IN HONOR OF LEADER ANTOUN SAADEH
The man who was martyred 77 years ago killed by an overall conspiracy was not an average person . He was the man who was inspired and had an insight , and who positioned himself from where he could secure the future of his people. He is among those who will not be satisfied by merely existing . His whole being and existence revolved around his people. His name is Antoun Saadeh called also the Leader , a title he earned with everything that goes with it . Not only he was fought and set up by the colonialist predators and their local clientele in the mid of the previous century, but after his martyrdom , all about him was obscured and camouflaged and even buried . He presented a real threat because people felt affinity with him and trusted him and were inspired by him . He was the man who lead the Renaissance proper to our area after WWI and WWII , when the region was meeting so many challenges that range from identity to independence . This was when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the colonialists were starting dividing the empire among themselves, and also creating the vicious state of israel , and planting it in the heart of the Arab world.
Leader Saadeh immediately felt the threat , and decided that the people of this area should claim what is theirs, and before they do this, they should know their identity and find out who they are and the common ground which they share or their natural belonging and natural habitat, and accordingly, claim what is theirs before they fall a prey to the conspiracies that seek to divide the area according to the colonial ambitions .. Religion can no more be a Reference thought leader Saadeh after the fall of the Ottoman Empire because the inhabitants of this area are multi cultural , multi religious and multi lingual , and there is need to define what a nation is in all its variety , and to defend this nation and its borders, and secure its sovereignty and unity and independence . It was an attempt at preventing that the identity of the people be lost for ever and an attempt at retrieving this identity .
The people should retrieve their identity – thought Saadeh- Greater Syria being the nation to which those belong , and it is located in what has been known as the Fertile Crescent , in the heart of the Arab World , being also an intrinsic part of this world . Saadeh knew from experience and from his life in Latin America in its attempt at breaking loose from the colonizer that freedom is NOT an individual Issue but a National Issue , and only a Free Nation can grant Freedom to its people and to the individuals and not the other way . No doubt , Leader Saadeh was deeply inspired by Simone Bolivar and other nationalists from Latin America . As a Nationalist , he was wrongly associated with Hitler or with the fascists , and this was a demonization campaign that targeted him and wanted to harm his spotless reputation as a spotless leader and tarnish his image and distort his message.
All what he professed was built on historical evidence and historical facts , and he did not invent anything when he said : SYRIA (meaning Greater Syria) BELONGS TO THE SYRIANS, AND THE SYRIANS ARE AN INTEGRAL NATION . It was a Truth that he discovered . For this, he had to pay his life , because what he discovered and called for went against all the colonialist schemes that had for purpose to tear apart this region and set Religions against one another and create the usurping state of israel about which Saadeh warned very early as a real immanent threat, as he warned against the Gulf countries role in making the creation of israel possible .
It is now that we are discovering that every word he said was true . He called for unity solidarity and above all Ethics . The essence of the Nation is Ethics, . His message did not remain unheard, and his Party – the Syrian Social Nationalist Party- was the largest in number, and so many people rallied around him from all categories and classes because he represented the Spirit of the Nation . The predators of course who wanted to carry on their vicious scheme of Sykes Picot and Balfour conspired against him , and their agents delivered him to the local Lebanese Authorities who sentenced him to death without trial and executed him at the dawn of June the 8th 1949 . He died full of dignity for he never feared death because he knew that the Nation will survive him, and he did not have the least doubt about it .
He had foreseen the future when he said : I see ranks in perfect order and harmony proceeding towards the goal , and this is what we are seeing now in Hizbullah who is the real expression of the aspirations of leader Saadeh , one of the most honorable leaders that this Nation has ever witnessed, and who used to say LIFE IS ONLY A DIGNIFIED STAND . It is this dignity that we see in the Resistance Leadership and Freedom Fighters , and if the Resistance has an Origin , no doubt that Leader Saadeh is one of these origins despite the fact that he was a secular leader of a secular Party where Religion is a private individual matter and a personal Relation to God His secularism was never anti Religion but was anti colonialist . It is in the Resistance that the real message of Saadeh finds life , and this is something that no one can deny , and it is the Resistance that qualified to carry this message whereby Leader Saadeh’s vision turned out to be true.