Levant - Blog Posts
Beirut’s stony Melkite Greek Catholic cathedral of Saint Elias.
It was initially built towards the end of the 18th century and reconstructed in 1849.
Style: Byzantine, baroque, Islamic
The only remaining Mameluke building in Beirut, Zawiyat Ibn Arraq.
Once a complete private madrasa, only the zawiya (prayer corner) remains of it.
Today, someone seemed to have made it their own prayer corner and unrolled a prayer rug inside.
Date: 1517- used till Ottoman times
Beautiful to see what we treat as “monuments” being reused as such. Do we glorify what is historical only because we know it’s historical? Do we love these stones only because we know they’re hundreds of years old? What’s so intrinsically beautiful about what’s historical?
Can we even call them monuments? Is it history? Is it present?
"By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across - each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip - is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale." - Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati
There is a massive historical discourse issue when it comes to Israel-Palestine and yeah it pisses me off, firstly as a Jew, second as someone who is pursuing a degree in Jewish history.
You can see a part of it by looking at the historical narrative presented by a very popular source, DecolonizePalestine. This source has been shared widely by celebrities, by activists. It has been quoted to me on this website. It was even in the instagram bio of one of my TA's. It is considered a helpful and trustworthy source on Israel-Palestine.
The website has a Palestine 101 section, which includes this helpful module:
okay lets take a look:
I've never heard of the Peselet tablet, so let's do a quick google.
Huh. That's weird.
There actually is a 3,000 year old Egyptian tablet (stele) that talks about the levant though.
Oh no! Anyways. Lets move on:
I'm sorry but how do you mention the Assyrians without mentioning that they destroyed the ancient Kingdom of Israel. And the Persians without mentioning that they allowed for the end of the Babylonian exile and the building of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem . And the Romans without mentioning what they named their province in the levant. Judea. This is where the name "Jew" comes from. There isn't a J in Hebrew.
wait the ottomans???? We already got to the Ottomans??? We just skipped literal centuries.
There's clearly a narrative being created here, not by the inclusion of historical facts, but rather the purposeful omission of historical facts. No serious scholar would be able to discuss the history of the levant and COMPLETELY LEAVE OUT THE JEWS.
This is the dominant historical narrative in discourse on Israel-Palestine and it is harmful. Not only because its untrue, but because it involves the destruction of Jewish history and the right of Jews to steward our own history.
Where we come from is and has always been a huge part of Jewish identity. I cannot stress this enough. It is wrong and yes, it is antisemitic to warp and erase Jewish history for your own political purposes.
and here's what gets me: it is completely unnecessary.
You can recognize all the horrors that the zionist movement and Israel has inflicted upon Palestinians without denying Jewish history. You can demand Israel take accountability and stop what it is doing without denying Jewish history. You can advocate for Palestinian freedom, statehood and self determination, without denying Jewish history.
But people don't want to *just* do that. In the minds of many, the only acceptable Free Palestine is a Palestine Free of Jews or Jewish autonomy.
And for that, fuck you. Palestinians are indigenous to the levant. They know their history and where they come from. Jews are indigenous to the levant. We know our history and where we come from.
No one is going anywhere.
Be better.
Free Palestine and Am Yisrael Chai.