The Xanax protocol

Nothing is as it seems, especially in Lebanon

Did you know that the former US President Joe Biden has a twin brother? No. Me neither. Did you also know that said twin brother was drafted-in to during the initial phase of the 2024 US elections to help his doddery brother? Again, news to me.

I was told this by a respected Lebanese businessman over dinner last night. He swore it was true. When I suggested a quick Google search would verify this, he backed down, laughing, saying that of course he knew it probably wasn’t true and was probably put out there by Donald Trump to further muddy the waters of truth.

As my friend at dinner illustrated, the Lebanese love a convenient explanation to awkward events that might otherwise unhinge a comfortable world view. It’s like popping a Xanax. The truth? Who needs the stress?

Let’s face it, the country’s sectarian make-up makes it a fertile petri dish for generational conspiracy theories. We are a small but strategic country with plenty of bigger, more important, nations seeking to exert influence and it is they, when catastrophe hits, who are responsible for the cataclysmic events that blight our lives. Because surely we would never do these things to ourselves…or would we?

The alternative narrative has been with us since the country was created. How many times have we heard those who despair at the Lebanese status quo, claim “we are not really a ‘country’ at all”.

Then there’s the civil war. Nothing was our fault. After all, we are not even a country. Remember?  It was “a foreign invention, using the Palestinians as a trojan horse, to curb our success.” Or “the US wanted it to happen.” Or “Israel was jealous.”

Ah yes, Israel. The biggest bogeyman on the block. The Egyptian Journalist, Mona Eltahawy, summed it up perfectly when she said that  “Israel is the opium of the Arabs”. When calamity strikes, Israel is often, but not always, to blame. There is always an answer. We need not worry ourselves looking elsewhere.

Exhibit A: The assassination of Rafic Hariri on February 14, 2006 and the August, 2020 port bombing. It is widely accepted now that rogue Hezbollah agents operating on the orders of the regime of Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, almost certainly had a hand in the former, while Hezbollah was responsible for the presence of the ammonium nitrate that set off the blast that wiped-out a swathe of East Beirut.

But many people still blame the Zionist entity. “Why would Bashar do it? It cost him control over Lebanon.” Or “I swear I saw a jet fire a missile into the port”. It’s the Xanax answer. Instead of reaching for the most likely and working backwards, we reach for the solution that makes us feel good and wait for it to be debunked.

Exhibit B: the 2006 war with Israel, a conflict that started after the botched kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, which left eight IDF soldiers dead and two more taken hostage. It was a reckless operation that took the country into a war it didn’t ask for. It left over 1,000 Lebanese dead; 1 million displaced and over $5 billion dollars’ worth of destruction. But, again, there was a neat explanation, peddled by those who didn’t want to experience any awkward self-reflection about how we let such a tragedy happen: “Israel was planning an attack later that year anyway. Hezbollah merely brought forward the inevitable on their own terms.” How neat. How tidy. How wrong!

And finally, Exhibit C: The 2019 banking collapse. Surely this one was down to us and us only. Hmmm. Not sure. On the face of it, the sector imploded due to years of financial mismanagement, fuelled by a drug-like dependency on high interest rates and dollar deposits and enabled by a patronage-based and sectarian political elite that was brought to its knees by a slowdown in inflows and a subsequent loss of confidence in the economy. It made perfect sense.

Or did it? That would be too easy. “It was the international community that wanted to pressure Lebanon politically.” Or “the US sought to hurt Hezbollah through its banking networks.” Or “the Saudis wanted to punish the Lebanese for enabling Hezbollah” or the international deep state, via the IMF, wanted to collapse the economy to rebuild it in their own image.” Anything other than greed and corruption. Israel probably had a hand in it somewhere. Why wouldn’t it?

Now where’s my Xanax?