MER Article Hourani, History of the Arab Peoples Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Faber and Faber, 1991). This is a rich and profoundly satisfying book, the high-water mark of Albert Hourani’s long and influential career as a writer and teacher. Hourani’s gifts as a teacher, and the care and affection he has devoted to his students, Peter Sluglett • 5 min read
MER Article Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation Smadar Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity Under Israeli and Egyptian Rule (California, 1990). The era of the nation-state has increasingly put into question pastoral nomadism as a way of life and as a distinctive cultural identity. In Saudi Arabia, Bedo Ted Swedenburg • 7 min read
MER Article Experts, News and Knowledge Sam Husseini, who works with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), recently gave us a glimpse into the bizarre and incestuous world inhabited by the mainstream media and the Middle East experts they parade before us. Sam has made available a transcript from a $250-a-ticket New York City fundraiser held Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Yitzhak Rabin and Israel's Death Squads Now that the abrasive and pugnacious Yitzhak Shamir has been replaced by the gravel-toned, pragmatic Yitzhak Rabin as Israel’s prime minister, should we anticipate a change for the better in Israel’s human rights record? Rabin cleverly campaigned for his June victory at the polls by ambiguously criticizing Likud’ Anita Vitullo Khoury • 7 min read
MER Article Peace Projects We may come to recall 1992 as the year of the peace activist in the burgeoning literary and cinematographic record of the Palestinian intifada. By rupturing the structure of the occupation, Palestinian popular collective action and the decisions of the nineteenth Palestine National Council expanded Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Orientalizing America: Beginnings and Middle Passages In the quincentennial year of 1992, critical Middle East studies can and should play a powerful, constructive role in the battles against right-wing efforts to deny the multicultural strands of American and Western identity. The usual reaction is to attack ethnocentrism, stereotyping and the Orientalism of establishment culture. But such Michael M.J. Fischer • 14 min read
MER Article Guarding Europe's Gate One of the events planned for 1992 is to “marry” the Statue of Liberty in New York to the statue of Christopher Columbus in Barcelona. Although they do share a similar aesthetic kitsch style, it will be a difficult union. Consider only the 300-year span between the ages of the groom and the bride, a Marisa Escribano • 4 min read
MER Article Rethinking Jews and Muslims “Your Highness completed the war against the Moors,” Columbus wrote in a letter addressed to the Spanish throne, “after having chased all the Jews...and sent me to the said regions of India in order to convert the people there to our Holy Faith.” [1] In 1492 the defeat of the Muslims and the expulsi Ella Shohat • 11 min read
MER Article Andalusia's Nostalgia for Progress and Harmonious Heresy In southern Spain’s province of Andalusia 1992 is a year of controversy, not because it is the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ voyage, but because it commemorates the conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada by “foreign invaders from the North.” In other parts of Spain, and even more so in Khalid Duran • 11 min read
MER Article Constructing Europe's New Wall The fall of the Berlin Wall was joyfully welcomed not only by the German people but by the other peoples of the continent: With the abrupt end to the joke about Real Socialism, Europe seemed to be moving forward toward a period of freedom, directed by principles of greater tolerance, compassion and Juan Goytisolo • 7 min read
MER Article Rai, Rap and Ramadan Nights The collapse of the Berlin Wall has forced Western Europe to rethink its identity. In the past its conception of itself as a haven of democracy and civilization depended in part on a contrast to the evils of the Communist bloc. Today there is a revived notion of Europe as David McMurray, Joan Gross, Ted Swedenburg • 18 min read
MER Article "By Compass and Sword!" It is hard not to be impressed by the changes that took place in the world during the second half of the fifteenth century. Bartolomeu Diaz rounded the southern cape of Africa in 1488; Columbus completed his first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492; Vasco da Gama arrived in India Resat Kasaba • 13 min read
