From the Desk of the Editor-in-Chief
It is difficult to know where to begin after the calamity that was this week’s presidential contest in the United States of America. Convicted felon and twice-impeached former president Donald Trump won re-election with both the popular vote and Electoral College. While he promises to “fix our broken economy,” Trump has threatened to wreak vengeance on his perceived enemies, including the press (“enemies of the people”), and uses terms including “vermin,” “trash” and “enemies within” to describe his political opponents. His second term promises to further weaken the rights of women to control their own bodies, to empower white supremacists, to detain and expel immigrants, and to destroy any hope of international consensus on how to fight climate change.
But what does this election result augur for Arabs and others from the center of the world? Will a second Trump term result in further loss of life and property for Palestinians and Lebanese, even as despots like Al-Sisi in Egypt and MBS in Saudi Arabia solidify their grip on power?
As one TMR contributor commented, “One fears a greater escalation of Israeli and US military presence across the Middle East.”
Here at The Markaz Review, we have been especially struck by the violence of Israel’s war on Gaza, on the genocide against Palestinians, and the seemingly indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon. And the looming regional war between Israel and Iran has worldwide implications, with Russia and China backing Iran, and the US and Europe still supporting Netanyahu’s Israel.
What the US election could mean for journalists and global press freedom
As a member of the press, I have been alarmed by Israel’s targeting of journalists, poets and writers in Gaza and Lebanon; Israel has killed more members of the media in the past year than perished in all of World War II, and has done so with complete impunity. That is to say, using Hamas as its every excuse, Israel has killed not only more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and destroyed all of its universities, the majority of its hospitals, along with libraries, schools, theaters, cultural centers, printing presses and bookstores — but in an attempt to prevent the world from learning the truth about the wanton destruction the IDF has wrought on Gaza (expanding into the West Bank and Lebanon), Israel has made journalism one of the world’s most dangerous professions. At the same time, with western complicity, Israel has violated international law so egregiously that there are calls for the country’s expulsion as a member of the United Nations.
What we have experienced over the past year has profoundly changed the way we see the world. The extreme dehumanization of the Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank, who have been under withering attack by Israeli military forces and settlers, has made it clear to Arabs and others from the region that our lives are expendable, our humanity questionable, and our future in danger. As TMR senior editor Lina Mounzer wrote in her editorial “A Year of War Without End”:
Ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.
Of course, all of this has occurred on the Democrats’ watch, and partly explains Kamala Harris’ loss at the ballot box. Now, one wonders if Trump could possibly be any worse.
The entire raison d’être of The Markaz Review has been to give the microphone, if not the megaphone, to our writers and artists, to speak in our own voices, on our own terms — not beholden to western gatekeepers, but to our own humanist values, and cultural traditions.
Now more than ever is the time to resist, to dissent, to speak out and be loud about it. As Ani Zonneveld, our ally at Muslims for Progressive Values argues, “We will fight fiercely, peacefully, and strategically to safeguard the freedoms of all individuals in this country, and we will stand as an ally to every community that finds itself under threat. Now is the time to resist despair.”
Let’s continue fighting together.
Thank you for reading.
—Jordan Elgrably
p.s. Creating The Markaz Review has been a labor of love. Keeping it going and growing has been a challenge, but we hope to continue to meet that challenge, with your support.
