Category Archives: International Politics

AUTHOR: Historian with a soul

Books, Human Rights, International Politics, Notable Personalities, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

IN these turbulent times when the Middle East is up in flames, Dr Elise Young’s interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is remarkably insightful and, coming from a Jew, radical. She learnt about her people’s history from her own family, but felt sceptical when as a historian and scholar she was trained to analyze the events of the past dispassionately. As a feminist, who feels keenly for the sufferings of other women, she felt compelled to probe deeper into the experiences of women in Palestine — both Muslim and Jew. As a peace activist, she had the strong urge to stop violence. All these qualities have combined to make Elise Young what she is today.

Young teaches history at the Westfield State College, Massachusetts, USA. She has recorded the findings of her research in her book, Keepers of history: women and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a nutshell, Elise Young’s provocative thesis states that the Jewish and Muslim women in Palestine have had a long history of cooperative relationship, which has transcended conventional andocentric nationalism. According to her it was the politics of nationalism, class, race and gender which has manifested itself in the form of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Explaining the underlying theme of her book, Young writes:

“The basic understanding of feminism, that the fate of all women is interconnected, is a bridge between Israeli and Palestinian women polarized by those forces that have brought Jew and Arab to this battlefield….. The purpose of this book is to bring into the foreground critical connections between gender, race, and class as they inform historic and current developments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Women are ‘keepers of history’; feminist critique is the basis for politics that can transform the deadlock between Israeli and Palestinian, ‘Jew’ and ‘Arab’.”

I met Young in Westfield where she had organized a conference of Pakistani and Indian women under the aegis of the Global Women’s History Project of which she is the founder and director. Her thinking is so different from the American mainstream opinion on the Middle East. She set up her project to bring together women from different sides of a conflict and help them see their situation from the perspective of history. She has already organized meetings of women of Palestine and Israel, South Africa and Ireland. A strong believer in non-violence — she wakes up before dawn every day to perform yoga for three hours before she starts her day’s work — she feels convinced that all conflicts can be resolved peacefully.

I was curious to know what provoked her interest in the Palestinian issue? And what made her so different from the majority of the Jews in America who are staunchly pro-Israel? Until the end of the sixties Young’s activism had focussed on the anti-Vietnam war protest, the civil rights movement and feminist causes. Her personal experiences and impressions in her first visit to Israel to meet relatives in 1971 made her interested in the region.

“I found the Israeli state highly militarized,” Young remarks (and that went against her pacifist nature). “The link between the military and racism deeply penetrated into my consciousness when an Israeli soldier boasted at length about how he would protect me from the Arabs only to follow me with a knife in an unsuccessful attempt to molest me. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 sharpened my interest in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Many questions came to my mind and I found my knowledge highly Euro-centric. What were the roots of anti-Semitism? What were the forces of dissension that disrupted the long-standing links between the Muslim, Jewish and Christian civilizations?”

Her quest for knowledge took her to Birzeit university in 1985. She was to study the holocaust and how the subject was taught in Israeli academia. But she found the universities too restrictive and regimented, Her favourite theme — relations between the Israeli and Arab women — continued to haunt her. The director of the women’s studies programme at Birzeit, Islah Jad, was a mine of information on the subject.

“Until then I never thought of writing a book. Then one day I visited a refugee camp with a Palestinian guide and met her aunt who had been there since 1948. When I heard the woman speak of her travails, it dawned on me that there is a feminist perspective to the conflict which has not been analyzed. Then she quoted an Arabic proverb saying that the five fingers of the hand are not equal,” Young says.

Thus Young got involved with the Palestinian women’s struggle. She met and travelled with Sarwar Nijab Khatib in 1987, the year of the first intifada, and co-founded the Middle East Peace Coalition. She has a profound understanding of the Israeli women’s perspective and speaks of the exploitation of the woman under Zionism. Though they struggled with the men for Israel, they found themselves driven back into the kitchen when the Zionist state was founded. She cites the election of Golda Meir as the prime minister as the biggest defeat of the Israeli women’s movement. She was coopted by the male leadership which bypassed Ada Maimon, the leader of the Israeli Working Women’s Union.

She speaks lucidly about the direct connection between race and gender in Israel. The Jews were Arab racially and had lived with the Muslims in Palestine for centuries. Zionism was a Europe-centred movement and was used by the European Jews to set up a state for themselves in Palestine. Today Israel is a racist state in which the European Jews who migrated to Palestine oppress the indigenous Jewish inhabitants.

“The Jewish identity in Israel is multi-layered,” she observes. “Factors such as gender, race and class interests are involved. Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been promoted as a smokescreen to conceal the Israeli patriarchal state which seeks to control women and to perpetuate the hierarchical class structures,” she argues compellingly.

When her book was published in 1992, it received positive reviews in women’s journals. However the mainstream Jewish opinion was not moved. Some even denounced her as a traitor while others thought it paradoxical because they saw the truth in what she said. But found it in conflict with what they had learned from childhood. Her book is now out of print but there is no proposal to print a second edition. “It is difficult for women to get their books published if they do not conform to mainstream opinion, and I hardly hold such views” she says.

Her parents migrated to America from Eastern Europe. She now wants to study the radicalization of the Jewish garment workers and their links with Zionism.

For Young, the violence on the West Bank is devastating. “Revenge killings of the kind being witnessed in Palestine every day will not bring peace,” she insists. “The Jews have always been trained to think of themselves as victims in history. This is a dangerous concept which has encouraged them to take positions without accepting responsibility for their action.” Where, in her view, does the solution lie? Without hesitating she says:

  • • The Americans must exert massive pressure on the Bush Administration to halt aid to Israel
  •  A movement must be launched to impose sanctions against Israel
  •  Sharon must be tried as a war criminal
  •  The restitution of Palestine must take place

She denounces the Oslo process and says it is now defunct. “There is need to reconceptualize issues to find a feasible solution. Zionism must end because as a Jew I believe it doesn’t provide me any security. Anti-Semitism must be addressed in the local milieu. In Israel and Palestine, the Jews and Muslims have lived together for ages. By setting up a new grassroots infrastructure, they could connect to each other. There is need for them to connect which they are doing in a small and sporadic way, the troubles notwithstanding. These groups should form the nucleus of a wider network to join these areas together,” Young says.

Source: Dawn

A scholar and a gentleman

Administration, Archive Edition, Constitution, History, Information, International Politics, Islamisation, Media, Notable Personalities

By Zubeida Mustafa

Has Pakistan been reduced to such a hopeless state that even the most creative and prolific of intellectuals have run out of ideas on how the country can be redeemed? Hopefully not. But a meeting with Professor Khalid Bin Sayeed provided no reassuring answers. It left me wondering how Pakistan will be saved from certain disaster and who will play the role of the savior. Continue reading A scholar and a gentleman →

Spirit of Sisterhood

Archive Edition, Education, General, Human Rights, International Politics, Justice, Social Issues, Women

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By Zubeida Mustafa

THE  FOURTH WORLD Conference on Women held in Beijing in September was like the proverbial elephant and the blind men. The reactions it evoked were conditioned by the perception of each observer. It was billed as the “largest gathering ever for a UN conference on women” by Newsweek and a gathering of women who “suddenly loom as a great force” by Betty Friedan, the author of Feminine Mystique and the founder of the American feminist movement in the sixties. Continue reading Spirit of Sisterhood →

The courage behind the laughter

Archive Edition, International Politics, Notable Personalities, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa
The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs is one of the oldest research institutions in the country. In the 1970s, which were years of change for the institute, Khalida Qureshi’s steady presence and devoted and meticulous work gave continuity and stability to this organisation which she served for over two decades. As the Director of Research, hers was the key role in keeping PIIA’s research tradition alive at the leanest period in its history.

It was November 1956. The Suez crisis had thrown the Middle East in a turmoil. A summit of the Muslim members of the Baghdad Pact was being held in the Iraqi capital. The visiting leaders had been invited to dinner by Pakistan’s ambassador, Mr Shuaib Qureshi.

Suddenly word came that Shah Faisal of Iraq had expressed the desire to accompany President Iskander Mirza to the dinner. In those days of yore, the Iraqi monarchs did not as a matter of royal protocol go to embassy parties. Hence this was an honor for Pakistan.

19-02-1993

A wave of excitement ran through the mission. The hostess was Khalida Qureshi, the ambassador’s daughter, who deputed for her late mother. She was very young at the time. But what she lacked in experience she made up in charm and hospitality. In the short time available she managed to have everything set for the royal guests.

But in her nervousness and eagerness to have everything in perfect order, Khalida forgot to mind her step when she went to receive King Faisal. It was only later when the photographs came in that she discovered to her great horror that it was she who was occupying the place of honour in the middle of the red carpet that had specially been laid for the monarch’s reception. The royal visitor had, been edged off the carpet. Years later, this was an incident Khalida would recount with good humour. There were many more such faux pas in her repertoire of lively anecdotes that made her such an excellent conservationist. One never tired of listening to her. She possessed the art of converting the most embarrassing of situations into an occasion for laughing at herself.

Then there was the story of the broken shoe. At a formal diplomatic party thrown by the British ambassador in Baghdad, Khalida felt the heel of her Cindrella-like shoe come off no sooner than she had entered. As she struggled to discreetly kick away the offending object,* the host noticed her predicament and came to her rescue.

The shoe was promptly dispatched for repairs and brought back on a silver salver.
But there was something more in the anecdotes that Khalida had to tell: her inborn sense of humour. It was this quality that made her the life of every gathering. It also made her a lovable person who put others at ease, for the jokes at her own expense conveyed the message, “I am after all human and not infallible.”

I first met her at the Karachi University after we were admitted in the International Relations department. She was well-travelled and as the hostess of the parties thrown by her ambassador father Khalida had had many interesting encounters with people whose names now figure in contemporary history. She spoke about her experiences with natural ease making them interesting and entertaining. I learnt infinitely more from these discourses than from the theoretical text of the books on diplomacy. Khalida’s light-heated demeanor could be quite deceptive though. One had to know her better to detect the rock-like courage and seriousness of purpose which lay beneath her jovial exterior. They kept her going through adversity, inspiring others who met her.

For hers was not quite the life a young and intelligent girl from an upper class family of high repute (her maternal grandfather was the great freedom fighter Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar whose fiery spirit of independence she inherited) is called upon to lead. She gave up her studies when her mother fell ill (and later died). This was the most challenging period of her life and given her youth and inexperience, she could have faltered. But she rose to the challenge learning much more than young women of her age were required to know as she strove to be a mother to her younger sisters and play the perfect hostess at the embassy parties.

After being mostly in the company of older people for ten years she decided to resume her studies when her father retired and settled in Karachi. Now she was called upon to adjust to the company of girls much younger in age. She did it gracefully and with good cheer. During her travels she had discovered her natural flair for foreign languages. When she went back to the university, she found that she was intrigued by the academic dimension of international affairs.

There was no looking back after that. Her interest in the subject was further stimulated by the research job she took up at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs where she worked for over 20 years, writing papers and reports. After the death of the founder- Secretary of the Institute, Khwaja Sarwar Hasan, Khalida was increasingly called upon to guide younger scholars and edit the research journal. She did these jobs with untiring devotion until she took final leave ten days before she died on February 23,1983. No one knew how seriously ill she was, surgery and radiotherapy having seemingly brought a remission in her cancer. But insidiously the illness was devouring her liver. She continued to be her kind and con. siderate self, forever concerned about the comfort of those who came to visit her, though all along she was fighting a losing battle against the dreaded disease.

Only once for a fleeting moment she had seemed to despair. When she discovered the lump and was due to go in for surgery she called me up. I went to see her. She would • always declare it time for tea whenever we got together. It reminded us of good old times. That day she was pensive. “I feel like packing that tin trunk we always talk about,” she sadly declared. (She was referring to an old joke we shared of wanting to run away with a trunk full of clothes whenever things seemed to be going drastically wrong in life.)

“The only problem is,” she added after a pause, “my illness will come with me wherever I go. So what good would it do running away?” Thereafter she came to terms with her illness, departing gracefully after due farewells only when her time was up. But she did not have to pack her steel trunk for her final Journey

To go nuclear or not is the question

Archive Edition, Defence and Disarmament, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, Health, Human Rights, International Politics, Nuclear weapons, Social Issues, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE suspension of American aid to Pakistan has produced one positive result. It has for the first time brought into the open the nuclear debate in this country.

Given the categorical linkage Washington instituted between the flow of economic assistance to Pakistan and nuclear non-prolif eration, Islamabad never encouraged a public discussion on the atom bomb.

To use Stephen Cohen’s term, a policy of ‘designed ambiguity’ was adopted. In other words, the capacity and the will of the government to go nuclear are deliberately kept ambivalent. Continue reading To go nuclear or not is the question →