I Speak for Lebanon

“This is by the Lebanese socialist leader who was assassinated in 1977 by those in power in Syria. It is not his best book. The book is posthumous, and the editor has done a poor job. But it still holds profound reflections on the deadlocks which Joumblatt fought against all his life, and which we continue to fight against 30 years later: authoritarian Arab states, the distortion and damnation of oil money, the sectarian straitjacket, the structural injustice constituted by the Israeli state, and the brutal rule of Asad’s Syria. After so many other essays on the Lebanese civil wars and Joumblatt’s fight for democracy, the book is most poignant probably in that Joumblatt failed to apply his professed Gandhi ideals in the Middle East, although he did end up assassinated like Gandhi.” Read more...

The best books on Maverick Political Thought

Chibli Mallat, Lawyer

This book is worth reading because of who the author is, as much as because of what he says. Jumblatt embodied some of the confusing paradoxes of Lebanese politics. He founded Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party and was a great admirer of Gandhi. But his political prominence really rested on his role as the hereditary chief of the Druze community. As such, he was a prominent politician and warlord in the early stages of the Lebanese civil war. He was assassinated in 1977 at the behest of the Syrian government. This book, published posthumously, contains his reflections on the Arab-Israel conflict, the possibility of democracy in the region, the outlook for peace in Lebanon and what he saw as the twin curses of Middle Eastern politics—oil and sectarianism.

Lebanon