Al-Rahi Calls for 'Stripping Hizbullah of Excuses' to Bear Arms

You are absolutely right
We are heading towards fragmentation of the Arab States.
Back in the unknown for 100 years.
Turkey, Israel and Iran taking over if no one wakes up and guide the Arabs.

There is no more an ARAB voice......
This is where we are heading ....uncertain weakness.

Bless You

Allah ytawilna bi 3omrak! God Bless you. That is the words of a leader and I'm proud to have you as the leader of my Church.

Interesting wording...
Rahi asked the UN to to implement resolutions regarding Israel's violations in order to remove any excuses HA has to bear arms.
Reading the title and the vaguish content you would conclude otherwise.

Nice job Naharnet...

I agree with every word he says but not the part about Bashar Assad. A leader with the blood of more than 2000 of his own ppl on his hands cannot be given a second chance. We must call things by its names and stand with the Syrian people in their struggle for freedom.

Most massacres in Iraq where committed by extremists that were harbored and armed in Syria and sent by the Syrian and iranian regimes to disrupt the Iraqi recovery.
We and the Syrian people have the same enemies, the Syrian and iranian regimes and the extremists they support.
Scaring the Christians from the uncertainty of the alternative to Assad is promoted by some misled leaders. Regretfully Al Ra3y is using his position to indirectly defend the barbaric Syrian regime.
To him we say we rather die than be protected by a Monster like Assad

Does El Ra3y believe that Hezbollah will drop its weapons even if israel applies all the UN resolutions and leaves Shebaa and even gives lebanon more than it asks for?
Hezbollah is an ideological project that has nothing to do with israel. The Iranian regime exploited the Israeli issue to implant in Lebanon an armed militia whose sole purpose is to turn Lebanon, sooner or later, into a satellite "islamic republic".
Blaming israel is naive and irresponsible and does perpetrate Hezbollah's false justifications for being armed.

All the totalitarian propaganda about civil wars and fragmentation is mere propaganda for criminals like assad to stay in power. Give him a chance?? Akeed 3am timza7, just today 34 people were killed in Syria. You have to wake up and face the wind.. the people are NOT going to give dictators chances from now on and the christians have to befriend the majorities of the people instead of supporting the dictators to ensure peace and stability, after all christians have been around thousands of years even during the muslim empire. Is Egypt/Tunisia and even Libya fragmenting?? ..and who created these maps anyway? sayks-pico and therefore they are not holly maps and could be redrawn. As for Syria, who in his right head imagines it being fragmented? all the major cities of Syria have clear vast majorities of one color, there will be no division there, rest assured, unless the Alawites keep a small area in the mountains for themselves which would be very stupid and could not survive alone.

Very Dangerous words by Al Ra3i, he is wrongly portraying the Christians as defenders and supporters of the criminal Assad regime (which are the lies that the Assad family regime has tried to propagate themselves), when in fact the Christians just like the others sects have been victims of the Assads 40 year brutal opressive rule. The Christians existed in Syria long before the murderous Assads came to power and will exist for many years after there ouster. The innocent blood being spilled by the brutal regime in Damascus is only on its hands and its direct associates (from all sects) and most importantly on the hands of supporters (i.e. the likes of Russia, China, and of Course the Iranian regime that has its Hezbollah thugs on the ground doing some of the killing). These outrageous claims by Al Ra3i are a prime example why the clergy be them Christian, Muslim, Shiite, Druz, Jews.. or whatever should stay stay out of politics!!

Did Syria give the Christians of Lebanon a chance when they pounded Ashrafieh for 100 days

Seperation of Church (and Mosque, Hussainieh, Temple...) and State has been proven a crucial winning formula for all nations that have made major strides in their economic, social, and developmental growth, as a matter of fact the lack of it has been proven mostly in Lebanon of all places as well as the entire ME.Give the educated inspirational and hopeful new generations a say in shaping their own countries' future. Enough hijacking of religions for personal political ends.ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!

عفوا سيدنا الراعي
مع الاحترام الكامل للموقع الذي تمثلون، هذا الحمل لا يوافق.
اذا كان الخوف من واقع بديل يجرف وجودنا، اشرف لنا ان نمتطي الحق، ولو كان على حساب وجودنا، هكذا علمنا السيد المسيح.
وماذا بعد؟ فرصة ليهوذا وبيلاطوس البنطي؟
فرصة لتجار الهيكل؟ لو كان السيد المسيح يمتلك قاذف صواريخ بدل السوط لما تردد، ليس هناك من موقع وسطي او حيادي في مسألة الحق، اما تجار هيكل، او حملة كلمة الحق.
السيد المسيح كان يدرك تماما ما ينتظره يوم امتطى ذلك الحمار ، او الدابة، باتجاه المدينة، ودخلها، عملية الصلب، مسألة تافهة في سياق التاريخ، في سياق الحق الذي يمثل.
المنطق والمساومة والواقعية في سياق البيع والشراء والبراغماتية السياسية، امور بديهية، ولكن ليس على حساب الحق.
في هذه اللحظة كدت اشعر بخجلي من مارونيتي، ولكن لا، سأرفع رأسي بالحق، الحق هو ضد تجار الهيكل.
الحق هو مع الدماء اللبنانية والسورية البريئة التي تسفك يوميا.
الفرصة هرطقة.

Speak out about Lassa. They are building on church land.

"Stripping Hezbollah of excuses" is wishful thinking at best if not pure naivete. Al Rahi is a man of peace trying to maintain the peace at any cost. He is willing to appease the thugs (Assad/Hezbollah) at any cost. Why? because it is easier to appease the thugs with the gun than to stand up to them as Sfeir has. They are hostage takers, unwilling to yield on the central issue of being the only party in Lebanon that is armed, and have used these arms against fellow Lebanese.

I respect Al Rahi but disagree with his position. In my opinion, he's driven by the old school mentality that says: dictators from minority groups protect other minorities. It is short sighted and will not work because the majority population will resent, boil and ultimately win.

Ya Batrak, don't make deals with the devil. Sooner or later, the cowards will be beaten, and you may find you have alienated those who are most willing to live in peace.

Hell with the Arab voice, Lebanese should care about their Phoenician heritage the most including their only christian state in the middle east.

Did the Lebanese forgot te 30 years of slavery and killing by this regime, the evil regime. Of course the region is better of and much better who ever comes in his place.

Santa Claus makes policy

It is rather naïve to think that Hizbollah has been built using excuses along the way! It is rather the strategic-born thug, of two rogue founding parents: Iran and Syria. It has been bread and raised to look like them and hold power through deception and murder. I find it absolutely ludicrous, that a party that is strongly legally suspected of serial killing in Lebanon, is party to power sharing, shielding itself behind blackmail against the rest of the whole country, and forcing the other communities, who don't have much other choice then , into an appeasement (with the criminal !) strategy! This is a free licence to kill, under the slogan: Submit to my will or die! This is not how societies are built, how long term stability is achieved. As to stripping them from their arms, it would be inviting them to commit a Hara-Kiri, cause they will have no more ' raison d'être' .But even that decision is not in their hands!

Has his Eminence seen on Al Arabyia the cold-blooded public demonstrative murder of a (many!) civilian (s)? Is this another way to adhere to the 10 Commandements !? Are those murdered civilians the biblical sacrificial lambs that will save the rest of the flock?

do not give bashar any chance to escape...take him on a one way ticket to the Hague, put him on trial for all the Arabs to see and make an example of him and hezbolla

the only way to get rid of hezbolla is either internally by the lebanese or externally by israel who will destroy all of lebanon, so get into his little bunker and blow him up to smitherines before israel nukes our country! pay jabal amel some money and he may do it for us!

All Lebanese hate the filthy non-Islamic militia

For once I agree with Bigdig. the articles headline is totally misleading.
Al-Rahi is calling for all UN resolutions to be implemented, those concerning Israel and also those concerning Hezbollah. I think he is naive concerning Hezbollah ever laying down arms, even if all UN resolutions were implemented.

Also he is horribly wrong regarding Syria.

Don’t you ever forget, it is in the blood stream, heritage and honour of Shia or Hizballah to protect human life and minorities especially, giving full freedom of individual faith and freedom. History writes, Sunnis, wahabis, sallafis, killed innocent lives, Christians killed Jews and Jews killed Muslims, but Shia never spelled a single drop of blood. So STOP following devil and Stop talking nonsense, since resistance is a part of Shia faith, and arms they have that no son of devil can take and they are to protect not only themselves but others. Yes, try who may be and taste the blood with no hesitation.

Guys, do not forget in Palestine it was the church that betrayed its christian peoples, these men sold out thyeir land to the Jews!
also do not forget all the abuse the church in Ireland, and US comitted ...
they are not saints and they should not get involved in Politics

At last we have a patriarch who has logic and whose speech is not dictated by any political party! The days of "Abu Samir" are gone and Rahi is opening a new page to the christians and all Lebanese alike. God bless you.

Minorities espcially Chrstians are clearly targed in several predominently muslim arab countries such as Egpt and Iraq. until moderate muslims decisevily stand up against it, and they have yet to do so, every minoriy in the region has to protect itself by any means that it can.....what is happening in the region is not encouraging and may well lead to unpredicatble chaos. The patriarch as head of the maronite church has to worry about this..

@iNcorruptible & biddig: the title is not a sentence, its a title.... 2nd the title should be attracitve at least , 3rd title is not at all distorted, 4th title should not includes everything so that no read the report

very dangerous from monseigneur rahi, it is unfair for the christians to say that they are protected in this orient by dictators and criminals,what happened in irak was the work of the dictators and criminals in syria and iraN....
don't fall in this TRAP , the lebanese christians are not a cattle,going out of this sionist trap is almost impossible.
N.B. time of the dictator moubarak, we were hearing everyday muslim/christian... now i am not even hearing somebody mention it.
THE DICTATOR IN SYRIA WILL GO AWAY AND SYRIA WILL NOT BE FRAGMENTED...

it is all depending on the usa and israel.if they wanted to destroy hizballah they coud have done it long time ago. Let us be realistics and tell the fact. The cia plays games with the whole world. Look at the palestinians they lost their land and are refugees in their own country .does any body cares? No. Yes it looks like the plan is to fragment the whole middle east into cantons. The patriarch is only trying but the plan must go on as directed by the usa. Lebanon will never know peace unless the usa says so. They only care about the jews. The arabs got fooled big time. Israel knows if the arabs unite they would take the palestinian land in one day. So your eminence you tried but it's only a dream . The us plan is going on .kessinger planned it long time ago. It looks like the us gave assad the green light.

Most victims in iraq have been Muslims who account for 99,9999 % of those murdered so i dont understand why the focus is on the christians of iraq when the focus should be on the iraqi people as a whole who all have suffered regardless of sect. And if one is to look at who suffered most then clearly it is the Muslims. The truth is iraq was much safer during saddam than now. Sadam was a dictator just like the king of saudi arabia, hafez al asad, king of jordan etc but nobody in his right mind can claim that iraq is better now than under saddam and if things are even worse now than under the time of the brutal dictator saddam then that says a lot of what the US brought iraq. All in all, the patriach is right in caring for christians but dont turn iraqs suffering in to a christian thing when most of the victims werent christians, and it doesnt matter as the suffering of iraq should be viewed as one.

CEIZAR, are you serious? Shia never spilled a drop of blood? Check your history again. Your shiite history starts with the shedding of blood when the shia (party) of Ali betrayed him and Hussein and had them killed at seperate times and then later on made their own religion based on those incidents. The history of shiaism is filled with blood. Just check your history. The only shiite ruled country today- Iran- has massacred tons of Muslims both in iran and in iraq via their heretic blood-loving militias badr and sadr as well as the basij and other iran-based regime supported institutions. Tell me, why did the druze and bahai had to flee iran? Both these sects are iranian in origin. Dont post rubbish please. Thank God you only have the control of one country, otherwise who knows what you would have done. Sure, the shiites first enemy is Muslims, this has been prooven many times in history but this doesnt mean they are your only enemy and the only people whos blood you have spilled.

@m.seraaly
I was referring to the title AND the content. Please read full post prior to commenting. Thank you for your meaningful contribution.