Middle East Press on Arab Youth and US-Sudan deal: New Age Islam's Selection, 13 October 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Bureau
13 October
2020
•
Arab Youth Survey Should Serve As A Wake-Up Call
By
Chris Doyle
•
Arab Music In Israel: From ‘Music Of The Enemy’ To Mainstream Popularity
By
Linda Abdul Aziz Menuhin
• ‘A
Slap in the Face’: 9/11 Families Say US-Sudan Deal Would Torpedo Two-Decade
Lawsuit
By
Elizabeth Hagedorn
•
Does The World Still Need The West?
By
Patrick Gathara
------
Arab Youth Survey Should Serve As A Wake-Up
Call
By Chris Doyle
October 12,
2020
Lebanese
students gather in front of the Ministry of Education during anti-government
protests, in the capital Beirut, November 7, 2019. (AFP)
-----
Should we
be in the least bit surprised at the huge number of Arabs who want to emigrate
from the region, particularly from the Levant? What is keeping young people in
their home countries during wars, civil unrest, power cuts and economic crises,
let alone the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic? It is a theme that
everyone with friends in the region hears about anecdotally. The sense of
frustration and despair is acute.
The 2020
Arab Youth Survey, which was published last week, confirms all of this and
more. The 12th edition of this annual report reinforces the anecdotes with hard
facts. Nearly half of young Arabs have thought about leaving, rising to 63
percent in the Levant. It is an even more remarkable figure given that the main
survey of Arabs aged 18 to 24 took place between early January and early March,
before the pandemic really hit. But the survey’s designers realized the unique
circumstances and usefully backed up the main report with a COVID-19 pulse
survey of 600 young Arabs in the middle of August.
This year’s
survey has boosted the number of those polled from 3,300 to 4,000 and has
continued to add new countries, with it now reaching 17 nations in the Middle
East and North Africa. This year it featured Sudan for the first time,
alongside the return of Syria after nine years. When considering the latter,
bear in mind that more than 5.5 million Syrians have already left the country
since the crisis began in 2011.
It is the
Levant that stands out. In Lebanon, 77 percent of those asked wanted to leave —
a figure that will surely have risen in the aftermath of the pandemic and the
August explosion in Beirut. Of those who wanted to leave the Levant, 49 percent
wanted a permanent new home country. The pulse survey found that 32 percent
were more likely to leave as a result of the pandemic. The figures are high in
North African states too, but considerably lower in the Gulf, where the
standard of living is higher, with the UAE once again the favored Arab nation
to move to.
What is
driving this? Dissatisfaction is intense, which explains the lofty levels of
support for protests in the region. Some 82 percent of youths from four nations
that have experienced such protests — Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan — backed
them. These four countries all saw their leaders turfed out of office last year
as a result. The survey records great positivity toward the protests, with 82
percent of young Iraqis believing they will lead to real change in their
country. Is this hope, desperation or a cast-iron belief that change will
occur? Clearly, if so many want to leave, one figures it is unlikely to be the
last of these.
Lack of
economic opportunity is a key part of the distress. Youth unemployment remains
painfully high at about 27 percent, which is double the global average, with
the pandemic likely to increase the figure considerably. For example, take
Jordan, where economists believe unemployment will rise to as high as 35
percent by the end of 2020.
The anger
that energizes the protesters is rooted in the region’s widespread corruption
and poor governance. This survey shows that 98 percent of Levantine youth and
95 percent of North African youth perceive high levels of corruption — figures
that are extraordinary in such a poll. Tackling this is the top priority for
most of those surveyed, alongside the creation of jobs.
The fact is
that most young Arabs will not be able to leave. This is a privilege of the
richer, better educated classes; those with connections. But even they will
struggle to find new homes given the increased anti-immigrant feeling
throughout Europe and in the US, with the building of walls and barriers to
block their paths. Those without jobs and resources may find themselves trapped
at home, likely with increasing personal and household debt. They may
consequently be more likely to join the protesters lining the streets of
capital cities such as Baghdad and Beirut.
The full
impact of the pandemic has yet to be felt by Arab economies and societies. For
sure, young people have suffered less from the medical impact of COVID-19, but
it is they rather than the older generations who are going to live with the
aftershocks and consequences for years, if not decades. Who wants to see them
endure soul-crushing levels of poverty?
Resource-poor
countries in the Levant and across North Africa will need to rebuild, but this
will be on the flimsiest of foundations unless they rebuild a relationship of
trust with their own populations. None of these countries can afford to lose
the one major resource they benefit from: Human talent. If the brain drain
accelerates, what chance does one give these countries of progressing? To do
so, they will first need to tackle the pandemic and implement an effective
strategy to cushion the population from its worst effects. Stopgap measures
will not suffice.
Almost 10
years on from the start of the so-called Arab Spring in Tunisia, the elites in
the Levant and North Africa in particular should be taking a hard look at this
survey. They must listen to their people and call time on the sort of inept
governance that has led to this state of affairs. A failure to do this will, in
all likelihood, see the protests get more and more violent, while the virus of
extremism may also have its own massive wave.
---
Chris Doyle is director of the London-based
Council for Arab-British Understanding.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1747831
-----
Arab Music in Israel: From ‘Music of the Enemy’
To Mainstream Popularity
By Linda Abdul Aziz
Menuhin
12 October
2020
Musician
Iyar Semel plays an oud on his rooftop garden in Tel Aviv, Israel, November 13,
2017. (File photo: AP)
----
One
Saturday in the summer of 1971, my aunt took me to her gym in Tel Aviv. The
scene was familiar, like a Baghdad swimming pool in the sixties. I sat in a
comfy chair and turned my little transistor radio to Voice of Israel, playing a
song by Egyptian singer Umm Kalthoum. My aunt swiftly asked me to turn the
volume down.
This was a
surprise and a shock for me. I had been in Israel for only a few months after
fleeing the hell that was Iraq at the end of 1970.
Since then,
Arabic music in Israel has achieved great success over the last two decades. In
2020, Israel is a place where Arabic music, thanks to the impact of
immigration, has succeeded in breaking through the barrier placed before it by
Ashkenazi hegemony who viewed it as the music of the “enemy.”
Arabic was
the spoken language of 850,000 Jews who came from different parts of the Arab
world. Their broad contours of musical taste were somewhat similar: shaped by a
scene dominated by Arab legends such as Umm Kalthoum, Abdel Wahhab in Egypt,
and Salima Murad in Iraq.
The
Arab-Israeli conflict placed a political burden on these romantic songs. This
is how Jews from the East found their Arabic culture and music held hostage in
their new homeland.
Part of the
arts sector in Israel, Eli Greenfield said that “the real launch of Arabic
music began with the arrival of Sapho, a French Moroccan singer to Israel in
1988, where she performed in the ‘Heichal Hatarbut,’ one of Tel Aviv’s grandest
halls, singing Umm Kalthoum songs.”
I believe
that Israel has gradually rid itself of its Arab complex over the years,
especially after the signing of the peace accords with Egypt and Jordan, in
1979 and 1994, respectively.
Five years
ago, the group Firqat Al Noor first showed up on the Israeli scene. The
25-member orchestra, directed by Ariel Cohen, of Moroccan origin, are
standard-bearers for the traditional Arabic music once played on Voice of
Israel radio.
No doubt,
many Israelis have been exposed to the musical giants of Tarab - traditional
Arab music that emphasizes long melodic notes - in the synagogue, after
Iraqi-born Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef allowed religious hymns to be set to these
melodies.
Festivals
championing the cause of peace and coexistence in the Middle East have
similarly helped the spread of Arabic music, especially Jerusalem’s annual Oud
Festival—a huge pull for a large and diverse audience, including Israelis who
do not have Eastern roots.
The
popularity opened up the genre to mainstream platforms, including the grand
elegant halls that typically play host to plays and musicals rooted firmly in
the West.
The second
generation of Jews from the Arab world do sing quite well in Arabic, especially
in the Iraqi dialect. One new star is Ziv Yehezkel, of Iraqi descent, who has
captured the hearts of the Arabs in Israel over the last few years.
Other
Israeli musicians have reworking melodies of childhood into something more
familiar to contemporary youth, along with reviving cultural classics for a new
generation of listeners.
The
Yemenite trio A-WA, made up of three sisters, is an example of this, as well as
Neta Al Kayam, an artist who sings and performs in Moroccan Arabic.
Al Kayam is
hosted by Al Firqa Al Maqdisiya Sharq Gharb, a band which distinguishes itself
through a broad repertoire, a concoction of both classic and modern sounds.
The band is
led by Thomas Cohen, in collaboration with Ravid Kahlani, who is of Yemenite
roots, and one of the most famous Israeli artists performing internationally in
Arabic.
Now, after
Israel’s signing of the Abraham accords with UAE and Bahrain, we can expect to
see new inspiration for Arabic music in Israel.
In fact,
Firqat Al Noor has already recorded a cover of the song “Ahibak” by Emirati
star Hussein Al Jasmi. The band said the performance was “in honor of the
hope-inspiring peace agreement.”
-----L
Linda Abdul Aziz Menuhin is an independent
journalist and expert in Arabic music in Israel. She established the NGO Kanoon
to promote Iraqi Jewish music. She is also an activist in civil society for
promoting peace.
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2020/10/12/Arab-music-in-Israel-From-music-of-the-enemy-to-mainstream-popularity
-----
‘A Slap in the Face’: 9/11 Families Say
US-Sudan Deal Would Torpedo Two-Decade Lawsuit
By Elizabeth Hagedorn
Oct 12,
2020
Nearly two
decades after 9/11, some victims’ relatives are worried that a Trump
administration deal to take Sudan off the US state sponsors of terror list and
grant its government immunity from prosecution could jeopardize their own
lawsuits accusing Khartoum of abetting al-Qaeda in the attack.
Angela
Mistrulli, whose father died in the World Trade Center’s north tower, called
the State Department in May after she heard news of the potential delisting.
She said officials claimed they were unaware the 9/11 families had active
claims against Sudan.
“At first,
they were very like, ‘You guys have nothing,’” recalled Mistrulli. “It was a
slap in the face from my own country.”
“It was
absolutely shocking to me because we had been pursuing Sudan in court since
2003,” she told Al-Monitor.
In exchange
for taking Sudan off the terror list — where it has sat since 1993 and remains
alongside Iran, North Korea, and Syria — the State Department is requiring that
Khartoum pay $335 million toward a court settlement reached in May with the
victims of al-Qaeda’s embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
As part of
the understanding, the State Department also negotiated an out-of-court
settlement for the victims of the terror attack on the destroyer USS Cole in
2000. The agreement does not include compensation for 9/11 victims’ families.
Under the
deal, the State Department has asked Congress to pass legislation restoring
what is known as Sudan’s sovereign immunity. The families say this would in
effect wipe out their lawsuits already filed under the Foreign Sovereign
Immunity Act, the same statute the Cole and Embassy families relied on to sue
Sudan.
“When we
first reached out to the State Department, they acted incredulous,” said
Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the 9/11 attacks and now lobbies
Washington on behalf of victims. She, too, said officials told her they weren’t
aware of their lawsuits.
But Sean
Carter, one of the lead attorneys representing 9/11 families, told Al-Monitor
that his office had been in contact with the US State Department over the
litigation for years. In February, he sent a letter to US Special Envoy to
Sudan Don Booth, reminding Booth that his clients had “active and unsatisfied
claims” against the Sudanese government.
The State
Department declined to comment on conversations with the families, but a
spokesperson told Al-Monitor that Sudan’s potential delisting and “ensuring
that 9/11 victims have the opportunity to pursue claims against Sudan” are not
“mutually exclusive.”
Officials
at the department told families they could pursue their claims against Sudan
under a different legal statute: the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act
(JASTA), which allows Americans to sue foreign countries that aren’t designated
state sponsors of terror.
“Our
response [was] if JASTA is such a viable remedy, then why is that not being
pursued by the other victims' groups?” Mistrulli said. “There is no reason that
we should have to modify our current claims and pursue them under a novel law
that has never been proven in court.”
To the 9/11
advocates who spoke with Al-Monitor, it seems as if the State Department is
taking Sudan’s side over theirs. During a July phone call, Mistrulli,
Breitweiser and two other victims’ relatives recall Booth telling them that if
their activism were to derail Sudan’s delisting, they would be considered
responsible for potential terror attacks that came as a result.
“It was
very hurtful,” said Mistrulli. “It made me feel as though there was not a
United States of America desk at the State Department.”
Sudan is in
the midst of a fragile transition to democracy, which proponents of the deal
say offers the United States an opportunity to end Sudan’s international pariah
status and ease the heavily indebted country’s access to foreign aid and
investment.
Last year,
long time dictator Omar al-Bashir was overthrown amid popular protests and
replaced with a civilian-led administration. Sudan’s new leaders deny the
government ever played any role in supporting al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks
against Americans.
After
harboring Osama bin Laden for five years, Bashir’s government expelled him from
the country and seized most of his local assets under US pressure by 1996, the
9/11 Commission report found.
“Sudan’s position
on all of this is you can’t fault Sudan for what Osama bin Laden did years
after he was kicked out of Sudan, any more than you could fault the US
government for Timothy McVeigh’s bombing in Oklahoma City,” said Christopher
Curran, Sudan’s legal counsel in the matter.
The
Sudanese Embassy in Washington did not return Al-Monitor’s request for comment.
After Sudan
failed to show up in court for nearly two decades, its lawyers in February
filed a motion to dismiss the 9/11 litigation as based on “vague and
conclusory” allegations. The lawyers also argue that the plaintiffs have not
presented evidence demonstrating the participants in the 9/11 attacks had
entered Sudan at all.
But the
9/11 victims argue that al-Qaeda would not have been able to pull off such a
large-scale terrorist attack had Sudan not first provided the group with safe
haven, as well as other forms of financial and material support in the early
1990s.
Al-Qaeda
conducted the Cole, embassy and 9/11 attacks after bin Laden had been expelled
from Sudan. The 9/11 families see little difference between their argument for
Sudan’s alleged connection and the arguments put forth in the other cases.
“It is the
same network,” Mistrulli said of the terrorists who planned all three attacks.
“[Sudan] is where al-Qaeda is bred. That is where the training camps, the
financing began.”
Carter said
the 9/11 families are optimistic more documentary and testimonial evidence will
emerge in court. They intend to seek the deposition of Bashir, who is currently
in the custody of Sudan’s new government.
The
litigation remains pending in the Southern District of New York.
Meanwhile,
Mistrulli and others have the backing of at least two senior members of
Congress, including Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who
have argued the proposed legislation to immunize Sudan does not adequately
protect the 9/11 families’ rights.
Menendez,
the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also took aim
at the State Department last month for asking Congress to vote to implement the
Trump administration’s agreement with Sudan, which, as of this writing, his
office says hasn't been shared with him.
The
proposal originally drafted by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., is now being
renegotiated, including “how the Congress will resolve the issue of the 9/11
claims,” a congressional aide told Al-Monitor.
The 9/11
victims are hopeful the delay will give them further opportunity to make their
case to lawmakers.
“We want
accountability and we want justice,” said Breitweiser. “Right now, we have
neither.”
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/10/911-lawsuit-sudan-deal-booth-families-victims-bin-laden.html
------
Does The World Still Need The West?
By Patrick Gathara
12 Oct 2020
For several
centuries, the countries of Western Europe and North America, led primarily by
the UK and its colonial spawn, the US, have dominated the globe in economic,
military and cultural terms. The West has made and remade the world as it saw
fit and projected itself as the pinnacle of human achievement. “The developed
world” it has vaingloriously referred to itself as, a model of enlightenment
for the rest of “underdeveloped” humanity to follow. And the world it built was
meant to reinforce this hierarchy.
Of course,
much of the narrative of enlightenment was little more than myth – a convenient
fable to cover up the brutal profiteering off the oppression and exploitation
of other human beings and destruction of their societies. Still, sitting on the
porch of its mansion watching over its global plantation, having grown fat off
the wealth it had taken from others, the West came to believe its own rhetoric
of racial and moral superiority.
However,
the last four years have done much to draw back the curtain on the hypocrisy
that has always lain under the pontification. Countries that just a few years
ago were proclaiming the end of history and their triumph as beacons of
democracy, liberalism and capitalism – nations that traversed the globe
preaching the gospel of good governance, accountability and transparent
government to the less fortunate denizens of corrupt, third-world banana
republics – have themselves succumbed to the lure of authoritarian, right-wing
populism. Gone are the heady days when they sought to enforce democracy through
manufactured wars and devastating economic sanctions. Today, democracy seems
just as endangered in the US (and in the UK) as it ever was in Kenya and
elsewhere.
This has of
course elicited great whoops of schadenfreude around the world. Throughout the
current US presidential election campaign, and especially in the recent weeks
following the tragicomic debate between President Donald Trump and his
challenger, Joe Biden, the world has been given a front-row view of the
unravelling of a narcissistic, if somewhat psychotic superpower. And it has not
been a pretty sight, with violence in the streets, nearly a quarter of a
million people dead from the coronavirus, its economy in the toilet, the
credibility of its elections and institutions in doubt, and a personality cult
around its leader that every passing day feels increasingly familiar to those
who have lived under totalitarian dictatorships.
“We’re not
a democracy” tweeted Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah following the
vice-presidential debate. And the spectre of violent coups, which was once
thought to be restricted to “s***hole countries”, has reared its head in the US
with the disruption of a right-wing plot to kidnap the Democratic governor of
the state of Michigan and overthrow her government.
To a
varying extent, similar problems with poor governance, authoritarianism,
corruption and institutional decay are present in the UK and in other European
countries. It is, however, unlikely that the West will face the same opprobrium
and consequences that it has imposed on others whom it has deemed to have
fallen by the democratic wayside. No sanctions, asset freezes or travel bans on
its rulers, no resolutions condemning them at the UN, no threats of prosecution
at international courts. It is unlikely that respected world leaders will be
heading to the US to mediate its anticipated election dispute.
Still, the
evaporation of Western prestige and hubris will have consequences for democracy
in other parts of the world. For all their faults and hypocrisies, in much of
the “developing” world, Western embassies and NGOs have been allies in the push
to democratise governance. So much so that in much of Africa, authoritarian
governments still deceptively refer to human rights and democracy as Western,
rather than universal, concepts. There is a real danger that with their
democratic credentials rubbished by events at home, it will be more difficult
for the West to credibly support pro-democracy movements and efforts abroad.
That, along
with the example set by the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, may also
encourage rulers with an authoritarian bent to take more liberties, calculating
that their oppression is unlikely to attract opprobrium or consequences from
the West.
Nestled in
among the dangers are also opportunities for the world to wean itself off the
patronising grip of the West. In Africa, for example, the African Union has of
late been doing much to try to shed its image as a club for dictators, taking
forceful stands against military coups and incumbents who refuse to accede to
election outcomes. It still has a long way to go before it can be described as
a bastion of democracy but the withdrawal of the West has gifted it an
opportunity to demonstrate that it can stand with the people rather than with
the rulers.
Civil
society groups too will now have to look for other benefactors. Already the role
for Western embassies in supporting reform movements was much diminished in
countries like Kenya compared with what it was 30 years ago. But the reliance
on Western governments and organisations for financing continues to be the
Achille’s heel of local groups – an easy target for governments when they seek
to delegitimise them as agents of foreign interests or to starve them by
introducing legal ceilings on how much they can raise.
In Kenya,
social media, coupled with money transfer apps, have emerged as an effective
avenue for local fundraising, one which even the government has not been
ashamed to tap into. For NGOs working in the governance space, local donations
would not only reduce their vulnerability to nefarious governments but, as a
measure of popular endorsement, would arguably increase their clout. Needless
to say, it would also be a great way to encourage a sense of local ownership of
the reform agenda. And as the sun sets on the West’s time as self-appointed
democracy police, that can only be a good thing.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/10/12/does-the-world-still-need-the-west/
-----
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