Author Archives: Arab America

Born in 1981, Yazan Khalili lives and works in Palestine. Khalili received a degree in architecture from Birzeit University and graduated with a Masters degree from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, London.

He has participated in numerous shows internationally, including Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti’s project Ramallah Syndrome in the Palestine c/o Venice Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). In 2009, alongside Lara Khaldi, Khalili co-curated We Were Never Heroes as part of the Jerusalem Show, and Independent Film in Palestine, at the Arab Shorts Festival presented by the Goethe Institute, in Cairo.

“The Colour Correction Series explores the idea of losing lifestyle, mobility, freedom of choice and even the ability to dream of a brighter tomorrow. According to Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, these losses lead to a permanent state of emergency, where the possibility of thinking and living in the present becomes impossible.

“This specific image shows Al-Amari Refugee Camp, located inside/beside/outside Ramallah City. The form of the camp does not represent its economic status, but rather its loss and trauma as a political manifestation that persists due to the continuous emergence of ephemeral homes, contradictory ways of living and unbearably unstable relationships between Palestinians and their surrounding landscape. Altering the refugee camp’s colours is a symbolic act. It aims to fill the loss – in the way a child fills the blanks in colouring books – and thus reignite the possibility of hope. Here Yazan Khalili attempts to appropriate an urban landscape that reminds us of the tragedy – of their existence and our disappearance – in order to subvert memory into a desired future.”

“When the woman in Bounty chocolate advert (the Arabic version) eats a bit of the chocolate, the time goes backwards, and she goes from the city to a Caribbean look island with all coconut trees around. While her lover is jumping in the blue sea water, the slogan comes out: The taste will take you there. The producers of this advert aim to create a direct relation between the taste and the place through the image; Bounty becomes a taste of an image, of blue seas and clear skies; the taste of paradise as in the English version. We ”the consumers” know that it won’t take us there, to the island, but we consume it so that it takes us there, to the image. It creates an experience of an image through tasting it.

“Heidegger noted that photographic images appear to abolish distance in their presence yet they do not bring nearness; “despite all conquest of distances the nearness of things remains absent”, they do not imply a shift in proximity.

The picture of the Dome of the Rock -the one that is found hanging on every wall and the background of every poster- is for the post second-Intifada generation -who grew up without the possibility of visiting the city- is the image of Jerusalem, the whole city has been reduced to that picture, it contains in its two dimensionality the erasure of the city from our space of three dimensional experiences, the image becomes a documentation of the distance, or the disappeared distance.”

First produced for Jerusalem Show, curated by Lara Khaldi & José A. Sanchez. This book is a film made in a format of a book, it doesn’t exist as a film, the book is its original and only format.

The film/book follows a narrative of a failed love story, involving a woman who had recently abandoned the narrator and left him with the landscape photographs lacking his presence and the presence of the notorious Israeli built Wall in the West Bank, an absence which echoes the atmosphere conjured by these images.

This series emerged out of questions relating to the representation of the Wall. Depictions of this Wall have been used and consumed within the palestinian and global shared visual economy to such an extent that it lost its power as an image.

Source: www.aquila-style.com

Nationally recognized, Award Winning Images and Perceptions Diversity Conference hosts a speaker series panel on April 23, 2015 in Metro-Detroit at Byblos Banquets in Dearborn. Mi..  Islamophobia, ISIS, Ferguson, stereotypes in the Hispanic, African American, disabilities community will be part of a thought provoking and compelling conversation.  Engaging the Arab American, Hispanic American, African American, … Continued

Bonhams has announced that it will hold the world’s first auction of Iraqi modernism on April 21 at its New Bond Street saleroom in London. Titled “A Century of Iraqi Modernism,’’ the sale will showcase the major Iraqi artists and artistic movements of the 20th century, making it the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

According to Dr. Nada Shabout, Professor of Art History and the Director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Studies Initiative at the University of Texas, the collection testifies to the creativity and innovation of modern Iraqi artists. “The works present examples of historical trajectories that were dominant in setting the rhythms of modern Iraqi art throughout the 20th century, said Dr. Shabout.”

 

Highlights of the sale include “Lamea” (1949) by Jewad Selim (1919-1961), a portrait of the celebrated Iraqi poet and academic Lamea Abbas Amara (estimate: £60,000-100,000); “Cubist Cockerel” (1955) by Shakir Hassan Al-Said (1925-2004), a student of Jewad Selim (estimate: £25,000 – 35,000); and “Still Life” (1941) by Mohammad ‘Hajji’ Selim (1883-1941), the father of Jewad Selim (estimate: £30,000-40,000)

Nima Sagharchi, Head of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art at Bonhams, said that Iraq has been one of the most creatively fertile areas in the region. “It is important for the international market to recognise the achievements that Iraqi art has made, despite the difficult circumstances the country has faced. It is hoped that our auction, in bringing together some of the most important works from this period, will lead to the emergence of a new perspective on the contemporary cultural history in Iraq,” said Sagharchi.

Source: www.blouinartinfo.com

While Arab astronauts have never actually set foot on the Moon, they have made their mark, with some of the craters named back in 1935.

“We have long reached the stars and beyond,” Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud said in an previous interview with The National.

I first came across the first Arab, Muslim and royal to travel into space as a sticker. Our science teacher in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, had distributed stickers about space and spaceships, and several of them were of Prince Sultan.

On June 17, 1985, Prince Sultan, a Saudi air force fighter pilot, blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39 on board the Discovery for a seven-day mission, helping to deploy a satellite for the Arab Satellite Communications Organization (often abbreviated as Arabsat).

The Prince became a hero and an icon across the region.

The mission lasted seven days, one hour, 38 minutes and 52 seconds. He travelled 4.67 million kilometres, and he had gone where no Arab had gone before.

“You realise how small you are, how we are just a speck in the universe,” Prince Sultan told me when I finally met him in person in 2008. I told him how we were given stickers with his image on it, and how I stuck his head shot on my pencil case.

He laughed. “I found myself on the back of notebooks, Thermoses, lunch boxes and pencils. Everywhere. I am not surprised I ended up a sticker.”

When I asked if he was nervous or scared when he flew into space, he said: “If anyone tells you they were not terrified, then they are lying. I prayed the whole time. The launch and landing are the most intense times.”

Prince Sultan, who is a son of the current Saudi ruler King Salman, is also the first person to observe Islamic prayers and read the Quran in zero gravity.

Less than a year later, however, saw one of the darkest days in space-exploration history. On January 28, 1986, the world watched in horror as the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after take-off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, killing all seven of its crew.

“There was this amazing rush and energy, there were big plans for space in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Arab world, where more Saudis and Arabs were going to go into space, but everything was put on hold,” Prince Sultan said. “This marked the moment the romance went out of mankind’s relationship with space,” he said.

The Prince is also credited with changing the perceptions on the universe of Sheikh Abdul Aziz Abdullah bin Baz, the Saudi grand mufti who died in 1999. The grand mufti had controversial views, including thinking that the Earth was flat. But after talking with Prince Sultan, he changed his views. Sheikh Bin Baz, who went blind by the age of 40, couldn’t watch on TV what we all saw broadcast from the shuttle. He couldn’t fall in the love with the dream of one day going up to space.

Source: www.thenational.ae

Last week, Brooklyn-based graphic designer, curator, and artist Laura Arena was denied entry into Israel in an experience she is still trying to understand.

A multidisciplinary artist, Arena is particularly interested in storytelling and projects that engage conversation and social issues, so she was naturally drawn to an advertised opportunity to volunteer in the West Bank to help a physically challenged artist who requires round-the-clock care.

Arena’s attempt to travel to the West Bank to help Echlas Al Azzeh, a disabled artist who lives in the Aza refugee camp near Bethlehem, West Bank, was thwarted by Israeli authorities at the Yitzhak Rabin Border checkpoint between Aqaba, Jordan, and Eilat, Israel.

I spoke to Arena about her problems crossing into Israel, something that is a common experience for many international artists, writers, curators, journalists, and other cultural workers traveling to the Palestinian Territories, many of whom feel like they are being unfairly detained or denied entry for simply wanting to visit Palestinians or the West Bank.

Her story was particularly poignant to me, since my own border experience entering and leaving Israel last October was difficult. A Canadian citizen of Armenian descent who was born in Syria, I’ve traveled throughout the region, including Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, and all this must’ve initiated my five-hour detention at Ben Gurion airport. During that long wait, my bags were searched, I was questioned by two different Israeli border police, asked to give the authorities all my email addresses, my itinerary, any contacts in Israel, the names of my family members (including my paternal grandfather, who died before I was born), their phone numbers, any contact information, my cell number, and a great deal of other personal information, before being allowed to continue into the country. The experience was emotionally exhausting, and the most difficult I’ve had at any border crossing in my life. During my exit, I endured an equally unnerving experience, as I was forced to go through a number of checkpoints, my taxi was searched, my bags were repeated scanned and opened, my smartphone was temporarily confiscated (the data probably copied), I was patted down (including my socks), and questioned a number of times. My experience is not at all unique, and I met numerous journalists, curators, artists, and nonprofit workers who shared their harrowing stories with me.

This is Arena’s story as she told it to Hyperallergic.

Laura Arena’s Story

“I was going to Palestine for three reasons. The first was that I was a volunteer caretaker for a disabled woman … [who] is in need of round-the-clock care and has spent her life in a wheelchair. I met Echlas [Al Azzeh] when I was in Palestine during an artist residency [in 2010] and found her to be an inspiration,” Arena told Hyperallergic. “She is my age and also is an artist who creates a calendar every year featuring what life is like at the camp, which she sells for income. Her mother died, and she is now completely dependent on volunteer caretakers for her needs. In return she provides Arabic lessons, room and board. Second, I wanted to document the stories of the refugees in the camp through words, images, drawings, photos, sound, and video … Third, I also had plans to meet with curators, artists, and art organizations to organize an artist journal called Vector, which would feature Palestinian artists.

“I passed through Jordan without any problems and was warmly greeted in Israel at first. I showed my passport and had my bags checked … [and then] when I went to the passport control section, I was detained and interrogated for approximately six hours total.

“I gave them my passport at the window and told them I was on holiday and I would be traveling in Israel for a few weeks and then return back to Jordan … I was asked where I was specifically going. I made it clear that I did not have a planned itinerary, and I was going to plan it as I go. I told them I wanted to visit Haifa, Nazareth, the Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. I told them I had been to most of these places before and really hoped to return to them.

“The woman looked through my passport and saw I was in Israel for five weeks in 2010. She asked me where I visited and I told her again the above places (other than Nazareth) and mentioned I was in Bethlehem. She asked how did I get to Bethlehem, and I said from Ramallah.

“This led to questioning why I was in Bethlehem, and I told her I was a Christian, that the church had significance. She quizzed me about the church, then she kept on asking me the same thing about Jerusalem, [including] why do I want to go there. I told her the same thing. She quizzed me again, I talked about the Stations of the Cross.

“I was asked about my flight from Amman, and I offered to give her the contact of my friend in Amman who I was staying with, but they were not interested. I explained I was going to Czech Republic and showed them my long-term visa that looks like a passport. This document I could tell confused them, and this is when they begin to question my real identity, [and if] I was not really American.

“At this point I became agitated because she kept on asking me where I was really going, and I kept on repeating the above places and said, ‘Listen. I don’t have an itinerary to show you; I don’t know what else I can tell you.’

“Then the woman asked me if I had plans to visit anyone or was in contact with someone in Israel. I told her I had no plans to see the people I knew because one couple was traveling and the other no longer lived in Israel. Then she asked me if I had contacts in Ramallah and Bethlehem, and I told her I knew of artists, curators, but did not know them personally.

“At this point I was told to sit down, and they took both my visa and passport. Over the course of six hours I was taken to various rooms and interrogated by three young women. One of them went through my backpack meticulously … This same woman also took my iPhone and went through all my photos, picking out [specific] ones and asking questions. Then she went through contacts in my address book. She picked out certain names and wrote them down. ‘This name is an Arab, how do you know this person?’ [she asked]. After the third or fourth name I said, ‘Listen, I am an artist/curator for an art space. I know a lot of artists from around the world.’ Then she looked me directly in the eye and said, ‘Artists are political and they choose sides. You know the current situation here in Israel.’ I muttered, ‘My home is New York City. Every type of person lives in NYC.’ This continued for some time, writing down names, and then I was sent away.

“A separate woman who had my passport called me intp an office and occasionally there would be another woman with her. To be honest I can’t remember how often I spoke to these woman and how often I was taken into these different rooms.

“At this time the woman holding my passport discovered a stamp made by Khaled Jarrar, who is a Palestinian artist who made this project, ‘Welcome to Palestine,’ where he made a passport stamp [and stamped people’s passports]. The woman pointed it out and asked, ‘What is this? Did you get this in Palestine?’ I told her, ‘No, I got it from an artist — it was part of a show at the KW Institute in Berlin for the [Berlin] Biennale. Then she asked if I was in an organization for Palestinians. I told her no, that I was at this art event and the artist stamped people’s passports. I told her to look it up online and she could read about the show.

“Surprisingly, this was not a focus, having this stamp. She then continued to ask me about one of the contacts on my phone, the woman who is the curator at Al Hoasch gallery in East Jerusalem. I told her I did not know her [and] that someone had given me her contact info. This went on for sometime. ‘Why is she your Facebook friend and [you] have her number? What is your relationship to her?’ It was really frustrating because I didn’t know her. At some point, probably three hours into it, their tone changed. I was threatened that I would never enter Israel again if I don’t tell the truth. Often they would say to me, ‘Do you need time to step outside and then tell me the truth?’

“It became focused on why do I communicate with Arabs, what do I plan to do in Palestine? Where am I really traveling? Why do I have Arab names on my phone? They questioned if I ever volunteered before and told me over and over again it is illegal to volunteer in Israel.

“At the end I was told I lied about my phone number, I had no working phone, and that I had no proof of a flight, which was not true — I showed them earlier, and when I offered to show her again, she didn’t look at it. Then she asked about this woman with Al Hoasch gallery, and I told her I didn’t know her. I told her to call her and she would not know who I am. I was accused of lying. At this point I was pale, exhausted, dehydrated, confused, and I didn’t know where any of my things were and told her, ‘I can’t tell you anything about this woman because I don’t know her.’

“Then I was called into the office one more time, where I was forced to sign a document which states that I need a visa to enter Israel, and they marked my passport with a large red stamp saying ‘Entry Denied.’ I was told that I lied about my phone number and that I lied about the woman at Al Hoasch.

“They returned all my belongings. The woman holding my Czech money gave it back to me [and] $500 was missing. I was escorted by a man holding my passport, who took me to the entrance to border patrol and told me to have a good day.”

Now What?

Arena had never been denied entry into a country before, and she is concerned she will never be allowed into Israel again. When she relayed the news to Echlas, she was told that the previous potential volunteer, who was also a US citizen, was denied entry and put on a plane back to the United States.

She isn’t sure what to think of her ordeal, but she believes the fact that she had been to the Palestinian Territories before — which she plainly told Israeli border authorities upon entering and exiting during her trip in 2010 — may have been a big factor in the denial of entry.

“The reason they gave me [for denial of entry] on the white paper is ‘Prevention of Illegal Immigration’ considerations,” she explained. “The reason they said in person was that I lied about my phone number and I lied about the Arab woman (Al Hoasch) on my phone.”

She was forced to sign a document that says she will need a visa in order to enter again. “I am not sure how difficult it is to get a visa,” she says. “I have friends in NYC contacting lawyers and organizations on my behalf in Israel, seeing if there is anything to do.”

She is currently staying in Egypt with the hopes that she could potentially still enter Israel if things change, even though she knows the chances are slim.

Source: hyperallergic.com

Sometimes the music student ends up playing alongside the teacher.

That will be the case when Zack Kear joins his Grammy-nominated teacher Rahim AlHaj in a trio concert on Friday, April 17, at St. Timothy’s Lutheran Church.

Kear will play the ney, an Arabic reed flute in the ensemble that also features AlHaj on oud, a Middle Eastern lute, and Issa Maluf on percussion.

Kear had taken AlHaj’s Arab music theory class when he was an undergraduate student at the University of New Mexico.

“He was so shy. I reached out to him,” AlHaj said. “I asked him if he played music, if he read music. Yes, and yes. He said he plays keyboard and wind instruments.”

Over the last years, Kear has played with AlHaj only a few times but has more frequently arranged compositions for him for various instrumental configurations.

“He’s a very talented man. He plays the ney so beautifully,” AlHaj said.

The ney, Kear said, has a thin wall, “giving it that husky, breathy sound. It’s a side-blown flute so it has a different playing technique. A standard ney has seven holes.”

He is self-taught on the instrument.

Kear, who has a master’s degree in music composition from UNM, teaches piano and voice and does a lot of piano accompaniment work for church, school and community choirs in the Albuquerque area.

AlHaj said the Friday concert will have a good deal of traditional Middle Eastern music plus his own compositions arranged for oud, ney and percussion.

Maluf’s percussion instruments include the doumbek, a goblet-shaped drum, the riq, a type of tambourine, and the def, a frame drum.

Source: www.abqjournal.com

t is difficult to find a view in Lifta that isn’t marred by the words ‘death to Arabs’ graffitied in Hebrew on its hollow buildings. Someone even took the trouble to write it in drying cement at the entrance to the site, ensuring that it will always be one of the first things visitors see. The leftovers of a Palestinian village that was depopulated over the course of a few months at the end of 1947 and the beginning of 1948, Lifta’s empty, crumbling houses are spattered across a valley just outside Jerusalem, each ruin a sign of violence that has come and gone.

It is the most well-preserved of hundreds of remnants of the Nakba — the dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of over 400 villages during the 1948 war — that tattoo the Israeli landscape, exit wounds from a history we have barricaded out of our lives. Yet these buildings linger at the sides of our roads, as does their meaning at the edge of our consciousness, sinkholes that threaten to consume our self-perception if we stray too close. Small wonder that the racist slogans came out; better to stem the leak at its source.

The problem, at least from the perspective of large parts of the Israeli mainstream, is that these leaks are indicative of a wellspring that will continue to bubble up as long as it is not addressed head-on. There is an underlying, pervasive and unipolar attitude in Israeli society about why we are here, how we got here, and what we are doing (and have done) here. It is an attitude that dictates all the unacknowledged elements of abuse, and which enables the more explicit expressions of racism that dominate the public sphere. And it is an attitude that is inextricably rooted in 1948, and the denial of what those events still mean.

The 1967 occupation — and the motivation behind it — would not have been possible without 1948. The mentality of those who support and enable the occupation lives in an ideology that was birthed at the same time as the State of Israel. As long as we deny, distort and repress the Nakba, Israelis will never truly accept and absorb the end of the occupation. We will not have faced up to the reality of the roads we drive on, the parks and forests we visit, the dwellings we inhabit. Without that understanding, Israel will never be ready to make the necessary sacrifices for addressing the consequences of that history and its living ideology.

Source: 972mag.com

Heartscapes”, “sadscapes”, “hopescapes” – certainly much more than landscapes. When looking at the latest work by Syrian artist Thaier Helal, you can sense in the intricate layers of paint, textures and colours a myriad of experiences and emotions that speak about the country.
“

For me, it’s not just landscapes – it is something behind; I’m talking about the lives of the people there through a mix of abstract and contemporary art. It’s not just images – it is a complicated mix of things,” said Helal.

He explained that his work is a reflection on his homeland and the tragedy that is being experienced in Syria at this time.
Just one story he related gives an impression of the kind of personal memories that are moulded into his art. He described his meetings with a remarkable Jesuit priest, Father Paolo Dall’Oglio. The Rev Paolo Dall’Oglio lived in Syria for 30 years, helping to restore Deir Mar Musa, a 6th-century monastery 80 kilometres north of Damascus, and forming a religious community dedicated to Christian-Muslim dialogue and harmony.

“The people who live there are Muslims, but they gave him their support to build the monastery, and he became like one of the family. He knew everyone and everyone knew him and liked him,” recalled Helal.
Dall’Oglio criticised Bashar al-Assad for his ruthless crackdown on those who opposed his rule, and as a consequence, in 2012, he was ordered to leave Syria. He did so, but fatally he returned the following year to al-Raqqah to try and negotiate the release of some hostages. He was kidnapped and is believed to have been killed by IS terrorists.
“He has just disappeared,” said Helal.

It’s just one tragedy among thousands upon thousands of individual stories of suffering and loss caused by hatred and intolerance.
“Remember how we lived there together without problems? I cannot believe what is happening now in my country when just a few years ago there wasn’t a problem and nobody cared whether a person was Shia, Sunni, Alawite or Christian,” he commented.
One of the landmarks that inspires his work is the Asi-Orontes – the only river in the region flowing in a northerly direction, draining from western Asia to the Levant coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. The river rises in the mountains of Lebanon continuing into the Syrian Arab Republic for about 325 km, before arriving in Turkey for its last reach of 88km to the Mediterranean Sea.

“This river has meaning for me and is inspirational to me; the fact that it moves in a different direction to the other rivers   – just like the Syrian people who are following their own course because they need to change something,” said Helal.

Inspiration is also taken from the mountains. Many of Helal’s Mountain series paintings are rendered from memory, particularly compositions depicting the imposing rock formations near the historic town of Maaloula in central Syria, a few kilometres from his birthplace. Numerous Syrian artists have painted the town since the modern period, especially the tiered homes that are built into its mountainside, yet few have captured its significance as a place of cultural pluralism given the survival of Western Aramaic among its residents, who belong to various sects.

In Helal’s recent works, the mountainous region symbolises Syria’s rich history, above all the survival of its culture through the many civilizations that have flourished across its diverse landscapes.
Born in Syria in 1967, Helal graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus, before relocating to Sharjah in the 1990s, where he currently lives and works. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Grand Gold Award at the Contemporary Painting Biennial, Tehran (2005); and the Award for Painting at the Sharjah International Biennial (1997). Helal has also contributed to the development of regional art as a long time faculty member of the University of Sharjah, Fine Arts College.

“The UAE is a good place for me – I can travel easily from Dubai to symposiums and exhibitions in any country and I have the chance to meet many artists based in the UAE, as well as those who come to Dubai for exhibit their work,” he said.
He has worked closely with Ayyam Gallery founders for the past seven years.

Asked about his opinion of the young artists now trying to make their way in Syria, he said: “They are very, very creative; the new generation are very open- minded and talented. They have different ideas to express themselves, particularly as they have access to the internet and social and new media.

“I also learn from my students in Sharjah. They learn so quickly, and when I see the results of their work I often get a big surprise – they are doing amazing things.”

Asked about what he feels at launches when he is in a room full of people, many strangers, who are reacting to his work, he said: “It’s like a new language – suddenly you find someone who understands you and they get your message. Painting is my language, and when I feel that someone can ‘read’ it and understand it that is the essence of the relationship between me and a person in the gallery. Some people love it and some don’t like it or ‘get it’ but they say they can appreciate it.”

Source: www.gulf-times.com

Farid Esack, an Islamic studies professor at the University of Johannesburg, has faced strong objections from the Zionist lobby in France over plans to give a series of lectures about the parallels between Israeli and South African apartheid. The pressure meant that he was banned from speaking at events in Paris and Toulouse. 

A veteran anti-racism campaigner, Esack has also championed the rights of women and of people lving with AIDS. He was appointed a gender equality commissioner by the late Nelson Mandela. He is currently chairperson of BDS South Africa, a group supporting the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. 

I spoke to Esack about his speaking tour in France. 

Adri Nieuwhof: You went on a speaking tour in France and were banned from speaking on some occasions. Can you tell us what happened?

Farid Esack: There was a huge amount of pressure on all seven universities where I was supposed to speak. Only Paris-Sorbonne University banned me from speaking. The university argued that they were doing so on technical grounds because the forms to fill in the application to give me a venue were wrongly filled in. The students tried to negotiate with the university for one week to correct this error, but the university refused this.

I think that the Sorbonne was giving a pretext by the incorrect filling of the form. The students argued that the students union have been filling in forms like this for years. The university has never drawn their attention to any kind of mistakes in the past. The only plausible explanation we could come to was that pressure from the Union of Jewish Students in France was behind the reason for my banning.

I was also banned from speaking at a public meeting in Toulouse at a local municipal hall by the mayor of Toulouse on the basis of the same claims that were made in the letters to universities. This was basically that I am anti-Semitic, and that I, as the chairperson of BDS South Africa, have been supporting and/or fermenting violent protest actions in South Africa.

AN: What happened after the ban?

FE: It appeared that the Sorbonne reached a tacit agreement with the police that I would be allowed to speak outside the main gate of the university. There were about twenty security people standing in front of me to block us from going in. I had activists on the left and activists on the right. But it was very interesting that the vice-principal of the university came to welcome me and regretted that the university had to ban my public lecture. He stayed for the entire duration of my lecture and thanked me afterwards.

In Toulouse, we also resisted the ban. I spoke outside the venue.

AN: Pro-Israel and Zionist groups regularly attack the BDS movement and its activists. This time you were targeted. How do you assess such attacks?

FE: They made a tactical huge blunder to attack me because BDS on the whole is deeply committed against all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. But in this particular case they were dealing with a character that had spoken very consistently against anti-Semitism. For the last 25 years, I have been addressing the question of anti-Semitism in general, but more particularly inside the Muslim community. That is why so many of my colleagues could rally to my support. 

The pro-Israel lobby very conveniently locates the BDS narrative inside the history of European anti-Semitism, where the Nazis had first come out with the call to boycott the Jews. But they do so in a very calculated, strategic and in a manipulative manner.

Those same Zionists, for example, both in Europe, and more particularly in Israel, would happily call for sanctions against Iran. They won’t say a word about the damage that it causes to the Iranian people. It is only in the case of the Jews that they invoke the narrative of Nazi anti-Semitism.

The same Europeans who accuse us and invoke the Nazi anti-Semitic discourse, those same Europeans would be happy to impose sanctions against Russia because of the alleged Russian maneuvers inside Ukraine. The same countries would be unanimous on imposing sanction on, say, North Korea or Zimbabwe. The same United States that invokes the argument of anti-Semitism imposed sanctions against Cuba for fifty years.

So there is nothing principled about their argument. It is simply a devious, technical device on the part of the Zionist lobby and to appeal to the guilt of the Europeans and other Westerners for a crime that was committed by the Europeans against other Europeans. This has got nothing to do with the Palestinians.

Our discourse of boycott, they very well know, is located in a left tradition, in a progressive tradition. Ranging from, for example — at a liberal level — choosing to buy products with a fair trade label, when you choose to buy products where the maximum amount of the profits will go to the farmers. By choosing fair trade, you are boycotting another product that maximizes profit to the middlemen and to the capitalist exploiters and businessmen at the end of the food chain.

Or when a vegetarian decides to not eat meat, to boycott meat, the vegetarian has got nothing against the farmer. The vegetarian is making an ethical choice that I do not want to participate in the cruelty inflicted upon animals. The vegetarian is a boycott, divestment and sanctions activist in relation to the cruelty inflicted upon animals.

So the BDS movement is located in a progressive, humanist, left discourse. It has got nothing to do with the Nazi discourse. The pro-Israel lobby damn well knows. It is simply a question of expediency and playing the guilt card with Europe and the US.

AN: How do you assess the role of the BDS movement against Israel in comparison with BDS activism against the apartheid regime in South Africa?

FE: The South African struggle only acquired sexiness in the last five years before the end of apartheid. And Mandela acquired sexiness only after he was released and became the reconciler. But BDS was alive 25 years before that. This year we are celebrating ten years of BDS against Israel. It is far more developed, has notched up far more victories than what the anti-apartheid movement had notched up when it was ten years old.

Another difference is that South Africa never had as its project the importation of all white races throughout the world into South Africa. BDS is now dealing with a movement that has as its fundamental project the importation of other settlers, other colonialists from other parts of the world. In South Africa we dealt with a settled colonialism. In the case of Israel, you are dealing with a colonialism that is ongoing and being entrenched every single day. So the nature of the enemy, the extent of its viciousness and its determination accelerates every single day.

As the BDS movement, we are facing challenges. Unlike South Africa, where we had a clearly focused liberation movement, liberation movement forces in Palestine are very truncated. You have the equivalent of the South Africa homeland governments still pretending to be liberation movements, while they have already sold out. Then you have very large resistance movements, all of Palestine’s civil society and in theory all the political parties that have called for BDS.

After the Arab Spring, the solidarity with the Palestinians from the front line states completely collapsed. In South Africa, we could count on support — in different degrees — from all the surrounding countries except Malawi. Palestine is surrounded by collaborationist, sell-out client regimes of the West. Not only can we expect no support from them, on the contrary, in some cases, for example Egypt and Saudi Arabia, they have effectively joined the camps of the enemy and are collaborating actively with the Israeli state to destroy the resistance movement.

This makes the urgency and the need for a BDS movement much more significant than it was in the case of apartheid South Africa.

Because of the BDS successes, the Israeli lobby have really upped their game. With every victory that we have achieved, we are creating much more work for ourselves. The challenge is how to transform the broad level of support that we have in most countries throughout the world into a larger base of activists to take on the bigger task and the greater urgencies that we are facing.

Source: electronicintifada.net

WASHINGTON, DC: Aasif Mandvi’s new web series, “Halal in the Family,” is a parody of the classic American sitcom “All in the Family” and follows the lives of and an American Muslim family as they deal with different challenges faced by the Muslim community in the United States today, such as online bullying, hate networks, media bias, and “the use of anti-Muslim prejudice for political gain.With the series, Mandvi and producer Lillian LaSalle hope to tackle Islamaphobia using comedy as their not-so-blunt instrument.Said the series’ Indiegogo page:Halal in the Family will expose a broad audience to some of the realities of being Muslim in America. By using satire we will encourage people to reconsider their assumptions about Muslims, while providing a balm to those experiencing anti-Muslim bias. I also hope those Uncles and Aunties out there will crack a smile!In fact, “Halal in the Family” is partly funded by nonprofits.LaSalle told WNYC News she was originally approached by the group Muslim advocates, who wanted to fund the project in order to “do some social good.”“It opened up this idea of wow, there could be a bridge between creating funny content for a social issue that was important and that it could be supported by all of these organizations,” she said.Injections of capital also came from organizations such as the Ford Foundation, Unbound Philanthropy, the Pillars Fund and the National Network for Arab American Communities.Mandvi explained that there was some friction between the nonprofits and his creative team, such as the former wanting to see scripts before filming began, but he eventually managed to get them on board so that he could fulfill his vision unfettered.Americans’ opinions of Muslims have plummeted over the past decade. According to the Arab American Institute, only 27 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Muslims, while 42 percent believed police are justified in using racial profiling to target Arab Americans and American Muslims. Per FBI data, over the last few years, anti-Muslim crimes have made up about 13 or 14 percent of all hate crimes perpetrated in the U.S.

Source: www.americanbazaaronline.com

Southern Vermont College (SVC) will award the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters to author Moustafa M. Bayoumi and former SVC President Karen Gross at its 88th Commencement on Saturday, May 9. Bayoumi, the author of “How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America” will address the graduates … Continued

“When I was a boy,” the Iraqi diplomat said, “My parents took me to the Louvre and I saw Hammurabi’s Code. I wondered why it wasn’t in Baghdad. Why did we Iraqis have to go to Paris to see it? Why couldn’t the rest of the world come to us? It made me angry.” He paused. “But after ISIS attacked Nimrud, I was glad that these things were not in Iraq.”
Luckily, some monumental Assyrian sculpture from the extraordinary archeological trove at Nimrud was removed in the 19th century and placed in the British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hatra wasn’t so lucky. Probably founded about 2,400 years ago under the Seleucids, it became the site of one of the first Arab kingdoms known to history, starting in 156 A.D. Although ruled by Muslims for centuries, it held examples of sculpture from an amazing array of artistic traditions, pre-Islamic Arabic as well as Greek, Caananite and Mesopotamian. Hatra was considered by archeologists to be “the best preserved and most informative example of a Parthian city.” No more. What the Prophet Muhammad’s contemporaries saw fit to preserve, ISIS has destroyed.

Last Friday, ISIS released a video showing its fighters chipping off figurative sculpture from Hatra’s ancient walls. Citing Abraham and Muhammad’s destruction of idols, an ISIS spokesman promised more of the same.

“Some of the infidel organizations say the destruction of these alleged artifacts is a war crime,” he added. “We will destroy your artifacts and idols anywhere, and Islamic State will rule your lands.” Of course, Abraham and Muhammad destroyed idols currently being worshipped by their people, not those worshipped thousands of years ago. The video’s musical accompaniment is also bizarre in that most Islamic purists reject any music other than Quranic chanting. But intellectual consistency has never been ISIS’s strong point.

Now that Islamist madmen are on the loose across great swathes of the Middle East and North Africa, we have reason to value the cultural imperialism of years past. It was rationalized, then, as saving treasures from barbarians. Whatever the truth of the matter in those days, there is no doubt now that the barbarians are back with a vengeance.

Since 2011, Islamist fanatics have demolished Sufi tombs and shrines in Egypt and Libya and destroyed shrines and ancient manuscripts in Mali. Last month’s attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis murdered 19 people–but the next one might be aimed at the artwork within. Tunisia wants to defend its heritage, but is it strong enough? The police response to the attack has raised questions.

Are such treasures of the human race better preserved for all of us–including Iraqis–in stable countries rather than in situ? If we believe that cultural patrimony belongs to all humankind, should the world try to re-locate threatened masterpieces out of harm’s way? Should countries that have a history of neglecting or destroying their past have it taken away from them, like parents deemed unfit by the courts? What happens when a country asks for help–as Iraq’s antiquities officials have done, asking for U.S. airstrikes to prevent further destruction–and it is refused?

These questions have bubbled up from time to time–but mainly when artifacts were threatened with destruction by the ignorant poor. In the 18th century, British travelers to Italy justified their importation of vast quantities of classical statues by the obvious neglect they faced in Italy. Meanwhile, in Athens, marble statuary of the Parthenon was being burned to extract lime. In 1801 Lord Elgin, then the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, began to remove what became known as the “Elgin Marbles,” with the permission of the Ottoman authorities then occupying Greece, intending them for the British Museum, where they have been on exhibit since 1817. The removal was controversial even at the time, and Greece has never stopped trying to get the reliefs returned. While the Greeks have alleged that the Ottomans had no right to give away the heritage of a country they occupied by force, the British have taken the view that the marbles are artifacts of ancient Athens, not contemporary Greek civilization.

There is an unlikely precedent for ISIS’s vandalism: Mao’s Cultural Revolution, where “old culture” was one of the Four Olds to be eradicated. Some classical Chinese architecture was destroyed, and great amounts of artifacts and manuscripts. But the aim of Mao’s dreadful actions was not shocking the Western world; it was “reforming” China. The same is true of the Khmer Rouge, which destroyed over 2,000 temples in Cambodia, though luckily not those of Angkor Wat..

ISIS’s attacks on art and archeology appear to be aimed more at shocking the West than at a local audience. Perhaps they are also aimed at potential recruits. Some of the lure of joining a mindless death cult is presumably that it tramples on as many taboos as possible, including that against destroying artistic masterworks. Although many conservative Muslims disapprove of representational art, they don’t usually sledgehammer it. This activity isn’t sanctioned by mainstream Sunni Islam; the grand imam of al Azhar Institute immediately issued a fatwa condemning ISIS’s vandalism in Mosul.

It’s been alleged that the destruction is mainly for propaganda effect and that ISIS intends to sell most of the works to finance itself. Follow up reports indicate that most, though not all of the Mosul Museum Assyrian sculptures shown being sledge-hammered by ISIS on a video released in late February were replicas; the originals are safe in Baghdad.

If it could be accomplished practically, would it be a good idea to remove vulnerable artworks from areas threatened by ISIS?

It’s not an easy call. Ancient artifacts haven’t always been better off in the West. We have wars, too. Babylon’s Ishtar Gate (reconstructed from the original bricks) had a close call under Allied bombing in 1945. Then, the Soviets expropriated the Pergamon’s collection to “protect” it, and it wasn’t returned until 1958, when it went to East Germany. Some items are still in Russian museums, though Germany has requested their return.

Syria has experienced devastating losses of heritage in the recent civil war. Yet forty 3,000-year old statues from Tell Halaf in Syria, housed in a private museum in Berlin, were pulverized by Allied bombing in 1943. The fragments were hidden in the Pergamon Museum until the 1990s. Only in 2011 were they reconstructed and exhibited.

Although it’s hard to imagine the logistics of a terror raid destroying, say, the remaining Assyrian artifacts in the West, it’s not impossible that ISIS might mount attacks on Western museums.

Secondly, this sort of cultural imperialism has been banned since UNESCO’s 1970 “Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property”. The Convention has been adopted by 128 countries. Article 11 states, “The export and transfer of ownership of cultural property under compulsion arising directly or indirectly from the occupation of a country by a foreign power shall be regarded as illicit.”

Following adoption of the convention, many works acquired by occupying armies have been returned to their countries of origin. For instance, the Venus of Leptis Magna– stolen from Libya by the Italians when they invaded with no justification whatsoever in 1911, and given to that noted humanitarian Hermann Goering– was returned to Italy in 1999 and thence to Libya. So far as we know, it’s safe today–but for how long?

Unfortunately, Iraq never ratified the 1970 Convention or the 1972 Convention on World Heritage. Iraq has also never acceded to the Rome Statute, allowing it to petition the ICC to take action against ISIS; Libya hasn’t either.

Can the international community intervene to save art works at risk? According to the convention, only if the affected country asks for help. Article 11 also means that a foreign army can’t seize antiquities unilaterally, even if its motivation is to save them. This doesn’t bode well if a country is taken over by a group of fanatics, as ISIS threatens to do in Syria and as the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia.

The legal framework for world cultural heritage hasn’t caught up to the latest outbreak of evil, but sooner or later it will; we live in a globalized, multi-lateral, interventionist world now. There also huge practical issues when the cultural goods to be protected are whole ruined cities, like Nimrud in Iraq, or the large archeological sites in Libya which many experts worry could be next.

There are measures that the international community could take for the moment. In cases where there is still a national government in the area, the government could offer financial rewards to local people who protect heritage and resist destroyers. The government could also announce that it will hold individuals who destroy heritage–and their heirs–legally liable both criminally and civilly. An Englishman who travels to Iraq to join ISIS and is videotaped destroying Iraqi heritage could be sued, even if it is years later, for the $10 million stone lion he destroyed. If he’s killed, his estate would shoulder the liability.

More compellingly, perhaps, the UNESCO conventions could be amended so as to fine states for failing to prevent destruction. I’d suggest fines in the billions, to make the seriousness of the issue clear (and encourage local protectors and whistleblowers). Iraqi soldiers are free to run away from ISIS–but the Iraqi government will then be liable to UNESCO for the damage ISIS caused to world patrimony. Yemeni Houthis are free to overrun their elected government–but if they destroy the mud brick architecture of Sanaa, not only they but the impotent government will pay. (In fact, the Houthis are unlikely to destroy heritage because they don’t have an iconoclast tradition.)

It may sound unfair to hit a weak state when it’s down, but it’s the flipside of all the good intentions of the UNESCO conventions. If a state deserves custody of its treasures, it also has a responsibility for them. In some cases, a weak state’s main assets are its heritage– Yemen isn’t a bad example. It doesn’t produce much of value, but it does have Sanaa.

Implementing punishments like this–and seizing the assets of states that don’t protect their patrimony–would show the people who have stood by as ISIS destroyed their treasures that even if they don’t value them, the world does. It might even convince them to value them, in the same way that they learned to value Western designer brands because the market put a high price on them. And slowly, perhaps, a real appreciation of their heritage would come, and a culture that would once again make treasures which the world holds in awe.

Source: www.aina.org