George in the Jungle

George Hawi seems like a strange choice for assassination...But then again, maybe not...


In circumstances very similar to those of the assassination of Samir Kassir, George Hawi, the ex-leader of the Lebanese communist party and a recently outspoken critic of Syria, was killed in a booby-trapped car in Beirut this morning.

He seems like an odd choice for assassination. Granted he was a strong critic of Syria, but unlike Samir Kassir, he was neither a symbolic figure nor one influential enough to pose any threats.
Samir Kassir scared the Syrians because he was meddling in their internal affairs. He was a rising star, a symbol of freedom of expression and of the new youthful kinetics of the opposition. Killing him sent a strong symbolic message.

But Mr. Hawi is a different story: he was, sort to speak, retiring politically. So why would anyone want to kill someone that would not have otherwise made any headlines?

There are two directions one can look at.

The first is that the killing of Mr. Hawi is a message to the recently elected opposition. “We still exist, we’re still powerful and we have our eyes on you”, they seem to be saying. But at the same time, they lowered the caliber of the target to avoid the sort of popular uprise that could dethrone president Lahhoud.

The second direction, which is a bit more conspiratorial, is to look at the similarities between Mr. Hawi and Mr. Kassir. They are both intellectual, leftist, secular Christians who embraced democratic Arabist causes all of their lives. The tears in the shocked Elias Atallah’s eyes in the crime scene this morning say a lot.

It is still too early to tell why anyone would want to kill people with the abovementioned characteristics (which are somehow the opposite of Mr. Hariri’s), but one thing is for sure, recently elected Mr Atallah has to be very careful. He has already seen too many loved ones perish, and he wouldn’t want his loved ones to cry over him.