There is a narrative wafting out of Lebanon at the moment that many within Lebanon dare not veer away from. The party line is that "Israel’s war has neither fractured the unity of the Lebanese people nor weakened their collective support for Hezbollah—the valiant defender of the nation’s sovereignty and independence against foreign occupation."
This is the tale that is told. It is framed as an indisputable truth, embraced by the virtuous and rejected only by traitors or collaborators. To its adherents, the ‘resistance’ is not merely a force but the very essence of Lebanon’s existence. To them, the nation must endure every hardship with patience, assured that those who resist Israel will ultimately triumph, as they did in the “divine victory” of 2006.
Founding story
Could this narrative ascend to the status of a founding myth or origin story, a nation’s fable bedrock? To do so, it must meet certain conditions. For a start, a narrative must be able to unite all citizens or community members, offering them a framework to interpret their present reality and assigning them historical (or ‘immortal’) missions.
This is seen across the Middle East—from claims of unique national heritage to the embrace of strict religious ideologies. Iran's narrative moved from the grandeur of the ancient Achaemenid and Sassanid empires to enshrining the Twelver Shiite doctrine as the official state ideology, as stipulated in its constitution (although this shift did not entail a complete departure from its imperial legacy, as reflected in numerous statements by Iranian officials).
Likewise, Turkey’s founding narrative intertwines the Turanian heritage of Central Asian tribes and their migration to Anatolia with the triumphs of the Ottoman Empire during its “magnificent century” as hopes of Western integration—once propagated by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk—gave way to a more inward-looking historical identity.
