Octavia Nasr

She is well rid of CNN.

The Levant remained a bulwark against Islamist expansionism while it remained a civilisation of Christians, Muslims, Jews and Druze, with Arabic as its lingua franca and with its de facto capital at Damascus. But a dreadful wound was inflicted on it in 1948, from which it has still begun to recover hardly, if at all.

No wonder that the Holy Land – Latin Catholic and Greek Orthodox, Melkite and Maronite, Syrian Catholic and Armenian, Anglican and Lutheran – founded, and continues to give considerable support to, the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine, whatever else one might think of those organisations.

And no wonder that Lebanese Christians pray for the success of Hezbollah, which is closely allied to several of their own political parties, whether the Melkites of the Skaff Bloc, the Armenians of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the broad Christian base of the Solidarity Party, or the Maronites of El Marada (yes, it is called that) and of General Aoun's (yes, General Aoun's) Free Patriotic Movement. Even Amal was partly founded by the then Melkite Archbishop of Beirut.

Of course, Octavia Nasr, being a Lebanese Christian, knows all of this. But why doesn't everyone? Hezbollah has many serious faults. But it is the main line of defence of the Levantine state that reserves the Presidency and half of parliamentary seats for Christians, and which has a European official language alongside Arabic: the West's true outpost, under physically violent existential threat ever since David Ben-Gurion laid claim to all territory south of the Litani.

That main line of defence is acknowledged as such by the Levantine state in which there are predominantly Christian provinces, and Christian festivals as public holidays. That main line of defence is acknowledged as such by the nearby power that has reserved parliamentary representation for Armenians and Assyrians. And that main line of defence is acknowledged as such by the the Melkites of the Skaff Bloc, by the Armenians of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, by the broad Christian base of the Solidarity Party, and by the Maronites of El Marada (yes, it is called that) and of General Aoun's (yes, General Aoun's) Free Patriotic Movement, as well as by Amal, which was was partly founded by the then Melkite Archbishop of Beirut.

Not that you would ever have heard any of this on CNN.