num_pages: 400
description: For decades now, the Middle East has been torn by violent conflict of the most savage kind. There have been five Arab-Israeli wars; wars between other states; numerous civil wars, small and large; struggles by women, students, workers, peasants; religious and class battles. And there have been innumerable books on many of these subjects. This collection of seventeen articles from the journal Khamsin, however, is unlike any other.All the contributors are from Middle Eastern countries: Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran. The subjects they treat – Oriental Jews and Palestinian workers in Israel; women in Israel and the Arab countries; the politics of religion and religious revivalism in the Arab world, Iran, and Israel; the civil war in Lebanon – are proscribed themes in much of the region. Moreover, these themes are treated in unorthodox ways: few of these articles are likely to please committed partisans of any of the contending political forces.Readers of this anthology will not find repetitions of the commonplace claims and banal jargon of Middle Eastern politics, whether left or right. But they will find iconoclastic analysis of some of the issues underlying the many conflicts of the region.The journal Khamsin is named after a scorching desert wind that has its source in Upper Egypt and, according to popular legend, scalds the Middle East for fifty days a year. It was founded in 1975 by a group of anti-Zionist Israelis and Arabs united in their socialist vision and opposition to economic exploitation, political domination, and social oppression. Independent of all organized political tendencies, it is a forum for discussion of all the crucial issues of Middle Eastern politics.
language: English
title: Forbidden Agendas: Intolerance & Defiance in the Middle East
publisher: Saqi Books