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Maya Mikdashi
2011, A Memory From Lebanon
![[Children Displaced by War in 2006. Image from electronicintifada.net]](/content_images/3/sm_lebanon-children.jpg "[Children Displaced by War in 2006. Image from electronicintifada.net]")
When the revolutions began in March of 2011, I was envious. It is not easy to admit this. Back then, before the revolutions turned bloody, before Libya and Bahrain and Syria and before the continuation of a military state in Egypt, the possibilities seemed contagious. But even then, while in the fever of January, beneath a desire for revolution, I understood that I would not see a similarly broad based and successful uprising in Lebanon. Watching the swell of people in ...
Keep Reading »Gay Rights as Human Rights: Pinkwashing Homonationalism
![[Tel Aviv Gay Pride. Image From Unknown Archive. Queers Against Apartheid Poster]](/content_images/3/sm_Screenshot2011-12-15at1.48.00PM.png "[Tel Aviv Gay Pride. Image From Unknown Archive. Queers Against Apartheid Poster]")
It is difficult to know whether to laugh or cry at the news that the United States has come out as the global defender of LGBTQ rights. This confusion is not only due to the United States' own record on gay rights, but perhaps more importantly, it is due to the United States' role as the premier imperial power in the world today. After all, while Secretary of State Clinton acknowledged that the United States has an imperfect record of defending and legislating gay ...
Keep Reading »بانتظار علياء
[المقال نشر على موقع جدلية باللغة الإنجليزية وترجمه إلى العربية يوسف حداد] من السهل مشاهدة صور لنساء عاريات أينما نظرنا من حولنا. فصورهن موجودة في كل مكان على مواقع الإنترنت وفي المعارض الفنية وعلى شاشات التلفزة وفي الأفلام السينمائية طبعاً. أما صور النساء ”شبه العاريات“ فهي الأكثر رواجاً. إذ نراها تنتشر على لوحات الإعلانات، في الأغاني المصورة، وفي الدعايات التلفزيونية، حيث تدعونا بجسدها وبنظرات "الإغراء" لشراء المزيد والمزيد. إن صور المرأة العارية و ...
Keep Reading »Waiting for Alia
It is quite easy to see a woman naked. In fact, naked women are always only an internet search, an art gallery, a television show, or film away. The semi-naked, alluring female form is even more pervasive. These images stare at us from billboards, music videos, and television advertisements asking us with their flesh and their “fuck me” expressions to buy more and more things. Yes, images of naked women and/or semi-nude women are everywhere, including in the Arab world. They ...
Keep Reading »Adventures in Candyland
![[Candy Map Of Israel Palestine: Image by Maya Mikdashi]](/content_images/3/sm_IMG_0414.JPG "[Candy Map Of Israel Palestine: Image by Maya Mikdashi]")
This week, walking through Columbia University's campus, I noticed a piece of paper stuck to the metal railings around me. It was a flyer advertising Israel week at Columbia University, a popular yearly event meant to discuss issues related to Israel and foster support on campus for that state. This year, one of the events in particular caught my eye. The event was titled Mapping Israel's Borders, and the blurb read: “Do you want to learn more about the history of Israel ...
Keep Reading »The Making of a Secular Democracy: Law, Marriage, and Empirical Irrelevance in Israel and Lebanon
![[Left: Israeli couples marrying in Cyprus. Image from Reuters. Right: Travel agency advertisment in Lebanon. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_Screenshot2011-10-28at11.21.42AM.png "[Left: Israeli couples marrying in Cyprus. Image from Reuters. Right: Travel agency advertisment in Lebanon. Image from unknown archive.]")
On any given weekend, Israeli and Lebanese citizens can be found standing together in an orderly line before a Cypriot magistrate. They shuffle forward, couple by couple, in line to get married. The distance to Cyprus is roughly the same for an Israeli or a Lebanese couple, as is the reason why these couples choose to get married there. And no, it is not due to the beautiful weather, the beaches, or the nightlife in Cyprus, which most Israelis and Lebanese would insist to ...
Keep Reading »What is a Virgin?
![[Female anatomy. Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_Slide16.JPG "[Female anatomy. Image from unknown archive]")
* What follows is a germ of a longer and more detailed piece. The names, dates and places related to this court case have been omitted in order to protect the anonymity of the plaintiffs. In recent years, the Lebanese Druze Court of Appeals adjudicated a particularly ugly divorce. The case concerned a young couple who had recently been married and divorced by the Druze Court of First Instance, which had found both members of the couple equally responsible for the failure ...
Keep Reading »Nour Merheb, RIP (1985-2011)
![[Nour Merheb, Image from Facebook]](/content_images/3/sm_nourmerheb.jpg "[Nour Merheb, Image from Facebook]")
On September 16, 2011, Nour Merheb killed himself. Nour did not leave a wife, husband, or children behind. He did not publish any books, did not write opinion pieces for influential newspapers, and did not parade himself in front of television cameras to provide expert opinions. He did not die in a protest facing down an authoritarian regime, he was not killed by an occupier's bullet, and his death will not inspire a popular uprising in Lebanon. He was not what academics ...
Keep Reading »Honoring the Law: Honor, Gender and Crime in the Lebanese Penal Code
![[Symbol of the Lebanese Lawyer's Syndicate. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_logo_beirut_bar.gif "[Symbol of the Lebanese Lawyer's Syndicate. Image from unknown archive.]"){kind=logo}
Last month the Lebanese judiciary repealed an article of the penal code commonly referred to as “the honor crime” law. Years of pressure from activist groups and national and international human rights non-governmental organizations led to the repeal of article 562. Its text stated that a man who “finds his wife or his sister or one of his female agnates in the act of (witnessed) illegitimate sexual relations and kills or harms one of the actors” can receive a lesser ...
Keep Reading »A Light Bulb
![[Electricite du Liban: Image from Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_edl1.jpg "[Electricite du Liban: Image from Flickr]")
Last summer, I posted a piece about electricity outages in Lebanon. In the year that separates that article from this one, one March 14 led Lebanese government has been brought down and another March 8 led government has been formed. Popular uprisings have swelled the Arab world with possibility as Ben Ali, Mubarak, and now Gaddhafi were overthrown. The US-Saudi-Israeli mix and match trifecta has seen its influence waning, and is leading counterrevolutions in ...
Keep Reading »Bio
Maya Mikdashi is a PhD candidate at Columbia University's Department of Anthropology and Co-Director of the documentary film About Baghdad. Maya is currently a Faculty Fellow and Director of Graduate Studies at the NYU Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. She is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine.
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