I wish you Egypt!
I wish you empowerment to resist; to fight for social and economic justice; to win your real freedom and equal rights.
I wish you the will and skill to break out of your carefully concealed prison walls. See, in our part of the world, prison walls and thick inviolable doors are all too overt, obvious, over-bearing, choking; this is why we remain restive, rebellious, agitated, and always in preparation for our day of freedom, of light, when we gather a critical mass of people power enough to cross all the hitherto categorical red lines. We can then smash the thick, cold ugly, rusty chains that have incarcerated our minds and bodies for all our lives like the overpowering stench of a rotting corpse in our claustrophobic prison cell.
Your prison cells, however, are quite different. The walls are well hidden lest they evoke your will to resist. There is no door to your prison cell -- you may roam about "freely," never recognizing the much larger prison you are still confined to.
I wish you Egypt so you can decolonize your minds, for only then can you envision real liberty, real justice, real equality, and real dignity.
I wish you Egypt so you can tear apart the sheet with the multiple-choice question, "what do you want?", for all the answers you are given are dead wrong. Your only choice there seems to be between evil and a lesser one.
I wish you Egypt so you can, like the Tunisians, the Egyptians, the Libyans, the Bahrainis, the Yemenis, and certainly the Palestinians, shout "No! We do not want to select the least wrong answer. We want another choice altogether that is not on your damned list." Given the choice between slavery and death, we unequivocally opt for freedom and dignified life -- no slavery, and no death.
I wish you Egypt so you can collectively, democratically, and responsibly re-build your societies; to reset the rules so as to serve the people, not savage capital and its banking arm; to end racism and all sorts of discrimination; to look after and be in harmony with the environment; to cut wars and war crimes, not jobs, benefits and public services; to invest in education and healthcare, not in fossil fuel and weapons research; to overthrow the repressive, tyrannical rule of multinationals; and to get the hell out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and everywhere else where under the guise of "spreading democracy" your self-righteous crusades have spread social and cultural disintegration, abject poverty and utter hopelessness.
I wish you Egypt so you can fulfill your countries' legal and moral obligations to help rebuild the ravished, de-developed economies and societies of your former -- or current -- colonies, so that their young men can find their own homelands viable, livable and lovable again, instead of risking death -- or worse -- on the high seas to reach your mirage-washed shores, giving up loved ones and a place they once called home. You see, they're "here" because you were there... and we all know what you did there!
I wish you Egypt so you can rekindle the spirit of the South African anti-apartheid struggle by holding Israel accountable to international law and universal principles of human rights, by adopting boycott, divestment and sanctions, called for by an overwhelming majority in Palestinian civil society. There is no more effective, non-violent way to end Israel's occupation, racial discrimination and decades-old denial of the UN-sanctioned right of Palestinian refugees to return.
Our oppression and yours are deeply interrelated and intertwined -- it is never a zero-sum game! Our joint struggle for universal rights and freedoms is not merely a self gratifying slogan that we raise; rather, it is a fight for true emancipation and self determination, an idea whose time has vociferously arrived.
After Egypt, it is our time. It is time for Palestinian freedom and justice. It is time for all the people of this world, particularly the most exploited and downtrodden, to reassert our common humanity and reclaim control over our common destiny.
I wish you Egypt!
Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian human rights activist, former resident of Egypt, and author of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS): The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Haymarket Books, 2011)
amen
supporting a boycott on israeli academia while being part of it is really the definition of hypocrisy.
“end Israel’s occupation, racial discrimination and decades-old denial of the UN-sanctioned right of Palestinian refugees to return”
with you on the first two, but the third is asking israel to commit suicide, all the bds in the world won’t get you there, only military defeat/ussr style self combustion.
the dictator’s gone, the generals remain.
Suicide? In terms of what the original UN authorization of Israel demanded of Israel to which Israel promised it would comply ASAP, Israel itself turned out to be an abortion. What does any judge do with the party that breached the contract based on mutal promises?
Wonderful, and vague as well.
Who can reject the liberation of spirit that Omar Barghouti invokes?
But, what is proposed? What choice not on the menu, does he hear even?
Those of us that care about Israel, and about Palestinians and Egyptians, want to consider our menu as well, to find the intersection, peace.
Conditional BDS until change in Israeli policies regarding borders, civil rights, application of law to dispossessed, is not hard to accept. Unconditional or vague BDS is more difficult (especially given the long history of very traumatic and intimate gruesome terror,and described in the west using very similar language as the current non-violent movements.)
“when we gather a critical mass of people power enough to cross all the hitherto categorical red lines” does invoke fear and threat.
I worry whether BDS is an effort for democracy or for a pendulum swing. Others do as well. Its really not clear what is meant.
Potshots from Richard.
Arguments, concerns are not potshots, James.
Address the concerns.
Does the word “potshots” have a familiar ring, Richard? It should, because you’ve used it repeatedly to dismiss the “arguments, concerns” of others.
Here, it is justified. You are repeating for the two hundreth time the same tedious non-arguments against BDS. Shmuel, and others, have tried to straighten you out — but you just skulk away, to pop up again a few days later with the same tedious misrepresentations.
The concerns and the rational perceptions remain, however you dismiss them.
Yeah, Richard Witty, the concerns and rational perceptions do remain, just like AIPAC and the survivors of the USS Liberty. Free Willie! Er, I mean Jonah Pollard!
“Conditional BDS until change in Israeli policies regarding borders, civil rights, application of law to dispossessed, is not hard to accept. Unconditional or vague BDS is more difficult (especially given the long history of very traumatic and intimate gruesome terror,and described in the west using very similar language as the current non-violent movements.)”
I’m not terribly optimistic about BDS. How about instead we just cut the aid spigot to Israel? Treat them like any other country with a bad human rights record until they shape up. That doesn’t require sanctions.
Of course that won’t happen. It won’t happen because for all the worry you express here, the real problem between the US and Israel is that our government enables their bad behavior, and the Lobby here likes it that way.
Beautiful, and so true. “Given the choice between slavery and death, we unequivocally opt for freedom and dignified life — no slavery, and no death.”
In the USA, the “multiple-choice questions” offered by politicians, by “peace groups”, by primary elections, and all too limiting. The limits are the prison walls Barghouti speaks of. I have tried to analyze a part of what is wrong with USA’s democratic process, but this is so much better!
Yeah, I get your point Pabelmont–he could be describing the USA too.
Omar Barghouti speaks for nobody and has zero political power in the Palestinian streets. Maybe I am wrong. What is the party he is a member of called and how many members does it have?
Or as Stalin laughed, “How many tanks does God have?”
Yes, compare political support to armed forces. Was I asking how many suicide bombers Barghouti commands? No, I was simply asking how big is his political support?
It gets bigger every day in case you haven’t noticed. Every dog (eventually) has his day.
“How many divisions does the Pope have.”
As “tank divisions”, not “divisions in the Church”. Altering sayings of Stalin may amount to heresy, so please be careful.
Yeah, you’re right piotr–both what I said and what you said came to my mind.