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"The Idea of Arab Nationalism Is Dead"
(Economist-UK) "We're now in the 21st century. The idea of Arab nationalism is dead," says Khairallah Khairallah, a veteran Arab opinion-writer from Lebanon. Politically, Israel, the Arab world's first rallying cry, no longer offers much glue. The boycott on the Zionist entity has more traction in Europe than in much of the Middle East. After six decades of Arabization programs, the former French colonies in north Africa are abandoning the effort. Morocco is reintroducing French as the language of instruction for science and math. Algeria has declared Tamazight, the indigenous Berber tongue, an official language. The former British colonies in the Middle East seem to be doing much the same with English. A survey last year confirmed that young Arabs in the Gulf use English more frequently than Arabic.