There is nothing more dangerous to history than a man who loves to lie, except a man who takes it as a method and doctrine, who makes desire a method, a wish a document, and slander a proof, and then he asks people to believe what he wrote, not because he established proof for it, but because he has more than clarification and has prolonged falsehood. Facts are not changed by the noise of printing presses, maps are not drawn with the ink of editorials, sovereignty is not granted by a newspaper if it is willing, it is not taken away by it if it is angry, and it is not erased by a passing article if its owner is overwhelmed by illusion and the claim is prolonged.
One of the wonders of some newspapers, when they are guided by whims and their purpose prevails, is that they dispute history when it bears witness, disbelieves a document when it is spoken, and accuses nations when they agree. If the text agrees with it, it raises a banner, and if it contradicts it, it throws it away as a temptation, until falsehood becomes, in their view, an established principle, truth an abandoned statement, delusion a published policy, and slander a well-known industry. It is from this chapter that the so-called Hossein Shariatmadari came out to us in the newspaper Kayhan, and he has no Sharia except the drawing of the name, and no orbit except the circling of the pen around the illusion. There is no true Sharia that guided his essay, nor the orbit of proof upon which his argument was based. Rather, he presented a series of words that the document does not need to refute, and the truth is sufficient to refute it.
If the article included homelands, ink demarcated borders, and passion destroyed covenants, the United Nations would have to close its doors, the Security Council would have to fold its book, and the world would have to wait every morning for a new issue of Kayhan, to know who remained a homeland and who disappeared, who remained a people and who became impossible. However, history is too stubborn to be led into the propaganda market, the document is too solid to be broken by a printing press, and the truth is too high to be reduced from the position of proof to the depths of slander.
What Kayhan intentionally omits, and intentionally ignores, is that Bahrain was never a free land, nor a floating identity, nor an absent will, nor a people waiting from Tehran for a name to be dictated, a drawing to be given, or a definition to begged. The Kingdom of Bahrain has been Arab, Muslim, Khalifa, since the establishment of the modern Bahraini state during the era of the founder, Ahmed Al-Fateh, in 1783 AD. It is a reality that was not created by a mission, nor was it granted by an organization, nor was it created by a newspaper. Its identity precedes the United Nations, precedes Kayhan and Reuters, and is more ancient and established than anyone who tries, or has tried, to undermine it. It was established by history, witnessed by the state, and carried by a people who knew their identity before reports were written, and realized their sovereignty before successive decisions were made. From the beginning, Bahrain has refused to make its Arabism a subject of question, its sovereignty a subject of debate, or its independence a subject for a referendum, because what is firmly established in the conscience of the people cannot be subject to review, what is established in the conscience of the nations should not be put up for bargaining, and what was an inherent right should not be reduced to the status of possibility.
When I address the path of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, this is not a digression in history, nor a luxury in narration, but rather out of concern for the national narrative in such situations to be clear and not ambiguous, solid and not confused, documented and not transmitted, because the response to falsehood is not with frivolous emotion, nor with fleeting anger, but rather with an earth-shattering argument, a conclusive document, and a solid national narrative that knows where to start and where to stop. How can a slander be dropped from its origins and not from its edges?
Hence, the course of the United Nations fact-finding mission was a witness to an existing Bahraini will, not the maker of a borrowed will. It was not the invention of a fact, but rather the display of a document; nor the establishment of a choice, but the announcement of a decision; nor the search for an absent identity, but rather the confirmation of an established identity. There, Kayhan’s lie was exposed from the beginning, as the matter was not funds being managed, nor numbers being made up, nor a scene being made in the night of politics, but rather a broad international survey, initiated by the personal envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Vittorio Winspear-Guicciardi, who listened to the various segments of Bahraini society, and then concluded with a conclusion that does not accept any interpretation or interpretation, and leaves no room for propaganda or slander: that Bahrain is a state. An independent Arab state, with full sovereignty, free in its decisions, and continuing to determine its relations with other countries.
The argument did not stop at the testimony of the international mission alone; rather, the Shah himself, the head of the state whose defunct claim Kayhan is trying today from the ashes of history, accepted the international path and was satisfied with its outcome, so the confession of the old opponent became a witness to the fall of the case, and the confession of the person making the claim is more eloquent in rebutting the claim than a thousand refutations and arguments. How can a hired writer, or a pen in trouble, return after that to dispute a truth that was accepted by the one who was more worthy of its claim, and deny something approved by the one under whose shadow Kayhan was leaning? It is astonishing that the Shah confirmed what Kayhan denies, and that history acknowledges what the propaganda denies, and that the old adversary is truer to the truth than a newspaper that claims to be the heir to the situation, but then it is the heir to nothing but illusion.
This will was not the will of one faction or the other, nor the voice of one group or the other. The report proved that the national consensus was not divided between one sect and another, nor was there any division between a city and a village, nor was there a difference between a man and a woman, nor was there a difference between an old man and a young man. Then the international confirmation of the Bahraini truth continued in a clear and unambiguous path. On May 11, 1970, the UN Security Council issued Resolution No. 278, confirming what the mission had concluded, that Bahrain is a free, fully sovereign Arab state. Then, on August 18, 1971, the Security Council voted in favor of accepting the Kingdom of Bahrain’s accession to the United Nations under Resolution No. 296, unanimously recommending to the General Assembly to accept Bahrain’s application for membership. Then, on September 21, 1971, the United Nations General Assembly opened its register to Bahrain as a full member under Resolution No. 2752, making it the 129th member of the international organization. Was the entire United Nations a choir of illusion, or did the world’s recognition become ink that could only be seen by those who extinguished the lamp of truth in their eyes and opened the shop of propaganda in their minds?
As for Reuters, it is not like Kayhan in this regard. Kayhan is a false trumpet from the mouthpieces of the Guardianship of the Jurist regime, blowing on the ashes of delusion until he thinks it is fire, and selling his reader the smoke of propaganda until he sees it as daylight. As for Reuters, its fault is not the fault of the warden if he lies, but rather the stumble of the professional if he is disturbed: it raises a banner for neutrality, then bends the narrative with it, declares integrity a covenant, and then narrows its horizons when applied.
Reuters says in its principles of trust that integrity is preserved, independence is protected, neutrality is maintained, and news is reliable. How easy are principles if they are formulated in offices, and how difficult are they if they are brought down to situations. Here, the scourge does not lie in a passing mistake by an editor, but rather in that ideological leftist creep that infiltrates the fortresses of media institutions in the name of progress, dresses up in the garb of rights, and speaks with the tongue of neutrality, then eats away at its credibility like a wee bite on wood, until if you read the news, you find a position behind it, and if you search for analysis, you find partisanship, and if you ask about neutrality, you find an ideological opinion that disputes policies it does not like, and compliments regimes it should not. Compliment her.
Not far from this is what is summed up by the political phrase attributed to Churchill: He who was not a leftist in his youth has no heart, and whoever remains a leftist after forty, and has reached the maturity of his life, is one who has no mind. It is a phrase, although its proportion is confused, that reveals a meaning present in many Western universities, where the leftist movement finds on university campuses a fertile ground for its spread, and then it soon emerges from the classrooms to the newsrooms, and from student slogans to the headlines of some newspapers, and from Ideological interest in making news. Here, the media institution becomes in real danger, not because it has an opinion, but because the opinion of its writer colonizes its standard, and because his bias wears the cloak of its neutrality.
This is not far from whoever wrote that fake article when it dealt with the issue of Bahrain, as the fingerprints of his approach appear present in the choice of phrase, directing the context, wrapping opinion in the guise of news, and dragging the reader into a reading that does not serve the truth as much as it serves an ideological position opposing the policies aimed at confronting the actions of the terrorist guardianship regime. There is nothing more dangerous to the media than a writer who makes the news platform a platform for his idea, the institution’s standard a cover for his inclinations, and the agency’s name a cover for his bias.
If the agency deals with the issue of Bahrain, and suspends its narration on a weak and ambiguous phrase of the type: “Analysts say,” and then makes this completely unknown shadow, and this hidden voice, evidence, and this fleeting opinion, an entrance to a reading that reduces a nation to anxiety, a people to a sect, and a state to possibility, then here the news is not news, but rather an opinion disguised as news, and the analysis is not analysis, but rather an assumption searching for the stamp of an agency to become In the reader’s eye for sure.
The press is not condemned because it asks, but when it hides the source of the answer; it is not blamed because it conveys an opinion, but when it covers it with the guise of truth. If Reuters has made neutrality one of its principles, let it be neutrality that is seen in the wording and not in the slogan, and heard in accuracy and not in claims, and is based on an apparent source and not on an absent name, and on a fixed fact and not on a loose reading.
Bahrain is not a narrative woven by Kayhan from the threads of lies of the Guardianship of the Jurist regime, nor a story recited by false trumpets in the market of camouflage, nor a hypothesis passed by an unknown person in a passing line of weak news or a foolish analysis. Homelands are not summarized in an article, nor are they kidnapped by a phrase, nor are their identity pinned on a paid pen, or a hidden source, or a passing reference in an amputated piece of news.
Let Kayhan write whatever she wants of her fantasies, and let Reuters be kind enough to apply its highest standards. Bahrain is not a footnote to a paid article, nor a footnote in a hidden analysis, nor a country waiting to be defined by a newspaper that has gone astray, or an agency that has gone astray. Bahrain will remain under the leadership of the honorable Al Khalifa family, preserving its covenant, preserving its sovereignty, steadfast in the loyalty of its people to its leadership, loyalty to its land, loyalty to its homeland, and harmony in its society; solidified by what its history has witnessed, and continuing with what the world has approved of it: an Arab state in identity, Bahraini in conscience, Muslim, with independent decision-making, and with complete sovereignty. What remains is a witness to the truth that cannot be bought, and the homeland has a name. It cannot be erased, and Bahrain has an indelible glory.
