Street: Middle East

1 year on, Angry Anarchist is back....!

2008-05-30T11:58:00.003+02:00

2007-05-31T18:57:00.000+02:00

This blog will no longer be updated (personal reasons).

Nahr el Bared Relief Campaign

2007-05-29T16:05:00.000+02:00

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Did you know? :-)

2007-05-28T19:45:00.000+02:00

1. The armed Salafi group Jund al Sham in Ein el Helwe refugee camp in South Lebanon is referred to by the inhabitants of the camp as "Jund al Sitt". Jund al Sitt Bahiya al Hariri, that is.

2. The bank (Bank al-Bahr al-Mutawassit / BankMed) that was robbed, and through which the Fateh al-Islam people used to withdraw their cheques, is owned by Hariri Empire. Now you will say, why would they rob the bank (or rather, $1,500 from the bank) ? Because Hariri Empire, somehow "discovered" that Syria (someone should write a Syrian version of "Blame Canada"...) has managed to infiltrate and use the Hariri Empire bank to pay the Fateh al-Islam fighters, and duly froze the accounts. BankMed is like a pressure cooker (I never liked it when my mom used pressure cooker, once she forgot to open the 'air' vent thing and the whole thing was about to explode. Now I always say, if I survived the pressure cooker, I can survive anything). It seems the Bank al Madina scandal will pale in comparison to this one. Interesting times indeed...

The plot/conspiracy/Syrian infiltration thickens.
Stay tuned for more fascinating developments, folks.

And now for the best part... I now have added a new label/category on my blog: Blame Syria.

In their own words :-)

2007-05-26T13:27:00.000+02:00

المستقبل - الجمعة 13 أيار 2005

من الذي ركّب ملف أحداث الضنية ومجدل عنجر، وأقنع مراكز القرار الغربية بوجود القاعدة المختلق في لبنان، من أجل المتاجرة بالحالة الإسلامية في بازار الإرهاب الدولي؟

أليس الذي فعل ذلك النظام الأمني اللبناني ـ السوري المشترك، وهو الذي يستمر اليوم في استباحة المسلمين والمسيحيين معاً من أجل الإبقاء على رموزه في السلطة بأي ثمن؟

المستقبل - الثلثاء 10 أيار 2005

التيار السلفي
[The Salafi Current/Movement]
يعتبر التيار السلفي في لبنان من ابرز التيارات الاسلامية، وان كان لا يشكل اطاراً منظماً وموحداً بل هو خليط من مجموعات وشخصيات ومدارس وجمعيات ومعاهد شرعية تختلف في ما بينها سواء على الصعد السياسية او الفكرية او حتى وصولاً الى الخلافات الشخصية.
ويمكن تقسيم التيار السلفي في لبنان بين اتجاهين اساسيين:
الاول ما يسمى السلفية الجهادية، وهو يضم المجموعات المتأثرة بتنظيم "القاعدة" وبعض الجماعات الاسلامية الجهادية في مصر والجزائر وحالياً في العراق.
والثاني التيار السلفي الفكري ويضم شخصيات ومجموعات متنوعة تعمل في الاطر السياسية والفكرية والتربوية.
ويبرز الاتجاه السلفي الجهادي من خلال بعض المجموعات التي تنفذ عمليات عسكرية او امنية ومنها عملية اغتيال الشيخ نزار الحلبي ومتفجرة البلمند ومحاولة اقتحام السفارة الروسية او تهريب الاسلحة الى الاردن وصولاً لمجموعات البقاع الغربي ومجدل عنجر ومجموعة احمد الميقاتي.ا
[Angry Anarchist: who gave amnesty to the Majdal Anjar gang?]
وليس لهذا الاتجاه اطار معلن وان كان بعض افراده ارتبطوا عملياً بمجموعة "عصبة الانصار" الموجودة في مخيم عين الحلوة، كما برزت بعض المجموعات المنشقة عنها كـ"جماعة النور" وجماعة "جند الشام".
[Angry Anarchist: Who funds Jund al Sham? Not Sitt Bahiya al Hariri, by any chance...?]
وهذا الاتجاه يبرز في بعض المناسبات أو لتنفيذ عمليات محددة وإن كان نشاطه في لبنان ينطلق من اعتبار هذا البلد "ممراً وليس مقراً" للذهاب الى دول أخرى.
وثمة تخوّف كبير من ازدياد نشاط هذه المجموعات في المرحلة المقبلة بعد الانسحاب السوري نظراً للدور الذي كانت تلعبه سوريا في لجم هذه المجموعات أو ضبط تحركاتها.
وإن كانت محاولة ربط عملية اغتيال الرئيس رفيق الحريري بهذا التيار من خلال قضية أحمد أبو عدس لم تنجح وأثبتت معظم الوقائع عدم صحتها.
أما الاتجاه السلفي الفكري والسياسي فمن أبرز رموزه التاريخية الشيخ سالم الشهال الذي أسس في السبعينات "نواة جيش التحرير الإسلامي"، ثم بدأت تظهر شخصيات ومؤسسات جديدة أبرزها "معهد الدعوة والإرشاد"، و"جمعية دعوة الإيمان والعدل والإحسان" التي يرأسها الدكتور حسن الشهال، و"مركز حمزة للولاء" ويشرف عليه الشيخ زكريا المصري، و"معهد الأمين" و"معهد طرابلس الديني" و"معهد الإمام البخاري" و"مسجد أهل السنة" و"معهد الوقف الإسلامي". وتنتشر هذه المعاهد في بيروت وطرابلس وعكار وصيدا والبقاع الغربي.
وقد بدأت التيارات الإسلامية في الأسابيع الماضية سلسلة اتصالات ولقاءات في ما بينها للتنسيق والتعاون وثم تشكيل "المكتب السياسي الإسلامي" برئاسة الدكتور حسن الشهال.
ويبدو أن الانسحاب السوري من لبنان واغتيال الرئيس الشهيد رفيق الحريري ساهما في تعزيز تحركات التيارات السلفية التي تسعى لـتكثيف نشاطاتها وتحركاتها في المرحلة المقبلة، وهي تلقى دعماً مالياً ومعنويات من العديد من المؤسسات الإسلامية في الكويت والسعودية.ا
[Angry Anarchist translation: "they [the Salafi currents/movements] receive financial and moral support from a number of Islamic associations in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia."]
إضافة للتيارات والحركات والجمعيات التي تحدثنا عنها سابقاً فإن هناك الكثير من المجموعات والجمعيات والهيئات الإسلامية الناشطة على الصعيد الإسلامي في مختلف المناطق اللبنانية، والتي ازداد نشاطها بعد اغتيال الرئيس الحريري واتخاذ قرار الانسحاب السوري، وبعض هذه الهيئات كان يعاني سابقاً الضغوط الأمنية والسياسية التي تعيق تحركه ويجد اليوم أنه أكثر قدرة على النشاط والحيوية.ا

Stay tuned for the next round of "in their own words". :o)

Summary for those who do not read Arabic:

These are two articles that appeared in Al-Mustaqbal (Hariri) newspaper in May 2005, which addressed the question of the Dinnieh and Majdal Anjar events, as well as the Salafi movements in Lebanon. The excerpt I quoted from the first article argues that Al-Qaida in Lebanon is fictitious, and that Syria was just trying to convince western "centers of decision" that it does exist, in order to do business with the "Islamic condition" in the "global terrorism bazaar". The second article talks about the Salafi movements post-Syrian withdrawal, and heaps praise on the newly found freedom of activity of these groups, which are divided into two groups: the "Jihadi" ones (which carry out military operations), and the "intellectual" ones. It also says that Syria used to restrain these groups, but following the Hariri assassination and the Syrian withdrawal, their activities have increased. Most importantly, they receive financial support and morale boost from various Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian associations.

Lebanese "Leftism" 101

2007-05-24T14:58:00.000+02:00

These days Lebanese "leftists" seem to be very much into bashing of Palestinians. I think it might have to do with their inability and unwillingness to do much else (except accuse anarchists of being "compulsive" and of "accusing people of things"). I'd be inclined to say that they are not "leftists". They are pseudo-leftists. But then, what is "leftism"? It seems that there are way too many things going under that term these days, so much so that a right-wing nutcase would be able to take shelter under it and still have people cheer for him. "Leftists" are fighting amongst themselves for monopoly over the term/label. As for the content of the label, it does not matter. At all.

For example, read the following excerpts from the "analysis" of a Lebanese "leftist":

The Syrian connection:

Naher el-Bared is located only 7 Kilometers away from the Syrian borders in the North. If you draw that on a small scale on any paper in front of you just now, do not draw anything but a "camp" and then "borders". And trust me... their is NOTHING that can stand between the most convenient armament and supply line for both points. That made a huge difference between Naher el-Bared and the other camps.

The proof:

This proves Syria's role in giving such primacy to the Islamists through a highly unbalanced presence where no other palestinian group could've opposed or even merely competed. This is why the civilians were caught in the middle considering the surprise attack that started this operation.

And now, the "leftism" kicks in:

If the civilians have been silent enough to get the militants to entrench themselves and to establish such firm control before the fighting broke out, doesn't that imply that they knew that militancy brings war? what's a damn cannon for? Beautifying the scenery? Or threatening the Israelis not to attack? This doesn't of course mean that the Palestinians are all in on this... Probably i leave this to Amine Gemayyel or Geagea to conclude. But militancy is not done in secret and particularly in the case of Fateh al-Islam people have known about it for 6 months to say the least.

Some more "leftism":

In defense of the Army, you cannot envision the army of being hitting blindly the whole camp careless of who exactly their shells hit. The army WAS BEING ATTACKED. It was Fatah al-Islam that broke all agreements for ceasefire in order to allow the safe exit of Palestinians. It is not equipped with proper weapons to return fire against specified accurate targets even if it could differentiate between civilian and militant. This opens up a political pandora's box about how much burdens this army carries amidst this endless turmoil. Still, the army hit back with the minimum damage to civilians. Everytime the army stopped shooting it was Fatah that hit first.

Be warned: the dosage of "leftism" is increasing as we move along:

The whole propaganda about bombing civilians started with the pro-Syrian sources saying that there's a humanitarian crisis in the camp. The humanitarian crisis was trigerred by Fatah without even needing the army. Since if you have militants overtaking your house, you're already in deep shit no? If you are against it, then don't you do something about it?

My initial response:

Huh???
Are you for real?????????????????????

Man, I would've never expected such a post from you.

But then this proves my theory.

That Lebanese "leftists" are a joke.
That nationalism blinds even the most (presumably) open-minded and non-racist people of all.

Amazing.

Excerpts from the reply:

Have you seen the civilian death toll? Before you shower me with your "humaine" emotions? Check the Red Cross Official Report: 56 dead - 4 of which are civilians - 3 males who were actually found with the militants. Check for facts, its always important to do so before engaging in debate - u don't want to be a misinformed participant - it's silly trust me.

Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori:

I join MFL in Saluting with Honor those who died in vain Palestinians, Kurds, AUbergines, and whatever u want to choose! I also extend my respect and sadness to the lost souls and brainwashed minds of those who are fighting on the wrong side and for the wrong cause... And allow me to remind you that they are NOT PALESTINIANS.. Again, check the facts... The highest percentage of the fighters is SAUDI, then SYRIAN, the PALESTINIAN.

"Leftists" do worry about human rights (while supporting the indiscriminate shelling of a refugee camp populated by more than 30,000 people):

Now, concerning the camps. Since you might (considering that case lo precedence u are misinformed and compulsive and anarchist by all means and u will act accordingly) be hasty in throwing all types of accusations at me, I am gonna explain it to u in simple and clear words. The social, political, and economic conditions in the camps are below zero. No respect for human rights, not even the minimum living standards.

Diversionary rhetoric (trust ME, I have experienced such rhetoric and tactics from many of your ilk):

Corrupt palestinians who use their guns and terrorize other Palestinians in the name of empty causes in order to fill their pockets. I have EXPERIENCED IT. Trust me, a real Palestinian refugee (in that term) would tell u this: U want to help us? emancipate us from the grip of those robbing us off from within the camps. It is weird that Abou al-Aynayn is a millionaire and he's representing a big chunk of the camps. LEt's do an estimation of the GDP of a certain camp or the overall income per day at least... I challenge you it won't compare to this man's fortune...

My reply:

Now you are rambling left right center.

Did you read what I said?

Did you actually read what you wrote?

Please do. Read what you wrote, that is.

Your post is full of reactionary arguments. Not just conspiracy theories about Syrian involvement, but also generalizations and blaming the victims for bringing it upon themselves.

Your argument is eerily similar (if at all distinguishable) from the Israeli argument of "collateral damage". Indiscriminate shelling (whether or not the army has accurate weapons) is a crime. If you do not have the appropriate weapons that is your problem. If you do not care if it is your problem and support the indiscriminate shelling, then you are immoral and are in my eyes no different than the Israelis, who also claimed to be acting in the interests and defense of their people from "terrorists".

In other words, "comrade", allow me to conclude this based on your post and subsequent rant: you are the "same shit, with a different name."

And yet, to cover up your blatant reactionary and racist rant about the Palestinians having to be blamed for not doing anything when they clearly saw those people training, etc., you bring a thousand things about millionaire Fateh leaders and so on. Where did you see me defend those???? Oh for goodness's sake, try your diversionary tactics with someone else. Fateh is a sellout (you can guess to whom, and no, it's not Syria for goodness's sake, though I am sure you will find a way to make that argument, too). So are all the other parties.

Your argument was clearly not about parties, though.

You said:
"If the civilians have been silent enough to get the militants to entrench themselves and to establish such firm control before the fighting broke out, doesn't that imply that they knew that militancy brings war?"

And then you distanced yourself from a possible comparison with Gemayel or Geagea. But your argument still stands. Or else, why did you mention it? You merely put in a corollary, that "not all" Palestinians are in on this. But then again, even Geagea would be willing to give you that!!!

Man, if you do not see anything wrong with what you said, then I pity you, really, and pity the "leftism" in the name of which you speak.

If you cannot see beyond the tip of your nose, then you are ignorant. You have allowed yourself to be dragged into the petty finger-pointing, much like at some point people used to blame (less so today) every single thing on Israel or America. MUCH LIKE the Islamist radicals continuously blame the "kuffar" and America and "crusaders" on every single thing.

For goodness's sake, read your post. Look in the mirror. Stop justifying your racism and ignorance by accusing me of being "compulsive".

What more can I say.

It's good that such circumstances expose people's true colors (though they might try to justify this exposure of colors by accusing others of being "compulsive" or misinformed). Misinformed about what? If you have any information about Syrian responsibility for what is happening now (and not how they built mazes in the camp some years ago!!) then clearly you know something that we don't, and why don't you inform your beloved shitty army of it? The same army that is indiscriminately shelling the poor Palestinian refugees (for you they bear the responsibility for not speaking out) did not dare launch a single bullet let alone a shell against Israel. Your problem is that you see things in black and white, good vs. evil. For you, the army in this fight is "the good", fighting against the "evil terrorists". I salute you for taking this very brave position.

Cheers,
and no need to reply!!!! I have nothing more to say, nor do I feel the need to read more of your diversionary arguments!!!

Need I say more???! Read the whole thing here.

ابواب الجهنم

2007-05-21T09:15:00.000+02:00

الجيش عمبيقصف مخيم نهر البارد
عمبيرتكب مجازر بحق اللاجئين الفلسطينيين
كلو تحت غطاء محاربة فتح الإسلام

فمين اللي عمبيفتح ابواب الجهنم ع مين؟
ومين اللي وصّل الأمور لهالحالة هاي؟
سوريا سوريا سوريا سوريا
سوريا الجبارة
الها ايد بكل صغيرة وكبيرة بتصير بلبنان

والنداءات من داخل المخيم
ما حدا سامعها الهيئة
ولا حدا شايف القتلى المدنيين
ما اصلاً هني لاجئين
ودمن مش غالي
وأكيد
بدنا الحقيقة
بس مش لنهر البارد
ولا لعيون نهر البارد
ولَو نسيتوا؟ عيب عليكن
بدنا الحقيقة
من اجل لبنان
لعيون الحريري
آخ لو كان الحريري معنا
كان انقذ لبنان
من القوى اللي بدّا تدمر لبنان
بس عالقليلة ابنو سعد الدين
الله يحفظو
عارف مين هي هيدي القوى
"كلنا منعرف"
واذا في ناس ما عارفين
معناتا اوهام
ونحنا معركتنا ضد الأوهام
والأوهام القاعدين بالـ"داونتاون"
او بالأحرى قوات الإحتلال الوهمية
الذين هني أضرب من قوات الإحتلال الصهيونية
لازم يضبوا غراضن ويفلّوا
موسم سياحي
وأهل الخليج ناطرين
بدن يعملوا "شوبينغ"
ويعملوا الإشياء اللي ما فيون يعملوها بالسعودية
وما تنسوا التبضع
تبضع بالنساء
بس لليلة وحدة مش اكثر
يعني معليش نحنا منعرف انو الشعب اللبناني معروف بصموده
فضلكن صامدين
والناس المعترين
يا حرام
بس شوفوا هآ نحنا كمان عنا ناس معترين بالسعودية
يعني منكن لوحدكن
فما تزعلوا

تعميد بالنار
وها قد دخل لبنان الفلك الأميركي
حرب على الإرهاب
ونشر الحرية
وثقافة الحياة
دفاعاً عن النفس
وأكيد لعيون رفيق الحريري
فلم اميركي طويل
مثل
"بولد آند بيوتيفول"
واحد بيقتل الثاني
واحد بيفقد ذاكرتو
وحدة بتقتل وحدة ثانية
اغتيالات ، مثل ما بسمّيها مدير مركز الشاي احمد فتفت
اغتيالات بالجملة والمفرق
وإذا بدكن
في "ديليفري" كمان
مجاناً
اذا اشتريتوا البضاعة من اميركا
بيجي عليها "ديسكاونت"
بالإضافة لـ"ديليفري" بظرف ثلاثة ايام

بس اهم شي
برأي واحد شيوعي
(وشو شيوعي يا عيني)
انو الجيش يقضي ع فتح الإسلام
بأية وسيلة كانت
يعني حتى
فتح ابواب الجهنم اذا لزم الأمر
شرط انو باب الجهنم ما ينفتح بالجميزة
او مونو
مخيمات؟ لاجئين؟
يدبروا راسن
تخّنوها هالمرة
يا عهد الأممية
تحية

وتحية للجيش اللبناني
لهالشجاعة
ضد الإرهاب
ارهاب فتح الإسلام واللاجئين الفلسطينيين
مش ارهاب الصهاينة
تحية تحية لجيشنا
وما تنسوا قوى الأمن
والميليشيات التي قدمت خدماتها ضد الإرهاب مبارح
وتحية لمدفعيات الجيش
والله يفتح ابواب الجهنم على اعداء لبنان
وما تنسوا شيخ سعد بيعرف مين هني
ووليد عيدو بعدو ما باع دمو ليجيب سلاح؟
يمكن حان الوقت

نهر البارد
وعين الحلوة من قبل شوي
سوريا سوريا سوريا
من الشمال للجنوب
من الشرق للغرب
بعد شوي رح يطلع سعد الحريري
ويعلن انو نظام البعث هو في الحقيقة الله عز وجل

بس اهم شي
انو واحد شيوعي
بيسهر بالجميزة
طالب بتطهير المخيمات من فتح الإسلام
بس بعدو مهووس بدور الجيش بتل الزعتر
ليش؟
آه العماد عون
وصلت الفكرة
يا عهد الأممية
تحية تحية

It IS funny. It is DAMN funny (can't you hear me laughing?)

2007-05-20T23:57:00.000+02:00

I hate to take on such a tone, but sometimes I am left with no other choice. This is one of those times.

You, and your truth, your international tribunal and your masters and your slaves and your blood-selling politicians and your zu'ama and your ta'ife and your tarik jdide and your bcharre and your rabieh and your dahieh and your chouf kingdom, and your shallow, idiotic analyses and finger-pointing and ignorance, are living proof that my Lebanese passport is not even fit to be toilet paper. Though I paid 300 fucking thousand Lebanese liras for it. Your currency by the way is equally unfit to serve as toilet paper.

I will not even waste my time preaching about not repeating the civil war. Go ahead, do it. You deserve all that you bring upon yourselves. Your herd mentality, your sectarianism, your racism, your hatred, your fucking obsession with Hariri (wlak k** emmo la Rafiq al Hariri w kl beit al-Hariri), are beyond disgusting. You call yourself a nation? I call you a joke. And I laugh. Today I will laugh at you, and you can tell me it ain't funny, but I will keep laughing. Because you are a joke. And you are too busy doing your masters' bidding, or coming up with conclusions based on -- you guessed it -- nothing, not one shred of evidence; and building on it an entire empire of ideas and imaginary explanations of a thousand other phenomena in the past and present, as well as predictions of the future. You are a joke, and I laugh out loud as you get slaughtered. So, do not mind my interruption, continue doing your masters' bidding.

لعيونَك ابو بهاء.
ولعيون لينين كمان. قال شيوعي قال.
اذا الشيوعية هيك بفكروا يعني كارثة.ا

You got the point. I hope.
Yes, it is damn funny.

Explosion????

2007-05-20T22:50:00.000+02:00

I think there is an explosion. I heard a very loud blast. I hope it's not all in my head. Maybe it's just that I've been doing too much reading that I've lost touch with reality? Anyone else heard it? I checked the TV, nothing.

Fatfatism of the day

2007-05-20T02:15:00.000+02:00

في المجال الامني، قال وزير الشباب والرياضة أحمد فتفت امس ان المتهمين بجريمة اغتيال الشاب زياد قبلان والفتى زياد غندور "معروفون وهم من بيت شمص. وقد ترك العمل والتحقيق للقضاء اللبناني". واضاف: "هناك معلومات بأن المتهمين موجودون في الضاحية الجنوبية، فيما تشير معلومات أخرى الى انهم هربوا الى الخارج، ولكن من المؤكد ان الجناة لن يفلتوا من يد العدالة ولو بعد 50 سنة".ا

In the security field, Minister of Youth and Sports Ahmad Fatfat said yesterday that the accused [Angry Anarchist: not "suspects"] in the crime of assassination of Ziad Qabalan and Ziad Ghandour "are known and they are from the Shamas clan. And the job and investigation has been left to the Lebanese judiciary." He added: "There are information that the accused are in the Southern suburbs of Beirut, whereas other information indicate that they have escaped the country, but one thing is for sure, the criminals will not get away from the grip of justice, even after 50 years."

"A picture is worth a thousand words"

2007-05-14T22:54:00.000+02:00

Camera moments

2007-05-09T22:55:00.000+02:00

You know those moments you just wish you had a camera at hand to capture a scene? I had two of those moments, today.

***

On my way home, I take the "north" highway-which-does-not-look-like-a-highway. Today, something extraordinary happened on the highway. And no, it was not the discovery of yet-another-enormous-pothole. I was driving in my lane (well there are no lanes... no need to, really, after all that is the unique Lebanese way of doing things; but by lane I mean line of traffic) at around 40 km/hr (due to moderate traffic) when all of a sudden, a jeep came up right next to me. I turned my head to check out what was the matter as the jeep was keeping up my pace even though it could go faster in its own lane. To my amazement, I saw two guys (aside from the driver), one in the front one in the back, with their windows rolled down, holding RIFLES, staring at me. At first I ignored them. I was so shocked that I turned around again to check out what the hell this was all about. Even by Lebanese standards it is unusual to see people going around in unmarked jeeps, with windows rolled down, and holding rifles. Then, one of them moved the rifle a bit out of the window, to make sure that I saw it. He then put his arm out of the window and gestured that I move to the right. What the hell? At first I did not know what was going on. So I moved a bit to the right. Then, I realized what was actually happening. It was actually a 3-car convoy, with the jeep leading it. All three cars, including the jeep with the armed gunmen, were unmarked in any way whatsoever. The last car in the convoy was a black brand-new Mercedes-Benz. It, along with the other 2 cars, bore standard/regular license plates. The mixture of shock and amusement soon wore off, since the cars actually passed me and disappeared into the traffic. Then, somehow, I don't know how, it so happened that I actually found myself having caught up with the convoy. To my amazement the man sitting in the front gestured again for me to move away, to the right. Being the trouble-maker that I am, I gave him the most disgusted look, shook my head, looked back at him, shook my head again, and not only did I not move away, but actually cut them off.

I was told by the person sitting next to me, that I should not be doing such things, that it was risky, and that on another occasion they might actually get out of the car and beat the crap out of me. I had to laugh out loud at that. First: beat the crap out of me?? The last time anyone tried to do that (and no I do not have a martial arts belt) they not only wished they had not thought it a good idea, but that they had not even been born, so as not to think it. Second, I am supposed to take their crap because they might beat the crap out of me??? What kind of twisted logic is this? And who are these people? Their cars are unmarked, their license plates regular, and even if not, then so what? If they are officials, then officials get paid to do their jobs rather than have red carpets rolled out for them on highways as if they are distributing money to the people from their pockets. And what are unidentified gunmen doing going around and threatening people like that???

***

Speaking of cameras: I passed through a red light today, and I was unlucky enough to have one of those camera thingies (courtesy Hariri, Inc.) snap right at that instant. I thought to myself, what the hell, why do I have to be so unlucky? Then I chuckled, and told the person riding with me in the car that the state of affairs in this country can be summarized when you look at, on the one hand these cameras that are supposed to catch traffic violations and other wrong-doers; and on the other hand the release of Mark Hoayek's shooter.

***

By the way, have you been noticing the fancy brand-new American-donated Internal Security Forces black Ford Explorers touring around the Hariri, Inc. part of Beirut? Did you also notice they almost never leave the Hariri, Inc. part of Beirut? I saw one today. It was stationary. The driver and the rider next to him had parked the car in the shade and were sleeping.

The Studio

2007-05-06T11:36:00.000+02:00

The brush jar...

the palette...

the canvas...
(Re-producing Yuroz's "Before Sunset", with some variations)

"احترنا بقى"

2007-05-04T15:04:00.000+02:00

I am being tempted time and again to publish that old angry post of mine (which still sits as a draft in my account).

I used to check my mail every morning, looking forward to receiving emails. I used to love getting emails. Now, I don't check my e-mail until late afternoon, and sometimes in the evening; sometimes I don't check it for a few days. I am afraid that it would contain something that will ruin my mood. As usual, I was right in my assessment. Just at a time when I was in no need of a mood-ruining email, given how stressed I am with the amount of work I am expected to hand in, I made the mistake of checking my e-mail. It was an e-mail from one of the professors I work with. I was assigned to him against my will, despite the fact that his main research at the moment has to do with sociology more than political science. I am supposed to work with him only 7 hours per week (2 hours on Monday, 3 hours on Tuesday, 2 hours on Wednesday). At the beginning of the semester, he handed me a stack of (two 300-page) books and some four-five 40+page articles, and told me, given that you are a good student you can probably read all of this in 2 weeks (that's 14 hours of reading time). I rolled my eyes and told him, "we shall see about that". I started reading the book, but soon concluded (not that there was any doubt about it, but I did give his assessment the benefit of the doubt) that not only was 14 hours not enough for that ONE book, but that I could not possibly handle all the books and articles unless I took the whole semester at a rate of 7-hours/week to read them all and write a review of each... He did not bother me for two weeks, and by that time I had finished reading one article and was halfway through one book. One day, 2 weeks after handing me the to-be-read-and-reviewed stack, he came up to me and said, how are the readings going? I told him I had read the article and was halfway through the book. He dropped a hint and asked me if it was because I was too crowded with coursework. At the time I didn't get the hint, I thought that it had nothing to do with his assignment, since I did it from campus and not from home... Now I understand what he meant: he knew it was impossible to read all that he handed me in 14 hours, and he expected me to put in as much work at home as at university. Anyhow, that day I felt there was something wrong with me, and so I took the book and articles home with me, and finished the book and a 150-page article (well, half a photocopied book) in a week's time. As a result of that, I had to skip doing my own coursework readings. The next week I started writing the report and decided I would not take anything home with me that had to do with his research. Last Wednesday, he came to me and inquired about me, again making the coursework hint; I told him I was almost done with the reviews, and he said we should schedule a meeting to discuss where I had reached. I said fine, and he asked me if Friday was fine. We agreed to meet and talk on Friday. After he left, I emailed him my review, and he replied, telling me I had done a great job, but that he was running late on a deadline and needed me to finish everything by next week. On Thursday the bodies of the two kidnapped youths were discovered, and it was officially announced that Friday all schools and universities would be closed. Down the drain went our meeting. This past Monday I went to work for my scheduled hours and continued reading the book, actually skimming it as fast as I could, so that I would finish it by Wednesday. Ditto for Tuesday and Wednesday. I was close to finishing the book on Wednesday, but ran out of time, and thought I would put the finishing touches this coming Monday.

A while ago, I received an e-mail. I will share it with you, without naming the professor of course:

Dear ----,

I have noticed your absence over the past few weeks while not reporting to me during your scheduled work hours. I hope you’re doing well and fine, please let me know if a specific reason is preventing you from coming or from completing your already past due research assignment.

Thanks,

The e-mail was CCed to the department head. Needless to say, hot-headed as I am, I felt the need to reply; I sent a reply, and CCed it to both the head of the department, and the secretary, who sees me every time I go there, as I get the key from her for the room I usually sit in and do the research; or when I do not sit in that room, I cover for her while she goes on a coffee break because there are no other assistants who are present at the department to cover for her.

I replied:

Dr. ----,

I have been coming to the office upstairs or otherwise working from downstairs (at the department); the only days I have been "absent" were Friday (which was not a school day given the fact that the minister of education announced official university closure) and this past Tuesday (May Day). I am not sure if I was expected to show up on those days.

Given the amount of work (two books and a number of articles) you handed me, I have also been forced to do additional hours from home, which has taken up from my own research and study time. Moreover, ---- also handed me an assignment for the [upcoming] conference, and I have been working on that as well (putting in at least 5 hours for the poster design, and more than another 5 hours for schedule leaflet design, which is the equivalent of more than a week's work- 7 hours-with you). I thought he might have mentioned that to you, as that is part of my working hours and not an additional task I am being paid to do. I have accepted ----'s request as per the faculty needs policy that was highlighted to me by ---- himself prior to assigning me as your assistant.

Moreover, I think the secretary and faculty members can testify to my presence in the past few weeks on Monday afternoons, Tuesday mornings and Wednesday afternoons, which is when my hours with you are supposed to be.

P.S. I have also attached the short report (as you requested last Wednesday that I keep my reports short) on the Cultural Resistance book.

Best,

He replied (there is a reason I am posting these):

Dear ----,

More than two months now have passed since I made my request for article reviews. My requests do not require you to read the entire books. As I informed you in the past, you are supposed to work on this 7 hours a week from your office in room 302 B as scheduled and not elsewhere. I do not require you to do any of the assigned work at home. We had a previously scheduled meeting for updates and set deadlines according to which my research has to progress accordingly. Please see me in this regard.

Best,

At this point I was beyond angry. Keep in mind that this whole affair is taking place after a very serious clash between me and the head of the department, on the issue of assignment of graduate research assistants. He had told me in response to my objections to being assigned to professors in sociology, that I was being selfish by not taking into account faculty needs. He insisted that there must be a happy compromise and mutual understanding between the faculty needs and students' interests and abilities. There was not much else that I could do, and I yielded, following which I was assigned with the professor who is the subject of this post...

So, I wrote a long reply -- I will not post all of it because it is quite long and you don't need to read the technical parts of it.

Dr. ----,

First of all, the email I received for G.A. [Graduate Assistantship] assignment from ---- is dated March 19, and I received it only on March 20, following which I talked with you on March 21 and we arranged that I would work on Monday afternoons, Tuesday mornings, and Wednesday afternoons. I believe I officially started on March the 26th. Thus, it has not been two months, but rather, 6 weeks. Six weeks, during which I was supposed to put in 7 hours / week. That makes it 42 hours total, 10 of which I had to put in for ----'s request (which was urgent and deadline-specific, and was handed to me before you told me that you also had a deadline to meet, which you told me on Wednesday, following which I have made every effort to read the 300-page book, or skim it as thoroughly as possible, and write the report). That left me with 32 hours total, for 2 books and more than 5 articles (one of which was half a book), and I do need to read them to a certain depth to understand and be able to summarize or review them.

Moreover, we agreed last Wednesday on a meeting on Friday, which went down the drain given the closure as a result of the killing of the 2 youths. It was only last Wednesday when I forwarded you my report for the book and the article, that you told me that you did not need me to write down long and thorough reports, and I followed your request in my report on the Cultural Resistance book, which I attached in the previous email. I had also read the Planet of Slums piece, and reported to you on that, saying that there was not much to be written, as it was primarily a quantitative / statistical overview.

In addition, I do not recall us having set a specific location for my work, we only agreed that I would work from "here", and by "here" it was not understood your office, or 302 B, but rather, that it would not be work from home but from on-campus, where I would be accessible for any other task that you might need me for. Having said that, much of my work, with the exception of a few days (when I was downstairs at the department for one reason or another, the reason being that another faculty or staff member needed my help which I could not turn down as per the faculty needs policy), has been done from that office, including when you were away from the university for some time (due to travel, from what I understood).

Having said that, I believe ---- was clear when we talked about the policies of assigning G.As, that assistantship dynamics is not a one-sided process of faculty needs (nor only of student needs) , but rather one of mutual understanding and acceptance of the needs, interests, and abilities of the other. This includes the interests, needs, and time constraints (as specified in the "contract" sheet) of the student. I have also assumed that the faculty would take the hour limits into consideration when setting up and defining their expectations.

I am not sure what more is specifically required of me; I have thus far read 2 books and 2 articles in the span of 32 hours of reading time (and additional hours from home, which you seem to dismiss for some reason). If we are to follow a policy of 7 hours and not one second less, then don't you think we would be better off to set up a counter, which would ward off potential controversies in the future?

Lastly, as far as I can recall, and please correct me based on prior email correspondence we may have had, the only time you mentioned a deadline is last Wednesday in your email; since you are dismissing the hours I have put in from home, I could only start working on meeting your deadline from Monday. I have shown up on all three days since then: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Here are my hours, as I have kept track of them on the sheets:
(snipped)

The above amounts to, even without my attendance during vacations: 42.5 hours. This does not include the hours I put in from home, and 10 hours of work I have put in for ----. Given that I officially started on March 26, which means that I have been your assistant for 6 weeks and not "more than two months" as you said, it would mean that I was required to put in, had there been no vacations, 42 hours in total (6 weeks, 7 hrs / week). This shows that not only have I worked my full times, but also more than that, if we count in the vacations and April 24 (despite which I showed up to work). This does not even include the hours I put in from home, to satisfy your expectations , at a time when I was short for time on my schoolwork.

I suggest, since this correspondence has been CCed also to ----, that we would hold a meeting between the three of us, to further discuss this matter. Because it seems there has been some misunderstanding about the hours that I am expected to put in, and expectations of what I can do within those hours -- and reading two 200+page books and 4-5 articles (almost all of them 30+pages long) in 42 hours is, even by PhD student standards, quite high.

I will be at university for my scheduled hour on Monday, and if ---- is able to meet and would like to discuss this issue, I would love to talk further about this, because I am not very happy with how I am being held over-accountable not for what I am not doing, but for what I am doing.

See you on Monday. [يعني حلّ عنّي بقى...ا]

I probably should not have made these e-mails public, but I am beyond disgusted. I am disgusted by how there is no definition that is upheld in this country, where people can define and re-define everything according to their daily needs and whims. Where people expect more than they are entitled to, and won't shut up about it when they are put in their place by the truth. I am most of all disgusted that a professor, with a PhD, can actually stoop to this level (there are other things that can be said about this certain individual which would literally drop your jaw to the ground, but I will refrain from publicizing them, because that is none of my business). It is beyond beyond disgusting. Sigh. Another afternoon gone to waste.

Attention, Montreal activists

2007-05-04T11:26:00.000+02:00

Take note of the following event

The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) and Tadamon call upon you to join a picket against the Chapters-Indigo bookstore chain which funds apartheid in Palestine/Israel.

Saturday, May 5th, 2007, 1:00-3:00 pm
Indigo Bookstore, west of McGill College (McGill Metro)
For more information about the campaign, check out the following leaflet
Or call: 514.941.9792
Or email: endapartheid aaaaat riseup dooooot net

Please circulate widely and inform your friends and relatives.
Even if they might not be interested in attending the picket, they would be aware of where their money is going.

Don't forget to boycott the bar code 729 (made in Israel).

Some Thoughts, in Bullet Form

2007-05-03T22:07:00.000+02:00

No pun intended in the title, of course. I don't have time to blog much and for that I apologize, but I thought maybe I could instead tease you with a share of the observations I have been making to myself these past few weeks (or days, I lost track).

Did you notice how subdued (drugged?) Walid Jumblatt looks these days? Apparently, I am not the only one who thinks that. Mind you, as the saying goes, do not judge a man by his looks, especially if he happens to be Walid Jumblatt.
Western media as usual does a cosmetic surgery of the ugly reality of the Israeli opposition to Olmert and Peretz; here's a typical headline: "Israelis protest over Lebanon war" (BBC). Of course, the opposition to Olmert and Peretz is not because they went to war instead of choosing the diplomatic track, nor because they killed too many civilians, but solely because they failed to achieve victory. Had victory been achievable, and achieved, would anyone have cared about the price in civilian lives that the "enemy" had to pay, or for that matter, expressed anti-war sentiment (not that they do now)?
The Israeli left, or what was left of the Israeli left, i.e, the right of the Israeli left, i.e. the center, which is the left of the Israeli right, which is the same as the Israeli right since the left is always at a loss for directions and somehow always tends to move in the opposite direction, has at last shed its image of "leftism", and officially joined the ranks of the right.
Chavez is on a rampage (what's new).
People are still arguing about whether Lebanon won or lost the July war...
I rarely check out, let alone participate in, the "have your say" section of the BBC website; a few days ago, I saw something on the Winograd commission, and decided to write up and send a reply. They still haven't published my reply. I think my name (Anarchist) turned them off. I wrote about the Winograd Commission, and I said that its purpose was twofold: first, doing cosmetic surgery on Israel's image by emphasizing Israeli "values" of accountability, etc. (but not for war crimes and mass murder) ; second, reassuring its patron (do I have to mention who that would be?) that the mistakes of the July war will not be repeated, and that Israel will be a good partner in the "war against terror" from now on. I did not take into consideration the public opinion factor, and still don't. I do not like public opinion much, especially when theorizing about correlation and causality; it is too tricky and slippery, it is not exactly quantifiable except in rare cases where referendum data is available. I do not think Winograd Commission is specifically for a domestic audience, though it certainly may take on that role, too.
On July 20, 2006 Gideon Levy accused Israel of launching "Operation Peace for IDF", in an article of the same title. I love the title (which in case you did not get it, is a play on "Operation Peace for Galilee"), though I do not approve of some of what came in the article.
Aoun suggested a one-time break from sectarianism (at face value), by having people vote directly for the president. Only a one-time thing, then we can go back to our neat boxes and profess allegiance to this za'im or that, "a strong Christian figure", "a Sunni za'im", "a heroic Sayyed", "a drugged chieftain", etc.
If as many people gathered in Lebanon as there were in the anti-Olmert rally in Tel Aviv, people would have been talking about 1.5 million protesters taking to the streets. Not only that, but people would have immediately monopolized that date, and started arguing about "which date" fielded how many supporters. The Lebanese like playing the numbers game, I guess; except when it comes to the debt, and the number of people butchered by Israel (that's when they start arguing about how Israel "won" the war).
The Lebanese talk about how Israel really won the war by pointing to the accountability process there; these same Lebanese, when faced with any talk whatsoever about their zu'ama being held accountable, turn into blood-sucking wild-eyed "patriots" and accuse you of wanting to weaken Lebanon and serve -- of course -- Syrian interests.
Israel still does not have a constitution nor defined borders. Remind them to get one, or if they have a phobia of specifying their borders, tell them not to claim to be a state. The latter is better.
Can someone please give me one good argument in favor of absentee (expatriate) voting? Or for that matter, voting in and of itself?
Lebanese sectarian politics: coming to your hometown? (see previous bullet)
At the current (oil) Reserve/Production ratio, the U.S can produce oil for another 12 years only, KSA for another 65 years, Iran for another 93 years, Iraq and Kuwait, for more than 100 years. Here, I bolded the important parts for you, draw your own conclusions. And do share your thoughts.
The Israeli government and defense forces should wage a war against car drivers. Traffic accidents claim the lives of dozens every week in Israel. But that doesn't violate the sovereignty of Israel. Sorry, my bad.
Apparently, HezbAllah won the propaganda war "by its strict and undemocratic control of the media". Israel, however, is as usual very democratic. Will Harvard remove its logo from this publication?
I had to chuckle at "May Day" demonstrations; communist parties in every country holding national flags.
The Azmi Bishara plot thickens... I have come to increasingly view the whole affair as one that is not unrelated to the Winograd commission and attempts to quell domestic dissatisfaction by busying the public with a case of treason, against an Arab citizen to make things marketable of course. This enables the authorities to play on the feelings of the Jewish citizens especially that the July war brought to the forefront fresh divides between the Arab and Jewish communities, along with accusations of mass-treason against Arab citizens, leveled by their Jewish counterparts. Azmi Bishara seems to be the scapegoat, and his framing not only serves a public opinion purpose, but also could be related to new policies to be adopted vis-a-vis the Arab community in light of the increasing strain it places on the authorities in the domain of demographic challenge (or perceptions thereof).

April 29 ODEO Special

2007-04-29T11:43:00.000+02:00

I guess this is as subtle a message as can be,
to all the pro-WSF/WSFers out there. ;)
Hopefully one day, you will get the hint.

Against Me! - "Baby, I'm an anarchist"
(and you're a spineless liberal)

Lebanon Mourns the Ziads

2007-04-28T13:11:00.000+02:00

Credit: "Touma" borrowed from Pierre Sadek

Media ethics?

2007-04-27T01:27:00.000+02:00

I don't recommend that you check out the front page of Al-Balad newspaper today.

I have to say, even though it is nothing as bad as some of the ghastly pictures I have seen, I find it rather distasteful that they would print such stuff, and on the front page to boot.

Which begs the question of media ethics: how far one should/can go, in the name of media freedoms or even for a much nobler cause such as condemning and spreading awareness against such criminal behavior?

The 2 kidnapped youth

2007-04-26T18:55:00.000+02:00

Urm, I was about to post the following when my mother came to me with the news that the bodies of the two kidnapped youth have been found.

I have to say, I am very pessimistic regarding the prospects that the two kidnapped youth (one of whom is a 12 year old and the other 25 years old) are going to be returned alive. In a few day's time, their bodies will probably be found somewhere far away from the kidnapping site. I could go into a long analysis of what the objective behind the act is, but I won't. I do not want to get into the "Lebanon's enemies did it because they do not want the stability of Lebanon" frame of mind. I will only say that for sure this is much more than a mere revenge on the part of the Chamas family.

...

Photo Thursday

2007-04-26T13:32:00.000+02:00

Light passes through me lightless, sound soundless,
smoking nowhere, groaning with sudden birds. Paper
dies, flesh melts, leaving stockings and their useless vanity
in graves, bodies lie still across foolish borders.
I'm going my way, going my way gleaning shade, burnt
meridians, dropping carets, flung latitudes, inattention,
screeching looks. I'm trying to put my tongue on dawns
now, I'm busy licking dusk away, tracking deep twittering
silences. You come to this, here's the morrow of it, not
moving, not standing, it's too much to hold up, what I
really want to say is, I don't want no fucking country, here
or there and all the way back, I don't like it, none of it,
easy as that. I'm giving up on land to light on, and why not,
I can't perfect my own shadow, my violent sorrow, my
individual wrists.

Dionne Brand - Land to Light On

Comments

2007-04-26T13:17:00.000+02:00

I don't know what's wrong, it seems there is a malfunction in the recent comments on the sidebar (blame Canada), or am I the only one who is not seeing the recent comments appearing there as before??

I have also noticed a dramatic reduction in the quality of photos I've uploaded on blogger above a certain size. There seems to be no announcement about any changes in photo uploading policy or limits, so I will assume this is supposed to be an unannounced "you can't do shit about it" change. Lovely. I guess I will have to stick to photobucket to upload my photos.

Al-Nakba

2007-04-24T22:45:00.000+02:00

Ongoing ethnic cleansing in Yaffa

powered by ODEO

The Culprit

2007-04-20T17:15:00.000+02:00

I was talking a few days ago with a faculty member, and I don't know how we got into a discussion of the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri. I was taken aback by his argument. To be honest, I would not have been surprised if it came from an undergraduate student, or the multitudes basing their positions and beliefs on what they hear on their favorite TV station(s). Perhaps I had given too much credit to the academic institution in Lebanon.

Note that the discussion below is not a word-for-word transcript, as I am not in the habit of carrying a tape recorder with me.

Syria the Culprit
~~ or ~~
Prove their innocence or shut the hell up

Me: I have to say, though, that the plausibility that Syria might not be the culprit in the assassination is quite high.
Professor X: Well, no. It isn't.
Me: ...
X: Syria is guilty until proven innocent. Usually it is the other way around, innocent until proven guilty, but in this case it is not.
Me: Why not? What makes it the exception?
X: Because Lebanon was under Syrian occupation and nothing could have gone on without Syria's knowledge.
Me: Oh come on now, that is not true. You are saying there could have been no intelligence agents other than those of Syria?
X: I'm saying that those tons of bombs couldn't have gone unnoticed if it weren't Syria.
Me: Really? Then, by the same token, the Spanish authorities were the ones that carried out the Madrid train bombings?
X: ... the same comparison has been drawn by some people in response to what I have said... but still...
Me: ...

Photo Thursday

2007-04-19T19:22:00.000+02:00

The Slaying of St. George

St. George hotel & yacht club

أنا أعتقد أن قول الحقيقة وتسمية الاشياء بأسمائها، أهم من الإمساك بالعصا من النصف، ولذلك كنت أول من أطلق على اعتصام المعارضة في الساحتين اسم «احتلال» لان الصفة القانونية لاستعمال أملاك الغير هي «احتلال».ا

I think that telling the truth and calling things by their name is more important than holding the stick in the middle, and this is why I was the first to have labeled the opposition sit-in in the two squares as "occupation", because the legal term for using the properties of others is "occupation."

Can you guess who said this? The first to guess correctly will receive a generous reward.

The War... Criminals

2007-04-13T19:13:00.000+02:00

So it's the big day. It's the day everyone talks about in Lebanon. Every year. I missed the 30th anniversary, not being in the country at the time. But I did not feel I lost out on much, and here I am, on the 32nd anniversary, hearing the same "warnings", the same "never again"s, the same... all the same. I have not met a people so stubbornly self-deceiving as the Lebanese are. Every year this circus of April 13 repeats itself, as the country slides ever closer to a civil war. Every April 13, in the midst of the loud and repetitive "never again"s, I look through the photos of the civil war, I look at the people today running after their self-assigned leaders, I listen to this guy on the eve of the 32nd anniversary of the civil war, who says "Nasrallah is afraid only of Walid beik; we can wipe out the Shi'a in less than 24 hours", I watch all the hype on the news attached to the groups and individuals who have transformed April 13 into a ritual, and for whom the remaining 364 days are good for a kill, I watch all the people insisting that it is the new generation that does not know the horrors of the war and may end up making the same mistakes, but then I see that the older generation, the war generation, is ever ready to engage in blood-baths, at a mere signal from their self-appointed leaders.

On the 32nd anniversary of the eruption of the civil war, virtually all the war criminals, all the fighters, all the butchers, are on the loose. And what is worse, many of them preside over political parties, and hold political office. Then I hear someone say that Lebanon is unique, that it is civilized, and Western -- the latter two descriptions used synonymously. I will not go into a debate on Phoenicianism, or any other ism. Lebanon, at this point, resembles the war-torn African states where tribalism is rampant and every once in a while, erupts in a civil war. This comparison is not to be interpreted as an endorsement of the racist, supremacist rhetoric aired by the likes of one FPM supporter who mourned that "even Kuwait is better than us, and heck, even Congo is better than us". As true as this placement may be, there is something unsettling in that "even". It assumes that Lebanon ever was better than the rest of the countries plagued by authoritarianism, tribalism, racism, civic unrest, and so on. The truth of the matter is that casinos and hotels, and tourism, do not make a country "good" or for that matter "civilized", despite the insistence to the contrary by Hariri, Inc., and for all I know Patriarch Sfeir... The "Paris of the Middle East", that phrase that just keeps popping up out of nowhere every once in a while, is only in the empty minds of those whose pockets were full, and are now overflowing. And since I stuck my nose into this subject, I must give them a piece of my mind: if you cherish Paris so much, my advice to you is to visit the Paris. I mean, the one in France; it saves the time and effort (and money...) you invest in planting Parises in different parts of the world for your touristic, gambling, and sex slavery agendas.

I truly and honestly do not hold any sympathy towards anyone in this regard, except for the Palestinians, whose experiences in the war and in its aftermath have been far more catastrophic than those of any other group or sect; to put the icing on the cake, their place in the discourse on the civil war is now at best marginal; marginal not in the sense that they are not discussed enough (they are discussed and blamed more than enough), but rather in the sense that they have no say on the manner in which they have been portrayed (as the representation of all that was evil), their involvement in the war used as a tool and manipulated to falsify history and weave a mythology around it. As Karim Pakradouni put it today, "the first two years of the war were good, and I do not regret them, because they united the Lebanese".

I had decided against writing on the occasion, as I am not a big fan of such artificial commemorations and marking of dates and events (especially ones that one has not learned from, and in fact seeks to repeat). What made me change my mind, however, is the fact that everywhere I went today, everything I saw, and every single individual I talked to, was so appallingly sectarian, so appallingly the exact opposite of what the Lebanese try to market themselves as, that it became impossible not to write anything about this phenomenon of mass-delusion and this mass-marketing campaign embarked upon by the Lebanese. I have been informed of a number of organizations and groups that have sprung up recently, which claim to be secular and working towards the advancement of civic society (and so on); most of the people I have met and talked with claim they are non-sectarian; some even say they are atheists. Yet in the heat of the debate (and I do love playing the devil's advocate), the vicious sectarianism and hatred (thickly-coated with the so-called Lebanese nationalism, the so-called "civic" culture, the so-called open-mindedness, the so-called acceptance of "the other"), rears its ugly head.

I also decided against posting any pictures (from my rather large civil war photo collection). I have grown to despise the routine references to the destruction, which are often coupled with scenes of "Beirut reborn". In fact, I despise the emphasis on Beirut. And again, which Beirut is it? The Beirut of the refugee camps? The Beirut of the rubble of the dahieh? What about the impoverished north and the Beqaa, and the devastated South? I suppose these do not fall within the scope of the project for erecting a Paris (or a second Dubai) of the Middle East.

The mythology of the civil war needs to be destroyed. Not dismantled, but destroyed. There are those who insist, despite what experience has shown, that pampering will lead to the dismantlement of this mythology. That merely "encouraging" people to discuss the civil war is enough to actually get them to do it, and do it in a way that would be more than merely parroting the official version approved by the sect's self-appointed leader(s). The attack on this falsified and prettified record must be brutal, uncompromising, merciless. To use war terminology, there should be road blocks on each and every single road. Not even alleys must be spared. Leaders and their blind followers are, to use the Dickensian phrase, "artful dodgers"; naturally they will try to find a tiny gap, and slip in through it. As for how this can and should be done, that is not my specialty, although I could definitely get quite creative (and at the very worst case, very distasteful). I am, however, granted my rather violent activist background, of the opinion that this is a much broader and complex task than to be entrusted merely to academics. Research and documentation are important and worthwhile tasks in and of themselves, but they are not enough. Books are not enough to educate people and break the myths that have been planted in their minds. What has been done so far can be described as gathering the fruit of those plants and at best throwing them away (and sometimes eating them). What needs to be done is to uproot those plants.

But so long as the efforts are hijacked by so-called secular groups claiming to work on enhancing civil society, and which do not do anything, and often do the opposite of what they claim to do, there is not much hope.

The mainstream must be dumped. Or else we will all be duped into the mainstream.

Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-12T08:48:00.000+02:00

Kurt Vonnegut, author of the breathtaking Slaughterhouse-Five has passed away.

My first encounter with Vonnegut was via a Satire class, for which I had to read Mother Night. Needless to say, ever since, I have been under the spell of Vonnegutism.

I wanted to quote from Slaughterhouse-Five, and was looking for an interesting passage that would not require that I put it into the context of the story. I came up with the following:

While the British colonel set Lazzaro's broken arm and mixed plaster for the cast, the German major translated out loud passages from Howard W. Campbell, Jr.'s monograph. Campbell had been a fairly well-known playwright at one time. His opening line was this one:

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'If you're so smart, why ain't You rich? ' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child's hand-glued to a lollipop stick and, flying from the cash register.

The author of the monograph, a native of Schenectady, New York, was said by some to have had the highest I.Q. of all the war criminals who were made to face a death by hanging. So it goes.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.

Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. Once this is understood the disagreeable behavior of American enlisted men in German prisons ceases to be a mystery.

Howard W. Cambell, Jr., now discussed the uniform of the American enlisted in the Second World War: Every other army in history, prosperous or not, has attempted to clothe even its lowliest soldiers so as to make them impressive to themselves and others as stylish experts in drinking and copulation and looting and sudden death. The American Army, however, sends its enlisted men out to fight and die in a modified business suit quite evidently made for another man, a sterilized but unpressed gift from a nose-holding charity which passes out clothing to drunks in the slums.
When a dashingly-clad officer addresses such a frumpishly dressed bum, he scolds him, as an officer in an army must. But the officer's contempt is not, as in other armies, avuncular theatricality. It is a genuine expression of hatred for the poor, who have no one to blame for their misery but themselves.
A prison administrator dealing with captured American enlisted men for the first time should be warned: Expect no brotherly love, even between brothers. There will be no cohesion between the individuals. Each will be a sulky child who often wishes he were dead.

Slaughterhouse-Five; or the children's crusade

His works are often imbued with a dose of silliness, mixed with dark humor and satirical hyperbole. He is one of the few authors of fiction whose works I have devoured, read and re-read, for the political messages they convey, often in a shocking, offensive manner. It is no wonder that Slaughterhouse-Five was in fact banned for "obscenity". He has successfully raised the ire of the British (and Americans), but particularly the British, for his emphasis on the fire-bombing of Dresden in the final months of WWII, in which hundreds of thousands of German civilians were killed. The British, when faced with the argument that the fire-bombing of Dresden was a war crime no less horrible than the war crimes perpetrated by the Nazis, fidget in their seats and point out that the focus must instead be on the V2 attacks on London and other British population centers. This is a classical technique which has been put to use by many to justify the unjustifiable... Keep in mind that to this day, discussing Dresden is taboo, although much less so than it used to be (thanks in no small part to Vonnegut's work). The victors of WWII continue to write history and worse, define morality. This model has also been applied to the Middle East -- the experiences of the indigenous, colonized populations viewed solely from a colonialist perspective; their demands viewed as an aberration; their attempts to assert their rights considered terrorism; their historical claims ignored and denied (either on colonial, imperial, or Messianic grounds); their desire to correct the falsified historical record trampled on. Today, the Middle East (and the much wider Muslim world) is experiencing multiple "Dresdenizations" led by the single most powerful imperialist force that reared its head after WWII. But it is not only the U.S that has emulated this model, nor has it been the first to introduce it. When they first set foot in the region, the French and British formulated the framework that to this day justifies colonial and imperial projects in the region, at the forefront of which is the Zionist project.

Despite the similarities -- the victor writing history and defining morality -- it would be wrong to compare the finished story of Dresden to the never-ending saga of the Middle East. In fact, the colonial discourse, while still rampant and dominant, has experienced its first major challenge in the Middle East (although many would disagree and point to communism and the USSR, which I will bluntly say, was swiftly transformed into Russian colonialism), and is in the process of, if not collapse, then definitely retreat. Nowhere has such a massive challenge been leveled (not even by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, or the anti-slavery and anti-racism movements of the U.S). The native populations and tribes of America (North and South), Australia, New Zealand (etc.), have been trampled on, and virtually forgotten, their stories undermined, their voices very frail, their existence almost completely confined to "reservations". This is not to say the Middle East is "unique". It is not, in any way whatsoever (I am sure the "Lebanon is unique" readers will fidget uncomfortably in their seats). I do not seek to espouse reverse BernardLewisism to counter BernardLewisism (I am not a big fan of "affirmative action"). I do believe, however, that the Middle East has posed the greatest challenge to the colonial and imperial project. In many respects, the region is also incorporated into the system, i.e. immersed in the global capitalist economy. Nevertheless, it would be unrealistic to say that this immersion and incorporation spells the end of the resistance. It is only one of the beginning stages of resistance. And that is not to say that resistance will be based on class consciousness. Class consciousness (if it exists at all) continues to be dominated by the more pressing loyalties: sectarianism, tribalism, nationalism, among other "isms". These in turn are used by the hegemons, or aspiring hegemons, to spread their influence and bring these units or groups into their fold. This is not rocket science. It is a very simple analysis. Perhaps too simple an analysis, so I am guilty of simplification.

I have to stop here, because I could go on forever, and I wouldn't want that to happen. I wanted to dedicate a post to Vonnegut, and recommend his works, especially Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, and Mother Night.

Le Monde Diplomatique

2007-04-11T21:06:00.000+02:00

Can someone please send me the full text of the recent article (April 2007) in Le Monde Diplomatique, "Douteuse instrumentalisation de la justice internationale au Liban" by Géraud De Geouffre de La Pradelle, Antoine Korkmaz, and Rafaëlle Maison? Thanks.

Update: Thanks a lot to those who sent me the article. I've posted it here for the rest of you.

Prestige

2007-04-10T19:12:00.000+02:00

The university I attend boasts of being a prestigious institution of higher education (yada yada), receiving whoppy sums delivered by hand by our beloved resident U.S ambassador, Jeffrey Feltman... The library had different tables and chairs last year, which were not shabby to be honest. But last semester, they did a complete makeover and replaced the wooden chairs and tables with IKEA-style fancy tables, revolving chairs, and couches. Now, you can see USAID stickers on all the furniture in the library, from shelves to desks to tables, not to forget computers...

Moving on to the library collection; the stacks are finally open to the students (no one stops you with a "hey you, where do you think you're going?!" when you are about to take the stairs or elevator). I mean, finally they had some sort of revelation it seems, and decided that this was the right way to go; that if I want to take a book out, I would not just do so based on the title and waste my time asking for it only to go through it and discover that it is not relevant to my research. I would instead take my list of shelfmarks and look through the books by myself. I think it would be logical to assume that students are adults and can return the books they don't need, immediately after looking through them, to their correct location. Or even if not, at least place it on an empty shelf on each row specifically reserved for books that people check out but decide not to take out and at the same time do not remember where they took it from in the row... But this doesn't exist. At any rate, the stacks are now open to all. But here again, there is another complication (for which this prestigious center of research and higher education cannot figure out a solution) -- since the stacks were never meant to be opened, there never was a marking of which letters are on which floor. And despite the fact that the stacks are now open, there still isn't such an identification. Instead, you have to hand the person at the circulation desk all your book shelfmarks and he or she will tell you which floor each book is on. Good luck writing that down...!

So after inquiring at the circulation desk, up we go. By the way, by the time the elevator heeds your call, you would have abandoned the idea of sparing your calories and would have taken the stairs instead. So you labor through the floors (good luck climbing 4 floors). And then finally you arrive at your destination. There is a person sitting on a desk on each floor, who, upon your entry, often hurries to you, and makes the (if you are a graduate student) offensive offer, "let me get that for you", trying to pull the paper out of your hand. But you resist, pull the paper from his hand, saying "no thank you very much, I can get it by myself. It's not rocket science, you know."

If you have something to find in the reference section, you go down to the basement, you look around you and are afraid to touch the books because you've had the traumatic experience of someone rushing at you before, in front of everyone, and telling you that he will give you whatever book you want "just don't touch a thing". But then you see there is no one there, and you still don't want to touch the books lest it trigger God's wrath, and so you go to the electronic resources people nearby, and you are 10 meters away from the guy sitting there, he looks at you and says, "sorry we are electronic resources people here, can't help you." Wait a minute, I wasn't holding a sign that read "I need help on a reference book", was I? But what can you do, so you walk away, and for the first time since that doomed traumatic day, you dare to touch the reference books. You find it, and then realize that you need a photocopying card because you can't take the books in the reference section out of the library. You go upstairs to the card vending machine, it says you need a 5,000 Lira note (the old big print not the tiny Monopoly-style version). Fabulous. You have a 10,000 note, and you gather your hopes and go to the circulation desk, ask the circulation people if they have change. No they don't. So what can I do? I need to photocopy this (not for me, for a professor -- w shu hal professor wlo). The girl says, "you get a 5,000 and get a photocopy card". Ha ha. Very funny. But then it's your lucky day, and the guy asks you who the professor is, and you tell him, and he says, fine, take the book out for 10 minutes, but you have to give me your ID. Thank God for wasta.

So you go home that day, all happy and satisfied. After having something to eat and taking a nap, you decide it's time to do some research on the e-journals databases. Let us say, on Syrian foreign policy. You start with one database, works fine, and if you are a multitasker like me, you simultaneously search on a second one, and then a third one. The third one returns some interesting hits, and you say, let me get that article. You click on "view as PDF", it takes you to a log in page. Ahh. You try and try and try, but it is of no use. You think, maybe it's my internet, and decide to try it the next day at work. You go to work the next day, you try it, but to no avail. You need username and password. You curse the electronic resources people. You get on the library website, and find an "ask a librarian" link, you write a note explaining that the database is not working. You click submit, and it gives you an error. You try again and again, but again to no avail. So you go back to the library page and look up the names of library staff, and find the one in charge of electronic databases. You write a very angry letter (in the spirit of Angry Anarchist), and send it. A week later, you get an e-mail. A confirmation e-mail from your contact person: "There seems to be a problem with the database." Oh... I didn't know...

Of all the thousands of students and faculty, no one had noticed that there is a problem with the database? What do these people do, daydream all day long? Or is attending the so-called "prestigious" university nothing more than an investment for these people?? May I inform you about Solidere??!

While I am at it, let me have this out of my system once and for all -- I meant to post a rant I wrote a while back, but didn't because it was very nasty. I've cut out the nastiness, and will make do with posting a conversation I had with someone:

X: You have to work with me.
Me: No, I do not have to.
X: Yes, according to the rules and procedures, we decide what you will work on, and with whom.
Me: What rules and procedures? I would like to see those rules and procedures in written form.
X: Um, there is none in written form, but it's nevertheless a policy.
Me: A policy, eh?
X: Yup.
Me: I was not aware of the existence of such a policy. You have to let people know what your policies are if you haven't given them a written notice, before they sign the contract.
X: So why did you sign the contract without asking?
Me: Excuse me? I signed the contract, I did not sign a set of non-existent policies which are only figments of your imagination.
X: But you signed the contract without asking.

After another 30 minutes of back-and-forth:
Me: Look, bottom line, you cannot force me to work with you.
X: You are interfering in my business, that is not up to you!
Me: Oh yes, very much up to me, what will you do, force me? Drag me from home?
X: You are being selfish and undemocratic.
Me: First, what does democracy have to do with this? Second, who said I believe in democracy?
X: What do you believe in, then, dictatorship?
Me: Ha ha ha ... no, I do not believe in anything. Anyway if you are a university functioning under institutions, then these institutions have rules, or are expected to have rules, and you apply those rules. You don't apply non-existent rules.

And didn't you know? Just because Honorable Jeffrey Feltman has handed the president of this very prestigious university a big fat cheque, apparently means, for one American professor, that those who oppose U.S policies are ungrateful. Apparently it's a take-all or leave-all world. Ahh those Americans.

Another funny occurrence involving me and a professor:

X: I'm working on a research paper on Hezb Allah. That's another project that you might be able to help me on.
Me: Ohhh, you are...
X: Yes, but I understand if you don't want to work on it.
Me: Why wouldn't I?
X: Because you know, I mean, Hezb Allah.......
Me: Uh... so? I don't have a problem with Hezb Allah. Besides, what does that have to do with research?
X: Ahh, I should've known. Leftists support Hezb Allah because they (leftists) are anti-American.
Me: What? ...

I love prestige. Don't you?

Ajami, again

2007-04-09T19:43:00.000+02:00

(In case you did not notice, I have launched an archiving project for interesting articles that I find on the net and elsewhere, for the purpose of giving my readers a better grasp of the realities of the Middle East, and helping dispel the myths that have often gone unachallenged outside the academic sphere)

I have posted an excellent piece on Fouad Ajami at the Article Vault. Do take the time to read it, it is very well worth it. I was asked by a reader about the reception that Fouad Ajami receives here in Lebanon; the article answers that question, although I do not think Ajami is that widely known and talked about here, except maybe in his hometown Arnoun.

I will quote two excerpts, for those who might not have the time to read the whole thing.

Excerpt #1

In 1986, Ajami had praised Musa al-Sadr as a realist for telling the Palestinians to fight Israel in the occupied territories, rather than in Lebanon. But when the Palestinians did exactly that, in the first intifada of 1987-93, it no longer seemed realistic to Ajami, who then advised them to swallow the bitter pill of defeat and pay for their bad choices. While Israeli troops shot down children armed only with stones, Ajami told the Palestinians they should give up on the idea of a sovereign state ("a phantom"), even in the West Bank and Gaza. When the PLO announced its support for a two-state solution at a 1988 conference in Algiers, Ajami called the declaration "hollow," its concessions to Israel inadequate. On the eve of the Madrid talks in the fall of 1991 he wrote, "It is far too late to introduce a new nation between Israel and Jordan." Nor should the American government embark on the "fool's errand" of pressuring Israel to make peace. Under Ajami's direction, the Middle East program of SAIS became a bastion of pro-Israel opinion. An increasing number of Israeli and pro-Israel academics, many of them New Republic contributors, were invited as guest lecturers. "Rabbi Ajami," as many people around SAIS referred to him, was also receiving significant support from a Jewish family foundation in Baltimore, which picked up the tab for the trips his students took to the Middle East every summer. Back in Lebanon, Ajami's growing reputation as an apologist for Israel reportedly placed considerable strains on family members in Arnoun.

Excerpt #2

Ajami also developed close ties during the 1980s to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which made him--as he often and proudly pointed out--the only Arab who traveled both to the Persian Gulf countries and to Israel. In 1985 he became an external examiner in the political science department at Kuwait University; he said "the place seemed vibrant and open to me." His major patrons, however, were Saudi. He has traveled to Riyadh many times to raise money for his program, sometimes taking along friends like Martin Peretz; he has also vacationed in Prince Bandar's home in Aspen. Saudi hospitality--and Saudi Arabia's lavish support for SAIS--bred gratitude. At one meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ajami told a group that, as one participant recalls, "the Saudi system was a lot stronger than we thought, that it was a system worth defending, and that it had nothing to apologize for." Throughout the 1980s and '90s, he faithfully echoed the Saudi line. "Rage against the West does not come naturally to the gulf Arabs," he wrote in 1990. "No great tales of betrayal are told by the Arabs of the desert. These are Palestinian, Lebanese and North African tales."

Sorry for ruining your appetite. I will be more careful next time.

By the way, a correction: Ajami does not have two clones, he has three; or, is one of three clonees of one of the three musketeers: Bernard Lewis, Martin Kramer, and Daniel Pipes.

Explaining my obsession

2007-04-07T19:52:00.000+02:00

Sorry, but I have to bore you with yet another post on Fouad Ajami and his clones Bernard Lewis and Martin Kramer. Or how does it go? Ajami and Kramer are clones of Bernard Lewis? Or what?

Actually, I will stick to Ajami and dump Lewis and Kramer this time around (I promise to post on both of them in the very very near future). True, Lewis makes me chuckle, so does Kramer (yes, it's photoshopped; yes, he is obsessed with Muslims), but not as much as Ajami does, so I owe it to Ajami.

I will let his words explain my obsession with the man. Clearly, he is one of a kind. Or the 3rd of the same kind: Bernard Lewis and Kramer being the other 2. I would not call him a "careerist" as Martin Kramer -- of all people! -- calls Ali Abunimah, while singing hymns of praise to Lewis and Ajami... Ajami is in a league of his own -- or maybe the league is co-owned by Lewis and Kramer. The article I will now post for your enjoyment appeared in October 2003, along with a few photos attached to it, with captions equally laughable as the article itself.

Oh, and this is not a late April fool's joke! He really did write what you will read below, and the photo (I was tempted into coloring the flag for effect) is one of 5-6 photos featured with the article.

"Bon appétit"...

The falseness of anti-Americanism

"America is everywhere," Italian novelist Ignazio Silone once observed. It is in Karachi and Paris, in Jakarta and Brussels. An idea of it, a fantasy of it, hovers over distant lands. And everywhere there is also an obligatory anti-Americanism, a cover and an apology for the spell the United States casts over distant peoples and places. In the burning grounds of the Muslim world and on its periphery, U.S. embassies and their fate in recent years bear witness to a duality of the United States as Satan and redeemer. The embassies targeted by the masters of terror and by the diehards are besieged by visa-seekers dreaming of the golden, seductive country. If only the crowd in Tehran offering its tired rhythmic chant "marg bar amrika" ("death to America") really meant it! It is of visas and green cards and houses with lawns and of the glamorous world of Los Angeles, far away from the mullahs and their cultural tyranny, that the crowd really dreams. The frenzy with which radical Islamists battle against deportation orders from U.S. soil-dreading the prospect of returning to Amman and Beirut and Cairo-reveals the lie of anti-Americanism that blows through Muslim lands.

The world rails against the United States, yet embraces its protection, its gossip, and its hipness. Tune into a talk show on the stridently anti-American satellite channel Al-Jazeera, and you'll behold a parody of American ways and techniques unfolding on the television screen. That reporter in the flak jacket, irreverent and cool against the Kabul or Baghdad background, borrows a form perfected in the country whose sins and follies that reporter has come to chronicle.

In Doha, Qatar, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, arguably Sunni Islam's most influential cleric, at Omar ibn al-Khattab Mosque, a short distance away from the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, delivers a khutba, a Friday sermon. The date is June 13, 2003. The cleric's big theme of the day is the arrogance of the United States and the cruelty of the war it unleashed on Iraq. This cleric, Egyptian born, political to his fingertips, and in full mastery of his craft and of the sensibility of his followers, is particularly agitated in his sermon. Surgery and a period of recovery have kept him away from his pulpit for three months, during which time there has been a big war in the Arab world that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq with stunning speed and effectiveness. The United States was "acting like a god on earth," al-Qaradawi told the faithful. In Iraq, the United States had appointed itself judge and jury. The invading power may have used the language of liberation and enlightenment, but this invasion of Iraq was a 21st-century version of what had befallen Baghdad in the middle years of the 13th century, in 1258 to be exact, when Baghdad, the city of learning and culture, was sacked by the Mongols.

The preacher had his themes, but a great deal of the United States had gone into the preacher's art: Consider his Web site, Qaradawi.net, where the faithful can click and read his fatwas (religious edicts)-the Arabic interwoven with HTML text-about all matters of modern life, from living in non-Islamic lands to the permissibility of buying houses on mortgage to the follies of Arab rulers who have surrendered to U.S. power. Or what about his way with television? He is a star of the medium, and Al-Jazeera carried an immensely popular program of his. That art form owes a debt, no doubt, to the American "televangelists," as nothing in the sheik's traditional education at Al Azhar University in Cairo prepared him for this wired, portable religion. And then there are the preacher's children: One of his daughters had made her way to the University of Texas where she received a master's degree in biology, a son had earned a Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, and yet another son had embarked on that quintessential American degree, an MBA at the American University in Cairo. Al-Qaradawi embodies anti-Americanism as the flip side of Americanization.

A New Orthodoxy

Of late, pollsters have come bearing news and numbers of anti-Americanism the world over. The reports are one dimensional and filled with panic. This past June, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press published a survey of public opinion in 20 countries and the Palestinian territories that indicated a growing animus toward the United States. In the same month, the BBC came forth with a similar survey that included 10 countries and the United States. On the surface of it, anti-Americanism is a river overflowing its banks. In Indonesia, the United States is deemed more dangerous than al Qaeda. In Jordan, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil, the United States is thought to be more dangerous than Iran, the "rogue state" of the mullahs.

There is no need to go so far away from home only to count the cats in Zanzibar. These responses to the United States are neither surprising nor profound. The pollsters, and those who have been brandishing their findings, see in these results some verdict on the United States itself-and on the performance abroad of the Bush presidency-but the findings could be read as a crude, admittedly limited, measure of the foul temper in some unsettled places. The pollsters have flaunted spreadsheets to legitimize a popular legend: It is not Americans that people abroad hate, but the United States! Yet it was Americans who fell to terrorism on September 11, 2001, and it is of Americans and their deeds, and the kind of social and political order they maintain, that sordid tales are told in Karachi and Athens and Cairo and Paris. You can't profess kindness toward Americans while attributing the darkest of motives to their homeland.

The Pew pollsters ignored Greece, where hatred of the United States is now a defining feature of political life. The United States offended Greece by rescuing Bosnians and Kosovars. Then, the same Greeks who hailed the Serbian conquest of Srebrenica in 1995 and the mass slaughter of the Muslims there were quick to summon up outrage over the U.S. military campaign in Iraq. In one Greek public opinion survey, Americans were ranked among Albanians, Gypsies, and Turks as the most despised peoples.

Takis Michas, a courageous Greek writer with an eye for his country's temperament, traces this new anti-Americanism to the Orthodox Church itself. A narrative of virtuous and embattled solitude and alienation from Western Christendom has always been integral to the Greek psyche; a fusion of church and nation is natural to the Greek worldview. In the 1990s, the Yugoslav wars gave this sentiment a free run. The church sanctioned and fed the belief that the United States was Satan, bent on destroying the "True Faith," Michas explains, and shoring up Turkey and the Muslims in the Balkans. A neo-Orthodox ideology took hold, slicing through faith and simplifying history. Where the Balkan churches-be they the Bulgars or the Serbs-had been formed in rebellion against the hegemony of the Greek priesthood, the new history made a fetish of the fidelity of Greece to its Orthodox "brethren." Greek paramilitary units fought alongside Bosnian Serbs as part of the Drina Corps under the command of indicted war criminal Gen. Ratko Mladic. The Greek flag was hoisted over the ruins of Srebenica's Orthodox church when the doomed city fell. Serbian war crimes elicited no sense of outrage in Greece; quite to the contrary, sympathy for Serbia and the identification with its war aims and methods were limitless.

Beyond the Yugoslav wars, the neo-Orthodox worldview sanctified the ethnonationalism of Greece, spinning a narrative of Hellenic persecution at the hands of the United States as the standard-bearer of the West. Greece is part of NATO and of the European Union (EU), but an old schism-that of Eastern Orthodoxy's claim against the Eatin world-has greater power and a deeper resonance. In the banal narrative of Greek anti-Americanism, this animosity emerges from U.S. support for the junta that reigned over the country from 1967 to 1974. This deeper fury enables the aggrieved to glide over the role the United States played in the defense and rehabilitation of Greece after World War II. Furthermore, it enables them to overlook the lifeline that migration offered to untold numbers of Greeks who are among the United States' most prosperous communities.

Greece loves the idea of its "Westernness"-a place and a culture where the West ends, and some other alien world (Islam) begins. But the political culture of religious nationalism has isolated Greece from the wider currents of Western liberalism. What little modern veneer is used to dress up Greece's anti-Americanism is a pretense. The malady here is, paradoxically, a Greek variant of what plays out in the world of Islam: a belligerent political culture sharpening faith as a political weapon, an abdication of political responsibility for one's own world, and a search for foreign "devils."

Lest they be trumped by their hated Greek rivals, the Turks now give voice to the same anti-Americanism. It is a peculiar sentiment among the Turks, given their pragmatism. They are not prone to the cluster of grievances that empower anti-Americanism in France or among the intelligentsia of the developing world. In the 1920s, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk gave Turkey a dream of modernity and self-help by pointing his country westward, distancing it from the Arab-Muslim lands to its south and east. But the secular, modernist dream in Turkey has fractured, and oddly, anti-Americanism blows through the cracks from the Arab lands and from Brussels and Berlin.

The fury of the Turkish protests against the United States in the months prior to the war in Iraq exhibited a pathology all its own. It was, at times, nature imitating art: The protesters in the streets burned American flags in the apparent hope that Europeans (real Europeans, that is) would finally take Turkey and the Turks into the fold. The U.S. presence had been benign in Turkish lands, and Americans had been Turkey's staunchest advocates for coveted membership in the EU. But suddenly this relationship that served Turkey so well was no longer good enough. As the "soft" Islamists (there is no such thing, we ought to understand by now) revolted against Pax Americana, the secularists averted their gaze and let stand this new anti-Americanism. The pollsters calling on the Turks found a people in distress, their economy on the ropes, and their polity in an unfamiliar world beyond the simple certainties of Kemalism, yet without new political tools and compass. No dosage of anti-Americanism, the Turks will soon realize, will take Turkey past the gatekeepers of Europe.

We Were All Americans

The introduction of the Pew report sets the tone for the entire study. The war in Iraq, it argues, "has widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans" and "further inflamed the Muslim world." The implications are clear: The United States was better off before Bush's "unilateralism." The United States, in its hubris, summoned up this anti-Americanism. Those are the political usages of this new survey.

But these sentiments have long prevailed in Jordan, Egypt, and France. During the 1990s, no one said good things about the United States in Egypt. It was then that the Islamist children of Egypt took to the road, to Hamburg and Kandahar, to hatch a horrific conspiracy against the United States. And it was in the 1990s, during the fabled stock market run, when the prophets of globalization preached the triumph of the U.S. economic model over the protected versions of the market in places such as France, when anti-Americanism became the uncontested ideology of French public life. Americans were barbarous, a threat to French cuisine and their beloved language. U.S. pension funds were acquiring their assets and Wall Street speculators were raiding their savings. The United States incarcerated far too many people and executed too many criminals. All these views thrived during a decade when Americans are now told they were loved and uncontested on foreign shores.

Much has been made of the sympathy that the French expressed for the United States immediately after the September 11 attacks, as embodied by the famous editorial of Le Monde's publisher Jean-Marie Colombani, "Nous Sommes Tous Americains" ("We are all Americans"). And much has been made of the speed with which the United States presumably squandered that sympathy in the months that followed. But even Colombani's column, written on so searing a day, was not the unalloyed message of sympathy suggested by the title. Even on that very day, Colombani wrote of the United States reaping the whirlwind of its "cynicism"; he recycled the hackneyed charge that Osama bin Laden had been created and nurtured by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Colombani quickly retracted what little sympathy he had expressed when, in December of 2001, he was back with an open letter to "our American friends" and soon thereafter with a short book, Tous Americains? le monde apres le u septembre 2001 (All Americans? The World After September 11, 2001). By now the sympathy had drained, and the tone was one of belligerent judgment and disapproval. There was nothing to admire in Colombani's United States, which had run roughshod in the world and had been indifferent to the rule of law. Colombani described the U.S. republic as a fundamentalist Christian enterprise, its magistrates too deeply attached to the death penalty, its police cruel to its black population. A republic of this sort could not in good conscience undertake a campaign against Islamism. One can't, Colombani writes, battle the Taliban while trying to introduce prayers in one's own schools; one can't strive to reform Saudi Arabia while refusing to teach Darwinism in the schools of the Bible Belt; and one can't denounce the demands of the sharia (Islamic law) while refusing to outlaw the death penalty. Doubtless, he adds, the United States can't do battle with the Taliban before doing battle against the bigotry that ravages the depths of the United States itself. The United States had not squandered Colombani's sympathy; he never had that sympathy in the first place.

Colombani was hardly alone in the French intellectual class in his enmity toward the United States. On November 3, 2001, in Le Monde, the writer and pundit Jean Baudrillard permitted himself a thought of stunning cynicism. He saw the perpetrators of September 11 acting out his own dreams and the dreams of others like him. He gave those attacks a sort of universal warrant: "How we have dreamt of this event," he wrote, "how all the world without exception dreamt of this event, for no one can avoid dreaming of the destruction of a power that has become hegemonic . . . . It is they who acted, but we who wanted the deed." Casting caution and false sympathy aside, Baudrillard saw the terrible attacks on the United States as an "object of desire." The terrorists had been able to draw on a "deep complicity," knowing perfectly well that they were acting out the hidden yearnings of others oppressed by the United States' order and power. To him, morality of the U.S. variety is a sham, and the terrorism directed against it is a legitimate response to the inequities of "globalization."

In his country's intellectual landscape, Baudrillard was no loner. A struggle had raged throughout the 1990s, pitting U.S.-led globalization (with its low government expenditures, a "cheap" and merciless Wall Street-Treasury Department axis keen on greater discipline in the market, and relatively long working hours on the part of labor) against France's protectionist political economy. The primacy the United States assigned to liberty waged a pitched battle against the French commitment to equity.

To maintain France's sympathy, and that of Le Monde, the United States would have had to turn the other cheek to the murderers of al Qaeda, spare the Taliban, and engage the Muslim world in some high civilizational dialogue. But who needs high approval ratings in Marseille? Envy of U.S. power, and of the United States' universalism, is the ruling passion of French intellectual life. It is not "mostly Bush" that turned France against the United States. The former Socialist foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, was given to the same anti-Americanism that moves his successor, the bombastic and vain Dominique de Villepin. It was Vedrine, it should be recalled, who in the late 1990s had dubbed the United States a "hyperpower." He had done so before the war on terrorism, before the war on Iraq. He had done it against the background of an international order more concerned with economics and markets than with military power. In contrast to his successor, Vedrine at least had the honesty to acknowledge that there was nothing unusual about the way the United States wielded its power abroad, or about France's response to that primacy. France, too, he observed, might have been equally overbearing if it possessed the United States' weight and assets.

His successor gave France's resentment highly moral claims. Villepin appeared evasive, at one point, on whether he wished to see a U.S. or an Iraqi victory in the standoff between Saddam Hussein's regime and the United States. Anti-Americanism indulges France's fantasy of past greatness and splendor and gives France's unwanted Muslim children a claim on the political life of a country that knows not what to do with them.

The Burden of Modernity

To come bearing modernism to those who want it but who rail against it at the same time, to represent and embody so much of what the world yearns for and fears-that is the American burden. The United States lends itself to contradictory interpretations. To the Europeans, and to the French in particular, who are enamored of their laicisme (secularism), the United States is unduly religious, almost embarrassingly so, its culture suffused with sacred symbolism. In the Islamic world, the burden is precisely the opposite: There, the United States scandalizes the devout, its message represents nothing short of an affront to the pious and a temptation to the gullible and the impressionable young. According to the June BBC survey, 78 percent of French polled identified the United States as a "religious" country, while only 10 percent of Jordanians endowed it with that label. Religious to the secularists, faithless to the devout-such is the way the United States is seen in foreign lands.

So many populations have the United States under their skin. Their rage is oddly derived from that very same attraction. Consider the Saudi realm, a place where anti-Americanism is fierce. The United States helped invent the modern Saudi world. The Arabian American Oil Company-for all practical purposes a state within a state-pulled the desert enclave out of its insularity, gave it skills, and ushered it into the 20th century. Deep inside the anti-Americanism of today's Saudi Arabia, an observer can easily discern the dependence of the Saudi elite on their U.S. connection. It is in the image of the United States' suburbs and urban sprawl that Saudi cities are designed. It is on the campuses of Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford that the ruling elite are formed and educated.

After September 11, 2001, the Saudi elite panicked that their ties to the United States might be shattered and that their world would be consigned to what they have at home. Fragments of the United States have been eagerly embraced by an influential segment of Saudi society. For many, the United States was what they encountered when they were free from home and family and age-old prohibitions. Today, an outing in Riyadh is less a journey to the desert than to the mall and to Starbucks.

An academic in Riyadh, in the midst of an anti-American tirade about all policies American, was keen to let me know that his young son, born in the United States, had suddenly declared he no longer wanted to patronize McDonald's because of the United States' support of Israel. The message was plaintive and unpersuasive; the resolve behind that "boycott" was sure to crack. A culture that casts so long a shadow is fated to be emulated and resented at the same time. The United States is destined to be in the politics-and imagination-of strangers even when the country (accurately) believes it is not implicated in the affairs of other lands.

In a hauntingly astute set of remarks made to the New Yorker in the days that followed the terrorism of September 11, the Egyptian playwright Ali Salem-a free spirit at odds with the intellectual class in his country and a maverick who journeyed to Israel and wrote of his time there and of his acceptance of that country-went to the heart of the anti-American phenomenon. He was thinking of his own country's reaction to the United States, no doubt, but what he says clearly goes beyond Egypt:

People say that Americans are arrogant, but it's not true. Americans enjoy life and they are proud of their lives, and they arc boastful of their wonderful inventions that have made life so much easier and more convenient. It's very difficult to understand the machinery of hatred, because you wind up resorting to logic, but trying to understand this with logic is like measuring distance in kilograms. . . .These are people who are envious. To them, life is an unbearable burden. Modernism is the only way out. But modernism is frightening. It means we have to compete. It means we can't explain everything away with conspiracy theories. Bernard Shaw said it best, you know. In the preface to 'St. Joan,' he said Joan of Arc was burned not for any reason except that she was talented. Talent gives rise to jealousy in the hearts of the untalented.

This kind of envy cannot be attenuated. Jordanians, for instance, cannot be talked out of their anti-Americanism. In the BBC survey, 71 percent of Jordanians thought the United States was more dangerous to the world than al Qaeda. But Jordan has been the rare political and economic recipient of a U.S. free trade agreement, a privilege the United States shares only with a handful of nations. A new monarch, King Abdullah II, came to power, and the free trade agreement was an investment that Pax Americana made in his reign and in the moderation of his regime. But this bargain with the Hashemite dynasty has not swayed the intellectual class, nor has it made headway among the Jordanian masses. On Iraq and on matters Palestinian, for more than a generation now, Jordanians have not had a kind thing to say about the United States. In the scheme of Jordan's neighborhood, the realm is benign and forgiving, but the political life is restrictive and tight. When talking about the United States, Jordanians have often been talking to their rulers, expressing their dissatisfaction with the quality of the country's public life and economic performance. A pollster venturing to Jordan must understand the country's temper, hemmed in by poverty and overshadowed by more resourceful powers all around it: Iraq to the east, Israel to the west, and Syria and Saudi Arabia over the horizon. A sense of disinheritance has always hung over Jordan. The trinity of God, country, and king puts much of the political life of the land beyond scrutiny and discussion. The anti-Americanism emanates from, and merges with, this political condition.

With modernism come the Jews. They have been its bearers and beneficiaries, and they have paid dearly for it. They have been taxed with cosmopolitanism: The historian Isaac Deutscher had it right when he said that other people have roots, but the Jews have legs. Today the Jews have a singular role in U.S. public life and culture, and anti-Americanism is tethered to anti-Semitism. In the Islamic world, and in some European circles as well, U.S. power is seen as the handmaiden of Jewish influence. Witness, for instance, the London-based Arab media's obsession with the presumed ascendancy of the neoconservatives-such as former chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz-in the making of U.S. foreign policy. The neocons had been there for the rescue of the (Muslim) Bosnians and Kosovars, but the reactionaries in Muslim lands had not taken notice of that. Left to itself, the United States would be fair-minded, this Arab commentary maintains, and it would arrive at a balanced approach to the Arab-Islamic world. This narrative is nothing less than a modernized version of the worldview of that infamous forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. But it is put forth by men and women who insist on their oneness with the modern world.

A century ago, in a short-story called "Youth," the great British author Joseph Conrad captured in his incomparable way the disturbance that is heard when a modern world pushes against older cultures and disturbs their peace. In the telling, Marlowe, Conrad's literary double and voice, speaks of the frenzy of coming upon and disturbing the East. "And then, before I could open my lips, the East spoke to me, but it was in a Western voice. A torrent of words was poured into the enigmatical, the fateful silence; outlandish, angry words mixed with words and even whole sentences of good English, less strange but even more surprising. The voice swore and cursed violently; it riddled the solemn peace of the bay by a volley of abuse. It began by calling me Pig . . . ."

Today, the United States carries the disturbance of the modern to older places-to the east and to the intermediate zones in Europe. There is energy in the United States, and there is force. And there is resistance and resentment-and emulation-in older places affixed on the delicate balancing act of a younger United States not yet content to make its peace with traditional pains and limitations and tyrannies. That sensitive French interpreter of his country, Dominique Moisi, recently told of a simple countryman of his who was wistful when Saddam Hussein's statue fell on April 9 in Baghdad's Firdos Square. France opposed this war, but this Frenchman expressed a sense of diminishment that his country had sat out this stirring story of political liberation. A society like France with a revolutionary history should have had a hand in toppling the tyranny in Baghdad, but it didn't. Instead, a cable attached to a U.S. tank had pulled down the statue, to the delirium of the crowd. The new history being made was a distinctly American (and British) creation. It was soldiers from Burlington, Vermont, and Linden, New Jersey, and Bon Aqua, Tennessee-I single out those towns because they are the hometowns of three soldiers who were killed in the Iraq warwho raced through the desert making this new history and paying for it.

The United States need not worry about hearts and minds in foreign lands. If Germans wish to use anti-Americanism to absolve themselves and their parents of the great crimes of World War II, they will do it regardless of what the United States says and does. If Muslims truly believe that their long winter of decline is the fault of the United States, no campaign of public diplomacy shall deliver them from that incoherence. In the age of Pax Americana, it is written, fated, or maktoob (as the Arabs would say) that the plotters and preachers shall rail against the United States-in whole sentences of good American slang.

April 4 ODEO

2007-04-03T23:42:00.000+02:00

Iran 1 West 0

2007-04-03T19:50:00.000+02:00

I just saw that the Iranians have released new pics of the Brit captives, the capture of whom should have led, according to Israeli justifications for the July war, to a large-scale invasion of Iran by the UK -- although technically a strike is still not out of the question, nevertheless, it has not happened yet and we can only base our analyses on what has happened.

I read the whole Brit captive affair along three tracks:
1) The domestic Iranian track, i.e. purely for Iranian public consumption;
2) The regional track, i.e. a subtle threat about what may come if USA (or anyone else) attacks Iran;
3) The international/global track, i.e. the image of Iran.

The first track seems to be playing smoothly so far, in so far as it is aimed to boost the confidence and pride of the Iranian people in the face of the psychological war that is being waged against the country. Its primary objective is to alleviate the fears of the Iranian people in the face of a looming strike. We cannot be sure if the second track will be as effective, but granted the risks associated with a strike on Iran (and hopefully the awareness of these risks by Bush, Blair, & co. -- something I am not betting on), it will have some impact, at least in terms of psychological warfare and its transformation of public opinion in the west. On the other hand, this incident has been utilized by some as a "proof" that Iran is a bully and must be put in its right place. Which takes me to the third point -- the image of Iran in the world, and especially in public opinion around the globe. While the incident itself at first was highly denounced, public opinion has gradually calmed down and has been reassured, through those photos (despite the trumpets of war sounding from some "houses" ahem...), of the welfare of the soldiers and the possibility of their release via diplomatic channels. The Iranians' release of photos every few days or so is meant to serve as a reminder of this fact to the world, and lays to waste much of the hyped-up hysteria of a genocidal Iran (once again the "they're going to throw us into the sea" myth comes in handy), along with the attempts at readying public opinion for a strike. The image of an Iran that has been represented in vicious terms in Western media is challenged by the image of an Iran that treats its captives "like kings" (even giving them chess boards and serving them fruit)... It's a bit of a hyperbole (!) I know, but it is good enough to score some points! At the end of the day, in terms of public opinion, it is not "reality" that matters as much as the psychological impact of images.

Nice track suits too... hahaha... (at the risk of sounding ignorant and heartless) I'm having too much fun with this.

Iran 1 West 0

Photo Tuesday

2007-04-03T16:22:00.000+02:00

This "Photo Tuesday", I will not be satisfied with a mere caption. I need to rant.

Every now and then, in Lebanon, you stumble upon an oddly named place, an oddly named store, an oddly named building (yup, they name 'regular' buildings here... of course, other than the ingenious "Our place is the 3rd building after Hajj Hassan's uncle's house, third floor, 2nd door"). And now, the "tower" thing seems to be in fashion. Every now and then, a new 6-7 (or 8) story building pops up, and is honored by the term "tower". Today, as I walked around in New Jdeideh, I noticed this "tower", and snapped a shot. I kept wondering what the word "developers" was all about. What is the meaning of "Developers Tower"? Is it some sort of gathering place for developers? But then, the apostrophe is missing at the end, so it couldn't be that. I couldn't help but wonder what all those buildings will serve. There is no shortage of buildings, apartments, office space! On the Rabieh road, there are at least 3 new centres; then there are the older ones that are pretty much out of use, since all the stores that opened there closed down due to lack of business. It seems that every person with some money to waste is now buying a plot and erecting a building -- or tower. I am sitting here in my room, surrounded by 3 -- THREE!! -- construction sites. Apartment buildings, 4 stories high (with some "wasta" you can also add a 5th floor in this 4-story zone). They say there's no money to buy anything, no money for cars, no money for new apartments, but then, where is the money for the construction coming from? These are not isolated phenomena, they are widespread (at least where I live) and are not housing projects by companies, they are individual initiatives. And then there is the issue of the treatment (or rather, abuse) of the laborers, who are mostly Syrians. I once woke up to horrible shrieks and yells, it turned out the owner of the construction site and the engineer were yelling at one of the workers and abusing him physically... Those who whine and continue to cry "there's no money", have the best of luxuries, whereas silence rules over the poor, the exploited, and dispossessed.

I keep wondering, if there is no money, how come I saw at least a 100 brand-new Nissan Tiidas parked in only one tiny "suburb" of Beirut, which claims to be "suffering" (it just can't be that all of the Tiidas belong to "visitors")? And what is worse than the whining and the brand new shiny cars (some quite expensive, topping the $50,000 level) is the condescending attitude towards those who do not have any of these luxuries; for example, towards taxi drivers with oldish cars, who struggle to feed their families, a fact which the poor suffering brand new car owners forget (how convenient). The poor, economically depressed cry-babies turn into abusive monsters when they come across real samples of what they claim to be going through (but aren't in reality). What's worse, sectarianism has plagued this country so much that it seems there are now different standards to judge poverty. A Christian with a yearly salary of $20,000 is considered "poor", whereas a Sunni or Shi'ite with 1/4th of that salary would not even be considered to be anywhere close to being poor. And Iraqi and Palestinian refugees are... not considered at all (except when keeping track of their sectarian "belonging", lest it threaten the "delicate sectarian balance"; batrak Sfeir will demand that we bring some more Christian Iraqi refugees to maintain the 6-6 balance).

Welcome to the world of capitalism and sectarianism... and Lebanon! Enjoy your towers, and don't forget, they (we?) love life...
Oh and, Syria is a hundred times better than Lebanon in almost every respect. Now shut the hell up and get over yourselves.

You demand a tribunal to try the (unknown) killers of Hariri?
I demand a tribunal to try the (known, clear as light of day) killers of 1200 people!!

Iranian vs Israeli nukes

2007-03-29T17:50:00.000+02:00

Whether or not one agrees with Iran's quest for nuclear capabilities and all that it entails in terms of strategic parity vis-a-vis Israel, one must admit that the IAEA and the international community have been hypocritical in their position on Iran -- compared to their position (or rather, lack thereof) on Israel. The farthest they have gone is to call on Israel to "admit" that it possesses nuclear weapons. I mean, wouldn't it have been lovely if Iran would have faced the same amount of "pressure", and nothing more? But no, here we have a situation where people are already sounding the drums and trumpets of war, not in the least alleged "freelance" journalists, some of whom have been at the forefront of defence for Bush's Greater Middle East Initiative and alleged "democratization" agenda. And now, for the good news, this project seems to have spread like a plague, from the ruins of South Lebanon and South Beirut, all the way to Somalia, where democratization is taking form (at the same time as the Arab summit speakers heaped praises on the "interim Somali government").

But back to the topic at hand, the fine line separating the yet-to-be-acquired Iranian nuclear weapons from the decades-long possession of nuclear weapons by Israel. I was watching the proceedings of the Arab summit today, and there was emphasis on the idea of the right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. I could not help but wonder whether it was an implicit reference to the possibility of U.S (secret?) aid to Arab regimes to advance nuclear agendas and projects of their own, especially in light of repeated Egyptian (and other Arab) statements to the effect of: acquisition of nuclear technology is our "inalienable right". You may say this is far-fetched and very dangerous, and so the U.S is unlikely to embark on such a stupid (ad)venture, but this argument fails to explain U.S (direct or indirect) funding to certain religious fundamentalist groups in the region to counter the threat to its interests by certain others. Sure, this is likely to backfire, but the U.S administration has, because of its short-sightedness, invested in its short-term hegemony instead of addressing its long-term interests and presence in the region. All the better, since it hastens the eventual departure of the U.S from the region, and the decline of the American Empire, but this will come with a price, and I would say, a heavy one at that. I'm afraid the alternative in the region will not be much better. That said, in terms of the Israeli conflict, the prospects for an all-out war, I would say, would be much higher, and have a very different impact on Israel than it has ever witnessed or lived under the protective wing of the U.S. Of course, the rise of Iran is portrayed in over-hysterical terms. These apocalyptic assessments of Iranian hegemony are misleading, even if one is to consider it in the context of the absence of an Arab counter-weight (a concept which is much talked about now in policy circles). However, the implementation of such a balance is more complicated than it seems to be, and I think will be manifested in terms of one of the following two available options: 1) the rise of (fabricated) Arab nationalism as a counter to the "foreign" (i.e. Iranian) intrusion in "Arab affairs"; 2) the inter-sectarian card, which will have even more dangerous implications for Shi'ite minorities in Arab countries, and even Shi'ite majorities trapped in "enclaves" throughout the region. From what we can see, there is a cautious indecisiveness in U.S policy as to which of the two to implement, and at the moment both are being used in different places and on different occasions to a certain extent. In Lebanon, it seems the sectarian card will be a far more effective tool, given Hezbullah's immense military power and efficacy, and the failure of Jumblatt's anti-Iranian rhetoric for the most part. Anything short of the threat of a mini-Iraq will be unlikely to place restraints on Hezbullah's domestic and regional agendas and ties, and anything short of the implementation of these threats will be unlikely to create an environment of "constructive chaos" in Lebanon. For its own part, Syria seems to be the last remaining hindrance to the "Arabist" solution to the U.S's "Iranian problem", and one may safely assume that the events leading up to the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon were meant to isolate it from the last "Arab" country that it continued to have significant influence in. But the Ba'ath regime in Syria proved to be far more robust than the U.S thought it was, and I think this miscalculation stems partly from the U.S misreading of the Ba'athist strategy of state-building and regime incumbency (an interesting piece which addresses, in part, state-building in Syria, is David Waldner's State-Building and Late Development, which I must say, is a very difficult and complex read -- nevertheless, I recommend it for the institutional and political-economic perspective it advances, as opposed to the cultural-religious one advanced by the likes of Bernard Lewis, Fouad Ajami, & co.).

At any rate, I strayed a bit from the main theme I wanted to address: the nukes controversy. When I say controversy I do not mean the controversy regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions per se, but the controversy regarding the double standards adopted in viewing the Iranian and Israeli nuclear ambitions. "Double standards" is an understatement to be sure! I have been hearing many saying that the two are incomparable because one is a "democratic" state whereas the other one is a theocratic one with a record of human rights abuses. It is true that Iran's human rights record is not clean (nor is any other state's for that matter), but the utilization of this argument to justify the incomparable nature of the two cases reeks of politicization of the discussion, and what is even worse, a complete whitewashing of Israel's human rights record, which has been far more systematic and large-scale than any other human rights abuses in post-WWII Middle East (I will not say post-colonial since colonialism is alive and kicking in the region).

Very few in fact know much about Israel's nuclear program and the manner in which it was shaped and implemented. Much of this ignorance stems from the deliberate silence of the media on this issue. I suspect that the average American who might feel threatened by the Iranian nuclear ambitions and may support a strike on nuclear facilities, is not even aware of Israel's possession of nuclear weapons, or even if aware of it, might be convinced that it is justified, since it guarantees Israel's existence. But if it does guarantee Israel's existence, and if Iran's nuclear ambitions must be curtailed exactly for that reason, what would explain the decades-long argument that the reason Israel occupied the West Bank & Gaza Strip (other than the standard myth they spread about the Arab armies having attacked Israel in 1967 and Israel having conquered these territories "fair and square") and must not give up on them due to the need for "defensible borders"? Of course the whole defensible borders argument is hilarious in and of itself. If the purpose is to defend Jews and the Jewish state, then isn't it counter-productive to move Jews into the occupied territories to form the new frontier? Wouldn't that subject those Jews (in whose defence the state claims to have expanded its borders) to the risk of murder, violence, and existential threats? What this will give rise to is a self-sustaining loop of expansion and more expansion, all the while as they claim that Israel needs "defensible borders". Will the purpose, after the occupation of the new territories, remain the defence of the pre-occupation borders, or will it shift onto the newly occupied territories and the need of the Jews there for "defensible borders"?

As for Israel's possession of nuclear weapons, a December 1986 MERIP report (no. 143), titled "Recipe for an Israeli Nuclear Arsenal", discusses the stages of Israel's development and testing of nuclear weapons. If I could post the whole thing, I would have, but some excerpts will have to do (anyone who wishes to get their hands on the whole thing -- 7 pages long -- may send me a request by email).

A Textile Factory... Built by France?
Most significant is France's dedication to Israel's nuclear project -- a fact which I am sure will make some elements in Israeli circles who feed on alleged French anti-Semitism, a claim advanced every time France does not do what they desire and expect it to do, fidget uncomfortably in their seats -- a favor paid for, one would guess, by Israel's full collaboration with the French and the British in their elaborate plans to take over the Suez canal, culminating in what became known as the "Suez war" (they were later forced to withdraw following threats by the Soviet Union -- followed by U.S pressure sparked by fears that tensions would erupt in a larger confrontation).

For public consumption, the reactor was a "textile factory." That fiction was exposed in 1960 when a US reconnaissance aircraft photographed the telltale dome characteristic of nuclear reactors. The US government demanded an explanation. Ben Gurion admitted that the reactor existed, but insisted that Israel had no intention of building a bomb. Research at Dimona was for medicine and industry only, he said. In fact, Vanunu has now revealed, France not only supplied the reactor but also helped Israel build the secret 8-story underground plant and actively collaborated with Israel on developing the atomic bomb for two years in the late 1950s.

Ambiguity and Appeasement
Even more ironic is the fact that Israel itself played the ambiguity and secrecy game and was largely appeased in that respect by the U.S (which was not uninformed about its nuclear ambitions and activities), something which it now claims, in the case of Iran, is akin to Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.

As reports of an Israeli nuclear arsenal became more frequent, and Washington raised questions, Israel obligingly assumed an anti-nuclear posture in public. Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin in September 1975 proposed a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the Middle East. Israel repeated the proposal in 1980, and again in March 1982 at the United Nations, but it refused to submit to the application of full-scope safeguards at the Dimona plant, and its nuclear program proceeded apace.

American Complicity
There are those who claim U.S innocence from the whole affair; this is, in fact, far from true. The U.S was not a mere passive appeaser; rather, it was an active supporter and funder of Israel's nuclear program.

In 1955, a US-Israeli nuclear agreement allowed Israel to acquire a small American nuclear reactor, its first. The US paid $350,000 of the reactor's cost, and gave Israel a library of 6,500 US Atomic Energy Commission research reports on nuclear topics. Over the next five years, some 56 Israeli nuclear scientists were trained in the US, while 24 others visited Atomic Energy Commission installations here.

Nuclear Technology for Peaceful Purposes?
In the aftermath of Vanunu's exposure of Israel's nuclear arsenal, the French justified their support for Israel's nuclear program based on the idea that it could also be used for peaceful purposes, an argument that Israel -- and France -- find outrageous when used with regards to Iran's nuclear program. Indeed, this is exactly what Iran argues: that its quest for nuclear technology is entirely peaceful. While this may bring forth the argument -- based on Israel's case and its subsequent development of nuclear weapons through the abuse of the peaceful purposes argument -- that the insistence on peaceful purposes is not sufficient to justify and allow for the continuation of nuclear work, the major issue is not the conclusion that Iran should be forced to halt its activities (violently if need be), but that Israel must hand over its nuclear arsenal. Instead (and not surprisingly), the focus is misplaced, and shifted onto those who do not yet have those capabilities, rather than placed on those who do have them, and who have shown willingness to use weapons of mass destruction and perpetrate crimes, as well as impose collective punishment, against an entire population.

A week after the Vanunu story broke, Professor Francis Perrin, France's high commissioner for atomic energy from 1951-1970, admitted to the Sunday Times that France had lied about the extent of its nuclear collaboration with Israel. France built not only the Dimona reactor, he said, but also the secret underground plant for producing weapons-grade plutonium. "We knew the plutonium could be used for a bomb but we considered also that it could be used for peaceful purposes," Perrin said. In 1959, de Gaulle felt "that the French military was starting to work too closely with Israel." He ended collaboration on atomic weapons, but agreed to supply Israel with the secret plutonium plant.

Zionist Theft: Not Just Of Land
The acquisition of enriched uranium from France and other sources was highly limited, and as such there was a need to find alternative sources that would satisfy Israel's "thirst" for uranium. But there was no need to worry. Theft came in handy, as is habitual of Zionism.

In 1966, the US Atomic Energy Commission discovered that over 200 pounds of highly-enriched uranium (enough to make 13 to 20 bombs, by one estimate) was missing. It had "disappeared" sometime before or during 1965 from a private US corporation, the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania.

NUMEC, according to ABC News, had an "intimate relationship with Israel at the time." NUMEC's president, Dr. Zalman Shapiro, was a research chemist who had been involved in the Manhattan nuclear bomb project. He was also a committed Zionist. During its investigation, the Atomic Energy Commission discovered that 50 to 69 foreigners from around the world annually visited NUMEC's supposedly top-security plant with its stock of thousands of classified government research documents. One of these was Rafael Eitan, then a Mossad officer and more recently the spymaster in charge of Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former US Navy analyst convicted of spying for Israel in 1986. Others included Baruch Cinai, an Israeli metallurgist, and Ephraim Lahav, Israel's scientific attache in Washington. It turned out that Shapiro was co-owner, with the Israeli government, of a firm purportedly working on preserving foods by nuclear radiation. The firm could well have served as a conduit for sending NUMEC uranium to Israel.

At least five federal agencies -- the National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, General Accounting Office and Atomic Energy Commission -- investigated, but the US government kept their reports under wraps. Eleven years later, in 1977, an environmental group, Natural Resources Defense Council, secured over 3,000 documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request which revealed that US intelligence agencies had long suspected Israel of stealing the uranium.

Zionism and Apartheid: The Fine Line Between Necessity and Morality
Collaboration with and support of apartheid in South Africa is perhaps the most embarrassing, and sadly perhaps the least publicized of all of Israel's actions. Support for apartheid was present on all levels, and transcended the official apparatus of the State of Israel, to include such organizations as the "Anti-Defamation League" (ADL), which purports to expose anti-Semitism (and anti-Zionism). I included anti-Zionism in parentheses since for ADL anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are synonymous. Zachary Lockman, in his brilliant piece "Critique from the Right: The Neo-conservative Assault on Middle East Studies", points out that

in 1993 a police raid on the ADL's San Fransisco office revealed that with the help of a member of the San Fransisco Police Department's intelligence unit who had access to police and FBI files, the ADL had for years been collecting information ... on local activists in the campaign against South Africa's apartheid regime and on many other organizations and individuals. Subsequent investigations and lawsuits revealed that some of the data on anti-apartheid organizing collected for the ADL had been made available to the South African government. Though it continued to insist it had done nothing wrong, the ADL eventually paid a substantial sum to settle a suit brought by the city of San Fransisco.

Needless to say, the file was closed through financial settlement and the affair was swept under the rug and conveniently forgotten over the years. This was not the first time Zionism had collaborated with apartheid. The fact that Israel's geographic reality restricted its ability to conduct nuclear testing necessitated the quest for an "ally", or rather, an accomplice, who would be willing to "host" such a test, in return for data, expertise and technology. This "need" is almost always -- in the rare case of any discussion on this matter -- cited as a justification for Israel's support for apartheid, which is inherently the same argument used to justify the Zionist lobby's (and Israel's) attempts at not only personal denial, but also the active pursuit of the prevention of the recognition of the Armenian Holocaust: the claim that Israel is in urgent need of "a Muslim ally", and Turkey being the only one available in the region willing to cultivate such ties with Israel, the relationship is marketed as a justified one. If there ever was a natural romance, it is the love affair between Zionism and official Turkish denial of the Armenian Holocaust.

South Africa was in fact the country that played host to Israel's nuclear testing.

On September 22, 1979, a US surveillance satellite designed to monitor nuclear explosions detected a tell-tale double flash over the South Atlantic near South Africa. When this became public a month later, President Carter appointed an advisory committee which concluded that the satellite sighting most likely was caused by a particle of matter hitting the satellite. None of the other groups which subsequently studied the flash found reason to doubt that it was a nuclear explosion. Five months later, an Israeli correspondent for CBS News reported that the flash had been an Israeli nuclear bomb test "which was conducted with the help and cooperation of the South African government." A recent study by Ronald Walters and Kenneth S. Zinn, based on 500 pages of newly-released documents from the US Naval Research Laboratory obtained by the Washington Office on Africa, indicates that the NRL concluded a nuclear explosion had occurred. Walters and Zinn believe the US has deliberately covered up its knowledge of Israeli-South African nuclear collaboration.

Morality? What's that?

Arabs May be Paranoid, but not THAT Paranoid: Mossad's Long Arm
Another controversy took place in 1985 with Israel's illegal acquisition of a device used for triggering atomic bombs. The whole thing was a typical middle-man deal, whereby the owner of a company illegally acquired these devices from the firm that produced them, and exported them to an Israeli firm owned by an arms dealer. The deal was exposed, and the middle-man (a man by the surname Smyth) was apprehended. The Israeli firm owner subsequently denied that these devices were ever exported to his company, and insisted that the middle-man had asked for the wrong export license. Israel then claimed it was unaware that sales of the devices were restricted and said that it had only used them in conventional weapons, and following U.S demands, returned the ones it had not yet used.

Smyth, free on $100,000 bail, disappeared with his wife in August 1985 just before his trial. In May 1986, an old acquaintance reportedly ran into Smyth while on a business trip -- in Israel.

Chamberlain Must be Turning In His Grave: Appeasement II
Israel can be compared to a spoiled kid who has successfully turned his parents into a function of his spoiled nature and his wishes and demands and actions. A kid who has his parents "on a tight leash", as the expression goes: "I will torture the street cat unless you get me a toy." The parents, not knowing what else to say or do, or just not feeling like doing anything, agree to go along, and encourage and appease him by getting him a toy. The only time that the parents retract their decision to appease is when the relatives and neighbors find out about it.

In 1975, the US reportedly agreed to supply Israel with Pershing I missiles, which are designed to carry nuclear weapons, in exchange for an Israeli pullback in the Sinai. Public disclosure of the deal led to criticism which killed it.

Israel's Nukes: A Danger to World Security
That Israel even thought of developing nuclear weapons at a time when none of its adversaries had them or had thought of acquiring them, and at a time when it had the strategic and military high ground and Western support (and continues to do so), and more importantly, that it seriously contemplated using these weapons on at least one occasion, and went as far as assembling and readying the bombs, awaiting for a trigger, is enough to conclude that its possession of nukes is a grave threat to world security and the continuation of human life in this densely-populated region. The refusal of the international community to take any action on the matter leaves one door open: nuclear balance and deterrence. Such a balance is not a new idea: it has been present between India and Pakistan for quite some time now, and even if not conducive to feelings of security, it nevertheless upholds the concept of "Mutually Assured Destruction" (I know many have poked fun at it, including the ever-brilliant James Morrow). One may argue that the Middle East is plagued by madmen far more than any other area of the world (I disagree, I think there are far more madmen in the West; look, after all, where they got us to) and as such nuclear proliferation is akin to suicide, but I tend to disagree with the idea that nuclear balance will lead to proliferation. I do not quite see a proliferation link. The fact that there may be madmen willing to go as far as to provide know-how to clandestine groups or other neighboring regimes to offset the rival's nuclear capabilities, is not the norm, but rather the exception, and in the absence of any effort to strip Israel of its nuclear arsenal, the proper action would not be to prevent Iran from acquiring the nuke, but to prevent the implementation of any "innovative" ideas that Israel -- or its benefactor the U.S -- may have; because that, and not, as claimed, Iran's acquisition of nukes, is what will lead to nuclear proliferation.

Special 2 in 1 Offer: American Tax Dollars and Silence
The piece I have been quoting from says it best on this special 2 in 1 offer.

The massive amounts of foreign aid that flow each year from US taxpayers to Israel's treasury give the US government great potential leverage over Israel. Yet it has failed to pressure Israel in any way to adhere to US non-proliferation policy, and has contentedly accepted Israel's assurances that it will never introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East.

Even the persuasive evidence revealed by Mordechai Vanunu has failed to stir Washington. The verbal warnings the Reagan administration has issued in response to Pakistan's nuclear weapons program have been conspicuously absent when it comes to Israel. Israel's status as a nuclear ally in the region may suit US interests well. Even if Israel publicly acknowledged its nuclear arsenal, it seems unlikely that Washington would punish this defiance of non-proliferation standards. So long as the matter officially remains in the realm of suspicions and deductions, Washington can continue to blithely hand over billions of dollars in military aid to build up a strong force -- even a nuclear force in Israel, capable of intimidating the region with the ultimate threat.

Zionism's Socialist Dilemma - Part II

2007-03-26T22:25:00.000+02:00

Zionism’s Socialist Dilemma:

Nationalism, Colonization, and Class Struggle
(Continued... See Part I)

The Judaization of the Socialist Protest: Nahman Syrkin

In The Jewish Problem and the Socialist-Jewish State[21], Syrkin argues – loosely echoing Marx – that anti-Semitism pervades society because it is a product of the class structure. He also points out that anti-Semitism reaches its peak in declining classes, the middle class and the peasant class; the middle class suffers most from Jewish competition. Furthermore, the hostility of these classes is not based on national or religious lines but on “egotism, the lust for Jewish money, the desire to undermine the Jewish competitor and expel him from the land.”[22]

Syrkin insists that a “classless society and national sovereignty are the only means of solving the Jewish problem completely.”[23] He argues that such social revolution and cessation of class struggle would normalize the relationship of Jews and their environment. As such, Jews should join the proletariat. Yet here he strongly condemns Jewish socialists in Western Europe who have accepted assimilation. Socialism will, moreover, eliminate the possibility of oppression of one nation by another. Here he insists that socialism is the “opponent of all those conspiring to suppress or destroy the national character of a people. The socialist movement … supports all attempts of suppressed peoples to free themselves.”[24] Thus socialists are the bearers of the idea of national emancipation. It is important to point out here that from a Marxist point of view nationalism, which is the mouthpiece of national emancipation and unification, is tolerable only in so far as it hides behind it economic interests, growth and rapid development of which would result in the demise of bourgeois society and by extension the slogans under which it operates.

But for Jews, he points out, this has not been the case, as Jewish socialists have accepted assimilation. This he criticizes, by saying: “If Jewish socialism … wants to rise to the level of real moral protest, then it must acknowledge and proclaim in public that the Jewish protest is its basic motif.”[25] This could be understood as a call for the “nationalization”/“Judaization” of the socialist cause.

In a manner that can be considered to be self-contradictory, Syrkin argues that “Jewish socialism should be placed on the same level with proletarian socialism.”[26] Yet such an enormous argument is left unelaborated. The placement of Jewish socialism – with the Jewish protest occupying its center – on par with proletarian socialism contains the tacit implication that the former is defined in distinction from rather than as belonging to the latter. Furthermore, the insistence on the specifically Jewish (i.e. spiritual/religious/national) element renders Syrkin a supporter of, at best, socialist Judaism (as opposed to socialism endorsed by the Jewish masses). Socialism is thus considered to be the variable rather than the constant, and the position of the constant is occupied by Judaism and Jewish consciousness and struggle. Further complicating the nation-class dynamic, Syrkin insists that socialism can become the possession of all Jews of all classes, since Jewish suffering affects every class of Jewry. Such an argument is not accurate; it assumes that Jewish suffering – even if genuinely impacting all classes of Jewry – elicits similar reactions and leads all classes to follow one movement or support one ideology. This is not true for upper-classes, which despite observing the suffering of lower-class Jews with concern (due to the threat it poses to their own position in society), do not endorse a proletarian revolution; nor is it true for the middle bourgeoisie, who despite a constant loss in their economic and social standing attempt to hold on to the last vestiges of their previous state.

Moreover, after insisting that Jewish socialist struggle is the only salvation of Jewry, Syrkin argues that the situation of Jewry at present cannot be improved through the socialist struggle. Such struggle would not help the Jewish middle class at all, and would not help the Jewish proletariat as much as it would help the general proletariat. It appears that Syrkin makes such statements with the purpose of validating the claim that the peculiar Jewish position determines the outcome of any struggle, and as such a specifically Jewish protest and struggle must be undertaken, even if under the auspices of the socialist movement.

Finally, non-Zionist attempts to solve the Jewish problem are utopian. Indeed, this is the first time in his article that Syrkin mentions the issue of Zionism and its compatibility with class struggle. He refers to arguments that dismiss the compatibility of these two as “foolish”, arguing that the Jewish proletariat has no reason to reject Zionism merely because other classes of Jewry have accepted it for national and ideological reasons. Such an assertion only confirms Syrkin’s prioritization of the national cause over the socialist struggle. Indeed, Syrkin’s language – for example references to the “outside enemy” – is reminiscent of ultra-nationalism rather than socialist Zionism. As Marx argued, given the economic determinants of Jews’ position in their societies, any solution must address the economic aspects first and foremost. The fundamental contradiction in Syrkin’s perspective is, on the one hand his insistence that the Jews’ economic position gives rise to anti-Semitism, and on the other, his willingness to second class struggle to the national struggle. He concludes the article by pointing out that a Jewish state based on capitalism should and would be opposed by the Jewish proletariat. Such a claim is moot for the simple fact that if facing the “outside enemy” is to take priority over (cross-ethnic) class struggle, capitalism could be established under the pretext of and utilizing the situational factors of a looming conflict. Indeed, it is under similar slogans that bourgeois society seeks to acquire larger markets and consolidate its grip on territories.

Normalization versus Revolution: Ber Borochov

Two pieces of work produced by this socialist-Zionist thinker will be examined; the first is dated 1905, while the second a year later. Although brief, these two pieces provide the raw material for an in-depth discussion of the manner in which the national and class struggles are allegedly intertwined. It is worth pointing out that, unlike Syrkin, Borochov’s analysis resembles to a large extent – though not fully – Marx’s views on the national question and its role in a proletarian revolution. Moreover, its content reflects a deeper understanding of the implications of a socialist struggle, while its style is one of referral to rather than distancing from and ignorance of Marx’s writings.

In The National Question and the Class Struggle[27] Borochov argues that that national struggle – like class struggle – is waged for the means of production as well as the conditions of production, rather than for the preservation of cultural values. This struggle, though often conducted under the banner of spiritual slogans, is nevertheless purely economic in its interests. Every nationality has a number of tools fashioned in order to serve the purpose of the preservation of its resources. Hence it is false to assume that the proletariat has no relation to the national wealth and has no national feelings and interests. Moreover, the territory is of great value for the proletariat – as it is for the bourgeoisie in search of larger markets – in that it is a place in which to work. Without a place to work, there can be no class struggle. This then is the central theme in the discussion of Jewish socialism, which is nevertheless not undertaken in this piece.

Borochov continues by arguing that for oppressed nationalities (and one can only assume that he considered Jews an oppressed nationality) the system of production is subject to abnormal conditions, such as deprivation of territory and organs of national preservation. Such conditions harmonize the interests of the members of the nation (this implies that according to him Zionism is merely the logical extension of the economic concerns of the deprived Jews of Europe, a claim that is, however, unsubstantiated, given the strictly bourgeois character of Zionism and its treatment of the working masses as merely tools for the establishment of a bourgeois state in Palestine[28]). In such a case the influence of conditions and relations of production, as well as class struggle, is lessened. Thus the members of the nation become interested in national self-determination. It is in this struggle that the class structure manifests itself. Nationalism does not obscure class consciousness. Rather, genuine nationalism of the revolutionary proletariat strives to acquire normal conditions of production for the nation, and a normal labor and class struggle base for the proletariat. It is interesting to note that the quest for revolution (proletarian class struggle) has, in the socialist-Zionist context, always clashed with the quest for normalcy (represented by the nation-state), culminating in the victory of the latter over the former and the necessity of the “reification of Labor Zionism.”[29] Ben-Gurion expressed the view that class interests are identical with national interests[30], yet this similarity was only observed in so far as “the way to achieve national unity is via class warfare”[31] rather than the other way around, namely the utilization of national existence for the achievement of a socialist revolution. In this, Ben-Gurion, one of the prominent figures in the history of Zionism, opposed Borochov. Indeed, the rejection of Borochov and the decline and disappearance of the Po’alei Zion movement/party[32] stemmed from a conscious ideological decision, whereby "[t]he founders realized at an early stage that there was a contradiction between socialism and nationalism, and since the first meaning of Zionism was the building of the nation, one had to make a decision.”[33] As Lockman points out,

“those parties which adhered to Zionism … were compelled, by the logic of their very presence and goals in Palestine, to compromise their socialist principles one by one when they came into conflict with the demands of Zionist colonization … those parties which refused any compromise with Zionism found themselves relatively isolated, cut off from the majority of the Jews of the Yishuv, and later the state, and this of course severely limited the possibilities of playing a prominent role in the class struggle.”[34]

Poa’lei Zion cannot be considered to have been within the ranks of the rejectionists referred to by Lockman, although the complexity of ideological and strategic clashes resulted in its isolation. For example, Lockman refers to Borochov’s reasoning in supporting class solidarity between Jewish and Arab workers, which has as its end the strengthening of Hebrew labour in Palestine.[35] An examination of the platform of the Poa’lei Zion party (Our Platform[36]), which Borochov wrote only a year after his The National Question and the Class Struggle, would provide more insight into the reasoning put forth by Borochov, especially in what pertains to the proletarianization of Zionism.

Borochov argues that every class has national interests differing from the national interests of other classes. National movements do not transcend class divisions. This assertion not only stands firmly against Syrkin’s all-encompassing view of socialism and nationalism (i.e. the argument that socialism can become the possession of Jews of all classes), it also contradicts Borochov’s assertion only a year before that the conditions in which oppressed nationalities live force the harmonization of national interests for all classes of Jewry. In this piece, a more realistic and socialist explanation is presented, whereby the lumping-together of all classes under the national umbrella is abandoned. This is in tune with Marxist analyses, which see in nationalism a slogan that reflects bourgeois interests rather than the interests and support of all classes of a nation.

The platform is an interesting piece on the dynamics of Jewish life and economic conditions outside Palestine, and the scheme with which Jewish life would operate in the context of the colonization of “undeveloped countries”. The first has already been discussed as part of the process of contextualizing the framework of analysis. The second is discussed briefly by Borochov. The first point that is emphasized is the emigration of the petty bourgeoisie, who become proletarianized in the land of their settlement/colonization. Such a process would be activated thanks to the restriction of immigration to the chosen territory only for Jews, and the irrelevance of big capital given the undeveloped (or at best underdeveloped) conditions. Such conditions would provide a satisfactory market for Jewish petty and middle capital, which would then be utilized to move from an urban to an agricultural economy. The second point is the concentration of Jewish immigration; this is necessary in so far as its absence is a hindrance to the colonization of the undeveloped country of settlement. The third point is the organization and regulation of immigration, which would be carried out by the Jewish proletariat. Finally, the success of Zionism depends on the success of proletarian Zionism, and the success of the latter is “also a step toward socialism.”[37] These three points, while setting the broad lines of the strategy proposed, do not provide much insight into the manner (i.e. steps, policies, etc.) in which it would come into being. Moreover, in so far as it ignores political, social, and economic realities[38] (and the presence of an indigenous population on the chosen land, which cannot be considered to have been undeveloped) and the strategic importance of Palestine for rival empires, it is a utopian piece.

The Synthesis: An Assessment

This section, while not touching on the broader lines of the place of socialism in Zionist thought, has nevertheless presented two distinct (one anti-Marxist and the other Marxist) Zionist perspectives, which while not necessarily being representative of Jewish leftist/socialist thought of the period, nevertheless combine elements that formed the core of both Jewish nationalism and (internationalist) socialism. The attempt at merging these two diverging concepts necessarily implies that no complete adoption of socialism would be possible; nationalism, on the other hand, provides more opportunities for the incorporation of ideologies such as socialism within it, without losing any of its defining characteristics. The question of whether there can ever be a true synthesis of nationalism and socialism whereby the latter preserves its defining characteristics (rather than being transformed into what is commonly referred to as “national/ist socialism”) would have to be answered in the negative, especially if one is to consider the practical aspects of the two. Nationalism and socialism might co-exist in thought/ideology only as much as one is the function of the other (i.e. nationalism explained in terms of socialism, means and conditions of production, and industrialization / socialism as a tool for the advancement of nationalist agendas or changes in the social/economic division of labour). Here it is important to point out that the complexity of the synthesis question/dilemma stems mainly from the customization of the definition of socialism, which indeed makes the synthesis question irrelevant to begin with. Indeed, Katznelson’s argument against the mechanical adoption of socialism and nationalism is a perfect example of this.[39] It is safe to conclude that if one is to take into account the ideological clash, no genuine synthesis between the two (and in particular Zionism and socialism) has been achieved. Furthermore, to answer the question of whether socialism was merely a mobilizing myth requires further in-depth analysis. It is necessary to point out, however, that some intellectuals and leaders were indeed convinced socialists (though the brand of socialism they believed in might not have coincided with the Marxist perspective). Yet one can argue that the impact of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish finance capital (led by the Rothschilds), which was taking place just as some of these thinkers were writing pieces on the role of socialism (and the process of proletarianization) in the Jewish struggle for statehood, was ignored.[40] It would be difficult to dismiss this as merely an innocent failure, given the implications this would have not in terms of socialism as an ideology per se, but in terms of the welfare of the Jewish proletariat, which the socialist-Zionists claimed to be concerned with.

III – Concluding Remarks: Labour Relations in Pre-1948 Palestine

This section will deal briefly with the practical aspects of the clash between nationalism (both Jewish and Palestinian Arab) with a general overview of Jewish-Arab labour relations. It will provide a final assessment of whether there could have been, at any stage prior to 1948 a real possibility for joint class struggle.

Three themes dominate the Zionist struggle: conquest of the land, conquest of labour, and produce of the land.[41] The three are intricately related. The first provides not only a living space and a territory for organized Jewish life, but also Jewish labour and possession of the resources and means of production. The second relates to the attempt to create a Jewish working class by means of forcing Jewish employers to hire Jewish rather than cheaper Arab labour. The third relates to the boycott of Arab goods for the stimulation of Jewish agriculture and industry. Of the three, the theme that is most relevant to this discussion is the conquest of labour. This policy, despite being in contradiction to the principles of class struggle generally espoused by the left, was nevertheless wholeheartedly adopted for the simple reason that it was in the national (Jewish) interest to do so.[42] Indeed, this was to be a recursive self-destructive loop, whereby the tenser the situation became the more difficult – predictably so – the possibilities for any meaningful cooperation between Jewish and Arab workers. The fact that there were two national claims to the same land, and that these national claims were manipulated by the elites to preclude any such cooperation (let alone organized joint class struggle) sealed the fate of a socialist revolution in Palestine. The working class in the country split in two, competing for control over the material conditions, which would enhance its position vis-à-vis the other.

Of all the parties in pre-1948 Palestine, the Palestinian Communist Party (PCP) was the most likely candidate for providing the bases for and leading the socialist struggle. Despite the fact that there was no lack of Jewish socialist (to varying degrees on the ideological scale) parties, these were nevertheless Zionist at the core (as mentioned before) and in membership. The PCP, on the other hand, was unique, for it was, throughout the period that witnessed an increase in nationalist rhetoric and strife and the diminishing of the importance accorded to a proletarian revolution in socialist intellectual and leadership circles, the only party whose membership extended to and was sought by Jews and Arabs alike. Yet the PCP faced an uphill struggle, not only in maintaining its detachment from the reactionary nationalist strife being shaped, but also in gaining the sympathy and support of Jewish immigrants, for the abandonment of Zionism by these would have meant the elimination of their reason for being in Palestine.[43] A discussion of the internal politics and external relations of the PCP is beyond the scope of this paper. However, it is important to note the two major incidents that fundamentally altered the position and efficacy of the PCP. While distrust was quickly making it into the ranks of the PCP, it was the Arab revolt of 1936-1939 that dealt the biggest blow to the PCP and by extension the future of socialism in Palestine. The party’s involvement in the revolt, however justified it might have been from an ideological viewpoint, nevertheless had practical repercussions, resulting in the further deterioration of relations between Arabs and Jews, the effective destruction of party unity, and the division (though not split) of the party into national blocs. Contrary to the role that the party’s position on the revolt had played in the estrangement of its Jewish leadership and membership, such a position in fact boosted the party’s standing in the Arab community. The development of the Palestine problem only spelled more trouble for the PCP, which despite preserving itself in the aftermath of the revolt, had nevertheless become irrelevant. The internal division along national lines merely reinforced the identification of each side with its respective national movement and aspirations.[44] The damages of the split in the revolt period would prove to be irreversible, both for the PCP and for socialist aspirations for a genuine, non-nationalist proletarian revolution. The inability of the PCP to bring about any real change stemmed from a number of factors: internal organizational failures, situational factors (i.e. domestic and imperial politics), and structural complexities and complications (i.e. the relations of production in both Jewish and Arab communities, especially the latter). Had the timing of the ripening of Arab class consciousness coincided with Jewish skepticism and aloofness at the idea of Zionism, there could have been a much larger probability of the success of a joint class movement. Yet of all the factors involved in eliminating the possibility of the success of such a scenario, nationalism has been the most destructive. Palestine has provided the grounds for the testing of the compatibility and synthesis of nationalism and socialism. The results have been nothing short of explosive. Nationalism has not only confined each group to its side, but its combination with and alleged attempts at the implementation of socialist ideals have been a remarkable failure.

[21] Arthur Hertzberg, ed. The Zionist idea: a historical analysis and reader (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997), 333-350.

[22] Ibid., 339.

[23] Ibid., 340.

[24] Ibid., 342.

[25] Ibid., 344.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Hertzberg, 355-360.

[28] While it would be wrong to generalize about Zionist's intentions based on the writings of a few (although the course of the development of the enterprise and the economic/class structure it set up for the Jewish state certainly demonstrates bourgeois intentions), nevertheless it is worth mentioning Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s view of socialism; for Jabotinsky, a socialist order would result in a halt in social reforms, a cessation of man's struggle for betterment and improvement. Moreover, he emphasizes the importance of the individual and individualism, which are the basis of human aspirations and the utilization of talents for the purposes of progress. Humanity, he believed, was not marching towards socialism but rather in the opposite direction. He points out that “if there is a class bearing the destiny of the future (an assumption that we the bourgeoisie, who deplore class ideology, do not believe in, for we believe in a nation above classes, and in mankind above classes); if there is such a class, it is we the bourgeoisie ... the standard-bearers of individualism.” See Mordechai Sarig, ed, The Political and Social Philosophy of Ze’ev Jabotinsky: Selected Writings. Trans. Shimshon Feder (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1999), 85. For more on Jabotinsky’s views of socialism, see Sarig, 78-79, 142-144. Also notable is the response of Ben-Gurion to Jabotinsky’s criticism, a formulation that places Zionism before class politics. See Mitchel Cohen, “Between Revolution and Normalcy: Social Class in Zionist Political Thinking.” Modern Judaism 12.3 (October 1992), 261.

[29] Cohen, 267.

[30] Ben-Gurion's view was that a synthesis of Zionism and socialism was possible, but only in Eretz Israel, where foreign influences would not pose any limitations. See Sternhell, 92-93.

[31] Sternhell, 225.

[32] For a discussion and analysis of the causes of the elimination of Po’alei Zion, see Sternhell, 92-106.

[33] Ibid., 89.

[34] Zachary Lockman, “The Left in Israel: Zionism vs. Socialism.” MERIP Reports 49 (July 1976), 3. Also see Ben Halpern and Jehuda Reinharz, “Nationalism and Jewish Socialism: The Early Years.” Modern Judaism, 8.3 (October 1988), 243.

[35] Ibid., 4.

[36] Hertzberg, 360-366.

[37] Ibid., 366.

[38] For an excellent study on the process of immigration, proletarianization, and subsequent deproletarianization of the Jewish working class in Palestine, which differs from the large-scale proletarianization predicted and recommended by Borochov, see Amir Ben-Porat, “Immigration, Proletarianization, and Deproletarianization: A Case Study of the Jewish Working Class in Palestine, 1882-1914”. Theory and Society 20.2 (April 1991), 233-258.

[39] In fact, Katznelson refused to even attempt to provide a definition of Zionism and socialism (see Sternhell, 154). Thus, his position was one of adoption of custom (but not properly defined) concepts (and passing them off as socialism, nationalism, etc.) and the arrival to “universal” conclusions based on these. Such fallacious and unsound thinking characterizes much of the socialist-Zionist intellectual sphere.

[40] For more details on Labour’s (and leftists thinkers’) reactions to Zionist colonization, see Stephen Halbrook, “The Class Origins of Zionist Ideology.” Journal of Palestine Studies 2.1 (Autumn 1972), 104-106. Also worth noting is the fact that, as Avni-Segre points out, for some time – until the birth of the kibbutz movement – the settlements financed by the Rothschilds relied on Arab labor. Dan Avni-Segre, “Israel: A Society in Transition.” World Politics 21.3 (April 1969), 349-350. For more on Labour Zionism in general, see Lilly Weissbrod, “From Labour Zionism to New Zionism: Ideological Change in Israel.” Theory and Society 10.6 (November 1981), 777-803.

[41] Lockman, 5.

[42] A key argument was that the Jewish people needed to achieve normalization. This could only be done by stimulating productivity, which in turn could be achieved by the transformation of the Jew into a peasant (namely, the idea of proletarianization). Both land (land acquisitions) and labour (growth of Jewish proletariat through preferential employment practices) were crucial in the successful implementation of this objective. See Joel Beinen, “The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948.” MERIP Reports 55 (March 1977), 4.

[43] Ibid., 7.

[44] Musa Budeiri, The Palestine communist party: Arab and Jew in the struggle for internationalism (London: Ithaca, 1979), 154.

Zionism's Socialist Dilemma - Part I

2007-03-24T13:57:00.000+02:00

I have been resisting calls to post/publish here the comprehensive comparative paper I wrote on HezbAllah and Hamas, for a number of reasons; chief among them being, I intend to incorporate it into a much longer work, and therefore, until such time as that work is in progress, I would like to keep the lid on the bottle.

Instead, I have decided to tease my readers - especially my Marxist, communist, socialist, etc. ones - with another piece I have written, which deals specifically with Zionism and socialism. Some of you might be familiar with this piece, since I have posted the whole thing before (on my old blog), but I thought this time I would post it in batches, and open up the floor for discussion/debates/critique, if there is sufficient interest in doing so. ;)

Zionism’s Socialist Dilemma:

Nationalism, Colonization, and Class Struggle

Introduction

The Zionist cause is, by nature, a colonialist one, aimed at uprooting the indigenous population with the express purpose of populating the land with Jews, who are declared the rightful owners of the land that they were exiled from 2000 years ago. However extravagant such a claim might be, one cannot ignore the fact that it was largely – though perhaps not completely – successful. Zionism owes its success to many factors, historical, ideological, and material. Given the tremendous impact of Zionism in thought and practice on the Middle East, it is important to understand the aspect of it, namely socialism, which played an important role in the shaping of Jewish society in Palestine and the course of its development in the period preceding the founding of the State of Israel.

Thus, in this context one must necessarily ask the question of whether a synthesis of socialism and nationalism was ever achieved, both in thought and in practice. Also relevant is the question of whether there was an intention to establish an alternative to bourgeois society or if socialist thought was merely a tool for mobilizing the Jewish masses in support of the Zionist cause. This paper aims at examining these questions, with emphasis on the writings of two self-identified socialist-Zionists Nahman Syrkin and Ber Borochov.

The paper begins by setting a brief and general theoretical framework for the discussion of nationalism, a concept dominant in the Zionist cause, ideology, and narrative from its inception and throughout its journey to success. The framework will focus largely on Marx’s and Marxist understanding of and views on nationalism. This would allow for a discussion and counter-critique of the various criticisms directed at Marxist analyses of the national/ist question – including what is widely referred to as the “Jewish Question” – in particular from scholars and thinkers who insist on the prioritization of ethnic and national identities over economic emancipation, class struggle, and identities revolving around the means and modes of production. Such criticisms and arguments are in fact in tune with the arguments of socialist-Zionists, which will be thoroughly examined and critically assessed in light of the Marxist framework in the second section of the paper. The rest of the article will discuss the manner in which the political/nationalist clash impacted the prospects for a genuine (cross-national) class movement and struggle in pre-1948 Palestine.

I - The Theoretical Framework
Critics of Marx and Marxist theory often argue that given that Marx’s analysis and predictions concerning ethnic relations are based on 19^th century European dynamics rather than phenomena that became especially prevalent in the 20^th century, much of the recent past cannot be explained by his writings. The 20^th century pattern of genocide and violent nationalism, they argue, has brought to the forefront concepts and issues largely unexplained by Marx and many of his contemporaries. As such, the exclusive attention accorded to economic development and social change is not enough and Marxism fails the test of the century in its failure to place nationalism on a separate platform. A look at Marx’s views on nationalism will thus be undertaken, with the purpose of establishing whether or not Marxism fails to provide an adequate explanation of the problem of nationalism in general and Jewish nationalism and the application thereof (Zionism) in Palestine in particular.

Marx and Nationalism
Shlomo Avineri argues that of all the phenomena discussed by Marx, nationalism has received the least satisfactory treatment.[1] Marx’s unsystematic treatment of the nationalist question and his two distinct – pre-1848 and post-1848 – analyses of it, have resulted in much confusion and disarray in the socialist movement, creating a gap where a discussion of the most acute social and political forces should have been.

The two analyses differ significantly, albeit overlapping in many of its central aspects. While the pre-1848 analysis will be touched upon, it is the post-1848 analysis that will be taken into consideration in any further discussions of the question, for it was after 1848 that nationalism appeared as a major force on the political and social stage, and it was then that Marx significantly altered his formulation of the national question within the context of class struggle.

In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx argues that the cosmopolitan character that production and consumption have acquired has rendered the national ground on which industries stood practically non-existent.[2] Furthermore,

“[n]ational differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding hitherto.”[3]

The proletarian supremacy and revolution would cause these national differences to vanish further. Indeed, it was this contention that constituted the crux of Marx’s argument in favour of internationalism, and which has been integrated into various socialist movements while discarded by others. The internationalist argument has a significant impact on the discussion of socialist Zionism. The post-1848 paradigm, despite presenting a different explanation, preserved the internationalist undertones. Given that it possesses a broader view of the dynamics of nationalism and class relations, and the fact that nationalism has become a problem that cannot be ignored in any discussion of world politics and international relations, this approach will now be examined and adopted in the future as the paradigm by which socialist Zionism’s approach to Jewish national self-determination is assessed.

The shift in Marx’s formulation of the question of nationalism appeared in terms of the “modern … expression of the bourgeois need for larger markets and territorial consolidation.”[4] The need for larger markets entailed the need for larger economic entities, which would only be possible through the unification of smaller economic units. Despite the auspices under which such unifications are called for, the core concern of the bourgeoisie is purely economic rather than nationalistic/ideological/romantic in nature. As such, nationalism is merely part of the process of capitalist development and industrialization.[5] What followed from this analysis was a strategic position that Marx adopted: support for unification where it would lead to the hastening of the development of capitalism and by extension its demise. More importantly, the less developed areas (which also lack bourgeoisie) would have to be integrated into more developed ones, with the purpose of developing an industrial society in the former.

Marx’s attitudes on the question of nationalism, as Avineri puts it, “left the socialist movement an ambiguous heritage, in so far as it relied on Marx as a guide to its policies towards the national question.”[6] The existence of two analyses of the national question have resulted in difficulties formulating a coherent theory of nationalism and a socialist policy towards this complex and rapidly intensifying phenomenon. Given that nationalism – contrary to what Marx predicted in the first analysis – has managed to steal the front seat of world politics and international relations, it is the second analysis that can provide an explanation and a guide for the formulation of socialist policy. In this context, the Middle East presents socialists with a complex environment to deal with. On one side is traditional Arab society, and on the other, modern Jewish colonialism. The fundamental clash between traditional modes of production and industrialized, bourgeois society is further complicated by a strong sense of nationalism that pervades all aspects of both societies. Indeed, a central theme in the arguments of many socialist Zionists who defend the colonization of Palestine and advocate the expansion of such colonial projects, is the contention that the colonization of Palestinian Arab society would set the stage for the development of modern forces in the region, setting in motion the wheels necessary for the demise of capitalism and the victory of socialism and proletarian revolution.[7] Yet such an argument is fallacious, for as Bryan Turner points out Marx did not specifically develop a theory of the economics of colonialism or of the nature of class struggle in colonial societies.[8] Furthermore, the Zionist enterprise, though being a colonial movement at the onset, rapidly transformed itself into a phenomenon that had as its primary objective the de-population of Palestine of its indigenous Arab population rather than the mere subjection of the local population to Jewish colonial rule. Thus, what socialist Zionists need to grapple with is Jewish nationalism vis-à-vis socialism rather than Jewish colonialism as a means of socialist revolution. A discussion of Marx’s views and suggestions on the “Jewish Question” is appropriate here, for it highlights the problems of Jewish existence in Europe, and thus allows for a better understanding of how Zionism has developed in comparison to these suggestions, and to what extent socialist Zionism has filled the gaps where necessary.

Marx and the Jewish Question
Any discussion of Zionism necessitates that due attention be paid to the conditions that have given rise to the Zionist idea and quest for national self-determination. The importance of the “Jewish Question” is emphasized in this paper through a discussion of Marx’s presentation of the problem and his recommendations for resolving it. This presentation was in fact in response to and a review of an attempt by another thinker, Bruno Bauer, who placed the Jewish question within a theological-subjective context.[9] Marx rejected Bauer’s theological and spiritual assessment and his analysis of the problem as part of the dynamics of the relationship between religion and the state, which was prevalent at the time. Instead, he argued for a materialistic analysis of the Jewish problem, which he placed in the context of the Jews’ “economic role … in the financial and trading sectors of the societies in which they lived.”[10] In fact, as Amor sums it up, “the preservation of Jews in history was a result of their historical mode of economic behaviour.”[11] Moreover, the behaviour and values of Jews symbolized and reflected the conditions of bourgeois society. In other words, Marx considered Judaism as a “metaphor for bourgeois society.”[12] He saw in this the assimilation of European bourgeois society into Jewry. Given this reality, Marx advocated the emancipation of Jew and non-Jew alike from the bourgeois way of life, which he then translated to the idea of the emancipation of society from Judaism. In this sense, he was critical of those who advocated merely religious and political emancipation for the Jews rather than total human emancipation. Since the position of Jews in society is determined by the economic/material basis of their existence, any emancipation short of addressing the economic role would fail to resolve the Jewish question. He concludes his review by pointing out that the elimination of the “essence of Judaism”[13] would render the Jew impossible, thereby eliminating the bases for estrangement and alienation. The element most relevant in this text is the distinction Marx places between political and social emancipation, which he discusses at length. Whereas the latter aims at realizing the full potential of human beings, the former merely establishes supposed but not factual equality, “equality” that is determined on the bases of bourgeois rights.[14] As such political emancipation is a limited progress within the framework of the ruling order. Marx’s discussion of bourgeois society as a reflection of Judaism can be further developed in the direction of the economic/class dynamics of the Yishuv and later on Israeli society (especially with regards to the treatment of the Sephardim[15]).

Contextualizing the Framework
The important point to clarify is how this discussion pertains not only to Marx’s understanding of the national question discussed above, but also to the manner in which socialist-Zionists handled the practical aspects of Jewish existence in their ideological and political writings on Jewish revival. The second is straightforward and requires little elaboration: in so far as the socialist Zionists believed in the ideal of Jewish nationhood and self-determination, their views differed significantly on the solution of the Jewish question; yet one can see in the writings of these thinkers, a fundamental agreement with the core argument put forth by Marx, that the peculiar position of Jews is determined by their economic and class position. This point will be elaborated on in the later sections of the paper, where an analysis of the writings of two significantly differing socialist Zionists will be undertaken.

The first, namely Marx’s understanding of nationalism requires a far more complicated analysis. It is necessary to first point out that the Jewish question is discussed in this context only in so far as nationalism was discussed by Marx in relation to bourgeois society. A post-1848 Marxist analysis could have the following implications for the Jewish question:

1) The bourgeois need for larger markets and Marx’s insistence on satisfying these conditions supports his quest for the emancipation of Jews, which he argued could only be achieved by emancipation from bourgeois society. However, in so far as the adoption of larger markets and unified states is a strategic belief, the implications for European Jewry, which did not constitute a large in-gathered mass but was rather dispersed throughout, are significant. In fact, Marx’s advocacy of such a strategy could have negative implications for Jewry, which would suffer from heightened antagonism due to an even fiercer competition brought about by rapid capitalist development.

2) Territorial consolidation and the fact that the Jewish bourgeoisie does not have a territory of its own would greatly enhance the position of the non-Jewish bourgeoisie. In turn, the material undermining of the Jewish middle bourgeoisie and its downward movement to the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie would awaken the need for the enlargement of markets to put an end to Jewish economic isolation. Indeed, as Marx argues, calls for national unification are merely a cover for economic interests.[16]

While these scenarios might not be logically continuous nor in fact a historical reality in the context of the course of development and success of Zionism, they are nevertheless valid theoretical/analytical extensions of Marx’s views on the question of nationalism and the Jewish problem.

II - Zionism's Socialist Dilemma
The conceptual framework brings us to the central issue that this paper aims to deal with: whether there was – at any point – a synthesis of socialism and nationalism in Zionist thought, and if so, how this synthesis has manifested itself in Palestine.[17] By a synthesis of socialism and nationalism is meant the combination of the particularistic aspects of nationalism with the universal values of socialism. However, this is not equivalent to asking the question of whether socialism has had any real impact on Zionism. The latter (including the question of socialism as a mobilizing myth) is a separate question, one that will briefly be touched upon in the final analysis. The emphasis here will be placed on the concept of the nation and its primacy, the relationship between nation and class, and the position of socialism vis-à-vis the nation (i.e. means vs. ends) in socialist-Zionist thinking. Aaron David Gordon, one of the earliest to have formulated a national outlook on which to base the Zionist enterprise, argued that the true enemy of nationalism and Jewish national aspirations was socialism. As such, “if one pairs socialism with nationalism, one is pairing one kind with another, and the pairing cannot be successful.”[18] Others, like Syrkin, Borochov, and ideologists of the labor movement answered the question of synthesis in the affirmative. Yet in so far as Jewish nationalism had developed in the absence of a territorial base, its driving force was necessarily attached to nationalism rather than socialism. The primacy of the nation was the defining characteristic of Zionism in all its forms, for in the subjugation of nationhood to any other entity lay its death. While this might appear to be a straightforward and simple answer to the synthesis question, it is nevertheless important to examine the manner in which Zionism has proposed to deal and has dealt with the challenges of the economic and class position of Jews. It is also worth noting that the answer is not quite simple, for it has been argued that a Jewish socialist revolution can take place only when the Jews are located on an ancestral soil and in control of rather than subjection to the means of production. Indeed, this is the major point that raises the question of the mobilizing myth[19]: has such an argument been promoted with the purpose of setting the stage for a genuine proletarian revolution, or has it merely served as a facade for the achievement of nationalist ends? Moreover, albeit outside the time-frame within which this paper operates, to what extent has socialism – though not a genuine proletarian revolution – become incorporated into the economic and social structure of the Jewish state?[20]

(to be continued)

[1] Shlomo Avineri, “Marxism and Nationalism.” Journal of Contemporary History 26.3/4 (1991), 638.

[2] Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”. In Steven M. Cahn, Classics of Moral and Political Philosophy (New York: Oxford UP, 2002), 850.

[3] Ibid., 858.

[4] Avineri, 640.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 643.

[7] Bryan Turner, “Karl Marx and Oriental Colonization.” Journal of Palestine Studies 6.3 (1977), 170.

[8] Ibid., 173.

[9] It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the details of Bruno Bauer’s assertions. For a brief overview of these, see Meir Amor, “State Persecution and Vulnerability: A Comparative Historical Analysis of Violent Ethnocentrism.” Diss. U of Toronto, 1999, 11-17.

[10] Walid Sharif, “Soviet Marxism and Zionism.” Journal of Palestine Studies 6.3 (1977), 79.

[11] Amor, 19. This assertion is summed up in the following quotation: “Judaism continues to exist not in spite of history, but owing to history.” In Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 1844.

[12] Sharif, 79.

[13] Marx, “On the Jewish Question.”

[14] Amor, 30.

[15] For an excellent article on the discrimination and oppressive economic/labour policies against Sephardim in Israel, see Ella Shohat, “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims.” Social Text 19/20 (Autumn 1988), 1-35. Also worth mentioning is the Black Panther movement, which took shape in response to the ethnic and economic discrimination that the Sephardic community encountered in Israel. See Shalom Cohen and Kokhavi Shemesh, “The Origin and Development of the Israeli Black Panther Movement.” MERIP Reports 49 (July 1976), 19-22.

[16] In fact, in the platform of Po’alei Zion party, Ber Borochov predicts exactly such a scenario. The document will be discussed at some length in the second section of this paper. A third implication, which is a continuation of the second, can also be drawn, and has been discussed by Borochov. It is, namely, the idea of the proletarianization of the Jewish bourgeoisie on the new territory. This, too, will be discussed in the second section of the paper.

[17] The second (practical) aspect will be discussed in the third and final section of the paper, which touches on pre-1948 labour relations and party politics (in particular the Palestine Communist Party).

[18] Zeev Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel. Trans. David Maisel (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997), 60. Sternhell’s book provides by far the most comprehensive discussion of the peculiar position of socialism vis-à-vis nationalism in Zionist ideology and practice.

[19] Bringing up the question of mobilizing myth does not necessarily imply that there has been no socialist element in the writings of these thinkers; rather, it aims at analyzing their intentions based on the comparative importance accorded to nationalism and socialism, and the manner in which the relationship between the two has been formulated.

[20] This question deserves a separate study; for an insightful albeit relatively outdated study see Amir Ben-Porat, “Class Structure in Israel: From Statehood to the 1980s.” The British Journal of Sociology 43.2 (June 1992), 225-237. Also relevant are the economic conditions of Sephardim; see Shohat (1998).

Photo Monday

2007-03-19T17:54:00.000+02:00

Sunset

March 10 ODEO

2007-03-10T13:11:00.000+02:00

I picked something special this time around. ;)

powered by ODEO

Charbel Rouhana. ;)

N.B: Mind you, the song is rather sexist...

What the U.S was thinking

2007-03-08T17:51:00.000+02:00

So what was the U.S thinking when it decided to invade Iraq and "liberate" the Iraqi people?
Well "it" wasn't thinking of whether or not it was the "right" thing to do (at least from a policy/political/end result perspective, ignoring for once the humanitarian aspect, which of course does not figure in the politics of the global hegemon). Contrary to what some argue, the U.S insistence on invading Iraq was not informed by scholars who had studied the Middle East. Rather, it was the exact opposite. The invasion was planned and only when it came to marketing it was there a resort to "scholars" (emphasis on quotation marks). But who exactly were those "scholars"?

For starters, Bernard Lewis, who is described as "one of the world's pre-eminent experts on the Middle East." He is the author of the famous (the word that should be used is notorious, really, but it shows the kind of "scholarship" that is valued in "the West") "The roots of Muslim rage", which I think all of you (especially so my Arab and Muslim readers) should read to get an idea of the "expertise" that is being spewed in academia, and especially so in the White [Man's] House.

Speaking of "expertise", the other day I was at T-Marbuta (a coffee shop) and I saw a girl holding a book she had bought only a few minutes before entering the shop. She was talking with her friends about how good it's supposed to be. So what book was it, you will ask? It was a book by another self-proclaimed (and hailed as an expert in some academic circles) Hezb Allah "expert", Judith Palmer Harik. On my old blog I dedicated an entire post (more than enough) to this book and its academic "merits". I recommend that if you were thinking about buying this book you would not base your decision on the write-ups on the amazon website, but rather on a very basic and short write-up as this.

But back to the point, the point about the "scholars" who allegedly informed Bush & co. on the merits of going to war against Iraq. Actually, before I continue with that, I must point out that when I was in Canada I took part in almost weekly protests against the war on Iraq. They were interesting, often violent (especially as the crowds lessened and the "protestor families", i.e. mom, dad, children, went home). They were also very diverse, and not just an "Arab protest" as some made it to be. There were activist groups from all over the spectrum, Jewish groups, and many Americans also. But the most interesting was the "Arab" component of the protest. I actually talked with many of them, and they were not only Iraqis but also Jordanians, etc. I wanted to know what it is that really pushed them to protest against the war, was it only the horror of war, or was it more than that? In other words, was there a politics behind it? I discovered that there indeed, in most cases, was. And this politics was not one of anti-Americanism (although in this case it manifested itself as such) or anti-imperialism. It was rather one that was based on sectarian affiliations. Ironically, it was the non-Iraqi components in the "Arab camp" of the protests that showed a sectarian reasoning. In fact the Iraqis I spoke to manifested a solid Iraqi nationalist perspective, and not a pro-Saddam one at that. They were very much outspoken against the crimes of Saddam, but at the same time condemned the sanctions that had resulted in millions of deaths, without weakening Saddam's grip over Iraq. Some had family in Iraq, others did not. But it was interesting to see the dynamics of the Arab politics in the 'diaspora', and how sectarian affiliation was associated with the war by the non-Iraqis, contrary to what one would have expected, especially in light of the sectarian violence plaguing Iraq today. I used to ask the Iraqi activists what they thought was the best approach to helping Iraq both from the woes brought about by Saddam and the American invasion, and they were rather unsure how to answer. They were rather torn, and did not express their positions positively, but rather negatively, in other words they did not say what they thought the best solution would be, but what would not be a solution. They were actually stuck between a rock and a hard place, and were outspoken against attempts to paint their protest of the American invasion as a pro-Saddam one, given that people (including non-Iraqi Arabs) viewed Iraq's predicament with either black or white goggles, which has become the norm all the more since 2003.

Back to our respectable "scholars" who cheered for the Iraq war (and are now in hiding or are busy preparing the cheerleading-party for yet another of America's "necessary" wars [of libration, don't forget]), the second scholar who apparently "informed" the U.S was Fouad Ajami, whom Sa'id would have referred to, had he been alive, as the "Orientalized Oriental". I was reading a most impressive piece by Zachary Lockman the other day, titled "Critique from the Right: The Neo-conservative Assault on Middle East Studies". Lockman points out that

Ajami's pronouncements, like those of Bernard Lewis, were solicited and cited by high officials of the Bush administration. For example, in an August 2002 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars laying out the case for war against Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, Vice President Dick Cheney declared that, "as for the reaction in the Arab street, the Middle East expert Professor Fuad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy in the same way throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans."

This is not only ironic, it is doubly and triply ironic! Notice the naming, "Veterans of Foreign Wars"; foreign wars of what? Of course, liberation, spreading "civilization", enlightening the "barbarians", and so on and so forth. This is pure Orientalism. The enlightened, civilized Americans, and why not also the Israelis, are out to spread civilization, and the latter have in fact made the desert bloom in a land without a people for a people without a land... This has "necessitated" the "removal" of the ungrateful "barbarians", who have opposed attempts to benefit them in an irrational, violent manner. Of course, these barbarians are void of feelings, loyalties, nationalism, etc. These are "complex" things that the undeveloped, irrational Arab (and why not Muslim) mind cannot comprehend. So the Arabs and Muslims should watch the "only democracy in the Middle East" (which in some speeches by U.S officials, faces stiff competition from the "fledgling" democracies in Egypt, yes, the same Egypt that has been ruled by Mubarak for, um, how many years, I lost track, and of course "the Siniora government" - previously it used to be "Lebanon") practice its democratic values of "detaining" (not kidnapping) diplomats and elected politicians (and even offer them the chance at appearing in kangaroo courts, very very civilized indeed, as opposed to "kidnapping" soldiers by Hezb Allah - that's the true face of the barbarian Arab, kidnapping soldiers, because diplomats in occupied territories and 15-year-old kids in another country's territory are detained, but soldiers are kidnapped, and the former does not seem to be a violation of sovereignty or an uncivilized act, but rather an "enlightening" act meant to spread the Israeli values, and thus no war is justified, no "smart" bombs can be quickly shipped to Lebanon or the Palestinians; quite the contrary, the aid package to besieged Israel must be increased. Yes yes.). All this while Israel devours dunam after dunam of Palestinian land, starves millions of people to death, all for the "crime" of electing Hamas in democratic elections. But wait, Israel is indeed practicing what the U.S was out to practice in Iraq: liberating the Iraqi people, first by starving them, then by bombing them, then, in case of failure, putting the blame on the ungrateful, irrational Arabs. Only difference, of course, Saddam was indeed a dictator, and a valid tool in the hands of the U.S at one time, whereas Hamas, which has been elected democratically (though I am by no means a fan of overuse/abuse of the term/concept!) has refused (thus far; I would not rule out the Fatahization of Hamas, it is very much possible, but I would say, in the long run rather than the short run) to become a puppet of the U.S at the expense of its people.

Of course, since the "Middle East expert", and the undeniable representative of the "Arab street", Basra and Baghdad included, Fouad Ajami "predicted" the aftermath of liberation, the U.S of invasion of Iraq can now be perfectly justified. That Fouad Ajami was not more than a representative of himself, is lost on the neo-conservatives. But then again, Ajami was/is not, as I said, more than a tool for the justification of already-laid plans, i.e. America's "foreign wars". In Ajami's case, he is of special use in swaying public opinion in the "media war". Is, not was, because the neo-conservatives are especially artful at concealing and even twisting their own words and "predictions", and as always, the public is more than receptive (especially given that the media is largely under the control of the neo-conservative establishment) to what it is told. The average individual, not to say American (since I do not think this is a specifically American phenomenon, although by all means it is especially acute in the U.S) does not dig, and does not care enough to dig into the immense scholarly material which debunks all the neo-conservative-imperialist, and of course Orientalist cliches about "the Arabs", "the Muslims", and the other lucky subjects of America's "foreign wars". But even then, this does not mean that the neo-conservatives (this is a loose terminology since I cannot possibly repeatedly list all the others that do not necessarily fall under the neo-conservative camp but which cooperate with it and share its objectives) are not fighting tooth and nail the academic establishment that has, especially of late (arguably in a post-Sa'idian milieu), been liberated from the one-sided, hegemonic discourse, especially on the Middle East. But again, this also does not mean that all that counters the neo-conservative agenda and discourse is void of the assumptions that Orientalists have adopted for so long. Indeed, most are full of these assumptions, to varying degrees of course. Take Lisa Anderson, of Columbia University, for example. A while back, I told a number of people that Anderson's view was typically "liberal". I was asked how it was so. What I meant to say, when I mentioned "liberal", was not a mere opposition to "liberalism" (although I am in fact opposed to liberalism), but rather a reference to the U.S "liberal" perspective and approach, which, albeit often challenging the hardcore realist perspective, does not seem to represent different ends, but only different means to the same end. In the end, "democratization" figures highly in the liberal approach, and indeed in Anderson's own writings. While I appreciate the theoretical and scholarly perspectives in democratization theory, I cannot help but view the "democratization" interest and agenda (because all scholars do have agendas, whether they are aware of it or not, whether they like to admit it or not) with a dose of skepticism, dislike, and harsh criticism. The very idea, after all, of "the Arabs" or "the Muslims" being in need of "democratization", is quite offensive. This does not, of course, mean that the Arab predicament is particularly democratic at the moment. However, the idea that people would be claiming to know better than the Arabs or Muslims themselves, what is best for them, is quite unappealing to me, and is, if not an actively Orientalist approach, nevertheless a remnant of such thinking.

On a side note, I wonder, was Dick Cheney a bit confused about the "Arabism" of Afghanistan, or was it a mere comparison of "cheerful welcome" for the liberators who had embarked on liberating the people from the same dictators that they armed and supported in previous "foreign wars", ones that they did not send soldiers to fight in, but rather used the "ungrateful" natives, or the barbaric Arabs and the "Jihadis" to do the dirty job of fighting the Soviets...)? I am not sure.

However, Cheney was indeed accurate with his comparison of Afghanistan and Iraq (albeit not in its content). The voices of cheering from Kabul, Basra, and Baghdad, must be quite deafening. You may now pay your sincerest respects for the expertise of Bernard Lewis (not so incidentally also a denier of the Armenian Holocaust) at 609-258 4280 (inquire about extension to Mr. Lewis's office), Fouad Ajami at 202-663 5677, and Daniel Pipes at 215-546 5406 or meqmef at aol dot com.

The Good, the Bad and ... the Saint

2007-03-05T21:59:00.000+02:00

Lebanese university students' favourite daydreaming themes

The Good
This morning:
X: Lebanon will always rise from the ruins and ashes, no matter what. I mean look at what Hariri did.
Me: ... What did he do? ...
X: What do you mean what did he do, he rebuilt Lebanon.
Y: Downtown, hehehe.......
Me: Uh, rebuilt Lebanon? I must've been living on Mars or something?
X: Come on, what would downtown have looked like without him?
Me: And I should care why exactly?
X: Because it attracts people to visit the country!
Me: Walla. Very nice theory. And that actually was worth smashing people's skulls for and vacuuming what little money that was left in their pockets? So you're saying downtown is good for the South Lebanese? Walla, you have a brilliant theory right there.
Z: You know what I think? I think Hariri was one of a kind.
Z1: There's always Sa'ad Hariri.
Z: Yes but no one can fill Rafiq Hariri's shoes.
Me: To be sure...

**
The Bad
This afternoon:
Me: You know, a taxi driver told me the other day that "a Saddam" should rule Lebanon, because that is the only thing that will fix the country.
X: You mean Michel Aoun?
Me: Uh, well, I guess that'd be more like Walid Jumblatt.
Y: Ha ha!! Walid Jumblatt would make a fabulous dictator! Just imagine!

**
The Saint...
This afternoon:
X: But you know, it's not right to say "once a murderer, always a murderer" with regards to Samir Geagea. It just ain't fair.
Me: Oh yes, that's not fair at all. Not fair at all.
X: Yes, because he might have changed.
Me: Yes yes, he might have.
X: Plus, in Lebanon you can't not put things into a historical context. The man was a product of his circumstances.
Me: Yes, that's an ingenious idea, because there is a "historical context" ONLY in Lebanon. But even "if" this "historical context" is not a concept unique to Lebanon, certainly Stalin "could have changed" too. Not to forget our good ol' buddy Hitler. And to be sure they were both products of "their circumstances."

**
I
This afternoon:
X: I want to convert you from leftism.
Me: Uff, now that's some humongous project...
X: Nah it's not too difficult I am sure.
Me: Just some advice, don't waste your time. ;)
Me: Oh, and one more thing, I am not a 'leftist'.
X, Y: What are you?
Me: I'm an anarchist.
Z: So you are a fan of Bakunin?
Me: Actually no, I am not a fan of anyone.
X, Y, Z: ...

Photo Saturday

2007-03-03T00:01:00.000+02:00

Out of Service Buses in an Out of Service Country
Not that countries serve anyone or anything other than the greed of the power hungry.

Whither Lebanese Media?

2007-03-01T21:35:00.000+02:00

No offense or anything, but Joseph Semaha is dead, fine, condolences, etc., but can we now get on with our lives? What is it with this obsession? The man died of natural causes for goodness's sake.

Where is the media? What is it doing? Al-Akhbar is still wallowing in self-pity over the passing away of Semaha, Annahar is busy praising the Lebanese people's achievements to the skies. I think Lebanon has the most per capita mass murderers elected to parliament than any other country. So there. Something to be proud of. The Daily Star is busy analyzing the Shi'a mindset or something. Al-Mustaqbal is... sorry I don't read al-Mustaqbal but perhaps one of my readers could elaborate on that (better if not).

I wonder, will the media cover the continuous automatic machine gun fire that I have been hearing for the past 2 hours? Oh and please, it is not a wedding celebration or some moron shooting birds with a hunting rifle, it is machine gun fire for goodness's sake. Machine gun fire.

Whither Lebanese media? Better yet, whither Lebanese "army"?

Um, we apologize for the interruption we now go back to ~~listening to classical music~~ mourning Joseph Semaha.

Did you know?

2007-02-25T19:28:00.000+02:00

I didn't know either. But now I do (and so do you). There is a website called "Arab Decision". I did not know there was anything Arab about Arab decisions. Apparently there is.

The City I Love

2007-02-25T16:00:00.000+02:00

Well well, I have been tagged to talk about the city I love.

I don't know if small towns qualify, I assume they don't, so I will not talk (extensively) about my favourite town Shusha in Occupied Azerbaijan, with its breathtaking beauty and simplicity, its pulverized roads and empty streets, the few Ladas that are a luxury for the few inhabitants that have been able to appropriate them from the ~~fleeing~~ expelled Azeris, the uphill climbs that you have to labour through while the kids laugh at you as they run from one street to the other and you wonder, what the hell, do they have imaginary wings? The ghost town called Shusha, with its amazing mixture of Azerbaijani-Turkic and Persian architecture in what remains of its houses and buildings, the Persian Mosque that was spared from destruction for fear of Iranian retaliation, this place so void of... hope, people, life... So... lifeless, so saddening, so... unnatural in the absence of its original inhabitants, yet so beautiful... a town whose hope hinges on the sound of a car, signaling the arrival of foreigners who would perhaps bring help, candies to the kids, clothes, anything. What more can I say, these are the victims (and tools) of nationalism. So poor, so uneducated, so manipulated, and sooo neglected. Instead of building houses, helping people survive, the first thing their 'leaders' did was renovate the church, another tool for manipulation. Foreigners go there on a sort of clownish 'pilgrimage' to a land they call 'theirs', a land they say was 'liberated' (another word for the ethnic cleansing of its Azeri inhabitants), to encourage the misery of these people. Some of them could not even live for half a day in the houses that the war they cheered for destroyed. I saw some of the American girls, they were extremely upset, one of them was crying. Not for the miserable conditions that the war had brought about for the current inhabitants or the previous expelled ones. But because they could not find a toilet to use and they had to relieve themselves au naturelle. These people should be condemned to ten years of hard labour in one of the Azeri refugee camps. That should teach them the meaning of 'liberation'.

Got carried away for a bit there, didn't I...
Back to the city I love... I suppose it'd have to be Las Vegas. OK, OK, I am joking. What were you thinking, geez, these people have the statue of Lenin in the heart of capitalism. They must've been truly pissed off to do something like that. Ideological bankruptcy calls for desperate measures and equally desperate symbolisms.

So it is Beirut...

بيروت العروبة - The Beirut of (the dead) Arabism whose inhabitants insist that Arabism is alive and kicking while chanting "Allah, Hariri, Tarik Jdide" or "Allah, Nasrallah, wl Dahiye kella" or "Aounak jeyi min Allah?" etc etc. Lest you think we are not diverse, we also are home to a sizeable population of clowns who insist Beirut is (not was) Phoenician, and that Lebanon is god's chosen country. Not only did these people prove that god exists, they also know that it is god's chosen country. Tell me, how, how? can one not love this city?
بيروت "أحبّ الحياة"ا - The Beirut of "I love life". Oh yes, you didn't know? We love life. Wallah.
بيروت الدراجات الناريةا - The Beirut of motorcycles. If you want to know what it feels like to want to kill someone, all you have to do is spend a few hours (if that) on the roads of Beirut, and then you will want to run over every single motorcycle-rider you see. Another great product of a great (god's chosen, don't forget) country.
بيروت "وقعت بالجورة اليوم"ا - The Beirut of "My car fell in the pothole today". Not only do we love life, we also like it rough... Life, or rides, I mean.
بيروت المطبّاتا - The Beirut of speedbumps. That's right, we only recently discovered speedbumps, so we are experimenting with them on every street.
بيروت أضواء وإشارات المرورا - The Beirut of traffic lights and signs. "It's red, what was red again? Green is stop, red is go, right? Yalla go! No one stops anyway!" or "ya Elie, turn off those traffic lights, and call them to send a 'traffic policeman' to take care of the traffic!"
ا"فلّوا من بيروتنا"ا- "Leave our Beirut". Didn't you know? Beirut belongs to some Lebanese and not others. To find out if you qualify for ownership or not, please contact Walid Eido at home (+961) 1 782782 or at his office (+961) 1 982100. But be careful, if you scare him, he will sell his blood to buy weapons. Don't come back (if you live to tell the tale) and tell me I didn't warn.
بيروت العنصريةا - The Beirut of racism. "I got me a Sri Lankan maid today", "I retrieved my escaped maid today", "dirty Syrians", "dirty Palestinians", and the latest trend but definitely not a new phenomenon, "dirty Shi'ite".
بيروت "راحت الكهرباء\إجت الكهرباء"ا - The Beirut of "the power went off, the power is back on". We even love life (and especially so) under candlelight.
Did I say Beirutis love life? Yeah, we are unique. Really.

Um, well I have some more... may I?

The falafel mixed with the (literally) breathtaking air of Beirut. You just can't not enjoy it.
The cars that have passed the 'mecanique' test I don't know how. I think it's part of the I love life campaign.
The 'jeeps' that are used for driving 'tests'.
The non-standard-size official cards, a driver's license card being twice as big as the ID card.
The $200 that I have to pay to get a Lebanese passport that Bush, Condie, et al would gladly use for toilet paper.
The 'students' who come to university dressed up as if they are going to a wedding party.
The 2-lane bridges that take more than 4 years to construct.
The people who jump in front of your car trying to cross the street.
The people who run across the highway, when the pedestrian bridge is only 2 meters away from them.
Oh, we need "I love life" billboards to remind us that we love life. Yes, Beirut is so good that sometimes we forget that we love life. I mean, who wouldn't get carried away?

Beirut. The city I love (to hate). No no, I can't possibly say that. What would become of me if Walid Eido reads this post? No no... it should be: Beirut... the city I love. Do I qualify to claim ownership of Beirut, O wise man, O king of kings, O master of Beirut, Walid Eido???

So what should I do now, tag other people with the same question? Sasa? How does it go?

Edit: I tag... um.. the guys (?) over at Remarkz (any taker? Bech? something fun for a change, eh? :P ), MFL, and Mr. Propagandist. :P

Photo Saturday

2007-02-24T00:19:00.000+02:00

Martian mukhabarat* landing in Beirut to plant bombs

* intelligence agency

Recollections

2007-02-22T00:05:00.000+02:00

Probably not many of you will be familiar with the location in the photo! This is (was) Cine Vendôme in Mar Mkhael. The long stairs that take ages to climb will lead you up to Ashrafieh. The street pictured above leads to Electricité du Liban. I still remember the specific odors that used to come out of different parts of that long street. I even used to cross the street in some places to avoid the smells. I went back last September and the smells were not the same anymore.

There is a gas station down the street where I used to live. There was a black man there. I don't know what he did there and what he was there for. I was very little, maybe 2 or 3, I still remember, sometimes my mom and I used to see him on the street while taking a stroll, and he would come over and playfully tell me, come, let me take you with me. I used to look at him horrified and he used to laugh out loud. I and my sister used to call him "the black man". He was unique. At least in that part of town. He was a loner I suppose, don't know what he did, where he was from, or what really happened to him. He used to live in the building behind the gas station, a tall building that was hit by a huge shell. He might or might not have been killed during the war. I wish I could find out who he was and what his story was. He was from Africa. Perhaps from Uganda whose poor are being swept off the streets to make way for the commonwealth yada yada. Or from some other ignored, starving country which does not seem to be blessed with Biblical references of first comings and predictions for second comings. The rich eat kaviar and the poor don't eat.

The movie theatre went out of service some 8-9 years ago. In the last few years of its existence, I and a few of my friends (all boys, by the way. The girls were busy fixing themselves up bla make-up bla skirt bla shoes bla bla bla) were its only source of income. First it was 5,000 L.L ($3.something) for a Friday afternoon movie; then the price went down to 3,000 L.L ($2). It was like reserving a private movie theatre. Just the 4 of us. We used to go there every Friday afternoon, after school. They had all the 'cool' movies so it was convenient. Those were the days indeed.

Then there was "the street girl". She was not homeless, but that was the nickname she had somehow 'deserved' according to locals. She was always roaming the streets, always hanging out with boys. People used to let go of their imaginations and come up with stories about her. It was fascinating, I tell you. Do your homework, do you want to end up like the street girl?

I hated going to the doctor to get my immunizations. One summer day, my parents told me, we are taking your sister to get the shots, why don't you come with us? I was playing with our neighbor's daughter, so I said I didn't want to go. Yes no yes no, you will continue playing when you get back, no, yes. Why do I have to come with you? No reason. Okay. Damnit, how did they manage to fool me.

There was no water in those days. We needed to fill up gallons, and we lived on the top floor of the building. The gallons were huge, and there was no elevator. A pulley was installed in the stairwell. The water-filling was a collective process. Who would've thought something as basic as water acquisition could turn into such a 'fun' activity? Two men on the destination floors, the rest downstairs. Ready? Pull!

Stepping on a banana peel and slipping does not happen only in cartoons. One day on my way home from school, passing by a grocery store, I stepped on a banana peel and whooooooooooosh, I slipped. I didn't know what hit me, or how I got up. I remember my face was burning with embarrassment. I looked around to see if anyone had seen me, then ran home. As they say, blame ~~Canada~~ Syria.

I was someone's 'lifesaver'. In grade 1. A boy had forgotten to bring his sports attire for the phys ed period that day and he needed a notice from his parents to be exempt from that day's phys ed class. Having an abusive jerk of a phys ed teacher, he was quite scared for his life. Someone came up with the idea that we should write a letter and pretend it was from his parents. Being famous for my excellent handwriting (yes, even in grade 1), I was chosen without having any say in whether I wanted to do it or not. After yes no yes no yes no, I thought what the hell, I will write it for the poor boy. I wrote the letter and quite happy with our achievement we folded it and gave it to the boy... Phys ed period. The teacher asks the boy, why aren't you dressed? He says, I have a letter from home. He gives the letter. A few seconds. All eyes are fixed on the teacher. He walks to the boy and asks him, did you write this letter? The boy starts crying, no no I did not, it was someone else. Who was it? He didn't say. He orders us to line up side by side. He says, if you don't tell me who it was you will run around this court 100 times. No one opens his/her mouth. Bad threat. He tries a second time, if you don't tell me who it was, I will find out and then I will send you all to the principal and you will be kicked out of school. Silence. He is walking in front of us one by one. In retrospect, I felt like I was in boot camp. What the hell. Then a boy broke down, he was standing next to me, he said, it was her, she wrote it! It was the worst feeling, a feeling of nakedness in front of the whole world. Exposed. Betrayed. He walked up to me, picked me up, carried me to some high platform and sat me on it. You thought you could fool me? I didn't reply. I was too shocked to say anything. I managed to steal a glance at the 'traitor' boy. He shot me a blank glance. The teacher was yelling at me bla bla bla I don't know what, and all of a sudden he slapped me twice. I felt like my jaw was no longer part of my body. My eyes watered, not because I was going to cry, but because of the force of the slap. I couldn't see in front of me. The 'poor boy' was spared any punishment. That was the whole point, wasn't it? All the teachers found out what had happened. One of the teachers who adored me came to me later in the day and wanted to talk but I refused to talk to anyone. I was too angry, embarrassed, and felt really stupid. He slapped me. And goddamnit, I didn't return the slap.

In the first year of kindergarten, I hated everyone and wouldn't talk to them. In the second year, I wouldn't shut up. In the third year, I wouldn't sit down. I would get up and start wandering around in class while the teacher was explaining something. Sit down. No, I want to watch the hamsters and fish. Much more interesting than learning addition and subtraction.

In the third year of kindergarten, at age 5, I learned the true difference between a 'boy' and a 'girl'. No, really. Don't laugh at me. I opened the main door of the restroom to enter the girls' room, and to my luck the door to the boys' room was open. I didn't even need to peek in, I just saw. I went home and told everyone that one of the boys had 'something'. At first I had thought it was just him. Then they told me, all the boys have it. I am surprised I did not say anything foolish in front of anyone before going home. Close call.

When we moved, our new neighbours had two sons our age. In the summers we used to play football (soccer), the three of us. They used to call me to go down and play with them. Then, one day, they were playing downstairs and didn't call me. I waited and waited, and they didn't call me. The next day I went down to play, and called them to come down and play with me, they said they couldn't. Why? Our mom said she doesn't want us to play with girls. FUCK OFF. That was the last time I talked to either of them. I used to go down and play alone, first playing football 'with the wall', then basketball. Whenever I was downstairs they used to secretly watch me from the balcony. If they had played with me they would have 'turned' gay. Their mom is a genius. Somebody hurry up and nominate her for the Nobel Prize.

In the days of the civil war, we used to go down to a 'shelter'. It was not really a shelter. One of the buildings just happened to have an underground storage place, and it was better than sitting like shooting ducks in a building that had sustained at least 10 direct hits. One day, the bombardments started. They were at first rather remote, so my mom hurriedly set the table for me and my sister to eat before running off to the 'shelter'. That day she had prepared mjaddra. With mjaddra she always used to make cucumber-tomato-onion-only salad. No lettuce etc. That day she had prepared 'regular' salad, not the usual salad that goes with mjaddra. I started whining, why haven't you made that other salad? I want that salad, not this one, I'm not gonna eat until you make the other one, etc. My mom got pissed off. She said, listen to me, either you eat right this minute or you go off to the shelter with an empty stomach for the whole day. Needless to say, I didn't eat. They say the donkey is notorious for its stubbornness. Not as notorious as I am. The cops I fought against know that. How can they forget it.

I used to wake up every morning to the music of Sawt Lbnan (Voice of Lebanon) radio station and the famous 'ding dong' sound, after which there would be a news broadcast. There even used to be 'predictions' or 'news' about whether 'they' intended to bombard any location that day. The war against civilians was systematic. Still is.

I remember, there was bread shortage for a very long time. At the time we had some ingredients at home, so we baked bread on saj. We used to moisten the bread with water, add some cheese, wrap it, and eat it.
At the gas station there used to be huge line-ups, and people fighting each other about who should fill up first. To avoid the long line-ups we used to take empty water bottles and sneak in between the cars and ask for a fill-up. A kid asking for a gas fill-up. Who could seriously refuse?

The Dawra gas tanks explosion. A day I will never forget. It was in March 1989, and we were at home as we were on vacation, and we were still asleep, me and my sister. All of a sudden my cousin ran in, woke us up, said, hurry look out the window. She opened the window and there, in the sky, there was a huge red 'thing'. All of a sudden there was a huge explosion. The whole place shook. The window glasses were shattered. Even the eggs in the fridge were cracked. Such bravery. I mean, geez, they are gas tanks, they can grow arms and legs and hold a AK-47 and fight. You didn't know that?

Short Episodes

2007-02-19T14:23:00.000+02:00

August 2005
A friend calls me up.
Friend: We are doing a get-together at Starbucks, wanna join us? Everyone wants to meet you, it's been such a long time.
Me: Starbucks?
Friend: Yeah, Starbucks in Zalqa.
Me: No, thanks.
Friend: Why not? You have something to do?
Me: Umm not really.
Friend: So?
Me: I do not set foot in Starbucks.
Friend: ???
Me: Long story. But to keep it short, it is the embodiment of evil. Not only does it support the crimes against the Palestinian people it also ...
Friend: ...
Me: Are you there?
Friend: So you are not coming?
Me: Not unless you change the location. And before you say it, no, I don't go to McDonald's either.
Friend: .... ok... sorry to hear it. It was just for a short while, you don't have to get anything.
Me: Akhhhh.... I told you, I don't set foot in Starbucks.
Friend: Ok. Talk to you later.
Click.
Me: Later. Umm, too late. :)

**
December 2006
A conversation with a taxi driver (who had a rather non-Beiruti accent).
Me: Marhaba, kifak? (Hello, how are you?)
Driver: 'eltili nezle `a Riyad el-Solh? (You said you are going down to Riad el-Solh square?)
Me: Eh, ya`ni a'rab shi `al seha iza btrid (Yes, the closest to the square, if you will)
Driver: Lesh nezle tkhayyme honik? (Why, you're going down to camp there?)
Me: la'... (no...).
Driver: Leki benti baddi 'ellik shaghle. Kell za`im w qa'ed bhal balad `ambyerkod wara maslahto wl sha`ab m`attar. Hal balad bi`omro ma rah ytghayyar. (Look my girl, I want to tell you something. Every za'im and leader in this country is running after their own interest and the people are poor. This country will not change in its life).
Me: ...
Driver: Shufi shufi heyda kif `ambisoo'... mtl el haywenet kl wahed ekhid siyyarto w nezel `al ter'at, mdri shu `ambya`mol. Ta'ellik mshkletna. `anna ktir hurriye. Bas heyda ma hurriye hatta, heyda fawda. (Look look how this one is driving... like animals every one has taken his car and has gone down to the roads, I don't know what he is doing. I will tell you what our problem is. We have too much freedom. But this is not even freedom, this is chaos).
Driver: Ani mosh ma` hada. W 'alil fi hek nes hal iyyem. (I am not with anyone, and rarely are there such people these days).
Driver: El hall el wahid enno yejina wahad mtl Saddam. Nehna sha`ab mabyefham illa iza hada fahhamna shi. (The only solution is that someone like Saddam would come. We are a people that does not understand unless someone made us understand something).
Me: ...

**
Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007
A conversation:
Person X: We should go out for coffee with the other folks some time.
Me: Yes we should. How about tomorrow?
X: !! What??! You are such a troublemaker.
Me: What? Why?
X: What's wrong with you, tomorrow is Feb. 14*!
Me: Ohhh, uh ... ok....

(* the anniversary of Hariri's assassination)

**
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2007
Walking down a street in "Haririland", I notice a very old man sitting on the sidewalk, in traditional Arabic dress and a white headdress. He seemed in need of help and everyone else was just passing by without paying any attention, as if he did not even exist.
He saw me looking at him curiously and said, "se`dini ya binti se`dini" (help me my girl, help me), and gestured with his walking stick. I thought he needed help to get up and walked up to him and extended my hand. At that instant, a man walked past me, muttering a deliberately audible "tsk tsk". I looked up at him; he was wearing a suit and a tie, carrying some documents. He shook his head and said to himself in a deliberately loud voice, "shu hal sha`ab wlo" (what a people... - in a condescending manner). Well, that pissed me off, not because I thought he was referring to me (he wasn't), but because he was referring in a condescending manner to that old man. I called him, "ya estez, `aib `leik, lezem testehe min halak" (o mister, shame on you, you should be ashamed of yourself). He stopped, turned around, gave me a blank look, shook his head, then turned around and continued walking, while muttering something inaudible.
The old man turned out not to be in need of physical help. He was simply a poor man ~~disrupting people's lives~~ trying to survive.

Some administrative notes

2007-02-16T15:56:00.000+02:00

Please be patient, I am working on writing some code for showing the recent comments on the sidebar. I have also arranged all my links though I have not checked if all of them are still functional. If there is a broken link or whatever, leave a comment or drop me a line... As per popular demand I've also added categories, but that will have to undergo some changes to optimize the code (you can tell I suck at coding).

Also note that from time to time I will be experimenting with blogging in Arabic. My sincere apologies to my non-Arabic readers or those who list me on aggregators with a non-Arabic-speaking audience. I promise I will provide an English translation where possible; or, you can try using the google translate thingy (I have to warn you, it sucks). Alas, if I write in "spoken" Arabic the tool will definitely not work.

Update: Alright, the recent comments thingy is up and running. Let me know if you encounter any problems. I gotta change a few things in it still, but meh, for now it should be fine.

لك يا خيّي\أختي أنا ما بدّي الحقيقة

2007-02-15T21:40:00.000+02:00

كنت عمبقرأ من قبل شوي رسالة السيد حسن نصر الله بمناسبة ذكرى اغتيال الحريري...

ولك شو هالرسالة والله كتير حبّيتها... يعني شو بدّي قول غير هيك... إذا الكل بدّن الحقيقة (ولك هلكتونا خلصونا بقا) طيّب أنا شوووو؟؟؟

يعني إذا الجميع ناقص أنا = الجميع، أنا بصير الـ"ما حدا". طيّب، عال...

وشو غير هيك؟ إذا قلتوا إنّو "ما في حدا ما بدّو الحقيقة" يعني عمبتحكوا عنّي. تمام.

وشو كمان؟

آه اي، بما انّو انا الـ"ما حدا" هيدا كمان بيعني إنّو أنا منّي وطنية وبدّي إنّو يضيع دم الشهيد الكبير... اي، لأنّو الذين استشهدوا برصاص قوى "الأمن" أكيد منّن "كبار". كبار بشو؟؟؟ أكيد مش بالملايين (من الدولارات). اوكي...

وأكتر شي حبّيت بالرسالة؟ لازم "نعاهده على إنجاز الهدف الذي كان يتطلع اليه". ممكن حدا يفسّرلي شو كان "هدف" الحريري؟ يعني كان عندو هدف كمان؟ والله ما بعرف عن جدّ. إنّو، اذا بدنا نحكي عن أهداف لازم نشوف الأفعال. بس شو بدنا بهالشغلة، شهيدنا "كبير" كرمال هيك ما في الزوم نعمل بحث طويل عريض حول الموضوع. يعني الحقيقة أهم. حقيقة شو؟ آه، أكيد مش حقيقة "شو صار بالملايين" او او او... خلص الحقيقة وبس... وأكيد ما تنسوا نحنا منحب الحياة.واوعا تنسوا الألوان هااا ... وبدنا نعيش. اي أكيد بكرامة... على الطرقات...

طيّب اسألوا الذي تشرّدوا من وراء "أهداف" الحريري. بقولوا.... "نحن فِدا الحريري" و"بالروح بالدم نفديك يا حريري" بس أحسن شي؟ "يا سعد يا عينينا سلّحنا والباقي علينا"... شو هالـ"بلد" ولو... يعني عن جدّ شبيه بالـ"ديزنيلاند..."

ويااااااااااااا ايها اليساريون والشيوعيون بعدكن عمبتحكوني عن "ثورة"؟؟؟؟ ولك انتو خرجكن تشتغلوا "عدّاد" للمظاهرات، تكتبوا تقارير - كم واحد نزل عهالمظاهرة أو هيداك...

لك يا عمّي فيقوااااااااااااااااا وخلصونا من هالقصة، كلياتكن زبالة عن جد زبالة. وعسيرة الزبالة، الذي بيشتغل بالـ"سوكلين" أشرف منكن انتوا و"حقيقتكن". هيدا إذا كنتوا مفكرين انّوا انتوا "غير" ناس عن الذين بيشتغلوا بالـ"سوكلين".. اي اي، اسمعوا منّي، ما تشغّلوا بالكن كتير. ما بتحرز. روحوا عند شيخكن سعد وبيككن وليد وحكيمكن عمّو سمير وجنرالكن عون وسيدكن نصر الله هنّي بفكّروا محلكن وانتو شووووووووو بتعملوا؟ تتبعوهن متل الغنم. اي، انتو أشرف غنم.

مودّتي،

الـ"ما حدا"

Downtown Beirut: A Sense of Disney

2007-02-15T18:56:00.000+02:00

I urge you to check out the excellent article by Miriam Cooke, titled "Beirut Reborn: The Political Aesthetics of Auto-Destruction," The Yale Journal of Criticism, volume 15, number 2 (2002), 393-424.

She does a brilliant job at discussing the translocation of the war and its memory into downtown Beirut, which has become the center of Hariri's economic terrorism.

She provides a very interesting, innovative (although by no means comprehensive and often innocently (?) ignorant of the real politics and economics of the "reconstruction") analysis and critique of the translocation and transformation of the narrative of the war (or the wish to erase the memory thereof) -- through urban architecture. I will quote some bits and pieces which I have arranged thematically, but I recommend that you read the whole thing to make more sense of what she is trying to convey.

The Narrative

Stories were written to make sense of the chaos, to stand witness and thereby create conditions for the construction of a moral memory. Narrativity, Hayden White writes, is “the impulse to moralize reality, that is, to identify it with the social system that is the source of any morality that we can imagine.” That is why war stories are told and also why their authority has been so policed. Some, like male combatants, will be authorized, others, like female civilians, will not.

"Mobilized Amnesia"

After 1990, the fiction of morality was even harder to sustain. A tension arose between the need to forget this war, this bad patch in Lebanese history, and the need to remember in order not to repeat. Between forgetting and remembering comes a moment of crisis in representation. Such moments, Donna Haraway writes, can be both numbing and empowering because when “historical narratives are in crisis . . . something powerful—and dangerous—is happening. Figuration is about resetting the stage for possible pasts and futures.” The aftermath of the Lebanese war, stretching from 1990 until today, has produced just such a powerful and dangerous discursive moment that will dictate how the stage can be reset for possible pasts and futures.

Political-Economic Power: A Defensive Shield

The survival of this financial artery through the Burj “front,” both in fact and in memory ... complicates the telling of a moral story. It suggests that even in a place that was represented as the epicenter of lethal chaos there was control, and further, that those who made sure their buildings were spared might have other forms of power. These are the details that some want to forget.

Engineering Forgetfulness

First of all the extent of the war must be reduced and contained, even as the official war memorial is placed elsewhere. If the Downtown were to be remembered as the place of the war—its front—it would compel attention to that particular place, and it alone, as the site of immorality. With time and in the absence of a counter-narrative, this translocation of the war may succeed despite the fact that it was generally known that the Downtown was merely a stage on which confessional enmities were spectacularized while the real fighting happened elsewhere.

Silencing Collective Memories

If all the anarchy can be identified with this one location, it can be made to bear all the history.

The key then is to shape that history, transform it so that it will be useful and not continue to harbor unpredictable collective memories.

OGER & Solidere

The first level of destruction after the outbreak of violence was demolition work. Saree Makdisi writes that it is now known that between 1983 and 1992 there were cycles of demolitions in the Downtown, many of them unnecessary. The first demolitions were conducted in 1983 by Rafik Hariri’s engineering company, OGER. The pretext was to clean up the mess to enable reconstruction. The process “involved the destruction of some of the district’s most significant surviving buildings and structures . . . in total disregard for the then-existing (1977) plan for reconstruction, which had specifically called for the rehabilitation of those areas of the city center.” In 1984 fighting flared up again and destruction continued by other means.Two years later, a temporary calm allowed OGER to resume the demolition work they had started in 1983. In 1992, the year Hariri was first elected Prime Minister, the government called for further demolitions.

"A Sense of Disney"

The visitor to the new Downtown is struck first of all by a sense of Disney, or Epcot. SOLIDERE has created generic Arab Mediterranean facades. [The Master Plan] describes the Saifi and Jmaizi districts, the brand new pastel housing blocks, as “restored Levantine vernacular . . . carefully integrated.” [It] calls Saifi an “urban village” and although construction is clearly new, the Plan vaunts the “large number of existing buildings that have been retained.” The buildings in this formerly working class area resemble their antecedents. But not quite. And it is this “not quite” that is so important because it serves to cloud the memory. The slick lines and surfaces of housing blocks targeting the wealthy middle classes cannot harbor the unpredictable collective memories that lurked in the thick green of the weedchoked Downtown ruins.

Profit Without Guilt

SOLIDERE promised a return, a reversion to a pre-war past ... The promised return capitalizes on nostalgia for communal harmony and desire for profit without guilt or memory, in the hope that the repressed will not return.

"A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land"

SOLIDERE, too, is using the instrumentalities of the civil war to displace it from the country and scattered locations of its capital to the site of the Downtown and then elsewhere. It is erasing its traces by drowning them. SOLIDERE has bulldozed the debris into the sea, and is using the ruins to build a new foundation that no one can claim because the sea does not belong to anyone. According to Edward Said, the new colonizer claims, names, and inhabits the land said to be empty. The occupied land can then appear to be productive of culture. The new Downtown has been made to absorb the history of the war and in the process it has emptied it of meaning.

Resisting the Memory of the Forgotten

SOLIDERE’s inflated claims for a glorious history for the Downtown glosses over the war that is finished, and prepares a vision for a brilliant global future that will owe its regeneration to SOLIDERE ... It revives the regional past (Phoenician and Greek) to erase the local past (the war) and to launch this new Beirut into a global future. The war is over. A monument to a conventional (hence, moral) war has been built and installed somewhere in the mountains. The traces will soon be gone. It will no longer matter who was responsible for the war nor why it was fought.

Balloons

2007-02-14T17:17:00.000+02:00

I wonder, how long will it take for these "promotional" (oh yes, they are promotional) balloons to arrive in Israel? Perhaps Fedexing would be faster than making a conspiratorial deal with the winds? Or maybe IDF has not yet learned from its mistakes and readied itself for Round 2, so we will have to give them some time and stick with the winds?

I think no "sovereign state" (Lebanon doesn't count) would accept that its citizens would freak out in such a manner from enemy balloons, and so it is to count as provocation.

Yalla, folks, place your bets. It's almost time for Round 2.

Link to me

2007-02-14T12:49:00.000+02:00

You can now link to me with any of the following graphics:

Some information about the pictures (from left to right):
1. Nazareth sheep market
2. Jaffa, 1933
3. Jbeil (Byblos), 2003
4. Antelias, 2003
5. Jbeil, 2003
6. Mar Mkhael, Beirut, 2003

Let me know if you need any assistance with the linking.

Feb 13 ODEO

2007-02-13T15:07:00.000+02:00

Now that I can finally embed objects in my blog, I have decided to share from time to time some bits and pieces of the music I listen to.

For today, I have picked a 'oud composition performed by the Cairo Orchestra. It is titled ملك العود(فريد الأطرش)ا/King of the 'Oud(Farid al-Atrash), and is available on the Tribute to the Arabian Masters/الموسيقى العربية من التراث (note: not a translation) album.

powered by ODEO

Disgusting

2007-02-13T11:40:00.000+02:00

I cannot believe it. There was a twin bus bombing today in Ain el-Alaq near Bikfaya (quite close to where I live at the moment) and so far 3 have been confirmed dead, and 19 injured.

What I cannot believe is not that there was a bombing -- we all knew it was coming, our very own Nostradamus, Samir Geagea, "predicted" it. What I cannot believe is how some people find it in themselves to translate such a horrible act into political currency.

A while ago, Marwan Hmadé (Jumblatt's left hand -- or is it right hand?) was on Al-Arabiya, and he said that a few things are very clear from today's act. The first, is the timing: a day before the 2nd anniversary of Hariri's assassination. The second, is the location: the bombing took place in Murr's village (Elias el-Murr is the minister of defence) following the confiscation of the truck loaded with weapons (rockets?) and Murr's refusal to return the confiscated material to HezbAllah. He also pointed out that those who are behind this were behind all the previous assassinations.

In other words, my dear readers, Marwan Hmadé accused HezbAllah of being not only behind this bombing, but also behind the assassination of Hariri and all the others after him.

Now, it seems people are showing their true colours even more clearly. So, HezbAllah is behind these bombings; if it were, how come Marwan Hmadé did not object to coming to power with HezbAllah's votes? Or is this some new revelation that he innocently was unaware of at the time (perhaps they should contact poor old Brammertz who is still digging up golden teeth from the assassination site??)? Furthermore, if he believes his own argument, then isn't he saying that he would understand IF HezbAllah objected to the international tribunal? -- yes, IF, because H.A idiotically (yes, idiotically) does not object to the international tribunal.

It seems clear that the objective of the tribunal has shifted from hammering Syria (since Syria has managed quite well with the investigation actually) to hammering HezbAllah. And yet, the idiots in HezbAllah continue to kiss these people's asses. It is amazing, is it not? That a party that claims to be "resistance" and used to claim to be "revolutionary" is now kissing these people's asses, afraid to even accuse Hariri of stealing money; or the ISF of killing those 2 kids in Raml el-'Ali. Sheikh Subhi Tufayli did have a point when he objected to the party running in elections in 1992 -- although mind you, Tufayli himself is a wacko and a hypocrite. Well, in 1992 HezbAllah was a tad bit better than it is now, politically speaking. At least it objected to Hariri's economic terrorism.

So then Michel el-Murr (probably the most corrupt man in Lebanon) made a statement, saying that the bombing was not directed against either the opposition or the "March 14", that the sole targets were the Lebanese people. Oh, I see we are back to reviving (was it even dead? It seems to be a never-ending, ongoing obsession) the age-old myth that it is always the "foreigners" who are behind Lebanon's problems (note that this does not mean that external elements could not be responsible for this or the previous bombings; the criticism is directed at those who insist that the Lebanese would never kill each other -- during the 15-year-long civil war it was the Martians killing the Lebanese and making it look like they were killing each other). Fascinating, is it not? (Although mind you, it is even more fascinating to see Bush accuse Iran of being behind its woes in Iraq -- I would not be surprised if Bush accuses Iran of arranging the shooting in Utah).

Speaking of the investigation and tribunal, why not investigate the systematic murder of 150,000 people (that includes Palestinians, in case some people forgot the Palestinians were people) in 15 years? Maybe that will settle once and for all the Martians vs. Lebanese issue. Oh I see, the ones calling for the international tribunal for the Hariri assassination were the same ones who carried out those massacres and killings. Oh wait, sorry, I take that back. It was the Martians.

Oh, yes, tomorrow is February 14. Can't wait to see the embodiment of civilization go down to the streets. Syrian agents, infiltrators, beware, for Geagea will take matters into his own hands.

About

2007-02-12T17:26:00.001+02:00

First off, welcome to my new blog.

The move from my old blog has not been finalized yet, but will be very, very soon. I shall call it "Operation True Promise."

This blog is full of sarcasm, anger, and criticism.

This blogger is a pessimist - and a very angry one at that.

This very, very angry blogger does not believe in borders or submission to authority - any authority.

And be warned, this blogger always has to have the last word.

Now, a few more things about me that you should know -- the rest is none of your business really:

Who am I? I am an anarchist. Full stop.

Where do I live? I live in a "state" called Lebanon, where people sit for driver's license tests in French mandate-era jeeps -- I kid you not.

What do I do? I am a graduate student; I also read, read, and read. And of course, write.

What are my interests? Anarchism; Mikhail Bakunin, Marxism, activism, international relations, politics (well, duh), Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Middle East, photojournalism, photography, Islam, Judaism.

What are my favourite books? Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon by Robert Fisk; Classics of Moral and Political Philosophy by Cahn; Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Goodin and Pettit; Utopia by Sir Thomas More; We by Evgeny Zamyatin; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick; The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians by Noam Chomsky; Hamas: Political Thought and Practice by Khaled Hroub.

Which TV stations do I watch? Al-Manar (sue me); NewTV; BBC (note: not during the summer war; I was so heart-broken when I saw the shattered glasses and windows in northern Israel that I could no longer watch the terrorism that is inflicted upon that peaceful nation that boasts of the most moral army in the world). I absolutely do not watch Future TV. Don't give me the "you should watch everything to get an idea what they are talking about" crap. I have removed the channel from my TV programming.

Which newspapers do I read? Ha'aretz (Israel); Al-Akhbar (Lebanon); Assafir (Lebanon) on a daily basis; and a few others from time to time. Oh, and Annahar sucks. And I'm not even going to talk about the Daily Star.

What is this blog about? Well, primarily ranting about the (idiotic) state of affairs in this region (i.e. "Middle East" -- what a Eurocentric term...), as well as analyzing it -- not that the idiocy warrants analysis...

What is the significance of the title? After having been stuck with an uninspiring title "Blogging the Middle East" for a year, I thought I would try something more inspiring ... and sarcastic. Well, basically the title is supposed to go along with the header image. Together, I think they make a very obvious point. What do you think?? Am I good or what??!

May you contribute? No, absolutely not. This is a personal blog and an individual initiative. I wouldn't want to dilute the anger, would I.

Wanna drop me a line? My email address is anarchorev aaaaaat riseup dooooooot net