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This article first appeared in Haaretz on 10 March 2013.

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Tags: apathy, arab league, barack obama, binyamin netanyahu, conflict, future, gaza, hamas, israel, israeli-palestinian conflict, israelis, john kerry, oslo process, palestine, palestinians, peace process, united states, usa, washington, white house

Palestinian liberation through the Israeli ballot box

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Despite their marginalisation or disenfranchisement in Israeli politics, Palestinians can use Israel’s democratic tools to their advantage.

Thursday 31 January 2013

The expected massive swing further to the right in Israel did not materialise, with, according to some estimates, an even 60-60 split of seats in the Knesset between the “left” and “right”. Although incumbent prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is not quite out, he is definitely down – and there exists the theoretical, though unlikely, scenario that he might not retain his position as prime minister if the famously fractured centre and left join forces.

Meanwhile, the new kingmaker, though probably not the king, is not, as many had forecasted, Naftali Bennett or the ultra-nationalist and religious right, or at least not them alone, but the compulsively centrist Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party, which came in second, with an estimated 19 seats.

This gain for the centre, if not exactly the left, has enabled many secular and progressive Israelis to breathe a sigh of relief, though not necessarily to breathe more easily. “The Knesset as a whole looks like it will be significantly more moderate as a whole than after the last elections,” said on Israeli friend, Rifka, expressing a certain cautious optimism.

In fact, many on the Israeli left feel little elation, and some are gripped by a sense of deflation. “The public of floating voters went for the middle-class chauvinist TV presenter with good hair and mood music and the charming high-tech guy who calls them ‘achi’ (‘brother’),” believes Udi, a young British-Israeli. “This is a victory for banal, naïve, escapist anti-politics.”

And Yair Lapid, nicknamed Tofu Man by one commentator, is perhaps the greatest example of this escapist anti-politics. He is an actor, a journalist and a TV presenter. But when it comes to politics – he is a political novice and lightweight. He seems to have gained so many votes partly through his superficial charm and the fact that he is a household name, and partly by maintaining an almost pathological silence on the political issues dividing left and right during his campaign.

Another area of major escapism in Israeli politics relates to the Palestinian question – and the occupation hardly featured as an election issue, not even as a minor preoccupation, except perhaps with the religious and revisionist rights’ unapologetic determination to further extend and entrench the Israeli settlement enterprise and even to annex large swathes of the West Bank.

“It was a surprise to everyone that the centre and centre-left have revitalised themselves, but when it comes to Palestinians, no one is jumping with joy,” admitted veteran PLO politician Hanan Ashrawi in an article, expressing a widespread sentiment among Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Faced as they are with an apparently unending occupation and its attendant machinations – walls, checkpoints, martial law, ever-growing settlements, the absence of sovereignty and self-determination – and the indignity this produces, it is hardly surprising that the Palestinians of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza have little to no faith in the Israeli electoral process.

However, the lack of enthusiasm stretches across the Green Line to Palestinians living in Israel who, at least theoretically, enjoy equal citizenship and have the right to vote. They are frustrated by how the Israeli political establishment at best ignores them and at worst passes legislation that actively discriminates against them, despite the political leverage their votes should afford them.

In addition, even though they are generally better off materially than Palestinians living under occupation and enjoy greater freedom than Arabs living under autocratic regimes, they are nonetheless marginalised and stigmatised socially and economically. As one resident of Umm al-Fahm explained: “This is not my country. I don’t receive my rights in this state.”

This translated into widespread apathy – and a certain measure of active boycotting – towards the recent vote, with pre-election surveys suggesting that only half of Arab voters would cast a ballot, compared with some 75% in 1999. At the time of press, it was unclear what the actual voter turnout among Palestinian-Israelis was, though indications were that it would be far lower than the nearly 70% national average, despite the efforts of Arab parties, politicians, community activists and even the Arab League to bring out the vote.

One young Palestinian who had not intended to vote changed her mind at the last minute when she got wind of how low voter turnout in her community was. “I got nervous and upset. I grabbed everyone I know who didn’t vote and drove them [to the polling station],” she admitted.

In total, Arab and mixed Arab-Jewish parties together managed to secure an estimated 12 seats in the Knesset: United Arab List (5), Hadash (4) and Balad (3). Some lament the low voter turnout as a missed opportunity.

“Let’s assume they had voted in large numbers and managed to get 20 seat, which is feasible, then the Arab parties would have had the power to impose their opinion,” believes Hamodie Abonadda, a television producer and Hadash voter. Abonadda speculates that armed with that many seats, the Arab parties would have become impossible to ignore (as Lapid has insisted he will do) by the left and could have made it, for the first time in Israeli history, into a ruling Israeli coalition.

It is my conviction that the political leverage of Palestinians in the Israeli system could be multiplied significantly if the 300,000 or so Palestinian Jerusalemites joined the fray and decided to claim their right to vote.

However, this would involve them applying for Israeli citizenship, which many oppose because it would, they fear, give legitimacy to Israel’s decision to annex Jerusalem. In fact, in the clash between ideology and pragmatism, even participating in municipal elections, which Jerusalem residents are allowed to do without becoming citizens, is still regarded as an unacceptable form of “normalisation”, as I have heard from numerous activists.

“For too long… there has been this taboo on voting for the municipal elections because if one does vote then he/she is seen as a ‘traitor’,” explains Apo Sahagian, an Armenian-Palestinian musician and writer from the old city of Jerusalem. “But this mentality has only worked to the Palestinians’ disadvantage… For example, the approval given to settlement construction starts on the municipal level. If there is enough opposition at that initial level, then that settlement enterprise can be stopped or interrupted.”

Though Sahagian believes that only “raw pragmatism” will save the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom and equality, he opposes the idea of Palestinians in Jerusalem applying for Israeli citizenship. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that “in a different reality” the combined vote of Jerusalemite Palestinians and Palestinian-Israelis would “shake the political landscape of Israel”.

And “raw pragmatism” is guiding a growing number of Palestinians in East Jerusalem to learn Hebrew, as attested to by the plethora of posters advertising language courses, and even to apply for Israeli citizenship, which they see, in light of the vulnerable status of the permanent residence cards that can be taken away fairly easily, as a way of guaranteeing their presence in their beloved city, and hence preserving what remains of its Palestinian character. “What is the difference between having an Israeli ID and an Israeli passport? They’re both Israeli documents, but one gives you rights, the other does not,” one young Jerusalemite who had recently acquired citizenship confessed to me.

There are Jerusalemites I know who argue that the potential combined political clout of Palestinians in Israel and in Jerusalem could also help ease the suffering of their kin in the West Bank and Gaza.

Despite the fact that this emerging trend has sparked controversy, even within individual families, many Palestinians who are moving down this path are doing so out of principle, not just pragmatism, seeing it as an important step along the road to a single, democratic, bi-national, Arab-Jewish state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river.

A friend and neighbour from Jerusalem, with whom I spent long hours dreaming of a better future, expresses this reality succinctly: “There will not be two states. There is already only one state. All the people of this one state should be represented at the ballot box.”

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This article first appeared in The National on 26 January 2013.

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Tags: apathy, bds, binyamin netanyahu, boycott, citizenship, disenfranchisement, east jerusalem, elections, electoral process, equality, hanan ashrawi, hebrew, israel, jewish state, knesset, marginalisation, palestinian question, palestinian-israelis, palestinians, politics, religious right, voters, west bank, yair lapid

A careless killer on the loose…

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Gun and knife violence gets a lot of public attention but one killer prowling our streets goes largely unnoticed… apathy.

Thursday 24 January 2013

It was a case of senseless violence followed by a needless death. Peter Vercauteren, a 43-year-old Belgian artist and local community leader, was heading home late one night in the heart of Sint-Niklaas, not far from the picturesque market square, the largest in the country, for which this smallish town is best known.

Vercauteren, “Pee” to his friends, was followed by another punter with whom he’d allegedly had a bit of a shouting match in the pub, even though, by all accounts Vercauteren was a jovial man with a big heart and a booming laugh that could be heard long before its owner could be seen.

His assailant, Wesley L, head-butted Vercauteren so hard that he collapsed on a dark street and died… eventually.

Had this been the whole story then this tragedy would have remained a largely private one. But what happened next has had locals, who went on a silent march to express their outrage at his preventable death, searching for explanations.

While Vercauteren lay dying outside a kebab shop, under the apparently unwatchful eye of a police surveillance camera, a number of people walked past him without stopping to offer assistance, including his attacker who returned for a second look. An hour and a half later, someone finally put in a call to the emergency services, by which time it was too late.

This carries echoes of a similar tragedy, in 2006, when Joe Van Holsbeeck, 17, was not only stabbed for his mp3 player on a busy rush-hour train platform in Brussels, but no one came to his aid.

One explanation for why no one lifted a finger to assist Vercauteren, as one friend, Steven, put it to me, is that passers-by may have assumed he was just a drunk who had fallen into a booze-induced stupor.

While this could well be what (de)motivated some from rushing to the fallen man’s aid, I find this diagnoses the symptom more than the underlying condition. Even if Vercauteren was a passed-out drunk, surely this, in a cordial, educated society whose sense of solidarity is reflected in its high tax rates would prod people to act, despite knee-jerk snobbery towards “tramps”. After all, in addition to the danger of choking on vomit, an unconscious drunk also runs the risk in winter of developing hypothermia or freezing to death.

Another, more convincing reason is simple, instinctive, gut-wrenching fear. “The uncertainty in society has increased the level of fear, and this undoubtedly played a role,” says Roel Thierens (23), who volunteered in a youth centre, Kompas, where Vercauteren also worked.

And, indeed, though much of Europe is perhaps the safest it has ever been, a neurotic media and fear-mongering politicians induce in many people a sense of disproportionate fear and distrust of, not to mention alienation from, others, especially immigrants and minorities. But fear, especially in a situation as unthreatening as this, can be overcome.

At heart, what this could all boil down to is that the true accomplice in this crime was apathy and indifference. “Passers-by might well have thought that somebody else is bound to help him,” notes Wouter Thierens (26), Roel’s brother who also volunteers at Kompas.

Many social conservatives see such apparent apathy as a sign of the breakdown in traditions and family values. But what this overlooks is that, though families have become less central than they once were, they still play a pivotal and central role in the lives of most Belgians.

Additionally, in countries where family is still paramount and traditional community remains important, such wilfull blindness also occurs, as demonstrated by the recent outrage when passengers reportedly stood by as a young woman was gang raped and beaten to within an inch of her life on a Delhi bus. And similar incidents occur in the Middle East.

Moreover, in a modern, well-oiled, mechanical society, like that which is prevalent in northern Europe, it is not that people have abandoned their sense of community and solidarity, though some erosion has occurred thanks to the greater individual alienation witnessed in contemporary society, but that it has changed to become more impersonal and distant. Citizens, aka taxpayers, have grown to expect the ‘system’ to take care of everything and everyone: the destitute and the desperate, the weak and the sick, and the criminal and their victims.

However, important as such systemic solutions are, we still need a certain sense of personal social responsibility.

___

This article first appeared in The National on 21 January 2013.

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Tags: apathy, Belgium, booze, brussels, crime, death, europe, immigrant, joe van holsbeeck, media, migrants, minorities, murder, policing, preventable death, rape, senseless violence

Israeli elections: When there’s nothing left to lose

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With Israel expected to elect its most right-wing government ever, what can progressive Arab and Jewish voters do to challenge the status quo?

Tuesday 22 January 2013

Polls predict that Israel’s ultra-nationalist and religious right will walk away with Tuesday’s elections, and that the subsequent coalition may well be even further to the right than the current one.

A dispassionate perusal of Israel’s situation would reveal the urgent and desperate need to narrow and bridge the growing gap in Israel between the have-loads and the have-nots and to build bridges across the enormous chasm separating Israelis from Palestinians, both within Israel and in the occupied territories.

Yet the right seems bent on widening these splits with its hardcore nationalistic discourse, the casual racism of many of its leaders and its determination to further entrench and broaden the settlement enterprise.

It is distressing and depressing to witness Israel’s continued drift to the right. This is reflected in how parties which were once considered rightwing are now regarded as centrist and in how quickly the “loony” fringe parties become mainstream, as embodied in the meteoric rise of HaBayit HaYehudi’s Naftali Bennett and in how Avigdor Lieberman, who once famously called for the bombing of Egypt’s high dam and the drowning of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea, managed to become Israel’s face to the outside world.

The hardening of the right, mixed with the weakness and disarray of the left, has resulted in massive disillusionment and alienation in the ranks of Palestinian-Israelis and, albeit to a lesser extent, among progressive Israeli Jews, many of whom have “defected” rightwards.

This has translated into widespread apathy towards Tuesday’s vote, with surveys suggesting that only half of Arab voters will cast a ballot, compared with some 75% in 1999. Expressing a widespread sentiment in his community, one voter from Umm al-Fahm explained the reasons for his abstention: “This is not my country. I don’t receive my rights in this state.”

Even many of the politically aware and young who are as comfortable, sometimes more so, in Hebrew as in Arabic, feel there is nothing left to vote for.

“I don’t believe I will be voting in these upcoming elections,” admits Mimas Abdel-Hay, a student of government at a private Israeli institution, despite having recently become a political representative for a new party called Hope for Change. “Although this might show weakness or indecisiveness, I never felt like I had a say.”

Faced with such a bleak political landscape, is there anything progressive Arabs and Jews in Israel can do to challenge or protest against the status quo?

Rather than simply abstaining as individuals from voting, some Palestinians in Israel have actively called for a collective boycott of the vote.

But whether it is understandable disillusionment at their growing marginalisation or principle that keeps Arab voters away, I personally believe the only thing worse than participating in this unrepresentative electoral fight is not participating.

While mainstream Israeli parties are largely ignoring the Arab electorate, Arab politicians, as well as the joint Jewish-Arab Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash), have been working to convince sceptical voters to turn out on Tuesday and make their voices count.

“In South Africa, people were killed struggling to have one person, one vote. In Israel, there is discrimination in every part of life… In only one thing there is equal rights: the day of the election,” Ahmed Tibi of the United Arab List said in an interview.

“A boycott now is an act of weakness, not an act of active struggle. We would be out of politics,” asserts Haneen Zoabi of the Balad party, the first woman to represent an Arab party in the Knesset, despite having experienced efforts to disqualify her from the current elections.

Although television producer Hamodie Abonadda will not be voting for Balad but rather Hadash, his assessment of the consequences of staying away from the elections is similar to Zoabi’s. “Not voting is a very harsh statement one makes when living in an environment of equality,” he maintains.

Abonadda describes Palestinians in Israel as being victims twice over: of exclusion by the Israeli political establishment and then of being blamed for the apathy and indifference this engenders. “This has made the victim guilty of being a victim… The 1948 Arabs must stop being the victim and rise up and change the Israeli reality with their votes,” he urges.

But this raises the tricky issue of who to vote for. Like progressive Jews, many Arabs in Israel feel poorly represented by the parties that speak in their name. While many Arab politicians focus their attention on nationalistic questions and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a survey by Haifa University found that 57% of Palestinian-Israeli voters were most concerned with “bread and butter” issues, such as welfare, discrimination and rising crime, while only 8% cited the conflict.

Some also describe discourse as a challenge. “The problem I have is with the way the Arab politicians reach out to the Israeli public. They never speak in a way the Israelis can relate to or understand,” believes Mimas Abdel-Hay. “We are a minority, and in order to be heard, we have to play this game wisely,” she suggests.

“Playing the game wisely” should involve finding common cause with likeminded Israeli Jews as part of a broader struggle for greater socio-economic equality between not only Jews and Arabs, but also within Jewish society itself.

One politician out to do just that is Asma Agbarieh, leader of the socialist, Arab-Jewish Da’am party, who is the first Arab woman to head a party in Israel and has been enthusiastically heralded by some as the “new hope” for the Israeli left.

Her vision? “To talk about Jews and Arabs, about socialism, social justice. They thought I was dreaming, that all Arabs hate Jews and all Jews hate Arabs. And I know that’s not true. At a certain point, because reality is crushing you, because it empties your pockets and kills your children, you start to think,” Agbarieh told Haaretz in an interview.

And, although Da’am attracted less than 3,000 votes in 2009, Agbarieh’s message is finding resonance and has caused a surprisingly large number of people to “start to think”.

“I’m pretty captivated by her and her charismatic activities and ideas,” confesses Harvey Stein, an Israeli-American filmmaker based in Jerusalem. “I think Jews and Arabs must come together to fight those things – the question is, how can this feeling that me and a small group of people are feeling become popular enough to be politically meaningful?”

For Stein, the litmus test will be whether Da’am can gain enough votes to cross the electoral threshold and win even one seat in the Knesset. Up until recently, this seemed like a big ask, but the ground seems to be slowly shifting in Agbarieh’s favour.

But even if Da’am does win a seat in the Knesset, what difference will that make, some may rightfully ask?

In my view, a small victory like this will have enormous symbolic significance: for the first time, a Palestinian woman will be leading an elected Israeli party on a joint Jewish-Arab platform.

This, along with other joint action, could help improve the socio-economic situation of the marginalised in Israeli society, whether Arab or Jewish, especially if Jerusalemite Palestinians overcome their reservations and also start demanding their right to vote. It could also slowly redefine the conflict and pave the way to its eventual resolution from the grassroots up.

___

This article first appeared in Haaretz on 21 January 2013.

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Tags: apathy, asma agbarieh, avigdor lieberman, conflict, da'am, democracy, discrimination, elections, equality, israel, israeli elections 2013, israeli jews, israeli-palestinian conflict, israelis, palestinian-israelis, palestinians, politics, religious right, socialism, socialist, voters

Israelis for Palestine

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By Dana Moss

Left-wing Israelis do not buy Netanyahu’s scare tactics and look forward to living side by side with an independent Palestine.

Tuesday 4 October 2011

When Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, landed in New York to attend the UN General Assembly, he promised the Israeli public that he would ”defend a people under assault from those who oppose [Israel's] very existence”.

The government’s sound bites are sending the average Israeli into panic wondering about the exact nature of the existential threat, which Netanyahu alludes to, posed by the Palestinian quest to join the UN.

Yet behind the smoke and mirrors, Netanyahu is trying to prevent the very step that would save Israel – the recognition of a Palestinian state on the borders of 4 June, 1967.

The current government bluster about the implications of the Palestinian UN bid is partly intended to distract mainstream Israeli society from recognising that this a line that the Israeli left has been pushing for the past few decades.

The left – composed of various political parties and a small, though active, civil society scene – encompasses a spectrum of opinion that is both Zionist and non-Zionist. At bottom, however, it possesses the belief that a two-state solution and a division of the land is necessary to enable Israel to live up to its claims of having a demographic Jewish majority and adhering to a democratic system in which one people do not rule over another.

While it is true that, in the past, left-wing governments contributed to settlement building, in recent years this constellation of left-wing Israeli groupings have taken active steps to oppose such policies.

As a member of the left wing of Israeli society, I want to say loud and clear that we do not buy into Netanyahu’s scare tactics. A Palestinian state next to Israel will be a win-win situation for both our peoples. The lengthy occupation has harmed Israel, endangered its future as a homeland for the Jewish people and eroded the fabric of its society – it is time for it to end.

While opinions are divided as to the real-life utility of the UN bid in effecting change on the ground, it is clear that this Palestinian attempt to seize the initiative is an innovative step to break the current apathy over negotiations which have lasted over 18 years but have not yet culminated in an independent Palestinian state.

The specifics of the current Israeli government’s opposition to Abu Mazen’s initiative smacks of hypocrisy. At bottom, the Palestinian initiative mirrors Israel’s own history and its own attempts to gain recognition at the very same arena in 1948. Much like the Jewish people, the Palestinian are a people with a culture and a history, and they deserve their own state – this should not be patronisingly bestowed by Israel, but is an inherent right.

Moreover, other than the specific arena in which this Palestinian bid is being aired, nothing suggested therein is new. This initiative asks the UN to focus on the territorial aspects of the conflict according to parameters that have, in theory, been agreed to by previous Israeli governments.

The intangibles of the conflict, its more complicated and emotional aspects – the future of Jerusalem and the status of Palestinian refugees – will, as Mahmoud Abbas made clear, be dealt with in direct negotiations. The UN bid will not replace these negotiations.

As a result, this initiative is not intended to demonise Israel as a whole, but, in the words of Abbas, to delegitimise Israel’s occupation. There is little divergence here with the stance of the Israeli left, which has long viewed the occupation as illegitimate.

Netanyahu’s stated opposition to the Palestinian UN bid is based on the straw man argument that it is a unilateral step that bypasses bilateral negotiations. Yet the Israeli left has spent the past two years of Netanyahu’s reign as prime minister opposing his various initiatives to expand settlements, or create facts on the ground – for how can negotiations take place when, simultaneously, the Israeli government continues to expand settlements in East Jerusalem, which has been ear-marked as Palestine’s future capital?

It is clear to a vocal sector of Israel’s society that Netanyahu is not sincere about reaching a peaceful resolution with our neighbours. Were a different government in place, Israel could have built on the momentum of this declaration to thresh out the remaining issues with the Palestinian Authority. Instead, Netanyahu is busy undermining Abu Mazen – with grave consequences for Israel’s security, as Israel is unlikely to find a more willing partner.

Instead of securing Israel’s future, Netanyahu would rather maintain the support of his own domestic right-wing base and prevent his own political eclipse by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s racist and reckless foreign minister. Yet this right-wing base does not represent the whole country.

Other voices are speaking up. These voices strongly oppose foolhardy steps by the US congress to block funds to the Palestinian Authority should it succeed in its bid for UN recognition of a Palestinian state.

That is why, instead of greeting this initiative with the doom and gloom heralded by the government, some Israelis chose to welcome this event with joint celebrations. These include the Israeli-Palestinian group Combatants for Peace and the Israeli branch of the One Voice movement.

Earlier in September, demonstrations took place in front of the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, held by the Meretz Political party. Meanwhile, demonstratons took place at major traffic intersections across the country on the day of the UN speeches.

Veteran Israeli political analysts are speaking up in the Israeli media, with voices such as Zvi Barel proposing further steps for the international community, such as establishing embassies in the West Bank and recognising Palestinian passports.

Polls continuously show that mainstream Israeli society does, at bottom, believe in a two-state solution to the conflict. Netanyahu’s legacy at the UN will be to blind the silent Israeli majority to the reality that Palestine’s bid for recognition at the UN could bring closer those wishes.

As the government won’t say it, I will say it instead: Palestine, alf mabrouk, congratulations. I look forward to living side by side with you.

This article is part of a special Chronikler report on the Palestinian quest to seek United Nations recognition.

An Arabic version of this article appeared in al-Sharq al-Awsat on 2 October 2011. Published here with the author’s consent.

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Tags: apathy, binyamin netanyahu, civil society, conflict, east jerusalem, independent palestine, israel, israelis, jewish state, mahmoud abbas, palestine, palestine@un, palestinian authority, palestinian refugees, palestinian state, un, un general assembly, UN recognition, west bank, zionist

Lessons in revolt

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Although designed to instil loyalty to the regime, Egyptian schools have been breeding grounds for rebellion and revolt.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Although education systems around the world seek to produce “good citizens”, schools in Arab countries have the additional function of teaching students to obey – and fear – the regime.

“The curricula taught in Arab countries seem to encourage submission, obedience, subordination and compliance, rather than free critical thinking,” the Arab Human Development Report complained in 2003.

While few would dispute that Arab state schools try to inculcate subservience, it appears no one bothered to ask whether they were succeeding. But now, research by Hania Sobhy at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London suggests that in Egypt, at least, this most central exercise in promoting conformity and obedience has been deftly subverted and disobeyed by pupils, and to a lesser extent by teachers.

In addition to certain school subjects with an overtly “patriotic” focus that exalt the “achievements” of the state and effectively equate the Egyptian regime with the nation, the school day itself starts with the highly regimented morning assembly. “The central ritual of Egyptian schools is the taboor (line up),” Sobhy said.

The taboor is supposedly a time for pupils to connect with their nation and express patriotism by saluting the flag and singing the national anthem. In a telling indication of where the former regime’s priorities lay, what many would regard as a hollow ritual is so hallowed by the ministry of education that it is “decreed and carefully delineated”, Sobhy pointed out.

Yet, “more often than not, taboor is not in fact prepared nor performed,” she said. “More importantly, most secondary school students do not attend.”

When the taboor does take place, most youngsters fail to salute the flag or sing alternative – usually obscene – versions of the national anthem which, according to Sobhy, are “typically variations on themes of abuse by the nation, disentitlement and failure, of being violated or raped by the nation, or the nation being a ‘prostitute’.”

This rebellion and disaffection is hardly surprising, given that outside the official curriculum school provides pupils with harsh lessons on class, youth exclusion, arbitrary punishment and the importance of connections. “The school gives very practical and concrete citizenship lessons to children – lessons about their differentiated entitlement to rights,” Sobhy said.

This is a far cry from the 1952 revolution’s promise to provide free and equitable education for all Egyptians. In Egypt today, anything approaching quality education is provided only in the private sphere.

In addition to a plethora of private schools of varying quality and cost for those who can afford them, the dysfunctional state system itself is also largely stratified and class-based, with middle-class children going to general secondary schools, while the bulk of poorer pupils attend the marginalised and chronically underfunded technical schools.

Moreover, the state system has gone through a de facto privatisation in which underpaid teachers are unable or unwilling to teach in the classroom and coerce pupils – often using corporal punishment, even though it is banned – into taking private lessons if they want to pass their exams. This failure has transformed state schools into breeding grounds for disaffection.

“The level of boldness and opposition voiced point to how deep the resentment [and] anger … runs among large segments of the population,” Sobhy said. “There was a surprising level of ‘politicised’ and highly oppositional discourses given the stereotypes of apathy and submissiveness.”

And despite the best attempts of the state and teachers to beat pupils down, the youngsters interviewed by Sobhy demonstrated political awareness and voiced a powerful note of defiance similar to that expressed by millions on the streets of Egypt this year. “We don’t have belonging. We are growing up in an age when the country doesn’t give us anything,” one girl told her.

In this regard, Sobhy views schools as a weather vane of the mood in Egypt as a whole: they highlighted “the themes and content of the grievances that fuelled the popular movement that deposed Mubarak”.

“Would we be like this if we did not have all this theft and corruption?” one boy told her, while another insisted: “To fix things, everyone has to be removed … We need all new people.”

Less than a month before revolutionary fever gripped the country, pupils at semi-private state schools known as national institutes went on strike, organising sit-ins and marches in opposition to a ministerial decree they believed threatened their schools. “The demonstrations and chants – and the security presence and threats – were really similar to many of the scenes we saw in January,” Sobhy said.

The experience of young Egyptians in state schools shows that coming generations are both politically aware and are no longer willing to accept the scraps that fall from the regime’s table. Providing them with quality education and decent job prospects is not only good for them and good for Egypt, it will also be good for any future government’s survival.

This article first appeared in The Guardian‘s Comment is Free section on 10 September 2011. Read the related discussion.

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Tags: ahdr, apathy, arab countries, arab human development report, children, citizenship, conformity, corruption, education, egypt, egyptian revolution, good citizens, morning assembly, national anthem, obedience, rebellion, revolt, revolution, saluting the flag, uk

The death throes of Arab dictatorships

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Will the unfolding popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt lead to the region’s dictators falling one after the other like dominos?

Thursday 3 February 2011

For me as an Egyptian, watching the dramatic events of recent days unfold has been inspiring, moving and worrying all at the same time. Despite usually being a cool-headed journalistic observer, I have found myself fighting back tears of joy and pride on numerous occasions.

For a country whose political life usually limps forward (and quite often backward), the drama of recent days has throttled along like a high-speed political drama. The old adage that a week is a long time in politics has been fast-forwarded in Egypt, and every hour, even every minute, brings new developments with it.

Ever since the Tunisian uprising broke out and especially since the downfall of its president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the question on everyone’s lips has been whether people in Egypt, the largest and most central Arab country, and other states in the region would follow the Tunisian example. Of course, I and some other observers were expecting matters to come to a head this year, because of the mounting opposition to President Hosni Mubarak’s (read profile) rule as we approach the presidential elections, slated for the autumn of 2011, but no on expected, even in their wildest dreams, anything approaching the mass protests that have shaken the country in recent days.

Even a fortnight ago, it seemed uncertain as to whether Egypt would actually catch the Tunisian bug and, through it, cure itself of the Mubarak virus. After all, for most of the past decade, Egyptian political and trades union activists, and other civil society actors, had been campaigning and agitating for change. They even created a broad-based umbrella movement which united all of Egypt’s opposition forces – progressive, conservative, leftist, Nasserist and Islamist – towards the common goal of bringing to an end the Mubarak regime under the simple banner ‘Kefaya’ (‘Enough’). But Kefaya was clearly not enough to mobilise ordinary Egyptians, who seemed to be weighed down by the heavy chains of disillusionment, apathy and fear.

Disappointed at the mainstream opposition’s inability to create new momentum, Egypt’s young people, long sidelined and undervalued, decided to take matters into their own hands and created, in 2008, the 6 April Youth Movement, originally to call, through social networking technologies, for a general strike in solidarity with strikers in Mahallah el-Kubra, Egypt’s main textile production centre. Although the movement’s success had been limited, this all changed on Tuesday 25 January 2011, Egypt’s Police Day (a day of celebration for the regime, not the people), when it called on Egyptians to take to the street in a “day of anger”. Spurred on and emboldened by the sweet success of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, Egyptians took to the streets in untold thousands across the country.

The “Friday of anger”, on 28 January, delivered a fatal blow to the regime and most expect it to be the final nail in the coffin of the presidency. At the time of writing, Mubarak continues to cling on to power desperately and delusionally, playing out a perverse and surreal pantomime in which he dissolved the government and appointed a vice president (for the first time) and a new prime minister, both members of the old guard.

Regardless of what tricks the no-longer-president tries to pull off, most Egyptians demand and expect his ouster. But how many more Egyptians Mubarak is willing to sacrifice at the altar of his ego, in addition to the many scores of dead and injured already, remains an open question. Another crucial question is whose side the army will ultimately choose: the people’s, the defunct regime’s or perhaps simply its own.

Every passing moment increases the risks to Egyptians, in terms of their safety as relative anarchy breaks out following the disappearance of Egypt’s beloathed police force – which impromptu neighbourhood protection committees are trying to combat – and their economic well-being, as the financial and tourism markets take a battering. Tourists have fled the country, the stock market fell by around 6% for two days running before trading was suspended, while regional and global markets are growing jittery at the unrest, and the exchange rate of the Egyptian pound against the dollar is at its lowest in six years.

But what or who will replace the fallen regimes in Egypt and Tunisia? In many parts of Europe and the United States, there has been a longstanding fear, exploited by Mubarak and other dictators, that when presented with democratic choice, Arabs would vote in Islamists who would then strip citizens of their democratic rights – in a sort of “one citizen, one vote, one time” – and turn their countries against the West.

For that reason, many argue that pragmatism and realpolitik call for the propping up of friendly dictators – a very distasteful notion, indeed, especially as the United States dithers over whether or not to withdraw its support from Mubarak.

In the two ongoing revolutions, the fears of an Islamist takeover appear to be unfounded, especially in Tunisia, probably the most secular country in the region, where the protests began out of sympathy with the suicide of a young street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, who burned himself alive after his wares were confiscated by police, in an echo of the actions of Czech student Jan Palach, who also set himself on fire in 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia which aimed to crush the liberalising reforms of Alexander Dubček.

Since then, Tunisians of all ages and backgrounds have been out on the streets in force, chanting for democracy and freedom, not for Islam or Shari’a. “This Muslim fundamentalist thing in North Africa is a scarecrow,” insisted one Tunisian protester. In addition, women, modern, courageous, outspoken have been clearly visible among the crowds in a country where gender equality has gone furthest in the Arab world.

Nevertheless, the fears are still being voiced, as I’ve personally experienced in the number of times I’ve been asked by journalists and ordinary people about the possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood would seize power in Egypt.

While recognising that nothing is beyond the bounds of possibility, I highly doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood will succeed, in a post-Mubarak democratic Egypt, of gaining complete control of the country through an Islamic counterrevolution, in an Arab version of Iran’s “Islamic revolution”, even if Iran itself drew parallels between 1979 and current events in Egypt and, rather cheekily considering its own crushing of mass protests in 2009, called on the Egyptian regime to submit to protesters’ demands.

However, there is a world of difference between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011. For one, the Egyptian Sunni clergy are not politicised and are not held in the same kind of awe as their Shi’a counterpart. Iran had the charismatic and “holy” cult figure Ayatollah Khomeini, while the Muslim Brotherhood is largely made up of conservative and rather grey professionals in suits, i.e. doctors, lawyers and engineers.

Significantly, the party missed the boat in this revolution by refusing to take part in the protests or back them until it appeared that they were unstoppable. The movement’s top brass, under the conservative and cautious leadership of Mohammed Badie, have proven themselves not only to be out of touch with the popular mood, but also with the younger, more open-minded generation within their own ranks.

In addition, one factor behind the Muslim Brotherhood’s apparent success and popularity, with the movement often described as Egypt’s largest opposition party, is the fact that they were kind of the “last man left standing” after the secular opposition was purged, starting in the 1970s under former president Anwar el-Sadat who also backed the Islamist current as a counterbalance to his powerful secular opponents. Moreover, no matter how oppressive the regime became, it could not shut down mosques, natural meeting points for Islamists, without provoking public opprobrium.

But now, with freedom beckoning and plurality around the corner, the Brotherhood can no longer play the dual role of being both the last protest party for the disenfranchised and the demon used by the regime to scare the outside world. In fact, with the emergence of democracy, the Brotherhood would only be one of Egypt’s many political and social movements, albeit a fairly influential one, perhaps even a sort of “Muslim Democratic” party.

So, can this popular revolution spread beyond Tunisia and Egypt?

History would suggest that popular uprisings have a tendency to spark a chain reaction in countries with similar conditions, as occurred in Europe in the 1848 “Springtime of the Peoples” and the 1989 “Autumn of Nations”. Since the Middle East is not short of dictatorships, we could well see a domino effect, though I hope it will be more successful than 1848 and not result in oligarchial rule as occurred in so many places post-1989.

A number of countries are already experiencing unrest and there have been suggestions that they could be next in line. These include Yemen, Jordan and Algeria. Events in Egypt often resonate in Yemen. For instance, inspired by the Egyptian revolution, or coup d’etat, of 1952, revolutionary forces took over North Yemen, creating the Yemen Arab Republic. Although Yemeni tensions and disaffection have been high for some time, protesters are only now explicitly calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power even longer than Mubarak, but Yemenis may have trouble mobilising to the same degree as Egyptians and Tunisians.

Although anger and resentment is greater than in Egypt, “civil society is weaker here and the culture of popular opposition is far less here”, observes Aidroos Al Naqeeb, who heads the socialist party bloc in the Yemeni parliament. In addition, Yemeni society, which is largely tribal, has a weaker sense of national identity and is more fragile than Egypt and Tunisia, with growing secessionist pressure in South Yemen, not to mention the Shia’a or “Houthi” insurgency in the northwest of the country.

Jordan has also experienced protests to demand political and economic reforms. “Jordanians are all for the revolution in Egypt and are cheering for change there,” a Jordanian journalist told me. “Those amongst them who talk about change in Jordan, mainly talk about reforms but not changing the regime.”

This is partly due to the awe, respect, fear and love in which the monarchy is held, the journalist notes, which would explain why Jordanians are calling for the resignation of the government, even though it was appointed by the king who, in any case, is the one who holds executive authority. With that kind of deference to the monarchy, the tensions between indigenous Jordanians (East Bankers) and Jordanians of Palestinian descent, and how much Jordanians value the stability they enjoy in a dangerous and volatile neighbourhood, Jordan is unlikely to be next in line for popular revolution, but could push harder for gradual evolution.

How far popular uprisings and revolutions spread in the Middle East and what their long-term consequences will be is impossible to predict. But one thing is for certain, after decades of stagnation, the region will never be quite the same and we may finally see the dawning of true independence in which local peoples have shaken off not only foreign rule but domestic despotism.

This article appeared in Ukrainian Week on 3 February 2011.

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Tags: 2011 presidential elections, anwar el-sadat, apathy, arab, arab world, army, civil society, democracy, dictatorship, egypt, egyptian revolution, elections, europe, hosni mubarak, iran, islam, islamist, jordan, kefaya, middle east, muslim brotherhood, opposition, politics, socialist, tunisia, united states, women, young people

Egypt’s other Mubaraks

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The imminent fall of Egypt’s dictator should embolden Egyptians, especially young ones, to deal with the mini-Mubaraks that hold Egyptian society back.

1 February 2011

As someone who has striven to get his head around Egypt’s apparent political apathy, the ongoing Egyptian revolution has been like a breath of fresh air. At first, it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen, that this would be yet another of the false dawns of recent years. Even as late as the morning of Tuesday 25 January, the police – during their national holiday – were out in such great force that Cairo was almost in lockdown, instead of the usual gridlock, and the streets were deserted of protesters.

Many Egyptians, nervously and excitedly following the situation, feared that the promised “day of wrath” would deflate into a day of mild frustration; that the police would, as they normally do, outnumber protesters, as if it were the regime that was the aggrieved party demonstrating against an “ungrateful” population.

But Tunisia has provided Egyptians with the necessary spark of hope that the oppositions’ rallying cry of “Kefaya” (“Enough”) could truly be enough. And Egyptians from across the country and all walks of life have displayed courage, determination, camaraderie, solidarity and even humour in the face of adversity.

For a sceptic like me whose political rebellion has more often been in written words than in collective deeds, the drama and poignancy of the situation have been truly gripping, and I have caught myself fighting back tears: a weary-looking lone man holding up a sign which reads “kefaya” with a line of riot police behind him; protesters braving tear gas and beatings; ordinary, hard-pressed folk refusing to compromise with a figure they once feared, not to mention the solidarity and new sense of civic duty demonstrated in the volunteers securing law and order after the police abandoned their duties and melted into the night.

What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall in Hosni Mubarak’s office right now, to learn how a man can live with himself when 80 million people hate him, and to try to fathom why he still clings on to power while the game is clearly up.

“Yesterday we were all Tunisian. Today we are all Egyptian. Tomorrow we’ll all be free,” said Amira Mohsen, a young Egyptian journalist, summing up the heady public mood. But democracy, if it comes, will not be the end but just the beginning of a very long and difficult process of change.

To their credit, the protesters have proven to be politically deft and in no mood for compromise, thereby avoiding the risk of lobbing off the head of the regime only for the body to sprout a new one before returning to business as usual. Mubarak’s appointment of a vice-president Omar Suleiman (whose intended role may be to hold the fort until Mubarak’s son, http://chronikler.com/tag/gamal-mubarak/ Gamal, can mount a comeback) has backfired spectacularly as the million-strong march gathers pace as I type.

Nevertheless, even if full democracy is born on the banks of the Nile, this will not necessarily mean an end to authoritarianism in the country, because a legion of “mini-Mubaraks” are waiting in the wings.

Many of the opposition parties are possibly no better than the ruling National Democratic Party in terms of their attitudes to dissent. For example, Mohammed Badie, the new leader of the Muslim Brotherhood is the embodiment of the conservative old guard that is completely detached from the party’s younger, more open and reform-minded members. This has resulted in the Brotherhood’s senior leadership becoming increasingly out of touch with the popular mood, as was reflected in their refusal to sanction or officially take part in the current protests, a position they were forced by events to revise.

In addition to dictatorships in political circles, Egypt is also burdened with a fair measure of social, professional and intellectual authoritarianism, with mini-Mubaraks running families, businesses and universities through the kind of deferential patronage made unpopular by the big man himself (I should, of course, point out that there are plenty of Egyptians who do not practise nor approve of authoritarianism).

But there are signs of hope that Egyptians will succeed in gradually breaking loose of this more ingrained authoritarianism. Sick and tired of how they’ve been messed around by their elders and supposedbetters, the disenfranchised young generation is increasingly making its presence felt. In fact, the current wave of protests was instigated by young people, who have managed to deploy social networking technologies and low-tech resourcefulness to powerful effect. And now that they’ve found their voice, perhaps they will no longer be silenced or sidelined, although, in a worrying sign, the emerging “national salvation” government is mainly made up of greying men.

I hope Egyptians will discover a new sense of self-confidence and self-esteem and never allow themselves to be cowed by authority again and that those in power will realise that tolerance of difference and dissent actually makes a society stronger.

Nevertheless, the sad fact remains that, in a world where little democracy exists between nations, even if Egyptians cast off the yoke of domestic tyranny in all its forms, the battle will not be entirely over if their choices and wishes are not respected by the dictatorship of mighty nations and corporations.

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Tags: apathy, authoritarianism, change, day of wrath, democracy, dictatorship, egypt, egyptian revolution, hosni mubarak, kefaya, muslim brotherhood, opposition, political apathy, reform, revolution, social networking, young people

Murder at rush hour

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A murder trial is delving into the mystery of why and how a young Belgian was stabbed to death for his MP3 player during rush hour in the capital’s busiest train station.

September 2008

In the UK, youth knife crime has received a lot of attention recently. A high-profile murder trial in Belgium has refocused public attention here on the issues of senseless violence, law and order, public apathy, immigration and racism.

The story, in this case, really does begin with a “regular Joe”. Joe van Holsbeeck was a popular, friendly and laid-back secondary school student looking forward to a bright future. On 12 April 2006, the 17-year-old and his best friend were waiting for a girlfriend in Brussels’s busiest transport hub, the Central Station.

At around 4.30pm, two teenagers approached them, ostensibly to ask for directions, and then demanded that Joe hand over his MP3 player. When Joe refused, one of them took out a knife and, amid the rush-hour crowds, stabbed him seven times, including a fatal blow to the heart, according to the court doctor.

Adam Giza, the killer, expressed remorse for his deed. “I am sorry for what happened. I didn’t want to kill him. I ask Joe’s parents, his brother, and [his best friend] Gil for forgiveness,” the 19-year-old said in his closing testimony.

On Tuesday, the jury found Giza guilty of violent theft which led to death but did not find that he intended to murder Joe. The dead boy’s father, Guy, described the verdict as “a slap in the face”. This reaction is understandable from the grieving parent of a young man who was described by his best friend as “someone you only meet once in your life”. Although justice has been served, this verdict is bound to add to the controversy surrounding the case.

That a young man should have died for a music player and that it happened in a busy public place caused public shock and outrage – not to mention, fear – at the time. Many people started calling for more policing and tougher punishment for offenders.

“We can’t continue to sweep minor offences under the carpet. We need to take a ‘zero tolerance’ approach,” one resident told De Standaard. “There aren’t enough police agents? There are plenty of unemployed people around. Or why not use the army?”

The then Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said that the government must step up its fight against juvenile crime. But others questioned this fixation on policing and wondered how it was possible that Joe was murdered in a train station through which some 200,000 commuters pass each day and how his attackers managed to get away?

Cardinal Daneels, the country’s top Catholic clergyman, condemned what he saw as society’s growing apathy and materialism. “Hundreds witnessed the murder but no one did anything,” the archbishop said in his 2006 Easter sermon. “God asks us: where is your brother? Where is your Abel? We must not answer like Cain: ‘am I my brother’s keeper?’”

Glenn Audenaert, a Brussels police chief, echoed the Cardinal’s message, albeit in less Biblical terms. “The police cannot be everywhere at once. Safety is a collective responsibility,” he said.

While the cardinal and the police chief have a point about public apathy, what they overlook is that, in our modern, well-oiled, mechanical societies, we expect the ‘system’ to take care of everything and many people find the potential consequences of intervention highly risky.

On a personal level, I find myself far more confident and comfortable about intervening in societies where collective intervention is something of a norm. It is far less threatening for the individuals involved if an entire group of people break up a fight or mediate a confrontation than if it is left to a lone passer-by. If enough people cared, then getting involved would become less a question of heroics and more one of good citizenship.

The trial has shed light on another possibility. The events occurred so fast on a busy platform that commuters had little time to notice, let alone react. Once the situation became clear, a Red Cross volunteer and a commuter quickly rushed to Joe’s aid. “For a moment, it seemed like he would regain consciousness,” she said in her testimony. “But then I saw him slip away again.” According to the court doctor, the wounds Joe suffered meant there was little anyone could do to save him.

But that still leaves the question unanswered of how it was that the two youth involved in the attack managed to run away, unchallenged, through the station and towards the town centre.

Right-wing commentators focused on the apparent ethnicity of the attackers, who were at first described as being of “North African” appearance.

“Belgian citizens realise… that the murder has nothing to do with ‘indifference in Belgian society,’ but everything with a group of North African youths terrorising Brussels,” Paul Belien wrote in that chronicle of far-right “enlightenment”, the Brussels Journal.

But Joe’s family refused to have their son’s plight used for xenophobic grandstanding. “Nobody should come to me, asking me to hate all Arabs,” his mother said in an interview with La Dernière Heure. “The youths who killed my son were scum… Scum can be found everywhere.”

Jean-Marie Dedecker, who has subsequently broken away from the Flemish Liberal Party to form a Flemish nationalist party centred around himself, claimed rather surreally: “You will sooner get punished for riding a bike without the lights on than for stealing a bike… Policemen look the other way in order to avoid being accused of racism… They behave in exactly the opposite way when they suspect decent citizens of some misdemeanour.”

The way Dedecker describes it, you’d think that Belgium was no country for middle-aged white men. But this has become a fairly typical tactic of victimhood used by bigots: “these brown people not only come here and steal our jobs, but also our rights and security”.

Some members of the far-right Vlaams Belang (VB) even went so far as to suggest that gun ownership laws should be relaxed to allow citizens to “defend” themselves.

The fact that Joe’s attackers turned out to be Polish Roma left the envoys of social intolerance with egg on their face. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before some focused on the attackers’ “gypsy” identity – and, hence, illegal immigration – as somehow accounting for the violence. But they are obviously unaware that Giza feared the verdict of his own community, who never allow the re-admittance of rapists and murderers in their midst, to that of the court.

Interestingly, a racially inspired shooting spree by the nephew of a far-right politician in Antwerp less than a month later caused the VB to plea insanity on the part of a “lone psychopath”, even though the shooter was deemed to be in full possession of his mental faculties and a jury found him guilty of being a “racist murderer”.

In a symbolic response to the charge of public apathy, 80-90,000 people took part, less than a fortnight after Joe’s death, in a ‘silent march’ in Brussels against senseless violence. It was the biggest public demonstration in Belgium since the ‘white march’ against the paedophile and murderer Marc Dutroux.

The brainchild of Fouad Ahidar, a Flemish politician of Moroccan descent, the silent march was well-attended by minorities to show that street violence and crime should not be forced into an ethnic pigeonhole.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 24 September 2008. Read the related discussion.

This is an archive piece that was migrated to this website from Diabolic Digest

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