CrossFireArabia
By Ismail Al Sharif
“I don’t admit that a wrong was done to the Native Americans in America or the Blacks in Australia. Rather, stronger peoples of a higher standard than the rest of the world came and took their place… That’s the way of life” – Churchill.
Last 26 August, US ambassador to Turkey—and President Trump’s special envoy to Lebanon—went up to the press conference podium following the US delegation’s meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun. In a familiar scene repeated in world capitals, journalists in the crowded room rushed to ask their questions simultaneously, all seeking direct answers from the ambassador.
This time, however, the ambassador confronted the Arab journalists addressing them with a tone of arrogance filled with contempt. He said: “The moment things turn into chaos, as if you were behaving like animals, we will leave immediately. Behave in a civilized manner; this is the essence of the problem in this region.” He then reiterated: “Please remain calm… The moment things devolve into animal-like chaos, we will withdraw immediately.”
His remarks sparked a wave of anger and condemnation. The Lebanese Journalists Syndicate demanded an official apology, while the Lebanese presidency issued a statement expressing its rejection of these offensive remarks. Ambassador Tom Barrack was later forced to backtrack, acknowledging his use of the term “animal” was inappropriate.
But Barrack is merely a recurring example of a colonialism that has not changed. He reminds us of Leopold II, King of Belgium, who displayed Africans as exhibits in humiliating human zoos. He is no different from the ex-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, the war criminal who called Palestinians “human animals.”
He is a natural extension of a deeply-rooted colonial mentality, embodied in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Ottoman Empire’s legacy as spoils of war, or the Berlin Conference, when Bismarck distributed the African continent as gifts among the European colonial powers. The bitter truth is that colonialism’s view of us has never changed.
In the past, they labeled us as barbarians and savages and described our peoples as backward and our races as inferior. These old colonial terms evolved, cloaked in glittering and attractive slogans such as sustainable development, good governance, spreading democracy, protecting human rights, promoting reform, fighting terrorism, and establishing peace. But the essence and ultimate goal remained the same: Plundering our wealth and tightening control over our peoples.
In the Belgian Congo under Leopold II, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rubber-mining companies imposed mandatory production quotas on African villages, and anyone who failed to meet the required quota had their hands amputated as punishment. Today, the same scene is being repeated in different forms: A million Iraqi children being killed to control oil under the false pretext of “weapons of mass destruction.”
In Gaza, the most heinous crimes of modern genocide are being committed to plunder gas resources, simply because Hamas dares to challenge Western hegemony and refuses to submit to it.
Barrack represents the naked face of colonialism, without embellishment or falsification; he is the blunt and frank expression of the Western view of us. In an interview with National News on 22 September, he stated with shocking clarity: “We don’t trust any of you; our interests are incompatible. The term ‘ally’ is inaccurate in describing our relationship with you, but our relationship with Israel is completely different; it is an exceptional and emotional relationship. As for peace, it is just an illusion that will never be achieved. Might makes right, and I personally oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
In a subsequent statement to Al Jazeera, Barrack went further, saying with disdain: “There is no such thing as the Middle East; it is just a collection of scattered tribes and villages.” As for the countries you claim exist, they were created by the British and the French.”
Barrack’s statements may have been intentional and deliberate, aiming to reveal the true face of the colonial project, as part of an American strategy to pressure the Arabs in the context of redrawing the map of the region. Perhaps the deeper goal behind this rhetoric is to implant concepts of backwardness, impotence, and division deep within our collective consciousness, so that we internalize and believe in them, and thus act accordingly, making it easier for colonial powers to subjugate us and impose their control over us.
The late intellectual Edward Said expressed this truth profoundly when he said: “The most dangerous form of domination is not direct military occupation, but rather internalizing and believing the stereotype that the colonizer paints about us.” From this perspective, every word Barrack utters is not merely a passing blunder or a spontaneous slip of the tongue, but rather a clear embodiment of a deeply rooted colonial mentality that views Arabs, Muslims, and all other oppressed peoples of the earth as inferior and worthless to Westerners.
Similarly, the late intellectual, thinker and activist Frantz Fanon, and one of the prominent pioneers of anti-colonial thought, emphasized that true and most dangerous colonialism begins when we view ourselves through the eyes of the colonizer. Therefore, the first and fundamental step on the path to true liberation is to reject these imposed terms, which seek to define our inferior status and portray us as nations of lesser value and civilization than others.
We are not merely the “Middle East,” the “Third World,” or the “developing countries,” as they like to classify us. We are an ancient nation with deep roots in history. We are the bearers of one of the greatest and oldest human civilizations, the Arab-Islamic civilization, with our authentic and deeply-rooted identity, our immortal Arabic language, our deeply-rooted culture, and our history spanning thousands of years. We have made sublime civilizational contributions to the progress of humanity as a whole, and we are a beacon that has illuminated the paths of science, thought, knowledge, and enlightenment for the world.
This article by Ismail Al Sharif was originally written in Arabic for the Addustour daily.
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