Dr Bouthaina Shaaban, Political and Media Advisor to Syrian President, Bashar Al Assad.
Throughout the decades, the Arab World watched as a foreign entity emerged and grew within its borders. This entity occupied land, killed both people, and connived vicious sectarian conspiracies against all Arab countries.
And after two wars with this entity, and after repeated aggressions against Lebanon, especially its latest war on that country in 2006, and the war on Gaza in 2008, most Arab media are busy describing the crimes of aggression against our land and our people in Palestine and other Arab countries, yet we are still missing for think tanks that would follow this entity, study the mechanisms by which it operates, and that would try to understand the way in which this entity presents itself and the way it presents the Arabs to the world.
Because it is not that easy for a few million people to usurp a land and evict an entire people, and go on to desecrate holy places and kill innocent people for decades, while at the same time being able to establish friendly relations and economic ties with other countries, while relations amongst Arab countries, and between them and the world, continue to deteriorate.
There is no doubt that some would say the Jewish lobby in the United States controls American policy, and perhaps world politics. There is some truth in this claim, but it is not the whole story. There are many issue in which this entity opposed the United States, the latest was the Iran nuclear deal; the entity was the only country in the world to face up to the United States in opposition to the deal.
More importantly, we need to observe what this entity is doing concerning Arab issues, and the mechanisms it adopts to promote its views around the world, while the Arabs stand idle.
More importantly, we need to look at the ways in which this entity prepares new generations, and the concepts it plants in their minds. While on the other side, we find many Arabs not ashamed of the treacherous way in which they build relations with this entity. The latest episode in this regard is the visit by Issam Zeitoun, and Seirawan Kajo, both Syrians, to Jerusalem and their performing of rituals at the “wailing wall.”
While the latest action taken by this entity was forcing the ESCWA, a UN organization, not to publish a report it financed and supervised, and which is considered one of the organization’s most important works. The reasons behind this is that the report includes a chapter on Palestine that highlights the illegality of settlements and the injustices perpetrated by the occupation forces, as well as the discriminatory acts and constants breaches of international law that they commit.
Commenting on the ESCWA report, one of the think tankers said that the Zionist entity goes as far as observing if a stamp that harms its image is printed anywhere in the world. This entity would turn every stone when it comes to its existence and identity in all corners of the earth.
Now, isn’t it strange that a handful of those people could observe and confront hundreds of millions of Arabs on the regional and international scenes? The simplest thing that interested Arabs could do is to have think tanks to study the mechanisms and procedures that this entity takes to attack Arab rights, whether in the realms of defense, media, international relations, and social media. Then to develop way to confront those mechanisms based on Arab rights as both a means and an end.
The latest example is the entity creating military formations to simulate those of Hezbollah, and these units will train for certain scenarios, expected to occur during the next confrontation. When the enemy found gaps in his preparedness, it went on to study it, in order to overcome it.
Isn’t it our duty to study the ways in which this entity seeks to distort our identity and our image in the world, in order to preserve our Arab identity and to develop the best way to prevent its aggression, to defend our rights, and to guarantee a good future for our nation and our people?
We have to stop mere verbal condemnation and resort to studying and analyzing the ways of our enemies in order to inoculate the coming generations and give them the tools with which they could defend their identity and their rights by using the correct mechanism and methodologies.
The first step in this direction is to build specialized think tanks, and to work on publishing the ESCWA report in many languages. We have to spread our message and multiply our efforts to reach out to all nations in all languages.
The Israelis have worked tirelessly to delegitimize this report; therefore, the appropriate answer is to make this report an international term of reference by publishing it and spreading it around the world by all means available.
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