Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova, a member of Shaffir’s party, raised the gauntlet March 2 by filing a sexual harassment complaint against Channel 20 and the show with the Council for Cable and Satellite TV. Svetlova claims that Segal and the members of the panel violated a clause in the law that defines sexual harassment as a degrading or derogatory comment made because of the subject’s gender or sexuality. It will be interesting to see how the council handles Svetlova’s complaint, especially when dealing with freedom of expression and satire.
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How a crude sex joke revived a partisan fight in Israel - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the ... - 0 views
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Israel media television TV satire news sexism gender politics analysis opinion
shared by Ed Webb on 05 Mar 16
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Segal is refusing to apologize. He will simply admit that it was a stupid and tasteless joke. During a bellicose interview with Army Radio on March 3, Segal shifted the debate to the political arena, turning it into an argument between right and left. He said, among other things, that the left-wing media was being hypocritical. He has no reason to apologize, he claimed, just as the popular satirical TV show "Eretz Nehederet" ("A Wonderful Land") was not asked to apologize for the sexual connotations of their jokes about right-wing ministers such as Ayelet Shaked (HaBayit HaYehudi) and Tzipi Hotoveli (Likud). When asked about why he was doing his satire on a news show, especially on one devoted to Jewish heritage, Segal responded that he does not make a firm distinction between current events, lighter news and humor. Toward the end of his interview, he said, “Personally, I feel bad that she was hurt. If only she would have left it as a personal insult, instead of bringing in sexual harassment. … But this is an attempt to silence Channel 20.”
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shared by Ed Webb on 06 Mar 16
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The Dashed Hopes of the Tunisian Revolution: Complicity between Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda - 0 views
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Tunisia ennahda politics analysis opinion media civil_society economy corruption
shared by Ed Webb on 06 Mar 16
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While Tunisians are often told that theirs is the only revolution that remains from the "Arab Spring," they know full well that its goals have not been achieved.
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Béji Caïd Essebsi has always rejected a democratic process within the party he founded in 2012--the party that carried him to the highest office. At the end of the party's congress held in Sousse on 9 and 10 January, the party appointed Caïd Essebsi's son to succeed him as party leader
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Béji Caïd Essebsi has always rejected a democratic process within the party he founded in 2012--the party that carried him to the highest office. At the end of the party's congress held in Sousse on 9 and 10 January, the party appointed Caïd Essebsi's son to succeed him as party leader,
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after co-opting the leaders of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali's Democratic Constitutional Rally (DCR) into his party, Caïd Essebi revived all the methods of the previous regime
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after co-opting the leaders of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali's Democratic Constitutional Rally (DCR) into his party, Caïd Essebi revived all the methods of the previous regime
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Not content with confusing past and present, in the name of national unity, the old statesman chose to make Ennahda's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, the guest of honor at the congress. Yet, Nidaa Tounes was founded precisely in opposition to the Islamist party, and Nidaa Tounes voters have not forgotten the insults heaped upon their rivals during the 2014 election campaign
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Not content with confusing past and present, in the name of national unity, the old statesman chose to make Ennahda's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, the guest of honor at the congress. Yet, Nidaa Tounes was founded precisely in opposition to the Islamist party, and Nidaa Tounes voters have not forgotten the insults heaped upon their rivals during the 2014 election campaign.
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The politicians who have taken turns governing the country all seem to have forgotten that it was economic demands that sparked the initial uprising
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Beji Caïd Essebsi came up with a law meant to promote economic reconciliation. Ostensibly, the idea was to favor investments by restoring confidence. In fact, it was meant to suspend the prosecution of business executives for fraudulent activities under the Ben Ali regime
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Politically, the country is witnessing a massive return to conservatism. The two biggest parties--Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda--have commandeered the multi-party system, which was accepted after the revolution. This takeover recreates the pre-revolutionary political landscape, except that Ennahda is no longer underground. And this conservatism goes hand in hand with measures at odds with article 2 of the Constitution, which guarantees individual freedom. New laws against homosexuality and the use of cannabis allow police to humiliate youngsters before jailing them.
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eo-authoritarianism, societal conservatism, and a general moralizing mood all seem much to the liking of Ennahda, which is now a full-fledged partner of the party that outstripped it in the 2014 elections
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While the president's party has become the main instrument for “recycling” politicians ousted in 2011, the phenomenon has become so banal that the press, and particularly television, is happy to do their share. And a number of high-ranking figures from the old regime are regularly invited to debate on television. In the name of freedom of speech, they give sober accounts of their participation in the governing bodies, speak of Ben Ali's timid personality, and claim that he loved his people so much that he can scarcely be called a dictator
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civil society is showing signs of fatigue
Iran Parliament to Debate Death Penalty for Bloggers - ReadWriteWeb - 1 views
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shared by Ed Webb on 20 Apr 19
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In Libya, traditional and social media are used to fuel war | Arab Tyrant Manual - 0 views
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shared by Ed Webb on 20 Apr 19
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Every Libyan news outlet has obvious and sometimes unabashed biases – Libya24 for example, has given itself a reputation for taking a pro-Gaddafi stance, while others such as al-Nabaa are seen as overly sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. The extent to which they allow debate and independent comment varies. As dozens of civilians have been killed since the start of Haftar’s offensive on Tripoli last week, a staunchly pro-Haftar news outlet, Libya Alhadath, broadcasts a steady stream of songs glorifying Haftar and his offensive, in a way reminiscent of Libya’s solitary state TV channel for most of the Gaddafi era.
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most Libyan news outlets and TV channels have dramatically changed their stances over the past number of years as alliances have changed and new actors have emerged in the country
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Libyans don’t trust local media.
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foreign media has been equally tarnished, through the partisanship of Arab outlets which are predominantly Gulf-based, such as Aljazeera, Alarabiya and Sky News Arabia
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the lack of professionalism and dishonesty of TV channels has driven many to social media for news updates.
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Well-intentioned citizen journalists enthusiastically spread rumours and misreported or exaggerated clashes, quickly creating a reputation for dishonesty that stuck to the sector as a whole.
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Systematic posting of false information on social media accounts also became a favoured tactic of militias on all sides of the conflicts has become a trademark tactic
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People living in the same area are often exposed to completely different realities depending on the media they consume.
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A phenomenon new to Libya in this round of conflict is the large-scale attempts by gulf monarchies to fill social media with blatant propaganda in favour of their chosen sides
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Haftar has long been backed by Saudi and the UAE, with the latter repeatedly breaching a United Nations arms embargo to provide his forces with attack aircrafts, armoured vehicles, helicopters and other ammunition
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Khadeja Ramali, a Libyan data scientist, who has examined and mapped tweets mentioning Haftar since the offensive was launched. Her research has clearly shown a huge pro-Haftar push from accounts based in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE.
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Qatar also joined with the Libya propaganda campaign, a few days late, to broadcast the UAE’s complicity in Haftar’s crimes
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shared by Ed Webb on 18 Feb 19
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Turkey's media landscape shaken up by major foreign players | Middle East Eye - 0 views
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Turkey media Russia UK Britain Germany Azerbaijan KSA Saudi China
shared by Ed Webb on 18 Feb 19
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At a time when press freedoms are regularly described as under threat and investment in the shaky Turkish economy is no sure bet, foreign media companies could be expected to avoid the country. Instead the opposite is true. A swathe of often state-backed foreign media outlets have begun expanding their output in Turkey, with Chinese, German, Russian and Azeri companies establishing radio stations, websites, online portals and even a news channel in recent years.
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Alper Gormus, a prominent Turkish media critic, said that the Turkish public depended on outlets such as Russia's Sputnik Turkiye, the UK's BBC Turkce or Deutsche Well Turkce because trust in government-controlled media was extremely low.
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“The conditions are very similar to post-coup Turkey in the 1980s in the sense that the majority of the media is supporting the government,"
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"Ironically, government supporters themselves don’t read pro-government newspapers. Best-selling newspapers lost their circulation after they were seized by government-friendly businesspeople."
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Ismail Caglar, an analyst at Ankara-based conservative think tank SETA, says Turkey’s rising profile in the region attracts foreign interest. Foreign companies make media investments in Turkey to propagate their point of view and take part in domestic political debates, he said
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A report by US government-funded think tank the Rand Corporation said last year that Sputnik Turkiye and other Russian media outlets were trying to undermine NATO by fomenting mutual suspicion between Turkey and its Western allies, enlisting Ankara’s support and impeding its opposition to Russian actions in the Middle East.
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Sputnik Turkiye published an article on 2 December 2015 with the headline “Russia: Erdogan and His Family Directly Involved in ISIS’s Illegal Oil Shipment in Syria”. Turkey later banned Sputnik Turkiye’s website and revoked its bureau chief’s work permit and visa, but Sputnik Turkiye radio continued to broadcast. Following the rapprochement between two countries in 2016, Sputnik Turkiye’s website began to freely operate again. Its Twitter account has roughly 600,000 followers.
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"As Turks look for fresh perspectives and alternate sources of information in a tightly controlled media environment, Sputnik Turkiye draws readers in through its shockingly open coverage on domestic issues,"
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Other outlets, such as Germany's Deutsche Welle Turkce, have also taken a generally critical line. Prominent journalist Nevsin Mengu, whose newscasts on YouTube are watched by thousands of Turks, has recently joined its ranks.
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BBC Turkce, which has been broadcasting since 1939, is known for an editorial style perceived to be critical of the current Turkish government.
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“There is this sense that stories edging on activist journalism have been regularly published because they think it will generate traffic,”
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BBC Turkce has more than 3 million followers on Twitter.
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Caglar, the SETA analyst who is also preparing a report on the subject, criticised BBC Turkce for being opaque about its staffing and operational information. “They didn’t even want to acknowledge with how many people they have in their staff.”
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Ali Duran Topuz, the editor-in-chief of independent news portal Gazete Duvar, told MEE that the current media structure in Turkey made it easier for foreign-owned outlets to operate. “It could be also financially profitable for the investors. Fox, for example, is mildly criticising the government and it posts profit. Because of large numbers of unemployed journalists, the labour cost is also very low,"
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shared by Ed Webb on 21 Feb 19
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Dinner with the enemy: How Egyptian drama El-Daif sparked a row over Islam and the hija... - 0 views
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Egypt film media religion Islam censorship hijab
shared by Ed Webb on 21 Feb 19
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El-Daif (The Guest), a new drama written by journalist Ibrahim Eissa and directed by Khalid El-Bagoury that has become both a box office and a critical hit in Egypt, while at the same time attracting controversy.
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a heated discussion about religious discourse between the younger and older man. The suitor, who appears to be highly influenced by Islamic fundamentalists, keeps engaging in arguments with Yahia, which are mostly won by the wit of the latter.
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El-Daif is set mainly in the house of Yahia, who in many ways echoes the character of writer Eissa, a journalist and intellectual known for his outspoken writings on religion.
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Eissa is no stranger to controversy. Before El-Daif, he caused a stir with his first screenplay, for Mawlana (Our Grand Sheikh), about modern Muslim televangelists as well as the relationship between religion and the state.
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"El-Daif has very well depicted taboos never discussed before in Egyptian cinema, showing how Islam is misinterpreted as a religion that forces a woman to cover herself from head to toe," said Nagwa Ali, 40, an accountant, as she was leaving a Cairo cinema.
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other critics say the film is long-winded and static, although praising it for tackling taboo subjects otherwise ignored in Egyptian cinema
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In the film, Yahia faces blasphemy charges due to his views about his interpretation of Islam and its teachings that have appeared in his books and articles. His life is at risk, which leads the government to assign policemen to protect him and his family against extremists. Ironically, the fierce debates and controversy portrayed in El-Daif are mirrored in real-life arguments around the film, leading to calls for it to be banned.
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it also angered Islamic scholars, including Khalid El-Gindi, a prominent preacher and member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs. "Six religious institutions including Al-Azhar [the highest Islamic authority in Egypt and the region] have stipulated that hijab is a heavenly order. Nevertheless, Eissa comes with his film to simply try to convince people otherwise," El-Gindi said angrily in a telephone interview with TV host Sayed Ali broadcast on Egyptian Al-Hadath Al-Youm satellite channel.
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El Gindi also upbraided the Egyptian censorship authority which, although it took a few months to approve the film, surprisingly did not cut any scenes.
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El-Daif avoids the stereotypical image of a religious fanatic, introducing a handsome light-bearded young man dressed in an elegant outfit who comes from a well-bred family and who has studied engineering in the USA. He has managed to influence the intellectual's daughter to the extent that she agrees to wear the hijab despite her liberal upbringing. Many women in Egypt wear the hijab for social rather than religious reasons, submitting to social and family pressures while also seeking to avoid sexual harassment. However, the attire does not protect women from unwanted attention and abuse, as women who have spoken to MEE confirm.
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Egyptian feminists and liberal thinkers have their own explanation of the hijab as being often associated with the rise of the conservative Saudi Wahhabi doctrine that emerged in Egyptian society in the mid-1970s.
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In the first six weeks of screening, El Daif took around seven million Egyptian pounds (about $400,000) and remained in third place at the Egyptian box office. It is still showing at most Egyptian cinemas. "Deals are underway to screen the film in a number of Arab and European countries," said an official at the film's production company, iProduction.
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'Diamond Dust,' a poisonous pleasure for Egyptian moviegoers - 0 views
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Tearing down pillars of modern Egyptian history can be lethal, as author and screenwriter Ahmed Mourad and director Marwan Hamed recently discovered with “Diamond Dust,” a political thriller dealing with the Free Officers Movement and the coup that dethroned King Farouk on July 23, 1952
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“Diamond Dust” the book, published six months before the 2011 revolution, became a best-seller that year, but was not a source of controversy. Its adaptation for the stage in 2016 premiered without event. This August, however, when the film adaptation by Hamed, known for the daring drama “The Yacoubian Building” (2006), arrived in Egyptian cinemas, it created a stir.
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“Diamond Dust” is the first Egyptian movie to describe the 1952 change in government as a coup, rather than a revolution, as the state officially recognizes the event. In fact, the film is unapologetically critical of the whole movement. Egyptian cinematic works have criticized the politics of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the leaders of the Free Officers, and of his successors' regimes, but the Free Officers Movement itself had apparently been off-limits.
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“Many viewers saw this vision as biased, as it addressed only Abdel Nasser’s flaws and neglected his virtues, while glorifying Mohammad Naguib with no reliable proof,” Shennawi told Al-Monitor. “Egyptian cinema suffered a lot in the era of Abdel Nasser, who exploited cinema to promote the ideas of the July 23 revolution and gradually root out any opposing ideas. Egyptian cinema started breaking free from those restrictions with the film ‘Al-Karnak’ [1975], which criticized Abdel Nasser’s era, and ‘Ahl al-Qima’ [People on the Top, 1981], against [President Anwar] Sadat’s Egypt.”
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many Nasserists and supporters of the 1952 revolution have harshly criticized the film. Last month, Magdy Eltayeb, film critic for the newspaper Al-Qahira, posted on his personal Facebook page, “Diamond dust is poisonous. … [The film] adopted a stance against the 1952 revolution. … It showed excessive sympathy with the Jews to the extent that this has undermined this work’s aesthetic value as a film noir.”
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A hit, “Diamond Dust” has so far earned 27.6 million Egyptian pounds ($1.5 million) at the box office.
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shared by Ed Webb on 02 Nov 19
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Egypt's Ministry of Religious Endowments boosts its imams' media skills - 0 views
www.al-monitor.com/...ing-media-skills-of-imams.html
Egypt Islam religion politics awqaf Al-Azhar azhar sermons fatwas media rhetoric training
shared by Ed Webb on 02 Nov 19
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Will a one-week training enable Egypt’s imams to sound more reassuring, more emphatic and appear more camera-friendly on television? The Ministry of Religious Endowments certainly hopes so.
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Courses include teaching the imams how to speak in talk shows, telephone interviews and TV debates. It also teaches them body language for interviews on TV as well as writing sound bites for various types of televised interviews.
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the course aims to develop the media skills of the imams so that they can “dominate the religious discourse,” counter extremist views expressed by the Salafists and efficiently debunk false interpretations on religion in TV programs.
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In 2017, the parliamentary Committee on Religious Affairs approved a draft law that banned issuing fatwas through the media unless prior authorization had been obtained from Al-Azhar, the country’s top religious institution. The draft still has to go through the General Assembly to become law.
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The Ministry of Religious Endowments — known locally as Awqaf — objected that the right of authorizations should rest with Al-Azhar, saying that this bypasses the ministry, which should be the appropriate authority to grant permissions. The ministry argued that as all of its imams are graduates of Al-Azhar, they were fully equipped to give this permission.
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Parliament has shelved the draft law until an agreement is reached between Al-Azhar and Awqaf, which has so far failed to materialize.
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According to Hosni Hassan, media professor at Helwan University, the main purpose of the trainings is to ensure that the Friday sermons — delivered by imams of Awqaf — are efficient tools to spread the Egyptian state’s version of Islam and to persuade the public.
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The state — represented by the Ministry of Religious Endowments — is paying close attention to Friday sermons and religious lessons in mosques so they can become tools of improving social and religious behavior
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“The rate of extremist fatwas has declined since 2013 after the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood, after the group was designated as a terrorist organization and its sheikhs were arrested,”
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The ministry announced in 2014 that only preachers licensed by the ministry were allowed to deliver the Friday sermons or teach religious classes in mosques.The ministry organizes a number of exams every year for those wishing to obtain such licenses. In 2015, a new law stipulated that unlicensed preachers who deliver the Friday sermons or teach religious courses in mosques shall be sentenced to imprisonment from three months to a year or pay a fine of 20,000-50,000 pounds ($1,238-3,097).
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The Ministry of Religious Endowments also issued in 2016 a decision that the imams in the mosques deliver a unified Friday sermon.
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shared by Ed Webb on 20 May 20
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'The End': Anti-normalisation, Islamofuturism and the erasure of Palestine - Middle Eas... - 0 views
www.middleeastmonitor.com/m-and-the-erasure-of-palestine
media TV television Ramadan Egypt Palestine
shared by Ed Webb on 20 May 20
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The End (El-Nehaya), the Egyptian dystopian science fiction thriller series, has captured the imagination of audiences throughout the Arab world this Ramadan TV season. It is ranked the third most popular series this season, and has generated a lot of discussion in social media about its futuristic technology and debt to Hollywood science fiction and dystopian films.The End was also lumped into the debate over normalisation in this year’s Ramadanic TV programming and was attacked by the Israeli Foreign Ministry for its anti-normalisation stance. The End is premised on the fictional idea that the Arab world would become a superpower and that Israel would be destroyed less than a century into its establishment — that is, in less than thirty years. In its place, Al-Quds conglomerate will be created and will be under total Arab control.
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Some contrasted the daring futuristic scenario with the utter impotence of the Arab world today, to offer any viable solution to the Palestinian struggle for freedom and the ongoing Nakba. Others thought it was enough that the series managed to provoke and infuriate Israel.
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The series does not only substitute one form of domination in Al-Quds conglomerate for another. More importantly, the Palestinians are completely erased from Al-Quds conglomerate itself.
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Ironically, the liquidation of Israel in The End did not bring an end to the oppression in Palestine or the Arab world in general. Around 2090, Al-Quds conglomerate became the main site for a robocide, the genocide in which humans eliminated all robots after one of them terminated its owner. Consequently, laws were passed to ban the production of robots and the development of AI. The series merely substitutes one form of domination and apartheid for another.After the elimination of the majority of the robots, the all-powerful Energy Co. was established in Al-Quds conglomerate. The corporation employs algorithmic governance, using surveillance technology, facial recognition software and military drones to track and control citizens. Its security forces regularly attack and brutalise citizens. One form of oppression is gone, but Palestine and the Arab world do not live in liberty yet.
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The most bewildering aspect about this triumphalist history of the liberation of Al-Quds conglomerate in the dystopian world of the series, is the absence of any trace of the Palestinians or Palestinian culture. The obverse side of the obliteration of Israel seems to be the erasure of the Palestinians.
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The people who live in Al-Quds conglomerate speak Egyptian colloquial Arabic, and no one seems to be taking pride in their Arabic cultural heritage or Palestinian identity.
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The other noticeable feature about the representation of life in Al-Quds conglomerate is its patriarchal gender politics. Women and men follow a rigid division of labour, even professional women who have careers. Radwa, the protagonist’s wife, works as the principal (agricultural) engineer at Green Co., the company responsible for providing food supplies to Al-Quds conglomerate, but she has to perform the domestic chores in the house.
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the dystopian world of the series is deeply steeped in Islamic culture and traditions. If Afrofuturism, for example, is “rooted in and unapologetically celebrate[s] the uniqueness and innovation of black culture,” this series is clearly grounded in Islamofuturism.
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The series illuminates and raises questions about these significant matters that have affected humanity in the last few decades. These issues include not only the polarisation of wealth and the cupola created in the global apartheid, but also neoliberal algorithmic governance, the naturalisation of AI (as both human surrogates and sex bots), the rise of megalopolis cities as corporations, renewable energy and ecological sustainability.
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it is not clear where the series positions itself on the question of the state and the military.
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the series itself is produced by Synergy, a mega-entertainment production house that has monopolised the Egyptian media sector and has ties to Egyptian intelligence.
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shared by Ed Webb on 11 Dec 20
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Jeffrey Goldberg Doesn't Speak for the Jews - 0 views
jewishcurrents.org/berg-doesnt-speak-for-the-jews
USA US media journalist Jews Jewishness Zionism opinion analysis
shared by Ed Webb on 11 Dec 20
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For some members of the tribe, Sanders’ commitment to social justice, his family’s experience with the Holocaust, his distinctive old-Brooklyn accent, his childhood memories of stickball and Ebbets Field, and even his visits to a kibbutz are all insufficient proofs of Jewishness. Why doesn’t he belong to a synagogue? Why did he marry a Catholic? Why is he so critical of the mainstream consensus on Israel? Why isn’t he a Jew the way Goldberg wants him to be a Jew?
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Goldberg continues to edit one of the most important magazines in the country, and is a fixture of its star-studded annual Aspen Ideas Festival. As such, he is easily one of the most powerful arbiters of elite opinion, and representative of the establishment that has led the country to the brink of ruin.
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If you’re a Jew who matters inside the Beltway, there’s a decent chance you hang out with Goldberg.
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He gets to decide, for instance, that Peter Beinart (J Street-aligned liberal Zionists) and David Frum (respectable #NeverTrump neoconservatives) should represent the poles of acceptable Jewish discourse. Meanwhile, the emerging generation of American Jews who supported Sanders, and who in many cases feel totally alienated from Zionism, are shut out. Goldberg’s project is to define the center, both for politics in general and for Jews specifically. And as that center buckles and shifts leftward, it’s worth reevaluating the macher who for so long has set the terms of debate.
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The story of Jeffrey Goldberg is one of hypermasculinity, nationalism, and careerism, a steady ascension facilitated by the right friendships and the right positions at the right times. Along the way he has drawn many harsh critics, none of whom have successfully held him back. But his disproportionate influence on the conversation and his vigorous policing of Jewish communal politics merit a closer look.
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After enduring antisemitic bullying as a suburban child, he fell in love with Israel on his first visit at age 13.
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At 20, he dropped out of Penn and made aliyah. As an Israel Defense Force volunteer during the First Intifada, he worked as a guard (or “prisoner counselor,” as he later insisted) at the overcrowded Ketziot prison camp, which was condemned by human rights groups at the time for violating the Geneva Conventions. There, he witnessed a fellow guard beating a Palestinian prisoner for talking back. In Goldberg’s account, he tried to stop his friend but then helped cover the incident up (“‘He fell,’ I lied”).
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The odd human rights violation, pointless imperial war, or botched hire notwithstanding, no one can deny that he has done well for himself, and it seems likely he’ll be shaping the national conversation for years to come. But in the Jewish world, Goldberg wields perhaps even more influence than outside of it, and by patrolling its borders he defines a narrow center of opinion antithetical to dissent.
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If there is any justice, Goldberg’s career will be remembered primarily for a long, award-winning reported piece from Iraq that ran in The New Yorker in March 2002, at the height of the post-9/11 jingoistic fervor, which informed that magazine’s readership that Saddam Hussein had both an active WMD program and ties to Al-Qaeda. Goldberg endorsed George W. Bush’s catastrophic war of choice in an article for Slate later that year, in which he wrote, “I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.” He was hardly the only high-profile journalist to help launder what turned out to be false intelligence into the mainstream media, but whereas Judith Miller was pushed out by the New York Times in 2005 and has since become persona non grata in liberal elite circles, Goldberg’s status and influence have only grown.
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palpable distaste for Diaspora Jewry features frequently in Goldberg’s writing
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a conservative minority of us has accepted a faustian bargain with Trump’s white supremacist base in order to support the right-wing coalition in Israel
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Goldberg is not part of the ascendant right. Rather, he is perhaps the single most representative figure of the liberal Zionist establishment in all of media, voicing the anxieties of a rapidly collapsing order. And with at least the passive approval of an elite network, Goldberg has spent years passing harsh, biblical judgment on both Jews and gentiles who dare to weigh in on issues related to Israel, from authors to organizations to U.S. presidents.
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Goldberg started out as a police reporter but achieved greater renown as a national security correspondent, with dispatches from Gaza, Cairo, and Iraqi Kurdistan in the months before and after 9/11. This period is crucial to understanding Goldberg’s influence—he had already become one of the most widely read reporters on the Middle East at precisely the moment when the Washington establishment became single-mindedly focused on terrorist and extremist threats from the region. This gave him an outsized role in shaping liberal elite discourse, with outsized consequences.
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it fit in perfectly with Goldberg’s longstanding project to deny the very obvious influence of pro-Israel advocates over U.S. politics.
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Obama successfully pandered to Goldberg, who noted, “speaking in a kind of code Jews readily understand, Obama also made sure to mention that he was fond of the writer Leon Uris, the author of [the 1958 Zionist pulp bestseller] Exodus.”
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In 2009, Goldberg referred to “the rather circumscribed universe of anti-Zionists-with-Jewish parents”, neatly ostracizing Jews he disagrees with from the tribe
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For Goldberg and the tribe he leads, a reactionary gentile who unapologetically supports Israel is preferable to a progressive Jew who expresses hesitation, discomfort, or outrage.
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an epically sleazy hit job
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Goldberg has spent most of his adult life in affluent Northwest DC, so it would be absurd for him to directly question the legitimacy of American Jews, but he has had no such reservations about European Jews, and especially the largest such community, the Jews of France. In 2015, he wrote a long reported essay in The Atlantic entitled, “Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?”, accompanied by a 20-minute video conversation with Leon Wieseltier and James Bennet, in which he concluded, “I am predisposed to believe that there is no great future for the Jews in Europe, because evidence to support this belief is accumulating so quickly.”
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Goldberg represents what, at least until recently, was an influential set of attitudes among mainstream Jewish liberals. But his approach seems exhausted, unable to respond to the scale of the disaster Jewish liberals now confront, from the ultra-orthodox, pro-settlement coalition firmly in charge of Israel to White House-approved antisemitism in the U.S.
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superficially curious and open-minded about big ideas, yet forever bound within a narrow establishment consensus averse to channeling any kind of populist anger
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to whatever extent my own Jewish identity has been stunted, I blame Jews like Goldberg. Of course I don’t blame him personally or exclusively, but he’s representative of, and has worked hard to reinforce, a set of attitudes that have made institutional Judaism and Jewish communal identity seem unattractive or unattainable. I’m certain I’m not alone in feeling this way. Membership in non-Orthodox synagogues is in steady decline, as is American Jews’ attachment to Israel, especially among millennials. Jewishness as defined by Goldberg is not our community’s future; it isn’t even our present
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Goldberg embodies the worst contradictions of American Zionism: on the one hand, the phony machismo, the insistence that Israel is the bedrock of a meaningful Jewish identity, and the morally bankrupt defense of Israel’s routine violence against its Arab subjects; and on the other hand, the smug, comfortable, coddled daily existence of the Beltway elite
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It’s taken me well into my thirties to grasp that there is a Jewishness to be located between the synagogue-attending, aggressively Zionist establishment that Goldberg presents to the most powerful people on Earth as definitive, and the superficial bagels-and-Seinfeld gloss on basic American whiteness that often seems like the only alternative. Jewishness can be righteous, confrontational, progressive, maybe even cool. It doesn’t have to be defined as a religion, a nationality, or a vaguely embarrassing set of quirks; it can be a way of asserting one’s humanity and moral fervor as America, Israel, and the world descend into a crude parody of fascism.
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NEIL MACKAY'S BIG READ: 'Scotland didn't have empire done to it, Scotland did empire to... - 0 views
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shared by Ed Webb on 04 May 22
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Glasgow’s Dr Campbell Price is British TV’s go-to guy when it comes to ancient Egypt. But the study is riddled with racism and he wants to drag the world of mummies into the 21st century … and he doesn’t care if you call him ‘woke’.
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Price is at the forefront of the fight to ‘decolonise’ the study of Ancient Egypt and drag it into the 21st century. He wants the discipline to confront its history of racism and empire, and he’s not shy about apportioning a fair amount of blame on Scotland and its own role in Britain’s colonial adventures.
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the study of Ancient Egypt was founded by colonialists from Britain and France in the early 1800s and it still hasn’t shaken off the baggage of the past. There’s a lingering sense that Egyptians are considered unable or incapable of studying their own history without the assistance of white, western academics who are really the people best suited to the discipline. The whiff of racism and a “white saviour narrative” still hangs in the air, he feels.
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“There’s this conceit,” he says, “that archaeologists - gung-ho western, bearded, white, elite, cis-gendered, ostensibly heterosexual - go to Egypt and ‘discover’ Ancient Egypt because the people, ordinary Egyptians, are too stupid.” He adds: “Ancient Egypt was never ‘lost’.”
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The “standard colonial narrative”, he says, portrays Egypt as “brilliant - a proto-British empire”. Egyptologists used terms like ‘empire’ and ‘viceroy’ to describe the government of the Pharaohs. Students were taught that “the Ancient Egyptians had a ‘Viceroy of Nubia’ - where the hell is the term ‘viceroy’ coming from?” Price asks. “It’s from the British experience of empire”. This explains why many British academics put Egypt on a pedestal as the greatest of all ancient civilisations.
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in the imperial age when Britons were travelling to India they would go through the Suez Canal. “You might take a few days and go and visit Egypt. So it’s colonial high noon,”
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British archaeologist Howard Carter led the dig that opened Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 - an event which turbo-charged interest in Egyptology and had a huge cultural impact on world, even leading to the creation of movies like The Mummy starring Boris Karloff in 1932. “Some early exhibitions quite literally feel like the spoils of empire,” says Price. “In some cases, it’s literally the spoils - like the Rosetta Stone which was seized from the French.”
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Price is chair of the board of trustees with the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) - an organisation, he says, which is “doing a lot of work of self-criticism, self-reflection and self-critique”. The EES, which was established in 1882 at the height of empire and just prior to the British invasion, is now “attempting to unpack colonialism in Egypt”.
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“the British and French cooked up a system” called ‘finds-division’ or ‘partage’. “Notionally,” he says, “the best 50% of things that come out of the ground go to the National Collection in Cairo, but then up to 50% of what is thought to be ‘surplus to requirements’ or duplicate can leave with archaeologists. So that’s how Manchester has 18,000 objects from Egypt and Sudan - mostly through finds-division.
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British egyptology is “more open” to change, Price says than most other western nations with a history of the discipline. “We’re on the winning side of the argument. The tide has turned. You cannot pretend you can enjoy your secluded cocktail terrace in the middle of Cairo and not expect to hear critical evaluation of colonial experiences.”
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“some people will tell you, some well known Egyptologists, that you should burn copies of ‘A Thousand Miles Up the Nile’ because it contains racist material. But the society is actually working on a critical re-edition, where there’s a new introduction to put the book in context. I firmly believe, and the trustees firmly believe, you can’t just bury the past. You’ve got to try and face it and constructively critique it. I’m not arguing for cancelling anyone. I’m not arguing for trying to ignore it. I’m saying ‘let’s have a conversation’.”
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Unlike many nations which had art looted by western powers, Egypt “isn’t particularly interested” in the repatriation debate except when it comes to “a few very exceptional objects like Nefertiti’s Bust and the Rosetta Stone”. Price adds: “Repatriation can sometimes be a bit of an echo chamber for western [people]. It doesn’t necessarily relate always to the concerns of indigenous groups, or people who live in places like Egypt.”
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There’s a funny attitude, where Scots kind of distance themselves and say, ‘oh well, you know, we were colonised first. The English came in, and we’re the victims’. Based on my work on the history of colonialism in Egypt, Scottish people are more than well-represented. They are disproportionately represented in the cogs of the imperial project with Scottish diplomats, engineers and soldiers … There’s a sense that empire was ‘done to’ Scotland, when in fact Scotland ‘did’ empire to other people … We put this stuff on the English and say it was the English … Scots appear surprisingly commonly in the imperial machinery in Egypt.
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Price has little time for the use of the word ‘woke’ as an insult, as to him it simply means trying to do the right thing professionally. He adds that he feels “fortunate” that Manchester Museum, where he works, is also having the same “conversations” about confronting the legacy of the past.
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It was legal between the 1880s and 1970s, but it was at a time when mostly the Egyptian government was controlled by the British and French, and the Egyptian government had to repay the massive debt of building the Suez Canal.
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Most of the workers who built the pyramids weren’t slaves - they were paid for their efforts, he points out. The slave stories of the Bible, though, lead to “another form of colonialism - Orientalism”, which depicts the rulers of the east as either exotic and mysterious or brutal and cruel. The notion of “the Oriental despot comes from the Bible: Pharaoh as a despot … The way in the Bible, that the pharaoh is cast as a baddie, reverberates”.
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Price is also incensed by the current pseudo-science trend for conspiracy theories claiming that aliens built the pyramids - the type of unfounded material aired on over-the-top documentaries like ‘Ancient Aliens’. “It’s racist,” he says, “very racist.” He notes that there’s a hashtag on Twitter called ‘CancelAncientAliens’. The wild alien theory is “based on the assumption that ancient people were too stupid to have [built the pyramids] themselves and so it had to be some outside force. So to be clear in the interests of global parity and justice: the ancient Egyptians were an African people who built absolutely stunning monuments. Get over it.”
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There is no simple answer, or history - and I think we insult museum audiences if we assume they want an overly simplified story. ‘Ancient Egypt’ is undoubtedly one of the most popular parts of a museum. By asking questions about how colonialism formed our idea of what ‘Ancient Egypt’ was, not just how it got to be in cities like Glasgow and Manchester, I think we can begin to address questions of global inequality.
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“Egypt more than Greece, Rome or other parts of the world, has existed as both ‘Oriental other’ and ‘western ancestor’ - that is why the colonial dialogue is so intense - and Egyptology is, in a sense, the exemplary ‘colonial discipline’, just as the British Consul Lord Cromer [consul-general in Egypt from 1883] said Egypt should be the exemplary colony.
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shared by Ed Webb on 05 May 22
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Elon Musk: Good for MENA Twitter? - by Marc Lynch - 0 views
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shared by Ed Webb on 05 May 22
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The MENA online ecosystem is not a good place for freedoms or civil debate right now, to say the least. The Digital Authoritarianism collection I edited last year makes for grim reading. Many MENA states have set in place legal frameworks criminalizing online dissent (and a lot more than just dissent). The pervasive use of Israeli-designed digital surveillance tools has turbocharged the ability of autocratic regimes to spy on their citizens (or on anyone else). Online discourse is plagued by armies of bots and trolls. And the suppression of Palestinian activist content shows how social media platforms have proven an uneven playing field when it comes to content moderation. Apocalyptic takes on what Musk might do really do need to grapple with how terrible things already are.
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Musk explained his approach to free speech in a recent tweet: “By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.” That may sound good to some people in an American context, I suppose. But in the MENA, it would play directly into the hands of authoritarian regimes which have spent years constructing elaborate legal and normative frameworks to criminalize online dissent. Those laws don’t just ban violent hate speech, but range from political dissent, criticism of royal family members or the military, human rights monitoring, even dancing on TikTok. Following these cybercrime laws as a guide to content moderation would entail censoring a wide range of legitimate political speech - the opposite, presumably, of what an avowed free speech advocate would want to see.
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If new Twitter policies drawn from the right wing understanding of the American online arena were applied consistently in the MENA context, it could potentially ease the suppression of Palestinian voices. I mean, that wouldn’t be the intention and it probably wouldn’t, but it’s worth thinking about.
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if he really means requiring users to authenticate their identity with some form of legal ID, that would mean a world of trouble for users in highly repressive MENA states. Many activists and dissidents face extreme consequences should their identities be discovered. So do many LGBTQ, atheist, or other users from marginalized or even criminalized communities
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The bot armies really are annoying, and if Musk could figure out a way to remove them then the MENA region would benefit greatly. Disinformation, harrassment and abuse (especially of women), polluting hashtags to make conversation impossible, obnoxious trolling, intimidation… all of these have contributed to making MENA Twitter at worst almost unusable, and at best a highly distorted reflection of reality. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran are among the worst offenders among states, but the problem is endemic
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Sure, if Musk actually does end up taking over and running Twitter (big ifs, still), he probably wouldn’t actually have those positive effects, at least not intentionally. But it’s still tempting to read some real significance into his intriguing little public spat with Waleed bin Talal, where he asked “What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?”
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Jadaliyya - 0 views
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shared by Ed Webb on 08 Jan 24
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At the heart of the regime’s responses to these pressures is the “National Dialogue.” The Dialogue, which kicked off last May, is a vaguely conceived multi-track forum in which a host of carefully selected political figures and experts convene periodically to discuss public policy reforms. The political leadership has marketed this initiative to its international and domestic detractors as a testament to its readiness to engage opponents and alternative viewpoints. In reality, the Dialogue is the regime’s attempt at gaslighting critics
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the spectacle (as opposed to the outcome) of deliberation is the clear driver of this initiative
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by early 2023, the regime had decimated the resources it now needed to erect a convincing façade of participatory politics to mitigate the concerns of its international partners and to absorb popular discontent
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The very existence of the Dialogue underscores the extent to which Sisi has managed to lock himself in a corner after spending much of the past decade destroying all forms of managed dissent and limited pluralism, once a staple of the previous authoritarian order.
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the July 2013 coup proceeded on the ruins of the “civilian punching bag” model of 2012-13. The latter describes a tacit arrangement in which the military was poised to pursue its interests from behind a civilian interlocutor (or, a “punching bag”), the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party—an arrangement that ended in utter failure. By 2013, therefore, the military’s appetite for working in collaboration with civilian parties had run its course.
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the reinvention of Mubarak-style dominant party rule was not an appealing option for Sisi in 2014.
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“the New Youth Project” or NYP for short. The NYP describes a host of formal and informal initiatives and programs that, collectively, seek to cultivate a new cadre of youth politicians and public servants socialized around military-centric nationalism
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a broader effort the political leadership is undertaking to inject into public institutions a broad-based ideological commitment to the military-dominated political order
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a pervading discourse senior officials and pro-regime figures have propagated in the past few years under the banner of “the battle of consciousness” (معركة الوعي). Behind this rather eerie term is a narrative claiming that Egypt’s most pressing national security concern is the spread of misinformation and ideational attacks against society’s so-called core values. The implication of course is that any expression of dissent, criticism of government performance, or questioning of state-provided information is a suspected attempt to foment instability and undermine Egypt’s social peace. The solution, the story goes, is countering such “false consciousness” by promoting public awareness of these threats and by enlisting more patriots in the “battle of consciousness.”
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the Sisi regime has been pursuing a broad-scoped project to ideologically militarize civilian spheres and to inculcate all sectors of Egyptian society with ideas rationalizing blind support for the military-sponsored regime
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the politicians who have been coached to impress the crowd by their confident demeanor, their captivating TED Talk public speaking style, and their superficial use of catchy phrases that borrow (albeit superficially) from the language of scientific research. Most importantly, they have been socialized to accept the supremacy of the military such that they would never question the men in uniform, as was the case with the contentious youth activists who often denigrated officers in public forums and protests between 2011 and 2013
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a consistent strategy Sisi has adopted whenever frustrated with the ineffectiveness or the bureaucratic resistance of state institutions: the creation of parallel structures to bypass these institutions altogether. Thus, today one finds a host of bodies and offices Sisi formed over the years and that seemingly replicate the roles of existing government ministries. Examples include the Supreme Council for Investment, the Supreme Council for Combatting Terrorism, the Supreme Council for the Automotive Industry, and, currently under study, the Supreme Council for Education. Whereas the office of the minister of health still exists officially, a presidential advisor for health affairs (a former minister of health himself), appointed by Sisi in 2020, has taken a visible role in explaining and defending state health policies, just like a minister of health would.
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Mustaqbal Watan Party (MWP). MWP was once the embodiment of Sisi’s dream of a new generation of pro-military youth politicians who could lead Egypt’s post-2013 political scene. After several wake-up calls, the regime was forced to restructure the party so that “Sisi’s youth” could step aside to accommodate a larger role for the older and more seasoned networks and affiliates of the Mubarak regime—the same actors the president once sought to sideline. These transformations underscore the inherent limitations of the NYP and the idea that Sisi, despite all the power and resources he possessed, had to forge compromises with the once-dreaded traditional political classes, even if at the expense of his own coveted project.
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observers were aware that MWP was among the political parties the intelligence establishment created and funded to promote the Sisi presidency. Nevertheless, Sisi kept an official distance from the party, avoiding any insinuation that Mustaqbal Watan represents the wielders of power in any formal sense. This policy was partly shaped by Sisi’s aforementioned skepticism of political parties and his interest in engineering the political field from a distance
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there was more to Sisi’s apprehension toward the Mubarakists than appeasing the January 25thers or deflecting criticism. On a more fundamental level, Sisi was keeping a watchful eye on presidential hopeful Ahmed Shafik, former Air Force general and Mubarak’s last prime minister, who ran for president in 2012 and lost to Morsi in a tight runoff. Even though Shafik opted (rather grudgingly) not to run for president in 2014 after it became clear Sisi was the state’s chosen candidate and trying to challenge him was pointless, his supporters did not relent.
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The idea of former Mubarakists banding together outside the state’s purview[3] was (and remains) an alarming prospect for Sisi for multiple reasons. They are proficient in mobilizing supporters in elections and have a long experience in the business of setting up vote-buying machines. More than any other civilian player, they can work collaboratively with security agencies. Most significantly, if organized sufficiently, they have what it takes to offer Sisi’s international allies and domestic constituents the same deal he offers them: a stable authoritarian project accommodating the various geostrategic, political, and economic imperatives the Sisi regime claims to protect
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In early 2021, over half of MWP’s Central Secretariat members had ties to the NDP (compared to a quarter in 2016), and so did two thirds of its provincial leaders. This reality stood in stark contrast to the state of affairs inside Mustaqbal Watan during its founding years, when a younger group of political outsiders were running the show. Interestingly, by 2021, only two of Mustaqbal Watan’s 2014 founding signatories enjoyed posts in the party’s Central Secretariat, which now featured a completely different cadre of politicians.
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lawmakers voted down by a wide margin the president’s highly coveted civil service bill, among the reforms reportedly “encouraged” by the International Monetary Fund at the time
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in the fall of 2019, the president decided to put an end to this disarray, ordering a freeze on parliament’s operations, nearly a year before the next legislative elections were due.
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The lead-up to the 2018 vote confirmed in many ways Sisi’s intolerance of any political competition, even to the most limited degree. He went to great lengths to eliminate all presidential contenders by any means possible: imprisonment, intimidation, violence, and dubious legal measures. Left to his own devices, Sisi would have run unchallenged. Pressured by Washington, however, he ultimately agreed to let one of his own political cheerleaders, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, run against him in what proved to be an unconvincing (even if lighthearted) episode of political theater, with Sisi winning 97 percent of the votes.
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Derek Penslar, Harvard Jewish studies professor controversy: This typifies what's broke... - 0 views
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shared by Ed Webb on 26 Jan 24
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There is no set of credentials that can prevent a person who is earnestly trying to do work in this space from getting sucked into the politicization and, yes, weaponization of antisemitism
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when fact and understanding and nuance of the issue are all considered secondary, what gets sacrificed isn’t just an individual’s career or standing or time, but comprehension of the actual issue that is antisemitism.