Today has been eventful in Egypt and for the Middle East as a whole. Yet we still don’t know what will come out of it all. In Egypt Mubarak finally spoke and promised not to run for office again. But apparently for the people this is not enough. They want him out, NOW. What will be after is still very uncertain. But if the way that the Egyptian people have demonstrated—the non-violent way, so far—is any sign, then it perhaps bodes for a better future for them, and hopefully for all the peoples of the region. Because it is not only Tunisia and Egypt that are bringing about change, but also, apparently, Jordanians, and even here at home, the PA has decided finally to call for elections. Israeli leaders are obviously very edgy these days, and not the least because they feel that if the US has so readily dropped its good friend Mubarak, then the same might happen to Israel
These matters are represented in the final 5 of the 10 items below, the 2 last ones being opinion pieces that I hope that you will find as interesting as I did.
But other events also are taking place, and are reflected in the first 5 items.
The first is Amnesty International’s Press Release on Ameer Makhoul.
Item 2 gave me great delight—imagine! Israel’s wonderfully intelligent Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has found a new way to make the world love Israel: he is hiring European PR firms to paint Israel beautiful! Why has this given me delight—for one thing, it shows that bds is working. For another, it reveals (if you had any doubt) how unintelligent this guy is. He does not realize the extent to which he and his cohorts in the government have helped greatly to sully Israel’s image. I doubt that even the greatest PR can help now. It’s too late. Israel has outplayed its hand.
Item 3 is a link to PACBI India’s open letter to Ian McEwan. If after reading it (if he reads it) he still accepts the Israel Prize, than he is another of these individuals who do not or cannot listen to reason.
Item 4 is a longish piece about a dancer—a Palestinian woman with Israeli citizenship, who against many odds and tribulations, not only herself studied dancing but has also opened a dancing school for Palestinian youngsters—the first of its kind in Israel. For Israeli Jewish children there are some 45 such. Now there is also 1 for Arab youngsters. In the telling, we learn also about Israeli racism, or fear of the other. The fact that this person overcame the obstacles is heart-warming, but leaves us with the question of why she had to have them in the first place.
Item 5 reports that the doctoral candidate who was fired by Brooklyn College has been reinstated to teach the course that he had originally been hired to teach. Apparently a huge number of letters counterbalanced the demands of the Israeli-firsters who fear academic freedom.
The rest are about the more world-shaking or Mid East-shaking events.
Item 6 is Al Jazeera’s report on the Egyptian people’s reaction to Mubarak’s speech tonight. Item 7 reports on Jordan. Item 8 tells us that the PA has called for local elections. Items 9 and 10 are opinion pieces that I found interesting, and hope that you will also.
Tomorrow (actually at 2AM it’s already tomorrow for me) will most likely bring more events of interest. But I promise to not overload you every day.
Amnesty International has urged the Israeli authorities to end their harassment of Palestinian human rights activists after a well-known campaigner in Haifa was jailed for nine years and given an additional one-year suspended sentence earlier today.
Ameer Makhoul, a longstanding Palestinian activist, was convicted on various counts of having contact with enemies of Israel and espionage after a plea bargain agreement at his trial. He was originally charged with an even more serious offence, “assisting an enemy in war”, which could have carried a life sentence, but that was dropped by the prosecution when he agreed to a plea bargain.
“Ameer Makhoul’s jailing is a very disturbing development and we will be studying the details of the sentencing as soon as we can,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director.
“Ameer Makhoul is well known for his human rights activism on behalf of Palestinians in Israel and those living under Israeli occupation. We fear that this may be the underlying reason for his imprisonment.”
“We are also extremely concerned by allegations that he was tortured and otherwise ill-treated following his arrest on 6 May last year in a dawn police raid on his home in Haifa, by the fact that he was not permitted to see his lawyers for 12 days after his arrest, and by the gag order that prohibited media coverage on the case during this time.”
Under the Israeli penal code, people can be charged with “espionage” even if the information passed onto an “enemy agent” is publicly known and even if there is no intent to do harm through passing on the information.
The prosecution claimed that a Jordanian civil society activist who Ameer Makhoul was in contact with was a Hizbullah agent, and that he gave this person information on the locations of a military base and General Security Services offices.
The confession on which Ameer Makhoul’s conviction and sentencing were based was admitted as evidence by the court, despite allegations that this statement was made under duress and that he was tortured during his interrogation. It also appears that the information allegedly conveyed by Ameer Makhoul was publicly available.
Ameer Makhoul’s sentencing comes at a time when human rights activists are coming under increasing pressure in Israel and being accused by some in the government and by members of the Knesset of being “anti-Israel” and unpatriotic because of their reporting on and campaigning against human rights violations in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Ameer Makhoul is the director of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations, based in Haifa.
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2. Ynet, J
anuary 31, 2011
Anti-Israel protest in Oslo Photo: AP
Israel to hire European PR firms
Lieberman makes unprecedented move due to Israel’s ‘catastrophic’ status in public opinion
As Israel’s image continues to deteriorate in the world, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has decided to make an unprecedented move by hiring a network of European firms to conduct the state’s public relations campaign throughout the continent.
The campaign will strive to acquaint Europeans with Israel’s character beyond the conflict with the Arab world. It will include more modern sides of the state – its culture, economy, history, tourism, high-tech, food, music, and more.
The Foreign Ministry has decided to launch the campaign in Europe’s most influential countries – Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Czech Republic. It is expected to cost NIS 12 million ($3.26 million) a year.
It will be the first time Israel uses ad firms in Europe to such great extent. During Operation Defensive Shield Israel hired the US firm Howard Rubenstein, and in 2004, during the debate on the separation fence at The Hague, it accepted services from the French firm Publicis services free of charge.
The move comes not a moment to soon, as reports from embassies abroad have been particularly concerning to Israeli leaders recently. In Britain and the Scandinavian states boycotts of Israeli products are on the rise, with successful chains in Britain refusing to sell products made in settlements and often all Israeli products as well.
All of Europe’s Israeli embassies were ordered to survey three local PR firms and take offers, with a goal of hiring European public relations advisers to guide diplomats.
The embassies will also poll public opinion now and in one year in order to gauge the success of the campaign. The goal is to invest €2.5 million in each country per year.
Lieberman told Yedioth Ahronoth Sunday that “the goal is to give our representatives in central European countries additional tools for the battle over public opinion”.
“With proper and professional work in the field we can significantly improve Israel’s standing and support for it,” he said. Envoys were also pleased, saying that Lieberman had been speaking of reform in PR for a while but that he had not backed it up with sufficient funds until now.
“Israel’s situation with public opinion in Europe is a catastrophe,” an Israeli diplomat in Europe said. “The Palestinians control messages and are preparing everyone for a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. Public opinion supports them despite the fact that they are unwilling to come to the negotiations table. We have no choice but to wage a battle for our image.”
Rabeah Murkus founded the first studio for Arab dancers and the first dance study track. The choreographer from Kfar Yassif shares her vision of a new, first generation of Arab dancers in Israel.
On the pale parquet floor of the Rabeah Murkus Dance Studio in Kfar Yassif a few students are warming up to a backdrop of purple walls and a decorated Christmas tree. After Murkus hustles the last of the lingerers in the dressing room, samba music starts coming through the loudspeakers and the lesson in modern dance begins. Couple by couple, the youngsters bound along the length and breadth of the space, energetically carving the air.
To the onlooker it seems like this is just another dance lesson. To Murkus, however, it is the realization of a pioneering vision she has nurtured for a long time: the establishment of a dance study track for secondary school students from the Arab sector.
Ever since she opened her studio three years ago, Murkus, 38, tried to receive Education Ministry authorization to open the track. This year she succeeded and the track began to operate with the cooperation of the Notre Dame School in Mi’ilya, a local council in the north of Israel inhabited by Christian Arabs.
“In Israel there were 45 dance study tracks until now and I’m the 46th,” she smiles with satisfaction mingled with criticism. “Imagine, only in 2010 did we manage to open the first high school dance study track in the Arab sector.”
The track serves students in grades 10 through 12 from several Arab communities in the north of the country. In the afternoon hours they study classical ballet, modern dance, composition and dance history at the studio. Classes on anatomy and music are taught at the school in Mi’ilya, so the students can take the matriculation (bagrut ) exam in dance, but Murkus expects this to expand in the coming years.
Rabeah is the daughter of a former head of the Kfar Yassif local council, Nimr Murkus, one of the leaders of the Communist Party in Israel (Maki, a component of Hadash ) in which she too has been active for many years. She is the youngest of his six daughters, a sister of singer Amal Murkus. She owes her first acquaintance with the world of dance to her father, who was smitten with the charms of classical ballet when he was a student in the Soviet Union. “He would bring me pictures of ballerinas when I was little,” she recalls, “and I would copy their movements.”
Until a few years ago Murkus lived in Paris and danced with Haim Adri’s Sisyphe Hereux company. Her father, who missed her, offered to set up a dance studio for her. To this was added a marriage proposal, and she moved to Acre to live with her husband and opened the studio.
“Our life in Israel is politics. We breathe and eat politics and our situation changes from day to day according to the political situation,” she says in reply to the question of whether the studio’s opening is also a political act as far as she is concerned. “But opening the studio came from a deeper place, from within the love of dance and the desire to answer to the need of the Arab sector.”
Racheli Shapira, a teacher of the Martha Graham method who taught Murkus in her youth and is now teaching at her studio, compares the students at the studio in Kfar Yassif, who come without solidified expectations, to a blank page. “There’s a big difference between them and the students I teach at other schools,” she says, “and there’s a lot of pleasure in the encounter with them and their desire. This isn’t simple; a dance education is a long-term education – there’s no hocus-pocus here. You need a lot of patience for the people in front of you, for their emotional difficulties and also in this case apparently for cultural differences.”
The new dance study track is supported by the Galileo Foundation, which has initiated a long-term project to bring together the students in the Kfar Yassif dance study track and students in the Mateh Asher track (who study at Kibbutz Ga’aton ). According to Murkus, “The two tracks have composition lessons and movement meetings together and the students create joint works.” The encounters take place alternately in Kfar Yassif and Ga’aton.
Completely different
It is hard not to wonder whether Murkus was motivated to create a study framework at least in part by the difficulties she herself encountered as an Arab dance student. When she was in first grade, even though she did not know Hebrew at all, she was sent to study ballet in Acre with a Jewish teacher. There the other girls taught her the first Hebrew word she ever learned: “move.”
Today she finds it hard to comprehend how she managed to learn despite the language gaps: “Sometimes I would arrive at the studio and it would be closed and I didn’t understand why. And then I would discover there were holidays but no one had informed my parents. My father and mother supported my dance studies as long as it wasn’t a matter of a profession.”
She persisted in her ballet studies until the age of 14, but then her teacher stopped teaching. Out of a lack of familiarity with the field and in the absence of a suitable educational institution, she stopped studying dance, and instead redirected her stage bug to acting. First she acted in a movie by Palestinian director Hanna Elias and subsequently she integrated into productions of the Acre Theater.
Two years later Murkus heard that at Kibbutz Ga’aton, only a 10-minute drive from Kfar Yassif, there is a professional center for training dancers. She started taking private lessons there and quickly caught the eye of Yehudit Arnon, the founder of the dance center at Ga’aton. Thereafter she joined the studio’s regular program for high school students.
“I don’t know how I did it,” she says in retrospect of the decision to study there. “My parents didn’t drive me, because my father didn’t drive. I would hitch-hike or take the kibbutz shuttle. It was something completely crazy.”
When she was 18 she was accepted to the dance training workshop at Ga’aton, moved to the kibbutz to live and studied dance every day, from morning till night. “She saw my talent and nurtured me,” says Murkus of Arnon, “but she really didn’t make my life easy and treated me like all the students. She opened me to a world that I alone knew in the Arab sector. No one knew what I was doing and why I was going to the kibbutz.”
Shapira, who was one of Murkus’ teachers at that time, relates that it was hard to ignore her presence and her strong personality. “Rabeah blazed the trail for more students from the Arab sector,” she says. “She’s a trailblazer.”
Nonetheless, the period Murkus lived at the kibbutz was accompanied by a certain sense of alienation. On the one hand, the Arab laborers who worked there regarded the Arab girl who ate in the kibbutz dining hall with suspicion and labeled her in various ways.
On the other hand, her fellow students didn’t really accept her enthusiastically. “I was alone there all the time, completely alone,” she says. “I didn’t connect with people – and not because I didn’t want to. To this day I have a copy of an item they did about me then on Channel 1, and in it you can see the [other students’] racism in the way they spoke. When the reporter asked them about me they replied, ‘She’s nice, but strange. She isn’t like us, she’s completely different.’ He also asked whether they were interested in being friends with me and they replied in the negative. So I didn’t connect. And you know what? Not everyone interested me. All I wanted to do was dance, and that’s what I did. I would finish the workshop and then take extra lessons in the afternoon.”
In her second year in the program Murkus was accepted to the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company. “What I loved there was that Yehudit Arnon opened her studio to lots of choreographers from abroad,” relates Murkus. “Jiri Kylian came and Daniel Ezralow from the United States put on ‘Read my Hips’ here. This gave me the strength to continue to dance.”
As part of her activity in the company she was cast in performances for children (and also helped adapt them into Arabic ), but she was consistently kept out of the repertory performances and performances put on by choreographers from abroad, although she took an active part in rehearsals. After a while it became clear to her that the privilege of performing was being kept from her for reasons of modesty, so as not to make problems for her with Arab society. “I was furious,” she recalls.
After two years in the company she decided to leave. “Yehudit tried to tell me I still had what to learn but I explained to her that in order to learn I had to dance in performances. You learn to be a dancer on the stage, not in the studio.”
After an audition for the Batsheva Ensemble (“I passed all three phases but I was 23 and they said I was ‘old'” ), Murkus decided to return to the Acre Theater and acted in productions of director Dudi Maayan (among them “Arbeit Macht Frei” ), until he left for Austria.
Her activity in theater continues to this day. She and her husband Firas Rubi are active both in the Acre Theater and in the Al Laz Theater, which was established in Acre six years ago. In the 1990s, in addition to forays into various fields of movement (butoh, tai chi, Sufi dance and “sacred dances” originating in the Sufi and Tibetan traditions ), Murkus also participated in the Metatron theater group, which consisted mostly of performers who had returned from India.
“In Metatron I was the only Arab woman. In every framework I was always the only Arab woman.”
One of the difficulties in managing the studio is dealing with the budget. Murkus is now in the initial processes for getting government support. She says the fees for the lessons at her studio are lower than what is customary in Israel, and accepts all students who are interested in studying with her, even those who aren’t able to pay. In order to deal with the financial difficulties she has developed a variety of strategies.
Between Tel Aviv and Bahrain
Murkus is also nurturing a company called Rimaz, consisting of nine young dancers, all of them her former students. Knowing how a company can be a depressing framework, she makes sure there is a free atmosphere. “I give them a lot of freedom to create,” she says, “and also to go beyond the limits of my company.”
Thus far she has created four works for the company: “Love is my Religion,” influenced by Sufi dance and based on a love song by the poet Ibn Arabi; “Assira and Almassira,” a work for nine dancers accompanied by her sister singer Amal Murkus, which depicts the Palestinian narrative through stories about a pair of lovers, one of whom perished in 1948; “Basket,” based on a childhood memory of hers, which deals with women’s struggle over three generations; and a duet called “Here and Now,” created recently with her husband and based on the last poem Mahmoud Darwish wrote before his death, “I Don’t Want this Poem to End.”
Among the dancers in the ensemble is Ayman Safia, a gifted dancer of 21 who also grew up in Kfar Yassif. Murkus, who discovered his talent when he was 15 years old, has been nurturing him since then and helped him integrate into the dance workshop at Kibbutz Ga’aton. Now he is living in London and studying at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, but when he visits Israel he makes a point of participating in the ensemble’s performances. The company appears mainly in the north and before Arab audiences, but Murkus does not reject the idea of also going to Tel Aviv in the future: “I very much want us to begin to perform in all kinds of places in this country. In the [Arab] sector it difficult to perform because people aren’t used to going to see dance.”
Recently the ensemble has collaborated with Jewish artists: At the beginning of last year there was a joint evening with choreographer Arkadi Zeides at Kibbutz Kabri and recently Murkus, together with Ilanit Tadmor, initiated a joint workshop with members of the Vertigo dance troupe.
Murkus is also trying to promote the ensemble’s activity by means of performances abroad, mainly at festivals. In the past they have performed in Jordan and she says there has also been interest in the ensemble from other countries, among them the United States.
For the most part she finds it difficult to afford the expenses of these trips (which are not always completely subsidized by the hosts ), but sometimes difficulties arise for other reasons. “We were invited to Bahrain,” she says, “where there is an amazing festival – they bring companies from all over the world – but I didn’t agree to go because I was afraid. I didn’t know how you travel there with an Israeli passport. Even if I did manage to get there, I didn’t know what I could expect here when I returned.”
What are your plans for the future?
“I want to build a dance workshop for the Arab sector like the one in Ga’aton, a workshop with certification. I want my company to grow, to have a budget for salaries for all the dancers, for them to be able to work with me from morning till night, and for choreographers to come and work here. This is my dream. I want a whole generation of dancers to grow from my studio.”
Brooklyn College officials announced Monday that they have re-hired adjunct professor Kristofer Petersen-Overton after dismissing him last week for an alleged lack of experience, a move that set off a fiery discussion on academic freedom.
On Jan. 27, Petersen-Overton was told that he lacked the requisite qualifications to teach a master’s course entitled Politics of the Middle East. But Petersen-Overton and his supporters suspected that the discharge was linked to New York State Assemblyman and Brooklyn College graduate Dov Hikind’s denouncement of his left-leaning politics, submitted to the school shortly before the adjunct was let go.
The incident prompted widespread censure of the college, with students and professors rallying behind Petersen-Overton and calling his dismissal an affront to academic freedom. Still, Brooklyn College spokesman Jeremy Thompson told the New York Times that the school’s decision to re-hire Petersen-Overton was not due to external pressure: “There was no political motivation behind this at all; it was always a question of credentials and process.”
According to Brooklyn College President Karen Gould, the updated decision came from the members of the political science department, who agreed unanimously that Petersen-Overton should reclaim his post. Like Thompson, she maintains that the departmental decision was not influenced by the public outcry prompted by Petersen-Overton’s dismissal. Inside Higher Ed has Gould’s statement:
Over the past several days, as a result of a provostial decision about an adjunct appointment, Brooklyn College has been thrust into a debate about academic freedom. This debate has been fueled at times by inflammatory rhetoric and mischaracterization of the facts. It is unfortunate that matters of utmost importance to our college community can be so rapidly co-opted by those with a political agenda and distorted by the media.
For his part, Hikind is less than pleased with the college’s behavior. He told Gothamist that he was ashamed to hold a degree from Brooklyn College, adding: “Everything was bizarre, and the most bizarre thing is the change that happened over the weekend. Who was intimidated, who was coerced? I don’t know. I’m just surprised by the entire behavior. These are not children. These are intellectuals. These are smart people. It’s a bizarre chapter.”
On his website, Petersen-Overton called the updated decision “a victory for academic freedom.”
Petersen-Overton has also been given the go-ahead to teach a graduate seminar on Middle Eastern politics beginning Thursday, reports Inside Higher Ed.
Egypt’s president tells nation he will not seek another term, prompting protesters to resume “Leave, Mubarak!” chant.
Mubarak’s televised announcement came after eight days of unprecedented nationwide protests [EPA]
CAIRO – Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, has announced in a televised address tonight that he would not run for re-election but refused to step down from office – the central demand of millions of protesters who have demonstrated across Egypt over the last week.
Mubarak seemed largely unfazed by the protests during his recorded address, which aired at 11pm local time on Tuesday. He mentioned them at the beginning of his speech, and said that “the young people” have the right to peaceful demonstrations. But his tone quickly turned accusatory, saying the protesters had been “taken advantage of” by people trying to “undermine the government”.
Until now, officials had indicated Mubarak, 82, was likely to run for a sixth six-year term of office.
“I never intended to run for re-election,” Mubarak went on to say. “I will use the remaining months of my term in office to fill the peoples’ demands.”
That would leave Mubarak in charge of overseeing a transitional government until the next presidential election, currently scheduled for September. He promised reforms to the constitution, particularly article 76, which makes it virtually impossible for independent candidates to run for office. And he said his government would focus on improving the economy and providing jobs.
“My new government will be responsive to the needs of young people,” he said. “It will fulfil those legitimate demands and help the return of stability and security.”
Mubarak also made a point of saying that he would “die in this land” – a message to protesters that he did not plan to flee into exile like recently deposed Tunisian president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
His announcement follows a week of protests, in which millions of people have taken to the streets in Cairo and elsewhere. But it will not carry much weight with protesters: they resumed their “Leave, Mubarak!” chant shortly after his speech, and added a few new slogans, like “we won’t leave tomorrow, we won’t leave Thursday …”
Indeed, none of the protesters interviewed earlier today said they would accept Mubarak finishing his term in office.
“He needs to leave now,” Hassan Moussa said in Tahrir Square hours before Mubarak’s announcement. “We won’t accept him leaving in September, or handing power to [newly installed vice-president] Omar Suleiman. He needs to leave now.”
Mubarak’s announcement comes after pressure from the US, which urged him not to seek re-election. Frank Wisner, a former ambassador to Egypt, met Mubarak on Monday and reportedly told him not to extend his time in office.
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7. Washington Post,
February 1, 2011
Jordan’s King Abdullah II ousts prime minister, cabinet in wake of mass protests
AMMAN, JORDAN – Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Tuesday dismissed Prime Minister Samir Rifai and his cabinet after widespread protests by crowds of people inspired by demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.
The monarch asked Marouf Bakhit – a well-regarded ex-general who is not tainted by allegations of corruption that plagued the former government – to form a new cabinet.
Abdullah, a key U.S. ally, has come under pressure in recent weeks from protests by a coalition of Islamists, secular opposition groups and a group of retired army generals who have called for sweeping political and economic reforms.
The weekly demonstrations, which have drawn momentum from the unrest in the region and were joined Friday by thousands across Jordan, reflect growing discontent stoked by the most serious domestic economic crisis in years and accusations of rampant government corruption.
Demonstrators protested rising prices and demanded the dismissal of Rifai and his government. But they have not directly challenged the king, criticism of whom is banned in Jordan. The demonstrators have been peaceful and have not been confronted by the police.
It was not immediately clear whether the opposition would be satisfied with Tuesday’s ouster of Rifai and members of his cabinet, who had been lightning rods for criticism. Opposition critics say they personally profited from the sale of state companies as part of the king’s policy of privatization and free-market reforms to attract foreign capital.
“It’s a club of businessmen serving their financial interests,” said Nahedh Hattar, a veteran opposition activist. “The king is a member of the club.”
In an attempt to defuse tensions, Rifai earlier announced a package of new subsidies for fuel and basic goods, as well as pay raises for civil servants, an increase in pensions and a job-creation initiative.
The king met with members of parliament and the appointed Senate, urging reforms. Officials say he has talked to representatives of various groups, including unionists and Islamists, to hear their grievances, and even visited poor areas of the country to get a firsthand look at people’s needs.
In his meeting with parliament members last week, Abdullah said that more should be done to address the concerns of ordinary Jordanians, and that “openness, frankness and dialogue on all issues is the way to strengthen trust between citizens and their national institutions,” according to a palace statement.
But leaders of the protests said Sunday that the king had failed, so far, to take substantial steps to address mounting public resentment. They warned that unless genuine changes were made, the unrest could worsen.
Zaki Bani Irsheid, head of the political department of the Islamic Action Front, an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jordan’s largest opposition group, said its main demands were dismissal of the government by the king, the dissolution of parliament – elected in November in a vote widely criticized as fraudulent – and new elections.
The opposition also is demanding that the prime minister, who currently is appointed by the king, instead be elected. And protesters want to amend of the election law, which critics say is designed to underrepresent opposition elements in the legislature.
Abdullah’s response so far has been “just a public relations campaign that doesn’t solve the crisis,” Bani Irsheid said in an interview Sunday, two days before Rifai’s dismissal. “The regime wants a solution without paying the price, and it is offering cosmetic changes. We told them that what was acceptable yesterday is not acceptable today, and what could resolve the problem today may not be a solution tomorrow. Delaying and hesitation will only complicate matters.”
Critics such as Hattar say the king’s policies, and accompanying corruption, have only widened the gap between rich and poor and exacerbated Jordan’s economic ills, which include a rising national debt and high levels of unemployment and poverty.
Ali Habashnah, one of the retired generals advocating reforms, said that public resentment has spread to rural areas dominated by Bedouin tribes that have been the traditional backbone of the monarchy and its security forces. It was the first time, he said, that members of that segment of Jordanian society had joined with other groups in demands for change.
But the generals, who published a manifesto with other retired officers last year outlining their positions, have asserted their loyalty to King Abdullah and say they are seeking reforms under the monarchy. The ruling Hashemite family, Habashnah said, is the only force able to unite a nation made up of disparate tribes and other groups.
“The Hashemites are the symbol of the unity of the state,” he said Sunday, before adding words of caution. “If things go on like this,” he said, “there’s no telling what can happen.”
Ordinary Jordanians, too, seem loyal to the king. Tarek alMasri, a Jordanian lawyer who studied in Egypt, said he has followed the upheaval there with mixed emotions: happy that the Egyptians finally have risen up against an oppressive ruler but worried about a power vacuum in the streets.
But regarding protests in his own country, where the authority of the monarchy is an article of faith, there is one line that he will not cross.
“I’m upset by the social problems, the economic problems, the political problems, and the parliament doesn’t represent the people,” Masri said. At the same time, he added, “I cannot imagine the country without the royal family. They strike a balance between the people and the government. I trust them.”
Greenberg is a special correspondent.
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8. Haaretz,
February 01, 2011
Palestinian government calls for local elections amid Egypt unrest
Palestinian Authority hasn’t held elections since 2006, leaving President and parliament members in power after their elected terms ended.
The Western-backed Palestinian government in the West Bank said Tuesday it will hold local council elections as soon as possible.
The move appeared to be a response to unrest in Egypt, where demonstrators have staged days of mass protests against the authoritarian regime. The Palestinian Authority has not held elections since 2006, leaving the president and parliament members in office after their elected terms ended.
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s Cabinet said Tuesday it would set election dates during its next session, probably next week.
Fayyad hopes to hold the vote in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Gaza will likely not participate since it is controlled by the rival Hamas militant group. There was no immediate response from Hamas.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas canceled local elections in the West Bank in 2009 when it appeared that his Fatah movement would lose key seats to independents.
Fatah has been burned twice before by heading into elections despite warnings of impending defeat. Hamas scored heavily in 2005 municipal elections and won a majority in the Palestinian parliament the next year.
Elections have not been held in the territories since Abbas’ four-year term expired in 2009, though his term has been extended indefinitely. The parliament’s term expired in 2010, though it, too, continues to serve.
Tuesday’s announcement did not mention presidential or parliamentary elections – presumably a key step toward Palestinian reconciliation.
Abbas’ West Bank government has been at odds with Hamas since it took over the Gaza Strip by force in 2007 and set up a rival government. Before Tuesday, West Bank officials said they couldn’t hold elections while the territories remained divided.
The announcement’s timing suggested it came in response to the days of massive street protests in Egypt calling for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.
Cabinet Secretary Naim Abu al-Hommos denied the decision had any link to the Egyptian unrest, telling The Associated Press the Cabinet had been waiting for the right atmosphere to hold elections.
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9. The Guardian,
1 February 2011
When Egypt shakes, it should be no surprise that Israel trembles
Given the region’s history, Israelis are bound to fear democracy in the Arab world. But that alone can bring real peace
They fear they’ve seen this movie before. In the first reel, the world watches with awe as the streets of a distant capital fill with the young and the angry, brave enough to shake their fist at a hated dictator. In the second, the statues fall, the tyrant flees and all hail a triumph for democracy. But in the final reel there’s a twist: the original street rebels are pushed aside, replaced by a tyranny just as ruthless as the one it toppled – and much more menacing to its neighbours.
That’s the movie famously screened in Tehran in 1979 and which Israelis fear they are watching again in Cairo in 2011. One senior Israeli official told me: “You can’t watch the scenes of all these young people demanding their freedom and not get excited.” But at the same time, a question keeps nagging: “Where’s this heading?”
The answer Israelis dread is a replay of the Iranian revolution. They recall that the Tehran crowds which won western hearts 31 years ago also looked secular and modern – only to be rapidly displaced by a dictatorship of the ayatollahs. Israel’s Egypt-watchers fret that the country’s secular opposition parties are small, comprised of intellectuals with little grassroots support. Only the Muslim Brotherhood has the resources and organisation to take control. If the current regime topples, they expect the Islamists to take its place.
To understand why that prospect chills the blood of Israel’s policymakers, it’s worth recalling a few nuggets of geography and recent history. Egypt looms over Israel from the south, dwarfing it in size and population: 80 million Egyptians outnumber Israelis by more than 11 to one. It is the most populous Arab nation and the de facto leader of the Arab world. If Egypt shakes, Israel trembles.
Perhaps the key strategic event in Israel’s 63-year history was the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. At a stroke, what had been a battle between Israel and the entire Arab world – the “Arab-Israeli conflict” – was reduced to the more manageable dispute between Palestinians and Israelis. For 30 years, Israel has not had to worry about its southern flank. Just look at Israeli defence spending. When Egypt was still the enemy, defence accounted for nearly 30% of Israeli GDP, driving the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Now it stands at just 8%.
So here’s the scenario making Israeli heads throb. Hosni Mubarak leaves, replaced eventually by forces dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. They hold elections – but they are of the “one man, one vote, one time” variety.
Among the new regime’s first moves is tearing up the Israel treaty – heeding the demands of those in Tahrir Square reportedly chanting for Mubarak to “go back home to Tel Aviv”. No longer will Egyptian forces police the tunnels that run under the border with Gaza: instead Hamas will be allowed to import as much weaponry as it wants, including from Iran. Nor will Cairo play intermediary between Israel and Hamas (useful until Egypt-Hamas relations all but broke down recently).
Suddenly the map will look very different, with Israel facing what one analyst calls Islamist “encirclement: Hezbollah from the north (in Lebanon), Hamas from the west (in Gaza) and the Muslim Brotherhood from the south (in Sinai).”
If that scenario doesn’t sound gloomy enough, Israel will have lost something even deeper. Beyond all the talk of borders and buffer zones, what Israel craves is recognition of its legitimacy – starting with acceptance of its existence. The 1979 treaty provided that, signalling an acknowledgement – grudging, maybe; cold, perhaps – that Israel was in the Middle East to stay. If Egypt were to annul that accord, the strategic bedrock of Israeli security and its sense of itself in the region will have been pulled away.
This is what the Israeli official who spoke to me of a “game-changer” has in mind. Suddenly, Jordan would stand alone as the sole Arab state that formally recognises Israel – and judging by King Abdullah’s hasty sacking of his prime minister today under popular pressure, that hardly seems a reliable foundation. Lacking the cover once provided by Egypt, the Palestinian Authority would be increasingly isolated in its policy of dialogue with Israel.
Small wonder then that Israel’s preachers of realpolitik are left concluding that democracy is fine in theory, but not, when it comes to the Arab world, in practice. As former foreign minister Moshe Arens puts it: “Peace you make with dictators.” Only a tyrant, he argues, can deliver the two essentials of any peace deal with Israel: a promise to terminate the conflict and a guarantee of security, with no armed attacks from his territory.
If Arens is right, then Israel is left hoping either for Mubarak to stay on or, at most, for his strongman-in-waiting, Omar Suleiman, to take over. But that is not just bleak in principle – putting Israel on the wrong side of a democratic wave it should welcome – it doesn’t make pragmatic sense.
For surely the events of recent days, in Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen as well as Egypt, have shown that no dictatorship is truly sustainable, not for ever. And if those regimes can’t last, then nor can any peace made with them. Sure, the peace accord with Anwar Sadat and then Mubarak brought great benefits – but how much bigger a prize would be an Israeli peace with the Egyptian people, one underpinned by their genuine consent? That, and that alone, would be a treaty to last.
The cynics will dismiss such talk as naive and Pollyanna-ish, the stuff of leftist daydreams. But it was the former Soviet dissident turned Israeli politician – and no leftist – Natan Sharansky, who long argued that peace depended on an Arab shift to democracy.
Or listen to the former deputy chief of mission in Israel’s Cairo embassy, Ruth Wasserman Lande. She agrees that Israel is right to be concerned by the upheaval in Egypt, that it should remain vigilant, “with seven eyes in the back of its head”. But she also urges Israelis to listen to the protesters with “open eyes and an open heart”. Doom is not inevitable.
She notes the historic rejection by the Egyptian public of Islamist violence, a trend that dates back to the 1920s. Even now, jihadists who have mounted attacks on foreign tourists have won little popular support. She recalls the joint Israeli-Egyptian Qualified Industrial Zones established in 2005. They provoked protests – not by Egyptians angry at collusion with the enemy, but by jobless Egyptians furious at being excluded from the scheme. Show Egyptians that peace with Israel brings tangible benefits and they’ll support it.
Is Lande naive? “I lived alone in Cairo for three years as a Jew and a woman and an Israeli diplomat. It’s hard for me to be naive about Egypt.” For now, as Israelis watch their neighbour, fear is outstripping hope. But another reaction is possible. It would acknowledge that peace with Arab rulers alone could never last, that one day Israel will have to make peace with the peoples it lives among. That day may not be coming soon – but that truth just got a whole lot harder to avoid.guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 February 2011 20.30 GMT larger | smaller Article history
They fear they’ve seen this movie before. In the first reel, the world watches with awe as the streets of a distant capital fill with the young and the angry, brave enough to shake their fist at a hated dictator. In the second, the statues fall, the tyrant flees and all hail a triumph for democracy. But in the final reel there’s a twist: the original street rebels are pushed aside, replaced by a tyranny just as ruthless as the one it toppled – and much more menacing to its neighbours.
That’s the movie famously screened in Tehran in 1979 and which Israelis fear they are watching again in Cairo in 2011. One senior Israeli official told me: “You can’t watch the scenes of all these young people demanding their freedom and not get excited.” But at the same time, a question keeps nagging: “Where’s this heading?”
The answer Israelis dread is a replay of the Iranian revolution. They recall that the Tehran crowds which won western hearts 31 years ago also looked secular and modern – only to be rapidly displaced by a dictatorship of the ayatollahs. Israel’s Egypt-watchers fret that the country’s secular opposition parties are small, comprised of intellectuals with little grassroots support. Only the Muslim Brotherhood has the resources and organisation to take control. If the current regime topples, they expect the Islamists to take its place.
To understand why that prospect chills the blood of Israel’s policymakers, it’s worth recalling a few nuggets of geography and recent history. Egypt looms over Israel from the south, dwarfing it in size and population: 80 million Egyptians outnumber Israelis by more than 11 to one. It is the most populous Arab nation and the de facto leader of the Arab world. If Egypt shakes, Israel trembles.
Perhaps the key strategic event in Israel’s 63-year history was the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. At a stroke, what had been a battle between Israel and the entire Arab world – the “Arab-Israeli conflict” – was reduced to the more manageable dispute between Palestinians and Israelis. For 30 years, Israel has not had to worry about its southern flank. Just look at Israeli defence spending. When Egypt was still the enemy, defence accounted for nearly 30% of Israeli GDP, driving the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Now it stands at just 8%.
So here’s the scenario making Israeli heads throb. Hosni Mubarak leaves, replaced eventually by forces dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. They hold elections – but they are of the “one man, one vote, one time” variety.
Among the new regime’s first moves is tearing up the Israel treaty – heeding the demands of those in Tahrir Square reportedly chanting for Mubarak to “go back home to Tel Aviv”. No longer will Egyptian forces police the tunnels that run under the border with Gaza: instead Hamas will be allowed to import as much weaponry as it wants, including from Iran. Nor will Cairo play intermediary between Israel and Hamas (useful until Egypt-Hamas relations all but broke down recently).
Suddenly the map will look very different, with Israel facing what one analyst calls Islamist “encirclement: Hezbollah from the north (in Lebanon), Hamas from the west (in Gaza) and the Muslim Brotherhood from the south (in Sinai).”
If that scenario doesn’t sound gloomy enough, Israel will have lost something even deeper. Beyond all the talk of borders and buffer zones, what Israel craves is recognition of its legitimacy – starting with acceptance of its existence. The 1979 treaty provided that, signalling an acknowledgement – grudging, maybe; cold, perhaps – that Israel was in the Middle East to stay. If Egypt were to annul that accord, the strategic bedrock of Israeli security and its sense of itself in the region will have been pulled away.
This is what the Israeli official who spoke to me of a “game-changer” has in mind. Suddenly, Jordan would stand alone as the sole Arab state that formally recognises Israel – and judging by King Abdullah’s hasty sacking of his prime minister today under popular pressure, that hardly seems a reliable foundation. Lacking the cover once provided by Egypt, the Palestinian Authority would be increasingly isolated in its policy of dialogue with Israel.
Small wonder then that Israel’s preachers of realpolitik are left concluding that democracy is fine in theory, but not, when it comes to the Arab world, in practice. As former foreign minister Moshe Arens puts it: “Peace you make with dictators.” Only a tyrant, he argues, can deliver the two essentials of any peace deal with Israel: a promise to terminate the conflict and a guarantee of security, with no armed attacks from his territory.
If Arens is right, then Israel is left hoping either for Mubarak to stay on or, at most, for his strongman-in-waiting, Omar Suleiman, to take over. But that is not just bleak in principle – putting Israel on the wrong side of a democratic wave it should welcome – it doesn’t make pragmatic sense.
For surely the events of recent days, in Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen as well as Egypt, have shown that no dictatorship is truly sustainable, not for ever. And if those regimes can’t last, then nor can any peace made with them. Sure, the peace accord with Anwar Sadat and then Mubarak brought great benefits – but how much bigger a prize would be an Israeli peace with the Egyptian people, one underpinned by their genuine consent? That, and that alone, would be a treaty to last.
The cynics will dismiss such talk as naive and Pollyanna-ish, the stuff of leftist daydreams. But it was the former Soviet dissident turned Israeli politician – and no leftist – Natan Sharansky, who long argued that peace depended on an Arab shift to democracy.
Or listen to the former deputy chief of mission in Israel’s Cairo embassy, Ruth Wasserman Lande. She agrees that Israel is right to be concerned by the upheaval in Egypt, that it should remain vigilant, “with seven eyes in the back of its head”. But she also urges Israelis to listen to the protesters with “open eyes and an open heart”. Doom is not inevitable.
She notes the historic rejection by the Egyptian public of Islamist violence, a trend that dates back to the 1920s. Even now, jihadists who have mounted attacks on foreign tourists have won little popular support. She recalls the joint Israeli-Egyptian Qualified Industrial Zones established in 2005. They provoked protests – not by Egyptians angry at collusion with the enemy, but by jobless Egyptians furious at being excluded from the scheme. Show Egyptians that peace with Israel brings tangible benefits and they’ll support it.
Is Lande naive? “I lived alone in Cairo for three years as a Jew and a woman and an Israeli diplomat. It’s hard for me to be naive about Egypt.” For now, as Israelis watch their neighbour, fear is outstripping hope. But another reaction is possible. It would acknowledge that peace with Arab rulers alone could never last, that one day Israel will have to make peace with the peoples it lives among. That day may not be coming soon – but that truth just got a whole lot harder to avoid.
LONDON — One way to measure the immense distance traveled by Arabs over the past month is to note the one big subject they are not talking about: Israel.
For too long, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the great diversion, exploited by feckless Arab autocrats to distract impoverished populations. None of these Arab leaders ever bothered to visit the West Bank. That did not stop them embracing the justice of the Palestinian cause even as they trampled on justice at home.
Now, Arabs are thinking about their own injustices. With great courage, they are saying “Enough!”
The big shift is in the captive Arab mind. It is an immense journey from a culture of victimhood to one of self-empowerment, from a culture of conspiracy to one of construction. It is a long road from rage to responsibility, from humiliation to action.
The Muslim suicide bomber aims fury at a perceived outside enemy. Self-immolation, the spark to this great pan-Arab uprising, betrays similar desperation, but directed inward. The outer scapegoat is replaced as the target by the inner Arab culprit.
Change won’t come overnight, and won’t be without pain, but Arabs have embarked on it — and the United States must support them without equivocation. Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, is finished: It is only a matter of time. No wonder the Obama administration is calling for an “orderly transition.”
Sure, there is risk. There always is in change. But nothing in the Arab genome says democracy, liberty and plain decency are unattainable.
Remember, Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attack, came from Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt. The vast majority of Atta’s henchmen came from another U.S.-backed Arab autocracy, Saudi Arabia. They did not come from Iran. They did not come from Lebanon — or Gaza.
President George W. Bush was right in 2003: “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.” And Condoleezza Rice was right to note that the U.S. promotion of “stability” — read autocracy — had allowed “a very malignant, meaning cancerous, form of extremism to grow up underneath.”
Bush and Rice were also, however, the authors of the Iraq invasion. This destroyed their credibility on Arab liberation. Their Middle East democracy agenda went nowhere. But, self-generated, it remains the right goal.
A 2008 study by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center found that 60 percent of Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters were of Saudi or Libyan origin: the handiwork of those alibi-seeking Arab despots again.
I spoke of risk. Egypt is not Tunisia, it’s the epicenter of the Arab world, self-styled “mother of the world,” a supporter of U.S. interests, a big nation that has made a cold peace with Israel. The direction it now takes will be pivotal to the region.
The arguments of those who say, “Better the devil you know” are already clear. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel-prize-winning Egyptian opposition leader, has immense stature but no organization. The Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist Israel haters, will fill any void. Look at what Arab democracy brings: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and chaos in Iraq! You want that in Egyptian guise?
These arguments are facile, as Tunisia, with its very un-Islamic revolution, has just demonstrated, and Turkish democracy shows, and Egyptian restraint suggests. They only perpetuate Middle Eastern dysfunction. They ignore America’s sway over Egypt’s Army as a critical moderating force — and ElBaradei’s rapid emergence as unifier.
Yes, Iraqi democracy is messy, but will prove healthier than Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. A Hezbollah-backed prime minister just came to power in Lebanon, but through a constitutional process — and life goes on. The Palestinian stab at democracy has proved divisive but also produced in the West Bank precisely the move from a culture of victimhood and paralysis that other Arabs are now following.
Indeed, with its fast-growing economy and institution-building the West Bank is an example to the dawning Arab world — and would be more so if Israel helped rather than blocked and hindered.
Nothing good can get built on the false foundation of Arab absolutism with its decades of waste: That’s the irrefutable argument for change.
Images of Cairo 2011 plunge me back to Tehran 2009, when another repressive Muslim — but not Arab — nation stood on a razor’s edge. Henry Precht, an author and former U.S. diplomat, has pointed out some differences: 40 percent of Egyptians make less than $2 a day while such poverty is less widespread in Iran; Iranian women are far more present in universities; literacy is higher in Iran, the fertility rate lower. As Precht writes, “Iranian politics, though badly flawed, offers more elements of democracy than Egypt’s.”
These are perhaps some indices of why the Islamic Republic proved more resilient than Mubarak’s Egypt seems today. Still, Iran’s paranoid rulers will shudder at Egyptian people power.
A representative Egyptian government — the one whose birth pangs I believe we are witnessing — will talk about Israel one day and may be less pliant to America’s will. But it would carry a vital message for Arabs and Jews: Victimhood is self-defeating and paralyzing — and can be overcome.
You can follow Roger Cohen on Twitter at twitter.com/nytimescohen.
These matters are represented in the final 5 of the 10 items below, the 2 last ones being opinon pieces that I hope that you will find as interesting as I did.
But other events also are taking place, and are reflected in the first 5 items.
The first is Amnesty International’s Press Release on Ameer Makhoul.
Item 2 gave me great delight—imagine! Israel’s wonderfully intelligent Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has found a new way to make people love Israel: he is hiring European PR firms to paint Israel beautiful! Why has this given me delight—for one thing, it shows that bds is working. For another, it reveals (if you had any doubt) how unintelligent this guy is. He does not realize the extent to which he and his cohorts in the government have helped greatly to sully Israel’s image. I doubt that even the greatest PR can help now. It’s too late. Israel has outplayed its hand.
Item 3 is a link to PACBI India’s open letter to Ian McEwan. If after reading it (if he reads it) he still comes, than he is another individual who does not or cannot listen to reason.
Item 4 is a longish piece about a dancer—a Palestinian woman with Israeli citizenship, who against many odds and tribulations, not only herself studied dancing but has also opened a dancing school for Palestinian youngsters—the first of its kind in Israel. For Israeli Jewish children there are some 45 such. Now there is also 1 for Arab youngsters. In the telling, we learn also about Israeli racism, or fear of the other. The fact that this person overcame the obsticals is heart-warming, but leaves us with the question of why she had to have them in the first place.
Item 5 reports that the doctoral candidate who was fired by Brooklyn College has been reinstated to teach the course that he had originally been hired to teach. Apparently a huge number of letters counterballanced the demands of the Israeli-firsters who fear academic freedom.
