Too much, too little history Wednesday, 21 April 2010 00:00

I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at the Four Seasons Hotel last evening for Robert Fisk’s talk — State of Denial: Western Journalism and the Middle East. Hundreds of people were waiting in line just to attend the lecture. Thank God, I found a front seat and could concentrate on the wisdom Fisk had on offer.

I have read Fisk a lot on Lebanon, Iraq and Israel. But the high point last evening was: We need to read history. The problem with the Arab nation is that we live in history. Our present is not far from the past. We look for solutions to our present day problems in the past. Always. The problem with the West is that they don’t care much about history. They are more concerned with now. Both sides need a change of attitude to history. If Western nations want democracy in the Middle East, they should not try to export it through conquering armies. Democracy will never come through force but it will come through science and education.

Fisk delved on why US Foreign Policy leans towards Israel? His answer: Because there is a strong Israel lobby in the US whereas the Arab lobbying efforts are “miserable.” The difference between the two lobbying efforts is that Israel is one nation while there are 25 countries and territories in the Arab world, each with its own agenda. Arabs tend to look at things in the micro instead of the macro perspective. If the Arab diplomatic corps want to have influence on US foreign policy, they need to read John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s book, “Israel Lobby and the US Foreign Policy,” in order to understand why successive US governments have supported Israel.

It was nice to hear Fisk talk about all these but I was hoping he would talk more about how he saw the future of the Arab nation and if there was any hope for peace in the region; if the Obama government could do something now or will we have to wait. While at it one thing is clear: We, in the Arab world, are still not using the media to present our perspective to the Western world. We have Al Jazeera, but our investment in media is still negligible. We cannot deliver our message, opinions and rights to the Western world.