by Adel Beshara
Fayez addressed the first constituent in a lecture delivered at the Catholic Club in Haifa under the rubric “A Nation Crying for Help”. He addressed the second constituent in a lecture at the Nahda Club in Nazareth.11 Next, Fayez published 44 consecutive articles in the Party’s newspaper, Sada an-Nahda, in which he explored and analyzed the practical plans needed to accommodate the regulatory requirements of reform. Almost simultaneously, he published a five-part series on the implementation aspect of reform in the Party’s internal cultural bulletin.
A fair share of Fayez’s public engagements on behalf of the Party was also taken up by the reform issue. In 1945, he delivered two major speeches on reform: one in the Lebanese town of al-Mtayn and the other in Baaklin. He gave at least three equally reform emphasizing speeches in 1946. The pace and tone of his writings on reform increased towards the end of 1946 in anticipation of parliamentary elections in Lebanon. No less than thirty-three short articles on the role of “political parties in national reform” flowed from his pen during this period. In all cases, Fayez used his insights and analytical skills to improvise and develop the reform vision proposed by Sa’adeh. He did not attempt to introduce a different vision or develop a new conceptual framework for the analysis of reform. Like others in the Party, he considered Sa’adeh’s perspective correct and beyond challenge. Thus, feeding directly from Sa’adeh, Fayez began by reaffirming the Party’s view that reform was not only healthy but also necessary:
Regardless how difficult it may be, reform is a human necessity. It is a requirement of refined human life in all its stages. It is the rescuer of human life from its natural disposition to lapse into decadence … Reform is indispensable as long as man is incomplete, and since man will forever remain incomplete, there will always be a need for reform.12
No doubt, the improved understanding of reform was vital for its effective implementation and sustainability. Fayez focused his mind on the issue of reform not only to draw attention to some of its salient features, but also to suggest and facilitate further investigation into it. After a careful examination, he concluded (1) reform, like any other human manifestation, is governed by laws that cannot be wished away or abrogated at will; (2) the management of reform in a divided and crisis-ridden society like Syria’s cannot be left to politicians who thrive on the decadence of the status quo or whose actions are dictated by expediency and self-interest; and (3) as a tapestry of profound responsibilities and duties, reform should be entrusted to visionary reformers acknowledged for their devotional integrity and high ethical and moral standards.
When read against the initial themes developed by Sa’adeh, it becomes evident that Fayez, in addition to willfully framing his analysis with Sa’adeh’s vision in mind, was maneuvering to promote Sa’adeh as the ideal reformer for the nation. He could easily be mistaken for talking about himself, but the myriad of praises and admiration he heaped upon Sa’adeh in his speeches and writings indicates otherwise.
The second major theme in Fayez’s political writings during that period was the threat of Communism. Nationalists and Communists were bitter rivals. Therefore, it was only natural for the “nationalist” Fayez to take a stand against Communism. He literally tore into local Communists, accusing them of incompetence and a lack of loyalty and slating their radical views as a pernicious creed that created more division than it pretended to solve. While recognizing the existence of class struggle, Fayez developed a very low opinion of Communism. He dismissed Marxist dialectical materialism as pseudo-science and accused local Communists of accentuating class division by attempting to superimpose the interests of the working class on the rest of society. He argued that this was both inimical to social unity and deceiving, because it merely reshuffled the hierarchy of class struggle instead of eliminating class struggle altogether.
Playing on popular sentiments, Fayez went on to describe Communism as a godless creed. He cast the theory and practice of Communism as not only opposed to all religions, but as expressing only hatred toward faith as taught by all religions. The question of the incompatibility of communism and religion is neither new nor uncommon. However, Fayez went beyond the sentimental approach of presenting the issue in purely rhetorical terms. He applied himself to the Marxist system and invoked vivid examples of religious persecution under Communism. He also drew on contemporary Communist literature to prove that Communism is antireligious and utilized direct quotes from Marx and Lenin.13 At one point, he published a series of front-page captions on the difference between the Communist creed and the Nationalist creed on various issues. The Communists were far from impressed.
However, nothing appalled Fayez more than the spectacle of seeing Communists blindly and with a total disregard to the national interest following Moscow’s instructions. The local Communists received a heavy dose of criticism over this. They were depicted as godless puppets under Moscow and traitors of the national cause in the name of class solidarity and higher interests of the Soviet Union. Fayez did not have much trouble articulating this depiction. Soviet tacit endorsement of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine and the local Communists’ own sympathetic response to it, which saw them extend a fraternal hand to Jewish workers while Palestinian workers and peasants were being dispossessed of their rights and land, gave him enough ammunition to build a strong case and mount a tenacious campaign against local Communists.
Fayez attacked the Communists with every means at his disposal, but he was most scathing in his public speeches and appearances. His ability to express his views with clarity and force and to present them in a scholarly fashion was so deeply disturbing that the Communists tried to kill him:
While Fayez was studying for his master’s and doing a lot of work for the PPS [the French acronym for Parti Populaire Syrien, or SSNP], there was an attack on him that could have been fatal. He criticized the Arab Communists a great deal because of their position on Palestine. He was riding on a motorbike behind a friend of his who also had some high responsibility in the PPS. They were going to this person’s home. On the road to Jal al-Deeb and Antalias, they were ambushed by three or four men with sticks. The men hit the rider on the motorcycle, the motorcycle spun around, and Fayez fell off. They concentrated on beating Fayez until he was unconscious. The young man who was with Fayez was wounded too, but the blows that Fayez got were mostly to his head. In fact, they thought that he was dead, and that is why they left him. We found out about this later because there was some jubilation in their circle over his death. But the other young man, the owner of the motorcycle, managed to get a lift, reach Jal-al-Deeb, and get the word out so that people could go and help Fayez. A couple who were very loyal PPS members – I think his name was Khalil Abu Jawdeh and his wife Linda – rushed in a car to pick Fayez up. When he woke up, he was in their home and he did not know what had happened to him, because he was still concussed. He refused to go to hospital because he was hiding from the authorities. He stayed there for two or three weeks until he recovered.14
The near fatal beating did not dissuade Fayez from attacking the local Communists and developing and defending the national idea of the SSNP. In April 1946, he gave a critical lecture on Communism at the American University of Beirut. The lecture precipitated a call for a live debate between Fayez and a Communist ideologue. A week later (on April 18, 1946), Fayez responded affirmatively to the call in writing in Sada an-Nahda on the condition that a transcript of the debate would be made public. The Communists did not respond, but a rumor spread that they accepted the challenge and offered to meet Fayez halfway. Fayez dismissed the rumor as baseless and the matter petered off after the Communists were unable to produce a copy of the letter of response.
The third and perhaps most important theme for Fayez was the question of Palestine. No other issue dominated his life and writings as much as this issue both during and after his involvement with the SSNP. One thing is certain, though. The seeds of his voluminous writings on the Palestine question, which contained some of the mo
st profound reflections of our time on the nature of Zionism, were planted largely while he was active in the SSNP between 1938 and 1947. Moreover, they were planted by and cared for by the perception established by Antun Sa’adeh. This does not take away from the importance of Fayez’s contribution and intellectual legacy: it merely puts them in the right perspective.
Sa’adeh developed an undisguised contempt and loathing for Zionism at an early age. In 1924, he wrote: “Despite that the Zionist movement is not rotating around a natural axis, yet, this movement has been able to make significant progress. If no other systematic movement is organized to counter it, it will eventually succeed”.15 By the early 1930s, Sa’adeh’s attitude toward Zionism had changed from opposition to outright rejection. The entire Jewish and Judaist legacy came under scrutiny and was juxtaposed with Zionism as a common enemy. Sa’adeh was totally convinced that Zionism was a colonial settler ideology representing a danger of epic proportions not only for Palestine but for geographic Syria as well. He thought that this perception should be enshrined in the aim and program of his political party:
The principle [of Syrian nationhood] cannot be said to imply that Jews are a part of the Syrian nation and equal in rights and duties to the Syrians. Such an interpretation is incompatible with this principle that excludes the integration of elements with alien and exclusive racial loyalties in the Syrian nation. Such elements cannot fit into any homogeneous nation. For large settlements of immigrants in Syria, such as the Armenians, Kurds, and Circassians, assimilation is possible given sufficient time. These elements may dissolve in the nation and lose their special loyalties. Nevertheless, one large settlement cannot be reconciled, in any respect, to the principle of Syrian nationalism: the Jewish settlement. It is a dangerous settlement that can never be assimilated because it consists of a people that has remained a heterogeneous mixture, although it has mixed with many other peoples, instead of a nation with strange stagnant beliefs and aims of its own, which are essentially incompatible with Syrian rights and sovereignty ideals. It is the duty of the Syrian Social Nationalists to repulse the immigration of this people with all their might.16
Fayez was indoctrinated into this belief system at a very young age. He accepted its assessment and conclusions without question and went on to dissect and analyze the Zionist movement according to its reference system. His conclusions, which he never ceased to develop and revise, were repeatedly published in the Party’s newspaper and used by critics of Zionism everywhere. A sense of his mindset can be obtained from the memorandum he wrote and presented to the Anglo-American Inquiry in 1946 on behalf of the SSNP:
The traditional conception of the Palestine Problem as a dilemma with which the Promising Authorities are confronted, due to their simultaneous declaration of contradictory and irreconcilable promises, must be exchanged for the alternative view of the Problem as an injustice which the Palestinians have been made to suffer through the introduction, into their country, of an alien people ambitious enough to look upon this country as their own and to seek to transform it into a national home wherein they will be not only the numerical majority, but the ruling power of the state as well! For, indeed, this is the problem, and it has to be viewed from this angle.17
Fayez utilized every opportunity to disparage Zionism. His blazing speech to the Christian-Islamic Conference in 1946 at Aley is a case in point. With sheer fury and force, he tore into Zionism and Judaism by describing them as a “danger to civilization and spirit”. “Let it be understood”, he told the participants, “Zionism is not a national movement in the contemporary sense but a pseudo-religious ideology that derives its principles fundamentally from ‘Jewish mentality, Jewish history, and material culture’”. He went on to characterize the Jewish worldview as a legacy of humiliation, retribution, and cultural fossilization of the most primitive kind. It is unclear why Fayez brought up this matter at the Conference. One can only assume that he did it to thwart any attempt to use the conference to build bridges with Judaism while Jewish immigration and land confiscation were expanding in Palestine.
Fayez’s early writings on Zionism also included detailed analyses of the Balfour Declaration and he was ruthlessly uncompromising in his judgment. With analytical precision and attention to historical detail, he tore into the Declaration, labeling it as a blot on human history and a statement of injustice bordering on the denial of fundamental rights. He dismissed the Balfour Declaration as invalid, citing its contradiction with the very elemental rights of national existence and sovereignty: “Our rejection of the Balfour Declaration arises from this starting-point: the trespassing against the national rights of the Palestinian people. What we reject is precisely the arbitrary treatment of Palestine, and the determination of its destiny by powers not authorized to interfere in the fate of that country”.18 However, he did find one good thing about the Declaration: it inadvertently exposed the Zionists for what they really were – not the peace-loving and charitable group they had been made out to be, but a “gang of bloodthirsty, trigger-happy warmongers intent on a destructive course that may be irreversible”. 19
PHILOSOPHICAL THEMES
Toward the end of 1945, a complex and contentious theme began to crop up in Sayegh’s writings. Without declaring it to the Party, Sayegh began to promote a philosophical perspective centred on Berdyaev’s existential concept of ‘personalism’. In the process, nationalist values, such as power, loyalty, order, sovereignty, statehood, etc. were ‘dressed-up’ or ‘toned-down’ to accommodate this new concept. Without tampering with the Party’s Aim and Program, Sayegh sought to inject a refreshing element into the Party’s national political discourse consistent with the new moral order created by World War II.
This shift toward moral philosophy occurred soon after Sayegh completed his Master’s thesis: “Personal Existence: Its Contents; Its Tragedy; Its Paradox”. Drawing largely on Berdyaev’s personalism, the thesis firmly stood for a conception of ‘personal existence’ as the highest perfection before which all social and political barriers must tumble and fall. The term ‘personal existence’ is used in a very strict sense to denote an inward self-realization of the individual personality as opposed to the general terms ‘individual’ and ‘individuality’:
To exist as an individual is the minimum of human existence; it is the condition for attaining the maximum, for achieving the fullness of being which is personality... Individuality is separateness, singularity. Personality is the fullness, the plenitude of achievement of the individual.20
According to Sayegh, true human existence is contingent on true personal existence, which in turn is contingent on the growth of the human personality. The latter is unconcerned with the “outward” or the “external” and resides in the inward recesses of the soul. It is the response of the self to, and its participation in, truth and beauty with a pure will and pure intentions. By locating the secret of true existence in personal existence, Sayegh basically elevated the ‘person’ to the highest order in life: “Man is truly only insofar as he is ‘person’”. 21
The social and political implications of such a conception cannot be underestimated. On the one hand, it subordinates individual and social existence to personal existence and elevates the ‘personality’ to a supreme level. Accordingly, both the individual and the society must always be ready to serve the demands of the human personality, willingly or unwillingly. Conversely, the conception exalts the personality and renders it an end itself over and above the social personality. It is independent of the social personality and takes precedence over the needs and desires of society. Social personality, as much as it is a fundamental objective of national politics, is rendered in Sayegh’s visualization as inconsequential and, in fact, as a potential impediment to the true nature of the individual personality.
Sayegh then lifted these theoretical themes from his thesis and superimposed them on the Party. The topics he took up after 1945 and the framework of his interpretations and emphases clearly attest to a
dramatic turn in his writing style. The Party’s precepts continued to attract his attention, but they were increasingly remoulded to assimilate existentialist notions. This is clearly reflected in the tone of his speeches and lectures, which intermittently included reference to the existentialist concepts used in his thesis:
Accordingly, the Nationalist Party has deemed that individual personal reform, which lies in the depths of every citizen, is the one and only course to meaningful reform!22
Two major studies from that period found among Sayegh’s private papers are also indicative of this transformation. The first is an undated and untitled study on the conflicting tendencies that emerged after World War II and presently confronted the “national revival”. An existentialist tone is interwoven throughout its complex and sometimes tediously extended philosophical discussions:
The two tendencies are not mere philosophical notions or purely artistic or scientific outlooks. Rather, they are ontological attitudes that man holds up toward himself. Thus, he sees himself, appreciates his values and activity, and interprets society and civilization. Accordingly, he determines the type of society to live in, the form of its institutions, and its principle orientation. Hence, the two tendencies represent man’s attitude towards his entity as a human being. In light of them, he decides all the efforts and deeds that emanate from his human entity. The soul of each person is, thus, the place where these two tendencies contend and compete, and the identity of man is their subject matter.23
The essay is permeated by references to the ‘human being’ and the ‘human soul’. In contrast to the early SSNP writings, it contains little if any reference to nationalist symbols even though the “national revival” was clearly on Sayegh’s mind: “Our nation, standing as it is at a crossroad today, finds in our national revival a decisive decision that we will be a human society, that we will have human spiritual courage, and that from the heart of this nation, real humans will emerge instead of deformed creatures who have decided to eliminate their own humanity”.24 Sayegh can be clearly seen to be trying to free himself from the shackles of nationalist rhetoric by swinging the pendulum of commentary and critique in the direction of the ‘human person’. The social or individual or national unit as nucleus of national politics gradually receded into the background.
