Class

Class has been great experience, where I learned a lot. Enjoyed the movies we watched it taught me a lot about my history. I came from the Middle East and specifically from Palestine, where the conflict doesn’t need, people killing each other everyday. Israel from one side and Palestinian parties on the other, the class of professor Metcalf offered me great learning about my conflict, and the treaties that they don’t teach us about, such as Iran who is playing as the religious ruler of the Middle East, put it interest before their believes, or how king Abdullah went to Israel behind the Palestinians back asking for land if he doesn’t fight, or when Nasser fought his group leader in order for him to take over his nation and establishing his spy system. Thanks professor for this chance you giving where you gave me a lot of your valuable information, to make me understand more about the issues of the middle east, especially when Saddam had his own treaties with the Americans in order for him to take control over more land.

Somali

Somalis groups has been attacked ships crossing the red sea, kidnapping more than twenty ships till now, killing few members of each ship, and asking for money as a exchange of the ship and the goods on it. People have become with those ideas because of the lives they living. I know you will argue the question, “but that’s not an excuse for them to become kidnappers?” trust me if you see the stress and the lives they live, you will excuse them for what ever they have done, because most of them do it because they can’t feed their families and they need to stand up for themselves. So they don’t think any other way of doing that but by kidnapping the ships and asking for money in return.

new events

In Afghanistan few events has been happening, the American forces killed more then twenty Taliban fighters as a counter attack on their camps out of one of the Afghani cities, and president Obama admitted that Taliban considered now as one of the biggest threats on the American security, since they been taking over town on the borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Zayni Barakat

Zayni Barakat was written in 1971 discussing the state of Egypt during the 16th Century. Throughout the 16th Century, the Mamluk maintained control over the nation of Egypt, despite being on the brink of losing power to the invading Ottoman empire. Barakat, although an able leader, maintains power through tyranny. Although the novel is made up of the personal accounts of Barakat’s subjects, it is clear this book was written because Zayni Barakat is depicted in the image of Gamel Abdel Nasser, the prime minister of Egypt at the time the book was written. I would argue that Barakat, like Nasser, only came into power as result of political instability, and maintained power only through oppression.

Touba

Shahrnush Parsipur’s, Touba and the Meaning of Night, is considered one of the biggest achievements of Iranian literature written by a women. Her story tells the life of Touba a young girl who was restricted by her culture yet had to make life changing decisions at the young age of fourteen against a changing political setting. Parsipur invites us on a journey of complicated Iranian history defying Western stereotypes of Iranian women and culture. Her modern feminist approach has gotten her in arrested but she continues to write for she feels it is important to portray the lives of these Iranian women who do not have a voice of their own. In fact she started writing Touba and the Meaning of Night while she was imprisoned.

The Man who Changed the World

Iran before the revolution was becoming modernized and westernized, were government isolated Islam in their rule, were women were allowed rights, but everything changed after the revolution, when Khomeini decided that Iran should go back to be ruled under the Islamic rule, were he gathered huge numbers of Iranians to follow him.


Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979. Iran’s seizure of the US embassy in Tehran and the holding a staff of 66 for more than 400 days. Discussing issues between the east and the west were interest plays a huge rule in the equation we witnessed through the movie that Iran had their interests such as the 5 billion dollars the American government was holding belongs to the Iranian government. Even after the agreement over the American hostages Iran still picked benefit of moral since in the 1980’s and after the establishment of Hezbollah French citizens were taking hostages in Lebanon. The French government at the time asked Iran for help since they got influence over the Hezbollah, and they offered them more than 100 million dollars, the Iranian government refused since the opposite party in France offered 10 times more the number.

Israeli Palestinian conflict

On Thursday, we discussed the issues that faced that Arab and the Jewish nations, forcing them to fight each other, instead of living together on one land equally. Palestine was under the British mandate, before the establishment of Israel as a state. After allowing the Jews to come to Palestine from Europe where they were treated badly, Palestinians accepted the idea of having Jewish community in certain parts of Palestine, while they can’t get involve with politics. Jewish immigrants were allowed to come to Palestine only certain number a year, but the illegal immigrants were more than the legal ones. Palestine is a country for three religions, Muslims believes that, meanwhile Jewish minorities in Palestine started a revolt against the Palestinians who were not armed at the time, causing a massacres in every single city of Palestine, throwing more than 750000 Palestinians outside of their country, and taking their houses.