Why were the forces of the “Axis of Resistance” defeated in the war triggered by the October 7, 2023, operation? Why have the regimes of the Arab Levant, along with their societies, been dragged, as a result of this defeat, into a second defeat that could prove even more bitter and cruel? Why has this region been defined by a level of misery, humiliation, bankruptcy, and disintegration that very few nations have ever known?
How did we end up where we are today, with no choices and limited agency? How can we avert the catastrophes that could be averted in the political, economic, and social realms? Which ideas have been discredited after this experience exposed their flaws and the peril of embracing them? Which ideas and practices have we learned we lack and could benefit from? What should we say to ourselves, to Israel, and to the world?...
It is these questions and others like them that contemporary and sound minds want to see Arab thought devote itself to. We can couple this focus, for tradition’s sake, with the occasional invective against Israel or brief recapitulations of the conflict’s history, though neither would add much to the unfathomably repetitive and tedious vast literature on the subject.
It seems, on the other hand, that efforts to address these pressing questions are swiftly dissipated and foiled by the overwhelming prevalence of mocking Israel, the US, Orientalism, and Orientalists, etc., plunging, despite having done so a million times, into the deep waters of history.
As for those on the more fundamentalist side of the spectrum, they are also the most fundamentalist in invoking history, or what they believe is history, to claim that eternal righteousness and innocence are, by definition, part of us.
Moreover, the only thing worse than thinking of the past with the mind and standards of the present is thinking of the present with the mind and standards of the past.
Sheikh Maher Hammoud, the President of the World Union of Resistance Scholars, published an op-ed in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar on December 8, “Who Are the Children of Abraham?” in which he sought to unpack President Joseph Aoun’s reference to Prophet Abraham when he received Pope Leo XIV.
The deeper goal of the piece was to provide us, the defeated, with some relief from the strains of our defeat. “Justly or unjustly,” some have claimed that “the balance of power overwhelmingly favors the enemy;” in response, we have a duty to remind them that “the balance of power favored the Persians and the Byzantines when Islam arose, and yet Islam prevailed because of the unity behind its stance and its profound creed.”
He says this at a time when denial of the defeat remains louder than its acknowledgement, and when the calamitous conclusions drawn from this denial, such as the insistence on maintaining the arms of the resistance, continue to threaten the national and physical existence of the region’s inhabitants.
As he makes his way to these grand conclusions, however, Sheikh Hammoud also comments on other matters. “Not all of Abraham’s descendants are counted among his children; today’s Zionists cannot be considered Abraham’s children.” Sorting religious history in this way, and at a foundational moment, imbues the conflict with an innate essence that can never change nor wither. It also does not deviate from the split that renders “us” the only “children of Abraham” and “them” the “children of apes and pigs.”
His fervor and self-assuredness then immediately compel Sheikh Hammoud to stress that Abraham can never be transformed into “a symbol of global and regional Zionist control, and this great icon can never be a false witness to the perpetuation of occupation and Zionism’s injustice.”
Israel and Zionism are almost certainly not very focused on this issue that Sheikh Hammoud is preoccupied with, using it to draw conclusions that boost morale, both his and ours. If nothing brings the defeated back to reality and the present like defeat, then in the case at hand, it is the season to migrate to a distant past in which we achieve victory by making an exclusive claim to Abraham.
If defeat ought to precipitate reflection that allows us to identify what we had missed, and to find alternative means that prevent the repetition of actions we had taken when we were misinformed, then in our case, it encourages absolving ourselves of blame and denying our mistakes, thereby reaffirming that we are the ontological equivalent of justice and truth just as much as it is ours.
True, some believe that such archaic and marginal texts are not worth our attention or engagement and that we should focus our critiques on “modern” partisan or academic works instead. As many experiences in our countries and others have shown, however, the influence of these texts - and by extension the need to repudiate them - peaks in times of despair. It is precisely these kinds of marginal texts that become “mainstream” when the supposedly mainstream discourse becomes marginal. In the minds of the men behind October 7 and the “support war,” the most fundamentalist texts, so to speak, have been and continue to be the most consequential, and we are addressing one such text.
