A Nation Under Siege and Destruction

This intervention was delivered at the round table on the topic “From Taurus to Gaza: 110 years since the bleeding of the Levant” held at the House of Independence in Bchamoun - Mount Lebanon on 05/23/2024

The image shown below appeared as the cover page of the first edition of the report of the King-Crane Commission, which was commissioned during the year 1919 by the US President Woodward Wilson to explore the conditions of the people of the Antiochian Levant, and to find out their opinions and aspirations regarding the fate of their country. The date of the bulletin in which the report appeared bears reference to the end of the year 1922.

The picture portrays masses from one of our cities in the Antiochian Levant, begging for bread, and bears written under it the caption: “Secret Diplomacy Won. It is now collecting, and in the Near East millions are pleading for bread”.

Millions are pleading for bread?

This was in 1922, when needs were limited and demands were modest, but today millions are begging for anything!

Food, medicine, fuel, electricity, water, air, to name but a few!

But millions are also begging for much more: political and military stability, good governance, human rights, human dignity, education, care for the disabled and the elderly, and so on.

The King Crane Commission and its findings

The Commission was appointed at the request of US President Woodrow Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, to determine the positions of the residents of Syria and Palestine regarding the settlement of their lands after World War I.

While touring Syria and Palestine between June 10 and July 21, 1919, and receiving petitions from local residents, the Commission found that the vast majority of the people wanted an independent Syria, free from the French mandate. Also, out of 1,875 petitions received by the Commission, 72 % of them were hostile to the Zionist plan to establish a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine.

Such results, coupled with Zionist talk of dispossessing Arabs from their land, prompted the Commission to suggest a serious modification of the Zionist immigration program to Palestine.

The Antiochian Levant loses its north, then its south

 Between Sèvres 1920 and Lausanne 1923, the entire northern region, which had a heavy historical and current Christian presence, was lost. This region consists of the five stolen regions: Cilicia, Alexandretta, the Aintab Plateau, the Upper Euphrates Island, and Hakkari.

Robbery was accompanied by massacres in these areas, as well as by the displacement of the largest number of their residents. This reality put the Middle Eastern society - the Antiochian Levant - in danger, and since that era this society has been struggling to survive.

Camps were set up for Armenians and Assyrians first, then for several other ethnic groups in this region, a trend which continued in this manner, as the Assyrians were displaced from Iraq in 1933, after they had migrated from Hakkari with the rest of the groups at the beginning of the century, and the bleeding- conspiracy continued until it reached a disaster. South of the Levant of Antioch in 1948, referred to as the Nakba of Palestine occurred, a fact which fallacious advocates of democracy boasted in calling  the contrived independence of the Zionist entity on the land of Palestine. Then came the 1967 war, and Jerusalem was lost, and the two pillars of Eastern Christianity, Antioch and Jerusalem, became hostages.

The international conspirators did not deny the news, so they attacked Lebanon starting in the middle of the seventies, and when this front rested at the beginning of the nineties, they attacked Iraq, and after they destroyed the older and stronger brother, who dared to possess the main technological ability in the area, they retreated to the besieged Levant, destroying it and tearing it apart.

They talk to you about the conspiracy theory, considering it as a type of persecution phobia experienced by those concerned about the fate of this nation.

Mobile siege-destructive plan

During this pathway, we have become a nation of camps. Our society has become a camp society.

The first stage, at the beginning of the century, saw the setting up of camps for Armenians, Syriac-Assyrians, Anatolian Greeks, and the Pontic.

The second stage, in the middle of the century, was the seizure of Palestine and the transfer of its people to camps.

The third stage, in three-quarters of a century, struck Lebanon, the exemplar of a harbor of human interaction and freedom, transforming its people into displaced and destitute people.

The fourth stage, at the end of the century, was the siege of Iraq, its destruction, the dispersion of its people, and their transfer to camps.

The fifth stage, at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one, witnessed the attack on the Levant, tearing it apart, destroying it, and transferring its people to camps that were set up for them in Lebanon, the Levant, and Jordan.

The path is clear to those who have the capacity of its correct reading, and mysterious to those who choose the ostrich method.

A century of displacement, killing and impoverishment. It is the bleeding of the tortured Antiochian Levant. Bright Arab countries are my homelands!

The society that constituted the cradle of every civilization in the world, which was the first to build, discover, innovate and invent, has turned into a society of misery in camps.

For more than a century, this society has been exposed to two threats: siege and destruction.

All kinds of agreements that were drawn up for it led to its siege and determined the fate of this region: Sykes-Picot, San Remo, Versailles, etc. The biggest catastrophe was the Balfour Declaration.

The method of separating Palestine from its original entity, from its motherland, is the same as the method of separating Antioch and its neighboring regions from its motherland: the necessity of a passport to cross to Cilicia, then the process of separating it from the motherland is announced. The same thing happened to Palestine, and in both cases, neither the uprisings nor the revolutions nor all forms of resistance were of any benefit at the time.

All of Palestine is under siege today, subject to systematic, brutal destruction: Gaza is under siege, the cities of the West Bank are under siege by imposed settlements,

Iraq was put under siege for decades before it was destroyed and occupied... only on suspicion of having nuclear weapons... Then the besieged Foreign Minister's apology was considered the ransom he paid for millions of victims.

The Levant is under siege under similar pretexts.

Lebanon is under siege directly and through the Levant, and it is not allowed to extract gas or import electricity from its brothers and neighbors.

The scene is truly tragic!

Sieges and wars have led, directly and indirectly, to the destruction of these societies and the dismantling of their social and economic structures, their social capital and their culture. All of this resulted in:

- Social divisions and civil conflicts

- Displacement of residents

- Impoverishment: divide and rule is completed by impoverish and rule

- Society lost its entity at all levels

Levantine society is at present threatened with disintegration and is vulnerable to political murder.

Where is the Antiochian Levant heading?

Large parts of the Middle East, especially the Antiochian Levant, are heading toward a total social and cultural catastrophe. A complete collapse of values ​​and the loss of parts of culture, despite the presence of persisting islands of cultural and social resistance. 

This is an old project, baptized decades ago under the name: Milletisation of the Middle East.

Is everything that happened a mere coincidence, a mere sequence of events, or part of a well-thought-out, well-executed plan?

The Palestine War displaced millions to neighboring Arab countries, especially to Lebanon. The Palestinian element was used as a detonator to blow up Lebanon.  The end of 15 years of war in Lebanon marks the beginning of the war in Iraq, with a decade of siege leading to millions of casualties of all kinds. Once Iraq was "under control", war was launched on the Levant, the only economically sound and self-sufficient Arab state. Is it a coincidence that 80 nationalities are at present fighting in the Levant?

The fate of tis country is to resist

The people of this region have become firmly convinced of a fundamental constant in their history, which is resistance, and it takes multiple forms that show the vitality of this nation:

- Reconstruction versus destruction

- Recomposition versus decomposition

- Restructuring versus dismantling

- Restoring humanity versus dehumanization

- Reunification versus fragmentation

- Rehabilitation versus loss

The struggle continues, and society is resisting.

What does that mean?

Is history repeating itself? maybe!

But this means that we are dealing with new threats, facing a new Middle East. It could be best portrayed as a region divided religiously, ethnically, and racially...

The aim is for it to end up being constituted of islands that group “minorities” warring with one another, governed by a large minority, better equipped politically, financially, and technically, and supported by the Big Powers that implement their projects for them.

This means that our region may witness events that are not the best that any community in the world can witness.

What do we, the religious institutions, the Church in particular, do?

God does not burden any soul beyond what it can bear!

We are in the midst of the conflict, in defense of our people, with all its components. We are trying to be a role model in many dimensions of our lives in the light of the societal role that we have undertaken by virtue of our faith, and by our anti-discriminatory behavior, which encourages justice and peace, and especially human dignity, which we have set up as the focus of our activities. Through the projects we undertake, we pave the way for a new social contract between the different groups that make up our societies.

By virtue of our structure, culture, and international relations, we are institutions of early warning and advanced defense of society as a whole, against enemies and ignorant people at home and abroad, relying on our experiences in communication and advocacy.

The path is clear, and we have no choice but to continue with our tasks, on the basis of our faith, from which we derive our values, our rules of conduct, and, most importantly, our courage to continue.

Our role in the land of our ancestors, where faith was born and from where it spread to the globe, is clear and becomes clearer day after day, and our love for each other, for our land, for our history, and for our generations yet to be born, is the basis of a social bond as well as of an enduring steadfastness that will be the salvation of our society.