On Being Right
about the Future
Posted on July 17, 2011 by Daniel Bart
While the continued articulation and dissemination of Aramean
identity politics remain crucial for the Aramean movement, planning
for statehood is no less crucial for ensuring liberation from Muslim
imperialism (Arabism, Islamism etc.) as was recently formally
achieved in South Sudan. One strategic problem is that the Aramean
Mount Lebanon region is so geographically small and the Aramean
state will therefore need to be planned on an urban model that draws
critical lessons from the respective historical urban developments
of Dubai, Singapore and Tel Aviv. Hence, urban planning with
residential skyscrapers so as to save open spaces will be crucial,
as preserving quite substantial green spaces is essential for
ensuring quality of life in a free Aramean state.
While the on average socio-economically high-achieving Arameans,
both in West Asia and in the state of Kerala (India) are constituted
by Crypto-Jewish ethnicities, it is for the people not only to
embrace, nurture, celebrate and take pride in Aramean peoplehood,
but it is eventually also up to the people of each Crypto-Jewish
ethnicity to determine whether they indeed desire to reclaim their
suppressed, ancient Jewish nationality. Collective ethnic
reclamation of the ancient Jewish nationality of Crypto-Jewish
ethnicities does not require conversion to Talmudic Judaism or
abandoning any presently practiced religion or held historical
belief or identity as Crypto-Jewish communities are already
completely and fully Jewish by virtue of retaining for centuries and
millennia their own distinctive Crypto-Jewish ethnicities and
therefore also Jewish nationality in crypto-form. This applies not
only to those Crypto-Jewish ethnicities that quite widely practice
Secret Judaism as do the Alawis and the Druze, but also to those who
have historically become Christian or Muslim to some degree or
another as both community types maintain initiated religious leaders
who retain fidelity to both esoteric Secret Judaism and
Crypto-Jewish ethnicity.
The relationship with sovereign Israel is thus a central factor in
realizing the Aramean vision of liberation from secular/religious
Muslim imperialism (Arabism, Islamism etc.) The Aramean people is
certainly entitled to statehood irrespective of whether the Aramean
people indeed eventually decide to formally complete the political
restoration of Aramean peoplehood and Aramean statehood with
official reclamation of their ancient, shared, multicultural Jewish
nationality. Thus, while community, ethnic and religious leaders of
various Crypto-Jewish ethnicities in West Asia and beyond are indeed
at liberty to reclaim their shared ancient Jewish nationality,
deciding so formally is eventually up to the people itself once it
is free.
An emerging and completely voluntary federal Israel based on
mutually agreed and increasingly close integration in different
fields between Israeli federal subjects comprising a union among
Israel and the various geographically significant majority
Crypto-Jewish territories, is indeed eventually dependent on the
public consent and approval of the people in these predominantly
Crypto-Jewish regions. The degree of desired integration with Israel
is thus a crucial element in planning Aramean statehood. As
Crypto-Jews (Alawis, Druze, Christians and some Muslims) constitute
a significant majority among the members of the Lebanese parliament,
they nominally hold it in their power to divide between Jordan and a
reborn Aramean state that misguided miscreation originally known as
Grand Liban.
Sectarian divisions have long served to keep Arameans divided to the
distinct benefit of Muslim imperialism. However, those who identify
as Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs would certainly be well advised
to acknowledge that there is no more suitable place to realize
statehood for this people than in the coastal Mount Lebanon region
abutting the Mediterranean Sea. This is so because Arameans in the
Mount Lebanon region constitute a demographically and geographically
very significant regional majority, something which certainly is not
presently the case in the landlocked Nineveh and Tur Abdin regions.
Surely, those who identify as Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs will
all accept this once Aramean statehood has been reestablished and
they are subsequently granted titular immigration rights to a free
Aram. Indeed, citizens of a free Aram should be at liberty to
identity however they please. However, embracing the goal of Aramean
statehood in the Aramean Mount Lebanon region even prior to
independence would certainly be quite helpful. Political pragmatism
is therefore very much needed in rallying behind the goal of
restoring Aramean statehood in the Aramean Mount Lebanon region.
Indeed, advanced and successful Israeli teaching methods for
idiomatic reclamation need to be shared with Aramean teachers so as
to permit Arameans such as Maronites who have been deprived of their
idiom to reclaim their national heritage idiom using those very
effective Israeli educational methods that are very much part of
Israel’s historical political success in bringing home the people
from exile.
Prior to Israel’s establishment, Talmudic Diaspora Jews also
suffered from severe national divisions with regard to Zionism,
while most Talmudic Jews did indeed come to support Israel once
Jewish independence had been reestablished in the land of Israel.
There were even early Zionists who advocated Jewish independence in
other places than Israel such as in Argentina, Cyprus and Uganda.
Indeed, the Aramean people find itself at a quite similar political
juncture. One key predicament is that Arameans like other
Crypto-Jewish ethnicities of West Asia quite understandably tend to
be confused with regard to national identity. The Aramean movement
therefore needs to find innovative discursive means to become more
inclusive such as by nominally recognizing other national identities
of the Aramean people as legitimate subdivisions of the broader
Aramean people, yet not in any manner condoning political forgery of
history of any kind. Indeed, this liberation should not be about who
is right about history, but rather about who is right about the
future.
The imperialist Iranian regime is not a friend of the Aramean people
in particular and certainly not of Jews and Crypto-Jews generally
and political personalities such as Michel Aoun need to end their
tragic collaboration with and political subservience to Muslim
imperialism. Unless they change their ways, history is unlikely to
forgive Arameans like Aoun who in effect collaborate with eventually
turning Grand Liban into a clerical Iranian-style Islamic republic
by means of increasingly enforcing political submission to political
Islam in Grand Liban. While it is hardly a secret that Iranian
intelligence uses sexual and other extortion to recruit agents and
collaborators in foreign countries, those like Michel Aoun who are
enslaved by Iranian intelligence need to call the bluff of Iranian
political extortion and break free of their thralldom and
subservience to Muslim imperialism. While Michel Aoun’s relationship
with Saddam Hussein in the 1980’s was quite severely misguided, so
is his later subservience to Iranian political Islam indeed
disastrous for the people of Aram in Grand Liban. Indeed, General
Aoun is one lost son who needs to return to his father’s house.
Whether directed against ethnic groups of present Grand Liban or its
individual citizens, both tolerance of and compliance with Iranian
intimidation is insufferable and need therefore cease. Confronting
and fighting Hezbollah should not be feared, rather it is not
confronting and not fighting Hezbollah that should be feared since
this leads increasingly to subservience to colonial clerical rule as
Hezbollah is so keen to admit. Lebanese Arameans, other Lebanese
Crypto-Jews and Anti-Islamist Amians of Grand Liban are indeed not
alone in this momentous and paradigmatic struggle. Failure to call
successive Iranian bluffs and indeed institute effective
counter-measures against Iran’s military occupation of much of Grand
Liban severely worsens the situation and certainly makes it more
difficult to reverse. Not only is this descent into colonial
clerical rule completely unacceptable for freedom-loving and
patriotic Amians, Arameans and other Crypto-Jewish communities of
Grand Liban, but indeed also for Jerusalem and Amman as well.
Planning Aramean statehood thus requires strategic rethinking on
quite a few strategic matters. Israel very much succeeded in
establishing its independence on its own soil thanks to its
extensive pre-state strategic planning and so does the future
reestablishment of Aramean statehood very much depend on and require
comprehensive, proactive, strategic planning on the part of the
Aramean liberation movement.
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