The Need for New Thinking in the Intifada

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Sep 25, 2023 Palestine
Palestinian child Faris Odeh faces down an Israeli tank during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. Palestinian child Faris Odeh faces down an Israeli tank during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The Need for New Thinking in the Intifada

By : Bertus Hendriks, Mouin Rabbani, and Edward Said

[In May 2001, at the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and several months after Ariel Sharon assumed office in Israel and George W. Bush was installed in the United States, Edward W. Said came to Palestine to pay his respects to his close friend and associate, the Palestinian academic and activist Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, who had succumbed to illness. He was interviewed by Jadaliyya Co-Editor Mouin Rabbani and Dutch journalist Bertus Hendriks in Jerusalem on 28 May. During this discussion Said offered his views on developments in Palestine, their broader context, as well as his conception of a different future.]

Mouin Rabbani (MR): Since Oslo was signed you have been uncompromisingly critical of Israel, the United States and the Palestinian Authority. You have also described the Accords as a “Palestinian Versailles” being implemented by a “Palestinian Vichy” government. And yet the current Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, according to the entire international community, is being led by the PA if not by Yasir Arafat personally. Can we conclude, therefore, that for the past seven years you’ve basically misinterpreted what both the Palestinian Authority and Oslo are about? 

Edward W. Said (EWS): I think one would have to say that what’s going on is a massive uprising against the whole situation, which includes an enhanced occupation due to Israel. I think it’s a revolt against the whole status quo brought in by Oslo, which in a sense I predicted. I said this would never go anywhere, and in the end people whose condition was getting worse were going to refuse to go on. I think that’s the current situation. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying it’s against occupation. It’s against the whole situation — occupation, and the role the PA plays in it. 

MR: At Camp David last summer, the Palestinians — as US diplomat Dennis Ross put it — were basically given everything they asked for, but instead took a strategic decision to use violence. Here again there is an at least implicit acknowledgement that the PA is actually still in charge of the Palestinian national movement, and seeking to attain the strategic objectives of this movement rather than being a subcontractor for Israeli security.

EWS: I think what was offered at Camp David and again at the White House at the end of 2000 has been misleadingly portrayed as “giving the Palestinians everything they want”. It’s like saying to prisoners in a jail we’re going to give you ninety per cent of the prison, but we keep the doors, the walls, the exits and the entrances and the roof. That whole confection was misleadingly portrayed as a wonderful gift to the Palestinians. 

Second, Arafat and the PA understood what was offered to them. They understood they were being asked to sign off on the entire conflict, that they weren’t going to get Jerusalem. That, after eight years of Oslo, they weren’t going to get a Palestinian state but a protectorate of some sort, non-contiguous territory, what I’ve just described. At that point Arafat’s caution, his endurance, gave out and he just drew back. I’m speculating, but I don’t think he had another plan. Like in Cairo in May 1994, he refused to sign [the Gaza-Jericho Agreement] and there was somebody there, President Mubarak [of Egypt], to make him sign; here he just drew back. He didn’t want to sign. He saw that it was a terminal trap from which he couldn’t escape. And at that point the whole policy of closure was also choking the Palestinians. So I think there was a convergence of reasons to cause the whole situation to blow up.

Bertus Hendriks (BH): If these negotiation are to resume again, it’s clear that in order to be successful they will have to start from where they left off at Taba, and there would have to be an improvement over the Taba offer. Would that not come close to a solution that would not entail all the abandonment of Palestinian principles that you have criticised so much? 

EWS: If they’re going to resume at all they’re going to resume within the framework of the Mitchell Report. The Mitchell Report is simply a rephrasing of the old Oslo agreements. I resent the fact that it’s seen as a very forward-looking, quite extraordinary document. There’s nothing in it about the end of occupation. They talk vaguely about stopping settlements, but say nothing about removing them. They don’t say anything about getting the tanks out of here, or about not using F-16s. It’s a very cautious report written, in my opinion, very much for the Israeli lobby in the US, of whom Mitchell and his colleague Warren Rudman are creatures. Mitchell was one of the highest recipients of Israeli lobby money when he was in the Senate. So was Rudman. To expect anything more of them is foolish. It’s the same old stuff repackaged, and the Israelis have everything to gain by it. They say “we’re stopping settlements”. But what’s the mechanism proposed for monitoring the stopping of settlements, or for getting rid of them? There’s nothing in the Mitchell Report about ending occupation, removing the settlers, or restoring East Jerusalem. It’s just what we in America call a shell game. Give me a break!

MR: You’ve now been in Palestine for several days during which I understand you’ve met many political leaders, or at least many of the leaders of the current uprising, such as Marwan Barghouti, Mustafa Barghouti, and others. Have these meetings affected your view of the current situation, and made you perhaps more optimistic or pessimistic? The second, related question, is whether you have had any meetings with the PA?

EWS: No. I met PA Cabinet Secretary Ahmad Abd-al-Rahman at the eulogy for Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, who I’ve known for almost 30 years. [Abu-Lughod’s deteriorating condition was the reason for Said’s visit, but Abu-Lughod passed away only hours before Said’s arrival., I of course met people at these very sad occasions, but I haven’t had any discussions with them to speak of.

The few discussions I’ve had with the leaders you mentioned and with others as well actually leaves me quite optimistic, because what I’ve discerned is a tremendous search for new ideas. There’s a complete awareness on the part of everybody that the old way just simply won’t do. You can’t just go back doing the same thing, it’s quite stupid in a way. And these are not stupid people. So I think there is a genuine search for new ideas, but there isn’t a genuine finding of new ideas, that takes time to come. But what impresses me is that people are looking for new things to do and new perspectives to offer beyond throwing stones, going back to the negotiations, and so on and so forth. In other words I think there’s a craving for some bit of imagination and creativity here which I think is tremendously encouraging.

MR: Speaking of new ideas, your consistent position during the Oslo period has been that the concept of a partition of Palestine cannot be sustained in the longer term. Yet during the early months of the current uprising you seemed to change this position. What is your opinion now and how has it been affected by the current uprising?

EWS: My feeling is that the current uprising is, as I’ve described it earlier, a complex phenomenon. I think its most useful energies should be directed towards the end of the occupation, basically within the 1967 lines, towards the removal of the settlements and of the Israeli military forces here. It’s not going to happen quickly, but you can build a movement around the evacuation of illegally held Palestinian territory by Israeli military and settlement forces. That’s a very clear tactical short-term goal. Now if you achieve that you achieve a dynamism in the political process here which is now completely unforeseeable. Will it lead to directly to a Palestinian state on the one hand, or will it lead elsewhere? I’m always thinking about the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, who are not going to rush into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There is also as an added factor a tremendous amount of pressure on the PA and on the Israelis: the movement of return. All of that has to be factored in. I’m simply incapable of telling you what that’s going to result in.

But I don’t think I should be misinterpreted as saying “end of occupation equals Palestinian state”. End of occupation equals a new situation, in which — and this is very important — Israelis have to participate. There can’t be an end of occupation without the substantial engagement in that anti-occupation movement of substantial numbers Israelis. Now in that situation you’ve got an entirely new dynamic, something resembling the liberation struggle against apartheid in South Africa, in which the whites were involved from the start. We’ve never achieved that kind of thought here. 

MR: Perhaps because the concept has so often been rejected by Palestinians?

EWS: Yes. This whole fetish of the dangers of normalization, even while normalization is taking place under the covers has to be rethought. I have some ideas about that which I’d be happy to talk about. But what I’m saying is that if you focus on occupation and ending occupation, which alas they’re not doing, neither the Americans nor the Israelis nor, alas, the Palestinians, then you create a whole new dynamic. And I think without that dynamic we’re just going to go around in the same circle.

BH: You say that in order to end the occupation you must have the involvement of large numbers of Israelis. But this can only be achieved if you accept the basic tenet that the solution for two people in one land is the end of occupation and partition. What then happens with the refugees’ right of return in line with UN Resolution 194, which for many Israelis amounts to an unrestricted exercise of the Palestinian right of return and spells the end of the Israeli part of a two-state solution. How do you deal with that? 

EWS: Very easily. The present right of return for every Jew everywhere is the end of Palestinian existence. Because if every Jew in the world has the right of return we’re talking about the return of 20 million people here, which can’t possibly be viable as far as Palestinians are concerned. So my answer is that we have to put both these unlimited rights together and negotiate some solution to the problem of this enormous number of theoretical returnees which this land can’t possibly accommodate. So why does everyone want the Palestinians to renege on a fundamental right of residence and not expect the same thing from the Israelis. So I’m just saying, put them together and look at them together and see what we get. That’s never been done. I think the Israeli screeching and the hysteria – the obviously feigned hysteria – is profoundly hypocritical. Why should they have an unlimited law of return for any Jew anywhere at any time, and Palestinians can’t even theoretically talk about the right of return to their country from which they were driven out. So I think that’s the way you have to see it, in that perspective.

BH: You said there could be no end to the occupation without significant Israeli involvement. Could you elaborate on this? 

EWS: I think it’s terribly important to address directly, as Palestinians, sectors of Israeli society. I don’t mean the traditional way of running after Meretz, and Peres, and Labour, and all those, to my mind, completely discredited and useless traditional elements of the Israeli political system, which is dedicated basically to a racist dehumanization of the Palestinians. But rather to students, artists, intellectuals, Sephardi Jews, independents, sectors of society, to explain to them that we have rights as a people that we’re never going to abandon, and that their policies of the last fifty-three years are a failure. We have to say it to them. To help them understand that simply killing Palestinians, or imprisoning them, or besieging them is not leading them anywhere. They have less security today than they had ten years ago, less than twenty years ago. So it’s obvious that this is a stupid, suicidal, delusional policy of theirs. That’s number one. 

I think the fear that we have of addressing them in creative ways stems from a complete misunderstanding of the ways other societies besides our own operate. These are basically democratic societies with a very strong civil component that we can deal with and work with, but we have to educate ourselves. One of the things that occurs to me when I see people blowing up cars and killing innocent people is that, aside from being criminal, it doesn’t do anything. But what if you could explode a barrel full of leaflets that say “this is what you’re doing to us”, and list the crimes they’ve committed against the Palestinian people, and force them to read and hear what we have to say. Address them via television. We have lots of Palestinians at Israeli universities who can quite easily address Israeli students, faculty and others. In other words, a courageous and direct exchange, the way there was between whites and blacks in South Africa because of the ANC. You’ve got to be able to address them and get them on your side. I don’t see any other way. You can’t keep radicalizing them so that they kill you with more impunity, feeling they’re the victims, which is what we have now. That’s number two.

And number three, you can’t have a situation in which our young people are sacrificing themselves to a delusional suicidal idea. Political struggle is about life, it’s not about killing others and yourself, you’ve got to be able to live. And where we’re at now is to me a dead end. It’s neurotic. And it should be converted to something that gets results. There’s nothing easier for the Israelis than to sit behind a barricade and fire missiles at what seem like a bunch of maniacs. But look at the effect — it may have been positive, it may have been negative, but it had an effect — of the introduction several years ago in the Israeli parliament of the question of whether students should read Palestinian literature or not. It created a tremendous storm. That’s the kind of argument you want to have, not whether “we should defend ourselves against terrorists”.

BH: But what do you to say to those Palestinians who have given up all hope and say that all liberation movements, South African included, only achieved results through the use of force, and that terrorism is the only thing that is frightening the Israelis?

EWS: That’s a stupid argument, it’s an insufficient argument. Nobody is saying that you give up the use of force. I said nothing about that. Mandela never gave up, never disarmed, at all. You protect yourself. I’m not a pacifist. I think people should be allowed to protect themselves against attack. It’s very different from what I would call blind terrorism. What is achieved by that politically? In my opinion, not very much. We’ve tried it for years. I’ve never seen much thought given to it as one alternative among many. Why not examine the alternatives? Try these, which are in my opinion forms of cultural struggle that are in their own way as dangerous as shooting a rifle. And I think they produce more lasting and more effective results.

BH: So you support those Palestinian intellectuals who have criticized the rapid militarization of the uprising?

EWS: Absolutely. Well, first of all, we don’t have a military. If you want to call it popular resistance you can call it that. I’m for that. But I think it could be directed more imaginatively. Take, for example, the settlements. I’ve been saying this for the last five years, maybe more. There is no movement to organize the people who are building the settlements, who are Palestinians. Palestinian leaders are organizing Palestinian contract workers to work in the settlements. Why is that not stopped? In other words, there are many other weapons besides rocks and terrorist bombs, like popular, organized resistance against settlements, against demolition of houses. The way Israelis do it. There’s a movement in Israel against the demolition of houses, people go and sit in these houses and challenge the bulldozers. We should have more of that, rather than just lobbing rocks from a distance. It shows bravery, I suppose, and audacity, and defiance, but it’s rather limited in its results. 

MR: What about the US role? There’s an increasing feeling here that what is happening is not so much Israeli aggression against the Palestinians but, as Noam Chomsky put it recently, “American planes with Israeli pilots”. How do you view the US role in the current situation, the representation of this conflict in the United States and the importance this representation has on realities on the ground here?

EWS: I would say that there are really only two serious areas of struggle. One of them is what I just spoke about, a cultural and political struggle on many fronts. The second is the United States. Without the United States, Israel cannot do what it’s doing now. The [US] media has systematically misrepresented this conflict as a conflict between two states, in which one – the Palestinians – are the aggressor, and the Israelis are the poor victims who might as well be in the Warsaw Ghetto. That’s the impression people have.

And third, in the United States, there is an extraordinarily permissive attitude towards Israel on the part of Congress and the Administration. It was true under Clinton, it was true under Reagan, it was true under Bush, and it’s now true under George W. That Israel has the right to a vast supply of military weapons and economic aid for which it is not held accountable.

What I think is developing, is a burgeoning civil movement in the United States, made up of elements of the old anti-war movement, the human rights community, the various ethnic communities, African-Americans, Latino-Americans, the Women’s movement, the academic community, the churches, and similar alternative as opposed to establishment communities in America, which have a very powerful clout and which have achieved quite important results, for example in the battle against the World Trade Organization, globalization, Davos and so on. All these elements are now slowly coalescing and converging around the question of Palestine and above all of US military support and supply of Israel. It has its information thanks to the internet, not thanks to the media but to the alternative media, radio, cyber-activism, alternative journalism, samizdat, all of that. There’s a tremendous amount of that stuff circulating around.

It seems to me that the movement is slowly being born which is going to in fact put enormous pressure on the US to modify or in some way rethink its policy towards the Middle East. It’s not going to come because the Republicans are more favorable to the Arabs. It’s not going to come because Colin Powell is better than Madeleine Albright. It’s not going to come for all the stupid reasons that we give here. It’s going to happen because of an enlightened, gradually more and more organized national campaign to change the position of the United States in the Middle East. I would say keep your eye on it. It is very, very, very encouraging.

[This interview was originally published in abbreviated form in Middle East International (MEI).]
Oct 9, 2014 Lebanon
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Jadaliyya Interview

The Chronicle of Higher Education Interviews Jadaliyya Co-Founder Bassam Haddad

The following interview was conducted by Ursula Lindsey with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Bassam Haddad in preparation for a feature about Jadaliyya for The Chronicle of Higher Education. The feature was published on 29 September 2014 and can be accessed by clicking here.

Ursula Lindsey (UL): Could you send me any statistics on the readership of Jadaliyya? I would like to get a sense of the overall size of the readership, and how it is geographically distributed.

Bassam Haddad (BH): We have become much less interested in numbers after having passed an important threshold in 2013, but we do not totally ignore them! Unfortunately (because one would like to see an alternative), the best indicator of the growth and expansion of readership has been “Facebook Reach,” which increased from around fifty thousand per week during the first six months in 2010–2011, to one million in 2012–2013, and surpassed 2.3 million in 2014. We actually stopped monitoring such numbers as closely, but know that our social media and classroom presence continues to increase steadily as our Facebook followers have surpassed 130,000. These followers are pretty active in circulating our content, and constitute a large part of how Jadaliyya content is disseminated. Twitter is another indicator. However, we refrain from tweeting too much, as shown by our tweets-to-followers ratio—which is perhaps among the highest (9900 tweets and twenty-seven thousand followers), at about thirty percent. The closest we have seen in our field is about forty-five to fifty percent. This reflects the extent to which each post/article, and/or tweet, is generating interest. It is important to note that our Arabic reading audience, world-wide but mainly in the region itself, has quadrupled since 2011, and now constitutes almost thirty to thirty-five percent of our readership, a testimony to how local informed readers elect to turn to Jadaliyya frequently—largely because our writers on local matters are either writing from the region or are intimately connected with the region.

As to other forms of tracing numbers, such as unique visitors, they seem quite inconsistent because the extent to which Jadaliyya is read not only via Android, iPhone, and iPad apps, but also because of the unusually large level of circulation of PDFs via huge email lists (which we are on and we see!) and, most importantly, its ubiquitous presence on syllabi (for instance, our unique visitors to the site hover around 500,000 a month, while most read Jadaliyya off line via email, PDF, or apps). Our Middle East scholars/educators/researchers list, now combined with that of Tadween Publishing, our sister organization, tops eight thousand engaged Jadaliyya readers who are increasingly assigning material from Jadaliyya.

The reason this happens is not only because we have good content. There is plenty good content if one searches the net carefully. Rather, it because of four very specific reasons: first, our good content has a long shelf-life, an outcome that is built into the editorial process; second, Jadaliyya content serves as an explicit resource or reference, through twelve topical and country/region-specific Media Roundups, profiles and archival posts for reference use, as well as weekly pedagogical reviews of new books, films, documentaries, art exhibits, and relevant social media items; third, Jadaliyya, in conjunction with Tadween’s blog, has become the space that most educators/researchers constantly visit for matters related to academic freedom, publishing, and higher education in the region as well as the United States and Europe; finally, our Jadaliyya content is selectively tapped to produce books and pedagogical publications that are published by Tadween Publishing and other publishers like Palgrave and Pluto Press, giving more gravity, and more longevity, to Jadaliyya content. One important source of such readers is JADMAG, of which we have so far produced five issues geared to educators, and chock-full of resources that are compiled and categorized at the end of each issue. (see www.JadMag.org or www.TadweenPublishing.com for more information). 

This source of readership is constantly expanding as Jadaliyya seems to be the only available site for such content (now quadro-lingual), and is our litmus test and what keeps us on our toes from day to day. The reason we emphasize this source in relation to numbers and quality is because the population of students reading Jadaliyya material based on educators’ choices is increasing exponentially at times, and serves as our most consistent source of readership with time especially that newcomers from that sphere become loyal readers. 

It is no surprise that the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) consistently sends us their critical public letters to publish when they want to reach the broader academic and research/journalist communities, including beyond the United States. It is not something you see consistently on any other website. And this applies to various other organizations that would like to reach the same expansive cohort (based in the United States, Europe, or the Middle East), including the new Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS).

Our colleague and professor of Arabic literature at Brown University, Elias Muhanna, who also runs his own popular blog, Qifa Nabki, commented openly at a conference that he does not know a professor teaching the modern Middle East who does not have a variety of Jadaliyya articles on their syllabi—an honor that ranges from rare to unique when it comes to similar online publications. 

UL: We discussed stories that caused particularly strong debates, and you mentioned the critique of DAM`s video. Are there any other pieces that sparked debates?    

BH: Just to clarify, this last piece sparked more than a debate, as some folks where actually unhappy with the approach—though we are still in good communication with the concerned parties (e.g., DAM) given our approach to the matter. The pieces that sparked debate, discussion, and the like are actually many, and I am not sure it would be fair to single out a handful. However, the notable pieces that drew heated debates and attention revolve around the July coup in Egypt, or around the nature of the Syrian uprising. But this is almost a continuous variable, and still sparks heated discussions that reflect the polarization on these matters among concerned publics. Nonetheless, we continue to get serious engagement—even if sometimes a bit over the top—from detractors on various topics, from Palestine and Syria, to articles on sexuality, Islam, and even literature and film. The fact that detractors of the entire publication continue to engage and critique reveals a sense of legitimacy that even this cohort associate with Jadaliyya. For a critical publication, this is priceless, and we think we will fail if we do not maintain that level of quality and legitimacy.

UL: What are the most common criticisms or suggestions for improvement your get? Do you think they are valid? Where do you see room for improvement? When I last saw Jadaliyya Co-Editor Sinan Antoon in Cairo, he said, for example, he thought the site might publish less so as to focus more on the quality of the writing. 

BH: Oh, dear, there are all kinds, and so many of which come from us, the editors, given that various page teams are relatively autonomous. Our position on critique is simple: we ignore any critique at our own peril. This does not mean that all criticisms are equally valid. They are not. It does, however, mean that we take them seriously and assume their validity until we can illustrate otherwise to ourselves and to others. In most instances, critiques do include a modicum of validity, and our responsiveness to nearly every single significant line of critiques (based on a compilation) is the reason we keep growing in quality and numbers. We surely miss some, and we surely make mistakes even in assessing critiques—but these represent a minority of cases within our practice. Based on what we have heard, we see room for improvement in soliciting even more writing from the region; in working harder to get more pieces from the scene, on intractably controversial matters, like Syria; and we agree that we, like any successful publication, can get too comfortable with its status quo of readership and contributors. But questions like yours, and internal discussions based on similar observations, push us on a quarterly basis to make a deliberate and explicit effort to reach out. This is in fact why we dramatically expanded the Arabic section (in terms of readership and contributors) during the past two years. 

All in all we operate on a five-year plan of sorts (despite the problematic association with five-year plans). At this point, as we are still in our fourth year, we are establishing ourselves as a serious and perhaps the go-to publication for informed readership. But you will soon see some changes that will expand our scope and spice things up a bit in a productive direction, at a time when we need not worry as much about the basics and daily operations. Our challenge, actually, is to maintain the essentially voluntary-based nature of Jadaliyya. Therefore, much of what we have focused on during the first years of establishment involves building the best team there is, or what we think is such, under these circumstances. It is a continuing challenge, but it has been working since 1992 when the parent organization, the Arab Studies Journal, started.

As to the question of quantity verses quality, we exercise a mean purge every quarter, precisely to avoid the false impression that quantity is synonymous with quality. Surely, we fail here and there. However, the one development since 2013 has been the reduction of the output rate—which we view as having been somewhat unavoidable as this is how you connect with new readership and contributors in the early stages—from about 175 pieces per month to about 110-120 (though this includes all posts and reports, etc.). But this challenge continues, and—frankly—we hold ourselves to standards that are not observed in comparable publications that either focus on one country, or one approach (e.g., Foreign Policy), or one audience, or one language, or one discipline, etc. So we have to make up our own standards for a new kind of publication. All this takes time, and we welcome any criticism that allows us to meat our challenge. We are not sensitive to productive critique at all! We will fail without it. 

UL: You mention detractors of the site—any examples?

BH: Every new initiative gives rise to critics, and that is a good thing. What is interesting about Jadaliyya’s critics, most of them at least, is that they critique and stick around for the most part—largely because of what they tell us verbatim at times: “We expect more from Jadaliyya,” or something of the sort. Now the question of who these critics are depends on the issue, and often our biggest critics on one topic are our biggest fans on another. Syria is a good example where we get flack from both pro-opposition corners and anti-opposition corners, but you would find avid readers of other Jadaliyya pages among both varieties. Do we have critics that do not think Jadaliyya is worth reading at all? You bet! There is very little we can do to convince those voices otherwise. Having said all of that, the fact is that Jadaliyya has filled a gap and presented a centrifugal force around which critics of mainstream discourse on the region in the United State and beyond hover. That in and of itself has generated detractors. 

UL: It seems to me that Jadaliyya has a pretty clear, consistent identity, both in its politics and its theoretical orientations. The people who edit and write it are generally the same age and peer group, and many have known each other for a long time. Do you think you have a wide enough variety of views? Do you feel like Jadaliyya has been able to spark debates outside of a community of like-minded contributors and readers? 

BH: [One factual note: the editors and contributors are by no means of similar age or belong to similar social circles—not after 2011, regarding the latter comment, and have never been, regarding the former comment. We have had more than a thousand contributors and the Jadaliyya team surpasses eighty people living in different countries now. Any cursory view of any fifty consecutive posts reveals a variety that easily surpasses most comparable publications. As for views, it is a political challenge, not always a question of diversity. See below.]

This is the one-million dollar question. Yes, any good publication must struggle with this dialectic of building a readership based on a particular kind/nature of knowledge production, but then expanding it to attract new readership and contributors while retaining the reason for its success. Are we guilty of not doing this perfectly? Absolutely. Have we gone far beyond most other publications to allow for serious internal differences and reach out to new and alternative views? Absolutely. But that does not exhaust the question. As mentioned above, we are in the building stage, and we view a good part of the shortcomings as related byproducts. However, this is one of our fundamental goals as we enter and complete our fifth year, and it will not come without its risks, risks we are very happy to take. Most importantly in reference to sparking discussion or debates, Jadaliyya articles have been written about and discussed in conferences and in social media in ways that have actually jump-started broader research questions and helped set research agendas—not to mention the impact of Jadaliyya on the carriers of junior writers who make their debut there and then get picked up by other institutions who are hiring, paying, and producing knowledge. The list is pretty long.

Having said that, two comments are relevant here. First, we are not and do not pretend to be an open forum for all views. Though I suspect you recognize that and you are not asking about why we do not highlight and invite problematic (racist, sexist, classist, etc. writers), but rather, from within the perspective we support, we may still afford more variety—and that is totally fair, and the above addresses our need to meet this challenge in increasingly better ways.

The second comment is political, and refers to the context within which Jadaliyya and other publications emerged in recent years. We see ourselves as a counter-discourse in relation to the dominant and quite entrenched discourse on the Middle East in the United States primarily, but also beyond. We also see ourselves in the same manner in relation to the petro-media empire of some Arab states. In this context, we are trying to provide an alternative reference point for sound daily analysis on the region. To establish that difficult reality and standard, we have had to be more focused on consistency and quality, sometimes at the expense of maximum diversity. So, we are not, per se, seeking diversity of “views” in the absolute sense, which is a matter/goal that speaks more to liberal concerns that are often divorced from realities of power and its direct relation to dominant discourses. However, where we have room to improve on this particular point, which is how we understand your question, is to establish even more diversity “within” the “general” perspective we endorse. And, yes, we do have some work to do in that respect, but not always for lack of trying. We are fighting an uphill battle and we also have to pay attention to the challenge of dragging everyone along while expanding this spectrum (i.e., the million-dollar challenge/question above). The years ahead will speak louder than any words regarding our genuine interest in making this happen within the context of a counter-discourse movement.

Also, we do not pay our writers, and this restricts us by excluding many careerist writers who might have provided a diversity of sorts despite differing views.

Finally, it is important to note that beyond the essentials, we have ongoing viewpoint disagreements within Jadaliyya regarding content and particular pieces. We think it is a testament to the absence of a rigid conception regarding which particular views are welcome.

UL: Finally, there is an argument that young academics should focus on scholarly work and publication and not "waste" their ideas and time on writing for web sites and other venues. How do you respond to that? 

BH: We totally agree in principle, considering the kind of online publications and quality that proliferates. And whereas we would give the same advice, we cannot ignore the fact that the strategic position of Jadaliyya within the academic community can be a plus for rising academics who would like to be read and heard. Last year alone, several folks within and outside Jadaliyya remarked to us how valuable their Jadaliyya contributions were in capturing the attention of employers/academics in the hiring process. This semi-exception is borne out of the fact that Jadaliyya has indeed become the go-to place for academics generally, despite what this or that observer can say, sometimes legitimately, about the quality of this or that post. We just have to make sure that this continues to be kept to a minimum in the coming five, or ten, years!

So, in short, it depends. In the case of Jadaliyya, publishing there can be used strategically to enhance one’s chances of getting an academic job. We used to think that this was not the case before we were told otherwise by employers and during academic interviews. Used properly, it can be a plus, and this is not confined to Jadaliyya, as there are a number of quality publications out there. The world is changing, and the academic community is following suit, even if at a few steps behind.

UL: Are you planning on publishing anything soon on Obama`s war on ISIS?

BH: Yes, we have published a number of pieces addressing the rise and nature of ISIS, in both Arabic and English, and, beginning the week of 22 September, our fourth anniversary incidentally, we are publishing a regular media roundup specifically on ISIS-related articles. Stay tuned!