The Jews of Lebanon Project

Laila Mourad was a legendary Egyptian actress, she was born in Al Daher, Cairo in February 1917 to a Jewish Iraqi father, Ibrahim Zaki Mordachi, a famous religious cantor, singer and musician in the twenties, and to a Jewish Polish mother, Gamilah “Salmon” who gave birth to Mourad, Ibrahim, Malak, Mounir and Samihah. Her brother Mounir Mourad was an Egyptian actor and composer.

Egyptian Jewish composer Dawoud Housni, who composed the first Operetta in the Arabic language, helped her start her career by composing two songs: “hairana Leh Bein El Eloub” (Why can’t you choose from among lovers), and “Hoa el dala’a ya’ani khessam” (Does dalliance mean avoiding me?). Further success came when the prominent Egyptian composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab heard her singing and gave her a role in his film Yahia el Hob (Viva Love!) in 1938. In 1953, she was even selected, over Umm Khulthum, as the official singer of the Egyptian revolution.

Once fully entrenched in Egyptian society, with numerous contributions to their culture and the greater Arab culture, Jews are now a very small minority in the country. Though the Jewish experience suffered a major setback as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict in Egypt, Lebanon was the only country with an increase, rather than a decrease, in its Jewish population after 1948.

A tribute to what once was, and what shall be again…

Previous article on the Egyptian Jewish Community, click here

Famous Synagogue in the picturesque town of Aley. Once a center of religious services for Lebanon’s Jewish community, particularly during the warm summer days when all Lebanese escaped the heat of Beirut for the mountains; particularly Aley and Bhamdoun.

Aley Synagogue (bottom left)

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Recently purchased in northern Lebanon at an antique dealership. The second picture is from a Church which was certainly a Synagogue in the past catering to Lebanon’s Jewish sons.

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Tiny Jewish community lives on in Beirut
From Agence France-Presse - 26/04/1998

Nayla Razzouk

BEIRUT, April 26 (AFP) - A tiny community of elderly Jews continues to live on in Beirut, quietly celebrating feasts and prayers at home, heedless of virulent anti-Jewish feeling and decades of violence pitting Arabs against Jews in the Middle East.

“They are mostly old people living quietly, a few businessmen and a handful of families with children,” said Toufik Yedid, secretary of the Jewish Council, who turns 84 this year.

Yedid, the only member of the tiny Jewish community who agreed to speak, said however that Jews in Lebanon were never subject to “official repression” as in some other Arab countries.

“Some unfortunate incidents happened to Jews, but we did not take it personally because many people associate Jews with Israel, which is a totally wrong perception,” he said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri said earlier this week that his country was officially still at war with Israel, which first invaded its northern neighbour 20 years ago.

“We are Lebanese, but we just happen to be Jewish. We are one of the 19 officially recognized communities in Lebanon,” Yedid said of the some 95 Jews who live in Beirut’s Christian eastern suburbs.

“Jews in Lebanon? I didn’t know there were still Jews in Lebanon,” said businesswoman Shereen Salem, 34, echoing the reaction of many Lebanese.

“If this is true, then they must be living in complete hiding or there must only be a handful of them because they are really invisible in society.”

The Jewish community numbered more than 10,000 in the 1940s, but a massive exodus, mostly toward Europe and the United States, began after the 1948 creation of Israel and throughout the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.

“Very few Jews went to Israel, but most of them did not stay there for social and economic reasons,” said Yedid.

At the onset of the 15-year civil war in 1975, about 3,000 Jews were still living in Lebanon, but a last wave of departures occurred after the 1984-1985 abduction of 11 Jews by militias in Moslem-dominated west Beirut.

“Four of them were killed and their bodies were recovered. We know that thousands of Lebanese are also missing, but like other communities we are still concerned about the fate of the remaining missing seven,” said Yedid.

Yedid says he is not afraid to stay in Lebanon, but admits that “life in Beirut is difficult for us.”

“We have not had a rabbi since 1975, but we still hold Sabbath prayers and celebrate our feasts quietly in our homes with Kosher meat, wine and matzo (unleavened bread) imported from Syria or Europe,” he said.

Yedid sighed sadly when asked about the 16 synagogues that once existed in Lebanon and the abandoned Jewish cemetery on the former Green Line that once separated warring Christian and Moslem militias in Beirut.

“The synagogues are destroyed but we hope to rebuild them, especially the Magen Abraham synagogue, the only one spared by the bulldozers reconstructing Beirut,” he said.

After a safari-like drive into Wadi Abou Jmil — Beirut’s former Jewish neighborhood in the war-devastated city center — and once clouds of dust from the rough terrain clear, determined visitors can reach the synagogue.

Ironically, the synagogue, once taken over by squatters, suffered most of its damage from Israeli shells during the Jewish state’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

But the synagogue, with Hebrew inscriptions on its facade and a shattered red-tiled roof, has been walled up by the Jewish Council who fear further damage.

A young Jewish businessman who did not wish to be named said he had “no problem in dealing with all Lebanese, even Hezbollah because they consider me Lebanese like them”.

The Shiite Moslem Hezbollah spearheads the guerrilla war to oust Israel out of southern Lebanon and staunchly opposes making peace with the Jewish state.

“I am confident that many Lebanese Jews who have left want to return home once peace is reached in the region,” said Yedid.

“It will be very difficult for Jews to return, but nothing is impossible. Beirut schools once had Jewish, Moslem and Christian students sitting side by side,” said Sana Idriss, a Sunni Moslem woman in her 70s, recalling her childhood memories.”

Lebanese Jews Living in Fear

HALA JABER

(AP) _ The few Jews remaining in Beirut say they live in fear and confusion because of the kidnappings of four Jewish men in west Beirut, where the Jewish community had always lived in peace with Moslems.

“”I am a Lebanese Jew and have lived in Lebanon all my life,” said one woman. “”I still cannot understand the reason behind it, but I must admit I am scared.”

“”What relation have we with the Israelis?” asked another woman. “”What is it to do with us? I don’t understand.”

The women, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of being singled out by the kidnappers, were interviewed in Wadi Abu Jamil, once the thriving Jewish quarter of west Beirut, where most residents are Moslems.

During the 1950s Lebanon’s Jewish population was estimated at about 9,000. Many Jews came to Lebanon because of anti-Jewish fervor in other Arab countries over the creation of Israel.

Judaism is one of 17 religions officially recognized by the Lebanese government. During anti-Zionist demonstrations in the late 1940s, Lebanese police were posted in Wadi Abu Jamil to protect its Jewish residents.

When Lebanon became headquarters for the Palestine Liberation Organization in the late 1960s, many Jews fled. More left during or after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in September, 1982.

Now Wadi Abu Jamil’s decaying apartment houses are occupied mostly by Shiite Moslem squatters forced from their own homes by Lebanon’s long civil war. The synagogue is closed.

Mary Jamous, whose kidnapped husband is the secretary to the head of the Jewish community, estimated there are 200 Jews, “”no more,” left in Lebanon.

Her 51-year-old husband, Salim Murad Jamous, was kidnapped eight months ago. A month earlier, another Jewish leader, Raoul Mizrachi, 54, was abducted and later found slain in Beirut’s Shiite-populated southern suburbs.

Neither of those crimes aroused as much fear as the seizure of the four Jews in just three days in late March.

The last victim was Ishaq Sassoun, 65, the leader of the Jewish community, who was taken at gunpoint March 31 on his way from the airport after a trip to Abu Dhabi, one of Arab emirates on the Persian Gulf.

Earlier, kidnappers had seized Elie Hallak, a doctor in his 50s; Haim Cohen, a 39-year-old Iranian Jew, and Elie Srour, 68, a Lebanese.

A previously unheard of group calling itself the National Resistance Arm, National Liberation Faction claimed responsibility for the killing of Mizrachi, but no group has said it carried out the other kidnappings.

Mrs. Jamous said she did not know “”which party or group” kidnapped her husband, “”nor can I think of a reason for his kidnapping.”

“”All my neighbors are Shiites and we are on good terms with them. They like us and have nothing against us,” she said.

“”We stayed when the Palestinians were here, and we had no trouble with them, later with the Syrians and then with the Israelis,” she said. “”We never thought of leaving.”

Mrs. Jamous and several of the other Jewish women linked the kidnappings to the Israel’s invasion and its occupation of south Lebanon, from which it is now withdrawing.

“”Since Israel invaded, this country has been a mess,” Mrs. Jamous said.

An aunt of her husband said, “”We, like any Lebanese, hid in shelters during the Israeli invasion and saw none of them. I do not speak Hebrew. I speak only Arabic.”

Lily, a 70-year-old woman, said she was frightened because armed militiamen had come several times to ask her to leave her house so Shiite refugee families from south Lebanon could live in it.

“”I can’t do that because I have no where to go and no one to turn to,” she said. “”The last time they came, I cried and begged with them so hard I fainted and then they left and said they won’t ask for the house any more.

“”But,” she added, “”these days I live in constant fear that one of these nights they might break into the house and do something to me.”

The women also spoke of their confusion, not only at the kidnappings but at their situation as Jews in the Arab world.

“”It is not our fault that we were born Jews,” Mrs. Jamous said, adding that Jews no longer held religious services in Wadi Abu Jamil.

Another woman, who said she had been a teacher in the Druse village of Aley until 1983 civil war battles there, said she could not understand the kidnappings because the victims were neither rich nor political figures.

“”I have never been threatened or insulted or treated differently because I am a Jew,” she said. “”I wish that whoever is doing all this kidnapping will explain their motives and demands. If there is a regulation or law that says we have to leave the country, then we would. But at least let us know about it.”

(Copyright 1985. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Date: 09/04/1985
Publication: The Associated Press

Jewish Leader Abducted

Beirut

Police said yesterday that unidentified gunmen abducted the head of Lebanon’s Jewish community on Sunday, forced him into a car and drove off.

The man, Ishaq Sassoun, 65, worked for a Lebanese company. He was the fourth Jew to be abducted in West Beirut in the last three days.

Police believe the kidnapings may be linked to the fighting in southern Lebanon between the Israeli occupation forces and the Moslem Shiite underground.

About a hundred Jews live in West Beirut. Most Lebanese Jews emigrated after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, mostly to Israel. Others went to the United States and Canada.

Sassoun had just arrived from a visit to the United Arab Emirates and was on his way home from the airport when the kidnapers intercepted him, the police said.

The other Jews were kidnaped over the weekend in the Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood. Police identified them as Elie Hallak, Elie Srour and Haim Cohen, an Iranian Jew.

About 7500 Jews lived in Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood before the exodus. They used to be recognized as one of 17 religious communities in Lebanon and were assigned one seat in the 99-member parliament. Now the neighborhood is inhabited by Kurds.

In a related development, a Dutch Jesuit priest who disappeared 16 days ago was found dead at the bottom of a well in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, a Jesuit spokesman said yesterday.

The priest, the Rev. Nicholas Kluiters, 43, was one of 11 Westerners who have disappeared or been kidnaped in Lebanon this year, and one of six in the past month.

A police report said the body of a “badly decomposed” man was found near where Kluiters was believed to have been kidnaped on March 14. “Unfortunately, we are now certain it is him,” a Jesuit spokesman in Beirut said.

No one claimed responsibility for his disappearance.

Early today, a French Embassy official said kidnapers have released Gilles Peyrolles, a French diplomat who was abducted almost two weeks ago in the north Lebanese city of Tripoli.

“He has been freed and is in good health,” the official said. He would not say where Peyrolles is.

New York Times
(Copyright 1985)
Date: 02/04/1985
Publication: The San Francisco Chronicle

From Daily Star - 09/04/1999

Munira Khayyat

Daily Star staff

The faded letters chiseled in the eroded stone above a gate in Beirut’s old Green Line are in Hebrew and spell out “bet hayameen.” This is the unassuming entrance to Beirut’s Jewish cemetery in Ras al-Nabaa.

In recent months, the cemetery has been given a facelift as Lebanon’s shrunken Jewish community rehabilitates the resting place of its ancestors.

The steps leading up to the graveyard are lined with pot plants, and old trees cast shadows on the white marble gravestones that are inscribed in Hebrew, Arabic and French.

Carved onto each gravestone is a black Star of David or a seven-pronged candleholder, the menorah, symbols of the Jewish religion. Some of the graves in the cemetery have stones on them, silent pointers to the fact that the graves are visited on a regular basis.

Apart from some cracked gravestones and the occasional bullet-hole that testify to the cemetery’s central place in the crossfire of the civil war, it looks peaceful and well preserved.

But until last summer when its renovation began, the Jewish cemetery was a tangled mass of dried grass and barbed wire. “We had to remove 20 years’ worth of weeds that concealed two thirds of the cemetery’s total area,” said the engineer in charge of its restoration, who did not wish to be named.

The graveyard was also barricaded with barbed wire, metal rods and sandbags, and embedded with anti-personnel mines.

According to Um Ali, a refugee from the Bekaa who has lived for eight years in the structure that previously housed the cemetery’s caretaker, the Lebanese army removed the mines and the barricades just over two months ago.

Um Ali observes all the comings and goings of the graveyard. “Very few people come here,” she said.

Um Ali and her son have informally taken over the duties of cemetery guardians. Ali dug the last grave to be used for an elderly man who died in 1997. In the absence of a Rabbi, an elder of the Jewish community presided over the burial.

Um Ali is familiar with all the graves and points to her favorite one. “She was very beautiful” she said of the woman whose likeness is preserved on a gravestone in a far corner of the cemetery.

Um Ali is aware that the Lebanese Jewish community is an ancient one that was very much part of the Lebanese national fabric. “The Jews here are Lebanese like us, they are not like the Israelis,” she said.

The cemetery land is owned by the Lebanese Jewish Community Council and dates back to the 1820s. The engineer in charge of renovations said the cemetery’s renovation was financed by the council. Although there are Jewish cemeteries in Sidon, Tripoli, Aley, and other Lebanese towns that once had prominent Jewish communities, only the Beirut cemetery will be renovated for now.

Plans for the renovation of Beirut’s only remaining synagogue, the Magen Avraham synagogue, in what used to be Wadi Abu Jmeel, are being drawn up and renovations will start later this year. “It seems quite by mistake that the synagogue was spared by the bulldozers `reconstructing’ downtown,” said the engineer. The old Alliance Israelite school which children from all communities attended has gone.

“Life is not easy for Lebanese Jews,” he continued. “There are too many powerful misconceptions about who they are. They prefer to stay quiet and lead quiet lives.

“I did not fix the crumbling Hebrew signpost above the gate. I left it faded and broken so as to not attract attention to it. If I had repainted the Hebrew letters, people would have noticed and most probably objected or defaced the Hebrew writing that is powerfully associated with Israel here.”

The Jews of Lebanon started leaving their country after 1948, but most left after the 1967 war. The civil war and the Israeli invasion escalated this emigration until almost no Jews were left.

Today there are about 100 Lebanese Jews in Lebanon. But the likelihood of the Jewish community regaining its pre-war numbers is small.

“Maybe in 200 years, Lebanese Jews will be able to come back and fully partake in Lebanese society as one of the 19 acknowledged religious confessions in this country” the engineer said. “But right now, the association of Jews with Israel is too deeply embedded.”

Because of the Jewish cemetery’s greenline location and the mines planted in its soil, the cemetery became inaccessible to the diminishing Jewish community during the war. A few gravestones dating back to the mid-1970s and 1980s point to the fact that some Lebanese Jews chose to stay in Lebanon despite the increasing difficulties of being both Jewish and Lebanese in a country at war with Israel and Zionism.

“The problem here is that people are not differentiating between the Jewish religion and Zionism,” according to Joe Mizrahi, the head of the Lebanese Jewish council. “More and more politicians are using the word `Jew’ to indicate the Israeli aggressor. We are not Zionists, we are Lebanese and we are here because we choose to stay in our land.”

Yet the Lebanese Jews who left their homeland and went elsewhere are initiating contact. “Some have relatives buried in the cemetery and have commissioned me to restore their relatives’ graves,” the engineer said.

Um Ali recalled a woman coming to the graveyard one day. “She was carrying rocks in her hands and walking among the graves. I thought she was a tourist so I asked her what she wanted.” Um Ali said. “She replied in broken Arabic that she was here to visit her father. I did not really understand at first but then I realized that she was looking for her father’s grave. “She sat for a long while near the grave and then left. I haven’t seen her since. She must have traveled back to where she now lives.”

COPYRIGHT (c) THE DAILY STAR, BEIRUT, LEBANON.
(c) 1999 THE DAILY STAR, BEIRUT, LEBANON.
Date: 09/04/1999
Publication: Daily Star

Announcement

Starting immediately, we will be publishing old news articles pertaining to the Lebanese Jewish community on a regular basis derived from media sources around the world. These archives are not readily available over the internet; we hope to establish our own exclusive news archive here on this website in our further effort of preserving the community’s history.

Concurrently, the NGO evolvement is progressing very efficiently and within a very solid framework. This is on-going and developing.

Jewish schools in Beirut once served purposes of integration
From Daily Star - 09/10/2003

Jewish schools in Beirut once served purposes of integration - But their effects on Arab Jews was noted and denounced by Zionists.

Mazen Wehbe

Special to The Daily Star

The year is 1870. The building no longer exists, but was located somewhere in the bourgeois and aristocratic neighborhood of 19th century Achrafieh.

Antoun Shehayber, lawyer and businessman, was addressing the director of the Jewish School of Beirut: “Yes, director, it is impossible for us to forget what suffering you have endured for our sakes and what efforts and zeal you have shown for our moral upbringing and education. First of all, in order to plant in us the spirit of the noble religion of Judaism you brought us an energetic rabbi. Secondly, you implanted in us the grammar of the Arabic language of our homeland, and how much expense and effort you have borne to bring professor Bekhor Leon for French. We want to assure your excellency, director, that we the Syrian Arabs are grateful for your favors. Although we are Arab in appearance, and our costume is Syrian, we still strive to attain the highest degree of science and progress. Friends, who have nominated me to undertake this noble task, raise your voices with me in calling out: Long live the Syrian, Arab and Jewish director from Sidon, Zaki Effendi Kuhin.”

Sadly, this speech survived but the school didn’t. It was shut down in 1904, probably because of lack of funds. Even though other institutions succeeded the school, and used a similar “Levantinesque” approach to Jewish education, its contribution to Beirut society was unique. In today’s world, the adjectives Syrian, Arab and Jewish would probably be met with disbelief if they were used to describe a rabbi who headed a Jewish school in Beirut.

The remaining Jewish community in Beirut (around 60, according to unofficial estimates) does not even have a rabbi. The synagogue survived the civil war and still stands, deserted and damaged, in Downtown Beirut, awaiting restoration and the return of the Lebanese Jews, something that might not happen soon.

Most of the Jews of Lebanon fled the country when their quarter in Wadi Abu Jmeel in Downtown Beirut became a battle zone in 1975.

But this is the present, and our story begins in Beirut in the 19th century. The city was still under Ottoman rule. European protection and the “civilizing missions” had transformed the non-Muslim inhabitants into agents of “social change.” Beirut was becoming Westernized.

According to author Leila Tarazi Fawaz, during the 19th century Beirut was transformed from a provincial town of 6,000 to a political and cultural center of 120,000. At this time of profound social change in Beirut, Kuhin (or Cohen) established what would be the first and largest Jewish-Arab college of its kind. Children of the small Jewish community in Beirut (around a thousand at the time) were taught Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, French, German and other foreign languages.

Kuhin and Shehayber (who was either Jewish or Christian, the records are not clear) even set up a Jewish-Arab theater on the same premises in Achrafieh. People from all sects came to the often-packed theater to watch Arabic adaptations of Moliere, as well as original plays performed in Hebrew, and sometimes French and Turkish. In many ways, the Beirut Jewish-Arab Theater was a response to the classic misrepresentation of the Jew in European theater.

Ironically, it was in the city of Beirut in the 19th century that Jewish characters transcended stereotypes and found depth to become the protagonists of European tales hostile to Jews in their original versions. It was not uncommon for a Jewish actor on the stage of the Beirut Jewish theater to quote Koranic expressions and Arabic poems, and mix French with Hebrew.

The whereabouts of what was the Jewish school is now a mystery. The information above was taken from a single article written by P.C. Sadgrove and published in 1992 in the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Sadgrove said the plays are now in the possession of the Abulafia family in Israel. The plays interested Sadgrove because to him they were an affirmation that, at the height of the Arab renaissance, Arab Jews were committed to “broader cultural, social and political values of parallel Arab and Syrian identities.”

This cultural participation was not confined to Lebanon. Around the same time in Egypt, Yaaqoub Sannouh, an Egyptian Jew who was also a member of Jamaleddine al-Afghani’s Islamic nationalist circle, was calling himself the “Egyptian Moliere.” His plays were aimed at a general Egyptian audience, and he played a prominent role in the development of the Egyptian dramatic tradition.

In fact, Egyptian Jews are acknowledged to have played important roles in Egyptian culture, specifically theater, cinema, music, the printing industry and the Arabic press. It is well known that Um Kulthoum in Egypt never performed without Daoud Hosni, an Egyptian musician who was Jewish.

In Iraq, we find a multitude of different Jewish authors making similarly important contributions. In fact, until 1948, we could still find outspoken authors like Murad Faraj in Egypt advocating Egyptian nationhood based on equality and fraternity, and Murad Mikhael in Iraq writing patriotic stories entitled He Died for his Country, and She Died for Love.

Kuhin’s school in Beirut was replaced by what some Lebanese still remember as the “Alliance.” The “Alliance Israelite Universelle” was the first international Jewish organization of its kind. Founded in Paris in 1860 by a group of liberal French Jews, it believed that emancipation of the Jews would come through education (L’Emancipation par l’Instruction).

By the turn of the 20th century, there were over 100 Alliance schools across the world in most of the cities with Jewish communities. The schools taught over 26,000 students.

The Alliance’s effect on Arab Jews was seen and denounced by Zionists, who abhorred Jewish integration into Arab society and accused the Westernized Jewish schools in the Levant of weakening the racial awareness of Middle Eastern Jews. Yehuda Nini from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry in Jerusalem said the Alliance schools “paved the way for a gradual alienation from Jewish tradition and Jewish nationalism, and for the perception of Western lands, rather than the land of Israel, as destinations for migration.”

Many Zionist authors argued the Jewish Arabs were only superficially “Arabized.” Zionist writers like Itamar Levin and Norman Stillman generally minimized the role Jews played in Islamic civilization and Arab culture.

The story of the Jewish school in Beirut and the Alliance contradict this version of history. It shows a degree of cultural integration that could have lasted until the present had it not been for militant Zionism, which sought to remove Jewish Arabs from their natural setting and create a new kind of Israeli Jew.

Ben Gurion said: “We do not want the Israelis to be Arabs. It is our duty to fight against the spirit of the Levant that ruins individuals and societies.”

But the spirit of the Levant gave the Jews a voice. After all it was in Beirut, not in the Yishuv (Palestinian Jewry), and certainly not in Europe, that a biblical play called The Sacrifice of Isaac was performed in the 19th century. One night in 1883, the characters of Abraham, his wife Sara, and Hagar, the bondmaid, stood together on stage with his son Isaac, ancestor of the Jews, and Ismail, ancestor of the Arabs.
(c) 2003 THE DAILY STAR, BEIRUT, LEBANON.
Date: 09/10/2003
Publication: Daily Star

BEIRUT: Lebanon will not be driven back to civil war. That is the solemn oath taken by activists displaying for the first time the rusty bus that was full of Palestinian civilians when it came under attack in Ain al-Roummaneh in 1975, sparking the country’s 15-year strife. The bus, an oxidized shell, was on display on Friday for the 32nd anniversary of the war’s outbreak at a time when many fear that divided Lebanon may plunge back into violence.

“This is the outcome of civil wars,” said Sami Hamdan, owner of the old Dodge bus as he knocked on the reddish brown metal of the decaying vehicle.

“People get killed, everyone loses and everything gets destroyed. All that’s left will be a rusty carcass,” said Hamdan, who is now 61 years old.

Lebanon erupted into bloodshed on April 13, 1975, when Christian militiamen machine-gunned the bus carrying Palestinian civilians in Beirut’s eastern suburb, hours after gunfight killed a group of Christians outside a nearby church.

Twenty-seven passengers on board were killed and the Civil War began.

Although most Lebanese have never seen the Ain al-Roummaneh bus up close, it has become the symbol of the outbreak of the war through Hayat Karanouh’s famous black-and-white photograph.

On Friday, the public had the opportunity to see the real thing at the Beirut racetrack. Normally, it is kept in a small Southern Lebanese village, “probably too far for most people to visit it” says an organizer of Friday’s April 13 Civil War remembrance event.

Hamdan bought the bus 25 years ago from its original owner, Abu Rida, who was behind the wheel when it was attacked on that fateful April day.

Abu Rida was slightly wounded during the attack, but his life was saved when he ducked down and hid under the bodies of the victims. He later repaired the vehicle and drove it again briefly before selling it to Hamdan.

“When I met the original owner, I asked him how much he wanted to sell the bus for. He told me to take it for free; he just wanted to get rid of it.”

“I bought his bus because it was notorious. I also wanted a new bus because my own had been hit by a shell that killed three children and wounded 17 others,” Hamdan said.

Paola Eid says that the “I Love Life” campaign has been trying to negotiate with Hamdan to purchase the Ain al-Roummaneh bus, on behalf of the Culture Ministry.

Eid says that if they could purchase the bus, it would go on public display “maybe in a museum or UNESCO, where there are wide spaces.”

Hamdan does not want to sell the wrecked bus, however, because “he is too attached to it,” explained Eid.

Indeed in 1983, when the bus was attacked again, Hamdan saw the symbolic importance of his treasure. “I didn’t have the money to fix it. I had my own house destroyed and considered selling the bus because I really needed money to fix it, but I couldn’t part with it.

“We want to say that the Lebanese will not allow another civil war to break out, and we want to warn new generations of the atrocity and absurdity of wars,” Hamdan said, adding that the organizers had asked him to bring the bus to the capital so it could be put on show for the anniversary.

“I am a living martyr of Lebanon’s wars - that’s why I want to warn people not to do it again. I have been wounded and kidnapped. In the Israeli attack last year the whole building where I lived was destroyed,” he said.

“In January, my bus was destroyed and transformed into a barricade,” during street battles between the government and opposition militants which took a confessional turn and sparked fears of a return to civil strife.

“I am a Shiite, but I respect all religions. I am against confessionalism and I hate all our leaders and politicians because they are all liars,” he said.

His ultimate dream?

“I want to put all our leaders on a bus and drive them to a remote place where they treat disabled people because they all need therapy,” Hamdan said. “They are sick. They constantly seek blood, violence and money.”
Daily Star Beirut

Rise in radical Islam last straw for Lebanon’s Christians

By Michael Hirst in Beirut, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:26pm BST 31/03/2007

Christians are fleeing Lebanon to escape political and economic crises and signs that radical Islam is on the rise in the country.

In a poll to be published next month which was exclusively leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, nearly half of all Maronites, the largest Christian denomination in the country, said they were considering emigrating. Of these, more than 100,000 have submitted visa applications to foreign embassies. Their exodus could have a devastating effect on the country, robbing it of an influential minority which has acted as an important counter-balance to the forces of Islamic extremism.

About 60,000 Christians have already left since last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah. Many who remain fear that a violent showdown between rival Sunni and Shia factions is looming.
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“If we love our children we have to tell them to get out,” said Maria, a Christian mother of one from the northern city of Tripoli, who refused to give her surname for fear of reprisal. “When my daughter finished her high school I sent her to Europe, and I will follow her if I can.”

Christine, another Christian woman, said that all of her family’s younger generation had left the country, adding that Tripoli had become increasingly Islamised in recent years. There is a rising number of veiled women and religiously bearded men on the streets - although she blamed economic and political instability for much of the emigration. Christians, who make up 22 per cent of the population, have historically played a major role in the development of Lebanon’s political, social and cultural institutions. Currently the president, the army commander and the head of the central bank are all Maronites, and under the agreement which ended the civil war in 1989, half the 128 seats in Lebanon’s parliament are reserved for Christians.

“Lebanon has always been a bastion of religious tolerance, but now it is moving towards the model of Islamisation seen in Iraq and Egypt,” said Fr Samir Samir, a Jesuit teacher of Islamic studies at Beirut’s Université Saint-Joseph.

Lebanon’s Christian community is concerned that its influence is waning as a result of a continuing internal power struggle, which for the past five months has pitted a Sunni-led government against a predominantly Shia opposition, spearheaded by the Shia militant group Hezbollah. The collapse in influence has been exacerbated by a roughly equal spilt in support among Christians for rival Shia and Sunni leaders. The battle between Muslim factions has paralysed the Lebanese administration and crippled the economy.

The exodus of young workers crosses the religious spectrum. Some 22 per cent of Shias and 26 per cent of Sunnis say they are considering going abroad, according to the study by Information International, an independent Beirut-based research body.