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Books & printed materials Conflict & disaster

[2980] Reading Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of those things that is always present in the background. Almost everybody is aware of it, even those who do not give any headlines any serious thoughts. It is easy to take it for granted, expecting the conflict to last a lifetime if not for eternity. It is as if it is a trouble that has no beginning. It just exists.

Throughout the 2000s, that was definitely my context. And I remember the decade as a violent period for Israel and Palestine. The news on TV, radio and on the internet told me so.

As a member of a Malaysian generation at that time who had only (mostly) experienced peace, that violence was hard to stomach. What is more is that it was easy for an outsider like me to fall into the stereotype that the modern Middle East is doomed to an endless cycle of violence. So, from the outside, it felt natural to blame both Palestinian groups and Israel for the bloodshed all at the same time. The Palestinian groups were wrong for their bombing tactics, and Israel was wrong for its disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force.

My views of the long conflict have changed over the last 20 years. Previously, I was willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt… because the whole business was complex. And Israel appeared different from the rest in the region.

Now, no longer. Benjamin Netanyahu and his far right government played a role in that. The Arab Spring, in some cases, showed the Arab states are capable of reforms and could be democratic. And over two decades since, Arab states definitely have shown capacity for economic growth. All these developments and more made Israel less special.

But the recent leveling of Gaza by Israeli military has removed completely any sympathy I might have for Israel.

The ongoing Israeli atrocities have prompted me to read more about Palestine and Israel beyond disparate Wikipedia articles. I bought several fictions and non-fictions to do just that. One of them was The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by historian Rashid Khalidi.

The book reframes my experience of the 2000s and makes me understand why I had some sympathy for Israel at that time.

During that decade, Palestine and Israel were going through what is now known as the Second Intifada. It involved suicide bombings and other deadly tactics carried out by multiple Palestinian groups. The violence itself was the result of deep frustration at a decade-long peaceful process that was never meant to succeed.

The deadliness of the Second Intifada, as Khalidi notes, had sapped global support for Palestinian cause, which was abundant before. Not too many governments (and definitely liberals, which I roughly identify myself as then and now) were willing to justify violence even in the face of injustice during the 2000s. The decade after all began with the September 11 Attacks that marked the start of the US War on Terror.

So, the Second Intifada was ruinous for Palestinian reputation as far as outsiders were concerned. And I was among the many outsiders who frowned at the violence.

But what I did not understand then was that the Second Intifada came after period of relative peace, even as Palestinians continued to suffer injustice. The First Intifada that began in the late 1980s and ended in the 1990s was a peaceful organic Palestinian resistance. But Israel would have none of it and suppressed it brutally. The non-violent Palestinian approach, and the violent reaction by Israel forces created deep international sympathy the Palestinian cause. At the time, for the first time in a long time, Israel was seen as the bad guys. So strong was the sentiment that it jumpstarted a peace process.

Unfortunately, as the author argues, that peace process was problematic. On the Palestinian side, the PLO led by Yasser Arafat was incompetent and shortsightedness (who themselves were victims of Arab states’ political maneuvering against each other and were victims of Israel’s policies). On the Israeli side, there was no sincerity about the peace process and about the establishment of the state of Palestine. Meanwhile, the US was not an honest broker; the author describes the US as Israel’s lawyers instead of arbitrators. Already during negotiations, Palestine’s legal team was no match for Israel’s. In the end, Palestine sacrificed too much for nothing with Israel offering no real concession. This brought the successes and the hopes of the First Intifada to naught.

This made many Palestinians bitter. The First Intifada was an organic resistance which was hijacked by PLO. And when PLO had the chance to do something do, they botched it badly.

In Palestinian eyes, as the author sees it, this discredited the PLO and Yasser Arafat immensely. They felt betrayed by the PLO, by the US and even angrier at Israel (especially as the peaceful route towards independence was closed). This created a split in the Palestinian leadership and a room for Hamas to rise in Gaza, at the expense of the PLO which after Arafat’s death, was led by an uncharismatic and ineffective Mahmoud Abbas.

As I mentioned, that recontextualizes the bloody uprising of the 2000s.

But the The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not just about the First Intifada, the subsequent 1990s peace process that failed and the Second Intifada in the 2000s. Rashid Khalidi goes back to the earliest days of Zionism to argue how the whole conflict should be seen within the lens of settler colonialism. He goes through the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1947-1948 war that led to the Nakba, the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1982 Israel invasion of Lebanon and all the way to the Trump years.

Each of these events represented a major turning point in Palestinian struggle for statehood over 100 years. In each of these events, the author demonstrates that it was never an even fight for the Palestinians.

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Books & printed materials

[2979] My readings in 2023

Fictions dominated my list this year. In 2022, more than four fifths of my major reads were non-fictions but for 2023, the ratio fell to less than half. There were two reasons behind this.

One, I have gained more responsibilities at work and despite that, I had played Football Manager 2023 quite religiously as a way to alleviate work stress (I do not recommend this because… ‘alleviate’ is not a word in the Football Manager’s dictionary). This had left me with less time to read, and risked having me falling short of my reading goal. To meet that goal, I cheated by turning to fictions. I find fictions are generally easier to read than non-fictions (as long as they are not written by Kafka).

Two, the non-fiction-heavy list in the past few years was really due to my book writing project. By 2022 and definitely by 2023, the project that began in mid-2010s was coming to an end. So, there was a bit of non-fiction fatigue happening.

Here, I am summarizing selected books I read in 2023.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is my best read this year, and bought from Literati in Ann Arbor. The novel describes the experience of a Nigerian woman moving to the United States and then returning home. While written from a Nigerian perspective, I think the theme would resonate with a lot of foreign students in the US. The author tells the story of a person wanting to run away from home, the racism she faces in the US and eventually the conflicting feeling she have about returning home. I enjoyed how the author describes Lagos: I love novels that tell me more about a place, like The Art of Losing, The Kite Runner and A Bookshop in Algiers, all of which I read in recent years.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Speaking about places, during a recent visit to George Town, I stumbled upon one of Hemingway’s less known work. The novel tells a story of a group of friends living in 1920s Paris making a trip to Pamplona to watch a bullfight. The highlight of the novel is the bullfight but I found I like the Paris part of the story better. But how do I rate it? The Sun Also Rises is the inferior version of A Moveable Feast, also by Hemingway.

Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau

Yet another novel with place-context heavy set in the 1950s Paris. This was supposed to be a funny breezy read but I ended up struggling to go through it. Originally written in French and quite influential when it first came out, the translated English work lost a whole lot of nuances. There is a movie adaptation of the novel, and I recommend watching that instead of the translated work.

Victory City by Salman Rushdie

Unlike the earlier three, Victory City sets in a semi-fictional place. It is a fictional retelling of Vijayanagara, which was an actual empire in pre-colonial India. Since I have reviewed this in much longer length, I do not want to spend too much time here, except that I recommend the novel.

The Employees by Olga Ravn

I bought this from Kinokuniya Kuala Lumpur because it was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. I regretted that. It is a science fiction with an interesting theme but its unorthodox structure left me dissatisfied and made reading a burden despite its low word count.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

This must be read with the right frame of mind and at the appropriate turn of your life. You would have to be really sad and in melancholy. I was generally content when I read this and so, I did not really appreciate it.

The Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History by O. W. Wolters

A classic, the work explains that the content of Sejarah Melayu should not be dismissed as myths. Instead, should be read within a certain context. Once the context is set right, the piece of literature could tell a lot about history of the Malays in the Strait of Malacca. The title suggests the work is about Srivijaya, but it is really more about the early days of Malacca, and how Malacca is linked to Srivijaya. I was lucky to found it while visiting Riwayat bookstore in old parts of Kuala Lumpur.

Malay Ideas on Development: From Feudal Lord to Capitalist by Maaruf Shaharuddin

A huge chunk of the book is a continuation or a repeat of points made in another of his work, Concept of a Hero in Malay Society. It is the latter parts of the book that I found interesting, where the author discusses several 20th century Malay personalities who he presents as the leader of their respective school of thoughts. I think the two most important ones are Zaaba’s Malay capitalism (which blames the Malays for their own backwardness) and Abdul Rahim Kajai-Ishak Haji Muhammad’s version of Malay capitalism (that blames other communities, specifically British and Chinese, for Malay backwardness). Maaruf reasons that the synthesis of these two ideas came in the form of Mahathir Mohamad (which is best understood by reading The Malay Dilemma).

The Malaysian Islamic Party 1951-2013 by Farish A. Noor

I think this is the best book about Pas available out there. Farish explains the evolution of the party from the beginning up until the 2013 General Election. In short, Pas began as a provincial insular gouping but in the 1950s, it evolved to become a leftist pan-Islamist political party. But the 1970s, it evolved again to become a Malay nationalist party before shedding its racist skin to become an Islamist party in the 1980s. By the 2000s, the party moderated its stance and became a party of Muslim democrats.

The End of the Nineteen-Nineties by Hafiz Noor Shams

Okay, this is a cheat. I read this multiple times as I went through the proofreading process with my editors. Yes, written my me. More about the book here.

Cover for the The End of the Nineteen-Nineties

Other mentions

The Parade by David Eggers — a fiction about two men building a highway in a war torn country, which people aspired for peace. There is a twist at the end. I recommend this if you need a short but impactful story.

How I Learned to Hate in Ohio by David Stuart MacLean — a story of racism in 1980s Ohio. It gets dark, slowly.

Acts of Resistance: Dol Said and the Naning War by Shaun Adam — it is a bit of retelling of the Naning War.

Categories
Books & printed materials Personal

[2978] Shall we read The End of the Nineteen-Nineties?

It has been a long journey but after seven or eight years of writing it, I am pleased to share that The End of the Nineteen-Nineties, published by Matahari Books, is finally out in the market.[1]

Cover for the The End of the Nineteen-Nineties

The synopsis on the back cover does a good job describing what the book is all about. Still, I feel I should explain it further and the best way to do so is to discuss the title of the book.

The obvious interpretation of the title is that the book is about the nineteen-nineties in Malaysia. The decade is the subject because, as I explained in the book, the period is special in several important aspects. To understand its specialness, I look back far into history to explain certain trends, and then rationalize the decades after through the lens of the 1990s.

One reason the 1990s is special is what I consider the end (as in the purpose) of the decade. That end is the creation of a larger civic nationalism that we commonly call Bangsa Malaysia. That wider nationalism beyond ethnicities was not conceived in the 1990s. It has a long history, but the specialness of the decade created space which civic nationalism could grow and prosper, unlike previous (and latter) attempts that failed.

The 1990s ended in a spectacular fashion with a political upheaval and an economic crisis. One of many victims of the end of the nineteen-nineties was Bangsa Malaysia.

The book is a broad sweep of Malaysian history. It is a bit of retelling by a person who grew up during the decade. It is written by a person who loved the country, fell out of love, and then ends up in a situationship.

Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — The book is slowly making its way to various physical stores. But online purchase is likely the best for most people. Here are several places where you could buy it online:

Finally, there will be several events linked to the book set in February 2024. I hope to see you there.

Categories
Books & printed materials Fiction

[2977] How I learned to stop worrying and love Salman Rushdie’s Victory City

Reading Victory City, I found myself figuring out whether the places and persons mentioned in the book were real. It is like reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: fiction is weaved through real history and that blurs the line separating the two.

But Victory City is worse than that. It is fashioned as a casual modern translation of a supposedly ancient text detailing the rise and fall of the Bisnaga Empire, which is a reference to a real entity that was the Vijayanagar Empire that covered much of southern India.

My knowledge of the Indian subcontinent history is not as good as that of other areas. That shows when I know of Vijayanagar largely from playing Europa Universalis IV.

Already having a superficial understanding of southern Indian history, the novel did not help. Is Victory City, actually based on something like Sejarah Melayu, an actual document however fanciful the details are? At the back of the novel, the author Salman Rushdie, lists sources he referred to, giving an aura of seriousness (aura of non-fiction?) to his work of fiction. He was painting a picture of 14th-15th-16th century southern India on an un-blanked canvas belonging to another painting. I was worried that would give me the wrong impression of Vijayanagar.

So worried was I, that I tried ascertaining the real history behind names and places in the book. Google. Wikipedia. The usual places for a quick lookup. But that worked up as a distraction, slowing my reading pace and disrupting the rhythm set by the book. Reading became a chore by too much.

Realizing that, I stopped my side quests, and enjoyed the book as it is, tracking the fictional life of the founder of Bisnaga, the fantastical almost immortal sage Pampa Kampana, born just before the empire was founded, and died as the empire collapsed more than two hundred years later.

Categories
Economics WDYT

[2976] Guess the 2Q23 Malaysian GDP growth

The second quarter GDP for Malaysia will be published tomorrow, at noon Malaysian time.

As a reminder, the first quarter economy grew by 5.6% year-on-year. That was a surprisingly resilient quarter, despite deceleration in growth.

How fast do you think did the Malaysian economy expand in 2Q23 from a year ago?

  • 2% or slower (8%, 1 Votes)
  • 2.1%-3.0% (38%, 5 Votes)
  • 3.1%-4.0% (23%, 3 Votes)
  • 4.1%-5.0% (23%, 3 Votes)
  • 5.1%-6.0% (8%, 1 Votes)
  • Faster than 6.0% (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 13

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All available statistics point towards a second quarter slowdown. Export numbers during the quarter have been horrible, and the country’s industrial output, given how Malaysia is an small, open economy, has not been doing well either.

Part of the reason why the decline in exports and industrial output is due to the extraordinary post-lockdown growth, amid severe supply chain complications: that created an extremely high base effect and that effect will likely persist until the third quarter.

But that should distract us from the ongoing global growth slowdown. Europe is in recession and China is in trouble. The only real bright spot is the US, which is surprising because much, much earlier, many had expected the country to go into a recession.

But the US strength itself is causing troubles elsewhere in the form of capital outflows and foreign exchange volatility, since it gives more room for the Fed to raise rates. The end of the hike cycle keeps getting delayed.

The good news is that the domestic labor market remains solid, and there has been a little bit more medium-term direction given out by this government. The political heat has come down a bit after the recent state elections, which hopefully, will convince the government to shift more attention towards the economy, and other nation-building exercise.

And challenges in the next several quarters will not be small. Next in the list is a strong El Nino phenomenon, resulting, very likely, the hottest season we will go through yet. That will require a little bit of preparation: water supply, electricity transmission, manufacturing inputs, health services, firefighting services, etc.

And I pray there will be no forest fire and haze this time around.