Lebanese say Nasrallah's US boycott goes beyond a joke

While Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah's recent call for a boycott on US products has been met with derision and a barrage of amusingly mocking social media memes, some caution that the move is no joking matter.

They warn that Nasrallah -- a figure many see as seeking to step into the leadership vacuum left behind by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani -- is attempting to move Lebanon ever closer to Iran.

This would come at enormous cost to the Lebanese people, they said, whether they support Nasrallah's proposed boycott or not.

Nasrallah made his pronouncement during a February 16th televised speech, delivered shortly after the 40-day anniversary of Soleimani's death.

Immediately after, social media exploded with critical and sarcastic comments.

One meme featured a photo of Nasrallah's son Jawad wearing a US-made shirt inscribed with "USA-73" in English, accompanied by a photo of him in the same pose, shirtless, after Nasrallah's boycott.

In a social media retort, Free Shia Movement head Sheikh Muhammad Hajj Hassan, one of Hizbullah's most prominent opponents, had these words to share with Nasrallah:

"Before you ask your public to boycott America, I wish you would have your son take off that sweatshirt, and have him wear Iranian [clothes]."

"Just for your information, the size of the hamburger market alone in America is $130 billion, or three times the size of the entire Iranian economy," journalist Nadim Koteish said in another post. "Take it easy with the boycott talk."

Nasrallah's call 'harms Lebanon'

"What age does al-Sayed Hassan want to take us back to?" asked Ghassan Husami, secretary general of the Traders Association in Tripoli.

"How does he want to fight American products when Lebanon imports more than 80% of its products from America?"

Nasrallah's call "harms Lebanon and isolates it" at a time when the country is in desperate need of help, Husami told Al-Mashareq.

"Its latent undertones are frightening," he added, noting that it reflects an attempt "to control us and serve Iran's interests in Lebanon".

Journalist and political writer Badia Fahs told Al-Mashareq that Nasrallah is "tilting at windmills" with his boycott call.

"He calls for the boycott of American products when he knows full well that we are a consumerist society and not a productive society, and we cannot do without these goods," she said.

"How can he call for boycotting and fighting America economically when most of the electric appliances in our homes are American-made, ... including those in his own home and the homes of his base?" Fahs asked.

She noted that Nasrallah's call was met "with a lot of sarcasm, and people saw it as amusing, since his stronghold in Beirut's southern suburb is a major hub for selling American products".

A number of US retail chains have shops in the heart of this area, she said.

Following Nasrallah's announcement, some of his supporters launched a Facebook page titled "Indi badeel" (I have an alternative), on which they display US products next to European, Iranian and Arab alternatives.

The page attracted a slew of sarcastic comments, including this one:

"You use Facebook, Twitter and American social media to call for a boycott of America. You call for boycotting America via iPhone and from US-made four-wheel drive vehicles. Everything you use to confront America was made by it."

Move has dangerous dimensions

Nasrallah's words "are a mockery as he has nothing to offer but delusions, such as taking on the US economy, as if it is based on only the products we import from it", journalist Vera Bou Monsef told Al-Mashareq.

"Although his call was mocked on social media, his words have a dangerous dimension, as if he is paving the way for full normalisation with Iran by surreptitiously promoting Iranian products", she said.

Bou Monsef said Nasrallah's call "preceded the visit to Lebanon by Iranian Shura Council Speaker Ali Larijani by mere hours. So his words are not innocent, but rather have an underlying motive and objective".

She said when she watches Nasrallah's televised speeches, "I do not see him as a person with a Lebanese identity but rather an Iranian who speaks for Iran".

"I also see the image of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei behind him."

Bou Monsef admits that she laughed when she first heard about Nasrallah's boycott.

"But then I became apprehensive," she said. "I felt that we are heading for dark days. It is as if by calling for boycotting American products he is deliberately seeking to suffocate and drown Lebanon."

"We are living our worst days with him," she said.