Say Not Fatah
By Israel Shamir
Palestinians are the freest people on
Earth. They proved it again this June, when they broke open
the infamous
torture chambers of Dahlan and released the prisoners;
when they sent the CIA-trained thugs packing back to their
Jewish masters. I feel proud of their unique victory:
Americans can’t get rid of Guantanamo and their plentiful
other jails with millions of prisoners (more than in Uncle
Joe’s Gulag); Brits can’t dismantle their surveillance
cameras; Saudis can’t throw away their CIA-bound rulers. Not
many people succeeded in removing the machine of fear and
oppression, in smashing these Gestapo-clones of security
police mushrooming around the globe. In future Palestine,
the fall of the Gaza Preventive Security Prison will be
celebrated like the French celebrate the Fall of Bastille.
This is the people’s victory over
oppression. Moreover, this is victory of law against
lawlessness, for Palestine had and still has its legitimate
government, while the rogue security apparatus tried to
place itself above the law. A true people’s
victory, for it succeeded without vengeance and unnecessary
bloodshed. Israeli media got a lot of mileage out of the 60
security men who asked for Israeli protection, but actually
even out of this (tiny by any measure) amount more than half
asked to return to Gaza. They knew there would be no
revenge, no head-hunting, no Night of the Long Knives, no
Moscow trials for the fighters of Fatah: the people won,
there is no civil war, no major bloodshed; the security
thugs lost, and now they have a chance to try to become men
again.
Magnanimity, largesse, fraternal feelings
were the hallmarks of this people’s revolution. Trying to
saw discord as they always do, the mainstream media
presented this glorious revolution as a victory of Hamas
over Fatah. This is an exaggeration. The people of Gaza
fought against Dahlan Gangs, against lawless criminals who
tried to establish their rule of force and violence over the
Strip. Tolkien readers may think of the Battle of
Bywater, where free hobbits
smashed and expelled the thugs of Sharkey from the Shire.
These gangs were leftovers from a sinister previous rule;
they were placed in charge by the Israeli
Saruman, and their defeat was
just a question of time. But Dahlan is not Fatah; nor is
Mahmud
Abbas, crowned by the US and Israel as the king of
the Ramallah Bantustan. Real Fatah is
Marwan Barghouti still
caged in the Jewish Gulag, and other wonderful men and good
fighters who carried the name of Palestine from the battle
of Karame to the Intifada. They
are true Fatah, and their place is preserved for them in the
Hall of Glory of the Palestinian Revolution.
I know Fatah fighters; I’ve met them in
their villages in the hills of Palestine, taking a short
rest after many years of exile and jail.
Great people, who were as upset by Abu
Mazen’s
shameful submission to the Israeli-American diktat as
anybody. The Gaza people’s victory may mobilize them
into a proper house cleaning, into returning to their own
revolutionary traditions. Dahlan and
Rajoub, these security thugs and their political
allies Abu Mazen and
Saeb Erekat
stole, nay, they privatized the name of Fatah, just as KGB
bosses privatized communism and the
Judaeo-Mammonite elites privatized the free
enterprise of America’s founding fathers. Let no Fatah
fighter feel upset by Dahlan’s
defeat. Moreover, they can follow the lead and get rid of
the werewolves who abused the name of Fatah in the service
of Shin Bet.
Jonathan Steele correctly
reminded us that “arming insurgents against elected
governments has a long US pedigree, and it is no accident
that Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser
and apparent architect of the anti-Hamas subversion, was a
key player in Ronald Reagan's supply of weapons to the
Contras who fought Nicaragua's elected government in the
1980s.” But those Contras, ubiquitously present at every
revolution, the Chouans of the
Vendée, the
Contras of French revolution,
the Cossacks of Don, the Contras
of the Russian revolution, Savimbi’s
Unita, the Contras of the
Angolan revolution, did have some truth on their side, and
expressed some legitimate interests. That is why we approve
and support the merciful character of the Hamas revolution:
Hamas' readiness to work together with healthier elements of
Fatah for the Palestinian cause.
However, some lessons can and should be
learned: Fatah leadership succumbed to the Israeli-American
temptation because of its faulty ideology. Nationalism, this
weapon of mass disintegration, was brought eastwards by the
Western colonizers in order to divide and conquer. Until the
19th century, the East knew nothing of
nationalism, for it was then united by faith and governed
by their traditional rulers, the successors of Constantine
the Great and Suleiman the Magnificent. T.E. Lawrence
delivered the bacilli of nationalism to
Hejaz in his Intelligence Service-packed saddle bag,
and undermined this Eastern unity. He promised Arabs
independence from the “hateful Ottomans”, but nothing good
came out of their betrayal: British, American and later
Zionist colonizers shared the spoils, while the natives
became even more oppressed.
Nationalism is necessarily a
particularist, “do it alone”
sort of ideology. In Palestine, Egypt, Syria this was
compensated for by a universalist
socialism, but with the evaporation of this socialist
element, Fatah remained with its faulty nationalism,
doomed to failure. “They are nationalists like us”, say the
Zionists from Sharon to Avnery about Fatah. “They will be
happy with a flag, an anthem, a
Swiss bank account -- like us. They will be content with a
Bantustan or two”.
But Palestinians are not likely to betray
Palestine for the illusion of independence. All
Palestinians, that is, all dwellers of Palestine, native and
immigrant, need all of it, not just two percent of Gaza and
ten percent of a Ramallah enclave, but all 100%. We may have
all of it together, not by dividing, but by sharing. Islam
is a universal faith, like Christianity, and the its
religious foundations are better suited for our universal
state than yesterday’s nationalism, Arab or Zionist. A
similar process is taking place in Turkey, where
Kemalist nationalism has
become an American ally propped up by soldiers’ bayonets,
while the Islamic party is the choice of people.
People of the East believe in God; that
is why Ex Oriente Lux. They also know from their
experience that godless ones have nor scruples neither
compassion, while we need compassionate leaders. Disregard
the scarecrow of “Islamofascism” or “Islamic danger”. This
is myth, created by Podhoretz and his ilk, an invented
threat like Yellow Peril, Panslavism, Communism. We are not
afraid of followers of Islam, because we live with them all
our life, and it is good to balance love to one’s land by
love to God.
The nation-building process in Palestine
is far from over. A new paradigm should be found to unite
its tribes and groups into one society, dismantling the
Palestinian National Authority - and the Jewish state, as
correctly stated by Avrum Burg.
Separation and the drive for independence of this or any
other part of Palestine turned out to be a bankrupt
strategy. Palestine can’t be divided. Friends of Palestine
and friends of Israel must work together to unify, not to
separate.
