Hebrew University made this announcement on Wednesday, reinstating Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian:

In a meeting held today between the Rector of the Hebrew University, Prof. Tamir Sheafer, and Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian clarified that as a critical feminist researcher, she believes all victims and does not doubt their words, and that she did not deny the fact that on 7.10 there were cases of rape in the South. After this clarification, the Hebrew University will allow Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian to continue teaching at the School of Social Work and Social Welfare.

Prof. Sheafer stressed that the Hebrew University strongly condemns inciting words and threats against students, lecturers, individuals and groups, and calls on all members of the University community to maintain a safe and respectful study and research environment.

Before this announcement the following letter had been sent:

Prof. Asher Cohen, President
Prof. Tamir Sheafer, Rector
Prof. Asher Ben-Arieh, Dean
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
24 March 2024
Dear President Cohen, Rector Sheafer, and Dean Ben-Arieh,

Prof. Asher Cohen, President Prof. Tamir Sheafer, Rector Prof. Asher Ben-Arieh, Dean The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 24 March 2024

Dear President Cohen, Rector Sheafer, and Dean Ben-Arieh,

We, the undersigned Palestinian faculty (current and former) at Israeli institutions of higher education, find your recent suspension of our dear colleague, Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, highly alarming and disturbing. Your decision does not only amount to an assault on her personally, and on her internationally esteemed scholarship, but also on all members of the academic community in Israel who aim to think freely, unrestricted by state agendas and ideologies.

Universities must aim to uphold the universality of knowledge, and this requires an unwavering commitment to liberty, equality, and justice. Academic institutions must provide open and safe spaces for the free and equal exchange of ideas and evaluate them according to merit as established within the rigors of academic disciplines. Scholarly discussions can only be fruitful and meaningful within these conditions.

Regrettably, your letter of 12 March 2024 addressed to and about Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian, as well as other prior public announcements, show that Hebrew University, under your leadership, is failing to adhere to these fundamental academic principles. You would do well to recall Hannah Arendt’s observation that when pervasive thoughtlessness runs rampant, immoral acts become the norm.

Your decision serves to censure Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s voice, along with the voices of other scholars and students who legitimately and rightfully question Israel’s policies and actions. Such critical voices participate in important conversations with academics, legal experts, humanitarian organizations, and NGOs around the world. As a world-renowned expert on state crimes and genocide, Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian holds particular legitimacy in expressing her researched opinions. Your decision to suspend Professor Shalhoub- Kevorkian sets a dangerous precedent, perilously undermining academic freedom at your institution, and potentially at other institutions as well – signaling a warning to those who might dare to speak against the state.

Instead of fulfilling your duty to protect Professor Shalhoub-Kervorkian’s academic freedom, you are encouraging voices that support the Israeli state in its massive assault on tens of thousands of civilians. Your statements and actions work to further inflame tensions at a time when hate speech of vocal professors and students at Israeli universities, including at yours, is escalating and ultimately escaping sanction. Dissenters and Palestinians are the members of the university community whose safety, and whose right to speak freely, requires your vigilant defense today.

We, the undersigned, request that you publicly withdraw your statements regarding Professor Shalhoub- Kevorkian, and that you work to ensure a safe space for students and faculty at the Hebrew University. Such a step would send an important message to the international academic community that universities must preserve academic freedom first and foremost.

Sincerely,

Michael Karayanni The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ميخائيل كرين 1.
Asʻad Ganim University of Haifa أسعد غانم 2.
Ahmad H. Sa’di Ben Gurion University of the Negev أحمد سعدي 3.
Manal Totry-Jubran Bar-Ilan University منال توتري-جبر ان 4.
Jeries Khoury Tel Aviv University جريس خوري 5.
Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder Ben Gurion University of the Negev رساب أبو ربيعة 6.
Nidaa Khoury Ben Gurion University of the Negev نداء خوري 7.
Marwan Dwairy Oranim College of Education مروان دويري 8.
Maurice Ebileeni University of Haifa موريس عبلّين 9.
Raif Zreik The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute رائف زريق 10.
Ameed Saabneh University of Haifa عميد صعابنة 11.
Honaida Ghanim Independent هنيدة غانم 12.
Nadeem Karkabi University of Haifa ر كننديم كر 13.
Jihad El-Sana Ben Gurion University of the Negev جهاد الصّانع 14.
Samer Swaid University College London سامر سويد 15.
Fadia Nasser Tel Aviv University فادية ناص 16.
A’as Atrash Independent عاص أطرش 17.
Amira Daher Zefat Academic College أمبر ة ضاهر 18.
Rawia Aburabia Sapir Academic College راوية أبو ربيعة 19.
Ahmad Igbaria Tel Aviv University أحمد إغبارية 20.
Arin Salamah-Qudsi University of Haifa عرين سالمة-قدس 21.
Manar Makhoul Tel Aviv University منار مخّول 22.
Salwa Nakkara University of Haifa سلوى نقارة 23.
Maha Sabbah-Karkabi Ben Gurion University of the Negev مها صبّاح-ركنكر 24.
Abeer Otman The Hebrew University of Jerusalem عثمان ر عبب 25.
Adeem Massarwa Ben Gurion University of the Negev أديم مصاروة 26.
Faisal Azaiza University of Haifa فيصل عزايزة 27.
Ramzi Sulieman University of Haifa رمزي سليمان 28.
Nadim Rouhana Tufts University نديم روحانا 29.
Ahmad Abu Akel University of Haifa أحمد أبو عقل 30.
Rassem Khamaisi University of Haifa راسم خمايس 31.
Bashir Bashir The Open University of Israel ر بشب ر بشب 32.
Mohammad Massalha The Open University of Israel محمد مصالحة 33.
Fuad Iraqi Tel Aviv University فؤاد عراق 34.
Heba Yazbak The Open University of Israel هبة يزبك 35.
Wael Abu-’Uksa The Hebrew University of Jerusalem وائل أبو-عقصة 36.
Taghreed Yahia-Younis Tel Aviv University ر تغريد يحن-يونس 37.
Suleiman Abu-Bader Ben Gurion University of the Negev سليمان أبو بدر 38.
Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud Coastal Carolina University أبو عقصة داود ر سهب 39.
Sarah Abu-Kaf Ben Gurion University of the Negev كف سارة أبو 40.
Mansour Nasasra Ben Gurion University of the Negev منصور نصاصة 41.
Hisham Jubran Beit Berl College هشام جبر ان 42.
Nihaya Daoud Ben Gurion University of the Negev نهاية داوود 43.
Rami Aqeilan The Hebrew University of Jerusalem رام عقيالن 44.
Abdalla Mashall Ben Gurion University of the Negev عبد هللا مشال 45.
Edriss Titi Weizmann Institute of Science إدريس تين 46.
Johnny Mansour Beit Berl College جون منصور 47.
Manal Gabour Beit Berl College منال جبّور 48.
Khalid Ghanayim University of Haifa خالد غنايم 49.
Ahmad Natour The Hebrew University of Jerusalem أحمد الناطور 50.
Yousef Jabareen Tel-Hai Academic College يوسف جبارين 51.
Ibrahim Geries University of Haifa إبراهيم جريس 52.
Ibrahim Taha University of Haifa إبراهيم طه 53.
Hassan Khalilih University of Haifa حسن خليلية 54.
Mahmoud Yazbak University of Haifa محمود يزبك 55.
Tawfiq Da’adli The Hebrew University of Jerusalem توفيق دعادلة 56.
Adel Manna The Hebrew University of Jerusalem عادل منّاع 57.
Areen Hawari The Hebrew University of Jerusalem عرين هواري 58.
Ula Aweida The Hebrew University of Jerusalem عال عويضة 59.
Muhammad Haj-Yahia The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ر محمد حاج يحن 60.
Muhammad Al-Atawneh Ben Gurion University of the Negev محمد العطاونة 61.
Abed El Qadir Kanaaneh Tel Aviv University كناعنة عبد 62.
Muzna Awayed-Bishara Tel Aviv University مزنة عويد-بشارة 63.
Issam Aburaya Seton Hall University عصام أبو ريا 64.
Zahiye Kundos Independent زهية قندس 65.
Nabih Bashir Independent ر نبيه بشب 66.
Muhammad Amara Beit Berl College محمد أمارة 67.
Elinor Saiegh-Haddad Bar-Ilan University اليانور صايغ-حداد 68.
Khawla Abu-Baker Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education خولة أبو بكر 69.
Aida Fahmawi-Watad Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education عايدة فحماوي-وتد 70.
Maram Masarwa Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education مرام مصاروة 71.
Hanna Bishara Tel Aviv University حنا بشارة 72.
Raja Giryes Tel Aviv University رجا جريس 73.
Ayman Agbaria University of Haifa أيمن إغبارية 74.
Muhammad Abu Samra The David Yellin Academic College of Education محمد أبو سمرة 75.
Areej Mawasi Technion أري ج مواس 76.
Nisreen Morqus Oranim College of Education نرسين مرقس 77.
Sylvia Saba-Sadi Gordon College of Education سيلفيا سابا-سعدي 78.
Ismael Abu-Saad Ben Gurion University of the Negev إسماعيل أبو سعد 79.
Wurud Jayusi Beit Berl College / Arab Academic Institute ورود جيوس 80.
Nihaya Wishahi Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education نهاية وشاح 81.
Khaled Abu-Asbe خالد أبو عصبة 82.
Raid Saabni The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo رائد صعابنة 83.
Asharf Brik Technion ف إبريقرأرس 84.
Norman Metanis The Hebrew University of Jerusalem نورمان إميل مطانس 85.
Riad Agbaria Ben Gurion University of the Negev رياضإغبارية 86.
Saleem Zaroubi University of Groningen ر سليم زارون 87.
Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat Tel Aviv University فاتنة إبريق-زبيدات 88.
Warda Sada Independent وردة سعدة 89.
Loab Hammoud Bar-Ilan University لؤاب حمود 90.
Ahmad Masarwa The Hebrew University of Jerusalem أحمد مصاروة 91.
Amal Rouhana-Toubi Braude – College of Engineering آمال روحانا-رطون 92.
Samir Hajj Oranim Academic College and Beit Berl College حاج ر سمب 93.
Areej Sabbagh-Khoury The Hebrew University of Jerusalem أري جصباغ-خوري 94.
Khaled Furani Tel Aviv University خالد فوران 95.
Banna Shoughry-Badarne The Hebrew University of Jerusalem بانة شغري-بدارنة 96.
Yaqub Hanna Weizmann Institute of Science يعقوب حنا 97.
Manal Shalabi Independent ر منال شلن 98.
Nicole Khayat The Hebrew University of Jerusalem نيكول خيّاط 99.

Mayor slams op-ed as ‘bigoted’ and ‘Islamophobic,’ calls for increased police patrols in city

By: Jon King –

( Michigan Advance ) – Reaction to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about Dearborn intensified through the weekend, as President Joe Biden and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined the chorus of condemnation. 

The WSJ op-ed, “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital,” alleged thousands of residents in the predominantly Muslim city, including “imams and politicians” are siding with “Hamas against Israel and Iran against the U.S.”

The op-ed was written by Steven Salinsky, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a group critics say often produces selective or inaccurate translations to negatively portray Muslims and Arabs. 

By Saturday morning, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a former House member, took to social media to lambast the piece.

“It’s 2024 and the @WSJ still pushes out this type of garbage. Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic,” said Hammoud, who called Dearborn “one of the greatest American cities in our nation,” noting that not only was it the home of the Ford Motor Co., but the fastest-growing city in Michigan, as well as  among the most diverse.

But within about two hours, he came back to X to note the negative impact the WSJ piece was having. 

“Effective immediately –  Dearborn police will ramp up its presence across all places of worship and major infrastructure points,” said Hammoud. “This is a direct result of the inflammatory @WSJ opinion piece that has led to an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city of Dearborn. Stay vigilant.”

Requests for comment on the nature of those threats were sent by the Michigan Advance to both Dearborn Police and Michigan State Police, but have yet to be returned.

Click On Detroit | Local 4 | WDIV | Video | –
“Dearborn police on high alert after WSJ opinion article”

CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid said the group welcomes “the proactive approach taken by Mayor Hammoud to protect the Muslim community from potential attack based on the false claims in this inaccurate and inflammatory commentary.” The Washington, D.C.-based CAIR reports that the groups received 3,578 complaints during the last three months of 2023 — a 178% increase compared to a similar period in 2022.

Almost exactly 24 hours after Hammoud’s post, Biden also posted to social media his criticism of the WSJ op-ed.

“Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong,” said Biden. “That’s exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate, and it shouldn’t happen to the residents of Dearborn – or any American town. We must continue to condemn hate in all forms.”

State Rep. Alabas Farhat (D-Dearborn) said he’ll be introducing a resolution in the House on Tuesday condemning “vile rhetoric.” 

“Glad to see the President condemning the hateful bigoted piece published by @WSJ,” he wrote. “Let’s not forget that dehumanizing words and policies lead to the rise in hate crimes we’re seeing.” 

Whitmer also issued a post on Sunday.

“Dearborn is a vibrant community full of Michiganders who contribute day in and day out to our state. Islamophobia and all forms of hate have no place in Michigan, or anywhere. Period,” she said.

Residents in Dearborn have organized and held multiple protests of the war against Hamas by Israel, jointly condemning the administration, and Biden specifically, for not embracing a cease-fire in Gaza, where more than 27,000 Palestinians have died since the Oct. 7 surprise attack by Hamas that killed as many as 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians.

Most recently, groups held a rally last Wednesday at Fordson High School in Dearborn, protesting the ongoing Israeli military action. It took place on the eve of Biden’s campaign visit to Michigan — which also drew protesters, as the Advance previously reported — and about a week after several Arab American leaders, including Hammoud, declined to meet with Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

While Biden administration officials have affirmed Israel’s right to respond to the attack, they have increasingly demanded more attention to minimizing civilian casualties.

“Israel must do more to stop violence against civilians in the West Bank and hold accountable those responsible for it,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last Thursday on sanctions levied by Biden against four Israeli settlers in the West Bank, part of an effort to curb civilian casualties in the region as the Israel-Hamas war continues. Negotiations on a ceasefire continued Sunday.

Critics of the WSJ op-ed said that protesting against American foreign policy, and even an American president, should not be used to indict an entire community, especially on ethnic or religious lines.

“Bigotry.  Hatred.  Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim.  If the headline was about any other minority — with the worst stereotype of that group — it would have never gotten through the editors at the WSJ,” said U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly), who is Jewish.

Fellow Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor), who lived in Dearborn for nearly 40 years, called it “another example of hate directed at a community that is already hurting, resulting in fear, vitriol, and threats of violence.”

Dingell said her “neighborhood and friends were supportive, caring, and dedicated, and concluded by stating that “We cannot let hatred of any kind, Islamophobia, antisemitism, destroy people. We must stand up to hate everywhere and anywhere we see it.”

 

Jon King

Jon King is the Senior Reporter for the Michigan Advance and has been a journalist for more than 35 years. He is the Past President of the Michigan Associated Press Media Editors Association and has been recognized for excellence numerous times, most recently in 2022 with the Best Investigative Story by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Cleary University. Jon and his family live in Howell.

 

Michigan Advance

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

He’s also provided some of America’s favorite headlines and jokes, even for progressives like me. As one fictional mom quipped in a Saturday Night Live skit at the end of his term in office, “If he’s gone, what am I supposed to do? Focus on my kids?” She was also mockingly lamenting the possibility that startling headlines like “‘Grab ‘em by the pussy” would disappear from our all-American world.

It turns out she needn’t have worried! It seems the media is far more eager these days to cover the former president’s endless missteps (or are they just steps?) than highlight the investments made by President Biden’s administration, which have finally started to pay off in terms of higher wages, more jobs, and lower carbon emissions. Big as we are on short-term gratification (or gloom) and the latest polls, we seem so much less interested in examining what presidents actually do.

Among Us

With the 2024 election heading toward us the way that asteroid hurtled toward the dinosaurs, while our sensationalistic political culture shows little sign of changing anytime soon, I’d suggest that we turn the conversation from the crazy stuff “Orange Jesus” loves to say to the fact that Trump and his supporters are, for the foreseeable future, going to be among us. Isn’t it time, imagining the worst to come, to start talking about what an anti-Trump resistance would look like?

To do so, we’d first have to take a closer look at what some of his most influential supporters are planning for the next time around. You may have noticed that a set of conservative think tanks and scholars, who call themselves Project 2025, have drafted a nearly thousand-page blueprint for a hypothetical Trump second term. It’s a document labeled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (though all it really purports to conserve is an abiding American focus on funding our military-industrial complex). The document covers everything from how a Trump administration ought to handle federal staffing to how it could restructure military and federal law enforcement agencies to its own benefit. Let me flag a few parts of that document that I find particularly concerning and suggest small ways in which you and I might act to preserve democratic values in a country that seems either to take them all too much for granted or care about them less and less.

“Taking the Reins of Government”

When it comes to the plans of Trump’s advisers to reshape the executive branch in an autocratic fashion, should he be reelected, the title in the relevant section of their document — “Taking the Reins of Government” — perfectly catches the top-down approach to power they envision. For years now, the Orange Jesus has made no secret of his urge to launch retribution against those in the Washington bureaucracy who opposed him and ensure that tens of thousands of career public service positions in federal agencies and the White House will, in (his) future, be held by people vetted for their loyalty to him (and only him!). So reads the first major section of that Mandate, which outlines how a second Trump administration would assert far more direct White House control over this country through the federal bureaucracy.

In fact, the document’s authors advocate that an incoming Trump administration circumvent the Vacancies Reform Act, which establishes standards for congressional vetting of temporarily appointed federal personnel. They suggest instead indefinitely using acting personnel in vacant positions, particularly ones the first Trump administration was hostile to like State Department diplomatic posts.

Buy the Book

Notably, the document is remarkably explicit about its recommendation to appoint acting personnel in departments already known for their abuse of American civil rights. (Think: Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials kidnapping Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland during the summer of 2020.) A chilling example is the Mandate’s discussion of how a Trump White House could appoint acting personnel at DHS from scratch to “guarantee implementation of a Day One agenda.” I can’t help thinking: Is this what Trump meant when he told a Fox News Town Hall that he would be a “dictator” only on day one? Ostensibly, he could make many of the worst decisions immediately and then leave his goons to carry out the rest of the dirty work, Putin-style.

Given such a topsy-turvy reality, if you were hoping that journalists would still be close at hand to help call out any disastrous lapses in integrity, think again. Because count on something else: serious journalists wouldn’t be allowed within a country mile of Donald Trump and his closest advisers. In fact, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the authors of the Mandate suggest the White House should have a very different relationship with its press pool, if there even were to be one at all. In describing a future Trumpian White House Office of Communications, the Mandate reads, “No legal entitlement exists for the provision of permanent space for media on the White House campus, and the next Administration should reexamine the balance between media demands and space constraints on the White House premises.”

Right! A Trump White House undoubtedly wouldn’t have space for all too much. At another point, in a paragraph on how Trump’s future communications director would need to “navigate the mainstream media” to advance the president’s agenda, the authors write, “The new Administration should examine the nature of the relationship between itself and the White House Correspondents Association and consider whether an alternative coordinating body might be more suitable.”

An “alternative coordinating body” organized by Donald Trump and crew? What could possibly go wrong?

In fact, just imagine a Trumpian future in which those with the president’s ear on every topic will be chosen by and aligned with that very same unhinged person, while his administration attempts to transform the media into its own propaganda arm, while repressing anything that might prove hostile to him in any way. In a second Trump White House, supporting an independent media would mean more than just subscribing to the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and local newspapers that will undoubtedly come under existential threats. It’s also going to mean providing an actual safe space for journalists whose exposés of government abuse will make them prime targets for the Orange Jesus’s followers. Think, for an analogous example, of murdered Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed abuse by Russian security forces against Muslim minority communities in the south of that country.

Now imagine, in an unhinged second Trump presidency, what sorts of doxing and other nightmares writers and their families might have to endure. We’ll all have to be ready to let such figures (or their threatened children and spouses) into our homes, lock the doors, and tell no one that they’re there. Meanwhile, the rest of us would have to protest — and get others to join us – when journalists and other oppositional figures start to be arrested under bogus charges or attacked by thugs. In a second Trump era, it will be of crucial importance for the rest of us to stand with those who continue to insist on telling the truth, even if you don’t agree with them politically.

It will be no less important to elevate and celebrate the writing of people who describe acts of resistance and heroism, be it their own or of others. I’m thinking about people like Washington Post columnist and author Jennifer Rubin or former Republican politico (and truthteller) Liz Cheney, who have made a point not just of critiquing the fascists aligned with Trump but of describing how to build life-affirming new policies that would serve the very constitution a second Trump term would undoubtedly try to toss into the gutter.

“The Common Defense”

Those would-be Trump presidential advisers have been remarkably detailed in describing their hopes for how a second Trump presidency could transform the U.S. military, and that section of their Mandate, I must admit, initially sounded okay to me. After all, they seemed to want to keep this country out of yet more foreign conflicts, while making the Pentagon accountable for how it spends its money. They also want more employment and financial support to be offered to military families (like mine!). In other words, many of the things I’ve been writing about at TomDispatch for years.

I was even initially impressed that they claimed to want the military to deprioritize “manufactured extremism” — until I realized that what they’re evidently referring to is the Pentagon’s plan (largely stalled at this point) to screen new and existing servicemembers for alignment with Nazi-style and white supremacist ideologies. In fact — I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn — their blueprint goes on to describe a military remade in the very image of those Project 2025 leaders as white, cisgender, and heterosexual men, and they want to start ’em young, too. The Mandate recommends standardized testing in all federally funded schools to check kids’ aptitude for military service. They want, in other words, to offer the Pentagon increased access to children for the purpose of recruitment. And the proposal only gets “better” after that. In fact, Trump’s future would-be advisers go on to support expelling people with gender dysphoria from that very military.

How are we then to trust that the Department of Defense won’t be used against the American people, if our troops are distinctly shaped not to reflect our exploding diversity? In fact, The Donald has called the 2024 election “the final battle” and has already suggested that he might take out after his foes (“vermin”), even possibly invoking the Insurrection Act to use the military to do so. And then, it seems, the rest of us would have to live with a military that embraced the very types who sought to tear down our elected government on January 6, 2021.

Oh, and even better news! The Mandate writers also propose increasing the number and size of American companies producing munitions here in the U.S., funding arms acquisition and training at more universities, and increasing the power of the arms production industry even further.

They also propose — and what could possibly go wrong here? — that the government should enhance its ability to deploy special forces and conduct irregular (nonstate) warfare “across the spectrum of competition, crisis, and conflict.” Hmmmm…. It’s hard for me not to recall a recent response by a Trump lawyer to a question by a federal judge in which he claimed that a president should be immune from prosecution for ordering a special forces unit to assassinate a political opponent. Welcome to 2025 and Trump 2.0!

All You Need Is Love

If former President Trump listens to his all-too-well-prepared advisers — and many think he would be more disciplined in doing so a second time around — there would be far less of a buffer of reasonable civil servants loyal to the Constitution between him and the rest of us. Given that, I’m suggesting that those of us in military communities tell our loved ones to defy any orders to brutalize other Americans who pose no violent threat to the rest of us — those exercising freedom of assembly and speech, running for public office, writing the truth. And even though this may sound counterintuitive to some of you, get rid of your guns! If the Trumpian security state that might arise did everything its would-be advisers advocate, there would be no point in taking up arms against it. After all, civil wars are the bloodiest forms of human conflict, with the worst impact on civilians.

But don’t give up either. Make sure in every way you can that elections continue, and show up to vote. Volunteer to get people to the polls and inform them of their rights as voters. Become an election worker or volunteer. Do your damnedest to keep a non-Trumpian world alive.

Change is afoot, and it could be bad, but who knows? It’s also possible that election 2024 will prove to be white supremacy’s dying gasp. Think of how readily Trump’s supporters scuttle away when the candidates he endorses lose elections. And if our very own Orange Jesus is more decisively denied access to power through a jail sentence or another big election loss, maybe all the planning of his toadies won’t mean a tinker’s damn. But that will only be true if we all show up and act, starting now.

Copyright 2024 Andrea Mazzarino

Via Tomdispatch.com

Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – What does it mean to be European? This is a complex but legitimate question. Still, one is unlikely to find an answer to the conundrum in the numerous billboards paid for by the EU Commission in Munich and many other European cities under the motto “You are Europe”.

There are four different models of EU-funded billboards. They all put focus on three different concepts, which give us a total of twelve ideas: freedom, peace, energy independence, democracy, diversity, climate protection, stability, respect, green transition, unity, security, and renewable energy. In every model of the billboard, there is a different single individual in the picture alongside a reference to renewable energies, with an electric car, solar panels, and a windmill appearing.

Billboard at Giselastrasse Subway Station. Munich, November 21, 2023.

By examining the billboards, we understand that the message the EU tries to convey is that the EU is a value-based community. The promotional site of this new campaign calls Europeans to “stand up for our values, to protect your and your family’s future, the climate and the planet.” But one does not need to do more than search online “EU billboard” to see how fragile these values can be. Because the billboards that are catching the headlines in Europe are not the ones promoted by the EU Commission but those found in one particular EU country, Hungary, and paid by Fidesz, the political party of the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

These billboards depict President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen alongside Alex Soros, the son of the Hungarian-born billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, under the slogan “Let’s not dance to their tunes”. This is not a first for Orban’s party, as they had already been responsible for similar billboards in 2019 featuring von der Leyen’s predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker and George Soros.

In the recently published book “Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project”, Hans Kundnani, an associate fellow at Chatham House, examines from a critical perspective how the EU has come to define itself and its values. The EU is often understood as a project united by the rejection of nationalism, which led to the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

This discourse can be found in, for instance, the address to the European Parliament in November 2018 by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel said that “nationalism and egoism must never have a chance to flourish again in Europe. Tolerance and solidarity are our future.” Kundnani begs to differ and presents a more complex picture of the EU, writing that “we should think of the EU as an expression of regionalism, which we should in turn think of as being analogous to nationalism—something like nationalism but on a larger, continental scale.”[1]

Internal borders and nationalistic competition between EU countries might have lost importance, but the borders and adversarial relations between Europe and the rest of the world remain there and have even hardened. It is difficult to disagree with Kundnani when we see how, despite their internal differences on the topic, EU countries are currently discussing how to further cooperate to establish harsher EU policies towards migrants and asylum seekers.

Kundnani’s key idea, namely that the EU represents a form of regional nationalism, helps understand the current rise of the European far-right from a different perspective. Increasingly, “the far right in Europe does not simply speak on behalf of the nation against Europe, but also on behalf of Europe”, notes Kundnani. Contrary to what many would think, the far-right can also be pro-European in its own specific way.

Hans Kundnani Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project. Hurst, 2023. Click here.

On December 3, European far-right parties held an international meeting in Florence, Italy, to co-ordinate in advance of the European elections to be held in June 2024. During the meeting, Reuters reports, “Jordan Bardella, president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, won applause speaking in Italian and saying that Europe cannot become a “5-star hostel for Africa”, and linking mass immigration to violence and crime.”[2]

Instead of hiding his Italian family background, which would have made sense from a French ultra-nationalist perspective, Bardella used his Italian language skills to appeal to his audience in Florence and demonize the non-European as violent and criminal. Inner European borders lose part of their importance when the main frame of reference is civilizational. And this is increasingly the case. European far-right parties share a belief in racist doctrines such as the ‘Replacement Theory’, which posits that white people around the world are being replaced by nonwhite people.

Kundnani argues that the regional nationalism we currently find in the EU is largely the result of its history. At the time the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957 establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), two of the six founding members – Belgium and France – still had colonies. This is what Kundnani calls the EU’s “original sin”.[3]

More important than that, however, is probably the way the EEC and its successor organizations, the European Community and the European Union, failed to come to terms during the following decades with this legacy of European colonialism and violence. Consequently, “the emerging official narrative of the EU was based on the internal lessons of European history, i.e. what Europeans had done to each other, but not the external lessons, i.e. what Europeans had done to rest of world—in particular colonialism.”[4]

There was an important sense, however, in which European regionalism could promote civic values. Kundnani mentions how many who described themselves as pro-Europeans saw “the social market economy and the welfare state as a more humane alternative to a more brutal American form of capitalism.”[5] Such an understanding of being European, which Kundnani names ‘civic regionalism’, reached its high-water mark in the decades following the Second World War. It became increasingly difficult to sustain in the face of the neo-liberalism of the 1980s and 1990s and the austerity measures imposed by the EU after 2008 during the Eurozone crisis.

This neo-liberal turn, and the increasing role of the EU in setting economic policies with little democratic oversight, argues Kundnani, was partly responsible for the rise in Euroscepticism. If the Eurozone crisis split the EU in terms of the better-off North versus the struggling South, the sudden increase in the arrivals of migrants and asylum seekers to Europe in 2015 led to important divergences between a more welcoming West and a closed-doors East. This double split, according to Kundnani, undermined the EU’s self-confidence. During the last years, the civic regionalism of the social market economy and the welfare state has receded even further in favor of a more exclusionary understanding of what it means to be European.

In this context, “centrists began to adopt far-right tropes and integrate them into the EU itself”.[6] Examples of this dynamic are abundant. After becoming President of the European Commission, the center-right politician Ursula von der Leyen announced the creation of a Commission Vice-Presidency for protecting ‘the European way of life’, which would include responsibility for topics such as migration. Von der Leyen, facing outrage, substituted the word ‘protecting’ for ‘promoting’, but little else changed. Meanwhile, the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, from the Socialist Spanish Party, pronounced a speech in 2022 where he defined Europe as a garden and added that “most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden”.

There are two significant weaknesses in “Eurowhiteness”. The first one is related to the very title of the book. Kundnani explains that “Eurowhiteness” is an “ethnic/cultural version of European identity”[7] but does not develop the concept extensively enough to justify why the term has such prominence in the title. The second shortcoming is the lack of a proper concluding chapter in the book. The last chapter deals with Brexit instead of pointing out some key ideas on the way forward if we want an EU that strengthens civic regionalism.

Catherine de Vries, the dean of international affairs at Bocconi University, has recently published an op-ed for the Financial Times that quotes Kundnani’s work and offers some significant reflections regarding the problems identified in “Eurowhiteness”. Reflecting on the recent electoral victory in the Netherlands of the far-right Party for Freedom (VVP) led by Geert Wilders, de Vries explains that we would be mistaken if we seek to understand the success of the European far-right only through its anti-migration rhetoric.

De Vries notes that “research has shown that cuts to public services play an important role in explaining the rise of the far right”. “Concerns about reduced access to public services”, she adds, “leads people to question the extent to which their government cares about people like them. Waning public services may also fuel immigration concerns out of fear of more congestion and overcrowding.”[8]

Kundnani’s book represents a major contribution to a better understanding of how nationalism, far from fading away with the emergence of a European Union that now covers most of Western and Central Europe, has adopted a new shape in the form of exclusivist European nationalism. “Eurowhiteness” is not without its faults, but it offers an intellectually stimulating and policy-relevant departing point to any discussion about the future of Europe.

[1] Hans Kundnani, Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (London: Hurst & Co., 2023), p. 3.

[2] Armellini, Alvise. “Far Right Parties Eye Gains in next Year’s EU Parliament Elections.” Reuters, December 3, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/far-right-parties-eye-gains-next-years-eu-parliament-elections-2023-12-03/.

[3] Kundnani, Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project, p. 75.

[4] Ibid., p. 94.

[5] Ibid., p. 84.

[6] Ibid., p. 126.

[7] Ibid., p. 6.

[8] De Vries, Catherine. “Migration Crackdowns Won’t Help Europe’s Moderate Right.” Financial Times, December 4, 2023. https://www.ft.com/content/6b3e2ee0-189e-47f4-95df-375d79dd6266.

Hateful anti-Palestinian feelings almost certainly are implicated in the shooting of three Palestinian-American students in Burlington, Vermont, this weekend. Of the three, Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmed, two are American citizens, and the third is a legal resident. Hisham Awartani, a student at Brown University, has a bullet lodged in his spine and may never walk again. He and one other are still in critical condition. One student has been released, but his identity has not be revealed for the sake of his own safety.

That’s right. This young man is not safe in America even after surviving a gunshot wound. Sounds like hate to me.

All three of these young men were graduates of a Quaker high school in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah. They were taught by people who believe in nonviolence.

They were visiting their aunt and their uncle (Rich Price) and had just been to a party for Price’s 8-year old sons. They went for a walk in the neighborhood and then were shot down. Two were wearing kuffiyehs, scarves typically worn by Palestinians though not exclusive to them, and they were speaking in a mixture of Arabic and English.

Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said, according to Kathy McCormack at AP, “In this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime. And I have already been in touch with federal investigatory and prosecutorial partners to prepare for that if it’s proven.”

Although the alleged shooter, Jason J. Eaton, 48, has not yet beeen charged with a hate crime enhancement, prosecutors are seeking the information that would allow them to apply that enhancement to the charges.

The families of the three young men said in a posting to X, “We are extremely concerned about the safety and well-being of our children. We call on law enforcement to conduct a thorough investigation, including treating this as a hate crime. We will not be comfortable until the shooter is brought to justice.”

Awartani, from his sickbed, issued a statement on the shooting for a candlelight vigil held at Brown University:

“It’s important to recognize that this is part of the larger story. This hideous crime did not happen in a vacuum. As much as I appreciate and love every single one of you here today, I am but one casualty in this much wider conflict.

Had I been shot in the West Bank, where I grew up, the medical services that saved my life here would likely have been withheld by the Israeli army. The soldier who shot me would go home and never be convicted. I understand that the pain is so much more real and immediate because many of you know me, but any attack like this is horrific, be it here or in Palestine.

This is why when you say your wishes and light your candles today, your mind should not just be focused on me as an individual, but rather as proud member of a people being oppressed.”

“Anti-Palestinianism,” Juan Cole, Digital (LunaPic), 2023.

Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are the last groups that it is all right to hate in the United States. The leader of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump, has tried to gain popularity by defecating on these groups with his big mouth. President Joe Biden has contributed to the demonization of Palestinians by purveying misinformation about the current conflict in the Mideast. He devalued Palestinian lives by baselessly and falsely calling into question the validity of the Gaza Ministry of Health professionals’ careful estimates of Palestinian deaths under Israeli bombardment. He erased the dead bodies of over 5,000 Palestinian children and over 10,000 noncombatant women and men. For all his citation of his Irish heritage and culture, Biden’s instincts are to side with the equivalent of the British in any anticolonial struggle.

American Zionists of whatever religious persuasion (Biden is a Catholic) have also played a role in the diminution of Palestinian humanity. Their line has been that there is no such thing as a Palestinian, though that isn’t a talking point into which Biden buys. This line seems to conflict with their other frequent assertion, that there are no innocent Palestinian civilians, which recognizes the Palestinians’ existence only to configure them as a terrorist people whose children are also terrorists and who all deserve to be killed or driven into the desert. That seems like a lot for people who don’t even exist in the first place.

My colleague Margaret Somers in her seminal book Genealogies of Citizenship discussed how the Nazis deliberately took citizenship away from German Jews so as to turn them into human flotsam and jetsam, unloved and unlovely on the world stage. The Nazis taunted their critics who decried state Antisemitism in the early 1930s, asking who now would take in these stateless people. The answer: almost no one. Certainly not Roosevelt’s America, where Washington officials feared riots if they let in large numbers of refugees at a time when 25% of Americans were unemployed. And virtually no one else stepped up, not even Brazil. Those Jews who were able to flee were dumped in a poor, dusty Third World British colony, not admitted to so-called “the civilized world.”

The Israelis are nothing like the Nazis in most respects. But they also have a policy of keeping the Palestinians in the Occupied territories, including Gaza, stateless. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just argued to his Likud Party that they should not dump him as leader because he is the only one who can handle Biden and fend off international demands for a Palestinian state– i.e. that he is the only one who can keep the Palestinians stateless.

Statelessness makes people look suspicious. Many Romani suffer from the same problem. The settled, rooted, citizens are afraid of those uprooted and made stateless. Somers quotes Hannah Arendt and Justice Earl Warren to the effect that citizenship is the right to have rights.

Because the Israelis ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, who have grown into millions of descendants today, they lost everything — their property, their crops, their homes, and their right to have basic human rights. Some 70% of Palestinians in Gaza are from such dispossessed families, and they have now been ethnically cleansed for a second time, in 2023 — a million and a half of them, which Biden and Tony Blinken say is just hunky dory. In the West Bank, Israeli squatters steal Palestinians’ land at will, as the Israeli army looks on or even actively helps.

Some Palestinians turned to violence (a remarkably small minority given what has been done to them) as a result of the injustices the Israelis visited on them. Their very violence was used to further impeach them as worthless specimens of humanity, as though the Zionist movement had not spawned violent terrorist groups and militias who killed thousands and expelled hundreds of thousands of people, who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and engaged in assassination. Once the Zionists had a state, they gained the legitimacy of statecraft, and state terror is almost never punished. The exception is where, as with the US struggle against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the terrorism of a state can be deployed against it for geopolitical purposes by a rival.

Americans have painted their anxieties on the Palestinians. In the Cold War, conservative burghers like Yasser Arafat and his PLO were painted as Communists. Hollywood’s favorite villains have been Arabs and Palestinians. In George Burns’ comedic film “Oh God, You Devil” (1984), when images of the satanic are flashed on the screen, Yasser Arafat’s face was one of them. It is difficult to distinguish Arafat’s and the PLO’s motives, however, from those of George Washington and the insurrectionists against the British in the eighteenth century (except that the British hadn’t done anything to the colonists like what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians).

Then in the era of Bush’s War on Terror, the Palestinians were scooped up under that label, even though by that time the PLO had recognized Israel and had been screwed over by the Israelis as a result.

There are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian-Americans, who deserve the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as all other Americans. They also have a right to wear a kuffiyeh, to speak the beautiful and divine language of Arabic in public, and to critique the colonialism that has impelled their diaspora.

Anti-Palestinianism is real. It is, as Beinart remarks, a commonplace of the discourse of US members of Congress. It must cease. Michael Connelly’s tough as nails detective, Hieronymous Bosch, has as his motto, as a fierce defender of victims, “Everybody counts or nobody counts.” That’s what Hisham Awartani was saying from his hospital bed. He, tragically, has likely lost the use of his legs. His plight, of being shot for walking while Palestinian, however, is all too common in Occupied Palestine itself. Americans have to care about Palestinians both here and there, because if they don’t they make hollow the ideals of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. They create a situation where nobody counts, really. Because someone, the one with the kuffiyeh, doesn’t count.

The absence of Palestinians and their advocates from news coverage isn’t just unfair. As a Jewish American, I think it’s harmful.

By Sarah Gertler |

( Otherwords.org ) – Like many of us, I’ve been glued to media coverage of the terrible violence in Gaza and Israel.

I was deeply shaken by the brutal killings of over a thousand Israelis on October 7. The families of Israelis killed and taken hostage deserve justice for these crimes. But instead of justice, all I’ve seen from the far-right Israeli government is more death.

Palestinians have already endured 75 years of displacement and oppression. The 2.2 million Palestinians living in the cramped Gaza strip have lived for 16 years under an Israeli siege that chokes their access to food, water, electricity, and movement.

Now Gazans’ access to these necessities has been cut off completely. Nearly half of the population’s homes have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombings, and well over 6,000 civilians have been killed. All with no end in sight.

As a Jewish American, I don’t feel safer when the Israeli government breaks international law to bomb families sheltering in refugee camps or cut off electricity to children in hospitals. I especially don’t feel safe knowing my U.S. tax dollars are funding these crimes.

And I’m not alone. Recently, I joined a march in Philadelphia calling for an end to the violence and freedom for the Palestinian people.

An estimated 10,000 of us showed up — including parents pushing strollers, friends holding banners together, and elderly couples arm in arm. We marched against what hundreds of scholars have warned is genocide.

It was a historic community call for peace. Yet it was noticeably absent from local news coverage. Days afterward, the only evidence it happened was one small news clip noting that “dozens gathered” — a comic misrepresentation.

Sky News: “Israel-Hamas war: Palestinians feel ‘unseen’, says ambassador”

“This is not only media suppression, but an erasure of history,” said Philadelphia organizer Nour Qutyan, who helped assemble the rally.

Just the previous week, a smaller rally in support of the Israeli government was covered by a swath of local news outlets. This eye-opening double standard reflects a much broader silencing of Palestinians and their advocates in the media.

During these weeks of Israel’s bombing campaign, leading Palestinian commentators including Noura Erakat, Omar Baddar, and Yousef Munayyer have had cable news appearances cut or canceled. Jewish American author Nathan Thrall had ads for a new book simply about Palestinians pulled from NPR and the BBC.

Equally noteworthy is the U.S. media’s passive treatment of Palestinian deaths. While headlines note when Israelis are “killed,” they often say that Palestinians simply “die,” without saying how.

According to a 2019 study on 50 years of coverage, U.S. headlines are also more than twice as likely to cite Israeli sources — including documented disinformation — than Palestinian sources.

This bias isn’t only unfair — it’s harmful.

Polls show the vast majority of Americans across party lines agree that our government should call for a ceasefire in Gaza. In Israel, even the siblings of people killed by Hamas are calling for peace, not war. Instead of uplifting these voices, many media outlets are inciting more violence.

By “silencing any criticisms of Israel,” Qutyan warns that “editors who are meant to uphold journalistic integrity, truth, and the so-called ethics of news media” are instead “co-signing genocide” in Gaza.

In the coming weeks, I will remain glued to the coverage of the violence that my tax dollars are funding. As a Jewish American, I demand life and freedom for Palestinians — and coverage which reflects that.

 

Sarah Gertler

Sarah Gertler is the Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Otherwords.org

(The Conversation) – In political communication, a big lie — what is known as the “illusory truth effect” — is when the constant repetition of misinformation makes people more likely to accept it as truth.

Repetition is how lies gain traction. The more exposure to specific ideas and tropes that may be false claims, the more likely it is that this misinformation becomes understood as real.

A plethora of fake news circulates on the internet and social media. Unlike misinformation, which refers to false or inaccurate information, disinformation campaigns deliberately spread propaganda to create fear and suspicion.

Disinformation industries, and the brokers who exchange in this false currency, have an immense capability to circulate propaganda and conspiracy theories to a greater public, outside of their own echo chambers.

Producing social fictions

Through media outlets and co-ordinated networks, Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian tropes and conspiracies are circulated. Eventually, they become regarded as social facts, especially in times of war, conflict and heightened political tensions.

During these fraught times, the ability to authorize wholesale violence relies on circulating dehumanizing tropes and “scare stories.” This targeted propaganda frames entire populations as deviant “folk devils,” responsible for crimes and social problems. This then creates moral panics, used to justify acts of oppression.

A violent threat

In my book, Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation, I document how since 9/11, two billion Muslims globally have faced collective punishment. Constructed as folk devils who imperil western societies, Muslims have been framed as inextricably linked with the support and promotion of violence.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

More recently, this trope was evident in public statements made by Canadian politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow described recent Palestinian solidarity rallies and movements as “glorifying” violence and characterized anyone attending these events as “Hamas supporters.”

The ubiquity of Islamophobia has led to generalized stereotypes of Muslims and Palestinians (including those who are not Muslim) as being prone to violence and terrorism. When these racist narratives are espoused by politicians, they falsely equate the support of Palestinian people with support for terrorism and instil fear and moral panic about the Muslim presence in this country and elsewhere.

Anti-Muslim policies

Public belief in the vilifying narratives of violent Muslims can become second nature to people who watch biased news reports on mainstream media and a variety of social media platforms that circulate anti-Muslim narratives.

For instance, negative Canadian attitudes about Muslims were evident in a 2017 Radio Canada poll. Fifty-one per cent of respondents in Canada — and 57 per cent in Québec — felt the presence of Muslims in this country made them “somewhat” or “very worried” about security. Nearly one out of four Canadians — 23 per cent — would favour a ban on Muslim immigration to this country, a level of support that rose to 32 per cent in Québec.

Widespread Islamophobic sentiments translate into anti-Muslim policies and practices. Recently, Markham Public Library in Ontario temporarily removed Islamic Heritage Month displays from its branches after an email was sent to staff saying that, “given the current situation in the Middle East, it is best for us not to be actively promoting the Islamic Heritage Month … .”

Islamophobia also has more deadly consequences. In 2021, four members of a Canadian-Pakistani Muslim family were mowed down and killed by a truck in the Ontario city of London. Evidence introduced at the trial of the man accused of the murders has shown that after his arrest, he repeatedly referred to fabricated scare stories about Muslim “grooming gangs” when being interrogated by police.

Online rumours and disinformation

The unsubstantiated claims of Hamas decapitating and burning 40 Israeli babies were repeated by international heads of state, celebrities and media outlets, despite the fact that there was no official confirmation by Israeli authorities of this alleged horrific act.

TRT World: “Anti-Muslim hate crimes spike in Canada ‘by 1,000%’”

Nonetheless, the repetition of this false story led to the dehumanizing characterization of Palestinians as “bloodthirsty monsters” and “human animals,” fomenting widespread anti-Palestinian racism.

These campaigns of disinformation and demonization also tragically resulted in the murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian-American Muslim boy, in Plainfield, Ill. He was stabbed 26 times, allegedly by his family’s white landlord, who is also accused of repeatedly stabbing Al-Fayoume’s mother, proclaiming, “You Muslims must die!”

Casualties of war

These violent trajectories bring to mind the military maxim attributed to the Ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, which warns that “In war, truth is the first casualty.” In times of war and conflict, disinformation is the first weapon to be deployed.

Uncritically consuming political or media narratives is no longer an option. In these dystopian times, the public needs to be able to separate fact from fiction as fabrications masquerade as truth. The consequences are dire.

This article has been updated to include a reference to the ongoing trial in the London, Ont. case.

Jasmin Zine, Professor of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Most commentators about the Mediterranean migrants would claim that there is a migration crisis that explains the harsh treatment and the denial of entry for many refugees. However, is there really a crisis? In truth, the statistics suggest that immigration to Europe from Africa by sea has dropped significantly, from 362,000 in 2016 to around 172.000 in 2017 and to 110 000 in 2018. At the same time, since the war in Ukraine started in February 2022, more than 8 million refugees have been welcomed into Europe, with 40% of those being children. In contrast, 1 in 50 Mediterranean migrants ends up dead or missing. According to a Save the Children report, European countries and the EU exhibit a double standard when it comes to refugees.

Despite the provision of essential services by African immigrants to European states, their reception is often harsh, and often these newcomers are seen as a security threat. European countries’ main response to African immigration is to increase security, intensify national borders, and create more detention centers even at the expense of human lives. For instance, Italy recently made a deal with Libya to train its coast guard to reduce immigration vessels. However, it’s no secret that would-be immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa apprehended in Libya are sent to detention centers.  The bargain Italy struck with Tripoli knowingly left people to be tortured, kidnapped, and put horrendous living quarters. These measures are proven to not diminish immigration.  Instead, they force would-be immigrants to place themselves in the hands of people smugglers who pledge to get them past the Libyan security forces; but these same smugglers do not hesitate to put the lives of these immigrants at grave risk.

Most African immigrants are of North African heritage (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia). They comprise almost two-thirds of all migrants in Europe. However, Sub-Saharan Africa is slowly increasing its percentage of immigrants to Europe. As far as destinations abroad, Europe attracts the biggest share of African migrants in comparison to other destinations like the US. This unequal distribution could be linked to multiple factors but mostly to “advantages with relation to transfer cost, and the established cultural and socio‐economic links of African Diasporas to the former colonial powers, England, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany and Italy” (GIGA).

This wave of immigration is for the most part portrayed by politicians and journalists as a negative phenomenon for European countries. In reality however, African migration has a complex impact both on the country of origin as well as on the new host countries. For many European states, African immigrants are “often a valuable and sought-after resource” (Africa and Europe). This is owing to the aging population of many European countries and labor shortages in these states. For example, in many European countries, migrants form a big percentage of the healthcare workforce, an essential sector, which was especially in evidence especially during the Covid-19 crisis. The role of high-powered professionals form Africa in Europe highlights one of the main concerns about this outflow, namely Brain Drain. Most African migrants, contrary to widespread belief, are highly skilled individuals. Over the last couple of decades, Africa has lost about one-third of its highly skilled workforce to developed countries in Europe.

         At the same time, African immigrants in Europe do provide their fair share of benefits to their home countries. A lot of African countries that send students and short-term immigrants north benefit from a reverse Brain Drain, such that migrants return to their home countries with their resumes enhanced by skills, knowledge, and values beneficial for the development of their respective countries.

         Even those who do manage to pass through European borders are not met with the warmest welcome. People confront challenges from the get-go, seeking shelter, food, facing hostile authorities, and more. However, the European response is to attack NGOs and individuals who seek to help such people. According to a 2015-2016 report published by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), these African migrants who are in dire need of help, are often seen as “economic” or “illegal” immigrants without any consideration for the reasons of their immigration.

         Some of the Mediterranean refugees are facing the same situation as Ukrainians, that is, they are fleeing warfare or foreign intervention — including Afghans, Syrians, and Somalis. Yet, “it seemed as if there were two parallel realities: one for Ukrainians and another one for everyone else” (Save the Children). Not only that, but European countries were swift in their response to the Ukrainian crisis, but even far right-wing politicians from the EU who had always spouted a strong anti-immigration stance are now flocking to support Ukrainian refugees. This clearly highlights a deeper issue of racism. The change of heart for many Europeans towards immigration raises the question of who is seen as an immigrant and who is seen as a refugee. Europeans are observing the scene with racial lenses, categorizing newcomers as “Us” or “Them”.

         Ukrainians are truly suffering from a horrendous situation, and they deserve all the help they can get. Yet, the way the EU and the European countries show a double standard treatment exposes an ugly side of humanity. A comment by Flavio di Giacomo, a spokesperson for IOM Italy about rickety immigrant ships in the Mediterranean Sea holds true to this day on the double standard treatment of immigrants “European coast guards are slow to intervene because it is not a priority for their governments”  (NPR).

Modern humans originated in southern Africa roughly 150,000 years ago.

Most of northern Europe was under miles of ice during the last ice age, from 110,000 years ago to 11,500 years ago. There were some habitable areas on its fringes, especially what is now southern France and northern Spain, to which modern homo sapiens migrated from Africa around 42,000 years ago. Yes, the oldest modern human Europeans were Africans. During the harsh Ice Age these Afro-European ancestors dwindled in number and their gene pool became thin because of heavy intermarriage within clans.

After the ice age ended, other groups immigrated into the subcontinent These were pastoralists from the Eurasian steppe who came through Ukraine, farmers from Anatolia in what is now Turkey, and hunter-gatherers from the the Caucasus. They intermarried with the remnants of the old Afro-European population of hunter-gatherers, who could now spread from the west to the east since the ice cover had retreated.

So was Ötzi a mixture of these four groups? A new study of his genome has appeared in Cell Genomics, “High-coverage genome of the Tyrolean Iceman reveals unusually high Anatolian farmer ancestry,” by Ke Wang et al.

An earlier attempt at such research was undertaken in 2012, but the sample appears to have been tainted with the DNA of modern persons, and the new researchers felt that contemporary DNA techniques are in any case better. So they took a new sample from his hip.

Remember those farmers from Anatolia? Those were Ötzi’s people. They had started coming into Europe probably around 8,000 years ago, 3,000 years before our iceman lived. Since they knew how to farm but the other groups didn’t, they seem to have been able to establish relatively isolated, self-sufficient villages up there in the Tyrolean area (today the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland). So they did not mix much with outsiders. They had never intermarried with the Steppe Nomads, the ones who may have brought in Indo-European languages. They did establish marriage ties with a few of the old Afro-Europeans who preceded them, but they were still 92% Anatolian. Farmers have bigger families than pastoralists or hunters and gatherers, so the Anatolians became a a force to reckon with.

Ötzi’s people were dark-skinned, as most Europeans were until fairly recently.

Research on DNA of 7,000-year-old remains in Spain shows people with dark skin and blue eyes.

Dark skin is functional in equatorial Africa because it protects people from strong ultra-violet rays, and in sunny places like that there is no danger of not producing enough vitamin D.

Ötzi’s descendants gradually acquired lighter skin because, as farmers, they lived on grain. Unlike the diets of the hunters and gatherers, this grain diet was low in vitamin D. We need vitamin D for healthy bone and nerve growth and functioning, and its absence causes brittle bones and hair loss, and can contribute to multiple sclerosis. Dark pigmentation in low ultra-violet radiation areas like northern Europe interferes with vitamin D production. So over thousands of years, those Europeans with a low-vitamin-D grain diet, i.e. the farmers, were subject to natural selection. Parents with slightly lighter skin had children more likely to survive and to mate and breed successfully, so eventually people turned white. It would have taken a few thousand years.

Ötzi was bald and had little hair on his body, and that may have been genetic, but I’m wondering if it was also a result of a vitamin D deficiency.

So, to recap: There were no indigenous Europeans. The oldest population immigrated from Africa around 42,000 years ago and barely survived the harsh Ice Age. As of 11,500 when the Ice Age was over, three other groups migrated in, the Steppe Nomads, the hunter-gatherers from what is now Georgia and Armenia, and the Anatolian farmers. Ötzi was from an insular community of the latter.

So when you see Turkish Döner Kebab restaurants in Germany or the UK, you’re seeing a modern-day immigration from Anatolia that mirrors what was happening thousands of years ago. The “white” people complaining about the immigrants are themselves descendants of dark-skinned Anatolians.