• ’I Had to Be the Voice of Women’ : The First Female Hijacker Shares Her Story
    https://www.vice.com/en/article/9k99k7/leila-khaled-first-female-hijacker-profile

    Une brève biographie de la miltante palestinienne Leila Khaled

    « Vice » classe cette interview avec la militante palestinienne Leila Khaled sous « identité ». Par cette ruse la rédaction fait disparaître sa cause, son combat contre l’injustice et les responsables de l’injustice derrière cet écran de fumée composé de tolérance identitaire et fausses présomptions.. Pourtant son témoignage explique ses mobiles et fait comprendre pourquo il y a des situations où la lutte non-violente n’a plus de raison d’être et les causes politiques ne peuvent se faire entendre que par le combat armé.

    Nous pouvons nous estimer heureux que nous vvions en Europe centrale toujours sous des conditions relativement paisibles malgré l’oppression et l’exploitation des classes populaires de plus en plus brutale.

    4.8.2016.by Leila Ettachfini - On August 29, 1969, 25-year-old Leila Khaled made her way into the cockpit of TWA Flight 870 and commandeered the plane on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. After that, she became known equally as an icon and a terrorist.

    On April 9, 1948, a young Palestinian girl from Haifa celebrated her fourth birthday, and between 100 and more than 250 Palestinian villagers were killed at the hands of the Irgun and Lehi, two paramilitary Zionist organizations, in what came to be known as the Deir Yassin massacre. The massacre proved to the girl’s family that they could no longer keep their eight children safe in their home country—they would have to flee. In the days following the bloodshed, the little girl, Leila Khaled, became a refugee. Twenty-one years later she would become the world’s first female hijacker.

    Deir Yassin was the first large-scale massacre of Palestinians in the history of the Palestine/Israel conflict, and it was only the beginning of similar tragedies. It preceded the beginning of the 1948 Palestinian exodus—also known as the Nakba, literally “the disaster” in Arabic—by one month. Though Khaled’s parents hoped fleeing the country would increase their children’s chances at a safe and normal life—and by many historical accounts, they were safer fleeing than staying home—this did not mean that their new lives as refugees were free of struggle and danger. When Khaled’s family left Palestine, they headed to the Dahiya, a suburb south of Beirut that has been home to thousands of Palestinian refugees since 1948. The location of major refugee camps like Sabra and Shatila, the Dahiya is a place all too familiar with instability and deadly attacks, committed by both Israeli forces as well as right-wing Christian Lebanese groups like the Phalangists. Overall, it is a poverty-stricken area populated mostly by refugees and Lebanon’s own lower class. For four-year-old Khaled, it was her new home.

    Now 72, Leila Khaled agreed to Skype me from her home in Jordan in late June. She sat in her living room wearing thin-framed eyeglasses and a hot pink shirt with traditional white embroidery—quite the opposite image to the woman in the iconic photo of Khaled in her youth, wearing a military shirt and keffiyeh, the typically black-and-white scarf that has come to symbolize Middle Eastern pride, and holding an AK-47. On her hand she wears a ring made from the pin of the first grenade she ever used in training.

    Khaled described her childhood as, simply, “miserable,” living in a state of uncertainty about both her country and her family. When they left their country initially, her father stayed behind to fight for Palestine; he would join his wife and their children in the Dahiya six months after they made the initial journey. Growing up, Khaled recalls asking her parents two questions constantly: “Why are we living like this?” and “When are we going back?”

    Based on the current state of Palestine, the latter may seem naive, but it was not entirely so at the time. In December of 1948 the UN adopted Resolution 194, which stated that, “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” Because Israel never complied, Khaled and many other refugee children continued to ask when they would return home well into adulthood.

    As is the case with many refugee families, especially in the Dahiya, the Khaleds faced poverty. “I never had a whole pencil,” Khaled told me, “always half. My mother used to cut it into two so every child could go to school.” Despite this, the Khaleds had it better than most refugee families who did not have the family connections in Lebanon that provided Leila and her family with shelter and food. Still, they, like many others, relied on UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees.

    By the late 50s, the atmosphere of the area echoed the “rise of the national spirit,” according to Khaled, and she often participated in the frequent public demonstrations in her community meant to raise awareness for the plight of the Palestinian people. It was then that her involvement within the Palestinian resistance began to evolve from passive to active. Many of her older siblings had joined the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), which declared the liberation of Palestine as one of its main goals. In her early teens, though Khaled was not allowed to fight with the ANM quite yet, she contributed by providing fighters with food and support even in the middle of dangerous battles. At age 16 she was accepted as an official member.

    In 1967, at age 23, Khaled joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or the PFLP, despite her mother’s wishes. According to Sarah Irving’s book Leila Khaled: Icon of Palestinian Liberation, Khaled’s mother told her, “Let your brothers go and be fighters.” But Leila Khaled did not want to be on the sidelines of the movement. “Calling for armed struggle—it was my dream,” she told me.

    The PFLP is considered a terrorist organization by countries like the US and the EU; its political leanings are usually described as secular and Marxist-Leninist. When the PFLP was formed, Khaled says, it was clear that it wanted both men and women actively involved in the resistance. When she was assigned to partake in a hijacking in 1969, she viewed the assignment as the PFLP upholding that idea.

    On August 29, 1969, Khaled and fellow PFLP member Salim Issawi hijacked TWA Flight 840 on its way from Rome to Tel Aviv. Khaled boarded the plane with a hand grenade and pistol. Once in the air, the two revealed their weapons, made their way into the cockpit, and said, “This is the Palestinian movement taking over your airplane,” according to Harry Oakley, the co-pilot. They then instructed the pilots to redirect the plane to Damascus, but not before flying over Palestine. “It was my happiest moment,” she said, “when we flew over Palestine and I saw my city, Haifa—not the hijacking.”

    Despite being a young woman about to attempt a mission that would either end her life or change it forever, Khaled was not nervous. “The contrary,” she told me, “I was happy because I was doing something for my people.” As for the purpose of the hijacking, Khaled is just as straightforward there. “It was meant to put the question in front of the whole world: Who are the Palestinians? After 1948, we were dealt with as refugees who needed human aid and that’s it—not recognizing our right of return. Also, to release the prisoners.”

    Upon landing, Khaled and Issawi evacuated the Boeing 707, and Issawi proceeded to blow up the nose of the aircraft as it lay empty on the cement. “We had instructions not to harm passengers,” said Khaled. “Very strict instructions not to hurt anyone, and to deal with the pilot and the crew with politeness—not to frighten them even.” Still, Khaled knows that her actions did, of course, frighten the innocent passengers, but to her, their momentary fear was a small a price to pay in order to put the suffering of her people on the world’s stage.

    In a post-9/11 world, it’s hard to imagine, but in 1969, hijackings were a relatively new tactic and not considered death sentences to the extent that they are now. Video footage of the passengers aboard TWA flight 840 shows a crowd that is relatively calm—some even express an understanding of Khaled and Issawi’s actions. In video footage of interviews with the passengers after the plane landed, one man reasons, “There was an Israeli assassin on board who was responsible for the deaths of many Arab women and children, and all they wanted to do was bring this assassin to a friendly Arab city and give him a fair trial.” The “assassin” the man is referring to was Yitzhak Rabin; at the time, he was Israel’s ambassador to the United States and was scheduled to be on TWA flight 840 that day, though a last-minute change of plans made it so he was not. Despite the understanding of some, like this passenger, many were understandably upset and shaken.

    After six weeks of off-and-on hunger strikes and questioning in Syria, Khaled and Issawi were released. While they were in jail, Syria made negotiations with Israel that resulted in the release of Palestinian prisoners who had been kept in Israeli prisons. This—and the frenzy of attention that labeled Khaled a hero among many Palestinians, as well as put the Palestinian story on the world’s stage—was enough for Khaled to deem the mission a success.

    Others, however, including many Palestinians, did not agree. For one, whether Khaled knew it at the time or not, this hijacking would tie the word terrorism to the Palestinian resistance for years to come. Many thought her mission tainted their image in front of the world; rather than refugees in need, Palestinians were now terrorists who didn’t deserve sympathy. In 2006 Palestinian–Swedish filmmaker Lina Makboul made a documentary called Leila Khaled: Hijacker. The film ends when Makboul asks Khaled, “Didn’t you ever think that what you were doing would give the Palestinians a bad reputation?”

    Then, the interview cuts out. “By not having her answer in it,” Makboul told me, “I wanted to show that in the end it actually doesn’t matter—because she did it.”

    Still, I was glad to have the opportunity to ask Khaled myself. “I told [Makboul], I think I added to my people, not offended the Palestinian struggle,” said Khaled.

    It makes sense that Khaled was proud of her mission—for one year later, she would do it again. This time, though, it was with a different face.

    After the first hijacking, Leila Khaled quickly became an icon within the Palestinian resistance. Posters of her famous photo were printed out and hung around refugee camps that occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and the diaspora. She was well known—a problem for two reasons. One, she never wanted personal fame; in fact, she found it pretty annoying. “Some would ask me, ’How many hours do you spend in the mirror?’” she said, “as if this was a question of any logic.” She often refused to answer. “We’d be happy to answer all the questions dealing with the cause itself,” she said, “the core issues, why the conflict, who is oppressing who, and so on—these are the main issues that we want to raise in front of the media. Not whether I have a boyfriend or not. That doesn’t mean anything.”

    The second issue was that being very recognizable made it difficult to continue her work with the PFLP. In 1970, Khaled was appointed to participate in another hijacking mission, but her new notoriety meant she could no longer fly under the radar like she had before. Still, no measure was too drastic when it came to the question of Palestine: Between the first hijacking and the second, Khaled underwent six total plastic surgeries in Lebanon.

    On September 6, 1970, Khaled and a man named Patrick Argüello, a Nicaraguan–American who volunteered with the PFLP, attempted to hijack a plane on its way from Amsterdam to New York City. This time, Khaled’s mission did not run so smoothly. After moving to the cockpit and threatening to blow up the plane, Khaled was tackled in the air by guards and passengers while carrying two hand grenades and a pistol. In an attempt to defend her, Argüello fired at those tackling her, but he was shot and later died of his injuries. Simultaneously, the pilot of El Al flight 219 cleverly dropped the plane into a nosedive; Khaled lost balance, making her more vulnerable to attack, despite the visible weapons she carried.

    This operation was a part of a series of PFLP missions known as the Dawson’s Field hijackings. (Dawson’s Field is the deserted airstrip in Jordan where Khaled and Argüello were supposed to force the plane to land.) With Khaled knocked out by the men who tackled her and broke her ribs—and Argüello dead—the plane made an emergency landing in London. In her autobiography, My People Shall Live, Khaled writes, “I should have been the one to be killed because it was my struggle and he was here to support us.”

    After being taken to the hospital, Khaled was held and questioned by British authorities while the PFLP held the passengers who were aboard the rest of the hijacked aircrafts hostage at Dawson’s Field and attempted to negotiate with the countries they were from. The majority were released in Amman a few days later, but the PFLP kept 40, arguing that they were members of the Israeli army and thus “prisoners of war.” On September 30, British authorities let Khaled walk free as part of a negotiated deal with the PFLP; several Palestinian prisoners were also freed from European prisons.

    Upon her release, Khaled went back to Beirut and back to work, though she was constantly on the move to ensure her safety. In November of 1970, not two months after she left prison, she married the man who first taught her how to hold arms. He was a military commander in the PFLP who had previously been jailed for ten years in Iraq, where he was from, for his involvement in the Communist Party. But as tensions in Jordan were on the rise and Khaled’s husband felt pressure to go fight with his men, their relationship began to disintegrate. When Khaled could no longer ignore Israeli threats and decided to go into hiding, it was clear that their marriage was no longer working; the couple decided to get a divorce.

    In 1973 Khaled decided to move to the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. (Shatila is widely known for the massacre of 1982, where death toll estimates are between 700 to 3,500 people—mass graves and a failure to investigate by the Lebanese government account for the wide range.) Fed up with her widespread, international attention, Khaled wanted to be in a humble place. “To be under light all the time was not comfortable for me,” she said. “For this reason I went and lived in Sabra and Shatila camp—to be with the people and work with the people.”

    When Khaled visits Shatila with Lina Makboul in her documentary, she is visibly welcomed as a hero. “I have always dreamt of walking beside you,” a man says to her as she makes her way through the camp on her way to visit an old comrade. Another points to her jokingly, “Do you know Leila Khaled? She is a terrorist!”

    Though Khaled is widely known for the hijackings that took place more than 40 years ago, she has been anything but absent from the resistance since then. In the aftermath of her hijackings, Leila Khaled became involved in the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW) and a member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC). Threats against her safety were a part of her daily life and frequently materialized. On Christmas 1975, she came home to find her sister and her sister’s fiancé shot dead in her apartment. She had been the target.

    In 1978 she left Lebanon to study history in the Soviet Union, where she met her second husband, a medical student and fellow PFLP member, Fayez Hilal. But two years after she began her studies, the resistance called—she was back in Lebanon working at the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) office. Khaled and Hilal had two children in the 80s, Badar and Bashar.

    It was never easy being a woman in the resistance, let alone a mother—she was expected to speak for the entire female Palestinian population. “I had to be the voice of women, those who nobody sees,” she said. Still, she maintains that the victims in the conflict are the Palestinian people in general—not women or men. “To feel injustice and be conscious of who is oppressing you—you will act as a human being, whether you are a woman or a man,” she said. “Men were fighting; they gave their lives. Women also gave their lives. Men and women went to jail.”

    Today, Khaled is an icon of not only the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation, but also of the Palestinian women’s movement. “The revolution changed the image of the Palestinian woman,” she said. “They are also in the revolution on an equal basis—they can do whatever the revolution needs.”

    When Khaled is asked about religion, she is firm that her enemy has never been Judaism. After her second hijacking, Khaled was rushed to a hospital in London, where a cop informed her that her doctor was Jewish. Khaled didn’t mind. “I was against Zionists, not Jews,” Khaled later told Sarah Irving. “[The cop] did not understand the difference, and I was in too much pain to explain.”

    Unlike most notorious terrorist organizations today, Khaled’s organization, the PFLP, has a secular reputation. It was the last week of Ramadan when I spoke to Khaled, but she told me that she isn’t particularly religious. “I think that whatever you are—you believe in Islam, or Christianity, or in Judaism—this is something personal,” she told me. When I asked if she practices Islam, she said, “I practice the values of humanity. These values are also mentioned in Islam: to be honest, to help the poor.”

    Khaled has been called both an Arab-Marxist hijacker and a freedom fighter, regarded as both a terrorist and a hero. When I asked her to define terrorism, she said it was “occupation.” The Leila Khaled on my Skype screen had been through much more than the young woman in the photo with her head loosely wrapped in a keffiyeh, but fundamentally the two are much the same. The terrorist/freedom fighter debate may be relative when it comes to Khaled, but her unwavering devotion and passion for Palestine is indisputable. “I’m from a family who believes in Islam,” she said, “but I’m not a fanatic. I’m a fanatic about Palestine and about my people.”

    #Palestine #PFLP #histoire #nakba #marxisme #sionisme #féminisme #moyen_orient

  • #Piri_Reis: Admiral extraordinaire, the champion of Ottoman cartography
    https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/piri-reis-admiral-extraordinaire-the-champion-of-ottoman-cartography-42239

    Reis’s genius geographical map work was lost to time for several centuries until a part of it was discovered in 1929, indicating the science of mapping in the 16th-century Ottoman Empire was way ahead of its time.

    For any historian interested in cartography, the life of Ottoman admiral Piri Reis is a compelling study of human genius. A trained polymath, he used his extraordinary mathematical skill to produce an exceptionally accurate world map in 1513, opening up new avenues and destinations for sailors, traders and pirates.

    #cartographie #cartographie_ottomane #moyen_orient

  • The Strategic Implications of the Strikes on Saudi Arabia | Center for Strategic and International Studies
    https://www.csis.org/analysis/strategic-implications-strikes-saudi-arabia

    Looking further into the future, the strikes on Saudi Arabia provide a clear strategic warning that the US era of air supremacy in the Gulf, and the near U.S. monopoly on precision strike capability, is rapidly fading . UCAV/RPVs, cruise missiles, and precision strike ballistic missiles are all entering Iranian inventory and have begun to spread to the Houthi and Hezbollah. [...] All of these systems can be used at low levels of conflict intensity and in “gray area” wars, as well as in far more intense conflicts. There also are no clear “firebreaks” to limit escalation, although most sides will want to limit the scale of escalation if they can find some way to do so on favorable terms.

    [...]

    Analysts have been warning about these shifts in the nature of war for years, but the recent strikes on Saudi Arabia have made it clear that they are now at least a limited reality. The US still has a vast superiority in precision strike and IS&R capability, but it is already confronted with the issue of how does it actually use it? Who and what in any given case will be the target? How far will the U.S. be willing to escalate? Who are America’s real and trustworthy strategic partners, and how does the U.S. best cooperate with them? How far is the U.S. willing to risk involvement in a major new war? What new forces will be needed to arm U.S. forces to deter and defend, and equip our strategic partners?

    The seriousness of the questions is now all too obvious. The answers are not.

    #moyen_orient #états-unis

  • America’s biggest base in the Middle East is getting bigger - Middle East - Stripes
    https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/america-s-biggest-base-in-the-middle-east-is-getting-bigger-1.595138

    Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who worked on the National Security Council and at the Departments of State and Defense during President Bill Clinton’s administration, said the expansion of the base showed the contradictions of Trump’s military policy.

    “In the Middle East, and around the world, Trump speaks of these security partnerships with America like a protection #racket,” Katulis said, with little discussion of the strategic purpose for troops abroad. “What is this all for? What’s next?”

    #etats-unis #bases_militaires #moyen_orient

  • Tom Stevenson reviews ‘AngloArabia’ by David Wearing · LRB 9 May 2019
    https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n09/tom-stevenson/what-are-we-there-for

    It is a cliché that the United States and Britain are obsessed with Middle East oil, but the reason for the obsession is often misdiagnosed. Anglo-American interest in the enormous hydrocarbon reserves of the Persian Gulf does not derive from a need to fuel Western consumption . [...] Anglo-American involvement in the Middle East has always been principally about the strategic advantage gained from controlling Persian Gulf hydrocarbons, not Western oil needs. [...]

    Other parts of the world – the US, Russia, Canada – have large deposits of crude oil, and current estimates suggest Venezuela has more proven reserves than Saudi Arabia. But Gulf oil lies close to the surface, where it is easy to get at by drilling; it is cheap to extract, and is unusually ‘light’ and ‘sweet’ (industry terms for high purity and richness). It is also located near the middle of the Eurasian landmass, yet outside the territory of any global power. Western Middle East policy, as explained by Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was to control the Gulf and stop any Soviet influence over ‘that vital energy resource upon which the economic and political stability both of Western Europe and of Japan depend’, or else the ‘geopolitical balance of power would be tipped’. In a piece for the Atlantic a few months after 9/11, Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne explained that Washington ‘assumes responsibility for stabilising the region’ because China, Japan and Europe will be dependent on its resources for the foreseeable future: ‘America wants to discourage those powers from developing the means to protect that resource for themselves.’ Much of US power is built on the back of the most profitable protection #racket in modern history.

    [...]

    It is difficult to overstate the role of the Gulf in the way the world is currently run. In recent years, under both Obama and Trump, there has been talk of plans for a US withdrawal from the Middle East and a ‘#pivot’ to Asia. If there are indeed such plans, it would suggest that recent US administrations are ignorant of the way the system over which they preside works.

    The Arab Gulf states have proved well-suited to their status as US client states, in part because their populations are small and their subjugated working class comes from Egypt and South Asia. [...] There are occasional disagreements between Gulf rulers and their Western counterparts over oil prices, but they never become serious. [...] The extreme conservatism of the Gulf monarchies, in which there is in principle no consultation with the citizenry, means that the use of oil sales to prop up Western economies – rather than to finance, say, domestic development – is met with little objection. Wearing describes the modern relationship between Western governments and the Gulf monarchs as ‘asymmetric interdependence’, which makes clear that both get plenty from the bargain. Since the West installed the monarchs, and its behaviour is essentially extractive, I see no reason to avoid describing the continued Anglo-American domination of the Gulf as #colonial.

    Saudi Arabia and the other five members of the Gulf Co-operation Council are collectively the world’s largest buyer of military equipment by a big margin. [...]. The deals are highly profitable for Western arms companies (Middle East governments account for around half of all British arms sales), but the charge that Western governments are in thrall to the arms companies is based on a misconception. Arms sales are useful principally as a way of bonding the Gulf monarchies to the Anglo-American military. Proprietary systems – from fighter jets to tanks and surveillance equipment – ensure lasting dependence, because training, maintenance and spare parts can be supplied only by the source country. Western governments are at least as keen on these deals as the arms industry, and much keener than the Gulf states themselves. While speaking publicly of the importance of fiscal responsibility, the US, Britain and France have competed with each other to bribe Gulf officials into signing unnecessary arms deals.

    Control of the Gulf also yields less obvious benefits. [...] in 1974, the US Treasury secretary, William Simon, secretly travelled to Saudi Arabia to secure an agreement that remains to this day the foundation of the dollar’s global dominance. As David Spiro has documented in The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony (1999), the US made its guarantees of Saudi and Arab Gulf security conditional on the use of oil sales to shore up the #dollar. Under Simon’s deal, Saudi Arabia agreed to buy massive tranches of US Treasury bonds in secret off-market transactions. In addition, the US compelled Saudi Arabia and the other Opec countries to set oil prices in dollars, and for many years Gulf oil shipments could be paid for only in dollars. A de facto oil standard replaced gold, assuring the dollar’s value and pre-eminence.

    For the people of the region, the effects of a century of AngloArabia have been less satisfactory. Since the start of the war in Yemen in 2015 some 75,000 people have been killed, not counting those who have died of disease or starvation. In that time Britain has supplied arms worth nearly £5 billion to the Saudi coalition fighting the Yemeni Houthis. The British army has supplied and maintained aircraft throughout the campaign; British and American military personnel are stationed in the command rooms in Riyadh; British special forces have trained Saudi soldiers fighting inside Yemen; and Saudi pilots continue to be trained at RAF Valley on Anglesey. The US is even more deeply involved: the US air force has provided mid-air refuelling for Saudi and Emirati aircraft – at no cost, it emerged in November. Britain and the US have also funnelled weapons via the UAE to militias in Yemen. If the Western powers wished, they could stop the conflict overnight by ending their involvement. Instead the British government has committed to the Saudi position. As foreign secretary, Philip Hammond pledged that Britain would continue to ‘support the Saudis in every practical way short of engaging in combat’. This is not only complicity but direct participation in a war that is as much the West’s as it is Saudi Arabia’s.

    The Gulf monarchies are family dictatorships kept in power by external design, and it shows. [...] The main threat to Western interests is internal: a rising reminiscent of Iran’s in 1979. To forestall such an event, Britain equips and trains the Saudi police force, has military advisers permanently attached to the internal Saudi security forces, and operates a strategic communications programme for the Saudi National Guard (called Sangcom). [...]

    As Wearing argues, ‘Britain could choose to swap its support for Washington’s global hegemony for a more neutral and peaceful position.’ It would be more difficult for the US to extricate itself. Contrary to much of the commentary in Washington, the strategic importance of the Middle East is increasing, not decreasing. The US may now be exporting hydrocarbons again, thanks to state-subsidised shale, but this has no effect on the leverage it gains from control of the Gulf. And impending climate catastrophe shows no sign of weaning any nation from fossil fuels , least of all the developing East Asian states. US planners seem confused about their own intentions in the Middle East. In 2017, the National Intelligence Council described the sense of neglect felt by the Gulf monarchies when they heard talk of the phantasmagorical Asia pivot. The report’s authors were profoundly negative about the region’s future, predicting ‘large-scale violence, civil wars, authority vacuums and humanitarian crises persisting for many years’. The causes, in the authors’ view, were ‘entrenched elites’ and ‘low oil prices’. They didn’t mention that maintenance of both these things is US policy.

    #etats-unis #arabie_saoudite #pétrole #moyen_orient #contrôle

  • Antisionisme et antisémitisme : un #amalgame à combattre
    https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org//2019/03/09/antisionisme-et-antisemitisme-un-amalgame-combattre_117798.h

    L’agression verbale d’Alain Finkielkraut en marge d’une manifestation des gilets jaunes le 16 février 2019, dans un contexte où le ministère de l’Intérieur a annoncé des actes antisémites en hausse, a soulevé une émotion bien légitime mais aussi des polémiques politiciennes bien calculées. Intervenant peu après, lors du dîner annuel du Crif, le Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France, Emmanuel Macron a assimilé l’antisémitisme et l’antisionisme.

    Reprenant à son compte une demande répétée des dirigeants du Crif, il a proposé de modifier la définition de l’antisémitisme pour y inclure l’antisionisme. Déjà en juillet 2017, recevant le Premier ministre israélien Netanyahou à l’Élysée à l’occasion de l’anniversaire de la rafle du Vél’d’Hiv’, Macron avait affirmé  : «  Nous ne céderons rien à l’antisionisme car il est LA forme réinventée de l’antisémitisme.  » Avant lui Manuel Valls, alors Premier ministre, avait déclaré en 2016 lors du dîner annuel du Crif  : «  L’antisionisme, c’est-à-dire tout simplement le synonyme de l’antisémitisme et de la haine d’Israël.  »

    Ces politiciens s’alignent ainsi derrière les dirigeants israéliens, leurs alliés indéfectibles au #Moyen_Orient, qui voudraient criminaliser toutes les critiques vis-à-vis de leur politique coloniale. Ils cherchent à flatter la fraction de l’électorat juif qui se reconnaît dans ces positions sionistes. En organisant une manifestation officielle à laquelle tous les chefs de partis ont pris part, Premier ministre en tête, les partis qui se succèdent au gouvernement depuis des décennies cherchent à faire oublier leurs responsabilités dans l’évolution de la situation politique et sociale qui rend possibles ces actes antisémites...

    – Combattre l’#antisémitisme, d’où qu’il vienne
    – Le combat du #Crif et des partisans inconditionnels d’Israël
    – Le #sionisme, longtemps rejeté par les Juifs
    – L’#internationalisme, seule voie pour les exploités

  • Opinion : To Understand France’s Crisis, You Must First Understand Its Cheese
    Karl Sharro, BuzzFeed, le 20 décembre 2018
    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/karlsharro/an-ancient-land-beset-by-ancient-rivalries

    Karl Sharro is a Lebanese expert analyst on WENA (Western Europe and North American) affairs.

    When you think of France, you think of fine cheeses and wines. Ironically — tragically, perhaps — it’s those cheeses and wines that explain the roots of France’s divisions. As the old French saying goes: “The people who make the cheese are not the ones who eat it.” The origins of the saying have been lost in time, but it’s thought to refer to the tension between the peasantry who produce but can’t afford their products and the bourgeoisie who produce nothing but consume the variety of French delicacies made in the countryside.

    A French cheeseboard with several types of cheese is the perfect representation of the nation. Different parts that have never truly come together, as you know if you tried to mix a Camembert and a Roquefort. And at the center is Paris, the dominant baguette as it is referred to derogatorily. There are many fault lines in this nation, but none are stronger than those between the countryside and the city. At heart, this is a philosophical dispute, as all French disagreements are. It is a clash between the rustic and the Cartesian worldviews — the former has existed for centuries, the latter imposed after the 1789 revolution in the name of the Enlightenment.

    As seasoned observers of the West like myself have become accustomed to in recent years, there is a tendency in Western culture to blame events on external actors and complex conspiracy theories. This strange trait can come as a shock to more rational Middle Eastern observers, but it is quite common across the WENA region, on the streets and in the media. Soon after the protests took off, some attributed them to a changing Facebook algorithm, and others argued they were caused by Russian agitation and propaganda.

    #Karl_Sharro #KarlreMarks :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/730563
    https://seenthis.net/messages/738075

    #Gilets_Jaunes #Fromages #Moyen_Orient #WENA

  • « – Tu as tué ? – Oui, sans doute. » Témoignages exclusifs de combattants français contre Daech
    https://la-bas.org/5178

    Djihadistes, islamistes, on a beaucoup parlé de ces Français radicalisés partis combattre aux côtés de Daech, mais beaucoup moins des autres, de ces volontaires français qui, au contraire, sont allés se battre contre Daech, contre l’État islamique, aux côtés des Kurdes du Rojava. Qui sont-ils ? Que veulent-ils ? Quel est cet anarcho-communo-féminisme dont ils se réclament ? Quel est ce Rojava pour lequel ils se disent prêts à mourir en martyr ? Écoutez les témoignages de deux d’entre eux, deux parcours, deux engagements, à l’heure où « mourir pour des idées » semble un mythe dépassé.Continuer la lecture…

    #Radio #Moyen_Orient #Luttes

  • Menaces sur le Rojava
    https://la-bas.org/5388

    Les États-Unis vont donc quitter la Syrie. Donald J. Trump a signé le décret ordonnant le retrait des troupes américaines engagées contre l’État islamique, estimant que l’État islamique est vaincu : « après des victoires historiques contre l’État islamique, il est temps de rapatrier nos jeunes gens formidables ! » Cette décision fait craindre le pire pour la Fédération démocratique de la Syrie du Nord, appelée également Rojava.Continuer la lecture…

    #Radio #Autour_du_Monde_diplomatique #Moyen_Orient

  • Medieval Arabic recipes and the history of hummus | The Recipes Project
    https://recipes.hypotheses.org/10414

    Via @hasepi

    Among historians of food in the Middle East, Kanz al-fawa’id and other medieval cookbooks are often discussed in terms of how much the region’s cooking has changed since they were written – and with good reason. Charles Perry has suggested that Middle Eastern #cuisine as we know it is 500 years old, pointing out that many of today’s staple ingredients, like tomatoes and potatoes, and common techniques, like stuffing vegetables, are absent from medieval Arabic recipe collections, having been introduced to the region centuries later. And medieval cooks’ liberal use of cinnamon, caraway, and coriander is a far cry from the typical Middle Eastern palate today.

    But not all contemporary Middle Eastern foods are without precedent in these medieval works. These collections also include recipes whose flavorings and makeup have shifted over time even as their essential techniques or structures have remained the same. An excellent example is the assortment of tahini- and chickpea-based dishes that we can read as forerunners of today’s #hummus (Arabic for “chickpeas”).

    [...]

    Examples of Arab influence on medieval European recipes abound, from the introduction of durum wheat to imported medicinal ingredients to the aesthetics of medieval cooking sauces. Conversely, shifts in spice use in the Middle East followed early modern Ottoman and European trends. Who knows how many more unexplored connections lie in the wealth of medieval Arabic recipes – more accessible today than ever.

    #recette #Pois_chiche #houmous #moyen_orient

  • Richard Semmler sur Twitter : ". #KarlreMarks: “What really is the #MiddleEast? – It’s the region between Egypt, Iran, Yemen, Turkey and the #BritishMuseum. There’s thousands of years of cultural exchange between us, based on the looting of our artifacts.” #Raubkunst #Kolonialismus" / Twitter
    https://twitter.com/rennsemmler/status/1066017461366075392

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXHcul337fI&feature=youtu.be

    #moyen_orient

  • Les Natoufiens fabriquaient de la bière il y a 13 000 ans (avant l’arrivée de l’agriculture).

    Les premières preuves archéologiques de brassage de la bière à base de céréales avant même l’arrivée de l’agriculture proviennent des Natoufiens, des populations semi-sédentaires, vivant en Méditerranée orientale entre le Paléolithique et le Néolithique, après la dernière période glaciaire. Les Natoufians de la grotte de Raqefet ont collecté des plantes disponibles localement, stocké des graines maltées et fabriqué de la bière dans le cadre de leurs rituels.

    « (...) avec la production de bière, les vestiges de la grotte Raqefet offrent une image très vivante et colorée des modes de vie natoufiens, de leurs capacités technologiques et de leurs inventions. »

    (...) Les résultats indiquent que les Natoufiens ont exploité au moins sept types de plantes associés aux mortiers, notamment du blé ou de l’orge, de l’avoine, des légumineuses et des fibres libériennes (y compris le lin). Ils ont emballé des aliments végétaux dans des contenants en fibre et les ont stockés dans des mortiers à blocs. Ils ont utilisé des mortiers de roche-mère pour piler et cuire des aliments végétaux, et pour brasser de la bière à base de blé / orge, probablement servis dans des fêtes rituelles il y a 13 000 ans.

    Les modèles d’usure et d’assemblage microbotanique suggèrent que deux des trois mortiers à blocs examinés ont été utilisés comme conteneurs de stockage pour les aliments végétaux - y compris les malts de blé et d’orge. Ils étaient probablement recouverts de couvercles, probablement faits de dalles de pierre et d’autres matériaux. Les aliments ont probablement été placés dans des paniers en fibres libériennes pour faciliter leur manipulation. Les puits étroits et profonds peuvent avoir fourni des conditions fraîches convenant au stockage des aliments, en particulier pour la conservation des malts de céréales.

    En combinant les données sur l’usure et les résidus, le troisième mortier étudié a été interprété comme un récipient multifonctionnel destiné à la préparation des aliments, comprenant des aliments végétaux et de la bière à base de blé / orge, probablement avec des légumineuses et d’autres plantes.

    Les preuves de brassage de bière à la grotte de Raqefet, il y a 13 000 ans, constituent un autre exemple des complexes sociaux et rituels du Natouf. Le brassage de la bière peut avoir été, au moins en partie, une motivation sous-jacente à la culture de céréales dans le sud du Levant, confirmant l’hypothèse de la bière proposée par les archéologues il ya plus de 60 ans.

    #Préhistoire #Natoufiens #alcool #Asie #Moyen_Orient
    #Li_Liu #Stanford_University #Danny Rosenberg #University_d'Haifa
    #Hao_Zhao #Université_de_Zhengzhou
    #XXXLIEN19LIENXXX
    #13000BC

    A prehistoric thirst for craft beer
    https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/a-prehistoric-thirst-for-craft-beer

  • 5-year drought raises questions over Israel’s water strategy
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/5-drought-raises-questions-over-062408778.html

    It’s a confounding situation for a country that places itself on the forefront of desalination technology in an arid region, where water is a key geostrategic issue that has its own clauses in peace agreements.

    “Nobody expected five years of drought in a row, so despite our desalination capacity, it’s still a very, very grave situation,” said Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of energy.

    Some say Israel’s technological prowess may not be enough to overcome the forces of nature.

    Situated in the heart of the Middle East, #Israel is in one of the driest regions on earth, traditionally relying on a short rainy season each winter to replenish its limited supplies.

    Years of decreased rainfall have reduced the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main natural water source, to some of its lowest recorded levels, and Israel has stopped pumping water from it to its national system.

    The current drought has also dried out some tributaries that feed into the Jordan River, which flows south into the Sea of Galilee then squiggles 220 miles (360 kilometers) to the lowest place on Earth, the Dead Sea.

    #eau #moyen_orient

  • Penser l’Union européenne à l’échelle mondiale – Le grand continent
    https://legrandcontinent.eu/2018/06/27/penser-lunion-europeenne-a-lechelle-mondiale

    Publié 27 juin 2018 par gegeurope

    Pour son deuxième entretien, le pôle cartographie du GEG a choisi de rencontrer Michel Foucher dans son bureau du Collège d’études mondiales, boulevard Raspail à Paris. Michel Foucher est géographe. Ancien ambassadeur de France en Lettonie et ancien directeur du Centre d’analyse et de prévision du ministère des Affaires étrangères, il est titulaire de la chaire de géopolitique appliquée au Collège d’études mondiales (FMSH). Il est notamment l’auteur de Fragments d’Europe (réed. 1998), L’Europe et l’avenir du monde (2009) et Le retour des frontières (2016). Il s’est plus récemment entretenu avec Bertrand Badie dans Vers un monde néo-national ? (2017) et co-dirige chaque année les rapports Schuman sur l’Europe avec Thierry Chopin.

    L’occasion pour nous de discuter des frontières de l’Europe, de la place de celle-ci dans le monde et de « l’impensé géopolitique européen. »

    Groupe d’études géopolitiques. – On sent une évolution de votre pensée entre 1998 et 2017. Vous devenez moins optimiste quant à l’avenir de l’Union européenne (UE), notamment sur la solidarité, sur l’émergence des mouvements nationaux. Est-ce réellement le cas ? Et si oui, pourquoi ?

    Michel Foucher. – C’est une question qu’on ne m’a jamais posée ! La période que vous indiquez, après 1989-91, était en effet assez enthousiasmante parce que, à l’exception de la Yougoslavie, les transformations politiques et géopolitiques furent tout à fait majeures et non violentes. J’étais pour Antenne 2 en novembre à Checkpoint Charlie, j’ai vécu l’ouverture du mur de Berlin en la commentant. Une vraie bifurcation avait lieu. Puis, je me suis souvent rendu en Pologne et on observait les transformations de la capitale à vue d’œil, notamment avec le Collège d’Europe de Natolin, campus du Collège de Bruges, ouvert à des étudiants du continent. Ma présence là-bas est d’ailleurs un effet du livre Fragments d’Europe. C’était le livre de chevet de Delors, selon ce qu’il me dit plus tard.

    #europe #michel_foucher #géostratégie #moyen_orient

  • Qu’est-ce que c’est, le Rojava ?
    https://la-bas.org/5112

    Corinne Morel Darleux nous revient d’un voyage en Syrie du Nord, dans la région du Rojava, qui a déclaré depuis 2014 son autonomie politique, en pleine poudrière syrienne ! Expérience politique en cours...Continuer la lecture…

    #Vidéo #Le_fond_de_l'air_est_vert #Moyen_Orient #Luttes #Un_autre_chemin #Résistance

  • Première preuve de l’utilisation d’un mors parmi les premiers équidés domestiques, et en particulier les ânes, au Proche-Orient.
    16 mai 2018

    Earliest evidence for equid bit wear in the ancient Near East : The « ass » from Early Bronze Age Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel

    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196335
    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196335.g011&size=inline

    L’analyse d’un âne domestique sacrifié et enterré dans un quartier résidentiel domestique de l’âge de bronze précoce (EB) IIIB (vers 2800-2600 avant notre ère) à Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi / Gath, Israël, indique la présence d’usure du mors sur la prémolaire inférieure 2 ( LPM2). C’est la première preuve de l’utilisation d’un mors parmi les premiers équidés domestiques, et en particulier les ânes, au Proche-Orient.

    Les surfaces d’émail mésial sur les LPM2 droit et gauche de l’âne (..) en question sont légèrement usées d’une manière qui suggère qu’un embout dentaire (métal, os, bois, etc.) a été utilisé pour contrôler l’animal. Compte tenu du contexte chronologique sûr de l’enterrement (sous le plancher d’une maison EB IIIB), il est suggéré que cet animal fournit la première preuve de l’utilisation d’un mors sur un équidé domestique précoce du Proche-Orient.

    #Préhistoire #Age_du_Bronze #Moyen_Orient #domestication #équidé
    https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0196335 #Haskel_J._Greenfield
    #Université_du_Manitoba

  • La jeunesse palestinienne réinvente la lutte
    https://la-bas.org/4937

    Depuis la décision unilatérale de Donald J. Trump de reconnaître Jérusalem comme la capitale d’Israël, le gouvernement ultra-droitier de Benyamin Netanyahou se sent pousser des ailes : un nouveau programme de colonies en Cisjordanie a été approuvée en janvier dernier, de quoi susciter la colère des Palestiniens, déjà ravivée en décembre 2017 par l’annonce du président des États-Unis de transférer l’ambassade des États-Unis de Tel Aviv à Jérusalem.Continuer la lecture…

    #Radio #Autour_du_Monde_diplomatique #Luttes #Politique #Israël #Moyen_Orient

  • Le mouvement BDS pour les droits des Palestiniens nominé au Prix #Nobel de la Paix | Le Club de Mediapart
    https://blogs.mediapart.fr/register/blog/030218/le-mouvement-bds-pour-les-droits-des-palestiniens-nomine-au-prix-nob

    Décerner le Prix Nobel de la #Paix au mouvement #BDS serait un signe puissant montrant que la communauté internationale est engagée à soutenir une paix juste au #Moyen_Orient et à utiliser des moyens pacifiques pour mettre fin à l’#occupation, à l’#apartheid et aux violations du #droit_international. C’est un espoir nouveau pour les Palestiniens et les Israéliens que propose ce parlementaire norvégien !

    #Israel #Bjornar_Moxnes

  • Et si le pays de Galles avait été offert aux juifs pour y établir leur patrie ?
    – Kamel Hawwash - 2 novembre 2017
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/opinions/et-si-le-pays-de-galles-avait-t-offert-aux-juifs-pour-y-tablir-leur-p

    (...) Et si Balfour avait offert le Pays de Galles aux sionistes ?

    Si nous partons du principe que les autorités britanniques voulaient en 1917 aider un peuple persécuté à trouver refuge, alors elles auraient sans nul doute pu offrir aux sionistes une patrie dans un territoire qu’elles contrôlaient à l’époque, n’est-ce pas ?

    « Charité bien ordonnée commence par soi-même », dit-on. Au moment de la déclaration, le Premier ministre britannique était David Lloyd George, un fier Gallois. Que ce serait-il passé si la Déclaration Balfour avait été rédigée comme suit : « Le gouvernement de Sa Majesté envisage favorablement l’établissement en Palestine au pays de Galles d’un foyer national pour le peuple juif ? ».

    Aujourd’hui, le pays de Galles couvre une superficie de 20 779 km2. Israël, la Cisjordanie et la bande de Gaza couvrent 20 770 km2.

    En 1917, la population du pays de Galles était d’environ 2,5 millions de personnes, tandis que celle de la Palestine était d’environ 1 million (les juifs représentant moins de 10 % de ce chiffre).

    Si Balfour avait offert le pays de Galles aux sionistes, on peut dire sans trop se compromettre que les Gallois auraient rejeté la déclaration. Les juifs, bien que déçus de ne pas avoir obtenu la Palestine, auraient alors bientôt commencé à émigrer pour coloniser la terre galloise.

    Des tensions entre les deux groupes auraient alors probablement éclaté. Londres aurait tenté de maintenir la paix, mais aurait probablement échoué, en raison notamment de la lutte en cours en Irlande – que les Britanniques contrôlaient également – pour l’indépendance.

    Les sionistes auraient mis en place des milices armées en vue de combattre les Gallois. De plus en plus de juifs seraient arrivés au pays de Galles au début des années 1940. Les Nations unies seraient alors intervenues, comme ce fut le cas avec la Palestine, et auraient offert un plan de partage donnant aux juifs 56 % des terres et laissant les autochtones gallois avec seulement 44 % de leur territoire.

    Peut-on vraiment penser que les Gallois auraient accepté d’abandonner ne serait-ce qu’un centimètre de leur patrie aux sionistes ? Ou auraient-ils résisté, y compris par le biais de la lutte armée ?(...)

    #Palestine #Grande-Bretagne #Déclaration_Balfour #Balfour_declaration #Histoire #Sionisme #Racisme #Colonialisme #Moyen_Orient

  • Pourquoi la Déclaration Balfour n’a jamais promis un État juif |
    Basheer Nafi | 2 novembre 2017
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/opinions/pourquoi-la-d-claration-balfour-n-jamais-promis-un-tat-juif-886251418

    Correspondance Balfour-Curzon

    Lors d’une visite de recherche au Bureau des archives publiques, il y a quelques années, j’ai trouvé un document très intéressant : il contenait une correspondance datée de début 1919 entre Lord Balfour, secrétaire des Affaires étrangères, et son collègue du Cabinet, le Lord President du Conseil, Lord Curzon. On notera que Curzon devait succéder à Balfour au ministère des Affaires étrangères un peu plus tard la même année.

    La première correspondance de Curzon à Balfour, alors à Paris pour la conférence de paix, fut écrite le 16 janvier 1919, suite à une réunion entre Curzon et le major-général Arthur Wigram Money, administrateur de Jérusalem sous les ordres d’Allenby.

    « Un gouvernement juif, sous quelque forme que ce soit, entraînerait de violentes réactions arabes, et les neuf-dixièmes non-juifs de la population ne feraient qu’une bouchée des Hébreux »

    - Lord Curzon

    Dans sa lettre, Curzon explique son interprétation de la lettre de Money : « Un gouvernement juif, sous quelque forme que ce soit, entraînerait de violentes réactions arabes et les neuf-dixièmes non-juifs de la population ne feraient qu’une bouchée des Hébreux. »

    Curzon déclara penser la même chose que Money, et ajouta : « Comme vous le savez, je partage cet avis et j’ai longtemps estimé extravagantes les prétentions de Weizmann et compagnie ; il convient donc de les contrecarrer. »

    Quelques jours plus tard, le 20 janvier, Balfour envoya sa réponse. Sa lettre, brève, ne laissait aucune équivoque : l’engagement britannique envers les sionistes n’impliquait aucunement la création d’un État juif. Il écrivit : « Pour autant que je sache, Weizmann n’a jamais présenté de revendications en faveur d’un gouvernement juif de Palestine. Une telle demande serait à mon avis totalement irrecevable et, personnellement, je ne pense pas qu’il faille aller plus loin que la déclaration initiale que j’ai présentée à Lord Rothschild. »

    Le 26 janvier, Curzon écrivit à Balfour une deuxième lettre, très élaborée : « […] Weizmann peut vous dire une chose, et vous pouvez avoir votre propre interprétation de l’expression ‘’foyer national’’ ; mais soyez bien certain qu’il cherche tout à fait autre chose. »
    Pas question d’un État juif en Palestine

    Le 25 mars 1919, pris d’un sentiment croissant de désespoir quant à la politique palestinienne, Curzon envoya à Balfour une troisième lettre pour commenter la décision de la Conférence de paix de mandater une commission d’enquête américaine au Moyen-Orient arabe.

    Il écrivit : « La seule chose que j’aimerais personnellement voir faire la commission serait de nous extraire de la position en Palestine... Il y a quelque temps, je vous disais que le Dr. Weizmann avait tout simplement abandonné le modeste programme sur lequel il s’était mis d’accord avec vous il y a un an ou plus, et que les ambitions des sionistes avaient franchi toutes les bornes de l’acceptable. »

    Curzon conclut sa lettre en exprimant l’espoir que la commission américaine, connue plus tard sous le nom de Commission King-Crane, recommanderait que « le mandat en Palestine soit confié à n’importe qui d’autre plutôt qu’à la Grande-Bretagne ».

    Voilà ce que pensaient deux grands noms du gouvernement britannique pendant et immédiatement après la guerre. Tous deux servaient en qualité de secrétaires aux Affaires étrangères, mais le nom de Balfour sera pour toujours celui attaché à la fameuse déclaration aux sionistes. Il n’en reste pas moins que tous deux indiquaient clairement que la déclaration n’avait rien à voir avec la fondation d’un État juif en Palestine.

    Il ne fait aucun doute que la Déclaration Balfour est à l’origine de tous les maux du Moyen-Orient arabe. Il semble, cependant, que même ce funeste document ne fût pas destiné à donner naissance au monstre qu’il finit par engendrer.