Hussein Alwaday is a Yemeni writer, media expert, and philosopher who analyzes the political and religious landscape of Yemen and the Arab region. He is known for his sharp criticism of the Arab world, which typically refuses to acknowledge its military defeats. During the war in the Gaza Strip, Alwaday published several articles emphasizing that Hamas does not recognize its defeat at the hands of Israel. Now—following the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Hamas’s failure—he presents another essay: “Footnotes in the Notebook of Arab Defeats.” An Arab self-critique that has actually been heard more often lately.

First marginal note: Acknowledging defeat is a necessary prerequisite for overcoming it

Insisting on the need to acknowledge defeat is not an intellectual luxury but a fundamental condition for rising again. Psychological denial is a defense mechanism the mind employs to avoid confronting a painful reality. When an individual or a nation cannot accept failure, it subconsciously denies it to protect its self-image. But what begins as temporary protection can develop into a chronic tendency to deny—a permanent rejection of reality that cements weakness and repeats defeats. The fixation on denial and defeat comes at a high price: It cripples the nation’s mental capacities and alienates it from reality. As in psychotherapy, neither an individual nor a nation can overcome its crisis without facing the facts. Escape or justification prevents learning and cements failure. Acknowledging defeat, on the other hand, opens the door to review, learning from mistakes, and rebuilding on realistic foundations.

Second marginal note: The Arab defeat has entered a phase of stagnation

If we refuse to confront defeat, a single failure turns into a series of repeated defeats. For example, the 1948 defeat in Palestine paved the way for a series of military and political defeats in the following decades. The 1967 defeat solidified the collective sense of defeat, so that many people live in the past and repeat the same mistakes. This reveals the concept of psychic fixation—the nation lingering in a specific shock phase, which prevents learning and progress and turns history into a register of repeated pain rather than a source of experience and growth. Denial means not acknowledging the defeat; fixation means living in it without realizing it. Denial closes consciousness; fixation freezes time. Both prevent healing and maturity—for the individual and the nation alike.

Third marginal note: The Arab defeat has become an identity

The latest defeat is often the hardest because it is comprehensive, almost final, and offers no “hook” for assigning blame. It forces self-confrontation without help from the past. Since this confrontation is impossible, denial persists, and fixation is strong, the defeat becomes identity. It transforms from an external event into an essential part of the self. The defeated self internalizes the defeat, gets used to it, and stays with it—like an unhappy lover clinging to the tears of sad songs and unhealthy love stories. Healing becomes more difficult because the defeat has fused with the self. The subconscious defeated self sees itself and the defeat as one, with all the conditions, causes, and slogans of the defeat. Detaching from the defeat becomes renouncing oneself, and a victory of defeat is simultaneously its triumph. Such a victory is worse than a thousand defeats.

Fourth marginal note: The need to move from “victorious defeats” to “creative defeats”

But defeat is not the end. A creative defeat is one that is used to enable review and learning, promoting innovation and ascent. When we acknowledge defeat, we open space to change reality instead of fleeing from it, and to rewrite history in a way that serves the future. The creative defeat turns pain into opportunity, failure into lesson, and suffering into drive for ascent. Japan’s creative defeat led the country to become one of the most advanced nations; Germany’s creative defeat brought it back into world history and shaped a new global identity. A single creative defeat can erase the traces of dozens of apparent victories.

Fifth marginal note: The immorality of “victories of defeat”

Clinging to the illusion of victory has an ethical price. In Gaza, for example, proponents of defeated victories have glorified sectarian militias (Hamas) and abolished the Palestinians’ right to a dignified life. Victories become slogans on paper, while human reality is marked by death and suffering. Victories based on denial, defense of death, or contempt for the right to life moral defeats. Those who support them lose humanity—the humanity of the victim, who is left with no destiny but death, and that of the one obsessed with the defeated victory, who finds refuge only in the constant justification of militia crimes. No matter how psychologically understandable a victory over defeats may seem, it loses all moral justification. Anyone addicted to glorifying defeats inevitably becomes an enemy of morality and a denier of humanity: denying the humanity of the victim, who knows no goal but death, and that of the defeated, obsessed with an imaginary victory that knows nothing but falling again and again and justifying the militias’ crimes.

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