Elias Khoury - Recent Political Engagement

Recent Political Engagement

Al-Mulhaq, under Khoury's editorship, became the "tribune of opposition" to controversial aspects of the post-Civil War reconstruction of Beirut led by businessman and politician Rafiq al-Hariri. The destruction of surviving elements of the city's architectural heritage in the Burj area and the old Jewish quarter of Rue Ouadi Abou Jamil aroused particular opposition.

In March 2001 Khoury signed a statement along with 13 other Arab intellectuals (including Mahmoud Darwish, Samir Kassir and Adonis), opposing the holding of a Holocaust denial conference in Beirut, a statement which was praised in the newspaper Le Monde by the Israeli ambassador to France. Khoury responded angrily to the ambassador's remarks, pointing to the Israeli repression of the Palestinian intifada.

Khoury, along with Samir Kassir and other intellectuals and political activists, was involved in the establishment of the Democratic Left Movement.

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