In Pursuit of Justice

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These people are so racist it’s not even funny…

“Ten generations. Five hundred years my family has been In Jerusalem. We come to pray, not because we are religious men, but because we are Jewish. We must show them that we are Jewish.”

Beitar fans show the Arab supporters of Nazareth that and a lot more. They are ultra-nationalist and anti-Arab.

Beitar win the game and the crowd sing: “Death to Mohammed.”

As the Nazareth crowd goes silent, they sing: “The muezzin has gone home.”

…

No management at the club has dared to try to sign an Arab or a Muslim player.

Fan base

Later in the week, I met Guy Israeli again. By day he is a tax consultant, but today he is preparing for Saturday’s game.

He tells me how he founded La Familia, how he created its network of 3,000 supporters, and how, in the end, he chose La Familia over his wife.

I asked him to explain his prayers.

“This is my country,” he says. “When I see one million Muslims praying in my country, it makes me nervous. The Arabs have 10, 11 countries, we have only one. And they want only this one.

“All the time the government says football makes peace. But we don’t want peace, we want war.”

Continue here

I had not realized a Leviev store had already opened in Dubai…will try to personally verify that asap inshaAllah (I’ll keep you updated).

Is Dubai helping ethnic cleansing in Palestine?
[ 20/04/2008 - 10:47 PM ]
From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

The government of Dubai recently allowed a major bankroller of Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank to open at least two Jewelry stores in the Gulf emirate.

According to reliable sources in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a key member-state, Israeli billionaire and diamond magnate Lev Leviev is preparing to open two large jewelry stores in Dubai, a world’s hub of Jewelry trading.

The first store will be opened soon at the Burj Dubai Mall (Dubai Mall Tower) while a second store is slated to be opened later this year in the new Atlantis Hotel on the Jumeirah Palm Island. Leviev has already opened one store in Dubai in March, 2008, in the lobby of al-Qasr Hotel on Madinat Jumeirah.

The Dubai authorities were initially reluctant to grant the Israeli billionaire a license to do business in the oil-rich emirate. However, Leviev reportedly successfully lobbied “North American and European
connections” to convince Dubai officials to reconsider their objections.

Leviev’s companies, including Africa-Israel and Leader Management & Development as well as several other subsidiaries, have been quite active in displacing Palestinian villagers from their homes and land in several parts of the West Bank.

The two firms have built hundreds of settler units in at least five Jewish settlements constructed on land illegally seized from its Arab proprietors. In recent years, a company called Leader belonging to Leviev built the settlement of Zufim on private Arab land seized from the village of Jayyous.

Danya Cebus, a subsidiary of the Leviev-owned company Africa-Israel has built hundreds of settler units on land stolen from the village of Bilin. Numerous additional settler units were built in the two large settlements of Ma’ali Adomim, a few kilometers east of Jerusalem, and Har Homa, near the predominantly Christian Arab town of Beit Sahur.

Israel hopes that these settlements will cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, thus making the Palestinian dream of making the city the future capital of a prospective Palestinian state utterly unrealistic and outright impossible. In addition to his intensive involvement in Jewish settlement expansion, including colonies defined by the inherently unjust Israeli justice system as “manifestly illegal,” Leviev has donated undisclosed but reportedly large sums of money to the Land Redemption Fund, a land-grabbing organization affiliated with Gush Emunim, the ideological group behind Jewish settlement
activities in the West Bank.

According to the Israeli newspaper, Yedeot Ahronot, the Land Redemption Fund uses fraud and strong-arm tactics to seize land from Palestinians for settlement expansion. Last year the Israeli group, Peace Now, and other settlement-watch groups, discovered that hundreds of settler units built in the settlement of
Matityahu in the Salfit region, in the central West Bank, were actually built on private Palestinian land seized at gun point from its legal and rightful Palestinian owners.
However, despite the discovery, the Israeli government refused to dismantle the illegal settler units, with one Israeli official saying that “this problem will be discussed with the Palestinian Authority in the context of final-status talks.”

Leviev’s companies are actually destroying the lives of thousands of Palestinians by narrowing their horizons and dispossessing them of their livelihoods.

Abdullah Abu Rahma from the village of Bilin and Sharif Omar from Jayyous told representative of the human rights group Adalah-NY (www.adalahny.org), which monitors Israeli theft Palestinian land, that “Leviev’s companies are destroying the olive groves and farms that have sustained our villages for
centuries.”

“We call on people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied against apartheid South Africa.”

The mayor of Jayyous, which suffered incalculable losses due to Leviev’s destructive rampage in the northern West Bank, told this reporter that “Leveiv is indulging in ethnic cleansing against our community and our farmers.”

“He is building settlements at our expense; he is destroying our land, our farms, and our orchards, and at the same time he is opening business in Dubai in order to finance his crimes against our people. Shame on Dubai and its government.”

Some Jewish organizations opposed to the Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing and apartheid have also called on the countries of the world to boycott Israeli businesses and firms involved in dispossessing Palestinians of their land.

“We call on the government and people of the United Arab Emirates to join the growing international campaign to boycott Lev Leviev’s companies due to their construction of Israeli colonial settlements,” declared Daniel Lang-Levitsky of Jews Against the Occupation-NYC.

“A major Israeli violator of Palestinian rights and international law should not be opening jewelry stores in Dubai,” said Issa Ayoub, a spokesperson for the Adalah-NY group. Adalah-NY organized eight boycott protests outside Leviev’s new Madison Avenue Jewelry store in New York City over the last
five months.

The Palestinian Authority has refused to comment on the Dubai government decision to allow the settler bankroller Leviev to open business ventures in the oil-rich emirate.

One Palestinian official contacted by telephone said “I don’t know anything about this affair and I have not heard of Leviev.”

A Hamas official in the Gaza Strip said “the Palestinian people were feeling embittered and betrayed by this scandalous behavior on the part of the Dubai government.”

“We were hoping that Dubai would stand with us against the genocidal Israeli regime and its unrelenting efforts to ethnically cleanse our people from their ancestral homeland. We had never imagined that a day would come when we had to appeal to an Arab country to refrain from harming us and
undermining our cause.”

For more on the campaign against Leviev stores check out this previous post.

A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.

A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), provided to The Electronic Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a “war” on Wikipedia.

A 13 March action alert signed by Gilead Ini, a “Senior Research Analyst” at CAMERA, calls for “volunteers who can work as ‘editors’ to ensure” that Israel-related articles on Wikipedia are “free of bias and error, and include necessary facts and context.” However, subsequent communications indicate that the group not only wanted to keep the effort secret from the media, the public, and Wikipedia administrators, but that the material they intended to introduce included discredited claims that could smear Palestinians and Muslims and conceal Israel’s true history.

Continue here (there’s a link to download the CAMERA emails too)

This is insane!! Gives one an excuse to start believing in conspiracy theories!

Published in the Washington Post!

President Jimmy Carter’s sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring the fact that American policy has reached its dead end. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acts as if a few alterations here and there would make the hideous straitjacket of apartheid fit better. While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies to Gaza; blockade its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing projects on West Bank land; and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing men, women and children. Sadly, this is “business as usual” for the Palestinians.

Last week’s attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise critics in the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war waged on us by a nation that mobilizes against our people with every means at its disposal — from its high-tech military to its economic stranglehold, from its falsified history to its judiciary that “legalizes” the infrastructure of apartheid. Resistance remains our only option. Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people. We Gazans, living in the world’s largest open-air prison, can do no less.

The U.S.-Israeli alliance has sought to negate the results of the January 2006 elections, when the Palestinian people handed our party a mandate to rule. Hundreds of independent monitors, Carter among them, declared this the fairest election ever held in the Arab Middle East. Yet efforts to subvert our democratic experience include the American coup d’etat that created the new sectarian paradigm with Fatah and the continuing warfare against and enforced isolation of Gazans.

Now, finally, we have the welcome tonic of Carter saying what any independent, uncorrupted thinker should conclude: that no “peace plan,” “road map” or “legacy” can succeed unless we are sitting at the negotiating table and without any preconditions.

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1. I am appalled that Livni was invited to Doha.  Inviting Israeli journalists, academics, activisits, etc… is one thing but inviting the FM of the Apartheid state especially with all that is going on in Gaza (total deaths from seige rose up to 133 yesterday)… I’m speechless!!  And it gets better…she’s there to discuss democracy!!  I think the Khaleej’s editorial today (Arabic) says it well.

2. Not only did Livni discuss ‘democracy’ (excerpts from speech below) during the conference, she also called on Arab leaders to help change the negative perception of Israel in the Arab world by altering the school curriculums and content of mass media!! (sorry, couldn’t find an article in English on this).

3. Below are excerpts from Livni’s address [emphasis added].  Warning: there is a significant risk that reading this will increase your blood pressure.

I have come here to Qatar, in a spirit of friendship and mutual respect, as a representative of the Government of Israel to an Arab state, with which we have maintained official relations, even in difficult periods, and with which we hope to strengthen our ties.

…

We are gathered here to discuss democracy. But what is democracy? It may seem self evident, but it is not always so. 

We all share the same understanding that:
• Democracy is not just a word.
• Democracy is a way of life.
• Democracy is a value system.
• Democracy does not belong to any specific faith or national identity. There is no contradiction between democracy and religion, or between democracy and patriotism.
• Democracy is the natural birth-right of every human being.

At its heart, democracy is a system and a set of universal values, that promotes diversity, freedom of worship and freedom of speech. In so doing, it creates the space and the opportunity for each faith, for each identity and for each individual, while reflecting local cultures, traditions and values. 

…

This is the greatest conflict today - between the moderates and the extremists. This is also the new challenge of the entire region. We, the moderates of the region, are all members of the same camp, facing the same challenges posed by the extremists.

It is true that even amongst us, within the pragmatic camp, there may be differences of opinion and conflicts. Israel and the moderate Palestinian leadership are in the midst of a process in order to resolve such a conflict. It is this vision of peace that binds together Israelis, pragmatic Palestinians and moderates throughout our region. The extremists have, unfortunately, the ability to block or prevent our vision of peace.

Therefore, it is quite clear now that Israel poses no threat to the stability and the peace of the region. It is equally clear now that the threat comes from the radicals, who refuse to recognize our democratic rights.

…

Democracy is not just a technical process. Today, in different parts of the world, extremists are entering the democratic process via elections - not to abandon their violent agenda - but to advance it. It is the full right of democracies to defend themselves from those who wish to exploit the system in order to reach a position of power, and then abuse that power to enforce their radical ideology and disregard the values of democracy.

…

We witness another breach of democracy, while three abducted Israeli soldiers are still held in captivity, for no reason, denied access of the Red Cross or a sign of life. I would like to take this opportunity to call for their release. This is a matter of human rights, not politics.

No true democracy on earth allows armed militia, or groups with racist or violent agendas, to participate in elections. I have checked this matter, and in various constitutions around the world, it is prohibited. Also in Israel, a racist party cannot run for elections. 

Full address here

Where do I begin?

She seems to know the definition of democracy very well!!  I wonder what she would think of a truely democratic state for both Israelis and Palestinians which treats them both as equals and gives both equal rights and responsibilities.  How’s that for democracy Ms. Livni?

Three abducted soldiers??!!  What about the millions of civilians under seige in Gaza and the West Bank cantons?!  What about the thousands of Palestinian civilians (including children) in Israeli prisons?! 

No racist party allowed to run for elections in Israel?!!  This one gets the grand prize!  Even if one ignores the fact that the Zionism in and of itself is a racist political ideolgy, and that the whole state of Israel is based on blatant and systematic racism, there is so much out there (you don’t even have to look beyond the Israeli press) that makes Linvi’s statement sound like a complete joke.  I have two words for Livni: Avigdor Lieberman… and he’s just the tip of the big ugly iceberg of Israeli racism.

What is worse is that out of all the conference attendees and speakers, MK Tibi was the only one who had the courage to challenge Livni’s ridiculous address.

Interesting article by M. Shahid Alam…nothing new though - this was obvious even before the 2007 summer war was over. Whether Israel chooses to accept or deny it is another issue.

The Winograd Commission offers a quite honest appraisal of some aspects of the July 2006 War. [1] It acknowledges that it was “a serious missed opportunity.” Israel had “initiated a long war, which ended without its clear military victory (italics added).” The Commission notes that a militia “of a few thousand men resisted, for a few weeks, the strongest army in the Middle East, which enjoyed full air superiority and size and technology advantages.” Nothing could reverse Israel’s handi-caps: not even a massive ground offensive launched in the last days of the war.

…

The Israeli military offensive of July 2006 had failed because Israel was fighting a war that did not play to its advantages in size and tech-nology. Israel had finally met its match – a foe that was prepared to fight, that knew how to fight on its own terms, a foe that was elusive and cun-ning, skilled and daring, ready to adapt its methods to neutralize Israel’s technical superiority, that controlled its terrain, and, most importantly, was backed by Iran and Syria. For the first time in its history, an Israeli invasion had been reversed by a cunning guerilla resistance.

In the past, Arab armies had handed easy victories to Israel. Repeat-edly, the Arab states chose to fight conventional wars: these backward, recently decolonized countries sent their poorly trained, poorly led, poorly motivated military to fight against the best, most determined military force the developed West could put together. Israel’s victories against the Arab armies is overrated: it always remained an unequal match. The Palestinians chose to fight a guerilla war in Jordan in the late 1960s, but they did so prematurely, without preparing the political con-ditions for their success. They were defeated because they were forced to fight on two fronts: against Arab enemy states and the Israelis.

The Israelis only deceive themselves when they use alibis – bad deci-sions or inadequate preparation – to ‘explain’ their military failures. Ever since their withdrawal from southern Lebanon in April 2000, the Israeli leadership had prepared for the occasion to deal a knockout blow to Hizbullah. Indeed, when the Israelis launched their latest invasion of Lebanon on July 12 2006, they had had more than six years to prepare; and they had had more than two decades to study their adversary.

The Hizbullah too had prepared. Without fanfare, but with dedica-tion, discipline, skill, and cunning, the Hizbullah leaders assembled an arsenal of low-tech rockets as well as more advanced missiles; they built secret bunkers; they laid out defensible communications; they acquired capabilities in electronic warfare; they used drones and eaves-dropping equipment to gather information; they placed spies inside Israel; they studied their enemy; and, most importantly, they had planned and trained, while maintaining the highest secrecy.[3] In a word, the small bands of Arab guerillas in southern Lebanon were prepared and ready.

Continue here

Why do I say this?  Because the last sentence in this article (Arabic) REALLY t-ed me off!

According to the article, Hamdi Qandeel (famous Egyptian journalist) concluded his talk to the students at the American University of Dubai by emphasizing that their real responsibility to the Palestinian cause is the preservation of Palestinian culture, starting from the clothes and ending with the cuisine.  Yes, I am serious.

I have nothing against celebrating and preserving culture, and it is especially important in the case of Palestinians because of Israel’s attempts to completely erase any sign of the Palestinian people, including their culture. 

However, it is important to keep it mind that for the most part, ‘preserving culture’ is the definition of pro-Palestinian activism in this part of the world.  Enough.  There is SO much more to do!  How far has preserving culture got us?  Nowhere! 

What happened to raising awareness?  How about becoming successful lawyers, polticians, journalists…who can make a difference in the world and help establish justice?  What happened to the other parts of culture besides food and clothes?

Is the message you want to give to a group of eager 18 year olds that their primary responsibility and roles toward the Palestinian cause is to go and learn how to make msakhan?!!!

I am very disappointed Mr. Qandeel.

If the AUD students are reading this - please please don’t let this society convince you that all you can do for Palestine is to preserve the culture.  If only you knew how much you can with your time and talent - there are so many opportunities out there.  And if there aren’t - you have all it takes to create them!

I was happy to see that Ramzy Baroud’s articles on Iraq are almost as good as his articles on Palestine.  By now, I think it’s obvious to everyone that the corporate media have been doing a good job at covering up the events in Iraq.  Baroud’s article provides insightful analysis; excerpts below:

Regardless of the outcome of the fighting which commenced upon the Iraqi Army’s march to Basra on March 24, and which proved disastrous for Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, we have been repeatedly “informed” of highly questionable assumptions. Most prominent amongst them is that the “firebrand,” “radical” Moqtada Sadr — leader of the millions-strong Shiite Sadr Movement — led a group of “renegades,” “thugs” and “criminals” to terrorize the strategically important city. Naturally Al-Maliki is portrayed as the exact opposite of Sadr. When the former descended into Basra with his 40,000-strong US-trained and equipped legions, we were circuitously told that the long-awaited move was a cause for celebration.

 The media also suggested we had no reason to doubt Al-Maliki’s intentions when he promised to restore “law and order” and “cleanse” the city, or to question his determination when he described the Basra crusade as “a fight to the end.” If anyone was still unsure of Al-Maliki’s noble objectives, they could be reassured by the Bush administration’s repeated verbal backings, one of which described the Basra battle as “a defining moment.”

Indeed.

Reporters parroted such assumptions with little scrutiny. Even thorough journalists seemed oblivious to the known facts: that the Iraqi Army largely consists of Shiite militias affiliated with a major US ally in Iraq, Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim and his Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI); that the ISCI’s Al-Badr militias have rained terror on the Iraqi people — mostly Sunnis, but increasingly Shiites as well — for years; that the Sadr movement and the ISCI are in a fierce contest in southern provinces, and that the US allies are losing grounds quickly to the Sadr movement, which might cost them the upcoming provincial elections scheduled for Oct. 1, 2008; that the US wanted to see the defeat and demise of Sadr supporters before that crucial date because a victory for Sadr is tantamount to the collapse of the entire American project (predicated on the need to privatize Iraqi oil and bring about a “soft” portioning of the country).

Hakim is pushing for what is being termed a super Shiite province with its center in Basra; Sadr is demanding a unified Iraq with a strong central government. Hakim wishes to see a permanent American presence in his country; Sadr insists on a short timetable for withdrawal. America’s major quandary is that Sadr reflects the views of most Iraqis.

His possible victory in the south in fair elections could position him as the new nationalist leader, and a unifying force for Iraqis.

Continue here

Excerpts from Uri Avenry’s recent article:

LIKE EVERYBODY else, I support the right of the Tibetan people to independence, or at least autonomy. Like everybody else, I condemn the actions of the Chinese government there. But unlike everybody else, I am not ready to join in the demonstrations.

Why? Because I have an uneasy feeling that somebody is washing my brain, that what is going on is an exercise in hypocrisy.

I don’t mind a bit of manipulation. After all, it is not by accident that the riots started in Tibet on the eve of the Olympic Games in Beijing. That’s alright. A people fighting for their freedom have the right to use any opportunity that presents itself to further their struggle.

I support the Tibetans in spite of it being obvious that the Americans are exploiting the struggle for their own purposes. Clearly, the CIA has planned and organized the riots, and the American media are leading the world-wide campaign. It is a part of the hidden struggle between the US, the reigning super-power, and China, the rising super-power - a new version of the “Great Game” that was played in central Asia in the 19th century by the British Empire and Russia. Tibet is a token in this game.

I am even ready to ignore the fact that the gentle Tibetans have carried out a murderous pogrom against innocent Chinese, killing women and men and burning homes and shops. Such detestable excesses do happen during a liberation struggle.

No, what is really bugging me is the hypocrisy of the world media. They storm and thunder about Tibet. In thousands of editorials and talk-shows they heap curses and invective on the evil China. It seems as if the Tibetans are the only people on earth whose right to independence is being denied by brutal force, that if only Beijing would take its dirty hands off the saffron-robed monks, everything would be alright in this, the best of all possible worlds.

THERE IS no doubt that the Tibetan people are entitled to rule their own country, to nurture their unique culture, to promote their religious institutions and to prevent foreign settlers from submerging them.

But are not the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria entitled to the same? The inhabitants of Western Sahara, whose territory is occupied by Morocco? The Basques in Spain? The Corsicans off the coast of France? And the list is long.

Why do the world’s media adopt one independence struggle, but often cynically ignore another independence struggle? What makes the blood of one Tibetan redder than the blood of a thousand Africans in East Congo?

Again and again I try to find a satisfactory answer to this enigma. In vain.

Immanuel Kant demanded of us: “Act as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature.” (Being a German philosopher, he expressed it in much more convoluted language.) Does the attitude towards the Tibetan problem conform to this rule? Does it reflect our attitude towards the struggle for independence of all other oppressed peoples?

…

But the Palestinians are suffering from several cruel strokes of fate: The people that oppress them claim for themselves the crown of ultimate victimhood. The whole world sympathizes with the Israelis because the Jews were the victims of the most horrific crime of the Western world. That creates a strange situation: the oppressor is more popular than the victim. Anyone who supports the Palestinians is automatically suspected of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Also, the great majority of the Palestinians are Muslims (nobody pays attention to the Palestinian Christians). Since Islam arouses fear and abhorrence in the West, the Palestinian struggle has automatically become a part of that shapeless, sinister threat, “international terrorism”. And since the murders of Yasser Arafat and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Palestinians have no particularly impressive leader - neither in Fatah nor in Hamas.

The world media are shedding tears for the Tibetan people, whose land is taken from them by Chinese settlers. Who cares about the Palestinians, whose land is taken from them by our settlers?

In the world-wide tumult about Tibet, the Israeli spokespersons compare themselves - strange as it sounds - to the poor Tibetans, not to the evil Chinese. Many think this quite logical.

If Kant were dug up tomorrow and asked about the Palestinians, he would probably answer: “Give them what you think should be given to everybody, and don’t wake me up again to ask silly questions.”

This article has been out for almost a month but I never got a chance to post…definately worth a read. Excerpts below:

A year ago I applied for the job of Occupied Territories correspondent at Ma’ariv, an Israeli newspaper. I speak Arabic and have taught in Palestinian schools and taken part in many joint Jewish-Palestinian projects. At my interview the boss asked how I could possibly be objective. I had spent too much time with Palestinians; I was bound to be biased in their favour. I didn’t get the job. My next interview was with Walla, Israel’s most popular website. This time I did get the job and I became Walla’s Middle East correspondent. I soon understood what Tamar Liebes, the director of the Smart Institute of Communication at the Hebrew University, meant when she said: ‘Journalists and publishers see themselves as actors within the Zionist movement, not as critical outsiders.’

…

When it comes to ‘security’ there is no such freedom. It’s ‘us’ and ‘them’, the IDF and the ‘enemy’; military discourse, which is the only discourse allowed, trumps any other possible narrative. It’s not that Israeli journalists are following orders, or a written code: just that they’d rather think well of their security forces.

In most of the articles on the conflict two sides battle it out: the Israel Defence Forces, on the one hand, and the Palestinians, on the other. When a violent incident is reported, the IDF confirms or the army says but the Palestinians claim: ‘The Palestinians claimed that a baby was severely injured in IDF shootings.’ Is this a fib? ‘The Palestinians claim that Israeli settlers threatened them’: but who are the Palestinians? Did the entire Palestinian people, citizens of Israel, inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, people living in refugee camps in neighbouring Arab states and those living in the diaspora make the claim? Why is it that a serious article is reporting a claim made by the Palestinians? Why is there so rarely a name, a desk, an organisation or a source of this information? Could it be because that would make it seem more reliable?

…

The IDF, as depicted by the Israeli media, has another strange ability: it never initiates, decides to attack or launches an operation. The IDF simply responds. It responds to the Qassam rockets, responds to terror attacks, responds to Palestinian violence. This makes everything so much more sensible and civilised: the IDF is forced to fight, to destroy houses, to shoot Palestinians and to kill 4485 of them in seven years, but none of these events is the responsibility of the soldiers. They are facing a nasty enemy, and they respond dutifully. The fact that their actions – curfews, arrests, naval sieges, shootings and killings – are the main cause of the Palestinian reaction does not seem to interest the media. Because Palestinians cannot respond, Israeli journalists choose another verb from the lexicon that includes revenge, provoke, attack, incite, throw stones or fire Qassams.

Interviewing Abu-Qusay, the spokesman of Al-Aqsa Brigades in Gaza, in June 2007, I asked him about the rationale for firing Qassam missiles at the Israeli town of Sderot. ‘The army might respond,’ I said, not realising that I was already biased. ‘But we are responding here,’ Abu-Qusay said. ‘We are not terrorists, we do not want to kill . . . we are resisting Israel’s continual incursions into the West Bank, its attacks, its siege on our waters and its closure on our lands.’ Abu-Qusay’s words were translated into Hebrew, but Israel continued to enter the West Bank every night and Israelis did not find any harm in it. After all it was only a response.

Continue here

Abu Dhabi: Political reform in the Gulf region is lagging behind socio-economic developments because the ruling elites are more open to modest liberalisation than to democratisation and people prefer stability to democracy, strategists and academics told a conference on Monday.
“Movement towards greater liberalism and greater democracy has been very limited because the ruling elites in the GCC countries have been more open to modest liberalisation than to democratisation,” said Dr Michael Hudson, professor of International Relations at the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, US. The theme of the conference is The Arabian Gulf: Between Conservatism and Change.

Continue here

Spot on analysis…the lack of democracy is two-fold: it’s not all about the rulers.

Israel has pledged to remove about 50 roadblocks in the West Bank, while the Palestinians have pledged to step up their efforts to “prevent terror”.More than 500 other obstacles blocking Palestinian movement will remain.

Continue BBC article here

I guess this is Israel’s way of commemorating Land Day!

A few weeks ago I was excited to read online about an inspiring Muslim woman activist in Dubai who is involved with volunteer organizations like the Jumeirah Islamic Center and the City of Hope (a shelter for abused women).  The very next day, I read this article in the Gulf News which completely slanders the activist and the City of Hope.  I was shocked and disappointed, but still not completely convinced.  One of my friends who know of Sr. Sharla Musabih told me the allegations were false, but I had no proof and wasn’t sure who to believe.  Afterall, it was the Gulf News that published the article.

 Turns out the Gulf News was completely wrong (its readers said so too) !  Jazakum Allah khairan to the sister who forwarded me this NYT article.  Everything makes sense now, and fits right into what I have come to know of Dubai, its government and its people.

I don’t know where to begin.  First there is the issue of Sr. Sharla and how someone can find it in himself/herself to slander such a person and tell horrifying lies about her.  I pray this person realizes his/her mistake and repents - I would not want to be them on the Day Of Judgement. 

Then there’s the whole crew that came together to silence this sister: the goverment, the government-sponsored religious scholar (whom by the way is extremely knowledgable and respected - I have to try hard to find him 70 excuses),  the government-sponsored woman’s shelter, and most importantly the media.

I do understand that it is easy for people to criticize Dubai because of it’s success: whether it’s on labor issues, the environment, or any other issue.  And I do understand that Dubai’s government must protect defend and protect its image to some extent.  But this has gone TOO far.

And of course, the most apalling yet expected level of injustice in all of this: the attitude the state takes towards battered women.  And what’s worse - they blame it all on Islam.  What do you think Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) would have done if a woman came to him with three broken bones?

I do not know Sr. Sharla and have not visited the City of Hope, so again, all I have to go by are the two articles above.  But one of them makes so much more sense than the other - I think it’s obvious which one is right.

Please, if you know Sr. Sharla, please do share your thoughts and comments - I would really like to get to the bottom of this and do whatever I can to help.

Excerpts from the NYT article below:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — For years, Sharla Musabih has fought a lonely battle to protect battered wives and victims of human trafficking here. She founded the Emirates’ first women’s shelter here and she became a familiar figure at police stations, relentlessly hounding officers to be tougher on abusive husbands.

She has also earned many enemies. Emiratis do not often take kindly to rights advocates drawing attention to the dark side of their fast-growing city-state on the Persian Gulf, better known for its gleaming office towers and artificial islands.

Still, no one was quite prepared for the stories that started appearing in Dubai newspapers this month. Suddenly, unidentified female victims were coming forward to say that “Mama Sharla” herself had abused them, forced them to work as servants and sold their stories to foreign journalists for thousands of dollars, pocketing the proceeds. She even sold one woman’s baby, the articles said, hinting at criminal investigations.

To Ms. Musabih and her supporters, the accusations, which appear to be baseless, are the latest chapter in a long campaign of threats and defamation that began with angry husbands and has grown to include prominent clerics, and even the directors of a new government-financed women’s shelter, who, she says, would like to silence her.

The ferocity of the dispute is unusual for Dubai, and underscores a major challenge facing this proudly apolitical business capital. The city’s few rights advocates have always been quietly shunted aside. But as the conservative Muslim ethos of Dubai’s native Arab minority rubs against the varied perspectives of a much larger foreign population, debates about how to approach taboo subjects like domestic violence and the city’s prevalent prostitution are getting louder.

Battling Tradition

Ms. Musabih, 47, a boisterous American transplant who was born and raised on Bainbridge Island, Wash., argues that confrontation is essential in fighting the patriarchal Arab traditions that allow men to beat their wives with impunity. She and her supporters also say the Emirates have not acknowledged the severity of their problem with human trafficking, the brutal business in which foreign women are lured here with promises of jobs and then forced into prostitution or servitude. Last year the United States State Department placed the Emirates and 31 other countries on a watch list for failing to effectively combat the illegal trade.

“When a woman has three broken bones in her back, and the police don’t take it seriously, yes, I get angry,” Ms. Musabih said.

Others say Ms. Musabih’s aggressive approach — which includes appeals to foreign news media as well as tough, face-to-face lobbying — is inappropriate in the Arab world, and has needlessly fueled the backlash she now faces. That assertiveness may also have made it easier to dismiss her as an outsider. Although she has lived here for 24 years, converted to Islam, is an Emirati citizen, wears a veil and has raised six children here with her Emirati husband, Ms. Musabih is still unmistakably American, from her moralistic zeal to her habit of calling the women in her shelter “darlin’.”

“I have told her sometimes I think she is wrong, she goes too far,” said Lt. Gen. Dahi al-Khalfan, the chief of the Dubai Police, who has supported Ms. Musabih in the past but now tends to criticize her work as divisive. “There is a case between husband and wife; let the court decide! Leave it.”

Safety and a Ticket Home

Ms. Musabih dates her work as an advocate from 1991, when she started tracking domestic violence cases and offering women shelter in her home in Dubai. In 2001, she rented a two-story house in the Jumeira district and opened a shelter for abused women and their children, naming it City of Hope.

On a recent afternoon, children’s toys littered the floors in the shelter’s sunlit living room, and several women snacked in the kitchen, while others sprawled on couches watching television upstairs. Although Ms. Musabih has had some dedicated assistants over the years, it is basically a one-woman show; she deals with everything from belligerent former husbands to buying plane tickets, sometimes with her own money, for foreign women to return to their home countries.

“I’ve repatriated 400 victims in the past six months,” said Ms. Musabih, a fast-talking, energetic figure who presides over the shelter like an overworked mother.

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As important as this topic it, it gets very little attention in the UAE media (another sign of the lack of press freedom).  This opine in the Gulf News is a recent and in-depth one on the issue.  Excerpts below:

The United Arab Emirates is not at its best when it comes to press freedom. This bleak diagnose of the press freedom in the UAE is attested to by the frustrated local writers and is confirmed by the latest Freedom House report which ranks the UAE 137 out of 196 states worldwide.

This is not a very bright ranking for a country that prides itself of being the first and the best in socioeconomic status. The economic freedom ranking of the UAE is impressive. The UAE ranks 24 worldwide. Its human development index is as solid as it can be.

The UAE is in the top 50 list of best countries. The country’s social liberty standing is just as formidable. There is plenty of social freedom around, probably more than can be digested.

Even the UAE’s information, communication and technology (ICT) scores are outstanding. It is ranked 27 overall out of 55 countries included in the global ICT survey.

Yet when it comes to the thorny issue of press freedom and political liberty, the UAE lags behind miserably. This begs the nagging question as to why the UAE is not at its best when it comes to freedom of the press.

Who is responsible for this unflattering state of press freedom in the UAE: is it the government, the society, the media establishments or the journalists and the writers at large who have not put up the fight to raise press freedom parameters in the society?

It is always convenient to blame the press freedom deficit on the government. Needlessly, governments everywhere including democratic governments are notorious for their dislike of active and critical press.

Press freedom translates into more societal constraints on government authorities. No government in the world likes to be accountable; the UAE government is no exception. It has done everything possible to gently court the media, keep it happy but under its tight benevolent watch.

The government has made sure that the media does not develop an independent mind of its own. A media that lacks independence is a great loss to good governance and the building of a healthy society.

Yet it is not all the government’s fault. Ironically, the government in the UAE looks much more open minded than the society. Politically, the UAE society has always acted conservatively and modestly. It still remains pretty much a tribal society in essence.

As progressive as it looks to outsiders, the UAE society is very cautious with regards to demand for democracy, transparency, political reform and press freedom. These are hardly hot societal issues in the UAE.

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Straight to the point article by Hannah Mermelstein (and American Jewish activist):

On March 20, 1941, Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund wrote: “The complete evacuation of the country from its other inhabitants and handing it over to the Jewish people is the answer.”

On this day in 1948, almost two months before the first “Arab-Israeli war” technically began, the 1,125 inhabitants of the Palestinian village Umm Khalid fled a Haganah military operation. Like their brethren from more than 500 villages, they likely thought they would return to their homes within a few weeks, after the fighting blew over and new political borders were or were not drawn.

Instead, more than 6 million Palestinian people remain refugees to this day, some in refugee camps not far from their original towns, others in established communities in Europe and the US, all forbidden from returning to their homeland for one reason: they are not Jewish.

Yosef Weitz’s wish was granted. In my name, and in the name of Jewish people throughout the world, an indigenous population was almost completely expelled. Village names have been removed from the map, houses blown up, and new forests planted. In Arabic, this is called the Nakba, or catastrophe. In Israel, this is called “independence.”

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Today 200 residents of Nablus and internationals gathered to commemorate the five-year anniversary of the murder of Rachel Corrie by Israeli forces in Rafah,Gaza, as she tried to prevent a bulldozer from demolishing a family home. The demonstration also protested the ongoing attacks on Gaza by the Israeli army, and the occupation of Iraq - taking place on the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion.
Present were bereaved parents of Rachel Corrie, Craig and Cindy Corrie, who were visiting Nablus for the first time. The Corries expressed their gratitude for the continuing remembrence of their daughter, but stressed the importance of focussing on the atrocities carried out against Palestinians everyday. Her mother stated:
“While we remember Rachel, it is important to remember the children of Palestine, because Rachel knew and Rachel taught us that it is about the people of Palestine, not about Rachel.
“We know that the people of Nablus have suffered for many many years, and have suffered many many losses that are like our loss, except they go on and on for them.”

…

The protesters carried 122 black balloons, to commemorate the 121 Palestinians killed in Gaza during the Israeli army Operation Hot Winter, as well as one for Rachel Corrie. The also carried Palestinian flags and pictures of those killed in Gaza.
Representatives from many organisations in Nablus addressed the crowd, including the Women’s Committee; Tanweer Centre for Cultural Enlightenment; and Centre for Global Consciousness; as well as Palestinians whose family members had been murdered by Israeli forces. Many spoke of the links between the occupation of Palestine and the occupation of Iraq, demanding freedom and justice for both.
These connections were also expressed by Rachel Corrie, which she wrote to her parents from Palestine before she died, which her mother Cindy shared with the crowd,
“I think freedom for palestine could be an incredible source of hope for people struggling all over the world.’’

Source: International Solidarity Movement

I respect Abu Ein for putting this out…there is no way in the world any country would support this (Iran may be an exception because it has nothing to lose), but still I think the initiative needs to be put out there.

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If anything, as the BBC article points out, this shows how desperate the Shin Bet is to recruit Israelis - another sign of the despair in the Israeli society. 

The Israeli secret service has launched a new venture: it has started to carry an internet diary, or blog, written by four of its agents.

The agents discuss how they were recruited, and what sort of work they perform; they also answer questions sent in by members of the public.

The tone of the blog is chatty, at times even facetious.

The agents from Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, are shown in silhouette.