... about which The Huffington Post Chooses the Wrong Side of History...

According to the HuffPo, Christopher Hitchens suffered a beat-down in Beirut this Valentine's Day past.  This is true, mostly, as I can attest, having been in the city at the time and seen Hitchens, limping and bloody and sober immediately afterwards.   That said, the HuffPo gets most of the details wrong; it was instead, I'd say, more of a stomping, with some scratching thrown in for good measure.  Further, the pro-Syrian fascist goons from the SSNP also roughed up The Week's 2007 Blogger of the Year Michael Totten, from Portland, Oregon, and punched Standpoint's own mild-mannered Deputy Editor Jonathan Foreman.  The goons, it has to be said, were not entirely effectual.  Their punches to the faces of the writers, three shots in toto, left absolutely no marks.  I was assurred that their heavy kicking was more damaging, especially when Hitchens was on the ground.  I'm unclear whether they crushed his writing hand beneath a bootheel. The thugs were not, as reported on Huff-Po, "shoe-shopping," but rather guarding watch in an intimidating fashion in a neighborhood where they were not welcome, and where last spring they brandished, and used, automatic weapons the residents. 

Meanwhile, the commentators on the HuffPo piece seem to favor the goons who beat up the writers.  One of the HuffPo commentators on the article actually tries to put in a good word for the SSNP, a socialist nationalist (not to say "nationalist socialist"... cough... Nazi) party.  Ouch.  The SSNP, suspected by many to be behind the 2005 wave of carbombings of journalists and politicians, were in any case sorry to see Syria forced out of Lebanon by a popular revolt, the Cedar Revolution, that spring. 

This Valentine's Day was, of course, the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Rafik Hariri, and in the morning Martyrs Square had been filled with young and old, Muslims and Christians and Druze, all commemorating the sad day.  That afternoon the SSNP members must have been feeling edgy and left out.  Everyone else in Beirut seemed ready to move on.  Too bad they didn't join in too.

Don't get the wrong idea about Lebanon from this incident.  It's a truly lovely country.  As the Valentine's Day Menacing took place in the Hamra district, I was with friends a mile away in Achrafiye sipping mint tea.  Very chill.  A few hours later all the menaced above-mentioned were drinking 2004 Keffrya in Gemmayzeh.

You can read the unreliable HuffPo account HERE. 

Updates:

Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club offers a photo survey of the site of the incident HERE.

Target-of-fascists Michael Totten posts his account HERE. As he says, This was "not just a street gang, they're a street gang with a state [behind them].”  Syria.