And a song for contemporary India? Listen to this weird electronica remix of the Indian national anthem that has caused a lot of controversy. “Vande Mataram” by MIDIval Punditz.
News – Israel-Lebanon gas field deal staves off war threat
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63414872
Israel and Lebanon has agreed to set their borders in the Mediterranean Sea. Israel and neighboring countries had been in a dispute over rights to a gas field since the founding of Israel. The powerful militant and political group in Lebanon Hezbollah had menaced to attack Israel when it extracted gas before the deal. Both countries benefit economically from the gas field. The signed agreement covers 330 sq miles of sea off their coasts. Nether countries were able to utilize the area’s natural resources due to a disagreement over where the boundary is up until now. Disputed areas subsume part of Karish, a confirmed gas field, and part of Qana, a prospective gas field. Israel maintained full rights to Karish under the US-brokered deal, and Lebanon’s rights to Qana were also recognized. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who fighting a general election next week, deemed the agreement as a diplomatic achievement. “It is not every day that an enemy state recognizes that State of Israel, in a written agreement, in front of the entire international community,” he stated. Yet, Lebanese President Michel Aoun regarded the deal as “technical work that has no political implication.” Mr. Lapid’s political rival Benjamin Netanyahu, hoping to return to power, has stated the agreement illegal. This agreement between two countries is more than crucial as it raises hopes that there could be real change in the relationship between the two countries. Some deals are signed to stave off war, yet some are signed to start one.
News – Israeli and Palestine conflict beyond the borders
Aljazeera News – Diplomatic spat after Chile leader snubs new Israeli ambassador
The conflict between Israeli and Palestine was intensified after the Israel started a campaign in West Bank cities, aiming to respond to the increasingly organized Palestine resistance. Over the past year, Israeli has been carrying out killings and mass arrests in cities such as Jenin and Nablus. Last week, a seventeen-year-old Palestinian boy lost his live as a victim of the violence from the Israeli force. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and especially this news have effects on diplomatic relationships far beyond the borders of the conflict. The news article above shares the story on the diplomatic spat between Chile and Israeli as an example. The dispute happened over the postpone of the newly appointed Israeli ambassador in Chile due to the death of the Palestinian minor. This news article also provides the not surprisingly opposing responses from Israel and Palestine. In addition, it also mentions the opinion of the Chilean president Gabriel Boric on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
As we have seen briefly during our discussion on the Middle East, the explanation for the Israeli and Palestinian conflict requires taking into account complexity. Moreover, this conflict is an example of how past historical events shape our world today. Lastly, I want to raise a question of the role of politics on how conflicts were viewed. For instance, what would the majority of Chilean, who are distant from the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, view this issue when their president favors one side over the other?
News – India, Pakistan, and Cricket
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-63333542
This is BBC news about India and Pakistan’s relationship in cricket, which is different from the cases outside the field. There had been issues in the Indian and Pakistani past including the independence of Bangladesh, wars on the land of Kashmir, and the Partition of British India. Despite the fact that there were conflicts between the two nations, cricket players themselves were not affected along the way. According to Sunil Gavaskar, a former Indian cricket player, there was no tension between Pakistanis and Indians. Instead, they had good memories and admired each other. Nevertheless, the outside conflict, wars in 1965 and 1971, caused India and Pakistan unable to play against themselves for the next 17 years. After the conflict has lost its steam, they were tied in sports for the next two decades until India rejected playing with Pakistan due to another conflict in Kashmir. The theme of religions, Hinduism and Islam, and the tension caused by them which divided India and Pakistan are affecting the areas of sports though the sports spirit surpasses the fight between the two nations.
Song of the Day – Khwaja Mere Khwaja from Jodhaa Akbar
A song to start us of on our week of South Asian history! This is Khwaja Mere Khwaja from the blockbuster historical Bollywood, Jodhaa Akbar, a spiritual song that shows some of the intercultural exchanges we will discuss on Monday.
News Story – Protests in Iran
BBC – 10/4/22 – Iran protests: ‘The people will fight until they succeed’
This news story from the BBC gives the perspectives of three Iranian women about the recent protests for more women’s rights in Iran. They mention what protesters have faced, including being hit by batons or being shot, and how their local areas have changed since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in Tehran. It has ignited a new wave of people to fight for new rights and freedoms. One of the women even mentions taking off her hijab when walking right in front of the police’s eyes. For a lot of them, it seems like a new era in which the people will keep fighting until the regime gives in. In the context of our study of the Middle East, this news story gives an example of some of the contemporary conflcts that are rooted in historical debates about religion, culture, and society in the region. The BBC news story, relying on the direct accounts of three women, deviates from how many have characterized recent developments in Iran or the Middle East in general in which there are ‘oppressive’ or ‘tyrannical’ governments at the heart of a region that have always been ‘unstable’. Although we do not want to minimize the actions of the more authoritarian regimes or the stories of the people living there, as historians we have to be aware of using a biased or skewed lens, especially when the ‘Orientalist’ view has taken hold in Euro-American politics and culture for a long time.
Middle East Blog Entry 10/17
Today, we continued studying the Middle East’s multifaceted and complex history. We learned the importance of the Middle East as a bridge between Africa and Asia and a bridge for both culture and empire. Through the rise of Islam and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East became a prevalent and powerful region in the world. The rise of the Middle East also grew the increase of xenophobic beliefs and Islamophobic ideals in Europe. European Christians believed that Muslims were violent and pursued a false religion. They claimed the Prophet Muhammad (alayhi as-salam) was the antichrist. Islamophobic ideas seen today can be traced back to the Roman Empire. The Ottoman Empire began to decline in the 1600s. In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt, signifying the start of European expansion into the Middle East. The Middle East today is shaped but the long-lasting rule of the Ottoman Empire, the growth of Islam, and the expansion of Europe. We are just scratching the surface of a region with so much history.
Songs of the Day – from the Middle East
A full exploration of the musical traditions of the Middle East is beyond our expertise! But we can start with music of the Ottoman Empire – classical Ottoman and traditional Ottoman music had an influence across the Empire, which controlled much of what we call the Middle East, North Africa, and south east Europe. Note the prominence of the oud, the fretless lute, a music scale distinctive from western music (including quarter tones halfway between notes), complex rhythmic structures, and the prominence (though not in this example) of the solo vocalist…
The music here is a version of the traditional Turkish folk song, “Kâtibim” (“my clerk” or “my secretary”), or “Üsküdar’a Gider İken” (“while going to Üsküdar”) about a woman traveling to Üsküdar with her secretary. I can’t speak for the visuals in the video, which are cobbled together from historical Ottoman sources of the 18th and 19th c. The song has been adapted and revised and performed in thousands of new contexts. Take this version for example, with Turkish zither (qanam), West African kora, and Turkish and Pakistani singers, Sumru Ağıryürüyen and Zoe Vicajji. A beautiful version, well worth a listen…
Or, for a classic – Umm Kulthum. For one of the most famous songs from one of the most famous singers in the Arab world. Umm Kulthum, born of the Nile Delta, daughter of an Imam, rose to prominence in the 1930s. For forty years she was a powerful international presence, spreading classical Arabic music throughout the Middle East and around the world. She was known for her passionate style and improvisation. When she died in 1975, millions of Egyptians turned out to honor her.
This video is from a 1967 performance in Paris. “You Are My Life” (Enta Omri), one of her most famous songs. The English subtitles explain the love story….
Or for something more contemporary… Cheb Khaled & Diana Haddad – Mass Ou Louly -Diamonds & Pearls
Diana Haddad, from Lebanon, is a superstar in the Arab world – and has been for twenty years now. Cheb Khaled – an international star from Algeria who popularized raï music (an Algerian folk style that incorporates European and Arabic influences). With its simple lyrics – Diamonds & Pearls – and performed in a dialect that could be understood across the Arab world, this song was a huge hit on its release in 2006.
Blog 10/5/22 – Japan and Korea
The topic I chose to write about from today’s class is the complex, interwoven history of empire and nation building in Japan and Korea. In the span of less than a century, Japan transitioned from an agrarian empire restricted by choice to its own archipelago to a fully-industrialized imperial superpower on the global stage–only to be toppled and forced into submission by the USA in WW2. In the same time span, Korea went from a largely independent tributary kingdom of China to a mere colony under oppressive Japanese rule to a divided nation used as the staging ground for a proxy war between the USA and USSR. Such rapid and wide-reaching changes are bound to leave many people displaced, and among such displaced peoples were the Zainichi, a population of 600,000 ethnic Koreans living in Japan who were unwilling or unable to be repatriated to the new Korean states after the end of the war. As a contradiction to the image of postwar Japan as a unified ethnostate, the Zainichi were and are subjected to intense social and legal discrimination, which the Japanese government has been sluggish to combat.
Legacy of Empire In China (10/5 blog post- Logan Burger)
Today’s discussion and last night’s reading were very interesting to me and provided a very good insight into China and its continuing imperialism.
The Chinese for a long time conquered non-Han territories like Vietnam or Korea, but the Qing dynasty dramatically expanded China to mostly similar frontiers as today. The Qing were ruled the Manchus, a minority ethnic group from northeastern China, making their rule over the mostly Han Chinese quite imperialist in terms of controlling a different people. The Qing didn’t encourage assimilation into the new territories and a good chunk of their culture survived the Qing era. Though after the 1911 Revolution, it’s leader Sun Yat-Sen encouraged assimilation among the minorities to ensure the survival of Chinese civilization. A lot of these ideas weren’t fully put through though, as Sun Yat-Sen only ruled China for a year or two. After the Chinese Civil War and the conquest of Tibet, a dilemma confronted the PRC in their new vast territory; how to treat the many ethnicities. At first they used a stalinist approach in giving them autonomy and also used western writings to scale down the number the number of ethnicities based on shared languages. However, in recent years, due to growing calls for equality and independence, Yat-Sen’s idea of assimilation has been revived, and some of the means of assimilating have garnered the justified scorn of the international community.