“Iran-tied terror group Hezbollah may be colluding with drug cartels along the U.S.-Mexico border, a Republican congresswoman warned, calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to establish a special task force to figure out how to “clamp down” on this “national security” threat.”I won’t be surprised if the US Congress stumbles on a document that “proves” that Hizbullah collaborated with the Nazi regime in WWII.
“Only when the Reform leadership, on the eve of World War II, reversed course did its anti-Zionist faction break away, ultimately forming the council in 1942. Its discourse was simultaneously idealistic and contemptuous — a proposed curriculum in 1952 described Zionism as racist, self-segregated and non-American — and for a time it boasted leaders like Lessing J. Rosenwald, heir to the Sears fortune, and a membership of 14,000.”
“Israel confiscated seven oxygen machines en route to hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza based on the claim that there was a chance the generators attached to the machines would not be used for medical purposes, Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported Saturday.”
Here, Walid Khalidi 1) seems to blame the Palestinians for the Lebanese civil war; 2) absolves the right-wing pro-Israeli Lebanese forces and Phalanges from responsibility; 3) bizarrely takes sectarian sides in the war and pays special tribute to Christians over Muslims.
“World Bank figures due to be published in coming weeks are likely to show that economic growth in the Gaza Strip in the first quarter of 2010 has exceeded that in the West Bank. While virtually all economic growth in the West Bank is a result of foreign aid, much of the growth in Gaza is attributable to a “parallel economy” that has emerged thanks to the tunnels. This has even created a small new class of nouveaux riches in Gaza.”
“In 2007, Yuval Diskin, the head of Shin Bet, made it clear that the agency would “thwart” any activities that challenge the Jewish character of the state, regardless of whether those activities are legal. Hussein Abu Hussein, a lawyer on the legal teams representing Makhoul and Said, says he feels that some within the Israeli establishment are looking for a confrontation with the Palestinians inside Israel.”The state has reached a political dead-end, with worldwide condemnation of Israel’s actions, and calls for the prosecution of leaders in international courts.”
“Also Wednesday, Jewish residents of eastern Jerusalem threatened to hire a private security firm to evict four Palestinian families living in a building that once was a Yemenite synagogue. The building is located in Silwan, near Beit Yonatan. The settlers set a deadline of July 4 for the 40 members of the four families to move off the property, which they say is Jewish-owned.”
`Uraykat thus establishes yet again his credentials as chief PA buffoon: “Erakat warned the Israelis that “if by the end of this year we do not have a two-state solution, you will sweat, you will sweat.”
“Today, Lebanon is the most hostile country to Palestinian refugees after Israel. They are second-class citizens here, but they are not the only ones.”
Israelis are suffering from a terrible siege. Boo hoo and hoo. “The international community has imposed an “emotional blockade” on Israel that has prevented the world from sympathizing with Israeli citizens, according to France’s Ambassador for Human Rights Francois Zimeray.”This is like saying that Goebbels got bad press.
“The Islamisation of Egyptian society deepened after the 1967 war; it became explicit government policy under Sadat, the self-styled ‘believer president’ who supported radical Islamists in his battles with the left, and who made the sharia ‘the principal source’ of law in 1980 – a year before his assassination by an Islamist. Under Mubarak, praying has become as popular as shopping or football and now serves a roughly similar function as a distraction from the innumerable frustrations of Egyptian life. Indeed, Islam as observed by Egyptians is increasingly an Islam that caters to consumerist needs. The popular televangelist Amr Khaled mixes Quranic citations with boosterish advice of a more general kind. This variety of Islam is no threat to the regime, but it has made life far less easy-going. ‘My neighbour used to water his plants in his pyjamas on the balcony, where he’d be joined by his wife in her nightie,’ a friend tells me. ‘They’d drink beer in the open, and then he’d go downstairs for the sunset prayers in the local mosque. Today he’d be killed for this, but at the time he would have seen no contradiction.’” (thanks Abdallah)
“”We have the sub-governor, the police, the Afghan army, the Marines here, and with all these forces they can’t destroy the Taliban,” Kalim said. “Who will protect us?””
“The writer claims that 95% of injured soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen were not reported as casualties due to what he refers to as the Pentagon’s “fudging the numbers” in a bid to win funding from American lawmakers to finance the wars. “Wounded in action is narrowly defined to essentially be an injury directly caused by an adversary,” he writes. “So called ‘friendly fire’ injuries and deaths would apparently not be counted. The emphasis is on acute injuries caused by enemy munitions which pierce or penetrate.” He cites sources such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Navy to conclude that the more than 170,000 U.S. soldiers suffer from hearing damage, the 130,000 or more cases of milder brain injuries, and the 200,000 troops suffering from mental problems are left out of the casualty count. If they were to be included in the Pentagon’s official numbers of 5,500 troop deaths and 38,000 injuries, the total American military casualty toll in Iraq and Afghanistan would amount to well over 500,000.”
It occurred to me while shaving this morning: my comrades/friends Joseph Massad and Mirvat Hatem were quite perceptive in warning against the dangers of Arab “liberal” voices back in the early 1990s. They deserve credit.
“Judicial officials say a Saudi court has convicted four women and 11 men for mingling at a party and sentenced them to flogging and prison terms. The men, who are between 30 and 40 years old, and three of the women, who are under the age of 30, were sentenced to an unspecified number of lashes and one or two year prison terms each.The fourth woman, a minor, was sentenced to 80 lashes and was not sent to prison.:”
“Nato spokesman James Appathurai said the article was “unfortunate”, but that the organisation’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had “full confidence in General McChrystal as the Nato commander and in his strategy”.”
“For those interested in Middle East politics, Gertler, a devout Orthodox Jew, is also behind the Green Park and Green Mount companies that are helping to finance the building of new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.”
“While exceptions do exist, in general, the Western woman is, more often, treated as if she were an Arab or Muslim woman, which means she is verbally abused, downgraded in status to that of a house servant, routinely monitored, isolated, threatened, battered, expected or even forced to convert to Islam, and to promise to bring up her children as Muslims. If she refuses to do so, she might even be honor-murdered.”
I am not making this up. Egyptian prime minister, Ahmad Nadhif (this translates of as “clean” in Arabic) was in Beirut. He was asked about the reason for the belated opening of the Rafah crossing. He said that the Rafah crossing has been open all along but that Egypt decided to open it again recently.
“It will be stressed here that the boycott is not a personal boycott on Israelis but rather, a boycott of official Israeli institutions and of events taking place under their auspices.”Oh, no: it should be a personal boycott to all those Israelis who 1) do not break with Zionism; 2) who serve in the Israeli terrorist forces.
“Anger towards Lebanon is brewing in Sudan and in Sudanese online forums. According to reports in the Arab media, a fundraising party held by Sudanese immigrants and asylum seekers in Beirut in aid of a child with cancer, was raided by Lebanese security apparently on the hunt for illegal residents.”
“One of the document’s annotations explains that “TK [Turkey] has checked with their capital and they are still under high-level instruction to insist on language as originally proposed.” The note adds that “PA and PAK [Pakistan] can agree to both proposals” — i.e to replace the independent HRC investigation with one merely approved by either the UN Security Council or the secretary-general.” Asa adds this to me in a note: “Something I didn’t highlight in the article (but perhaps should have) is that Khraishi was also the PA’s man in Geneva when they attempted to scupper Goldstone at the HRC there last year.”
“A mysterious arrest carried out recently by Israel’s security services has renewed condemnation from human rights groups about the country’s treatment of prisoners and its possible infringement of press freedoms. A report last week on the website of Israel’s biggest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, said that a so-called “Mr X” is being held in complete seclusion at the maximum-security Ayalon prison, and his identity is being kept so closely under wraps that it is not even known to his prison guards or fellow inmates.”
As I entered the conference room in the basement of College Hall at AUB, I stopped to look at the pictures outside. They basically were a tribute to the White Man and to Charles Malik and Rafiq Hariri–two of the worst Lebanese ever. And there was even a tribute to Mark Twain–an early enemy of the Arab people whose disdain for them made them invisible to his eyes when he visited the Holy Land, and even to Theodore Roosevelt–it suffices to read the latter’s speech in Cairo early in the 20th century and his private comments about Arabs in any of the published biographies of the man. You wonder why I call for the nationalization of AUB.
