Christopher Hitchens duffed up in Beirut
Not so long after he chose to see what waterboarding felt like for a Vanity Fair feature, Christopher Hitchens has been in the wars again. Last Saturday - Valentine's Day - Hitchens was set upon and beaten up by a gang of skinheads in a smart shopping district of Beirut. It was, like many of Hitchens's battles, over politics.
Hitchens had been invited to the Lebanon by a group named after Rafik Hariri, the country's prime minister who was assassinated in 2005. After a drink with his friends Jonathan Foreman and Michael Totten he took offence at a poster promoting the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), and, so the story goes, decided to write 'Fuck the SSNP' on it. Unfortunately, he did this just as a posse of SSNP supporters were passing by.
Lawrence Osborne, who met up with Hitchens later in the week, recounted the incident on Forbes.com. "The attackers had apparently come out of nowhere on posh Hamra Street, where they had gone to buy shoes. 'I was on the ground,' Hitchens said, 'and getting it in the head.' It was a miracle they didn't pull Kalashnikovs."
The beating wasn't too bad. Despite his gashed knuckles and bruises, by Wednesday Hitchens was fit enough to lecture at a Beirut university on 'Who are the revolutionaries in today's Middle East?'
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