Resistance: A Case of Stunted Development
Joseph Hitti
Edgartown, Massachusetts
December 31, 2005

In its Saturday, December 31, 2005 issue, the Lebanese Daily Star reports on the holding of a National Conference in Beirut last Friday to “Support the Resistance” and “Endorse the option to resist and confront the American-Israeli schemes against Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East." According to the report, entitled “Arab culture ‘under attack from West in name of democracy'”, the conference which was held at, of all places, the UNESCO (a United Nations organization) building in Beirut, “emphasized the need to promote the culture of resistance and reinforce society's immunity to meet the current challenges facing Lebanon.”
The Conference president, Yehya Ghaddar, is quoted as telling the attendees that "…Lebanon is put again on the agenda of invaders who want to change our culture, politics and rob our resources in the name of democratization following devious road maps."
These are all tired, stale and obsolete arguments that continue to be used by those who want to protect the culture of death and destruction they themselves imported and implemented in Lebanon during 30 years of mayhem and barbarity. All under the banner of this “Arab culture and politics” that, they say, must be protected against the “invaders”. Such slogans as “Supporting the Resistance” and “Promoting the culture of Resistance” are intended solely by to maintain these individuals’ own grip on power and on the frozen mindsets of their people, whom they maintain immersed in a primordial soup of intellectual depravity and ignorance, with a good dose of backwards antiquated religious beliefs.
It is time for the Lebanese people and other peoples of the Middle East to listen more carefully to this language that has been slowly injected in their veins and their brains for several decades. Yes, I advocate that people should listen very carefully to this discourse and study every word of it, and not merely hear the big catchy headlines in it. Of course, the word “Resistance” is appealing. It conjures up romantic images of freedom fighters dressed a la mode, living a bohemian lifestyle under the cover of the bush, the jungle, the tropical forest, the desert or the Mediterranean maquis, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, and a gun over their shoulder, thwarting attacks by “foreign” enemies and occupiers. In other words, living it up very much like the Hollywood movies that these paper heroes grew up with and want to imitate in real life, but which they also condemn in their intellectually truncated development.
But in real life, real people get killed, countries get destroyed, innocent people get hurt, and their lives, livelihoods, political power and economic wellbeing become shattered. Yes, people should read carefully the words that these power-hungry hate-mongers say to them, and understand that their underlying aim is to keep them in a state of war, in a state of stunted development, in a state of disrupted lives, in an existential limbo simply to maintain the romanticism of “resistance”. In real life, the people themselves - who are being “protected” by the “Resistance” against the “invaders” – become deprived of normal development, of economic wellbeing, of schooling for their children, and most importantly, of access to genuine political power that they must first snatch out of the hands of the political establishment spewing this language at them. In other words, as long as they want you to support the resistance, you will always live precarious lives. We must abandon this contorted intellectual depravity in order to give people real power: The power to control their lives economically, to elect who they want politically, to be treated with justice and fairness by governments they can hold accountable.
The “venerable” institutions that organized this summit of Arab and Lebanese grey matter have names such as the “Democratic Dialogue Forum”, the “Cultural Committees Gathering in Lebanon” and the “Permanent Conference to Confront the Zionist Cultural Invasion”. In addition, and to the chagrin and surprise of this writer and many Lebanese Americans, the Daily Star report stated that representatives of the “Leader of the Free Patriotic Movement Michel Aoun” attended this pseudo-intellectual cesspool, along with other illustrious Lebanese leaders or their representatives such as “President Emile Lahoud, Speaker Nabih Berri, and the Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir.” Thankfully, Premier Fouad Siniora was not represented, as if this would tip the balance in favor of some hope. But let us not get too euphoric. Siniora is watching his government quickly decompose, thanks to the defection of, you guessed it, the “Resistance” members of his government.
One of the papers that were presented at the conference offered its view on “how the Zionist and the Americans organize their media campaigns with the aim of defeating the Arab masses culturally and psychologically through ‘establishing and financing nongovernmental organizations and political and cultural associations capable of penetrating society's immunity and will to resist.’ ” Stunning intellectual perspicacity! According to this mind-shattering analysis, the Arab masses are currently at the zenith of their culture and development, thanks to the efforts of dedicated, pioneering, accountable and otherwise fast-moving democratic governments. But all these achievements and the wellbeing of those scientifically-literate, technologically-advanced, educated societies stand threatened by the Zionists and the Americans. The entire Western world, and it would be safe to add the growing Asian economic giants like China, Japan and India to the mix, have realized that the might of the Arab World is of such magnitude that it must be defeated before it takes over the world. And therefore, how better to attack these societies than by “penetrating their immunity and will to resist.”
If there is one thing that the Arab masses need liberating from, it is this mindset and language and one’s definition of oneself through the prism of the victim. What are the Arab countries offering world civilization TODAY? What developments and inventions and discoveries are being made in the Arab World TODAY? How is the Arab World contributing to human civilization and human decency TODAY? Besides the oil beneath their soil, for which no merit can be claimed by the humans living on the ground above, there is nothing that the Arab peoples are offering their fellow humans in our time and in our world. And the reason is primarily because the Arab masses remain hostage to their religious, genetic and economic elites that parade themselves as the pseudo-intellectual vanguard defenders of their masses against the outsiders, the Crusaders, the Zionists, the imperialists, the Americans, the colonialists, etc.
When will the Arab peoples understand their predicament under these totalitarian social and political systems? Luckily, there are true intellectuals from the Arab and Middle Eastern worlds, working with their fellow intellectuals and researchers from all over the world, to try and emancipate the human populations of the region from the hold that their governments and religious dictators have on them. The United Nations Arab Human Development Reports, which are published yearly, are a testament to this effort.
In the words of Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States, “There can be no doubt that self-reform stemming from open, scrupulous and balanced self-criticism is the right, if not the only alternative to plans that have apparently been drawn up outside the Arab world for restructuring the region and for reshaping its identity” (http://www.rbas.undp.org/ahdr.cfm). The only alternative to the West forcing change in the Middle East for the benefit of the peoples and to the detriment of the rulers, is self-criticism. Self-criticism implies putting an end to the victim-syndrome, assuming one’s own responsibility to effect change, and shunning the fatalistic assignment to God of the source of our happiness and misery in this world. Admitting one’s own mistakes and taking steps and measures to correct them. Stop blaming others for our problems.
But until this happens, until the pseudo-intellectual heroes of the conference in Beirut pack their bags and go home, until they shut the tap on their verbal diarrheas against the West, until the construct of “Resistance” is thrown aside and is replaced by a proactive search within the self for the modalities of improvement and moving into the modern world, then we, the ordinary Lebanese, Arabs, and Middle Easterners will continue to seek help from the West and others to help us bring a modicum of change in our lives. To discard the yoke of tribal and family oppression, social and intellectual backwardness, the destruction of the human spirit by antiquated religious beliefs, and the overwhelming feeling that the Arab World, in spite of its wealth, remains the most backwards collection of societies in the world today.
Dr. Joseph Hitti