The iron fist of President Zain el-Abidine Ben Ali had opened, following his flight abroad earlier that evening without even a specific direction or destination for his plane.

What eloquence is required to describe the uprising of the Tunisian youth! What strength of language! How many metaphors are required to comprehend that event- unprecedented in the context of both history and geography- in a country which had been racked with suffering for decades. My natural disposition betrayed me many times as I attempted to reshape this event in language that encompasses all of this revolutionary beauty – an immense lotus flower opening on the surface of a sea of fire.

From the initial eruption of protests that spread throughout all the cities of Tunisia following the blaze of the symbol of the revolution- Mohamed Bouazizi, the pace of the revolution was record breaking. According to his sister, Bouazizi had lit himself on fire “protesting against the injustice and the coercion – not the poverty, to which he had become accustomed.” The hour arrived apace in which the president of the regime fled, under the passionate stomping from the street of the tempestuous protests marching towards his lofty palace. The president, deposed at the hands of the people this time, and not at the hands of foreigners, preferred to depart under cover of darkness, through the back door of the capital rather than present his resignation, step down from power, and face up to his responsibilities before the people who had entrusted him with their destinies, their lands, and their future. In a betrayal of trust, Ben Ali did not find even one among his Western friends who would provide a place for his plane to land, which ran low on fuel as it circled the skies of countries “allied” with him, looking for a refuge following the collapse of his fragile security edifice.

The political winds shifted here in Washington when, during a telephone call with members of the Saudi leadership, American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked that the Saudis welcome Ben Ali in their land! The American policy position in Tunisia has always been ambiguous with respect to human rights and freedoms. Last April, on the margins of the Tunisian Foreign Minister Kamal Marjan’s visit to the United States, the organization Human Rights Watch published a statement by one of its ranking members, Sarah Leah Whitson. Whitson, the executive director for the Middle East North Africa division of the organization said “Tunisia pays much lip service to respecting human rights, but the reality is otherwise.” She added “ Secretary Clinton should publicly press the foreign minister for an end to the persecution of independent journalists and human rights activists.”

In this fashion, far outside narrow political visions, awkward political rhetoric, and inflexible academic conventions, and closer to the novel instinctive perception of the inviolable right to freedom and dignity, the feeling that the need for change supersedes the need for bread continued to grow. Based on this notion, the Tunisian youth built their unique revolutionary project far outside the traditional theoretical framework for realizing political change in the MENA region. They could pave the way for change using a peaceful strategy. In a matter of mere months, they had swept away the a despotic tryant and demolished the foundation of the ruling party and the ruthless regime, which had ruled the country for a period of twenty –three years through the iron command of the security services. The youth compelled the leader of the regime to slip stealthily out of the country, under the weight of the anger and the grievous pain the people felt for the martyrs of the revolution, who had faced with bare chests bullets from both the thugs of Ben Ali’s security services and his snipers spread out across the rooftops of apartment buildings.

With the speed  information could be transmitted over thousands of internet lines, the spark of revolution moved between groups of young people- whose numbers exceed 21% of the Tunisian population- over facebook, which became the command center for directing this movement.

If we know approximately 1,200,000 Tunisians have personal accounts on this site, we are able to estimate the breadth and depth of the communication and coordination that took place on facebook in the course of organizing this revolution. This revolution that surprised the entire world by its ability to succeed and the speed with which it did so.

The educated Tunisian youth were suffering from the problem of unemployment, which had reached 14% in 2010. Unemployment was the slow fuse that lit the towering fire, which quickly transformed into broad protests against government corruption, oppression at the hands of the security services, and the absence of freedoms. This series of events officially put an end to ready-made, traditional theories, whose proponents believed it was impossible to sweep away a despotic regime unless an organized, political opposition with cohesive leadership existed.

This new type of revolution became possible through the work of Mark Zuckerberg. The American youth who created Facebook can take pride in the“eighth” continent he launched on the waves of the digital internet. From the perspective of logistics, Facebook has become the first incubator of the modern revolution. The revolution in Tunis was the most luminous since the outbreak of the French Revolution, which chopped off the heads of King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette in the year 1793. This evolution of the modern revolution culminated in the “Cactus Revolution,” as it is called by the people of Sidi Bouzid, birthplace of the youth Bouazizi, prophet and martyr of the revolution.