Ad Hominum

I've traveled quite a bit throughout the Middle East, to places where people have good reason to be angry at America. From Egypt, where our foreign aid helps prop up a discredited and hated regime, to Lebanon, where we supported Israeli occupation of the south for some 18 years, and more recently, a war. Yet the amount of times I personally was a target of even negative remarks? Maybe twice... if you count the farmer in the countryside around Saida in Lebanon who, after giving me directions and asking where I'm from, said, "Ah America! No!" and jokingly mimed that he was pointing a weapon at the car. Then he told me about his cousin's son in New Jersey or something, and waved as we drove off. This was in 2006, a few months before the war.

The only other tme was a friend of a family I used to live with, who visited once and was very proud to tell me that he hated America and all things American. The son pushed for clarification, saying you possibly couldn't mean the people too? Yes, I mean the people. I hate them too. I won't even eat pizza.
I pointed out that pizza is Italian.
Whatever, I won't eat hamburger either!
I pointed out hamburger is German.

The man was steadfast in his hatred of Coca-Cola, the government, and the American people, but stating this hatred was the extent. And that is the one incident among almost two years total of Arab world livin' and travelin'.

From Iraqi refugees in Damacus, most of whom have had their lives and livelihoods taken away from them because of my government, I have never been cause of any negative reactions. Governments are governments, people are people, I'm told. Even when my country directly attacked Syria and people were in the streets burning my flag in anger, nothing against me personally.

So it is very sad to me that this enlightened view does not hold true in all cases. There is a lot of hostility against Syrians in parts of Lebanon. I've heard dudes saying how a car with a Syrian liscense plate in Beirut is going to be stolen or fucked with, no doubt. One of my friends who lived in Beirut the past six months told me how she had to be careful not to speak in Syrian when trying to find a job. And then there are the stories of Syrian dudes getting beat up. At one point a couple months ago I was considering relocating to Lebanon and my boyfriend expressed reservations - of course I'd be fine, as an American girl, but there might be some trouble for him, he said. I know obviously all Lebanese are not hating on the Syrian people, but it's very sad to me that there are some willing to take their anger out on people.

And it All Comes Back to Ireland

My father is proven right. It all comes back to Ireland. Since moving to the States 30 years ago, he has been on a one-man mission to prove that everything comes from the Irish; I have born the majority of this campaign. Growing up, books like, "How the Irish Saved Civilization" littered the house. At any time I was expected to name the four Irish Nobel Prize winners for Literature (Yeats, Shaw, Beckett, Heaney) or recite a Yeats poem. Any discussion on practically anything brought up the inevitable Irish Analogy.

American civil rights movement? Let's hear the story about Catholic Emancipation again. But from where did Martin Luther King draw his inspiration? If you said Ghandi, you'd be only partially corrent: the true source of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and all boycotts for that matter, was the Irish Land League in 1880. Peasants in county Mayo organized a protest against Charles Boycott, the landlord's agent, for refusing to lower rents. Everyone refused to deal with the man: no one would work the fields, shopkeepers refused to sell to him, servants left the house. Boycott soon entered the English lexicon. Affirmative action, in his mind, has a direct relation to the positive discrimination practiced to bring more Catholics into the police and other government bodies in Northern Ireland after peace.

My father has also been insisting on creating a Palestinian-Israeli peace along the lines of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland (though wouldn't this create one state? Perish the thought!). No fan of colonalization, he laments the injustice of hundreds of years of English occupation, and was delighted when I pointed him to Edward Said's work on analyzing Irish literature with post-colonial theory.

And now, even Lebanon can be Ireland. Joshua Landis, who runs the awesome blog Syria Comment has written some commentary on a WSJ editorial on Hezbollah. In countering the ed's author, he writes that Hezbollah is a reasonable organization, "not much different from the IRA."
Futher:

The US very intelligently refused to treat the IRA as a terrorist
organization despite British insistence that it be proscribed as an
evil criminal gang. Fortunately, the the US insisted on viewing the Irish
Catholic struggle as political and not criminal. The result was successful
diplomacy that helped resolve the dispute and transformed Ireland into one
of the happier countries in the world with one of its zippiest
economies. There is no reason Lebanon can not follow suit.

Yes! It all does come back to Ireland! Unfortunately I doubt that many in Washington are going to see Hezbollah as more similar to the IRA than to al-Qaeda, as all logic vanishes in the face of the supposed monolith of "Islamic Terrorism". al-Qaeda in the unspoken word in all American pronouncements on Hezbollah (and Hamas), referenced with the all-emcompassing "Islamic Terror" or, what are they calling it? "Islamofascism". Whenever these terms are invoked, the average American sees Osama Bin Ladin, never mind that sect differences, or that Hezbollah is at heart nationalist, or that Hezbollah's beef ain't directly with the US.

But the bigger question is, if Hezbollah is IRA, when are they going to get a Sinn Féin? Both Gerry Adams and Nasrallah do have beards and kindly, grandfatherly smiles.

Oh, Lebanon!

Friday mid-morning some friends came over to play cards and eat a late breakfast. I has been blissfully unaware of the outside world as our TV was not working (later discovered that the satellite cable was just not plugged in hard enough).

Ra'id asked if I had heard the news about Lebanon. What news? Oh, just the inqilab (coup d'etat). Inqilab! The TV was soon fixed, much to my embarrassment, and we sat around watching al-Manar (the Hezbollah station) while playing blackjack and betting with cookies. I was all for switching to al-Jazeera, since al-Manar was playing an old interview and the only news was the scroll at the bottom. But some of those present trust few channels outside al-Manar; certainly not al-Arabiyya, which is owned by the Saudis, and not al-Jazeera, which, while better, still is anti-Syrian sometimes.

From the scroll we learned that President Bashar Al-Assad had proclaimed that the not-actually-a-coup was Lebanese issue for the Lebanese to work out. So, I cleaned out my friends in blackjack, magnanimously sharing the cookies afterwards anyways, and enjoyed the beautiful spring day.

I don't want to sound too blase, but at times its hard not to roll my eyes and sigh, oh, Lebanon! But really - a nonstop crisis for months? How many militias and parties in a country with a total population less than that of Damascus? Oh, Lebanon!

Lebanon Might not be an Ideal New Years Destination

I was in class today when Ester, the Italian, got a text from her friend that said "the general of the Lebanese army died in an explosion". She shared, and we all immediately thought why? Michel Sulaiman is the one guy everyone agreed on for president - who gains from killing him? And immediately as well - shit, does this mean civil war? During the break our teacher checked it out and no, the general was not killed, but a vice-general (نائب القائد - what do we call this? One of the guys right below the general) was.

Still - who benefits? Those aligned with March 14 and Hizballah all have good relations with the army. Maybe it was the Islamist militants the army spent the summer fighting in Nahr al-Barid?

Election Tomorrow

The big news here is the Lebanese presidential election to be held tomorrow, after being delayed 4 times. The news is all ablaze on the topic, especially on the the high interest that America, France, Britain, Israel, Syria, Iran, and others have in the result. Basically (and very basically) from the multitude of Lebanese political parties there are two camps: "pro-West" and "pro-Syrian" (including Hizbollah). The two sides have to agree on a presidential candidate, who must be a Maronite Christain because of Lebanon's insane constitution. The Christians themselves are split between the two camps.

If the parliament cannot decide on one candidate tomorrow, many fear that the two camps, who are probably training and arming supporters, will form rival governments, and its 1975 all over again.

The family I live with and I watch TV together, them agreeing with various mps and ministers from the latter camp. They were impressed that I know from what sect each of Lebanon leaders must be from (President, Maronite Christian; Prime Minister, Sunni; Deputy Prime Minister, Orthodox; Speaker of Parliament, Shi'i). Abu Mazen shakes his head at this, and blame the French. "You know Lebanon used to be part of Syria. They divided us to make us weak. United we are stronger."