Ha’aretz, Israel
Aug 12 2004
Anti-Jewish feeling
The Lebanese Republic, to use the official name, is one of the few
countries in the world conceived partly as a political experiment: in
this case, to create a haven for religious and ethnic minorities in
its region. But while the main Lebanese Christian and Muslim blocs
are gingerly having a second go at coexistence, some of the smaller
of the 18 recognized groups are still being squeezed out. Armenians,
for example, and above all Lebanon’s Jews.
Of the 20,000 Jews who called Lebanon home for much of the 20th
century, only 73 remain today. Like other Lebanese, many Jews left to
escape the war, and later the ailing economy. Today, the ongoing
money troubles and rise of anti-Jewish feeling in the region keep the
emigres abroad and have driven the tiny community underground.
The many foreign names – Sephardic and Ashkenazi – on the coffins in
Beirut’s old Jewish graveyard bespeak the attraction Lebanon once
held for Jews persecuted elsewhere, notably in Nazi-controlled
Europe. After Israel’s creation in 1948, Jews from the surrounding
Arab countries poured into Lebanon, which became a relatively safe
alternative to either staying at home or immigrating to Israel. By
the mid-20th century they had congregated in the quarter of Wadi Abu
Jamil, in central Beirut, mixing amicably with Kurds, Shi’a and
Palestinians who arrived later. Even through the 1967 Six-Day War and
Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the Jews insisted – as they do to
this day – they were Lebanese first and Jewish second. Like many
Jewish communities around the world, they specialized in trade, and
the few who remain in Lebanon have generally managed to keep their
businesses and commercial links intact. Some occasionally travel
abroad to visit family in France, Brazil and the United States.
Today Wadi Abu Jamil is mostly a vast expanse of gravel and empty
lots. It served as no-man’s land during the war, and the government
has since pulled down the ruins. The synagogue’s walls still stand,
but the floor is littered with debris and a jungle of plants grows up
through it. The roof lacks most of its tiles – ironically, an Israeli
gunboat blew them off in 1982, trying to hit PLO fighters holed up
nearby.
The Jews’ social and religious life has withered to nothing. Living
chiefly in East Beirut (and some of the wealthier ones on the
overlooking heights), they are just far enough from each other that
gathering for prayer is inconvenient. Anyway the nearest rabbi is in
Damascus. While he sends monthly shipments of kosher meat and bread,
he seldom actually comes to Lebanon. But the Jews still maintain
their community council, elected leaders who have guided them since
the old days, and who oversee the distribution of a monthly pension
to the community’s poor.
Many say it’s just as well to keep a low profile, with Hezbollah at
large and growing ever more influential. Its declared anti-Israeli
policy is as strident as ever, its loyal voters and seats in
parliament more numerous, and its militia autonomous enough to
recently bar the Lebanese minister of tourism from entering a
Hezbollah-held castle.
Jews worry that too many of their countrymen confuse Israel with
Judaism. It’s impossible to know if the Jews are really in any
physical danger but, warranted or not, they have withdrawn from
Lebanese society. In recent municipal elections, only one Jew turned
out to vote, and then only in conditions of partial secrecy.
They remember the rash of kidnappings in 1985, in which a group
linked to Hezbollah spirited away 11 leading members of the community
despite the Jews’ neutrality in the civil war. So far, only four
bodies have been recovered. More recently, they watched uneasily as
Hezbollah’s television station, Al-Manar, broadcast the
Syrian-produced series “Al-Shatat,” (“The Diaspora”), a recounting of
Jewish history from 1812 to 1948 in which sinister radical Zionists
plot to bake matzo with the blood of Christian children. Everyone
from newspaper pundits to the French Broadcasting Authority to the
American Embassy in Lebanon voiced their disgust. Meanwhile, Lebanese
publishers have issued new editions of “Mein Kampf” and “The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” both widely recognized as
anti-Jewish propaganda.
Few Lebanese are truly anti-Semitic, but most distrust Israel.
Officially everyone is expected to hate it, all contact with the
“Zionist entity” is strictly forbidden and the phone lines to Israel
are blocked (e-mail, of course, is happily unstoppable). Lebanese
resent Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon till 2000, and some
support the Palestinians. In the streets around the American
University of Beirut, in Hamra district, posters of the late Hamas
leader Ahmed Yassin appeared everywhere following his March 22
assassination. A month later he was papered over with the snarling
face of his successor, the hapless Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Every time the
Israel Defense Forces blows up a terror chief there is a jump in
poster sales in the Hamra shops.
Nonetheless, it’s easy for the casual visitor to assume all is well
in Lebanon. Broadly speaking, it is. After 15 years during which the
Lebanese’s world turned upside down, daily life is more or less back
to normal. Five people died in Hay al-Soulom; surely a dreadful loss,
but in Lebanon’s case also a vast improvement on the preceding
decades. The sun shines all day, the fireworks joyfully explode all
night, and the guests at the summer’s many weddings and suchlike are
increasingly of mixed religion.
But in a sense Lebanon’s war isn’t over. The guns have stopped, but
the country still hasn’t fully regained the freedoms, prosperity and
truly open society it enjoyed before 1975. From time to time some
sordid headline reminds us of this.
“We are a nation of schizophrenics,” one friend, a recent university
graduate, told me. “We have fun and enjoy life, but inside we know
this country’s in trouble.”
My friend was lamenting, but I think the Lebanese’s ability to
unabashedly revel in their country while acknowledging its problems
is a sign of strength. They are nothing if not resilient and, in
their boundless capacity for both business and pleasure, as
irrepressible as cats. My friend is a fairly typical young Lebanese,
at once distressed by his country’s hardships and convinced of its
deep worth. Often it is young people who call most loudly for the
political independence and economic reform Lebanon so badly needs for
“the good life” to become great again. There is a pervading sense
among Lebanese that Lebanon is being cheated of a prouder destiny;
that, like the endangered cedar adorning its flag, it is in peril and
yet mystically everlasting.