Excursions on the Middle East, politics, the Levant, Islam in politics, civil society, and courage in the face of unbridled, otherwise unchecked power.
Prior to 1936, Syria was at best a non-entity, its components (the consitutents of the present "Syrian Arab Republic") ALL parts of the Ottoman Empire.
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Moubayed's synopsis is generally fine and a fairly balanced and dispassionate one. However, his impulses as a Syrian-regime flack and a whitewasher of Baathist and Hezbollah brutalities--the adjective in Arabic is "moubayyed" btw--seem to have gotten the best of him. His simplistic and wornout cliché "[the Syrians'] readiness to exchange diplomatic relations with Lebanon for the first time since the two countries were separated by France in 1920..." is proof that Baathist and Arab nationalist thugs can never shed their silly arrogance and possessive fascistic vagaries.
The canard about Lebanon having been somehow "separated" from Syria "by France" presumes Syria was a well delineated political entity with its own independent civic, legislative and political personality prior to that presumed "separation." We know of course that this is just pure and simple bunk and delusional fabrication. There are no history books, besides the risibly shoddy ones improvised by hack writers like Moubayed, that speak of a "Syrian" entity tout court before 1936--let alone a Syrian entity inclusive of Lebanon.
Prior to 1936, Syria was at best a non-entity, its components (the consitutents of the present "Syrian Arab Republic") ALL parts of the Ottoman Empire.
Syrian pseudo-intellectuals like Moubayed should seek treatment for their addiction to Lebanon. Lebanon was never part of Syria! Both Lebanon and Syria were "carved out" of the Ottoman Empire, as were other regions throughout the former Ottoman possessions in the MENA. Syrians like Moubayed need to grow up and quit the hackneyed and failed mental clichés of their stillborn Arab nationalism. Indeed, they should THANK the French, rather than bemoan an illusory "Greater Syria" that never was and never will be.
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