The Blacks

The blacks
 
The tidal wave
 
When the French invaded Egypt in the late nineteenth century, they left no doubt about how won. The Egyptian army, made almost entirely of a foreign caste of mercenaries called Mamluks, was eviscerated in every encounter. Casualty figures are laughable, and the shock of the asymmetry did not only hit Egypt, but the entire Ottoman Empire.

 

The French often romanticized their foray into Egypt. Above, a French artistic depiction of the battle of Abukir. The reality was a lot more Mamluks slaughtered by guns and cannons and a lot less melee.

The French burnt themselves out and had to leave Egypt within a few years. In the chaos of the vacuum left behind, Egypt picked the head of a band of Albanian irregulars as the ruler of Egypt. Mohammed Ali Pasha proceeded to modernize Egypt. In fact, he modernized the Egyptian army, and in the process accidentally modernized the country. For the first time since the Ptolemies, the army was made of native Egyptians, and it adopted European training and armor.
 
When you have an army, you use it. And Mohammed Ali used his new army to expand Egypt. He began by invading the lands to the south, and then he headed east to Hijaz as part of the Wahhabi wars. But then he got greedy and headed north, invading Syria. He stood at the gates of Turkish lands and demanded the Ottoman Caliph give him Egypt and all its new territories as a de facto independent hereditary empire, with only lip service to the Ottoman Empire.
 
Europe was happy to see the Ottomans squirm. When the Ottoman caliph refused, Mohammed Ali invaded Anatolia. Europe saw the Egyptian army about to invade Istanbul and panicked. The Egyptian navy was destroyed by a coalition of European forces. Europe forced Egypt and the Ottomans to come to an understanding. Mohammed Ali would not get his expansive empire, but he would get de facto independence for the Egyptian Khedivate. As well as the lands to the south of Egypt.
 
In the firman (Ottoman decree) allotting these southern lands to Mohammed Ali and his descendants, the Ottoman caliph proclaims that Egypt would now get control of the lands of Nubia, Kordofan, Sinnar, and Darfur.
 
Stunning diversity
 
These four lands are what form modern northern Sudan, or the republic of Sudan. The Ottomans never saw it as one land. Nobody ever did. These lands have always been incredibly diverse. Sudan, like Egypt, is at a crossroads. It is Africa’s gateway to the Mediterranean, and the gateway of the Mediterranean to Africa. As such, the people of Sudan are not and have never been one. And therein lies the strength of this land, and its innate weakness.
 
In a way, the Ottoman caliph knew what he was talking about. The above map shows the ethnolinguistic diversity of Sudan. The country is shaped by the intersection of the Middle East and Africa. This intersection dates to the stone age, but there is an additional layer of delusion that shapes identity in Sudan. Specifically, there are various degrees of identifying with Arabia. This has to do with the history of how parts of Sudan were Islamized, through late medieval migrations from Arabia across the Red Sea. This causes an overwhelming dichotomy between the “Arab” and the “Black” in the country.

Nubain wedding in Aswan, Egypt. Sudanese Nubians do not look very different from Egyptian Nubians.
 
In the northernmost part of Sudan and along the Red Sea coast, the main groups are Nubians and Bejas. Neither speak Arabic, both are Muslim, and both are also present in smaller numbers in southern Egypt, forming the link between the two countries. The Bejas are nomadic, while Nubians are agriculturalists. Both are among the least “African-looking” Sudanese, which is ironic because both are foci for Afrocentrism.

Bejas are a Cushitic people who live near the Red Sea in Sudan and Egypt.
 
South of this belt along the Nile down to Khartoum and Al-Jezira, the bulk of Sudan’s population lives. This is an ethnic group known as “Sudanese Arabs”, but they should be identified as “Riverine Arabs”. The Riverine Arabs traditionally identify with particular tribes in Arabia that migrated to Sudan. They are entirely Muslim, and their Islam is a peculiar form of militaristic Sufism. The Riverine Arabs are the most numerous ethnic group in Sudan and they form the elite of the country, holding onto most aspects of the modern state, including the regular army.

The bulk of the Sudanese population and Sudanese elite are Arabized Nubians, traditionally called "Sudanese Arabs". More properly, they should be known as Riverine Arabs.
 
To the south is Kordofan, a hilly area with a very different nature from the rest of Sudan. This area, especially the Nuba mountains, is inhabited by extremely diverse people. But there is something “different” about them. They are mostly Muslim, and they speak Sudanic languages rather than Arabic, but something sets them apart from Nubians and Sudanese Arabs. Political correctness notwithstanding, what sets them apart is that they are “more African”. We can pretend we do not know what this means, but we do. They are darker skinned, have “typical African features”, and live in Savana environments in thatched huts. One might protest that all of this is too simplistic, and it is, but everyone knows the difference when they see it.

The Nuba mountains "Look African". It sounds stupid to say so, but it is undeniable.

The Nuba people are not Nubians and are hardly if at all related to them. It is with the Nuba in Kordofan that you start seeing the fault lines of Sudan.

Fur and Masalit refugees, probably displaced by massacres perpetrated by Baggara Arabs.

And like Kordofan, Darfur is also “different”. It is again a highland Savana, and it is also inhabited by non-Arabic speaking people who “look African”. Darfur is also entirely Muslim. In fact, it is probably one of the earliest areas of Sudan to convert to Islam and the Sultanates of Darfur and Dar Masalit are some of the earliest Muslim states south of Egypt.

Baggara "Arabs" are more adamant that they are true "Arabs" than the Riverine Arabs.
 
The Riverine Arabs are the dominant group in Sudan, but they are not the only “Arabs”. There is also a large group of people called “Baggara” Arabs, or cow-herding Arabs. These are nomadic pastoralists who extend in a belt into Chad, and further west all the way to Nigeria. While many Riverine Arabs, especially youth, are starting to reject an “Arab” identity, Baggara Arabs are fixated by the idea. They insist on pure Arab lineage directly from the Arabian Peninsula, and they can track their ancestry dozens of generations to specific clans in Hijaz and Najd. The Baggara herd their cattle in Darfur and Kordofan, where they have interacted for centuries with local Nuba, Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa.

The Baggara belt extends from Sudan into Nigeria.
 
In the late nineteenth century, the first ember of a “Sudanese” national identity sprang in the Mahdist revolution against Egyptian rule. The Mahdist state was a mixed bag, with most of its practical results disastrous. Egypt regained Sudan after it (Egypt) itself was invaded by Britain. When the British “helped” Egypt regain Sudan, they expanded the territory south into Equatoria, and in that new territory, they found another group of cattle herders.
 
If it feels icky to say the Fur or Masalit look “more African”, but nobody feels any compunction saying the same about the Nilotes. Nilotic people are the inhabitants of what would later become South Sudan. Just looking at them, you cannot deny they are unique. They are tall, extremely dark, speak a unique group of languages, and have a lifestyle that has no parallel in Africa or the world.

A Dinka man from South Sudan with his cattle.
 
And the British added them to the pot of disparate territories that Egypt was given by the Ottoman caliph.
 
Stunning delusions
 
Sudan is a fascinating place for a geneticist. It is literally the out of Africa corridor. I find this paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5587336/
To be particularly fascinating because it puts Sudan in its regional context. The figure below is an admixture analysis of the various populations in the study:

Autosomal admixture analysis of Northeast Africans, including the Sudanese.

Without getting too technical, Admixture allows a machine learning tool to break down populations’ genomes into building blocks. The K in the figure is how many building blocks you allow the tool to use. The higher the K, the more genetic components you allow the tool to find and the finer the breakdown.
 
So, if K=2, the tool will most likely choose one block for African and another for non-African, then express all populations as proportions of both. At K=3, the “African” gene is broken down into two variants. At K=4, the African gene is broken down further. Only at K=5 and above does non-African genome start to differentiate into different clusters. Why does African genome differentiate first? Because Africa has more genetic diversity than the rest of the world combined.
 
So, at K=4 only the green color represents “non-African” genome. The Europeans are represented by all green because they have 0% African genome. But “African” genome breaks down into multiple colors. For example, orange represents west African populations, and you see it being very high in Yoruba people from Nigeria.
 
A few things are very interesting, even funny if you look at the K=4 row. The Southern Sudanese Barria, Shilluk, Nuer, and particularly Dinka people look like they are almost entirely made of one cluster. In fact, as K rises, you find this cluster covers 100% of many Dinkas. And this cluster is very different from everyone else. It sets them apart not only from non-Africans, but also from other Africans. The uniqueness of the South Sudanese is not a myth.
 
For Nubians, Bejas, and Riverine Arabs in Sudan (Shaigia, Bataheen, Gaalien), almost half of their genome is similar to Dinka people, while half of it is non-African. These most northerly of Sudanese people “look different” for a reason. They might think of themselves as a pure race, but like most people in the world they are mixed. At higher K’s, we find something interesting. The non-African part of these most northerly Sudanese is not Arabian-like, it is Egyptian-like. It is an ancient migration that shaped who the Sudanese are from their inception to this day. This breaks a few myths simultaneously. First, most Sudanese, like most people in the world, are not “pure”. Second, most Sudanese are not Arabs from Arabia. Third, while a lot of Sudanese believe that Sudan is the origin of ancient Egypt, it looks like it is the other way around. 
 
As people had always suspected, the Fur, Masalit, and Nuba people of Darfur and Kordofan are mostly African. They have negligible non-African genes. But what is truly funny is that the Baggara, represented here by the Meseiria, are indistinguishable from their “more African” neighbors in Darfur. The “most Arab” of the Sudanese Arabs, responsible for generations of ethnic cleansing, are as African as the Fur and the Masalit.
 
Maneki Neko
 
The Maneki Neko is a Japanese waving cat motif that you have seen but don’t know the name of. My dad bought a Maneki Neko alarm clock in Tokyo as a gift for my daughter. And she loved it. The cat waves its hand and gyrates at seemingly random times, but they are not really random. The cat sits at critical equilibrium. It is stable, but barely so. Any slight breeze will cause the equilibrium to break and the cat moves along a groove. It is fascinating how little it takes to set the cat off, and how much she moves in response to basically nothing.
 
Sudan is also at best in critical equilibrium. Its whole history is moments of glory after which it disappears and breaks apart. Sudan will break apart if someone pushes it, and it will break apart if left alone.

I know this sounds harsh, but it is important in understanding what is happening now and how to solve it. Kerma and Kush were shining lights in the ancient world, but they were brief compared to the length of bronze and iron age societies in the old world. After which, Nubia went away and disappeared, only to reappear as the “Nubian Christian Kingdoms” in late antiquity. These, in turn, disappear and appear periodically, until they break completely apart at the slightest push back from Mamluk Egypt. The Mahdist state of the late nineteenth century had ten years of Egypt getting invaded by the British to completely solidify itself. They spent it trying to enslave Nilotes and destroying irrigation infrastructure.
 
It is not that Sudan is destined to break apart into statelets, but perhaps its amazing dizzying diversity required tools that were not available in the pre-modern world. But what about now that we know about federalism, basic rights, and managing diversity? Can Sudan remain stable? Yes, but first everyone must get real.
 
Untenable
 
Nasserist Egypt in the early fifties wanted a unified Egypt and Sudan. Nasser was a lot of things, but he was not racist. He viewed a single country from the Mediterranean to the Sudd marshes of Equatoria as possible. He wanted freedom of movement for the southernmost Dinka to travel and work as far as Alexandria and to have the same citizenship as everyone in between.
 
The Riverine Arab elites in Khartoum rejected this. They had already woven a view of Sudanese national identity in intellectual debates in the early twentieth century, and Egypt was the villain in their novel. They wanted an independent and unified Sudan, and Britain wanted a fragmented region, so they got what they wanted. But at that moment, they ensured that greater Sudan was no longer possible.
 
The relations between northern and southern Sudan had always been more fraught than even the tensest communal strife in Darfur. The practice of enslaving Nilotes was so prevalent in Northern Sudan that the British had to ban northern Sudanese travel into South Sudan. The British also used this as an opportunity to spread Christianity and “Western culture” to South Sudan. The Christianity part worked, but the South Sudanese remained who they are.
 
South Sudan had to break away from Sudan, and in a way, I think the Sudanese internalized this fact. South Sudan was supported in its struggle by too many foreign powers for Sudan alone to withstand. But there was also a lot for the South Sudanese to want to break away from. There was neglect, cultural imperialism, and violence.
 
But I think what really drove the south to abandon attempts at autonomy in favor of independence is the fact that the north never held on to itself long enough to talk to the south. Since its independence, Northern Sudan oscillated between incompetent civilian rule, last minute military coups to keep the whole thing from falling apart, and rinse and repeat. With nobody to talk to in any effective way, the south was dragged into fighting for independence.
 
 
Backstabs
 
We need to assign evildoers in all conflicts. In the many many ethnic conflicts of Sudan, we want to call the “Arabs” villains. But things are not always that simple. 

The Fur and Zaghawa minorities of Darfur united in the early 2000's to fight the government. Their grievances were very legitimate, but their demands were hazy at best. This Fur resistance grew slowly at first, but perhaps unfortunately for them, the government was too busy fighting in the south and in Kordofan to pay them enough attention.

This is unfortunate for the Fur because they ended up miscalculating and badly overshooting. They attacked the regional capitals of Darfur, and seeing little resistance, they even attacked the heart of the country: Khartoum.

 
The problem with stories with villains is that you fail to see the other side. The Riverine Arabs rightfully panicked. The very existence of the country was under threat. What made things worse is that it felt like a backstab, and one that was disproportionate and unprovoked from their point of view.
 
The army regrouped and held onto the capital. They understood that they cannot fight wars on so many fronts, so they adopted the same weapon as their opponents. If everyone was using ethnic militias, then the government would also hire an ethnic militia. And in Darfur, there was an agent ready and willing. The Baggara Arabs were already in conflict over land use with the agriculturalist Fur and Masalit.
 
The government had a paved road. The Baggara were “Arabs” and good Muslims, fighting “less Muslim” tribal people who had stabbed the state in the back. The west found a beautiful story in the Muslim Arab militias attacking black African villagers. Which in turn allowed the government to claim the Fur were foreign agents.
 
It was a perfect downhill trip. The Baggara militias, the Janjaweed, carried out a horrific genocide, burning villages and displacing people. The west was happy with the story, Sudan was happy with the breaking of Fur resistance. The irony is that everyone in this conflict was Muslim. In fact, the Fur are probably among the earliest Muslims in Sudan. Genetically, everyone is Black and African, the Baggara trace as much lineage from Arabia as the Masalit, zilch.
 
 
Arabi Juba
 
What I find amazing about the Sudanese people is their ability to find good in everything. They can extract cultural richness and spiritual depth from things you do not even think about. And from the midst of adversity, there are signs that Sudan was, and hopefully will continue to, extracting something unique: a national identity.

The wars in Darfur and Nuba mountains caused large numbers of refugees to move to Khartoum. And in that burgeoning metropolis, people of all stripes were forced to live together and to deal with each other as equal. It is there that the many components of Sudan were being fused into a new identity. It was a fascinating process where people kept regional and ethnic identities while at the same time forming a new shared sense of belonging.
 
Even in the embittered south, I still find that “Al-Sudan” had left its mark. South Sudan is linguistically diverse and tribal conflict between the south Sudanese since independence has been more violent at times than the civil war with the North. The government of South Sudan picked English as a neutral common language that does not allow a single tribe to dominate, while leaving behind the Arabic luggage of the north.
 
The people of South Sudan did not agree. The most common lingua franca in South Sudan is still Arabi-Juba or Juba Arabic. This is a fascinating pidgin that first developed among the soldiers conscripted into the army in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. But now, Juba Arabic is a central feature of south Sudanese identity, and it still binds the country together and ties it to its northern sister.
 
The battle royale of the “most Arab”
 
The crucible melting a new Sudanese identity has been destroyed. Khartoum needs at least a decade to recover. This new round of fighting is like nothing before. First, it is everywhere. Second, it is hitting the heart of the country, Khartoum. The haven to which everyone escaped before is now the focus of fighting and people do not know where to run to.
 
But also, this round seems different because it is between two “military strongmen” rather than an ethnic conflict. Or so news reports would have us believe. This is a horrible misreading of the situation. This latest round of fighting is part of the pattern of Sudanese history that keeps repeating.
 
This is still an ethnic war, and just because the two sides call themselves “Arab” does not mean it is not. The Sudanese army has a core consisting of Riverine Arabs, but given the other option, I bet a lot of other ethnic groups in Sudan are flocking to join the army.
 
The RSF, on the other hand, is personified in its leader, Hemedti. He is known for being the leader of the Janjaweed, but there is more to this. Hemedti is not a very good speaker. His Arabic is provincial and stunted and he radiates a sense of ignorance. He is a Baggara Arab and his militia represents the frustrations and centuries of marginalization of these nomadic cattle herders. His militia is no different from the Kordofanian and Darfurian militias who fought the country before.
 
Except in some respects, it is different. For one, the RSF are battle hardened. They are also heavily subsidized by regional powers, making them more deadly. But another difference is that the Nilotic, Nuba, and Sudanic Darfurian resistance movements have elite leaderships that are intellectual and western educated. The RSF leadership is ignorant and nihilistic. In the RSF, we see the results of total unadulterated marginalization, and it does not matter that they are “Arabs”.
 
 
The revolution is succeeding, actually
 
In a way Sudan is currently what would happen if the Arab Spring works. This is the payoff for years of demonstrations and disruption of the status quo. You might think this is the revolution being backstabbed, but the revolution is doing what it says on the box. 
 
Hemedti’s Arabic might be stunted, but the content of his speech is very well-crafted. He includes all the buzzwords: minorities, civilian rule, democracy, transition, and revolution. The speech is very carefully worded, too carefully worded for a simple herder from Darfur. It smells a lot like a bunch of consultants in an air-conditioned skyscraper.
 
On the ground, anywhere Hemedti’s militias take control, a clear pattern emerges. Ethnic minorities are immediately cleansed. It does not matter if this is the most “Black African” Muslim groups in Darfur, or the least “Black African” groups like the Sudanese Copts in Khartoum. Everything must go. Your villages will be burnt, your churches will be dismantled, and you will exit the country to Chad or Egypt. Meanwhile, every woman will be raped, the agricultural infrastructure will be taken apart, educational institutes will be razed, and every aspect of diversity and culture will be erased.
 
This is not a bug; it is a feature. Nothing will be left of Sudan except those parts that serve the source. The “source” is always the west through some local broker. The broker might change, but in the end the gameplan is the same. And thus, only gold mines will remain to pay the broker, and only Sudan’s normalization with Israel will remain because that’s what the west wants. Nothing else is needed. The country can be emptied of its people and its history can be erased; and what’s cool is that this will make the remaining husk of Sudan more efficient at fulfilling its post-revolutionary purpose.
 
 
Getting real
 
If anyone wants to be honest about solving the problem of Sudan, what should they do? Well, first they must get real and admit a few things, then things can move on:

• Egypt is not the villain. The Sudanese love to hate Egypt. They have a bunch of villains in their national myth, which is fair enough, but Egypt is always a common denominator. If Sudan is to move on, they must stop taking Egypt’s villainy as a given. As of late, the pattern has been that Sudan has consistently shot itself in the groin just because Egypt said please stop shooting yourself in the groin. Sudan does not have to always agree with Egypt, but Sudanese society is now so addicted to hating Egypt, that they feel they MUST always disagree with Egypt. It is also a fact that if Sudan tries to find an external mediator in the conflict, it can keep fooling around with East Africa, the gulf, and the west. But when it’s time to actually solve the problem, the only interlocutor that can work is Egypt.
• It is NOT about “military bad”. Blaming all of Sudan’s trouble on “military rule” is a lazy, easy, and false copout. The pattern in Sudan is clearer than in any other Arab country. Civilian democratic rule always fails miserably. They are impotent and have no power on the ground. They talk a lot of talk and do nothing. Meanwhile, without fail, ethnic militias rise and start taking over the vacuum of the countryside. Eventually the country is at the edge of collapse and the military steps in to keep together what seems to never want to stay together. The military in Sudan is not the cause of its strife, it is a symptom of the impotence of Sudan’s elite and its perpetual identity crisis.
• Stop both siding. This is not a fight between two equally evil military strongmen in which the people are not involved. The pattern is clear as daylight. Anywhere the SDF goes, villages burn, girls are raped, and young boys are shot in the back as they run away. Anywhere the Sudanese army goes, people go back home and markets open. The Sudanese army is certainly not the most professional in the world, and conditions are not the best, but these two things are not equal. Pretending that they are is not helping anyone, least of all the Sudanese people.
• Accept mistakes have been made on all sides. Everyone in Sudan has made mistakes, horrible mistakes. And by everyone, I mean EVERYONE. The Riverine Arab elites have certainly made mistakes, but so have the Sudanic people of Darfur and the people of Nuba mountains. The military has made mistakes, but so have the civilian forces and the “revolutionaries”. Yes, mistakes weigh differently and some are worse than others, but realizing everyone was at some point some degree of villain allows people to forgive.
• If you want to put pressure, put it where it should be. You cannot seriously think that you should equally pressure the foreign sponsors of the SDF and those of the Sudanese army. If you think that you should, then you have to watch some of the great coverage by brave journalists who still venture into Sudan. Again, there is no comparing what happens to places the army gets to and what happens to places the SDF controls.
• Admit why most of us don’t care. To be able to care about what happens in Sudan, we must be honest about why we haven’t cared so far. The Israelis are masters of whataboutism. Whenever you point out the fact that they are carrying out a genocide, they ask "what about that other genocide." But two things can be right, they can be carrying out a genocide, and we should also care about that other genocide. So why does the world not care about Sudan?This is going to be cringe, but again, cringe can be true. The reason we care less about Sudan than anywhere else is in the name “Al-Sudan”. Look it up if you don’t know what it means.

Losing generations for fun and profit

One of my many guilty pleasures is watching moderately old Egyptian TV dramas. They are a universe on their own. It is hard to describe, but they are simultaneously poignant, superficial, kitch, classy, delusional, and excessively realistic. You have to see it to believe it. So, last August, I was watching one of my favorites from the early naughts. The show centered on class warfare (as always). The upper class girl runs away from her family and joins with the working class good guys (as is tradition).

In one scene, her mom stands there saying incredulously, "Why do you hate me so much, am I Sharon?"

This hit me in the summer of 2023 as extremely dissonant. Why is this a thing a mom would say to her daughter. It sounds too political, too forced even for an Egyptian soap opera. But I remember watching this show when it was released, and I vaguely recall this sentence not sounding jarring at all back then.

Then it flooded back. My memory has a weird tendency to work through odor. Suddenly, I could smell tear gas. Since signing the camp David accord with Egypt, Israel insisted on having its embassy on a high rise building on the Nile 700 meters away from Cairo University. So, when the second Intifada happened, I also happened to be there, between an angry mob of university students and the Israeli embassy.

I could suddenly remember why the students were so angry. The images of slaughtered Palestinians were seared into all our memories at the time. Yet twenty years were enough for this brand to fade away. In the summer of 2023, I no longer remembered why anyone would insult someone by calling them Sharon.

My generation had been lost for at least a decade, but it was forgetting. The generation of my kids had no idea what Israel is. They did not care for it, but also didn't care to hate it. They had no feelings about Israel. They vaguely understood that one day they tried to take away our land and we took it back. But when my kids asked me if we are OK with them now, I stammered. I honestly did not know. I guess so.

But that was August.

After Israel started responding to Hamas' attack, I expected another generation to be lost. I could see it coming because I've been through it before. Israel will shoot up a NICU or white phosphorous a refugee camp or something. And we will go into the seasonal cycle, the normal monsoon. People will start a boycott campaign that will be partly good, but partly self destructive. Things will taper off, and it will take another decade or two before we rinse and repeat.

But this time feels different. And it's been driving me crazy why.

I thought maybe the magnitude. When people asked Israel "What kinds of atrocities will you commit in Gaza this time around?" Israel answered "Yes!" But the difference isn't quantitative. There is something fundamentally different.

So I thought it maybe because Israel came out of the gate trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza into Egypt. But no, the difference in the generation being lost goes beyond Egypt.

And then I figured it out. The difference this time around is not about Israel. It is about two things: The west, and the Arab Spring. Specifically, this has to do with the Arab Spring happening and failing, then the West trying to recycle it recently; and then the way the west responded to Israel's ethnic cleansing. And it has to be in that order.

The Arab Spring, its failure, and consistently trying to revive it have been seen in two ways in the Arab world. The first is a portion of the population who saw the west as truly principled. They stand for individual freedoms, equality, and the right to expression. Sometimes things will crop up, for example the far right in Europe, but it is easy to gloss over it as part of the process by which the west cleanses itself peacefully. The Ukraine war proved the moral superiority of the west in supporting freedom and principles, and the moral depravity of the global south in taking a more nuanced approach. This gave the west the moral standing to dictate what is and is not acceptable in the Arab world. It allowed the West to piss allover Qatar's World Cup because Qatar had to give the same rights to LGBTQ people that America didn't ten years ago. It allowed the west to dictate to us who we should let speak, what constitutes a peaceful protest, and whether the choices we make are acceptable.

The other way to see all this is that the Arab Spring, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and certain "Standards" are just cudgels. They are used to beat us over the head when and if convenient. When and if convenient you can call him bone saw Bin Salman, and when and if convenient, you can give him a Fox interview.

The West now bans some protests and allows others. It is illegal to say you oppose genocide in some countries. If you oppose apartheid and want everyone in one country to have equal rights, you are hateful. You can get your visa revoked, get sacked out of your university, lose your job, or maybe even go to jail. Europe supports summary executions in the West Bank and suffocating premies in maternity wards in Gaza. Some countries, openly so.

I have no interest in why the west, particularly Europe is doing this. This is their business. This is their guilt. The Germans killed Jews because they were not white enough. They whitened Jews and are now supporting them in ethnically cleansing a new people who are not white enough, because you can't let the holocaust happen again. I have no capacity to approach how this logic works. It requires a different culture and history to understand this.

What I care about is the shock I see in all the millennials in Egypt who saw a Messianic savior in the west. They are facing the west that us older folk always knew was there. It is a bit funny, and there is Schadenfreude in seeing them contorting over this. But I worry about where it ends up.

There are two ways it will go. The first is to realize that the west shall not save thee, and thus we should start loving ourselves and our culture. We don't have to be a copy of them. We can be who we are and be proud of who we are. If someone says we are not democratic, we can laugh at them. If a European makes fun of how little we work in Ramada, we can send them daily work emails in August to see if they reply. We can insist that they respect who we are and leave us alone.

The other way this goes is more Islamic fundamentalism. This is how it's always gone. Killing, shock at hipocrisy, radicalization, then Islamist violence. And the final part of the cycle is a bunch of white people wondering where the violence comes from, which prompts them to do more killing. But here's the thing, we always end up losing in this. We are the ones who mostly get killed and held back. 

I really wish our youths learn the right lesson this time.

What is there to see, between the river and the sea?

When America was attacked on September the 11^th, it waged a righteous war in Afghanistan and a dumb war in Iraq. In both wars, when the US got intelligence on a target, they would trail it for days, picking an opportune moment to hit the target while minimizing civilian loss. These wars are characterized as disastrous failures rife with violations. 

In its current war against Gaza, if Israel gets vague intelligence that a target is hiding in a tunnel in an area, it carpet-bombs the entire neighborhood with armament intended to compact the soil. what happens to everyone in the neighborhood is not a consideration. I am realizing that Israel is not a normal country. To understand what Israel is doing and how we in the Arab world should respond, we must understand Israel from its own perspective.

So, what is Israel? Israel is the Jewish homeland. It started with the realization among European Jewry that Jews need a place to call their own country. Jews had been persecuted for centuries, and when they were not, they were dependent on the goodwill of those around them, which has always been fickle. They needed a place where it was normal and safe to be Jewish.

One common myth among Arabs is that the early Zionists did not necessarily target Palestine for settlement but wanted a home for Jews anywhere. They did consider options in Africa, Russia, and Latin America briefly, but they started with Palestine, continued to think Palestine, and ended in Palestine.

Why? Because Palestine is very important for Jews. Jews had a continuous presence among the other populations of the area for centuries. They also have origins in the ancient kingdoms of Judaea and Israel. 

The Jewish national origin myth is that of a people who were enslaved in Egypt, escaped, ethnically cleansed Canaan, and created a powerful united kingdom. This kingdom then split into a heroic southern kingdom, and an impure northern kingdom. The northern kingdom was broken up, but the southern kingdom held on because it was religiously pure.

The real story is that the Israelites were never in Egypt. They were a native Canaanite confederacy that worshipped a common storm god. There was never a united kingdom. Both the northern and southern kingdoms were “impure”, in that they included all kinds of people. Both were minor princedoms surrounded by equally minor Canaanite, Phoenician, and west Semitic principalities and city states.

This land was never pure and simple, it always included all sorts of ethnicities and religions. But there is no denying Jews have an origin in it, which is why Zionism was always going to go for Palestine.

When Israel was formed, it was on the trailing edge of colonialism. It had a narrow window to ethnically cleanse land, which it mostly managed to do. It then declared itself Jewish and Democratic. Both are critical. If Israel is not Jewish, it is meaningless regarding its original purpose. If it is not democratic, it loses the support of its patrons in the west.

As the Arab world emerged from colonialism, Israel found it very useful to contrast itself with its surroundings. It had to look secular, free, democratic, and in a certain way that nobody speaks but everybody understands, “white”. It had to hide religious Jews who creep out Europeans, put gay pride parades front and center, promote leftist (but not too leftist) ideals, and generally give off the image of a secular place full of vibrant diverse opinion.

Israel created this image, and sold itself as a heroic little white western David in a forest of barbaric brown Goliaths. Things could have settled right there, but Israel was a victim of its success and our failure. In 1967, Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, Sinai, and the Golan. Suddenly Israel asked itself: why not? I deserve it. I earned it. And it was enabled by the west.

Israel proper is Israel along the 1948 international borders. It has a population of roughly 10 million. About 7.5 million are Jews, 2 million ae Arabs, and the rest are migrant workers.

Above is an area known as Gush Dan. This is simply the Metropolitan area of Tel Aviv. It has a population of about 4.5 million. Most are Jews. Greater Jerusalem has a population of about 1.2 million. Of which around 700,000 are Jews.

The distance between the sea boardwalk in Tel Aviv and the edge of Israel’s easternmost settlement in Jerusalem, Maale Adumim is 62Km. The distance between Rishon Lezion, on the eastern side  of Tel Aviv and the Western reaches of Jerusalem is 37.5Km.

The distance between two satellite cities in Cairo, October 6 and 10^th of Ramadan is 96km. But this is a crazy trip that most people will not make in a lifetime. On the other hand, many people commute daily between New Cairo and 6 October, 60Km apart.

So about 5.2 millions of Israel’s 7.5 million Jews live in what would be considered in many places a single metropolitan area. The rest of the country is as follows: The Galilee, which is mostly Arab, the Negev which is about half Arab, Haifa which is about one third Arab, and the perimeter of the west bank, which is mostly Arab.

Here is another weird distance, the northern edge of Gaza, and the southwestern edge of the west bank are 33Km apart. If a Palestinian from Gaza wants to visit family at the end of these 33 kilometers, they have to cross into Egypt, fly to Jordan, and then enter the west bank from Jordan. The trip will take multiple days and require two entry visas. Once in the West Bank, the dude will probably take a few more days to move another 30Km from the Jordanian border to the eastern edge of the West Bank, 33Km from where he started. Along the way, he will need multiple Israeli passes and will be stopped at countless checkpoints for indeterminate periods.

That's a lot of distortion of the fabric of spacetime, and with one objective: to satisfy Israel's prerequisites about itself, to be democratic and Jewish. But what does that mean? What does Jewish mean? We are always asked to pledge our support for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. I honestly don’t know what that means. I think people have rights; I do not know if states have the right to exist as something specific.

But if we cut the bullshit, the “Jewish nature” of Israel means that it has a Jewish majority, speaks Hebrew, and has aspects of Jewish religion and culture integrated into laws and daily life. This makes it a safe haven for Jews anywhere should they need it.

But Israel also wants to expand. It feels it needs “lebensraum” sort of speak. The fact that most Jews in Israel essentially live in one city doesn't seem to register in this expansionist philosophy. Jews feel a historical right to all the land from the river to the sea. This is based on a deep connection that some Jews, especially religious ones, feel towards the west bank. The west bank is where ancient Judaea was after all. The west bank also elbows into lake Tiberias, the Jordan river, and the Dead Sea, all resources Israel wants to never give up.

So, between the river and the sea, there are 7.5 million Jews in Israel and the west bank. There are 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, the same number in the west bank, and about 2 million in Israel proper. This is dangerously close to the Jewish population between the river and the sea. Israel cannot allow everyone to be free from the river to the sea if it wants to be democratic and Jewish. If everyone is free, it is not comfortably Jewish. If it is Jewish between the river and the sea, it cannot allow itself to be democratic.

None of this is new. Israel has always known it had only four options. These are: the two-state solution, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and the one state solution.

In the early nineties, Israel opted for the two-state solution. This is the solution favored by the Arab world and the west. It is also the safest. It has challenges. Israel will have to contend with an independent Palestine so close to its major (and let’s be real only) population center in Gush Dan. The Palestinians will have to contend with forming a viable state on the tiny resource poor land of the west bank and Gaza. But everyone else was ready to help both sides be successful, and there was hope it could work.

This perhaps died with the assassination of Rabin and was buried by Sharon and Netanyahu. The expansion of Jewish settlements deep in the hill country of the west bank now makes it impossible to have any viable land swap, and Israel will not evacuate these deep settlement blocks. The right wing in Israel set out to kill the two-state solution, and they were successful.

The apartheid solution was Israel’s long-term vision starting with Sharon. In this solution, Israel partitioned its demographic problem so they can deal with it. The theory is the “Arabs” between the river and the sea should not be seen as a monolith. This is against the Israeli propaganda, which promotes Arabs as an amorphous blob, this traditionally allows Israel to rally western support for ethnic cleansing. But Israelis can face reality when it’s to their advantage. “Arabs” between the river and the sea really are:

• The bedwins of the Negev, who Israel managed to recruit. Israel had little interest in taking over all of the resource poor desert, and they were happy to trade some privileges for bedwin allegiance to the Jewish state.

• The Druze of the north, who had to endure centuries of persecution and were more than happy to declare allegiance to the Jewish state. Druze and bedwin soldiers in the Israeli army tend to be among the most ruthless to Palestinian civilians.

• This leaves a more manageable 1.5 million Muslim and Christian Palestinian citizens of Israel who can be contained to segregated communities in the Galilee.

• In the west bank, Palestinians will be strangled by ever shrinking Bantustans and a pass system. This will allow Jewish settlers to gradually takeover all of the resources in the land, making life near impossible for the Palestinians who remain.

So, what is wrench in the gears here? Well, the open-air prison of Gaza with 2.5 million Palestinians. Any equation from the river to the sea is ruined by Gaza. The narrow strip is exploding with the progeny of refugees cleansed from south central Israel during its creation. 

So, Israel decided to withdraw from Gaza. But a Gaza without Israel, even with Hamas, had the possibility of improving. If a de facto independent Palestinian city-state improved, it could inspire uprising in the West Bank. So Gaza could not succeed. Enabling Hamas was instrumental here, since Hamas are not really interested in good governance. But Gaza also had to be cutoff from its resources. And for Gaza, this is the coast and airspace, which Israel completely took control of.

Meanwhile Israel aided by western media pushed a narrative that Egypt is participating in the siege through closing the Rafah crossing. The Rafah crossing processed 200,000 crossings in 2022. Five hundred trucks carrying goods flowed through it every day. So why is the west, Islamists, and Israel claiming it is “closed”?

Because the opening of Rafah that all these people want is an unconditional opening, and open border. This will make Egypt responsible for all the needs of Gaza. Meanwhile Gaza is not allowed to develop because it does not have access to its air and water. This way Israel will rid itself of 2.5 million pests without allowing them to inspire the remainder of the 7 million. Getting Egypt burdened is an added perk.

And for a long time, this complex ad hoc “plan” was working. Israel had a booming advanced economy, the world pretended Israel was a democracy, and Gulf countries ran to normalize with Israel. Life went on.

October 7^th hit Israel’s very definition. Because if Israel is a Jewish state, then it must be the safest place on Earth for Jews. On October 7^th, it became the most dangerous place on Earth for Jews.

Which is why I think Israel has now chosen answer number 3: ethnic cleansing. I think most Israelis now support genociding or chasing away all Palestinians from Gaza and the west bank. And I think the west will not oppose them. But I also think they will fail. Israel is trying to make things so unbearable for the world, that the world will solve its demographic problem for it. If Egypt is not going to take the Palestinians, Canada can, or Fance, or Turkey, or whatever. Israel just wants to keep killing people and destroying things till it feels safe again.

If it takes killing fifty thousand children and ethnically cleansing millions for Israel to be Jewish and democratic, so be it. And then Israel will be a beacon of light in a sea of brown darkness.

Which is why I think we, as Arabs, should hold Israel’s feet to the fire. Ethnic cleansing and genocide are major war crimes. If the west supports it, we should make them say they support it. The two-state solution was destroyed by Israel, we should stop talking about it.

There is only one solution, the one state solution. And we should be very clear about what that means. This means everyone living between the river and the sea gets to live there. Nobody gets thrown in the desert, nobody gets thrown in the sea. Everyone has the same rights. If these rights are many, they are for all. If they are few, they are for all. Jews everywhere in the world should have the right of “return” or refuge in this one state, let us call it Israel. But every Palestinian whose grandparents were kicked out of this land should also be able to go back.

One democratic secular state with equal rights, safety, and freedom for all. Israel’s worst nightmare. 

Gates of Habu, Way of Horus, Trail of brain farts

The mortuary temple of Rameses the third on the west bank of Thebes is a sight to behold. I am particularly obsessed with the preservation of colors on its walls and ceilings, which until the most recent restoration at Karnak was unique. Outside the temple though, you can see the remains of much less glorious mud brick walls that were used to protect the temple. Then you get to the entrance, which is through a narrow doorway in a huge pylon that looks like the ramparts of a castle. Kind of overkill for a temple.

To understand why, you have to see some of the less colorful depictions inside the temple. They show (and tell of) the victory of Rameses III over the sea people. This is one of the best accounts of this mysterious wave that triggered the Bronze Age collapse. Among the people that Rameses fought were a people that gave their name to the Roman province of Palestine.

On the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, the gateway looks curiously like that of the temple at Madinet Habu. In fact, most New Kingdom temples kind of look like fortresses. This paranoia is based entirely on Egypt's experience with its northeast. In the second intermediate period, a people known as the Hyksos invaded Egypt from Canaan and caused the country to crumble. There is a sense of “never again” from the New Kingdom on Canaan. But it would happen again, and again.

Egypt always understood that key to its strange relation with the Levant is Sinai. Sinai is a place where Egyptians have been since the pre-dynastic period. The mines of southern Sinai were integral to Egypt's economy and all through dynastic Egypt, there was a particular fixation with ensuring the area always remained under Egypt's control. Key to preserving the peace in Sinai is the way of Horus, a series of fortresses along the coast in northern Sinai, designed to strengthen Egypt against the inexorable attacks coming from that direction. Anyone who wanted to enter had to go through a gauntlet of gates of Habu.

Egypt’s entanglement with the Levant never stopped. In Fatimid, Ayubid, and Mamluk Egypt; the Levant was the source of never ending crusader attempts to invade the country. Although this sometimes came from the sea, it often came from the Sinai. In Mamluk Egypt, an existential threat came from farther east and descended upon Egypt from the Levant: the Mongols. Egypt was on its way to disappear from the surface of Earth, like Khwarazm before it. But the Mamluks decided that the only way to save Egypt was to fight the Mongols where Egypt’s weakness lies. The first battle between Mamluk Egypt and the Mongols was in Gaza. Egypt won.

In 1956, during the Suez crisis, Israel, unprovoked, invaded Sinai in collaboration with France and the UK. Moshe Dayan stood in the Knesset and declared that Israel had established a new reality. The “armistice lines” of 1948 (read international borders) no longer meant anything. Many westerners wonder why “The Arabs” never tried peace with Israel. All evidence we have is that Nasser was initially very interested in peace with Israel, but that moment in 1956 certainly gave everyone in Egypt pause. Was Israel interested in peace?

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, reactions in Egypt was mixed. There was the usual cohort of Islamists, western sponsored democracy activists, and leftists who were giddy at "Palestinians freeing themselves with their own hands". But the nature of the Hamas attacks also meant that for the first time there was sympathy for Israel. The Israelis also did a good job with communicating, and sometimes miscommunication what Hamas did in this initial stage. On a human level, a lot of people in Egypt felt sorry for the civilians in Israel who in a way had nothing to do with the suffering of the Palestinians.

But we know the playbook. It would take ten days for Israel to burn a bunch of Palestinian kids to a crisp and any Egyptian sympathy for the Israelis would disappear. Westerners would hold on a bit because Israelis killing children is different because of reasons. But a week later maybe they'd catch up. And this is playing out as usual for most countries. Except Egypt.

Because almost immediately after the attacks, Israel started suggesting, sometimes explicitly, that the Palestinians should exit Gaza to the Sinai. Western officials also immediately embraced this, talking about "humanitarian corridors".

Now the reaction from Egypt towards this would not surprise anyone in Egypt. What I find surprising is that the west was shocked at Egypt's reaction. In Egypt, the suggestion confirmed what many had always suspected: Israel plans to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza into Sinai so it can annex Gaza. It would do the same for the West Bank, this time depopulating it into Jordan. While some had always dismissed this as far fetched, it was now explicit. Israel as an expansionist entity that knows no borders was reignited in the minds of many.

This is rejected in Egypt. It is rejected in upper Egypt and in lower Egypt; by Muslims and Christians; by secularists, Islamists, and non-ists. It is rejected at the political level, at the military level, at the cultural level, and at the popular level. It is rejected for the sake of Palestinians and for the sake of Egyptians. It is rejected on a boat, it is rejected with a goat. And Egyptian officials, including the president have been blunt and direct in how much rejected this is in language Egypt has not used in decades.

None of this is surprising to anyone who knows the bare minimum about Egypt. Which is why what I find surprising, is the surprise of American and European officials at the reaction of Egypt. It seems they genuinely thought we would be OK with depopulating Gaza and giving up the Sinai. Or maybe they had no idea what causing an exodus from Gaza would mean. I do not know which is worse honestly.

I have always known that westerners view everyone in the region as just an amorphous blob devoid of culture, history, or national identity. And I have always not cared. But I had forgotten that these perceptions sometimes have real world impacts. And here was one. The west saw Egypt as non-distinct and having no national identity. The west, saw Egypt as having no national identity. Egypt. The country that invented national identity.

Even to officials at the highest level of government, we are all just interchangeable brown people. And then there are others, who see us refusing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and then say, hey it seems the Egyptians hate the Palestinians. Well, again I don't care if you do not understand, but the problem is this is starting to have real world consequences. For example, how western media keeps insisting that Egypt does not want to open Rafah for aid, when Israel explicitly keeps screaming that they are the ones who refuse to open it.

Thus, it took a few days of disbelief on both sides as Europeans and Americans say things like hey Palestinians, Egyptians, what’s the difference; while Egyptians stare in disbelief at the utter lack of understanding of culture, history, and the worth of people. I do not think that westerners understand how this suggestion is insulting to both Egyptians and Palestinians.

But there is also an incredible lack of insight. Let us assume Egypt lets everyone in from Palestine. How? How can you guarantee that Hamas doesn’t also come in? And if they come in, wouldn’t that allow them a much longer border from which to attack Israel? I don’t know if Israel didn’t think of this. Perhaps they did and this is the feature not the bug. Maybe they want a pretext to invade Sinai again. But did Europe and America not think of it? Because I don’t know which is worse, if they thought it out or if they didn’t.

It seems that for now the west seems to have backed off from supporting ethnically cleansing Gaza into Sinai. Ethnic cleansing bad. But the new plan is in. When asked what next, Israel is now suggesting that they will “cut ties” with Gaza. And we are already starting to hear brilliant ideas about “integrating” Gaza with Egypt coming in from the Likes of John Bolton.

Now there is a built in resistance to resettling Palestinians in Sinai that goes across the board in Egypt, which is why the country came down on this suggestion like a brick wall. There has not been enough time to develop resistance to the idea of an “Egyptian administered Gaza”. I can see some Nasserists and maybe some Islamists being fine with it. I can see cracks.

But this is a very bad idea. First, it destroys the Palestinians, because Israel all of a sudden gets rid of half the Palestinian population between the river and the sea. It can then turn to the real prize, the west bank where annexation and ever shrinking Bantustans can finally kill the Palestinian cause and lead to a mini “Greater Israel”.

But even for Egypt this is a shit idea. What does “integrating” Gaza mean? And what is Egypt’s responsibility for this “integrated Gaza”? How do we keep security in it? Will we? Why are we supposed to govern a totally different people? Because yes, they have their own distinct identity, and it's time for western people to realize this.

But I am not really worried that Egypt will end up with this burden. Because I have finally decoded the Israelis. Israel is a tactical marvel. Give the Israelis a specific aim and they will do it brilliantly and efficiently. Control this area, and kill this guy! They will do it and they will do it better than anyone. They have a professional, well trained, and motivated army; and they are brilliant with high tech.

However, I do not think Israel ever had strategy. Israel never had vision. Even the strategic and self evidently beneficial decision to have peace with Egypt, I don't think the Israelis would have ever done it. This was started by president Sadat, and the Israelis tried their best to sabotage it even if it was obviously good for Israel and good for Jews. It took a lot of sticks and a lot of carrots from the Americans to get Israel to do it.

Israel's strategy and vision has always been a trail of brain farts. It is hard to see this because they are technically and tactically proficient to a degree that staggers an observer. But it is true. Asking them what the plan is for anything is never going to get you anywhere, and it's not because they have a master plan, it's because they don't know. They are just crossing bridges as they come, but they have no idea to where.

So this brilliant plan for Gaza, what will Gaza be? OK so Israel "disengages" from Gaza, and then what. Egypt will never annex Gaza. So what is Gaza? There are only two options, an independent Gaza, in which case they get control of their borders, territorial waters, harbor, and airport. This is a nightmare for Israel because they would start messing with it in the Mediterranean and would inspire a lot of hope in the West Bank. So Gaza is not independent? Then Israel has not disengaged from Gaza, because it will keep it under blockade at sea and through the air.

So what are the Israelis thinking? Well, nothing really. It's just another ephemeral cloud in the trail of brain farts. The question is, will the west continue to give unconditional support to this aimless trail?