A country in denial: Lebanon’s ugly history

Lebanon, September 2011, week 3. While the summer frenzy is slowly fading away everywhere else, here, it hasn’t yet. Even in the middle of the week, Beirut’s famous rooftop bars are still packed with silicon beauties drinking Moet or Belvedere, showing off their over-tanned cleavage to confused tourists helplessly trying to find reminiscence of the Orient in a falsely westernized society.

For the past three months, the whole country has been dancing and drinking carelessly at night while trying to make a living or parade its wealth in the glazing heat of the day. But that week, the stakes were higher, and so the dose of Grey Goose doubled: there was a lot to remember (or forget).

On the 14th of September, as usual, a group of Lebanese Christians gathered in the center of East Beirut to commemorate the death of Bashir Gemayel, son of Pierre Gemayel, founder of the Lebanese Phalanges movement, one of the main protagonist of the 15-year-long civil war. He was killed exactly 19 years ago along with his daughter three weeks after he was elected president of Lebanon. On the 16th of September, for whoever still remembers – and unfortunately, there aren’t that many – another morbid anniversary was observed: the Sabra and Chatila massacres which occurred exactly 19 years ago, two days after the leader of the Phalange movement was assassinated.

It seemed simple back then. 19 years ago, after the PLO had left (or fled) Lebanon, Bashir’s rule of the country seemed to be the perfect compromise. All parties, and by that I mean the US, Israel and Syria, had agreed to his presidency. Three weeks later, he died. Two days after, Christian militias that had always been faithful to Gemayel went in both Sabra and Chatila refugee camps with the help of Israel, to commit what would be remembered as the worst massacres of the Civil War.

Two heartbreaking commemorations, two misleading myths. From that fateful date onward, Bashir was considered a hero whose death meant that all hopes to see a strong, unified country formed were lost, and Sabra and Chatila were immortalized as the epiphany of human atrocity – the only massacres worth remembering from 15 years of raging war.

However, Bashir was not a hero, and he should not have been considered as the only chance Lebanon had of becoming a proper state of rights; whilst Sabra and Chatila were unfortunately not the only outburst of viciousness and were wrongly regarded as the only massacres to be remembered in a war that has taken away every bit of humanity from all its belligerents, leaving them blinded by hatred.

As years went on, both myths persisted, creating even bigger schism amongst a population that was from then on forced to make a choice between which event to commemorate and which atrocity to cry for because remembering both would from then on be regarded as treason. It would be unacceptable.

But of course, no one should choose which to remember and which to forget. Both should be commemorated regardless of one’s opinion, religion or side. They are intrinsically linked, and they will always be. If Sabra and Chatila happened, it is because of Bashir’s death, it is because of previous massacres that blinded the men who went in the camps on that day, and turned them into low-lifes. If Bashir died, it is because of the Palestinian presence in Lebanon, because of the forced exile, the discrimination and the mistreatment they were subject to. They both represent hatred; they both symbolize dehumanization of mankind. And so, the only way to really pay tribute to one is to remember the other. Denial doesn’t help. Selective denial even less.

So the party can wait. The champagne can stop flowing for 48 hours; it wouldn’t hurt anyone to sober up just for two days. We might regain our innocence – and our wisdom maybe.