Outright Assassination

by Adel Beshara

  Initially, the question of just who may or may not have been involved with Sa’adeh’s execution and why was discussed in the mainstream press. However, given the lack of detailed information available at the time, the precise content and actual arguments deployed by the Lebanese press were highly selective. It soon became clear that the affair was far more complex than had earlier been described. After the downfall of the Khoury regime in 1952, it diversified into other genres of literary and political writings, but after 1962 it petered out when any form of writing on Sa’adeh became an intolerable risk. In the early 1970s and more vigorously in the 1980s and 1990s a new push for the truth was enlivened by the publication of personal memoirs of key political figures from Sa’adeh’s era. These memoirs, however, illuminated only part of the picture, and because of their restricted scope, did so in a necessarily subjective manner.

  This chapter will attempt to outline the major theories (in no particular order) that have surfaced over the years on the Sa’adeh saga. An exploration of these theories is vitally important, as the existing literature is concerned mainly with what happened to Sa’adeh rather than why it happened. That, in turn, may encourage a much more detailed exploration of events still kept secret by a nearly total silence on the part of the Lebanese State and by the missing official transcripts of the trial.

  1. The Official Line

  Contrived by the Khoury regime in 1949 and replicated by successive Lebanese governments, the official discourse is based on a simple logic: Sa’adeh was a conspiratorial criminal who sabotaged the security of the state and betrayed the homeland, the penalty for which is death. The saga is depicted as a limited local battle between two irreconcilable forces, ending in the triumph of the righteous (the State) over the villain (Sa’adeh). It is an open-and-shut case that holds Sa’adeh entirely responsible for his fate.

  The official version of the events surrounding the Sa’adeh trial thus makes it out to have been much less planned than was likely the case. Moreover, it is often presented in a prosecutorial way: Sa’adeh, ambitious and fanatical in his political belief, was full of traitorous designs to subvert the regime and ready to take the law into his own hands. The response of the regime, therefore, was that of a responsible government compelled to act decisively and swiftly to protect the country’s independence. All the while a pretense is made of adhering to standard judicial procedure: indictment, judges, counsel, witnesses, and the accused’s right to make a final statement:

  The trial took place all through the 7th of July. The accused was cross-examined meticulously and thoroughly. Witnesses were brought in. The General Prosecutor, Youssef Charbel, then delivered a long speech in which he gave a lucid and unequivocal inventory of the evidence [against the accused]. After that the Court went into a brief recess. When proceedings resumed the defense counsel gave a speech in which he pleaded for leniency on psychological and intellectual grounds. Next up was Sa’adeh who delivered a defense lasting more than an hour. He dealt in the first part of it with the principles of his party during which he gave a comprehensive explanation of them and claimed that he was not opposed to the Lebanese entity! And in the second part of the speech he talked about the rebellion absolving himself of any wrong-doings and placing the responsibility for what happened on other Syrian nationalists. He cooked up an excuse for them that they did what they did in self-defense against government intimidation as though it is intimidation to the public for a government to invoke its right and duty to protect the security of the country!

  After deliberating for an hour the court then announced its verdict of death to the accused and dissolution of the Syrian National Party. After that the file was sent to the Pardon Board, which returned it unanimously endorsed and a decree for the execution of the verdict was issued. At four in the morning of 8 July the sentence was carried out after a priest was brought in to help the accused complete his religious obligations.

  After the publication of this tense explanation the Khoury regime made no further comments on the case. It expected the matter to peter away once the media frenzy had subsided. That did not happen. The case was a powerful propaganda weapon and government critics took full advantage of it. The publicity which swirled about the trial and subsequent disclosures of the regime’s very substantial role in the affair served as a constant reminder of the case and kept these critics on tenterhooks. These disclosures strengthened the conviction that the government was dictated by feelings of pride and unwillingness to admit a mistake. It also confounded its ability to respond. Most Lebanese would have favored a detailed statement on the sordid affair. But, as a policy of constructive engagement, this approach required a factual response which the government clearly was in no position to produce. Its other option would be to trump up new allegations about Sa’adeh, but that had very little chance of getting through to the public after all the publicity. Even if it succeeded, the government would still have had to answer its critics over its quick and tawdry handling of the case.

  It took almost two months for the Khoury regime to make up its mind. Towards the end of 1949, it finally issued a documented monograph entitled Qadiyat al-Hizb al-Qawmi (The Case of the National Party), a 303-page, three parts volume. The first seventy pages is an outline of the SNP’s inception, organization, ideology and political history to 1949. The next sixty pages contain legal fragments from the case against the party (but not against Sa’adeh), including some thirty-three pages on the public prosecutor’s trial speeches. The rest of the book, amounting to 170 pages, consists of fragments of documents seized during government raids on the party’s offices in Lebanon after the Jummaizeh incident in June 1949. Only six pages of the book pertain directly to Sa’adeh, though there is nothing about his defense or address to the court or about actual trial procedures.

  A close scrutiny of The Case of the National Party would reveal that it is among the most spectacular frauds ever published on Antun Sa’adeh and his party. In a field littered with crass propaganda, forgeries and fakes, this was no mean distinction. The fraud in the book is so pervasive and systematic that it is hard to pluck out a single thread without getting entangled in the whole unravelling fabric. The fraud falls into two basic categories:

  The evidence that the Government adduces to document Sa’adeh’s political life is almost entirely falsified.

  The conclusions that the Government draws from its documentary study of Sa’adeh and his party are not borne out by the documents it presents.

  The deception is apparent from the opening statement to the book: “From the dawn of our independence to this day, the incumbent regime has been, and continues, to respond to challenges, in the general sense, with the wisdom and forbearance that are expected of authorities whenever these challenges threatened the Lebanese entity and infringed on its independence. Did not those who built this independence pay the price for it from themselves and with their bodies?”1 Yet, anyone familiar with Lebanon’s history would surely realize that the only casualty in the 1943 independence campaign was a member of Sa’adeh’s party.2 As for “wisdom and forbearance,” it was out of all bounds of the regime’s corruption and duplicity, which reached unprecedented levels under Khoury.3 The author’s wildly chaotic presentation of the relevant material, though, manages to conceal this fact to some extent.

  Another interesting comment in the introduction concerns the Jummaizeh incident: “The Jummaizeh incident was not the reason that precipitated legal prosecution on the part of the authorities (the authorities were preparing the grounds for this prosecution long before that) . . . Jummaizeh occurred in the spur of the moment and was a very ordinary incident from the point of view of the government and judiciary . . .”4 This remark belies the regime’s explanation of events since it contains a clear acknowledgement that plans to prosecute Sa’adeh and his party were laid down before and not after the Jummaizeh incident. It also begs the question that if Jummaizeh was an average incident, as alleged, why did the government blow it out of proportion
and use to strike hard at Sa’adeh? Perhaps Jumblatt was right when he claimed that the government engineered the Jummaizeh incident for its own objectives.5

  The thrust of the book is that Sa’adeh had been in touch with foreign powers during World War II, and had conspired against the interests of Lebanon and Syria. The Lebanese Government claimed that Sa’adeh, while he was in South America, tried to approach certain foreign powers in an effort to convince them to withdraw their support for an independent Lebanese state.6 Among other things, the book refers to an entry in Sa’adeh’s diary, dated 3 September, 1941, in which he was alleged to have written the following:

  Today, I have written to the Executive General of the Province of Minas (Brazil) and to Edward Sa’adeh, directing them to travel to Rio de Janeiro and submit the following requests to the German Ambassador: 1 – Germany’s recognition of the geographic unity of Syria. 2 – Germany’s recognition of the sovereignty of the Syrian National Party as the only spokesman for Syria. 3 – A frank declaration by Germany that the national independence of Syria is necessary and in line with the new order which Germany and her allies are attempting to enforce. 4 – Germany’s agreement with the Syrian National Party alone on all these points and its admission that the Syrian National Party is the only party which is in a position to speak for the Syrian nation. 5 – Germany’s abandonment of her support of the reactionary elements in Syria. 6 – That we are ready to listen to the demands of the Germans.7

  The alleged report from Sa’adeh’s diary then goes on to say:

  I have explained to the Executive General at length how to approach the Germans. At the same time, I have requested him to contact my brother Ernest Sa’adeh, who is employed by the American Embassy in Rio de Janeiro, and ask him to serve as a link between us and the Democratic camp.8

  Sa’adeh’s alleged entry elicited the following response from the Lebanese Khoury regime:

  Antun Sa’adeh demands from the Germans the recognition of the geographic unity of Syria without defining the boundaries on logical principles or, maybe he did not wish to define them for bargaining purposes. Anyhow, what is his Syria? Could it be the Syria which would have best suited the interest of the New Order in Germany?9

  As for using his brother, Ernest, as an intermediary between the Syrian National Party and the Democratic camp, it proves that Sa’adeh lacked morality in negotiating simultaneously with the Axis and the Allies:

  What is noteworthy of observation is that in a report he wrote during the same day, Sa’adeh discloses that he tried to negotiate, at the same time, with two warring camps that possessed conflicting ideologies . . . This is the best proof of the man’s lack of character. He is, without the least doubt, an opportunist who saw not difference between a democratic government and a Hitlerite regime.10

  Then the Lebanese Government goes on in its tract on the Syrian National Party to show how Sa’adeh attempted to line up with whom he thought would end as victor of World War II. It said:

  When in 1943 it became increasingly apparent that Sa’adeh’s Nazi friends were losing the war and that the Allies were winning it, he changed colors and switched over to the Democratic camp. On April 11, 1943, he wrote, “all what could be done now is to try to reach an agreement with the Anglo-Saxons, in as much as the principles of the Party permit.” Sa’adeh must have forgotten, at that moment, that his Party was the fore-runner of Nazi principles in Syria and Lebanon.11

  The obvious, if unstated, upshot of this argument is that Sa’adeh is to blame for the political (if not moral) tribulation that befell his party and himself. He is constantly presented in the tract in a Nazi outfit to help situate him in the anti-Nazi hysteria of the time. Yet, the method is flawed in three crucial respects: (1) During World War II public opinion in Syria and Lebanon was pro-Axis in general and pro-Nazi in particular on account of Germany’s anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist, position. Antun Sa’adeh, however, placed the Third Reich on a par with Britain and France;12 (2) the relation of Sa’adeh and his party with foreign powers was based on negotiation and bargaining power rather than submission.

  Sa’adeh merely made suggestions to Germany and the United States and declared that he was ready to consider counter-suggestions from those two powers on Syria’s future. He did not try to “sell” the country to the foreigners, as insinuated in the book, but merely attempted to gain foreign recognition of Syria’s independence. As such, he did “not offer foreigners his services but made demands which were in line with his country’s best interests;”13 (3) even if Sa’adeh could be shown to have been a Nazi, it does not bear on the charge for which he was prosecuted, namely, seeking Lebanon’s destruction.

  As for Sa’adeh’s trial and execution, The Case of the National Party merely built on the rendition touted in earlier press releases. Its main thrust is not the trial proceedings per se but the person of Sa’adeh. A roster of trumped-up charges dominates its pages ranging from nurturing aggressive elements among his followers, harboring fascist and Nazi tendencies, hostility to Lebanon, and contempt for the state. In so far as the tract had sought directly to counter the effects of the press blitz on the Khoury regime it did so predominantly by posing a negative counter-image of Sa’adeh, rather than by seeking to refute the negative image of the regime. The result is a shallow account that portrays Sa’adeh as a traitor who sold his comrades out in an attempt to save his own life.14 Yet anyone even slightly acquainted with Sa’adeh’s past will be struck by the absurdity of this narrative. It is difficult to know what to make of this report, particularly without knowing more about the source and the conditions under which the information was obtained. If the allegation is true why did the government keep the trial records under wraps from the general population? Why is it, also, that no part of the trial proceedings was appended to The Case of the National Party to verify the claim? In fact, there is no credible, direct evidence to support any of the tract’s revelations. Even the document section is highly suspect: it does not allow us to draw any conclusions about the actual scale of collaboration or conspiracy alleged against Sa’adeh. Nor does it tell us anything about Sa’adeh’s intentions and movements.

  A naïvely self-serving account of the Sa’adeh saga, The Case of the National Party is a treatise in character assassination. Nearly all of it is directed specifically against the person of Sa’adeh, distorting and ridiculing his life and vocation, playing up dissensions, and depicting him as a debauched warmonger carrying on his “nefarious” activities against the true wishes of the Lebanese people. By contrast, the regime brazenly portrays itself as the true exponent of “peace” and “democracy,” the only protector of the country. Such renditions may pass in countries where the law plays a negligible role over the political system and other areas of life but not in an open country like Lebanon, where the press is active and witty.

  Indeed, the tract turned out to be a colossal and multifaceted hoax. It had to be withdrawn from circulation because the documents were pitiable and incoherent. The monograph incorporated many claims, none of which could sustain close scrutiny and which, overall, were common to the vast body of literary myth surrounding Sa’adeh. More importantly, the purposes that the author had set for himself produced confusion. One is never sure of the strand in Sa’adeh’s conduct that is being challenged. When a strand does appear it is belied by the actual documents produced in the monograph. For example, allegations concerning Sa’adeh’s “obstructions” of the military campaign in Palestine are contradicted in the supporting documents, which reveal a more sober picture of the SNP leader working earnestly to set up a commando unit in Jerusalem and to obtain weapons for the fighting. At the same time, those fragments in the book that paint Sa’adeh as a hostile enemy of Arabism are completely unwarranted. There is no evidence against Sa’adeh that could justly condemn him for national treachery, no definite proof of preparation of money or arms, no evidence of any regular organization of troops which could threaten the safety of the state, and no proof of complicity in a
plot to overthrow the political system or the Constitution. Rather, the fragments of evidence that the monograph does offer the reader rely almost exclusively on mangled statements taken completely out of context and presented in a wildly chaotic fashion. The result is a book at war with itself.

  The Lebanese public had the right to expect a detailed and thoroughly convincing account of the Sa’adeh case. Instead, all it got was a disoriented and an ambiguous explanation. The Case of the National Party contained none of the crucial information about the trial, except for a few regurgitated snippets from the Lebanese press. As a historical reference, the tract is ultimately disappointing and misleading. It is doctored history intended to justify a given version of events acceptable to those in power. Thus, “it may not be able to follow where the evidence leads. It may have to overlook or even suppress pertinent information. It cannot, consequently, meet the tests of objectivity, balance, and independence of judgment. At best a bland, cautious, diluted version of the truth . . .”15 It reads and sounds like a propaganda tale out of the old Soviet Union.16 Its tone is strikingly totalitarian, from both the legal and factual standpoints, and it blatantly bypasses the outrageous travesties of justice perpetrated against the defendant. Moreover, like totalitarian material, the focus is on the dispute, not on the reasons for it. Thus, while it is apparent what issues are in dispute, the precise content and actual arguments are not clear.

  For those not fully within the local perspective, the questions that have been most insistently raised over the years are these: if the government believed that the evidence against Sa’adeh was compelling why did it resort to secrecy and speed? Why did the dispute so strongly stimulate the need for imposition of an official version, produced in a particular and problematic form? Why did the regime subsequently give an entirely distorted account of what actually took place? And why did it issue press statements that were the exact opposite of the truth? The inability of the Lebanese state to produce satisfactory answers to these questions or to release essential information that can be analyzed and empirically verified have furthermore eroded the credibility of the official line. Until some practical steps are taken to redress the situation, the official line is likely to remain where it has always been, in the ash heap of history.