From the ‘Battle of Dignity’ to the shield of shame: How Jordan has fallen

APR 16, 2024

Source

Amman’s collaboration with Tel Aviv peaked last Saturday with its shocking defense of Israeli territory from Iranian drones and missiles, a move that may prove fateful for the future of the Hashemite Kingdom.

(Photo Credit: The Cradle)

Khalil Harb

The most dangerous development during Iran’s massive 13 April retaliatory strike against Israel last weekend was the defensive military alliance – comprising the US, Britain, Jordan, and France – that coalesced to defend the occupation state.

Jordan has jumped to Israel’s full defense at a time when Arabs have never been more collectively outraged by its crimes.

Particularly notable was Jordan’s role in thwarting Iran’s incoming drones and missiles. The Hashemite Kingdom was the only Arab or Muslim state to act as Israel’s “firewall,” providing direct military protection for Tel Aviv within a multilateral, regional military framework.

Despite Amman’s long-standing pro-Israel stance, this sudden reassertion of its position is indicative of some broader shifts in military strategies across West Asia. 

Patterns and calculations of confrontations across West Asia will be readjusted to adapt to this new equation and others that have emerged in the region as alliances shift to and away from the west. 

That includes the Axis of Resistance, which will likely reassess the expected range of responses in a future confrontation, given that western anti-missile capabilities are well spread throughout strategic locations – strategic sites from the Ain al-Assad base in Anbar, Iraq, to the Al-Tanf base at the Syrian–Jordanian–Iraqi border and from the Mashabim base in the Negev desert to the King Faisal base in northwestern Jordan.

Strategic shifts

Over the years, the Jordanian government has dramatically shrunk its commitments to the Palestinian cause and “Arabism.” 

This can be traced from its 1968 “Battle of Dignity” against Israel to 5 November, when King Abdullah II boasted of his country’s “success” in airdropping medical aid to the Jordanian field hospital in the Gaza Strip, and now, quite stunningly, employing its air force to protect Israel’s security from retaliatory Iranian strikes. 

This shift is not merely a reactionary measure but the culmination of years of extensive security and military coordination with the occupation state, as highlighted by a Jordanian opposition activist speaking to The Cradle. This deep-seated integration into anti-missile and drone operations reflects a strategic evolution rather than a spontaneous response.

Eyewitness reports from multiple sources to The Cradle describe the audible presence of warplanes over the Amman region, followed by the sound of explosions hours later when overhead projectiles were intercepted and downed. 

One Jordanian witness relays that the suburb of Marj al-Hamam saw the most interceptions against Iranian drones and missiles, with debris reported across the area.

Jordanian writer and journalist Rania Jabari informs The Cradle that “citizens in Jordan have felt jammed on the GPS for about two weeks,” that is, since after the Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus. 

Amid rising concerns about a swift Iranian counterattack through drone incursions, Israel reportedly initiated GPS jamming operations across several regional countries, including Jordan. 

Jabari suggests that this electronic interference might have precipitated the Jordanian Air Force’s readiness to intercept any unauthorized aerial objects in its airspace, given the potential risks to national security from mistakenly guiding Iranian drones into Jordanian territory.

However, the Jordanian opposition activist casts doubt on the capability of Jordan’s Air Force – equipped with only about 60 older F-16 and F-5 aircraft – to single-handedly manage the response against hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles destined for Israel.

Regional repercussions 

Supporting these suspicions, Israeli Channel 12 reported that Israeli fighter jets had intercepted drones launched by Iran in the airspace of Jordan and Syria. 

The day after the Iranian Operation True Promise, the Jordanian government issued a vague statement, only saying that “some unidentified flying objects that entered our airspace last night were dealt with and intercepted to prevent endangering the safety of our citizens and inhabited areas.”

The statement conspicuously omitted any mention of the scale of involvement of the Israeli Air Force or the nature and role of US fighter jets participating in the operation.

Given the limitations of Jordan’s aerial fleet and the extensive geographic area these planes need to cover – a “firewall” stretching approximately 1,500 kilometers from western Iran to the occupied territories of Palestine – the involvement of international forces seems credible. 

Additionally, Iraqi sources inform The Cradle that coalition forces had shot down about 30 drones and missiles over Iraq, with explosions heard in regions like Erbil, Najaf, Wasit, and Anbar. This indicates that a significant number of the drones and missiles traversed Jordanian skies, where they were intercepted before reaching their intended targets in Israel.

The role of the Jordanian Air Force is so significant that the Iranian Mehr news agency quoted an Iranian military source as saying, “Iran will monitor Jordanian movements, and if they cooperate with Israel, Jordan will be our next target.”

The source is said to have “warned Jordan and other countries in the region before the start of the attack against cooperating with the occupying entity.”

This statement seems to have aroused the ire of the Jordanian government. On Sunday, authorities summoned the Iranian ambassador in Amman to warn against Tehran’s “questioning of Jordan’s position.”

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi also issued a statement saying that his government would “intercept any drone or missile that breaches our airspace, whether Iranian or Israeli.” 

However, the Jordanian oppositionist questions the accuracy of Safadi’s statement, especially about his country’s readiness to confront a similar threat coming from Tel Aviv, noting numerous occasions when Israeli fighter jets infiltrated Jordanian airspace to carry out raids on Syria. 

A history of betraying Palestine  

Jordan’s historical antagonism towards Palestinian resistance dates back to the “Black September” massacres of 1970, aimed at expelling the PLO from the country – allegedly with the support of former King Hussein bin Talal, who reportedly received backing from Israel and the US.

During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel’s Air Force shot down and destroyed dozens of Jordanian aircraft. Following the 1994 Amman–Tel Aviv peace agreement, the two states have struck multiple defense deals, including Israel supplying Jordan with F-16 jets and Cobra helicopters.

Since the 1970s, when Israel supported Jordan during the Palestinian revolt against King Hussein, the two air forces have not engaged in combat. Israeli belligerence persists despite this. On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, when asked about potential opposition from the Jordanian Air Force should Israel strike Iraq, then-retired Air Force Commander Avihu Ben-Nun boldly stated, “There would be no more Jordanian Air Force.”

It is very likely, moreover, that the western militaries involved in Israel’s defense last weekend utilized Jordanian bases. For example, US troops are stationed at the Mashabim air base in the Negev desert, supporting operations like the Iron Dome system. 

Similarly, UK and French military forces are present at multiple strategic locations within Jordan, including the King Faisal Air Base in Al-Jafr and the Humaymah base near Aqaba, where they play roles in regional defense and run intelligence operations.

There are also French troops at King Faisal Air Base, known as Al-Ruwaished Base, which is close to Al-Tanf. From this base, activities involving espionage operations in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran are carried out through a state-of-the-art reconnaissance center, and its airport is believed to be used by both Israeli and US drones. 

Sacrificing Jordan’s stability for Israel’s security 

But Jordan’s relations and collaboration with Tel Aviv remain deeply unpopular among the country’s citizenry, with protestors amassing for weeks near the Israeli embassy in Amman – many of them subsequently subjected to repression and tight security restrictions by Jordanian authorities. 

Adding to the pressure on Amman, the Iraqi resistance faction, Kataib Hezbollah, announced earlier this month its readiness to arm “12,000 fighters with light and medium weapons, anti-armor launchers, tactical missiles, millions of bullets and tons of explosives, so that we can be united to defend our Palestinian brothers,” adding that it would seek to “cut off the [Jordan] land route that reaches the Zionist entity.”

By participating in the interception of Iranian drones, Jordan has made a significant contribution to alleviating some pressure off Israel, but one that comes with a much more significant domestic consequence for the stability of the kingdom. 

Will Amman’s blatant alignment with Tel Aviv in this context prove to be politically detrimental for its monarch? In years to come, this decision may be viewed as a strategic error of gargantuan proportions. For now, Jordan’s political future and its position in regional politics remain uncertain – certainly as Tel Aviv and Tehran gear up for further confrontations. 

King Abdallah can jump into the fray as he did last weekend and suffer through further waves of domestic and Arab outrage, or he can resolve to stay neutral and quiet – as many larger, more powerful neighbors chose to do – and let Iranians and Israelis adversaries fight their own battles.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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USA: The most hated country in the world

October 25, 2023 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

(illustration by Zaynab El-Hajj for Al Mayadeen)

By dismantling the moral veneer of Zionism, the US manifested that it now holds the reins of decision-making.

By Janna Kadri

October 17, 2023. A day that will eternally etch as the most somber chapter in human history. The aggression on al-Ahli Hospital has exposed a never-seen-before degree of malevolence on the part of the Israeli regime. On October 17, a medical establishment meant to be a sanctuary for the ill, the wounded, and the displaced was blown off with the utmost brutality, extinguishing the lives of almost 500 beating hearts with just one single rocket. The perpetrators of this massacre swiftly emerged on social media, only to later erase their digital traces. After the fact, Biden portrayed the attack as a result of Palestinians’ actions. One may ponder, how can anyone on earth be so evil? And as world leaders remain silent in the face of such an atrocity, one can’t help but wonder: has the world gone mad?

“Israel” ceased to exist

The moment the genocide was sparked, “Israel” had already ceased to exist. As a regime that struggled to maintain its credibility on the world stage, it no longer retains any semblance of legitimacy. Carrying out a massacre of such magnitude would not only spell disaster for the Israeli working class, but it also expose the extent to which Western morals and values are fragile. 

The ruling settler classes have historically expanded their capacity for accumulation via means of expropriation and depopulation. However, in this specific instance, they no longer appear to wield this power. By dismantling the moral veneer of Zionism, the US manifested that it now holds the reins of decision-making. This is evidenced by the fact that the war in Gaza is not primarily aimed at exerting psychological pressure on Hamas fighters but rather at sending a clear message of war to Iran.

Read more: At least 10 hospitals in Gaza out of service due to Israeli bombing

Why Iran?

The Iranian revolution has faced continuous sanctions since its inception, leading to economic challenges and a strong sense of self-reliance and resentment towards the West. Over the years, the Iranian government has gained wide popular support but the true achievement of the revolution lies in Iran’s autonomy, which challenges imperialism. Iran has also shown a willingness to reform on social issues, particularly concerning women’s rights, and its stability can lead to social progress. 

For quite some time now, the US has been itching to wage a war against Iran. Since the start of the genocide, Iran has issued several warnings to the regime that it would be compelled to intervene should the war on Gaza prolong. However, in its attempt to incite a response, the US failed to anticipate that Iran would refrain from launching a military response. Consequently, the US shot itself in the foot by revealing on the world stage the extent of its actions’ unparalleled brutality and injustice. But so far, it seems that the US remains oblivious to the magnitude of the self-inflicted damage.

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Rising with the people of the West Bank the refugee camps, diaspora, and allies in Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Morocco and globally erupt in anti-zionist protest in condemnation of the American-zionist massacre carried out at Al-Maamadani hospital in #Gaza pic.twitter.com/JAoLtEIObO— UBBE AHMERDSON (@OurVisionariess) October 18, 2023

Understanding Israeli aggressions

The regime has a history of perpetrating similar acts of atrocity, with a pattern of constant disregard for human rights and international law. We have seen similar episodes in the Qana massacre in 1996 when the IOF bombed a UNIFIL shelter housing women, children, and UN staffers in southern Lebanon. Syria is neither a stranger to Israeli crimes as it has over the years been the target of multiple aggressions via airstrikes. Despite constant appeals to put a halt to Israeli aggressions, no concrete steps were ever taken to act in defense of international law. 

When the regime was first conceived under Resolution 181, its primary objective was to establish a Western foothold in the Arab region. At that time, the pan-Arab movement posed a substantial threat to Western interests and was gaining momentum throughout the region. Through the defeat of pan-Arabism, “Israel” effectively isolated the Arab masses from the fallout of development in the productive forces. The effort was one where the US and several EU countries had joined forces to arm the Zionists, and thus, contrary to Zionist claims, the regime’s actions against Arab states were never primarily driven by existential threats but rather served to act on the behest of imperialism. 

Read more: Al-Aqsa Flood looming over “Israel”; settlers in tents and schools

But this time, the West no longer has the capacity to exonerate “Israel’s” war crimes. The warning signs were evidenced by the fact that the regime had been embroiled in political upheaval over the past ten months. Netanyahu’s extremist cabinet and the proposed judicial overhaul plan had weakened the liberal basis of the Zionist regime which would have opted for a more strategic approach to negotiate superficial concessions with the Palestinians and to ensure the regime’s credibility and durability.

Moral decay

Anti-US sentiment initially pervaded countries like Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen which endured the harshest consequences of US intervention and policies. Anti-US sentiment has also been steadily growing over the past decade throughout the Gulf region, including by key allies like Saudi Arabia, which have sought to establish greater autonomy in matters of national defense. But since the genocide began, this sentiment has grown immensely out of proportion among the Arab masses. Videos circulated all across social media of protesters attacking US embassies, as well as resistance groups resorting to attack military posts and warships. Likewise, numerous protests erupted across the West, but the silence of Western leaders implies a desire for more massacres to occur.

Western amorality is explained by the fact that the commodification of labor under capitalism not only objectifies labor but also establishes the moral framework for how capital treats human resources. Eurocentric perspectives tend to focus on partial facts as absolute truths, emphasizing class-desirable information to guide moral actions. The rejection of the categorical imperative, due to its lack of alignment with ruling-class interests, leads to various shortcuts and eclectic approaches to ethics, which erode the universality of moral conduct. In some cases, morality is reduced to a form of lifeboat ethics, justifying actions like shooting refugees at sea to protect Europe or provide benefits to the majority white population. This perspective is also reflected in the justifications provided by US presidents for war, where the focus is on protecting a way of life that perpetuates profit rates and imperialist exploitation, rather than safeguarding life itself. In this particular context, the US capitalizes immensely through the dehumanization of both Palestinians and Jews. 

Panic begets panic

There was a time when the US had the ability to implement wars similar to those in Libya and Iraq. But the changing global balance of forces had no longer allowed for such scenarios to be repeated. With the rise of China and Russia on the global stage, there seemed less of a free hand to engage in direct military intervention. Russia forged alliances with Iran and the DPRK, de-dollarized its own economy, and gained new territory by defying NATO’s expansion to the East. China, on the other hand, supports the sovereignty of developing states and recognizes the national rights of the Palestinian people in Al-Quds, which poses a challenge to “Israel”, seen as a spearhead of US-led imperialism. The US felt it could not keep up with China as it offered a more compelling offer for peace: While the US promoted a version of peace based on the unchallenged supremacy of US military, China promoted peace via trade and development projects.

For the US to get directly involved through the monstruous dispatch of arms and carriers speaks volumes about the deteriorating state of US influence in the Arab region. With an awareness that attempts to drive a wedge between China and Russia had failed, the US is taking actions that continue to erode its global reputation. It brings to mind the adage that “panic begets panic,” that is, the US is increasingly losing its strategic composure on the international stage and resorting to a full-scale destruction of anything in sight amid despair to reaffirm dominance.

Could this be cause for concern? Quite so, since the reconfiguration of power structures could potentially lead to a nuclear conflict.

Read more: Biden holds talks with West amid mixed reports of a ground invasion

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Operation Al Aqsa Flood

“The Idea of Palestine Hounds Zionists.” Edward Said

September 20, 2023

Global Research,

By Edward W. Said and Nashwa Bawab

In These Times 18 September 2023

Region: Middle East & North Africa

Theme: History, Law and Justice

In-depth Report: PALESTINE

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*** 

In September of 1982, Edward Said analyzed the Zionist invasion of Lebanon, calling for justice for Palestinians. Days later, the right wing Lebanese Phalangist militia, accompanied by Israel, embarked on a brutal massacre at the Shatila refugee camp.

Forty-one years ago, in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War, Israeli Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon and besieged Beirut, forcing the Palestine Liberation Organization into Tunisia. With much foresight, Edward Said wrote a piece in September 1982, stating: ​

“What matters about Palestine is what has always prevented Israel from converting its military superiority into lasting political gains: that invincible Palestinian desire to keep hold of what is right and to reject what is wrong.”

Image: “Robin Moyer, USA, Black Star for Time. Beirut, Lebanon, 18 September 1982. Aftermath of massacre of Palestinians directed by Lebanese Forces with the complicity of senior members of the Israeli Cabinet and Defence Forces and conducted by Christian Phalangists and members of the South Lebanon Army in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.” “Moyer saw flares burst above the camps, and went there to discover piles of bodies – brutally shot. He photographed for hours surrounded by the smell of death, while soldiers joked around. The killers were never brought to justice.” (Licensed under Fair Use)

Just a few days after this piece by Said was published by In These Times, the right wing Lebanese Phalangist militia, accompanied by Israel, entered the Shatila refugee camp and the adjacent Sabra neighborhood, closed off exits and went on a two day killing campaign. The Sabra and Shatila Massacre occurred between September 16 and 18 and ended with between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese men, women and children dead. This became known as one of the most horrific massacres of the Lebanese Civil War.

Today, as Israel continues its occupation of Palestine in new and brutal ways, it also continues fighting skirmishes along the southern border of Lebanon.

In 1982, Edward Said wrote:

With thousands of Israeli troops ravaging Lebanon, with literally uncountable civilian casualties caused by terror bombing, with a political campaign designed expressly to dehumanize the Palestinians (two-legged beasts, terrorists, as Begin and his minions call them) in order to kill them more easily— with all this and worse, it may now seem inappropriate to reflect on the idea of Palestine. Certainly the Philip Habib mission allowed for no such reflection, and this, like American policy itself, takes the sense out of the Middle East.

Unlike Europe, where at least there is a historical sense of the human and political meaning of the struggle for Palestine by Palestinians, the American scene is rife either with on-the-spot reductive reporting of the kind that encourages Israeli apologists to say the media lied about the war’s horrendous scope, or with endlessly dreary commentary about questions, formulated by U.S. policymakers, that skirt the issues and confine the Palestinian problem to evacuation from Beirut.

Yet in both Europe and America, the immediate drama of the Palestinian-Lebanese tragedy threatens entirely to overwhelm thought. And even though expressions of outrage, displays of attitude and pratings about ​“new political opportunities” are understandable, one must not lose sight of the ideas and values embodied in the awful scenes unfolding before us. There are three important aspects of the idea of Palestine.

First, the idea of Palestine — represented by every one of the four million Palestinians — has driven the Israeli military machine to its furious assaults on Lebanon and elsewhere. There is a simple, irreducible authenticity in the simple existence of Palestinians who speak of Palestine as their homeland, an authenticity with which Zionists have been unable to deal except by massive negation and denial. Security, peace or an end to terrorism are not the root issue, but rather the assertion by every Palestinian, militant or not, that he or she was displaced, dispossessed, dispersed by Israel when it appeared in 1948. Leaving aside Begin, Sharon and Eytan, whose outrages upon logic and life have provoked respected Israelis like Professor Yehoshua Leibowitz to speak of ​“Judeo-Nazism,” Israeli resourcefulness has always faltered. when it came to native Palestinians. Either they were ignored, or they were to be punished. For once you create a polity based, so far as Palestinians are concerned, on the advantages of being a Jew and the equal and opposite disadvantages of being a non-Jew, the collective enterprise will inevitably be called into question by the non-Jews (the Palestinians) who must live the disadvantages. The more they have done so, the more Zionists have collectively denied them. This pattern has, obviously enough, increased the level of Palestinian resistance.

The idea of Palestine—represented by every one of the four million Palestinians—has driven the Israeli military machine to its furious assaults on Lebanon and elsewhere.

Zionist Project Has Always Been Colonisation and Exclusion of Indigenous Palestinians

Israeli’s present policies are all designed to destroy the Palestinian will to national self-determination by destroying the basis for an independent Palestine. The word Palestine is forbidden on the Occupied Territories, as are any institutions expressing Palestinian nationalism — schools, universities, books, newspapers, municipal councils. Above all, it is the idea of Palestine as it has been formulated, bumblingly and perhaps confusedly by Palestinians as an idea of coeval existence in the same world now ruled by Zionists, that Israel seems to have committed its national energies to fighting. No opening articulated by the PLO, or for that matter by Zionist doves, seems unworthy of rejection, attack, abuse.

How starkly it has come down to the truth that hardline Zionists, with their purblind Western apologists in tow, stake Israel’s existence on the actual liquidation of any trace of Palestinian life. How utterly despicable is Begin’s demagoguery when it posited either Palestine or Treblinka while his armies were bombing refugee civilians without mercy a few miles away, and incarcerating many thousands of their men in virtual concentration camps, denied prisoner of war status.

Yet Israeli supporters like Conor Cruise O’Brien still rant on about the virtues of ​“peace in Galilee,” ignoring the truth. For the past year alone there have been more than 7,000 Israeli violations of Lebanese air-space, territorial waters, land boundaries, each recorded by United Nations Truce Observers. Compared to one Israeli casualty during the three months prior to the invasion, Israel killed several hundred Palestinians and Lebanese in air strikes and border raids, and maintained a cashiered Lebanese officer in an enclave inside Lebanon. This is the state that now says it is for a free and independent Lebanon, without at the same time concealing that it wants Lebanon ruled by its Phalangist allies. Far from the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov being a real reason for the invasion, Israeli officials — Begin, Shamir, Sharon, Arens, Eytan — have repeatedly stated their intention to raid Lebanon. It has always been a question of ​“when” not of ​“whether.” As for the gravity of the supposed PLO ability to destroy Israel, so gullibly and piously reported by the tearful O’Brien, that was never taken seriously by ruling Israelis. The war’s military results have disproved it completely, although now Begin’s propaganda mills are grinding out a new confection, that Israel forestalled a Soviet takeover of the Middle East. The main point has always been Israel’s unremitting war on the very concept of Palestinian nationalism, so that the aggression on Lebanon was a required extension of colonial practices on the West Bank and Gaza. Menahem Milson has been saying exactly that for well over a year.

The last remnant of Arabism.

Second, the idea of Palestine today is the last credible and actual component of Arabism. Divided as it has rarely been before, the Arab world presents a spectacle provoking laughter and tears in equal measure. Vast wealth and potential power for good are squandered. Internecine quarrels take an unseemly toll in lives as well as resources. The greedy corruption of alienated, incompetent regimes have turned most of the Arab world into something closely resembling a prison. Along with the abrogation of democracy, the regimes justify their authoritarianism in the name of national security and of Arabism. Religious fundamentalism has been bred in direct response both to the regimes’ tacit complicity with the enemies they profess to be fighting and to the Arab world’s directionless drift. When creativity or talent appears it is routinely, and officially, silenced. Only cults of the ruler, the party, and the regime are given unlimited headway. And still the rhetoric of Arabism pours forth.

At its focal point is Palestine. Yet, as recent research has shown, it has always been popular pressure on indifferent rulers that brought them round to the Palestinian cause. This was the case in the Gulf during the 1936 Palestine General Strike when the first financial aid to the Palestinian Arabs was sent, and the pattern has continued since. Plainly, however, rulers have gotten the better of their people, since during the darkest days of the Israeli siege of Beirut all that the Arab states could muster was some pleading at the American court, and ineffective pleading at that. The question is why, and why is the question of Palestine relevant to all this?

Palestinian stand in Lebanon and elsewhere incarnates opposition (indeed, the only consistent opposition) to Israeli designs on the Arab world.

For one, the presence of a body of committed, politicized Palestinian fighters organically related to their community directly impugns every inactive Arab army and party. Yasser Arafat is on the front lines with his people, not in a palace; he walks the streets as unprotected as anyone else. His enemy is the common enemy and he fights it directly, instead of resorting to public rantings expressing enmity, even as private accommodations are made with the status quo. Can it be lost on any Arab that while 500,000 Arab troops, 900 Arab planes, 3,000 Arab tanks and three Arab countries could not withstand Israeli might for more than six days in 1967, the PLO has done so for eight weeks with scarcely 100 antiquated tanks and no air force at all?

For another, the Palestinian stand in Lebanon and elsewhere incarnates opposition (indeed, the only consistent opposition) to Israeli designs on the Arab world. Consider that for at least 50 years the Zionist vision of the region has narrowed inexorably to a ghetto state on the one hand and, on the other, an Arab world kept in a state of permanent unrest. According to a former chief of Israeli intelligence, the campaign in Lebanon wouldn’t have been possible without the safeguard of a neutralized Egypt. Israeli efforts to destabilize Lebanon have been in place since the middle ​’50s, even down to the details of a Maronite major in South Lebanon acting as an Israeli surrogate: the Sharret diaries are irrefutable evidence of this. Gen. Sharon has been open about his plans. Last December he declared that Israeli ​“strategic” interests now included the whole of the adjacent Arab world, plus Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, North Africa and Zimbabwe. Jordan he has unilaterally decided is to be Palestinian, and in addition his government has bombed Iraq, annexed the Golan Heights, penetrated Saudi land, sea and air space, to say nothing of destroying Lebanon in order to make it ​“Christian.“

Against all this, the Arab states have nothing to say, and have done less. The Palestinians are the only force actually resisting Israel in the Middle East. In this they immediately enact the ritual incantation of Arab nationalism — that imperialism must be opposed. Only the Palestinians do it because the abiding idea of Palestine, which fuels their stubbornness, has given them the courage to do so.

Third, because the idea of Palestine is grounded in the life of every Palestinian, and because it represents the only direct Arab effort against an expansionist Israel, it is also a kind of wedge opening up the discrepancy between Israel as it has appeared internationally and as it is in fact. Moral, democratic, unusual, special: These were the words baptizing Israel’s creation in 1948. Its claims on the West because of European guilt over anti-Semitism continue, although almost everywhere else Israel is synonymous with ruthlessness, cruelty and oppression. The fact that no less than 24 beleaguered West Bank and Gaza mayors signed a declaration denouncing Israel’s war on Lebanon and expressing unqualified support for the PLO is, despite Milson’s theories, something to be noted for its own sake in the annals of settler-colonialism.

Who are the Palestinians if not the functional equivalent of Israel’s blacks, or red Indians? Why, if not because of its attitude toward the Palestinians, does Israel herd together naturally with South Africa, every fourth-rate Latin American junta, the entire American right wing, from Jerry Falwell to Irving Kristol to Ronald Reagan?

As for liberals who preach support for Solidarity and tutelage for Palestinians, or those who go on sanctimoniously about terrorism and are silent when it comes to Israel’s almost apocalyptic state terrorism, they are shown up for the moral cowards and liars they are because Palestinians can be seen dying on the TV screen every night.

The idea of Palestine living in all Palestinians is not just a matter of land, water and a flag. They are important, but not the only thing. What matters about Palestine is what has always prevented Israel from converting its military superiority into lasting political gains: that invincible Palestinian desire to keep hold of what is right and to reject what is wrong. By most standards, the Palestinians are a modestly endowed people, although a people possessed by what is in the strict sense a secular ideal. They want justice, but not abstract justice. Rather, they want something that can be lived by them collectively in forms that can still be called just. In support of this, they have offered no metaphysical rationale, no divinely ordained trans-historical scheme. For them the idea of Palestine is adequate to their real memory, their actual present and their minimal requirements for the future. This is the idea’s power, which even the Lebanese conflagration will not diminish.

*

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Edward W. Said was Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University

Nashwa Bawab is Assistant Editor at In These Times. She is an organizer and reporter with bylines in The Intercept, Electronic Intifada, Texas Monthly, The Texas Observer and more. 

Featured image: Memorial in Sabra, South Beirut (Licensed under CC BY 3.0)

The original source of this article is In These Times

Copyright © Edward W. Said and Nashwa Bawab, In These Times, 2023

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The Future of Arab Christians: One path, one destiny

July 7, 2023

Source: Al Mayadeen English

Arab Christian face a common existential threat that can only be overcome through unity amongst themselves and with their counterparts across the lands under the umbrella of a single collective identity.

By Myriam Charabaty

The destiny of all ethnic and religious groups in the Arab world, in their multitude, is intertwined, making it only possible for Arab Christians to survive the current existential threat by taking up their responsibilities as an integral component of the historical and unifying collective identity, which is made up of the frameworks of the spiritual and social values which Arabism overshadows.

“Will there still be Arab Christians in the next 50 years?” This question has been brought to the forefront on several occasions in the past decade, whether directly or indirectly. However, it was not until 2022 and 2023 that this question was put before the leaders of the Church in the Middle East. It comes as no surprise that the continued presence of Christians in the Middle East is integral to the historical and unifying collective identity [whose social fabric encompasses a multitude of diverse faiths, cultures, and ethnicities] that is made up of the frameworks of the spiritual and social values which Arabism overshadows, and must be addressed thoroughly and swiftly. 

Understanding the social fabric of Arab identity

Over the past century and a decade, the region currently known as the Middle East [whose name reflects a geolocation vis-à-vis Europe, and thus becomes inherently entrenched in Eurocentric misconceptions] has been divided into “spheres of influence” by Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Despite the deep-rooted hatred of most Christians toward the Ottoman Empire, which is mostly grounded in the final century of a 400-year-old empire, it must be clarified that throughout Ottoman rule, at least until the empire was weakened in the 1800s, multiple sects have had their churches preserved under the empire.

It is important to note that the Crusades, which happened much earlier, were actually a greater threat to the region that was later divided into spheres of influence between the French and the British. This is mostly because Latinization, as explained in my previous writings, had threatened a multitude of Christian denominations that were indigenous to the land given that any Christian church that does not follow the Latin rite was condemned as heretic.

While a debate of history is not the topic, it serves to remind us that at the core of the identity of Arab Christians has been their coexistence in parallel to other ethnicities, which in turn coexist within the larger Arab national identity. It also underscores that the same religion could extend across a number of ethnicities. For example, Assyrian and Coptic Christians, both of which are part of the Arab national identity, consist of an ethnicity that adopted a Christian religion. In another example, the Kurdish people, an ethnic group that is also a constituent of the Arab national identity, comprises Sunni, Shia and Alawites, Christians, and Zoroastrians.

Arab Christians beyond borders

Since its inception, Lebanon has been dubbed the protector of Arab Christians, however, Arab Christians have never been limited to the Lebanese border. While much can be explained by drawing from a century and a decade of a policy of divide and conquer launched by the West, today, the existential crisis faced by Arab Christians requires a holistic response rather than preoccupation with secondary disputes. Humbleness must be at the core of any solution as the Christians of the Arab world suffer a great deal, and mere rhetoric will not alleviate their pain.

Christians across the Arab world must unite under the banner of Arab Christianity as they suffer the same existential threat, as the invasion of Iraq, the war on Syria, and the occupation of Palestine have altogether targeted Christians of all denominations and ethnicities. The same applies to Egypt and Jordan. While many would like to blame Islam for the slaughter and immigration of Christians, this Western-led heresy must be silenced, for all Arabs face the same destiny if they do not unite. 

Read more: Liberation movements in a historical echo: Latin America to West Asia

In Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, [These countries are merely examples given their recent histories] Muslims have time and time again fought alongside Christians for the war was never against a denomination but rather against a larger national identity that once emerged will threaten large-scale economic gains achieved by the West, in the Middle East, throughout the past century and decade.

In Jenin, Palestine, a now majority Muslim city, where Israelis have time and time again attempted to falsely depict Palestinians as not only Muslims that threaten the existence of other religious groups, but also as savages, the fourth oldest church in the world still stands: the Burqin Church of the Greek Orthodox church. This is to show that Islam, in and by itself, has not been a threat to Christians, for the constituents of the Arab national identity have historically established mechanisms of coexistence that had proven successful until their fragmentation through colonization and imperialism.

Also in Jenin, there is a Latin Parish that has also long been protected by the people of Jenin. However, yesterday, the church suffered at the hands of the Israeli occupation Forces who targeted and damaged it. While circumstantial at best, the incident serves to show, once again, that Christians are threatened by the West and Western-supported entities. With that in mind, it would be good to turn to the statements made at some of the latest synods discussing the issue of Christian existence in the Middle East.

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• Israeli attacks against Christians increasing in Al-Quds
• Archbishop Hanna: An attack on Muslims is also an attack on Christians
• ‘Israel’ infringes on religious freedom, prevents Christian feast

ILAN PAPPE on Gamal Abdul Nasser: Why We Must Revisit the June 1967 War

June 27, 2023

Egyptian Prime Minister Nasser cheered in Cairo. (Photo: via Wikimedia Commons)

– Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel. Pappé is described as one of Israel’s ‘New Historians’ who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

By Ilan Pappe

Nasser miscalculated Israel’s reaction. Though the Israeli government knew full well that Nasser did not intend to go to war, they used his brinkmanship as a pretense to start a war of their own, with the aim of building a mini-empire, a greater Israel.

June is the month when one recalls the June 1967 war.

Historians re-evaluate an event not only based on new evidence. Their analyses are also influenced by the passage of time, which enables them to reconsider different aspects of formative events such as this one.

And when you probe into history and use documents and solid evidence, you sometimes disappoint friends and enemies alike.

In this piece, I would like to revisit the role of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser in that war. His role, I think, does not always match everyone’s perceptions of this great leader, and maybe disappoints perceived evaluations of his contributions to the struggle.

Nasser, Palestine and Israel

Here, I write from a Palestinian perspective, in the sense that I am less interested in what happened to Egypt because of Nasser’s role in Palestine – undoubtedly a worthy topic. Instead, I am interested in the Egyptian leader’s impact on the history of modern Palestine.

Nasser came to power as part of the Free Officers movement in the July 1952 Revolution. Very soon after, he settled in his office as deputy leader of the movement, before taking over the leadership from Muhmad Naguib.

Even as a deputy, he was interested in negotiating with Israel. He used a senior diplomat in France to initiate talks with the Israelis. His counterpart was Moshe Sharett, at the time Israel’s Foreign Minister.

Nasser saw the Nakba, indeed, as a catastrophe. He believed strongly in the right of the Palestinian refugees to return and deemed Israel as a huge threat to the Arab world. But Nasser was also a pragmatist who understood well how Israel became an essential part of the American imperialist set-up in the Arab world, thus sought ways to limit its potential danger.

Back then in 1952, Nasser did not necessarily deem the United States as the arch-enemy of progressive Arab regimes and was hoping that a realistic approach towards Israel would curry favor with the Americans.

In 1952, he made reasonable twin demands, and was surprised to learn that both Britain and the US found acceptable: An unconditional return of Palestinian refugees; and a land bridge through the south of the Naqab (the Negev) linking Jordan and Egypt. In return, he was willing to agree to a non-aggression pact with Israel and, eventually, peace.

Ben Gurion and His Two Cronies

The Israeli Prime Minister at the time, David Ben Gurion, categorically rejected any contact with the Egyptian leader. In fact, from the moment it was clear that Nasser would be the leader of Egypt, Ben Gurion searched for a way of toppling him.

Sharett, on the other hand, was more forthcoming; not that he agreed to Nasser’s conditions, but he valued the very idea of negotiations and hoped to find a compromise.

For a brief period, a compromise seemed possible, when Sharett replaced Ben-Gurion as prime minister of Israel for a year and a half, between 1954-1955.

Although he was no longer in government, Ben-Gurion left behind two cronies, who, like him, believed Nasser had to be overthrown. This belief was itself an outcome of a rooted ideology according to which only a display of Israel’s ruthlessness could tame the Arabs and obliterate any pan-Arabist agenda that could be of help to the Palestinians.

One of the two cronies was the Minister of Defense, Pinchas Lavon, and the other was the Chief of the General Staff, Moshe Dayan.

The three plotted a series of actions to defeat Sharett’s desire to reach an agreement with Nasser. It began by violating the armistice agreement with Egypt by building an illegal colony on no man’s land, followed by the infamous massacre in the village of Qibyah in the West Bank.

The Qibyah massacre was carried out by an Israeli commandos unit headed by Ariel Sharon in 1953. 65 villagers were murdered, partly by blowing up their houses while they were still sleeping inside.

But the peak of this campaign was the setup of a terrorist organization of Egyptian Jews that was ordered to plant bombs in cinemas and libraries associated with Western culture, to increase the mistrust of Nasser in the eyes of the Americans.

The terrorists were caught before they were able to carry out their actions.

Ben Gurion Back in Power

Ben Gurion returned to power after a relatively brief absence. In February 1955, he sent his army into the Gaza Strip to carry out a military operation, which resulted in the killing of 37 dead Egyptian soldiers. Until that very moment, as he indicated by Nasser himself in his memoir, the Egyptian leader was open to negotiations with Israel, sticking to a position that the Americans and the British still regarded as common-sensical and doable.

When Nasser understood that the West was unwilling to exert pressure on Israel and would not lift a finger to stop Israel’s colonial, annexationist ambitions towards the Arab world, he changed course. He now believed that Israel would attack both Syria and Jordan to expand its geographic boundaries. That called for a new way of thinking.

Nasser’s New Strategy

Then, Nasser embarked on a new strategy, which included more visible support for the nascent Palestinian guerrilla resistance efforts against Israel, attempts at pan-Arab unity, the creation of a non-alignment bloc with India and Yugoslavia, and purchasing more modern arms for his army.

On top of all these policies, he opted for what is known as brinkmanship policy – using war rhetoric and seemingly preparation for war, with the hope that this would be enough to force the West to exert pressure on Israel to cease its aggression.

This strategy included the closure of the Tiran straits connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba, concentrating an army in the Sinai Peninsula, and asking the UN to withdraw from the border between Egypt and Israel.

But Nasser miscalculated Israel’s reaction. Though the Israeli government knew full well that Nasser did not intend to go to war, they used his brinkmanship as a pretense to start a war of their own, with the aim of building a mini-empire, a greater Israel.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Declassified Documents

Recently declassified documentation from the Israeli cabinet meetings shows clearly that the Israeli leaders understood that war was not imminent and that much depended on their own actions.

In fact, one did not need to wait for the opening of the archives to reach such a conclusion. Several Israeli leaders admitted as much. One of them was Menachem Begin, who was part of the government at the time, and who told senior officers in the Israeli army:

“In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

Israel’s Need for War

As in 1948, in 1967, Israel also needed wars to fulfill the typical objectives of any settler colonial movement: having more geographical space with less native population living in it.

Since 1963, Israel had prepared comprehensive plans, waiting for the perfect movement to initiate its ‘greater Israel’ project. But Israel failed because it erroneously believed that the demographic imbalances resulting from the creation of such an entity can easily be solved by oppressing, for decades, millions of Palestinians. Since it was not possible for Israel to replicate the ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948, it opted to treat the newly occupied peoples as inmates in a huge, and ever-growing prison.

The Palestinian resistance to this monstrous policy continues to this very day.

The lesson is that, even with a leftist, Labor government, which ruled Israel between 1948 to 1977, Israel did not seek peace. To the contrary, Tel Aviv hoped to impose its will on the Arab world, by allying itself closely to the West.

The consequences of this strategy were felt beyond Palestine, whose people were the main victims of this Israeli intransigence. In fact, it impacted drastically and detrimentally the whole of the Arab World.

Unfortunately, we are still witnessing the bitter fruits of this aggression, which can only be stopped by the liberation of Palestine and the creation of a democratic state over the whole of historical Palestine, which would ensure the return of its refugees.

Only this would enable us to close this dangerous and sorrowful chapter in the history of the Arab World and, hopefully, allow all of us to begin a new and more hopeful chapter.

Syria Rising from the Ashes of Twelve Years of Hybrid War

APRIL 9, 2023

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° 

Vanessa Beeley

I talk with Syrian journalist and analyst Kevork Almassian about the recent seismic events in Syria starting with the earthquake on February 6th and culminating in some unexpected and positive geopolitical shifts towards a new Pan-Arabism in the region.

We discuss what the US, UK and Israel can do to prevent normalisation of trade and economic relations between Syria and former US/UK/Israel-allies in the destabilisation project that began in 2011. The US occupation will end sooner or later and while Israel flexes its military muscles for war it knows it is faced with an unprecedented Resistance unity and military prowess in the region that threatens its existence. Turkey is painting itself into a very tight corner – which way will it turn, East or West? All these questions are discussed in depth.

• A Thaw in Türkiye-Syria Relations a Step Toward a ‘New Europe’ in the Middle East
• Recent Hostilities Between Syrian and US Forces Could Be a Turning Point

Hezbollah: Forty Dimensions of Uniqueness In Local & Regional Contexts [1/3]

August 26, 2022

By Housam Matar | Al-Akhbar Newspaper

Translated by Al-Ahed News
 
Hezbollah holds a special place among national liberation movements, especially on a regional level. Its success is manifested through its outstanding military efficiency in confronting “Israel” to liberate territory and deter aggression. This success is also evident in the group’s soft and hard regional influences, and in its ability to politically adapt within the Lebanese system.
 
The triumphs and accomplishments have their own reasons and circumstances. These are both subjective and objective, to which the party adds metaphysical and spiritual factors (divine guidance) that are linked to its religious identity.
 
When talking about the success of this model throughout its history one must acknowledge the fact that it is not free of problems, weaknesses, and failures, and this is the case for every political actor from the greatest empires to the smallest political groups.
 
Hezbollah is a small organization fighting “Israel”, which is a regional entity and project with unlimited international support. Therefore, it needed material and financial assets, cadres, an incubating environment, a logistical structure, a dynamic and charismatic leadership, and a strategic geopolitical depth (national and supranational). How did Hezbollah achieve this?
 
The dimensions of this success and its historical circumstances are intertwined, but it is necessary to sort and disassemble them to get a clearer picture.
 
Also, focusing on the elements of success and uniqueness does not translate into ignoring the obstacles, challenges, and changes. Shedding light on these elements contributes to enhancing our understanding of their importance and their role in the party’s march, in a way that encourages interaction with them in terms of reform, correction, and care. Hence, their inclusion is not the result of complacency or vanity.
 
1- The founding generation gains experience: The first generation of Hezbollah gained experience and expertise within Lebanese and Palestinian political and military movements, during difficult times of civil war and confronting the “Israeli” enemy.
 
They experienced challenges, problems, and failures that reinforced their desire and need for changes and acquiring the necessary resources, skills, and networks of influential interpersonal relationships.
 
A number of cadres belonging to the first generation had plenty of experience in large parties such as the Amal movement, local Islamic movements, mosque groups, and a few of them were part of non-Islamic resistance forces (Fatah movement).
 
This generation experienced communist and nationalist ideas, argued with them, responded to them, and often competed with them.
 
This generation suffered the disappointments of the defeat of the Nasserist project, the kidnapping of Imam Musa al-Sadr, the assassination of Sayyed Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in Iraq, the repeated “Israeli” aggressive operations, and the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Jordan and then Lebanon.
 
All of these prompted the founders to try and think in a different way. For example, from a military point of view, their collective experience contributed to the planning and implementation of the most dangerous military and security operations during the 1980s, which established a solid foundation for the party’s saga.
 
2- Taking inspiration from the Islamic Revolution and integrating with it.
 
The victory of the revolution in Iran transformed the broader Islamic world. For the Shiites this was a historic opportunity to break out of the state of oppression.
 
The Lebanese Shiites were the first to network with the victorious revolution, especially since some of the cadres had built strong personal relations with Iranian cadres opposed to the Shah’s regime and provided them with assistance in Beirut, in addition to religious relations with Iranian figures due to contacts through the Hawzas in Najaf and Qom.
 
Thus, the benefits of the Islamic revolution reached Lebanon quickly. The most prominent of these was the arrival of the training groups sent by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps by order of Imam Khomeini to the Bekaa Valley through Syria following the “Israeli” invasion in 1982.
 
To carry on and grow, this resistance required organizational frameworks that gradually took shape until the structure of Hezbollah emerged.
 
The existence of this regional support for the resistance is indispensable in light of the imbalance of power. The Iranian regional political support and Iranian material resources (arms, training, and money) enabled Hezbollah throughout the decades to focus on the conflict with the “Israeli” enemy without needing to be constantly preoccupied with securing support or searching for compromises with regional powers in pursuit of protection.
 
The religious/ideological link between the party and the Wali al-Faqih [guardian Islamic jurist] organized the party’s relationship with Iran and facilitated an understanding between them. It allowed the latter to look at the party from several perspectives, namely the Islamic revolution, which is hostile to the American system of hegemony in the Islamic field (specifically the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine) and Iranian national security as well as preserving Shiism.
 
3- Solidifying the historical resistance framework of the Lebanese Shiites
 
Hezbollah engraved and reproduced the history of the Lebanese Shiites from the angle of their role in resisting the Ottomans, the French, and the Zionists.
 
Imam Khomeini’s fatwa for the delegation of the nine (they formed the nucleus of establishing Hezbollah) on the duty to resist the “Israeli” occupation with the available capabilities, no matter how modest, played a pivotal role in activating the resistance project as a religious duty first and foremost.
 
Thus, Hezbollah became a natural extension, compliment, and boost to the experiences of the Shiite revolutionaries at the beginning of the twentieth century and the positions of their great scholars such as Sayyed Abdul Hussein Sharaf al-Din and Imam Musa al-Sadr. All these are figures deeply enshrined in the conscience of the Shiite community, especially Imam al-Sadr (the founder of the Lebanese resistance regiments “Amal”) due to the temporal rapprochement between its experience and the birth of Hezbollah.
 
Therefore, loyalty to the resistance project is no longer loyalty to the party, but to the sect’s heroic role in defending the natural unity of Syria and in the face of the “Israeli” occupation since the beginning of its aggression against occupied Palestine.
 
4- Spreading power and confidence within an oppressed sect
 
The historical grievances and the structural marginalization of the Lebanese Shiites, especially after the defeat of their revolution in 1920 (and they had been defeated before that in the second half of the 18th century in Mount Lebanon), contributed to their thirst for changing their reality and the presence of a high revolutionary readiness that was being nourished by the restoration of the revolutionary practices of the Imams of Prophet Muhammad’s household (PBUH).
 
Hezbollah presented the resistance project under the title of confronting occupation and hegemony to which the sectarian system is affiliated. This would free the society from marginalization and oppression – the world in the party’s ideology is divided between the oppressed and the arrogant.
 
What helps the party perpetuate this narrative is its already strong presence among ordinary people born after the mid-1940s.
 
Hezbollah recalls this marginalization, which the society is actually experiencing firsthand – once directly as Shiites and once as part of the center’s marginalization of the parties in the north, the Bekaa, and the south. These areas are inhabited by an Islamic majority, and this made it easier for the party to communicate with various national groups under the rubric of confronting deprivation and marginalization.
 
Accordingly, Hezbollah’s success with resistance had multiple dimensions, serving as a remedy for dissipated pride dating back nearly two hundred years.
 
5- Filling the void in the shadow of a failed state
 
The civil war and the resulting settlement, which the party was not a part of, led to the emergence of a weak state incapable of carrying out many of its sovereign duties.
 
This allowed the party to carry the responsibility of the resistance and conduct social work for relief and development.
 
This state was not, in several stages, in agreement with the resistance project. It was even hostile towards it at times, including the era of Amin Gemayel and later Fouad Siniora’s destitute government.
 
However, it [Siniora’s government] was too weak to confront the resistance even with the help of external supporters.
 
This chronic state deficit that resulted in a lack of sovereignty reinforced the popular legitimacy of the resistance and forced the party to assume responsibilities that were not at the heart of its project, especially with the deterioration of the economic situation in the past two years.
 
6-  Benefiting from the advantages of Lebanese Shiism, which tested nationalist, leftist, patriotic, and Islamic currents and produced a large number of intellectual and scholarly figures (Sheikh Muhammad Jawad Mughniyeh, Sayyed Mohsen al-Amin, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, and Sheikh Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din, etc.).
 
It was historically characterized by a moderate tendency resulting from the peculiarities of the highly diverse and complex Lebanese reality, and later due to the many waves of migration towards Africa and the West.
 
In recent decades, the Shiite community has also witnessed the phenomenon of displacement to urban centers (Beirut, the southern Matn coast, and Tyre) and integration into the contracting and trade sectors, which had repercussions on their social class and political awareness.
 
Hezbollah had to work and grow within this type of complex Shiism, and therefore, its relationship with the general Shiite environment is based on a mixture of loyalty to it and negotiation at the same time.
 
This requires the party to be distinguished by social flexibility and targeted communication for each circle of its incubating environments, each of which has its own cultural, class, and regional characteristics for the Shiites themselves.
 
The party gradually attracted elements and cadres from these circles, which was reflected in an internal organizational vitality capable of understanding the complexities of the Shiite scene, dealing with it, and understanding its various internal sensitivities.
 
7-   Maneuvering within the complexities of the Lebanese system resulting from deep-rooted sectarianism, its exposure to external interference, and its highly centralized financial-business economic model, required Hezbollah to maintain a safe distance. The movement positioned itself on the system’s external edge and approached it only to the extent that was needed to protect the resistance from local players with foreign ties to the United States and its allies.
 
Therefore, this complexity imposed on Hezbollah to weave broad horizontal relations in the general political sphere (it had to develop its political thought and initiatives to build a network of cross-sectarian national alliances) and restricted vertical relations within the political system.
 
However, the deterioration of the political system and its poles, leading to the danger of the state’s disintegration, put the party in a historical dilemma; it must work through the system itself to ward off the danger of the state’s collapse (a concern that has grown in the party’s awareness after the devastation that befell Syria and Iraq and the accompanying disintegration of state structures) with apprehension that engaging in regime change or reform would lead to an externally backed civil war.
 
From the beginning, Hezbollah, in particular, had to be aware of the external interference in Lebanon, its channels, borders, and goals, as they represented an imminent threat to it.
 
Just like that, the party’s local political choices could have reinforced tension or appeasement with local and international forces.
 
It was not possible for the party to estimate the direction of the policies of foreign powers (such as America, Saudi Arabia, and France) in internal affairs and how to deal with them regardless of the international and regional situations.
 
Therefore, the party has developed complex decision-making mechanisms from its developing experience in Lebanese politics, which are mechanisms that it can employ in other areas related to the resistance and its regional role.
 
8- The rapid positioning within the Lebanese political arena of conflict is crowded with competitors. Hezbollah came into existence amid a heavy presence of political forces, armed and unarmed, most of which have external relations. It had to expand its influence within all this fierce competition.

In its infancy, the party underwent several field tests and intense political competition with major Lebanese forces rooted locally and forces with a regional reach.
 
Then the party became vulnerable to severe political attacks from the anti-resistance forces, especially after 2004. The burden of this competition increased after Hezbollah confronted the leadership of a national alliance with the so-called March 8 forces and the Free Patriotic Movement.
 
Hezbollah’s opponents receive extensive external support and are distinguished by their presence in various cultural, media, and political spheres in the form of parties, elites, platforms, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations, which are entities closely integrated with regional and international financial and political networks hostile to the resistance.
 
Some of these adversaries play security roles that double their threat. This reality produces constant pressures on the party, forcing it to dedicate part of its resources and capabilities to the local political sphere. It also makes it accumulate skills, frameworks, and criteria for managing political competition in a way that guarantees it the local and national stability necessary to avoid open internal conflicts that distract it from its main mission.
 
9-   Intellectual rivalry in a complex and open public sphere resulting from the richness of the Lebanese political and intellectual life, contrary to what is the case in most Arab countries.
 
The party had to present its Islamic thesis in a highly competitive intellectual market where leftist, liberal, and nationalist currents have deep roots and prominent thinkers in the region.
 
This is what the party quickly realized in its infancy and prompted it to self-review the Islamic state and the Islamic revolution.

The party is constantly confronting political and cultural arguments that are highly critical of its political and cultural project (apart from a fierce information war) that prompted a number of its elites and institutions to engage in this “market” and root the party’s proposals on issues such as Wilayat al-Faqih, the homeland, the Lebanese system, multiple identities, the legitimacy of the resistance weapon, American hegemony, and social justice.
 
As a result, despite the party’s intense preoccupation with the issue of resistance and its requirements from the tactical cultural discourse, it finds itself obliged to engage in many discussions and develop its intellectual, research, and scientific institutions and cadres – a challenge still facing the party.
 
10- The ability to transform geography into its environment.
 
The geographical contact of the Shiite communities in Lebanon with occupied Palestine in southern Lebanon and the western Bekaa made this environment targeted by “Israeli” aggression and under constant and imminent threat.
 
Thus, the party gained enormous influence and wide embrace within these communities through the success of its experiment in resistance, liberation, and deterrence.
 
This contact and the success of the party produced what is called the incubating environment, which is the most important element in the success of the resistance’s experiences.
 
The party has succeeded in completely assimilating into this environment, including its fighters, cadres, leadership, voters, and supporters.
 
This contact gave rise to a historical Shiite awareness of the Palestinian issue resulting from the historical personal and commercial ties between the Shiite and Palestinian communities and then Shiite engagement with Palestinian organizations and the residents of Palestinian camps after the 1948 Nakba.
 
On the other hand, this contact with “Israeli” aggression had a significant impact on Shiite urbanization and migration, as the occupied areas witnessed extensive Shiite migration to Africa and North America, and internally to coastal cities, specifically Tyre and Beirut.
 
This migration was a decisive element in the social and political rise of the Shiites, as well as giving Hezbollah popular incubators in vital areas and providing it with necessary human and material resources.
 
11- The participatory nature of the relationship with Iran:
 
The two sides dealt from the beginning on the basis that Iran’s role is to support the party’s decisions that it takes in accordance with the data of the Lebanese reality, especially since the Iranian state was preoccupied with major internal and external challenges.
 
Therefore, the Wali al-Faqih used to grant legitimacy to the act, provided that the party takes the necessary decisions. Later, Hezbollah was able, due to its successes and the role of its Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, to become a partner in the Iranian regional decision-making process, especially in the files related to the resistance project.
 
This partnership is reinforced by the influence of the Revolutionary Guards within the Iranian national security establishment, and the broad respect for the party’s experience among the Iranian people is a lever for this partnership.
The Iranians were keen from the beginning to play the role of an assistant to Hezbollah, which is why the decision was to send trainers instead of fighters to Lebanon after the “Israeli” invasion.
 
This independence is reinforced by the theory of Wilayat al-Faqih itself, which recognizes local and national specificities.
 
With the Wali al-Faqih having the authority to command in all administrative affairs, but according to wisdom, justice, and the ability to understand interests and conditions of time, which are among the obligatory attributes of the Wali al-Faqih, he realizes that every local and national society has deep peculiarities that its people tell about.
 
Therefore, the Wali often leaves the party to determine the interests after he adjusts their terms.
 
This partnership had a direct reflection on Hezbollah’s regional influence, as the Iranians realize that the party’s Arab identity, along with what it has accumulated in the Arab conscience, makes it, among other arenas and files, a major player in managing the resistance project.
 
12- Mastering the administration in connection with the experience of Iranian institutionalization.
 
Hezbollah has benefited from its deep ties with Iranian institutions, whether the Revolutionary Guards, the civil services, or even the hawza in Qom, to draw inspiration from the experience of building institutions and organizing administration, which is one of the historical characteristics of the Iranian experience.
 
A number of the institutions of the Islamic Revolution either initially opened branches in Lebanon and then were run by the party, or transferred their experience to the party, which copied it with a local flavor and peculiarities.
 
Iranian experts in management and human resources have transferred knowledge, skills, and administrative systems to party cadres that worked to build and develop active and efficient civil institutions in the fields of education, development, party organization, health, services, and local administration.
 
The party’s institutions usually benefit from Arab and Lebanese experts and academics from outside its environment to gain access to qualitative experiences and new knowledge.
 
The above-mentioned party institutions in the capital and the outskirts attracted thousands of young men and women graduates of universities who chose these majors or who were encouraged by the party to study in them to benefit from modern sciences in management and human resources.
 
This institutional momentum contributes to the efficiency of the party’s activities and its ability to meet its needs, to preserve and transfer experience, to development, to attract energies, and to adapt to transformations, especially since the “Israeli” enemy has repeatedly targeted these institutions.
 
13- Building strategic interests with Syria after years of mutual anxiety.
 
The relationship between the party and Syria was characterized by mistrust and suspicion at the beginning, with several field frictions between the two parties taking place, which reinforced the mutual distrust.
 
Damascus aspired to gain the regulating position of the Lebanese reality with international and regional recognition and to employ this in Syria’s internal stability, regional influence, and balance with the “Israeli” enemy.
 
Some Syrian government officials were apprehensive that the party’s agenda, identity, and relationship with Iran could disrupt their Lebanese project.
 
But with the war on Iraq, after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the failure of the Arab-“Israeli” settlement project, the end of the Iraqi-Iranian war, and Hezbollah’s steadfastness in the face of the “Israeli” enemy in the 1993 aggression, a new path was launched, the beginning of which was to prevent President Hafez al-Assad, at the initiative of the then commander of the Lebanese army, Emile Lahoud, using the army to clash with the resistance in 1993.
 
Since then, it can be said that a door for direct communication opened on the issue of resistance between the party and President al-Assad, regardless of the complexities of the so-called Syrian-Lebanese security system.
 
This relationship was strengthened during the “Israeli” aggression in 1996 when Syria played a key role in the birth of the April Understanding.
 
The relations between the two parties were strengthened after the American invasion of Iraq and Resolution 1559, as Syria realized its need for the party and its necessity regionally and in Lebanon.
 
Syria also became a vital strategic depth for the party with the expansion of the confrontation arena after 2011, which was proven by the party’s entry into the war in Syria in 2013.
 
The party succeeded in understanding Syria’s concerns in Lebanon and kept pace with its vital interests by not clashing with the post-Taif regime and revealed to it its weight in the conflict with the “Israeli” enemy. The strategic partnership that developed over time between Syria and Iran helped in this.
 
14- The awakening of the marginalized Arab Shiites.
 
With its rise, the party became the center of the Shiites’ eyes, hearts, and minds in the Arab world. They have experienced decades of exclusion and abuse, similar to the Zaydis in Yemen.

Thus, they found in the successes of the Shiite Hezbollah a possible entry point for Islamic and national recognition. This oppression of the Arab Shiites served as an amplifier for Hezbollah’s achievements and a motivator for being identified with it and drawing inspiration from it.
 
Thus, Hezbollah’s regional influence is primarily a product of its soft power, a power characterized by long-term results and acceptable costs. It is a fully legitimate influence.
 
The party supports the choice of these Shiites in peaceful struggle, encourages climates of dialogue with their partners and the governments of their countries, emphasizes Islamic unity, respects their national privacy, helps them in the media to raise their voice to demand rights, and urges them to political, media, and popular participation in support of the resistance project within the region.
 
15- Healing the Arab psychological defeat through victory over the “Israeli” enemy and support for the rising resistance project in Palestine.
 
A large part of Arab societies took pride in Hezbollah’s resistance, interacting with it and getting closer to it, as they found it a response to decades of disappointment and defeats.
 
Hezbollah has been keen to highlight its Arab identity in its political, cultural, and media discourse and in its artistic products (anasheed) and has strengthened its institutions concerned with communicating and engaging in dialogue with Arab elites, parties, and groups.
 
This Arab fascination with the party’s experience in fighting the “Israeli” enemy and in its leadership constituted a provocative factor for the Arab official regimes that emerged from the conflict with the enemy, as the party’s successes practically undermined the discourses of complacency and the legitimacy of its advocates.
 
This explains the insistence of a number of regional regimes on creating sectarian tensions that have had negative repercussions on the party’s relationship with part of its Arab incubators.
 
But the decline of the sectarian wave as the party continues to lead Arab resistance efforts against the “Israeli” entity can create conciliatory atmospheres with Arab incubators on the basis of understanding and dialogue, organizing differences, and neutralizing them from the resistance project.
 
16- Inspiration, representation, and transfer of experience
 
Hezbollah has limited material, human, and financial resources. Therefore, its building of partnerships and alliances at the regional level within the resistance project had to be based on its most prominent assets, namely its ability to inspire and transfer its experience and lessons learned to its peers within movements and forces that practice the act of resistance.
 
What made this possible was that the party’s victories revived the spirit of resistance in the Arab and Islamic spheres (for example, the comparison between Sayyed Nasrallah and President Abdel Nasser abounded) and thus stimulated the desire of many groups and elites to understand and benefit from the party’s experience.

The most prominent results of this appeared in occupied Palestine, especially in the second intifada.
 
Therefore, Hezbollah was interested in transferring its experience in resistance, administration, media, and organization to a large network of Arab and Islamic non-governmental political actors involved, militarily or politically, in confronting the American hegemony system.
 
The transfer of experience naturally includes the transfer of values, ideas, patterns of behavior and practical culture, as well as establishing networks of links and relations with the cadres of these movements and parties.
 
Thus, over time, additional groups joined the equations of force and deterrence for the resistance project. The Zionists started talking about multiple circles of the resistance axis that extend to Iraq and Yemen.

• حزب الله… أربعون بعداً للفرادة [1/3]: السياقات المحلّية والإقليمية

Meaning and Validity of Bilad al-Sham

Nov, 26, 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

Pablo Sapag

After a long decade of an imposed, cruel and bloody winter, the political recovery of the Arab block as an international actor is taking shape precisely around Bilad al-Sham.

Bilad al-Sham is much more than a mere geographic reference, as western outsiders seem to believe every time they equal what is an ancient rich and comprehensive social, cultural, and political reality with that of the Levant. The latter is indeed a purely physical tag. This misunderstanding is at the core of those western catastrophic cyclic policies towards Bilad al-Sham and beyond. It’s also the cause of the systematic failure of their interventionist schemes in what by far transcends a landscape.

Since the time of the crusaders, one after the other, all and each of western attempts to divide and conquer has ended up with the invaders expelled, puzzled and for a long time searching for the causes of their recurrent defeats. An example of this is what happened during the 20th century’s first half, when the French and British plot to dismember Bilad al-Sham according to the Sykes-Picot secret terms ended up shamefully on April 17th, 1946. On that date, the last of the defeated French soldiers evacuated off the core of Bilad al-Sham, nowadays the Syrian Arab Republic. In parallel, the other member of the aspiring terminator duo struggled to impose to the region a Zionist entity that 73 years later is still psychologically insecure and desperately trying to make true the impossible dream of its British putative father. Palestine, the Syrian Golan, and Lebanon are the mirror that every single day reflects a fiasco that cannot be overcome through a wishful thinking so-called “normalization”.

More recently, the war imposed on Syria with the declared aim to quarter it into confessional and ethnic cantons, or mini-states depending on outside powers, has failed once again. Now as then the reason is the same. Bilad al-Sham’s main strength is the will of its diverse people to live together, regardless of their ethnic and religious different affiliations. In short, they just keep adhering to what has been there the natural state of things for several millennia, a social way of life which defines a culture. In case of necessity, such a rich legacy gives a formidable impulse to resistance and becomes an unbeatable defense shield vis-à-vis any invader.

Ten years after the beginning of the conspiracy against the Syrian Arab Republic, and by extension against the whole Bilad al-Sham, this solid ancient reality that westerners don’t identify because they simply don’t understand it, is showing all its economic and political possibilities, not to mention its social and cultural ones. Umm Kulthum, Fairouz, Sabah Fakhri, Nizar Qabbani, Mahmoud Darwish, George Wassouf, or Edward Said –just to remind some- are the cultural voices that trespass the imposed borders to Bilad al-Sham, exposing in every concert, book, reading, or listening session the futility of the dismembering endeavor.  

The energy crisis imposed on several Middle Eastern countries is being solved in a natural – let’s say Shami, successful way that challenges those borders imposed one century ago by the infamous Sykes-Picot treaty. Lebanon is already receiving Iranian petrol transported through the Syrian Sea to the Syrian Arab Republic port of Banias and from there to Lebanon. The latter will also increase very soon its gas and electricity supplies thanks to the agreement that will facilitate Lebanon to receive from the Egyptian Sinai gas or gas transformed into electricity through Jordan and Syria. All the countries involved have in one way or the other been historically core components of Bilad al-Sham.  

After a long decade of an imposed, cruel and bloody winter, the political recovery of the Arab block as an international actor is taking shape precisely around Bilad al-Sham. Trust and bonds among Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon have resettled. Some non-Bilad al-Sham countries have understood it and are rushing to reconcile with Syria. The UAE’s constructive policy shows that Abu Dhabi understood that any Arab attempt to counterbalance the western diktat to the Arab region and especially the pernicious Turkish aggressive policies must be built around Bilad al-Sham in both, geographically and cultural terms. From the Gulf, however, others insist to establish a new Arabness based on the radical interpretation of a religion that they believe is the only one possible. One spiritual current among many others that they feverishly pretend has to shape everything, from the government to the rule of law and even personal behavior. An extremist and short-minded ideology exported to the rest of the world from the desert south of Jordan and from the lands north of the Taurus Mountains.

Michel Aflaq and Salah Bitar’s Pan-Arabism is linked to a collective Arab identity developed around political struggles for independence and the use of Arabic as a language of understanding. As a means of communication, Arabic was embraced long before by the people of Bilad al-Sham, a useful and valuable tool to express its culture, thoughts, and social unity. In that sense, the UAE is siding with those like Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, or Algeria. The latter has always realized that the political unity of Arab states is based on a common language and a pragmatic approach to counterbalance an unfair world order. That unity can only be possible if social and cultural differences are respected. Above all, the Emiratis have understood that without Bilad al-Sham other schemes of convergence are simply not possible. That’s the meaning and validity of Bilad al-Sham. No more, no less.    

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

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President Bashar Assad Takes the Oath for a New Presidential Term

 ARABI SOURI JULY 18, 2021

President Bashar Assad took the constitutional oath for a new presidential term yesterday, 17 July 2021, at the Syrian People’s Palace – the Presidential Palace in a highly ceremonial style and delivered one of his most direct speeches yet leaving no room for ambiguity in regards to the complete liberation of the country from NATO powers, Israel, and their proxies of Al Qaeda and the Kurdish SDF terrorists.

Syrian President Bashar Assad took the oath in attendance of dignitaries of the Syrian people, top state officials, army officers, members of the parliament, tribal notables, prominent artists of all arts, and intellectuals.

The ceremony started with the arrival of the president’s humble motorcade to the Presidential Palace to be received by the Guards of Honor walking him to the gates of the palace where he was received by the Syrian orchestra and then into the large hall with attendees jumping on their feet cheering their leader of victory over the most vicious and longest war of terror and war of attrition spearheaded by the world’s superpowers and super-rich countries resorting to all sorts of unthinkable massacres, genocide, displacement, and terrorism carried out directly by tens of thousands of terrorists on the ground and both directly and indirectly by the sponsors of the terror, the NATO member states.

For the full speech in Arabic visit SANA page.

President Assad was received at the podium by the Speaker of the Parliament who invited him to take the oath and declared the beginning of the new presidential term, the Syrian presidential term is for 7 years, after which, President Assad delivered his inaugural speech.

In his one hour speech, which was interrupted several times by the enthusiastic audiences delivering short poems, praises, and blessings to their leader, President Bashar Assad outlined his new term’s strategy in all fields starting with continuing to liberate all of Syria and maintain its unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, the liberation of all of the recognized Syrian territories including Idlib province, the last stronghold of Al Qaeda in Syria, Hasakah, Deir Ezzor, and Raqqa provinces where US troops and their Kurdish SDF separatist terrorists occupy parts of those provinces, and of course, the Golan.

President Assad emphasized on the unity of the Syrian people of their rich ethnicities, religions, sects, and cultures, he stated that Arabism does not eliminate other cultures rather unites them under the leading culture on the one united land of Syria, in the oath itself, the President swore to work for the unity of all the Arab nation, that means all the Arab world who share the same language, lifestyle, culture, tradition, history, and have shared aspirations and future.

The Syrian President stressed on economic challenges due to the regions that remain under occupation especially in the northeast of the country where Syria’s main food and oil comes from, the western blockade against the country, and the inaccessibility of the foreign currencies held by the Lebanese banks with an estimate of 40 to 60 billion dollars owned by Syrian businessmen who moved most of it into the neighboring country during the early days of the war on Syria for protection and to facilitate trade with the world.

President Assad highlighted the achievements of the Syrian industrialists who remained in the country during the difficult years of the war and continued to work, those who resumed working after their cities were liberated from the terrorists, and those who founded new businesses with thousands of new factories and tens of thousands of workshops all over the country. The need to solve the electrical power shortages was also mentioned by the Syrian president where he called on more investments in alternative energy sources even when the main Syrian oil and gas fields are liberated and restored, he mentioned a recent solar power project that was started in the past week in the Industrial City of Adra as a PPP (public-private partnership) with the initiative from the state and with the contribution of several private investors, the project will be generating 100 Megawatts enough to cover the industrial city’s needs which will allow the now used electrical power to be available back to the grid in order to lessen the hours of the power rationing.

The Syrian president called on those who chose to fight against their own state to drop their weapons and join the reconciliation and return to their normal lives and help rebuild their country offering amnesty and reminding that the most generous were the families of the martyrs who forgave the killers of their loved ones in order to turn a page on this ruthless war, there’s no future for those fighting the state except more bloodshed and inevitable victory of the people over terrorism and the international sponsors of terrorism. He called on the displaced abroad to return to their country which needs them and they need it.

President Bashar Assad thanked Russia, China, Iran, and other countries and parties who stood beside Syria politically, militarily, and economically which helped the Syrian people in their fight and victory.

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Al-Assad Sworn in Today before the People’s Assembly

Today 17/07/2021

By Al Mayadeen

Source: Al Mayadeen

President Bashar al-Assad is to be sworn in for a new presidential term before the members of the People’s Assembly today.

Al-Assad is sworn in for a new term today before the People’s Assembly

Today, Saturday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will be sworn in for a new term presidential term. 

President al-Assad will address the Syrian people today during his swearing-in ceremony with the presence of local and international political and media figures, in addition to representatives of diplomatic missions accredited in Damascus.

On May 27, Assad won another Presidential term. 

Syrian Speaker of the People’s Council, Hammouda Sabbagh, announced al-Assad the winner of the Syrian presidential elections with 95.1% votes.

The elections were held in 12,000 polling stations across the country, witnessing a heavy voter turnout in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Latakia, and the Syrian coast. 

In eastern Syria, voters defied the “SDF” harassment and made a massive presence at the polling stations. 

The Syrian President and his wife, Asma al-Assad, were reported casting their votes in the city of Douma in Eastern Ghouta.

Al-Assad Takes Oath: Supporting Any Resistance in Syria against the Occupier Is a Duty

By Al Mayadeen

During the swearing-in ceremony for a new term, President Al-Assad says that the legitimacy of the state comes from the people and that all the agents’ plots have been shattered thanks to the steadfastness of the Syrian people.

Al-Assad speaking before the People’s Assembly

In his speech to the Syrian people, during the swearing-in ceremony for a new term before the members of the People’s Assembly, today, Saturday, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said that “the people who know well the path of freedom spare no effort to defend their rights.”

He added, “Their aim was to divide the country, but the unity of the people was the fatal blow [to their plots]”, stressing that “the Syrians inside their homeland are becoming increasingly challenging and strong.”

#الميادين في تغطية خاصة لمناسبة أداء الرئيس السوري #بشار_الأسد #القسم لولاية جديدة.#سوريا
https://t.co/tI1jRF1dLa— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) July 17, 2021

لحظة وصول السيد الرئيس #بشار_الأسد إلى قصر الشعب لأداء اليمين الدستورية رئيساً للجمهورية العربية السورية pic.twitter.com/KhF2mFTmxA— سانا عاجل (@SanaAjel) July 17, 2021

He also considered that the wide popular participation in the presidential elections is “evidence of the great national awareness,” saying that “the enemies’ bet was on people’s fear of terrorism, but today, their bet is on turning the citizen into a mercenary.” 

He emphasized that “the elections experience has proven that the people are the ones who give legitimacy to the state,” stressing that “transparency is at the top of our priorities for the next stage, and it is the core of the administrative reform program.”

President Al-Assad pointed out that “those who were manipulated to be a card played against their own homeland have turned into resources dedicated to the outside and completely under its control,” noting that “national popular awareness is our fortress and the standard based on which we measure the extent of our ability and strength.”

Apropos of the agents working under Turkish proxy in the Syrian territories, President Al-Assad said, “Some of them are working on suggestions for a constitution that puts Syria at the mercy of the foreigners,” noting that ” all the agents’ plots have been shattered thanks to the steadfastness of the Syrian people.”

Al-Assad: We Call on All Those Who Were Deceived to Return, because Your Homeland Is Your Refuge and Your Haven

He continued, “The biggest reason behind the crisis that we have experienced was the lack of values and morals,” pointing out that “whoever loses his sense of belonging [to his country] can be up to no good…”

The Syrian President addressed all those who were deceived and lured into betting on the fall of Syria to return to it, reiterating: “We say to all those who were deceived that their enemies have exploited them and used them against their own country, yet the homeland remains your refuge and haven, and the Syrian people have a big heart and are forgiving.”

Al-Assad stressed that “the next stage will witness the modernization of laws, the fight against corruption and the exposure of the corrupt, without looking back.” He considered that “the world nowadays is a jungle witnessing the overthrow of countries, support for terrorism, and the taming of peoples through psychological warfare,” considering that “the goal of modern wars is man per se, before the land, and he who wins man wins the war.”

Al-Assad: Speaking of Arab Nationalism Is Not a Viewpoint; It’s an Entire Fate

He said, “We will be defeated both psychologically and intellectually once we believe that our national affiliation is limited to the borderlines set by the occupier, and we will be defeated once we confuse Arab affiliation with Arabized governments. We will also be defeated once we believe that Arab nationalism is merely something made-up that certain parties adopted, which renders it no longer suitable for the requirements of our time.”

He also reiterated his assertion that “[national] affiliation is too big to be limited to a religion, sect, interest, history or geography.”

Moreover, the Syrian President considered that “speaking of Arab nationalism is not a viewpoint that we can agree or disagree with or a certain taste we might like or dislike; rather, it is a matter of fate.”

Al-Assad addressed the Palestinian cause, saying, “The cause closest to us is the cause of Palestine, and our commitment to it stands strong and unwavering no matter what.”

He also said, “We have set our sights on liberating the rest of our land from the terrorists and their Turkish and American sponsors,” adding: “We have confidence in the role of our friends, such as Iran and Russia, whose standing with us played a big role in the liberation.”

Al-Assad also stressed that “it is the duty of the state to support any resistance in Syria against the occupier,” noting that “the credit goes to those who preserved the land and sacrificed themselves for its sake…”

Al-Assad: 3000 Factories Underway in Syria

On the economic situation in Syria, Al-Assad revealed that work is currently underway to build about 3,000 production factories in the country.

While he stressed that “the war and the blockade failed in stopping investment,” he pointed out that “the other part of the problem has to do with willpower.”

Al-Assad also revealed that “Syrian frozen funds in Lebanese banks are estimated between 40 and 60 billion dollars.”

Moreover, he considered that easing the obstacles is necessary, “but it does not compensate for the increase in production, which is the basis for improving the living situation in Syria,” pointing out that the main goal in the next stage is to increase production and it is up to the state to facilitate the process in different sectors.

He also maintained that “solving the electricity problem is a priority to all of us, as this is reflected on life and the environment of investment.”

It is worth noting that Al-Assad took oath at a ceremony to which local and international political and media figures, in addition to representatives of accredited diplomatic missions in Damascus, were invited.

Al-Assad had won, on May 27, the Syrian presidential elections, where the Speaker of the People’s Assembly of Syria Hammouda Sabbagh declared his victory after obtaining 95.1% of the overall votes.

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Al-Assad’s Vow and Syria’s Comeback

 JULY 16, 2021

Rasha Reslan

Ahead of the Syrian President’s much-awaited inauguration speech, here is a quick review of how al-Assad stepped in and boosted his country’s stature and resources during his first term, despite a global military war and extreme economic sanctions.

On Saturday, July 17, Bashar al-Assad will begin his new term as Syria’s President, setting his policies for 2021-2028.

On May 27, the Syrian government’s official Twitter account posted: “The Syrians had their say. Bashar al-Assad wins the presidential elections of the Syrian Arab Republic after obtaining 95.1% of the votes at home and abroad.”

The victory achieved in the latest elections has further emboldened al-Assad, the President who managed not only to defeat a global conspiracy against his country but also to bring Syria back to life, against all odds and despite one of the world’s most brutal decade-old wars.

Al-Assad’s First Term: The Survival of the Fittest

During the period between 2014-2021, the conspiracy plan against Syria rapidly escalated. Hundreds of foreign fighters and armed groups sprung up, and it did not take long before the conflict turned into more than just a battle between the Syrian army and terrorist groups. Certain foreign powers took the anti-government side, supporting it with money, weaponry, and armed groups, and as the wreaked chaos worsened, the grip of western-backed extremist organizations, such as “ISIS” and “al-Qaeda”, tightened.

Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad didn’t flee his country. On the contrary, he got off to a fresh strong start. By most measures, he stood with his country, despite gloomy clouds and rumbling storms. His overall strategy booted terrorist groups out of major Syrian cities. On the personal level, al-Assad always scores high for his attributes, as most Syrians like the way he conducts himself as president.

Terrorist Groups Fall in Syria

At its height, as terrorist groups held about a third of Syria; al-Assad, the Syrian army, and Syria’s allies redefined victory in a thundering War on Terror. The so-called “US-led global coalition” carried out airstrikes and deployed “Special Forces” in Syria, providing financial and logistical support for the terrorist groups since 2014.

By December 2017, terrorist groups started to suffer key losses in Aleppo, Raqqa, and other strongholds. In 2018, the focus of the campaign against the terrorists shifted to eastern Syria. In 2019, they lost their last bastion in eastern Syria, in Baghouz village, after which Syria declared victory over terrorism.

Today, the country is almost clean from armed groups except for the presence of dormant cells along the border with Iraq and in Idlib (a city in northwestern Syria).

US Sanctions:  A Trifling Opening Shot

US support for terrorist groups in Syria was a shot in the dark, and as it failed to win the military war on Syria, they initiated a new type of war represented by Caesar sanctions.

In mid-June 2020, the US government announced the implementation of the “Caesar Act” with a flurry of sanctions. Yet a closer look at the 15 sanctions by the US Department of State and the 24 sanctions by the Department of Treasury reveals a brutal plan to destroy Syria’s economy and inflict utmost suffering on its people.

A Desperate Plan within a Failed One

Apropos the US military and economic war on Syria, there is much more yet to come. Syria and its allies have succeeded in defeating the flurry of sanctions aimed at stopping the al-Assad government from reconstructing Syria. They also buried a US plan to change the demography of Syrian and divide the country.

Rebuilding Syria’s Future

The main question remains: How will the future of Syria unfold? At the dawn of al-Assad’s new term, Syria continues to stand strong and united. Furthermore, the Syrians have high hopes that their President will take effective actions in the course of boosting the economy and achieving overall prosperity, despite the US sanctions.

Besides, al-Assad exerted strained efforts to reconstruct his country, focusing on projects with the highest likelihood of significant economic returns and benefits to quality of life. In other words, al-Assad, side by side with his people, is conveying a clear message to the world which declares the end of the global war on Syria; al-Assad will remain in power, treading the path of Syria out of all the challenges and crises. Syria’s allies also plan to be on hand as al-Assad rebuilds Syria to help it rise from the ashes, by handling the security and economic threats imposed on Syria.

The Second Term: Defying the Odds

To put things into perspective, the last election witnessed al-Assad securing almost 95.1% of the votes, so this cannot but be seen as a sign of strength for Syria and al-Assad himself, as well as his electoral campaign.

Today, the elections had taken place, and Syria has come out victorious, with an insistence on maintaining its vital role, considering that al-Assad plans to finance the infrastructure that the terrorist groups have been targeting and bombing for the past 10 years.

The Syrian President will also tackle the US sanctions on Syria, aiming to accelerate economic growth, strengthen society, and encourage youth empowerment.

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• الأسد في أداء اليمين الدستورية: واجب الدولة دعم أي مقاومة في سوريا ضد المحتل

Marwa Osman on Israel’s genocide of Gaza, and the new precedent of united regional Resistance

Eva Bartlett 

A very informative discussion with Beirut-based journalist and political analyst Marwa Osman, on the litany of Israeli crimes against Palestinians in Gaza during Israel’s horrifying bombardment of the besieged and densely inhabited Gaza Strip.

Note: as of May 19: Ministry of Health in Gaza: 219 Palestinians massacred, including 63 children, 36 women and injuring 1530

Marwa also speaks of the unity not only among Palestinian resistance groups, but also Resistance movements throughout the region.

“Myself as a Shia Muslim, I believe that when there are people who are oppressed, it’s not only my duty, but if I don’t help that people, then I’m complicit.

This ideology has surpassed the Shi’ism ideology and has passed to a pan-Arabism ideology, the same ideology Gamal Abdel Nasser used to reiterated and emphasize when he was president of Egypt. That pan-Arabism is now being mirrored at the different factions, the different resistance, the allied forces of the resistance across west Asia, from Sana’a to Maghreb, up to Baghdad to Mosul, to the border between Iraq and Syria, to Damascus, Aleppo, to Daraa, down to Quneitra, down to south Lebanon, not forgetting the Islamic republic of Iran. This is very important, and historic.

What we are seeing is the same people that the Imperial powers, starting from WW2 to today, tried to dismantle, disintegrate, and break apart, they are coming all together to stand in the face of this cancer that was prepared for us in the late 1800s….”

Imperative listening.

Follow Marwa at:

Her Twitter

Her Youtube

بين الديبلوماسيّة والميدان من طهران حتى صنعاء…

 محمد صادق الحسيني

يقول الفيلسوف والمفكر العسكري الألماني، الجنرال كارل فون كلاوسيڤيتس: «إنّ الحرب هي استمرار للسياسة بوسائل أخرى».

ويضيف: «أن الحرب هي استخدام للقوة لإجبار العدو على الخضوع لإرادتنا».

إنّ هذا يعني أنه عندما يفشل السياسيون في تسوية اي ملف او قضية يلجأ اصحاب القضية الى الحرب، اي الى الميدان لفرض الحلول المناسبة التي عجزت عنها السياسة وبالتالي فرض موازين للقوى ميدانياً تجبر الخصم للرضوخ لمطالب السياسيين.

بمعنى آخر وفي تطبيق لهذه المقولة على ما يجري اليوم من حروب في منطقتنا نستطيع القول بانّ فشل السياسة والسياسيين في جبهة الخصم من فرض إرادتهم علينا دفعهم الى إعلان الحرب علينا.

في المقابل لم يكن أمامنا ونحن الذين تعرّضنا لحروب العدو المفروضة علينا سوى أن نذهب الى قتال العدو في الميدان حتى نعدّل في ميزان القوى بيننا وبينه لنجبره على الخضوع لإرادتنا.

المتتبّع لخط سير تطورات بلداننا في غرب آسيا يستطيع القول إنه وعلى مدى ٤ عقود مضت كحد أدنى قمنا بتطبيق هذه القاعدة الذهبية للمفكر الاشهر في علم الحرب على عديد من الساحات، وفي مقدمها إيران، وقد نجحنا فيها.

وقد حصل ذلك بالفعل بالإجمال والتلخيص على مراحل ثلاث:

 في الأولى وهي الأشهر كانت العملية في مواجهة الحرب الكونية التي اعلنت ضد إيران فور نجاح ثورتها الإسلامية بقيادة الامام روح الله الموسوي الخميني.

الثانية الاخطر في مواجهة الحرب الكونية الثانية ضد سورية الاسد العربية بعدما رفضت الخضوع لشروط الخريف العربي المدمّر.

الثالثة الأقرب والتي لا تزال جارية على قدم وساق ضد يمن أنصار الله الحرة المستقلة التي رفضت التبعية والتقسيم وسحق الهوية بهدف تسوية الطريق لتسليم ما تبقى من مقدرات عربية للعدو الصهيوني والسيد الأميركي.

وهكذا تبلورت عملياً أسطورة المقاومة التي يعيّرنا البعض بها اليوم، او يلصق بنا شتى التهم بسببها او يرمينا باللمز والهمز «الأكاديمي» مرة والنيوليبرالي مرة أخرى بوصفنا مرة بالمتزمتين وأخرى بالمتشدّدين وثالثة بالمتطرفين ورابعة بأننا من أتباع المهدي الذي يريد اجتياح العالم العربي!

وإنما نعيد استذكار هذا في هذه اللحظات المصيرية، لكوننا أمام امتحان واختبار داخلي وخارجي في كل أقطارنا العربية والاسلامية اليوم، وبشكل خاص في دول محور المقاومة، مطلوب فيها أن نجتاز بنجاح «فتنة» استقطابين كاذبين… الاستقطاب الكاذب الاول بين ميل شعوبنا للسلام والعيش بأمان وبين عشقهم لإنجازات أبطالهم التاريخيين في الميادين أي بين السلام ايّ الحلّ السياسي كما يقولون وبين الحسم في الميدان.

وحتى نضع النقاط على الحروف لا بدّ من تذكير أصحاب الفتنة الجدد، بأنهم هم من أشعلوا الحروب ضدنا ودفعوا بنا الى دخول ميادين القتال للدفاع عن ديننا وأوطاننا واستقلالنا وحرياتنا، ولم نكن نحن من أشعل الحروب.

والاستقطاب الثاني بين العروبة والإسلام.

وإذا نسي البعض فنحن لن ننسى ونذكّر لمن ألقى السمع وهو شهيد بأن حلف اليسار القديم مع النيوليبراليين الجدد الذين يتهموننا اليوم بأننا إسلاميون متطرفون او خمينيون او متحالفون مع إيران الخامنئي، انما نهدّد الأمن القومي العربي بسلوكنا هذا، هم أنفسهم من كانوا قد وقفوا طوال النصف الثاني من القرن الماضي ضد الزعيم الراحل جمال عبد الناصر وقاتلوه ونعتوا «القومية العربية» التي آمن بها ودافع عنها، بالجاهليّة رافعين بوجهها راية الاسلام كذباً وزوراً…

 ولما برز الإمام الخميني مجدّداً النهضة الإسلامية ورافعاً راية فلسطين والدفاع عن العروبة التي رموها هم على قارعة الطريق، تذكروا فجأة انهم عرب وان القادم الجديد بثورته وجمهوريته الحرة والمستقلة وحلفائها انما يشكلون تهديداً للأمن القومي العربي لا بد من مواجهته ومنع تمدده…!

إن أي مؤرخ منصف لا بد أنه مع قراءته الموضوعية لما حصل طوال العقود الأربعة الماضية سيكتشف ان طلاب الحروب ومروّجيها من بين أبناء جلدتنا والمدعومين والمندسين بجحافل الغرب لم يعملوا ذلك الا لإدراكهم خطر مقولة المقاومة التي رفعت بوجه سياساتهم الظالمة ومطامعهم الخطيرة، التي تبلورت مرة ناصرية عربية وأخرى خمينية إسلامية.

انّ اسطورة المقاومة التي صدّت موجاتهم الثلاث في الهضبة الإيرانية الإسلامية، ومن ثم على بوابات الشام العربية الفلسطينية واليوم على تخوم الهضبة اليمنية الحرة والمستقلة وأمّ العرب وأصلهم، انما مذهبها ودينها وقوميتها وانتماؤها هو لله الواحد القهار الذي صنف البشر على قاعدة:

«الناس صنفان إما اخ لك في الدين أو نظير لك في الخلق» وإنها هي هي مَن كانت تقف عائقاً وسداً منيعاً امام الاستعمار والصهيونية والرجعية العربية.

وهذه الأسطورة هي من افرزت القادة العظام الحاج قاسم سليماني وأبو مهدي المهندس وعصام زهر الدين وصالح الصماد والحاج عماد مغنية، وأمثالهم المئات والآلاف من أمة أشرف الناس، الذين بفضلهم إنما يحقق السياسيون اليوم إنجازاتهم، وبمدادهم يخط الكتاب رواياتهم، وبدمائهم يحيا سائر من بقي على قيد الحياة من بقية السيف ناجياً من وحشية جيوش إرهاب العدو الذي ما انفكّ يوظف راية الإسلام مرة وراية العروبة مرة اخرى، لخداع الرأي العام والرأي العام منه براء.

وها هم آخرون جدد مرجفون بدأوا يضافون الى اولئك أخذوا برداء الفتنة وراحوا يروّجون لمقولة: «إنّ الميدان عسكرة لقضايا الامة لا لزوم له وانه كان بالإمكان تفاديه لو أننا أحسنّا فن الحوار مع العدو وعاملناه بالتي هي أحسن بدلاً من الدخول في مستنقعات الحروب.

لقد نسي هؤلاء او تناسوا او يتغافلون لغاية في نفس يعقوب بان من يدعوننا اليوم للحوار والجلوس الى طاولة المفاوضات هم من ظلوا حتى الأمس القريب يهددوننا بنقل الحرب الى داخل مدننا وشوارعنا وازقتنا وبيوتنا، بل إنهم اقسموا بأنهم لن يوقفوا الحرب علينا الا فاتحين مصلين في جوامعنا الكبرى.

 وأنهم ما نزلوا اليوم عند اجندة الحوار الا بعدما ذاقوا مرارة الميدان الباليستية الدقيقة والشاردة.

هذا إن كانوا فعلاً يريدونه حواراً وليس التفافاً وخدعةً او مراوغةً، واستراحة محارب تمهيداً لاستمرار الحرب بوسائل أخرى (اقلب نظرية المفكر الألماني) الذي بدأنا المقالة معه أيّ أن يأخذوا منا في السياسة ما لم يتمكنوا من أخذه منا في الميدان…!

 والحرب خدعة، فإياكم والخدع وأمهات الفتن الكبرى التي تتنقل اليوم من ميدان لميدان ومن ساحة لساحة لمنعنا من القيام بالفصل الأخير من هجومنا الاستراتيجي نحو أم المعارك أي تحرير فلسطين وبيت المقدس.

وما ذلك على الله بعزيز.

بعدنا طيبين قولوا الله…

Naqqash’s solution for Middle East: A Levantine Confederation (Pt. 4)

March 10, 2021

Description:

In a 2020 conference held on Zoom and published on YouTube, the late senior Middle East political analyst Anees Naqqash spoke about his 2014 book titled The Levantine Confederation: The Battle of Identities and Policies.

The book proposes that the solution to the chronic problems of the war-ravaged and tumultuous Middle East region lies in the establishment of a confederation that unites the states of the Levant, or what Naqqash often calls the ‘West Asian region’.

Middle East Observer is gradually publishing English translations of the author’s online talk over several posts. The following is Part Four.

To read Part One see here.
To read Part Two see here.
To read Part Three see here.

Source:  Kalam Siyasi YouTube Channel

Date:  Aug 26, 2020

(Important Note: Please help us keep producing independent translations for you by contributing as little as $1/month here)

Transcript :

It is no longer a secret; no one can say anymore that we are (falsely) accusing a (particular) state of being an ally of America and an ally of Zionism, now that all the masks have fallen off. They (some Arab states) themselves admitted that they had served America for 70 years (by implementing) its regional and international strategies. Today, they are openly expressing their convictions and publically (sharing) their relations with Zionism and the US. For them, Arabism and Islam have become a type of folklore with no ideological, political or cultural importance, (and they feel no need to) respect the will of their people and the people of the region. They have lost all these titles (Arabism and Islam). However, they have a strong grip on the Arab media because 80% of it is financed by Arab oil (monarchies). Therefore, we are facing a major offensive locally and internationally.

I believe that no country alone, no matter how powerful it is, can face such an offensive; and no party can claim that it alone can confront it. Even Turkey, with its current capabilities, cannot defend the region on its own and run things alone no matter how great its economic and military capabilities. The reason is that if Turkey took action individually, without joining the socio-political and security pact and the dialogue we are calling for, other powers (in the region) will be troubled by the Turkish forces and will begin a resistance under the title of rejecting a (potentially) new Ottoman (Empire). Some people in Turkey may have the idea of resurrecting the Ottoman Empire with the same old ultranationalism, but this is impossible these days.

Iran, which today leads the Axis of Resistance in confronting Israel and the US presence in the region, meaning that it leads the armed national liberation movement against the Western presence, also (has not yet been able to achieve) a broader regional dialogue (that is necessary) to clarify its goals and cooperate with other powers. However, there is an advantage that I must point out, which is that the bilateral Turkish-Iranian cooperation is almost impeccable. However, there are many regional issues that (both countries) do not agree on, the most important of which are the conflict in Syria; Iraq; in addition to some other matters. Even regarding Palestine (there are differences between the two). The Iranian involvement has now become an engagement that challenges the US and Israel with (its provision of) weapons and equipment aimed at unconditionally supporting the Palestinian resistance with all means (possible). Turkey, on the other hand, supports the Palestinian people, but without disturbing Zionism. It refuses to withdraw its recognition of (Israel as a state), it does not bother the US, nor does it support the (Palestinian) resistance with arms. There must be a dialogue to settle these issues.

I think that the dialogue aiming to build a Levantine Confederation that moves away from Ibn Khaldun’s concept of one ‘asabiyyah (socially cohesive group) having control over the region, will (in fact) bring ideological peace to the region, because the Turkish bloc represents a major Sunni bloc and the Iranian bloc represents the largest Shia bloc in the Islamic nation. Therefore, (more cooperation between the two countries) would offer a respite to this sectarian conflict that the Zionists, the US, and all enemies of our nation – and even the Takfiris from within our nation – seek to ignite in order to weaken our nation. In other words, this is a positive thing that we must support through (the establishment) of an intellectual system that explains to public opinion what we (who call for a Levantine Confederation) do and why are we doing this. Our movement should not be secret or private, and our tactics should be clear, so that no party is accused of wanting to dominate.

The most important thing (necessary here) is that the idea of ​​the hegemony of one sect with its individual capabilities must be completely precluded. We must push parties, powers, movements, thinkers, writers and journalists towards a region-level social, security and political union through dialogue and conferences, and not through hegemony. This (approach) will facilitate the consolidation of financial, economic, military and security capabilities. It would also dispel the worrisome ideas prevailing in the region as everyone fears for their doctrine, nationalism, and even their clan. In order for everyone to feel that there is a great fusion in the region (between our countries), just as big as a nuclear fusion, such that there would be a win-win situation for all, with no losers.

This is what I wrote about in my book after (conducting) a historical study of the way geographical maps were drawn up, by highlighting the ways in which client regimes were implanted (in our region), and by speaking about (the importance of) natural resources, a very important issue when it comes to questions of strategic awareness. Geography is a dominant (factor) that we often forget about. (Geography) is not only related to borders, but also to natural resources and the interconnectedness of natural geography, relating to plains, mountains and valleys. It refers to oil and gas reservoirs. It refers to transit lines, energy transit routes, and the networking/integration of potentials in relation to economic-related transport and the transit of passengers.

Therefore geography is a dominant/undeniable (factor) that must not be forgotten. In the past we lived in an open geography (i.e. without rigid national borders), and what is utterly disgraceful today is that the Hejaz Railway line, that was built just before World War One, had passed through all of these countries, from Istanbul to Hejaz, passing through Palestine and Baghdad, while we are unable today to implement even a portion of this project which would tie these areas together.

(To be continued…)

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أنطون سعاده حلم مشرقيّ وشهيد حي

ناصر قنديل

–

لم يُنجِب المشرق شخصيّة عبقريّة ونضاليّة بمكانة أنطون سعاده، فقد عرف الشرق أبطالاً خاضوا معارك أسطوريّة وحققوا انتصارات تاريخيّة، أو سقطوا في ملاحم استشهادية، كما عرف الشرق قادة سياسيين نقلوا واقع كياناته ودوله من مراحل إلى مراحل، وكتبوا سيَرَهم بأحرف من نور، وعرف الشرق قادة حركات مقاومة أنجزوا ما عجزت الجيوش عن إنجازه، وعرف الشرق مفكّرين وكتّاب وفلاسفة ألمعيّين تركوا بصماتهم في الفكر الإنساني، لكن هذا الشرق لم يعرف شخصاً جمع كل ذلك في سيرة حياته القصيرة بمثل ما جسّدها أنطون سعاده.

–

قُدّمت عقائد ومشاريع فكرية سياسية لشعوب المنطقة، عالج بعضُها قضية التحرر من الاستعمار كأولويّة وتفوّق في رسم معاملها، وعالج بعضُها قضية الوحدة وأبدع، وعالج بعضُها قضية العدالة الاجتماعية وتفوّق، وعالج بعضُها قضية الأمراض الاجتماعية وشكل الدولة القادرة على توحيد النسيج الوطني، فوقع بعضُها في العداء مع الدّين، ووقع بعضُها الآخر في محاولة توفيق هشّة بين مفهوم الدين ومفهوم الدولة، لكن التجربة الحية لكل هذه العقائد قالت باستحالة بلوغ مرتبة متقدّمة من الإنجاز في أيّ من هذه العناوين، رغم الإنجاز الأولي المحقق، ما لم يلاقيه تناسب في الإنجاز في العناوين الأخرى، فكانت عقيدة سعاده وحدَها التي نجحت بتقديم الأجوبة المتكاملة على الأولويّات المتزامنة والمتلازمة، وبصورة تفادت خلالها الوقوع في ثنائيّات قاتلة، فتجاوزت الفِخاخ التي وقع فيها الآخرون، فهي متصالحة مع الدين وليست دينيّة، وهي مدنيّة وليست إلحاديّة، وهي نوع من اشتراكيّة لا تلغي المبادرة الفردية، ونوع من رأسمالية لا تلغي دور الدولة، ووحدويّة بحدود المدى الجغرافيّ الأضيق، وتحررية الى المدى الأبعد الذي يمثله اليقين بأمة عظيمة لا تعاني عقدة النقص تجاه الغير شرقاً وغرباً، لكنها تنطلق في التحرّر من فلسطين والصدام الوجوديّ مع كيان الاستيطان الغاصب.

–

خلال عقود الاحتلال التي عاشها لبنان، تعرّف اللبنانيون على فكر سعاده حزباً مقاوماً، وخلال عقد المواجهة التي خاضها السوريّون مع الإرهاب عرفوا عقيدة سعاده منظومة وحدة اجتماعيّة وسلم اجتماعي، ومقاومين يستشهدون الى جانب الجيش السوري دفاعاً عن وحدة وسيادة سورية، وفي ذروة الأزمات المحيطة بدول المنطقة اقتصادياً وأمنياً، قدّمت عقيدة سعاده مشروع وحدة الحياة بين كيانات المشرق، وما عُرف بالتشبيك الذي دعا إليه مفكّرون كثيرون ليس إلا بعضاً مما قدّمه سعاده.

–

عرف سعاده أهميّة الجماعة المنظّمة، وعرف أهمّية دم الشهادة، فتلازما مع مسيرته قائداً حزبياً وشهيداً لقضيته وحزبه، وعرف الأخطبوط الداخليّ والخارجيّ الممسك بالسيطرة على بلاد المشرق مبكراً أن سعاده وفكره وحزبه خطر داهم، فتضامنوا وتفاهموا على التخلّص منه بصورة دراميّة لا تزال بصماتها توقظ ضمائر الأحرار، ورغم مضي عقود على ما كتبه سعاده في كل ميدان سيكتشف مَنْ يقرأه ومَن يُعيد قراءته، أنه كتب لهذه الأيام، وأن أضعف الإيمان هو العرفان، وللعرفان موجبات، أولها دعوة الجيل الشاب للتعرّف على مفكّر من لحمه ودمه يشكل عبقريّة استثنائيّة وشخصيّة أسطوريّة، يباهي بها شعوب الأرض، ومن العرفان أن ينهض محبّو سعاده وتلامذته بما يليق بالصورة التي يستحقّها لإعادة تقديمه مخلّصاً يحمل مشروعاً يستطيع أن ينهض بلبنان وسورية وكيانات المشرق نحو التقدّم، وفكر سعاده نسخة علمانيّة غير مستوردة لا تتعارض مع الإسلام والمسيحيّة، ونسخة اقتصادية اجتماعية صُنعت في بلادنا تقدّم حلولاً جذرية لمشكلاتنا، ومشروع مقاومة تتّسع لكل مقاوم بوصلته فلسطين، ومشروع وحدة تتّسع مع أتباع عقيدته، للقوميين العرب والإسلاميين والأمميين، فوحدة بلاد الشام توفر لكل هؤلاء قلعة حرّة تتسع لمشاريعهم التحرّرية والوحدويّة والإنسانيّة.

Assad and Islam of the Levant الأسد وإسلام بلاد الشام

الأسد للعلماء: لقيادة المواجهة مع مشروع الليبراليّة دفاعاً عن الهويّة بوجه التفلّت والتطرّف

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched from a gathering of scientists in Damascus a call for the renaissance of scientists with the task of leading the confrontation with the liberalism project, which aims to strike the national identity and the ideological depth represented by Islam, together with social and family values, considering that this project aimed at dismantling societies and opening the way to the project of hegemony, This project stands behind both fragmentation, Misrepresentation and extremism, Assad accused French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President Recep Erdogan of sharing roles in managing extremist climates to strike the true identity of societies, He called for realising the lack of contradiction between their Islamic affiliation, their national identity and their secular state.

Assad and The Islam of the Levant

Nasser Qandil

–

 When an Islamic reference with the rank and knowledge of Sheikh Maher Hammoud said that when he listened to the speech of President Bashar al-Assad yesterday, in a council of leading scholars in Syria, he was surprised that the level of talk and depth in the issues of jurisprudence, doctrine, Qur’an and interpretation matched the senior scholars, as he was surprised by the clear and deep visions in dealing with issues affecting the Islamic world in deeper matters than politics, this is some of what will be the case for anyone who has been able to hear the flow of President Assad in dealing with matters of great complexity, sensitivity and accuracy, over the course of an hour. He is half-spoken in the sequence of the transition from one title to another, and supports every idea of religious evidence, Qur’anic texts, prophetic hadiths and historical evidence, and he paints the framework of the battle he is fighting intellectually to address decades-old dilemmas known as titles such as secularism, religiosity, Arabism and Islam, moderation and extremism, the task of scholars in interpreting and understanding biography and providing example in the front lines of identity battles, in drawing the paths of social peace, and establishing a system of moral, national and family values.

–

 Assad is crowned by efforts led by great reformers in the Arab and Islamic worlds to address these thorny issues, courageously advancing to this difficult, risky course, taking it upon himself as an Islamic, nationalist and secular thinker, to present a new version of the doctrinal, intellectual and philosophical understanding, seeking To replace imaginary virtual battles with historical reconciliation between lofty concepts and values related to peoples and elites, but divided around them, and fighting, instead of looking for the points of fundamental convergence that begin, as President Al-Assad says, of human nature, divine year and historical year. High values cannot collide, people’s attachment to them cannot be contradictory, and scientists and thinkers must resolve the contradiction when it emerges, and dismantle it. This is the task that Assad is dealing with by diving into the world of jurisprudence, thought and philosophy, and he is putting his hand on a serious intellectual wound, which is his description of the role played by the liberal school based on the destruction and dismantling of all societal structures, and elements of identity, to turn societies into mere individuals racing to live without meaning and controls, closer to the animal instinctive concept, and to the law of the jungle that governs it.

–

The historical role of Islam in the East, its structural and historical overlap with the manufacturing of major transformations, and universal identities, a title that needs the courage of Assad to approach it in terms of adherence to secularism, nationalism, prompts Assad to reveal the danger of realizing those who look to take control of this East of the importance of occupying Islam, as an investment less expensive than occupying the land, and doing its place and more. Whoever occupies Islam and speaks his tongue cuts more than half way to achieve his project, and reveals the danger of Assad realizing this in the heart of the war on Syria as one of the most prominent titles of the war prepared to control Syria, and in parallel the demonstrations of Islam in Syria, elites, scientists and the social environment. of resistance to the projects of intellectual, political and related occupation Seeking to destroy identity, belief, family cohesion, morality and value system, which carried the project of extremism financed and programmed with hundreds of satellite channels to spread strife and sow fear and encourage terrorism, with a neat rotation between the two sides feeding each other, and pushing Syrian scientists in the face of the precious sacrifices of the ranks of scientists, and they played in this confrontation a role that President Assad places as the role of the army on the front sands.

–

 Historically, Syria has been the focal point of the national identity, from which Islam has established its status as a cultural political project, and in front of doctrinal and religious schools divided between Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the aspiration for Islam in the Levant has always been to promote the Islam of al-Azhar, and together constitute the historical turning point in the course of the East, in harmony with the understanding of the national identity of society and the secular foundation of the state. In this historic conversation, it is clear that President Assad has taken this important task upon himself as a thinker, not just as head of state.

الأسد للعلماء: لقيادة المواجهة مع مشروع الليبراليّة دفاعاً عن الهويّة بوجه التفلّت والتطرّف

أطلق الرئيس السوري الدكتور بشار الأسد من لقاء علمائي جامع في دمشق الدعوة لنهضة العلماء بمهمة قيادة المواجهة مع مشروع الليبراليّة الذي يستهدف ضرب الهوية القوميّة والعمق العقائديّ الذي يمثله الإسلام، ومعهما القيم الاجتماعية والأسرية، معتبراً أن هذا المشروع الهادف لتفكيك المجتمعات وفتح الطريق لمشروع الهيمنة، هو الذي يقف وراء التفلّت والتطرّف معاً، متهماً الرئيس الفرنسي امانويل ماكرون والرئيس التركي رجب أردوغان بتقاسم الأدوار في إدارة مناخات التطرّف لضرب الهوية الحقيقيّة للمجتمعات التي دعاها الأسد الى إدراك عدم التناقض بين انتمائها الإسلاميّ وهويتها القوميّة ودولتها العلمانيّة.

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الأسد وإسلام بلاد الشام

ناصر قنديل

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 عندما يقول مرجع إسلامي بمرتبة وعلم الشيخ ماهر حمود أنه عندما استمع الى حديث الرئيس بشار الأسد أول أمس، في مجلس ضمّ كبار العلماء في سورية، فوجئ بأن مستوى الحديث وعمقه في قضايا الفقه والعقيدة والقرآن والتفسير يُضاهي كبار العلماء، كما فوجئ بالرؤى الواضحة والعميقة في تناول القضايا التي تطال العالم الإسلامي في شؤون أعمق من السياسة، فهذا بعض ما سيقع عليه كل مَن أتيح له سماع تدفّق الرئيس الأسد في تناول شؤون شديدة التعقيد والحساسية والدقة، على مدى ساعة ونصف متحدثاً بتسلسل الانتقال من عنوان الى آخر، وتدعيم كل فكرة بالشواهد الدينيّة والنصوص القرآنية والأحاديث النبوية والشواهد التاريخية، وهو يرسم إطار المعركة التي يخوضها فكرياً لمعالجة معضلات عمرها عقود طويلة عرفت بعناوين، مثل العلمانية والتديُّن، والعروبة والإسلام، والاعتدال والتطرف، ومهمة العلماء في التفسير وفهم السيرة وتقديم المثال في الخطوط الأماميّة لمعارك الهوية، وفي رسم مسارات السلم الاجتماعي، وإرساء منظومة القيم الأخلاقية والوطنية والأسرية.

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 يتوّج الأسد مساعي قادها إصلاحيّون كبار في العالمين العربي والإسلامي لتناول هذه القضايا الشائكة، متقدماً بشجاعة لخوض هذا المسلك الوعر، والمحفوف بالمخاطر فيأخذ على عاتقه كمفكر إسلاميّ وقوميّ وعلمانيّ، تقديم نسخة جديدة من الفهم الفقهيّ والفكريّ والفلسفيّ، تسعى لاستبدال المعارك الافتراضيّة الوهميّة بمصالحة تاريخية بين مفاهيم وقيم سامية تتعلق بها الشعوب والنخب، لكنها تنقسم حولها، وتتقاتل، بدلاً من أن تبحث عن نقاط التلاقي الجوهري التي تنطلق كما يقول الرئيس الأسد من الفطرة البشريّة، والسنة الإلهيّة والسنة التاريخيّة. فالقيم السامية لا يمكن لها أن تتصادم، وتعلّق الشعوب بها لا يمكن أن يأتي متناقضاً، وعلى العلماء والمفكرين حل التناقض عندما يظهر، وتفكيكه. وهذه هي المهمة التي يتصدّى لها الأسد بالغوص في عالم الفقه والفكر والفلسفة، وهو يضع يده على جرح فكري خطير يتمثل بتوصيفه للدور الذي تقوم به المدرسة الليبرالية القائمة على تدمير وتفكيك كل البنى المجتمعية، وعناصر الهوية، لتحويل المجتمعات الى مجرد أفراد يتسابقون على عيش بلا معنى ولا ضوابط، أقرب للمفهوم الحيوانيّ الغرائزيّ، ولشريعة الغاب التي تحكمه.

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 الدور التاريخيّ للإسلام في الشرق، وتداخله التركيبي والتاريخي مع صناعة التحوّلات الكبرى، والهويات الجامعة، عنوان يحتاج الى شجاعة الأسد لمقاربته من منطلق التمسك بالعلمانيّة، والقوميّة، يدفع الأسد للكشف عن خطورة إدراك الذين يتطلعون لوضع اليد على هذا الشرق لأهميّة احتلال الإسلام، كاستثمار أقل كلفة من احتلال الأرض، ويقوم مقامها وأكثر. فمن يحتلّ الإسلام ويلبس لبوسه وينطق بلسانه يقطع أكثر من نصف الطريق لتحقيق مشروعه، ويكشف الأسد خطورة إدراكه لهذا الأمر في قلب الحرب على سورية كواحد من أبرز العناوين للحرب التي أعدّت للسيطرة على سورية، وبالتوازي ما أظهره الإسلام في سورية، من النخب والعلماء والبيئة الاجتماعية من قدرة مقاومة لمشاريع الاحتلال الفكري، والسياسي، وما يتصل بها من سعي لتدمير الهوية والعقيدة والترابط الأسري والأخلاق ومنظومة القيم، وهو ما حمله مشروع التطرّف المموّل والمبرمج بمئات الفضائيّات لبثّ الفتن وزرع الخوف والتشجيع على الإرهاب، بتناوب متقن بين طرفَيْه يغذي أحدهما الآخر، ودفع علماء سورية في مواجهته تضحيات غالية من صفوف العلماء، وأدوا في هذه المواجهة دوراً يضعه الرئيس الأسد بمصاف دور الجيش على الجبهات.

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 تاريخياً، كانت سورية هي نقطة الارتكاز التي تأسست عليها الهويّة القوميّة، والتي امتلك منها الإسلام صفته كمشروع سايسيّ حضاريّ، وأمام مدارس فقهيّة ودينيّة تتوزّع بين الوهابية والأخوان المسلمين بقيادة سعودية وتركية، كان التطلع دائماً لإسلام بلاد الشام ليستنهض معه إسلام الأزهر، ويشكلان معاً نقطة التحول التاريخية في مسار الشرق، بالتناغم مع فهم الهوية القوميّة للمجتمع، والأساس العلماني للدولة. وفي هذا الحديث التاريخي، يبدو بوضوح أن الرئيس الأسد قد أخذ هذه المهمة الجليلة على عاتقه كمفكّر، وليس فقط كرئيس للدولة.

فيديوات متعلقة

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جمال عبد الناصر زعيم الأمة العربية الخالد

2020-09-26  الصفصاف

بوفاة جمال عبد الناصر في الثامن والعشرين من أيلول سنة 1970 فقدت الأمة العربية قلبها النابض، عقلها الاستراتيجي ولسانها العربي القومي الفصيح. فقدت قائدها الثائر ومثور أجيالها من المحيط الى الخليج. رأس حربتها في مواجهة الاستعمار والصهاينة والرجعيين. ولأنه كان كذلك نجد أن كل أعداء الزعيم الخالد كانوا ولازالوا حاقدين عليه بالرغم من مرور عشرات السنين على رحيله. يأتي العدو الصهيوني على رأس الحاقدين والباغضين والكارهين والمعادين لعبد الناصر، فهذا الرجل الذي كان مبدعاً في تثوير الأمة العربية من محيطها الى خليجها ومن خليجها الى محيطها ضد الاحتلال الصهيوني وأعداء الأمة العربية وأعوانهم الرجعيين العرب. غرس العروبة والمقاومة والعداء لكل هؤلاء في عقول الملايين من الجماهير العربية. خير دليل على احترام ومحبة وتقدير الأمة العربية للزعيم الخالد كان يوم وفاته واثناء جنازته المهيبة التي شارك فيها نحو 5 مليون مصري. عداكم عن ملايين الجنازات التي أقميت في كل الوطن العربي وشاركت فيها ملايين الحشود من جماهير الأمة. فلو كان عبد الناصر كما يصفه الأعداء واعلامهم وجواسيسهم وأعوانهم لما لاقى هذا الوداع العظيم ولما بقي خالداً في قلوب العرب حتى يومنا هذا. ولما بقي احترامه موجوداً ومقدراً لغاية يومنا هذا في عدد كبير من دول العالم وبين قواها الحية وشعوبها. ولو كان عبد الناصر خائنا ومتخاذلا وذليلا ومستسلما ومطبعا ومهزوما وعاجزا و صغيراً كما الذين خلفوه في حكم مصر، لما قامت وسائل الاعلام المؤتمرة بإمرة الحكام وأشباه الحكام بتشويه سيرته وزرع ذلك في عقول الشباب المصري. فعبد الناصر سيبقى ملهماً للثورة وللنضال وللانتماء الأصيل للأمة. بقي هو ولازال حياً في أجيال العرب المقاةمة بينما مات أعداؤه في الحياة نفسياً ووطنياً وقومياً قبل أن يموتوا جسدياً.

عاش زاهدا مثله مثل أي مواطن عادي وأي فلاح وأي عامل وأي جندي مصري. تزوج من سيدة من طينته وعجينته تشابهت صفاتها مع صفاته وتواضعها مع تواضعه وطريقة معيشتها وحياتها العادية والبسيطة مع طريقة حياته ومعيشته العادية. عاشت في الظل ولم تبدل جلدها تماما كما فعل زوجها ورفيق عمرها الزعيم جمال عبد الناصر، زعيم مصر والعرب، هذا الجندي الذي قاتل في فلسطين اثناء النكبة وصمد ودافع عنها بضراوة وشراسة. ففي فلسطين عاش عبد الناصر النكبة والخيانة والألم على ضياعها واغتصابها واحتلالها من قبل الصهاينة المجرمين. فقرر عند عودته أن يفعل هو ورفاقه من أبناء الجيش المصري شيئاً يقلب مصر والمنطقة راساً على عقب، فكانت حركة الضباط الأحرار التي أزاحت عرش الملك وأعادت لمصر مكانتها في طليعة العرب وأفريقيا ودول العالم، وصار يحسب لمصر ناصر ألف حساب. منذ نجح ناصر ورفاقه في السيطرة على الحكم في مصر بدأت المؤامرات ضده من قبل الصهاينة والغرب الاستعماري ممثلا بالولايات المتحدة الأمريكية وبريطانيا وفرنسا وكل معسكر الأعداء من مملكة آل سعود الوهابية الى المجرمين الصهاينة اليهود في فلسطين المحتلة. وصولاً الى أعداء الداخل في مصر نفسها الذين كانوا يكيدون لعبد الناصر، ثم حاولوا اغتياله بالتنسيق مع المخابرات البريطانية وبتمويل ودعم من السعودية. لكنه صبر وصمد وقاوم وأستمر وانتصر عليهم.

الرئيس عبد الناصر توجه إلى قمة دول عدم الانحياز في باندونغ عام 1955، برفقة شوان لاي رئيس وزراء الصين الأسبق و نهرو وسوكارنو وأسسوا مجموعة دول عدم الانحياز، الحلف التضامني الآسيوي الافريقي واللاتيني الأمريكي. الذي ضم عظماء من ذلك الزمان منهم أيضاً تيتو ثم كاسترو. استطاع الزعيم عبد الناصر مع قادة عالميين بناء حلف عالمي كبير لأجل دعم قضية فلسطين وحركات التحرر العربية والافريقية والأسيوية والعالمية. وللتحشيد العالمي لنصرة شعب وقضية فلسطين.

كما دافع عبد الناصر عن فلسطين دافع عن البلاد العربية الأخرى من الجزائر الى اليمن وسوريا والعراق وليبيا ولبنان والخ. هذا كله لم يرق للأعداء ومعسكرهم الكبير، خاصة علاقات عبد الناصر مع الاتحاد السويفيتي واعادة بناء الجيش المصري استعداد لحرب التحرير الكبرى. لكن الأعداء هاجموه في العدوان الثلاثي رداً على المقاومة المصرية التي ألحقت خسائر كبيرة بالمستعمرين البريطانيين في سيناء قبل واثناء توقيع اتفاقية الجلاء سنة 1954. التي انتهت بطرد الاستعمار البريطاني من مصر نهائياً.

في ذلك الوقت كان موقف عبد الناصر واضحاً في عداءه للكيان الصهيوني ورفض الاعتراف بوجوده. وكرس ذلك عبر تضييق حركة الملاحة في قناة السويس وخليج العقبة على السفن الصهيونية. طبعاً لم يرق ذلك للصهاينة الذين قاموا بتعزيز قدراتهم العسكرية عبر ابرام صفقات سلاح كبيرة مع فرنسا. طلب عبد الناصر السلاح من الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية وبريطانيا لكنهما رفضتا تزويده بالسلاح فتوجه نحو الاتحاد السويفيتي الذي رحب بذلك وزود مصر بالسلاح والعتاد العسكريين. في ذلك الوقت كان السوفييت يريدون أن يكون لهم موطئ قدم وحلفاء في المنطقة. في ذلك الوقت أيضاً رفض عبد الناصر الدخول في حلف مع الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية وبريطانيا حليفتا (اسرائيل). وأعلن يوم 26 تموز – يوليو 1956 تأميم قناة السويس. وعندما فشل معسكر الأعداء العالمي في ثنيّ مصر عن قرارها قررت بريطانيا مع فرنسا والكيان الصهيوني مهاجمة مصر عقابا لعبد الناصر على قرار التأميم ورفض الصلح والاعتراف بالكيان الصهيوني، أو توقيع اتفاقيات سلام (استسلام) معه والسيطرة والسيادة الكاملة على قناة السويس التي هي جزء من الأرض العربية المصرية.

هاجمت مصر قوات معادية بريطانية، فرنسية وصهيونية سنة 1956 وعرفت تلك الحرب بحرب السويس. تعتبر تلك الحرب العدوانية ثاني حروب وغزوات العدو الصهيوني على الأمة العربية بعد احتلال فلسطين في الحرب الأولى سنة 1948. لم تكن مصر في وضع عسكري قوي يسمح لها بمواجهة هذا العدوان لكنها واجهته ودحرته بعد معارك مشرفة وكان لموقف الاتحاد السوفيتي شديد الأثر في انهاء العدوان الثلاثي حيث وجه السوفييت انذارا شديد اللهجة للمعتدين وهددت القيادة السوفيتية بمحو العدوان. مما اضطر المعتدين الى الانسحاب. اعتبرت تلك الحرب نهاية لنفوذ وقوة بريطانيا كدولة عظمى في العالم. وهذا يضاف أيضاً لانجازات الزعيم جمال عبد الناصر.

اليوم ونحن على مشارف ذكرى رحيل الزعيم الخالد جمال عبد الناصر، الذي قال في خطبة من خطبه “إن جزمة جندي مصري بتاج آل سعود”. نقول للزعيم الراحل: تلك الجزمة بتيجان كل الذين خانوا مصر وخانوك وخانوا فلسطين والعروبة. عبيد أموال السعودية وأخواتها من الذين لازالوا يعيشون في عهد العبودية والاستعمار والتبعية والخيانة.

أما من وقعوا اتفاقيات مع الصهاينة معترفين بروايتهم التاريخية الزائفة ومتخلين عن روايتنا العربية المقدسة فقد أصبحوا خارج الصفين الوطني والقومي. وهذا ينطبق على المستسلمين الفلسطينيين أولا ثم على أشباههم من العرب.

في ذكرى رحيل زعيم الأمة العربية بلا منازع أقول للفلسطينيين الصامدين الصابرين المرابطين داخل الوطن المحتل وبالذات في القدس وأماكنها المقدسة، مساجد وكنائس. جهزوا نعالكم وأحذيتكم لاستقبال أي مستسلم ومطبع عربي سيتجرأ على زيارة أحياء المدينة العربية القديمة في القدس ولو حتى برفقة نتنياهو نفسه وليس فقط شرطته وجيشه.

نضال حمد

مختصر مفيد ثورة جمال عبد الناصر

ناصر قنديل

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يقدّم لنا نموذج القائد التاريخي جمال عبد الناصر بعد نصف قرن من الرحيل مسيرة رجل من أبناء الفقراء والبسطاء وفي موقع عادي في هرميّة مؤسسات الدولة والمجتمع تحمّل المسؤولية عندما رأى وطنه يحتضر ويُهان وشعبه يجوع والأجنبي يهيمن على القرار والثروات، فلم يسأل عن تبعات التحرك والمواجهة وخاضها حتى النهاية بكل ما أوتي من قوة، من دون أن ينتظر عشيرة أو حزبا أو دولة يدعمونه، مستعداً لتحمل المخاطر بأعلى تجلياتها وهو زوج وأب وموظف.

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خلال توليه المسؤولية قدّم لنا جمال عبد الناصر نموذج المسؤول الصادق الذي بقي أميناً لما أعلن من مبادئ، والذي بذل كل جهد ممكن للتعلّم والتزوّد بالمعارف والتواضع في كسب الخبرات وسماع الآراء حتى اختار أفضل ما يخدم قضية شعبه وبلده وأمته وبذل في سبيله وقتاً وجهداً وتضحيات، فكانت معارك وحروب وحصار وعقوبات، وولدت مشاريع بحجم مصانع التعدين والسد العالي وقرارات بحجم تأميم قناة السويس وتوزيع الأراضي على الفلاحين.

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خلال مسؤولياته الجسام خاض عبد الناصر حرباً وخسرها، فما كان منه إلا أن قدّم استقالته مستعداً لتحمل تبعات الهزيمة، وقد قدم في سيرته الشخصية مثالاً استثنائياً حول الزهد بالمال والترفع عن المكاسب الشخصية له ولعائلته وعاش حياة البسطاء وغادرنا. وهو كما دخل الحكم بجيوب فارغة.

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عظمة المثال في كونه لا يترك عذراً لأحد، فيقول بالوقائع أن كل شيء ممكن، فهو يقول لشبابنا تحمّلوا المسؤولية ولا تقيسوا قراراتكم في قضايا أوطانكم بحجم ما بين أيديكم وبضمانات الفوز مسبقاً. فحاولوا وتشجعوا وتحملوا التبعات، والنجاح ممكن دون عشيرة أو حزب أو دولة يقفون وراءكم، ويقول لمن يتولى المسؤولية أي مسؤولية، أن تغيير حياة الناس أمر ممكن، وأن تغيير حال الوطن أمر ممكن، وأن مواجهة الحصار والعقوبات أمر ممكن، ويقول لكل من يتعاطى الشأن العام أن الجمع بين العمل العام والأخلاق أمر ممكن، وكل من يقارن قرارات عليه الحسم بشأنها ويخامره بعض اليأس والتردّد مدعوّ لتخيل ماذا واجه جمال عبد الناصر وكيف اتخذ قراراته.

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يستطيع الناس الاختلاف في تقييم تجربة حكم جمال عبد الناصر، و/أو في صواب قراراته، لكن أحداً لا يستطيع أن يشطب من ذاكرتنا أنه كان عنوان المرحلة الذهبية في التاريخ العربي المعاصر، عندما صار للعرب والشرق والعالم الثالث كلمة.

الطبيعيّ يهزم التطبيعيّ

حمدين صباحي

التطبيع هو الجائزة الكبرى التي يسعى إليها العدو الصهيوني.

إنه استسلام المغتصب للغاصب، ومباركة الضحيّة لسكين الجلاد، هو تخلّي صاحب الحق عن هويته وتنكّره لدمه وتكذيبه لروايته وترديده لسردية قاتله.

هو الانسحاق النفسي والسلوكي الذي يُخرج المطبعين من صفة الأحرار ليدبغ أرواحهم بوشم العبيد.

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تعدّدت الجبهات وتوالت الحروب في الصراع العربي الصهيوني. الصراع الحضاري الشامل عسكرياً ومعرفياً وثقافياً وعلمياً وتكنولوجيًا وسياسيًا، صراع من نوع فريد لن ينتهي إلا بانتفاء أحد طرفيه، صراع وجود لا حدود.

وفي سياق هذا الصراع فإن التطبيع هو حرب كبرى، هو رمانة ميزان الصراع، فعند العدو كل انتصار منقوص ما لم يتمّمه التطبيع. وعند الأمة كل هزيمة محتملة ما لم يكرّسها التطبيع.

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التطبيع لا يعني فقط التخلي عن فلسطين بل هو موت العروبة.

لأنه انتفاء شرط الأمة. الأمة ليست عديد محض لبشر يتساكنون، بل جماعة يوحدها تاريخ من الهم والحلم والسعي نحو حياة تجسد هويتها وتحقق أهدافها، ولكل أمة مقاصدها الكبرى تجتمع على السعي نحو تحقيقها. وقد بلور العرب بوحدة الجغرافيا والتاريخ هوية جامعة ومقاصد نبيلة في الحرية والتنمية المستقلة والعدل الاجتماعي والكرامة الانسانية والتجدد الحضاري وبناء دولة القانون المدنية الديمقراطية الحديثة الحامية لحقوق الإنسان. وفي قلب هذه المقاصد تحرير فلسطين. الذي هو حق وواجب أخلاقي وقومي ووطني.

هذه المقاصد سلسلة متكاملة الحلقات يعزز بعضها بعضاً. فلو انكسرت بالتطبيع حلقة تحرير فلسطين لتكسرت السلسلة وانفرط العقد وتبعثرت الأمة.

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وانتفاء أحد طرفي صراع الوجود لا يعني بالضرورة الإبادة الجسدية بل إكراهه أو استدراجه إلى الرضوخ والتخلي عن الحقوق. وقد ثبت أن هذا الهدف لن يتحقق بالقوة العارية وحدها، فتاريخ العدو يفيض بالمذابح وسفك الدم والاقتلاع والتهجير والترانسفير والاحتلال والعدوان والفصل العنصري والإبادة الجماعية. ورغم كل هذه الوحشية لم يزل العربي الفلسطيني على مدى سبعين عاماً على قيد الحياة والمقاومة والأمل.

لا يتحقق هذا الهدف الرئيس إلا بالتطبيع. فبالتطبيع وحده يمكن إخراج العرب من حال الأمة التي تقاوم عدوها ككل الأحرار، إلى حال قطعان العبيد الراكعين في حظيرة التطبيع يديرهم السيد الصهيوني ويحرسهم ويعلفهم ويذبحهم متى شاء. وهذا هو المقصد الجوهري للمشروع الصهيوني بتعدّد لافتاته من “إسرائيل” الكبرى إلى الشرق الأوسط الجديد إلى صفقة القرن.

ولكل حرب أسلحتها وجنودها. وسلاح التطبيع هو الكذب وجنوده هم بضعة عرب كاذبون استهدفوا تزييف وعي الأمة وإصابة الروح والعقل والوجدان العربي بفيروس التطبيع، كما يفعل فيروس كورونا الآن.

ولأن الكيان الصهيوني هو عضو غريب مزروع بـالـعنف في الجسد العربي، ولأن المعلوم من الطب أن الجسد يلفظ العضو المزروع ما لم يُحقن بمثبطات المناعة لكي يتقبله. فإن هدف فيروس التطبيع هو تثبيط المناعة العربية لكي تقبل الكيان الدخيل.

على مدار أربعين عام يتوالى حقن العقل العربي بفيروس التطبيع. منذ حقنة كامب ديفيد أم الخطايا إلى حقنة أوسلو وحقنة وادي عربة انتهاءً بأقراص التطبيع المسمومة مما يحاول إعلام العبيد ترويجها كما تفعل قناة mbc وسواها من الكذبة التابعين.

أربعة عقود من حرب التطبيع خاضها الصهاينة بدعم أميركي وتواطؤ دولي ومشاركة ذليلة من بعض النخب العربية التي خارت فخانت في قصور الحكم وأجهزة الإعلام وأسواق التجارة. فماذا كان الحصاد؟

هزيمة ماحقة للتطبيع والمطبعين.

ونصر مبين للوعي الشعبي والعقل الجمعيّ العربيّ.

تكفي نظرة فاحصة لحالة مصر التي عمّدت خلال هذه الحرب أبطالها في مواجهة التطبيع: سعد إدريس حلاوة وسليمان خاطر وأيمن حسن وأبطال تنظيم “ثورة مصر” بقيادة خالد عبدالناصر ومحمود نورالدين كما عمد الأردن العربي بطله احمد الدقامسة.

والأكثر دلالة ملايين الابطال المغمورين من النساء والرجال العاديين الذين يتجلى رفضهم الطبيعي للتطبيع واحتقارهم ونبذهم للمطبعين.

ولعل من مكر التاريخ أن الجيل الذي ولد في ظلال كامب ديفيد وتربّى تحت سلطة وأبواق التطبيع حتى إذا بلغ أشده رفع علم فلسطين في ميدان التحرير في أعظم تجليات الربيع العربي قبل أن يختطفه خريف الحكام التابعين. هو نفسه الذي رفع في الميدان صورة جمال عبد الناصر الرمز الأصدق في مقاومة الصهيونية والاستعمار، هو الجيل نفسه الذي ما أن أسقط مبارك حتى اتجه إلى سفارة العدو على شاطئ النيل يحاصرها بأجساده الغضة وهتافاته الغاضبة ويتسلق جدرانها بأظافره ويقتحمها بصدوره العارية.

ما أبأس المطبعين وما أحقرهم، ورغم خطرهم ما أهونهم.

إن النصر عليهم أكيد. لأن حرب التطبيع ليست وقفاً على الجنرال أو المثقف، إنها حرب كل الناس، حرب الشعب، وما دامت بطبيعتها حرب الشعب فإن النصر فيها هو الممكن الوحيد.

إن هزيمة الكيان الصهيوني في حرب التطبيع تحرمه من ثمرة عدوانه، وتبقيه في مهب تبديد كل ما حققه. وانتصار أمتنا في حرب التطبيع لا يحقق مقاصدها لكن يؤكد مناعتها، وهي الشرط اللازم لتقدمها الواجب من الممانعة الى المقاومة، ثم من المقاومة إلى تحرير فلسطين.. كل فلسطين.

والنيل يجري.

فما ضيَر إن تسقط في مجراه العميق بعض جثث الحيوانات النافقة؟ يجرفها تياره الطبيعي، يتطهر ذاتياً ويُطهّر، يُخضر ويُعمّر.

كذلك تيار الوعي الجمعي لأمة وحدتها هزائم مقيمة وانتصارات مبددة وأحلام لا تموت. فتعلمت أن تميز العدو من الصديق كما تميز الخبيث من الطيب. لا يضيره أن تسقط فيه بعض أكاذيب منتنة يلقيها مهرّبو التطبيع. يجرفها تيار الوعي الجمعي الطبيعي.

هذا هو القانون الحاكم من أربعين عاماً، وسيبقى:

الطبيعيّ يهزم التطبيعيّ.

والنيل يجري.

(1) مداخلة ألقيت في الملتقى العربي الدولي «الافتراضي» لمناهضة التطبيع مع العدو الصهيوني.

*سياسي مصري

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هذا ما سمعتُه عن المطران كبوجي من الأمين بديع الشدراوي والرفيق عزيز إبراهيم الشرفاء دائماً حاضرون حتى وإن رحلوا عن الوجود

المصدر

يوسف المسمار

في 28 نيسان 2020 غيّب الموت في البرازيل، الأمين بديع الشدراوي الجزيل الاحترام والعاطر الذكر، وهو من المناضلين القوميين الذين أدّوا أدواراً كبيرة في مقاومة الاحتلال.

قبل رحيله، تلقيت منه اتصالاً يشكرني فيه على نشر قول أنطون سعاده «العالم كله بحاجة إلى فلسفتنا» بلغات عدّة، وقال لي: «أحسنت يا رفيق يوسف. يجب أن يعرف العالم كله مَن هو أنطون سعاده ومَن هم نحن تلامذة أنطون سعاده الأوفياء النظاميون المناقبيون في الحزب الذي أسسه لنهضة الأمة السورية وماذا أعطت الأمة السورية الحضارية للعالم». وقد شكرته وأكدت بأن «حزبنا مدرسة حياة مَن نجح فيها تخرّج وتألّق، ومن استهان بها فشل وأخفق».

وخلال الاتصال أتينا على ذكر المطران ايلاريون كبوجي فقال لي الأمين بديع: «المطران رفيقنا وأنا أعرفه وأعرف أشياء كثيرة عنه قام بها من أجل الحزب والأمة. وقد كان ملاحقاً أثناء الانتداب الفرنسي ولم تتمكن السلطات الفرنسية من معرفته والقبض عليه، لأنه كان يحمل اسماً آخر هو اسم الرفيق جورج ينشط به حزبياً غير اسمه بالإضافة الى جانب نشاطه الديني». وقال لي الأمين بديع بأنه سيرسل كل ما يعرفه عن المطران كبوجي لتضمينها في مقال أكتبه، لكن القدر خطفه قبل أن يزوّدني بالمعلومات.

هنا، لا بدّ من الإشارة إلى المقابلة التي أجرتها الإعلامية جودي يعقوب مع المطران كبوجي وفيها يقول: «إنّ حل الأزمة السورية يكمن بالفكر السوري، فكم نحن بحاجة إلى كل المنادين بفكرة وحدة الأمة السورية مثل أنطون سعاده، لأن الرهان اليوم هو على الذين يؤمنون بفكرة الوحدة، من أجل أن نرتقي بسورية نحو الخلود».

وما يؤكد انتماء المطران كبوجي أنه كان يحبّ العرب ولا يحبّ الأعراب، ويقول بالعروبة العربيّة التمدنيّة العلميّة الواقعيّة الصحيحة ولا يقول بالأعرابية.

وهنا لا بد من الإشارة إلى ما جاء في محاضرة سعاده التي تحت عنوان «الاتحاد العملي في حياة الأمم» في النادي الفلسطيني سنة 1933: «وهل يضيرنا ان يكون بعضنا عرباً والعرب برهنوا بفتوحاتهم وما أدّوه للمدنية من خدمات أنهم شعب لهم مزايا تمكنه من القيام بأعباء المدنية متى وجد في محيط صالح. فالعرب في الأندلس – والسوريون كانوا يشكلون قسماً هاماً في الأندلس ضمن التسمية العربية – كانوا من أهم عوامل ترقية المدنية في العلوم وإطلاق حرية الفكر حتى أصبحت اللغة العربية لغة العلم في الشرق والغرب».

عروبة المطران كبوجي هي العروبة الواقعية العلمية التمدنية الصحيحة وليست العروبة الطائفية اللغوية الوهمية المتخلفة الزائفة. وقيامة العالم العربي وجبهة المجتمعات العربية لا ولن تتحققان بالطائفية المكفّرة، واللغوية المتبجّحة، والأوهام الخرافية، والتقهقر الأخلاقي المدمّر، بل تتحقق بالمفهوم السوري القومي الاجتماعي ومبادئ الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي وغايته وبالعقلية المناقبية القومية الاجتماعية.

وفي هذا السياق يقول المطران كبوجي للإعلامية يعقوب إن مَن يقرأ كتاب المحاضرات العشر «بتأنٍّ وتمعّن وتدبّر يفهم معنى العروبة الواقعية الصحيحة ويهجر العروبة الطائفيّة اللغويّة الوهميّة. وهذا هو إيماني لأن العروبة الواقعية العلمية هي لخير سورية ولخير العرب. وسورية القومية الاجتماعية هي لصالح العالم العربي كما هي لصالح سورية».

لقد كان للمطران كبوجي نوعان من النشاط في حلب: نشاط ديني علني ونشاط سوري قومي اجتماعي سري باسم آخر، ولمعرفة سبب لقاء راهب الدير كبوجي بالعمرين: الشاعر عمر أبو ريشة والأمين عمر أبو زلام هي أن الثلاثة كانوا بمهممة إدخال أحد المقبلين على الدعوة القومية الاجتماعية وقد عيّنوا له موعداً لأداء القسم الحزبي. وقبل ان ينطلقوا الى مكان الاجتماع المعيّن طلب منهم الراهب كبوجي أن يرتدوا ثياب رهبان لإبعاد الشبهة عنهم وتوجّه الثلاثة الى المكان المخصص لاداء القسم ومروا في طريقهم في سوق الهال ومعهم القَسَم الحزبي مكتوباً باليد، فظهرت أمامهم وفاجأتهم في السوق دورية من الشرطة الفرنسية فأمرهما المسؤول الرفيق جورج الذي هو الراهب كبوجي أن يخفوا الورقة المكتوب عليها القسم وأن الأمر الذي وجّهه لهما بكل «سلطان ورهبة»، كما ورد في قصة الحزب للأمين الدكتور شوقي خيرالله هو لإخفاء الورقة التي كتب عليها القسم، لأن السلطات الفرنسية كانت تعتبر القوميين الاجتماعيين مخرّبين لرفضهم الاحتلال الفرنسي ومقاومته، وتلاحقهم في كل مكان تواجدوا فيه.

وبالفعل أخفوا الورقة التي كتب عليها قَسَم الانتماء الى الحزب في قلب المكسّرات أو البهارات. وهذه القصة سمعتها من الرفيق الراحل عزيز إبراهيم ناظر إذاعة منفذية البرازيل العامة وهو من منطقة انطاكية والإسكندرون التي تنازلت عنها فرنسا لتركيا.

والرفيق عزيز ابراهيم كان رجل أعمال، وكان يملك مصنعاً كبيراً للنسيج في سان باولو، وكان على علاقة قوية مع الشاعر عمر أبو ريشة والمسؤول الأول عن طباعة خمسين نسخة في كتاب مختارات «من شعر عمر أبو ريشة» الذي وصل الى 300 صفحة عندما قدم الشاعر الى سان باولو كمسؤول دبلوماسي للكيان الشامي السوري وقدّمها كهدية من المؤلف لمستوصف القديس يوحنا في سان باولو – البرازيل. وقد خصّني الرفيق عزيز إبراهيم بنسخة من الكتاب قائلاً لي: لقد طبعنا خمسين نسخة من هذه المختارات من شعر الرفيق الشاعر عمر أبو ريشة. كما أرسل لزوجتي هدية قطعة من القماش المصنوع في مصنعه مع ابنه المهندس بشارة عزيز إبراهيم بعد زواجنا. وفي إحدى المرات التقينا في سان باول بدعوة على الغذاء من الأمين ألبرتو شكور وكان معنا الأمين نواف حردان والرفيق أديب بندقي، قال لي أثناءها الرفيق الراحل عزيز إبراهيم: «لقد حدثني الأمين البرتو أنك تقوم بترجمة مبادئ الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي الى اللغة البرتغالية فسررتُ جداً بهذا الخبر. وأقول لك إن سعاده في قبره يشكرك على هذا العمل».

من أقوال المطران كبوجي

1 –

«على أصوات المساجد وهي تصدح الله أكبر، وعلى أصوات الأجراس في الكنيسة، نحن عائدون إلى قدسنا الحبيبة».

2 –

«عائدون مهما طال الزمن ومهما بهض الثمن، والحق يعلو ولا يُعلى عليه، وطالما هناك شعب وفيّ هو الشعب الفلسطيني، فحتماً عائدون».

3 –

«يسعد صباحكم والله يجمعنا بكم قريباً في الناصرة… فعندما اسمع صوتكم انتعش. أنتم بالنسبة لي أوكسجين الحياة لقد صلّيت في قاعة المؤتمر لسلامة سورية وفلسطين والناصرة وكل بلاد الشام».

هكذا بدأ سيادة مطران القدس في المنفى المطران هيلاريون كابوتشي حديثه خلال مغادرته مدينة مونتريو، حيث شارك في الجلسة الافتتاحية لمؤتمر جنيف 2 حول سورية.

4 –

« لقد صليت ولكن… يد واحدة لا تصفق. فإن لم يبنِ الرب البيت عبثاً يتعب البناؤون… إن لم نرفق العمل بالصلاة فعملنا سيبقى بدون جدوى، لقد كنت داخل القاعة أصلي لربنا رب السلام والمحبة… وحتى يعمّ السلام العالم أجمع، والشرق الأوسط… يعمّ الناصرة وفلسطين وكل سورية وكل بلد عربي، فكفانا عذاباً. كل مدة وجودي في القاعة كنت أصلي من أجل السلام في العالم أجمع ونجاحه في فلسطين وفي الناصرة وفي كل سورية».

5 –

«أنا رجل دين الله رب العالمين، ورجل دين الله هو أيضاً مواطن، وحب الأوطان من الإيمان والذي لا يحبّ وطنه، لا يحبّ ربه. وايماني بربي هو من محبتي لوطني».

6 –

«وردًا على سؤال عن مشاركته في افتتاح المؤتمر وجلوسه على طاولة الوفد الرسمي السوري قال المطران كابوتشي: «نعم نعم.. كنتُ جالساً ضمن الوفد السوري الرسمي».

7 –

«وتابع المطران كبوجي: «لقد حضرت بتلقاء نفسي دون دعوة من أحد.. أنا لست بحاجة لدعوة من أحد لأذهب وأصلي وأعمل من اجل السلام لبلادي ولشعبي ولخلاصهما من القتل والدمار والإرهاب.. نعم رحت الى هناك الى سويسرا ومنها أنا مستعد للذهاب الى اي مكان في العالم من اجل السلام..».

8 –

« وعن مفاجأة الوفد السوري واستقباله له قال المطران كبوجي: «ما بتقدر تتصوّر. أنا عشت السماء على الأرض. مباشرة احتضنوني ضمن الوفد… كانت سورية أمامي بشعبها ورئيسها متألقة.. سورية كانت في السماء. سورية رغم كل الجراح تتأمل خيرًا. فما نيل المطالب بالتمني ولكن تؤخذ الدنيا غلابا. وحبة الحنطة إن لم تمُت في الأرض لا تُنضج سنبلة. سر الحياة وخصبها أنها تموت. وإنما هي تموت لكي تعيش، هكذا هي سورية شكلاً وروحاً».

9 –

«سورية هي وطني وشعبها شعبي، فإذا لم أعترف بذلك، فأي بلاد أخرى غيرها يمكن أن اعتبرها بلادي؟».

10 –

«سورية هي السماء على الأرض وهي دائماً في السماء، ولسلامها دائماً أعمل وأصلّي. فالدنيا لا تؤخذ بالصلاة وحدها، بل بالعمل أيضاً. الدنيا لا تؤخذ بالتمني بل تؤخذ غلابا».

هذا هو المطران كبوجي السوري القومي الاجتماعي الذي قال: «اذا لم أعترف بأن سورية وطني وشعبها شعبي، فأي بلاد أخرى غيرها يمكن أن أعتبرها بلادي؟!».

كاتب وشاعر قومي مقيم في البرازيل

قصةُ إمارةِ قطر كما لم تسمعوها من قبل