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Alalusi Foundation
Aïda Muluneh’s "Return of a Departure" is currently on display at the Sharjah Art Foundation’s Africa Institute.
history and identity. Official reports estimate that nearly 300,000 Ethiopian female domestic workers migrated to the Middle East—mostly to Lebanon and Gulf Arab countries—between 2008 and 2013. But this does not take into account the likely hundreds of thousands migrating illegally, according to a 2017 report by CVM Ethiopia, the International Domestic Workers Federation, and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women.
The majority of these women obtain visas through the kafala sponsorship system, which grants the employing family absolute control over the sponsored worker. This system has embroiled the Gulf Arab countries in international condemnation, as it has too often resulted in slave-like exploitation. Although Ethiopia barred this form of migration in 2013, new agreements signed in 2018 lifted the ban in August 2019, and women continue to report the same abuses.
In April 2020, Saudi Arabia and the UAE also incurred backlash for the sudden deportation of thousands of Ethiopian migrant workers due to mounting fears of COVID-19, highlighting once again their disposable status.
Despite Ataya’s direct reference to this exhibition in her article, the reality of Ethiopian women as exploited migrant workers in the Middle East was not explicitly mentioned. However, this exhibition of Muluneh’s work in Sharjah presents an opportunity to address systemic racism on both a local and international scale. As Sharjah’s two-year-old Africa Institute carves out its place in academia, one hopes that it will heed Ataya’s own advice to engage in the difficult but urgent conversations this exhibition inspires. ■
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! "# Alalusi Foundation has provided sponsorships to over 5,310 Orphans in Iraq.
Food During a Pandemic: A Source of Comfort, Stress and Resilience On June 2, the Middle East Institute’s Arts and Culture Center hosted an online webinar titled “Breaking Bread: Food in Times of COVID-19.” Each panelist was provided an opportunity to share their thoughts on food as a source of comfort, but also anxiety, and on the revival of traditional food practices and recipes during the ongoing pandemic.
Mirna Bamieh, an artist, cook and founder of the Palestine Hosting Society, spoke about new cooking techniques that she has been experimenting with, like the process of fermentation as a way to prolong the life of fresh produce, and foraging for wild greens. She continuously returns to the kitchen and deems home a unique space of healing and reclamation.
Similarly, Kamal Mouzawak, co-founder of Beirut’s first farmers market, Souk El Tayeb, spoke about kitchens as the guardians of tradition.
Aisha Al Fadhalah, co-founder of the Mera Kitchen Collective, a Baltimorebased co-op offering refugee chefs a place to cook, talked about how chefs are being creative with available healthy and nutritious produce. Focusing on dignified meals, the Mera Kitchen Collective wants to change the stigma around free meals, while also hoping its catering business can start up again after COVID-19.
All three panelists spoke to the impact of COVID-19 on their work, with Mouzawak sharing that “in times of catastrophe, we always need to adapt and be creative.” In Beirut, Mouzawak’s groups have switched to feeding front-line workers, nurses and doctors. Both Mouzawak and the Mera Kitchen Collective have been humbled by the generosity of people in their communities, and Mera has been able to provide more than 30,000 free meals in Baltimore, cooked by their refugee chefs.
Al Fadhalah highlighted the very slim profit margins that restaurants run on, and said she has shifted much of her work to reimagining how this system can be rethought in the future.
Mouzawak feels optimistic about some of the changes that have come out of the pandemic, like the importance of producing locally and sustainably. He sees food as a communal experience, integral to family, “not something you buy; it is produced, planted, harvested, cooked.” Drawing on the many experiences of uncertainty and crisis that Palestinians have faced, Bamieh sees the intersection of food and the pandemic as yet another opportunity to build practices of resilience, suggesting the way that food builds resilience is in the way that it connects Authors Discuss Writing Amidst a Global Moral and Health Crisis On June 12, Washington, DC’s Middle East Institute (MEI) hosted the webinar “Writing Covid-19” with authors Elias Khoury (Gate of the Sun), Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) and Ece Temelkuran (Women Who Blow on Knots), in discussion with MEI’s president Paul Salem.
The discussion reached well beyond COVID-19 and touched on the dangers of fascism, threats to values and culture, and writing as a means of human connection and a method to reclaim human dignity.
Epidemics, Khoury started out, are often found in literature as
metaphors for life. The “catastrophe” we face today, though, isn’t metaphorical. The literal
PHOTO COURTESY MERA KITCHEN COLLECTIVE Mera Kitchen Collective’s refugee chefs have provided more than 30,000 free meals to residents of Baltimore during the COVID-19 pandemic.
health, political and economic crises magnified by COVID-19 ultimately stem from, in Temelkuran’s words, a “global moral crisis.”
The role of writers and of literature, the authors reflected, is to challenge
the “dominant culture,” which today, they believe, is marked by a “denial of reality” and corrupt regimes.
Nafisi argued that this “denial of reality” permeates through the politics and culture of both the Middle East and the United
States, exacerbating the virus, as well as the preexisting economic and political crises. “How to deal with this mentality,” Nafisi continues, “becomes the problem
for a writer.”
If this is the state of the “dominant culture,” though, “who is producing culture? How is culture determined?” Salem
probed. people. —Allison Rice
Khoury acknowledged that political and economic powers and culture are always
connected. The neoliberal ideology that has framed political, economic and social strategies has “destroyed values and put society in such a situation where only the powerful can survive,” he argued.
Citing author James Baldwin, Nafisi argued that it is the work of authors and artists to “disturb the peace of not just the people, but of the rulers…The whole power of literature is the fact that it has access to truth, and truth can be very dangerous,” she said, referencing the fear leaders have harbored for writers—be they novelists like Salman Rushdie or jour
SABAH ARAR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Iraqis peruse books at a store in Baghdad, in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, June 28, 2020.
nalists like Jamal Khashoggi.
Temelkuran argued that not all is negative. She observed that in this current crisis, people have exhibited selflessness and solidarity to degrees we wouldn’t have thought possible. Writers, she asserted, must “include this aspect of humankind in the story, to the records of history.” Restoring faith in humankind can change the political game, she suggested.
“In times of crisis, yes there is fear, but there is this instant solidarity,” Temelkuran asserted. “My responsibility is to tell stories to make people once again believe in their own kind.”
The demonstrations of solidarity and the “rebellion of dignity,” as Temelkuran dubs the recent Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti-racist protests, are more existential and pressing than the ongoing pandemic.
“The whole Arab region is in a catastrophe and the people cannot breathe,” Khoury said, deliberately using the BLM movement’s refrain. “We cannot breathe, we will die,” he continued, “and if we do not die biologically, our souls will die. Here is the big struggle of culture.”
Drawing on examples from their writings and experiences, the authors illustrate the importance of literature beyond the act of writing and recording. Writers and the legacy of literature, in fact, “belong” to and live on through those who read, Nafisi insisted. “Reality can imitate literature, not only we [writers] imitate reality,” Khoury claimed. “Imagination is a dimension of reality.” —Eleni Zaras
WAGING PEACE Trump Administration Offers No Resistance to Israeli Annexation
Questions surrounding Israel’s impending annexation of significant portions of Palestinian territory were tackled in a June 22 webinar hosted by the SETA Foundation in Washington, DC.
Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, argued that the Trump administration should have been taken seriously three years ago, “when they basically said that coming into office their goal was to erase the Oslo process, erase the peace process, roll U.S. foreign policy back...to a setting which says there is one sole legitimate actor between the river and the sea—and it is Israel.”
The Trump White House has put the full weight of U.S. policy behind official annexation, which has been a de facto, ongoing process for decades. “This administration does not care about whether annexation will spark conflict or destabilization,” she said.
“We have a president who…handed from day one his Israel-Palestine policy over to ideologues, people who are unapologetically, undeniably motivated by an ideological agenda,” Friedman noted. One of these ideologues, President Trump’s appointed ambassador to Israel David Friedman, “is the most consequential figure in defining what U.S. policy has actually been,” she stated. The ambassador, she said, came in with a clearly defined political agenda “based on long-held [personal] positions which have systemically been transformed into U.S. policy.”
With the possibility that Trump might not be re-elected in November, “I do think we will see action before the end of this administration,” Friedman said. “They had a laundry list of things they were going to change on Israel-Palestine. They have made good on every single one of them and this is the final piece of it.…One
should take them seriously that they actu
SAMEH RAHMI/NURIPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah participate in a rally against Israeli annexation of the West Bank, on July 3, 2020.
ally mean this [annexation] and they are going to go ahead on it.”
As to why annexation is happening now, Geoffrey Aronson, chairman and cofounder of the Mortons Group strategy consulting firm, said one contributing factor is the lack of an acceptable framework for engaging the parties and the discrediting of the Oslo process. “In Israel, talk of a Palestinian state has disappeared from the political agenda,” he noted.
He also said the Trump administration poses a unique opportunity Israel feels it cannot pass up. “Failure to annex today is intolerable for Israel,” he said. “It will undermine to some degree their strategic position in the region.”
Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, argued Palestinian leadership has not articulated a plan for the day after annexation. Rather than simply clinging to old formulas of the past, leadership should be embracing new Palestinian voices and talking about “something new and different that could actually inspire Palestinians,” he stated. “One of the problems with the Palestinian leadership right now is that it is such a small circle of people who are around Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] and his decision-making process.”
Elgindy hopes the controversy surrounding annexation will at least give Palestinian voices a greater platform in the U.S. “One thing we can look forward to is an increasingly polarized and polarizing debate,” he said. “So we could get voices that haven’t been heard, including Palestinian voices in the public discourse, and maybe some more receptivity to those of us who have been trying to point out the many contradictions in this process and its many failures over the years.” —Elaine Pasquini The Legal Implications of Israeli Annexation
On April 30, J Street hosted a virtual conversation with Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard to discuss the legal implications of Israel’s planned annexation of Palestinian land. Sfard is an expert on international and human rights law, with a
NEDAL ESHTAYAH/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES Israeli forces watch as Palestinians demonstrate against Israeli settlements in Nablus, the West Bank, on July 10, 2020.
focus on the law of belligerent occupation and war.
Sfard began by examining how international law goes hand in hand with international relations. “Big changes in legal terms affect, very much immediately, international relations,” he said.
Applying this to the occupation of the West Bank, he noted the “tectonic change” caused by Israel officially pursuing a policy of annexation. Since 1967, the official Israeli position has been that it is not an occupying power and that the West Bank is a “disputed territory” that needs to be resolved by negotiations. By pursuing annexation, he said Israel is casting aside this justification for its presence in the West Bank and admitting it is no longer interested in negotiations or relinquishing its territorial grip over the land.
Annexation, Sfard said, is a rejection of two major principles of the post World War II international order: that states cannot annex territory that was occupied by force, and that self-determination must be upheld. In reference to the latter, he noted that Israel is rejecting a principle that served as a basis for its own creation.
By following through with annexation, Israel will solidify the argument that it practices apartheid, Sfard said. This is important, he noted, as apartheid is not just a government type modeled off of South Africa, but is an independent crime in international treaties and agreements. He noted that the definition of apartheid includes the intention to permanently separate and dominate, something that Israel can no longer deny under annexation.
Much of the fallout from the anticipated annexation revolves around how other states respond, Sfard said. If the world allows the annexation of the West Bank, it needs to ask why it objects to the annexation of the Crimea by Russia, the Western Sahara by Morocco, or Tibet by China. International law needs to be implemented and enforced equally to all parties, he emphasized.
In terms of what to expect from annexation, Sfard outlined several possibilities. Annexation could only encompass the Jordan Valley and specific settlement blocs, or it could be all of Area C. Another possibility is a “gerrymandering” approach in which Israel seeks to grab the most land with the lowest number of Palestinians in those territories. Under this approach, if the number of Palestinians in Israeli annexed territory is small and would not alter the country’s demographics, Israel could offer limited citizenship as a public relations move. Another possibility is Israel deploying the East Jerusalem
model, where Palestinians live with a nebulous, second-class status.
Sfard also warned that Israel may attempt to nationalize annexed Palestinian land using domestic Israeli eminent domain laws. Sfard additionally envisions the forcible transfer of Palestinians living on lands Israel does not officially recognize, especially in the Jordan Valley. He also noted the possibility of massive settlement development, since settler councils would gain the same legal status as councils operating within Israel proper. —Nate Bailey Jordan’s Response to Threat of Israeli Annexation
On May 28, J Street hosted a virtual event titled “Annexation and Israel’s Peace Treaty with Jordan” featuring Marwan Muasher, Jordan’s first ambassador to Israel, and subsequent ambassador to the United States. He has also served as Jordan’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister.
Muasher opened by explaining that relations between the two neighboring countries are at an all-time low, primarily because Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has done nothing to assure Jordan or the international community that he is serious about a viable and credible two-state solution.
Muasher explained why Jordan is taking a strong stance against Israeli annexation of the West Bank. He noted that Jordan accepted the 1994 peace treaty between the countries because Amman thought the deal would facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state and permanently bury the idea propagated by some Zionists that Palestine and Jordan are indistinguishable.
Jordan is concerned about the potential for mass immigration into Jordan from the West Bank if Israel were to proceed with annexation. If Israel does not want a Palestinian state and also opposes a Palestinian majority within its borders, Muasher fears mass expulsion will be the Israeli solution. “And where would they go? To Jordan.” A strategy of expulsion would be viewed by Jordan as an attempt to uproot its national identity by turning it into a Palestinian state, and would constitute an “an existential threat,” Muasher said.
Not only would involuntary expulsion of the inhabitants of one state into another be an explicit violation of the 1994 treaty, but it would also change the nature of Jordanian and Palestinian national identity. Although Jordan has taken in, and largely granted citizenship to, huge numbers of Palestinian refugees, Muasher said they are wary of a solution in which “a Palestinian state exists and it is called Jordan.”
The other main breach of the IsraelJordan peace treaty would be the loss of a promised border between Jordan and
LAITH AL-JNAIDI/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES Jordanians protest against Israeli plans to annex large parts of the Palestinian West Bank, June 27, 2020, in the capital of Amman.
Palestine via the Jordan Valley. Legal measures by way of the International Court of Justice is one path the Jordanian government could take, as they believe the only way the Palestinians could ever have a viable state is if they share a border with Jordan, Muasher said.
The discussion concluded with an analysis of possible next steps for Jordan to take. Muasher was careful to note that he no longer works for the Jordanian government and that he was merely speculating on future steps. He did note, however, that the “bottom line is business as usual cannot be maintained.” Jordan could freeze or pull out of the peace treaty and the more recent gas deal with Israel. “How can you work and cooperate with a country that you know is working against your own existence?” he asked.
Security cooperation would be another likely casualty of annexation. Muasher understands that Jordan alone can’t do much, and must turn to the international community for advocacy, specifically the European Union. He also pointed to longstanding bipartisan support for Jordan on Capitol Hill as a potential source of leverage, though he believes the White House is willing to let Jordan be “collateral damage” when it comes to annexation. He was not widely optimistic about the official Arab reaction, but believed there would be strong coordination with Egypt, which is also heavily affected by annexation. —Allison Rice The Arab Gulf-Israel Relationship: Increasingly Viable?
Over the past few years, Israel and the Arab Gulf countries have been quietly, and sometimes publicly, expanding their diplomatic, economic and security relationships. On July 7, the Atlantic Council hosted a virtual discussion about this topic, titled “Israel’s Growing Ties with the Gulf Arab States.” The panel featured National Defense University professor Dr. Gawdat Bahgat, journalist Jonathan Ferziger, former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ambassador Anne Patterson and Ambassador Marc Sievers of the Atlantic Council.
Bahgat and Ferziger first discussed their recent report on these ties. “Israel has always wanted good relations with all Arab countries,” Bahgat explained. With the decline of traditional regional powers Egypt, Syria and Iraq, he continued, Israel, Turkey and Iran took their place. Bahgat observed that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states for the most part have strained relations with Iran and Turkey, making Israel a more appealing ally. Israel is attractive to the Gulf states, he said, because good relations with Israel are a way to maintain close ties with the U.S. and to challenge Iranian regional ambitions.
Bahgat also noted that change in the Israeli-Arab Gulf relationship is led from the top down, and can therefore be reversed, especially if people-to-people connections do not develop. The Palestinian issue, he said, appears to be “on the back burner, but not dead.”
Ferziger discussed the sectors of medical research, finance and religion, which have been a focal point of Israeli-Gulf cooperation. “If the relationship continues to develop and doesn’t get cut down by the old dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict, these elements will play a central role,” he said.
In the domain of medical research, Ferziger observed that COVID-19 has provided a platform for open commercial relations between Israel and the Gulf. “There is a whole ecosystem now of quiet Gulf investment in Israeli startups,” he said.
As for finance, he pointed to the Saudi and Emirati sovereign wealth funds investing $4.4 billion into WeWork, a startup founded by an Israeli, as well as the long history of maritime deals between Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem of Dubai’s DP World and Idan Ofer of Israel’s Zim Shipping.
In terms of religious ties, Ferziger noted the large synagogue being built in Abu Dhabi as part of the Abrahamic Family House interfaith complex.
Patterson thought the increased ties are driven by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). “Saudi Arabia has now become the most important player in the Arab world on this issue,” she said.
SHAUN TANDON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Attendees arrive at the “Peace to Prosperity” workshop in Manama, Bahrain on June 25, 2019. The event was organized by the Trump administration to launch its economic plan to forge peace between Palestine and Israel. Many view the plan as a U.S.-Arab Gulf-Israeli effort to buy off Palestinians.
The Kingdom is constrained, however, by the generational gap between King Salman and his son MBS, the potential damage to Saudi Arabia’s image as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques if it goes too far in its relations with Israel, and the viability of MBS’ “deeply flawed” economic strategy. In fact, Patterson predicted that “there may be a lot fewer economic opportunities for Israelis and everyone else in the Gulf.” Looking to the future, she also sees difficulties ahead in moving forward with the rapprochement between Israel and the Gulf states.
Sievers disagreed with Patterson. He was optimistic about the future of IsraeliGulf relations because aspects of the relationship are developing organically. “These are all separate from this whole question of whether a threat from Iran is driving the Gulf states together with Israel because of similar perceptions,” he argued. Oman, he observed, does not feel particularly threatened by Iran, but recently welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In the UAE, “the relationship with Israel has taken on a life of its own” and Bahrain “has its own kind of organic relationship” with Israel, he said. —Alex Shanahan Oman Enduring Tough Economic Seas While Oman’s location on the Strait of Hormuz—the conduit for a large percentage of the world’s oil and gas—is of strategic importance, the country of five million people often flies under the radar.
In January, after the death of Oman’s long-time head of state Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the country quietly transitioned into a new era under Sultan Haitham bin Tariq AlSaid. On June 11, Dr. John Duke Anthony, founding president and CEO of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, moderated a webinar of panelists on the challenges facing the country.
“The relationship between the Sultanate of Oman and the rest of the world is a story of peace, trade and bridging cultures,” Ambassador Mohamed Al-Hassan, permanent representative of Oman to the United Nations, began. “Oman is going to continue on this path of diplomacy and peaceful relations with all countries, and the foreign policy of Oman will see a similar but more engaging relationship with the rest of the world,” he said.
Al-Hassan also encouraged Arab dialogue with Iran. “We do not have a phobia toward Iran,” he said of Oman. “We under
STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI Muscat’s historic old town.
stand that the Iranians live in this area and would like to have a role to play. I think the world and the Gulf region will be better with Iran included rather than isolated and excluded.”
The ambassador also acknowledged the challenge of diversifying Oman’s economy to rely less on the oil and gas industry, the primary source of government revenue. “We just need to address it in an innovative way,” he said. Oman introduced two rounds of deep budget cuts in the first half of this year, in response to a dramatic decline in oil revenue caused by the global coronavirus lockdown.
Richard J. Schmierer, chairman of the Middle East Policy Council and former U.S. ambassador to Oman, said the country is experiencing a generational economic challenge. He said providing educational and employment opportunities to its large youth population—60 percent of Omanis are under the age of 20—is an important issue on the radar of the new sultan, who is the first Omani ruler to have a business background.
Managing the expectations of the older generation raised during a period of relative economic boom is another challenge, Schmierer noted. Oman’s standard of living rose markedly during Qaboos’ reign, “an increase that any country would be hard-pressed to maintain,” he said.
“Oman is the good news story in the Middle East—a veritable gem in a region that is beset by sectarian division and warfare,” said Professor Linda Pappas Funsch, author of Oman Reborn: Balanc
ing Tradition and Modernization.
“The sea has served as its window to the world for centuries,” she noted. Oman’s maritime legacy in both trade and commerce dates back centuries when it began exporting copper which was important in the manufacturing of bronze, she said. Through these seafaring expeditions, Oman’s interactions with people from all over the world helped create the country’s culture of diversity, which cultivated “its distinctive paradigm for development, which is balancing tradition and modernization.” —Elaine Pasquini Poor Governance, Conflict Worsen Climate Crisis in Middle East
The Arab Center Washington DC held a July 8 webinar titled “Climate Change, Conflict and Water Politics in the Arab World.” Panelists agreed that climate change poses an existential threat to the Middle East, but also noted that ongoing conflicts and poor governance play a profound role in the region’s environmental crises. Climate change, they warned, will only hasten the damage caused by years of mismanagement and violence.
Zena Agha, a former policy fellow at AlShabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, described climate change as a “threat multiplier” for the region. “Whatever preexisting conditions exist, climate change will draw them out further,” she explained. “Gaza is a prime example of this,” she noted. “You have the [Israeli] blockade, poor governance…and then you have rising sea levels [damaging] a coastal aquifer.”
In the West Bank, Agha said the Israeli occupation strips Palestinians of the resources and agency needed to respond to climate change. Furthermore, she pointed out that Israel is actively exploiting resources—mostly notably water—in the West Bank, even though it has an obligation under international law to protect Palestinian natural resources.
“It’s a complete contradiction to the international reputation of Israel as the bastion of green governance policy,” she said, referencing the fact that Israel proudly promotes itself as a global innovator of green technologies.
LOUAI BESHARA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Women tend a field in the drought-hit region of Hasaka, in northeastern Syria, on June 17, 2010. Many have argued that a years-long drought was a major cause of the country’s devastating civil war.
Georgetown University Professor Marwa Daoudy, author of the recently released book, The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security, pushed back against those who pinpoint climate change as the primary impetus for Syria’s civil war. “Climate change had an impact,” she acknowledged. “But if you don’t analyze climate change in the context of human insecurity, unsustainable practices and mismanaged government polices, we can’t understand what happened in the context of Syria.”
The devastating drought that plagued northeast Syria, the country’s bread basket, in the years leading up to the 2011 mass protests was in part caused by climate change, Daoudy said. However, she argued the drought was primarily caused by the Syrian government’s gross mismanagement of water resources, most notably its over pumping of ground water.
Daoudy also noted that both the Syrian government and rebel groups used water as a weapon during the civil war. Government forces targeted water supplies while attempting to retake rebel-held areas, she said, while rebel groups, most notably ISIS, weaponized their water resources. For instance, she noted that on one occasion ISIS flooded 22 villages in an effort to slow the approach of the Syrian army, and in other cases cut off water supplies as a war tactic.
Michael Mason, a professor of environmental geography at the London School of Economics, noted that water mismanagement is a pervasive issue throughout the region. Every country in the Middle East experienced a decline in groundwater reserves from 2003-2015, he said, with Iraq and Kuwait experiencing the greatest declines.
While a change in weather caused by climate change is partly to blame, he said poor resource management is a far larger issue. For instance, he noted that Jordan’s use of groundwater is twice the rate of natural renewal. Meanwhile, he pointed out that Iraq’s tremendous loss of surface area water is largely a result of extensive upstream dam construction in Turkey and Iran.
In terms of reducing emissions, Mason noted that the oil-rich Arab Gulf nations, particularly the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are using their large sovereign wealth funds to invest in renewable energy sources. However, he noted that these countries have not made quantitative emission reduction targets. The Arab Gulf countries currently have some of the highest per capita emissions in the world, he noted.
According to some climate models, large portions of the Arabian Peninsula could become uninhabitable due to extreme heat by 2100. —Dale Sprusansky Experts Hopeful Iran Nuclear Deal Can Be Salvaged
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, moderated his organization’s June 4 webcast on the topic, “Maximum Pressure or Maximum Failure— America’s Shrinking Options on Iran.”
In May 2018, under President Donald Trump, the United States abandoned the Iranian nuclear agreement, instead choosing a policy of “maximum pressure” that they hoped would force the Iranians to renegotiate a “better deal” with Trump himself.
“While Trump keeps escalating sanctions, it is no longer clear whether the goal now is a new negotiation or whether it is to push matters towards war, or perhaps simply to pursue a strategy to ensure that no future administration will be able to resurrect diplomacy with Iran, let alone revive the nuclear deal,” Parsi stated.
According to Iranian-American journalist Negar Mortazavi, Iranians are watching American politics very closely and they differentiate between the Trump administration and a potential Joe Biden presidency. “Tehran, surprisingly, is prepared to rejoin the nuclear deal under a potential Biden presidency,” she said. “I think the view in Tehran is not set in stone.”
However, the United States’ abandonment of the nuclear agreement “diminished the credibility of the deal-making of the United States as a whole and also weakened the argument of the pro-engagement camp in Iran,” Mortazavi noted. “I think the deal is very much alive— maybe half alive or on life support, but not completely dead.”
Jarrett Blanc, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and formerly the deputy lead coordinator for implementation of the nuclear deal in the Obama administration, concurred with Mortazavi.
“Our European friends and allies have done remarkably well to keep it on life support and the Iranians have demonstrated
MAJID ASGARIPOUR/MEHR NEWS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Iranian doctor Majid Taheri (l) arrives in Tehran on June 8, 2020, after being detained in the U.S. for 16 months on charges of sanctions violations. Days earlier, Iranian scientist Sirous Asgari was released by the U.S. in exchange for U.S. Navy veteran Michael White, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for insulting Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
tactical restraint in a number of areas that has allowed a vision of a possible endgame either under a new U.S. administration or potentially a modified Trump second term,” he said. In addition, Biden has clearly stated that his policy toward Iran would be “mutual re-compliance” with the nuclear deal, Blanc added.
On the regional side, MIT political science Professor Barry Posen posited that “Israel and Saudi Arabia are very much against a normalization of relations between the United States and Iran.” But, he added, “I don’t think they want a war between the United States and Iran, they just want bad relations, because bad relations means the U.S. defends them while they go about their own business.”
Posen warned that Tehran is not open to negotiating its regional agenda. “I don’t think Iran gives up its allies and proxies. I don’t think they are going to give up their intelligence operations or their missiles or developing their special operations capabilities,” he opined.
The June 4 prisoner exchange of U.S. Navy veteran Michael White, imprisoned by Iran for nearly two years, and Iranian scientist Sirous Asgari, held by the U.S., was “one little area of opening,” Mortazavi said. “But I do not think there is going to be much change in the policy from Tehran except for maybe more prisoner swaps like this.”
Iran’s decision in late June to issue an arrest warrant for Donald Trump over his decision to assassinate Quds Force Commander Qassim Soleimani is but the latest indication that any substantive diplomacy between the two countries remains unlikely under current leadership. —Elaine Pasquini From the U.S. to the Middle East, Protesters Demand Change
On June 24, the Middle East Institute held a webinar titled, “Protests and Solidarity Movements in the Middle East.” The panel discussed topics ranging from common goals of protest movements in the Middle East and the United States, to the impact of COVID-19 on current resistance movements.
Zahra Ali, an assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers University, discussed the Iraqi uprising that has been ongoing since Oct. 2019. “These protesters are really about establishing the society that they want,” she said. “They are developing new state forms that provide free services, ranging from education services to cultural services. They are also developing new codes of conduct that centralize around gender issues.”
One of the features of the uprising, Ali said, is “its bloody repression by the Iraqi regime.” More than 700 unarmed protesters have been killed since October, with more than 25,000 severely injured and hundreds detained. Many recent protests have emphasized the release of imprisoned protesters and demanded justice for those murdered.
Razan Ghazzawi, a doctoral candidate from the University of Sussex, focused on how protests in Syria are “non-binary” in a political sense, because protesters do not support either President Bashar al-Assad, nor the militarized opposition. Ghazzawi argued, “these protests reflect the need for new socio-political imaginaries; non-binary protests tell us about different paths and different futures instead of those offered by the state and the opposition.”
Lokman Slim, the director of Hayya Bina and UMAM, both Lebanese civic organizations, discussed ongoing unrest in Lebanon. Protests began in 2019 as a result of government-imposed taxes on WhatsApp and other applications, but Slim argued that this was simply a final tipping point. The underlying causes of resistance can be drawn back to the overall corruption in the state and unease with the role of Hezbollah and foreign actors, such as Iran.
Ahmed Abu Artema, a Palestinian journalist and a founder of Gaza’s Great March of Return, discussed the common struggle between oppressed groups within Palestine and the U.S. “Israel views us with inferiority based on our ethnicity, which is something we cannot choose,” he said. “The same case is seen with black people [in the U.S.]. It is one essence and one problem. Let us struggle to create a world where all people can be treated according to their humanity.”
The panelists also explained how COVID-19 is impacting protests. “Coronavirus is being used as a security argument in Lebanon to terminate the protests,” said Slim, while Abu Artema speculated “if COVID spreads in Gaza, the situation would be horrible, as the medical sector has collapsed.” —Incia Haider
HUSSEIN FALEH/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Anti-government protesters take to the streets of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, despite the ongoing threat of the coronavirus, on June 3, 2020.
On June 4, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) hosted a webinar titled “Palestinian Solidarity with Black Communities.”
Noura Erakat, an activist and professor at Rutgers University, opened with an analysis of U.S. law enforcement systems and an impassioned call to action. Deeming the enemy to be a history of white supremacy in the United States, Erakat highlighted ghettoization, redlining, lack of access to credit, medical experimentation, forced sterilization, food deserts and the criminalization of addiction as systems that have historically ensured the white domination of black communities in the U.S.
To enforce this system, “police forces in the United States have historically and continue to be established as an occupying power that sees black communities as the enemy and as the foreign force within,” she charged. Erakat situated the training of U.S. police in Israel within the long colonial tradition of exchanging technologies of repression.
Speaking primarily to her Arab-American community, Erakat noted that although Arab-Americans are certainly overpoliced and racialized as an enemy in the U.S., they remain “eligible for whiteness.” In her assessment, they have an imperative to support the black struggle for rights rather than to vie for inclusion in white supremacy.
Ajamu Dillahunt, a key organizer in the Demilitarize! Durham2Palestine Campaign, focused on putting the work of the Black Freedom Movement in union with the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Dillahunt stressed the importance of educating young people on ending police exchanges with Israel. “We must commit ourselves to a project of conscience raising among the masses of our people,” he said.
Ahmad Abuznaid, founder of Dream Defenders and the Arabs for Black Lives collective, detailed a “need to lean into our humanity.” Following the killings of Martin
STAFF PHOTO DALE SPRUSANSKY A man waves the Palestinian flag with the words “Black Lives Matter” at a rally condemning police violence and racism in Washington, DC on June 6, 2020.
Lee Anderson and Trayvon Martin, Abuznaid was inspired by black organizers and took up activism in a way he never had done previously. Though much of his work has been fighting for Palestinian causes, he told the audience, “we cannot keep ourselves in silos.”
Questions from the audience primarily centered on actionable steps. What for instance, is the difference between virtue signaling and actually making a difference? Does voting help? In response to these questions, Dillahunt stressed that much of the work is already being done. People simply need to reach out to black organizations and ask what support looks like. Most importantly, he said, “wherever there is struggle, fight.” Erakat and Abuznaid emphasized making sure solidarity does not come from a place of pity and allowing black voices to be amplified.
The conversation then shifted to policy options. Erakat began with a call to expand our imaginations, urging not a replacement of prisons, but, drawing on the words of Angela Davis, to “make prisons obsolete.” Dillahunt drew on a divest and invest model, pointing to education, housing, jobs and historically black colleges and universities as spaces where resources would be better used to support communities of color, rather than enacting violence against them. Erakat charged the audience to “respond to this moment as you would respond to any freedom struggle.” —Allison Rice Racism, Islamophobia and the Fight for Justice
The Coalition for Civil Freedoms (CCF) hosted a discussion on June 5 touching upon a variety of topics, ranging from the oppressive tendencies of the American prison system to the inherent racism present within America’s police forces. The discussion, titled “#ICantBreathe: A Conversation on Black Lives, Racist Policing and the COVID-19 Death of a Prisoner,” also explored connections between police brutality and anti-Muslim bigotry, as well as the racism that drives and sustains the U.S. war on terror.
The discussion brought to light the death of 37-year-old Mohamed Yusuf, who died alone in a solitary cell after succumbing to COVID-19 on the same day that George Floyd was murdered. A Swedish national of Somali descent, Yusuf was arrested in East Africa and extradited to the U.S. on charges of provid
ing material support to alShabaab. According to his mother, Yusuf’s last words to her after contracting the coronavirus were, “I can’t breathe.”
“My brother and I shared everything and he was my best friend,” said Hassan Yusuf, Mohamed’s younger brother. “His heart was pure and he was humble.” Hassan, the first to find out about the passing of his brother, shed light on the challenges he faced in attempting to arrange an international prison transfer, which would have allowed Yusuf to transfer from his California prison to one near his home in Sweden. Hassan said that “after being denied the first prison transfer, we waited another two years and reapplied. We applied for another in November 2018 and to this day we have not received any answer.”
Adam Hudson, a San Francisco-based journalist, focused on the influence that the military and prisons have on American policing tactics. “Both the military and the American policing system have a feedback loop; they are part of the same system, while most of America still views these two as separate entities,” he said. As part of his press visit to Guantanamo Bay, he drew the conclusion that many of the guards at the facility have deployed tactics they learned while working in domestic U.S. prisons.
El-Hajj Mauri’ Saalakhan, a human rights advocate and author, described the role of blackness in the case of Imam Jamil Al-Amin, who is serving a life sentence for the killing of two Fulton County Sheriff's deputies in 2000, even though another man confessed to the crime. Al-Amin was a prominent figure in the 1960s civil rights movement, serving roles in both the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party. According to Saalakhan, “what makes him so significant today is the fact that he represents two parties of political prisoners in America: as an African-American and as someone who embraced Islam.”
Kathy Manley, CCF legal director, noted the role of prison guards in recent protests. “We heard two days ago that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had a nationwide lockdown and indicated that it might be because of prison disturbances,” she said. However, the real reason, she realized from a call with a client, was because, “BOP riot squads are being de
COURTESY COALITION FOR CIVIL FREEDOMS Mohamed Yusuf was one of the first prisoners in California to die of COVID-19. He died on the same day that George Floyd was murdered, and his last words were also, “I can’t breathe.”
ployed in Washington, DC to attack peaceful protesters.”
To conclude the webinar, both Hudson and Saalakhan shared opinions on what actions civilians should take to show general allyship and solidarity with the black community. “One of the unprecedented beauties,” noted Saalakhan, “has been the huge demonstrations that have taken place from coast to coast, and in solidarity abroad, to unite with the black cause.” —Incia Haider Palestinian Women’s Football Legend Shares Uplifting Journey
Honey Thaljieh, co-founder of women’s football in Palestine, joined the Museum of the Pales
tinian People for an online dis
cussion on July 7. She discussed her trailblazing efforts to launch the Palestinian women’s national team, and her recent
work with International Federation of As
sociation Football (FIFA) to bring the game
to young boys and girls living in poverty.
Growing up in Bethlehem, Thaljieh enjoyed football as a source of hope and a
way to escape from the realities of living
under occupation. “Football was the best
WILLIAM WEST/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Honey Thaljieh (second from right), working with young refugees in Australia.
way, regardless of all the difficulties, to distract us from insanity and just give us a secure place,” she recalled. As she got older, she wanted to seriously pursue football as a career, but received pushback from family who told her playing sports was not a viable career for women. Instead of accepting their answer, she pushed back against their reasoning.
“I challenged my community, I challenged my parents, I challenged my neighbors,” Thaljieh said. “I refused from an early age to accept the fact that girls should stay at home while boys play football in the street.” She attributes her tenacity to growing up Palestinian. “I was born as a rebel, I think,” she said. “Most Palestinians are rebels, I believe, and the resilience in us never goes away, because
Education
Continued from page 35
In August 2019, Palestine Legal, CCR and other defenders of free speech on college campuses won a major victory by defeating a lobby-inspired effort by Fordham University to deny the startup of an SJP chapter at the private university in New York City. A New York Supreme Court judge rejected as baseless Fordham’s argument that an SJP chapter would create “polarization” on campus.
Justice Nancy Bannon concluded that Fordham’s “disapproval of SJP was made in large part because the subject of SJP’s criticism is the State of Israel” and came “in spite of the fact that SJP advocates only legal, nonviolent tactics aimed at changing Israel’s policies.” As LaHood pointed out, “The students’ support for Palestinian rights and their demand to freely express that support truly exemplify Fordham’s stated values, unlike the administration’s shameful actions here.” Fordham has no shame, however, as it is appealing the decision.
In November 2019, the Zionist lobby tried but failed to shut down the National Students for Justice in Palestine meeting in Minneapolis. An Israeli government-sponsored app advised people to complain of an unsafe enwhen we want something we have to make it happen.”
Thaljieh ultimately partnered with Bethlehem University in 2003 to launch a piecemeal woman’s football team consisting of just a handful of players. From there the program took off, and just a few years later the team played its first official match.
Looking back, Thaljieh is moved by the commitment of her fellow athletes. She noted that many women from that first team now assist with the official women’s football academy: “The girls who played with me, they are the coaches, administrators and they are the decision makers, and that makes me so happy that a movement has been created,” she said.
Today, Thaljieh works for FIFA, traveling
around the world to empower impovervironment at the meeting site, the University of Minnesota (UMN) campus, while anonymous websites smeared the organizers with groundless accusations of support for terrorism. UMN rejected calls to cancel the conference, which went ahead, attracting 350 participants, even as shadowy individuals snapped photographs of people entering and exiting the gathering.
At Arizona State University (ASU), student protesters were barred from attending a campus event on Nov. 13, 2019 featuring Israeli soldiers. They were then harassed and questioned by university administrators. However, a broad coalition of student organizations, including a local chapter of Black Lives Matter and advocates of justice for undocumented migrants, rallied behind the ASU SJP chapter, offering their support for its demand that ASU divest from companies profiting from Israeli human rights abuses.
At the University of Florida, an Israeli militarist and propagandist spoke on campus on Nov. 19, 2019 and then falsely asserted that students called him a Nazi and a war criminal. In actuality 80 students had walked out in silent protest. The university, which had circulated the false charges on its website, was forced to retract them and send a notice of correction to students and ished children. “It’s important for us to go and show them that there is something else,” she said. “They need opportunities. They have the potential, they have the skills, but opportunities are the key.”
Thaljieh recalled one particularly moving moment in her travels to India. After leaving the country on an official trip working with children, she was utterly devastated and depressed by the level of poverty she witnessed. Three years later at the Homeless World Cup in Oslo, a girl participating in the tournament approached Thaljieh and asked if she remembered meeting her in India.
“I couldn’t handle it,” Thaljieh said. “I just had tears in my eyes.” Seeing that “football has given her the opportunity to change her life” was extremely rewarding and uplifting, she said. —Dale Sprusansky
faculty who received the initial email.
In October 2019, Chancellor Robert Jones of the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign—a university notoriously hostile to free speech on Palestine as a result of the Steven Salaita case—dispatched an email equating a Palestinian student presentation on Israel with anti-Semitism. The student government responded by voting overwhelmingly to condemn the chancellor’s false conflation of criticism of Israeli repression with anti-Semitism.
This accounting touches on only a few recent cases on university campuses, to say nothing of the wide-ranging censorship in high schools or the repressive legislation proposed in Congress, and by state and local governments across the United States. It is clear, however, that as far as universities go, for every academic with integrity—men and women like Professor Ledford at Case Western—there are all too many others who prove willing to cave to the lobby and willingly sacrifice the freedom of expression that goes to the very heart of the mission and integrity of academic institutions to which they are supposed to be dedicated.
As LaHood noted, “It’s just sickening to see these institutions of higher education give in to repression.” ■
Middle East Books Review
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Wrestling With Zionism: Jewish Voices of Dissent
By Daphna Levit, Interlink Publishing, 2020, paperback, 288 pp. MEB: $20
Reviewed by Allan C. Brownfeld
Zionism, many now forget, was always a minority view among Jews. When Theodor Herzl organized the Zionist movement in the 19th century, he met bitter opposition from Jewish leaders around the world. The chief rabbi of Vienna, Moritz Gudemann, denounced the mirage of Jewish nationalism. “Belief in one God was the unifying factor for Jews,” he declared, and Zionism was “incompatible with Judaism’s teachings.” In 1885, American Reform rabbis, meeting in Pittsburgh, rejected nationalism of any kind and declared, “We consider ourselves no longer a nation but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine...nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.” It was only the advent of Hitler and the Holocaust which convinced many Jews that a Jewish state was necessary. Many are now coming to the realization that this was indeed a mistake, and a violation of Jewish moral and ethical values.
In this important book, Daphna Levit amplifies the voices of 21 Jewish and Israeli thinkers—scholars, theologians, journalists and activists who challenge Zionism on re
Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor ofIssues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.
ligious, cultural, ethical and philosophic grounds. Beginning in the late 18th century, long before the founding of the State of Israel, she brings together a range of viewpoints into a single historical conversation. Among those she discusses are Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, Noam Chomsky, and such dissenting Israelis as Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Zeev Sternhell, Shlomo Sand and Ilan Pappe.
Levit is an Israeli who now lives and teaches in Canada. She served in the Israeli army and slowly came to understand that the Israeli narrative of events was contrary to history. She saw with her own eyes the daily mistreatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories. She writes: “My own lengthy process of disillusionment with the Zionist narrative and search for other dissenting voices began soon after the Six Day War of 1967, when I served as a press liaison officer at the Allenby Bridge and watched Palestinian refugees attempting to flee across the border. The separation from my country was gradual and took several decades. In 2002, I left Israel for Canada, at a point when the Zionist agenda was becoming increasingly militant and intolerant of opposition.”
A “Jewish” state, Levit believed, was meant to be “a light to the nations.” Instead, she points out, it became something far different. “Instead, we became a military power, armed to the teeth and blind to the victims of our own cruelty. I found other, perhaps more enlightened, kindred spirits in my quest for absolution from the guilt of my complicity in the actions of my country.”
The voices she has gathered together are indeed eloquent as they try to maintain the Jewish moral and ethical tradition in the face of the excesses to which nationalism leads. From the very beginning, Zionism’s slogan of “Aland without a people for a people without a land” was refuted by the earliest Zionist settlers in Palestine, who discovered that the land was populated by people who had been there for many generations. Asher Ginsberg, a Russian-born “cultural” Zionist, objected to Herzl’s lack of Jewishnefeshor spirit. He wrote under the pen name Ahad Ha’am, which literally meant “one of the people.” In 1891, after his first visit to Palestine, he wrote that the land was not empty, “Its people were not savages, and Jewish moral superiority was unwarranted. Jews in Palestine were behaving in hostile and cruel ways to the native population.”
Levit reviews the thinking of a wide variety of Jewish and Israeli critics of Zionism. In 1938, alluding to Nazism, Albert Einstein warned an audience of Zionist activists against the temptation to create a state “imbued with a narrow nationalism within our own ranks against which we have already had to fight strongly even without a Jewish state.” Another prominent German Jew, the philosopher Martin Buber, spoke out in 1942 against “the aim of the minority to ‘conquer’ territory by means of international maneuvers.” From Jerusalem, in the midst of the hostilities that broke out after Israel unilaterally declared independence in May 1948, Buber cried out with despair, “This sort of ‘Zionism’ blasphemes the name of Zion, it is nothing more than one of the crude forms of nationalism.”
One chapter is devoted to Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Orthodox Jew and long-time professor at the Hebrew University. He says that no nation or state should ever be worshiped as holy and advocated the separation of religion and state. He saw the occupation of Palestinian land as an abomination that was corrupting the soul of Israel. He did not want Judaism to serve as “a cover for the nakedness of nationalism.” Nor did he want it to be “used to endow nationalism with the aura of sanctity attributed to the service of God.” Reverence for the State of Israel as a holy land was unacceptable, a form of idolatry. In Leibowitz’s understanding of Judaism, no piece of land could be holy nor could any nation or state. Only God is holy and only His imperative is absolute.
Another chapter is devoted to Zeev Sternhell, who served as head of the department of political science at the Hebrew University and is a widely recognized expert on fascism. He wrote an article in 2018 entitled, “In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism.” Sternhell asks: “how would a historian in 50 or 100 years...interpret our period? When did the state devolve into a true monstrosity for its non-Jewish inhabitants? When did some Israelis understand that their cruelty and ability to bully others, Palestinians or Africans, began eroding the moral legitimacy of their existence as a sovereign entity?”
In the case of Shlomo Sand, Professor Emeritus of History at Tel Aviv University, he believes that the Jewish society in Israel has become intolerably ethnocentric and racist. It has evolved into a closed exclusive cast, which Sand abhors. Jews in Israel today have greater privileges than others living in the same country. Even Jews living outside of Israel, he notes, who never set foot in Israel, have more rights and privileges within Israel than non-Jewish Israelis.
There is much in this book about Israel’s “New Historians,” who exposed the ethnic cleansing campaign to rid the country of its Palestinian inhabitants. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe writes that the population problem had already been recognized as a major issue to the early Zionists in the late 19th century. As early as 1895, Herzl proposed a solution: “We shall endeavor to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed.” And in 1947, David Ben-Gurion reaffirmed the underlying principle, “There can be no strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 percent.” In 2003, Binyamin Netanyahu reaffirmed this sentiment stating, “If the Arabs in Israel form 40 percent of the population, this is the end of the Jewish state...but 20 percent is also a problem...The state is entitled to employ extreme measures.”
Levit notes that, “This book was not intended to be a comprehensive history of opposition to the moral bankruptcy of militant nationalism for that would require a much longer work.” What the book does is introduce the reader to a large number of thoughtful Jewish critics of Zionism, people who are trying to uphold the humane Jewish tradition, which believes that men and women of every race and nation are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally. As Israel moves in its current direction, the number of Jewish dissenters is likely to grow dramatically.
Death is Hard Work
By Khaled Khalifa, translated by Leri Price, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, hardcover, 192 pp. MEB $22
Reviewed by Eleni Zaras
Bolbol, the youngest son of Abdel Latif, lives a quiet, “well-behaved” life in Damascus when his father dies a natural death at an old age—a privilege in the midst of Syria’s civil war that garners little or no sympathy at a time when death is so ubiquitous.
In Khaled Khalifa’sDeath is Hard Work— publishedinArabicin2016andtranslatedinto Englishin2019—threeestrangedsiblingsattempttocarryoutthedyingwishoftheirfather: to bury him in his ancestral village, Anabiya, next to his sister Layla. Bolbol, his brother Hussein and his sister Fatima haul their father’sbodyoutofthemorguefridge“chockfull of bodies,” lay him onto icepacks in the back of Hussein’s minibus and hit the road.
As a logistical nightmare takes shape, Bolbol, who had cared for his father in his final days, quickly regrets his sentimental lapse of judgment that tricked him into consenting to his father’s final request.
Passing from regime to rebel-held territories demands not only patience, but also cash, connections and a hefty dose of luck, which is not always on their side. Abdel Latif had been a devoted rebel-supporter and their identity cards all bore the name of the town where they grew up—“S.”—a well-known rebel stronghold that immediately raises the suspicions of regime checkpoint guards.
Checkpoints, storms, bouts of open gunfire, tank convoys, and off-road detours further delay what should have only been a few hours of driving, transforming the trip into a days-long odyssey. The ice under their father’s body melts and the corpse passes from one stage of decomposition to the next faster than the minibus can move between checkpoints. The siblings, who can’t even bear each other’s company under normal circumstances, teeter on the verge of aborting their absurd mission and leaving the body to the ravenous dogs prowling the outskirts of towns.
“What did his father’s body mean?” Bolbol wonders after hours of travel. “It was a harsh but justified question that night. All three of them were wondering it, but none had a clear answer. Silence had settled over the minibus. Hussein stayed silent to
Eleni Zaras is the assistant director at Middle East Books and More. She has a BA in the History of Art from the University of Michigan and a masters degree in History at the Universite Paris Diderot.
stifle his anger; Fatima was trying not to The story line itself is straightforward. In breathe, so they would forget she was its simplicity and without focusing on the there. The sounds of missiles and anti-tank politics of the war, Khalifa illustrates how a bombs were getting closer; Hussein said routine, human need (a burial) is subjected dispassionately, ‘They’re bombing Homs.’” to the war’s dehumanizing effects. This ap
Khalifa writes with matter-of-fact prose proach, in turn, humanizes the destruction and unapologetically reveals attitudes on we may only vaguely understand through life as a “pre-death” state, bodies as comnumbers or unrelenting but faceless modities to declare like “hookah coals, tragedies that saturate the media. crates of tomatoes, sacks of onions,” and In a 2008 interview with the New York childhood memories “like acid inside them.” Times, Khalifa “insists he has no interest in
Yet these same memories are what save social realism or didactic fiction. Political idethe family and the reader from utter nihilism. ology infected the work of too many Arab “Surrendering to one’s memories is the best writers in the 1960s and ’70s, he said. His way of escaping the wounds they preown aims are purely aesthetic, and his serve…So as the minibus was leaving the heroes are William Faulkner and Gabriel checkpoint at Z, that’s just what Bolbol did, García Márquez. He chose to write about swamped with pain as he was, feeling as ‘the Events’ [in his novel In Praise of Hatred] though he were sinking into the earth....” not to make a political point, but to give artis
With Bolbol, we sink into silent reckonings tic life to the increasingly brutal realities of the with once-blissful moments of youth, disapworld he grew up in.” Death is Hard Work pointments of adulthood and paralyzing fear continues in this same vein and has been of the regime. His memories of Lamia, the compared to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. woman he never stopped loving, and of the As the prolonged travel ravages the body energy and hope that marked the early days of Abdel Latif and whittles away at his progof the revolution remind the reader why this eny’s sanity, the reader’s tolerance, too, journey is simultaneously futile and neceswears thin. Our own dread of whatever hursary. Khalifa jolts us from these poetically dles the war will throw at this family next sketched reveries, though, with his terse and our own desperation for the journey to narration of the pitiless guards, the blistering end cannot be dispelled. body and indiscriminate destruction. While Abdel Latif’s children “couldn’t imagine that anyone else would still harbor any sense of duty toward this man,” the power of Khalifa’s narrative is that he does in fact instill this “sense of duty” into the reader. Like the three www.MiddleEastBooks.com travelers, it is imperative that we bear this burden Nonfiction • Literature • Cookbooks through to the end and Children’s Books • Arabic Books • Films Greeting Cards • Palestinian Solidarity Items refuse to abandon them Pottery • Olive Oil • Food Products to face the road alone. Death is Hard Workis
Monday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. • Saturday: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. a National Book Awards Sunday: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Finalist, one of the Wall Street Journal’s Best 1902 18th St. NW • Washington, DC 20009 bookstore@wrmea.org Books of the Year and an (202) 939-6050 ext. 1 NPR Best Book of the Year.
By Yotam Gidron, Zed Books, 2020, paperback, 213 pp. MEB: $24
Reviewed by Dale Sprusansky
In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of African countries forging closer diplomatic relations with Israel. This development, along with improved Israeli-Arab Gulf relations, has left some members of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement feeling dismayed. Meanwhile, Israel has built-up the importance of each of these new diplomatic openings, utilizing them to counter the BDS narrative that its illegal occupation of Palestine has left the country largely isolated on the international stage.
Perhaps the best-known chapter of Israel’s history in Africa is the close relationship it forged with apartheid South Africa. Beyond that, however, little tends to be known about either historic or contemporary Israeli engagement with the continent. Why, for instance, have Rwanda, Togo, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo opened up to Israel? These are questions that academics, researchers, journalists and activists deeply interested in Israel/Palestine but unfamiliar with the history of Africa increasingly want to understand.
Thankfully, researcher Yotam Gidron has stepped up with a timely new book, Israel in Africa: Security, Migration, Interstate Politics, that, in a pithy 159 pages (minus footnotes), masterfully explains the rise, fall,
and reemergence of Israel-Africa relations since 1948.
While Gidron does provide details about Israel’s relations with particular countries, the objective of the book is to provide an overview of the themes that have defined Israel’s engagement with Africa. Readers can enjoy the book as a primer on the subject, and use its many references as a means to launch research into a case study of particular interest.
To this reader, there are three key takeaways from Gidron’s work: Israel’s engagement with Africa has historically only yielded modest results, African countries have not been passive victims of Israeli intervention, and Israel’s interaction with the continent has been largely privatized.
Here’s a closer look at these themes:
Limited Results: Shortly after independence, Israel, isolated by much of the Arab world and Asia, saw decolonizing African countries as a way to gain international allies. Close relations with certain countries on the periphery of the Arab world, particular Ethiopia (one of Israel’s first African partners), also allowed Israel to check the power of its Arab nemeses.
While Israel established 22 embassies in African nations by 1963 and provided developmental and security assistance to several countries, they were unable to leverage these relationships on the international stage. “The support of many of Israel’s friends in Africa usually didn’t extend beyond a polite abstention in votes on Israel-related resolutions” at the U.N., Gidron notes. This, he says, was due to the fact that the Arab world also had diplomatic levers to pull in Africa.
Israel-Africa relations chilled as a result of African displeasure with the 1967 and 1973 wars, and took on a less important role for Israel after it reached peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt. In the era of BDS, however, Africa-Israel relations are again of importance to Jerusalem, and are rebounding. However, Israel still cannot count on the continent for votes at international fora. For instance, even though Washington was actively “taking names” of
This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman, by Ilhan Omar, Dey Street Books, 2020, hardcover, 288 pp. MEB $25.
A beacon of positivity in dark times, Rep. Omar has weathered many political storms and yet maintained her signature grace, wit and love of country—all the while speaking up for her beliefs. Similarly, in chronicling her remarkable personal journey, Omar is both lyrical and unsentimental, and her irrepressible spirit, patriotism, friendship and faith are visible on every page. As a result, This is What America Looks Likeis both the inspiring coming of age story of a refugee and a multidimensional tale of the hopes and aspirations, disappointments and failures, successes, sacrifices and surprises, of a devoted public servant with unshakable faith in the promise of America.
Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy, by Robert Vitalis, Stanford University Press, 2020, hardcover, 240 pp. MEB $24.
There is a conventional wisdom about oil—that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees access to this strategic resource; that the “special” relationship with Saudi Arabia is necessary to stabilize an otherwise volatile market; and that these assumptions in turn provide Washington enormous leverage over Europe and Asia. Except, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Robert Vitalis debunks the myths to reveal “oilcraft,” a line of magical thinking closer to witchcraft than statecraft. Vitalis shows how we can reconsider the question of the U.S.–Saudi special relationship, which confuses and traps many into accepting what they imagine is a devil’s bargain. The House of Saud does many things for U.S. investors, firms and government agencies, but guaranteeing the flow of oil, making it cheap, or stabilizing the price isn’t one of them.
A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, by Tom Segev, translated by Haim Watzman, Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2019, hardcover, 816 pp. MEB $35. In this definitive biography, Israel’s leading journalist-historian Tom Segev uses large amounts of previously unreleased archival material to give an original account, transcending the myths and legends that have accreted around Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion. Segev’s probing biography ranges from the villages of Poland to Manhattan libraries, London hotels and the hills of Palestine, and shows us Ben-Gurion’s relentless activity across six decades. Along the way, Segev reveals for the first time Ben-Gurion’s secret negotiations with the British on the eve of Israel’s independence, his willingness to countenance the forced transfer of Arab neighbors, his relative indifference to Jerusalem, and his occasional “nutty moments” from UFO sightings to plans for Israel to acquire territory in South America. Segev also reveals that Ben-Gurion first heard about the Holocaust from a Palestinian Arab acquaintance and explores his tempestuous private life.
countries who supported a 2017 U.N. resolution condemning the U.S. decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Gidron notes, “Togo was the only African country that voted with the U.S. and Israel.”
African Agency: Gidron makes a strong case that the Israel-Africa relationship has not been a one-sided affair. He does rightly make clear that Israel has always been the stronger member of any bilateral relationship it has enjoyed with an African nation, and that “much of the leverage Israel has in Africa comes from Washington rather than Jerusalem.” At the same time, he emphasizes that African leaders have often played their cards wisely.
Awareness of Israel’s desire to use the continent as an avenue to project diplomatic, geopolitical and economic strength has afforded African leaders significant leverage, Gidron argues. For instance, at the height of the Arab-Israeli conflict, African leaders were “always able to increase the price of their friendship by threatening, more or less explicitly, to strengthen their cooperation with the other side.” Gidron thus describes the relationship as, in part, “a story about African leaders utilizing the rivalries of the Middle East and North Africa in order to draw Israeli material and political support for their own local ends.”
African leaders, he adds, know they, “can tap into Israeli investments, technologies and expertise without having to pay it back directly in political support.”
Privatization: While Israel’s early interaction with Africa was largely initiated by the state, it did not take long for private interests to usurp the Israeli diplomatic corps. Today, even as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu celebrates new diplomatic openings, it is private Israeli interests, particularly those pertaining to the arms trade and mining, which dominate Israel-Africa relations. Given the nefarious nature of many of these operations, Israel officially keeps
Dale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
its distance from most of these private sector initiatives, though Gidron notes that, particularly when it comes to Israel’s military, “the distinction between national interests and private ones can be unclear.”
That African leaders have welcomed Israeli arms is not to say these weapons are benefiting the people of Africa. As Gidron notes, many despotic leaders have used Israeli arms to fortify their own power, often at the expense of the common good.
These conclusions are just a microcosm of the abundant, clearly distilled information available inIsrael in Africa. There are many more insights to be gleaned from the book on these topics, not to mention its assessment of topics this review has not explored, such as migration, the role of Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity, and the influence Washington and pro-Israel lobbying groups have over Israel-Africa relations.
Anyone interested in understanding Israel’s role in the world today is strongly encouraged to pick up a copy of Israel in Africa. It’s a short, power-packed book well worth the time.
On June 10, the Washington Reportheld a book talk with author Yotam Gidron. To view the discussion, visit, https://youtu.be/ 929KtEbo1I8.
B O O K TA L K S
Interlink Authors Discussing Writing about Palestine
By Incia Haider
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) held a webinar on May 28 titled, “A Zoom Discussion with Interlink Publishing Authors,” featuring three of the publishing house’s writers. Authors discussed Palestinian rights, Zionism and the Middle Eastern conflict and highlighted the importance of Interlink Publishing as a channel for dispersing and printing works ignored by other publishers.
Nora Lester Murad, a U.S. native who has lived in Palestine for 13 years, during which time she has co-founded two organizations, Dalia Association and Aid-Watch Palestine, recently published a collection of personal reflections on foreigners living in Palestine titled, I Found Myself in Palestine. She said this “was not a book she set out to write, but it had to be written and compelled itself into existence.”
Murad described the process of gathering and listening to stories from ajanab (foreigners) as “wrapping herself around some really raw issues about identity, belonging and the experience of being an ‘inside-outsider.’” Contributors to the book come from all over the world. Various angles of how all these foreigners have been transformed are explored within the work, ranging from transformations of family life to religion to activism. While these reflections give insight into the unique experiences of foreigners in Palestine, Murad stressed the importance of Palestinians sharing their own stories.
Daphna Levit, an Israeli-born activist, writer and lecturer, discussed the failure of Israel as a democratic state, as well as the history of dissent in the country, which is the focus of her book, Wrestling with Zionism.
Levit expressed herself as, “always the outsider, because being critical of Israel as an Israeli is not really permitted.” She cited Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s declaration of Israel as a state that shows preference to its Jewish citizens as an impetus for her to commit to fighting against the occupation and anti-democratic values within the Israeli state. “If Israel is truly a democracy,” she exclaimed, “why do people who don’t live there but are Jewish have preferential rights over non-Jews who actually live there?” Levit addresses this juxtaposition of democracy and religious nationalism within her work.
Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, has published many books with Interlink, with her most recent being the seventh edition of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.
Incia Haider, who attends the University of California, Berkeley, is a Washington Report on Middle East Affairs summer intern.
