A Ray of Hope – or at least sanity

points us to a MEMRI translation of a column by liberal Tunisian columnist Al-‘Afif Al-Akhdhar in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat. A brief exerpt:

The Palestinian ‘Failure Neurosis’
“What caused these leaders, primarily the Palestinians among them, to lead their peoples to perdition?
[I believe] it is the ‘Failure Neurosis’ that compelled them to do everything within their power to punish themselves and their peoples with failure where success was certain. Their ‘Failure Neurosis’ has several symptoms:
Conceptual Stagnation, making them incapable – at every stage of the struggle – of reading the regional and international balance of powers, and incapable of drawing the necessary conclusions, so as to make a political and military decision in keeping with the situation…
Political Backwardness, preventing them from changing their means of struggle, way of thought, and goals which are not compatible with the political changes…
The Mania of the Armed Struggle, with all its terrible ramifications – transforming the armed struggle from a means serving the ultimate goal of a viable Palestinian state into a goal in and of itself…
Inability to Define the National Interest, Are we talking about the liberation of Mandatory Palestine, or about regaining what can be salvaged of the Palestine occupied [by Israel] in the 1967 war? What are the optimal means of armed struggle for actualizing one of these two options…
Fiinally, a [last] symptom of the ‘Failure Neurosis,’ which forces these Arab leaders to act without knowing what their enemies want from them, is the Prohibition on Free Internal Discussion and Moderate Discourse – which usually arise from a serious analysis of the data. The verbal radicalism sweeping our culture and the emotionally charged words … fills the vacuum created by the lack of analysis and the vacuity of thought…”

Wow. Like, what he said.