iPouya

See the video from the “only democracy in the Middle East” here.

The Guardian – Excerpt: 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.

Eyewitnesses report that although most of those attending produced valid residency cards, this did not spare them from being handcuffed, beaten and racially abused. According to Sudanese and Lebanese newspaper reports (in Arabic), the detainees were referred to as animals who “learned how to wear nice clothes” and “black pieces of coal”, and lined up flat on their bellies. Some members of the police, seemingly ignorant of the fact that there are any Arabic-speaking black Arabs, asked some of the Sudanese how they spoke Arabic so fluently. The Sudanese responded that they were Arabs from Sudan. In disbelief, the officers thought that they were being mocked, and another round of beating started.

See the trailer here.

See the trailer here.

Gotta love this video.

His only crime was that he was an Arab man who slept with a Jewish woman… if this is the only “democracy in the Middle East” then the Middle East has extremely low standards – Haaretz:  An Arab resident of Jerusalem who had consensual sex with a woman who believed him to be Jewish, was convicted yesterday of rape by deception and sentenced to 18 months in prison by the Jerusalem District Court. Sabbar Kashur, 30, was convicted as part of a plea bargain. According to the indictment, Kashur met the complainant in September 2008 in downtown Jerusalem, presenting himself as a Jewish bachelor looking for a serious romantic relationship. The couple then went to a nearby building and had sex, after which Kashur left the building without waiting for the woman to get dressed. When the woman found Kashur was not a Jew but an Arab, she filed a complaint that resulted in charges of rape and indecent assault.

al-Jazeera: A recently-revealed tape has shown Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, discussing ways to undermine the Oslo Accords and calling the United States “easy” to manipulate….

Netanyahu – who did not hold political office when the recording was made - was dismissive of the United States, calling it easily manipulated.

“I know what America is,” Netanyahu said. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”

Netanyahu also spoke extensively about undermining the Oslo Accords, the agreement signed in 1993 which set a framework for future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The Oslo Accords specified that Israel would be allowed to keep “military zones” in the West Bank in any future agreement with the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu told the settlers he would use that loophole to retain large portions of Palestinian territory.

“I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ’67 borders,” he said.

“How do we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I’m concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone.”

Here’s an interesting interview at Tehran Bureau on the working class and the Green Movement: “The Green Movement cannot succeed unless it raises social justice demands, which include workers’ demands at the center. During the Khatami era, Reformists failed because they did not take the demand for social justice seriously, and did not make efforts to organize social forces. When there were disturbances in Islamshahr [a working-class city near Tehran], Reformist newspapers paid them no attention. Reformists better have learned from these experiences.”

The Independent: Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed.

The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land.

Drawing on official Israeli military maps and population statistics, the leading Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, compiled the new findings, which were released just as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived in Washington to try to heal a gaping rift with US President Barack Obama over the issue of settlements.

Fadlallah passed away yesterday. I would have commented on it sooner but I was in the Bay area for the weekend and didn’t get around to blogging until now. Contrary to media reports, Fadlallah was not the “spiritual guide” to Hizbullah. He did not establish the group nor did he sanction all of its activities, but he did endorse those that were in harmony with his own beliefs. His main contribution, however, was the his role in a Shi’i militant awakening in Lebanon in the 1960s and 1970s. Like Imam Musa as-Sadr, Fadlallah’s writings and sermons helped create a militant consciousness among the dispossessed and war-ravaged Shi’i of Lebanon. One of his most important writings was a book titled “The Logic of Force” which gave religious sanction to revolutionary violence. His teachings helped foster a militant environment from which Hizbullah – in tandem with the Iranian Revolution in general and Khomeini in particular – was launched and has since become arguably the most powerful resistance organization in the entire Middle East and wider Muslim world. But make no mistake about it, it was Khomeini who ordered the creation of Hizbullah and provided it with crucial guidance, financial, and military support.  In 1985, after 3 years of underground existence, Hizbullah came out into the open by declaring its existence and aims through the publication of its first communique, in which Khomeini was declared the leader of the organization, his ideology was recognized as that of Hizbullah’s, and his image appeared on the back of the pamphlet. Today, officially, Khamenei is Hizbullah’s spiritual leader.  Nevertheless, as an aspiring historian who wrote his master’s thesis in part on Hizbullah’s origins, seeing him pass is witnessing history. Read about his death here. Here’s a good obituary by The Guardian.

Palestinians resisting the Gaza siege… with sand. I admire their resilience while abhoring Israel’s ruthlessness. See the video here.

al-Jazeera: First close down the borders and refuse to allow any exports out.

Then ban the importing of any raw material for factories and businesses.

Force the commercial class to rely on expensive underground smuggling tunnels to procure what the community needs. This in turn enriches the tunnel owners.

Prevent businesspeople from travelling abroad.

And then, if the economy still has a breath of life left in it, go to war. Bomb the region and destroy its factories.

Finally refuse to allow any building material in so that those businesses cannot be rebuilt.

De-development

The result is the economy goes backwards in a process called de-development.

Businesses close, jobs are lost and families become dependent on food aid.

This is what has happened in Gaza.

It is suffering from a four year old siege, the destruction from Israel’s war and now a continued siege, with no sign of any real abatement.

While a few more products have entered Gaza since Israel killed nine people on board the Gaza-bound aid ship, the Mavi Mamara, raw materials for businesses have not.

And in some respects the blockade on business is getting worse.

Now Gaza’s manufacturers have to compete with Israeli products.

And Israel’s goods are cheaper and better quality because they are not produced under siege.

Truckloads of Israeli biscuits are entering Gaza. Israel says this is part of its so-called decision to “liberalise” the siege.

Al-Awda biscuit factory

This could put a company like Al-Awda biscuits in Gaza out of business.

Its owner, Mohammed al-Tilbani, has to depend on tunnels to bring in sugar, flour, cocoa. Imports are banned by Israel. So everything he needs for his factory is carried through a dirt underground passage.

The costs are high, the quality poor and the goods often arrive damaged and unusable.

Al-Tlibani started his business with nothing. Now he has a biscuit and ice cream factory. He could operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Imagine the jobs this would create in Gaza where unemployment is greater than 40 per cent.

But since the siege, his 350 employees have only worked up to eight days each month. This is barely enough money to keep their families alive.

As for the ice cream factory, with electricity cuts of eight to 16 hours a day, it is too difficult to keep the ice cream frozen and this part of the factory permanently running.

So al-Tilbani is watching his hard work fall apart.

Before the siege he planned to open another factory, for chips. He travelled abroad, bought the machinery and shipped it to Israel.

Cruel joke

But since Israel imposed the blockade he has not been allowed to import the equipment to Gaza. It is stuck in a warehouse in Israel.

Destroy the businesses and destroy the job market. This collective punishment of Gaza’s population is illegal under international law, but it continues.

Somehow the al-Awda factory has managed to stay open throughout the siege. But now it faces its greatest challenge – competition from Israeli biscuits.

The Israeli biscuits have the advantage. Israeli factories can import anything they like and now they can also export into the strip. It is likely this will displace the local product which only has one market, Gaza.

The biggest market for Al-Awda biscuits used to be the West Bank.

It seems like a cruel joke. Israel attempts to assuage the international community by “easing” the siege.

So it allows Israeli goods to be sold inside Gaza; while blockading goods made in Gaza.

This is one more step in killing an economy.

This highly emotional HBO documentary on the death of Neda Agha Soltan is a must see.