Part Twenty
This is a translation from the original Arabic, offered so that my grandchildren, and others of their generation, may understand something of their history— a history they were denied when they were uprooted without choice.)
Where To? How Does the Nation Unite? — I
In the previous instalment, I promised to respond to the objections that are easily anticipated against any call for the unity of the nation. Yet I found it necessary first to expand upon a point I mentioned briefly in the last part—so briefly, in fact, that its meaning escaped a number of readers. I wrote: “What matters is that our enemies have implicated us in their enmity even in our division; that is, our enemies have proven our unity through their aggression against us all, for the same objective.”
What I meant by this statement is that our enemies have long dealt with us—and continue to deal with us—as though we were a single nation, despite our fragmentation and despite their persistent and effective efforts to preserve that fragmentation. This conviction on the part of our enemies has manifested itself in making us collectively the target of aggression. Zionism, contrary to what many educated Arabs—fully alienated from their own reality—claim, is not concerned with building political systems in any Arab country based on dignity, justice, freedom, or the protection of fundamental rights. Were it so concerned, it would have objected to the political systems it itself helped establish in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf—systems that stand before the world as clear models of despotism, injustice, and the violation of dignity and basic rights.
When I say this, I do not mean that other Arab states that claimed progressivism or nationalism were not themselves unjust or authoritarian. What I am saying is that Zionism’s hostility toward those states stemmed from reasons other than the absence of freedom or human rights. The reason for that hostility was that those states rejected Zionist political and economic hegemony, whereas the Gulf Cooperation Council states, for example, accepted it. The states that were targeted, whether successfully or not, called for Arab unity and sought to establish a minimum level of social justice. There is no other reason for Zionism’s enmity toward them. The evidence for this is plain to see, among it the following:
Zionism invaded Egypt in 1956 because Egypt dared to nationalize the Suez Canal—the waterway at the heart of the country—began building a modest national army, called for Arab unity, and rejected Zionist settlement on Arab land.
Zionism imposed a genocidal siege on the people of Iraq for twelve years because Iraq, having nationalized its oil and begun building a state, dared to break the rules laid down by Zionism—chief among them the inviolability of the artificial borders it had drawn for the region. Iraq also rejected Zionist settlement on Arab land and called for Arab unity.
When the siege failed to break Iraq’s will, Zionism invaded, occupied, and destroyed it, reducing it to a trivial consumer society torn apart by gangs of thieves, illiterates, and collaborators. It transformed Iraq into an ally acquiescent to Zionist settlement on Arab land and returned its oil to Zionist capitalist control.
Zionism then gathered the dregs of the earth, Gulf money, and Zionist weaponry and unleashed them all to turn beautiful Syria—the last trench of resistance to Zionist settlement and the foremost advocate of Arab unity—into ruins, after its president refused the conditions imposed upon him by Zionism.
Through backward tribalism, Zionism engineered Libya’s descent from a secure and developed state—one that rejected Zionist settlement on Arab land and called for Arab unity—into manufactured conflict, escalation, invasion, and devastation. Libya was reduced to corrupt, rival tribal mini-states whose wealth is now plundered by the Zionist capitalist system, to which all Libyan entities today profess loyalty.
Even if we were to assume that these four states were authoritarian and unjust, like the Saudi system, what common factor rendered them targets of destruction while Saudi Arabia enjoys not only unconditional Zionist support but also protection from accountability for its crimes? The sole common denominator among the targeted states was their rejection of Zionist hegemony and their attempt to build productive states—rather than mere consumer markets—capable, or potentially capable, of development and of exercising sovereign decision-making over their political and economic systems outside the capitalist order. Above all, they called for Arab unity. It mattered little to Zionism whether these states were consistently sincere in that call; the mere persistence of the slogan itself was cause for alarm, for the goal was—and remains—the relentless fragmentation of this nation.
Thus, Zionism has treated us as a single enemy since at least the Second World War. In Zionist calculations, we are one nation. Is it reasonable, then, that our enemy counts us as one while we strive for division?
So, what are the familiar and predictable responses to the call for Arab unity?
The response most often heard is that the borders of today’s Arab states were drawn by the United Nations Security Council and may not be touched, for doing so would violate “international legitimacy.” This is not a hypothetical objection devised for debate; it is the dominant language of Arab politicians and media outlets, repeated for decades. Its origins lie in a highly successful process of indoctrination carried out by Zionist media, particularly among educated Arabs. This response is riddled with contradiction, deficiency, and illusion.
The first illusion is the claim of the sanctity of borders drawn by invaders in our region. There is no sanctity to any borders in the world—whether imposed by conquest or formed gradually and “naturally.” Europe itself, which delights in drawing borders for states beyond its shores, contains not a single country except Britain whose borders have not changed—often multiple times—over the past two centuries. Yugoslavia, whose borders were drawn after the Second World War, is today a collection of states. Poland, so adept at generating problems, saw its borders change three times in a single century. Ukraine—the current instrument of Zionist blackmail—did not exist in its present form before the First World War, and its borders were altered again by Khrushchev after the Second World War. These are only limited European examples.
As for Asia, I know of no state whose borders did not change during the past century. The Indian subcontinent is now multiple states; China is not the China of the nineteenth century; Japan lost territories; and the situations of Korea and Vietnam require little explanation.
The most telling indicator of the non-sacredness of borders, however, is Africa. South of the Sahara, there were no states with defined borders on the eve of the Second World War. All African states were created and their borders drawn by European colonial powers—often arbitrarily—leaving behind a continent riddled with conflict resulting from borders that bore no relation to tribal and social realities.
After this brief demonstration that borders have never possessed inherent sanctity and have always been subject to change across the globe, why are we expected to accept that the borders drawn by Europeans in our region are sacred and immutable? Why may borders change elsewhere but not here? When borders were challenged in our region, the world erupted in outrage, as in the case of Kuwait. Yet Europe permitted itself to carve out Kosovo and dismantle Yugoslavia at will, without invoking the sanctity of borders or the sovereignty of a unified, internationally recognized UN member state. The world did not rise in protest because Europe believes itself to be the world.
When parts of Syria are occupied, the “world” appears deaf and blind. When an entire homeland is usurped, its people become refugees begging for the compassion of that same “world,” while it busies itself with the security and well-being of the European settler-usurper. When Yemen is invaded and its children die of hunger and bombs, that “world” threatens to defend Riyadh and Abu Dhabi—the aggressors—rather than protect Yemen’s children.
Is it conceivable that the educated Arab fails to grasp these realities? And if he does grasp them, why does he invoke the sanctity of borders and their inviolability when responding to calls for Arab unity and the removal of imposed divisions?
If the justification lies in so-called “international legitimacy” or the Security Council, then I have another discussion to pursue.
That is what I shall attempt to examine in the next part.
To be continued…