Al Manar Reacts to John Kerry

There was quite a lot of coverage of the United States across all forms of Al Manar’s media over the past two weeks in response to John Kerry’s visits to Lebanon and Syria and his request that Syria help disarm Hezbollah. In response to this perceived attack on Hezbollah, Al Manar carried stories about U.S. interference in Lebanon’s political affairs on television and in both the Arabic and English websites.

Al Manar TV ran an interview with Hezbollah MP Husayn Al-Hajj Hasan on February 20th where Hasan said that John Kerry’s recent trip to Lebanon was a violation of sovereignty. The interview addressed Kerry’s meeting with Syrian officials where he asked that Syria help to disarm Hezbollah, of which Hasan said:

“What is noteworthy in this issue is that the Americans have asked for a Syrian interference in Lebanon, while those who falsely allege to be concerned with sovereignty, freedom, and independence in Lebanon have not denounced the US demand of a Syrian interference in Lebanon. Why? Because it seems that this demand suits the US and Israeli interests, and no one of them can harm the US and Israeli interests regardless of the Syrian response, which was clear that Syria does not accept this, and is not a tool for the US policies."

A similar story was featured on Al Manar’s Arabic website February 24th, where Al Manar interviewed Vice-president of the Higher Shiite Council Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan who blamed the lack of consensus on a budget for the Council for South Lebanon on the inference of the American embassy. Qabalan accused the U.S. of trying to interfere in every Lebanese detail, obstructing all political and diplomatic values and norms, saying:

"They are interested in knowing all details, they want to know even the salaries paid to the martyrs' families as well as to the former detainees and wounded people.”

Al Manar’s English website ran comparable stories, including a story on February 20th where Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Shaykh Na'im Qasim called for the U.S. to stop interfering in Lebanese elections, saying:

"We want the US to stop interfering in our elections, to stop supporting the criminal Zionists, to stop conspiring against our country and people, and to stop all the crimes it commits with its policies and positions.”

Al Manar English complimented these stories about American interference in Lebanese affairs with op-ed pieces about American weakness from Western voices: an article warning the U.S. not to treat Afghanistan like Iraq by Irish journalist Patrick Cockburn and an article arguing that the U.S economy is designed to fail by U.S. federal government analyst Richard C. Cook.