Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "islam"
Popeophobia hits Holy Land
By Matt Beynon Rees, on Global Post
JERUSALEM — If you happen to be in the Holy Land next week and you have a beef with the pope, get to the back of the line.
In Nazareth, where Pope Benedict XVI will say Mass on May 14, the Islamic Movement accuses the pontiff of insulting Islam in a 2006 speech and leaflets have been distributed in the town calling for violence against the pontiff. In Gaza, the small Christian community there is upset that he won’t visit them as a show of solidarity after the violence in January.
The Israeli security services say the popemobile isn’t safe enough and want to cocoon Benedict in an armored limo, where pilgrims won’t be able to see him. Refugees in a Bethlehem camp that Benedict plans to visit are setting up a platform for his appearance right in front of the tall concrete wall Israel has built around the town and camp leaders refuse to locate it somewhere with a less emotive backdrop.
The Catholic Church, too, has done its share of complaining in advance of the pope’s arrival in Israel May 11, insisting that the planned tour of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, should bypass an exhibit that suggests Benedict’s predecessor, Pius XII, maintained a “neutral position” on the mass murder of Jews during World War II. The pope will pray at the memorial to victims of the Holocaust but won’t enter the museum.
To Father William Shomali, it all looks distressingly familiar.
Rector of the Latin Seminary in Beit Jala, a Christian village attached to Bethlehem, Shomali organized an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem during the visit of the previous pope, John Paul II, in March 2000. John Paul was the first pope to visit Rome’s main synagogue and also made a historic stop in a Damascus mosque. But his attempts at reconciliation couldn’t overcome the all-around nastiness of the Middle East.
At Notre Dame, a Catholic complex overlooking the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and the Palestinian Authority’s chief Islamic judge Taisir Tamimi refused to plant an olive tree with the pope because they didn’t want to shake hands with each other. Shomali had to ask John Paul to plant the symbol of peace on his own.
The public meeting that followed was notable for the image of John Paul hunched between Lau, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and a stony-faced Tamimi.
“They only talked about their own suffering,” Shomali said. “We need to get out of this victim mentality and recognize our own guilt, before there can be reconciliation.”
Since that meeting in 2000, Palestinians and Israelis have lived through five years of intifada violence and a devastating war in Gaza. It hasn’t made them any more willing to acknowledge their own guilt.
With that in mind, Benedict gamely plans to have another try.
On his first day in Jerusalem, he’ll return to Notre Dame for a meeting with Israel’s chief rabbis, a leading Muslim jurist, and heads of the Druze minority in Israel.
The message of such a meeting is clear. “His Holiness rejects denial of the Other,” says Bishop Munib Younan, head of the Lutheran Church in the Holy Land.
For Younan, the pope’s dual status as a religious figure and head of a state — the Vatican — gives his spiritual interventions a political element. That, he hopes, could reverse the disturbing politicization of religion in the Middle East.
“Politics and religion are intertwined,” he says. “We would just like to have religion lead politics, rather than the other way round.”
That could give an important shove to peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, as Christian leaders see it.
More immediately — and more likely perhaps — the pope will give a boost to the embattled Christian Arab community in Israel and the West Bank. In towns like Bethlehem and Nazareth, Christians used to be a majority, but now face hatred and sometimes violence from the growing Muslim population. Bishop Younan describes it as “Christianophobia,” in the face of which much of his congregation and many members of other denominations are emigrating to the U.S. or South America.
Of course, that might depend on whether Benedict can quell the “Popeophobia” circulating before his arrival
JERUSALEM — If you happen to be in the Holy Land next week and you have a beef with the pope, get to the back of the line.
In Nazareth, where Pope Benedict XVI will say Mass on May 14, the Islamic Movement accuses the pontiff of insulting Islam in a 2006 speech and leaflets have been distributed in the town calling for violence against the pontiff. In Gaza, the small Christian community there is upset that he won’t visit them as a show of solidarity after the violence in January.
The Israeli security services say the popemobile isn’t safe enough and want to cocoon Benedict in an armored limo, where pilgrims won’t be able to see him. Refugees in a Bethlehem camp that Benedict plans to visit are setting up a platform for his appearance right in front of the tall concrete wall Israel has built around the town and camp leaders refuse to locate it somewhere with a less emotive backdrop.
The Catholic Church, too, has done its share of complaining in advance of the pope’s arrival in Israel May 11, insisting that the planned tour of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, should bypass an exhibit that suggests Benedict’s predecessor, Pius XII, maintained a “neutral position” on the mass murder of Jews during World War II. The pope will pray at the memorial to victims of the Holocaust but won’t enter the museum.
To Father William Shomali, it all looks distressingly familiar.
Rector of the Latin Seminary in Beit Jala, a Christian village attached to Bethlehem, Shomali organized an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem during the visit of the previous pope, John Paul II, in March 2000. John Paul was the first pope to visit Rome’s main synagogue and also made a historic stop in a Damascus mosque. But his attempts at reconciliation couldn’t overcome the all-around nastiness of the Middle East.
At Notre Dame, a Catholic complex overlooking the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and the Palestinian Authority’s chief Islamic judge Taisir Tamimi refused to plant an olive tree with the pope because they didn’t want to shake hands with each other. Shomali had to ask John Paul to plant the symbol of peace on his own.
The public meeting that followed was notable for the image of John Paul hunched between Lau, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and a stony-faced Tamimi.
“They only talked about their own suffering,” Shomali said. “We need to get out of this victim mentality and recognize our own guilt, before there can be reconciliation.”
Since that meeting in 2000, Palestinians and Israelis have lived through five years of intifada violence and a devastating war in Gaza. It hasn’t made them any more willing to acknowledge their own guilt.
With that in mind, Benedict gamely plans to have another try.
On his first day in Jerusalem, he’ll return to Notre Dame for a meeting with Israel’s chief rabbis, a leading Muslim jurist, and heads of the Druze minority in Israel.
The message of such a meeting is clear. “His Holiness rejects denial of the Other,” says Bishop Munib Younan, head of the Lutheran Church in the Holy Land.
For Younan, the pope’s dual status as a religious figure and head of a state — the Vatican — gives his spiritual interventions a political element. That, he hopes, could reverse the disturbing politicization of religion in the Middle East.
“Politics and religion are intertwined,” he says. “We would just like to have religion lead politics, rather than the other way round.”
That could give an important shove to peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, as Christian leaders see it.
More immediately — and more likely perhaps — the pope will give a boost to the embattled Christian Arab community in Israel and the West Bank. In towns like Bethlehem and Nazareth, Christians used to be a majority, but now face hatred and sometimes violence from the growing Muslim population. Bishop Younan describes it as “Christianophobia,” in the face of which much of his congregation and many members of other denominations are emigrating to the U.S. or South America.
Of course, that might depend on whether Benedict can quell the “Popeophobia” circulating before his arrival
Indonesia debates my Grave in Gaza
I’ve been extraordinarily impressed with the job my Indonesian publisher is doing with my Palestinian crime novels. It also turns out I have something in common with a popular former President of Indonesia.
My editor at Dioma Publishing in Malang, Indonesia, Herman Kosasih filled me in on a couple of events they organized there for the launch of A Grave in Gaza (it’s the second of my Palestinian novels, but Dioma decided to publish it first; they’ve purchased rights to the first four books). That includes a debate at the Islamic University in Malang.
This is particularly important to me because Indonesia is the first Muslim country in which my books have been published. As the hero of the books is a Palestinian Muslim, I’m very keen that his story should be read by Muslims around the world.
Here’s a little of what Herman wrote to me about the debate at the Islamic University: “It was great. There were Quran readings, prayers, speeches. Then the Indonesian National Anthem and the Hymn of Pergerakan Mahasiswa Islam Indonesia, which is the Association of Indonesian Islamic Students. Present were the Vice Rector of the university and the representatives of the movement throughout Malang. 200 people attended it. Wow. I was very surprised to see them all. Out of my imagination.”
Mine, too. Wonderful news.
Herman continues: “There were many questions including whether the author had a plan concerning Palestine and Israel when he wrote this novel. They agreed that cruelty and murders can be done by people with various religions. The atmosphere of religion influenced the discussion.
“The dean of the Law Faculty said that your idea in the novel is similar with what Gus Dur has said concerning Middle East affairs. Gus Dur is a former president of Indonesia, a proponent of minority rights in Indonesia and a champion of religious dialogue. He is much beloved among the students who most of them are followers of NU, a branch of Indonesian Islam. They are usually moderate and traditional.
“I concluded that they appreciate your novel. I also made some friends there.”
It’s clear to me that the debate in Indonesia was thoughtful and carried out with consideration for other people as humans – rather than in a spirit of religious antagonism. I’m very touched by that.
In another email, Herman told me: “On May 15, 2009 we had a kind of talk show in Jakarta in one of the biggest bookstore chains in Indonesia for A Grave in Gaza. The speaker was a journalist who has visited Middle East.”
Herman also sent me a lovely set of playing cards from Bali. I’m using them to teach my little son how to count.
Obama's speech: the view from Jerusalem
President Barack Obama spelled out what he expects of the Israeli government in his Cairo speech, issuing a challenge that most commentators here believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no way of meeting [I wrote on Global Post today:].
Obama’s speech, carried live on all three main Israeli television stations, made clear his firm opposition to any sort of building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. “This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace,” Obama said. “It is time for these settlements to stop.”
The realization that Obama is serious about halting settlements has been growing in Israel since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited in early March. At first Israeli politicians and diplomats thought it could be dealt with by the same sleight of hand that stymied previous administrations — Israel would agree to a freeze on settlement construction, except for “natural growth” to accommodate the children of existing settlers. In reality that meant as much building as Israel wanted.
Since Netanyahu’s visit to Washington two weeks ago, aggrieved Israeli government officials (who weren’t immediately available to comment on Obama's speech) have complained that there were unwritten agreements with the Bush White House allowing Israel to build in the settlements, provided they pulled out of “illegal outposts” — mainly composed of a few young settlers living in shipping containers on hillsides across the valley from existing settlements.
Obama’s speech made it clear that such unwritten promises are not part of the debate. Read more....
Obama’s speech, carried live on all three main Israeli television stations, made clear his firm opposition to any sort of building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. “This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace,” Obama said. “It is time for these settlements to stop.”
The realization that Obama is serious about halting settlements has been growing in Israel since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited in early March. At first Israeli politicians and diplomats thought it could be dealt with by the same sleight of hand that stymied previous administrations — Israel would agree to a freeze on settlement construction, except for “natural growth” to accommodate the children of existing settlers. In reality that meant as much building as Israel wanted.
Since Netanyahu’s visit to Washington two weeks ago, aggrieved Israeli government officials (who weren’t immediately available to comment on Obama's speech) have complained that there were unwritten agreements with the Bush White House allowing Israel to build in the settlements, provided they pulled out of “illegal outposts” — mainly composed of a few young settlers living in shipping containers on hillsides across the valley from existing settlements.
Obama’s speech made it clear that such unwritten promises are not part of the debate. Read more....
A living foreign correspondent the most useless thing to media industry -- Reviewing a "Novel of Jihad"
The magazine of Harvard's Nieman Fellowship asked me to write an essay about Jeffrey Fleishman's "Promised Virgins: A Novel of Jihad". I wrote about why international correspondents like me and Fleishman, Cairo bureau chief for the LA Times, turn to novels to express the depth of what we learn about a foreign culture. Here's how the article begins:
Jay Morgan, the central character of Jeffrey Fleishman’s thought provoking “novel of Jihad,” carries an undeveloped roll of film shot by his young photographer wife in the moments before she was killed in Beirut. Morgan lifts her wounded body to safety, but she dies anyway. It’s a fitting image on which to build Morgan’s deep bitterness and disillusion about journalism as he covers the war in Kosovo. In these days of cyberjournalism, idiotic reader “talkbacks” and nonsensical newsroom cutbacks, the only thing apparently more useless to the media industry than an undeveloped film or a dead photographer is a living foreign correspondent.
The story of “Promised Virgins” revolves around Morgan’s trek through the mountains as he interviews Serbs, Albanians and CIA operatives on the hunt for a newly arrived jihadi who has brought Islamic fundamentalism to the otherwise nationalistic Muslims of Kosovo. In truth, the book is about a foreign correspondent’s uncomfortable personal connections with the society he covers and his realization that they’re the only things keeping him from despair at his ever-shabbier trade. Read more...
Hot Reading in East Jerusalem!
This weekend I was the guest of Munther Fahmi, who runs the excellent bookshop at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, for a reading from my newest Palestinian crime novel THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET. Munther and I have been scheming for some time to organize an event, so it was great to finally get it together.
I knew it'd be an interesting crowd at the Colony, which manages to be something like neutral ground (although many Israelis might dispute that) in Jerusalem. There were foreign journalists and diplomats, Israelis and Palestinians among the sizeable crowd, including some old friends I haven't seen for some time. Oh, and tourists, too -- a rare species since the intifada, but I signed for visitors from Berlin and Seattle, Ireland and Serbia.
I was also delighted that one of the people on whom I based the character of a World Bank worker in THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET happened to be staying at the Colony this weekend. I was able to give him the news that I'd turned him into a woman and changed his employer. He seemed pleased with both alterations, and I hope he enjoys the book.
I've edited the photos so that you can't see how hot it became in the room. By the time I was signing the books at the end I was rather inelegantly dripping with sweat. The alternative, of course, was the honking of passing Arab wedding convoys and, as antiglobalization activist Naomi Klein discovered when the windows were opened to let in some air for her reading immediately after mine, the evening call to prayers by the muezzin at the mosque next door. (It's the Mosque of Sheikh Jarrah, named after Saladin's doctor, whose tomb it houses.)
To get on Munther's mailing list for future readings at his excellent bookshop, write to him at bookshopat@gmail.com.
Whose Abu are you?
Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:
In the West, our names tend to be pretty nailed down and unvaried. Unless you’re the child of some Hollywood goof who named you Moon Unit or Pilot Inspektor, you’re likely to share your name with many other people. Take me, for example. The family name Rees accounts for 15 percent of Welsh people – not to mention people descended from Welsh immigrants to the US, Canada, Australia. And it seems every other man of my generation is a Matthew.
Elsewhere in the world, people are more inventive. I had an Indian girlfriend in graduate school whose surname was Moorti. I noticed that her brother’s surname was Krishnamoorti. When I asked her to explain, she said that Indians could decide what their surname was themselves. That didn’t make much sense to me. So she just laughed and said I was “so Western.”
I’ve often confronted something similar in the Arab world, and it’s an element I’ve worked into my Palestinian crime novels – not just for cultural accuracy, but also as an important part of the plot. (But I won’t give away how!)
Arabs have a lengthy given name about which there’s relatively little choice. In the case of a Palestinian man, it’d be his name, followed by his father, grandfather, family and/or clan name. So my sleuth is Omar Yussef Subhi Sirhan.
But then there’s the tricky issue of the “kunya.” That’s when an Arab is known as “Abu-something”. Abu means “father of.” Traditionally a man is obliged to call his first son after his father. So even before his first son is born, if his father’s name was Muhammad, he’d be known as Abu Muhammad. (He’d actually be the son of Muhammad and only nominally the father of a future Muhammad…. But faith counts for everything, doesn’t it.)
My father’s name is David, so in Bethlehem I used to be known as “Abu Dahoud,” the Father of David. A few of my friends there were a little confused when I named my first son Cai. “Doesn’t your father object?” one of them asked.
My Omar Yussef is no traditionalist, so he decided to name his son Ramiz. Which wasn’t his father’s name. That means most people in the novels who want to show him respect and, at the same time, familiarity, call him Abu Ramiz.
It works the same way for women, though they’re tied to the name of their husband. Omar Yussef’s wife Maryam is called Umm Ramiz – the mother of Ramiz. No matter what her father was named.
So Abu refers to your father’s name, probably, and your son’s name, certainly.
Except when it doesn’t.
Sometimes the kunya is political nom de guerre. Yasser Arafat, who had no sons, called himself Abu Ammar, after one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad. It had a classical ring and also tied him to the early Muslim holy warriors.
A pal of mine who’s a big shot in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine calls himself Abu Leilah – Father of the Night. I once asked him if he had a daughter Leilah, and why he wasn’t named after his father even if he had no sons. “No,” he smiled, “I don’t have a daughter with that name. I just thought Father of the Night was an exciting name. Mysterious, you know.”
Some time later I was in the Lebanese town of Tripoli, investigating an uprising there by Islamic fighters who had returned from Afghanistan to battle the Lebanese army. The rising had been led by another Abu Leilah. He’d been killed by the army. I asked his family if he’d also thought Father of the Night was an exciting name.
“No,” one of them said, looking at me as though I had suggested the dead man was less than purely heroic. “His eldest girl is called Leilah.”
You can’t win, see.
Of course, in Arab society most men don’t want to carry a girl’s name and I never quite figured out why the Tripoli rebel did it. After all, for Palestinians, “Abu al-Banat” (Father of the Girls) is an insult aimed at men who haven’t been able to father any sons.
This is all the kind of thing that caused trouble with the US “no-fly” lists after 9/11. Perfectly innocent Abu Muhammads and Abu Ahmads, the Tom Smiths and Bob Joneses of the Muslim world, were suddenly
indistinguishable from people considered a danger to the nation. Including the real Omar Yussef, a friend of mine from Bethlehem.
My contribution to all this naming confusion is that in the UK I’m published as Matt Rees, while in the US I use my middle name and am therefore Matt Beynon Rees.
Why? Because I decide who I am.
Except when I’m in Bethlehem. There I’m “Abu Cai.”
In the West, our names tend to be pretty nailed down and unvaried. Unless you’re the child of some Hollywood goof who named you Moon Unit or Pilot Inspektor, you’re likely to share your name with many other people. Take me, for example. The family name Rees accounts for 15 percent of Welsh people – not to mention people descended from Welsh immigrants to the US, Canada, Australia. And it seems every other man of my generation is a Matthew.
Elsewhere in the world, people are more inventive. I had an Indian girlfriend in graduate school whose surname was Moorti. I noticed that her brother’s surname was Krishnamoorti. When I asked her to explain, she said that Indians could decide what their surname was themselves. That didn’t make much sense to me. So she just laughed and said I was “so Western.”
I’ve often confronted something similar in the Arab world, and it’s an element I’ve worked into my Palestinian crime novels – not just for cultural accuracy, but also as an important part of the plot. (But I won’t give away how!)
Arabs have a lengthy given name about which there’s relatively little choice. In the case of a Palestinian man, it’d be his name, followed by his father, grandfather, family and/or clan name. So my sleuth is Omar Yussef Subhi Sirhan.
But then there’s the tricky issue of the “kunya.” That’s when an Arab is known as “Abu-something”. Abu means “father of.” Traditionally a man is obliged to call his first son after his father. So even before his first son is born, if his father’s name was Muhammad, he’d be known as Abu Muhammad. (He’d actually be the son of Muhammad and only nominally the father of a future Muhammad…. But faith counts for everything, doesn’t it.)
My father’s name is David, so in Bethlehem I used to be known as “Abu Dahoud,” the Father of David. A few of my friends there were a little confused when I named my first son Cai. “Doesn’t your father object?” one of them asked.
My Omar Yussef is no traditionalist, so he decided to name his son Ramiz. Which wasn’t his father’s name. That means most people in the novels who want to show him respect and, at the same time, familiarity, call him Abu Ramiz.
It works the same way for women, though they’re tied to the name of their husband. Omar Yussef’s wife Maryam is called Umm Ramiz – the mother of Ramiz. No matter what her father was named.
So Abu refers to your father’s name, probably, and your son’s name, certainly.
Except when it doesn’t.
Sometimes the kunya is political nom de guerre. Yasser Arafat, who had no sons, called himself Abu Ammar, after one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad. It had a classical ring and also tied him to the early Muslim holy warriors.
A pal of mine who’s a big shot in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine calls himself Abu Leilah – Father of the Night. I once asked him if he had a daughter Leilah, and why he wasn’t named after his father even if he had no sons. “No,” he smiled, “I don’t have a daughter with that name. I just thought Father of the Night was an exciting name. Mysterious, you know.”
Some time later I was in the Lebanese town of Tripoli, investigating an uprising there by Islamic fighters who had returned from Afghanistan to battle the Lebanese army. The rising had been led by another Abu Leilah. He’d been killed by the army. I asked his family if he’d also thought Father of the Night was an exciting name.
“No,” one of them said, looking at me as though I had suggested the dead man was less than purely heroic. “His eldest girl is called Leilah.”
You can’t win, see.
Of course, in Arab society most men don’t want to carry a girl’s name and I never quite figured out why the Tripoli rebel did it. After all, for Palestinians, “Abu al-Banat” (Father of the Girls) is an insult aimed at men who haven’t been able to father any sons.
This is all the kind of thing that caused trouble with the US “no-fly” lists after 9/11. Perfectly innocent Abu Muhammads and Abu Ahmads, the Tom Smiths and Bob Joneses of the Muslim world, were suddenly
indistinguishable from people considered a danger to the nation. Including the real Omar Yussef, a friend of mine from Bethlehem.
My contribution to all this naming confusion is that in the UK I’m published as Matt Rees, while in the US I use my middle name and am therefore Matt Beynon Rees.
Why? Because I decide who I am.
Except when I’m in Bethlehem. There I’m “Abu Cai.”
Suffering 101
Palestinians and Israelis take an eternal debate into the classroom, leaving the UN stuck in the middle. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — In the Book of Lamentations, the people of Jerusalem cry out against the destruction of the city: “Is any suffering like my suffering?”
The answer, of course, is: No. Ever since, Jeremiah’s phrase has pretty much been the catchphrase of the entire Middle East.
On a recent Sunday, the Israeli Education Minister Gideon Saar told the cabinet that the word Arabs use to describe the foundation of Israel — “Nakba,” or catastrophe — would be removed from Arabic-language textbooks in the schools of Israel’s Arab minority. His contention: it wasn’t a catastrophe for him or the government that pays the schools’ bills, so out with “Nakba.”
The same day, Hamas lashed out at the U.N. agency that educates Palestinian refugees. The agency, Hamas alleged, was planning to change its textbooks to teach Palestinian children about the Holocaust. Hamas’s contention: the Holocaust didn’t happen, and teaching about it would legitimize the State of Israel which, in the opinion of most Palestinians, was foisted on them as payback for the Holocaust by guilt-ridden Europeans.
Recognizing the sufferings of the other side is generally the first step in conflict resolution. It makes the enemy seem human. It’s something Israelis and Palestinians find particularly hard to do.
In a letter to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the Hamas-affiliated Popular Committees for Palestinian Refugees called the Holocaust “a big lie that was fabricated by the Jews and a big campaign of propaganda.” The U.N., the letter says, should “erase the subject of the Jewish Holocaust from the curriculum, and stop future attempts to insert strange concepts which contradict Palestinian values and principles.”
Hamas claimed to have uncovered plans to teach about the Holocaust in a human-rights course. There are 200,000 Gazan children in U.N. schools.
U.N. officials tried to set the record straight. Karen Abu Zayd, the UNRWA commissioner-general, said Tuesday that she could "refute allegations that the U.N. school curriculum includes anything about the Holocaust."
A relief, perhaps, to anyone worried about offending Palestinians. Maybe not such a relief to those hoping the U.N. provides refugee children with a fully rounded awareness of history — the history of the people who live right next door.
Holocaust denial is common among Palestinians. That’s because they believe the enormity of the Holocaust diminishes — in the eyes of the world — the significance of their own suffering. The figure of 6 million murdered was made up, they contend, so that it would dwarf the 750,000 Palestinians who lost their homes and became refugees in 1948 when Israel was founded.
Hamas has backers in this regard. Since its international isolation in 2006, the Islamic group has increased its political and financial ties to the Holocaust-denying regime in Tehran.
In contrast, Saar, the education minister, didn’t entirely deny the grievance of Israel’s Arab population at the cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “It can be said with certainty that Arab Israelis experienced a tragedy in the war [of 1948:],” he said. “But there will be no use of the word ‘Nakba,’ whose meaning is similar to Holocaust in this context.”
For Saar it seems to be more a matter of capitalization. That is, 1948 was a catastrophe for the Palestinians, but not a Catastrophe.
“Nakba” didn’t have a very long run in Israel’s schools. The left-wing education minister, Yuli Tamir, introduced it two years ago to third-grade Arabic-language textbooks. Saar took office this spring as part of a more rightist government.
“The creation of the State of Israel cannot be referred to as a tragedy,” he said, “and the education system in the Arab sector will revise its studies in elementary schools.”
All this is just in time for the return of students to school for the start of a new academic year.
Now that’s a kind of suffering everyone can relate to.
JERUSALEM — In the Book of Lamentations, the people of Jerusalem cry out against the destruction of the city: “Is any suffering like my suffering?”
The answer, of course, is: No. Ever since, Jeremiah’s phrase has pretty much been the catchphrase of the entire Middle East.
On a recent Sunday, the Israeli Education Minister Gideon Saar told the cabinet that the word Arabs use to describe the foundation of Israel — “Nakba,” or catastrophe — would be removed from Arabic-language textbooks in the schools of Israel’s Arab minority. His contention: it wasn’t a catastrophe for him or the government that pays the schools’ bills, so out with “Nakba.”
The same day, Hamas lashed out at the U.N. agency that educates Palestinian refugees. The agency, Hamas alleged, was planning to change its textbooks to teach Palestinian children about the Holocaust. Hamas’s contention: the Holocaust didn’t happen, and teaching about it would legitimize the State of Israel which, in the opinion of most Palestinians, was foisted on them as payback for the Holocaust by guilt-ridden Europeans.
Recognizing the sufferings of the other side is generally the first step in conflict resolution. It makes the enemy seem human. It’s something Israelis and Palestinians find particularly hard to do.
In a letter to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the Hamas-affiliated Popular Committees for Palestinian Refugees called the Holocaust “a big lie that was fabricated by the Jews and a big campaign of propaganda.” The U.N., the letter says, should “erase the subject of the Jewish Holocaust from the curriculum, and stop future attempts to insert strange concepts which contradict Palestinian values and principles.”
Hamas claimed to have uncovered plans to teach about the Holocaust in a human-rights course. There are 200,000 Gazan children in U.N. schools.
U.N. officials tried to set the record straight. Karen Abu Zayd, the UNRWA commissioner-general, said Tuesday that she could "refute allegations that the U.N. school curriculum includes anything about the Holocaust."
A relief, perhaps, to anyone worried about offending Palestinians. Maybe not such a relief to those hoping the U.N. provides refugee children with a fully rounded awareness of history — the history of the people who live right next door.
Holocaust denial is common among Palestinians. That’s because they believe the enormity of the Holocaust diminishes — in the eyes of the world — the significance of their own suffering. The figure of 6 million murdered was made up, they contend, so that it would dwarf the 750,000 Palestinians who lost their homes and became refugees in 1948 when Israel was founded.
Hamas has backers in this regard. Since its international isolation in 2006, the Islamic group has increased its political and financial ties to the Holocaust-denying regime in Tehran.
In contrast, Saar, the education minister, didn’t entirely deny the grievance of Israel’s Arab population at the cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “It can be said with certainty that Arab Israelis experienced a tragedy in the war [of 1948:],” he said. “But there will be no use of the word ‘Nakba,’ whose meaning is similar to Holocaust in this context.”
For Saar it seems to be more a matter of capitalization. That is, 1948 was a catastrophe for the Palestinians, but not a Catastrophe.
“Nakba” didn’t have a very long run in Israel’s schools. The left-wing education minister, Yuli Tamir, introduced it two years ago to third-grade Arabic-language textbooks. Saar took office this spring as part of a more rightist government.
“The creation of the State of Israel cannot be referred to as a tragedy,” he said, “and the education system in the Arab sector will revise its studies in elementary schools.”
All this is just in time for the return of students to school for the start of a new academic year.
Now that’s a kind of suffering everyone can relate to.
Is Abbas really ready to quit this time?
Worn out has-been or drama queen? Interpretations of the Palestinian president's threat to quit vary greatly. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — Sometimes a quitter really does quit for good.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced last week that he wouldn’t run for re-election in the proposed January elections. Back when he was Yasser Arafat’s deputy in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Abbas sulked off to his home in the Persian Gulf several times. As Arafat’s prime minister, he quit in the middle of the intifada, accusing the Palestinian leader of undermining him and slamming the U.S. for failing to back him fully.
Each time, he slipped back from exile, until he took over from Arafat on his death and was elected to office, in January 2005. But the 74-year-old now says that he’s exhausted by the political events of this past year, particularly the failure of the Obama administration to pressure Israel on continued settlement-building in the West Bank.
At first, Abbas’s announcement was interpreted as a ploy to press Washington and the Israelis. Israeli, European and Arab leaders called Abbas to beg him to stay on. The West has long banked on Abbas, one of the formulators of the Oslo Peace Accords, as the best hope for a deal with Israel. If he were to go, things might look bleak for peace. (Not that they don’t look bleak right now.)
Despite the phone calls to Ramallah, most leaders assessed Abbas’s move as a tactic rather than a genuine expression of finality — like an actress pouting in her trailer until the director strokes her ego. After all, Abbas said only that he wouldn’t run in the January elections. It’s far from certain that those elections will be held, because Hamas won’t allow a poll in the Gaza Strip, which it controls. That would leave Abbas in office, in spite of his announcement.
Then Palestinian officials started talking to local and international media about what they claimed were Abbas’ true feelings. To sum up: He’s really had it with the Israeli government’s intransigence, and the way the U.S. backed down over settlements was the last straw.
Abbas’ supporters added that if he were to quit, the entire Palestinian Authority might collapse. It is, after all, fairly unloved among Palestinians. The only politician to have told his aides he would run to replace Abbas, Marwan Barghouti, is serving a series of life sentences in an Israeli prison. There are also plenty of Palestinian leaders who hanker for the old days of backroom political deals and lucrative private trade monopolies, which were nixed by Abbas and his Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, a U.S.-trained economist.
Still an institution that receives more than $1 billion in international aid each year is unlikely to just go away. For that kind of money, someone will be found to keep it rolling. The threat of collapse seems like an attempt by Abbas’ friends to demonstrate how peeved he is.
So why is Abbas out of patience?
Early in the year, the new U.S. administration pushed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a true freeze on building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. Washington insisted the freeze include so-called “natural growth,” which Israel uses to expand its building in the West Bank under the guise of new housing for existing residents.
But Netanyahu didn’t cave. During an Oct. 31 visit to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Netanyahu for showing “restraint” on settlement building. Restraint, Arab leaders pointed out, is not quite a freeze.
U.S. diplomats seemed to have been slipping toward this climb down for some weeks. Abbas already called Obama late last month to complain about it. That was when he first broached the idea of quitting.
Abbas had, after all, conditioned the resumption of peace talks on a total Israeli settlement freeze. He edged out onto that high diplomatic branch because he thought the U.S. was behind him. Gradually he saw that he was going to be left on that limb.
Backing down on the settlements isn’t an option for Abbas. He’s already seen as weak and vacillating by ordinary Palestinians. Over the summer, he backed off when the U.S. pressed him not to insist on an International Court of Justice trial for Israel, after the release of a U.N. report into the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza at the turn of the year.
Palestinian public outcry forced him to shift his position. But it was too late. He appeared to have confirmed long-standing suspicions that he lacked strength. Perhaps really quitting is the only thing that will show he can make a plan and stick to it.
JERUSALEM — Sometimes a quitter really does quit for good.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced last week that he wouldn’t run for re-election in the proposed January elections. Back when he was Yasser Arafat’s deputy in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Abbas sulked off to his home in the Persian Gulf several times. As Arafat’s prime minister, he quit in the middle of the intifada, accusing the Palestinian leader of undermining him and slamming the U.S. for failing to back him fully.
Each time, he slipped back from exile, until he took over from Arafat on his death and was elected to office, in January 2005. But the 74-year-old now says that he’s exhausted by the political events of this past year, particularly the failure of the Obama administration to pressure Israel on continued settlement-building in the West Bank.
At first, Abbas’s announcement was interpreted as a ploy to press Washington and the Israelis. Israeli, European and Arab leaders called Abbas to beg him to stay on. The West has long banked on Abbas, one of the formulators of the Oslo Peace Accords, as the best hope for a deal with Israel. If he were to go, things might look bleak for peace. (Not that they don’t look bleak right now.)
Despite the phone calls to Ramallah, most leaders assessed Abbas’s move as a tactic rather than a genuine expression of finality — like an actress pouting in her trailer until the director strokes her ego. After all, Abbas said only that he wouldn’t run in the January elections. It’s far from certain that those elections will be held, because Hamas won’t allow a poll in the Gaza Strip, which it controls. That would leave Abbas in office, in spite of his announcement.
Then Palestinian officials started talking to local and international media about what they claimed were Abbas’ true feelings. To sum up: He’s really had it with the Israeli government’s intransigence, and the way the U.S. backed down over settlements was the last straw.
Abbas’ supporters added that if he were to quit, the entire Palestinian Authority might collapse. It is, after all, fairly unloved among Palestinians. The only politician to have told his aides he would run to replace Abbas, Marwan Barghouti, is serving a series of life sentences in an Israeli prison. There are also plenty of Palestinian leaders who hanker for the old days of backroom political deals and lucrative private trade monopolies, which were nixed by Abbas and his Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, a U.S.-trained economist.
Still an institution that receives more than $1 billion in international aid each year is unlikely to just go away. For that kind of money, someone will be found to keep it rolling. The threat of collapse seems like an attempt by Abbas’ friends to demonstrate how peeved he is.
So why is Abbas out of patience?
Early in the year, the new U.S. administration pushed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a true freeze on building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. Washington insisted the freeze include so-called “natural growth,” which Israel uses to expand its building in the West Bank under the guise of new housing for existing residents.
But Netanyahu didn’t cave. During an Oct. 31 visit to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Netanyahu for showing “restraint” on settlement building. Restraint, Arab leaders pointed out, is not quite a freeze.
U.S. diplomats seemed to have been slipping toward this climb down for some weeks. Abbas already called Obama late last month to complain about it. That was when he first broached the idea of quitting.
Abbas had, after all, conditioned the resumption of peace talks on a total Israeli settlement freeze. He edged out onto that high diplomatic branch because he thought the U.S. was behind him. Gradually he saw that he was going to be left on that limb.
Backing down on the settlements isn’t an option for Abbas. He’s already seen as weak and vacillating by ordinary Palestinians. Over the summer, he backed off when the U.S. pressed him not to insist on an International Court of Justice trial for Israel, after the release of a U.N. report into the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza at the turn of the year.
Palestinian public outcry forced him to shift his position. But it was too late. He appeared to have confirmed long-standing suspicions that he lacked strength. Perhaps really quitting is the only thing that will show he can make a plan and stick to it.
Ass-backwards on Gays
When it comes to homosexuals, Palestinians have it all ass-backwards.
That led me to introduce homosexuality as a theme of THE SAMARITAN’S SECRET, my most recent Palestinian crime novel. I wanted to show how negative attitudes toward homosexuals function in the Muslim world, demonstrating the bloody consequences for gay Muslims and the struggles it causes the people around them. I’m glad I did, particularly after the recent shocking story of a Turkish man living an openly gay lifestyle who was tracked down and murdered by his own father—an honor killing with a difference.
As a novelist who writes about people of a different culture, it’s important not to have the members of that culture think as we’d somehow like them to think, in the West. To have them simply accord with our values.
But I’ve known Palestinian homosexuals and seen their suffering at keeping their real selves secret. Enough to be able to portray those sufferings, as it were, from the inside.
In my novel, the subject also gave me a bit of a conundrum in terms of style.
In each of my novels I’ve translated directly some of the more poetic phrases of local Arabic, as well as slang. So “Good morning” becomes “Morning of joy.” “Get lost” becomes “Fuck your mother’s cunt, you son of a whore.” You get the idea.
The slang word for homosexuals among Palestinians is a little more difficult to translate. Not the word itself, but the negative meaning of it.
Palestinians call homosexuals “Loutis.” “Lout” is the Arabic name for Lot, the brother of the biblical Abraham who was the one good man in the city of Sodom. The man God allowed Abraham to save.
The problem for me was that I couldn’t simply translate the name. To have someone say, “Yes, he’s a Lot-type.” You, dear reader, would wonder what that meant. You might think, “You mean, he’s like Lot, the righteous man. The one man in Sodom who wasn’t sodomizing the other…Sodomites?”
So I had to add a subtle explanation (I hope it’s subtle) that wouldn’t interrupt the conversational flow in the narrative. Here’s the first time the term turns up in THE SAMARITAN’S SECRET, when my detective Omar Yussef is talking with a local sheikh who is of a fundamentalist bent (if you’ll pardon the pun…):
“But I also don’t condemn some of the illogical things people do when their bodies demand it of them,” Omar Yussef said. “For them to do otherwise is to court depression and suicide, and that’s certainly against Islamic law.”
“You can’t mean you see nothing wrong in homosexuality? The holy Koran condemns homosexuals as /Loutis/, the people of Lot from Sodom.”
“Homosexuals suffer enough in our society without me hating them, too.”
“What if you learned that one of your sons was such a pervert?”
Omar Yussef gave a rasping laugh. “I’d blame his mother. But he’d still be my son.”
Of course part of my introduction of gay characters into THE SAMARITAN’S SECRET, which is set in Nablus, was an in-joke that only Palestinians would get. You see, whenever a Palestinian tells a homophobic joke, it’s always about a guy from Nablus who likes to be buggered.
Nabulsi men maintain that their reputation should belong to a group of Iraq soldiers who were stationed in Nablus during the 1948 war with Israel. The Iraqis, according to the men of Nablus, were the true “Loutis.” They raped many young boys from Nablus. So the idea that Nabulsi men tend to homosexuality, they claim, isn’t true.
Recount that “defense” to Palestinians from Jerusalem or Hebron and they’ll laugh that the Nabulsi boys enjoyed the visit of the Iraqi soldiers, which is why the reputation stuck…and on the joking will go.
Life for homosexuals in Nablus or anywhere else in the West Bank is dangerous. Some Palestinians used to sneak into Jerusalem to attend the city’s one gay night club (Israel’s gay culture is centered in Tel Aviv, and most Israeli Jerusalemites are hardly more gay-friendly than the Palestinians, as the man stabbed by a religious gay-baiter during the city’s gay parade four years ago could attest). The Palestinians were the most prominent among the drag queens at the club, which was close to the Jerusalem Municipality.
But the club’s closed now. Palestinian homosexuals simply can’t come out, because their families or neighbors might take a dreadful revenge upon them.
And that’s no joke.
4-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians?
My latest dispatch on Global Post -- a week or so after it posted, because I've been in Italy and, well, the Middle East wasn't on my mind...I didn't miss the taste of humus too much either, not with all that saltimboca and gelato...
Palestinians are divided; Israelis too. Not a good basis for negotiation.
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — The traditional diplomatic formulation for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is the slogan “Two states for two peoples.”
Let’s revise that for the current political situation and posit a solution based on “Four states for two peoples.” Because it’s the only way just now of drawing lines on a map between the feuding parties.
Why not stick with two peoples? Well, the Palestinians are divided in almost every way possible — geographically, politically, financially and with hatred and violence — between Hamas-ruled Gaza and the parts of the West Bank under the sway of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority.
Israel is doing its best to emulate that self-destructive division. Late last month Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a 10-month freeze on construction in the country’s settlements in the West Bank. With his customary ability to try placating everyone only to end up displeasing them all, Netanyahu pledged that the freeze wouldn’t apply to synagogues and schools in the settlements. Nor would it hold for Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which are viewed by international diplomats as settlements.
The U.S. agreed to bite its tongue about this brush-off of President Barack Obama’s push for a total freeze on settlements. Israeli settlers, however, bit Netanyahu instead. They promise to block major road junctions inside Israel in the coming week and have already started to refuse entry to building inspectors come to determine if construction work is being carried out in their settlements.
Within Israeli politics, the ire isn’t just a matter of geography. At least five ministers from Netanyahu’s Likud Party are opposed to the construction freeze. Three met with Netanyahu to complain that under his plan important sewerage projects wouldn’t be completed. Translation: We’ll have a lot of waste lying about and we’ll just have to throw it at you.
Some Israeli political observers believe that’s just what Netanyahu wants now. They contend that he realizes he can’t make a deal that’d please the settlers, the Palestinians and the U.S. — and certainly not one that’d get by his right-wing Likud activists.
In this reading, Netanyahu wants to push the most right-wing members of his party out, forging an alliance with political blocs tied more directly to the settlement movement. That would leave Netanyahu free to take the somewhat less right-wing elements of his party and to form either a new party or an alliance with the Labor Party. Historically the most powerful of Israel’s parties, Labor has gradually diminished and now is merely the fourth-biggest party.
Oh, and guess what: It’s divided. There are five, sometimes six, of the 13 Labor parliamentary members who oppose the government of which their party is a part.
That might change if a new Likud and Labor joined forces — particularly as some of those “Labor rebels” would be aware that in the next election their party’s showing is likely to be even worse, leaving them out of a job.
When Netanyahu isn’t figuring out how not to be held hostage to Israel’s extremist right, he’s focused on cutting a deal to free the Israeli held hostage by people even more extreme: Hamas. Though a deal to swap hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for the Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza was said to be imminent a week ago, it remains only imminent.
Hamas officials say they’ve narrowed the gap with Israel over the prisoner swap. Of the 450 prisoners Hamas wants released, Israel is believed to have agreed so far to all but 15. Those include some prisoners that most Israelis will find it hard to stomach releasing — several were behind lethal suicide bombings, and another was the woman whose email flirtation with an Israeli youth was designed to lure him to a sexy assignation at which he was murdered. There are a number of cabinet ministers who continue to oppose the deal.
Which is one point of agreement between those rightist Israeli ministers and a man they deride — Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian president maintains that a prisoner release like this would be a gift to Hamas, making the Islamist group more popular before elections scheduled for January.
Of course, Abbas doesn’t really intend to hold those elections. Still he has to show that he’s as tough on Israel as Hamas. That’s why he’s refusing to go back to peace talks, despite urging from his paymasters in Washington.
In the absence of four corners in which to send all these recalcitrant kids to stand with their faces to the walls, four states might be the only way to keep them from fighting in the playground.
Palestinians are divided; Israelis too. Not a good basis for negotiation.
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — The traditional diplomatic formulation for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is the slogan “Two states for two peoples.”
Let’s revise that for the current political situation and posit a solution based on “Four states for two peoples.” Because it’s the only way just now of drawing lines on a map between the feuding parties.
Why not stick with two peoples? Well, the Palestinians are divided in almost every way possible — geographically, politically, financially and with hatred and violence — between Hamas-ruled Gaza and the parts of the West Bank under the sway of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority.
Israel is doing its best to emulate that self-destructive division. Late last month Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a 10-month freeze on construction in the country’s settlements in the West Bank. With his customary ability to try placating everyone only to end up displeasing them all, Netanyahu pledged that the freeze wouldn’t apply to synagogues and schools in the settlements. Nor would it hold for Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which are viewed by international diplomats as settlements.
The U.S. agreed to bite its tongue about this brush-off of President Barack Obama’s push for a total freeze on settlements. Israeli settlers, however, bit Netanyahu instead. They promise to block major road junctions inside Israel in the coming week and have already started to refuse entry to building inspectors come to determine if construction work is being carried out in their settlements.
Within Israeli politics, the ire isn’t just a matter of geography. At least five ministers from Netanyahu’s Likud Party are opposed to the construction freeze. Three met with Netanyahu to complain that under his plan important sewerage projects wouldn’t be completed. Translation: We’ll have a lot of waste lying about and we’ll just have to throw it at you.
Some Israeli political observers believe that’s just what Netanyahu wants now. They contend that he realizes he can’t make a deal that’d please the settlers, the Palestinians and the U.S. — and certainly not one that’d get by his right-wing Likud activists.
In this reading, Netanyahu wants to push the most right-wing members of his party out, forging an alliance with political blocs tied more directly to the settlement movement. That would leave Netanyahu free to take the somewhat less right-wing elements of his party and to form either a new party or an alliance with the Labor Party. Historically the most powerful of Israel’s parties, Labor has gradually diminished and now is merely the fourth-biggest party.
Oh, and guess what: It’s divided. There are five, sometimes six, of the 13 Labor parliamentary members who oppose the government of which their party is a part.
That might change if a new Likud and Labor joined forces — particularly as some of those “Labor rebels” would be aware that in the next election their party’s showing is likely to be even worse, leaving them out of a job.
When Netanyahu isn’t figuring out how not to be held hostage to Israel’s extremist right, he’s focused on cutting a deal to free the Israeli held hostage by people even more extreme: Hamas. Though a deal to swap hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for the Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza was said to be imminent a week ago, it remains only imminent.
Hamas officials say they’ve narrowed the gap with Israel over the prisoner swap. Of the 450 prisoners Hamas wants released, Israel is believed to have agreed so far to all but 15. Those include some prisoners that most Israelis will find it hard to stomach releasing — several were behind lethal suicide bombings, and another was the woman whose email flirtation with an Israeli youth was designed to lure him to a sexy assignation at which he was murdered. There are a number of cabinet ministers who continue to oppose the deal.
Which is one point of agreement between those rightist Israeli ministers and a man they deride — Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian president maintains that a prisoner release like this would be a gift to Hamas, making the Islamist group more popular before elections scheduled for January.
Of course, Abbas doesn’t really intend to hold those elections. Still he has to show that he’s as tough on Israel as Hamas. That’s why he’s refusing to go back to peace talks, despite urging from his paymasters in Washington.
In the absence of four corners in which to send all these recalcitrant kids to stand with their faces to the walls, four states might be the only way to keep them from fighting in the playground.
