Word: arabist
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PREDICTABLY, Mr. Ben-Gacem's failure to reason beyond the bounds of the Pan-Arabist discourse leads him to the tenuous conclusion that Arabs sympathetic to Saddam's destructive Pan-Arabism "never betrayed" the Kuwaitis; rather, they simply followed a "fake" version of the doctrine...
Whence this angry dismissal of a "fellow Arab" by a self-proclaimed Pan-Arabist if "Arabism is the most precious thing every Arab has," the sustaining Arab "spirit," the "blood" in the Arab soul, and so forth...
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the Pan-Arabist discourse is its susceptibility to the allure of immoral solutions to the grave problems of the Middle East. If the human and cultural dignity of an Arab is conditional upon her/his acceptance of cultural and/or political nationalism, all manner of atrocities become permissible against dissenters. Thus, Baghdad could justify its crimes against the Kuwaiti people by branding them and their Arab coalition allies as "traitors against the Arab Nation...
Perhaps this reasoning begins to explain the willingness of many Yemenis, North African Arabs and Palestinians to wink at Saddam Hussein's brutality; it was cloaked in the rhetoric of Pan-Arabist "justice" and was therefore--although immoral and un-Islamic--understandable and probably excusable...
What are Arabs to do with Saddam Hussein? What are they to think if they see the devil in the hero, the thug tricked up as a Pan-Arabist dreamer? In considering Saddam, many Arabs are sorting out complexities in themselves. They are formulating an attitude toward their collective past and future, toward the Arabs' place in the world. The exercise does not leave them entirely happy...