Travesty in the New York Times: Robert F. Worth’s “Tragedy in the Middle East”

Egyptian women protesting against the British occupation during the 1919 Revolution.

The New York Times has had a long and productive history of insulting the Middle East and its people through their opinion page.  Time and again, they deliver blatant slaps in the face to the work of many brilliant scholars on the region.  While there are surely earlier examples, the one that most quickly comes to mind is Thomas L. Friedman’s deplorable critique of Egyptian society in his January 28th, 2000 opinion piece “Foreign Affairs; One Country, Two Worlds”, or his June 11, 2008 piece “Obama on the Nile”, or essentially anything written by Friedman. This week, however, they sunk to a new low, something that unfortunately seems to happen with greater frequency in recent years.  Ironically, their actual reporting of Middle East news is some of the best in Western media, the notable exception to this being their coverage of occupied Palestine. It seems the opinion page is where they enjoy committing their atrocities and crimes against humanity.

Their latest act of wanton ignorance regarding regional history comes in the form of Robert F. Worth’s May 12, 2020 book review/opinion piece “Tragedy in the Middle East”, which is labeled as “Nonfiction” perhaps only because it is purely the opposite. Worth’s piece is a bizarre amalgamation of a review of Noah Feldman’s book The Arab Winter (which you would have to pay me $1,000 an hour to read) and various opinions on regional politics that center specifically on a shockingly generalized and specific reading of the history of Arabs alone, in a region with a diverse history of coexistence.  Arabs along with a myriad of other ethnic groups and sects all participated in the glorious succession of prosperous and thriving societies that make up the rich history of the Middle East, until European colonialism arrived and began creating the divisions that today cause so much suffering and bloodshed. These now stark divisions, that were only truly codified after the arrival of the Western imperialist project, and in service to its domination and subjugation of the entire region, seem to be falsely accepted as historical fact by Mr. Worth.  Early on in the article, Worth comments that “the Arab world has been under the sway of one empire or another for the past two millenniums, from the Romans to the Mamluks to the Ottomans to the European colonialists.” He goes on to remark, via Feldman, that “In other words, in 2011 the Arabs finally cast off their historic subservience.”

Perhaps Mr. Worth and Mr. Feldman both need to reexamine their secondary school history books, wherein it is recorded how the Arabs conquered major portions of the world during this period, established just and fair governments that far surpassed later European empires in tolerance, and were responsible for the creation of countless schools of thought, science, art, and all other areas of scholarship. That I even have to list these examples is a testament to the ignorance of these two individual’s work.  Instead, every sentence of Worth’s screed praising Feldman’s book demands a paragraph of unpacking and rebuttal, from the very outset where Worth describes Feldman as “a Harvard law professor with significant experience in the Arab world”. I can think of many Arabs with significant experience in the Arab world, but seemingly they are rarely solicited for their opinions by the New York Times.  Perhaps that would be too much truth to fit in print.

Even more problematic than the vague nature of Mr. Feldman’s credentials on this subject is the New York Times and the Western world’s continued obsession with the Arab Spring, a moment of revolutionary popular uprising that essentially resulted in nothing except for Tunisia’s democracy, Egypt’s regression to an even more repressive status quo, and the destruction of dictatorial yet highly functional states in Libya and Syria, now both utterly ravaged by years of suffering and civil war.  As Worth writes:

“Feldman wants to rescue the Arab Spring from this verdict of ‘implicit nonexistence.’ He believes the uprisings signaled ‘a new, unprecedented phase in Arab political experience, in which participants engaged in collective action for self-determination that was not conceived primarily in relation to imperial power.’”

I should refer these two now not to their secondary school lessons but essentially any college course on the history of the Arab world and greater Middle East, a history that in the modern era is characterized by a long and active tradition of social activism and popular uprisings. Popular resistance movements and social and political activists have been paying with their lives for countless struggles and uprisings since the creation of the Arab nations in the midst of World War I and the Sykes-Picot betrayal.  Instead, according to Feldman and Worth, the “historically subservient” Arabs have been sitting around taking orders from a series of dictators and foreigners for the past 2000 years. Thank god Feldman has arrived to “rescue” the stillborn Arab Spring, nearly a decade after it failed to produce any positive outcomes, and as hundreds of thousands of Arabs continue to perish in the resulting conflicts.

Female students marching at a demonstration in Baghdad, 1939.

Additionally, Feldman’s assertion that these uprisings had nothing to do with imperialism is not only wrong but seems to be an attempt to remove the hand of Western imperialism from Middle East politics, indirectly washing it of the blood of the multitudes who have lost their lives in its palm.  Attempts by Western writers to remove their nations implicit responsibility for Middle Eastern issues and thus paint them as internal “Arab” problems somehow seek to disregard that Western imperialism created these nations and continues to meddle in all of their affairs.  Current uprisings and protest movements in Iraq are a direct result of government corruption largely centered around the theft of national resources by Western corporations. Additionally, the painting of regional issues as “Arab” problems disregards the multitude of non-Arab ethnic groups that are just as important to the region.  Through this, all regional issues are chalked up to be “Arab problems,” scapegoating the Arabs as the constant source of their own suffering, common in Western media today.

Possibly the most insulting assertion by these two self-described scholars on the region is their claim that the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS were wholly the product of local Arab issues and grassroots social movements, despite the massive meddling of foreign powers in both of those conflicts.  In a testament to their ignorance, they cite the very evidence contrary to their opinions instead as bizarre proof of their point.  As Worth describes:

“Feldman concludes that despite the destructive role of foreign powers in that war — including the United States — responsibility ultimately lies with Syrians, who had made the momentous decision to rise up en masse like their fellow Arabs. This conclusion will anger some people. Having written my own book on the Arab uprisings and their consequences, I am inclined to agree with it. (Full disclosure: Feldman draws on and praises my book.) ISIS also qualifies, in Feldman’s reckoning, as an authentic expression of collective political will. Its creators were ‘attempting to act as agents in politics every bit as much as the peaceful Arab Spring protesters or those who took up arms against oppressive regimes.’ In some ways, they had a better claim, since they had a more precise idea of the kind of state and society they were creating.”

Worth’s despicable moment of self-praise and expository masturbation stands on its own as glaring evidence of his utter lack of credibility on any of these subjects. Once again, both writers make no attempt to hide the fact that all they are attempting to do is wash Western hands of the oceans of blood they very readingly and knowingly continue to spill. These two self-styled experts acknowledge the US and other foreign governments direct roles in both the prolonging of the war in Syria, and even more appallingly the rise of ISIS, yet still place the blame for these intensely globalized conflicts strictly on those caught in the crossfire, specifically the Arabs. They even come close to praising ISIS as a genuine political movement, ignoring its direct origins in the US invasion and destruction of Iraq, a reaction to and continuation of the violence and chaos initially sown in the region by the Western war machines.

Their ensuing hamfisted attempts at drawing conclusions regarding the disastrous results of the Arab Spring again seek to remove Western powers from the equation while also suggesting that Tunisians are the only Arabs who are smart enough not to fantasize about a false savior, including Islam itself, an insult to the intelligence of both Arabs and Muslims. Lest these two authors be reminded, many recent uprisings across the Middle East have demanded not that foreign powers save them but that they cease their interference and meddling in the region. When displaced and dying individuals plea for foreign intervention to “save us,” they are appealing to the very same powers who contribute to their unspeakable suffering, and thus who have the ability to do something about it.  Here, Worth and Feldman not only downplay the Western role but blame the victims and then criticize their reactions, akin to breaking into someone’s home, starting a fire, and then telling them it was their fault and they should take care of it.

Worth’s attempts to tie in references to Mohammed Bin Zayed’s vastly oppressive police state in the United Arab Emirates are largely inexplicable in service to their vague and ill-formed attempts at analysis.  They go on to suggest that there is something inherently wrong with the Arab people, describing how “the greater Arab tragedy” could have happened elsewhere yet did not, as if the Arabs are a failed people, wholly and personally responsible for all the issues that have plagued their states in the modern era, not exploited by decades of foreign interference but simply unable to accomplish some vague standard of neoliberal democracy.  While Worth acknowledges that Tunisia is the exception, his list of evidence for this exclusion fails to include one major factor: the lack of major Western meddling in their politics. 

Through this article and their continually increasing willingness to publish others like it, the New York Times demonstrates their growing commitment to the bizarre yet increasingly dangerous neoliberal version of modern Orientalism.  Their commitment to amplifying Western voices to explain “Arab” issues is a flagrant disregard to the vast breadth of work being conducted by scholars, writers, researchers, and actual experts from the region, and a gross disrespect to their brilliant work.  In the modern era, where scholarship is highly self-critical and aware of its past mistakes, and factual information is more readily available than ever in history, fallacies and viewpoints such as these should be a thing of the past.  Unfortunately, in an extension of previous forms of this Orientalist social cancer, modern self-serving pseudo-scholars posing as compassionate experts continue to blatantly and unabashedly prove themselves to be just as dangerous to the prosperity of the Arab world as the British Petroleum Company or Napoleon’s armies arriving on the shores of Egypt in 1798.

Insult to Injury: MoMA's "Theater of Operations"

An image from Jamal Penjweny’s Saddam Is Here (Photo: MoMA)

The massive exhibit “Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011” closed on March 1st at MoMA’s PS1, and may I first say, good riddance. While I am a follower of Iraqi art, I am not fully in tune with the greater art world, and so my perspective on this exhibition is that of an Iraqi American who has spent the greater part of my life working academically on topics related to the history of Iraq and the systematic destruction of this beautiful and once prosperous nation by the US invasion and its allies. As I made my way through the first few halls of the exhibit, I first noticed the glaring lack of representation for Iraqi artists. The nation of Iraq has a long and prolific artistic history, with many prominent artists recognized worldwide, a history that has now been brutally interrupted by the ongoing destruction of the country. Instead I was greeted by piece after piece by American artists, followed by a number of Kuwaitis, to the point that I began to wonder “Where are all the Iraqis?” Only 31 out of 82 artists in the exhibition are of Iraqi origin. Certain pieces seemed to have little relation to the subject matter. The war criminal George W. Bush is a painter now, perhaps his work could have been included here.

While the 1991 Gulf War was a brutally tragic conflict, the exhibition begins with the sufferings of the oil-rich Kuwaitis shoved to the forefront, while a single tiny image of a man wiping a tear represents the vicious massacre of the fleeing Iraqi army on the Highway of Death. Iraq invaded Kuwait on the basis of a historical claim to the territory, annexed from the Ottoman Empire after the murder of the local Pasha by his half-brother, who signed a protectorate agreement with the despicably conniving British, and whose progeny still rule to this day. While Iraq was the belligerent in the invasion of Kuwait, retreating Iraqi forces along with large numbers of civilians were hemmed in and then bombed into oblivion by US and coalition air power, in a wanton act of slaughter and retribution that draws parallels to the firebombing of Dresden in its total unnecessary cruelty. Several works from this era are simply recordings of news broadcasts by Americans, and arrangements of news clippings and military technical documents that offer little artistic value. What is most troubling is the massive imbalance of representation for the 1991 conflict, representing a major portion of the exhibit, when the 2003 invasion was infinitely more devastating to the region and the entire world.

Numerous pieces depict mundane reactions to the 1991 war by American and other Western artists, while Iraqi representation, still dismal later on, is even more lacking here. It seems that even in the art world, as in Gaza, Iraq, and the Western media, an imbalance of powers defines both the conflict and the narrative surrounding it. Perhaps if the Iraqis had million dollar foundations to fund such exhibits, the narrative would be slightly different, however they are still dealing with the disaster of the invasion, the continued theft of their national resources, and the ongoing internal violence fueled by proxy wars.

Conveniently, the time period this exhibit covers begins with the 1991 conflict and ends with 2011 and the “withdrawal” of the US forces who continue to occupy Iraq. This conveniently leaves out two of the most important recent conflicts in the Gulf region. The 1991 invasion of Kuwait was a direct result of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, which was directly funded by both the US and the Gulf states, albeit with Iraq and Iran bearing the entirety of the casualties and suffering of this protracted conflict, that ultimately resulted in nothing except bloodshed, destruction, and massive arms sales. The 2011 bookending of the exhibit conveniently removes any inclusion of the Islamic State, the most significant result of the 2003 US invasion and one of the bloodiest and most horrific events in regional history, second only to the invasion that caused it. The US and the Gulf states have also had direct roles in this ongoing conflict, not to mention the ongoing genocide in Yemen, also conveniently excluded by the chosen time frame.

A series of mundane amateur photos taken by a US soldier show no evidence of the massive campaign of destruction, suffering, and bloodshed he participated in. Images taken by an American of Kurdish victims of the Anfal campaign show the brutality of Saddam’s crimes against the Kurds, but still serve to position the American as the observer in a conflict between Saddam and the Kurds, with no acknowledgement that the US was complicit in Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, providing him with not only the resources to produce such weapons but also the reconnaissance he relied on to carry out such attacks. Perhaps including the famous photo of the dictator shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld in 1983 could have served as a deeper explanation as to how these individuals lost their lives. Art that seeks to speak on history should do so clearly, instead here we are presented with a campaign of downplaying US war crimes and artwashing the sins of the perpetrators, some of whom sit on the board of MoMA. Kurdish artist Jamal Penjweny’s photographs show Iraqis holding photos of Saddam in front of their own faces, a series of images that Western audiences are sure to salivate over. One of these is used as the poster for the show.

One of the most glaringly offensive pieces in the entire show is Touching Reality by the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, who simply compiled a video of presumably his own finger swiping through random images on an iPad of unknown Iraqis slain throughout the conflict. As the stream of bloodied and destroyed faces, dismembered bodies, and severed limbs goes by, the finger taps on certain parts of the images, in order to zoom in on the goriest details. While Western audiences should be confronted with images of the horrors that Iraqis were subjected to on a daily basis at the hands of the US and allied governments, that is an undertaking for those affected by the conflict to decide upon, and not a task for a Swiss artist to capitalize on. Iraqi bodies are not canvases for outsiders far removed from the conflict to make their name upon. Iraqi blood is not Swiss art. For an indigenous approach to confronting the West with Iraqi pain and the horror of war, we can look to Hanaa Malallah’s intensely moving She/He Has No Picture, a series of portraits of victims of the US bombing of the Amiyriyyah shelter in 1991, when 400 civilians were killed, many of whom were children. For many of the victims, no photo was available, and so their portraits are left blank, leaving us only to consider the facelessness of the deaths of innocent human beings. Malallah’s masterful Ruins Roar is equally haunting and moving in its use of burnt canvas and a single skull to convey feelings of darkness, destruction, and ruination.

There is a stark contrast between the artistic approaches to violence as seen by the victims and those who watched comfortably from their homes. Victim’s Portrait, Dia al-Azzawi’s painting of a newspaper photo of a burned Iraqi soldier, adds color, dignity, and humanity to the gruesome horror of the face in the original black and white photo. In contrast, many works by Western artists seen here seem to revel in elements of gore and bloodshed, rather than contemplating its causes and effects. Many of the works by Iraqis are far more pensive and thought provoking in nature, reflecting not only many of their extensive backgrounds in fine art but also their deeper sense of contemplation on bloodshed, loss, violence, and the nature of suffering. Pieces like the various examples of Iraqi book art on display are profound in their often intensely thoughtful simplicity, conveying much broader concepts and emotions through their understatedness. A US soldier’s amateur photo of a sign outside the village of Tikrit is laughable in comparison to the rich and transcendent paintings of Rafa Nasiri, who was born in the same village. Richard Serra’s Stop Bush is simply that very message over a crude drawing of the now iconic image of a torture victim at Abu Ghraib, something out of a high school art class.

Ali Eyal’s Autumn Solo Show (Photo: MoMA)

Particularly inspiring and touching are the works by young Iraqi artists Ali Eyal and Ali Yass, who came of age during the war and were immensely affected by it. Eyal’s pillow case renditions of dreams and nightmares in skilled calligraphy evoke a deeply poetic and pensive take on loss and memory. Similarly, Ali Yass’s recreations of his lost childhood drawings are a similar mediation on these themes, along with displacement. Both of these young artist’s works meditate on familial loss. Sadly, a tour guide observed leading a group of students could only comment on the color palette of Eyal’s moving paintings, and made no mention of the deep themes of loss in his work, both of home and family, nor of his inability to attend the exhibition opening due to the ongoing Muslim ban. Other artists in the exhibit were also denied visas and prevented from attending. Both Eyal and Yass have lent their support to various movements protesting the exhibit and MoMA. Ali Yass’s work was removed preemptively when he organized a protest in which he planned to physically remove his paintings from the exhibit. Michael Rakowitz’s name was removed from his piece after he made an attempt to pause a screen showing his work, and posted a statement next to it in protest of MoMA’s trustees profiting from global suffering and “toxic philanthropy.”

As if this exhibition wasn’t tragic enough, many of these artist’s first opportunity to exhibit their work at MoMA was overshadowed by the controversy surrounding board members Larry Fink and Leon Blacks’s respective investments in private prisons and Blackwater, the latter notorious for its human rights abuses and war crimes in Iraq, including the 2007 Nisour Square Massacre. Many artists involved in the exhibit signed petitions demanding MoMA board members divest from these companies. Less significantly, cultural mistakes were made in the presentation of certain works, meant to be read right to left as in Arabic script but instead presented in the opposite fashion. This is most notable in the hanging of Dia al-Azzawi’s breathtaking Mission of Destruction, which is arguably the focal point of the entire exhibit. Evoking a modern Iraqi version of his 1983 recreation of Picasso’s Guernica after the Sabra and Shatila massacres, this colossal work depicts the armies of the invasion on the right, followed by the suffering of the Iraqis on the left, commanding an entire room of the gallery.

Near the end of the exhibition we are confronted with Thomas Hirschhorn’s Hotel Democracy, a massive celebration of ignorance, both cultural and political. A collection of images of angry people of color from around the world, all of which have nothing to do with each other, are placed as backdrops in a massive cross-section of miniature hotel rooms furnished with crude children’s furniture made from cardboard and masking tape. This palace of insensitivity is a total slap in the face to all non-European people of the world and their individual and highly specific struggles. What most of this has to do with Iraq and the Gulf is unclear, as images of African militias and and various protesters from around the world are featured. While I have no other knowledge of Hirschhorn’s work beyond his extremely offensive contributions to this exhibition, I feel I can safely say he single-handedly represents everything that is wrong not only with this exhibition but also greater Western thinking about the rest of the world.

The most flagrantly out of place image included in this highly problematic celebration of global violence is that of a group of men in white covered in blood. They are bleeding not because they have been injured in some geopolitical conflict, but because they are participating in the the annual passion play of Ashura, wherein many Shia Muslims flagellate themselves in public rituals and processions to remember the martyrdom of the Imam Hussein, considered by many to be an honor and a rite of passage. It appears the artist simply found an image of bloody Muslim men and decided to include it, with little or no knowledge that for many this is actually a sacred religious ceremony. The title of this highly abhorrent work suggests that simply democracy is the cause of all of this conflict, presented entirely out of context, and disregarding global capitalism and its myriad technologies of violence. Those who remain in power continue to exploit these machinations to further enrich themselves, often even using their profits to weakly polish their reputations and fund art shows such as this one. A major issue for many of this exhibition’s protesters was the blatant artwashing of Iraqi suffering.

In a sleek modern totem to the hypocritical mirror of Orientalism, many of the Western artists featured in this exhibit seem to think they are making grand statements about Western imperialism and foreign policy, when in fact they are only expressing the continuation of the ignorance of their perspective, and that they have learned almost nothing from the last century of global conflict and strife. The true victims of this exhibition are the Iraqi artists, whose work was not only silenced by occupation and displacement but then once again drowned in a sea of American and European voices seeking to speak on their behalf, replacing their own narratives with Western views of what they might be. Perhaps they should have sat back and let the Iraqis do the talking, those who actually lived through the horrors of war on a daily basis, for decades, often with little hope for escape. The ever more popular idea that liberals are just as ignorant and dangerous as conservatives is on full display at MoMA. Thank god it only lasted until March 1st. No to occupation, no to division, no to this exhibition.