Thousands of supporters of Hizbullah and other pro-Syrian parties, many inconsequential, organized a demonstration outside the US embassy in Awkar today. What is striking about this demonstration is how it copied the March 14 look and feel. Lebanese flags were everywhere, and protesters even painted their faces with the colors of the flag.

To many, this constitutes a robbery of national symbols. The flag is being prostituted to serve essentially unpatriotic goals.

Yet the irony of the situation should not escape us. Hizbullah, criticized for being an Iranian militia acting against national interests, is in humiliating self-defense mode. The party has never been a fan of the Lebanese republic's national symbols. Its ultimate goal being an Islamic Shia state ruled by clerics, it has, in the past, refused to even wrap the coffins of its martyrs in a Lebanese flag.

During the last years of the Israeli occupation, when more Lebanese became sympathetic to their fight against the occupation in the south and the Bekaa, their yellow flag with the gun and God's name in the center often reminded Lebanese that Hizbullah's fight was selfishly and exclusively theirs. Even when Future Television and Tele Liban would refer to the resistance as a "national resistance", Hizbullah's al-Manar never did, and more frequently than not, it became difficult to accept that resistance into the national fold when it constantly renounced national symbols.

Lebanese support for the resistance was, at times of alleged great national unity, nothing more than spite directed at arrogant Israel. It was never a unanimous call for arms, and it certainly never equated Lebanese honor with those arms (as Hizbullah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, did yesterday).

In fact, Hizbullah was always alone in its choice to fight. Whether this was fortunate or unfortunate is beside the point. The majority of the Lebanese after the civil war-and this includes the Shia-- were tired of violence, period. Hizbullah's short-lived fortune came after Israel stupidly bombed Lebanese infrastructure, creating enough spite to temporarily legitimize the resistance's shaky national raison d'etre. And if it weren't for Syria, one could argue, Lebanon would have resurrected the armistice treaty with Israel a long time ago.

Today Hizbullah has been adding a hypocritical dimension to its political identity. The sea of Lebanese flags that confronted alleged American interference was a desperate attempt to portray the increasingly isolated party as a national party with legitimate rights. Yet I'm afraid Hizbullah has already lost the fight for Lebanese hearts and minds. Hariri's assassination ended all illusions regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Arab regime's sincerity and competence in waging such a struggle. No amount of cedars painted on noses will convince people that Lebanon should return being Syria's card against Israel, let alone join Iran's folly. One could even predict that Hizbullah's demise will be at the hands of that fake Lebanese nationalism it flaunts, which is eating away at the party's yellow Islamist project.

Hizbullah's affront today lies in hypocritical calls for no foreign interference in domestic affairs, while pledging allegiance to Iran and Syria, and praising terrorists in Iraq, who massacre Shias on a daily basis.

Many bloggers and commentators have rightly pointed out Hizbullah's shameful disregard for Syria's murders in Lebanon. Nasrallah yesterday even challenged the March 14 parties to present him with evidence of Syrian complicity in the murder of Hariri and other anti-Syrian figures. Nasrallah is not known for being stupid, but he chooses to play dumb at the expense of the country he claims to want to protect from foreigners. His shameful defense of Syria is not unlike Ahmadinejad's pathetic denial of the Holocaust. But why go that far. Next time you hear Hizbullah doubting Syria's role in terrorizing Lebanon, point to a poster of one their martyrs and ask: what is your proof that Israel killed him?

Source: From Beirut to the Beltway