They call me Arab but my history says I’m not

090304

 I’m born in Lebanon and the main course regarding the identity has for at least 60 years been the Arab one. At the same time Lebanon offers today and has always offered the biggest resistance against the Arabisation of the state if we compare it to the rest of the members in the Arab League. It has sometimes been an armed resistance and sometimes a peaceful one.

I understand the Muslim Lebanese for calling themselves Arabs. It is what they are and should be proud of. The Christians of Lebanon are divided in 2 categories: Arabised and not Arabised people. The Arabised give more priority to the Pan Arab nation than the Lebanese identity and they are supported by all official institutions, media and politicians. The second type of the Christians get their identity feelings mostly from their hearts and intuition, at a later stage they get confirmation from reading history, weather we call it Phoenician or Aramean, we can call simply call them Lebanese. We should also add that Arabic projects get all kind of support while the others are always being fought by Arabised Christians and Arab Muslims.

Some try to convince themselves with the Pan Arab identity and take it to an extreme level. When they don’t have more arguments we usually see this kind of dialogue:

Arabised: We speak Arabic therefore we are Arabs.

Lebanese: Actually, we don’t, we speak Lebanese.
We don’t speak Arabic and even if we did, it doesn’t matter cause then you should say that all English speaking people are English men,
right?

Arabised: We are Arabs because we are born in an Arabic country.

Lebanese: It has never officially been an Arab republic, it is the Lebanese republic.
In the 40s the politicians put a wrong label on Lebanon, they said Lebanon is Lebanese but it has an Arabic face, in the 1989 Taif accord the Christians were lost and many leaders were paid. The Muslim Arabs and the Christian Arabists won and Lebanon got more than his face Arabised, they said ´´3arabi l hawiya wal intima2´´, and means Arab by identity and belonging. Luckily that many things didn’t get implemented and so far this definition has not entered the Lebanese constitution.
Arabised: We were active in starting the Arab league that we belong to.

Lebanese: We were also active in starting of the francophone organisation, it didn’t make us French either.

Politicians are playing with the identity issue for economical and political reasons and the Arabism position is the one you have to support if you want to reach far in Lebanon and in the Middle East. However, there is something they can never win; it is the feeling the simple Christian people of Lebanon have in their hearts...