Cairo Post

 

So the Democrats swept Congress, although the feeling and excitement of the moment was muted by being far away in Cairo.

I volunteered briefly for the DNC in Boston in 2004, working at post-convention parties and attending one night of the convention (by chance the night of Barack Obama’s keynote address). His speech aside, I was disillusioned by the big money, big party pomp of a political convention; my job as a "Finance Volunteer" was to direct people to the bar at the Science Museum party and stand around looking formal, accepting compliments from drunk delegates trying to get into the roped-off VIP area to see Wesley Clark.

There is some lingering disappointment in this Democratic sweep, since I know a shift in parties does not mean a shift in American policy in the Middle East. This is not directed at Iraq; our interests will leave us in Iraq for a few years no matter who is in power. Oil and stability are too precious.

This is directed at the elephant that is the Palestine-Israel conflict and the connected conflicts between Israel and neighboring Arab states. American politics is stuck in a dialogue about Israel’s right to defend itself, the monolith of "militants" and "extremists," and an apparent need to either look tough on security, appeal a vague idea of "the Jewish vote," or listen to AIPAC (probably all three). Today’s rejection of the UN Security Council condemnation of the Beit Hanoun killings is John Bolton’s work, to be sure, but it’s hard to think that a Democratic-appointed UN representative would act any differently.

The big faces and talking heads of the party have clear positions when it comes to Israel. Last summer, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, and Dick Durbin condemned Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki’s statement about Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, threatening to boycott his then-upcoming speech to Congress. In the House, Rahm Emmanuel and Nancy Pelosi echoed their calls.

What, after all, had the Iraqi PM said?

That the international community should "take a quick and firm stance to stop this aggression against Lebanon, to stop the killing of innocent people and to stop the destruction of infrastructure. What is happening is an operation of mass destruction and mass punishment and an operation using great force that Israel has — and Lebanon does not."

Not off the mark, if you look at the rubble, but deniable if you’re a Democrat or a Republican in Congress.

Late last summer, NY Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who once wanted to be mayor of New York City, tried to bar a Palestinian delegation at the UN. They "should start packing their little Palestinian terrorist bags," the Congressman said of the delegation. Weiner later wrote a letter to Columbia urging the firing of Joseph Massad, a professor of Arab politics for his "displays of anti-Semitism."

Here is one of the briefings on AIPAC’s website after the election:

AIPAC Builds Ties With New Lawmakers
AIPAC reached nearly every lawmaker elected in Tuesday’s mid-term congressional elections as part of its effort to educate political candidates on the value of the U.S.-Israel relationship. During the campaign that ended Tuesday, nearly every viable candidate met with AIPAC professional staff members and submitted a position paper summarizing his or her views on U.S. Middle East policy. A non-partisan organization, AIPAC has for decades worked with Republican and Democratic members of Congress to strengthen the ties between the United States and Israel.

Nancy Pelosi is a definite improvement over Dennis Hastert. But here’s Pelosi at an AIPAC delegation in May 2005, via Counterpunch:

"There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist."

Apparently Pelosi has never asked a Palestinian what they think of Israel’s brutality. Not that she hasn’t witnessed the occupation first hand; Pelosi is just not concerned in the least with the Palestinian resistance.

"This spring, I was in Israel as part of a congressional trip that also took us to Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq," said Pelosi. "One of the most powerful experiences was taking a helicopter toward Gaza, over the path of the security fence. We set down in a field that belonged to a local kibbutz. It was a cool but sunny day, and the field was starting to bloom with mustard. Mustard is a crop that grows in California, and it felt at that moment as if I were home. And then we were told that the reason we had to land in that field, as opposed to our actual destination, was because there had been an infiltration that morning, and they weren’t sure how secure the area was. And that point alone brought us back to the daily reality of Israel: even moments of peace and beauty are haunted by the specter of violence."

Yes. And perhaps if Pelosi had gone over that security fence and into Gaza, she would have seen that violence is not a specter in the Occupied Terrorties, like it is in the mustard fields of Israel that remind Pelosi of California.

 

Via Harper’s.

Photos by Amr Abdullah. Via Hossam el-Hamalawy.

 

The Egyptian government is cracking down on bloggers and writers who cover sectarian issues, journalist and website owner Hossam El-Hamalawy has said.

“To be frank, all the bloggers who have been arrested from their houses have been detained for [touching upon] religious matters. If other, [more politically oriented] bloggers are arrested, they are arrested at demonstrations," Hamalawy, whose blog is called 3arabawy (www.arabist.net/arabawy), told The Daily Star Egyp .

"[The government] lets people say what they want, but when they talk about sectarian issues, such as oppression of Coptic Christians or Islamic fundamentalist [rhetoric], they go nuts.”

El-Hamalawy mentioned numerous cases of bloggers who were arrested for commenting on sectarian issues, whether to highlight discrimination against Copts or, in one case, an Islamic fundamentalist who posted an anti-Coptic rant on his blog.

He added that in the case of political bloggers, they usually receive “phone threats … and intimidate you as in the case of Wael Abbas (a blogger who recently posted pictures of the alleged sexual attacks in downtown Cairo).”

On Monday, Abdel Karim Suliman Amer, also known as "Kareem Amer," a student blogger, was detained by state authorities and is being held in custody pending prosecution for his secular online writings in which he criticizes Islam, his lawyer told The Daily Star Egypt

The prosecutor’s office has remanded him for a further 15 days.

More, from the Daily Star. Here for Egypt blogs.

CAIRO: Over 250 people protested in front of the Press Syndicate on Thursday calling on the government to be held accountable for the allegedly widespread sexual harassment downtown during the Eid Al-Fitr holiday.

Surrounded by hundreds of soldiers and armored vehicles, the crowd was composed of women from all walks of life, including Egyptian and foreign students, veiled elderly women, bloggers and activists. Many men were also present, chanting and holding banners.

Organized by the Liberties Committee of the Press Syndicate, the Egyptian Committee for Women’s Rights, Kefaya and Nehdet El-Mahrousa, the crowd criticized Kasr El-Nil police station and also called for the resignation of both Interior Minister Habib Al-Adli and President Hosni Mubarak.

“This means we are not going to be pushed off the street,” said Aida Seif El-Dawla, a member of activist organization The Street is Ours and a professor of psychology at Ain Shams University.

“This is what we said after the harassment of May 25; it is what we are saying now and it is what we are saying tomorrow.”

“The street belongs to the citizens and we have the right to walk in it without fear. We should all live in safety and freedom.”

Banners and chants echoed this demand, with placards demanding greater legal and police protections against sexual harassment.

“The police protect Mubarak!” demonstrators chanted. “The police protect his heir! The police protect corruption! The police do not protect the people!”

The Eid incidents were first reported by bloggers who claimed that they saw hundreds of men chasing and groping women in the streets of downtown Cairo during the Eid.

According to witnesses, the mob attacked women regardless of their dress, ripping off their veils and clothes. Eyewitnesses said that even women who were accompanied by their husbands weren’t spared after their husbands were beaten and pushed aside.

During the Eid, Kasr El-Nil police station denied that any such attacks took place.

“It’s true, it happened,” said Mustafa, who works at a juice shop on Talaat Harb Street. “I hid some girls in my store myself.”

The incidents were reported in other local and international media in the weeks that followed.

Mohamed Gamal, a blogger who witnessed the incident in front of Metro Cinema argues that the Egyptian government should be held accountable for its failure to protect the people.

“It is the duty of our government to provide security to all Egyptian citizens,” he says. “The security forces are only protecting the regime instead of the Egyptian people.

“Today we are surrounded by security,” he said, gesturing toward the lines of riot police encircling the protestors. “The security forces are simply protecting the regime, and not the people.”

But Khaled Sallam, a student at AUC, said he could not hold the government directly responsible for the alleged incidents.

“I think there is a state of moral bankruptcy in Egypt, and I think it is caused by the restrictions on pre-marital sex.”

Holding a megaphone, women shared their experiences of sexual harassment with the crowd.

“At first I thought it was just us,” said Kelly Kerr, an American student studying in Cairo, “But then I realized it happens to everyone. We came here because we want to help our Egyptian friends.”

“People try to give different reasons for why this happens — delayed marriage, sexual repression. I don’t care. Whatever conditions men are under, women are under the same conditions. There is no excuse for their behavior,” said Nour El-Tahawy, a veiled middle-aged Egyptian.

Via the Daily Star Egypt.

2008 will be the 50th anniversary of iraq’s revolution, which ended the british hashemite monarchy. if we are to believe david brooks and how he frames iraq’s violent past, then maybe this will be a big moment. undoubtedly it will be commemorated, though how who knows. of course mr. brooks history of iraq, provided in an op-ed 11/00, was a polemic, a quick look at an essay based on british documents and the following summary:
 
"And his is a Gibbonesque tale of horror. There is the endless Shiite-Sunni fighting. There is a massacre of the Assyrians, which is celebrated rapturously in downtown Baghdad. Children are gunned down from airplanes. Tribal wars flare and families are destroyed. A Sunni writer insults the Shiites and the subsequent rioters murder students and policemen. A former prime minister is found on the street by a mob, killed, and his body is reduced to pulp as cars run him over in joyous retribution."

while dismissing a base, unspecified view of iraq as historically violent, the reasons for bringing up history are still there. americans were the first foreign invaders and occupiers of iraq since the british; perhaps george h w bush didn’t order tanks all the way to baghdad because he didn’t want that weight on the us. perhaps george bush sr had a head for history. i could be wrong, but even if that thought crossed his mind only for a moment, that’s more than we can expect from his son. the baseless rhetoric and public talk that america rode into iraq and that continues to propel the war expects little from americans.

americans need not know a history of the modern middle east, shaped by imperialism, zionism, and increasingly since the end of the second world war, american foreign policy. the settlement program begun by israel after the june war in 1967, and supported continuously by every American president since, is only part of the picture on the ground. in the 1980s, america supported Israel’s invasion of lebanon; through the 1990s and into 2000, a perhaps hopeful peace process failed in israel/palestine, not simply because arafat rejected barak’s "generous offer" but because of the flaws of that ungenerous offer. newspapers might have described it generous, but a look at the definitive maps — which no papers provided at the time — revealed the american support for israel confining palestinians to three cantons in the west bank, dissected by israeli roads and settlement blocs. palestine would have been the gaza strip and a broken west bank, behind a expanding, meandering wall, the ‘67 borders constantly being redrawn by settlements.

immediate military aid for israel throughout the second intifida, when the ratio of palestinian and israeli death was near 10 to 1, and the bush administration’s support of increased israeli aggression and settlement expansion under sharon did not disappear as factors on the ground when america began its war on terror. they did not go away when america invaded iraq. when we ask why so much of the middle east is not ‘moderate’ to our liking, why iraqis — thank you mr. brooks — have a historical penchant for being violent, greedy, and against the common good — well, that is when we need to ask other questions. why the american view is so essentialist, casting ‘moderate’ against ‘rogue’ and ‘terror’ against ’security’ in such a way that precludes any real consideration of the place and the increasingly american presence in the region, whether directly in iraq or indirectly along the separation wall, in the grid of new west bank settlements, or in the empty space of a bulldozed palestinian home.

if in 2008 violence in iraq has subsided and the american-catered government can pacify the country, then perhaps the celebration of 1958 will take on a glow of actual progress. if in 2008 we are where we are today, which is fairly close, just worse, than where we were in 2005 and 2004, then 1958 will likely be remembered another way.

if the dates and details actually impress themselves on us, perhaps the totality of american history in the middle east, from the 1950s to the present, will tell us to finally scale back our involvement, to change course, to not push all the way to baghdad, and to try and actually broker even resolution in israel and palestine. maybe when we see the iraqi revolution of 1958 in 2008, we will takes the significance of the moment, which was the collapse of the british system there, and apply it preemptively on the course of american foreign policy.

 

Today I read a David Brooks editorial on the "Views" page of the International Herald Tribune. What’s haunting Iraq, Brooks argues, is not only the fact of foreign invasion and occupation but "the same old Iraqi demons: greed, blood lust and a mind-boggling unwillingness to compromise for the common good, even in the face of self-immolation."

How does Brooks, famous for his Bobos in Paradise, make such a sweep? This is meant to be a history op-ed, demonstrating the columnist’s sudden interest in one history book to prove a current policy point. Brooks gives us a paragraph of Iraqi history, his personal citation of an Iraqi history essay written by Elie Kedourise, "a Baghdad born-Jew:"

"And his is a Gibbonesqu tale of horror. There is endless Shiite-Sunni fighting. There is a massacre of the Assyrians ,which is celebrated rapturously in downtown Baghdad. Children are gunned down from airplanes. Tribal wars flare and families are destroyed. A Sunni writer insults the Shiites and the subsequent rioters murder students and policemen. A former prime minister is found on the street by a mob, killed, and his body is reduced to pulp as cars run him over in joyous retribution."

Brooks is a bad historian. I shouldn’t be surprised - he is a major columnist, here to espouse some intriguing line that falls between right and left, hopping dynamically back and forth as the news cycle turns, making good on his name as a contrarian conservative thinker. He wants us to appreciate the historical research behind what amounts to a "stay the course" editorial.

 

But history is not all trajectory for columnists to cite at their convenience either to justify American foreign policy or to suggest a more "muscular U.S. military presence" in Iraq. His is a poor, loaded summation of Iraq’s British history. If David Brooks cared about its recent history, he would study up on the effects of the destruction of Fallujah in 2004 on general Iraqi regard for America. As much one can rightly call Iraq’s general history violent and a fine example of what went wrong after World War I, "Iraq" and "Iraqis" are not intrinsically greedy and blood-lusting. Historians don’t try and make points like that.

If David Brooks were actually interested in illuminating the history of Iraq for the op-ed page, he would have identified "a former prime minister… found on the street by a mob" as Nuri Al-Said, who revolved in and out of influence throughout Iraq’s first 30 or so years until the revolution in 1958. No, the mob that killed that former prime minister was not simply out one day killing people, like all days in Iraq it seems as Brooks wants us to believe; they were taking to the streets because it was the revolution to remove the king and his parliament, a fairly singular moment in Iraq’s history. Al-Said, who was prime minister fourteen times between the 1930 and 1950s, represents the volatility of Iraqi government throughout that time, without a doubt, when a progression of coups and counter-coups, either by the military or the parliamentary figures ostensibily outside the military, consistently changed the cast in the government. His death does relate the extent of violence in 1958, and most of all the level of anti-British imperial sentiment, but I wouldn’t connect that with "children…gunned down from airplanes" in a general argument on Iraqis penchant for violence, blood lust, and greed. After all, one might wonder whose airplanes gunned down children. Well, the only air force in Iraq in the period Brooks cites was the RAF, and routine air raids were the preferred British tactic to keep the country under control.

The state of Iraq was formed in 1921, though Brooks feels no need to make this small point, likely because it’s a rebuttal to his own supposedly convincing citation of a British official in 1923 that the Shias "have no motive for refraining from sacrificing the interests of Iraq to those which they conceive to be their own." In 1923 the concept of "Iraq" was two years old. How can Brooks reach back into history, quote a British official, and then conclude, wholesale, that here is our evidence that Shias have always been against "the interests of Iraq"? Iraq was barely a state in 1923, drawn-up at the Cairo Conference in 1921 and imposed by the British government on three former Ottoman provinces — Basra, Baghdad, Mosul — with distinct ethnic differences, histories, and rivalries. The only way one can reach a conclusion that Shias in 1923 can be described as "sacrificing the interests of Iraq" is in this quote by a British official, which was all the research that Brooks wanted to do, since that was the only point he wanted to make all along. He’ll assume we don’t question the absurdity, and the historical sloppiness, in arguing that yes, Shias were sacrificing the interests of Iraq, and therefore all Iraqis, by rebelling against the imposed state two years after its creation.

Since June, I’ve been running War Post, a research blog that seeks to present "Iraq: 90 years apart" mainly through the letters and narratives of the soldiers fighting there. The letters of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force of 1914-1918 are compared with letters, emails, and blogs from our current war. The work is meant to be an archive of soldiers’ experience, framed by my own commentary as a college student majoring in history and blogging about war during wartime. I don’t try and suggest trans-historical truths about Iraq, focusing more on the brutal contrasts of Indian soldiers starving to death in a siege in Kut in 1916 and American soldiers burning a dead cow on the side of the street since it might be an IED. Conclusions like "Shias have always sacrificed the interests of Iraq" or that "Iraq, historically, is unwilling to to compromise for the common good" are the points of syndicated columnists who are given a pass on distorting history since, hopefully, their readers wouldn’t know otherwise.

But it’s not a surprise — David Brooks is a bad historian, but I know I don’t expect David Brooks to be a historian. He’s paid to write in line with his image as a nuanced, measured New York conservative, never mind the fact that this op-ed in the end offers the same advice for Iraq you’d find in the Wall Street Journal or on Fox News — a more "muscular" US presence.

What tips the whole thing over, though (and this is a shame because it’s the IHT), is the editorial by David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, who argues that Israel cannot "stand on the sidelines" in Gaza and therefore should try and remove Hamas. Nevermind the pathological bent of this op-ed — Israel is anywhere but on the sidelines in Gaza, killing 22 42 Palestinians there this week, including two women protesting outside a mosque, and they have killed hundreds since the early summer. Nevermind the selective view of Hamas, quoting only from a stump rally while ignoring any of the signs of Hamas’ actual moderation since assuming power (yes, Hamas has shown signs of moderation, even if all the American media will print about Palestine is that Haniya said three times in a row that they would never recognize Israel).

Again, the main problem is history, and the sad state of American papers and popular discourse that has no problem propping up political positions with bad history.

"As a result of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s bold decision, the Palestinian residents of Gaza were given self-rule for the first time in their history over the entire Strip. Not even under Egyptian control, from 1948 to 1967, until Israel entered Gaza in a war of self-defense, did Gazans enjoy a modicum of autonomy."

The June War was a resounding success for Israel, but calling it a defensive war in an echo of every "defensive" war in the Occupied Territories or in Lebanon obviously says more about Mr. Harris’ motives and uses for history than anything accurate about Palestine. Menachem Begin said of the Six Day War (in an address in 1982, the same year as Israel’s invasion Lebanon, under Begin): "The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."

Anger at Middle East commentary in the New York Times as I’m in Cairo is no surprise; one doesn’t have to go all the way to Egypt to see how the Times selects its Mid East authorities, and how much of a balance Arthur Sulzberger’s paper cares to strike between Israel and the Palestinians. It’s the feigned history in op-eds like Brooks’, and a lesser extent Harris’, that are most troubling. While terms like "defensive war" can be argued in a historical framework for far too long, the more general concern is this: that the Times op-ed editors likely assume that their readers, whether in New York or around the world reading the Herald Tribune, don’t know history either and will be quick to appreciate Mr. Brooks work today on the history of Iraq.

David came to Egypt for a week, and left last Saturday. I’ve been offline a bit with his visit during ‘Id and midterms the week before to close out Ramadan. We went to the Sinai for a few days, where we lost and then found a passport near Taba after we arrived, and rode in a minibus full of hotel workers for 6 hrs from the Sinai back to Cairo when we left two days later. The details of the ride  boiled down to Khalid, a cab driver who lived at Castle Beach in Ras Shaytan, where we were staying, befriending us, helping us track down David’s passport via cell phone calls to what seems like an expansive network of Sinai cab drivers, and then agreeing to drive us to Cairo. Only, at an exhorbinant price, as he told us on the road. After getting the price down in increments, only to find out that he didn’t really want to drive all the way, and that we didn’t what to drive all the way with him for what he was asking, he arranged for us to overpay still to ride instead in another minibus. It was like any of the minibuses that buzz around Cairo with four full rows of seats and little wheels. Taking digital photos with a little Canon camera in a bus of men who work for a week in Taba for 300 Egytpian pounds, and pay 30 pounds for the ride, didn’t seem appropriate. That David and I had been duped into paying far more than that was not so much a surprise — prices for tourists are always higher, most of all in the Sinai, where on the stretch of beach camps between Taba and Nuweiba, on the border with Israel, cab drivers expect  American dollars. I saw one couple pay with a crisp 100 dollar bill; we only had pounds. 

We went to Giza on David’s last day; my first daytime trip to the Pyramids. It’s a park, really - walk around, and pay to go inside - we climbed a narrow shaft in the Great Pyramid up to the clammy burial chamber - soon you realize that all these old burial holes, or whatever, scattered around the Pyramids and in the sand are full of garbage. The Sound and Light Show stage, and the tourist cafes, face the Pyramids, but across the street there are the stables where you can rent camels and horses, and slums. The contrast is overwhelming but there flocks of people and tourist buses - a road cuts been the two big Pyramids - none of which seems to react. Guides holding laminateed, numbered group signs lead packs of tourists under the Sphinx, trashy looking British and American women huff cigarettes in the sun, their backs to Pyramids, men on camels and horses try to shuffle you on for a ride, best rate, and across the street in the unpaved allies behind KFC poverty Egyptian children wearing old dot-com tee-shirts. Old women sell packs of tissues, and a steady stream of tourists - Egyptians, Americans, Europeans - ride through on horses, on their way to the open desert and the big view of the all the Pyramids.