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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