Sinwar and Nasrallah "are not the same"

After being bombarded with quick writings on social media and the general public’s fleeting and simple comments on events, I sometimes decide to browse news websites to read long articles by writers whose opinions and visions I am interested in knowing about what is happening in our Arab world.

I read an article by the Egyptian journalist and writer Wael Kandil in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed titled “Arabs after Sinwar and Nasrallah.” I usually pay attention to Professor Wael Kandil’s articles, because I first met him when I was a high school student. He was a journalist who commented on the Arab Spring on Al Jazeera, which earned him a status for me that is associated with lofty values related to dignity, freedom, justice, and equality. So I have a relationship of belonging and belief in the Arab Spring.

I can say that this educated media elite who emerged on television, especially during that period, contributed to shaping part of the value and cognitive concepts for us, the young and dreaming generations, before we started and chose colleges of media or political science and other similar specializations. I even think about the necessity of having a study that addresses "the impact of the Arab Spring and its advocates on the educational, value and intellectual tendencies of the young generation."

By the way, Professor Wael Qandil still puts in his bio the following description of himself: “Arab in identity, who believes that Palestine is the cause of causes, and that the Arab Spring was, is, and will remain the most wonderful thing that the peoples of the nation have achieved.”

I wonder as I write here: After 14 years of the events of the Arab Spring and its repercussions in the region, are its values and principles being ignored, or are they being distributed as desired by its supporters and theorists?!

Returning to the article, Qandil from the first line places Sinwar and Haniyeh, the “leaders of the Palestinian cause,” on the same level of status as Hassan Nasrallah, the “leader of transnational sectarianism” and one of the main reasons that led to the collapse and annihilation of the Arab Spring in more than one country, including Yemen through the counter-revolution represented by the Houthi coup in September 2014, or Syria through enabling the Assad regime to brutalize the revolution since 2011, and “Nasrallah” clearly played a pivotal, supporting and directing role in both countries!

Qandil says that the Arab peoples "smelled some dignity from the speech of the three real leaders.."! I don't know what dignity we smelled while Nasrallah spoke openly in his speeches that "the fall of the Yemeni Ma'rib Governorate means the defeat of Washington and Riyadh", or while he announced that he "is personally prepared to go and fight in Syria"!!

I do not want to repeat the debate on the worn out topic: Nasrallah’s relationship with the Palestinian resistance. It has taken up space for debate to the point of “reversal,” since the beginning of Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa until the recent past, when the instigator of sectarianism in our Arab world was killed, whom Qandil describes as “martyrdom”!

It's okay, this title is no longer an honor or a monopoly and is now distributed for free, but it is funny that it is "Nasrallah" who contributed directly, and through the Iranian axis of which he is a part, to the martyrdom of nearly a million Syrians and more than three hundred thousand Yemenis as well!

I said that this was a worn-out talk, and I entered it to pose an innocent moral question: How did he dare to write his article with a cold conscience and escape responsibility for his words, even after the recent events in Syria, and despite the celebrations of liberation and victories, yet terrifying chapters of criminality are revealed every day, reopening the wounds of the Arab Spring and revealing the enormity of its cost!

No one can argue that what happened in Syria, and is happening today in Yemen, was not only a problem of the Assad regime or the Houthi group, but they found sectarian support that they would not have had, nor would they have been able to excel in their crimes and brutality, had it not been for these allies and their direct and public support with weapons, money, fighters and experts!

I will skip to the next paragraph of the article, where “Yemen” addresses our bleeding wound and our glaring tragedy, saying: “There is no one left in the Arab countries who speaks correct Arabic in the face of an overwhelming current of Zionist hegemony over the political discourse of the region, except for the leader of the Ansar Allah group, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, in Yemen, who speaks the language of resistance and applies it in practice by continuing to support Gaza with weapons,” “Tel Aviv announces that its next step is to eliminate the last pulse of Arab resistance in Yemen.”

What poetic nationalistic sentences! If I had not been a daughter of the country that witnessed the crimes and torture of this group, and a daughter of the city of Taiz that witnessed a complete siege for eight years, the worst siege in the history of contemporary wars, I would have cried with emotion at this description!

To Professor "Wael Qandeel":

Is it necessary to read on the screens the non-stop death toll in Yemen, as in Gaza, for us to have a share of your respect for our suffering and our unfortunate situation. Or at least stop drumming up support for those who turned our country into a graveyard and ruins! Even Israel, which says it is coming to destroy Yemen, has left the Houthi group no mission to carry out! Do you know that?

Although I am not keen to ask for attention to our suffering, because this is a position that one records for oneself regarding just causes and is not requested, what matters to me is that those whom we respected for a period of time maintain some of this respect, in order to avoid a Yemeni proverb that says, “He was afraid of everything that was good,” even “books,” meaning, “There is nothing good left”!

It is scary to wear 20mm glasses and still be unable to see the clear determinants, and to encounter major fallacies that have become exposed to everyone. This is not a calibration of a visual problem as much as it is a call to review a position that requires insight more than sight. It is also not specific to Professor "Wael Qandil" but to many Arab writers and journalists who, for the sake of Gaza, whose justice and victory we believe in, distort our reality and the truth of the group that is devouring our present and future.

It seems that I will stop following what the educated elite write, and will be satisfied with the public’s discussions and comments, to stay close to reality and the people. Perhaps when a person rises a certain level, he stops seeing the simplest and clearest truths!