Europe
Yemeni Freedom and Mobility Dreams
Yemenis forced to leave their war-torn home not only flee to neighboring countries, they also head south across the Indian Ocean to the European Union’s furthest outpost: the French-administered island of Mayotte. Bogumila Hall tells the stories of migrants who make grueling journeys south and north only to be trapped by EU policies that severely limit their mobility. Despite the hardships, Yemenis continue to create vital social bonds and dream of freedom.
Europe Dispatch
In the post-September 11, 2001 landscape, the United States made clear its intent to go it alone—even if that meant operating outside the doctrines of international law and international institutions. While President Barack Obama, to some degree at least, endeavored to re-situate the United States within the international community, Trump has embraced Bush-era doctrines. This approach, combined with a US-Russia alliance and failure to understand the refugee crisis as a global crisis that requires a global plan, has had significant repercussions for Europe, which is keenly aware that the problem extends far beyond Trump.
Éloge de la Naïveté
The attacks in Brussels have inspired grief, fear and questions about transformative politics.
North Africans Go Long-Distance Shopping
George Trumbull’s recent blog entry about Middle Eastern outposts in other parts of the world rightly mentioned Marseille and the Italian islet of Lampedusa, with its now closed migrant detention camp, as two “Middle Easternized” spaces of the European Mediterranean. I want to briefly revisit the two sites and suggest other possible ways of reading them.
Lamped USA
Amanda Ufheil-Somers has ably described how refugee flows from the uprisings in North Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa have pushed the strained infrastructure and the residents’ hospitality to the breaking point. The islanders aren’t the only ones at wit’s end: In protest, refugees burned the holding facilities in September 2011 and again just the other day.
Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983).
Lenni Brenner has written a singular book about “the interaction between Zionism and Fascism and Nazism.” It is one of the many ironies of history that Zionism, a movement that claims to be dedicated to assuring the survival of the Jewish people, should have developed in symbiosis with the most murderous Jew-haters of our (or perhaps any) era. Ironies, however, have their logic, and this is what Brenner explores.
Looking Across the Mediterranean
"Femmes de la Mediterranée," Peuples Mediterraneens/Mediterranean Peoples 22-23 (January-June 1983).
European Leaders Unhappy with Sadat-Begin Treaty
In the view of leading European politicians, statesmen and journalists, the “peace” treaty signed between Egypt and Israel in March is more of a liability than a promising asset in their governments’ attempts to forge better relations with the Arab world. Many see it as a prelude to further conflict in the Middle East, and diplomats for the nine member states of the European Economic Community (EEC) have been quietly urging the United States either to extract more concessions from Begin or to make a new initiative — unilaterally if necessary — to widen the Treaty to include other Arab states and possibly the Palestine Liberation Organization as well.
