October 10, 2003	Friday	Sha’aban 13, 1424

BEIRUT: A leading scholar on Arab culture has said that Zionists are influencing the United States to wage war against the Arab world with the intentions of colonizing the Middle East.

Hisham Sharabi, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., said that the Middle East is currently under “a neo-colonial attack” but insisted that the Arabs would not be vanquished.

In a lecture delivered at Balamaned University here, he said, “however, in the long run, neither the Jews nor the Americans would be able to subdue us for we are not native Americans.” He observed that around 280 million Arabs form a “massive force”.

Sharabi insisted that the greatest danger faced by Arabs is their attitude toward their own problems. “This patriarchal society is selfish and greedy,” he said. “We have to change the social and political systems in the Arab world and establish equality among people”.

Sharabi said gender equality should be given first priority, and unless it was made a goal, the Arab world would remain akin to “a car mired in mud whose tires skid continuously, but stays in place”.

Sharabi accused the Arabs for squandering money with no plans for organization or establishing an independent viable economy. He said there has been no attempt of building a weapons arsenal or establishing collective relations with the West.

“Only Iraq managed to build an arsenal, but proved to be insane when it directed it against Iran instead of using it to maintain a balance of power”.

“Jews are getting ready to take control of us and the Americans have entered the region to possess the oil resources and redraw the geo-political map of the Arab world” he added.

Sharabi cited the first UN-commissioned Arab Human Development Report, released recently, which said that the Arab world’s poor record in freedom and democracy has led to stagnation in literature, arts and sciences.

Sharabi also equated globalization with colonization.