Letter to Karl

Dear Karl,

I understand why you want it to be Mossad.

Israel assassinates people. It bombs cities. It occupies land. It lies with the fluency of states that have long been rewarded for lying. None of this is imaginary. Your instinct to distrust Israeli power is not foolish. It is historically earned.

But the danger is letting a real enemy become a universal explanation.

If Israel killed everyone who challenged the Syrian-Hezbollah security order, then Israel repeatedly removed the very people weakening its regional adversaries. If Israel killed Hariri, it accidentally produced Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon after three decades. If Israel killed Kassir, Tueni, Hawi, Slim, and others, it somehow chose targets whose deaths most directly benefited the internal actors they criticized.

That is not impossible in the abstract. Intelligence history is full of strange operations. But politics is not theology. Evidence matters. Consequences matter. Motive matters. Telecommunications evidence matters. Threats against judges matter. Refusal to hand over suspects matters. A pattern of silencing critics matters.

The emotional temptation is clear. If every crime is external, then the resistance remains clean. Lebanon remains a victim of outsiders only. Your side does not have to look at its own hands.

But no serious politics can be built on innocence fantasies. Israel is an enemy. Hezbollah can also have killed Lebanese. Syria can have ordered Lebanese killed. Lebanese factions can have benefited from the silence. These truths do not cancel each other. They coexist because the world is more degrading than propaganda allows.

Do not give Israel the dignity of being the only villain. Lebanon has produced enough of its own.

Your friend, Karim