Jefferson Corner

One thing for sure, the “secularist/nationalists” and the “salafi/islamist” in Egypt and in Tunisia all conspired willingly or unwillingly to abort the “Arab Spring” or what is left of it. Both are unfit to lead let alone govern.

I am sure the hundreds of thousands of young and old, rich and poor, ideologically free who went to the streets and took down the regimes of Bin Ali and Hosni Mubarak and Muamar Qaddafi, little did they know their hard work is hijacked by “leaders” and “followers” that best can be described unfit to lead and unqualified to govern and take the countries forward, rebuilding nations people and infrastructures destroyed by decades of corruptions, police state and failing institutions.

These “secularist/nationalists” and “salafi/islamists”, and the likes of Daniel Pipes and that other pseudo intellectuals like the creep Bernard Henry Levy should know they did not bring about the Arab Spring, in fact they have nothing to do with it all.

The Arab Spring was born out of the people desire to be free, to have a quality, decent respectable life, free from fear of the knock on the door in the middle of the night, free from fear to go to jail sentenced by a judicial systems at best corrupt, unjust and at the pecking of the president, the ruling party and intelligence service. A decent house and a decent job, a future for their families and a place under the sun.

The thousands who died did not die waiting for creeps and veggie-intellectuals the likes of Bernard Levy or Daniel Pipes to bring about democracy and good governance to the Arab countries. Not Arabs, not Americans, not Europeans want or desire a democracy seeded in Zionist ideologies and corrupting financial and political systems that are destroying societies and nations from within. What an insult for the hundreds of millions of Arabs to have these two Zionists think they are the “intellect” behind the Arab Spring.

The thousands who died and went to jail did not wait for the “secularist/nationalists” whose failures, in fact whose support for dictatorial regimes in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen brought about failing states and kelpto-dictatorship. While the Brothers went to jail, Egyptians so called “intellectuals” were heading almost all government institutions from radio and TV to national newspapers, national publications and were spreading the lies that kept Mubarak regime going for decades.

The thousands who died and the millions who took to the streets in defiance of the police and bullets did not go out so that “salafi/islamists” can go out and take the laws in their hands and determine who is a pious righteous citizen and form a nation in their own ugly dark vision.

The young and the brave Egyptians did not bring down the regime so that Egypt can be ruled by “fatwa’s” from many unfit, unlearned if not misfits who are sawing the seeds of anarchy and sectarianism. The young revolutionaries did not bring down regimes to have the state substitute one ‘secular corrupt police” with a “ religious virtue police” whose interests and understanding of the state and people does not go beyond “sex and booze”.

The biggest danger facing “Arab Spring” and citizens of states like Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, certainly Syria is not American imperialism but Sunni Salafi terrorists whom in the case of Syria are the biggest danger and threat to the Syrian revolution and uprising and its chance of bring down Bashar and his criminal regime.

Al-Nusra and Alqaeda never contributed any good to the renaissance of the Arab or Muslim states and their agenda if any thing is questionable funded by certain evil forces from within the Muslim world Zionist related mafia, and from drug money generated in the opium fields of “Mujahideen and Taliban” and the cocaine trafficking in Sub-Sahara and separatists forces operating within Algeria, Mali and the Sahara.

Too bad for the citizens of these states, whether Arabs, Berber, Kurds, Muslims, Christians and Jews, religious and secular the “salafi” terrorists movements are the biggest threat to what we know today as Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq. These “salafi” terrorists are sowing the seeds of hate and ‘sectarian’ strife in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq and are committing terrorists and murderous acts whose victims are innocent people. And in Libya they are the one standing in the way or rebuilding the nation.

Not so sure if these ‘salafis” in Tunisia, or Egypt, or Iraq or Libya or Syria ever contributed money or efforts to building a school, a clinic, perhaps a bakery or social clinics let alone a factory to employ people or sport centers or rehabilitation clinic or vocational schools or a library or a science museum. The only thing they are capable of doing is killing and committing cold blood murders of innocent people and destroying nations with the hope of bringing about a retarded backward “jahylia/ ignorance” Islamic state

One has to always questions how do these “salafi terrorists” get their funding to buy arms and weapons to attack and kill and destroy and to travel the “jihad route”.

These “Islamist terrorists” with their acts and vengeance and their ugly dark vision of an “Islamist” state shares common interests with America’s imperialism and Israeli Zionism in their conspiracy to abort the Arab Spring.

Let all these Islamist Jihadist and terrorists go back to their home countries and let the Syrian people fight for their future. If America and Israel succeeded in one thing, they did succeed in nourishing and nurturing “Islamic terrorism” starting with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the source of all evil and terrorism in the Muslim world. I am sure the Arab and Muslim world would be much better off if the Mujahideens and Taliban’s were defeated by the Soviets.

Dr. Moncif Elmarzooki, President of Tunisia is correct when he stated in an interview in Asharq Al-Awsat (23/12/2013) and I rephrase, that the Arab Spring was not about Sharia or about ethnicity, sectarianism and nationalism, it has every thing to do with liberty, civil rights, freedoms, end of a police state and freedom from economic deprivations, corruption and dysfunctional state, decent life with full rights of citizenship.

This was the case in Tunisia, in Libya, in Egypt, in Yemen, certainly in Syria. US supported if not sponsored “secular” governments ruled with blood and iron, jailing and executing opposition, disfranchising large segment of the population in favor a ruling party and elite that looted the countries and rendered the nations of divided, those inside jails and those outside, those with a life style that many dreams of and a majority living in dire poverties.

In Tunisia as it was in Egypt, in Libya and in Yemen, it was not the “Islamists” who lead the revolution and took to the streets, forcing ruling dictatorship out of office. It was the young, mostly educated who lead the charge against oppressions and the state security forces and corrupt incompetent governments. Sharia, Isalmizations and “secularism” of the nations was not the driving force behind the success achieved by the people as they took to the streets breaking the wall of fear and defying bullets, and water cannons.

Over the last year or so I have been following, many writers and opinion makers and their analysis of the Arab Spring with views ranging from a “conspiracy by the US and the West against “nationalistic governments” as some claims the case in Syria and Libya, while others mostly “Islamists” claim the Arab Spring was all about “virtues and Islamic value systems” with many “liberals” in the West claiming it was an international conspiracy. With all due respect to all views, the Arab Spring was all about freedoms, civil liberties, dictatorship, failing government institutions, disfranchising majority of people. It was all about the rights of “citizenship” since people in most if not all the Arab world are referred to as “subjects” but never “citizens” with its wide ranging meaning.

Arab “nationalists and secularists” on the one hand are worried that the emerging powerful “Islamists” movements will change the nature of the state from a “nationalist and secular” to an “Islamistist and religious” and as part of the “Ummah”. This is at a time when these “Arab nationalists and secularists” disfranchised” important segments of the populations that are not “Arabs” such is the case in North Africa and in Iraq, failing to recognize the unique and enriching diversity of the “Arab” world with its Arabs, Berbers, Kurds not to mentions Christians, Jews, and others.

“Islamists” are moving now toward committing the same mistakes. By insisting on the “religious/Islamic” nature of the state they are disfranchising a substantial part of the nation who are Non-Muslims and “secularists” who do not adhere to the nature of an “Islamization” of the state or the institutionalization of the “Sharia” but believe in the “civil” nature of the state where citizens are equal in rights, opportunities and duties irrespective of ethnicity, faith, and gender, and as citizens of the state and not members of a “sectarian community” be it Muslim, Christians or Jewish. “Islamists” are unfortunately leading these states toward divisions and “sectarianism”.

Both sides, “Islamists” and “Secularists/Nationalists” are simply forgetting why the Arab Spring came about, freedom, civil liberties, economic reforms, educations, opportunities, and poverty. Most if not all of the people (Muslims. Christians and Jews) are true believers but they too want “Heaven” in the hereafter only, they want to live a decent life here on earth, a life of freedom from wants and poverty, a life free of fear from the knock on the door past midnight, they want respect of their rights as citizens in dealing with a chocking and frightening and discriminating “bureaucracy” that can be described as “hell on earth”, one oiled by bribery, corruption and ‘Mahsoobia”, dividing the people into those “with connections” and those “ without connections”. They want accountability and transparency from their governments and their elected officials. All of these rights have nothing to do with social virtues. It has every thing to do with “rights of citizenship”.

Religion, sectarianism, Sharia or secularism could not of itself solve or address the deep and entrenched problems of the “Arab” word from hunger, poverty, ignorance, lack of development, lack of science and technology, lack of education, lack of equal opportunities, dysfunctional bureaucracy that is main contributor to failing economies in almost all of the Arab world, certainly absence of accountability and transparency.

More than any thing else, the Arab world needs competent, honest, dedicated social, economic, educational, scientific, political leaders and competent corrupt free public servants that can bring the Arab world into the 21st century. All the money in the world will not and could not solve the problems plaguing the Arab world unless the people, the citizens take charge and do something about their own fate and future. They too have a duty and obligation to be part of the solution. They must not trust their future to “Islamists” as they trusted their fate to “secularists” but make sure the state is a “civil state” with rights of citizens to their faiths, independent of state or governing institutions.

Ps. The absence of “codifications” of Sharia allows countries, certainly groups to define it and exercise it according to its own ideology or interests.

I simply do not buy the excuses by America and the West let lone some Middle East countries for non –intervention in Syria. The only and main reason the US and European are reluctant to give the logistical support to the Syrian rebels is the safety of Israel.

America and the West are willing to see Syria totally destroyed, to see not 60,000 but 100,000 dead as long as there is not one single anti-aircraft missile in the hands of Syrian rebels that may one day be used to shoot down an Israeli jet as it flies over Damascus or Aleppo. That is the only reason and excuse for not arming the rebels. Arab and Muslims fighters should also stay out of Syria; this is the Syrian fight, not the misfits from all over the Arab world.

A much-weakened Syria is the best thing that can happen to neighboring Israel. A much destroyed country is a bonanza for Israel, a much divided Syria is a gift from heaven to Israel and ripe to conclude peace with Israel.

By not arming the Syrian rebels America, Europe and certain Arab countries are giving indirect support to Bashar’s criminal regime. Time to arm the Syrian rebels and let them finish this fight they did not start and did not chose and let them bring this bloody “spring” to an end.

No one including I are calling for the Americans or the French or the British to come to Syria and fight. Just give the poor Syrian bastards the right weapons to make the sky free of Bashar menacing air force and the anti-tank missiles to fry his soldiers. Should the West done so months back there will no 60,000 dead and the country will not be in ruins.

The Assad dynasty, criminal dictatorship and thieves never had the courage to stand up to Israel, even when Israel was kicking the hell out of the Syrian army in Lebanon. The Assad family and the Ba’athist regime were and are the best thing that happened to Israel and its northern borders. Not a single shot was fired since 73 and the Golan Height is booming with Israeli settlements, farms and ski resorts.

When governments send its army and air force to bomb towns and cities it is everybody’s business. When governments engage in daily massacres of own citizens it is everybody’s business.

When the Shah of Iran was killing his own people it was everybody’s business. When Hitler massacred the Jews in the concentration camps it is everybody’s business,

When Pol Pot and his regime killed over two million Cambodian it is everyone’s business. When Milosevic unleashed his Serbian thugs to massacre hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Bosnia it was and remains everyone’s business.

When the local police and sheriff unleashed their attack dogs and water canons on peaceful Black demonstrators in the South it was and is everyone’s business.

Even occupying courtiers like Israel or Japan or Germany when they deliberant targeted civilians under their occupation its everyone’s business. Too bad it was no ones business when Saddam gassed the Kurds in Halabja and the Reagan administration send non other than Donald Rumbsfeld bearing gifts to Saddam only few days after massacring tens of thousands of Kurds. And it was no ones business when Saddam unleashed his attack helicopters on the rebelling South killing tens of thousands only few days after the allies concluded a truce in Safwan.

The Syrian people are like all other people in the world entitled to freedom and liberty and have every right to take up arms against a totalitarian regime that oppressed them for generations, robs them of their wealth and dignity, jailing hundreds of thousands with thousands simply disappearing forever. All of this was done in the name of “Arabism” and “Arab nationalism” and “fighting and resisting Zionism” as Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and “Arab” nationalist tell us. They said the same thing about Saddam when he ruined Iraq as a favor to the Americans in his war against Iran.

There is simply no excuse by the Arabs, by Muslims, certainly by the Americans or the Europeans to allow this war against the Syrian people to go much longer.

Arabs “nationalists” were too angry protested loudly when Israel attacked Gaza and killed couple of hundreds yet they are silent as one of their own managed to kill over 60,000 and every day a hundred and two hundred are added to the list.

I do not blame the US or the West for their cowardly position on what is going on in Syrian, however I take a strong view about the position of Iran from all of this.

Iran of all countries, a country that rose against the Shah and his regime that called on all oppressed people to stand up for their rights and freedom is so silent. I guess to every rule there is an exception and as Israel is an American exception so is Syria an Iranian exception.

I very much doubt that the Syrian people subjected to decades of “secular “ ruthless dictatorship are ready to replace it with a “religious Talmudic” ruthless dictatorship of ‘fatwa’s” and Islamic caliphates. Otherwise all the lives and destruction are in vain.

I think if the likes of Mohamed Hassanaein Haikal had the courage to speak up then as they speak now, perhaps there will be no need for an Arab Spring or a New Skyes Picot.

Mr. Haikal no doubt an intelligent man and a committed Arab Nationalist failed to do the right thing and failed to speak up when he was within the “inner circles” of the late Gamal Abdul-Nasser. The man who lead the military coup in Egypt that toppled the monarchy and who failed miserably to set the stage for the “democratization” of the Arab World.

An Arab World with free elections, political parties free and independent of military regimes, accountability, transparency, economic and educational systems that failed at every turn and of course a state and people free of the dreadful “Mokhabat” that controlled the lives of people and kept the regimes in place. But for Nasser’s failures Mubarak will be unheard of and could never qualify to be president of Egypt, nor will Bashar or Hafiz, Saddam, or Ali Saleh or Bin Ali or Qaddafi will be heard of.

The late Nasser and his inner circles set the stage for incompetent, failed Arab regimes in Yemen, in Sudan, in Syria, in Iraq, in Libya certainly in Algeria with a military that failed at winning wars (except Algeria war of independence) and setting the stage for a bloody “Arab Spring” in Libya, in Syria and of course the millions of causalities in Iraq, not to mention the failed leadership of Arafat. One can understand the frustrations of Mr. Haikal and many so called “Arab Intellectuals and nationalist” because they were and are “irrelevant” to the Arab Spring and the emerging freedoms taking place now.

These days, the “Arab Spring” is coming under assault from all sides from “Arab Nationalists” who see in it as an “American-Zionist” conspiracy and a new way for the West to divide once again the Arab World as Mr. Haikal claims to “Islamist Fundamentalists” who are hijacking the Arab Spring.

Haikal: “What happening now is not a ‘spring’ but a new ‘Sykes Picot’ to divide the Arabs”.

Nasrallah: “What Yemen, Syria and the region are witnessing is part of a Zionist-American plan of fragmentation”

More surprisingly, the Syrian Arab Spring is coming under attack and assault by the likes of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah who sees the people uprising against a criminal regime in Syria as a “conspiracy” against the “Syrian State” and the Assad regime and its claimed role of “steadfastness and resistance” of course not against Israel but against democracy and reforms in Syria.

Both Mr. Haikal and Sheik Nasrallah failed to give credit to the hundreds of thousands if not millions who took to the streets in Yemen, in Egypt, in Libya, in Syrian, in Tunisia and in Syria, demanding freedom, liberty and accountability from corrupt dictatorial regimes that oppressed the people and ruined the nations economies while looting the country through nepotism, corruption, mismanagement using the “police state” as an instrument of perpetuating their rules.

Arab intellectuals and nationalists give more credit to an insignificant almost a non-entity like Bernard Henry Levy while discounting the roles of the thousands who gave up their lives so that dictators like Qaddafi, Ben Ali, Saleh and Mubarak are out of power. The statements of Haikal and Nasrallah are an insult added to injury.

Of course on the other hand the Arab Spring was not the making of the “Salafis” nor of the Muslim Brotherhood, but the making of the people with active support and leadership of a non-political media savvy young people who with their commitments, courage breaking the wall of fears and strong commitments to the democratic process and democracy made all that happens. The Salafis and the Brothers simply road the wave and collected the fruits and rewards while those young paid dearly with their lives and because they are not well organized and well funded are now marginalized.

But for the fact that criminal ruthless leaders like Qaddafi and now Assad failed to see and recognize the people’s demand for freedom and liberty after years of oppression decided to use the military to wage war against the people and the nation we will not see the kind of menacing militias that are the main threat posing clear and present danger to the Arab Spring specially in Libya.

No one can deny the role played by these militias as those within Libya and now Syria and the brave fight they put up against criminal regimes and army, and the sacrifice they paid with their lives. However all that does not and should not justify the way they are holding the nation and people hostage as is the case in Libya and we hope it will not be the case in Syria.

If the Arab Spring is to succeed in countries such as Libya, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia and Egypt then these “Islamist fundamentalists” must give up their weapons and arms as is the case in Libya and allow the people to exercise their hard won rights to freedoms, to free speech, to free associations without having these militias and “Salafis” enforcing their will and vision of an “Islamic State” through the power of the gun and through black mail and intimidations of citizenry in the streets, in the media, and their dismissal if not abrogation’s of hard won rights for women in countries such as Tunisia.

What the Arab Spring needs most to succeed is an open democratic process that does not exclude any one based on race, ethnic origin and faith. In order for the Arab Spring to succeed it needs strong enlightened and intellectual leadership that can shape the vision for the future, establish a modern nation state where the people are the source and only source of power and constitutional powers, not the Mullah or the Militias as a substitute for the “army” or of the “mokhabartat”.
Keeping in mind democracy is a work in progress and could not be achieved over night even among the most enlightened people and nations.

The French Revolution continued for over 3 years, with more than 40,000 casualties and with “liberal assemblies” competing and fighting with “right wing” monarchists. So please give the Arab Spring a chance to find its way forward and mature.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

I thought the original title “ The Failing Arabs” would be too offensive to a very proud people and nation. People who pride themselves with a rich history enriched by Islam and an Islam enriched by diverse cultures, civilizations, and faiths. The Arab world at one time was a unique and rich mosaic of cultures, faiths and civilizations and yes, success. Sadly all that disappeared. Read the rest of this entry »

By: Sami Jamil Jadallah

The United States never was on the side of the people of the Middle East and is the only party standing between the Palestinians and their freedom and liberation and always stood the side of criminal dictatorship as they imprisoned, tortured, suppressed freedom and democracy and looted the country. Read the rest of this entry »