Gad Saad: ‘Bad things’ happened to abducted parents

Since 7 October 2023, the Beirut-born professor Gad Saad has become an outspoken figure on social media, inveighing against antisemitism, ‘wokeism’ and ‘social justice activism’ . His book ‘Suicidal empathy‘ describes a ‘death wish’ among westerners who empathise with those who wish to destroy them. Although he has mentioned that his parents were abducted in Lebanon, for the first time in an interview with the ‘progressive’ Joe Rogan, he went into detail.

Born into a Jewish family in Lebanon in 1964, Gad was 11 when his parents decided to leave Lebanon at the outbreak of the 1975 civil war. His older brothers and extended family had already left in the wake of the 1967 war, together with the bulk of the community, but his parents had been ‘well-entrenched.’ Although they had resettled in Montreal, Canada, his parents, who retained business interests, continued to make return visits to Beirut. It was on one of these visits that they were kidnapped. ‘Bad things’ happened to them, says Gad, referring darkly to the Israeli hostages of 7 October.

His mother was a close friend of a Muslim called Ihsan. She was the dresser to the Syrian president Hafez al-Assad. Syria sent thousands of troops into Lebanon in 1976, ostensibly to protect the Lebanese Christians, who were mainly fighting Lebanese Muslims and Palestinians under the leadership of Yasser Arafat. Ahsan interceded with Assad  and he promised to contact Arafat. But the kidnappers belonged to the Abu Nidal group over which Arafat had no control. Eventually, Gad’s parents were released. He suspects a large sum of money had changed hands.

Gad’s parents had been lucky to get away with their lives. In 1971, Albert Elia, community leader, was murdered, and there followed a string of abductions and murders by Hezbollah of Jews in the 1980s.  Their tragic plight is a reminder that the Iran-sponsored terrorist group has been wreaking havoc in the country for decades, a cuckoo in the Lebanese nest.

The antisemitism which the Saad family had escaped, and which extinguished the Lebanese-Jewish community, now seems to have caught up with them in Canada. Gad Saad has reported receiving a ‘tsunami of death threats’. He is now preparing to move his family to the US, mainly because he ‘is a high-profile professor who supports Israel’s right to exist’. One suspects that the fact his Montreal university Concordia is a hotbed of pro-Palestinian activism, has something to do  it.