Someone explain to me what Syria looks like if Assad stays

Something I wrote years ago... Never pressed the "Publish" button! Still pretty relevant I hope.

I've noticed that in conversations and writings about Syria, recently and increasingly, the burden of proof is misplaced when it comes to the question: "Does Assad really have to leave?"

For some reason, the burden of proof is on the people who say "yes" -- we need to explain how that would work. I think the implicit reason is that "removing Assad" is a form of action whereas "Assad stays" is just the undisturbed and "natural" direction things are going in.

To those who think this logic makes sense: there is nothing natural about how the ideological footprint of Daech (aka ISIS) fits perfectly in Assad's narrative from the early peaceful days of the revolution. There is nothing natural about Iran and Russia pouring money, weapons, men into Syria every day. There is nothing natural about Hezbollah, an Iranian-funded Lebanese militia, tipping the balance in favor of Assad time and time over when times got tough. And, of course, nothing natural and normal and unrelated about the US bombing Daech and begging to fund and arm any rebels who think or convince themselves that the US should be trusted.

For once, let's shift the burden of proof on the people who think Assad is Syria's "only hope." They say it to you like a doctor that's telling you you're going to die in 6 months. Like they're terribly sorry, but they're not going to let their emotions cloud this cold, perfectly rational judgment.

It's "Assad or chaos," they say. We know what the worst kind of chaos looks like. Assuming it's feasible, what does Assad's Syria look like after the war?

Who can guarantee that media access will not be completely shut off? Who can guarantee the safety of anyone who's liked a "dubious" picture on Facebook or lived in the wrong area? How many people will die?

Maybe the US will draw a few red lines here and there, and express "grave concern" when they're crossed. After a while, we probably won't have to see it on the news every day. Der Spiegel will have an amazing in-depth 10 page article about it.

If that happens, the "West" -- the US specifically -- will have based itself on the wrong reasons to make a life and death decision for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. I'd argue that the US has been making that decision every day since the start of the war.

Palestinian Children are NOT an "and"

Many if not most political coalitions that were able to significantly affect a serious political outcome are constituted by different groups with major internal ideological divergences. The key to these coalitions' success is that they aligned on a particular demand or set of demands and the circumstances were favorable.

This applies to the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the Arab Spring, the feminist / women's rights movement in many places, and many more outside of a Middle Eastern context. Often, the movements are built around a core of people that are directly effected, although problematic gaps can appear sometimes (e.g. the reification of the proletariat).

There are always "hardliners" that have and create the most problems with the coalition and some of its members. Nevertheless, these hardliners' role is as crucial as the one of those choosing the right alliances. Alliances that are too "distant" can cause too much internal divergence - in other words there's a trade-off between the mass of the movement and its volatility (in the sense of the opposite of robustness). As a movement evolves, policing the border of that movement is the subject of intense and often difficult debates.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, I'm focusing on the movement that (let's define it very loosely to start) people who are outraged with what is happening to the Palestinians and thinks they deserve a better future.

I consider myself close to that movement or even part of it. To be a bit more specific, I'm talking about the movement that does not support Hamas or Hezbollah - more on that later - this movement condemns violence against Israeli civilians, although some would say the scale and/or criminality of the violence is not comparable on both sides.

Going back to the configuration I was talking about, there are certain groups that the "mainstream" of the movement does not want to associate with. A prime example is the antisemites that were protesting in Germany and in France. They have no place in this movement -- the biggest question mark is about who gets to say who is and who is not part of the movement, but I think these groups are marginal enough to most of what people agree on within this movement. Hamas and Hezbollah are open questions because then it becomes about a different coalition with maybe some shared actors but a different center of gravity.

A more interesting example is the debate with the community about a specific kind of Jewish Orthodox anti-zionism. The problem is that they are opposed to the state of Israel on the wrong bases -- for religious reasons.

Anti-zionism from within the movement is opposed to the state of Israel based on the atrocities committed against the Palestinians, the oppression, the military occupation with very little, or even no rule of law. I will not go into the ethics of anti-zionism and Israel's right to exist and the alternatives or solutions.

The question I'm thinking about is whether a group like J Street can be a good ally for the pro-Palestinian movement - especially outside of Palestine. On the one hand, they are openly opposing crazy hardliners like AIPAC and Netanyahu; they sometimes seem to want to change Israel's policies in directions (but probably not to extents) compatible or similar to the ones the pro-Palestine movement wants. On the other hand, like Jewish Orthodox anti-zionism, J Street - at least in its rhetoric - is more worried about the massacre or oppression of Palestinians as a PR problem than as an utterly cruel, preventable, and undeserved human tragedy inflicted by the IDF (and Hamas, in my opinion).

My take on it is that it really depends on the context. When pro-Palestine people want to work with J Street, they need to make sure that their views are not being distorted and that they're not being used - which is an understandable tendency for J Street to have. They have an interest in portraying a "moderate voice" on the "other side" that can work with you. But often, Palestinians and pro-Palestinians can be type-casted into this position while having any sort of agency stripped from them, and this can end up hurting their cause.

Here's an excerpt from a CNN article about a statement J Street released earlier in the most recent conflict in Gaza: While adding to the chorus of pro-Israel voices in the U.S. condemning Hamas and expressing support for Israel's right to defend itself, J Street tagged on a series of emphatic "ands." "And ... we grieve for families in Gaza whose innocent children are dying," the statement said. "We take issue with those who say that discussing how to end the violence in the long run is not pro-Israel."

I understand where this is coming from. But Palestinian children are not an "and." They are why this is so urgent and outrageous and terrible. People should care about this situation because of these children, because of the conditions the Palestinians are forced to live under, because of the fundamental asymmetry and injustice of this conflict. We should care about this conflict because we want a better life for Palestinians and Israelis taken collectively, because they deserve it as persons and are capable of it, not because of possible harm to Israel's interest.

That's the problem. But missing critical strategic opportunities can be a problem too. I hope that I can get more insight by hearing what other people think.

[Teaching] My experience with making mini computer games for my students

I am a Lebanese guy who recently graduated from Yale University in the US. I have been teaching 4th and 5th grade (8ème et 7ème) math in a public school (متوسطة الأشرفية الرسمية المختلطة) in Beirut, Lebanon, since October this year. Other posts on teaching and my experience (this is the second one) can be found on this blog with the label [Teaching].

In this post, I will explain (1) why I started creating mini computer games that helped kids improve their math skills, (2) which games I've made so far, and (3) what I have learned + where I want to go in the future.

(1) Why/how it started:
I have a B.S. in Computer Science and, at some point, I realized that I missed coding. I started learning web programming (HTML+CSS+JavaScript+jQuery) at the end of last year, and I thought it would be cool if I could improve my skills while making stuff that the kids would like. I went to the school's computer room, looked through all the hardware, put aside the stuff that didn't work, rewired a few things; it turned out I had 4-5 Windows XP machines that worked alright. I installed an old version of Firefox I found on www.oldapps.com, and I was ready to go.

In class, I'm always experimenting with new games; these are as simple as splitting them into two teams and asking them questions for points. I found out pretty fast that kids suddenly becomes geniuses when they are playing games. I knew my students love winning very much, so it seemed obvious to me that I could capitalize on that through a computer game. In addition, I thought that a computer game could provide a good change of context that could energize and motivate the kids.

(2) Games made so far:
I have made 4 games so far; I'm putting them in chronological order. All the games are in French; I'm happy to translate them if anyone wants to use them in a math class taught in English!

Ilana (you can check her art out here) helped me out with picking colors for the first two games, and we made the last one together (she did the layout + appearance and colors, I did the coding) with some color advice from my sister Riwa.

The games have been tested on Chrome and Firefox only; if you're using IE or Safari I feel sorry for you.

• Quelles Droites: tests students' knowledge of the difference between parallel, perpendicular, and intersecting ("concourantes") lines. I choose to ignore the fact that perpendicular lines are also intersecting.
• Multiples de 2, 3, 4 et 9: tests students' understanding of criteria of divisibility by 2 (last digit is a multiple of 2), 3 (sum of digits is divisible by 3), 4 (last two digits for a multiple of 4), and 9 (sum of digits is divisible by 9).
• Comparaison de fractions: tests students' understanding of how to compare fractions (make their denominators the same or compare them to 1).
• multiXO: definitely the most advanced game so far. This game is a 2 player variation of XO (tic-tac-toe) where each player picks a square and needs to win a small challenge (testing multiplication skills) in order to put their mark (X or O) on that square.

(3) Lessons and future direction:

A few things I have learned:

• Kids learn super fast when playing computer games! But we should keep in mind that anything new is exciting to the kids, and that the gains would diminish considerably if they played computer games every day. The most important thing to keep the students motivated is using many different techniques and tools for teaching.
• Let them play (and lose) and then explain! After playing for a while and being unable to make progress, the kids will want to listen and understand what they need to do if they want to win. Some of the "least mathy" students performed amazingly well when that approach was used because their curiosity was triggered.
• Kids love games, but they get bored quickly! One day, I had to take care of my students for a free period; I agreed to take them to the computer lab, and I let them play a game they had already played. They were so excited at first, but they got bored really quickly and it was a little bit demotivating :( but I learned to always leave them wanting more.
• Kids hate losing! multiXO took a lot of time to produce, but kids who lost in the first round got demotivated and lost interest very quickly. So it's useful to make the game more open-ended and make the competition about beating your previous score as opposed to beating your classmate.

Going forward, I'd like to continue getting better and getting more input from them to make the games more fun / evolved. I think that, in general, I want to try to make the games more addictive. I would really appreciate any kind of feedback or ideas!

ShooBekManAnaManné3awné®

If you live in Lebanon and have 4 or more Christian friends, you have definitely encountered the 3awne-but-not-3awne friend. The 3awne-but-not-3awne friend is part of a class of individuals with very peculiar properties.

A lot of the 3awne-but-not-3awne friend's properties are similar to properties of the 3awne individual - for example, the 3awne-but-not-3awne-friend exhibits selective Islamophobia and intense sectarianism coupled with 24/7 bashing of politicians and people in Lebanon for not putting Lebanon above everything.

The most fun property of the 3awne-but-not-3awne-friend is their incredible ability to:

1. Use every classic argument present in the TayyarArguments® book
2. Get out of any corner you put them in by using the magical ShooBekManAnaManné3awné® formula

Here are 2 classic 3awne-but-not-3awne-friend moments:

Convo 1:
You: "Any thoughts on Syria?"
Her: "The regime is bad, but the rebels eat hearts for breakfast, children for lunch, and Christians for dinner! Aren'tYouScaredOfSunnis® Maaloula Maaloula Maaloula Maaloula Maaloula"
You: "But people will hate Christians more if they support a criminal regime that's oppressing them; even if this 'saves' the Christians in the short run it dooms them in the long run"
Her: "So you want to be ruled by cannibals and Al Qaeda? Aren'tYouScaredOfSunnis® Maaloula Maaloula Maaloula. At least when the regime was on top no one was dying"
You: "Anyone who raised their voice was dying! The uprising was peaceful but your friends from the Syrian regime did everything to lead up to this situation!!"
Her: "What do you mean 'your' friends? ShooBekManAnaManné3awné®"

Convo 2:

Him: "All politicians in Lebanon suck. They use us and lie to us and steal from us"

Me: "Yeah especially Aoun, all he cares about is being president!"

Him: "Yeah but he never stole anything. But they all suck"

Me: "Dude's allied to Hezbollah and they're ruining institutions and the country!"

Him: "Yeah I said they all suck! But Aren'tYouScaredOfSunnis®, HaririSucks®. They all suck"

Me: "Dude... Future movement is corrupt and weak but at least they don't assassinate their political foes! They have a minimum of respect for democracy, the constitution and the rule of law. You can't equate their problems with Hezbollah's problems!"

Him: "Ok bro rou2 as I was saying they all suck. Aslan ShooBekManAnaManné3awné®"

Me: [Facepalm]

[Teaching] How I noticed that being better at French is making my teaching worse

I am a Lebanese guy who recently graduated from Yale University in the US and I have been teaching 4th and 5th grade (8ème et 7ème) math in a public school (متوسطة الأشرفية الرسمية المختلطة) in Beirut, Lebanon since October this year. If I write more posts on teaching and my experience, you'll be able to find them on this blog with the label [Teaching].

This problem is widely documented when it comes to the education system in the Arab World, but here goes (I'll ask the education guru Nafez Dakkak for some citations here): we either use written Arabic or a foreign language (French in my case, English in other schools/countries) to teach math and science.

In both cases, the kids are learning complex, oftentimes abstract material in a language that's not their first language. Think of a language you don't know or barely know, and imagine learning even the most basic math concepts in it. Now imagine learning these concepts for the first time in that language. I'm learning Spanish, and I tried to read a Wikipedia article on "los números primos." Ouch, right?

The math curriculum used in my school (and throughout public schools in Lebanon) is in French, and the kids I teach unfortunately have a very poor French: just to give you an idea, I spent 4 periods trying to teach my 4th grade students the words "combien" (how many), chacun ("each"), "il y a" ("there is/are") so I could give them a simple problem ("There are 5 bags; each bag has 3 pieces of candy. How many pieces of candy are there?"). I felt like it was too complex; they got bored and stopped paying attention no matter how hard I tried, and I realized I was trying to do too many things at the same time.

Most of the time, I resort to just teaching in Arabic, although French (along with spoken Arabic) is my first language. Although I think I am better at French than the non-French teachers around me, other teachers use more French than I do! This is simply because these teachers know what French the kids speak, so they know when to use Arabic and when to use French. They intuitively know that the kids will understand a word like "excellent" or "lève-toi" ("get up") or "regarde devant toi" but not something like "réveille-toi" or I don't know - I mean my whole point is that I don't know what they know!

This makes me terrified of using French. They're already expending so much energy learning the concepts, I don't wanna spend more of their mental energy on language skills that they're supposed to be getting in French class! That said, although I'm making it easier to learn the skills I want them to learn in the short run (like enumerating the multiples of 3), I'm limiting their capacity for more abstract thinking (like understanding why if Rami is carrying pieces of candy in bags of 3, then the number of pieces of candy he has is a multiple of 3): abstract thinking requires tying more technical terms and concepts to more mundane/everyday terms and concepts and is difficult to do across languages. By doing most of my teaching in Arabic, I am also not doing enough work to help them actually get what is asked from them without having to translate it word by word.

My better French is due to my growing up in a different setting that is more privileged, where even the kids spoke French (really the language of power if we don't take into account how the rise of English and the decline of France in general is making things much more complicated) amongst themselves. In most cases, this has been an advantage, but here it's actually preventing me from doing my work better because I'm further from the kids' linguistic sphere. I think that going forward, I want to try to speak French in class and really push my students to express when they don't understand what I'm saying, maybe I'll learn a bit of their French and they'll learn a bit of mine :)

With respect to the broader problem of language discrepancy, I'm starting to think that maybe we should teach math and science in spoken Arabic (عامية\دارج), like literally have our books written in spoken Arabic. Although it might be painful to (1) translate the technical terms and (2) teach the kids how to read standard Arabic (there are ways of writing it out there!), it's the easiest way for the kids to learn because they'll be able to tie math to their daily lives more easily (and they learn so much faster when this happens!!). The only issue is that, for those who get to university, they'll have to relearn math and science in another language (thanks for this insight Ilana!), which might be very hard because I suspect they will be worse at that language unless we find a way to reform our language curricula and teaching methods.

3aksser, being a good person, and the ideal Lebanese State

Note: this is the second blogpost in a series of 3 about approaches to practical life and inspired by what I'm seeing and hearing around me in Lebanon. Here's a link to the first one; it deals with the question of the "daww 3ale" (high beams) at night. I'm not sure exactly in what way, but I've benefited a lot from conversations with Michel about driving in Lebanon when it comes to these posts, so I'd like to thank him :)

If you've driven in Lebanon, you've probably had the experience of turning into a one-way street only to see another person coming towards you the wrong way - I'll call driving the wrong way 3aksesser from now on.

There are several attitudes I've seen adopted in this case, and I've been trying to figure out which one I should adopt if I want to be a good person:
- an understanding attitude: if everyone takes the mafra2 (the street you're going into) 3aksesser, and you're feeling magnanimous, you just back off or move your car to the right and let the person pass
- a principled attitude of attachment to the law: because the other person is breaking the law, you'll force them to back off until they can pass and throw in some mean looks while you're at it to show them how ashamed they should be of breaking the law
- an always right, always angry attitude: some people don't think of the question of who's right in a road disagreeement as one that depends on the facts. They only look at one variable: their position in the issue. If a "principled" person refuses to let them pass when they're driving 3aksesser, they'll be outraged. If someone who's driving aksesser comes their way, they'll be outraged. These people will get angry and force the other person to go back, maybe even getting out of their car and getting threatening if they sense resistance on the other person's part

For me, the angry attitude doesn't really qualify for what a good person is or should be - because, in the end, morality relies on our ability to be someone other than ourselves and see that someone sees - so the competition is between the understanding attitude and the principled one.

People who hold the principled attitude will tell you that if there was a proper, functioning Lebanese government, people would be punished for going against the traffic. While that's not happening, it's on us as citizens who care about the law to model lawful behavior and frown upon unlawful behavior. If we act like unlawful behavior is okay then we're part of what's making it okay.

I used to find these points compelling. However, there's something that makes me very uneasy with this sacralization of the ideal State that these points rely on. I don't like the idea that the only way for things to be right in this country is for the State to be in control of every inch of territory and for all laws to be perfectly enforced. Very often, what I see in the description of this ideal state we will have reached "lamma yezbat el balad" (when the country finally becomes functional, works out) is the imposition of an idealized European framework - even though even Europe doesn't function this way. Very often, that idealized State becomes an excuse to dismiss what we have before our eyes and blame whoever seems to be preventing that State from happening or who's acting like it's not there. We blame them instead of thinking about why exactly the problem at hand is a problem and what we can do to fix it. On that note, I suspect that it's once we let go of that framework of the sacred idealized State as the ultimate solution for all problems that we can start to work a solution out when it comes to Hezbollah's weapons and their current monopoly over decisions of war and peace.

Sorry I got a bit sidetracked. To come back to our topic, I think it might be useful to stop seeing 3aksesser as a backwards phenomenon that will be eradicated once our ideal perfect Lebanese State is in place. It's no wonder mentions of such a State (e.g., "kif beddo yezbat el balad" = how is the country gonna work out) often go hand in hand with terms like "bajam" and "tatar" that conjure up racist images of an undisciplined, barbarian people. We need to stop fitting every difference between our situation and the idealized State on the backwards/advanced axis - things are richer and more interesting than that.

After much thought, I decided that we should start seeing 3aksesser for what it is: something that can be helpful and save us a lot of time in many cases; but I still think it should be looked down upon when it's exaggerated or when it's (too) dangerous. I think I'm a better person when I let it be and maybe even engage in it when it makes sense. Compared to the crusade against 3aksesser in all its forms, the battle against unreasonable 3aksesser is one that is more just and that is more likely to be won.

Thoughts on "something needs to be done about Syria"

I have written a couple of posts against common arguments that are used in opposition to U.S. intervention in Syria. While that eventually seems to have been taken off the table thanks to Russia's savviness, I think that moment is still rich and very interesting. There is no doubted it shaped the current media and social media configuration around the Syria issue.

In this post, I want to focus on a  trend I see implicit in a lot of commentary/exhortation on Syria. I take a U.S.-centric perspective here because it makes the "we" I use (see below) more direct.

There as a trending argument that seems to go as follows: "The situation in Syria is so bad that we have a moral duty to do something." Variations are {horrible picture / video} and then "and the West doesn't do anything."

This argument is actually a disguise for two possible (incompatible) arguments:
(1) it is morally impermissible to stand idle when others are suffering this much. In other words, the existence of this intensity of suffering itself, on its own, means we need to do something. Not doing something is immoral because it entails a failure to fulfill a duty. That duty is precisely the duty to do something.

(2) if we don't do something it's going to continue and there are ways to make it stop. The war (at its current scale) stopping is a good thing, it's a better alternative than the war going on. That indicates there is a way to make things better. Not doing anything would mean not executing that particular alternative that could make the situation better, and failing to make things better when you can is bad.

The first kind of reasoning is not only very dangerous, it is also deeply flawed for the same reason: it can be used to justify any action in any circumstances. Instead of being a careful approach that tries to weigh options, it bases itself on the very dubious claim that any "something" is better than "nothing." We should be careful about that argument, and never forget the when you can. We need to know when we can and we need to know why we can and do it.

When things are bad, we have a moral duty to think about how we should relate to it and THEN act if there is something to be done. It's NOT about doing any action because, whatever it is, it's presumably better than no action.

Note: it's interesting that, despite their fundamental difference, both arguments rely on the fact that even if there is a moral distinction between action and omission, omission cannot be devoid of moral consequences or weight.