Environment in Context: Green Energy Colonialism in the Occupied Syrian Golan Heights

Environment in Context: Green Energy Colonialism in the Occupied Syrian Golan Heights

 

This is the third episode of the Environment in Context podcast. In it, Environment Page co-editor Malihe Rezazan interviews Wael Tarabieh and Muna Dajani on the Israeli wind farms in the occupied Golan Heights.

Renewable, clean sources such as solar and wind energy have become an important part combatting the climate crisis and its impacts, but can we divorce the environmentally friendly technologies from the conditions under which these are developed and implemented? And what happens when renewable energy development becomes synonymous with colonial expansion and political repression?

Israel’s feverish plans to build the largest onshore wind farm in the occupied Golan Heights are a good example of why the conversation about a decarbonized economy may not be abstracted from considering prevailing power structures and systems of oppression including colonialism.

Wael Tarabieh

Wael Tarabieh, the co-founder of al-Marsad, The Arab Centre for Human Rights in the Golan Heights is an independent, not-for-profit international human rights organisation located in Majdal Shams, in the Occupied Syrian Golan. The centre was founded in October 2003 by a group of lawyers and professionals in the fields of law, health, education, journalism, and engineering, along with human rights defenders and other interested community members.

Muna Dajani

Muna Dajani’s research aims to identify the link between identity, resilience, and farming under belligerent occupation, where farming acquires political subjectivity as a form of cultural resistance. Her research interests are environmental politics, community-led resource management, and social impacts of climate change.

Malihe Razazan

Malihe Razazan is producer and cohost of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on KPFA Radio in Berkeley. She is also a producer and guest host of Your Call, a daily public affairs program on KALW, local public radio station in San Francisco and a member of The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA). Malihe is the co-editor of Jadaliyya’s media page and host of the weekly program “Media on the Margins.”



For more from Status/الوضع, visit www.statushour.com and subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts!

[This article was originally published by Jadaliyya on 17 July, 2020.]

Politics in the Time of Corona: Gaza (Hosted by Jadaliyya Co-Editors Noura Erakat and Bassam Haddad)

Politics in the Time of Corona: Gaza (Hosted by Jadaliyya Co-Editors Noura Erakat and Bassam Haddad)

From Gaza: 24 March 2020
For audio only, find the podcast on SoundCloud.

This podcast takes you to several cities/countries affected by Covid-19 to discuss social, economic, and political challenges facing their societies, with emphasis on the most vulnerable groups and on what this pandemic reveals about the human condition (wow, big phrase). Based on personal and incisive conversations with various interlocutors on location, we hope both to learn from others and to provide some solace as we address how we are collectively experiencing and dealing with similar challenges.

We will be speaking with our guests, one or several at a time, via Skype, and will try to have brief, informative, and non-draining calls within 20-30 minutes.

Look out for upcoming episodes in the coming week(s) from Dublin, Cairo, Iran, San Francisco, Vancouver, and more.

Hosted by Noura Erakat and Bassam Haddad
Production Set by Khalid Namez
Edited by Alicia Rodriguez
Directed by Bassam Haddad
Research by Naim Mousa

Stats: Gaza

[Date: 26 March 2020]

  • Total confirmed cases: 9
  • Total deaths: 0
  • Total cases per 1 million people: 4
  • Total deaths per 1 million people: 0
  • First cases recorded on March 21.
  • As of March 23, only 200 testing kits are available.
  • Only about 99 people tested so far.
  • Only 3 ventilators per 100,000 in Gaza.
    ○ By contrast, in the US and Israel there are 52 and 40 ventilators per 100,000 people, respectively, which has been deemed vastly insufficient.
  • Around 30 hospitals and major clinics, providing an average of only 1.3 beds per 1,000 people.
  • While other countries have emphasized the need to wash hands frequently, Gazans are worried about having enough water to drink.
    ○ 90% of the water in Gaza has been deemed unfit for human consumption.
  • Almost impossible to quarantine people in Gaza due to population density.
    ○ 113,990 refugees are living in Jabalia camp which covers an area of only 0.54 square miles, making it impossible for people to maintain physical distance from each other, let alone effectively carry out a quarantine.
    ○ In Beach Camp, 85,628 refugees reside in an area of 0.2 square miles.
    ■  Beach Camp has only one medical center and one food distribution center servicing the entire population.
  • Schools have been converted quarantine quarters, with 8 people per classroom and about 200 sharing a bathroom.

Issam A. Adwan

Issam A. Adwan, the project manager for We Are Not Numbers, is a trained translator/interpreter, journalist and English teacher. In 2019, he was chosen by The Carter Center to be the first Palestinian independent observer for the Tunisian elections.

Salam Khashan

Salam Khashan is a family doctor in the Palestinian primary health care. She holds a bachelor’s degree in medicine and surgery from Ain Shams University, Egypt.

Bassam Haddad

Bassam Haddad is Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of the forthcoming book, A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Forthcoming, Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine. Bassam is Co-Project Manager for the Salon Syria Project and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI).  He received MESA’s Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book tittled Understanding The Syrian Tragedy: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).

Noura Erakat

Noura Erakat is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University in the Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice where she teaches topics such as human rights law, humanitarian law, national security law, refugee law, social justice, and critical race theory. Her scholarly interests include humanitarian law, human rights law, refugee law, and national security law. She earned her BA and JD from Berkeley Law School and her LLM in National Security from the Georgetown University Law Center. She is a Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya e-zine. Prior to beginning her appointment at GMU, Noura was a Freedman Teaching Fellow at Temple Law School and has taught International Human Rights Law and the Middle East at Georgetown University since 2009.



For more from Status/الوضع, visit www.statushour.com and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

Interview with Lisa Wedeen on “Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria”

Interview with Lisa Wedeen on “Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria”

 

Jadaliyya Syria Page Co-Editor Lisa Wedeen joins the “Politics, Theory, Other” podcast to discuss her new book, Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria. They spoke about the strategies the Syrian regime has adopted in order to maintain a degree of public support, the neoliberal turn of Syrian society under Bashar al-Assad, how authoritarian leaders exploit digital media to create uncertainty, and the relevance of Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation to the regime’s endurance.

See the podcast posted originally on the “Politics, Theory, Other” Soundcloud here.

[This article was originally published by Jadaliyya on 2 March, 2020.]

الأحلام و الأمل و العزم المدير إيناس حقي

الأحلام و الأمل و العزم المدير إيناس حقي

حديث مع  المخرجة السورية إيناس حقي عن الأمومة والانعزال. إيناس أخرجت العديد من مسلسلات سورية ولكنها الآن تعيش مع زوجها غسان زكريا بعدما رحلو من سوريا إجباريا. الآن، تحاول إيناس وزوجها في بدء حياة جديدة في فرنسا.

إيناس حقي،
 أعمالها التلفزيونية تتضمن: زمن الخوف، رائحة المطر، أصوات خافتة، أبو خليل القباني. والفيلم الوثائقي: المعبر.
الأحلام و الأمل و العزم المدير إيناس حقي

فن سوري في المنفى الأميريكي ورحلة البحث عن الحرية

اجرت رغد المخلوف هذا القاء لمجلة الوضع مع الفنانة التشكيلية السورية عتاب حريب المقيمة في اميريكا, يتناول اللقاء مجموعة اسئلة عن الوطن والمنفى, عن رحلة البحث عن الحرية داخل وخارج الوطن. تحدثنا عتاب عن تجربتها الخاصة في سوريا واميريكا, عن الاحلام والخذلان. يتطرق الحوار أيضا الى سياسات ادارة الرئيس الاميريكي ترامب تجاه الاجئين و الاثر الذي تركته هذه السياسيات في حياة عتاب و حياة السوريين بشكل عام.

أقامت عتاب حريب عدة معارض فردية وجماعية داخل وخارج سوريا. أعمالها مقتناة من قبل وزارة الثقافة السورية / وزارة الثقافة الأردنية / وزارة الثقافة المصرية / متحف النساء، بون / متحف الفن الحديث، القاهرة / المتحف الوطني بدمشق / وضمن مجموعات خاصة ايضا. حصلت على الجائزة الذهبية في مهرجان محرس بتونس 1993، والجائزة الذهبية في وزارة الثقافة بالصين. وتم تكريمها كفنانة عربية متميزة في الجزائر عام 2009 أقامت عدة معارض في الولايات المتحدة الاميريكية, منها معرض مشترك في كاليفورنيا مع الفنانة السورية فاديا عفاش, و معرض فردي في نورث كارولينا بالاضافة لثلاثة معارض فردية في شيكاغو. شاركت حريب في عدة معارض اخرى ذهب ريعها لسوريا واطفال سوريا.

تخرجت رغد من قسم التمثيل سنة 2004 وعملت في نفس المعهد كمدرسة مساعدة لمادة فن التمثيل بين عامي 2005 وحتى 2011. مخرجة مساعدة لعدة عروض مسرحية منها عرض سيليكون إخراج عبد المنعم عمايري وعرض حكاية روزالين إخراج فايز قزق. ممثلة  في الكثير من العروض المسرحية مع مخرجين عدة, منها عرض تكتيك للمخرج عبد المنعم عمايري, وعرض وعكة عابرة إخراج فايز قزق وعروض أخرى مع عدة مخرجين منهم جواد الأسدي وعروة العربي. ممثلة في الكثير من المسلسلات التلفزيونية السورية مع عدة مخرجين منهم حاتم علي وهيثم حقي وشوقي الماجري وغيرهم. ممثلة في عدة مسلسلات إذاعية أشهرها مسلسل حي المطار بنسختيه العربية والانجليزية من إنتاج إذاعة ال بي بي سي. كتبت عدة مقالات لجريدتي السفير والعربي الجديد. أقامت ورشات مسرحية في لبنان لتقديم الدعم النفسي للأطفال السوريين اللاجئين هناك من خلال المسرح.