Monday, January 28, 2008

Nostalgia and disillusionment. I had to remind myself of the grave political mistakes of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. I dug out my issues of Al-Hadaf magazine from the 1970s. In terms of political propaganda, it was really good and effective, and it makes you politically nostalgic to a previous era where people had hope, and where religion and sectarianism were marginal. But I also saw what disturbed me: two pages in each issues contained paid political propaganda from North Korea. And one of the senior editors of the magazine, `Adnan Badr, would write the most propgandistic article on the Iraqi regime: the front was getting money at the time from the Iraqi regime. A few months ago, I spoke to a guy who knew me from my college days at the American University of Beirut. I sounded politically nostalgic to that era: he reminded me that I was politically very disillusioned and bitter in those days. I said that our politically disillusionment is so deep these days, that I I am nostalgic to my past politically disillusionment. When I saw comrade Fawwaz Trabulsi in Berlin, I asked him--and he is somebody who has been around struggle since the early 1960s: was it ever as bad as it is these days? Never, he answered. But then again: you see the resolve and determination of the Palestinian people, and you can't but be politically optimistic about the future. Zionism is verily doomed.