The moral technologist

I began working in technology not for money or notoriety, but in pursuit of human progress. Technology was a conduit for that change. And while the “issue of the day” may often present itself as trendy, leftist, or mob-like, the issue of Palestine is a grand exception. It is a true litmus test for us in our pursuit of the progress of humanity.

I have never understood why Western nations, particularly the US and Canada, have stood to gain from the sadism of Zionism, which seeks the capitulation and annihilation of Palestine and its people. In classrooms, I was taught that the US and Canada were great nations and world leaders. Sadly, watching the global order over the past twenty years has shown me otherwise.

When we were coming up in the technology scene, there was a sort of implied moral neutrality one was expected to have. In retrospect, this was deeply erroneous. I now know better: moral neutrality is a lie at best, a form of self-deception under the guise of objectivity. Life is short, and I would rather spend the rest of my time on earth being honest, vocal, and principled in my views, no matter the cost.

It is no secret that Muslims, Arabs, or really anyone who dares to share an opinion contrary to the Western state narrative is subject to punishment, penalization, scrutiny, blackmail, deportation. For our brothers and sisters in Palestine who dare stand up, the consequence is the prospect of death. It is a reality I cannot truly compute, and an admission that our plight is still incredibly privileged compared to the ground reality.

As I start my own startup, I want there to be no ambiguity about my views. It must be clear that technology is in and of itself a moral good, and that the act of a technologist is intrinsically a moral act. As such, it follows naturally and logically that Palestine, as a people, deserve the right of self-determination: to become a nation-state, to control their own destiny without foreign interference or intervention.

As a Muslim, I have the utmost respect, admiration, and sense of brotherhood with Jews and Christians. Islam is an Abrahamic faith, like Christianity and Judaism. But in good moral and rational conscience, I cannot accept the aims and actions of Zionism, which from its beginnings in the early twentieth century was designed to remove and displace Palestinians. These are people who have shared this land with Jews and Christians for centuries.

To be a moral technologist is not to bend to the issue of the day, nor to be partisan to left or right. It is to take an objective, morally universal stance. Philosophically, it is elementary: any ideology that seeks the preservation of its own existence through the elimination of another is immoral.

The question I pose to my fellow technologists is this: why must your vision of the future of technology include the absence of Palestine and the capitulation of the Palestinian people to Zionist will?

The Western Zionist feigning of victimhood is waning and fading. For what is worse than constantly being the target of modern weaponry?

I remember as a student learning about the Holocaust, feeling great pain and empathy for the plight of the Jewish people. As we were taught in Canadian schools: “never again.” Yet as I grew older and came to understand what has been happening to our dear Palestinian sisters and brothers, Muslim and Christian alike, I realized that “never again” was treated as an empty epithet reserved only for the Chosen.

One of the most incredible books I have read is The Road to Mecca by Muhammad Asad, the story of a Jew named Leopold Weiss who traveled the Middle East and befriended many leaders of the old Muslim world.

I will conclude with a passage I often return to, which more eloquently and effectively captures the problem of Zionism:

“What did the average European know of the Arabs in those days? Practically nothing. When he came to the Near East he brought with him some romantic and erroneous notions; and if he was well-intentioned and intellectually honest, he had to admit that he had no idea at all about the Arabs. I, too, before I came to Palestine, had never thought of it as an Arab land. I had, of course, vaguely known that 'some' Arabs lived there, but I imagined them to be only nomads in desert tents and idyllic oasis dwellers. Because most of what I had read about Palestine in earlier days had been written by Zionists - who naturally had only their own problems in view - I had not realized that the towns also were full of Arabs - that, in fact, in 1922 there lived in Palestine nearly five Arabs to every Jew, and that, therefore, it was an Arab country to a far higher degree than a country of Jews.

When I remarked on this to Mr. Ussyshkin, chairman of the Zionist Committee of Action, whom I met during that time, I had the impression that the Zionists were not inclined to give much consideration to the fact of Arab majority; nor did they seem to attribute any real importance to the Arabs' opposition to Zionism. Mr. Ussyshkin's response showed nothing but contempt for the Arabs:

'There is no real Arab movement here against us; that is, no movement with roots in the people. All that you regard as opposition is in reality nothing but the shouting of a few disgruntled agitators. It will collapse of itself within a few months or at most a few years.'

This argument was far from satisfactory to me. From the very beginning I had a feeling that the whole idea of Jewish settlement in Palestine was artificial, and, what was worse, that it threatened to transfer all the complications and insoluble problems of European life into a country which might have remained happier without them. The Jews were not really coming to it as one returns to one's homeland; they were rather bent on making it into a homeland conceived on European patterns and with European aims. In short, they were strangers within the gates. And so I did not find anything wrong in the Arabs' determined resistance to the idea of a Jewish homeland in their midst; on the contrary, I immediately realized that it was the Arabs who were being imposed upon and were rightly defending themselves against such an imposition.

In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised the Jews a 'national home' in Palestine, I saw a cruel political manoeuvre designed to foster the old principle, common to all colonial powers, of 'divide and rule'. In the case of Palestine, this principle was the more flagrant as in 1916 the British had promised the then ruler of Mecca, Sharif Husayn, as a price for his help against the Turks, an independent Arab state which was to comprise all countries between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. They not only broke their promise a year later by concluding with France the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement (which established French Dominion over Syria and the Lebanon), but also, by implication, excluded Palestine from the obligations they had assumed with regard to the Arabs.

Although of Jewish origin myself, I conceived from the outset a strong objection to Zionism. Apart from my personal sympathy for the Arabs, I considered it immoral that immigrants, assisted by a foreign Great Power, should come from abroad with the avowed intention of attaining to majority in the country and thus to dispossess the people whose country it had been since time immemorial. Consequently, I was inclined to take the side of the Arabs whenever the Jewish-Arab question was brought up - which, of course, happened very often. This attitude of mine was beyond the comprehension of practically all the Jews with whom I came in contact during those months. They could not understand what I saw in the Arabs who, according to them, were no more than a mass of backward people whom they looked upon with a feeling not much different from that of the European settlers in Central Africa. They were not in the least interested in what the Arabs thought; almost none of them took pains to learn Arabic; and everyone accepted without question the dictum that Palestine was the rightful heritage of the Jews.

I still remember a brief discussion I had on this score with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the undisputed leader of the Zionist movement. He had come on one of his periodic visits to Palestine (his permanent residence was, I believe, in London), and I met him in the house of a Jewish friend. One could not but be impressed by the boundless energy of this man - an energy that manifested itself even in his bodily movements, in the long, springy stride with which he paced up and down the room - and by the power of intellect revealed in the broad forehead and the penetrating glance of his eyes.

He was talking of the financial difficulties which were besetting the dream of a Jewish National Home, and the insufficient response to this dream among people abroad; and I had the disturbing impression that even he, like most of the other Zionists, was inclined to transfer the moral responsibility for all that was happening in Palestine to the 'outside world'. This impelled me to break through the deferential hush with which all the other people present were listening to him, and to ask:

'And what about the Arabs?'

I must have committed a faux pas by thus bringing a jarring note into the conversation, for Dr. Weizmann turned his face slowly toward me, put down the cup he had been holding in his hand, and repeated my question:

'What about the Arabs ...?’

'Well - how can you ever hope to make Palestine your homeland in the face of the vehement opposition of the Arabs who, after all, are in the majority in this country?'

The Zionist leader shrugged his shoulders and answered drily: 'We expect they won't be in a majority after a few years.'

'Perhaps so. You have been dealing with this problem for years and must know the situation better than I do. But quite apart from the political difficulties which Arab opposition may or may not put in your way - does not the moral aspect of the question ever bother you? Don't you think that it is wrong on your part to displace the people who have always lived in this country?'

'But you have been away from Palestine for nearly two thousand years! Before that you had ruled this country, and hardly ever the whole of it, for less than five hundred years. Don't you think that the Arabs could, with equal justification, demand Spain for themselves - for, after all, they held sway in Spain for nearly seven hundred years and lost it entirely only five hundred years ago?'

Dr. Weizmann had become visibly impatient: 'Nonsense. The Arabs had only conquered Spain; it had never been their original homeland, and so it was only right that in the end they were driven out by the Spaniards.'

'Forgive me,' I retorted, 'but it seems to me that there is some historical oversight here. After all, the Hebrews also came as conquerors to Palestine. Long before them were many other Semitic and non-Semitic tribes settled here - the Amorites, the Edomites, the Philistines, the Moabites, and the Hittites. Those tribes continued living here even in the days of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. They continued living here after the Romans drove our ancestors away. They are living here today. The Arabs who settled in Syria and Palestine after their conquest in the seventh century were always only a small minority of the population; the rest of what we describe today as Palestinian or Syrian "Arabs" are in reality only the Arabianized, original inhabitants of the country. Some of them became Muslims in the course of centuries, others remained Christians; the Muslims naturally inter-married with their co-religionists from Arabia. But can you deny that the bulk of those people in Palestine, who speak Arabic, whether Muslims or Christians, are direct-line descendants of the original inhabitants: original in the sense of having lived in this country centuries before the Hebrews came to it?'

Dr. Weizmann smiled politely at my outburst and turned the conversation to other topics. I did not feel happy about the outcome of my intervention. I had of course not expected any of those present - least of all Dr. Weizmann himself - to subscribe to my conviction that the Zionist idea was highly vulnerable on the moral plane: but I had hoped that my defence of the Arab cause would at least give rise to some sort of uneasiness on the part of the Zionist leadership - an uneasiness which might bring about more introspection and thus, perhaps, a greater readiness to admit the existence of a possible moral right in the opposition of the Arabs. . . None of this had come about. Instead, I found myself facing a blank wall of staring eyes: a censorious disapproval of my temerity, which dared question the unquestionable right of the Jews to the land of their forefathers…

How was it possible, I wondered, for people endowed with so much creative intelligence as the Jews to think of the Zionist-Arab conflict in Jewish terms alone? Did they not realize that the problem of the Jews in Palestine could, in the long run, be solved only through friendly co-operation with the Arabs? Were they so hopelessly blind to the painful future which their policy must bring? - to the struggles, the bitterness and the hatred to which the Jewish island, even if temporarily successful, would forever remain exposed in the midst of a hostile Arab sea?

And how strange, I thought, that a nation which had suffered so many wrongs in the course of its long and sorrowful diaspora was now, in single-minded pursuit of its own goal, ready to inflict a grievous wrong on another nation - and a nation, too, that was innocent of all that past Jewish suffering. Such a phenomenon, I knew, was not unknown to history; but it made me, none the less, very sad to see it enacted before my eyes.”