When the revolutionaries impede their revolution

The Arab Spring revolutions, at the heart of which is the Syrian revolution, the most draining and with the most suffering, are only let down by those who compare their fateful tragedy with the Palestinian tragedy, as if we are comparing blood with blood, wound with wound. However, what lets down these revolutions the most is their involvement in the battle against the Zionist entity, which is the mother of all battles and the cause of all causes, by moral and existential standards.

The Arab Spring was, in essence, a revival project against the expansion of the Zionist project, which had been feeding on the tyranny nested in the Arab ruling regimes that killed the freedoms of the peoples and stifled attempts to transition to a democratic state, claiming that they were confronting the lurking enemies. Accordingly, Palestine was present in the dreams (and chants) of the millions of Arab masses who revolted in 2011. It can even be said, without exaggeration, that the Palestinian cause was an incentive for large groups of Arab people to rise up against their rulers.

As I said, anyone observing the course of the Arab revolutions in their early days is aware that the Palestinian flags were present (in 2011) in all the squares of the revolutions, from Tunis to Cairo, passing through Sanaa and Damascus, in an open liberation carnival extending across the length and breadth of the map of Arab dreams.

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In the Egyptian case, specifically, the first thing the revolution sought after getting rid of Hosni Mubarak was to get rid of the shameful Camp David legacy represented by the presence of the Zionist enemy’s embassy with its flag raised on it, burning the eyes of everyone who passed by. So, the masses surrounded the embassy, ​​until the enemy’s ambassador fled in panic, returning to the Occupying State.

This was precisely the difference made by the Arab Spring revolutions, and the first fruit of the attempt to liberate the Arab citizen from the occupation of the state of tyranny and oppression. In light of that, we can understand the secret behind the Israeli determination to support and embrace the counter-projects against the Arab revolutions. They do not want a generation that remembers the names of its ancestors who died defending the land, or who remembers the names of cities and the dates that the massacres and slaughters were committed.

This is the Arab Spring as I understand it, and as I experienced it: Palestinian in its features, dreams and pain, or a revolution against the occupation and its friend tyranny. This is unlike the counter-revolution projects, which were Zionist revenge for the attempt to rebel against the hateful reality that solidifies the Occupation of Palestine, an attempt that was slaughtered early, allowing Tel Aviv to go back to dominating the maps of the entire Middle East, and receiving gifts from the killers of the Arab peoples’ spring. This was until Al-Aqsa Flood came, reviving both dreams: liberation from the Occupation, and revolution against tyranny. In light of this, the masses sided with every bullet fired at the Occupation in support of the Palestinian Resistance, and rose above all the old bitterness against those who were once supporters of tyranny but, at the same time, resisting the Occupation, realising that the current duty is to stand with the Palestinian people, siding with everyone who supports them with a stone, a missile or a word, and hostility towards their enemies. Therefore, everything that pleases Gaza pleases us, and everyone who the Gazan Resistance sees as a brother or an ally, is also ours or, at the very least, is not an opponent or enemy to us. We all suffer for their pain and see every one of its men who dies in the battle of Al-Aqsa as a martyr, without any of this being considered treachery or a betrayal of the murdered revolutions. These revolutions are being killed, once again, and their corpses are being mutilated now, at the hands of those who dance with joy at the Zionist strikes on the Resistance in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, whose citizens are being killed before their Resistance fighters.

It would be shameful for these revolutions that some of those who are considered to be part of them are rejoicing at what pleases Israel, and that they would dance wearing the flag of their country’s revolution while raising the Israeli flag, in an image that the most bitter enemies of revolutions would never have dreamt of or wished for. This is the real betrayal of the revolutions and their martyrs.

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This article appeared in Arabic in Al Araby on 23 September, 2024.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.