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COMMENTARY
August 12, 2006
Impossible mess
When the Jewish farmers of Metula, in upper Galilee, were fleeing the Sunni Muslim Arabs, in 1920, they went to hide at Nabatiya, and other Shia villages in what is now southern Lebanon. Jews of Kfar Giladi went to Taybah, where they received the protection of the Shia, Sheikh Kamal Assad Berk. Jews and Shia were on excellent terms in those days, in the ethnic quilt of the mountains of Galilee, the Golan, and southern Levant. The Jews employed Shia on their farms, and cultivated their friendship in an environment where they were already often under siege.I have this from Meir Ben Dov, an elderly resident of Metula, interviewed in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. He had it from his grandparents, who lived it. Druze, Bedouin, Maronite Christians, Roman Catholics, and Greek Orthodox were among the other inhabitants in that district, which passed back and forth between the British and French mandates as boundaries were revised. Also Circassians, Kurds, Moughrabi, Turkmens, Alawites, and Nawars (the Muslim gypsies).They were not all mixed together, but apart, in their respective villages and caravanserais. But they traded with each other, and sometimes fought. They had all been there since Ottoman times, permitted to settle or remain as part of a complex juggle by the authorities, trying to keep the roads open between the coastal plains and interior cities such as Damascus. Minorities were given preference, because their loyalty to the government was assured: each community in its turn needing official protection, whether from feuds with one another or with the Arab majority. The Sunni Arabs seized villages like Metula, but then gave them up for fear of reprisal from the authorities. Mr Ben Dov mentions that when the Jewish families returned, they found their farms intact. The Arabs had been too honourable to loot them. I know less than I should about the recent history (i.e. the last few centuries), of what is now southern Lebanon and northern Israel; I probably know more about the ancient history. But the memoirs of Mr Ben Dov seem eminently plausible from the little I do know; and fit with what I know of “colonial” and “imperial” local histories elsewhere. The “ethnic cleansing” that is an almost international phenomenon, is chiefly a product of very recent history (i.e. the last few decades). Perhaps an inevitable phenomenon, once modern conditions are even partially introduced, and the old independent village arrangements become insupportable. Contrary to the blather of “multiculturalism”, it takes a very long time for people of different religious and ethnic persuasions to work out arrangements to live and let live, and these easily fall apart. And contrary to the old “melting pot” blather, the homogenization of cultures happens only under such artificial conditions as we have had in North America. One could almost say, that if the second generation of immigrants hasn’t assimilated into the majority culture, it isn’t going to assimilate. A new ethnic crazy quilt will emerge, but with contentions between groups on an unmanageable scale. For in today’s world, there is no such thing as a remote village. Members of each ethnic group become vividly aware of the rest of their diaspora. The grievance of one becomes the grievance of all. Ethnicity easily mutates into ideology. I return to Mr Ben Dov. He noticed the sort of thing so simple and obvious, that it would escape the attention of most intellectual observers. It was about Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, born and raised in the village of al-Bazuriya -- whose great grandparents might easily have sheltered Mr Ben Dov’s grandparents. It was that Nasrallah wears a Persian turban, and Persian clothes. His ancestors would have worn their own version of kaffiyeh and awal (the headcloth and cord), and sharwal (baggy trousers). Nor would his women have worn veils. The people of Shia villages in southern Lebanon are still Shia, to be sure; but they have been transformed, under the influence of a vicious ideology, into agents of fanatics giving orders from far away. And the new clothing is only the outward manifestation. Their religion has been changed within them, from time-honoured custom to something hateful and unspeakably aggressive. What is their future? For we are, or at least I am, hardly concerned exclusively with the future of the Israeli Jews, or the Lebanese Christians. Their leaders have led them into the valley of the shadow of death, and cannot lead them out again. I truly can’t imagine how they can recover, or how any outsider can help. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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