Time for an Independent Conversation

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Time for an Independent Conversation

By : Al-Masry Al-Youm

[The following editorial was published by the editors of Egypt Independent, an affiliated publication of Al-Masry Al-Youm, in response to the latter`s censorship of and interference in the content-related decision-making of Egypt Independent.]

On 24 November, we issued the first edition of our new project, Egypt Independent, a weekly, twenty-four-page newspaper that attempts to unpack Egypt’s complex and dynamic political and cultural landscape. It was not long before we were interrupted. Our second issue never made it to the newsstands.

This interruption has not only caused us a major frustration after putting days of work and much investment into the project. It has also disappointed our nascent readership. This is why we want to explain what happened and take the opportunity to introduce our team.

The issue scheduled for publishing on 1 December was internally censored. It featured an opinion article by Robert Springborg, a renowned political scientist and longtime scholar on Egypt, about the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces` (SCAF) continuing rule. The article, which was critical of the SCAF and pointed out potential pitfalls in its leadership, raised objections from the chief editor of Al-Masry Al-Youm, our Arabic-language sister paper after Egypt Independent had gone to press. Because our paper lacks its own printing license right now and is therefore legally considered a “supplement” of the Arabic paper, we complied and agreed to change what the editor considered the objectionable parts of the article. We did this in collaboration with Professor Springborg, who, with his long experience in Egypt and knowledge of the country’s politics and military, understood the restrictions placed on the media, even in the wake of an historic revolution.

After making the requested changes, the censored version was still never reprinted. We never received any calls from authorities outside of the institution to halt the printing process and, to our knowledge, the decision was internal. The editorial team of Egypt Independent was not part of this decision.

At a recent meeting of our writers and editors, we laid out some of the principles at the heart of our project. In our internal mission statement, we wrote that we stand against racism, sexism, xenophobia, religious discrimination, fascism and state violence. We try to give voice to groups whose rights are violated and avoid reinforcing stereotypes. We were—and continue to be—wholeheartedly in support of the revolution.

Both online and in our print paper, we have intentionally shown skepticism toward the paranoid and chauvinist tones that have arisen in Egypt since January, specifically those implicating ambiguous “foreign conspiracies” trying to undermine Egypt. This ultra-nationalist discourse is a by-product of the toppled regime, and by extension the 1952 military regime, and continues to be put forward by the SCAF, which claims that only strong rulers can protect Egypt from countless conspirators, foreign hands and meddlers.

Professor Springborg, who was accused in the 7 December Arabic edition of Al-Masry Al-Youm of being a conspirator against Egypt’s stability, is an eminent scholar of Egyptian military affairs. One of his seminal works studied the relationship between former President Hosni Mubarak and Field Marshal Abdel Halim Abu Ghazalah, the former head of SCAF. In the original opinion column he wrote for Egypt Independent, Professor Springborg suggested the possibility of an internal rift within the military due to SCAF’s poor management during the transitional period. This is not advocating mutiny and it does not make him a conspirator against Egypt. It is a descriptive reading by a respected expert on the Egyptian military. Even if this analysis is uncomfortable for some, it deserves to be heard.

When Al-Masry Al-Youm was founded in 2004, it helped inaugurate a new opening for independent media in Egypt. Seven years later, even after 25 January, self-censorship still plagues Egyptian media. As an Egyptian newspaper, we, too, suffer from it. But if self-censorship becomes internalized and goes unquestioned, it becomes an irreversible practice. We refuse to let this happen.

We have stopped putting together the weekly print newspaper until we have a license guaranteeing our independence from the Arabic newspaper and resting all legal liabilities on our own shoulders. Even once we have this, we will continue to strive to maintain the highest standards of honesty and integrity. We are ready and excited for Egypt Independent to return to the newsstands. Our shaky beginning has not set us off course. It has taught us.


[This article was originally published on Al-Masry Al-Youm.]

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