Never-Ending Story: The American Press Fails on Iran

ahmadinejad_iran-nuclear-The big, bad Iran nuclear threat is one of the American news media’s favorite evergreen stories. Year after year, it picks up where it left off: Enrichment, sanctions, red lines, the usual.

In November, the media circus on Iran exploded. From Foreign Affairs’ catastrophe “Time to attack Iran,” to The New York Times Magazine’s seemingly-million-word “Will Israel attack Iran?” (Conclusion: Yes, this year), to The Atlantic’s new “Iran War Clock” (It’s 10 minutes to midnight, by the way), the blockbuster stories that paint broad strokes of fear, panic, and war keep rolling out. Continue reading Never-Ending Story: The American Press Fails on Iran

Liberation Square

liberation_03292012Ashraf Khalil’s Liberation Square offers a gritty and engrossing account of the events that took place in Egypt in 2011, using the voices of both Egypt’s most prominent political observers and the activists who risked everything in pursuit of an ever-elusive dream. Khalil, who has covered regional politics from Cairo, Jerusalem, and Iraq for a variety of publications over the past 15 years, adds his perspective to the narrative, allocating praise and blame in careful doses. An Egyptian-American raised in the States, Khalil’s personal stake in the outcome of this upheaval makes him a unique interlocutor. As such, Liberation Square is not simply a catalogue of Egypt’s revolution; rather, Khalil, who is not afraid of colorful metaphor or bawdy language, calls for systemic change. Delving into the psychology of the uprising, Liberation Square illuminates both how corrupt Mubarak’s regime had become, and how improbable the success of the uprising to oust it was. Continue reading Liberation Square

Global Unrest Ushers in New Crises of Representation: Assessing the Present and Future of Area Studies

tunis_03292012_2The global wave of protests presently underway has ushered in a new crisis in the interdisciplinary field of area studies. The Arab Spring in particular has sounded an alarming wake-up call, leading many to challenge the relevance of modalities and methods currently employed within area studies. There is an existentialist quality underpinning this crisis, as scholars question how their personal subjectivities and academic training may be employed in a more constructive, responsible manner.

Although it is a relatively new field, this is not area studies’ first moment of crisis. As the United States rose to superpower status in the aftermath of World War II, area studies began to emerge as a field through which the government could cultivate regional “experts” to perform military and intelligence missions in areas deemed critical to Washington’s interests. Throughout the Cold War, dubious ties of many leading area studies scholars and departments with governmental and military agencies (ranging from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Department of Defense) were exposed. Many resulting issues of transparency and ethics, in terms of the often-ambiguous relationship between politics and academics, remain unresolved today. Continue reading Global Unrest Ushers in New Crises of Representation: Assessing the Present and Future of Area Studies

“The End of an Era”: A Genealogical Analysis of “Sectarianism” in Egypt and the Memory of Pope Shenouda III

  pope3_03262012Pope Shenouda III’s passing comes at a moment of political uncertainty for a new Egypt and its Coptic communities. In Western media, fears of “sectarian violence” and potential “religious discrimination” have been expressed in numerous articles focusing on his passing as the next stage of a timeless religious conflict that will erupt between the Muslim and Coptic communities in Egypt. But, is “sectarianism” in Egypt indeed timeless and inevitable?

“Sectarianism” in Egypt and the narrative associated with it has been normalized, naturalized, and constantly reified as something inevitable. This “sectarian” discourse and knowledge is perpetuated through the plethora of mainstream Western media stories addressing the passing of Pope Shenouda III and the “troubled” future of Coptic peoples. Continue reading “The End of an Era”: A Genealogical Analysis of “Sectarianism” in Egypt and the Memory of Pope Shenouda III

Walid Jumblatt: Can He Have His Baklawa and Eat it Too?

jumblatt_03232012In March 2010, he left a national dialogue session with other Lebanese politicians, because he was “sleepy and hungry.

In December 2010, responding to alleged statements attributed to him by Wikileaks, he proposed the use of “carrier pigeons or horseback mail, which is more secure.

I have wanted to write something focusing on Walid Jumblatt for quite sometime. He is by far my favorite Lebanese politician–mainly for his odd charm and refreshingly frank statements (see above). However, he also possesses a unique ability to maneuver through Lebanese politics enabling the Druze community that he represents–and his Progressive Socialist party–to punch above its demographic weight.

BBC describes him as “the country’s political weathervane—consistently emerging on the winning side through the twists and turns of the 1975-90 civil war and its troubled aftermath.”

Continue reading Walid Jumblatt: Can He Have His Baklawa and Eat it Too?

Good War/Bad Terror: Morality, Violence, and the (De)Valuation of Palestinian Life

gaza_03212012Last Friday, the Israeli Air Force killed two members of the Palestinian Resistance Committee in Gaza, who were believed to be planning an attack on Israel from the Egyptian Sinai some time in the following days. This sparked an onslaught of rocket attacks from Gaza into Southern Israel, and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, with civilian and militant casualties on both sides. In the wake of the attacks, Israeli journalist Larry Derfner, in an article in +972 Magazine, chose to address a common justification for military violence by the state of Israel, that “Palestinians have no right to lift a finger against our control of their lives and land,” and called for a rejection of the idea that “we [Israel] will always be totally innocent, while they will always be totally guilty.” Continue reading Good War/Bad Terror: Morality, Violence, and the (De)Valuation of Palestinian Life

Palestine and the Fight for Water Access

“Israel is a small piece of land. We are not even 1 percent of the Arab space, you know. We don’t have water. We don’t have oil. Our greatness, if one may say greatness, stems from the fact we had nothing to start with. So we turned to human talent because there weren’t natural resources. The Arabs can do it too.” – Shimon Peres, Foreign Policy (March/April 2012 issue)

wateracess_03192012If by “human talent” the Israeli President meant illegally and unfairly managing water access for Israelis and Palestinians, then I might be inclined to agree. Now, the above quote was by no means the only condescending and misleading one to be found in the interview, but given the recent report released by the French parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee asserting Israel’s “apartheid” water management policies, it stood out as particularly cringe-worthy. (Note: a partial English translation of the report can be found here, and the original report, in French, can be downloaded here in PDF format.)

Crossing the Border: Afrabia and Alternative Cosmopolitanisms

Libya’s “African Mercenaries” from Baraza Video on Vimeo.

Coverage of the conflict that brought the end of Gaddafi’s 42-year regime over Libya exposed some of the weakest points in the ways we conceive of geographical categories. Rebel forces accused Gaddafi of using “African mercenaries,” painting a racial tint to the civil conflict. In many respects, the conflict showed the limits of Libya’s Africanness — which Gaddafi emphasized in his later years — while aggravating the very real historical tensions between Arabs and other ethnic groups in Africa. Nevertheless, the positioning of Libya as an African nation has resonated with many Africans on the continent and throughout its diaspora.

How can we account for Libya’s occupation of both Arab and African fields of identity? Continue reading Crossing the Border: Afrabia and Alternative Cosmopolitanisms