Tehran vs Gaza in the American Media

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

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

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

Tianamen Square 20th Anniversary

Palestinian Nakba 60th Anniversary

Israeli Right Wing Group Calls Obama Anti-Semitic

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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!

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

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

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.