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1- Thread👇
Excerpts of a speech given by General Henri Gouraud in Damascus, June 20, 1920; a Speech-Program" of sorts, meant to guarantee Lebanese sovereignty but also stymie Faysal's "Arab Syria" program. #Maysalun was 34 days later. My grandfather was there, under Gen. Goybet!
2- "Lebanon, with proud traditions & a history all its own, ought to remain free, and shan't be constrained to enter into any regional union. It may wish to be associated economically in a joint customs & monetary regime with a future Syrian federation, but this ought to be
3- the outcome of negotiations conducted & agreed to by sovereign states recognizing the imperative that is Lebanese independence, but also conciliating the marked particularism of certain regions of Syria, Aleppo for instance, vis-a-vis of Damascus. A serious study of the Syrian
4- region reveals that ONLY A FEDERAL SYSTEM IS THE ADEQUATE SYSTEM TO RECONCILE AND HARMONIZE SYRIAN DISCORD, PREVENT ANTAGONISMS, AND GUARANTEE UNITY IN DIVERSITY, AS DEMONSTRATED IN THE EXAMPLES OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE HELVETIC CONFEDERATIONS." My emphasis
5- Source, my book-in-progress "Lebanon in 200 Exceptional Documents, 1918-1923"
This source is from the Archives des Affaires Étrangères, Quai d'Orsay
Levant 1918-1940
Syrie-Liban
Volume 133
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Years ago flying coach with wife to a DC conference, we were seated in aisle & window seats, a distinguished gentle septuagenarian separating us.
Buckled in, my wife & I began talking back & forth in French (how rude) across the classy gentleman sitting between us.
Classy, dignified, smiling, nodding occasionally, bantering (politely) with the buzzing flight crew running to-and-fro, the crew on this JetBlue flight seemed on familiar terms with this (obviously) frequent flyer, addressing him “Judge,” fretting over him,
making sure he was okay in his middle seat, asking if he needed anything—his coat hung at the front of the cabin perhaps…??? “No thanks,” he kept saying with a smiling voice, “I’m perfectly fine in this seat,” “I’ll keep my coat on my lap, for warmth…”
I'm old enough to remember her and her Lebanon; pre-War Lebanon of icons like her who had class and grace… people who were decent, clean, principled, genuine… Forces of nature like her, Nadia Tuéni, Evelyne Bustros, May Arida…
I remember old quaint Beirut, the original Martyrs' Square, a veritable human beehive teaming with people, the Automatique, the Grands Magasins Byblos and their regal escalator, the ABC, Cécé--whose owner, a Lebanese Jew and childhood friend of my mother's, was bullied to leave..
I remember mirrored sunglasses that we pestered mom for months to buy us for Christmas, and who, when she finally caved, hastened to remove her own glasses--lest people thought we were a family of blind—because my brother & I insisted on wearing them sunshades in dead of winter.
2/ France wanted no part of #GreaterLebanon, and long into the eleventh hour, the Quai d'Orsay kept insisting on #PetitLiban. Here's a little snippet from a classified memo #Grouraud sent to the #MAE in June 1920, reflecting France's UNDERSTANDING of #History in the #LongueDurée:
3/ “Lebanon, with proud traditions and a millennial history all its own, ought to remain free, and shan’t be constrained to enter into any regional union. It may wish to be associated economically in a joint customs and monetary regime with a future Syrian federation,
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This is what remains of #CharlesCorm's short lived #AmitiéLibanoPalestinienne; bits and pieces of documents at the #CZArchives in Jerusalem, and an exchange of notes of goodwill like this one to #EliahuEpstein (Eilath) and his wife, "in recognition of [our] friendship"
Based on Epstein's recollections and #JewishAgency papers, there is a sizable slice of Lebanese history extirpated from Lebanon's official curricula and doctored up (or suppressed) by the curators of the private papers of Lebanon's "founding fathers." #Corm for instance believed
in the special responsibility incumbent upon the descendants of the #Hebrews and the #Phoenicians, and the obligations they respectively had to modern Israel and Lebanon. Layers of cultures have been deposited in Israel and Lebanon, throughout their history [he admitted...]
Excellent must-read essay.
Couple of things I would've worded differently: 1- The Lebanese speak Lebanese period, NOT Lebanese Arabic, just like the French speak French, NOT French Latin; newlinesmag.com/argument/how-a…
2- Lebanese is a language, NOT a dialect (the word dialect is a statement of power, not observation and NOT analysis); 3- Diglossia is a linguistic situation where two or more languages (NOT necessarily only "varieties of the same language") coexist in a subordinate relationship
(a High language that is learned and NOT natively spoken, vs. a Low language that is natively spoken and subordinated to the H.) #JoshuaFishman expanded Ferguson's restrictive definition to include unrelated languages (eg, Alsatian vs. French) in the diglossic relationships...
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Like my Cilician grandmother's family, Afeyan's took refuge in Lebanon when Lebanon could still brag about being a refuge. #CharlesCorm (the builder of the Armenian "refugee camp" that eventually became Beirut's most industrious and enterprising municipality) wrote
"It is here, in Lebanon, since time immemorial, that every minority, whenever mistreated and whenever abused, elsewhere in the Near East, has found sanctuary, has found safe refuge, from murder and tyranny. Even Druze and Shi’as, even Muslims themselves,
when persecuted by majorities among them, have always found peace, freedom and security, in the shadow of the Lebanon! And so, here are we, us the Armenians, ever since the persecutions of 1875, and during the massacres of Red Abdulhamid, in 1895, then in 1915, and later in