Algerians are upset at how their nation has been hiring many non-Algerians to play football for their national team, skirting the normal naturalization requirements to become citizens instantly.
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More monetary woes in Gaza:
Not exactly the FDIC, is it? |
In an interview with Asharq Al Awsat, given while he was in China, Mahmoud Abbas (referred to consistently as Abu Mazen, his nom de guerre in Arabic) said that there is no difference between Fatah and Hamas:
This is mostly meant to put pressure on Hamas for an agreement, but Abbas knows very well that Hamas does not accept the Green Line. He is using the normal Fatah argument that Hamas is hypocritical when it tries to stop rockets while saying it is a resistance movement. |
by Phyllis Chesler
NewsRealBlog
May 4, 2010
http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/766/polygamy-and-lawsuits-in-france
It gets even better.
Remember the French woman who was fined for wearing a face mask (niqab) when she was driving? She turned out to be one of four wives who collectively had twelve children, all of whom were being supported by the French government; their father, the polygamist, was also on the public dole.
Whatta guy. He is 35 years old, sports a beard, keffiyeh, white cap, and black djellaba, and his name is Liès Hebbadj. Formerly Algerian, he became a French citizen in 1999 after marrying a French national. He has also been accused of being a wife abuser and of selling or handing off one of his wives to another man. The charmer has been quoted thusly:
As far as I know, mistresses are not prohibited in France, nor in Islam. Maybe by Christianity, but not in France. If you lose your French nationality for having mistresses, then a lot of French men would have been stripped of their citizenship.
Guess what? Now Hebbadj is being sued by a Muslim association for "defaming" Islam! Rachida Benamed, of the Association of Muslims in Meaux and the region, says:
We were shocked that this man would say that in Islam you can have mistresses. That's completely wrong. To listen to him, our religion is immoral. … When we saw that nobody reacted, we decided to do something and so filed the complaint. … This man needs to be convicted for his defamatory statements, we need to put a stop to this type of behavior, he must take responsibility for his actions.
Whoa!
Is she defending polygamy and denying the epidemic of concubinage, prostitution, and sexual slavery among Muslims?
In the Qu'ran's Sura 4, verse 3, it is written:
And if you fear that you cannot act equitably towards orphans, then marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four; but if you fear that you will not do justice (between them), then (marry) only one or what your right hands possess; this is more proper, that you may not deviate from the right course.
I have been told that polygamy is actually very hard to practice in "the right way" because a man must treat each wife equally—exactly equally. Since this is impossible, polygamy, by definition, may never have been practiced in "the right way." Also, mainly wealthy men can afford to practice polygamy, a fact which dooms young, poor men to unmarried lives of enormous envy and resentment. In an age of jihad we know where this may lead: They will sexually harass and rape infidel women and kidnap Muslim girls and women as sexual slaves. This was done by Islamist paramilitary gangs in Algeria and by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Such resentful young men will also become fundamentalists and terrorists. Trust me: Polygamy makes women and children quite miserable too—but that is the subject for another piece.
Historically, the "right course" among Muslim men has included taking concubines—many, many concubines, both Jewish and Christian, African and European. Muhammed himself did so and this practice has not stopped. Obscenely large harems have existed among Muslim rulers for centuries, although many non-Muslim Africans have "lived large" in terms of multiple wives as well. Jews outlawed polygamy in the eleventh century. Prostitution has always flourished in the world; sexual trafficking is at an all-time high today. Neither Muslim nor African countries are immune to this practice.
Today, the Saudis alone are known to fly in new planeloads full of European prostitutes each and every week. Are they considered to be "temporary concubines" or even "temporary wives," a practice which is now common in Iran? Female domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are routinely raped by their employers as well as held hostage, underpaid, or never paid.
In other words, poor Rachida Benamed has scarcely a fig leaf to cover the enormous nakedness of Muslim men when it comes to the subject of polygamy, concubinage, and prostitution. I would not recommend trying to justify such misogyny no matter what religion the john may practice.
As I have said: Follow the Islamic veil and you will find many other improprieties and immoralities in the West.
I wish to acknowledge the fine work of Esther's Islam in Europe blog.
They Outnumber the Nay-Sayers Twelve Times Over
Those students, faculty, Brandeis alumni and interested others who are eager to hear Ambassador Oren speak now number 3,164 and counting on a petition. Those who believe that his presence will be “divisive” and “polarizing” now number only 249 and counting.
The pro-Orens have it!
Listen to what some Brandeis students themselves are saying in favor of Ambassador Oren.
According to The Washington Times, Brandeis student Nathan Mizrachi said that protesting Mr. Oren was a “waste of time” and acknowledged that although he is a controversial figure, “anyone who is consistently contributing to our worldview in a dignified, widely respected manner …is someone who merits our attention.” He went on to ask students not to protest vocally during Mr. Oren’s commencement speech as the Muslim students did in California.
“That would truly be a disgrace to our university,” Mr. Mizrachi wrote. Mizrachi also created a pro-Oren Facebook group which now has 162 signatures.
According to Brandeis student and president of the Brandeis Zionist Alliance Rebecca Schlangel, “I was actually really thrilled to hear that Brandeis invited Michael Oren.” She had heard him speak before at a Harvard event. “He was really concise and clear; he got all the points across that he was trying to talk about, and the audience responded really well to him,” Schlangel recalled. “I think that there is this stereotype on the Brandeis campus that the second anyone says ‘Israel,’ everyone freaks out and has this overreaction; I really don’t feel that his politics are overly controversial,” she said. “I don’t feel like what he’s going to be saying is going to be overly political…He’s going to be talking to us about graduating and our future lives.”
According to Brandeis student Heddy Ben-Atar:
“The radical ideas to protest [Oren's invitation] stifle free speech and intellectual discussion–exactly what extremist students claim to stand for. [They are doing so] before actually hearing what Oren may have to say. He is damned without even having said a word. It is silly to pretend he will try to solve the Middle East’s problems during commencement. He has much else to say. More important than Oren’s politics and current role as ambassador, he represents academic excellence, rigorous research practices and fearlessly honest writing. Let the entire Brandeis community unite and aspire to that intellectual greatness, regardless of politics.”
Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz had this to say: “Frankly, I’m astonished by the fact that people think that they know what the political views of Dr. Oren are. If they would [read his work] they would actually learn what a great scholar he is.” Reinharz said he hoped that “people at Brandeis have learned…to argue only after they have heard what the person has had to say, not in advance.”
As a member of the extended Brandeis family, (my son and daughter-in-law both graduated from Brandeis and I once taught there), I am pleased to report such good news.
Like other Obama administration members, Hillary Clinton was just muttering words last week at the American Jewish Congress. And the Jewish community that has known only one political party all its life is falling for them. Ron Radosh explains. Yet liberal Jewish groups, grasping at straws in the hope that Obama will stand with Israel and the special relationship between the U.S. and the Jewish state, have quickly sought to reassure their members that all is well, despite evidence to the contrary. All it took for Hadassah to inform its members that all is well were some carefully chosen words from David Axelrod. On April 29th, a backgrounder alert sent to its members informed them that “the Obama administration has responded to concerns from the Jewish community with a letter to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and speeches by prominent administration officials to Jewish organizations, affirming the administration’s support for Israel and the need for peace.”
Last Friday, I attended the evening plenary session at the American Jewish Committee national conference in Washington, D.C., where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a standing ovation and a very warm reception. Her speech was a perfect example of reassuring spin meant to wow the crowd. “We know,” Clinton told the audience, “that Israel faces unique challenges. A nation forced to defend itself at every turn, living under existential threat for decades. We Americans may never fully understand the implications of this history on the daily lives of Israelis – the worry that a mother feels watching a child board a school bus or a child watching a parent go off to work. But we know deep in our souls that we have an unshakable bond and we will always stand not just with the Government of Israel but with the people of Israel.”
Instead of addressing the specifics and the reasons Lauder, Ed Koch and others have pointed to, Secretary Clinton merely asserted “that there has been some of what he called ‘noise and distortion’ about this Administration’s approach in the Middle East. Over the past month, we have attempted to remove any ambiguity. The President and this Administration have repeatedly reaffirmed our commitment to Israel’s security in word and in deed.” On Iran, for example, she said, “We are now working with our partners at the United Nations to craft tough new sanctions. The United States is committed to pursuing this diplomatic path. But we will not compromise our commitment to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”
In Europe a century ago, as Jews coped with constant, socially acceptable anti-Semitism, there was a refrain that echoed throughout the ghetto: shver tzu zein a yid (it's difficult to be a Jew). Evelyn Gordon explains that shver tzu zein a yid is the only possible explanation for the betrayal that European Jews handed Israel when they signed on to J Call's call for blaming Israel for the conflict in this part of the world. Unlike the U.S., the EU doesn’t vote against anti-Israel UN resolutions, give Israel financial aid, serve as a major Israeli arms supplier, and publicly defend (or at least refrain from condemning) Israeli counterterrorism measures. Indeed, it makes only one major contribution to Israel’s welfare: it’s Israel’s largest trading partner.
So when you urge European “pressure” on Israel, you’re effectively urging BDS. The EU has no lesser pressure mechanisms left.
Chemla nevertheless insisted that JCall is “actually helping Israel’s image in Europe” by showing that the Jewish community is “not monolithic.” How Europeans’ image of Israel would be improved by learning that prominent Jews also deem Israel the conflict’s main culprit remains a mystery.
But it’s no mystery how that might improve Europeans’ image of European Jews. On a continent where opinion polls consistently show Israel to be widely loathed, even implying that Israel isn’t solely to blame makes you suspect. But if you urge the EU to withhold support from Israel’s government, yet not from the PA; if you even declare that this serves Israel’s “true interests,” so Europeans need suffer no qualms of conscience, then you’ve restored yourself to the European consensus. You’ve showed, to quote JCall’s petition, that you, too, hear “the voice of reason” — at least as Europe currently defines it.
It’s hard being a Jew in Europe today. So it’s understandable that some would seize on anything, however irrational, that labels itself “pro-Israel” while not violating the European consensus. But their Israeli and American brethren must remind them of the truth: being “pro-Israel” in Europe today requires emphasizing Palestinian guilt, which Europeans routinely ignore, rather than reinforcing their “blame Israel” reflex. And it requires lobbying against “pressure” that can only be manifest through BDS.
International aid workers in Gaza came up with the idea to stage a mock World Cup tournament, with different "countries" being represented. The goal was, as usual, to highlight the "siege" where Gazans cannot freely travel to the real World Cup matches.
I guess that Obama's overtures to the Arab world have not made any impact. Time for him to redouble his efforts to make them like him better.
But - it wasn't Palestinian Arabs who came up with this idea, it was international aid workers! Here' a great example where Al Jazeera is fully doing propaganda, not news.
The first commenter on the article is actually on the American team and wasn't happy with this article, which again indicates that truth is hardly what this tournament is about:
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From the WSJ:
32 people to kill one guy! |
CBS has a story on their website about how Catholics feel about the sex scandals in the Catholic Church, with most saying it doesn't affect their faith but upset at how the Vatican is handling it.
Got that? The Zionists, together with their gay friends, are working to take down the church! |
In order to ensure that the outcome of negotiations between Israel and the 'Palestinians' is not pre-determined, the Obama administration has been pressuring Israel to freeze Jewish housing construction in Judea, Samaria and 'east' Jerusalem. The Israeli government has agreed to a ten-month freeze in Judea and Samaria (which is up at the end of September). But regarding Jerusalem, if the Netanyahu government has agreed to anything, they are not saying.The Fayyad government is authorized by the new decision to relocate government offices and important institutions to what mass media refer to as eastern Jerusalem but actually includes northern and southern areas of the capital as well. The stated goal is to implant the sense among Jerusalem Arabs that the address for their issues is the PA.
The decision is a violation of the Oslo Accords, which prohibits the PA from operating in Jerusalem. The Orient House controversy, at the end of which Israel forcibly closed the eastern Jerusalem building and forbade it from being used for PA activity, was based on the clause in the Oslo II agreement stating that the PA's jurisdiction was restricted and did not include "issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations: Jerusalem, settlements, specified military locations, Palestinian refugees, borders, foreign relations and Israelis.”
The PA government also stated its intention of Arabizing the city, as well as "setting facts on the ground" that will have to be taken into consideration in all future negotiations with Israel. Special allocations will be made to schools, culture centers, health clinics and the like.
Hamas made a similar decision several weeks ago, allocating some $30 million towards various causes in eastern Jerusalem.
American Jews who care deeply about Israel can be divided into three broad categories. The first two are what I call “righteous Jews” and the “new Afrikaners,” which are clearly definable groups that think about Israel and where it is headed in fundamentally different ways. The third and largest group is comprised of those Jews who care a lot about Israel, but do not have clear-cut views on how to think about Greater Israel and apartheid. Let us call this group the “great ambivalent middle…”
To give you a better sense of what I mean when I use the term righteous Jews, let me give you some names of people and organizations that I would put in this category. The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.
It's become stylish recently to suggest that President Obama should come to Israel and speak directly to Israelis. Martin Indyk, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz, among others, have suggested it in the past couple of weeks. But the first person to suggest it publicly - the very first - was Aluf Benn, the Haaretz editor. Benn wrote an op-ed in the New York Times last July suggesting that Obama had to something about his popularity in Israel, and why doesn't he come to Israel and speak directly to Israelis. At the time, Benn was lambasted by Marc Stanley of the National Jewish Democratic Council, in an op-ed that appeared in the JPost, which accused Benn of being part of the anti-Obama wing of the Jewish community, and claimed he had chutzpa for criticizing Obama.It’s great that you mentioned the date. It’s been 9 months, but i could still print it today or tomorrow. He [obama] missed one point. Israel. he went all around the world, speaking to different leaders, but not here. yes, I stand by it.
I was sitting in tel aviv one saturday morning in cofee shop a couple of weeks ago. I was surrounded by secular israelis, the most open-minded types. but when the conversation turns to him, they say "we can't trust him." even the most secular. in tel aviv. if he can't gain their support, how is he to gain the israeli public's support?
The Hebrew website Yedioth Aharonoth (YNet's counterpart) will report over the weekend that as a South African judge during the apartheid era, Richard Goldstone sent tens of blacks to their deaths. Israel's largest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, is leading this morning on the top of its front page with an advance story to its weekend edition by its top investigative reporter, Tzadok Yechezkeli, that while a judge during the Apartheid regime in South Africa, Richard Goldstone sentenced tens of blacks to death sentences, beatings, and enforced racial laws. (Headline) Goldstone: "Those were the laws, and I had to respect them".
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In the full story to come out on Friday, it will be reported that while a judge in the South African Court of Appeals, Goldstone sent tens of blacks to their death. They point out in the article that while this hasn't stopped Goldstone from severely criticizing the death penalty and those countries that continue to permit it, he has himself never expressed any regret for his actions.
According to Yediot's findings, Goldstone confirmed the death sentences of at least 28 accused blacks, who had appealed their sentences, most of them for murder, and he expressed his support for death sentences in his decisions as well, as he wrote in the case of a young black man who was sentenced to death for killing the white owner of a restaurant after he fired him: "The death penalty needs to reflect the demands of society to take retribution for the crimes that people see, justifiably, as horrifying". Goldstone, "declared that the gallows were the only punishment of deterrent in these cases", and wrote: "Fury is a relevant factor in the imposition of a suitable punishment".
The article notes that Goldstone also supported Apartheid policies in other decisions where the death sentence was not involved, among them: "He confirmed a punishment of flogging for 4 blacks who were charged with violence, and acquitted 4 policemen who broke into the house of a white woman who was suspected of having sexual relations with a black man - which was considered then to be a severe crime in South Africa".
In this part of the world, the term 'linkage' is usually used to refer to the notion that resolving the Israeli - I can hardly help but recognize the central role that U.S. Middle East policy has given to the belief that, from the Persian Gulf all the way to Western North Africa, a region encompassing many thousands of tribes and clans, dozens of languages and dialects, ethnicities and religious confessions, the Arab-Israeli issue is the key factor in determining the happiness of over 300 million Arabs and an additional 1.3 billion Muslims outside of the Arabic-speaking regions. Where does such an extraordinary idea come from? The answer is the Arabs—who might be expected, in the U.S. view of the world, to give us an honest account of what is bothering them. However, this would ignore the fact that interested parties do not always disclose the entire truth of their situation, especially when they have a stake in doing otherwise.
In all relations, intimate as well as international, the goal is to convince the other side to see the world in the way that you have chosen for them to see it. As Zionist immigration started to pick up in the 1920s and 1930s, long before the United States was even a factor in the Middle East, Arab rulers explained to the British that the creation of a Jewish state would cause deep anger among the Islamic umma, or community. The notion that all Muslims could feel strongly about one particular issue that did not touch on them directly was not necessarily false, but neither was it invariably true. Religious affiliation is only one form of identity in the region, where tribal and clan loyalty often trump everything else: It tests credulity that, say, the Saud clan of the Nejd on the Arabian peninsula was more concerned with protecting wealthy Jerusalem families than with defeating its own local adversaries, such as the Hashemites.
Linkage is the narrative the Arab rulers—specially Ibn Saud, the Hashemites who ruled Iraq and Transjordan, and the Egyptian monarchy—used to compete with each other to represent the Palestinian file to the British, a privilege that would enhance the winner’s power and prestige at the expense of his rivals. If the Saudis, say, owned the right to speak for the Arabs of the Palestinian mandate, then the British would have to go through the Saudi king to win concessions, a path that the British would need to pave with gold and concessions of their own to the Saudis. The competition for the role was stiff.
In the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, many of the British Foreign Office’s bureaucrats were, following in the footsteps of T.E. Lawrence, obsessed with the notion of a great and unified Arab nation. But even as the Foreign Office’s advice to Whitehall was largely based on sentimental, or irrational, grounds, London was not entirely foggy-headed. Recognizing that war with Germany was on the horizon, the Brits did not wish to risk their position in the Levant or energy sources in the Gulf by pushing the Arabs over to the Nazis. After the war, with the Brits losing their holdings and discovering that they were incapable of continuing to balance the Jews and the Arabs, the American moment in the Middle East began in earnest. The U.S. Department of State inherited the Foreign Office’s Arab nationalist inclinations and with it the idea of linkage. President Harry S. Truman’s Secretary of State Gen. George Marshall was the first in a long line of American military men reaching up to the present who subscribed to the idea that U.S. support for the Zionist state would antagonize the world’s Muslim population. Marshall was a proponent of hard linkage who not only warned the president against recognizing Israel, but also threatened to vote against him if he did so.
So, how did Washington manage to navigate these dangerous shoals, balancing not only the Arabs and Israel, but also a large segment of its own foreign-policy establishment that was suspicious, if not downright hostile, to the Jewish state? An even neater stunt than convincing the other side to accept your perspective is to turn their idols upside down—that is, to take their worldview and use it against them. This is exactly the trick that Washington accomplished in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the energy crisis. Henry Kissinger’s State Department began exploiting the Arab narrative for the United States’ own benefit: The United States told the Arabs that it, too, believed in linkage, and that if they wanted anything from Israel, they’d have to come through the United States to get it. The Arabs were happy to go along for the ride, especially the Saudis, who wanted to avoid a repeat of the oil embargo that OPEC imposed on the United States for siding with Israel.
Those who say they see through the myth of linkage note that the Palestinian issue can’t be that important because in fact the Arabs don’t really care about the Palestinians and just use them as a political football for their own benefit. That’s both true and not true, but what’s more instructive is that the Palestinians have caused a lot of trouble in the region for their Arab brethren. Palestinian refugees started civil wars in Jordan and Lebanon and sided with Iraq when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. If, like me, you see the region in terms of an Arab civil war, then these Palestinian uprisings are simply evidence of how one group has fought its rivals for power. But if you see the Middle East in terms of linkage, you would argue this proves your circular logic: If the Palestinian issue was resolved these wars never would have happened in the first place.
Indeed, the American position in the Middle East is founded on the idea that Arab regimes are incapable of defending themselves against anyone. Washington made sure these regimes can’t defeat Israel; the United States protected the Saudis from the Soviets and then from Saddam, when the American presence in the desert made the Saudis vulnerable to their own domestic opposition in the form of Osama Bin Laden. What the Saudis want now is to be protected against the Islamic Republic of Iran, but they can’t say that publicly any more than they can explain that the myth of linkage was always more about intra-Arab politics than it was about the fate of the Palestinians.
Nor apparently can the Americans admit that linkage was just a strategic instrument that leveraged the Arab narrative to the advantage of the United States. The further U.S. policymaking gets from the origins of the myth, the more magical and enticing it has become. The myth of linkage has grown to such legendary proportions at this point that it is the extent of the current White House’s Middle East policy. We have no other strategy to stop the Iranian nuclear program but linkage. Movement on the peace process, the Obama Administration believes, will get the Arab regimes to help us with Iran. The problem is that the Arabs will not help us with Iran. They want us to deal with Iran ourselves, but if we keep forcing the issue of linkage they have no choice but to go along with the ruse that everything is linked to the Arab-Israeli crisis. After all, it’s their narrative, and they can’t disown it now.
In reality, the reason the Obama Administration, Gates, and Petraeus are pushing linkage into overdrive is that there is no Iran strategy, and nothing—not even linkage—is going to stop the Iranians. They are telling the Arabs that they are going to do what they can about the Palestinian question, because they are not going to do anything about Iran. That’s the Arabs’ consolation prize for being an American ally. What a cruel joke fate has played at the expense of Arabs, who have been talking out of both sides of their mouth about the Palestinians and linkage for almost a century, a myth that came to link the fate of the Americans to that of the Arabs, and theirs to ours. Since we have no other policy than a magic trick, the Arabs have no choice but to pretend to believe it’s real.
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