The Middle East : an Arab Perspective
A Lecture At Sapienza University (Rome), Conferences Center
Saturday 17/3/2007
The Moderator: (in Italy)
Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban: Thank you very much Dr. Francis. Good morning everybody. Ladies and gentlemen I'm very happy to be with you this morning.
There're so many things that I'd like to say to you about the Middle East and about what's happening in the Middle East from a Syrian perspective. And I think the best way to start is to indicate the difference between the way we, in the Middle East live, the reality that's there now, and between the way, perhaps the way the world sees it, through the media.
Unfortunately although it's a time of fast press and electronic media it seems to me that this concept which is promoted through the media about the Middle East is getting further and further away from the reality. Some concepts are being created and promoted in order to make the people in the West forget about the sense of real situation in the Middle East.
To start with a very practical example I thought I'll tell you how I read western papers in my country, for example you read here in the morning and here " Coroner condemns U.S. attack on British forces in Iraq", you remember when a British soldier was killed by the Americans and now the court concluded that this killing was unlawful!! I want to say, well, is this the only soldier that was killed unlawfully?? Everyday the Americans are killing tens of the Iraqis unlawfully. Everyday thousands of Iraqis are arriving at the borders fleeing the hell that was created for them by the American occupation of Iraq, but you don't read about them, and we live all this every single day. They're bringing this to show that they care what's legal, I would smile, I would say that there's nothing legal in everything that is happening to us. The war on Iraq is not legal, the occupation of Palestine is not legal, the settlements are not legal, the occupation of our Golan is not legal, the Israeli war against Lebanon is not legal, so there wasn't anything legal. The destruction of the Palestinian houses that's taking place everyday is not legal, the arrest everyday of four Palestinians and Palestinian children is not legal. So there's nothing legal.
What this makes in reality is a gap in feeling between the Arab people who are the subject of those wars and the Western world who sees the engineering, investing in our region without us having anything to do with it.
I read also another news item here about using children as human shields in the West Bank by the Israeli soldiers in order to get the men of the Palestinian resistance to get out and arrest them. Look what the news say, it says about the Israeli army "it would investigate allegations –please underline 'allegations'- supported by tv footage from Associated Press showing on Tvs pictures showing Israeli soldiers leading Palestinian children from house to house searching for wanted militants during an operation in the West Bank! It was a picture on Tv showing the Israeli soldiers using Palestinian children as human shields in order to get some Palestinian people resisting the occupation to get them out and arrest them and yet it's called 'allegation'!! This is an image in front of your eyes.
What did they call the Israeli crimes in the West Bank? They call it 'operations'!! it's not an operation, it's a crime that's killing children, arresting people, demolishing houses, they're not operations.
If you go to USAToday you see "Muhammad confesses details" and you see the picture of the man, you see this picture of this man is taken to be an example of the Muslims. You see, the news about this man is telling you that this is how the Muslims are, they're terrorists, they're criminals and they look terrible and we should try to find a way to get rid of this danger that would probably threaten all of us. This is really a very serious problem between our two worlds that's dividing our world now into 'us' and 'they', and I do remember this started to happen very clearly after 9/11, in fact in the first hour when 9/11 happened I was watching Tv and I saw that there was a fire in the two towers in New York and at the moment a terrorist attack is mentioned a man said there was a paper written in Arabic that was found near the scene! You know it was the first hour, nobody knew what happened, who did what, yet somebody who planned, probably, who masterminded the action, said that there was a paper written in Arabic. I'm saying this to show that 9/11, whoever did 9/11, who ever masterminded 9/11, the dubious thing is that nobody truly investigated 9/11. We don't have results about what happened, what truly happened in 9/11. But whoever masterminded it, whoever did it the results of 9/11 are the creation of the feeling in the Western world against Muslims and Arabs, the distortion of Arab civilization, of Arab culture, of Arab life, of Arab humanity even, in the minds of the West. And as it's the media that informs people everywhere and as the Arabs don't do their duty by going everywhere and speaking what's happening really most things go by what there is. They, unfortunately, have no other source of information.
That's why probably you found that since 9/11 along with real political wars that took place in our region there was a real war on journalists, particularly who go to the hot lines to convey the truths, and you remember many British journalists were killed and James Miller was one of them. Miller was making a film on Palestinian children and their cases were investigated and they were killed deliberately and 2006 is the year recorded a record number of journalists being killed or kidnapped or prevented from entering the hot zones. And you know after the invasion of Iraq we had the terminology of 'embedded journalism' so only journalists who go with the troops are safe and of course they'll have to subject themselves to the troops opinion. Any other free journalist is subject to arrest, to be kidnapped, and by the way I pray for the Italian journalist who was kidnapped in Afghanistan and I hope that there's good news about him {He was later released}.
We feel that media men and women are so important in today's world who're trying to travel and risk their lives in order to bring out the truth to people who can't reach the truth.
Dr. Shaaban: We were talking about the issue of the journalists. Now in the West Bank there're 240 check points. The Israeli logic, or what they say, is that we put all these check points to prevent the Palestinians from carrying out attacks against the Israelis. O.k., even if we accept this logic why the journalists are not allowed to go to the West Bank and see for themselves what's going on there. i.e. if the danger is the Palestinian and not the journalists why they're not allowed to go there and why they are treated worse than the Palestinians? Why Rachel Courrie was killed? She was killed in order to deter anybody from going there with their camera to show the world what's happening behind the apartheid wall. So the war is on the Arabs and on the media as well; On any honorable media man or woman who wants to go there and see for themselves what's going on and show the world what's happening. The result of that is a gap of information and a gap of knowledge between the Middle East and the rest of the world.
We have wars fought in our region without saying what's happening. Now I'm saying what's happening. Now we have this expression 'the international community'! You know, today Israel is saying 'the international community will not accept the Palestinian unity government', so I assumed that this means that Israel now represents the international community on its own, it is speaking on behalf of the international community.
So, really this gap of information, this gap of knowledge is becoming very dangerous because we live reality that only produces anger because of the huge oppressions and violence and injustices inflicted on our people for no reason whatsoever. The West doesn't see all this, when they see someone who really gets crazy with all of this or he does something terrible they ask why is this happening.
If I start with the Iraq war, if I were to give a brief idea about Iraq then I'll reach some conclusions.
Now, we all know that the war on Iraq was launched illegally etc. but how much do you know about what's happening truly in Iraq? The American themselves live in Saddam's palaces, in what they call 'the green zone'. And if you look at the weekly Guardian supplement on the fifteenth of February 2007, it tells you that the Americans could be living anywhere as if they're not living inside Iraq, they have their swimming pools, they're having their shopping centers, they're within a castle of their own, and they were speaking against Saddam who lived in the palaces.
What happened to Iraq outside this green zone?
At least 500 Iraqi university professors had been killed till now. Over 3000 of them fled Iraq, and they were forced to flee Iraq. Babylon had been stolen. Nobody knows how much archaeology Iraq has lost. Its mosques and churches had been destroyed. Two weeks ago you heard about Al Mutanabi street being destroyed. Al Mutanabi street is perhaps the only street in the entire world, in any city, that's a street only for books, bookstore, a street for reading, that's over 400 years old and they destroyed that street.
This year only 20 per cent of Iraqi children go to school, only 20 per cent.
I have relatives in Iraq, we have people in Iraq, Iraqis who are in Syria, every Iraqi in Syria is a walking tragedy, you cannot imagine what's going on in Iraq. Just think that you are here and someone tells you that you can't go back to your apartment, just leave safely. How painful it would be not to take your photographs, your memories, your life that you lived, to dig you out of your history, your memory, your dignity. Nobody thinks about these dimensions of the war. What's happening to women in Iraq? What's happening to the children in Iraq? American soldiers rape Iraqi women in front of their husbands and children in Iraq. This is not a statement, this is a reality that's found illegal, you know, investigated and found illegal!
The Iraqi people are the ones who were known throughout history never wanting to leave Iraq. You go now to Latin America and you find Syrians and Lebanese. Because Syrians and Lebanese since the 19th century liked to travel. You don't find an Iraqi because the Iraqis don't like to leave Iraq, they don't like to leave their country. The UN said now that there are nine million Iraqi refugees inside and outside Iraq. If killing a British soldier is a crime how many crimes are perpetrated against the Iraqis and who is the criminal who did all these crimes?
The problem is that the Arabs are in such a bad state of their history, who's going to take those who perpetrated all these crimes to court, to show the world what's happening to us?
The same thing is happening in the Palestinian territories. 80 per cent of the Palestinians are below poverty line! They don't find anything to eat, they can't go to schools, why? Why the Arabs should be subjected to this kind of life? What did they do to deserve this? In Lebanon now 60 per cent of the children don't go to the schools because Israel destroyed most schools in the South. It deliberately targeted schools, libraries and hospitals in the 33 days war against Lebanon. You can't find a library with thousands of books that are irreplaceable hadn't been destroyed by Israel in Lebanon. The same thing is in Somalia. Why? What did the Arabs do in order to deserve this destiny. And the new language that emerged is the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds in order to portray the Arabs to the world as if they were sectarian people.
Before I was coming here I attended a beautiful Arab musical evening in which the leader of that Orchestra is a Kurd, but we never see that this is a Kurd, this is an Armenian, this is a Sunni, this is a Shiite. This is impolite, we never refer to people according to their sect or ethnicity. In Iraq there are so many intermarriages between Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds. Some of the best Arab poets in Iraq are from the Kurds, Ahmad Shouki- our best poet- is a Kurd. From 627 - 647 the Christians and the Muslims went into the Umayyad Mosque pray together The Christians go right to pray and the Muslims go left to pray. Now you have the head of John Paul there buried in the Ummayed mosque.
We love each other and we lived there for thousands of years, it's only the occupation, American occupation and the Israeli occupation who are creating sectarianism. And trying to divide our people in Iraq, in Palestine, in Lebanon, in Syria and all over the Arab world.
If you ask my opinion there's a big attack on Arab identity, on Arab civilization, on Arab culture. The objective is not only the Iraqis, the Palestinians or the Lebanese it is the Arab culture and Francis knows how old this culture is, how tolerant, how embracing for everyone in the world it is. The opposite of this culture is what occupation is bringing to us, is to divide us into Sunnis and Shiites and the objective of all this is to make people forget about the occupation of Palestine, and the Arabs should make peace with Israel as if there's no occupation of the Arab territories. And the Israeli foreign minister said it yesterday, she said that the Arab leaders in the Arab summit should make peace with Israel without land, there's no land and Israel will not return anything of the land and I think this is the essence of the problem; Israel wants to keep the land and it makes all these wars to identify resistance as terrorism and to invite the world to stand against those who resist occupation accusing them of being terrorists and I think this is the essence of the problem.
Translation into Italian..
Dr. Shaaban: So in answering to the question 'is the Palestinian problem the heart of the problems in the Middle East' I say 'yes'. The Palestinian problem is in the heart of the problems in the Middle East because Palestine is in the heart of every Arab, Christian or Muslim, and what's happening to the Palestinians is very crucial to our lives, to our feelings and to our dignity. And I feel that the war on Iraq was launched in order to avoid finding a just solution to the Palestinian problem.
So, either you find news that doesn't reach you, for example two days ago two houses in Jerusalem of Palestinian families were destroyed by the Israeli bulldozers and I tried to find on the BBC, Cnn and every foreign channel to find any mention of this, there was no mention for this at all. So, either the news doesn't reach you at all or you'll read that the United States or Condolezza Rice asked the European governments not to lift sanctions from the government of Hamas. Sanctions are not against the government of Hamas , they are against the Palestinian people, because when Israel withhold 800 million dollars of the Palestinian government it's a collective punishment against the Palestinian people. By doing so Israel is starving the Palestinian people in order to break their will, to subject them to occupation in order to prevent them from being able to raise their voices.
Anyone of you who want to read the history of the Red Indians or the history of Aborigines he'll find the same treatment the Aborigines were treated in Australia; they were prevented from going to schools, they were put in camps, they were starved, their water was poisoned. They were subjected to collective punishment. I visited Australia and I visited an Aborigines family and I listened to these stories and when I spoke, you know, I went to a room like this and when I was there someone with one leg came, I wanted to say hello to him, I thought he's an Arab, and I spoke to him in Arabic and he turned to be an Aborigine. When I started talking about Palestine he started crying. He said this is our story, it's the same story that we lived, I didn't think there's another story like ours in the world. When I visited his family I found that aborigines have beautiful art, beautiful culture, beautiful buildings. Don't believe that they were primitive. They have the most beautiful things on earth and white settlers destroyed them. They are not allowed to live as human beings.
I feel, as an Arab women, I am also a descendent of indigenous people, that the war against the Arabs as indigenous people of the Middle East. I feel that this is exactly what's happening to us; what's happening to the Palestinians, what's happening to the Lebanese, what's happening to the Iraqis. It will take Iraq two or three generations to go back to what it has been as one country.
You might ask yourselves so what do we have to do with Iraq or Palestine? Why are you coming here and speaking to us about your region? I think and believe that what's going on in our region affects and influences everywhere in the world particularly Europe. One of the most important problems in the last four or five years is that Europe is not able to make its own political decision. Unfortunately Europe is only walking in the shadow of the political decisions of the United States, it was not able to make up its own mind and to make a stand about what's going on in the world.
If you allow me to go a little bit further I will say that there're very few leaders in the world now who can stand up and say the truth about what's happening. I feel that there's so much cowardice, there's so much hypocrisy, there're so many leaders who don't care, who don't know about public interest, the public service, they claim to represent the public but they don't represent the public, they represent their own interests and this is extremely dangerous.
If you ask me what's next I can tell you that we're really in a very dangerous threshold of a very dangerous period. Unless a solution is found to Palestine, to Iraq we could be witnessing a very dangerous era in which it is not only Iraq is disintegrated, perhaps Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia. God forbid if Iraq is disintegrated into parts this is going to be replicated in so many countries in the region because all our countries are made up of the same mosaic of religions, of ethnities and of the same people and whether they liked it or not it would be out of control.
I'd like to mention to you an American study that was published a few weeks ago that concluded that, since the war on Iraq terrorism has increased seven times in the world. So, what's called 'the war on terrorism' is only duplicating and encouraging and nourishing terrorism all over the world. And as we have experience no one of us can be safe in this violent world with this policy that encouraging terrorism.
I think every and each one of us has an interest in putting a limit to what's happening now and in bringing a very different world and a very different policy because if we believe that we live in one human family we all have an interest in bringing peace to the world.
I can't stop without paying very much appreciations to the very honest voices Jewish, Christians and Muslims in the United States, South Africa and Europe who're taking a very honorable stand against what's going on, who are writing, who are searching, you probably read Symore Hersh, what Carter wrote, Baker and Hamilton report, many writers I can't mention all of them, many wonderful dignified people who're taking a stand against this crazy wars in the Middle East because they can see that the end of these wars is so dangerous not only for the Arabs but also for Israel, for the United States, for Europe and for everyone on this planet.
As we can see the world is a small village now and what's happening everywhere affects everywhere else and therefore I feel that we're all in the same boat and we have all to stand up and to look for the truth, and we have all to stand by the truth and defend justice and human integrity.
I can tell you that the worst thing that's happening to the Arabs now is 'humiliation'; humiliation in Abu Ghraib, humiliation in Guantanamou, humiliation in Iraq, humiliation in Palestine. If you ask any normal human being what could be worse than this he'll tell you that nothing is worse than humiliation. In our prayers we always pray 'God let me die before I am humiliated' because death is easier than humiliation.
And I hope we all fight for bringing knowledge in, for bringing information in, for finding what's happening in the Middle East in order to take a stand against what's happening.
We, as Arabs, what we want is 'justice' and 'peace'. We always loved peace. We never launched wars against sects or against religions; when the Arabs left Spain the Jews left with them because they were living wonderful life with the Arabs and they were still living wonderful life in every Arab country. We don't feel guilty about the Jews because we didn't do anything wrong to them and what's Israel is doing has nothing to do with the Jews. The people who're standing against Israel many of them are Jews. The people who're writing against the apartheid wall in Palestine many of them are Jews. This has nothing to do with religions. And what's Israel is doing in Jerusalem is not only against the Muslims but it's against the Christians also. Jerusalem now has only 11000 Christians. There's a danger from eliminating the Christians from Jerusalem and from the West Bank if Israel continues treating the Arabs, Christians and Muslims, in this way.
So I fear that we might only be witnessing the beginning of a very dangerous era. And therefore I feel obliged to travel and speak to people. I no longer trust the internet, no longer trust the papers because they don't give the whole truth and I feel I have to do what my grandfathers did. They traveled and informed the world about what's happening because saving the world is our own responsibility.
Thank you very much
Question: about the organizations of Arab women
Dr. Shaaban: There're of course many organizations of Arab women and I think the issue that Arab women is taken as an example or as a way to disturb the image of Arab culture to take that why Muslim woman has to cover her hair and what's happening is taken as a measure of oppression for Arab women. I think covering the hair is a religious thing which's not only in Islam but in Christianity as well. We don't have any picture of the Virgin Mary showing her hair. Some Muslim women cover their hairs. I think covering the hair is a part of history in Christianity, Judaism and Islam and also part of the culture. You find in Africa extremely beautiful and colorful head-covers. So head-covers are not something strange or abnormal. Also our men cover their heads not only our women. The Arabs, you know, is a way of dressing, my father can't go outside without covering his head, you know, honestly (Applause). So this is something cultural, it has nothing to do with backward or forward. I asked one of my friends why are you covering your hair she said because I have very little hair left (laugh). So all this pretext is as part of a campaign to distort the image of Arab women in the eyes of the West and to really promote the motto that Arab men oppress their wives and to take this as an element of identification of Islam or of Arab culture.
The first one who believed in Islam was a woman, the Prophet's wife, the first martyr was a woman. Women in our culture, both Christian and Muslim, play a very important role in Arab culture, they fought wars, they were religious leaders, they were political leaders, they were economic leaders, they were business women. We came from a culture where women played a very important role. In fact in our villages I always feel that women are the ones who lead the work. My grandfather was in Argentina for 27 years and it was my grandmother who took care of the land and sold the horses and brought up the children and struck deals with the merchants. My mother was a very strong woman. I don't know this idea in the West about the Arab woman that the Arab woman covers herself with a scarf I don't know where this idea comes from. You go to Iran, Iran is not an Arabic country but it's a Muslim country, there women cover themselves but the Iranian woman is a very strong one. She occupies very important positions in the political system there. If you think about Syria fifty percent of our universities population are women, fifty percent of our school population are women. And we have a very prestigious status for mothers also. Any man in any position his mother has the grandest authority. If you travel in Arab countries and if you understand the Arab culture you'll see that.
The problem with that regarding the woman issue or any other issue is really that the Arab society is measured by Western standards and that's a mistake because we have our own culture, we have our own life.
I remember for many years when I was interpreting for the late president Assad every American delegation came to ask president Assad to open McDonalds in Damascus. President Assad always told them that we have our fast food. We have Shaorma, and we have falafel (laugh and applause). Now I read that prince Charles said that you have to close McDonalds in England.
I have two friends from England who came to visit me and I have my best friend who wears hijab (the scarf) who cooks very beautifully so I asked her to cook for them. She did this. We went to her home to eat there and she was dressing beautifully, you know, hijab could make you more beautiful not less beautiful. These two English friends asked her how you could cook all this food while you were wearing hijab. So she told them I don't sleep with al hijab, I don't cook with al hijab, I always wear it when I go out or when someone strange visits us. The idea of this is that they felt as if al hijab is stuck with the woman and she can't take it off her head while in fact she just wears it when she is going out to meet someone who's not one of her direct relatives. For me al hijab is not an important issue; the important issue is your brain. The important issue is what kind of person you are. So this is really one of the problems that stigmatizing and stereotyping the Arab women. We find it strange in France that there is a decision not to allow the girl who wears al hijab to go to school!! It's ridiculous. It's really ridiculous. In our society, you know, every minority; the Caucasian, the Armenian, and all the minorities came to our society they continue to dress the way they dressed. They celebrate the new year the way they like, they go to school the way they like. Nobody asks them why are you doing this. We feel that the West was not exposed to Islam before so they don't know what to do with Islam and they don't know how to handle Muslims. But when there's a social justice, when there's really good government everyone should be o.k everyone will be fine. The problem in France with the Muslims is not they are Muslims the problem is not giving rights to the minorities. That's the problem. They're being kept in ghettos, they're not treated the same way as others, that's the problem.
Now, if I sit with anyone of you, I'm a Muslim woman coming from Syria for the first time to this university and if you talk to me about my family, about my children and husband you'll find 78 per cent in common. We're human beings so connects us is stronger than what's divides us. And the problem with this world after 9/11 is trying to show that these Arabs, this Middle East is so different from us and we're different from them and they're dangerous and you should protect yourselves from these people. This is very dangerous. This is a beginning of racism, really. This is very dangerous to the entire world, you know. I went to South Algeria, Sahara, in 1990 to the Tuarik, I don't know if you read about the Tuarik. In Tuarik the men who wear the veil not the women. They're Muslims and they are descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. I saw them so civilized because they accepted me as I am although I looked very different from them. And I think this is the measure of civilization; is to accept people as they are so long as you share with them their humanity, their feelings. So I think the West has to come to terms with itself regarding the other.
Arab women are probably an example of how we can work with each other. Perhaps women could take a leading stand at this stage in history because probably women could identify with each other better, could understand each other better, could understand the sensitivities of these issues and hence women everywhere are invited to take a front place and try to address these crazy, tendencies in the world (Applause).
THANK YOU VERY MUCH