REVANCHISM

d r a f t

Between me and you,
There’s no [room for] blame
You live [to] ignore me
And [to] apologize [later]

Fairuz, Baghdad and the Poets

(The following was inspired by one of may endless conversations with my father, a man to the right of Attila the Hun. He’s my sounding board for right-wingers. I get his first reaction then I complicate the subject for him, as only those not of the right can.)

IF YOU THOUGHT THE AL-QAEDA BRANCH OF THE ARAB OPPOSITION WAS BAD – WAIT 'TIL YOU SEE THE POST-GAZA REVANCHISTS

It was reported reently in the Arab press that the Syrian Muslim Brothers as a result of Gaza had suspended their activities against the Syrian government. It wasn’t clear who had issued the statement. (If my memory serves me well, the statement was sent to a French media outlet.) No names were mentioned, such as that of al-Bayanouni or even that of the palace dwarf, Abdel-Halim Khaddam. But the statement tells a truth: the Arabs, the Sunni included, are wounded, so deeply embittered by Gaza.

Should Gaza fall, the Arab Sunni (and I’m including a majority of the elite) should turn revanchist.

As I’ve said in a recent prior post: the Arab Sunni elite and public, the majority, should head Iran’s way as a result of Gaza, especially if Gaza falls.

IRAN V. EGYPT: THE BLAME GAME

Hence Iran’s persistent campaign to portray the Egyptian government as responsible for Gaza’s suffering. Which is true, in good part. Each and every photograph of a Palestinian child with amputated legs; each and every photograph of corpses of children being rushed forward, draped in green cloth; each and every photograph of a mother crying, of a girl weeping, having lost their entire family to the insane and desperate harmful idiots’ bombs – these pictures should be etched in the brain of each and every Arab Sunni – if one is to use the categorization nomenclature pushed along in part by the colonialist harmful idiots and their self-hating reactionary Arab servants.

The Egyptian ruling elite would like nothing more than to point to Iran for blame: why don’t the Iranians activate the Lebanon front? But they can’t even make this argument lest they upset Israel. Besides, the Arab public, majority Sunni, knows that Iran’s hands are somewhat tied by Lebanese politics. Not to mention that the Arab public knows that Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah perceive the Israelis as the enemy, even when they can’t act on that perception to help the Gazans. But the Egyptian government is Israel’s friend and an Arab servant of the harmful idiots and their Israeli pet -- or is it the other way around? Get it?

MORE ANGLES

The cargo cult nature of the Middle East, most of it, is hard to dispute. (The oil-rich Gulf Arab ruling elite are a cargo cult in that they are totally reliant on the U.S. for their security, not willing to field decent armies of their own, while oil-poor countries like Lebanon and Syria are cargo cults of – nearly – anyone who’s willing to deliver cargo.)

The financial meltdown in the countries from where cargo originates – the West, Russia, and China – should heat up instability in the Middle East. Only the Gulf Arabs at present have material cargo – money. And Arab countries with dire need for cargo should therefore be searching for angles to lay a claim on some of that. Consider Lebanon and its insurmountable national debt; Yemen and its population explosion; Syria and its relative poverty. Elite in these countries should evolve ideologies to secure cargo. In the absence of a willingness by the Gulf Arabs to share their wealth (cargo) with the poorer Arabs under the umbrella of an Arab common market and/or an Arab common defense plan, the elite of the poorer countries would have to devise ways for forcing the issue with their rich counterpart.

THE USE OF GAZA: AN ILLUSTRATION

The fall of Gaza should provide a terrific angle. Here’s an illustration:

Saida, the very (second) home of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence man, Saad al-Hariri, is predominately Sunni. And the Hariri family, whose wealth was and is directly connected to the theft of Lebanon’s national purse, which turned the Hariri family into a state-within-a -state (Hezbollah is the second such state) had been generous with the Sunni of Saida, perceiving this constituency as essential to the family's prominence and continued pilfering (through banks) of the Lebanese national purse. The Hariri family’s “generosity” has extended to other Sunni in Lebanon, but hardly ever to other sects. (Saudi intelligence has been pumping money into the Christian constituency of Samir Geagea, but that’s likely temporary to secure the election of his men to parliament , with the hope of providing the Hariri bloc with a majority. If Saudi intelligence fails at this effort, the Christian beneficiaries of that Saudi largesse should be dumped flat on their ass.)


But Saida is a gem for Hezbollah -- a Sunni city in a predominately Shia region (south Lebanon) and featuring one of the largest (it may be THE largest) Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon – Ain el-Helweh. If you’re Sunni in Saida, you wouldn’t want tension with the Shia majority, would you? Nor with the Palestinians, the refugees in Ain el-Helweh. These after all are Sunni, too. You are Sunni. Gaza (and Hamas) are Sunni. Shia Hezbollah is a terrific ally of Hamas. The Israelis are slaughtering the children of Sunni Gaza under the guise that Hamas is hiding amongst them. (Like Israel didn’t know that a people’s army in an area mostly devoid of forests, would not use its people to hide from the superior killing machine of the Israelis, whose effective bombs come mostly from the harmful idiots. ) What do you get? In spite of all the Hariri state and Saudi intelligence money in the world, you get a coalition whose effort and energy are directed against the Israelis and their killing machine. Let’s call it The Arab Islamic Coalition for the Liberation of Palestine (AICLP.) Many among the public and elite in Saudi Arabia should become secret card-carrying members of that coalition.

FAISAL’S MARTYRDOM AND NAYIF’S SECURITY (MUKHABARAT) FILES

(NOTE: Hence likely in part Turki al-Faisal’s statement that he would be willing to be martyr for God and Palestine. Turki, likely in coordination with “the family” and Saudi intelligence, was trying to absorb the anger of the Saudi public at the Israeli massacres in Gaza. Especially that it’s not a secret ( to the elite) that Saudi Arabia is allied to Israel, via its intelligence service and Bandar bin Sultan. A cynic would say that Turki’s statement served a less benign purpose: to flush out those who are angered by Gaza (and, by extension, by the Saudi state’s alliance with the Israelis and its funding -- to an analytical certainty -- of the Israel lobby in Washington, D.C.) Once out, Nayef at Interior would open files on the opposition members and have them monitored. Faisal’s statement would've been an inexpensive way at countering the compelling strategy of Arab Islamic nationalism to go underground all the way in response to the treason of Arab regimes vis-a-vis Gaza.)

THE NEED FOR AN IDEOLOGY

Factor in the fact that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs give only pittance to poorer countries such as Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. What do you get? You get AICLP to develop an ideology that reaches into the depth of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries if only to force them to share their Arab wealth – not as cheap payments to proxies like Hariri and his ilk. But more as systematic payment of cargo to Lebanon itself and the poorer Arab countries. Use Palestine and the murderous Israeli war machine against the Muslims of Palestine. Add Yemen to the mix. Consider AICIP dispatching operatives to Yemen. Consider that Yemen borders on two Gulf countries which are intimate with Israel: Saudi Arabia and Oman. What do you get?

SILENCE

My father became silent. He understood all too well what I was talking about. I just crumbled his world, yet again. He’ll get his respite and come back at me later. And I’ll have to do the same thing over, with more twists that would eat away at his once-cogent law-and-order world.

It’s like when Dona Quixote would attack my toes; I’d put my free foot under her belly and flip her up in the air. She’d fly upward, then fall back on the bed, licking herself and assuring that no blood was gushing. Then she’d attack again, with more gusto, only to face the same fate, this time flying even higher flipping and falling like a ton of bricks on the bed, using all her acrobatic skills to soften the fall. Then she’d give up and go looking for what her imagination tells her was an antagonist lurking somewhere in one of the closets.

My father finds solace at the Lebanese church with fellow Lebanese right-wingers, all searching for what lurks in closets of Muslim terrorists and haters of Christians.