Middle East Research and Information Project: Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971
Among those who direct American foreign policy, there is near unanimity that the collapse of communism represents a kind of zero hour. The end of the Cold War so transformed the geopolitical landscape as to render the present era historically discontinuous from the epoch that preceded it. Policy makers contend that America’s mission abroad has had to change to keep pace with these new circumstances.
Since 1990, US military policy has been governed by one overarching premise that US and international security is primarily threatened by the “rogue states” of the Third World. These states — assumed to include Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria — are said to threaten US interests because of their large and relatively modern militaries, their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and their hostile stance toward the United States and its allies. To counter this threat, current American strategy requires the maintenance of sufficient military strength to conduct (and prevail in) two Desert Storm-like operations simultaneously.
The US justifies periodic saber rattling against Saddam Hussein by claiming that Iraq is the only country to have employed chemical weapons in battle. Forgotten amidst the propaganda is dissident Iraqi tribes’ first encounter with chemical weapons during an uprising against British rule in 1919. The Royal Air Force asked Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill for authorization to use chemical weapons “against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment.” Churchill approved the request, saying, “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using [it] against uncivilized tribes.”
Given that a large contingent of foreign aid workers and UN representatives has been on the scene in Sudan for a decade, why did no one foresee the current famine in southern Sudan, which is affecting more than a million people?
A Kenza a yelli / D iseflan neghli /
F Lzzayer uzekka / A Kenza a yelli /
Ur tru ara
(O Kenza my daughter / We have sacrificed our lives / For the Algeria of tomorrow / O Kenza my daughter / Do not cry)
—"Kenza," written by Lounès Matoub in 1993 for the daughter of assassinated Kabyle journalist and playwright, Tahar Djaout
Five years ago on the White House lawn, President Bill Clinton assumed he had achieved a monumental Middle East policy coup. Since then, the overall situation in the Middle East has worsened, largely due to the ignorance and arrogance that characterize US policy making in the region. In the face of growing crises in the Middle East, critical assessments of flawed US policies in the region are long overdue.
Arat, Zehra F. Deconstructing Images of “the Turkish Woman” (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998).
Bengio, Ofra. Saddam’s Words: Political Discourse in Iraq (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Carapico, Sheila. Civil Society in Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Modern Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Chubin, Shahram and Charles Tripp, eds. Iran-Saudi Arabia Relations and Regional Order, Adelphi Paper 307 of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
I am writing in connection with Eugene Rogan’s article, “No Debate: Middle East Studies in Europe,” which appeared in Middle East Report 205 (October-December 1997). Below, I comment on aspects of that article and contrast several others with the experience expressed in Lisa Hajjar and Steve Niva’s article. I highlight an omission from the issue as a whole.
The impact that Middle East-sourced funding and involvement of official representatives of regional governments in academic fora was overlooked in these two reports, yet it is one that could dramatically change the differing agendas within and the nature of the field of Middle East studies.
Irene Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
With the February 1998 news that the Clinton administration was preparing unilateral military action against Iraq, sectors of the US public seemed shocked by this unnecessarily violent turn in foreign policy. Gendzier’s scholarly sleuthing uncovers important clues for solving this puzzle and, in company with other literature, prompts us to think about constructive alternatives.
Yaron Ezrahi, Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997).
The May 1997 election of Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran was a watershed event in the history of the almost 20-year-old Islamic Revolution. While the current on-the-ground situation in Iran remains confusing, it is not for lack of information. During the last year, the press has blossomed with a variety of daily newspapers printing real news, including murders, scandals, police misconduct, public protest and opinion, public appeals to rulers and polemical debates between Iran’s different factions. With the exception of attacks on the concept of velayat-e faqih (regency of the jurisconsulate) and the role of the Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, many previously forbidden things have now been printed.
On the occasion of Israel’s fiftieth anniversary, a Bar Ilan University poll found that kibbutzniks were considered to be the most Zionist by respondents asked to pick among 11 different categories. Myths of the heroic pioneers live on, despite the fact that kibbutzniks have not done their own work in years. Tightened restrictions on Palestinian labor from the Occupied Territories in the wake of the intifada mean that kibbutz work today is likely to be done by Romanians, Thais or Filipinos. According to official estimates there are now 200,000 foreign workers in Israel, about half of them working illegally, but other estimates put the total at 300,000.
On April 23, 1997, the general secretary of Israel’s Sephardi orthodox Shas movement, Rabbi Aryeh Deri, was carried shoulder high above the roar of more than 20,000 adoring supporters gathered in the Givat Ram sports stadium in West Jerusalem. “We are all Deri,” was one chant; “Deri equals Dreyfus” was another.
Half a century ago Israel was a poor new state hopelessly indebted to the outside world. Fifteen years later, it could be described as a rapidly growing developing country undergoing successful industrialization. By the early 1980s, it was an extreme case of an economically overburdened state incapable of stemming stagnation and spiraling inflation. But as the century comes to a close, the guardians of the “Washington consensus” laud Israel as a model of economic liberalization and successful adaptation to globalization and technological change.
Not long ago right-wing Israel backer William Safire wrote in his column in the New York Times that the Palestinians had to recognize that their “100 million-plus [dollars] annual financial support from the European Union had ties to mutual movement” in the Oslo process. [1] On a certain level of abstraction he is correct. Significant international backing, whether financial or political, should imply commensurate adherence to international norms, whether in international human rights law, respect for the sovereignty of neighboring countries, fulfillment of United Nations resolutions or implementation of internationally backed treaties.
There is a bill pending in the Israeli Knesset that would allow women the option to use the country’s civil courts for personal status matters. Liberal Israeli feminists see this as promoting “women’s rights” by loosening the grip of religious authorities over women’s personal lives. But Israel is not a liberal state, so there is something fundamentally problematic in assuming common gender interests, since women in Israel have no common status or rights as citizens. In fact, as long as Israel is a Jewish state, the Muslim, Christian and Druze religious institutions will remain important sources of communal identity for Israel’s Arabs (women and men), since the civil state is not really “theirs.”
The profuse media coverage showered upon Israel on its fiftieth anniversary largely failed to consider more critical perspectives that might have cast a different light on the celebrations. While some commented on the familiar divisions between secular and religious Jews, left and right, or immigrants and “native” Israelis, their analyses remained superficial. There was little or no attempt, including in the pages of such progressive magazines as The Nation and Tikkun, to examine how the Zionist project and the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict is based upon and, at the same time, masks not only ethnic and racial power relations but also gendered divisions of labor and power. [1]
“A displaced person owns nothing but the spot where he is standing, which is always threatened.” — Murid Barghouti
Israeli power, US backing, Palestinian weakness, Arab complicity — these are the basic ingredients for a coercive settlement of the “refugee problem” based not on refugees’ rights but on their disappearance. The “new Middle East” must be tidied up; states, citizens and borders must correspond; disruptive anomalies must be removed. Because of their centrality to regional instability, eliminating the Palestinian refugees is essential to a pacified Middle East free to fulfill its designated role in the global economy.
Noam Chomsky, commenting on the just released book Remembering Deir Yassin, notes that “the Deir Yassin massacre is a bitter symbol of a long history of terror and repression, to which — to our shame — we have contributed in many substantial ways, and still do. We should not only remember, but also rethink and understand, and more important, act to bring some measure of justice to people who have suffered gravely.”
