Not Everything that Shines is Gold by Dr. Suleiman Rabadi

For the last 30 years, the Arab World has been going through an intrinsic crisis that has deformed the shape and outlook of our societies. This crisis had its internal and external causes. Internally, our societies have been ruled by a conglomerate of forces that had a stake in perpetuating the status quo and continue to rule and prevail. Our societies have been ruled by royal families with different titles; kingdoms, sheikhdoms, republics which have also adopted different kinds of ideologies from socialism, to capitalism, political Islam, nationalism and built their strength base on fear, corruption and naked power. They rallied forces around them that benefited from the system and bet on the docility and helplessness of the popular masses. Our rulers used the military and representative institutions; parliaments, political parties etc., to camouflage a flagrant lack of representation of the majority of the populace interests. The prevailing regimes used the powerful tools of the media, educational systems to perpetuate their vision and interests. The media and the educational systems produced docile citizens that had no choice but to obey and accept the faith of being allowed to live, which is a generosity the regimes have to be thanked for. These two instruments, which were the tools of indoctrination, shaped the minds, culture and hopes of millions of young Arabs. They were keen at producing individuals that feel powerless and loyal to the prevailing order because it is the best “that God created”. Externally, the interests of these regimes coincided with the interests of the prevailing international system, that has been bombarding us with beautifully crafted and packaged slogans like democracy, human rights, equal and balanced development, with a real agenda that was only interested in depleting these countries of their resources by controlling each and every aspect of their economies, political systems and agendas, to even their social and cultural development. Thousands of projects and tons of aid money were invested in shaping every aspect of life imaginable. International institutions starting from the UN and its agencies, to the world Bank, international governmental and non-governmental organizations and others orchestrated a symphony that played well to the interests of the big powers and their stooges in the region; all of which at the expense of the ordinary individuals and their humble hope of having a descent dignified life.
One might think that we are trying in our analysis to blame others for our misery and incompetency and resort to the old conspiracy theory that dissolves oneself of the responsibilities of the situation.
Conspiracy theories were shunned by regimes and the sultan’s intellectuals as the scarecrow of the powerless lazy Arab citizen, who saw in every act a conspiracy in order to blame someone for the unbearable vicious circle citizens were situated in. One shouldn’t be ashamed of naming things by their right names. There has been a big conspiracy against the ordinary citizen for the last 30 years that has been totally exposed with the last six month revolts. The youth carrying their faith in their hands alarmed and flabbergasted the tightly knit international system and its local comprador to its roots.
One should not underestimate the ascendancy of this system which has the power, money, international institutional tools and most importantly the internal forces and classes of each Arab society that stand to lose everything if the prevailing system collapses. Furthermore, one should not overestimate the power of the youth, who in their own right are not totally united, for they come from different backgrounds and have different agendas and are still carrying the heavy mantle of years of indoctrination that can’t be erased by will or wishful thinking, but through a long process of reproducing new social and political thought and formulating new strategies and agendas through a very painful caesarian rebirth of this new generation.
Any revolution has to have a clear cut with the past, not all the past, part of the past is who we are, our identity, history and culture, in addition to what was imposed on us and hammered in our minds and psyche that led to the prevalence of the status quo. We need to be aware of what to delete and what to retain from our past. Not everything that shines in the modern world is gold; we should just accept and internalize because we have this inferiority complex towards “modernity” in its marketed formulas in this insensitive consumerist world.
The youth’s role has to be crafted and rethought of meticulously. New political parties and unions have to be formed with tireless discussions about what we want and how we should go about changing the status quo. This process can take years and it has to be oriented towards empowering the different strata of the population that has been marginalized historically. We have to guarantee that the media system would gradually be the tool of change and not indoctrination, that we should rethink the whole purpose, content, vision of the educational system and work in the coming 5-10 years to reformulate our educational agenda and work on the ground to change practices, attitudes and ways of learning in order to achieve change and educate a new generation with knowledge and its tools rather than reproducing docile individuals.
Not only does the Palestinian society have to face the issues raised in this article but also have an extra burden of dealing with a heavy unprecedented in history occupation, that has been keen at distorting its memory and identity and has been creating facts on the ground to negate its existence. The Arab and Palestinian youth should remain realistically optimistic about change, because they can’t afford to be pessimistic. They have to work hard to achieve real meaningful and sustainable change. A special care should be given to what type of educational system we need to produce in the coming few years that would help us educate our kids and place them in the future rather than being entrapped in the past.