The Arab Defeat

The Arab Defeat - OpenDemocracy - Sehr lesenswerter Artikel über Nahost

"The lessons the Japanese took from their defeat enabled them to become a global economic power. How different are the conclusions the Arabs have drawn from their own losses. Not one of four Arab-Israeli wars - of 1948, 1967, 1973 or 1982 - was sufficient to convince the Arabs that they had been defeated; nor was even the course of events which led ultimately to the destruction of Iraq, to the jeopardy in which Lebanon finds itself, to the growing tide of fanaticism, to the bland acceptance of bloodshed, to the curtailment of women's freedoms and to widespread economic, academic and institutional decline. None of this has been enough to force an admission of defeat from us or a change in our intellectual mood. [...]
The current situation in the Arab world, or at least in the middle east proper (the Mashreq), is the result of a cultural crisis which we will underestimate if we examine it only from a political standpoint. It is no coincidence, for example, that Arab intellectuals in their broadest terms still reject any normalisation of relations with "the Zionist enemy". Nor is it insignificant that the fundamentalist movements are getting stronger and stronger. [...]
We must stop denying our defeat: the sooner all sections of Arab societies face up to the truth, the sooner we will bring a halt to our agony and humiliation. The rising chorus of those who claim that our predicament is the product of American and Israeli policies is itself another incentive to admit our defeat openly, and the sooner the better. Things cannot go on as they are. True, we cannot transform our situation into a bed of roses overnight, exactly because we are defeated, but at least we can halt the deterioration and open the way to a more modest, more realistic starting-point for honest reflection and self-examination."