Gamal Abdel Nasser Archives - CrossFireArarbia

How The West Came to Control Arabism

CrossFireArabia
April 12, 2025

Dr Elias Akleh

The Arab world lies in one of the most important global strategic locations, controlling most of the major commercial transportation routes. It is rich in natural agricultural and industrial resources and has always been a prime target for Western colonial powers, which periodically launched military campaigns to occupy and control our world, starting from the heart of the Arab world, Palestine, known as the Holy Land, and expanding to the Levant in the north — Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan— then to Egypt, and it’s rich in its fertile Nile River, and finally to the Arabian Peninsula in the south.

When we look back in history, we find these military colonial campaigns against the Arab world—especially Palestine—were numerous, even dating back to before Christ, such as the campaign of Alexander the Great (336 BC–323 BC) and the Roman colonial rule (63 BC–324 AD). Moving on to the ages after Christ, we recall, for example, the eight Crusades over nearly two centuries (1096–1291), followed by Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign (1799–1801), and finally the Talmudic Zionist campaign initiated by Theodor Herzl in 1896, which continues into the present day.

These post-Christ colonial campaigns were primarily charged with religious fervor and can be termed as religious wars. In fact, Pope Urban II in 1095 described them as a “holy war” to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem from the “brutal” Muslim Arabs. As for Napoleon Bonaparte, who was defeated at the walls of Acca, he promised the Jews he would help them reach the “Promised Land,” holy Jerusalem, if they aided him in his colonial campaign.

Finally, at the present time, Britain, France and Germany came first, followed by all the US presidents who started supporting Zionist colonialism financially, politically and militarily to “recover” the “Promised Land” promised by a “racist” god biased towards the Jews to “rebuild” the alleged Temple of Solomon in the city of Jerusalem and to build Greater Israel.

All these colonial campaigns attempted to divide the Arab world into small, weak states by perpetrating genocides against their many Arab peoples. They destroyed and burned cities, tortured and killed civilians, and raped women, girls, and even boys, just as Zionist Israel is doing now in Palestine. However, past genocides cannot be compared to the brutality and brutality of the Zionist genocide against the Arabs of Palestine, from 1947 to the present day, due to the power of modern, highly destructive and lethal weapons.

The Arab nation was able to defeat all past colonial campaigns because of the people’s sense of belonging to their homeland and their unity, undivided by distance or borders, and led by brave, honorable, national leaders who sought the best for the entire nation.

The western colonialists noticed this inherent sense of belonging within the nation and decided to target it. After World War II, Britain, then the Great Power, agreed with France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, to break the pact it signed with Sharif Hussein bin Ali. This agreement divided the Middle East into small states, appointing rulers loyal first to Britain and then to the current American administrations.

How can the men in the Arab world sit back while the carnage is unfolding in #GazaGenocide ? Have you all forgotten who you are? Children of Azzam, Mukhtar and the Ouled Darradj? Here are the words from a brother in Khan Younis less than an hour ago. “The Israelis have killed 490… pic.twitter.com/ZhECfHaic3
— Yvonne “Newcastle ” Ridley (@yvonneridley) April 6, 2025

To further weaken these Arab states, the Western Axis powers divided the economies and financial systems of these states, rendering them alien and compete with each other. They also sowed division and religious, regional, and ethnic animosity among the Arab nation, allowing Zionist colonialism to penetrate the Arab world, beginning with Palestine.

Unfortunately, most Arab leaders failed to attempt to restore Arab unity and unify the people, economy, and currency, as the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser attempted to. Instead, what was spread was division, hatred, competition, animosity, and even war among Arab peoples, as has happened in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and what is currently happening in Arab African countries such as Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan.

Worst of all is the spread of the philosophy of distancing oneself from the problems of any neighboring Arab country. Some leaders consider that the wars that take place in a neighboring Arab country do not concern them as long as these wars do not affect their country, even in the short term. We see this now clearly in what is happening in Palestine, especially the extermination of the Arabs of Gaza.

The heads of neighboring Arab countries are trying to convince their people that their national interest requires non-interference and to distance themselves to avoid destructive wars and to leave the Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation alone.

Israel, launching pad

It would be better for these leaders to warn and inform their people that Israel is a launching pad for a broad western colonial campaign aimed firstly at destroying the Arab homeland and colonizing it by planting Zionist terrorism in the form of the Israeli entity which aims to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates, from the far south of the Nile – on the Sudan borders – to the far north of the Euphrates – to the Turkish borders – to build what is called Greater Israel in the Promised Land promised by a racist land broker god to a criminal, savage, genocidal people.

Secondly, for this Zionist entity to grow from Great Israel to Greater Israel it is going to move to the south to include all of the Arabian Peninsula – to recover Khaybar and Yathrib and their dependencies – then move west to the northern coast of the African continent, extending to Morocco and control the entire Arab world, monopolizing the most important strategic locations internationally, and global maritime trade routes between East and West, including the Strait of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, passing through Bab al-Mandab Strait to the Red Sea, then via the Suez Canal to the ports of occupied Palestine, and from there to the Western world via the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. And across the Giberalter Strait to the Americas – the ultimate goal of the Greater Israel Project.

All we have to do is listen to and understand the Israeli (and American) statements, both public and broadcast, clearly and vociferously, that the goal of Israel and the West is to exterminate all Arabs, just as they did to the Native Americans—they call them Red Indians— to build Greater Israel and control the Arab world and its natural resources. The evidence of these goals is clear, such as the destruction of Iraq and the theft of its wealth, and the establishment of American military bases along the Arab states on the western coast of the Persian Gulf.

We also witnessed how the Western colonial powers destroyed, divided, and weakened Libya and stole its wealth, then spread enmity between Algeria and Morocco, waged a war of extermination in Sudan, and then divided Syria and Lebanon, weakened Jordan, and effectively occupied it with American, British, and French military bases. All that remains is Egypt, which is subjected to economic occupation through conditional World Bank debt and by allowing other countries to purchase Egyptian land, real estate, and companies, which will ultimately lead to Egypt’s economic collapse.

Many people from all over the world, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language, are taking to the streets in massive, daily and weekly marches and demonstrations in solidarity with the Arabs of Palestine, against Israeli brutality, against Western countries, and against their own governments, which fund and supports Israel politically and militarily.

They wonder why the Arab peoples don’t take to the streets in solidarity with the Arabs of Palestine, demanding that their Arab governments personally intervene to protect and assist the Palestinians, instead of these governments begging for assistance from the powerless United Nations. Have the Arabs lost their humanity and solidarity with their Arab brothers in Palestine, or are they simply cowards and selfish and unable to do anything?

Dr. Elias Akleh is a Palestinian writer who contributed this article the Arabic Al Rai Al Youm website. This is a translated piece that was slightly edited at the end for the sake of brevity.

Opinion

Fragmented Arab Nation May Yet Rise!

CrossFireArabia
December 15, 2024

Dr. Saad Naji Jawad

The Arab nation has never lost its compass as it is doing so these days. It has never gone through such a state of disintegration, despair and inability to do anything since the World War I, and be satisfied with everything that others are doing to it.

If we go back in history when Britain and France occupied the Arab nation and divided it in the way we see it now, we will find that the spirit of revolution, liberation, love of independence and rejection of direct and indirect colonialism remained glowing within its societies.

Many national movements succeeded in obtaining independence, even if it was nominal, and some liberation movements succeeded in revolting against colonialism and expelling it from their lands. Then the Arab countries that gained their independence stood by those that were still struggling for that goal. When some Arab governments stood by the tripartite aggression against Egypt, demonstrations filled the streets, and the popular tide succeeded in toppling some of those regimes.

The same thing happened after the outbreak of the Algerian revolution, where all the masses of the nation and its independent countries stood by until it succeeded in achieving complete independence from French colonialism.

After the Bandung Conference (Asian-African Solidarity Conference 1955), which was the nucleus of the Non-Aligned Movement (1961) in the shadow of the Cold War, the late Gamal Abdel Nasser succeeded in leading the nation to a position that was taken into account, and the bloc was able to force the two world powers to respect the point of view of the movement’s members and supported the independence of most Asian and African countries. Some Arab capitals, Cairo in particular, became the headquarters and refuge for all Asian and African liberation movements.

Alarm bells

Indeed, that stage set the alarm bells ringing in Western countries about the possibility of the Arab homeland becoming an influential force in the regional and international arenas with its wealth. It is no exaggeration to say the entity that Western countries created in Palestine, the heart of the Arab homeland, was the one that activated this bell and kept its voice constantly loud.

This entity felt that its existence, which passed with the approval and submission of the Arab regimes that were groaning under colonial rule, and its attempts to expand beyond the area granted to it by the United Nations in the partition resolution in 1947, became clearly threatened, especially after the emergence of national regimes that rejected its existence.

This feeling increased when Nasser’s Egypt, with Syrian support, adopted the armed Palestinian resistance in Gaza and the West Bank since the mid-1950s, and other Arab countries followed suit after the 1967 setback.

Hence the decision to work to stifle any Arab renaissance project that could stand in the way of Zionist ambitions with American-British-European support was made. This decision was translated into two wars, the first of which failed (Suez and the tripartite aggression of 1956), and the second succeeded greatly (June 1967).

This introduction should not make us overlook the fact that those who helped the Israeli-American-British plan succeed were the Arab regimes and governments, which despite the national intentions of some of them, failed to create democratic institutions and societies that stand behind the regimes and support them.

A map of the Arab world. Population is over 470,000,000 people. The Palestinian people make up around 1% of the Arab population. Can @HumzaYousaf explain why they can't move to this vast area on their doorstep, with shared culture, climate & language and need to come to Scotland? pic.twitter.com/oHLo1UtkBp
— Blues Brother (@wavydot) September 25, 2024

Isolated regimes

Rather, it can be said these regimes isolated themselves with their oppressive policies, which they naively justified as necessary to protect revolutions and national experiences from foreign conspiracies. This is why a schism occurred between the peoples and their rulers.

This gap widened when the majority of citizens in all Arab countries felt marginalized and had no say in what was happening. They participated in wars against their will, were forced to suffer defeats against their will, and accepted agreements that had no interest for them or their future generations. Most of them found themselves, and still are, living below the poverty line, while their wealth went into the pockets of the corrupt and the rulers.

The same failure befell other leaders who possessed enormous wealth. Instead of harnessing this wealth to build an economic, industrial, cultural, and agricultural renaissance in all Arab countries, they put all this enormous potential in the service of the American-Zionist project that aims to dismantle the Arab homeland, believing that this project is the one that will protect them and keep them in power.

These parties spent hundreds of billions of dollars to support civil wars within the Arab homeland, at a time when a small percentage of this money would have been enough to create an economic, cultural, and social renaissance in all Arab countries.

What is happening in our Arab region today is a path that began in 2003, then moved to most Arab countries (under the name of the Arab Spring), and resulted in the destruction of Libya, Syria and Yemen, then moved after the Al-Aqsa Flood to Palestine, to Gaza, then Lebanon and last but not least in Syria, where Israel and the United States were able to achieve easy victories they did not deserve.

Terrified

This even included the right-wing axis that normalizes and satisfied with Israeli expansion, which was terrified by what is happening. The problem is that people’s memories are narrow, weak and sometimes non-existent. What is happening now in Syria in particular happened twice in Iraq in 2003 and after, and in 2014 after the invasion of the terrorist ISIS gangs.

The result of both operations was catastrophic by all standards.

However, there are those who still support what America and Israel are doing and seek their help and obey them. A not insignificant group, including this writer, believe that the basis of the current disaster is the failure to activate the principle of (unity of arenas) after the launch of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation.

Perhaps there is no benefit to be gained from discussing such a topic with those who are driven by sectarian and racist fanaticism, or driven by narrow and limited interests and painful personal experiences (this is if we assume good intentions and the absence of suspicious connections), as all of these people cannot look at or discuss matters from the perspective of the supreme national interest.

Turkish ambitions

Perhaps one of the most difficult roles to explain to some is that played by Turkey, not only practically, but also in terms of its future intentions that harbor ill intentions for this nation, including talk in Istanbul and by official bodies about (the necessity of restoring Aleppo and then Mosul and annexing them to Turkey), then wrapping this up with honeyed words about (preserving the unity of Syrian territory).

Today, Turkish activity has extended to the Horn of Africa region, where it has succeeded in achieving an important historical reconciliation between Somalia and Ethiopia, a reconciliation that ultimately serves Addis Ababa and its policy, driven by Israel, in thirsting Egypt and depriving it of a large percentage of the Nile waters with the resulting major effects.

In other words, the destructive and fragmentation plan has begun to move to Egypt. Turkey has previously tried a strategy of destabilizing neighboring Arab countries, and that policy backfired, but it seems that it is not only the Arabs who are characterized by weak memories and failure to learn from experiences.

Yes, the Arab nation today lives on the edge of disaster, and it is threatened with fragmentation more than it is fragmented now, and what is more painful is that the occupying state, which was standing on the brink of a major defeat for itself and its expansionist settlement project, is today achieving, with American and Turkish support, and a cynical Russian, Iranian and official Arab position, a victory that it did not dream of.

It is not unlikely that after Trump comes to power, this will not only be strengthened, but new Arab countries will be forced to accept it, and it may even reach the point of forcing the International Criminal Court to withdraw the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Galant, and the matter may extend to the International Court of Justice and prevent it from issuing a ruling on the genocide committed by the occupation in Gaza.

This bleak picture is only alleviated by the continuation of the resistance in Gaza despite everything that has happened and is happening, and the low state in which the occupying entity has fallen in the eyes of the world, especially the West, and the increasing boycott operations against it and its being considered a pariah and rogue regime.

The Arab nation has accustomed us to succeeding in difficult times in rising from the ashes and achieving victories despite all the setbacks. Perhaps such a thing now requires a period of time that is not short, but in the end this is what will happen at the hands of generations that have not rejected humiliation, subordination and the promotion of divisions.

And hope for this cannot be cut off no matter how long it takes. We have no choice but to take as an example of what was stated in the Holy Quran in the Battle of the Trench when the Muslims reached an unprecedented state of despair until the noble verse was revealed: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful “Or do you think that you will enter Paradise while such [trial] has not yet come to you as it came to those who passed on before you? They were touched by poverty and hardship and were shaken until the Messenger and those who believed with him said, “When is the victory of Allah?” Unquestionably, the victory of Allah is near.” God’s words are the truth.

The writer is an Iraqi academic who contributed this piece to Al Rai Al Youm