war that will affect the fate of the greatest nations of today. A war to topple a local faction has resulted in the undoing of an entire region.

It is surprising that Lebanon, a small country on the edge of the Arab world, should become the stage where a world play is staged. It was not Palestine suffering under the most savage siege in history while the Arabs watched and waited.

Neither was it Iraq with its daily spectacle of carnage that finally unhinged the Arab world. It was little Lebanon and history will record it as the moment when all things changed and everyone realized that nothing could be the same again.

There in Lebanon the seeds of a new Arab world have been sown - not the one predicted by President Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice but one free of all the lies it has labored under for decades.

It is said that the first casualty of a war is truth. However, the Lebanese war has been an exception to this rule. In this war the first casualty was the "lie" or the myriad of lies which the world in general and the Arab world in particular has lived by for decades. The lies spun by Israel and the West for the Arab world or the lies garnered by some Arab leaders and intellectuals for their people and finally the lies the Arab people told themselves to escape from their own responsibilities.

As for the lie of a West posing as the victim of Israeli manipulation, coercion and influence, the barbarous attack on Lebanon has revealed it to be exactly the opposite. Israel is a Western mercenary outpost implanted in the heart of the Arab world to keep us well behaved and obedient to Western dictates. It is a new form of colonialism, franchise colonialism. Instead of demanding that Israel cease its savage attack on Lebanon forthwith, the West was encouraging and facilitating its aggression leaving it as much time as it felt necessary to make an example of the uppity Hezbollah to the rest of the Arab world in case it entertained any thought of freeing itself from Western dominance.

The lie that Israel seeks peaceful coexistence with its neighbors if only given a chance and is able to feel safe from Arab aggression has been exposed for what it is. On the contrary the past month has shown to the entire world that Israel's definition of peace is to turn all its neighbors' lands into a wasteland.

One of the biggest lies to be exposed was the invincibility of the Israeli Army, a lie believed by the entire world including the perpetrators of this particular lie, the Israelis themselves. A small band of honest men faithful to their cause stood up to one of the strongest armies of the world and defied it. It wasn't a miracle and they were not mythical creatures but a few men who planned and sacrificed and eventually won.

The lie some Arab leaders have been telling their people for decades that they could never defeat Israel and that the only way was to accept any proposal the West and its lackey Israel threw our way regardless of how egregious or humiliating it was. This, we were told, will eventually enable us to channel our misdirected talents toward economic prosperity and technological advancement. However, all we received in return was a galloping rise in poverty, degradation and more humiliation while we lagged behind in all fields of technology and education.

The lies our intellectuals sold us were of dreams of glory through empty ideologies like Arab nationalism, Nasserism, Baathism, socialism and every other "ism". Then when all their isms ended in utter failure they threw all their ideals away and began to vaunt the many benefits of pragmatism. For pragmatism, read totally abandoning any form of resistance or independence of will or action and submitting without any question to those who hold the keys to technological advancement and prosperity - the West. We were basically told that beggars can't be choosers and every attempt at resistance or demand for justice was mocked as childish dreams. It was time for the Arabs to wake up to the reality of their situation and work toward self-improvement by following the path that the West set out before them. We were to turn into cheap copies of the West and abandon our silly nostalgia for Arab culture and identity that, they told us, belonged to a bygone era incompatible with the modern world.

Then came along the little Lebanon to shatter every lie and lift the veils of deceit and treachery. We watched as a party, not a country, stood up to the strongest army in the Middle East and made a mockery of the vanguard of Western culture and values. What is more, it was accomplished by the Lebanese who still hold on to Arab identity and Muslim ideals - those very same archaic beliefs the Arab world was encouraged to abandon. So, came crashing down the lie proliferated by Arab intellectuals of defeatism and collusion.

Finally, the lie the Arab people uttered to themselves declaring their inability to help their brethren in Palestine, Iraq and now Lebanon and yet feeling their pain as though it was their own. Huge demonstrations took place all over the world asking for an immediate halt to the aggression and condemning Israel. Venezuela pulled its ambassador out of Israel. But popular support for the Lebanese in the Arab world never went beyond silent sympathy.

A few demonstrations here and there without any concrete results like pressuring those governments which have relations with Israel to sever them or pulling our ambassadors from both America and UK to protest their open support to Israel in its savaging of Lebanon. We saw no Arab civil action independent of their governments like, for example, Arab businessmen suspending any business activity they have with those who connived at Israeli crimes.

We wake up today, in the aftermath of the war to realize that we the Arabs get the leaders and intellectuals we deserve. We sold out on our ideals, our history, culture and worst of all we sold it on the cheap creating a wasteland from the Atlantic to the Gulf believing we were so smart and realizing we've outsmarted just ourselves.

The only thing which frees me from utter despair is the presence in the Arab world still of people and groups who are prepared to resist and suffer for it. They are our only hope, if we are to get out ever of the levels we have sunk into, pointing us to a more dignified future. They have exposed the ultimate lie that there can be progress or prosperity without achieving independence for our lands and freedom of action for us. They are the future while the rest of the Arabs who prefer to skulk in the shadows of the West belong in the past.

- Reem Al Faisal is a Saudi photographer. She is based in Jeddah.