How Can Israelis Play Games in the Arab World?

شباط 21st, 2009 كتبها أحمد جميل عزم - aj.azem@gmail.com نشر في , English, فلسطين

 

The reaction for my article in al Arabiyya (English) is a surprise for me. Have a look:

http://www.alarabiya.net/views/2009/02/19/66833.html

 

the article:

How Can Israelis Play Games in the Arab World?

 

 

The Western world of tennis has been provoked to anger by the story of the Israeli tennis player, Shahar Peer, who has been denied a visa by the UAE authorities and thus prevented from competing in the Dubai Tennis Championships. As a person whose origins were in the city of Jerusalem, I feel not only angry about the issue, but also worried on seeing that my children are pleased to hear that the tennis player has been banned from an Arab country, for I know this reaction does not augur well for peace mentality.

According to documents going back hundreds of years, I am an indigenous Palestinian, for my family has lived in a village close to Jerusalem, in a location from which the Old City can easily be seen. Our story as a family is documented in a book written by Said K. Aburish in English and entitled Children of Bethany: The Story of a Palestinian Family. The author describes clearly how my parents and grandfathers have been always part of the city of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, for more than eighteen years, I have been denied entry to that city. All the Palestinians, both Muslims and Christians, in the West Bank are denied this right. Not one of us is allowed to pray or shop in, or visit the city.

 

I myself have had to abandon a book that I spent years writing, including producing a thesis for a Ph.D. degree on the same topic: “How to settle the issue of Jerusalem peacefully” On reaching a certain point, I needed to visit the cit

المزيد


A visit to Jerusalem is not normalisation

شباط 9th, 2009 كتبها أحمد جميل عزم - aj.azem@gmail.com نشر في , English, القدس

The National

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090206/OPINION/810032946

 Last Updated: February 06. 2009 9:30AM UAE / February 6. 2009 5:30AM GMT

“More than ever, the Palestinian cause requires a new type of struggle that would go beyond the current factional division and set the foundation for [using] new tools,” wrote Dr Ahmed Jamil Azem in the UAE’s Al Ittihad daily.

One of the most prominent issues that has been greatly neglected that the author said “necessitates r

المزيد


Bretton Woods II: An Arab View

كانون الأول 30th, 2008 كتبها أحمد جميل عزم - aj.azem@gmail.com نشر في , English, نظرية علاقات دولية

 

    EU and international leaders are advocating establishing a new global financial system and they are calling for an overhaul of the international monetary and economic institutions, what are widely known as the Bretton Woods institutions, which were founded in July 1944. The aims of the Bretton Woods agreement were to regulate global commerce by encouraging free trade through a world trade organization, and to secure sources to reconstruct the economies of countries seriously damaged by the Second World War by means of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is now one of the agencies of the World Bank Group. The agreement also established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to design and implement a monetary policy governing international exchange rates. The present call for revision is described by many sources as the founding of Bretton Woods II.

    Although the Arab oil countries, namely, the GCC states, have been invited to play an important role in the revision, serious concerns and questions have arisen in the minds of Arab officials, analysts, and commentators.

    Arab oil states, in particular have an obligation to support the international economy in the current crisis for two major reasons. Firstly because of its membership in the international community, and secondly because a global economic rescission harms its oil revenues and its overseas investments. However, this reality does not terminate Arab concerns.

    One major concern is that the basis of the new Bretton Woods system still has to be fully debated, especially with the many new and different challenges facing the international financial systems. Therefore, the basis of the new system to which the Arab countries will contribute needs to be clarified, bearing in mind that the Arab

المزيد


The Iraqi Journalist and Arab Alienation

كانون الأول 30th, 2008 كتبها أحمد جميل عزم - aj.azem@gmail.com نشر في , English

Ahmad Jamil Azem
I have been utterly astonished by the enthusiastic response to the action of the Iraqi journalist, Muntazer al‑Zaidi, who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush.
I recognized from the very first moment that there would be jubilation, and that if I did not want to be part of a hectic and wearisome debate with almost everyone around me, regarding the true meaning of the action, I should keep silent. However, the celebration exceeded expectations.
As a regular columnist for two daily Arabic-language newspapers, I did not think that I should comment on the event; therefore, I kept previously prepared texts for last week’s articles. However, the editor of the Comments page in one of the two newspapers had to delay some of the articles, while including those which addressed the story of the shoes. The space left by the delayed articles was devoted to letters from “happy” readers expressing their opinions of the shoes’ story. On the second day after the event, the newspaper’s cartoonist produced a picture showing Bush asking Iraq to deconstruct its program of “the shoes of mass destruction.” Many people wrote as if they had fallen in love with al‑Zaidi’s shoes. One girl commented on the BBC Arabic website that a

المزيد


Mumbai Attacks and the Need for Conflict Transformation

كانون الأول 22nd, 2008 كتبها أحمد جميل عزم - aj.azem@gmail.com نشر في , English, باكستان- القاعدة

Dr. Ahmad Jamil Hamad
 
If it is proved that Islamist groups were behind the recent attacks on civilians in Mumbai in India, then these latest examples of terrorism should be viewed as having four main dimensions.
The first is that these attacks are an expression of extreme distortion of and departure from the fundamental vision of Islam as practiced by Prophet Muhammad and his early successors. The attacks contradict the recommendation of the first Muslim Khalifah, Abu Bakr, to the Muslim army. He directed the army not to target civilians: “Do not kill children, women, or elderly people,” and to avoid destroying environment: “do not cut down trees where there is food for men and beasts.” He also reminded them firmly not to harm the people of religion: “Do not molest the monks in the churches.”
The second dimension of the attacks is that the unintended consequences of the American policy during the Cold War era remain untreated. The Islamists of Pakistan were radicalized and driven to carry weapons in the face of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. After more than 25 years, the United States is still unable to find the right method of removing the socio-political infrastructure which it originally helped to construct and which now forms the infrastructure of the terrorist groups in Pakistan. American policies still concentrate on military means, that is, motivating the Pakistani army to

المزيد


Western Universities in Abu Dhab (TV)

تشرين الثاني 19th, 2008 كتبها أحمد جميل عزم - aj.azem@gmail.com نشر في , English, الإمارات

 

Interview (Abu Dhabi Mall November 2008)

(my part is at the end)

http://tv.rebell.tv/10-uhr-nachrichten/the-de-colonialization-is-incomplete-or-my-conclusion-of-my-2nd-travel-with-bashar.html

المزيد


Job seekers from the West – and the problems they bring

تشرين الثاني 5th, 2008 كتبها أحمد جميل عزم - aj.azem@gmail.com نشر في , English, الإمارات

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20081104/OPINION/498639551/1080?template=opinion

Job seekers from the West – and the problems they bring

Ahmad Jamil Azem

A year ago, I was discussing with an Arab friend, who had just moved to live and work in London, the social implications of what was then the “looming” economic crisis in the West. We agreed that nationalism and radical nationalist groups in Europe and the United States would most probably flourish in that kind of economic downturn; that they would direct their racist attacks against migrants from Africa, Asia, and South America who had moved to the prosperous North during the boom years.

However, now that the economic crisis is no longer “looming” but has become painful reality, another question has been raised: what about the migration in the opposite direction, namely, the flow of labour from the United States and Europe to the Middle East, especially the Gulf?

A month ago, The National (October 12, 2008) produced the headline “Job-seekers lured to UAE.” The article described how recruitment agencies were being flooded with applications from foreign job-seekers aiming to escape the stormy financial conditions in their home countries. The London manager of UAE Staffing said: “We used to get five resumés a day from the US. Now we can get 50.”

So the question has been reversed. It now

المزيد


Single in the Emirates

تشرين الأول 14th, 2008 كتبها أحمد جميل عزم - aj.azem@gmail.com نشر في , English, الإمارات

People like liberal environment

Hamida Ghafour’s report, “Single in the Emirates: a bold life” (Oct 12), was interesting. Arab novels by women can provide more examples of women coming from other countries to live in the Gulf. Some of them are not very positive. One such novel, set in the 1970s, was written by the talented Palestinian novelist, Sa


English translations for some of my Articles

تشرين الأول 4th, 2008 كتبها أحمد جميل عزم - aj.azem@gmail.com نشر في , English

The National/ UAE

 18 Sep 2008

Islamists and the one-man one-vote system

Dr Ahmad Jamil Azm, a regular columnist for the UAE’s Al Ittihad wrote on September 18 that debate about the attitude of Islamists towards democracy has focused on how willing they are to share power with “non-Islamists” and accept ideological and intellectual diversity.

“But recent developments prove that the debate among the Islamists about accepting pluralism has not reached an advanced stage, as the Islamic groups seem to have a hard time accepting pluralism even among themselves,” he wrote.

The four current models are the two Shiite regimes in Iraq and Iran, the Sunni regimes in Sudan and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. All of these either suppress opponents or resort to arms, Azm wrote. Only Turkish Islamists appear to respect pluralism.

“These models show that the Islamists, like the leftist, revolutionary, or nationalist parties that reached power in the Arab world, do not accept pluralism and do not want to listen to a voice other than their own, even if it is an Islamic one.”

http://www.opinionsource.com/newsletter.jsp

Al Ittihad (UAE)

Islamists and the one-voice system
Dr Ahmad Jamil Azm
9/18/2008

Azm states that debate about the attitude of Islamists towards democracy has focused on how willing they are to share power with non-Islamists and accept ideological and intellectual diversity. But recent developments on the groun

المزيد