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Following are excerpts from a TV debate on colonialism and the Arab regimes, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 16, 2010.
Moderator: Who is more merciful towards the Arab peoples: the Arab regimes or colonialism?
The Arab regimes: 31.7%. Colonialism: 68.3%.
Dr. Shalouf, this is really amusing... 68% is a high figure. More than 4,000 people voted. 69% prefer colonialism over the Arab regimes. Amusing.
Dr. Hadi Shalouf, ICC member and Libyan expatriate: It is not funny. It clearly shows... Those who voted are the grandchildren of the mujahideen, who made sacrifices in order to liberate these countries. Unfortunately, as you said in your introduction, these countries were handed over to a gang of criminals, who have proven themselves over history to be worse than the colonialists.
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The Arab citizens – in Algeria, Morocco, Syria, or Lebanon – always knew that this foreigner, who came from across the ocean, is a colonialist and that they should resist him. But when our sons and brothers took power, what did they do? They destroyed our countries and sent us back to the Middle Ages...
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Moderator: Some countries are demanding an apology from the Western colonialists.
Hadi Shalouf: On the contrary. I say that we should apologize to colonialism. If our martyrs and mujahideen were here today, they would revolt. If the 1.5 million Algerian martyrs, and all the martyrs of Libya, of Syria, and of all the Arab countries were here, they would cry and maybe even regret all the bullets they fired at the colonialists.
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Muhammad Jahid Younesi, secretary-general of the Algerian Al-Islah movement: The population of Algeria in 1830, when colonialism began, almost equaled the population of Egypt. Today, the Algerian people numbers 35 million, while the Egyptian population numbers 80 million. There was a genocide.
Hadi Shalouf: How many people did the Algerian regime annihilate after reaching power? How much money did the Algerian military regime steal after the independence?
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Arabs are fleeing their countries on a daily basis. I have seen Algerians crying in French courts, saying that they would rather remain in a French prison than return to their country. A scientific study has shown that 80% of Algerians want to flee to France.
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I am ready to go to the Arab world and liberate it, like Iraq was liberated. We have to liberate these countries from these criminals, these traitors, these dictators, these occupiers. I view the current Arab rulers as greater occupiers than the colonialists.