Why the Liberals of the Arab Spring Hate Yahya Sinwar (And Why Revolutionaries Love Him)
Musa al-Sada, Orinoco Tribune, August 8, 2024 —
Liberalism in the Arab context has an inflated and multifaceted connotation, encompassing several orientations simultaneously. In the general theoretical framework, liberalism has three general approaches. The economic approach favors market freedom and financial globalization. The secular approach promotes personal freedoms and opposes religious authority and societal values. The political approach is based on democracy and ballot boxes as an absolute ideology and value.
Based on these approaches, we can divide Arab liberalism into two types supported by two different authorities and political forces. The first type combines the first and second approaches, supported by Gulf countries, while the second type primarily revolves around the narrative and ideology of democracy and is supported by the United States. This support dates back at least to the neoconservatives and George Bush era. It continues through support for non-governmental organizations, development funds, and grants from European and American institutions.
Let’s call the first type “Princes’ Liberals,” in reference to the support of princes and sheikhs of Gulf countries. As for the second, they are the “Arab Spring Liberals.” Here, it is necessary to elaborate on this term because it is an emotionally charged phrase with imagined nostalgia, ultimately carrying the aesthetic qualities of the “Arab Spring.” Yes, especially for those who lived through the events after 2011, we remember that moment of political vigor that led to arrests, displacements, and the martyrdom of friends. Some others still languish in prisons to this day. Perhaps one of the important observations of that period is that young Arab men and women have a great capacity for sacrifice and going to extremes for ideas and dreams they believe in.
The problem with the term is its romanticism, which has rendered it immune to criticism. Criticizing it is considered an attack and denial of those sacrifices. But more fundamentally, the term is flawed because it was imposed by Western media. Even the victories we celebrate did not achieve independence. Astonishingly, the term’s origin dates back to 2005 and the Beirut demonstrations, coined by neoconservatives. It reappeared in Foreign Policy Magazine in January 2011, referencing the “Prague Spring” of the 1960s.
The “Spring” was the consequence of a Western project combining material support with political programming over the previous decade. The Western project consists of massive money networks and funding programs and political sponsorship for Arab activists. These activists adopt democracy as an ideological doctrine, similar to how Salafists relate to religion. For Salafism, the problem is the absence of religion, and the solution is its return, in an imagined reference to an Islamic society and a utopian virtuous state that once existed, but no one knows when. The Arab Spring Liberal has a similar belief about democracy: that the problem is the absence of democracy, and the solution lies in democracy, in an imagined reference to Western society as a utopian virtuous state, based on the success of democracy. Of course, this propaganda image of Western democracy and defining it as the goal to be imitated is the political consequence of Western material support. Arab Spring Liberals need to preserve this image and the democratic idol more than the Europeans themselves, because their existence is based on it.
Today, Palestine is a source of crisis for liberal democracy. It has awakened consciousnesses and disrupted the Western political illusions and propaganda about everything from freedom of expression to human rights. But the mere existence of the Palestinian cause does not cause this effect. For as long as the hordes of activists were preaching about democracy, Palestine was relegated to the margins. It was absent because it revealed the truth. And if Palestine was mentioned, the democracy activists would boldly dare to include it within democratic solutions, or procrastinate it by saying: democracy first in the Arab world, and then Palestine as a foregone conclusion.
Today, Palestine has returned as an active presence in politics, and this return was not random or coincidental. Rather, history will remember Yahya Sinwar as one of the smartest revolutionary strategists in our entire Arab history of confronting Western colonialism. Sinwar responded to criticisms about the Gaza Return Marches (2018-2019) by explaining their strategic goal. He said the use of peaceful means aimed to expose the world’s contradictions and values (liberalism, democracy, human rights, and so on.)
Sinwar knew that the Palestinian human was excluded from those values, but he also knew that the Palestinian’s duty is to work on a historical and methodological process with multiple stages against the falsehood of liberalism. This battle is fundamental to Palestinian and Arab liberation. Sinwar was open about this. In media programs he spoke about how they would expose the hypocrisy of the whole world and all the normalizers through the sacrifice of their blood.
Sinwar challenged the idol of Arab liberals head-on. He addressed the people with powerful slogans, grand narratives, and a clear Palestinian goal. This type of discourse disturbs the Arab Spring Liberals. They see it as “populist” because it touches people’s hearts and abstains from elitism. More importantly, it talks about political projects to change the reality of the entire people and the nation. Whereas the liberal is an individualistic being who does not want to change the situation for the people and the nation, but wants to change his own situation and his own lifestyle.
Sinwar’s spontaneity, modest dress, and common speech don’t suit the class taste of activists. His style and content do not suit the class tastes of activists, cultural centers, conferences on democracy, and academia. He was and still is the son of a camp, in his audacity, anger, and improvisation when he speaks, which are qualities he is often criticized for.
However, Sinwar’s most significant impact was in what a friend called “burning stages.” Within his strategic preparation for the Al-Aqsa Flood he demolished the malicious narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism.” This narrative had served as a reductionist cover for civil conflicts and self-destructive wars. He reclaimed the Palestinian cause from the margins of Arab politics and reaffirmed the vanguard role of Palestinians in correcting the Arab situation against Zionism and behind it Western colonialism.
Sinwar’s historical strategy aimed to expose the falsehood of Western liberal propaganda. He targeted the myth of Zionism as a democratic oasis – a narrative long promoted by Arab Spring Liberals. He then revived major liberation slogans in Arab politics. These were the same slogans that Arab liberals had mocked and weakened for generations, ever since Umm Kulthum sang “To Palestine, there is one road.” While liberals called for pragmatism and solutions within Western parameters, Sinwar pushed for a different path.
He sought to rectify the Arab division that “Spring” liberals often exacerbate with their class and identity-based resentments. Sinwar called for unity around a common cause: not abandoning Palestine. He proposed making Palestine the banner of Arab unity for collective liberation.
It is for all these reasons that they hate Sinwar. And it is for these same reasons that we love him.