Tim Cavanaugh splashes some context on the “it had to be Syria” narrative of the recent murder of Lebanese MP Gebran Tueni:
- [Y]ou can get a sense of what made him a polarizing figure in his responses to my followup question: Nobody knows how many Shi’ites there are in Lebanon (because there hasn’t been a census since 1940; CIA demographic estimates don’t break out the Muslim sects), but it’s reasonable to assume they are the largest single religious group, and Hizbollah is the most important party representing them—more prominent than Amal, the other major Shi’a party. So how can you keep Hizbollah out of the political process? His response was that the Shi’ites could have whatever representatives they chose, but only for the limited number of parliamentary seats that were designated for Shi’ites decades ago, and that that number shouldn’t be increased to reflect population changes. …
Let’s see: a Christian politician wanted to partially disenfranchise the largest single religious group in Lebanon, a group whose leading subsidiary is Hezbollah. Yes, he was obviously assassinated by foreigners.