I wrote about Christopher Hitchens yesterday, pointing out his atheism and fierce hostility to religions, particularly Judaism. Such a short article did not do justice to him; Hitchens is too smart and well-cultured to be one-dimensional. His anti-Nazism and anti-fascism do not prevent him from supporting the right of French writer Robert Faurisson to put forward his denial of the Holocaust, and he defended the thinker Noam Chomsky when he was attacked because he supported the right of the British historian David Irving to publish his views, even though he denies the Holocaust. Today, the only thing about Hitchens I will mention is his visit to Beirut in February 2009, invited by the March 14 movement on the anniversary of the death of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. This visit ended in Hitchens getting beaten up, kicked and punched after he tried to deface a symbol of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, its “hurricane,” which is on a sign erected on Hamra street in Beirut, to mark the spot where SSNP operative Khaled Alwan killed two Israeli officers in the summer of 1982. Hitchens was accompanied by the British journalist Michael Totten, who has wide experience in the Middle East and a prize-winning blog and publishes articles in international newspapers, and another British-American (like Hitchens) journalist, Jonathan Foreman, who is a moderate right-winger and writes for Standpoint magazine and also publishes his articles in some of the most prestigious newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. Totten and Foreman wrote a considerable amount on the incident, and the world's newspapers, such as British Guardian, and American e-newspaper The Huffington Post. Young men from the SSNP confronted Hitchens after he kicked the sign; Hitchens and his two friends finally fled in a taxi, but after Hitchens was beaten and injured and people intervened to save the Three Musketeers. I read in The Observer a long interview in which he talked about his visit to Beirut two and a half years ago, his attending a rally by Hezbollah and his claim that the party's emblem is a mushroom cloud, as he saw something that no one else did. I do not know if Hitchens appreciated what he was doing while defacing the SSNP sign; I read that he said he could not overlook a Nazi symbol, and thus did what he did, expecting the subsequent problem. However, he said that the attackers were not hooded or armed, and thought that the worst that would happen was to receive a beating. Totten and Foreman gave an eyewitness description of the incident, and added considerable information about the SSNP and the assassination of Hariri, and political divisions in Lebanon, to which I can add some things. There was a migration from the right after the 1967 war. The Movement of Arab Nationalists, which launched the “Vengeance Youth” and “Youth of the Return,” i.e. a Bedouin in search of vengeance, ended in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which then saw the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine split off from it. The PFLP was founded by George Habash, who wanted to move gradually to the left, while the DFLP's Nayef Hawatmeh wanted to “burn” everything and build a new leftist party. The SSNP experienced a similar change, and I can mention what I witnessed myself. Before its coup attempt in Lebanon at the end of 1961, the SSNP was unquestionably a right-wing party, with its roots in the 1930s and its emblem the hurricane, which Hitchens believed was a swastika. I knew party leaders Asad al-Ashqar and Abdullah Saade, and I visited the home of the former in Deek al-Mahdi after I heard about the attack against him and his family. I saw only a door busted in, while the wall of the garden and the iron in it, in the shape of the hurricane, was partially vandalized. As for Dr. Abdullah Saade, the leader of the party, I interviewed him for Reuters (where I was a shift leader) after the party leaders were released. I attended a news conference he held at the Beau Rivage Hotel, which was perhaps the best evidence of the change undergone by the party. The journalists sat in front of Saade and his assistants at a horseshoe-shaped table. They received a small pamphlet about the party, its founder and its future policies. After an introduction by Saade, it was time for questions, and I heard him say: “We begin with the right because the right is older, and end with the left, because the left is the future.” It was finally my turn to ask a question, and I said, “Dr. I knew your party as the Syrian Nationalist Party, and I see in this pamphlet it is the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. Antoun Saade was called the leader, and he is now called the founder. Your party was right-wing, and now it is left-wing. Do you think that if Antoun Saade came back to life, he would know this party as his own?” Abdullah Saade responded patiently, but unconvincingly. I have never belonged to any party in my life, but sat on that fabled wall, observing everyone; thus, I feel that I can be neutral and fair. A final word about the SSNP, as Michael Totten talks about it as a party that is majority-Christian, particularly Orthodox. Perhaps this was true up to the 1970s, but not today. The president of the party is Asaad Hardan, and before him it was Ali Qanso; the members have come from other sects, particularly the Shiites, and not just the Orthodox. [email protected]
