Levantine Dreamhouse

Syrian Regime Loosing its Grip on Power

2012-01-28T17:13:00.001-05:00

Despite the regime's continued bluster in the face of Arab league and UN diplomatic maneuvering, the events on the ground suggests that its authority is rapidly unraveling. Josh Landis, in a piece with a notable change of tone about the regime, says that it is doomed but it will hang on for another year or two. It is hard to see how it can last that long. For several months only parts of Homs were no-go areas for the regime. Over the last two weeks, several areas across the country have managed keep the security forces at bay with the help of the FSA. Notable areas include the town of Zabadani as well as Douma and Saqba, minutes from the center of Damascus, the once impregnable seat of Assad's power. This will embolden opposition demonstrators and hasten the flow of deserters from the armed forces. It is also likely to rattle some Bashar's reluctant supporters and many fence-sitters enough to get them to switch sides. The real question is what the regime's insiders will do now that it has become crystal clear that unless forced, Bashar will not alter his "iron fist" policy to accommodate any political transition plan whether it came form AL or the UN. One exception might be Russia as they may have enough leverage with the regime to have them change course. Although given Russia's interest in a continued toehold in the Mediterranean, it may push Bashar aside but will not advocate for . Several possible end game scenarios have been discussed. One of the options, predicts a palace coup that would replace Bashar and launch a transition process. Most of the others are too depressing to contemplate.

Given the violence and trauma of the last eleven months and given that any predicted transition will very likely involve a period of chaos, I fear the specter of retributive violence and its effect on the fabric of Syrian society. In preparation for this eventuality, activists and opposition leaders should systematically quash any and all sectarian incitement and emphasize that a representative democratic state is meant to benefit all Syrians, even those who had supported the present regime. The revolution would be considered a failure if it succeeded in toppling the regime and then failed to capture the hearts of all Syrians.

Is Bashar Following in Ghaddafi's Footsteps?

2012-01-11T22:47:00.000-05:00

Bashar's fourth speech since the uprisings was long on hot air and short on substance, not unlike his first three. In fact there is nothing, absolutely nothing new in the speech that should inspire hope that some modicum of reality or pragmatism has seeped into his thick skull. On the contrary as the crisis deepens and his regime unravels, Bashar's tone has be become more desperately defiant. The speech was rambling, full of hubris, faulty logic, paranoid delusions, outright lies and false bravado. Some the explanatory details he gave were laughable were the consequences of such a disturbed thought process not so tragic for the people of Syria. We now learn, for example, that there are 60, not 62 or 73, but exactly 60 media outlets worldwide who have conspired to tarnish the image of Syrian regime by falsifying and fabrication news about Syria.

The president paints every last opponent of the his regime with the same terrorist, traitor, agent of foreign powers brush. It follows that they have to be crushed with an iron fist. In effect, he says, there is no opposition to talk to. As in his ABC interview, which was incidentally, according to him, also edited to make him look bad, he shows no remorse, no guilt and no admission of wrongdoing. All the while his security forces and shabeeha thugs continue to kill, maim, imprison and torture unarmed civilians. As Bashar mocks the AL in his speech, his henchmen are playing a shell game with Observers rendering the whole exercise a farce. Some honorable individual observers have had enough and walked out.

How can anyone then, against such a putrid background, take any of Bashar's talk of reform seriously? How can anyone still think that there is any sliver of hope that a negotiated settlement is possible? Bashar has had 11 months to respond to this challenge of his authority and the only response has been an unrelenting and increasingly brutal crackdown. Compromise is not possible when the side with the overwhelming force, the side that can instantaneously stop the killing if it chooses to, refuses to do so.

The regime's path is not only destructive for Syria, it is eventually self-destructive. The only way I can foresee a somewhat orderly transition is for a palace revolt that would bring in more pragmatic elements capable of steering the country away form the abyss. This unfortunately, is a long shot and I am increasingly worried that Bashar's path will take Syria down the same path as Libya: civil war, with or without foreign military intervention.

Is this the freedom that you want?

2012-01-02T12:46:00.000-05:00

Off a back alley, on the floor of a small room,

you lie in a pool of crimson blood, dying

the doctor, with nothing but a bandage

is unable to heal your gaping wounds

Your family pleads with strangers in orange vests

from far off Egypt, Sudan and Mauritania

because your privileged compatriots in the City

show no empathy for your ilk

You are but a hoax to them, a conspiracy,

a figment of fevered, primitive minds,

who demand the right to freedom and dignity

and place their fate in the hands of the divine

Your protestations are disturbing to them,

you expose their fake modernity for what it is,

the basest form of human existence,

privilege as reward for absolute subservience

They are the modern slaves whose master,

a deified leader with no redeeming qualities,

demands absolute obedience and yet,

unlike your God, shows no mercy or compassion

And so when one of the privileged

stands by your expiring body and chides:

"Is this the freedom that you want?"

you answer: "Yes, God save your rotten soul....."

2011: How Arab Citizens Lost their Fear and Regained their Dignity

2011-12-31T17:44:00.000-05:00

There is no adjective that can capture the enormity of what happened in the Arab world in 2011. Suffice it to say that the region will never be the same. It will be a infinitely better place; it already is. The citizens of the Arab world have shed their mantle of fear and regained their dignity and with it they have reclaimed their freedom. And with freedom comes hope.

A skeptic would say that despite the ongoing uprisings in the Arab world, little tangible change has in fact occurred. The big change is intangible, it is a change the mindset of the people. Loss of fear is liberating, it allows people to think for themselves, to dream and to hope. All one has to do is to look at the faces of the young and old in Tahrir square beaming with pride and confidence, to feel the energy and sense of elation emanating from the chanting crowds in Cairo or Homs or Sanaa. This is a sea change for the region. The people are longer willing to play the role of docile, pliant sheep to local power elites and all the regional and world powers who conspire to keep them submissive, stagnant and predictable. The regimes of the region should take note, the citizen has been empowered and it is no longer business as usual. The most dramatic example is the recent response in Egypt to the videotaped beating of the female protester. Overnight, thousands of Egyptian women descended onto the streets of Cairo to protest. It was a sight to behold, women of all ages and from across Egypt's cultural and social spectrum were out in the street in a spontaneous show of support for a fellow citizen. This type of a grassroots response to the plight of a single citizen would have been unheard not too long ago. The change in people's mindset is not only manifested in street activism but in what people dare to say and dare to think. The previously stale fare served up on the web from the Middle East is now replaced by a flood of original ideas, thoughts and creative expression. Emboldened TV anchors and journalists are no longer willing to tow the official line; they are asking hard questions and demanding answers. Politicians are no longer untouchable and unaccountable. Another dividend of the Arab Spring is that it has brought the people of the region closer together. Activists exchange ideas and have helped each other in organizing acts of civil disobedience and banners in demonstrations in one country often offered support for the people demonstrating in another.

In the last decade a series of UN reports on human development in the Arab world painted an increasingly grim picture of the region by whatever index of measurement used. As the rest of the world moved forward, we seem to be moving back. No longer; the Arab Spring has shaken the world. Occupy movements across the world were inspired by the Arab Spring and the world's most populous country, China, clamped down hard on protesters fearing the contagion of the Middle East revolts would reach its shores. The world stands in awe at the courage of the young men and women who stood their ground and sacrificed their lives for the good of their people.

The revolts in the Middle East are far from over and the clouds of instability and unrest will continue to plague the region for years to come. Change will take time; the corrupt autocracies will leave behind few if any viable civic institutions. Make no mistake about it though, there is no turning back and the region will be a better place. We owe it to the thousand of mostly young men and women, who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that the rest can live free.

The Arab League Observer Mission is a Farce

2011-12-27T22:20:00.000-05:00

I don't know much about "observing" a slaughter as it is happening. I think I would at the very least like to have a pen and a clip board with me; perhaps a camera might come in handy to document what I saw. And, as a supposed impartial arbiter of what is happening, I would tell my government minders to fuck off so I can "observe" what is happening from the other side. Serious observers would be on the ground with helmets an flack jackets not ridiculous orange vests like construction workers. That latter detail is perhaps telling; the regime knows with certainty that no one will shoot at the observers. This is not a war zone they are entering, it is a one-sided massacre implemented by a murderous regime. The observers in the second video, including the head of the mission, the Sudanese general Mohammad al-Dabi seem unaffected by the heart-breaking pleas of a local man asking them to come into their neighborhood. The government minder brushes off the man's pleas without any objection from the observers. There might be a reason why general al-Dabi seemed unfazed by what he saw. He knows a thing or two about waging war against your own people and the utility of thugs like the Shabbiha to do your dirty work. Or perhaps it is that the AL observers, while being entertained by the government in Damascus for two days before they managed to make it to Homs, have fully imbibed the regime's narrative and have already made up their minds. I thought the AL had finally made itself relevant by agreeing to send observers to Syria. I was wrong, it is the same shamefully incompetent and irrelevant body.

Tomorrow, the tanks will be back in Homs and the observers will have moved on to Hama for another few hours of useless observation. If the observers continues to willingly play the cat and mouse game of the regime, their mission will not only be useless, their inaction will be tantamount to complicity in the ongoing murder of innocent, unarmed civilians.

The Syrian Regime's Cynical Game

2011-12-24T09:55:00.001-05:00

When claims by activists that hundreds of people are mowed down by the regime around Idlib earlier this week, it created but a ripple in the world media because there were no "visuals" and the sources are "unverifiable". Conveniently, a day after the arrival of the Arab League advance team of observers, two explosions rock Damascus with the Syrian state media at hand to document the carnage. Media outlets around the world publish the regime's version of events without questions, complete with visuals. Suicide bombers, they said, even though one of the "bombers" was picked up a couple of hours later. The security forces, inept at everything except the torture and killing of their own citizens, figured out within the hour that it was the work of Al Qaeda. SANA, publishes the accusation adding, without a hint of irony, that it was part of the "Zio-American conspiracy". The AL observers are rushed to the scene to "observe" and the regime spin masters are out in force to tell the world, "we told you so". The Russian leadership, practically silent for nine months and over 6000 deaths, suddenly develops a conscience and deplores the bombing as heinous crimes. With Al Qaeda's name invoked, western media minds tend to freeze and lose all objectivity. This narrative also works to reinforce the regime's local support. In a twist on the Youtube video of the soldier kicking a bound protester as he tells him, "you want freedom? I'll give you freedom", the minhebbakjis (regime ass-kissers) point at the carnage in Damascus and ask the opposition accusingly, "is this the freedom that you want?" Of course Syrians are not easily duped, except of course those who wear pictures of the eternal leader and choose to salute him -appropriately- with a Nazi-style salute (below). The cynicism and Machiavellian machinations of the Assad dynasty are well known and there are no moral boundaries to their take on "the end justifies the means."

Quickly forgotten in the media are the hundreds killed in Idlib and the basic fact that, for the last several months, the daily death toll among Syrian citizens at the hands of the regime has equaled and often exceeded that of the Damascus bombings. All in all, this criminal act, was the perfect end of the year present for the embattled regime; or was it a present it gave itself?

Syria Loses its Doctor of the Revolution

2011-12-11T22:37:00.001-05:00

Dr. Ibrahim Nahel Othman was born in 1985, the year I became a doctor. He was the youngest of several siblings and, according to his friends, his mother's favorite. Ibrahim obtained his medical degree in Damascus in 2009 and was in training to become an orthopedist when the Syrian uprising began on March 15th of this year. A soft-spoken, popular young man who believed in non-violence, he was appalled by the loss of life and the injuries sustained by peaceful demonstrators at the hands of the Syrian security forces. More outrageous was that many of the injured feared going to public hospitals as the security forces raided them periodically looking for and arresting the injured. They even raided private clinics and arrested both the injured and the treating physicians. By one account some 700 physicians have been arrested and several have died. True to his calling, Ibrahim could not stand by and watch. He founded with other physicians the Damascus Phyisicans Coordinating Committee and became it spokesman using the pseudonym Khaled Al Hakeem. He was instrumental in setting up dozens of secret field clinics to deal with the flood of injured at the hands of the security forces. Risking life and limb, Ibrahim ventured to other restive cities like Hama and Homs, to help set up and run field clinics. He had become the Doctor of the Revolution and his laudable humanitarian work landed him on the most wanted list of this most inhumane of regimes. Sensing his life in danger, he was making his way to the Turkish border yesterday when he was cut down, in the prime of a promising life, by the regime's henchmen outside the village of Kirbet El Joz.

This is an unspeakable personal tragedy for his family and friends, one that is unfortunately repeated dozens of time a day in Syria. The greater tragedy with the loss of young men and women like Ibrahim, intelligent, passionate and driven individuals, is that Syria is deprived of its future leaders.

Rest in peace, Ibrahim. I am awed and humbled by your courage and compassion. You are an inspiration to our profession and to our country.

Syria: Bashar's 4360 "Mistakes" ... and Counting

2011-12-09T19:33:00.001-05:00

Bashar Al Assad's interview was one of the most inarticulate, discombobulated, contradictory and mendacious performances by any head of state I had ever seen. It is even worse when you read the full transcript rather than just watch the sanitized video that was broadcast.

One of the most outrageous claims is that there was no official policy to shoot or maltreat peaceful demonstrators. Those who died were the result of "mistakes" committed by individuals. How many mistakes should be committed before we can declare it a policy? Even more troubling is his total lack of remorse. Even if every last civilian victim of the last 9 months were killed by his fictitious terrorist gangs, he should feel remorseful because he failed miserably to protect his own people.

For those doubters, those who still cling to the notion that there is an ounce of decency in this man, here is the list of 4360 of Bashar's "mistakes" as of December 6th.

Syrian Blogger, Activist Razan Ghazzawi Arrested

2011-12-04T16:33:00.001-05:00

The Local Co-ordination Committees activist network say Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi was arrested on Sunday at the Syrian-Jordanian border as she was on her way to attend a workshop for defenders of freedom of the press in the Arab world in Amman as the representative of the Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression (Source: Al-Jazeera English)

In August of this year Razan left a brief comment on a blogpost I had just written after a multiweek hiatus. "Welcome back!" she wrote. " Thanks Razan" I wrote back, "stay safe". Indeed, I always worried about her safety seeing how boldly she criticized the Syrian regime's action while living in Syria. She spoke without the shield of anonymity or the comfort of being beyond the reach of the regime's thuggish tactics.

When I started my blog in 2006, I quickly got to know of Razan, one of a handful of Syrian bloggers writing in English. She was studying in Lebanon at the time. I was a regular reader of her posts that alternated between being intensely personal to broadly political. One got a sense of someone with evolving ideas, yet ideas solidly anchored in the belief of fairness, justice and equality. She was the champion of the poor, the downtrodden and the disenfranchised. She championed the Palestinian people at every turn. And because of that, she also sided, at the time, with Hizbollah's "resistance". On that we disagreed; I saw Hizbollah as an extension of the divisive sectarian politics of Lebanon; their focus on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I felt, was not genuine but more a means to an end.

Razan earned my respect because she was never trapped by ideology. She did not tolerate hypocrisy and was not shy to speak the truth as she saw it, even if it meant changing course. She never backed away from a confrontations taking on religious conservatives and others even it mean enduring vicious verbal attacks. She has championed migrant workers' rights, women's right as well as gay and lesbian rights int he Middle East. Razan, in short, is an original, a trailblazer. She is among a generation of brave, remarkable young Syrians whose collective, peaceful, efforts will eventually undo one of the most repressive regimes anywhere.

I hope and pray for her quick and safe return.

Fadwa Suleiman's Recent Videotaped Statement

2011-12-03T14:42:00.000-05:00

Another compelling statement by Syrian actress Fadwa Suleiman addressing the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations.

To Bashar: It is the People, Stupid...

2011-11-26T11:08:00.001-05:00

“She complained to me that she was beaten and sexually assaulted by Central Security Forces,” Mr. Jaffar said. “But what did she expect would happen? She was in the middle of the streets, in the midst of clashes, with no press card or form of ID. The press center had not given her permission to be in the streets as a journalist. The country is in a sensitive situation. We are under threat. She could be a spy for all we know.”

Col. Islam Jaffar of the Egyptian Security Forces, acknowledging Egyptian-American journalist's Mona Eltahawy accusation. (NYT November 25, 2011).
In his brief, maddeningly callous statement Col. Jaffar's, epitomize all that is wrong and despicable in the Autocratic regimes of the Arab world. The overarching premise of all those regimes is that the average citizen is nothing more than a cog in a machine of the state serving strictly the interests of those in power. And when those cogs show signs of life and refuse to be simple inanimate objects, the leaders elevate them from inanimate objects to despicable subhuman creatures, rats (Gaddafi) or germs (Bashar), to be subjected to immediate extermination. Even when the citizens are occasionally allowed to assume human forms, they are, at the slightest hint of dissent, labeled as traitors and thus deserving the harshest of punishment. And so it is in Syria where the regime sends out it's media "shabeeha" (thugs) to declare on the air that all who go against the eternal president of Syria are traitors who deserve to die.

It is the lowly policemen or security men who beat and groped Mona and have abused and killed hundreds of other unarmed protesters in Egypt. The same holds true of the killing and mistreatment of protesters in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The real guilt, however, lies squarely on shoulders of the likes of Col. Jaffar and his superiors who in their words and actions encourage and excuse the behavior of their subordinates. Ultimately, General Tantawi is directly responsible for the recent deaths and abuse in Tahrir square as is Bashar Al Assad responsible for the thousands of deaths, disappearances, detentions and abuse of prisoners perpetrated by the forces he ultimately commands.

Before any of the niceties of democratic governance, the citizens of the Arab world urgently need and deserve a much more basic human right: the right to be treated with dignity and respect. It is the lack of this fundamental right that has ignited the Arab uprisings and it is the unrelenting daily toll of deaths and abuse that fans the flames of rebellion. In the United States, the pepper spraying of Occupy protesters sparked outrage and was relentlessly covered by the media for a week, the video of the incident replayed (in slo mo) ad nauseum. Meanwhile, after a week of mayhem and the killing of forty one protesters, all the Egyptian government can come up with is a lame apology, quickly negated by statements similar to that of Col. Jaffar. The Bahraini government, to its credit, and without excusing any of its past and ongoing transgressions, appointed an independent commission and actually allowed it to publicly present damning evidence of abuse and torture by government forces. This is the first step towards transparency and accountability.

We will not see such transparency any time soon in Syria under the leadership of a very myopic eye doctor in chief. Bashar and his propaganda machine, in complete denial, continue to lament the loss of life of the abusers never seeming to care about the abused, his own citizens. The heart wrenching lament of a middle aged Syrian protester who appears on one of the hundreds of Youtube videos sums it up best: His voice trembling and on the verge of tears he cries out "I am not an animal, I am not an animal! I am a human being!" and pointing to all the people around him he adds "we are all human beings and deserve to be treated like human beings". It is a very simple and very basic request and it this demand for dignity and respect that is at the heart of all the popular uprising from Tunisia to Bahrain.

And so to president Bashar Al Assad I say: "It is the people, stupid!". It is not about salafists, or terrorists or imperialist designs.... It is not about secterianism or the Hariri-KSA-Zionist plot... It is not about pan-Arabism or resistance or Baathist ideals. It is about about the people asking for their most basic rights.

نصاءح للمواطن اللبناني; ممنوع ... لزياد الرحباني

2011-11-21T22:08:00.015-05:00

ممنوع ..... لـ زياد الرحباني

· ممنوع ولا مواطن عم يشارك باعادة انتخاب نفس الطقم السياسي بكل انتخابات يجي ويسأل وينيي الدولة

· ممنوع ولا شوفير تكسي يزمّر لشوفير تكسي تاني وقف بنص الشارع، يرجع هوي ذاته نفس الشوفير يوقف بنص الشارع

· ممنوع ولا لبناني يسب الدولة لأنها مش ضابطة عجقة السير، يرجع يسب الدولة لأنها عملتله ظبط سير بيستاهله

· ممنوع ولا حدا مسؤول عن جامع بوعي الناس بالقوة مؤمنين وكفار الساعة خمسة الصبح يجي يتذمر من صوت موسيقى عالية بمنزل شي مواطن شي يوم

· ممنوع أي شب يحكي عن حب الأرض وهوي بحياته مش ماسك منكوش ولا بيعرف يحوش زيتون

· ممنوع أيها المواطن تسرق كهربا وتشتكي من انقطاع التيار الكهربائي

· ممنوع اللبناني يسب لبنان بلبنان وبس يوصل ع كندا يحط فيروز ويقعد يبكي

· ممنوع تكون عم تناقش خصمك بالسياسة وتبلش معو بجملة كول خرا وبس يقلك عيب عليك تاخدها شخصية وتزعل

· ممنوع يقبل المواطن انو الزعما يقرطوه يومية وياخد ع خاطره اذا حدا من رفقاته قرطه بالصدفة

· ممنوع تطلع عالتلفزيون تشتكي ع زعران طايفة تانية وانت يومية بتدافع عن زعران طايفتك

· ممنوع ولا مواطن، ولا واحد، مناصرلحزب مشارك بالحكومة، ينق اذا معاشه ما كفاه لنص الشهر

· ممنوع ولا بنت تتضايق لأنو حدا لطشها، وترجع تاني نهار دغري تتضايق لأنو ما حدا لطشها

· ممنوع ولا عسكري حامل بارودة ومفروز للحراسة قدام السفارة الاميركية يكون بالبيت قدام ولاده ضد اميركا

· ممنوع ولا حدا يقول عن حاله انو لبناني صميم ووطني وهوي ما بيعرف وين الهرمل ووين عكار

· ممنوع ولا واحد يساري يحكي عن حقوق الفقرا هوي وسكران

· ممنوع ولا بيّ يسجل ولادو طواعيةً بمدرسة دينية يشتكي من انو عم يجبروله اولاده يصلوا او يجبروهم يقدسوا

· ممنوع ولا واحد طائفي بدو يحكي طائفية ليدافع عن طايفته يبلش حكيه دايما بجملة مع انو انا علماني

· ممنوع ولا نايب الو بالبرلمان دورتين يحكي عن الاصلاح السياسي والاقتصادي

· ومعليش يعني، ممنوع أي حديث فيه كلمات من نوع :منعطف خطير/ مرحلة حساسة/ ناقوس الخطر/ ضرورة التلاحم /التضامن الوطني/ لبنان الفريد من نوعه، خلص بطلولنا ياهن هلحركات

· ممنوع من هلق ورايح أي حدا، أي مواطن يقول انو عايشين عيشة كلاب، ليكو يا اخواتي، الكلاب عايشين وصدقوني آخر همهن، راسن مرتاح وماشي حالن.. انتو عايشين عيشة لبنان

عشتم... وعاش لبنان

(Thank you Laila)

Syria: The Regime Coming Unstuck

2011-11-19T23:39:00.001-05:00

For the past several months the consensus was that unless a critical mass is reached in the number of protesters, the army crumbles or significant protests happen in Damascus or Aleppo, the regime will survive. Once again in the year of empowerment of the Arab people, the people have defied all predictions. There have been a significant number of army defectors but the army has not fallen apart and there have not been the massive protests either in Damascus or in Aleppo. And yet it has happened, the regime seems to be in disarray and suddenly coming apart at the seams.

It is the sheer persistence, tenacity and courage of the demonstrators that is the principle factor that has pushed the regime to the edge of the precipice. The people of Homs deserve much of the credit for heroically standing up to the regime's brutality. Also, contrary to the regime's propaganda, the silent majority were on the side of the demonstrators not on the side of the regime; it explains in part the perseverance of those who take to the street. This silent support also explains why the relatively small FSA (Free Syrian Army), was capable of mounting a daring attack against the feared Air Force mukhabarat headquarters outside Damascus. But the needle that seems to have broken the regime's back are the actions of the certifiably useless Arab League. Suddenly, the regime that fancies itself the bastion of Arabism, has been shunned by the organization that represents the vestiges of old-style pan-Arab unity.

It is the regime's depraved brutality that is the main cause of its undoing and this iss documented in horrific detail in thousands of online videos for all to see. It is hard to see how, at this point, anyone but the morally depraved or the completely deluded still support the regime. At a certain point, all such individuals become complicit in the violence and murder perpetrated against their fellow citizens. This violence is emblematic of a regime holding on to a sclerosed, defunct and bankrupt ideology; they are unwilling and incapable of responding in any other way. In this way, Bashar's Syria is more like Ghaddafi's Libya and unlike Egypt and Tunisia. Both of the latter had a flexible enough system, despite being autocracies, to manage a transition of power without destroying the state. This is a worrisome fact for Syria. Left to his own devices, Bashar is likely to fight to the very end taking down with him the whatever structure of the state is still standing. It looks like Syria's only way to a reasonably orderly transition is to hope for palace coup or to have the army, as an institution, turn against him.

Lebanese TV Talk Show Brawl over Syrian Uprsising

2011-11-18T23:21:00.001-05:00

On a Lebanese TV talk show hosting two politicians from opposing camps earlier this week, a heated argument about Syria degenerated into a shouting match followed by a near brawl. To the left of the talk show host is Mustafa Alloush, a politician from the Future Movement and to the right of the host is Fayiz Shukur, the head of the Lebanese Baathist party (allied to Bashar Al Assad). When the topic turned to Syria, Shukur asks Alloush if he had listened to Assad's speech. Alloush said "yes but I don't believe him, I think he is a liar". Shukur, taking offense as he plays the role of obedient sycophant,asks Alloush sarcastically: "who do you think you are to call president Bashar a liar". Insults are exchanged, water and pens fly across the table and then, Shukur, Bashar's man to the end, gets ready to throw his chair before he is stopped by the host. In the final seconds of the video, one can hear Shukur swearing and calling Alloush's sister a whore.

It is a sadly comical video and I blame the uncivil behavior completely on Shukur. His behavior is emblematic of anyone working for or supporting the criminal regime in Syria. Beside the horror perpetrated on the Syrian people, their long arm reaches into Lebanon where they use their allies to threaten, harass or kidnap anyone opposing the Syrian regime. Recently they unleashed their goons to sack embassies of governments who go against them and send death threats to the head of the Arab league.

I applaud Alloush for taking a stand against the Syrian regime, a courageous move given that it is done at the risk of his own safety. Mustafa Alloush is an old classmate from medical school. Warm, honest, soften spoken and always with a ready smile, Mustafa was liked by everyone in class. In fact this video may be the first time I see him lose his temper. Not that he is a pushover; he is short but built like a rock and has a black belt in Judo. Had Shukur, in his rage, managed to reach him, Mustafa would have taken him down in a second.

We Need More Fadwa Suleimans

2011-11-12T08:34:00.001-05:00

There are certainly numerous women activists in Syria, many of whom have paid a heavy price for this activism. However, none have become as visible as Fadwa Suleiman has over the past few days. Even more powerful than her recent videotaped appeal (see previous post), is this video of her leading protesters in Homs in chants against the regime. Whereas we are used to seeing most of the visible faces of the opposition speaking calmly and in measured words, the emotion and energy that Fadwa projects is enthralling and galvanizing. Of course, the symbolism of a young woman, a well known public figure, leading throngs of protesters in a male-dominated society cannot be overstated. Her visibility also shatters the divisive narrative of the regime's propaganda. Since the beginning of the uprising, the regime has pitched the uprising, in images and words, as a clash between the the sophisticated, modern, urban Syrians and the backwards, ignorant, intolerant hordes in the countryside. Fadwa's voice completely dismantles this false narrative.

She has been criticized as an attention seeker and one who is trying to revive a waning career. These are ridiculous accusations given that, with her vocal activism, she has essentially put herself and her family on the regime's hit list. Very few public figures from Syria's artistic community have mustered even a fraction of her courage and stood up against this murderous regime. Moreover, if her visibility is new, her political stance against the regime is not new and has been consistent since the beginning of the uprising. Nor is Fadwa's fearlessness and willingness to go against the grain new. She was not afraid to tackle controversial roles in her acting career.

The lack of visible leadership in the Syrian uprising was initially thought to be an advantage. However, at this stage, the uprising would benefit from a few visible public figures to galvanize the Syrian people and get the support of the world community. The Syrian National Council, since the announcement of its formation, has been all but invisible. As Syrian citizens continue to be slaughtered daily, we need more voices like Fadwa Suleiman's to raise the volume and spread the word.

Syrian Actress on Hunger Strike فدوى سليمان

2011-11-10T20:52:00.000-05:00

The courageous Syrian actress Fadwa Suleiman, who has led several anti-regime demonstrations in Homs, makes a videotaped plea to her fellow citizens. Below is a translation of the text of her speech:

“General strike Thursday in the city of Homs: Since yesterday, neighborhoods in Homs have been searched by the security forces looking for me. People were beaten to force them to reveal where I was. In case I am arrested by the security forces or the army, it is possible that I will be forced to appear on the Dunia TV station to confess that I am part of a conspiracy against Syria as they have done with the honorable hero, sheikh Ahmad Alsayasen and the (defected) army officer Hussein Harmoush. In case I or any one of my family are harmed in any way, I hold the regime, the army, the security forces and the shabiha (thugs) fully responsible. I declare that I will continue to demonstrate and continue the hunger strike that I started two days ago to prove to all our partners in the nation the lies of the regime about the presence of armed gangs, salafis and Muslim extremists intent on overthrowing the regime and exterminating the minorities. I advise the great people of Syria to continue their peaceful protests until the fall of the regime and they achieve the civil, democratic country that all Syrians dream of. I implore all Syrians to remain unified and stand together until the fall of the regime, the regime that has lost its legitimacy since the constitution was altered to accommodate Bashar Al Assad’s rise to the presidency for no reason other than the fact that he was the son of the previous president. I call on you today and every day to descend to every public square in civil disobedience and to go on hunger strike until the withdrawal of the army and security forces from every city and street and the release of all prisoners of conscience and political prisoners from the jails of oppression. I call on all honorable Syrians everywhere and I call on every human being wherever they are, to support us and to stand in front of our embassies all over the world and to declare their intent to go on hunger strike in solidarity with the right of all people to freely choose their own government without fear of losing their life. Oh free people of Damascus, free people of Barzeh and Quaboon and Midan, the free people of Douma and Kadam and Muadamieh and Harasta and Irbeen and Riknideen and Zabadani. Oh free people of Daraa and Baniyas and Latakia and Tartous. Oh free people of Hama and Aleppo and Idlib and Bukamal and Deir Elzor and Raqqah and Quamishli and Hasakeh. I call upon you to declare your civil disobedience and go on hunger strike in all public squares and streets in solidarity with the prisoners of the central prison of Homs who are themselves on hunger strike and to lift the siege off the neighborhood of Baba Amr that has been subjected to continuous shelling with heavy machine guns and artillery for the past week and that has been isolated from the world. No one knows what is going on inside Baba Amr. Baba Amr is being subjected to a real humanitarian disaster. Stand with them because no street, neighborhood or city in Syria is immune to what is happening in Baba Amr. As the Arab League continues to set one deadline after another, the regime continues to oppress the people of Syria, robbing them of their dignity, their freedom and their life.

And peace, all the peace for Syria and it people.
And peace, all the peace for Syria and it people.
And peace, all the peace for Syria and it people.

Thursday of the General Strike, Homs, 11/10/2011."

(Translation: Abu Kareem)

Foretelling Syria's Future from Libya's Present

2011-10-24T23:07:00.001-04:00

You reap what you sow, it is said, and many Libyans would argue that Ghaddafi's horrific end pales in comparison to the horrors he inflicted on thousands of Libyans during his ignominious rule. I understand the feeling and have no sympathy for Ghaddafi and yet the way he was killed and the macabre display of his body leaves me uneasy. As the Libyans rejoice in their liberation, they may think that the circumstances of Ghaddafi's death is only of concern for Western human rights organizations, but I disagree. Libya is supposed to be turning a new page not borrowing a page from the defunct Jamahiriya. If you let one extrajudicial killing slide, how many more will be ignored before it is too late, before the country slides into an orgy of revenge killings. The NTC should have owned up to what happened to Ghaddafi, quickly contained the fallout, imposed some discipline on the fighters in the field and moved on to the difficult tasks ahead.

The juxtaposition of the frantic, blood-soaked final days of the Libyan uprising to images of 90% of Tunisians going to the polls for their first free elections, couldn't have been more jarring and informative. Tunisia's ousting of their autocratic ruler was relatively peaceful and quick and their transition to democracy seems to be on track. Libya's road to freedom was long, violent and destructive and their road back to some semblance of normalcy will be even longer and more complicated.

These events leave me wondering about the future of the Syrian uprising. Without a critical mass openly joining the opposition or outside military intervention, it looks like we are in for a long simmering war of attrition between the government and the opposition. This will lead not only to more violence and loss of life but will also start to erode the social and economic fabric of Syrian society and disrupt normal day to day functioning of state and educational institutions. The longer this drags on the more difficult and fraught with danger the post-Bashar transition will be. So what is the solution if military intervention is not a palatable option to the majority of Syrians who oppose the regime?

Whereas Ghaddafi clearly would not have succumbed to political pressure, I believe that Bashar, despite his grandstanding, and with the appropriate screws tightened, would succumb to such pressure. This may be an especially opportune time to do so with the recent toppling of a similarly obstinate dictator. The trouble is that I do not see such political pressure forthcoming. The Arab League, with its predictable impotence, is unable to pressure the Syrian regime and the Western countries, not wanting to confront Russia and China are not pushing hard enough and are anyway distracted with their own economic crisis.

Morpheus, the Damascene Architect, Fails to Charm

2011-10-16T21:36:00.000-04:00

Morpheus, the Damascene architect, unlike his mythological namesake, has utterly failed to charm with the mendacious lyrics of his tired old song. His article posted on Syria Comment is a complete whitewash of the Assad dynastic rule couched to appear objective and balanced. The author's bottom line is that Syrians face two options: secular bliss under the Assad fiefdom or Islamist hell without it. He also blames the protesters for pushing too hard for reform, inciting violence and ruining "all that was achieved" by seeking to overthrow rather than work within the established state system.

Where to start with a piece so full of fallacies and misinformation. First, to label the dynastic, overtly sectarian Assad regime as secular is laughable. Second, that Bashar has instituted any significant reform during his tenure as president is equally ludicrous. At the beginning of his tenure, Bashar started on what appeared to be a reforming path but quickly reverted to the old Assad mode of governing. He turned out to be as thin-skinned as his father and soon dissenters were rotating in and out of jail. He built a cult of personality -witness its nauseating manifestations among the "minhibbak" crowd- largely based on the charisma, intelligence and looks of Asma. True, some economic reforms were implemented but benefited mostly the well connected cronies of the regime. I have never seen evidence of genuine, even if gradual, democratic reform. And despite Bashar's utter failure to produce real reform, the majority of Syrians were still, in the name of stability, willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Even after the start of the uprising, the peaceful demonstrators were calling for justice and reform not for toppling of the regime even as his thugs were slaughtering unarmed protesters . It was clearly not the demonstrators who refused negotiate or work within the system, it was the regime that was utterly incapable of dealing with dissent expect by crushing it.

What the demonstrations quickly laid bare is that talk of democratic reform was just that. A regime that is preparing for a transition to democracy would be slowly allowing an opening in civil society and working to develop independent civil institutions, lift the state of emergency and allow the election of a representative parliament rather than a bunch of ass-kissing sycophants. An autocratic regime preparing for reform would not be spending a good part of the treasury to equip a division of the army specially trained not to defend the country but to defend the regime. Even worse, the regime has trained and equipped non-uniformed civilians as a private militia, not constrained by the rules of law, to do whatever they deem necessary to protect the regime. So it is the regime whose "apres moi, le deluge" attitude is dragging Syria to the brink of civil strife and an uncertain future, not the demonstrators.

The Young Ones Laugh: A Syrian Parable

2011-10-11T22:32:00.001-04:00

(Photo from: Paxmachina)

The Young Ones Laugh:

One day the king saw a number of children playing in the field and laughing merrily.

"Why are you laughing?" he asked.

"I am laughing," one of them replied "because the sky is blue."

"I am laughing," a second replied "because the trees are green."

"I am laughing," a third replied "because the birds are flying through the air."

The king looked at the sky, the birds, and the trees and found that they were not laughing. He came to the conclusion that the children were only laughing to poke fun a the king's majesty. So he went back to his palace and issued an order forbidding the people of his kingdom to laugh. All the old people obeyed the ruling and stopped laughing, but the young children paid no attention to the king's edict and carried on laughing because the sky is blue, the trees are green and the birds kept on flying.

From: The Enemies, by Zakariyya Tamer

The Syrian National Council is Formed: A Hopeful Day for Syria

2011-10-02T21:31:00.001-04:00

The formation of the Syrian National Council is a milestone in the Syrian uprising. That it took six months to put together may have frustrated many Syrians but it is understandable given that the regime has never allowed any opposition activity within Syrian and imprisoned many of the most influential dissidents. The Council's formation is critical in many respects other than the obvious one: that it represents one united effort to change the regime. Since the beginning of the uprising and with the media blackout imposed by the regime, there was never a defined face of the opposition. The regime stuck to its narrative of armed gangs, jihadists and outsiders fomenting the uprising. If the outside world did not buy these fabrications, many Syrians, fearing chaos instability or worse, never questioned this narrative. This is especially true of Syrian Christians, who were, to a degree, justifiably fearful having seen the fate of their co-religionists in Iraq. With the formation of a Council whose motto is "One people, one nation, one council", and composed of people representing the Syrian ideological, religious and ethnic spectrum, the regime will have a harder time peddling their lies. I am hoping that as a consequence, many Syrians who have sided with the regime will start seeing the light.

Call me sentimental, but I am completely taken by the symbolism of the Council's poster. I am too old to be naive but still hope that the members of the council stay true to their motto and work on behalf of all Syrians. In fact every Syrian must hold them to that. But truly what this poster conveys in ideas, as simple as they might appear, is a radical departure not only for Syria but for the whole Middle East. Since the countries of the Middle East gained their independence now some sixty to seventy years ago, two political ideologies dominated: pan-Arabism and to a lesser extent pan-Islamism. Both ideologies sought to homogenize and forcibly conform the diverse countries of the region into a single mold; one ignored the rich ethnic diversity of the region and the other, its rich religious diversity. Both ignored the cultural and historical differences between Arab countries spanning the Arabian gulf to the Atlantic coast of Africa. In this paradigm, the interests of the citizens of a particular country and even those of the country itself were always superseded by the interests of a somewhat mythical whole. That is why the notion of inclusiveness, "one people, one nation", the notion that each citizen counts, seems so radical, even if it is long overdue.

What is Imad Mustapha Smoking?

2011-09-17T10:45:00.000-04:00

On today's CNN interview of Syrian ambassador to the U.S. Imad Mustapha, the lover of art and philosophy, he essentially states that everyone in Syria except the regime is lying. If he is not smoking some funky weed, he must be in possession of the hallucinogenic pills that government propaganda says Al Jazeera supplied the gangs of protesters. He must also think that activist Giyath Matar's body was a prop in Qatar along with the elaborate sets that have been manufactured to stage and videotape fake demonstrations. It is a sad state of affairs when otherwise intelligent people, rather than mustering the courage to take the moral high ground choose to fully embrace the paranoid delusions of dictatorial regime.

A Word to Syrians Who Refuse to Take a Stand

2011-08-27T23:43:00.000-04:00

Came across this fitting poem for those Syrians who are sitting, silent on the sidelines:

Whoever keeps you and me
from being we,
let his house cave in.
If I don't become we, I'm alone.
If you don't become we,
you are just you.
Why not make The East
arise again?
Why not force open
the hands of the vile?
If I rise,
if you arise,
everyone will be roused.
If I sit,
if you take a seat,
who will take a stand?
Who will fight the foe,
grapple the foul enemy hand to hand

From: Blue, Grey, Black (1969) by the Iranian poet Hamid Mosadegh

Ali Ferzat's Pen is Mightier than Bashar's Sword

2011-08-25T18:12:00.001-04:00

It was like a bad flashback. In the 1980s Selim Al-Lawzy, editor of Al Hawadeth, a weekly critical of the Assad (senior) regime was found murdered and thrown on the roadside on the outskirts of Beirut. One remarkable detail stuck with me to this day. Both his hands were severely mutilated before he was killed. That detail stuck with me because of what it says of the viciousness of the people who committed the crime. It was not enough to kill the man, the tools of his trade, his mode of free expression, his hands had to be destroyed first. The message was clear to all those who would dare speak ill of the despot; even he knows that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Today, Ali Ferzat, the brilliant Syrian political cartoonist, was abducted by masked men in Damascus, savagely beaten and left at a roadside with both hands broken. Why? Because he dared express himself freely and speak his conscious openly and courageously; a recent cartoon apparently compared Bashar to Ghaddafi.

Latakia Under Fire

2011-08-16T21:22:00.001-04:00

Latakia is not the first Syrian city to suffer the wrath of a regime spiraling out of control and it will not be the last, but with Latakia, the city of my birth, it has become personal.

I recognized the vantage point from which the shaky YouTube video of the al Ramel district in Latakia was captured. It was from Tabiat, the hilly neighborhood on the Southern tip of the Latakia peninsula looking East. As children, we frequently visited a family friend who lived near the very top of Tabiat. I remember the view of the Palestinian refugee camp, then a hamlet at the outskirts of the city just off a sandy coast, now engulfed by urban sprawl. Little did I know that one day, the Syrian regime that fancies itself champion of the Palestinian cause, of steadfastness and resistance against Israeli hegemony, would send its army (حمات الديار: defenders of the homeland) to fire, indiscriminately, salvos of heavy machine gun fire into an area teeming with Palestinian refugees and impoverished Syrians. Many who have escaped the fire are now herded like cattle in the city stadium, built by Assad father, to host, with great fanfare, the 1987 Mediterranean games. The only sport now practiced in that stadium is gratuitous violence and humiliation of innocent civilians, a sport for which the regime's thugs deserve the title of world champions. Of course other neighborhoods in Latakia suffered a similar fate including Slaibeh where I was born and where my aunt and cousins still live in building, sandwiched between a church and mosque. We have yet to hear any news from them.

One gets the distinct sense that this a regime in free fall. There are few if any public appearances or statements by high level government officials. They don't answer the phone when world figures call, they alienate the few allies they have and make no coherent statements about what the plan for the country is. Their absence cannot inspire confidence. In fact the only part of this regime that exudes confidence are members of the security forces who, after more than five months, have not lost any of their swagger, their viciousness or their brutality. It is, in fact, the only thing that this regime knows how to do well; after forty one years of the Assad dynasty, this is the only skill they have truly mastered.

Beirut Demonstrations in Support of the Syrian People

2011-08-09T21:32:00.000-04:00

It is nice to see the large turnout in Beirut in support of the Syrian people. I cannot vouch for the motives of all who were present but I think most had their heart in the right place. Perhaps most prominent was the presence of the musician and singer Marcel Khalife, who is popular across the Middle East. His principled and reasoned stance in support of the Syrian people defied the idiotic thinking that you cannot both support the Palestinian people and resistance against Israel and at the same time condemn the criminality of the Syrian regime.

This Lebanese show of support is payback of sorts for the generosity of the Syrian people who sheltered displaced Lebanese families during the war of 2006. Despite the disdain with which some Lebanese view Syrians, it is an undeniable fact of history and geography that the two people are inextricably linked. Both people need each other's support. To me the support of the demonstrators in Beirut means much more than the hypocritical support of the Saudi monarch and the government of Bahrain who somehow overlooked their own complicit criminality several months in crushing the peaceful protests in Bahrain.

Syrian Revolt Five Months On: Decrees, Deception and Death

2011-08-04T22:41:00.003-04:00

There is perversity in Bashar Al Assad's pronouncements that borders on the obscene. After starting, on the eve of Ramadan, the bloodiest crackdown in the five months of the Syrian uprising, he has the gall to pass a decree, like a benevolent father bestowing a favor on to his children, allowing the creation of political parties. All the while the state's security apparatus, when they are not bombing a town into submission to rid it of "armed gangs", tracks down, imprisons and tortures anyone who so much as thinks of dissent. The hand of the regime even extends outside Syria with their goons belting peaceful protesters outside of the Syrian embassy in Beirut.

Yet despite the fact that the regime's actions defy all logic and reason, many, in and out of Syria continue to drink the Kool-Aid dished out by the regime as I noticed on a recent trip to Lebanon. There, the defenders of the Assad regime make for some strange bedfellows. A not insignificant number of Christian Lebanese, the same people who cheered the loudest when the Syrian army left Lebanon in 2005, have bought into Bashar's narrative as the defender of minorities. There is of course the Hezbollah supporters, the party of the poor and disenfranchised, that celebrated the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen but demurred when it came to the Syrian revolt. Suddenly, the revolt of the Arab people is a Saudi-American-Israeli plot. Even my own brother seems to have sipped the regime's Kool-Aid. The truth about what is going in Syria is somewhere in the middle, he told me as I raged at the brutality of the regime. This from a man whose father -our father- was one of the early victims of the emergency laws having been thrown in Mezze prison for three months in 1963. My brother's contorted reasoning is that Assad is the defender of the "resistance" against Israel and that the Syrian revolt is manufactured by outsiders. Somehow, this reasoning makes it acceptable for Assad to kill, maim, imprison and torture thousands of his citizens for the simple act of expressing their opinion.

The other prop trotted out by the regime supporters is the elusive "armed gangs" of terrorists and salafists, an obsession of several of Josh Landis' posts. After nearly five months of government brutality, it is not surprising that some the citizenry have retaliated in kind; what is surprising actually is the amount of restraint shown by most citizens. I have yet to see evidence of an organized armed resistance let alone salafist terrorists who are typically not shy in boasting about their exploits. Having said that, if the regime keeps up the violence, their wish will come true. Armed resistance will emerge in various forms including the salafist whose appetite for violence will match that of the regime and then some.

The outlook for Syria is gloomy. Assad shows no signs of wanting to negotiate a settlement and with Syria having no independent civic institutions, a transition similar to that in Tunisia or Egypt is not possible. Moreover, direct outside intervention will not happen and will anyway be counter productive. The present impasse will continue with a ratcheting up of the violence on the part of security leading inevitably to increasingly violent push back from those on the receiving end.

If this vicious cycle continues to snow ball, Syria will degenerate into an Iraqi style civil war. I this happens, let there be no doubt that the regime bears full responsibility. Bashar could have chosen the high road back in March and he would have been celebrated as hero in all corners of Syria. Instead he has chosen the path laid down by his father in 1982.

A Must Read

2011-06-26T18:49:00.000-04:00

A beautifully written, heart wrenching post by Juxtaposer.

The Lion's Speech

2011-06-23T21:56:00.000-04:00

There is a lot I could have said about the lion's speech but nothing could have summed it up better and more succinctly than what I saw on bumper sticker while driving to work today.

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

A Man of Principle: Malek Jandali vs ADC

2011-06-11T08:52:00.000-04:00

The Arab American Anti-discrimination Committee (ADC) is an organization created to safeguard the civil and human rights of Arab-Americans. This weekend is their yearly convention. Malek Jandali, the noted composer and pianist of Homsi origin was to perform at the convention. He was to perform his new song Watani Ana (my homeland is me), a universal call for freedom and dignity. Although Syria is not explicitly mentioned in the lyrics, given his background, it is clear what Watan he is referring to; and yet the lyrics are gentle and non-confrontational. The ADC asked him to choose another piece to perform at the convention. He refused and when the ADC would not give in, he walked away.

The ADC's explanation for its action just does not hold any water. They are an organization that strongly promotes the human and civil rights of Arab Americans. They cannot claim to be apolitical and feign neutrality when it comes to human rights abuses in the Middle East because they take a clear stance in on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. What they did with Jandali is hypocritical and outrageous.

I have been a card carrying ADC member for several years now but will reconsider my membership if the ADC does not change course. They can either limit their mission to civil rights issues in the US, or be an independent voice for human rights for all Arabs. To achieve the latter, they will have to assert their independence from Arab regimes.

As for Malek Jandali, I salute him as a man of principle and a Syrian patriot. In his gentle, civil way, he continues to advocate for the Syrian people at every chance that he gets.

Ministry of Disinformation: Reem Haddad Lives in an Alternative Universe

2011-06-11T07:51:00.001-04:00

But I don't think she is delusional; she is lying and she knows it. It is the same with every Syrian government official I have seen being interviewed. As soon as they are asked a simple of question, they immediately become defensive, combative and then indignant. You don't need a polygraph, just watch their body language and their facial expression and the tremor in their voice; they are lying through their teeth.

منحبك : Who are these People?

2011-06-05T08:17:00.000-04:00

Who are these people with their well manicured looks, their matching white hats and flags and requisite Bashar posters as statesman, warrior and man for all seasons? Do they really believe that they represent the majority of Syrians and that the men women and children protesting peacefully for change are but the poor ignorant minority? Even if it was so, why are they so heartless? Has the blood of their compatriots spilled so savagely by men who utter Bashar's name next to God's in their chants not repulsed them?

It is an irony of ironies that the heir to the Arab Baath Socialist party has carefully built and indoctrinated this privileged class of Syrians as the buffer between him and the unwashed masses. This منحبك (we love you) class was built to reflect an air of modernity and sophistication that Bashar has sought to project over the last decade. Yet, clearly, this veneer of sophistication is thin and, as has become clear over the last twelve weeks, supported by a corrupt and repressive state infrastructure.

The منحبك crowd should be told that carrying posters of your leader as idol or big brother is so 20th century. They should also be told that if they want real sophistication, they should listen to their less privileged compatriots from the hinterland. Those compatriots understand, much more than they do, the importance of freedom and dignity. They understand that without those very basic tenets, you cannot built a thriving successful country where citizens enjoy equal rights and opportunities.

Daydreams and Nightmares

2011-05-23T19:44:00.000-04:00

House Call: My yearly visit to one of my homebound patients.

Patient: Are you taking a vacation this summer?

Me: Yes

Patient: Where are you going?

Me: To Lebanon

Patient: Is that where you are from?

Me: My wife is from there, I am Syrian.

Home attendant: Where is that?

Me: In the Middle East (in my head: Aakh! If I had a penny for every time I heard that question I would be a millionaire!)

Patient: I would love to go there, but they hate Americans don’t they?

Me: No they don’t…So how is your back pain?

Driving back to the hospital I listen to Lina Chamamyan Ala moj el bahr. I am transported for a moment by her beautiful voice until ugly Youtube images from Lattakia, Banyas, Bayda and elsewhere rudely intrude into my daydream. My throat tightens, I reach down for the off button then hesitate. Screw them, the bastards will not spoil my daydream.

The Moral Dissonance of the Syrian Regime Apologists

2011-05-10T23:50:00.000-04:00

The Syrian regime is claiming victory in its battle with its own people or rather, as they would say, the battle against the insurrection by armed terrorist gangs. I hope they are wrong but I frankly don't know. They have managed to choke off almost completely the trickle of images escaping from Syria, arrested thousand of activists and continued their brutal crackdown. Does that mean that the protests have diminished and will stop? I doubt it.

If the fragmentary information over the past eight weeks has left many in doubt about the course of the events, there are certain things I have become certain of. The regime's ruling elite is brutal, incorrigible and unreformable and willing to take the country down with it rather than surrender or share power. I always thought that some opponents of the regime engaged in hyperbole when describing the regime as a mafia. But how else can you describe a regime led by a leader who inherited the presidency and that is rife with nepotism. Brother Maher controls the most powerful division in the army, a cousin is the wealthiest monopolist businessman in Syria and various lesser Assads control a freelance militia, the so-called Shabiha, used to kill and intimidate unruly citizens. In fact , the Corleones' behavior pales compared to the Assads.

The last eight weeks have also acutely heightened my distaste for those, who despite everything that has transpired, continue to provide cover for the president and his regime. After several hundred unarmed protesters are killed, many more injured and thousands of activists and ordinary citizens incarcerated and tortured, there is no room for moral hand-wringing. The regime has clearly shown what it is capable and willing to do to its own people. If the protests are suppressed, the apologists will say that it is because the president has many more supporters than detractors among the Syrian citizens, as if the blood of those who died was worth spilling if the protests represented only 20% of the Syrian people.

Surely the same regime apologists will think my moral arguments naive. They will tell me that I don't understand the complex nature of the Machiavellian politics of the Middle East and how events are interconnected by nefarious conspiracies. I am happy to be the naive one along with all the common people whose Arab Spring has debunked all the stupid assumptions and political theories. It turns out -surprise, surprise- Arabs are like everyone else and long first and foremost for dignity, respect and freedom. Until individuals in our part of the world are given those basic rights they will continue to be expandable pawns in power games played by a few and we will never be able to build stable, progressive societies that achieve the potential of their people.

The Syrian regime might temporarily put out the fires but the embers of dissent will continue to burn.

How Many Syrian Demonstrators are Enough?

2011-05-02T21:08:00.001-04:00

Since the beginning of the demonstrations in Syria, some, mostly regime sympathizers or apologists, have obsessed over the numbers of demonstrators. They were too few to make a difference, they said, a handful of disgruntled extremists from the countryside; everyone else loved the president. When the numbers went from dozens, to hundreds, to thousands and then to tens of thousands, these number crunchers then switched to estimating the number of protesters relative to the total population again trying to minimize their relevance.

This is a silly exercise at many levels. First, no one knows what the numbers are since the government-run media is a propaganda puppet of the regime that spews bold-faced lies and no independent journalists are allowed into Syria. Second, in a country that has been in a state of lockdown since 1963, a dozen people publicly demonstrating against the regime would have been front page news only two months ago. So, if some of the citizens have boldly tossed the yoke of fear off their necks, it is a safe bet that many are still too afraid to express their real views. This fear is reinforced by the regime and its security forces' -uniformed or not- penchant for shooting unarmed demonstrators and otherwise trying to extinguish any nascent demonstration with threats of violence, intimidation and arrests. Witnesses also describe how security forces surround mosques at prayer time letting people leave one a time to prevent the gathering of a crowd; this after the president declared that Syrians have the right to demonstrate peacefully.

In the end, however, the question as to whether the regime needs to change has nothing to do with the number of demonstrators but has all to do with the response of the regime to the demonstrations; and by that measure they have lost all legitimacy. Several hundred, unarmed, demonstrators have lost their lives; few would dispute that their deaths was at the hands of the security forces or the shabiha. That fact without any attempt on the part of the government to take responsibility for its act is reason enough for a change. No Syrian, myself included, wants to see the country descend into chaos. That the options are down to the status quo or chaos is the choice of the regime not the demonstrators. The power structure, built specifically to cement the power of a few, is rigid with no room for flexibility to adapt to change despite having a self-declared reformer at the helm for a decade. The emergency laws have been lifted in name only as hundreds of arbitrary arrest continue unabated. Is there any shred of evidence that this regime is willing or capable of evolving, of reforming itself into something other than the repressive police state it has been for last 48 years?

.

Playing the Sectarian Card in Syria

2011-04-26T22:14:00.000-04:00

One of the most corrosive and disingenuous claims of the Syrian regime is that the protesters are crypto-salafists bent on instigating sectarian strife; this coming from a regime that is established and maintained on narrow sectarian loyalties. Of course the implicit message to the Syrian people, as well as to Westerners (see the recent Vogue interview of the Assads), is that peaceful coexistence among the sects in Syria is made possible only by the grace of the Assads and was it not for them, Syria would be deep into a sectarian civil war. Interestingly, the argument the regime makes is identical to what Westerner commentators glibly make when talking about our region: loyalties sectarian and tribal and they only get along when coexistence is enforced.

Sectarian chauvinism certainly exists and is present in all sects and is not limited to wild-eyed salafists. However, relations among the sects in Syria have been generally good, a situation that antedates the Assads. Moreover, I strongly believe that the primacy of sectarian loyalties is diminishing with time. At independence, it was difficult for people brought together within boundaries drawn by colonial powers to feel like citizens of a nation. Loyalties were first and foremost regional, religious or tribal. However, after sixty years of common history and common shared memory, even the citizens of the most artificially drawn up nation develop a sense of a shared identity. That is why the current generation of young Arabs identify themselves first as citizens of their respective countries. We saw that feeling clearly manifested in the demonstrations in Egypt and we see it now among the young Syrian protesters. Even in the country where sectarianism is institutionalized, Lebanon, young protesters have been out in the streets demanding an end to the sectarian sate.

The Syrian regime is currently pandering to the fears of minority communities. They in turn, are understandably nervous. However, the best way to insure the rights of minorities is to have those rights protected by a representative and responsive government and not dependent on the benevolence of an authoritarian ruler.

Youtube Video Worth a Million Words

2011-04-24T11:22:00.000-04:00

It starts predictably with protesters marching and chanting. Soon, shots are heard, protesters scatter, the image turns sideways and upside down, too shaky for a clear image only to settle to a static street level view. The road is deserted, a young man lies prone in a pool of blood, a few feet away. He is staring straight at the camera with vacant, near lifeless eyes, slight movements of his head the only palpable sign of life . When the shooting stops, hoarse cries arise, in a mix or horror, fear and disbelief they shout repeatedly: "Allahu Akbar" and "Ambulance, we need an ambulance". The frenetic images return; as the camera pans back and forth over the chaotic scene, you see protesters scrambling to help the injured, several are carried hastily away from the open road, some with horrific wounds. We also get a quick final glimpse of the young man, still lying in the street, now face down, lifeless. Fear and horror turn to seething anger with shouts of "Bashar, you son of a bitch, this was peaceful!"

I must have watched dozens of these shaky pixilated Youtube protest videos taken by Syrian citizens. It is not that I have macabre voyeuristic urges, I just need to see, sitting in safety thousands of miles away, what the people of Syria are enduring. Many of these video clips were too difficult to watch but none have affected me as much as that of the recent demonstration in Izraa described above. I am not sure why, was it the haunting look of the dying young man who could have been my son's age or the sheer horror I heard in the voices of the survivors? No one, and I mean no one, protesting peacefully deserves such a fate. If for most readers, this last statement is self-evident, it is not apparently for some defenders of the regime who will come up with any number of reasons as to why these people deserve such treatment.

Of course, as the various news websites stipulate, the authenticity of these videos clips cannot be verified. However, it is the sheer number of these videos, their rawness, their redundancy and their consistency in telling the same horrific story across every demonstration in multiple towns that make them totally believable. What you clearly see is that the protesters consist of mostly young to middle-aged men, unarmed, representing a cross section of Syrian society, demonstrating peacefully. Has there been vandalism and some violence on the part of the protesters? Of course there has been. But again, to the regime apologists I say that neither tearing up posters of the president nor toppling statues constitute capital offenses in any self-respecting country. What is astounding, is that after enduring over five weeks of unprovoked mayhem at the hands of security forces, that the protesters have not resorted to an open, violent insurrection.

If an image is worth a thousand words, videos clips are worth a million and this massive archive of moving images, as imperfect as it is, is a damning indictment of the Syrian regime.

Malek Jandali: Watani Ana مالك جندلي، وطني أنا

2011-04-19T21:37:00.002-04:00

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Watani Ana (I am my Homeland) Composed & Arranged by Malek Jandali - Piano - Vocals: Salma Habib & Ali Waad Cello: Martin Gueorguiev Directed by: Jibril Haynes

Syria: I Hoped for an Evolution but Got a Revolution

2011-04-14T23:39:00.000-04:00

Like many Syrians I had hoped for a transformation in Syria over the last decade with the ascendancy of Bashar to the presidency. There was not much logic behind my hope except for a Syrian's natural tendency to want to avoid conflict and wish the best for his beloved country. This wishful thinking eroded gradually over the years, as other than applying a shiny veneer of wealth to the privileged -well connected- few in Damascus, the president achieved no real reform. However, as late as a couple of weeks ago, even after the outrage in Daraa, I was still, against all odds, willing to give Bashar the chance to do the right thing. He failed miserably.

The harsh reality, as clearly demonstrated in the last month, is that the Syrian regime of 2011 is no different than the Syrian Regime of 1990 or 1980. Worse than the brute force with which the protests were put down, is the way some in the security forces (or is it the Shabiha) sadistically handle anyone taken into custody. The most recent appalling example can be seen on Youtube video of armed security officers in the village of Baida, brutalizing the men they had taken into custody. The behavior is meant to sow fear, dehumanize and debase the citizens. It is as if the regime is in an abusive relationship with its own people. And as in abusive relationships, the abuser will intermittently feign concern and sympathy between bouts of abuse; hence the meeting of the president with delegates from Banyas to try "reduce tension".

The regime's clumsy propaganda has worked on no one but their most die hard supporters and many disillusioned apologists have given up on them all together. If the regime of 2011 is no different than that of 1980, the Syrian citizens of 2011 are. The people have lost their fear of the regime and brute force will not work, as it did in the past, to quash the legitimate aspirations of the people. The sooner the regime realizes that the better it is for Syria. Unfortunately, a system based on fear and intimidation is not equipped with the flexibility to adapt to new realities.

I fear that we are looking at many more months of strife and bloodshed.

The Syrian President's Ignominious Speech

2011-03-30T22:58:00.000-04:00

As I was searching for words to express my outrage at the president's speech, I came across Hashashji's post that perfectly encapsulates the speech's message (below is my translation):

- ما رح يتغير شي…الاصلاح مبلش من عشر سنين بس عادة التغييرات بدها عشرين سنة لتظهر و يعم الرخاء…

- الحكومة كان مقرر تسريحها اساسا…يعني مو لانو حدا تظاهر…

- لن يتم التساهل مع اي تظاهرة او متظاهر…

- اما معي….او ضد سوريا

- انا سوريا و سوريا انا….

- انا ما فهمتكون و ما شكلي رح افهمكون…صحي شو بدكون؟

- الاعلام السوري هو المرجعية الاعلامية لا العقل و الكومن سينس او اليوتوب

- انو معتقلين سياسيين؟

- انا الامل

- شعب متلكون بيستاهل واحد متلي

مبروك علينا الوطن…

I will not change anything... The reforms started ten years but the amendments will take another twenty years before they are applied and spread prosperity
The government was slated to resign anyway... it was not because of the demonstrations
There will be no compromise with any demonstration or demonstrator
You are with me... or you are against Syria
I am Syria and Syria is me...
I do not understand you and it appears that I never will... what do you really want?
Syria's government media is the primary reference, not critical thought or common sense or YouTube
What political prisoners?
I am hope
A people like you deserves someone like me

The speech was dripping with arrogance and hubris. Even worse than the speech itself were the cheers of the sycophants in the parliament who, on cue, chanted their allegiance to the president. How much longer do the Syrian people have to be subjected to such nauseating and humiliating spectacles. It was not the cabinet of technocrats that should have resigned but rather this collection of useless ass-kissers. The president's speech contained not a word of compassion or regret for those who died at the hands of his government's security forces and no recognition of any of the long list of legitimate demands put forth by the demonstrators. The statement that this was the work of conspirators intending to harm Syria, essentially delegitimizes every demonstration that started on March 15th and makes every demonstrator a traitor. The consequences for those who oppose his valiant effort to safeguard the patrimony didn't have to be spelled out; the Syrian people understood. However, this is not Syria of 1982, 2000 or 2010, the people will not go gently into the night. Not only have they lost their fear of those in power, they have the moral backing of millions of other Arabs who have shed the albatross of fear from around their neck .

If the president thinks that his hardline will somehow extricate him from the present impasse, he is wrong. He has undoubtedly lost significant popular support for his handling of the demonstrations. Many of the ever optimistic "give Bashar a chance" crowd buoyed by the promise of some grand announcement of reforms, will finally abandon him as well. Bashar Assad could have made history today as a real reformer, regained his people's trust and secured Syria's stability and security. Instead, he has chosen confrontation and suppression of dissent insuring Syria's progressive instability and insecurity.

I fear what is coming next; God help the people of Syria.

Syria: Sorting Rumors from Willful Disinformation

2011-03-26T23:20:00.000-04:00

The absence of independent journalists covering the events in Syria has made it impossible to get a clear sense of what is going on the ground. The official Syrian media is a mouthpiece of the regime and routinely engages in decietful and outright false reporting. The most recent example is the implausible story of the Egyptian-American Tweed with a cellphone, paraded as proof of a foreign (American-Saudi-Wahhabi-Israeli) plot to destroy Syria. On the other hand, trying to piece together the view from the other side by watching blurry youtube videos of uncertain provenance or tweets of second and third hand information is equally troubling. The events in Lattakia, my hometown, is a case in point. Who shot at the civilians? a. security forces, b. regime goons in civilian clothes? or c. "foreign" elements trying to sow sectarian discord as the government claims. Judging from recent history, the Arab autocrat's playbook would suggest that the answer is a and b. Yet, it is impossible to verify my impression.

This lack of credible information puts the Syrian public in a tough spot and given the sectarian sensitivities, makes them more susceptible to sectarian fear mongering on the part of the regime. Although there is little doubt that some opposing the regime have sectarian agendas, the vast majority do not. And as to the uprising being the work of other meddling countries, there is absolutely no proof that I can see. Neither the start of the trouble in Daraa nor any subsequent demonstration seemed to be other that hastily organized and largely leaderless protests. The organized opposition groups seemed to have little clout, not much of a popular base and seem believed like most everyone else that the Syrian people was not ready.

Having said that, the more the regime bungles the response to these demonstrations with more violence and deaths the more violent the response and the more protracted the conflict will be, allowing opportunistic groups with specific agendas come in and sow discord.

Syrian Government's Proposed Reforms:Talk is Cheap

2011-03-24T23:04:00.000-04:00

The Syrian regime had an epiphany after massacring dozens of it own citizens in Daraa: keep it up and you may not be around too much longer. So, grudgingly, Bouthaina Shaaban is trotted out to declare sweeping reforms! maybe... or maybe they will just consider thinking about thinking about reforms. She admits that perhaps the people of Daraa have legitimate grievances but then goes on to immediately delegitimize them by saying that the demonstrations are the work of foreigners trying to destabilize Syria. I guess no one in the regime watches the satellite channels. Don't they realize that every other Arab autocrat in trouble has trotted out the same lame excuse and no one believed them?

There is a distinct smell of insincerity about the whole thing. Why was it Shaaban who offered these concessions? Why not the president? Why are some of the offers of reform so ambivalent? Is this just a stalling tactic to buy time and let the passions simmer down? I remain skeptical. This regime has had absolute power for two generations, imposing its will on the people and tolerating absolutely no dissent. This is their modus operandi, they know no other way of doing things.

There has been enough bloodshed already. Talk is cheap; if the regime does not start implementing its declared reform agenda, it will loose the last shred of legitimacy it still has.

Syrian Demonstrators in Cairo Attacked by Embassy Goons

2011-03-20T21:06:00.000-04:00

Another example of the utter contempt for the citizens they are supposed to serve!

What the Chattering Class is Saying about the Demonstrations in Syria

2011-03-20T20:28:00.000-04:00

A good place to gauge the mood of Syria's internet chattering class is the comment sections of Joshua Landis' postings on Syria Comment. The chattering class is jittery, and for good reason. Everyone was unanimous about the fear of a descent into violence and chaos, myself included.

This jitteriness seems to have also affected the reasoned judgement of many. It has also brought to the surface the biases and paranoia of the commentators, clearly colored by each person's sectarian and class affiliation.   Conspiracies abound. A KSA-US-Beirut conspiracy to destabilize Syria is mentioned. Beirut? with Lebanon politically dominated by Hizballah, does anyone seriously believe that the emasculated March 14th movement is capable of inciting rebellion in Syria? Wahhabi plots are also raised as a cause of unrest by several commentators although no one has yet raised the possibility of hallucinogenic drugs being involved! The Daraa demonstrations were attributed to a tribe in the region with Wahhabi tendencies not the arrest of fifteen schoolboys for scribbling anti government graffiti, inspired by the images they saw of the Egyptian demonstrations. It is ironic that some of the obsessions with Wahhabis sound very much like the stuff spouted regularly by fear-mongering right-wing American neocons.

Many of the comments seem to uncover sensitive sectarian and class divides.  Officially, we all get along in Syria, and officially, it is all because of the president's stewardship. Unofficially, we do, for the most part get along, certainly much better than our neighbors to the East and to the West; not because of the president's stewardship but because of the generally tolerant predisposition of Syrians. This does not mean that there are no sectarian sensitivities or concerns and airing such concerns without prejudice or demonization of other groups is a good thing in the long run .

There certainly is at least a grain of truth in most of the fears expressed, but many are wildly exaggerated at the expense of de-legitimizing the real grievances of ordinary Syrian citizens. What the demonstrators want here is what other demonstrators in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain are asking for. Most of the commentators, recognize the latter grievances and yet seem to want to hang on to the status quo because they cannot see a clear road to an orderly transition. This is largely because there are no institutions independent of the president capable of assuring an orderly transition. This is not the fault of the Syrian people, it is the fault of a regime that has not, despite being in power for a decade, made the major reforms needed to allow for the evolution from a top-down, locked-down authoritarian government to a open, representative government. Instead of giving KSA tacit approval for sending troops to Bahrain, the president should be talking to the Egyptians and Tunisians.

Syria: The Genie is out of the Bottle?

2011-03-18T20:42:00.000-04:00

As I reflect on the events in Syria today, I remember Bashar Assad's confident, if not smug, answers during the Wall Street Journal interview at the time of Mubarak's fall. He did not hide his pleasure at the fall of Mubarak and with him the Camp David accord. He himself, however, was untouchable, he implied, because he listens to his people and backs the "resistance". The various regime apologists later chimed in saying pretty much the thing: it will not happen in Syria. Well, it has and the brutal push back against the demonstrations in Yemen, Libya and Bahrain has not dampened the resolve of those seeking change.

Over the last three months, it has become perfectly clear for all to see that the autocratic rulers of the Arab world are all cut of the same cloth. Whether they are American lackeys or chest thumping members of the "resistance", they view their people with the same jaundiced eye and treat them with utter disdain. The way they respond to demonstrations in the various countries might make you think that they are using the same playbook. At the first sign of trouble, they bring out the riot police force, but also bring out the plain clothed goons to do the dirty work. When people get hurt and killed, send the security forces to the hospitals to further intimidate the demonstrators and control the information coming out into the media. Of course, always blame outside agitators and infiltrators and ominously warn of chaos and disaster should they loose their grip on power.

The killing of demonstrators in Daraa today is a turning point for Syria. If the regime retrenches and responds with more massive force to further demonstration -as I suspect it will, since it is the only way they know how to respond- I fear that Syria might descend onto a dangerous path. What I would wish for is a major public intervention on the part of the president to calm fears, the implementation of immediate reforms starting with lifting press and Internet censorship and the laying out of a serious and sincere plan for real reform. Unfortunately, I am not hopeful anything that positive will ever occur.

In the end, the present regime, has no one but itself to blame. In the decade since Bashar Assad has come to power, other than some economic reforms that have mostly benefited the rich; there has not been any improvement in individual citizen's liberties and rights. Had that been started a decade ago, the choices for Syria may not be as stark as they are now.

Syria and the Arab Revolt: The Clock is Ticking

2011-02-28T23:50:00.001-05:00

After the Tunisian uprising, we were told that this was an anomaly.  After Egypt, they said that it is unlikely to go further because every country in the Middle East has a different history and circumstance. After Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Libya and Oman, the pundits were left scratching their heads. There is no pattern to this spreading revolt and thus no predictability. No one is immune. The only thing that seems to be certain now is that the Arab people no longer fear their rulers.

The short term outcome of the revolts will certainly differ from country to country and will be largely dictated by the rulers. Autocrats, especially those in power for decades, become alarmingly detached from reality and start believing the propaganda that they spew.  The false narrative on which their power structure is built becomes their alternative, delusional reality reinforced by the yes men that further insulate them from their people. They are all invariably shocked, horrified at the intensity of the anger that their people manifest.  All blame outside forces, fellow Arabs, the media, Zionists or -every one's bogeyman- the Islamists. Ghaddafi outdid everyone, as only he can, by claiming that the protesters were given hallucinogenic drugs. The reflexive response is deadly force as they know no other way of dealing with dissent. Some will eventually back off once reality pops their delusional bubble, they are talked down from an unsustainable position by more realistic advisers or they are pushed aside. However, when, as in Libya, the delusion is a self-reinforcing family affair, the result is the unfolding tragedy we are now witnessing.

Where the Syrian regime falls within the spectrum of delusional autocratic regimes is a source of my concern. While Bashar Assad publicly recognized the need for change, there have been no palpable moves in talking about or implementing reforms and the security forces seem to have been in heightened clamp-down mode.  A recent article featuring Asma al-Assad in the March issue of Vogue left me a little disconcerted. As always, Asma comes across as a vibrant, smart advocate of the Syrian people and the first couple appears down to earth and sincere. They also seem to make a conscious effort in showing the reporter that, despite living in a "rough neighborhood", they preside over a secure and diverse country with no sectarian strife. The not so subliminal message is that we know how to make our citizens get along and if it was not for us, it will be an Islamist hell. Here again is the autocrat's narrative - almost identical to that of Mubarak- on which power is built.

To be clear, I don't a Tahrir, Pearl or Green square showdown in Damascus. I don't want the blood of a single Syrian citizen spilled  and  would rather have an orderly evolution of the Syrian government rather than a revolution.   But the wave of anger is moving fast and unpredictably.There is a need for the Syrian regime to make bold and decisive moves towards a more democratic and transparent process of government. Lifting the state of emergency, as Algeria recently did, would be a welcome first step and should be followed by a program of reform attached to a timetable.

The time to act is now; there is little time to waste.

Voice of Freedom هاني عادل : صوت الحرية

2011-02-18T23:46:00.001-05:00

An uplifting music video about Tahrir square, a respite from the obscene images coming out of Bahrain as yet another Arab government demonstrates just how cheaply they value the lives of their citizens.

Hypocrites East and West

2011-02-18T22:55:00.002-05:00

The beauty of the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia is that they belong to no one and to everyone; they are truly popular uprisings. And yet everyone is falling over themselves to hypocritically claim them as their own. When was the last time you saw the US government and Hizbullah agree on anything? Here is a partial parade of hypocrites:

The US government, belatedly coming to the side of demonstrators after the man they propped up to the tune of 1.5 billion dollar a year crumbled
American analysts and journalists who routinely added the adjective "moderate Arab leader" when referring to Mubarak; now they refer to him as "our SOB". You see, they knew all along that he was an SOB, but because he was pliable and played nice with Israel, they turned a blind eye to his SOB qualities, the Egyptian people be damned.
Ahmedinejad claiming support for the uprising in Egypt and promptly quashing any popular demonstration in support of the uprising
Hillary Clinton forcefully denouncing the "awful" Iranian regime's suppression of dissent and yet becoming mealy mouthed when it came to worse abuses by Bahrain and Yemen. I wish she would just shut up.
Bashar Assad claiming that the uprising will not spread to Syria because his people love his steadfast foreign policy; yet he promptly restores food subsidies and unlocks Facebook and Youtube.
Switzerland freezing the assets of the Mubarak clan. Really? I guess the Swiss bankers learned that it was tainted money after reading the signs carried by the protesters in the streets of Cairo.
Muammar Gaddafi -every one's SOB- blaming everyone but himself for the anger on streets of Benghazi.

Remembering Egypt's Martyrs شهداء ثورة مصر

2011-02-13T08:39:00.000-05:00

Remembering those who gave their lives for the freedom of the Egyptian people and inspired people everywhere.

Wael Ghonim on Dream TV وائل غنيم في مقابلة دريم

2011-02-08T21:56:00.015-05:00

Wael Ghonim's TV interview, a day after his release by Egyptian security. What Wael has to say is compelling and important. Just substitute any other Arab country's name for Egypt and what he is saying applies to every one of them. (for video clips with English subtitles click here)

A Salute to the Young People of Tahrir Square

2011-02-07T23:40:00.000-05:00

For the past two weeks, I have, as I suspect millions of other Arabs have, lived the Tahrir square revolution vicariously, deep emotions ebbing and flowing with every turn of event. We cheered the demonstrators on, cursed the thugs who attacked them and sat back and tried to absorb the immensity of what is happening. There was something infectious about the demonstrators' passion, their determination, their courage and their unfettered idealism. What is more, it is the way they did it, just like the Tunisians, that has most astonished us. Who would have ever thought that autocrats would fall to sheer people power? No guns, no bombs, no palace intrigues needed. Just as we, as well as the rest of the world, were ready to write off the people of the Middle East as terminally downtrodden and hopeless, the young men and women of Tahrir square proved everyone wrong.

My admiration for the young people of Tahrir square is enourmous but is mixed with a sense of envy and regret that, at first, I could not understand. "The young people are doing what our generation should have done!" explained a middle-aged woman interviewed in an upscale Cairo sporting club. She is right, I envy the fact that I am not twenty five and manning a barricade in Tahrir and regret that my generation did not have the courage to achieve what this generation already has. I could come up with legitimate excuses for my generation but the bottom line is that we failed.

I salute the young people of Tahrir and hope that your spirit will spread to every corner of the Arab world.

Never Prouder to be an Arab

2011-01-29T08:59:00.000-05:00

What could be more heartwarming than the sight of Egyptian demonstrators chanting the Tunisian anthem in recognition and solidarity of their Tunisian brothers and sisters? The people of Tunisia and now the masses in Egypt have managed to do in two weeks what the scheming politicians have pretended to want to do for the last fifty. All the fake, self-serving calls by political leaders for Arab unity and nationalism of the 1950s and 60s never amounted to much. The ideal of Arab unity was never more than a convenient prop brought out periodically by leaders to burnish their image all the while working feverishly to keep their respective populations as hermetically sealed from one another as possible. Time and technology has slowly loosened these leaders' iron grip on their people. Nothing has been more effective in bringing down the barriers among the people in the Middle East as much as satellite TV starting in the 1990s and now the Internet. This was not a top down enforcement of a fake Arabization scheme meant to squeeze all Arabs into a single mold but a more a natural people to people cultural cross fertilization. No one, not in the most remote corner of the Arab world, could be effectively isolated either from the rest of the region or the rest of world. The leaders could no longer control the message.

When seen against this backdrop , Hosni Mubarak, in his speech last night, comes across as alarmingly out of touch. While Ben Ali quickly read the writing on the wall, Mubarak seems to be ready to let his country go up in flames before giving an inch. Then there is King Abdallah, another one with their head in the sand, coming out in support of Mubarak. While few could have foreseen the scale and speed of what has transpired in the last two weeks, Arab leaders across the Middle East ignore its implications at their own peril. The formula of most Arab leaders, "autocracy with stability is better than chaos", which is used to lull their people into submission has outlived its usefulness; it is history. In fact, the opposite is true, without expeditious implementation of real reform , chaos is assured.

Let the Kings, Oligarchs and Dictators Take Note

2011-01-18T22:43:00.000-05:00

As tragic as Mohamed Bouazizi's death is, as well as that of the demonstrators that followed, there is something invigorating about the uprising in Tunisia. It is perhaps its spontaneity, its lacks of designated leaders that give it the feel of a genuine, popular uprising and not an ideologically-driven coup destined to serve the desires of a narrow constituency. It is easy as an Arab, to resign oneself to the fact that the region's stagnant and sclerotic political systems are immovable and immutable. It is exactly this state of hopelessness and inertia that most of the region's leaders strive to instill in their people. It kills hope, prevents progress and keeps the leaders in power. So I hope that the leaders across the region take note and that a cold chill runs down their spine as they watch the events in Tunis unfold; perhaps it will make them reconsider their ways.

One can only hope that the passion of the people of Tunisia is infectious and that other citizens of the region are aroused from their slumber. It will not be, I suspect, like a rapidly spreading epidemic and more like a slow virus. It is likely that it is Tunisia's particular circumstances that made such a popular uprising leading to a non-violent change in government possible. Regardless, the Tunisians set a precedent that is hard to ignore. Political and civil society activists in the region will certainly learn a lot from the Tunisian experience.

Meanwhile, the Syrian blogsphere remains in slumber mode. Except for some sharp commentary by Qunfuz, one would think that not much is happening across the Mediterranean.

(Photo: Tunisian students spelling out the words: No to murder)

"I am not desperate yet, but I am less hopeful"

2010-11-07T20:58:00.000-05:00

These are the disheartening words of Hatem Ali, a well known Syrian film director, commenting about the state of the arts in Syria in an artcile in the NYT today.

A Not So Brief Taste of Prison

2010-10-27T22:48:00.000-04:00

This is my first post in the last six months. It is triggered by a long comment left two days ago by Sammy on one of my old posts from 2006 titled A Brief Taste of Prison. Reading his comment sent a chill down my spine as dark memories, twenty four years old, were brought back to life. Sammy had it much worse than me but both of us were extremely lucky. To those who wonder why bring up such stories from the past, I say: these are recurrent stories, from our past, our present and, unfortunately, our forseeable future. I am not one to dwell on the past and always ready to give someone the benefit of the doubt, but are things really different in Syria now than they were a quarter of a century ago? Ten years on from the promise of the Damascus Spring and the hope of a new leadership, is Syria's government any less opaque or its citizens any freer than they were a half century ago? The gloves are now made of silk but they still hide an iron fist; autocracy-lite is still an autocracy.

With Sammy's permission, I repost his story:

My story is a magnified account of yours: I was studying in the U.S (TAHT EL ESHRAF). I came back to visit my family in Beirut after 2 years absence during which I neglected to renew my military service deferral paperwork.One day we were riding our motorcycles through Bhamdoun and got pulled over at a Mukhabarat checkpoint. I produced my Syrian passport to the spick mounting the checkpoint and was asked about DAFTAR AL ASKARIEH (military service booklet). I told him it was not in order. He told me to get off the bike and told my friends to get lost. He then put me in his mercedes and took me to a nearby detention centre. I was shown to an empty room with few blankets on the floor. Later I could hear the guards hurling insults at a few guys they had pulled over. Then the screams started. The guards were beating up whoever they had in that room. I kept thinking that I was going to be next. Later that day I was taken to Ramlee Al Baida. Level 6 for interrogation and then taken down to the same cell Abu Kareem was taken to except when I walked in I counted at leat 50 inmates. It was August, the room felt like an oven. I walked up to one of the walls and banged my head against it. The sudden loss of freedom left me completely dazed. Floor space was so tight we were unable to sleep on our backs: we each slept on our side effectively being sandwiched between the guy in front and the one behind. Dinner consisted of one super bowl filled with rice and another filled with some red stew. It was put in the middle of the room for everyone to fight for their share. The next 5 days were a repeat of the first but I managed to strike conversations with the other inmates which helped pass the time. One day the guard comes in and asks me to go up with him to level six. I went in and found my parents waiting for me. We chatted for a while and before leaving my father whispered in my ear that things are being taken care of and I should be out of there soon. Before leaving they handed me a roast chicken with salad. I went back to my cell and sat on the floor ready to devour the chicken. I looked around and I saw couple of dozen eyes staring at my feast. I felt shame and asked them to join me. They all obliged. Anyway, the next sunday a few of us were told that we will be moved to a detention centre on the lebanese-Syrian border. The building was effectively the customs building. All the offices had been turned into holding cells. On my first night, they shaved my hair and interrogated me. Conditions here were a bit better,we were at ground level and had natural light. By that time I had accepted my fate: 4 to 5 years in the army, no going back overseas, no degree. I learned that the only way I am going to make it out of there in one piece is to socialise and stop thinking about my loss of freedom. Every inmate had a story to tell (most of them are interesting). I think I was the youngest in the wole building (I was 19) and some of the inmates took it upon themselves to cheer me up and point out the bright side of things. Another bonus was that I did not get beaten up by the guards in any of the 3 detention places. Finally, on saturday (14 days into my ordeal), a guard comes in and asks me to accompany him. I was taken to an office where I saw some of the officers I'd already seen, my father and a decorated officer.Him and my father walked up to me and asked me if I was OK. The officer then pulled me to the side and asked me if anyone had beat me. My father then came to me and told me it has all been sorted out and I should be out of there in the next day or so. Next day (sunday) I was woken up at 6 in the morning and taken to the office where I was given back my posessions and shown to my parents' waiting car. The feeling of being free was truly undescribable. One week later I was back in the U.S. It took me fourteen years for me to set foot in Syria again.

You got to feel for those incarcerated in Syrian jails. I imagine their lot is not much better off. No wonder most who get a chance, end up living in western countries: the smart and the not so smart.

The part that upset me the most was when my father told me the price he paid for my freedom: 5000 lebenese liras or the equivalent of USD1200.00 in those days. That covered three ranking officers and their side kicks. The top officer on the take had his own demands: he told my father thst he needs to buy him a fridge, a washing machine and the use of the family's Volvo for a month (which later dragged on for more than 3 months and was only returned after my father escalated the issue through our neighbour who was a colonel in the lebanese army). I could not beleive that a measly 5000 liras could buy so many officers. How on earth can such an army win any war?

The Zeitouns: From Jableh to Post-deluvian New Orleans

2010-04-21T08:00:00.004-04:00

(This article is co-written by Abu Kareem and Abufares and posted simultaneously on both blogs)

by Abu Fares

There's a tomb at the far end of the Cornishe in Jableh, Syria. It is the resting place of 23 year old Mohamad Zeitoun (1941-1964), by far the most accomplished Syrian athlete of all times. Mohamad died in a car accident while on his way to the Suez Canal in Egypt to participate in the International Canal Swimming Race.The Zeitoun family came from Arwad, a small island off the coast of Tartous and the only inhabited one in Syria. The father, Haj Ahmad, was a master sailboat builder. He had witnessed family and friends perish in the treacherous waves of the unforgiving sea and wanted to offer his offspring an alternative life. Accordingly he moved to Jableh where he worked hard as a mason and brought up his sons into the business. The main concern of this simple man was to keep his family safe and away from the sea but fate, as it is often inclined to, had other ideas up its sleeve.

Mohamad Zeitoun, Syrian long distance swimmer, went on to become an international legend as 3 times World Champion (1960, 1961 and 1964). In 1959 his winning of the 40 km Nile Race in Egypt was nothing short of historic as he completed the final 10 km using one arm only due to injury. His 1961 world record in the Capri-Napoli International Swimming Marathon remained unbroken for many years as he swam the 38 km in 8 hours and 45 minutes, one full hour ahead of his nearest competitor. He crossed the 50 km Suez Canal Race in 12 hours and 3 minutes in 1963. Mohamad, who never had a coach, went on to win every single international event he participated in during his short-lived career. His brother Abdulwahab, a retired general, recalls how his father sent Mohamad to work as an apprentice blacksmith at 16. His boss had to make a custom 15 kg sledgehammer for him with a steel handle because he invariably kept breaking those made of wood. He was a powerful man who ultimately defied his father's will and couldn't keep away from the water. All of Jableh, including the father, gathered around the radio when Mohamad was racing and waited for the good news. A huge celebration would erupt upon the announcement of the expected result and the proud father would delightfully cry: Abaday, Allah Ywaf'o in his provincial Arwadi accent.

In 2005, 41 years later and halfway across the world, Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, Louisiana. Another son of Haj Ahmad Zeitoun makes the headlines and becomes an American Legend. Heroism runs in the family evidently but why not continue reading about this fascinating story through the words of my friend Abu Kareem of Levantine Dreamhouse.

By Abu Kareem

Few books published in the United States since 9/11 have sought to understand those on the recieving end of the war on terror. Always on prominent display at bookstores are books with sensational titles written by self appointed Middle East "experts" with ulterior motives or an axe to grind. Such books fed the national paranoia and along with the popular media provided cover for the Bush-Cheney years.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (see side bar for link to book) shatters that mold. The book is a biography of a Syrian immigrant, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, living in New Orleans when hurricane Katrina devastated the city. Abdulrahman, a native of Arwad and Jableh, steps onto dry land in Houston after a ten-year wanderlust sailing the seven seas on commercial ships. He makes his way to New Orleans where he settles down, marries an American woman and establishes a thriving business as a painting contractor. A couple of days before Katrina strikes New Orleans, Abdulrahman sends his family away to safety and stays behind to look after his properties and his business. After Katrina's passage over New Orleans, the levies break and Abdulrahman's neighborhood is flooded. He retreats to the second floor of his house and retrieves an old canoe from the garage. Setting out by canoe intending to check on his business and properties, he instead finds himself rescuing eldery people trapped in their houses and feeding dogs abandoned by their owners. He wife's pleas to leave the city go unheaded as he feels duty bound to stay behind to help out. As Abdulrahman's American story unfolds, Eggers weaves in anecdotes from his past in Arwad and Jableh. We learn much about his family of seafarers, his childhood in Arwad, the moonless nights he spent sardine fishing off the coast of Jableh and his attachment to his older, now deceased, brother, a world champion swimmer. These anectdotes help the reader understand Abdulrahman's character, his inner strength and resolve bordering on stubborness, his gentle piety, his devotion to his family, his dreams and ambitions and his deep sense of fairness. One cannot help but like this man.

The first half of the book recounting Abdulrahman's history is hopeful and heartwarming: an honest and hardworking immigrant thriving in his adoptive land. Even in the midst of New Orleans' apocalyptic floods, our spirits are lifted by Abdulrahman's good deeds. Soon, however, this American dream turns into a nightmare.

Instead of mounting a campaign to rescue the stranded citizens of New Orleans, the Bush administration, in true war-on-terror style, sets up a military seige of the city. Thousands of heavily armed soldiers and private security guards -mercenaries in effect- are sent in. As hundreds of citizens perish, the soldiers' first priority was to build a makeshift prison at the city's train station. Abdulrahman and three companions, two Americans and a Syrian, all of whom stayed behind hoping to ride out the storm, are arrested on suspicion of looting by overzealous soldiers armed to the teeth. The Syrians are singled out as possible terrorists and all are detained in conditions that are a cross between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Claustrophobic and nightmarish, the second half of the book is a powerful indictment of the Bush administration and the militaristic attitude that permeated everything it did and where national security paranoia trumped even the most basic civil rights of its own citizens. Perhaps what is most shocking about Zeitoun is how the horrific treatment of detainees in post-Katrina New Orleans went completely unreported by the national media at the time.

Eggers is a compelling storyteller and a careful journalist. He researched and cross checked all the facts of the events described in the book. He even traveled to Syria several times to meet the Zeitoun clan and learn about the coastal towns of Syria. As a good journalist should, he avoids sentimentality, though his admiration for Abdulrahman, his wife Kathy and the whole Zeitoun clan is hard to hide. Abdulrahman comes across as an admirable human being, fair and idealistic, almost to a fault. Even after his arrest and mistreatment, he stubbornly refuses to think ill of his fellow human beings, assuming that it is all a misunderstanding that will soon be resolved. It is perhaps this quality that also made him so liked among his neighbors and why so many New Orleanians were ready to come to his defense.

Even after Bush's departure, the perception of a "clash of civilizations" lingers and ignorance and suspicion of Arabs and Muslims remains an issue in the United States. I therefore take it as a hopeful sign that Zeitoun, a book with a fairly narrow focus, made it to the New York Times best seller list last year.

References:

Lecture Abdulwahab Zeitoun 2008 (Arabic)
The Guardian: The Amazing True Story of Zeitoun (English)
Nass MBC Net (Arabic)

The Tragic Tale of an "Overqualified" Diplomat

2010-02-06T13:06:00.001-05:00

Too funny to pass.

From: Foreign Policy, by David Kenner; Feb 3, 2010.
Despite having served for years as a distinguished Pakistani diplomat, Akbar Zeb reportedly cannot receive accreditation as Pakistan's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The reason, apparently, has nothing to do with his credentials, and everything to do with his name -- which, in Arabic, translates to "biggest dick": In Saudi Arabia, size does count.

A high level Pakistani diplomat has been rejected as Ambassador of Saudi Arabia because his name, Akbar Zib, equates to "Biggest Dick" in Arabic. Saudi officials, apparently overwhelmed by the idea of the name, put their foot down and gave the idea of his being posted there, the kibosh.

According to this Arabic-language article in the Arab Times, Pakistan had previously floated Zeb's name as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, only to have him rejected for the same reason. One can only assume that submitting Zeb's name to a number of Arabic-speaking countries is some unique form of punishment designed by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry -- or the result of a particularly egregious cockup.

Dining with Sheharazade: Medieval Middle Eastern Cuisine

2010-01-25T21:51:00.002-05:00

Did you know that there are more cooking books in Arabic before 1400 than in all other languages combined? I didn't, but I cannot say that I am surprised given how finicky Middle Easterners are about the food they eat. This and many other tantalizing tidbits appear in Medieval Cooking in the Islamic World by the Tunisian author Lilia Zaouali. It is a short, fascinating whirlwind tour of our culinary heritage.

The oldest Arabic cookbook titled Kitab al-Tabikh, dates from the 10th century and was penned by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq and included recipes from the 8th and 9th century Caliphs and members of their court. The influences and complexities of Medieval Islamic cuisine grew predictably as the geographic reach of the Islamic world expanded. Expanding Northward from the Arabian peninsula, Arab cooking was infused with Persian influences as well as those of the Aramaic speaking Christians of Syria and Iraq. Moving Westward, Arabs brought Near Eastern recipes to North Africa and Andalusia but also adopted Berber and Iberian influences. With the Arrival of the Ottomans, the cuisine of the Eastern and Western Islamic world grew apart with the Near Eastern cuisine becoming heavily influenced by Turkish culinary traditions. Paradoxically, however, some of the more ancient common recipes, lost in the East are preserved in the Maghreb.

The history of the development of a particular cuisine also provides a window into the societal and political workings of the era. There seems to have been a distinct preoccupation with the health aspects of particular foods with many physicians of the era, Muslim Jewish and Christian writing about the benefits and harmful effects of certain foods. Eggplant, for example, with its bitter taste was considered unhealthy and did not become part of the cuisine until someone figured out that salting the eggplants before cooking took the bitterness out. The importance of hygeine in cooking also emphasized as way to ward off fevers. Cooking pots had to be scrubbed clean and cooks were advised not to cut their vegetables on board used to cut uncooked meat. Surprisingly, some of the cookbooks even included recipes for making wine and beer. At different periods in the medieval Islamic world alcohol consumption was tolerated though overindulgence was considered unacceptable. I remember, as a child, asking my father about references to Khamr in old Arabic texts or poems I read; he would invariably and disengenuously tell me that it really referred to grape juice.

The book also includes 174 recipes divided into medieval recipes and modern recipes, the latter being mostly Maghrebi dishes, that can be traced back to medieval ones. Most sound delicious and have combinations of sweet and savory that is no longer common in today's Middle Eastern cuisine -except, perhaps in Maghrebi cooking. Also, there was widespread use of fermented sauces, akin to soy sauce or Asian fish sauces, in medieval recipes that, to my knowledge, are no longer used. Despite the differences, there remains some commonalities: the heavy use of nuts, pomegranate, lemon and the frequent use of cinammon and other spices. Some recipes like Beef with rosebuds sound intriguing while others, like the one detailed here, sound ominous:

Fish Drowned in Grape Juice:

Take a large fish. Put in black grape juice in a vessel deep enough for it to be completely immersed. It will thrash about and swallow the juice until its body is filled with it. When the level of the juice goes down and the belly and gills are saturated with it, remove the fish, clean it and cook it on the grill...

Sounds cruel, but I guess it is not any worse than throwing a live lobster into scalding water.

Perhaps the most suprising thing is how few medieval recipes survive. Though some of the names sound very familiar, the medieval recipes are often totally different than their modern namesakes. It should come as a surprise, the food we eat is influenced by the times we live in. Recipes for the same dishes evolve over time with changes in tastes and introduction of new ingredients -like the tomato- not available in medieval times. Witness, for example, the demise of the use of samneh (clarified butter) in favor of vegetable oil. Samneh was considered so important that a scandal over tainted samneh once toppled a government in Syria. Moreover, even at any given time recipes for the same dish vary tremendously from family to family and from town to town, each thinking their recipe is the ultimate, immutable version for that particular dish.

Deconstructing Obama's Oslo Speech

2009-12-20T22:11:00.000-05:00

Here is a piece from ConsortiumNews that shreds Obama's speech for it faulty reasoning:

"Whether Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize is not the point. He didn’t. The fact is he got it, and was gifted with the chance of a lifetime to make a classic speech on the politics of peace-making, a speech that in the glare of Nobel could have attained instant biblical standing.
He failed miserably, producing a hodge-podge that resembled the work of a bright but undisciplined sophomore." (Read more Here)

An Immigrant's Dilemma

2009-12-07T22:38:00.009-05:00

My Homeland!
A word that sends chills down my spine
Emotions that confound me
And questions that persist
Is my homeland the place where I was born
Or the place that I live in
Is my homeland the land that pushed me away
Or the land that welcomed me
Is my homeland just a collection of old memories
Or is it the memories in the making
And the list gets longer, and the questions multiply
But there are no answers
In the end, one question lingers
One burning more than all others combined
Do I really have a homeland?

The above poem, in Arabic, appeared on the blog Migrant Bird. The words resonated with my own experience and I took the liberty, with George's permission, to translate it into English.

Alas, it is the inescapable fate of all first generation immigrants to never feel fully at home anywhere. I have, long ago, become reconciled with that fact. The facet of my immigrant psyche that remains problematic, however, is my sometimes ambivalent relationship with the land of my birth. My family did not emigrate by choice; it was not a voluntary, planned or orderly process, but a harried, furtive, and frightful departure. Our life, like that of many other compatriots, was suddenly upended, and we were sentenced to a nomadic and fragmented existence away from home and extended family. A hopeless optimist, I always told myself that the unique experience of our family's disrupted life would make me stronger. But it is impossible to make it through such chaotic formative years without some psychic scars. However well camouflaged, these scars do, from time to time, resurface, raw and painful as if the wounds were inflicted yesterday.

So I sometimes wonder, why should I care about the country of my birth? Have I not earned the right to turn my back and walk away? Somehow, though, I cannot walk away. My home might be here, but my roots, as forlorn and dessicated as they might, are still there.

Into the Wild

2009-11-29T17:21:00.001-05:00

Until a few weeks ago, I had never been camping. So when a friend, an experienced outdoors man, offered to take me on a camping trip, it was hard to say no. Not even a forecast predicting an overnight temperature of two degrees (Celsius) for the weekend of our trip, dimmed my enthusiasm; on the contrary, the extra challenge strengthened my resolve.

The plan was to hike 23Km of the Finger Lakes Trail in upstate New York over two days. The trail runs hundreds of miles East to West, perpendicular to the Southern tips of a dozen or so elongated lakes carved into the landscape by ancient glaciers. The trail runs through forested hills, farmland and along streams and glens. An added bonus at this time of the year, is the foliage ablaze in fall colors. But October, in this part of the world, can also be very wet and very cold.

Predictably, it was dark, cold and raining the morning we drove South. After parking one car at the destination of our hike, we drove to our planned starting point. As we drove deeper into the countryside and paved roads turned into unto desolate dirt roads, images from the 70s movie classic Deliverance crossed my mind. What, I wondered, would a bunch of rednecks do if they found an Ayrab lost in the woods. Other than the isolation, however, there was nothing threatening about the quiet, bucolic countryside that surrounded us. Several miles from our destination we came across a sign planted in the front yard of a house announcing: "Arab Mare for Sale". The sign was sitting under the street sign: Templar road. We had to chuckle at this odd juxtaposition. Not even deep in the backwoods of the New World can you get away from ghosts of the Old World.

We parked the car, dressed in layers to keep warm and dry, donned our backpacks and set out onto the trail. It was mid morning but felt more like dawn. A grey mist hung heavy across the valleys and a constant drizzle saturated the air. The cold, damp air scented with the distinctive smell of fall, was invigorating. The trail was carpeted with fiery red, rust-colored and golden leaves glistening from the rain. Other than the sounds of our steps, the woods were silent without even the distant din of traffic, a reassuring sound for the urban dweller, a sign that civilization is still within reach.

We walked mostly in silence, enveloped by the vegetation around us and exhilarated by the solitude. This was no leisurely stroll in the woods, however, we walked at a determined, purposeful pace. We had to make it to our campsite before dark. Every couple of hours, we would drop our backpacks and collapse unto the wet ground for a quick break. We shed or added layers of cloths according to the ambient temperature and we refueled with water, nuts and dried fruits. Over the next seven hours we walked through woods, along creeks, across streams, past small waterfalls, emerging occasionally from the woods to walk around farms, unto hilltops with distant views of the surrounding hills and lakes. Our most striking encounter in the woods, however, had nothing to do with nature. It was the abandoned cemetery of an old, long gone settlement, an eerie vision in the middle of the woods. Most of the tombstones were toppled or cracked by the encroaching trees and the chiseled names worn down by age and the unrelenting dampness of the undergrowth.

In the late afternoon, as we approached our destination for the night, we saw the only other hiker we came across on the trail. He was an older, white bearded man, making his way into the woods with a full backpack and walking sticks. We exchanged greetings but he was rather taciturn. He seemed determined to get away from it all and longed for the solitude of the wild; our small talk just got in the way. We reached our campsite at around five in the evening, time enough to make a fire, eat and prepare for the night. A lean to, a small wooden platform, closed on three sides, was going to be our shelter for the night. The night was jet black except for the dying embers of our fire. To keep the wildlife at bay, we hung all of our food in a bag high on a tree branch some fifty meters from our shelter. The night was uneventful with no unexpected visits from any of the wildlife - foxes, coyotes and occasional black bears- that live in the area. Early next morning, energized by the crisp cold air and a cup of instant coffee, we set our onto the trail for the final eight kilometers ending at the Watkins Glen state park. We must have been a strange sight to the tourists strolling in the opposite direction into the park, two scruffy, muddy, unshaven middle aged men with backpacks walking with a brisk confident pace. It was the confidence borne from a sense of achievement at having hiked 23Km in a day and a half and except for a couple of blisters, we were none worse for wear.

My first venture into the wild was exhilarating. OK, we did not cross the Amazon or survive a week in the arctic, but there were neverless real dangers had we been foolish or unprepared. Get wet when the ambient temperature is two degrees and you rapidly become hypothermic. There is a certain primordial pleasure in regaining some of the lost skills of our ancient ancestors and sense of achievement when you reach your goal. To get there, you have to shed all concerns of your daily life and fixate on a very primal need, survival: staying warm, dry, and safe. I can't wait to get back out there again though I will likely wait out the frigid subzero winter months; I am no Survivoman ... at least not yet.

My Eureka! Moment

2009-09-27T20:57:00.004-04:00

It was a eureka moment eighteen years in the making. Two years ago, a wealthy man made me a proposal I could not refuse. A family member with an inherited neurological condition was my patient. She suffered from a disease that I had been researching for a number of years. He wanted to help move the research forward and asked me to give him a far-reaching, long-term research plan and he would fund it. I came up with a seven year plan to create a "center without walls" with the aim of bringing together researchers with complementary expertise to work collaboratively on this project. He agreed to the plan and committed several million dollars to the project. It was an unusual proposal. Most scientists would have opted for a project that would keep all of the money at their institution. That was never a consideration for me as I thought that the quickest and most efficient way to move the science forward was to tap into already existing expertise elsewhere rather that try to recreate it locally.

Scientific research is a cutthroat business full of back-stabbing, petty jealousies and over-inflated egos. It is these attributes that often get in the way of scientific advancement and make successful collaborative research a rarity. The medical sciences are no exception. Therefore I had to choose my partners carefully. In addition to being good scientists, they must be willing to leave their egos at the door. I partnered with a Dutch scientist whom I had known for some time. He not only had the scientific talent, but he also had the temperament that I was looking for in a collaborator. A year into the project, we extended the collaboration to include a scientist in Seattle.

Last week, we gathered to go over the data generated in the first two years of the project. I knew this would be a good meeting. When careful scientists not usually given to hyperbole and exaggeration tell you that they are "very, very, excited...", you cannot help but get giddy. When all the data was presented, the members of the scientific advisory board overseeing the project were stunned. Several independent lines of evidence all pointed to one mechanism for this disease. For eighteen years since the initial discovery of the genetic defect, there were several competing theories about what was happening at the cellular level to cause this disease. With the data presented last week, all but one remains, and that last one is now backed by solid evidence.

Of course it is not the end of the road. It will be years before we have an effective treatment, but we finally have a target to go after and the technology to eventually reverse the effects of this sometimes devastating neurologic condition. For me, as a clinician, I can now for the first time offer my patients hope and truthfully tell them that we understand their disease and that we are working on a treatment.

My next eureka moment will come when I can look my patients in the eye and tell them that we finally have a treatment.

Blogging Against Fossilized Thinking التدوين ضد التفكير المتحجر

2009-09-13T06:50:00.000-04:00

Fossilized thinking inflicts people who rigidly adhere to an ideology, be it religious, political or philosophical. Lest anyone misrepresent my post, let me say up front that when it comes to religious fossilized thinking, no religion is immune to fossilized thinking. Fossilized religious thinkers:

Consider everyone who does not think like they do an enemy and legitimate target for conquest or elimination.
Deform the faith they seek to defend because they are more concerned with process and ritual than with the true content of their faith.
Take the spirit out of spirituality.
Are happiest when everyone looks dresses and acts exactly like they do; like identical preprogrammed, unthinking automatons.
Stifle creativity, ingenuity and critical thought.
Foster intolerance and conflict.
Will create an intolerably boring world, should they gain the upper hand

Several years ago I told a wise friend that I was considering sending my daughter to the local mosque for weekly religious lessons but was concerned that she will taught by and old shaikh with fossilized ideas. On the contrary, he said, the older shaikhs tend to be more moderate and reasonable, it is the young ones who think they have all the answers that I should be concerned about. And therein lies the problem; it is the large number of young people who seem to be going from green to fossilized that is a source of concern for the future.

Along the Karakoram Highway

2009-09-08T21:54:00.002-04:00

Pakistan today occupies the front and center the global media's attention. Pakistan is also on my mind. You see, for the past several months, my younger brother has been in Islamabad working for an international organization. I worry about him, but not excessively; we've lived through more dangerous times in Beirut of the early eighties. In one of those ironic twists of fate, twenty years ago, it was my father who was posted in Islamabad and worked in the same office complex where my brother now works.

During my father's tenure there, I visited several times and came know and like this complicated and troubled country. During one visit, I went on road trip in the company of an Argentinian photographer and Mustafa, an Argentine Sufi convert. We drove West to Peshawar, then teeming with Afghan refugees as well as plotters and schemers of all stripes. We continued to the North West Frontier province and the lovely Swat valley, now ground zero for the Taliban insurgency. It is in the Northern reaches of the Swat valley that you realize how complex this country is. All you have to do is look at the people passing you by to realize the multiplicity of distinctive features and distinctive clothes that mark the various ethnicities, tribes and sects that share this land at the crossroads of China, the Indian subcontinent, and central Asia.

But perhaps the most memorable journey was flying up North to Gilgit, at foothills of the Himalayan chain at the juncture of the Hindu Kush mountains and the Karakoram chain, and then driving the incredible Karokaram highway all the way to the border of China. Recently married , the trip was a gift from my parents to me and my wife.

The first inkling that this was no ordinary place was the view from the window of the PIA turboprop flying us from Islamabad to Gilgit. At cruising altitude, we were flying below the peaks of the mountains that surrounded us from all sides. After a night in Gilgit, the birthplace of polo, we set out on the Karkoram highway. The highway itself was an engineering feat that took fifteen year to complete and the combined efforts of Pakistani and Chinese engineers. It runs 848 Km to the border of China at the Khunjerab pass, the world's highest paved mountain pass at 4703 m. We head North in a jeep with open sides, on narrow roads often hugging deep precipices, across raging rivers on hanging bridges and with baited breath across rock slide zones. The Karokaram highway is notorious for rock slides. Upon emerging unscathed from a rock slide zone, a sign exclaims "Alhamdulilah". All fears, however, are quickly forgotten as the most stunning scenery unfolds in front of our eyes. The sheer scale of the place is breathtaking and the views otherworldly. You are surrounded, in all directions by peaks that are six and seven thousand meters high. The landscape goes from stark moonscapes to , within minutes around a bend in the road, lush green valleys with terraced gardens and orchards pregnant with apples, peaches and apricots spread amid humble villages; it is as if you'd died and gone to heaven.

The Hunza valley is one such place. We stopped for the night in the town Karimabad nestled on a rocky ridge across the valley from the mighty Rakaposhi mountain with its peak, at 7788 m, showing just above the clouds. We are the only customers at the Karimabad resthouse that evening. The family that runs it goes into a frenzy of activity when they learn that we haven't eaten and within an hour two huge platters of rice pilaf with chicken and meat materialize, enough to feed a family of ten.

The people of Hunza valley are predominantly Ismailis and are known for their peaceful demeanor. The also benefit from the generosity of the Agha Khan Foundation. Each humble village has a decent looking school and a medical clinic courtesy of the Foundation. We continued along the Karakoram highway for the next day encountering equally majestic scenes, past the Batura glacier and shortly before arriving to the Khunjerab pass, to the east, we glimpsed the mighty K2 at a distance, the worlds second highest peak at 8611 m, straddling the border of China in Pakistan. At the Khunjerab pass car and buses stopped and passengers descended inhaling the thin air and taking measure of the place. The pass, after all, sits astride of the old silk trade route travelled by Marco Polo in the 13th century but before him by the Chinese Monk, Fa Hien in the 4th century and the Iranian historian and scientist, Al Biruni in the 11th century.

Twenty years on, no other place we have visited measures up to what we saw along the Karakoram highway. And on the evening news, when Pakistan is reduced to a one-dimensional cutout about terrorism and extremism, I remember a very different Pakistan.

Photos by AK:

1. View from flight to Gilgit

2. Rakaposhi peak and Hunza valley

3. Karimabad

4. Chatting with the elders of Karimabad (I am in the blue T shirt)

5. Mountains around Gilgit

6. K2 top left of photograph

Don't Touch This!

2009-09-04T12:57:00.008-04:00

I had been working on a post expressing my disappointment with the content of much of the Syrian blogosphere when I saw this today: A campaign to combat masturbation! Need I say more? I almost fell off my chair!! Is this for real? I guess I was not aware of the masturbation "epidemic" that has hit Syria’s youth.

I am still trying to understand what the impetus was for this campaign. Are there no other more pressing righteous causes? How about poverty, gender discrimination, honor killings, the absence of civil liberties and the absence of freedom of expression among a long list of societal ills. Don’t these deserve more immediate attention than a practice that is the realm of the personal and affects no one else?

(Prophylactic T Shirt: works best with MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" playing in the background)

Lebanon: Painful Reminders

2009-07-19T22:51:00.007-04:00

"The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war". - Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

In several earlier posts (here and here), I lamented the tendency of many Lebanese, including many politicians, the bury their heads in the sand when it comes facing the country's tragic history of the last thirty years. Two recent stories give me hope that things may be changing. There is perhaps a growing recongnition that you really cannot move forward, not in any meaningful way, without facing the past. The NYT published a story on the new Beirut Art Center showing and exhibition titled “The Road to Peace: Paintings in Times of War, 1975-1991”. Across town, in Haret Hreik, another, more humble cultural center, The Hangar, is screening a film series entitled "What is to be done: Lebanon's War Loaded Memory".

For those Lebanese too young to remember these days, it will be an eduction that they missed in school -official history books omit any mention of the war years. For those who remember, it is a necessary, if agonizing, recall of a not so distant past, and a reminder that many of the problems that led to the civil war have yet to be resolved.

The Sword of Damocles Still Hanging Over Syria's Women

2009-07-05T22:07:00.000-04:00

President Assad scraps article 548 of the penal code. The new amendment however, represents only a small step forward in combating the scourge of honor killings. As clearly explained here (in Arabic) the new amendment sets the minimum sentence at two years and removes the statute from article 548 that essentially justified honor crimes even when adultery is suspected. Does this really represent progress? Yes, if you believe that a slap on the wrist as opposed to a pat on the back is adequate punishment for the horrific act that is honor killing.

How could it be acceptable, in 2009 -or in any other year, for that matter- that half of Syria's population is still held hostage to such an inane law? and why was the president's amendment so timid? What constituency within Syria is holding him back? With 98% (or was it 99%) of the votes in the last election, one would think that he has a mandate to push through real change if he so desired.

This is no trivial matter; there are over 200 victims of this crime in Syria every year. And yet there is a certain reluctance to talk about the issue. For some, and here I include myself, it is out of shame and embarrassment that such crimes are associated with our country. Others, may feel that it is a crime of the poor and uneducated and therefore of no concern to them. Even among those who condone it, many, I suspect, know deep down that these crimes are wrong but somehow feel compelled by societal or distorted religious beliefs to think that these are justifiable acts.

There is no room for partial or stepwise solutions to this problem. It is wrong, it is unconscionable, it is morally reprehensible. It is murder pure and simple and it should be punished as such.

(Photo: Grave of Zahra el-Azzo; victim of honor killing; NYT)

Gad El Maleh and the Beiteddine Festival

2009-07-04T16:15:00.003-04:00

Gad El Maleh is a manic, wickedly funny French comedian born and raised in Morocco to a Moroccan Jewish family. I first learned of him from my younger brother when I visited him in Morocco. After seeing a couple of his one-man acts on DVD, I was hooked. We went the Rabat mdina (old town) to buy pirated El Maleh DVDs to take home with me. It is clear from his skits that he considers himself culturally Moroccan who happens to be Jewish. He speaks Arabic and his website has the French and Morocaan flags and is in three languages: French, English and Arabic.

I was therefore taken aback by the recent row over his scheduled appearance at this year's Beiteddine festival. Apparently, Al Manar TV aired a peice that suggested that El Maleh served in the Israeli Army and he was a stauch supported of Israel. The story rsulted in threatening calls to the Festival's organizers and ultimately El Maleh decided to cancel his three sold out shows at Beitiddine. The response, as everything else in Lebanon, was as polarized and politicized as it was predictable. The organizers said that there was no basis for the accusations and that Hizbullah was mounting a smear campaign and that the campaign amounted to "cultural terrorism". Wanting to go past the usual histrionics of Lebanese politics, I went on an internet search to see if I could find anything incriminating enough about El Maleh that would disqualify him from appearing at the festival. The bottom line is, I did not.

Al Maleh went on tour in Israel and was recieved by enthusiatic audiences. In interviews during the tour, he said that he was glad that he came (he is Jewish after all) and praised the Israeli people. There was nothing remotely political about his statements. Now, some would argue that no statement involving Israel could really be apolitical. Perhaps, but one must consider the context. Gad El Maleh is a talented comedian, he was not invited to Lebanon for his political views but to entertain.

Tehran vs Gaza in the American Media

2009-06-23T21:28:00.000-04:00

It is not news that the quality of American journalism had sunk to new lows during the Bush years. The fall to the bottom continues especially in TV and cable news with the obsession to be the first, the penchant to sensationalize even bits of unsubstantiated news and to over analyze everything. Witness the week-old feeding frenzy on Iran where, blurred pixilated cellphone videos are over interpreted by "experts" for the naive viewers and recycled endlessly as real news. These uninterpretable videos were accompanied by emotive language that was, most of time, not justified by the facts or the images shown thus exposing the broadcasters intrinsic biases.

To be clear, I never liked Ahmadinejad and fully sympathize with the demonstrators in Tehran. What bothers me is the stark difference between the media’s coverage of the Tehran demonstrations and the way the massacre in Gaza earlier this year was covered. As heart wrenching as the story and images of Neda Agha Soltan are, there were hundreds of Nedas in Gaza. These stories went largely unnoticed by the American media despite the presence of easily checked facts and very crisp videos documenting the unfolding horror. Just as the Iranina government did in Tehran, Israel limited journalists' access to the war zone. But whereas in Tehran the media shunned suspect government generated information in favor of citizen journalists, in Gaza information coming from Palestinians was treated as suspect and they relied on the drivel generated by the Israeli army as hard facts.

For the Arab observer, the disconnect does not stop there. In the absence of reliable news coming from Iran, the airwaves were jammed with -often ignorant- talking heads pontificating about the situation in Iran. Most outrageous was an interview with Netanyahu who exclaimed, without a hint of irony, that he is in favor of freedom for the people of Iran!!! Needless to say, the double standard extends to the politicians. Whereas Congress swiftly condemned the Iranian government's crackdown, during the war on Gaza they passed a resolution in support of Israel. Obama, wisely, kept quiet. Today, however, with mounting political pressure, he declared himself "appalled and horrified" at the loss of innocent lives in Tehran; but neither he nor his predecessor were moved by the hundreds of innocent men, women and children murdered in cold blood in Gaza.

The Oriental Music Ensemble

2009-06-23T21:00:00.000-04:00

The story of the Oriental Music Ensemble is the story of every Palestinian:
NYT, June 21, 2009: Wisps of mournful tunes from a cane flute mingled with the plucking, jangling arabesques of the zitherlike qanun, the oud and gentle drums. The sounds arose from a quartet of Arab musicians who call themselves the Oriental Music Ensemble as they shared a precious moment of togetherness in the Miller Theater at Columbia University in March (more here)

Tahir Shah's Arabian Nights

2009-06-05T21:23:00.001-04:00

Tahir Shah is a writer and filmmaker of mixed Afghani-British descent. In Arabian Nights, Shah, having recently moved to Casablanca from the UK, sets out to explore and understand the essence of Morocco through its storytellers. Shah believes in the power of the well told story, the folktale, the Sufi parable, not as mere entertainment but as mechanisms of transmitting wisdom and deeper meaning through the generations. He believes that whereas the West has forgotten this oral tradition, it is alive and well in the Middle East from the stories of the hapless Jeha to those of Mullah Nasruddin, his Afghani equivalent.

Shah sets out to find the storytellers and the stories of Morocco. On his often spontaneous journeys through Morocco he asks everyone he meets to tell him a story. From the small town policeman who takes him in for the night to the Casablanca cobbler who repairs his expensive shoes, they all, happily, oblige. The result is a masterful interweaving of the stories he was told with the events his daily life in Morocco and reminiscences of his childhood travels in Morocco with his revered father, Idris Shah. In his search for the oral traditions of Morocco, Tahir also begins to understand the value of the stories his father passed on to him.

Idris Shah figures prominently in the book with references to him on almost every page of the book. It is he who instilled in a young Tahir the love of the story and belief in their hidden powers. Idris Shah was a prominent, if sometimes controversial, figure in the West. He is credited with making Sufi philosophy understandable to Westerners. He was also fond of stories and wrote a number of books on the subject.

The book is both an informative travelogue of Morocco and a soulful reflection on larger existential questions brought out by the stories Moroccans tell him and those told to him by his father when he was a child. The book is peppered with asides where he explains "Oriental" habits and customs to the Western reader. I thought most were unnecessary and sometimes annoying but what puzzled me most is that these asides were often prefaced by "we, in the West...". Sure he was born in the UK of mixed parentage but his books, his intellectual pursuits have always pointed Eastward. Surely, his move from London to Casablanca with his Indian wife and young children is more than some Orientalist fantasy?

These asides do not, however, detract from the fact that Tahir Shah is a talented and captivating travel writer and I thouroughly enjoyed In Arabian Nights.

Tianamen and Palestine

2009-06-04T21:00:00.004-04:00

Tianamen Square 20th Anniversary

Palestinian Nakba 60th Anniversary

Israeli Right Wing Group Calls Obama Anti-Semitic

2009-06-03T18:08:00.003-04:00

A right wing Israeli group wants to hang this poster all over Isreal.

In the words of a good friend of mine "How a nation that would not exist if it wasn't for America, that depends on American tax dollars, weapons, technology, satellite information, and constant vetoes and protection from the slightest criticism at the U.N., can bite, kick, and spit on the hand that feeds it and gets away with it is a historic anomaly."

What's the Yiddish word this .... Ah yes! Chutzpah.

Bible Thumping Donald Rumsfeld

2009-05-17T20:50:00.006-04:00

For those who think Bin Laden calling Bush a crusader is just jihadi hyperbole, think again. Rumsfeld regularly used verses from the Bible in his intelligence reports to Bush. Above is an image of one example. GQ magazine has a slide show of several such reports here: http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret. This is what the leader of the only superpower, where the separation of church and state is enshrined in the constitution, was reading every morning.

Against All Odds

2009-05-13T22:12:00.010-04:00

"I only did this for my daughter!", Caroline's lips mouthed the words as her husband, now adept at lip reading, interpreted her silent utterances. She glanced across the kitchen door into the living room where a large portrait of her daughter, now fourteen, featured prominently on the wall. I first met Caroline ten years ago when she was referred to me because of stiffness in her legs. She was a beautiful thirty year old with alabaster skin, blond hair and high cheekbones, a gift inherited from native American ancestors. But it was her disarming smile, warm, radiant, kind and yet also playfully mischievous that charmed everyone who met her. I quickly realized that her ailment was untreatable, but it took another year before her condition clearly declared itself. She had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, a devastating, untreatable disease that causes progressive muscle weakness eventually leaving those afflicted unable to move, speak swallow or breathe . My heart ached when I broke the devastating news to her and her husband: the average survival is three to five years.

Ten years on, accompanied by our clinic nurse, we were making a house call. Caroline had beaten the odds, but at what cost. She is almost completely paralyzed with barely enough strength to manipulate the joystick of her electric wheelchair. She has a tube in her stomach to help with her nutrition and a tracheostomy to help her breathe. At night, she is attached to a ventilator. And yet, despite ten years of battling this crippling disease, her face is as beautiful and her smile just as radiant as it was when I first saw her. Caroline lost her mother when she was only thirteen and she was determined to see her own daughter into adulthood. And so, at every fork in the road along the rugged path of her illness, her choice was always made with her daughter in mind. Long after many patients with ALS just give up, she chose to keep going despite the discomfort and the pain.

As we chit chatted and examined Caroline, the mood was not somber around that kitchen table. Caroline was not withdrawn into a dark corner of her mind passively waiting to die; she was fully engaged, fully alive. She was, as always, neatly dressed and her home did not give off the stifling, stale feeling one often gets in the homes of the chronically ill. This was not the home of someone who's life was put on hold. She asked me about my children and I asked about her daughter. She had her husband bring out a bracelet that she had designed as a present for the nurse. She talked about taking an online course in comparative religions. We asked her about her painful spasms. They were still troublesome she said but did not care for more medication; she can deal with the pain and would rather be alert than in a drug-induced daze. A pleasant hour and half passed by effortlessly and we had to get back to the medical center. Before we said our goodbyes, she had her husband take a picture of us standing by her.

Caring for terminally ill patients can be emotionally taxing. But as I drove back to the medical center that day, I carried with me no emotional burdens. On the contrary, I felt a certain lightness, a sense of serenity as I marvelled at Caroline's fortitude, her grace and her dignity in the face of unspeakable suffering, in the face of death. It is a life lesson that I have learned repeatedly from my ALS patients, when against all odds, they reach deep down and show me the strength of the human spirit. I hope that in a year's time there will be another visit and that Caroline will again dazzle us with her her smile and her indomitable spirit.

Launch of UN's World Digital Library

2009-04-25T18:46:00.004-04:00

UNESCO launched the World Digital Library last Tuesday. It promises to have primary source documents (manuscripts, books, illustrations, photographs, etc) from countries and cultures around the world. It is being develop in conjunction with a number of institutions and libraries from around the world and is available in six languages, including Arabic. Currently, it has only about 1200 documents online, an embarrassingly small number for World library but, I guess, it is just starting. It is of interest that they will not only deal with institutions but will consider publishing documents from private collections and archives as well.

If it achieves its goal, it will be a very important resource. As with any such endeavor though, I fear that countries with resources and digital savvy will have flood the library with their documents and the resources of the "world" digital library will not really be representative. As is stands, the number of documents seem fairly well balanced from different regions of the world. Of course, this may be just to be politically correctness coinciding with the launch of the library. It will be interesting to see how it evolves.

In Pictures: To Lattakia and Back

2009-04-23T22:22:00.003-04:00

Starting at the beginning, there I am on the balcony of my grandfather's house. If my older brother in the background, it is because he was. Until my arrival, he was it! The next picture is of the same house now unfortunately probably beyond repair.

The rest of the photographs retrace our trips to Ugarit, up to a cold and fogged-in Slunfeh and a quick visit to the family's old summer house, then back down to Haffeh and the spectacular Salaheddine castle. The last day, we made our way to Tartous and Arwad. Click on the image or here.

Limiting Free Speech

2009-04-22T21:49:00.008-04:00

English teacher: So Kareem, what is the topic of your English research assignment?

Kareem (age 14): It is about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

English teacher: That's a very interesting topic...But what side are you taking?

Kareem: The Palestinian side.

English teacher, looking worried: Oh!! Hmm...That might get touchy; you have to be careful what you say.

Reflections of a Son and a Father

2009-04-11T08:13:00.006-04:00

I was invited to a medical conference in Cyprus in late March and so I took advantage of my proximity to Beirut to hop over and see my parents. I saw them last in December but of all my brothers I live the furthest from them and see then the least and at 76 and 81 years of age, my parents are getting frailer and slower. “Provided I am still alive by then” was my father’s usual response for as long as I can remember whenever we planned future reunions. That statement twenty years ago used to annoy my mother to no end. These days, however, she lets it pass.

Unencumbered by wife, kids or obligations to in-laws this time, my parents had me all to themselves for the three short days I spent in Beirut. We reconnected, reminisced, talked about their health as they worried unnecessarily about mine. Just sharing a common space with them, chatting over coffee and a few meals sufficed. It was just what I needed and it was all they wanted as well.

Retreating to the living room one afternoon as they rested, I sat on the sofa across from a bookcase jam packed with family photographs and memorabilia. They were the memories of a rich, if complicated, life, lived across many continents and requiring frequent fragmentation of the family. I had seen them all before, but whenever I visited, I felt the need to examine them again. Here on several bookshelves, was essentially the chronology of our life. This time, one particular photograph caught my attention. It was a photograph of me sitting on the floor my back against the bathtub, on each arm, a child wrapped in a towel. My two children, mere infants at the time, wet and smiling from ear to ear, looked happy, content … beautiful.

Then it happened, with a sudden rush of thoughts and emotions, one of life’s intense, confusing and contradictory moments. I felt simultaneously a sense of happiness, longing, loss, sadness and contentment. Here I was, visiting my aging parents in the twilight of their life, and feeling in their presence, even in my middle age, the same sense of comfort and security I felt as a child. At the same time the photograph of my children filled me with joy and realizing that more than a dozen years have passed since I gave them their baths, I longed to see them. I wanted to stay and yet I felt a sudden unrealistic urge to go. Time was passing fast, after all, and I only had a few more years to shepherd my children into adulthood.

I was torn between the privilege of being a son and the responsibilities of being a father. I may lose my privileged status as a son in a few years but I will always be a father. My only hope is that when I let my children fly on their own in a few short years, they will soar, but will not forget the privilege of being a son and a daughter. I want them to remember that there will always be a place of respite for them from life’s hard knocks and unpredictable turns, in the warm reassuring embrace of their father and mother.

Putting in My Two Cents Against Homophobia

2009-03-16T19:58:00.006-04:00

In my humble estimation, true faith is supposed to infuse the mind with spirituality and expand it’s horizon beyond the material world. Unfortunately, to some of our fellow Syrian bloggers, those who have been recently all tied up in knots about homosexuality, religion is more like a mental straightjacket. It makes them unable to reason, to see anything beyond the confines of their self-imposed straightjacket. They are consequently irrational, intolerant, and impossibly arrogant as they pass judgment on whole groups of people whom they know nothing about beyond their distorted stereotypes. The arguments that they use are naïve to the point of being juvenile. Moreover, some of their attempts at arguing on the basis of scientific evidence only further exposed their ignorance. They have all the right to believe that homosexuality is un-natural and a sin, but they have no right to demonize people to the point of justifying violence against them. I know that the retort will be that none of the bloggers directly suggested harming homosexuals but their failure to censure comments left on their post that explicitly speak of violence says volumes about their mindset.

And why this sudden interest in censuring homosexuals? Is homosexuality really threatening the very fabric of Syrian society? How about rampant corruption, lack of free speech, the absence of some basic human right, political prisoners, honor killings, to mention just a few ills? Of course addressing these topics takes some courage; it doesn’t take much courage to write a post opposing homosexuality.

The deep-seated hatefulness displayed by some of these bloggers suggests that there is more to it than just hitting an easy target. These guys really feel threatened by homosexuality; they speak of homosexuals as they were strange alien creatures out to decimate the world as they know it. Well, I got news for them; if they think they have not been tainted by interactions with homosexuals, they are wrong. This may send their paranoid minds over the edge, but surely there is an uncle, an aunt, a cousin, a niece or a nephew that they cherish who is a closeted homosexual. Will they want to “throw them off the roof of the tallest building” if they found out that they are gay? The fact is homosexuals existed since the dawn of humanity; they are what they are most likely because of a combination of nature and nurture. They are not the result of a distorted upbringing or a permissive society; they are just more visible in a permissive society and more closeted in more conservative societies. The other fallacy perpetrated by some of the bloggers is that homosexuality defines all aspects of their life, and therefore according to them, there are no redeeming qualities to their life. Homosexuals’ sexual preference, right or wrong, is only one aspect of them as human beings; it does not preclude them from being successful and productive members of society. That I have to make such a seemingly obvious statement is a testament to how distorted the perceptions are and the reason why an intelligent and reasoned conversation about this topic cannot occur in the Syrian blogosphere at this point in time.

On a positive note, I would say that the call for a week of blogging against homosexuality was largely a flop. Those who took up the call were few and far between and there were almost as many posts criticizing the whole premise.

Waltzing with Death

2009-02-28T23:28:00.004-05:00

I will never forget that night in mid-September of 1982 when we saw the flares light up the sky over southern Beirut, the orange glow outlining the silhouette of a darkned and shattered city. We were sleeping on the balcony of a friend's apartment on this sweltering night in West Beirut. There were several of us, men and women, brought together like flotsam by the turbulent waves that dislocated our lives that summer. Social conventions go out the window during war and conflict; we sought the safety of an improvised pack in this still half-deserted city.

We knew that the flares were Israeli, having watched in disbelief and anger as Israeli tanks and troops made their way into West Beirut only a couple of days before. Lest anyone forget the treachery of Begin and his henchman Sharon, the Palestinian fighters had by then been escorted out of Beirut by sea under an agreement that stipulated that Israel would, in turn, not enter the city. What we failed to realize that night is what kind of horror the flares were both illuminating and facilitating.

Ari Folman, the director of "Waltz with Bashir", was there that night and some of the flares I saw were fired by him. His movie is an animated documentary of his quest to remember and reconstruct the events of the summer of 1982 by interviewing other Israelis soldiers who served with him. Folman's is unflinching in his approach to the subject and the result is one of the most powerful indictments of the folly of war in general and of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon in particular. Most of all, Folman is very clear about the culpability of the Israeli army, especially the senior commanders including Sharon, in the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla. Just as the image of the flares and its connection to the massacre is seared in memory, Folman uses images of the flares in a repeated surreal scene of soldiers emerging form the sea to forwarn of the horrors to come. As he peices together the reality from the fragments of memories of his comrades in arm, it becomes clear that the flares are being fired to facilitate the killing field perpetrated by the Phalangists brought into the camp by the Israeli army. With the Palestinian fighters all gone, and the phalangists penchant for cruelty well known by their close allies, the Israelis, what other purpose was there to bring into the camp other than to commit a massacre?Late in the movie, Folman switches seamlessly from animation to some of the most graphic images of the massacre. At this point in the movie, with my heart in my throat, I could not contain myself anymore, not only because I remembered these exact images from 1982 but also because the images were eerily similar to what we just witnessed in Gaza.

It has been several days since I have seen the movie and yet I cannot seem to get out from under its dark cloud. Saddest of all for me is to think that it has been twenty seven years since this war and yet it is as if we are stuck in time, as if our part of the world is doomed to live in conflict and war forever impervious to the lessons of history.

Holocaust at the Oscars

2009-02-23T12:08:00.003-05:00

Winslet, 'Waltz,' and how Hollywood likes its Jews
By Bradley Burston. Haaretz, Feb. 23, 2009

Hollywood is about message. It is not, strictly speaking, about subtlety, nor idle fretting over obvious irony.

So when Israelis woke up before dawn on Monday to watch the 81st running of the Oscars, the message was clear enough. Hollywood knows exactly how it likes its Jews: Victims. Civilian victims. Targets of genocide. None of this Goliath stuff. None of these pre-emptive, disproportionate, morally amorphous behaviors.

My wife, the child of Auschwitz survivors, saw it right off, even in the dark. Even before they announced the winner of the Best Actress award.

Against a well-deserved paean to eventual winner Kate Winslet, a giant screen showed hunted, gaunt, clearly doomed figures. "This is how Hollywood likes its Jews," my wife said. "Hunched over and dressed in rags."

Minutes before, as if to underscore the Hollywood principle that Jewish history ended in the Holocaust, and Israeli history ended with "Exodus," the Oscar ceremony enlisted Liam Neeson - star of the ultimate Hollywood version of the Good Christian-Bad Holocaust epic, Schindler's List - to deny the Oscar to a film showing Jews not as they may have been, but as they, in fact are.

The narrative of Israel has become increasingly uncomfortable for the limousine left of Hollywood. Not necessarily because of the specifics of occupation and overkill. No, there are wider problems with these Israelis. Their story arc doesn't work.

They are neither cutesy, comedic Yiddishers nor noble, chiseled, ascetically moral kibbutzniks. They bear as much resemblance to Zohan as Adam Sandler does to Tsipi Livni. Israelis are complicated, angry, unhappy, family-oriented, insular, often flawed human-beings. Perhaps, in the Hollywood context, the problem with these Israelis, is that they are not identifiable as Jews at all.

Last year, "Beaufort," an exceptional Israeli film about IDF soldiers at war in Lebanon was one of the five nominees, but lost to the Austrian entry, in which a Jewish concentration camp prisoner forges currency for the Nazis.

This year, "Waltz with Bashir," an extraordinary, soul-shattering Israeli film about IDF soldiers at war in Lebanon, was one of the five nominees. Its only conmnection to the Holocaust, however, is an uncomfortably authentic one. As Neeson's announcement suggested, with his small but ringing note of incredulity, a nominee it will forever stay.

There were at least eight films classed as Holocaust-based, released in 2008. "Waltz with Bashir" was not one of them. But in dealing with searing honesty about war, memory, the violent death of innocents, as well as about the complex darkness at Israel's heart, it has fundamentally more to do with the Holocaust than any of the eight.

Ari Folman, the director of "Waltz with Bashir," is also the son of Holocaust survivors. The Holocaust informs the film in ways that Hollywood is literally incapable of imagining. Because this is the real thing.

"Waltz with Bashir" was not made for Hollywood, it was made for human beings. It was made for the people who went through the horror it shows, and who are still going through new horrors which feel exactly as unbearable.

The story of how Hollywood likes its Jews has been told before, of course, never more succinctly - or with a heavier cargo of irony - than when Kate Winslet played a satirized version of herself in a 2005 episode of the U.K. series "Extras." Winslet, then winless in four trips to the Oscar nomination altar, explains to series star Ricky Gervais, why she's decided to act in a Holocaust film.

Gervais: You doing this, it's so commendable, using your profile to keep the message alive about the Holocaust.

Winslet: God, I'm not doing it for that. We definitely don't need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It's like, how many have there been? You know, we get it. It was grim. Move on. I'm doing it because I noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, you're guaranteed an Oscar. I've been nominated four times. Never won. The whole world is going, 'Why hasn't Winslet won one?' ... That's why I'm doing it. Schindler's bloody List. The Pianist. Oscars coming outta their ass ...

Gervais: It's a good plan.

This year, despite general agreement that her performance as a 1950s-era Connecticut housewife in Revolutionary Road was far better than her role as a former SS guard in The Reader, life imitated Gervais, and the Oscar was finally Winslet's.

Back in Israel, meanwhile, the debriefing of the Academy Awards had begun. On an early morning television news show, Meital Zvieli, the lead researcher for "Waltz with Bashir," said that despite their disappointment, the crew members watching in Israel felt that, in any case, "The film won." It had been seen by people who needed to see it, people who in many cases began to speak to their families about their own experiences only after having experienced the film.

That may be the only point that really matters.

In the end, the cultural distance from the Jews of Hollywood to the Jews of Israel may be impassible. The oldest and most basic need of the Jews who invented the film industry, the compulsion to reinvent themselves, early on developed into the need to reinvent the Jewish people.

There, after all these years, the industry remains. Perhaps, after all these years, it's time for Hollywood, at long last, to take seriously and with intelligence another piece of Gervais' scripted advice.

Move on.

Home Again: To Lattakia and Back

2009-02-17T18:43:00.003-05:00

My last interaction with Syrian authorities did not go well, yet I felt surprisingly calm this time around. My wife, did not share my confidence and waited nervously in the car with the children as I walked with our driver into the Arida border checkpoint to have our passports checked.

The place was inauspicious to say the least. A ragged Syrian flag flew over the station. The building itself was rundown. Inside, the offices were dirty and filled with idle men, some in uniform and some in civilian outfits –leather jackets preferred-, milling about in a haze of cigarette smoke. By contrast, the offices of the Lebanese border checkpoint we just passed were tidy if somewhat bare. The uniformed personnel, clean shaven and in crisp uniforms, dealt with travelers in a professional way. Once inside the passport office, our driver, a veteran of the Beirut-Lattakia line, told me to let him do the talking. With a handshake here and there, the necessary show of deference to the officers, and a couple of minor but apparently necessary “tips”, we cleared the border in about thirty minutes.

After an absence of about thirty five years, I was back on Syrian soil. Yet, there was no emotional catharsis, no melodramatic falling to the ground in a puddle of tears. More than anything, what I felt was a sense of bemused disbelief. Besides, any elation at being home again was dampened by my irritation at the sleaziness of the transaction at the border and the embarrassment I felt in front of my kids at the lousy first impression they got of Syria. But, as parents are often wont to do, I underestimated my childrens' maturity. They were unfazed by what they saw; they understood what was important and what this trip meant to me. For the next three short days, I took in all the sights, sounds and smells hoping to trigger long dormant memories buried deep in the recesses of my mind.

The coastal plain to Lattakia was wide, a welcome relief from the narrow and overbuilt Lebanese coastline. Some of the villages and small towns we drove through looked poor and neglected. The first familiar sight on the road to Lattakia was the imposing Mar'ab castle on a hill overlooking Banyas, a sight that always fired up my imagination as a child. As we approached the outskirts of Lattakia, I recognized nothing . The city's population has quadrupled since I lived there as a child and its physical outlines has grown significantly. Closer to the port I started recognizing my old Lattakia. Across from the old seaport, my grandmother's house, sandwiched between between a church and a mosques is now gone, replaced by the apartment building where my aunt and cousins live. A couple of blocks east, my grandfather's house, where I was born, still stands, old and rundown. The northern part of Baghdad street where we later lived looked familiar with many of the same pleasant 1950s and 1960s vintage two and three story apartment building surrounded by small gardens. Further south, Baghdad street used to end in a small traffic circle surrounding an ancient roman column beyond which was scrub and empty rocky terrain descending down to the sea. Today, the area is packed with upscale apartment buildings and it is bordered by the the new southern corniche.

In the short time we had, we tried to see as much as we can. We drove throught Shateh el Azrak beach area where I first waded into the sea. It is now sadly overbuilt. Next we drove further North into countryside to ancient Ugarit where the alphabet was born. That afternoon we made our way up the mountains East of the city. The temperature dropped precipitously as we drove up the mountain. Slunfeh, our destination was shrouded in dense fog. We managed a quick visit to the family's old summer home before making our way down to Haffeh. From there we veered off to the South to visit see the Salaheddin castle. From the vantage of the opposing hill and against the backdrop of the green wooded mountains behind it, the view is breathtaking (see banner photo above). Salaheddine's castle sits like a crown on top of a steep, narrow hill in the midst of a wooded valley. To reach it, one has to descend to the bottom of the narrow valley and then ascend the steep hill to the base of the castle wall. We explored the grounds of the castle excitedly for an hour before rain forced us to retreat back into our car and continue our descent back to Lattakia.

As vivid as childhood memories are of places, their importance comes from their associated remembrance of people, of family. My kind grandmother has long since passed away as have many of her siblings who formed much of our extended family. Sadly, as is the case of many Syrian families, subsequent generations slowly dispersed to the four corners of the world. Many left seeking new opportunities, others became unwilling political exiles. My aunt, a lawyer, remained as have her two children, my cousins. Distance and prolonged separation has led to strained relations between my father and his sister over the past few years, yet none of that was evident in the warm and generous reception we got from my aunt and her husband. I met my two cousins now adults, only one of whom I had seen before and then only when she was an infant. I, in turn, introduced them to my wife and kids. My wife, the more extrovert of the two of us, hit it off with my aunt’s husband, a energetic Levantine gourmand, as they discussed the finer points of Syrian cuisine. Now we definitely know that the Lattakian knafeh bi narain* (love the name) is the best knafeh bi jibin** anywhere on the Eastern Mediterranean coast. We talked, we tried to catch up and almost instantaneously the three and a half decade gap disappeared. Once family, always family.

On our way back to Beirut, we stopped in Tartous, took a quick boat ride to the Island of Arwad and returned to meet with Abu Fares and his lovely wife for lunch. I had been looking forward to this meeting for a long time. It is curious to think that you can have an affinity and a familiarity for someone that you have never met. That these sentiments were only reinforced when I met Abu Fares is perhaps a testament to the communicative power of the blog. Alas, after too brief an encounter, we had to continue our journey back to Lebanon.

Middle age crises manifest differently in different men. Some seek out a sports car that they always fancied while others, grieving their lost youth, seek out a younger woman. Since I could care less for a sports car and already have my younger woman (OK, only two years younger), all I wanted was to go home. I needed it as an anchor at this stage in my life. This trip has done that for me and more. Perhaps the best feedback I got is from my father who did not quite understand my obsession with wanting to visit Syria. As we were making our way back to Beirut, my aunt called tell him how happy they were at having seen me and my family, and I in turn relayed to him the warm and generous reception we received. He told he how glad he was that I went and that what I did was not only good for me but for the whole family. For the first time in many years, my father is inquiring about whether he too can go home.

* Knafeh: Middle Eastern sweet filled with cream or cheese. bi narain: literally, with two fires; refers to the knafeh being browned on both sides.

**Knafeh bi jibin: cheese filled knafeh.

The End of the Two-State Solution?

2009-01-26T20:14:00.004-05:00

Not long ago, the idea one state solution used to thought of as an impossible idea held by a radical fringe, a non-starter especially among most Israelis who were raised on the Zionist ideal of Israel as a Jewish state. Sasa recently pointed out the increasing interest among some Palestinians and Israelis about the one state solution. So it is notable that yesterday, the hard-hitting investigative CBS network show 60 minutes had a segment discussing this topic entitled: "Time Running Out for A Two-State Solution." This obviously comes in the wake of the senseless war on Gaza but also because of the abject failure of the flawed Oslo agreements.

Obama's Eloquent Words: Substance or Empty Rhetoric?

2009-01-20T20:29:00.005-05:00

No matter what one thinks of Barack Hussein Obama, today was undeniably a historical and transformative day in American politics and possibly world politics. It was a particularly poignant and emotional day for African Americans but also, by extension, for other under-represented minorities in the United States. Moreover, the ascendance of an African-American to the highest office in the most powerful Western country will also certainly have implications on race relations and the integration of immigrants in Europe.

There is litte doubt that the world as whole will fare better from this day on if for nothing else than the departure of G W Bush and with him the architects of the disastrous neo conservative doctrine. The biggest question that concerns me is whether America's Middle East foreign policy, immune to major changes from president to president, will change substantially with this new and different type of American president. If the carefully crafted words of his inauguration speech are any indication, there is hope.

Obama's speech is replete with references that reflect an expansive vision of what is good for America in the context of what is good for the whole world rather than the narrow, myopic, inward looking vision of his predecessor. This is a radically different stance than the "you are with us or you are against us", fortress America mentality of Bush. The tone is conciliatory and there is no invocation of unrealistic fear by the repeated use of the word terrorist, a word rendered meaningless in the last eight years. In fact that word does not appear once in the speech.

It remains to be seen if Obama's actions in the next four years remain faithful to the pledges he made in his inaugural speech. We can only hope. Below are selected portions of his speech:

"And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more."

"To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect."

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

"To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

Some Americans Get It!

2009-01-15T23:00:00.004-05:00

Why should we care? Because the United States is the de factor sole world superpower and until that "passionate attachment" between the United States and Israel is broken, no peace or justice in the Middle East is possible. That break will only happen when enough Americans, especially Jewish Americans, like the author below, realize that continued blind support for Israel will insure that the region will remain mired in conflict, instability and insecurity for generations to come to the detriment of all concerned.

When Israel expelled Palestinians:
What if it was San Diego and Tijuana instead?

Randall Kuhn
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Washington Post

In the wake of Israel's invasion of Gaza, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made this analogy: "Think about what would happen if for seven years rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico."

Within hours scores of American pundits and politicians had mimicked Barak's comparisons almost verbatim. In fact, in this very paper on January 9 House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ended an opinion piece by saying "America would never sit still if terrorists were lobbing missiles across our border into Texas or Montana." But let's see if our political and pundit class can parrot this analogy.

Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.
What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I'm Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.
What if the United Nations kept San Diego's discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live.

And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.

Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn't allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn't even allow them to fish.

Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.

The majority, instead, supported against all hope negotiations toward a peaceful solution that would provide security, freedom and equal rights to both people in two independent states living side by side as neighbors. This is the sound analogy to Israel's military onslaught in Gaza today. Maybe some day soon, common sense will prevail and no corpus of misleading analogies abut Tijuana or the crazy guy across the hall who wants to murder your daughter will be able to obscure the truth. And at that moment, in a country whose people shouted We Shall Overcome, Ich bin ein Berliner, End Apartheid, Free Tibet and Save Darfur, we will all join together and shout "Free Gaza. Free Palestine." And because we are Americans, the world will take notice and they will be free, and perhaps peace will prevail for all the residents of the Holy Land.

Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank.

Gaza: The View From Over Here

2009-01-14T20:39:00.004-05:00

It has been ten days since my return from Lebanon and Syria. From the overwhelming coverage of Gaza in the Middle East, I stepped into the near silence about Gaza here. In the local paper, Gaza is relegated to the inner pages. Any letter to the editor critical of Israel has to be coupled with a pro-Israel letter for "balance" but not the other way around. Of course there are no disturbing photographs of Palestinian casualties. TV network news is not much better; a story about what dog Obama is getting his girls preceded a snippet about Gaza the other day. The difference between CNN and CNN International is striking. The accepted story line, the result of lazy journalism, parrots the official Israeli lie: Hamas broke the ceasefire, Israel had to respond. To his credited one CNN host exposed that lie yet that fact didn't seem to catch on. Members of the US government, with rare exceptions, fell over each other to demonstrate their loyalty to Israel. Congress passed a resolution supporting Israel's right to self-defense! Congressman Mark Kirk, Republican from Illinois, showing his predilection to kiss ass said: "To misquote Shakespeare, something is rotten in Gaza and now it's time to take out the trash." The lame duck president, even in the face of mounting a humanitarian disaster, didn't seem pressed to call for a ceasefire and is talked out of voting yes on the Security Council resolution by a last minute call from Olmert. Meanwhile as Israel fails to abide -once again- with a UN resolution and is roundly condemned by the ICRC and UN relief agencies for its many violations of the rules of war and its murder of aid workers, over 1000 Palestinians have lost their lives, thousands wounded and Gaza is physically pulverized. So as people around the world -if not governments- express their revulsion at Israel's barbarity, the American people, whose government is complicit in this tragedy are living in blissful ignorance.

On the other hand, as this video shows, some Jewish supporters of Israel cannot be accused of living in blissful ignorance but in state of hateful paranoia.

Of course there have also been demonstrations in support of Gaza and dissenting Jewish voices,
but it is all to no avail. The "Israel right or wrong" dictum of American politics, is cast in stone; anyone seeking to change can kiss their political ambitions goodbye.

Israel Admits: No Hamas Rockets During Ceasefire

2009-01-14T20:22:00.003-05:00

For those who still believe -like most American mainstream media- that Israel started this war because Hamas broke the ceasefire, here is even more evidence of Israel's lies.

Oxford Professor Deconstructs Israel's Casus Belli

2009-01-07T22:53:00.002-05:00

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

* Avi Shlaim, * The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.
Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas. It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.
The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

The Ruins of Gaza City: An Eyewitness Account

2009-01-07T16:50:00.004-05:00

A heart wrenching and personal description of the extent of the devastation in Gaza City by an Palestinian AP writer. It also exposes the Israeli lie that they were only after Hamas rockets and militants.

By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer –

I live alone in my office. My wife and two young children moved in with her father after our apartment was shattered. The neighborhood mosque, where I have prayed since I was a child, had its roof blown off. All the government buildings on my beat have been obliterated.
After days of Israeli shelling, the city and life I have known no longer exist.

Gaza City, with some 400,000 people, stopped supplying water when the fuel ran out for the power station driving the pumps. We listen to battery-run radios for news, even though the outside world watches what's happening to us on television. The Hadi grocery where we once shopped is closed. Food is scarce all over town.

Three days after Israel began its airstrikes against Hamas militants on Dec. 27, my apartment building was shaken by bombs aimed at a nearby Hamas-run government compound.
My brother took a picture of the room where my boys, 2-year-old Hikmet and 6-month-old Ahmed, once slept. Their toys were broken, shrapnel had punched through the closet and the bedroom wall had collapsed. I don't know if we will ever go back.

There are other pictures that haunt me. The Israeli army issued a video of the bombing of the Hamas-run government compound, which it posted on YouTube. In it, I also can see my home being destroyed, and I watch it obsessively.

Some of my colleagues lost their houses to the shelling as well, and are sleeping on mattresses spread across the floors of an apartment upstairs from The Associated Press bureau.
On Tuesday, I stood outside my apartment building but didn't dare enter. I was worried the remains of the nearby compound might again be shelled.

Othman, the owner of the Addar restaurant where my wife and I bought takeaway when we were both working, put up aluminum sheeting over the broken windows to stop looters. On the pavement, phone and power lines were tangled together like twine.

Driving to central Gaza City, I took the road where Gaza's two main universities are. It was covered with shards of glass, telephone cables, electricity wires and flattened cars. This road was once crowded with students, taxis and street vendors.

The Mazaj coffee shop on Omar Mukhtar street, Gaza's main thoroughfare, was shuttered. It was popular with wealthy university students and foreigners working for nonprofit agencies because it served really good Guatemalan coffee — rumored to have been smuggled in through the same tunnels under the Egyptian border the militants used to bring in weapons.
Al Dera, a beautiful hotel on the Mediterranean shore, was a place where young men and women smoked water pipes and flirted, and where families went for dinner on Thursdays.
Those days are gone now.

On Tuesday, the only shop I found open was the Shifa pharmacy run by my friend Eyad Sayegh. He's an Orthodox Christian, and I stopped to wish him a Merry Christmas — Eastern churches celebrate Christmas on Wednesday. Eyad told me he forgot it was Christmas.

All the landmark buildings I covered as a reporter have vanished. The colonial-era Seraya was the main security compound for the succession of Gaza's rulers — the British, Egyptians, Israelis, the Palestinian Authority and then the rival Palestinians of Hamas. We used to fear the Seraya, where the central jail was. Now it's rubble.

The Al Shuhada mosque on the eastern corner of the compound, where I prayed every day, was one of the few in Gaza with good air conditioning. A local philanthropist who liked Moroccan architecture redecorated the interior with intricate wooden arabesques and Quranic verses etched on the roof. The roof caved in when the Israelis bombed the jail next door.

Of the presidential office overlooking the sea, only a few walls remain. For many Gazans it was a symbol of our statehood, even though President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the Fatah movement, hasn't been there since Hamas seized control of the territory in June 2007.
Someone planted a Palestinian flag on the building's remains. The huge gate at the western entrance still stands, giving an illusion of something big behind it.

And across the city, the Parliament house is half destroyed. It used to tower above the Unknown Soldier park and the shops that lined downtown Omar Mukhtar Street. On Jala Street, one of Gaza's main roads, I saw about 30 boys around a leaky irrigation tap on a traffic island. They were clutching empty soft drink bottles and jerry cans, trying to fill them with water. Samir, who is 9, told me his family has no water at home and he wanted to bring enough for a bath because he and his brother smell. That's a problem for most people in Gaza right now. In my father-in-law's building, residents throw out bags of spoiled food. With no power, refrigerators don't run and fresh food quickly rots.

There were few cars on the roads, and most of those were media cars, ambulances and vehicles packed with civilians. Some looked like they were fleeing, with mattresses tied to the roofs, but who knows where they can go.

Israeli helicopters flew overhead. I heard blasts in the distance. The roads were ripped apart by explosives. I drove into downtown Gaza, trying to prove to myself I can still do something I have done so often before — drive through my city. I reached the Catholic Latin Patriarchate School I attended, where my late father — also an AP correspondent — used to bring me every day. The building was undamaged. I stood in front of it, wondering if I will ever be able to walk my children to this school.

Helping Gaza

2009-01-05T20:44:00.009-05:00

I have been unable to find the right words to describe my anger and sorrow at Israel's cold blooded assault on the people of Gaza and the equally cold-blooded response of most of the worlds' governments. But the most outrageous response, or lack thereof is that of Egypt's cowardly Mubarak who does not have the balls to unilaterally open the Rafah crossing to help save Palestinian lives. Individually, there is little I can do to stem the violence, but rather than fuming helplessly about the injustice of it all, I can help fund charities whose assistance the people of Gaza will sorely need long after the violence stops. The list below is of excellent charities that provide help to Palestinians.

United Palestinian Appeal

Palestine Children's Relief Fund

ANERA: American Near East Refugee Aid

Save the Children Fund, Gaza Crisis Fund

Oxfam Gaza Crisis

I have just donated to three of these charities and challenge anyone reading this post to do what they can to help. Also, disseminate the above links to friends and let me know in the comment section if you donated.

Revising Zionist History

2008-12-21T16:46:00.003-05:00

Abu Hazem, in a comment to my lost post, brought to my attention this article by Schlomo Sand, a professor of history from Tel Aviv University and author of Comment le people juif fut inventé. The article summarizes Sand's thesis and I thought it intriguing enought to provide a link to it. It is titled: Israel deliberately forgets its history. An Israeli historian suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East (Read More).

Cracks in the Israel's Fortress Mentality?

2008-12-20T09:02:00.004-05:00

Much of the success of Israel over its sixty years can be accounted for by it strict adherence to and enforcement of a collective, uniform Zionist narrative. Israelis who dissented from this narrative are promptly marginalized. Three generations on, however, the fanatic settlers not-withstanding, there seems to be an increasing number of Israelis who are challenging the basic tenets of this narrative.

Avaraham Burg, a onetime speaker of the Knesset has created outrage in Israel with his book, recently translated into English: The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes. None of Burg's assertions are new or earth shattering, but any non-Jew who made these same assertions would be promptly labeled anti-Semitic. The novelty here is that such ideas are being expressed by a mainstream Israeli figure. Consider this statement:

“I realized that Israel had become an efficient kingdom with no prophecy. Where was it going? What is a Jewish democratic state? What does it mean that Jews define themselves by genetics 60 years after genetics were used against them?”

In a radio interview, Burg gives a telling anecdote about the centrality of the Holocaust to the Israeli narrative. He recounts the story of a colleague leaving to Poland on a business trip only to return prematurely a couple of days later. When he asked him what happened, his friend said that while traveling by train across Poland it all came back to him: the trains, the concentration camps, the gas chambers. He could not take it and promptly returned to Israel. The problem was his friend was an Iraqi Jew with connection whatsoever to the holocaust. In his book, Burg asserts that Israel has become a self-justifying Sparta, that Israel should not be a Jewish state and that its law of return granting citizenship to any Jew should be changed. The English version of the book, interestingly, is a watered down and skips over some controversial statements he made in the original manuscript such as the assertion that the Israeli government will pass a law prohibiting the marriage between Jews and Arabs.

Why should I care? Because no real sustainable Middle Eastern peace is possible when Israel's very identity is based on the concept of perpetual victimhood and perpetual conflict.

HM the Amnesiac

2008-12-09T19:21:00.006-05:00

Henry Gustav Molaison, a man suffering from post operative amnesia died a week ago at the age of 82. Until his death, Molaison was known to the world as HM, the amnesiac who helped neuroscientists understand the processes involved in short and long term memory. For the first 27 years of his life, Molaison suffered from intractable seizures. In 1953, in a drastic attempt to treat his seizures, his doctors resected his brain's temporal lobes. His seizures improved tremendously but he lost his ability to acquire new memories.

Imagine this, for 55 years until his recent demise, this man lived with memories he acquired in the first 27 years of his life. None of the life experiences of the last five decades have lasted more than thirty seconds, the average duration of short term memory. He was unable to remember anything new he saw, read. smelled, tasted or heard. One can also imagine that any emotion aroused by these new sensory experiences would be equally lost. Nothing stuck; not the sight of a beautiful woman, nor a gorgeous scenery, nor a sublime painting, nor a catchy melody, nor an enchanting scent. The taste of a delicious new dish would dissipate into the ether as soon as the meal was over and the name and appearance of a new friend would elude him as soon as he turned his back. It is hard to overestimate the importance of memory to our existence, to our humanity and to our life's experience.

Molaison's tragic life fascinates me. For as much as he has helped neuroscientists understand the brain's memory processes, I am intrigued by Molaison, the human being and how his memory deficit affected his personality and his outlook on life. Since we are the sum total of our life experiences, was Molaison then the same man at 82 that he was at 27? And if so were his established memories more vivid because there were so few memories for a man of his age or had his memories faded with the passage of half a century? And how does a man like him face life every morning?

I can imagine him waking up every morning full of optimism and wonder at all of his new experiences, his mind, a nearly blank slate, unencumbered by the unpleasantness of the recent past. The quarrel with a friend or the illness of a loved one would be forgotten as would be all the trickle of grim news about war, pestilence and hunger from around the world. On the other hand, I can imagine him waking up flat-affected, somewhat confused by his inability to interpret his new experiences without the context of any similar recent experiences. That last description of him, I believe, is the most likely to be accurate. We learn from experiences carefully laid down in our memory. We are conditioned by these experiences. Without the context of these experiences, it is difficult for us to interpret new ones or even assign values to them. Molaison's amnesia left him unable to build on the ebb and flow of good an bad life experiences and instead committed him to live a diminished life, lived in increments of thirty second slices each completely disconnected from the next.

Al-Khalil (Hebron) in Their Words

2008-12-07T21:05:00.006-05:00

The article below is from the New York Times today as it finally deems it fit to write something about the continuing violence by West Bank settlers against Palestinian residents in Hebron. See here settlers shooting Palestinian men at point blank range. It is interesting that NYT chose to put pogrom in parentheses. Typically pogroms is a term that Israelies reserve exclusively for violence against jews; so it is telling when Olmert, the architect of the 2006 war on Lebanon, uses that word to describe what the sttlers are doing. He is not the first, a Haaretz article on December 5th, also used the pogrom label in the title of a story on the Hebron violence.

Olmert Slams "Pogrom", Palestinians Still Fearful
December 7, 2008
HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday that attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians last week were a "pogrom" and that Israeli police must end "intolerable leniency" toward such violent offenders.
"As a Jew, I am ashamed of other Jews doing such a thing," Olmert told his cabinet, referring to a shooting incident.
But in the West Bank city of Hebron, where at least three Palestinians were wounded by gunfire on Thursday after troops cleared dozens of hardline, religious settlers from a large building, many locals were skeptical of such Israeli promises.
"We're expecting to be attacked again at any time by the settlers," said Bassem al-Jabari, as he and other neighbors looked at the evacuated site on Sunday. "No one cares about us."
Olmert, who has resigned over a corruption scandal but stays on as caretaker until after a February 10 election, has lately taken to describing settler attacks as "pogroms," using the Russian term for violence against Jews a century ago that drove some to emigrate to Palestine and, in time, establish the Israeli state.
"We are a people whose historical ethos is built on the memory of pogroms," Olmert told his cabinet, according to a statement. "The sight of Jews standing with guns and shooting at innocent Palestinian civilians can only be called a pogrom."
His latest remarks were among his strongest yet. They follow the broadcasting of video apparently showing a settler shooting and wounding Palestinians, as well as stone-throwing and other violence across the West Bank, including the torching of olive groves, which Palestinians leaders described as "waging war." Olmert said he was pressing for prosecutions and "an end to the intolerable leniency ... toward settlers who break the law." An Israeli court remanded one settler in custody on Sunday over the shooting allegation and released another on bail.
The United States, which failed in efforts to broker a peace in this final year of George W. Bush's presidency, has described the settlement of half a million Israelis in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory in 1967 as an obstacle to peace.
Olmert says Israel should clear outposts but draw borders with a new Palestinian state to ensure major settlements, deemed illegal under international law, are incorporated into Israel.

TENSIONS, VIOLENCE
In Hebron, troops now occupy the building, dubbed "House of Peace" by the dozen or so settler families who refused to obey a court order to leave last month. A Palestinian denies selling it to them and is asking Israeli courts to return his property.
Mohammed al-Jabari, who lives close by the building, on a strip of hillside separating Hebron's ancient center from the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, said neighbors were glad the army was now in control: "It's better now. There is respect for the law. When the settlers were here, there was no law."
Longer term, however, his neighbors are not optimistic.
Jabari and other householders, mostly also from the Jabari clan, living in flat-roofed houses among patches of field and olive trees around the evacuated building recount a year or more of tension and clashes with the Jewish former occupants.
Though the allegations could not easily be verified, tales of rocks thrown at homes, women intimidated, a dead dog tossed into the courtyard of the local mosque, a horse poisoned, and so on were repeated by several Palestinians living close to a hard core of settlers. These see expansion in Hebron, which is home to the tomb of Abraham, as a religious and nationalist duty.
Israeli troops protect some 650 Jews living in the center of Hebron, a city of 180,000, as well as surrounding settlements.
Palestinians say Israeli forces turn a blind eye to settler attacks while punishing Arabs who resort to violence: "It's double standards," Issa Amro, 28, a human rights activist.
He said local people were particularly fearful that settlers are allowed to carry rifles: "There is an Israeli soldier to protect every one of them," Amro said. "Why do they need M-16s?"
Another neighbor, using his nickname Abu Firas, recalled how his children had been terrified as settlers attacked their home with burning material and stones on Thursday: "They burned our homes with the protection of the Israeli state," he said.
"Right now, I see no Israeli government. I see gang law," he added, surveying the hillside from a cemetery where at least two Muslim headstones have been daubed with a star of David.
"The only way to end this is for Israel to pull all settlers from the West Bank. It's a fight for survival. It's us or them."

Keeping the Syrian Blogosphere Civil

2008-11-22T20:16:00.005-05:00

I started reading blogs for about a year before I started my writing my own. I read many Lebanese blogs and the few Syrian blogs that were out there. The discourse among the Lebanese blogs often degenerated into gratuitous verbal attacks. By contrast, discussions among Syrian bloggers, rarely if ever, got contentious. I smugly attributed this difference to the generally more congenial nature of Syrians. So I was surprised by one of Razan's recent post where she describes the venom with which some self-righteous religious Syrian bloggers have been denigrating others whose points of view they found objectionable to the point that they have suggested these blogs be destroyed by hackers. Razan wrote that the reason she turned off the comments function on her blog is that she was the target of some of this venom. Perhaps I should not be surprised, with the exponential increase in the number of Syrian blogs, it was only a matter of time before some self-appointed thought police took it upon themselves to purge the Syrian blogosphere of ideas that THEY deemed inappropriate.

Both Dania and Abu Fares have posted on this topic following Razan's lead but given the critical importance of this issue, I felt that as many bloggers as possible need to make their voices heard.

That Razan was one of the target of these zealots is not surprising. She is perhaps one the most outspoken and fearless Syrian blogger. She never shies away from saying what's on her mind even if it trespasses into territory that is taboo by Middle Eastern standards. I admire her courage, her energy and her strength even if I don't always agree with her. Razan's passion is matched only by her compassion as exemplified by her work on behalf of the Palestinians of Nahr el-Bared. Zealots may want to silence voices like Razan's, I on the other hand, would like to see more young Syrians in her mold start to speak up.

The proliferation of Syrian blogs with strong religious points of view is a reflection of the changes in Syrian society as a whole. But, I think such blogs likely over represent this societal trend because whereas expressions of deep religious convictions is publicly acceptable, expressions of political (or social) convictions that run against the norm is frowned upon and may come -in the case of politics- at a high price. Nevertheless, blogs with diverse religious points of views is a welcome addition to the Syrian blogosphere. Unfortunately, a few among these, are works of zealots who are not only unwilling to consider other points but want those points of views they consider offensive eliminated.

I have a problem with zealots of all kinds: political, secular or religious. Among religious zealots, Muslim zealots irk me the most precisely because I am Muslim. I find the zealots' narrow and rigid mindset and their intolerance nonsensical. To me, true faith comes out of a conviction reached through a deliberate thought process that considers many alternatives. Zealots would rather have believers as unthinking automatons, like donkeys with blinders following edicts without understanding them. Zealots expose their own deep-seated insecurity when they jump to silence any criticism of their religion as if their faith is a fragile house of cards. It is not; I believe that one should deal with such criticism head on and there is never a need to muzzle dissenting voices. Hearing what others say about you, no matter how unpleasant, often leads to necessary self-examination. Finally, intolerant zealots rightfully extol the various achievements of Islam over the last millennium but forget that Islam flourished most when it was at its most open and tolerant.

So as Abu Fares stated in his post, I welcome and encourage interaction among Syrian blogs. Although several people seem to draw a clear line among secular and religious blogs, I thinks it is more like a continuum. Frank exchanges and debates among blogs of opposing viewpoints is only possible when they are free of personal attacks, condescention and threats.

Coming Home!

2008-11-15T10:14:00.012-05:00

Very soon, I will be going home ... for a visit. It has been about three decades since I last set foot on Syrian soil. I am exhilarated and I am anxious; I cannot wait to go and yet there are lingering fears holding me back. What if all my longing and all the pent up emotions acquired during years of separation turn out to be illusory and false emotions? What if I set foot in the city of my birth and felt nothing?

Certainly the Lattakia of my childhood has long since vanished and most of my extended family, that boisterous tribe consisting of my father's aunts, uncles and cousins, is scattered in the four corners of the world. Yet close family members remain. My aunt, my father's only sibling, and my two cousins remain in Lattakia. And if the physical features of Lattakia have changed radically, my grandfather's house where I was born and the house where I grew up as a child remain as touchstones of my past. In the end though, my connection with this land is more a state of mind. This is the land of my birth; it is the land of my ancestors. In no other place on this planet can I make that same claim. In no other place can I claim such deep roots and in doing so, carry within me the historical memory, good and bad, of my place of origin. These facts help orient and anchor me, they provide with a context and a perspective on life and of my place in this world. Calling any other place home somehow rings hollow; I feel like an impostor.

But could it be that, after all these years away, I will feel like an impostor in the land of my birth? I don't think so. I am too old to be a sentimental fool or to be beholden to unrealistic nostalgic dreams. I am ready to take in Syria as it is, not as I think it should be. This trip will be as much an exploration as a return to my roots. I will be introducing Syria to my children and reintroducing it to myself. There is much to see and much to do.

(Photo: From Lattakia online; my grandmother's old house in the foreground; now replaced by a concrete monstrosity)

October 26 American Raid Into Syria Not the First

2008-11-09T22:14:00.003-05:00

According to this New York Times article, Donald Rumsfeld, with approval from the White House, authorized in the spring of 2004, secret incursions by special forces anywhere in the world as part of the American global war on terrorism. According to the article, among the dozen or so previously undisclosed attacks, there have been one or more that occured in Syria other than the recent October 26th cross-border attack into Al-Sukkarieh. Attacks on diffferent countries required different levels of administration approval with attacks on Syria and Pakistan requiring presidential approval.

This information makes the timing and circumstances of the October 26th incursion all the more intriguing. Was it a "secret" operation gone bad with the slaughter of innocent civilians? or was it meant to be a public warning to Syria? Either way, GW Bush personally approved the attack! It also raises questions about the previous American incursions into Syria: where did they occur, what were the targets and who was aware of their occurence?

Making My Case for Obama as President

2008-11-02T18:34:00.009-05:00

Before I make my case for Obama, I feel the need to make a disclaimer. Although I am intrigued by the man, I am not starstruck by him as my previous posts will testify (see here, here, here, here).

I first made my case for Obama in a post in December of 2006 at a time when he was an undeclared candidate and most of my arguments in his favor still stand. That Obama, on November 2, 2008, looks more like a conventional American politician of the Democratic party should not come as a surprise. The American presidential campaign process inevitably pushes candidates toward the mainstream, the center of their respective political party. Yes, he made the compulsory visit to AIPAC and trip to Israel, and in an effort to appear tough on foreign policy he made some unsettling remarks about his support for U.S. cross border attacks into Pakistan. And yes, he has treated Arab and Muslim Americans as if they were politically radioactive, not because he thought they were, but because the Republican xenophobes made them so. It took a Republican, Colin Powell, to publicly point out that McCain "No Ma'am, he is a good family man" response to a bigoted supporter's claim that Obama is an Arab, is patently offensive.

Yet despite all of that, I will be voting for Obama because of who he is and not what he is saying in the heat of the campaign. This is unquestionably a defining moment in American and world history. In my twenty two years of living here, I have never seen Americans as angry, as passionate about change and yet at the same time as polarized as they are in these elections. Moreover, the candidate with the only reasonable choice for a new beginning comes in a flavor that Americans have never experienced in an American president: Not white and not with a reassuring Anglo-Saxon name; Christian, at least, but whose middle name is Hussein and who learned to recite the Fatiha in school in Jakarta. And yet, early on, Obama managed to mobilize and ignite the political passions of a group that are typically politically apathetic, the young. This constituency took easily to Obama because unlike older generations of Americans, Obama's exoticism was never an issue. Their classmates and friends were just as likely to be white as South Asian, Oriental, African or Middle Eastern. This a generation that is more globally connected and aware than their more insular parents. It is the constituency that created an unconventional campaign that overcame the well-heeled political machines of some of his opponents.

Obama as president will cause a paradigm shift in the way the United States views itself and the way the rest of the world views the United States. How that translates into real changes in United States foreign policy remains to be seen. Specifically, the foreign policy towards the Middle East, as ingrained as it is, is not likely to change quickly. Obama has promised to close Guantanamo and leave Iraq, all good, but he has said little about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I trust he will bring an intelligent and nuanced understanding of foreign policy that will be a radical change from the idiotic "you are either with us or against us" approach of the current administration. A less combative, arrogant and condescending president may even open up some diplomatic space to allow for contacts and talks with axis of evil veterans such as Syria and Iran.

If this is not a ringing endorsement, it is as close as I can get. For anyone still on the fence, the emergence of Dick Cheney yesterday from his cave in the Rockies to endorse McCain, should have sealed the deal. The world cannot afford another four years of neocon madness.

Bush-Cheney Never Met a Border they Didn't Want to Violate

2008-10-27T20:54:00.005-04:00

And now it is Syria's turn. Yet, the violation of the most basic and fundamental international laws seem to have barely raised an eyebrow in the United States. The news -what passes for news- is filled with chatter about Palin being a Diva and how much money -$150,000- the gal from humble Wassila spent on her wardrobe. The American attack on Syria is relegated to the running banner at the bottom of the screen. Perhaps eight years of such rogue behavior has immunized the media against reacting negatively. A good part of the general public, on the other hand, is just oblivious and many, because of their biases, are predisposed to swallow the American official version of the story. The thinking goes something like this: "If they went after them, then they must be guilty of something; they are, after all Ayrabs and Mooslims".

Lost in any discussion, even by journalists who ought to know better, is that the fundamental issue is the violation of the sovereignty of a country with whom the United States is not at war. This was a calculated and planned raid, not a case of crossing border in hot pursuit. The subtext of most of the reports is that the raid is somehow justified because it was in pursuit of smugglers of foreign fighters. Even if every last one of the nine persons killed on the Sukkarieh farm is proven to be a smuggler of foreign fighters, the raid is an illegal and unjustified by international law. It is the type of action that would trigger a war; and perhaps that is the ultimate purpose. Why now? Because Bush-Cheney are trying to create a foreign policy distraction to influence the election; because Bush-Cheney and the neocons continue to stubbornly stick to their imperial hegemonic plans for the Middle East despite eight years of proof that their plans have failed dismally.

That the American media is not alarmed by this development is disturbing. They ought to know after eight years of lies and deceptions what the administration is up to. This may be lame duck presidency but Bush-Cheney are still quacking and they still have time to create a lot of trouble before the new president is sworn in on January 20th, 2009.

In Praise of an Adoptive Land

2008-10-19T22:08:00.030-04:00

First impressions are hard to shake. We first moved to upstate New York in late March. It was grey and rainy and the landscape was brown and muddy, recovering slowly from the battering of a harsh winter. The rolling green hills seemed monotonous and the sky, when it was clear, was an icy blue color that left me, well, cold.

But Twenty years on, this once foreign landscape has become my own. A short drive from the city, these hills offer a welcome respite from the stresses of daily life and work. I learned to appreciate the small ramshackle family farms dotting the countryside with their ancient oversized wooden barns. They stand there , an anachronism in a time when most farm produce comes from hyper-industrialized megafarms, as a testament to the the stubborn, heroic toil of the last family farmers. Moreover, the hills are not a monotonous as they appear at first glance. Hidden among the green hills and farmlands, are hundreds of glens and gorges cut deep into the layered shale rock. Clear, icy-cold streams run through them often interrupted by waterfalls. There is nothing quite like walking upstream in a shady glen in the middle of a hot summer day, the cold water, cascading over layers of shale, cooling your feet. And even though you have walked that same glen a dozen times before, the sight of the waterfall around the bend at end of your hike never fails to surprise and excite you.

The streams empty into lakes etched into the valleys by ancient glaciers. Several of these lakes, long and narrow, sit in parallel, pointing North in adjacent valleys. Viewed from high above they look like a collection of elongated fingers, thus the name, the Fingerlakes. The dark waters of these narrow lakes, hint at their significant depths, deep enough, some say, to easily navigate and full-sized submarine. If the color of the water, especially on an overcast day, can appear foreboding, the view of the lakes from the surrounding hills is always majestic.

Perhaps the area's best natural asset, though, are the two seasons when nature explodes in a fury of color, ornamenting the hills, glens, streams and lakes with an infinite palette of colors.

The glorious early Springs and Falls of upstate New York are God's reward for having endured yet another seemingly endless and bitterly cold winter. Not that winter does not offer its own particular charms, but after five months of a grey and white world, cabin fever sets in and even the hardiest among us crave the warmth of the sun.

The Fall foliage colors this year were particularly intense. The hills, seemingly overnight, turned into a kaleidoscope of colors with fiery reds and yellows and all shades of browns. Side lit by the late afternoon sun, the trees looked like they were ablaze. It is a feast for the eyes and the senses as the cool autumn breeze carried in it the unmistakable smell of Fall.

Then, just as suddenly, the incandescent light in the leaves faded and the floated to the ground, rust colored. The once flamboyant trees were now bare. Winter is around the corner; in fact, scattered among the raindrops today, were the first few flecks of snow.