المجلس
Matahef met Lebanon’ s Minister of Culture, Ghassan Salamé, in his office at the National Library, a storied building between Sanayeh Garden and Hamra Street that once housed the Faculty of Law and Political Science. The meeting came amid the minister’ s ongoing reflections, in talks and interviews, on the role of culture today and on plans for restoration, preservation, and reconstruction at a moment of destruction almost without precedent in Lebanon. For now, the urge to resist erasure seems to take precedence over everything else: preserving an artifact, rescuing a library, restoring a monument, or rebuilding what has been destroyed becomes more than cultural work. It becomes a condition of survival.
Destruction targets not only stone but also the bonds people form with their place and history. Protecting memory and heritage thus becomes part of protecting the capacity to endure, and for Salamé, it is a national cause with a human and universal dimension. People need something to remember to know where they stand, and they need surviving traces of their past to imagine their future. In this sense, culture in wartime becomes resistance to erasure, and rebuilding, even before the work begins, becomes synonymous with life.
Through Ghassan Salamé, we come to understand what it means for an intellectual and academic to serve as minister of culture in wartime. A seasoned diplomat with extensive international experience, he views heritage not merely as a national legacy but as part of humanity’ s shared memory. He translates that vision into diplomatic and legal action to secure a three-tiered umbrella of protection: documenting damage on the ground; securing international legal protection through UNESCO and the Hague Convention; and mobilizing international funding and expertise for restoration and rehabilitation.
Here,“ endangered heritage” is not limited to monuments, temples, and citadels. It also includes heritage houses, old souks, libraries, and cultural institutions. Salamé has sponsored the launch of the National Network for the Protection of Libraries, Archives, and Cultural Heritage, as well as other restoration projects, and has described preserving memory as“ a national and cultural necessity.”
In this way, Salamé shifts the conversation from salvaging antiquities to something broader. Memory, he knows, is the compass by which people navigate time and place; erasing it does not merely obscure the past; it threatens their ability to know where they stand in the present and to chart a path to the future.
In our conversation, Salamé speaks broadly about Lebanon’ s situation, focusing on heritage at risk and efforts to save it. He observes that“ the destruction of buildings has become an objective in itself, to render the devastated area unlivable.” He also maps the current state of culture in Lebanon, arguing that it“ managed to weather the previous period because it is independent of the state,” and that the cultural sector, despite half a century of internal and external wars, deserves attention for its role in recovery and in safeguarding national unity and freedom of thought and expression.
Salamé speaks in the language of the future about an extraordinarily difficult present and a heritage under constant threat— refusing to accept destruction as final and insisting that ruin need not have the last word.
Mr. Minister, you went to UNESCO on the premise that Lebanon’ s endangered antiquities do not belong to the Lebanese alone. UNESCO has granted enhanced protection to many Lebanese sites, recognizing some as of the highest importance to humanity. But what does this“ international protection” mean when the war continues, strikes reach nearby sites, and some are damaged? Does the international community have the tools to protect this human heritage, or can it ultimately do little more than document its loss?
It is hard to write the history of what did not happen. That is the nature of history: it speaks not of the tragedies averted but of those that occurred. It is difficult for me— impossible, in fact— to say that all the diplomatic and legal measures we took to protect Lebanon’ s heritage were sufficient. In reality, no archaeological area was directly targeted during the war, and I believe those measures helped. One reason I say this is that the maps the Israelis were publishing marked archaeological areas in red, as if they were taking these areas’ special status into account. That is a fact, but there were exceptions. Areas Israel decided to raze completely, such as Khiam and Bint Jbeil, were bulldozed without sparing anything. That is how they flattened a beautiful municipal library in Bint Jbeil, along with everything else. Overall, however, archaeological sites were protected, and that protection took two forms. First, some sites requiring enhanced protection, found across Lebanon— including the building where
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