Lebanon
After fifteen years of civil war between Muslim and Christian factions,
which ended in 1990, Lebanon started to make significant progress in the
reconstruction of state and society. This new stability has been constrained,
however, by the impasse in the Middle East peace process.
Since the 1992 elections, Lebanon has been governed by Prime Minister Rafiq
Hariri (a Sunni Muslim), and President Elias Hrawi (a Maronite Christian)
was re-elected in 1995 to a second three-year term. Shi'ite Muslim parties,
Amal and Hizbullah, maintain the largest bloc of deputies in the new national
assembly.
Domestic tensions surfaced in February and March with anti-government demonstrations
and a general strike that led to the imposition of a nationwide curfew.
Before the parliamentary elections in August, a new law altering electoral
constituencies was condemned by many parties across the political spectrum,
because it assigned unequal status to voters in different regions. The election
was fraught with allegations of irregularities. As a result of a last-minute
coalition between the Shi'ite Muslim parties, Hizbullah won only nine seats
(down from twelve) in the new national assembly but won four (up from two)
in the south. Its political weight has been reduced but militant Islamists
continue to play a key role.
The presence of an estimated 30,000 Syrian troops continues to ensure Syrian
influence over Lebanese domestic and foreign policy and prevents Lebanon
from joining the peace pro-cess. Palestinian groups operated autonomously
in refugee camps throughout the country. In southern Lebanon, the Iranian-backed
Islamist movement Hizbullah continued to launch attacks against Israel and
the Israeli-backed South Lebanese Army, resulting in retaliatory air attacks
by Israeli forces. Following an es-calation of hostilities before April,
Israel launched a series of rocket attacks against Lebanese targets during
an operation named "Grapes of Wrath". These attacks caused 165
civilian deaths and resulted in the migration of 200,000 refugees.
The eighteenth century witnessed an influx of Sephardic Jews from Turkey
and elsewhere, who settled in the Shouf mountains. Until the 1860 Maronite-Druze
war the Jews were economically and socially integrated with the Druze communities.
During the war, however, the Jews moved to Beirut, Aley and Saida, where
their contacts with the Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims increased.
In 1929 there were an estimated 5,000 Jews in Beirut alone. As one of twenty-three
minorities in Lebanon they were treated with great tolerance and enjoyed
complete religious, economic and legal freedom. Moreover, they maintained
open contacts with the Jews of Palestine. Lebanese Jews were not adversely
affected by the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Indeed, the
number of Jews increased to an estimated 13,000 after 1948 because of Jewish
refugees from Syria and Iraq, who either remained in Lebanon or crossed
into Israel.
During successive wars in 1948, 1958, 1967, 1973 and 1975, Lebanese troops
protected the Jewish quarter of Wadi Abu Jamil from possible Arab hostilities.
Jewish emigration from Lebanon began after the Six-Day War in 1967. The
Jewish community diminished further owing to the civil war from 1975.
It was not until the Israeli invasion in 1982 and the Sabra and Shatilla
massacres that the Lebanese Jews became particularly vulnerable, especially
to the hostility of emerging radical Shi'ite organizations. On the eve of
the redeployment of Israeli forces, the community was evacuated by Israel's
Maronite allies. Since then, the few remaining Jews have lived in east Beirut,
Jounieh and the mountains.
Between 1984 and 1986 eleven Lebanese Jews, including prominent members
of the community, were taken hostage by the Organization of the Oppressed
of the Earth, which has links with Hizbullah. Despite international appeals,
only four bodies have been recovered to date.
As in previous years, militant Islamists based in Lebanon continue to
invoke antisemitic themes to discredit Islam. A common theme is that of
an international Jewish conspiracy; for example, the spiritual leader of
Hizbullah, Sayyid Muhammed Husayn Fadlallah, regards hostility to Israel
as part of the "old struggle of the Muslims against the Jewish conspiracy
against Islam". In many of his speeches, the distinction between anti-Zionism
and antisemitism is blurred. In a speech broadcast on 14 April on Radio
Islam (in the midst of the "Grapes of Wrath" operation) Sheikh
Hassan Nasrallah, the general secretary of Hizbullah, called the struggle
"our heroic and honourable confrontation against Zionist Jews, killers
of prophets".
Hostility to the USA is also combined with antisemitic statements. In an
article published in al-Anwar , on 27 July, Fadlallah admonished
the "new US ploy led by the Jewish lobby in Congress".
The US feature film Independence Day was heavily criticized in the Lebanese press as an example of "Jewish propaganda" (see Morocco).
Arabic translations of classical antisemitic texts such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion continued to circulate in Lebanon. Beirut also remained a centre for the publishing of antisemitic literature that is distributed throughout the Arab world. An example is "Prominence of the Torah from Abraham to Herzl" by Musa Mutlaq Ibrahim, which claims that traditional Jewish texts are a source of Zionist conspiracies and negative Jewish traits.
Hostility towards Israel in the media focuses primarily on the Israeli
presence in the security zone and Israeli retaliatory policy. Militant Islamists
continue to invoke anti-Zionist and antisemitic themes, generally failing
to distinguish between the two. These statements peaked in 1996 during Israel's
"Grapes of Wrath" operation. Al-Diyar , the pro-Syrian
daily newspaper, also lambasted Israel's policies towards Lebanon and published
hostile articles about Jews.
In contrast, mainstream Lebanese newspapers such as al-Hayat or an-Nahar
and radio broadcasts from Radio Lebanon are anti-Israeli but not necessarily
antisemitic.
The hostility of Islamist movements and of Syrian forces towards Israel
and Zionism is reflected in statements in the media and in support for Palestinian
groups opposed to the peace process. Anti-Zionism is often mingled with
antisemitism, particularly when religious rhetoric is invoked. In 1996,
Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" operation provoked widespread condemnation,
particularly within Islamist circles. Conspiracy theories that allege Jewish-Zionist-US
plots against Islam remained rife.
© JPR 1997