Fayez Sayegh- the Party Years (1938-1947)

by Adel Beshara

  DS: If she’s a usurper state, and inhabiting your land, the only successful conclusion, from your point of view, would be her final demise, or defeat?

  FS: Not necessarily.

  DS: What else would accommodate your ambition?

  FS: I—what would accommodate my ambition will be—my hope—and I say this now in the utmost earnestness, whether you like to believe me or not—my hope [is] that the human conscience will still wake up among the Zionists living in Israel, and will make them realize that they have usurped someone else’s land, and will make them accept to live as human beings in a democratic Palestine, where they and the rightful inhabitants have a place, rather than to live in an exclusively Zionist state, at the expense of the rightful inhabitants of Palestine.

  DS: Give up statehood?

  FS: Give up statehood, but not give up existence.

  DS: Well, that’s charming. Don’t die, but go away.

  FS: Well, sir, you have done that—Israel has done that to the Arabs of Palestine. And I believe that human beings are human beings everywhere. I believe that the human conscience of many people in Israel will still awaken to the tragedy that they have been instrumental in inflicting upon another people that was never guilty of their suffering, that was never guilty of their persecution in Christian Europe....

  DS: Turn over the state to an Arab country, is that it? The state of Israel?

  FS: While they’re there, it will not be an exclusively Arab country. Any Jew who has no place else to go will be able to stay in Palestine; the rightful inhabitants of Palestine must be allowed to come back to their country; and you will have a bi-national state of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Druse, Baha’i, atheists; all in Palestine, as Palestinians, leading a Palestinian life.

  For years after that interview, no Zionist or pro-Israel debater would appear with Sayegh publicly.17

  Finally, Sayegh was a political social activist of a primary kind. His vast personal history in activism began during his days as a member of the Syrian National Party in the 1940s. Whether advocating for Syrian nationalism, pan-Arabism, or Palestine, he stood up for what he believed in with unbreakable confidence. Many people around the world admired his resilient spirit and unwavering commitment.

  Sayegh carefully and consciously created for himself an image as a public speaker. He never missed an opportunity to speak out or state his case. He gave public lectures, participated in symposiums, appeared on television shows, spoke on radio programs, and partook in live debates. As a result, he became one of the most visible spokespersons of the Palestinian cause in the West.

  The highlight of Sayegh’s activism was the passing in 1975 of UN Resolution 3379, which determined that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. Sayegh was the chief architect of that resolution. Representing Kuwait, he made four oral statements to the Third Committee of the General Assembly of the UN (Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural) and to the General Assembly in support of that decision. Sayegh argued the case with objective, empirical sense. He asked the Committee and the Assembly to consider the matter not from an Arab or strictly Palestinian perspective, but from the standpoint of the UN’s own definition and standards of “racial discrimination”:

  We do not come before this Committee today with a new, arbitrary definition of our own invention and ask it to adopt our definition in order to determine that Zionism is a form of racial discrimination. On the contrary, we come to this Committee with its own long established and universally-accepted definition of “racial discrimination”, and ask it to judge whether or not Zionism, as defined by the Zionist movement itself, constitutes a form of racism and racial discrimination, as defined by the Committee itself long ago.18

  With precision and the power of repeated proof, Sayegh then tore into Zionism’s inherent racism. He highlighted terms like “distinctions”, “exclusions”, “Jewishness”, “restrictions” and “preferences” and exposed them as essential elements of the Zionist agenda and worldview. Almost instantly, this rendered Zionism racist because these elements were essential to the universal and scientific meaning of the term.19 At the risk of being labeled anti-Semitic, Sayegh continued to repeat his lifelong opinion that Zionism, in both its fundamental ideas and tactics, bore all the marks of the Nazi system:

  The Zionist concept of the final solution to the Arab problem in Palestine, and the Nazi concept of the final solution to the Jewish problem in Germany, consisted essentially of the same basic ingredient: the elimination of the unwanted human element in question. The creation of a Jew-free Germany was indeed sought by Nazism through more ruthless and more inhuman methods than the creation of an Arab-free Palestine accomplished by the Zionists: but behind the difference in techniques lay an identity of goals.20

  Yet, as a testament to the power of his analysis and reasoning, Sayegh could not be tarnished with the anti-Semitic tag. He did, however, cope with a tirade of hysterical abuse and name-calling, especially from representatives of the United States. His response was vintage Sayegh: “I am not chagrined and I am not disconcerted. Long, long ago, in my first elementary course in philosophy, I was told by my professors: ‘Only he who has no argument resorts to name-calling.’ ”21

  In December 1991, the United States, using all the diplomatic power it could muster, pressured the UN to repeal Resolution 3379. Sayegh did not live long enough to fight this repeal. It was achieved not through an objective re-assessment of Zionism, but through sheer political pressure and expediency: “The vote reflected the shifting political currents of recent years, the Persian Gulf war in particular, which split the Arab and Islamic worlds, and the changes in the former Soviet bloc, fostered by the collapse of Communism.”22

  Politics can distort the truth, but can never take its place. The events since the repeal of Resolution 3379, especially the spread of Jewish settlements and calls for the recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state”, indicate that Zionism has lost none of its racist underpinnings. It might be some consolation for Sayegh to know that an “Arab Committee Against Zionism and Racism” was established to defend UN Resolution 3379 and that the Committee was spearheaded by In’am Raad, a fellow student from AUB and also a three-time president of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

  Because Sayegh crafted his ideas with uncommon care and diligence, Zionists scrambled for cover when he spoke. They feared the power of his spoken word, the historical and theological knowledge he commanded, and the confidence he possessed to develop fresh proposals and to bring them forward usefully. If not for Sayegh’s resilience and strong academic credentials, they would have succeeded in their attempts to isolate him from the public limelight. But Sayegh always stood his ground. He knew that they were after him, but he refused to bow down or back away.

  Sayegh passed away in 1980 at the tender age of 58. He left behind his wife, Ariene, and daughter, Rima. He could not have died at a more critical time. With Israel posing to invade Lebanon and expel the PLO to Tunisia and with secret negotiations for the Oslo Accords in 1993 approaching, the Palestine cause would have gained much insight and benefit from his wisdom and energy. But whether Sayegh would have relinquished the fight against Zionism in favor of a truncated Palestine is open to conjecture. Be that as it may, having denounced Zionism as a colonial project all his life, it does seem very unlikely Sayegh would have changed his views on Zionism and Palestine.

  INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

  Sayegh’s portrait as developed here underwent significant changes. Since he lived in continuous contact with the realities of a world experiencing rapid transformations, the changes in his thinking followed an inherent logic. At least four changes in Sayegh’s thinking, which we shall refer to as phases of his intellectual development, are clearly evident.

  THE FIRST PHASE

  From 1938–1947, Sayegh accepted nationalism as the basis of his thinking and his interpretation of sociocultural reality. He embraced the iron logic of Antun Sa’adeh’s unifying national doctrine and immersed himse
lf in its philosophical and cultural values. Appearing at the height of national and sectarian divisions in the mid-1930s in Lebanon, Sa’adeh became a magnet for a whole and confused generation of people. His integrative and highly secular doctrines reverberated with the burgeoning new intelligentsia and provided an alternative course of action to the suffocating politics of communal and sectarian formations. For an aspiring intellectual like Sayegh, Sa’adeh’s totalizing philosophy provided a practical answer to the political and national confusion that wreaked havoc on his generation. Its systematic analysis, ambitious ideals, novel approach, and accent on change resonated well with Sayegh’s nationalist ego, as it did with many of his contemporaries, and it opened a wide field to his inquisitive and ambitious young mind. He subsequently set out not only to fathom the key topics of this new philosophy, but also to infuse them with doses of his own thinking and sentiments. Eventually he became one of its most visible spokespersons and principal tactician; a position he would occupy until 1947.

  THE SECOND PHASE

  Around 1945, Sayegh developed a distinct fondness for existential philosophy. This fondness arose from his philosophical studies at the AUB and his affiliation with Charles Malik’s philosophical circle. As a result, nationalism was married to a new interest in life. The spirit of collective existence popularized by Sa’adeh in a sociological endeavor that accords society a central place in human development suddenly appeared less attractive than it once had been. Sayegh began to lean toward the existentialist perspective that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life. While not completely discarding the societal perspective, he began to focus on human existence as the product of personal experiences and the theatre for the actions and feelings of the individual. By 1945, his conversion to existentialism was complete. It was capped off with a Master’s thesis entitled “Personal Existence: Its Contents, Its Tragedy, Its Paradox” in which Sayegh gave “a powerful though not unflawed defense of radical individuality and personality under the rubric of what he terms ‘personal existence.’ ”23

  Existentialism embodies a perennially recurring philosophic theme: the significance of the individual person and the problems and peculiarities that face individual human beings. Accordingly, it tends to distrust abstractions and overgeneralized formulations of “human nature” because each of us, in some important sense, makes his or her own nature. The idea appealed to Sayegh so much that, without hesitation, he wrote a monograph about it: nida’ al-aamak: nadharat fi al-insan wa al-wujud (A Call from the Depth: Reflections on Man and Existence). Published in 1946, the monograph can be described as an intimate call for re-self-discovery and personal rejuvenation in an age of great uncertainty and constant change: “The need is critical to discover the human in every person, after that human element has been dispersed and replaced by the citizen, the economic being, the social creature, or reduced to the abstract mind, the pure feelings, or the raw instincts.”24

  To discover the human in us in a seemingly inhumane world is not only noble but also essential. The process might be fraught with ambiguities and unavoidable landmines, but it is the only way to achieve a meaningful life in an absurd and unfair world. The key is not to be willed towards fruitless endeavors and therefore excluded from creating a better world for ourselves.

  In his PhD dissertation “Existential Philosophy: A Formal Examination”, Sayegh articulated a theory of existential philosophy without restricting himself to any particular existentialist or non-existentialist philosopher. Speaking “as an existentialist”, he set out not to defend and justify a specific mode of existential philosophizing but to demonstrate that

  ... the tendency [that existential philosophy] is born from, and the choice from which it gets rise, and therefore its own formal character, are in strict conformity to the requirements determined by the nature and situation and destiny of man, and the conditions of human knowledge.25

  According to Habib Malik, “the exposure to [Existentialist] philosophy became a life-changing experience”26 for Sayegh. But it was not as smooth a transition as Malik portrayed. Before his conversion to existentialism, Sayegh faced serious problems about his own insecurities regarding existentialism and endured occasional bouts of anxiety and self-doubt arising from the anti-rationalist bias of existentialist theorists like Kierkegaard and Berdyaev. He particularly found their assault on rationalism and religious truth too unbearable to sustain, and he persevered only by counterbalancing this assault with the realism and rationalism of Jacques Maritain and the Aristolean-Thomistic mode of philosophizing. By his own admission, his inner doubts and fears of existentialism were soothed by the additional information afforded by the post-war flow of European books and English translations of existentialist texts.27

  Why Sayegh chose existentialism as his preferred choice of philosophy remains a matter of conjecture. Some claim that his professor, Charles Malik, a noted Christian existentialist, played a key role in luring him to the existential position: “During the early 1940s, Sayegh … immersed in the Malik philosophical circles and had imbibed a sufficient dose of existential philosophy to enable him to write with passion his master’s thesis on the topic of personal existence.”28 This explanation is not entirely implausible, but it does not explain how Sayegh could have remained involved and strongly committed to the Party and to Sa’adeh in 1946 despite Malik’s aversion to Sa’adeh’s ideological orientation and political taste. Moreover, the evidence suggests that Sayegh did not always find Charles Malik agreeable and openly criticized him. Among his many essays from that period is one in which Sayegh stands up to his teacher after attending one of his public lectures on nationalism. Echoing Western critics of nationalism as regressive and hegemonic, Malik stated:

  Nationalism maintains that man in himself is a nationalist . . . that his existence is not complete unless he belongs concretely to a specific nation. Moreover, man to the extent he wants to fulfill his being must direct all his duties and loyalties to his nation alone.29

  In the essay, Sayegh took issue with Malik over this parsimony and narrow description. “As a ‘nationalist’, I do not see myself exclusively through the restricted prism implied by the lecturer.”30 The fact that a nationalist owes his primary duty to the nation does not necessarily preclude the nationalist of life’s larger duties and loyalties to the groups and institutions that form the nation, the broader community of nations, universal literature and art, and the noble ideals of right and justice. Thus, according to Sayegh, man is not a “nationalist” but a social entity first. He becomes a “nationalist” or has become a “nationalist” because man has arrived at a stage in life where the “nation” has come to represent the perfect and most complete expression of his social existence. The logic he followed was intended to serve the cause of “positive nationalism”; a concept he would develop and remain committed to for most of his life. In fact, in his response, Sayegh invoked the concept of “positive nationalism” several times to distinguish his conception from Malik’s distinctly negative tag that juxtaposes all that is nationalist with all that is supposedly obnoxious.

  After obtaining his PhD, Sayegh produced several essays from an existentialist perspective, but they were trifling in comparison with his output in political writings. The scale and speed of political developments in the Middle East, especially in Palestine and Egypt with Nasser’s rise to power, compelled him to return to politics.

  THE THIRD PHASE

  In this phase of Sayegh’s intellectual development, which spanned much of the 1950s and 1960s, Sayegh developed a reserved admiration for pan-Arab nationalism. Stepping away from the Syrian nationalism of the 1940s, he embraced the cause of Arab unity and took up the mantle of the League of Arab States. In 1956, following the Suez fiasco and Nasser’s emergence as an undisputed leader of Arab nationalism, Sayegh jumped on the Nasser pan-Arab bandwagon. Like many others, he believed that the moment of deliverance for Arabs had finally arrived:

 
For the first time in centuries, Arab forces have now appeared on the stage of Arab life ready and able to remake Arab history. For the first time in many centuries, Arab leadership has asserted itself as the principal actor on the stage of Arab life, abandoning alike the observer’s seat and the spectatorial role formerly assigned to it. No longer is Arab society content with reciting a script written by someone else, or with suffering meekly during a performance, supposedly its own but actually designed neither for its enjoyment nor for its edification. At long last, the Arabs have now emerged, in their own homeland, as the makers of their own history.31

  The formation of the United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1957 added mightily to Sayegh’s interest in the Arab idea. The pace of his writing and lecturing on Arab unity intensified and he contributed a comprehensive ideo-historical account and analysis of the Arab national movement: Arab Unity: Hope and Fulfillment. Hailed for its “grace and dignity of scholarship”,32 the book elevated Sayegh to new academic heights and enhanced his reputation as chief spokesman in America of Arab political aspirations. In his public talks and addresses, he began to promote the concept of “dynamic nationalism” as the “only real alternative, both to untenable reactionary system at home and to unwanted domination from the outside (whether direct or indirect)”,33 and to apply it to Nasser: