The Antiochian Levant: People, Identity and Society
Between conspiracy and steadfastness
MECC Secretary General Dr. Michel Abs’ lecture at the One Voice Foundation’s symposium, entitled “One Voice Lebanon, the Homeland of Man” and a detailed presentation about the Antiochian Levant.
Dr. Michel E. Abs
General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches
Saydet El Bir Convent, Lebanon, 16 October 2021
We live in a culturally civilized geographic catchment area that has undergone so many crises and has been designated with such a great plethora of names so that it has lost its identity.
Some call it the Levant, and some call it the Arab Levant, and some call it the Fertile Crescent, and some others ‘Souristan’. All these appellations refer to a region of diverse ethnicities, deeply divided, abundant in conflicts, which in its history has been exposed to what no other region of the world has been exposed to in terms of invasions and calamities. Geography has played against the history of this region and the stability of its peoples and civilizations.
In the universal Church, this area is called “Antioch and All the East”. Therefore, when the priest presents the patriarch at the Royal Door, he designates him, after mentioning his name, “the established patriarch over the great city of God, Antioch, Syria, Arabia, the two rivers and what is between them - Mesopotamia, the country of Georgia and All the East.” With this sentence, the text summarizes the social-cultural range within which early Christianity spread before reaching its nearest neighbor, Armenia and Anatolia – also designated as the Levant as well, and then to the Arabian Peninsula then the Nile Valley and the Great Maghreb, and from there it spread east and west to the rest of the world.
Unversed fishermen set out from the bay of Iskenderun, the looted region, for which the Church has recently elected a shepherd to replace its abducted pastor, and they roamed the world, preaching to all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and baptizing all people. The Pentecostal hymn expresses this path, as it is stated in its text:
Blessed are You, O Christ our God,
Who made fishermen all-wise,
Sending upon them the Holy Spirit
And, through them, drawing the world.
O Loving One, glory to You.
How strong is the faith of this nation, how sharp is its determination, and how abundant is its children's love for the world, forasmuch as since the dawn of history they have issued the most basic foundations of human civilization.
Many conquerors have passed through history in our region, and they have left their traces in it. Some of our people walked on their traces, subsisted on their crumbs, gushed and complied with them, at a time when the honorable people of this nation resisted the conquerors and sacrificed blood and soul in order to preserve their identity and dignity. This is how life always is, in which the lowly beseeches for his rights and the proud knows no other stand but the stand of pride.
We said that the geographical location of this region has played a very negative role against its peoples and civilization, as it is located at the intersection of three continents, and it is not surprising that trade routes between East and West pass through it, such as the "Al-Darbasiyah" region - the Asia trail - in the northern of Syria-Cham and other areas such as Tikrit - derived from "Tgurto" - the trading area - north of Beth Nahrain - Mesopotamia.
This geographical presence at the intersection of three continents had, in return for its positive characteristics, many negative ones, the most important of which being the succeeding conquests that did not allow this region to enjoy political, economic, or civilizational stability.
We will not go back to ancient times in order to understand our structure and the dynamics that govern our paths, but we will content ourselves with some highlights on the policies and events that produced some of the constants on which our region operates and which govern its life and destiny thus resulting in an unambiguous conspiratorial character.
The Ottoman Millet System
The Ottoman rulers realized the diversity of the religious and ethnic communities that made up the empire, so they organized a series of private negotiations with the heads of religious groups, which led to what became known as the Millet System, which means in Turkish a “religious community” or “people,” and even a “nation.” This name applies to some Non-Muslim minorities, especially Christians and Jews.
Under these arrangements, these groups organized their presence in the empire and continued through a generalized system of imperial tolerance and intense negotiations.
In the heterogeneous Ottoman Empire (1300–1923), a Millet was an independent, self-governing religious community, each organized according to its own laws and headed by a religious leader, who was responsible to central government for fulfilling the responsibilities and duties of the community, particularly those related to paying taxes and maintaining internal security.
This system deepened the distance between the groups that make up the Antiochene Levant society and contributed to the establishment of political sectarianism in Lebanon, the best recipe for inducing civil strife and covering up corruption. This also applies to the other countries around the area, which, although they have apparently secular political systems, but sectarianism has remained latent in their psychological and social structures thereby spurning up its horn from time to time when the need arises.
The Balfour Declaration
The Balfour Declaration applies to the saying "He who does not own gives to those who do not deserve" , a designation which has constituted a turning point in the history and identity of the Middle Eastern region. It had a profound impact on the course of events in the Arab Levant as a whole, and we can consider its effects as one of the causes of underdevelopment, poverty and conflicts in the region.
According to the system of "Mandate" established by the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, Britain was entrusted with the administration of Palestine, with the understanding that it would act for the benefit of its Jewish and Arab populations. Little explanation is needed to conclude what should be concluded therein.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement
The Asia Minor Agreement, the official name of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, dates back to 1916.
It was the result of secret deliberations between the British civil servant Mark Sykes and the French diplomat François Georges-Picot and was made official by the Allied nations in World War I with the San Remo Conference in 1920.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement created the modern Middle East.
The San Remo Conference
The San Remo Conference was held in 1920 and its goal was to allocate the League of Nations mandate to administer three undefined Ottoman regions in the Middle East: "Palestine", "Syria" and "Mesopotamia". The conference was attended by Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow and Herbert Samuel, who presented a memorandum to the British delegation on the final settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean. British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour was summoned for consultation, and despite France's objection to incorporating the Balfour Declaration into the decisions of the conference, British pressure made France endorse it.
Here is an excerpt from the San Remo conference report:
“The Mandatory States will be responsible for carrying-out the declaration made by the British Government on November 8, 1917, adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. It is clearly understood that nothing shall be done which would prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities living in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
This mandate was then ratified on July 24, 1922 by the Council of the League of Nations - the world post-war organization and predecessor of the United Nations.
The Treaty of Sèvres
The Treaty of Sevres was concluded in 1920 between the Allies of World War I and the Ottoman Empire.
The Treaty ceded large parts of Ottoman territory to France, the United Kingdom, Greece, and Italy, and moreover set up large areas of occupation within the Ottoman Empire as well.
The King Crane Commission
The Commission was appointed at the request of US President Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to determine the attitudes of the populations of Syria and Palestine towards a post-World War I settlement on their lands.
The Commission toured Syria and Palestine between June 10 to July 21 1919, soliciting petitions from the local population, and found that the vast majority of Arabs favored an independent Syria, free of any French mandate, and rejected the idea of establishing a national home for the Jews in Palestine.
Of the 1,875 petitions received, 72% were hostile to the Zionist plan for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Such findings, along with existing Zionist talk of Arab dispossession of their properties, prompted the committee to advise a serious modification of the Zionist immigration program in Palestine.
Division, allotment and skinning
Since the fall of the sick Levant and the placement of the Western hand on the countries constituting it, the pens of the Western delegates have been dividing and flaying the country simply as if they were children playing with absurd drawings on paper. The divisional experiments resulted with the following:
A - The mandate area was divided into six states.
1- Damascus (1920)
2- Aleppo (1920)
3- Alawites (1920)
4- Jabal al-Druze (1921)
5- Independent Sanjak of Iskenderun (1921, now called Hatay)
6- Greater Lebanon (1920), which later became modern Lebanon
B- The Sanjaks of Alexandretta and Antioch were prepared to separate them from the motherland:
These include Antioch and all the cities from which the apostles spread to the rest of the world, such as Mersin, Adana, Tarsus. Antioch was granted autonomy in preparation for its separation from Syria and handing it over to Turkey during the era of French President Leon Blum, whose name was immortalized by the Zionists as it came to designate a settlement on the land of Palestine.
C- The various treaties segmented many of the five Christian regions, namely:
1- Cilicia
2- Alexandretta - Iskandaroun
3- Aintab plateau
4- Upper Euphrates Island
5- Hakkari area
These are all regions and cities that had witnessed for centuries the growth of Christianity and the prosperity that accompanied such growth in the fields of science, culture and the arts.
Thus, the Antiochene Levant entered the new age divided, scattered, and plundered, losing its potentials and wealth, and losing the two symbolic poles of Christianity, Antioch and Jerusalem.
We will not enter into a narrative and analysis of the eras that followed the decolonization of our region, the political, military and economic fluctuations it experienced, and the importance of the fall of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into the hands of the artificially grafted Zionist entity on the land of Palestine.
We will ponder in what follows on the sequence of wars in the region: First, the devastation and loss of Palestine- and we all know the extent of the scientific and economic prosperity that they had enjoyed. Secondly, the Lebanon war, which was a result, even partially, of the devastation of Palestine. Lebanon lost its basic components and is still floundering in the consequences of the war that lasted for a decade and a half. Then the war on Iraq, which dared to gain the technological ability and reverse the brain drain, so it deserved destruction based on a Zionist lie and the complicity of an American president and his conjoint foreign minister, both of whom did not know the meaning of the term shame. This resulted in the tragedy of millions of people dead, wounded and disabled in Iraq and ended with the word "sorry" so that no one was held accountable or punished. As for the latest chapters of the region’s tragedies, it originated in the form of a world war waged against Syria-Cham, in which fighters from eighty nationalities participated, destroying the most healthy and balanced Arab economy and dispersing an entire population into homelessness and poverty.
I mention all of this without any reference to political positions, positive or negative, from any of the Arab countries' regimes or its political leaderships. We only look at homeless families, their destroyed homes, hungry children, and humiliated groups, and we are not concerned with anything outside the purely human realm.
It is the moving carnage that affects the most important region in the world from a spiritual, cultural and historical point of view, and its weakest link is the Christians, who are decreasing in number and who are gradually losing their political, economic and other ranks with the escalation of their tendency towards fragmentation and emigration. But it is worth noting that this migratory trend has become generalized, and is no longer confined to Christians, as it includes all the scientific and economic elites in the region due to the plights of instability in all of life’s dimensions that they have been experiencing for decades.
Today this region suffers from problems of all kinds:
- Demographics: the exodus of young people, especially those of them who are skilled in one field or another
- Asylum: the plight of refugees as well as homelessness in numbers that exceed the one witnessed in any other region in the world
- Environmental: the decline of agriculture, the loss of water and the gradual desertification that affects it as it is besieged by dams
- Political: the inability of these societies to produce adequate political systems that express the interests of society and the aspirations of future generations
- Social underdevelopment: stagnation in the social, political and economic structures, and the domination of all forms of feudalism and monopoly
- Poverty: the degree of misery and the inability to create a developed economic system that secures an increase in the standard of living and curbs rising unemployment, in addition to a deep imbalance in the income distribution system
- Insecurity: as the result of the inability to allow peaceful political transitions, in addition to social violence resulting from unemployment, poverty, and the failure to implement laws
- The escalation of religious, racial, ethnic and other fundamentalisms, and what these entail in demeaning the other by various means
Which is the way for us out of all this?
I will not repeat with Imru’ al-Qays: Standing weeping about the memory of a lover at the valley ... we might say "between Jerusalem and Antioch."
We are not ruined vestiges so as to becry our status or for those who envy us to pity us
We are life and life does not accept emptiness, nor does it live in isolation.
Our people have the vitality, creativity and courage that qualifies them to get out of their predicaments in record time if they come together and know the meaning of integrity of spirit and unity of direction. Raising awareness and cultural action are the main ways for us to adopt, without forgetting the importance of the human life dimension. In this context, I am certain that all what is being produced in terms of thought and culture must bear fruit at some forthcoming time, even if it takes a while for that.
We are one of the organizations operating on the ground in several countries of the Antiochene Levant, and we are, with all our knowledge, determination and resources, serving this people who is subject to permanent oblivion moving from one region to another. Of course, we occupy a privileged position because we represent the churches of the region, but what other organizations are doing is not to be ignored, and we consider that all these intellectual, cultural and financial resources that flow into the service of people will be a tool for a momentum of change that is slowly taking place, due to the very nature of social structures.
Among the programs of our organization, one of the most important goals is to preserve and strengthen the Christian presence in the Middle East- in the Antiochian Levant- mostly avoided to be designated as such by many. This goal has never been one that leads to division, sedition and discrimination. The history of the Middle East Council of Churches bears witness to this trend.
What we propose or implement in terms of plans, programs and projects target all the people of the wounded Levant. We have been in Palestine since the Nakba, in Lebanon since the lines of demarcation were drawn, in Iraq since the killers of the end of the century betrayed it, and in Syria since its cities were destroyed.
If we had launched relief, reconstruction and awareness raising projects, they targeted every deserving person, and if we are preparing today to launch the Human Dignity Project - exploration and restoration, it involves every human being who lives on this part of the earth where dignity has been trampled and man has been treated in a way that is not accepted by the One who created him in his image and likeness.
In everything we do, we aim for building the Soul and the Stone in a harmonious material-spiritual approach that considers all the components of the human being.
We work in relief, health care, education, vocational rehabilitation, institutional rehabilitation, rural development, women's empowerment, youth rehabilitation and refugee relief, and especially in building social capital as well as rehabilitating the value system that was disintegrated by wars and uprooting. We also work in thought and media, we communicate our beliefs and our values to all parts of the world, we defend our issues, highlight justice and correct the crooked local and Western thought by misleading and biased media that distort the facts and deny right- holders their rights.
In our work, we tell people that your identity is one created by God, which is the identity of humankind, and that the racial, ethnic or sectarian discrimination that turned your Antiochene Levant into racist islands each of which is seeking help abroad is not authentic in the history of your civilization, but rather alien to it.
Our drawn way out is for each of us to shout out loud :enough with hypocrisy, double standards, and manipulation of people's interests and feelings!
The way out for us is to cry out to people: Get to know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free!