Jadaliyya

Accusations of Anti-Semitism Target Progressive Faculty at CUNY
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/38485

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Kingsborough administrator Michael Goldstein, in particular, has accused progressive faculty at the college of orchestrating a “systematic and pernicious campaign” of anti-Semitic hate against him. “The reason for their attack?” he writes. “I’m Jewish, politically conservative and I believe in Zionism, the civil rights movement of the Jewish people.” These accusations have been picked up and amplified by the Jerusalem Post and Tablet magazine.

These accusations are irresponsible and unsubstantiated. In making them, Goldstein is adopting a dangerous, increasingly common tactic of the right: cynically deploying anti-Semitism—a very real problem—as a weapon to intimidate political opponents.

Progressive faculty have been subject to a number of different forms of harassment. More than a dozen, for example, have received letters from the Lawfare Project threatening a lawsuit. Some of the progressive faculty accused by Goldstein in the press of inciting anti-Semitic hatred have also received threatening emails and letters.

Kingsborough English Professor Anthony Alessandrini, who is also on the faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center’s MA Program in Middle Eastern Studies, is one of those Goldstein publicly accuses in a recent article of being a “puppet-master” of his fellow progressive faculty, and of inciting anti-Semitic hatred at the college. The article specifically cites Alessandrini’s scholarly and political involvement with Palestine solidarity work, and make the case that an article he wrote about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is evidence of his anti-Jewish views. That Goldstein and the journalistic outlets reporting his story are conflating critique of Israel with anti-Semitism threatens to squash discussion of an issue that faculty KCC have the right to study, write about, and discuss freely, as they do regarding all important political and intellectual matters.

It is telling that Goldstein has called on the support of the Lawfare Project, whose mission involves using lawsuits alleging anti-Semitism as a means to harass faculty and educational institutions, perhaps most notably San Francisco State University, in a case recently dismissed by a federal judge. (A separate, related case in state court is still pending.)

#instrumentalisation de l’#antisémitisme pour empêcher les critiques contre #Israël dans les #universités #USA

Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat Discusses the History and Rage Behind the Deadly Protests in Gaza with Vice.
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/36405

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Reports of violent encounters with Israeli forces are not exactly rare in the deeply contested Palestinian territory. But this time feels different.

Last Friday, Israeli soldiers opened fire on a gathering of thousands near the border between Gaza and Israel, ultimately killing 18 Palestinians andreportedly wounding some 700 more. The demonstration was organized to mark “Land Day,” an annual commemoration of Palestinian civil resistance, and video evidence has since emerged indicating that at least some of the protestors gunned down from a distance on Friday were either carrying no weapons or actively fleeing—or both.

The incident has drawn pointed criticism from NGOs like Human Rights Watch—which called them “unlawful” and “calculated”—and American politicians like Bernie Sanders, who tweeted, “The killing of Palestinian demonstrators by Israeli forces in Gaza is tragic. It is the right of all people to protest for a better future without a violent response.”

The Israeli government has tried to assert it was acting in self defense, claiming protestors had links to Hamas and that activists were throwing molotov cocktails and stones, among other projectiles. The Foreign Affairs Director of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, Eli Hazan, went so far as to assert that “all 30,000” of the protestors were “legitimate targets.” Still, even before last Friday’s protests, an officer in the Israeli military tweeted what critics suggested was a damning video in anticipation of Land Day featuring images of Israeli soldiers loading and firing sniper rifles along with Arabic captions warning Palestinians to stay away from the border.

How the United States and Israel Praise Each Other as National Security Exemplars to Validate Their Own Actions
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/36400/How-the-United-States-and-Israel-Praise-Each-Other-as-National-Security-E

Le site Palestine Journeys est en ligne :
▻https://www.paljourneys.org

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Un article à ce sujet :

Announcement : Palestinian Journeys - Launched
Jadaliyya Reports, le 14 février 2018
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/35212/Palestinian-Journeys-Launched

Un exemple d’article :

Palestinian Music
▻https://www.paljourneys.org/en/timeline/highlight/10526/palestinian-music

#Palestine #Palestine_Journeys #Images #Histoire #Culture #Biographies

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French, British and American Soldiers Raped almost One Million German Women after World War II

A German historian estimates in her book that French, British and American soldiers raped 860,000 Germans at and after the end of the WW2, including 190,000 sexual assaults by American soldiers.
▻http://dailyarchive.org/index.php/8-archives/19-french-british-and-american-soldiers-raped-almost-one-million-germa

Revolt against the Sun
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How the West Undermined Women’s Rights in the Arab World I Jadaliyya

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A Poem by Dareen Tatour
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/34975

Misreading Qazvin in Washington: On the Protests in Iran

By : Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi

Jadaliyya
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/34931/Misreading-Qazvin-in-Washington

Iran has featured protests throughout several provincial cities (e.g., Mashhad, Kermanshah, Rasht, and Isfahan) since they first started on Thursday 28 December 2017. Some reports indicate that conservative opponents of the Rouhani government in the north-eastern city of Mashhad initiated the protests. However, they have since spread and escaped their oversight. In the early stages, protestors’ demands largely revolved around spiraling prices of basic foodstuffs and bore the classic signs of frustration with the country’s ongoing economic torpor. Today, they reached Tehran and have been taken up in limited numbers by students around the university. As of yet, it is not clear whether we can speak of one protest movement or several protest movements, as there are different (and sometimes conflicting) grievances and solutions being articulated.

Appropriating “The People”

Commentators and self-styled experts have been quick to jump to hasty conclusions and decree what is driving the present bout of discontent. The giddy enthusiasm of the Trump administration, rightwing DC thinktanks, and many others is palpable. Predictably, the same voices who have consistently demanded Iran’s international isolation, along with the imposition of sanctions, military intervention, and regime change, have rapidly sought to bandwagon the recent expressions of discontent and appropriate them for their own imperial agendas. Such rampant and frankly malevolent opportunism is frustrating to say the least. Within the space of some twenty-four hours, and with only a small number of exceptions, nearly every mainstream Western media outlet has inclined to assimilate legitimate expressions of socioeconomic distress and demands for greater governmental accountability into a question of “regime change.”

Needless to say, these very same individuals and venues have time and again completely ignored the fact that countless strikes and protests from Khuzestan to Tehran, ranging from teachers to retirees, have become a regular occurrence in Iran since President Hassan Rouhani’s 2013 election. The latter’s administration and those sympathetic toward its agenda have sought on many an occasion to scale down levels of securitization and similarly distinguish between those citizens who express legitimate civic grievances and others who seek the system’s overthrow. These may seem like fine distinctions which fail to assuage the liberal conscience, but they are nevertheless immensely important for the institutionalization of legal and mutually recognized channels of civic contestation. These achievements and many others besides (e.g., indications of relaxed policing of “bad hijab” and the commuting of the death penalty for drug smugglers under two kilograms) are not inconsequential or to be belittled. They harbor implications for the lives of thousands if not millions of Iranians.

New Texts Out Now: Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel, eds. Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26998/new-texts-out-now_nader-hashemi-and-danny-postel-e

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Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi (DP and NH): Over the last several years, a narrative has taken root in Western media and policy circles that attributes the turmoil and violence engulfing the Middle East to supposedly ancient sectarian hatreds. “Sectarianism” has become a catchall explanation for virtually all of the region’s problems. Thomas Friedman, for instance, claims that in Yemen today “the main issue is the seventh century struggle over who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad — Shiites or Sunnis.” Barack Obama has been one the biggest proponents of this thesis. On several occasions, he has invoked “ancient sectarian differences” to explain the turmoil in the region. In his final State of the Union address, he asserted that the issues plaguing the Middle East today are “rooted in conflicts that date back millennia.” A more vulgar version of this view prevails among right-wing commentators. But in one form or another, this new sectarian essentialism, which is lazy and convenient — and deeply Orientalist — has become the new conventional wisdom in the West.

Our book forcefully challenges this narrative and offers an alternative set of explanations for the rise in sectarian conflict in the Middle East in recent years. Emphasis on recent: the book demonstrates that the sharp sectarian turn in the region’s politics is largely a phenomenon of the last few decades — really since 1979 — and that pundits who imagine it as an eternal or fixed feature of the Middle East are reading history backwards. So the book is an exercise in refutation and ideology critique on the one hand, while also offering a set of rigorous social scientific arguments about what exactly is driving the intensification of sectarian conflict in the Middle East today. Our contributors come from political science, history, anthropology, and religious studies, and it is from this range of disciplines that we present a social and political theory as well as a critical history of sectarianism.

#narrative #orientalisme #sectarisme

Egypt’s Power Game: Why Cairo is Boosting its Military Power
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/27111/egypt’s-power-game_why-cairo-is-boosting-its-milit

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.... the decision to allocate huge resources to the procurement of jets, helicopter carriers and weapon systems in the throes of a mounting economic crisis reflects something else: Egypt’s intention to convert its uneasy one-sided dependency on wealthy Arab states into a mutual dependency. In other words, Egypt seeks to balance its economic inferiority with its military superiority, in a bid to elevate its status in the region and to avoid subordination to other Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia.

That is why Sisi has been more than willing, nearly eager, to put Egypt’s military strength to actual use. Egypt was the most vocal advocate about the creation of a joint Arab military force when the idea was popular in 2015, and it pledged to commit 40,000 troops to the force, but the plan never came to fruition. Moreover, Sisi vowed to provide protection to Gulf states whenever required, and he also expressed his readiness to send Egyptian troops to a future Palestinian state to help stabilize it. There is also reason to believe that Sisi feels inclined to intervene militarily in neighboring Libya, but only if a multilateral force that enjoys a UN mandate is formed.

#Egypte #armes

New Texts Out Now: Hannes Baumann, Citizen Hariri: Lebanon’s Neoliberal Reconstruction
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26860/new-texts-out-now_hannes-baumann-citizen-hariri_le

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With Hariri we have liberal talk and illiberal walk. This contradiction is not unique to Hariri but goes to the heart of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is not a defined set of policies but a jumble of contradictory projects: An ideological project which says that markets allocate resources more efficiently than the government, and a political project which favors capital over labor. Neoliberalism requires the rollback of the state through privatization or welfare cuts, but it also requires strong state action to build markets and to ensure capital accumulation. Lebanese neoliberalism was first and foremost a project defined by the interests of Gulf contractor Rafiq Hariri and his business partners.

#néolibéralisme #Liban #Hariri

The Policing of the Palestinian Minority in #Israel: An International Law Perspective
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26157/the-policing-of-the-palestinian-minority-in-israel

In sum, the report commissioned by MK Zoabi strongly suggests that Israel is violating its international legal obligation to protect the life of its Palestinian citizens without any discrimination. International law is clear: ordinary crime committed by private actors could be attributed to the state, when the latter fails to prevent and punish crimes that violate two of the basic human rights, i.e., the right to life and physical integrity. Every time the Israeli police force fails to prevent a preventable crime, or fails in investigating and punishing perpetrators when these options are objectively possible, the victims and their families should be encouraged to seek a remedy. The failure of the state to provide remedies, amounts by itself to an additional violation of Israel’s international obligations.

#Palestine #droit_international

Remembering Husayn Muruwwah, the ‘Red Mujtahid’
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26064/remembering-husayn-muruwwah-the-%E2%80%98red-mujtahid%E2%80%99

On 17 February 1987, during one of the bloodiest periods of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), the prominent journalist, literary critic, intellectual, and activist Husayn Muruwwah (or Hussein Mroué[i]) was assassinated at his home in Ramlet al-Baida, West Beirut. Muruwwah left Lebanon at the age of fourteen to train at the Najaf hawza (seminary) in Iraq. He intended to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a respected religious scholar and cleric. Yet after a multifaceted intellectual journey that spanned several decades and multiple locations, Muruwwah went on to become a celebrated Marxist philosopher and senior member of the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP); “a Red mujtahid who was at once proud of the cultural heritage of Islam and politically committed to the cause of social justice, political freedom and emancipation from foreign domination along Communist lines.”[ii]

The Egyptians : A Radical History of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution - Afterword
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/25934/the-egyptians_a-radical-history-of-egypt’s-unfinis

Regeni’s murder, and the architecture of state terror from which it emerged, has helped illuminate the west’s own uneasy tightrope walk over the Nile and exposed points of vulnerability in the relationship between Sisi and his international backers. Just as importantly, it has underlined how profoundly unstable Egypt’s status quo is, and the extent to which the underlying dynamics of Egyptian authoritarianism have been churned into crisis by successive years of revolt. Mubarak would not have allowed a white European to be tortured to death in such a prominent manner, inviting needless controversy; in the wilds of today’s Egypt, Sisi lacks both the choice and control to follow suit. The counter-revolution’s arsenal of defences is more ferocious, and more fragmented, than that held by the state before 2011, precisely because the landscape beneath its feet has been so thoroughly rearranged by revolution.

Jadaliyya publie l’épilogue d’un livre qui semble mériter le détour :
Jack Shenker, The Egyptians : A Radical History of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution.

What the West Owes Syrians: US and European Arms Sales to the Middle East 2011-2014

The last two years have seen heated debates within Europe and the United States about the costs of hosting Syrian and other refugees. However, there has been almost complete silence about another aspect of their involvement in the conflict: the extent of arms sales to the Middle East. Between 2011 and 2014, and based on conservative estimates, Europe earned twenty-one billion euros from the arms trade to the Middle East while it spent nineteen billion euros on hosting approximately one million Syrian refugees. During that same period, the United States earned at least eighteen billion euros from arms sales, while accepting about eleven thousand refugees. Aware of the consequences of weapons proliferation, European politicians may have opted for a tradeoff: making their taxpayers shoulder the short term cost of hosting refugees in exchange for profits to the arms industry.

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What the West Owes Syrians: US and European Arms Sales to the Middle East 2011-2014
►http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/25730/what-the-west-owes-syrians_us-and-european-arms-sa

The last two years have seen heated debates within Europe and the United States about the costs of hosting Syrian and other refugees. However, there has been almost complete silence about another aspect of their involvement in the conflict: the extent of arms sales to the Middle East. Between 2011 and 2014, and based on conservative estimates, Europe earned twenty-one billion euros from the arms trade to the Middle East while it spent nineteen billion euros on hosting approximately one million Syrian refugees. During that same period, the United States earned at least eighteen billion euros from arms sales, while accepting about eleven thousand refugees. Aware of the consequences of weapons proliferation, European politicians may have opted for a tradeoff: making their taxpayers shoulder the short term cost of hosting refugees in exchange for profits to the arms industry.

Jadaliyya
►http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/25628/the-left-and-the-syria-debate

Sur la question syrienne, un très long et très riche article de As’ad AbuKhalil, dont j’extraie ces lignes, juste avant la conclusion. A lire absolument si on s’intéresse à ladite question.

Some Principles to Consider in Assessing the Leftist Stance on Syria

While there are no active leftist organizations and movements of consequence on either side of the divide in the Syrian conflict, leftist arguments and appeals should not be disregarded or forgotten. Poor people are dying on both sides of the divide in Syria, and poor people are among the fighters of the regime and of the rebels. Leftist arguments should still hold for analysis and for activism, even if they are not currently politically salient.
The invocation of the “Syrian people,” speaking on behalf of the Syrian people, deploying the academically fashionable terminology of “the agency of the Syrian people” is in line with—if not always intentionally—a long Western tradition of occupation and colonization in the name of the natives. There are Syrians who support the rebels, there are Syrians who support the regime, and there are Syrians who support neither. They all do so for a complex set of reasons. The notion that leftists should blindly follow the political choice of “the people” or a segment of people (conveniently selected) is a political exercise intended to support one group of combatants. Masses can make erroneous political choices and leftists—of all people—should not use demagogic arguments.
Leftists should not necessarily follow blindly one side or the other in the armed conflict. We can all agree Asad and his regime represent a brutal dictatorship. That is not the same as saying those armed groups of consequence among the Syrian opposition should be supported or championed. Leftists should make their own criticisms or suggestions without fear of intimidation, especially the effective and universal intimidation exercised by the US-Gulf alliance.
There are civilians on both sides of the conflict. All sides of the armed conflict (meaning, the Syrian regime and the rebels as well as all of their sponsors and supporters) have committed war crimes. Despite no reliable data about the killing and destruction, we know that both sides are guilty of war crimes, and that the regime bears a much bigger share of the responsibility. The notion that the Syrian regime is justified in its bombing campaign or that rebels are hiding behind civilians (even if true in some cases) is the same argument often used by Zionists to justify the murder of Palestinian civilians. This logic should be categorically rejected. Similarly, the notion that Syrian rebel crimes should be ignored or forgiven because the Syrian regime committed more war crimes is basically a license for Syrian rebels to commit more war crimes.
Leftists of all people should welcome open debate about Syria and should reject the intimidation tactics of Western supporters and cheerleaders for the Syrian rebels. Leftists more than others should engage in media deconstruction and in pointing out the impact of financial ownership of media in the West and in the Arab world.
Attacking the anti-imperialist left in the West has a long tradition. Those engaging in the debate about Syria need to be careful to not contribute and reinforce this tradition, all the while stating any differences and critiques they might have of those that identify as the anti-imperialist left. We need to separate those attacks on parts of the left due to purely Syrian considerations from those that are part of the US hegemonic order.
The attack on the left exaggerates the role of the left, in the West, in the Syrian conflict, and in the Arab world at large.
Most promoters of the idea that the left is guilty in its stance on the Syrian conflict belong to groups who are sponsored by Gulf regimes or Western governments—hardly parties that possess Leftist credentials. It must be noted in this context that the Western attacks on the left from supporters of Syrian rebels is synchronized with the campaign of attacks against the left across the Saudi-owned media.
Leftists should be aware of the infiltration by Zionists in the ranks of the debate on Syria, for purposes that are neither related to Syria nor the welfare of the Syrian population.

Some of the loudest voices feigning concern for the Syrian people are individuals, organizations, and regimes that have never been known for their concern for the Syrian people or for the lives of Arabs more generally.
Palestine is relevant to every debate, or it should be. But the Palestinian issue is being exploited for political purposes by all sides to the conflict. The Syrian regime and its supporters use it, for example, in their argument that any protest or armed insurrection against the regime is a Zionist conspiracy (although Israel is certainly active in the Syrian conflict and Israel has been active in every internal war or conflict in the contemporary Arab world). The Zionist supporters of the Syrian rebels also exploit the issue when they take advantage of every possible political event to further the interests of Israeli occupation and aggression.
The left is interested in the welfare of the poor, and neither the Syrian regime nor its enemies among the rebels care for the poor. Furthermore, the Western-Gulf alliance is hardly ever interested in the plight of the poor in their own countries, let alone abroad.
Leftists have to oppose Russian intervention in Syria at the same time they condemn US, European, and Gulf intervention in Syria. Russia is a hegemonic player, but the United States remains the supreme imperialist global power causing more death, destruction, and conflict than any other country on the planet. There are reasons to distrust Russian motives in Syria, but there are more reasons to distrust US motives in Syria and across the Arab world.

Migrant Worker Repression and Solidarity in Lebanon
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/25364/migrant-worker-repression-and-solidarity-in-lebano

In the weeks and months following the al-Qa` bombings that occurred near the Lebanese-Syrian border on 27 June 2016, the Lebanese government has intensified its repressive measures against Syrian refugees. This has taken place in the form of illegal curfews, political hate speech, and arbitrary arrests. In the week following the attacks, checkpoints were established all over the country, mainly targeting Syrian refugees, although other undocumented migrant workers were arrested as well. According to the Lebanese Army twitter account, more than six hundred Syrians were arrested in the first three days alone. In January 2015, most Syrian nationals residing in Lebanon became subject to new rules that resemble​ the ​kafala (sponsorship) system, tying their residency to a “pledge of responsibility” on the part of their employer (with minor exceptions). Ever since, the majority of Syrians present in Lebanon (those who cannot get a tourist or student visa, for instance, or those whose relatives did not obtain sponsorship) have fallen out of legal status.

Denial of status is a tool the Lebanese government consistently uses to further control marginalized populations in the territory. Prior to these recent events, migrant workers as well as refugees across the country were already the target of a noticeable increase in police violence, albeit one that largely escaped media attention. From late April through May 2016, these communities witnessed waves of arrests and police raids at their homes, workplaces, and public gathering spaces. This targeting affected both “legal” and undocumented migrant workers and refugees, particularly migrant women who cannot live legally outside of their sponsor’s house and who are thus suspect simply for being in public space. In the words of an Ethiopian woman who has been working in Lebanon for more than fifteen years: “In all my time here, I have never seen a year like this year.”

This article focuses on this past wave of repression against migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, and their ongoing strategies of resistance. We tackle three aspects of this state violence: the gendered nature of the arrests and their role in producing state legitimacy, the criminalization of migrant women through restrictions on status, and the networks of solidarity that have developed around the `Adliyya Detention Center in Beirut.[1]

#répression #migrants #réfugiés #femmes