Music, The New York Times and the politics of a Palestinian state
An Israeli leaflet dropped on Lebanon in 2006 depicts Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a snake being charmed by the Syrian and Iranian presidents, and the Hamas leader Khaled Meshal. (Zena)
Belén Fernández, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2009
On 31 May and 1 June of this year, two articles by culture reporter Daniel J. Wakin appeared on the The New York Times website: “Minuets, Sonatas and Politics in the West Bank,” and “Amid West Bank’s Turmoil, the Pull of Strings.” It is clear before we even begin reading that we are going to be indebted to Wakin for providing us with a romantic filter through which to view an otherwise sobering subject, just as we might be indebted to someone for writing about the athletic pursuits of disabled persons or about clandestine wine tasting groups under the Taliban.
The heroine of the first article is 16-year-old Dalia Moukarker from Beit Jala near Bethlehem, whom Wakin describes as “one of a new generation of Palestinians who have been swept up in a rising tide of interest in Western classical music in the last several years here in the Palestinian territories, but especially the West Bank.” Wakin does not explain why Gaza has been behind the “rising tide,” although it may have something to do with the ban on importing musical instruments.
Three years of flute study have enabled Dalia to “dispatch … the courtly melodies and cascading runs of an 18th-century concerto with surprising self-assurance,” adding to “[t]he sounds of trills and arpeggios, Bach minuets and Beethoven sonatas [that] are rising up amid the economic malaise and restrictions of the Israeli occupation.” The bittersweet landscape is augmented with images of Dalia “sometimes retreating to a bathroom in her crowded apartment [to practice], sometimes skipping meals.” Wakin confirms that, “As with many endeavors in this part of the world, the pursuit of classical music is fraught with tensions and obstacles,” and goes on to explore one example:
15th anniversary of AMIA bombing to be observed Friday, barring interference by IranAir
Ubiquitous poster in Buenos Aires honoring AMIA bombing. (Photo by Linda Fernández)
Walking down Avenida Figueroa Alcorta in Buenos Aires the other day, I came across a succession of posters advertising “la penetración iraní en América latina” and featuring Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clasping hands. When I then came across the Iranian embassy and a monument in a park labeled “Plaza Irán,” as well, I became momentarily convinced that the posters might have a point.
Some confusion arose from the date on the monument, May 12, 1965, which placed its origins in an archaeological period of penetración estadounidense in Iran. Things slowly began to make more sense, however, as I continued walking and noted that the Chávez-Ahmadinejad posters were interspersed with posters featuring an unoccupied bed with white sheets and the proclamation: “85 ‘HASTA LUEGO’ CONVERTIDOS EN ‘HASTA SIEMPRE” [“85 goodbyes to be remembered forever”], which I first assumed was a tribute to Argentine swine flu fatalities.
It turned out that the 85 “Hasta luego” were in fact the victims of the 1994 attack on the AMIA, the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, which was blamed with intermittent force on Iran in accordance with the current geostrategic interests of the United States. The fifteenth anniversary of the attack was to be commemorated on Friday, July 17, one day prior to the actual anniversary; passersby were invited to pursue further information at www.85vidasmenos.amia.org.ar/, in which the “85 vidas menos” translates as “85 fewer lives.” Not explained on the posters was whether their designer could not think of a more suitable image to commemorate bombing victims, whether viewers were meant to infer that their own beds could be penetrated at any moment by Iranians, or why there were no commemorative websites for recent events in Gaza, such as 1300vidasmenos.
I returned home to find that my own bed was still unmade, although it was presumably not the fault of terrorists, and that the AMIA link consisted of a black page with suggestions in white as to the variety of sentiments that might have been expressed by companions of the 85 victims had they known the 85 would never be seen again. Suggestions include “I love you,” “I hate you,” and “You have a nice smile.” To one side of the written suggestions is a YouTube video with additional suggestions of hypothetical situations tragically thwarted by the bombing, such as “un beso apasionado que nunca llegó” [“a passionate kiss that never took place”], juxtaposed with the sound of attack. The question is raised of whether this sort of commemoration would not have been more appropriate in the context of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which occurred on Valentine’s Day.
PULSE Announcement
Friends,
PULSE is maintaining a different posting schedule in the coming months. While for the past seven months we have been daily posting both original material from our contributing editors as well as aggregating press picks, our focus for the remainder of the year, before we make a decision about migrating to a self-hosted CMS site, will be on original material and less frequent commentary, perhaps on a weekly basis.
As we have found — with many of our valued contributors completing books and doctoral theses — a website that maintains a regular daily posting schedule like this requires time and resources. While it costs little to run the platform itself, it does take time away from employment which sustains us. If you like what you see and might suggest funding options to be able to provide a more full-time service, we’d be interested in hearing from you.
Thanks for supporting PULSE, and we look forward to bringing you more great reading.
How to Write about Africa
Kenyan literary critic Binyavanga Wainaina offers some handy tips for all would-be saviours of Africa. (Also see my review of Mahmood Mamdani’s Saviors and Survivors where I touch on these conventions). (Thanks Rabeeah)
Yes, I feel totally African when I put on my loincloth.
Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.
Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.
In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.
A fanatical ultra-orthodox ‘welcome’, and, a hidden agenda for Jerusalem
Anne Barker, an Australian journalist with the ABC, was recently caught in an Hasidic mob’s hate in occupied Jerusalem, here with an audio testimony. So called Christian zionists might be interested to see how these fanatics, which the zionist entity apparently and not surprisingly fails to bring to heel as with the fanatic illegal settlers, brook no reasonable acceptance of any others who wish to do normal things on Saturdays. Rather, they demand that everyone else must conform to their narrow religious dogmas — or be repeatedly spat on and set upon by hundreds in these orthodox Hasidic Jewish mobs. See also some important observations from Dan Lieberman that follow about historic co-existence in the Holy City and the apartheid state’s hidden agenda for Jerusalem.
As a journalist I’ve covered more than my share of protests. Political protests in Canberra. Unions protesting for better conditions. Angry, loud protests against governments, or against perceived abuses of human rights.
I’ve been at violent rallies in East Timor. I’ve had rocks and metal darts thrown my way. I’ve come up against riot police.
But I have to admit no protest – indeed no story in my career – has distressed me in the way I was distressed at a protest in Jerusalem on Saturday involving several hundred ultra-Orthodox Jews.
John Mearsheimer on Israel National Radio
John Mearsheimer
John Mearsheimer, during his 2008 visit to Israel, interviewed on Arutz Sheva’s Israel National Radio show.
John does a great job arguing for his positions yet his extremist pro-settlement hosts seem determined to paint him as an anti-Semite. All Mearsheimer really argues is that he wants it to be possible to criticise Israel’s bad policies in the United States – it’s difficult to see why any sensible person could have a problem with this.
Toward the end, after they’ve ditched John, they even claim the next Holocaust will be in America and that it’s being brought about by a new sophisticated anti-Semitism, contained in Mearsheimers & Walt’s book The Israel Lobby, and this new anti-Semitism is the “most dangerous thing on the market today.”
Mearsheimer on Israel National Radio (48:31) | MP3
Germany: why did Marwa al-Sherbini die?
On 1 July, Marwa al-Sherbini, an Egyptian woman who wore the headscarf and was three months pregnant, was brutally murdered in a Dresden courtroom by a German man of Russian descent who declared ‘you have no right to live’. Liz Fekete of the Institute of Race Relations investigates the climate of tacitly sanctioned bigotry within which this murder happened.
Marwa al-Sherbini and husband Elwi Ali Okaz
Marwa al-Sherbini was stabbed eighteen times in the space of thirty seconds. It was a frenzied attack, clearly motivated by racism and Islamophobia. Yet the German state and media, have been in a state of denial. The press reported it as a neighbourhood dispute, with headlines such as ‘Murder over quarrel over swing’. Amidst widespread anger in Egypt, the press officer at the German embassy in Cairo declared the murder an isolated case and a ‘criminal act. It has nothing to do with persecution against Muslims’.
As the funeral of Marwa al-Sherbini took place in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria and attracted huge attention in the Middle East, the German public and media have woken up to the anger that the murder, and its apparent denial, was causing in the Muslim world.
Read the rest of this entry »
Conversations with History: Amira Hass
Harry Kreisler interview with the brilliant Amira Hass:
