Articles

Facebookers Call for Bob Dylan to Boycott Zionist Concert
June 15, 2011
Campaigns
NOVANEWS   Human Rights  Blowin’ in the Wind While Bob Dylan Plays on in Tel-Aviv “The only person you have to ...Read more
Guardian series of videos by Palestinians in East Jerusalem
June 15, 2011
Palestine Affairs
If, like me, you are disgusted by the minstrelry of Tom MacMaster pretending he was a queer Syrian woman here’s a ...Read more
A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter
June 15, 2011
Middle East
What privatised war does to ethics; render them irrelevant Peace activists are clearly terrorists We buy oil from Saudi regime ...Read more
Can you Help With This?
June 15, 2011
Middle East
NOVANEWS Dear Dorothy: I wanted to write you about the project that I am working on with my friend, Pam ...Read more
Mondoweiss Online Newsletter
June 15, 2011
Middle East
NOVANEWS   Newt Gingrich lauds ‘Jerusalem Day’ extremists Some thoughts on the fake gay blogger from Damascus…. ‘Washington Times’ yanks ...Read more
Iran accuses West of meddling in Syria
June 15, 2011
Syria
NOVANEWS Foreign Ministry says US, Zionist provoking terror groups in Syria to carry out attacks, sabotage operations. ‘Zionist regime and ...Read more
Obama slammed for soft approach to Syria violence
June 15, 2011
Syria
NOVANEWS   US president’s critics say he’s not doing enough to stop brutal crackdown in Syria; White House blames lack ...Read more
Lebanese PM: New government to liberate land under occupation of ‘Zionist enemy’
June 15, 2011
Middle East
NOVANEWS   Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati announces long-delayed new government dominated by allies of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is likely ...Read more
Suspected Zionist spy arrested in Egypt was traveling to Libya
June 15, 2011
Egypt
NOVANEWS   Egyptian prosecution is claiming that American-Zionist Ilan Grapel met with several Europeans in southern Egypt before traveling to ...Read more
Zionist arrested for spying in Egypt entered country with forged permit
June 15, 2011
Egypt
NOVANEWS   Ilan Grapel, an American-Zionist who entered Egypt using his American passport, has met with American consular officer in ...Read more
Nazi Lieberman: EU peace efforts in Mideast are ‘naive’
June 15, 2011
ZIO-NAZI
NOVANEWS Zio-Nazi Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responds to the new EU plan to restart IsraHelli-Palestinian negotiations, telling Army Radio the ...Read more
Clinton presses Africa to sever ties with Gadhafi
June 15, 2011
Libya
NOVANEWS   AP   ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed some of the world’s ...Read more

Facebookers Call for Bob Dylan to Boycott Zionist Concert

NOVANEWS

 

Human Rights



Blowin’ in the Wind While Bob Dylan Plays on in Tel-Aviv

“The only person you have to think twice about lying to is either yourself or to God.”-Bob Dylan

by Eileen Fleming

Tickets are currently unavailable online for Bob Dylan’s June 20th concert at Ramat Gan Stadium but may still be available at the box office in Tel Aviv, Israel.

For months numerous Facebook groups have been calling for Bob Dylan to stand with the Palestinian call for BDS: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions on Israel until Israel abides by international law and ends its brutal occupation of the indigenous Palestinian people and then they will live like a good neighbor in Arab territory.

There’s a battle outside ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

As the occupation of Palestine is not on Bob’s radar screen, I wonder if Bob has even heard of Mordechai Vanunu, who today walks the streets of Tel Aviv as he waits for Israel to allow him the right to leave the state.

Vanunu spent 18 years in jail-most all in solitary-for telling the truth and providing the photographic proof of Israel’s WMD program in 1986. When he was released on 21 April 2004, he moved to east Jerusalem for six years and in 2010, endured another 78 days in solitary punishment for defying Israel’s orders and speaking to foreign media in 2004.

In 2004 it was also reported:

“One in three Israelis considers Vanunu, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, a traitor and wants him behind bars for the rest of his life. Jewish extremists have vowed openly to kill him. Israeli Justice Minister Tommy Lapid said that the government would not provide security for Vanunu. Before he was released, stories in the media alleged that he was a broken man who wanted to be left alone. But as soon as he emerged out of jail, Vanunu reiterated his position on issues relating to nuclear weapons and the state of Israel in front of the international media. Vanunu is out on bail for a year and could be rearrested if he breaks the severe restrictions attached to his release.

“At the time of his release he was banned from talking to the media, mixing with foreigners and leaving the country for at least one year. Later the government relented and allowed him to speak to foreigners and the media, but not about his work at the Dimona nuclear plant. Israel claims he still holds some of its nuclear secrets. Vanunu, however, said that he had ‘no more secrets’ to reveal.” [1]

Vanunu quit listening to Dylan at 22 and began listening to only classical and mostly opera, as he wrote, “FROM MONTEVERDI TO WAGNER”.

When I last saw Vanunu in east Jerusalem in June 2009, he told me:

“Opera inspires me, it gives me strength. When I was twenty-two I stopped listening to pop; The Beatles, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan. I like challenges and began listening to opera. It builds skyscrapers in my mind. Opera is nutrition for the brain. Opera enlarges and develops the brain. Opera speaks to my brain. Every morning I am in my room until eleven listening to opera. I find ways to enjoy myself as my way of resistance. I transform anger into positive energy.”

Vanunu’s righteous anger is rooted in being convicted of espionage and treason but all he did was blow the whistle on Israel’s WMD Program.

“Vanunu told the world that Israel had developed between one hundred and two hundred atomic bombs [in 1986!] and had gone on to develop neutron bombs and thermonuclear weapons. Enough to destroy the entire Middle East and nobody has done anything about it since.”-Peter Hounam, 2003 for the BBC.

Vanunu has also blown the doors off Israel’s new latest racist law, which targets Palestinian dissidents convicted of treason and espionage:

I wonder if Bob knows that as Vanunu told me, he was “born in Marrakech, Morocco on October 13, 1954. I was the second oldest of eleven; the first seven of us migrated from Morocco in 1963 after the Zionists came and convinced the neighborhood that Israel was the Promised Land. Instead of the land of milk and honey, we were banished to the desert of Beersheba.” [2]

Beersheba is one of over 500 ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages that Israel has literally wiped off the map:

In 2005, Vanunu recalled when he was nine and his life all changed:

“Outside, there was only desert, but I walked a few hours everyday so I could be in the Old City. I started exploring around a Mexican-looking town, never talking with anyone, but always watching everyone. Three weeks later, my mother returned, and then my uncle, Joseph, arrived and took us up north to see some more newly arrived family. We stayed for two months, and then moved into a new apartment in Beersheba. I went to the fifth grade and met a few friends, but they were strange people. They were Romanians and a lot of Middle Easterners, who used bad language and seemed cheap to me. Even the school supplies were inferior to those I had had in Morocco. Even the ice cream was not ice cream; it was just ice, and there was no Pepsi.

“I didn’t like it at all, and wondered why I had to be there. There were only Jewish people around; I never saw an Arab or Palestinian then, and the old mosque was uninhabited. My mother had babies every two years. I preferred to be alone, but I was never lonely. Even when I walked with my father on Saturday to pray, I didn’t talk, but I wondered about God and truth. My father became even more orthodox as I turned away. I couldn’t accept all the teachings and decided I would not accept any of them. At fourteen years old, I began to doubt, and by sixteen, I left Judaism for good. I didn’t know if God even existed, and I didn’t even care. I decided I would decide for myself what is good and what is bad; I didn’t need anyone telling me the rules. For me, it was about doing to others what I wanted them to do to me; I didn’t need any other rule. I was sent to Yeshiva, the Jewish boarding school in the Old City. I experienced a great disconnect from God. I didn’t talk to anyone about any of it. I kept everything within and continued to wonder about finding my way, my direction, and the purpose of my life. I have always searched for answers.

“I kept my mouth shut about not following the faith and excelled in secular studies. With everything else, I just went through the motions–in the eleventh grade, two friends and I were listening to the radio. It is a big sin and crime to use electricity on the Sabbath. The rabbi caught us and called my father to come get me, and when we had almost reached our house, I smelled that he was going to beat me, so I ran the five meters back to school without looking back. The next day, the rabbi sent me for an intensive week of Jewish studies. I was angry for the entire week. After that, I returned back to my boarding room. My two friends and I had become outcasts; we were forever ignored by the other students. The isolation became very comfortable, and I began walking in the desert alone every night without any fear.

“I would just walk around and imagine that I would find my way, and have some success.” [IBID]

Yes and how many more weeks, months, years before Israel allows Vanunu that right and opportunity?

Yes, n how many years can some people exist Before they’re allowed to be free?

Yes, n how many times can a man turn his head, Pretending he just doesn’t see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind, The answer is blowin in the wind…

For the last few days I have been listening again to Bob Dylan’s 2006 release “Modern Times” and this line has become an ear-worm:

“If it keeps on raining, the levee’s gonna break, If it keeps on raining, the levee’s gonna break, some people are still sleeping, some people ARE WIDE AWAKE.”

Everything always leads me back to John Lennon and I wonder if this is what he might sing to his friend Dylan on the occasion of his playing Tel Aviv vis-a-vis ignoring the Palestinian plea for BDS:

US Made White Phosphorous Dropped on Gaza’s Population by US Made Israeli Planes

I’m sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

I’ve had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

I’m sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mama’s little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now

I’ve had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth

Ah, I’m sick and tired of hearing things
from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

I’ve had enough of reading things
by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now.

I IMAGINE Bob could do as much JUSTICE for Vanunu as he did for Hurricane-if he will only remember the line has been written ““The only person you have to think twice about lying to is either yourself or to God.”

Guardian series of videos by Palestinians in East Jerusalem

If, like me, you are disgusted by the minstrelry of Tom MacMaster pretending he was a queer Syrian woman here’s a good antidote. The Guardian has published a series of videos made by Palestinians and Israelis in  occupied East Jerusalem who were given cameras by the Israeli human rights group B’tselemand documented their lives.

A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter


What privatised war does to ethics; render them irrelevant

Posted: 14 Jun 2011

Evidence for the prosecution:

In December 2008, South Asian workers, two thousand miles or more from their homes, staged a protest on the outskirts of Baghdad. The reason: Up to 1,000 of them had been confined in a windowless warehouse and other dismal living quarters without money or work for as long as three months.
In a typical comment made by the laborers to news organizations at the time, Davidson Peters, a 42-year-old Sri Lankan man, told a McClatchy Newspapers reporter that “They promised us the moon and stars…While we are here, wives have left their husbands and children have been shut out of their schools” because money for their families back home had dried up.
The men came to Iraq lured by the promise of employment by Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor performing work for Houston-based KBR, Inc. under the Army’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) III contract.
Now, a cache of internal corporate and government documents obtained by POGO offer insight into this episode of alleged war zone human trafficking by companies working for the U.S.—and suggest that hardly anyone has been held accountable for what may be violations of U.S. law.
The subcontractor, Najlaa, appears to have suffered no repercussions for its role in luring hundreds of South Asian workers to Iraq with promises of lucrative jobs only to turn around and warehouse at least 1,000 of them in dismal living conditions without work—and pay—for several months. In fact, Najlaa continues to win government contracts.
Despite strongly worded “zero tolerance” policies against human trafficking, the U.S. has directly awarded contracts to Najlaa after the December 2008 protests, including one contract that lasts through 2012.

Peace activists are clearly terrorists

Posted: 14 Jun 2011

Barack Obama’s America:

FBI agents took box after box of address books, family calendars, artwork and personal letters in their 10-hour raid in September of the century-old house shared by Stephanie Weiner and her husband.
The agents seemed keenly interested in Weiner’s home-based business, the Revolutionary Lemonade Stand, which sells silkscreened baby outfits and other clothes with socialist slogans, phrases like “Help Wanted: Revolutionaries.”
The search was part of a mysterious, ongoing nationwide terrorism investigation with an unusual target: prominent peace activists and politically active labor organizers.
The probe — involving subpoenas to 23 people and raids of seven homes last fall — has triggered a high-powered protest against the Department of Justice and, in the process, could create some political discomfort for President Obama with his union supporters as he gears up for his reelection campaign.
The apparent targets are concentrated in the Midwest, including Chicagoans who crossed paths with Obama when he was a young state senator and some who have been active in labor unions that supported his political rise.
Investigators, according to search warrants, documents and interviews, are examining possible “material support” for Colombian and Palestinian groups designated by the U.S. government as terrorists.
The apparent targets, all vocal and visible critics of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and South America, deny any ties to terrorism. They say the government, using its post-9/11 focus on terrorism as a pretext, is targeting them for their political views.

We buy oil from Saudi regime and they hate women

Posted: 13 Jun 2011

Our addiction to the black gold has made us morally complicit in horrific discrimination. Farzaneh Milani writes in the New York Times:

The Arab Spring is inching its way into Saudi Arabia — in the cars of fully veiled drivers.
On the surface, when a group of Saudi women used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to organize a mass mobile protest defying the kingdom’s ban on women driving, it may have seemed less dramatic than demonstrators facing bullets and batons while demanding regime change in nearby countries. But underneath, the same core principles — self-determination and freedom of movement — have motivated both groups. The Saudi regime understands the gravity of the situation, and it is moving decisively to contain it by stopping the protest scheduled for June 17.
The driving ban stems from universal anxiety over women’s unrestrained mobility. In Saudi Arabia that anxiety is acute: the streets — and the right to enter and leave them at will — belong to men. A woman who trespasses is either regarded as a sinful “street-walker” or expected to cover herself in her abaya, a portable house. Should she need to get around town, she can do so in a taxi, with a chauffeur (there are 750,000 of them) or with a man related to her by marriage or blood behind the wheel.
Although the Islamic Republic of Iran could not implement similarly draconian driving laws after the 1979 revolution, given that women had driven cars there for decades, the theocratic regime did denounce women riding bikes or motorcycles as un-Islamic and sexually provocative. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, proclaimed in 1999 that “women must avoid anything that attracts strangers, so riding bicycles or motorcycles by women in public places involves corruption and is forbidden.”
The Saudi regime, like the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the military junta in Sudan and the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, ordains the exclusion of women from the public sphere. It expects women to remain in their “proper place.”
Indeed, the rulers in Saudi Arabia are the most gender-segregated in the world today. In official ceremonies, and in countless photographs, posters and billboards, the royal family seems to be composed solely of men.

How Canberra imprisons children with rapists

Posted: 13 Jun 2011

Welcome to Australia, human rights abuser:

Three boys snatched from an impoverished Indonesian village by people smugglers have been held for months in an Australian jail with paedophiles, rapists and murderers.
Federal police have ignored Immigration Department assessments and extracts of birth certificates showing the boys are under 18, contravening federal government policy to return home children apprehended on asylum seeker boats.
Instead, the boys aged 15 and 16 face five years’ jail in a high-security adult prison under mandatory sentencing laws.

Because that’s all many Jews have

Posted: 13 Jun 2011

From the new book by American Jew Jack Ross:

The writer Irving Howe, who came to bitterly regret his alliance with the neoconservatives in his final years, gave a speech in 1989 foreseeing that “because the religion of most American Jews is not serious, it has become almost totally defined by Israel, and a major crisis will erupt as Israel’s actions become less and less defensible.”

Can you Help With This?

NOVANEWS

Dear Dorothy:

I wanted to write you about the project that I am working on with my friend, Pam Bailey. Both of us have spent a lot of time in Palestine working with International Solidarity Movement – I have spent most of my time in the West Bank and Pam, in Gaza.

Both of us have been deeply troubled about how Palestinians are perceived in the US and the myth propagated by the media and persons of political and social stature (Nicholas Kristoff, Tom Friedman, and Bono come to mind as examples) that there is an absence of non-violent resistance in Palestine. Knowing that the Palestinians have a rich history of non-violent resistance that dates back to the Ottoman Empire, as well as knowing many Palestinians who resist the Israeli occupation on a daily basis in a myriad of ways, we decided we needed to do something to give voice to those voiceless non-violent resisters and at the same time dispel the pernicious myth that the Palestinians know nothing of non-violent resistance. Additionally, we wanted to provide a home (a website) for visual testimonies of these individuals to provide an oral history of Palestinian non-violent resistance.

Pam was in Gaza for three months earlier this year to film Gazan voices of non-violent resistance. She returned with 15 clips representing 2 bloggers; Darg, a rap group; a break dance group; several artists; twins who are filmmakers and artists; a businessman; an engineer; and a leader of the non-violent marches. We chose to cover such a variety of people because we think it is important to highlight not just the political activists resisting through non-violent action but also those who resist through carrying on with their lives, conducting business and creating art – thus rejecting the dichotomous roles of aggressors and victims that the international community has thrust upon them.  We’ve presented some of these short films to several groups and the response has been incredibly supportive and encouraging. Until our website is up and running, you can view some of the video clips, including the introductory film at http://vimeo.com/channels/palestiniangandhiproject.

In order to continue this project, we are planning to go to the refugee camps of Lebanon and Jordan, Syria, the West Bank, and to Israel to take testimonies from Palestinian Israelis. However, to do that we need to raise funds to cover travel, videographers, translators, etc. We have set up our fundraising appeal for $18,000 on Kickstarter.com, a fundraising site. You can read about our project, view an introductory film and donate at: http://kck.st/gKYBIM

We’ve raised about 54% of our goal, but we have only until June 24 to raise the remainder – the rules established by Kickstarter are such that if we do not entirely meet our goal by the end of the allotted time, all of the donated money reverts back to the donors. While we’ve had one donor offer to match contributions from yesterday to June 24, up to the point of meeting our $18,000 goal, we hope to lighten that individual’s burden by doing our best to reach as many interested donors before the deadline as we can. So you can see the urgency of raising the remaining funds.

We believe in our project and are working hard to raise the funds. I wanted to write you about our project and share what we’re doing and trying to accomplish, as well as to ask you if you would be willing to endorse the project, pass the word about it to interested others, and make a donation. Individuals can go to

For individuals who would prefer to make a tax deductible donation, checks can be made out to Nonviolence International, with Palestinian Gandhi Project written on the memo line, and send the ck to me.

I’m attaching a flyer about the project. I am also available to speak with you or anyone else interested in the project if there are questions.  I can be reached at keren.palestine@gmail.com or on my cell phone – 240-476-4182.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for any support you might extend.

Wishing you all the best,

Keren Batiyov

2814 S Wakefield Street

Apt C

Arlington,

VA 22206

“I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.” ~Malcolm X

“My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I’m not selling bread, I’m selling yeast.” ~ Unamuno, wall graffiti from Paris, May 1968

“If we throw strategy to the wind and end our hope for victory, then we are free to be faithful. ~Marc Ellis

“F— hope! It’s not about hope . . . . You don’t do what you do because you hope things will get better. It’s about getting up every morning and asking yourself what’s the right thing to do and doing it.” ~Allen Ginsburg

“I am not only a pacifist, but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.” ~Albert Einstein

“I rebel, therefore we exist.” ~ Albert Camus

“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue”. ~ Oscar Wilde

“Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” ~ Thomas Paine

“To think deeply in our culture is to grow angry and to anger others; and if you cannot tolerate this anger, you are wasting the time you spend thinking deeply. One of the rewards to deep thought is the hot glow of anger at discovering a wrong, but if anger is taboo, thought will starve to death. ” ~ Jules Henry

“How many people can you love before it’s too much? she said & I said I didn’t think there was any real limit as long as you didn’t care if they loved you back.” ~ “Real Limit” from StoryPeople

“Walk gently, breathe peacefully, laugh hysterically.” ~ Nelson Mandela

“A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which you realize that you are trapped in a world almost entirely devoid of reason. Laughter is how you release the anxiety you feel at this knowledge.” ~ Dave Barry

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
~Napoleon Hil

Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

 

Newt Gingrich lauds ‘Jerusalem Day’ extremists

Jun 13, 2011

Alex Kane

Newt Gingrich’s speech yesterday to the Republican Jewish Coalition was standard right-wing boilerplate intended to appeal to Republican Jewish donors and hardcore Christian Zionists. But notably and disturbingly, Gingrich lauded the throngs of Jews who danced through the streets of occupied Jerusalem earlier this month to celebrate what they call the “reunification” of Jerusalem.

Here’s Gingrich (my emphasis added):

It was on this Feast of Shavuot 44 years ago, in June of 1967, a mere six days after the Old City of Jerusalem had been reunited in the Six Day War, that for the first time in almost 2,000 years, Jewish people were once again able to visit the Western Wall and walk the streets of the Old City as citizens of a sovereign Jewish nation.

Hours before dawn that day, thousands upon thousands of Jews gathered at the Zion gate to await entry into the Old City.

At 4 a.m., the crowds were finally allowed to stream into east Jerusalem — the first time Jews had been allowed to carry out a pilgrimage to the Western Wall, as members of a Jewish nation, celebrating a Jewish festival — since the pilgrimages to the Temple 2,000 years earlier.

As the sun rose over the Old City, a total of more than 200,000 Jews made their way through the city streets to a site that today remains the heart of a people, a religion, and a nation.

Each year the Festival is celebrated in a similar fashion, by a pedestrian pilgrimage through the streets of Jerusalem to the Western Wall.

It is a pilgrimage of which generations of Jews could only dream, and signifies the unbroken connection between the identity of the Jewish people and the land of Israel that has existed not for mere decades, but for thousands of years.

During this last week, today’s generation of Jews made a similar pilgrimage through the streets of Jerusalem, knowing that the freedom that allows them to visit their holiest sites is more endangered at this moment in history than at any time since that Shavuot morning four and a half decades ago.

Leave aside the whitewashed talk about the 1967 war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were made refugees. The most significant aspect of Gingrich’s speech is his wink and a nod to the Jerusalem Day revelers who marched through occupied Palestinian parts of the city and chanted, “Butcher the Arabs” while Israeli police protected them in early June. See these video above and here to see what the “pilgrimage through the streets of Jerusalem” was really about. Gingrich is lauding state-supported violence and racism directed against the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem.

The political reasons for the tacit support of the ethnic cleansing project in Jerusalem is clear. Right-wing Jewish donors–including Democratic Party donors–and Christian Zionists insist that Israel hold on to Jerusalem as the state’s eternal capital. The speech also allows Gingrich to shore up his Arabophobic and Islamophobic credentials as the Republican Party primary heats up. But let’s be clear: Gingrich is playing with real fire when he lauds those Israelis who openly incite for the killings of Arabs.

Alex Kane, a freelance journalist based in New York City, blogs on Israel/Palestine and Islamophobia at alexbkane.wordpress.com, where this post originally appeared. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.

Some thoughts on the fake gay blogger from Damascus….

Jun 13, 2011

Seham

Amina Araf was never as interesting to Arabs on the internet as she was to Westerners who are always looking for Arabs that they can identify with.  For Americans it’s easier to see some humanity in a lesbian blogger who writes about making out in airports in the Middle East with her partner than with an Arab woman who might be covered head to toe.  It’s a part of our sensationalist culture, we want to support people who we perceive as pushing the envelope and a woman who defies norms and traditions and does things out in the open that no straight couple would ever dream of doing is the right kind of edginess that Americans are willing to stand behind, even if it’s not exactly the type of attention that gays in the Middle East are looking for.

They want to be accepted as part of the fabric of the Arab world, they aren’t trying to turn their societies into something they’re not.  It was dangerous for the LGBT movement in the Arab world for this man to create a storyline about gay Arabs that included erotica and risky behavior such as making out in public, anyone paying attention to that would think that those are the intentions of Arab gays.  Though gay rights is an issue in the Middle East, it certainly is not the most important one and it certainly doesn’t trump any of the other issues in Syria or anywhere else right now.
Last month I posted a video about an Arab lawyer who was slapped across the face by an Israeli police officer simply because she dared address him and ask a question.  At the time I said that no feminist Jewish women or Israeli Jewish women’s rights organizations would speak up for that woman.  I said that nobody would demand his immediate resignation and that he would not be punished in any way for his violence against women, because, apparently Israeli society isn’t bothered much by violence against Arab women if it’s done by Jews. No one in the MSM picked this story up, no one in the MSM wants to talk about women’s rights unless it fits into their preconceived notions of what the Middle East is like.  It is somehow only OK to discuss the plight of Arab women if it is Arab men that are doing the subjugation–and if there is no immediate story to be told, as with Amina Araf, then it is invented.

How many real Arab women have been thrown in jail by the Israelis for being political activists and fighting for the cause of the masses and not just one small group within the population?  When did they ever get the attention that the West was so willing to pour on a woman just because they could identify with her because of her sexuality?  Can anyone name a single Palestinian woman who is rotting away in an Israeli prison?  Anyone?

Here’s more by the Angry Arab on the stupidity and damage of what Tom Macmaster has done:

When the White Man poses as the Native “girl”, As’ad Abukhalil

The admission by Tom Macmaster that he was the man behind the blog “a gay girl in Damascus” should not end the conversation.  I thank may friends and readers who kept on investigating this case until it was cracked, but the primary credit goes to Electronic Intifada.  This story is bothersome on so many levels, but i was even more upset when I read Macmaster’s remarks to the Guardian in which he criticizes Western media coverage of the Middle East and even took a shot at Orientalism.  Macmaster should know that he is worse than a classical Orientalist (and clearly does not possess the knowledge, erudition, and rigor of classical Orientalist).

This man is delusional and racist: he took it upon himself to fabricate an identity of a native “girl” (I mean, is there anything more Orientalist than the White Man of the West posing as a Damascene “girl” and writing on her own behalf?  Is there anything more racist, sexist, patronizing, and offensive?)  Macmaster does not know what he has done and he has the chutzpah of writing this:  “While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground.”  What did he mean by that?  He basically is saying–if I now pose as the racist White Man in the West for a second, and I don’t mind taking that license from somebody posing for a long time as a lesbian “girl” and even exposing and communicating with many in the gay and lesbian community in Syria and the Arab world–that while he lied and fabricated but that his lies and fabrications are true and accurate.  He really sounds delusional and is divorced from reality.

This is the White Man privilege, which permits MacMaster to lie and fabricate and to arrogantly claim that his lies and fabrications are not inaccurate.  This mentality behind the creation of this identity is the same one that was around during colonial times.  The natives can’t speak for themselves: that they have to be represented by the White Man who can best explain them to the West.  Beyond all that, Macmaster damaged the efforts of well-meaning and sincere Syrian dissidents (I am not talking about the lousy Ikhwan or Khaddam or Ma’mun Humsi or Rif`at Asad or other pro-Saudi tools): this scandal is a great help to the propaganda of the Syrian regime.  Macmaster should not only apologize to the readers of the blog: he owes a bigger apology to the people of the Middle East and to gays and lesbians in the region, and even to Middle Eastern studies. This is a smug and arrogant and delusional White Man.  I bet he hears voices in his head: probably the voices of Lord Cromer.

‘Washington Times’ yanks Weiner-married-Muslim-agenda piece

Jun 13, 2011

Philip Weiss

This just in,The Washington Times has pulled its crazy Eleana Benador piece about Anthony Weiner being “married to a Muslim agenda” because he married Huma Abedin. But the piece is still cited on the Times home page as the most-read piece at the site, even though the link goes nowhere. Thanks to Salon’s Justin Elliott, who reports that the piece is under “review.”

Shareholders to Caterpillar: ‘our product has become Israel’s weapon of choice for ethnic cleansing and potentially even war crimes’

Jun 13, 2011

Russ Greenleaf

640px IDF D9R pic001

Zionist Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer with cage armor and FN MAG 7.62mm machinegun. (Photo: MathKnight and Zachi Evenor via Wikimedia Commons)

This speech was given to the Caterpillar Corporation’s CEO, their board of directors, and top management at the annual Caterpillar shareholder’s meeting in Little Rock, Arkansas on June 8, 2011.

The speech was given on behalf of Jewish Voice for Peace, which had purchased shares of Caterpillar stock so we could offer a shareholder proposal and make a speech in support of it.

Our shareholder proposal urged Caterpillar to review its policies related to human rights and to conform more fully with international human rights standards. Our proposal was endorsed many shareholders, including the Catholic Sisters of Loretto, and a coalition of other religious organizations. The proposal can be read at this link (PDF, look for Proposal 11):

Although our proposal did not pass, it received 21% of the votes, which is considered a high number for a proposal that was opposed by the company management.

Caterpillar shareholder speech in favor of Proposal 11

By Russ Greenleaf, on behalf of Jewish Voice for Peace

June 8, 2011

Little Rock, Arkansas

Hi. I’m Russ Greenleaf, a shareholder with Jewish Voice for Peace and a coalition of religious organizations, speaking in favor of Proposal 11.

I am Jewish. I am not anti-Israel. I have friends in Israel, and I want what’s best for them.

Caterpillar’s sale of D9 bulldozers to Israel is not good for Israel or for Caterpillar’s reputation. Israel’s routine use of those D9’s to destroy the homes of innocent Palestinian’s is making Israel a pariah in the world and destroying any chance for peace.

Amnesty International says, and I quote:

House demolitions usually are carried out without warning, often at night, and the occupants are given little or no time to leave their homes. Often the only warning they get is the rumbling of the Israeli army’s Caterpillar bulldozers. They barely have time to flee as the bulldozers tear down the walls of their homes.

Sometimes they are buried alive under the rubble.

An Israeli newspaper reported that an Israeli army D9 dozer operator said, and I quote:

I had no mercy for anybody. I would erase anyone with the D9. They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I came, but I gave no one a chance. I didn’t wait. I didn’t give one blow and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible.

Ladies and gentlemen these are very serious human rights violations, and they happen again and again — with our knowledge.

The Israeli army says, quote: “The D9 is a strategic weapon here.”

Fellow shareholders, our product has become Israel’s weapon of choice for ethnic cleansing and potentially even war crimes. Israel knows it, and the world knows it. Yet our management buries its head in the sand when dealing with human rights.  They say, quote:

“It is not clear what is meant by the Company’s ‘policies related to human rights.’ “

That is exactly why we need proposal 11 – a call to review Caterpillar’s policies related to human rights and to conform more fully with human rights standards.

In the video we just saw, a Caterpillar representative said, “Our brand – our name – has high expectations. I think we should exceed high expectations.”

Caterpillar makes very little money from selling these military D9’s to Israel, but the cost to Caterpillar’s reputation is enormous, and escalating. It’s time to call a halt. Passing proposal 11 is a very modest first step in that direction. It’s long overdue.

I move proposal 11. Please vote for it. Thank you.

‘NYT’ characterizes ’48 ethnic cleansing as ‘evacuation’

Jun 13, 2011

Philip Weiss

Some good history in the New York Times. Joshua Hammer first visits the village of Abu Ghosh outside Jerusalem

The Muslim town has maintained close ties to Israel’s Jews, who arrive here en masse for weekend brunch, especially in spring and summer…. Abu Ghosh sat out the 1948 war, when Arab gunmen used the surrounding hills to ambush convoys bringing supplies to besieged Jerusalem….Today, the town is one of the only surviving Muslim villages in the area.

I’ve been to Abu Ghosh, and the simple question the town raises is, What’s so demographically upsetting about Palestinians living in Israel? Of course the Times doesn’t touch that angle. Then Hammer goes on to Ein Karem.

During the war of 1948, 300 Arab guerrilla fighters from Ein Karem, with support from Iraqi, Syrian and Egyptian troops, battled Jewish soldiers and ambushed convoys on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. After the April 1948 massacre by Jewish paramilitary forces of 120 Arab civilians in the nearby village of Deir Yassin, Ein Karem was evacuated, and resettled by Israelis. The Muslims are all gone now, and as I wandered through the village, one of the few to survive the 1948 war with most of its buildings intact, I was keenly aware of Ein Karem’s controversial past and couldn’t help but notice that there was no mention — in tourist guides or signs at historic sites — of the Arab evacuations.

Wingnuts focus on Weiner’s marriage to Muslim

Jun 13, 2011

Philip Weiss

Max Blumenthal says neocon crazies are horning in on Anthony Weiner’s marriage to a Muslim, Huma Abedin. One of them is the PR maven Eleana Benador:

Writing in the Washington Times, (the last time I picked up that paper was probably when I was working on my report about the white nationalist cabal that was running its newsroom at the time), Benador portrays Weiner’s marriage to Huma Abedin as an Alinskyite union between a leftist (read: self-hating commie) Jew and a taqiyyah-practicing Muslim who are conspiring to put the United States under the control of Shariah law:

“When looking broadly at the Anthony Weiner–Huma Abedin union, we have to wonder if the coupling of a Jewish American man and a Muslim woman of her pedigree was fostered by love or by a socialist political agenda”…

Also at the Washington Times, Eric Golub, a professional nobody who says he “only dates Republican Jewish women” (unsurprisingly, he is also an Andrew Breitbart blogger), claims that Weiner hates Jewish women. Golub goes on to compare Weiner’s marriage to the Holocaust, writing that Weiner and other Jews who marry non-Jews are doing “what Hitler failed to do.”

Update: This post originally identified Abedin as Arab-American. I’m told she’s of Pakistani background, though she

speaks Arabic. Thanks to Parsa Sajid.

Why I fell so hard for ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ (and why the hoax makes me angry and conservative)

Jun 13, 2011

Philip Weiss

One of my touchstone moments for understanding the relations of the US and the Arab world was an exchange at a crowded outdoor restaurant five years ago in Aleppo, Syria. My wife and I were out to dinner with someone we’d met there and grown to like, a Tunisian woman who worked in Dubai. Very modern. And we were talking all about American policy in the region when I said to her, “Hey what’s the deal with the role of women in the Arab world?” She said in a quiet voice, “Let’s talk about this when we get back to the hotel.”

I was surprised that she felt a need to censor herself in a public place. And then on our way back to the hotel, I thought, Well there are subjects we censor ourselves about publicly in the U.S. I wouldn’t go into a restaurant in New York and launch into the Israel lobby.

Then later I thought, Well, I’m going to deal with the U.S. censorship issues– we gotta fight the powers that be!– and let the Arabs deal with their censorship issues.

And that is why I fell hook line and sinker for A Gay Girl in Damascus. I thought, here at last is the strong voice of an Arab woman openly taking on the oppressive traditions in her society. I am on her side, I celebrate her presence.

I posted from A Gay Girl a few times. I completely bought her story in February that her father had faced down thugs who had come to arrest her, and that he embraced her sexuality at the family’s front door. And when the blog said she had been arrested a week back, I said I was praying for her and urged my government to jump in.

What a fool. Today, thanks to the energies of people like Ali Abunimah, Andy Carvin of NPR, and our contributor Seham, I know that A Gay Girl was a hoax. She was the fabrication of Tom MacMaster, an American writer in Scotland. You can hear him talking on BBC about his confection, an interview in which he doesn’t show much awareness. I think he must be spinning emotionally like Anthony Weiner. Apparently he’s apologized at the Gay Girl site, which I’m allergic to visit right now. On BBC, he explained that people dismissed him when he tried to talk about the issues as an American. So he invented a name to get “real facts and opinions” discussed, the “actual issues.” The facts he provided about Islam are “true.”

I feel angry today that I was punked, and doubly angry that MacMaster played on my credulity about the Arab world. I was the perfect mark. I wanted what Gay Girl was saying to be true: I wanted to believe that an out lesbian woman could be so empowered and vocal inside Syrian society.

And maybe it’s unfair to Syria and all the gay people there, but the fact that a movement person lied to me about a key fact, who he was, in order to tell me a politically-correct story about Syria, well it makes me question the other claims he made. I recoil angrily against his lessons. I think, Why was A Gay Girl so prominent? What are the actual conditions of gay people in that traditional society? Can you be an out lesbian in Damascus and have your sexuality embraced by your family?

I recognize that it was Palestinians in the Diaspora who played an important role in unmasking Gay Girl (Seham and Abunimah) but I am afraid that in recoiling on MacMaster I am thrown back on those impressions of traditional culture that I’ve had in Syria, in Egypt, in Jordan, in Morocco, in Gaza, in Qatar. The overwhelming public presence of men, at the wheels of cars, in restaurants… the comment from an Egyptian woman in public life that it was hard to be married and have a public role in Egypt…. the fact that at New Year’s celebration in Palmyra, Syria, there were only men at the restaurant…. the fact that in Qatar I was told by a man that married men shouldn’t go out publicly with their wives, it was a dishonor… The extent of sexual harassment in Egypt (from anecdote and friends’ reports)…

Yes the blame for my punking goes on MacMaster (and me), but in my rage, I do wonder what the “actual issues” and truth are about women and gays in the Arab countries I’ve visited.

And I would note that when the 92d Street Y held a panel on the Arab spring recently with some wonderful Arab writers, Abdellah Taia and Abdelkader Benali and Rula Jebreal spoke about relishing western freedoms– yes until 9/11 caused Benali to feel afraid in Holland. But bottom line, the west (Europe and the U.S.) is better at free speech and gay rights than the Arab countries I’ve visited.

You can call me an orientalist, and you can say that occupation and ethnic cleansing and massacres and imprisonment are more important issues than gay rights, and you can say that America is still a traditional society in some places, and fine, I won’t quarrel with you. I know I’m seeing surfaces; I’m a universalist in my (gullible) heart; I can tell you that on my last visit to Egypt a covered and apparently-traditional woman I shared a car with through the Sinai on New Year’s 2010 turned out to be a free spirit, who brought me to a sybaritic party on the Red Sea, and I thought I don’t know the half of it. But again: Can an out lesbian be embraced by her family in Syria? I don’t know.

My wise friend James North likes to say that we all have conservative and radical and liberal and militant elements in our political hearts, and different circumstances call on the different aspects, and this fraud calls on the conservative in me. We’re in a global conversation, and I think the east has something to learn from the west about these freedoms.

And I have a lot to learn about the internet.

 

Iran accuses West of meddling in Syria

NOVANEWS

Foreign Ministry says US, Zionist provoking terror groups in Syria to carry out attacks, sabotage operations. ‘Zionist regime and its allies are seriously threatened,’ spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast says

Iran accused Zionist allies on Tuesday of interfering in Syria after Western countries said Tehran may be helping crush dissent there.

“Some regimes, especially America and the Zionist regime, with particular aims, are provoking terrorist groups in Syria and in the region to carry out terrorist and sabotage operations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a news conference.

Iran, has voiced support for uprisings in most of the Arab world, but not Syria with which it has what it sees as a “line of resistance” against Zionism as both support militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Mehmanparast backed the Syrian government’s assertions that the three-month-old protests are part of a conspiracy backed by foreign powers.

“The Zionist regime and its advocates are seriously threatened, that is why they are doing all they can to crush this resistance line standing against the aggression of the Zionist regime.”

Britain has said there is “credible information suggesting Iran is helping Syria with the suppression of protests there, including through the provision of expertise and equipment,” a charge Tehran denied.

Syrian rights groups say 1,300 civilians have been killed since the start of the uprising. One group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says more than 300 soldiers and police have also been killed.

‘Internal issue’

“What is happening inside Syria is an internal issue. The government and the people of Syria are politically mature enough to resolve their own issues,” Mehmanparast said.

The spokesman warned against any overt military action by the West.

“We think that the Americans in no way have the right to have any military interference in any country within the region, namely Syria. We acknowledge this as a wrong act … which can have consequences for the region,” he said.

Meanwhile, Syrian tanks pushed toward more towns and villages near the Turkish and Iraqi borders on Tuesday.

Activists say more some 10,000 Syrians have been detained in the government crackdown since the popular uprising began in mid-March. About 8,500 have fled to Turkey, where they offer a frightening picture of life at home.

Obama slammed for soft approach to Syria violence

NOVANEWS
 

US president’s critics say he’s not doing enough to stop brutal crackdown in Syria; White House blames lack of action on absence of international unity

ynet

WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama has come under attack in recent days for failing to take a tough stance on the Syrian regime’s violent crackdown on anti-government protesters, as he did in Libya.

US senators, lead by Lindsey Graham, are urging the president to put military force on the table as Damascus launches an all-out assault on protesters.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the difference in approach is connected to the international response to the two crises. Carney cited the absence of a United Nations resolution and an international coalition to enforce it as the reason why no diplomatic action has been taken to stop Syrian President Bashar Assad’s assault on civilians.

“There are different circumstances,” Carney told reporters. “We had a United Nations mandate (with Libya). We had a broad coalition that was eager to participate in a mission that was designed to prevent the immediate carnage that would have taken place in Benghazi, to protect civilians from the grave danger presented by Gaddafi’s forces, to enforce an arms embargo and to enforce a no-fly zone.”

Meanwhile, Carney noted, Obama has been calling on Assad to “cease the violence” and condemning Assad’s actions “in the strongest possible terms.”

New Mideast reality

By blaming the lack of action on international disunity, the Obama Administration is indirectly pointing the accusing finger at the members of the UN who have refused to condemn Assad’s brutal repression of protesters. The UK, France and other European nations have been pushing for a UN Security Council resolution that denounces Assad’s actions, but Russian and China have expressed opposition – a move suggesting they might veto the decision if it is put up to a vote.

The West has been joined by Israel recently in condemning Assad. “We see the Middle East changing before our eyes, and the Syrian president does not know what Syria will look like tomorrow,” IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said on Monday during an event at the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv.

“The State of Israel and the IDF will have to adapt to this new reality,” Gantz added. “As an army, we must be prepared for every challenge… We are facing a reality where our units will have to prove their abilities.”

Lebanese PM: New government to liberate land under occupation of ‘Zionist enemy’

NOVANEWS
 

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati announces long-delayed new government dominated by allies of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is likely to cause alarm among Western powers.

Reuters

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced on Monday a long-delayed new government dominated by allies of Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which is likely to cause alarm among Western powers.

Mikati was appointed to form a government after Hezbollah and its allies toppled Western-backed former premier Saad al-Hariri’s coalition in January over a dispute involving the United Nations backed tribunal investigating the assassination of statesman Rafik al-Hariri, Saad’s father.

“Let us go to work immediately according to the principles and basis that we have affirmed our commitment to several times, namely … defending Lebanon’s sovereignty and its independence and liberating land that remains under the occupation of the Zionist enemy,” Mikati said at the Baabda Presidential Palace.

Political wrangling had held up the formation of the cabinet, including disagreements over sensitive posts.

Mohammed Safadi, the former economy minister, was named finance minister and will try to improve Lebanon’s growth outlook which stands at about 2.5 percent this year, driven down by the political stalemate.

Fayez Ghusn was named defense minister and Marwan Charbel as the interior minister. Nicolas Sehnawi was given the telecommunications portfolio, a post ridden with controversy due to disagreements over privatizing the sector.

Hariri, who is supported by the West and Saudi Arabia, has refused to join Mikati’s government.

A main aim of the government will be to agree on a unified stand to face indictments by the tribunal expected to implicate members of Hezbollah in the 2005 killing of Hariri. The group denies any link to the attack.

Mikati, who says he is politically neutral, said the Lebanese government would seek to maintain positive ties with all Arab countries.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been fighting a popular revolt against his 11-year rule, telephoned Mikati to congratulate him, Lebanese media said. Syria is a strong ally of Hezbollah, the main player in the political coalition which helped bring Mikati to power in January.

“This government is committed to maintaining strong, brotherly ties which bind Lebanon to all Arab countries without exception,” Mikati said.

Suspected Zionist spy arrested in Egypt was traveling to Libya

NOVANEWS
 

Egyptian prosecution is claiming that American-Zionist Ilan Grapel met with several Europeans in southern Egypt before traveling to Cairo upon Zionist Mu-Barak’s resignation, al-Ahram reports.

Haaretz

Ilan Grapel, the Jewish American citizen detained in Egypt under suspicion of espionage for Israel, planned to get from Egypt to a rebel hub in Eastern Libya, Egyptian daily al-Ahram reported on Tuesday.

The Egyptian paper reported that the Egyptian prosecution is claiming that Grapel met with a group of people, some of whom were European, in southern Egypt before traveling to Cairo on the day of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

The report said that Grapel entered Egypt on February 11 on a direct flight from Frankfurt, Germany. He then left the country on February 15, only to return on May 10 and checking into a hotel in the center of Cairo.

The Egyptian authorities announced on Sunday that they had arrested a suspected spy for Israel. Egyptian media published Grapel’s name and identity on Monday.

A former paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces with dual American-Israeli citizenship, Grapel reportedly travelled to several parts of Egypt, and was given the task of gauging the public’s reaction to the policies of the Egyptian high military council.

Earlier reports have claimed that Grapel entered Egypt as a foreign writer for an American newspaper, meeting with a group of foreign reporters he kept in touch with throughout his stay in Egypt.

Zionist arrested for spying in Egypt entered country with forged permit

NOVANEWS
 

Ilan Grapel, an American-Zionist who entered Egypt using his American passport, has met with American consular officer in Cairo and spoken with his mother; Egyptian news agency claims Grapel in Egypt to ‘incite’ protests.

Haaretz

Ilan Grapel, the Jewish American citizen reportedly detained in Egypt under suspicion of espionage for Israel, entered Egypt using a forged permit, according to a report issued on Monday by the Egyptian online news agency “The Seventh Day”.

Grapel entered Egypt as a foreign writer for an American newspaper, meeting with a group of foreign reporters he kept in touch with throughout his stay in Egypt, the report said.

The Egyptian authorities announced on Sunday that they had arrested a suspected spy for Israel. Egyptian media published Grapel’s name and identity on Monday.

A former paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces with dual American-Israeli citizenship, Grapel reportedly travelled to several parts of Egypt, and was given the task of gauging the public’s reaction to the policies of the Egyptian high military council.

The Egyptian news report published on Monday claimed that Grapel made sure to be present in areas in which there were clashes between Christians and Muslims in an effort to incite demonstrators.

While in Egypt, Grapel planned to travel throughout the country, according to the Egyptian report, including northern Sinai and Al-Arish to follow the developments happening with the gas pipeline that has supplied much of Israel’s oil, as well as with the recent opening of the Rafah border with Gaza.

The Seventh Day has posted a few photographs of Grapel, apparently from his own personal camera, in which he is seen in IDF uniform. In the other photographs he is pictured carrying a banner in Tahrir Square, the heart of the Egyptian protest movement that toppled Hosni Mubarak, as well as snapped visiting a mosque and the pyramids.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement on Sunday reacting to Grapel’s detention, saying that the U.S. Embassy in Cairo “is providing Ilan Grapel, an arrested U.S. citizen, with the same assistance it provides to all U.S. citizens arrested overseas.”

The statement said that consular officers have already visited him and the embassy will be in contact with local Egyptian authorities to ensure that he is “being treated fairly under local law”. Grapel will be provided with information about the legal system, and will be allowed communication with family and friends in the U.S.

Grapel met with an American consular officer in Cairo on Monday to check on him and put him in touch with family members in the United States.

The Foreign Ministry said that Grapel entered Egypt using his American passport, and therefore Egyptian authorities initially contacted the American Embassy in Cairo and not the Israeli Embassy.

“An American consular officer has visited him [Grapel] and he is under the care of the American Embassy in Cairo,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday.

The U.S. State Department has said that they have been in contact with Grapel’s family, all of whom live in the United States. While the consular officer was visiting with Grapel, he called the detained former paratrooper’s mother so that she could speak with her son.

The Foreign Ministry has been attempting to obtain information from Egyptian authorities about Grapel’s arrest without success. A source at the Foreign Ministry said that after multiple attempts it was clear that Egypt is dealing only with U.S. authorities regarding Grapel’s detention.

Therefore, the ministry will not be getting directly involved in the case and will receive updates from the U.S. Embassy and the State Department.

Friends of Grapel’s believe that the American citizen is innocent, and the allegations against him do not fit with the kind of person he is. “It doesn’t fit,” a friend of Ilan’s who asked to be identified as Shmuel told Haaretz.

“Ilan was always concerned with human rights, was for the establishment of a Palestinian state and was learning about Arab culture,” Shmuel said.

“Everyone knows he was very left-wing,” he added, “him being a spy is very far-fetched.”

According to an Egyptian authorities’ statement, released to the press Sunday afternoon, Grapel was arrested in a hotel in central Cairo. It said the intelligence services have been conducting a clandestine investigation and passed their findings to the attorney general’s office.

The authorities went on to claim that Grapel had a number of assignments in Egypt, including collecting intelligence during the revolution.

The authorities claim that Grapel attended the major protests and incited demonstrators to violence, in order to provoke a confrontation with the Egyptian military “and spread chaos in the Egyptian public and harm the state’s political, economic and social interests.” They also stated that Grapel was a soldier in the Lebanon war and was wounded in battle.

The attorney’s general’s office ordered Grapel’s arrest for 15 days in order to continue investigating him. Once the investigation is complete, its details are expected to be made public.

Nazi Lieberman: EU peace efforts in Mideast are ‘naive’

NOVANEWS

Zio-Nazi Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responds to the new EU plan to restart IsraHelli-Palestinian negotiations, telling Army Radio the world should instead focus on events in the Arab world.

Haaretz

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman rejected on Tuesday the European Union’s peace initiative. The plan, revealed in Haaretz on Tuesday, aims to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority by convening a Middle East peace conference in Paris.

“This is an attempt to distort the international community’s correct set of priorities,” Lieberman told Army Radio, stressing that the current events in Iran and Syria should take precedence.

“We know a lot of initiatives, and not just from today,” Lieberman said. “There is a French initiative and a plan for a conference in Moscow, but when I speak to my colleagues I tell them, ‘you are trying to take the Palestinian story and alter the natural agenda in the Middle East.”

Lieberman mentioned the events in Syria and Yemen, saying “you can’t compare the situation in the Arab world to what is happening here… and we haven’t even mentioned the situation in Iran, Sudan and Pakistan.”

“The attempt give top priority to the Palestinian issue is naïve,” he said.

Earlier Tuesday, In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, called for the urgent convening of the Middle East Quartet. The Quartet – the U.S., EU, UN and Russia – would gather as a precursor for support for a peace plan based on the Middle East policy speech delivered by President Barack Obama at the State Department last month.

In Ashton’s letter, a copy of which has been obtained by Haaretz, she noted “dramatic developments across the Arab world” and a “positive process of transition.” In other countries, however, “regimes are holding on to power, spreading insecurity and instability across the region.
“This situation makes it even more urgent to find a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Ashton added. “Unfortunately, we have not seen any progress on that front.”

Clinton presses Africa to sever ties with Gadhafi

NOVANEWS
 


AP
 

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed some of the world’s last remaining friends of Moammar Gadhafi to abandon Libya’s strongman and join the growing international demand for him to cede power. She told African nations that their solidarity with the Libyan people could make the difference for a peaceful future.

Culminating a volcano-shortened trip to the Gulf and three African nations, Clinton told diplomats at the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia’s capital that they needed to recognize that Gadhafi forfeited his legitimacy to rule by attacking his own citizens.

It represented a difficult call for unity. Gadhafi still has many friends in Africa after providing decades of military training and patronage for groups fighting apartheid and colonialism.

“Your words and actions could make the difference in bringing this situation to a close and allowing the people of Libya to get to work rebuilding their country,” Clinton told African officials in Addis Ababa. She said the world needed African leadership to end the standoff between opposition forces and Gadhafi’s troops.

For Clinton, the emphasis on the Libyan leader provided a full circle for a one-week voyage that began in the United Arab Emirates, where she prodded NATO countries and Arab governments participating in the U.N.-mandated military mission against Gadhafi to increase the pressure on him to leave power and increase their contacts with the Transitional National Council.

After stops in Zambia and Tanzania, she was to have spent Monday night in Addis Ababa. But she was forced to leave the Ethiopian capital a day ahead of schedule when a volcano eruption in nearby Eritrea sent an ash cloud over parts of East Africa. Officials said the airport in Ethiopia’s capital was to be closed, and Clinton faced being stranded if she had proceeded with her planned events.

Although Clinton departed earlier than planned, she should not arrive in Washington ahead of her scheduled Wednesday arrival time because she’ll have a long layover in Europe.

The timing of Clinton’s return is being closely watched because her traveling party includes senior aide Huma Abedin. Abedin is the wife of embattled New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is facing calls to resign because of sexually-charged messages and photos he sent to several women online. Weiner reportedly wants to speak with his wife before making a decision on stepping down.

In Ethiopia, Clinton acknowledged that Gadhafi’s “major role in providing financial support for many African nations and institutions, including the African Union.” But she said it has become clear in light of his abuses that he cannot remain in power.

All African leaders should demand that Gadhafi accept a ceasefire and then leave Libya, she said. They should expel pro-Gadhafi Libyan diplomats from their countries, suspend the operations of Libyan embassies and work with the Libyan opposition.

Since seizing power in Libya in 1969, Gadhafi has offered training, funding and other support for African rebel groups, including the African National Congress as it fought white minority rule in South Africa. Buoyed by oil money, he also paid the membership dues of many smaller, poorer countries at the United Nations, African Union and other international bodies — winning himself a cast of supporters even as he fancied himself the continent’s “king of kings.”

While the Arab Leagues suspended Libya’s membership in the midst of the crisis, Gadhafi is still seen as a hero by many African leaders. His government remains a member in good standing in the African Union. Among the scenarios that Western nations have debated to resolve the situation include Gadhafi’s possible exile to a friendly African country.

The revolt against Gadhafi in Libya is just one among many in the Middle East and North Africa. The longtime leaders of Tunisia and Egypt have been ousted and anti-government protests have faced severe crackdowns in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen.

Clinton said that repressive governance is no longer accepted in the world. She said discontent, mainly among exploding youth populations in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere cannot be suppressed in the era of the internet and social media.

“Too many people in Africa still live under long-standing rulers — men who care too much about the longevity of their reign and too little about the legacy that should be built for their countries’ future. Some even claim to believe in democracy defined as one election, one time,” she said to laughter.

Clinton said that approach has been soundly rejected, noting the Arab uprisings.

“After years of living under dictatorships, people have demanded new leadership in places where their voices have long been silenced,” she said. “They are exercising their right to speak at the top of their lungs.”

African governments, too, must enact broad social, economic and political reforms or they will face similar revolts, Clinton said.

In Addis Ababa, Clinton also met separately with officials from Sudan’s northern and southern governments and helped advance the U.S. goal of an Ethiopian peacekeeping force being sent to the disputed, oil-rich region of Abyei. The two sides agreed in principle Monday to demilitarize the region, after two days of talks between Southern Sudan President Salva Kiir and Sudan President Omar al-Bashir aimed at defusing threats of a renewed military conflict.

Both sides claim Abyei, but the north sent troops into the region last month. Tens of thousands of residents fled to the south, which will become the world’s newest independent country on July 9. The north and the south fought a debilitating two-decade civil war that ended in 2005.

“I was hoping to spend a long time talking to you but I am being chased by a volcano,” Clinton told Kiir.

Clinton’s travels have often been dogged by natural disasters. She arrived in Tanzania on Saturday, a day after the capital Dar es Salaam was shaken by a small quake.

Clinton told officials that she would return to Ethiopia and finish her itinerary when her schedule permits, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in Washington. She had planned to visit a women’s health center and see a demonstration of clean cook stoves aimed at preventing deaths from smoke inhalation among poor African communities.