Unfavorable view
Much can be said about Ben Lynfield’s “Who is Walid Phares, Trump’s Mideast adviser?” (November 16), and none of it favorable. It is mean spirited, wholly selective in “facts,” pungent with character assassination and judgmentally arrogant. It whitewashes the true culprits in the morass that afflicted Lebanon.
Three external forces were behind the collapse of Lebanon starting in the mid-1970s: a Syrian military assault, Palestinian warfare and the Iranian intervention. The Lebanese were losing their country to foreign predators, and the essential Christian component of the population, without which there was no history or future for the country, faced exile or extinction.
Walid Phares, a Lebanese Maronite academic, ideologue and activist, was one of many patriots who joined the struggle to save Lebanon and its destiny. He understood the stakes and the diabolical actors, and personally witnessed the havoc on the playing field.
The Palestinian massacres of Maronites at Damur and Ayshieh in 1976 were ignored in the West. Syrian assassinations and the political intimidation of politicians, judges, journalists and clerics from all denominations subdued and strangled the voices of many Lebanese. But others, like Abu Arz and Bashir Gemayel, chose the path of resistance.
Phares was not, as Lynfield derisively calls him, a warmonger. He was a loyal son of his people and country, writing and teaching for national freedom and human dignity. Indeed, the liberation of Lebanon from alien warmongers led him to appreciate the role Israel might play in the complex political equation.
Lynfield haughtily expects Phares to change his views, but with Donald Trump’s victory and Phares now slated for a top policy post in his administration, that will hardly be necessary or justified. MORDECHAI NISAN Jerusalem
The writer teaches Middle East studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Rothberg International School and authored two books on Lebanon: The Conscience of Lebanon: A Political Biography of Etienne Sakr (AbuArz), and War and Politics in Lebanon: Unraveling the Enigma.
Ben Lynfield responds: People should read the article and then decide who is “mean spirited, wholly selective in ‘facts,’ pungent with character assassination and judgmentally arrogant.”