The untold story of how Congress is helping save a Lebanese cultural jewel
A US senator created the American Committee for Tyre 35 years ago, and now former Hill staffers are bringing it back to life.
For a brief moment this spring, Washington became the de facto capital of the long-lost Phoenician civilization.
A who’s who of DC power-players — current and former lawmakers, ambassadors and former administration officials — gathered at the Library of Congress on June 3 along with some 50 guests from around the world to celebrate Tyre Day. They were there to breathe new life into efforts to save the historic Lebanese port city — and to commemorate the late Sen. Claiborne Pell, who helped birth the US movement 35 years ago.
“[Pell] was a statesman in every sense of the word — an intellectual, an internationalist,” said Jay Ghazal, a Lebanese-American board member on the American Committee for Tyre and a former aide to the long-serving Rhode Island Democrat. “He cared deeply about a lot of issues, including cultural and historic preservation internationally.”
That passion found a home in Tyre, home of a great civilization that mastered maritime trade and gave the world the phonetic alphabet. The port city was added to the UN's World Heritage List in 1984.
