18 minute read
Middle east books reVieW
All books featured in this section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1
Apartheid is a Crime: Portraits of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
By Mats Svensson, Cune Press, 2020, hardcover, 160 pp. MEB $20
Reviewed by Charles Villa-Vicencio
A picture tells a thousand words! It was television and photographs of South African apartheid that, in the 1970s and 1980s, informed global audiences of the barbarities of racism. Thanks to social media, the present Israeli variant of apartheid is even more extensively documented. Whilst South Africa gave the word “apartheid” to institutionalized racism, international law indicates that the Israeli government’s conduct toward Palestinians meets the legal definition of apartheid, as well as the definitions of genocide and war crimes in terms of articles six, seven and eight of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The intricacies of the legal and political debates on the illegality of the Israeli oc-
Charles Villa-Vicencio, the former national research director of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation based in Cape Town. He is currently a visiting professor in conflict resolution at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. This review was edited and shortened for space from its original submission.
cupation of Palestine continues. Mats Svensson’s album, Apartheid is a Crime, is comprised of black and white photographs and offers a different approach. He captures the mood of “ordinary” Palestinians in a manner that speaks to people who observe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a distance.
The photographs include the ruins of stone huts, storage barns and other structures of occupied Palestinian farms, which have been incorporated into Israeli orange groves. The imposing wall along the Gaza border, the separation of East and West Jerusalem and the wall separating “the little town of Bethlehem” from the southern part of the West Bank are blunt structures of conquest and control, embellished on the non-Israeli side with pro-Palestinian graffiti. Svensson also captures the memories of dispossession, which are internalized on the faces of the elderly, the fortitude of women and mothers, and the determination of youths and the mischievous eyes of children who await the future. The firepower of Israeli fighter jets, bombs and teargas is massive. The question is whether youthful conscripted Israeli recruits can match Palestinian resolve—and for how long? For South Africans, the faces generate a sense of déjà vu.
Svensson’slensisontheemotional trauma,bodilysufferingandtheeconomic dispossessionofPalestinians,which speaktoalienatedgroupsintheUnited States,Europe,theMiddleEast,South Africaandelsewherearoundtheworld. Thishasresultedingrowingsupportfor Palestinians,throughtheglobalBoycott, DivestmentandSanctions(BDS)campaign,whichisreminiscentoftheglobal mobilizationthatbroughtapartheidtoan endinSouthAfricaandcurrentlyinspires theBlackLivesMattermovementagainst racismintheUnitedStates.
The portraits included in Apartheid is a Crime are augmented with succinct words from people who have lost their land to Zionist settlers, as well as the words of scholars, poets and world leaders, including Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Comparing the Palestinian situation to that of apartheid South Africa, Tutu speaks of the “corralling and harassing” of Palestinians, warning that “those who turn a blind eye to injustice” are contributing to the mutual destruction of the humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians. An elderly woman captures the sentiment of the first generation of displaced Palestinians, torn away from their land, their identity and their grandmothers’ stories. A wise Palestinian activist encourages Svensson to write about what he sees and hears in the lives of Palestinians. “Write, write, write!” he insists. Svensson went one step further, allowing his camera to do the writing. The candid persistence of the hardened activist is part of the Palestinian story.
ThecontextofSvensson’sphotographyistoldandretoldbynumerousauthors.Collectively,theydefinetheemotion,suspicionandintransigenceofthe conflict,intertwinedinthecomplexities
andtheaffinityofpoliticalandreligious Zionism.Thiscametoaheadinthe 1948Arab-IsraeliWar,the1967Six-Day WarthatledtotheoccupationofEast Jerusalem,theWestBank,GazaStrip andtheGolanHeights,the1973Yom KippurWar,the1982Israeliinvasionof Lebanonandthefirstandsecondintifadas.ThebuildingofJewishsettlementsinoccupiedterritoriesandthe latestthreattobuildmoresettlements withthetacitsupportofU.S.President DonaldTrumpentrenchesalevelofcolonialsubjugationthatcontradictsthevery demandoftheStateofIsrael—thatArab nationsrespecttheirbordersandnationalsecurity.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict replicates the two dominant typologies of conflict described in the field of peace and conflict studies: identity-based conflict and land or resource-based conflict. Whatever the contextual nuances and political machinations behind the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Partition Plan of 1947, the current situation allows the State of Israel to be committed to territorial expansion, ethnic cleansing and, ironically, a memory of the lebensraum of German expansionism during the Second World War. Palestinians are resisting the occupation of their land and the violation of their most basic rights.
Svensson’sphotographssuggestthe needforamechanismoftransitionaljusticeandpeace-making,inwhichthebasic needsofbothIsraelisandPalestinianare met.Thisinvolves:(i)Sufficientpolitical willamongbothIsraelisandPalestinians toexploreaunitarystate,basedon mutualrespectandco-existence.(ii)The importanceofacknowledgement(asopposedtomereknowledge),whichinvolvestakingre sponsibilityfortheprevailingimpasse.(iii)Thepoliticalleadership onbothsidesguidingfearfulandangry peopleawayfromresentmenttoasituationofmutualbenefit.(iv)Agreementon symbolic,politicalandmaterialreparations,plustheemotionalrealityinvolved. (v)Theuseofgoodgovernanceandeducationtonegotiatethroughtheinterregnumbetweenthepastinpursuitofanew future.(vi)Adeepreflectiononhistoryas abasisforcorrectingmistakesmadeand opportunitieslost,inanattempttoavoid similarrepetitionsinthefuture.Itwould involveamajorchangeforIsraelis,in returnforameasureofsecurityand humanrights,asanalternativetoescalatinginternationalpressureandintensifiedPalestinianresistancetotheoccupation.Thiswasthepathchoseninthe SouthAfricantransitionin1994.Twentysixyearslater,thebuildingblocksofthis statearestillbeingedgedintoplace.
Enforcing Silence: Academic Freedom, Palestine and the Criticism of Israel
Edited by David Landy, Ronit Lentin and Conor McCarthy, Zed Books, 2020, paperback, 288 pp. MEB $29
Reviewed by Walter Hixson
This anthology centers on the concerted efforts being led by Israel and its supporting lobbies, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, to si-
Contributing editor Walter L. Hixson is the author of Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor. lence academic dissent over ongoing repression of Palestine. The book raises disturbing questions about the limitations of academic freedom amid the movement to suppress the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and equate criticism of Israel with delegitimization and anti-Semitism.
Divided into three parts and 12 chapters, the anthology features different perspectives united around a common theme: the effort to silence dissent on campuses in the face of Israel’s ongoing settler colonial oppression. These essays show that rather than serving as bastions of free thought and dissent, universities in Israel and the West often serve to reinforce dominant hegemonic discourses. Rather than protecting and enabling dissent, as John Reynolds argues in one of the essays, academic freedom arguments are instead “being deployed in the service of colonialism.”
In addition to assailing critics with charges of anti-Semitism, “Israel Studies” programs have been established on campuses as a “corollary to censorship and suppression of critiques of Zionism in universities.” As Hilary Aked points out, faculty posts in Israel Studies thus “serve as academic ‘facts on the ground’” bolstering settler colonialism in Palestine.
In an essay focusing on Israeli universities, Ronit Lentin demonstrates that “contrary to its ‘liberal’ image, Israeli academia works in the service of the racial state’s permanent war against the Palestinians.” Rather than enabling academic freedom, Israeli universities repress dissent while at the same time promoting “active collaboration” with the weapons and securities industries of the Israeli state. Moreover, Israel “exercises surveillance and control over educational institutions in occupied Palestine” by a variety of repressive means, including raids, closures, disruption of the free movement of students and faculty, preventing the holding of meetings and conferences, suspensions and expulsions, and the manipulation of visas and passports. The dedicated
pursuit of a “colonial agenda” in Israeli higher education makes “a mockery of the very principle of academic freedom.”
An essay by Jeff Handmaker analyzes the deployment of “repressive, law-based measures, or lawfare” to “silence dissent and to persecute individual critics of Israel.” Universities increasingly resort to this “hegemonic and illegitimate use of law,” including the creation in Israel of a “government-funded tarnishing unit.”
Whereas “legal mobilization of human rights adopts positive, legitimating, and empowering forms” of advocacy for social justice, Handmaker points out “by contrast, lawfare takes negative, delegitimizing, and oppressive forms...validating the superiority of one group of people over another,” as with the nation-state law purporting to establish Israel as an exclusively Jewish state.
Palestinian scholars and activists such as Omar Barghouti, Sami Al-Arian and Steven Salaita have been especially susceptible to vilification and lawfare. As C. Heike Schotten notes, “Indigenous resistance is a mortal threat to the coherence, meaning, stability and persistence of the settler state.” The efforts to repress these scholars and activists is chilling and sometimes ironic. Salaita, for example, was hired by the University of Illinois to teach indigenous studies but when he spoke out for indigenous Palestinians amid their slaughter in Gaza in 2014 his offer of employment was withdrawn.
While some readers may find the frequent resort to academic terminology offputting, overall, the essays in this book achieve their goal of offering abundant critical analysis as to “what academic freedom means in practical terms in neoliberal academic settings,” in which corporate capitalism dominates institutional planning. The anthology thus speaks truth to power in the face of Israeli repression of Palestinians and repression of academic freedom as well.
www.MiddleEastBooks.com
Nonfiction • Literature • Cookbooks Children’s Books • Arabic Books • Films Greeting Cards • Palestinian Solidarity Items Pottery • Olive Oil • Food Products
Monday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. • Saturday: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday: 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
1902 18th St. NW • Washington, DC 20009 bookstore@wrmea.org (202) 939-6050 ext. 1
By Ilhan Omar, HarperCollins, 2020, hardcover, 277 pp. MEB $25
Reviewed by Delinda C. Hanley
I’ll admit I’ve been worried about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who is often the target of Islamophobic and racist taunts from President Donald Trump and his right-wing supporters. In fact, the day after Trump refused to condemn white supremacists during the first debate, the president held a rally in Omar’s state, home to one of the largest Somali populations in the country. Trump warned the crowd that if elected president, Joe Biden would turn Minnesota into a refugee camp, prompting chants to “lock her up!”
Omar was raised by her widowed father and a beloved grandfather, her childhood interrupted by Somalia’s civil war. After reading This is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman, I realized that Omar used her wits to fight off illness and despair in a Kenyan refugee camp and her fists to stand up to mean bullies in her middle school in Arlington, VA. Trump, who grew up pampered, rich and clueless about many of the people who make America great, doesn’t have a chance in a fight with this brilliant survivor.
Omar’sgrandfatherurgedthefamilyto
leavetheirrefugeecampandapplyforresettlementintheU.S.becausehesaid, “OnlyinAmericacanyouultimately becomeanAmerican.Everywhereelse wewillalwaysfeellikeaguest.”After watchinganorientationvideoshowing Americaasalandofplentywithbeautiful homesandwhitepicketfences,the12year-oldOmarwasshockedtolandin NewYorkCityin1995andseethehomelessandpilesofgarbageinthestreets.Her fatherassuredher,“Thisisn’tourAmerica. We’llgetto our America.”ThatmoreperfectAmericaisaplaceOmarisdetermined tospendherlifebuildingforallofus.
IwasafraidthatwhathadbeenapageturnerwouldslowdownonceOmar becameateenagerandherfamilymoved toMinneapolis.Insteadthisreaderwas transfixedbyherworkorganizingacoalitioncalledUnityinDiversitythattransformedherchaoticvolatilehighschool intoamorepeacefullearningenvironment.She’sbeenorganizingeversince.
Mind you, Omar was no angel and it is her single-parent father, raising a headstrong daughter, who I think earned a halo. “My father raised me with a strict morality, not strict rules...A revealing outfit upset him not for the body parts it revealed, but for the lack of self-esteem it demonstrated.”
Omarmetherfirsthusband,Ahmed, whenshewasonly16,andtheymarried rightafterherhighschoolgraduation.She hadbarelystartedanaccountingprogram whenthe9/11terrorismattacksoccurred. SherecallsthatMuslimAmericans“were heldresponsible,asagroup,fortheterroristattacksorseenasathreat.Suddenlyourreligionwasdangerousandour American-nesscalledintoquestion.”
Throughout the book, Omar honestly and fearlessly examines her religion, marriage, motherhood, work and the losses she’s endured as a refugee, “...the loss of my homeland, my language, and any sense of permanence. I lost not only my childhood but also the future that had been promised me.” Instead of sinking into depression Omar makes some tough
What the West Is Getting Wrong about the Middle East: Why Islam Is Not the Problem, by Ömer Taspinar, I.B.
Tauris, 2020, hardcover, 268 pp. MEB $26. The West’s actions in the Middle East are based on a fundamental misunderstanding: political Islam is repeatedly assumed to be the main cause of conflict and unrest in the region. The idea that we can decipher jihadist radicalization or the region’s problems simply by reading the Qur’an has now become symptomatic of our age. Ultimately, this oversimplification has hindered long-term solutions and stability in the region. Ömer Taspinar focuses on three cases currently under the spotlight: the role of Erdogan and unrest in Turkey, the sectarian clashes in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon and the existence of the Islamic State. Taspinar emphasizes the importance of treating the causes, which are economic, social and institutional—rather than the symptom—the growing success of Islamist parties and jihadist movements in assessing the Middle East.
TheUnitedStatesofWar:AGlobalHistoryofAmerica’s EndlessConflicts,fromColumbustotheIslamicState, byDavidVine,UniversityofCaliforniaPress,2020,hard-
cover,464pp.MEB$29. TheU.S.hasbeenfightingwars constantlysinceinvadingAfghanistanin2001.Thisnonstop warfareisfarlessexceptionalthanitmightseem:theU.S.has beenatwarorhasinvadedothercountriesalmosteveryyear sinceitsindependence.DavidVinetracesthispatternofbloody conflictfromColumbus’s1494arrivalinGuantanamoBay throughthe250-yearexpansionofaglobalU.S.empire. The UnitedStatesofWardemonstrateshowU.S.leadersacrossgenerationshavelockedthe countryinaself-perpetuatingsystemofpermanentwarbyconstructingtheworld’slargestevercollectionofforeignmilitarybases—aglobalmatrixthathasmadeoffensiveinterventionistwarsmorelikely.Beyondexposingtheprofit-makingdesires,politicalinterests, racismandtoxicmasculinityunderlyingthecountry’srelationshiptowarandempire,Vine showshowthelonghistoryofU.S.militaryexpansionhasshapedAmericans’dailylives.
Retargeting Iran, edited by David Barsamian, City Lights
Books, 2020, paperback, 187 pp. MEB $15. The United States and Iran seem to be permanently locked in a dangerous cycle of brinkmanship and violence. Both countries have staged cyber-attacks and recently shot down one another’s aircraft. Why do both countries seem intent on escalation? Why did the U.S. abandon the nuclear deal? Where can Washington and Tehran find common ground? To address these questions and the political and historical forces at play, David Barsamian presents the perspectives of Iran scholars Ervand Abrahamian, Noam Chomsky, Nader Hashemi, Azadeh Moaveni and Trita Parsi. A follow-up to the previously published Targeting Iran, this timely book continues to affirm the goodwill between Iranian and American people, even as their respective governments clash on the international stage.
decisions and bravely embarks on a new journey, juggling kids, school and activism. She also describes her political ascent to Congress, getting out the vote for Mohamud Noor’s bid for Minnesota state senator, working for Councilmember Andrew Johnson and other progressive leaders—tirelessly organizing grassroots campaigns and building coalitions. Omar also honestly addresses some of the controversies that have dogged her, like her “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” tweet and expresses her pride that Bernie Sanders endorsed her re-election.
Omar’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, died due to complications from COVID19 in June 2020, just after this book was published. “No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew him,” the first Muslim congresswoman to wear a hijab on the House floor stated in a press release.
I beg to differ. Omar’s book describes in eloquent words her beloved father, as well as her grandfather, and many other hard-working refugees proudly raising their American children. Like Omar, these children are uniquely positioned to stand up to bullies and transform this nation into “our America.”
The Quarter
By Naguib Mahfouz, translated by Roger Allen, Saqi, 2019, hardcover, 128 pp. MEB $15
Reviewed by Eleni Zaras
A contagion of tears, a gambler desperate for a wife and family, and a mysterious, deadly arrow are among the
mundane and fantastical misfortunes recounted in Mahfouz’s collection of short stories, The Quarter, published posthumously in 2019. While misfortune, distrust and longing all lurk in the streets of Cairo’s old quarter, we also catch glimmers of their antidotes of laughter, faith and love, even if only revealed in fleeting or unconventional ways.
The 18 stories published in The Quarterwere discovered by Mahfouz’s daughter in 2018 with the attached note, “To be published in 1994.” While the exact moment of the stories’ execution is unknown, the translator, Roger Allen, attempts in his introduction to situate the stories within Mahfouz’s long career.
Stylistically, he points to Mahfouz’s “increasingly allusive and economical style” in the 1960s and 1970s, and his thematic return to the hara(quarter) setting around this same time. Comparing the stories in The Quarter to Mahfouz’s other writings, Allen specifically draws parallels to Echoes of an Autobiography (published in Arabic in 1994 and in English in 1997).
Indeed,thestoriesin TheQuartercombinethe“reminisces”and“homileticwis dom”elementsofEchoesofanAutobiography.Attimesaddressingthereaderinthe
Eleni Zaras is the former assistant bookstore director at Middle East Books and More. She is a student in Near Eastern Studies at New York University’s Kevorkian Center and has a BA in the History of Art from the University of Michigan and a Masters degree in History from the Universite Paris Diderot. firstperson,thenarratorsharesepisodes oflifeinthequarterasifspeakingwithan oldfriend.Othertimes,hestepsintoa moreelusiveroleofastorytellerrecounting awell-versedlegendoutsidethebounds oftime.Attheheartofeachstory,though, andofthequartermorebroadly,arethe HeadoftheQuarterandtheSheikh,who mediatebetweenforcesofmen,nature andspiritsandstrive,withmixedresults, towardamoralizingconclusion.
While the reader becomes privy to the emotions, intrigues and shifting situations in the quarter, the stories are brief—no more than a few pages—and more concerned with precision of a narrative form than developing complex psyches and robust, realist details. The setting of the “Quarter” itself floats in an unspecified time and place.
These vignettes are thus far removed in style and form from Mahfouz’s perhaps most well-known Cairo Trilogy, the epic, over 1,500-page trilogy which steeps the reader in the minds and material worlds of the characters, neighborhoods and epochs.
Yet, the judiciousness of sensory and descriptive details in The Quarter endow each line with greater potency, and draw attention to his syntactic and structural precision. In “The Prayer of Sheikh Qaf,” the story opens matter-of-factly with the lines: “Umaira al-Ayiq had been murdered./ Hifni al-Rayiq was accused of the crime./ Al-Zayni, Kibrita, and Fayiq all witnessed the crime and testified to it./ Hifni al-Rayiq confessed to the crime.”
These seemingly indisputable facts communicated in terse, unambiguous language are suddenly obfuscated when the narrator goes on to poetically concede: “But the quarter has its own hidden tongue, although no one knows to whom it belongs. It can whisper misgivings and reveal secrets. Such rumors persisted until they filled the entire atmosphere like a powerful smell.”
Mahfouz thus piques our interest from the first carefully crafted lines of each story and proceeds to succinctly divulge
the gossip and myths of the district. Though not specifically related, the stories in The Quarter read more like a set of interconnected tales than distinct, stand-alone stories.
Even with their folkloric structure, their conclusions defy convention. Each outcome is tinged with an unexpected twist or concession, or with uncertainty and unsolved riddles, thus challenging even a “folklore” descriptor.
At the end of this Saqi Books edition of The Quarter, we also find a few facsimiles of stories hand-written by Mahfouz, as well as his Nobel Prize acceptance speech from 1988. Though the tales are supposedly local in their relation to a quarter of Cairo, the quarter serves as a petri dish of humanity, and Mahfouz’s speech at the end amplifies their universal messages. Taken together, Mahfouz’s writings in this newly released compilation remind us of our fallibility, our interconnectedness, and our responsibility toward others, as if we too are all neighbors in this metaphorical hara.
SUPPORT MIDDLE EAST
BOOKSTORE/
COFFEE SHOP
Brick-and-mortar retailers are facing a challenge. Even before the pandemic, competition from Amazon forced a lot of independent bookstores to close. Thanks to your support, Middle East Books and More defied that trend! When it’s safe we hope to welcome you back to browse, shop, and gather our community together for book talks, club meetings and film screenings. We’re still selling books online (www.MiddleEastBooks.com) and opening a few days a week but we are also using this time to expand and add a coffee shop to the bookstore. Now that we’ve completed the architectural plans and selected the contractor, we’ve learned that renovations will cost more than $100,000. Please send a check to AET, 1902 18th St, NW, Washington, DC, with “bookstore” on the memo line to help make your favorite bookstore a special gathering place for our community.
Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia by Rosie Bsheer, Stanford University Press, 2020, paper-
back, 379 pp. MEB $30. The production of history is premised on the selective erasure of certain pasts and the artifacts that stand witness to them. From the elision of archival documents to the demolition of sacred and secular spaces, each act of destruction is also an act of state building. Following the 1991 Gulf War, political elites in Saudi Arabia pursued these dual projects of historical commemoration and state formation with greater fervor to enforce their post-war vision for state, nation and economy. Seeing Islamist movements as the leading threat to state power, they sought to de-center religion from educational, cultural and spatial policies.
Rosie Bsheer explores the increasing secularization of the post-war Saudi state and how it manifested in assembling a national archive and reordering urban space in Riyadh and Mecca. The elites’ project was rife with ironies: in Riyadh, they employed world-renowned experts to fashion an imagined history, while at the same time in Mecca they were overseeing the obliteration of a thousand-year-old topography and its replacement with commercial megaprojects. Archive Warsshows how the Saudi state’s response to the challenges of the Gulf War served to historicize a national space, territorialize a national history and ultimately refract both through new modes of capital accumulation.
Creative Radicalism in the Middle East: Culture and the Arab Left after the Uprisings, by Caroline Rooney, I.B.
Tauris, 2020, paperback, 226 pp. MEB $27. In the face of vicious oppression and years of authoritarian and neoliberal ideology, how did the Arab Left assert itself during the Arab uprisings? In this bold new account, Caroline Rooney outlines the importance of aesthetic strategies and creative expression in the left’s critique of authoritarian and Islamic extremist discourse during the revolutions.
Using a wide array of texts and sources, the book uses affect theory to show how a poetics of disappointment, despair and distrust, to dignity, solidarity and reconfigured senses of the sacred, offer a way for the left to reclaim ethical and progressive “radical” values that have been co-opted by political leaders and extremists in the Middle East. In doing so, the book offers an original conceptual framework for differentiating “radicalization” from the creative radicalism of the Arab avant-garde.
The Spiritual Poems of Rumi, translated by Nader Khalili,
Wellfleet Press, 2020, hardcover, 128 pp. MEB $17. For more than eight centuries, Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi Rumi—commonly referred to simply as Rumi—has enchanted and enthralled readers from every faith and background with his universal themes of love, friendship and spirituality, which he seamlessly wove into resplendent poetry. The verses herein perfectly express the spiritual quest and desire for a deeper understanding of not only ourselves, but also of our collective oneness as humankind.
