Lebanon: in the area, first of all!

Once again, political ads invade Beirut streets and TV screens. Three months before the coming elections, people are reminded that Freedom is in their hands according to a dubious motto: Lebanon first! Criticised in the daily Al-Akhbar, the advertising campaign depicts its political opponents as people not only radically wrong but even dangerous. According with the political grammar of today’s Arabic, those “localist” ads use “pure” vernacular Lebanese (when more “arabist” political trends are prone to use a more classical wording).

Once again, it is not difficult to find who stays behind those ads and billboards: the graphic composition, the red, white and green colors, the typographic composition were already used for previous campaigns like Independence05 or I love life… (see previous posts 1 and 2.

Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that the famous Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency officially denies to have played any role in this new campaign: even those who speak out for "Lebanon first" do not forget that there are regional realities that must be respected.

As usual, here is the link to the more developed post in French.

The keffieh as a symbol

Since a previous post post written two years ago (and not translated into English), about the "globalisation" of the Palestinian keffieh and its transformation, in Western societies, to a fashion accessoire, the phenomenon has spread to the Arab world where the keffieh has been adopted by many young men and women with its trendy look (with all sort of colors and sometimes a modification of the patterns). In the “historical Palestine” for instance, Israeli Jews may wear the “new” keffieh, something unbearable for many Palestinians who see it as another spoliation of their national heritage (as it has been the case before with the hommous and the falafel).

In Lebanon too, the (now) fashionable keffieh has made a noticed apparition in the streets of Achrafieh and Ayn al-Rumaneh, areas of Beirut whose people were not precisely well known as supporters of the Palestinian cause. Thus, the traditional keffieh still to be found in the refugees camps faces the challenge of two different versions of the Palestinian symbol : that of the trendy globalised keffieh but, also, that of the Shiite Lebanese who have adopted a different similar in patterns but where the black color dominates.

For old people, the rejection of the modernized keffieh transformed in a accessoire à la mode could be less a political question than a “moral” one, as the keffieh has always been traditionally associated to masculine values. Something Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum made very clear in her famous “Keffieh” – presented at her last personal exhibit in Amman – were the apparently usual headscarf interweaves strands of women's hair with the Arab symbol of machismo.

In Palestine as in other places, the keffieh is a reliable barometer of the public opinion. After the bombardments of Gaza, the classical keffieh has made a noticeable come back on the shoulders of many stars of the Arab screen as around the neck of many demonstrators in the streets.

Is it still possible for the classical keffieh to reaffirm itself as the symbol of the Palestinian identity? Whatever is the answer, it is worth to consider that the last local keffieh factories are on the verge to disappear after the market has been flooded with cheaper products made in Asia.

Is this symbolic of the Palestinian fate?

(On the last Palestinian keffieh factory, there is wonderful – and short video - made by a French journalist, Benoit Faveley, which I founded on Hawgblawg, an always very interesting blog, in English.

As usual, here is the link to the more developed post in French.

Waltz in Gaza

Ari Fomman took best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes Awards on January 11 with Waltz With Bashir, a personal documentary about Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982. The same day, as Tania Tabar’s article on Menassat reminds us, around 60 Palestinians died under the Israelis bombs in Gaza. And many more during the following days…

Tania Tabar follows mentioning that nearly 90% of the public opinion in Israel supported the war in Gaza (a statistic which does not include the “useless” opinion of the Palestinian citizens). How is this possible regarding the success, even in Israel, of an “antiwar film” like Waltz with Bashir, and compared to the thousands of Israelis who marched in the streets of Tel-Aviv as a reaction to Sabra and Shatila massacres? (Again, the 100 000 Arab Israelis who demonstrated against the war in Gaza in Sakhneen, one of the major Arab towns of Galilee, do not matter very much !)

A first explanation is the fact that Ari Folman’s film places the responsibility of the massacres in 1982 on the Phalangist militia and on Ariel Sharon who gave his green light” for the killing of civilians in the Palestinian camps of Beirut. Thus, the “naive young men (…) were only participating in a massacre because of the time and the place they happened to be” explains Tania Tabar, who also underlines that the “personal” narrative of Waltz with Bashir fails to provide a complete historical background which could explain why and how the Israeli state has been using for such a long time systematic violence against the Palestinian and Lebanese populations.

Waltz with Bashir ends with the animation suddenly shifting to real footage of the massacres which took place in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982, and with Palestinian ladies yelling and screeming at the camera [and the viewer] : “Where are the Arabs, where are they ?”

Since Waltz with Bashir is not a political movie, but a kind of personal testimony, accordind to Ari Folman's declarations, why did he choose such an ending? asks Tania Tabar.

Indeed, the question needs an answer. As an answer is needed to many others, today, “after” the war in Gaza, as many people ask : where are the Arabs? Where are they?

As usual, here is the link to the more developed post in French. Illustration : We are all Gaza. Demonstration in Beirut (Al-Akhbar)

Gaza under the rain...

... and blogging seems very useless... This drawing is by Mazen Kerbaj, a Lebanese artist (and musician). I suggest you visit his blog, and that you do your best to stop that criminal (and politicaly stupid) war.

Again, the boycott and its many questions

Again the boycott issue, with its difficult questions already tackled in previous posts, like that one about two movies, an Israeli one, The Band’s visit, and another, Egyptian, Salata Baladi (Salade maison).

This time the discussion concerns a book, Madinah, City Stories from the Middle East. This collection of short stories edited by the Lebanese writer Joumana Haddad gathers ten texts written by various Arab writers, by a Turkish one and… by the Israeli writer Yitzhak Laor with a text about Tel Aviv.

The Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish started the whole discussion in the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar asking how Arab writers could have accepted to participate in a project which presents Tel Aviv side to side with the other Arab towns, as a figuration of the New Middle East map…

Because of such reactions, the English publisher published on his site a declaration mentioning among other things that “the request to include an Israeli story was the publisher's” and that the editor “was initially very much against it (…) until the name of writer Yitzhak Laor was eventually suggested”, an idea “highly supported by the Palestinian contributor to the book, Ala Hlehel.”

Hlelel, a Palestinian living in Acco, had already expressed his point of view in Al-Akhbar saying that Yitzhak Laor, as a radical opponent to the Sionist state, was perfectly entitled to participate in such a book, even with a story about Tel Aviv, a city built on the ruins of the Palestinian villages.

Later on, Al-Akhbar published Laor Yitzhak’s answer. His text begins with an interrogation about the wijdân¸a word used by Najwan Darwish and for which there is no easy translation in other languages. Then, Yitzhak Laor goes on saying that Darwish’s attitude means in fact that when an Arab public discourse speaks of secularism, democracy and so on, another one, like in Darwish’s article, denies any right for a Jewish presence in the Middle East.

Of course, explains Yitzhak Laor, nobody is asked to forget on which ground Tel Aviv has been built but, at the same time, somebody like Najwan Darwish should learn that all the people who live in that city are not the same. Something the reading of his text, which describes Tel Aviv as a huge and frightening military camp, makes quite obvious…

Pierre Abi Saab, the editor of Al-Akhbar cultural section, comments on Yitzhak Laor’s position. He regrets that the Israeli writer sees Najwan Darwish’s position as racist when it is just the denial of a policy which aims at making the Jewish occupation like something natural (tabî‘î, a key word very closed to the Arabic tatbî‘ for “boycott” "normalization" [see comments]).

Of course, the dispute is much more elaborated than said in this short summary. But it has to be mentioned that it was published in Al-Akhbar, a daily supposed to be very close to the Lebanese Hizbollah, and thus to Al-Manar. A TV station that Germany has recently banned on grounds that it violates the country's constitution!

Just to make things more complicated, another boycott issue was raised by the same Al-Akhbar with the possible coming to Beirut of the West-Eastern Divan. Founded by Daniel Baremboim and the Palestinian Edward Said, the orchestra has played only once in an Arab country. It was in Ramallah, some three years ago. Knowing that the players come from various Arab countries, from Spain and from…Israel, should the visit be boycotted?

As usual, here are the links to the more developed posts in French, about Al-Madinah and the West-Eastern Divan.

Occidentalism : the other face of Orientalism

In Beirut, two galleries run an exhibition of art works by the well-known Lebanese film director Jocelyne Saab. In the first one, called Soft Architecture, pictures of abstract patterns taken from the local traditions are displayed at the Agial gallery. In the second one, Sense, Icons and Sensitivity, the artist uses neo-pop art icons objects of mass production and of popular culture like Barbie dolls to express the hidden thinking of Arab society towards changes in cultural taste and habits due to globalization.

Some of those last works have been deemed unsuitable by Solidere, the company which which owns the venue where the exhibition opened. Among the most controversial pictures was a photo entitled "American-Israeli playground" where Christ is on a crucifix surrounded by images of Nasrallah and two Barbie dolls in the background. “French Can Can in Bagdad,” with Barbie dolls wrapped in Iraqi currency bearing the image of former dictator Saddam Hussein has not been very much welcomed too!

Even if the Agial gallery has agreed to host, not in a too noticeable place, the pictures expressing “the popular anger in the face of Israeli-Lebanese conflict,” Jocelyne Saab’s last exhibition shows how politics and religion remain two very sensitive issues.

As usual, links to articles in Arabic or English with the more developed post in French.

Enough with the "Arab street"!

In an article (arabic) published by the daily Al-Quds al-‘arabi (2008/09/02), famous Lebanese writer Elias Khoury comments on the use by the actual media of the expression “the Arab street”.

Compared with “the Arab masses” (al-jamahîr al-‘arabiyya) of the 50’s and 60’s, the “Arab street” reflects, in Khoury’s mind, the actual situation of the Arab word and media, dominated by the Gulf States.

According to him, the “Arab street” is an expression which conveys the idea that no political mobilization is possible in today’s Arab world. The lack of reaction of the “Arab street” during the second intifada is a reality which can not be denied, although every major Arab TV station gave an extensive coverage of the tragic events in Palestine.

Financed by Gulf investors, most of the Arab media are obviously not interested in promoting nationalist ideas. For a while, the mainstream Arab media thought they could find a solution playing on the islamist cord but it only lead to more contradictions.

The Turkish soap operas recently aired by other Arab TVs gives another illustration of the lack of a public expression in this so-called “Arab street”. As a perfect illustration of mass consumption products marketed by cultural industries, they are no more than a cheap “relief valve” for “veiled societies” unable to make a collective move toward the future.

The “Arab street” is full of poor and desperate people, only able to look, on their TV screen, for an individual solution to their endless problems.

As usual, the link to the more developed post in French.

Divas and Politicians: the Dialectic of Body and Power

For a change, the subject of all conversations in the Arab world during the holy month of Ramadan was not the countless TV soap-operas aired at that time of the year, but the serialized novel of the murder of a well-known Lebanese singer, Suzanne Tamim.

Her body was found in her flat in Dubai and, a few days later, the police arrested the murderer, a former Egyptian cop. But, the real scandal came when it became obvious that Hishma Talaat, a famous Egyptian billionaire, leading member of the ruling Party and close friend of President Mubarak’s family, was charged with arranging the murder.

The Arab press (see this article in Elaph) has suggested many scenarios to explain the somehow unusual promptness of the Egyptian justice: rivalries among the ruling elite, the necessity of restoring the Egyptian Department of Justice reputation after various disputed decisions, the desire of calming things down considering the popular reaction, and also bearing in mind the fact that the Emirates authorities were urging for a quick and efficient elucidation of the case.

It is certainly not the first example, and the last one, of the "dialectic of power and body", to use Adnan Abuzeed's nice way to put it. After all, the famous Jahiz wrote in the IXth century his famous eulogy to the qiyans, a kind of Arabic variation of the famous Japanese geisha. Obviously, there is some sexual activity in the (supposedly) puritanical Arab world.

As another evidence of the many connections between sexual fame and politics, mention could be made to the famous Haifa Wehbe (see previous post). When she mentions, as she did more than one time, how fascinated she is by shaykh Hassan Nasrallah’s personality, we must ask ourselves if we are always right in using opposed categories like securalism and liberated sexuality on one side, and religiosity and moral uprightness on the other.

As usual, the link to the more developed post in French.

Palestinian Hip-Hoppers: Jackie Salloum’s "Slingshot Hip Hop"

Rap music in Palestine began as an “Israeli phenomenon”, with young Jewish and Arab rebels coming from the poor industrial suburbs of Israel sharing the same rage against their living conditions.

A short-lived artistic coexistence as the Palestinian hip-hoppers went their own way with the Second Intifada (2000) and the adoption a more nationalist political discourse by artists like Dam, while Israeli rappers like Subliminal became more and more extremist.

Today, rap music has been adopted by the young Palestinians as a way to express their (political) identity and musicians perform regularly in Israel, as well as in the so-called “Autonomous Territories” or in the Palestinian camps of the surrounding Arab states.

Thus, after Ramallah and Jenine in June, Jackie Salloum was in the Palestinian camps of Lebanon in August to show her first “real” movie, Slingshot Hip Hop. Listening to the soundtrack was a real shock for the young Palestinian raised in Lebanon: certainly not because of the music but because they were amazed to discover that Arabic and Hebrew could be used by “Israeli Palestinian” rappers.

As they explained in an interview given some time ago to the Moroccan weekly Telquel, the three members of Dam are eager to be heard, especially by an Israeli society upset by their national claims.

Under Slingshot Hip-Hop trailer...



... a link to the more elaborated post in French and to Jackie Salloum's website where two shorter moovies could be seen: a must !

Ziad Rahbani: the beating heart of Arabism

There is no way to present Ziad Rahabni, son of Assi Rahbani and Lebanese Diva Fayrouz, in a few lines. The wiz kid published his poems at the age of 13 and shortly thereafter became a comedian, a playwright, a songwriter, a composer, a singer, a radio host, before he turned more recently to jazz music.

And it is the jazz composer and player who has been officially invited to perform in Damascus, for the first time is his whole career. Two hours before the beginning of the show, the audience was already there, clapping hands and singing by heart the most famous hits of the Lebanese composer and singer.

Thus, a real event, at the musical and the political levels, since Ziad Rahbani is a major icon of the Arab left wing. Indeed, his coming to Damascus, within the official frame of the (very successful) celebrations of “Damascus, Capital of the Arabic Culture”, means that things are changing in the country, at least at some level and even if Fayrouz’s son is not anymore the trouble maker he was.

It means also that the relationship between Lebanon and Syria is certainly more complex and deep-rooted that what we usually read in the main-stream media.

The text of the original post in french (with other links) and a video by a fan.

Arab Alternative Music (3): Lebanon

It would have been impossible to give an idea of the alternative musical scene in Lebanon without the help of some Internet sites.

Four of them deserve a very special mention:
- Incognito, founded very recently by Tony Sfeir in order to settle a kind of regional network for Arab alternative musicians (and artists as Incognito also offers a selection of DVD, books and comics).
- Forward Production founded in 2001 by film maker Carole Mansour and player Ghazi Abdel Baki with the idea of “pooling together the cooperative efforts of young artists in the Middle East” and aiming “to encourage new and creative trends in the musical
Arts.”
- Al-Maslakh (the Slaughterhouse) is an UFO says the group of
musicians who launched that new label some five years ago, in order to “document the nascent scene” which was emerging at that time, largely thanks to Irtijal, a festival they organise since 2000, dedicated to (experimental) improvisation.
- The last one, Those kids must choke, goes more or less on the same experimental tracks.

Following the previous posts, some remarks about “Oriental Jazz”, an expression made popular in the mid 80’s by Ziad Rahbani who does not like it anymore. Mention must be made to musicians like the oud player Charbel Rouhana or the singer Rima Kcheich.

In a less jazzy mood, you may enjoy Ziad Sahhab work with his band Shahhadeen Ya Baladna.

Fans of musical experimentation will listen to the works of the Irtijal (Improvisation) Festival, Bechir Saade, Raed Yassin and Mazen Kerbaj (author of the picture used for this post).



Here to read the original post in French.

Lebanon : Worlds against Forgetfulness

The works of the Lebanese artists are more necessary than never when the specter of the civil war comes closer and closer. And it is the reason why they should not be gagged.

It could have been the case in August 2007 with “How Nancy wished it was just an April fool joke”, Rabih Mroueh’s last work. The play, which was said to fuel confessional divisions, has not been banned, thanks to the intervention of Lebanon minister of Culture, Mr Tarek Mitri (whose help was useful later against the ban of Persepolis, a French cartoon about the life of a young Iranian girl).

Under changing posters inspired by Zina Maasri’s work on the graphic use of such posters by political parties during the civil war, four “witnesses” tell the story of Lebanon, from the very beginnings during the mid 70’s, to the end of the play which ends, not in the beginning of the 90’s with the Taef agreements but with the last (at that time) events of the 25 January 2007, when fights in Beirut were close to send the country toward a new war. Just like now…

One could read Mroueh’s title as a way to wish, with the Nancy mentioned in the title, that nothing never happened and that all those events were just a “joke”. Nothing serious happened.

But it is just the contrary: with many other Lebanese writers and artists, Mroueh reminds us that - to put it in Mahmud Darwish’s words - Memory is necessary for forgetfulness (more or less the title of Darwish’s famous book about the siege of Beirut in 1982).

Modern Letters: Today’s Arab Calligraphers

Mostly appreciated as a prestigious artistic activity, calligraphy is nonetheless an everyday and popular practice. To know that, you just have to look at decorated trucks and cars running along streets and roads in the Arab world.

A recent study in sociology paid attention to that phenomenon in Jordan, something Arab graphic designers have done long before.

There is a long list of incredibly interesting internet sites and everybody interested in modern Arab culture has to pay a visit to it (see the French version for the links).

Better than anything else, modern graphic designers make obvious the inanity (insanity?) of the (classical) opposition between “tradition” and “authenticity”. They give the best possible example of a “tradition” – that of calligraphy – truly inherited because it a living practice which uses today’s facilities.

Illustration : Wael Morkos, www.theplacedesign.com.
To read the original and more detailed post in french, just a click here!

When a mufti speaks for women’s rights...

... nobody cares in the West! Nonetheless, Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah’s fatwa, delivered on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, made its way in the Arab World.

For instance, Al-Quds al-‘arabi daily wrote that there were a lot of talks in Jordan mosques last Friday, after long debates on the Internet and during satellite TV religious programs.

Indeed, Fadlallah’s fatwa arguing that women have the right to defend themselves against men's violence made a lot of fuss.

Such a position, presented in many media as “the right for a woman to beat her husband and to desert his bed”, was very much welcome by local associations for women’s rights, but was refused by Islamic jurists in Saudi Arabia or Egypt.

How strange is it to see that Western media, so incline to castigate whatever “wrong” position expressed in the so-called “Arab street”, did no pay very much attention to that rather open-minded fatwa!

Sure, it is safer to keep on saying that Islam is fixed for ever, and obviously unable to deal seriously with controversial issues!

Indeed, they are many crazy and indulgent muftis but others are not frighten by audacious thinking and open discussion.

To read the original and more detailed post in french
Text in English of Fadlallah's fatwa.

The Ban of Pop "artistat" in Syria: a war for moral or against brands?

There are two translations in arabic for the word "Artist" : one is "fannânûn" and the other, not so correct, "artistât".

Recently, Syrian Union of artists (fannânûn) has declared a ban on "artistât" - mainly Lebanese - coming to Syria. Such a decision is a real threat to the "creativity" of Lebanese "artistât" already coping with many economical difficulties at home. There is no political reason for such a decision, according to Salah Obeid, the Union leader, but the necessity to protect the country against "moral pollution" of female singers playing more with their body than with their musical gifts.

Regarding what some people have coined the "ajramisation" of the Arab societies (from Nancy Ajram, one of the most glamorous Arab pop singers, "icon" for Coca-Cola in the Middle-East when Elissa, another "artistat", is the other one for Pepsi), the Syrian ban may be seen as another chapter against the (global) Amecanization of the Arab world.

To read the original post in french
And to discover Elissa, former Lebanese top model, this video