Monday, January 31, 2011

Faire aboutir notre révolution-Yahyaoui Mokhtar

Les tunisiens sont par nature un peuple humble à la limite de la naïveté. Ils ont souvent tendance à chercher à vite oublier, à pardonner et à enjamber  les difficultés pour retrouver la sérénité. Cela à fait que notre histoire est en grande partie une série d’erreurs. Souvent trop pressés et enclin au compromis on à fini par vendre la peau du loup avant de l’avoir tué. Les évènements, qui sont en train de se passer depuis le soulèvement qui à chassé le dictateur, nous appellent amèrement cette nature qui nous a souvent condamné à l’échec  au cours de notre histoire.
Je ne veux pas parler de la malicieuse mauvaise foie de personnages lugubres qui ont toujours été présents par leur manigances et complot pour fausser les décisions qui auraient pu à chaque fois changer dans le bon sens le cours de notre histoire. Toujours cachés dans les couloirs arrières des despotes, tyrans, dictateurs et tortionnaires à nous baver de promesse dans l’intention de nous confisquer les fruits de nos révolutions et de notre dime du sang. Ils ont toujours été maitres dans la tromperie et la subornation, toujours habile à nous faire sortir de piètres marionnettes dont l’imbécilité n’a d’égal que l’excès d’éloges et de magnificence dont ils sont gratifiés pour nous convaincre de leur morale, de leur droiture, de leur compétence et de leur probité. Ainsi ils ont toujours réussi à nous arracher notre destin de nos mains, à nous voler nos révolutions.
Je ne veux pas non plus parler des gens qui ont payé par leur sang, par leur martyr, par leur souffrance et par tous les sacrifices qu’ils ont du supporter. Souvent des gens ordinaires, tunisiens de tous les temps qui ont toujours appris à donner sans contre partie. Des gens comme ceux des martyrs de Sidi Bouzid de Thala de Kassrine et des dizaines d’autres localités qui ont assisté impuissant au spectacle de vies tronqués de leurs enfants. Que leur dire maintenant ? Un beau discours sur la bravoure ou quelques sourates de prière sur leurs âmes qui observent du haut des cieux  la trahison, la lâcheté et l’hypocrisie.
Je ne veux pas en fin parler de mon désarroi devant ce qui est en train de se passer face à l’échec du verbe qui crie pour le  dénoncer…
L’histoire vient de nous mettre pour une fois au premier rang d’une révolution qui est en train de changer le monde entier en ébranlant un statuquo qui a empêché longtemps tant de peuples et de nations de s’émanciper du joug de l’injustice, de l’humiliation, de la persécution et de l’exploitation. C’est notre devoir face à l’humanité et face à l’histoire de faire aboutir notre révolution, d’assumer notre rôle de leader, d’honorer nos martyrs de détruire les structures de la dictature et d’extirper définitivement ses racines de notre terre.
Yahyaoui Mokhtar – Tunis le 1er fevrier 2011

The road to Jerusalem runs through Tunis and Cairo-Philip Weiss

The neoconservatives told us that the road to Jerusalem lay through 
Baghdad. They meant that invading Iraq and installing a democracy 
there would lead to peace in Israel and Palestine. The way they 
imagined that peace was a neocolonial landgrab: a greater Israel with 
portions of the West Bank amalgamated by Jordan. Still, that is what 
they believed-- that creating democracy in Iraq would lead to a peace 
in Palestine.

These ideas are in smithereens today. The Palestine Papers have 
revealed that the peace process was a Trojan horse for Israeli 
expansionism and that even the American client in the West Bank could 
not accept a future state without Ariel and Ma'ale Adunim, the long 
fingers of Jewish territory.

And the lessons of Iraq and Tunisia and Egypt are that you don't 
install democracy anywhere; no, democracy must arise from the people 
themselves, you damage the processes of establishing popular will by 
seeking to impose such a system. The western democratic revolutions 
also arose from within.

The lesson of Tunisia and Egypt for American foreign policy is that 
the United States is the most conservative force in the world, in this
region. It didn't see democracy coming because it didn't want to see 
it coming to the Arab world and to the palaces we supported. And when 
democracy did come, the U.S. creditably reversed field in Tunisia, but 
has stuck by its dictator in Egypt.

Barack Obama's failure to honor the Egyptian protesters in his State 
of the Union speech Tuesday night, and Joe Biden's cold negativity 
toward them last night (they're not up against a dictator, we can't 
encourage them, this is not the awakening of eastern Europe) reveal 
the unwavering influence of the Israel lobby in our public life, and 
how conservative that influence is. The administration's statements 
reveal that it prefers stability in Egypt, no matter the cost to civil 
rights and human rights there, to freedom for Arab people. And why? 
Because Egyptian stability preserves the Israeli status quo, in which 
Israel gets to imprison West Bank protesters without a peep from the 
U.S. government and gets to destroy civilians in Gaza again without a 
peep from the alleged change-agent in the White House.

Thankfully, P.J. Crowley was forced to reveal the policy yesterday by 
Shihab Rattansi of Al Jazeera, when he admitted that the difference 
between the administration's response to Tunisia and Egypt stems from 
the fact that Egypt has a peace deal with Israel and has come to terms 
with Israel's existence, a model to the region. And this line is 
echoed all over the American news, when they say that Egypt is helping 
the "peace process," a process that has produced only suffering and 
dispossession for Palestinians.

The hole in the bottom of the world here is the fear that Arabs have 
not accepted Israel's existence. They didn't accept it in 1947 in New 
York, and they didn't accept it in 1967 in Khartoum. They always 
warned that its presence would create instability in the region, and 
the State Department said it would radicalize Israel's neighbors, and 
60 years on this is more true than ever. The Arab Peace initiative of 
2002 was a great gesture of realism: the Arab states did accept 
Israel's existence, on the '67 lines. But nothing has come of this 
incredible shift, and Brian Baird tells us that leading American 
congressmen, tucked in at night by the Israel lobby, didn't even know 
about the Arab Peace Initiative, and Israel scoffed at the offer 
because it had American power behind it.

Now in Tunisia and Egypt, the Arab street has taken the neocons at 
their word and said, Yes we want democracy, and we will get it. And 
Arab youth has taken facebook and twitter and done more with these 
tools than Americans have done, and said we want free speech and 
social freedom.

And when they get it-- if not this year then within ten years, the 
internet is too dynamic a force, along with Assange and Al Jazeera-- 
when they get it, they will expose the power of the Israel lobby so 
that even Chris Matthews will have to address the contradictions. For 
we will be seen to have only one policy, the preservation of a Jewish 
state, even if that means Jim Crow and apartheid and stamping out 
democratic movements everywhere and tolerating a prison for 1.5 
million innocent people in Gaza. I waffle about the two state-solution 
more than anyone, I actually imagined that partition might preserve 
tranquility, but when democracy comes to Cairo the pressure on 
Jerusalem to allow equal rights for all citizens will be massive. And 
the claim that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East will 
have completely dissolved.

You see the pressure on Jerusalem beginning in earnest now, from new 
quarters. You see it in Admiral Mullen's awareness that Americans will 
come home in wheelchairs until Palestinians have freedom, in Senator 
Rand Paul's call for cuts in military aid to Israel.

That pressure must come to bear soon on the Democratic Party. It is 
the natural home for the recognition of minority rights and the self-
determination of formerly-oppressed people. How sad that even Russ 
Feingold can scarcely talk about Obama's war when he speaks out to a 
progressive audience, and can't even talk about Palestine. Pathetic.

What we see in Cairo is the destruction of American racist attitudes. 
A year or so back a Jewish friend said to me that if Jews could take 
on the Israel lobby and reform American foreign policy, it would be a 
model for human rights leadership across the world. And I agreed; and 
we are working at it.

But that was an elitist conceit. The moral leadership in the region is 
coming not from any American movement in our imperfect democracy, no, 
we are the most conservative country in the world right now; it is 
coming from the streets in Tunisia and Egypt.

Philip Weiss is the co-editor of " The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of 
the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict ."



http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/28/weiss_jerusalem_cairo

The Palestinian people betrayed-Saree Makdisi


 
January 27, 2011
 
A massive archive of documents leaked to Al Jazeera and Britain's Guardian newspaper offers irrefutable proof that years of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians have been an empty sham. The papers make clear that the time has come for Palestinians and anyone interested in the cause of justice to abandon the charade of official diplomacy and pursue other, more creative and nonviolent paths toward the realization of a genuine, just peace.
 
The leaked documents, assuming they are genuine — and both Al Jazeera and the Guardian say they have authenticated them — are behind-the-scenes notes from a decade of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel. On issue after issue, they show Palestinian negotiators eager to concede ground, offering to give up much of Jerusalem, to accept Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank, to collaborate with Israeli occupation forces in suppressing dissent in the occupied territories — including killing fellow Palestinians — and even to forgo the right of return for most Palestinians driven from their homes by Israel in 1948.
The papers give the lie to Israel's claim that it yearns for peace but lacks a Palestinian "partner." And they reinforce the sense that Israel has gone along with these negotiations only to buy time to expropriate more Palestinian land, demolish more Palestinian homes, expel more Palestinian families and build more colonies for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers in militarily occupied territory, thereby cementing new realities on the ground that would make a Palestinian state a geophysical impossibility.
Anyone who doubts this has only to skim through the leaked papers, which show Israel spurning one gaping Palestinian concession after another. And this was Israel not under Benjamin Netanyahu but under the supposedly more liberal Ehud Olmert and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who claimed they were committed to the peace process. In shameless abjection, the Palestinian negotiators prostrated themselves and surrendered essentially every major objective for which their people have struggled and sacrificed for 60 years, only for the imperious Israelis to say again and again, no, no, no.
Clearly, all that the Palestinians have to offer is not enough for Israel.
The major revelation from the documents, indeed, is the illustration they furnish of just how far the Palestinian negotiators were willing to go to placate Israel.
Men like Saeb Erekat, Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei — the lead Palestinian negotiators in all these years — are of a type that has come forth in every colonial conflict of the modern age. Faced with the overwhelming brute power with which colonial states have always sought to break the will of indigenous peoples, they inhabit the craven weakness that the situation seems to dictate. Convinced that colonialism cannot be defeated, they seek to carve out some petty managerial role within it from which they might benefit, even if at the expense of their people.
These men, we must remember, were not elected to negotiate an agreement with Israel. They have no legitimacy, offer zero credibility and can make no real claim to represent the views of Palestinians.
And yet they were apparently willing to bargain away the right that stands at the very heart of the Palestinian struggle, a right that is not theirs to surrender — the right of return of Palestinians to the homes from which they were forced during the creation of Israel in 1948 — by accepting Israel's insistence that only a token few thousand refugees should be allowed to return, and that the millions of others should simply go away (or, as we now learn that the U.S. suggested, accept being shipped away like so much lost chattel to South America).
The documents also show Palestinian negotiators willing to betray the Palestinians inside Israel by agreeing to Israel's definition of itself as a Jewish state, knowing that that would doom Israel's non-Jewish Palestinian minority — the reviled "Israeli Arabs" who constitute 20% of the state's population — not merely to the institutionalized racism they already face but to the prospect of further ethnic cleansing (the papers reveal that Livni repeatedly raised the idea that land inhabited by portions of Israel's Palestinian population should be "transferred" to a future Palestinian state).
All this was offered in pursuit of a "state" that would exist in bits and pieces, with no true sovereignty, no control over its own borders or water or airspace — albeit a "state" that it would, naturally, be their job to run.
And all this was contemptuously turned down by the allegedly peace-seeking Israeli government, with the connivance of the United States, to whom the Palestinians kept plaintively appealing as an honest broker, even as it became clearer than ever that it is anything but.
What these documents prove is that diplomatic negotiations between abject Palestinians and recalcitrant Israelis enjoying the unlimited and unquestioning support of the U.S. will never yield peace. No agreement these callow men sign would be accepted by the Palestinian people.
Fortunately, most Palestinians are not as broken and hopeless as these so-called leaders. Every single day, millions of ordinary Palestinian men, women and children resist the dictates of Israeli power, if only by refusing to give up and go away — by going to school, by farming their crops, by tending their olive groves.
Refusing the dictates of brute power and realpolitik to which their so-called leaders have surrendered, the Palestinian people have already developed a new strategy that, turning the tables on Israel, transmutes every Israeli strength into a form of weakness. Faced with tanks, they turn to symbolic forms of protest that cannot be destroyed; faced with brutality, they demand justice; faced with apartheid, they demand equality. The Palestinians have learned the lessons of Soweto, and they have unleashed a simultaneously local and global campaign of protests and calls for boycotts and sanctions that offers the only hope of bringing Israelis — like their Afrikaner predecessors — to their senses.
Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. He is the author of, among other books, "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation."

Palestine Papers: If US can't be 'honest broker' in Middle East, get out of the way


The Palestine Papers – a collection of classified documents on the Middle East peace process, leaked to Al Jazeera – reveal that the US has stifled true Palestinian democracy and acted more like Israel's lawyer. Only a bold policy shift could salvage a positive US role in the Middle East peace process. Otherwise, the US must stand back and allow the popular movements now shaking countries across the region, like Tunisia and Egypt, to establish representation for their people.


By Ali Abunimah / January 27, 2011
Doha, Qatar


"We make the call on our own credibility." Those were the words of State Department official Dan Shapiro when confronted by Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat about the Obama administration's failure to obtain an Israeli settlement freeze and to stand by minimal commitments made to the Palestinians by the Bush administration.
The conversation on Sept. 17, 2009 was recorded in detailed Palestinian minutes of meetings with US officials that were part of The Palestine Papers, a huge cache of documents related to the Middle East peace process leaked to Al Jazeera. In early January, I was one of a number of experts invited to Doha to analyze the documents in detail before the network began to release them, in conjunction with The Guardian, on Jan. 23.


Palestine Papers: 5 disclosures that are making waves


The contents of the documents and the reaction to them among Palestinians and in the wider Arab world show that the United States is, to put it mildly, actually rather incompetent at evaluating its own credibility among those it seeks to influence. It is completely out of touch with the grim realities it has helped create in the region and unprepared to deal with the consequences.


Only a bold policy shift could salvage a positive US role in the Middle East peace process. Otherwise, the US must stand back and allow the popular movements now shaking countries across the region to establish representation and freedom for their people.


These revelations emerge at a moment when people across the Arab world are demanding in the streets, on television, and through social media that the order that has kept them impoverished and oppressed for so long finally change. The uprising in Tunisia has restored hope that such transformation is possible.
At first, State Department officials variously tried to cast doubt on The Palestine Papers, then admitted they would "complicate" US diplomacy, and eventually vowed to carry on with failed policies as if nothing had happened. That won't work.
Failed US policies, role in Middle East


The initial picture that emerges from the documents is of unbridgeable gaps between an increasingly intransigent, ultranationalist, land-grabbing Israel, and a Palestinian leadership that has offered all it can in concessions and capitulations, despite its utter lack of legitimacy among the people it purports to represent. "The only thing I cannot do is convert to Zionism," said Mr. Erekat in 2008 after a Palestinian team presented plans and maps to then Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni conceding virtually all the Israeli settlements in and around Jerusalem, the rights of refugees, and the right to a state with full sovereignty.


Far from sitting between the parties as an "honest broker," the United States has continued to play its role as "Israel’s lawyer." Even worse, instead of supporting Palestinians to end the Israeli occupation and achieve their "legitimate aspirations," the United States has helped Israel entrench the occupation and sabotaged Palestinian democracy.


In Oct. 2009, Erekat informed US Middle East envoy George Mitchell that Mahmoud Abbas intended to step down as Palestinian Authority leader because he saw no way forward in the peace process. Mr. Mitchell immediately went to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who promised that she and President Obama would personally persuade Abbas to change his mind. Clinton added, according to the minutes, that Mr. Abbas "not running in the election is not an option – there is no alternative to him." That Palestinian election still has not been held in large part because the United States refuses to contemplate a situation where the choice of voters might trump its own.


This top-down usurpation of the right of the Palestinian people to freely choose their own leaders was matched by a bottom-up effort led by US Army Lt. General Keith Dayton to build Palestinian security services that Dayton knew engaged in torture. In fact, Mr. Dayton told Erekat how pleased the Israelis were with Palestinian intelligence services: "They say they are giving as much as they are taking from them – but they are causing some problems for international donors because they are torturing people."


The irony here is that US efforts amounted to helping the Palestinian Authority build exactly the kind of despised police state apparatus that the Tunisian people overthrew, with the admiration – and perhaps the emulation – of hundreds of millions of Arabs who live under similar regimes. It has not enhanced US credibility that the US only expressed its support for the democratic rights of Tunisians after they had overthrown their dictator. But as the United States showed when it supported the Shah of Iran to the end, it is loyal to its "friends."


Change approach or let democracy grow


Some might say that the revelations about the peace process are hardly surprising. After all, its credibility was already threadbare. I disagree. What kept it on life support until now was the opacity and mystique that came from Mitchell's tight-lipped shuttle diplomacy, from the hopes that Mr. Obama was somehow really different, and that at the end of all this the United States would show its hand and pressure Israel to do the things it doesn't want to do but that are needed for peace.


The Palestine Papers show us once and for all that this is all a bluff. Mitchell has no cards up his sleeve, and the other players are no longer even at the table. The Palestine Papers have probably struck a regime-ending blow to the Abbas leadership. True, Abbas may remain in Ramallah for some time to come, thanks to massive external support. But his clique does not speak for, and cannot make a deal on behalf of the Palestinian people. As for Israel's leadership, the supposedly "moderate" government of Ehud Olmert consistently rejected Palestinian concessions on every key issue -- concessions that, when revealed in The Palestine Papers, have shocked the Palestinian public. It's impossible to imagine Mitchell returning to the same old game.


Palestine papers: More nations floated for Palestinian resettlement
It is possible, however, to imagine a dynamic new US approach: ending unconditional aid and diplomatic support for Israel, allowing Palestinians to democratically choose a consensus leadership -- even if the US doesn't like it -- andsupporting their global, grassroots struggle that takes as inspiration the same values as those of the US Civil Rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The US would also insist that any peace process has as its goal the fulfilling of international law and universal human rights. More broadly, the US would end its backing for reviled dictatorships across the region so that people can reshape their futures as they see fit, with all the hopes, opportunities, and risks such dramatic change would entail.
Of course, that is a distant dream. I expect the US will carry on as it has since the last time a US president, Eisenhower, challenged Israeli territorial aggrandizement head-on back in the 1950s. But the message from the reaction to The Palestine Papers and the protests for democracy and economic justice in countries across the region is that if the United States is unable to change its utterly failed policies, it might as well get out of the way and let the people act to secure their rights and dignity.



http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0127/Palestine-Papers-If-US-can-t-be-honest-broker-in-Middle-East-get-out-of-the-way

MAS Statement on the Current Crisis in Egypt

The current uprising in Egypt has taken on the character of a massive popular democratic revolution, with broad support from virtually every sector of Egyptian society.  After decades of dictatorship, political repression, and economic hardship, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, and many other towns and cities to demand the removal from power of the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, and to seek the institution of true democracy in the most populous Arab nation in the world.  

We believe that it is time for President Mubarak to heed the demands of the masses of Egyptian people and leave office.

This uprising, coming in the aftermath of a popular uprising in Tunisia, is evidence of the broad call for true political freedom and reform that is sweeping through the Arab world. This massive discontent is not limited to any one part of Egyptian society. Students and youth, religious organizations, organized labor groups, intellectuals and academics, working people, women's organizations, journalists, and the masses of poor Egyptians are united in their demand for a fundamental change in government.  We are deeply saddened by the loss of lives and the civil unrest that accompanies these mass demonstrations. We believe that the Egyptian people will work together to end the violence and bring peaceful accord to a nation that has suffered from years of political repression and economic hardship.  

Further, we call on the diverse opposition forces to collaborate and consult on the best way for religious and secular activists to construct a new, truly democratic government in Egypt that will address the social and economic problems of society while assuring the respect of human and civil rights for all people of the country.

As Americans, we urge the United States to support democracy in Egypt, to immediately suspend military assistance to the Mubarak government, and to recognize the legitimacy of the struggle for people power in Egypt, and throughout the Arab world.  

This support for real democratic reform will benefit American interests in the long run, the people of Egypt, and the entire world.  

Moreover, we believe that true democracy in Egypt will be beneficial to the overall struggle for peace and social justice in the world, and that it will help thwart the spread of extremism and terrorism, anti-American violence, and armed attacks on civilians.  When democracy and human rights are allowed to flourish, the threat of internal and illegitimate violence will diminish.


As American Muslims, we stand behind the rights of all people to "Liberty and Justice", and call on our government to do the same.





Ramifications of the Egyptian Intifadah-Mazen Mokhtar

 Can you feel the warm air in January?

What is happening in Egypt is of truly exciting and is of great global consequence. While Egypt's international influence has greatly weakened in the last 30 years, no country is better positioned to inspire change in other Arab countries. Many Palestinians consider that change in Egypt is better for their cause than change in the Palestinian National Authority.

Enlightened reform in Egyptian have direct and far reaching consequences for the cause of reform in other Arab countries, for the Palestinian cause, for International Trade, for the problem of water, for the global role the United States and for the international distribution of power.

As hopeful as the protests in Egypt are, we should remember that getting rid of an oppressive regime is the easier half of the desired reforms. The more delicate and much harder half is to establish a just system that does not repeat the mistakes of the old regime. This is a very difficult task because people are people, and the opposition is a collection of groups and parties, some of which are predisposed to corruption.  


Once a new system is established, it will immediately face awesome though exciting challenges:

  1. To protect the legitimate rights and interests of Egyptians and all people in Egypt
  2. To combat corruption in itself and in society
  3. To heal social and communal wounds that have festered for decades
  4. To rebuild the infrastructure of Egypt
  5. To act as a catalyst for Educational, Scientific, Economic and Creative progress in Egypt
  6. To achieve sustained progress
  7. To play an active, constructive and responsible regional and global role

None of these seven challenges is easy, and what makes the task all the more difficult is that there is an eighth ominous threat. Change in Egypt is not in the interest of all people, especially the Israelis, and a new government may have to face an external threat either directly or in the form of sabotage.

It is to the great credit of the men and women of Tunisia that they took the popular initiative, demanding fundamental reforms. I hope to see a growing wave of popular revolt against oppression wherever it exists. A worldwide revolt of people demanding to reclaim their freedom, their dignity and their future, and I hope we help to make it happen.


Assalamu `alaykum,

Mazen Mokhtar


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Mazen Mokhtar is my dearest, most beloved brother for the sake of Allah. Alhamduilillah, I am so honored to have his words on the Voice of the Ummah blog.

Deferred Dreams, Self-Destruction, and Suicide Bombings-Shaykh Hamza Yusuf


By Shaykh Hamza Yusuf


There was a story in the New York Times a few days ago about how the "revolution" in Tunisia was sparked in December by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old, befuddled roadside green grocer. Like so many young Arabs, he was born poor and only dreamed of providing for his siblings and his mother. He had been to college, where he studied law, but had found no employment possibilities. So, given the basic dignity often found in people in places like Tunisia, he chose to humble himself and find a halal means to generate some income. But he kept running into problems with the police and government inspectors until the fateful day in December when they confiscated his cart and his produce, saying he didn’t have a proper permit, and leaving him with an unpaid loan with which he’d bought the goods. At the station, upon attempting to reclaim his cart, he was slapped and humiliated publicly. His already deferred dreams had clearly dried up. Bouazizi left an apologetic note for his mother and set himself on fire in front of the local government building.

Four weeks later, the protests sparked by his death brought down the government of President Zine el Abdidine Ben Ali, who’d ruled Tunis with an iron hand for 23 years.

I have had the good fortune of visiting Tunisia many times. During my last visit, which was in the early nineties, I was harassed by the Mukhabarat (secret police), and the family that I was staying with was also questioned. That left a bad taste for me, and I decided not to return to the country and have not been back since.

Mukhabarat notwithstanding, my experience of the Tunisians is that they are wonderful people. They are known among Arabs for being kind and gentle. They are slow to lose their temper and quick to lend a hand to a stranger. I remember seeing young men selling beautiful bundles of jasmine flowers that had such a powerful scent that you could smell a seller coming your way long before he reached you.

Tunisia is a stunningly beautiful country with a great history and a bright and talented people, but corruption, cruelty, and the ineptitude of leaders unable to gauge the frustration of their people has led to the current crisis. Like so many Muslim countries, its government has been run largely by a family operation with a tribal mentality that was milking a population dry.

When the government was brought down this month, President Ben Ali fled with his wife, Leila, to Jeddah of all places; terrible floods in the port city inauspiciously welcomed him. It seems that Jeddah is the choice retirement haven of ex-African Muslim tyrants, including the former dictator Idi Amin of Uganda. Sometimes, birds of prey flock together in unlikely places. No doubt, Ben Ali has millions, if not billions, of dollars in his Swiss accounts, but even Europe, despite its dire need of cash, didn’t want him. Options diminish quickly for these men once they’re out of political power, but where odiousness closes doors in some places, great wealth obviously opens them in others.

The irony is that such tyrants usually rise to power because the people want to get rid of tyranny from a previous source. Years ago, I was in the house of the great Tunisian scholar, Shaykh Shadhili Nayfar, who was from a proud Andalusian family that had fled to Tunis with the collapse of Muslim Spain. Shaykh Shadhili had been the dean at al-Zaytuna University, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world. He studied rare manuscripts and had a great library in his home that researchers could use. Since he was a former Member of Parliament in Tunisia, I asked him about the country’s history. He told me that during the anti-colonial movement to rid the country of the French, the scholars of al-Zaytuna University were very powerful indeed, but the single most unifying force was around the politician, Habib Bourguiba, and the scholars of al-Zaytuna debated long and hard whether or not to back Bourguiba, as he was an avowed secularist and had no commitment to the religion.

Shaykh Shadhili said that the scholars opted to support Bourguiba because they thought he would help the Tunisians oust the French, and they could deal with him thereafter. However, little did these scholars realize that Bourguiba would be worse than the French and would, in fact, turn against them before they could do anything about him. This seems to be the great lesson of revolutions and coups: With rare exceptions, they bring in new governments that are as bad or worse than the ones they ousted. The man who just fled from Tunisia to Jeddah had taken the government from a decrepit and delirious Bourguiba promising the Tunisians that the age of tyranny was over. Hah.

An intriguing aspect of the current Tunisian situation is the absence of ideology. This is a genuine uprising of people who are sick and tired of the corruption and cruelty of a state apparatus. Monarchs of old practiced the tradition of benevolence. They were not always benevolent but were raised with the understanding that they were there to serve the people. These pathetic Arab rulers who overthrew those monarchs practice the worst types of cronyism and nepotism, placing their sons on their "thrones," and they thrive in an environment that is driven by family and tribal allegiance. The cracks have been showing for a while. And now, in Tunisia, it has all come tumbling down.

The lessons of history are worth heeding. Tunis, once called Carthage, had a mythical queen, Dido. According to legend, she killed herself on a funeral pyre due to her despair at being scorned by Aeneas, who abandoned her to Rome. The historical Hannibal led a Tunisian army to Rome to rid Tunis of Roman persecution, but he failed, and Rome’s vengeance led to the salting of the soil in Tunis and the destruction of Carthage that lies in ruins today near the capital. The Muslim world now has its share of misguided, petty Hannibals who think that by attacking Rome, they will restore the glory of "Carthage." Yet, their attacks only provide the necessary excuses for the Empire to salt the soil of Iraq and Afghanistan.

*****                                    *****                                    *****

While the Tunisian Dido didn’t accomplish anything through her suicide by fire, our poor green grocer, Mohamed Bouazizi, has ignited the Arab world in flames, achieving in death what he could not in life – sense of purpose and meaning – indubitably more than all the suicide bombers around the globe combined. His was an act of a desperate man who chose not to kill others but instead to light himself on fire in protest. This was the sacrificial tactic that Buddhist monks used during the Vietnam War, and their actions had a massive impact on the psyches of Westerners. When a situation becomes so desperate that people choose to leave the world rather than to stay in it and struggle, the message to the surviving ones is clear: it is time for a change. Well that change is happening in Egypt and other places in the Muslim world. Let’s hope for the best and pray for these poor, suffering people who deserve far better than their leaders have given them.

Suicide is rare in the Muslim world, but it’s increasing. God makes life generally bearable for people, so they will choose even highly difficult situations over the option of checking out. Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, which begins with "To be or not to be," reminds us that in taking our own lives, we may be fleeing to troubles far greater than the ones prompting us to flee.

An odd aspect of the reaction to Bouazizi’s suicidal act is that some Muslims will surely condemn it, since suicide is clearly prohibited in Islam, but these same Muslims will justify the actions of suicide bombers, now euphemistically called "martyrdom operations" ('amiliyyat istishhadiyyah) on Arabic newscasts. The justifiers point out that suicide bombing is an act of defense, and their only real weapon at that.

But the similarities and differences of a suicide and suicide bombing are worth contemplating. In Bouazizi’s mind, suicide was his only weapon of defense against an unjust Tunisian government that would neither listen to him nor even let him earn a livelihood selling vegetables without having to bribe some low-level official to get the piece of paper that would enable him to do so. A suicide bomber, as the social science studies show, is also in a similar state of despair, and straps bombs to himself so he can kill himself and other people about whom he knows nothing. The assumption the suicide bomber makes seems to be, "My life and my people’s lives are miserable, and no one is doing anything about it, so it might fix things if I sacrifice my life and take a bunch of other people’s lives too." Hence, some people just being on an Israeli street corner become a target, irrespective of whether they support or oppose Israeli aggression against Palestinians. What makes such suicide bombing more honorable than Bouazizi’s suicide?

Suicide is suicide, it seems to me, but it becomes truly heinous when one decides to take others with him using indiscriminate methods of mass destruction. I cannot sit in judgment of the Palestinians who have resorted to such measures nor the Chechnyian women who lost husbands and children and in acts of savage revenge killed themselves and others. I am not in their shoes, and I cannot fathom the depth of their despair. However, I do not condone the act of suicide bombing or any form of suicide, as I consider both to be of the same ilk, and in fact the former is worse in my estimation due to the extended harm to others. And I do judge the notion that suicide bombers are somehow not really committing suicide (because they are taking the lives of others) yet our Tunisian green grocer deserves to go to hell because he is committing suicide. He is not seen as a martyr, but the suicide bombers are viewed as noble martyrs because along with their own lives they took some possibly innocent bystanders; hence, in this view, suicide bombers deserve a martyr’s honor and paradise. I must admit, I just don’t get it; I think those who promote this notion need to study Mizan al-amal and the other great texts of ethical theory in our tradition.
Like copycat suicide bombers who now proliferate all over the Muslim world, we are seeing copycat self-immolators in places like Egypt, Algeria, and even Mauritania. Dr. T. J. Winter said, "Suicide bombing is an extreme way of shooting oneself in the foot." The Muslim world deserves better strategies for dealing with very real social issues as well as better leadership, clearly.

*****                                                *****                                                *****

Though suicide is haram, the simple protest of this Tunisian street vendor did more to change the status quo and put real fear in the hearts of the tyrants than all of the suicide bombers. We must devise better and more civilized ways of dealing with our differences, as we live in an age of nuclear power, machine guns, aerial bombings, and global news cycles that expose us to the pain and suffering of peoples in far off places.

Many people in the West have no idea how much the Arab on the street suffers from humiliation under unjust rulers and their petty minions. I have a friend who is a beautiful young Arab man from the desert. Unlike some of his compatriots who come to the West and have promiscuous relationships, he chose to honorably marry an American woman while he was studying here. Now, upon returning to his homeland, he is struggling to get a visa for her, as his country does allow its citizens to marry outside their land without first obtaining permission from the government. He now simply waits for the whim of some petty bureaucrat to issue his wife a visa so that she can join her husband and meet his family.

Like our green grocer, people can only take so much.

The great American novelist, writer, and poet, Langston Hughes, wrote:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore…
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over…
like a syrupy sweet? 





















Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load. 
Or does it explode?

Our green grocer went to university with dreams; but his dreams did not materialize, and so in desperation he turned to selling vegetables to earn an honorable livelihood. Yet he was not allowed even to fulfill that pitiful deferred dream. They should have just let the man sell his vegetables, but they didn’t, and the fire was lit. Already those flames have spread to Egypt, and we watch with fear and trepidation for the well-being of our Egyptian brothers and sisters, hoping and praying for their future and that of Egypt, the heart of the Arab world, which now is engulfed in the bonfire of revolution.

Post Script:
Sorry for the delay in posting a blog. If you knew why, you would sympathize. I really appreciate the prayers and well wishes so many of you expressed. Thank you and God bless you. Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Jeddah also who are suffering from devastating rainfalls that have left many homeless.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

نداء من الأستاذ غسان نجار......................................... إلي الشعب السوري المقدام-Ayham Haddad

نداء من غسّان محمد النجّار من حلب الشهباء إلى الشعب السوري البطل
يا شعبنا السوري الأبي – أيّها الشباب السوري المقدام من كل الفئات والطبقات.
يا أحفاد يوسف العظمة وإبراهيم هنانو وإبراهيم العلي وسلطان باشا الأطرش ومحمد الأشمر وفارس الخوري وسعيد العاص وشكري القوتلي وخالد العظم ومصطفى السباعي وعصام العطار..
يا أبناء الشيخ معشوق الخزنوي وحسن حبنّكة ومحمد عوض وعبد الكريم الرفاعي ومحمد أبو الفرج الخطيب الحسني ، يا أبناء جامع زيد ويا أبناء الشيخ أحمد كفتارو
يا شباب دمشق الفيحاء وحمص ابن الوليد وحماة أبي الفداء وحلب سيف الدولة يا ِشباب كل مدينة وبلدة وقرية في وطننا سورية الحبيبة
لا ينبغي السكوت عن الظلم بعد اليوم والساكت عن الحق شيطان أخرس لقد طفح الكيل ولا من سامع أو مجيب .
يا شباب سوريه : أنتم معقد الأمل والرجاء بعد الله ؛ نحري دون نحوركم وجسمي دون جسومكم لقد هرمت أعمارنا وفنيت أجسامنا ولم نعد نطيق عيش الذل ، إنّ عيش الذل أولى بالعبيد ، فإما حياة تسرّ الصديق وإما ممات تغيظ العِدا .
تقدموا يا شباب واحملوا الراية ، العزّ لكم والمستقبل لكم ، على أكتافكم ستبنون الدولة الدستورية المدنية الديمقراطية الشوروية ، تحقق العدالة الاجتماعية وفرص العمل لكل الشباب والعاطلين وتتعهد براتب شهري لكل عاطل عن العمل من مؤسسات تأمينات اجتماعية وصناديق الزكاة ومن إيرادات أوقاف المسلمين الّتي سرقتها الدولة إلى ميزانيتها دون حق ولا عدل ولا شرعية .
لا نريد ثورة هوجاء بل نريد انتفاضة سلمية نريد أن ترفعوا أصواتكم بشكل سلمي وحضاري فالتعبير عن الرأي يكفله الدستور والقانون وكل القوانين الوضعية والسماوية.
أيّها السياسيون والمفكرون : رياض سيف ، رياض الترك ، حسن عبد العظيم ، فداء الحوراني ،عبد الحميد درويش، نواف البشير ، عارف دليلة ، ميشيل كيلو،عبد المجيد منجونه، أكرم البني ، عبد العزيز الخيّر،فاتح جاموس،بشير السعدي،غبريال كوريه،عبد الحكيم بشّار،محي الدين شيخ آلي ..لماذا أنتم ساكتون ؟! أليس الوطن وطننا جميعاً ؟؟! عبّروا عن آرائكم من خلال مواقع الانترنت ،والفيس بوك ،وتصريحات للصحف العربية لا تنقطعوا عن تاريخكم النضالي، تواصلوا مع الشباب، فالشعب سيقدّر كل من يقف إلى جانبه ، وشكّلوا (لجنة إدارة الأزمة).
أيّها الرئيس بشّار : هبّة الشعوب لا يقف أمامها شيء ، لا تعتمد على بطانتك فيكيدوا لك كيدا ، أُخرج اليوم قبل الغد إلى الشعب وأعلن ما يلي :
1- حل مجلس الشعب المزوّر
2- إقالة الحكومة الفاسدة، وتشكيل حكومة إنقاذ وطنية تشرف على انتخابات حرّة نزيهة.
3- إصدار قانون التعددية الحزبية, مع تعديل الدستور
4- إصدار قانون العفو العام وعودة المهجرين والإفراج عن السجناء السياسيين.
أيّها الرئيس ؛نحن لسنا ضد شخصك , ولكن ضد أسلوب الحكم الفردي والفساد والاستبداد وتكديس الثروة بيد أقربائك وحاشيتك.
يا شباب حزب البعث:أسقطوا رموز الفساد في حزبكم ولا تنسوا أنّكم جزءٌ من الشعب،فالتحموامعه.
يا منسوبي الأجهزة الأمنية: هؤلاء الشباب المتطلع للحرية هم أبناؤكم وإخوانكم فلا تقمعوهم وحافظوا عليهم فهم ثروة الوطن وعدّة المستقبل ، فالولاء للوطن أولاً بعد الله العزيز القاهر، والوطن للجميع .
أيّها الشباب السوري : لستم أقل من أبطال تونس وأبطال مصر ، نسّقوا صفوفكم ورتّبوا قيادتكم واتصلوا بوسائل الإعلام واعتمدوا الخطط البديلة ،وارفعوا شعارات وطنيةً فقط، كل ذلك في إطار النظام والقانون العام , لقد أسقطنا عندما كنّا شبابا حكومة مردم والشرباتي لخيانتهم قضية فلسطين وأسقطنا حلف بغداد الاستعماري وأسقطنا الحكم العسكري لأديب الشيشكلي، ودفعنا ضريبة النضال عشرات السنين في سجون النظام الحالي من أجل حياة كريمة حرّة أبية لنا ولكم ،والآن جاء دوركم فحققوا آمال الأمة فيكم وهبّوا يوم السبت ،الخامس من شباط القادم في العاصمة وكل مدينة وقرية وأعلنوها يوم الغضب السوري العارم والله معكم.
وأخيرا أقول للمسئولين : إنّكم لن تستطيعوا أن تغيّروا مسار التاريخ ، ولا أن تنطحوا المرّيخ .
وسيعلم الّذين ظلموا أيّ منقلب ينقلبون
30/1/2011 المهندس غسّان محمد ياسين النجّار

Composition du gouvernement de transition « Ghannouchi 2″-Yahyaoui Mokhtar

TUNIS, 28 jan 2011 (TAP) – Voici la nouvelle composition du gouvernement d’Union nationale, annoncée, jeudi soir, par M. Mohamed Ghannouchi, Premier ministre :
M. Mohamed Ghannouchi : Premier ministre
M. Abdelkarim Zbidi : Ministre de la Défense nationale
M. Ahmed Ounaies : Ministre des Affaires étrangères
M. Farhat Rajhi : Ministre de l’Intérieur
M. Lazhar Karoui Chebbi : Ministre de la Justice
M. Laroussi Mizouri : Ministre des Affaires religieuses
M. Ahmed Nejib Chebbi : Ministre du Développement régional et local
M. Taieb Baccouche : Ministre de l’Education
M. Ahmed Brahim : Ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche scientifique
Mme Habiba Zéhi Ben Romdhane : Ministre de la Santé publique
M. Mehdi Houas : Ministre du Commerce et du Tourisme
M. Mohamed Naceur : Ministre des Affaires sociales
M. Mokhtar Jalleli : Ministre de l’Agriculture et de l’Environnement
M. Mohamed Nouri Jouini : Ministre de la Planification et de la Coopération internationale
M. Mohamed Afif Chelbi : Ministre de l’Industrie et de la Technologie
M. Jelloul Ayed : Ministre des Finances
M. Ezzedine Beschaouech : Ministre de la Culture
Mme Lilia Laabidi : Ministre des Affaires de la Femme
M. Yacine Ibrahim : Ministre du Transport et de l’Equipement
M. Said Aïdi : Ministre de la Formation professionnelle et de l’Emploi
M. Mohamed Aloulou : Ministre de la Jeunesse et des Sports
M. Elyes Jouini : Ministre auprès du Premier ministre, chargé des réformes économiques et sociales et de la coordination avec les ministères concernés
Abdelhakim Bouraoui : secrétaire général du gouvernement
Les Secrétaires d’Etat :
M. Radhouane Nouisser : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre des Affaires étrangères
M. Néjib Karafi : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre du Développement régional et local
Mme Fawzia Charfi : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur
M. Rifaat Chaabouni : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche scientifique, chargé de la recherche scientifique
M. Lamine Moulahi : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre de la Santé publique
M. Abdelhamid Triki : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre de la Planification et de la Coopération internationale
M. Abdelaziz Rassaa : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre de l’Industrie et de la Technologie, chargé de l’Energie
M. Sami Zaoui : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre de l’Industrie et de la Technologie, chargé des Technologies de la communication
M. Ahmed Adhoum : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre des Finances, chargé des Domaines de l’Etat
M. Slim Chaker : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre du Commerce et du Tourisme, chargé du Tourisme
M. Salem Hamdi : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre de l’Agriculture et de l’Environnement
M. Slim Amamou : secrétaire d’Etat auprès du ministre de la Jeunesse et des Sports
M. Mustapha Kamel Nabli : Gouverneur de la Banque Centrale de Tunisie.