I WENT with a French friend of mine the other day to explore a new restaurant in one of the burgeoning new projects in glittery Dubai. The diner offers three choices of Arabian cuisine: Lebanese, Egyptian and Moroccan. The chef explained to my French buddy the various kinds of food on the menu, but he was particularly vehement when it came to Egyptian food, as he tried to convince my friend that it was the best. “Are you Egyptian?” my friend jokingly asked the zealous chef. The chef's answer to that was as shocking as it was stupid. “I'd rather kill myself than be an Egyptian.” That was enough to ruin our meal. A week earlier, my friend was discussing the situation in Lebanon with an Egyptian young man. He was just as shocked when the guy told him he would rather die than be Lebanese. My friend asked me: why do Arabs hate each other so much? I truly had no idea how I should answer that. I went to an Arabian cafe in Washington D. C. a few years back. For some reason that I could never figure out, the owner kept insisting that I couldn't be from a Gulf country. He seemed to have no shortage of bad names and derogatory adjectives to throw at his Gulf brethren and Saudis in particular. After I got tired trying to convince him that his attitude was a shame, that generalization would be wrong, and that we all share one culture, one language and one common history – and whatever else is there in our staple Arab rhetoric – I finally got up and left the cafe in protest at the owner's vulgar, rude racism. When he finally realized I was really a Saudi, he followed me to my car to apologize, but added insult to injury. “Hey, I really didn't think you were a Saudi,” he said. Then he made it even worse. “You're not like other Saudis, because you're a polite, respectable person,” he told me. Unfortunately, there's a lot of that going on everyday, in one way or the other. If we drew a map of Arab hatred, we'd be shocked at where we stand. It would appear that all the tussles and skirmishes among Arab politicians have directly resulted in their peoples hating each other's guts, so much so that even after the leaders kiss and make up, Arab peoples remain prisoners of the zeitgeist of hatred spewed out by every Arab country's official propaganda machine. That's why I often ask those Arabs who call for intensive spinning efforts to improve the image of Arabs abroad just how they expect that to work out. How can we possibly have the temerity to demand the world to treat us with respect when we have no self-respect ourselves, and make a business out of hating each other? How can we possibly change our image among foreigners when we do exactly nothing to change that image in the minds of our brethren-in-blood, history and homeland? When my French friend asked me again why we hate each other, for some reason I allowed my pride to get the better of me, so I threw his question right back at him, thinking that that would make him stop asking: why did Europeans fight each other for decades and shed so much blood, with signs of hatred on the Continent still visible to this day? What I did was the typical Arab behavior: to answer an embarrassing question with another, even more abrasive one. So, a piece of advice: if someone asks you about the situation of Arab women today, you'd better ask him how women in America lived 200 years ago. That said, my French friend was totally cool about it. Unlike many Arabs, he didn't deny Europe's bloody history, and he never threw a question back at me. Instead, he explained to me that his question was out of his conviction that even though Arabs have so much in common – in language, history and common cultural roots – they still choose to stay hostile and spiteful towards each other. “Why?” he asked. Good question. Unlike us, the Europeans have managed to bury all their differences and get along with each other, after they realized that the only way to survive is to live with each other and cooperate, all with mutual respect. With time, whatever barriers separated them withered away, even though there remain fundamental differences that do not stand in the way of coexistence. Italy, for instance, still strongly adheres to its unique culture and history, but Italian's don't let that stand in the way of confidently dealing with Germans, Frenchmen or Spaniards. They deal with each other on a basis of mutual interests and a common vision of the challenges and dangers their common future holds. Needless to say, what Arabs have in common today, their culture, language, common interests and threats, should be far greater than what the Europeans ever had in common. The Europeans were successful only after they threw their past heritage of war and conflict behind their backs and realized what challenges they have to deal with on going forward. There is always a difference between those who are trapped in the past and those who are in a race with time for the future. To this day, the only thing the Arab culture has a knack for is past vengeances and revenge. Tribes whose ancestors still couldn't avenge the slaying of their grandfather by his cousin 450 years ago still threaten to take revenge today and tomorrow. But the same tribe seems to forget that foreign invaders killed half of it just a hundred years ago, or at least told the story as one of the tribe's “heroism.” So why do Arabs hate each other? Why do they envy each other? Why can't they just forgive each other? In this culture of hatred, the chef is the same as many Arab intellectuals and politicians and other elites. The only difference is the degree of hatred and the way it is expressed. And Lebanon's tragedy is a microcosm of the comprehensive Arab misery. If we were to analyze the essence of the age-old crisis in Lebanon – regardless of the well-established sectarian political experience – we would inevitably arrive at the same conclusion: the universal animosity among Arabs and the lack of a culture of tolerance are the two basic reasons of our crises in Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world. Unfortunately, the culture of hatred still thrives on the stupidities of politicians and the child's play of their lackeys in the media, who use unjust generalizations, abrasive insults and subtle provocation. At the mere sight of a fresh political crisis, all the Arab mental illnesses suddenly pop up like mushrooms as Arabs practice the pastime of hating themselves and each other. So what's the solution? We Arabs have to choose. Either we are Arabs who respect (but not necessarily like) each other and get along with each other, each in their business or government, sharing an enlightened vision for the future's challenges and opportunities for going forward. Or we can stay like sheep, ramming each other and chopping each other's heads off in the desert, while wolves hover around and watch, and wait until the right moment comes to swallow us as a whole. When will we ever learn? – AL
