Sunday, August 21, 2011

War on Gaza: Douchebags Show Their True Colours


Just when we thought that the Arab Spring would be blowing change through the region, the wonderful people known as Israelis remind us that the self-same attitudes which they displayed in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza during the winter of 2008 can be brought back to vogue. Not long after thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv demanding that their government provide them with cheaper housing (known as the J14 Movement; notice that the rights of Palestinian Israelis, whose lands have systematically been appropriated by the state, are never addressed), Israel retaliated against a shooting attack by bombing civilians in Gaza--although there is absolutely no evidence that anybody in Gaza shot anybody in Eilat.

Now, a feisty young Israeli has associated these two phenomena: he is using his presence on facebook to demand that Gaza be "flattened" to make way for cheap housing for immigrants from the Ukraine, Poland and Moldova (eg, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Leibermann). Thank you, Shlomi Cohen, for proving to us that the ugliness that is Zionist thuggery has survived the Arab Spring.



Sunday, July 24, 2011

Breivik: Radical pro-Israeli gunman (UPDATED)

UPDATE: I have since been told by more than one source that Breivik and Fjordman, his putative internet persona, are not the same person; my understanding is that the jury is still out, and that, at any rate, Fjordman is possibly an ensemble of writers. What is beyond doubt, however, is Breivik's association with the rabidly pro-Israeli/anti-Palestinian trend on the fringe of European politics. I insist that it is still valid to ask what connection these beliefs had on his actions.


Like countless others in the Middle East, I was glued to a TV screen with a group of friends as news of the Norway attacks came in. To be fair, many of us were relieved to learn that the ostensible culprit was not "one of us"--given the massive efforts Norway makes to contribute to a better life to people in the region, it would have been an understandable attack on a very friendly country.

What remains worrying, however, is that some in the mainstream media continue to insist that blaming Muslims for the attack was perfectly reasonable. Of course this was nothing as compared to the way in which some of the media jumped the gun and pontificated wildly about the prescriptions to "fix the Muslims". Muslim terrorists have done stupid things; I'm not going to suggest a new discussion about how representative they are of Islam, save to say that, unfortunately, Muslims are a bit lacking when it comes to introspection of their religious beliefs. What is absolutely bizarre, however, is that nobody is paying attention to how a man who was been spewing virulently racist and violent views for over five years might have actually put his money where his mouth has been all this time.

That last link is to a source so valuable I am going to repeat it:


Fjordman, the online alter ego of Breivik, contributed to rabidly anti-Palestinian blogs like Gates of Vienna and Jihad Watch. To be sure, Fjordman's musings on the matters of the day were indicative of his break with reality and kind of absurd mis-reading of philosophy, part of which includes his identification of Maimonedes as a Muslim (well, that kind of makes sense ...). Yet the important questions remain to be asked:





  • Many organizations have freely partaken in a kind of hysterical smear campaign against Muslims: not just the violent ones, not even just those with beards, but basically anybody with a name like "Mohammed". What responsibility do they now carry for breeding this violent of paranoid violence?

  • Why is nobody making the Israel connection with Fjordman? If a pro-Palestinian had taken up arms in a country which was as avowedly pro-Israeli as Norway is pro-Palestinian, there would be hell to pay for it (possibly reasonably so ...). If a man with attitudes towards Palestinians can buy 6 tonnes of fertilizer, surely some needs to ask what risk there is to Palestinians and their supporters around the word. Non? How likely are groups like the Jewish Defense League to follow suit?


  • I leave you with those!!

    Wednesday, June 15, 2011

    ماذا حل بنا؟



    كنت قبل ايام في احدى البلاد العربية المترامية الاطراف، و التي تنعم بمناخ معتدل و متنوع في اشكاله من
    منطقة إلى اخرى، دون ان يكون لذلك البلد الكثير من احتياطي النفط او اي مصادر للثروة السريعة الاخرى. كنت بالتحديد باقصى اطراف ذلك البلد و كنت، انا و رفيقتي انذاك، اتجه نحو العاصمة الموجودة في الطرف الاقصى المقابل للطرف الذي كنا فيه، فوقفنا ننتظر الحافلة التي ستقلنا خلال الرحلة التي تطول بضعة ساعات. و يبذل شعب ذلك البلد قصارى جهدهم كي يحيوا حياة صالحة تتماشى مع ارثهم، و لا يبالون كثيراً إلى التحولات من حولهم. فهم، و برغم قدرتهم على استعمال التقنية الحديثة، و سكنهم في بيوت كبيرة و مكيفة، يعيشون بتناغم مع تقاليد ثقافة تم اشتقاقها عن ما هو، ربما، اخلص نموذج للبداوة يعرفه التاريخ و يمكن لاي زائر ان يلمسه.

    كنت قد رايت في كل زياراتي السابقة إلى ذلك البلد اثار و اصحة للعادات و الثقافة العربية الاصيلة و المحتشمة: فلا يسمح الرجال للنساء ان تحمل حقائب ثقيلة في الشارع، و تفرض عليهم شهامتهم غير المرئية صرامة في التعامل مع المظاهر غير اللائقة. كما اتذكر كيف ان قبل سنوات قليلة مضت، ذهبت إلى منزل احد الاقارب الساكن في هذا البلد لاجد ان سكان الحي الذي يسكن فيه في العاصمة قد خرجوا بحثاً عن ابنة احدى الاسر القاطنة هناك التي اختفت قبل دقائق، بحثاُ على الاقدام و بالسيارات و حتى ان احد الاسر طوعت كلبها الحراسي، قبل ان تصل الشرطة. مثل هذه التصرفات تبرهن كيف ان تشبثهم بقناعة جادة بما هو صالح، ينير لهم الطريق في ظروف قد حيرت تعقيداتها مجتمعات اخرى اكثر ثراء و اكثر تقنية. و لكن الحدث الذي شاهدناه في ذلك اليوم جعلني اتساءل : ماذا حل بالنشامة المعهودة؟

    جلسنا، انا و رفيقتي، على دكة موقف الحافلة. كان ملحوظاً في هذا البلد العربي ان نجد في محل واحد صورة تعبر عن كل شرائح البلد الاقتصادية، فكان هناك الشباب ممن ذهبوا إلى المنتجع لقضاء عطلة اسبوعية، و كان عدم تعودهم على ركوب وسائل النقل العامة واضحاً على وجوهم، بينما تجد الكثير من الاخرين من راكبي الباص رضاءهم التام عن وضع المركبة التي ستنقلهم، و هي مكيفة و مرفهة قياساً على وسائل النقل العامة في الوطن العربي. و بينما كان بعض الركاب يرى في سعر تعرفة الرحلة مبلغاً بسيطاً و سخي، كان بعضهم الاخر يقارن هذا المبلغ بدخله اليومي، و هو مبلغ قد يعتبر محرزاً مقارنةً مع متوسط الدخل للفرد في بلدنا هذا. و مع ذلك، لم تكن هناك سمات للحرمان باينة على وجوههم، ربما لانهم عائدون من اجازات استحقوها، او لانهم عائدون إلى بيوتهم محملين بمكاسب عملهم في منتجعات هي مقصد الكثير من سواح العالم.

    في هذه الاثناء، دخل رجل طالق شعر ذقنه دون ان تكون له لحية، و كان يدخن سيجارة بخلاف تعليمات . اللافتات الواضحة في كل انحاء قاعة الانتظار، و امتنع عن مناشدته اي من الموظفين، دون ان يحترموه. كان هذا الرجل ماسكاً بيد امراءة اسيوية قصيرة القامة، ترتدي ثياب مزرية لا تصلح بان تكون ثياب عمل. كانت تنوح بشيء يقترب من البكاء، بينما لم ينفك الرجل عن سحبها من معصمها بطريقة يصعب علي التعبير عن الاهانة الموجودة فيها. سرعان ما بداء الاخرون يتهامسون بين بعضهم البعض، ((هي لا تريد ان تذهب)) و ((تخشى ما ينتظرها على الجانب الاخر حين تنزل عن الباص)). و همست صديقتي غير المتقنة للغة العربية و((هل هو عشيقها ربما؟)) فكانت الاجابة على هذا السؤال سهلة: لا اعتقد ذلك، و دارت تلك المراءة الاسيوية ذات الملامح الحزينة و الملابس الرديئة بوجها على الجالسين بقاعة الانتظار، تتوسل شفقة الجالسين. .

    لم تنجح المراءة في توسلها. صمت الجالسون و كنت صامتاً إلى جانبهم، لم يحرك احدنا ساكناً لمساعدة انسان قد طلب منا النجدة بالوسيلة الوحيدة التي استطاع منها، و لم نفعل شيء. استرد الرجل طليق شعر ، ذقنه مبلغ التذكرة، و بداءات الامراءة الاسيوية تتالم من قبضته المتحكمة على معصمها، دون ان يلتفت اليها موظفو بيع التذاكر، مجرد معاملة مقايضة بسيطة، سواء ان قال احدهم، بعد مغادرة الرجل و الاسيوية التي يصطحبها عنوة عن قاعة الانتظار ((كنت شاكك بهذا الموضوع من زمان)). هذا و حسب.

    و هنا ادركت و ايقنت ان ثمة تغييرات حقيقية قد اثرت في مجتمعنا. فالشعب الذي كان يعرف عنه الشهامة الفروسية قد وقف محايداً امام منظر من الرق المستحدث و الاتجار بالبشر. و الشعب الذي كان يقف مستعداً دوماً للدفاع عن اعراض و شرف و كرامة الاخرين قبل ان يدافعوا عن انفسهم، قد اعلن استسلامه، و لو في هذه المعركة المحدودة. صحيح ان وجود اعداد كبيرة من العمالة الاسيوية الوافدة اتى على حساب العمال العرب و نقاباتهم، و لكن لا احد يحمل الافراد العابرين للبحار المسؤولية عن ذلك. صحيح اننا لم يعلم ا احدنا ما ستؤول اليه الامور اذ حاول احدنا التدخل، و لكن كان بالامكان ان نجتمع على الحق و ان ندحض عملاً باطلاً. ان بقينا نخرس امام الاتجار بالبشر، غرباء كانوا علينا ام لا، فاننا قد فشلنا في الامر بالمعروف و النهي عن المنكر، بالمعنى الحقيقي لهذا المصطلح--لا اقصد هنا كف النساء عن قيادة السيارات او منع رجال الاطفاء من دخول مدرسة للفتيات و هي تحترق و تحرق معها التلميذات. .

    و اكون انا اول المعترفين بانني اخفقت في واجبي اثناء الحادثة التي رويتها انفاً، و لكن كتبت هذه الاسطر لانني لا استطيع ان اتوقف عن مساءلة نفسي: هل بقي لنا اية قيم؟


    Tuesday, May 24, 2011

    Notes from the Unemployed Fringe, No. 349: Sudoku in Al Qabas

    For the past two months or so I have been a member of that unfortunate mass of humanity: unemployed, Arab and male, living in the Middle East. It's a sad existence, to be sure, living at my mother's home while the horrible number 30 fast approaches, and my beard gets longer by the hour, but, hey, it gives me the time I need to play Sudoku.

    I'd earlier promised a friend I would provide a full review of Sudoku puzzles as they appear in Kuwaiti newspapers. A full review is indeed in the works, but for now, I will stick to this: the puzzles in Al Qabas need to be seriously looked at. People, seriously, sudoku is meant to be something you solve on a coffee break, not an all-day activity. I can't claim to be a sudoku guru, but I'm not bad either, and the higher 2 puzzles in Al Qabas are a bit too difficult.

    The "easy" level is fine, a bit too easy, in fact but, really, the jump from "easy" to "medium" is unjustified. If they had printed one which was titled "killer" or something, and meant to be very different from the others, that would be fine, but, honestly, the "medium" and "difficult" levels do not follow on from "easy".

    If anybody here knows how to get in touch with the relevant editors at Al Qabas, please pass on the note.

    Thursday, April 14, 2011

    Sign the Petition, asking the Coen Bros not to go to Tel Aviv

    It's a long story; I'm not asking the Coen Bros to abandon their Zionism--which would be unrealistic--but I am suggesting they think about the wider implications of receiving the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University.

    If you care about civility in public dialogue, you might want to sign it, here.

    Do spread!!

    Tuesday, January 04, 2011

    Saudi Arabia: Defending Arab skies

    It's been the better part of a calendar year; and do I really wish I had something kind of useful and original to contribute. Instead, I want to pilfer and poach this story about how the brave men of the Saudi armed forces are stepping up to the plate to be counted for Palestine. I'll quote two stories:

    From Haaretz ("the good Zionists" as many Palestinians insist)

    and also from Maan, my favourite Palestinian news source.


    Happy New Year; I'm looking forward to a bit more blogging in 2011, especially as I am likely to leave the UNRWA job and might have some more spare time on my hands.

    Thursday, January 28, 2010

    Table Tennis at Cold River

    I pointed out to Jamal that he and I had the same Palestine map necklace—not too shocking, given that we were sitting opposite each other in the Nahr Al Bared camp (a place name which also translates into “Cold River”) near Tripoli—and that we smoked the same flavour of Gauloises cigarettes. Still a little in my London mode, I was a bit shocked when this prompted him to come out with “have one”, and we sat and smoked.

    Jamal had been fortunate enough, through luck and determination, to leave the aid-dependent camps and find a home Beirut—albeit in another camp, this time Mar Elias—where he was studying mathematics at university.

    “Ah! A man even more after my own heart! I did physics!”

    Like the others gathered at the Nahr Al Bared youth centre that day, Jamal had come to participate in one of their frequent and irregular (“sometimes every month, sometimes for special occasions like Ramadan, whenever we feel like it really”) table tennis tournaments. The trip from Beirut to the North was an easy 2 to 3 hours, so was it really worth it for a few games of ping-pong?

    “I'm good you know, and I think I might get one of the cups this time around.”

    Although far from the most painful, this was the one sentence I heard in the camps I would want to broadcast to the world in Tripoli and beyond: The Palestinians, long-time, inter-generational dwellers—dwellers only and not citizens—of Nahr Al Bared went for the same silly pastimes as everybody else. We play table tennis and study mathematics and sneak away for fag breaks while our friends are practising bouncing balls. Since Jamal's friend Zaki had trounced me like a bad joke earlier in the afternoon, I wasn't in a position to offer Jamal a pre-tournament warm-up, but I thought to ask him about chess.

    “Oh, I've given up on chess, stopped playing since I was 13; you see, people stick to really silly plans, and it becomes hard to beat them if you want to be creative like me.”

    Yes, of course. I'd heard that before. So it hit me, Jamal and I were not just two similar people staring at each other in the face: We were twin brothers who'd ended up on differing sides of a rather small political coin. I knew how to evade saying “I'm afraid I'll lose” in more ways than one myself.

    I might have been born in Kuwait, and Jamal in this camp here, but putting a brave face on what could be a personal tragedy was a national habit shared by both of us. In Elias Khoury's Gate of the Sun, an absent-minded Palestinian nurse trained deep behind the Eastern bounds of the Iron Curtain was transformed into a Daktor in the blighted life of the camps; and just today, Zaki of table tennis fame had referred to a Daktora Vivian, in fact an MA-holding American researcher well-known and liked in these parts. Although maybe a way to make it easier for a woman collecting data on the health of the camp-dwellers, it was also a way of signifying their own significance: The world has not totally abandoned the Palestinians so long as the medics will continue to visit. It is better to live in a world where doctors care about your health than in a camp where even your existence is of questionable legality; it is better to be a freedom fighter than a hopeless refugee, and better to be tired of unimaginative tactical manoeuvres than a bad chess player.

    If the escapism seemed a bit desperate, there was enough cause for as much. When I arrived, Zaki took me around to see what had become of Nahr Al Bared since the Lebanese military had carried out its “operations” there to wipe out the Fateh al Islam group—which even the Lebanese state acknowledged was not made up primarily of Palestinians—bulldozing everything which stood between the new, post-Syrian departure Lebanon and a Muslim fundamentalist. Here, the delusions of grandeur indulged in by Palestinian refugees seemed to have their place. Where the Lebanese Army spoke of “operations”, they spoke of a “war”. A war which, in the words of Zaki,

    “Was against the trees and the stones of the houses as much and the people in the camp. This used to be a little orchard I planted: Were my orange trees terrorists?”

    Where Zaki's trees had once stood, there was no only a pile of rubble and iron bars. To make matters worse, Zaki could have owned the land, just on the fringes of the camp hiumself. Instead, it was held in trust for him by a distant cousin, who had managed to make a living, and gain citizenship, for himself in the US, where there were no refugee camps save for the Indian reservations. A little in the distance, Zaki showed me the “resort” where the Nahr Al Bared dwellers would go to smoke hookah and look out at the Mediterranean.

    Being on the shoreline brought this conflict, found throughout all the camps where the Palestinians lived, screeching to the front. In Nahr Al Bared, you may have to worry about tanks uprooting your trees or the fact that you are not legally entitled to be a citizen anywhere; but you still want to smoke argeela with the boys and have a good time. After all, even Palestinians want to play ping-pong.