Nas Daily: Normalising Israel a minute at a time

Middle East Eye

Some years ago, I stumbled upon a (now-defunct) website operated by the Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, which encouraged Israelis travelling or living abroad to serve as “novice ambassadors” on behalf of the state of Israel by countering international “misconceptions” and “barbs of criticism” wherever they turned up.

The site’s stated aim was to “make it possible for each one of us to arm ourselves with information and pride in Israel’s global contributions and history and to present a more realistic image of Israel to the world”.

Among the inventory of “information” compiled for the benefit of the aspiring novice ambassador were factoids such as that “an Israeli invention for an electric hair removal device makes women happy all over the world” and that “Muslim terror takes place throughout the world with no connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian issue, Israel-US relations or the existence of Israel and its policies”.

Another, subtler weapon of sorts has now turned up in Israel’s public relations arsenal: Palestinian-Israeli vlogger Nuseir Yassin, better known by his Facebook page Nas Daily, which currently boasts nearly seven million followers.

A Harvard graduate from the town of Arraba in the Galilee, Yassin quit his $120,000-per-year high-tech job in New York City in 2016 at the age of 24 to travel the world posting daily one-minute videos that are often gratingly chipper.

The one-minute formula is no doubt well-suited to the global non-attention span, while the perks of the Nas Daily brand aren’t hard to guess at.

A report in the Times of Malta, one of Yassin’s recent destinations, noted that the vlogger was lodged in an “executive suite in a top five-star hotel, whose corporate sales manager [said] she is happy to provide the suite free of charge in exchange for a single mention on Instagram”.

In 2017, Yassin explained his motivations as follows: “Look, I’m just a 25-year-old hairy kid who wants to live the best possible life… That’s it.” 

But is that really it? READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Trump's astronomically misguided 'space force'

Al Jazeera English

Speaking to an audience of military personnel in California earlier this year, United States President Donald Trump unveiled his scheme to create a sixth branch of the US military: the "space force".

According to Trump's version of the story, the idea had unfolded as follows: "I was saying it the other day cos we're doing a tremendous amount of work in space. I said maybe we need a new force; we'll call it the space force. And I was not really serious, and then I said what a great idea, maybe we'll have do do that."

Of course, such flashes of creative brilliance are to be expected from the man who self-identifies as "a very stable genius".

It seems, however, that the whole space force notion may not have materialised in as spontaneous a fashion as Trump has implied. As CNN pointed out, the idea for a "space corps" as a distinct military branch surfaced last year but was ultimately "nixed from the final version of the $700 billion bipartisan defence policy bill".

Rewind a bit further in time, and we find that a similar suggestion was also put forth in 2001 by a commission headed by soon-to-be US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

And as NPR recalls: "The concept of a space force goes back to the Cold War".

Anyway, facts are flexible in the Trumpian era. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Forty years of Orientalism, an eternity to go

Middle East Eye

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Edward Said’s celebrated text Orientalism, in which he explored various interconnected meanings of the term in question, such as "Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient".

In the preface to the 25th anniversary edition of the book, published shortly before Said's death in 2003, he took the opportunity to provide some critical updates to the Orientalist scene on account of that ongoing post-9/11 exercise in Western domination known as the War on Terror, which was to thank for, inter alia, "the illegal and unsanctioned imperial invasion and occupation of Iraq by Britain and the United States" in March of that year.

Naturally, Orientalist strategies of reductionism and demonisation had proved a boon to the war effort, with "mobilisations of fear, hatred, disgust, and resurgent self-pride and arrogance" pitting the "West" against the Arab/Muslim "Other".

Said noted the proliferation in US bookstores of "shabby screeds bearing screaming headlines about Islam and terror, Islam exposed, the Arab threat, and the Muslim menace", not to mention the "omnipresent CNNs and Fox News channels of this world" as well as other media outlets regurgitating the same fabricated generalisations "so as to stir up 'America' against the foreign devil".

Indeed, one need not look very hard to discern a symbiotic relationship - between the US establishment on the one hand and peddlers of sensationalist drivel on the other - that furthers the bellicose aims of empire while also generating handsome profits for individual "terror experts" and the like.

In the meantime, America's own frequently diabolical behaviour - including the slaughter of countless Arab and Muslim civilians - is conveniently relegated to the realm of non-issues, or else is magically converted into Just One of Those Things That Happen When You’re Spreading Freedom and Democracy. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.