I’m reprinting here my most recent Tomdispatch essay for The Nation Institute, on the possible emergence of a centrist Sunni bloc that aims to offset Israeli power in the region. Check out, as well, Tom Engelhardt’s essential introduction, here.

At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: the Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary stated foreign policy goal has been to rally its partners in the region to cooperate with the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu while upholding a “rules-based” international order and blocking Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason. President Biden’s Achilles heel has been his “bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, while launching a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza in the wake of the horrific October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Biden also signed on to the Abraham Accords, a project initiated in 2020 by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and special Middle East envoy of then-President Donald Trump. Through them the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco all agreed to recognize Israel in return for investment and trade opportunities there and access to American weaponry and a U.S. security umbrella. Not only did Washington, however, fail to incorporate Saudi Arabia into that framework, but it has also faced increasing difficulty keeping the accords themselves in place given increasing anger and revulsion in the region over the high (and still ongoing) civilian death toll in Gaza. Typically, just the docking of an Israeli ship at the Moroccan port of Tangier this summer set off popular protests that spread to dozens of cities in that country. And that was just a taste of what could be coming.

Breathtaking Hypocrisy

Washington’s efforts in the Middle East have been profoundly undermined by its breathtaking hypocrisy. After all, the Biden team has gone blue in the face decrying the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine and its violations of international humanitarian law in killing so many innocent civilians there. In contrast, the administration let the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu completely disregard international law when it comes to its treatment of the Palestinians. This summer, the International Court of Justice ruled that the entire Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal in international law and, in response, the U.S. and Israel both thumbed their noses at the finding. In part as a response to Washington’s Israeli policy, no country in the Middle East and very few nations in the global South have joined in its attempt to ostracize Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Worse yet for the Biden administration, the most significant divide in the Arab world between secular nationalist governments and those that favor forms of political Islam has begun to heal in the face of the perceived Israeli threat. Turkey and Egypt, daggers long drawn over their differing views of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist movement that briefly came to power in Cairo in 2012-2013, have begun repairing their relationship, specifically citing the menace posed by Israeli expansionism.

The persistence of Secretary of State Antony Blinken in pressing Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. security partner, to recognize Israel at a moment when the Arab public is boiling with anger over what they see as a campaign of genocide in Gaza, is the closest thing since the Trump administration to pure idiocracy. Washington’s pressure on Riyadh elicited from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman the pitiful plea that he fears being assassinated were he to normalize relations with Tel Aviv now. And consider that ironic given his own past role in ordering the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In short, the ongoing inside-the-Beltway ambition to secure further Arab recognition of Israel amid the annihilation of Gaza has America’s security partners wondering if Washington is trying to get them killed — anything but a promising basis for a long-term alliance.

Global Delegitimization

The science-fiction-style nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East is starkly revealed when you consider the position of Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel. In early September, its foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned that any attempt by the Israeli military or its squatter-settlers to expel indigenous West Bank Palestinians to Jordan would be considered an “act of war.” While such anxieties might once have seemed overblown, the recent stunning (and stunningly destructive) Israeli military campaign on the Palestinian West Bank, including bombings of populated areas by fighter jets, has already begun to resemble the campaign in Gaza in its tactics. And keep in mind that, as August ended, Foreign Minister Israel Katz even urged the Israeli army to compel Palestinians to engage in a “voluntary evacuation” of the northern West Bank.

Not only is the expulsion of Palestinians from there now the stated policy of cabinet members like Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir; it’s the preference of 65% of Israelis polled. And mind you, when Israel and Jordan begin talking war you know something serious is going on, since the last time those two countries actively fought was in the 1973 October War during the administration of President Richard Nixon.

In short, Netanyahu and his extremist companions are in the process of undoing all the diplomatic progress their country achieved in the past half-century. Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s domestic Shin Bet intelligence agency, warned in August that the brutal policies the extremists in the government were pursuing are “a stain on Judaism” and will lead to “global delegitimization, even among our greatest allies.”

Turkey, a NATO ally with which the U.S. has mutual defense obligations, has become vociferous in its discontent with President Biden’s Middle Eastern policy. Although Turkey recognized Israel in 1949, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the pro-Islam Justice and Development Party interactions had grown rocky even before the Gaza nightmare. Still, until then their trade and military ties had survived occasional shouting matches between their politicians. The Gaza genocide, however, has changed all that. Erdogan even compared Netanyahu to Hitler, and then went further still, claiming that, in the Rafah offensive in southern Gaza in May, “Netanyahu has reached a level with his genocidal methods that would make Hitler jealous.”

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Worse yet, the Turkish president, referred to by friend and foe as the “sultan” because of his vast power, has now gone beyond angry words. Since last October, he’s used Turkey’s position in NATO to prohibit that organization from cooperating in any way with Israel on the grounds that it’s violating the NATO principle that harm to civilians in war must be carefully minimized. The Justice and Development Party leader also imposed an economic boycott on Israel, interrupting bilateral trade that had reached $7 billion a year and sending the price of fruits and vegetables in Israel soaring, while leading to a shortage of automobiles in the Israeli market.

Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party represents the country’s small towns and rural areas and its Muslim businesses and entrepreneurs, constituencies that care deeply about the fate of Muslim Palestinians in Gaza. And while Erdogan’s high dudgeon has undoubtedly been sincere, he’s also pleasing his party’s stalwarts in the face of an increasing domestic challenge from the secular Republican People’s Party. In addition, he’s long played to a larger Arab public, which is apoplectic over the unending carnage in Gaza.

The Alliance of Muslim Countries

Although it was undoubtedly mere bluster, Erdogan even threatened a direct intervention on behalf of the beleaguered Palestinians. In early August, he said, “Just as we intervened in Karabakh [disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia], just as we intervened in Libya, we will do the same to them.” In early September, the Turkish president called for an Islamic alliance in the region to counter what he characterized as Israeli expansionism:

“Yesterday, one of our own children, [Turkish-American human rights advocate] Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, was vilely slaughtered [on the West Bank]. Israel will not stop in Gaza. After occupying Ramallah [the de facto capital of that territory], they will look around elsewhere. They’ll fix their eyes on our homeland. They openly proclaim it with a map. We say Hamas is resisting for the Muslims. Standing against Israel’s state terror is an issue of importance to the nation and the country. Islamic countries must wake up as soon as possible and increase their cooperation. The only step that can be taken against Israel’s genocide is the alliance of Muslim countries.”

In fact, the present nightmare in Gaza and the West Bank may indeed be changing political relationships in the region. After all, the Turkish president pointed to his rapprochement with Egypt as a building block in a new security edifice he envisions. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made his first visit to Ankara on September 4th (following a February Erdogan trip to Cairo). And those visits represented the end of a more than decade-long cold war in the Sunni Muslim world over al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against elected Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, whom Erdogan had backed.

Despite its apparent embrace of democratic norms in 2012-2013, some Middle Eastern rulers charged the Brotherhood with having covert autocratic ambitions throughout the region and sought to crush it. For the moment, the Muslim Brotherhood and other forms of Sunni political Islam have been roundly defeated in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and the Persian Gulf region. Erdogan, a pragmatist despite his support for the Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas, had been in the process of getting his country the best possible deal, given such a regional defeat, even before the Israelis struck Gaza.

Netanyahu’s Forever War in Gaza

For his part, Egypt’s al-Sisi is eager for greater leverage against Netanyahu’s apparent plan for a forever war in Gaza. After all, the Gaza campaign has already inflicted substantial damage on Egypt’s economy, since Yemen’s Houthis have supported the Gazans with attacks on container ships and oil tankers in the Red Sea. That has, in turn, diverted traffic away from it and from the Suez Canal, whose tolls normally earn significant foreign exchange for Egypt. In the first half of 2024, however, it took in only half the canal receipts of the previous year. Although tourism has held up reasonably well, any widening of the war could devastate that industry, too.

Egyptians are also reportedly furious over Netanyahu’s occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor south of the city of Rafah in Gaza and his blithe disregard of Cairo’s prerogatives under the Camp David agreement to patrol that corridor. The al-Sisi government, which, along with Qatar’s rulers and the Biden administration, has been heavily involved in hosting (so far fruitless) peace negotiations between Hamas and Israel, seems at the end of its tether, increasingly angered at the way the Israeli prime minister has constantly tacked new conditions onto any agreements being discussed, causing the talks to fail.

For months, Cairo has also been seething over Netanyahu’s charge that Egypt allowed tunnels to be built under that corridor to supply Hamas with weaponry, insisting that the Egyptian army had diligently destroyed 1,500 such tunnels. Egypt’s position was given support recently by Nadav Argaman, a former head of Shin Bet, who said, “There is no connection between the weaponry found in Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor.” Of Netanyahu, he added, “He knows very well that no smuggling takes place over the Philadelphi Corridor. So, we are now relegated to living with this imaginary figment.”

In the Turkish capital, Ankara, Al-Sisi insisted that he wanted to work with Erdogan to address “the humanitarian tragedy that our Palestinian brothers in Gaza are facing in an unprecedented disaster that has been going on for nearly a year.” He underscored that there was no daylight between Egypt and Turkey “regarding the demand for an immediate ceasefire, the rejection of the current Israeli escalation in the West Bank, and the call to start down a path that achieves the aspirations of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state on the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” He also pointed out that such positions are in accord with U.N. Security Council resolutions and pledged to work with Turkey to ensure that humanitarian aid was delivered to Gaza despite “the ongoing obstacles imposed by Israel.”

To sum up, the ligaments of American influence in the Middle East are now dissolving before our very eyes. Washington’s closest allies, like the Jordanian and Saudi royal families, are terrified that Biden’s bear hug of Netanyahu’s war crimes and the fury of their own people could, in the end, destabilize their rule. Countries that, not so long ago, had correct, if not warm, relations with Israel like Egypt and Turkey are increasingly denouncing that country and its policies. And the alliance of U.S. partners in the region with Israel against Iran that Washington has long worked for seems to be coming apart at the seams. Countries like Egypt and Turkey are instead exploring the possibility of forming a regional Sunni Muslim alliance against Netanyahu’s geopolitics of Jewish power that might, in the end, actually reduce tensions with Tehran.

That things have come to such a pass in the Middle East is distinctly the fault of the Biden administration and its position — or lack of one — on Israel’s nightmare in Gaza (and now the West Bank, too). Today, all too sadly, that administration is wearing the same kind of blinkers regarding the war in Gaza that President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top officials once sported when it came to the Vietnam War.

Copyright 2024 Juan Cole

Featured Image: “Erdogan and al-Sisi,” Digital, Dream /Dreamland v3 / IbisPaint/ Clip2Comic, 2024

How did Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan go from labeling Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi a ‘murderer’ to referring to him as a brother?

Istanbul (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – On Wednesday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made a historic visit to Turkey. This is the first time in 12 years that an Egyptian president has traveled to the country.

After years of tension, it appears that Cairo and Ankara are beginning to bury the hatchet. During Sisi’s visit, the two countries signed 18 memoranda of understanding on cooperation in various fields, including energy, defense, tourism, health, agriculture, finance, culture, education, and transport.

But why did Turkey and Egypt have a rift initially, and how did they manage to reconcile?

Timeline of Turkey-Egypt Rapprochement

After the 2011 revolution in Egypt, Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government supported the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the election of Mohamed Morsi as Egypt’s president in 2012. Relations between Egypt and Turkey flourished since AKP had ideological affinities with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The relationship took a sharp downturn after Egypt’s military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, ousted President Morsi in July 2013. Turkey strongly condemned the coup, with President Erdoğan labeling Sisi’s government as ‘illegitimate’ and refusing to recognize the new administration.

After the coup, supporters of Morsi began protesting and demanded his reinstatement. On August 14, 2013, Egyptian security forces intervened to disperse the demonstrators at Rabia al-Adawiya Square (named for a female Muslim saint) and Nahda Square in Cairo. The crackdown resulted in a high death toll; estimates vary, but Human Rights Watch reported that at least 817 to 1,000 people were killed.

This massacre became one of the deadliest instances of mass killing of demonstrators in modern history.

The Rabia massacre had a significant impact on Erdoğan and Turkey’s foreign policy. The name ‘Rabia,’ shares a root with the word for ‘four’ in Arabic, leading to the widespread adoption of the Rabia hand sign (four raised fingers with the thumb tucked in) as a symbol of support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdoğan incorporated the Rabia hand sign into his domestic political rhetoric.

After the military coup, Turkey became a safe haven for exiled members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Istanbul hosts several Muslim Brotherhood-linked media outlets, which broadcast in Arabic and are critical of governments that oppose the organization.

Erdoğan repeatedly called Sisi a “tyrant,” “murderer” and a “dictator.” Before the March 2019 Turkish local elections, Erdoğan even likened the Turkish opposition to Sisi: “Will we vote for (AKP candidate) Binali Yildirim or Sisi?” Erdoğan asked in an election rally.

Two years later, Turkey began repairing ties with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. In March 2021, Turkey and Egypt resumed diplomatic contacts at the level of the foreign ministry and the intelligence apparati.

As part of this foreign policy shift, Turkish authorities reportedly instructed three Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated TV channels operating from Istanbul — Watan TV, Al-Sharq TV, and Mekameleen TV — to reduce their criticism of the Egyptian government.

The following year, Sisi and Erdoğan shook hands at the 2022 FIFA World Cup reception in Doha, the capital of Qatar, and gradually, relations began to improve. Egypt and Turkey reappointed ambassadors for the first time in a decade in July 2023 and Erdoğan visited Cairo to meet with Sisi in February 2024.

Impact of the War in Gaza

Deutsche Welle suggested that the war in Gaza accelerated the rapprochement between Turkey and Egypt. Since the outbreak of the war, cooperation between the two states has become increasingly important.

While Turkey and Egypt agree on the Palestinian cause, Erdoğan’s sympathy for Hamas is not shared by Egypt.

Hamas was founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt designated a terrorist organization in 2013. Cairo also briefly classified Hamas as a terrorist organization in 2015, but this move was overturned by the courts on a technicality.

Nonetheless, Turkey and Egypt share a strong consensus regarding an independent Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. During their meeting, both Sisi and Erdoğan called for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid for Gaza.

They also called for an end to the ongoing escalation in the West Bank, where Israel had been conducting a military operation since August 28.

“Sphinx / Blue Mosque,” Digital, Dream, Dreamworld v3, 2024

Libya and Maritime Borders

In recent years, besides ideological differences, Egypt and Turkey have also had significant diplomatic tensions on regional issues.

Notably, Cairo and Ankara have backed opposing sides in the Libyan Civil War. Turkey has supported the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Meanwhile Egypt, along with the UAE and Russia, has supported the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by General Khalifa Haftar.

The two countries have also had disputes over the Eastern Mediterranean maritime borders.

In 2019, Turkey signed a maritime boundary agreement with the GNA in Libya. The deal extended Turkey’s claims over large areas of the Eastern Mediterranean, including waters claimed by Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt. In response to Turkey’s deal with the GNA, Egypt signed a maritime demarcation agreement with Greece in 2020.

After Sisi’s visit, the pro-government media in Turkey discussed the possibility of new maritime deals between Egypt and Turkey, suggesting that Turkey offers a better deal compared to Greece and Cyprus. Hürriyet claimed that Turkey’s reconciliation with Egypt has scared Athens.

What makes Sisi’s visit to Turkey so significant is the decade-long rift between the two countries. Erdoğan has been a vocal critic of Sisi, and this led to significant personal animosity between the two leaders.

As Turkish political scientist Emrah Gülsunar explains, under normal circumstances, “U-turns” in foreign policy occur among states since interests determine inter-state relations. However, Erdoğan’s approach is quite different. He tends to personalize foreign policy and make grand statements, this is why the shifts in Turkish foreign policy sometimes seem “tragicomic.”

It remains unclear how closely Turkey and Egypt will cooperate. Economic collaboration between these two countries—given their control over key trade routes like the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, and the Suez Canal—could be mutually beneficial, especially as both face economic difficulties.

The Middle East has long been a center of geopolitical tensions and instability, and both Turkey and Egypt could benefit from enhanced cooperation on issues such as Gaza, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia. Despite significant challenges, the thaw in relations between Ankara and Cairo seems to signal a strategic recalibration in the region.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “Türkiye and Egypt agree to work together on regional issues”

The local Jewish communities in Arab and Muslim countries significantly dwindled during the 1948 War and drastically declined following the Suez War. This tendency’s trajectory has been clearly manifested in Morocco and Egypt, which are the two countries where about one-third of all Jews living in Arab countries reside. For a long time, the narratives on the causes for the emptying of the Jewish communities in the two countries were exclusively based on nationalistic narratives, both Arab and Zionist. This, in turn, distorted the past image of Jews as an integral part of Moroccan and Egyptian societies.

This framing of the local Jewish past also assumes that synagogues, cemeteries, and Judaica items left in these countries are silent relics of the past. In contrast, I have found a sort of “living archive,” which is a unique collection that includes Jewish monuments, Judaica artifacts, and a wealth of textual and visual records spanning various periods. Since the turn of the 21^st century, this archive has been continually enriched by diverse documentation focusing on the Jewish presence in both its historical context and present-day heritage. These once-taboo topics are now widely discussed across multiple platforms, including popular entertainment, media, and social networks.

Millions of Egyptians were exposed to revisionist representations through the silver screen and TV, especially the TV series Harat Al-Yahud (Neighborhood of the Jews, 2015) and the films Salata Baladi by Nadia Kamel (Country Salad, 2007) and ʿAn Yahud Misr (Jews of Egypt, 2012) by Amir Ramses. Diverse and complex representations of Egyptian Jews were provided by Kamal Ruhayyim in a trilogy centered on the life of Galal and his quest to find his identity in Egypt during the second half of the 20^th century.

In Egypt, the government sponsored a costly and impressive restoration of the Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria. After decades of neglect, several synagogues were cleaned in Cairo, the ancient Jewish cemetery in Bassatin was cleared of tons of rubbish, and part of the surrounding cemetery wall was rebuilt. The Karaite Menasha burial plot was remarkably restored.

Yoram Meital, Sacred Places Tell Tales: Jewish Life and Heritage in Modern Cairo
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024). Click here to buy.

In Morocco, an unprecedented number of projects have been carried out to preserve Jewish heritage sites, including the cleaning and restoration of many cemeteries and a number of synagogues. Impressive displays of the Jewish past are now presented at the Jewish Museum in Casablanca and at the Bayt Dhakira, or House of Memory, in Essaouira. A new curriculum is being written with a sympathetic chapter on Jewry as an integral part of Moroccan society and culture. The preamble of the 2011 constitution states that the identity of Moroccan society and its unity “is forged by the convergence of its Arab-Islamic, Berber [Amazigh], and Saharan-Hassanic components, nourished and enriched by its African, Andalusian, Hebrew [Jewish] and Mediterranean influences.”

Significance should also be attributed to the innovative projects for preserving Jewish heritage promoted by nongovernmental organizations, primarily the Moroccan Mimouna Association and the Egyptian Drop of Milk Association. The Egyptians and Moroccans who are safeguarding Jewish heritage see their commitment as an expression of a patriotic stance. They usually recast the heritage of the local Jewish community as an Egyptian and Moroccan story of past and present. The fact that it is mainly non-Jewish Egyptians and Moroccans who preserve Jewish heritage in their respective countries allows us to consider the future of Jewish heritage independently of the number of Jews in these countries.

Equally vital is the role that has been played by the authorities and the local tiny Jewish communities in providing formal legitimacy, determining the scope of heritage preservation efforts, and mobilizing the requisite resources. This renewed engagement with the Jewish past is reflected in concurrent bottom-up and top-down initiatives, signaling a multifaceted approach to heritage preservation and historical reinterpretation.

The unprecedented Moroccan and Egyptian engagement with the local Jewish past and present heritage is enriching the Living Archive. Yet, the significance of these unique materials stems from their reuse, preservation, and reference to local cultural practices and public discourses. In other words, the existence of Jewish sites and artifacts is a precondition for the preservation of local Jewish heritage, but it is not a sufficient one. It is the reinterpretation given to synagogues, cemeteries, and Judaica items that replants them into the local social and cultural contexts, thus giving them renewed meaning and relevance in reshaping the image of both the past and present. Hence, the emergence of new and positive representations of Jewish sites and heritage in popular cultural artifacts is of great significance.

Why has all of this happened in recent years? The timing is significant, driven by recent developments in Egypt and Morocco. I contend that the unprecedented revisionism and the varied opinions about the Jewish past and heritage are inseparable from the social and political struggles that have culminated in, and ensued from, the 2011 popular uprising, commonly known as the Arab Spring. Despite the differences between these two societies, both have become entangled in a political debate concerning governance, political pluralism, cultural and social identities, and the attitude toward local minorities. For a long time, silence over the minorities and their heritages was maintained by nationalistic narratives that distorted the past images of Copts, Greeks, and Jews in Egypt, and Amazigh and Jews in Morocco. In this context, a vigorous debate has developed over the Jewish community’s history and the future of its assets, particularly its synagogues, cemeteries, archives, Torah scrolls, rare manuscripts, and books.

The re-engagement with minorities, past and present, is also highly politically contested. The assortment of oppositional opinions raised regarding the possible “reinstatement” of the Jewish past into Egyptian and Moroccan history reflects a fierce debate about social and cultural identities and the deep political rifts dividing these societies regarding their present regimes and policies.

An artificial political line has been drawn between the opponents. Generally, the proponents of preserving Jewish heritage support the current regime or find it a reasonable compromise. The fierce opponents of the regime stand on the opposite side. In other words, these two political camps deal with communities of Jews or other minorities as a means of dealing with the issues of contemporary Muslim-majority society, which are identity, culture, and the nature of governance in the present.

Finally, one of the more meaningful expressions of revisionism in Egyptian public discourse about Jews is the call to distinguish between “Jewish” and “Judaism” on the one hand, and “Israel” and “Zionism” on the other. Yet, this trend has only begun. The distinction between “Jew” and “Zionist” is still blurred, as if all Jews are Zionists or are working to advance Israeli policy. The prevalence of Jewish stereotyping in public debates regarding their “nature” and their political and national commitments is now even more challenging. Against the backdrop of the horrendous war at the heart of the Middle East, the scope of erroneous and anti-Jewish sentiments and positions throughout MENA has significantly increased among all classes and ranks.

* The concept of the Living Archive is thoroughly explored in the author’s newly published book, Sacred Places Tell Tales: Jewish Life and

( Globalvoices.org ) – On Tuesday, April 23, protesters in Cairo were detained while participating in a peaceful demonstration in support of women in Sudan and Gaza. Ironically, this event coincided with Sinai Liberation Day, a public holiday celebrating the return of the Sinai Peninsula from Israel to Egypt.

The detentions were anticipated, given Egypt’s history of suppressing protests since 2013, under President Abdeh Fattah el-Sisi. This is not the first time that activists have been arrested for showing support for Palestine since the conflict began last October. In early April, demonstrators assembled outside the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo to denounce the Zionist aggression towards Palestine. The government accused the protesters of spreading false information and of belonging to a terror group — accusations that are used in almost every instance of the government suppressing free speech.

In this most recent wave of arrests, the protestors were all women, protesting in solidarity with women in conflict zones. Among the protesters were well-known figures in Egyptian revolutionary society, such as Eman Ouf, Rasha Azab, Mahienour El-Masry, Ragia Omran‌ and Lobna Darwish. The feminist activists involved assembled outside the regional headquarters of UN Women in Cairo, which is responsible for promoting gender equality and empowering women as a United Nations entity.

The detainees were released the day after their arrest.

The human cost of Gaza’s blockade

Despite expressing disapproval of Israel’s repeated public statements about relocating displaced Gazans to Egypt, and requesting greater assistance from the US in securing the border, Cairo has not taken direct action against the Israeli aggression since it started, over six months ago. This has led to significant frustration and resentment among Egyptians.

Although it claims otherwise, Egypt has played a role in the blockade on Gazans. The majority of those who have been able to cross the borders hold dual citizenship in both Palestine and Egypt. Others have had to gather an exorbitant amount of money in order to leave, due to the actions of Ibrahim Al-Organi, a leader of a government-approved militia in the Sinai region. Since the start of the Gaza war, Al-Organi has had significant control over the movement of people and goods between Gaza and Egypt through his companies. One of these companies, Hala, charges Palestinians thousands of dollars to help them leave Gaza. It has strong ties to the Egyptian security forces.

Video: Students at American University in Cairo Protest for Gaza

A majority of Arabs generally regard Israel as a representation of tyranny. Egyptians have voiced their disapproval towards their government for granting Israel any control in the transportation of crucial aid into Gaza through an Egyptian border crossing. Sisi fears the boomerang effect, as speaking out about the Palestinian issue during protests might motivate the public to rally against him, which did in fact occur last October.

State-controlled protests?

In October, Sisi’s authoritarian regime allowed the public to express their frustrations, by calling on people to gather in the streets. However, demonstrators soon moved to Tahrir Square, the iconic site of the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

According to an article by The Tahrir Institute For Middle East Policy on December 12, 2023:

State-controlled media called on people to congregate in certain locations on October 20, to show support both for Gaza and the president. However, at least one of the demonstrations strayed from this state-approved scenario, as it made its way to the iconic Tahrir Square, after starting at Al Azhar Mosque. Videos of the demonstrations showed police trying, to no avail, to prevent people from reaching Tahrir Square. It was the first time demonstrations had reached the iconic square in 10 years.

Following the demonstrations, the Egyptian authorities unlawfully arrested and charged numerous peaceful protesters.

The people of Egypt stand firmly behind Palestine and the movement for Palestinian liberation. As an 89-year-old grandmother from Alexandria told Raseef 22:

The Palestinian cause runs in our blood. I watched The Nakba unfold in my youth, and I was left confused about why there were masses of people crying on our streets. It wasn’t until I grew up that I truly understood the ugliness of it all. I saw what the occupation was capable of after I saw my brother-in-law return from war in 1967, bloodied and in ripped clothes, only to enter his room and start hysterically crying.

The erosion of artistic freedoms

As Cairo tightens its grip on pro-Palestine protests, the influence of state control extends beyond the streets and into the very heart of Egyptian cultural life, notably impacting the once vibrant landscape of cinema.

Once a cinematic powerhouse in the Middle East and North Africa, in ‌recent years, Egyptian cinema has died. El-Sisi founded the United Media Services Company, which oversees all creative, TV, and news production in the country. It is under the control of the General Intelligence Agency, giving the military a significant impact on artistic creation.

Before this, many iconic examples of Egyptian film and television touched on the Palestinian issue.

One of the most well-known films in contemporary Egyptian cinema that addresses the Palestinian conflict is “El Sefara Fel Omara.” This film follows the journey of Sharif Khairi, who is compelled to come back to Egypt after two decades of working for an oil company in Dubai. To his surprise, he finds out that the Israeli embassy is situated right next to his apartment. Initially, he attempts to sell the property, but his unsuccessful attempts lead him to handle the situation in a different manner.

Through the lens of Egyptian cinema, the Palestinian cause has been a recurrent theme, resonating deeply within the cultural fabric of the nation. Films like “El Sefara Fel Omara” have not only depicted the struggles of Palestinians but have also served as a platform for exploring themes of justice, resistance, and solidarity. As Hossam El-Hamalawy articulates in an article for Spectre Journal, the cause is deeply ingrained in the cultural identity of many Egyptians:

The Egyptian regime’s position is understandable if one takes into consideration how the powers in Cairo perceive the Palestinians: as a source of threat, instability, and inspiration for Egyptians to revolt. The Palestinian cause has always been a radicalizing factor for the Egyptian public. Most, if not all, turning points in the history of dissent of the most populous Arab nation were, either directly or indirectly, the product of a chain reaction triggered by Palestinian resistance and popular mobilization.

The recent crackdown on pro-Palestine demonstrations underscores not only the government’s determination to quell any opposition but also its reluctance to openly challenge Israeli aggression. This suppression of free expression reverberates throughout Egyptian society, touching even the cultural sphere, where historic solidarity with Palestine in films has also declined under el-Sisi’s regime.

Written byRaseef22

This post by Haneen Shoukry was first published by Raseef 22 on May 8, 2024. An edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. Our MENA team added the links to provide further clarification.

Via Globalvoices.org

What struck me in their report is how unhappy the Middle East is. The only Middle Eastern country in the top twenty is Kuwait (for the first time in this cycle). Kuwait has oil wealth and is a compact country with lots of social interaction. The high score may reflect Kuwait’s lively labor movement. That sort of movement isn’t allowed in the other Gulf States. The United Arab Emirates came in at 22, and Saudi Arabia at 28.

These countries are all very wealthy and their people are very social and connected to clans and other group identities, including religious congregations.

But everyone else in the Middle East is way down the list.

As usual, Gallup found that the very happiest countries were Scandinavian lands shaped by social democratic policies. It turns out that a government safety net of the sort the Republican Party wants to get rid of actually is key to making people happy.

Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden take the top four spots. Israel, which also has a Labor socialist founding framework, is fifth. The Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Luxembourg fill out the top nine.

The Gallup researchers believe that a few major considerations affect well-being or happiness. They note, “Social interactions of all kinds … add to happiness, in addition to their effects flowing through increases in social support and reductions in loneliness.” My brief experience of being in Australia suggests to me that they are indeed very social and likely not very lonely on the whole. Positive emotions also equate to well-being and are much more important in determining it than negative emotions. The positive emotions include joy, gratitude, serenity, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and altruism, among others.

Benevolence, doing good to others, also adds to well-being. Interestingly, the Gallup researchers find that benevolence increased in COVID and its aftermath across the board.

They also factor in GDP per capita, that is, how poor or wealthy people are.

Gallup Video: “2024 World Happiness Report; Gallup CEO Jon Clifton”

Bahrain comes in at 62, which shows that oil wealth isn’t everything. It is deeply divided between a Sunni elite and a Shiite majority population, and that sectarian tension likely explains why it isn’t as happy as Kuwait. Kuwait is between a sixth and a third Shiite and also has a Sunni elite, but the Shiites are relatively well treated and the Emir depends on them to offset the power of Sunni fundamentalists. So it isn’t just sectarian difference that affects happiness but the way in which the rulers deal with it.

Libya, which is more or less a failed state after the people rose up to overthrow dictator Moammar Gaddafi, nevertheless comes in at 66. There is some oil wealth when the militias allow its export, and despite the east-west political divide, people are able to live full lives in cities like Benghazi and Tripoli. Maybe the overhang of getting rid of a hated dictator is still a source of happiness for them.

Algeria, a dictatorship and oil state, is 85. The petroleum wealth is not as great as in the Gulf by any means, and is monopolized by the country’s elite.

Iraq, an oil state, is 92. Like Bahrain, it suffers from ethnic and sectarian divides. It is something of a failed state after the American overthrow of its government.

Iran, another oil state, is 100. Its petroleum sales are interfered with by the US except with regard to China, so its income is much more limited than other Gulf oil states. The government is dictatorial and young people seem impatient with its attempt to regiment their lives, as witnessed in the recent anti-veiling protests.

The State of Palestine is 103, which is actually not bad given that they are deeply unhappy with being occupied by Israel. This ranking certainly plummeted after the current Israeli total war on Gaza began.

Morocco is 107. It is relatively poor, in fact poorer than some countries that rank themselves much lower on the happiness scale.

Tunisia is one of the wealthier countries in Africa and much better off than Morocco, but it comes in at 115. In the past few years all the democratic gains made during and after the Arab Spring have been reversed by horrid dictator Qais Saied. People seem to be pretty unhappy at now living in a seedy police state.

Jordan is both poor and undemocratic, and is ranked 125.

Egypt is desperately poor and its government since 2014 has been a military junta in business suits that brooks not the slightest dissent. It is 127. The hopes of the Arab Spring are now ashes.

Yemen is 133. One of the poorest countries in the world, it suffered from being attacked by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates from 2015 until 2021. So it is war torn and poverty-stricken.

Lebanon ranks almost at the bottom at 142. Its economy is better than Yemen’s but its government is hopelessly corrupt and its negligence caused the country’s major port to be blown up, plunging the country into economic crisis. It is wracked by sectarianism. If hope is a major positive emotion that leads to feelings of happiness, it is in short supply there.

Some countries are too much of a basket case to be included, like Syria, where I expect people are pretty miserable after the civil war. Likewise Sudan, which is now in civil strife and where hundreds of thousands may starve.

Poverty, dictatorship, disappointment in political setbacks, and sectarianism all seem to play a part in making the Middle East miserable. The role of the United States in supporting the dictatorships in Egypt and elsewhere, or in supporting wars, has been sinister and certainly has added significantly to the misery. For no group in the region is this more true than for the Palestinians.

On Saturday, the US and Britain had flown a fourth round of bombings, directed at 18 Houthi military targets. The BBC says that they were directed at “storage facilities, drones, air defence systems, radars and a helicopter of the militant movement.”

A Houthi government spokesman downplayed the impact of the bombings and asserted that there was nothing the US could do about the movement’s Red Sea attacks.

If the US Air Force and the Royal Air Force commanders really think that a few bombing raids can knock out the Houthi capabilities, they haven’t been paying attention. The Saudis, the UAE and other members of a coalition bombed Yemen intensively from 2015 until 2021, as Sarah G. Phillips pointed out. At the end of the war the Houthis were still in control of 80% of the Yemeni population of some 33 million, who live on about a third of the land area of the country. They have certainly hidden away most of their munitions, having had to operate under aerial bombardment for almost a decade, and the targets being hit by the US and the UK are likely inconsequential.

Nationalist troops of the internationally recognized government of President Rashad al-Alimi have contained the Houthi forces to the south and the east but were never able to push them out of the most populous regions of the country in the north. I recently published a paper on how the United Arab Emirates worked with southern secessionists to establish control of the littoral of the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but that is a thin sliver of southern territory.

[By the way, broadcast journalists, Houthi is pronounced like “who the” in English — Arabic has a “th” sound. I don’t know why the Americans keep saying Hootie.]

Reuters reports that about $1 trillion of goods is transported through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal annually, on some 19,000 vessels. That is about 30% of global seaborne trade, and it comes to about 12% of total world commerce. About 10% of global energy supplies go through this route.

Hindustan Times Video: “Red Sea On The Boil: American Ship Attacked; Houthis Reiterate Support To Palestinians | Watch”

The volume of goods transported through the Red Sea has fallen between 42% and 66% since the Houthis began attacking container ships. Many ships are going around the Cape of Good Hope and up the coast of West Africa, adding some 10 days to the journey from Asia to Europe, and upping the cost. Countries in the region have taken an economic hit. Egypt has suffered a 40% fall in Suez Canal revenues.

UNCTAD says that “Average container shipping spot rates from Shanghai in early February 2024 more than doubled – up by 122% compared to early December 2023. The rates from Shanghai to Europe more than tripled, jumping by 256%.”

China’s $1.8 billion in investments in Africa has also been placed in jeopardy, and the Chinese portion of Djibouti port has been idled.

The Israeli port of Eilat has apparently been idled, and occasionally has to fend off Houthi ballistic missiles. About 5% of Israel’s imports by sea used to come in through Eilat.

The easiest way to stop this economic disruption, which could have an impact on supply chains and prices that echoes the COVID-19 era of 2021-2023, is for President Biden to cut off arms and ammunition to the mad bomber, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Rising prices and supply chain problems would not be good for Biden’s reelection bid.

The Helpers of God militia is supported by many Yemenis of the Zaydi Shiite persuasion, a form of Shiite Islam that is closer to Sunnism and which does not have ayatollahs or some of the distinctive rituals of the Iranian and Iraqi Twelver Shiism. The militia’s leader is Abdul Malik al-Houthi, who announced this past week an escalation of attacks on Red Sea shipping.

Although the Houthis receive some money and arms from Iran, from all accounts it is a minor factor. They are an Arab, Yemeni movement with their own motivations and they have a weapons-making capacity of their own. The Helpers of God have become the de facto government of most people in Yemen and they tax them for revenue. It is not at all clear that an energy exporter like Iran would want Red Sea shipping disrupted.

The Nile is one of the world’s most famous rivers. It’s also Africa’s most important freshwater system. About 300 million people live in the 11 countries it flows through. Many rely on its waters for agriculture and fishing to make a living.

The Nile’s two main tributaries, the Blue Nile and the White Nile, come together in Sudan’s capital city, Khartoum. This industrial hub has grown rapidly over the past few decades.

The Nile is not immune to the same pollutants that affect rivers all over the world. Plastic debris is of particular concern. Over time plastics break down into smaller pieces known as microplastics. These are tiny plastic particles with a maximum size of five millimetres, all the way down to the nanoscale. Recent research found that

rivers are modelled to export up to 25,000 tons of plastics from their sub-basins to seas annually. Over 80% of this amount is microplastic.

This has huge negative consequences for biodiversity and the climate. As microplastics degrade, scientists have found, they produce greenhouse gases. Airborne microplastics may influence the climate by scattering and absorbing solar and terrestrial radiation, leading to atmospheric warming or cooling depending on particle size, shape and composition. It also negatively affects animal and human health. Microplastics have been shown in laboratory studies to be toxic to animals and cells.

Much of the research about microplastics in African waters has focused on marine and coastal areas. To address this gap, I conducted a study to assess the presence of microplastics in the River Nile in Khartoum. My students and I tested for the presence of microplastics in Nile tilapia. This popular African freshwater fish species forms the basis of commercial fisheries in many African countries, including Sudan.

Photo by Islam Hassan on Unsplash

The results do not make for happy reading. In the 30 freshly caught fish we surveyed, we found a total of 567 microplastic particles. This shows that the River Nile is contaminated with microplastics that can be consumed or absorbed in various ways by the tilapia and other aquatic organisms.

Our sample

The fish used in our study were caught just after the meeting point of the two Niles, known in Arabic as Al-Mogran.

We visited the Al-Mawrada fish market in the Omdurman area, which is also alongside the Nile. All 30 specimens we bought were freshly caught.

We dissected the fish to remove their digestive tracts. The individual tracts were treated so they would digest any organic matter they contained without interfering with the analysis of microplastics. The resulting solution was subject to another extraction procedure and we then conducted physical and chemical analyses.

Every specimen had microplastics in its digestive tract.

The number ranged from as few as five to as many as 47 particles per single fish. In total we identified 567 particles. This is high compared to studies that have reported microplastics in tilapia species in other rivers and lakes. There is, as yet, no global guideline or standard for what might be an “acceptable” number.

Shape, size and colour

We detected different sizes of microplastics (0.04mm to 4.94mm), shapes (fibres, fragments, films, foams and pellets) and colours. The most common were very small (less than 1mm), fibrous – they appear slender and elongated – and coloured (dyed).

These characteristics make sense because of how fish and other aquatic organisms feed. Nile tilapia are versatile feeders: they consume a variety of organisms including phytoplankton, aquatic plants, invertebrates, detritus, bacterial films, as well as other fish and fish eggs. That puts them at a high risk of ingesting microplastics.

Nile tilapia are also more likely to consume particles that are within a similar size range as their natural prey, as well as the same shape and colour.

Smaller microplastics are especially good carriers for other pollutants such as heavy metals, resulting in additional health risks. Their small size also makes it easier for them to move into organs like the liver. Studies have found microplastics in the tissues, muscles, livers, blubber and lungs of other aquatic as well as marine mammal species.

Fibres, the most dominant shape found in our specimens, stay in the intestine for longer than other microplastic shapes. This, too, can lead to health problems for the fish. Coloured microplastics contain dyes, many of which contain toxic chemicals.

This all has serious implications for human health, as people catch and eat the fish, which introduces those microplastics and associated chemicals into their bloodstreams.

Pollution sources

Where does all this plastic originate? For starters, 65% of plastic waste in Khartoum is disposed of in open dumps. From there, it contaminates water bodies and other parts of the environment.

Image by Refaat Naiem from Pixabay

The city’s wastewater treatment system is ineffective. The three wastewater treatment plants in Khartoum state, Karary, Wd-Daffiaa and Soba, are outdated and do not meet local and international standards. That means untreated effluent from domestic, industrial and agricultural activities is another probable source of microplastic pollution.

There are also countless recreational sites along the River Nile in Khartoum. The Nile Street is the most popular in the capital city, hosting water sports, restaurants, cafes, clubs, event venues and hotels, as well as the tea ladies (women who serve hot beverages from makeshift mobile cafes along the banks of the river). However, waste disposal and collection practices are sorely lacking, so plastic litter from these leisure activities leaks into the river.

No easy fix

Tackling microplastic pollution is not easy. It will require technological advances, as well as the collective efforts of consumers, producers, governments and the scientific community.

As consumers, we need to change our behaviour around plastic products, especially single-use plastics. For example, opt for fabric shopping bags instead of plastic bags; use glass and metal containers. Recycling is also important.

Governments must enforce waste management regulations and improve waste management practices, as well as helping to improve public awareness. Strategies and policies must explicitly feature microplastics.

Scientists can not only fill the knowledge gaps around microplastics. Communicating scientific findings is crucial; so too is developing innovations to protect against microplastics and their harmful effects.

I would like to thank and acknowledge my student Hadeel Alamin, who conducted this study with me.

Dalia Saad, Researcher, School of Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The peace treaty has been the cornerstone of Egyptian-Israeli relations for nearly half a century.

The Egyptian government had not said much in public about these reports until yesterday. Mahmud `Abd al-Raziq of al-Khalij 35 reports reports that on Sunday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued a stern warning to Israel that any operation in Rafah City would have “severe consequences.” The communique said that Egypt “continues its contacts and actions with various parties in order to arrive at an immediate ceasefire, enforce calm, and achieve an exchange of hostages and prisoners.” That is, Egypt is seeking another Israel-Hamas agreement, along with the US and Qatar.

Africanews Video: “Israel’s assault on Rafah endangers peace accords with Egypt, officials warn”

The ministry asked responsible international actors (we’re looking at you, Joe Biden) to pressure Israel not to do anything that would “complicate the situation further and cause harm to the interests of everyone without exception.”

Prominent Egyptian parliamentarian and journalist (he has a talk show!) Mustafa Bakri had openly said earlier that the Egyptian border is a “red line” and its breach would threaten the Camp David Accords.

In an interview with Sky News, the former deputy head of Egyptian military intelligence, Gen. Ahmad Ibrahim, had said that from his country’s point of view any Israeli take-over of the Philadelphi Corridor would constitute a breach of the Camp David Accords. He warned that Egypt’s military is “powerful.”

The Saudi foreign ministry also condemned the planned attack on Rafah City and any further coerced displacement of the Palestinians there. The Saudis called for an immediate ceasefire and a UN Security Council resolution against Netanyahu’s plan.

This position was echoed by the spokesman for the Gulf Cooperation Council, which rejected the Israeli plan to assault Rafah after forcibly expelling the civilian population.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab states called Friday for immediate, concrete and irreversible steps to recognize a Palestinian state.

It seems clear that even countries that are more or less at peace with Israel, whether formally (Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates) or informally (Saudi Arabia) have their hair on fire about the proposed Rafah operation.

Although American newspapers depict Egypt as broke, desperate and easily manipulated, my own estimation is that Cairo absolutely will not accept the Palestinians of Gaza as refugees on its soil. The Sinai is already a security problem for Cairo, and 2 million radicalized Palestinians would make it ungovernable. No amount of debt forgiveness would make such a bitter pill go down.

Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – At the end of 2019, there was no shortage of articles looking retrospectively at the events that had shaped the decade of the 2010s. One of them was aptly titled “A decade of revolt.” From Tunis to New York, Madrid, Hong Kong, Tehran, or Khartoum, the past decade was marked by protests, demonstrations, and uprisings. If the notion that history is an almost continuous march towards the progress of human kind (a popular view among Western intellectuals in the 1990s such as Francis Fukuyama) still had some currency, the last decade should have put this idea to rest.

That is because, in hindsight, it is difficult to be optimistic about the results of this decade of revolt. This is a feeling shared by many and examined in the book “If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.” The author, Vincent Bevins, is a US journalist who was highly praised for his previous book, “The Jakarta Method”, which discusses the US support for human rights abuses during the Cold War in the name of anti-Communism.

The question at the core of Bevins’ second book, “If We Burn”, is a very straightforward one: “How is it possible that so many mass protests led to the opposite of what they asked for?”[1] With the temporal focus set on the 2010s, but having a global geographical scope, Bevins conducted around 200 interviews in twelve different countries with activists, politicians, and other people with key insights on this decade of mass protests.

“If We Burn” discusses many different cases of protests during the last decade, but special attention is paid to Egypt, Hong Kong, Chile, and, above all, Brazil. This is no coincidence because, from 2010 to 2016, Bevins worked as a foreign correspondent based in São Paulo for the Los Angeles Times. The chapters on Brazil are a pleasure to read, but the strong focus on the country is somewhat disproportionate when considering that the book is presented as a work of global history. An alternative approach would have been to focus on a smaller number of cases, perhaps narrowing it down to a few Global South countries.

Bevins appears a bit uncomfortable when moving away from the countries he knows best. For instance, when he refers to the protests in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in 2013, Bevins writes that after coming to power in 2003, Turkey’s ruling party AKP embraced “more conservative Muslims and small business owners (as long as they were ethnic Turks).”[2] This is actually not the case, as the AKP has historically outperformed the main opposition party CHP – which has a much stronger Turkish nationalist discourse – in the Kurdish areas of Turkey.

Notwithstanding this inaccuracy, and the fact that the geographical scope of the book often works against the final result, there is much to be praised in “If We Burn.” A key success of the book is that Bevins strikes the perfect balance between critically examining what protests achieved in terms of tangible results and remaining deeply respectful of the protesters and their sacrifices. Tunisian President Kais Saied might have entrenched himself in power after 2021 and established a dictatorship similar to the one headed by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, brought down by mass demonstrations in 2011. But this does not take anything away from the personal stories of people like Jawaher Channa, a university student who joined the protests against Ben Ali in December 2010. Jawaher explains to Bevins how she was tortured for her political activity in a Tunisian police station before the regime collapsed.

Bevins’ reporting allows us to see how relatively unknown people shaped and were shaped by this decade of protests. Take the example of Mayara Vivian, who was a teenager when in 2005 she joined the Movimento Passe Livre (MPL) that demanded free transportation in Brazil. In 2013, Fernando Haddad, the mayor of São Paulo from the center-left Workers’ Party, announced a rise in the price of public urban transportation. Mayara and her colleagues at MPL mobilized the streets against Haddad’s decision, forcing the mayor to cancel the price increase. Mayara and other members of the MPL were even granted a meeting with then-Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, also from the Workers’ Party, who was trying to understand the growing discontentment with her government.

Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. Click here.

The likes of Mayara would soon be replaced in the streets by right and far-right-wing groups. These protesters, in conjunction with sympathetic judges like Sergio Moro and media conglomerates like Grupo Globo, pushed for Rousseff’s impeachment on flimsy charges. Rousseff was ousted in 2016. Two years later,  Fernando Haddad, the Workers’ Party candidate, was defeated in the presidential election by far-right and Brazilian dictatorship apologist Jair Bolsonaro. Mayara, then living in Santiago de Chile, wept while lamenting the election loss of the man she had opposed in the streets, explains Bevins.

Mayara soon joined the protests against the conservative Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, who was forced to accept the election of a constitutional assembly to reform the constitution inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship. After two referendums, Chile still does not have a new constitution. What is has, though, is Gabriel Boric as president, someone who became famous in the student protests of the early 2010s. Boric represents like no other the difficult relationship between activism and institutional politics, which is often manifested in the tensions between protesters who want to use their leverage to gain political concessions and those who prefer to keep pushing for maximalist objectives. A congressman since 2014, Boric was seen as a traitor by many protestors when he agreed to a constitutional referendum as a way to resolve the conflict with the Piñera government in 2019. After he was elected president of Chile in 2022, many of those who perceived Boric as too compromising in 2019 saw his decision in a more positive light, observes Bevins.

A key topic covered in “If We Burn” is the importance of traditional and social media in defining the protests of the last decade. Their relevance was accentuated by the fact that these were mostly de-centralized protest movements with no clear spokespersons. The protesters who had the opportunity to present their views to the traditional media were not necessarily those who put their bodies on the line when it mattered or were more representative of the whole movement. Instead, those who were interviewed were usually the more Western-media friendly. Writing about the protests in Egypt that led to the fall of dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Bevins graphically explains that despite how bravely street youth had fought against the police, Western journalists “were not likely to grab a teenager who lived on the street, addicted to drugs.”[3] Equally relevant was managing the narrative in social media platforms. In the case of the Occupy Wall Street movement, open fights emerged over who controlled the movement’s social media accounts.

“If We Burn” does not provide any conclusive answer on why so many protest movements failed to achieve their objectives during the 2010s, and this only makes the book better. Anyone claiming to have a perfect explanation for such a complex puzzle should be approached with caution. Still, Bevins presents reflections that help us make sense of what he calls ‘the mass protest decade.’ One of them is that horizontally structured, leaderless mass protests are “fundamentally illegible.”[4] As Bevins sees it, “movements that cannot speak for themselves will be spoken for”, with the ensuing danger that the protesters’ goals will be misrepresented. [5]

Strongly connected to this idea is the fact that successful protests will lead to a momentary political vacuum. Influenced by the experience of Brazil, where reactionary forces took the streets against Rousseff using some of the protest repertoire of the MPL movement advocating for free public transportation, Bevins notes that “unclaimed political power exerts an irresistible gravitational pull on anyone who might want it.”[6] Therefore, he argues, a protest movement that believes in creating a better society needs to be ready to enter the political vacuum that will emerge if successful.

In the absence of a plan, someone else will step in, most likely with a very different agenda but equally relying on the power of street mobilizations. The greatest merit of Bevins’ latest book is that it leaves a deep imprint on the reader and will serve as a prompt for many fruitful discussions. We cannot know which kind of retrospective articles will be published by the end of 2029. Still, it is reasonable to assume that protests in the 2020s are likely to play at least as important a role as they did in the previous decade.

[1] Vincent Bevins, “If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution” (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023), p. 3.

[2] Ibid., pp. 108-109.

[3] Ibid., p. 68.

[4] Ibid., p. 276.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., p. 263.