"Algarade", editorial extracts from l'Orient-Express

SAMIR KASSIR in l'Orient-Express (1996-1998)

Les rescapés de l’Histoire (The survivors of History), #3, February 1996
(…) They (The Palestinians) know how wrong it would be to defect when the so longed for opportunity is finally being offered. This is what the boycott supporters have not understood. This is what they are about to pay the price for in terms of credibility, with Hamas at the head and so much the better. Because, as it happens, we just might see an end to the intellectual terrorism that the integrists exert over the Arab intelligentsia, by purporting to represent the major political force in Palestine and the only force wishing to stand up to Israel. Such is without a doubt the grand lesson that one must retain from all this: extremism is no longer valid when moderation is so effective. (…)

Le Funambule et son Filet (The Tightrope Walker and His Net), # 4, March 1996
It has now been almost five years since the disarmament of the militias has sealed the end of the war and never has civil peace been a wandering thought in the minds of the political staff commissioned to lead the 2nd Republic. All we were offered to reflect upon were the endless and misleading denunciations of “the others’ war” or the idyllic promises of an economic restoration. In all of this, no one has bothered to consider the motives of a renewed national pact or the demands of the social contract, which is the sole factor that would render it permanent.

Tous gagnants? (All winners?), #6, May 1996
(…) There are situations that do not bear to be rationalised. These hundreds of thousands of refugees thrown out for the zillionth time on the roads, these lives annihilated and devastated for ever, these ruins where an old woman weeps, these children of Nabatieh caged underneath the rubble, these end of the world scenes in Cana, as many images that should only stir one’s emotions.
As many images which, however, already escape the beat of the heart. Not so much because it has been necessary to comment on their implications and that it will have to be done again. But because, deep down, they have been wanted, received, managed in the coldness of tactical calculations and strategic equations.

Du Souffle, # 8, July 1996
(…) No, it is simply a matter of not concluding from the present state of the Syrian presence that there is no hope for politics in this country. When there are eleven deputies, in this so wrongly elected Parliament who refuse to bend their views when everything’s been said and done, then there are reasons to be hopeful. Hopeful that for instance, there should be twenty of a similar calibre in the next Parliament, and why not even thirty? And that, group dynamics allowing, they should convert another twenty. Because only this way will we be able to succeed - not during this summer’s elections, but in the ones of the year 2000 (2001?) - to produce a Parliament that would finally be on the same wavelength as its plural society.

Connivences (Connivances), #9, August 1996
(…) Clearly, everyone in the country does not think of national belonging in terms of religious dichotomy. And that is for the best, because there is no other way of building a common future for all citizens. But if we wish to get there one day, and not too late, we must work on what is common right now, and nothing as much as elections allows the construction of these transcommunitary networks without which there is no salvation. Here is yet another reason and perhaps the most important one, not to desert public space when completion time arrives. There will always be time to think of the Syrian presence later.

La liberté, autrement (Freedom, another way), #12, November 1996
(…) Pleasure from auto satisfaction? The L’Orient- Express team would not be repugnant to that, being readily seen as arrogant when it feels only too of the bet it has won twelve times over: to create in this as yet gasping country that is Lebanon a space for expression and discussion on the scale of this end of century. No, this is not champagne going to our heads; it is simply the praises of the great figures of the Arab press and the echoes that we receive from foreign colleagues when they have the chance to discover L’Orient-Express. And it is, above all, the readers’ welcome, perhaps slightly disconcerted to begin with yet quickly seduced and already faithful.
Let’s talk about this bet actually. To say how mad it may have appeared to some. What? A French-speaking periodical that would not only revolve around vainness and futilities? A magazine that understands the word society to mean something other than trendy and up-to-the-minute people? Come now, you will never find an audience amongst the Lebanese! Well, here is the grand lesson of this adventure: it is rewarding to address people’s intelligence. (…)

Thérapie de choc et médecine arabe (Shock therapy and Arabic medicine), #13, December 1996
(…) But were Netanyahu’s days in government being counted – something still left to prove – that we would still not be reassured for as much. Because in this impossible to measure interval, all ventures are to be feared. Cornered on the Palestinian case, the most sensitive for Israeli society, the Israeli Prime Minister might be tempted to play the opening elsewhere, upon a stage where he is certain to win: the battlefield. And for this, there is but one enemy in a position to obtain the consent of the generals for him: Syria. One must therefore hope that the Americans’ reflexes are swift enough to put him in a strait jacket before a fait accompli that they should fear above all things, since they have no alternative solution for the existing regional order.

Tourassic Parc (Tourassic Park), #14, January 1997
(…) It is true that Lebanese politicians are angry with history. They have chosen once and for all to make use of it in their squabbles. And when they have the good taste to refrain from doing so, it is to only retain a rather orthodox “wisdom” from it. Have a listen to the approximations of the “men in charge” on the rare occasions when they abandon the beaconed paths of small politics to venture into a meticulously delearned past. And reflect upon how sterilely the theme of unification of the manuals of history foreseen by the Taëf agreement recurs. As if we didn’t know since Dominique Chevallier and, in a different genre, Edmond Rabbath, that is it likely to produce a single yet plural history of Lebanon – in fact of what has become Lebanon. But that is precisely the problem: what serves as power does not only entail a problem of historicity, it lacks the most basic vision of that object named Lebanon. Its fruition, its identity – well yes indeed, one must talk about it – none of all this seems to concern it. (…)

Responsable moi? (Responsible, me?), #16, March 1997
(…) As if public opinion had failed to remember this notion of responsibility. It is true that the politicians in charge in Lebanon have done their best in order that it should be forgotten. To them, nothing is worth resigning over, be it loss of face or denial: they do not hold themselves responsible, it is as simple as that. And the worst part of it all is that we are beginning to believe them.
We all know the old refrain: they cannot resign, the Syrians would never agree with that. You bet they would agree! Firstly, because they have an inexhaustible supply of ministerial candidates in the antechambers of Damascus. But above all, because since they began taking Lebanese affairs into their own hands, they have on more than one occasion proven how easily they could adapt to the “peculiarities” of this country.
Have they not shown themselves to be extremely learned in constitutional rights, they whose constitution only serves as a laughing matter? (…)

La politique en BOT (Politics in BOT), #19, June 1997
(…) There is no doubt about it; this is what we call grand communication. I bring you an audacious Egyptian journalist. I let him wear out the entire Republic for a whole week and on my own television if you please. And once I am absolutely certain that, delighted and confident, you have entrusted your critical eye to him, I invite him to my place or rather I invite myself to his and I am the greatest.
No regrets after all. All profit for Hariri, the Lebanese week on Orbit will at least have provided us with a few little treats of which the least was not to listen to Farès Boueiz say things that he did not learn during private lessons. But let’s beware of auto-flagellation. If an Egyptian television journalist succeeds better than his colleagues over here, it is not because Lebanese journalists are bad. It is more a case of audiovisual in Lebanon being too closely linked to the circles of power and those in charge of it, all channels mixed up, having it in their best interest to entrust their political programs to complacent presenters only. (…)

Le pays qui n’aime pas les enfants (The country that does not love children), #21, August 1997
(…) Must we then accept, be it over here or elsewhere, that children should be marginalised by a society which is itself immature? It’s just that one should not underestimate the prices to pay. One could accept that they should be confronted at some point or other to a little example of arbitrariness, it shapes one’s character. What is far more serious is the image of the world that they are constantly being offered, that of money and sham, of contempt and racism. Children and SriLankans not allowed! You cannot invent it, yet you hear it sometimes and often where you least expect to. Was it not on this same beach that the same irresponsible person saw fit not to allow a seasonal guest from the adjoining hotel to have her children accompanied by their Philippino governess, whilst their English nurse had been cordially welcomed the year before? (see the article by Firas al-Amin in An-Nahar, June 1997). But on this, it is only fair to say it, they are all the same. Or almost. It is just as fair to point out however, that rare are the guests or parents who are affected by this. Try to ask a child how he perceives these curious aliens who are so happy, is it not so my dear, to perform the most thankless jobs. It is a sad country that whose most young are so meticulously programmed to reject difference. (…)

Un État pas comme les autres (A state unlike any other), #22, September 1997
(…) Even having become a land without a people or just about, Palestine has remained across the way of the country unlike any other. Irreducible, always reborn to the point of literally being the miraculously cured ones of History, the Palestinians are clearly saying to the Israelis that they will never be like the others. This is what Shimon Pérès had perceived. This is what Itzhak Rabin had resolved to accept. This is what was said in Bâle itself last week, during the commemoration of the 1897 congress, and in the mouth of the successor, admittedly remote from Herzl, Avraham Burg, president of the Jewish World Congress and of the Jewish Agency, and little does it matter on the subject that this post should only have been the consolation prize offered a few years ago to the one who was the rising star of the Left Labour.
This is what Benjamin Netanyahu still doesn’t understand. Never mind. He will end up getting there. After all, is it not the other grand lesson of the century just gone by? (…)

Promesse d’automne (Autumn promise), #23, October 1997
(…) Let us say it to ourselves and let us work upon it: next year, we will have a new president. In the meantime, if you haven’t already done so, go and sign the national petition. It will still serve as some extra pressure on all those who think that citizens’ intelligence can easily be despised. And who knows? It could convince the horde of politics’ half-portions who suffer presidential urges to go and get hanged somewhere else. By leaving the space clear for candidates who, by their past and future protests in opposition to the offences against the Constitution, will already have given evidence of their commitment to build the State of Law. Beautiful autumn, wouldn’t you say?

Jeu de Rôles (Game of Roles), # 24, November 1997
(…) Specifications exist in every election. But they concern the candidates, not the president. In actual fact, it so happens that they are stipulated by the Constitution: the possession of the Lebanese nationality, a minimum age, a clean record or in any case, the enjoyment of political rights. To these legal conditions, one could assuredly imagine that a strong democratic movement arising from the depths of the country would succeed in adding extra ones that would be of a political order. For instance, that the candidate should not have been involved in any war crimes, even if those have been granted amnesty. That he should not have switched his political credo about fourteen times throughout his career. That he should not be under suspicion of unlawful enrichment or nepotism. That he should have shown a minimum amount of decency in his own dealings with Damascus or Anjar. That he should have displayed a definite respect towards institutions and above all, that he should not view himself as a saviour. (…)

Liberticide, #26, January 1998
(…) Have we not been fed long enough on this argument of depoliticization purporting to justify a subdued despair amongst this country’s youth? Have we not been overloaded with the idea that we should relinquish all hope for change because, they so enjoyed reiterating, the youth of today are far too busy looking for a place under the sun to invest any time in politics?
Well, it has now been proven that one should never despise civic intelligence. The grand lesson is this: all citizens, including the most disengaged and the most “blasé” always end up realizing that even the smallest of battles are worth fighting, that talking does get you somewhere and that freedom of expression is still worth conquering even if it does not yet extend to complete political freedom, meaning the possibility for alternation. (…)