The Lecture of
H.E. Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban
In
The Syrian Symposium
in Vienna
Date: June 30th 2005 - Time: 19.00 PM – Duration: 40 Minutes
Place: Conference Hall in RZB Financial Center
The Middle East in Arab's Eyes
Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban:
Good Evening,
Allow me first of all to thank Mr. Nabil Kuzbari our friend; we are very proud of a Syrian-Austrian man who presents in himself the lovely relation between Syria and Austria. I thank you Mr. Kuzbari for arranging this event.
I would also like to thank my colleagues who accepted to take the floor with me, Mr. Herbert Scheibner, his lovely word about the relation between Syrian and Austria. I would like to appreciate Mr. Heinz Nussbaumer for all what he said and for his presence with us, and Professor Worm for his presence and contribution, I would also like to acknowledge our moderator Mrs. Sawsan and Mr. Karl Blecha who will give us his conclusion remarks.
Let me first of all starts by saying I'm extremely happy to be here in Austria and it is quiet a relief to be between a friendly atmosphere, not to be on the defensive, not to go and give a talk where you expect very difficult atmosphere, and very difficult questions. So I'm absolutely relive.
I would like to say that Syrian people really appreciate Austrian people in particular, and appreciate also the role Austria played on the Golan, so I would like to acknowledge the role of the Austrian men who spend their time in the Golan, doing their duty and helping Syria to maintain the agreement and the truce that was made with Israel.
I think that most Arab people would agree with me that Austria stands in a very special light in the Arab world as a country that is most objective in its analysis of what goes on in the Middle East, and probably, of what goes on in the Moslem world and the relation between the Muslim world and the western world, and therefore, I feel Austria is probably entitled specially when it take the E.U. presidency to play very important role and in this regard, a roll that is extremely needed.
I wanted to share with you few ideas about how we see what is happening in the Middle East in our own eyes away from what is presented about us, and I think one of the problems that faces most Arab and Muslims nowadays is that they are being defined by others and I think that they need to define themselves and this is one of the big problems that we face, the Arab and Muslims are not playing a role in speaking to the world, who they are, what they stand for, and what the problem is, and let me start by blaming ourselves a little bit for not doing enough to reach out to the world international media and speak up about what we believe is happening and I know that my audience is extremely informed this evening so I don't want really to waste your time by telling you what you know but I would like to share with you some perspectives and I think I will share with my colleague Professor Nussbaumer starting from 9\11 because that seems to have been a very important date for all of us and if I want to start from there, as an Arab and Muslim woman, I would like to start by saying that 9\11 for us was as terrible as it was for the Americans, and therefore, whoever stands behind 9\11 who other masterminded 9\11 must have targeted not just Americans but Muslims-western relation, and probably Arabs and Muslims as well. Because as an Arab woman who looks for excellent relations with the west I could feel how badly the relation was affected after 9\11 and therefore, I think we have to pause and think what happened after 9\11. The language that was coined after 9\11 is a very different language from the language that used to be used before then, and if I can take you one minute to the time before 9\11 there was a dialogue going on and their were battles going on in the Muslim world between extremist and moderates and between liberal people and those who do not want liberalization.
I remember in the late 80's and early 90's as a university professor, I shared so many sessions with Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid, with liberal people who were fighting against extremism intellectually and through different social and political platforms.
What I would like to say is that after 9\11 we got weaker, we were under mind by the fact that the US policy reacted not only in such a violent way to what happened in 9\11 but in a way that put all Muslims, all Arabs in the category of the terrorist and that was the terrible thing to be done. And if you rethink only of the idiom "Islamic Terrorism" you realize that it is not an idiom that should be used because no body other spoke about Christian Terrorism or Judaic Terrorism or Protestant or Catholic Terrorism.
Terrorism is an aberration of a human mind, and of human self, it has no color no nationality, no border, no gender.
I think speaking about what I read today in a newspaper that president Bush said he wouldn't have to leave the region to Ben Laden and Al-Zarkawi is like me saying we shouldn't leave New York to a criminal who committed a crime at night i.e. to resent all people in New York as if they are criminals. So I would like to invite you to think of the Arab world and of the Muslims world of people there not to think of the few terrorists who have an agenda, but who are being fed by this feeling of hatred that is being promoted both ways so you realize that they all the time they speak about what Arafat wanted, what Arafat did, after Arafat, there is Abu Mazen, but no body told you that in between there are eight thousands people who were arrested and put in the Israeli's prisons, thirty babies had been born in prison and became prisoners with their mothers, no body told you that four hundred children under the age of ten had been killed, that 50% of Palestinian people had been transferred from the east Jerusalem, that settlement had been tripled over the last three years, that a terrible wall has claimed 20% of the territories of the west bank and 40% of its water.
That is the reality of what is going on in our region and that is what matters to us as people who are living there.
We think about our baby lives, we think about our security, we think about the future of our children, we would like our children to play music and to play football and to go to universities and to travel to the west. We don't like them to see wars raging in Iraq and Palestine and everywhere. And if they talked to us about what happened in the last twenty years in Iraq, what Saddam Hussein did, Saddam himself, was an apparition of Muslims and Arabs. Iraq is a very old country it hasn't been always as it was under Saddam. Iraq is a country that has been known for its history, traditions, culture, and we have always been, we still are as as Arabs very proud of Iraq's achievements whatever Saddam did, Saddam was a terrible guy, but we don't judge the Iraq's people or the future of Iraq by what Saddam did and say, well it had been terrible under Saddam, yes it has been terrible under Saddam, but we expected it to improve as the American's scheme came to improve the lives of the Iraq's people so what is happening in Iraq now is really very dangerous not only what has happened but is likely to happen.
One of the things that president Bush said on Tuesday, he said that we prevented a civil war, I just hope he is right, because the rudiments of the civil war are really raging in Iraq and for the last three months, very sectarian kind of killing is taking place in Iraq and I would like to say that religious men had been extremely wise on the part of the Shi'aa toward being issuing a fatwa every single day not to allow Shi'aa to react to the killing that are taking place against them, because the moment they react, the civil war would irrupt in Iraq and that would be terrible for the entire region.
That is really our most anxious fear, because as you know, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, we are all made up of the same ethnicities, of the same religions that are there is Iraq. God forbid a civil war irrupted in Iraq this would be truly disastrous for the entire region. So that is really what we fear but the tragedy of that happens in Iraq the loss of Iraq's heritage, of Iraq's museums, of Iraq's scientists, Of Iraq's doctors who is going to make up for Iraq what happen.
It is very easy for Donald Ramsfield to say it might take twelve years, it could take him forever, he looks at his T.V. and see Iraq for two minutes. He doesn't have to live without electricity, without hot water, without schools, without his children being able to walk the streets.
So we see the world from a very different light. From a perspective of people who have always been their for thousands of years and I think the mosaic composition of our region speeds a lot for our forefathers why do you find in Syria or Iraq the eldest Christians, Jewish, Muslims, Caucasians and Armenians. All living together for thousands of years because we are a tolerant society, because we love living together, because we are enriched by living together.
I think it is a new experience to the west that they are having Muslims living with them but we have always live together for thousands of years and we don't want to live in any other way it is beautiful way to live together and as a minister of expatriates, I would like to say that two hundreds years ago Syrians and Lebanese started to migrate to Brazil and Argentina. What did they do there, what did they opened their? They opened schools, hospitals and social clubs. That is what they did and the hospitals in San Bawlo that Syrian and Lebanese women built in 1921 is the only hospital probably in the world that treat not only the body but the spirit as well, they carried their traditions with them as well and that is one of the traditions that is kept high by the people there so I think we do have a history that we are proud of and we would like to maintain and we would like to keep for our children this does not means that the Arab world is not passing through a very difficult stage at the moment, yes it is, it is passing through a difficult stage the Arabs are not united, they are speaking in one voice they are not presenting their case to the world as one people and that is a huge difficulty and also that applies to the Muslim world and I would like to come to what professor Heinz Nussbaumer said that the Muslims should get together and present their case. I totally agree, I think they should do that but I would like to add to that that the new trend after 9\11 is driving Muslims and Arabs exactly the opposite road they are targeting, a secular society, a secular government, they are targeting countries that impose women, they are targeting any move that could make our lives better under the name of democracy and by the way only four years ago they started talking about democratizing the Arab world and I know why they started to talk about this, so that we don't talk about Israeli's occupation of Arab territories so that we don't address the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab-Israeli conflict is the cancer in the Middle East and Syria maintained before the war on Iraq that addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict would be the best step to start with in the middle east and would help in undermining Saddam and in solving the problem in Iraq. We still maintain that our president said before the war, there will be two things if this war irrupt, first, the Americans will sink in the Iraq's sand and this was his statement because Iraqis in their history they never accepted foreign occupation and second, chaos and anarchy will broaden the room for terrorist, and as you can see this is exactly what happened.
I think any one of you who read the speech of president bush two days ago would feel dismay, he is talking about the Middle East as a source of evil, and as a source of terrorism and all of you know that Middle East is the source of monologist, religions, the source of Alphabet, and the source of civilization, and I think this frame of mind is very dangerous for the Middle East, and we really look to Europe and especially to Austria to help us to provide an alternative towards the American policy towards the Middle East.
As a Syrian woman I know why all this is happening because they want to keep the Israeli occupation of land and water, and to convince the world that those Arab are terrorists and we can't do anything about that except to fight them.
As you know we worked for peace for ten years we were that close to achieving a peaceful settlement with Israel in the year 2000 but really the bottom line of the matter is land and water, and water in particular, that is why they would not sign a peace with us over the Golan, that is why the apartheid wall is built, that is why the land is being raped and that is why attention is being diverted from all these problems so what do we do?
I really believe that our only salvation is public opinion, the Arabs as you know are not allowed to have any argument they are not even allowed to defend themselves although their territories are occupied, their water is stolen, their houses are destroyed, but it is a crime for any Arab to have any weapon on earth while Israel is allowed to have all the weapons it needs. I just want to ask why? Why the Arabs are not allowed to have any armaments to defend themselves and why Israel is allowed to have all the armaments, sometimes for free to occupy other peoples land and to destroy their homes and to kill their children, that is a question that we ask in the Arab world, you know, so it is a problem of a total pious in this opinion, but in the long run it is not really in the interest of Israel those who think that they are serving the interest of Israel by supporting Sharon I would like to say to them we in the Middle East feel that we are all in the same peat. We either swim or sink together, and those who are supporting Sharon are creating more hatred more anger, more resentment and only prolonging the suffering on all people on all fronts. So what do we do?
I think what we can do at the moment is to address public opinion; I would like her to pay attributes to all journalists who paid with their lives weather in Palestine territories or in Iraq.
I would like to mention Tomas Harnbel from Britain. James Miller who was designed to do a film on Palestinian children and he was killed because of that. Rachael Cory who tried to protect Palestinian children when the Israeli bulldozers crushed her body.
I know why they did that, because they wanted to deter any conscious journalists to go to Palestinian territories or to Iraq to discover what is going on to discover the truth of what is going on, as a humanist, I believe, no mother, no father in the world would accept what is going on in the Palestinian territories or in Iraq but they first have to know what is going on and as you can see Michael Jackson occupies the American T.V. for five months, I think he was covered more than Palestine and more Iraq and more than Syria, and that is also part of the problem where the media is going, where is directed to go and sure all of you would like me to say few words about Syria. Why Syria is threatened?
I said this morning in Kreisky Forum, and I would like to repeat that again that I started working with the late president Assad in 1990 when the late president was sixty years old, even then I was reading in The New York Times and Herald Tribune about the late president calling him the old man of Damascus, the sick man of Damascus, and he died at seventy, and he was not ill, and all what they said about him has nothing to do with his health at all, it was not true. He died in the year 2000 at age seventy.
Did you ever hear anyone calling Sharon who is seventy-five years old now the old man of Jerusalem, or the sick man of Jerusalem? No!! Now we have a young president, humble, westernized, out world looking, determined to make peace, loves his country, fighting corruption, they say he has no experience, he can't do it.
It has nothing to do with who we are, or what we are, it is a pre conceived attitude to be little people to try and say we have no partner every time. Sharon says I have no partner for peace, I laugh do you know why? Because every time there is a partner for peace, he kills him, he killed Al-Rantisi, he killed Sheik Ahmad Yassin, he killed "Oslo", he killed any prospect for peace then he stands and say to the world I have no partner for peace.
There are 22 Arab countries who took the decision to make peace with Israel, if Israel would withdraw to the land of June 1967, they made that decision in Beirut in March 2002, they reiterated that stand in Algeria in 2005, ten minutes after the announcement Sharon gave a speech and rejected the offer, the Arab people want to make peace they feel dialogue is the only way to make peace, we don't want to fight wars, we don't want more people to be killed we want to make peace through negotiations, but certainly not through giving up our lands and water or our rights, and that is the problem that Syria has. Syria is advocating to dignify stand, a stand with international legitimacy, a stand with Arab right, a stand on a parity of dignity. We certainly feel we are entitled to have parity of dignity and I would like to say what the late president Assad said, he said: "If I can't liberate the Golan, I am not going to sign the Golan off for future generations, I will certainly allow future generations to speak about a Golan".
And I am sure that all of you watched the visit of Condaliza Rice to the Middle East and if you want my perspective of that visit, she was going to the Middle East to give Arab leaders and Arab countries lessons about democracy and what is to be done. As you know she brushed the Palestinian question and the Israel occupation aside and I laughed when I read that she was "Displeased" with the settlements. I liked the word displeased, you know for somebody it is a matter of life and death, somebody else is displeased with it.
And I think in order to end on a positive note and see there are people in the world who agree with me on the need for a change in the US policy towards the Middle East.
I really hope that Europe, who is so close to the Middle East and Austria, who is so trusted by the Middle East, will play a roll to lighten world opinion about where we need to go, and what we need to do, and certainly, Syria, would love to be a partner of any effort like that.
I would like to conclude by a quotation from Robert Mackemars, the Ex US of defense in his latest book called: In Retrospect, New Prospect, The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. He wrote: "Us generals opposed poses in bombing north Vietnam, which some officials believe would provide an opportunity to open negotiations with the regime. Because it would be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Today, the Bush administration" I am still quoting "has the same problem, it is scared to negotiate with countries such as North Korea, Iran, and Syria, for fear of being seen as week" end of quote.
And off course I would like to say we always feel that those who negotiate are strong, are not weak, because they have the strength of justice, the strength of right, and we always feel in the Middle East, because we are partly spiritual people, that right is always better than might, and it is always triumph over might, and with all your efforts I hope it will.
Thank you very much.