Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC
Dear All,
It is now 10:20 PM here in Israel. As with many others throughout the world this evening, am waiting for the anticipated speech by Hosni Mubarak. The electronic media seems certain that he will resign. BBC and other TV programs are less certain. In any event, we will know before, I presume, tomorrow morning. Because I don’t want to miss the speech, and because I don’t want to work till 2:00 AM (have to be up at 6:00AM), my intro will be brief.
Of the 5 items below, the first 2 are about Al-Arakib, that Bedouin village that belongs to citizens of Israel, and which has been demolished by Israel 11 times these past 2 months! But the people do not give up. They refuse, however despondent they must be, to leave and let colonists or trees or other artifacts grasp their land. The first of the two items below relates that today there were violent clashes—which normally means that the Israeli police and military were violent. The 2nd item is an urgent request by Rabbis for Human Rights for adults to come and help the residents of the village keep the wolves from their doors. But it is not merely a request, it is a special one—asking adults to come so that the village children can be spared the melee.
The third item is a link to a video—brief but worth your 3 or so minutes. It is of a photo exhibition of results of Israel’s infamous military campaign in Gaza, known as Molten Lead.
The final two items are both by Robert Fisk—written before he or anyone knows what is to follow. Will tonight see a takeover by the Egyptian military, which will maintain the old order?, will Mubarak really resign?, or will this be the true beginning of what the protesters really want—‘freedom’ is one word that is repeated frequently. May it be that beginning for freedom and civil rights and leaders sufficiently wise to pave the way to a better life for the populace.
All the best,
Dorothy
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1. Ynet,
February 10, 2011
Coming to Blows
Structures demolished and rebuilt again and again Photo: Roee Idan
Clashes in Bedouin village leave 6 wounded
Residents of southern village of Al-Arakib clash with JNF workers who came to plant trees in the area. Three people arrested for allegedly hurling stones. Balad condemns government
Violent clashes in disputed village: Residents of al-Arakib, the Bedouin village not recognized by the State of Israel, clashed Thursday with police forces and JNF officials who came to plant trees in the area. Four women and two men were lightly injured and three people were arrested on suspicion of hurling stones. The wounded were taken to the Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba.
The clashes broke out after residents and activists disrupted JNF forestry work in the area.
Last month, the Beersheba District Court cancelled the interim injunction against JNF and Civil Administration forestry work on the village’s land. The presiding judge ordered the village representatives to pay for the State’s legal costs amounting to NIS 10,000 ($2,738).
And yet, the judge also expressed criticism over the State’s conduct. “Both sides would do well to show restraint, not only because of the fact that the committee for the implementation of the Goldberg Committee’s conclusions is completing its work as we speak, but also because of the fact that restraint serves the public’s interest,” she stated in the verdict.
Following the events, the Balad party called for a general strike by Arab-Israelis and announced it will work to bring the matter before the UN and international organizations. “Balad condemns the government’s criminal policy and barbaric treatment of the residents,” a statement on behalf of the party noted.
Over the past few months, the village of al-Arakib became a permanent battlefield between residents and law enforcement forces. Clashes have broken out between the two sides over a dozen times when Land Administration officials came to the village to demolish illegal structures. Each time the structures are demolished the residents rebuild them again, without obtaining permits.
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2. [from Rabbis for Human Rights]
Today the heroes of El-Arakiv were the children.
We can doubt whether or not it is right to put children in front of a violent struggle, but the fact is that when 100 children, women and men entrenched themselves in their poor sheds and were attacked by sponge balls, beatings, pepper gas and detentions, and there was plenty of blood, even the Hebrew newspapers, which had previously been uninterested in El Arakiv, reported on the events.
For those of us who find it uncomfortable for children be in frontliet of the struggle, the solution is that we, on Sunday and Monday mornings, will respond in our hundreds. This time I am asking that everyone who can, open up your calendar to come in great numbers in the mornings of next week, starting Sunday.
We are looking into the possibility of arranging transportation, but meanwhile we will coordinate rides between those who need and those who are offering. If you need a ride, or have space in your car, please contact Kobi at 050-2345251 (not on Shabbat)
There are signs that the pressure is working. There are executives from JNF who are beginning to request that the plan be dropped. Even the evangelical group that is funding have made it known on their website that they are not responsible for the areas where trees are being planted, that only the JNF is responsible for these areas. But we need pressure in the field to enable these measures to succeed.
Please set aside at lease one day in next week, preferably Sunday or Monday, to come to El Arakiv.
3. A link to a brief video (about 3 minutes) of a photo exhibit in London depicting results of the Israeli military campaign called Molten Lead (should have been called ‘Death by phosphorus and lead”) in December 2008-January 2009.
Our writer sees Cairo’s protesters rally again in Tahrir Square
MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/Getty Images
Tens of thousands of anti-government supporters wave national flags as they gather for the 15th consecutive day to demonstrate in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square on 8 February 2011, demanding the ouster of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Blood turns brown with age. Revolutions do not. Vile rags now hang in a corner of the square, the last clothes worn by the martyrs of Tahrir: a doctor, a lawyer among them, a young woman, their pictures strewn above the crowds, the fabric of the T-shirts and trousers stained the colour of mud. But yesterday, the people honoured their dead in their tens of thousands for the largest protest march ever against President Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship, a sweating, pushing, shouting, weeping, joyful people, impatient, fearful that the world may forget their courage and their sacrifice. It took three hours to force our way into the square, two hours to plunge through a sea of human bodies to leave. High above us, a ghastly photomontage flapped in the wind: Hosni Mubarak’s head superimposed upon the terrible picture of Saddam Hussein with a noose round his neck.
Uprisings don’t follow timetables. And Mubarak will search for some revenge for yesterday’s renewed explosion of anger and frustration at his 30-year rule. For two days, his new back-to-work government had tried to portray Egypt as a nation slipping back into its old, autocratic torpor. Gas stations open, a series of obligatory traffic jams, banks handing out money – albeit in suitably small amounts – shops gingerly doing business, ministers sitting to attention on state television as the man who would remain king for another five months lectured them on the need to bring order out of chaos – his only stated reason for hanging grimly to power.
But Issam Etman proved him wrong. Shoved and battered by the thousands around him, he carried his five-year- old daughter Hadiga on his shoulders. “I am here for my daughter,” he shouted above the protest. “It is for her freedom that I want Mubarak to go. I am not poor. I run a transport company and a gas station. Everything is shut now and I’m suffering, but I don’t care. I am paying my staff from my own pocket. This is about freedom. Anything is worth that.” And all the while, the little girl sat on Issam Etman’s shoulders and stared at the epic crowds in wonderment; no Harry Potter extravaganza would match this.
Many of the protesters – so many were flocking to the square yesterday evening that the protest site had overflowed onto the Nile river bridges and the other squares of central Cairo – had come for the first time. The soldiers of Egypt’s Third Army must have been outnumbered 40,000 to one and they sat meekly on their tanks and armoured personnel carriers, smiling nervously as old men and youths and young women sat around their tank tracks, sleeping on the armour, heads on the great steel wheels; a military force turned to impotence by an army of dissent. Many said they had come because they were frightened; because they feared the world was losing interest in their struggle, because Mubarak had not yet left his palace, because the crowds had grown smaller in recent days, because some of the camera crews had left for other tragedies and other dictatorships, because the smell of betrayal was in the air. If the Republic of Tahrir dries up, then the national awakening is over. But yesterday proved that the revolution is alive.
Its mistake was to underestimate the ability of the regime to live too, to survive, to turn on its tormentors, to switch off the cameras and harass the only voice of these people – the journalists – and to persuade those old enemies of revolution, the “moderates” whom the West loves, to debase their only demand. What is five more months if the old man goes in September? Even Amr Moussa, most respected of the crowds’ favourite Egyptians, turns out to want the old boy to carry on to the end. And woeful, in truth, is the political understanding of this innocent but often untutored mass.
Regimes grow iron roots. When the Syrians left Lebanon in 2005, the Lebanese thought that it was enough to lop off the head, to get the soldiers and the intelligence officers out of their country. But I remember the astonishment with which we all discovered the depth of Syria’s talons. They lay deep in the earth of Lebanon, to the very bedrock. The assassinations went on. And so, too, it is in Egypt. The Ministry of Interior thugs, the state security police, the dictator who gives them their orders, are still in operation – and if one head should roll, there will be other heads to be pasted onto the familiar portrait to send those cruel men back into the streets.
There are some in Egypt – I met one last night, a friend of mine – who are wealthy and genuinely support the democracy movement and want Mubarak to go but are fearful that if he steps now from his palace, the military will be able to impose their own emergency laws before a single reform has been discussed. “I want to get reforms in place before the man leaves,” my friend said. “If he goes now, the new leader will be under no obligation to carry out reforms. These should be agreed to now and done quickly – it’s the legislature, the judiciary, the constitutional changes, the presidential terms that matter. As soon as Mubarak leaves, the men with brass on their shoulders will say: ‘It’s over – go home!’ And then we’ll have a five-year military council. So let the old man stay till September.”
But it’s easy to accuse the hundreds of thousands of democracy protestors of naivety, of simple-mindedness, of over-reliance on the Internet and Facebook. Indeed, there is growing evidence that “virtual reality” became reality for the young of Egypt, that they came to believe in the screen rather than the street – and that when they took to the streets, they were deeply shocked by the state violence and the regime’s continued, brutal, physical strength. Yet for people to taste this new freedom is overwhelming. How can a people who have lived under dictatorship for so long plan their revolution? We in the West forget this. We are so institutionalized that everything in our future is programmed. Egypt is a thunderstorm without direction, an inundation of popular expression which does not fit neatly into our revolutionary history books or our political meteorology.
All revolutions have their “martyrs”, and the faces of Ahmed Bassiouni and young Sally Zahrani and Moahmoud Mohamed Hassan float on billboards around the square, along with pictures of dreadfully mutilated heads with the one word “unidentified” printed beside them with appalling finality. If the crowds abandon Tahrir now, these dead will also have been betrayed. And if we really believe the regime-or-chaos theory which still grips Washington and London and Paris, the secular, democratic, civilized nature of this great protest will also be betrayed. The deadly Stalinism of the massive Mugamma government offices, the tattered green flag of the pathetic Arab League headquarters, the military-guarded pile of the Egyptian Museum with the golden death mask of Tutankhamen – a symbol of Egypt’s mighty past – buried deep into its halls; these are the stage props of the Republic of Tahrir.
Week three – day sixteen – lacks the romance and the promise of the Day of Rage and the great battles against the Egyptian Ministry of Interior goons and the moment, just over a week ago, when the army refused Mubarak’s orders to crush, quite literally, the people in the square. Will there be a week six or a day 32? Will the cameras still be there? Will the people? Will we? Yesterday proved our predictions wrong again. But they will have to remember that the iron fingernails of this regime have long ago grown into the sand, deeper than the pyramids, more powerful than ideology. We have not seen the last of this particular creature. Nor of its vengeance.
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5. The Independent,
10 February 2011
Robert Fisk: Hypocrisy is exposed by the wind of change sweeping Arab world
So when the Arabs cry out for the very future that Obama outlined, we show them disrespect.
There is nothing like an Arab revolution to show up the hypocrisy of your friends. Especially if that revolution is one of civility and humanism and powered by an overwhelming demand for the kind of democracy that we enjoy in Europe and America. The pussyfooting nonsense uttered by Obama and La Clinton these past two weeks is only part of the problem. From “stability” to “perfect storm” – Gone With the Wind might have recommended itself to the State Department if they really must pilfer Hollywood for their failure to adopt moral values in the Middle East – we’ve ended up with the presidential “now-means-yesterday”, and “orderly transition”, which translates: no violence while ex-air force General Mubarak is put out to graze so that ex-intelligence General Suleiman can take over the regime on behalf of America and Israel.
Fox News has already told its viewers in America that the Muslim Brotherhood – about the “softest” of Islamist groups in the Middle East – is behind the brave men and women who have dared to resist the state security police, while the mass of French “intellectuals” (the quotation marks are essential for poseurs like Bernard-Henri Lévy have turned, in Le Monde’s imperishable headline, into “the intelligentsia of silence”.
And we all know why. Alain Finkelstein talks about his “admiration” for the democrats but also the need for “vigilance” – and this is surely a low point for any ‘philosophe’ – “because today we know above all that we don’t know how everything is going to turn out.” This almost Rumsfeldian quotation is gilded by Lévy’s own preposterous line that “it is essential to take into account the complexity of the situation”. Oddly enough that is exactly what the Israelis always say when some misguided Westerner suggests that Israel should stop stealing Arab land in the West Bank for its colonists.
Indeed Israel’s own reaction to the momentous events in Egypt – that this might not be the time for democracy in Egypt (thus allowing it to keep the title of “the only democracy in the Middle East”) – has been as implausible as it has been self-defeating. Israel will be much safer surrounded by real democracies than by vicious dictators and autocratic kings. To his enormous credit, the French historian Daniel Lindenberg told the truth this week. “We must, alas, admit the reality: many intellectuals believe, deep down, that the Arab people are congenitally backward.”
There is nothing new in this. It applies to our subterranean feelings about the whole Muslim world. Chancellor Merkel of Germany announces that multiculturalism doesn’t work, and a pretender to the Bavarian royal family told me not so long ago that there were too many Turks in Germany because “they didn’t want to be part of German society”. Yet when Turkey itself – as near a perfect blend of Islam and democracy as you can find in the Middle East right now – asks to join the European Union and share our Western civilisation, we search desperately for any remedy, however racist, to prevent her membership.
In other words, we want them to be like us, providing they stay away. And then, when they prove they want to be like us but don’t want to invade Europe, we do our best to install another American-trained general to rule them. Just as Paul Wolfowitz reacted to the Turkish parliament’s refusal to allow US troops to invade Iraq from southern Turkey by asking if “the generals don’t have something to say about this”, we are now reduced to listening while US defence secretary Robert Gates fawns over the Egyptian army for their “restraint” – apparently failing to realise that it is the people of Egypt, the proponents of democracy, who should be praised for their restraint and non-violence, not a bunch of brigadiers.
So when the Arabs want dignity and self-respect, when they cry out for the very future which Obama outlined in his famous – now, I suppose, infamous – Cairo speech of June 2009, we show them disrespect and casuistry. Instead of welcoming democratic demands, we treat them as a disaster. It is an infinite relief to find serious American journalists like Roger Cohen going “behind the lines” on Tahrir Square to tell the unvarnished truth about this hypocrisy of ours. It is an unmitigated disgrace when their leaders speak. Macmillan threw aside colonial pretensions of African unpreparedness for democracy by talking of the “wind of change”. Now the wind of change is blowing across the Arab world. And we turn our backs upon it.
