We the people of MENA know fully well the hypocrisy, cowardice, and ignorance of the leftists. That is patently clear in our recent history. We know that we are the immune systems of our own countries trying to protect them from the ravages of the diseased dictatorships that we have. For so long, tyrants and despots have been playing havoc with our countries. They have perpetrated horrendous crimes against us without getting anything worse than a slap on the wrist, if that, from those who wax lyrical about their commitment to human freedom and welfare. When for full four decades, Qaddafi ran amok in my country of origin, Libya, not many people around the world condemned him for the atrocious crimes he committed against the Libyan people. If they condemned him at all, it was only for his alleged acts of international terrorism, some of which have not been convincingly proven to this day. I recall watching a documentary on British TV back in the 1980s in which a former member of the Mossad stated that 90% of Qaddafi’s violence was directed at the Libyan people. Bull’s eye! And yet, very rarely, if ever, have I heard someone, from a Western country or otherwise, highlight the magnitude of the crimes committed by Qaddafi and his henchmen against Libya and its people. To this day, many people, especially the leftists, sing his praises based on the delusional idea that he was a great anti-imperialist leader who developed his country very well. He certainly did not develop the country well; on the contrary, he ruined it. Even the mayhem that has been happening in Libya since his demise can be justifiably laid at his door: For decades on end, he marginalized and vitiated state institutions to such an extent that he eventually turned Libya into a one-man show. I knew fully well long before his ouster and assassination that once he departed from this world, Libya would go into a tailspin.

A good number of other MENA countries have suffered a similar fate. I cannot recall any noticeable number of people in MENA or in Western countries publicly protesting against Saddam Hussein’s murder of thousands of Iraqi civilians, including his gut-wrenching chemical attack on Iraqi Kurds in the infamous Halabja massacre in 1988. Nor do I remember any significant public protests against Hafiz Al-Assad’s murder of tens of thousands of Syrian civilians in 1982 in what became known as the Hama massacre. Who protested in public on a considerable scale against the hundreds of thousands of Algerians who were killed in the Algerian Civil War between 1992 and 2002, the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people who were killed in Lebanon’s Civil War between 1975 and 1990, or the hundreds of thousands of people recently killed in Syria, Yemen, and Sudan? Not many at all. Maybe because none of those victims had been killed by Israel. Or, as they say, no Jews, no news. That is why all of those demented people who have recently been very active and loud in criticizing Israel for its justifiable response to the murderous terrorists of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have done precious little in condemning to anywhere near the same extent the mass murders of the innocents in those other countries mentioned above. In view of all of that, is it any wonder then that the leftists around the world, including the Western world, have been at best mute towards the ugly repression of the recent uprising by freedom-thirsty Iranians and, even worse, have dismissed anyone who stood on the side of the Iranian people against the atavistic mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran as an agent and a puppet of America and of Israel? This inane accusation of being “an agent of the West,” “an agent of the US,” “an agent of Israel,” “an imperialist agent,” and “an agent of the colonialists” is something that many oppressors have been consistently using for almost a century now: In the USSR, in China, in North Korea, in other parts of Asia, in MENA, in sub-Saharan Africa, and in Latin America. Stalin used it; Mao used it; Saddam Hussein used it; Nasser used it; Qaddafi used it; Assad used it; Mugabe used it; Idi Amin used it; Castro used it; Ho Chi Minh used it; Pol Pot used it; Osama bin Laden used it. It is particularly instructive that the Ayatollahs have now used that same accusation by Western leftists against the freedom fighters of Iran to try and delegitimize their revolt.

In his book Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess asks the question, not cottoned onto by most of his readers or those who watched the film, whether it would be better to control societies by force- very much like a clockwork- and thereby minimize the number of crimes in those particular societies, or whether it would be better to let societies grow freely- as you would an orange- and accept the rise in the number of crimes in those societies as the price for that freedom. His sympathy seems to lie with the latter. Perhaps. On the other hand, it is another kettle of fish to give people extensive freedoms on the assumption that they are rational and that a collective, democratic choice cannot go wrong. This is not borne out by the available evidence. People as a whole can definitely go wrong, very wrong. This problem has troubled thinkers since the beginning of civilization. In his play The Knights, Aristophanes mocks the idea of democracy where every Tom, Dick, and Harry is given the vote to determine the political fate of a nation. That echoes the opinion allegedly expressed by Einstein to the effect that politics is more difficult to understand than physics. Yet, countless people who are untrained and ignorant of the intricacies of political science appear to pretend that they know so much about it when, in fact, they do not. They express their opinions with the total confidence of an ignoramus, something which easily lays them open to exploitation by the vile manipulators of vulnerable and cocksure human beings. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that numerous people throughout the whole world, including the Western world, may accept with alacrity some of the most arrant nonsense that has ever been uttered about popular uprisings, the Western world, or Israel.

At this juncture, one is tempted to reflect upon one of the most bizarre opinions that one has come across time and time again and which seems to be the ultimate epitome of the irrationality of the hordes of the leftists and wokers, namely the claim that they have nothing whatsoever against the Jews, but that they are only opposed to the existence of the State of Israel. Nothing more. One cannot help but think that that would be like saying to someone, “I support your right to live a healthy life, but I am totally opposed to your right to have an immune system.”

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Husam Dughman is a Libyan Canadian political scientist, religious thinker, linguist, and an expert on immigrants and refugees. He received his formal education in Libya and the UK. Mr. Dughman later worked as a university professor of political science in Libya. Due to confrontations with the Qaddafi regime, he resigned from his university position and subsequently worked in legal translation. Mr. Dughman has been working with new immigrant and refugee services in both Canada and the US since 2006.

Husam Dughman has published a book entitled Tête-à-tête with Muhammad. He has also written numerous articles on politics and religion. He has just completed the full manuscript of a book which he hopes to have published in the near future. The new book is an in-depth examination of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and the non-religious school of thought.