New Lines Magazine

08/28/2024

“Prized by emperors, the Lipizzaner breed has been the glittering, shimmering diamond of the equine world — and, more specifically, — for centuries. Many consider them to be the perfect horses, with their docile temperaments, ability to concentrate and small builds that enhance their agility. But they are also beautiful. Bearing coats so white they seem to glow, Lipizzaners have long Roman noses, strong, arched necks and muscular shoulders. They are like beholding Pegasus, if he had shed his wings and come to live among mere mortals.

And just as the mortal Bellerophon needed the goddess Athena’s secret golden bridle to tame Pegasus, so have the secrets of training the ethereal been passed down through generations of riders at Vienna’s Spanish Riding School. For nearly half a millennium, since the Habsburg monarchy established the school in the 16th century, people have come from all over the world to enter the temple of the art of classical riding and behold the legendary Lipizzaner stallions in their gleaming golden bridles.

I am here because some say the temple has fallen, that the school is dying.”

This is an editor’s pick. To read the full piece, please go to our link in bio.

✍️Lindsay Kusiak
📷A horse groomer leads Lipizzaner horses for training through the stables courtyard of Vienna’s Spanish Riding School. (Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)

08/27/2024

At the end of Ramadan comes the festival of Eid al-Adha, a major celebration in Islam. But in Oman this year, it split the country. Some tribes in Dhofar — the country’s South — chose to perform Eid al-Adha prayers on the date set by Saudi Arabia rather than that set by the Omani government, prompting interrogations and arrests. The al-Hakli tribes, including al-Mashani, gathered to assert their allegiance to the sultanate while also demanding that the Saudi date be used for determining Eid al-Adha.

The issue is not new. The first time the Sultanate of Oman announced that it would not follow the Saudi lunar calendar was in 2008. On that occasion, people in Dhofar performed Eid al-Adha prayers with the Saudis, prompting an army raid.

In contemporary Oman, mosques are a social institution and public facility owned and managed by the state. Yet tribal alliances seem to be challenging the state and its claims to uphold the rule of law and define the values of citizenship.

Tribes have hardly been politically active in recent decades. This can be attributed to a general caution about tribal autonomy. During the Omani Spring — a series of sit-ins that coincided with the Arab revolutions in 2011 — tribal chiefs stayed outside the political arena. Yet the recent events in Dhofar mark a shift in tribal political dynamics, with tribes becoming involved in expressing desires for change.

For more, please go to our link in bio.

✍️Saud Abdulla Al-Zadjali
📷Eid al-Adha prayer in a field in the village of Al-Khoud in Muscat, Oman. (Ahmed Abdul Qawi/Anadolu via Getty Images

08/26/2024

“In the early morning hours of Nov. 9, 2020, I woke to the sound of banging at the door of my family home in Vienna, Austria. As I made my way to the window of my bedroom — still half asleep in the morning darkness — to investigate the commotion, I witnessed a sight unlike any I could have ever imagined. Below my window were dozens of heavily armed police officers, preparing to breach my front door. When they saw me these men began screaming, gesturing and pointing their weapons at me. The laser sights from their guns bathed my body and the room behind me in a terrifying red glow. At that moment, my mind racing, I could think only of my wife and three children, now waking up to the sounds of these armed men, and the unknown terror that had arrived in the night for us.

The morning of the raid was a turning point in my life. But I was not the only one affected. Operation Luxor targeted nearly 70 individuals and organizations, with raids by nearly 1,000 police officers taking place in three different Austrian states. While cast as a crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood in Austria, a transnational political organization with which I had no connection, the raids were in reality part of an effort by an increasingly right-wing government to punish and silence politically active Austrian Muslims. I had woken up one day and discovered that, through no apparent fault of my own, I was no longer welcome in my country. It would take me some years more to unravel why and how I and many others had been targeted by smears intended to cast us out of society.”

Full story at our link in bio.

✍️Farid Hafez
📷Police raid a community organization in Graz, Austria, in 2020 as part of a nationwide series of arrests of prominent Muslims known as Operation Luxor. (Erwin Scheriau/APA/AFP via Getty Images)

08/26/2024

“Below my window were dozens of heavily armed police officers, preparing to breach my front door.”

NEW: Behind a smear campaign in Austria that targeted prominent Muslim voices.

A researcher of Islamic extremism, a private investigation firm and a Gulf state all played a role in spreading unfounded smears

08/24/2024

“When I saw a picture of him, it was kind of unavoidable that he was mine,” says Andy, recounting the first time he was contacted by his adult biological son.

Now in his late 50s, with silver hair and a jovial manner, Andy, who gave only his first name, chose to give ***m at a time when anonymity was still written into U.K. law. Donors — often students looking for a bit of extra cash — were not prepared for the possibility that they might be tracked down by biological offspring decades later.

But here he was: a son resulting from Andy’s decision to donate s***m during his university days in Liverpool in the late 1980s.

The boom in testing leads to one inescapable conclusion: There is no such thing as a lifetime guarantee of anonymity for any donor.

Since the days when Andy was a donor, the global landscape of egg and s***m donation has shifted. Many countries — including Britain, France, Greece, Portugal, the Netherlands and New Zealand — have rewritten their fertility laws. Accepting that the rise of DNA testing means donors are no longer untraceable, governments are outlawing their anonymity altogether.

To read more, visit our link in bio.

✍️Caitlin Allen
📷Vials containing s***m frozen in liquid nitrogen are prepared at a university hospital in France in 2024. (Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images)

08/22/2024

08/21/2024

On a rainy afternoon in early June, just a few weeks away from their hard-earned summer break, faculty members from the Free University of Amsterdam’s psychology department logged on to an online meeting to process some disconcerting news.

The newly formed and largely right-wing Dutch government was planning one of the largest cuts the education sector had ever seen. The Netherlands, a leader in innovative research, was on the brink of losing over 5,000 jobs in academia.

"The mood in our office was somber,” Katharina Diehl, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology who attended the Teams app meeting, told New Lines. “We were asking ourselves: What’s going to happen to the quality of education? But also: Why is cutting our funding the first thing these politicians do now that they have come to power?”

While academics were lamenting the budget cuts, some right-wing politicians celebrated what they saw as a victory in their campaign against institutions they view as elitist, internationalist and woke.

“Our universities must now reconsider their priorities,” PVV representative Reinder Blaauw said during a legislative meeting in June 2024, shortly after a “Free Palestine” protest at the University of Amsterdam resulted in substantial property damage. “What’s going to be on the menu — political activism or actual education?”

Link in bio to read the full piece.

✍️Tim Brinkhof
📷The 2019 opening ceremony at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. (Ana Fernandez/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

08/20/2024

NEW: Lake Pergusa — the biggest natural lake in Sicily — has dried up. The vanished body of water symbolizes a worsening climate crisis.

The vanished body of water symbolizes a worsening climate crisis

08/20/2024

NEW: One year into his tenure as mayor, progressive Brandon Johnson may be a cautionary tale for the Democratic party as it convenes in Chicago.

One year into his tenure as mayor, the progressive Brandon Johnson may be a cautionary tale for the party as it convenes in his city

08/19/2024

NEW: In the Netherlands, the right-wing demonization of higher education over “woke activism” detracts from more nuanced discussions about its quality.

The right-wing demonization of higher education over so-called woke activism detracts from more nuanced discussions about its quality

08/16/2024

People from the low-income neighborhoods of Tunis, labeled as ‘Hogras,’ have long been a strong force in the country’s politics. They were instrumental in overthrowing the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali during the Jasmine Revolution in 2011 as well as bringing the Islamist-leaning Ennahda movement to power in 2010, the same year in which they led protests against the police’s persistent contempt for Mohamed Bouazizi. Despite their political significance, these neighborhoods still suffer from endemic marginalization and isolation, and their young people endure immense hardships simply because of where they come from.

These impoverished areas find themselves rooting back to French Colonialism over Tunisia which began in 1881. Due to the French taking arable lands away from small farmers, continuing to industrialize the country, and causing the circumstances for an increasingly impoverished population, workers’ neighborhoods were on the rise. The migration from the interior of the country to these new neighborhoods would contribute to the increasing populations of these workers’ neighborhoods, which would be known as the slums of ‘Hogras’ today.

“These three intertwined paths of crime, extremism and migration are the limited options available to those in underclass neighborhoods, countering the narrative that choice is available to all. The residents of these neighborhoods suffer not by choice, but as a result of their lack of choice.”

Deprived areas of Tunis have often been drivers of social and political change. traces how they were shaped by a long history of contempt for the poor.

Link in bio to read full piece.
✍️ Osama Slim
📷 Illustration by Hatem Arafa for New Lines Magazine

08/15/2024

On a late May evening in the barren steppe of Sudan, where the Sahara meets the foothills of a rolling mountain range, Adam Hasan walked through a camp of straw huts and tarps. Moonlight reflected off the still-warm, rust-colored earth. Hasan’s eyes were red and weary.

“They must be coming soon,” he mumbled.

Early in the morning of the previous day, his two eldest sons had set out to gather what little food they could find in the bushes in this desolate region, far from the cities, just before the rainy season: small, almost wooden fruits from a palm tree, and leaves from trees and bushes. It was a 10-hour walk each way.
“If they don’t make it today, it will be the second day without food,” he said.
Seventeen months into the war, Sudan has fragmented into a tattered patchwork. The RSF now controls areas west of the Nile, including much of Darfur and parts of Khartoum, while the regular Sudanese army has relocated its government to Port Sudan, concentrated east of the Nile. Millions have been displaced. The U.N. and the rest of the international community have been desperately trying to broker a cease-fire, with little success.

With the outbreak of civil war in last year, the Mountains, one of the country’s most perilous regions, have emerged as a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of .

Link in bio to read full piece.
✍️ Julian Busch and Vincent Haiges
📷 An SPML-N fighter at the last rebel base before the front line. (Vincent Haiges

08/14/2024

Russia’s borders do not end anywhere” ran Vladimir Putin’s electoral slogan in January 2024, in seeming justification of a war of conquest in Ukraine meant to be over shortly after it began. But in a surprise turn two and a half years after the full-scale invasion, Ukraine decided to make good on Putin’s loose definition of sovereignty by invading the Kursk region in southern Russia on Aug. 6, in what has become the largest seizure of Russian land since World War II.

Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, says his forces have captured about 400 square miles of the region, which is opposite the northeastern Ukrainian region of Sumy.
“The situation is stable and in our favor,” he said during a broadcast meeting chaired by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukrainian border raids into Russia are nothing new, although none has been undertaken with this type of forethought and ambition.

A Ukrainian source close to the military with firsthand knowledge of the operation told New Lines that the invading troops were shocked by how many prisoners of war they were able to capture on the Russian side and at the initial ease of their breakthrough across the border.

For more, read the link in our bio.
✍️ Michael Weiss and James Rushton
📷Getty Images

08/13/2024

“Said’s love of classical music was not merely a pastime. Toward the end of his life, Said attempted to blend two of his worlds — politics and music — by co-founding the East-West Divan Orchestra, which sought to unite Israeli and Arab musicians within a shared cultural project. This decision was not without controversy,but was also a unique distillation of Said’s perspective on culture and politics alike. While he condemned the injustices of Western imperialism, including the way that systems of knowledge were often deployed to crush the oppressed, he remained an ardent universalist. Said saw the cultural achievements of the West as part of a shared cultural heritage to be critiqued and grappled with, not an alien imposition to be rejected. It is that legacy, expressed in his love of opera, which makes revisiting Said as a scholar and humanist more necessary than ever in an era of political polarization and cultural turmoil.”

“In introducing what is called in classical music a “contrapuntal” style to his analysis of colonial literature, Said was also making a political intervention — and not only in the academy or in his musical writings. Said’s move toward supporting a one-state solution in Israel and Palestine at the end of his life was not just a despairing response to the failure of the Oslo process to produce a two-state solution. It was also a natural extension of his belief that the histories of Israelis and Palestinians could not be separated without causing terrible violence to the welfare and culture of both peoples. Israelis and Palestinians are too intertwined, their identities constitutive of one another, to support a hard break, he would argue. It was a lesson that has been swept under the rug by many on both sides who still believe a violent, final separation remains possible.”

A new book shows how Edward Said’s passion for classical music exemplified his broader message of cultural universalism.

✍️ Abe Silberstein
📷 Illustration by Selina Lee for New Lines Magazine

LINK IN BIO

08/13/2024

NEW: Edward Said, the famous Palestinian academic, loved opera. A new book sheds light on his affection for classical music and the role it played in his politics.

A new book sheds light on the famous Palestinian academic’s little-known passion for classical music and the role it played in his politics

08/12/2024

When authorities raided the home of Alvaro Malaquias Santa Rosa in 2021, what they found wasn’t your typical drug kingpin’s lair. Surrounding the sizable swimming pool was a large fresco depicting the old city of , complete with armed forces carrying a Star of David flag — and all under a banner with the words “Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

Then again, the man better known as Peixao, which translates to Big Fish, is few people’s vision of your typical co***ne trafficker. Reportedly an ordained pastor, Peixao headed a gang variously known as Army of the Living God, Aaron’s Troop or Bonde da Kabbalah, and it controls a cluster of five favelas — the slums that ring ’s major cities — known as “Complexo de Israel” in the northern part of Rio de Janeiro, home to some 134,000 people.

From Brazil to Nigeria and beyond, gangsters — and sometimes pastors — are using evangelical Christian networks and beliefs to stamp their authority on illicit trades.

Visit the link in our bio to read the full piece.

✍️ Elle Hardy
📷 Illustration by Joanna Andreasson for New Lines Magazine

08/12/2024

NEW: From Brazil to Nigeria and beyond, gangsters — and sometimes pastors — are using evangelical Christian networks and beliefs to stamp their authority on illicit trades. Elle Hardy reports on the global rise of narco-Pentecostalism.

Gangsters — and sometimes pastors — are using evangelical Christian networks and beliefs to stamp their authority on illicit trades, from Brazil to Nigeria and beyond

08/09/2024

The Remarkable Overlaps in the Lives of Two Poets: One Chronicled the Nakba, the Other the Holocaust

Mahmoud Darwish and Avrom Sutzkever were poets who survived and wrote about the respective catastrophes of their peoples. One wrote in , the other in . describes the remarkable overlaps in their lives and writing.

Visit the link in bio to read the full piece.
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“Sutzkever and Darwish created a poetic narrative out of their biographies, which were both deeply marked by the traumas of catastrophic loss and displacement. Darwish was born in al-Birwa in Galilee, a village that the Israeli army occupied and later destroyed during the 1948 war. Because his family fled from Palestine to Lebanon during the war and returned a year later, they missed the newly established State of Israel’s first national census; they were also forced to make their home in another village, since their own no longer existed. They were thus considered “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens” who were denied any claim to their previous homes. Palestinian citizens of Israel lived under military rule from 1948 to 1966; this meant that Darwish was required to obtain a permit from the military governor to leave Haifa, where he lived for many years. He left Israel in 1970 and lived a peripatetic life, moving from Cairo to Beirut, Moscow and Paris. In 1996, after Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords and Yasser Arafat became president of the Palestinian Authority, Darwish moved to Ramallah.”

“Darwish’s words are echoed by both Sutzkever’s demand for historical justice after the Khurbn and by what Yerushalmi wrote at the end of “Zakhor,” his profound meditation on Jewish memory: “Is it possible,” he asks, “that the antonym of ‘forgetting’ is not ‘remembering,’ but justice?” In the dark times that we witness in Palestine-Israel today, it seems that memory can only be a zero-sum game, part of a struggle in which only one side can win, but justice is lost.”

✍️ Shachar Pinsker
📷 Illustration by Joanna Andreasson for New Lines Magazine

08/09/2024

NEW: Mahmoud Darwish and Avrom Sutzkever were poets who survived and wrote about the respective catastrophes of their peoples. One wrote in Arabic, the other in Yiddish. Shachar Pinsker describes the remarkable overlaps in their lives and writing.

Mahmoud Darwish wrote in Arabic and Avrom Sutzkever in Yiddish, both engaging with memory and forgetting

08/08/2024

"The eagle on Zambia’s national flag symbolizes the nation rising above all obstacles. Its strength is epitomized by the rise of two Zambian women who have, against all odds, risen to the summit of world soccer," writes Ponga Liwewe for New Lines Magazine.

Record-breaking transfer fees for Barbra Banda and Racheal Kundananji have capped a story about what investment and determination can achieve

08/08/2024

How Two Zambian Players Have Raised the Profile of African Women’s Soccer

Two made history as the most expensive transfers in women’s . delves into their stories of overcoming family resistance, gender bias and verification tests in this essay.

Visit the link in bio to read the full piece.
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“However, Banda would again face questions about her gender. Despite setting the Olympics alight, forces in were aligning to deny Banda the opportunity to showcase her skills to an African audience. A CAF document titled “Associations Declaration on Agreement on Gender Verification,” was the source of the problem, as it required national associations to have team doctors determine certain medical criteria for the players.”

“Kunda also believes that the Anglophone-Francophone divide in soccer plays a more significant role than initially appears. The overall political landscape of African soccer governance is complex, plagued by internal power struggles and tensions between member countries and regions. Historically, Francophone and North African countries have dominated African soccer administration, from the position of the president through to the committee members and all decision-making bodies. English-speaking countries tend to view CAF with suspicion, making Kunda’s view on the issue less surprising.”

✍️ Ponga Liwewe
📷 midfielder Racheal Kundananji celebrates at the as Barbra Banda faces the crowd. (Valery Hache/AFP via Getty Images)

08/08/2024

"For over a decade the cat accompanied me on adventures by land and sea, throughout the Middle East and onward to America. Together we survived mortar attacks and power cuts, hostile checkpoints and authoritarian regimes, all while bearing witness to human nature in its many manifestations, its whims of love and folly, in peacetime and in war."

A memoir — about a wartime cat, gone suddenly missing.

For over a decade Rasha Elass and her cat shared adventures by land and sea, and together witnessed human nature in its many manifestations.

08/08/2024

NEW: Two Zambians made history as the most expensive transfers in women’s soccer. Ponga Liwewe delves into their stories of overcoming family resistance, gender bias and verification tests in this essay forhttps://newlinesmag.com/reportage/how-two-zambian-players-have-raised-the-profile-of-african-womens-soccer/

Record-breaking transfer fees for Barbra Banda and Racheal Kundananji have capped a story about what investment and determination can achieve

08/08/2024

Far-Right Riots in the UK Are a Revealing Moment for a New Parliament

Far-right riots in the . are a revealing moment for a new . While the Labour government seeks to punish the perpetrators, the underlying factors require more than a crackdown in the courts.

Visit the link in bio to read Spotlight bio and subscribe to New Lines newsletters.
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“Yet, one month later, we find that over a dozen towns and cities have experienced violence at the hands of the far right, specifically aimed at ethnic minorities. Videos are circulating of individuals being dragged from their cars or encircled by mobs. Businesses run by people of color have been listed as targets. Hotels where asylum-seekers are believed to be housed have been attacked. Often, the violence has spilled over into more mindless destruction and looting. Police attempting to keep the peace have been attacked and sometimes hospitalized.”

“So far, however, Conservative politicians seem more likely to support a strong law-and-order response from Labour rather than use the opportunity to tack to the right or strongly attack the government. And while the violence is ongoing and there are reports that further unrest is expected, including new targets such as immigration lawyers, the end result will probably be that Starmer gains in stature for punishing those responsible and reinforcing the majority’s moral outrage at the violence and solidarity with the U.K.’s Muslim communities. For Farage and Reform, however, the gamble is that the U.K. will slowly move the same way many European countries are moving, and that by the next election, in five years, they will appear as the party of common sense to more voters.”

✍️ Lydia Wilson and Jos Betts
📷 Far-right activists hold an “Enough is Enough” protest in , , in August 2024. (Drik/Getty Images)

08/08/2024

Gaza’s Children Face an Unseen Crisis

Even before the war, estimated that at least 500,000 children needed psychosocial help. After nine months of bloodshed, the scale of the trauma is overwhelming.

Visit the link in the bio to read the full piece.
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“The mental health crisis for Palestinians living in Gaza was already acute before Oct. 7, according to reports from UNICEF. Since 2006, Israel had imposed a military closure on Gaza, controlling everything from who and what entered or left the territory to the population registry and the daily allotment of electricity. The closure shaped entire generations that have grown up amid repeated cycles of violence, with military incursions, airstrikes and severely restricted freedom of movement. The Israeli military incursions as well as the constant surveillance and monitoring took an enormous toll; even before the current war, UNICEF estimated that at least 500,000 children in Gaza were in need of psychosocial support.”

“Palestinians have long faced repeated danger,” Hakim said. “With no external protection systems to process any of their experiences, it throws them into a cycle of revictimization. It is far from what we can clinically describe as PTSD, where one’s fears are stuck in a traumatic loop, suggesting little to no likelihood of recurrence. In Palestine, that loop is reality. The threat is still there. It has always been there. This chronic, generational pain is the only breath most children have ever taken in Gaza.”

✍️ Hoda Sherif
📷 Razan Muneer Arafat, 11, often cries uncontrollably after losing her entire family in an air raid and having her leg amputated. (Jehad Alshrafi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

08/06/2024

The Lethal Price of Misogyny in Security and Defense

Recent intelligence failures in the and have prompted a misguided pushback against hiring women in protection positions,

Visit the link in the bio to read the full piece.
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“Massive intelligence failures in both the U.S. and Israel in recent months have put gender under the spotlight and brought to the fore the growing pushback among right-wing political circles against hiring women in the security services. Many blamed women on the ground for July’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, despite the security team being overwhelmingly male. Some Republican lawmakers took aim at the Secret Service’s efforts to recruit women, blaming its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. The service’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, was smeared with sexist abuse, including being called, in the words of Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, “a DEI horror story” — implying she was only hired because she is a woman. Cory Mills, a former sniper in the Army and a Republican congressman from Florida, went a step further: “When you primarily go after DEI [hires], you end up with D-I-E,” he told Fox News. (Cheatle resigned late last month, the day after she testified to Congress.)”

“Interviews with intelligence and defense experts reveal the deep-seated systemic challenge to women’s authority and career progression — the exclusionary informal culture of the defense and security sectors. This takes various forms: the entrenched belief that women are not as able as men; the infantilization, belittling, sexualization and harassment of women colleagues; and, in Israel, the significant pressure from religious groups to keep women away from Orthodox men who have been conscripted into the army. (Israeli media has reported on religious combat soldiers bolting from a tank upon finding female soldiers inside and rabbis demanding female-free bases for religious male conscripts.)”

✍️ Luba Kassova
📷 A photograph of Donald surrounded by security agents after an assassination attempt is shown during a congressional hearing. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

08/06/2024

Extrajudicial Killings May Be Frequent in India’s Most Populous State

A investigation of police shootouts in , , revealed discrepancies between official accounts and forensic and scientific evidence, raising troubling questions about extrajudicial killings.

Visit the link in the bio to read the full piece.
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“Moreover, the majority of victims killed by police were from marginalized classes, lived in poverty and hailed from religious minority communities, especially Muslims. When families of victims insisted that their deaths were extrajudicial, they had to deal with a broken legal system that seldom operates in their interests. They also faced tremendous police intimidation and failed to find quality legal aid because so many of them were unaware of their rights, leaving them without meaningful recourse.”

“The narrative that is constructed conveys to the people that we do not need a judicial system in this country because scrutiny of evidence and proving guilt in accordance with the law is too time-consuming and cumbersome,” she said, adding, “that [police killings] are an efficient, cost-effective mode of eliminating those marked as criminals by the state. Of course the police pick up these signals with alacrity. After all, it gives them arbitrary power to pull the trigger and spares them the tedious task of evidence collection to convict a person before court.”

✍️ Saurav Das
📷 Uttar Pradesh police in Bulandshahr, India, in April 2024. (Sunil Ghosh/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)