I am no historian, but those who are ought to be excited these days. They are witnessing a new phenomenon unparalleled in history. They will be the first to chronicle the absolute paralysis of 200 million otherwise hot-blooded people.

This is unlike the fall of Baghdad to the Moguls. This is no lamentable loss of Al Andalus. The peculiar situation of the Arabs today is that a whole nation has died en masse while it is still breathing – and having a jolly good time, for that matter.

Have we been there before? I don’t think so. The Arab Israeli wars usually lasted for a few hours or days. The siege of Beirut only lasted three months. But this is the longest and fiercest war of extermination to which the Palestinians have been subjected so far.

I am not asking for too much. Forget about Arab solidarity. Forget about common history or religion. Let’s, for the sake of reality, screw all that. Wouldn’t normal political entities at least try to get together with a meaningful reaction if such atrocities were perpetrated against total foreigners at their doorsteps? The Christian Europeans, for heaven’s sake, couldn’t ignore the massacres of Muslims at their doorsteps in Bosnia and Kosovo and had to do something about it, despite the lack of political, historical or cultural affinity with the victims. The mere proximity of the location of the carnage meant that the bloodbath could not be ignored for too long.

But the total impotence of the Arabs is indeed without equal in modern or ancient history. The Arab leaders met in Amman last year in response to the massacres in Palestine, huffed and puffed, and, in a surreal scene out of a sick movie, went back home to business as usual.

Now they want to meet again. For God’s sake, WHY? No one is buying it this time, and no one ever did. They should save themselves the embarrassment and pack it in.

These are very implausible times; it really feels like a science fiction or horror movie. It is not a natural situation for so many Arab states with so much human and financial resources to be cowed into their first-class spectator seats to watch the grim show while not being able to lift a finger to save one Palestinian life.

In fact, it is such an unbelievable situation that a new name for this era has to be invented by the lucky historians I talked about. The “dark ages” is passé. I would suggest the “filthy ages”, the “shameful ages”, the “dishonourable ages”… something along those lines.

Or maybe also, like “the artist formerly known as Prince,” the Arabs should just drop their name and replace it with a symbol, out of humiliation and disgrace. A symbol of someone shooting himself, or perhaps just someone giving himself the finger would be more appropriate.

May God have mercy on the “people formerly known as the Arabs” and bless their departed souls.

Tags: pan-arabism, philosophy, politics