Episode Details

Social justice and Struggle in Lebanon and Syria: Elia J. Ayoub and Leila Al-Shami

Photo taken from Al Jumhuriya This week on The Final Straw we're featuring a chat with Elia J Ayoub and Leila Al-Shami. In this conversation, Elia tells us of some of the history of Lebanon, since the civil war that ended in 1990 and up to the current demonstrations against the clientelist warlords in power in that country. Intertwined with this, Leila speaks about the sparking of the resistance to Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, the tumult of the civil war, and the state of anti-authoritarian and social justice organizing and media work in that country. Then the two talk about the experience of countering disinformation, conspiracy thinking and poor solidarity in the so-called Left in the West and ways to combat ignorance.

This is another long conversation, covering a lot of the last 30 years in these two neighboring nations. The guests proposed speaking about the interrelations across that border because of the similarities, differences, and shared experiences between the two places. Lebanon has Syrian refugees, it was occupied by Syria until 2005. Both spaces share Palestinian refugees, experienced war with Israel, are politically influenced from Hezbollah, mostly speak Arabic and even the flames of the recent wildfires that ignited anti-regime sentiment in Lebanon last fall crossed the border between Lebanon and Syria. We hope to have future chats that play with borders in this way to explore ways we can bridge these borders in our understanding in hopes of increased solidarity.

• aNtiDoTeZine formatted article (thanks to them for trancription and synthesis!)
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Elia J Ayoub is a Lebanese-Palestinian writer, editor and researcher. He publishes frequently on https://joeyayoub.com/ as well as on the blog https://hummusforthought.com/ and the related podcast by the same title.

Leila Al-Shami is a British-Syrian activist and co-author of 'Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War', a founder of the international solidarity site, TahrirICN and writes on http://leilashami.wordpress.com/ .

Below are links to some resources that Joey and Leila suggest interested listeners check out to for perspectives by folks on the ground in the region:

Lebanon links:

• An updated list of twitter accounts reporting well on Lebanon: https://twitter.com/joeyayoub/lists/lebanon-2019
• a great critique from crimethInc: https://crimethinc.com/2019/11/13/lebanon-a-revolution-against-sectarianism-chronicling-the-first-month-of-the-uprising
• The Lebanese Politics Podcast https://soundcloud.com/lebpoliticspodcast
• The Public Source https://thepublicsource.org/
• Megaphone News