Foreign “interference” in Iraq? Good luck finding it:
A new airport, funded in important part by Iran has opened at the Shiite holy city of Najaf. It will likely bring millions of pilgrims from Iran, Pakistan, India and elsewhere to the shrine of Imam Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad. American authorities worried about Iranians in Iraq may as well just lay back; with millions going in and out, tracking them is going to be rather difficult.
Getting married in Saudi Arabia, a how-to-guide.
Of course, Saudi isn’t a “normal” country.
Is Barack Obama Jewish?
An alternative view on the recent arrest of Radovan Karadzic:
The spirit of the media frenzy surrounding the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 21 is based entirely on the doctrine of non-equivalence inaugurated in 1992: Serbs willed the war, Muslims wanted peace; Serb crimes are bad and justly exaggerated, Muslim crimes are understandable.
This doctrine was spectacularly reiterated a month before Karadzic’s capture, when the Muslim wartime commander of Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, was found not guilty by The Hague Tribunal of any responsibility for the killing of thousands of Serb civilians by the forces under his command in the three years before the fall of the enclave in July 1995. It is also apparent today, in the endless media repetition of Karadzic’s alleged bellicose intransigence before and during the Bosnian war.
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, July 24:
Israel might be able to go on claiming that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East, but it cannot do the same regarding another weapon of mass destruction: the bulldozer. The claim that terror has adopted an original new weapon, a “new fashion” as the public security minister put it, once again shows how convenient it is for us to present a one-sided and distorted picture.
The bulldozer as a destructive and even lethal weapon was not invented by the Palestinians. They are merely imitating an Israeli “fashion” that is as old as the state, or at least as old as the occupation. Let us forget for a moment the 416 villages Israel wiped off the face of the earth in 1948 – that was before there were D9 bulldozers – and focus on a more modern fashion. In Israel’s hands the bulldozer has become one of the most terrifying weapons in the territories. The only difference between the Palestinians’ murderous bulldozer and the Israeli bulldozer is in color and size. As usual, ours is bigger, much bigger. There is no similarity between the small backhoe the Palestinian terrorist was driving and the fearsome D9 driven by Israel Defense Forces soldiers.
From the dawn of the occupation, Caterpillar has been a major arms supplier to Israel, no less than those who provide planes, cannons and tanks. Not for nothing are peace activists trying to call for a boycott of the manufacturer. Israel has sown almost unimaginable destruction using heavy equipment. Go to Rafah, stopping in Khan Yunis on the way, and see the results of the destruction scattered there to this day. Whole neighborhoods razed, the contents of houses – possessions and memories – crushed under the treads. Have you ever seen a street after being “stripped” by a bulldozer? Cars are crushed like tin cans and homes become piles of rubble, along with their contents. Any street in Rafah looks much worse than King David Street in Jerusalem this week.
Speaking of Israeli apartheid…
The American overseas in a post 9/11 world, curious about Arabic, worried about the Middle East and loving Israel.
What is the Girl Effect?
Just when the Middle East conflict couldn’t get any more heated:
After decades of bitter conflict and the loss of thousands of innocent lives, Israeli and Palestinian forces clashed once again this week, with each side laying claim to a five-mile stretch of desperately needed cemetery space.
Fighting over the disputed territory, which is located on the easternmost border of the Gaza Strip, has thus far resulted in more than four dozen casualties. According to sources, the swath of cemetery space is being called the rightful burial home of both the Israeli and Palestinian people.
“Israel has always been the deathplace of the Jews,” said Moshe Abrahim, a religion professor at Bar-Ilan University. “My father was killed here, and his father and mother, and both of his uncles before him were killed here. To have this area occupied by Palestinian bodies is an insult to our great history.”
From the New York Times, December 21, 1924:
Hitler Tamed by Prison: Released on Parole, He Is Expected to Return to Austria.
Jeremy Scahill, The Guardian, July 23:
It seems that executives from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration’s favourite hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS gas and Little Bird helicopters and go back to the great dismal swamp of North Carolina whence they came. Or at least that’s how it is being portrayed in the media.
Shame on journalists for not recognising the noble work of the gallant heroes and patriots (who happen to be paid much more than US troops and have not been subjected to any system of law and who can leave the war zone any moment they choose) and forcing Blackwater to consider abandoning its (very profitable, billion-dollar) charitable humanitarian campaign in Iraq. Remember, according to Blackwater, it is not a mercenary organisation. It is a “peace and stability” operation employing “global stabilisation professionals“.
What next, the weather channel being sponsored by the nuclear industry? Oh wait:
The tentacle-like growth of clandestine advertising in American TV shows in the form of product placement has taken another controversial step with the introduction of McDonald’s products into regional news programmes.
Several TV outlets have begun to sell the fast-food giant the right to place cups of its iced coffee on to the desks of news anchors as they present morning current affairs shows.
Following my lead letter in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, the following letters appear in response today (under the headline, “Define reasonable, Mr Loewenstein”):
Antony Loewenstein says “not many Jews” agree that the 2001 UN conference against racism in Durban was an anti-Semitic hatefest (Letters, July 23).
I was a delegate and I don’t remember Mr Loewenstein being there when hundreds of Palestinians and Muslims were screaming in our faces “death to the Jews”. Nor when Palestinians and members of the Arab Lawyers League were handing out leaflets saying that if Hitler had done his job properly, there would have been no Israel and no Palestinian problem.
More importantly, he misses Anne Bayefsky’s key point, which is that Western values of free speech and support for open interfaith dialogue are threatened, rather than supported, by the UN Human Rights Council.
Alan Gold Leura
The headline on Antony Loewenstein’s letter, “Israel the aggressor must accept reasonable and unbiased criticism” could have been more appropriately worded “Israel must accept reasonable criticism”.
Each of us brings our bias, our opinion weighted with life experience, when we enter into conversation. As a Jew, I recognise mistakes have been made on both sides of the conflict in the Middle East. But to argue as Mr Loewenstein does that the “Palestinians are the eternally demonised people, occupied, starved and killed with impunity by Israel” only presents another “biased” perspective, not reasonable criticism.
In the past week, Israel has mourned the losses of soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, while Hezbollah and Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, have praised the release of the murderer Samir Kuntar. I hope Mr Loewenstein, in his ardent pursuit of human rights, would not condemn Israel while its neighbours dance in the street when murderers go free.
Reasonable criticism and a pursuit of human rights will come only when we acknowledge the mistakes of both sides. But when one nation mourns and others celebrate a vigilante with seemingly no respect for human life, I reserve my right to be reasonably biased.
Paul Jacobson Bondi
A few comments are in order. The issue of human rights in the Middle East is indeed a fraught one, but far too many Jews seem able to convince themselves that Israelis are on the side of angels and only Arabs are the terrorists. Hardly. The occupation of Palestinian land is a daily attack on dignity. Until the Western world understands the reality of Arab resistance to Zionist designs on the region, conflict will continue.
It’s amazing, in the letters above, how I’m chastised for not appreciating the Jew-hatred of the “enemy.” I’m well aware of it, having travelling around the Middle East a number of times. But Zionists refuse to acknowledge their responsibility for creating anti-Semitism, defending the occupation or remaining silent about it.
