In this corner last week, the author of these lines wrote about another Syria that we love. Some readers who commented on this sketch were appalled to see the words “Syria” and “love” appear in one expression. However, this attitude is neither judicious nor noble.

Such feelings spring from the great contradiction between the pluralist and civil Lebanese structure and the unilateral, militaristic and nationalist Syrian structure. They also flow from the long suffering of the Lebanese at the hand of the Baathist regime. Perhaps one understands their source. However, explanation is one thing, and justification is another.

The Lebanese and Syrian peoples share in one pain inflicted by a single side. If the suffering of the Lebanese from this side dates back to 1976, in the Syrian case it dates back to 1963.

Looking back, it is clear that every oppression inflicted by Syrian governance of Lebanon was matched by a thousand oppressions inflicted by the same regime in Syria. The Lebanese experienced Syrian intervention in their affairs in 1958, but the Syrian people were subject to the security dominion of Abdel Hamid as-Sarraj. While Hosni az-Zaim intervened in 1949 to support the Syrian nationalists and their attempted coup in Lebanon, the Syrians suffered the establishment of a military coup overhead as the organizing model for their lives.

If it is true that Lebanon is not stable in the shadow of dictatorial regime in Syria, it is also true that Lebanon cannot live without a stable relationship with Syria. One need only look to Lebanon’s borders to be sure of Syria’s ability (as its consecutive dictatorial regimes proved in practice) to choke Lebanon economically.

Perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that a qualitative shift must be created in Syrian political culture, beyond mere regime change. This shift must include deep change in the concept of nationalism and citizenship: Syria is a nation, not a “region,” and it is itself the nation and the community. The alleged “Arab nation” is not the nation. Likewise, Syria’s role in the Palestinian issue is to support the Palestinians. Syria’s role is not that the Palestinians support it in expansionist aspirations that some call unifying and for which Lebanon usually pays the heaviest price.

However, there is a need for a parallel qualitative shift in Lebanese political culture to the same extent. This means a departure from the narrow parochial consciousness that permits empty condescension and (more dangerously) racist behavior toward Syrian migrant workers thrown abroad by the Baathist regime.
 
There is no harm in a reminder that many of Lebanon’s zaims – among March 8 and 14 equally – excelled in praising the Syrian ruler to the point of deification during the era of Syrian tutelage, while simultaneously excelling in hating and despising the Syrian worker to the point of demonization. This is not the custom of free masters, as if we could say that they were not slaves. The free man sympathizes with his partner in pain rather than washing the thresholds of those causing it. Some of these leaders went so far with this Nietzschean distortion that they regarded the “genius” Syrian President Hafez al-Assad as too good for Syria’s people. In their opinion, the Syrians deserved a president like our “non-genius” presidents. We, the Lebanese, were of course great geniuses, and nothing suited us except a great president who lived in Damascus and shared this genius with us.

This substitution is a slave’s longing. In order to be free, we must wish for freedom for Syria – and for every people and country in the world – just as we wish it for ourselves.