Arab Spring Quotes

We're going to fight this battle with everything we have, and we will probably lose. But then we will fight it again, and we will lose a little less, for this battle will win us many supporters. And then we'll lose *again*. And *again*. And we will fight on. Because as hard as it is to win by fighting, it's impossible to win by doing nothing.

Arab children, Corn ears of the future, You will break our chains, Kill the opium in our heads, Kill the illusions. Arab children, Don't read about our suffocated generation, We are a hopeless case. We are as worthless as a water-melon rind. Dont read about us, Dont ape us, Dont accept us, Dont accept our ideas, We are a nation of crooks and jugglers. Arab children, Spring rain, Corn ears of the future, You are the generation That will overcome defeat.

Politics, too, is a second-order chaotic system. Many people criticise Sovietologists for failing to predict the 1989 revolutions and castigate Middle East experts for not anticipating the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011. This is unfair. Revolutions are, by definition, unpredictable. A predictable revolution never erupts.

it easier to use religion to mass-control people with shitty lives?

The Arab Spring whose seeds failed to bloom anything other than a chaotic mess that requires only blood to grow has contributed immensely to the rising numbers of these migrants.

Governments often keep their populace in permanent states of vigilance or anxiety against foreign enemies as a control mechanism—the politics of fear.

Those who would later lament Seif and his father's (Qaddafi) regime are like a man who looks at the ashes and says, "I much prefer the fire

لقد كان الربيع العربي فشلًا ذريعًا محزنًا ؛ فجميع المؤشرات تدل على أن ما سيأتي بعده سيكون أسوأ بكثير مما كان قبله ، في تونس وفي كل مكان آخر . وقد تسببت الأحداث المؤلمة التي وقعت حتى الآن بالفعل في قدر هائل من الفوضى والعنف ، وجعلت حياة أناس بسطاء أبرياء أكثر بؤسًا وشقاء مما كانت عليه قبل ذلك . فمن الناحيتين الاجتماعية والاقتصادية ، أعاد الربيع العربي بلدانًا مثل تونس واليمن وسوريا عقودًا إلى الوراء .

Or maybe it is the very nature of military rule: they hate diversity and they don’t know how to deal with it, so the best thing is to make everyone as homogeneous as the uniforms in their training camps. The

A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,” my father would say. And he’d prove it, cupping the buzzer instantly while the host with the swatter stared. In the spring our palms peeled like snakes. True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways. I changed these to fit the occasion. Years before, a girl knocked, wanted to see the Arab. I said we didn’t have one. After that, my father told me who he was, “Shihab”—”shooting star”— a good name, borrowed from the sky. Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?” He said that’s what a true Arab would say.

In 1789 the French rebelled and found an emperor. The Americans found their freedom from the British and enslaved the Africans. The Arab Spring bloomed and the military and the jihadists seized power. The internet gave us all the power of speech, and what did we discover? That victory goes to he who shouts the loudest, and that reason does not sell.

These months drive us to listen within.

I am not going to censor myself to comfort your ignorance.

when you bend down once, you stay bent, you never stand tall again.

you got Trump as president, so you’re really not in a postion to mock our “democracy” or our “choices

To all the revolutionaries fighting to throw off the yoke of tyranny around the world: look at British democracy. Is that what you want?

التحركات الثورية التى تفتقر إلى قيادة تُسحق على يد القوى الأكثر ثباتاً والأفضل تنظيماً فى أعقاب حراك اجتماعى وسياسى شامل.

Say what you wish about media in the Arab world, but say it knowing that no media channel in the world is absolutely free.

Bit by bit, the uprising that had brought out the best in Syrians and projected their aspirations and yearnings was vanishing as pain, vengefulness, and war took over. It was yet another page from the playbook of Hafez as well as all the despots who clung desperately to power at the start of the Arab Spring: civil war is acceptable and even desirable to defend the leader.

. رأيي أن الإسلام السياسي أشبه بإدمان المخدرات ، من حيث إنه لا يؤدي إلا إلى التلهف للمزيد منه . وأفضل الأراضي مرتعًا للمدمنين الجدد تلك التي تسودها النزعات القبلية والإقليمية ؛ حيث ضيق الأفق وتأجيج الكراهية . ومن ثم فإن مؤيدي الإسلاميين الأساسيين في كل من تونس ومصر ينحدرون من الريف ، أو ينتمون لعائلات هجرت الريف إلى المدن الكبرى ، ووجدوا أنفسهم منجرفين في بحر من الفقر واليأس .

America's 1st Arab spring came in the guise of the Civil War...when our nation couldn't stomach the abomination of slavery anymore. One can't help keep wondering...when the next one will come.✌

مصر الآن بلد محافظ للغاية انصاعت أجزاء واسعة منه — على مدار العقدين الماضيين — للعادات الوهابية التي تلقى دعمًا من الإخوان المسلمين ، حتى إن بعض المدن المصرية أصبحت لا تختلف عن المملكة السعودية .

An authoritatrian regime, whether military or religious, doesn't want diversity. Having masses of people who think the same. talk the same, and hate the same is much easier for maintaining control.

فى بلد محافظ؛ حيث نصف السكان أميُّون، وحيث اللامبالة التاريخية المتأصلة عندما يتعلق الأمر بأدق تفاصيل النقاش السياسى، تكون الغلبة للشعارات الدينية الزائفة والمصحوبة بتطمينات جسورة بأن الحقيقة ستحررك.

تقدم ماليزيا إذن مثالًا لما يحدث عندما تسترضي النخبة الليبرالية الإسلاميين المعتدلين المزعومين . فهؤلاء الإسلاميون يوفرون غطاءً لحلفائهم الأكثر تشددًا من أجل تحويل المجتمع ، بحيث ينتهي به الحال إلى نسخة طبق الأصل من السعودية ( دولة استبدادية لا يجرؤ الإسلاميون في أي مكان آخر ومن أي صنف كان أن ينتقدوا انتهاكاتها الفاضحة لحقوق الإنسان ) .

حققت الجماعة بعض النجاحات المدوية في أسلمة المجتمع المصري من قاعدته . فقبل سقوط مبارك بشهر واحد ، كشف استطلاع رأي أجراه « مركز بيو للأبحاث » عن أن غالبية المصريين يؤيدون الرجم عقابًا على الزنى ، وقطع اليد عقابًا على السرقة ، والموت عقابًا للمرتدين عن الإسلام .

في فناء السجن الواسع تجمع نزلاء الزنزانة رقم 1 فرحين بالنور يرقصون و يهتفون للحرية وللحياة بعدما حطموا الابواب الحديدية وتغلبوا علي الحراس..ولم يمر وقت طويل حتي ثار النزلاء في الزنزانة رقم 2 وبدؤا يهتفون ويدقون علي الجدران ويحطمون النوافذ ثم اشتبكوا مع الحراس ليسقط منهم قتلي وجرحي.. وفي الزنزانة رقم 3 بدأ الهتاف يعلو بينما كان المساجين في كافة أرجاء السجن العربي الكبير يسترقون السمع ويحلمون....

Many people criticise Sovietologists for failing to predict the 1989 revolutions and castigate Middle East experts for not anticipating the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011. This is unfair. Revolutions are, by definition, unpredictable. A predictable revolution never erupts.

The guy who started the Arab Spring was almost exactly my age. He was a produce peddler in Tunisia, selling fruits and vegetables out of a cart. In protest against repeated harassment and extortion by the authorities, he stood in the square and set fire to his life, dying a martyr.

So much, then, for the “mystery” of how Muslim culture was somehow lost or left behind. The notion that in the medieval era Islamic culture was advanced well beyond Europe is as much an illusion as recent ones about an “Arab Spring.” The Islamic world was backward then, and so it remains.

Our daily routines influence the lives of people and animals halfway across the world, and some personal gestures can unexpectedly set the entire world ablaze, as happened with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, which ignited the Arab Spring, and with the women who shared their stories of sexual harassment and sparked the #MeToo movement. This global dimension of our personal lives means that it is more important than ever to uncover our religious and political biases, our racial and gender privileges, and our unwitting complicity in institutional oppression.

As politicians weigh courses of action against their political agendas the death toll weighs heavy on the conscience of the world. The once vibrant Syrian streets are now haunted by the souls of the innocent and the historic monuments that told of an unrivalled Arab civilisation no longer stand tall.

Lost In black as solid as a mire In a land no one would die for In a time I was lost To anyone who ever loved me The world set itself on fire And the sky collapsed above me In a place no one could call home In a place I breathed and slept In a battle no one understood That continued all the same I sat defenseless and alone With the insignificance of my name In the midst of the Lord’s birth On a night meant to be peaceful In a country of the Prophet Where women don’t live free I spoke to God from the shaking Earth And prayed my mother would forgive me In a city without power In a desert torn by religion In a bank between two rivers We added up the decade’s cost And glorified the final hour Of a war that everyone had lost In the dust of helplessness In a concrete bunker In a fate I chose myself I waited without remorse To fight again as recompense For wasted lives and discourse -an original poem about an attack on our base in Iraq during the Arab Spring

If Syria is to rise from the ashes it needs a united Arab world which has one thing on its agenda, not the falling of a dictator for we have seen many of those fall, but the reemergence of a prosperous Arab nation, one that is not reliant on foreign aid but is self-sustained and set on its way to become powerful once again.

A global world puts unprecedented pressure on our personal conduct and morality. Each of us is ensnared within numerous all-encompassing spider webs, which on the one hand restrict our movements, but at the same time transmit our tiniest jiggle to faraway destinations. Our daily routines influence the lives of people and animals halfway across the world, and some personal gestures can unexpectedly set the entire world ablaze, as happened with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, which ignited the Arab Spring, and with the women who shared their stories of sexual harassment and sparked the #MeToo movement. This global dimension of our personal lives means that it is more important than ever to uncover our religious and political biases, our racial and gender privileges, and our unwitting complicity in institutional oppression. But is that a realistic enterprise? How can I find a firm ethical ground in a world that extends far beyond my horizons, that spins completely out of human control, and that holds all gods and ideologies suspect?

Our daily routines influence the lives of people and animals halfway across the world, and some personal gestures can unexpectedly set the entire world ablaze, as happened with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, which ignited the Arab Spring, and with the women who shared their stories of sexual harassment and sparked the #MeToo movement.

Same scare tactics, different days of the week.

in a two-man race the other candidate came in third

When you laugh, you are not afraid anymore.

دائماً ما كان مبارك يُردد : إما أنا أو الإسلاميين.

ارتداء الحجاب بين الشابات عادةً ما يكون بسبب خوفهن من تصنيف العاطلين من الأوصياء على الأخلاق العامة لهن على أنهن عاهرات.

Normal people began to see that a beard was not synonymous with honesty. It was simply a patchy place to hide one's lies.

وإذا كانت الطائفية حجر عثرة في طريق بناء وحدة وطنية وسياسات تقدمية في أعقاب الربيع العربي ، فالقبلية أشد منها خطرًا .

Obama was the most powerful man in the world, but that didn’t mean he could control the forces at play in the Middle East. There was no Nelson Mandela who could lead a country to absolution for its sins and ours. Extremist forces were exploiting the Arab Spring. Reactionary forces—with deep reservoirs of political support in the United States—were intent on clinging to power. Bashar al-Assad was going to fight to the death, backed by his Russian and Iranian sponsors. Factions were going to fight it out in the streets of Libya. The Saudis and Emiratis were going to stamp out political dissent in Egypt before it could come to their kingdoms. A Likud prime minister was going to mouth words about peace while building settlements that made peace impossible. Meanwhile, innocent people were going to suffer, some of them were going to be killed, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. Obama had reached that conclusion before I had. History had opened up a doorway in 2011 that, by the middle of 2013, had been slammed shut. There would be more war, more conflict, and more suffering, until—someday—old men would make peace.

Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not just leave his corpse in Iraq but was isolated and repudiated even by the minority Sunnis on whose presumed behalf he spilled so much blood and wrought such hectic destruction. It is even more gratifying that bin Laden himself was exposed as an excrescence on the putrid body of a bankrupt and brutish state machine, and that he found himself quite unable to make any coherent comment on the tide—one hopes that it is a tide, rather than a mere wave—of demand for an accountable and secular form of civil society. There could not have been a finer affirmation of the force of life, so warmly and authentically counterposed to the hysterical celebration of death, and of that death-in-life that is experienced in the stultifications of theocracy, where womanhood and music and literature are stifled and young men mutated into robotic slaughterers.

Since de Soto published The Mystery of Capital, revolutions in countries like Tunisia and Egypt have provided compelling evidence in support of his approach. He sees the ‘Arab Spring’ primarily as a revolt by frustrated would-be entrepreneurs against corrupt, rent-seeking regimes that preyed on their efforts to accumulate capital. The prime example is the story of the twenty-six-year-old

Freedom of the press can never be the licence to say anything one desires. Freedom of the press is not the freedom to slander and attack and must never be used to fight other people’s wars. It does not mean manipulating a story into speaking your views. One might think it common sense but in the world of journalism a lot of what makes sense is lost to the lure of favouritism, greed and fame. Sadly, in this truth-telling business truth is hard to find.

As liberal columnist Şahin Alpay points out, however, the fundamental division in Turkish society is not between Islamists and secularists but between those who oppose a military-bureaucratic “tutelary” regime and those who support it.

إذا أردنا أن يكون هناك أمل في تطور الديمقراطية الليبرالية في العالم العربي ، باختصار ، ينبغي أن تهب رياح التغيير على الغرب نفسه أولًا . وما فرص حدوث ذلك ؟ حسنًا ، كانت هناك بعض التلميحات على أن هذا التغيير تحديدًا ربما كان يحدث بالفعل ، استلهامًا أيضًا من ثورات الربيع العربي .

What is surprising, though, is that in every part of the world, people have become more liberal. A lot more liberal: young Muslims in the Middle East, the world’s most conservative culture, have values today that are comparable to those of young people in Western Europe, the world’s most liberal culture, in the early 1960s. Though in every culture both the zeitgeist and the generations became more liberal, in some, like the Islamic Middle East, the liberalization was driven mainly by the generational turnover, and it played an obvious role in the Arab Spring.41

The army could not have been happier. The result of the referendum was a repeated slap to the faces of those liberal powers who thought they could change the country. The army never wanted change, not with so many interests, businesses, and powerful people involved. It was a system sixty years in the making. Removing Mubarak didn’t even touch the deep state that he was a disposable face of. The Muslim Brotherhood were never serious about the revolution either. They used it simply to come into power. They had no problem with the old regime as long as they were on top of it. One

For Obama, drones not only opened the door to withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq; they were a way to avoid getting drawn into future entanglements, military or diplomatic, which would sap the nation and distract from his domestic agenda. “It allows you to be disengaged,” Nasr said. “We don’t need to be in Iraq, we don’t need to invest in the Arab Spring. We don’t need to worry about any of this; all we need to do is to kill the terrorists. It’s a different philosophy of foreign policy. It’s surgical, it’s clinical, it’s clean.” “Basically,” Nasr said, “he’s the drone president.

في بريطانيا ، طالبت جماهير الشعب بنشر قوات الجيش في أعقاب ثلاث ليال من أعمال الشغب التي قام بها بضع مئات من الأشخاص ، وقبع دعاة الديمقراطية المغاوير يرتعدون في بيوتهم . غير أن هؤلاء الليبراليين أنفسهم كانوا يدعون في الوقت نفسه إلى المزيد من الثورات في العالم العربي ، والمزيد من الشجاعة من جانب الثوار ، المزيد من الاضطرابات ، والمزيد من العنف والفوضى ، في أي مكان ما دام بعيدًا عنهم . إنني أظن أن الليبراليين الغربيين ، من ناحية معينة ، أكثر استحقاقًا للمقت من المحافظين الجدد . وكلا الصنفين بالطبع جنرالات تنظيريون مخضرمون ، يرتشفون كئوس خمر الكلاريت وينفثون دخان أفخر أنواع السيجار وهم يرسلون الآلاف من الناس إلى موت محقق .

Only once did I make Shireen sit down with me for a formal interview. She talked about the need to rebuild what she called "the culture of resistance" that she remembered experiencing during the Second Intifada, but which had since evaporated, replaced by a dull consumerist individualism, by "this illusion that if I forget about Palestine, build a career, take a loan, buy a car, build a house, watch Arab Idol on TV, it's all be okay; that if they're not raiding *your* house, you're okay." In a culture constructed around a shared goal of liberation, she said, "my house is your house and your son is my son and if they kill me today they will kill you tomorrow." (103)

Fear has always been their best weapon. Fear of refugees, of people who don’t look like us, fear of “losing our religion and identity,” fear of war, and the destruction that will happen if you don’t blindly follow your dictator, or simply the fear arising from dealing with facts, reality, and science, because truth is not really their friend.

وفي مصر ، وعلى الرغم من كل الخطابة البلاغية المعادية لإسرائيل التي تصدر من كل ركن من أركان الطيف السياسي ، فقد أوضح الجيش أمرًا واحدًا على نحو لا يحتمل اللبس ؛ أيًّا كان ما سيحدث ، فإن معاهدة السلام المبرمة بين مصر وإسرائيل عام ١٩٧٩ لن تمس . وسواء أكانت هناك ديمقراطية أم لم تكن ، فسيستمر جنرالات الجيش المصري في إملاء السياسة الخارجية المصرية ، وليست الأولوية لديهم هي ما يريده جماهير الشعب ، وإنما هي ضمان تدفق المساعدات العسكرية ، التي يحصلون عليها من أمريكا والتي تقدر ﺑ ١٫٤ مليار دولار سنويًّا . وفي الواقع ، تظهر استطلاعات الرأي باستمرار أن ما يقرب من نصف المصريين يريدون أن تظل معاهدة السلام قائمة ، ومع تدهور اقتصاد البلاد في أعقاب الثورة ، يكاد لا يوجد مصري عاقل يرغب في خوض حرب شاملة ضد الدولة اليهودية .

When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer.

A woman of Samaria approached, and seeming unconscious of His presence, filled her pitcher with water. As she turned to go away, Jesus asked her for a drink. Such a favor no Oriental would withhold. In the East, water was called “the gift of God.” To offer a drink to the thirsty traveler was held to be a duty so sacred that the Arabs of [184] the desert would go out of their way in order to perform it. The hatred between Jews and Samaritans prevented the woman from offering a kindness to Jesus; but the Saviour was seeking to find the key to this heart, and with the tact born of divine love, He asked, not offered, a favor. The offer of a kindness might have been rejected; but trust awakens trust. The King of heaven came to this outcast soul, asking a service at her hands. He who made the ocean, who controls the waters of the great deep, who opened the springs and channels of the earth, rested from His weariness at Jacob’s well, and was dependent upon a stranger’s kindness for even the gift of a drink of water. The

Looking back on all my interviews for this book, how many times in how many different contexts did I hear about the vital importance of having a caring adult or mentor in every young person’s life? How many times did I hear about the value of having a coach—whether you are applying for a job for the first time at Walmart or running Walmart? How many times did I hear people stressing the importance of self-motivation and practice and taking ownership of your own career or education as the real differentiators for success? How interesting was it to learn that the highest-paying jobs in the future will be stempathy jobs—jobs that combine strong science and technology skills with the ability to empathize with another human being? How ironic was it to learn that something as simple as a chicken coop or the basic planting of trees and gardens could be the most important thing we do to stabilize parts of the World of Disorder? Who ever would have thought it would become a national security and personal security imperative for all of us to scale the Golden Rule further and wider than ever? And who can deny that when individuals get so super-empowered and interdependent at the same time, it becomes more vital than ever to be able to look into the face of your neighbor or the stranger or the refugee or the migrant and see in that person a brother or sister? Who can ignore the fact that the key to Tunisia’s success in the Arab Spring was that it had a little bit more “civil society” than any other Arab country—not cell phones or Facebook friends? How many times and in how many different contexts did people mention to me the word “trust” between two human beings as the true enabler of all good things? And whoever thought that the key to building a healthy community would be a dining room table? That’s why I wasn’t surprised that when I asked Surgeon General Murthy what was the biggest disease in America today, without hesitation he answered: “It’s not cancer. It’s not heart disease. It’s isolation. It is the pronounced isolation that so many people are experiencing that is the great pathology of our lives today.” How ironic. We are the most technologically connected generation in human history—and yet more people feel more isolated than ever. This only reinforces Murthy’s earlier point—that the connections that matter most, and are in most short supply today, are the human-to-human ones.

Als Präsident Obama den Aufstand als legitime Meinungsäußerung begrüßte, die von der Regierung anerkannt werden müsse, war die Verwirrung komplett. Die Massen in Kairo und Alexandria wollten keine Anerkennung ihrer Forderungen durch die Regierung, deren Rechtmäßigkeit sie rundweg ablehnten. Sie wünschten sich das Mubarak-Regime nicht als Gesprächspartner, sie wollten, dass Mubarak verschwand. Ihr Ziel war nicht nur eine neue Regierung, die ihre Meinung anhören würde, sondern eine Umgestaltung des gesamten Staates. Sie hatten keine »Meinungen «; sie waren die Wahrheit der Situation in Ägypten. (S. 55)

They say the world will end soon. They say that the nuclear weapons made, Due to fearing 'the other', Has become a curse, a plague, a scourge On those who made them Even more than those they were made to scare... And I wonder: Will the nuclear weapons be the cause of world’s end? Or will world’s end be caused by humanity’s fear, complicity, and submission? And if what they say is true, Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to drink one last cup of cardamom-flavored tea Taste one last fig, peach, or apricot, Smell a quince, Dip one last piece of bread In Palestinian thyme and olive oil… Before the world ends, I wish to smell a few pine needles, To breathe the smell of the first rain shower After a long, hot, and dry summer… Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to read one more book Out of the thousands of books that I still want to read… Before the world ends and before I die, I ask for one more spring To smell bunches of Iraqi narcissus flowers. I want to live one more autumn, To enjoy the magical colors Of the dying leaves on the trees As they challenge death with beauty Right before falling on the grounds of indifference… But my biggest wish before I die is For my death not to be the end of the world… [Original poem published in Arabic on October 13 at ahewar.org]

But Holbrooke brought to every job he ever held a visionary quality that transcended practical considerations. He talked openly about changing the world. “If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes,” Henry Kissinger said. “If you say no, you’ll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful.” We all said yes. By the summer, Holbrooke had assembled his Ocean’s Eleven heist team—about thirty of us, from different disciplines and agencies, with and without government experience. In the Pakistani press, the colorful additions to the team were watched closely, and generally celebrated. Others took a dimmer view. “He got this strange band of characters around him. Don’t attribute that to me,” a senior military leader told me. “His efforts to bring into the State Department representatives from all of the agencies that had a kind of stake or contribution to our efforts, I thought was absolutely brilliant,” Hillary Clinton said, “and everybody else was fighting tooth and nail.” It was only later, when I worked in the wider State Department bureaucracy as Clinton’s director of global youth issues during the Arab Spring, that I realized how singular life was in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—quickly acronymed, like all things in government, to SRAP. The drab, low-ceilinged office space next to the cafeteria was about as far from the colorful open workspaces of Silicon Valley as you could imagine, but it had the feeling of a start-up.

على مسافة بضعة كيلومترات في أحد الطرق النائية في قلب الجنوب التايلاندي المضطرب يوجد مقر جامعة جالا الإسلامية ، التي يُنفَق عليها ملايين الدولارات . ومع وجود أكثر من اثني عشر مدرسًا عربيًّا من مختلف أنحاء الشرق الأوسط ، وتمويل دائم على ما يبدو — من السعودية في المقام الأول — تعطيك الجامعة — بأسطحها العاكسة وجوِّها الباعث على الهدوء على نحو غريب — انطباعًا بأنك قد انتقلت فجأة إلى أحد مراكز التعليم العالي في الرياض . يرتدي آلاف الطلاب الذين يذهبون إلى الجامعة ملابس عربية ، ويدرَّس لهم تفسير متشدد للشريعة الإسلامية باللغة العربية . يقدم موظف الاستقبال نفسه — بلغة عربية فصحى متقنة — على أنه خريج جامعة الأزهر في القاهرة . أما رئيس الجامعة الدكتور إسماعيل لطفي ، فكان — كما أخبرني متباهيًا — خريج مؤسسة وهابية متشددة تسمى « جامعة الإمام محمد بن سعود الإسلامية » في الرياض . وفي القائمة التي وضعتها السعودية لأكثر الإرهابيين الإسلاميين طلبًا عام ٢٠٠٣ ، كان أكثر من نصف القائمة خريجي تلك المؤسسة الجليلة .

ذات مساء في ربيع عام ٢٠١١ ، كنت جالسًا في مطعم في حي وسط المدينة بالعاصمة تونس — بالقرب من مكان إقامتي هناك — عندما دخل إلى المطعم رجل يصطحب ابنه معه . اتخذا مجلسهما على استحياء على إحدى الطاولات . كان واضحًا — من خلال لون بشرتهما الداكن ، وملابسهما ، وسلوكهما — أنهما قادمان من الريف لقضاء اليوم في المدينة . ظلا يحدقان في قائمة الطعام لفترة طويلة ، ويسألان النادل بعض الأسئلة بين الحين والآخر ، إلى أن انتهيا إلى طلب الحصة القياسية المعتادة تقريبًا من الحمص وخبز البيتا والكباب . واحتفالًا بوجودهما في المدينة ، طلب الأب لنفسه كوبًا من الجعة . كان أيُّ ماركسي عجوز سيرى في هذا المشهد ظلمًا جليًّا متبديًا في خوفهما الواضح ، وحقيقة أن هذا المطعم العادي تمامًا يمثل لهما ذروة اجتماعية من نوع ما . ولكنهما كانا يستمتعان ، وخطر لي وأنا أراقبهما أن هناك الملايين مثلهما في أنحاء العالم العربي ، بل في جميع أنحاء العالم ، ممن لا يكادون يتمكنون من فحص النظام الذي اعتادوا عليه . بأي حق يمكن لأحد أن يقرر أنهم لا بد أن « يدفعوا ثمن » فكرة مراوغة غير واقعية طرحها شخص ما عن الديمقراطية الليبرالية ؟ لقد كانوا على الأقل يعرفون في الوضع القائم أي سبيل يسلكون إذا احتاجوا مثلًا لتقديم أي أوراق رسمية ، وكانوا يستطيعون التمتع ببعض الحريات الصغيرة المتاحة لهم — ككوب من الجعة بعد يوم عمل شاق — دون أن يلطمهم بلطجي أشعث اللحية على وجوههم بسبب ذلك . من المؤكد أنهم كانوا يستحقون فرصًا أفضل عجزت أنظمتهم الحاكمة القديمة عن توفيرها لهم . ولكن لهذا كله ، خشيت على مستقبل هذين الشخصين البسيطين في المطعم ، أكثر بكثير مما كنت سأفعل لو أنني قابلتهما خلال حكم بن علي . لقد كان الربيع العربي فشلًا ذريعًا محزنًا ؛ فجميع المؤشرات تدل على أن ما سيأتي بعده سيكون أسوأ بكثير مما كان قبله ، في تونس وفي كل مكان آخر . وقد تسببت الأحداث المؤلمة التي وقعت حتى الآن بالفعل في قدر هائل من الفوضى والعنف ، وجعلت حياة أناس بسطاء أبرياء أكثر بؤسًا وشقاء مما كانت عليه قبل ذلك . فمن الناحيتين الاجتماعية والاقتصادية ، أعاد الربيع العربي بلدانًا مثل تونس واليمن وسوريا عقودًا إلى الوراء .

They say the world will end soon. They say that the nuclear weapons made, Due to fearing ‘the other’, Have become a curse, a plague, a scourge On those who made them Even more than those they were made to scare... And I wonder: Will the nuclear weapons be the cause of the world’s end? Or will the world’s end be caused by humanity’s fear, complicity, and submission? And if what they say is true, Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to drink one last cup of cardamom-flavored tea Taste one last fig, peach, or apricot, Smell a quince, Dip one last piece of bread In Palestinian thyme and olive oil… Before the world ends, I wish to smell a few pine needles, To breathe the smell of the first rain shower After a long, hot, and dry summer… Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to read one more book Out of the thousands of books that I still want to read… Before the world ends and before I die, I ask for one more spring To smell bunches of Iraqi narcissus flowers. I want to live one more autumn, To enjoy the magical colors Of the dying leaves on the trees As they challenge death with beauty Right before falling on the grounds of indifference… But my biggest wish before I die is For my death not to be the end of the world… [Original poem published in Arabic by ahewar.org on October 13, 2022]

A Sweet Woman from a War-Torn Country" In her exile, they often describe her as that “sweet woman from a war-torn country” … They don’t know that she loved smelling roses … That she enjoyed picking spring wildflowers and bringing them home after long walks… They don’t know about that first kiss her first lover stole from her during a power outage at church on that Easter evening Before the generators were turned on… They don’t know anything about the long hours she spent contemplating life under the ancient walnut tree in her village, while waiting for her grandfather to call her to eat her favorite freshly baked pita bread with ghee and honey… They don’t know anything about her grandmother’s delicious mixed grains that she prepared every year before Easter fasting began… In exile, they try to be nice to her… They keep repeating that she is now in a “safe haven”… They attribute her silence is either to her poor language skills, or perhaps because she agrees with them… They don’t know that the shocks of life have silenced her forever… All she enjoys doing now is pressing her ears against the cold window glass in her apartment listening to the wailing wind outside … They repeatedly remind her that she is now in a place where all values, beliefs, religions, and ethnicities are honored, but life has taught her that all of that is too late… She no longer needs any of that… All she needs, occasionally, is a sincere hand to be placed on her shoulder or around her neck To remind her that nothing lasts That this too shall pass… [Published on April 7, 2023 on CounterPunch.org]

ISIS was forced out of all its occupied territory in Syria and Iraq, though thousands of ISIS fighters are still present in both countries. Last April, Assad again used sarin gas, this time in Idlib Province, and Russia again used its veto to protect its client from condemnation and sanction by the U.N. Security Council. President Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on the Syrian airfield where the planes that delivered the sarin were based. It was a minimal attack, but better than nothing. A week before, I had condemned statements by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had explicitly declined to maintain what had been the official U.S. position that a settlement of the Syrian civil war had to include Assad’s removal from power. “Once again, U.S. policy in Syria is being presented piecemeal in press statements,” I complained, “without any definition of success, let alone a realistic plan to achieve it.” As this book goes to the publisher, there are reports of a clash between U.S. forces in eastern Syria and Russian “volunteers,” in which hundreds of Russians were said to have been killed. If true, it’s a dangerous turn of events, but one caused entirely by Putin’s reckless conduct in the world, allowed if not encouraged by the repeated failures of the U.S. and the West to act with resolve to prevent his assaults against our interests and values. In President Obama’s last year in office, at his invitation, he and I spent a half hour or so alone, discussing very frankly what I considered his policy failures, and he believed had been sound and necessary decisions. Much of that conversation concerned Syria. No minds were changed in the encounter, but I appreciated his candor as I hoped he appreciated mine, and I respected the sincerity of his convictions. Yet I still believe his approach to world leadership, however thoughtful and well intentioned, was negligent, and encouraged our allies to find ways to live without us, and our adversaries to try to fill the vacuums our negligence created. And those trends continue in reaction to the thoughtless America First ideology of his successor. There are senior officials in government who are trying to mitigate those effects. But I worry that we are at a turning point, a hinge of history, and the decisions made in the last ten years and the decisions made tomorrow might be closing the door on the era of the American-led world order. I hope not, and it certainly isn’t too late to reverse that direction. But my time in that fight has concluded. I have nothing but hope left to invest in the work of others to make the future better than the past. As of today, as the Syrian war continues, more than 400,000 people have been killed, many of them civilians. More than five million have fled the country and more than six million have been displaced internally. A hundred years from now, Syria will likely be remembered as one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of the twenty-first century, and an example of human savagery at its most extreme. But it will be remembered, too, for the invincibility of human decency and the longing for freedom and justice evident in the courage and selflessness of the White Helmets and the soldiers fighting for their country’s freedom from tyranny and terrorists. In that noblest of human conditions is the eternal promise of the Arab Spring, which was engulfed in flames and drowned in blood, but will, like all springs, come again.

في بريطانيا ، طالبت جماهير الشعب بنشر قوات الجيش في أعقاب ثلاث ليال من أعمال الشغب التي قام بها بضع مئات من الأشخاص ، وقبع دعاة الديمقراطية المغاوير يرتعدون في بيوتهم . غير أن هؤلاء الليبراليين أنفسهم كانوا يدعون في الوقت نفسه إلى المزيد من الثورات في العالم العربي ، والمزيد من الشجاعة من جانب الثوار ، المزيد من الاضطرابات ، والمزيد من العنف والفوضى ، في أي مكان ما دام بعيدًا عنهم . إنني أظن أن الليبراليين الغربيين ، من ناحية معينة ، أكثر استحقاقًا للمقت من المحافظين الجدد . وكلا الصنفين بالطبع جنرالات تنظيريون مخضرمون ، يرتشفون كئوس خمر الكلاريت وينفثون دخان أفخر أنواع السيجار وهم يرسلون الآلاف من الناس إلى موت محقق . ووفقًا لعبارة جورج أورويل الشهيرة فإن « كل دعاية الحرب ، وكل الصراخ والكذب والكراهية ، تأتي دائمًا من أناس لا ينزلون إلى ساحة القتال » . ولكن المحافظين الجدد واضحون على الأقل ؛ فهم يريدون المزيد من القوة لأمريكا ، والمزيد من الأمن لإسرائيل ، والموت لكل من يقف في طريق تحقيق ما يريدون . أما الليبراليون ، الذين يقفون مرتعدين تحت شعار « التدخل الإنساني » ، فليسوا أقل إمبريالية من ذي قبل . وبينما هم يجلسون في أمريكا وبريطانيا يتغنون بشعارات الديمقراطية ، يجب عليهم بذل جهد شاق ليغضوا الطرف عن حقيقة إفلاس أنظمتهم السياسية ، وعن الفساد الاجتماعي والفقر غير العادي الذي ينخر مجتمعاتهم ، وعن اقتصادات بلدانهم التي توشك على الانهيار ، وعن ساستهم الذين باعوا أنفسهم وقبضوا الثمن ، وعن مؤسساتهم الإعلامية متزايدة الجبن والسطحية . كم يجب أن يخدعوا أنفسهم ليتغنوا بالثناء على أنظمتهم السياسية ، بل يوصون الآخرين بأن يتخذوها نماذج تحتذى ، في حين أنهم رفعوا إلى السلطة — من خلال انتخابات ديمقراطية — أوغادًا من أمثال جورج دابليو بوش ، وتوني بلير ، وسيلفيو بيرلسكوني ، وفلاديمير بوتين ، ونيكولا ساركوزي . في الربع الثاني من عام ٢٠١١ ، لم تكن الدولة التي حققت أعلى معدل نمو اقتصادي — وإن كان بنسبة تظل ضئيلة هي ٠٫٧ بالمائة — من دول الاتحاد الأوروبي هي ألمانيا ( التي حققت نموًّا بنسبة ٠٫١ بالمائة ) ، ولا بريطانيا ( التي حققت ٠٫٢ بالمائة ) ، وإنما كانت بلجيكا ، وبلجيكا لم تحظ ، طوال سنة ونصف ، بسبب تعقيد غير عادي في الإجراءات ، بأي حكومة على الإطلاق . لم تتخذ بلجيكا إجراءات تقشفية قاسية في أعقاب الأزمة المالية ، ولم تكن هناك مشاحنات حول الميزانية ؛ إنما ظلت الأمور تسير بسلاسة دون حاجة إلى توجيه من جانب الحكومة . 9 وفي ضوء النتائج التي تحققت حاليًّا على أيدي الساسة في الديمقراطيات الغربية ، يبدو أن عدم وجود حكومة على الإطلاق أفضل من تسليم الدفة إلى العباقرة المنتخبين .

What is happening in Egypt now, and in the countries of the Arab Spring, confirms a global phenomenon that the human became in the service of things, but while he is in the service of multinational companies, media, and political parties in some countries, he is in the service of the state, political alliances, military, political movements, armed militias.. and so on, in the Arab countries. Which may confirm - with much of regret - the words of Michel Foucault that "Modernity has evolved against its essence" and "this world began without human and will end without him"!

never really liked being a doctor. It was just a great line to open a conversation with a hot chick.

On Fox News I found an abundance of stupidity and ignorance.

America, I hope you do something about that Trump. Consider this book a warning for what is yet to come.

The young generation is not taking this bullshit again.

Having masses of people who think the same, talk the same, and hate the same is much easier for maintaining control.

You can’t really respect or fear something you are laughing at.

My team had to endure the same agony Jon Stewart’s team had to go through while watching Fox News.

Our segment of the week just wrote itself.

it was in their best interest to prop up imaginary enemies all the time to keep people distracted.

college student was arrested for photoshopping Mickey Mouse ears onto Sissi’s head.

In my experience, historical analogy is the analytic method of choice for senior foreign policy makers trying to get a handle on world events unfolding in real time. When trying to understand a new problem, they rarely use or even read analyses informed by social science methods such as game theory, statistical data, or randomized control trials. And logically, these analogies are made to historical cases with which the individuals are most familiar. I watched this play out dozens of times during my five years in government, and it was particularly striking during our struggles to understand the Arab Spring, and especially events in Egypt in the winter of 2011.

ignorance, xenophobia, racism, and everything that Donald Trump stands for can transcend borders, cultures, and religions.

how desperate I was to get out of the country like my getting pumped about going to Cleveland.

History cannot be explained deterministically and it cannot be predicted because it is chaotic. So many forces are at work and their interactions are so complex that extremely small variations in the strength of the forces and the way they interact produce huge differences in outcomes. Not only that, but history is what is called a ‘level two’ chaotic system. Chaotic systems come in two shapes. Level one chaos is chaos that does not react to predictions about it. The weather, for example, is a level one chaotic system. Though it is influenced by myriad factors, we can build computer models that take more and more of them into consideration, and produce better and better weather forecasts. Level two chaos is chaos that reacts to predictions about it, and therefore can never be predicted accurately. Markets, for example, are a level two chaotic system. What will happen if we develop a computer program that forecasts with 100 per cent accuracy the price of oil tomorrow? The price of oil will immediately react to the forecast, which would consequently fail to materialise. If the current price of oil is $90 a barrel, and the infallible computer program predicts that tomorrow it will be $100, traders will rush to buy oil so that they can profit from the predicted price rise. As a result, the price will shoot up to $100 a barrel today rather than tomorrow. Then what will happen tomorrow? Nobody knows. Politics, too, is a second-order chaotic system. Many people criticise Sovietologists for failing to predict the 1989 revolutions and castigate Middle East experts for not anticipating the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011. This is unfair. Revolutions are, by definition, unpredictable. A predictable revolution never erupts.

The invasion of Iraq turned the region into a cauldron. And when the new American president decided the time had come to withdraw, the cauldron boiled over. And then there was this folly we called the Arab Spring. Mubarak must go! Gaddafi must go! Assad must go!” He shook his head slowly. “It was madness, absolute madness. And now we are left with this. ISIS controls a swath of territory the size of the United Kingdom, right on the doorstep of Europe. Even Bin Laden would have never dared to dream of such a thing. And what does the American president tell us? ISIS is not Islamic. ISIS is the jayvee team.

When the Furies were released in the Middle East, an evil emerged beyond my worst imaginings. The joy of the Middle East has been replaced by fear, pervasive in Iraq and Syria and darkening the lives of people throughout the region. This is why refugees have been flowing out of the Middle East by the millions for Europe. If President Bush’s seeds of democracy or the Arab Spring had bloomed, these families wouldn’t be risking everything to leave. Many in the region have simply lost all hope, which is understandable. If you lived in Libya after the fall of Gadhafi, you’d be terrified. You can’t work, you can’t sell your goods, your children can’t go to school, you can’t even drive around without fear of being kidnapped by bandits or terrorists. It’s not a place where people can be happy and even marginally prosperous. It’s pure chaos. It’s worse in Iraq and Syria.

ORIGIN OF TWO COUNTRIES They say Churchill said: “Jordan was an idea I had one spring at about four-thirty in the afternoon.” The fact is that during the month of March 1921, in just three days, British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill and his forty advisers drew a new map for the Middle East. They invented two countries, named them, appointed their monarchs, and sketched their borders with a finger in the sand. Thus the land embraced by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the clay of the very first books, was called Iraq. And the new country amputated from Palestine was called Transjordan, later Jordan. The task at hand was to change the names of colonies so they would at least appear to be Arab kingdoms. And to divide those colonies, to break them up: an urgent lesson drawn from imperial memory. While France pulled Lebanon out of a hat, Churchill bestowed the crown of Iraq on the errant Prince Faisal, and a plebiscite ratified him with suspicious enthusiasm: he got 96 percent of the vote. His brother Prince Abdullah became king of Jordan. Both monarchs belonged to a family placed on the British payroll at the recommendation of Lawrence of Arabia. The manufacturers of countries signed the birth certificates of Iraq and Jordan in Cairo’s Semiramis Hotel, and then went out to see the pyramids. Churchill fell off his camel and hurt his hand. Fortunately, it was nothing serious. Churchill’s favorite artist could continue painting landscapes.

With Sissi, he was not the elephant in the room, he was the elephant and the room. As

Before continuing further, it is important to gain an understanding of how democracy is perceived by the ordinary people of the Middle East. Democracy, as a secular entity, is unlikely t be favorably received by the vast majority of Middle Easterners who are devout followers of the Islamic faith. Traditionally, there is tension among the Muslim countries with respect to the establishment of a democratic form of government. On the one hand, there are those who believe that democratic rule can co-exist with the religious nature of the Middle Easter societies; however, on the other hand there are those who believe that the tribal structure of the Middle Eastern countries may not be suitable for democratic rule as too many factions will emerge. The result will be a "fractured" society that cannot effectively unite and there is also the risk that this could impact the cohesion produced by the Muslim faith. Although concerns exist, for the most part, the spirit of democracy, or self rule, is viewed as a positive endeavor so long as it builds up the country and sustains the religious base versus devaluing religion and creating instability. Creating this balance will be the challenge as most Western democracies have attempted to maintain a separation of church and state. What this suggests is that as democracy grows in the Middle East, it is not necessarily going to evolve upon a Western template—it will have its own shape or form coupled with stronger religious ties.

In the two years since I left Egypt, things haven’t gotten better. Thousands of people have been incarcerated for the most trivial reasons. Hundreds have been tortured on a daily basis in police stations. Others have been killed. You would think that there would be some sort of stability on the surface at least. You know, the kind of fake stability military dictatorships have. But even economically the army was running the country into the ground. They were basically milking the shit out of it, changing laws, basking in the corruption that is protected by their military status. Every day, people woke up to a new business taken by the army.

Most of Arab corrupt leaders ( the thieves ) they talks and act publicly as real leaders when in fact their real actions toward their people shows us they are bunch of assholes and cowards , bastards as well

Camus, remember, said that even at that point, the rebel who challenges a tyrannical state must have an alternative order of government in mind to implement, or his rebellion loses legitimacy, since anarchy is worse than tyranny. We saw this dilemma played out during the Arab Spring in Syria and Libya,

On the one hand, the so-called Arab Spring took place in opposition to neoliberal policies, but it also took place in a society shaped by neoliberal subjectivity. It was carried out by individuals with a certain way of looking at the world. “The Arab revolutions lacked the kind of radicalism—in political and economic outlook—that marked most other twentieth-century revolutions,” he wrote in his book Revolution Without Revolutionaries. “Unlike the revolutions of the 1970s that espoused a powerful socialist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and social justice impulse, Arab revolutionaries were preoccupied more with the broad issues of human rights, political accountability, and legal reform. The prevailing voices, secular and Islamist alike, took free market, property relations, and neoliberal rationality for granted.

It's not an Arab Spring, it's a European Spring.

castigate Middle East experts for not anticipating the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011.

Libya. A Tunisian street vendor setting himself aflame to protest police brutality in December 2010 ushered in what has become known as the Arab Spring. Mass demonstrations protesting longstanding authoritarian rule in Egypt, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, and Libya in 2011 stirred national and international debates.

the Arab Spring, which has transformed Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and, as I write, shortly Syria. These transformations each demonstrate the potency of the idea of democratic institutions.

consider a young Tunisian man pushing a wooden handcart loaded with fruits and vegetables down a dusty road to a market in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. When the man was three, his father died. He supports his family by borrowing money to fill his cart, hoping to earn enough selling the produce to pay off the debt and have a little left over. It’s the same grind every day. But this morning, the police approach the man and say they’re going to take his scales because he has violated some regulation. He knows it’s a lie. They’re shaking him down. But he has no money. A policewoman slaps him and insults his dead father. They take his scales and his cart. The man goes to a town office to complain. He is told the official is busy in a meeting. Humiliated, furious, powerless, the man leaves. He returns with fuel. Outside the town office he douses himself, lights a match, and burns. Only the conclusion of this story is unusual. There are countless poor street vendors in Tunisia and across the Arab world. Police corruption is rife, and humiliations like those inflicted on this man are a daily occurrence. They matter to no one aside from the police and their victims. But this particular humiliation, on December 17, 2010, caused Mohamed Bouazizi, aged twenty-six, to set himself on fire, and Bouazizi’s self-immolation sparked protests. The police responded with typical brutality. The protests spread. Hoping to assuage the public, the dictator of Tunisia, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, visited Bouazizi in the hospital. Bouazizi died on January 4, 2011. The unrest grew. On January 14, Ben Ali fled to a cushy exile in Saudi Arabia, ending his twenty-three-year kleptocracy. The Arab world watched, stunned. Then protests erupted in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain. After three decades in power, the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was driven from office. Elsewhere, protests swelled into rebellions, rebellions into civil wars. This was the Arab Spring—and it started with one poor man, no different from countless others, being harassed by police, as so many have been, before and since, with no apparent ripple effects. It is one thing to look backward and sketch a narrative arc, as I did here, connecting Mohamed Bouazizi to all the events that flowed out of his lonely protest. Tom Friedman, like many elite pundits, is skilled at that sort of reconstruction, particularly in the Middle East, which he knows so well, having made his name in journalism as a New York Times correspondent in Lebanon. But could even Tom Friedman, if he had been present that fatal morning, have peered into the future and foreseen the self-immolation, the unrest, the toppling of the Tunisian dictator, and all that followed? Of course not. No one could. Maybe, given how much Friedman knew about the region, he would have mused that poverty and unemployment were high, the number of desperate young people was growing, corruption was rampant, repression was relentless, and therefore Tunisia and other Arab countries were powder kegs waiting to blow. But an observer could have drawn exactly the same conclusion the year before. And the year before that. Indeed, you could have said that about Tunisia, Egypt, and several other countries for decades. They may have been powder kegs but they never blew—until December 17, 2010, when the police pushed that one poor man too far.

Would you buy a used car from your occupier? For the first six months of the intifada, Ehud Gol was the official Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman. Every day he had to go before the world’s press and defend Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. But in the spring of 1988, Gol was made the Israeli Consul General in Rio de Janeiro and he had to sell his car before he left the country. Practically the first place he went was to a Palestinian car dealer in the West Bank town of Ramallah. “Intifada or no intifada, this was business,” Gol explained to me. “The car dealer even came down to the Foreign Ministry and we went over all the papers in my office. There I was, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, and this guy, whose son was probably out throwing stones, was ready to buy from me—and it was a used car!” A Palestinian teacher I knew was driving from Ramallah to Jerusalem one afternoon when he saw a colleague of his from Bir Zeit University and offered to give him a lift. “This fellow came from a small village near Ramallah,” said my teacher friend. “The whole way into Jersualem he was talking to me about the intifada and how it had changed his village, how everyone was involved, and how the local committees of the uprising were running the village and they were getting rid of all the collaborators. He was really enthusiastic, and I was really impressed. As we got close to Jerusalem, I asked him where he wanted to be dropped off and he said, ‘The Hebrew University.’ I was really surprised, so I said, ‘What are you going there for?’ and he said, ‘I teach an Arabic class there.’ It simply didn’t occur to him that there was any contradiction between enthusiasm for the intifada and where he was going.

undertaking however he could. But when approached by Yale in the late spring of 1916 for his help with the next round of concession-buying, Ismail Bey balked. In the Arab way of doing business, one’s word was inviolate. Ismail Bey had now seen enough of the American way to know that Yale’s assurances of compensation were quite meaningless; what he needed was a written contract. Confronted by this request, Yale explained that as a mere purchasing agent for Socony, he hadn’t the authority to pen such a guarantee, but that if Ismail Bey “wished to know my personal opinion, it was that he had better have confidence in the Company.” That wasn’t good enough for Ismail Bey;

People whose lives were determined for them by a group of politicians whose severing, dissecting and reattaching of their lands has turned their world into a monster that not even its creator can control.