Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.--Albert Einstein
We are witnessing right now what BBC World is calling the worst attack on Gaza in the history of the conflict in terms of casualties, not even a week after the end of a 6 month truce.
UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk has this to say:
Against this background, it is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as 'holocaust'...
...and has even gone so far as to use the word "genocide."
In fact, I can't begin to put this in words as well as he, Sabbahblog and others are doing, but I do want to contribute my two gersh/cents.
I don't dispute Israel's right to defend its citizens. This was part of my dilemma over the 2006 Lebanon War, because there was an immediate threat to innocent Israeli lives, and it was legitimately hard to distinguish purely military targets. The population density in the Gaza Strip makes it even harder to distinguish military targets, which is precisely why, after the publicity beating Israel got after the 2006 Lebanon War, I should think they would want to be more careful about civilian casualties. One Israeli was killed, so the only appropriate response was to kill 350 Gazans and injure over 1000 more? Come on, Ms. Livni!
If "the people of Gaza do not deserve to suffer" for what Hamas does, as PM Olmert said in today's press conference, where is the proof of that? It's not suffering to be under a strangling blockade of even basic food and medical supplies since June 2007? It's not suffering to never know when Israeli planes, tanks or troops will attack?
Ehud Barak said the IDF only "... attacked only targets that are part of the Hamas organizations [and will] make an effort in order to avoid any unnecessary inconveniences to the people of Gaza." Is that why they bombed a university? It's not an "unnecessary inconvenience" to allow no food, water or electricity over the border for weeks at a time?
And what, exactly, is all of this supposed to accomplish? Does Israel really think that cutting off aid and basic necessities and raining down bombs on the Gaza Strip will make Palestinians more sympathetic to Israel? Do they really think that by killing hundreds of Gazans, this will make them stop retaliating on Israeli citizens? This is the very epitomy of what Albert Einstein was talking about when he defined stupidity!
Though I have to give Israel kudos for their timing. What with the Christmas season, the global economic woes, and the US administration in transition, hardly anyone is paying serious attention to what's going on over here. This much, at least, shows definite cunning!
I try, in this blog, to be eloquent, to say things that are well considered and meaningful, but I just feel so frustrated and impotent today. I did take some food donations to Books@Cafe today to be sent to Gaza. Apparently, only Jordanians are being allowed into the Gaza Strip to deliver aid. I guess Israel is worried about what the UN and Red Crescent might have to say about the conditions of people there. Certainly Israel displayed their unhappiness with the comments of Richard Falk which I mentioned above when they denied him entry to the Gaza Strip.
There was some talk on BBC today about the lessons UIsrael has learned from the 2006 Lebanon War, and I can think of a couple they failed to mention. Apparently Israel learned that there's nothing the international community is ready or able to do to actually stop Israel's actions. I feel, too, like they've taken a page from George W. Bush, who legitimized the Pre-Emptive Strike Doctrine that, for lack of a better word, completely fucked up Iraq, and now seems to be allowing Israel to do the same to the Gaza Strip.
I'm no Juan Cole or Richard Falk; I know that the words I put here won't reach many people or make much difference, especially as disjointed and incoherent as this rant is, but I feel compelled to publish something, anything to express my outrage and frustration.
It was the description of the difference between American airports and public transportation, and that of the rest of the world, that first drew me into this article by recent Nobel Prize winner Thomas Friedman. My father likes to compare the Swiss train stations, which apologized profusely when a train was just 2 minutes behind schedule, with the traffic reports we listened to after we got back from Switzerland that habitually indicated 45 minute delays on the commuter trains into the US capital! Just this week I was fuming to someone about how luggage carts are free(or at most require a 25 cent refundable deposit) in every airport I've ever been to EXCEPT in the States, where they cost $3 and, in my experience, are often broken. (I had one in Philadelphia towards the end of my 24 hour trip home from Peace Corps that would only turn left, but there was no way I was paying another $3 for another cart!)
However, it should come as no surprise that the winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics had very cogent things to say about the future of the American economy.
Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.
It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.
America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.
John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.
Earthrise is the name given to this photograph of the earth taken by astronaut William Anders on Christmas Eve 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission. Wilderness photographer Galen Rowell called it "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken." Now an editor for the journal Nature reenvisions this photograph as an enviornmental call to action for another generation in this article.
But it is solar energy, indirectly or directly, that will dominate the picture, simply because of its abundance. The Sun delivers more energy to the Earth in an hour than humanity uses in a year.
THE LIGHTS are out in Gaza again and few are paying attention. The 1.5 million Palestinians living in the densely populated strip are being collectively punished once more, while Israel attempts to strangle the Hamas government. The UN agency that feeds hundreds of thousands of people is unable to get supplies in because the border is closed, and a plea from UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has been ignored.Ignoring the Plight in Gaza
by Yousef Munayyer in the Boston Globe
This article was posted to Facebook by my friend Jennifer, whom I met when she was teaching me Arabic in the Peace Corps, whose wedding to a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer I attended in Amman, in his village of Rajaf near Petra, and in Kansas City, Missouri (the only one other than his family to attend all three). She worked on the Obama campaign (though she was instructed to tell voters she was Spanish or Italian, not Arab), changed her Facebook name to Jennifer "Hussein" Walsh in protest of the anti-Muslim slurs hurled at Obama, and said of this article, "Somebody is writing about this." Too often, for those of us who are concerned about the situation in Gaza, it seems that no one does write about this.
Like Mr. Munayyer, I wonder why Israel believes that continuing the blockade of Gaza will change anything within Gaza or any of the Palestinian Territories.
After Hamas was democratically elected, sanctions followed and the grip began to tighten on the Gaza Strip. Fuel supplies ran short, malnutrition rose, and Gaza's only power plant could not be relied on to provide electricity. Store shelves were often empty of food, and many who were already impoverished were now struggling even more.Reading this article reminded me of the truly terrible situation I saw on the BBC and meant to write about during the week of Eid. The second week in December was the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar, the Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha), commemorating Ibrahim's (Abraham's) willingness to submit to the will of God and sacrifice his first-born son Ishmael (Isaac in Judeo-Christian tradition). It is traditionally a time for family, feasting and sacrificing one's own sheep to God, in imitation of the ram which the angel told Ibrahim at the last minute would be an acceptable substitute for Ishmael.
And what, if anything, has been gained by all this? If the objective was to diminish public support for the Hamas government, it is hardly working.
Some public-opinion polling of Palestinians has consistently showed that Hamas remains as popular today as it was before it was elected. Some polls also indicate that Hamas garners its highest approval ratings when the collective measures against the Gaza Strip have been most punitive.
But aside from the fact that the Israeli policy of collective punishment, and world complacency to it, is counterproductive, there is a greater problem with this policy: It is morally reprehensible.
In 1949, when Soviets had surrounded Berlin and were ready to choke a war-torn population into submission, the Western world refused to stand silent. In the boldest move in the history of the Cold War, the United States spearheaded an airlift of food and supplies to Berlin, flying in the face of Soviet oppression, confident the Soviets would not fire upon humanitarian aid.
Where, one has to wonder, is that moral courage now?
I am not asking President Bush or President-elect Obama to declare "Ana Ghazawi," the Palestinian equivalent of "Ich bin ein Berliner." Rather, the United States should strongly state to Israel that this failed policy is only hurting innocent civilians and is making Israel and the United States look terrible in the process. While Hamas must moderate its positions if it is to be considered a legitimate political player, this policy has failed to change Hamas.
The collective punishment in Gaza has left a deep and troubling scar on America's image in the world and has hindered our ability to maneuver politically in the region. If we are truly living in a new era, and change has come, let us hope it will come for the innocent civilians in Gaza too.
Yousef Munayyer is a policy analyst for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Merely finding the food to feed one's family in Gaza has been a challenge for many years, as the border is frequently closed, and so deliveries are sporadic and uncertain. From time to time, the UN, Red Cross and other international bodies step in to demand that Israel allow food and basic necessities into Gaza, but it is not consistent. There are also, reportedly, networks of tunnels allowing the smuggling of food and necessities into Gaza. In the days leading up to Eid al-Adha, in fact, live sheep were being smuggled through those tunnels for the holiday festivities.
However, this year there was a new challenge for Gazans. Israel blocked banks from transporting bills and coins into the Gaza Strip in the days leading up to Eid. On the last Thursday before Eid, banks and ATMs were forced to close, because they didn't have the bills to pay the paychecks that were to be issued that day. Banks were then closed for the whole next week for the holiday. This meant that people not only didn't have the money to buy sheep for sacrifice, but that they didn't even have the means to purchase even basic food items for 10 days.
The Gaza Strip is in serious danger of a complete economic collapse into a barter economy, but one in which there isn't even anything to barter for!
Yes, Hamas has supported and probably still supports so-called terrorist ideology and actions, but why is that? When a people under military blockade have no vote, no voice, no hope, no food, no money, and not even anything to barter with, what other choice do they have?
Maybe President-elect Obama will never say it, but I will: "Ana Ghazawiya!"
Emily put me on to the fabulous commentary excerpted here, by Najlaa A. Al-Nashi, with Noah Baker Merrill, of Direct Aid Iraq:
You may have heard the news that an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at the American president, but as an Iraqi I’d like to share with you a few details about the journalist, and why he did that.
Muntather’s actions have, for these days, united Sunnis, Shiites, and Christians. It united Iraqis as Iraqis. And it only took a few seconds. Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders have publicly asked that Muntather not be referred to using his tribal affiliation (Muntather al-Zaidi), because they believe his tribal affiliation now encompasses all the tribes of Iraq: They’ve asked for him to be referred to as “Muntather Al-Iraqi” (Muntather the Iraqi). At the same time, the tribal leaders have said that they hope it is now clear that they have only one enemy — the occupation of Iraq.
The Iraqi response shows clearly that Muntather’s actions have triggered a deep release in Iraqi society. It gives an indication to the outside world how much so many Iraqis oppose the occupation and the ongoing presence of foreign troops in their country, but have been without a voice that cut through the walls of silence and the filtered mainstream media.
It is important to be clear that this action by a single man does not arise from his role as a journalist, or from some specific incident or time in his life. It comes from an Iraqi man who, like all of his people, has suffered greatly from occupation, from the actions of mercenaries like those employed by Blackwater Worldwide, from the torture of Iraqis by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, and from the sectarian violence that the occupation has cultivated, fueled, and allowed to thrive. Muntather himself was kidnapped a few months ago, though thankfully he was released alive.
Unfortunately, Direct Aid Iraq is reporting that he was tortured in the care of Iraqi police, a practice common under the Saddam Regime, and unfortunately not much discouraged by the Americans, Jordanians, Saudis and others who trained those police. It reminds me of what my roommate said when he heard about the incident: "I wonder if they'll kill his whole family for this." I'm happy to see that the shoe-throwing has not fueled the sectarian violence, and that the Americans didn't cart poor Muntather off to Guantanamo for the insult. Nonetheless, it is a vivid example of how ludicrous it is to think that the United States would be able to bring democracy and freedom of speech and expression to Iraq by the means which the Bush Administration has chosen.
I wanted him to be President. I hoped someone would see his potential as a Vice President, criss-crossing the world solving problems as he did for the Clinton Administration, but with more weight. When that didn't happen, I held out hope for Secretary of State, even though I figured the position was probably promised to Senator Clinton in the still-secret meeting with Senator Obama that marked the end of her campaign.
He's been US Ambassador to the UN. The man negotiated hostage releases from North Korea, Cuba, Sudan and Saddam Hussein himself. He brokered a ceasefire in Sudan that, while short-lived, was the most successful such deal to date. Three times, he's been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. On the other hand,
In 2006, Forbes credited Richardson's reforms in naming Albuquerque, New Mexico the best city in the U.S. for business and careers. The Cato Institute, meanwhile, has consistently rated Richardson as one of the most fiscally responsible Democratic governors in the nation.
--Wikipedia
Perhaps Secretary of Commerce is not a position unsuited to his talents. I only wish he'd been able to returned to the world stage, because I see in Governor Bill Richardson the statesmanship and global vision that I admired in President Bill Clinton. I thought that a Vice President or Secretary of State Richardson could help restore what is left of the American image after 8 years of the neo-cons.
Still, who knows what the future holds for Secretary of Commerce Richardson?
Here are a couple interesting blog entries by friends about blogging in the Arab world: from kinziblogs with some interesting comments by the very Jordanians effected, and about a Saudi blogger whose neighbors can't see what he writes.
I feel somewhat protected by being an American in Jordan, which depends heavily on American funds to run its government and its economy, and is therefore loathe to offend the American public. However, rest assured, it has crossed my mind more than once that blogging in this part of the world is not without risk.
I filter my writing carefully anyway. I know that friends, family and potential employers all have access to my blogs, as well as the friends, family and current or potential employers of those whom I mention in my blog. I definitely don't want to offend those people, who are important to me, nor jeapordize their personal or business relationships. I also have a definite agenda to help Westerners see this region in a more sympathetic, positive light.
All of this, however, is about my own personal concerns. As a US American, as a humanist, and as a writer, I find government control of information appalling.
The following anonymous comment (that sounds an awful lot like it came from my sister!) was left on my blog entry "New Teachers Needed":
As a student (victim, survivor?) of the American school system and a current cubicle jockey, I must ask, what world are the children not prepared for? I am numbered and accounted for at every turn. Recently I was sent to the principal’s office (DMV) for not having my hall pass (work order for my car) signed. Never mind that I fixed the problem promptly. I have a job where I write- and I am expected to be empathetic and caring, within the proscribed limits. I must hold the position for a year before I am allowed to move up, no matter how fast my learning curve is. I am also struggling- as I did in elementary, middle, and high school, to simplify my responses to customer queries in order to cater to the least common denominator. I have been placed on a “Career Path” by my supervisor, who is currently working to get me more exposure to the same department on another site so that my year-end evaluation (grades) will be higher and stack up better against my peers. There are two main cliques that lunch together, and a few of us floaters that wander between groups. How is this different than school?
Yes, you're right, public schools definitely prepare us for the scenario you describe. But the "Shift Happens" video I posted before, or the TED speeches by Sir Ken Robinson and Ray Kurzweil all suggest that, while this model still works at T. Rowe Price, Merril Lynch and Ford, they won't sustain us too far into the future.
But wait a minute! It's not working for Merril Lynch and Ford, is it? And I don't think it's the way things are working in the most successful segments of Google, Zappos and other new companies that are taking the Twenty-First century by storm. Some of the newest success stories are a matter of wikinomics or built on the open-source model of Linux and OpenOffice.org.
I think, in fact, that you've gotten the point exactly. Public education, as it emerged out of the Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, has been designed to train and prepare students for the kind of corporate culture that has produced the cubicle jockey. In fact, however, this model is becoming obsolete, and while it may work for our generation, I believe Sir Ken Robinson when he says that it will not be relevant for today's first graders.
So how about a Thanksgiving toast: Let’s give thanks for the courage of these magnificent women, and to those readers who had the faith to send checks to an illiterate rape victim in a remote Pakistani village.
People are always telling me how brave I am to do what I do, traipsing about the world, volunteering here, there and everywhere....
But THIS is courage!
It was a cold, dark, wet and miserable Sunday afternoon. I was in my car, driving my 12-year-old daughter and her friend back from a birthday party. I was tired and fed up from being in the car.
"Mummy, mummy," trilled a voice from the back. "I want to phone the pirates."
My daughter had heard me repeatedly trying to get through to the Somali pirates on board the Sirius Star.
They usually picked up the phone but put it down again when I said I was from the BBC. My obsession with getting through to them had reached the point that I had even saved their number on my mobile phone.
"Mummy, mummy, please can I phone the pirates for you?"
"No."
"Pleeeeez."
By this time, with rain battering my windscreen and cars jamming the road, I was at the end of my tether.
"OK", I said, tossing the phone into the back of the car.
"They are under P for pirates."
"Hello. Please can I talk to the pirates," said my daughter in her obviously childish voice.
I could hear someone replying and a bizarre conversation ensued which eventually ended when my daughter collapsed in giggles.
This was a breakthrough. Dialogue had been established.
I guess it's hard to establish contact when you represent the Power Couple of the US and Britain that intervenes half-heartedly in Africa only when intervention sends the right message.
Don't get me wrong. I applaud this reporter for her tenacity, for her determination to get the point of view of the pirates themselves. This is reporting at its most responsible, the kind of reporting I was calling for recently. But it's exactly what she was able to report in doing so that makes my point:
A pirate, who called himself Daybad, spoke in Somali, calmly and confidently. He said Somalis were left with no choice but to take to the high seas.
"We've had no government for 18 years. We have no life. Our last resource is the sea, and foreign trawlers are plundering our fish."
Once upon a time, the United States of America and Great Britain declared that they were not going to stand idly by and watch Somalia fall into ruin. And they continue to warn that the situation in Somalia is fostering anger and radical Islamism and that it is a serious threat in the "War On Terror." Yadda yadda yadda. It sounds great on the airwaves and on the campaign trail. When it comes down to it, though, the US and the UK are completely unwilling to put their resources where their mouths are.
I understand that resources are limited, and now more limited than ever with their Iraqi follies and the repurcussions of Americans' and Britains' unwillingness to live within their means. I also know all too well that, even when we are willing to put our resources where our mouths are, we are not always effective. (Just ask me about a bus station in the southern Madaba governorate of Jordan.) It's just frustrating, when you're on this side of the pond or the Channel, to listen to the talk and know that, not only is nothing going to be done, but that the world's most powerful forces are going to continue doing the selfish, damaging, infuriating things that they have always done, the things that have contributed to the problems that they claim to want to fix.
Is today's education teaching our children to live in their world?
Leaving my job as a second grade teacher at the Modern American School here in Amman, Jordan, has made me rethink a conversation we frequently had in Peace Corps with Jackie and Lynn, who were retired elementary school teachers, and had been students in the American system fifty years ago. They would frequently say that Jordan's education system is about where America's was 50 years ago, and it would take time to catch up. I would say that the Modern American School may be where the American system was 40 years ago, but I keep thinking back to a video I saw on YouTube some time ago:
We can't afford to be stuck in an educational philosophy that is 40 years old. We can't even afford to be stuck in today's educational philosophy.
I don't know what the answer is. That's the whole point. None of us knows what the answer is, what our new teaching model needs to look like. But I know that it shouldn't look like this:
My math class was the hardest to teach, not only because I don't do math the way most people do math, but also because it was a class of extremes. I had one student who needed me to do every problem with her, because she couldn't remember how to do them from one question to the next. I also had about five students who finished their workbook pages in five minutes, finished four or five additional double-sided worksheets, and still had twenty minutes left in the class period, day after day. My mother suggested what seemed to me like a brilliant solution, which I proposed to my supervisor: Elementary school math books are designed to be more or less self-explanatory to students who are competent readers. Couldn't I just put my best students together at one table and allow them to teach themselves at their own pace? It was essentially what those students had been asking to be allowed to do for weeks.
Now, I know that my supervisor was thinking of the third grade teachers when she answered my question. The third grade teachers who would have those students next year, and have to fit them back into the officially sanctioned little boxes. I am sympathetic to my supervisor's answer, but I am shocked nonetheless by it. She said:
"Absolutely not! We can't have students thinking that they can learn by themselves!"
The parents of my students are being told and believe that they are getting the best possible education for their children. What their children are learning, however, is to work within a social system that will be completely irrelevant by the time they finish college. I'm not sure how to teach for that. I think it probably looks something more like the way I taught for nerd camp. What I know is that it's not the way I was being asked to teach the second grade.
I don't know much about the campaign that is being waged against Rashid Khalidi. I don't remember much of what I read by Rashid Khalidi in graduate school. Unfortunately, I worked so many hours to pay my bills that I had to choose between learning Arabic or reading carefully for my so-called "content classes," and chose the former (but that's another rant for another day). What I do know is that my friend Chris brought this video to my attention while I'm unemployed and have the time to watch it, and I think every student and politician should be listening to what Rashid Khalidi (and presumably the other presenters at this conference) have to say about the state of the Fifth Column.
We had this discussion all the time at Indiana University. With some valuable exceptions, academics have become so turned inward that they don't know how to engage with the public, how to make use of the new media revolution to get out their valuable, informed opinions. Academia and a free press are supposed to be working together to illuminate what government forgets or attempts to cover up. Western liberal democracies tout academic freedom and press freedom as hallmarks of what makes Western liberal democracy great and worth exporting to the developing world. If we can't guarantee those freedoms at home, what business do we have imposing our particular variety of liberal democracy on Iraq, Afghanistan, DR Congo, North Korea, Iran, or anywhere else? If we can't keep the press honest, if we can't keep the debate clean, if we resort to Swiftboat-style personal vendettas, and if we can't give academics the freedom and objectivity that they deserve, how can we claim to be a bastion of liberal democracy?
Because I can tell you with absolute certainty that the rest of the world is watching. I can say this with such certainty because I'm now out in the rest of the world. I'm interacting not only with Jordanians, but with Germans, Filipinas, Mexicans, Canadians ... people from all over the world. I can tell you that they know more about American politics than the majority of Americans know about the politics of any other country in the world, even more than most Americans know about their own politics. Furthermore, I tell you that this is no new phenomenon. I've been out in this world for a decade listening to Europeans, Arabs, Aussies, Kiwis, South and East Asians, Africans and South Americans give detailed, accurate arguments about American foreign AND domestic policy.
They're listening, they're watching, and they are most certainly judging us. If you ask me, they're doing a very good job of it. People here know that while the administration and the media are touting full-voice their support of the occupation of Iraq, the majority of Americans are against it. People out in the world see that American policy is addressing the exact same nuclear issues by making nice with North Korea, but not with Iran or Syria. People here know that the European Union's economic stimulus package announced yesterday is a serious attempt to fix the problem, and the stimulus package McCain made such a big deal of abandoning his campaigning for was just that much flag waving, and won't actually help anyone who really needs it. (They also know that's why Obama won the election.)
People out here are very insightful critics of American policy, politics, media and society, and let me tell you, it does not look good from out here in the rest of the world!
I've been having an interesting series of conversations about language with my top-level adult English students. We've been doing a chapter on language registers: business vs. casual English, written vs. spoken language, the English of different age and cultural groups. There was a question in the book asking whether students believed most people spoke their own language correctly.
Now, you have to understand that asking this question in the Arab world is like asking it in Switzerland or Bavaria. The difference between the dialects of those regions and High German are so great that northern German swear they can't understand a word. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is like High German, the language of writing, TV news and official speeches, except that there is no population which speaks Standard Arabic as their native language. All Arabs first learn a dialect of some sort. Many say that the Levantine dialect of Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon is the closest to Modern Standard, but it is still significantly different.
So I asked my students what they considered to be their native language. Was it dialect, or MSA? About half the class said of course dialect was their native language! They never spoke a word of MSA till some time in elementary school. MSA, which they simply call "Arabic," was a foreign language to them. The rest of the class said that Levantine was not a language, that it was just a corruption of real Arabic. (As a hobby linguist who believes languages are organic, evolving systems, this answer always irks me, but I held my tongue.)
So then we asked the book's question, Do most people speak their native language correctly? Their answers fell predictably along the same lines. Those who considered Levantine their first language said yes, of course we speak our first language correctly. Those who considered MSA their only language claimed that it took years of study to speak even one's native language properly.
The whole conversation reminded me of a conversation I had with my adult class last session. I showed them my resume, which says I speak Standard, Levantine and some Iraqi Arabic. My students considered it completely illogical that Iraqi, Levantine and Egyptian dialects should be considered worth mentioning separately. For an Arab, they're all Arabic. They grow up watching Egyptian films, news from al-Jazeera in the Persian Gulf, and call-in shows with dialects from Morocco to Oman. But for me, the differences are huge. Egyptian is unintelligible to me. I was listening to Yemenis on al-Jazeera talk about the recent flood in Hadramawt, and barely understood one word in three. Just listening to the newscasters on al-Jazeera with their fully-inflected MSA is a frustration to me. But put on the Syrian mini-series Baab al-Haara or any other miniseries in Levantine dialect, and I feel very much at home.
This is, of course, opposite to most non-native speakers of Arabic. Unless you learned your Arabic by marrying an Arab, chances are that you learned MSA first and best, and the dialects are just so much grammarless jibberish to you. This is why, when I gave directions home from Club Nai for my American and German friends the other night, the cab driver said, "Are you Jordanian? No? But your Arabic...!"
My standard reponse has become, "I learned my Arabic by living near Gafgafa for two years." Everyone laughs, because everyone knows Gafgafa as the site of one of Jordan's most infamous prisons.
First, let me say that my faith in American democracy has been restored. Regardless of who won this election, I was hoping that we wouldn't have the same quagmire we had in the last two elections, with no one quite sure who really deserved to win, even four and eight years later. I'm glad that McCain and the xenophobic, bellicose GOP right and especially Sarah Palin didn't win, but I'm mostly glad that the election was an unambiguous one.
Those Jordanians who had a preference in the recent election are also mostly pleased by the result. I can't tell you how many people, upon seeing me for the first time after the election, have said "Mabrouk! [Congratulations!]" So tonight in my adult English class at AMIDEAST, I decided to ask my students for their thoughts on the election. Most Jordanians I've spoken to tend to agree that as far as the Middle East is concerned, the two candidates are basically the same. On Palestine, the same. On Afghanistan, the same. On Iran, Obama is calling for more dialogue, but is not significantly less belligerent.
Wait a minute, I said. All of that I can agree with. But what about Iraq? Don't you see a difference there?
No, said Ghassan. Whether it's a few hundred troops, or thousands, both candidates want to leave a troop presence in Iraq. They came for the oil, he said, and that hasn't changed.
However, everyone here seems to recognize that, while there isn't a difference where Arabs are concerned, for Americans there is a huge difference between McCain and Obama on domestic issues. All the Jordanians I've spoken to here know that Obama is calling for national health care, and they will all tell you that he has the better plan to help ordinary Americans in their current financial crisis. On domestic issues, all the Jordanians I've met would say that Obama is clearly the best choice.
And, of course, all the Muslims I know here are delighted that America has elected the son of a Muslim. I haven't actually asked anyone why yet. I can think of two likely reasons, though. First, under Islamic law and tradition, any son or daughter of a Muslim is and always will be a Muslim, so although he's been a practicing Christian for years, many Muslims may be telling themselves that America has a Muslim president. The other, probably more likely reason that comes to mind is that, whether Obama is Muslim or Christian, Muslims in America have come under an awful lot of not-so-flattering scrutiny in America in the last seven years, and at the very least, Obama knows something about Muslims. I think that Muslims may well be hoping, as I am hoping, that an Obama administration will be sympathetic to the troubles of both Muslims and Muslim Americans, or at the very least, will be more rational.
I recently received one of those Republican propoganda emails full of vitriol and innuendo trying to discredit the Obamas as un-American. It came from the same person who sent me the infamous and very damaging email speciously claiming that Barack Obama is secretly a dangerous anti-American Muslim terrorist, because his father is a non-American and a Muslim, and because Barack went to early elementary school in the Philippines. This email, however, was not even about the candidate himself. The subject was "This is NOT First Lady material!" and it was about the Senior thesis of one Michelle Obama, nee Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, written 23 years (half her lifetime!) ago.
In stark contrast to the authors of this suspiciously anonymous forwarded email, I don't see anything abut Michelle Obama's thesis that's controversial. Let me give you a few examples.
What is Michelle Obama planning to do with her future resources if she's first lady that will elevate black over white in America ? The following passage appears to be a call to arms for affirmative action policies that could be the hallmark of an Obama administration.
'Predominately white universities like Princeton are socially and academically designed to cater to the needs of the white students comprising the bulk of their enrollments.'
Universities like Princeton DO cater to the needs of WASPs over all other ethnicities, because WASPs (and a few Catholics) established and still run these universities. It's a fact that has been proven over and over in academic studies, just as it's a fact that the SATs are culturally biased towards white middle and upper class high schoolers, which hinders minorities from getting into universities like Princeton (or Goucher, or even Indiana University) in the first place.
Here is another passage that is uncomfortable and ominous in meaning:
'There was no doubt in my mind that as a member of the black community, I am obligated to this community and will utilize all of my present and future resources to benefit the black community first and foremost.' (emphasis not mine!)
Ominous? Michelle Obama is hardly unusual in wanting to channel her abilities and resources towards the improvement of her own community, just as white evangelicals give preference to the white evangelical community, Latinos give preference to their community, Jewish America protects its own interests, and Republicans prefer to give to Republican causes. This doesn't make her a racist. It merely means that she has a strong sense of community and social responsibility, and as First Lady her community would expand to include all of America. I believe that a First Lady with a strong sense of social responsibility can only be good for American society. I would call this quite the opposite of ominous; I would call it hopeful.
Obama writes that the path she chose by attending Princeton would likely lead to her 'further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.'
Michele Obama clearly has a chip on her shoulder.
I think she has less of a chip on her shoulder than she has a right to. She's absolutely right that most white Americans see her as black first and American second, just as they see Barack Obama as black first and American second. If that wasn't the case, no one would care about her college thesis or her "ethnic allegiances," because they would recognize that Michelle and Barack are Americans. Just as American as any Mayflower descendent or DAR member, and just as dedicated, if not more, to making sure that all Americans succeed.
If you want to talk about what we DON'T want in the White House, take a look at Sarah Palin, who tried to !ban books in her local library in Alaska, who didn't tell her children that her baby would have Downs Syndrome because she wasn't sure she would keep him, and who thinks that dealing with the Yukon Territories of Canada is significant international policy experience. *I* have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin, as do these nearly 54,000 people. Oh, yes, and she's under investigation for corruption in her home state ... but I wouldn't worry too much about that: Innocent until proven guilty (or Muslim).
There were other even more specious and out-of-context quotes in this email I received, but I'll just leave you with one more:
P.S. We paid for her scholarship.
Damn right we did! That's what America's supposed to be all about:
...Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome.... "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore...."
--Emma Lazarus, 1883, on the Statue of Liberty
This interview and the associated book offer a view of Iraqi history and culture not often heard these days:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/a_talk_with_orit_bashkin/?page=full
It's a controversial viewpoint, to be sure, one that I call the "Istrabadi version" of Iraqi history, because it's the one that I heard most often from my professors at Indiana University, Dr. Zainab Istrabadi and her brother Amb. Faisal Istrabadi. But there is some truth to this viewpoint. For a very long time, especially during the Abbasid Dynasty that built Baghdad, Iraq and especially Baghdad were the center of the known world. Scholars came to Baghdad, Basra and Kufa from as far away as al-Andalus in Spain or the Philippines to study with the some of the greatest scholars of their ages in Baghdad.
The Talmud, the greatest compendium of Jewish law, was written in Babylon (a suburb of present-day Baghdad), where the Jews had been banished by King Nebuchadnezzar II in 588 BC. Even after the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great allowed Jews to return to Palestine half a century later, many stayed on in Baghdad, and for 25 centuries there was a substantial Jewish population in Baghdad. In addition to Jewish contributions, The Thousand and One Nights as we in the West know it today was adapted from Hindi in Abassid Baghdad. The seat of the Nestorian Church, considered heretical and heavily persecuted by the Byzantine Holy Roman Empire, has always been in Baghdad, with Nestorians living peacefully alongside Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Armenian Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, Jews, Sabeans, Zoroastrians, Muslims (Sunnis, Shi'is and Sufis), Yazidis and others.
As Zainab and Amb. Istrabadi's father used to say, Iraq is a country of 38 nationalities (i.e. ethnic and religious groups). The Istrabadi family tree itself includes Sunni Arabs, Shi'i Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Turkmens, and many others, and the Istrabadis are hardly unique in this respect.
I see two futures for Baghdad and the rest of Iraq. The tapestry of Iraqi identity may well survive and be repaired after the occupation ends, with all Iraqis finding a way to coexist. We may find, however, that America and the so-called Coalition of the Willing has shredded the Iraqi cultural tapestry so badly that Iraq will be shattered for generations.
"I had spent years discussing religious matters with smart American students in excellent schools before I was sent to the Middle East. I had found those conversations enjoyable, often challenging and usually sincere. But something was often missing, something I found hard to pin down. An Egyptian Muslim friend I met in Qatar helped me understand what that something was. Talking with Americans about faith and religion, he told me, is like having coffee with Forrest Gump: pleasant enough, but not of much substance. "They just don't have much to say because they just don't get it," he said....
"The majority of Georgetown students I know are fairly knowledgeable about religion. They can talk intelligently about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. The glitch is that they talk from the perspective of anthropologists and sociologists and historians. These are valuable perspectives. But they are not enough. Of course we need to raise young people who can be smart, savvy, sophisticated participants in international affairs. What we also need are young people who can be all of those things while at the same time knowing and understanding what it is to live one's life with a commitment rooted in faith."
---Father Ryan J. Maher, Asst. Dean, Georgetown University
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071802558.html?referrer=myspace
I couldn't say anything more precise and eloquent than Father Maher says here. Suffice it to say, he's absolutely right when he says that most Americans in the international sphere don't understand what faith means in many other parts of the world. I count myself among them. And I wish there were a thousand more students like this one:
"Recently, I had a conversation with a young woman who is about to begin her sophomore year at Georgetown. She has a passion for art history and American democracy and is serious about her Jewish faith. She hopes to work in international affairs one day. We were discussing the courses she might take this fall.
"She reported that people had been telling her she really should take more economics. "What if instead of that," she said, "I took only four courses this semester and used the extra time to go with my Christian and Muslim friends to their churches and mosques? I just think that if I had a better sense of how they prayed and what they mean when they use the word 'God,' I'd be able to have much better conversations with them about the situation in the Middle East."
"What do you say to that, except "Amen"? And, "Have you thought of taking the foreign service exam after you graduate?" "
There are those really amazing days in teaching when you can see a student finally get it, make that breakthrough that just makes your day....
And then there are days like this....
Bulqiis was one of my brightest first graders. She had learned every word in her vocabulary, she had learned at home to identify all the words and letters in the English alphabet, and she never gave me any trouble in a class that was often quite unruly. Like the Queen of Sheba whose name she shared, Bulqiis was already well on her way to being a very capable, admirable woman.
One day, as I was starting class, Bulqiis raised her hand. "Miss Maryah," she asked, "do you speak Arabic?"
"Of course. We're speaking Arabic right now. You hear me use it a lot in class." Too much, perhaps, though I needed the least amount of Arabic to get the lessons across to my first graders, who had not yet formed the habit of learning English through Arabic. But maybe, I was thinking, I didn't use as much Arabic as I thought, if Bulqiis wasn't sure I spoke the language at all.
Then she asked the question that burst my bubble. "Then why do you always speak to us in English?"
In my second year of Peace Corps, I taught English to the first, second and third grade classes. Perhaps the freshest of my first graders was Sarah, the daughter of an Arabic teacher who lived right next to the school. Sarah's sister Selsabeel was the star of my third grade and the darling of the teachers' room, and Sarah was determined to be different from her sister. I'm sympathetic to this; my sister was in a very similar situation, and eventually she transferred to another school to avoid being compared to me!
Sarah was clearly one of the fastest learners in my class, but determined not to let anyone know it. Sometimes I would walk around the room and ask the girls to point, say, to the number 3 in their books. With a big smirk, Sarah would point to the 4, the fox, the pencil, the 2, the ball.... Sometimes I'd wait for her to point to everything else on the page, and then ask her again to point to the 3, and she would start over, pointing to the fox, to the 1, to the pencil, to the 4.... Anything but the 3, which made it obvious that she knew exactly where the 3 was, but was determined not to let me know it. In addition to trying to act dumb, Sarah did her best to be disruptive. I would turn around to write on the board, and hear some little girl's voice, usually Bulqiis or another of my best students, say, "Miss Maryah, Sarah's sitting under her desk again!"
Every morning, when I entered the first grade classroom, Sarah would ask, "Miss Maryah, do you love God?"
"Of course I love God," was always my automatic response, and I would start class. Though an agnostic with polytheist inclinations at home in my Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Maryland, in Jordan I described myself as a Christian, at Peace Corps' suggestion, and because UUism is hard enough to explain in English!
One morning, however, Sarah tried a different tactic of distraction as I entered the classroom. It was midmorning, with early morning flurries and no heat in the school, and it was cold! As usual that winter, I was wearing pants over second-hand Eighties stirrup pants, two wool sweaters, a wool cloak and my mother's gift from my trip home to Maine the summer before: a big fleece hat . "Miss Maryah," said Sarah in her chipper little voice, "you shouldn't be wearing that hat! You should be wearing a headscarf!"
Without really thinking about the fact that these were only first graders, most of whom had seldom left the village and probably never met another real, flesh-and-blood non-Muslim, I said, "I'm a Christian. I don't have to wear a headscarf." With older children, this was often (but not always!) sufficient explanation.
Immediately, though, another little girl asked, "What's a Christian?"
"Christians are of a religion like Islam," I said. "They worship the same God, but they have different customs. For instance, they don't wear headscarves." I thought this ought to do it: a fairly simple, non-judgemental statement that no parent could take offense to as prosthelytism, with carefully chosen pronouns to not dig myself too deeply into my habitual white lie of being a Christian.
Not so. "Miss Maryah?" asked someone else. "Are you a heretic?"
This hit a little closer to home, and perhaps made my response a little more vehement than necessary. "No, no!" I said. "Christians are People of the Book; they worship the same God as the Muslims. Christians aren't heretics."
"Miss Maryah?" asked yet another first grader. "Are you a pagan?"
Cringing inwardly, I said, "No, no!" Things were starting to get out of hand.
"Miss Maryah?" someone else inquired. "Do you love Satan?"
With a quick "no," I started class with our usual full-body review of the four verbs they knew in English. "Alright, ladies. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Jump! Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Turn around."
As a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small Bedouin village in northern Jordan, it bothered me to no end that no one every said "shukran," the word we had been taught in training to mean "Thank you." In fact, my neighbors and students would laugh when I said "shukran," and ask me why I used that word so often. Even more bewildering to my new community was the way I would say, "No, thank you." They would protest, "But I didn't do anything! I just asked a question!" It was a long time before I began to appreciate the nuances of thankfulness in Jordanian culture, and to recognize that I was being thanked, but in ways that were so culturally strange to me that I did not initially recognize my neighbors' gratitude.
Months into my service, I began to complain to my closest colleague and friend, a Muslim American raised mostly in Pakistan, about the lack of gratitude for the work I was doing. It was she who explained to me the Evil Eye and related customs, which were also prevalent in Pakistan. It was, she said, considered very bad form to give compliments or thanks, because this might foster a sin of pride and bring down the Evil Eye upon the recipient. I found the idea of the Evil Eye strange and, I must admit, backward. Nevertheless, I used the mantra I had learned as a Rotary Youth Exchange Scholar, "Not better, not worse, just different!" and tried to accept that I would not be receiving thanks for my work.
In fact, as I eventually recalled, they had told us in training that we would probably not be thanked for our work. They had told us that the things we would do in the community would not fall outside the realm of the community's expectations of us, and thus would not merit thanks. Also, they pointed out, we would be invited for tea and meals, to engagement parties and weddings, and this would be because the community appreciated our efforts there. However, our trainers were primarily Jordanian themselves, few had even traveled outside the Arab world, and few had lived in the villages, where life is very different from the capital city, Amman. Over time, I began to unpack the cultural norms that they could not recognize behind their own descriptions of how Jordanians show appreciation.
Jordanian life, especially among families in the smaller villages that tend to be of nomadic Bedouin origin, operates on a basis of collectivism. In the desert, the individual perishes without the support of the community. Even in the villages of the semi-arid regions, Jordan is one of many cultures where it truly does take a village to support an individual. Under such conditions, everyone always helps everyone else.
Sometimes the girls next door would come over for English help while I was cleaning, doing laundry or cooking, and I would say that I did not have time just then, and they should come back later. Often their mothers would then come knocking, and the mothers would say, "If you are going to live among the Arabs, as an Arab, you may not say no when you are asked for help." They would explain that even when someone called the house, asking for the mother of the house, and she was a mile down the road visiting a friend, whoever answered the phone would say, "She's right here! Just a minute," and run down the road to fetch her. Once it had been pointed out to me, I saw that exactly this was the case.
I started thinking about "Thank you," and what it implies. To say "shukran" in Jordan is to imply that someone did something for me that was not needed or expected. Giving me a cup of tea is not occasion for "shukran;" guests expect to be offered tea. Receiving a plate of whatever my neighbor had made for lunch is not an occasion for "shukran;" she was also sending plates to her inlaws, and she considered me her spinster sister. "Shukran" is for an unexpected gift, or something above and beyond the daily exchange.
In time, I noticed that, while I was not being thanked, thanks was constantly being given. A daughter of the house would serve tea, and the guest would say, "God bless your hands." A child would bring home a high grade on an exam, and the parents would say, "God's will is done!" A neighbor would give us a ride home from school and we would say, "God have mercy upon you." We had been taught all these phrases in training, and been told that they were an important part of village life and courtesy. At first I avoided such phraseology; as a secularist who has not declared faith in any God, it felt fraudulent for me to use such God-speak. Eventually I came to understand what our trainers had known intuitively, that all these phrases meant "thank you," but by thanking God, there is no danger of attracting the Evil Eye. It was not until I had studied Islamic law and tradition more closely in graduate school that I realized an even deeper significance of the practice. If they thanked God for the things I had done, I would remain sufficiently humble, and I would understand that my place was to work for the good of the community, promoting the good and forbidding the evil, which is the essential core of Islam.
Living with the Bedouin in Jordan and learning their language and idiom helped me to see the world in a new way. As I embark on an academic career leading to a career as an Arabic interpreter, I find myself wondering about the interdependence of interpreters and the peace process. If I am the linguistic liaison between Arab and American parties, and at the end of negotiations, the Arab says, "God's will is done!", it may be unwise to translate this literally, because the American party is likely to understand this as a statement of religious conservativism, whereas perhaps the Arab's meaning is closer to "Thank you." Likewise, in English, perhaps it is worth considering how sincere my own "thank you"s are, and what cultural baggage they carry.