Essays and Features

As the different uprisings continued to unfold in the Arab world, the demand for TV guests called “analysts,” “academics,” and “experts” increased, despite a serious shortage of true professional experts. Faced with this structural deficit, some Arab TV stations resorted to “manufacturing” their expert news analysts, inviting virtual unknowns, and then bestowing supreme titles upon them in an attempt to create artificial qualifications without having to go through legitimate vetting processes, reviewing actual scientific or practical credentials. By contrast, the genuine experts chose to strictly confine their TV appearances within the limits of their expertise, avoiding the temptation to make claims of knowledge in areas outside their specializations or practical experiences. Still, a majority of the guests did willingly plunge into the maze of spotlights, exploiting the qualitative and quantitative shortages of truly qualified experts. Those pseudo experts emerged as “stars” of the screen, triumphing at the expense of the viewer.

With an initial investment of $24 million funding the Palestinian Museum, many attending the opening on May 18th felt surprised by the institution’s lack of art exhibits. The Museum directors had originally scheduled the opening on May 15th to honor Nakba Day, a memorial to the Palestinian “nakba” or catastrophe, and had advertised the opening exhibit, the “Never Part” for almost a year. Thus, the lack of Palestinian embroidery, traditional folk crafts, vintage photographs and collected memorabilia sparked confusion among many of those who attended the event.

The Arab world lives in a state of nostalgia for bygone days, when much of the hatred and intolerance of today had not set in, and the demographic minorities of what was once called the Levant were not escaping to Europe and elsewhere. But the Levant of peaceful coexistence between religious and ethnic minorities and the Muslim majority has suffered a physical blow with the rise of the terroristic Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)...Using the word Levant has raised much curiosity, both intellectual and political. Identifying the vicious and obscurantist ISIS movement with the region called the Levant, a place which historically has represented the polar opposite of ISIS ideology, causes dissonance.