ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on interviews, militant personal writings and publications, in particular the mouthpieces of the two groups Socialist Lebanon (SL) and Organization for Communist Action in Lebanon. The New Left arising in Lebanon during the 1960s defined itself against Pan-Arab movements, in their Nasserite and Baathist veins, but also against Arab communist parties and the Soviet Union (USSR). The Arab communist parties have been discredited for having more or less blindly followed the USSR and accepted the United Nations partition plan of Palestine in 1947. In the early 1960s, the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) was following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s strategy of harassing Israel though refraining from entering the war. However, dissensions between the ‘leftist’ and ‘rightist’ wings had started fissuring the ANM as early as 1957. The Lebanese Communist Party was going through a multilayered crisis. Younger generations of cadres were challenging a pro-Bakdash old guard.
