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the biggest discovery of this year’s edition from the Middle East could very well be Sudan, the new Arab cinema on the block making its major international festival debut with two documentaries by first-time filmmakers: Marwa Zein’s Forum contender, Khartoum Offside; and Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Panorama pick, Talking About Trees.

Iran has had a modest presence during the recent past at Berlin – and this year is no different, with only a single feature representing the once powerhouse cinema across all sections. Deviating from the country’s signature social realism, newcomer Suzan Iravanian is attracting buzz for her Forum curio, Leakage, a supernatural mystery about a fifty-something middle-class woman who starts leaking oil from her body after her husband disappears.

Mostafa Derkaoui’s forgotten 1974 classic, About Some Meaningless Event, a docudrama about a group of filmmakers asking passersby in Casablanca about their expectations for Moroccan cinema, only to shift their focus to a resentful worker who accidentally kills his superior.  An investigation of the role of cinema and art in society, this militant effort - which was primarily funded by the sale of paintings of a number of contemporary painters – was banned in Morocco and virtually disappeared, until a negative print was discovered in the Spanish film archive, Filmoteca de Catalunya, in 2016 and subsequently restored.

Mukalla’s residents accepted WaxOn and would offer them money to perform, allowing them sometimes to make as much as 40,000 Yemen rials ($160) for a 10-minute performance.He said the security forces had not moved against other bands performing traditional Yemeni dances on the square

The UAE, while liberal in many regards compared to its Middle Eastern neighbors, has strict laws governing expression. Journalists working in the country require government-issued press cards. People also have been jailed for their comments online.

The plan, to be funded by private Saudi and Emirati investors and executed by Egyptian firms that helped broaden the Suez Canal, also envisions the construction of five hotels, two ports and a free trade zone.

The $750 million project would have the dump ready for when Saudi Arabia inaugurates the first two of its 16 planned nuclear reactors in 2027. Saudi Arabia is reviewing proposals to build the reactors from US, Chinese, French, South Korean contractors and expects to award the projects in December.

Qatar’s more liberal Wahhabism of the sea contrasts starkly with the Wahhabism of the land that Prince Mohammed is seeking to reform. The crown prince made waves last year by lifting a ban on women’s driving, granting women the right to attend male sporting events in stadiums, and introducing modern forms of entertainment like, music, cinema and theatre – all long-standing fixtures of Qatari social life and of the ability to reform while maintaining autocratic rule.

A traditional Gulf state and a Wahhabi state to boot, Qatari conservatism was everything but a mirror image of Saudi Arabia’s long-standing puritan way of life. Qatar did not have a powerful religious establishment like the one in Saudi Arabia that Prince Mohammed has recently whipped into subservience, nor did it implement absolute gender segregation. Non-Muslims can practice their faith in their own houses of worship and were exempted from bans on alcohol and pork. Qatar became a sponsor of the arts and hosted the controversial state-owned Al Jazeera television network that revolutionized the region’s controlled media landscape and became one of the world’s foremost global English-language broadcasters.

Qatari conservatism is likely what Prince Mohammed would like to achieve even if that is something he is unlikely to acknowledge

“I consider myself a good Wahhabi and can still be modern, understanding Islam in an open way. We take into account the changes in the world,” Abdelhameed Al Ansari, the then dean of Qatar University’s College of Sharia, a leader of the paradigm shift, told The Wall Street Journal in 2002.

if built, the channel would suggest that geopolitical supremacy has replaced ultra-conservative, supremacist religious doctrine as a driver of the king-in-waiting’s policy

Israeli drones are unmarked, and the Israeli jets and helicopters cover up their markings. Some fly circuitous routes to create the impression that they are based in the Egyptian mainland

In Israel, military censors restrict public reports of the airstrikes

The Egyptian government has declared the North Sinai a closed military zone, barring journalists from gathering information there

Mr. Sisi, then the defense minister, ousted Mr. Morsi in a military takeover. Israel welcomed the change in government, and urged Washington to accept it. That solidified the partnership between the generals on both sides of the border

In November, 2014, Ansar Beit al Maqdis formally declared itself the Sinai Province branch of the Islamic State. On July 1, 2015, the militants briefly captured control of a North Sinai town, Sheikh Zuwaid, and retreated only after Egyptian jets and helicopters struck the town, state news agencies said. Then, at the end of October, the militants brought down the Russian charter jet, killing all 224 people on board. Advertisement Continue reading the main story It was around the time of those ominous milestones, in late 2015, that Israel began its wave of airstrikes, the American officials said, which they credit with killing a long roster of militant leaders.

They moved into hitting softer targets like Christians in Sinai, churches in the Nile Valley or other Muslims they view as heretics. In November 2017, the militants killed 311 worshipers at a Sufi mosque in the North Sinai.

Zack Gold, a researcher specializing in the North Sinai who has worked in Israel, compared the airstrikes to Israel’s nuclear weapons program — also an open secret.“The Israeli strikes inside of Egypt are almost at the same level, he said. “Every time anyone says anything about the nuclear program, they have to jokingly add ‘according to the foreign press.’ Israel’s main strategic interest in Egypt is stability, and they believe that open disclosure would threaten that stability.”

when he talks he talks the language of the street and the street listens to him. That's Sisi's problem.  

Most Egyptians have seen their real incomes fall, while Egypt under its IMF-backed austerity programme is racking up huge foreign debts. It was $43bn during Morsi’s presidency. It is $106bn now. Seventy per cent of taxes now goes into paying these debts off. Internal debt is over 5 trillion Egyptian pounds ($306bn).

Ali listed them: a luxury house in Hilmiya ($6m), a presidential residence in Alexandria ($15m), a palace in the new administrative capital, and another one in the new Alamein city west of Alexandria.

A report published by the World Bank in April calculated that "some 60 percent of Egypt’s population is either poor or vulnerable". 

Sisi  was a "failed man", a "disgrace", a "midget" who uses make up and hitches his trousers up too high, Ali told Egypt. Sisi was a con man who lectured you on the need to tighten your belt while building palaces for his wife Intissar.

"Now you say we are very poor, we must be hungry. Do you get hungry? You spend billions that are spilt on the ground. Your men squander millions. I am not telling a secret. You are a bunch of thieves."

Every Egyptian remembers the lectures Sisi gave them on the need to tighten their belts. When the IMF forced the state to reduce subsidies, Sisi’s response was: "I know that the Egyptian people can endure more... We must do it. And you’ll have to pay; you’ll have to pay," Sisi said in one unscripted rant a year into his presidency.

Ali’s YouTube channel has done more in three weeks to destroy Sisi’s image than the Brotherhood, liberals and leftists, now all crushed as active political forces in Egypt, have done in six years of political protest. 

To their credit the opposition did not crumble, paying for their stand with their lives and their freedom. To their shame the Egyptian people did not listen.

Sisi thinks he can ride this out, as he has done challenges in the past. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested since last Friday.

The initial demonstration in Tahrir Square in January 2011 was smaller than the ones that broke out in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria last Friday. They called for reform, not the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. Last Friday, Sisi’s portrait was torn down. “Say it, don’t be afraid, Sisi has to leave!” they shouted on day one of this fresh revolt. 

the "opposition" is everybody - ordinary Egyptians, disaffected junior ranks in the army, Mubarak era businessmen. This is a wide coalition of forces. Once again Egypt has been reunited by a tyrant

unlike 2013, Sisi’s bankers  - Saudi Arabia and the UAE - have run out of cash for Egypt. Today each has its own problems and foreign interventions which are all turning sour - Yemen and Libya.

The steam is running out of the counter-revolution.

popular protest is re-emerging as a driver for change across the region. We have seen it topple dictators in Sudan and Algeria. Both have learned the lessons of failed coups in the past and have so far managed the transition without surrendering the fruits of revolution to the army. This, too, has an effect on events in Egypt.

On Nov. 8 and 15, two episodes of the news satire Al-Basheer Show were jammed, as soon as the broadcast began on the German DW channel. Jamming would start at 9 p.m. while the episodes were being shown, and would end an hour later at 10 p.m., when the show was over.

The government clampdown on the media and journalists has taken several forms, ranging from obscure threats to the shutdown of media institutions to jamming channels or not offering security protection. There were also insinuations that media channels have been inciting people to protest.

“I received a text message on my personal phone threatening to kill me and attack my family if I continue to use my phone to contact the channel where I work.”

The Iraqi Media House, a civil society organization in Iraq, reported that “as a result of the internet ban, 90% of Iraqi media coverage was cut off, and 70% of social media coverage was dead. Fears of targeting media channels and journalists also reduced coverage.”

The Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq reported that there had been “89 violations against journalists," 33 death threats and the shutdown of or warnings to 17 offices and headquarters of media institutions.

Plusieurs groupes palestiniens ont dénoncé le rôle d’Emi Palmor « dans le musellement de la liberté d’expression et la censure des défenseurs des droits humains, en particulier des voix palestiniennes, arabes et musulmanes » sur Facebook. La Palestine Digital Rights Coalition, le Conseil des organisations palestiniennes de défense des droits humains et le réseau des organisations non gouvernementales palestiniennes exhortent Facebook à « considérer les graves conséquences que le choix d’Emi Palmor pourrait avoir en particulier sur les défenseurs palestiniens des droits humains et sur la liberté d’expression en ligne pour défendre les droits des Palestiniens ».

the government first needs to contain the spread of the left

The left, however, puts up genuine systemic resistance: They reject the idea that the Turkish nation is pure and infallible. Like leftists elsewhere, they deconstruct official history, focusing on massacres of minorities and exploitation of the working classes. There is also an inextricable tie to the Kurdish movement, which in turn is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — an insurgency that has been waging war on the Turkish state for over four decades. The connection between the non-Kurdish left and the Kurdish movement is complicated and has gone through various stages in the recent past. For the Turkish right, there is little difference between leftist subversion and Kurdish insurrection. “I joined the police to beat up Communists” a crescent-mustached officer once told me, and he was talking about arresting Kurdish protesters.

Many in the urban middle class, who are fairly indifferent about Kurdish rights, wanted to see Demirtas grow the HDP into a Turkish-Kurdish version of the European Greens. The idea at the time was to also expand into a grand center-left coalition that would prevent Erdoğan from establishing his hyper-centralized presidential system. Their momentum was cut short when months after the coup attempt, in December 2016, the government detained Demirtas on charges of terrorism and began a ruthless crackdown on the HDP’s activities that has since only gained in intensity.

The second part of the government’s strategy is to keep the left — crippled and branded as terrorists — within the political system. While Turkey’s politics is polarized between the government and the opposition, this creates a second polarization, this time within the opposition camp. It is this second polarity where the vast majority of political discourse takes place. From the perspective of a nationalistic system of valuation, in which being “local and national” reigns supreme, this is a fatal flaw. On the one hand, the various factions of the opposition can’t win a national vote unless they partner with the HDP to form a 50 percent bloc against Erdoğan. On the other, the nationalists within the opposition cannot be seen working with the “terrorists” of the pro-Kurdish left.

the People’s Republican Party (CHP), Turkey’s founding and currently main opposition party, has tried to contain this “patriot-terrorist” polarity. Its umbrella candidates for the presidency, ranging from the soporific Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu in 2014, to the firebrand Muharrem Ince in 2018, have failed. In the 2019 municipal elections, however, the CHP’s mayoral candidates did well, uniting the Kemalist-nationalist camp, Islamists, liberal cosmopolitans, as well as leftists and even some sympathizers of the Kurdish movement. These candidates won against Erdoğan’s men in all major cities, including Ankara and (in a repeat election) Istanbul. This was the first, and so far only, time Erdoğan’s containment of the left had been breached.

the Erdoğan government finally seeks to pull the entire bloc to the right. This means focusing on liberal-minded urbanites whose nationalism has lapsed, and rekindling their faith in the national mythos. This is the most challenging aspect of its effort, and where it has done most poorly.

restructuring of the media. For the past few years, the government has been taking over media channels that centrist voters traditionally follow, then gradually shifting their tone to favor the government. The Dogan Media Group, owner of Hurriyet (Turkey’s former newspaper of record) and CNN Turk (a 24-hour TV news channel) used to cater to a secular, urban, and increasingly progressive audience. The group’s main audience overlapped with the centrist-opposition CHP’s voter base, whose older members are secularist-nationalists and younger members (often their children) are leftist-progressives. In March 2018, the media group was sold to an Erdoğan-friendly conglomerate, which fired many of its veteran journalists and changed editorial guidelines. The result has been a desensitized, less colorful version of the jingoist carnival running across Erdoğan’s formal channels. CNN Turk, especially, became a tool for the government to enter the living rooms of CHP voters and tell them that they were voting for terrorist collaborators. So insidious were these attacks that the CHP had to ban its members from getting on the channel, and call upon its electorate to boycott it.

 Erdoğan said “We have 18 martyrs and close to 200 wounded. In our country, we have the terror group’s so-called political organism. Aside from that, our nation is now in a state of Yekvücut.” The term is a favorite of the president. It is a combination of the Farsi term “Yek” meaning “single” and the Arabic word “vücut” meaning “existence,” or in the Turkish use, “body.” Erdoğan was thinking of the nation as a single biological organism, with the leftists and the Kurdish movement as foreign bodies

The opposition media — largely relegated to the internet — was reporting on the plight of the working class and the brewing economic crisis. Like free media across the West, they also questioned the quality and veracity of their government’s COVID-19 data. In a speech delivered in May, Erdoğan was unusually angry. He had clearly expected a Yekvücut moment and was struggling to understand why it hadn’t come about. His strategy to create a “local and national” opposition wasn’t working, and the frustration of it seemed to hit him head on. “I want to warn once again the media and other representatives who are in league with the CHP’s leaders,” he said, before launching into what was — even for him — an unusually vituperative attack: “You are not national, and your localness is in question,” he said, “you have always sided with whoever was treacherous [bozguncu], whoever was perverted, whoever was depraved” adding, “you are like the creatures in mythology that only feed on enmity, hate, fear, confusion and pain.”

The absurd accusations of fraud and coup-abetting aside, there is something to the idea that the opposition wants things to get worse. The Erdoğan government’s consolidation over the past decade has been so suffocating for opposition voters that many do look for deliverance in economic or natural disaster.

The Erdoğan government may have cut short the HDP’s rise, but it hasn’t been able to prevent leftist ideas from spreading. The CHP’s youth wings today are highly class-conscious and hostile to militant nationalism. Figures like the CHP’s Istanbul provincial head Canan Kaftancıoğlu , who campaign on a mix of feminism, workers’ rights, and anti-fascist slogans, are gaining a national following. The polarization within the opposition is likely deepening, with part of the 30 million become more “national,” while another part is becoming more leftist. This means that the great mass of right-wing sentiment is growing, but so is the left-wing minority. The “problem,” in the government’s view, may no longer be 30 million strong, but it is more acute, and perhaps more vexing, than before.

(gun ownership has soared since the 2016 coup attempt)

To Turkey’s governing class, the military coup of their imagination is not a matter of defending against an armed force trying to take over the government. Rather, it is a night of free-for-all, in which politics is stripped down to its violent core, and a majority at the height of its powers can finally put down the enemy within: the haters, the doubters, the creatures of mythology.

“Turkey will not only reach its 2023 goals [the centennial of the Republic], it will also be rid of the representatives of this diseased politics,” he said in May, hinting that he might cut the left out of the political system entirely. If this should happen, politics would be an uneven contest between Islamist, pan-Turkic, and secularist hues of Turkish nationalism. Far off, in the back streets of the big cities and in the Kurdish provinces, in second-hand bookshops and hidden corners of the internet, there would be a progressive left, weathering out what is surely going to be a violent storm.

Freedom of religion is enshrined in Israeli law, and proselytizing is allowed as long as missionary activities are not directed at minors and do not involve economic coercion.

The Communications Ministry said it was investigating a “discrepancy” between the application for the license that was granted in March, which said the channel was focused on the Christian community, and its actual content, which appears to “target Jews and convince them that Jesus is the messiah.”

Simpson denied trying to convert Jews to Christianity. He said Jews who accept Jesus as the messiah can continue to practice their faith, a reference to Messianic Jews, popularly known as Jews for Jesus.

widely seen as a form of Christianity. All major Jewish denominations reject it, and Israel considers Messianic Jews to be converts to another faith

Simpson’s willingness to speak openly about conversion reflects the growing influence of evangelical Christians in both Israel and the United States. “They feel bulletproof to say these kinds of things and what their real agenda is,”

Daniel Hummel, the author of a book on evangelicals and Israel, says Christian Zionists have “more or less learned” that Messianic Judaism’s presence in the movement is “politically unwise.” “The issue always continues to simmer, but the precedent was set [in the 1970s] and grew stronger that any Christian organization wishing to work in Israel or be at all close to the center of political action in the [Christian Zionist movement] would need to publicly disavow at minimum coercive evangelization.”

Salahi and countless non-Western others have long known and written about torture at Guantánamo or Bagram or any of the many places where it occurred. But it only becomes a literary, notable, and prize-worthy truth when it flows from the pen of a foreign correspondent at a prestige publication like The New Yorker.

“If you say that you are angry,” Salahi tells the two white men, “it is understood as an emotion. If I say that I am angry, it is seen as a threat to national security.”

Salahi’s words underscore the truth Taub has not told: that writing an article about torture that does nothing to disrupt a worldview that has left brown men forever suspect is not getting anywhere at all.

PodFest Cairo is Egypt and Africa’s first podcasting conference, bringing podcasters and podcast listeners together to share experiences. Africa Podfest is a Kenyan, woman-led company which founded Africa Podcast Day (February 12) and whose primary objective is to cultivate the African podcasting community through networking and sharing resources. 

in Africa, podcasts are produced in many of the native languages, including Arabic, and thus reach audiences that are otherwise ignored by podcasters who reside outside of the Global South

globally, including in Africa, traditional radio is tethered to governments in terms of regulation and licensing and thus subject to various levels of censorship. On the other hand, podcasting is more rogue, with niche non-standard formats and topics. As a result, there is an exciting variety of podcasts, including emerging podcasts in true crime, wellness, history, and identity and culture. There is also a reciprocal relationship between the content podcasters are creating and what podcast listeners are interested in; meaning there is a focus on audience engagement. Buoyed by the growth in African podcasts that speak to the African experience, African podcast listenership has expanded.

Weak mobile and internet penetration, though increasing, stifles the ability of the industry to flourish

in Africa, where it’s estimated that there are at least 1500 languages, podcasts are produced in many languages

Aaisha Dadi Patel, a writer and journalist at the Wall Street Journal Africa bureau, says audiences are more likely to listen to the radio as opposed to undertaking the added burden of trying to find, download, and then listen to a podcast, not to mention the exorbitant cost for data

Just as the podcast medium’s presence is increasing in Africa, so too is research in the field. South African podcasters have seen their community grow and firms, like Edison Research, have taken notice by collecting data on the region, releasing their first report on South Africa in 2019. Scholarly research has also increased

Africa is the continent with the youngest population worldwide, with around 40 percent of the population aged 15 and under compared to the global average of 26 percent

Africa Podfest reports dating back to 2018 indicate that the types of podcasts released in Africa are consistently hyperlocal

Garabli grew up in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa. The city made headlines this year after residents organized mass demonstrations to protest increasing gentrification, which has taken on an ethnic dimension as Jewish buyers displace Palestinian families who can no longer afford the rent on the homes they’ve been living in for generations.

In Jaffa, dance lessons were a privilege that not everyone could afford, she noted. There was also a social imbalance to the classes: the teachers were Jewish Israelis who did not speak Arabic or understand local norms, whereas most of the students were Palestinian citizens.

According to Garabli, who comes from a traditional Muslim family that prays and fasts during the holy month of Ramadan, many among the Palestinian community in Jaffa do not approve of dancing as a profession. Dance is considered a temptation, and women moving their bodies in such a free way can “damage” their reputations. Moreover, given that the community is heavily focused on its survival, advocating for affordable housing, and mobilizing against gun violence and police brutality, many Palestinian residents view artistic activities as an indulgence, Garabli explained. This, she added, is why relatively few Palestinians attend cultural events like hers.