LOST TO THE CAUSE/ SHORTCOMINGS OF WESTERN ACTIVISM

Westerners , activists and writers, from Europe and USA, have difficulties encompassing what is happening in the Arab World – for example -or in other poor countries . Some of them are well intentioned but cannot relate properly to what is happening. The reason is that they are not directly in touch with the environment where the events they want to write about are taking place. They project their own western conditioning on what is happening and cannot see things objectively . Look at the number of westerners who hailed the Arab Spring or those who hailed the so called Syrian Revolution , the majority of them support what is happening in Syria – maybe now to a lesser extent – thinking it to be something like the French revolution that materializes their western dreams.

They do not support the Iranian Revolution – for example – that liberated the country from a despot who was a US stooge and this is obviously due to religious reasons . They do not recognize that the ailment the Arab countries suffer from is occupation in the form of partition and the creation of Israel and subjugation to the colonial west economically and culturally, and that any revolution that does not address these issues, is fake and imported. Too much conditioning they need to transgress in order to understand anything that is happening in Syria or Palestine . They think religion to be an ailment and think they live under the best system that should be copied and generalized . They don’t know that the system under which they live with all its derivatives – from the right or from the left – is the origin of the world plight, and that this system should not only be condemned but should also be deconstructed for the world to remain safe because such system is built on the exploitation of the other and not on fraternity or partnership . That this system is insanity itself and is an insult to humanity is something many are not ready to admit .

Those among westerners – from Europe or USA or elsewhere – who transcended this conditioning , be them writers or activists or simply average people- with the exception of those coming from Latin America- are not many . They are the ones who were ready to learn from the other who had something to say -or to transmit – even if he is an Arab or a Muslim or a Native. They are the ones who were ready to connect to a different experience that is closer to what the majority of humanity is experiencing in general nowadays, experience from which the westerner – even if he is well intentioned- has been deprived due to the fact that he has become -to a large extent- an assimilated part of the oppressive system .

Living the Palestinian plight or the Syrian plight and identifying with them requires great modesty and openness that is rarely seen but is still present and found . It requires the shedding of all western conditioning and privileges to become human and put oneself in the place and in the shoes of the other who is none other than the self of the westerner that has been stripped off its ethnical and egocentric tendencies and is ready again to learn the reality of things and get in touch with truth . This is something that not many westerners are willing to do . This first hand experience of someone else’s plight or connecting to this experience by a way of certain medium – be it a person or a group of persons or anything that expresses it – is a treasure in itself but one should qualify for it . It does not only shed light on a portion of reality but is the whole picture that is then revealed and completed .