Paola Garcia: For Massoud Hayoun, asserting his own Arabness is in itself a political act, one of solidarity and of retaliation: “In large part, I identify as Arab because reclaiming my place in a broader Arab world […] scares our foes who have, for so long, taught us to fight against ourselves,” he writes. “I am an Arab because that is the legacy I inherit […] My Arabness is cultural. It is African. My Arabness is Jewish. It is also retaliatory. I am Arab because it is what I and my parents have been told not to be, for generations, to stop us from living in portentous solidarity with other Arabs.”
[…] Hayoun detests all forms of colonialism, including Zionism, and speaks harshly against it. He expresses a much-justified anger against Europe and the Western world for destroying and erasing a myriad of extremely rich indigenous cultures, dividing its peoples, and generally wreaking havoc all over the Middle East and North Africa.
He similarly resents and rebels against the imposition of a European version of history, the replacement of indigenous cultures by the colonizers’ values and ways of life, the devaluation of native cultures, and the mental colonization that tells the colonized that their conquerors are superior. More here.