It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, March 11, 2023
Time to Challenge Canadian Schools’ Anti-Palestinian Racism
While Jewish settlers launch pogroms and Israeli ministers call to “wipe out” Palestinian towns, Canadian schools suppress Palestinian symbols and celebrate colonial violence.
Last week Park West School in Halifax forced a half dozen Palestinian-Canadian students to remove Kufiyahs they were wearing during a cross-cultural day. In a flagrant display of anti-Palestinian racism, the principal said the Palestinian scarf “represents the colors of war.”
In a similar case of cultural/political suppression, Palestinian students in Ottawa were blocked from flying the Palestinian flag alongside those from dozens of other countries. The Palestinian Youth Movement has been engaged in a year-long battle with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board over anti-Palestinian discrimination.
Recently a guest speaker, part of the English Montréal School Board Holocaust Education Program, told Westmount high school students that people say “Israel is a terrible country, [that] they’re abusing the Palestinians – which is a bunch of crap. I lived in Israel.
Trust me they’re doing everything but abusing the Palestinians.” Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other establishment human rights groups have concluded Israel is committing the crime of apartheid.
Last month the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation complained to the Toronto Sun about a workshop offered by an Ontario Secondary School Teachers Foundation (OSSTF) local titled “Anti-Palestinian racism: Nakba denial.” In recent years pro-Israel groups have lobbied Canadian school boards to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism.
While Palestinian solidarity and symbols are targeted, schools expose children to aggressive pro-Israel messages. On January 24 the Jewish National Fund of Canada reported, “270 students from various Jewish day schools in Montreal participated in JNF Day at Beth Zion Synagogue.” A large map showing the grade schoolers included the illegally occupied West Bank as Israel.
The kids were probably subjected to other anti-Palestinian positions. The session was led by JNF Educational Emissary, Yifat Bear Miller, who spent more than a decade as an education officer for the Israeli military. A registered Canadian charity, the JNF is an explicitly racist institution that’s played an important role in the colonization of Palestine.
The JNF educates Canadian educators in its racist worldview. On the “JNF Educators mission to Israel” participants “Learn about Eco–Zionism and the connection between Judaism, Israel, and the environment”.
In a recent JNF Canada Facebook post a young student is wearing an Israel Defense Forces shirt. Has any Canadian school banned shirts promoting this violent organization?
At Canada’s largest private high school kids are pressured to wear IDF shirts. During “IDF Days” at Toronto TanenbaumCHAT they fundraise for Israeli military initiatives. A summary of a 2020 IDF day noted, “Shavuah Yisrael continued today with IDF day. The TanenbaumCHAT community — under the leadership of our Schlichim [Israeli emissaries] Lee and Ariel — showed their support for the Israel Defence Forces by wearing green, eating green, and donating green! Proceeds from the delicious green-sprinkled donuts that were sold during the 10-minute break are being donated to help the well-being of Israeli soldiers on active duty on behalf of TanenbaumCHAT thru the Association for the Soldiers of Israel – Canada.”
Recent posts on the school’s Facebook page mention a presentation by a former member of an elite IDF unit and students taught “Krav Maga is a martial art developed by the IDF”. According to TanenbaumCHAT’s statement of purpose, “Israel engagement pervades our curricular and extracurricular programming and it is a shared vision–part of the consciousness of all our teachers and educators. Through connecting with our staff, guests and visiting speakers, our students develop relationships with Israeli peers and other Israeli role models. Students enjoy special Israel weeks and IDF days.”
As part of TanenbaumCHAT’s Israel engagement, some students attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C. In 2019 there was controversy over one of the school’s teachers, Aviva Polonsky, who posted a group picture on social media of her students meeting Sebastian Gorka, a far-right figure in the Donald Trump administration. Polonsky has stated publicly that she doesn’t accept students expressing non-Zionist views in her classes.
Netivot HaTorah, Bialik Hebrew Day School, Bnei Akiva, Toronto Heschel School are other schools breeding anti-Palestinianism. A December post from Leo Baeck Day School notes, “we are a Zionist institution with a core responsibility to preserve Israel.” An Israeli emissary spends a year at the Toronto elementary school and when they return, noted the Canadian Jewish News, “engages with students by way of live video chat from their Israel Defence Forces barracks dressed in their military uniforms.” Leo Baeck students also pay “tribute” to Israel’s fallen heroes” and fundraise for Beit Halochem Canada/Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel, which supports injured IDF soldiers.
In a damning comment on Canadian political culture, some schools celebrate the colonizers’ military while others repress symbols of the colonized. Fortunately, there’s been some resistance. Thousands emailed and dozens rallied in opposition to the recent banning of Kufiyahs in Halifax, which prompted officials to label the incident a misunderstanding.
The Palestinian Youth Movement has organized protests against discrimination in Ottawa schools and a parent complained about the anti-Palestinian comment made at Westmount High school (these incidents have only come to light because of the protests)
While essential, defensive protests are insufficient. There should be public letters and rallies challenging “IDF Days” and the colonial indoctrination at Canada’s largest private school. We need to directly challenge schools breeding anti-Palestinian racism.
– Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and a number of other books. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit his website: yvesengler.com.
Remove Ignorance, Not Kufiyahs: Challenging Anti-Palestinian Racism in Halifax
Last week in Halifax several students were asked to remove their Kufiyahs, known to many as the checkered (black and white) Palestinian scarf, from their person at Park West School. To boot this was during a “Culture Day” at the school to honor the uniqueness and diversity of different peoples.
Saltwirereportedthat according to Lana Khammash, president of the Atlantic Canada Palestinian Society (ACPS), the principal told students that the Kufiyah signified “war.” The Maritimes news outlet however, like several others, did not make clear whether it was the principal themselves who asked the kufiyahs be removed.
It’s surely bad enough when anyone, let alone young people, is asked to remove their Kufiyah —representing the strength, resilience, and unity of the Palestinian people. An entirely positive symbol, there is no reason why someone should ever be asked to take it off.
I reached out to Khammash to learn more about what happened at Park West. By phone, she shared with me that, according to information ACPS obtained, “[The principal] gave instructions [to staff]…that if the kids in the classroom are wearing the kufiyahs tell them to remove it. …[If they don’t] they will be sent to the principal’s office.”
It surprised by that the principal would be so obvious in expressing their anti-Palestinian racism. Far from the more subtle or insidious forms of such racism, I’m used to learning about in Canada at least, their “instructions” mimic those of a dictator, issuing a public command to be carried out immediately, rather than an educational administrator—genuinely concerned about the well-being and dignity students.
Moreover, as a principal, you should know that when you single out students, for whatever issue, it’s a serious deal. Whether the student has in fact done anything wrong the consequence of this—and I believe many of us can speak from experience having once been young students—is typically not good. They will often be left feeling fearful, ashamed or apprehensive.
In light of that fact alone you must make extra sure that treating a student differently from others is warranted. The principal at Park West did not. Had they done so, which would have involved them doing some responsible research on what the kufiyah means (and there’s no shortage online or elsewhere to find such information), they would have learned that it does not signify war and thereafter made students remove theirs on that erroneous basis.
The actual extent to which the principal was involved in the students removing their kufiyahs, not to mention the teachers who facilitated that, is yet to be determined by any thorough investigation. At any rate that the school played a direct role in the students removing their kufiyahs undermines what it’s set up to do: engage students in learning. Instead, it sent the message, both to the students wearing the kufiyahs and the larger student body, that “we do not tolerate or accept Palestine here.”
Indeed this is part of the erasure, through much of the West, of Palestinian history, culture, and identity. But to say that is not enough. In addition, the message confirms that the school is committed to preventing students from learning about Palestine, through their fellow peers—as could’ve happened if Park West was hosting a Culture Day where all students were allowed to share and exchange ideas about their backgrounds, including why somewhere the kufiyah.
I don’t think using the term “committed” is too strong, especially when we think of how the principal allegedly acted. Specifically, they did not wait til the end of the school day or another time to discuss their concern, if you will, with the students about the kufiyah. By Khammash’s account, they acted swiftly, as if the kufiyahs themselves posed a threat to the integrity of the school. And it’s not a stretch to say that in the mind of the principal that’s the exact meaning they had. After all symbols of war are often invitations to violence. The only real violence however that took place at Park West was that endured by the students who had to remove their kufiyahs, thereby forced to experience unnecessary humiliation and shame.
By the same token, the students are wholly entitled to the apology that has been called for, on the part of those supporting the students. I would humbly suggest that the apology include robbing the student body from learning about what the kufiyah means, specifically by the school’s rendering it invisible (having certain students it off) and so not something that would otherwise provoke intellectual curiosity. This is particularly upsetting. It’s often through intellectual curiosity that we are most willing and prepared to learn, as opposed to when things are foisted on us as “mandatory”—in or outside the classroom.
What happened at Park West speaks to the observation by the well-known Italian philosopher of education, Maria Montessori, that “the fundamental problem in education is not an educational problem at all: it is a social one. It consists in the establishment of a new and better relationship between the two great sections of society—children and adults.”
The reason for this reflects Montessori’s more general view that within society adults, whether they recognize it or not, tend to oppress children for their “own good”, as when they are enrolled, for example, by parents in extracurricular activities (e.g. athletics) that constantly trouble them and in which they take no enjoyment. The destructiveness of this dynamic was also present at Park West’s Culture Day where staff—both cruelly and paternalistically—made students remove the kufiyah as if this had some educational value.
In a progressive school, the students would have the right to directly challenge staff, with impunity, about the “legitimacy” of having to remove the kufiyah. This has nothing to do with promoting adolescent rebellion for its own sake. Rather the right in question serves as an important check against the adult world, including teachers and administrators, who often and quite simply are wrong. Our society, however, perhaps paralleling its general attitude towards Palestine, continues to normalize the ageist view that adults are “always right.” Education is immediately jeopardized where schools, implicitly or explicitly, subscribe to this view.
American education critic and writer Jonathan Kozol is here instructive:
Teachers have the right to see what they believe without the fear of accusation or self-accusation. No student, however, should be forced to suffer social ostracism, nor compelled to pay a price, beyond that of the moral anguish of the issue, in itself, for taking a stance in opposition to that of the teacher. Both conditions can, and must, be realized by an ethical teacher in rebellion against all that is implied, inflicted, or reflected by the standard dogmatism of the textbooks, the curricula, and the time-embedded customs and conventions that prevail today.
By the same token, we must create the conditions in schools in which teachers and students alike can engage in meaningful dialogue about Palestine. This includes Palestinian students, with the lived experience that often entails (e.g. being the target of anti-Palestinian racism or enduring the intergenerational trauma of destructive Israeli militarism), being able to challenge their teachers in the classroom when they mischaracterize Palestine itself, let alone what they might be wearing such as the kuffiyeh.
To achieve this it is not enough that schools have “anti-oppressive” mandates. We see time and again how schools that do, whether in Toronto or Halifax, are hostile to Palestinian voices, expressions of Palestinian solidarity, and efforts to combat anti-Palestinian racism. For the same reason, it’s not assuring that the Halifax Regional Centre for Education sent a “diversity team” to Park West last Monday, to address the school’s anti-Palestinian racism.
To be anti-oppressive in the true sense of the term we need, paralleling Palestinian activist and scholar Ramzy Baroud’s notion of solidarity as an action rather than sentimentality, to develop schools that, on the one hand, allow students and teachers to talk about the colonial reality endured by Palestine (under Israeli rule and oppression) and, on the other, how they—as citizens of the world and people of conscience—can act to end it, as genuine allies to the Palestinian people themselves.
Some might object that this turns schools into sites of activism. That however is the point. Education is empty, if not altogether self-serving if it is not empowering students to figure out how to overturn injustice. This might ruffle staff at Park West but it’s how young people, however gradually, transform humanity for the better.
- Paul Salvatori is a Toronto-based journalist, community worker and artist. Much of his work on Palestine involves public education, such as through his recently created interview series, “Palestine in Perspective” (The Dark Room Podcast), where he speaks with writers, scholars and activists. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Canada Should Not Be Welcoming Nakba Deniers: Protesting Caroline Glick’s Talk in Toronto
In February, I organized a small demonstration to protest a talk that was being given by Israeli Nakba denier Caroline Glick, in Toronto. Unsurprisingly it was being hosted by the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation (CAEF) and other Israeli ultranationalist right-wing groups that support such denialism—falsely promulgating the view that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were not displaced from their homes to establish the Israeli state (1948), while approximately 15,000 Palestinians were massacred for the same reason.
Like Glick, some go so far as to say that Israelis, and not Palestinians, are indigenous to the Palestinian lands that Israel illegally occupies. In her pseudo-historical book, ‘The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East’, Glick writes:
“If they [Palestinians] acknowledge the validity of the region’s Jewish roots, they will be forced to recognize that the Jews rather than the Palestinian Arabs are the indigenous people of the land. …
“For the Palestinians, even the most basic recognition of reality—that Israel is a Jewish state—threatens their entire edifice of lies. One must refuse to recognize the existence of the Jewish people, they say, for once you recognize the Jewish people, you necessarily recognize their history, which in turn requires you to recognize that the Jews are the only nation that has ever claimed the Land of Israel as its homeland, and the only people that has ever claimed Jerusalem as its capital.”
On the evening of the demonstration, there was a bad snowstorm. It was also very cold. I wasn’t sure how many exactly would be in attendance. But three fellow Palestinian allies did show. Except for myself, we were all Jewish. This seemed to have confused some attendees who could not process that, yes, some Jews do not—and rightfully so—support the Israeli state and stand in solidarity with Palestine, in virtue of our shared humanity.
It should be stressed that when it comes to such solidarity it’s also our shared humanity, from which emanates the universal impulse against oppression in all its forms, that matters most.
For the same reason, I replied to a security guard at the event (taunting us) “what does it matter?”, when he inquired as to whether I was Jewish. Moreover, if you care to ensure dignity for all in this world you side with Palestine. You do not side with Israel, which persecutes Palestinians for simply being Palestinian.
Taking this position does not at all depend on one’s ethnicity, religion or race. It’s grounded rather and an expression of genuine respect for all human life. That’s why Israel’s oft-cited complaint that it’s “antisemitic” to challenge or oppose is entirely spurious.
We were outside the speaking venue for not terribly long. Less than an hour. But during that time it seemed most people who were attending the event were arriving and there were many. We were surely outnumbered by them and anyone seeing us could immediately recognize that. This seemed to have emboldened those who opposed our general anti-Israeli apartheid stance, let alone opposition to Glick herself.
One way this was manifest was by how we were often addressed by the attendees, namely with spite and contempt. People swore at us, and called us names like “scumbags” and “terrorists.” We didn’t even have to say anything for them to attack us this way. For the most part, we remained silently standing during the demonstration, as if keeping a vigil. The signs we held in solidarity with Palestine, against Glick and Israeli oppression, were enough to rile our attackers.
In some sense, none of this is all that surprising. CAEF and those who support it are anti-Palestinian. We were raining on their parade by protesting at their event where they were expecting to see Glick echo their feelings and ideas that “justify” Israel’s harm against Palestinians, without being reminded of the wrongness of it. Nobody after all wants to think of themselves as supporting harm, let alone the egregious human rights violations that Israel routinely commits against the Palestinian people.
There were however two moments during the demonstration that admittedly surprised me. The first was when a lady expressed utter disbelief—as if having discovered some troubling secret instead of what’s now widely known—that Israeli apartheid exists.
“Are you crazy?” she asked us, after noticing an anti-Israeli apartheid sign one of us was holding. “The only cities that don’t allow others are the Arab cities where it says ‘no Jews allowed’.”
In reality, however, Israel prohibits Palestinians from venturing anywhere near certain parts of cities or, more generally, geographies within and outside the occupied territories. As B’Tselem notes:
The restrictions on movement within the West Bank have institutionalized the separation between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. The main network of roads was built to serve settlers, on land expropriated from Palestinians. Israel completely prohibits Palestinians from using about 40 kilometers of these roads – including almost eight kilometers of Route 443 and almost seven kilometers within the city of Hebron, near the settlements established there. Another 20 kilometers of these roads are partially off limits to Palestinians.
A clear and recent reminder of this was shared by Palestinian human rights defender, Issa Amro, in an interview with Democracy Now!, where he recounts having been assaulted by an Israeli soldier (entirely unprovoked) and while Amro was being mindful not to walk on areas strictly designated for Israelis.
The second surprising event was meeting a gentleman attending the event who, straight-faced and without compunction, told us: “These so-called ‘Palestinians’ are not a distinct ethnic group. They are colonial occupiers.”
Familiar to me are defenders of Israel who deny that the state is committing crimes against humanity and oppressing the Palestinian people.
But till meeting that gentleman, I had never heard Palestinians so absurdly (and offensively) being referred to as “colonial occupiers”, as if their homes—from which they are under constant threat of being illegally evicted by Israel—were seized by force. Where was this person, I thought, getting his “history” from? Where is what he was saying documented by any legitimate source? How long has he been believing this lie and why has no one in Canadian society, which champions itself as one that welcomes a plurality of viewpoints, corrected him?
Then again we know and illuminated well by the Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) report Unveiling the Chilly Climate: The Suppression of Speech on Palestine in Canada (authored by Sheryl Nestel and Rowan Gaudet), Canada is not a hospitable place to talk about the truth about Palestine, including universities that are supposed to be models of free speech and dialogue.
The ignorance of the gentleman recalls for me Regavim, the pro-Israeli settlement group that petitions the Israeli government to expedite the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank and that visited Toronto late last year to endorse such criminality (I wrote about my experience, at that time, of attending one of its talksand then protesting one of its talksfor this publication).
Like Regavim’s his view of reality is inverted such that Palestinians, not Israelis, are illegally occupying or, as I heard at the Regavim talk I went to, “squatting” on land that does not belong to them. This is not simply preposterous, something we can shrug off as totally at odds with the fact that it deserves no attention. Rather it plays a role within the larger Israeli ultranationalist or Zionist discourse, namely to deny the indigeneity of Palestinians.
Convincing people of this, which is increasingly less likely as the world thankfully is learning and understanding the actual history of Palestine, makes it easier for them to see Israel as the “good guy”, “victim”, or “oppressed party” rather for what it really is: a colonial force engaged in Palestinian erasure. Sadly it makes sense that people like the gentlemen attend talks by Glick. What they all have in common is an interest in publicly spreading or endorsing disinformation to make the erasure easier. After all, if Palestine is the “colonizer” then what rational person would protest Israel acting to “secure” itself, violently wherever necessary, from it?
Studying philosophy taught me not just about different ways to look at the world. It also inculcated in me a certain attitude and which is classically embodied by Socrates: never assume to always know and be honest with yourself about your own ignorance. This can surely be hard for us. It’s not easy to think, at least very long, about the extent to which we have gaps in our knowledge, to hold mistaken beliefs (that we may discard one day with embarrassment after becoming more enlightened) and take pride in having access to “truth”—too complicated for others—but which is in fact wrong or a myth.
Engaging in deep reflection that helps us recognize this is good, as it allows us to attain a better understanding of our intellectual limitations. However where such activity is guided or informed by dishonest actors, such as Glick who distorts the truth about Palestine and Israel alike, we may be persuaded to accept erroneous views—pushing us away from understanding, be they of the aforementioned limitations or otherwise, and closer to falsehood.
It was in this direction I believe that one of the attendees at the event was trying to steer some of my fellow demonstrators. She asked them if they’d be willing to come to the event and “learn” what they didn’t already know. A similar question was asked by another woman to another fellow demonstrator at the Irwin Cotler protest I organized several weeks ago.
The presumption here is that we, as pro-Palestinian, are somehow ignorant and that the truth about Palestine and Israel alike is to be found inside the venue they’re inviting us into, in which some event (lecture, film screening followed by a Q&A, etc.) either refrains altogether from discussing the history of Palestine or, if it is, either warped or denied.
It’s almost as if we are, in religious terms, needing to be “redeemed” from being pro-Palestinian—the result of having not studied enough of the Zionist version of history that frames Palestinians as “uncivilized” and “terrorist” and their supporters as necessarily “antisemitic.”
It does not matter to the Zionist proselytizer that one might be well aware of facts, in accordance with what’s been documented by the United Nations and credible international human rights bodies the world over, that point directly to Israel’s criminality. For them, Israel can never fail to be “good”, Palestine “bad.” This dichotomy governs much of their thinking and by the same token why they see us, as outspoken allies of Palestine, as wrong. The Palestinian and their ally will always be a “problem” for them, promoting awareness of material (e.g. Palestinian dispossession) and not imaginary states of affairs (e.g. Israelis as indigenous to geographies they illegally occupy). This unscientific viewpoint, interestingly, squares well with the lady who invited the demonstrators to the event. She told them that they are being vaccinated against COVID-19 as “proof” of their small-mindedness.
Invitations like that of the lady also have an absurd element. They resemble someone convicted—through genuinely fair court proceedings and with overwhelmingly credible evidence—asking others to refrain from judgment, as if the truth about what they did, their moral character, the crime they committed, etc. did not already come to light during the proceedings. Why would anyone with knowledge of such truth need to still suspend judgment? What function or purpose would that serve, apart from perhaps an attempt by the convicted—given the opportunity—to persuade their audience to adopt a narrative based on lies, questionable information and non-facts?
That Glick’s talk and other’s like it are allowed to take place in Toronto publicly, without any mainstream media attention, says that the city is, first, still not safe for Palestinians and, second, where anti-Palestinian racism is tolerated. Imagine instead of being a Nakba denier Glick was a Holocaust denier. Without question she would’ve been condemned by the mainstream media, elected officials, the venue that hosted her sharply criticized—and rightfully so. We must take Holocaust denialism seriously because it emboldens antisemites and Nazi ideologues. There is absolutely no place for that.
Nakba denialism ought to be taken as seriously as Holocaust denialism. Yet, that is seldom seen. Mainstream media for example hardly ever talks about Nakba denialism and groups like CAEF continue to endorse such denialism through what it publishes on its website, as well as the events it hosts publicly.
This emboldens anti-Palestinian racists—be they Zionist, Christian Evangelical, what have you—to promote a view of the world where the ongoing legacy of the Nakba, from Israel’s bombing and blockade of Gaza to the state’s destruction of Palestinian agriculture and evictions of Palestinians in the West Bank, as simply “imaginary” (not to mention criminal).
This is more than a cruel lie. Downplaying the suffering of people to the point where you refuse to acknowledge its happening, knowing full well it is and by an oppressive power to boot, is at once to despise them.
If Canada is sincere about helping achieve Palestinian justice it must commit itself to fund public media that routinely covers Nakba denialism. This of course includes events, such as Glick’s speaking engagement in Toronto, that features purveyors of it while (more generally) highlighting the destructive anti-Palestinian racism that motivates them. At present this is something the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the darling of liberals and “progressives”, consistently fails to do—despite being Canada’s main publicly-funded media source. Furthermore, it’s in the Canadian public interest to know that Nakba denialism pervades certain areas of Canadian society, including but not limited to the northern part of Toronto where I’ve been writing about it. Such denialism unnecessarily harms any decent society and so Canadians are entitled to know where it exists so they can rightfully challenge it and prevent it from doing further damage.
The silence surrounding Nakba denialism trivializes not only Palestinian history but how the Nakba reverberates today, through the senseless suffering, death and trauma of countless Palestinians—all at the hands of the Israeli state. Public media cannot be allowed to keep that in the dark. Its role, in large part, is to provide a comprehensive picture of the world we’re living in, however much commercial or private media falls short of that.
When it comes to Nakba denialism that picture surely will not flatter the likes of Glick. But that’s a good thing. There’s no truth in anti-Palestinian racism.
Just hate.
- Paul Salvatori is a Toronto-based journalist, community worker and artist. Much of his work on Palestine involves public education, such as through his recently created interview series, “Palestine in Perspective” (The Dark Room Podcast), where he speaks with writers, scholars and activists. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Saudi Arabia making peace with Iran in a deal brokered by China is a 'middle finger to Biden'
John Haltiwanger Fri, March 10, 2023 Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) and US President Joe Biden (R).
Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to restore diplomatic relations in a deal brokered by China.
A former US diplomat says the move is a "middle finger to Biden."
China and Iran are top US adversaries. The deal signals Beijing's rising influence in the region.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have restored ties with the help of China, agreeing to reopen embassies in their respective capitals, in a move that appears to signal the US's waning influence in the region.
Tehran and Riyadh are historic rivals, and both have fueled a devastating eight-year war in Yemen as they've vied for greater influence in the Middle East. The Saudi and Iranian governments reestablishing diplomatic ties lowers the temperature in the region and raises hopes that their proxy war in Yemen will come to an end.
At the same time, the deal amounts to a slap in the face to the Biden administration. It's a sign that the Saudi government, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is willing to increase ties with US adversaries, and could have major implications for the future of the region.
"Stunning at a time when US-Chinese ties are at an all time low and US-Iranian tensions rising that MBS does a deal that boosts Beijing and legitimizes Tehran. It's a middle finger to Biden and a practical calculation of Saudi interests," Aaron David Miller, a former US diplomat who advised multiple secretaries of state on the Middle East, said in a tweet.
The move is also indicative of China's growing influence in the Middle East after decades of US dominance in the region largely catalyzed by the war on terror.
"The fact that China brokered the deal is significant," Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said on Twitter. "It shows the role that China could play in fostering a Middle East defined more by cooperation and trade and less by conflict and weapons sales, as has been the norm under US dominance."
The US and Saudi Arabia have a close relationship and have been security partners for years. But relations between the two countries have soured since the brutal 2018 murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which led many in Washington to call for a reassessment of US-Saudi relations.
President Joe Biden on the campaign trail pledged to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah" over Khashoggi's killing, and in 2021 his administration released a declassified intelligence report that explicitly implicated the crown prince — often referred to as MBS — in the murder.
But Biden faced criticism last year when he visited Saudi Arabia and met with MBS at a time when his administration was pushing Riyadh to increase oil production amid shortages linked to the war in Ukraine that drove gas prices higher for American consumers. Saudi Arabia ultimately moved to cut oil production instead, which was viewed as a diplomatic embarrassment for the Biden administration and sparked outrage in Congress.
US President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.Bandar Algaloud/Reuters
The deal also comes as the US contends with historic tensions with both Iran and China. Biden entered office vowing to restore the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, but the landmark pact is effectively defunct and Tehran's nuclear ambitions continue to raise concerns in Washington and beyond. Meanwhile, relations between China and the US have hit their lowest point in decades, with Beijing and Washington butting heads on a wide array of major issues — with Taiwan at the top of the list.
The agreement also has the potential to throw a wrench in efforts to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, given the latter and Iran are longtime enemies. Israel has appeared to suggest it could take military action against Iran over its accelerating nuclear program, particularly after UN experts recently said Tehran has enriched uranium to 84% — close to weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iran last month blamed Israel for a drone attack on one of its military facilities, and warned that it could respond "wherever and whenever deemed necessary."
Empowering Art review – Indigenous masterworks full of wonder and sorrow Jonathan Jones Fri, 10 March 2023
When the artist Simeon Stilthda saw a picture of Egypt’s Great Sphinx in a missionary bible in the 1870s, he carved his own version of it. Stilthda was a member of the Haida people in the Pacific Northwest of the Americas and his carving was a tribute from the indigenous culture of this region to ancient Egypt, thousands of miles and years away. It’s not just a wonderful sculpture – round the back, the Sphinx has a Haida hairstyle – but a piece of art theory in wood. Stilthda draws eye-opening parallels between his community’s religious art and that of the Pharaohs.
Like the ancient Egyptians who conjoined a human and lion to create the Sphinx, the Indigenous peoples of North America’s Pacific Northwest have a magical eye for nature. This compelling exhibition transports you to vast coniferous forests and the open ocean where humans and animals are close. This style of Pacific Northwest art, with its blocky curved patterns, appears to emulate the black and white markings of one of the region’s ruling creatures, the killer whale. Not only do orcas feature on totem poles along with birds mythic and real, but their “abstract” appearance is reflected in a style that brilliantly stretches and warps reality.
Empowering Art is a radical and satisfying survey of nearly 250 years of Pacific Northwest culture, created in close collaboration with Indigenous artists and scholars, and drawing on Britain’s extensive collections of the art of the Haida, Tlingit, Nuu-chah-nulth and other communities. In 1778 the British explorer James Cook led the first European meeting with these peoples: at that time, writes artist haa’yuups in the catalogue, “virtually every man in each of our villages on the Westcoast could carve a dugout canoe, paddles, dishes and spoons … every man was his own Leonardo”. The power of these popular traditions, already millennia old, can be seen in 18th-century prints of the objects Cook collected: a mask in the shape of an otter’s head proves the later naturalism of masks by Stillthda – which imitate real faces uncannily – was not just an impression of the whites’ art but an Indigenous heritage.
This enthusiastic exhibition seems to me to reveal the way forward for exhibiting world art at a time when some believe the very ownership of “ethnographic” pieces by Britain’s museums is wrong. There are works here from Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, the British Museum, the Wellcome and not least Ipswich Borough council: “some gifted, some traded, some stolen”, as haa’yuups writes. There are also contemporary artworks, from a 21st-century totem pole to video installations, that reveal a fiercely, joyously living culture. The show has a historical clarity that doesn’t disguise the violence Indigenous peoples have suffered but goes beyond the restitution debate to open up all the wonder and dreaming and sorrow these objects contain.
The masks alone are enough to inspire whole theories of art – and they have done. Anthropologists like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Franz Boas were fascinated by the complexity and variety of the ritual masks first brought to Europe by Cook. Here you are greeted by a row of them, fantastic faces that subtly mix myth and fact, imagination and observation: by putting on a 19th-century mask of the Thunderbird you could imitate or even become this mythic creature that waters the earth. Alternatively you could don a vividly mimetic Haida mask of a wrinkled old woman, another entrancing piece lent by the Pitt-Rivers Museum. And, in a contemporary take, you can mask as Marlon Brando.
At the heart of the show is the Potlatch, the weightiest collective event of the Pacific Northwest world. Chiefs and powerful people would invite neighbouring villages to a Potlatch feast where everyone took part in a meal served from beautifully carved wooden bowls: there’s one here in the shape of a canoe. At the Potlatch, everyone got a gift, for this was a world rich in material things.
The combs, figurines, model canoes, fighting knives, straw hats and other chunkily lovely artefacts could all have been Potlatch gifts. The gift relationship was binding: the debt conferred power. But it was the very opposite of capitalism, and perhaps that was why it was specifically banned by Canada in 1885. The ban lasted until 1951.
The assault on indigenous culture still scars memories and it sends a chill through the exhibition. A wall-filling photograph of the ruinous hulk of St Michael’s residential school is a measured way of documenting these outrageous institutions: right through the 20th-century Indigenous children were taken from their communities, their hair was cut to symbolise the killing of the “Indian” in them, some were sexually as well as physically abused – and worse, as has been shockingly revealed by recent excavations of mass graves.
Sonny Assu (Ligwilda’xw Kwakwaka’wakw) calmly comments on the horror of it with his 2024 artwork Leila’s Desk: on an old wooden school desk sits a bar of soap, symbolising what actually happened to his grandmother when she was made to wash herself on her first day as school, suddenly made to feel she was a “dirty Indian”.
The final display of contemporary north-west Pacific creativity could seem sentimental in the face of such brutality. But it’s a convincing testimony to the endurance and survival of a rare artistic vision. The patterns and creatures of traditional art are engraved into the skyline of Montreal and projected on to the walls of a room you want to dance in.
These mind-bending designs don’t need to be analysed, only enjoyed and shared. And everything in the show has a universal lesson for us now. For each object here contains the secret of living inside nature, alongside the otter and the whale.
Empowering Art: Indigenous Creativity and Activism from North America’s Northwest Coast is at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, from 12 March 2023.
Girl with AI earrings sparks Dutch art controversy
Posted : 2023-03-11 A visitor takes a picture with his mobile phone of an image designed with artificial intelligence by Berlin-based digital creator Julian van Dieken, inspired by Johannes Vermeer's painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring" at the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, March 9. AFP-Yonhap
At first glance it seems to be just a modern take on Johannes Vermeer's masterpiece "Girl with a Pearl Earring".
But look more closely and things get a little strange.
Firstly, there are two glowing earrings in the image hanging in the Mauritshuis Museum in the Dutch city of The Hague. And aren't those freckles on her face actually... a slightly inhuman shade of red?
That's because the work ― one of several fan recreations replacing the 1665 original while it's on loan for a huge Vermeer show at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum ― was made using artificial intelligence (AI).
Its presence has sparked a fierce debate, with questions over whether it belongs in the hallowed halls of the Mauritshuis ― and whether it should be classed as art at all.
"It's controversial, so people are for it or against it," Mauritshuis press officer Boris de Munnick told AFP.
"The people who selected this, they liked it, they knew that it was AI, but we liked the creation. So we chose it, and we hung it."
'Frankensteinish'
Berlin-based digital creator Julian van Dieken submitted the image after the Mauritshuis asked people to send in their versions of the famous painting for an installation called "My Girl with a Pearl."
Van Dieken said he had used the AI tool Midjourney ― which can generate complex pictures on the basis of a prompt, using millions of images from the internet ― and Photoshop.
The Mauritshuis then chose it as one of five images out of 3,482 submitted by fans that would be printed and physically hung in the room where "Girl with a Pearl Earring" is normally housed.
"It's surreal to see it in a museum," van Dieken wrote on Instagram.
The budding artists ranged in age from three to 94, depicting the "Girl" in diverse styles ranging from a puppet to a dinosaur and a piece of fruit.
But the decision to choose an AI-generated image sparked a backlash.
Dutch artist Iris Compiet said on the Instagram feed for the Mauritshuis exhibition that it was a "shame and an incredible insult," and dozens of others piled in.
"It's an insult to the legacy of Vermeer and also to any working artist. Coming from a museum, it's a real slap in the face," Compiet told AFP.
She said AI tools breach the copyright of other artists by using their works as the base for artificially generated images, as well as scraping the data of internet users in general.
The image itself she described as "almost Frankensteinish."
Artist Eva Toorenent, of the European Guild for Artificial Intelligence Regulation, criticized what she called the "unethical technology."
"Without the work of human artists, this program could not generate works at all," she was quoted as saying by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.
Visitors walk past an advertisement for Johannes Vermeer's painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring" at the entrance of the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague on March 9. AFP-Yonhap 'What is art?'
"It's such a difficult question ― what is art, and what is not art?" said the Mauritshuis's de Munnick.
But he insisted that the museum, whose collection boasts three Vermeers and nearly a dozen Rembrandts, had not deliberately set out to make an artistic statement on AI.
"Our opinion is, we think it's a nice picture, we think it's a creative process," he said. "We're not the museum to discuss if AI belongs in an art museum."
He admitted though that "up close, you see that the freckles are a little spooky."
Visitors to the Mauritshuis were equally divided, he added.
"Younger people tend to say, it's artificial intelligence, what's new.
Elderly people sometimes say we like the more traditional paintings."
The Mauritshuis was looking forward to the return of the real "Girl" in April, he added. The painting's fame has increased in recent years due to a 1999 novel by US author Tracy Chevalier and an ensuing Hollywood film.
"Well, she is beautiful in the (Rijksmuseum) exhibition... But we will be very happy when she is at home." (AFP)
Dutch historian finds medieval treasure using metal detector Handout image shows 1000-year-old treasure discovered in Hoogwoud
Thu, March 9, 2023 By Charlotte Van Campenhout
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch historian found a unique 1,000-year-old medieval golden treasure, consisting of four golden ear pendants, two strips of gold leaf and 39 silver coins, the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) announced on Thursday.
Lorenzo Ruijter, 27, who told Reuters he has been treasure hunting since he was 10, discovered the treasure in 2021 in the small northern city of Hoogwoud, using a metal detector.
"It was very special discovering something this valuable, I can't really describe it. I never expected to discover anything like this", Ruijter said, adding that it was hard to keep it a secret for two years.
But experts of the National Museum of Antiquities needed the time to clean, investigate and date the treasure's objects and have now found that the youngest coin can be dated back to around 1250, which made them assume the treasure was buried then.
By that time the jewellery was already two centuries old, the museum said, adding it must already have been "an expensive and cherished possession".
"Golden jewellery from the High Middle Ages is extremely rare in the Netherlands," the museum also said.
While it will remain a mystery why exactly the treasure was buried, the museum pointed out there was a war raging between Dutch regions West Friesland and Holland in the middle of the 13th century, with Hoogwoud being the epicentre.
Lorenzo said it is possible someone powerful at the time buried the valuable objects as a way to protect them and hopefully dig them up once it was safe again.
Given its archaeological significance, the treasure was given as a loan to the museum which will display it, but it will remain the official property of finder Lorenzo Ruijter.
(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
Canada immigration: Why record asylum seekers are crossing U.S. border Asylum seekers cross into Canada from Roxham Road in Champlain New York
Sat, March 11, 2023 By Anna Mehler Paperny and Ted Hesson
CHAMPLAIN, New York and WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bookseller Zulema Diaz fled her native Peru after being kidnapped, beaten and robbed, hoping to find safety in the United States. Instead, she said she experienced homelessness and sexual harassment as she worked off-the-books on a hospital cleaning crew.
So when Diaz, 46, heard New York City was distributing free bus tickets, she said she hopped on a bus for Plattsburgh, a town close to the Canadian border, then took a taxi to the irregular crossing at Roxham Road to enter Canada and file an asylum claim.
A sharp increase in asylum seekers entering Canada through unofficial crossings -- including many whose bus fares were paid by New York City and aid agencies -- is intensifying the pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to reach an agreement with President Joe Biden to close off the entire land border to most asylum seekers.
Canadian immigration minister Sean Fraser discussed irregular migration with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in Washington, D.C., this week. Trudeau has said he would raise the issue when Biden visits Ottawa on March 23-24.
Many of the arrivals abandoned plans to seek asylum in the United States, deterred by long processing times and restrictive definitions for asylum, according to aid officials and interviews with asylum seekers.
On a snowy day in late February, about three dozen asylum seekers, some wheeling suitcases, others carrying backpacks, trudged along a snow path from New York State to Quebec.
For Diaz, the city's payment of the roughly $150 fare to Plattsburgh offered an extra incentive for a decision she had been weighing for months.
"This presented itself like a miracle," she said. After arriving in the U.S. in June last year, she was given a January 2024 date to appear in U.S. immigration court.
"I felt protected in the United States, it just takes a long time to process the documents."
New York City has been providing bus and plane tickets to homeless people who can demonstrate a source of support in other cities and countries since 2007. Refugee aid groups began offering free bus tickets to migrants in August last year but said they stopped in November for cost reasons. New York City said it began its effort in September.
The office of New York City Mayor Eric Adams would not say how many tickets the city and partnered charity organizations purchased for migrants. Reuters requested comment from mayoral spokespeople Kate Smart and Fabien Levy; the mayor's immigrant affairs office; the Department of Homeless Services, and SLSCO, the contractor that handles the ticket distribution.
Smart said migrants choose their destinations.
"To be clear, New York City has not sent people to anywhere in Canada," Smart said. "We want to help asylum seekers stabilize their lives whether in New York City or elsewhere."
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on processing times in the U.S. asylum system. The Biden administration has called on Congress to overhaul immigration laws.
Almost 40,000 asylum seekers entered Canada through irregular border crossings from the United States last year -- nine times higher than in 2021, when pandemic restrictions were still in place, and more than double the nearly 17,000 who crossed in 2019. Almost 5,000 entered in January alone, according to the most recent figures from the Canadian government.
Canada accepted more than 46% of irregular asylum claims in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, according to Canadian government data. U.S. immigration courts approved 14% of asylum claims in the same period, according to U.S. government data.
At the end of last year, Canada had more than 70,000 pending refugee claims. The United States had about 788,000 pending asylum cases in U.S. immigration court.
Nigerian, Haitian and Colombian nationals accounted for nearly half of the irregular claims in Canada, according to previously unreported data from the Immigration and Refugee Board. 'PEOPLE ARE DISCOURAGED'
While the Safe Third Country Agreement allows U.S. and Canadian officials to turn back asylum seekers in both directions at formal ports of entry, it does not apply to unofficial crossings like Roxham Road.
A Canadian government official who was not authorized to speak on the record told Reuters the U.S. has little incentive to agree to expand the agreement to the entire 4,000-mile border.
Asylum seekers in the United States wait more than four years on average to appear in immigration court, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. It takes at least six months after filing a refugee claim to get a work permit, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"People are discouraged with the long, long timeline they have for getting working papers and asylum hearings," said Ilze Thielmann, director of Team TLC NYC, which aids migrants arriving in New York.
In Canada the average processing time for refugee claims was 25 months in the first 10 months of 2022. That’s up from 15 months in 2019, according to the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Raymond Theriault, 47, said he left his home in the Nicaraguan mining town of Bonanza aiming to connect with relatives in Canada, where he said his late father was born.
Theriault said he had struggled to find steady work and that local officials blocked him from opening a small seafood restaurant after he criticized the government.
After crossing into the U.S. at El Paso in November, he visited a daughter in West Virginia entering Canada at Roxham Road last month. In New York City, he paid $140 for a bus ticket to Plattsburgh.
Now at a government-paid hotel in Niagara Falls, he said he is happy with his decision to go to Canada.
"There is more support, they're more humanitarian," he said. "In the United States ... if you die of hunger, that's your problem."
The Quebec government has said the increase in asylum seekers is straining its capacity to house people and provide basic services. The federal government said it has relocated more than 5,500 asylum seekers to other provinces since June, the first time it has done so.
In his downtown Montreal office, refugee lawyer Pierre-Luc Bouchard said he has never been so busy.
"I have limited resources. I can't take everybody," he said. "My staff is getting tired of saying 'No.'" RISING NUMBERS IN BOTH DIRECTIONS
Irregular crossings into the United States are also increasing.
U.S. Border Patrol said it apprehended more than 2,200 people crossing between ports of entry in the four months since October, nearly as many as in all of fiscal year 2022. The force said it deployed an additional 25 agents to the stretch of border that includes Champlain, New York, where most migrants were apprehended.
Immigration experts said closing off the border to asylum seekers could push migrants to take even riskier routes. Last year an Indian family of four froze to death in Canada's province of Manitoba as they were trying to cross the border into the United States.
"You’re just going to see people making more risky and dangerous choices and we’re going to see more tragedies happen," said University of Ottawa immigration law professor Jamie Chai Yun Liew.
(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny in Champlain, New York and Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Denny Thomas and Suzanne Goldenberg)
