a fascinating discussion between Tariq Ali and the brilliant Ella Habiba Shohat. i’ve read a lot of dr shohat’s work and am familiar with the erasure of arab jewish history and culture, which is deeply entangled with the european colonial impulse and zionist nationalism, but i always learn something new from her. for example, here she talks about the “revival” of the hebrew language which meant, nevertheless, that its syntax and the pronunciation of words were deliberately changed – in order to westernize sounds that were considered “vulgar” and were in line with arabic or semitic languages in general.