Cold as an arctic blade

by Ibrahim Musbah

I remember I was watching a documentary, set somewhere in the North Pole.
The locals were out hunting wolves. They used a double-edged knife and put blood on the blade, then melted some ice and dug the knife’s handle deep into the ice, so that only the blade would stick out.

When the wolf smelled blood and wanted to eat, it would get close to the blade and start to lick the knife, trying to eat it.

What happens when the wolf licks the knife?

It injures its own tongue... thinking that it found its prey, the wolf keeps licking and drinks, but it drinks only its own blood.

At the Marsa Open Centre, they think they have something that gives them a chance to live.

This is what liberals, traders of human beings and drug and cocaine politicians do.

We see our young brothers here; with the opportunity to buy cars like they were white people, and houses and riches and other life necessities, but in truth they live as if they don’t know what happens around them.

They kill themselves exactly like a wolf licking the knife’s blade.

They slowly die, but ignore this truth, and this is exactly what happens in a life fabricated by these politicians.

And instead of blaming the hunter who put the damned knife, it happens that they blame the wolf, which wanted to eat, to survive. Don’t blame the victim, but those on whom the blame should fall are the traitors. They are the true enemy for humanity, since they occupied Africa and forced the Africans to come here against their will, attracting us Arabs to come here in name of a delusion of democracy, freedom and human rights.

Are they our enemies today? Is this what we must understand?

I think you have a complete image now, and you can see the regime for what it is.

...

Whether you like it or not, your life will change.

We cannot back off now, and give everyone their right – isn’t that just it?

Surely not, but would you want to back off?
I didn't share this with you to have fun, as a pastime, or to influence someone’s ideas, but I involved you so that you can prepare yourselves for what will happen – it is your life I have been talking about.

You have to look deep inside yourselves and understand your real value.

The person who can prepare you to face future trials is you, and only you.

I am simply trying to free your mind and I can only point at the door. It is your own duty to cross this door.

Take what I involved you in as an advice and know, that truth is inside yourself.

There will be many ferocious battles, between us and those who want to kidnap and torture us. After all, the most imminent battle is about your soul. To go on you have to know your value because our adversary knows us better than we know ourselves.

Wars come and go, but the war for your soul, for your self, will never end and because of this the issue concerns us all, and this is what forces us all to be ready.

...

I can say, based on my personal experiences during a whole year as a refugee at the Marsa Open Center, and after confirming my initial perceptions of the provisions and regulations applied to the refugees in these centers, that I have can reach one clear conclusion about the improper acts and deeds committed by the refugees.

In short, I believe that these acts are the result of an intense form of psychological warfare, whose ultimate intention is to crush the spirit of these refugees, in one way or another.

Perhaps this may be strange or shocking to hear to most of you, but I'm convinced that it goes a long way towards analysing the atmosphere inside the fences of this centre and the surrounding environment.

We all know that there are two kinds of war that exist – the military one, and the psychological one.

For me, I had tough experience with both of them, but honestly, the psychological one is more dangerous one, because it creeps up on you in various ways. This kind of war concentrates its effects on people's nerves, morals, and emotions, and above all – it is always veiled, so that nobody can notice its objectives and targets and so, does not protect themselves against it.

We always realize the danger of the guns, shells, and bombs, so we try to protect ourselves. But psychological warfare sneaks up inside you through more insidious means, and its targets are wider and comprehensive than those of its military counterpart, and it has a big and widespread effect on the whole community, and on public opinion.

From this perspective, I can say, with psychologists, that it is a systematic and planned usage by a government or a group of politicians, as well as media-oriented calculation, to affect the emotions and behaviours of refugees and to influence public opinion. It is a toxic weapon and a double-edged sword that has a critical effect on the whole community. The negative impact spreads not just to the victims' bodies, but also their minds. The method sometimes threatens to use the iron fist, at others it tends to opt for more peaceful ways of operating.

The sole objective of this war is to enforce their will on the refugees to control their behaviour, by using uncontrolled methods that operate outside the limits of the law. It is a continual and long-lasting process, whose effects may not be directly evident – they could take months or years (or sometimes, even days) to rear their head.

I think that the politicians always keep that cold smile on their faces because it is not a direct war which you fight face to face, but it is a highly effective method that crushes the will of these refugees without having to employ direct physical confrontation.

Defeat is a psychological state which comes when you might be convinced that the resistance is in vain, which means total submission and giving up, then they will have achieved all the objectives of their war.

These politicians, in order to fulfil all the war’s aims, use different ways – including diplomacy, deception, double-dealing, ingenuity in propaganda and media.

They isolate the Maltese community apart from this environment and misinform them about these refugees, and they are convincing them through the media in many ways with their point of view, as a result we have discrimination between the minority ('refugees') and the majority ('people'), which make it easy to them to take the anti-refugees' decisions and have popular endorsement of it.