Because, as Michel Chiha wrote, sometimes it is necessary to repeat what should be self-evident. Because what ought to be common sense has been systematically trampled, dissolved in successive compromises, eradicated by a culture of submission, buried under the rubble of a State that has long ceased to be one. Because, once again, we must remind ourselves of this fundamental truth:
A State that does not prosecute its murderers is not a State.
It is nothing but a fiction.
A mere parody of institutions, behind which thrive the parallel reigns of militias and clans. A territory abandoned to power struggles, where fear has replaced law, where submission passes for order, where memory is perceived as a threat. A political space where truth is not only concealed but deliberately crushed, flattened, annihilated.
In other words, a fig leaf concealing a shameful deformity.
And let there be no illusions. Impunity is not a malfunction. It is a method of governance, the cornerstone of a system of domination that survives solely through crime and the silence that follows.
It rests on three immutable principles:
•Violence as the language of power. One does not persuade; one eliminates. One does not govern; one neutralizes.
•Oblivion as the ultimate victory. A crime today, a rumor tomorrow, and then—nothing.
•Submission as the political horizon. If no one is judged, it means fear has already triumphed.
A justice system reduced to nothing but a skeletal shell, devoid of compass and soul, is merely an “Ideological Apparatus of the State,” as Gramsci put it. At best, it is a docile instrument in the oppressor’s hands. At worst, it is yet another form of that “silencer” with which the Party of Assassins had threatened Lokman Slim months before his murder.
Lokman and the victims of August 4 were not merely assassinated.
They were executed a second time through the abandonment of justice.
Beyond the crime itself, it is the denial of that crime—the burial of the investigation—that is equally unbearable.
No suspects. No accused. No guilty parties.
Only corpses and silence.
This is how a country dies.
The Mechanics of Crime
A flag, a government, and a seat at the United Nations do not make a State. A State is, first and foremost, a structure that guarantees justice, asserts sovereignty, and protects its citizens. When it renounces the punishment of crime, when it refuses to uphold the rule of law, it ceases to be a State and becomes nothing more than an instrument of domination.
Those who kill without being judged always end up ruling.
This is how the mechanics of crime function:
First, intimidation—harassment, public shaming, and threats hurled with impunity by a pack of attack dogs, cyber-militias, and media mouthpieces, throwing around the ultimate accusation: “traitor.”
Then comes execution—cold, calculated, not just as punishment but as a message to all those who might dare to break the silence.
And finally, oblivion—the case closed without follow-up, the investigation obstructed, the institutional complicity that turns justice into a masquerade.
Political assassination is never an isolated act. It is a cog in a much larger machine, a means of governing through intimidation rather than argument, through execution rather than negotiation, through enforced amnesia rather than memory.
Ask Lokman Slim.
Ask Samir Kassir and Gebran Tueini.
Ask Rafik Hariri.
Ask Rene Mouawad.
Ask Bashir Gemayel.
Ask Kamal Junblat…
From Lokman Slim to Kamal Joumblatt, half a century of assassinations. Half a century of closed cases. Half a century of capitulations that have turned impunity into the norm and oblivion into a State policy.
The truth? Everyone knows it from the very first moment.
But its recognition by justice? That is another matter entirely—an almost unattainable luxury.
Between Two Cultures
The fundamental problem, for over half a century, is that Lebanon is torn between two cultures.
On one side, the culture of connection, of coexistence, of citizenship, of building a State governed by law.
On the other, the culture of exclusion, of rejection, of murder as a political instrument.
What it aspires to be, versus what it is.
Mr. Hyde, yearning to become Dr. Jekyll again.
The culture of connection builds a State. The other destroys it.
Samir Frangieh understood this better than anyone.
That is why he constantly called for a rupture with the culture of violence and the necessity of an intifada for peace.
The Lebanese Want to Turn the Page
And for the first time in half a century, the regional situation—marked by the weakening of Iran and its proxies and the fall of the Syrian regime—opens the door to such change, after two incomplete and unfinished attempts in 2005 and 2019.
But now, the time has come for new leaders to rise to the occasion.
The time has come to put an end to the mechanics of crime.
If impunity triumphs once more, Lebanon will not recover.
States do not die solely under bombs.
They die in indifference.
In the silence that follows assassinations.
In the silence that surrounds closed cases.
In the silence that buries causes before they have even been judged.
Lebanon cannot afford another surrender.
Every impunity left unchallenged is a guarantee of future violence.
A War Cannot Rebuild a State
A war and its consequences cannot rebuild a State.
Violence cannot put an end to violence.
On the contrary, any war—regardless of its outcome—is merely the beginning of a new cycle of violence.
To truly mark the transition toward a culture of peace, we must begin somewhere. With a sign. A symbol. A bold gesture.
This powerful gesture is justice.
For Lokman. For the victims of the Beirut Port explosion.
For all the dead.
For all the living who refuse to die.
For once—just once!