I do not know why I am feeling so hesitant to write this post , lately I am feeling that the freedom I used to enjoy in my blog is questioned, yes it is not censored, but the mixed responses on the post of taking off the veil alerted me that I should not wait for tolerant feedbacks only from all my readers. I think that this post as well might or might not raise some questions .
The issue I want to raise is the feedback of the Arabs to certain uprisings taking place now. I think that the human history is witnessing a new phase and it started with an act of rebellion by Bou Azizi and it ended up into massive demonstrations all over the Middle East. And these revolutions varied in the level of the success, Tunisia and Egypt toppled the head of the state and still struggling with the rest of the system, Yemen stooped in a mid point where nothing is clear, Bahrain revolution faded because of the unethical intervention of the Gulf Cooperation Council, or basically the Saudi Arabia and Libya and Syria are facing bloody attacks on civilians from the so called national army .
Throughout these revolutions many facts were proved, like there is no more supremacy of the states of the media and in addition to that the citizen media played a crucial role in informing and documenting the revolutions, the vocal presence of women and youth and the most important factor in my view was the global support for the cause of the revolution from all over the world regardless the political stances and the cultural backgrounds
I remember how I was happy to get solidarity calls and emails from all over the world and in the other hand I was happy to see the Spanish protesters using a banner saying: this is Tahrir square , or walk like an Egyptians, I had this feeling again with the Greek protests.
However in a third case which is the Israeli protests had completely different echo in the Arab world, and hereby I am building my opinion on my observations on the social media , mainly FaceBook and Twitter.
The reaction was creating pages like "supporting the revolution of the sons of the dogs " and creating a hash tag on Twitter with the same name . I totally understand the reasons behind these reactions, this is a product of years of war and bloodshed and sadly it is still ongoing conflict . however I did not understand how Arabs ignore the point that such protests might be beneficial for their interests, if it brought to power a government willing to change the situation in the Middle East issue. If a failed prime minister like Bibi is toppled, a "better" peace partner might show off.
I know that Arabs will never consider Israelis friends , however the human and strategic relations have a lot of shades of the grey color. Should Arabs start searching for persons believing on similar principles in the other bank of the river , I am just wondering .
5 comments:
Thank you for this entry, you are not the first to mention this hashtag and reaction from the Arab world. The previous blogger was appalled at what she saw as racism to the Israelis as jews, which wasn't the case.
I think it is important to make the distinction between Arab world politics and Israeli politics because they are in no way similar.
The world regimes were propped up after the force of colonization were forced out. They were secular military brutal dictatorships that in most cases followed agendas running against the interest of their peoples. The Arab spring is of course a miraculous change after decades or humiliation and fear.
Israel on the other hand, is a colonizing power. Their existence means the ethnic cleansing of historical palestine. Their policies and attitudes have been an affront to Muslims, Arabs and Humans for the past 90 years almost. Though they did operate on a kind of racially selective democracy where elections actually worked.
The Israeli war and espionage machines have rarely if ever been used on Palestinians. There is little danger of IDF conducting mass arrest and torture of israeli jews like what is happening to the arabs in Syria, Libya, Bahrain etc...
Allahu A3lam. that's my opinion.
Thank you again.
Nasser,
i know that i am not the only one who tackled this issue, it is controversial issue in deed.
well thank you for the analysis, and i agree with you to a great extent, however if we are foresee the near future based on the latest news, an Israeli court ordered evacuation of a settlement recently , i do not know to what extent that show a different pattern, but it is something to be noticed.
finally i agree with that if the Israeli seek their security through their war machine, that will be a fool stop to any peace project
thanks for passing by
Hi, On a superficial level it certainly seems that j14 has no similarity to the Arab spring. But we are essentially protesting the same thing, we have no control over our future, Our civilian and democratic rights are only imagined, they are not real. It's true, no one will shoot us if we say something, but we can only talk... The so called "democratic״ government has no interest in serving the people, just the financial elite, and the fundamentalist pressure groups. Arabs yearn for democracy, so are we.. Democracy is failing all over the world, and is taken hostage by the super rich.
I know it all sounds so hypocritical when we talk about social justice while doing such atrocities to the Palestinians, but there is no doubt that if j14 bears any fruits, and the sane Israeli majority regains control, the end of the occupation will soon follow.
And one last thing, it is really sad to read that you know Arabs will never be friends with Israelis.. bloodier and longer conflicts have been resolved and totally forgotten.. We are all human beings, we lough, cry, love.. We are not that different.
amitaviv
i agree with ur perception, and i do not want to romanticize or over estimate #j14, but what i think is as follow , that if there is governments in the Middle East truly representing its people, beliving in the same common ground and the same values, may be we will witness a change.
@amitaviv Thank you for your comment. At times like this it's incredibly essential to use the power of internet connectivity for "good".
It makes me happy to know that some Israelis think like this. From the media and other sources it was sounding like all Israelis had the same genocidal tendencies.
Of curse Arabs want piece. War is not a natural state of affairs and it should not be considered an option. However Palestine (and especially Jerusalem) is a pivotal issue. If you're telling me that the potential of j14 is to change the dominant status quo of the last 90 years to have forge some peace treaties, disband settlements and open crossings then that would be amazing.
We can all hope and dream, can't we...
@Fatma Emam I read your piece about taking off the hijab, mui interesting.
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