A leading Lebanese researcher plans to sue an English language Israeli daily for publishing an opinion piece in his name which he says he never authored, reported the Daily Star newspaper on Saturday.
The Jerusalem Post newspaper’s Friday edition ran an opinion piece entitled Reflections from Beirut under the byline of Nabil Khalifeh.
The paper described Khalifeh as a “political activist living in Beirut.”
The article, which was addressed to the Israeli people, contained scathing attacks on the late Syrian president, Hafez Al Assad, as well as Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who was described as a “pathological liar,” said the paper.
“We signed 72 ceasefires with him in a span of 18 months in 1975-76, and he broke each and every one of them,” the article said.
Khalifeh was quoted as writing that Lebanon had become a “wasteland.”
“We had our chances in 1982 and we blew them, but a new school of political thought is shaping itself; and the hope of regaining our rightful place in the Mideast is being rejuvenated.”
Khalifeh was quoted as saying that he believed “a strong and democratic state in Israel is a must to insure the stability of the region, even though the forces of evil consider this treason and blasphemy. But the fact that they have nothing to offer but destruction and bloodshed makes their opinion trivial.”
Assad, the article said, was a “first-class politician, a regional leader, a man who kept his word, but he belongs in the hall of fame of the greatest butchers of the 20th century, alongside Hitler, Stalin and a few others.”
The article “modestly” advised that Israel should not retreat from the Shabaa Farms.
In a statement faxed to the Daily Star, Khalifeh denied having “anything to do with this article or with the newspaper.”
He said the article was filled with “gratuitous provocation” and contained “a personal and very serious slander (against me).”
He and his brother, Issam, a history professor at the Lebanese University, are both experts on the origins of the Shabaa Farms dispute and have written books to support Lebanon’s claim of sovereignty over the area, according to the paper – Albawaba.com
