Thousands of people demonstrated in Beirut on Sunday, calling for an end to sectarianism in Lebanon. The size of the protest (around 8,000, according to Reuters) was considerably larger than a week earlier, when just a few hundred braved bad weather for a similar demonstration...
Blog archive: Lebanon
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7th March 2011
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23rd October 2010A symposium was held in Beirut earlier this month under the auspices of the Florida-based International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association – basically aimed at promoting Lebanon as a "gay" tourist destination. Some members of Lebanon's LGBT community were uneasy about it (to say the...
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14th October 2010I won't say much about Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon, which is being extensively covered elsewhere. But I was delighted to see that Memri, the "media research institute" described by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as an indispensable tool, has got another scoop. ...
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11th August 2010Some reactions to Nasrallah's press conference in Lebanon on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Writing in the Daily Star, Rami Khouri says the Hizbullah leader had four related aims when he made his statement accusing Israel: Deflect attention from the widely...
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9th August 2010Hassan Nasrallah's statement tonight was every bit as dramatic as his broadcast during the 2006 war when he announced than an Israeli naval vessel, hit by Hizbullah, was ablaze off Beirut. The drama this time came from his revelation that for a number of years Hizbullah has been able to...
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5th August 2010Good fences make good neighbours, according to an old proverb – the idea being that friction is less likely if those on both sides of the line know exactly where they stand. On that basis, the border fence between Israel and Lebanon is a bad one ... Read my full article at Comment Is Free...
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28th July 2010Following recent debates about the use of gay rights to "pinkwash" Israel's image (Toronto Pride, Madrid Pride, US Social Forum, etc), Aeyal Gross, associate professor of law at Tel-Aviv university, has written an interesting and level-headed essay: "Israeli GLBT...
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29th June 2010Three people in their twenties were arrested in Lebanon yesterday for allegedly defaming President Michel Sleiman on Facebook. A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a fourth person,AFP reports: The justice ministry said the case met the requirements for a slander and...
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15th June 2010This was the view from my hotel room in Beirut last week. Two men, with not so much as a hard hat or a ladder between them, were erecting a scaffolding at the Phoenicia Hotel on the opposite side of the road. They only used planks on the level where they were...
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27th May 2010The International Crisis Group issued a strongly-worded reportyesterday on the Sunni community in Lebanon and the Hariri family's Future movement. In order to combat sectarianism, it says, prime minister Saad Hariri will have to "relinquish his de facto position as Sunni leader" and...
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18th May 2010Photo: mozzoom The International Day Against Homophobia (Idaho) was observed in Beirut on Sunday with a programme of events. (I think Lebanon was the only Arab country where this happened, though there may have been something in Morocco.) A set of photos...
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11th May 2010Next Sunday, May 16, is the International Day Against Homophobia, or Idaho for short. Uniquely among the Arab countries, it will be observed in Beirut (as it has been for several years now). Rather controversially, the title of this year's Idaho event...
