| In
Al Nakba’s 50th Anniversary, Adonis Denounces Arab Chauvinistic
Voices
By
Elie Chalala
Ali
Ahmad Said, pen name Adonis, is perhaps the most creative
living Arab literary critic, often discussed as a potential
candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1995, he
made headlines in the Arab world not because of a book he
wrote, although most of his books instantly become classics,
but because he attended a conference in Spain that included
Israeli intellectuals. Some zealot Arab intellectuals accused
Adonis of advocating al tatbi , the normalization of cultural
and economic relations with Israel . Consequently he was expelled
from the Union of Arab Writers. The campaign against Adonis
seems far from over, for his name was recently invoked in
the controversy surrounding a series of events marking the
50 year commemoration of the loss of Palestine, “Fifty
Years: Catastrophe and Resistance,” taking place in
Beirut from April 8 to early July .
Those opposing one of these events, a panel on “Arab
Jews: Exile and Roots,” claimed that the Jewish participants
were chosen by Adonis, a claim denied by Elias Khoury, director
of the main organizing and sponsoring institution, the Beirut
Theater. Adonis is one of several Arab intellectuals who have
lent their support to the panel. These attacks on the only
event of its kind to be held in an Arab capital seem to have
angered Adonis, prompting him to write an article in Al Hayat
debunking the opposition, or as he calls them, the “pressure”
group, pointing out how “moral and human terrorism followed
intellectual terrorism.”
Adonis apparently was not surprised by the attacks seeing
them as part of a larger problem: “The immoralism of
this ‘racist' tendency has precedents...This tendency
does not reveal itself only in the relationship with ‘the
Other'– that is the foreigner or the enemy–but
also in the relationship with ‘the Other' inside Arab
societies themselves. Our history abounds with instances like
these.” Adonis cites the Iran-Iraq war during which
such “racist” literature was produced, and also
the Lebanese Civil War, where individuals were “kidnapped”
or “targeted” on the basis of their “identities”
as stated on their official identification cards. Listing
instances like these is “shameful indeed, and even humiliating
both intellectually and in human terms.”
Racism in day-to-day Arab life is easily recognizable, according
to Adonis. But such recognition is contingent on the individual's
readiness to “be honest with himself and the truth,”
and to be willing “to violate the consensus” by
thinking of that which should not be thought of, according
to those preaching prohibitions against discussing the defects
in Arab societies. When the need arises for such criticism,
they maintain that the discussion should be confined “to
those fighting us, lest we tarnish our image before the “Others,”
especially when we are at a critical period facing vicious
enemies.” According to the logic of these preachers,
“by merely concealing illness...good health will be
realized, enabling us to overcome the enemy.”
Adonis counters that “Our ‘traditions' and ‘customs'
stipulate that we do not differentiate between the individual
and his ideas. If we hated his ideas we hated his person,
regardless of who he is; and if we hated the person, we hated
his ideas irrespective of what they are. We raise no objection,
and perhaps support the elimination of the person in the same
way we annihilate his ideas. Should we give examples of such
incidents when our history abounds with them, reoccurring
over and over again on the stage of our Arab life, in one
form or another?”
Adonis’s implicit focus is on the Syrian Social Nationalist
Party (SSNP), which he briefly joined in his youth, debunking
the contradictions between this party's ideological claims
and actual practice. It is contradictory and tragic, writes
Adonis, when the “pressure” is applied by groups
who attribute to themselves principles like “secularism,
civilization, respect for man as human being, the emphasis
on human dignity, the values of truth and justice.”
Although Adonis does not refer to the SSNP by name, these
slogans are associated more with this party than others. (Two
other groups reportedly participated in the campaign against
the panel, a Palestinian faction led by Sabri al-Bana, known
as Abu Nidal, and the Permanent Conference Against Cultural
Zionist Invasion).
Even if one leaves aside the violation of the laws of the
Arab countries in which the Jewish panel participants hold
citizenship–laws which guarantee their rights and freedom
of movement and expression–the architects of this “pressure”do
not even stop for one moment to think, Adonis notes, apparently
unaware of the paradox of their position. “They present
the struggle with Israel at a religious rather than a national
level. By this they hide the intellectual nationalist component
of the struggle whereby the question is presented in its entirety
within the framework of religious conflicts, becoming a continuation
of the Christian-Jewish conflict Europe experienced and for
which we paid a price.” Adonis finds this “logic”
alarming since it makes Zionism acceptable, bestowing on it
legitimacy and credibility. “When we decline to recognize
the citizenship held by every Jew and the country to which
he belongs by birth, and insist on associating him with Israel
, wouldn't this lead us to consider every Jew an Israeli?
Does this not support Zionism, which we resist...and which
is based on these ideas that make up its theoretical core?”
When viewed from a cultural perspective, the racist logic
invoked in opposing a dialogue with Arab-Jewish intellectuals
amounts to what Adonis calls “a hateful combination
between cultural and political activities: man is not evaluated
as human but as someone ‘belonging.' Or the human is
not evaluated except by a political criteria; refusing to
look into our lives, our country as wholly both human and
intellectual, as a constant movement toward the better and
the more noble. But instead, we look at our societies as sites
of political and material interests, in terms of immediate
politics–which is an arena of war. Thus passions control
minds, showing in practice the presence of everything savage
and concealing everything human.” Adonis eloquently
protests that the Arabs “frequently respond to catastrophes
by raising extremist slogans, making fiery speeches, leveling
accusations, and blaming ‘the Other' for the whole responsibility,
without analysis, research or questions.”
The Lebanese Civil War offers the best example of what Adonis
is referring to. In today's Lebanon, those who attempt to
study the war–its causes, consequences, and what can
be done to avert its reoccurrence–risk a lot, the least
of which is the accusation of opening past wounds. “The
Lebanese-Lebanese war,” a term used by Adonis, witnessed
“the collapse of basic foundations, values and slogans.”
Since the architects of the racist thinking view the Lebanese
civil war as the deed of the other, particularly the Jews,
they have no problem in watching the war's players “washing
their hands and embracing” with its conclusion. A war
which claimed more than 150,000 lives becomes simply a “slight
fault,” as if “ nothing had happened. No need
for analysis or study, no questions that deepen consciousness...If
individuals or institutions adopt a critical and reflective
position toward Al Nakba , they stand accused merely for participating
in criticism, and are accused even as in truth they reject
Zionist ideology, refusing its ‘identity.' It is those
who applied the ‘pressure' that confirm for the Arab-Jewish
intellectuals that Zionism is the fate of every Jew: an inescapable
fate!”
To Adonis, “ our Achilles'heel is not outside us as
much as it is within us.” His concluding remarks pose
a thought-provoking question: “What is the difference
between the position of the Serbian militias which ostracize
the Muslim and annihilate him for being Muslim, and this ‘position'
which ostracizes the Jew for being Jewish?...Why are we then
surprised, and consequently protest, when the Arab is ostracized
by Western and racist official agencies merely for being Arab?”
This essay appeared in Al Jadid, Vol. 4, no. 23 (Spring
1998)
Copyright © by Al Jadid (1998)
|
