I am by no means disrespectful to the majority of Syrians when I say that “elitism” is good, yet my argument simply implies that those who are not qualified should not rule, neither in Syria nor elsewhere. In general, those who ruled Syria in the 1950s were qualified. And likewise, in general, those who ruled […]
In 1982 while Yasser Arafat was making his painful exodus from Beirut someone walked up to him and asked, “Abu Ammar, where are you going?” Confidently, the PLO Chairman replied, “To Palestine! I am going to Palestine.” Today, in 2002, Arafat has been asked by visitors at his Ramallah place of detention, “Abu Ammar, where […]
Amin Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon on Sept. 23, 1982, thus coming to power in the midst of the Israeli siege of Beirut and the height of Lebanon’s bloody civil war. A Maronite notable from the village of Bikfayya, Gemayel was born in 1942 and earned a law degree from St. Joseph University in […]
Walking through the crowded Shaalan market in downtown Damascus, one sees numerous CD stores, selling DVDs, movies, and playing music by modern artists like Bon Jovi and Sting. A modern sight for an old-fashioned market, one wonders, then sees a small, worn-out wooden shop at the edge of a dark alley. Only those intending to […]
Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim recalls visiting Pope John Paul II at the Vatican a few years ago. At the time the pope said: “Today the first in the Second Church welcomes the first in the First Church.” It was in Antioch, Hazim says, “that believers were first called Christians, and it was in Antioch that […]