April 1, 2007
Hope Over Hate: A Lebanon Diary
My American friend Noah Pollak visited Beirut and South Lebanon with me on my last trip.
He flew to Beirut from Jerusalem (via Amman.)
His long-awaiting essay has now been published in Azure Magazine. Here is an except:From Israel, Lebanon has a way of appearing as a monolith. Its entire southern border is a Hezbollah stronghold, from which the organization, since Israel’s withdrawal in 2000, has been building a sophisticated battlefield infrastructure, stockpiling weapons, and planning the abduction and killing of Jews. It is thus easy to view Lebanon as a country in which the masses have gladly assented to the establishment of an Iranian forward operating base within its borders. Hezbollah is particularly good at using its territory to attempt to provoke and demoralize Israel; it put up a billboard on the border, facing into Israel, which shows the severed head of an IDF soldier, captioned: Sharon, don’t forget. Your soldiers are still in Lebanon. If you tell an Israeli that you have visited Lebanon, you will typically be met with a guileless stare of worry and astonishment.Read the whole thing.But there is a Lebanon that exists in the distance, too far away to see from Israel’s northern border, and too difficult to discern through the opaque and fevered people camped in the South. It is the Lebanon of the Christians, the moderate Sunnis, and the Druze, the Lebanon that earned Beirut the moniker of the Paris of the Middle East. This Lebanon looks West for inspiration and support, not East, and sustains a loathing for Hezbollah (and the Palestinians) that rivals Israel’s. This is the Lebanon of East and West Beirut, of outstanding restaurants, nightlife, beaches, tourism, and Mediterranean joie de vivre. These Lebanese share two vital things with Israel: An aspiration to live in a liberal, democratic society, and a fervent wish to rid their nation of the Islamic extremists who are the perpetual cause of bloodshed, instability, and warfare. Israel and Lebanon, in this regard, are more similar to each other than either of them is to any other nation in the region. In the 1980s, a Lebanese Christian leader declared that “the Western world should either defend us, or change its name.” Israel is a member in high standing of the Western world, and should not exempt itself from sympathizing with such pleas.
