By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 14th, 2011 
I had the good fortune of being an eye witness to one of the major changes in the geopolitical world of my life time. I observed the Soviet Empire collapsing, chronicled it at the front lines, even before many saw the collapse coming. I don’t have such a privileged seat as we observe the transformations of in Egypt and Tunisia, but my intuition tells me that these may be every bit as significant as the ones I saw in their infancy thirty years ago. We can’t be sure that the changes begun this past month will reach a fully successful conclusion: fully? probably not. But there is no doubt that the world has changed, not only there, but also here.
A big change: the idea of the clash of civilizations has been defeated. It turns out, and should be clear to all, that Muslims are quite capable of initiating a genuine democratic movement. It may or may not prevail, but it is certainly an important strain in Egyptian and Tunisian political culture.
Another big change: I suspect that the commitment to democracy is now “in,” more appealing than radical jihad, even for the disaffected in the Muslim world. How long this lasts and with what effect will depend on the continuing success of the transformation begun last month. I believe this is the first major victory in the so called “war on terrorism.”
A little change, close to home: in everyday life, Islamophobia may be in retreat. After seeing the images from Cairo, why should Juan Williams wonder about that person in Muslim garb on an airplane? It may never have been particularly rational, but especially not now. There are crazy people of all sorts of cultural and religious persuasions, and also admirable ones. Now the admirable of the Arab and Muslim world are front stage. Now they are most visible. Only the most close-minded will refuse to see them, i.e. over at Fox,  Glenn Beck but, I suspect, not Juan Williams.
And now the “only democracy in . . .
Read more: The Week in Pre and Re-view: Revolution in Egypt and Beyond
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 9th, 2011
How does the head of state of the oldest of modern democracies, born of a revolution, approach the uncertainties of this revolutionary moment? Many are quick with criticism of, but also with appreciation for, President Obama’s apparent conservative realism.
Ross Douthat wrote in Monday’s Times: “Obama might have done more to champion human rights and democracy in Egypt before the current crisis broke out, by leavening his Kissinger impression with a touch of Reaganite idealism. But there isn’t much more the administration can do now, because there isn’t any evidence that the Egyptian protesters are ready to actually take power.”
On my side of the political tracks, opinion is different. My friend and colleague, Elzbieta Matynia, posted on her Facebook wall an open letter: “Dear Barack, Dear Mr. President, Why are we still hesitant to join the Egyptians’ cry for their rights and dignity? The longer we wait, the more doubt there is around the world in the sincerity of our commitment to democracy. Why are we failing to appreciate that these determined people are trying hard not to resort to violence? Too often, geopolitics has smothered the hopes of an entire people!”
A more extended application of these questions was developed in a piece by Asli Bali and Aziz Rana, “Supporting democracy in the Middle East requires abandoning a vision of Pax – Americana.” But I wonder about such judgments of the President and the Western leaders. Are these judgments responses to actual policy, or are they responses to the politics of gestures as examined by Daniel Dayan in his post last week?
Gestures that are thought to reveal what is going on in closed negotiations between the authorities and some oppositional figures, but may not actually be representative, may be more significant as expressions in and of themselves, as Dayan suggests. Their appearance is significant. They have a power, while they may not be telling an underlying story.
As President Obama seems to gesture toward human rights, democracy advocates in Egypt and abroad are heartened, while America’s traditional allies in the region . . .
Read more: Obama and Egypt
By Hazem Kandil, February 8th, 2011 
Today, I was planning to present my reflections on the events in Egypt, using the insights of our conversations at DC, but Hazem Kandil, a sociologist from Egypt, sent in his latest thoughts about what is happening there, providing critical insight that I have not seen elsewhere. My thoughts from a distance will wait until tomorrow. -Jeff
If scholarship has failed the Egyptian revolutionaries, they too have failed scholarship. The revolution, as gallant as it may be, has so far benefited little from what theorists of revolutions have to offer. A cursory look at the history of popular revolts suggests the following:
– Popular uprisings eventually subside if demonstrators do not take the initiative and suffice with demanding concessions from the old regime (such as asking the president to step down) because people cannot keep coming out, and state institutions (such as the military), as well as other countries cannot be asked to chose between an established regime and a vague body called “the people.” In revolutions, you cannot stand still; if you do not move forward, you will be pushed backward.
– To transform a popular uprising into a revolutionary situation, demonstrators must create a situation of dual power.
– Dual power requires that demonstrators immediately elect a governing body and charge it with managing everyday life (coordinating neighborhood watches, administering food distribution, negotiating with foreign government, and so on).
– This governing body can then demand the recognition of the people, state institutions (such as the military), and other countries of its legitimacy as the new power.
– This state of polarization between an old fading power and a new rising one is what eventually destroys the existing regime.
As long as demonstrators fail to apply this recipe, the power struggle will come to resemble a chessboard where one side makes all the moves and the other merely blocks its advances. The absence of a strategy for victory transforms a potentially revolutionary situation into a waiting game where the only option revolutionaries have is to keep their fingers crossed and pray for their rivals to lose, . . .
Read more: Revolutionary Failure in Egypt?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 7th, 2011 
This has been another eventful week, and for another week I am a bit late in posting the review. Thinking about the “news,” thinking about what is new in our world, I have been mesmerized by the remarkable drama in Egypt, the conclusion of which is far from certain. At DC, we have been trying to make sense of this, with side glances at related problems. I think in fact that the standard ways of understanding these revolutionary times require such glances, because conventional ways of thinking mislead. I am going to address this with a couple of short posts, the first today, the second tomorrow, thinking about the revolutionary moment by reviewing the posts of my colleagues. I will start by reflecting on an apparent comedy and move toward an examination of potential tragedy.
Some of the conventional responses to the events in Egypt would be funny, if they weren’t so serious. The prime example is that of Glenn Beck: “Islam wants a caliphate. Communists want a Communist, new world order. They’ll work together, and they’ll destabilize, because they both want chaos, period.” That this is what he gets out of the complex events in Egypt reveals the power of ideological thinking.
Beck, ever on the lookout for conspiracies and frightening analogies, normally distills a powerful brew. But it seems a bit weak when it comes to a major foreign affair, indeed quite foreign for him and his audience. I suspect that even the confirmed Fox News viewer is put off by Beck’s week long attempt to demonize the obviously well meaning Egyptian activists, who have appeared on our television, computer and mobile screens.
In fact, I wonder what Gary Alan Fine thinks. In his appreciation of Beck, he makes two strong observations, leading to a provocative conclusion: Beck is a talented communicator, expressing popular skepticism about elites who purport to know what is best for the people, better than the people. And he pays intellectuals the complement of taking them seriously. Therefore: “Glenn Beck is an endowed professor for the aggrieved, presenting . . .
Read more: Week in Review: Egypt, Glenn Beck and Democratic Transition
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 31st, 2011 
 It’s been a busy week at DC and in the world, thus a slight delay in this post.
Indeed, last week has been “restlessly eventful,” as Robin Wagner Pacifici might put it. The main event has been in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt. But closer to home, President Obama gave an important State of the Union address. In both cases, we can see that something new is emerging, that tomorrow will be strikingly different from what yesterday was. Change rather than continuity is the storyline.
Obviously, Egypt appears to be more consequential. It would seem that there is real democratic promise and a promise of an end to stagnation, in a country and region with a history of great cultural and political achievements, mostly frustrated in the recent past. The outcome is uncertain, who wins and who loses is unknown, but clearly a page has been turned.
Less dramatically, President Obama for the first time seems to have been understood on his own terms, as a creative centrist, making advances in changing the nature of the center in the United States. Given the power of the United States, this may indeed be eventful.
Egypt and Beyond
I particularly appreciate the post by Hazem Kandil. He points out how conventional ways of understanding politics and history, not only in the media but also in academia, did not anticipate what is now happening before our eyes. I would underscore two aspects of this, which in fact coincide with my last two book projects, The Politics of Small Things and the forthcoming Reinventing Political Culture.
Kandil illuminates the gap between past and future, as Arendt depicted this. All the studies of Egypt as “thoroughly Islamized,” with powerful “mosque networks,” “social welfare circles,” mired by “identity politics,” and informed by and organized around symbols and rituals, suggested that the culture of political culture points in the direction of authoritarian continuity. His note demonstrates how we must consider cultural creativity, along with cultural continuity in political and not only in artistic matters.
Now, look again at the Muslim Brotherhood. Note . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Egypt, The State of the Union, Between Past and Future
By Hazem Kandil, January 30th, 2011
 Hazem Kandil is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at UCLA. His work examines state institutions (primarily, the military and security organs) and religious movements, with a special focus on Egypt, Turkey, and Iran. He has taught at the American University in Cairo and has published on the sociology of intellectuals, military sociology, developments in warfare, and international relations. His most recent publication is Islamizing Egypt? Jeff
It seems that the gap between scholarship and reality remains unbridgeable. Much ink has been spilled on studying Egypt and its political prospects. Most of it seems to have missed the mark. We learned that Egyptian society has been thoroughly Islamized; we read volumes about mosque networks, social welfare circles, identity politics, symbols, rituals, etc. But when Egyptians finally revolted none of this came to play. The demands were non-ideological; the participants were people who never got involved in social or political movements; and the urban heart of the revolt was secular downtown (a neighborhood Islamists never demonstrated in). Again, we were bombarded with articles about cyber movements, social network sites, and the like. Yet when the government shut down the cell-phone and Internet services at the beginning of the turmoil, there was virtually no effect. When asked, many demonstrators had never even heard of Facebook.
Experts warned of the ‘revolt of the poor’, i.e., the starving inhabitants of the inhuman shantytowns that engulf the capital. But spearheading the revolt were the country’s best and brightest. Among them, credit officers, stock market investors, and car dealers (each worth several million pounds), in addition to dozens of actors, pop singers, and other celebrities. Also, nineteenth century doctrines about the passiveness and incurable fatalism that plagues Muslim societies (justifying the ‘democratic exception’) were still circulating when Egyptians were pushing back the men with the black helmets and batons, torching armored vehicles, and mailing tear gas canisters back to sender. Finally, studies warning of the dissolution of social bonds in Egypt, and the absence of modern civil society values failed to explain how doctors formed voluntary medical committees, and fellow citizens set neighborhood watches (to guard against plainclothes police thugs . . .
Read more: Egypt Considered Deliberately
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 29th, 2011
I’ve been following the news of major political mobilization from the Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon, and now I see in Jordan too, with great interest. Since I was an eyewitness to the changes in East Central Europe, participated a bit and thought and wrote about them during and after, I can’t help but think about comparisons and contrasts. I think Roger Cohen’s piece drawing the comparison substitutes hope and dreams for careful analysis and is overly optimistic. Rather for me the comparison leads to questions and concerns.
I wonder why the roundtables that were key to the transition in Central Europe, but also in South Africa and Latin America, and earlier in Spain, which provided a kind of special architecture for the transition from dictatorship to democracy, are not being discussed in Tunisia.
I wonder to what extent there exists in any of the countries the kind of social custom of pluralistic self organization which provided the micro infrastructure for the successful peaceful transition to democracy in Poland, what I call the politics of small things.
And tonight as I watch the dramatic video reports on television of the intensified protests in Cairo, with escalating violence, I worry not only about the frightening likelihood that by the time I wake up tomorrow, there may be massacres in the street ordered by the dictator in a last ditch attempt to stay in power. I also worry what will happen when he is finally overthrown, and the protestors have their day.
I have no expertise in Egypt and its neighbors beyond what I read in the newspapers and in casual reading of magazine and journal articles. I tend to think that the fear of the Muslim Brotherhood that the regime propagated has been self serving. I don’t know how the Brotherhood will act or whether it will act only in one direction. I worry about sectarian violence, about how changes in Egypt will affect other countries of the region and beyond. I suspect that the measured and cautious approach of President Obama, supporting democratic rights without daring to say the . . .
Read more: Transition to Democracy in the Arab World?
By Nachman Ben Yehuda, January 6th, 2011
When I first found out about the Rabbinical letter banning the sale or rental of property to Arabs, I noticed that my old friend and colleague, Nachman Ben – Yehuda, was quoted condemning it in the Toronto Globe and Mail. I then wrote to him asking for more extended reflections for DC. I received this post from him over the holiday weekend. He took his time, he explains, hoping for consequential official response. He offers his sober deliberate considerations. -Jeff
There are times and places where people like to stick together with their own flock, in defined, sometimes confined, geographical locations. In these locations, they live their own life style, with their own dress codes and eat their own foods. The Amish in Pennsylvania and the Jewish ultra-orthodox in Mea Shearim in Jerusalem are two examples. People outside of these communities and non-members may find it difficult to move and live in such social habitats. Moreover, in the case of ultra-orthodox communities, strangers who live in their neighborhoods and practice a non-religious life style may find themselves facing aggression and violence. I am writing about this to contrast it with the call of some rabbis in Israel not to rent apartments to Arabs in Israeli cities.
Israeli Arabs are just that – citizens with full and equal legal rights, and Israeli cities are not confined communities with a uniform worldview and way of life. Israeli cities, like most other cities of the world, are centers of diversity, including the religious and the secular, Jews, Christians and Muslims, old and young, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, etc. These cities are open. Renting an apartment is basically an economic issue. Making and publicizing a general call not to rent apartments to Arabs (or to any other culturally defined group) is quite simply racism.
The rabbinical pamphlet received very critical comments from some Israeli politicians and others, but this did not prevent activists from the Israeli right and religious right to stage a large demonstration on Thursday, December 23, 2010 . . .
Read more: Problematic Rabbinical Ruling Continued
By Iddo Tavory, December 19th, 2010
Today we post the controversial Rabbinical open letter in Israel prohibiting as a matter of religious obligation the renting or selling of property to non-Jews, translated and with reflections on its meaning by Iddo Tavory. It has caused great controversy in Israel and beyond (link and link), including at DC as it challenges the meaning of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state. -Jeff
The Translation:
In response to the query of many, we respond that is forbidden, by Torah-law, to sell a house or a field in the land of Israel to a non-Jew. As Maimonedes wrote: “as it is written (Deuteronomy 7:2) ‘thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them’ which means you shall give them no title to land. For if you do not give them title, their staying shall be temporary.” (laws: 77; 10, 4). And on that topic, the Torah warned in numerous places, that it causes evil and make the many sin in intermarriage, as it is said “For they will turn your sons away from following Me” (Deuteronomy 7:4), which is blasphemy (Maimonedes, 12:6). And it also causes the many to otherwise transgress, as the Torah has warned: “They shall not live in your land, because they will make you sin against Me” (Exodus 23: 33). And the sin of he who sells, and he who profits from it, is upon the heads of those who sell, God shall have mercy.
And evil upon evil, that he who sells or lets them rent an apartment in an area in which Jews are living, causes great damage to his neighbors, and for them it is said “and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell.” (Numbers 33: 55). For their way of life is different from that of Jews, and some of them harass us and make our life hard, to the point of danger to our very lives, as has become well known on several occasions. And even outside of Israel they have forbidden to sell them in Jewish neighborhoods for this very reason, and all the more so in the land of Israel, as it is elucidated in the [Jewish book of law] Shulhan . . .
Read more: The Israeli Rabbis’ Letter: a Translation
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 16th, 2010
As has been discussed in DC already, the notion of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state presents serious problems. (Roadblocks to Peace and Two-Sided Response) While recognition of the Jewish State has been used as a condition for peace talks, the enactment of the Jewish character of the state (something that implies much more than Israel as a Jewish homeland) has challenged the democratic rights of the twenty per cent of Israel’s population that is of Palestinian origin.
 A religious edict forbidding Jews from renting or selling property to Arabs and other non-Jews is a most recent example that has caused great controversy. My Israeli friend and DC contributor, Nachman Ben Yehuda, was quoted about the Rabbis edict in The Globe and Mail of Toronto: “Their ultimate goal is a theocratic state….In the meantime, they want to enforce division between the ultra-Orthodox and everyone else.”
But things look even more critical from the Palestinian point of view which became apparent to me when I came across an email note from Amal Eqeiq, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who is studying in Seattle. We worked together planning a research project on the politics of small things in Israel-Palestine. In her note, she makes clear that the democratic legitimacy of Israel is at stake. I present her message today, unedited, hoping it provokes serious deliberations.
So, 50 Rabbis signed up a religious call- Psak Halacha – asking Jews to NOT rent for Arabs. Yes, I understand that they don’t represent everybody, and that they are taking advantage of religion for political gains, and that there are different opinions, and that it is not legally binding, and that some lefties will protest in the name of human rights and for keeping face, and, and, and…”Amal, don’t take it personally,” BUT, WHAT THE FUCK?
Here is my observation about the (always guilty) Israeli media.
Haaretz says the letter is addressed for non-Jews (link) …they don’t say Arabs only…and I ask “really Haaretz?! 3anjad!! Thank you for watering down apartheid rhetoric. As a non-Jew, I feel much better now.
And of course, there is Yediot Ahronot with . . .
Read more: Israel: Jewish and Democratic?
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