Feb posts get a good workout, and the brilliant Juan Cole

February posts

Yes, today is Leap Day, and I offer one stat. February has been different in that more than the usual number of posts from the month itself appear in the top ten most viewed in the month.

Juan Cole

If you go to my 2005 archive you will find a page of recommended reading. In the Current Affairs section you will find Juan Cole.

And in 2024 you will find the link still works — which is great, because for a while he went subscriber only. I am glad he has opened up. It is a public service as his material is of the very best quality.

Informed Comment sheds light on how war, climate change and globalization are shaping our world.

Drawing on the insights of expert journalists, activists, and academics, we strive to publish deep geopolitical analysis that’s readable for a general audience. And unlike most foreign policy-oriented publications, our editorial line isn’t dictated by beltway think tanks or corporate boards.

His biography tells an amazing story. Just in part:

…After summer of travel in 1976 (Syria, Turkey, Iran, India), Juan arrived at AUC in September. He did an MA in Arabic Studies/ History. He studied the Qur’an, the life of the Prophet and early Islam, Abbasid poetry, the history of Sufi orders, Muslim jurisprudence, and modern history, with many of the texts Arabic primary sources. Unlike AUB, AUC did not offer a degree in religion, and Juan was therefore constrained to become a historian instead. He did a seminar with SOAS-trained Marsden Jones on the French invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1798-1801, and Jones told him that someone needed to write a good book on the episode that took advantage of the broad range of sources for it. Juan lived in the al-Abbasiya neighborhood near Ain Shams University, which has many Coptic Christians, and made friends with some. He also had many Muslim Egyptian friends, and some from the small, disorganized Baha’i community. He continued to read modern literature in his spare time, including Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Faulkner and Hemingway in English, and Sartre, Raymond Aron and other modern French writers in French….

He is currently  Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Few people are as well qualified experientally or academically to comment on Middle Eastern matters.

Juan Cole on Palestine, that Palestinians are Indigenous, are descended from the Canaanites, and that Palestinian identity is not new

Two posts in reply to Ron de Santis. Brilliant posts. Must read posts if ever there were!

I have had quarrels with some views I have seen, as in this post for example: Weeping ranting thinking even despairing.

The genome rant

I will leave you to wade through this. In my opinion a whole lot of rather barren argumentation has gone on on all sides of this matter when all that really matters is who in fact has occupied, belonged to and/or ruled this land and its near neighbours for at least the past 2,000 years and the answer is quite a few groups. Standard historical methods can arrive at perfectly sensible answers to the questions of who has the right and there can be no doubt, unfortunately, that the foundation of a Jewish State, as distinct from the perfectly acceptable idea of a safe haven for Jews, has been rooted in a number of quite dubious assumptions, made worse by the 2018 Israeli Citizenship Law which is manifestly unjust.

Yes an unholy mess was created in 1948 and from at least 1917 on, and doubling down on it as Netanhyahu and the even more extreme “patriots” he now relies on has made matters far far worse.

There are people of good will among all the communities who call what used to be the British Mandate of Palestine home. There always has been. So sad that too often they have not been listened to.

Creating a wasteland and calling it peace! When will humanity ever learn?

No matter what their DNA profile all those who live or whose families have lived in Israel/Palestine, whether recently arrived or able to trace ancestry objectively and reliably a long long way back, are entitled to the same citizenship rights in a properly constituted state.

That is the minimum we expect in Australia, whatever our family histories and cultural and religious identities — or other markers of identity. In fact we all enjoy multiple identities. (Look up On Identity by Amin Maalouf, one of my all-time favourite books.)

So wade through all this — but ultimately, fascinating as it might be, it does not actually matter. Or should not. Which of course is merely my opinion…..

The two articles are Yes, Mr. DeSantis, there is a Palestinian People that has exercised Power in Historical Palestine (30th April 2023) Part 1 and Yes, Mr. DeSantis, Palestinians are Indigenous, Descended from the Canaanites, and Palestinian Identity is not New Part 2. Do go to them.

In the second of his two brilliant and detailed posts Juan Cole says:

While genetic history is working itself into various forms of nationalism, I wish it wouldn’t. For one thing, human beings just aren’t that different from one another, even if they carry distinctive haplotypes. Haplotypes are “a set of DNA variants along a single chromosome that tend to be inherited together.” But humans are always evolving and intermarrying, and haplotypes come and go. Some really old human DNA has yielded haplotypes that don’t seem even to exist any more. We all have diverse ancestries, most of which can no longer be traced.

But the reverse is also true. Naive nationalists misuse genealogical history to exclude and demonize. Some Jewish nationalists or Zionists seem to really mind the scientific finding that today’s Palestinians and other Levantine Arabs show strong genetic continuity with the Canaanites. This dismay derives from the Canaanite city-states and small kingdoms having preceded Israel in history, such that they have a stronger claim on being indigenous. If Palestinians are the descendants of the Canaanites, do they have a superior claim on today’s Israel/Palestine?

Sure, if haplotypes were all that mattered. They aren’t. Human beings today have individual rights, incorporated into treaty law via UN instruments. Palestinians and Israelis both have a Canaanite heritage. That is irrelevant to their present-day human rights. Both should have the right to basic human freedoms, to citizenship in a state, to their own property and livelihoods and to self-fulfilment. Both should be able to live free of violence. These basic rights matter more than from whom they are descended or where their ancestors used to live.

In the following the interviewer is the great journalist Robert Scheer, who is getting old — he is 87 — and does rabbit on and on. But be patient and persist.

One comment: “Juan Cole knows more than anyone in his field.” I agree.