Soren
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Some Lebanese, mainly Christians, identify themselves as Phoenician rather than Arab, seeking to draw "on the Phoenician past to try to forge an identity separate from the prevailing Arab culture". [4] They argue that Arabization merely represented a shift to the Arabic language as the vernacular of the Lebanese people, and that, according to them, no actual shift of ethnic identity, much less ancestral origins, occurred. Their argument, based on the premise of ancestry, has recently been vindicated by some emerging genetic studies as discussed below. Thus, Phoenicianists emphasize that the Arabs of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, and all other "Arabs", are different peoples, each descended from the indigenous pre-Arab populations of their respective regions, with their own histories and lore, and that therefore they do not belong to the one pan-Arab ethnicity, and thus such categorisation is erred or inapplicable. Lehe nationals in particular tend to stress aspects of Lebanon's non-Arab history as a mark of respect, to encompass all Lebanon's historical stages, instead of beginning at the Arab conquests, an attitude that prevails in the rest of the Arab world.
It is preposterous for you to claim that Arabs populated the Levant before the Muslim conquest. Same for North Africa.
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