| Egyptian PM breaks into tears while talking about the economy Posted: 11 Dec 2011 06:33 PM PST From Ya Libnan: Egypt's new interim prime minister broke into tears in front of journalists on Sunday as he spoke about the state of the country's economy, saying it was "worse than anyone imagines."
Egypt's transition in the months since Hosni Mubarak's ouster has been rocky, with protests against the military council leading the process, an increase in crime and the battering of the tourism industry that was once a pillar of the economy.
Kamal el-Ganzouri, the third temporary prime minister since Mubarak's ouster in February, said his priorities were the restoration of security and economic progress.
At one point in his news conference, el-Ganzouri became teary eyed as he recalled seeing "an Egyptian man on TV saying I want security, not bread."
He said austerity measures were needed to start reducing the deficit but that no new taxes will be imposed. He did not elaborate on exact steps.
El-Ganzouri said his government will not consider loans from the International Monetary Fund until the outlook of the Egyptian budget becomes clear. In the summer, the IMF offered a $3 billion loan, but Egyptian officials turned it down.
The IMF is projecting Egypt's economic growth to be just 1.2 per cent this year, compared with about 5 per cent in 2010.
"Solidarity is needed to face the economic crisis and security problem for citizens to be pleased with the revolution," he said.
Urban consumer inflation in Egypt rose to an annual 9.1 per cent in November from 7.1 per cent in October. The unemployment rate in the third quarter climbed to 12 per cent from just under 9 per cent a year earlier. Net international reserves dropped by roughly 40 per cent by the end of October, compared with the end of 2010. Spengler has been sounding the alarm about this for a while now. Egypt is in deep trouble and the revolution is showing no way for it to extricate itself. 
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| Jordan is Palestinian (Mudar Zahran) Posted: 11 Dec 2011 12:15 PM PST From Middle East Forum: In most countries with a record of human rights violations, vulnerable minorities are the typical victims. This has not been the case in Jordan where a Palestinian majority has been discriminated against by the ruling Hashemite dynasty, propped up by a minority Bedouin population, from the moment it occupied Judea and Samaria during the 1948 war (these territories were annexed to Jordan in April 1950 to become the kingdom's West Bank).
As a result, the Palestinians of Jordan find themselves discriminated against in government and legislative positions as the number of Palestinian government ministers and parliamentarians decreases; there is not a single Palestinian serving as governor of any of Jordan's twelve governorships.[3]
Jordanian Palestinians are encumbered with tariffs of up to 200 percent for an average family sedan, a fixed 16-percent sales tax, a high corporate tax, and an inescapable income tax. Most of their Bedouin fellow citizens, meanwhile, do not have to worry about most of these duties as they are servicemen or public servants who get a free pass. Servicemen or public employees even have their own government-subsidized stores, which sell food items and household goods at lower prices than what others have to pay,[4] and the Military Consumer Corporation, which is a massive retailer restricted to Jordanian servicemen, has not increased prices despite inflation.[5]
Decades of such practices have left the Palestinians in Jordan with no political representation, no access to power, no competitive education, and restrictions in the only field in which they can excel: business.
According to the Minority Rights Group International's World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples of 2008, "Jordan still considers them [Palestinian-Jordanians] refugees with a right of return to Palestine."[6] This by itself is confusing enough for the Palestinian majority and possibly gives basis for state-sponsored discrimination against them; indeed, since 2008, the Jordanian government has adopted a policy of stripping some Palestinians of their citizenship.[7] Thousands of families have borne the brunt of this action with tens of thousands more potentially affected. ...
These open displays of animosity are of a piece with the Hashemite regime's use of its Palestinian citizens as pawns in its game of anti-Israel one-upmanship.
King Hussein—unlike his peace-loving image—made peace with Israel only because he could no longer afford to go to war against it. His son has been less shy about his hostility and is not reluctant to bloody Israel in a cost-effective manner. For example, on August 3, 2004, he went on al-Arabiya television and slandered the Palestinian Authority for "its willingness to give up more Palestinian land in exchange for peace with Israel."[24] He often unilaterally upped Palestinian demands on their behalf whenever the Palestinian Authority was about to make a concession, going as far as to threaten Israel with a war "unless all settlement activities cease."[25]
This hostility toward Israel was also evident when, in 2008, Abdullah started revoking the citizenship of Jordanian Palestinians. By turning the Palestinian majority in Jordan into "stateless refugees" and aggressively pushing the so-called "right of return," the king hopes to strengthen his anti-Israel credentials with the increasingly Islamist Bedouins and to embarrass Jerusalem on the world stage. It is not inconceivable to envision a scenario where thousands of disenfranchised Palestinians find themselves stranded at the Israeli border, unable to enter or remain in Jordan. The international media—no friend of the Jewish state—would immediately jump into action, demonizing Israel and turning the scene into a fiasco meant to burden Jerusalem's conscience—and that of the West. The Hashemite regime would thereby come out triumphant, turning its own problem—being rejected and hated by the Palestinians—into Israel's problem.
...The desperate and destabilizing measures undertaken by the Hashemite regime to maintain its hold on power point to a need to revive the long-ignored solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict: the Jordanian option. With Jordan home to the largest percentage of Palestinians in the world, it is a more logical location for establishing Palestinian statehood than on another country's soil, i.e., Israel's.
There is, in fact, almost nothing un-Palestinian about Jordan except for the royal family. Despite decades of official imposition of a Bedouin image on the country, and even Bedouin accents on state television, the Palestinian identity is still the most dominant—to the point where the Jordanian capital, Amman, is the largest and most populated, Palestinian city anywhere. Palestinians view it as a symbol of their economic success and ability to excel. Moreover, empowering a Palestinian statehood for Jordan has a well-founded and legally accepted grounding: The minute the minimum level of democracy is applied to Jordan, the Palestinian majority would, by right, take over the political momentum. Read the whole thing. 
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| 70 million Arabs in poverty, and a wild peace plan Posted: 11 Dec 2011 10:00 AM PST Addustour reports on the Conference of Arab Social Affairs Ministers, held in Beirut on Saturday. Among the statistics released is that the number of Arab citizens who live below the poverty line is between 65 and 73 million, and ten million Arabs are suffering from malnutrition. According to statistics, the unemployment rate in Arab lands is at 20 percent and that the Arabs will need 51 million new jobs for young people by 2020. The Arab population is expected to increase to 645 million by 2050. The number of illiterates of people 15 or older has grown to reach nearly 5.99 million people, according to UNESCO, and the illiteracy rate in the the Arab world is at 9.27 percent. There is of course an easy way to help fix these problems: Make peace with Israel. Israeli experts would be thrilled to travel openly to Arab countries and work with them on economic, education and health issues, to create joint projects that would employ tens of thousands, to raise everyone's standard of living and to creatively come up with comprehensive solutions to regional issues. The benefits of a real, warm peace with Israel would be huge for all Arab countries. And there would be another benefit. If a few Gulf states would break with their Arab neighbors and embrace Israel as a fact, it would bring peace with the Palestinian Arabs that much closer. The intransigence of the Palestinian Arab leaders is based partially on the unwavering paper support from their Arab "brethren." They would be far more likely to accept a peace plan if they felt that this support that Arab leaders have given them was in jeopardy. Everyone would win. Unfortunately, the Arab mentality is not win-win, but a zero-sum game. They believe that if Israelis want to do something, it must by definition be fought against. (Arab pride will not allow them to accept help from the hated Zionists anyway.) So their people will continue to suffer. Hundreds of billions of petrodollars will remain in the hands of the rich Arabs and poverty will increase along with the high Arab birthrates. And Arabs will continue to be fed the lie that Israel is the reason for all their problems. And the funny thing is, even supposedly progressive, "pro-peace" liberals are not calling for Arab nations to unconditionally establish warm, peaceful relations with Israel, even though it would benefit the Arabs - and ultimately their Palestinians - so richly. On the contrary, they want to keep them in an official state of war. Ironic, isn't it? 
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| London mosque hosts sheikh who calls to enslave Jewish women Posted: 11 Dec 2011 08:15 AM PST Andrew Gilligan at The Telegraph reports than the East London Mosque hosted a radical sheikh to speak last week: Sheikh Saad al-Beraik raised over a hundred million dollars to give to Palestinian Arab terror organizations in 2002. He also has said: Is it too dear to us that among our honorable beloved die as martyrs? Their death dates were written before their birth. That they die as martyrs. "Say even if were at your home, those who will die will walk to their death."
Which is a better choice, to de on your bed, or to die perseverant, fighting, not retreating. Which is better to suffer long before death many days, or taste death quickly?
Which is better to suffer a slow death, or die as a martyr in your way to heaven. A death that you will be forgiven on the first drop of your blood.
When life became perishes we started to drink humiliation many times over.
Oh Palestinian Authority, don't you see that you are tested once or twice a year? Then you don't learned or repent.
Isn't time yet to wage jihad, and call for holy war. Isn't time that Muslim countries which normalized relations with the Jews to cancel everything that happened from Madrid to Oslo, and Why River, which forbids the supplying of weapons to Muslims in Palestine?
It's a call to close all embassies opened for the Jews in the land of Islam; it is call to end normalization with Israel.
People should know that Jews are backed by the Christians, and the battle that we are going through is not with Jews only, but also with those who believe that Allah is a third in a Trinity, and those who said that Jesus is the son of Allah, and Allah is Jesus, the son of Mary.
I am against America until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment;
I am against America even if the stone liquefies
My hatred of America, if part of it was contained in the universe, it would collapse.
She is the root of all evils, and wickedness on earth.
Oh Muslim Ummah don't take the Jews and Christians as allies.
Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women? Why don't you wage jihad? Why don't you pillage them? He also refers to Jews as monkeys. (h/t Ian) 
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| Tunisian Jews publicly support Islamist government, privately nervous Posted: 11 Dec 2011 06:15 AM PST From Al Arabiya: Tunisia's moderate Islamist Ennahda party said in a statement Saturday that Jews living in the North African country were citizens with "all their rights and duties."
The party, which emerged as a dominant force in October elections, criticized an invitation last week by Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom for Tunisian Jews to settle in Israel.
"Tunisia remains, today and tomorrow, a democratic state that respects its citizens and looks after them regardless of their religion," Ennahda said.
It added that "members of the Jewish community in Tunisia are citizens enjoying all their rights and duties."
 | | Silvan Shalom | Tunisian-born Shalom on Wednesday called on Jews living in the country "to settle in Israel as soon as possible," speaking at a Jerusalem ceremony for Jewish Holocaust victims in Tunisia.
Tunisia is home to about 1,500 Jews, mostly on the island of Djerba.
Ennahda called Shalom's comments "irresponsible" and "irrational" and said "making this kind of statement at this particular time is very suspicious."
The head of the Jewish community in Tunisia, Roger Bismuth, reportedly said that "all this fuss made around Silvan Shalom's statements is a storm in a teacup and an attempt to undermine the process initiated by Tunisia after freeing itself from the yoke of dictatorship."
"No foreign party has the right to interfere in Tunisia's affairs, including those of the Jewish community living in this country for over 3,000 years," he said, according to a report by the Tunisian news agency TAP.
He added that "the Jewish community loves Tunisia and does not consider leaving it," the report said. A report on reactions by Tunisia's Jewish community is interesting. The owner of La Goulette's Kosher restaurant, Mame Lilly, and former Constituent Assembly candidate Jacob Lellouche insisted that to him, Shalom's comments were shallow. "Silvan can say whatever he wants. I am Tunisian, this is my country. I will stay here. Silvan can not tell me where to live."
He added that the only fear he had of the Islamists currently in Tunisia's government was that they would not succeed in improving Tunisia's situation. "I fear for Islamists that god will turn against them," he joked with a tint of sarcasm.
Avraham Chiche, is the director of the Jewish Old Age home in La Goulette. His family immigrated to Tunisia over 500 years ago from Spain during the Spanish inquisition. Chiche feels that Shalom's comments have been political and he has no plans to leave Tunisia.
"Silvan Shalom needs to mind his own business and let us choose to live where we want to live, instead of making publicity statements for Israel," said Chiche.
"We fear the small number of Salafists in Tunisia, but not Ennahda, the leadership of Ennahda came to us both before and after the election and assured us that our community will remain a vital part of Tunisian society while they are in government," Chiche added. But... Others contacted in the Jewish community refrained from comment.
A Djerba based silversmith who asked not to be named, said that it was best for him not to respond to Shalom's comments. Like many other Tunisians he is hoping that Tunisia's democratic transition succeeds.
"It is best I not respond to Shalom because whatever I say can be misunderstood or distorted by people both here and in Israel. I obviously have not taken these calls seriously, they have been made by Shalom before. I prefer to be vigilant, and patient with this new government to see if the democratic transition will be successful instead of listening to the provocations of Shalom." The fact that no Jews are willing to express any reservations publicly speaks volumes about where the truth is. It sounds like Jews of Tunisia are a lot more nervous than is being reported. 
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| Unity! PA refuses to send passports for Gazans Posted: 11 Dec 2011 04:17 AM PST Palestine Today reports that the PA has continued to refuse to send blank passports to Gaza. The passports are necessary for Gazans to travel to other countries, especially Egypt. The PA has withheld or drastically limited the passports for years. But in one of the agreements with Hamas for "unity," Mahmoud Abbas promised to rectify the situation, saying that a passport is "the inherent right of every Palestinian." "Unity" has accomplished its main purpose: It stopped a possible revolt against Fatah and Hamas with false promises. And the two parties will continue to do whatever they can to maintain the status quo, and to save their own necks and positions of power. The Palestinian Arab media is mostly aligned with one side or the other, so there are very few articles complaining that "unity" has been a sham. Instead there are articles blaming the others for the stalemate. 
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| Arabs upset at map of "Palestine" that doesn't include Israel Posted: 11 Dec 2011 01:00 AM PST The 12th Arab Games are being held in Doha, Qatar this week - and they have caused some controversy. During the opening ceremonies, when countries are announced, the TV feed shows a representation of a map of that country popping out in 3D from the globe. "Palestine" showed only the West Bank and Gaza. Here's the video: Arabs are incensed at Qatar for allowing such a graphic to exist that does not obliterate the Jewish state. (h/t/ CHA) 
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