If the culture represents the first line of defense on Palestine and its identity after a series of political failures, hence the importance of supporting the creators who make fun of their works to revive the cultural scene, confront attempts to Judaize the Holy City, focus on its Arab -Islamic identity, and reveal the plans of the occupier in his policy of blurring its identity.
From this standpoint, the creator Mohamed Abdel -Fattah Halaqawi won the first place for the Arab Enlightenment Award and the criticism of the Orientalist Thought for its author “Arrow and the Department: Orientalism and the Zionist movement … from the idea to the state”, which was granted by the Palestine International Foundation in its 12th session last May.
The author included a group of issues, such as the theoretical framework of Orientalism and the Zionist movement, the imperial West between the stakes of the past and the possibilities of the future, and Israeli Orientalism, the most prominent Jewish Orientalists and their scientific production, and the institutions and centers of scientific research related to Israeli Orientalism, and to provide the forward -looking vision of the future of the Palestine issue in the light of the relationship between Orientalism and the Zionist movement.
In an interview with Al -Jazeera Net, Mohamed Abdel -Fattah Halaqawi, winner of the Edward Said Award in Enlightenment and Criticism of Orientalist Thought, said: “The book seeks to interact and see the relationship between the occupation historically, cognitively, politically and morally, and the Jewish issue in the European West, and the need to study what Western Orientalist discourse and its connections to the Zionist movement, where the Western Orientalist discourse was established on the essential idea that is the essential idea The Palestinian, and that Palestine is a land without a people and without a cultural history, and thus the identification between the Western and Zionist Orientalist discourse has moved to the degree of slurring and fusion, as this occupation went away in its caves and dedicated it to the alphabet of hatred, exclusion and extermination against the Palestinian people and their rights.
According to his opinion, the Zionist settlement colonial discourse in Palestine is based on the narrative of Western Orientalism, as it devoted the Zionists to silence, abolish, or kidnap Palestinian history, and remove the Palestinian person from his heritage, heritage and land, in the process of cultural, historical and political cleansing that is no less in its harm than the ethnic cleansing that the occupation practiced a lot.
There is no doubt that the Zionist discourse has been leaning on a central saying, which is that the occupation entity in Palestine is the truth and the only democratic and liberal image in the Arab region, and it emerged from these representations that the image of the Zionist entity became an ideological simulation of the city of “New Rome”, which is surrounded by “barbarians”, and they are the Palestinian and Arab people.
Edward Said and veto the Western statements
Halaqawi believes that the thinker of the thinker and critic Edward Said on the methods of Orientalism is included in the paths of the development of his thought in a dialectical or strict manner, and these cognitive and historical elements were not derived from the West alone, but the intellectual roots, civilized experience, Arab culture, and national affiliation contributed to developing Edward Said methodology.
Where his intellectual creativity was not a pure development in the level of meaning and pronunciation, but rather a cognitive openness that has no limits, and a tight building with successive breaks that possess a person with his height and hold his breath because of the continuous rhythm and scientific methodology that he gives the issues he studies.
And when the two met: Edward Said and Orientalism, in a real and methodological way, the distance between the same scholar, the thinker and the intellectual, and the same studied that is dominated by transcendence and suspicion, and the abolition of the other, exclusion, marginalization, control and domination.
His speech continues to say that the post -colonial speech and its contents, with Edward Said’s intellectual contributions, have become a strict critical trend that was established on the veto of Western statements and the deadly stereotype, up to the elevation of the intellectual project of this thinker, who represented an institution with his great efforts, to the stage of human criticism and opposing the forms of Western colonial center and the system of blurring the identities of the other.
Jerusalem is a symbol of the Palestinian presence
As for the city of Jerusalem, it stands out in most of its lectures and articles, but it shines in its memoirs “outside the place”, where the city is attended by the visions of the child, Edward, and he calls it the sanctity of Palestine, which is represented in the student, al -Katmuqmuqmuqmuh, al -Baqa and al -Tahta that the Palestinians inhabited.
That is, he sees it as a city with a Palestinian identity, so Jerusalem in Edward Said’s thoughts fuse between man and place, and it is the symbol of existence and Palestinian presence in the collective memory, although it was later subjected to a complete theft of its human being, location and Palestinian identity.
Why did the orientalists norm?
But why did the orientalists nurture? Halikawi explains that some Western researchers, especially those with interest related to Orientalism, sought to break the image and thought of Edward Said, because what he did from criticism was a challenge to the system of knowledge, cultural and ideological construction that the West has built over centuries, and above the bodies of millions of people whose country was colonized and looted their wealth, languages and cultures.
Edward Said pursued his research in Orientalism the direction of resistance to colonialism, tyranny, cancellation, control and domination, and represented in giving him this that Orientalism is an intellectual method that was based on an ontological and epistemological discrimination between East and West, and a Western style to control the East and possess sovereignty over it.
He also sought – and the hadith of Jallawi – to control the concept of Orientalism as the West’s study of the East as a means of domination, and therefore it is not without political, ideological and cultural destinations, and has become a cultural overthrow of a political belief in the East.
The Saudi criticism of Orientalism has become a model for revealing its backlines, and transformed the Western statements into views subject to scientific and methodological trial.
Why is Islam spread?
Many orientalists tried to engage in answering the most prominent question regarding Islam: Why does Islam spread and come out after every defeat again? Rather, it is increased by unexpected categories? Indeed, some orientalists have written the following title: “The attractiveness of Islam”, which is Maxim Rodinson.
The Holy Qur’an and the Arabic language also had the largest roles in influencing these people and their visions on Islam and Arab culture and the general heritage associated with them. The people of Orientalism continued to search for the attractiveness of Islam until today without recognizing what they found.
Halaqawi believes that the freedom and dignity of man, the values of justice and equality, and the fight against cancellation and tyranny, represented the most prominent challenges of Islam and Arab culture in the face of the West. But they are challenges that reveal the falsehood of the West’s claim of civilization and humanity, and for this this gravity has been always rejected.
Orientalism and preaching
In his response to a question, Halaqawi said: The Church was in the West and its leaders from the leadership with leadership in going to the east and caring for it, and for this it was the forefront of the orientalists from the clergy and priests. Consequently, there is a resort between Orientalism and preaching, and the interest between them is a grouping or separation between the two fields.
But the saying that Orientalism is the other side of preaching that includes an arbitrary judgment that needs evidence, proofs and studies, but this did not prevent the employment, exploitation or exclusion of one for the other.
But what about the responsibility of the Arab elite towards Jerusalem? Halaqawi reported that there is a varied cultural activity within the city, but marginalization and absence chasing those in charge of the cultural movement. However, the question can be more painful when we talk about the role of the Arab and Islamic educated elite towards the Holy City, which needs more awareness, support and confirmation, and confronting Judaization and blurring.
The intellectual must be concerned with research topics related to the city of Jerusalem, because a city the size of Jerusalem is His Holiness, blessing and importance that deserves to know more about it, and to focus our scientific efforts in practical practical research, with academic scientific bodies holding scientific conferences concerned with the city of Jerusalem and all the issues and problems related to it.
Scientific bodies and Arab ministries of education must also be invited to prepare a study program that is presented to the current generations of children and youth, who hardly know anything about the city of Beit Al -Maqdis and the programmed and planned Judaization, while submitting proposals for the completion and development of media programs for various Arab media, following the settlement, Judaization and killing of humans, place, heritage, trees and libraries.
Where are our projects for renaissance?
Halikaoui said that the presence of the overwhelming and dominant Western “other”, which heralds his culture, values, philosophy and beliefs as absolute rightness and way of salvation, through huge and charming media capabilities that control the human mind and life, and a technical production that governs his movement and needs, requires reorganization and understanding of the “self”, and a lot of review and criticism to get out of the dark tunnel in which we live.
According to his opinion, the issue of how to get to know the “other” and communicate with his cognitive formulation, his civilized experience and his characteristics remain a thorny issue in modern Arab and Islamic thought, where the process of controlling the relationship with the “other”, whose radiation is almost applied to all horizons in the world, is the summit of the end that the world of ideas in our Arab society.
And the legitimate question: Where are our projects for renaissance in the third millennium? This does not mean canceling or rejecting our previous reform attempts, but rather we are in a new stage that has its implications, conditions, needs, components, challenges and new horizons.
The renaissance, as I see, starts from the stage of self -criticism, which needs self -diagnosis and a real return to the self. Because the West’s reading is conscious through the surprise project, in parallel with the presentation of the Arab civilized project, it has become a necessity confirmed by the nature of the times. This is achieved by possessing the corner of science and the methodology that confirm the clear premises, accurate goals, and effective means.
How the student outperformed his teacher!
The Zionist project in its roots and basic environment was a Western European project before it was a Jew. And had it not been for its European Christian roots and its incursion to the project of imperial domination in the second half of the 19th century, the Zionist movement would now be merely another gathering such as the multiple gatherings and sects among the global Jewish body.
As for the essence of the paradox between Western colonialism and the Zionist movement, the student surpassed his teacher in the matter of canceling the other and settlement colonialism. While the Western colonial thought transformed the world into a colonial material, its employment and its ambitions, as happened in the United States of America that the Europeans eliminated their indigenous population, it was crystallized in the light of that Zionist thought that deepened and deepened in pure Western contexts, but it has become more imperialist and racist.
The Zionist occupation announced from its beginnings in Palestine – the hadith of Jallawi – that its goal is to empty that land from its people and show it with the image of “empty land”, and these are colonial practices, not through the exploitation of the population, but rather a process of emptying and converting those who remain the remaining hands.
Hence the Zionists went to seize the Palestinian territories and purify them ethnically, and they sought to invent a system of indigenous emanating from a settlement colonial system.
He concluded his speech by certainly that Zionism is the Western colonial solution of the Jewish issue. After its exacerbation, solutions aimed at the “modernization” of the Jews and Judaism were presented, based on the fact that the crisis of Jews and Judaism resulted from their economic and civilizational association with the prevailing feudal society, and that they are functional groups without function.
Therefore, the Zionist leaders devoted the idea of transferring the Jewish human surplus from Europe out of it, and they also perpetuated the transcript against the Palestinian people out of their land, and formed a base for Western colonialism.