| Let's play some Persian Golf Posted: 27 Apr 2011 10:02 PM PDT There has been a long battle between Iran and Arab oil states countries over the name of the gulf that they surround. Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies call it the Arabian Gulf, while Iran and most of the rest of the world call it the Persian Gulf. This conflict gets personal. Iran is hosting some sporting events in coming weeks where Arab states will compete, and people who want to popularize the name "Persian Gulf" are going to hang banners to bug the Arab sports teams and players. Arab delegations have also been harassed with these taunts. Here's one of the banners, shown by Al Arabiya: I didn't even know Iran had any golf courses! This is not a unique case of "Persian Golf" sightings. See this webpage and this Facebook page made by overzealous but spelling-impaired Iranians with the same slogan. The extreme touchiness over this issue has been noted here before. 
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| Who ya going to believe - the caption or your lying eyes? Posted: 27 Apr 2011 01:55 PM PDT DayLife has a series of photos from Gaza, taken by Getty Images, each with the identical caption: Christian Orthodox hold up candles lit from the 'Holy Fire' as thousands gather in the Church in Gaza City on April 24, 2011. Most of the photos look like this: A couple of dozen people at most in these photos, nto exactly "thousands." But one of the photos looks like this: Now, Gaza has maybe 3000 Christians altogether. The idea that "thousands" celebrated at this church seems more than a little far fetched. And from this last photograph, it looks like the church is far from full. How many times do wire service captions shape the story more than the photos themselves? 
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| Did Abbas recognize the existence of "The Jewish Nation"? Posted: 27 Apr 2011 01:27 PM PDT I reported a couple of months ago that one of the released "Palestine Papers" included this comment from the Negotiations Support Unit of the PLO: Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination. Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people's claim to all of Historic Palestine. So did Abbas goof in his Passover tweet to the "Jewish nation"? If there is a Jewish nation, does it not have the right of self-determination? And if there is a Jewish nation, where is its land? It is obviously in the Biblical Land of Israel, which includes the entire West Bank. So was this a gaffe, or just another of a long line of English language doubletalk by Palestinian Arab leaders? I could not find any Arabic version of his Passover holiday wishes for this year (in 2009 he gave a more generic message to Jews worldwide, which raised eyebrows among some Islamists.) (h/t Challah Hu Akbar) 
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| Dialogue with a Western Leftist (Nick Cohen) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 12:16 PM PDT This should probably be made into one of those XtraNormal animations.... "You say you support the Palestinians?"
"Yes."
"Which Palestinians?"
"What do you mean 'which Palestinians'? I support all Palestinians. Their oppression by Israel is the great injustice of our time. Western hypocrites ignore racism, and use false accusations of antisemitism to stop legitimate criticism. The Zionist-controlled media label resistance 'terrorism', while ignoring the state terrorism of Israel which is the root cause of all the violence in the Middle-"
"All right, stop there. You still have to choose. Do you support the Fatah leadership in the West Bank, which may be corrupt and unpleasant but is at least presiding over an economic boom and allowing some freedoms, or Hamas, which tortures its enemies and tramples on the rights of women."
"Hamas won Gaza in free elections. Palestinians must unite against the colonial enemy and the Israel Lobby in the West."
"But they cannot unite. Religious reactionaries from the extreme right - and 'the extreme right' is the correct term, by the way - who are building an Islamic emirate in Gaza and want a caliphate to cover the whole world, do not mix with democratic politicians, however imperfect they may be. You saw what happened in Gaza. The Islamists won one election, cancelled all future elections, and threw their opponents from high-rise blocks. If David Cameron threw Ed Miliband off the Post Office Tower, would you still say that he was worthy of support?"
"It is not for us to intervene in Palestinian affairs. Hamas is an issue the Palestinians must resolve themselves."
"Listen to yourself. 'It's not for us to intervene?' You and your friends intervene all the time. You close down Jewish shops, oblivious to the ghosts of Kristallnacht that thuggish policy raises from the grave. You lobby to stop Israeli academics visiting our universities, and don't worry that the last movement to ban Jewish intellectuals was-"
"I knew it, I knew it! I knew you would accuse me of antisemitism. Your kind always does. It's a dirty trick to silence legitimate debate."
"I agree it can be sometimes. But when you will not condemn Islamist movements that lift Jewish conspiracy theories direct from the screeds of European fascism, I am entitled to suspect that you suffer from a severe case of Judeophobia at the very least. Your repeated references to the 'Israel Lobby' and 'Zionist-controlled media' don't reassure me on that score either."
"I am a left-winger, how dare you accuse me of racism? I have fought racism all my life, and don't ignore the Islamophobic racism of Israel and her friends, as you do. If there are antisemitic elements in the Islamist movement, they are a rational response to Western oppression. You would hate Jews if Israelis were doing this to you."
"Dear God, where to begin with that. Do you really believe there's no racism on the left, and that extremism can be rationally explained? In any case, it's not just antisemitism you excuse, is it? You have abandoned internationalism, secularism and, most disgracefully, the struggle for the emancipation of women. Your friends in Gaza have even banned women from sucking on hookah pipes - and, let me tell you, I don't need to have a psychiatry degree to understand the male sexual hysteria that lies behind that telling prohibition. Here's a test. The Palestinian Authority is about to declare the territories an independent state. The Israelis hate the idea, what do you think?"
"I worry that a two-state solution will not be full and just. The expelled refugees must have a right of return."
"That is a recipe for war without end. Israelis will never allow millions of Palestinians to swamp their state. Your trouble is that you are a voyeur. The violence of bearded reactionaries with a Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other excites you. You prefer their thrilling intransigence to the arguments of boring men in suits in Ramallah, who are willing to compromise for a better life. You need the burning corpses of Palestinians and Jews to bring light to your empty life."
"And your trouble is you are a sly apologist for imperialism. You never condemn Israeli atrocities, but use nit-picking points of detail and clever rhetorical tricks to distract attention from crimes against humanity. You are a neo-con and a zio-Nazi, and I am never going to speak to you again."
"Don't worry, there are millions more like you out there, and I'll be having this conversation for the rest of my life. Send in the next one on your way out."
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| Terrorist bishop spoke at Vittorio's funeral Posted: 27 Apr 2011 11:10 AM PDT At Hamas-supporter Vittorio Arrigoni's funeral in Bulciago, Italy, one of the speakers was Archbishop Hilarion Capucci of the Greek-Melchite Catholic Church. ( Italian media said he is the archbishop of Jerusalem, but that appears to be wrong.) Capucci said, "For us Vittorio is a martyr, a hero and a saint, a bishop who has defended the his flock and the flock was the Palestinian people." And who is Hilarion Capucci? From Wikipedia: On August 18, 1974 [Capucci] was arrested by Israeli police for smuggling weapons into the West Bank in a Mercedes sedan.[2] He was subsesquently convicted by an Israeli court of using his diplomatic status to smuggle arms to the Palestine Liberation Army and sentenced to 12 years in prison.[3][4] Capucci was among the prisoners whose release was demanded by the Palestinian hijackers of the Kfar Yuval hostage crisis in 1975 and of the Palestinian hijackers of Air France Flight 139 in 1976. He was released two years later due to intervention by the Vatican.[2] The governments of Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria have honored Capucci with postage stamps. This man of peace has also publicly sided with Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on civilians in Syria: Archbishop Hilarion Capucci of Jerusalem in Exile on Monday stressed that the conspiracy against Syria aims at undermining its pan-Arab principles and firm stances towards the just Arab issues and its support to the just Palestinian Cause.
In his statement on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of Evacuation Day (Syria's Independence Day), Capucci said "President Bashar al-Assad's decisions and directives were appeasing on all levels," expressing pride in Syria's leadership and its steadfastness in the face of hatched conspiracies.
Capucci expressed his belief that Syria and the Syrian people with the wisdom of President al-Assad would foil all conspiracies. You can see how this fake supporter of human rights would fit right in with Vittorio Arrigoni. (h/t Rudi) 
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| Hamas, Fatah initial a fake agreement Posted: 27 Apr 2011 09:47 AM PDT From JPost: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement hammered out an agreement with rival group Hamas on Wednesday, setting the stage for forming an interim government as well as fixing a date for a general election.
"The consultations resulted in full understandings over all points of discussions, including setting up an interim agreement with specific tasks and to set a date for election," Egyptian intelligence said in a statement.
Spokespeople for both Hamas and Fatah confirmed that "all differences" have been worked out between the long-feuding Palestinians political movements.
A spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Hamas has agreed to hold elections within a year, a part of the reconciliation deal it signed in Cairo.
A Hamas spokesperson said that "all points of differences" between the rival groups have been overcome. He added that officials in Cairo will soon invite top Hamas and Fatah officials for a signing ceremony in the Egyptian capital. Here is where it is useful to know a little history. Palestinian Arabs have long been able to put together temporary, paper agreements and truces to achieve larger political goals. Inevitably, Westerners are consistently fooled by these, stupidly believing that short-term absence of violence indicates a long-term shift in attitudes. In 1947, in the months before the UN Partition vote, virtually all Arab terror against Jews stopped. Amazing! The Arabs were proving to th world that they could act responsibly and run an Arab-led Palestine where they would protect the Jews as Islam requires them to, and they were puching this as an alternate plan to partitioning Palestine. But within hours of the UN vote to partition Palestine, the Arabs gave up their pretense of peacefulness and started attacking Jews (in those days, they didn't bother with calling them "Zionists.") In the months before Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas managed miraculously to reduce rocket fire from Gaza, and the rocket count dropped dramatically from 1157 in 2004 to 417 in 2005 as Israel implemented the plan. The next year, the number of rocket attacks increased back up to nearly the pre-disengagement levels. Now the Palestinian Arabs are faced with another deadline. The PA is putting all of their eggs in the unilateral recognition basket, that they are hoping the world provides to them in September. The biggest obstacle to that recognition was the simple fact that the PA and Hamas are hopelessly split - ideologically, physically and politically. There is no way that sympathetic Europeans can overlook that problem and support the establishment of a state where there are two competing rulers. Hamas also recognizes the immense political value that recognition would bring them - something that, like the disengagement, would happen once and would likely never be reversed. So even though Fatah and Hamas have been negotiating for years over the exact same issues without being able to come to an agreement, they now are agreeing to paper over their differences with vague wording that is just enough to convince the credulous, wishful-thinking West that they major obstacle to Palestinian Arab independence has been removed. Note the little we do know: "Hamas has agreed to hold elections within a year." You can bet that the elections will be scheduled after September, because the result of elections beforehand - either way - would torpedo any chance for a unity government. Vagueness will be the hallmark of the agreement - just enough to fool the world into thinking that these two groups can work together. Hamas can play the unity game until September, and, if the world is sufficiently fooled, for a few months afterwards. Then the elections, or absence of elections, will start to rock this false alliance. By then, they hope, Palestine will already be de facto recognized as a state, and Israel will be on the ropes politically anyway. The world will be cheerleading the PalArab insistence on ethically cleansing the heart of the Land of Israel of Jews, and Hamas-Fatahstan will blame all of their new problems on Israel. They will say things like they cannot accept Palestinian Arab "refugees" in their new state as long as Israel holds any of "their" land. The ever present threat of them exploding in a new terror war will cause the West to pressure Israel, as always, as they insist on Israeli concessions to solve their problems. The outline of what is coming is clear. Because we've seen this game before. Unfortunately, Western amnesia will help ensure that it plays out the way the PalArabs are planning it. UPDATE: Barry Rubin concurs. 
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| What did you learn online today? (Music video - HuffPoMonitor) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 08:44 AM PDT |
| Why is Amnesty hosting a Hamas apologist? (Michael Weiss) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 07:57 AM PDT An op-ed in The Telegraph by Michael Weiss of Just Journalism: When Amnesty International sacked the brilliant feminist Gita Sahgal for pointing out the obvious human rights bloomer in her organisation's partnership with Moazzem Begg – a man who, the Telegraph reveals today, was once claimed by the US authorities to be "a confirmed member of al-Qaeda" – the official Amnesty explanation was that Begg was a swell guy. The unofficial rationale, I suspect, was that, as a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, he hated the Bush administration even more than Amnesty did. But now Amnesty has taken the next step in its easy-breezy attitude towards religious fundamentalism. The celebrated NGO has cosied up to a Hamas-friendly magazine based in London known as Middle East Monitor Online (MEMO). On May 23, Amnesty's Human Rights Action Centre will co-host what promises to be a ripping debate on "Complicity in Oppression: Does the Media Aid Israel?" The other co-hosts are MEMO and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. In case you aren't familiar with the vagaries of British Islamism, let me provide a short course. MEMO is run by one Dr Daud Abdullah, the deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain and a signatory of the Istanbul Declaration. This gothic document states that it is the obligation of the "Islamic Nation" to "carry on jihad and Resistance" against Israel and to fight "by all means and ways" any "foreign warship" attempting to block arms smuggling to Hamas, which, last time I checked, was still a terrorist organisation according to EU and UK law. Though it's true that "all means and ways" could refer to a strongly worded Facebook campaign, try running those semantics by the Royal Navy, which blocks arms smuggling to Hamas. MEMO has published some sterling contributions to the discourse of social justice in the Middle East. Take Khalid Amayreh, who in a MEMO essay entitled "Netanyahu's Lebensraum" described all Israelis as "pathological liars from Eastern Europe, who lie as much as they breath oxygen", an accusation which at the very least is unfair to the Sephardim. Just last week, the MEMO website presented Sheikh Raed Salah'scontemplation on "The 'Jewish state' and us". By "us", Salah means a very select group, since his cod-history of Zionism argues that "Israel has never negotiated with the Palestinians". (MEMO thinks the Palestinian Authority, as led by Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad, is illegitimate because of its negotiations with Israel.) More interesting than Salah's history is his CV. He's the leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel and an ex-con who did two years in the clink in Israel for raising money for Hamas. Salah thinks Jerusalem is the designated capital of the new Islamic caliphate and in 2007 he was charged with incitement to violence and racism for suggesting that Jews use the blood of gentile children to bake bread. So who is coming to this wondrous festival on media tendentiousness? A cohort including former Guardian associate foreign editor Victoria Brittain and former BBC Middle East Correspondent Tim Llewellyn. Can this really be the natural constituency of Amnesty International? Why not ring them up and ask: +44 (0) 20 7033 1500.
Amnesty would no doubt argue that the Human Rights Action Center is public space available for rent. However, they state that "The rooms are open to the public and are available for hire by organisations working in the field of human rights and social justice." Exactly how does the extremist MEMO, which is explicitly dedicated to disseminating pro-Islamic, pro-Palestinian Arab propaganda, get defined as such an organization? I would love to see Hadassah or a similar Zionist organization try to book space at the HRAC, say for a conference on medical care for Ethiopian Jews in Israel, just to see what Amnesty would do. 
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| Syrian tanks headed towards Daraa; Syria headed for seat in UNHRC Posted: 27 Apr 2011 06:58 AM PDT Via Now Lebanon, here is a video taken this morning that says it shows tanks being transported towards Daraa, Syria, the center of the anti-government protests. Other interesting updates: A tweet from CNN's Hala Gourani: Eyewitness in #Daraa tells CNN some 35 tanks in and now around city. Says people forced to stay home bc of snipers on rooftops.
Twitter user @wissamtarif tweets that many water tanks in Daraa were emptied after being shot, adding that more people—Including a 6-year old child—were killed overnight in the city.
Most towns and cities in the Houran province (which includes Daraa) have run out of wheat.
A senior US State Department official on Tuesday said that Washington will limit its response to the violent crackdown on civilian protests in Syria to diplomacy and possible sanctions, AFP reported. Meanwhile... The brutal crackdown by Syrian President Bashar Assad may finally be getting the attention of world leaders -- but apparently not enough to stop Syria from becoming the newest member of the U.N. Human Rights Council. The UN needs a laugh track to accompany everything it does. 
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| Arabs notice Arabs treat Arabs worse than Israel does Posted: 27 Apr 2011 05:58 AM PDT An interesting article by a Syrian journalist in Gulf News: Funnily enough, comparing the number of Arab people killed during the wars between Israel and Arab countries with the number of Arabs killed locally, one will notice that Arab dictatorships have killed more people.
Sadly enough, some Arab armies and security services have proved to be much more brutal than the Israeli army.
When we compare the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza with the number of Arabs being killed these days by Arab dictators, we will be horribly surprised.
In fact, the Sudanese regime killed hundreds of thousands of its own people in Darfur. The so-called Janjaweed gangs in Sudan used to annihilate the people of Darfur like flies simply because the latter clamoured for their basic rights. An Arab satirist once commented that an Arab dictator would not accept the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza even as an appetiser!
Recently there were reports that deposed Tunisian president Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali ordered his air force to bombard a civilian area in the Al Qasrain region because the people there demonstrated against his regime. Thankfully, the army refused to carry out his order.
Take Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. WikiLeaks has revealed that his 'chairmanship' gave the green light to American aircraft to bombard civilian areas to quell a local revolt. Add to this, of course, his brutal handling of the Yemeni revolution.
Other Arab despots are reported to have asked their security forces to aim their guns at protesters' heads. Have you ever seen an Israeli officer torturing a Palestinian civilian to death in the street for everybody to see? Definitely not. Many of us have seen that in some Arab towns lately.
It is true that Israel is forcing an embargo on Gaza, but I do not think that the Israelis are preventing the Palestinians from getting their daily bread, whereas the security services in some Arab countries stopped cars carrying food from entering certain areas. Nor are the Israelis cutting off electricity, telephone and other communication services from houses, hospitals and schools.
It has been reported that the security services stopped nurses and doctors from treating the injured during certain Arab demonstrations as a punishment for rising against the ruling regime. The thugs contracted by the police to help quell protests went even further. They shot at ambulances.
Unlike in some Arab countries, Arabs living inside Israel can organise sit-ins very comfortably. And when the Israeli police intervenes, they never beat demonstrators to death. And if we compare how Israel treats Shaikh Raed Salah with the way some Arab dictators treat their opponents, we will be horribly surprised, as the Israelis are very much less brutal.
Israel can always claim it is facing an enemy, whereas Arab dictators are facing their own people. Let us end with a succinct verse from the late poet Omar Abu Risha: ''No one can blame a wolf when it preys on a sheep if the shepherd himself is the enemy of the cattle''. 
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| PA MP calls for giving medal to murderer of Jewish worshipper Posted: 27 Apr 2011 04:06 AM PDT Palestine Times reports that a Hamas MP in the West Bank has called for rewarding the policeman who shot and killed Ben-Yosef Livnat as he was returning from prayers at Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus.) Sheikh Hamed Al-Betawi, MP for the "Change and Reform" party (Hamas), says that the killer should be released and he should received the Order of Pride Medal, apparently a top PA prize. He also bitterly complained that PA negotiators were prepared to give the Jews rights to the Western Wall, which he insisted is purely Muslim. 
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| Pew poll: Egyptians want to scrap Camp David, prefer sharia law Posted: 27 Apr 2011 01:49 AM PDT A new Pew Research poll of Egypt shows some worrying trends. No dividend emerges for the United States from the political changes that have occurred in Egypt. Favorable ratings of the U.S. remain as low as they have been in recent years, and many Egyptians say they want a less close relationship with America. Israel fares even more poorly. By a 54%-to-36% margin, Egyptians want the peace treaty with that country annulled.
The military is now almost universally seen (88%) as having a good influence on the way things are going in Egypt. Fully 90% rate military chief Mohamed Tantawi favorably.
Egyptians are welcoming some forms of change more than others. While half say it is very important that religious parties be allowed to be part of the government, only 27% give a similar priority to assuring that the military falls under civilian control. Relatively few (39%) give high priority to women having the same rights as men. Women themselves are more likely to say it is very important that they are assured equal rights than are men (48% vs. 30%). Overall, just 36% think it is very important that Coptic Christians and other religious minorities are able to freely practice their religions.
Egyptians hold diverse views about religion. About six-in-ten (62%) think laws should strictly follow the teachings of the Quran. However, only 31% of Egyptian Muslims say they sympathize with Islamic fundamentalists, while nearly the same number (30%) say they sympathize with those who disagree with the fundamentalists, and 26% have mixed views on this question. Those who disagree with fundamentalists are almost evenly divided on whether the treaty with Israel should be annulled, while others favor ending the pact by a goodly margin. If more than half of those who favor Shari'a law are not sympathetic to "fundamentalists," this means that the Arab definition of "fundamentalist" is much different than the Western definition. After all, wanting to have the nation ruled by religious law is, by definition, a fundamentalist position. This means that Western journalists and pundits who try to paint the Muslim Brotherhood as outside the mainstream of Egypt are missing the real story.
Only 20% of Egyptians hold a favorable opinion of the United States, which is nearly identical to the 17% who rated it favorably in 2010. Better educated and younger Egyptians have a slightly more positive attitude toward the U.S. than do other Egyptians.
Looking to the future, few Egyptians (15%) want closer ties with the U.S., while 43% would prefer a more distant relationship, and 40% would like the relationship between the two countries to remain about as close as it has been in recent years.
So in what sense is Egypt considered an "ally" of the US again? 
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