Remembering Samir Kassir

Last night, I met the novelist Elias Khoury in a Beirut street café to discuss his close friend and fellow writer, Samir Kassir, who was assassinated two years ago on June 2. As we sat down, police cars and ambulances were racing through the streets enroute to another bombing, evidence, as Elias remarked, that Lebanon's “change is now passing through these very tough times, as you can see.” On June 2, the Samir Kassir Foundation, headed by his widow Gisele, a prominent television journalist, jointly awarded the Samir Kassir press freedom prize to a young Moroccan journalist and a Lebanese student.

Kassir, only 45 when he died, was one of the region's foremost intellectuals, a historian as well as an active journalist. He wrote important books on the history of Beirut as well as the Lebanese civil war, but his brave commentaries in the daily An Nahar are what made him one of the most powerful voices of the 2005 “Cedar Revolution.” In common with widespread opinion among Lebanese, Khoury believes Kassir and other victims of recent assassinations were targeted for their opposition to the Syrian regime and its allies in Lebanon. Kassir was killed when a bomb exploded as he got into his sports car on a street in East Beirut; six months later his editor at An Nahar, Gebran Tueni, himself a prominent democracy advocate, was assassinated while driving to the newspaper.

Elias, one of the Arab world's most distinguished novelists, playwrights and critics, who edits An Nahar's Al-Mulhaq cultural supplement and teaches a course one semester a year at New York University, said he's been working on translations of Kassir's work, which gave him a chance to rediscover his writing.

How do you look at Samir now?

As a historian and as a thinker, there is the big loss. Of course, on a personal level, there are not words to speak about that loss. He was a friend and colleague and we worked together all the time. We were together for this change that happened in Lebanon. His presence now could be very helpful to rethink.

How do you mean?

Before he died, he wrote an interesting article in An Nahar speaking about an intifadah inside the [Lebanese] intifadah, an uprising inside the uprising. It was the first self-criticism of the March 14 uprising, in the sense that he was pushing for a more radical change in it, in order to change Lebanese political life.

What was his radical idea?

After March 14's huge demonstration, the leadership hesitated to put down the president [Emile Lahoud]. He felt something wrong, to stop a revolution in the middle. It was wrong to stop the revolt in the middle and make compromises. You finish the job and then you make compromises. At that moment, it was possible. It could have been done, with high price, but it was possible. But the price we paid afterwards was very high and it will be higher to come.

What could Samir contribute to today's debate?

He was Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese. His father was Palestinian, his mother was from Lattakia and he was born and raised in Lebanon. This is the moment when these three places are connected in a very deep way. Our Syrian friends are condemned to jail, Michel Kilo, and others, these who were in the initiative of the Damascus Spring. Palestine, in Gaza and in Nahr al-Bared, is facing its biggest danger, the first time someone dares to kidnap Palestine in the name of Islam, with this very vague relationship with the Syrian regime and al Qaeda. Lebanon is also approaching the last test, which is the presidential election, whether we have a country or not. With these three counties, Samir was very much engaged. Samir was engaged for Syrian democracy, in Palestine for a two-state solution and right of Palestinians for self-determination, and in Lebanon he was engaged in struggle for independence and democracy. In these three places we are facing very tough moments. To discuss with him would have been very helpful. We feel the gap. We feel how much we lost in his death.

On other hand, there is something which is very moving and interesting. I see this in the young generation and young students and young democrats. I see how Samir became a model in his death. I see how this model is inflaming imaginations and the idea that the intellectual must be a real intellectual, independent, following only his own personal conscience, not being related to any political power. He is part of a whole line of journalists who lost their lives. The freedom of press in Lebanon which we are still enjoying, the price of it was very high.

Do intellectuals have any impact in the Arab world?

It is fashionable now to say intellectuals have no impact. If there was no impact, why was Samir killed? I think the enemies of freedom know very well that intellectuals in the turning points in history are very important. There is no change without an intellectual revolution, a cultural change. This is why the first target for Saddam were Iraqi intellectuals. You have a huge Iraqi diaspora. Hundreds of intellectuals of all types of who left Iraq under Saddam and under this American stupid way of invading a country.

[Egyptian novelist] Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed under that. [Egyptian professor] Nasser Abu Zeid is obliged to go into exile. [Egyptian journalist] Farag Fouda was killed in Egypt. Algerian intellectuals are assassinated in the streets. In the situation of this huge turning point, the only thing that is not penetrated by Islamic fundamentalism is culture. With the ascendance of Islamism since the Afghanistan war, since the 1980's, the only place where there is still a secular place in all the levels is intellectual life. You tell me there are Islamic intellectuals. Yes, but they did not penetrate any fields of culture. They don't have Islamist novels, poetry. They cannot. This is one of the reasons they want to destroy culture. On other hand, you find that the whole Palestinian project, a national awakening, really began with intellectual work, with writers and intellectuals, before it became a revolution.

Why do you think Samir was killed?

You have to ask the killers. He has a long story with the Lebanese security. They used to watch him and follow him. In a café like this, they'd be outside, you could see them waiting. They tried to terrorize him for a very long time. When the decision was taken that killings can begin, he was seen as a target and very easy. Nobody guards him. Like I'm sitting here, they can come and kill both of us. The important thing about his articles is that he named them. They were very angry with him. Someone so daring on one hand, but an easy target on the other hand. I want the truth, but I know it.

--By Scott MacLeod/Beirut