Gaza--Beirut--Tel Aviv: In Praise of Opportunism by Bilal Khbeiz

8/7/2019 Gaza--Beirut--Tel Aviv: In Praise of Opportunism by Bilal Khbeiz

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Bilal Khbeiz

GazaÐBeirutÐTelAviv: In Praiseof SelfishnessandOpportunism

In 2006, the Lebanese novelist Hassan Daoudreflected on how some friends, visiting Lebanonin the aftermath of the July war, insisted oninspecting the destruction in BeirutÕs southernsuburb.1 He declared that he was not capable ofaccompanying them on these visits Ð he hadexperienced the destruction firsthand and sawno need to inspect the damage himself. Suchinspection would only complicate an already

troubled existence.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn all probability, Daoud was not expressingsentiments unique to him. During those darkdays in Beirut, it appeared that comprehendingthe meaning of the war and coming to terms withits material and cultural consequences renderedthe act of inspecting the destruction unbearable.Such inspection would only serve to document acatastrophe that one had already lived throughand experienced fully.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTo me, this suggests a disparity between theconcerns of those of us who live in our part of the

world and those of others enthusiastic to ourcauses. We, in Lebanon and Palestine, in Iraq andIran, shoulder the burden of dealing with theaftermath of our catastrophes. This disparity isprimarily geographic in nature and manifestsitself on two different levels.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWitnessing the full impact of the 2006 JulyWar in Beirut, or the 2008Ð2009 Israeli invasionin Gaza, is a very different sensory experience tothat of following it from afar in New York orLondon. The edited scenes that are broadcast inNew York or London are replays of the protractedevents to which war subjected Beirut and Gaza.The reverberation of shelling is evidence in itselfof death and destruction, yet the lengthy processof establishing the extent of the damage and theidentities of the victims delays the broadcast ofthat event by several hours. Because of thisinterval, the residents of BeirutÐGaza experiencethe attacks as two distinct events, one vague andobscure and the other clear and documented. Ofthe two, the obscure event is undoubtedly theone experienced more sorrowfully.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊEmerging from the terrifying experience ofthe shelling brings about the realization ofsurvival and subsequent delight in knowing thatthe bombs have chosen others and spared usand our loved ones Ð an outcome that is palpablyillustrated by the sight of the victims. The viewerin New YorkÐLondon, by contrast, is gripped by apure form of sorrow for the fallen Ð a sorrowuntarnished by any of the selfish feelings thattypically characterize survivors. This pure sorrowallows one to relate to the cause with a clearconscience, and with a courage and an honestythat those experiencing the shelling lack.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊContemplating the nature of these qualities

brings to mind Hannah ArendtÕs Eichmann inJerusalem. Arendt, herself a Jewish survivor,

e-flux journal #3 Ñ february 2009 Ê Bilal Khbeiz

GazaÐBeirutÐTel Aviv: In Praise of Selfishness and Opportunism

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identified the qualities of selfishness andopportunism that survivors display. Thesesentiments merit reconsideration, for thecourage of the survivor is more akin to surrenderthan to intrepidness. To possess courage underthese circumstances requires completedetachment from the victims. Both IsmailHaniyeh and Patrick Seale embody thisdetachment despite the differences in their

positions.2 Haniyeh remains resolute and holdssteadfast under the shelling as long as he doesnot see himself as a victim. He is firstly a fighterand a defender Ð a potential victor. He is willingto pay the costly price of such a war, unlike thevictims who never sought to die or lose theirloved ones. Patrick Seale, on the other hand, canchoose to be courageous and feel sorrow for thevictims, as he has no reason to be selfish andopportunistic like the survivors. Given this unjustchoice, I willingly opt for being opportunistic andselfish Ð these are qualities that I require far

more than courage and pure sorrow.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPure sorrow needs to be reconsidered aswell. It appears to me, perhaps at NietzscheÕssuggestion, to be a form of taking pleasure in asuperiority over those less fortunate. Thiscreates an insurmountable barrier between theafflicted and those who feel sorrow for them.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSo far, I have dealt with the first level of howthe disparity between watching war in NewYorkÐLondon and experiencing it in BeirutÐGazamanifests itself. The second level is much deeperand far more complex. Perhaps it emanates fromthe conceits of journalism, how it exercises itspowers of selection and derision. Thecatastrophe touristÕs experience of observingflattened neighborhoods is radically differentfrom that of the Beirut resident. The tourist andthe local are worlds apart. They are incapable ofrelating to each otherÕs experiences Ð unless weinvest the rubble left by the shelling, and theremains in general, with the power of bridgingthis existential gap.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe neighborhoods that have been shelledand leveled hold remnants of lives under theruins: pillows and beds, secrets and innerthoughts, books and pictures and scents. Thesurvivors have left parts of themselves under theruins and are left with the remains of invisibleand undocumented lives. Whole chapters of theirexistence are no longer available to cameras andarchives and are out of the reach of any possibleauthority, even that of inquisitive excavations.These buried episodes now elude the grasp bothof National Geographic and of artworks as well. Itis as if people have been transformed into rats,the creatures that live closest to us humans, yetthe most secretive and protective of their affairs.

Rats lead un-documented, un-observable livesand relate to human beings only through our

refuse.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe war created a subterranean world forthe residents of BeirutÐGaza that is also un-observable, and is consequently beyond thereach of conservationists and ÒLeftistsÓ who livein secure lands. It is impossible to equate thosesurveying the devastation with those who haveburied parts of their existence under thewreckage. Visitors observe general and

superficial scenes and reach conclusions blindly.Ruins encourage guesswork and speculation,and those visitors are incapable of close scrutiny.Any documentation in a situation like thisremains as cold as United Nations figures andstatistics. The inspector can only estimate thecost of reconstruction and count the number offamilies that have been displaced. At most, hecan imagine happy times that the formerresidents must have experienced, and unhappytimes that they must have been through beforethe war machine brought the houses down. In

any case, he will not go so far as to guess thatsomeone who collected souvenirs from aroundthe world had once lived in one of these flats,and that the personal museum collected from allthose cities is now irreplaceable.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊA life that resists documentation has beenburied, and what remains is the wreckage uponwhich the visitors construct their ideas and theirpositions. All that those well-intentioned visitorscan do is reward the survivors with the peacethat follows destruction as a form of consolation.In other words, they are inviting the survivors toresume their lives without their past, henceforthinscribing it on a clean sheet.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe wreckage conceals secrets that are farmore telling than what the surface manifests. Inart, the techniques that we use to decipherimages insist on the image itself as the ultimatereference Ð everything we need resides within itsframe. A crumbling house prompts us to assumethat life once ran its course between its walls,and that this life generally resembled another.The image of a nude model in a painting obligesus to contemplate the lust and desires of thereclining body but does not refer to the old ageand demise of that body. The nudes in thepaintings of Rubens, Renoir, and Goya have alldied. Their bones must have decayed by now, butthey remain there in the paintings without namesand biographies. The subject of art constantlyappears to be mortal and transient, far lessdurable than the artwork that seeks immortality.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWith time, nothing remains of the identitiesof those models except the brief moments spentposing for the painters. Art is a forcefulinterruption of a narrative that both precedesand follows the moment of depiction, and thus it

asks us to read the stories of the models at thatprecise moment. In a similar vein, the visitor



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inspecting the damage in solidarity with theafflicted, prepared to feel sorrow for them andtake a courageous position in supporting them,wishes for the survivors to commence their livesfrom the precise moment that catastrophe befellthem. That sympathizer wants to force thevictims into their grief-stricken roles in order todefend their cause at the moment of its mostblunt and cruel manifestation.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn this way, the Holocaust became theultimate courageous and sorrowful stand of theworld, after which the Jews were rewarded withthe Promised Land Ð a reward intended torepress all that preceded the Holocaust for Jewsand Europeans alike. The Holocaust ultimatelyassumes the responsibility of erasing whatpreceded it by way of persecution anddiscrimination against the Jews at the hands ofEuropeans. It represents the end of the JewsÕsorrows. Consequently, any attack on the Jews inPalestine after the Holocaust is unforgivable.

This allows the Jews themselves to persecuteand displace others on the pretext that theirholocaust has not taken place yet. The right ofthose others to also become archetypal victims,living without their pre-holocaust history, hashitherto not been granted.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe courageous and sorrowful proponentsof the International Left realize the necessity ofexposing those with whom they sympathize tominor holocausts in order to adequately defendthem. In Notre Musique , Jean-Luc Godard re-stages a real interview between the Palestinianpoet Mahmoud Darwish and an Israeli journalistin which Darwish proclaims that the Palestinianshave the fortune and the misfortune of havingIsrael as an enemy. The worldÕs attention isdrawn to the Palestinians only because of theinterest in Israel and its history. Nonetheless,Palestinians find it very hard to be recognized asvictims precisely because their struggle is withIsrael. The moral debates that ensued from theHolocaust made archetypal victims out of theJews, and enabled them to persecute theirenemies on the pretext of self-defense, not leastbecause of the unique position they were grantedin modern history (consider the irony of the mostpowerful army in the Middle East being calledthe Israeli Defense Forces).ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHowever, citing the Holocaust in thiscontext is not specifically related to what Israelchooses to name its army or the right of IsraeliJews there to defend themselves. It concernsfirst and foremost the right of the Jewish peoplenot to bear the responsibility for the atrocitiescommitted by their army on the pretext of self-defense. The same logic extends to thoseresisting Israel and its provocations: no one has

the right to hold us responsible for terrorism byclaiming that it is a form of self-defense or by

considering it a logical consequence ofglobalization (a form of fate or compulsion, asJean Baudrillard maintains).ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNowadays, resistance against imperialism,the Israeli occupation, and the Americanpresence in the region is both cumbersome andcatastrophic. We are left to suffer theconsequences of the unjustifiable murderscommitted in the name of resistance. Living in

this part of the world makes us either the objectsof suspicion or the deranged sufferers ofunbearable injustice. Our protectors abroad,then, are those who understand our problemsand diagnose our disorders, and they exercisethis guardianship by placing us in laboratoriesand asylums. The injustices that we suffer,according to those protectors, transform us fromhumans into laboratory mice, similarly to howthe transgressions of our enemies changes usfrom humans into plague-bearing rats. At anyrate, holding a Middle Eastern nationality is

sufficient to place us under the suspicion oftransmitting the modern plague.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe restrictive quarantine in which we findourselves presents us with only two options.Some declare that they have escaped theepidemic that afflicts their compatriots and goon to write and produce artworks as survivorswho witnessed the plague, but avoided it. Otherswrite and produce as convalescents, seeking thehelp of the world to cure them of their affliction.In this way, we either renounce or repent ourpestilence.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt has been observed that merely residing inBeirutÐGaza need not implicate us in its affairs.Immigration here takes many forms. There are atleast three different resident-immigrants here:the first observes a demonstration by a millionHezbollah supporters and sees an awesome andcaptivating spectacle, like a scene in a Kurosawafilm. The second is terrified by the crowd,considering it barbarian (in the Foucauldiansense of the term), and consequently seekscultural asylum in the civilized West on thepretext of not belonging to this multitude. Thethird chooses to reside here out ofadventurousness, not unlike those who live in ajungle amidst rapacious beasts. Thoseadventurers demand rewards for their excessivecourage.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThere is a fourth type, a citizen that onlyfeels at home in this city, knowing full well thatHezbollahÐHamasÕ peaceful demonstrations caneasily turn violent, sensing that there will be nocure for the plague if the sane continue tomigrate to non-afflicted lands. This citizenglimpses the future of Paris in BeirutÕs present, aprospect that persists as long as the meaning of

citizenship continues to be constructed on top ofthe wreckage that ensues from the catastrophe,



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and not from the lives that have been buriedunderneath.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe actions of the supporters of thePalestinian people, of the Third World in general,rely on this theoretical framework. During thedemonstrations against the Israeli invasion inGaza, there were many well-intentionedrepresentatives of this persuasion, some ofwhom defended at length their twisted affiliation

to the Third World and their support of its causesand struggles. This affiliation would not havemanifested itself in such a manner had there notbeen a renewed interest in the affairs of theThird World that followed a period ofabandonment. Those supporters returned to thatcause fully capable of being courageous,sorrowful, and outraged, much unlike theircounterparts who remain selfish andopportunistic.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×

Translated from the Arabic by Karl Sharro.

Bilal Khbeiz (1963, Kfarchouba) is a poet, essayist, andjournalist. He regularly contributes to the newspapersBeirut Al Masa'a and Al Nahar , and to Future TelevisionBeirut, among other publications and networks.Published poetry and books on cultural theory includeFi Annal jassad Khatia' Wa Khalas (That the Body is Sinand Deliverance), Globalisation and the Manufacture of Transient Events , The Enduring Image and theVanishing World , and Tragedy in the Moment of Vision .



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ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1Hassan Daoud is a Lebanesenovelist living and working inBeirut. He made this admissionin an international paneldiscussion organized byDocumenta 12 in Vienna onNovember 19, 2006.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2Ismail Haniyeh is the disputedPrime Minister of the PalestinianNational Authority and a seniorpolitical leader of Hamas.

Patrick Seale is a British writeron the Middle East.



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Gaza--Beirut--Tel Aviv: In Praise of Opportunism by Bilal Khbeiz

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