Samir El-Youssef

“ Anyone with a token knowledge of the Levant knows that the Levant is of both, conflict and culture; it is only that the people of the Levant need to be reminded that theirs is a land of great culture, and that they need pay more attention to it. ”

“ Good art for me is that which combines pleasure with education, or simply an intelligent joke that makes one laugh and think and then laugh again. The chance to forget here is a chance to think, to discover something else, or something different, or at least to recognise the significance of something that one might have overlooked or dismissed. ”

“ This makes one imagine communities in the Middle East doing nothing all day long except digging trenches.
That is not true! The Levant is no poorer a place than any other in the culture of peace. But what has been lacking in the Levant is actually the imagination of peace; people for a long time have been living in one state of conflict or another; or a state of no peace and no war, that they have no idea how the world might look like without war or the expectation of conflict and violence. ”

“ Because imagination has failed to keep up with reality.
Imagination is meant to precede reality and to provide examples, models, and images of how the new reality, the world in a state of peace, would look like. ”

“ Indeed, what better way to resist unremitting “resistance” than to encourage forgetfulness?
But let me first emphasize two points: First, that the attitude of suspicion vis-­à-vis the “other” is peculiar to politics, or anything that is determined through politics. ”

“ The trauma of the dark past is generated in deep fear and suspicion verging on paranoia. Accordingly the “other” is seen as someone who has no other wish and intention but that of defeating us, destroying us. ”

“ Whatever statement and move the “other” makes is often seen as part of a wider, sophisticated, devious plot; an endless conspiracy within which whatever is prefigured years earlier is bound to take place. ”

“ In this context, any concession made, no matter how small and insignificant, is often considered the first of many other greater concessions to follow, leading eventually to the destruction of those surrendering to compromise. ”