Personal Info
- Country of residence: Lebanon
Information
Samir Kassir (May 1960 – 2 June 2005) was a Palestinian professor of history at Saint-Joseph University and journalist. Samir Kassir was born to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother on 5 May 1960.
Kassir received his degree in philosophy and political philosophy in 1984. He gained a DEA (roughly equivalent to a Master's degree in the British university system) in philosophy and political philosophy from Pantheon-Sorbonne University in the same year. He obtained his PhD in modern and contemporary history from Paris-Sorbonne University in 1990, with a thesis on the Lebanese Civil War.
Samir Kassir's journalistic career began when he was a seventeen-year-old secondary school student at the Lycée Français de Beyrouth, with unsigned contributions to the Lebanese Communist Party newspaper Al-Nidā'. The same year, he began contributing to the French-language daily L'Orient-Le Jour. From 1981 to 2000, he contributed to the French international political review Le Monde Diplomatique. In 1982 and 1983 he edited the newsletter Le Liban en Lutte (Struggling Lebanon), which was dedicated to the Lebanese resistance against the Israeli occupation. From 1984 to 1985 he edited the weekly Al-Yawm as-Sābi`, and from 1986 to 2004 he was a member of the editorial board of the Revue des Etudes Palestiniennes, the French-language journal of the Institute for Palestine Studies. From 1988 to 1989 he contributed to the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.
In 1995 he founded a new monthly political and cultural review, L'Orient L'Express, which he edited until it ceased publication in 1998, from lack of interest and pressure from the advertising industry. From that year on he was a professor at the "Institut des sciences politiques de l'Université Saint-Joseph" in Beirut. It was also in 1998 that Kassir became an editorial writer for the daily Al-Nahar newspaper. He became widely known for his popular weekly column in which he wrote strong articles against the pro-Syrian government. He also made frequent appearances on several television stations as a political analyst on news programs.
Kassir was assassinated using a car bomb in a Christian part of Beirut on 2 June 2005, just few days after the general elections. The investigation into his assassination is ongoing underway, but to date no one has been indicted. Since he had been constantly receiving threats from Lebanese and Syrian Intelligence Officers, there is widespread speculation in Lebanon that the perpetrators were the Lebanese-Syrian security apparatus or remnants of this force (as Syria has claimed that all its intelligence officers were out of Lebanon; in addition, the head of the Lebanese security forces had resigned). The Syrian government has denied these charges.
On 4 June, a funeral ceremony was performed for him in Beirut with the attendance of hundreds.
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