Smothering critics is cowardice, not bravery.

Note: This is a post that I had submitted to the Times of Israel blogs in response to a campaign of  disinformation against a fellow blogger and casual acquaintance named Fred Maroun. I submitted it on Sunday, September 30 2018, and it was rejected by the blog editors. The rationale given was that "[t]his post is not approved for publication because it contains false assertions and makes slanderous, ad-hominem claims against an identifiable person." 

Unfortunately no action has been taken against the person in question for her own slanderous and ad hominem attacks against her critics from other TOI bloggers like Maroun to common Facebook users, because she is herself affiliated with Times of Israel.  I am also expanding the article somewhat (highlighted in grey) as there are less time constraints. You can therefore judge the piece on the basis of both its original form as submitted as well as the new updates the I've added.

Last week, as some of you regular readers or fellow blog posters may know, a fellow TOI Blog contributor Fred Maroun criticized a public statement made by a published author and TOI blogger regarding a sexual assault against her that she claimed she had not reported. The Author, as I'll refer to her, had made among other things, a statement that "I also knew that the police would turn this into a nationalist thing -- 'Arab man assaults Jewish woman,' and it sooooooo wasn't about that".

Fred responded, while omitting her identity notwithstanding that she had posted this publicly and also included it in her book, by rejecting the notion that Arab offenders should be granted greater leniency by their victims than Jewish Israelis. As a Lebanese Christian expat, Fred likely can cite the issue of different tiered systems of justice from his own personal experiences. In Lebanon, unlike virtually every other nation in the Middle East each confessional religious group and many ethnic subgroups are granted quotas for the number of parliamentary seats, and they resolve their disputes typically through a network of socially dominant clans like the Joumblatts (Druze), Jumayyils (Maronite Christians), and Hariris (Sunni Muslims). Would it have been a nation of equal protection under the law, Lebanon would possibly be blessed to be the "Paris of the East" as it once was called as recently as 1976 due to its residual French culture and liberal social mores. But it's not and unfortunately many Lebanese have for decades emigrated abroad, including to the USA and Canada like Fred, several friends of mine from engineering school.

Transparency International, one of the only organizations that grades nations by their level of corruption, graded Lebanon 143 out of 180 nations saying: "Corruption in Lebanon is widespread and permeates all levels of society, as reflected by the country’s global and regional average performances scores in most governance areas. Political parties, public administration, the Parliament and the police are perceived as the most corrupt institutions of the country." The 2016 International Men and Gender Equality Survey report on Lebanon stated that "even as study participants widely felt that violence at home is unacceptable, their rates of perpetration of violence against children, sexual harassment, and intimate partner violence are significant." This would imply that while the Lebanese people are not averse in their attitudes to change their approach to these issues, they have a ways to go to improve. 

This is not to say that Lebanon can't change, because after all in 2011 its parliament - notwithstanding deep divisions along religious and sectarian lines - approved a bill that eliminated lenient sentencing guidelines of defendants to honour killings. Such murders are those committed by a male in order to protect his family's reputation if a daughter or other female relative had behaved in an unchaste manner. This also does not mean that Israeli society, the one addressed by the Author, or any other western society is off the hook due to any perceived or real advanced status compared to Lebanon on this topic.

Fred's main objection to the Author in question based on his TOI response was that he as an Arab does not regard himself to be excluded from the obligations of Canadian law. So I won't assume that his motive was connected to my observations on Lebanese society, one that I've read about and have heard from other emigrants like him from Lebanon. But the Author in question did assume that the man that assaulted her was not motivated by nationalist sentiments.

I would ask her this: If she is so indignant about skeptics (especially men) that she alleges cannot put themselves into the mind of the assaulted victim, why can she therefore put herself into the mind of the assailant with confidence? After all, the Author asserted in her post that there was no nationalist motivation behind the assailant's deed. The issues of intent, consent, and social boundaries are at the center of the #MeToo movement for which she and numerous other progressive writers claim an affinity. Now with the dust-up concerning the Brett Kavanaugh hearing and the testimony of the main accuser Christine Blasey Ford, her defenders like the Author in question ferociously impugn the motives of anyone that questions the accuracy and credibility of an assault claim that was never reported and for which there exists no forensic evidence.

More than that, rather than seek to hold her actual assailant legally accountable, the Author in question and her various hangers on have engaged in a defamatory mass flagging campaign against Fred Maroun as well as numerous similar critics of her opinions on this and many other topics. Supporters and opponents of her have begun ridiculous petitions concerning her writing that I'll admit are amusing in their juvenile thinking. The same Author, while facilitating campaigns to not only de-platform her foes but have them fired from their jobs, has portrayed herself as a martyr in the making, a tortured Joan of Arc seeking to promote enlightenment against a throng of barbarians.

Blog forums like TOI Blogs are meant to give a direct access to alternative voices on topics that often only accredited authorities get to comment on. It goes without saying that I have ample disagreements with both Fred Maroun and the Author in question. The difference is that Fred welcomes criticism and is all to willing too engage in debate. It's not a common quality between them. Every time we as contributors publish one of these pieces, the understanding must be internalized that this is something that represents the author, and therefore they must be willing to accept the critical responses that come with them. I challenge this person to not only apologize to Fred Maroun, but to all of the men and women that she has pursued up till now. You know who you are and we know you're not ignorant of what's going on.