Armin Rosen

The Syrian Civil War is reaching a turning point. Over the past two weeks, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seized several villages north of Aleppo, the country’s largest city and one of the last remaining strongholds of Syria’s non-jihadist rebels.

The advance cut off Aleppo’s anti-regime groups from their last remaining supply lines into Turkey, and put Assad in a position to retake a fiercely contested city that had a pre-war population of over 2 million.

Assad’s gains have come on the backs of foreign militaries that are themselves showing signs of strain. Iran has been forced to send Afghan refugees to fight in Syria while Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, has seen as much as one-third of its fighters killed or injured in the country’s war. And the Aleppo offensive would have stalled without Russian air support — Damascus failed to retake substantial territory when it first launched its Aleppo offensive six months ago.

Lebanese TV channel OTV Lebanon expresses its dismay at the airing of Channel Nine’s sitcom Here Come the Habibs, saying: ‘Despite the achievements of the Lebanese at home and abroad, the west only sees our country as an uncivilised land of wars.’ People stopped on the street in Lebanon express varying degrees of disgust with the Australian comedy show, which follows a Lebanese family that moves from Sydney’s western suburbs to Vaucluse. One Lebanese man says: ‘Unfortunately, if a civilisation like Australia is showing the Lebanese in this way, it is the end of civilisation as we know it’

Info about the show

They mangle the Arabic and say “falafel” like an Aussie. Nobody, his mother included, can pronounce “Elias”. And what kind of name is Fou Fou?

The Habibs are Lebanese like Crocodile Dundee is Australian, but they aren’t offensive. With Channel Nine’s Here Come the Habibs, which premiered last night, the worst fears of petitioners have not come to pass.

The family at the heart of the series, whose lottery win catapults them from western Sydney into its east, is warmly drawn, pretty funny – if exaggerated – and written to be the good guys.

The first original comedy commissioned by Nine in over a decade, Here Come the Habibs was devised by the veteran comics behind Fat Pizza and Housos, but written by what co-creator Tahir Bilgic called a “vanilla milkshake writing team”.

It shows. The gags are strongest when tackling what the writers know: the white Australian fear (and fixation) with immigrant Lebanese culture; resentment at Sydney’s glittering harbourside suburbs; the anguish many feel trying to address race without mentioning the war (in this case, the Cronulla riots). Albeit well-meaning, it’s inescapably a show about race from a white perspective.

daily star.com.lb

The United States has pledged over $100 million in humanitarian and development assistance to Lebanon, the U.S. envoy said Monday, reaffirming American support to the country in various fields.

“At the donor’s conference, the United States pledged an additional $133 million in humanitarian assistance which will be used in Lebanon, as well as more than $290 million in development assistance which will be used for education in Lebanon and in Jordan,” U.S. Charge d’Affaires and interim Ambassador Richard Jones said after meeting Prime Minister Tammam Salam at the Grand Serail.

“The United States is among the largest donors to Lebanon, having given over a billion dollars in humanitarian assistance through the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and USAID’s Food for Peace Program since 2012,” Jones added.

A highly intricate residential tower, dubbed The Cube, was recently completed in Beirut, Lebanon. Commissioned by Lebanese developers Masharii, the Dutch design firm Orange Architects is responsible for the 164 foot building, which bares a striking resemblance to a block-stacking, gravity-challenging, high-stakes game of Jenga. It even sounds like the structural design of the building was inspired by an age-old Jenga axiom: If the core is solid, you’re golden.

Marcia Lynx Qualey

Literature The civil war — although it officially ended in 1990 — continues to preoccupy novelists, with new books set during war-time coming out every year. The renowned blogger ‘ArabLit’ looks back at how civil war shaped the Lebanese novel, and recommend 15 great books set just before, during, and after the war.

The 1960s brought changes to Lebanon and countries around the world, among these a mini-renaissance in Lebanese literary writing. “There was some kind of revival,” Lebanese novelist Rawi Hage said in a 2013 interview, “and a very progressive community…formed in Lebanon, mostly around the AUB area around Ras Beirut.”

It was an era of openness to world literature and formal experimentalism, with important work being done by authors Elias al-Diri and Youssef Habchi El-Achkar, among others. Publishing houses flourished. Books that couldn’t be printed in neighboring countries, for one reason or another, found their way to Lebanon.

by Anealla Safdar

Al Jazeera

A landmark ruling in Lebanon in favour of a transgender man is being celebrated as a leap towards equality, with hopes that discrimination towards the transgender community will ease given the subsequent positive media attention the case received.

In the mid-January ruling at the Court of Appeals in Beirut, Judge Janet Hanna confirmed the right of a transgender man to change his official papers, granting him access to necessary treatment and, importantly, privacy.

The decision marked the first time a Lebanese appeals court ruled specifically in support of transgender rights to treatment.

"The operation was a medical necessity to relieve him [the appellant] from his suffering that had been present throughout his life," the court said in its ruling.

Natasha Bertrand

In a Washington press conference shortly after peace talks over Syria’s future fell apart earlier this week, US Secretary of State John Kerry again called on Syria’s government and its supporters to end its military campaign and pursue a political solution to the conflict instead.

Days earlier, Gareth Bayley, the UK’s special representative for Syria, told reporters in Geneva that "there is no military solution" to the conflict.

As the diplomats called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis, however, pro-regime forces were encircling Aleppo — Syria’s largest city — aided by heavy Russian airstrikes that are estimated to have killed scores of civilians. 

gulfnews.com

Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: Free Patriotic Movement leader and presidential hopeful Michel Aoun on Saturday reiterated his party’s alliance with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, a day after a large Hezbollah delegation visited him.

The delegation on Friday included heavyweights such as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s chief political assistant, Haj Hussain Khalil, security leader Wafiq Safa, Minister of Industry, Hussain Al Haj Hassan, and two politburo members, Mahmoud Qmati, and Mustafa Haj Ali.

During the meeting, Aoun did not appear to be happy as the group announced yet again it would be boycotting Monday’s scheduled session to elect a president.

Reuters

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s mother, Anisa Makhlouf, has died at the age of 86, Syrian state media said on Saturday.
Makhlouf, who married late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad in 1957, rarely appeared in public even after al-Assad became president in 1971.
Al-Assad ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000, and shared five children with Makhlouf, Bushra, Basil, Bashar, Majed and Maher.
Makhlouf was born in 1930 to a powerful and wealthy family from the coastal province of Latakia.

by Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: A fresh dispute surfaced in Lebanon a few days ago over the appointment of a senior government official at the Ministry of Finance, where a post reserved for a Christian — according to the 1943 National Pact and 1989 Tai’f Agreement — went to a Shiite.

Accusations and denials followed — as expected in a country where sectarianism is an institutionalised matter — which raised fundamental questions.

What preoccupied many were the long-term consequences of such appointments at a time of profound demographic changes that continue to record significant Christian losses.

In fact, and even if no references were made to the latter, the council of Maronite bishops addressed the issue of balance among all sects in state institutions a few days ago, after several officials complained about the alleged exclusion of Christians from key posts.