Searching for the Means to Uphold Arab Rights
By Bouthaina Shaaban
7 Oct. 2005
Rain was washing down the windscreen, while my hostess worried her way through the slow traffic toward the lecture hall. Next to her, I was contemplating the type of audience that I would be addressing for my lecture on "Arab Rights and the World." We arrived to find the lecture hall packed with professors, students, journalists, Canadians of Arab descent, and others interested in the Middle East.
For half an hour I spoke to the audience on the situation in the Arab region from Iraq to Syria, Palestine and Lebanon, trying to paint the real picture they rarely encounter in Western media, sometimes due to deliberate blackout.
Sincere interest was beaming at me from the rows. After I concluded with the Arabs' duty to tell the world objectively and honestly what is happening in their countries, the audience stood up to applaud. The discussions and reactions that followed were surprisingly diverse.
Some called for more efforts to stop the brain drain from the Arab world and provide Arab expatriate experts with the enabling environment that ensures their contribution as agents of change.
The questions I received from the Canadian scholars and professors were focused around the three main messages I relayed to my audience.
The first was questioning the reasons why Arab spokespersons at the UN and everywhere else do not propagate the Arab Initiative launched at the Beirut Summit in 2002, and reaffirmed at the Algeria Summit 2005. This would demonstrate the collective Arab call for peace with Israel, and show the world that it is Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who is blocking its implementation.
My second message was questioning why an honest media does not exist that shows the world the actual destruction, insecurity, squander, and obliteration of national identity taking place in Iraq. No one seems to shed light on this side of reality, instead the media focus is devoted to the United States' victories and losses.
The third message was yet another question contemplating the reasons why Arab media do not have one united voice against the prevailing divisive and sectarian dismemberment of Iraq, and the serving terminology of "Sunni and Shiite" threatening new rival political identities in the Middle East.
Finally, I concluded with a search for the means of collaboration between all the free forces in the world that campaign to uphold Arab rights.
Responding to the audience, I found myself drawing an enlightening comparison on a different scale. I thought of the British organizations demanding the detention of a number of Israeli military officers who committed war crimes against Palestinian civilians. These demands have actually sent General Doron Almog back on the same plane that brought him to London, made Yoshi Alon cancel a similar trip, and Sharon reject Blair's invitation to visit Britain.
I thought of the leaders of the Anglican Church demanding a British apology to Muslims for the war on Iraq, and of 83 percent of Americans opposing the war.
On the opposite side, I thought of the daily reports in Arab media parroting and exaggerating what the Israelis propagate about Palestinians, Hizbullah and Syria.
The reality we live in today demands that believers in human rights and justice have to have a different international and regional approach.
We, Arabs, have the responsibility to place what is actually happening in our region in the right human and international context to end foreign occupation. Only then might we be able to catch up with the human progress toward reform, development and democracy.
Reform is a consequence and not a precondition or an alternative to ending the suffering and destruction that has befallen our region.