Thirty years of tyranny and corruption were enough for the regime to stretch its arms out in all directions, and so the fall of its head is no longer enough. Rather, it has become necessary for the revolution to continue in order to remove those arms and complete the cycle of the revolution by tearing down the former regime, and building a new one. It was upon this principle that the people of the rebellion worked toward establishing the revolution’s bases and roots everywhere, and Committees for the Defense of the Revolution popped up in various neighborhoods, cities and provinces. Workers strove to establish unions and committees in labor sites. These roots and missions are no less important than the heroic struggle fought by the masses from January 25th to February 11th to topple Mubarak. For if the Egyptian Revolution leaves the body of the regime in the provinces, cities, and official establishments, it will sprout a thousand new heads, so as to hijack the revolution.
In the prevailing US political culture, supporting Washington’s policies is considered synonymous with democratic thinking and behaviour, while opposing the American outlook and Israel is judged to derive from the backwardness of ‘captive minds’. According to this perspective, a mentality of imagined victimhood feeds ‘hatred’ of and resistance towards Israel.
But, it is, in fact, this thinking that is utterly undemocratic. If we assume that democratic values are universal values and move away from a Western ethno-centric interpretation, we will find that the rejection of occupation is totally consistent with ideas of freedom and human dignity – two supposedly integral components of democratic thought.
Just as rejecting racial discrimination asserts a belief in freedom, so does the refusal to simply accept the Israeli and American occupations of Arab lands and subordination of Arab people.
Lamis Andoni — Obama does not get it
