Virginity Tests: A Revolutionarily Disgusting Idea

Every man and woman should remember every single woman they see walking down the street is someone's mother, sister, auntie, grandma, niece or cousin etc. There is no "other" type of women, as the Major Amr Imam of the Egyptian Army claims when talking about the protesters who were arrested and forced to undergo "virginity tests. He told CNN that


 “The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs). We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place. None of them were (virgins).”


Articles are here and here


The women who were a part of the Jan25 Revolution were exactly the same as your mother, your sister, your aunt etc. They were then and are now women, like all women. Their bodies are their own. Their virginity is their concern and not a tool to be used by police to show the jailer's innocence upon release. Though varied in size, shape and color, women's bodies are fundamentally the same. The rights all women should have to protect and keep our bodies safe should be as similar. 


"Othering" a segment of the population is popular in every country. "They" are on welfare, only "they" do drugs, I won't get AIDS because I am not one of "them". Well in a city were 98% of women report getting sexually harassed on a daily basis there really is no "other" type of woman. If you are a guy and you still think only a "certain" type of girl gets harassed you are blind, ignorant and scared. 


Egypt is changing, slowly, but change is happening. Some women I know report less harassment and some report more. Certainly all reports from Tahrir during the height of the Revolution were of men and women side by side in the most respectful and equal manner. Keep the faith Egypt; get vocal and get upset about this behavior. Sexual abuse by the police or army is not set aside for women only. Men are victims of this as well and will be as long as it is tolerated in any form. No country will ever be a great country until all its citizens are equal and feel equally safe. 


I don't know of a country where women feel totally safe. But I had never heard of a country that peacefully deposed an autocratic ruler in less than 30 days either and Egypt you did just that. The world expects the worst from you, keep showing them the best. Be upset about this, be vocal in your opposition and keep demanding better from your countrymen and women.

That suit!

There is no reason for this post other than the photo below. You know you were a gangster when you had a pin-stripped suit with your name as the stripes.  WOW. Do you think Qaddafi has one? Would he know how to spell his name in English? Qaddafi Gaddafi, Kadaffi, Q'addafi and the list goes on. Even Hosny is potentially misspelled. Could by Hosni. Hope his tailor did not get in trouble for that. What do you think it is like to the tailor to someone like Mubarek?

This photo is second possibly only to the creatively hilarious website that is...

Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things. You will not be disappointed.

Or is the winner the Will Ferrel as Harry Carry vs Qaddafi mashup?

Not sure who wins. 

Maybe this amazing story I heard from a friend about Libyan state TV before Qaddaffi started killing everyone. The brother in law of my friend, let's call him Jim, was in Libya for work. Noting the extreme lack of night life Jim went back to his hotel room after dinner to watch some TV. A few minutes into his program the broadcast cuts and Qaddaffi appears on screen for a service announcement. In this announcement he immediately begins to yell at the TV audience, screaming "You are wasting your lives watching TV. You are useless, lazy and good for nothings. Get up and do something." The PSA  abruptly ends and regular programming continues. Um, what? Can you imagine watching a CSI rerun and all of the sudden Qaddaffi is on the screen screaming about how lazy you are for watching state TV? Amazing.

But, I don't want the epic stories of craziness to over shadow the cruel, murderous and senseless actions of Qaddaffi. Crazy or not he is one horrible SOB who is joined by far to many dictators we tend to pass off as "crazy," "delusional," or "eccentric". When really they are just murders.

Mega-Cities

 Apparently I live in a mega-city.

Sounds scary right? Cairo is crowded but, I do not have agoraphobia so its cool. 


Quick synopsis of the article linked above: as huge cities get more and more crowded they become a breading ground for dangerous politics and social unrest. At the same time nations are forced to give undue attention to their own mega-cities and ignore the outlying areas, which causes resentment towards the national government. The lack of public services present in these cities is filled by religious and political organizations who provide schools and social services-this is what groups like Hamas and Hezbollah do on the ground and why people are attracted to them. Consider the local chapter of Hamas a little like the local YMCA, only they recruit for suicide missions and not just the summer baseball league. 


Cairo is crazy, there is a noticeable lack of public services, and I have no idea how everything functions. Except that it does, vaguely, in a beautiful sort of chaos. I am sure I am not privy to the greatest tragedies in the city, but articles like this are always very negative about situations on the ground. Come visit and see for yourself, I will let you know if Cairo disrupts into absolute social chaos anytime soon.


Link to the article here and above.

Interesting

I know I said I would hold out on judging Israel, but then the Israeli Keffiyeh popped into my inbox. 

For background's sake...
 I subscribe to an email list serve, Cairo Scholars. It is very handy for apartment hunting, weird questions, and entertaining arguments. Someone sent out a link to a website advertising an Israeli Keffiyeh with the original subject line "they stole history and culture, and kill the Palestinian people." Needless to say a debate ensued about whether the email was appropriate for the list, does it have anything to do with Cairo, are we offending any Jewish students that might be in Cairo, blah blah blah. The highly unorganized email debate brought up a few relevant questions-are you anti-Semitic if you slightly criticize anything Israeli and how serious of an offence is it to co-opt a nation's symbol of resistance.

Let's examine the facts I learned from wikipedia...

The Keffiyeh can be found all over the Arab world. Various tribes and groups wear different colors and patterns, and they can be tied around the head in different styles. You could relate them to a Scottish tartan as the weave, color, and how you wear it are indicative of your family's origins. They are generally worn by men and veiled women do not typically use them. The scarf became a symbol of Palestinian resistance in the Arab revolt of the 1930s, Yasser Arafat used the keffiyeh as a national and personal symbol, Lawrence of Arabia wore one, the British army apparently wears them, and  Leila Khaled, a female member of the armed PLO, was seen wearing the Keffiyeh as a hajab (headscarf) after the TWA Flight 840 high jackings. With her it was seen as a statment of her equal footing with militant men of the time.

Here is some current knowledge gleamed from my own observations (and wikipedia love)...

The keffeyeh is still seen as symbol of resistance around these parts and when the Israeli strikes on Gaza happened last year you could buy one on any street corner in Cairo. They are also a semi-outdated hipster trend. Maybe this trend was started by socially conscious hipsters or Jewish Americans and non-Jewish Americans who were trying to display their anti-Zionist feelings. Apparently “keffiyeh kinderlach” are "young left-wing Jews." Young Americans can purchase them at the local Urban Outfitters or maybe Claire's (I have been out of the country for a while) in all colors. Even in the Middle East it is hard to find one not made in China, most things are made in China. But, you can pay a little more to get handmade scarves and it is worth the extra money. Either way they are sort of a sold out trend, but still relevent enough that when I bought some in Jordon and wore them around Israel I felt weird in  parts of the city (OK I felt weird when I wore it by the Wailing Wall on Friday, but that was a coincidence and not a statement).

But, finally the point. Apparently there a Jewish rapper/label owner/producer based out of Brooklyn who is hawking the Israeli Keffiyeh on his blog and somehow I got an email about it from a list serve here in Cairo. God damn I love globalization!

Now an Israeli wearing a keffiyeh, to be blunt, a lot like a white person wearing FUBU. Apparently the scarf says "Am Israel Chai" in Hebrew, meaning "Jewish People Live." Symbols get co-opted all the time and as an American I can't really claim I am not a huge part of it. As I see it the difference lies in the intention of co-option. When a some random guy wears a Che Guevara shirt he does not want to change what the handsome Latin rebel in the green hat stands for, he wants the coolness of Che to rub off on him. However, taking the basic design and reworking it with different colors and adding Hebrew changes what the keffiyeh stands for and could potentially obliterate the original meaning. You can't call a keffiyeh a keffiyeh when it is a totally new design under the same name.  


Innocently then the above scarf is just an Israeli hipster/national pride scarf and similar to football scarves, or an American flag speedo. Not so innocently the above scarf is another attempt on the part of Zionist Jews to obliterate the Palestinian culture, language and pride. At this point after hipsters, urban outfitters, men in the markets selling hot pink keffiyehs, and semi-political white chicks like me have muddled the symbolism does it matter if an Jewish rapper/label owner/producer does the same? The debate is still going on the email list, although the moderator is trying to stop it. Ahh petty expat student politics, you could just stay wrapped up in them forever, no? I have no answer for the debate, but my gut reaction tells me that this is not right and a little to nationalistic for my tastes. I am sure there are Israeli scarves that could create their own symbolism, no need to take someone else's. Or maybe this is just another example of how similar Palestinians and Israelis really are.

Good article

Facebook, my dad is on it, started out as a way to stay in touch with other friends at American universities and has become a global social networking site crucial to all kinds of things. This New York Times article does a really good job of summing up the importance of sites like Facebook to a less than free country like Egypt and gives good background to lesser known political movements.

The article should be in the Times Magazine too, if you are cool enough to get that.

I wish I was.

Tunnels

I knew the tunnels would be a problem and since people want to know how Egypt is being affected by the recent Gaza strife they do matter!

Egypt does not want international forces in the Sinai, yet the US and Israel want Egypt to be bound by their own agreement to stop tunnel smuggling using US detection technologies and US help with training troops in Gaza border countries. Both Mubarek and the foreign minister have spoken out against this agreement, but who knows if that was posturing for the domestic audience and how much US aid Egypt will actually accept. Currently they accept quite a bit.

For more information read this article...
http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=19165

Back to school and some more politics

Today marked the end of my almost three week vacation and my return to school. :( Upon arrival (15 minutes late because of the bus) I learned that school would be let out an hour or so early because our national school counter part is getting out early due to exams. This will last until the end of the month. I have two weeks of real class, in which I have to teach multiplication, one week of review, and then one week of exams.

Does that sound like third grade to you? Sounds like college to me, only I did not even get a "reading week" like a lot of colleges do. Wisconsin got a "reading day" aka half a day. Good thing I am done with college.

In other Egypt news the situation between Israel and Gaza worsens every day. Egypt seems to be taking a lot of heat in the Arab world for it's alleged lack of action. I do not see Egyptians troops becoming involved and there are some valid reasons for keeping the border closed; not wanting foreign troops on their side of the border, not wanting massive amounts of refugees, wanting international assistance in opening the borders, and trying to remain above the constant calls of jihad and martyrdom.

Recently, as of today, it seems Israel had started bombing the tunnels between Rafah and Egypt, damaging property and border crossing stations on the Egyptian side. The tunnels are a major point of contention because Israel believes (and they are probably right ) that Hamas smuggles in a large amount of weapons through the tunnels. But, there are two types of tunnels really. Hamas' tunnels for weapons. Civilian tunnels for every day goods, because when most of the borders in and out of your country are closed things like TVs, baby formula, and electronics can be hard to come by. Egypt wants an international forces present on the Gaza side to help regulate border smuggling, even though they have the military strength and technique to deal with it.

Side note: Unless you are the only son, have no father or have connections most Egyptian men have to serve 13 months in the military after university.

The death toll has reached close to 900 and 3,600 wounded. Israeli troops are on the ground. Still, if the point of this newest war is to stop rockets from launching into Israel that goal is not going to be accomplished by pummeling civilian or Hamas hideouts. Israeli attitudes remains "Hamas will never be the same." While Hamas' attitude remains "as long as there is occupation there will be resistance." Sounds like both sides are still the same.

Egypt is currently brokering peace talks aimed at first establishing a ceasefire. Israel would like to see a US backed guarantee that arms smuggling through the Rafah border will stop. Israel will not stop its attacks until the tunnels are secured. I am interested to see what Obama does with this his first days in office, but hopefully it will be over by the 20th because to many people have died for something that truly cannot be solved with violence.

Again for a good Egyptian news source check out...
www.dailystaregypt.com
They claim to be independent and seem to be.

3 days of bombing

With the recent violence between Israel and Palestine playing out in the news and me feeling completely cut off from TV, print and radio news I am at the stupid mall reading articles online. Thank god for the internet!!

www.huffingtonpost.com, one of my favorite political blogs has a good collection of articles on the subject. I am on vacation from school and have not seen much action or talk in the streets, but rest assured whatever anti-Israeli views the average Egyptian held they are more extreme now. I am spending the afternoon reading up on the subject so many of the thoughts and ideas presented are recently gleamed from international news articles.

“Israeli leaders said they would press ahead with the Gaza campaign, despite enraged protests across the Arab world and Syria's decision to break off indirect peace talks with the Jewish state. Israel's foreign minister said the goal was to halt Gaza rocket fire on Israel for good, but not to reoccupy the territory.”
IBRAHIM BARZAK and KARIN LAUB | December 28, 2008 10:07 PM EST |
AP Article

The idea that bombing a country into oblivion will halt anything forever is just silly. When in history has this ever worked, ever changed minds, ever put an end to violence and not only created more violence? When?

Map taken from the New York Times website, I always forget the geography of this region.

After reading a few articles it seems that Egypt is more involved than I knew. They have been brokering a peace/cease-fire between Israel and Palestine and agreed to close their border with Gaza to show their condemnation of Hamas. From what I know one of the biggest problems in Gaza is the lack of imports into the region, this means little economic activity, hospital or basic infrastructure supplies. One of the reasons Hamas was elected and is strongly supported is because they have been successful in smuggling/importing goods into the country so that people can live. Israel just bombed the system of tunnels between the Rafah, Gaza and Egyptian border. From what I am reading most hospitals are without basic medications and not functioning and homes are without gas.

Violence between Israel and Palestine inevitably stirs up talk of a united “Arab” front against “America and Zionists.” But who are the Arabs? I think it is sort of like referring to black people in America, as if you can lump all black people together and say they feel the same way about an issue. You cannot with either group.

From my first days in Egypt what has struck me is how Egyptians are Egyptians. Not Arabs. Arabs, in the eyes of many I have had conversations with, are Iranians, Saudis, Iraqi’s etc. Egyptians speak a different Arabic, live in Africa, and are mainly Sunni. From this point of view it makes sense then that Egyptian politics would not mirror “Arab politics,” this is also supported historically with many past Egyptians PMs. However, Egyptians do not like Mubarek, Zionists, America’s unabashed support of Israel, or Israel. So, it is safe to say that many Egyptians politics do not mirror those of their government. I am anxious to see what happens and hear what my friends here have to say about Egypt’s closed border with Gaza and the government’s action.

Israel stands to lose face or gain back fear they had before the 2006 Lebanon bombings/war. I just learned that the Defense Minister and chairman of the Labor Party Ehud Barak, who is also running a distant third in polls for Israel’s February elections, is the mastermind behind the air strikes and the public face. Win a war; win an election! Lose a war; well maybe you were not going to win anyways. Meanwhile Hams is launching rockets further than even into Israel and Israel is preparing ground troops.

Also I guess oil prices just went up, what a scam. If Obama cannot get us off of foreign oil and oil all together and figure out a way to be a little less-biased about Israel 2009 will not be that much better than 2000-2008.

The politics between Israel/Palestine are almost beyond my comprehension. I just don’t understand bombing prisons and refugee camps. WTF?