Most Arabs do not actually make a real effort to rediscover this continent and to understand the common links between the Arab civilization and the native civilizations of the continent. This is something difficult to understand. Is it the intellectual and cultural colonization of the Arabs which prevents them from communicating with those who identify with their causes; or is it rather the lack of insight and vision at a time that the thing Arabs most urgently need is the right vision and the right decision at the right time?
Our hosts in South America talk to you about the Maya and Inca civilizations and how the Inca where the first to use stones in building, how their culture respected human life and human diversity regardless of race, religion or color. However, that civilization was eliminated by European settlers.
While touring South America, you realize that most of the information you receive comes through western lenses colored with Western purposes and policies drawn for you and for those who became victims before you in South America. You love the people and would want to learn more the secret of this coexistence between Africans, Indians, Arabs, Spaniards and Italians in one melting pot.
For a brief moment, you wish for this model to become global; but as soon as you return home, you realize that you are the victim of Western perceptions which decide war, peace, punishment, death and life wrapped up in a veneer of democracy, human rights, security and peace seeking. It might be an interesting coincidence that while all these ideas were occurring to me on my way back from that rising continent neglected by the Arabs, I watched the press conference held by US President Barak Obama and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu talked about the Arabs like any colonizer talking about the colonized. He ignored the existence of the Palestinian people and reduced them and their history and civilizations to being ‘Iranian agents’.
After watching, reading and analyzing, you understand that President Obama and his guest had planned to change the image of the relationship between them circulating in the media recently by stressing the warmth which prevailed in the meeting, the depth of the relationship and the strategic link between the United States and Israel. In this press conference, the threats to both countries were described as the same. President Obama portrayed Israel as the center of the region and all the Arabs surrounding it were ‘hostile neighbors’, which makes it incumbent on the United States to support this ‘democratic’ entity seeking security in the middle of a hostile environment. As to the Palestinians, he said: “I think it’s very important that the Palestinians not look for excuses for incitement, that they are not engaging in provocative language; that at the international level, they are maintaining a constructive tone, as opposed to looking for opportunities to embarrass Israel”.
This was the most prominent mention of the Palestinians in the press conference, whose right to freedom and salvation from Israeli occupation was manipulated to fix what was claimed to be a deteriorating relationship between the United States and Israel. As to solutions, hopes are pinned on proximity talks to lead to direct talks, and for talks to go on for years and years while Israel eats up the West bank and Jerusalem and builds settlements while headlines speak of ‘freezing’ settlements or for this ‘freeze’ to end in September, while the Silwan neighborhood has not seen any freezing. Settlers have continued to uproot the native population, destroy their houses and expel them.
About the Author: Professor Bouthaina Shaaban is Political and Media Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister of Expatriates.
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