| Springtime! Egypt's Parliament names 50 newspaper editors Posted: 08 Aug 2012 04:58 PM PDT From AP: Egypt's upper house of parliament named 50 new editors for state-owned newspapers on Wednesday, including several who have Islamist leanings, raising concerns among journalists of Islamizing the press.
The state-owned papers, run for years by secular-leaning editors, had a reputation as a mouthpiece for President Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed last year.
Elections following the popular uprising put the Muslim Brotherhood in control of the parliament and the presidency. State-owned media formally belong to the upper house of parliament, the Shura Council, and it was poised to put its stamp on the newspapers.
The Brotherhood and its newly elected president, Mohammed Morsi, have complained about negative press coverage, and the move by the Shura Council to replace the old editors with people more sympathetic to the Islamists was not a surprise.
Several of the new editors named Wednesday appear to be linked to Islamists. Abdel-Nasser Salama, appointed chief editor of Al-Ahram, Egypt's oldest paper, was suspended from writing his weekly column in 2010 for inflammatory articles against Christians.
The new chief editor of Al-Akhbar daily, Mohammed Hassan al-Bana, is the grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood's founder, Hassan al-Bana.
Gamal Abdel-Rahim, new chief editor of el-Gomhouria, was accused by rights groups of inciting Muslims against the Bahai religious minority in 2009, when Muslim villagers attacked houses of Bahais, denouncing them as "enemies of God."
The Shura Council, headed by Ahmed Fahmi, who is Morsi's brother-in-law, formed a committee of 14 members to filter applicants for the editor posts.
The committee comprised six lawmakers, two professors, two administration experts and four journalists. Journalists who favor normalization with Israel or had strong ties with old regime were banned.
Two of the journalists resigned from the committee, voicing suspicions that the filtering process was not transparent and that Islamists were choosing their loyalists. Isn't Egyptian freedom freaking fantastic? (h/t @OrenKessler via @WarpedMirrorPMB) 
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| Honor killing after years of abuse Posted: 08 Aug 2012 02:32 PM PDT Practically every sentence in this Ma'an article is more outrageous than the one before. A man is being charged for the murder of his sister, who he is suspected of killing after he was released on bail facing charges of beating her.
Days before the death of Randa al-Mahareq, aged 34, her brother and father were detained after she complained to police that they beat her.
The men, from al-Samu near Hebron, were detained for four days, but a court released them on bail on July 18.
Randa's brother has told south Hebron prosecutor Mohammad Gaboon that on his release he returned home and beat Randa on her face and chest. "She lost her conscious and I left the room at that time," he said.
On July 21, Randa's father took her body to a clinic, where a doctor issued a death certificate.
Suspicions were raised by the family's failure to give Randa a proper funeral, said Atta Jawabra, who works at the family protection unit of Hebron police.
"As a result, we immediately informed Hebron police chief Ramadan Awad, about this matter as it might be a murder," he told Ma'an.
Police exhumed Randa's body on July 23 and a pathologist found seven fractures in her ribs.
Police detained the doctor that had issued Randa's death certificate, and after many hours of questioning the doctor said he issued the certificate without examining the body because Randa's father told him she suffered from epilepsy, the prosecutor in the case said.
Several months before her death, Randa had sought police protection from her father and her brother, said Farid al-Atrash, the regional director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights told Ma'an.
In January, she filed complaints with the family protection unit and at police stations in al-Samu, where she lived, and Yatta, a nearby town. Police made her father sign a "pledge" to stop beating her.
The beatings continued and Randa approached the Independent Commission of Human Rights on Feb. 4.
"We called the family protection department to find her a safe house, but family protection said that her father and brother promised to find her a job," al-Atrash said.
Randa was living with her family after her husband threw her out, Hiyan Qaqour, a lawyer for the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling told Ma'an.
Aged 28, Randa was forced to marry a 78-year-old man from Beersheba, in Israel, her mother told Ma'an.
They were married for six years and he regularly beat her, the lawyer said. Randa complained to Israeli police, who arrested him. On her husband's release, he sent her back to her family in as-Samu in the southern West Bank, Qaqour added.
The Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling provided Randa legal support to divorce her husband, but the process was complicated by Randa's family's refusal to stand as witnesses in the case.
After four months, her brother finally agreed to stand in court and she was able to get a divorce, the lawyer said. This is horrifying, even worse than the usual honor killings. Randa did everything she was supposed to and yet the people who should have protected her were the ones who punished her, repeatedly. (I am also wondering how many other Palestinian Arab girls are forced to marry people in Israel. There is some evidence that there is a conscious decision by some either to try to overwhelm Israel demographically or simply to become Israeli citizens.) 
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| Wednesday links Posted: 08 Aug 2012 12:30 PM PDT From Ian:
Scandinavian activists launch new ship to Gaza Swedish and Norwegian backed 'SV Estelle' set to sail from Oslo to Gaza; organizers hoping more ships will join.
"This time around it will be an easy task for the Israelis to stop us because we will be so few and strictly non-violent," Dahle told Reuters at Oslo harbor. Is a Palestinian State Today Economically Viable? by Michael Curtis The Report of the World Bank is a bitter commentary on the Palestinian economy, currently in a self-inflicted decline induced by the violence it brought on itself by launching the Second Intifada in 2000. Above all, the fundamental requisite for economic and political progress is to end the violence. Radical elements in United Church infected with antisemitism, minister says "I have wracked my brain trying to understand why Israel gets such a disproportionate measure of our moral criticism," said Love. "I keep coming back to a very difficult conclusion, and that is that there remains an undercurrent of antisemitism in our church, and that disturbs me. It's Official: Genocidal Sudan Running Uncontested for U.N. Human Rights Council Seat "Electing Sudan to the international community's highest human body is like putting Jack
the Ripper in charge of a women's shelter," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. Saudi Olympic Athletes Test Kingdom's Dedication To Gender Apartheid by Qanta Ahmed Far from revered, the Kingdom's first female athletes are ignored or insulted at home, writes Qanta Ahmed.
"Her father, a judo referee who said he wanted his daughter to make "new history for Saudi's women," is reportedly incensed at conservative Saudis who showered her with racial slurs on Twitter and called her a "prostitute" for participating." MEMRI: Saudi Cleric Sa'd Al-Qa'ub: The CEDAW Agreement Sends Shivers Down Your Spine And Makes Your Hair Stand On End He's not a a fan of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women: "One of the articles states that when a girl reaches the age of 18, nobody has guardianship over her – not her father, her husband, her brothers, or anyone for that matter. She can act with complete freedom. 'Al-Hayat Al-Jadida' Editor: The PLO's Goals Have Not Changed Since Its Establishment In 1964 Why MEMRI matters In a perfect world, it would be best to have at our fingertips translations of every article that appears in the foreign press. Fearing backlash, Morsi skips funerals for slain Egyptian soldiers Aides advise president to avoid the mob after PM attacked at funeral Egypt admits it ignored Israeli warnings of attack Intelligence chief says no action taken because they didn't believe a Muslim would kill another Muslim during break fast Guardian: We were wrong to call Tel Aviv Israel's capital Terror ring busted after smuggling 21 kg of explosives into Israel for Hezbollah Sharia4Holland spokesman fined for threatening Geert Wilders "At an impromptu press conference on Dam square in Amsterdam in May, Ab Qasim, 29, likened Wilders to a Roman dog and warned him to learn the lesson of what happened to Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh was killed by an Islamic militant." Headline of the Day: Outraged Lebanese demand end to anal exams on gay men Israeli Daily Picture Zion Gate in Jerusalem -- More Pictures Uncovered in the Library of Congress Archives  | | Zion Gate, 1898 |
Also: Documentary trailer: "Make Hummus Not War" A poster from The Israel Project: The International Federation of Journalists condemns Hamas for meddling in journalists' affairs Expanded notes and explanations for Richard Landes' WSJ article I posted Monday. Solomon2 brings us Will Durant, Palestine, 1930 (h/t Rob, Emma, Jean) 
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| 24 hours of anti-semitism in Arabic media Posted: 08 Aug 2012 10:45 AM PDT Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir says that "The Jewish entity is the crux of the disease and the scourge in the region, and wherever they settle they bring calamities to the nation." A Salafist group in the northern Sinai said the attack against Egyptian soldiers was a " terrorist act that serves only the Jews." An article in an Iraqi resistance group newspaper, Al Basrah, says that "Can there be a collapse of the Zionist entity?! Do we have an analysis or a clear vision for it?! Answer: Yes, the Koran tells us that the Jews are cowards and submissive and weak themselves, if they gain strength and dominance and control it is because of external forces...This is how the Koran says to defeat the Jews and their inability to hold power permanently..." An Egyptian artist expressed sorrow over the killing of the Egyptian soldiers, and cried out, "Oh God, the Jews burned them." A writer for Al Watan Voice says "the Zionist enemy and his intelligence and his cronies carried out this terrorist act and the evidence of this is the history of the dirty Jews, full of such crimes from the beginning of history; they have been killed Prophets and kill children and the elderly and their assassinations here and there are without any regard for humanity nor of morality." This Egyptian preacher also blames the Egypt attacks on "the Jews, enemies of Allah." But the stories aren't all bad. Why, this article in Shorouk News explains that "in the eyes of these Islamists, the Muslims in Egypt who have sold themselves to the West and the United States, and those who sold themselves to the Shiites in Iraq, and also those who sold themselves for Bashar al-Assad in Syria - they are much worse than the Jews and Americans." Meaning that even a relatively sober newspaper that knows that Islamists attacked the Egyptian soldiers accepts as a fact that Jews and Americans are bad, but the Islamists think that some other Muslims are even worse. All of these stories were published in the past 24 hours. 
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| Egyptian cleric: "People Worldwide 'Thirst for the Blood of the Jews'" Posted: 08 Aug 2012 09:30 AM PDT From MEMRI: Following are excerpts from two Friday sermons delivered by Egyptian cleric Sallah Sultan, the founder of the Ohio-based American Center for Islamic Research. The sermons aired on Al-Aqsa TV on July 27 and August 3, 2012.
Sallah Sultan: I travel all over the world, and I met supporters of Al-Aqsa, of the prisoners, of Jerusalem, and of Palestine – people who thirst for the blood of the Jews, and who are eager for the promised war against the sons of Zion, until Palestine is liberated in its entirety. .
[...].
Under the previous [Egyptian] regime over 30,000 Zionists entered Egypt every month, defiling its land. The Egyptian police were forced to protect them, while they were getting drunk and picking fights. .
There was a great scandal, when [alleged Israeli spy] Misrati and some Jews entered Egypt, in order to commit all kinds of crimes here: counterfeit dollars, taking photographs of military bases, girls with AIDS seducing young Egyptians in order to infect them, and the vilest act of all – for the price of one Egyptian pound Misrati and his gang would seduce young Egyptian boys from Cairo, Alexandria and Upper Egypt. They took young children who did not know any better and sodomized them. .
Sultan has previously called for Muslims to murder every Israeli who sets foot in Egypt. And that Jews use Gentile blood for matzoh. On his website I saw this nice little article about the "divine battle between the believers and the Jews," where we can read that "the entire universe hates Jews." And this guy founded an Islamic center in Columbus, Ohio - which is considered a tax-deductible charitable organization. 
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| Chaos in Sinai; Islamists and police battle. Tourism minister says "come over!" Posted: 08 Aug 2012 07:55 AM PDT From YNet: Egyptian military troops and jets killed 20 terrorists in the Sinai region bordering Israel on Wednesday, striking back after armed men attacked several security checkpoints, an army commander in Sinai told Reuters.
"We have succeeded in entering al-Toumah village, killed 20 terrorists and destroyed three armored cars belonging to terrorists. Operations are still ongoing," he told Reuters.
Security officials say it is the first time that the army has fired missiles in Sinai since Egypt's 1973 war with Israel, which was an attempt to recapture the Sinai Peninsula.
The military offensive follows attacks on Sunday that killed 16 border guards and which the government blamed partly on Islamist militants. The commander said the army had received information that many militants were in al-Toumah village.
Officials say six people were wounded in the attacks - among them a military officer, two soldiers, two policemen and a civilian whose condition is critical.
Security officials said the military also carried out separate attacks just outside Sheikh Zuwayed.
Witnesses in Sheikh Zuwayed, about 10 km (six miles) from Gaza, said they saw two military jets and heard sounds of explosions. Other witnesses in a nearby area said they saw three cars hit.
Egyptian media are reporting that the terrorists responded to the attack by firing anti-aircraft missiles at one of the apache helicopters, which eventually left the scene having escaped several downing attempts.
Meanwhile, eye witnesses told The Guardian and Arabic-language Sky News that several fighter jets are taking part in the assault. Other reports said that the attack involves four fighter jets, 30 armored vehicles and dozens of Egyptian troops
The strikes follow clashes between armed men and security forces at several security checkpoints in the Sinai region.
Armed men opened fire on several checkpoints in Arish and in the nearby town of Rafah on the border with Israel, according to a Reuters reporter and state media.
An army officer, a police official and an officer were injured in the clashes. The Egyptian Interior Ministry announced that the army traced the gunmen's hiding places with the help of Sinai residents. And Egypt is encouraging you to visit! Egypt's newly-appointed Minister of Tourism Hisham Zazou has denied that there has been any negative impact on tourism following the recent attack on the Egyptian-Gaza border by unknown assailants which left 16 Egyptian border guards dead and seven injured.
Zazou confirmed to Ahram Online that tourism agencies have not yet cancelled reservations, saying that he called them in person to make sure.
He stressed that tourists should feel secure again in the country, adding that this is supposed to be one of the president's priorities.
Elhamy El-Zayat, the head of the Egypt Tourism Federation, warns of another shock to the sector in the country, particularly as the Sinai attack was preceded by two bloody clashes in Giza and Cairo.
El-Zayat said that the total loss to the tourism sector in 2011 is estimated to be LE5 billion ($833.3 million), and one third of the workers in this field were laid off.
The tourism industry in Egypt employs around four million people. By the way... Egyptian authorities on Tuesday detained a suspected Palestinian arms dealer in the Sinai peninsula town of el-Arish shortly after arrival, officials said.
The man, identified only as "A.A." was detained along with his wife and son. They were waiting to face legal measures at the el-Arish police station, officials in Gaza told Ma'an. 
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| Hezbollah smuggling explosives into Israel Posted: 08 Aug 2012 06:31 AM PDT From JPost: A series of Hezbollah terror attacks inside Israel were foiled recently by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) after a group of Israeli-Arabs helped smuggle 20 kilograms of high-grade explosives into Israel.
On Wednesday, eight residents of Nazareth and the town of Ghajar - half of which is in Israel and the other half in Lebanon - were charged in the Nazareth District Court with assisting in the infiltration of the explosives.
The 20 kg of C-4 explosives - each kilogram was wrapped separately and could have been used to assemble a separate bomb - were smuggled into Israel in a single bag by a number of residents of Ghajar on June 5.
The bag was transferred a few days later to a resident of Nazareth, Abed Zoabi - another known drug dealer - who hid the bag in his backyard where it was captured by the Israel Police in mid July.
"The explosives could have been used against any type of target inside Israel," a senior Shin Bet official said on Wednesday. "This is just the tip of the iceberg of Hezbollah's efforts against Israel...the attempted attack here and the recent attack in Bulgaria are all carried out by the same organization."
The Shin Bet official said that such an operation - to infiltrate explosives into Israel from Lebanon - would have needed approval from the top Hezbollah echelon, including likely from the organization's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
The Shin Bet said that there was concrete intelligence linking Nimer to Hezbollah and specific operatives in the organization.
Zoabi and Nimer spoke by cellphone after two of Zoabi's friends helped smuggle Israeli SIM cards to Jordan where they were then transferred to Lebanon. Do you think that the EU would consider this "tangible evidence" that Hezbollah is a terrorist group? (h/t Yoel) 
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| Prominent Muslim leader attacked at "Tolerance in Islam" conference Posted: 08 Aug 2012 04:25 AM PDT From Tunisia Live: Yesterday, Abdelfatah Mourou, a prominent Tunisian Islamist figure, was hospitalized after he was attacked by an attendee of a conference entitled, Tolerance in Islam, which he was heading in Kairouan.
The assailant struck Mourou in the head with what appeared to be a water glass following a dispute. Mourou passed out and was taken to the hospital, where he was given five stitches in the forehead.
...In response to the attack, Morou said, "I am fine now, the damage is moral… We are here to speak about tolerance, but those people are ignorant of true Islam. I don't know what his [the attacker's] political orientation is, and regardless, this is not part of Islam." You can see the tolerance in action in the last seconds of this video: (h/t Jan) 
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| Israel-haters target Sacramento Posted: 08 Aug 2012 02:47 AM PDT Sacramento, California is considering a sister city program with Ashkelon, Israel. So, naturally, the haters are inundating the city and its officials with emails claiming that Ashkelon is a uniquely evil city that somehow discriminates against "Palestinian-Sacramentans." You can read their ridiculous (and mostly made-up) arguments here. As a synagogue in the area puts it: A Sister City is a cooperative agreement between towns, cities, and even counties in geographically and politically distinct areas to promote cultural and commercial ties. The purpose of this program is to promote partnership, education and understanding.
Sacramento has been involved in this effort for some time and our city has developed Sister City relations with Manila/Pasay City, Matsuyama, Jinan, Hamilton, Liestal, Chisinau, Yongsan-gu,San Juan de Orient, and Bethlehem.
The Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region has been working on a proposal for Sacramento to form an official Sister City partnership with Ashkelon, Israel.
With commitment from Council Members Steve Cohn and Jay Schenirer, the recent process has been positive and productive, and the Federation will make a presentation to the City Council on August 14th at 6pm to make this project official. The presentation will reinforce the purpose of the Sister City program, which is to promote partnership, education and understanding.
Unfortunately, as often happens with matters related to Israel, those who support the perspective of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) have been circulating troubling letters. Visit here for an example.
We recall the struggle against BDS last year when some BDS proponents unsuccessfully attempted to get themselves elected to the Board of the Sacramento Natural Food Co-Op. The goal of BDS is to isolate and de-legitimize Israel.
The Palestinian American Congress (PAC) and local BDS groups plan to have a significant delegation at the City Council meeting on Aug 14th to negate inviting Ashkelon, Israel as a Sacramento Sister City. We hope to have a strong presence from the Jewish Community. While the intention is to not engage in issues of politics, we must be prepared to have a strong show of support from our leadership and general community.
If you are able to attend the City Council meeting on August 14, at 6pm, please email Melissa Chapman, mchapman@jewishsac.org. This is an important moment for Israel and Sacramento's Jewish Community. It should be noted that in 2009, Sacramento chose Bethlehem as a sister city - a city where Jews cannot buy land and where Israelis cannot visit, period; a city that is allowing Muslims to intimidate Christians into fleeing. And at that time, the City Council adopted a resolution to establish a sister-city relationship with an Israeli city in the future. The haters aren't quite interested in bringing up that little fact. Anyway, the haters are organizing email campaigns towards Sacramento officials, so if you want, you can email and call them too: Mayor Kevin Johnson email c/o Council Operations Manager, Lisa Serna-Mayorga, serna@cityofsacramento.org Council Members: - Vice-Mayor Angelique Ashby, 916-808-7001, aashby@cityofsacramento.org - Sandy Sheedy, 916-808-7002, ssheedy@cityofsacramento.org - Steve Cohn, 916-808-7003, scohn@cityofsacramento.org - Robert Fong, 916-808-7004, rkfong@cityofsacramento.org - Jay Schenirer, 916-808-7005, jschenirer@cityofsacramento.org - Kevin McCarty,916-808-7006, KMcCarty@cityofsacramento.org - Darrell Fong, 916-808-7007, dfong@cityofsacramento.org - Bonnie J. Pannell, 916-808-7008, bpannell@cityofsacramento.org And if you live in the area, you may want to attend the City Council meeting on August 14. More details here. 
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