Letter to William Marling: about Lebanon

An AUB graduate student, Nate George, sent a letter to William Marling regarding his article in the Wall Street Journal. (I cite with Nate's permission): "Your article "Why Jane Fonda Is Banned in Beirut: Anti-Semitism leads to startling censorship in Lebanon" is one of the most startlingly awful things I have read. It is amazing that you could come to this country and write this after being here for eight months: obviously, you have not learned a single thing here about the peoples, cultures, histories, politics, and governments of not only Lebanon, but of the region as a whole. The idea that now you are considered to have the "authority" to publish articles, to an international audience in The Wall Street Journal, on Middle East affairs because of your ill-informed tenure here is thoroughly disturbing. The late Edward Said must be turning in his grave knowing that such an antithetical person to his lifelong positions is the inaugural "Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies."

Your cowardice is apparent in that you have chosen your last month here to indulge in your sense of "moral outrage" at the anti-Semitic censorship in this country. I do wholeheartedly agree that it is stupid to ban things based on their connection to "Jewishness." Personally, I fully believe that there should be no censorship, of anything, anywhere. However, that is not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is your ignorant portrayal of Lebanon as something akin to a police state where Stalinist goons are searching through every library and bookstore to confiscate and burn Jewish related material. Even the most casual visitor to the country can see that there isn't much of a state structure anywhere, much less a totalitarian anti-Semitic dictatorship, and even less still your choice of portraying Lebanese General Security as an organization that "combines the functions of the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security."

But the true litmus test of your supposed morality is that you stood here and watched the massacring of over 1,200 Palestinians in Gaza- the majority of which were civilians- by the State of Israel and you chose to stay silent. Instead your "sense of moral outrage" was awakened and you were motivated to contribute to The Wall Street Journal (of all places) on "why Jane Fonda is banned in Beirut," during the last month of your stay. Now that is political courage.

Your article is so poorly researched that you get a number of key facts wrong that invalidate your already weak argument. Indeed the very first sentence, "A professor at the American University here recently ordered copies of "The Diary of Anne Frank" for his classes, only to learn that the book is banned" is factually incorrect. English instructor Sean Lee, an advisor to the student book club, did not order The Diary of Anne Frank for his classes, indeed he didn't try to order it at all. The student president of the AUB book club attempted to do so through the AUB bookstore. All you would've had to have done is look at this blogpost by Sean Lee himself to find this out. You would've also notice the comic ineptitude of the Lebanese censors because only the English version of Anne Frank is banned, and that the French edition is widely available.

If you would have ever gone into the AUB Library, you may have noticed the extensive collection of Jewish, Israeli, Holocaust and Zionist material, such as the impressive collection of the journal Jewish Quarterly, as well as a variety of books that portray the Arabs as terrorists and the Israelis as courageous heroes.

But the icing on the cake of your, and Mr. Lee's, lame arguments is that a well-used copy ofThe Diary of Anne Frank is readily available in the AUB library (shelfmark 940.53492:F828:c.1)!! Perhaps you should take it to any one of the many copy centers around AUB, reproduce it free of copyright charge, and distribute it at your discretion. Nate George"