Although the denigration and misrepresentation of pan-Arab nationalism existed long before recent attempts to portray Saddam Hussein’s regime as exceptionally heinous, threatening and a major source of terrorism, the demonisation of this profoundly important and evolving political force has been given further impetus by the imperative to justify current US Middle Eastern policy. The fallacies that inform reductionist and hostile approaches to pan-Arabism, including the assumption that it is inherently racist and totalitarian, are here dissected and contextualised, and the evolution of pan-Arab nationalist thought is illuminated in the process.
and Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit , Occidentalism: the West in the eyes of its enemies ( New York , 2004). For examples of respectful and favourable responses, see Philip Bobbitt’s review of Buruma and Margalit in the New York Times Book Review (4 April 2004) and George Scialabba’s review of Berman in the Nation (28 April 2003). Bobbitt speaks of Occidentalism as a ‘fine book’, even if its central argument needs ‘further development’. Given the ignorance displayed in both of these works, Scialabba’s comment that ‘even a non-historian will find a lot to quibble with’ is also remarkably generous.
2.
Buruma and Margalit, op. cit., pp. 145-6.
3.
Ian Buruma , ‘Revolution from above’, New York Review of Books (Vol. 50, no. 7, May 2003).
4.
Lawrence Freedman , ‘A legacy of failure in the Arab world’ , Financial Times (26 January 2004).
5.
For a discussion of Acton and Kohn, see Youssef M. Choueiri , Arab Nationalism: a history ( Oxford , 2000), pp. 1-14.
6.
This summary of Kedourie is based on Choueiri, ibid., pp. 6-8.
7.
Elie Kedourie , ‘Pan-Arabism and British policy’, in his Chatham House Version and other Middle Eastern Essays ( London , 1970), p. 218.
8.
and Martin Kramer , Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival ( New Brunswick, NJ , 1996).
9.
Ellen Meiksens Wood , Democracy against Capitalism: reviewing historical materialism ( Cambridge , 1995).
10.
See Barnard Yack , ‘The myth of the civic nation’ , Critical Review (Vol. 10, no. 2, 1996), p. 208 .
11.
Edward S. Herman , ‘The cruise missile left, part three’ , Z Magazine (July/August 2003), p. 59 .
12.
See Hisham Sharabi , Arab Intellectuals and the West: the formative years, 1875-1914 ( Baltimore, MD , 1970), pp. 87-128.
13.
Ibid., p. 96.
14.
See Tarek Y. Ismael , The Arab Left ( Syracuse, NY , 1976), pp. 3-6.
15.
Cited in Choueiri, op. cit., p. 130.
16.
Cited in Omayma Abdel-Latif , ‘Is Baathism dead?’ , Al Ahram Weekly (22 April 2004).
17.
Choueiri, op. cit., p. 215.
18.
Ibid., p. 217.
19.
See William L. Cleveland , The Making of an Arab Nationalist: Ottomanism and Arabism in the life and thought of Sati al-Husri ( Princeton, NJ , 1971), pp. 103-104.
20.
Ibid., pp. 105-6.
21.
Choueiri, op. cit., p. 116.
22.
Cited in ibid., p. 135.
23.
cited in Marvin E. Gettleman and Stuart Schaar , The Middle East and Islamic World Reader ( New York , 2003), pp. 133-135.
24.
Cited in Hanna Batatu , The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq ( Princeton, NJ , 1978), p. 724.
25.
Hanna Batatu , Syria’s Peasantry: the descendants of its lesser rural notables, and their politics ( Princeton, NJ , 1999), p. 133. The Baathist execution of members of the Communist Party during the 1963 anti-Qassim coup in Iraq cannot be laid at Aflaq’s door. Comrade Hamdi (Hamdi Abd al-Maji, a member of the pan-Arab and Baath Command), Aflaq told the Extraordinary Session of the Syrian Baath in 1964, ‘is aware that I constantly warned against a policy of bloodshed and torture whomsoever might be its victims, for our differences with the Communists cannot possibly justify such means. The revolution had in its first months a legitimate right to defend itself against those who opposed it by force of arms but afterwards when no month or weeks passed without our hearing or reading of the execution of tens of men, I told Comrade Hamdi that this course brought great harm.’ See Batatu, The Old Social Classes, op. cit., pp. 990-1.
26.
Batatu, Syria’s Peasantry, op. cit., p. 133.
27.
See Norma Salem-Babikian , ‘Michel Aflaq: a biographic outline’ , Arab Studies Quarterly (Vol. 2, no. 2, spring 1980).
28.
See Ralph M. Coury , The Making of an Egyptian Arab Nationalist: the early years of Azzam Pasha, 1893-1936 ( Reading , 1998).
29.
Batatu, Syria’s Peasantry, op. cit., p. 328.
30.
Leila Ahmad , Women and Gender in Islam: historical roots of a modern debate ( New Haven, CT , 1992), pp. 210-211.
31.
See Aziz al-Azmeh , ‘Nationalism and the Arabs’ , Arab Studies Quarterly (Vol. 17, nos 1-2, 1995), passim.
32.
See Paul Noble , ‘The Arab system: pressures, constraints, and opportunities’, in Bahgat Korany et al., The Foreign Policies of Arab States ( Boulder, CO , 1991).
33.
Cited in Arnaud de Borchgrave , ‘Commentary: World War IV’, (25 September 2002), at <http://www.upi.com/view>.
34.
New York Times (7 November 2003).
35.
Paul Berman , ‘Will the opposition lead?’ , New York Times (15 April 2004). Edward S. Herman provides a succinct explanation of Berman’s appeal: ‘Berman’s Terror and Liberalism has done extremely well in the ‘‘free’’ press, with numerous, most flattering, reviews and Berman invited to give his views in the New York Times and on national TV. He is the kind of ‘‘leftist’’ that the imperial establishment wants to encourage, who attacks the real Left for its failure to commit to the crusade against terror and totalitarianism - as defined by the imperial establishment - and ignores or gives support to the approved terror, which is called counter-terror, retaliation, and response. His work... lapses on close inspection on any topic that he addresses, but that is irrelevant where the ideology, premises, and message are congenial and lend support to on-going policy.’ A prime example is offered by Berman’s extensive treatment of the Islamist Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), whom Berman sees as an inspiration to bin Laden. As Hamid Algar, who has translated several of Qutb’s works, noted: ‘Nowhere in Qutb’s writings can one find a parallel to Al-Qaeda’s advocacy of mass slaughter. Conversely, Osama bin Laden’s statements show not a trace of Qutb’s distinctive philosophy. Berman’s article exempli-fies the tendency to conflate into a malevolent blur all Muslims regarded as troublesome.’ Algar’s remarks are from a letter that he wrote in response to an article based on Terror and Liberalism which Berman published in the New York Times Magazine (23 March 2003). See Herman, op. cit., p. 60.
36.
See ‘A strategy for Israel in the 1980s’, translated and edited by Israel Shahak in The Zionist Plan for the Middle East ( Belmont, MA , 1982), pp. 8-11. Yinon’s piece originally appeared in Hebrew in Kivunim (Directions) (No. 14, February 1982). The journal was published by the Department of Publicity of the World Zionist Organization in Jerusalem.
37.
For the history of American/Israeli efforts to crush and/or subvert Middle Eastern or other Third World states and movements of which they disapproved, either through a strategy of divide and rule or otherwise, see Binjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection: who Israel arms and why (New York, 1987). Such efforts remain unabated on the part of the American and Israeli governments and the American Zionist lobby and its allies on the Christian right. A law passed by the US Congress allowing the American government to place penalties on foreign governments that do not guarantee religious freedom is illustrative. For its implications, see Bashir Musa Nafi, ‘Nizam jaded li al-alaqat al-duwaliyya aw imbiriyaliyya bi wajh mubtakar?’ (A new order for international relations or imperialism with a new face?), al-Quds al-Arabi (26 May 1999); and Bruno Fouchereau, ‘Au nom de la liberte religieuse: les sects cheval de Troie des Etats-Unis en Europe’, Le Monde Diplomatique (Vol. 48, no. 566, 2001), pp. 1 and 26. For an example of how a bogus concern for religious freedom and equality manifests itself through the activities of the Zionist lobby in the American Congress, see Simona Shapiro, ‘Pro-Israel groups focus on Christians under PA rule’, Forward (25 July 2003). For an example of more direct, hands-on deconstruction, consider the current role of Israeli agents in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, Syria and Iran. See Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command: the road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York, 2004), pp. 351-60. Israeli commandos and agents are, of course, also working closely with the Americans in non-Kurdish Iraq. According to Hersh, the Israelis are particularly valued for their expertise in ‘targeted killings’, the ‘core lesson’ that they provide in their ‘tutorial’ in counter-insurgency.
38.
For information on ‘A clean break’ and its authors, see Mark Perelman , ‘Cheney taps Syria hawk [Wurmser] as advisor on Mideast’ , Forward (25 July 2003).
39.
For the US’s support for tribal sheikhs and tribal structures in the post-invasion period, see Patrice Claude , ‘Washington puts trust in Iraq’s tribal system’ , Guardian Weekly (17 September 2004).
40.
and Ori Nir , ‘Iraqi dissidents pledge peace with Israel: Perle boosts exiles as leaders of a post-Saddam regime’ , Forward (11 October 2002).
41.
See Naomi Klein , ‘Baghdad year zero: pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia’ , Harpers (Vol. 309, no. 1832, September 2004), pp. 43-53 .
42.
Kanan Makiya, the head of the constitutional committee of the Iraqi National Congress and another pre-invasion darling of the American/Israeli/Zionist champions of war, told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute in October 2002 that post-Saddam Iraq would be ‘non-ethnic’ and ‘federal’, which, it is clear, meant that it would be non-Arab. See Ori Nir, op. cit. The de-Arabisation of Iraq is, to be sure, part of a larger process. When Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Iran met in Istanbul in January 2003 to discuss the Iraqi crisis, the US made it clear that it did not want the Secretary-General of the Arab League to attend. ‘Americans... are... opposed to the Arab League since they want Arabs to stop thinking in the ‘‘Arab’’ mindset and to start thinking in the ‘‘region’’ mindset’, an Arab diplomat commented. See Dina Ezzat , ‘From Arabism to regionalism’ , Al-Ahram Weekly (23-9 January 2003).
43.
Samir Farid summarised American hopes in July 2004: ‘Under the Greater Middle East scheme, the US seems keen on creating moderate Islamic governments styled after the Turkish model.’ See Samir Farid , ‘Redefining Arabism’ , Al-Ahram Weekly (8-14 July 2004).
44.
For al-Yawar and the collaborationist regime of which he is a part, see Susan Watkins , ‘Vichy on the Tigris’ , New Left Review (No. 28, July/August 2004), pp. 5-17 .
45.
and Roula Khalaf , ‘Arab minnows evade slipstream of their mightier neighbours: US links have given smaller states confidence to assert themselves’ , Financial Times (5 April 2004).
Nicholas Lehmann , ‘The next world order: the Bush administration may have a brand new dream of power’ , New Yorker (1 April 2002), p. 11 .
48.
See, for example, International Herald Tribune (8 October 2002).
49.
Cited by Peter Waldman , ‘Containing jihad: a historian’s take on Islam steers US in terrorism fight’ , Wall Street Journal (4 February 2004).
50.
Ibid.
51.
Lewis became politically involved with Israel in the 1970s when Golda Meir invited him to discuss an article that he had written for the American Jewish Committee’s Commentary in which he argued that Palestinian Arabs didn’t have a historical claim to a state because Palestine hadn’t existed as a country prior to British rule in 1918. Lewis went on to spend months at a time at the Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University in the 1980s and became the confidant of a succession of Israeli prime ministers, including Ariel Sharon. Amnon Cohen of Hebrew University, who worked for the West Bank military government, organises an annual conference at the university in honour of his birthday. The American Under-Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz participated by video conference in 2002. ‘Bernard has taught how to understand the complex and important history of the Middle East’, said Wolfowitz, ‘to use it to guide us where we will go next to build a better world for generations to come.’ See Waldman, op. cit. Lewis’s Zionist credentials may have had special resonance for the New Yorker as it is currently constituted. In citing David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, as one of the fifty Jews who had exercised the most influence on American Jewish life in 2002, Forward wrote, ‘For a magazine published in the capital of American Jewish life, The New Yorker traditionally felt more like a lobster salad than a pastrami sandwich. But under David Remnick, its fifth editor since 1925, the magazine has taken on a distinctly Jewish voice for the first time. Its editorials urge Middle East peace but unabashedly insist on Israel’s need for security and the right to defend itself. In the feature well, former Forward staffer Jeffrey Goldberg’s reports have been shaping the national conversation on combating terrorism.’ See ‘The Forward fifty’ , Forward (5 November 2002).
52.
and Bernard Lewis , Semites and Anti-Semites: an inquiry into conflict and prejudice ( New York , 1986), pp. 147-148.
53.
Bernard Lewis , What Went Wrong?The clash between Islam and modernity in the Middle East ( New York , 2003), p. 158.
