<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-top-anchor"></div>
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container">
</div><div class="gmail-container" lang="en-EN" dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/the-battle-against-western-arrogance">english.almayadeen.net</a>
<div class="gmail-domain-border"></div>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The battle against Western arrogance</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Hasan Abu Ali</div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">June 29, 2024<br></div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><p>Until
we, as a people, are seen as more than mere barbarians, our merits will
not be understood, our successes will not be replicated, and our
achievements will not be topped.</p><img src="cid:ii_ly1tbctm0" alt="a0fad1ff-874c-4214-8809-11d479dafbdb.jpg" width="408" height="321"><br><div><ul id="gmail-content-slick-0"><div aria-hidden="false"><li>
the Left's search for a non-Arab, non-Muslim resistance
movement belies the fact that the center of the world revolution has
been far from the West for a very long time. (Al Mayadeen English;
Illustrated by Batoul Chamas)
</li></div></ul>
<p>There is a wonderful talk hosted by the Masar Badil with a spokesman
from the Ansarallah movement, and I urge you to watch it if you can. It
is crucial in times like this to hear directly from the Resistance.</p>
<p>There is this one phrase he said that is stuck in my head: We are in a battle against Western arrogance.</p>
<p>Although everything he said was poignant and incredibly useful, this
phrase in particular made the unity between political work in the
homeland [Palestine] and in the diaspora incredibly clear.</p>
<p>In the homeland, the operative tool of this arrogance is the military
and its mouthpieces. Netanyahu and his underlings spout off incoherent
nonsense every two days about how they are this close to winning the
war, destroying Hamas, and freeing the hostages. The Resistance
counters, firmly grounded in the reality on the ground, and with a
confidence recognized worldwide, that Netanyahu has barely managed to
free a few hostages. That its command and control remain robust, and
with each passing day, Netanyahu's pride and legitimacy suffer
irreparable blows. The Resistance, of course, suffers greatly in all
this, but as martyr Basil Al Araj puts it "we are far more capable of
bearing the costs".</p>
<p>The Resistance's confidence is built on a sturdy foundation of the
promises it has kept. They give us footage of conflagrated tanks,
fighters literally jumping for joy, and, in general, the triumph of
indigenous ingenuity over imperialist hubris. This is the difference
between arrogance and confidence: Evidence. The supposed evidence of
Zionist greatness is blasted on Western TV channels 24/7, yet it is
convincing to no one. The English language news of the Resistance is
concentrated in a single Telegram channel, and a few prominent Twitter
accounts, all of which are constantly suppressed and even outright
banned, and yet, millions are tuning in.</p>
<p>In a more just world, this tuning in, and the support that flows from
it, would be the primary political activity of the world's progressive
masses. In the Middle East and among some of its diaspora, this is what
political work looks like. But "the colonial world is a world cut in
two", so for much of the "developed world", this is not the case. The
colonial world, including its progressives, cannot possibly accept the
leadership of an Islamic or Arab Resistance.</p>
<p>The Arabic word for arrogance is 'istikbar'. The root, k-b-r, means
big or bigger, so the word literally means "to make yourself bigger".
The Western left, despite having had virtually no successes since the
fall of the Soviet Union, thinks of itself so highly that it can choose
to ignore and minimize the anti-imperialist Resistance in the Middle
East.</p>
<p>Abdaljawad Omar's wonderful essay, The Question of Hamas and the
Left, addresses this issue directly. The piece's core concept is that
the global Left, but especially those in the West, refuse to engage with
the reality of Palestine and, especially with Hamas as a leading force.
He says, "One cannot claim solidarity with Palestine and dismiss,
overlook, or exclude Hamas."</p>
<p>In the West, especially in America, this dismissal has a singular and
underappreciated root: the deep-seated anti-Arab anti-Muslim sentiment
implanted in people's hearts and minds over the past few decades.</p>
<p>Most on the Left have at least a cursory understanding of Cold War
propaganda: The constant deluge of anti-communist demonization that
Americans, especially but the West tout court, were exposed to for
decades. The media campaign against Arabs and Muslims over the past 3
decades is like that, but with modern media and military might, and
directed at a mass of people rather than, as with the Soviet Union, a
coherent political force capable of rebuffing cultural or physical
annihilation.</p>
<p>This is unsurprising, as both the military and media machinery that
make this possible both find their origin in post-Cold War surplus. A
full discussion of that phenomenon is beyond the scope of this essay,
but suffice it to say this was prefigured since the fall of the USSR.
Take for instance this 1990 quote by the feminist and pacifist
philosopher Ursula Franklin:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It will be very interesting to see what's going to happen now in the
current situation with the Soviet Union and the USA. And I would venture
that the social and political needs for an enemy are so deeply
entrenched in the real world of technology as we know it today that a
new enemy will quickly appear.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And appear we did! The new enemy of the 21st century was just as
amorphous as the communist but markedly more 'backward', dispersed and
unpredictable. At the turn of the century, the US had carte blanche to
change to this new, more inscrutable enemy, and has ridden that wave
through the last 20 years, spreading destruction around the world from
Iraq to Libya, Syria, Yemen and, continually, with increasing barbarity,
Palestine.</p>
<p>Endless examples elucidate the omnipresence of this destruction and
dehumanization. The worst prisons in the world are for our people (Abu
Ghraib, Guantanamo, Gilboa). In the US military, to this day, GIs love
to coat their bullets in pork in an absurd attempt to trick God into
sending their Muslim victims to hell.</p>
<p>The most advanced and carefully designed weaponry is tested and
perfected on our people. Multiple countries populated almost exclusively
with Arabs and Muslims have their skies patrolled by drones to the
degree that children there "fear blue skies". Even in the diaspora, from
France to Germany to the US, official ruling parties issue decrees that
specifically target and violate our fundamental rights.</p>
<p>This is the backdrop for every opinion on Arabs and Muslims and their
Resistance. It is in this context, of oppression, destruction, and
near-universal hatred that responses to our independent political
maneuvers are generated. Regardless of the West's unshakable faith in
its "rationality" it needs to be said that you cannot properly
understand someone you do not see as fully human.</p>
<p>Case in point, after October 7th, I and other Arabs were subjected to
a slew of otherwise rational people asking about mass rape and baby
beheadings. Even before delving into the facts of the matter, I stood
stunned at the credulity of these people. Why do you believe Shani Louk
was raped? Simply because she was scantily clad and near Arab men? Is
that all it takes? Why do you believe in baby beheading, even
conceptually? Why would you believe that such an act, which serves no
political or military purpose would be carried out by what are obviously
trained and disciplined fighters?</p>
<p>This was either extreme naivety or abject racism. In any case, even
in otherwise well-meaning people, it drew a line of demarcation. A line
that was not between 'Left' and 'Right' but between those who understand
that every word said about an Arab in the Western media is a lie, and
those who don't.</p>
<p>I naively expected better of the Western left, even though my entire
life in America has given me evidence to the contrary. In truth, I
shouldn't be surprised that this same dehumanization is at play. The
American political spectrum, divided between reactionaries, liberals,
and leftists, is united in not recognizing us as full political agents
with a strategy and history that rivals, and sometimes even surpasses,
their own. While this is expected from others, one would hope for a
markedly better position from the left.</p>
<p>This position has echoes in the French left's abandonment of the FLN
in Algeria and its slavish loyalty to the colonial regime, but its
fundamental character is different. To understand it we have to go to
one of Omar's most oft-repeated points:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ultimately, the Western left’s quixotic search for a secular
progressive alternative to Hamas overlooks a simple fact: at this
particular historical juncture, the political forces that are still
holding onto and leading a resistance agenda are not of the secular
left.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I would expand on this to say: the Left's search for a non-Arab,
non-Muslim resistance movement belies the fact that the center of the
world revolution has been far from the West for a very long time. Since
the fall of the Berlin Wall, resistance has shifted from being
interwoven into the fabric of Western society to something that
predominantly comes from outside. The Western left, in its colonial
arrogance, refuses to accept this fact, and even less the notion that,
if there is a revolutionary center, it would be the Middle East.</p>
<p>Even among those who appreciate this revolutionary center, we are
often treated as a kind of raging beast. We have an appreciable power to
be sure but lack meaningful insights. These are the people who will
watch our military exploits with great excitement but yawn at the
impressive feats of coalition building, the slow rise to strategic
equilibrium over decades, and the steady accumulation of resistance
infrastructure in the world's most besieged and bombarded region. Only
an arrogant Left that refuses to learn from those it sees as "lesser"
could miss these monumental feats.</p>
<p>The fact is while we have precious few examples of a
counter-hegemonic trend cohering into a political force, most are in the
Middle East and none are in the West. </p>
<p>A humble Left would realize that the most active political student
organization on nearly every campus in the US is not a socialist club or
an autonomous group but an SJP (Student of Justice in Palestine). But
our arrogant Left is committed to an unwillingness to learn from and,
God forbid, to take seriously and be led by the subjects of the colonial
empire.</p>
<p>Omar ends his essay with this description of Hamas as an energetic
political entity that has astutely learned from the mistakes of its
predecessor, the PLO, both in warfare and negotiations. It has
meticulously invested its intellectual, political, and military
resources into understanding "Israel" and its psychic center of gravity.
And that Whether we like it or not, Hamas is now the primary force
leading the Palestinian struggle.</p>
<p>No one in the West likes this. This description is matched in its
accuracy only by its absolute incompatibility with the West's view of
"The Arab" in our entirety. The battle against Western arrogance has
been an open-ended, multi-fronted war for at least 30 years. The most
successful and sophisticated forces in this battle have been Arab and
Muslim. Any effort to change that, to supersede this force for one that
is more secular or international must begin with this realization.</p>
<p>Until this happens, until we, as a people, are seen as more than mere
barbarians, our merits will not be understood, our successes will not
be replicated, and our achievements will not be topped.</p></div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div></div>
</div>
</div>