THE ANGRY ARAB ONLINE NEWSLETTER

NOVANEWS
Monday, August 16, 2010

boycott

“In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.”

Sunday, August 15, 2010

 

Ghazi Qusaybi: died

Was an interesting writer and poet who squandered his talents and his skills in the service of House of Saud. No floor was too low for his chin when it came to prostrating himself before the House of Saud. Even when King Fahd banished him in the 1980s, he managed to write a fawning poem to the King begging for forgiveness. This Saudi ambassador and Minister died: the ban on all his books was lifted weeks before his death, when he was on his deathbed.

Lebanon’s elite army forces

I have no comment.

Contrary to what I have been reading in Western media. I don’t think that Nasralllah’s press conference was intended to prove Israeli’s responsibility for the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. That was not the point although many Arabs believe that Israel is capable of any massacre, atrocity, or assassination (I liked what the defense correspondent to Haaretz said on Aljazeera. He said: oh, no. Israel stopped doing those kind of things 15 years ago). Nasrallah was aiming to undermine once and for all the credibility of the court. In that, he was successful. End of story. But the one who undermined the credibility of the court before him was Detliv Mehlis. Go back and read his comedic report. I can’t believe that it was discussed in the UNSC. Wait: oh, no. I can believe that, and I am sure the Bush administration loved it.

“But in the meantime, the administration delivered a message to the Lebanese government viaFrederic Hof, senior advisor to Special Envoy George Mitchell, who was in Beirut on a previously scheduled visit. Hof arrived there last week and left August 9. He met with senior civilian and military leaders to discuss the border incident and to update them on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a senior U.S. official told The Cable. “He noted that the incident could and should have been avoided and placed stress on the important U.S.-Lebanon bilateral defense relationship,” the official said. Hof also warned that some in Congress were trying to curtail or even eliminate U.S. military assistance to the LAF and the administration’s efforts to keep the assistance going were dependent on there being no further incidents. “Hof told his interlocutors that if something like this were to happen again, he’s not sure we could prevent [the elimination of the aid] from happening,” the official said. Perhaps most importantly, Hof communicated to senior Lebanese officials that their actions going forward, such as taking assistance from Iran, for example, would have consequences for U.S.-Lebanon military cooperation.””He reaffirmed that the Administration considers the relationship very important and the role of the LAF as a national institution defending the country’s sovereignty to be vital. But he also explained that our ability to justify and strengthen this important defense relationship will be affected by what Lebanon does in the wake of this incident,” the official said.”

“More recently the UAE police arrested a citizen in Ras al-Khaimah, one of the federation’s seven emirates, for trying to organise protests against a rise in petrol prices. Such protests are rare in the super-rich but democracy-free UAE. The police were able to trace the organiser because he revealed his BlackBerry’s identity code in a message he had sent out, calling for the protests.”

“Like Mr bin Laden, Mr Gingrich is apparently still relitigating the victories and defeats of religious wars fought in Europe and the Middle East centuries ago. He should rejoin the modern world, before he does real harm.”

“One reason for Israel’s acquiescence is a positive feeling towards the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. Israeli ministers and diplomats speak of him with warmth, in private as well as in public, and Israeli citizens have begun to exclude him from their anti-UN animus.“

Saturday, August 14, 2010

I finally managed to watch Eliane Raheb’s film, Hayda Libnan. I saw it on New TV. Eliane had sent me a DVD copy early on but I lost it in the jungle of books in my house. I loved it. It was entertaining and critical. She is a fine story-teller. It revealingly discusses the sectarianism of her own family, although I wished that she covered other sectarianisms in Lebanon. Translation in the subtitles were not very accurate by the way. The film can be enjoyed by non-Lebanese as well. She has a cynical touch in her films which makes for good films.

From the yellow newspaper of Kuwait Zionist, Ahmad Al-Jarallah: “يدرك اللبنانيون ان اسرائيل – طوال حربها المفتوحة مع العالم العربي – لم تعلن مرة واحدة لبنان في خانة “اعدائها” ولم تتحرش به او تجتاحه الا بوجود الهيمنة الفلسطينية عليه ومن ثم الهيمنة الايرانية, آخذة بعين الاعتبار “الحياد السوري” الذي ضبط حدود لبنان مع اسرائيل كما هو مضبوط في مرتفعات الجولان منذ نيف وثلاثة عقود من الزمن, كما ان تل ابيب لم تشمل لبنان في كل حروبها الكبرى الشاملة مع الدول العربية (سورية ومصر والاردن) وتركته وشأنه كما انه هو تركها وشأنها تحت غطاء اتفاق الهدنة الذي مازال وليد جنبلاط السياسي الوحيد الذي يعلقه فوق صدره ويطالب به رغم انفي حزب الله والنظام السوري اللذين لا يعترفان به.”

UC Irvine

“The general theme was that Israel is an oppressor and deliberately murders innocent Palestinians, aided and abetted by an imperialistic America. California State University-Stanislaus political science professor As’ad Abu Khalil, for example, claimed that civilian casualties by Israel are “never accidental.””

Your beloved Anwar Sadat

“Even the deep anti-Semitism common in today’s Islamist groups like Hamas and Hizbullah was not, he argues, as marked in the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928. By contrast, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who broke the Arab taboo on peace with Israel and paid for it with his life in 1981, was “a notorious Jew-hater”.”” (thanks Khelil)

Comrade Talal sent me this: “You cite his claim of having received an honorary doctorate from Barrington University. Actually, the link you provide also mentions another honorary doctorate from the American University of Asturias. I googled it and found that it was closed by the Spanish government as an unaccredited /fraudulent enterprise.:

See the following entries under the above search:
and

The funny thing is that he got both phony doctorates in one ceremony that was held in Casino du Liban. I mean, what better place to receive phony honorary doctorates? I try to teach myself every day not to be surprised by anything, but life remains full of them.

Talal

PS: if two of the three doctorates are phony certificates from discredited enterprises, what does it say about the third doctorate and its parent institution?”

Origins of Saudi-Israeli alliance: the untold story

This is from an unpublished (unclassified) American government study of the subject. It states: “Anctual Israeli support of the Saudi-Imamate causes probably began prior to any direct meetings between representatives of the two governments and the Yemeni Royalist movement…This study has been able to trace at least two locations of direct Saudi-Israeli meetings which began at two distinct phases in the Yemeni civil war. The first traceable set of meetings began in March of 1963 in India. Indian sources reported that an official of the Saudi Embassy in India, Ahmad Allalah Al-Qadi, began frequenting the Israeli consulate in Bombay. According to Arab (Egyptian) sources, Crown Prince Faisal ordered the Saudi official’s meetings in reaction to the two Arab nationalist coups in Baghdad and Damascus in February and March 1963 that removed anti-Nasser governments from power in each state…The focus of the Israeli-Saudi talks were the prospects for Israel dropping arms for the Royalist tibal forces as well as Israel providing military intelligence regarding Egyptian army movements and capabilities to both the Saudis and Yemenis. Israeli and Yemeni representatives met directly, either upon their own initiative, or under Saudi auspices, during this period. An Imamate delegate visited Israel in March 1963 at the same time that the Saudi embassy official began visiting the Israeli consulate in Bombay…However, other Israeli sources disclosed that unmarked Israeli planes made over a dozen and perhaps as many as twenty flights from Djibouti to drop arms over Royalist areas in late 1962 and most of 1963. The second confirmed set of Saudi-Israeli meetings occurred in Europe and began in 1965. In a highly unusual manner, former Israeli ambassador to Great Britain (1965-1970) Aharon Remez, made mention of his, and other high Israeli officials, continuous contacts with “Arab leaders from Saudi Arabia and Jordan” in a 1983 newspaper interview. In neither the original Kol Ha’ir (August 12, 1983) newspaper article nor subsequent interview did the former ambassador reveal the contents of the meetings, except to say that “not much came out of these, but they were very eye opening.” In all subsequent interviews Remez stated that he feared that it was still early early to talk about the meetings. However, other (military) sources, claim that AMAN, the Saudi Defense Ministry and the security branches of Iran, including SAVAK as well as the Iranian Ministry of Defense, were in constant contact with one another even following the Israeli victory in June 1967. One source asserts that Moshe Dayan was the key intermediary with the Saudi defense establishment who soon shifted their focus of concern toward other areas of the Arabian Peninsula, such as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen…” (pp. 23-25 from the unpublished, unclassified secret US government study).

I wish to thank my anonymous source (who shall remain very anonymous) in the US government. You may read on the subject from a published source in Clive Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Lebanese musician, Elias Rahbani, claims that he received an honorary doctorate from “Barrington University” in Washington, DC. I kid you not. Try to locate that university. (thanks Moustafa)

Walid Jumblat flew to Paris to meet with Jeffrey Feltman…accidentally. I am not making this up.

Religious noises in Lebanon

The Catholic religious leadership in Lebanon called for censorship of a show dealing with Jesus (and the Iranian-made show did rely on the discredited forgery of the “Gospel of Barnabas”). Some Muslim criticisms of the ban are hypocritical because Muslims would be outraged if a non-Muslim produced a TV series on the life of Muhammad. So which side I am on in this controversy? I am against both.

My weekly article in Al-Akhbar: “Beyond `Adaysah: The Occupation Forces of UNIFIL”

“The piece lacked a crucial personal disclosure on Baker’s part: Her husband, Tamim Samee, an Afghan-American IT entrepreneur, is a board member of an Afghan government minister’s $100 million project advocating foreign investment in Afghanistan, and has run two companies, Digistan and Ora-Tech, that have solicited and won development contracts with the assistance of the international military, including private sector infrastructure projects favored by U.S.-backed leader Hamid Karzai.”

Jihad Bazzi on Elias Murr.

And Fida’ `Itani on the same clown.

Samir Qasir Center for press rights outside of Saudi influence

Comrade Pierre responds to the hypocrisy of Samir Kasir Center for bullshit press rights.