Return to the spirit of the nineteenth century

Highlights: The spirit of the nineteenth century is the spirit of psychological and material defeat before the West, its power, and its civilization. This spirit has returned to impose its authority on us, based on the superiority and aggression that Israel represents in the region. The nineteenth century was led by the French invasion of Egypt, followed by the European invasion of the Islamic world, and then concluded by the establishment of the Zionist movement. In the last fifty years, all Arab governments at least have been able to neutralize Israel.

In the nineteenth century, there were those among us who welcomed the colonists as conquerors, as well as those who cooperated with them, worked under their leadership, and sold themselves to them, but that was the rare exception, even if they occupied important positions of influence and authority.

What is happening in Gaza is a holocaust that history is ashamed of, and it shames everyone who witnessed it and did not deny it, a holocaust from whose curse the twenty-first century will not escape (French)

The spirit of the nineteenth century is the spirit of psychological and material defeat before the West, its power, and its civilization. This spirit has returned to impose its authority on us, based on the superiority and aggression that Israel represents in the region. The nineteenth century was led by the French invasion of Egypt, followed by the European invasion of the Islamic world, and then concluded by the establishment of the Zionist movement.

Between the French invasion in 1798 AD and the First Zionist Conference in 1897 AD, exactly one hundred years. These hundred years are the cornerstone of the formation and formation of the contemporary Middle East. Then between the First Zionist Conference in 1897 AD and the issuance of the Balfour Declaration to establish a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine in 1917 AD, exactly twenty years, and then between the promise of Balfour, and the United Nations decision to divide Palestine between the Arabs and the Jews in 1947 AD, exactly twenty years, then between the defeat of the Arabs before the Zionist gangs in 1948 AD, and then their crushing defeat again in 1967 AD, exactly twenty years.

Wars without plans

There are exactly seventy years between the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 and President Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem on November 19, 1977, and between the last Arab war, October 6, 1973, and the last day of resistance, October 7, 2023, fifty years. I took the Arabs on a path completely different from the path they took in the thirty years between the 1948 war and the 1978 Camp David Accords. Here it is necessary to make several observations:

1- The Arabs’ wars with Israel lasted thirty years, the first of which they entered - 1948 AD - while they were under colonialism, and at the instigation of colonialism. The British wanted to create a measure of balance between the powers of the Arabs and the Jews, then they wanted to limit the violence of the Jews, then they wanted to preserve their interests and image in The Middle East.

The Arab armies entered the war without a plan, and without preparation. The armies were under the command of the Jordanian army, and the Jordanian army was under the command of a British general. The Arabs were not only under colonialism, but they also entered the war under British leadership, just as the leadership of the Egyptian army was under the command of British officers. Until the signing of the 1936 agreement.

Then the Arabs did not fight in the 1956 war. The forces withdrew west of the canal, and international balances ensured the deterrence of aggression and the withdrawal of the aggressors, with Israel gaining international navigation rights in the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits of Tiran. Then the 1967 war was entered by the Arabs - as President Abdel Nasser admitted - with decisions based on wrong calculations. Then the 1973 war was the end of the wars. The Arab fighter did not neglect it, but politics was planning the path to peace.

The wars of the Arabs against Israel seem as if they were missteps, missteps, or forced or forced impulses that were not intentional in themselves. Wars - with the exception of the 1973 war - lack the spirit, energy, and determination of wars. A spirit imposed by passing circumstances and not imposed by a national perception, a national vision, or ideological motives. Wars that were not imposed by The Arabs task themselves with proving or confirming that they are a nation of war and valor.

Historical anachronisms

2 - The path of peace took fifty years. It began as something strange and rejected by most Arabs, then it became the principle that no other Arabs thought about. These are the most dangerous fifty years in the history of the Middle East from 1973-2023 AD, and they are no less dangerous than the first fifty years after the founding of the peace process. Zionism from 1897 AD to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1947 AD.

The first fifty are the fifty related to the actual establishment by force, and the last fifty are the fifty related to voluntary recognition. This explains to you the historical paradox that occurred between the two unique dates, between October 6, 1973 AD, and October 7, 2023 AD. In the first, Israel was the stranger in the region, and in the second, the Palestinian resistance was the stranger in the region, from the point of view of the Arab and Islamic governments at least.

In the last fifty years, Israel has been able enough to neutralize all Arab and Islamic countries with astonishing and astonishing neutrality, a neutrality that has turned the consciences of the Arab and Islamic authorities into pieces of artificial wood, or dead plastic that does not shake, is not affected, or sympathizes, and the people of Palestine, the people of Gaza, are subjected to a terrible holocaust that will destroy them. Humans, trees, stones, Arabs and Muslims, without any reaction to which Israel takes the slightest account.

A Holocaust that history is ashamed of, a Holocaust that shamed everyone who witnessed it and did not deny it, a Holocaust whose curse the twenty-first century will not escape. These fifty years, 1973-2023 AD, from the end of the wars until the annihilation, returned the Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East to the spirit of the nineteenth century, the spirit of original, natural submission. Confronting the West, its civilization, its violence, its arrogance, and its power.

Rise and fall

3 - The spirit of the nineteenth century returns with its defects rather than its advantages. At the end of the seventeenth century, the supreme power of Muslims was defeated at the gates of Vienna in 1683 AD, and then was defeated in successive wars against Russia, Austria, Poland, and what was known as the Holy Christian League, which exhausted the forces of the Ottomans while Nearly twenty years from 1683 AD until 1699 AD.

In the year 1700 AD, Russia was beginning its long journey of ascension as a great European empire, its main goal being to erase the Ottoman Sultanate and expel it from Christian Europe. In the same year, the Ottomans were sufficiently aware that they were between two options: either modernization or annihilation. If annihilation did not come at the hands of enemies, it was coming. Due to time, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, European powers were turning into empires that encircled the world, and the Ottoman Empire’s shadow was shrinking and withdrawing from here and there.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Sultan Ahmed III, 1673 - 1736 AD, began the process of modernization, which is: How do we take the sources of power that Europe took, and it defeated us and we were defeated by it? Attempts were repeated at the beginning of the nineteenth century with Sultan Selim III, 1761 - 1808 AD, and then Sultan Mahmoud. The second, 1785 - 1839. But it was a faltering modernization over the course of two full centuries that ended with its disappearance at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The fall of political centers

4 - Modernization was not limited to the center of Islam in Istanbul. Serious attempts were made in Egypt by Muhammad Ali Pasha and his descendants after him 1805 - 1882 AD, which ended with the British occupation, then serious attempts were made in Tunisia by the Bey Muhammad Sadiq 1813 AD - 1882 AD, and the reformist minister Khair ad-Din 1820 - 1890 AD. It ended with the French occupation in 1881 AD.

In the three centers: Istanbul, Cairo, and Tunisia, attempts were made to modernize in the European style in building armies, military education, and civil education, borrowing constitutions and parliaments, bringing in foreign experts, opening the country to the influx of European adventurers, and borrowing and borrowing from financial houses, usurers, and foreign merchants, until the bankruptcy of Istanbul, Cairo, and Tunisia coincided. At the same time in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, bankruptcy was followed by the occupation of Egypt and Tunisia in two consecutive years, and the occupation and then demise of the last center of Islam in Istanbul was delayed until World War I 1914-1918 AD. The Europeans occupied it, then removed it from existence after human civilization had survived. Nearly seven centuries.

5 - A hundred years ago or a little more, the last political center of Sunni Islam fell, and the Islamic civilization itself fell with it. The Balfour Declaration was issued on November 2, 1917, and the Arab countries were placed under the French and British mandate with the approval of America and the European world. Then Jewish immigration caravans flowed from corners of the world to Palestine, and today we are witnessing the annihilation of the last bastions of Palestinian resistance, with a new displacement of those who can be displaced, under the bombardment of fire for the remaining people of Palestine.

This is the historical context in which the Zionist-Crusader holocausts, massacres, and genocides take place in the winter of 2023-2024 AD. Where Palestine has no friend, companion, brother, or ally, it is left to Israel to do with it whatever it wants, and its people are left to their enemy to abuse them however he wants. All of this happens while the capitals of Arabism and Islam see the episodes of genocide as if they do not exist, as if they do not concern them from near or far.

Intellectual and spiritual collapse

6 - It returned to us, or we returned, to the spirit of the nineteenth century, that is, the fall of mental, spiritual and intellectual immunity, that is, voluntary surrender to the Zionist-Crusader power, with the difference that in the nineteenth century, we were aware that the West was a danger to us, and the goals of modernization at that time were the goal. One of them is to harvest the sources of strength with which we stand in the face of the West’s threat.

The Ottomans were sufficiently aware of this, Muhammad Ali Pasha and his descendants were sufficiently aware of this, the Beys of Tunisia were sufficiently aware of this, everyone was aware that danger was creeping upon them and was reaching it, so there was no escape from being prepared to confront it, but the spirit of the nineteenth century that we live in now It is what leads us voluntarily to subsume under America in the roof of the world, and then under Israel in the roof of the region, a unique moment of two defeats: political and civilizational, a moment of nihilism in which we choose to live under the shadow of the enemy, so we lose self, identity, features, and existence. We live in a distorted state of hermaphroditism and political effeminacy. And the civilized.

7 - In such a context, the context of falling to the bottom of the well, we lose discrimination, make poor choices, so we lose our way, and wonder who is responsible for the war of genocide against Gaza and its people? Then we answer that the resistance is responsible.

This - exactly - is the spirit of the nineteenth century, it is the spirit of defeat that claimed that the Mamluk provocations of French merchants in Cairo were the reason for Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 AD and not that the French, since the failure of Louis IX’s campaign in 1250 AD, had not stopped thinking about returning to occupying Egypt. The idea flourished during the reign of Louis XIV, 1638 - 1715 AD.

Likewise, the claim is that the Urabi Revolution of 1881 AD was the reason for Britain’s occupation of Egypt, and not that Britain tried throughout the entire nineteenth century to occupy Egypt. Likewise, it is claimed that the insult of the Dey of Algiers, Consul of France in 1827, is the reason for France’s occupation of Algeria in 1830 AD, and not that Algeria was a target for all European powers from the beginning of the sixteenth century, and for this reason it entered under Ottoman protection in 1520 AD.

It is also said that the inability of the Bey of Tunisia to protect the borders with Algeria - which became a French colony - is the reason for the occupation of Tunisia in 1881 AD, and not that France was planning to occupy Tunisia when it occupied Algeria more than fifty years before that.

Fake awareness

8 - In the nineteenth century, there were among us those who welcomed the invading colonialists as conquerors, as well as those who cooperated with them, worked under their leadership, and sold themselves to them, but that was the rare exception, even if they occupied important positions of influence and authority, and the majority maintained sound awareness; That the colonialists are usurping enemies who have no right to our country, and it is impossible for them to have come - as they claim - for our good and our progress. This majority, of sound nature and upright character, despite the prevalence of illiteracy at that time, was the fuel for the resistance movements that confronted colonialism when it entered, and then became hostile to it through revolutions. When he settled in the position, then I fought against him until I expelled him and achieved freedom and independence.

9 - But after the domestication of awareness and the falsification of understanding in the last five decades, the idea of resistance has become a subject of condemnation, alienation, and contempt, while the idea of normalization, adaptation, normalization, rapprochement, and alliance with the enemy is the basis of politics in Arab and Islamic capitals.

This false awareness is more dangerous to the Palestinian resistance than the Zionist genocide. If it were not for the stability of this domesticated awareness and its infiltration into souls and seeping into consciences, it would have been impossible for Zionism, along with America and Europe, to dare to carry out this genocide slowly and in the sight and hearing of humanity. This false awareness - Normalization is good and resistance is evil - it is the fuel for Zionist genocide, just as it is the most severe siege on the Palestinian resistance, isolating it and stripping it of moral support, moral support and brotherly sympathy, whether Arab or Islamic.

10 - With all certainty, Israel was defeated on October 7, 2023, just as it was defeated on October 6, 1973, and with all certainty after October 6, Egypt was at war with America, not just Israel, as well after October 7. The resistance was and still is - as of the date of writing these lines - at war with America and the West, not Israel.

Just as Egypt was not responsible for the First October War, the resistance is not responsible for the last October War.

As for genocide, meaning evacuating the land of historic Palestine of all its people that can be evacuated in stages, and as circumstances permit, this is an old plan that is not the result of the victory of the resistance and the defeat of the enemy on October 7, 2023 AD.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.