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Every year, a shady organization calling itself the “Tunisian Community Center” produces the same farce and assumes the role of an honorable and legitimate institution that bestows honor upon a member of the Tunisian community in North America.
The reality is that this organization is devoid of legitimacy and lacks the minimum credibility to speak in the name of Tunisians in North America let alone bestow honors and sully the name of Ibn Khaldun or Abul Kacem Echebbi in the process. Its decisions are made in a dark room, maybe late at night in a bar around the corner.
I have come to realize this sad reality after giving the organization the full benefit of the doubt and helping it materially and by spending valuable time “putting the organization on the map” as the organization’s eternal director puts it. For over four year, I provided web hosting and support free of charge to this organization. One of these years, when the junta did not find a better candidate to exploit, I got “rewarded” and was asked to join the “Ibn Khaldun Hall of Shame” as the eternal director likes to call the previous “honorees.”
I invited my daughter and paid our way to New York to accept the “award” to learn in the process that the junta speaks in different tongues depending on the listener. To some listeners, the organization is not a “shu3ba,” the Tunisian flag has no place in the event and the Ambassador (whom they invited) has no right “dictating terms.” To others, the organization is the local cell of the ruling party in Tunisia.
I am now on the organization’s black list because I simply advised the junta, as an “honoree,” to seek more transparency after about 10 years of one-man rule. I even offered to setup online systems for the organization to facilitate interactions and consultation. The junta showed interest in person but after a few weeks of hard work putting the system in place, I was the one to be shocked when I discovered that they would rather have a dysfunctional website than a more transparent organization. The junta has decided to dump its “honoree” just like they dumped the others they have “honored” before.
Personally, I do not regret whatever I did for the organization because I did so with the good intentions of contributing to the betterment of the Tunisian community. However, after this experience, which I have decided to share openly, my hope is that others realize the nature of this organization and either reform it or move on. My other hope is that other respected members of the Tunisian community do not fall in the same trap and get their reputation sullied by accepting this “award.”
President Obama is set to deliver a speech in Egypt on June 4, 2009, to address US-Muslim World relations. Many pundits anticipate this speech to be a defining moment for Obama’s presidency on this issue and a clear break with the bully and confrontational policies of the previous administration. It may very well be a cosmetic shift but if there were to be any substance to such a shift, it would not have been anticipated by most Muslims. History of US-Muslim world, indeed of US-world relations, has been consistent in paying lip-service to supporting democracy and human rights while supporting puppet and dictatorial regimes. It would be foolish to expect anything different under Obama. It would be even more foolish to lobby the US administration to interfere in the affairs of the Muslim world in the name of democracy or human rights because history also teaches us that such interference has been selective and usually executed for ulterior, less noble motives. Therefore, while Obama is doing a great job repairing the damage to the US image in the Muslim world, the best to hope for is for the US to end its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, support education, and adopt a policy of principled non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations, except maybe in the case of humanitarian crises. Muslim nations would appreciate such a shift more than any direct interference in their affairs.
The world has been brain-washed for many decades to believe that the “tiny State of Israel” is fighting for its survival in a “sea of terrorists and enemies.” The world has been led to believe that Israel is the “only democracy” in a “jungle of dictatorships” and that whatever Israel does is civilized self-defense while any self-defense action from the other side is terrorism. Lately, the final weeks of a completely discredited US administration offered an irresistible opportunity for Israel to indulge in a killing spree with perceived impunity. The Israelis never anticipated that this indulgence would expose the true nature of their apartheid and oppressive state. They tried hard to block the world from seeing the carnage inflicted purposefully on the civilian population in Gaza. However, the world finally had chance to see some real terrorist action when rural areas were carpet bombed with illegal weapons, UN shelters were turned into blood pools, complete villages were erased and olive trees were uprooted. The war on Gaza showed the world a state whose leaders compete for votes by showing more inhumanity and ruthlessness. No gains can be gleaned for the State of Israel from this killing spree except perhaps that they have succeeded in inflicting unforgettable pain and misery on a defenseless population which can only increase the likelihood of a continuing conflict. On-going conflict and breeding extremists are clear goals of Israel’s war on Gaza and these goals have apparently been achieved. Our hope is that the other side does not use Israel’s terrorism as an excuse to engage in terrorism. The cycle of terror must be broken and there is no better window to break this cycle than when the side at receiving end of terror chooses not to respond in kind. It is only then that the identity of the real terrorists becomes clear and the Israeli propaganda machine runs out of fuel.
It is a routine that we have to come to know by heart. It is a magical routine that turns the loss of many thousands of lives and utter destruction into crisp and undeniable “victories.” Arabs in the Middle East have known many such victories; the most extravagant of which are the first Gulf War, the war on Lebanon in 2006 and pretty soon the victory in the making in Gaza. The magic in all of these routines is that all parties end up satisfied, except the poor masses, that is. The aggressor is satisfied a country is pushed back many decades or even back to the stone age without having to face any accountability for the crime; the victim, or shall we say the partner in crime, is satisfied with the “historic victory.”
The Israeli side has perfected the game. They play the region like an accordion. They commit atrocities to make sure the fire keeps burning and the wounds keep getting deeper while inciting the masses through their hired satellite media outlets to keep a healthy supply of extremists. Extremists are an Israeli necessity because they ensure Israel can always play victim. And the cycle continues while more and more Arab lands come under Israeli control.
There is no hope that this cycle can be broken if the people of the region do not call Israel’s bluff and remove any excuse Israel may find to justify its perpetual aggression. No one knows what would happen then. Will Israel start recruiting Palestinians to throw those “rockets” or would they start throwing them at their own people to justify continued aggression? We do not know if this will happen but it is likely there will be less bloodshed and destruction. It is worth a try anyway.
Cooler heads need to prevail. Evil does not need an excuse but if the excuse is removed, perhaps there will be the critical mass needed to defeat evil.
For the last year, and especially during the final months of the US presidential elections when the McCain campaign started to get desperate, Obama was being attacked by "accusing" him of being Arab or Muslim (which is equivalent to saying terrorist these days). One can understand such attacks when they come from racists and ignorant people; however, these attacks were coming from McCain, his partner Sarah Palin, higher ups in the campaign and campaign surrogates. When an elderly women stood up during a McCain townhall meeting and said she did not trust Obama because he was Arab, McCain took the microphone back and said "No maam, he is not, he is not." He stopped there as if being an Arab were a crime in itself. What is even more hurtful to Muslim and Arab Americans, is that no one (from the Obama campaign, the mainstream media and others) stood to say something about the injustice of equating being an Arab or a Muslim to being a crime in itself… until finally one person, a person who has done more than his fair share in causing the Iraqi holocaust, finally spoke up. He was the least expected to say it but he did. That person was Colin Powell. The conservative nutcases jumped on his endorsement of Obama as being racially-motivated. They forgot that it could be the guilt he must be feeling after giving false testimony on Iraq’s virtual WMDs. . See the video here:
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A space for freely expressing opinions and commentaries on current
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experiences and issues, etc... In brief, this space is open to
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