136 Between Private and Public
them redemption. In this regard, Hubayqa is no different from his body-
guard, Robert “Cobra” Hatem, who wrote around the same time:
Today, in my lonely exile, haunted by memories, I am neither
worried nor frightened that I personally participated in the
assassination of some Shia Moslem prisoners. I carried out my
orders as a soldier, kidnapped persons during the Israeli occu-
pation, out of anger by rights, to avenge our innocent victims
killed in cold blood, and in keeping with the line mapped out
by our leaders [like Hubayqa].^47s we shall see, there is a marked difference between the expla-A
nations of former leaders like Hubayqa and lower ranking fighters like
Cobra. Unlike the leaders who gave the orders, the common militiamen
tend to evade their responsibility by pointing to “al-zu‘amā’,” “the big
shots [al-kibār],” or most often simply the “responsible [al-mas’ūlūn].”
Seen in this perspective, the apology delivered in al-Nahar on 10 February
2000 by a former colleague of Hubayqa’s in the top ranks of the LF, Assa’ad
Shaftari, was a radical breach of the self-imposed silence regarding one’s
own misdeeds, not only of former Christian leaders, but of all former
high-ranking militiamen in Lebanon. In his letter, Shaftari apologized
to all his victims, “living or dead,” for “the ugliness of war and for what
I did during the civil war in the name of Lebanon or the ‘cause’ of ‘the
Christians.’”
e letter is formed by a series of confessions all introduced by Th
a‘tadhir [I apologize]; apologies for having “misrepresented Lebanon,”
for having “caused disgust,” and for having “led the destiny of Lebanon
astray.” Commenting on the dogma of no victor, no vanquished, Shaftari
writes that “a distorted picture has emerged, that during the 15 years of
war everybody who participated on whichever side was a war criminal.”
The truth is that “a shameless minority” has built up this image. Hopefully,
he writes, these people will see that his public apology “is the only way out
of the Lebanese distress and that it will clean the souls of hatred and ill
will and the pain of the past.” To conclude, he calls for “true reconciliation
with the self before reconciliation with the others.”
haftari’s piece did not cause a sudden wave of true reconciliation S
with “the others” to take place in Lebanon. Perhaps due to the abstract