By Julia Kassem
Later that day, Illaik revealed it in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
“I received a call from the Central Investigations Department informing me that the Disciplinary Prosecutor Judge Jamal Al-Hajjar has decided to summon me for questioning (before the Investigations) tomorrow afternoon, Friday. I learned that the reason for the summons is the video I posted the day before yesterday about the President of the Republic, Joseph Aoun.
The Disciplinary Prosecutor agreed to be a tool in the hands of Rami Naeem (who announced the summonses before they happened) and others, in an effort to whitewash his record before the President of the Republic.
President Jamal, I am ready to die defending my people and my cause, so do you really think you can scare me with threats of detention? Prisons are most welcome.
I promise you that I will not be silent, neither about others nor about you.”
His charge was allegedly for “insulting the president,” an unusual – but not entirely unprecedented – accusation in a country where insulting politicians has become a form of entertainment.
He refused to appear at the sham trial, opting instead to hold a press conference where he highlighted the president’s failure to fulfill even the most basic duty of defending Lebanon’s sovereignty.
In a January 21 episode titled “Joseph Aoun and the Cleanup of the South,” Illak ironically began by criticizing a military court’s interrogation of a citizen who allegedly posted social media criticisms of the president.
The public backlash against the crackdown on citizens – especially through the military court rather than the press court, which lawyers representing journalists summoned to military tribunals often argue – centered on the blatant contradiction with treason laws enforced by the government.
Most of his criticism, however, was aimed at Aoun’s meeting with ambassadors on January 20, where the Lebanese president boasted about his and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s self-styled achievements in limiting weapons to the state – echoing a long-standing, 25-year American demand to disarm the Lebanese Resistance group Hezbollah.
In his original video on al-Mahatta, Illak delivered a searing critique of the incumbent government under Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam for fostering an environment of complete disregard for Lebanon’s sovereignty.
The August 5 decision, in which the Lebanese presidency tasked the army with disarming the Resistance – a move that sidelined Hezbollah and Amal – was swiftly followed by a continuation of daily Israeli attacks that have yet to cease.
Though Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem defended the resistance group’s right to maintain its weapons and vowed to treat any motion of total disarmament “as if it doesn’t exist,” Hezbollah has demonstrated extreme restraint.
The group has adhered to UN Resolution 1701, which mandates withdrawal south of the Litani River, and has refused to retaliate against the Israeli regime’s attacks and killings. Instead, Hezbollah has afforded the Lebanese state an undeserved degree of respect and the opportunity to fulfill its responsibility to monopolize weapons as it claims.
Yet, in his speech, President Aoun praised the willing defenselessness of the Lebanese state, celebrating the fact that for at least a year, barely a shot had been fired from Lebanon.
Meanwhile, in the days leading up to his hollow commendations, the Zionist entity grew even more emboldened, escalating strikes on villages north of the Litani River in a bid to pressure disarmament across the country. Notably, on January 16, airstrikes targeted Sohmur and Machgara, both located near the Qaroun Dam lake.
In his message to foreign ambassadors, Aoun disgraced himself by trampling on the memory and sacrifices of those who freed the country from a 20-year occupation, dismissing their efforts as “suicidal adventures.” His tenure has, in fact, emboldened the return of Israeli occupation to southern Lebanon for the first time in over 25 years, as he bowed to American pressure tactics.
Much like his predecessor, the persecution of Illak’s relatively mild criticism of Aoun’s speech was wholly unjustified and not protected under Lebanese law.
The law mandating prosecution for insults against the president – punishable by up to two years in prison – is meant to safeguard constitutional institutions. These institutions, however, are currently being undermined by an administration that tolerates daily American “diplomatic” and Israeli military incursions on Lebanese land, law, and sovereignty.
In fact, the act constituted a violation in a country where persecution of journalists is not a legal ground for such prosecution, let alone through military courts, which are reserved for cases of “terrorism” and “treason.”
True treason would begin with investigating the American exploitation of Israeli occupation outposts as leverage in an illegal and imperialist disarmament campaign. Genuine efforts against treason would probe why Israeli spies in Lebanon, such as Joshua Tartakovsky, can be easily airlifted out of the country amid clear cases of espionage.
What was truly criticized, however, was the Aoun administration’s own, to put it mildly, operational treason. The current Lebanese government, led by Aoun and Salam, did not fire a single bullet – a point the president proudly made in his speech before ambassadors on January 20 – nor did it issue any verbal condemnation of the daily murders and periodic massacres resulting from relentless Israeli violations in the South.
These violations include the ongoing killing of Lebanese citizens, including children, and attacks on Lebanese Army and UNIFIL troops and positions.
Just days ago, the country’s justice minister, Youssef “Joe” Rajji of Samir Geagea’s far-right Lebanese Forces Party, openly declared that Israel had the right to continue attacking Lebanon as long as Hezbollah remained armed.
Through silence and subservience to American interests – at the direct expense of Lebanese constitutional integrity and international law – the Lebanese president and his cabinet repeatedly insult both themselves and their country, granting a de facto carte blanche for the continued occupation and violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.
All of Aoun’s actions – and inactions – are the direct result of American dictates and instructions. For the past two years, American officials have flown in and out of Lebanon relentlessly, using the Lebanese state as an instrument to dismantle the Lebanese resistance and pave the way for normalization with the Israeli regime.
This vision includes transforming the Lebanese Army into a Palestinian Authority-like instrument of counterinsurgency against the Resistance, undermining decades of collaboration against terrorists, espionage, and Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty.
Yet, under the American vision, despite its stated goal of “restoring state sovereignty over weapons,” the real objective is to impose Israeli qualitative superiority over Lebanon, especially its resistance, before another anticipated round of fighting between the occupying entity and Iran inevitably involves the regional resistance forces.
In preparation for a multi-front war, the Zionist entity’s Lt. General Chief Zamir recently unveiled a five-year “Hoshen” plan designed to ready the Israeli army for a prolonged, multi-front war against regional resistance movements.
The buildup toward this next phase of war involves more than just expanding material capabilities; it is also a battle of perceptions. This war is fought not only with weapons but with wills. The empire, desperate to maintain its image amid declining material power, has accelerated its efforts to silence those who expose the façade of US/Israeli power in the region.
On January 21, the same day Illaik published his critique of Aoun on al-Mahatta and the day before his summons to military court, the Israeli entity launched a deadly barrage of raids across the South, targeting groups of journalists in Qennerit, South Lebanon.
The attacks killed two people and injured nineteen, including at least eight journalists.
Those journalists, witnessing the horrific bombing across the South that day, including in Qennerit itself, saw firsthand the destruction that left at least 50 Lebanese families homeless. All this unfolded while Aoun was boasting about the supposed achievements of the Lebanese state.
It could not be clearer that the witch-hunt against Illaik is part of a coordinated US-Israeli attempt to silence dissent, targeting journalists as pressure mounts against the Lebanese Resistance’s legitimate weapons.
Both the journalists in the South and those at al-Mahatta bear witness to the illegitimacy of the ongoing occupation, which has expanded from five post-ceasefire points into a full-fledged attempted buffer zone, and the illegitimacy of the Lebanese state in enabling the illegal occupation by covering for the Americans.
Julia Kassem is a Beirut-based writer and commentator whose work appears in Press TV, Al-Akhbar, and Al-Mayadeen English, among others.
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