Dec 13, 2024
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Why Arab Liberals Support Israel
by Doniphan Blair
Dahlia Zaida, Egyptian activist now the executive director of the Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies. photo: courtesy J. MuhammadPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
“All the Arab states that exist right now, they want to get rid of the Islamists,” noted Dalia Ziada on Yasmine Muhammad’s December 18th podcast. “At the beginning of the war, they were happy to see Israel doing this to Hamas.” Elsewhere in the podcast, she says: “I am 100% supporting Israel in its war on Hamas. I believe if Hamas is removed—Hamas and the other terrorist organizations—it will be good for the entire region.”
The 30-or-so-year-old Ziada is currently the director of Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the Babeş-Bolyai University in Romania, which produces in-depth research on politics, economy and defense policy. Previously, she was a leading feminist and activist from Cairo, where her cohort strove to reduce female genital mutilation.
Although Egypt banned FGM in 2007, it continues clandestinely among two-thirds of Egyptian women, but the drop from over 95% is significant. The big problem confronting Ziada and other Arab Spring activists is power imbalances and police states, which killed almost a thousand people in Tahir Square, Cairo, in 2011, and compels people to accept lies and conspiracy theories. Immune to such subterfuge, however, are the region’s great poets, politicians and activists, from Lebanon’s still-bestselling author Kahil Gibran to Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel in 1978 and was assassinated by Islamists in ’81, and Dalia Ziada.
I was blown away by Zaida’s openness and logic, which is why I quote her at length below, but also her tragedy. After growing up in a stable, supportive family—the first child of a loving, military-engineer father—and a modernizing Egypt, where she attended good schools, she was overjoyed to join the international liberal coalition. It’s heartbreaking, therefore, to see the fresh-faced Zaida, a devout Muslim who covers her hair, have her progressive dreams under attack from the radical religious, the hard right and now hard left, and conspiracy theorists.
An ancient tradition in Islam, conspiracism was perfected and popularized in the 12th century by the Hashasheens, or Assassins, from Persia and then Lebanon. Indeed, the perennial bestseller of Cairo’s publishing industry, the largest of the 22 Arab nations, is “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, the Russian forgery claiming Jews control the banks. In fact, Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian war lord who directed anti-Zionist violence, became the head of Islam in Jerusalem, and was the leading Arab supporter of Nazism, living in Berlin from 1942 to ’45, printed his own edition of “Protocols”.
“Then things escalated,” Ziada continued, about the current conspiracy mongering. “All this news coming from Gaza about people being killed… created an outrage in the Arab street. Outrage that is added to the anger that already existed from before, because of the mis-practices of the leaders of the Arab countries. For example, in countries like Egypt and Jordan, there is already a severe economic crisis.” The authorities start saying “all these lies and these slogans. And then they had to play along, not because they really believed, but they had to do so to protect their own seats—protect themselves.”
After defending Israel on social media, Ziada was attacked by Egypt’s radical Islamists, security services and media, a three-sided assault by the religious, the authoritarians and the conspiracists, although she also identifies a severe threat from the left. “I think that, somehow, I was used as a scapegoat in this game, unfortunately, for the Egyptian state to have this image.” Unbowed and obliged to go into hiding while in Egypt, Ziada continues her noble efforts, joining liberal activists from Ukraine to Iran and the Philippines who are standing up for democracy and freedom of speech.
“The only thing I am determined to keep using,” she says on Muhammad’s podcast, “is my voice,” and what a powerful and prescient one it is.
“Believe me, it is all related, what is happening in [the] Israel-Hamas war right now. It is very much related to what is happening in Sudan and Libya—all over the region. It’s all related. If you look at the main source of all these conflicts, you will find out that it is… between Islamists, on one side, and the secular nation states, on the other side. It’s like the core—the core, the core, the core—of all these conflicts. Of course, there are other layers… but this is the base.”
“I think it also something that the Western world has to be very careful about… This problem is now being exported to them, specifically by Islamists. Anyone can search for this. There is a text written by the Muslim Brotherhood [Hamas’s precursor, formed in 1928 Egypt] leaders in the United States in 1990s. It was discovered by federal investigations and is now released for the public to read. The Muslim Brotherhood had a clear plan about sabotaging the West from within—”
“The ‘One-Hundred-Year Plan’?” interjects host Yasmine Muhammad, who also has an astounding record of activism and amazing bio. The latter includes being abused by her Egyptian mother, being inspired by her pro-peace Palestinian father, and being forced to marry an al-Qaeda operative, after which she lived publicly fully covered by the “niqab,” including her face and hands. After escaping that situation, Muhammad got an education, began helping others in similar straights and penned the phenomenal “Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam”. Rejected by dozens of publishers for being too provocative, she self-published, and it became a bestseller, see podcast interviewing her.
“Exactly,” continues Ziada about the One-Hundred-Year Plan. “To sabotage the West from within, which means they had a clear vision… [W]hat they want to do [is] make these nation states—successful nation states in the West—collapse, so they can build their own Islamic caliphate upon the ruins of these nation states. This is what they have been doing in the Middle East for so long, ranging from Iran to Malaysia, all over the region, up to Hamas, up to Sunni Islamist organizations, like the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and al-Qaeda, and so on.”
“In the West, they adopted the strategy of infiltrating into the Western societies and, like, putting their children, who would normally be second-generation citizens of these countries, into certain groups… so they can promote their ideas… One of the manifestations of this evil plan we are seeing happening right now in the reaction to the Israel-Hamas War.”
“All this twisted rhetoric about Hamas being a resistance movement, about being the heroes of, or champions of, the Palestinian cause, this for me is nonsense—nonsense! It has nothing to do with the truth. But this was being told to western news in the United States, in Europe, in universities, everywhere, by their Muslim fellows, by their Islamist—I would say—fellows, who are saying this on purpose, to promote some lies, to ally [westerners] on the side of the evil, rather than being on the side of the good.”
“It’s really shocking to see that people in the US, for example, in American universities, who are women, who belong to the LGBT community, are supporting Hamas! They don’t even understand that if they lived under Hamas and the Shari’ah Law, they will be immediately killed, just for being an LGBT person, you know. It’s crazy. It’s crazy! So, when you see how brainwashed they are, you will be shocked—but there is a reason for that.”
“Islamists have been preparing for this moment for so long. That’s why we are seeing this extreme international polarization around the issue [of Hamas], although [what happened on October 7th] is very clear. We have a group of terrorists who attacked civilian people in their homes, on a holy day. They attacked people in their pajamas, you know; they raped women; they killed children. They arrested toddlers even, and kidnapped them, and [held] them for over a month, and tortured them.”
“It does not even need to [be] argue[d] about: It is a clear case of terrorism. And there is a state responsible about these civilians, which is the Israel state. It reacted like any other state in the world would react when it is faced by a terrorist, when it is attacked by terrorist organization like Hamas.”
“But, actually, Hamas twisted the whole rhetoric and made it appear like the Israeli government woke up one day and decided just to kill some Palestinians, just out of the blue, just because they think the Palestinian number is increasing. I know it sounds like a joke, but it was said in our media, the Egyptian media and the Arab media, by reputable analysts.”
“At the beginning of the massacre and the attack by Hamas, I was reading the Arab news… so I thought, like, as they were saying, ‘It was just a clash between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants,’ which happened every now and then… no big deal. But two days later, I was invited [to an event] organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel and the Ministry of Defense, and it had journalists from all over the Arab world. More than 300 people were attending: journalists, activists, researchers. And they showed us the actual footage of what happened, like videos collected from the cameras of the houses, from the streets of the kibbutz where the massacre happened, and where the music festival was attacked.”
“They showed us, like, the real scenes of this horrific, horrific attack and, at that time, I felt, like, anger. I was so offended by the many lies that the Egyptian and the Arab media was promoting about the issue … “
“To be honest, regardless of religious background or nationality or anything, I related to these women, who were brutalized and were raped and murdered and mistreated simply because they are Jewish women, or because they are Israelis. It’s not an excuse! And all these children.”
“They killed the animals, like dogs and cats—they killed them! They burnt houses. They didn’t let any sign of life... It was an attack on humanity. This massacre was an attack on humanity—not only on the Jewish or Israeli people—it was an attack on humanity.”
“So I thought, I should stand up. And I have a following on social media, so I thought ‘OK, [that’s] the first place I can do that.’ As long as our media is lying, I will go and say the truth. And I did that… and actually, of course, expectedly, I received a horrible backlash from the many trolls on social media.”
“I thought, ‘OK fine, it will take two or three days, and it will go away, as usual,’ because it happened to me many times. But soon after it was picked by… the state-sponsored media in Egypt. By state-sponsored, it is REALLY state-sponsored: the state dictates everything that is being said in this station! So being attacked by these media stations, the state itself is against me.”
“In the beginning, I said, ‘Perhaps this is not the case. They made a mistake or something, but it [was] increasing. Once and again, the attack is increasing, to the extent that some members of [the Egyptian] Parliament appeared on these TV stations to call me a traitor—to call me a traitor!—to call me a threat to Egypt’s national security.”
“And here is the irony. Here is someone like me, who is a liberal thinker, while all the radicals… [who] are cheering for Hamas, cheering for the Muslim Brotherhood and supporting the Salafists, are NOT a threat to Egypt national security! Which is so ironic.”
“So, I thought, ‘OK, it will [blow] over,’ but, unfortunately, it didn’t. I started, like, to have death threats coming to my phone, and radical Salafists going to my mother’s house and looking for me and asking, like, to have my address or my phone number, like, to kill me, and things like that.”
“Thank God, it went well and my mother wasn’t hurt or anything, but it was really scary. So, I contacted people in the authorities in Egypt, and I said ‘Guys, I need protection.’ Their reaction, unfortunately, was, ‘We are sorry, we cannot really protect you.’ I said, “Is it because I oppose Hamas?’ They said, ‘No, not really. It is because you support Israel in its war on Hamas.’ So the words ‘support Israel’ was for them the sin, the big crime I committed. They wouldn’t mind me being killed by some fanatic in the street just because I said, ‘I support Israel,’ which is crazy because Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel that has been in place for forty years,” established by another advocate of Egyptian liberalism, President Sadat (1918-1981).
Zaida is well aware of what I only recently realized: We are in a four-way war against the radical religious and nihilist conspiracists as well as the hard right and left, four extremists groups brought together by a perfect storm and now joining in a kaleidoscope of alliances, all determined to end the 81-year-old liberal order.
Hence, Russia is allied with Iran, finances France’s fascist National Party, and is supported by MAGA, QAnon and other American conspiracists. Hamas, part of Iran’s colonization of the Middle East, is revered as anti-colonialist by the American hard left, many of whom will vote third party on November 5th, 2024, perhaps helping to elect Trump, a hard-right conspiracist also worshiped by America’s radical religious.
Liberal and “Peace Now” Israelis, meanwhile, have been whipsawed from protesting their authoritarian government through most of 2023 to having their children butchered and raped at a music festival and fighting a brutal two-front war against a religious death cult and their hard left and hard right allies in the West.
Welcome to Four-Way War, which no one knows better than Egyptian liberals. In fact, they have been struggling for human rights, democracy and improved economies since Muhammad Abduh, who studied with his Sufi uncle, became the liberal Mufti of Egypt in 1899. Sadly, they have received little respect or even press. In fact, innumerable Arab liberals have been murdered by war lords, authoritarians and fanatics, a story little known in the West and denigrated or erased locally.
As pro-Palestinian groups marched in Columbia University on October 10th, I was 12 blocks away, visiting the University’s new Wallach Gallery (615 W. 129th), and learning about an incredible Arab art movement, through the show “Partisans of the Nude: An Arab Art Genre in an Era of Contest, 1920-1960” (open ‘til January 14). A daring group of men and women (about 20%), containing Muslims of all sects, Christians and a few Jews, they painted a modern Middle East, free from authoritarianism and theocracy. It was so liberal, in fact, they called themselves the Partisans of the Nude see my review.
Even as Middle Eastern issues became fighting words on Columbia's campus, the Partisans of the Nude show languished unreported, unrespected and unattended. Even though supporting Hamas was all the rage among the city’s radicals, students and hipsters, this fabulous show of Arab art was virtually empty during my two visits, and it was only reviewed two months later by a couple of members of New York's large press corps.
And, when they finally got around to the Partisan of the Nude show, they didn’t recognize its full significance. In fact, those artists proved the need and strength of liberalism in Arab culture, which has been denied by critics both in the East and the West, but was previously exemplified by the tolerant, artistic Sufi Muslims.
Indeed, Ziada is one of many Arab liberals to defend Israel. There is also Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of Hamas's founders and the subject of the excellent documentary, “The Green Prince” (2014) see my article and Luai Ahmed. An outspoken and visionary Yemini-Swedish YouTuber, Ahmed tweeted on January 5th: “If you are pro-Hamas today, you would have been pro-Hitler in the 1930s. Both Hitler and Hamas kill Jews and gays simply for being Jews and gays.” Among women liberals there is the brilliant, brave and beautiful Yasmine Muhammad, and many others, although Ziada remains especially stellar for her sincerity, steadfastness and Muslim values.
In my dark night of the soul, which started this October when I learned that many of my friends were chanting “From the River to the Sea” on marches and many actually did want to end Israel, my heart was warmed by the stalwart progressives of the Middle East. Realizing their number was larger than I once thought, I felt reassured that classical liberalism—which we all love so much, even the protestors, as indicated by their reliance on those freedoms—would endure, despite the chaotic, confusing and perhaps catastrophic Four-Way War in which we're now embroiled.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jan 10, 2024 - 01:09 AM
by Doniphan Blair
Dahlia Zaida, Egyptian activist now the executive director of the Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies. photo: courtesy J. Muhammad“All the Arab states that exist right now, they want to get rid of the Islamists,” noted Dalia Ziada on Yasmine Muhammad’s December 18th podcast. “At the beginning of the war, they were happy to see Israel doing this to Hamas.” Elsewhere in the podcast, she says: “I am 100% supporting Israel in its war on Hamas. I believe if Hamas is removed—Hamas and the other terrorist organizations—it will be good for the entire region.”
The 30-or-so-year-old Ziada is currently the director of Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the Babeş-Bolyai University in Romania, which produces in-depth research on politics, economy and defense policy. Previously, she was a leading feminist and activist from Cairo, where her cohort strove to reduce female genital mutilation.
Although Egypt banned FGM in 2007, it continues clandestinely among two-thirds of Egyptian women, but the drop from over 95% is significant. The big problem confronting Ziada and other Arab Spring activists is power imbalances and police states, which killed almost a thousand people in Tahir Square, Cairo, in 2011, and compels people to accept lies and conspiracy theories. Immune to such subterfuge, however, are the region’s great poets, politicians and activists, from Lebanon’s still-bestselling author Kahil Gibran to Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel in 1978 and was assassinated by Islamists in ’81, and Dalia Ziada.
I was blown away by Zaida’s openness and logic, which is why I quote her at length below, but also her tragedy. After growing up in a stable, supportive family—the first child of a loving, military-engineer father—and a modernizing Egypt, where she attended good schools, she was overjoyed to join the international liberal coalition. It’s heartbreaking, therefore, to see the fresh-faced Zaida, a devout Muslim who covers her hair, have her progressive dreams under attack from the radical religious, the hard right and now hard left, and conspiracy theorists.
An ancient tradition in Islam, conspiracism was perfected and popularized in the 12th century by the Hashasheens, or Assassins, from Persia and then Lebanon. Indeed, the perennial bestseller of Cairo’s publishing industry, the largest of the 22 Arab nations, is “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, the Russian forgery claiming Jews control the banks. In fact, Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian war lord who directed anti-Zionist violence, became the head of Islam in Jerusalem, and was the leading Arab supporter of Nazism, living in Berlin from 1942 to ’45, printed his own edition of “Protocols”.
“Then things escalated,” Ziada continued, about the current conspiracy mongering. “All this news coming from Gaza about people being killed… created an outrage in the Arab street. Outrage that is added to the anger that already existed from before, because of the mis-practices of the leaders of the Arab countries. For example, in countries like Egypt and Jordan, there is already a severe economic crisis.” The authorities start saying “all these lies and these slogans. And then they had to play along, not because they really believed, but they had to do so to protect their own seats—protect themselves.”
After defending Israel on social media, Ziada was attacked by Egypt’s radical Islamists, security services and media, a three-sided assault by the religious, the authoritarians and the conspiracists, although she also identifies a severe threat from the left. “I think that, somehow, I was used as a scapegoat in this game, unfortunately, for the Egyptian state to have this image.” Unbowed and obliged to go into hiding while in Egypt, Ziada continues her noble efforts, joining liberal activists from Ukraine to Iran and the Philippines who are standing up for democracy and freedom of speech.
“The only thing I am determined to keep using,” she says on Muhammad’s podcast, “is my voice,” and what a powerful and prescient one it is.
“Believe me, it is all related, what is happening in [the] Israel-Hamas war right now. It is very much related to what is happening in Sudan and Libya—all over the region. It’s all related. If you look at the main source of all these conflicts, you will find out that it is… between Islamists, on one side, and the secular nation states, on the other side. It’s like the core—the core, the core, the core—of all these conflicts. Of course, there are other layers… but this is the base.”
“I think it also something that the Western world has to be very careful about… This problem is now being exported to them, specifically by Islamists. Anyone can search for this. There is a text written by the Muslim Brotherhood [Hamas’s precursor, formed in 1928 Egypt] leaders in the United States in 1990s. It was discovered by federal investigations and is now released for the public to read. The Muslim Brotherhood had a clear plan about sabotaging the West from within—”
“The ‘One-Hundred-Year Plan’?” interjects host Yasmine Muhammad, who also has an astounding record of activism and amazing bio. The latter includes being abused by her Egyptian mother, being inspired by her pro-peace Palestinian father, and being forced to marry an al-Qaeda operative, after which she lived publicly fully covered by the “niqab,” including her face and hands. After escaping that situation, Muhammad got an education, began helping others in similar straights and penned the phenomenal “Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam”. Rejected by dozens of publishers for being too provocative, she self-published, and it became a bestseller, see podcast interviewing her.
“Exactly,” continues Ziada about the One-Hundred-Year Plan. “To sabotage the West from within, which means they had a clear vision… [W]hat they want to do [is] make these nation states—successful nation states in the West—collapse, so they can build their own Islamic caliphate upon the ruins of these nation states. This is what they have been doing in the Middle East for so long, ranging from Iran to Malaysia, all over the region, up to Hamas, up to Sunni Islamist organizations, like the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and al-Qaeda, and so on.”
“In the West, they adopted the strategy of infiltrating into the Western societies and, like, putting their children, who would normally be second-generation citizens of these countries, into certain groups… so they can promote their ideas… One of the manifestations of this evil plan we are seeing happening right now in the reaction to the Israel-Hamas War.”
“All this twisted rhetoric about Hamas being a resistance movement, about being the heroes of, or champions of, the Palestinian cause, this for me is nonsense—nonsense! It has nothing to do with the truth. But this was being told to western news in the United States, in Europe, in universities, everywhere, by their Muslim fellows, by their Islamist—I would say—fellows, who are saying this on purpose, to promote some lies, to ally [westerners] on the side of the evil, rather than being on the side of the good.”
“It’s really shocking to see that people in the US, for example, in American universities, who are women, who belong to the LGBT community, are supporting Hamas! They don’t even understand that if they lived under Hamas and the Shari’ah Law, they will be immediately killed, just for being an LGBT person, you know. It’s crazy. It’s crazy! So, when you see how brainwashed they are, you will be shocked—but there is a reason for that.”
“Islamists have been preparing for this moment for so long. That’s why we are seeing this extreme international polarization around the issue [of Hamas], although [what happened on October 7th] is very clear. We have a group of terrorists who attacked civilian people in their homes, on a holy day. They attacked people in their pajamas, you know; they raped women; they killed children. They arrested toddlers even, and kidnapped them, and [held] them for over a month, and tortured them.”
“It does not even need to [be] argue[d] about: It is a clear case of terrorism. And there is a state responsible about these civilians, which is the Israel state. It reacted like any other state in the world would react when it is faced by a terrorist, when it is attacked by terrorist organization like Hamas.”
“But, actually, Hamas twisted the whole rhetoric and made it appear like the Israeli government woke up one day and decided just to kill some Palestinians, just out of the blue, just because they think the Palestinian number is increasing. I know it sounds like a joke, but it was said in our media, the Egyptian media and the Arab media, by reputable analysts.”
“At the beginning of the massacre and the attack by Hamas, I was reading the Arab news… so I thought, like, as they were saying, ‘It was just a clash between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants,’ which happened every now and then… no big deal. But two days later, I was invited [to an event] organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel and the Ministry of Defense, and it had journalists from all over the Arab world. More than 300 people were attending: journalists, activists, researchers. And they showed us the actual footage of what happened, like videos collected from the cameras of the houses, from the streets of the kibbutz where the massacre happened, and where the music festival was attacked.”
“They showed us, like, the real scenes of this horrific, horrific attack and, at that time, I felt, like, anger. I was so offended by the many lies that the Egyptian and the Arab media was promoting about the issue … “
“To be honest, regardless of religious background or nationality or anything, I related to these women, who were brutalized and were raped and murdered and mistreated simply because they are Jewish women, or because they are Israelis. It’s not an excuse! And all these children.”
“They killed the animals, like dogs and cats—they killed them! They burnt houses. They didn’t let any sign of life... It was an attack on humanity. This massacre was an attack on humanity—not only on the Jewish or Israeli people—it was an attack on humanity.”
“So I thought, I should stand up. And I have a following on social media, so I thought ‘OK, [that’s] the first place I can do that.’ As long as our media is lying, I will go and say the truth. And I did that… and actually, of course, expectedly, I received a horrible backlash from the many trolls on social media.”
“I thought, ‘OK fine, it will take two or three days, and it will go away, as usual,’ because it happened to me many times. But soon after it was picked by… the state-sponsored media in Egypt. By state-sponsored, it is REALLY state-sponsored: the state dictates everything that is being said in this station! So being attacked by these media stations, the state itself is against me.”
“In the beginning, I said, ‘Perhaps this is not the case. They made a mistake or something, but it [was] increasing. Once and again, the attack is increasing, to the extent that some members of [the Egyptian] Parliament appeared on these TV stations to call me a traitor—to call me a traitor!—to call me a threat to Egypt’s national security.”
“And here is the irony. Here is someone like me, who is a liberal thinker, while all the radicals… [who] are cheering for Hamas, cheering for the Muslim Brotherhood and supporting the Salafists, are NOT a threat to Egypt national security! Which is so ironic.”
“So, I thought, ‘OK, it will [blow] over,’ but, unfortunately, it didn’t. I started, like, to have death threats coming to my phone, and radical Salafists going to my mother’s house and looking for me and asking, like, to have my address or my phone number, like, to kill me, and things like that.”
“Thank God, it went well and my mother wasn’t hurt or anything, but it was really scary. So, I contacted people in the authorities in Egypt, and I said ‘Guys, I need protection.’ Their reaction, unfortunately, was, ‘We are sorry, we cannot really protect you.’ I said, “Is it because I oppose Hamas?’ They said, ‘No, not really. It is because you support Israel in its war on Hamas.’ So the words ‘support Israel’ was for them the sin, the big crime I committed. They wouldn’t mind me being killed by some fanatic in the street just because I said, ‘I support Israel,’ which is crazy because Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel that has been in place for forty years,” established by another advocate of Egyptian liberalism, President Sadat (1918-1981).
Zaida is well aware of what I only recently realized: We are in a four-way war against the radical religious and nihilist conspiracists as well as the hard right and left, four extremists groups brought together by a perfect storm and now joining in a kaleidoscope of alliances, all determined to end the 81-year-old liberal order.
Hence, Russia is allied with Iran, finances France’s fascist National Party, and is supported by MAGA, QAnon and other American conspiracists. Hamas, part of Iran’s colonization of the Middle East, is revered as anti-colonialist by the American hard left, many of whom will vote third party on November 5th, 2024, perhaps helping to elect Trump, a hard-right conspiracist also worshiped by America’s radical religious.
Liberal and “Peace Now” Israelis, meanwhile, have been whipsawed from protesting their authoritarian government through most of 2023 to having their children butchered and raped at a music festival and fighting a brutal two-front war against a religious death cult and their hard left and hard right allies in the West.
Welcome to Four-Way War, which no one knows better than Egyptian liberals. In fact, they have been struggling for human rights, democracy and improved economies since Muhammad Abduh, who studied with his Sufi uncle, became the liberal Mufti of Egypt in 1899. Sadly, they have received little respect or even press. In fact, innumerable Arab liberals have been murdered by war lords, authoritarians and fanatics, a story little known in the West and denigrated or erased locally.
As pro-Palestinian groups marched in Columbia University on October 10th, I was 12 blocks away, visiting the University’s new Wallach Gallery (615 W. 129th), and learning about an incredible Arab art movement, through the show “Partisans of the Nude: An Arab Art Genre in an Era of Contest, 1920-1960” (open ‘til January 14). A daring group of men and women (about 20%), containing Muslims of all sects, Christians and a few Jews, they painted a modern Middle East, free from authoritarianism and theocracy. It was so liberal, in fact, they called themselves the Partisans of the Nude see my review.
Even as Middle Eastern issues became fighting words on Columbia's campus, the Partisans of the Nude show languished unreported, unrespected and unattended. Even though supporting Hamas was all the rage among the city’s radicals, students and hipsters, this fabulous show of Arab art was virtually empty during my two visits, and it was only reviewed two months later by a couple of members of New York's large press corps.
And, when they finally got around to the Partisan of the Nude show, they didn’t recognize its full significance. In fact, those artists proved the need and strength of liberalism in Arab culture, which has been denied by critics both in the East and the West, but was previously exemplified by the tolerant, artistic Sufi Muslims.
Indeed, Ziada is one of many Arab liberals to defend Israel. There is also Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of Hamas's founders and the subject of the excellent documentary, “The Green Prince” (2014) see my article and Luai Ahmed. An outspoken and visionary Yemini-Swedish YouTuber, Ahmed tweeted on January 5th: “If you are pro-Hamas today, you would have been pro-Hitler in the 1930s. Both Hitler and Hamas kill Jews and gays simply for being Jews and gays.” Among women liberals there is the brilliant, brave and beautiful Yasmine Muhammad, and many others, although Ziada remains especially stellar for her sincerity, steadfastness and Muslim values.
In my dark night of the soul, which started this October when I learned that many of my friends were chanting “From the River to the Sea” on marches and many actually did want to end Israel, my heart was warmed by the stalwart progressives of the Middle East. Realizing their number was larger than I once thought, I felt reassured that classical liberalism—which we all love so much, even the protestors, as indicated by their reliance on those freedoms—would endure, despite the chaotic, confusing and perhaps catastrophic Four-Way War in which we're now embroiled.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jan 10, 2024 - 01:09 AM
