Once upon a time there was a magical little country named Lebanon. It was created by French imperialists out of the post-World War 1 wreckage of the Ottoman Empire as a mountainous stronghold for Levantine Maronite and Orthodox Christians.
Imperial Russia sought to assert its influence as defender of Lebanon’s Christians. The British and French thwarted Russia’s efforts and created two new states, Syria and Jordan. After the war, Israel was created by Britain. Some 750,000 Arabs who had been living in what was known as Palestine and Syria were driven from their homes by Jewish settlers. The Levant’s map was redrawn. What was to have been an Arab state was annexed by an expanding Israel and British-influenced Jordan, with little Lebanon sitting amid the geopolitical leftovers. Sixty percent of Jordan’s population was Palestinian. Nearly 60% of Lebanon’s population was Sunni and Shiite Muslim. The rest was Orthodox, Catholic, Druze and Armenian.
In 1975 I landed in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, just in time for the first day of the 15 year long civil war that tore that nation apart and killed up to 200,000. All the pressures and hatreds that had been building up across multiethnic Lebanon exploded into one of the ugliest, most sadistic conflicts I had seen as a long-time war correspondent.
Women and children and unarmed men were routinely massacred. Rape, which was rare in the Muslim world, was used to punish Muslims. Torture of all sorts was a daily horror. Maronite Christians became crazed killers. One former business associate, who owned a chain of successful perfume shops, turned into the knife-wielding chief of the Maronite-Phalangist combat group. He boasted to me about the many Muslims he had killed. He offered to show me his collection of Muslim ears. This from a Paris-educated gentleman who had just previously been selling Chanel perfume.
Muslims battled Maronites; Druze fought Shiites; Armenians fought Muslims; Sunnis battled Druzes. It became a madhouse of slaughter and hatred, and then Israel invaded. Israel’s plan – as it is today – to annex parts of southern Lebanon. I was with the Israeli Army when it attacked the key town of Nabatiyeh. Its Shia citizens were celebrating their high Day of Ashura as Israeli mechanized troops burst through the worshippers spraying them with gunfire.
Until then, the Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah had been cooperating with Israel. Now, they began firing at their former allies. Before long, Israel’s all-powerful information machine and its US allies branded the Shia movement ‘terrorist.’ Hezbollah became Israel’s enemy number one – where it remains today even after Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s leadership.
Into this maelstrom charged the Reagan administration. 220 Marines and 18 American sailors stationed at the Beirut Embassy were killed by a large truck bomb. They had no business being in the midst of Lebanon’s civil war.
The next horrors were the massacres of Palestinians at the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps outside Beirut in 1982. Over 3,500 Palestinians were slaughtered by Lebanese Christian troops backed by Israeli forces. This crime helped end Lebanon’s ghastly civil war. But now, thanks to Israel’s latest invasion of Lebanon, the nightmare civil war may be about to come to life again – all thanks to Netanyahu and Trump, the so-called ‘men of peace.’
Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.
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