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“Net-Intifada”: Moroccan Youth, Cyberspaces, and the Palestinian Conflict
Abstract
In the last decade, cyberspace has been as central domain where? political and? social grievances over the Arab-Israeli conflict are publicly circulated? with limited censorship. Facebook and YouTube have, at least partially, helped rural? and urban Moroccan youth go beyond the regulated spaces of media traditionally controlled ? by the state and political parties. Based on ethnographic research? among Moroccan youth in different public and private university campuses, this paper looks at how? a new generation of Moroccan youth use cyberspace to express their attitudes? towards the Arab-Israeli conflict. For instance, recently, some Moroccan youth have? targeted Israeli and American official websites as a reaction to? the conflict. Moroccan? hackers deploy? hacktivism to generate publicity for their cause. Hacktivism includes? automated? email bombs, virtual sit-ins, sites blockades, and web hacks. By using? cyberspace, I argue that Moroccan youth have managed to escape the political? and cultural Panopticon that traditionally limited students' activism within? the confines of public universities. I claim that this recent movement is a sign of the emergence of a new political agency that challenges what Ted Swedenburg’s coins as the “Daddy State” and its old patriarchal system. Accordingly, I contend that youth? not only? react to their exclusion from the public sphere but also protest the? globalized? discourse of the conflict in which their leaders are active participants. Finally, I maintain that these networks of? cyber-resistance have allowed youth to create through blogs and hip-hop new? landscapes of contention and net-wars over the ownership of memory, the? politics of remembering and forgetting, and the interpretation of past? histories of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Morocco
Sub Area
Arab-Israeli Conflict