Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

World Press Photo of the Year 2006
Spencer Platt, USA, Getty Images. Young Lebanese drive through devastated neighborhood of South Beirut, 15 August, 2006

Munson: The main reason for recording human brutality, in pictures or in words,  should be to induce humans to become more humane. It should obviously never be a form of “voyeurism.” Those who record the agony of others violate their privacy in a way that can only be justified if it induces others to recognize the need to eliminate or at least curb unnecessary violence. Violating people’s privacy simply to take a prize-winning photograph is wrong.  But if a picture portraying human brutality can both induce humans to become more humane and win prizes, that is fine. Indeed, the prize may well increase exposure to the picture and the basic message it is intended to convey.

Mai Ghoussoub, Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award, openDemocracy

Four stylish young women, an open-topped car, the rubble of war-torn Beirut … but where is the real power of Spencer Platt’s prize-winning image, asks Mai Ghoussoub.

(This article was first published on 13 February 2007)

I am certain that Spencer Platt’s picture which won the World Press Photo prize for 2006 looked disturbing and even repellent to most viewers at first glance. I admit that it bothered me when I first saw it on my screen. But I also admit that I kept on looking at it. What was it that intrigued me in this picture despite my unexplained revulsion? Why did I feel that I had to write about what I saw in the picture?

…I went to a housewarming party and I overheard two young Lebanese arguing about the same photo. Both were in their 20s and very “cosmopolitan”. One said: I think this is a great photograph, it shows us as we are, not people associated only with war and destruction. The second one was appalled and said: this is the “new orientalism” - instead of the women depicted in Delacroix’s classic orientalist paintings, today we have these modern, model-type Lebanese women against a background of war and poverty….I believe that the photo is stunning in the metaphor it creates about war photography. It tells us about the voyeurism of the photographer, of the act of taking photos in tragic situations: if there is a contradiction, it is in the encounter between art, beauty and tragedy. Covering a disaster in order to create a striking image is what Robert Capa did best, he became an icon for it and we, the viewers are becoming addicted to this art form.

Nir Rosen, Scapegoats in an Unwelcoming Land, WP, December 16, 2007

Last Wednesday, a car-bomb blast on a crowded Beirut street killed Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj, one of Lebanon’s top generals. The capital began buzzing with speculation that Hajj had been assassinated in retaliation for his role as the operational commander of the army’s bloody three-month battle with an armed Islamic group last summer. In May, Fatah al-Islam — a foreign jihadist group inspired by al-Qaeda, led by veterans of the struggle in Iraq and made up mostly of Saudis, Syrians and even some Lebanese — ensconced itself on the outskirts of Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, and massacred Lebanese troops at an army checkpoint. Hajj’s forces responded by indiscriminately bombarding the camp in the name of the war on terror, and the Lebanese public rallied ’round.

Palestinians had once again become Lebanon’s scapegoats, victims of a land in which they have long faced slaughter and discrimination…. I’ve heard followers of assassinated president-elect Bashir Gemayel, whose Maronite Christian militia massacred Palestinians in 1976, brag that he was stopped at a checkpoint in the early years of the country’s 1975-90 civil war with a trunk full of the skulls of dead Palestinians….

Last summer, I witnessed yet another chapter in the book of the refugees’ misery. By late June, most of the Palestinians from Nahr al-Bared had fled to Badawi, another refugee camp nearby. In a schoolyard there, I was stopped by a man named Abu Hadi, born in Haifa in 1946. “I am a person without an address,” he told me. “I wish I was a donkey or a horse so I would have doctors and lawyers for my rights.” He showed me a plastic bag with a sponge and a towel. “My bathroom is in my hand,” he said….

Only in October did the army finally begin to allow a trickle of Palestinians back to their homes, and then only in the so-called new camp, a small area on the outskirts of the original camp that had housed 2,000 families and been safely under Lebanese army control throughout the clash.

When about 1,000 families finally passed through the checkpoints, to the jeers of soldiers and demonstrators, they found only destruction. Every single home, building, apartment and shop that I saw had been destroyed. Most buildings had been burned from the inside; the signs of the flammable liquids that the soldiers had used were scorched on the walls, and empty fuel canisters were strewn on the floors. Ceilings and walls were riddled with bullets, shot from inside, seemingly for sport. Most homes that I saw had been emptied of furniture, appliances, sinks, toilets, televisions and refrigerators. Most shockingly, soldiers had defecated in kitchens and bedrooms, on plates, bowls, pots and mattresses; they had urinated into olive-oil jars.

Daniel Sobelman, Lebanon 2007: Old Realities, New Uncertainties, Strategic Assessment, December 2007, Vol. 10, No. 3

Several events converged to bring twenty-nine years of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon to a finale: the string of political assassinations, the withdrawal of the Syrian military from Lebanese soil, and of course the Second Lebanon War. The end of this Syrian hegemony also brought to a close what had been an era of domestic stability. Surrounded by regional crises, and with an ever-present threat of civil conflict looming, Lebanon is struggling to recover from the 2006 war and to stem further disintegration. The future status of Hizbollah, at least in the short term, and its political and military room for maneuver will be largely determined by the way in which Lebanon resolves the current crisis.

Internal Strife
In an inconspicuous column entitled “Secrets of the Gods” in late 2003, the Beirut newspaper al-Nahar – at the time the Lebanese newspaper most outspoken in its criticism of Hizbollah – published a one-line item that “one of the prominent organizations” was engaged in digging in towns along the border in order to lay the infrastructure for a private phone system. The report noted that “official and civil authorities” objected to the operations.[1] Four years later, Hizbollah’s operational telephone infrastructure is no longer a guarded secret but rather an openly debated topic on the agenda of the Lebanese government, which in recent months has been exposing and dismantling the Shiite organization’s telephone infrastructure in Beirut and other parts of the country.[2]

Middle East Report Online: Rallying Around the Renegade by Heiko Wimmen, August 27, 2007

Back in the fall of 2006, student elections at the American University of Beirut produced an unexpected aesthetic: female campaigners for the predominantly Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of the ex-general Michel Aoun sporting button-sized portraits of bearded Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah on their stylish attire. “Hizballah stands for the unity and independence of Lebanon, just as we do,” went the party line, as reiterated by Laure, an activist business student clad in the movement’s trademark orange. “And imagine, the Shi‘a and us,” she mused, off-script and with a glance at her co-campaigners, covered head to toe in the black gowns of the staunchly Islamist party, but spiced up with bright orange ribbons for the occasion. “How many we will be.”

Just how many became clear soon enough, when Aoun joined Hizballah’s attempt to bring down the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora through public pressure later that year. While actual numbers are notoriously hard to come by,[1] the two main rallies held on December 1 and 10 clearly rivaled the demonstration that brought about the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon 18 months before. Followers of Aoun, who stand out in their blazing orange gear, accounted for an apparent third of the masses. Once again, predictions that Aoun’s alliance with the “Party of God” would dispel his support in the Christian community were proven wrong.

RETURN OF THE RENEGADE

Throughout his political career, Michel Aoun’s bold maneuvering, boisterous, often ranting discourse and utter disregard for the complex rules and false niceties of the Lebanese political scene have made him one of the most divisive figures therein. To his admirers, he is the strong leader who can rise above the fray of perennial internecine conflict, clear out a divided and despised political class bent on the pursuit of factional and personal interest, and achieve longed-for, but ever elusive national unity. Likewise, Aoun has earned himself the intense loathing (even by Lebanese standards) of the members of exactly this political class (and their followers). Rather than a champion of secularist nationalism, they consider Aoun to be an irresponsible rabble rouser who threatens to upset the delicate balance of sectarian power sharing, and his calls for reform and a shakeup of public institutions to be thinly veiled Bonapartism. Aoun’s loud populism is seen as not only gauche but also a challenge to the country’s Byzantine political game, whereby decisions and distributions of spoils are supposed to be worked out behind impenetrable smokescreens of lofty principles and diplomatic cant. For the Christian part of this political class, he is also an upstart trespassing on territory that is rightfully theirs. “To his supporters,” as one journalist sums it up, “he is a Lebanese Charles de Gaulle seeking to unite this fractious country and rebuild trust in its institutions. To his critics he is a divisive megalomaniac willing to stop at nothing to become president of Lebanon.”[2]

“When the war begins, I’ll be the first one in it,” said Mr. Abbas, “I want everyone to know I am a Christian and I am ready to fight.”

Photo: Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Slide Show of Christian Lebanon, The New York Times, Slide 5 of 13, accessed October 6, 2007