I said yesterday that the Lebanese were the first outside Europe to become alert to the dangers of fascism and Nazism, and that they founded am anti-fascist league in the 1930s. This league had some of the leading intellectuals at the time as its members, such as Anton Thabet, Mohammad Ali Hamadeh, Taqi al-Din al-Solh and Jamil Makkawi. A chronicler of popular history in Lebanon documented a Zajal [traditional Middle Eastern poem] from a seminar held by the league, to warn against fascism and Nazism, which loosely translates as: “We talk about fascism, but we forget about feudalism, and while we curse Mussolini and Hitler, we have a hundred faces like theirs here.” Nonetheless, I read that members of the audience protested against the Zajal, and demanded that the addresses be limited to the subject of the seminar, i.e. the dangers of fascism and Nazism. Taqi al-Din al-Solh then interfered and said: let him remind us of our national obligations, because what is important should not preoccupy us from what is even more important. This last expression subsequently entered the lingo of Lebanese politics, and became a maxim often quoted by people there. Why did the Lebanese become alert to the dangers of fascism before many of their peers? Perhaps the answer lies in the history of the relations between the two countries [Lebanon and Italy]: Despite the fact that the Arab countries had suffered from the oppression of the Ottoman Empire, welcoming the Young Turks movement in the beginning before becoming quickly disappointed with the latter; despite this, the sensitivity against the “Italians” dates back to almost an entire century ago. In fact, the precise date for this would be 24/2/1912, when the Italian fleet arrived to Beirut and demanded the surrender of the Ottoman cruiser “Aoun-u-llah” and the frigate Ankara. The Ottomans refused to surrender, prompting the Italians to bomb the port and the entire city of Beirut, killing and wounding two hundred, and causing great damage. At the origin of the conflict between the Ottoman Empire and Italy was their dispute over the control of Libya. The Lebanese supported the Ottoman Empire and the people of Libya at the time, as they supported the Abyssinians later on in 1934 following Abyssinia's invasion by the armies of fascist Italy. Following the invasion, Emperor Haile Selassie escaped to Jerusalem where he resided under the protection of the British. My grandfather knew him and told me that he [the Emperor] lived in the YMCA building there. During my only visit to Ethiopia in 1973 with an international group of journalists, we were received by the emperor in his castle. I reminded him of his stay in Jerusalem and my grandfather's story about him and his wife the empress. He replied, (while he was in his great castle and garden where lions roamed, and after he had been living in a room in the building of a charity,) that this was a long time ago, and that he had forgotten most of the details. What I also remember from that meeting with the Emperor, is that he began his conversation with me in English, and then switched to French when I mentioned his obligations in defending Jerusalem as a leader of the Orthodox Copts- perhaps because he was hoping that I would not understand what he was saying. Going back to the Italians, my grandfather used to tell me that their warships used to sail near the coasts of Lebanon and Palestine during the Second World War, as did the Nazi warships, and then used to attempt to bomb a French or British post such as a consulate, a barracks, or other structures. He also used to tell us that if people saw a German ship, they remained in their homes because its cannons would hit its intended target only, but that when they saw an Italian ship at sea they would flee outside the city and take shelter in the caves and the valleys, because the Italians would hit everything except their intended targets. The fascists and the Nazis have perished, and both Haile Selassie and my grandfather have passed away (and as the proverb goes, “leave the lying to the dead”). As such, I will add that I had already written about everything mentioned above in this column at the time, one way or the other, while having added today some details and omitted others; nonetheless, all the original articles are still in my possession. Today, only the Israeli barbaric occupation remains, along with the neo-fascist and neo-Nazi supporters of Israel such as Bernard-Henri Levy, who was the focus of my article yesterday. Meanwhile, the expression “blame it on the Italians”, which was coined by President Bishara al-Khouri to justify each error or mistake, has its equivalent today in the act of blaming everything on Israel and America. Perhaps we will solve our problems one day when we admit that it is us who are responsible, before the Italians, France, Britain, America and Israel. But in any case, I do not want to ruin today's subject with politics; I just want to say that the time has come for us to bury the hatchet with the Italians, since they have always been more light-hearted than the French and the British colonists. They are also definitely funnier and have a better taste, since Rome is as much of a museum as it is a capital, and the capital of style is Milan, and not London, Paris or even New York. I will leave the reader with some verses of Palestinian Zajal about the lost land, and how others have taken it, lock, stock and barrel [...]
