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped in 2006, the Israeli government released five Lebanese prisoners on Wednesday, some of whom had been imprisoned for murdering civilians. Clearly averse to the resolution, the authorities posted videos on YouTube in both Arabic and English, to remind viewers that the men released are not the heroes that Hezbollah makes them out to be, but cold-blooded killers.

The most famous of the five is Samir Qantar, who was sentenced in 1979 for the murder of three Israeli civilians including a father and his four-year-old daughter. While famed as a hero in Lebanon, he is hated by the vast majority of the population in Israel. The Israeli videos were launched to counteract Hezbollah's efforts at glorifying Qantar as a national hero. There were also 190 Lebanese and Palestinian bodies handed over by the Israeli government as part of the deal.

An end to getting slapped in the face for the Lebanese?

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:00:00 +0200

As dawn broke today, five days of talks between Lebanon's leading politicians on the country's internal crisis finally came to a head, just in time to stop the country from sliding into civil war.

More divided than ever after Hezbollah's military campaign of early May, Lebanon's leading figures — except for the Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah — began negotiations in Doha, Qatar, on May 16. Today they finally came to an agreement, promising the country a president and a new government by Sunday. While the country's leaders talked, the people of Lebanon protested on the streets, exasperated with the situation. Today, they can finally put down their banners.

Lebanese pols battle it out online. But Hezbollah's honcho is not in sight.

Julien — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:03:51 +0100

Material compiled by Marc Daou, our regional editor for the Middle East

'Douma Game,’ a street-combat game, was launched online shortly before President Emile Lahoud quit office following his Nov. 23 term expiration. (the election of his successor had been postponed six times). Inspired by the famous PlayStation game, ‘Tekken’, Douma Game feaures Lebanese politicians of all stripes locked in a battle for survival. One notable omission though, is Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who escapes the call to the boxing ring. For good reason, it seems. The last time he was caricatured on television, there were riots in Beirut. So Douma Game's creator was careful about representing the pro-Iranian party, using one of Nasrallah’s deputies, Hussein Hajj Hassan, instead. Alas, Lebanese bloggers hardly had time to test the game, as it was stripped off-line by its own creator, officially for ‘legal reasons’.