The Facade Of
Arab Passivity Will Fall
By Ghali Hassan
15 January, 2005
Countercurrents.org
It
would be a mistake to reduce Arabs passivity to the Arab peoples. It
would be equally misleading to lump all Arabs in a single identity.
Arabs passivity is a feature of the Arab leaders as a payback for protection
by Western powers, the United States in particular.
It is true all Arabs
speak Arabic, with a large variety of dialects, but Arabs are not homogeneous
with respect to religious beliefs. They include Christians, Jews, and
Muslims. Although the large majority of Arabs are Muslim (90 percent),
in total Arabs comprise only about 17 percent of the Islamic population
worldwide. The largest Muslim country is Indonesia. Furthermore, Arabs
are as diverse as Europeans. No one would dare to lump Germany, Austria
and Switzerland as "Germans", because they all speak German.
They are as diverse as any three Arab countries.
After the end of
the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the West,
led by Britain and France embarked on carving up Arab lands and dividing
the Arabs to suite their imperialist interests. Like the current situation
in Iraq, the imperialists were responsible for creating and
supporting illegitimate governments of small cliques of ruling elites.
The creation of Israel was part of this imperialist ideology. It should
be borne in mind that the creation of Israel by European Zionists was
never intended to save guard Jews. Many European countries and the United
States rejected
European Jews who forced to flee Europe, they were sent back to Germany.
The creation of Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people was
an imperialist investment in the world's most vital energy rich region.
Despite their fast resources and rich history, Arab leaders have not
only failed to coordinate and confront this Zionist ideology, but also
failed to develop as a strong united block, like West Europe.
Since the early
1970s, there has never been any collective agreement between the Arab
leaders themselves. Each Arab leader tried to make friendly arrangement
with the US. The people have never been consulted or participated in
any decision. The peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was signed between
Anwar al-Sadat, US and Israeli leaders. The people of Egypt have never
been consulted. As a result of that unequal agreement, al-Sadat was
assassinated. The Oslo Accord between Israel and Arafat officials had
nothing to do with the Palestinian people. In fact, both the peace treaty
with Israel and the Oslo accord were major achievement of the Zionism
at the expense of the Palestinian people. The people were never consulted;
they were deceived.
In the 1991 US war
against Iraq, several Arab countries joined US forces against Iraq.
Their decisions were against the wishes of their own peoples who favoured
a peaceful solution to the crisis within the Arab league. After the
War ended, Arab leaders continue to support the US-Britain genocidal
sanctions against the Iraqi people, which caused the death of more than
2 million Iraqis, a third of them children under the age of five. Arab
leaders have benefited from the one-way trade and turned a blind eye
to the
sanctions' devastating effects on the Iraqi society.
In 2003, Arab leaders
sat back watching passively as the US and its allies fabricated lies
and prepared another genocidal war against the Iraqi people in stark
validations of international law. Some of them appeared on US and Western
TV cameras showing their fake 'opposition' to the war and 'telling'
Saddam 'to disarm'. It was only a theatre dictated by the US and played
for domestic consumption. There was no resistance; there was no barking
against the US war caravan heading for the destruction of an Arab nation.
Instead, Arab stooges competing with each others to provide passages
and play hosts to foreign forces. The Arab peoples were kept in place
by the usual armies of oppression. It should be borne in mind that Arab
leaders are big spenders on arms (the highest per capita in the world).
Their armies are never intended for the defence of the motherland, but
to keep them in place. Arab leaders have sacrificed "national security
in exchange for regimes' security", writes the well-known Egyptian
journalist Mohamed H. Heikel.
How can a group
of 22 countries, with approximately 300 million peoples bound by religion
and language watched passively without the slightest protest for a foreign
power to illegally attack, occupy and destroy the society of one member
of their group? Arabs leaders saw the Occupation of Iraq as an opportunity
to sit on the US lap. Not only they are afraid they might be the next
targets, but they know that they are illegitimate, and illegitimate
rulers do not like to end up the way Caucesco of Romania and
the Shah of Iran ended up. The US reciprocates by increasing its support
for Israel's terror against the Palestinian people, and opposes any
peaceful solution to the Palestinian tragedy.
Because of the US's
own imperial interests and of the US support for Israel's terror against
the Palestinian people, the US has always been opposed to Arab unity
and Arab nationality. Dividing the Arabs is the single most important
policy in the US today when dealing with the Middle East issues. Arab
leaders responded in kind to this devastating policy. The creation of
secret detention centres for torture in Egypt and Jordan to conduct
abuses of human rights on behalf of the US is a shameful act and must
be condemned.
Moreover, relations
with neighbouring countries such as Iran and Turkey, both with majority
of Muslim populations, have suffered as a result of this blind obedience
to the US and Israel dictates. Instead of seeking stronger relations
and cooperation with their neighbours, Arabs leaders have distanced
themselves from Iran and Turkey.
Both, Iran and Turkey
have tried very hard to improve their relationships with the "Arab
world". After the 1979 Revolution, Iran broke relation with Israel
and tried to normalise its relations with the Arabs, but the Arabs poured
money into Saddam's regime to continue the Iraq-Iran War, which benefited
the Gulf-monarchies and US-Israel alliance. Arab leaders were in disbelief
when the Turkish people and Turkey's democratic government stood up
to the US and opposed the invasion of Iraq. The Turkish parliament refused
passage to US troops through Turkey territory. It is a significant act
of solidarity with the Iraqi people and respect for democracy. The US
protested and vehemently opposed to this democratic principles, but
Turkey stayed the course and did not budge. Can you imagine having the
same sort of democratic freedom and courage in Saudi Arabia or Egypt?
The US and its Western
allies have always opposed democracy in the Middle East and provided
protection and support to oppressive despotism at the expense of the
majority of the people. US support for undemocratic regimes is well
documented. In 1953, the British M16 and the American CIA engineered
bloody coup d'état against the democratically elected Prime Minister
of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, and replaced him with the brutal regime
of the Shah. Under the Shah's dictatorship, the Iranian people have
suffered corruption, fake elections, and heavy censorship on the press,
torture and execution of thousands of dissenters until the 1979 Revolution,
which ended the Shah's regime.
The Algerian elections
were a watershed in the history of democracy in the Middle East. In
1992 the West was astonished by the election of the grassroots movement
of FIS (Islamic Salvation Front). With the support of Western powers,
particularly France, the Algerian army intervened and annulled the democratic
process before the birth of political freedom. The country then descended
into a terror campaign that cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.
Democracy is only good if it serves the
interests of the few elites.
The January 2005
"elections" in occupied Palestine are the latest farce in
the history of Western-imposed "democracy". A single candidate
was propped by US-Israel and promoted by the mainstream media. Other
community leaders have either been assassinated or imprisoned by the
Israeli army with the blessing of the US. It was a one-man contest,
hailed by the West as, "a victory for democracy, a first victory
for peace." If the elected moron deviates from the US-Israel dictates,
he will be considered undemocratic and unworthy of "peace partner".
Today, the US and
its allies are using the so-called Bush's "War on Terror",
and the pretence of promoting "freedom" and "democracy"
to attack and conquer sovereign nations. The invasion and occupation
of Iraq is only recent example of an armed conquest of a rich, but defenceless
nation. As history has shown, Iraqis do not buy into this western hypocrisy.
Despite the most sophisticated propaganda machine that the world has
ever seen, the motives for the US War on Iraq are becoming clear, it
is the Iraqi oil resources and support for Israel's terror against the
Palestinian people.
Moreover, in the
US, Arabs are lumped together in a single identity, dehumanised and
demonised by very biased and unfair mass media. In school textbooks,
cinema and the media, Arabs are portrayed as; murders, violent "anti-Semites",
"unworthy" and "undemocratic". This deliberate racism
is to "eradicate the plurality of differences among the Arabs in
the interest of one difference, that one setting Arabs off from every
one else", wrote Edward Said.
Again, the Arabs
have failed to 'coordinate any collective Arab information and cultural
policy into the US' in order to inform the American public about the
Arab peoples with rich culture and great civilisation. There is simply
nothing in the US that portray Arabs as worthy humans, not "terrorists
and suicide bombers always on the lookout for murder and bombing targets".
Educating the American public is one way to expose the fraud in US policy.
Few Arabs today
believe that this Arabs passivity is sustainable in the face of US colonial
hegemony and a belligerent, expansionist Israel. The massive popular
Iraqi Resistance against US occupation surprises peoples everywhere,
including the Arab peoples. The Iraqi Resistance have shown the world
that the racism of Western scholars and "Orientalists" was
nothing more or less than an ideological racism designed to conquer
Arab lands and resources.
The heroic Iraqi
resistance stands in stark contrast to the cowardly self-styled and
US-installed Arab leaders. The Arab peoples are unlikely to remain passive,
artificially divided and undeveloped. The façade will fall soon,
and the Arab peoples will be free of despotism and imperialism.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth Western Australia. He can be reached at
e-mail: [email protected]