“Palestinians have vandalized a banner bearing President Barack Obama’s image just days before his visit.
The Palestinians tore down the banner, hurled shoes at it and spray painted it with swastikas. Associated Press TV video showed a taxi driving over the banner before it was set on fire in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Monday.”
“Israeli Arabs are more afraid than the Jewish public of being attacked by an enemy state, according to the annual ‘National Resilience’ survey.
“Israel’s Jewish population, meanwhile, is more calm than ever about the possibility of an attack by an enemy country, the survey revealed, reporting an all-time low on its so-called ‘fear index.’ This is a continuation of a previous trend that began in 2006. The Jewish population’s fear of terror is also reportedly at an all-time low.
“The annual ‘National Resilience’ survey has been conducted since 2000. Most recently it was conducted in November during Operation Pillar of Defense, polling 2,000 respondents, including 400 Arabs. Questions covered topics such as optimism, militancy, faith in government institutions, and fear regarding a possible attack.”
Irony at its finest.
Source: movedtoanewplacePro-Hamas leftist Israelis and Arab students demonstrate at HU…
…and then run to a bomb shelter when the siren goes off alerting them a Hamas rocket is on its way.
“Imagine the morale booster they would get from an international flotilla! Ships and boats, an armada of morality, led by a former member of the Canadian Parliament, with no one less than the iconic Apartheid-buster, Nobel Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu atop its advisory board. Imagine the international impact of a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid and the critical message to Syrians: YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN!
Forget it.
“For these human rights ‘activists,’ Syrians are as good as forgotten. There is no flotilla heading to either of the Mediterranean Syrian ports of Latakia or Tarsus. Instead, it is heading to help the ‘beleaguered’ people of a few miles south in— Gaza.
“But there is no invasion of Gaza, no one starving. Hamastan’s new neighbor—Muslim Brotherhood-led Egypt—has even opened the border for the transit of goods and a whole lot more.”
”’Syria is at war with the axis of evil whose centers are in Tel Aviv and in Washington,’ Syria’s Ambassador to Iran Hamed Hassan said Monday. Speaking at a Tehran conference titled ‘Syria – the First Line of Resistance,’ Hassan blamed the United States and Israel for backing opposition forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, and announced that several other nations, such as Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have joined forces with the West.”
“Dozens of people demonstrated outside the law courts in the Lebanese capital on Saturday to protest the use of anal ‘tests’ on men suspected of homosexuality, which is a criminal offence in the Arab country.”
“A series of Hezbollah terror attacks inside Israel were foiled recently by the Israel Security Agency after a group of Israeli-Arabs helped smuggle 20 kilograms of high-grade explosives into Israel.”
Investigation by the Israel Security Agency brought to light connections to the terror organization Hezbollah.
Israelis recently marched in Tel Aviv calling upon the government to pass a fair draft law that would include all sectors of society including the Arab and Haredim minorities.
“Alice Walker, author of’ The Color Purple,’ refused to authorize a Hebrew translation of her prize-winning work, citing what she called Israel’s ‘apartheid state.’”
By Michael Peel of the Financial Times.
Gulf states are cracking down on alleged politically and religiously offensive messages on Twitter, in a move that is alarming rights campaigners and highlights the surging regional popularity of the site.
Human Rights Watch has condemned the detention of activists in Bahrain and Kuwait, as social media offer a new outlet for criticism in conservative societies where rulers have traditionally enjoyed near-absolute power in exchange for delivering high living standards.
The arrests – together with other detentions in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – show how social websites are expanding Gulf public life in contrasting and sometimes conflicting directions, as nationals traditionally served only by heavily censored media grapple with rapid social change at home and the political turmoil gripping the Middle East.
While Twitter has carved out a niche in Gulf countries as a tool for organising protest, it has also emerged as a means of religious enforcement; an alternative to physical demonstrations in societies where such confrontations are taboo; and as a debating chamber between loyalists and enemies of the ruling monarchies.
Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi, a UAE-based columnist and the Gulf’s best known tweeter in English, says the site offers for the first time a “window into the minds and thoughts” of groups ranging from previously remote top officials to hitherto “unrecognised political movements”, often operating under aliases. “Recently pro and anti-government elements have … taken advantage of this anonymity to criticise each other – and go as far as making threats,” Mr Qassemi says.
Human Rights Watch last week called for the release of Nabeel Rajab, a rights activist in Bahrain, where the Sunni Muslim monarchy has cracked down on an uprising led by members of the country’s Shia majority. The campaign group said Mr Rajab, who was previously held for more than three weeks in May, had been detained again this month after he tweeted a call for the prime minister to step down.
Human Rights Watch also criticised the Kuwaiti government over a 10-year jail sentence handed down in early June to Hamad al-Naqi over tweeted messages that allegedly criticised the kings of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and insulted the Prophet Mohammed. Mr Naqi’s lawyer says his client was convicted under a law forbidding “intentionally broadcasting news, statements, or false or malicious rumours … that harm the national interests of the state”.
The arrests reflect a migration of Gulf nationals of all political persuasions to Twitter. In a recently released infographic, Amman-based social media consultant Khaled el-Ahmad showed users from the region making up more than two-thirds of the estimated 1.3m Twitter accounts active across the Arab world.
In tiny, but politically active Kuwait, almost 8 per cent of the population uses the service; the 235,000 Kuwaiti accounts eclipse the number of users in nearby Egypt, Mr Ahmad’s graphic showed, citing numbers from the Dubai School of Government.
The boom has sent the popularity of leading users in the Gulf surging at a staggering rate. Many of the top tweeters are clerics, led by Mohamed al-Arefe, a telegenic, conservative Saudi Arabian Islamic scholar, who has this year leapt from just under 650,000 followers to more than 1.8m.
Mr Arefe’s rapid rise shows how – among some sizeable Gulf constituencies – the reach of religious figures is far greater than that of the revolutionaries, media personalities and entertainers comprising the site’s elite in other Arab states. This power was demonstrated in February, when Hamza Kashgari, a young Saudi writer, addressed the Prophet Mohammed in a series of tweets that many declared blasphemous.
After fleeing the country amid a storm of calls for his arrest and execution, Mr Kashgari was extradited from Malaysia and, according to local media reports, is now in detention awaiting trial.
In the UAE, both representatives and opponents of the status quo have embraced Twitter enthusiastically since a ban on it was lifted in 2008. The country’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority – which once oversaw the curb on the site – is now an active user, while Dhahi Khalfan, Dubai’s outspoken police chief, attracts attention and headlines for his lively tweets denouncing Islamists and others he deems to be working against the UAE’s national interests.
The ability of online campaigns by Emirati citizens to reach the halls of power quickly was demonstrated in June with an impromptu Twitter campaign encouraging the UAE’s expatriate majority to wear culturally appropriate dress in public spaces. The call, which resonated widely in the community, quickly made it to local newspaper headlines, international newswires and the country’s Federal National Council, where elected and appointed representatives debated the need for a federal law regulating dress codes.
Deeper political concerns have also been raised. Some UAE citizens have taken to Twitter to rail against what they claim to be the all-pervasive and negative influence of the country’s state security agency, highlighted by the arrest of four people in May on charges of “tribal instigation” and libel over tweeted comments.
The plight of seven Islamists stripped of their nationality documents for unspecified alleged crimes has been broadcast effectively through the site, in the absence of coverage by the local media. Sheikh Sultan bin Kayed al-Qassimi, the highest profile Islamist to be detained, has praised Twitter as the UAE’s Tahrir Square.
It is part of a wider embrace of Twitter in the Gulf that has been as messy – and sometimes ugly – as might be expected in a region suddenly offered a mighty platform for long repressed public discourse.
“Twitter has contributed to an expansion of freedom of expression,” says Dima Khatib, a correspondent for Qatar’s Al Jazeera, who has emerged as one of the region’s biggest Twitter stars since the start of the Arab uprisings. “But things have cracked wide open – we still don’t know how to respect other points of view yet.”
“In an effort to combat growing anti-Israel sentiments in Norway, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has appointed a Druze Arab poet as ambassador to Oslo and named an Arab career diplomat as his deputy. Araidi will be joined by George Deek, a Christian Arab from Yaffo who is currently deputy ambassador to Nigeria.”
Source: elderofziyon.blogspot.co.ukIsn’t primal, irrational hate a wonderful thing?
From Ahram Online:
Egypt’s censor has halted production of a film for allegedly promoting the normalisation of relations with Israel, Al-Ahram Arabic has reported.
Mohamed Kenawy who wrote the film, Regheef Aish…
“Ironically, those who would get harmed the most by the move are some 15,000 Palestinian workers who are employed in these factories and depend on them to make a living.”
