HM the Amnesiac

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

Arab World: Grinding Poverty Meets Extravagant Wealth

As I wrote this post, I looked at other Blog Action Day posts about poverty. I was tempted to ditch my sober discussion for a more chirpy, hopeful, feel good post with multiple links encouraging people to donate to this or that charity. However, with as serious a subject as poverty, I cannot do chirpy, and though donations to charities are absolutely critical, most offer only stop-gap measures to alleviate poverty, not to eliminate it.

There is perhaps no better time to talk about poverty, or rather the persistence of poverty than now as the world's economic house of cards, constructed by unscrupulous speculators comes crashing down. The whole debacle exposes as myth the idea that unfettered, unregulated capitalism is good for the common man, that when the man on the top of the pyramid makes untold sums of money, those at the bottom should be thankful for the crumbs that trickle down. The past decade has seen an unprecedented accumulation of wealth both in the West and elsewhere, but instead of alleviating the problems of poverty, it has significantly widened the gap between the rich and the poor. In many developing countries the problems are exacerbated by poor governance and corruption but also by the conditions imposed by lending agencies like the IMF and World Bank. Loans are often given subject to free-market, free-trade reform that encourages privatization and deregulation. These conditions, imposed by lending agencies have failed to help alleviate poverty in recipient countries whose governments and even less their people have little say in how aid is being used.

Nowhere in the world is that discrepancy between wealth and poverty more glaring than in the Arab world . Oil-exporting countries have made untold billions of dollars whereas the economies of neighboring non-oil exporting countries have stagnated. However, the unprecedented injection of wealth into the area has not altered the indices of poverty according to a recent report. The reasons for this lack of progress are many but a few stand out. The frenzied building activity in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia has consumed billions on over the top showpieces that have done little for the economic sustainability of the countries themselves and even less for the long term economic prospects of the region. Whereas the Atlantis resort in Dubai features rooms for $25,000 a night, in Yemen, 4 in 10 people live on less than $2 a day. In the pursuit of national prestige, Saudi developers are planning to build a skyscraper taller than Burj Dubai at the cost of $1,000,000,000 (billion) at a time when bread riots are breaking out in Egypt as subsidies are being curbed.

Why should those who have help those who don't? If not for pure altruism, then for self preservation. Poverty and economic instability breeds political instability. Wealthy oil producers need to invest in projects that promote a sustainable economic future for the region. The region needs to coordinate its economic future and, not a moment too soon, the first Arab economic forum is scheduled to be held in Kuwait next January.
Of course simply throwing money at the problem will not solve it. Here is what I think, as a non-economist, is needed to help reduce poverty:

• Provide immediate debt relief to developing countries
• Donors should not force recipient countries to adopt free-market "reforms" that are detrimental to their own people.
• How aid money is to be spent has to be the decision of recipient countries as represented by local NGOs and civic groups who are best equipped to decide how best to spend the aid.
• Top-down investments to create jobs should be matched by bottom-up investment into small businesses, education, basic infrastructure and health care to create sustainable economic growth and jobs that provide living wages.
• Service economies, especially ones that services the needs of richer countries are not the intrinsically stable and are not the answer. A sustainable economy is one in which its citizens produces "something" tangible.
• Now more than ever, sustainable economies are by necessity ones that are environmentally sustainable. It is also the poor who bear the brunt of environmental neglect.

Above all, donors and developing countries need to get off they high horse and start listening to the people they are trying to help; they know what they need and how best to do it.

(Cartoon: Naji Al Ali)

Rim Banna's Soulful Voice

I was introduced to Rim Banna through a post by a Syrian blogger a couple of months ago (forgot who) and promptly bought one of her CDs: The Mirrors of My Soul, produced in 2005. Two of my favorite songs from that CD are featured in the video clip here. Rim, a native of Nazareth, who studied music in Moscow, is an accomplished Palestinian singer and composer. In the 1990s she recorded Palestinian folk songs and lullabies, a part of the Palestinian heritage that was in danger of being forgotten. She came to international attention with her contribution to the CD: Lullabies from the Axis of Evil, recorded in collaboration with a Norwegian producer. Many of her songs reflect the suffering, remembrance and hope of her people. Her voice is exquisite in its clarity and soulfulness whether singing songs in classical Arabic or in the common Palestinian dialect.

"With This or Upon This": America as The New Sparta

"With this, or upon this" is what Spartan women said to their men as they handed them their shields in preparation for battle. It means return to Sparta in one of two ways, victorious or dead.

For the past eight years Bush and his neocons have been cultivating this Spartan ethos and it is carried forth dutifully by the McCain/Palin campaign. It matters little that the Iraq war was an unnecessary mistake, or that is has ruined a country. Victory -American victory- is the only option and "doggone it" they will fight to the last Iraqi to achieve this victory. Any reflection upon the cause or the conduct of the war is defeatist and tantamount to treason. As in Sparta, this all or none attitude is fostered by a delusional jingoistic attitude. America, they believe, is the exceptional country, the righteous country that can do no wrong, a force for good against all that is evil. And because of these immutable qualities, America has to remain the strongest and richest country in the world and has the right to war to preserve that status. Yet the intrinsic contradiction of the last two statements seems to escape the true believers. How can America possibly be a force for good, if its first and only priority is to look out for number one.

The Spartan ethos is also manifest in the American fascination with war and everything military. There is proliferation of violent computer war games and cable channels dedicated to new and more deadly weaponry. Members of the armed forces are put on a pedestal and are beyond reproach, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and other dishonorable deeds not withstanding. In fact these soldiers are not called soldiers any more; they are mythical warriors. And of course, every fallen warrior is a hero, never mind that some of these "warriors" became soldiers to escape grinding poverty or as a shortcut to citizenship. Whereas fallen warriors become heroes, those who come back neither "with" nor "upon" their shields, the horribly injured and mutilated, are tucked into underfunded veterans hospitals and all but forgotten.

For many Americans, the Spartan mystique is an easy sell; it is simple and morally self-justifying. Moreover, war for the vast majority of Americans is an abstraction that happens elsewhere requiring sacrifices that are borne by few Americans. Yet, happily, after eight years, Sparta is loosing its sparkle for many Americans. The reality of endless war and the arrogance of American imperialism disguised as American exceptionalism is wearing thin. Change is finally coming on November 4th and the rest of the world will let out a collective sigh of relief.

American Presidential Elections and the Clash of Civilizations

Right wing pamphleteers and propagandists are in full swing to try to defeat Obama's bid for the presidency. Attacking his race is not politically correct in the U.S., at least not publicly or directly. So the propagandists have found the perfect alternative target with the confluence of their push for a perpetual war on terror (defined narrowly to apply only to Arabs and Muslims who don't tow the American line) with Obama's connection with Islam and his Arabic middle name. You see, smearing Arabs and Muslims doesn't ruffle anyone's feathers here, except, of course, if you happen to be Arab or Muslim.

The latest and what appears to be the most concerted effort to influence the election is the distribution of DVDs of the a documentary called Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. The documentary, produced by an Israeli-Canadian, features such luminaries as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson and Alan Dershowitz, all self-proclaimed experts on Islam and terrorism, and well known for their inflammatory Islamophobic views. Millions of these DVD were distributed free of charge as an advertising supplement in numerous newspapers. The distributors targeted newspapers in swing states that can go either democratic or republican in any given campaign.

Whether hate and fear mongering win the day remains to be seen. The events shaping the elections are rapidly changing. With the American economic juggernaut looking like the Titanic, the average voter may be more terrified by the real prospect of loosing their job than the distant hyperinflated fear of terrorism.

Obama's Unspoken Problem: Part 2

After I wrote my last post, two articles seem to substantiate my impression about the American electorate. The firs one is an Op Ed by Nicholas Kristoff in the NYT which essentially confirms my suspicions that many Americans will not vote for Obama because of his "connections" to Islam. The other is new poll showing that a substantial percentage of Americans, because of their perceptions of African-Americans, will likely not vote for Obama on that basis.

Not even the recent economic meltdown seems to have made a dent in the polls in Obama's favor. Could it be that after eight years of the worst presidency in the United States history, the American electorate is stupid enough to reelect a president of the same party and with largely the same policies as G.W. Bush?

I am afraid the answer on November 3rd will be: yes they are!

Obama's Unspoken Problem

I have no illusions about what an Obama presidency will be like when it comes to the U.S. foreign policy,especially its policies in the Middle East. But what I am certain of is that a McCain presidency will be far worse.

At a party for my son's soccer team the conversation among the adults turned to electoral politics. Some parents were discussing the merits, or rather the lack of merits, of McCain's choice for vice president, Sarah Palin. A woman, the wife of the host sat by me and upon hearing the topic of the discussion opined that she loved Palin and the views she represented. "I know what's coming next", I told myself, and sure enough she obliged almost immediately. "And anyway, I don't trust this Barack guy; he is a Moslem, you know". I bristled, glanced at my wife who walked away in disgust, and said "who says that he is Moslem?". "Well he was registered as a Moslem when he went to school in Indonesia ". "So what if he was?" I said, getting more irritated. Most Americans are averse to contentious public political argument; so another woman suggested that we change the topic. I knew that getting into a heated exchange was futile; I walked away.

That such opinion exists is the United States is no big surprise given the unrelenting anti-Muslim paranoia of the last seven years. That a woman in an affluent, Northeastern, cosmopolitan city feels unrestrained to make such a statement in public is a little surprising. Moreover, this woman surely knows that we were from "over there somewhere"; my son is the only one on this otherwise lily-white team with dark hair and a perpetual tan. It is likely that she was too ignorant or too thick-headed to have connected the dots. At least she was honest in what she said. In polite company, Americans tend to be politically correct and will not spout such charged remarks. So the question is, how many American readily share her opinion that Obama is "tainted" by his connection to Islam? And how many others, who may not publicly support such a claim, actually agree with it.

How many Americans, standing in a voting booth with the curtain closed are willing to vote for a black man whose names in Barack Hussein Obama? It is more than I think and more than most Americans are willing to admit. Therein lies Obama's problem.

The Trumpet of Ibrahim Maalouf:

Ibrahim Maalouf is a youn and, talented trumpet player. He is the scion of an exceptionally talented musical and literary Lebanese family. His paternal uncle invented a trumpet with a fourth valve in the 1960s to allow him to play the quarter tones needed in Arabic music. He is also the nephew of the illustrious Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf.

Mixed Marriage: A Insider's View

In a recent blog post, Abu Fares skillfully outlined for Betty the issues that need to be considered to make an intercultural marriage a success. The post made me think about my own parents. Mixed marriages generally get bad press as the media focuses on sensational stories of relationships gone horribly wrong. Given this negative image, if my parents' story appears unremarkable to me -they are my parents after all- theirs is a story of success and is perhaps a story worth recounting.

Fifty two years ago, a young Syrian physician, doing a year of post-doctoral training in London, met a young European woman who was in London to learn English. They fell in love. My father, not wanting to be hemmed in by his family's choice of suitable future spouses, proposed to my mother. Before they returned to Syria, they went to get the blessing of her parents. My father, won over my grandmother with his Levantine charm. My grandfather, on the other hand, could not swallow the fact that his daughter was marrying an Arab. Though he did not stand in the way of their union, his attitude never changed. Upon seeing me and my brother a couple of years later, he told my mother that we were not as brown as he expected us to be! He, unfortunately passed away shortly thereafter and I regret never to have been able to know him better.

Arriving in Lattakia of the mid 50s was a cultural shock for my mother. She was received with open arms by my long-widowed paternal grandmother and my father's nine uncles and aunts, an open-minded and highly educated bunch embraced her easily. But Lattakia was a small, parochial and conservative town and the the arrival of a foreign bride certainly set the tongues wagging. Her unusual parenting methods, she followed the Dr. Spock school of parenting, was the talk of the neighborhood. They noted with amusement my mother's penchant for using colored plates to increase her children's finicky appetite. The ladies of the حارة (neighborhood) were scandalized that the doctor's boys were playing, dressed in nothing but their underwear ( شحّارن they are going to "catch" a cold!), in the tiny wading pool my mother had put in our small garden.

It took my mother time to adapt to this new social environment. The support of the extended family made the transition much easier as was the support of a handful of other European women from mixed marriages living in town. My parents' relationship remained solid in spite of my father's increasing religiosity. To his credit, my father never imposed his religiosity on my mother or used it to limited her in any way. Soon, however, their lives would be turned upside down by external upheavals beyond their control. With my father's involvement in politics, we moved to Damascus. The subsequent political unrest of the early sixties made it difficult for us to stay in Syria and the family decamped -in haste- to Lebanon. There, the more open and liberal social atmosphere offered my mother respite from the more restrictive public sphere in Syria. Simple pleasures like going swimming became possible again. On the other hand, Lebanon, with its schizophrenic identity problems, could at times prove to be uncomfortable for my mother, married as she is to Muslim Syrian. To her annoyance, some Lebanese, who fancied themselves more European than Middle Eastern, felt at liberty to share with her all of their prejudices against "les Arabes"; all within earshot of her four boys.

For the next three decades, Lebanon would become the home base of a nomadic family existence as my father, working for an international organization, was posted in various developing countries. In an attempt to provide us with a stable education my parents enrolled us at first in boarding schools in Lebanon and we would rejoin our parents abroad on holidays and in the summer. This often proved too difficult a separation for my mother who would return to Lebanon to stay with us for months at a time. Eventually, to preserve family unity, we abandoned our schooling in Lebanon and followed my father in his various postings. Though my parents' relationship was strained and severely tested, especially at times when they were separated, it survived. Fifty two years on my parents remain inseparable.

The success of a marriage, whether within or across cultures, comes down to the compatibility of the partners. Any relationship requires, in addition to love, a willingness to compromise, a give and take to reach a balance that is acceptable to both. In an intercultural marriage the spouse who ends up living in a new culture will have to make additional compromises. Of course, how much compromise is required depends on the how accomodating the culture is. Certainly modern day Lattakia is a very different place than Lattakia of the 50s. But Lattakia, a coastal Levantine city, even in the 1950s was more accomodating than a place like modern day Saudi Arabia, outside of the artificial foreign enclaves, with its imposed homogeneity.

But mixed marriages are not only about compromises. Exposure to new a new culture is greatly enriching for both. Moreover, for a resourceful spouse, like my mother, access to the ethos and morals of two divergent cultures came in handy in keeping us, her children, in line. She might, for example, become indignant if our behavior offended her European sensibilities in some way. Yet she could in an instant turn the tables on us and act like the most conservative Lattakia mother chiding us for some other behavioral misstep. The conservative Lattakia mother is the face she yielded when it came to her sons' relationships with the opposite sex. She would advise us about "nice"girls whom she thought appropriate for us. When we made our own choices, she acted like the typical Arab mother, jealously protecting her "precious" sons from unworthy women. Um Kareem was on the receiving end of some of that wrath although I am happy to say that she is now, thank god, the favorite daughter-in-law.

Whether intercultural marriages especially European-Middle Eastern unions are any less successful than other marriages is difficult to say. After reading Abu Fares' post I put that question to my mother, knowing that she is not one to mince words. She said that in almost all marriages that she has known between Syrian men and European women, the men married for true love and remained loyal to their wives even when the realtionship faltered for other reasons such as difficulties with the husband's family or the inability of the wife to adapt to Syrian culture.

Of course, the couples my mother knew may not be representative. Nevertheless it clearly shows that such marriages can succeed and prosper. And if they offer greater challenges at the start, they also offer greater rewards when they do succeed.

Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks

When it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Western opinion is greatly influenced by cultural and religious biases, collective post-Holocaust guilt and a narrative of the conflict that is almost exclusively that of Jews living in the West. In addition, with the passage of time, a clear-eyed view of the root of the conflict is increasingly muddied by intervening world and regional events, and more recently, by internecine Palestinian conflicts. Yet, when pared down to its bare-boned essentials, there is stark, simple and undeniable reality to the conflict: The deliberate, planned, systematic dispossession of Palestinians of their land which continues unabated sixty years into the conflict. That reality, clear as day to most Arabs –and I might add, most of the rest of the world-, still does not seem to register with most Westerners. Raja Shehadeh’s book, Palestinian Walks, goes a long way into refocusing the attention of its readers to the realities of Israel’s intentions.

Shehadeh is a lawyer and human rights activist who spent decades trying to defend Palestinian lands from expropriation by Israel. In Palestinian Walks, Shehadeh, an avid walker, recounts several of his most memorable walks through the unique Palestinian landscape in the past three decades. As we go along with him on his walks, we learn much of the geology of Palestine as well as its flora and fauna. We also learn about the intricate relationship between this land, its history and its people through stories of his own extended family. He goes on to poignantly describe the devastating changes in the Palestinian landscape brought on by the settlements, the bypass roads and most recently Israel’s “security” wall. Throughout his walks Shehadeh reflects back on his struggles as a lawyer trying to defend Palestinian land from expropriation. He describes in great detail the systematic way in which Israel thwarted local and international laws to steal Palestinian land and expel its rightful owners. He exposes as a bold faced lie Israel’s contention that settlements were built only on “public” lands in the Occupied Territories. Shehadeh’s wrath is not limited to Israel though. He rails against the PLO and its failure to include the settlements in the Oslo accord, an omission that he feels has had disastrous consequences. All that Arafat was interested in, he contends, is Israeli recognition of the PLO.

Much of what Shehadeh exposes is not new; it can be found in many more scholarly books and magazines. The value of Shahedeh’s book, with its seemingly innocuous title and low key style, is that it brings the stark reality of Israel’s machinations to the general (Western) public. This is not second hand recounting of dry facts but first hand information from a man who is intimately involved. Moreover, what makes this book so powerful is the juxtaposition of the personal anecdotes from someone with a deep love of the land, with the hard facts. What also comes through in some of the anecdotes is the mindset of the “other”, the settlers and those in Israel and outside who empower them. Take, for example, this anecdote about a Palestinian farmer most of whose land was confiscated for building a settlement and what was left of his house and property was fenced in except for a passageway a few yards wide. Now the wall threatened to cut him off from his village and the houses he built for his children:

“Sabri and I were standing outside in the sun looking at the settlement through the wire fence built around his house. He was telling me about this latest case when we saw an old man walking his Labrador on the other side of the fence. I tried hard to catch the man’s eye. I wanted some indication of how he felt confining his neighbor in this way, but the man would not raise his eyes from the ground. He went solemnly through his walk, keeping pace with his dog, never showing recognition of Sabri or his guest.”

When I read this and think of the Western media’s accepted narrative of the Israeli as the perpetual victim and the Palestinian as the perpetual aggressor, it is hard not to get angry. Is there any more need to explain Palestinian rage? to answer the question of "why do they hate us?" when Barack Obama deems it only wothwhile to visit Sderot and not the thousands of Palestinians who suffered the same fate as Sabri and when Sarkosi says that the creation of the state of Israel was the greatest thing that happened in the 20th century?

As you delve further into the book, Shehadeh’s mood grows from melancholic to despondent as he realizes that his life’s work, that of trying to protect Palestinians from Israel’s seemingly insatiable appetite for other people's land was a failure. At one point, as his father once did, he briefly thinks of suicide. Some of the gloom lifts towards the end of the book as Shehadeh’s perspective changes. He has to force himself to admit his failure, the defeat of this phase of the struggle for Palestine, to enable him to move on. He also learns the virtue of patience as he realizes that while most men measure their accomplishment in the time scale of a lifetime, history follows not such time scale.

Shehadeh’s clearly thinks that Israel's current policies, disastrous as they are for the Palestinians, will ultimately doom Israelis as well. Although he does explicitly spell it out, you get the sense that he believes as did Edward Said, late in life, that the ultimate solution is a one state solution. The one state solution is gaining traction among more and more prominent Palestinians although it remains anathema to the vast majority of Israelis. I have come around to believe the same although I do not see how it will ever become acceptable to enough Israelis to make anything more than a pipe dream.

Step 1: Aref Dalilah's Release

Mohannad al-Hassani, Dalilah's lawyer, said upon his release:

"We hope that this will be the beginning of freedom for the rest of the prisoners of conscience in Syria."

I couldn' agree more. I am a hopeful person by nature and will not speculate about the motive for his release, hoping -against all odds- that this is not political maneuvering or some quid pro quo to placate some foreign leader, like Monsieur Sarko, par example. Oops, I speculated!! Whatever the reason, it is a good first step and hope that it becomes a trend.

On Hamid's Reluctant Fundamentalist

"THEY hate our freedom!", "THEY want to destroy our way of life!", "THEY love death more than they love life!", "Islamofascits this and Islamofascists that....". These and other like-minded statements permeated the airwaves and newspaper headlines during the early post 9/11 frenzy. There was talk, by otherwise reasonable people, of internment camps and mass expulsions. Paranoia and xenophobic patriotism electrified the air and made every Arab and Muslim living here retract in fear, concern and anger. We all wondered how far this will go and whether we should pack our bags and leave.

Changez, a highly successful immigrant and the protagonist of Hamid's novel, chose to leave. Mohsin Hamid's intriguing novel is a monologue by Changez as he entertains an American visitor to dinner at a Lahore restaurant. Changez, a Pakistani immigrant, recounts his years in America starting as an ambitious student at Princeton, on to success in the rarefied air of a Manhattan valuation company. Then 9/11 transpires and things start to unravel. He becomes disenchanted with post-9/11 America and feels torn and guilty about being away from his family in Lahore as Pakistan and India, with American collusion, edge towards war. He thinks of returning home. His mind is made up when on an business assignment in Chile, a book editor compares Changez, a soldier in a high temple of the American capitalist empire, to an Ottoman Jannisary . Changez returns to Pakistan where he becomes a vocal critic of American foreign policy.

Early on in the novel, we learn that the American visitor is not a guest but is there in some official capacity. Tension builds as we learn that the American is uneasy and suspicious. We get a distinct feeling that something ominous is about to happen but Hamid's deft storytelling leaves us guessing to the end. In fact we are left guessing at the novel's abrupt end as to what exactly happened. Perhaps it is a statement by Hamid about the murky and yet unresolved state of affair between East-West, seven years after the start of the open-ended "war on terror".

Through the monologue Hamid answers the question that Americans keep asking: "why do they hate us?". Hamid's response is not an angry polemic but a subtle, intelligent explanation. It is the fact that the United States is, whether Americans want to admit it or not, the world's economic and military bully. American by and large see themselves as moral and decent individuals but there is a fine line between moral rectitude and condescending, self-absorbed, self-righteousness. America's asymmetric response to 9/11 is one manifestation of this syndrome.

Seven years on, the tide of mindless flag waving is slowly turning -slowly. This book was published in 2007 to uniformly good reviews. Yet I bought it from a bookstore a couple of weeks ago from a pile of deeply discounted books, an indication that it is not selling well. It is too bad, this book should be widely read by Americans. I guess it is more reassuring to read a book by pseudo-experts reassuring you of your moral superiority and confirming that the enemy is more vile than Satan, than to read a book that holds a mirror up to your face and shows you all the warts and wrinkles that you would rather forget.

Kuntar: Hero or anti-Hero?

I don't think he is either.

Let's get real. Kuntar was a minor at 16 years of age, when he was sent by the FLP on the Nahariyah operation in 1979. I do not pretend to know what his motives were or whether this was an idea implanted by adults into the impressionable mind of a sixteen year old. He is after all a Lebanese Druze and not a Palestinian whose family suffered violence and dispossession at the hands of Israel; so personal anger and rage are unlikely to have motivated him.

I wanted to stay out of this debate altogether but the way Kuntar is being treated like a celebrity has left me more than a little queasy. I am annoyed with the way many Arabs have reflexively accepted his promotion to icon of the resistance and are willing to gloss over the facts that have brought him to his iconic status.

I know for certain that many who will publicly support him, have privately the same uneasy feelings I do about this whole affair but are willing to suppress it in favor of the big picture: That the prisoner exchange was a victory over Israel. These very same people when confronted with the facts of the Nahariyah operation will, instead of responding to the accusation, remind you of Israel's long list of atrocities against civilians, including children. No objections here except that two wrongs don't make a right. Others will tell you that the child bludgeoning accusation is an Israeli fabrication, that the child died in the crossfire. I do not know the veracity of the claim but even if true, it does not get him off the hook since neither the child nor the child's parents should have been put in that situation in the first place. I, for one, cannot accept that this act perpetrated against civilians is a legitimate act of resistance. There are no buts here; we, as Arabs, undermine our legitimate grievances against Israel's many acts of barbarity if we then turn around and excuse similar acts perpetrated by one of our own. More importantly, we undermine our own integrity.

The real resistance heroes in my book are the Hizbullah fighters who fiercely and valiantly battled the Israeli army forcing its exit in 2000, or the youngsters of the intifada who battled fire with rocks and slingshots. My iconic figure of resistance is the young Palestinian fighter who in the summer of 1982 in Beirut, was standing alone on the back of pickup truck manning an antiaircraft gun. He was one of few fighters left standing on an exposed highway by the Beirut stadium (Madineh el Riyadiyeh) surrounded by death and destruction, yet he kept firing at unrelenting waves of Israeli fighter jets until he was felled by an Israeli missile. They are heroes because they fought unselfishly and with courage. Their actions were purposeful in that they confronted the immediate cause of their problems, the armed aggressors.

The point is the Nahariyah operation and other operations targeting civilians undertaken by the Palestinian resistance during that era were purposeless in that they never advanced the cause of the Palestinian resistance and I would argue that, in many instances, it set it back. Hizbullah did not liberate the South by staging operations against civilian targets in Israel; they did it by making life hell for the IDF in the South.

I do not know the histories of the other four prisoners released along with Kuntar or the stories of the nearly two hundred deceased fighters, but I bet that more than a few will have stories much more befitting a hero than that of Samir Kuntar.