Monkey Business

Today’s impressive turnout was tarnished by useless, sometimes harmful gimmicks.

Apparently, a lot of people showed up. Video footage shows thousands and thousands of people defying terror to pay homage to a great man. The message was clear: the anti-Syrian majority is definitely not “fictional”.

Yet something wasn’t quite right. The event at times seemed personal and unprofessional, and I’m not talking about Nazek’s never-ending, sleep inducing ‘poem’.

It is understandable when the public gets carried away by emotion, but I still can’t see the benefits of a (otherwise respected) public speaker calling another country’s leader a monkey (and a snake, and a whale, half a man, Israeli product…etc).

Don’t get me wrong: Assad is indeed a despicable, loathsome murderer, but I still can’t understand why devote your time writing a speech that is the equivalent of poking your nose at someone.

Why lose the calm confidence? Why bring down the level of discourse? Sure the public got a blast, but why risk an irrational reaction from next door’s dictator? What is Walid Jumblat’s plan for countering a Syrian border closure for example? Would he compensate our exporters?

The other side is busy winning hearts and minds by writing editorials in newspapers, and all we’re doing is behaving like buffoons.