By
Zahir Ebrahim | Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org
February
04, 2014
À
propos of the excellent advice from the
stellar Palestinian journalist, Ramzy Baroud, to young Palestinian
activists appearing in the column titled: Ten
Principles to Guide the Young Activist,
I would like to observe that Mr. Ramzy Baroud only forgot to mention
that without the young activist also intimately learning the Art of
War, Machiavelli, and the diabolical basis for the evolving tunes of
the Mighty Wurlitzer, and wage a real struggle against the
prime-movers rather than continually focussing on the foot-soldiers
and trigger-pullers, that battle of Activism for justice will remain
still-born!
It
is more than just lamentable that most Palestinians, activist or not,
in this day and age of iphones and ipads, do not even know to whom
the Balfour Declaration is addressed. The primary document that
instrumented their subjugation and almost a century long oppression,
they strangely remain unaware of, while being expert in tweeting text
messages and pouring their heart out in volumes on facebook. While
many have surely heard of the document, almost none of the outspoken
lot in Diaspora has evidently actually read
it – if one is permitted to conclude their ignorance by their
omissions that is.
Who,
or what forces have deprived the latter day Palestinians
of this knowledge of their own history?
How
can the young activist wage an effective struggle against the
long-running, systematic, and piece-meal usurpation of his homeland
when diligent intellectualism has been replaced by plentiful talk by
the ignorant activist to the equally ignorant Western audiences; by
weekend street protest more in catharsis than in effectiveness before
returning happily to the pursuit of the 'American Dream' the
remaining days of the week; and by ineffective emotional sloganeering
and book publishing rather than effective intellectual combat against
a most diabolical adversary? Especially for the Palestinians holding
on to their keys in their forced Diaspora
where no one is shooting them and their brothers and sisters in the
eyes?
The
safety enjoyed by the Palestinian activist in the West is all but
lost to his and her unwitting ignorance of, or witting silence on,
the most diabolical methods employed, and still continue to be
employed, in the theft and ongoing military occupation of Palestine.
Whatever the Palestinian activist can say today has been said many
times even by the oppressors themselves. What they don't say is what
no one else is saying either.
This
is what makes the Palestinian struggle continually futile --- the
excellent “Buddhist” advice to keep the self and the ego
in check by Mr. Ramzy Baroud notwithstanding. That general advice is
useful for us all. But not particularly useful for waging an
effective struggle to reclaim Palestine for the rightful owners.
The
Palestinian activist neither really knows the enemy, nor evidently
understands his own self, his own myopia, his own
limitations as a victim whereby he continually tends to play the
victim just like his nemesis, the eternal victims. He
continually reaches for the straw handed him by the Western freedoms
to purchase his silence on the most crucial prime-movers in exchange
for securely pursuing his 'American Dream'; he looks to his own
oppressors' civilization to speak for the Palestinian cause; happily
accepts awards from them for his outspoken narratives of the theft of
his own homeland; and then pats himself on the back for his great
effort while still crying himself to sleep at night. As per Sun Tzu
in The Art of War:
‘If
you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of
a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every
victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the
enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.’ --- Sun
Tzu, The Art of War, circa 500 BC.
To
remedy that lamentable fact of inefficacy, I include below the text
and image of the Balfour Declaration. Item zero, or at least item
eleven, on Mr. Ramzy Baroud's
list ought to have been the advice to young activist to study it most
carefully --- for it contains the elusive key which both unlocks and
unravels the mystery behind their travails; the first step in ending
it:
Caption
The Balfour Declaration main text: Dear Lord Rothschild, ‘His
Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use
their best endeavor to facilitate the achievement of this object. it
being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may
prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed
by Jews in any other country.’ (signed) Arthur Balfour, Foreign
Office, November 2nd, 1917.
A
careful examination of this super Machiavellian text reveals that the
Balfour Declaration permitted the Jews, solely by the fiat of
imperial power, to live in any country in the world while
simultaneously making the Jewish state in Palestine their new home
without jeopardizing their “rights and political status”
in their home country of birth or citizenship. Notice that the
wording of the Balfour Declaration does not even mention the
indigenous peoples of Palestine by name, only referring to them as
“non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. It further does
not mention their general “rights and political status”
as a people as it does for the Jews, but only refers to some narrower
“civil and religious rights” as “non-Jewish
communities”. While on first glance these might appear
equivalent to the layman, on careful examination with the eyes of a
shrewd lawyer, the local “non-Jewish communities” are not
accorded the same general unspecified “rights and political
status”, as are the transplanted Jewish people in the land of
another granted to the Jews.
While
bearing only a few short imperial proclamations, the Balfour
Declaration is the most treacherously worded document of its kind in
the history of colonization. Observe the magic of its linguistics,
wherein, the Palestinian peoples are not referred to as a “people”,
but only as “non-Jewish communities”. Whereas, the same
document refers to the Jews as “the Jewish people”. The
simple, largely agrarian, indigenous Palestinian population,
uninformed of the vagaries of deceit and the Machiavellian use of
legalisms and linguistics, from day one were deprived of political
status by the very wording of the Balfour Declaration.
The
Palestinian activist also better come to learn to pronounce that
name, Lord Rothschild, and what magical powers it possess such that
an entire land grant by the British Empire, land which was not theirs
to grant, is gratuitously issued specifically in that name! What
forces must have prevailed upon the British empire which had
previously no love lost for the Jews, to suddenly issue such an
unjust proclamation?
Both,
the young Palestinian activist as well as the seasoned Palestinian
journalist who have experienced the fourteen feet tall separation
walls in their homeland, and have survived the daily hell of the
Israeli gun-turrets and checkpoints targeting
their family and loved ones, are continually fooled into believing
that the “Iron Wall” mentioned in the diabolical
statement of Vladimir Jabotinsky's 1923
missive, The Iron Wall, represents that physical separation wall, or
the Jewish guns, or the checkpoints, or the Zionist lobby in
Washington:
'This
colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the
protection of a force independent of the local population – an
iron wall which the native population cannot break through.' ---
Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923
Unless
the Palestinian activist can understand that diabolical construct of
the “Iron Wall”, and what power makes it independent of
the “local population”, no “Buddhist” style
advice is likely to make even a tiny chink in the inhuman armor
which protects the theft of their land even today.
It
is a power which lends the greatest graft in modern times, a pious
moral cloak of respectability before which all Western powers,
without exception, bow as they might bow before a deity:
'Two
brief remarks: In the first place, if anyone objects that this point
of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true; either Zionism is moral
and just or it is immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we
should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have
settled that question, and in the affirmative. We hold that Zionism
is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be
done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with
it or not. There is no other morality.' --- Vladimir Jabotinsky, The
Iron Wall, 1923
What
is the power behind that definition of Zionist “morality”?
All
questions raised by this Letter to Editor are addressed, of course
only to my admittedly still constrained
understanding of the matter due to my limited abilities, in my book:
Undoing
the Theft of Palestine.
It only opens a new chapter in the book of struggle, an
uncompromising chapter; it is not the final chapter. That, I hope,
will be written by the Palestinians themselves, someday. One day!
Download
PDF:
http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/undoing-the-theft-of-palestine-by-zahirebrahim-2013-homeprint.pdf.
Please
print and give a copy to a Zionist friend or enemy, as well as to a
Palestinian friend, to let them both know that Palestinians are not
alone in their struggle. It is a common struggle of all mankind
against the primacy of common predators. And we know who these
primates are!
That
is the principal message which the young activist must take to heart
and mind, along with the wonderful pearls of general personal wisdom
offered by Mr. Ramzy Baroud. One can only
admire him – the son of a freedom fighter. As a Muslim, I can
only say: God Bless, regardless of his own personal beliefs and
creed.
Thank
you.
Zahir
Ebrahim
California,
United States,
Source
URL:
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2014/02/ramzy-barouds-ten-principles-to-guide.html
Letter to
Editor: Response to Ramzy Baroud's Ten Principles to Guide the Young
Activist