What exactly was a Jewish boy, frequent visitor to Israel, Holocaust historian and long-term teacher of the Arab-Israeli conflict doing in Beirut?
November 14, 2015 09:28
By
Ronnie Landau
Several weeks ago, I found myself on a coach hurtling towards the heart of Beirut, a city once described as a ''paradise on Earth'', thanks to its stunning coastline (still very much in evidence), and as the ''Paris of the Middle East'', due to its French influences and vibrant cultural and intellectual life. So what exactly was a Jewish boy, frequent visitor to Israel, Holocaust historian and long-term teacher of the Arab-Israeli conflict doing here?
Well, last year, I embarked, rather fortuitously, on a post-retirement ''career" as "guest lecturer" on ocean-going cruise ships, specialising in Classical Greek civilisation and modern European and Middle East history. When my agent offered me a gig on a ship visiting Turkey, Lebanon and Israel, I jumped at the chance to visit a city that the countless Israeli stamps in my passport had always rendered impossible. For the fact that I was technically working on the ship meant that I could go to the British Passport Office and obtain a second, ''clean'' passport on the grounds that my employment would take me - in the Passport Office's wording - to ''politically incompatible countries''.
While there, I discovered that ours was one of the only passenger ships to dock in the port of Beirut this year! The Americans had long been scared off: the migrant crisis and continuing political turmoil, not only in Beirut but elsewhere, in north Africa - most notably in Tunisia - and the Middle East had severely damaged the Lebanese tourist industry, especially that involving cruise ships.
Beirut is a city trying desperately to stage a comeback, an effort that has been only very partially successful. Beirut still bears the visible scars and psychological feel of a deeply troubled city; one that has been ruined, not only by the tensions between the Christian and Muslim sections within its "indigenous" population - which boiled over into a disastrous civil war between 1975 and 1990 - but also by the ruinous interference of foreign elements, Syrian, Iranian, Palestinian and - lest we forget - Israeli.
As my coach progressed, I opined that, if someone wanted to make a quick, sizeable fortune, they should go into the razor-wire business in this city! So ubiquitous were cordoned-off sections of the centre that it resembled the heart, not so much of a beautiful Middle Eastern city but of Belfast at the height of the Troubles. The Lebanese army seemed to be everywhere, with sentries surrounded by sandbags preventing access to beautiful streets and historically important areas of the city, some containing significant churches and mosques. We eventually sweet-talked our way into one street, into which entry was formally verboten, previously the pulsating nerve-centre of the city's social and cultural life but today completely deserted and lined heartbreakingly with gorgeous-looking cafés and restaurants now silently gathering dust.
We proceeded down another artery, Damascus Street, running from north to south, which was, during the civil war, a no-man's land dividing the Muslim west from Christian east of the city - and it still somehow has that feel, though the snipers have mercifully disappeared.
Then, suddenly, our coach ground to a halt at a militarily improvised road block and, to my astonishment and consternation, I saw, and surreptitiously photographed, a stand-off between a small group of demonstrators and about 30 soldiers aiming a tank, machine guns and water cannon in their direction. Our guide was rather embarrassed and explained the demonstrators were probably striking refuse collectors, while our coach driver retreated down a side street.
I should stress that our guide was a delightful young Lebanese woman who was both knowledgeable and extremely patriotic. However, she informed us that Lebanon had borders with three countries: Jordan, Syria and… ''occupied Palestine'' (this is the politically correct wording - the default position, if you like - for official Lebanese tourist guides). When one of our British party asked rather naively, or perhaps mischievously, why some of the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees stranded in Lebanon, could not make their way south to Israel, she hissed - the only time she lost her cool and my sympathy -
"Is-ra-el" (three syllables spat out very slowly) "is our enemy'' and turned her back somewhat disdainfully on the questioner.
Interestingly, and perhaps, instructively, my British fellow-passengers would contrast the general openness, geniality and fair-mindedness of our Beiruti-Muslim guide with what they saw as the defensive-aggressive stance of the Israeli tour guides they would meet later on the cruise, who sought to bludgeon them into agreement with their views!
Once again, Israel would seem to be getting its image projection completely wrong - or, as my late, deeply missed, former colleague David Cesarani put it, the ''blundering idiocy'' of Israel's policy towards the Palestinians is matched by ''new depths of bad PR''.
The tragedy of Lebanon can be encapsulated easily: today, there are around four million ''native'' Lebanese living within its borders, while there are 16 million (that's 80 per cent of a possible total) scattered across other countries, making it one of the world's largest diasporas. And, of course, it's essentially the urban middle class who have fled during the past four decades of war and strife. At the same time, there are almost 1.5 million Syrian refugees - a quarter of Lebanon's population - and 450,000 Palestinians in the country and, according to my Lebanese sources, there seems, to put it mildly, little love lost between the ''hosts'' and their visitors.
When we passed the new football stadium, rebuilt after its predecessor was destroyed by the Israeli air force in 1982, and later came close to the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp, I was reminded just what a devastating impact on Lebanon the expulsion of the PLO by King Hussein of Jordan in September 1970 had had.
I was extremely grateful for this opportunity to visit, albeit briefly, Beirut, one of the world's great cities, with a proud history going back thousands of years. But my feeling on leaving was overwhelmingly one of sadness. I doubt if the ''comeback'' will succeed in recapturing the glory days of old; the nightmarish politics of the contemporary Middle East, as ''difficult'' a neighbourhood as has ever existed, makes that an extremely distant prospect.
The third edition of Ronnie Landau's 'The Nazi Holocaust: its history and meaning' will be published by I B Tauris in January 2016
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