Dr. Joseph Hitti
Joseph Hitti is an American Translators Association-certified Arabic translator, a genomics scientist and a political commentator on Lebanon and the Middle East. He was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon and currently lives in Boston. He can be reached at joehittimass@yahoo.com
Contact Information
Articles by Dr. Joseph Hitti
March 07, 2009
Recent talks between the Syrian dictatorship and the US (and Europe) have been hailed as "constructive". President Obama is testing a 180-degree reversal of the Bush policy of "they know what we want, so there's nothing to talk about". But 40 years of history show that all previous engagements and talks with the Syrian dictatorship have been destructive to Lebanon, to the Middle East and to the peace process. Other than Obama and Clinton's personal charm, there is no substantive change to the status quo. Let no one be fooled by the vulgar tyranny that reigns in Damascus.
December 21, 2008
Time for Lebanon's politicians to get off the fence and make peace with Israel. The Lebanese people deserve no less that a normalization of their lives after 50 years of mayhem on the pretense of "resistance." The "pro-America" government of Fuad Siniora is betraying its American patron by subscribing to Hezbollah's and Syria's pressures not to negotiate with Israel and end Lebanon's agony.
November 29, 2008
Attacks in the media by Western governments and aid groups against the Lebanese government and people for mistreating the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon should stop. Lebanon is not responsible for the refugees. The international community is.
November 11, 2008
The sympathy shown by the international community towards the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, as evidenced by the hundreds of millions of dollars donated to rebuild the Nahr el-Bared camp, is nothing more than a hypocritical policy of forcing the permanent settlement of the refugees in Lebanon, relieving Israel of having to deal with the Right of Return, and the culmination of a 40-years old policy of destabilizing Lebanon in order for it to become a substitute homeland for the Palestinians.
November 02, 2008
The recent US attack against Syria comes against a 40-year background of an utterly contradictory US foreign policy vis-a-vis Syria in which Washington, with Israel's complicity, catered and cavorted to the Syrian dictator in the hope that he will deliver on peace with Israel. The price for that misguided policy was the destruction of Lebanon. Now that the US and Syria are realizing that they have created the monster that rules in Damascus, the consequences of a change in that long-standing policy are difficult to grasp.
October 22, 2008
The death of 241 US Marines and servicemen in Beirut on October 23, 1983 continues to haunt many Lebanese and Lebanese-Americans. For many of us, we believed on September 11, 2001 that this shameful policy failure of US Republican administrations would be reversed. Unfortunately, the lessons of Oct. 23, 1983 Beirut do not seem to have been learned by the Americans. Some people have no sense of history.
October 05, 2008
In 1983 (Reagan) and in 1989 (Bush Sr.), two Republican administrations betrayed their own US Marines, US national security, and the pro-Western country of Lebanon by fleeing in the face of Hezbollah's and Syria's terrorism. After Sept. 11, 2001, we heard an act of contrition by George W. Bush (Jr.) to no more barter fake stability from criminals and dictators, but instead to promote genuine grassroots democracy. The Republican presidential candidate John McCain has already indicated he intends to continue the Bush policy of supporting pro-Syrian anti-peace corrupt traditionalists, warlords, dictators, and war criminals who are in the same Lebanese government as Hezbollah. I, an American Lebanese, will therefore not vote for John McCain this November.
September 15, 2008
The Sabra-Shatila massacre is by all measures the most notorious event of the Lebanese War. In a gruesome congruence of Western latent racism and a deliberate Western-Israeli policy of permanently burdening Lebanon with the Palestinian refugee problem, many similar massacres that took place during the Lebanese War are ignored and never remembered. This opinion resurrects the Damour Massacre that was perpetrated by the Palestinian gunmen of the PLO against innocent Lebanese civilians six years before the Sabra-Shatila Massacre. Yet, the world today remembers the latter, but not the former. Why?
September 05, 2008
Michel Aoun and Michel Sleiman claim to represent the Christian Lebanese in the current Lebanese political structure. They have to deliver on two issues - the Lebanese prisoners in Syria, and the Lebanese refugees in Israel - if they hope to survive the coming parliamentary elections in the Spring of 2009.
July 15, 2008
Shame on the Lebanese government for glorifying criminals like Samir Kuntar. The reputation of Lebanon was already in the mud because of Hezbollah's actions. Today, it sinks even further because of the Siniora and Sleiman regime's endorsement of Hezbollah.
July 09, 2008
By continuously rejecting any peace negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, Prime Minister Siniora is in fact playing the role of an agent on behalf of Israel. Here is why.
May 24, 2008
Not only is Lebanese democracy "consensual", which is an oxymoron, it is hereditary, which makes it more simply moronic.
May 11, 2008
The present Lebanese turmoil vindicates the historic Christian position vis-a-vis Lebanon's identity and proves the fallacy and self-destructive position of their fellow Lebanese Muslims.
May 07, 2008
As Lebanon descends into anarchy for the umpteenth time, there doesn't seem to be hope for anything beyond the expected violence.
April 18, 2008
Thanks to Lebanon's Muslims, the country is the only Arab war front with Israel. Time has come to adopt a Lebanon-first policy that permanently shields the country from the Arab-Israeli conflict.
April 10, 2008
The impasse in Lebanon today is directly traced to a deliberate and programmed failure of a West in collusion with the Arabs and Israel.
March 26, 2008
After much heart-wrenching soul-searching by Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora and his March 14 mastodont supporters, he finally decided not to attend the periodic Arab cesspool (a.k.a. summit) to be held this weekend in Damascus. While his indecision for some weeks now about whether to attend or no...
March 19, 2008
The last witnesses to Beirut's architectural heritage and to the once-thriving Lebanese Jewish community in Wadi Abu-Jmil fall to the bulldozers of Saad Hariri's Solidere.
March 16, 2008
In his March 15, 2008, opinion "Silenced by the Men in White Socks", Rober Fisk of the Independent proves himself, yet again, to be the true master of deception that he always was.
First, somehow in his "deep thoughts" about the Middle East, which he has intellectually plundered over the years ...
March 11, 2008
After September 11, 2001, we heard President Bush and his thinkers make a major reassessment of how the US conducts its foreign policy: We heard it said many times that the US will no longer seek stability by colluding with dictators and criminal governments at the expense of the true aspirations of...
January 09, 2008
Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon is upset that Israel kidnapped a Lebanese shepherd on the Lebanese-Israeli border over the weekend, detained him for 24 hours and released him. Siniora’s government has lodged a complaint with the UN. There is no confirmation yet as to whether the kidnapping took pl...
December 14, 2007
More than two years have now passed since Syria forced the hand of Rafik Hariri and imposed an amendment to the Lebanese constitution and the re-election of Emile Lahoud, an action which ushered the cataclysmic events of the Hariri assassination, the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, and t...
December 03, 2007
Syria came dragging its feet to Annapolis for the hefty prize of, yet again, interfering in Lebanon’s internal affairs. Unfortunately, and in spite of repeated assurances by this Bush administration that - unlike the Bush father administration in the early 1990s – it will not sell out Lebanon to Syr...
November 28, 2007
The word “democracy” comes from the Greek and means “Government by the people”: “Demos” for people, and “Kratia” for government. In the current stalemate in Lebanon over the presidential election, the inability of elected representatives to vote on a candidate for President highlights the inherent c...
November 21, 2007
Boston, Massachusetts -- The stalemate in Lebanon’s presidential elections has come down to this: The opposition (Hezbollah, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), the Marada Christians of the North and others) is insisting on fielding the exiled former Prime Minister, FPM leader, and head of the larges...
September 13, 2007
September 11, 2007
PM Siniora of Lebanon is again begging foreign countries for funds to rebuild the Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian Camp that was razed by 3 months of fighting between the Lebanese Army and the Fatah Al-Islam Sunni fundamentalist terrorist group. Siniora is asking $55 million for immed...
August 01, 2007
(This opinion was published originally in Arabic by Laila Nicolas Al-Rahbani on www.tayyar.org. It has been translated with some modifications by Joseph Hitti)
There’s an ambiguity as to who really nudged Former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel to run for the Parliament seat in the Matn by-electio...
July 28, 2007
On August 5, the Lebanese have to elect representatives for two seats in Parliament, to replace two MPs assassinated by the Syrians and their residual dogs in Lebanon. One seat is Christian and the other seat is Moslem. The Christian seat is for the Maronite mountainous heartland of the Matn, the ot...
May 24, 2007
With the deadline looming for the Lebanese Parliament to elect a new President of the Republic of Lebanon this summer, there is an undeniable quest by many Lebanese for a “strong” President who would be unlike the riff-raff Presidents the country has had during the three decades of the war. Many of ...
April 04, 2007
NEAL endorses the idea of a Chapter 7 mandate to establish the International Tribunal for Lebanon. The reasons are many, but they all center on the single most obvious fact now in evidence two years after the withdrawal of the Syrian occupation from Lebanon:
The Lebanese political leadership – l...
February 14, 2007
Writing in the aftermath of the July War between Hezbollah and Israel, and the passage of resolution 1701 by the Security Council this past August, this writer opined the following:
"… Nasrallah said on Monday that the Lebanese Army is "incapable" of defending the south, and he sure would love ...
January 02, 2007
"This [resolution] will not damage the nation of Iran, but its issuers will soon regret this superficial and nil act". With these ominous threats, the Iranian President responded yesterday to the unanimous vote by the UN Security Council on a resolution imposing sanctions on his country for breach...
December 06, 2006
One more victim fell last week in the Lebanese War. I have been trying for days to figure this one out, to find it a place somewhere in the pile of stuff in my brain about the War, but I seem to be running out of space. Or perhaps emotion. I feel nothing. The reservoir of pity, anxiety, fear, appreh...
October 23, 2006
With the dust settling in Lebanon and the players, old and new, trying to stake their territories in the increasingly confined space of this tormented nation, the emerging picture is one of a country headed towards a major confrontation whose outcome is predictably coupled to the outcome of the gath...
August 16, 2006
By expressing reservations to UN resolution 1701, Hassan Nasrallah has effectively laid the ground for his outright rejection of the resolution, a rejection he could not publicly make under the pressures mounting during the final hours of the negotiations, but that he will certainly more expressly m...
August 09, 2006
Thank you, Hezbollah, for showing us that we, the Lebanese people, don't need an army or a government or an infrastructure. As long as we have "sacred unity", steadfastness and brotherhood and all the other slogans, we do not need organized society, and History will judge us well on our actions. We ...
August 02, 2006
There is plenty of responsibility on both sides for Friday's killing of 65 Lebanese civilians sheltered in a building in the southern Lebanese town of Qana by an Israeli air strike. But the lion’s share of responsibility by far falls squarely into the hands of Hezbollah for triggering events whose o...
July 20, 2006
Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora yesterday made statements that indicate a shift in the position of his beleaguered government towards an alignment with the will of the Lebanese people and the international community. This shift, characterized by a more direct finger-pointing towards Hezbollah as the...
April 10, 2006
CNN's Wolf Blitzer today hosted Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine and discussed with him a recent article published by Hersh. In the article, Hersh quotes very highly reliable sources in the White House and the Pentagon as saying that the US is contemplating the option of a nuclear attack on ...
March 13, 2006
We have said it many times, and everyone knows that Michel Aoun has a much longer way to go than his enemies to qualify for the “pro-Syrian” label they love to tag him with these days. As hard as they say he is trying, he could never beat his opponents of the March 14 Movement in the pro-Syrian Olym...
January 02, 2006
In its Saturday, December 31, 2005 issue, the Lebanese Daily Star reports on the holding of a National Conference in Beirut last Friday to “Support the Resistance” and “Endorse the option to resist and confront the American-Israeli schemes against Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East." Acc...
December 29, 2005
That the German government has decided to release the Hezbollah terrorist Mohammad Ali Hamadi, one of two hijackers of TWA flight 847 who beat, shot to death, and dumped the body of unarmed, off-duty U.S. Navy serviceman Robert Dean Stethem in the summer of 1985 in Beirut, comes as no surprise. We h...