In response to the article written by Mrs. May Murr: "Facts concerning the so-called Greater Syria".

I will divide my response to two parts. In the first I will briefly address Mrs. Murrs statements one after the other commenting on each, then I would follow that with a detailed explanation of some of the points raised by Mrs. Murr hoping to be able clarify them in an objective, scientific and truthful manner. (These points are: 1. The Name: "Syria", 2. Social Nationalism Vs. National Socialism and 3. Saadah and the Lebanese Particularism)

However, before I get into the details of the article, allow me to re-iterate what was mentioned in previous responses. If you agree with us that the geographical area known to some as the Fertile Crescent and to others as Natural Syria is a single geographical, social and historical entity then what you actually name it becomes a secondary issue.

I see that Mrs. Murr stressed too much on the naming of such an area. She does not seem to have denied or tried to deny the fact that this area constitutes a single Nation. If she decides to call it Greater Lebanon so be it.

Antun Saadeeh’s labelling of this region as Syria came after thorough investigation and was not a haphazard, non-substantiated statement. The details of such investigation are mentioned at a later stage in this article. (Please refer as well to the response presented by Mr. Elie on January 29^th, 1998).

Going back to the article at hand:

1. Statements with which we agree:

1. "Greater Syria is a political entity …". (Section 2, first sentence)

I think that Mrs. Murr means that the term ‘Greater Syria’ is not but a political term. Antun Saadah fully agreed with such a claim. In all of Saadah’s literature, not a single time does he refer to Natural Syria as ‘Greater Syria’.

 

2. "He [Antun Saadah] picked up an idea which was not new. Namely, an entity including Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and Cyprus would be a viable economic entity, whereas each country by itself, is not…" (Section 2, 4^th line)

No comment.

3 ."In speaking of nations and nationalities, one must always remember that the only beings in whom blood descent is paramount are horses (to use Said Akl's words)! People interact and intermarry but if, at the origin, they have strong physical and spiritual particularities which are intensified by the vicissitudes of time, their spiritual and physical particularities remain and will assimilate the newcomers!" (Section 5, 2^nd paragraph)

The fact that any Nation is the result of a coherent mixture of different races is a basic premise in Saadah’s ideology.

 

2. Statement which seem to contradict one another:

1. Whom should we blame for labelling Lebanon as part of Syria?, Mrs. Murr wonders. In addressing this question, Mrs Murr states:

"The idea of the Fertile Crescent was formulated by British political thinkers who wished to oust France from the region" (Section 2, 2^nd paragraph)

"The French government under the Third Republic, prompted by their political thinkers, attempted to wipe out the name Lebanon from the map…

… in the hope that they will drown the Lebanese in a Syrian entity…" (Section 2,3^rd paragraph)

So, who was it? The British or the French? (See the detailed answer for better understanding).

2. Still confusing historical, geographical and political terms. Mrs. Murr writes:

1. Statements that are completely, absolutely, utterly, 100% wrong:

The above was a brief (As brief as it could possibly be), point by point response to Mrs. Murr’s article.

What follows is an in depth analysis and explanation of several points and issues that were raised by Mrs. Murr in her article but she either failed to present them in a truthful and honest manner or she kept her discussion of these points at a very shallow level.

Several theories have been advanced to explain the origin of the name Syria. It is, in form, a Greek name (Suria) first used by the Greek historian Herodotus (20). Herodotus applies the name Syrians to the Phoenicians, Palestinians, and interestingly the Cappadocians. He does not use distinction between Syrian and Assyrian consistently and states: 'These people used to be called Syrians by the Greeks, Assyrians being the name for them elsewhere'. The various theories on the etymology of 'Syria' can be categorized as follows:

- from 'Assyria' by elimination of the prefix. This is a popular theory and has strong elements to support it considering that the Assyrian empire included at various times the entire western part of the Crescent. It is suggested by the statement of Herodotus mentioned above. Further evidence comes from the Syrian writer Lucian who, writing in Greek, referred to himself interchangeably as 'Syrian' and 'Assyrian'.

-from the Semitic name of the city of Tyre, 'Sur'. The Greeks, however, referred to the city as 'Tur' and it is difficult to see how they would derive the name of the land with an 's'. Chroniclers of the crusades have stated that the inhabitants of the region gave this explanation for the etymology of the name of the land. The reliability and relevance of this late testimony, however, are difficult to ascertain.

-from the Ugaritic and biblical 'Siryon', a name for Mt. Hermon. The Greeks, however, would have maintained the 'i' and had no need to substitute a 'u' as in "Suria'.

-from the Egyptian 'Hrw' (Hurri) used to refer to western Syria during the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Dynasties. This assumes a transformation of the 'H' to the Coptic -S-, apparently a development with many precedents. Herodotus could easily have utilized the term the Egyptians used to refer to their northeastern neighbors.

The Unitarian stirring in the confines of the Fertile Crescent became manifest in the development of economic ties, cultural interactions, and population mixing all antecedent to the earliest political forms of unity. The unity of the life cycle within the Fertile Crescent has preceded the political unity of the first territorial empire by the Akkadian rulers. The unity of life has persisted when political unity was lacking. It should be highlighted that the recurring territorial empires arising in Syria under the mantles of the various forming elements of the Syrian nation, have contributed to the maintenance and promotion of the unity of life. Thus the Babylonian empire of Hammurapi, the Assyrian empire, the Neo-Babylonian state, the Seleucide rule etc... have given political and administrative facilitatory forms to the unity of life prevalent within the confines of the Syrian homeland.

Saadeh ascribed the failure of historians in general to grasp the historical unity within the confines of the Fertile Crescent to the influence of Greek and Roman historians. A similar opinion has been independently advanced recently by the British historians Amelie Kuhn and Susan Sherwin-White: 'Traditional approaches to the study of the Hellenistic East after Alexander have been mainly hellenocentric and have selected as of prime importance the establishment and spread of Greek culture. This is a serious lack which stems from the overriding significance attached to the classical tradition in which most scholars of the ancient world have been educated. One of the results of this is that where there is no clear Greek evidence a political, social and cultural vacuum is assumed. Another distorting factor has been the preoccupation of Roman historians who have tended (not unnaturally) to concentrate almost exclusively on those regions of the Seleucide empire which by the first century BC had become part of the Roman empire. This approach has led them to...[ignore] the central importance of the vast territories controlled by the Seleucid east of the Euphrates'.

The question of limiting the term 'Syria' to the western part of the Fertile Crescent is examined by another historian in the same collection, Fergus Millar: 'By 'Syria' I mean anywhere west of the Euphrates and south of the Amanus mountains-essentially therefore the area west of the Euphrates where Semitic languages were used ... This begs a question about Asia Minor (and especially Cilicia), from which Aramaic documents are known, and a far more important one about northern Mesopotamia and about Babylonia; Should we not, that is, see the various Aramaic-speaking areas of the Fertile Crescent as representing a single culture, or at any rate closely connected cultures, and therefore not attempt to study the one area without the others?'.

At the core of National Socialism was the Nationalism advocated by the historian Heinrich von Treitschke. A basic theme was Social Darwinism: individuals and nations are both subject to a continuous struggle for life. In this struggle, race is the center of life and all other elements are rated with reference to it. National Socialism claimed that keeping the blood and the race pure is a nation's noblest task. It proclaimed the Germanic race as the new ‘icorpus mysticum’ on which the salvation of the Aryan race and consequently that of the world depended. Accordingly, Nazist policies "figured solely as an expedient intended to improve the Germanic race genetically and to protect it against racial interbreeding which according to the National Socialists, always entails the doctrine of the higher race."'

By contrast, Sa'adeh excluded the notion of race as a criteria of nationality. In one of his most vigorous statements against the national socialist conception of the N.S.D.A.P, he declared: "The alleged purity of the race or the blood of any nation is a groundless myth. It is found only in savage groups, and even there it is rare." For the same reason, Sa'adeh reproached both Count Gobineau and Chamberlain, the forefathers of National Socialism, and Pascal Mancini who unconsciously lapsed into the use of the catchword race in defining the concept of the nation.

In National Socialism, the national idea lost any pretense of scientific objectivity. This is because there is no correlation between race and national frontiers. More importantly, when seen from a purely social perspective, the nation is not a single race in the scientific sense, but a multiracial society fused together in multitudes. This fusion is a process by which two or more races combine to produce a new whole which is significantly different from each of its parent races, but includes elements from all of them, produced through the stimulation of contact and subsequent internal development.

Another significant difference between National Socialism and Social Nationalism relates to the concept of national history. In National Socialism purity of blood speaks louder than reason, and race is the center of all human history. Ernest Kriek, a National Socialist philosopher at Heidelberg, asserted the contrast as follows: "There has arisen ... blood against formal reason; race against purposeful rationality; honour against profit; unity against individualistic disintegration; martial virtue against bourgeois security; the folk against the individual and the mass."

In Mein Kampf Hitler stated the basic postulates of the race theory as follows: First, a struggle for the survival of the fittest sets the pace for social progress. This struggle occurs within the race, thus giving rise to a natural elite; it also occurs between races and the cultures that express the inherent natures of different races. Second, hybridization by the intermixture of two races results in the degeneration of the higher race. Third, that all high civilizations or important cultures are the creation of one race, or at most of a few. One particular race singled out is the 'culture-creating Aryan' which, according to Hitler, achieved its superior moral qualities through dutifulness and idealism (honour) rather than intelligence. In this organic conception of life, all history "must be rewritten and reinterpreted in terms of the struggle between the races and their characteristic ideas, or more specifically, as a struggle between the Aryan or culture-creating race and all the lower breeds of mankind."

On the contrary, Sa'adeh regarded racial fusion as one of the driving forces of human history. Although he distinguished between higher and lower civilizations he never lost sight of the common sense approach to the question of race relations. This distinction itself was maintained on the ground of racial hybridization. Higher civilization was thus seen as the product not of racial purity, as the national socialists would have us believe, but of the group's on-going inter-racial mixture, and vice versa in relation to lower civilizations. Moreover, whereas in national socialism the nation, in both its existence and history, is seen in a purely racial sense, in social nationalism, it is based on human as well as geographical factors. "There can be no people," wrote Sa'adeh, "where there is no land, no society where there is no physical environment, and no history where there is no society."

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By Dr. Adel Beshara (Extracts from his book: "Syrian Nationalism: An Inquiry Into the Political Philosophy of Antun Sa’adeh". Bissan – Beirut, 1995)

Sa'adeh considered the creation of the modern state of Lebanon in 1920 a breach of the territorial integrity of natural Syria. In an article entitled "al-wihda al-Suriyya" (Syrian Unity), written soon after the proclamation of the new state, he argued that it would be erroneous to suggest, as some Lebanese nationalists have, that present-day Lebanon constituted a single national entity with a unique historical continuity. Instead, Lebanon is depicted as an invaluable part of Syria, no different, certainly no less important, than the rest of the country. As Sa'adeh's political awareness sharpened, his argument took on added significance. He began to emphasize that, from the internal point of view, the Lebanese question arose from subsidiary reasons which were valid at a time when the sectarian idea formed the predominant social ideology. He wrote:

It is clear that the Lebanese question can only be sectionally justified. The Lebanese question is not based on the existence of Lebanon as something independent, nor on the existence of a separate Lebanese homeland, or even on an independent Lebanese history. Its only basis is religious party partisanship and theocracy.

This meant, in effect, that the foundations of modern Lebanon hinged on the continuing presence of a sectarian feeling. If this feeling were to be eradicated, the claim to a separate Lebanese nation would lose its political legitimacy. By contrast, the Lebanese nationalists see the history of Lebanon as an unbroken historical procession tending toward "national" self-fullfilment. This procession, according to them, did not begin in 1920 with the creation of the modern state, nor in 1861 with the establishment of the autonomous Sanjak of Mount Lebanon (the Mutasarrifiya). Certain unique features had already appeared as far as back as the Mameluk period; but a truly Lebanese entity, the Imarah, emerged only in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries during the reign of Fakhr al-Din II. During this period (1590-1842), so the argument goes, Lebanon acquired its special character as a separate political entity with a tradition of autonomy. The argument made considers the Maronite political, economic, social and numerical dominance of vital importance to Lebanon's development as a distinct entity. It was the work of the traditional historiographers of the Maronites. Their writings stressed a strong sense of religious unity and a feeling that their community was 'a rose among thorns'. Ironically, this reinforced rather than negated Sa'adeh's interpretation. The Lebanese entity emerged in Maronite writings not as a scientific or historical reality, but rather as a sectarian reaction to an anomalous situation.

After the creation of modern Lebanon in 1920, various attempts were made to give scientific depth to the demand for a separate Lebanese state. Pheonicianism, which may be broadly defined as that body of opinion which postulated the existence of a distinctive Lebanese national essence persisting from the Phonician era to the present, was perhaps the most pivotal theory developed. Youssef Sawda, its leading exponent, claimed that modern Lebanon is not a mere product of post-War diplomacy, but the direct descendent of ancient Pheonicia and, as such, possessed the same essential characteristics, qualities, and potential. Similarly, Michel Chiha regarded Lebanon as the "warehouse and financial and services centre of the Arab World - the Phoenicia of the modern Middle East." In his writings on Lebanon, the Phoenician days are projected impressionistically to illustrate the various features of the country and its unique character.

Sa'adeh dismissed the Phoenician theory as a fantasy that lacked any sense of historical objectivity. Those of this way of thinking, he argued, see history as tailor-made to their own particularistic and personal needs. For instance, they are oblivious to the fact that the Phoenicians were not confined to Mount Lebanon or to the geographical entity of contemporary Lebanon. They covered the entire coastline of Syria and parts of the Syrian interior. "If the [Lebanese] Christians refer back to their scripture, the Bible," asserted Sa'adeh, "they will find that it is defined as the Pheonicia of Syria, not the Phoenicia of Lebanon." From a chronological point of view, the largely Maronite population of Mount Lebanon could not possibly be biologically related to the ancient Phoenicians because they belonged to a different part of Syria. They did not move to the safety of the Lebanese mountains until the ninth century. This made them, in Sa'adeh's opinion, considerably more "Syrian" than any other group in the country. Sa'adeh could take heart in anthropological studies which showed no direct connection between the present-day population of Lebanon and the Pheonicians. Rather, they seemed to suggest a common, though distant ancestry, possibly to be seen an early Proto-Hittite race, believed to have once occupied the entire region from Armenia proper across the Taurus to the Syrian coast and the area of the Fertile Crescent.

A recent book by the celebrated Lebanese historian, Kamal Salibi, has given an added credibility to this claim. Salibi writes:

Clearly, between ancient Phoenicia and the Lebanon of Medieval and modern times, there is no demonstrable historical connection. The historical chasm between the two involves two major changes of language, from Canaanite to Aramaic, then from Aramaic to Arabic, and the accompanying shifts of population which no doubt occurred at the same time. There is also the intervening Hellenistic period to account for, when Phoenicia, certainly by the late Roman period, was no more than a geographical expression loosely used. Not a single institution or tradition of Medieval or modern Lebanon can be legitimately traced back to ancient Phoenicia.

Regretably, the Lebanese particularists were too deeply and passionatly absorbed in the search for political legitimacy to see Sa'adeh's point.

A second, but equally influential theory, portrayed Lebanon's existence from a geographical perspective. It argued that Lebanon was separated from Syria by unique dividing frontiers and has a natural environment that is both unique and distinct. Its architects placed an enormous emphasis on a mountain chain that runs through the centre of Lebanon. Charles Malek, a contemporary Lebanese nationalist, has expressed this theory as follows:

Lebanon, in the first place, means those mountains that are unique in the Near East, this nature which God bestowed as a beauty but almost surpasses any natural beauty...there is no country in the Middle East and it is rare to find a comparable country in the world in which mountains dominate the life of human beings, their mentality, their thinking, and their destiny as the mountains of Lebanon do for the Lebanese. Lebanon and Mount Lebanon are almost synonymous and Mount Lebanon historically and as an entity has been a source of separation keeping the desert at bay and an orientation and movement towards the Meditterranean. Thus, it is through nature and the mountains that Lebanon has been completely distinguished from other countries, and without them Lebanon could have no existence.

For another pioneer of this theory, Jawad Boulas, the existence and evolution of Lebanon into a "natural" entity were subject to numerous tests and events (eg. civil wars, wars). They are affirmed by the most ancient of history.

Sa'adeh tackled this theory from within the literature of Lebanese nationalism itself. He stressed that even those generally regarded as ardent supporters of Lebanese independence, like Shukri Ghanem, have conceded that the Syrian environment is an unbroken natural territory and a unique a geographical site. A recent study of Jawad Boulas has found the same trend in his discussion of geographical Syria: a tendency to consider it as a whole, a single distinct region; and a tendency to meticulously examine its geographical structure and regard it as a collection of regions. Its author, Nassif Nassar, concluded that Boulas' "oscillation between these two tendencies was not free of a certain confusion and caution despite his apparently settling the issues in favour of the second tendency."

Actually, the Lebanese mountains had never impeded the contacts between the Lebanese coastline and the Syrian interior. Over them, populations have flowed back and forth and settled there, even in sections that are today arid and desolate. Historically, the mountains were hardly ever treated as an autonomous region. During the Ottoman period, for instance, they were divided into different parts, depending on the size and political organization of the vilayets inside Syria. Here again, it is worth quoting Kamal Salibi:

In terms of historical geography, there had always been a territory of special character, between the desert and the Mediterranean coast, which the ancient Greeks were the first call Syria. In this Syrian territory, Lebanon was no more than the name of a small cluster of mountain ridges which geographers in classical and modern times, but not in the intervening centuries, applied by extension to a longer mountain range.

A third school of thought tried to forge a collective Lebanese identity from a purely historical perspective. For those who hold this view, "the sovereignty of Lebanon as a nation-state is not a temporary arrangement or a historical stage." It is claimed that the history of Lebanon as a separate entity began, not in 1920 with its proclamation of Greater Lebanon nor in 1861 with the mutassarifiya, but with the creation of the Imarah during the reign of Fakhr al-Din II. Within the Imarah, an evolving form of political authority has continued without interruption from the early seventeenth century to our own time, giving Lebanon a separate and distinct identity.

In dealing with this school, Sa'adeh was equally uncompromising and ruthless. The Imarah, he wrote, appertained to the age of feudalism when political authority was decided purely along the lines of feudal aspirations. Fakhr al-Din, he added, was a great politician whose penetrating mind understood that Lebanon alone was insufficient to form an independent state, and who tried to extend the borders of his state to the furthest borders of Syria. A recent study by George Houran has found that, in fact, the territories over which Fakhr al-Din exercised his authority extended well beyond the boundaries of contemporary Lebanon. Houran concluded that the real political aspirations of al-Din was the reunification of Greater Syria in its historical sense, and not Lebanon in its present form.

In short, Sa'adeh considered the theories of Lebanese particularism as an exercise in vanity. Its proponents committed their gravest error in failing to distinguish between Lebanon as a "political question" arising for a religious motive and Syria as a "national cause" of a completely different nature. Sa'adeh wrote: Our Social Nationalist ideology is a social thing and the Lebanese entity is a political thing and we do not confuse the two. If utility or political conditions required that the Lebanese entity needed to become an actual, physical entity, the question from this aspect remains a purely political one and there is no justification to turn it into a national issue. Because of this, those who consider the Social Nationalist Party [Sa'adeh's party] a party that exists solely to demand Syrian unity err or misunderstand its cause. Those who try to panic the ultras among the Lebanese by saying that the party wants to annex Lebanon to Syria are deliberately making false propaganda.

Actually, Sa'adeh respected the political entity of Lebanon and understood its real issues. But he did not want the country to develop into a self-indulgent fortress, isolated from the rest of Syria. In one of his memorable speeches, he said: "What do the Lebanese want of their entity? Is it to have light themselves while the surrounding region can remain enshrouded in darkness? If there is light in Lebanon, it is only to be expected that this light should spread itself out throughout the whole of natural Syria. Could we accept that we in Lebanon could have light without all compatriots in our nation having a share in it." Sa'adeh tried in vain to get this message across. At one stage, he said that his real aim was Syrian unity and not the dismemberment of the Lebanese state. But few understood what he was saying and actually thought he was contradicting himself. He meant that any union between Lebanon and Syria must be preceded by a program of intense national education to overcome the existing psychological barriers. Such education would have to go further than merely pointing out the kind of problems and contradictions that prevailed in Lebanon. It had to consist of making the Lebanese more aware of the national question and their stake in it. Inevitably, this would lead to Lebanon's dissolution as a separate political entity, but its re-incorporation into Syria would not be a question of merger or annexation, but one of genuine unity.

Mrs. Murr Article:

FACTS CONCERNING THE SO-CALLED GREATER SYRIA

1- The name: Present day Lebanon was never called Syria throughout history, except by some politically minded people and

establishments. As a matter of fact, the name Syria comes according to St. Jerome 4th century AD) and many others from Tyre

(or Sour). Present day Lebanon and a good deal of Syria were always (since prehistoric times) called Lebanon, and often

conjointly, Sidonia (cf. the Bible, Homer, etc.) when the supremacy of Phoenician city-states was for Sidon, or Syria (or Tyria

because the "sad" in Phoenician is pronounced "TS". Whence Tyre in English and Sour in Arabic, etc.) when Tyre was

supreme.

Under Roman domination, the name Syria (or more correctly Tyria) was given to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean

until the throne of Rome fell into the hands of the Phoenicians (the Severuses), who promptly divided this land into two parts.

Present Syria, calling it Lebanese Phoenicia, with either Homs or Hama as capital, and present Lebanon, calling it Coastal

Phoenicia, with Tyre as capital.

Consequently, it is correct to say that Syria was, at several times in history, a part of Lebanon, but the contrary never

happened!

2- Greater Syria: is a political entity created in the thirties by Antoun Saadeh, a self-styled political philosopher. (I will not

enter at present into the details of his philosophy which contains many fallacies, but will say that his political philosophy was

traced upon Hitler's National Socialism, whence their original name Syrian National Socialist Party, and their flag, a variant of

the swastika.) He picked up an idea which was not new, namely: an entity including Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq,

and Cyprus would be a viable economic entity, whereas each country by itself, is not. Remember that this was in the thirties,

now, with the incredibly rapid progress of industry, even an economic union as vast as Europe or the USA, is considered

hardly sufficient and there is a tendency to lift all economic barriers in the world. But this does not mean that small entities -

even the size of a city, such as Monaco, Andorra, Malta, etc. are not viable, and these States refuse to merge with any other

entity!

When, subsequent to World War One, the Allies met to dismantle the Ottoman Empire, the idea of the Fertile Crescent

was formulated by British political thinkers who wished to oust France from the region. It resulted in the attempt by King Faisal

I to conquer Syria (with British tacit support). Defeated by the French, his dream fell, and the French consolidated their

mandate awarded by the Society of Nations over Lebanon and Syria, and the British had to satisfy themselves with a mandate

over Palestine and Jordan.

The French government under the Third Republic, prompted by their political thinkers, attempted to wipe out the name

Lebanon from the map. The reason was that Lebanon was notoriously and permanently inclined for self-rule: all the countries

that composed the Ottoman Empire (including south-eastern Europe) were directly ruled by Turkey. Lebanon alone was

always directly ruled by autochthons, except for a short spell prior to World War One, by a Christian but non-Turkish

"Mutassarrif", and during W.W.I, by a Turkish Pasha. Despite their effort to merge Lebanon with Syria (cf. French diplomatic

correspondence under the mandate) in the hope that they will drown the Lebanese in a Syrian entity, which will make the

Lebanese as docile as the Syrians, they only succeeded in strengthening the Lebanese in their patriotism, and Lebanon was the

first nation in all of Afro-Asia to win its independence. Syria and all the other so-called Arab States, won it later, and perhaps

availed themselves of the trail blazed before them by Lebanon!

3- Lebanon is peerless: From the beginning of time, Lebanon was a peace-loving land. An industrious people seeking

knowledge and freedom and prosperity for themselves and other peoples, the Lebanese were always reluctant to go to war:

history (and the Bible) does not mention a war started by Lebanon, but it mentions several times when they hesitated to fight

until it was too late. Historians always wondered why the Phoenicians never went on a campaign of conquest in the manner of

the Greeks and Romans in ancient times, and the major powers in modern times, but their conquest was always a peaceful

entry into uncivilized lands, spreading knowledge (the alphabet was taught to the "conquered" people almost as soon as it was

invented) and prosperity. Today, only the prejudiced, the blind and deaf still ignore that the Phoenicians landed in America, in

the IXth century BC, according to the Paraiba (Brazil) inscription, and the hundreds of inscriptions in the USA and Canada.

Their astonishment at this particularity remained until the discovery (in the first half of this century) of the tablets of Ugarit, Mari

and Ebla, which spoke of a God, El, who said to his people: War is against my wish; Plant the seeds of peace in the heart

of the earth. This policy brought upon the Phoenicians tremendous distress and calamities. But they always and very rapidly

bounced back and regained their glory. (About this glory, a mere glance at the Bible will show that it was all but incredible and

caused the admiration of the whole world.)

But let us return to modern times. Fakhr Eddine, the "Founder of Modern Lebanon" to use the title of one of General Aziz

Ahdab's books, fought against, and defeated the Turkish ruler of Syria who wanted to conquer Lebanon. Banished later he was

offered a kingdom in Europe but refused, wanting to return to Lebanon, even if that meant his death, and it did! But superficial,

or biased people often put Fakhr Eddine at par with Bashir II Chehab. Nothing could be more unjust: whereas the former was

a scholar and a great patriot who, in order to keep Lebanon united, always forgave his vassals that sided with the Turks against

him (a fact that hastened his downfall). Remember that the Turks, at that time, were laying siege to Vienna. Whereas Bashir

sided with the enemies of Lebanon, once with Jazzar Pasha, another time with Ibrahim Pasha in order to remain in power and

overtaxed his subjects so heavily that they revolted against him and against Ibrahim (cf. "Alammiyat Antelias", which was signed

by people of all religions) and brought his downfall and the defeat of Ibrahim. (Mohammad Ali, Ibrahim's father cried out: "The

European Chancelleries are in my pocket, but it is those cursed mountaineers who brought my defeat!")

4- Arabity: Lebanon is not Syrian and even less Arab. Philip Hitti, in his History of Lebanon, says that the Arab (Islamic)

invasion consisted of not more than 23000 fighters, whereas the population of this part of the world was close to 7 million.

Does it mean that the male part of this population was castrated and only the Arab invaders were allowed to reproduce in

order to leave an Arab population?

The Turkish period which lasted for four centuries did not stamp Lebanon with either Turkish blood in the veins of the

people nor change their customs or habits. Is it likely that other invasions, such as the Assyrian, Sumerian, Greek, Roman...

which lasted for a considerably lesser time (some of which only two or three decades) could have achieved anything else?

Moreover, we know that the so-called Greek and Roman periods were in fact an invasion of Phoenician scholars,

philosophers... of Greece Homer, Euclid, the gods: Hercules (whose name is meaningless in Greek but means The Traveler in

Phoenician), Athena (the Anat of the Ugaritic epopees), Poseidon etc, and the philosophers, legislators (the Beirut School of

Law is credited of almost all the Law Codexes which are falsely called Roman; the professors of the School were called

Ecumenical, i.e. Universal, Masters) and, yes! Emperors and Popes.

At any rate, Arabity is a fairly recent notion. In fact it was formulated by the British through Lawrence of Arabia (cf. his

Seven Pillars of Wisdom) just prior to World War One. The idea was to create a force which would help the Allied

Expeditionary Force under General Allenby coming up from Egypt to attack Turkey from the South. Lawrence was able to

convince Sharif Hussein and his children, especially Faisal and Abdallah, to march up from the Hijaz on the Levant States,

promising them kingdoms. In between the two wars, and due to the struggle of Britain and France to enlarge their influence

over the region, Arabity gave way to the Fertile Crescent, as we said. But, close to the end of World War II, the British

government (under Winston Churchill) pressed the countries of the Levant and Northern Africa to found the Arab League,

hoping to cap and rule indirectly, as they did the so-called Trucial States. But W.W.II left Britain extenuated and forced to give

way to the USA, who are notorious for political mismanagement, since only their "national interests", understand the interests of

their super-capitalists. Under the insistence of the Lebanese government (Prime Minister Riad Solh) forced the inclusion of a

clause on the Charter of the League stipulating that the decisions are binding only to the members approving them.

Furthermore, this Arab awakening (to use the title of a book by George Antonius, whose name does not underline his

Arab origin, any more than Pakradouni's who is supposed to have dragged Pierre Gemayel and his Kataeb Party into Arabity)

led to the creation, by Michel Aflak of the Arab Baath (Renaissance) Party, and Gamal Abdul Nasser's quest for the conquest

by Egypt, under the standard of Arabity of the member States of the Arab League. Abdel Nasser invaded Yemen and forced a

union upon Syria, thereby creating the ill-fated United Arab Republic. In 1958, his Syrian stooges tried to seize Lebanon but

were repulsed. the Baath Party subsequently seized power in Syria and Iraq, but the Party was quickly divided into Syrian and

Iraqi Baath, each claiming to be the genuine party, instead of joining hands in order to begin putting into action the aim of their

Party, which is Arab unity. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, thereby putting into action their aim, almost all the Arab States sided

against it! Is there better proof of the fallacy of such a philosophy? and the Arab League, is there any institution that has failed

so much in producing results? Is there any positive incident on which the member States were agreed, except on the destruction

of Lebanon?

5- Conclusion: Because of the industry and learning of his people which resulted in prosperity and a decent life, Lebanon was

always coveted by all his neighbors and by distant peoples as well. This brought a succession of invasions, but none of which,

except the Turkish one lasted for more than a couple of decades before they turned a reverse conquest by Lebanese

intellectuals.

In speaking of nations and nationalities, one must always remember that the only beings in whom blood descent is

paramount are horses (to use Said Akl's words)! People interact and intermarry but if, at the origin, they have strong physical

and spiritual particularities which are intensified by the vicissitudes of time, their spiritual and physical particularities remain and

will assimilate the newcomers!

Nevertheless, there is a danger in flooding the natives in a country with too many immigrants before they had time to

assimilate those who arrived earlier. That is why Europe, who has already some 20 or a little more thousand Kurds, has raised

hell because there is the threat of a few thousand Kurd immigrants, and are ruthlessly expelling the so-called "economic

refugees", i.e. those who are fleeing the poverty of their countries. We, in Lebanon, because of our sisterly association with

Syria and brotherly affiliation with the so-called Arab States (resulting in the so-called Taef Accord, which in reality was a

dictate, not an accord), have an estimated one and a quarter million Syrian, half a million Palestinians and hundreds of

thousands of other nationalities (an estimated 500000 of which were recently given wholesale the Lebanese nationality), all of

whom are "economic refugees", because our "sister" will not allow us to check our borders. On 19/2/1998 the President of the

Lebanese Republic declared officially that "foreign workers (this does not include the half a million new citizens) are draining

away four billion dollars per annum, which is more than equivalent to our national budget!"

Let those who still advocate Greater Syria or pan-Arabism meditate!

By May Murr.