Israel’s ‘boys’ from Bashir Gemayel to Al-Golani

On August 23, 1982, Bashir Gemayel—the Maronite militia leader who forcibly unified most of the Christian community under his Lebanese Forces—was elected president of the republic.

The scene revealed the fragility of Lebanon’s sectarian parliamentary system, whose democratic facade depended on ever-shifting inter-sect military balances. It also underscored a moment of regional rupture, as the Palestinian resistance’s withdrawal from Lebanon coincided with the elevation of Israel’s most explicit Lebanese ally to the presidency.

Bashir had to visit Israeli PM Menachem Begin in secret—not just to repay the cost of weapons, funding, and battlefield support Israel had granted his forces during the civil war, but also to settle the bill for his ascension to the presidency, a role he reached via an Israeli–Kataeb roadmap forged over years of massacres, sectarian coups, and two invasions that ravaged his own capital.

That final visit to Israel took place on the night of September 1. Bashir returned visibly rattled, fully aware that what Begin had asked of him—signing a draft peace agreement with Israel within his first week in office—might well cost him his life.

Maneuvering with excuses that reflected his precarious position, he pleaded to take office first, arguing that he needed to sign on behalf of the state, not as an individual or sectarian leader. But Begin's response was openly arrogant. Accounts of that final meeting describe him humiliating Bashir, treating him like a subordinate rather than a head of state.

Two weeks later, on September 14, Bashir was assassinated along with several of his commanders in a bombing at the Kataeb headquarters—his father’s party, his family’s legacy. The Israeli army responded by invading Beirut, and together with the Lebanese Forces, carried out the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

Although the assasination was framed as spontaneous retaliation, the perpetrator was known to be Damascus. It was punishment for Bashir's shift in loyalty from Syria to Israel. Still, some of Bashir’s supporters insisted against all evidence, that Israel had him killed for refusing to yield, casting him as a tragic hero.

Sanctifying betrayal, masking fear

The story of Bashir’s final visit to Israel recalls the earlier, formative moment between Lebanese Christian militias and the Zionist state. Much has been written about the  supposed necessity of that relationship, and how the Christian leadership, in the early 1970s, chose to cross the red line and engage with the enemy.

Just as Bashir’s death was repackaged to appear as a punishment for bravery, the initial alliance was beautified retroactively—as if it were a moment of existential panic. Sectarian ideologues have long claimed that the turn to Israel was perhaps an error, but not a sin—an act meant to protect their community from extinction.

But the Christian sect itself was not at risk.

Not even after the Cairo Agreement granted Palestinian factions operational presence in Lebanon. What was in danger was the sectarian system—the structure that preserved the dominance of feudal and semi-feudal Christian elites, their control over their own communities, and their superiority over others.

What threatened that structure was the rising influence of the National Movement and its popular agenda, which was ultimately crushed by civil war, sectarian militias, Israeli intervention, and Hafez Al-Assad.

Recent violence in Syria’s coastal regions, the latest clashes in Sweida, the bombing of Mar Elias Church in Damascus, and the surrounding rural upheavals all recall the symbolic contours of Lebanon’s past. Today, the roles are reversed.

The Druze are smeared with treason while the Syrian regime engages Israel through backchannels, hoping for approval from Tel Aviv, from Washington, and from their Gulf allies.

This dynamic reveals a constant in our region’s sectarian crises: Israel. A state built explicitly on ethno-religious supremacy.

Israel does not merely aim to fragment and weaken its neighbors, but to remake them in its image. It commits its own massacres under the pretext of “feeling threatened,” while the real motive is a primal racial hatred—naked and brutal, directed at all who do not conform to the ruling identity. Simultaneously, it presents itself to minorities as their only refuge.

The settler’s language

Some accounts suggest that Menachem Begin grew angry when Bashir Gemayel attempted to evade signing a document he had been handed, responding dismissively by simply calling him “boy.”

Other accounts, from those sympathetic to Bashir and seeking to preserve his dignity, sought to soften the insult by attributing it to a mistranslation. This supposed mistranslation has since been mythologized, wrapped in a kind of historical folklore that altered the course of Lebanese political memory—all due to a misunderstanding over a single word uttered in a secret nighttime meeting. Was it truly “boy”—or was it “my boy”—as Begin was said to often call Bashir?

In either case, neither phrase is fitting for addressing an elected president—even if the election was largely theatrical, with MPs forced at gunpoint to attend parliament and secure quorum.

Such language has no place in the realm of diplomacy and politics—unless it is used to address Bashir Gemayel before his presidency, as the militia leader whose structure and behavior more closely resembled a sectarian gang than a political party. A man who turned to Israel for weapons and funding, not only to confront Palestinian and national forces, but also to suppress dissent within segments of his own sect.

Colonial arrogance has been present in every pivotal moment where Arab leaders—whether of states or sectarian cantons—choose normalization or collaboration with Israel. Not only in the case of a Christian militia chief presented as a community representative, but even with presidents of states whose national identities are not sectarian at all—such as Egypt.

Begin humiliated Sadat at Camp David on three occasions. The first was by unilaterally amending the agreement just hours before the signing; second, by standing before the cameras and claiming that his ancestors had built the pyramids; and third, by mocking the moment Sadat, in a fit of anger, began packing his bags to leave—only to unpack them minutes later and stay to sign.

This is not merely about Begin’s character, nor his arrogance as a founding militant of the Zionist project implanted in the heart of the Arab world. It reflects the very nature of settler arrogance—the colonial belief in superiority, even over those who serve its interests.

Begin may be long gone, but the mindset of humiliating others—especially when they invoke sect or religion to justify collaboration—remains intact. And often, that invocation becomes their undoing.

Al-Golani, another ‘boy’

Damascus today is ruled by a fragile new order.

Instead of addressing its instability through the only viable path—building a national, democratic project that transcends sectarianism—it has entrenched itself in pettiness, vengeance, and political inexperience. It rebrands itself as a Sunni power punishing all others, a sharp departure from Syria’s historic role as a secular, supra-sectarian state. Israel, naturally, seizes on this weakness, feeding it, exploiting it.

No one has ever truly believed Israel’s claims of concern for the Christians of Lebanon, the Copts of Egypt, or the Druze of Syria. These are nothing more than media narratives wielded to pressure others—tools for exploiting sectarian crises and deepening fragmentation.

What Israel encourages in its surroundings—among its new friends and potential allies—is not genuine strength, but a fragile mimicry of its own sectarian configuration. This imitation is devoid of force, steeped in contradiction, and ultimately doomed by its own hollowness.

And so, the insult returns.

During recent meetings in Azerbaijan, an Israeli delegate reportedly told the Syrian side—regarding the deployment of new regime forces in southern Syria, composed of Sunni militias—“Let him do what he wants.”

Was it a green light? Or was it a trap that Al-Sharaa walked into as a result of his and his aides’ inexperience? Did the Syrian regime mistake that arrogance for permission to enter its own southern territory and slaughter one of its sects? Did they not realize Israel would reprimand them—symbolically, with “boy” then literally, with missiles? Was he unaware of how little he understood Israel’s vision for his country—whether united or carved apart?

“Boy” is no longer just a term of insult as it was in the early 1980s, when Israel was still soliciting allies, clients, and treaties from the Arab world. Today, it is Israel in its new age—imperial in posture, unchecked in power.

The phrase now takes the shape of rockets and bombs striking Al-Golani’s forces, his presidential compound, his military command. It humiliates, forces retreat, and states plainly where the line lies—a line drawn not by the ruler in Damascus, but by Israel.

History, when it repeats, takes on the character of farce. Bashir may have boasted to his allies about defying Begin, though it was his brother who later signed the treaty. Today, another militia commander, Abu Mohammad Al-Golani, declares—via a midnight speech—his withdrawal from Sweida, so as not to embroil Syria in a war with Israel.

In both episodes, the empire asserts itself. It reduces its clients to their actual size—a “boy,” a warlord, a paper president, a placeholder ruler. Whether they sign as individuals or on behalf of states, they all know one thing: they are not the authors of their own history.