This document discusses the debate around whether it is better for Lebanese society to forget or remember the traumatic memories of the country's 1975-1990 civil war. Some argue that forgetting the past allows society to move on and live in the present, while others warn that without remembering the lessons of violent sectarian conflict, Lebanon risks repeating the cycle of civil war. The document notes that younger generations in Lebanon have little memory of the war due to the lack of efforts to preserve memories and lessons through memorials or education. This concerns some who fear Lebanon may be poised to return to civil war without these safeguards against repeating the past.

1.
Ideas
The plus and minus of a short memory: Forgetting the pain vs.
remembering the cost;; Is it better to forget the pain of war, or
does that doom us to repeat history?
Andrew Mills
Special to the Star
1187 words
25 June 2006
The Toronto Star
ONT
D03
English
Copyright (c) 2006 The Toronto Star
BEIRUT – On June 10, the sound of gunshots echoed through the no
man's land that divided East and West Beirut during Lebanon's long
and bloody civil war.
But it was not the telltale sound of the snipers, militiamen or assassins
who once ruled this part of town. Nobody took cover. This was not civil
war redux.
The sound was coming from the 50 Cent concert down the street.
In a tent around the corner from the former Green Line, 10,000
Beirutis -­ most of whom were too young to have any memory of what
that Green Line used to mean -­ were snapping photos with their
camera phones and cheering wildly as the hip-­hop superstar opened
his first concert here in a hail of recorded gunfire.
The fans come from a generation that has grown up in the aftermath
of Lebanon's 1975-­1990 civil war, a time when the traumatic
memories of that experience have largely been allowed to slip away.
Except for the occasional bombed-­out ruin, there are few reminders
that, not very long ago, this country was the site of some of the worst

2. violence the modern world has seen. There are no state-­sanctioned
memorials or days of remembrance. Lebanon's national museum,
which sits on the former Green Line, barely mentions the war.
In high school history class, the civil war is not taught -­ the curriculum
ends in the mid-­1960s.
"Sometimes, what's not nice to remember is not worth remembering,"
says Kamal Salibi, a renowned Lebanese historian.
But that impulse has some here afraid that the same teens who
welcomed America's favourite gangsta rapper as the biggest act of the
summer haven't learned from Lebanon's violent past.
The very real fear is that they are poised to fall into the same cycle of
violent civil war their parents' generation did.
Now, we shouldn't read too much into the long-­term effects of 50
Cent's stop in Beirut. A night of glorifying violent crime certainly won't
set off another Lebanese civil war.
"People went there, they jumped around, and the next day all they'll
remember is the drugs they did and whom they kissed," says Charles
Harb, a social psychologist at the American University of Beirut.
"That's it."
What's interesting is the way young people in Beirut felt honoured that
such a successful hip-­hop artist would include a stop here on his world
tour.
It was sign, they said, that Beirut has recovered from the war years.
"It's a good thing," said Christy Sakr, 18, while she waited outside 50
Cent's hotel for an autograph. "It makes Lebanon look safe and gives
the world a better impression of this country."
Apparently, I was the only one in town who found it strange, if not

3. perverse, that the way to mark recovery from a civil war is to welcome
an artist whose latest album is called The Massacre and features
sustained bursts of gunfire accompanied by bloodcurdling screams.
An estimated 150,000 people were killed in the 15 years of the civil
war. Some died in the crossfire, others were executed. Some 17,000
people are still missing. There were multiple massacres.
Doesn't the visit of an artist like 50 Cent make a mockery of those
deaths?
No, said 18-­year-­old Wadih Abikhalil, another autograph seeker.
There is no comparison between Lebanon and 50 Cent's message, he
said.
"Here, it's politics and religion. There, it's a drug war. It's two different
things, a totally different point of view."
But Abikhalil was three when the war came to an end. Like most
Lebanese teenagers, he has no personal memory of it and only
vaguely understands what unfolded.
That's because many Lebanese picked up the pieces after the war by
attempting to erase as many of their horrible memories as possible.
They tried to forget, and then moved on.
"It's not that we say, 'I'm not going to remember,'" says Salibi, the
historian. "But I'm philosophizing and saying that perhaps when you
remember too much then you forget about living."
Salibi only rarely dredges up his own frightening past. "In our village,
365 people, the number of days in an ordinary year, all of whom I
know, were killed. In cold blood," he says without flinching.
"Of the deaths, I have some live reports from the survivors, of the
deaths of others I don't. Among my relatives that were killed was a
first cousin.

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"Now, if I have to keep on remembering this, it won't do anybody much
good. I'd feel silly," he says. "They're all lost. They're gone."
As Salibi's logic goes, there's not much point in remembering things if
nothing but more grief will come of it.
And because of a general pardon issued at the end of the war, there
will never be an opportunity to prosecute any of Lebanon's killers.
They all walk free.
"We let bygones be bygones," Salibi says. "That's the way it always is
in Lebanon."
This voluntary amnesia makes novelist Elias Khoury afraid that
Lebanon's postwar generation will never learn the lessons of the
bloody past.
"The teaching of peace is memory," says Khoury, who, with several
other novelists and artists, has been fighting a losing battle to
preserve those memories. "Without memory, you cannot make a
tradition of peace. Here is the problem in this country."
Just look at the pattern, he says. Over the last 150 years, Lebanon
has experienced three major sectarian-­based civil wars, in 1860, 1958
and 1975-­1990. Each resulted in a lot of bloodshed and, ultimately,
stalemate. And each war was forgotten as quickly as possible.
"But the lesson of any civil war in a country like ours is that everybody
will lose," Khoury says.
If the memories of that war aren't preserved, he says, nobody will ever
learn this hard lesson, and the pattern of civil war in Lebanon will
repeat itself forever.
Khoury calls it a "perpetual cycle of wars."

5. It appears that the cycle has already started again.
Since last year's assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri,
relations between Lebanon's myriad sectarian groups have been
steadily growing worse.
Inter-­communal relations in Lebanon haven't been this tense since
1975, and many are beginning to fear it's only a matter of time before
the country finds itself in the midst of another civil war.
When there is no memory of the past, Khoury says, it is inevitable that
the present will become the past.
"This," he says, "is what makes me very afraid."
Andrew Mills is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Beirut.