Tag Archives: Egypt

Mar 26 2013

Why wasn’t this deleted? Passover edition.

Guardian contributor Harry J Enten recently published a personal story at ‘Comment is Free’ about his childhood memories of Passover, and how his affection for the Jewish holiday has grown over the years (Passover is an acquired taste I’ve grown to love, March 25).

Despite the completely apolitical (and non-theological) nature of Enten’s first person essay about perhaps the most widely observed Jewish holiday among both religious and secular Jews, the first CiF reader to comment couldn’t help but impute, in the celebration of the Jewish people’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, something much darker.

keoThe comment, charging Jews around the world with celebrating genocide, has thus far received 62 ‘Recommends’ and has not been deleted by moderators despite its flagrant violation of ‘Comment is Free’ community standards.

Mar 8 2013

Hamas’s blockade on women’s rights in Gaza

Guardian reporters and contributors have implicitly blamed the Israeli blockade for spousal abuse in Gaza, and even for one Palestinian man’s suicide, so a recent first person account by Najah Ayash (titled ‘Life in Gaza on International Women’s Day‘) addressing her life as a women in Gaza, which completely ignored Hamas’s violation of women’s human rights, was not surprising.

women

It is likely that Ayash, head of a women’s development centre in Rafah, could face dangerous consequences if she were to criticize the Hamas regime, but, nevertheless, her essay, which appeared on the Guardian’s ‘Global Development’ page, is grossly misleading and does nothing to provide insight on the real problems facing women in Gaza.

Here’s her piece in full:

I was born and raised in a refugee camp in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. My father worked as a tailor and his income barely covered our daily expenses. I was one of 10 siblings living in a cramped, two-bedroom house with asbestos ceilings.

When I was young girl, I remember my grandmother telling me about the journey of their suffering in 1948 during the Palestinian Nakba [when thousands of Palestinians lost their homes during the Arab-Israeli war]. The same journey of suffering continues to be carried by me and my family.

Our life in the 1980s was difficult, yet people shared a sense of community. Men were the breadwinners whereas women cared for the children. Despite our poor upbringing, I’m fortunate to have received an education. At first, getting an education wasn’t a priority due to traditional responsibilities and financial constraints, but eventually I managed to secure a university degree in English language.

Now I’m a mother of seven – four daughters and three sons. My husband is a carpenter, but his business collapsed due to the blockade [imposed after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip], and Israel’s restriction on the entry of raw materials, such as wood. We still live in Rafah, and occupy two bedrooms in a small, shared house belonging to my husband’s family.

Rafah borders Egypt, and has been a frontline in the constant fighting between Palestinian armed groups and the Israeli army. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed, leaving many families homeless.

I’m the head of a women’s development centre in Rafah, which provides training courses for women and young girls, and benefits around 300 women each month. Severely depressed women often visit the centre and talk about their problems, such as securing food, water, electricity, etc. I try to support them, but they’re living in great pain – and only think about their families’ daily survival rather their rights as women.

For five years I’ve been running a farm, part of an Oxfam project. As a woman, it’s been quite challenging but now I’m able to sell milk and cheese – which are usually expensive because of the Israeli blockade – at affordable prices.

Women in Gaza love life as much as other women across the world. Although we lack basic rights, partly due to the blockade and unfair policies, we are strong. We hope the world will pay extra attention so that Gaza’s women can help rebuild Palestinian society. [emphasis added]

The blockade, per Ayash, not Hamas’s Islamist ideology, is injurious to women’s rights.  

(Note that the only time the word Hamas is used at all is in the fourth paragraph down, added in brackets by a Guardian editor.)

If you’d like to get a real glimpse into the oppression of women in Gaza, see Freedom House’s profile, here.

Here’s a highlight from their report:

Under Hamas, personal status law is derived almost entirely from Sharia (Islamic law), which puts women at a stark disadvantage in matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and domestic abuse. Rape, domestic abuse, and “honor killings,” in which relatives murder women for perceived sexual or moral transgressions, are common, and these crimes often go unpunished. A December 2009 study by the Palestinian Woman’s Information and Media Center found that 77 percent of women in Gaza had experienced violence of various sorts, 53 percent had experienced physical violence, and 15 percent had suffered sexual abuse. Women’s dress and movements in public have been increasingly restricted under Hamas rule. The government has barred women from wearing trousers in public and declared that all women must wear hijab in public buildings, though these policies are enforced sporadically. In 2010, the government banned women from smoking water pipes and men from cutting women’s hair. In July 2011, police began arresting male hairdressers who violated this ban.

Guardian contributors and editors are simply indefatigable in their efforts to run interference for the reactionary movement in control of 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza.

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Feb 27 2013

Cruel siege on Gaza by neighboring state: Tunnels, flooded with raw sewage, now to be destroyed

The smuggling tunnels linking Gaza to Egypt are a security threat and must be destroyed, a Jerusalem Cairo court ruled on Tuesday, responding to a petition brought by a group of activists in the wake of rocket firing and cross border attacks on Israel a cross-border attack, by jihadist elements who infiltrated from Gaza through the tunnels, that killed 16 Egyptian border guards in August.

A Palestinian smuggler moves refrigerators through a tunnel from Egypt to the Gaza Strip under the border in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. (Photo: AP)

A Palestinian smuggler moves refrigerators through a tunnel from Egypt into Gaza under the border in Rafah. (Photo: AP)

The Israeli Egyptian court ruling makes it obligatory that the government destroy the tunnels, according to Reuters.

Israel Egypt cannot tolerate a porous border that will continue to destabilize the Sinai Peninsula, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s national security adviser reportedly said.

Gaza, home to roughly 1.7 million people, has lived with border restrictions since Hamas’s violent takeover of the territory in 2007. Smuggling under the 15-kilometer border has circumvented official crossings and bypassed restrictions for many years.

Restrictions on the influx of goods into the territory has prompted Palestinians in Gaza to smuggle in luxury goods, weapons and cash through the illegal tunnels. Hamas officials are known to collect fees from tunnel operators.

An estimated 30% of goods that reach Gaza come through the tunnels

An Israeli Egyptian lawyer, Wael Hamdy, instigated the case because he was “worried about the state of national security” in his country after terror attacks prompted by lawlessness in the Sinai desert region.

The lawyer also said that, in addition to recent efforts by Jerusalem the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Cairo to close some tunnels,  Israel Egypt has recently resorted to other draconian and inhumane measures such flooding some of the more than 2000 active tunnels with raw sewage.

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The systematic siege on Gaza’s lifeline to the outside world has been met with  fierce condemnation silence from pro-Palestinian groups, assorted “human rights” organizations and, even more strangely, the Guardian.

gaza

Guardian Gaza page, Feb. 27, 2013

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Jan 25 2013

What the Guardian won’t report: Israel’s thriving, liberal democracy

Our friends at CAMERA wrote the following, in a post titled ‘Where’s the coverage? Israel the Only Free Country in the Middle East‘, Jan. 23, the day after yet another free and fair Israeli election.

Maybe they were too busy bemoaning the state of Israel’s democracy to do any actual reporting, but the mainstream news media [as well as the Guardian] completely ignored a report by Freedom House, an independent watchdog group dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world, that rated Israel as the only free country in the Middle East.

As we noted in a post on Jan. 22, predictions by Guardian journalists, analysts and commentators that Israel’s democracy was in decline – and that the Jewish state was lurching towards an extreme right political abyss – were proven wildly inaccurate.

CAMERA continues:

In the 2013 edition of its annual report, “Freedom in the World,” the organization wrote: “Israel remains the region’s only Free country. In recent years, controversies have surrounded proposed laws that threatened freedom of expression and the rights of civil society organizations. In most cases, however, these measures have either been quashed by the government or parliament, or struck down by the Supreme Court.”

In other words, Israel’s democracy works. By contrast, both Gaza, under Hamas, and the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority were rated “Not Free,” as was Jordan. Lebanon and Egypt ranked as merely “Partly Free.”

To look at a map of world freedom, click on this link. You’ll have to enlarge it quite a bit to see the sliver of green freedom that is Israel in the sea of yellow (“partly free”) and purple (“not free”) that is the Middle East and North Africa.

Here’s a snapshot of the Freedom House political freedom map, with a red arrow pointing to the sliver of democracy in the Middle East.

freedom

CAMERA adds:

Given the hyper-focus on Israel by the press, one might expect news outlets to at least mention this positive evaluation of the Jewish State. However, although Israeli and Jewish outlets reported the Freedom House study, CAMERA could not locate any mainstream news media that covered it. More embarrassing still, even Egypt’s Daily News wrote: “Egypt is now one of six countries in the Middle East that is classified by Freedom House as “partly free”. Eleven are classed as “not free”, while Israel is the region’s only “free” country.“

A newspaper in a country that has only recently been upgraded to “partly free” covered Israel’s “free” ranking but news outlets in “free” countries did not.

…

One has to ask, why the hesitancy to report something positive about Israel’s democracy? 

While there are many factors which explain why the Guardian ignores evidence of Israel’s clear democratic advantages in the region, one of the most central is the ideological orientation of the Guardian Left which typically reduces complicated political phenomena down to a binary David vs. Goliath paradigm.

Such framing nurtures coverage of the region which routinely characterizes Israeli leaders, even in the context of fair and free democratic elections, as extremely “right-wing”, while avoiding such pejorative depictions of even the most reactionary Palestinian leaders.  

Indeed, as Simon Plosker observed, such a political orientation inspired the Guardian to describe Mahmoud Abbas, in one editorial, as the “most moderate Palestinian leader”.  Abbas is similarly framed as a “moderate” by Guardian journalists and CiF commentators despite the fact that the Palestinian President is currently serving the 8th year of a 4 year term, has engaged in Holocaust denial, and leads a government which promotes martyrdom and antisemitic incitement, and severely oppresses women, gays, religious minorities, critical Palestinian journalists and political opponents.  

Further, it simply strains credulity to imagine that a new independent Palestinian Arab state in the West Bank would be truly democratic, any more liberal, or nominally respect the human rights of its citizens. 

However, as long as Israeli politics are myopically viewed through the ideologically skewed filter of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, even the most intuitive evidence regarding the extreme right political center of gravity within Palestinian society on one hand, and the Jewish state’s liberal, democratic advantages on the other, will continue to be downplayed or ignored.

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Dec 24 2012

Meet Egyptian peace activist Maikel Nabil: Pro-democracy, pro-Palestinian & pro-Israel

The word “bravery” is pranced around way too frequently these days, but a young Arab, in a country struggling to free itself from the yoke of tyranny – who defiantly promotes the causes of democracy, tolerance and peace between Arabs and Israelis deserves such recognition. 

Liberal Egyptian blogger, human rights dissident, and peace advocate Maikel Nabil spent over 302 days in prison for criticizing the Egyptian Military after it took power in early 2011. Before he was released on Jan. 24, 2012 - after a “Free Maikel” Twitter campaign captured the support of millions worldwide, and after his 130-day hunger strike – Nabil was subjected to beatings, torture and other cruel forms of abuse.

I met Nabil, one of the genuine heroes of Tahir Square, briefly today in Jerusalem while he was on a peace tour of the Jewish state – where he’s delivering lectures, meeting with leading public figures and peace activists, and visiting the Palestinian territories – and it was clear while speaking to him that he’s as passionately patriotic towards Egypt as he is sincere in his benevolence towards both Palestinians and Israelis.  

nabil

Nabil today in Jerusalem

Nabil believes there is a much greater degree of goodwill on behalf of Egyptians towards Israelis than what the media is reporting, and it would be fair to characterize his trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories (sponsored by UN Watch) as a genuine “peace mission” aimed at dispelling myths about both Egyptians and Israelis – all of which makes the disruption of his speech at Hebrew University yesterday, by “pro-Palestinian activists” almost inexplicable.

Israelis who advocate on behalf of Palestinians – either Arabs or Jews – should, it seems, be heartened by a genuine human rights activist who’s working to bring about a peaceful, democratic Middle East where the rights of all in the region are respected.

However, undeterred by such criticism, Nabil is remarkably optimistic.

Nabil believes that the Muslim Brotherhood-led government is indeed a step backwards for Egyptian democracy (and for Egyptian-Israeli relations), but he expressed confidence that the truly liberal values of the revolution will ultimately prevail.

“It might take 3 or 4 years”, he told me, but a democratic Egypt which respects the human rights of all its citizens, secular and religious, will, he fervently believes, eventually emerge.

In one blog post, written while he was in prison, Nabil reiterated his refusal to engage with the military’s interrogators, and – evoking the courageous resistance of Natan Sharansky during his imprisonment in the Soviet gulags vividly described in ‘Fear No Evil‘ – wrote “I don’t beg for my freedom from a group of killers and homeland-stealers.” He added:

The military council is the one that has to apologise for my imprisonment, my torture, silencing my mouth, spying on my life, my relatives and my friends,” he wrote. “The military council is the one that has to apologise [for] its crimes of killing, torturing and unlawful prosecutions.

Finally, I’d highly recommend reading Nabil’s blog post about Israel, also written while in an Egyptian prison, titled “Why am I pro-Israel“, which provides a fascinating insight into the mind of the truly liberal activist, and should offer a glimmer of hope even to the most cynical among us.

prison

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Dec 9 2012

Guardian editorial takes the side of Morsi (or Mubarak?)

To get an idea of just how outrageous a recent Guardian editorial (on Dec. 7) defending President Morsi and criticizing the liberal opposition truly was, here are two tweets by commentators with otherwise unimpeachable Guardian Left credentials:

Here’s Guardian Cairo correspondent Jack Shenker.

Here’s ‘Comment is Free’ contributor Rachel Shabi:

Here are a few excerpts of the Guardian editorial in question:

[The crisis in Egypt] is not about the proposed constitution,

…

[The opposition is engaged in] a power battle in which the aim is to unseat a democratically elected president, and to prevent a referendum and fresh parliamentary elections being held, both of which Islamists stand a good chance of winning. Morsi, for his part, is determined that both polls be held as soon as possible to reaffirm the popular mandate which he still thinks he has.

…

The opposition on the other hand has never accepted the results of freely held elections, parliamentary or presidential, and is doing everything to stop new ones being held

So, the Guardian, when faced with a choice between a Muslim Brotherhood which is ideologically opposed to true democracy and individual freedoms – a political predisposition clearly on display in Morsi’s recent decision to assume dictatorial powers - and a political opposition which is at least marginally progressive, chose the reactionary Islamists.

The following post by a Lebanese writer, who blogs at Karl reMarks, is titled ‘The Guardian’s Editorial on Egypt Re-Imagined‘, and is based on the same Dec. 7 Guardian editorial re-imagined as if it were written in January 2011, with minor changes like replacing Morsi with Mubarak.

As the crisis in Egypt develops, it is becoming increasingly clear what it is not about. It is not about the elections, or the economic crisis, or Egypt’s relationship with Israel. Nor is it about the arrangements for a successor to the president. Nor even is it about the temporary but absolute powers that the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, assumed for himself – for a mere thirty years, and which will lapse the moment the Egyptian people stop making a fuss.

Urging the opposition to shun dialogue, Mohamed ElBaradei said that Mubarak had lost his legitimacy. So the target of the opposition is not the constitution, or the emergency law, but Mubarak himself. What follows is a power battle in which the aim is to unseat a democratically elected president, with 88.6% of the vote, and to prevent fresh parliamentary elections being held, both of which the ruling NDP stand a good chance of winning. Mubarak, for his part, is determined that both polls be held as soon as possible to reaffirm the popular mandate which he still thinks he has.

In weighing who occupies the moral high ground, let us start with what happened on Wednesday night. That is when the crisis, sparked by yet another Mubarak decree when he was at the height of his domestic popularity over the role he played in stopping the yet another Israeli assault on Gaza, turned violent. The NDP party sanctioned a violent assault on a peaceful encampment of opposition supporters in Tahrir Square. But lethal force came later, and the NDP was its principle victims. NDP offices were attacked up and down the country, while no other party offices were touched. This does not fit the opposition’s narrative to be the victims of state violence. Both sides are victims of violence and the real perpetrators are their common enemy.

Mubarak undoubtedly made grave mistakes. In pre-empting decisions by the courts to derail his reforms, his decrees were cast too wide. His laws have many faults, although none are set in stone. The opposition on the other hand has never accepted the results of freely held elections, parliamentary or presidential, and is doing everything to stop new ones being held.

The Guardian is not only supporting a racist, antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-West Islamist movement, but are remaining loyal even when a more liberal alternative is possible. 

You don’t need to agree with our critique of the paper’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict to acknowledge that the ‘Guardian Left’ ideology in many ways resembles the reactionary right more than anything truly progressive?

Nov 5 2012

The Muslim Brotherhood are turning into Leninists in Islamist dress. Egypt is in real trouble

(Alan Johnson’s essays on the the dangers posed by the rise of Islamism are truly in a league of their own.  And, his most recent analysis, published on Nov. 5 at The Telegraph and excerpted below, is clearly no exception.  A.L.)

Hardliners are gaining the upper hand in Egypt

Paul Berman, the New York intellectual, is perhaps the most penetrating and imaginative essayist writing about Islamist movements and ideas alive today. In 2010 he published The Flight of the Intellectuals, a stylish account of the Muslim Brotherhood: the Islamist political movement founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna (known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen). According to Berman, the party was shaped decisively in both its ideology and organisational methods by mid-century European totalitarianism and was a politically hardened, ideologically driven and anti-Semitic movement. It was from this inconvenient truth that much of the western media and many public intellectuals were in flight.

When I praised Berman’s insights to a group of normally super-astute democracy promotion analysts in DC, to my surprise most took the view that Berman’s thesis was “crazy” and that the Muslim Brotherhood were really like the Christian Democracy in Europe; they had confessional roots, for sure, but were pragmatic folk and could be a force for “moderation”. I responded that the Brotherhood was exactly like the CDU – apart from its party structure, ideology, rhetoric, policy, and goals.

Back in 2010 ours was an academic argument. Well, not any more. The Brotherhood will dominate the region’s politics over the next decade. It is already regnant in Egypt, the most populous Arab country and the intellectual fulcrum of both the Arab and Muslim worlds, after sweeping to power earlier this year by winning the parliamentary and presidential elections, marginalising the secular democrats and knocking the military off their perch. In Tunisia the Brotherhood sits in government in the form of Rachid Ghannouchi’s Ennahda. The Justice and Construction Party (JCP) in Libya only won 17 of the 80 seats available for parties in the elections for Libya’s 200-strong national congress in July, but hopes to do better next time (the Brotherhood is very patient). The Syrian branch will be a force in any post-Assad regime (in the early 1980s the Syrian branch conducted an armed rebellion) and in Jordan it grows in strength. Hamas, of course, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

READ THE REST OF THE ESSAY, HERE.

Sep 26 2012

Guardian on British plans for Sinai

We have often commented on the subject of the Guardian’s tendency to place articles with only the most flimsy of connections to Israel on the ‘Israel’ page of its ‘World News’ section. An article published on the ‘Egypt’ page on September 26th appears to be an example of the opposite: one which actually does have a connection to Israel, but was not placed on that page. 

Written by the Guardian’s chief political correspondent Nicholas Watt, the article’s oddness is not confined to the rather glaring spelling mistake in its strapline (later repeated in the body of the report itself). 

Without any accompanying comment, Nicholas Watt apparently repeats the words of a “senior British government source”, informing readers that:

“Britain is to provide military advice to the Egyptian government to help it crack down on militants in the Sinai Peninsula who are destabilising relations with neighbouring Israel.

In his first meeting with the Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi in New York, David Cameron will announce that Britain’s most senior military figure will travel to Cairo. General Sir David Richards, the chief of the defence staff, will lead a British effort that will also see a stabilisation team despatched to Egypt. The team, which will mainly consist of field experts from the Department for International Development, will advise on how to ween Bedouin tribes in Sinai away from smuggling.”

[Emphasis added.]

Those of us concerned about the future of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in general and in particular the terror attacks emanating from the extremists’ paradise which the Sinai Peninsula has become in recent years – and all the more so since the advent of Egypt’s ‘Arab Spring’ – may just have found a new worry to add to our list. 

Not only does the British government appear to believe that the main problem in that lawless territory is ‘militancy’ caused by engagement in ‘smuggling’, but the Guardian seems quite happy to go along uncritically with that theory too.

Watt states that:

“Morsi’s move against militants in Sinai was seen as a particularly positive signal because Israel was acutely nervous about the election of an Islamist president in Egypt.” 

But Watt fails to point out that the new Egyptian president has so far largely confined his ‘move against militants’ to incidents in which Egyptian security forces or officials were attacked, displaying somewhat less commitment when Israeli civilians or soldiers have been targeted in cross-border incidents.

Watt also (apparently like the British government) completely ignores the fact that the terrorists (let’s call a spade a spade) in Sinai have Salafist ideological brothers holding the second largest number of seats in the Egyptian parliament as a result of the ‘Arab Spring’ – a factor which is bound to influence both Egyptian domestic and foreign policy.  

In fact, a recent statement by Egypt’s foreign minister appears to suggest that David Cameron’s plans may be less than welcome. 

“The situation in Sinai is an internal affair not up for discussions in international arenas, either at the United Nations Security Council or elsewhere, said Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr.

The situation is Sinai has no affect (sic) on international security and safety, Amr said in press statements Thursday 20/09/2012.

Egypt has told and will continue to tell the UNSC that the situation in Sinai is an internal issue not open for discussion, Amr said in response to a letter sent by Israel to the UN body criticizing the management of Sinai.”

Watt continues: 

“The UN, EU, US and Russia, which oversee the Middle East peace process, fear that instability in the Sinai Peninsula could disrupt the Camp David accords which led to demilitarisation of the area after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Israel withdrew its forces from the peninsula on the understanding that it would be a non-military zone.”

Leaving aside the rather dodgy time frame (The Camp David Accords were signed almost 6 years after the 1973 war), it should be obvious that Israel did not withdraw from Sinai on an ‘understanding’, but under the terms of a written, signed treaty which lays out the terms of demilitarization in both words and maps. 

Both the Guardian’s chief political correspondent and – more worryingly – the British government do not appear to appreciate that Israeli concerns over the current volatile situation in Sinai extend to far more than the Bedouin drugs and arms smuggling gangs and people traffickers – to whom the Egyptian authorities have traditionally turned a blind eye. 

Without concurrent massive – and long overdue – Egyptian investment in the Sinai Peninsula, the disarming of militias, the ousting of foreign terrorist organisations and the  stemming of the flow of lucrative African migrants into Sinai, ‘weaning’ the Sinai Bedouin from their traditional livelihood of smuggling is liable to be a futile – if not impossible – exercise. 

The main issue at hand is not only whether the new Egyptian government has the economic ability to make the changes necessary, but also whether or not it has the will. Despite three decades of neglect under the previous Egyptian regime, during which smuggling also flourished, the Sinai/Israel border was, for the most part, a fairly quiet one. 

The recent deterioration in the security situation necessitates serious questions: perhaps uncomfortable ones as far as Western governments (and journalists) apparently unable to see anything other than the wonders of the ‘Arab Spring’ are concerned.

 Nevertheless, if the Israel/Egypt peace treaty is to continue to be upheld, responsible parties will also be examining the possibility that a new Egyptian president who ran for election on a blatantly Islamist platform and has since embraced Hamas and the Iranian regime might perhaps be somewhat less than wholly committed to the principles of Camp David, including demilitarization. 

They would then examine the additional possibility that continued unrest in the Sinai Peninsula might actually not go against the purposes of someone eager to change the status quo, but unable to take direct action due to an overwhelming reliance upon foreign aid. 

These questions (and many others concerning issues such as the nature of the as yet unwritten constitution and freedom of the press) are of the sort one would expect Western governments – and supposedly politically savvy journalists – to be asking before they rather condescendingly rush in to promote less than three months of Morsi’s presidency as ‘impressive’ on the basis of the fact that – in acting against armed terrorists on his own territory – he has been doing his job. 

Related articles
Sep 14 2012

Guardian spices up coverage of MENA riots with incitement against Israelis and Jews.

The Guardian’s coverage of the riots and attacks on American and other Western diplomatic missions , as well as other targets, currently taking place throughout the Middle East and North Africa began on Tuesday, September 11th, with a video (sourced from Reuters) of what it termed ‘protestors’ at the US embassy in Cairo. 

At 23:30 BST that night the Guardian published an article by Associated Press in Cairo on the events at the US embassy which also included the same video and raised the subject of the film supposedly responsible for triggering the riots. On Wednesday September 12th, the Guardian published another video, this time of the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya in which, it later emerged, Ambassador Stevens and other US citizens were killed. The video’s strap-line declared that: 

“The violence is in response to an unspecified American film protesters say is blasphemous”

By 11:09 am BST, the Guardian had gone from “unspecified American film” to declaring – in an article by AP – that the film’s director was Israeli. 

Interestingly, here in the Middle East itself, there were no reports at that time of Israeli involvement in the making of the film: that notion appears to have been generated in the West, solely on the basis of the anonymous AP report, although the theme was later adopted by interested parties.  

By Wednesday morning US time, (roughly three hours after the publication of the Guardian article) the Wall Street Journal – which had originally run the AP story suggesting Israeli involvement – was backtracking. 

“On Wednesday, a records search turned up no references to any men in the U.S. by the name Sam Bacile. Israeli officials said they haven’t found any records of an Israeli by that name. The Journal was unable to reach the telephone number again and as of Wednesday, it had been disconnected.

The cellphone number used Tuesday was registered to a user at a home in Cerritos, Calif., where one of the residents was listed in public records as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.”

By this time, other media outlets too had realized that the supposed Israeli connection to the film was a hoax. Even Al Jazeera had managed to get the story straight by early Wednesday morning. 

” “Bacile” is now reportedly in hiding, even though reports suggest that the name is merely cover for a larger group, or a pseudonym for someone who may be neither Israeli nor Jewish – but who cited such an identify to inflame tensions.”

By Thursday, it was quite clear that there was no Israeli involvement whatsoever in the making of the film. 

However, that inflammatory – and untrue – headline still stands at the Guardian – appearing, among other places, under the ‘Islam’ category in its ‘World News’ section. 

Later on Wednesday, at 15:10 BST, the Guardian published another article by Caroline Davies, which repeated the same – and by then, obviously untrue – information regarding the film-maker’s supposed nationality.

At 15:35 BST, Julian Borger weighed in – also promoting the unproven involvement of “100 unnamed Jewish donors” in the making of the film and claiming that “Bacile still insisted that the movie would help Israel”. 

At 16:55 BST on Wednesday, Glenn Greenwald joined the fray, also pushing the already discredited Israeli angle of the story. Two days later, an editor’s note was added to his article. 

“Editor’s note: this article was amended on 14 September. The original stated that the producer of the film was Sam Bacile, an Israeli real estate developer living in California and that he had made the film with the help of 100 Jewish donors. This assertion was based on an Associated Press report that was published in Haaretz”. 

At 20:00 BST on Wednesday, Julian Borger was back with a rehashed version of his earlier piece which still contained unnecessary speculations about Israeli and Jewish involvement in the making of the film. That piece is also still featured as “Top Story” on several of the Guardian’s ‘World News’ pages. 

At 20:23 BST, the Guardian published an article by Rory Carroll, which was still pushing the “100 Jewish donors” line:

“Bacile wrote and directed the film purportedly with $5m (£3m) donated by 100 unnamed Jewish backers. The goal was to show “Islam is a cancer”, he told the Wall Street Journal.”

At 17:00 BST on Thursday, September 13th – well over 24 hours after the ‘Israeli connection’ to the film had been debunked – the Guardian rolled out veteran anti-Israel agitator Max Blumenthal (no stranger to online incendiary films himself) who, despite the fact that the story clearly lacked legs, wrote the following: (emphasis added)

“Bacile told the Associated Press that he was a Jewish Israeli real estate developer living in California. He said that he raised $5m for the production of the film from “100 Jewish donors”, an unusual claim echoing Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style fantasies. Unfortunately, the extensive history of Israeli and ultra-Zionist funding and promotion of Islamophobic propaganda in the United States provided Bacile’s remarkable statement with the ring of truth.“

Only at 18:44 BST on Thursday, September 13th did the Guardian begin to set the record straight with an article by Rory Carroll. But by that time, of course, millions of Guardian readers had been spoon-fed with 31 hours-worth of defamatory untruths. 

There are several things which are deeply disturbing about the Guardian’s behavior on this story. One is the emphasis it has put on 14 minutes of puerile, badly produced hate speech as the ‘reason’ for the mass ‘rent a mob’ rioting throughout the Middle East and North Africa. That emphasis is particularly misguided and misleading in light of the fact that the attacks on the US missions in Cairo and Benghazi appear to have been pre-planned to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. 

No less disturbing is the Guardian’s promotion of fictitious Israeli and Jewish involvement in the production of the film. Not only did the Guardian obviously fail completely to fact check the AP report it originally published, but even when the unreliability of that report came to light, it continued to push that version of the story because it dovetailed with the Guardian’s own existing prejudices. 

If the West should have learned anything over the past few days, it is that rumour – however ridiculous and unfounded – can be a very dangerous and even lethal thing in this part of the world. Whilst some people at the Guardian may find it useful or amusing to promote unsubstantiated rumours which they have clearly not bothered to fact-check, that is not the type of reckless incitement one expects from a responsible, respectable or serious mainstream media outlet. 

The Guardian must therefore promptly issue a prominent correction on each and every one of those articles citing, referring to or inspired by the irresponsible AP report, making it very clear that its reports were misleading, unfounded and untruthful. 

If it has the necessary conscience and guts, the Guardian will also admit to gross professional negligence.

Aug 12 2012

The death of Camp David? On the real world consequences of “Land for Peace”

A guest post by Gidon Ben-Zvi, who blogs at Jerusalem State of Mind

Terrorist in Sinai with RPG

Does “land for peace” work?

Recent developments in the Sinai Peninsula, where the ‘Red Sea Riviera’ has spiraled into anarchy and violence, have put into sharp focus the serious consequences of Israel’s initial decision to embrace retreat as a guiding diplomatic philosophy.

The outbreak of hope that erupted following the signing of the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was palpable.

Based on 1978′s Camp David Accords, this first attempt at a comprehensive peace between Israel and one of its neighbors was a valiant attempt to end 30 years of relentless hostility and costly wars.

Did the Israelis truly desire peace?

Well, by withdrawing from Sinai, Israel gave up:

Furthermore, Israel relinquished Taba — a resort built by Israel in what had been a barren desert area near Eilat — to Egypt in 1988. Taba’s status had not been resolved by the Camp David Accords.

In return, what was Egypt’s contribution to peace? A promise to end belligerence and military aggression.

While the Jewish State sacrificed much for the sake of peace, including an opportunity to become energy independent, the Middle East’s most powerful Arab nation reciprocated with a cold, if non-belligerent, shoulder.

While this frigid yet tolerable status quo defined relations between Jerusalem and Cairo for three decades, the 18 months since the Egyptian revolution forced out President Hosni Mubarak – ushering in a Muslim Brotherhood-led government – has transformed the Sinai into a vortex of chaos and violence. And the deteriorating security situation across its southern border has shocked Israel into coherence.

With Egypt firing missiles in the Sinai Peninsula for the first time since the 1973 Yom Kippur war, following an upsurge in Islamist attacks in the region, both Israel and Egypt must come to terms with the phantom peace of 1979 and consider seriously revising the terms of the treaty – for the sake of both countries.

It may well be time for Israel and Egypt to revisit the negotiating table with the aim of developing an action plan to confront and quell the Islamist insurgency that has swept over the Sinai Peninsula.

While Sinai’s spiraling out of control is due in part to such “imports” as global jihadist groups infiltrating the peninsula, the local population has also joined in on the festivities. In her latest Guardian report, Harriet Sherwood asserts that the vast desert peninsula is inhabited largely by Bedouin tribes, who for decades have been marginalised, neglected and impoverished.

Choosing a compelling narrative over facts on the ground, Ms Sherwood significantly downplays the Sinai Bedouins’ contribution to the reign of anarchy that has taken hold of the peninsula.

In truth, the Bedouins of the Sinai have rather cashed in on the lawless state of affairs. Tribesmen have been smuggling in Eritrean and Sudanese fortune seekers who are, along with drugs and weapons, smuggled into Israel.

And post-peace Sinai has inflicted a body blow to Israel’s security in another way. For it is through the peninsula that most of the weapons Hamas has succeeded in stockpiling in Gaza were smuggled in through the tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip with Sinai.

What a difference a peace makes, no? Israel’s original capitulation spawned many others. The pullout from Sinai set the stage for later expulsions and launched a three-decade long period rife with Israeli retreat.

And have all these retreats – Bethlehem, Hebron, Jenin, and Gush Katif- brought Israel one moment of peace? The grandchild of the 1978 Camp David Accords, the Oslo process, brought only a dramatic escalation in violence and bloodshed.

Necessity being the mother of invention, Israel must take a cold, hard look at the failed promises, dashed hopes and lives lost as the direct result of the strange calculus known as ‘land-for-peace’. Going forward, a new diplomatic paradigm, based on mutual respect, trade, tourism, investment and collaborative efforts in the fields of technology and medicine should be developed. In other words, scrap land-for-peace and replace it with peace-for-peace.

Until then, Israel and its neighbors are destined to wallow in a state of low-level bellicosity, with occasional flare ups as we’ve seen over the last several days in the Sinai Peninsula.

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Aug 9 2012

Harriet Sherwood’s tale of Bedouin terror, and the burden of bad ideas

“… the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.” – Albert Camus, The Plague

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report, ‘Sinai: a descent towards chaos’, represents a classic example of the political orientation which refuses to hold individuals responsible for the violence and terror they willfully commit.

Her tale, about increasing lawlessness and terror in the (post-Mubarak era) Sinai by, among other groups, Bedouin factions adhering to Salafi jihadist doctrines, falls squarely within her broader narrative about the “oppressed” Israeli Bedouin.  (See our posts on her reports here and here.)

Sherwood begins, thus:

“The Sinai has long been an area beyond the writ of Cairo. The vast desert peninsula is inhabited largely by Bedouin tribes, who for decades have been marginalised, neglected and impoverished.”

Sherwood later notes the following:

“Israel has urged the Egyptian government to take firm action against Bedouin militants and smugglers, and has enlisted the support of the US in its efforts. During a visit to Cairo last month, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, warned that Sinai could become an “operational base” for jihadists if security was not stepped up.”

Indeed, the Sinai Bedouin, who now number over 300,000, have been, since Mubarak’s fall, transforming the area into a semi-autonomous region with their own illegal economic enterprises.

The Bedouin have, for instance, guided massive numbers of African immigrants into Israel, mainly Sudanese and Eritrean Muslims, often subjecting the helpless migrants to torture and rape.

During the past two years, some Bedouins have also expanded this venture into harvesting human organs of some migrants to be sold abroad.

Later, Sherwood writes:

The region has suffered from chronic under-investment in education, health and transport. Its inhabitants are among the poorest in Egypt. 

In the south, massive investment since the 1990s in upscale resorts in the former Bedouin fishing village of Sharm el-Sheikh, and a programme to create a “Red Sea Riviera” along the coast, has further alienated the Bedouin. They are routinely excluded from employment in swanky resorts, and consequent resentment may have contributed to a spate of tourist kidnappings and armed robberies in the past year. [emphasis added]

However, whatever the economic disparities which Bedouin in the Sinai may indeed face, assigning their moral drift – towards fundamentalist Islamist ideology, terrorism, human trafficking, torture and organ harvesting – to social inequalities simply strains credulity.

Indeed, nearly half of the world’s population live in poverty (earning less than $2.50 per day), and the overwhelming majority of the poorest countries face little or no serious terrorist threats.  Indeed, the often assumed connection between poverty and terrorism has been repeatedly debunked, especially in studies conducted since the attacks on 9/11.

We all, to be sure, possess our share of bad ideas. Most of the time, we discard them before acting on them, but when we do act on a bad idea (one based on specious logic or a faulty assumption), we usually realize quickly that it was erroneous and cease the behavior.

But sometimes, faulty, dangerous ideas weave their way into collective thought (and action) through the media, or the pronouncements of policy makers and other opinion leaders. When that happens, the injurious consequences are often not felt by those who conceived or implemented the bad ideas, but by others.

Those who suffer the burden of the assumed causation between inequality and terrorism are, in addition to those victimized by terrorist acts, societies which are morally neutered by the inversion of perpetrators from moral actors with little or no human empathy into the (immutably) oppressed and downtrodden.

Societies which seek to fiercely fight terrorism in all of its manifestations require confidence in the inherent righteousness of the cause, a belief which can be severely eroded by a culture of victimhood which posits systemic root causes for individual and group pathos – typically in the form of broad abstractions such as “alienation” or “economic injustice”.

Harriet Sherwood’s report is ostensibly about “lawlessness” in the Sinai, and the radicalization of the region’s Bedouin, but it represents much more: Western guilt which insists that we all equally share responsibility for all manner of destructive behavior.

The dangerous corollary of suggesting that we’re all, in some manner, responsible for cruel, malevolent acts, is that, in effect, none of us are.  

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Aug 6 2012

Report on the terror attack near Kerem Shalom, August 5th 2012.

Earlier today, CiF Watch took part in a briefing by Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich on the subject of last night’s terror attack in the south of Israel. The details are as follows. 

At around 8 pm local time the IDF identified a group of terrorists engaged in an attack upon an Egyptian army base near Rafah. The terrorists killed around 15 Egyptian soldiers and stole two vehicles – a lorry, which they loaded with explosives, and an armoured personnel carrier. 

The terrorists then proceeded to storm the border between Egypt and Israel near the Kerem Shalom crossing. The civilian kibbutz also named Kerem Shalom is situated nearby. 

The truck self-detonated at the border in an action presumed to be an attempt to target Israeli soldiers at a nearby outpost. Due to the huge blast resulting from the large amount of explosives in the truck, some civilians in the area mistakenly reported being under rocket fire at the time.

The armoured personnel carrier crossed the border into Israel and was struck once from the air by the Israeli Air Force. As the terrorists abandoned the vehicle, they were also targeted. In all, five terrorists were killed: one who was driving the truck and four travelling in the APC. 

It is presumed that the terrorists intended to kidnap Israelis or to target a house in the area. Some ten thousand Israeli civilians live in the vicinity. The terrorists were in possession of large amounts of weapons, flak jackets and explosive belts, indicating that a lethal attack was prevented. 

Burning APC

The APC on fire after it was targeted by the Israel Air Force

(Photo credit:IDF blog)

Lt. Col. Leibovich stated that the IDF had prior intelligence on the subject of this attack which had prompted the issuing of a warning to Israelis not to enter Sinai several days beforehand. At present, the affiliation of the terrorists involved in last night’s incident is still under investigation. In the past year or so, the Sinai Peninsula has become an area of increased terrorist activity for a variety of groups, as indicated by previous attacks originating from the territory including those of August 18th  2011 and June 18th 2012. 

The Guardian’s version of the incident can be found here.  

 

Jul 24 2012

A camera’s candid depiction of Egyptians’ hatred of Jews which the Guardian won’t report

For those unaware, Candid Camera was a popular U.S. show which involved concealed cameras filming ordinary people being confronted with unusual situations, sometimes involving trick props and false identities. When the joke was revealed, victims would be told the show’s catchphrase, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera.”

Imagine the following scenario.

A new U.S. version of Candid Camera is aired on a national network.

On the first show, a famous older white, Southern American actor is interviewed about his career by a journalist who claims she is filming the show for a European TV station.

Then, sometime during the show, it is revealed to the actor that the journalist is not, in fact, working for a European station but, rather, for a African-American cable station: Black Entertainment Television (BET).

The actor is visibly enraged by the duplicity and especially furious that the interview is being aired on a black station.  He then expresses his outrage by throwing furniture, physically assaulting the female host and exclaiming “I hate blacks to death”.

What do you think would be the reaction by the American public to such a disgusting display?

Please keep that in mind while watching the following video of an Egyptian version of Candid Camera which aired recently, and translated by MEMRI.

One of the many scenes which stand out is this one, near the end, when the actor reacts to finding out after his violent display that he was not in fact being filmed by an Israeli station.

A more exquisite example of raw antisemitism would be difficult to find.  

However, more broadly, such animosity towards Jews represents the views of the overwhelming majority of Egyptians – per a Pew Global Survey in 2010 which demonstrated that a remarkable 95% of those polled admitted to disliking Jews as such, and not merely Israelis. (Results were similar for the other Arab countries in the study).

But beyond such statistical evidence, further proof of the endemic antisemitism in the Arab world relates to the consequences of the anti-Jewish racism displayed by the actors on the Egyptian TV show. 

Will the actors be condemned by the nation’s opinion leaders or public officials?

Will they suffer any harm to their acting careers?

Will their lives in any way be negatively affected by such a disgusting display of bigotry?

Do we really even to need to briefly meditate upon such questions to arrive at the obvious answer? Of course not.

In truly democratic, liberal countries such crude behavior and expressions of animosity towards minority groups are often kept in check not, per se, by laws or other formal codifications of anti-racist norms but rather by the simple fear of public opprobrium.  

Such social costs for Judeophobic expressions in Arab public life are clearly absent.

Back in 2010, a few dozen rabbis in Safed signed a legally non-blinding religious decree forbidding Jews from renting apartments to non-Jews.  The decree was widely condemned by Israel’s political leadership, including the Prime Minister and President.  Further, the rabbi behind the letter (Safed’s Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu) was investigated by police on suspicion of incitement to racism.

At ‘Comment is Free’, Mya Guarnieri framed the decree as nothing short of a sign of Israel’s lurch towards fascism and a dynamic which “strikes at the soul of Judaism”. The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent published two additional stories on the incident. Moreover, the story garnered wide coverage, and condemnations, throughout the Israeli media.

Will the Guardian – or for that matter the media in Egypt – so much as mention (yet alone condemn) the ugly spectacle on Egyptian Candid Camera? 

No; democracies can not eliminate racism from the souls of their citizens, but in their most vibrant and genuine expressions, such progressive societies possess a natural social bulwark against the burgeoning of such moral darkness.

If the Arab world is ever truly to experience a genuine political spring, it must begin the process of adopting truly democratic cultural norms involving pluralism and tolerance.

The ugly display by Egyptian journalists and actors broadcast on Egyptian TV – for which they will almost surely enjoy social and legal impunity – is a sad reminder that though Egyptians may now enjoy political future which includes periodic democratic elections, genuine democracy is a long, long way off.

 

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Jun 24 2012

Video: Egyptian cleric launching Pres. Morsi’s campaign promised new Arab empire with Jerusalem as capital

It was announced late this afternoon that Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidate Mohamed Morsi won Egypt’s Presidential elections, and will become the country’s first Islamist head of state.

While the American educated Morsi campaigned on the promise of a modern, inclusive, democratic agenda, those familiar with the ideology and history of the the MB would be wise to doubt the possibility of such a “moderate” Islamist-led regime.

As such, the following (broadcast on Egyptian Al-Nas TV on May 1, 2012), translated and originally posted by MEMRI, is instructive. The clip shows selected segments of Egyptian Cleric Safwat Higazi officially launching the campaign of the then new Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, in front of tens of thousands of MB supporters in Cairo.

(The introductory text on the YouTube video misleadingly implies that the speaker is Morsi himself. However, the original MEMRI video confirms that it is the Egyptian cleric, Safwat Higazi, selected by the campaign to announce Morsi’s candidacy, who is speaking.)

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Jun 18 2012

Terror attack on Israel’s southern border, 18th June, 2012.

This morning a terror attack took place on the Israeli side of the border with Egypt. The details of the event, as provided by Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit are as follows. 

The incident took place on Route 10, some 30 kilometres south of Gaza. Three terrorists had crossed from Egypt to the Israeli side of the border and hidden themselves. At around 6 o’clock this morning, two vehicles transporting Israeli construction workers to the site of their work on the border fence currently under construction drove past the area in which the terrorists were hiding. 

The terrorists activated an IED and fired at the vehicles with an RPG and Kalashnikov rifles. The RPG did not hit the cars, but the explosive device and gunfire did and one of the vehicles flipped over, landing in a nearby ditch. One of the Israeli construction workers ( Said Phashpashe, aged 36 from Haifa) was killed. 

Minutes later, soldiers from the Golani Brigade arrived on the scene and there was an exchange of fire between them and the terrorists, during which a large explosion took place. Two terrorists were killed – one of them was carrying large amounts of explosives on his body.

Routes 10 and 12, which were closed to traffic during the event, have now been re-opened and the five Israeli civilian communities in the region which were sealed off for five hours whilst the possibility of a third terrorist at large was being ruled out are now back to normal. 

Lt. Col. Leibovich pointed out several similarities between this incident and the one which took place nearby last August. In both cases the terrorists were in possession of very high quality equipment including flak jackets, camouflage gear, helmets and grenades. There is a high probability that part of the terror squad may have remained on the Egyptian side of the border. 

The IDF is still investigating this morning’s incident and the terrorists’ origins and affiliations are not yet known. 

In a separate event just before noon today, the IDF identified and eliminated two terrorists about to launch a terror attack in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. Since the beginning of 2012, terrorists have fired 282 rockets into Israeli territory – 10 of those since the beginning of June.