The Lebanese Peace
Movement Manifesto:
Toward A New Vision
for Peace in the Middle East
by
Rami E. Kremesti M.Sc.
2005
I
- The Manifesto:
"I
believe that I, and you, and the peoples and the
Let
the goal be Peace. Peace makes sense spiritually and it is cash in the hand...
I will expound this idea more later.
After
this movement takes root, the West will fear us no more and we will not fear
their military might either because they will become our friends. The West will
cry bitter tears of repentance when it realizes it had negatively stereotyped
the Arab from its position of power and intellectual racism (confer Edward
Said's Orientalism)
and the Arab will undergo a process of self-improvement when he looks at
himself through the eyes of the critical Orientalist.
The
Oriental will not feel inferior any more and might even be cured of his
schizophrenia and identity crisis which is brought about by a false inferiority
and "vanquished" complex and a symptomatic adoption of the West's
moral code of might and material wealth. May be more Orientals will find their
true calling more as poets, artists, musicians, teachers and prophets rather
than neurotic money mongers which is one of the problems at the root of
political corruption in the Middle East.
May
be Orient and Occident will see in the "Other" what they lack, what
they need and thus develop spiritually, mentally, socially and politically
until that final ecstatic time when each will acquire the positive qualities of
the other and then opposites will become one! This idea I have adopted from
Edward Said's seminal book "Orientalism"
and it is the brain-child of one of the French Orientalists that he studies.
May
be this will precipitate the Biblical Millennial Peace: Babylon will not be
viewed as the Whore any more as the religious right-wing, neo-con freaks at TBN like to believe and the Arab
will not label the Westerner as the "Great Satan"...
This
will certainly put an end to racism...
As
a consequence of this movement, this renaissance, the West's fear will
disappear and so will the need for their mad military spending (half the
world's military spending is done in the
Now
for starters, I would like to see a peace treaty signed between
And
now back to the idea that peace is cash in the hand that I mentioned earlier, I
learned recently from an Israeli friend of mine - with whom I had the
pleasure of going on a road trip from Los Angeles to Washington, DC on November
2, US election day - that Israel has no mountains, so normalizing
relations between Lebanon and Israel would definitely be a boost to the Lebanese
ski sector as well as the tourism sector because the Israelis don't have the
Roman remains that we also have. I would also love to see our neighbor
There
is a strong peace-loving left wing in Israel, let us reach out to them and this
way pull the rug from underneath the ultra-racist Zionist right wing minority
(new political strategic thinking, Arab politicians listen up and let go of
your stubborn, machismo confrontationalism). And I forgot to mention, let us,
Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Human Beings, turn our ear to the meekness of
Islam, The Other Cheek of
Islam, as I call it, which is the Sufi vision expressed most
beautifully through the poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, which I am currently
translating into popular, accessible Arabic. The
Remember
the saying from the Bible:
"The
Meek Shall Inherit the Earth" Psalms
37:11
Join
the second largest (and growing) super-power in the world, to quote the words
of American poet Blaise Bonpane: The Peace Movement.
Peace.
"
Rami E. Kremesti BS, MS
Founder,
Lebanese Peace Movement
Last
updated
II - Plan of Action
The
only way to fight political corruption and backwardness on the ground is by
creating political and cultural think and soul tanks in
The
counterpart to illuminating the mind of a corrupt politician is to depose him.
This can be accomplished by creating an electoral force of young, forward and
idealistic individuals. Straight-shooting representatives of the populace can
be put in places of political power by an honest electoral force.
The
third tool is to empower the legal system so that it can hold politicians who
misuse their power for personal ends accountable.
The
fourth NGO tool is to create an online information tool that will “black list”
the names of corrupt politicians. The concomitant website will be run by a
technological, informed elite committee that will be the vanguard of the
people. The public contact info of the involved politicians will be
disseminated to create a direct democratic check force.
The Lebanese abroad number in the tens of
millions. Their accomplishments are impressive in all walks of
life and these have been documented by websites like amalid.com’s
Prominent
Lebanese Americans. We need to invite these people, the ideas, art, and
economic force that they represent, to
One
strategy to this end would be to appoint prominent expatriate, trustworthy
businessmen in government economic positions. Of course the cornerstone for
opening this clogged channel of investment would be an economic infrastructure
that is built on trust and accountability, checks and measures.
The
Lebanese purport to be very politically savvy. I believe that this statement is
very arguable. During my stay in the
Two
names to my mind should become the gospel of a new political ethos in the
I was devastated to
find out that most of the educated youth in
I believe that once
this dirty laundry is aired, it will pressure the West to self-examine and
abandon any neo-colonial ambitions in the
In poetry, the Sufi
vision of Jalaluddin Rumi will be the cornerstone of a widespread national reconciliation movement. To me, Sufism
represents the Other Cheek of Islam. Muslims need to be educated about
this side of Islam and the West needs to discover that there is, and has been
all along, that moderate voice in Islam.
The conciliatory poems of Rumi can be found online at:
http://kremesti.com/La_Dolce_Vita/rumi.html
Rami E. Cremesti
BS, MS
Founder
Lebanese Peace
Movement
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email:
On
the Internet: