Author: Ramzy Baroud

Writing about and reporting the Middle East is not an easy task, especially during these years of turmoil and upheaval. While physical maps remain largely intact, the geopolitical map of the region is in constant influx. Following and reporting about these constant changes without a deep and compassionate understanding of the region will achieve little but predictable and lackluster content that offers nothing original, but recycled old ideas and stereotypes.

From my humble experience in the region, I share these "DOS" and "don’Ts" on how the Middle East should be approached in writing and reporting.

Question Terminology

To start with, the term Middle East is itself highly questionable. It is arbitrary, and can only be understood within proximity to some other entity, Europe, which colonial endeavors imposed such classifications on the rest of the word. Colonial Europe was the center of the globe and everything else was measured in physical and political distance from the dominating continent.

Western interests in the region never waned. In fact, following US-led wars on Iraq (1990-91), a decade-long blockade, followed by a massive war and invasion (2003), the "Middle East" is back at the center of neocolonial activities, colossal western economic interests, strategic and political maneuvering.

Continue reading “‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’: Things I Learned Writing about the Middle East”

"This is not who we are. This is not how we operate," were the words of President Barack Obama commenting on the grisly findings of a long-awaited congressional report on the use of torture by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

But what if this is exactly who we are?

The report is difficult to read, not just because it is awfully long – hundreds of pages of a summary of a nearly 6,000-page investigation, including 38,000 citations based on the review of six million pages – but because it was most disturbing. Parts of it resemble the horror of an extremely dark Hollywood movie. But it was all real: from rectal feeding (as in putting hummus in detainee’s rectums), to rape, to torturing prisoners to death, to blinding prisoners, to forcing them to stand on broken feet, for days. It is beyond ghastly.

Also, it was all useless. Worse, it strongly believed that the torture dungeons, many of which were outsourced to other countries, including 25 in Europe, including the democracy and human rights-touting Britain, have achieved little but fabricated information. What else can an innocent man say when he has nothing to say; but lie, hoping that maybe such lies would save his life?

Of course, aging accused war criminals like former Vice President, Dick Cheney were quick to dismiss the report and its detailed brutal interrogation tactics as "full of crap."

Continue reading “Whitewashing CIA Torture: ‘We Are [Not So] Awesome’ After All”

I recall, with particular awkwardness, my first talk at a socialist student gathering at the University of Washington in Seattle nearly two decades ago. When I tried to offer an authentic view of the situation in Palestine from the viewpoint of a refugee, my hosts were hardly impressed.

However, the head of the student group knew how to move the crowd. He spoke of Palestinian and Israeli proletariat classes, which, according to him were ultimately fighting against the same enemy, the neoliberal capitalist elites shamelessly subduing the working classes in both Palestine and Israel. But what the audience loved the most was his sweeping statements about the working classes of Algeria, Congo and South America that were somehow all magically tied back to Palestine.

Inconvenient Narrative

My comments that the Histadrut (General Organization of Workers in the Land of Israel) was actually a racially-constructed trade-union enterprise – didn’t go well with the crowd. Since its establishment in 1920, the Histadrut advocated Jewish labor rights and did its utmost to exclude their supposed Arab comrades. A powerful institution, it eventually grew to become the hub of Labour Zionism, responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, laborers and all, and the establishment of Israel over the ruins of Palestine.

Continue reading “Nothing About Us Without Us: The Token Palestinian and Authentic Narrative”

Netanyahu’s war-turned-genocide in Gaza has backfired badly –his strategy has helped resurrect Hamas, the very movement he tried desperately to crush

Aside from being a major military setback, Israel’s war on Gaza has also disoriented the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like never before. Since the announcement of a ceasefire on 26 August, his statements appear erratic and particularly uncertain, an expected outcome of the Gaza war.

Since his first term as a prime minister (1996-99), Netanyahu has showed particular savviness at fashioning political and military events to neatly suit his declared policies. He fabricated imminent threats that were neither imminent nor threats, for example, Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Later, he took on Iran.

He created too many conditions and laid numerous obstacles for peace settlements to ever be realized. The late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, labored for years to meet Israel’s conditions, and failed. Abbas has taken the same futile road. But Netanyahu’s conditions are specifically designed to be unattainable.

Continue reading “Losing the Plot: Israel’s Premier To Face New Gaza Reality”

When the bodies of three Israeli settlers – Aftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19 – were found on June 30 near Hebron in the southern West Bank, Israel went into a state of mourning and a wave of sympathy flowed in from around the world. The three had disappeared 18 days earlier in circumstances that remain unclear.

The entire episode, particularly after its grim ending, seemed to traumatize Israelis into ignoring harsh truths about the settlers and the militarization of their society. Amid a portrayal of the three as hapless youths, although one was a 19-year-old soldier, commentators have failed to provide badly needed context to the events. Few, if any, assigned the blame where it was most deserved – on expansionist policies which have sown hatred and bloodshed.

Before the discovery of the bodies, the real face of Netanyahu’s notoriously right-wing government was well-known. Few held Illusions about how "peaceful" an occupation could be if run by figures such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon. But because "children" – the term used by Netanyahu himself – were involved, even critics didn’t expect an exercise in political point-scoring.

There was sympathy elicited for the missing settlers case, but it quickly vanished in the face of an Israeli response (in the West Bank, Jerusalem and later in a full-scale war on Gaza) largely seen in the crucible of world opinion as disproportionate and cruel. Rather than being related to the tragic death of three youths, this response obviously reflected Netanyahu’s grand political calculations.

As mobs of Israeli Jews went out on an ethnic lynching spree in Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank that some likened to a "pogrom," occupation soldiers conducted a massive arrest campaign of hundreds of Palestinians, mostly Hamas members and supporters.

Continue reading “Ravaging Gaza: The War Netanyahu Cannot Possibly Win”

Palestinians are yet to achieve national unity despite the elation over the ‘national unity government’ now in operation in Ramallah.

One has to be clear in the distinction between a Hamas-Fatah political arrangement necessitated by regional and international circumstances, and Palestinian unity. What has been agreed upon in the Shati’ (Beach) refugee camp in April, which lead to the formation of a transitional government in the West Bank in June, has little to do with Palestinian unity. The latter is a much more comprehensive and indispensable notion. Without it, the Palestinian people risk losing more than a unified political platform, but their ability to identify with a common set of national aspirations wherever they are in the world.

Thus, a hurried agreement in Gaza that left many points of contention to be discussed and settled by various subcommittees with uncertain chances of succeeding is hardly the prerequisite to true and lasting national unity.

Most media pundits are mixing up between Palestinian national unity and the ‘unity’ government of 14 ministers which were sworn-in in Ramallah. Most of the supposed technocrats are recognized for their overt or subtle loyalty to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. The transitional government is tasked with administering areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The PA is allowed to operate in the West Bank under the watchful eye of the Israeli army. In return for allowing the PA a space of operation, PA forces are involved in ‘security coordination’ aimed at securing illegal Jewish settlements, reigning in Palestinian resistance and offering a line of defense for the Israeli army, which in reality is the one and only ruler of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

It is unclear as of yet how the security coordination will affect the way Israel controls Gaza, which thus far has been secured through a hermetic siege intensified since the Hamas election victory in 2006 and the brief Hamas-Fatah civil war in 2007.

Continue reading “What Palestinian Unity Is All About – The Real Task Ahead”