Al Jadid | A Review of Arab Arts and Culture

My Story with You is Different

By Rima Assaf

Your fault is that you are dying in large numbers. Thus, you have ceased to be a rare scene. Your crime is that the photographs of your body parts no longer attract advertisers, and thus your death, pain, and displacement have ceased to attract TV viewers.

Your crime constitutes one of ordinariness.

Vol. 18, No. 67

Issue file

AlJadid_67PrinterIssueSepte.pdf

Essays & Features

2. How an Era of Progressive Scholarship Helped Conceal Assad’s Sectarianism, by Elie Chalala

12.

Azadi for Kobani

Watching a Kurdish city almost disappear from its "Kurdishness" as hundreds of thousands flee to Turkey is as painful as watching the millions of other Syrians thrown out into the cold in their own country and in neighboring states. Kobani under siege by ISIS rekindles distant and recent memories of Arab-Kurdish relationship, a history marked by chauvinistic Arab condescension toward the Kurds.

Asala a Thorn in Assad's Side, Her Arrest a Black Eye for the Lebanese Government

By Elie Chalala

It is amazing how the Syrian regime orders its priorities at a time when an armada of allied forces daily bombards its territory. Nothing appears to restrain Assad’s war against his people. He ignores with equal facility the "global war," ceded daily to ISIS, the blood of 200,000 martyrs, the displacement of millions, and the reflexive, cynical destruction of some of civilization’s most ancient cities.

'Realist' Scholar's Argument Delights the Syrian Regime: 'To Crush ISIS, Make a Deal With Assad"!

By

Elie Chalala

"It feels surreal to even contemplate the possibility of Western powers crushing ISIS while allying with a regime that has facilitated the deaths of more than 200,000 of its citizens, displaced half of Syria's population, and transformed more than half of the country's infrastructure into a pile of rubble. How could the oppressed and marginalized Sunni communities ever trust in an alliance made with their tormentors?" (From The 'Realist' Scholar's Argument Strikes Delight in Syrian Regime: 'To Crush ISIS, Make a Deal With Assad"!)

It's High Time for Statehood for Kurdish Nation-in Waiting!

I vividly recall the diatribes of the Baathists and Arab nationalists, during the course of which they even denied that the Kurds have an ethnic identity of their own, instead asserting that they are actually Arabs! And if they did not know who they were, then we needed to "educate" them! But the important issue remains that the "rejectionists of today/pan-Arabists" rarely, if ever, support the establishment of a Kurdish state, and instead find themselves in the same bed with Mr. Sykes and Mr. Picot, who left both the Kurds and the Palestinians stateless after WW I.

Iran’s ‘Lost and Silent Voices’ of 2009 Elections Heard in Abadi Film

By Lynne Rogers

"The Green Wave," by filmmaker Ali Samadi Ahadi, skillfully utilizes animation, blog posts, film footage, and interviews, to restore the “lost or silenced voices” of that ill-fated election.

The Green Wave

By Ali Samadi Ahadi

Cinema Guild, 2011, 80 minutes

"The Green Wave" by filmmaker Ali Samadi Ahadi combines animation, film footage, interviews, and actual blog posts to record the “lost or silenced voices” of the Iranian 2009 elections.

Films

Jerusalem’s Urban Dynamic: The Ottoman and British Occupations

By Lynne Rogers

From Empire to Empire

By Abigail Jacobson

Syracuse University Press, 2011

In “From Empire to Empire,” Abigail Jacobson analyzes the social tapestry of Jerusalem during the city’s transition from Ottoman Rule to the British Mandate between 1912 and 1920.

Section

Books

The Historical Novel Revived

By Wided Khadraoui

Tree of Pearls, Queen of Egypt

By Jurji Zaydan

Syracuse University Press, 2012

The “Tree of Pearls, Queen of Egypt” by Jurji Zaydan was originally published in 1914 and was recently translated and released in English by Samah Selim, an assistant professor at Rutgers University.

Section

Books

Behind a Mask: How an Era of Progressive Scholarship Helped Conceal Assad’s Sectarianism

By Elie Chalala

Many of those same scholars, both in the West and the Arab world, still remain chained to old ideas invalidated not only by time, but by the hundreds of thousands dead, by the equal numbers maimed, and by the millions displaced. When we read or hear current assertions, both private and public, regarding the Syrian conflict, we discover, in the most vivid and concrete terms, the phenomenon of ideological totalitarianism.

This inhuman transfer, this displacement of millions both inside and outside of Syria, serves as the Assad regime’s true motivation, and the cruel goal of its sectarianism.

Essays and Features

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