Without names and without peoples

Bouthaina Shaaban 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

The reason for the grief, sadness, pain, and frustration in today's world is that tyrants ignore all the values ​​and laws that nature and history have told, and all the lessons that history has repeated time and time again.  

Much of what characterizes today's world is the anxiety that afflicts most of the inhabitants of this planet: anxiety over the passing of the past without establishing a permanent connection with the present and the future; anxiety over a generation as if its roots had been uprooted without other roots sprouting for it; and anxiety over the decline of the supreme value of man and human dignity even in the eyes of its proponents, and those who are supposed to be its guardians, or those charged with watching over it by their societies and institutions, so that everyone has become a number, or a group, or category of people whose fate is mentioned in passing terms.

There is no clearer evidence of this than what is happening to our people in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands have been killed, including tens of thousands of children and infants to this day, who have died without the world knowing their names or the present recording anything about them or their history and dreams, as well as tens of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in horrid Israeli jails. The people who are subjected to the most horrific types of torture, abuse, insult to human dignity, and starvation. Their ordeal violates every letter of human dignity, and it appears that the entire world, not just the Zionist Western governments, or the Western media, which is run by Zionist money, has abandoned its responsibilities towards the life, rights, freedom, and dignity of these people.

Perhaps this explains the controversy caused by the release of Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, head of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, seven months after his arrest, because he is a living example of Zionist injustice, and its ugly crimes, and because he is a credible name, and a credible person who deserved people’s trust. He has principles and morals. It is dangerous for people around the world to know victims with names, faces, and credibility that speak about what is really going on in the Zionist detention centers, which far exceeded the Nazi prison camps in brutality; all of them are in the occupied Palestinian territories.

This is conceivably the hidden reason behind the occupation forces committing unprecedented crimes by demolishing any center related to the cultural, societal, or professional memory of Palestine because the goal is not only to annihilate the people, but to annihilate memory as well, including the authentic historical memory that carries the fragrance of the land and the components of identity inherited over centuries, as this disturbs the new occupiers who are passing through the land and not knowing its roots, nor do they smell the scent of its history, and know little of its flavor or texture.

To respond to this machine that crushes the essence of humanity, we have to defend human dignity and every person’s right to live a dignified life safe from war, destruction, humiliation, and abuse. We must record and honor every name that was sacrificed in support of truth. That is why we must form armies of storytellers to tell humanity the stories of these people who sacrificed themselves and their families to raise the banner of truth, and who struggled, steadfast and patient, in order to change the very equations of power, establishing a new definition for war.

They proved that no force, no matter how overwhelming, armed, and supplied with all kinds of weapons and money, can break the will of fighters who have nothing but their land and their faith in God, yet are prepared to sacrifice themselves so that injustice does not cross over their bodies and harm other innocent people. Victims and Resistance fighters must not remain without names and be referred to as groups and dozens. Rather, we should devote pages of historical records to them, for everything they did, for everything they dreamed of achieving, everything they sacrificed and resisted for, and all the ideals they embodied through their faith and actions.

Just as aggressors and dark forces intentionally turn human beings into objects and strip them of every human characteristic that invites empathy, Zionist Western governments who support these criminal acts exert another type of oppression and deprivation of dignity on their own people. They wage all kinds of wars, completely ignoring the interests of their people and the need of these people for policies and spending far removed from what their governments are doing, for reasons that have little to do with popular interest.

While the military-industrial complex in the United States focuses on creating and continuing wars in order to reap trillions in profits and to finance and develop arms industries, this comes at the expense of all other social sectors, such as education, health, and infrastructure.

In the United States, for example, the education, transportation, and health sectors suffer from a severe shortage of resources and have been demanding for years that a small percentage of taxes be allocated to these sectors instead of developing the arms industry. But the stakeholders work in a completely different orbit from the orbit of their people, and they continue to be interested in increasing their wealth, maintaining their positions, and putting their partners in decision-making positions; so much so that a real rift has already emerged between the rulers and the ruled.

This matter also appeared clearly in the elections in France and Britain, when it became clear that the decision-makers were not in contact with the people demonstrating in the streets, whose chants went completely unheard. Decisionmakers put forward their own agendas, discussed them, and implemented what they wanted.

This problem was seen very clearly in the movements that spread across American universities in support of the people of Palestine. Instead of listening to those who represent the elite of American society, they were suppressed in humiliating ways, university presidents were investigated, and professors, college deans, and department heads were dragged to the ground in a scene that constituted an insult not just for the persons concerned, but also for the so-called democratic system in the United States of America.

The lessons learned from victims without names and governments without people are that these methods, though they give false results to those in charge, are without a doubt unsustainable. Ignoring reality and the true will of people will eventually lead to disastrous results. Injustice, killing, and occupation cannot ensure the perpetuation of the oppressor, no matter how powerful he is.

Should the oppressor continue in this manner instead of taking a step back and thinking with some wisdom about what can be done, then this would be akin to it committing suicide, dragging its tools down with it. When time turns some of its pages, no one will be able to separate the results from the causes, and the time separating them will be so short that it will be barely visible. The same applies to governments that think they are working to enhance their power, while they are in fact accumulating mistake after mistake, which eventually will lead to the complete collapse of the entire system. At that point, the people will then work to build a new system with new rulers, ideals, laws, and institutions.  

The reason for the grief, sadness, pain, and frustration in today's world is that tyrants ignore all the values ​​and laws that nature and history have informed us, along with all the lessons that history has repeated time and time again. This may be the result of ignorance or inability because they are approaching the abyss and can no longer change course. Their train of action has gone too far, and it has no choice but to continue its path to the abyss that will consume them eventually.