This Week on Voices of the Middle East & North Africa
March 25th, 2009
In this week’s program, Khalil Bendib speaks with History Professor Shlomo Sand of Tel Aviv University about his new book “When and Why the Jewish People was invented.”
a surprising best seller in Israel which challenges the conventional wisdom according to which today’s Jews are a national group with a biological connection to the original Jews of Judea and Israel 2000 years ago.
Later in the program, Dr. Alan Mikhail is in conversation with Professor Roger Allen about the work of the great Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih who passed away on February 18th a month ago. Tayeb Salih was one of the most respected Arab novelists of the 20th century.
And before we close, our regular commentator, the Prez in the Fez, weighs in on the subject of our first Latino president, Barack Obama. (You heard right, our first Latino president.)
Voices of the Middle East and North Africa – March 25, 2009 at 7:00pm
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This Week on Voices of the Middle East & North Africa
March 11, 2009
We mark International Women’s Day with a conversation with Iranian socialogist, Professor Haideh Moghissi from York University in Toronto, Canada. Later in the program we speak with independent Iranian-American film-maker Marjan Tehrani about her documentary, Arusi Persian Wedding.
Voices of the Middle East and North Africa – March 11, 2009 at 7:00pm
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Khalil Bendib’s weekly Cartoon
Bendib.com
This Week on Voices of the Middle East & North Africa
March, 4, 2009
A conversation with Patrick Craven of COSATU (the Congress of South African Trade Unions) about the latest action taken by a South African union that refused to offload an Israeli ship last month to protest Israel’s bloody massacres in Gaza and Michael Eisencher of USLAW in Alameda about nascent efforts from within to break the US labor movement’s long-standing silence and complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Also Bay Area-based Algerian-born musicians, singer-songwriter-activist Moh Alileche will talk to us about his newest CD, wntitled “in Honor of a Hero. “
The Lebanese poet Bassam Hajjar
Bassam Hajjar
From : 
Banipal, the magazine of modern Arab literature in English .
1955 – 17 February 2009
With great sadness we report that Bassam Hajja died of cancer on 17 February. Born in Sûr (Tyre), Lebanon, he became a philosopher and a poet – with a Diploma of Advanced Study in Philosophy from the Sorbonne. Bassam Hajjar worked as cultural editor on the Lebanese daily newspapers An-Nahar and Al-Safir and later for Al-Mustaqbal in Beirut. Since 1980 he published ten collections of poetry. He was also a prolific translator from the French of novels, poetry collections and books of philosophy and literary criticism.
I don’t mind,
when I look,
absent-mindedly,
from the edge of fifty –
the commotion of pedestrians on a wide street,
down there,
where the shops are,
the taxicabs,
a bunch of students and workers and the unemployed,
policemen,
fathers who are looking for a safe place
in which to keep the pleasures of seeking,
the hardships of seeking,
day by day,
until the seeking day is over,
and the shortest among them,
the most short-lived,
finds refuge in a night of doubts and suspicion.
I don’t mind,
at sunset,
men who drag the disappointments of hardships into lit houses
with the fever of hope
alone
if there is any hope left
And I don’t mind –
when I look,
absent-mindedly –
days I should have lived,
or the shadow I used to be should have lived,
or the person who was for years in my company
And years elapse
like a silent dialogue
like a speeding bus
ahead of me
filled with those who live without me, here
or there
As if these were the memories of the person
I’ve always wanted to be
As if these were memories I’ve read in a book
which I then lost
a book borrowed by a friend then lost
or
maybe I sold it to a book peddler
a basket weaver
who will carry it to the end of the world
and barter it for a loaf of bread
a drink
a warm cup of soup
And I don’t mind
when I look
absent-mindedly
at me
the one who doesn’t mind
For I don’t care what happens metres away
miles away
cities
and seas
and tales
away from the gate of my absent-mindedness
Translated by Anton Shammas
From the poet’s collection of the same title
Read more →
Student Protesters Arrested In Iran
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
2/25/09
TEHRAN, Feb. 24 — Dozens of Iranian students were arrested Monday after they protested a government decision to rebury troops who died in the Iran-Iraq war on the grounds of a Tehran university, Iranian student Web sites reported. The semiofficial Fars News Agency said that “a few people tried to create problems and prevent the burying of the martyrs” but did not mention arrests.
Students said 70 people were arrested in the altercation at Amirkabir University of Technology. Cellphone clips posted on YouTube show the reburial ceremony and two groups of people shouting and shoving.
Protesters say they fear that the government will use the presence of war graves on campuses as a pretext for official suppression of demonstrations, political or otherwise.
According to Fars News, the leaders of the protest had links to a student group that has organized demonstrations in the past, calling for more democracy but also better living conditions on the prestigious university’s campuses.
Student protests have become rare since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005 and measures were imposed under which students can be suspended or expelled from state-funded universities if they participate in activities — such as demonstrations — that are deemed “against the system.” There are about 2 million university students in Iran.
On Monday night, friends and family members waited in front of the police station where many of the arrested demonstrators had been brought.
“We were filmed first, and many of us were arrested while leaving the university campus,” said a student who was waiting for a friend’s release, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Amirkabir University’s news Web site, AUTnews.com, which is controlled by the students who organized the demonstration, said that 20 students were transferred to Tehran’s Evin Prison and that the others had been released overnight. It also reported the arrests of five student leaders Tuesday.
When Ahmadinejad became mayor of Tehran in 2003, he proposed that remains of troops killed in the war be reburied at each of the city’s squares as a tribute to their sacrifice. The city council opposed the idea at the time.
Since last year, remains of the fallen have been reburied at two other major universities in the capital, including at Tehran University last month. Groups of students opposed the moves, saying they were intended to influence the atmosphere on campuses. Iranians are expected to behave decorously in the presence of graves of fallen troops.
Monday’s reburial ceremony was widely advertised in Tehran, with big promotional posters lining main streets. The remains of unknown soldiers were driven through downtown Tehran before being brought to their new resting places by student members of the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force controlled by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, photos published by the semiofficial ISNA news agency show. Plainclothes police officers also filmed the event.
“This is a scheme to create rallying points at universities for student supporters of the government. They would say that anybody who criticizes anything will in fact be criticizing the revered martyrs of the war,” Abdullah Momeni, a former student leader, said in an interview Tuesday. “Universities are the last places in this country with a grain of freedom and the ability to express opinions.”
“The students have deep respect for the martyrs,” Momeni added. “It’s the government that is abusing them for political games.”
The troops who died in the Iran-Iraq conflict, a bitter eight-year-long trench war in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians died, are revered in Iran. They are commemorated with public murals in almost every town, and large cities have special cemeteries devoted to them.
Some students voiced criticism of Monday’s protesters.
“They should not have protested against this,” Yahya Bakhtiari, a journalism student and Basij member, said. “Martyrs are considered to be our benefactors — they have given their lives. The least we can do is respect them. . . . They should be buried in public places, and they should be remembered.”
