YouSaid · the spoken record

Bassil

lines on the record

18

first

2015-03-27

most recent

2015-09-30

sittings or episodes

2

sources

un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “The success ofthe fight against terror needs the conjunction of two legitimacies. One is the moral legitimacy of values, which we take for granted; the other is the political legitimacy of regimes, and their additional efforts are needed. The clock is ticking and violence is spilling over. Refugees are spilling over. This cannot be contained geographically; it is an ideology that we contain and counter through the antidote models like Lebanon. It is the fragile balance between the peoples of the Middle East that is at stake. It is peace in the world that is threatened.”

   2015-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7527 (2015) · source

2. “We believe in dialogue and we see in peaceful engagement and in bridge-building the best answer to Violence. We believe in political dialogue and we have faith in diplomatic means to resolve conflicts. The examples of the nuclear deal and the Cuban crisis are a confirmation that confrontation is not an option, since it will lead only to the victory of terrorism. We call for political solutions. A forceful approach will not work. A forced solution will not last. An induced political solution will not flourish. Only a solution from within - from the people - will succeed and put us all at our ease. That can be achieved only if we resort to democracy, offering first to the people the freedom to choose their leaders and their regimes and, secondly, respecting the choices they make.”

   2015-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7527 (2015) · source

3. “We believe that this phenomenon is leading to irreversible changes that will affect all of us. If the Middle East were to sink into perpetrual violence between sectarian, closed entities, we cannot imagine the world living peacefully. What would the world look like if the message of Lebanon were to disappear? We will keep on fighting, but we will not be able to sustain the fight if we are left on our own - or rather, betrayed. We will not be able to keep up the pace of our struggle if the international community keeps on with its policy of double standards, especially when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. We will not be able to win if the major policy-movers remain shortsighted to the implications of the spread of terror. Combat was not our choice; it was imposed on us.”

   2015-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7527 (2015) · source

4. “The system of collective security set up in the aftermath of the Second World War has failed to protect us. Do we need to search for a protection system every 100 years, or do we develop our own self-protection system through our scale of values and our ability to live together, while preserving our rights and roles. We have opted for the second. We are fighting to safeguard our collective values and to demonstrate that obscurantism cannot prevail over humanism. We are fighting because we are convinced that the fall of Lebanon, as the last bastion of diversity in the Middle East, would inevitably lead to the uncontrolled spread of terror to neighbouring Europe and, further, to the rest of the world. We are fighting to reverse the current trend that is emptying the Middle East of its essential social components.”

   2015-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7527 (2015) · source

5. “Lebanon is at the forefront of this battle. Daesh and Al-Nusra have been holding hostages - 26 members of our armed forces - since August 2014. Our troops have been engaged in daily fights on our eastern borders, and our intelligence services are tracking dormant and active cells inside the country. Our strategy against terrorism is to engaged in the fight for the promotion of our values and our message. We are fighting to preserve the existence of our people since the spread of terror, combined with a mass influx of forcefully displaced persons, represents an existential threat. We are fighting to protects the rights of minorities. Diversity in the Middle East is at the foundation of the region's identity. It is also a source of inspiration for other countries and nations all over the world.”

   2015-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7527 (2015) · source

6. “I thank the Russian Federation for convening this meeting. Lebanon believes that the fight against terrorism is an international one, considering that terrorism is an international menace to peace and security. Eradicating terrorism from the Middle East and North Africa is a prerequisite for stopping its rapid expansion through the world. The fight against terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa cannot be won without the countries of the region. Lebanon has fully engaged in the fight to drag our country and people away from radicalism and fundamentalism. We have mobilized our troops and our boots are on the ground. We have resorted to our values of openness and tolerance to counter the message of hatred and inhumanity. We have supported actions aimed at defeating the ideological and financial sponsors of these organizations.”

   2015-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7527 (2015) · source

7. “Israel has been the legitimate father of Daesh for decades and the one who has instigated war among us, the builders of civilization and advocates of peace. We need the Council's help in safeguarding our civilization, our culture and our identity, and in moving beyond the focus on our oil and resources. Our friendship, love, affection, goodness and peace must be won. Our presence in our own land is an act of faith. We are the children of faith, yet the Satan Daesh will not defeat us.”

   2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

8. “We even demand the return of all of those who were forced to flee from their homes at the hands of all the extremists since the nineteenth century. Furthermore, we demand more than contributions to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and more than a trust fund for construction projects. We demand that an international fund be established by the United Nations for the reconstruction of the civilizations that have been destroyed, the return of peoples who have been forcibly displaced, and the restoration of cultural heritage damaged in the laboratory of realpolitik. Leaving home is like cutting off one's roots. Emigration is isolation from one's original roots, and we are the roots, the trunk and the link to our region. We are not ready to be separated from ourselves.”

   2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

9. “If all the embassies, interior ministries and airports welcomed the people of the Middle East, that would protect their them nor their receivers. Only resistance on their own territory will preserve our common civilization and community. We have come here today to ask for more than the issuing a mere statement; we ask the presidency to prepare an international draft resolution that would truly protect the minorities of the Middle East and lay down geographic and moral red lines. Its implementation mechanism must include all States, while deterring all problematic groups. We ask for more than an end to the encouragement of the constituent communities of Armenians, Kurds, Turkomans, Circassians, Syriacs, Assyrians, Yazidis, Shabaks, Sabians and Druzes to emigrate.”

   2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

10. “Do we believe that the notion of integrity is limited to a mere simulacrum of the Middle Easterners in the West and the return of Muslims to the Middle East? Is it not that the very origin of the Violence among civilizations lies along the two civilization on the shores of the Mediterranean? The value of Middle Easterners is resides in their remaining in the Middle East, thereby preserving its plurality and diversity. Additionally, that would prevent the various confessions from being transformed into isolated, homogenous sects, losing their original identities and rejecting their humane message, and stop them from fighting among themselves and clashing collectively with the West. Such Middle Easterners would not be a demographic burden to the West.”

    2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

11. “We are not here to defend groups or religions; we are here to defend principles and ways of life. Christianity is a culture of life and a set of human values that belong to all persons. Do we believe that Christianity can survive throughout the world in the absence of Christians on the land of Christ? Can a river continue to flow if its sources dry up? Can Islam continue if it is distorted in our region, demonized in the West and is hastily being massacred in the four corners of the world? Do we believe that Judaism, if it adopts an insular entity that is closed off to others, can defend against evil by itself? Do we believe that freedom means only accepting those who mock Mary and Jesus and publish cartoons depicting Mohammad being ravished, while anyone who uses anti-Semitic slurs is prosecuted?”

    2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

12. “Will any be minority spared if a State is allowed to be created in the name of Islam, while it is a radical and distorted interpretation of Islam? In the light of all this, is it not worthwhile to operationalize the military option, and something more than mere air strikes, such as support for those armies, including our heroic Lebanese army, that are fighting and dying on the ground? Is it not worthy to operationalize the mechanism of international justice, something more than mere a statement, and to truly support Lebanon's endeavours at the International Criminal Court? Is that not worth something more than a meeting of the Security Council? In this respect, we thank France, whose level of representation reflects the international concern for safeguarding minorities and maintaining the dialogue among civilizations.”

    2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

13. “What remains of a minority if it has declined from 2 million to 300,000 in Iraq and in Turkey from 15 per cent to 1 per cent? In Bethlehem, the minority has declined from 85 to 12 per cent, and in Jerusalem from 52 to 2 per cent. Seven hundred thousand Christians and Yazidis were forcibly displaced from Mosul in one fell swoop and two bishops were kidnapped, without provoking any response. What will remain of the dignity of minorities if Assyrians are forcibly displaced as a result of this silence, and if the sculpture of Sargon of Akkadi, in Mosul, is destroyed? Moreover, what use is it if the authority of the Lebanese presidency has been transmuted and the candidates are scorned to a degree that they become accessible only to people whose political conscience is not free?”

    2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

14. “What has become of Lebanon, the country of two civilizations? One cannot but wonder why our principles have been sacrificed on the altar of alien interests, and we now find ourselves being killed by Daesh and Israel, in the full glare of the world, which only records events and reports. We therefore wonder whether this twofold attack will continue to fuel tensions in the world. We also wonder about what remains of international law, international justice and the Security Council, while we no longer have the rule of law, justice or security in our region. Speaking of minorities, one might ask: What remains of the minorities dignity if they live at the mercy of the majority's ideolog? If their numbers are decreasing, this will lead to their culture isolation. And what if their existence has become the shortest way to their disappearance?”

    2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

15. “We come from the wombs that brought forth Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. We are the grandchildren of those who were born and grew up in the Middle East, emigrated to and integrated and lived in Lebanon and coexisted with the East and the West. That is why we have been persecuted. Our only guilt is that, by the coefficient of coincidence, we were born into confessional communities. We believed that the United Nations was created to protect people like us, but the rise of Daesh represents a major setback for the global security regime. The apostolic guidance directed us not to ask for any privileges and we do not seek any. Nevertheless, we want to ask: What has happened to the characteristics of our region? What has become of the Mesopotamian country of Iraq? What has become of Syria, the country of the two caliphates?”

    2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

16. “We are of an eastern identity that has moulded the heavenly religions in one land and in one human being. We are the descendants of a Lebanese formula unique in terms of power-sharing in governance between Christians and Muslims. We are the descendants of a great nation that is a martyr in its own land, a people that has sent out a message of hope when it was able to withstand and showed resilience on its own land, a people that has carried along with it the message of humanity when it was forcibly displaced from its land. We come here from the land of divine messages and from the home of the message, Lebanon. It is the message of tolerance, coexistence and the safeguard of others. It is a message of humanity in the face of Daesh, the inhuman. We are the descendants of the messengers and prophets.”

    2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

17. “Once this meeting has been adjourned, I will immediately return to my home region, and my roots, where I will actively strive to ensure that the region continues to encompass Civilizations united by more than language alone. No matter how much the international and Arab communities disappoint us, we will continue to work and our people will continue the struggle to save to the soul of Lebanon and the Middle East and our culture from danger. We are the children of a nation that has witnessed the greatest travails of history. We have been resilient, depending not on material power, but only on our culture. We are are descendants of the Phoenician civilization that invented the alphabet and exported it around the world through our commercial ports.”

    2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source

18. “Mr. Bassil (Lebanon) (spoke in Arabic): At the outset, I wish to thank France, which has always worked to protect minorities. We extend our heartfelt thanks for the initiatives and ideas that have been proposed today. We warmly greet Patriarch Sako and our sister Mrs. Vian Dakhil, who is the model of the courageous activist Arab woman. I have come to this meeting today after cutting short my participation in the meeting of the League of Arab States. I was the only one among all the Ministers who left that meeting in order to be here with my colleagues in the Security Council to find ways to end the cultural genocide that is occurring in our region.”

    2015-03-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7419 (2015) · source