By Liz Sly and Suzan Haidamous | Washington Post
BEIRUT – Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri personally intervened Wednesday to override a ban on screening the movie “The Post” after an outcry among many Lebanese, government officials said.
The reversal of the ban represented a rare contradiction by the government of a ruling by Lebanon’s censorship board. Officials said they could not remember the last time such a decision had been made.
“The Post” had been barred because of ties between the film’s director, Steven Spielberg, and Israel. Lebanese laws sanction artistic content created by people connected to Israel. Spielberg violated the laws, which date to the 1950s, by making a contribution to relief efforts in Israel during its 2006 war with Lebanon.
Hariri, who recently returned to his role after a brief and bizarre resignation involving Saudi Arabia, asked the Interior Ministry not to implement the ban, said a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Hariri did so, the official said, “because he is opposed to the idea of banning movies.”
A statement from the Interior Ministry said the department’s head, Nohad Machnouk, signed the decree late Tuesday permitting “The Post,” starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, to be screened as scheduled starting Wednesday. The film narrates the decision by the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham to defy a judge’s interdiction on publishing a story about the Vietnam War.
“Machnouk does not see any reason to ban the film since the content focuses specifically on the war in Vietnam during the 1960s and has no connection to Lebanon or the conflict with the Israeli enemy,” the ministry statement said.
Parts of Lebanon were occupied by Israeli troops for 22 years, and thousands of Lebanese were killed in Israeli attacks on the country, explaining why ties to Israel are so sensitive.
Samah Idriss, a leading member of the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon, said the group opposed the reversal of the ban.
“We think this is not the right decision,” he said. “We think that notwithstanding the fame and the importance of Steven Spielberg, for the sake of our martyrs and for the sake of Lebanon, our national dignity is more important than any creative elements connected to this film.”
But others hailed the decision as a strike for free speech in Lebanon, which is known to be one of the more liberal countries in the Middle East but nonetheless comes up against frequently arbitrary impediments to freedoms that would be taken for granted elsewhere.
“This is an amazing development, and to the best of my knowledge, unprecedented in Lebanon,” Gino Raidy, of the anti-censorship group March, wrote on his blog. “This is a great day for freedom of expression in Lebanon.”
