At the movies

In thrall to ideology, formula, and powerful special effects, Hollywood has had a difficult time producing really memorable movies recently, although the situation is slowly improving. The independent and semi-independent scenes are livelier than ever. Movies made in and about the Middle East are especially rich these days, with Iran and Israel leading the pack.

The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret, 2007) is the first feature of Israeli director Eran Kolirin, with some Hebrew and Arabic, but mostly in English (which is why it didn't qualify for the Oscars as a foreign film). The story is a bit of a fairy tale, the plot set in motion by one of those subtle Middle Eastern misunderstandings. In striking sky-blue uniforms, the Ceremonial Police Band of Alexandria, Egypt, is sent on a cross-cultural visit to the Arab cultural center of the Israeli city of Petah Tikvah (Door of Hope, founded in 1878 and the oldest modern Jewish settlement in Israel). But in Arabic, there's no "p," only "b," so the visiting musicians accidentally take a much longer bus ride to Beit Tikvah, the House of Hope, an ironic name for one of those dreary Israeli development towns in the Negev desert (or so it seemed to me).* And the movie sets off from there, in a probing story both realistic and surrealistic. See it if you have a chance.

Another must-see recent foreign film is The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, 2006), a powerful first work from German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and an Oscar winner (German, with English subtitles). Set in the mid-80s, a few years before the end of Cold War, the story centers around an agent of the East German secret police (Stasi) assigned to spy on a couple, becoming absorbed into their lives beyond even the obvious potential for voyeurism. Over East Germany's 45-year history, the Stasi became the most efficient and cunning secret police ever known. Many millions of people, often themselves blackmailed by information from existing informants, became in turn informants themselves, turning the whole country into a giant snitching exercise twisting all institutions and relationships. Precisely the social and cooperative virtues supposedly prized in a communist utopia were relentlessly undermined by the destruction of trust and the isolation of individuals from one another by an all-powerful state.

The legacy was and still is painful, since the full truth about this system became known after the Berlin Wall came down and shocked the disintegrating country, accelerating its fall. The Lives of Others is a powerful piece of Cold War history and joins the ranks of other anti-collectivist classics such as 1984 and Darkness at Noon. Hollywood's ideological bent and historical ignorance make such movies difficult to produce here. Don't miss it.

POSTSCRIPT: Another recent offering from the former Soviet bloc, set in late Cold War Romania, is 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile, Romanian with English subtitles). I have not seen it, but have heard nothing but very positive things about it.
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* That's how the ancient Neapolis ("New City") in northern Palestine became the modern Arabic Nablus. Thus Arabic-speakers argue about "bolitics," not about politics.

Reading Exodus

I almost forgot my comment on the parashat ha-shavua, last week's Torah portion, Parashat Va-era. Here it is.

The second portion of Exodus (covering 6:2-9:35), Va-era contains the first seven of the ten plagues and also happens to be my bar mitzvah parshah. The haftarah is Ezekiel 28:25-29:21.

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One of the most disturbing aspects of the plagues is the "hardening of Pharaoh's heart." This is often viewed as a paradox, contradicting free will. It also seems gratuitous: why can't G-d just free the Israelites, or let Pharaoh free them? The traditional commentators have wrestled with it, as have modern ones. The answers they come up with often seem vague: "heightening the drama" is the major theme of many approaches, both ancient and modern.

But a much more satisfying answer is in the text, if we examine it carefully. Hardening Pharaoh's heart was necessary, not just to heighten the drama, but to make Pharaoh release the Israelites for the right reason, not just to make himself look good to his subjects and courtiers, or as an emotional response to the devastation of the plagues. What is the right reason in this case? To acknowledge divine sovereignty as superior to his own and admit that he was not a god. Apparent inconsistencies fall into place if we follow the text carefully with this in mind.*

In response to those plagues which caused Pharaoh to temporarily give in (although he always changes his mind once the plague had passed), the text tells us that the king allowed us to "Go, sacrifice to your G-d" (8:24). Pharaoh's responses in the other cases, although varying in scope (sacrifice within Egypt, let only the men go, etc.), remained constant in style: It is your god whom you seek to worship, not mine. This attitude always limits and qualifies his temporary cave-ins.

And to sneak a peak at next week's portion (Parashat Bo): This is why the plagues end with the plague of the first born, something that the Egyptian wizards could not manage and could not be attributed to any Egyptian god. In response to this final plague (12:32), Pharaoh adds: u-veirakhtem gam-oti (And bring a blessing on me too!), which contains his whole capitulation by implication.

Pharaoh has to admit that neither he nor any other Egyptian god is really a god. But he also has to admit that it is G-d who is doing the freeing, not himself. Otherwise, Pharaoh would have viewed himself as their liberator - and, crucially, so would the Israelites. Instead, he, the Egyptians, and the Israelites are forced to see who is G-d, who frees the slaves, and why. This is why in the Haggadah on Pesach, we sing the praises of, not Pharaoh, not even Moses, but G-d.

The haftarah has a curious confirmation: Ezekiel's prophecy (29:6) against Egypt, delivered in the year (587 BCE) before the Babylonian exile, says that, again,

"Then all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am YHVH."

But the parshah itself announces it at the beginning (6:7):

"And you shall know that I, YHVH, am your G-d who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians."
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* Cf. the comment of Sforno, the sixteenth-century Italian exegete, on Exodus 4:21 and 7:3: "And I will harden his heart": Since he will be unable to tolerate the plagues, he would certainly emancipate the people - not because he accepts the sovereignty of God and to do His will - therefore He hardened his heart to be able to withstand the plagues and not to free them.

It helps to know that "harden" is chazaq in Hebrew - literally, "strengthen."

The age of babble

For an example of what once-respected institutions - in this case, National Geographic - have twisted themselves into so they can play media whores, read this about the Gospel of Judas.

This non-canonical gospel was made famous in last year's media-sensational, PC-tinged, and seriously flawed mistranslation of the original Coptic/Greek text from the 3rd century Gnostics of Egypt.

Another something very cool

That would be the Giza Archives Project, which is storing and making available tens of the thousands of documents from almost a century of archeology at the Giza Plateau, home of Egypt's pyramids. It's a joint project of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard University.

POSTSCRIPT: Are there too many amateur archeology crackpots out there? That's what Eric Cline of George Washington University thinks (requires registration). Amateurs can contribute a lot to archeology, as they still do to astronomy - it's not, and probably never will be, a fully professionalized subject. But there's no substitute for doing your homework - and eating your broccoli :)

Free the bloggers!

A while back, a posting on the Middle East's new blogging culture described one of the few positive trends in the region. I was trying at the time to set aside my pessimism about the Middle East's future and not sound so negative. The blogging culture, taken at face value, is certainly an encouraging sign of constructive change there. To reiterate, this is one of those cases where I'm pretty sure my pessimism is right - but I would love to be proved wrong.

Egypt's best-known blogger is undoubtedly Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman (Kareem Amer). Soliman had been a law student at Cairo's famous Al-Azhar University, but was expelled in March 2006 for his criticism of the school's curriculum. As of February 2007, he's been in an Egyptian jail for the crimes of defaming Islam and Egyptian president-for-life Hosni Mubarak. Soliman's friends and supporters here and in the UK have pressed his case in various media.

You can follow their work through the online networking site Facebook.com, which has a Free Kareem Amer! group. The facebook.com site does require registration.

Middle East blog ferment

Some of my previous posts on the Middle East have emitted an unmistakeable aroma of pessimism about the place, leaving me wondering if I'm just too damn negative. Are there any positive trends? Yes, there are. I don't know how significant they are, but they are. One of those trends is bloggers and their sometimes-brazen challenge to both authoritarian governments and authoritarian cultures.

The bloggers in question are often brave, in ways that bored and pampered Americans can't even begin to understand. Many must use pseudonyms or noms de blog. Here's a partial list (partial in multiple senses), a taste of what the Middle East has to offer. Whatever my serious doubts about the future of the Middle East, I hope these bloggers prove me wrong!

I've organized the list by country/region and picked the ones I know the best. But that's just my experience and bias. Many of these sites have links to other bloggers, who shouldn't be missed. Be adventurous. Notice also that many of them, like Kavanna, are housed by Blogspot/Blogger. It's Google's mitzvah, whatever else they might do right.

North Africa: I couldn't find many here. These are two I've looked at a few times.
* The Moor Next Door (Algeria)
* Winds of Change in Algeria (Algeria, mostly in French, some English)

Egypt: Largest and most important Arab country, with small but active blogging culture, not as conservative as the Gulf countries (see below). Nonetheless, the Egyptian government can move slowly but effectively against bloggers it doesn't like.
* Big Pharaoh
* Mona Eltahawy (blog by a well-known professional journalist)
* Sandmonkey (Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman - now the best-known Egyptian blogger, because he was recently sentenced by the Egyptian government for his blogging)

Lebanon: Very active and varied blogging culture. Played an important role in covering the March 2005 protest movement against Syria and the Hizbollah war last summer. Israeli bloggers (see below) and Lebanese bloggers communicated via blogs even as the missiles and bombs were dropping.
* Lebanese Political Journal (important multi-blogger site)
* Lebanese Bloggers (clearinghouse for many individual blogs)
* Daily Star (Lebanon's most important newspaper, in English)

Iraq: In spite of all the violence in and around Baghdad, Iraq has a significant and very informative blog culture. It's a useful corrective to the inevitably misleading conventional media coverage of Iraq.
* Salam Pax (the famous pseudonymous "Raed" of pre-2003 fame, who went off the air in 2004 - he has a book out)
* Iraq the Model (best-known and most important Iraqi blog)
* The Messopotamian (Alaa is the pseudonym - life in Baghdad)
* Iraq Pundit (an Iraqi exile comments from afar)

Perisan Gulf: The most conservative part of the Middle East, outside of Talibanland, dominated by the Salafi (Wahhabi) school. These bloggers have to tiptoe.
* Silly Bahraini Girl
* Saudi Jeans
* Arab News (the most important English-language Saudi newspaper)

Iran: The largest and most active of Middle Eastern blogging cultures, apart from Israel. Bloggers there play a complicated cat-and-mouse game with the Iranian government. There are too many blogs for me keep track of. Here's a partial list. If you look at only one, look at this one:
* Hoder (Hossein Derakhshan - he has a Persian blog too)

Israel: Israeli has a large number of blogs, some more active than others; some highly political, others mostly personal. Ones I look at:
* Israpundit (multi-blogger, with an excellent linked list of other blogs)
* IsraellyCool (Australian and Israeli - check it out)
* An Unsealed Room (Allison Sommer's sharp-witted diary from a Tel Aviv suburb)

Another newspaper I should mention is Al Hayat, the London-based independent, Arabic-language publication. They have an English edition. And all serious students of the Middle East must keep up with MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), which bridges the language gap between Arabic-, Farsi-, and Turkish-language media and English.

Finally, anyone who thinks or writes about the Middle East these days is indebted to the indefatigable Michael Totten, who has without question the best English-language blog on the region. In a just world, his lengthy postings would be articles in the New Yorker or Atlantic. When you visit his site, consider donating via PayPal. I don't think he has any other regular source of income right now.

Opportunities like this rarely knock

So when they do, someone should pounce: see Robert Satloff's recent article in the Baltimore Sun about his visit to Cairo and speech there on the Holocaust and Holocaust-denial. The Sunni fright of Iran is deeper than I realized.

There have been disastrous events for the Jewish people, like the outbreak of World War I and the Hitler-Stalin pact, which made World War II possible. But then there have been positive breakthroughs like Sadat's 1977 visit to Jerusalem and Gorbachev's arrival in the US in 1988. This is more like the latter.

More on the unreality of realism

It's not just recently that foreign policy realism has seemed, well, unreal. Fifty years ago, 1956 saw the Hungarian Revolution and the Suez crisis. The latter in particular was a fiasco that has cost us a lot in the years since: the US sided with Nasser's Egypt and the Soviet Union against Britain, France, and Israel over Nasser's illegal seizure of the Anglo-French Suez Canal and his support for Arab guerilla attacks on Israel, just after encouraging, then failing to help, the Hungarians throw off the Soviet yoke.

Eisenhower and especially Dulles undoubtedly thought they were being sophisticated and clever. In fact, what they did was delusional and self-destructive. Later, after he left office, Eisenhower admitted as much.

Instead of explaining it myself, I'll let Arthur Herman and Martin Peretz do the talking. The Suez crisis marked the first cracks in the Western alliance and the start of the grand delusion of pan-Arabism, the immediate ancestor of the pan-Islamic virus.

POSTSCRIPT: About the failed 1956 Hungarian Revolution, see Charles Gati's remarkable new book and his talk on C-SPAN.