The events that transpired on the Syrian coast were triggered by a terrorist operation at the hands of "remnants" of the deposed regime. However, it quickly morphed into something else, something much bigger that raises a series of pressing questions about our lives and our politics: How can we deal with grudges and vengeful tendencies? How should we approach the social contract in a pluralistic society? And how can we prevent extremist ideas and their proponents from taking over and shaping decisions? In addition, it seems that another issue these painful events have reintroduced: how violence and nonchalance toward violence shape our lives.
There is no doubt that we are deeply inclined to fall into the illusion of controlling violence, of restricting it to one place and leaving it out of another, of using it here and abating it there, and thus of steering it to serve the ends that we believe to be righteous. This inclination is often exploited to rationalize violence, while our mainstream political culture encourages us to embrace this delusion.
For decades before Islamist movements eliminated all metaphoric interpretations of "jihad," Levantine parties like the "Syrian Social Nationalist Party" and the "Arab Nationalist Movement," influenced by European fascism, had idealized the use of force. Martiniquais physician Frantz Fanon, as a result of his enthusiasm for Algeria and its revolution, taught us that violence against the colonizer is a form of therapy that cleanses the psyche of the oppressed.
With the Iranian Revolution of 1979, a new theory flourished: Khomeini had precipitated a major shift by channeling ritualistic violence, which had been directed inward, toward "imperialism and its stooge the Shah." And whenever an Arab country is rattled by domestic instability, there is always someone there to lecture us and insist that we ought to direct our rifles at "the Zionist enemy."
However, it seems that, relatively quickly, these teachings were proven spectacularly misguided. Algeria, despite having been "cleansed" by its "million martyrs," was not spared a long and costly civil war that saw Algerians killing Algerians. And every jump Khomeini’s Iran made in its fanaticism against imperialism did nothing but aggravate self-directed ritualistic violence. As for the "Zionist enemy," at no time have civil wars and intra-Arab disputes flourished like they have when our rifles had ostensibly been directed at the Zionists.
Violence, in this sense, resembles the unruly forces of nature that pre-philosophy philosophers believed to be the source and root-cause of the world. That is, contrary to its architects’ claims, we cannot control the forms and trajectories violence takes; we have just about as much control over it as the movements and trajectories of air, fire, and water.
As for the (correct) claim that violence had been at the center of our lives in the past, this is not a compelling reason to grant it a central role in our future. Accepting it as the inevitable "vehicle of history," simply because it had been so in the past, amounts to considering ourselves passive inertia in the face of violence - an inertia that benefits from neither civilization, nor progress, nor experience.
Moreover, since we are weak and lack any lever of power, all that violent ideologies do is compensate for our weakness by spreading an illusion of strength. The only material translation of this illusion is the circulation of the supposed force among ourselves. Overwhelmed with frustration by the clash between our imaginary world - where battles and victorious warriors define history- and the reality of our defeats, we delude ourselves once again, becoming convinced that we can overcome our frustration with more violence that, this time around, will surely do us justice and deliver an unequivocal victory.
It is true that we have had peaceful political movements in our modern history. Egypt’s Wafd Party may have been the first to launch one with its revolution in 1919. The first Palestinian Intifada of 1987 was also largely peaceful, as were the early days of the Arab Spring before they were crushed by force.
However, violent means would always eventually take hold, especially since we have never had any truly consequential peaceful movements. Thus, our lives have never been drained of sources of violence, while politics was marginalized, freedom of expression was stifled, and justice for victims was denied.
We have never managed to distinguish between allegiance to an idea and allegiance to a community, nor to prevent one ideological allegiance’s victory over another from turning into a victory of one community over another. We have never made serious efforts to reconcile our support for an idea with tests of the others’ will or their capacity to endure the consequences of the victory of our idea.
As for the worship of power and the monopolization of righteousness, both have become ingrained through a variety of mediums, some old and modernized, others modern and spiritually drowning in antiquity. Through a fusion of these mediums with a conspiratorial worldview that has mastered the craft of associating evil with foes that never change, power and resistance are presented as our destiny and only option.
With toxic slogans like "a war of existence, not a war of borders" and "never humanize the enemy," the door to tolerance between two sides of a conflict is closed shut, pushing everyone to firmly identify with their organic and sectarian background - identification that is more suited to genocidal violence than anything else.
The fact is that no cause justifies arbitrary violence. And now, with the immense opportunity that has presented itself to the peoples of Syria and Lebanon, both the victors and the vanquished, the choice might be clearer than ever before. We can choose either politics and justice or force that leads to savagery and turns potential new beginnings into conclusive endings.
