Where Did this Sacrificial Spirit Come from? We Should Understand Ourselves. By Najeeb G. Awad

Where Did this Sacrificial Spirit Come from? We Should Understand Ourselves.

Written and copyright by Najeeb G. Awad

In October 2006, the Israeli Ilan Pappe, the chair professor of History in Exeter University, England, wrote to the English-speaking readers his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. In this book, Pappe presents a brave, authentic and microscopically scientific historical display and analysis of what he describes as ‘the ethnic cleansing that Zionism systematically exerted on the Palestinian people since the establishment of the state of Israel in the Middle East’, exposing therein the ‘massacres and ugly criminal activities’ that were conducted by the organized troops and militia of the Hebraic state since 1947 against a whole unarmed nation. His book is a historic, valuable reference from-within the sphere of the Israeli state on what Pappe deems horrendous actions against a weak, vulnerable people who radically lack any tangible support from their Arab brothers.

It is not my intention to review the book and analytically appraise its content in this article. The book deserves by all means to be translated into Arabic (the Arabic version is now in markets) and to be granted all the attention and study from the Arab intellectuals and readers of the region. What I would like to look at is what Pappe says on chapter five of his book, in the context of his exposition of the unsuccessful attempts of some of the Arab resistance at the very beginning of the year of defeat, 1948. Pappe points to the big difference between the number of the volunteers for resistance and the ones of the Israelis in these clashes, emphasizing the refusal of the Arab states of sending their troops or allowing its peoples to volunteer in the resistance activities. Within the context of his speech on the numerical difference in specific, Pappe says the following: “the Palestinians were not in shortage of those who wanted to volunteer for resistance with them. Many peoples from the surrounding Arabic countries demonstrated against their governments’ indifference to the situation. Thousands of young Arabs were ready to offer their lives for the Palestinians. Many things have been written on this overwhelming sentimental feeling, yet this phenomenon remains an enigma that is hardly fair to be attributed to mere pan-arabist solidarity. The best explanation of the readiness of thousands for sacrificing their life for the Palestinians is that Palestine, like Algeria, symbolizes two examples of a brave and violent struggle against occupation. This rejection of occupation inflamed the nationalist and patriotic zeal of the youth in the Arabic Middle Eastern countries. Yet, I again stress that what I said is just an incomplete analysis of the will of Damascene and Iraqi youngsters to give up everything for what they considered a holy mission and not necessarily a religious one.”

I find in the standpoint of an Israeli historian like Ilan Pappe, with regard to the phenomenon of readiness to sacrifice one’s self for the other, which he read perceptively in the Arab youth position, a significant and essential point that should catch attention today. During the latest Israeli invasion of Gaza Strip (2008-2009), I was caught strongly by the news about the public’s reaction along the whole Arab countries. I paused silently before thousands of Arab youth’s demand from their countries’ ruling regimes either to send their armies (that are actually made for protecting these regimes first and foremost, if not only) to stand by the innocents of Gaza and to open their boarders and arm people before allowing them to go and die with and for the Palestinians.

A profound phenomenon like this caught the attention of Ilan Pappe in his historic narration of the Arab-Israeli struggle’s story. Yet, it is a phenomenon that requires the Arabs’ consideration before no one else. It is a phenomenon that requires from the Arab regimes before others a profound, relentless pondering. Maybe then, they would turn into serving their people and respecting their humanity, rather than repressing them. We should ponder seriously the fact that those who declared their readiness to sacrifice themselves for the Palestinians are not merely simple, naïve, intellectually limited or culturally poor people, driven by pure sentiments and blind reactions. Nor are they just ones who are driven by the dogma of ‘support your brother whether fairly or unfairly’, any ideologized form of struggle (Jehad) or any religious eagerness for the eternal, after-life paradise. I do not deny the sentimental, nationalist, religious, ethnic and tribal dimensions that control and shape the minds of many in the Arab world. I just say, instead, that there is no scientific, logical reason for assuming always the influence of these later dimensions and imposing them on all the Arabs in a pre-meditated and stereotypical manner. I point here at the fact that the scream in the Arabic public squares was the one of the educated and intellectuals, the seculars and liberals who does not believe at all in the ideological Jehad and abhor any form of extremism. It sounded to me as general and more inclusive a scream than we think or we are willing to believe, even more than what the Arabs per se are to perceive about themselves.

What makes the modern, young Arab publics ready to sacrifice everything for the Palestinians? What really make young boys and girls at the springtime of their life, at the front gate of the future, declare their willingness to give up everything and support others who live in a land they heard about yet they have never visited, and maybe they will never ever be able to visit one day? Are the Arab youths merely ‘herd of sheep’ led by the staff and rod of their leaders or just a human sea roaring with storms of blind sentiments, completely remote from reason, logic and depth? This might be the media stereotypical view about the Arabs those days. This might even be the hidden opinion of the Arab ruling dictators about their people; leave alone the fact that this image is fostered and re-generated consistently by the religious fanatics among the Arabs, who find in violence and death The solution for any clash, for proclaiming any standpoint or for gaining any right. Those who reject reducing the Arab human one-sidedly either into tool in the hand of a dictatorship, into a reactionist, irrational creature or into a fanatic terrorist, would undoubtedly inquire about the substance of the readiness of thousands of Arabs to redeem the Palestinians, especially the contemporary youth who were not born in 1948 and have not lived the events and the consequences of the consecutive Arabs’ defeats before Israel, as well as they did not grew up within a familial and educational framework that entertains either  pan-arabist slogans like ‘the Arabs countries is my homeland, from Damascus down to Baghdad’, religious concepts like ‘the nation of Islam’, or pride itself blindly about any tribal or nomadic origin.

Does not the core-identity of this generation, which screamed loudly its readiness to go and die in Gaza, deserve a deep sociological, anthropological and cultural analysis? Are not the Arabs supposed to understand themselves? This is what Ilan Pappe invites for when he concedes that this redemptive, self-sacrificing phenomenon bewilders and puzzles the Arabs’ antagonists and makes the rationalist and reasonable groups among them trace the components, sources and causes of this hug reservoir of self-sacrificial spirit. It seems to me that throughout the past 6 decades of the Arab-Israeli struggle, the enemy of the Arabs spent time in analysing and deciphering the Arabs’ sociological, anthropological and cultural textile (regardless to its success or failure) tenth, of not thousands, times more than the Arab regimes’ huge legions of intellectuals, experts and theoreticians. What usually makes these regimes pause at any scream from the public squares is fear and insecurity, not the eagerness for communication and understanding.

The Arab regimes pay attention to the reaction of the angry peoples only when this serves its survival-purpose and when it helps in guaranteeing the maintenance of its power and monopoly. This alone and no other reason is what might make the Arab leaders declare in one of their, often unproductive, summits (like the one held after Gaza invasion), for instance, an inclusive reconciliation between each other and a solidarity for the sake of the ‘cause’ and the service of the ‘nation’. Yet, none of these regimes’ rulers or their serving writers, consultants and analysts spend any shred of a time in thinking about the structure of the contemporary Arab public atmosphere, especially the question of what makes the spirit of self-sacrifice present and vivid still and what makes it pass from generation to another despite history and time?

Ilan Pappe wrote on the ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people not only to analyze the Arab human, but to understand in the first place his nation’s state and the mind-sit of its founders. In his book, he launched a conversation with the Israeli and the Pro-Israeli publics alike, inviting them to ponder what Pappe deems the sociological and cultural offspring of these ethnic cleansing operations the Zionists troops committed against the innocent land-owners. Pappe does this by nothing else than pointing to the fact that those who stand on the opposite river-bed of Israel have a serious aptitude for self-sacrifice, which can stand over-against any militaristic, political and ethnic domination and power. On the other hand, who within the Arab world would write today about the Arab public atmosphere and its members’ identity and character in the light of this self-sacrificial attitude towards the Palestinians? Who would reflect upon the contemporary generations of a specific Arabic state and how they deal with their problems and the problems that face their brothers and sisters in the other Arabic countries? What makes the contemporary Arab who she is as a ‘human person’? What makes the Arab intellectuals empty the stage to the violent and militaristic movements to exploit this aforementioned self-sacrifice in the service of principles and resistance activities that are unlikely to serve the people, but rather enhance its weakness and losses?

I have been often asked by my western friends: what makes the Syrian and Lebanese, and Arabs in general, sympathize with the Palestinians and defend their cause this seriously, vividly and zealously? Is this because you are all called ‘Arabs’? Is it because the Palestinians are Muslims? Or is it because the Arab dictatorial regimes force people to do this? I usually respond to the first option with what Pappe says in his book: the issue is deeper than mere pan-arabist solidarity. It is for the most of the recent Arab people a holy human cause. I then respond to the second option by saying: the Palestinians, as well as the Arabs, are not only Muslims. The issue is beyond mere religion, no matter what the militaristic resistant movements (e.g. Hizbullah and Hamas), which damages the Palestinian cause radically, claim. While, I respond to the third option by saying: many of those whom you witness calling on the Arabic streets for supporting and redeeming the Palestinians may actually be of the fiercest and most radical dissenters of their countries’ ruling regimes, and even wish their collapse. They might also be in depth intellectually critical about the validity and value of the militaristic, violent and exclusivist form of resistance, which, in their opinion, does not calculate the expenses of its actions perceptively and wisely. By these answers, I aim saying to my western friends that there are thousands of the Arab youth who are ready to die for the Palestinians for a reason far much deeper than the above mentioned three ones.

My friends part away puzzled further than they were before raising their question. I also move ahead fully occupied with a very deep question on an organic phenomenon in the Arabic scene. It is a phenomenon the Arabs have not yet stopped at to study and learn from its analysis anything until this very moment. It is phenomenon that caught the attention of Ilan Pappe and made him think and learn.