Lebanese Divisions

The film choose to point out the rather massive expanse of Bashir iconography.  I believe the observation in the film was something like "Bashir was to them what David Bowie was to me".  With the importance of Bashir as a symbol in mind I suppose the Sabra and Shatila massacre might make less sense without a good grasp on some of the dynamics of the Lebanese civil war.

The best case I can make is that the Lebanese are not split along religious lines the way it might look at first glance.  Sure it's a conflict along Sunni/Shia/Druze/Maronite Christian lines but religion isn't the thing that's being fought over really.  Religious affiliation is a short hand way of identifying allegiance to political parties, ideas on international allegiances (enter the problem of Syria and the PLO), and perceived cultural divisions (identify as an Arab or Phoenician).  Religious affiliation is also a way of signifying where your family probably lived for hundreds of years and probabilistically what family name you might have. It's a fight over who has the right to direct the new nation-state and therefore a fight over who really represents the true Lebanon.  Should it go by population? (This raises the issue of running a government based on population when the last official census was taken in 1932.)  Age of the community's presence in the region and tradition?

Civic nationalism really doesn't exist in Lebanon.


1982, the year of the massacre, was well into the civil war.  For the Maronite Christians - predominately supporters of the Christian Phalange - Bashir (son of prominent politician Pierre) Gemayel looked to be the leader to bring an end to everything (albeit probably violently).  As Dr. Eichler-Levine said, he was kind-of the Lebanese Kennedy.  The loss of a young leader, with strong ties to a family that had become symbolic as well, who had become such a symbol in his own right, was that triggering for some member of the Christian Phalange.  A previous attempt on Pierre's life, years prior, prompted revenge killings as well.

With this in mind the massacre might make a little more sense in the grand scheme - terrifying and inexcusable, but not preformed against a blank historical and political background.