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.
Continue here
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.
Continue here
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.”
Continue here
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.’’
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.
A plan, drawn by Ziad Abu Ein, the Under Secretary of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)’s Ministry for Prisoners’ Affairs, urges the Palestinian refugees to implement the United Nations Resolution 194 to mark the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba and Israel’s 60th anniversary, The Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday.
The plan stresses that the Palestinians can no longer expect to achieve the “Right of Return” at the negotiating table with Israel.
“We must take matters into our own hands,” it states. “Negotiations, slogans and UN resolutions are not going to bring us our rights.”
Abu Ein’s initiative calls on all Israelis to welcome the Palestinians “who will be returning to live together with them in the land of peace.”
The Arab countries hosting Palestinian refugees are requested to facilitate the return of the refugees by opening their borders and allowing them to march toward Israel. The plan specifically refers to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, whose governments are asked to provide logistic support to allow the refugees to carry out their mission.
Arab governments are requested also to provide both financial and political backing for the initiative.
Palestinian refugees living in the US, EU, Canada and Latin America are requested to use their foreign passports to fly to the Israeli Ben-Gurion Airport from May 14-16. The plan calls for the Palestinians to hire dozens of boats flying UN flags that will converge on Israeli ports simultaneously.
To ensure international backing, the plan calls to invite world leaders, the UN secretary-general, journalists and legal experts from around the world to declare their support for the Palestinians’ “Right of Return.” The Palestinians, in return, would promise to practice their right peacefully and to denounce violence.
Continue here
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.
This sounds like an amazing program!! Pass the info on and don’t miss out!
Introduction
Birthright Palestine is a unique program created by Native Palestinians for Diaspora Palestinians. The concept created by the Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies (PCNSS) – a new non-profit, non-governmental Palestinian organization, is meant to gather first-generation, western-born Palestinians (over the age of 18-years old) in their ancestral homeland, so that they can reunite and witness firsthand how their brethren are living under illegal Israeli military occupation. Read More.
Dates & Costs
The cost of the Birthright Palestine program is dependent upon the duration of the session that you choose to partake in. In order to fully take in the experience, we suggest that you participate in the program for a two or three month period; however, there are also three available one-month sessions. Read More.
Hat tip: Muslamics
By Ismail Kushkush, IOL correspondent:
KHARTOUM — The decision by the rebel Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) faction of Abd al-Wahid Nur to open a liaison office in Israel has infuriated most Sudanese, including Darfurians.
“This will created more divisions in Darfur,” Salah al-Fadul Rijal, the current sultan-general of the Fur tribes, told IslamOnline.net over the phone from Nyala, Darfur.
“Some tribes are now calling for a jihad against the SLM because they believe that they are a front for Israel in Darfur. Even some associated with the SLM are denouncing this act.”
Nur, himself a member of the Fur ethnic group, has announced opening a liaison office in Tel Aviv to help Darfurians who have sought refuge in Israel.
He praised Israel for “for protecting Darfur youth from genocide” and insisted that his rebellion will change norms and break taboos in Sudan, especially about Israel.
“Our vision of Sudan as we see it would allow for the opening of an Israeli embassy in Khartoum as long as it is in line with the interests of the Sudanese people,” Nur told Sudan Tribune from his Paris residence.
Sudan, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel over its occupation of Arab lands, described Nur’s decision as evidence that the Darfur crisis has been manipulated by foreign hands.
Nur’s SLM is one a few rebel groups that has refused to subscribe to the 2006 Abuja peace agreement. It has refused to date to participate in peace negotiations.
Read on here
Insolence is not exactly the word I’m looking for, but I couldn’t find a better word in English. Anyway below is what I’m referring to:
An angry Israeli Ambassador to UN, Dan Gillerman lashed out at Libya following the deadlock describing it as a ”terrorist country”.
”Unfortunately this is what happens when the Security Council is infiltrated by terrorists. It brings into question the legitimacy of such a country not just being in the Security Council but being a member of the United Nations,” he said.
I like the Libyan response though:
Libya’s deputy UN representative Ibrahim al-Dabbashi said his country did not need ”a certificate of good conduct from the Israeli terrorist regime.”
Full story here
On a more serious note, I cannot bring myself to commend or celebrate the attack in Jerusalem today. Even Orthodox Jewish students who support Israeli illegal settlements in the West Bank are civilians. This is just a personal thought.
I think the phrase “Empirically reprehensible, but contextually understandable” (coined by Dr. Tareq Ramadan) is a good way to sum up the situation. Below is Br. M. Saalakhan’s (founder of The Peace and Justice Foundation) commentary on the situation which I received by email, and I thought offers a needed perspective:
Recently, a brother in Islam (and friend of many years) shared a very astute observation made by the imminent Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan several years ago. “Empirically reprehensible, but contextually understandable,” is how he termed the periodic terrorist attacks committed by a small number of Palestinians against civilian targets within Occupied Palestine (aka, Israel).
These words came to mind after I learned about the most recent terrorist attack at the rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem - empirically reprehensible, but contextually understandable. Not only does this description seem fitting for the crazed gunman who went into that yeshiva, it may also apply to the reported “joyful reaction” among oppressed Palestinians in that largest open air prison in the world called Gaza.
In the coming days the world is going to be inundated with a litany of reports, analyses and commentaries, accented by political and religiously charged denunciations from an assortment of “leaders” and commentators of various stripes - all emanating from this admittedly tragic attack in Jerusalem. As detestable as this attack on a religious school is, however, it must be placed into relative context, in order for it to be properly understood and appropriately analyzed.
According to an Associated Press report by Aron Heller (released earlier today from Jerusalem), this was “the first major militant attack in Jerusalem in more than four years.”
When one juxtaposes this reality against an observation also made by [former] U.S. President Jimmy Carter, when he was making the promotional rounds for his provocative book (Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid), “No Israeli has died since August 2004 because of a so-called terrorist attack from Hamas. Almost all of the casualties in recent months have been inside Gaza…” – one is inclined to see such shrill and unbalanced denunciations as those coming out of Israel right now, for what they truly are: crass attempts to gain political and propaganda advantage from a tragedy that didn’t have to be!
(Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev reportedly stated: “Tonight’s massacre in Jerusalem is a defining moment. It is clear that those people celebrating this bloodshed have shown themselves to be not only the enemies of Israel but of all humanity.” What gall, for any representative of Zionist Israel to say such a thing!)
It has also been reported that after the attack ended, hundreds of seminary students demonstrated outside the school chanting, “Death to the Arabs!” This is precisely what instigated this tragedy in the first place; the daily deaths, and the living hell, of Christian and Muslim Arabs at the hands of unrepentant Zionists!
The seminary has been identified as the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, located at the Kiryat Moshe quarter at the entrance to Jerusalem. It is said to be a “prestigious center of Jewish studies,” identified with the leadership of the infamous Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank. (The school reportedly serves high school students and young Israeli soldiers.)
Rather than exploiting this tragedy in a manner that continues the never-ending cycle of death and destruction, it would behoove sincerely inclined peace and justice loving workers on both sides of the dividing line (but especially on the Israeli side) to reflect more deeply on the causative factors behind this mayhem…before more [Israeli] chickens come home to roost.
In the eternal struggle for peace thru justice,
El-Hajj Mauri’ Saalakhan
Another excellent article by Ilan Pappe, excerpts below:
In several articles published by The Electronic Intifada, I claimed that Israel is pursuing a genocidal policy against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, while continuing the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. I asserted that the genocidal policies are a result of a lack of strategy. The argument was that since the Israeli political and military elites do not know how to deal with the Gaza Strip, they opted for a knee-jerk reaction in the form of massive killing of citizens whenever the Palestinians in the Strip dared to protest by force their strangulation and imprisonment. The end result so far is the escalation of the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians — more than one hundred in the first days of March 2008, unfortunately validating the adjective “genocidal” I and others attached to these policies. But it was not yet a strategy.However, in recent weeks a clearer Israeli strategy towards the Gaza Strip’s future has emerged and it is part of the overall new thinking about the fate of the occupied territories in general. It is in essence, a refinement of the unilateralism adopted by Israel ever since the collapse of the Camp David “peace talks” in the summer of 2000. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his party Kadima, and his successor Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, delineated very clearly what unilateralism entailed: Israel would annex about 50 percent of the West Bank, not as a homogeneous chunk of it, but as the total space of the settlement blocs, the apartheid roads, the military bases and the “national park reserves” (which are no-go areas for Palestinians). This was more or less implemented in the last eight years. These purely Jewish entities cut the West Bank into 11 small cantons and sub-cantons. They are all separated from each other by this complex colonial Jewish presence. The most important part of this encroachment is the greater Jerusalem wedge that divides the West Bank into two discrete regions with no land connection for the Palestinians.
The wall thus is stretched and reincarnated in various forms all over the West Bank, encircling at times individual villages, neighborhoods or towns. The cartographic picture of this new edifice gives a clue to the new strategy both towards the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The 21st century Jewish state is about to complete the construction of two mega prisons, the largest of their kind in human history.
Continue here
As I watch/read the news on Gaza, the only thing I can think of that may make a difference is revitalizing the boycott campaign against Israeli goods. I think ith all the graphic videos and photos on the news, people are awake and ready to do something (I hope!).
Does anyone know how to contact the Committee for Boycotting Israel in the UAE. I have heard that such a committee exists (or existed, mainly in the wake of the second intifada) but I have no idea how to contact them.
Any other ideas? Come on people of the UAE…I know there must be something we can do!!!
By the way, if you think the boycott is alive and well in the UAE, check out this article…for starters. Plus, there’s always the boycott of zionist-supporting companies, even if they are not Israeli.
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