Dear Fellow Arab Students,

Accept my heartful greetings and apology for not being here with you in person. But I hope you a successful meeting, and the patience to listen for few minutes, to my thoughts on the past, present and future of the Nation.

In August 1963, i.e. 40 years ago, I attended my first Arab Students Convention. It was in Forte Collins Colorado. There were nearly 1000 of us, representing some 10 percent of the total Arab student population in the U.S. and Canada. The scene was quite festive, with tremendous passion, energy and enthusiasm. The convention opened with the Pan Arab anthem, Nahnu al-shabab lana al-ghadou, we Arab Youth, to whom the future belongs, followed by messages from Arab heads of state, from Morocco to Kuwait. We were taken quite seriously by them in those years, as if these leaders truly believed that the “Future belonged to us (Arab Youth)”. Two years later, I was elected to the Presidency of our robust Organization of Arab Students (OAS) in North America. We continued to grow in number, strength, organizational sophistication, enthusiasm and political skills. Much of what was happening on American campuses in those years hightened our consciousness – the civil rights, the anti-war and the women movements.

But paramount on our minds were still the issues, concerns, aspirations, and dreams of the Arab Homeland, and the Arab Nations. Palestine continued to consume much of our attention and energy. We truly believed that it could be liberated from the Zionists and restored to its rightful owners. Arab unity, we believed was the key to that liberation. We equally believed that “socialism” is the key to social justice, and rapid economic development. We had our share of infighting. We quarreled on who can best lead the Nation to its glorious destiny – Nasser, the Baathi Party, or the Muslim Brotherhood.

We were avid followers and supporters of all liberation movements – from Cuba to Vietnam, via Angola and South Africa. Good part of our time was spent drafting solidarity statements with all these movements.

We critiqued our own governments for their slow march toward Arab Unity, the liberation of Palestine, and the institution of social justice. Obviously we took full advantage of the space of freedom available to us in North America.

Then came the 1967 earthquake. Our Arab armies were badly defeated in six days. We were deeply humiliated as individuals and as a nation. Many of us have not recovered from it till this day. The scars were so visible and the stigma so pervasive. No single Arab of my generation at home or abroad could escape the trauma of June 5 of 67, or its long aftermath.

As students at the time, and later as young professionals, we pondered the new calamity. Some of us expressed their anger and frustration in inflammatory condemnations of the West, Israel and Arab rulers. Others turned off completely from Arab affairs and decided to stay abroad. I was among the few who joined the ranks of the Palestinian resistance, which seemed at the time to be the only ray of hope in an otherwise dark Arab sky.

Black September (1970) shortened our stay with the resistance in Jordan. It was another Arab defeat no less disastrous than that of 1967. We came back to the U.S. and reported to an Arab students gathering like yours, in Long Beach and California (20th OAS Annual Convention).

The great Arab historian Qustantine Zuraiq issued a book after every one of these Arab defeats: 1948, 1967, 1970, 1991. Had he remained alive, he would have issued one more about the 2003 war in Iraq. In his first 1948, Droos al Nakbah (lessons of the Calamity), Zuraiq has lamented the absence of “rationality” and “democracy” in the Arab homeland. He contended that it is this absence which explains the absence of all other desirables in our lives – modernity, accountability, respect of human rights, social and political freedoms.

Two successive generations of Arab intellectuals, activists, and rulers failed to heed Zuraiq’s message, hence failed in nearly all other major battles since the first Nakbah. To be sure, we have had several promising starts; occasionally brilliant leaders; and always enough Valliant youngsters willing to sacrifice their lives for the “Cause” and the “Nation”. We even had on one occasion fabulous oil wealth. But all of these have not blossomed into anything big enough to deliver victory; or even put us on the steady sustainable economic development. This was the stark conclusion of the 2002 Arab Human Development Report (AHDR).

As you all may have read, the biggest deficits, responsible for the Arab lag behind all other world regions are those of freedom, democracy, gender equality, and the acquisition of knowledge and technology. It is the democracy deficit that I wish to call on you to join with the few of us back home to rectify. Yes, it was exactly 21 years ago, i.e. mid-way in my activist journey, that some 100 of us resolved to dedicate the rest of our lives to the cause of democracy and human rights in the Arab Homeland. Some of us were former Nasserites, Baathists, Marxists, and Muslim Brothers. But despite these diverse, even mutually hostile ideological backgrounds, we arrived at the same conclusion that the AHDR would arrive at twenty years later. The moment of truth came to those 100 Arab activists during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut. Not only did all Arab Capitals fail to respond to the new Israeli onslaught even with firing one bullet in self-defense of one of their own capitals, or of the beleaguered PLO brothers, but also wouldn’t allow us to protest publicly. When some of us went ahead and organized a peaceful demonstration out of Al-Azhar Mosque after a Friday prayer, we were brutally beaten and dispersed. Something similar occurred with like-minded protesters in other Arab Capitals. To compound the pain, the only public Arab demonstration allowed at the time was in the Algerian Capital not over the fall of Beirut, but to protest the way a Belgian referee’s unfair ruling vis-à-vis the Algerian football team in the Mondiale (World Cup) that year (1982). And to compound the irony, a half million Israeli demonstrators marched in the street of Tel Aviv protesting the aggression of their own government against Lebanon.

That moment of truth was the trigger for the twin birth of the Arab Human Rights Organization (AHRO) and the Arab Democracy Movement (ADM). Another irony at the time was the refusal of all Arab government to grant the organizers a permit to convene the founding meeting in any of their respectable capitals. So we all went to Limasol (Cyprus) for our first meeting.

Twenty years later, twenty seven associates and I were incarcerated because of our continued struggle for democracy and human rights. But three-year ordeal in-and-out of prisons and courts ended with an acquittal for my associates and me of all charges by Egypt highest Court of Cassation. It was a small victory for us on the long arduous march of Arab democracy. Despite my old age and ailing health, I am more determined than ever to continue the struggle started as an Arab nationalist activist in the OAS at Forte Collins, some forty years ago. There were many wrong turns and dead-ends in that long march – in Cairo, Algiers, Beirut, Amman, and Baghdad. I lived, worked and enlisted in various promising adventures in all these Arab Capitals. I believed many of our leaders who preached, promised, and sold us dreams, only to discover their falsity or suffer their turning into nightmares. None of these leaders in power preached or promised democracy, although it is the only authentic dream. It is authentic because it is not a magical slight of hand by leaders, but the arduous work of people.

Forty years of activism and nearing the end of a life-long journey, I urge and hope for the new Arab generations, especially those among them who are educated and live in open democratic societies, never to trade off democracy and human rights for any other value no matter how noble or desirable. Two generations had gone these routs. They were willing to trade democracy off, sometimes for Arab Unity, sometimes for the liberation of Palestine, other times for social justice, or rapid development. We did not get Arab Unity, Palestine, social justice, or even development for that trade off. But we got despotic rulers who relentlessly hang on to absolute power. And as you know, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So do not make that mistake again. Stand by democracy and for democracy. It is our only hope for Arab salvation. God bless our tormented Nation and bless you all.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim

Cairo: October 6, 2003