Egypt, Israel and Academia

From the first days I arrived at AUC, I often heard talk of the university "normalizing" relations with Israel. The term does not have an exact definition, but what I came to understand was that a "normal" relationship is one in which there is no boycott, like the way AUC and any American university interact. From what I understand, right now the status between AUC and Israeli academia is in limbo, somewhere between a boycott and an established relationship. In the last few weeks, however, the faculty senate, responding to the normalization rumors, passed a resolution condemning the idea of a normal relationship with Israeli academia--supporting a boycott of it.

The article can be seen here:
http://www1.aucegypt.edu/students/caravan/stories/08May18/front_riham2.html

I found it extremely dissapointing that the academic leaders of this institution supported this boycott, given the unique opportunity for dialogue and understanding were AUC and Israeli institutions to establish some sort of relationship. I wrote a letter to the editor expressing this sentiment and was published in this week's issue.
Since I first wrote the letter as a much longer Op-Ed, I will post the link to the letter to the editor and post the Op-Ed itself here.

Letter to the editor on the newspaper's website:
http://www1.aucegypt.edu/students/caravan/stories/08May25/letter.html

The Op-Ed

Last week, I read with great disappointment that The American University in Cairo’s faculty senate passed a resolution calling for the community to refrain from normalizing relations with Israeli academia. It is an unfortunate reality that the senate members’ personal biases and self-righteous indignation are serving to undermine a historic opportunity for the community and country they are supposedly striving to enlighten. While AUC could have led a breakthrough initiative of tolerance and understanding, the senate decided that their political grudges were more important than advancing the causes of academic integrity and bi-cultural understanding.

The main reason the senate passed the resolution is from political disapproval and anger towards Israel. The senate feared that that normalizing relations would somehow condone Israel’s actions—that the institution of Israeli academia is an extension of the government’s doctrines. As Professor Sherif El Musa points out, it is unfortunate and heartbreaking that he cannot return to Gaza and many of the students’ educations there are put on pause. El-Musa and the senate, seeing and even experiencing the suffering of the Palestinians under the Israelis, in no way want to excuse the government’s behavior by establishing ties with prominent Israeli institutions.

But establishing ties with Israeli academia and condoning the government’s actions are two very separate actions. Believing that Israeli academia is an instrument for furthering the conflict is as false as the claim that the AUC is a tool of Mubarak’s autocratic rule. If the universities represent the same principles as the supposedly racist and cruel government, then why do hundreds of Israeli-Arabs attend and graduate from Israeli Universities every year alongside their Israeli classmates? Israeli academia does attempt to think independently of their government’s policies and examine a diversity of opinions. Israeli academia deserves admiration, not a boycott, for this academic pursuit. It’s a pity the AUC faculty cannot pursue this same hallowed principle.

As an academic institution committed to furthering understanding, the AUC senate’s rejection of Israel academia is so unfortunate because it deprives students a perspective they will perhaps never study or see. Instead of viewing every Israeli citizen as a monster who is stealing Palestinian land in cold blood, as Copy Editor Khouloud Khalifa asserted in her column last week, Egyptians with such one sided opinions could perhaps interact with an Israeli person not much different from themselves, struggling with the weight and complexities of decades of violence. With normalization, Egyptians could perhaps experience firsthand that many Israelis are thoughtful, compassionate and committed to peace. A normalized relationship with Israeli institutions is a path to regional tolerance and respect. I am bewildered that the senate finds issue with these honorable qualities.

Normalization is not just a benefit for Egyptian intellectualism and cultural understanding, but also a path to aiding the Palestinian cause. Sitting in an Ivory Tower, glowering upon their Israeli neighbors, the AUC Senate is doing nothing to encourage change or foster dialogue that could alter policy and alleviate Palestinian suffering. In a normal relationship with Israel, AUC could encourage Israeli universities to offer more spots to Palestinians, even the ones currently locked in Gaza. AUC could also send deeply passionate students and professors to Israeli Universities to attempt to raise awareness of Palestinian issues and induce sentiments of change among future leaders. Scenarios such as these would actually aid the suffering of the Palestinians, but the Senate decided a complete boycott, in which encouragement is impossible and the possibility of inducing change is far lower, is the preferable method.

Sadly, the senate faculty wants the administration to take a pass on this potentially groundbreaking and watershed moment in the history of Israeli-Arab relations. What defines that relationship right now, among the majority of Egyptians and AUC students, is hatred, intolerance and disrespect, which the boycott only serves to bolster. This university could send a strong message to the world: the American University in Cairo is more committed to intellectual pursuits and healing regional wounds than serving our faculty and student’s one sided political beliefs and interests.

Steering from controversy is not the job of a university academic body. Our enlightened community members must be the forerunners of change, leaders who seek even unpopular methods to upgrade the university’s intellectual atmosphere. If the administration truly believes that the American University in Cairo is a leading academic institution of the Middle East, it will cast aside the rhetoric and prejudices and take a historic risk. By normalizing relations with Israel, the administration can elevate the University’s intellectual environment, aid the Palestinian cause, and advance understanding, tolerance and hope in a regional conflict that sorely needs it. It is my hope that the university administration, seeing this historic opportunities lying before it, ignores the faculty senate’s advice.



Please comment and let me know what you think!

Reviving the Blog

When I first started this blog, I hoped to update relatively frequently. With two posts in about a month and a half, however, it seems that I utterly failed at this goal. But with this new post--the one you are reading now--I hope to begin a more consistent updating routine.

So much has happened in the past month and a half that even beginning to think where to start and what to write is daunting. Just as in my first post, I will attempt to summarize some of the more significant events.

TRAVELING
While Cairo is a truly amazing city, it has a tendency to wear on even the most enthusiastic and experienced visitors. The pollution and air quality, traffic and overcrowdedness often makes us Americans antsy to "escape" for the weekends (Basically, as spoiled as this sounds, a vacation from a vacation). Additionally, there are obviously very interesting places I wanted to see as well.
Starting at the beginning of March, I would travel and have a variety of exciting experiences the next four weekends.

Port Said
It started in Port Said, a breezy, mini-resort seaside town at the tip of the Suez and the Mediterranean. This was the perfect destination after three weeks in Cairo: the air was fresh, the cars less reckless and the fish delicious. The most interesting part of Port Said was the Suez canal: I stood feet away from one of the most important waterways in the world and I could not understand how humans could build such a large structure. While Port Said did not offer an exhaustive list of tourist destinations and activities--really the Suez canal was it--it was nonetheless an enjoyable and relaxing few days.

Black and White Desert
The next weekend I traveled to two areas in the Western desert--the black desert and white desert. If this looks familiar, mom and dad, it is because it is an excerpt from the email I sent you after I returned (well, with some stylistic improvements).

I traveled with a group of twenty friends to the black and white desert, located about 4 hours outside Cairo. We first saw the black desert, which is a portion of the desert coated in black due to a volcanic erupted a long time ago, staining the ground with ash. Our tour guides took us to that volcano, now inactive, and we climbed it, giving us an impressive view of the desert laid out before us. After the Black Desert, we drove about an hour to the white desert, which was even more impressive--desert with amazing white rock formations everywhere you turn. Apparently a long time ago (I say long time ago because I am not sure exactly when) that portion of desert was submerged under water, which resulted in those strange shapes. The rocks looked like someone had just played with silly putty, created the weirdest and silliest shapes, and stuck them in the middle of the Sahara Desert in Egypt. Even more amazing, we were able to camp out in the middle of the desert, under the stars, surrounded by these surreal statues.

Since it was Friday night, and my friend Sara and I always enjoy celebrating Shabbat in some way, we led a little Kaballat Shabat service in the desert, away from our campsite. We invited the other 2 or 3 Jews along, but a bunch of other non Jewish friends of our came along as well.
Standing in the middle of the desert under the stars (which I hadn't seen in weeks), away from the campsite, surrounded by incredible manifestations of nature, the service was one of the more inspirational ones of my life.

Dahab/Mt. Sinai/Luxor/Aswan
('m condensing the next two weekends because I can't write much more)
The following weekend brought me to Dahab, a resort town on the Sinai just off the Gulf of Aqaba. We lounged on the beach for the day, enjoyed some amazing fish that night, and climbed Mt. Sinai the following afternoon, arriving at the summit just before sunset. While there is much debate as to whether the mountain we climbed is the actual Sinai (I think Jewish scholars came to a consensus that it is not) it was still an amazing experience. We all sat and watched with wonder as the sun slowly sank towards the horizon, casting an eerie but beautiful glow on the surroundings. Although it very likely is not the historical Sinai, I tried to God if we could change a couple commandments, especially the one about honoring one's mother and father, even though I've been ignoring it for years (kidding, mom and dad!)
The last weekend of my whirlwind tour of Egypt took me to Luxor and Aswan, a twelve hour train ride, for our four day weekend break. Located in Upper Egypt--which actually refers to southern Egypt--Luxor and Aswan were the hearts of the Pharaonic kingdoms. The temples, tombs and monuments were awe inspiring. Just like the pyramids, you cannot help but question, how could people thousands of years ago build something like this? And because I didn't have a guide for much of it, that question went unanswered. However, I intend on returning and getting to the bottom of those magical places.

After my fourth weekend in a row, I needed a little break from all that traveling: what a tough life I live! I have spent two weekends in a row in Cairo, catching up on sleep (due to my 8 AM class every morning), seeing interesting places in the city I have not visited, and trying to do some schoolwork.
Spring break is coming up in less than two weeks, when I will celebrate passover in Israel before visiting Turkey for a week.

ISRAEL AND ZIONISM

This is an issue I have been forced to constantly think about in Egypt. After spending my whole life in Jewish day schools, I have always been in places extremely supportive and encouraging of Judaism, Israel and Zionism. Egypt, though, could not be more different. I have never been forced to question my beliefs like here. Every day I hear anti-Zionist and anti-Israel rhetoric. An Egyptian who I know from my university, in all honesty, believes it is commanded by Islamic law to kill all Israelis. Many of my classmates are in facebook groups like the one titled "How Many People Hate Israel?" The level of hatred and anger directed to their neighbors to the northeast is more than palpable here. Needless to say, this is no Solomon Schecther, CJHS or Brandeis.
While I expected to confront some serious Israel bashing, I must admit I was surprised at the degree with which the students delude themselves concerning the conflict. A perfect example: located on the campus are signs with quotations from famous people regarding Arab unity, and one of them seems to espouse a certain level of tolerance that I had previously not been exposed to here:

"On this land, Muslims, Christians and Jews can coexist together, as they have - as they had for the - for hundreds of years in the framework of a democratic state."

A pretty nice quotation, right? I was surprised by it, considering most of what I had heard concerning the conflict was vitriol and hate towards Israel. But it made sense that the university would choose this ostensibly positive quote when I read who uttered it: Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah. I guess they also forgot to quote these other pearls of tolerance:

"If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."
"If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli."

Using Nasrallah as a model for coexistence in Israel would be like employing a David Duke quotation to support racial equality in America. (Analogies have never been my strongsuit, so if you can think of a better one, feel free to post it in a comment).

The fact that my university here chooses this man as a spokesperson for coexistence says volumes about the way many Egyptians understand the conflict, which has been confirmed time and again through conversation and observation. From my experience here, most Egyptians refuse to face the facts and history. In their recitation of the last sixty years, institutions here mysteriously forget the years 1948 and 1967. In their recounting of the 1973 war--in which Egypt's surprise attack resulted in two victorious days of fighting for the Egyptians, followed by two weeks which concluded the war in a stalemate--audio from a museum declared: "Egypt experienced the greatest military victory of modern times."

The greatest victory of modern times! Norman Finkelstein would have been proud of that revisionist history.

While I have been very frustrated at times, I have also been forced to examine my views more carefully and understand the entire conflict in a new light. Due to the length of the post, I will not attempt to impart my thoughts right now. But if all goes to plan, and I begin posting more regularly, maybe you will be reading about that soon!

Arabic

Imagine if you were walking down the street of a Chicago and a Middle Eastern looking tourist approached you and asked, "Pardon me, would thy be willest to showest me the wayest to arrive at the public gardens located on the thoroughfare of Michigan Avenue?"

You would probably stare in wonder and curiosity as this Middle Easterner speaks to you like he's in Shakespearean times. You would probably try to respond and help this time traveling tourist, but find that he can't even understand the directions using modern English. You might even rudely laugh in his face, albeit unintentionally, after hearing language you would only find in your high school English class.

After spending almost a month in Cairo, I can tell you that many of us Americans feel like we are foreigners from another time period. This is because for the majority of us, the Arabic we have learned is FusHa--Modern Standard Arabic, the version of Arabic that is usually reserved for classical poetry, scholarly works and even the texts of the Koran and Hadith. Because every Arabic speaking country has developed vastly different Arabics, Arabic education focuses on this more universal, albeit archaic and obsolete, dialect.

I don't think most foreigners realized how incongruous their spoken Arabic would be with the Egyptian dialect. I figured most people would understand me and I in turn would be able to pick up relatively easily the major differences. But I couldn't have been more wrong. Using Arabic I thought was simple and straightforward, Egyptians have laughed at me, looked at me with blank stares and attempted to explain using words and phrases I didn't know while I nodded and smiled. As one of my friends who was here last semester put it, "Modern Standard gets you NOWHERE in Cairo." While it's slowly getting better, with a class on Egyptian colloquial and a private tutor, I have a long way to go before being able to maintain coherent conversations in the vernacular. 

This experience has taught me that Arabic education in the states needs to focus more on colloquial. While every country does have a different dialect, it is much easier, for example, for a Saudi Arabian to communicate in Egyptian colloquial than Modern Standard. If the ultimate goal of most Arabic students is to communicate and converse with Arabic speakers--which I think it is--then the education should accommodate this. We don't want to devote our studies the English equivalent of Shakespearean English--we want to learn the most useful, communicable language.

If any Arabic students disagree, please comment!

In Cairo!

I'm finally in Cairo! Well, I've actually been here for three weeks, but due to a combination of an underwater internet cable being cut and living in a place without an internet connection, I haven't been able to start updating. But better late than the never

Because I'd be here for hours if I tried to recap everything I've done, I'll give highlights of my past three weeks, with the hopes I can now write regularly.

--Cairo is like nothing I've ever seen before. I learned a word in the beginning of my Arabic education that describes the city perfectly: izdeeham-overcrowdedness. While at the time I wondered why the book taught that before words like go, see, speak, and like, in my short time here I've realized the significance of it. The sheer amount of traffic and pedestrians makes Manhattan look like a rural farm town. Traffic lights and lane markers are not even suggestions--they are completely ignored as cars and mopeds criss-cross through the streets, trying to find the tiniest opening to get just a few feet ahead of the competition--the other drivers. 

What I've found so interesting about this is that the fast paced, rushed appearance of the city runs completely against the general mood of the people. I've found most Egyptians friendly, laid back and flexible. If you are short a pound at a falafel place or have too big of bills, they'll trust you to return when you have the change. When asking for directions or trying to speak broken Arabic, they are patient and understanding, and will at least pretend to understand in order to be polite. While I braced myself for anti-Americanism that so many people warned me of, I've experienced none of it here--on the contrary, the Egyptians I've interacted with, from my classmates to shopkeepers, enjoy talking to us and welcoming us to their country.

--I've done some cool tourist things so far--Pyramids and Sphinx, Alexandria, a Numibian dancing show, Khan al-Khalili (the busy open air market). There's so much more to see, both in Cairo and the rest of the country, that it's impossible to ever feel too comfortable--

--A week into my stay, I moved from the dorms located in a quiet, international oriented neighborhood of Cairo, to an apartment in a bustling, noisy downtown area. While I had made some good friends in the dorms, the allure of an apartment a five minute walk to campus, in a much busier, Cairene area, was simply too appealing to turn down. I live with my friends Meredith and Sara--luckily the landlord, a loathsome and greedy man to be nice--didn't take issue with the co-ed arrangement, which the traditional culture here frowns upon. 

The move was definitely a good one--I have my own room and balcony, the area is perfect for study abroad students seeking an authentic Cairo feel,  and we get along great. But I might think differently about the apartment when I am forced to make dinner at some point--thanks for teaching me how to cook mom!

That's all I can type now. I hope you enjoyed reading and check back soon for another update!

Before I sign off, I would like to thank Michael Geveryahu for helping me come up with this blog title that I "sphinx" is a pretty good one.