Month: February 2009

More Emily Jacir

The New York Times runs a review of Emily Jacir’s show at the Guggenheim (I’ve already discussed their interview with her earlier). 

Dry, cerebral, fragmentary and stylistically derivative, the exhibition is less affecting and less informative than any number of newspaper and magazine articles about the Palestinian situation you might have read over the last 40 years.

I went to the show’s opening and thought it was very affecting. 

Anyway, despite the NYT reviewer’s claims that his problem is with the formal execution of the show–not with its political content–he spends a good deal of time questioning that content.

If one were to judge from Ms. Jacir’s work, Mr. Zuaiter was innocent of any connection to the Munich murders, eliminated rather because he was an eloquent spokesman for the Palestinian cause.

In the wall text that introduces the exhibition, however, there is a curious qualification. It says that Mr. Zuaiter was never “conclusively” linked to the Olympics murders. This introduces the shadow of a doubt. Is there a chance that he was somehow involved? Ms. Jacir’s exhibition can thus be viewed as a brief for the defense, but this is problematic. How can we know if the artist is manipulating her material, leaving out anything that might be suspicious or incriminating? 

Here’s the wiki page on Zuaiter. It seems clear to me that while the Mossad suspected him of being linked to the Munich attacks, no evidence has been made public to prove this–and shouldn’t the burden of proof be on them?

A question

For those of you who regularly read this blog: you’ve noticed that I write regular posts a lot less, and instead have these daily lists of links. I would try to start blogging normally more often again, and will try providing I have time, but in the meantime do you prefer:

1. Daily compilations of links as currently exists; OR
2. Each link to be posted individually with the opportunity to leave comments on that specific one.

I’d appreciate any thoughts on this issue ahead of an upcoming reorganization of the site. Thanks!

Links February 17th to February 18th

Links from my del.icio.us account for February 17th through February 18th:

Links for February 16th

Links from my del.icio.us account for February 16th:

Links February 14th to February 15th

Links from my del.icio.us account for February 14th through February 15th:

Links February 11th to February 14th

Links from my del.icio.us account for February 11th through February 14th:

  • Pre-empting the Satellite TV Revolution – Committee to Protect Journalists – On the Arab Interior Ministrers' agreement to control satellite TV stations.

  • ei: Israel lurches into fascism – Ali Abunimah writes: "Lieberman, who previously served as deputy prime minister, has a long history of racist and violent incitement. Prior to Israel's recent attack, for example, he demanded Israel subject Palestinians to the brutal and indiscriminate violence Russia used in Chechyna. He also called for Arab Knesset members who met with officials from Hamas to be executed.
    But it's too easy to make him the bogeyman. Israel's narrow political spectrum now consists at one end of the former "peace camp" that never halted the violent expropriation of Palestinian land for Jewish settlements and boasts with pride of the war crimes in Gaza, and at the other, a surging far-right whose "solutions" vary from apartheid to outright ethnic cleansing."

  • Hamas murder campaign in Gaza exposed | World news | guardian.co.uk – I'd like to read more detail about the kind of people Hamas went after in its murder-and-kneecapping campaign, especially an analysis of how credible the claims that the victims were IDF collaborators or whether they were just political opponents.

  • U.S., EU indicate they prefer Kadima-Likud unity government in Israel – Haaretz – Israel News – Because a Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu coalition would just make their jobs explaining why the US still supports Israel more difficult?

  • UK Muslim tells court he fabricated Islamist past | International | Reuters – The result of the British media paying for interviews with ex-jihadists: "Hassan Butt, 28, told Manchester Crown Court he had fed stories to the media and that his portrayal of himself as a terrorist planner who later renounced violence in order to fight Islamist extremism was a fabrication."

  • Mauritania says it has closed its embassy in Israel – Haaretz – Israel News – About time.

  • The American Conservative » Whither Zinni – Zinni overlooked for Iraqi ambassador job: "Zinni was rejected after Clinton came under pressure from some major supporters in New York State who told her that the appointment was unacceptable to Israel because Zinni is perceived as “hostile” to the Jewish state. Zinni has, indeed, been critical of Israel on a number of occasions. Another source in the intelligence community has told me that Zinni was perceived as bad for Israel’s security because Israel regards Iraq as a “front line state” in its confrontation with Iran. If Israel were to attack Iran it would need overflight approval over Iraq, something that Zinni would be unlikely to approve, possibly even submitting his resignation to stop such a development."

Links for February 10th

Links from my del.icio.us account for February 10th:

Al Aswany to Obama: You should speak out on Gaza

Alaa Al Aswany (Egypt’s best-selling novelist and international phenomenon) recently penned an Op-Ed in the New York Times. Not bad, actually.

 

We saw Mr. Obama as a symbol of this justice. We welcomed him with almost total enthusiasm until he underwent his first real test: Gaza. Even before he officially took office, we expected him to take a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza. We still hope that he will condemn, if only with simple words, this massacre that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, many of them civilians. (I don’t know what you call it in other languages, but in Egypt we call this a massacre.) We expected him to address the reports that the Israeli military illegally used white phosphorus against the people of Gaza. We also wanted Mr. Obama, who studied law and political science at the greatest American universities, to recognize what we see as a simple, essential truth: the right of people in an occupied territory to resist military occupation.

But Mr. Obama has been silent. So his brilliantly written Inaugural Speech did not leave a big impression on Egyptians. We had already begun to tune out. We were beginning to recognize how far the distance is between the great American values that Mr. Obama embodies, and what can actually be accomplished in a country where support for Israel seems to transcend human rights and international law.

No political freedom in the Arab world? Blame diglossia.

Before we encountered technical difficulties over the weekend, I’d been planning to link to this article in the Al Ahram Weekly about Egyptian psychoanalyst Moustapha Safouan’s book “Why Are the Arabs Not Free? The Politics of Writing,” recently translated into English. Safouan argues that diglossia–the difference between the Classical Arabic used in literature and formal discourse and the Colloquial Arabic actually spoken by all Arabs–is a factor in the lack of democracy in the Middle East, since public discourse is linguistically off-limits to those who only speak the dialect. 

It’s an interesting theory, although of course other non-linguistic factors must be considered in an analysis of authoritarianism (also, Egypt’s modern rulers have often purposely spoken in very colloquial ways, starting with Nasser). It reminds me of my sense that Bourdieu’s “Language and Symbolic Power”–whose thesis, to simplify scandalously, is that societies assign value to a certain correct/educated/literary language whose command is then limited to an elite that uses it to intimidate and exclude the rest–is very relevant the Arab world.

Links February 8th to February 9th

Links from my del.icio.us account for February 8th through February 9th: