BEIRUT— After 41 years of captivity in France, ordinary people welcomed Lebanese freedom fighter Georges Abdallah at Beirut International Airport, where he reaffirmed his commitment to the path of resistance.

While large groups of people were welcoming the hero returning from a country hypocritically praising slogans of freedom, the President of the Republic was busy eating a falafel sandwich at a Beirut restaurant. Ironically, the scene of him biting into the sandwich received denigrating media coverage, transforming him from a head of state into a food blogger.

“Our resistance is not weak, but strong,” the international freedom icon emphasized, calling for greater support than ever before.

Georges Abdallah added that “it is a shame for history that Arabs watch the suffering of the people of Palestine and Gaza.”  

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam happened to be in Paris, which not only retaliated against Georges Abdallah, but also ordered a ban on any official reception for him.

Reportedly, a representative of the French judiciary briefed Salam on the details of Abdallah’s case and the measures Lebanon was required to take against him to restrict and obstruct his political activism.

This is what actually happened, not only at the airport but also in his hometown of Qobayat, where the municipality imposed strict measures, including a ban on wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh and raising the Palestinian flag.

This was amid a shameful absence of political and religious figures (even from his own town), as well as restrictions on journalists, who were prevented from conducting direct interviews with Georges Abdallah.

George Abdallah remained loyal to his legitimate and honourable history of struggle, and the years did not force him to reconsider his convictions. 

Georges Abdallah broke the shackles after spending more than half his life in the dungeons of the white man who repeatedly attacks us with the freedom, democracy, and human rights, refusing to apologize for his brave and heroic resistance work that made him a struggle icon who rejected all offers and compromises.  

The Lebanese government acted as an “arm” of imperialist regimes, complying with the highest orders, preventing the hero Georges Abdallah from being welcomed. 

Had he been their envoy, carrying a barrage of threats of woe and damnation against the Lebanese people, Lebanese government officials would have prepared themselves for a humiliating celebratory rituals, just as they recently did with the U.S. envoy Thomas

Barrack, the man of Lebanese origin, who was welcomed with open arms.

Barrack came to strip the Lebanese state of its strongest guarantee of sovereignty: resistance, while Georges Abdallah insisted on the inalienable right to resistance.

Thomas Barrack claimed that his colonial country could not impose anything on Israel, which would inevitably mean the freedom to take hostile aggression against Lebanon without deterrence.

The U.S. envoy was not ashamed to threaten his countrymen with the takfiri terrorist policy that rules Syria, while George Abdallah boosted the morale of the people with the effectiveness of resistance.

Barrack relied on a strategy of inciting “panic” and frightening the Lebanese people with brutal sanctions; that is why Thomas Barrack was not and will not be a “mediator,” but rather a high commissioner whose only goal is to impose the U.S. policy of “enforced submission” without compensation or guarantees!