Attorney Dr. Rami Ollaik: Open Letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Open Letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

I am a Lebanese citizen who believes in his country and his people. I consider the interests of my country and its people to be above any consideration that has recently led to Lebanon being transformed from a homeland of the human and of life into a land of killing and destruction.

I am a Lebanese who lived through the Civil War and suffered from the injustice of the militias during it, their arbitrariness against the people, their brutality, their thuggery and their thefts. I will never forget how ‘Fatah’ checkpoint guards stopped my father upon driving me and other children to school, how its members fiercely beat him up when he refused to let them confiscate the ‘pack of bread’ prepared for our school lunch. The checkpoints of the Lebanese party militias were no better.

Palestinian atrocities against the Lebanese were followed by Syrian oppression, trailed by state terror of the leaders of the Lebanese militias, their entourage and their mafias. After the war ended, we saw them getting rewarded instead of being held accountable. They replaced their war uniforms with the fancy suits of thieves, elegant on the outside but dirty and evil on the inside. They plundered the state’s resources, deepening corruption and injustice, and completed what their militias had started in terms of destroying the state and weakening the Lebanese and abusing them. The State was looted and has collapsed, its borders wide open to weaponry smugglers, the livelihoods of the Lebanese people compromised and the savings of depositors in the banks stolen. Those mafias have turned Lebanon into a den for their corruption, terrorism, money laundering and lawlessness, making it a safe haven for every (wanted) criminal in the world.

It is the deadly epidemic of corruption that has shattered the dream Lebanon of Feyrouz and Wadih Al-Safi, turned it into a ship sailing without a captain and plunged it into the furnace of this accursed war. This war is turning Lebanon into rubble from which its oppressed people flee, broken and humiliated, to the ends of the earth, in full view and hearing of everyone.

The whole world is watching, as you bomb, kill, destroy and displace the people of my country, and in your mind you are defending your people.

Perhaps my direct message to you, and to the world watching, will shorten the time, distances and unfounded bets; perhaps it will spare us more violence, death and displacement.

I am a Lebanese whose homeland has been expropriated and whose rights have been desecrated. I heard your speeches about Lebanon; it was hard for me to hear you talk about the ‘Switzerland of the East’ while I writhe with anger and disgrace at the sight of my Lebanon bleeding to death. And I agree with you on this. Yes, I agree with the leader of an aggression on my country, and with all sadness I do so more than I agree with its rulers, the thieves of the temple, its merchants and its traitors.

I address you with all courage, and it pains me to hear from you about the oppression of people in my country, the robbing of their livelihoods and of citizens and depositors who have become homeless on the streets. Your bombs have made them lose their homes while they cursed the enemy from within for its cruelty that they say exceeds your own!

I heard your words and I want a fair solution and a way out that stops the war, killing and destruction. How’s the pathway for a truce, towards which first steps were made way earlier, that would enable our communities to live in peace? I address you while standing before my afflicted country and my oppressed and helpless people, far from the bets and philosophies of waiting that have become masks we wear to evade responsibility. I do this while trashing the treason nonsense talk and collaboration accusations that basically apply to those who cast them.

If not now, then when? So that the killing and destruction wreak more havoc on us and the souls become loaded with hatred, grudges, violence and greater evils which breed all kinds of terrorism??

I address you, seeking through this letter the shortest and fastest way to stop the machine of war and destruction, to end the horrors of war against the children of Lebanon, Israel and Gaza altogether and before anything else. I realize that we need an authority that represents its people to enter negotiation in their name. And I say: In light of a corrupt, criminal, tyrannical authority that does not represent its people, and with a fierce war raging, let us set a period and a plan in which the attacks will stop while we, the Lebanese, deal with the restructuring of our authority. I believe it’s an internal matter, with being adamant on emerging into a new reality whose consequences we bear with full responsibility and clarity.

I address you with confidence in what will achieve the interests of the Lebanese, after listening to your words and holding to what serves the interests of Lebanon and its people, hoping that we will find in them a doorway to achieve a common interest. Or do you see us rejecting ‘dialogue’ as a moral and human value that we have long claimed to adhere to?

He who trusts in himself, his ideas, integrity and values, does not fear and is not worried about anyone's blame before God. His rightfulness and truth are not shaken by any speech when he's to save his people and his country.

Finally, the most important thing remains: Are we not all descendants of Abraham, believers in one God whose call is Peace before anything else, through the words of all his prophets? So, do we choose to be true believers and advocates of ‘true’ Peace and not just a passing ‘political’ peace? Or do we accept to be advocates of conflicts, wars, grudges, sedition, killing and destruction, so that in the end we deserve God's wrath upon us?

I hope for the best, despite everything that is said, and I look forward to you accepting my call. It is a call for Peace, for the sake of Lebanon, Homeland of Humanity and the Message, and for the sake of all of us.

Truly and respectfully,


Rami Ollaik
A Lebanese citizen who loves his country
Nabatieh, Lebanon