Articles about women in the Middle East inevitably touch on many facets of social, political, and economic life in the countries concerned, and will tell us as much about the nature of Zionism and the Arab societies as they do about women themselves.
The two articles in this section, written nearly seven years apart in time, share common concerns, seek to call attention to the Lebanese, as opposed to international or inter-Arab, components of the crisis and the war. Both refuse to endorse any of the warring sides, or to countenance their behaviour.
Khamsin 8 was entirely devoted to the 'Politics of Religion in the Middle East'. All the articles in this section are taken from that attempt to take up what the issue's editorial called 'the sadly neglected twin tasks of confrontation with Islam and Judaism'.
Whatever may be said about Hammami's political views on particular points, there is no denying the non-sectarianism of his attitude to the Israeli Jewish population: he recognizes that they constitute a nationality just as much as the Palestinian Arabs, and that they, too, are entitled to national right in Palestine. To hear a Palestinian spokesman say this was not necessarily congenial to fanatics on both sides.
The present issue of Khamsin goes to the press almost exactly one year after Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The central theme of the issue is not a description of the war events themselves, but their broader context.
The question mark hanging over Egypt is whether the bourgeoisie can impose its solution, or whether the working class can smash the bourgeois state and reorganise production. If those of us outside Egypt can contribute something by way of analysis for and solidarity with the workers in Egypt, all the ink that has flowed will have been worthwhile.
A Judeophobic anti-Zionism is the best weapon in the hands of Zionists. Rather, it is the task of progressive anti-Zionists (Jews and non-Jews alike) to challenge Zionism as a false liberation, or better, as a total surrender to antisemitism and an actual negation of liberation.
Nikki R. Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran; With a section by Yann Richard.
Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the World.
The picture that emerges in the book is very different from the popular myth of the kibbutz , which can be seen as a commune not so much of utopian socialists as of militants of a colonialist-nationalist movement.
The families in the study are desperately poor although they are not the poorest of Egypt's capital city. They at least have somewhere to live other than cemeteries and sewers, and they have a wage earner in the family. But no family has an income sufficient to meet its needs.
The Palestinian refugees in the Sabra, Shatila and Ain al-Hilweh camps, survivors of the massacre and bombings are being robbed of their right of return and rehabilitation in their homeland.
This issue of Khamsin continues the crucial debate on religion in the Middle East and its reactionary impact on politics in the region today.
Analysis of the political evolution of Iran's Shi'ite clergy from the late 19th century to their seizure of state power in the February 1979 revolution, looking specifically at how they were able to sustain themselves in politics for so long and why, in the latter half of the 1970s, they experienced a militant revival.
A major work on the structure of Egyptian capitalism and the changes it has undergone throughout its history, arguing that these changes can be understood only as part of developments in international capitalism and the demands of advanced capitalist countries.
A common image employed in interpreting the Israeli-Arab conflict views it in terms of a moral symmetry: both parties ‒ Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab ‒ are in the right, both have a legitimate claim to the same country and are engaged in a tragic struggle with each other for possession of the land. But beneath the surface its basic message seems to be that the one party (Israel) is human and the other one is not.
In the Arab world, not only has there never been a serious bourgeois-liberal challenge to religion and clericalism, but the left too has for the most part avoided the issue or pussyfooted round it.
None of the expectations, predictions and prognoses of left circles, whether inside or outside Iran, have been confirmed by the passage of time. The speed with which a highly repressive and deeply reactionary regime has emerged, in the wake of colossal mass mobilisations involving millions, has left many in political shock and disillusionment.
I don't see any contradiction between the struggle for the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and the struggle for a Palestinian state. I also don't see a contradiction between this struggle and the struggle to build bridges to the Jewish proletariat and for the gradual erosion of the ideological hegemony exercised by the zionist leadership ‒ a struggle which is absolutely necessary and should be supported by all means.
The workers and peasants serving on both sides of the front have no interest in fighting each other. They have no interest in defending the "revolution" that brought their exploiters and oppressors to power.