11 - 17 April 2002
Issue No.581
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 11 - 17 April 2002 Issue No.581 |
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Globalising morality
Amr Elchoubaki* pays tribute to those who reject oppression everywhere
Many of those who decided to go to the occupied Palestinian territories belong to international peace organisations. Some don't, and still they went to Ramallah, risking their lives, to protect President Arafat. Sandrine is of the latter group. I met Sandrine 10 years ago when she was doing a master's degree in political science in Paris. She was an intelligent scholar and a promising researcher; but I never thought the day would come when even such a kind- hearted human being would decide to risk her life to protect others.
Sandrine, and many of those who went to Palestine, are "ordinary people," men and women who have never pretended to be freedom fighters, although perhaps they really are. They work and travel, love and hate, and generally go about their normal, unpretentious lives.
Some of those who went to Palestine to show support for the Palestinians are foreign researchers who live in the Arab world. They hold perfectly satisfying jobs and enjoy a better-than-average standard of living. They are standing up for the Palestinians for moral reasons, because they reject oppression, occupation, and injustice. Deep down, they are perhaps not very different from many Palestinian fighters who became involved in resistance as a result of repression by the occupation authorities, not because of any party or organisational affiliation. The occupation forces often try to conceal this fact. It is the justice of the Palestinian cause that fuels the resistance, not the particular programmes of any Palestinian group.
Those researchers, and many others, have a public and moral stand that only complements their academic and scientific endeavours. The institutions they work for do not object to them taking a political stand. On the contrary, they respect their choices.
Those ordinary people are the other side of the globalisation coin. They are "global" strugglers. They do not see globalisation as liberalisation of trade or as the North's freedom to exploit the South. They see it as a force that should spread democracy, liberty, and human rights across the world, regardless of colour, race and religion. Perhaps their stand against Israel's disregard for international norms and laws will herald a new era.
These ordinary people have a thing or two to teach those who think "openness" to the world means that we have to sit with Israeli officials and normalise relations with Israeli institutions. Globalisation and modernisation do not mean that we have to endorse American political and economic vocabulary, deal with financial organisations in New York and Davos or ignore the frictions between South and North.
These ordinary people are sending a signal to the isolationists who want to close their societies off from the modern world to protect their cultural privacy. The West is not an impenetrable monolith. Many Europeans have a solid sense of morality and the resolve to act upon it. Their moral stands may just offset the ethical collapse of the US administration. We need to reach out to them, perhaps even learn from them how to fight for our causes and stay faithful to the causes of our world.
* The writer is a researcher at the Al- Ahram Political and Strategic Studies Centre.
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