What Do We Know about Hamas?
Ex-Detainees Narrate to Majalla Their Experience in World’s Most Dangerous Prisons
A Weekly Political News Magazine
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Issue 1869- September- 10/09/2021
Eitan Na’eh: The Ambassador of Peace Sent to the Gulf www.majalla.com
A Weekly Political News Magazine
Issue 1869- September- 10/09/2021
Core Reason Why Turkey-Egypt Reconciliation Faces Challenges www.majal a.com
Editorial In Ankara, on the 7th and 8th of September, Turkish and Egyptian diplomats sat for the second round of exploratory talks at the deputy levels of their foreign ministries. A brief press statement after the meeting confirmed that the two countries desire to make progress on normalizing relations and agreeing to continue consultations on regional issues of common interest, such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, and the maritime conflicts in the eastern Mediterranean. In this week’s cover story, Dalia Ziada reveals the core reason behind why Egyptian-Turkish reconciliation efforts are facing challenges. Twenty years have passed since there were four coordinated terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda, one of which killed 2,977 people in New York. Across the United States on Saturday, memorial events and observances will be held to honor the victims and remember the legacy of the September 11 terror attacks. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden plan to visit all three sites where the attacks unfolded: the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and the field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed. Mohamed Ali Saleh delves into ten of the most popular books that were written about the 11/9 attacks. For the event’s anniversary, many American publishing houses have issued lists of the books they published about the attacks and about issues that are related to the attacks. Some sources said that the total number of the books approached a thousand. Video footage leaked from the notorious Evin prison in Tehran showed horrific scenes of violence. Being held in the Mullah’s prisons subjected inmates to higher levels of brutality, systematic repression and violations of human rights. Rowshan Qassim talks to ex-detainees who narrate their experience in the world’s most dangerous prisons. In the arts section, Sarah Gamal interviews Egypt’s first male ballet dancer who breaks social stereotypes in a conservative society like Egypt. Read these articles and more on our website eng.majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our readers’ feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.
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A Weekly Political News Magazine
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A Weekly Political News Magazine
Is the World Ready for the Protein
52 Crunch of an Edible Insect ?
Issue 1869- September- 10/09/2021
18 Zelensky’s Visit to Washington
Turkey Seeks Operating Rights of Kabul Airport
20 Despite Qatar’s Announcement of Same Mission
‘Dune’: A Transporting Vision, But It
42 Could Use a Touch More Madness
56 5 Tips to Help You Age Well
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Luca Abdel Nour: The Egyptian Ballet Dancer Who Broke Stereotypes 5
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50 “Decent life” : The Largest Egyptian Project in Modern Era
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light installations in front of the Blackpool Tower People walk through light installations in front of the Blackpool Tower during the Blackpool Illuminations in Blackpool, north west England on September 4, 2021 - For the second year running, the six mile (10km) light show will be extended until the New Year to provide a boost to pandemic-hit tourism businesses)AFP Photos(
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the traditional Historical Regatta event in Venice People sit in a gondola as they take part ine the traditional Historical Regatta event on September 5, 2021 in Venice Venice, Veneto, Italy )AFP Photos(
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Core Reason Why Turkey-Egypt Reconciliation Faces Challenges Public Rivalry Stands in the Way of Reconciliation By: Dalia Ziada
ation between Turkey and Egypt, especially on economic and military affairs, is crucial for keeping the Diplomatic talks on reconciliation between Turkey balance of power in their regional contexts. Figuring and Egypt are resuming amidst a chaotic security out a reliable future path for sustainable long-term scene in the Middle East, especially on the region’s cooperation between Turkey and Egypt is essential eastern strategic depth. With a pinch of pessimism, for the security and stability of the heated regions of most Middle East experts agree that positive cooper- the Middle East, east Africa, and the eastern Medi-
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terranean. The recent withdrawal of American and NATO troops from Afghanistan, which came as a first step to the United States’ complete withdrawal from the Middle East region, is yet another reminder on this simple fact. However, the slow pace and repetitive pauses of the reconciliation process are raising doubts about the potential of Turkish and Egyptian rapprochement efforts, in their current form, to eventually succeed in restoring and solidifying the strategic relationship between the two cornerstone countries. Looking closer, one can easily discover that there is one core reason why the current reconciliation process between Turkey and Egypt is not working as smooth as it should. This prehending clutch has nothing to do with the disagreements between the two states on issues like Libya or the Muslim Brotherhood. It is much deeper, but also much easier to resolve.
Egypt’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hamdi Sanad Loza meets his Turkish counterpart and delegation at the foreign ministry in the Egyptian capital Cairo on May 5, 2021. (AFP)
In Ankara, on the 7th and 8th of September, Turkish and Egyptian diplomats sat for the second round of exploratory talks, on the level of deputy foreign ministers. A brief press statement, after the meeting, confirmed the two countries desire to progress on normalizing relations and agreeing to continue consultations on regional issues of common interest, such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, and the maritime conflicts in the eastern Mediterranean. Ironically, the language of the press statement implicitly indicates the failure, or at least lack of progress, in the reconciliation process. The bilateral statement is almost a copy of the press release that was issued at the conclusion of the first round of talks that had been convened by the same diplomatic teams, in Cairo, in early May. For a few months before diplomatic talks started, in May, Turkish and Egyptian intelligence officials used to meet to discuss Egypt and Turkey involvement in the Libyan civil war. Egypt’s concern regarding Turkey’s military intervention in Libya, in December 2019, was not only motivated by the fact that Egypt and Turkey had been in political dispute, since 2013. Egypt and Turkey supported two opposing sides in the Libyan civil war, and thus after Turkish troops arrival to Tripoli, the two countries found themselves in a direct military confrontation, which neither of them wanted. This pressed the Turkish and the Egyptian intelligence bureaus to sit together, in mid-2020, to contain the potential conflict. That
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The political rift between Cairo and Ankara cracked in 2013 when Turkish President Erdogan voiced explicit support to the Muslim Brotherhood group, after their ouster from power by a popular revolution that was supported by the leadership of the Armed Forces. moment was the actual start of the rapprochement between Egypt and Turkey, after seven years of political rivalry. The political rift between Cairo and Ankara cracked in 2013 when Turkish President Erdogan voiced explicit support to the Muslim Brotherhood group, after their ouster from power by a popular revolution that was supported by the leadership of the Armed Forces. President Erdogan labeled the political change in Egypt as a coup d’état and adopted a strong personal stance against Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who acted as the Egyptian Minister of Defense at that time. Two years later, when El-Sisi retired from the military service and got elected as the President of the State, diplomatic ties between Egypt and Turkey got mercilessly severed, and remained so for eight years. Meanwhile, a brutal media war between the two countries was launched as Turkey hosted the headquarters of television stations, funded by Qatar and run by Egyptian members and sympathizers of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the purpose to attack and discredit the new Egyptian state and president. Ironically, the economic relationship between the two countries has not been influenced by this political rift. The bilateral trade between Egypt and Turkey has reached unprecedented levels despite the ongoing political conflicts and media wars. In 2020 and 2021, Egypt is number one on the list of the countries Turkey exports products to, with a trade volume exceeding three billion US dollars.
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Over the past eight years, the Turkish-Egyptian bilateral disputes, had been magnified by the bigger conflicts between Turkey and Arab Gulf countries. In 2017, Egypt with Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain decided to declare a diplomatic boycott against Qatar, on the background of its continued support to the Muslim Brotherhood group and for using Al-Jazeera TV for attacking neighbor Arab regimes. Immediately, Turkey jumped to support Qatar against the Arab quartet through signing a number of economic and military agreements, that did not only serve Qatar but also helped Turkey survive massive economic shocks and inflations. As the Turkish-Qatari ties strengthened, the animosity between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and UAE went much deeper than media wars. Saudi Arabia’s conflict with Turkey was mostly limited to pressuring each other in the economic arena, through launching product boycott campaigns against Turkish products. In parallel, the conflict between Turkey and UAE went as deep as using military power, however indirectly, against each other. In January 2020, one month after Turkey’s intervention in support of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), an aerial attack on the Military Academy in Tripoli killed dozens of Libyan cadets. Turkey accused UAE of launching this attack to weaken GNA
A large sector of the Egyptian and Turkish public citizens, who are obviously dominated by their emotions not their brains, are watching the reconciliation process as if they are watching a football match.
in its war against the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by General Khalifa Haftar. Later, Turkish Defense Minister, Hulusi Akar, in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV, vowed to take revenge at Abu Dhabi leaders, at the proper place and timing. Ironically, the deep and bruising clashes between Turkey and Gulf states, did not prevent UAE and Saudi Arabia from considering reconciliation with Turkey, later in 2021, when their national interests required so. On August 18th, the UAE National Security Advisor, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed, visited Ankara and met with Turkish President Erdogan to re-initiate the relationship between the two countries in light of the recent developments in Afghanistan. One week later, Turkish President Erdogan and UAE’s Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, had a phone call, which was described later by UAE’s Foreign Relations Advisor as “extremely friendly.” Saudi Arabia, too, has been able to fix its relationship with Turkey, however through a slower and more stable process. After the election of the Democrat Joseph Biden as President in the United States, in November 2020, Saudi Arabia decided to end its regional conflicts with Turkey and Qatar. The process started by high-level communications between Saudi and Turkish officials before and during the G-20 Summit. Then, in May 2021, Saudi King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz and Turkish President Erdogan spoke on the phone to discuss reviving bilateral relationship. This call was immediately followed by an official visit by the Turkish Foreign Minister to Jeddah. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia led a regional effort to reconcile between Qatar and the Arab quartet. In January 2021, a declaration of reconciliation was signed between Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt, in Al-Ula city. Since then, the relationship between Cairo and Doha has been moving forward on a steady pace until it reached a peak point last month, when Egyptian President El-Sisi and Qatari Prince Tamim held a cordially meeting on the margin of Baghdad Regional Summit, on August 28th.
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Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal (C) and his delegation meet with their Egyptian counterparts in the Foreign Ministry headquarters in Egypt’s capital, Cairo, on May 5, 2021.
The conflict between Egypt and Turkey is not as whacking as was the conflict between Turkey and Gulf states, or as was the conflict between Egypt and Qatar. Despite that, the reconciliation process between Turkey and Egypt is still stumbling on murky road. The core reason why the Turkey-Egypt reconciliation is not progressing as it should has nothing to do with their disagreements on Libya, the Mediterranean, or the Muslim Brotherhood. The issue, here, is that the Turkish and the Egyptian political leaders are approaching each other with a raised nose. The personal prejudices of the Turkish and the Egyptian leaderships are blinding them. None of them wants to appear weak in the eyes of their public citizens, who had been dragged into the state-to-state conflict, through the pitiless media wars that continued to boil between the two countries for more than seven years. A large sector of the Egyptian and Turk-
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ish public citizens, who are obviously dominated by their emotions not their brains, are watching the reconciliation process as if they are watching a football match; waiting for the loser team to bow and cry on the feet of the winning team. Unfortunately, the political leaders cannot free themselves from their citizens’ emotionally-blinded expectations so they can get the reconciliation accomplished, on solid pragmatic basis. One of my most favorite quotes by the eloquent Turkish Minister of Defense, Hulusi Akar, reads: “Prejudice is the biggest human flaw. Prejudice makes people blind and deaf. When you look at an issue with prejudice, you cannot see the truth, or hear the facts.” For reconciliation between Egypt and Turkey to succeed, the political leaderships of the two countries need to take off their egos and prejudices before entering the negotiation room, for the third time.
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Zelensky’s Visit to Washington No Bold Moves from Biden By Maia Otarashvili The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was finally invited to the White House. This was an opportunity he actively and unsuccessfully sought during Donald Trump’s presidency. Coming fresh off the highly publicized Crimea Platform summit in late August, Zelensky was determined to make most of his face-to-face meeting with President Biden. Ukraine’s national security issues remain at the top of Zelensky’s agenda – the country is desperate for substantive western support in ending the war in Donbas and looks to NATO
membership as that much needed decisive turning point. The US government has been eager to support Ukraine in rhetoric and has even provided the impoverished nation with major financial aid packages over the years, but even under the Biden administration Washington remains reluctant to commit any further. During their remarks to the press in the Oval Office the two presidents spoke about the importance of bilateral relations. President Biden implied that Ukraine’s future is tied to the future of Europe: “Ukraine and the United States have a
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similar value system and the strong commitment to the fil- — the fulfillment of a promise that we hope all will come forward, and that is a Europe whole, free, and at peace. And the United States remains firmly committed to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression and — and — our support for Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations. Today, we’re going to discuss how the U.S. can continue to support Ukraine as it advances its democratic reforms, agenda, and movement toward being completely integrated in Europe.”
During his visit to Washington, Zelensky spoke openly about the need for the US to be involved at the presidential level, and urged Biden to support Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership.
Biden added that the US planned to provide Ukraine a new $60 million security assistance package and would provide COVID-related assistance. Earlier this summer Ukraine received 2.2 million doses of COVID vaccine as a donation from the United States. Under a new Strategic Partnership Commission, the United States will work with Ukraine on implementing the security assistance package, and aiding with energy diversification projects to secure Ukraine’s energy independence.
the war. The Minsk 2 agreement, signed by representatives from the OSCE, Russia, Ukraine, and the Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples Republics, has been the framework for ending the war, but has not been implemented due to its many pitfalls. The key issue, however, is that although the agreement is signed by a Russian representative, it does not mention Russia itself, and thus allows Russia to shirk any responsibility. President Zelensky understands that the Minsk agreements have come to a standstill and cannot be implemented and is looking for alternative solutions.
According to Zelensky’s office other major accomplishments included the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two governments on a business partnership: “The document is intended to realize the mutual interest of the two countries in making closer commercial ties to strengthen the welfare, security and economic growth in Ukraine and the United States by encouraging the commercial participation of U.S. companies in the Ukrainian economy and Ukrainian companies in the economy of the United States. President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The parties plan to develop and implement business projects, as well as participate in government procurement in Ukraine and the United States. Key attention will be paid to cooperation in the energy sector, including supporting Ukraine’s goals for energy transition and decarbonization, infrastructure, digital economy development, defense, cybersecurity and healthcare. Three agreements totaling $2.5 billion were inked by the state concern Ukroboronprom. The documents relate to cooperation with U.S. defense companies.” While these are important accomplishments, and Zelensky’s visit to the White House was no small event for Ukraine, the major policy agenda items remain just as ambiguous as before. Last month Ukraine celebrated 30 years since it declared independence from the Soviet Union. The country is not any closer to resolving the conflict in Donbas – this was Zelensky’s number one election promise, and the comedian-turned-president is still looking for ways to deliver on his promise. Initially the Minsk agreements (1 and 2) were supposed to end
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The Normandy Framework is one such alternative solution. It was created by Zelensky and involves Russia, France, and Germany alongside Ukraine at the negotiating table. The negotiations have been mildly successful at times in reaching an understanding between Russia and Ukraine on swapping prisoners and facilitating political communication between Kyiv and Moscow. But this framework too is in need for revitalization as no meeting has taken place in two years. Zelensky insists that the United States should join the format. During his visit to Washington, he spoke openly about the need for the US to be involved at the presidential level. He also urged President Biden to support Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership by granting the country a timeline which would come in the form of a formal Membership Action Plan (MAP). The summit did not result in any new US commitments on either of these critical security issues. The Biden administration’s position towards Ukraine’s security remains largely devoid of any serious commitments or bold new moves. By now this is how Biden’s overall Eurasia policy can be characterized as well – disjointed and leaves a lot to be desired. Maia Otarashvili is a Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Eurasia Program. Maia also serves as the Deputy Director of Research at FPRI. Her research interests include geopolitics and security of the Black Sea-Caucasus region, Russian foreign policy, and the post-Soviet “frozen” conflicts.
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Turkey Seeks Operating Rights of Kabul Airport Despite Qatar’s Announcement of Same Mission International Relations Expert Reveals to Majalla Reason for Erdogan’s Insistence on Operating Kabul Airport By: Jiwan Soz – Istanbul One of the first priorities of the Taliban government after it took over Afghanistan was to get the Kabul airport operational again because of its importance as a transportation hub for cargo, aid and domestic services to the provinces. Soon after a technical team from Qatar reopened Hamid Karzai International Airport in the Afghan capital last week for aid and domestic services, Ariana Afghan Airlines announced that domestic flights have resumed in Afghanistan between Kabul and three major provincial cities. The swift resumption came two days after Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani confirmed that his country was working with the Taliban to reopen Kabul airport “as soon as possible”. Although Doha officially announced the operation of Kabul airport on its own, Al Thani had earlier revealed that his country was in talks with Turkey about whether it could provide any technical assistance to operate the international airport. His announcement came days after two Turkish officials announced the
Taliban’s request for technical assistance from Ankara in order to operate Hamid Karzai airport. After taking control of the entire Afghan territory weeks ago, the Taliban movement rejected the presence of any foreign forces in Afghanistan, including more than 500 Turkish soldiers who were recently evacuated by Ankara after it originally intended to assign them to the task of protecting Kabul International Airport. On the other hand, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan questioned the Taliban’s ability to protect the airport security after witnessing a bombing that killed and wounded dozens, including US soldiers at the end of last August. However, he revealed that “Ankara has started talks with the Taliban,” adding that his country “is still studying the offer submitted to it by the movement to take over the task of operating the airport and providing its logistical requirements”. Ilhan Uzgel, a former professor of international relations at Ankara University and an expert in international relations, said that “Ankara will not return its soldiers at the present time to Afghanistan,” as it is
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Spanish citizens residing in Afghanistan and Afghans board a military plane as part of their evacuation, at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 18, 2021. Credit: Reuters
satisfied with a diplomatic presence only, since the Turkish embassy has not closed its doors in the Afghan capital, contrary to what some European countries have done. Speaking to Majalla, Uzgel said, “The Taliban is, for now, determined not to accept any foreign troops in the country. Turkey’s insistence to keep its troops there failed to convince the Taliban. Even the operation of the airport is not a finished deal, because Qataris are also willing to assume the operation. I think the negotiations are still underway. The US is also backing Turkey to be part of the operation of the Kabul airport. Protection of the airport should not be a problem for the Taliban, so I do not see any reason why the Taliban should allow Turkish troops. Qatar has the upper hand in dealing with the Taliban. It has had personal/diplomatic ties with some of its leaders since 2010. It uses its advantage of existing ties whereas Turkey has invested politically in the previous Afghan government and anti-Taliban figures such as General Rashed Dostum.” He continued, “The airport is important since it is the only place that connects Afghanistan to the out-
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“The airport is important since it is the only place that connects Afghanistan to the outer world because it is a landlocked country.” er world because it is a landlocked country. Turkey wants to be part of this strategic place. It wants to sustain its influence there. Secondly, Erdogan wants to be a kind of liaison between the Taliban and the West/ US, therefore, elevating Turkey’s profile and importance in the face of many problems Erdogan faces. I do not think that Qatar is interested in involving Turkey in the operation of the airport. Qatar may prefer to be the sole actor that links the west with the Taliban with the same concerns Erdogan has.” Despite Doha’s unilateral declaration to gradually operate Kabul Airport, Turkey apparently has not lost
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hope, at least in the participation alongside the Qataris in operating the international airport, according to well-informed Turkish sources for Al-Majalla The sources revealed that “Turkey, with US support, is trying to find a foothold in Afghanistan as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which has withdrawn all its military forces from Afghan territory.” Ankara had been planning for a long time to secure and operate Kabul airport on its own, but this matter faced obstacles, most notably the Taliban’s refusal to the presence of Turkish soldiers at the international airport after Washington completed the withdrawal of all its forces from Afghanistan permanently by the beginning of this September.
Ankara had been planning for a long time to secure and operate Kabul airport on its own, but this matter faced obstacles.
Turkey has not yet responded to the Taliban’s request for its assistance in operating Kabul International Airport while it continues its talks with the Afghan movement without reaching tangible results so far. “Flights between Kabul and the western city of Herat, Mazar-i Sharif in northern Afghanistan and Kandahar in the south have started”, the Afghan airline said in a statement on its Facebook page last weekend. “Ariana Afghan Airlines is proud to resume its domestic flights,” it added, but it did not reveal the entity from which it received assistance in the re-operation of Kabul International Airport. On the other hand, The Turkish president insists on assigning the security mission of Kabul Airport to the armed forces of his country. He criticized the Taliban movement a few days ago, after the Kabul airport witnessed a bombing that was claimed by the extremist organization ISIS, according to what was quoted by the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency. “How can we hand them the tasks of securing the airport?” the Turkish president said, referring to the Taliban. Erdogan also asked: “Assuming that we hand over the security duties to the movement, how can we justify our position to the world if the bloodbath we witnessed at the airport is repeated again?”
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People climb on a plane as they wait at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 2021 ,16 | Wakil Kohsar/AFP
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What Do We Know about Hamas? How does Hamas Manage its Funding Sources and Activities inside Germany? By: Jassim Mohamad - Bonn
Iran provides Hamas with material and financial support, and Turkey reportedly harbors some of its Hamas is a militant movement and one of the top leaders. Its rival party, Fatah, which dominates Palestinian territories’ two major political parties. the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and rules It governs more than two million Palestinians in in the West Bank, has renounced violence. The split the Gaza Strip, but the group is best known for its in Palestinian leadership and Hamas’s unwavering armed resistance to Israel. Dozens of countries have hostility toward Israel have diminished prospects for designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, though stability in Gaza. Germany bans the Hamas flag as well as PKK symbols some apply this label only to its military wing.
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under new ‘terror’ rules. Germany was moved to ban the Hamas flag in response to reports of violence and anti-Semitism at demonstrations in Germany, an official said on 25 June 2021. Germany’s Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, has passed a law outlawing symbols of groups designated as terrorist organisations by the European Union, including the Hamas Palestinian movement. The new law passed and was approved by the Bundesrat (upper house), and also outlawed symbols of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which is listed as a “terrorist” group by Turkey and its Western allies. In revealing the funds of the Hamas Palestinian movement, on 16th August 2021 the German newspaper Die Welt published exclusive documents from Western security agencies stating that since the beginning of 2018, the Palestinian movement has had a secret international investment portfolio and assets estimated by Hamas itself at about 338 million dollars. However, its real value exceeds more than half a billion dollars. According to the newspaper, the portfolio includes about 40 companies controlled internationally by Hamas. These companies are mainly active in the construction sector and located in several countries, but only a handful of Hamas officials know about these investments. German police stand in front of a Dresden courthouse where a trial against a Syrian jihadist is set to begin, in Dresden, Germany, Monday, March 2019 ,18. (Jens Meyer/AP)
Ansaar International On 5 May 2021 Germany banned a purported aid organization, Ansaar International, accusing it of collecting donations to help finance terrorism worldwide. The decision came along with a series of raids on properties in ten states, with investigators also seizing items. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer “has banned the association Ansaar International and its related organizations. “The network finances terrorism worldwide with donations,” tweeted Ministry spokesman Steve Alter. In 2018 alone, it collected 8 to 10 million Euros in donations, according to its first chairman. However, the Interior Ministry said that the funds are in fact raised with the intention of financing foreign groups such as Palestinian group Hamas as well as the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab and Jabhat al-Nusra. German police raided offices of several nongovernmental organizations, alleging that they
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The European Union keeps Hamas on its terror list, despite strong objections by the Palestinian group, which describes itself as a national liberation movement practicing all types of legitimate resistance against the Israeli occupation. provided support to the Palestinian resistance group Hamas. Around 90 properties across Germany, including offices of WWR Help und Ansaar International, were searched by the police, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. “There are indications that they have provided financial and propaganda support to Hamas,” the Ministry said. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer stressed that Germany will not allow charities to provide support to the Gaza-based Hamas group, arguing that German laws prohibit activities that violate the principle of international peaceful understanding. The European Union keeps Hamas on terror list The European Union keeps Hamas on its terror list, despite strong objections by the Palestinian group, which describes itself as a national liberation movement practicing all types of legitimate resistance against the Israeli occupation. The German newspaper «Die Welt» quotes what it describes as “Western security circles” as saying that the head of that investment portfolio in Turkey is a person residing in Lebanon and travelling frequently to Turkey. A large part of the proceeds goes to Gaza and to the financing of Hamas activities abroad, and to the salaries of leaders, some of whom are Arabs in Israel. The newspaper reported, quoting its Western security sources, that «between 30 and 40 percent of the funds are used to carry out military operations and terrorist objectives.» According to the newspaper, the movement uses the same tools of organized crime: “hawalat” money changers instead of banks to transfer money to Gaza and to evade tax authorities in the countries in which it operates. As another example,
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the newspaper reported that it is receiving apartment rents in cash and not through banks.
German Security revealed Hamas network The Agency for the Protection of the Constitution (Internal Intelligence) in North Rhine-Westphalia for the year 2017 revealed extensive contacts between the two organizations. According to the report, intensive cooperation efforts were monitored between Ansar International and other individuals affiliated with extremist Salafist circles. The internal intelligence revealed in its report that “there are overlaps between this organization and the banned ALDEEN ALHAAQ and IQRAA organizations,” explaining that this indicates that the “Ansar International” organization was an alternative to the banned organizations, which were campaigning to distribute copies of the Qur’an in the streets. Hamas ran networks inside Germany despite the censorship, Maya Margate wrote in the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post on 12 April 2019. She indicated that experts in the fight against terrorism revealed that the Palestinian Hamas movement has woven a hidden network of relationships in Germany, despite the fact that hundreds of its supporters are under surveillance. Janis Jost, an analyst at the Center for Research,
The German branch of the Islamic Relief Organization announced at the end of November 2020 that it had started a reform process in order to rebut the accusation that it was affiliated with networks of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Terrorism and Extremism in the German city of Kiel, said that the local intelligence and security agencies «have been monitoring Hamas supporters in this country for more than a decade,» explaining that the number surveilled reached at least 300 people since 2007. «But the problem lies in the fact that these members do not, of course, work in the name of Hamas, but have taken other organizations as a cover for their activity.» She pointed to the repeated discovery of evidence of financial, institutional and propaganda links to Hamas in a number of charitable organizations. Jost stated that after finding such evidence, the organization will be dissolved, as happened in 2002 with the «Al-Aqsa» association, and in 2005 with the «AlYatim» association. Jost asserts that one of the reasons Hamas is able to re-emerge in Germany so frequently is the country›s unique political and legal systems, which were shaped as a result of «lessons learned from Nazi Germany and the failure of the Weimar Republic.» «International Humanitarian Relief Organization» On 12 July 2010 the German Interior Minister decided to ban the «International Humanitarian Relief Organization» based in the German city of Frankfurt, accusing it of supporting organizations and social unions linked to Hamas, and its propensity to not to recognize Israel›s right to exist. The German Ministry of the Interior stated that the organization, through its support for Hamas, violated Article 9.2 of the German Constitution, which calls for the support of understanding between peoples. The ban came into effect in the state of Hesse, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia. The German branch of the Islamic Relief Organization announced at the end of November 2020 that it had started a reform process in order to rebut the accusation that it was affiliated with networks of the Muslim Brotherhood. But the German Interior Ministry, according to its response to a request for a briefing from the parliamentary bloc of the Free Democratic Party, clarified that the Federal Authority for the Protection of the Constitution (Germany›s domestic intelligence) is not convinced of this yet.
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A file photo of a Hamas militant raising the flag of the group. (Credit: AP)
Funding sources inside Germany The German Foreign Ministry provided aid to Islamic Relief in Germany totalling 2.5 million euros in 2018. The “Deutschland Helft” Association made donations amounting to about 2.5 million euros to the organization in 2019. The German branch of the Islamic Relief Organization received support for its projects amounting to 6.13 million euros from public funds. In the past, many German media outlets have referred to Hamas as a radical Islamist organization. More recently, however, as Israel-Gaza fighting flares up again, the media have referred to Hamas as an Islamist terror group. A majority of Western governments, including the European Union and the United States, have classified it as a terror organization. Norway and Switzerland are notable exceptions. Both adopt a strictly neutral position and maintain diplomatic ties with the organization that has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007.
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«But the problem lies in the fact that these members do not, of course, work in the name of Hamas, but have taken other organizations as a cover for their activity.» The official German policy stance towards Hamas remains constant. The German government expresses its support of Israel’s right to self-defense in confronting Hamas. Berlin has not stopped calling on Hamas to change its position of refusing to implement the conditions of the International Committee and to recognize the international agreements signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
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Ex-Detainees Narrate to Majalla Their Experience in World’s Most Dangerous Prisons
Evin Prison: Mullah’s Crime Scene By: Rowshan Qassim Erbil- Hassan Zarif Nazarian may not be disturbed as much as other detainees by the scenes of violence practiced in the video footage leaked from the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Being held in the Mullah’s prisons subjected him to higher levels of brutality in the treatment of detainees. The Iranian regime has been practicing systematic repression and violating human rights for more than 40 years. Nazarian said the leaked videos awakened some harsh memories he chose to bury from his near-death experience in Evin prison. “In a night in 1981, a patrol including four cars carrying security forces and dozens of gunmen stormed my house and arrested my sister, fiancée and me without having an arrest warrant,” he told Al-Majalla, adding that they seized many of his personal items, including photo albums, books, a camera and other things, such as mountaineering equipment. Security forces used various methods of abuse during the twelve years that followed the night of arrest, Nazarian said, recalling some of what he had experienced. “I was tied on a torture board and flogged during the interrogation, while my fiancée was tortured in the next room to give information about me,” he added, stressing that flogging prisoners was part of the interrogation process. “Some people were hung on the walls and a prisoner, Jaafar Semsarzadeh, was severely beaten until the flesh peeled off his bones and needed to be transplanted from his thigh.” Nazarian also recalled seeing a young couple in the interrogation center, where the wife was tied to her husband and beaten every time he refused to give a statement. There are many examples I heard about later while in prison, he said, noting that means of torture to
which he had been subjected and seen during his years in prison exceeded 170. “We prepared a list of these methods to submit to the Special Rapporteur of the Commission of Human Rights on Iran, Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, whom we could not meet in prison. But the Iranian resistance sent the list to him later.” Commenting on his trial, Nazarian said it only took three minutes and he wasn’t aware he was in a court. “I thought they transferred me again to an interrogation center, since the same detective was present, but he then played the role of the public prosecutor,” he explained. Asked about the prison conditions, Nazarian said they are similar to a “slaughterhouse.” The Mullah’s regime also set up an area divided into about 18 wards and then allegedly presented it as the Evin prison for foreign delegations. In this fake prison, living conditions seemed to be good for inmates. However, the conditions were very dire, unsafe, crowded and scary in other sections, he affirmed. End of the World Evin prison means the “end of the world for every inmate due to the lack of the humanitarian community laws. Prison guards, detectives and judges believe prisoners deserve the worst means of torture and maximum pressure, especially if they belonged to or supported the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (MEK/PMOI),” Nazarian elaborated. Prisoners lack their basic rights, such as ventilation, food, treatment, education, adequate lighting, visits and even the appointment of a lawyer, he stressed. “In my opinion and that of the ex-detainees in Iranian prisons, especially in Evin, the videos leaked on social media on the regime’s crimes were only part and parcel of the torture inmates are subjected to in torture cells. Prison guards considered these crimes normal.”
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Activists from Reporters Without Borders participate in a protest in Paris on July 10, 2012, to denounce the imprisonment of journalists in Iran. (AFP)
Nazarian further stated that when he was in Evin prison in 1988, and upon Khomeini’s orders, the “Death Commission,” which included figures like current President Ebrahim Raisi, Hossein Ali Nayyeri, Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi, Mohammad Esmail Shushtari, the prison chief and representative of the Ministry of Intelligence, carried out a massacre in which almost 5,000 political prisoners were executed. “I was in a ward with 175 other inmates, of whom only 15 survived the massacre,” he told Majalla. Those who had traces of torture on their bodies were taken for execution, he said, noting that international public opinion has not addressed this issue over the past 33 years. For this reason, he stressed, the perpetrators of this crime still hold their posts in Iran. “Raisi signed at least 4,000 execution verdicts in Evin and Gohardasht prisons,” he confirmed, urging his trial along with the other commission members before an international court. A hacking group in Iran calling itself Edalat-e Ali (Ali’s Justice) released videos and pictures on social media from the prison’s surveillance cameras and showed guards carrying out abusive acts against the detainees. They also managed to hack the prison’s control room and sent a message to the current Iranian president reading: “Evin Prison is a stain of shame on Raisi’s black turban and white beard. General protests across the country until the freedom of political prisoners.” After hackers shed light on the violations carried out inside the prison, Mohammad Mehdi Hajmohammadi, head of Iran’s prisons wrote a tweet in which he held himself accountable for the “unacceptable behavior” and pledged to try to prevent the reoc-
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In this fake prison, living conditions seemed to be good for inmates. However, the conditions were very dire, unsafe, crowded and scary in other sections. currence of such bitter acts. A few days after releasing some ordinary footage from sections of the Evin prison, including its cells, yard, and other areas, the hackers released other painful footage revealing the abuse against prisoners who were subjected to violence and beating. One video showed a prisoner attempting to commit suicide and others passing out and being dragged across hallways. Other footage showed several incidents of inmate assaults against other inmates and prisoners self-harming, as well as a fist fight between a guard and a policeman. Some further scenes showed a large room with modern equipment said to belong to Hossein Fereydoun, the brother of former President Hassan Rouhani, who is serving a sentence on corruption charges. In light of the leaked videos, four people were arrested and handed over to a military court and orders were issued to summon two others. In addition, Iranian officials affirmed that some of the abusers have already received their punishment. This was the only action taken by authorities before holding another
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probe into the violations. Will decades of violations be redressed by arresting four people? Will their arrest improve the prison’s bad reputation and pardon it for thousands of executions and killings under torture and mass graves? Will it change its black history? Evin Prison: Black History The Evin prison (Zendân-e-Evin in Persian) is located in Saadat Abad area at the foot of the Alborz Mountains in northern Tehran. It was built in 1972 under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It contains an execution yard, a courtroom, and separate sections for regular criminals and female prisoners. It was operated by the Shah’s infamous security and intelligence service (SAVAK) and was initially designed to house 320 inmates (20 in solitary cells and 300 in two large communal blocks). It was expanded in 1977 to accommodate more than 1,500 prisoners, including 100 solitary cells for political prisoners. The political crimes committed in the prison since Pahlavi’s rule led to its bad reputation, and it became more well-known
Ex-detainee says Evin prison means the end of the world for every inmate due to the lack of the humanitarian community laws.
following the 1979 revolution when the Mullah took over the reins of power. Under the Islamic Republic, the prison population was again expanded to 15,000 inmates. Theoretically, the prison was supposed to be a jail for criminals awaiting their trials, after which the convicts would be transferred to a prison such as Ghezel Hesar or Gohardasht. However, it has become a concentration camp for many inmates who have been waiting years for their trials, and prominent figures often spend their entire sentence in this prison. It was run by many extremist leaders, most notably Mohammad Kachouyi who carried out a series of executions against senior military officers and officials during the Shah’s era. One of the most prominent of the executed figures was then Prime Minister Abbas Kachouyi. Mohammad was assassinated in 1981 and a prison was named after him in Karaj city in the northwest of Tehran. Assadollah Ladjevardi also ran the prison and his name was associated with the 1988 massacre ordered by Khomeini following the Iran-Iraq war. Thousands were executed, most of which were PMOI supporters, and Ladjevardi himself was later assassinated. Due to the number of intellectuals imprisoned within its walls, the prison has been nicknamed “Evin University.” According to Amnesty International reports, it includes a group of interrogation rooms underground. Inmates there are routinely abused to be forced to sign confessions that eventually often lead to their execution.
Evin Prison Today 30
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Hackers posted messages on screens inside the control room of Evin Prison (Twitter)
An image screenshot from a video shared with the Associated Press by a hacking group calling itself Edalat-e Ali (Ali’s Justice) showing guards dragging a prisoner at Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran. (AP)
There are 15,000 inmates in the 12-ward overcrowded prison, which was built to house nearly 3,000 prisoners. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) use various tools to torture political detainees, and executions are carried out under verdicts issued by the so-called revolutionary courts without any accountability. Additionally, thousands of Iranians are forcibly hidden there. The most brutal Evin cells belong to the IRGC and the intelligence services, such as ward 29. Ward 350, the largest in the prison, was run by the judiciary, aka the third division, before the Revolutionary Guards decided to run some of its sections. This, of course, violates Article 1 of the disregarded Iranian Prisons Law. Prisoners are subjected to sexual and physical abuse, electric shocks and other brutal torture methods, while those awaiting execution are put into wards 1, 2, 3, and 4. IRGC forces run the prison, which falls under the direct auspices of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei despite the theoretical authority of the Ministry of Justice for the prison’s administration. Inmates include opponents of the current regime, those who protest the living conditions, and dual nationals. It has recently been identified as a torture scene being kept away from the eyes of the world and the Iranians. Following the unprecedented protests in 2009, the prison became overcrowded and the detainees were subjected to various means of torture. Nevertheless, survivors were able to reveal what goes on in the prison’s corridors. Daily violations also take place in the women’s section in this prison. According to the 2020 Amnesty International reports, female inmates are ill-treated, tortured, and have no access to
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Ex-detainee says prison conditions in Iran are similar to a slaughterhouse. hospitals for treatment. Executions are carried out after quick trials and inmates are hung in a courtyard inside the prison. This adds to the black record of executions in Iran, which is ranked the second highest in the world in terms of the rate of executions. Western human rights groups have long criticized the prison, and the US added it to its blacklist in 2018 for “grave human rights violations.” Like the other Mullah’s prisons, Evin is known for torturing its inmates mentally using the “white torture” method. This method includes brutality by sensory deprivation. This type of torture relies on subjecting inmates to long periods of isolation, leading to their loss of personal identity and the decrease of their energy level. This method is basically practiced on political prisoners in Iran, mainly journalists. Evin prison does not need direct permission from the Iranian government to punish inmates who are placed in Section 209.
Not Only Evin Many ex-detainees believe the Iranian regime has expanded
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its crime scenes against detainees to cover the whole country. The further away from Tehran, the more horrific these crimes become, especially since these areas are monitored by neither international delegations and organizations nor local civil activists. Ahvazi Arab journalist and writer Yousef Azizi Bani-Torof affirmed hundreds of torture cases in secret prisons, some that lead to death. However, the authorities will announce that the inmate had either committed suicide or suffered a heart attack, he noted. In case the prison is secret and the prisoner is not a known figure, he will be killed without discovery, as happened to many Ahvazis including Ahmed Haidari and Ali Beit Sayah, who were killed under torture in Shaiban prison of Ahvaz. Azizi noted that these two inmates are among a list of Arabs who die in Ahvaz prisons, especially the secret (death prison) in the Zeitoun neighborhood, where “I spent 65 days in one of its cells.” He told Majalla about the physical and mental torture he was underwent in his cell in a prison far from Evin and the cameras. Although he spent a night in Evin prison, he was transferred to his hometown in Ahvaz to a prison specially prepared for the Ahvazis. “Each nation has its share of systematic torture
“I was in a ward with 175 other inmates, of whom only 15 survived the massacre,”
crimes,” he said. “In 2005, our region as well as Iran witnessed massive protests. I lived in Tehran where I spoke to Arab, Persian and foreign media and reported the bloody suppression practiced by authorities against peaceful demonstrators,” he explained, adding that 50 protesters were killed and dozens were arrested in Ahvaz. “Unfortunately, I went through two bitter experiences during the current regime’s rule, and before that I had an experience under the Shah, which was also harsh.” Azizi said he was arrested in Ahvaz where he worked as a teacher in its high schools. In September 1981, he was jailed in the IRGC headquarters in Jarshir Square. “My family did not know where I was arrested and thought I was executed along with dozens of others,” he added. “We could hear the sound of bullets that claimed the lives of about 30 prisoners every night,” he affirmed, noting that they included Arab nationalist activists, some of who belonged to the PMOI and others to the radical left-wing. Meanwhile, Iraqi artillery were pounding the city from a distance of about 40 kilometers,” Azizi explained. “The second time was in April 2005 when I was arrested after returning from the Defenders of Human Rights Center. I spent one night in the Intelligence Ministry’s division in Evin Prison in Tehran. Then they transferred me to a terrible secret prison in Ahvaz.” Azizi pointed out that his name was not registered in the Ministry of Justice prisoner’s list and he was placed in a very tight cell with cockroaches and lizards during the city’s very hot summer. He was forced to move and eat within this small area. “I used to walk five to six hours a day in less than a three-meter
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A photo published by the Human Rights Organization in Iran (CHRI) showing prisoner abuse in Evin Prison.
Mohammad Mehdi Hajmohammadi, head of Iran’s prisons
long cell like a crazy man. Sometimes there were power cuts and Ahvaz is a hot area where the temperature reaches 55 degrees in summer. They didn’t open the cell door or any other opening for air to enter, forcing me to take off all my clothes so I wouldn’t die from the heat,” he said. Azizi said he was lucky he was from this region or else he would have died, noting that if a prisoner were from the cold Iranian regions, he would have died or fallen ill in these circumstances. “I was subjected to unbearable mental torture, including the threats of execution as well as bringing my wife and daughter to the same prison,” he told Al-Majalla. The writer said he suffered a murder attempt when he was left alone in the prison courtyard (breathing yard) surrounded by high cement walls under the burning Ahvaz sun for hours without water, and feeling exhausted, thirsty, and hungry. “I repeatedly hit the iron door and their justification was that the guard who had the keys went to the market. They also threatened to put me in a tighter cell if I refused to kiss then-President Mohammad Khatami’s hand.” “We used to hear about terrible acts, such as raping virgin girls before executing them,” he added. Azizi pointed to the dire conditions in the prisons located in non-Persian cities. Even the food served to prisoners in marginalized provinces is twice as bad as that served in Tehran’s prisons, including Evin, he stressed. These areas are inhabited by minorities in Sanandaj and in Zahedan in Tabriz, i.e., the Kurdish, Arab, Baluch and Azeri regions. Prisoners in Tehran fare better because it is the capital and there are opposition figures within the regime itself, he explained. Shooting inmates in Sepidar prison in Ahvaz and killing 25 pris-
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oners last year in the protests held in prisons across the country during the coronavirus outbreak proves that “our prisons are the worst.” Finally, Azizi revealed that there are major prisons registered in the Ministry of Justice and other secret prisons, but he considers that thousands of Iranians, including Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis and Azeris have died in the country’s prisons during four decades and under multiple means of torture.
The Main Prisons in Iran The public central prisons are distributed throughout Iranian provinces. According to the PMOI, authorities have transformed many of these prisons into forced labor camps to obtain profits. Jailers get more creative in torturing prisoners in numerous ways by using electric shocks, severe beatings, and keeping them blindfolded in the cold for hours in solitary confinement. Another method adopted in prisons is the distribution and sale of drugs, where the jailers systematically distribute methadone to control prisoners and prevent them from protesting. There are 568 political prisoners in the prisons, distributed according to their nationalities, and subjected to various types of physical and mental torture. Within the national distribution, there is also a religious sectarian distribution with the following composition: 231 Shiites, 150 Sunnis, 108 of unknown sects, 35 Bahais, and 19 Christians, all told comprising 493 men and 76 women. Iranian prisons are managed by the Organization of Prisons and Security Measures under the presidency of the judiciary, which was led by the President during past years and was commissioned by Khamenei to initiate reforms that were implemented
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in prisons across the country. Despite all this, not all prisons are publically known. There are dozens of illegal detention centers, as acknowledged by the Iranian prison website. The most notable is the one assigned by the authorities to the persecuted Arabs in 2016 and is located in Sheiban in Al-Ahvaz, with a capacity of 4,500 prisoners. Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, is one of the oldest and most overcrowded prisons. It was built in 1964 and can accommodate 5,000 prisoners. However, it is crammed with more than 30,000 prisoners distributed between two buildings in Ghezel Hesar, southward, and Karaj Central Prison, northward. There is also Rajai Shahr (aka Gohardasht) in Karaj, which is renowned for the incident with the Death Committee and the Council for the 1988 massacres, i.e., the same prison in which Hamid Nouri is currently on trial for his crimes. The prison in Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan in the northwest of Iran, has a capacity of 1,800 prisoners, but there are
We seek to amend the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages to include penalties and dual nationals, Zakka said.
actually 7,000 inmate, most of whom are Azerbaijani Turks. The prison in Ardabil, northwestern Iran, is considered a detention center for Azeri activists and a gulag for the Arab Baluch, with the number of prisoners exceeding 2,000. Zahedan Central Prison is in the southeastern capital of Baluchistan, where human rights reports discuss turning it into a torture center in which nearly 3,000 prisoners are held. Dizleabad prison is in Kermanshah, the Kurdish province in western Iran, where the majority of prisoners are Kurds. Kurdistan... at the top of the list of executions There is, however, a hell in secret prisons that are out of sight, or rather in the margins of cities which are usually the non-Persian provinces, unlike official and well-known prisons. Jahangir Abdullahi, head of the Kurdistan Human Rights Association, declared that cameras are usually located in large and central Iranian prisons and are controlled by those responsible for those prisons. “The situation of detainees in prisons in Kurdistan, Ahvaz, and Baluchistan is dreadful,” Abdullahi told Al-Majalla. Authorities are keen to appoint Persian directors and jailers in non-Persian regions, and they usually choose people who harbor grudges against other nationalities, he added. “For example, they appoint a prison director in Kurdistan whose relative was killed in one of the battles between the Kurdish movement and the Basij. The reason behind all this is to remove mercy and humanity from the hearts of these people and to sow hatred and envy for the other.” But whatever the case, this hacker group that decided to penetrate the Evin prison camera network system will not find it
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Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese information technology specialist
Evin Prison
difficult to hack prison cameras in Kurdistan or Ahvaz and the rest of the prisons in other cities if it decides to do so, Abdullahi stressed. “What we and other international organizations get to know about prison conditions in Kurdistan is only through the families of the detainees,” he added. In this regard, I remember when Sharara Sadeki, the wife of Kurdish detainee Haidar Qurbani, published a video a few days ago in which she confirmed that her husband was being subjected to the most severe forms of physical and psychological torture. Sadeki demanded international assistance to halt the death penalty issued against him, stressing that she and her children are living in the most precarious conditions. She pointed out that the Supreme Court of Sinanja State (Sanandaj) reconsidered the case of political prisoner Haidar Qurbani and approved the sentence issued against him (death by hanging). The Kurdish detainee was then transferred to the Kamyaran Court to undergo the death sentence,” she further noted. “Qurbani is not a member of any armed organization, and although this was proven by conclusive evidence before the IRGC courts, judicial authorities insisted on implementing the death sentence against him under the pretext of armed rebellion (against the regime).” Amnesty International states that the verdict was based on confessions extracted from him under torture and, that from the time of his arrest, Qurbani had been subjected to intense pressure in prison to confess. He also said that he was repeatedly tortured to confess, and a film of these confessions was prepared and published by the Press TV network, Abdullahi stated. Abdullahi asserts that “Qurbani is one of dozens of examples
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that reflect the reality of the situation in Iranian prisons in Kurdistan, and that what was seen in the leaked video is nothing compared to what is actually happening on the ground. Families of the arrested political activists always fail to know their whereabouts. “He is being tortured without a specific charge, and this torture continues throughout his detention or until the death sentence is carried out,” he warned. He also revealed that although the death sentences executed against the Kurds in Iran are at the top of the list, the number of detainees and prison inmates is unknown and not officially announced. The reason behind the inaccuracy of this figure is a result of the random arrests carried out by the security services and the executions that Iran no longer proclaims in front of its opponents, so people often do not know whether the detainee is alive or dead. He also said four Kurdish detainees were killed under torture in Iranian prisons last year, and so far this year two detainees have been killed under torture. “This is what we were able to uncover.” “In Iran, the oppressed are sentenced to death, but the real culprits are acquitted,” Abdullahi said. As for the case of Qurbani, who was sentenced to death, there is an acquittal ruling against the investigative judge Saeed Mortazavi. The judge is accused of issuing sentences of torturing to death, violation of dignity, and physical and sexual assaults against young people who were arrested in the 2009 demonstrations. Back then, the detainees were gathered in the newly built Kahrizak prison on the southern outskirts of Tehran and cramped
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under the scorching sun in iron containers stacked on top of each other, which led to the suffocation of many of them. “Years before that, specifically in April 2000, Mortazavi led a campaign of arrests to silence the growing opposition in Iran and issued an order to close 100 newspapers and periodicals. He was working as a judge in General Court Branch No. 1410. In June 2003, the Canadian-Iranian journalist, Zahra Kazemi, died while being held in the custody of some security officers and judiciary officials that were led by Mortazavi. Kazemi’s family advocate stated that her body bore signs of torture, including punches to the head and that Mortazavi himself participated in the interrogation process,” Abdullahi explained. In 2004, Mortazavi arbitrarily arrested more than 20 bloggers and journalists and held them in secret prisons. Human Rights Watch’s research confirmed that Mortazavi was involved in committing violations against these detainees, including holding them in solitary confinement for long periods and forcing them to sign false confessions. The process of signing false confessions was further repeated in front of television cameras. The senior official finally revealed what is happening in the IRGC-established secret prisons across Iran which have inten-
The Iranian regime has been practicing systematic repression and violating human rights for more than 40 years.
sive security presence. He affirmed that they apply the most horrific forms of torture and are also found in Kurdistan and other provinces.
Unofficial Prisons The most notable, according to media sources: 1- Prison 59: It is one of the IRGC’s oldest prisons. It is located in Badjan Ashrat Abad camp, in the Vali-e-Asr district in Tehran. It consists of four walls in the middle of a large courtyard, in which there are wards, rooms, and tools for the psychological and sexual torture of men and women. Prison 59 differs from the rest of the Iranian prisons due to the lack of lighting that reaches pitch darkness in some of its halls, where you cannot but hear the screams of tortured prisoners and activists. 2- The “Zoo” prison: It consists of three sections: the first for wards, the second for chemical laboratories, and the third for microbial laboratories. It also contains three basements and corridors and has three entrances and exits through three different ways. The people kidnapped by the Revolutionary Guards are imprisoned here. The first person to supervise this prison was Ali Khamenei and his mission was to arrest students with nationalist and sectarian orientations in Iran. 3- Amaken Detention Center: It is exclusively for issues affecting Iranian national security, such as espionage against the state or the IRGC, and attempted coup d’état. Most of the inmates are prisoners of conscience and political prisoners who oppose the Iranian regime. 4- Efsiriya or Firouzeh Palace: It is one of the military detention centers in the secret military garrison of Kaladuz, east of Tehran, and a part of the famous Firouzeh Palace. It is supervised by members of the IRGC Supreme Command, which is assigned to imprison and torture reformists and oppositionists
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Images from a video leaked to the Associated Press showing appalling abuse of inmates in Evin Prison.
Gohardasht prison, north of the outskirts of Karaj, about 20 km west of Tehran
during the presidential elections. A group of reformist websites and anti-regime press and media sources mention that the oppositionists, Saeed Hajjarian and Tajzadeh, were arrested and tortured in this prison after objecting to the procedures for the 10th presidential elections in Iran. 5- Shapur Detention Center: It is related to crimes involving morals and drug use, and its cells contain a significant number of women who are detained by the Mobilization Forces (the Basij morality and values police), or the new undercover police in Iran. According to the statistics of Iranian human rights organizations, the number of prisoners is estimated to be more than 12,000. 6- Prison 64 in the Military Intelligence Directorate: This is a series of secret detention centers in Tehran and a group of other Iranian provinces, such as Shiraz and Isfahan. It is located inside the (G) military garrison between a group of residential neighborhoods. It is run by the Intelligence Department of the Iranian Ministry of Defense and is one of the most dangerous detention centers in the country, where there are about 70 detainees whose identities and the offenses for which they were arrested are unidentified. They suffer from a lack of ventilation, food sources, treatment, and medication. 7- The Department of Tracking in the Ministry of Information: The Iranian Ministry of Information, in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Directorate, owns a group of distinguished buildings in Tehran, containing a group of secret rooms and temporary prisons that are used by the intelligence to interrogate detainees and those suspected of being involved in acts that affect national security. These offices are located in various places, the most famous of which are in the streets of Khawaja Abdullah, Suhrawardi, and Hemmat. 8- Dhaban Detention Center: It is located in the secret Dhaban military base, 100 meters away from the Sahfa secret detention
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center as well. It accommodates more than 350 Iranian military personnel who are accused of security crimes that affect the regime or national security. They undergo torment and torture until they are transferred to Hashemiyah prison without any legal procedures. 9- Army Security Information Preservation Camp: This prison has two branches, one in Tehran and the other in Shiraz. It hosts prominent opposition military figures from the General Mobilization Forces and the IRGC. The history of this prison dates back to the Iran-Iraq war, as it was the site for Iraqi prisoners during the war. 10- Military Information Detention Center: This secret detention center belongs to the intelligence service and is located in Tehran. It specializes in espionage crimes and foreigners’ crimes that threaten the existence of the Iranian regime and is directly supervised by the Commander in Chief of Iranian Military Intelligence. It accommodates from 200 to 450 detainees, according to information from detainees’ rights and anti-torture organizations in Iran. 11- Section 209 Detention Center: It is under the administration of the Ministry of Information, where it became remarkably active after closing the “Tawhid” detention center and transforming it into a museum. The identity of the prisoners there is unknown, but their number ranges between 250 and 300, most of whom are oppositionists and communists. This detention center was founded by Kazem Kazemi, a senior official of the Iranian Ministry of Information. Among the most important detainees in this prison are Reza Shehabi and Abdolreza Tajik. In addition to these above-mentioned secret detention centers, there is another group of prisons and detention centers with varying importance to the Iranian regime, given that they are located in other provinces, and not in the capital
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Tehran. These include: The detention centers of Ashrat Abad, Al-Ray, Shahriar, Kahrizak, Urumiyeh, Police 160, Ramin, Court 7, the Revolutionary Court, the secret facility of the detention center of the Ministry of the Interior, Johar Dasht, Dawlat To, Qezel Hesar, Qezel Qalaa, Zindan Qasr, Qamar, Soleh, Nabout, and the Saul prison, aka Abu Ghraib Iran. Iranian prisons contain not only Iranians, but also foreigners, who also get their share of abuse and torture.
We were just hostages The leaked videos have not only activated the memory of former Iranian detainees but also the non-Iranians who tasted Evin’s bitterness and woes. These include Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese resident in the United States, who visited Iran on September 15, 2015, after receiving an official invitation from the former Iranian president’s assistant for Women and Family Affairs, Shahindokht Molaverdi, to participate in an international conference on the role of women in sustainable development. On his way back to the airport three days later, he was surprised by a civilian car that stopped him and kidnapped him. Zakka was sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage for Washington, but was later released in 2019. The head of the Hostage Aid Worldwide organization, Nizar Zakka, told Al-Majalla that “the published pictures from Evin prison evoked bitter memories from the time of my imprisonment there. I was in Evin for three years, eight months, and 25 days.” “I was harshly tortured during the IRGC interrogation and was placed in solitary confinement, where systematic acts of torture take place,” he said. “Since the first days of my arrest, I have been subjected to various forms of torture, in addition to long hours of interrogation and attempts to force me to give false statements,” he affirmed. “About a year later, the verdict was issued. There were other types of torture where I was detained, they deprived us of food and put me in a solitary cell underground where I did not know the day from night. They even blindfolded me on the way between my detention and interrogation cells.”
Ex-detainee says prison guards, detectives and judges believe prisoners deserve the worst means of torture.
Zakka was not the only foreigner in the notorious Evin prison, as he sarcastically said the detention center resembles the United Nations (UN), There were detainees from various European, African, Asian, and Arab nationalities. “We were all hostages to obtain political or regional gains,” he stressed. “An international newspaper contacted me and sent me a video that was published later. It also sent me some footage from Evin Prison. I was asked to confirm whether this is the same prison or not. By looking at the footage, I was sure it’s Evin Prison, but not the IRGC division A2, the political division 7, or the division 12,” Zakka explained. “Evin Prison is divided into three sections, one belonging to the IRGC, the second is affiliated with the Intelligence, and the third is linked to the Ministry of Justice.” What appears in the video is the section affiliated with the justice ministry, he affirmed, noting that its network of cameras is not connected to those of the IRGC and Intelligence. “What we saw in the video can be considered only as abuse compared to the torture that takes place in the other sections of the prison.” On the repercussions of the leaked video and the Iranian officials’ admission of negligence, Zakka was surprised by the statements issued by officials in the Iranian regime, who said they were shocked and apologized for those scenes. “This is utter lie and slander,” Zakka said, affirming that Iranian officials are aware of everything that is happening in the prison cellars. “When we complained about ill-treatment, the judge told us: ‘You deserve torture because you are torturing the jail-
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Kylie Moore-Gilbert was detained in Iran and sentenced to 10 years in prison on espionage charges. (Reuters)
A former prison that was run by the prerevolution intelligence service has been turned into a museum, where a wax doll of a tortured prisoner is displayed, in Tehran, Iran. (AFP)
ers,’” he said. He also stressed that all officials are aware of the systematic torture and ill-treatment. In every investigation room in the prison, there is a wall behind which no camera can monitor what is going on. It’s called the dark spot. So, when you don’t succumb to what they want you to do, you are taken behind that wall and the most horrific methods of torture are practiced against you. All this happens in the presence of the investigative judge of the judicial authority and the translator. It happened once during my trial, as I knew the judge who was interrogating me from his voice even though the investigation carried on with us while we were blindfolded, Zakka affirmed. The Ministry is aware of everything, especially the judiciary, whose head was the current Iranian president. They are belittling the minds of the entire world, he warned. “Foreigners are tortured, but the guards are careful not to leave traces of torture on their bodies. They rely on white and psychological torture, but the traces of brutal torture were deep in their bodies, starting with nail extraction and ending with the most horrific practices.” He pointed out that “the Iranian regime mastered games, as ambassadors of countries in Tehran and international organizations were invited to check out the conditions of Evin prison and accompanied by Secretary General of the Human Rights Committee Jawad Larijani, who is the brother of Ali Larijani. They sat without meeting any prisoner and later hailed the prison conditions. “In the meantime, we were subjected to the most horrific meth-
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ods of torture underground,” he stressed. The other farcical matter was when Federica Mogherini, the European Union envoy, came to the Iranian parliament during the inauguration ceremony of the former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. This lasted for several hours in the capital and the regime’s representatives took pictures with her. “Today, when any European official goes to Iran and takes pictures, he must realize that his citizens are at the same time subjected to torture in Iranian prisons. They have to remember the leaked videos and that they will never be able to close their eyes to the truth again,” Zakka noted. He believes that “Iran has linked its foreign policy to hostagetaking, and this has become its adopted policy in negotiations with the West, or with any other world country.” Since 1989, when the American hostage crisis took place in Tehran, and until today, the Iranian foreign policy has been fundamentally linked to hostage-taking after it made gains from its policy, especially since it was not punished at the time. “As an organization, we will seek to amend the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages also known as the Hostage Convention. It is a UN treaty in which members agreed to prohibit and punish the taking of hostages, but it does not include sanctions. We will introduce a new definition of hostages, or a definition of the term hostage ...provided that it includes dual nationalities.” It is noteworthy that this matter is very significant for Iranians with dual nationality, given that a person who is taken for political advantage is considered a hostage, Zakka explained.
A Weekly Political News Magazine
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Issue 1869- September- 10/09/2021
Eitan Na’eh: The Ambassador of Peace Sent to the Gulf www.majalla.com
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‘Dune’: A Transporting Vision, But It Could Use a Touch More Madness
A Story of a World Ravaged by Oil Wars, Climate Change and Human Greed By Justin Chang The story in “Dune” is set in motion by an ambitious, unwieldy and ill-advised transfer of power — an undertaking that extracts a terrible cost and seems doomed to end in frustration and defeat. Something similar might be said of the previous major attempts to wrest Frank Herbert’s 1965 literary colossus to the big screen, even if recent history has sometimes looked back on those failures with a forgiving smile. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s assuredly trippy, never-completed version has become a muchmythologized cinematic ruin. David Lynch’s 1984 flop, reviled by many (including Lynch himself), can still inspire spasms of admiration for its mix of narrative intransigence and visionary strangeness. Still, to the extent that “Dune” endures, it does so on the strengths of Herbert’s extraordinarily prescient work — its echoes of a real world ravaged by oil wars, climate change and other consequences of human greed — rather than anything to do with its dubious cinematic legacy. Not least among the book’s mysteries is that it has shaped the iconography of so many classic science-fiction and fantasy films — most obviously, though not exclusively, “Star Wars” — without yielding a classic of its own. Conventional wisdom has long held that “Dune” is unfilmable, that its interlocking parables of colonial oppression, ecological disaster and messianic deliverance are too vast to be contained within the flattening parameters of the cinema screen.
The magisterially brooding new “Dune,” unveiled Sept. 3 at the Venice International Film Festival and slated to reach U.S. theaters and HBO Max subscribers Oct. 22, boldly seeks to reverse that prophecy. With methodical poise and seat-rattling spectacle, the French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (who wrote the script with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth) draws you into an astonishingly vivid, sometimes plausibly unnerving vision of the future. If those cursed earlier stabs at “Dune” were examples of what the French call a “film maudit,” this imposing new vision aspires to be the opposite: perhaps a “film Mahdi,” to reference the Arabic word often hurled at the young savior-to-be, Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), as he embraces his destiny. The fulfillment of that destiny will have to wait; “Dune: Part One,” as it’s billed onscreen, is the first in a projected two-part adaptation, which means that any assessment of Villeneuve’s achievement must be provisional at best. For now, it’s hard to deny the excitement of feeling swept up in this movie’s great squalls of sand, spice and interplanetary intrigue, realized with a level of craft so overpowering in its dust-choked aridity that you may want to pull your mask up a little tighter in the theater. You may also feel a more qualified sense of admiration for Villeneuve’s efforts to preserve yet streamline the novel’s imaginative essence, to translate Herbert’s heady conceits and arcane nomenclature into a prestige blockbuster idiom. Whether he succeeds — and for an impressive stretch, I think he does — his own meteoric Hollywood ascent has clearly
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Zendaya and Timothee Chalamet in “Dune,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is slated for an Oct. 22 release. (Warner Bros. Pictures/Legendary Pictures/TNS)
prepared him for the assignment. This isn’t the first time Villeneuve has evinced a superb eye for the textural and chromatic nuances of sand, as the Mideast deserts of “Incendies,” the U.S.-Mexico border zones of “Sicario” and the Las Vegas ruins of “Blade Runner 2049” will attest. And like “Blade Runner 2049” and especially “Arrival,” “Dune” is another unusually philosophical speculative fiction that ponders the difficulties of language and coexistence. As the movie opens, a superficial detente has been orchestrated between the warring royal strongholds of Atreides and Harkonnen, led respectively by the noble Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and the grotesque Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (a prosthetically transfigured Stellan Skarsgard). “Dune” heads will know the rest: By imperial decree, House Harkonnen must relinquish stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis, aka Dune, which is at once inhospitable to life and a much-coveted source of it. House Atreides will assume control of the planet as well as its rich concentrations of spice, a drug-like substance whose lifeextending properties have made it the most prized commodity in the universe. Notably, these narrative preliminaries are laid out by Chandi (Zendaya), one of the Fremen, the thick-skinned, blue-eyed Indigenous people of Arrakis. Long acclimated to the planet’s sweltering heat and deadly giant sandworms, they’ve suffered bitterly under their cruel Harkonnen overlords and
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With methodical poise and seatrattling spectacle, the French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve draws you into an astonishingly vivid, sometimes plausibly unnerving vision of the future. have no reason to suspect the Atreides will be any different. Villeneuve’s sympathetic focus on the Fremen feels like an early declaration of principle, a promise that this “Dune” might radically reframe the story from their perspective. For much of the movie, though, Chandi and her people remain fleeting presences, glimpsed only in the gauzy visions of Duke Leto’s son, Paul. Chalamet, always good at suggesting both youthful callowness and limitless potential, proves an inspired choice for the role of a young man who is both a coddled heir and an intriguingly unknown quantity. On the Atreides’ home planet of Caladan, he is trained with avuncular affection by his father’s retainers, including the brilliant security
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expert Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson), the brawny swordmaster Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and the skilled weapons teacher Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin, not exactly the “ugly lump of a man” described in the book). Paul is also a source of pride and anxiety for the Duke, movingly played by Isaac as a leader who longs to do right by his family, his people and the Fremen, even as he suspects that House Atreides might be stepping into a carefully laid trap. But Paul’s most important mentor is his mother, Lady Jessica (a superb Rebecca Ferguson), a member of a shadowy, oracular sisterhood known as the Bene Gesserit for whom Paul poses both a problem and a source of fascination. Led by an imperious Reverend Mother (a heavily veiled but unmistakable Charlotte Rampling), the
Conventional wisdom has long held that “Dune” is unfilmable, that its interlocking parables of colonial oppression, ecological disaster and messianic deliverance are too vast to be contained within the flattening parameters of the cinema screen.
Bene Gesserit are versed in many skills including “the Voice,” a form of mind control rendered here via menacing aural distortions that — along with the soundtrack’s low, ominous rumbles and Hans Zimmer’s pulsating score — make “Dune” a symphony for the ears as well as a feast for the eyes. It is, admittedly, a rather monochromal feast, dryer than it is rich, notwithstanding a luscious early shot of the Arrakis dunes that brings to mind the crisped swirls of an overbaked meringue. Much of the palace intrigue plays out in muted tones and symmetrical compositions (the cinematography is by the great Greig Fraser), part of a rigorously color-controlled aesthetic that extends to Patrice Vermette’s futuro-brutalist production design and Jacqueline West’s slickly utilitarian costumes. A cold, fascist sheen seems to cling to the Atreides’ regal formations and their state-of-the-art ornithopters (like helicopters, but with blades that flutter like insect wings), all flawless design elements in a pageant of technological might and militaristic order. Villeneuve means to subvert and disrupt that pageant, something he accomplishes in part by consciously elevating the women in this male-dominated story. Ferguson’s forceful presence in the expanded role of Lady Jessica is one example; another is the gender recasting of Liet Kynes (a striking Sharon Duncan-Brewster), Arrakis’ deeply knowledgeable planetologist. It’s Kynes who helps the Atreides adjust to their desert environs, at one point accompanying them to a spice-harvesting site where they get their terrifying first glimpse of a giant sandworm in action, its great maw swirl-
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The 78th Venice Film Festival - Screening of the film “Dune” - out of competition - Red Carpet Arrivals - Venice, Italy September 3, 2021 - Actors Javier Bardem, Zendaya, Stellan Skarsgard, Chang Chen, Oscar Isaac, Sharon DuncanBrewster, Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Dave Bautista, Josh Brolin and director Denis Villeneuve pose.(REUTERS/Yara Nardi)
This image released by Warner Bros. Entertainment shows Timothee Chalamet, left, and Rebecca Ferguson in a scene from the upcoming film “Dune.” The 2021 film will premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. (Chia Bella James/Warner Bros. )Entertainment via AP
ing open like a raging quicksand vortex. This action sequence and others are handled with masterly assurance, including several scenes of intimate combat performed with form-fitting, blood-concealing energy shields. But as ever, Villeneuve’s true talent is less in the staging of violence than in the queasy anticipation of it; he loves to linger in the looming threat of mayhem, in the tense moments before the (sand)worm turns. That gift serves him well enough in “Dune,” whose plot hinges on encroaching threats, assassination attempts and a series of devastating betrayals that send Paul and Lady Jessica fleeing into the desert where there await still more perils, possibilities and encounters with the Fremen (led by a sly Javier Bardem). Until the movie slams to an abrupt, unsatisfying halt halfway through the events of Herbert’s novel, there’s pleasure in watching this particular game of thrones play out, though perhaps more pleasure than depth or meaning. To call this “Dune” a remarkably lucid work is to praise it with very faint damnation. Perhaps reluctant to alienate the novices in the audience, Villeneuve has ironed out many of the novel’s convolutions, to the likely benefit of comprehension but at the expense of some rich, imaginative excess. Herbert’s more memorable flights of linguistic fancy, like “gom jabbar” and “Kwisatz Haderach,” are spoken once, with a faint air of embarrassed obligation, and seldom mentioned again. A more significant casualty is the book’s layered interiority, its skill at turning unspoken perceptions and motives into drama; the writers have managed this material without mastering it.
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Lynch’s compromised version was similarly stymied and more clotted with exposition. But it also had the courage of its demented convictions, as well as a fearless commitment to feverish, pustular imagery that makes Villeneuve’s pristine filmmaking seem almost timid by comparison. Not for the first time, his craft seems to exist mainly for its own sake; it’s the hallmark of a filmmaker who’s more logistician than thinker, more technician than artist. As a visual and visceral experience, “Dune” is undeniably transporting. As a spectacle for the mind and heart, it never quite leaves Earth behind. And perhaps that’s as it should be, at least at this early stage. With any luck, there will be more to see and much more to think about in “Dune: Part Two,” the completion of which will depend to some degree on this first movie’s fortunes. Will “Dune” conjure enough coin — the spice of the Hollywood realm — to see itself through to completion? I suspect it might, in part because I doubt Villeneuve, a filmmaker more dependable than he is interesting, has it in him to add to “Dune’s” string of memorably catastrophic failures. Dust has long been his truest cinematic habitat, and to dust may he return. This review was originally published on TNS.
‘DUNE: PART ONE’ MPAA rating: PG-13 (for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing images and suggestive material) Running time: 2:35 Where to watch: In theaters and on HBO Max Oct. 22
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Luca Abdel Nour: The Egyptian Ballet Dancer Who Broke Stereotypes First Egyptian Ballet Dancer to Win the Prix de Lausanne International Prize By Sarah Gamal When we talk about dancing among men in the Arab world, the first thing that comes to our mind is Dabkeh, or dances full of rough masculine movements, but who sets these standards?
While Egyptian and Arab newspapers highlighted the story of Luca Abdel-Nour, who has been touring European theaters since March 2020 as part of international shows after winning international fame and the Prix de Lausanne on Feb. 8, Luca continues to
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be bullied in his own country by those who believe ballet dancing is limited to women. Five years ago, Abdel Nour, the 18-year-old Egyptian, could not have imagined participating in the largest ballet competition in the world and winning second place in the most prestigious competition in dance, outperforming 399 dancers from all over the world. After many years of training and moving from one country to another, Abdel Nour, the native of Maadi suburb in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, became the first Egyptian to win second place in the premier Swiss ballet competition in the world since 1973, the “Prix De Lausanne”. Born in Egypt in 2003 to a French mother and an Egyptian father, Abdel-Nour was educated from a very young age in a private school where arts were considered a very fundamental part of education and this helped give him more exposure to theatre, music, applied arts and dancing.
Young Egyptian dancer Luca AbdelNour poses on March 3, 2021, at Switzerland’s Tanz Akademie Zurich. - FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
Abdel-Nour succeeded in realizing his dream by moving from Cairo and winning a scholarship in a ballet school in Switzerland to begin his international journey in ballet, and then joined the most famous ballet school in Switzerland, the “ZÜRICH DANCE ACADEMY”, and received a three-year scholarship.
“I entered the ballet world not really knowing what I wanted from it. It wasn’t until I discovered that I had the potential to create a future out of it that I realized that this is what I wanted to do with my life.” Dutch National Ballet as a junior company artist in August 2021. Abdel Nour recounts his journey, which began in 2012, in an exclusive interview with Majalla, noting that he is a ballet dancer in the largest schools in Switzerland now, explaining that he started dancing in several Egyptian schools before joining the Premier Baller Academy, which is run by the famous Egyptian ballet dancer Ahmed Yehia who took it upon himself to train him for many years. “I entered the ballet world not really knowing what I wanted from it. It wasn’t until I discovered that I had the potential to create a future out of it that I realized that this is what I wanted to do with my life,” he said.
Abdel-Nour joined the Hungarian Dance Academy for the 2017-2018 season on scholarship, where he performed in the yearly Nutcracker program and performed original works around Hungary with the school.
When asked what Upper Egypt represents to him as one of its sons, Luca said: “It merely represents half of my ancestry however I was born and raised in the big city of Cairo, this is where home is for me.”
When he was selected by the “ZÜRICH DANCE ACADEMY” after two years of intensive training, to represent the company in the “Prix De Lausanne”, Abdel Nour not only won second place, but also Web audience favorite award, and best Swiss candidate Award. Luca graduated from the “ZÜRICH DANCE ACADEMY” in 2021 with a Federal Certificate of Proficiency in Classical Dance and joined the prestigious
As for the source of inspiration in his life and who encouraged him, he said: “I think that everything around me inspires me a lot. In the ballet world I’m very inspired by Marianela Nuñez, Vadimm Muntagirov and many others including my colleagues from the past in ZÜRICH DANCE ACADEMY and my colleagues here at the Dutch National Ballet. My family has been the biggest supporters I could ask for, even if at some points there were some doubts. They always encourage
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my siblings and I to do what we love and not what society expects us to do.” When asked about what dancing meant to him, he said: “It is what I do for a living but it is also my passion and I couldn’t imagine my life without dancing.” He owes a lot to the Egyptian ballet dancer Ahmed Yehia and his wife Anja Ahcin, whom he considered, “the first mentors that really pushed me to pursue this professionally and I owe a lot of my early success and hard work to them.” he said. As for his other hobbies; he added: “I didn’t really have other hobbies that really stuck
“It is what I do for a living but it is also my passion and I couldn’t imagine my life without dancing.”
with me for a long time but I really enjoyed snorkeling in the summer and I was always interested in different art forms as well as theater and applied arts.” When asked about his opinion about bullying male dancers face in Arab countries and oriental societies, he said: “Not just only in Arab countries or oriental societies, but it is definitely more than in Europe or North America. I personally think it is because ballet is simply not mainstream enough in these countries so people are not informed about the existence of ballet for men. People think that ballet is just for girls simply because they never saw male ballet dancers, it is all a matter of information and education.” He concluded by talking about his dreams and ambitions for the future, by saying: “My dream is to have a long successful and healthy career in the ballet world, next to that I would love to bring more light to ballet in the Middle East and transfer what I learn to the next generation.”
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Photo Courtesy of Luca Abdel-Nour
Photo Courtesy of Luca Abdel-Nour
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“Decent life” : The Largest Egyptian Project in Modern Era An Unprecedented Initiative to Develop Egyptian Countryside By Salma Adham “We have not lost sight of the situation of people and we have decided to address the problems,” President El-Sisi said during his speeches talking about the decent life initiative at Cairo’s international stadium on 15TH July. The Decent Life (Haya Karima) initiative dates back to 2019 when the Ministry of Social Solidarity was put in charge of developing Egypt’s poorest 1,000 villages where 70 percent of the population was living below the poverty line, but at the end of 2020, Al-Sisi decided to expand the initiative to include all the
country’s 4,658 villages. The initiative witnesses the aggregation of the work efforts of all the initiatives, such as the “100 Million Health” initiative, “Solidarity and Dignity”, and “Egypt without debts”, and others. These initiative which the president implemented will be combined and applied simultaneously in all the targeted villages, and the pace of their implementation will be accelerated in all villages. It is called the project of the twenty-first century for Egypt, because the greatest challenge in this project is that it is not linked to one geographical area, but extends to all parts of Egypt, and it is not a single engineering work, but rather includes thousands
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Mothers wait for their children as they attend a class conducted by Reem El-Khouly, a 12-year-old girl, who teaches children in her neighborhood as schools remain closed during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, at Atmida village in Dakahlia province, Egypt February 7, 2021.Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
of projects that will be implemented simultaneously in all parts of the country. It targets 4,500 villages, in 20 provinces by investing 700 billion. 58 percent of Egypt’s 102-million population who live in these villages across the country will benefit from the project. It aims to achieve various goals, such as comprehensive development of all interventions required for infrastructure and facilities, decent housing for the first groups with care, improving health and educational services and developing units and youth centers, economic empowerment, training, rehabilitation and employment of those who are able to work and investing in human development to maximize the value of the Egyptian personality. In addition to that, it is also working on filling the development gaps between villages to eliminate poverty, stimulating the values of community participation between state institutions and citizens, accommodating volunteer youth capabilities and directing their efforts to charitable and development work, improving the infrastructure of road networks, drinking water, electricity and natural gas and alleviating the burdens of the neediest societal groups in the governorates of Egypt. As part of a review of the details of the Decent Life Initiative, the government has crystallized its implementation plan in the form of projects and plans with Egyptian minds, and it will be applied with Egyptian hands, in addition, all materials used are made in Egypt, as well as financing a decent life project, which is purely Egyptian funded. For the first time, the initiative witnessed the launch of indicators to measure the quality of life in the villages of rural Egypt in order to improve the proportion of sewage coverage, education, increasing job opportunities, and implementing services that are not yet available. “The UN considers this initiative to be one of the best leading programs for sustainable development worldwide,” Mahmoud Mohieldin, Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a recorded speech aired during the first conference of the “Decent Life” initiative, which took place on July 15, in the presence of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. The first phase targeted about 11 governorates and 143 villages, benefiting 1.8 million citizens at all levels, which contributed to an improvement in the quality of life index in the villages that
Ministry of Planning and Economic Development official website.
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It is called the project of the twenty-first century for Egypt, because the greatest challenge in this project is that it is not linked to one geographical area, but extends to all parts of Egypt. were developed during the first phase by about 18 percentage points, and a decrease in the average poverty rate by about 14 points.
The first stage Achievements
- Providing 50,000 protection and social care interventions. - Covering 47 villages with sanitation services, with investments of more than one billion pounds. - Increasing the coverage rate of drinking water services from 86% to 94%. - Doubling the amount of water produced in the targeted villages with investments of 128 million pounds. - Implementation of 125 projects in the field of electricity and public lighting, with investments of 240 million pounds. - Paving 188 km of roads with investments of about 319 million pounds. - Adding 1100 new educational classes to accommodate 44,000 students. - Comprehensive development of 51 health units with investments of 457 million pounds. - Developing 22 youth centers with investments of EGP 38 million. - Raising the efficiency of 16,000 homes, benefiting about 80,000 citizens. - Providing free health services to about 117 thousand beneficiaries. - Providing soft loans worth 277 million pounds. - Implementation of vocational training programs that contributed to providing 28 thousand job opportunities. - Providing about 330,000 temporary job opportunities in construction projects. Within the decent life initiative and the President interest in the affairs of people with special needs and the payment of debts for women who can’t pay off, the Ministry of Solidarity in collaboration with the Ministry of Awqaf stated that it was agreed that the ministry would allocate (50) million pounds of self-resources from donation revenues to the Ataa Charity Fund for people with special needs, and (12) million pounds, ten of which were for paying debts for women, and another two million to pay off their debts urgently.
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Is the World Ready for the Protein Crunch of an Edible Insect? Food Technologists, Specialty Chefs Cooking up All Sorts of Creepy-crawlies By: Meera Ravi Walking down a Bangkok street in those faraway pre-pandemic days, I remember pausing at a street vendor’s cart to peer into his wok full of fry-‘ums. Imagine my shock when the delicacy everybody was buying turned out to be locusts! Apparently, fried locusts, still warm and popping from the fire, are a big favorite in South East Asia.
If you tend to shiver at the thought of bugs wriggling in your vicinity, just change your outlook. Join the hundreds of food technologists and specialty chefs around the world who are looking at insects as the Next Big Wave in food trends. There is even a term coined for that: Entomophagy, which means the human consumption of insects as food and it is practiced not only in China and the Far East but many cultures in Asia, Africa and South America. Giving credence to the fact, no less an
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organization than the Food and Agriculture (FAO) of the United Nations has observed that insects could be a viable replacement for meat in the event of a food shortage over the next century because of their high nutritional value and low environmental impact. FARMING YOUR INSECT MEAL
Packs of pre-cooked insect burgers based on proteinrich mealworm are seen on a supermarket shelf in Geneva, Switzerland. Credit: AFP
Before you dismiss this as a weird and over-the-top theory, consider these facts: insects are far more nutritious than other forms of protein, even fish. For e.g., 100 gms of beef contains about 29 gms of protein as well as 21 gms of fat. 100 gms of grasshopper contains 20 gms of protein and just 6 gms of fat. So, double benefit here, both sustainability and health-wise. Experts opine that there are more than 1900 documented edible insect species and some are even ‘farmed’ commercially like cattle and poultry. There are several reasons which justify insect eating as a sustainable food source for future generations. First and foremost, insect rearing does not require large tracts of land. It is low-tech and inexpensive and can be afforded by even the poorer sections of society. Most insect breeders grow the edible bugs in controlled environment in mesh trays that take up just shelf space even in industrial operations. It is more environmentally friendly compared to traditional animal husbandry. Insects display exponentially faster growth and breeding cycles, which would come as no surprise to anyone who has tried to rid his home of pests. For e.g., a female cricket can lay from 1200-1500 eggs in 3-4 weeks, while for beef the ratio is 4 breeding animals for each market animal produced. But the icing on the cake (for want of a better analogy) is that insects have a higher food conversion efficiency compared to most traditional meats. Crickets, for e.g., need 12 times less feed than cattle to produce the same amount of proteins. They are good sources of healthy fats and high in nutrients such as calcium, iron, B vitamins, selenium and zinc. They are generally healthy and have low risk of transferring diseases to humans. Crickets contain more omega-3s than grass-fed beef, more iron than spinach and more calcium than milk. Another fact giving weight to this argument is that insects emit considerably fewer greenhouse gases than most livestock. Think ‘Global Warming’, ‘Climate Change’, ‘Ozone Layer’ and the tortuous negotiations held on these topics in Paris recently, and you get the drift of how important this aspect really is. So why are we so prejudiced against insects? The primary reason is that our minds are conditioned to consider insects as pests which evoke feelings of disgust and repulsion. Dutch entomologist Marcel Dicke suggests that one way of changing this mind-set is to consider insects as ‘shrimp of the land’. Did you know that the most luxurious seafood - the lobster- actually belongs to the same Phylum as
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the lowly cockroach? So where does the ‘yuck’ factor come from? Arthropods like lobster and shrimp were once considered the poor man’s meal in the West but are now prized delicacies. If you are a meat-lover and can get past the initial aversion, insects can add a notch or two to the nutritional intake. Let’s take you around the world for a glimpse into some countries where insects are considered as a part of edible food.
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Thailand: Fried bugs like beetles are commonly served with beer. One of the country’s most popular snack is Jing Leed, a deep fried cricket seasoned with Golden Mountain Sauce ( like soy sauce) Ghana: Termites may be considered as pesky and unwanted creatures, but Ghanians see them as a delicious and nutritious snack.
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They can be fried, roasted and even ground into flour for baking purposes. Mexico: Insects have long been a staple in Mexican cuisine. French-fried caterpillars, chocolate covered locusts and candy covered worms are some of the snacks you would find here. China: Chinese snack on a wide variety of insects from waterbugs boiled and soaked in vinegar to live scorpions doused in liquor. They also enjoy roasted bee larvae and fried silk-worm larvae which are rich in copper, iron, riboflavin and zinc. Brazil : Queen ants are considered a favorite snack in this part of the world. Brazilians remove their wings and fry them or dip them in chocolate. Japan: Japanese enjoy munching on fully grown insects such as fried cicadas and fried grasshoppers. Boiled wasp larvae, fried silk moth pupae and aquatic insect larvae are other delicacies found on Japanese restaurant menus. USA/Canada: Eating insects has not been popularized in the West, but a few companies have recently introduced products made using insect powder as an ingredient. The first company to use cricket flour was Chapul, which launched a project in 2012 to make protein bars with cricket flour. Another company, All Things Bugs, manufactures and sells whole cricket powder to be used in protein bars, baked goods and other products. Cricket Flours LLC sell flavoured mixes such as Peruvian chocolate and Chocolate Peanut butter cricket flour. Some restaurants like Vij’s restaurant in Canada has parathas (Indian bread) made from
There is even a term coined for that: Entomophagy, which means the human consumption of insects as food and it is practiced not only in China and the Far East but many cultures in Asia, Africa and South America.
roasted crickets which are ground into a flour. It’s sister restaurant Rangoli offers pizza made by sprinkling whole roasted crickets on naan dough. India: You would be surprised to find India in this list, where a significant part of the population practices vegetarianism. However, there are regions in central and north-east India where insects are consumed. Assamese cookery queen Purobi Babbar had said that her most unusual meal was red fire ants in Assam, which tasted nutty! Bodo tribals consume insects such as caterpillars, termites, grasshoppers, crickets and beetles. Insect meat is not readily available in the rest of the country, but efforts are being made to remedy this. The Central Sericultural Research and Training Institute of Mysore has been experimenting with converting left-over silkworm pupae into food. However, some believe that India’s long-established caste taboos may derail these experiments. Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit economist, says, “ However nutritious insects might be, tribals and Dalits eat them out of compulsion. But if there are other options, people will not accept anything that has a low social marker.” We might not realize it, but even the vegetarians among us are probably already eating insects unintentionally. It is not possible to eliminate pest insects completely from the food chain. Poorly stored grains like rice and wheat can be infested with beetles, weevils and other insects. That is the reason why food laws in many countries do not prescribe a blanket prohibition of insect parts in food but just limit the permissible quantity. So that macaroni that you boil to prepare pasta might already have insect parts which are not clearly visible to the naked eye. Even stuff like ground thyme, frozen citrus juices and even frozen broccoli can have what we call as ‘insect filth’ which we consume unknowingly. Worse, even chocolate makes the list of foods which are prone to be contaminated with insect parts! How can one stop eating chocolate? Makes one understand and appreciate the orthodox Indian diktat of eating only fresh, home-made food, though! RISK FACTORS The intentional cultivation of insects and edible arthropods for human food, referred to as mini-livestock, is now emerging in
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Sous-chef Nowshad Alam Rasel displaying a signature cricket dish at a restaurant in Sydney. (Saeed Khan / AFP)
animal husbandry as an ecologically sound concept. But food handling and safety standards need to be established in the same way as they are for farm live-stock. The European Food Safety Authority has published its initial risk assessment of using insects as a source of protein for human consumption and animal feed. It concluded that risks to human and animal health depended on how the insects were reared and processed. To gauge the biological and chemical hazards of using farmed insects for human consumption and in animal feed, the risks were dependent upon the form of husbandry being employed. Spore forming bacteria are a potential spoilage and safety risk for both raw and cooked insect protein. Cooking is advisable in ideal circumstances since parasites of concern may be present. Uncooked insects can carry nematodes which can infest the human hosts. Pesticide use can make insects unsuitable for human consumption. Herbicides can accumulate in insects through bioaccumulation. For example, when locust outbreaks are treated by spraying, people can no longer eat them. Another concern is humans experiencing allergic reactions to insects. Some people have allergies to Crustaceans, and they may suffer food allergies to other arthropods as well. From a religious and moral perspective, it is repulsive to know that insects are killed by methods which involve heating, like frying, boiling,
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So why are we so prejudiced against insects? The primary reason is that our minds are conditioned to consider insects as pests which evoke feelings of disgust and repulsion. roasting or steaming. Vegetarians and vegans would give a clear dumb-down to the idea of processing insects for food, as they would for any life form. Some schools of Islamic jurisprudence consider scorpions haram, but eating locusts as halal. Within Judaism too most insects are not considered kosher. Folklore and superstitions involving insects are perhaps more prevalent in indigenous or traditional cultures than among industrialized societies. But all said and done, will ordinary people be able to discard their squeamish attitude towards insects and consider them as a sustainable food source? There’s a long, long way to go before that happens.
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5 Tips to Help You Age Well Developing Good Habits Can Keep You Healthy, Independent Longer By Kelly Bilodeau Interviews with people celebrating their 100th birthday always include one question: What’s the secret to your long life? The answers aren’t always in line with science. For example, in 2020 a Chinese centenarian responded with some dubious advice -- “smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and eat junk food.” From this, we can probably surmise that living a long life is sometimes just a matter of luck and good genes. The rest of us might need to work a little harder to live well into our older years. Are there certain things that can help? To find out we reached out to Dr. Suzanne Salamon, associate chief for clinical geriatrics at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. We asked her for some advice on how to live longer -- and more importantly, how to live well. Below are five of her tips.
1. Protect your brain One of the conditions people fear the most as they get older is dementia. While your risk of Alzheimer’s disease is largely out of your control, other types of dementia are preventable, says Dr. Salamon. The health of your brain, like your heart, is largely the product of your lifestyle habits. “There are a whole lot of things we can do to prevent vascular dementia, which has the same risk factors
as heart disease,” she says. Preventive steps include, among others, eating a healthy diet, getting regular physical activity, not smoking, maintaining a healthy body weight, and keeping cholesterol and blood pressure within the recommended range. “It’s important to start these practices early in your life, but it’s never too late,” says Dr. Salamon.
2. Walk more A great way to stay healthy and active is to squeeze in more physical activity. An easy way to do that is by walking. You don’t need to hit 10,000 steps a day to stay healthy; far less -- closer to 7,500 -- can do the trick, says Dr. Salamon. As it turns out, that 10,000step goal may have been an arbitrary number created by a company marketing a Japanese pedometer. A 2019 JAMA Internal Medicine study found that half that number of steps was associated with better health. Even women taking as few as 4,400 steps per day had a 41% lower risk of dying during the study period when compared with women who walked 2,500 steps a day or fewer. And they didn’t need to be power walking; just moving around the house was enough.
3. Put technology to use Many older adults who didn’t grow up with computers and other gadgets might be hesitant to embrace electronic tools. But learning to use them can bring health benefits, says Dr. Salamon. During the pan-
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An old man relaxing in front of the sea. Credit/ Unsplash
demic, telemedicine has become a valuable way for people to connect with their doctors and keep tabs on their health. Computers can also help people stay connected with friends and family. “For many older people, especially people in their 80s and 90s, the computer opens up the world for them,” she says. They can use it to rapidly access information, read about anything and everything, communicate by email and videoconference with their friends and family. Today, many senior centers offer assistance to people who want to learn more about how to use technology, which can give you an easy place to learn the ropes. Don’t be afraid to give it a try!
4. Keep tabs on your medication As people get older, their pillbox often gets larger. Many people take multiple pills each day, some of them prescribed many years ago. This raises the risk of not only harmful drug interactions, but also dangerous side effects. Prescriptions need to be updated regularly, because your body may react differently to drugs if your weight or your metabolism changes. It’s good practice to review each of your medications with your doctor or pharmacist every six months to ensure that you still need to be taking them, that the dose is accurate, and that they aren’t
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Prescriptions need to be updated regularly, because your body may react differently to drugs if your weight or your metabolism changes. interacting with one another, says Dr. Salamon. Making needed adjustments can help you avoid side effects, such as dizziness, which may lead to a fall.
5. Use tools to help you stay mobile A lot of people are reluctant to use a cane or a walker, even if they feel unstable when they walk. This may lead to a fall and a serious injury that affects their quality of life. “A walker can really help keep you from falling and also gets you moving more. You won’t be so afraid of moving and walking longer distances,” says Dr. Salamon. This article first appeared in Harvard Women’s Health Watch
B
ook Reviews
9/11:20Years,10 Books A Look into 10 of Most Popular Non-fiction Books on 9/11 Washington, Mohammad Ali Salih On the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 11/9, many American publishing houses issued lists of the books they published about the attacks, and about issues that related to the attacks. Some sources said that the total number of the books approached a thousand.
1.“Ghost Wars,” Steve Coll (2004): HOW? WHY? “It is for now far easier for a researcher to explain how and why September 11 happened than it is to explain the aftermath …Clinton regarded bin Laden as an isolated fanatic, flailing dangerously but quixotically against the forces of global progress … The Bush team was fixated on great-power politics, missile defense and China.”
2. “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 11/9,” Lawrence Wright (2006): IGNORANCE: “The most frightening aspect of this new threat … was the fact that almost no one took it seriously. It was too bizarre, too primitive and. exotic … The most elemental question that we were all asking after 9/11. The level of our cultural ignorance is hard to overstate, even my own. Even though I had spent time in the Middle East and had written this movie, I still was left with many riddles that I needed to unscramble.”
Wikipedia divided the books into fiction and non-fiction, then subdivided the fiction into novels, graphic novels, short novels and children’s novels. It subdivided the non-fiction into memoirs, first-hand accounts, historical, religious, economic, military, social, scientific and comics. It also listed books about the books and the literature that related to 11/9. These are short quotations from ten of the most popular non-fiction works:
3. “Against All Enemies,” Richard Clarke (2004): A CRUSADE? “America, alas, seems only to respond well to disasters, to be undistracted by warnings … Our country seems unable to do all that must be done until there has been some awful calamity … (On Iraq Invasion): Bush handed that enemy precisely what it wanted and needed, proof that America was at war with Islam, that we were the new Crusaders come to occupy Muslim land.”
4. “102 Minutes,” Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn (2011): THE BUILDINGS: “The ferocity of the attacks meant that innocent people lived or died because they stepped back from a doorway, or hopped onto a closing elevator, or simply shifted their weight from one foot to another … It is likely that a very different world trade center would have been built. (But this one) increased the floor space available for rent by cutting back on the areas that had been devoted, under the earlier law, to evacuation and exit.”
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5. “Bush at War,” Bob Woodward (2002): RUSSIAN LESSON:
8. “To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq,” Robert Draper (2020): “CIA Counterterrorism Center IRAQ INVASION:
Director Cofer Black and Deputy Secretary of State Richard “Bush needed little convincing: he Armitage traveled to Moscow had ordered up Iraq war plans only shortly after 9/11 to give offitwo months after the Sept. 11 atcials a heads up about the comtacks. The rush to war was driven ing hostilities in Afghanistan. by fear, not hard intelligence, and The Russians, recent visitors by imagination, not facts … Bush to the graveyard of empires, warned, in October 2002, that ‘we cautioned that Afghanistan was cannot wait for the final proof — the an ‘ambush heaven’, and that, in the words of one of smoking gun — that could come in them, ‘you’re really going to get the hell kicked out the form of a mushroom cloud.’” of you.’ Cofer responded confidently: ‘We’re going to kill them. . . We’re going to rock their world.’” 9. “Reign of Terror,” Spencer Ackerman
(2021): TRUMP:
6. “The Dark Side,” Jane Mayer (2008): LEGALITY: “Beginning almost immediately after September 11, 2001, Vice President Cheney saw to it that some of the sharpest and besttrained lawyers in the country, working in secret in the White House and the United States Department of Justice, came up with legal justifications for a vast expansion of the government’s power in waging war on terror.”
“Trump’s great insight was that the jingoistic politics of the War on Terror did not have to be tied to the War on Terror itself. That enabled him to tell a tale of lost greatness … The backlash against Muslims, against immigrants crossing the southern border and against protesters rallying for racial justice was strengthened by the open-ended nature of the global war on terror … Trump had learned the foremost lesson of 9/11 was that the terrorists were whomever you said they were.”
7. “The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable,” David Cole (2009): THE TORTURING:
10 . “9/11 Commission Report” (2004): HISTORY LESSONS:
“CIA agents and contractors, in addition to using ’authorized’ and previously reported tactics as waterboarding, wallslamming, forced nudity, stress positions, and extended sleep deprivation … (also) threatening suspects with a revolver and a power drill; repeatedly applying pressure to a detainee’s carotid artery until he began to pass out; staging a mock execution; (and) threatening to sexually abuse a suspect’s mother.”
“The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors … We need to defend our ideals abroad vigorously. America does stand up for its values … As time passes, more documents become available, and the bare facts of what happened become still clearer. Yet the picture of how those things happened becomes harder to reimagine, as that past world, with its preoccupations and uncertainty, recedes.”
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Eitan Na’eh: The Ambassador of Peace Sent to the Gulf By Majalla Illustration by Ali Mandalawi As the first anniversary of the peace agreement signed between Israel, Bahrain and the UAE will be celebrated in mid-September, the first Israeli ambassador sent to the UAE and Bahrain following the deal comes under spotlight. Eitan Na’eh was Israel’s first diplomat to take up office in the United Arab Emirates following its normalization deal with Israel, serving as chargé d’affaires of the Israeli Embassy in Abu Dhabi, a position he has held since January. Last week, he was nominated as Israel’s first ambassador to Bahrain, the same day that Bahrain’s new envoy to Israel presented his credentials to Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. In September 2020, former US President Donald Trump announced the Bahrain-Israel agreement had concluded a peace agreement, describing it as a “historic achievement.” Khaled Yousef al-Jalahmah, Bahrain’s first ambassador to Israel, met last week with Lapid in the Knesset and presented him with a copy of his diplomatic credentials. “The opening of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s embassy in Israel is another step towards true peace in the Middle East,” said Yair Lapid, Israel’s Foreign Minister, in a statement following
the meeting. “Many countries in the region see the strong ties that are being forged between us and the Bahrainis, as well as the brave decision made by the King of Bahrain, His Majesty Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, to establish peace with Israel. In the future, other countries that are changing the face of the Middle East will too join the circle of peace.” Na’eh worked in Abu Dhabi for eight months and his first task was to strengthen the relationship between the two countries at all levels and expand relations with the UAE government, economic entities, the private sector, academia, media and others. The Bahraini official news agency had highlighted the arrival of the ambassador and the upcoming official opening of the embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain in Tel Aviv, describing it as an important step for developing bilateral relations between the two countries and their peoples. The acceptance of credentials was a priority for the Bahraini Foreign Minister, Lapid, Israel’s Foreign Minister, and Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Bahrain. Na’eh was born and raised in Kiriat Bialik, north of Haifa. He studied political science and History of the Middle East in Tel Aviv university. He was head of Turkey, Greece and Cyprus
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dept at the ministry, and was ambassador to Baku/ Azerbaijan, 2001-2005. He worked at the National Security Council as Head of Diplomatic secretariat at the Prime minister’s office and then sent to London in 2013-2016, and as Ambassador to Ankara until May 2018. Na’eh continued to occupy political and diplomatic positions at the beginning of the current millennium, when he was appointed as Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan in 2001, and then as director of the foreign policy department in Erzdarjan at its national security headquarters in 2005. He continued to move among the diplomatic seats of Israel, as he also held the position of Deputy and Acting Ambassador to the Israeli Embassy in the United Kingdom which was then responsible for relations with the UK. From 2016-2018, after nearly five years without an Israeli envoy to Turkey, Na’eh served as Israel’s envoy to Turkey until he was expelled by Ankara in protest of the deaths of dozens of Palestinians during violent clashes with Israeli forces on the border with the Gaza Strip. With the start of the current year 2021, Na’eh held the position of Israeli Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, before becoming the first Ambassador of Israel to Bahrain to which he was appointed the past few days.