I wonder if Elie Hobeika, the once notoriously-feared militia leader, would have ever imagined his legacy sharing a billboard with Burger King.
Every year memorial canvases like the one on the left crop up across Beirut’s northern suburbs around the time of his assasination on January 24, 2002 in car bomb that killed three other people.
Days before his death, Hobeika reportedly claimed he would reveal evidence against former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres– evidence that would prove Hobeika’s “innocence.” I wonder what happened to that evidence.
Nonetheless, several survivors of the 1982 massacre, which killed of over 1,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, told me they personally witnessed Hobeika leading that killing spree in a piece I wrote for Al Jazeera last September.
