The Lebanese Peace Movement Manifesto

"I believe that I, and you, and the peoples and the Middle East and the USA, can make history by starting a social/intellectual/political/artistic movement that will unite East and West via creating a bridge of mutual understanding, appreciation and respect of the "otherness" of the party on the other side of the ocean. Let the Orient teach the spiritually bereft Occident the meaning of soul-wealth, and let the wealthy, technologically and politically advanced West help the Orient understand itself better and rise from its political corruption, decadence, disillusionment, materialistic obssession, inferiority complexes, anger, venegefulness, poverty and fear...

Let the goal be Peace. Peace makes sense spiritually and it is cash in the hand... I will expound this idea more later.

After this movement takes root, the West will fear us no more and we will not fear their military might either because they will become our friends. The West will cry bitter tears of repentance when it realizes it had negatively stereotyped the Arab from its position of power and intellectual racism (confer Edward Said's Orientalism) and the Arab will undergo a process of self-improvement when he looks at himself through the eyes of the critical Orientalist.

The Oriental will not feel inferior any more and might even be cured of his schizophrenia and identity crisis which is brought about by a false inferiority and "vanquished" complex and a symptomatic adoption of the West's moral code of might and material wealth. May be more Orientals will find their true calling more as poets, artists, musicians, teachers and prophets rather than neurotic money mongers which is one of the problems at the root of political corruption in the Middle East.

May be Orient and Occident will see in the "Other" what they lack, what they need and thus develop spiritually, mentally, socially and politically until that final ecstatic time when each will acquire the positive qualities of the other and then opposites will become one! This idea I have adopted from Edward Said's seminal book "Orientalism" and it is the brain-child of one of the French Orientalists that he studies.

May be this will precipitate the Biblical Millenial Peace: Babylon will not be viewed as the Whore any more as the religious right-wing, neo-con freaks at TBN and the 700 Club like to believe and the Arab will not label the Westerner as the "Great Satan"...

This will certainly put an end to racism...

As a consequence of this movement, this rennaissance, the West's fear will disappear and so will the need for their mad military spending (half the world's military spending is done in the USA). Imagine what can happen if this budget where redirected to fund education, medicine, art and nation-building...

Now for starters, I would like to see a peace treaty signed between Israel and my home country, Lebanon. I am sick of Lebanese and other Arab politicians spinning Israeli fear and terror yarns to scare people off of the boogie man south of the border (a very effective technique for control of the masses both in the Middle East and in the USA). The memory of over 20 years of brutal Israeli occupation of South Lebanon is still fresh in the Lebanese consciousness, but if the Israelis learned anything from this lesson, it is that they cannot occupy Arab land indefinitely because they will lose a long-term "guerrilla resistance" war. However, if the Arabs ought to learn anything in return, it is that Israel is not after occupying the whole Biblically promised land from the Nile to the Euphrates. They simply do not have the military man power to do it. This is the great "Israeli boogie man" theory that is dominating the Arab mentally-ill political ethos nowadays and it is time to cure the middle east from it.

And now back to the idea that peace is cash in the hand that I mentioned earlier, I learned recently from an Israeli friend of mine - with whom I had the pleasure of going on a road trip from Los Angeles to Washington, DC on November 2, US election day - that Israel has no mountains, so normalizing relations between Lebanon and Israel would deifnitely be a boost to the Lebanese ski sector as well as the tourism sector because the Israelis don't have the Roman remains that we also have. I would also love to see our neighbour Syria sign such a peace treaty. I recently learned during a trip to Aleppo (amazing citadel and museum btw), that colossal sums of government money in Syria are spent on the military and intelligence. Again if this fruitless animosity with Israel ends, the good Syrian people and as a consequence, the Lebanese too, will prosper as this military and security spending is redirected to other sectors in the economy.

There is a strong peace-loving left wing in Israel, let us reach out to them and this way pull the rug from underneath the ultra-racist Zionist right wing minority (new political strategic thinking, Arab politicians listen up and let go of your stubborn, machismo confrontationalism). And I forgot to mention, let us, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Human Beings, turn our ear to the meekness of Islam, The Other Cheek of Islam, as I call it, which is the Sufi vision expressed most beautifully through the poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, which I am currently translating into popular, accessible Arabic. The USA has discovered the beauty and soul of Rumi, but unfortunately, Arabs haven't...

Remember the saying from the Bible:

"The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth" Psalms 37:11

Join the second largest (and growing) super-power in the world, to quote the words of American poet Blaise Bonpane: The Peace Movement.

Peace.

"

Rami E. Cremesti BS, MS

Founder, Lebanese Peace Movement

Beirut, Lebanon

11/16/2004

Last updated 24/3/2005

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