Details of Military Prosecutor's Summoning of Egyptian Activist and Journalist Hossam El-Hamalawy

[Image from arabawy.org/blog] [Image from arabawy.org/blog]

Details of Military Prosecutor's Summoning of Egyptian Activist and Journalist Hossam El-Hamalawy

By : Jadaliyya Reports

On Monday, May 30th, 2011, Egyptian activist and journalist Hossam El-Hamalawy was summoned by the military prosecutor in relations to on-air accusations (made Thursday May 26) of the military`s attack on protesters and activists during the Egyptian uprising. Below are a sequence of videos and reports that highlight how the events unfolded, giving voice to Hossam El-Hamalawy at different stages of the controversy. [Jadaliyya will be conducting the fourth interview with Hossam on the Muslim Brotherhood. See the first three interviews here, here, and here].

Video on Hossam El-Hamalawy on On TV show hosted by Reem Maged wherein in he makes his statements (Thursday May 26, 2011):

 

Ahram Online article by Salma Shukrallah discussing military prosecutor`s summoning of Hossam El-Hamalway and others (Monday May 30, 2011):

Blogger and Ahram Online journalist Hossam El-Hamalawy and TV host Reem Maged were given a summons on Monday to appear before military prosecution after Maged screened on her show on Thursday Hamalawy criticising the role of military police, holding the head of the military police responsible for torturing activists.

The questioning will start tomorrow at 11am, and there has already been a call for demonstrations in front of the military prosecutor`s building.

Journalist Nabil Sharaf El-Din was also summoned on the same day after he criticised on OnTV Friday the way the military was handling the transition period.

Sharaf El-Din claims that the military’s approach makes many suspect that there is a transfer-of-power deal with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The same programme aired a very critical phone call with Mamdouh Shahin, member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), who attacked both OnTV and Sharaf El-Din.

The SCAF has criticised what it calls “irresponsible media,” arguing that it is creating a national split between the military and the people. The SCAF has decided to hold a forum 5 June to discuss the Egyptian media with the country`s various political forces.

 

Video of Hossam El-Hamalawy on al-Tahrir television station describing his summons and his reaction to it (Monday May 30, 2011):

 

Ahram Online article by Salma Shukrallah reporting on meeting between Hossam El-Hamalawi and military prosecutor (Tuesday May 31, 2011):

Journalist and blogger Hossam El-Hamalawy and TV presenter Reem Maged who have been summoned on Monday for questioning by military prosecution were not in fact interrogated, lawyer says.

The head of military prosecution only discussed the statements made by El-Hamalawy on Maged’s television programme in an attempt to clarify the accusations which El-Hamalawy directed at the military police, according to lawyer Haitham Mohamadein. El-Hamalawy had criticized the military police for torturing activists and held the head of the military police responsible.

The head of the military prosecution asked El-Hamalawy for proof of military police violations, Mohamadein said.

A demonstration was staged by hundreds of activists as El-Hamalawy and Maged were at the military prosecution. Activists considered the summoning of the two journalists as an infringement on the freedom of expression and feared that the military prosecution will file charges. 

 

Video of Hossam El-Hamalawy and Reem Magd on On TV discussing their meeting with the military prosecutor (Tuesday May 31, 2011):

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412