The saddest thing about the failed smear campaign against change MPs and independent media outlets like Megaphone and Daraj is how lazy it was. For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why the elites who enriched themselves before the Thawra chose to just copy-paste a right-wing conspiracy theory from the 2010s about George Soros. Then, it finally made sense, and in today’s episode, I’ll break it down with you.

The Bankerjiyyeh’s Mindset Post-Hezbollah

There’s one concept (I know how much Lebanese love this word) that is very apt to start things off with: the Mafia-Militia analogy. Its premise is that Lebanon, in the past few decades, has been ruled by a coalition between Hezbollah (the militia) and the Mafia (the corrupt politicians, bankers, and warlords), united by their hatred of anything that could threaten their ill-gotten gains and their domination of the Lebanese population they’ve been robbing for generations.

Nasrallah’s last misguided intervention, dragging Lebanon into a full-on war with Israel that Hezbollah was hopelessly ill-prepared and ill-equipped for, neutralized the Militia part.

The one thing I’d say here is that the militia thought it was an equal partner in the self-proclaimed “Axis of Resistance.” Meaning, it was one leg of a four-legged chair with the Iranian regime, the now-fallen Assad regime, and groups like the Houthis and Hamas. The October 8, 2023 war Nasrallah launched led to the painful realization by Hezbollah that they weren’t actually partners, but simply bodyguards. They were there to take a bullet for Khamenei, but the Islamic Revolution of Iran wasn’t coming to save them when they got themselves in trouble.

It’s a difficult realization, tough to swallow, even though the rest of us could obviously tell. Now Hezbollah knows they weren’t really a partner. With Assad gone, Iran sitting with the US in Oman, and their entire Captagon empire crumbling along with their ability to smuggle Lebanese subsidized goods to fund their war machine in Syria, even their black-market illegal bank Qard El Hassan, are all gone now. Not even laundered Iranian cash via airplane is coming in anymore.

Now, just like Iran’s regime turned out to be a fickle partner, so did the local Mafia in Lebanon. They couldn’t care less about Hezbollah’s decimation. All they saw was that they no longer needed to share the spoils with the subterranean Nasrallah. They no longer had to abide by the unspoken (but often spoken) omerta they had with Hezbollah.

So the only obstacle left for the Mafia keeping their ill-gotten gains was a handful of our brave MPs and media outlets who don’t leave every interview with Mafia people carrying a wad of cash as a “tip.” The same group of people that pushed out Hezbollah’s PM choices and rustled up a loose coalition to get Lebanon Nawaf Salam as prime minister. That’s cause people like that, will not let the elites trying to keep their spoils and make us, the taxpayers, bail out the destruction they wrought while they remain untouched. Please.

But why the Soros conspiracy?

To understand this odd choice of smear, we need to understand why the reforms are actually happening. It’s because the Deputy United States Special Envoy to the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus, flies in whenever one of the Mafia tries to derail the reforms and gives them a little scolding. Like good little boys, they go down to Parliament and vote for reforms, with some extra protections too, thanks to our MPs’ coordinated pressure.

It’s because, as in a recent interview I had about the banking secrecy amendment laws passed last week with Dr. Moe Farida, “ma byemsho gheir bel sermeyyeh.”

But why does the US administration care about corruption in Lebanon so much? Why haven’t the Mafia been able to wiggle out of meaningful reform like they always did every single time Lebanon got money from foreign powers to keep the country going, while the Gebrans and Nabihs and Saads of the country milked it dry?

The simple answer is Hezbollah finances. Hezbollah, like any terrorist group, cannot have bank accounts without allies like Riad Salameh in power, who helped them steal millions of our deposits via “Sayrafa” and by smuggling subsidized goods to fund their operations in Syria. Remember when some banks helped uncover Hezbollah money laundering, and Hezbollah blew up explosives in front of cooperating bank HQs?

Cash Economy = Hezbollah Coming Back

The current, basically cash-only economy, means it’s just a matter of time before the group starts to replenish its ill-gotten funds to oppress Lebanese people first, and second, to put on a show every now and then by firing a few Soviet-era rockets and Temu-bought drones to maintain the lie to their shrinking base that they are actually “resisting” occupation.

Understanding that the current situation of zero fiscal policy and an economy in the complete darkness of cash transactions means Hezbollah might be able to sustain itself , if not as the multinational private mercenary force it was for the past two decades, at least as an armed group able to destabilize and derail any meaningful change in Lebanon for the better.

Now we get to why Soros. It’s not like he’s a household name in Lebanon, and in a country where most organizations, government agencies, and even media outlets need foreign donations and investments to stay afloat, it’s no surprise that even MTV, the spearhead of this lazy Mafia-bankerjiyyeh smear, also received a ton of money from Soros-funded initiatives.

And unlike MTV and the Mafia mouthpieces, I brought receipts, instead of only insults and rants like toddlers in Assad’s nursery.

The Lebanon Media Recovery Fund (2020–22) was a brilliant project to help support Lebanese media after the collapse and to support proper investigative journalism in Lebanon. A democracy without a free press that holds those in power accountable, at least in the court of public opinion, can never thrive. The total fund was USD 764,627 and wrapped up in 2022.

The core funders were:

The idea was that if TV stations were rewarded for doing good investigations, instead of the Thursday glazing sessions the Ghanem Brothers put on every week for whoever paid them the most, they might actually shift to real journalism. That means, instead of Marcel hosting wanted fugitives from the law like Ali Hassan Khalil because he might get a fancy watch out of it, they could, with some help and support, maybe do actual journalism for once. After all, why would anyone risk angering the Ghada Aoun-types of Mafia-Militia corrupt judges (thank goodness she’s gone) when they can easily fund their operations from the month before any election, when the Mafia-Militia shower TV stations with patronage money? I think that’s why Marcel is so butt-hurt he hosted them after their historic victory: they didn’t pay him to go on, like the rest normally do.

Bki, bterte7. Say hi to your sugar daddy Riad Salameh next time you visit him in his jail cell.

MTV, LBCI, and Al Jadeed were part of Pillar 5:

This was the amount of money and support they were given:

Now that that’s out of the way, and we’ve proven that Soros money made its way to MTV too, why would they do such a lazy, sloppy job when the one accusation they were hurling was one they were part of too? And it was never really an accusation in the first place, since anyone can submit a grant proposal and get one, all of this is publicly available information, not some scandalous thing MTV “uncovered.”

That’s because, like we already discussed, it’s US pressure forcing reform now. And like we all know, being able to lobby the US for changes in policy is crucial. Given no one would believe freshly-minted MPs and news organizations caused the collapse, and not not the Patek Philippe-clad Mafia-Militia who were in power for decades, they needed to frame it as some ideological struggle between “globalists” and “extreme left” versus right-wing conservatives.

This was such a sloppy attempt to dupe the Trump administration into thinking that the corrupt bankers are the good guys, so that the administration stops putting pressure to reform Lebanon. MTV was trying to convince the administration in DC that reforms are actually helping some global conspiracy by people like Soros, instead of the reality: not implementing reforms is just protecting the felony crimes by the Mafia and Militia that robbed us all of our bank deposits and savings.

Luckily, the Trump administration didn’t fall for this lazy, badly put-together fantasy, and the banking secrecy amendment law passed. They saw through the lies and understood that the Mafia-Militia didn’t suddenly become right-wing darlings, they just don’t want to give back the money they stole and thought they could outsmart US officials. A true “hail mary” pass if I’ve ever seen one, for those that benefited from the ponzi scheme at our expense. Thankfully, the US administration saw through the lies and is focused on making sure Hezbollah doesn’t engratiate itself as easily this time, instead of making sure a handful of bankers and politicians don’t give up the money they stole, or at the very least, stop stealing more.

This time the law passed without the loopholes that the Bankerjiyyeh put in every single previous attempt to fool the IMF, the US administration, and any other possible funders to get us out of the mess the Mafia and Militia created, without the Mafia and Militia ever suffering consequences for their crimes, but handing the bag to us, the taxpayers, instead.

What’s Next?

Lebanon has two months to decide how to distribute the losses incurred thanks to the ponzi scheme of the century pulled off by Riad Salameh at the behest of the Mafia and Militia.

The best way to do it, in my humble opinion, is to give back all the small depositors' money. It’s not even 20% of the total amount that was stolen and squandered according to the Finance Ministry (84% of depositors have less than USD 100,000 in the bank, which adds up to about $20 billion out of the roughly $100 billion lost since 2019.)

As for the big depositors, who held the majority of the money before the banks shut their doors (except for politicians and bankers) in October 2019, let them show the now-empowered banking oversight committee how they got their money. For those who made it legally, it should be a piece of cake: bring the receipts, get your money back. For those who made it illegally, I assume they’ll probably just stay quiet about it, and that money doesn’t need to be paid back by selling state assets or making us, the taxpayers, clean up the mess to make the thieves and corrupt politically exposed people’s portfolios whole again.

Then, in the upcoming elections, when we get even more MPs who are not part of the Mafia-Militia, we can finally start to criminally pursue all the big depositors who didn’t come forward to prove their money was clean. But for now, we can at least stop returning the spoils to the thieves. And hopefully, we can return the retirement accounts of so many honest Lebanese who got screwed over by the buffoons copy-pasting 2015 Twitter conspiracies to try and throw wool over everyone’s eyes, from the Trump administration to the smallest depositor wondering if they’ll ever see their money again.

Things are changing. The world is changing. The hope of the Mafia existing without the Militia is gone. It’s never too late to course-correct. Not everything is spin, and smear campaigns might get you trending on Twitter, but they won’t change the reality on the ground. And one last thing: khayyeh, shba3o.

You’ve made so much illegally, and you’ve never paid for it. That’s a pretty good deal. Just take the L and stop trying to steal even more by using Assadist and Hezbollah tactics of threats, lies, and intimidation, the same tactics you always pretended to be against.

Shba3o.

Is the pro-Mafia and pro-Banks elite minority really willing to let Hezbollah slowly regroup, just for the chance to make a quick buck by ripping off the Lebanese taxpayers, or at the very least, keep what they stole and have us bail out the banking system?

When does the short-sighted greed become too much to live with? Weren’t they supposed to be against Hezbollah, like they groveled in front of President Trump? Now you’re trying to lie to the US administration to keep this cash economy going and give Hezbollah a lifeline just when it’s finally giving up, all to protect the dirty money you illegally moved around and now can’t anymore because of the amendments that were passed, despite your desperate, and quite honestly pathetic, attempts to smear everyone but the perpetrators.

Not this time. Course correct. Do the right thing for once.

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