History

Sahban Abd Rabbo

In the previous issue of Forward, I read an article by my dear friend Jamal Mansour, asking about «his» Hiroshima. He compared between the crisis of Japan in 1945 and the crisis of the Middle East in 1967. He then wondered why Japan, less than 50 years after the fiasco of the atomic bomb, became one of the most powerful countries in the world, while the Middle East and the Arab world in general is still being manipulated and is still trying to find a way to get rid of the Israeli threat or more recently, American influence in the region.

Sami Moubayed

Over the last 200-years a variety of political, cultural, and ‘revolutionary’ celebrities have visited Damascus. Some came for tourism, others for work. All of them, however, came across with very favorable impressions of the capital of the Umayyads. Whether it was Damascus under the Ottomans, the French, or since independence in 1946, the city has never failed to inspire, impress, and enchant its visitors. The hall of fame of those who have come to Syria is a long and impressive one, which has never been studied in a proper manner. It includes, among others, three US presidents, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Cart-er, Bill Clinton, four French presidents, Charles de Gaulle, Valerie Gescard D’Estaing, Jacques Chirac, and two Brit-ish prime ministers, Winston Churchill and Tony Blair. It also includes every Secretary General of the United Nations, from the first Trygve Lie to the current Ban Ki Moon. Forward Magazine takes a look at some of the ‘who’s who’ in the long list of Syria visitors.