More Lebanon links
zuzu at feministe points to an article at Salon in which a celebrity chef goes to Beirut to film a documentary about the city’s cultural and culinary revival in the years since the civil war, and instead witnesses the beginning of another war:
Everything had begun so beautifully. Our fixer, Lena, was bursting with enthusiasm when she met us at the airport. After months of preproduction, finally we were here! Finally, the American television crew had arrived — to show the world how beautiful her country was, how lovingly restored, how hip and forward thinking in the years since the bloody civil war….
Then, in the blink of an eye, everything went sideways: Relaxed smiles froze and disappeared. Suddenly, there was the sound of automatic weapons firing randomly in the air from a nearby neighborhood. And fireworks. Then cars — a few of them — teenage kids, women and adults, some leaning out the windows and waving Hezbollah flags and flashing the “V” for victory sign, celebrating what we were told, after a few quick cellphone calls, was the grabbing of two Israeli soldiers. Our fixer, a Sunni; Ali, a Shiite; and “Marwan,” a Christian, who’d just minutes ago been pointing proudly at the mural — all three looked down in embarrassment, a look of sorrow, shame and then resignation on their faces. Someone muttered “assholes” bitterly. They knew — right away — what was going to happen next.
Obsidian Wings has a guest post by someone with family in Lebanon both about the war and about politics in that country in general:
I will warn you that I am suspicious of my own point of view. I’m suspicious that I only know Lebanon through Armenian lenses, and that there are a great many Lebanons….
Right now, there’s no business whatsoever. Working life has stopped. The farmers in eastern Lebanon are very dependent on seasonal Syrian laborers, and understandably seasonally employed Syrians in Lebanon found it easiest to leave. In a sentence, there are not enough hands to collect the harvest. The Armenians there largely have no sympathy for Hezbollah. In fact, my uncle’s first response to all this was joy that Israel would “wipe them out” [the quotation marks are a translated quotation, not scare quotes]. I think it would be fair to say that they regarded Syrians as oppressors and Hezbollah as a growing nuisance. Now a number of Armenians have already left, many to Syria, and then from Syria to Armenia itself. It would also be fair to say that those in my family are more afraid of the Shi’ites than they are of the Israelis. In particular, they are afraid that the Shi’ite refugees will occupy these abandoned homes.
I know how ridiculous and cowardly this might sound — to fear refugees more than bombardment from the sky. But I think it gives an accurate picture of the character of the place. Lebanon’s peace is fragile, and it was secured by everyone keeping to his own and everyone keeping guns. The ethnic distrust goes back to the foundation of the state. Still today, even after the Cedar Revolution, seats in parliament are divided by ethnicity and religion. The prime minister must always be a Sunni Arab, and the president must always be a Maronite Christian, and so forth. It’s bizarre, unfair, and self-weakening as a system of government. The same ethnic distrust that makes this the only government which is acceptable also hampers this triumvirate government from acting as a single coordinated unit.
…
Hezbollah is, so to speak, the last remaining militia in a country that was ruled by ethnic militias not so long ago. Hezbollah remained because it was focused in the sole remaining place of active fighting, southern Lebanon. Hezbollah will be reluctant to disarm because in many ways it operates as the only government of southern Lebanon. That is to say, the Shi’ites might be just as afraid of the rest of Lebanon as they are of Israel.
What I want to emphasize is that as a Shi’ite in Lebanon, you have no natural allies. You have been historically oppressed by the other ethnic groups within your state. Israel, across the border, has invaded, occupied, funded paramilitaries, and regularly bombed at something like five-year intervals. The Syrians are largely Sunni Arabs who think you are a heretic. Besides, the Syrian government is Baathist, socialist, and politically opposed to your religiosity. The Iranian government is with you religiously, but they aren’t Arabs, they don’t speak the same language, and you are not sure how much their support of view reflects an interest in casting a longer shadow on regional politics. We in America see a single image of Muslim unity, but the truth is that the only thing which unites these groups, of whom many have grudges which run far far longer and far far deeper than the conflict between Israelis and Arabs, is contempt for these policies….
I’m promoting another Lebanese blogger from the comments.
Back to vaccination blogging, I promise, sometime this week (since I still need to update that FAQ), but I’m not sure exactly when.
In the meantime, feel free to suggest any useful sources on the Israel-Lebanon conflict in the comments.