The long march of Pan-Arab media

Early in the summer 2006 I booked a flight to Beirut scheduled for the 12 July that would take me home after thirty years abroad. Little was I to know that the date displayed on my ticket would be inscribed in Lebanese history. But being well aware of Lebanon’s acute vulnerability in the volatile politics of the Middle East, I kept to myself the excitement I was feeling about returning home. Mid-morning July 11, a work colleague walked into my office asking if I had heard the latest news. Two Israeli soldiers had been kidnapped by Hizbullah, he told me. Thinking about my scheduled July-12 flight to Beirut, I rushed into the TV monitoring room at the Pan-Arab Research Center where I work. I was eager for the very latest news. The first report I saw featured the Israeli Army chief’s threat to take Lebanon back thirty years. With the painful experience of civil war and Israeli invasions that I share with most Lebanese, I took these threats literally. The first images of war that I witnessed were the flashing shells hitting Beirut airport’s runway. This was an agonizingly familiar image. Our leaders have let the vulnerability of Beirut airport be enshrined in our national psyche: images of the national airport succumbing to the Israeli Army go as far back as 1967 and have been replicated in the subsequent series of attacks against Lebanon. I have particularly strong visual memories of war as my home village lies just 350 meters above Beirut airport and is an ideal place for a panoramic view of all Beirut and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. These images of war remain vivid; nothing can erase them from my memory

Internet privacy · Computer Science · Globalization and Cultural Identity · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies